Author's Note: Officially the most fun I've had writing a chapter.

7. Fatherhood

Severa warmed to him faster than she did to her mother. It was certainly still a slow process, for she had a lashing tongue and a lack of respect that Frederick sternly curbed whenever possible. Still, the more he watched her, the more he saw that she had his tidiness and dedication to training, and her mother's perfectionism and frustration whenever she did anything wrong. The longer he was with her, the greater he cared for her—respected her, even. She'd certainly had a harder life than he had. And perhaps that, mixed with his regret for however his future self had failed as a father, made it easy for him to touch her shoulder, to call her pet names, to start training to be a better father right away.

She made him wonder a great many things: what had her first word been? Did he ever play with her on the kitchen floor before dinner? What had Cordelia looked like pregnant? The idea made him ache with longing. To stop warring for a while and have a real family with the love of his life was something every man wanted eventually, he was sure, even the most diligent of knight commanders.

Things were tense because Severa wouldn't speak to her mother, tense because he made her do chores, tense because she came from a time when he was wrong, when Cordelia never came around, when his companionship and that of the child he'd sired was completely inadequate for her. But she was still proof that he and Cordelia had made something together, and even if they'd left her—had to leave her, he hoped was the case—wasn't she just beautiful? Wasn't she strong, coming back with Lucina and the others the way she did?

He came across her far from camp as he was patrolling one evening, sharpening blades with a whetstone so savagely that she was chipping their steel edges. She uttered an angry cry as she broke the fifth and hurled it away.

"Severa," he said. "Frustration has little place on the battlefield, let alone off it."

She looked up guiltily, as if noticing him for the first time, but her scowl did not fade. "Oh, good! Come to watch me fail, have you?"

"Not at all." He tucked his hands behind his back, sure that the rest of his patrol would be delayed. "I just thought I should say something. Your mother keeps track of the armoury and told me we would soon not have enough swords."

"Well, sorry to fail Mother again!"

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "You haven't failed anyone."

"Not yet. But I will! You'll see! In the future, nothing I do will ever be good enough for you both." She jammed the stone against another blade. "I'm not smart like Mother, and I know you were always comparing me to her."

She looked nearly on the verge of tears. Frederick was confused, but had dealt with similarly sudden tears from Lissa and Maribelle—and, just once, Sully—as they were growing into women, so he knew to sit down beside her.

"Severa," he said gently, "I'd never compare you to Cordelia. You're your own person."

"You did!" she insisted. "You were always so hard on me! Lucina adored her father, and Kjelle's father doted on her, but you and I were just like—like a drill master and a useless new recruit!"

He had been the failure, then, he realized as his heart sank. His whole life, he'd been hard on everyone: the Shepherds, the squires, and now even his own daughter. The person he should be cherishing.

"Severa, you aren't useless. I drill everyone. For everything. I suppose…I should work on calming down, a little bit."

"Yeah," she said angrily.

There was a silence.

"Everyone was always sizing me up against Mother," she said then. "That's why I couldn't become a pegasus rider. I just couldn't take it. You taught me the sword instead, but I refused to become a knight, and that disappointed you."

"I'm sorry," he said, honestly. "I can't imagine being disappointed in you."

"You sure were the other day, when I tricked you into buying all that stuff!"

"That's different," he said with a sigh. "That was willful manipulation. What you want to do with your life is a choice that is yours to make and yours alone, and I should have supported it."

"You did support me," she admitted, a little grudgingly. "You always did. And Mother did, too. I just…hated to disappoint you. I knew that you secretly wanted something different from me, but I just couldn't do anything to either of your stupidly high standards."

"I don't know that we wanted you to be something different," he said. "Perhaps we just gave you the wrong idea. I'm sure that if we were too hard on you, it was because we thought that was best for you. We must have known the end was coming. We must have wanted you to be strong enough to live through it."

"Whatever," she sneered, even as her face softened and she blinked hard. "This is all speculation. A big waste of time."

"No," he said. "It is true. Because in the future I loved you more than life itself, and I know that because I already love you now."

Her tears escaped then, rolling down her face. She drew up her knees and hugged them, shoulders shaking, but he resisted the urge to reach out to her because there was something else she needed to know:

"Your mother loves you, too. You're all she talks about, Severa—how lovely you are, or how excited she is to have a child like you when this is over, or how proud she is of what you've accomplished."

The girl crumbled right in front of his eyes, muscles going slack, hands reaching out for him weakly until she'd wrapped her arms around him. He held her while she cried against his shoulder, perhaps a bit awkwardly since he still wasn't used to being a father, but as comfortingly as he could manage.

"I love you, too," she said when she finally pulled away, bright red. "And I love Mother. I've missed you both so much."

"You should tell her so," he said. "She feels terrible. She always wanted to be the perfect mother to you."

"She was perfect," Severa whispered.

"Please, speak to her." Because she wept with guilt at night for a crime she hadn't yet committed, he thought, although he couldn't say so. Cordelia would be furious if anyone else knew she let herself cry about anything.

"I will," promised Severa. "And Daddy…I'm so sorry about what I said, earlier. About Chrom."

"Lord Chrom," he corrected, but she just rolled her eyes.

"See, that's exactly what I'm talking about! But look, that was awful of me to do, dropping him in front of you like that. I was being malicious. You and Mother were always so stiff around each other, and the older I got, the more I realized it was because of him, and I was so angry at you both for it, because all I wanted was a home as happy as Lucina's or Kjelle's. When I saw you two those days ago, I was still angry. I wanted you to know that you'd hurt me, and I wanted to hurt you too." She was blushing again. "That was wrong, and I'm a terrible daughter. You should drown me in a sack."

"Do not be ridiculous. If what you spoke was the truth…" he said quietly, unable to finish the sentence.

She just shrugged. "Then you're a cuckold and Mother's a bitch; that's life. But really"—she pressed on before he could scold her for calling her own mother such a word—"you both seem…different, in this time. Maybe that's how it always was and you both changed in the future; I don't know. But right now, you seem like something that can work. Like something's better."

"All a person can do is their best," he said, but her words gave him hope. "Now, you should run back to camp and speak with your mother."

"But the swords," she said as she cast the dull pile a frustrated glance.

"I'll take care of them. Off with you."

She stood and dusted off her skirt, narrowing her eyes and pointing down at him before she left. "Fine. But don't think this makes you a cool dad or anything! Because you're not!"

He felt the corners of his mouth lift once she was gone, and began to run the whetstone down the first unbroken blade.

xxx

Once again, despite the war, life eased. Severa began speaking to her mother—at first only in exchange for extra dessert, but gradually of her own free will, until the two women were often seen together, simply talking. Frederick assumed it was because of their senses of humour. Severa was very bold and very sharp, and while he didn't approve of how frank she was in front of her own mother, Cordelia never seemed to mind. Besides, Cordelia had a quiet sarcasm, herself, which Severa seemed to love.

He was never ignorant of the fact that any day, one of them could die, and the happy family they were building could be broken once again. But he didn't allow himself to dwell on it, because he didn't want to be too harsh on any child he might have in the future, and he was sure Cordelia would prefer it if his hair didn't grey prematurely. Two of the most important people in his life had asked him to fret less, and he had to do his best.

Or at least, he planned on it, until he found Severa up in a tree at sunset, while he was taking out the dishwater from dinner to dump. Normally, his daughter up so high would have worried him a little, but that wasn't the problem.

The problem was that Inigo was also in the tree.

And his tongue was in her mouth.

"Young lady!" he barked, making them both jump.

"Go away, Dad!" she shouted back.

"I'll do no such thing until that scoundrel with you gets out of the tree!"

"Sir," Inigo stammered, "I didn't mean any harm!"

"I've seen how you treat the women of this camp! I insist upon a fifty-yard restraining order for my daughter from this moment forward!"

"Dad! You're being ridiculous!"

"You're far too young for this, Severa."

"Just because you met me a couple months ago doesn't mean I'm an infant. I'm practically your age!"

"You don't know what you're doing!"

"I know exactly what I'm doing." She seized Inigo's collar and kissed him again. The boy closed his eyes.

Frederick just gasped, angrier than he thought he'd ever been—and not even at Severa. So what if this was what she wanted? Inigo shouldn't be anywhere near her, shouldn't even have let her! That rascal! Manhandling his daughter! Or…allowing himself to be manhandled!

"Don't make me come up there!" he threatened. "I climb like—like a bear!"

"Come on," said Severa to Inigo, "let's go."

Before he could chase them they'd jumped from the tree, her landing cat-like and him tumbling like the floozy dancer he was, and then they were off, laughing, holding hands as they ran.

He scowled after them and then went to get his axe.

xxx

Cordelia found him at twilight, when he'd hewed halfway through the trunk.

"Frederick?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

"Chopping, of course," he said between swings.

"Yes, but why? We have plenty of firewood."

"Enough to build a bonfire? For a dancer?"

"What?"

"Severa was up in this tree. With Inigo. They were both acting completely indecent, so I must remove the temptation."

"By chopping down this tree," said Cordelia, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes."

"But there are a thousand trees around here. Are you going to chop down all of them?"

He surveyed the landscape, calculating how many he could fell that night. "That was the intent, yes."

He thought she would side with him, would be mad at Severa, or—even better—would join him on his quest to bring Inigo to justice.

But instead, she laughed. She laughed so hard she clutched at her sides, and then sank down onto one of the tree's roots.

"Frederick!" she cried as she wiped a tear away. "No wonder the poor thing was so mad at us!"

"This is for her own good!" he insisted. "That boy is nothing but trouble."

Cordelia patted the space next to her, and he hesitated a long moment before he leaned his axe against the trunk and sat on the root beside her. "She's not a little girl, Frederick. She's a grown woman. She should be able to do as she pleases."

"But," he protested lamely.

"But nothing. This is her choice, and she loves him. A mother always knows, it seems."

"Well, I can guarantee that he is only after one thing, and it isn't her heart."

"I wouldn't be so sure," said Cordelia, although she smiled. "I've been watching him, ever since I saw how Severa started looking at him. He really does seem like he's lost interest in all the other girls."

He set his jaw. Cordelia was never wrong about these things, but…

"If they're both in love," she said softly, "we shouldn't interfere, should we? It must be wonderful to love somebody who loves you back. Neither of us would know, so I want that for her, at least."

He took her hand, unsure then of what he was feeling, other than the knowledge that she was right. She squeezed his fingers hard.

"I suppose I will not hunt Inigo down, then," he finally said.

"I am changing your nickname from Frederick the Thorough to Frederick the Merciful." Her lips pressed a slow, sincere kiss to his cheek.

"So if it is love," he said, preferring Wary for the moment, "what then? Marriage? It's possible that our child will have a child before we have a child." He ran his free hand through his hair because the thought made his head hurt.

"She knows better than to start something during this war," said Cordelia. "As we all do."

"It will be over soon," he told her, "for better or for worse. Robin says it should only take another month."

"So it's almost time to start," she murmured, as if to herself, but it made him jolt anyway.

"Start what?"

"Trying to have a child."

"They're not even properly courting!" he protested. "It's entirely too soon!"

"No, not them." She squeezed his hand again. "I meant you and I."

"Now," he said nervously, "let's not be rash. We've both just agreed that we don't understand requited love, and we have proof that we weren't perfect parents."

"But now we know our mistakes," Cordelia argued. "I'd hardly even thought about children before we met Severa, and now I can't get the idea out of my mind. I want a baby. Soon."

"But my baby?" he asked, unable to believe that she was saying such a thing.

"Of course, your baby! You're my husband, aren't you? And seeing how good you are with Severa, I…" She trailed off, and while it was too dark for him to see if she was blushing, the way she turned her face away let him know. For a moment he wasn't sure why, and then it hit him.

"You find that attractive. Very attractive."

"Well, can you blame me?" she said, an edge to her voice. She hated being teased. "That's why women stand to be with men at all, you know! So they can have good fathers for their children."

He supposed that made sense; Chrom was a spectacular father, if Lucina was any indication.

But she wasn't thinking about Chrom. She hadn't blushed to see him talk about his daughter.

He reached for her chin and gently pulled her face back, just so he could look into her eyes for a while. While he was trying to read what she was thinking, she slid her arms around his neck, leaned close, and kissed him softly. After a long moment he closed his eyes and made a hard decision to just let all of his worries go, for once in his life. They didn't return to camp until well after moonrise.

Author's Note: I've decided fandom needs more StupidlyOverprotectiveFather!Frederick. Somebody should get on that. (Also, how funny would he be, having to deal with teenage hormones all the time.)

I've also decided that "drown me in a sack" is my favourite Severa-ism. Her supports are so funny sometimes.