While You Were Sleeping

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

(Leave-taking)

Azel couldn't sleep late the following morning, not with the clatter of cavalry echoing through the courtyards as the Agustrian Liberation Force got ready to move. He propelled himself down to a balcony where he might watch the scene. It was perfect as an image from a book of tales or a tapestry, all the pretty horses and their pretty riders beneath the banners of two kingdoms. Sylvia's daughter made a bright splash against the unrelieved sable of King Ares and his black destrier, a sight balanced in turn by the gleaming white mounts of New Thracia's royal couple. A flicker of green caught Azel's attention then— Lewyn, who was standing in the midst of the riders, exchanging a few words with Finn. Finn's blue coat was the same color as the one he'd worn twenty years ago as a squire to Prince Quan, and the sight of that exact shade of blue wool beneath the morning sun sent Azel into one of those states where yesterday, today, and tomorrow all turned into a vague blur.

Azel saw Lewyn step back and raise his hand in some kind of blessing, saw the flash as Delmud lifted his broad silver blade into the air in the signal to move out. Leif and his queen sent up a great spiraling war cry together just as Quan and Ethlyn did so many years ago, and the campaign was on. Azel watched the tableau until all the pretty horses and pretty riders and magical weapons were nothing but a final glimpse of a wool coat and a last flash of steel through the dust… and they were gone.

Azel was halfway to Agustria in his mind already. He remembered Princess Raquesis laughing and crying at the same time when that same silver blade was presented to her as spoils of war, the proof her brother's murderer was finally dead. As he went back and forth in time Azel remembered the mad dash toward Nordion, when an earlier generation of cavalry rode off on the rescue mission than turned into full-scale conquest, remembered standing on the heights of Agusty Castle when the banners of Agustria came down and those of Grannvale's occupation went up, remembered peering over the ramparts of Madino at wave upon wave of pirates, an Elfire tome clenched in white-knuckled fingers. Agustria was his coming-of-age, the first time in his life he'd gone six months without Arvis checking up on him in person. Agustria was the place where he'd realized that Aideen was never going to fall in love with him.

Azel wondered why it hadn't occurred to him to join in the fight for Agustria, where he might earn the title of Crusader that had been granted him even though he hadn't won any wars. He hadn't lost his gifts for magic during his fifteen-year sleep, had he? Things started spinning in his head, but as Lewyn crossed the courtyard alone, he stopped for a moment and glanced up at Azel, and something in that glance frosted Azel's fancies before they'd begun to bloom.

So he stayed on at Belhalla, even as Shanan went back to Isaac with Queen Patty on his arm and his cousin Ulster trailing in his wake. Azel considered giving him a message for Aideen and then decided, at the last moment, that he'd better not. Shanan departed northward, and the letter for Aideen also stayed in Belhalla. Then Princess Altena left for Thracia with her retinue of General Hannibal and his son. Azel didn't know any of them well and didn't go down to say good-bye; he watched from his window as the green shape of Altena's dragon became a dark speck in the distance, then shut his curtains and went about the rest of his day.

And, of course, he had Arthur on his hands.

"No," Duke Azel pronounced as Arthur pleaded his case, said case being the desire to hare off to Silesse in the service of the newly-proclaimed King Ced. He'd even brought Ced along to bolster the argument. The young heir to Silesse had none of Lewyn's particular flair, and something in his downturned mouth said that he expected Azel to deny the request, but they were asking for it anyway.

"No? But Father-"

"Your place is in Velthomer with me. The people of our duchy suffered the direct influence of Manfroy for entirely too long, and they need to see their rulers working with them and for them." He felt every word on his tongue was a pale imitation of something Arvis or Lewyn might say. "Besides, we need to see about getting you a bride. I've noticed you didn't find yourself one out of your comrades during the war."

"But, ah... there weren't enough girls to go around?"

They were falling into the relationship most fathers enjoyed with their willful adolescent sons, and Arthur seemed younger and less confident every day because of it. As much as Azel enjoyed this power, he knew it wouldn't be good to knock Arthur back down into a child.

"All right, you have my blessing on one condition," said Azel as he folded his arms.

"Yes?"

"I'm going with you."

"What?" Arthur's mouth actually hung open for a moment, and behind him Ced flinched.

"I want to join your fight in Silesse." Azel looked to Ced, figuring the young king would be more sympathetic to his argument. "Your grandmother Queen Rahna was kind beyond measure to us. She didn't just welcome all Sigurd's army to her land, she protected Tiltyu when there wasn't any safe place in Grannvale for us. I owe it to Rahna to help you in any way I can, and I owe it to the people of Silesse who risked their lives on our behalf."

And maybe, fighting side by side... we'll finally have something to say to one another.

-x-

Ced said yes, but Lewyn told Azel no.

"Why do you want me to be useless?"

"Velthomer sits in its own filth and misery- its house disgraced, its people fearful of reprisals. You're the man to lead them out of it."

It was the very same argument Azel had made to Arthur, and he didn't like hearing it any more than Arthur had.

"How? I'm a fraud. I'm the crusader who didn't actually do anything to win the crusade."

"For the love of…" Lewyn closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "Azel, for once in your life will you stop thinking of the things that you can't be and embrace one thing you can?"

"No?"

"Remember this?" Lewyn brandished a miniature banner with the Velthomer crest, a party favor left over from the investiture.

"Yes. Of course. The Fire Emblem."

"It's on you, Azel. Not your kids. Not Julia. Not even that bastard son of your brother's who got the major Fala blood."

"Why?" I don't see you accepting the crown of Silesse, Azel thought, but even now he didn't dare say it.

"Because you're still the same person who told Tiltyu you didn't want her to try to murder her father. And it wasn't just because of some little detail of Tiltyu getting her hands dirty, but because you don't want to be part of a world where it's become natural for children to kill their parents."

"What if those parents deserve it?" Azel did his best to make his own face impassive as stone and so make a mirror of Lewyn's unyielding facade.

Lewyn saw through him anyway.

"Because the rage in your breast when you learned about your brother's surviving son was from horror at your brother's perfidy and not because Saias stood in the way of you or your children."

Azel blinked.

"What kind of monster d'you expect me to be?" he demanded, when really he had the right to demand how Lewyn might claim to know the contents of his inner being, or to protest that he'd been brought to life only to be spied on, toyed with, and generally manipulated for the greater good, the same as it ever was. Instead, his accursed open heart spilled out the first thing that surged through it.

"This might be why you had to sleep through the war, Azel. This fight needed stronger tools." Lewyn's ageless face softened into something that was almost friendly. "But peace needs a warm heart to balance out the ice and steel. You'll do well enough."

"If you say so."

Lewyn began flipping through a stack of petitions meant for the emperor, and so Azel decided to take his leave. Lewyn wasn't done with him yet, though.

"And really, Azel. Dying in a blaze of glory on some distant battlefield is a shameful way to get out of your obligations at home."

"That's not what I'm trying-"

"But you wouldn't mind it if you did. You'd think yourself a real Crusader then, wouldn't you?"

"I'd see Tiltyu again." Azel did his best to look Lewyn dead in the eye. "Wouldn't I?"

Lewyn didn't take his own eyes off the paperwork fanned out before him.

"Wouldn't I?"

"Don't ask any more, Azel. Every one of you Crusaders was put here for a reason. To kill and to heal, to tear down and build anew, to speak and to keep silence, to reap and to sow. That's really all you need to understand." Lewyn made then the same gesture of parting he'd given to the Liberation Force. "Go forth. This is your time."

-x-

Epilogue

"Would you care for some more tea, Uncle?"

"Thank you, Julia."

Azel held out the delicate cup of gilded porcelain so the Imperial Princess could refill it. Every item at the table shared by Lana and Julia was precious and perfect, dainty things treasured by young ladies deprived of dainty things most of their lives. Gilt and flower petals, lace and tassels, and a cream-pitcher shaped like a happy kitten. Most Dukes of Grannvale wouldn't belong there, even if the imperial ladies let them in, but Azel fit the milieu somehow.

Now Lana was giving him the good news. From the distant east came tidings that King Ares and his forces had captured Silvail, and from the frozen north came the word that King Ced and his associates were steadily gaining ground against the various factions that overran Silesse in the absence of its rightful monarch.

"Father, can we visit there once things have settled down?"

Tinny now had silver thread and jeweled flowers braided into her hair instead of childish ribbons, but she didn't look any more adult for it.

"I don't know, Tinny," Azel, though his voice was steady and he was smiling a little. "I don't know if I'm ready to see that place again."

Somewhere the the woods there'd been a cabin. Perhaps it was gone, burned out or simply fallen to ruin from neglect. Perhaps another family lived there, unaware of its past. Azel didn't know and didn't want to know, because in his mind Tiltyu was still there, waiting for him to come back from his crazy mission to talk sense into Arvis.

But he smiled a little and drank his tea and ate little iced cakes with the young ladies, because that was how Duke Azel the Good simply was— slight and beautifully-dressed as a figurine of gilt and porcelain, mild and sweet like Lana's special blend of tea. Lana and Julia adored him, and the people of Velthomer adored him, and and even Tinny had come around to adoring him with the fervor she'd formerly reserved for Arthur.

It might have all been a dream of the old Azel, the one locked away in his glass box in the Belhalla catacomb. In a way Azel hoped it was all a dream, because a dream might one day be large enough to hold Tiltyu, in much the same way that Azel one had hoped the paradise of heroes would be large enough to hold his mother. But the place prepared at the table for him now was merely a place at Julia's tea table, and so Azel settled back on the tasseled cushions and accepted it with grace.

The End

A/N: And that's a wrap!