#i know that there's a way to do fancy page dividers in tumblr bc i've done it before but i cannot for the life of me remember how

[arosnowflake]

That Broken String of Fate

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Fandom: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance Wordcount: 10590 Summary: It had never bothered Ike that he didn't have a soulmate, but for some reason, it really bothered the world.Or: being aromantic would suck in a world where soulmates exist.

Warnings: (internalized) arophobia/aromisia (not from the main character), swearing, a little bit of canon-typical fantasy racism.

Notes: I haven’t finished playing the game (got stuck around chapter 19 due to a non-functional laptop), so major thanks to @siryamsalot for helping me out with chronology, canon details, and brainstorming! Also, if you reblog this, please keep spoilers out of the tags. Written for @aggressivelyarospec‘s Aggressively Arospec Week 2019.

///

During those first few years, when they were still moving around, the Greil Mercenaries didn’t exist. There were mercenaries that traveled alongside them, sure, but there was no trust between them, no stability. They were there because it was convenient, and although they were friendly, in the end, they always left.

After the fourth one, Ike stopped smiling when he was introduced. There was no point in putting on a mask when he wouldn’t know them for more than a few months.

“What’s with that kid?” he’d heard one of them say, once, late at night after a successful raid on a Daein fortress. “Do you think his face got damaged and is stuck in the frown position?”

There was laughter from below, and Ike curled up tighter in the rafters. The laughter was too loud for the joke; they were drunk, celebrating a job well done by shittalking the boss’s kid as soon as he wasn’t around to hear them.

“But seriously though,” a brown-haired woman (Ike had been introduced to her, he knew her name, but he couldn’t bother to remember it) slurred. “Kid’s fucking creepy. He does nothing but stare with that dead-eyed look. Doesn’t even smile when he’s playing with his sister.” She took a swig from her bottle, exaggerating her movements and nearly falling backwards in the process. “It’s almost like he doesn’t have any emotions at all.”

“Wonder if he’s even got a soulmate,” a red-haired guy (Gert?) mused.

Ike gritted his teeth.

“Oh Goddess, can you imagine?” the woman groaned. “Pity the poor soul that gets stuck with him.”

“I’ll drink to that!” one of the others called, and they all laughed and opened another bottle. Or tried to.

“I think you’ve had enough.”

The group stilled, and Ike leaned forward on the wooden beam in order to get a better view.

In the doorway stood Dad, too far away for Ike to read his face, but he knew him. He never raised his voice, always maintaining a calm tone, but when it trembled at the edges, he was angry.

Right now, every word shook, and he was livid.

“Pack up your drink and go to bed,” he said. “I suggest you do not test me right now.”

The group wasn’t so drunk as to defy him, and within minutes, they’d scrambled out of the room, probably to claim one of the newly empty cells for the night.

A deep sigh echoed off the walls.

“You can come down now, Ike.”

Ike hopped down from the rafters, scaling the wall with the confidence and precision of someone who’d been doing this his entire life. Rafters were good vantage points, and although dad wouldn’t let him do reconnaissance just yet, he’d been taught how to climb almost as soon as he’d been taught how to walk.

With the last push, he jumped straight into his dad’s waiting arms, and burrowed his head into his neck. His dad’s hugs were always comforting, even when he couldn’t stand the touch of anyone else.

“How long have you been up there?” he asked, his voice low and soothing, no longer trembling.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ike answered. It was pitch dark outside, the fire casting long, eerie shadows over the room’s high walls, sizzling in the deep silence of night.

Dad held him tighter.

“They don’t know anything,” Dad said, a hand stroking Ike’s hair. “Don’t listen to them.”

“I don’t. Why should I care what a bunch of jackasses have to say about me, especially when they’re gonna leave next month anyway?”

“Language,” Dad scolded half-heartedly. “But you’re right. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. You don’t need to smile to make them comfortable, and you certainly don’t need a soulmark.”

“Soulmarks suck,” Ike mumbled, trailing off into a yawn. Dad sighed his Maybe-I-Shouldn’t-Raise-A-Kid-Between-Swearing-Mercenaries sigh, and carried him towards the cell he and Mist had claimed.

“C’mon, let’s go to sleep.”

“Mist snores,” Ike protested, but he slept before they even reached their room.

///

The group had gone and been replaced within three months. The red-head (Gert-Jan, apparently) had found his soulmate, a short woman with hair like straw and a nice smile, and he brought her over to the camp to introduce everyone. Ike was hiding in the treetops so that he wouldn’t have to. Dad didn’t even scold him.

The others scattered to the winds soon after, hope to find their One rekindled in their hearts.

When Ike had first realized that the beautiful white flowers climbing up Mists’s arm were a soulmark, he’d thrown a fit, yelling the whole camp into a frenzy until Dad finally dragged him off to the side and told him that they were going to have a talk.

“Soulmarks make people leave,” Ike said, looking at the floor, kicking his feet angrily. “Mist can’t leave. She needs to stay here.”

Dad had kneeled before him. He didn’t make Ike look at him, so Ike stared stubbornly down at the ground.

“When people want to leave, they leave,” Dad had said, voice soft. “Soulmarks are just a convenient excuse. If you say ‘I’m going to explore the world because I just kind of want to’, people will protest, try to stop you, and you’ll doubt yourself too, questioning whether you should really leave your friends and family behind, whether your choice is worth it.”

His dad shifted a bit. “But if you tell yourself and everyone else that you’re going to explore the world in search of your soulmate, people get it, and you don’t need to worry about leaving your friends behind because you can tell yourself that you’ll find your soulmate, and that’s something that comes before everything else.”

Ike looked up, gaze resting slightly above dad’s eyes. He didn’t say anything, shoulders still tense, rocking back and forth slightly. Dad closed his eyes for a bit, and when he opened them, he pulled his shirt down. There, on his shoulder, was a tiny little dove. The white was off, closer to grey, and the lines were smeared, like it had rained on the picture before the paint was dry.

Ike blinked. “Is that -”

“My soulmark.” Dad confirmed. “I - before I met your mother, I was... stuck, somewhere. I should have left, but I didn’t, for a lot of reasons, and one of them was that I had a trainee. And every time I thought about leaving, I asked myself ‘But what would become of him?’, and I’d back out at the last moment.”

“But you did leave,” Ike stated, gripping the tree branch so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Because you loved her more than you loved him.”

Dad smiled. It wasn’t happy; it was sharp-edged and bitter, a look that he’d never seen on his father’s face before. “No. I left because that life didn’t suit me anymore - I wanted out, and if I had to leave him behind, then that was a sacrifice I was willing to make.” Dad let go of his sleeve, and the shirt shifted back in place. “Your mother was my excuse. My reason not to worry about the people I left behind. If I loved her, then I couldn’t be wrong, right?”

Ike’s voice was sharp. “Were you wrong?”

Dad was silent for a beat. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and while I might do some things differently if I could turn back time, in the end - in the end, I made the right choice. I’m glad I left, and I’d do it again, if need be.”

“Then what’s stopping Mist from leaving like you did?” Ike demanded, his palms getting rubbed raw by the bark as he twisted them around the branch.

“We’ll make her happy,” Dad said simply, finally standing up. “We’ll keep her happy, and she won’t have any reason to leave.”

Ike blinked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Dad agreed. He spread his arms open, and Ike accepted the invitation, burying himself in his hug and trying not to think about wrong smiles and secrets.

///

One day, Dad carried a lady into camp, shouting for their healer. Even from a distance, Ike could see red, both from her hair and from the blood dripping onto the grass.

Turns out her wounds were relatively minor; a large gash on her left arm being the only thing that would leave lasting damage.  The worst of it was malnutrition, the healer said. Ike looked down on the lady’s pale, gaunt face, and didn’t doubt her.

Mist was helping the healer change her bandages, while Ike waited for her to be done so they could play, when the red-haired lady woke up, gasping.

The healer quickly shoved Mist out of the way, instructing her to get some water, while Ike ran out of the door to get his father.

“She’s awake!” he yelled, and his dad followed him without further questions.

Mist fed the lady water, slowly, sip by sip, while the healer rattled off simple yes or no questions that she could answer with a shake of her head.

When Mist saw them, she hastily gave the cut to the healer and met them in the doorway.

“How is she?” Dad asked.

“Not bad,” Mist answered. “She can’t strain herself too much, but she’s lucid and responding.

Dad nodded and went over to talk to the healer.

“Can she talk?” Ike asked softly.

“Yes, but the healer thinks she should do it as little as possible,” Mist whispered back.

And just then, a weak, unfamiliar voice sounded through the tent.

“Sir,” she said, then coughed. “You’re the one who saved me.”

The lady tried to sit up, but Dad grabbed her shoulder and carefully pushed her back onto the pillow.

“Please don’t strain yourself,” he said. “You’re still very weak.”

The lady did as he said and sunk back into the pillows, but still bowed her head. “I must thank you, sir. You had no cause to save me, yet you did. You have my eternal gratitude.”

“There’s no need for that. It’d be very lousy payback to let someone die after they saved my life by axing my would-be murderer.”

The lady laughed, or tried to, because she trailed off into a cough almost immediately.

“Like I said, don’t strain yourself.”

“I’m alright,” the woman said, after she recovered. “Nevertheless, I must insist. Many others wouldn’t have been so honorable.”

“Then I must thank you the same, for not many would have interfered to save a stranger from bandits while wounded and exhausted themselves,” Dad said, voice sliding into a strange accent.

Mist leaned over to Ike. “You ever head Dad talk like that?”

Ike shook his head.

“Are you a knight, sir?” The lady asked.

“Not at all, just a simple mercenary,” Dad replied, taking up his usual drawl again. “Although I get the impression that you are one yourself.”

There fell an uncomfortable silence, and the lady looked away. “I -”

“You don’t have to explain yourself if you don’t want to,” Dad interrupted. “You wouldn’t be the only one here with a secret.”

The lady was silent for a while. “What is your name, sir?” she finally asked.

“Greil,” Dad answered. “And please, drop the sir. Makes me feel like a nobleman.”

The lady inclined her head. “Greil, then. My name is Titania. I am at your service.” A pause. “Although at the moment, that’s not quite so impressive, I’m afraid.”

Dad laughed, and that was the first time Ike saw Titania smile.

///

Over the next couple of weeks, Titania recovered, being fed broth and later soft bread to get back on weight. Her wounds healed quickly, although as expected, the one on her arm left a scar.

As soon as she could walk without assistance and eat solid food, Ike found her sneaking out of camp.

“Are you leaving?” he asked, feeling little at the prospect. It was expected, after all.

Titania hesitated. That was new. Most of the time, people were eager to leave, or at least not particularly remorseful. But the way Titania stared around the sickroom, it was almost like she felt sorry for going.

“I’d like to stay,” she said, and Ike didn’t believe her, although she sounded honest. “But I don’t think I’d be welcome here for much longer.”

“If you’re gonna leave, at least own up to it,” he said, folding his arms. “Don’t pretend like you care, or try to make it our fault.”

“I’m not -”

“We’ve been nothing but nice to you, Dad never told you that you had to leave, and I know he’s been thinking about offering you a place in the group because of your skills. You’d be welcome here. You just don’t wanna stay.”

“Of course I do!” she protested. “It’s - nice, here. Nicer than alone on the road, at least. But I need to go. You wouldn’t want me here.”

“And why not?”

She hesitated. She hesitated for a long while. She hesitated so long that Ike began to question whether she meant for him to leave while she was silent. Well, if that was what she wanted, then she could wait a long, long while, because he wasn’t going anywhere.

But she did speak, finally. “I’m cursed.”

Ike raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t noticed much of that over the last couple of weeks.”

“It’s true, though,” she insisted. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, gripping her single pack in a vice-like grip. Ike felt a twinge of pity before he pushed it down again. No use feeling for someone who he’d never see again, anyway.

“We’ve got at least five clerics here. Surely one of them could help.”

“They had clerics in the army, too. They were the first to push me out.”

Immediately after saying that, she bit her lip, as if she hadn’t meant to let that slip.  Ike cocked his head, just slightly, not enough for anyone other than Mist or his dad to notice. “The army kicked you out?”

Titania took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m cursed.”

Ike made an annoyed noise. “You keep coming back to that curse, but you refuse to tell me how you’re cursed. Sounds like an excuse to me.”

“It’s not!” Titania snapped, and Ike flinched back, surprised at the anger in her voice. “You think I like being alone in the woods? I’d much rather stay here, but I can’t! I can’t be kicked out again! I wouldn’t survive it!”

“Why the hell would you assume we’d kick you out?” Ike snapped back, balling his fists. “We’ve never kicked anyone out! They always leave by themselves! Why would you be the exception?”

“Because I don’t have a soulmark!”

She slapped a hand against her mouth, eyes wide and trembling. Ike blinked, leaning back on his heels and unclenching his hands.

“That’s all?” he asked.

She stared at him, completely frozen.

“I mean, neither do I.”

That made her move. Slowly, she lowered her hand, took a tentative step towards him.

“What?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

Ike shrugged. “There’s not much to tell? I just don’t have any. Dunno why you’d think that’d make you cursed.” He frowned. “Or why the army would kick you out for that. Sounds like their loss.”

Titania lowered herself on the bed, her pack still clutched in her hands. “And nobody minds that you do not have a soulmark?”

“Well, I don’t exactly go around telling everyone, it’s none of their business. But Dad and Mist know, and they don’t mind, no.”

“Oh,” Titania said. “Oh.”

The pack slipped out of her hand, landing on the ground with a large thunk.

“I think,” she whispered, “that I could stay for just a little longer.”

///

“A little longer” turned into months, then a full year, then two, and tentatively, carefully, Ike began to believe that “a little longer” meant “forever”.

Titania trained him when his father was too busy; although her axes were her specialty, she could still teach him how to hold a sword, how to parry attacks from various weapons (soon, he knew every last way to duck from an axe), how to search for weaknesses in your opponents. Her hair grew longer, and she tied it back into a large, thick braid, and let Mist comb it sometimes. She rode with dad to battle, and came back laughing, often with a little trinket for him and Mist, or sometimes, with little kiss marks on her neck. She blushed when Dad pointed them out, laughingly.

“I’d’ve never guessed that she’d be such a ladykiller,” he teased, and suddenly, she remembered that she needed to clean her tent, immediately, and left with her face bright red.

But she never brought one of her girls back home, never showed up proudly with a straw-haired woman with a sweet smile and proclaimed her to be her soulmate. She couldn’t. She didn’t have a mark.

///

She was the one who pointed out the fortress.

“It’s empty,” she explained, coming back to the camp. “We could stay there for a while, at least.”

Ike hid in the rafters of the main building for the first night, and overheard her say to Dad: “I think it’d be good for Mist and Ike to have some stability. A place to come home to. For Ike especially.”

And again, the days turned into weeks turned into months, and they didn’t leave. Mist started filling their room with little trinkets she found, and Titania bought him a nice quilt from the nearby town, after she’d gotten a deal with the shopkeeper because she liked her.

And one night, when she let Mist brush her hair and taught him how to braid it, he realized that she’d become family, and the fort had become home.

///

He gained a brother when he found a young boy with a strange  soulmark on his forehead crying at the foot of a mountain, beat up and near starving, looking even worse than Titania had when she first came to them.

So of course, he gave him his lunch. The boy stared at him, then back at the bread, and snatched it out of his hands and gobbled it up the way only the dying could.

“Don’t eat too fast,” Ike warned, too late, since the bread was already half gone. “It could make you sick.”

Right on queue, the boy heaved, and Ike patted his back until he could sit up again and eat the rest of the bread, slower, this time.

After he’d eaten, the two of them sat back, the boy watching Ike with suspicious eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked. The boy didn’t answer. Ike sighed.

“I could share my lunch with you tomorrow as well?” he offered.

The boy looked startled, and nervously began to chew on his lips and comb his fingers through his hair. They kept getting caught on matted blood, and Ike tried very hard not to wince, and even harder not to drag this kid back home with him as fast as he could.

Finally, the boy nodded.

“Good!” he said. “I’ll be here tomorrow too, then.”

And that’s how he first met Soren.

Later, watching him sleep in a warm bed, with nicely washed and brushed hair, Ike was convinced that this was the best decision he’d made in his life.

///

Soren was... damaged, there was no other way to put it. When he first joined their family, he didn’t speak, not a word. He looked at everyone with suspicion, clinging to Ike like his life depended on it, and outright refused to be in the same room as Dad for more than an hour. More than once, Ike woke up to Soren huddling near his bed, staring at him like he was going to disappear if he blinked too often.

It got better, slowly. He wrote notes, at first, and then haltingly spoke a few words when it was convenient, and finally talked in full sentences, only using his notebook when he was particularly stressed. They discovered that he liked to read, and Dad did his best to get him books, bargaining with nearby merc groups that had access to the capital to get the truly difficult, expensive ones. He had prior training in magic, although he refused to say where he learned it, and Mist loved asking him question after question about it, and it made Soren flourish like a flower in the sun. And although he still didn’t like to leave Ike’s sight, Titania did manage to convince him to come with her to town, sometimes.

Ike stopped waking up to Soren staring at him in the middle of the night, mostly. There were outliers, and when it happened, he simply tapped the spot on the bed next to him, and dragged Soren under the covers so that they’d both go to sleep.

But one night, Soren just kept staring at him, chewing his lip.

“Something wrong?” Ike whispered, shooting a glance to where Mist was sleeping.

Soren shuffled a bit, before finally taking a deep breath and asking: “Can I see your soulmark?”

Ike blinked. “Why?”

“It’s -” Soren rubbed his arm. “I just want to see if it matches.”

“Oh.” There was a churning in Ike’s stomach he couldn’t quite identify, but he didn’t like it. “I don’t have a soulmark.”

Soren’s eyebrows shot up. “None at all? Is that even possible?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Ike bit out, surprised at how hostile he sounded.

Soren took a step back, holding up his hands. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just - surprised, is all. Do you know why you don’t have one?”

Ike shifted a bit, folding his arms. “I was just born like this. It’s never really bothered me.”

“Even though it’s...” Soren’s voice trailed off, the way it sometimes did when he realized he was about to say the wrong thing.

“Just say it.”

“Even though it’s abnormal?” His voice was trembling a little bit, like forming words was getting difficult again.

“Yeah.” Ike shrugged. “Honestly, from what I’ve seen, soulmates just make you do stupid things. I’m glad I don’t have one.”

Soren stared at him for a bit, then shook his head, a small smile on his lips. “You continue to surprise me.”

Ike snorted. “Good, that’s what I’m here for. Now come sleep.”

///

Ike took note of Oscar’s arrival for one reason and one reason only: he brought two of his brothers along.

Rolf was young, younger than Mist even, which she delighted in, because it meant that she could now tease someone else for being the baby of the fort. Boyd was a little older than Ike, but still young enough that they could spar together without any one of them getting the upper hand out of sheer strength.

No, Ike got the upper hand in their spars because he was better.

“You’ve been training with knights for years,” Boyd complained. “It’s just unfair!”

“Your bother is a knight,” Ike pointed out, leaning on his sword as he watched Boyd scramble up out of the mud. “And my dad and Titania are mercenaries.”

“Well, my brother isn’t a knight anymore, either,” Boyd grumbled. Then, hefted his axe and grinned. “Rematch?”

Ike raised his sword. “You’re going down.”

It was nice to have someone his age to spar with, and Mist and Rolf seemed to be getting along for the same reasons. Soren was wary around them at first, but eventually, he got used to sharing camp with two more kids (and Ike with Boyd), and he seemed to enjoy calling up fire to impress Rolf. Ike was going to miss them when they left.

As much as he saw Rolf and Boyd, as little did he see Oscar. It seemed that he was always running ragged somewhere, cleaning weapons, training, going out into battle, helping to cook, and whatever else adults did all day. He never sat still, and so, Ike only ever really saw him during dinner, when he was almost too tired to talk to even his brothers, let alone some other kid. He seemed nice enough, Ike supposed, but he wasn’t around enough for Ike to really care for him.

Three months in, he caught a scrap of a conversation between him and Titania while hiding in the rafters.

“You can afford to sit down, you know,” he heard her voice say. “Your brothers miss you. Spend some time with them.”

“I’d love to,” Oscar answered, and the echo of his voice sounded sincere. “But I need to make sure I’m useful to Commander Greil. I can’t afford for this to fall through.”

Titania made a noise that was hard to identify from up here. “Greil is a good man. Do you honestly think that he’d sent you three back home to starve?”

Ike peeked over the beam to see Oscar shrug. “I - no, I don’t. But he’s not the only one I have something to prove to.”

Titania’s braid moved as she cocked her head. “Did you leave someone behind in the army?”

“Yes.”

“Someone important.”

“Yes.”

“Was it your soulmate?”

Oscar choked. “How did you -”

“Educated guess,” Titania’s voice was carefully neutral, the way it always was when she talked about soulmates. “Why didn’t they come with you?”

“I uhm, never told him?” Oscar rubbed his neck. “I think he knew, probably - I mean, how can you not know if you met your soulmate? But we never really, you know, talked about it. I was working up the nerve to do it, and then my parents -” his voice broke off.

When he recovered, his voice was louder, and a little higher - there was an emotion there, but Ike couldn’t quite recognize it. “So do you understand? I need this to work out. Otherwise I let that go for nothing.”

A deep sigh echoed through the room, and Titania grasped Oscar’s shoulder. “Oscar,” she said, so soft that Ike had to strain to hear it. “You worry too much. You don’t need a soulmate. We’re a family here, and we’ll keep you safe. You don’t need to run yourself ragged to prove your worth.”

“I -” Oscar’s next words were too low for Ike to hear. But Titania hugged him, and they walked out of the house soon after.

Ike stayed up in the rafters until dark, just thinking about the conversation. When his dad called him down for dinner, and he saw Oscar, tired, but still digging up the energy to listen to Boyd and Rolf’s enthusiastic stories, he didn’t feel entirely alright. Not really bad either, just - weird. He couldn’t quite place it.

And slowly, over the following months, Oscar quieted down. He joined Ike and Boyd’s spars, helped Rolf chose the weapons he wanted to learn, and offered to teach Ike and Mist how to cook (both took him up on the offer, Ike was banned after almost burning down the kitchen). Slowly, he seemed to come alive again, teasing his brothers and laughing along with the others, instead of drooping tiredly over his supper.

At the year mark, Ike decided that they were probably here to stay, and let Boyd win his first spar to celebrate.

///

After that, they acquired member after member, all here to stay, until slowly, the Greil Mercenaries grew into a stable force that didn’t need to take up contractors any longer. Ike didn’t care much for that. He only cared for the fact that he’d gained a family, one that was here to stay, and that, when Soren left to study with another merc group at the capital, he could safely trust him to come back.

He just didn’t expect to see Soren back this early.

That’s about when everything went to hell.

///

And then his dad was dead.

///

The sun was low on the horizon, casting long shadows in the room. They’d just raided Daein’s fortress, and they’d ride out for the king’s court tomorrow.

“Hey, you alright?”

Ike looked up from packing to see Oscar standing there, leaning against the wall.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” Ike answered, not looking at him as he pulled the bag’s twine tight. From afar, he could hear Oscar sighing, and footsteps sounded as he walked closer.

“Are you okay to be touched right now?”

He shook his head. Oscar’s knees came into view as he sat down before him.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re really not, and that’s okay.” Oscar’s voice was soft, soothing. It grated on him. “Look, I get how you feel.”

Ike said nothing, twirling the twine in his hands, pulling it taught and letting it loose again. He focused on the coarse feeling of rope against his skin, on the slight pain it caused when it caught off his blood circulation and dug into his skin.

“Remember when my parents died and I first joined the mercenaries?” Oscar said. “I felt like I had to be in constant motion, like everything would fall apart if I stopped for even a second. But I was wrong, of course. When I stopped, the world didn’t fall through, and it was fine.” Oscar shifted a bit, coming to sit cross-legged. “You can afford to rest, I promise.”

Ike tugged on the twine, feeling a white-hot sting of pain. “You’re wrong. You didn’t have to lead everyone. I do. I can’t afford to rest, because everything would quite literally fall apart.”

“Titania’s here, she can pick up the slack for a while. No one would blame you. You’re grieving.”

“Just shut up.” The twine snapped. “I’m fine. I mean, yeah, it was a shock at first, but I’m fine now. Not like Mist, she was bawling her eyes out just this morning, and I don’t - I don’t know how to help her. If you want to play healer for someone, pick her. Or just leave already, if you’re that worried about my leadership capacities.”

“Ike, we’ve talked about this. I trust you completely. I know you’ll be a great leader. Why would you think I’d want to leave now?” Oscar sounded genuinely hurt, and Ike could almost get himself to believe him.

There was a laugh from outside.

“You have your soulmate,” Ike said brusquely. “Boyd is old enough to take care of Rolf for a bit while you’re away, and besides - with the way things are going, it’s probably more dangerous for them here than alone in a house somewhere. You could - fuck, I don’t know, join with another merc group, or start your own, or something. It’ll be better for you, anyway.”

“Wait, how did you know that Kieran...” Oscar trailed off. “Okay, yeah, it’s probably obvious. But it doesn’t matter. Ike, seriously, it doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving you guys.” The stones were cold under Ike’s palms as he pushed himself forward slightly, rocking softly back and forth. Oscar was still talking, above him. “We haven’t even talked about the soulmate thing, yet. I think he’s waiting for me to bring it up. And even if he did want to leave, I wouldn’t care. I left him behind before, I can do it again.”

Oscar leaned forward, his voice growing more intense. “Frankly, I don’t care what the Goddess has to say about this. You guys are more important than whatever random person she decided to put me up with. You’re my family, and I’m not leaving you.”

“Shinon and Gatrie left.”

“They’re idiots. I’m not leaving. Besides, I’m pretty sure Boyd would axe me if I tried.”

At that, Ike couldn’t help but snort. “He might.”

“He would.” Oscar’s said. “He doesn’t want to go, and Rolf doesn’t either, he’d use me as target practice if I tried to leave Mist behind now. And most importantly, I don’t want to leave. None of us want to leave, so we’re staying. We trust you to lead us well, okay? You don’t have to run yourself ragged to do it.”

Ike dragged in a ragged breath, finally looking up at Oscar. He was smiling, little dimples forming in his cheeks. “Do you understand?” he asked.

“I - yeah,” Ike breathed out, looking at Oscar’s chin. “I’m just not sure if I can, right now. I feel like I just need to push through. That if I stop, I won’t get up anymore, and we can’t afford that.” I need to make Dad proud, he didn’t say.

Oscar nodded. “I understand. But let us help you, alright? No more skipping sleep.”

“Okay,” Ike said. “I promise.”

“Good.” Oscar went to pat him on the back, before hesitating. “Is touching alright?”

His back was still tense, his fingers still jittery, and Ike could feel every bump, nook, and cranny on the floor. “No,” he said. “Thanks for asking.”

“Any time.” Oscar waved. “I’ll be outside for now. You want to join us when you’re ready? We still have a while before the sun sets.”

Ike nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute.”

Tomorrow, they’d ride for the king’s court, but for now, they had a little respite.

///

Gallia was certainly different from Crimea, not that this was surprising. For one, seeing Laguz everywhere was something of a shock, although it was easy enough to get used to. Getting used to the different customs was harder.

Laguz didn’t believe in tools or weapons, and so when their group trained in the courtyard, people stared at them, and the kids eventually got up the nerve to ask them about their swords, axes, spears and lances. It was strange to explain these things to others; for Ike, they had always been a part of his life, and the feel of a sword in his hand was almost as natural to him as breathing.

There were other differences as well. The language that people around them spoke was foreign, and it set Ike on edge more than he expected, to always be reminded how far he was from home. Much of the furniture was different, as was the layout of their rooms, and the architecture was strange to him as well, although he’d never had much of an eye for such things.

Social customs were completely different here, too, although this wasn’t something that Ike minded much; he’d never cared much for false politeness, and the fact that the Beast Laguz apparently didn’t want people to look them in the eye was something Ike could get behind completely. Less nice was the fact that physical contact was normal and expected in Gallia, even among strangers, which meant that Ike had to duck under more arms than he ever had before in his life.

But Gallia wasn’t any worse or better than in Crimea, as a whole; it was simply different.

The customs surrounding soulmarks were perhaps the only thing that truly grated on him. Although, to be fair, there was very little about soulmarks that didn’t grate on him.

“I’ve heard Beorc don’t display their soulmarks,” Mordecai said to him one afternoon while they were training. “Is this true?”

Ike wiped the sweat of his forehead, leaning forward on his sword while he watched Soren call the wind. In the end, he’d had to tell him that if he couldn’t say anything nice to the Laguz, then he shouldn’t say anything at all, which had lead to complete silence. He was disappointed in Soren, to say the least; while he’d always been a bit prickly, he hadn’t thought that he could be this much of an asshole.

“Think so,” Ike said with a shrug. “I don’t know much on the topic, to be honest. Apparently, our group has an unusually lax attitude to them.”

Mordecai cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t much care for them. If you ask me, they’re nothing but a nuisance.”

“Huh.” Mordecai rubbed his nose. “Perhaps you should tell Lethe that.”

Ike leaned back slightly. “Why?”

“She doesn’t have a soulmate,” Mordecai said easily. Ike blinked.

“Is it okay to just go around telling people that in Gallia?”

“It is not in Crimea?” Mordecai shook his head. “Of course not, if you cover up your soulmarks. Here, we display them proudly. It makes it easier to find your soulmate. If someone doesn’t have a mark, you notice it quickly. No use keeping it secret.”

Ike threw a glance at Mordecai. Of course, he’d noticed the blue tiger streaks on him, and he’d assumed that those were his soulmarks, but since Lethe also had them (albeit in yellow), he supposed that he’d guessed wrong.

“Where’s your soulmark, then?” he asked.

Mordecai tapped the bandages on his left arm. “Here.”

Ike frowned. “You cover them up? Didn’t you just say Laguz didn’t do that?”

“Didn’t say that Laguz always show their soulmarks. Only here in Gallia. We don’t all have the same customs.”

Ike nodded. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed. Does that mean you’re not from Gallia?”

“No, I was born here.”

“Then why do you cover them up?”

Mordecai looked at Lethe, who was resting on the other side of the field from sparring with Titania, after having reluctantly agreed to join them only on the condition that she be allowed to fight their strongest warrior. They’d been evenly matched, laser focused on each other. Now, they were speaking, seemingly even civil, with Lethe’s tail lazily swaying in the sun.

“Solidarity,” Mordecai said simply. Then he patted Ike’s head, got up, and left to join the sparring group again.

///

Now that he was paying attention, Ike could notice the difference in the way that the other Laguz treated Lethe, verses the way they treated Ranulf and Mordecai. With Ranulf, they were respectful, as people often were to their superiors, and on ease the way someone would be around a friend or brother. Mordecai was treated with a little more wariness, but none of the Laguz actively went him out of the way. When Lethe walked through the hall, people parted around her, as if they’d get sick if they touched her.

Ike and Titania threw a glance at each other, and joined at her side.

“What do you want?” Lethe bit out.

“I wished to ask if you’d join us for a spar,” Titania answered, tapping the axe strapped to her back.

Lethe’s eyes narrowed. “Then why is he here?” she said, pointed at Ike.

Ike shrugged. “Had nothing better to do.”

Lethe’s tail gave an irritated swipe, before she glanced at the Laguz pressed against the walls, and snapped “Fine. See if you can keep up with me.”

She stormed out of the hall to the courtyard, and behind her back, Ike and Titania threw a smug glance at each other.

///

That night, Soren asked: “What was that for?”

“What was what for?” Ike replied, as he pulled off his shoes.

Soren’s fingers drummed against his leg. “Since when are you friends with the su-”

“Maybe you shouldn’t finish that sentence,” Ike warned in the mildest way he could, which still involved threateningly raising his shoe. “What is it with you, anyway? You’re hostile to everyone here for no good reason, and you’ve been off since you came back from the capital. Did something happen?”

“Aside from seeing the entire merc group I was with being slaughtered and watching Crimea fall to Daein?”

“Yes, aside from that.”

Soren crossed his arms, hugging them tight to his chest. “Nothing happened.”

“Soren, you’re not fooling anyone.” Ike sighed, leaning forward on his knees. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, fine. But whatever it is, you don’t have a right to be a dick to people who’ve done nothing to you.”

“Lethe’s rude,” Soren protested.

“So are you,” Ike countered. “And from what I’ve seen, she’s got a much better reason to be rude to Beorc than you have to be rude to Laguz, and she’s actually been willing to spar with us, whereas you’ve been ignoring Mordecai and Lethe like the plague.”

“On your orders!”

“No, I told you not to say anything to them if you couldn’t say anything nice, and you decided yourself that it was easier to avoid them than to just not be an asshole for three seconds,” Ike snapped, finally losing his patience. “Look, I know that something’s bothering you, and I really want to help, but I can’t if you insist on bottling everything up and not talking to me. If you’re ready to tell me what’s wrong, I’ll listen. But in the meantime, I’m not going to let you get away with bad behavior. I have a right to make friends with whomever I want, and if you have a problem with it, then that’s your issue to deal with, and I suggest you do so, because right now, even Lethe is better company than you are.”

As soon as that last bit left his mouth, he knew he shouldn’t have said it. Soren looked as if he’d slapped him. Ike winced. “Soren -”

“No, it’s fine, I get it,” he interrupted, and before Ike had the chance to say anything else, he spun on his heels and left the room.

Ike fell back on his bed, covering his eyes with his arm. It had barely been a week since his dad died, and already, things were falling apart.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

///

The next few months were spent on a boat, looking out at nothing but waves, in close quarters with everyone. Ike was used to living in other people’s personal space, more or less, but the tension between him and Soren hang heavy in the air, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He’d apologized, of course, as soon as he could, and Soren had apologized in return, but it had been stiff and formal. Whatever was wrong with Soren, Ike had only made it worse, and he wished he knew how to fix it. But he didn’t, and so he spent most of his time busying himself around the ship, learning whatever he could about seafaring. Which meant that he spent a lot of time around Nasir.

They got along well enough. Nasir had an easy way of talking, and he was an excellent teacher, knowing when to slow down and when to skip ahead a few lessons. But there was something gnawing at Ike, something that buried itself deeper and deeper into him the more time he spent with Nasir. For the longest time, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, until one morning, when Nasir was teaching him how to tie knots, and the sun caught his face just so, the mark on his forehead starkly standing out from his skin.

“Is that your soulmark?” Ike asked, then flinched immediately. “Sorry, that was a rude question. Feel free to ignore it.”

Nasir blinked, before chuckling and absently rubbing his forehead. “No, it’s not, although the fact that many Beorc assume the same thing has proven to be an excellent cover. It’s my Laguz marking.”

“Oh,” Ike said, tugging on the rope. “I thought it seemed familiar.”

Soren’s mark looked much the same.

///

He met Kurthnaga for all of five seconds, but those five seconds were long enough to notice certain similarities between him and Soren. The tilt of his smile, the shape of his jaw, and of course, the red mark on his forehead - they might not be things that other people would have noticed, but Ike knew Soren almost better than he knew himself. And this prince felt undoubtedly familiar to Ike, even though they’d never met.

But still, he wouldn’t have been sure. It could’ve been coincidental, or he could have simply been imagining things.

But if he was, why would Soren hide inside the ship? Why wouldn’t he show his face?

Ike was beginning to suspect what was bothering Soren. The pieces fit. It made sense.

Now he just needed to figure out a way to broach the subject.

///

Apparently, Ike was a coward, and before he managed to get up the nerve to do anything, they were in Begnion, which was quickly rising up the ranks to be Ike’s least favourite country. Granted, he’d only been to three thusfar, but that was still two more than most people, so he felt qualified enough to say that Begnion was probably a shitty country by everyone’s standards. Unless you loved rules, cowards, corruption, and the Goddess, maybe.

Those four things just so happened to be on Ike’s Top Five Most Hated list, right alongside ‘soulmates’. Which were also of great importance to Begnion’s ruling class, unfortunately.

The subject of soulmates was first broached by Tanith.

“Your group has a very... casual attitude towards soulmarks, doesn’t it?” she asked, glancing at Mist’s uncovered mark.

Ike shrugged. “I guess,” he said, trying to end the conversation at quickly as possible.

“Don’t you think you should be encouraging everyone to cover them up?” Tanith pressed.

“Not really,” Ike said curtly. “It’s their body, they can do with it whatever they want.”

“But soulmates aren’t just part of their body,” Tanith protested. “They’re a blessing from the Goddess; they are but one half of you, the other one somewhere else, and you should search for them, but do so discretely, so as to not disrespect the Goddess’ gift.”

Perhaps I really am cursed, if I have to listen to this drivel every other week, Ike thought.

He didn’t say that. Instead, he gave her a short “I don’t care. Please leave.”

Next to him, Titania made a choking sound. “He didn’t mean that,” she tried to placate.

“I did. Please leave,” Ike said.

Titania pinched the bridge of her nose. Tanith looked... affronted, maybe? (He couldn’t quite identify her expression.) She opened her mouth to say something else, but Ike walked away before she could.

Frankly, he had more important things to do.

///

The day before they were set to leave Begnion, with his usual tact, Ike blurted out: “I know you’re a Laguz.”

Soren’s book fell on the floor. “Excuse me?”

“I know you’re a Laguz,” Ike repeated, sitting up straight on his bed. “I figured it out, it’s okay.”

“I’m - I’m not-” Soren sputtered, clenching his hands together. “Why would you even think that?”

Ike pointed to his forehead. “That’s not a soulmark, is it? Both Nasir and Kurtnaga have similar markings, and they’re both Dragon Laguz. In addition, you hid inside the ship when we met Kurthnaga. Like you were afraid he’d recognize you. It would explain why you’ve been so rude to all the Laguz we’ve met; it bothers you, and you’re lashing out at other Laguz in order to overcompensate. It fits.”

Soren stared at him, mouth hanging open, before he finally buried his head in his hands. His shoulders shook, and for a second, Ike thought he was crying, before he heard smothered laughter coming from him. “Fuck. Fuck, I’m -” Soren said, voice muffled by his hands, before taking a deep breath, sitting up, and looking straight at Ike again, with dogged determination on his face. “You’re half right.”

Ike blinked. “Half right?”

“Yeah.” Soren carded his fingers through his hair, twisting the strands nervously. “I’m - I figured it out in the capital, it was written in one of the books I read. It’s possible for Laguz and Beorc to - procreate, but the offspring isn’t quite right. They’re cursed by the Goddess herself. You can recognize them by their brand, which is why they’re called the Branded.” Soren waved vaguely in the direction of his forehead. “So no, that’s not a soulmark, but it’s not a Laguz mark, either. It’s a sign that I’m cursed.”

“Oh.” Ike could see that this was bothering Soren, but - honestly, he couldn’t understand why. “And what does that matter?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’m cursed!” Soren’s voice was high and panicked now. “The Goddess Herself gave me this brand to show everyone how cursed I am! I don’t - how can you even stand to be near me?”

“Soren -”

“Why are you keeping me around? You have better mages, and full-blown, not broken Beorc and Laguz, and I’m cursed, I just -”

“Soren!” Ike yelled, cutting Soren off. He flinched, but stayed quiet. “I’m keeping you around because you’re hands down one of the best mages we have, because you’re definitely the best tactician we have, and because you’re my friend and I love you.”

Soren blinked, dazed. “But -”

“No ‘but’s,” Ike said firmly. “You’re my friend and my brother, and I’m keeping you around because you’re a valuable asset to the group and, most importantly, because I love you. It’s that simple.”

“But I’m cursed!”

“Soren, if I threw out everyone who was supposedly cursed by the Goddess, I’d have to throw out at least three members of our party, including myself.” Ike gestured wildly around him. “Seriously! Ask any of the pegasus knights what they think of people without soulmates, it’s not going to be pretty. Lethe gets treated like shit no matter where she is, either because she’s a Laguz or because she doesn’t have a soulmark or, you know, both; I’m pretty sure Tanith would personally run me out of Begnion if she found out I didn’t have a mark, and as for the last one - well, that isn’t for me to tell, but they didn’t exactly have fun, either. And all that because we’re supposedly ‘cursed by the Goddess’ or whatever.”

Ike leaned forward, making a point to look Soren straight in the eye, no matter how much it made his skin crawl. “I’ve never given a fuck about what the Goddess has to say, or who she’s supposedly cursed. Hell, if anything, I’m proud of the fact that my mercenary group is a safe haven for people she supposedly spit out, and if she’s got a problem with it, she can come and strike me down herself.”

He took a deep breath, two, and said, calmly, this time: “You know that. You’ve known that I don’t care about how abnormal I am or am not since we were little. And if I didn’t care about it then, why would I now? Why on Earth would you think I’d kick you out?”

Soren bit his lip, and his shoulders shook, and this time, he was actually crying. Ike stood up, hands hovering over his shoulders, unsure what to do, before Soren pulled him down into a hug and buried his head in his shoulder. Ike hugged him back, tight to his chest, like his dad used to do.

“It’s just,” Soren stammered out, once he managed to catch his breath. “The woman that took care of me when I was little was only doing it out of duty, and she liked to make that pretty damn clear, and then someone else took me in only because he mistook my mark for the sign of a spirit charmer, and the sage never cared for me, either. It’s - nobody was ever just nice to me, before you came me along. They all wanted something, and they didn’t care about me. It was comforting, back then, knowing that there was at least one person out there who’d love me unconditionally. And now - now I find out that what I thought was a soulmark was a brand from the Goddess all along, marking me cursed, and I don’t have anyone -”

“You’ve got me,” Ike interrupted. “You’ve got the entire mercenary group. We’re family, and if anyone wants to leave you behind, I’m personally going to kick their ass.”

Soren let out a strangled laugh. “I - I know that, I think. I’m just -” he sniffed. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Ike said, and kept hugging him until they fell asleep.

///

It was the last day they were in Begnion, and so far their stay hadn’t been... great, but they had secured the help Elincia needed, and Saneki liked them, and the Herons (all two of them, and didn’t that still make his blood boil) had their forest back, so Ike was going to count it as a win.

And then something went wrong, because of course it did.

“You’re an abomination before the Goddess!” he heard Tanith’s voice yell as he approached the hallway, and he had to stop for a second and sigh, deeply, before pushing open the doors and coming face to face with disaster.

“Do you really want a claw in your fucking face? Are you absolutely sure you wanna be mutilated?” Lethe snarled, only held back from following up on the threat by Mordecai, who held her in a death grip against his chest. Tanith stood before her, her face scrunched up, while the pegasus knights behind her, shuffling akwardly, as if unsure how to react to Tanith’s blatant breach of professionalism. Or maybe unsure how to react to Lethe. Either way, they were no help.

“What’s going on here?” Ike asked, attempting to seep as much authority into his voice as possible. He’d gotten very good at it over the last couple of months, and Tanith and Lethe stood to immediate attention.

“My lord,” Tanith said with a small bow, and Ike suddenly hated this situation so much more than before, if that was even possible. “Excuse my language, but I’ve uncovered an important detail about your... traveling companion. It seems that she doesn’t have a soulmark.”

Lethe looked about ready to murder Tanith, and in all honestly, Ike wouldn’t mind much if she did, in this moment. But he could acknowledge that that’d be a bit of a drastic solution to the problem at hand, so instead, he took another deep breath, and said: “I’m aware. Do you have something relevant to inform me of?”

Tanith blinked, and murmurs started up in among the pagasus knights. “My lord,” Tanith said again, louder this time, as if volume would make her bullshit any more true. “She’s cursed by the Goddess. She cannot be allowed to travel with us.”

Ike and Tanith stared each other down, for one, two, three seconds, before Ike looked away, unable to take it any longer. He balled his fists, unballed them, and finally decided that he simply didn’t care enough to maneuver out of this in a manner that would be approved of by Soren and Titania. This was his mercenary group, and if someone insisted on being an asshole to them, he didn’t care how important they were, they were going down.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Ike said, in his most neutral voice. “It’s regrettable that you won’t be traveling with us, then. We could have used your strength, but I’m sure we can manage without you.”

The pegasus knights went dead silent, all staring at him with open mouths. But he didn’t care for them; he looked at Tanith, whose eyes were wide, and whose mouth was threatening to fall open, too.

“I’m sorry, I don’t suppose I heard you correctly,” she finally managed to choke out. “What did you say?”

“I said,” Ike repeated calmly, “that if you insist on demonizing one of my trusted companions over trivial matters, then I neither want nor need your help. Was that clear enough?”

“Trivial matters!” Tanith exclaimed, and - huh, was that real pain in her voice? He might be getting that wrong. “Soulmates are anything but trivial!”

“They are to the task at hand, namely restoring Princess Elincia to the throne and defeating Daein.” Ike’s hand went to grab his sword, so that he had a grounding weight, but he aborted the movement quickly, realizing just in time that it would be taken as a threat. “And furthermore, in case you are of the opinion that not having a soulmate makes you inherently cursed and therefore untrustworthy, you might like to know that I myself am not in the possession of a soulmark.”

Tanith looked like she’d been slapped. A pegasus knight stepped back, and he saw some of the other’s hands go for their swords. He’d probably do well to get out of here as quickly as possible.

“We leave in an hour,” he announced. “If you think that you’ll be able to conduct yourself civilly, you may leave with us. Otherwise, I suppose we are done here.”

He gestured at Mordecai and Lethe to follow him, and marched out of the door without looking back. It slammed behind him.

“Pretty rude,” Mordecai remarked. Lethe was uncharacteristically quiet.

“So were they,” Ike snapped. His hand had found his cape, and he was fidgeting with it. Outside, a bird chirped, and horses neighed, and he couldn’t shut it out, so he knew it was time to leave. “I’ll come find you in about an hour.”

He disappeared before anyone could answer.

///

It might’ve been half an hour before Titania found him in the rafters of the attic (was it still an attic in a castle? It might have a fancier name. Anyway, the highest point that wasn’t the roof).

“Ike?” she called out in the silence of the room. Ike startled, his hands stilling against his cape’s fabric.

“Here,” he said, letting the echo carry his voice.

Titania looked up, straight to where he was hidden, and began to climb. She plopped down at the beam opposite to his.

“How did you find me?” Ike asked.

She smiled. “You like hiding up high. You’ve been doing it since you were a kid. Did you honestly think I didn’t know?”

Ike shrugged. He’d never really thought about it, but it made sense. If anyone knew him, it was Titania. And Mist, too, but he could guess why she wasn’t here, currently. In this matter, Titania could relate to him better than Mist ever could, with her pretty white flowers.

“So I heard you blew off our reinforcements,” Titania said, but there was no harshness in her voice.

“Sorry,” he said anyway. “I knew I shouldn’t have done that, but I -”

“I’m proud of you,” Titania interrupted, and that shut Ike up. “Yes, we’ve lost some crucial reinforcements. I’m not happy about that. But in all honesty, I’m afraid that this was always bound to happen.” She sighed, leaning back on her beam. “It’s just the same as what happened in the army. We scare people. We force them to look at their own lives, their own priorities, and if they acknowledge that we’re not cursed, then they need to acknowledge that they themselves aren’t blessed for having soulmates. That maybe, the way they’ve been living their lives, longing for one single person who is supposed to solve all of their problems, isn’t entirely healthy. And that thought scares them, so they lash out. It happens. It’s not your fault, and it’s not Lethe’s, and it wasn’t mine.”

Ike focused on his cape, running his fingers over the coarse fabric. “I hate this.”

Before Titania could answer, the door opened the second time.

“Ike?” Lethe yelled from below. “Titania? You guys here?”

“Lethe?” Titania yelled back, leaning over the beam to look at the floor. “What are you doing here?”

“Followed you,” came the answer. “Figured you were probably going to search for Ike, and I wanted to talk with him.”

“I’m here,” Ike called down. “Up in the rafters.”

Lethe looked up, and although Ike couldn’t see it from up high, he’d be willing to bet that her expression was irritated. Quickly, she transformed, and jumped up the walls, finally landing on the same beam as Ike with the grace of a cat. “Why would you be hiding all the way up here, asshole?” she asked, once she transformed back.

“Would you ever have found me if you didn’t know to follow Titania?” he replied.

“Point,” Lethe admitted. She settled down on the beam, her tail swiping in the air, her ears pressed flat to her head.

“Look,” she started, crossing her arms and looking stubbornly down at the beam. “I wanted to thank you, I guess. You didn’t have to do that, but it was - nice, to have someone other than Mordecai defend me for once. So thank you.”

“Tanith was being an asshole,” he said simply. “You’re welcome.”

“Good. You’re not getting this out of me a second time, and I’ll deny I ever said it.”

“I have a witness, though,” Ike noted dryly, pointing at Titania, who waved.

Lethe let herself fall backwards against the beam. “Fuck. Should’ve planned this better.”

Ike snorted, and Titania outright laughed, and Lethe threw them the finger.

They still had half an hour left, and nothing else to do, so they stayed up there in the rafters, talking.

///

When they were set to leave, to his immense surprise, he saw Tanith waiting for him in the hallway. Lethe bared her teeth, and Mordecai put a calming hand on her shoulder. At his side, Titania twitched slightly, not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for Ike to know that she was on edge.

“Can we talk?” Tanith asked.

“Can you be civil?” Ike retorted, genuinely surprised when Titania didn’t stop him.

“I - yes,” she turned to Lethe and bowed. “I apologize for my outburst earlier. It was completely uncalled for, and it won’t happen again.”

Lethe’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, and finally, she just bristled and walked away without saying anything.

“She appreciates it,” Mordecai said, before following her.

Ike nodded towards Titania. “Go with them.”

She glanced down at him. “Are you certain?”

Tanith was still standing there, and she looked - well, Ike couldn’t be entirely sure; he was famously bad at reading people he didn’t know well, and Tanith’s body language was very subtle. But she’d sounded genuine, earlier.

“Yes,” he confirmed. Titania nodded and left, leaving only him and Tanith in the hall.

She took a deep breath. “First, I would like to apologize to you as well. Like I said to Lethe, my outburst was uncalled for and completely unprofessional.”

Ike nodded curtly. “I appreciate your apology, although you should be aware that I will be wary around you, from now on.”

“That might be fair,” Tanith admitted. “While I can assure you that I will not be repeating such a scene, I can’t promise to be completely civil from now on. I -” she broke off her sentence and looked away. “I’ve been taught from a very young age to value soulmarks, perhaps above all else, as a gift of the Goddess. I’ve never quite known how to reconcile that with myself, and I suppose that has lead to me lashing out. I can’t promise not to do that in the future.”

Ike took a few moments to process her words, and then the pieces fell together. “You don’t have a soulmate.”

She winced. “I implore you not to tell anyone else.”

“I won’t,” Ike reassured her. “You’re welcome to join our group, on the condition that we be allowed to speak up when you’re being rude. While I sympathize with your issues, they aren’t an excuse to hurt other people.”

Tanith nodded. “I understand, and I agree. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” They nodded to each other, and Tanith turned to move out. Ike began to do the same, then hesitated.

“And Tanith?” he called after her, and she turned around to look at him.

“Yes?”

“You’re not alone.” He moved to stand beside her. “Really. It’ll be alright.”

She stared at him for a while, before a small smile played on her lips. “Thank you.”

They moved out, to the snowy mountains of Daein.