Disclaimer: Fire Emblem does not belong to me.

Title: Traitor
Rating: PG
Summary: She had known from the beginning he was a spy and would-be assassin. The moment of revelation for two people.
Status: Abandoned

Started: July 31, 2007
Word Count: 717
Posted: February 5, 2010
Last Edited: February 5, 2010
Author's Note: The final scene of what would have been a story where Seth is sent to spy on Eirika. And the original was waaaay cheesier ("I have been your knight since you first spoke to me" and "Become my knight and prince as I have been your princess.")

"I know."

His head snapped up in shock from where he knelt before her. He looked at her with wide eyes, his head slightly tilted with mouth parted. Know? How could she know?

"I knew from the beginning who you were."

He struggled for words, and then they came out all at once, "Then why?"

She placed her hands behind her back and turned to look at him, her heels shuffling across the tile. "I liked you."

"That was foolish of you, my Princess."

"Perhaps, but it is not foolish to put your trust in a kind, gentle, strong heart. You are worthy of my trust, are you not? Have you not noticed that even now, you say 'my Princess?' You didn't in the beginning. But now I am your Princess; in more ways than one."

He was bewildered and embarrassed. "But I may still betray you."

"If you betray me, then that is what will be. I will not fight you; I put those days far behind me."

"Then," his body tensed in hesitation, "it is true, that you were—"

"—a member of the army that specialized in things that required quick efficiency. Murder. Yes. I was. And now I repent for those days by trying to nurture this fragile peace." She walked into the small balcony overlooking the orchard.

He could not reconcile that she could be both princess and assassin, not with her standing with the sunlight on the edges of her blue dress, her hands in white gloves. "Your hands are only stained with the blood of one monarch; mine are stained with the blood of hundreds of ordinary people who stood in the way of my orders."

Her neck turned and she looked at him sadly. "If that is what you think I did, I will not disillusion you."

"Then the bodies in the castle—"

"Yes, they were my doing."

He stated the obvious, "We never guessed your skill with the rapier was so."

She remained silent, her eyes remembering. "It wasn't a rapier, it was an iron blade."

"I see."

"Seth, I have put the past behind me." He noted the change in her voice. "It seems you are trying to do the same as well. I believe you were going to retire after this." She said the word very carefully, rolling each syllable in her mouth to enunciate it properly. "But you know there is no true end to this kind of life. They will always call upon you once more. Always once more. There are others amongst you who wish to leave this, do they not?"

"Yes. I take it you had a spy among us, then?"

She smiled. "Seth, I require a husband for this new era of peace. It is not for me, but for my people. The people will feel safer with a king and queen. My brother will reign as king, and I as queen. But the people would feel better if both of us married.

Her smile turned sad. "But my brother will never marry. That leaves me to provide the image of stability our nation needs. Seth, will you continue to stand beside me? I am not good with the way women carefully choose their words in courtship." His throat was tight and his stomach knotted; he'd never considered the past year a courtship, but perhaps that was what the careful game of strategy and deception he played had really been.

"I suppose I must be blunt. Marry me, Seth. Rule beside me. Although I marry for necessity, I would also do so for love. I love you, Seth. I believe, I would venture, that you feel as I do, but if you would do so out of duty, that would be too cruel. As I have been your princess, I ask you to be my knight and prince."

He rose from his feet with a push of his palm. He crossed the distance between them, his armor rattling, and grasped her by her shoulders and pulled her to him, holding her tightly against him as his arms came to rest at her waist.

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," he spoke into her neck. "I love you, Eirika," there was silence and then he spoke again, "I love you."