To the lovely who signed their name as SanexChrom for a review of the last chapter... You made my day. You rock. And happy holidays to everyone, hope you enjoy this little gift of another chapter :)

My eyes were glued to the ring in my hand. My heart was racing almost out of my chest.

"Chrom... I..."

He smiled at me.

"I'm ready to spend the rest of my life with you Sane, whatever craziness that may mean. It would all be worth it if you tell me you love me as much as I love you."

'Oh bugger all...'

"I..."

'Ay dios mio...'

I closed my hand around the ring.

'Dammit, how can I say no to him?'

I clenched my jaw and frowned.

"Sane?"

Chrom had a worried look in his eyes.

"That's not your happy face..."

I opened my hand and held it out to Chrom.

"I can't except this. I'm... Sorry."

Chrom's face fell and he slowly took the ring back, a confused look in his eyes.

"Why won't you accept?"

I turned away from him.

"I just... I've seen what will happen. I can't marry you. I'm sorry. It just can't happen."

"What will happen that's so terrible?"

I wrapped my arms around myself.

"Look, just... I'm sorry Chrom, I care about you, I really do. That's why I can't marry you."

"Then... You do love me?"

"I..."

'Dude, I freaking support grinded you so we could be married by Chapter 4.'

"It's not love... But... You're very special to me that's for sure."

Chrom put the ring away and looked at me with sadness.

"I understand Sane..."

'Well... What the bloody hell am I supposed to do now? I was never taught how to react when someone proposes to you and you choose not to marry them.'

"I'm glad you do, because I sure as hell don't."

I laughed dryly.

"I never thought I'd be proposed to honestly. By a freaking prince nonetheless."

Chrom didn't smile.

"It's not every day it happens I suppose." He said sadly.

I felt like I was a bad person for saying no to his request, but I just didn't feel right taking the ring and marrying him. It's not that I didn't want to get married, well, actually I didn't, but knowing that if I married Chrom I'd have to pop out a kid bothered me more than it should've .

'I'm thinking too far into this... I really need a drink or seven.'

"I'm sure there's someone better for you than me anyway. Someone who would be more fit to be a princess."

"I don't want a princess Sane, I want someone just like you."

I was feeling more and more bad by the second. It was like I shot his puppy by saying no to his proposal.

'Look, I'm sorry if I'm coming off as greedy here buddy, but I don't like the idea of popping out a kid just to play the part of the Avatar so...'

"So get out there and look for her man, I guarantee you're not going to find anyone if you just sit around feeling bad for yourself."

Chrom sighed.

"Ever the ball of joy." He said flatly.

I shuffled my feet nervously for a few moments.

"So I'll uh... Just leave your room then... Let you get on your merry way..."

Chrom dismissed me with a weak wave of his hand. I quickly left the room and hurried off down the corridor. I felt my face burning and heart slamming into nearly all of my internal organs.

'Oh... That could not have been any more awkward... Oh...'

I was in so much shock from Chrom's proposal that I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and bumped right into Kellam.

"Oh Sane, I was looking for you!"

I smiled weakly.

"Hi Kellam, what's up?"

He didn't seem to notice my distress and smiled back.

"There's something I'd like to ask you."

'I swear to God if you pull out a ring I'll char-broil your ass...'

"I've been wanting to propose to Sully, but I have no idea how to do it, any ideas?"

'Oh thank you Based God!'

"Uh... I actually don't know much about proposal... Sully strikes me as the kind of girl to do the asking though."

"Yeah, you're right. But I figured I'd take some initiative you know?"

I cocked my head to the side.

"You could try asking her after training or something. Personally, if I was going to propose to a girl, I'd wait till she was bored out of her mind or something and be all 'I know something fun we can do' and bam! Ring."

Kellam stared at me in quiet curiosity before shaking his head and smiling.

"You are quite the character."

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

I leaned forward and looked around dramatically.

"I'll bet that no matter how you propose, she'd say yes."

Kellam raised his eyebrow in surprise.

"Really? You do?"

"Uh-huh. You've got husband material written all over you."

"Ha ha... I'll keep that in mind, thanks Sane."

Around lunch time I had finally calmed down with my proposal ordeal. I briefly caught glimpses of Chrom throughout the day, and he looked more depressed than I thought possible. Each time I saw him it nearly brought me to tears and I thought of nearly anything else to distract me. At one point, I was even going to track Tharja down so I wouldn't have to deal with my feelings.

'I rejected Chrom, not the other way around, why do I feel so bad?'

Something deep inside me still was clinging to the idea that I wasn't really in Ylisse, and that everything was just one weird dream that didn't seem to end. In a way, that was most likely what stopped me from saying yes to Chrom.

'He's just a dream, I don't really have to worry about his feelings, right?'

Seeing as Gangrel had been vanquished, there was no reason for us to be marching off to war anymore and the Shepherds were going to be spending a lot more time home in Ylisse. I had no idea how I was going to spend my two years until the conflict with Valm started happening. Virion was still in Ylisse, and from the way he was prancing around hitting on anything female I could assume he wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon.

'I guess I'll just spend my time like I would back home... Minus the video games and fanfictions of course.'

Chuckling to myself I cleared away my leftover lunch and decided to walk around the town. The shops were bustling as usual, but this time around they were filled with gossip about the Ylissean Tactician who lead the Shepherds to victory against Gangrel's troops.

"I heard she defeated the Mad King single handedly."

"No, she couldn't have, she was fending off all ten of his royal guards."

"That's a lie, she was leading the cavalry."

I rolled my eyes at all the gossip that was flying around.

'You should really do something about that you know.'

'And what would you have me do?'

'I don't know. You're the expert on shenanigans, not me.'

I walked up to a group that were talking outside the pub.

"That's not the story I heard at all." I said to them.

The group looked at me funny.

"Yeah?" A burly man asked. "What story did you hear?"

I looked around like I was about to tell a secret.

"I heard that the Tactician isn't Ylissean at all. Words are traveling that says she was the Mad King's bastard child."

The group looked at me in shock.

"You lie!" One snapped.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It could be a lie, it could be truth. But when thieves whisper you know it's because they don't want to be overheard."

I walked away from the group with a grin that would put the Cheshire cat to shame.

'Oh my... You devious little thing...'

Suddenly, Gaius was at my side holding a slice of pie and chuckling.

"Do you always cause this much trouble, or are you just in a mood?"

"Gyah! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"King's bastard child huh? That's a good one. I heard Lissa mention once or twice that you were found in Plegian robes, how far is that story from the truth?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I suppose you'll never know."

He chuckled again.

"Any particular reason you're causing trouble among the gossips? You realize that is going to come back to bite you if any of the stuffed shirts believe it."

"Well, considering I look nothing like Gangrel, I'm sure at least someone will have the common sense to know that's not true."

"People? Common sense? Yeah you're sane alright."

"Oh ha ha."

I tried to just aimlessly wander away from Gaius, but everywhere I went he followed like an obedient puppy. The creepy thing was after a while he didn't even say anything, he just walked.

"How long do you plan on following me?" I asked annoyedly.

"Oh I don't know. I'm hoping that if I follow you long enough you'll go somewhere interesting."

I sighed.

"Why don't you go bother Chrom or something?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I tried to talk to him earlier, but he was all sad about something. Every time I asked him what was bothering him he just dismissed it saying everything was fine."

I looked down.

"Oh..."

"Oh? You knew that he was sad?"

"Uh... Yeah."

Gaius stopped walking.

"Then what's bothering him? I'm not the only one who noticed he's upset I'm sure."

"You're not. I was the first person to know he was upset..."

"Did you do something?"

I glared at Gaius.

"Hey, don't try to pin this on me! If Chrom's still butthurt that's his own fault."

"Sane? Did the two of you get into an argument or something?"

"Not exactly..."

"Then what?"

I took a deep breath.

"You won't tell anyone?"

Gaius raised an eyebrow.

"My my, Sane has a secret now? I don't know... It takes an awful lot of sweets to seal these lips."

I pulled a tome from my cloak.

"Or I could just cauterize them shut."

He put up his hands in the universal 'chill bro' gesture.

"Relax, I don't charge to keep a friends secret."

"Alright... But I swear to God if anyone finds out about this... I will have Frederick break you."

He rolled his eyes.

"The big lug would have to catch me first."

"Chrom... Proposed to me."

Gaius' jaw dropped.

"He proposed!?"

"Gaius! Shut up, what are you trying to do, let the whole town know?"

"What did you say?"

"I said 'no', obviously. Do you think he'd be upset if his proposal was a success?"

"Why the hell did you say no? He's a prince! He's the Exalt's brother!"

"Yeah. That's exactly why I said no."

Gaius shook his head slowly.

"How could you say no to a prince?"

"If he asked for your hand in marriage would you say yes?"

"No, he's a man."

"But he's a prince!"

Gaius rolled his eyes.

"Okay, so you said no to Chrom. Why don't you want to marry him? The two of you seem to get along alright."

"I have my reasons... Besides, I'm not ready to get married."

"... I suppose that's a good enough reason."

Gaius shrugged his shoulders and began to walk away.

"Wait," I asked. "That's it? You're done? You aren't going to ask a million and one questions?"

"Why should I? You said you aren't ready to get married and that should be the end of it yeah? What kind of gentleman would I be if I kept badgering you about it."

He looked back briefly over his shoulder and flashed me a smile.

"Just let me know when you are ready to get married yeah?"

Just a brief refresher, more to my benefit than yours I'm sure, the underlined text is Livvy/Grima speaking directly to Sane. They have a bit of friendly? dialogue in this chapter because the way their relationship works (modeled after the voices that exist IRL in my head) is that they just kind of aggravate each other for the most part, and don't really try to hurt each other.

I feel like this chapter was kind of half-assed in a way, but I wanted to skip ahead a bit so Sane can monologue with herself a bit, plus in the next chapter Lucina is going to pop by for a spell. I feel like I need to interject some logic and what not as to why Sane can't marry Chrom, because there's more to it than just she's not ready to get married. (Which one reviewer was sooooooo close to pointing out in a review and they definitely get props for that.) And that little bit at the end with Gaius was to appease one person who commented that they'd like to see Sane with either Chrom, Gaius or Lon'qu. Ah, and only my dear LeonPianta wants to see some Lissane action (Yeah, see what I did thar? I've been wanting to use that in a sentence for days...)