Chrom POV
"Begin!" Stahl shouts, and the two combatants begin circling one another.
They only circle for a few minutes in silence, until Becca stops and a terrifying grin splits her face, eyes predatory and gleaming, her grin promising pain. One of the reasons I refuse to be opposing her in even a game.
She dashes forward, swinging her sword down in a flashing arc, and Vaike is barely able to block the powerful hit before it strikes his shoulder. She immediately jumps back and crouches low to the ground, one hand holding her steady against the ground and the other holding her sword backwards and behind her. The gleam never leaves her eyes as she watches Vaike circle her, wary now that he knows just how powerful she is.
"This is not a fair fight! You never said she was trained!" Vaike shouts as he charges forward.
"I never said I was a recruit," she says, voice blending in with the wind to seem ethereal as she rolls away from Vaike, swinging up at his back to rest her blade at his neck, miraculously drawing no blood. "Now, do you yield or want to make me clean my blade?"
"I yield. You have won this round," he grinds out from his clenched teeth.
She backs away and lowers her blade slowly, not even breathing hard as he gasps for air. "Told you she would win in less than three attacks. You owe me twenty gold, Lissa," I whisper victoriously in her ear.
She pouts and counts out the money into my hand as I see Frederick paying a small amount to Robin at the same time. "That's not fair, I thought Vaike could hold out a bit longer than that!"
"Vaike, behind you!" Becca shouts, as the sound of something hitting the ground with a dull thud echoes through the sudden silence in the court.
I look up to find her kneeling over someone, bringing a knife down, the blade dripping with blood as she lifts it in the air. "Becca!" I shout as I run to her, pulling her away from the bleeding attacker. "Frederick, restrain him!"
Becca struggles slightly against me, but I hold on to her. "Becca, I'm not releasing you just so you can attack him again."
She sighs and turns to face me. "I'm not going to attack him, I promise, it's just that my arm is bothering me."
I release her to find she has a bloody gash slicing cleanly up her forearm. "Oh gods, I'm so sorry! I didn't see you were injured!"
She smiles thinly and presses on the center of the wound. "This is nothing, it's not even very deep."
"I'll be the judge of that, Becca. Give me your arm," Lissa growls as she marches over to us.
"I'm fine," she insists, even as she offers the bleeding limb to my sister.
Lissa narrows her eyes at the wound and waves her staff, stopping the bleeding instantly and building a scab over it before the injury vanishes, leaving only a slightly lighter line of skin to show she had ever been injured in the first place. "It wasn't so bad, but it was best to have it healed anyway."
"Whatever Lissa. Thanks," she responds, hugging Lissa around the shoulders as the attacker groans in pain from Frederick trying to pull him upright.
"Dammit man, where is my daughter? Where did you take her?" he groans, clutching his shoulder and ignoring Frederick, looking around.
"Who is your daughter?" he asks the man.
His eyes open, slightly foggy with pain, staring straight at Becca. "The one who just stabbed me."
She frowns down at him, grabbing onto my arm. "My father died trying to protect me when I was five."
"No, I survived. I have the scar to prove it, and your mother is here as well, with your little sister."
"That's impossible," she growls, half hiding behind me.
I unsheathe Falchion as the man tries to reach for her. "Don't even try it."
"No, don't!" a woman's voice echoes out, as two sets of footsteps charge our way. I turn around to find Becca holding her sword aimed at a woman on the other side of the courtyard, with a young teen hiding behind her.
"Mom, what's going on?" the brunette about a foot and a half shorter than Becca asks the slightly taller blonde-haired, hazel-eyed woman, who stares at Becca.
"Becca, it's me, your mother. Don't you recognize me?" she begs, tears brimming in her eyes.
"Becca, wait, you do look quite similar to all three of them," Robin says, stepping between them.
I look closely at each of them, finding some aspect of her in each of the two adults. While the man's hair is dark in this lighting, it looks similar to hers, and he has the same shape of eyes as her, as well as the same height. The woman has the same eye color and small nose, as well as a similar skin tone, lighter than Becca's but still in the same area. The teen is almost the spitting image of Becca from when she was around eleven, but has darker eyes and has dirty blonde hair.
"I can prove we're your parents, Becca," the woman begs, reaching into her pocket to pull out a folded piece of paper. "Here, this is a family picture we took a month before you vanished."
Still not trusting them, she keeps her sword raised. "Put the picture on the ground and take several steps back," she growls. They instantly obey, keeping their hands raised as they nearly trip over themselves to step back. She steps forward and picks it up, never taking her eyes off her targets until she brings the picture closer to her. "This is…"
I step up behind her and smile as I sheathe Falchion, seeing the little girl dressed the exact same as she was when Father brought her home near the end of the war, laughing at the viewer, her chubby cheeks scrunching her eyes so they look half-shut. "That's definitely you, Becca. There's no denying that they are your family."
The photo shakes as she lowers her hand, dropping the sword into the grass. "I don't understand… why are they here?" she whispers, voice thick with held back emotions.
I turn her in my arms so she can bury her face in my chest, and I feel her tears stain my shirt, but I pay it no mind. "It doesn't matter, Becca," I whisper to her over and over again as I run my fingers through her hair.
"Milord, what do we do with her family?" Frederick asks me after a moment of tense silence.
I sigh and rub Becca's back. "Give them space in the barracks, unless there's a guest room already prepared that they can use."
The girl steps forward, away from her mother, and walks up to me, tapping Becca on the arm, making her look to her side. "Yeah?" Rather than answering, she pulls Becca into a small, hesitant hug around her waist.
She stiffens in our arms immediately, making the younger girl back off. "S-sorry, it's just… you looked like you needed a hug… Sis."
Becca starts trembling again, and I hold her tightly. "I need to get her back to her room, we'll talk later," I dismiss us hurriedly, bending over and sweeping up Becca's legs under her knees like a princess. Lissa grabs her cloak and spreads it over her, then steps back to let me run into the castle as Becca's breathing picks up, her skin getting clammy under my hands. "Becca, you need to calm down. You're safe, nobody is going to hurt you."
Her breathing, while shaky, steadies into deeper breaths, showing her efforts to calm herself. I eventually find the tapestry and push it aside, skipping every other step to get up the tower faster. At the last window, I look out to find the moon high in the sky, stars twinkling gently in the pitch black sky. When we reach the door, she reaches out to twist the handle for me rather than making it so that I wouldn't have to put her down.
The moonlight stretches across her room from the windows, giving a gentle light to the atmosphere that seems to calm her even more. She wraps her arms around my neck and buries her head into my shoulder, just resting as I sit down on her bed, keeping her in my grasp.
"Chrom… I'm sorry I'm such a wreck…" she mutters in my ear, just barely a whisper.
I squeeze her gently, moving my hand from her shoulder to her waist as she shifts slightly. "I don't mind, not after everything you've been through with the court and that curse."
She shakes her head and looks up at me. "But I-"
I press a finger over her lips, silencing her. "Listen to me, I don't care if you're a wreck, it just means that I need to be there for you. I want to make you happy, more than you know, and… gods, I don't know how to put this into words." After a moment of struggling to find the words, I replace my finger with my lips, kissing her and trying to convey just how much she means to me. She kisses back with just as much feeling and passion, twining her fingers into my hair as I pull her closer. With a sigh, we part, and I rest my forehead on hers. "You should go wash up and get to bed, before it gets much later."
She nods and scoots off my lap and onto the bed next to me, reaching into a draw on her bedside table, producing a candle and a match. She lights it up and the orange glow illuminates her face, strong with a light scar on her eyebrow, from a cut she got before coming to the palace, and yet so sad. "Thank you, Chrom," she whispers, before pulling off her boots to expose her long, pale legs to the cooling air. She then walks me to the door and rises to her toes to press a light kiss to my cheek, even though I have to bend down a few inches to help her get there. "Good night."
"Good night, love," I whisper as I steal another kiss from her soft lips, already enjoying kissing her more than I should.
She blushes as I pull away from her, though I pretend to be ignorant as I leave her room, set on getting back to the barracks to settle the issue with her family.
Becca POV
I make sure Chrom is gone from the stairwell before I take the candle into my small washroom, lighting the tinder under the small tub with the tiny flame to get the thing heating before I add the water, setting the candle in a tray next to the tub. The buckets I had noticed earlier smell fresh, with a bit of a minty aroma lingering in them, which I find is because of the mint leaves pasted along the inside of the buckets. As the water reaches the halfway point, I stop filling it up and let the water begin to heat, moving on to removing my clothes.
The heavy belt buckle, a gift from Robin's mother, is delicately removed from my shorts and placed on the desk in my room for polishing in the morning. I then toss off the rest of my clothes, put out the fire under the tub, and lower myself into the hot water, allowing the heat to ease my sore muscles and calm my thoughts. The soap dish at the end of the tub has a honey and lavender scent, relaxing and sweet, my favorite from when I lived here before.
After scrubbing my hair and every inch of my body, I rise from the tub, grabbing one last bucket to give myself a final rinse before getting out, reaching for one of the freshly washed towels. Just as I rest my hand on it, someone knocks at my door. I freeze, eyes wide as I blow out my candle and reach into my camping wash-basket, pulling out my emergency throwing knife, and wait.
The person turns the knob and walks in, heavy footsteps and clanking armor slow and unsure. "Becca, are you here?" Frederick's voice echoes out.
I breathe a sigh of relief and stay hidden. "Frederick, I'm in the washroom, but don't come in. What brings you up here so late?"
"The maids didn't know how to get up here, and asked me to bring up some clothes for you."
I blush madly at the realization that he had to handle my clothes. "O-oh, thanks then. Could you just… put them on the bed, please?"
"Of course, milady. Once you are dressed, please let me back into your room so I may discuss something with you." His footsteps lead back to the door, and onto the stone steps as the door squeaks shut.
I breathe a sigh of relief and peek my head out of the washroom, making sure he isn't in here with me, and rush over to the bed, the stones cold on my damp feet. I randomly grab for a nightgown and smallclothes, finding the gown to have sleeves to my elbows, and the skirt falling down to just above my knees, in a dark fabric I can't figure out the color of without proper lighting. With a sigh, I run the towel through my hair and grab the candle, setting it on the tray on my bedside table before lighting it once more. "I'm decent Frederick."
He steps in slowly, looking at the ground bashfully. "Forgive me for coming in while you were bathing."
I shake my head as I ruffle my hair with the towel, drying the long, coppery mess as much as I can. "It's alright Frederick, at least I wasn't out here yet when you came in. But I honestly wasn't expecting anyone to be coming up here tonight for anything."
"Ah, well, I wished to discuss the nature of your relationship with Milord," he says as he eases down onto my bed, sitting on the end.
"What about our relationship?" I ask, unsure of what he's enquiring about.
He sighs and frowns. "You have people coming here claiming to be your relatives with evidence, and I don't wish to see either of you hurt by whatever may come that they would be the cause of."
"If you're worried that they will make me leave him, I will tell you right now that I have no intention of leaving, either him or this world."
"But what if they force you to leave? They are your guardians, after all," he points out, accenting it with a raised eyebrow.
I cross my arms and frown. "The royal family are my guardians, not them. They were not a part of my life long enough to count as such."
He shakes his head. "Be that as it may, you are still their child."
"Yeah, and they still weren't there! I told myself they were dead and that I would never see them again years ago, and then they show up out of the blue just when I start making progress again!" I scream at him, frustrated with him beyond reason. "Frederick, I don't care if I'm related to them by blood, or that I am not from this world! This is my home, and all of you are my family! I wouldn't give up all of this for people I hardly remember!" Tears cloud up my vision slightly, and I try to blink them away.
"Becca, I-" he starts, voice apologetic.
"Don't! Just leave me alone," I whimper, my shoulders shaking as I suppress my sobs.
With a heavy sigh, I hear him walk out of my room, closing the door gently behind himself as he leaves me alone in my misery.
I sit there, shaking and my eyes dripping tears, gasping, for a while after, maybe even an hour, before I grab a pillow and shove my face into it, screaming at the top of my lungs in distress.
Yeah, this is really sad… like, extremely. I have a bunch of friends with depression, and they handle it pretty well whenever I'm around, but that's because they can talk it out with me. Then I go on facebook and see a bunch of posts from one of my friends who's got it real bad, and this chapter is dedicated to her. I won't put her name out here, but to all those with depression, if you need to talk, I'm here and willing to listen. You don't need to be alone.
I do not own Fire Emblem Awakening.