[30 Kisses][Fire Emblem 9/10] Whispers
Whispers
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9-10
Theme: 26 - if only I could make you mine
Gauntlet theme: 16 - a faint quiver in the air
Words: 1257
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: n/a
......................................................
It seemed to Lehran there was no change in his country after the war, nothing but a cosmetic difference to suggest Ashera's judgment had come to pass and been retracted. If laguz walked the streets more freely, they were still confronted with sidelong glances, mutters, called names; if he walked the halls of Mainal Cathedral with his wings out and his true name revealed, still in possession of the duchy of Persis, and now Begnion's first and only laguz official - he still felt the stares and heard the whispers. I still can't believe it. To think I sought his hand before I married Percival - can you imagine the horror my children could have been? They forgot - conveniently - that their lovely, magnificent, beautiful empress was one of those horrors.
He is a good governor. I must acknowledge the numbers. But his heritage--
He could have the decency to keep those things hidden. I shudder to imagine what they might look like if he were a hawk--
Andrea paced at his side, her hand on the hilt of her sword, wearing the coat of a commander in Sanaki's holy guard. Whispers carried in the cathedral; he thought, watching her in his peripheral vision while they walked across the public antechamber to the hallway leading inward, that she might be able to hear some of it. She had good ears - they were all trained to strain their human senses as far as possible. She glanced at him, as if sensing his regard. "Commander Sigrun said her majesty would meet you in the rose garden after audience." Softly, she said it - a true whisper, not the stage acting the lower senate indulged in. "I assume you mean to go straight there."
Lehran nodded and motioned for her to lead the way. A knot of white-robed officials parted at her sharp demand, each bowing at the waist when they noticed him. He pretended not to see their eyes slide to follow him, though their heads were bowed.
It hadn't been that long - maybe three years, or four. He'd thought it a long time for beorc at first, because Sanaki had bemoaned the length of each year as a child, while she waited for her birthday and the privileges each would entail: her first true fire tome at age seven, Elfire at eight. Light at nine. When she turned ten, he allowed her to stay up as late at night as she was old, providing she'd finished her lessons and signed all of her paperwork. He'd promised to let her hair grow out at age twelve, and stopped trimming it a little sooner than he intended, because she kept petting his hair at night, sweeping and combing it over her fingers, rubbing her cheek against the length. My ancestors wore their hair long, she would say. But it can't have been as beautiful as yours. Then would follow the begging: you must let me, how undignified is short hair, anyway, I look like a child!
Oh Sanaki; she had never been a child. Not quite.
And yet, she always would be.
White marble arches vaulted over the gray marble floors, echoing everything - the shift of his wings, the tap of Andrea's boots, the rattle of his belt, its ornaments, even his breathing. They left the main corridor for a smaller one without windows that led beneath the mezzanine levels and past a dozen dark, wooden doors shut and locked, several of them chained. The air smelled heavier and dustier until they reached the back doors and his guard peered out before pushing them both wide open to allow room for his wings. Outside the scent of grass and wet gravel tickled his nose, and far beyond, very faint, the sweetness of roses, drawn over on a breath of cool wind.
Lehran tossed his hair back, combing over his ears with his fingers and holding it at the nape of his neck while Andrea led him around the building to the edge of the garden. Another guard joined them - Eirene, her belt creaking as she adjusted the way her blade sat on her hip. She's still inside, the knight whispered, and they gestured for him to walk as he would; they would guard him from the perimeter. Others were probably walking the halls facing the rose enclave, even haunting the offices whose windows peeked between his maple trees, dark and reflective. He stretched his wings back, flapped once to shake the dust of the audience chamber from his feathers, and let the breeze play with his hair while the tree branches creaked and their leaves scratched and whispered to each other. Each flower was open fully, petals spread to the sun; he bent over each, brushed their soft edges, smiling into each healthy blossom.
They couldn't hear him anymore. He still thought it was a shame, and yet, the bounced on the wind when he let them go, shaking their heads, flattening their petals, until it seemed he was wrong and every murmur of his really was taken to heart. Spirits, he told Sanaki the first day he'd shown his wings, in this very garden. Every single one of them. The goddess might call it something else, but he had no other word for it that his empress would understand.
He heard her voice before he saw her, echoing from the mouth of the cathedral, and he timed his rounds so he faced the pathway when she should have come around the bend, fingering the stem of a red rose. Her sandals scuffed; something must have stopped her. But she appeared a moment later, her glossy hair swaying in a long wave behind her, and that 'something' took the form of a boy he recognized as the pest who had pursued Sanaki during her girlhood - one she'd encouraged just to irritate him, Lehran suspected, and he hoped the same was true now. She laughed at something he said, which he refused to hear. His hair was reminiscent of Lekain - the color, the way it was combed back. The resemblance left a bitter taste in his mouth.
I really must be going now, she said, a laugh coloring her voice. Oh, don't think I'll fall for--
Thorns bit into Lehran's fingers. Her lackey bent to press his lips to her knuckles, and he almost sighed when he straightened up with a formal farewell-- and the stem twisted, snapped when Fredric - that was his name, and he didn't deserve to be remembered - leaned forward again to kiss Sanaki's cheek. Pain sparked in Lehran's jaw, and he forced himself to unclench his teeth.
None of his business - it was none of his business. He made himself repeat the mantra silently, looking down at the torn fibers of the rose stalk and the red smears on his fingers. None. If he'd wanted a say in her associations with others, he would have refrained from betraying her - that was what Sanaki would say. And she would be right.
But when Lehran twirled the rose between his fingers, feeling the sting where its thorns had cut his skin, he thought it wouldn't be terribly unfair to let her know his opinion, at the very least.
.
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9-10
Theme: 26 - if only I could make you mine
Gauntlet theme: 16 - a faint quiver in the air
Words: 1257
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: n/a
......................................................
It seemed to Lehran there was no change in his country after the war, nothing but a cosmetic difference to suggest Ashera's judgment had come to pass and been retracted. If laguz walked the streets more freely, they were still confronted with sidelong glances, mutters, called names; if he walked the halls of Mainal Cathedral with his wings out and his true name revealed, still in possession of the duchy of Persis, and now Begnion's first and only laguz official - he still felt the stares and heard the whispers. I still can't believe it. To think I sought his hand before I married Percival - can you imagine the horror my children could have been? They forgot - conveniently - that their lovely, magnificent, beautiful empress was one of those horrors.
He is a good governor. I must acknowledge the numbers. But his heritage--
He could have the decency to keep those things hidden. I shudder to imagine what they might look like if he were a hawk--
Andrea paced at his side, her hand on the hilt of her sword, wearing the coat of a commander in Sanaki's holy guard. Whispers carried in the cathedral; he thought, watching her in his peripheral vision while they walked across the public antechamber to the hallway leading inward, that she might be able to hear some of it. She had good ears - they were all trained to strain their human senses as far as possible. She glanced at him, as if sensing his regard. "Commander Sigrun said her majesty would meet you in the rose garden after audience." Softly, she said it - a true whisper, not the stage acting the lower senate indulged in. "I assume you mean to go straight there."
Lehran nodded and motioned for her to lead the way. A knot of white-robed officials parted at her sharp demand, each bowing at the waist when they noticed him. He pretended not to see their eyes slide to follow him, though their heads were bowed.
It hadn't been that long - maybe three years, or four. He'd thought it a long time for beorc at first, because Sanaki had bemoaned the length of each year as a child, while she waited for her birthday and the privileges each would entail: her first true fire tome at age seven, Elfire at eight. Light at nine. When she turned ten, he allowed her to stay up as late at night as she was old, providing she'd finished her lessons and signed all of her paperwork. He'd promised to let her hair grow out at age twelve, and stopped trimming it a little sooner than he intended, because she kept petting his hair at night, sweeping and combing it over her fingers, rubbing her cheek against the length. My ancestors wore their hair long, she would say. But it can't have been as beautiful as yours. Then would follow the begging: you must let me, how undignified is short hair, anyway, I look like a child!
Oh Sanaki; she had never been a child. Not quite.
And yet, she always would be.
White marble arches vaulted over the gray marble floors, echoing everything - the shift of his wings, the tap of Andrea's boots, the rattle of his belt, its ornaments, even his breathing. They left the main corridor for a smaller one without windows that led beneath the mezzanine levels and past a dozen dark, wooden doors shut and locked, several of them chained. The air smelled heavier and dustier until they reached the back doors and his guard peered out before pushing them both wide open to allow room for his wings. Outside the scent of grass and wet gravel tickled his nose, and far beyond, very faint, the sweetness of roses, drawn over on a breath of cool wind.
Lehran tossed his hair back, combing over his ears with his fingers and holding it at the nape of his neck while Andrea led him around the building to the edge of the garden. Another guard joined them - Eirene, her belt creaking as she adjusted the way her blade sat on her hip. She's still inside, the knight whispered, and they gestured for him to walk as he would; they would guard him from the perimeter. Others were probably walking the halls facing the rose enclave, even haunting the offices whose windows peeked between his maple trees, dark and reflective. He stretched his wings back, flapped once to shake the dust of the audience chamber from his feathers, and let the breeze play with his hair while the tree branches creaked and their leaves scratched and whispered to each other. Each flower was open fully, petals spread to the sun; he bent over each, brushed their soft edges, smiling into each healthy blossom.
They couldn't hear him anymore. He still thought it was a shame, and yet, the bounced on the wind when he let them go, shaking their heads, flattening their petals, until it seemed he was wrong and every murmur of his really was taken to heart. Spirits, he told Sanaki the first day he'd shown his wings, in this very garden. Every single one of them. The goddess might call it something else, but he had no other word for it that his empress would understand.
He heard her voice before he saw her, echoing from the mouth of the cathedral, and he timed his rounds so he faced the pathway when she should have come around the bend, fingering the stem of a red rose. Her sandals scuffed; something must have stopped her. But she appeared a moment later, her glossy hair swaying in a long wave behind her, and that 'something' took the form of a boy he recognized as the pest who had pursued Sanaki during her girlhood - one she'd encouraged just to irritate him, Lehran suspected, and he hoped the same was true now. She laughed at something he said, which he refused to hear. His hair was reminiscent of Lekain - the color, the way it was combed back. The resemblance left a bitter taste in his mouth.
I really must be going now, she said, a laugh coloring her voice. Oh, don't think I'll fall for--
Thorns bit into Lehran's fingers. Her lackey bent to press his lips to her knuckles, and he almost sighed when he straightened up with a formal farewell-- and the stem twisted, snapped when Fredric - that was his name, and he didn't deserve to be remembered - leaned forward again to kiss Sanaki's cheek. Pain sparked in Lehran's jaw, and he forced himself to unclench his teeth.
None of his business - it was none of his business. He made himself repeat the mantra silently, looking down at the torn fibers of the rose stalk and the red smears on his fingers. None. If he'd wanted a say in her associations with others, he would have refrained from betraying her - that was what Sanaki would say. And she would be right.
But when Lehran twirled the rose between his fingers, feeling the sting where its thorns had cut his skin, he thought it wouldn't be terribly unfair to let her know his opinion, at the very least.
.