Lived long enough to become the villain
"Listen, Ephraim. I’ve always loved you. I’ve always —"
That’s when Ephraim knows he can’t do it.
It’s too much. Too much all at once. Ephraim wants to fall to his knees, but he can’t move anything but his mouth to speak. So he shouts instead, hollow, broken, before Lyon can finish.
Lyon stares, and Ephraim says it again, again, again, until none of it sounds like words anymore.
Eirika weeps when she sees him next. Not right away — she tries to talk him out of it, first, but he won’t, can’t hear it.
"Ephraim. Brother. Please. Come back to us."
He doesn’t move from Lyon’s side, though he won’t raise his spear to her, either. Half of him wants to go to her, hold her, apologize. The other half can already imagine her sword buried in Lyon’s chest.
"I won’t leave him," he answers.
It’s one of his own knights who pulls Eirika away, and Ephraim forces himself not to look back.
When they’re alone together, Ephraim thinks he sees in Lyon some of that tenderness he remembers. He kneels for Lyon, kisses his hands, swears his loyalty again and again.
It’s always when he’s on his knees that Lyon’s smile looks most genuine, most like the warmth Ephraim’s craved for ages now. He can forget about his father, then, and his country, and almost about Eirika.
"You won’t leave me, right?" Lyon asks, his voice sweet. Ephraim doesn’t think he could if he tried.
It’s a Renais blade that ends it, sliding just under Ephraim’s breastplate, running right through him. He coughs, stumbles, falls into the arms of the knight who wielded it.
"My king, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…"
He thinks he hears sobbing, but it’s distant, hazy. He’s too focused elsewhere, on the streak of violet he sees through the darkness.
His vision goes black just before Lyon falls.
