#FE Lukas

[luce-speaks]

cross stitch lukas is complete!!

the art is his map sprite from @sacredechoes with slight modifications to reduce the color palette <3

guess who’s up next?

[good-beansdraws]

Fe Aspec Week Day 2: Friendship

An indulgent piece for today!!!! :') It's no secret the trio's friendship has always had a really special place in my heart, and I've been grateful for the taste of acceptance and contentment it brought me during (and long after) I played the game. To see them find the most caring and complete friendship in each other was truly inspiring.

Here's to all of us finding the people that make us "never long for companionship throughout the rest of our days" <3

[good-beans]

"Oh Pocket Lukas, we're really in it now..."

Thank you to the wonderful @luce-speaks who made me a Sacred Echoes Lukas cross stitch!! I'll find a more permanent home for him eventually, but for now I'm going to carry him around like a little locket >:3

[good-beanswrites]

Fe Aspec Week Day 1: Coming Out

WOO It's aspec week time!! 💜💚 To no one's surprise I'm starting off with Lukas :3 I know we have the wonderful support convo when he and Python sort of come out to each other, but I was always curious about the loose ends that it brings up -- how he comes out to/is treated by his family, the woman he's left behind, his fellow nobles, etc. This drabble doesn't really answer any of those questions sadfsadf but it's coming from that thought 😂

Father,

I am writing to you now, so soon after my previous letter, as there is something I have yet to confess. It may be difficult for you to hear, but

The sentence stops abruptly, a small dab of ink at the corner of the ‘t’ where the pen had rested a moment in contemplation.

A man sits back at his at a desk. His candle illuminates the page, displaying a few brief lines at the top. He dips his pen in ink time and time again, but the page remains mostly empty. 

At first, the man believes his problem to be a lack of words. No title exists for men like him. He’s well-educated and well-connected in the army; he has an extensive vocabulary for how the upper and lower class categorizes its people. Whether it’s a scholar’s dull terminology, vulgar common language insults, or the carefully chosen phrasing of a gossiper, none of the usual descriptors fit him. All he has are the distantly connected criticisms he’d heard his whole life: “heartless,” “cold,” “detached.” 

When the candle burns lower, however, he realizes the real issue. He has far too many words.

Where would he even start? Should he describe his contentment with his life here? How not one of his fellows ever brought up the lack of a woman at his arm, or how dinners with the King and Queen themselves were filled with pleasantries that never touched on his romantic endeavors? Whatever his father had been preparing for, it had never come.

Or should he begin earlier, when he was first accepted by this group of people? He wasn’t sure if he could properly convey all that he experienced on that fateful night, speaking softly with the unit’s archer – a man he’d come to call one of his truest friends. The man had heard for the first time in his life that there were others like him. He heard that they were content. They were whole.

He could go back further and describe the moment that the realization first hit him. How his father had been right in a sense. Just as he said, one day when the man was grown, he would be in the arms of another, and everything about himself would suddenly make sense. There was only one difference. He’d been forced to bury that clarity, since it wasn’t the same kind that everyone else came to.

Or should he start even further back? He could recount all little hints that haunted him across his youth. His dreams for the future never quite aligned with those of his peers. Nothing ever seemed to align. His choice of stories to read, of games to play, of jokes to make. He wouldn’t ever claim he was mistreated as a child, but everyone would agree that the signs had appeared even then.

The man sighs. Where is the beginning, when one has always been this way? 

The clock strikes on the hour. It is late, and he will need to be at his sharpest tomorrow for drills and meetings. He has no more time to fret over words about his past. 

The man tries a new method, and wonders what his friends may write about him. He can’t resist a dry smile. He knows that he can never, under any circumstance, allow them to exchange any correspondence with his family. 

But the exercise gives him an idea.

He writes out a single statement. Then he blows out the candle and heads to his bed. 

there is nothing broken about me.

Cordially,

Lukas

[justrudyart]

my favorite fire emblem rarepair, pykas my beloved 🫶🏻

[nitetime-moon]

[feh-alt-battle]

VS Battles - Boys :)

Requested by Anonymous

[thousand-winters]

Man... man... i forgot Lukas and Clive's support ended in Lukas being all like "why else do you keep me around if not for [the fact that I'm cold and detached]? (:"

There's only so much you can put on a support with how the convos are meant to be short but Lukas just seemed so unhappy about that 😔

[rosecelebi]

Posting my favorite FEH Meet the Heroes art every day

Picnic Lukas

[jebbeesketches]

Conrad/Lukas

[tiabwwtws-art]

FE Aspec Week Day Two: Coming Out | Support

Everybody say thank you Echoes

[luce-speaks]

lukas' guide to getting into (and subsequently out of) a political marriage

written for @fe-aspec-week 2024! i was inspired by this piece by @good-beanswrites from last year's aspec week—i wanted to try my own spin on the how-to format, and this is what came of it!

—

The first step is to be a pushover. Be a second son, be an easy mark, be someone useful and easy to use. Be agreeable. Go along with it. It’s the least you can do.

He meets Talia for the first time when he’s fifteen. They’re at a banquet table, silver spoons in hand. She smiles, and he smiles back. It’s rare luck, to meet someone his own age who isn’t completely insufferable.

The second step is for someone else to make the decision. This is the hard part, because you don’t have any control over it, but it’s also the easy part, because you don’t have to do it yourself.

He is informed of the marriage three days after he turns eighteen, and the announcement receives rather more fanfare than his actual birthday. He later finds out that it had been in the works for eight months, his own involvement only an afterthought. He nods along.

The third step is to try and get used to it. Look for the bright side. Do your best. Scrape out what happiness you can and tell yourself that it’s enough. Try to believe it, too.

They sit together in Talia’s ornate bedroom while their parents hash out the details.

“I know it wasn’t your idea,” she says quietly, “but… I like you well enough. And I think you like me well enough. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? To find our own happiness?”

“Yes,” he says, like second nature, agreeing but also agreeable. “I think it is.”

The fourth step is to watch it fall apart. Your relationship, your happiness, your ambitions—these things will decline slowly but steadily, in step with the political decline of the country you live in. It will get worse before it gets better.

He and Talia used to go for picnics. They both preferred open fields to banquet tables, but the silver spoons came with them in the wicker basket. They would sit under the blue sky and talk about what they’d read recently. Their tastes were never quite the same.

His family used to like the picnics, too. Now they just say he isn’t doing enough. He wonders how it can be not enough and too much at the same time.

The fifth step is to run away. Watch for your chance and take it. Mask your intentions under what is asked of you, always useful, always agreeable, always a second son. Smile and nod and run like hell.

“You’re joining the Deliverance? But—Lukas—“

He doesn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t have a choice.”

“When will you be back?”

“I can’t say. I might not return at all.”

If she asked, he would say “because I might die”. But he also leaves his engagement ring on the table.

The sixth step is to be happy, against all odds. Wash your bloody hands and smile, for real this time. Sit with your friends while they sing campfire songs and gossip and never, ever ask you when you’re getting married.

Python corners him once, alone, with a single-minded focus. He wants to know, so Lukas tells him.

“Honestly, Python? I’m not sure if I love her or not.”

He expects some kind of scolding. He does not expect Python’s simple answer to make everything fall into place in his mind.

The seventh and final step is to settle your affairs. Write a curt letter to the family that sent you away; disappoint them with the news of your continued existence and promise they won’t be seeing you again. For the second letter, waver a while longer before finally giving in and asking your friends for help.

“Keep it short—no fancy words, nothing too nice,” Python says. “You’ve made up your mind. You can’t have her thinkin’ you might come back now.”

“But it ought to at least be polite!” Forsyth argues back. “He said himself that she was completely pleasant about the whole thing. There’s no call for rudeness to her—unlike that awful brother—“

“Hold on,” he says. “I think I’ve got it.”

Python and Forsyth accompany him to mail the letter to Talia. Afterward, the three of them go out for drinks, just as Python promised once upon a time.

(As he turns in for bed that night, Lukas reflects on how light he feels. He is no longer engaged, no longer agreeable, no longer easily used. He is nobody’s husband and nobody’s second son. And he is more at home than he has ever been before.)

[good-beansdraws]

Finally finishing my Lukas-Fuuta swap art -- I was really happy with the original armor switch and thought some alternate outfits could be fun to go full-out with :3 I was so tired of drawing the uniforms so just have my sketch for that and the resplendent alt 😅

[good-beans]

Audio from this post 🦋

[good-beanswrites]

Fe Aspec Week Day 7: Free Day -- Legacy

This one took me forever to settle on something I liked -- I was toying around with some ideas about Lukas's epilogue text and the idea of legacy, as well as a bit of meta impact. A few scrapped drawings and 1k words later, I've got this 😂

As always, thank you so much for running this week!! 💜💚 I always have so much fun with the pieces, (it's been the only event week that I can regularly commit to because I always have a blast haha!) and seeing others' amazing work! It's been such a great time :D

Forsyth stepped back from his canvas. He wiped hair from his forehead, hoping he wasn’t smearing any paint there. He studied his work, then his model, then his work once more. He gave a decisive nod. 

“Well. I tried.”

Python choked back a laugh. “That’s not quite the confidence you want to hear from your portrait painter, you know.” He walked up to the canvas, but Forsyth was quick to angle it away from him. 

“Oh, hush, I wasn’t even painting you! I’ll have you know, it was rather difficult trying to paint something without having it in front of me.”

“What are you talkin’ about, Luke was sitting right there for hours!”

At his mention, Lukas perked up. He’d been lounging in front of Forsyth, his eyes lowered to sift through a pile of student writings. He’d been scribbling notes in the margins, absentmindedly angling his face this way and that when Forsyth requested.

“And I am incredibly grateful for his presence. However, I did not want to capture him looking like a sleep-deprived schoolteacher –”

“– but that’s exactly what he is –”

“– so I attempted to recreate my personal favorite expression of his.”

Lukas smiled. “Oh? And what would that be?” He placed the papers aside, giving Forsyth his full attention. Lukas nodded to the canvas, encouraging him to reveal it. 

“Well… you see… the point of this whole project…”

Forsyth searched for the right words. The point of the whole project actually struck him months ago, back at Rigel Castle. 

He and Python had sat for their own portraits, which would later be hung in the great hall to commemorate members of the Brotherhood. Forsyth could have cried seeing he and Python’s likenesses full of dignity and chivalry. The whole time, though, he couldn’t shake the feeling of injustice that boiled in his stomach: Lukas would get nothing. 

Sure, his name would appear in the records as the royal family’s right-hand advisor during and after war, but his image would disappear entirely. He left the Brotherhood to fulfill his dreams long before the kingdom was stable enough to commission a professional painter. With his brother furthering the bloodline and becoming the major focus of the household, Lukas was relieved of all marriage obligations – and opportunities for a couple’s portrait. Paintings alongside any future children were out of the question, as well. 

“It’s terribly unfair!” Forsyth had cried. “Are war and romance the only means to remember a man? Is he any less worthy because he will never marry?”

“You’re overthinking things, Fors.” Python had hardly spared him a glance. “Plenty of good people don’t get their paintings done.”

“And that is just as much an outrage!” 

He brought his concerns to Lukas, who seemed at peace with the situation, as Python was. The pair’s disinterest only caused Forsyth more urgency. After a bit of deliberation, he knew there was only one path forward. 

“I shall take this into my own hands.”

They would find out he meant this very literally. He showed up at Lukas’ schoolhouse with various brushes clutched in his hands, an apron thrown over his chest. He pulled up a nearby seat, propped up an easel, and got right to it. It became their routine: once classes dismissed for the day, Lukas would busy himself with reading through his school materials, and Forsyth would busy himself with work of his own.

He’d done his research beforehand, but had never actually painted anyone’s portrait. He looked again at the finished product.

“I was hoping to capture… er… the point of this work is to commemorate your independent situation… and thus… I remembered the days after you first told me, you were the happiest I’d ever seen you. The face is still a rare one, but after that night, I’ve seen that side of you more and more. I just thought…”

He gave an audible huff. Screw it. 

He turned the canvas around. 

“I am sorry. Perhaps I should have gone with a more dignified look, like the other knights’ portraits. I am aware that I have yet to accomplish a professional’s level of –”

“It’s perfect.” 

Forsyth blinked. 

Lukas stared at the canvas. He appeared to be working out his next words. Meanwhile, Python let out a long whistle. “Lookin’ good! Not too shabby, for your first masterpiece.”

“‘Not too shabby’ is an understatement.” Lukas stepped closer to the piece, his voice full of warmth. “Thank you, friend.”

In the painting, Lukas wasn’t sitting straight-backed and stiff; it was focused on his bust, leaning a bit in relaxed movement. He wore casual clothes, none of his usual professional garments. He smiled. His mouth was a little lopsided, a little odd, pinching his eyes a bit, showing some teeth, but not all – and it was a perfect replication. This was Lukas’s true smile, not the one he put up for others to view. 

Python gave him a poke. “So, now what? Where are we gonna do with it? We can’t just smuggle it into the royal gallery. And I don’t think Lukas is the kind of guy who wants to stare at it here in the school all the time.”

“Well, I… er….”

“I mean, we can certainly just go and hang it up somewhere around town, but I don’t think he’s looking for that, either.”

“I just thought he’d want it! For his legacy!” Forsyth huffed. His eyes shone with The kind of determination that the others knew not to overstep on. There was no stopping him now. “It’s important that he’s remembered through the ages! I think of all the heroes that inspired me – the way I gazed at their images in my fathers’ textbooks, gaining hope from their stories…”

“You’re hoping that Lukas ends up in some dusty textbook someday?”

“Indeed!” He beamed, not realizing that Python didn’t see it as a grand victory. “Just imagine: centuries from now, some harrowed scholar, crushed under familiar struggles. They get a hold of a secondhand book, and suddenly, bam!” He gestured to the painting. “They look upon his face and see that everything will be alright. They’ll think, ‘if Sir Lukas of Valentia can do it, and smile so purely at the end of it all, surely I can too!’”

He clenched his fists, caught up in his own excitement. His gaze was somewhere faraway, imagining this incredible future.  

Python scoffed. 

“It sounds like they’re just as much of a hopelessly sentimental dreamer as you are. They’ll probably think, ‘gods, now I need to study up on this guy too?”

“Python…”

“Or, if they’re like me, maybe they’ll think, ‘mmm, that is one fiiine –”

“Python!”

“Alright, alright. I think it’s a real nice gesture, Fors.”

Lukas had been quietly taking everything in for a while. Now he spoke. “I truly believe this is perfect. As you said – this is an expression only saved for rare occasions. It’s difficult for me to smile so genuinely. I… I never really see it myself.”

He placed a hand on Forsyth’s shoulder. “We can hope it reaches others someday, but regardless, I am grateful to have seen it right now. It inspires me about the future. I… I cannot thank you enough.”

[girafferoyalty]

Hi pal!! Ha, I am predictable and here to request any member of the rgb trio for Faebruary :D I hope you're taking it easy and doing well 💖

Hello @good-beansdraws! Thanks for the well-wishes and requesting some lovely Echoes boys. To be quite honest, I misread your message and was like "The RGB trio? Coming right up!" and only after I was finished I reread the message and realised you meant just one of them... Anyway here are all 3 of them with some animal friends! 🐁🐸🐦‍⬛🧚‍♀️

Edit: Had to fix the bird’s beak a little it was bothering me too much