#all my fe8 ships are crackpairs im so sorry

[miyakari]

people in love

FE8 Week, Day 2 - Prompt Serve/Refuse

The first time they meet they’re both simple cadets, anonymous soldiers among a sea of others just like them, with their accents and armors the only details differentiating them. Syrene wears an unfit, scrappy breastplate as white as her newly assigned pegasus (her pride and joy, eyes so vigil they remind her of the little sister she’s left home sometimes), while Selena carries herself tall in her mage robes.

She’s no Fluorspar yet but the way she measures the ground with her steps might as well already scream of her future every time her boots clack on the stone pavement of the hallways of the castle. Syrene thinks idly that the only other person to walk those hallways like that is their archer princeling, who still smells of his late mother’s milk no matter how mature he thinks he has to act, and maybe it’s that thought that makes her approach Selena.

(Or at least, that’s how she’ll justify it to herself in a late future.)

“Hey there,” she says, as casual as she can manage with the weight of her full gear on her shoulders and a few strands of hair blocking her eyes. She blows those out of the way. “Looking for something?”

Selena stops dead in her tracks, something that didn’t look just quite possible only a few seconds ago, and turns towards her, bows her head just slightly in recognition.

“Not really,” comes the dignified answer, thick Gradoan accent coloring her consonants and folding her vowels as thin as Carcino silk robes. “It’s break time and I wanted to see the castle.”

Syrene smiles, wide enough that she’ll remember the pull of her cheeks years later, countless other smiles later, and offers herself as a guide. “I’ll even give you a ride on my pegasus if drinks are on you tonight,” she declares, bolder than she feels, and prays Selena is not a lightweight.

She finds out soon enough how well they can both hold their liquor.

***

The first time they topple over onto Selena’s bed, giddy with euphoria and the best Gradoan wine to celebrate Selena’s recent promotion, Syrene lets herself melt in between the sheets with a helpless giggle, taking in the sight above of her. Selena’s flushed skin, all the way down to the collar of her shirt, the countless, faint freckles on the bridge of her nose, the black of her pupils eating up the stark blue of her eyes.

She probably makes a crude joke, something slurred about mages being good with their hands that only sounds funny in her head, but Selena is gracious enough to at least snort.

“I live for my Emperor.” Her voice is a huffed murmur tickling Syrene’s ear, and if the way the dim light dances in her stare seems foreboding Syrene doesn’t know what else to do about it but press closer, shivering as Selena continues, “but you, you’re—”

She trails off, like she doesn’t know what to say next except for Syrene’s name, voice feverish like a convict, and it makes Syrene’s fingertips dig deeper.

Later that night, with the blueish darkness right before the dawn seeping through the walls almost as if it were solid, Syrene thinks people in love shouldn’t be that desperate.

Selena is sleeping next to her, hair a halo on her pillow, and her mouth hangs ajar as she snores softly. It smells of her, and of bedsheets and the lingering alcohol, but the knot in Syrene’s throat quivers like the imperceptible, harmless tremors that shake Grado from time to time.

A nightingale starts singing outside the window and Syrene tugs at the covers so that they’re covering them both up to their chins. She traces the outline of Selena’s jaw with two fingers, careful not to wake her up, and thinks of Frelia, of her King and the princeling who’s all grown up now and his little sister; the child fills to the brim the gaping hole nostalgia’s gnawed in the middle of Syrene’s chest like a woodworm with every passing day. She’s duty-bound to them, just like Selena’s duty-bound to her own country, her own woodworms, but Syrene is going to smoke those out one by one.

“Just you wait,” she whispers, muffled by the sheets and the pillow, and with that she falls asleep.