"I'm sorry," Benny said, "but you must be mistaken. There is no one named Severa, Inigo, or Owain residing within this castle."
Ananias' eyes narrowed in disbelief and confusion. "I'm sorry," Ananias said monotonously, "but could you please just double check for me? I could've sworn that I saw them entering this castle just a few moments ago."
"I'm sorry," Charlotte replied in a sickeningly sweet voice, "but my friend and I know practically everything that goes on within the castle walls and we're both fairly certain that no one with those names have passed by here for whatever reason, and neither of us can just abandon our post all willy-nilly just to ask for people we're fairly certain aren't here." When a look of disappointment appeared on Ananias' face, Charlotte gently placed a hand on one of Ananias' shoulders, gave him a sympathetic pout, rubbed his shoulder empathetically, and added, "We're really sorry sweetie. I really wish we could help, but as of right now, I'm afraid our hands are tied."
Ananias let out a dejected sigh. "I understand," he muttered.
Sympathizing for the crimson-clad stranger, Benny thought the entire situation through for a moment before innocently, though gruffly, suggesting, "Maybe you just imagined it?"
Ananias crossed his arms as he slowly shook his head. "Did I?" he murmured to himself. "But I could've sworn -"
Just then, the three of them heard a surprised and excited squeal. The three of them turned to find that the squeal had belonged to none other than the Nohrian army's very own Anna, who was quickly running towards the trio while waving one of her hand excitedly over her head. "Annykins!"
Benny and Charlotte's eyes widened in surprise as they gave each other equally surprised looks and repeated, "'Annykins'?"
Ananias let out a weary sigh before raising his hand up, casually waving back, and drawling out a, "Hey Aunt Anna."
Benny and Charlotte's eyes widened even more in surprise as their quickly turned towards the emotionless man with looks of utter disbelief on their faces and incredulously cried out, "'Aunt Anna'?!"
Once Anna finally reached her nephew, she gave him a great, big hug and dotingly inspected him for a moment before saying, "Oh, you're just as handsome in the flesh as you are in the photographs your mother sent me!"
"P-Photographs?" Benny asked, his confusion obvious in the tone of his voice.
Anna giggled before waving her hand to dismiss the subject and saying, "Don't think about it too hard, big guy. It's over both of your heads."
"P-Pardon me," Charlotte said as she incredulously pointed back and forth between Ananias and Anna, "but are you truly leading us to believe that this man is really your nephew?"
Anna gently placed a finger onto her face, closed one of her eyes, and giggled mysteriously. "If that's what all of my siblings' letters are to be believed, then yes." She then turned back to her expressionless nephew and let out another squeal before giving him another big hug. "Oh, wait until I write back to everyone about this! They're going to be so excited!"
Ananias raised an eyebrow incredulously. "Will they?"
Anna nodded. "Of course! There's only one Ananias in the family and there are just so many Annas and so little time! A lot of Annas are just going to have to make do with other Annas' descriptions of you. And based on all I've heard about you, I hear you're a complete sweetie!"
Ananias mildly blushed as he nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders, averted his eyes to the side, and murmured, "Well, I mean, it's not like I try to go out of my way to be a jerk, you know?"
Anna giggled. "Well said!" She then gestured towards the heavy backpack she was currently carrying and asked, "Well then, how about it? Would you mind carrying this back to the shop in the castle for me? The weight of this is already threatening to kill little-old-me."
Ananias let out an exasperated sigh before sticking his hand out and muttering, "As long as you tell me where exactly your shop is located then yeah, sure, why not?"
Anna smiled as she handed over the over-packed to her servile nephew, who was already noticeably being crushed by all of the weight he was carrying. "Thanks sweetie, you're the best! You know that, right?"
Ananias let out a couple of huffs before strenuously answering, "I try."
Anna was just about to enter the castle, but once she noticed that Benny and Charlotte had apparently had been put on guard duty for the day and were inadvertently blocking their path, she gave them an amused look and said, "Come on guys, you know who I am. Let us through."
"Uh," Benny quickly glanced at Charlotte, who simply shrugged her shoulders and shook her head in resignation, "sure, yeah." The two of them stepped to the side and allowed the two redheads to pass through.
After the two of them were well out of earshot, Benny continued to watch the two as they went on their way and commented, "So he's her nephew, huh?" He chuckled. "You know, for a moment there, she really started to remind me of Lady Camilla."
His friend let out a disgruntled huff as she scowled at the two, folded her arms, and replied, "Yeah, and just like Lady Camilla, their family is loaded."
Benny frowned. "Hm?"
"Oh!" Charlotte whined as she stomped her foot in frustration. "I let another potential husband and fortune slip through my fingers!"
Benny sighed. "And now, in a way, you're starting to remind me of Anna."
"My sincerest apologies," Xander said. "You seem like an honorable and trustworthy man, but I am afraid that what Benny and Charlotte said was true. There is no one within our ranks who possess the names of those you speak of."
"Are you sure that they were allowed through our main gates?" Leo asked. "Perhaps one of them cast a spell to hide themselves among our ranks?"
Ananias simply shook his head. "None of them are magic users, or, at least, not the last time I checked."
Camilla frowned. "'The last time you checked'?" she asked.
"Well, you see," Ananias calmly explained, "I've actually been on a bit of a journey to deliver something to them." He patted the side of the satchel he had slung over his shoulder. "It's been a while since anybody had last seen them and I'm already a bit of a messenger already and they're my friends, so…."
"Say no more," Xander said, a small smile appearing on his face. "We understand." He turned to his two younger siblings. "Right?"
Leo smirked. "Of course."
Camilla chuckled. "Do you even have to ask?"
Ananias gave them all a look of mild surprise. "You do?"
Xander nodded. "Indeed. They are people you are willing to search the ends of the earth for, is that right?"
Ananias blushed slightly. "Well, I wouldn't go that far, but yeah, sure, that's the gist of it."
"I must ask however," Leo said. "What exactly is it that you are delivering to them in the first place?"
Ananias took out one of the many letters addressed to his friends from his satchel. "Nothing much," he said as he handed it towards the three royals so that they could inspect it. "Just a couple of letters from their friends and family."
"My goodness," Camilla said with a frown on her face. "How many of these are there in that bag of yours?"
"A good many of them unfortunately," Ananias answered honestly. "It's really starting to do a number on my shoulders if I had to be honest."
Xander nodded gravely. "To have continued on your journey for so long with such a weight on your shoulders, you have our utmost respect and condolences." He handed the letter back to Ananias, who calmly placed the letter back into his satchel. "If there's anything we can do to help then feel free to tell us. We will do all that we can to help."
Ananias respectfully bowed to the three Nohrian royals. "Thank you," he said. "If I were to be completely honest, I wasn't expecting such kindness from the royal family."
"Oh?" Camilla asked with an amused grin on her face. "And why is that?"
Ananias blushed slightly before explaining, "Well, it's just, you're at war right now, so I was a bit afraid that I was going to be branded as a spy or something."
"Nonsense," Leo said. "Yes, under normal circumstances, we might have, but you had our Anna to vouch for you, and she has been nothing but loyal ever since she joined our ranks. So calm yourself. Her family is our family."
Ananias let out a small gasp of surprise before bowing his head and saying, "Thank you." He raised his head. "But if it's not too much to ask, I'd like to conduct my own search of the castle, if that would be okay with you."
"Of course," Xander said. "But considering the fact that you're unaware of the castle's layout, perhaps you would like one of our men to be your guide." Just then, Xander spotted three familiar figures running towards them. He smiled. "Well, speak of the devil, here comes three potential guides right now. Good evening Selena, Odin, Laslow."
Ananias looked at the three people who had just made their way towards them and were now currently taking a moment to catch their breath from running so hard. His eyes widened in shock upon finally seeing their faces. "Selena?!" he cried out, pointing at Selena. He turned to Odin. "Odin!?" He turned to Laslow. "Laslow?!"
"Oh?" Camilla asked, both surprised and amused by Ananais' response to seeing their retainers. "You know them?"
Before Ananias could answer, Laslow gave Camilla a respectful bow before saying, "Our apologies Princess Camilla, Prince Leo, Prince Xander, but we're friends with his friends you see, and once we heard that he was looking for them, we came here as quickly as we could so that we could so that we could lead him to them."
Xander raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Oh?"
"Indeed!" Odin cried out. "We are the messengers to the messenger it would seem!"
Leo eyed the retainers suspiciously. "Is that so?"
"Yes!" Selena cried as she turned towards Camilla. "And they're extremely elusive, so if it's okay with you, we need to start pointing him to the right direction right away!"
The three Nohrian royals gave each other suspicious glances before Xander let out a weary sigh and said, "Alright, do what you must."
The three retainers bowed gratefully towards their royal superiors. "Thank you very much Prince Xander!" Laslow cried. The three of them then proceeded to forcefully lead Ananias away from the Nohrian trio.
"Hey," Ananias whispered as he continued to let his friends push him away, "what's going on here?!"
"We'll explain later!" Severa hissed.
"Just please promise us to keep silent until we are well away from curious ears!" Owain whispered.
Ananias let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine."
It was then that they passed by two women with two surprised and curious looks on their faces. "Father!" Ophelia asked as she addressed her Owain. "Just who is this strange man who proudly bears the blood of his enemies on his clothes? And what fate do you plan to enact on him?"
"Yeah dad," Soleil said, addressing Inigo. "What gives? What's going on?"
Ananias's eyes widened in shock as he looked back and forth between the two. "Father?!" he cried looking towards Owain. He then turned towards Inigo. "Dad?!"
"Father? Dad? Laslow? Selena? Odin?" Ananias stammered as his friends led him into a private room so that they could talk and locked the door behind them. "What's going on here? What's with the different names? What's with you guys being in another world? What's with your change in hair color?" He then glanced at Owain and asked, "And what the heck are you wearing?!"
"Hey!" Owain cried. "I like it!" He grinned proudly. "It really suits my mysterious dark mage persona!"
"'Mysterious dark mage persona'?!" Ananias cried. "What the heck's going on?!"
"Hey!" Severa said as she made her way towards Ananias and gave him a firm slap across his face. "Get a grip, or gods help you I will -"
"Whoa, hey," Inigo said as he calmly tried to force Severa away from Ananias and attempted to try and calm the red-headed girl down, "go easy on him. This is a lot to take in!" He then turned to Ananias, flashed him a smile, and said, "Hey man! Long time no see!"
Realizing that he was acting up a little bit too much towards the situation, Ananias took a moment to calm himself down, before wearily asking, "I'm going to ask this one more time: what's going on here?"
Owain cleared his throat. "Well, you see my friend -"
"To make a long story short," Inigo interrupted, earning him a scowl from Owain, "someone asked us to help out here and, well, we just couldn't say no, you know?"
Ananias let out an exasperated sigh. "I guess." He then folded his arms. "But why just you three?" he asked. "I mean, it's not like the rest of us had anything planned after our war."
Owain shrugged. "Perhaps our employer believed that too many recruits would raise too much suspicion. Indeed, our entire army or our entire group of misfits might have been outside the suspension of disbelief."
Ananias rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. "And the name and appearance change?"
Inigo nonchalantly shrugged. "Same reason, I guess."
"But you're from another world," Ananias calmly argued. "Who would recognize you here?"
"You did!" Severa angrily pointed out.
"Yeah, because I know you," Ananias calmly countered. "And how did you all dye your hair anyway? The last time I checked, my aunt who runs the hair dying and hot springs business said nothing about you guys buying red, yellow, and grayish-blue hair dye."
Inigo smiled. "Magic."
"But none of you guys know anything about magic," Ananias pointed out.
"Well, I mean, I do now," Owain said.
"Gods, we're not getting anywhere with this!" Severa muttered, rubbing her forehead in frustration. She turned towards Ananias. "Look, we're doing something important here, alright? So we'd appreciate it if you didn't blow our cover and do what you came here to do!"
Ananias sighed. "Yeah, I guess that's all I can do at this point, huh?" He then went to the table situated in the middle of the room, took off his satchel, opened it up, and turned it upside down, letting all of its contents fall out and land on the table. Inigo, Owain, and Severa exchanged surprised and confused looks before taking a step towards the table and looking at the contents spread out across the table. Ananias gestured towards all of the fallen letters and said, "These are all for you… from all of us."
Severa's eyes softened as she looked at Ananias. "'All of us'?" She then quickly took one of the letters from the pile and read, "To: Severa, From:," she gulped down a lump in her throat as her eyes watered upon reading whom the letter was from, "Mother and Father."
Inigo and Owain's eyes widened upon hearing what Severa had read out loud. "What?" Inigo said before he and Owain quickly began rummaging through the pile of letters. Inigo picked one up and read, "Kjelle." Another one. "Brady. Laurent."
Owain sniffled as he picked up a letter and read, "From your mother, Uncle Chrom, and Aunt Emmeryn." He picked up another one. "From a different Lucina." He gave Ananias a look of confusion. "Huh?"
"Lucina's been missing even more than you guys," Ananias explained. "Even with the Outrealm Gates, I could never really find any trace of her. I eventually found this world where a duplicate of Lucina was and when I told her about the three of you going missing, she thought a letter from her would be a nice enough consolation prize for not getting a letter from our version."
Owain chuckled. "Yeah, that sounds like Lucina alright. Both of them."
Severa looked at a couple more letters before incredulously asking, "You came all the way here, searched for us all of this time… just to deliver this to us?"
Ananias nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders and answered, "Well, I mean, I had already became sort of a messenger already, and they asked, and besides," he blushed slightly as he scratched the back of his head, "I kind of… missed seeing you guys too, even if you guys do give me a headache sometimes."
Severa ran around the table and gave Ananias a great, big hug. "You're amazing," she whispered. "You know that, right?"
After recovering from his initial shock, Ananias slowly hugged back, giving Severa a few comforting pats on the back as he did, smiled slightly, and whispered back, "Kind of. I keep needing to have to remind myself from time to time."
"Thanks man," Inigo said, offering Ananias a fist bump, which Ananias returned. "You're one hell of a messenger. You don't know how much this means to us."
"Though I must admit," Owain said, holding his chin as he looked at the pile of letters, "with the war going on and with the amount of letters, it will take many moons to answer them all."
Ananias thought for a moment before giving his friends a nonchalant shrug and saying, "Ah, what the heck. I've got nothing else going on right now. I'll stick around and help out until you guys are done answering all of your mail. Besides," he looked at both Owain and Inigo, "I'd like to get to know your daughters a little bit more. I mean, did they come from another apocalyptic future, or what?"
Inigo rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "No, not really."
"Hazzah!" Owain cried, making his way around the table and giving him a hard slap on the back. "The Red Death and Owain Dark join forces once again! The enemy best prepare themselves for the worst!"
"What 'worst' are you talking about?" Ananias asked. "A slightly better offense?"
"Whoa whoa, back it up a little," Inigo said, raising his hands in an attempt to calm everyone down. "We can't just let Ananias join the army, not after what we just told Princess Camilla, Prince Leon, and Prince Xander!"
"No worries!" Owain cried. "We'll just say that the search for his friends has hit an unexpected roadblock and that he will be helping us fight the good fight until the problem has been resolved!"
Severa frowned. "We're going to have to give them a better excuse than that, but," she blushed slightly as she averted her eyes to the side, "it wouldn't be so bad to have another friend fighting with us again." She thought about it for a moment. "Well, Elise could always use another retainer."
"Huh?" Inigo asked. "What's wrong with Effie and Arthur?"
"Nothing's wrong with Effie," Severa explained. She then scowled. "Arthur on the other hand…."
Inigo laughed awkwardly. "Yeah, now that you mention it, maybe one more retainer wouldn't be such a bad idea after all."
"I'm sorry," Ananias said, nonchalantly raising his hand up to get his friends' attention. "But who exactly am I being a retainer for?"
Inigo smiled and explained, "Princess Elise, the youngest of the Nohrian family. You'll like her. She's as cute as a button."
Ananias' eyes widened in surprise. "You guys want me to protect a princess? But I'm not even that good at fighting!"
"Ah, you fight well enough," Severa said, waving Ananias' apprehensions away with her hand. "And besides," she smiled, "you'll have Arthur and Effie to help you out." She frowned. "Though, with Arthur's luck, you'd probably have more luck relying on Effie, which should be fine. Effie's got enough strength for three people."
"Indeed!" Owain cried. "And hopefully your plethora of luck can counteract Arthur's!"
Ananias gave Owain a strange, confused look. "Since when have I ever had a 'plethora of luck'?" he murmured to himself.
Author's Note: In celebration for Fates finally being released in the U.S., here's me hating myself and increasing my workload for this story! Question: Should I add some Fates supports to this story, or should this just be a fun little story and end the Fates section here? I must admit, I'm interested in doing some supports for Fates, but supports have already come to a halt due to life currently getting in the way, and the ones who are patiently waiting for the other character supports probably wouldn't want even more supports cutting in line. So, what do you guys think? Keep this story Awakening, just let it be a complete collection of all of Ananias' supports across both games, or finish Awakening's supports before starting with Fates' supports? Agh, I wouldn't even be having this discussion if Fates didn't literally reuse three of its characters from Awakening!
In case you wish to add Fates supports to this story, some ground rules:
1) In my head, Ananias will, at least, be a glorified DLC (a bit like Anna in Fates), which means that he'll be allowed to support, but not with everyone. Characters that I plan on supporting with him are: Elise, Effie, Arthur, Ophelia, Soleil, Female Corrin, and (Fates) Anna on the Conquest/Nohr side, and Rinkah, Subaki, and Setsuna for the Revelations/Invisible Kingdom side.
2) If you wish for Fates characters to be put in the list and cut in line, then request it like, "I want Soleil to support before _."
3) If you want S Supports for Arthur and Subaki then I'll... consider it. I say that because I've always personally seen Ananias as a straight character, but if there's enough of a demand, then I'll consider it. I won't do one for Male Corrin though because, well, in Fates, Female and Male Corrin's supports are pretty much the same, so just imagine all of the she's are he's.
4) Nah's is next. There's no changing that.
Again, the current order for supports is Nah, then Cynthia, Noire, Kjelle, Zephyra, Lumaria, Yarne, Laurent, and then Brady. Hope you enjoyed this fun possible one-shot! See you next time!
