Okay time to be annoying™ Just finished Weekenders, it was amazing. Are you ever gonna post more of that stress-written OC story with Sara and Derrick and Balad??? The snippet you posted like a year ago was soooo good and my body hungers for more. If you don't I'll probably write my own version and I'm really bad so that's a threat. No pressure though ofc LOL. Hope you're doing well. How's life?
It is never annoying to ask about a woman's OCs. Ever. The woman will love you. Because there is a lot more of the stress-written OC story LMFAOOOO. Obviously feel incredibly free to write more that sounds awesome.
For back reference, I dug up the other stories I posted with Sara in them. I never masterlisted them because I'm embarrassed. A few OCs are fine but a fic of exclusively OCs embarrasses me.
There is a lot more of that document. Here is a short story from it. TW for graphic violence (so, Dimitri shows up)
Another memory: strange in comparison to the last, or just the same.
The royal family of Faerghus (or Fodlan, as some simply called it) were traveling in a carriage somewhere. They were visiting Lord…somebody, Sara didn’t remember. They never arrived. Sara was fourteen. Luca was twelve.
Father was doing paperwork. Sara and Luca were playing against each other for the five hundredth round on their magnetized miniature chess set, bored. They would both learn much later that they were demons at chess. Mother was asleep against the door. The atmosphere had been sleepy and quiet until Mother woke up.
She straightened from the door, shifting instantly from asleep to wide awake in her characteristic fashion. Evenly and casually, Mother said, “We’re about to be attacked.”
Father’s papers slid off his lap. Sara and Luca looked up, startled. Sara wondered for a split second if Mother had a weird dream before remembering that Mother just knew the future sometimes. Intuition. Or something?
The adults moved in complete sync. Mother grabbed Sara and Luca, sending their set spilling and clattering onto the floor, and pulled them onto the floor. She covered them with her body and large skirts. Sara remembered vividly the feeling of chess pieces digging into her stomach and thigh. Luca’s arm was over hers, and his hand twisted to grab her own.
At the same time, Father stood up. At the top of his lungs, he roared, “Stop the cart!”
The cart clattered to a hard halt. Horses bellowed muffled neighs, and the distant sounds of the coachman cursing echoed through the cart. Scuffles and snorts sounded from all sides as their guard of knights stopped, pulling their horses to attention. Metal rustled.
Father ducked down, quickly grabbing his folded cape and throwing it over heads. “When are they -”
“Get down,” Mother said.
Glass shattered, and Luca screamed. The fur coat was thick, and although Sara knew that the shattered window was pouring glass over them she couldn’t feel a thing. Was the coat over Mother too? It was, right?
A cacophony of sounds began. It took Sara far too long to recognize it as a battle. Another window shattered, and Sara pressed Luca’s head down to the floor with her own hand in a useless attempt to help.
Aunt Ingrid. Where was Aunt Ingrid? There - Sara could hear a feminine war cry. That sounded like Aunt Ingrid. Was it close? Would she be right here, faster than a flash? Of course she would. She needed to save Luca. Sara was fine, obviously.
Right. Sara was an adult. Fifteen year olds were on the battlefield all the time, and Sara was close-ish to fifteen. She was being an absolute baby. Sara raised her head, lifting the coat above her head so she could try and see what was going on.
The carriage door was ripped off its hinges. All she could see was Father, standing on the front steps of the carriage. He was completely unarmed and unarmored, but he was holding the line single-handedly against some number of - bandits or something, some enemy enclosing them and crowding into Sara’s world. Even without his majestic cape, his lance or his armor, Father seemed larger and stronger than the tallest statue of the mightiest warrior.
A man wielding a giant ax - it felt larger than Luca, although maybe it wasn’t - bum rushed the carriage. Father dodged the swing easily. He reached out and grabbed the man’s head. For a brief second it felt like a ridiculous move - shouldn’t he have grabbed the ax? The man could still hurt him! - before Father squeezed his hand.
The man’s head collapsed. Father crushed it like an egg. Things like white and yellow yolk spilled from his head, and the ax clattered to the ground. Father slammed the man onto another approaching assailant, sending him crumpling to the ground, and Father caught the second man by the shirt right before he hit the dirt. With his left hand, Father grabbed the man’s neck and -
Sara buried her head into the floor. Vomit rose in her mouth, and the world began swimming around her.
The carriage rocked, and Sara felt Mother pull her and Luca backwards against the floor. Sara went limp and let her, and the cape fell away as Mother pulled them out of the other door of the carriage and shoved them into another pair of arms.
Sara opened her eyes and saw Aunt Ingrid, just as expected. Mother seemed to have swapped them for a sword, and she was already casually unhooking her skirt and allowing it to fall to the ground.
“Due south, half a mile away into the forest.” Mother’s voice was even and calm, as if she was reading out the newspaper. “You’re late, by the way.”
“I know, I was flying ahead - come on, kids, onto the horse.” Sarah was lifted onto the pegasus as if she was smaller than Luca, and she quickly clambered onto the back. Luca wrapped his arms around her stomach, burying his face in her back, and Aunt Ingrid easily swung up behind them. “Where will we rendezvous?”
“Send a runner to fetch you. Don’t fall off the horse, you two.”
Sara looked away from the pegasus’ mane and towards Mother, but she was already gone. She had dived back inside the carriage - probably backing up Father and taking them both into the fray. Wasn’t Mother a tactician? Why was she fighting? Did tacticians fight?
Sara looked backwards at Aunt Ingrid, who was calmly swinging herself onto the pegasus behind Luca. “Shouldn’t I be fighting too?” Sara asked. Right now she was mostly fighting her wavering voice. “I can use a sword -”
“I know spells!” Luca yelled into her back.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aunt Ingrid said, and snapped the reins of the pegasus.
*
They were brought back to the clearing some amount of time later. Sara had thrown up and sworn Aunt Ingrid to secrecy about it. Aunt Ingrid looked as if they had all gone to the market for groceries. Everybody was so calm except for her. It was so embarrassing. At least Luca was upset.
Maybe Luca and Sara weren’t the only ones upset. Father was upset too. They probably got it from him. Not for the first time, Sara wanted to be more like Mother instead.
Father didn’t even notice Aunt Ingrid touching down behind him. He was standing in front of everybody - every knight and guardsman and servant accompanying them. The exceedingly familiar cast of the royal guard were neatly lined up. Even the coachman was there, hat in hand. Mother was standing next to Father, stoic as always. There were no corpses around them, but a lot of the grass was red. Somewhere on the grass, there was white and yellow egg yolk. Sara anxiously looked at the grass underneath her silk slippers, wondering if she was standing in it now.
Father was standing in front of everybody, and he was screaming his head off.
“I want somebody’s head for this!” Father screamed. It was a familiar scream, but that was what made it so strange. “I want somebody’s head!”
Nonsensically, Sara thought: didn’t he already have two heads? Why did he want more?
Luca leaned close against Aunt Ingrid, whispering in her ear. “Is Daddy having an episode?”
“That was no attack of opportunity!” Wasn’t it? Father would know, but… “They knew my carriage, they knew my guard’s patrol, they knew our route!” Father stopped short and looked at Mother. “We were sold out, weren’t we?”
“I can guess,” Mother said blandly. “The assailants didn’t match bandit profiles. Mercenaries, perhaps.”
“Or soldiers disguised as mercenaries,” Luca muttered. Sara shushed him. Mother had to know that. She didn’t want to cause a panic. Or set Father off further.
Father rounded back on the entourage, even more enraged.“This is unacceptable! From all of you, Faerghus’ best! If I discover traitors among any of you, your entire House will feel the repercussions!” Father was breathing heavily, and Auntie Ingrid quietly slipped off her pegasus and made her way towards Father. “My family was in that carriage, damn it!”
“Your Majesty.” Aunt Ingrid stood in front of Father and bowed stiffly, taking point in front of the entourage. “I take full responsibility for the failure of my guard to prevent this attack. It is unacceptable. I cannot apologize enough to the royal family.”
Father pulled back, and his posture wound from fully aggressive to stiff. “You’re right, Captain. You can’t. An apology does not keep my family safe.” His voice was pure ice. “We are turning around and returning to the castle. I’m holding you responsible for finding the - any potential traitors and holding them to the highest degree of culpability.”
Aunt Ingrid bowed again. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I think they understand, Dimitri.” Mother put a hand on Father’s shoulder, and he finally fully subsided. She turned to the assembly, and although her voice was even Sara heard an ice even colder than Father’s. “My invaluable children were placed unarmed and unprepared on a battlefield today. It was a complete failure of our staff.” Slightly quieter, she said, “And their parents.”
That was more than Sara could take. She slid off the pegasus, stopping only to help Luca stumble down after her, and ran forward. “Mommy!”
Mother turned around, and she instantly opened her arms. Sara barrelled into her, grasping her tightly around her waist, and Luca clutched onto both of them. Sara hoped she didn’t smell of vomit.
“Did you save our lives, Mommy?” Luca asked, quiet and muffled. “I could have saved our lives too.”
“No. I only saved Sara from a shoulder -” Mother stopped short as Aunt Ingrid made frantic shushing motions. “Oh. No, you were only in situational danger.” Aunt Ingrid pinched the bridge of her nose. “What? I’m not going to lie.”
Aunt Ingrid smiled down at them, small and wan. Her face was pale. Sara realized for the first time that she must have been more stressed than anybody else. Father would have blamed her if anything had happened to them. “Three Blue Lions were on this field. Including our two strongest members. You were never at risk.”
“Sara. Luca.” Father rounded on them, eye wide, and something in his face was adjacent to familiar. He bent down and gestured as if he wanted to grab her shoulders, before forcibly pulling his hands back. “You two are unwounded? Completely?”
Sara bobbed her head in a nod, summoning a confident smile. “Not a scratch! I’m excellently trained in the sword, Father, I could have he -”
“What did you see?” Something increasingly frantic was entering Father’s eyes. “Did you see any of that? Any blood?” Sara hesitated. “You did. You didn’t see me, did you?”
“Were we supposed to see you?” Luca asked innocently, twining his hands behind his back. “Did you do anything cool?”
“I did what I had to do,” Father spat. Luca glanced at Sara, and she understood immediately. He was lying his ass off, and she should too. “You didn’t see that. You two didn’t see that, right? No corpses?”
Sara shrugged carefully. “Mother passed us right to Aunt Ingrid. What’s the big deal, Father?”
“Nothing. No big deal.” Father straightened, gesturing them both away from the entourage. “Get in a spare carriage and don’t leave. Knight Brittany and Knight Magda will stay with you.” They were Luca and Sara’s personal guards, respectively. They both looked rather sick. Sara really hoped Father didn’t get too mad at them.
Byleth put a hand on Father’s back and gestured him forward, closing their family off from the outside world. Aunt Ingrid moved in to hover at Father’s elbow, but she didn’t make any knowing faces at Sara and Luca. Sara and Luca glanced at each other, nodding. They must have gotten away with it. Nice.
Quietly, Mother said, “How’s your head, Dimitri?”
For the first time, Father sounded calm. “I believe I am present right now. But I am going to lose it and I am going to lose it soon. Ingrid, you and I will separate and take an individual path home.” He slid off his gold ring and placed it in Aunt Ingrid’s hands, who solemnly accepted it. Everybody knew what that meant. The physical reminder was Uncle Ashe’s idea, and it worked well.
Sara and Luca knew what that meant. It meant that Daddy needed to rest in his rooms, and that Sara and Luca weren’t allowed to disturb him. It meant he was feeling very sick and needed some peace and quiet. Mother or Uncle Sylvain tended to take over for him, and a manservant stayed with him. But their aunts and uncles liked to stay with him when they could. Mother stayed with him as much as possible.
If Mother could, Sara could. Mother always said that Father liked it quiet when he was sick, but Sara could be quiet and helpful. She could do anything that her aunts and uncles could do. Families helped each other when they were sick. Why couldn’t Sara help Father?
They didn’t hide things from each other. Sara knew perfectly well how Father’s sickness worked. He yelled and screamed sometimes, before Mother shepherded him off to bed. Sometimes he got sad and sometimes he got hyper, which used to be fun until somebody almost got beheaded. The sickness was part of their family, as sure as Luca’s strength or Mother being some kind of saint or whatever. Or the thousand and one ghosts that lingered around every Blue Lion, any one of the million little things that made everybody Sara knew so sad sometimes. Even Sara got sad sometimes. Mother said sadness was proof that we were alive, but Sara was really just sure that sadness was proof that the world sucked. Preventing Sara from being helpful wasn’t making the world suck any less, it was just making it impossible for Sara to do anything about it.
Mother’s mouth thinned. “I should go with you.”
Father shook his head. “I would feel better if you were with the children.”
Sara perked up. This was her opportunity. “Mother and I could go with you! If you need a hand -”
“The greatest help you can be right now is staying safe and listening to your mother,” Father said evenly. Sara sagged. Like a child? “Ingrid. Let’s go.”
Ingrid nodded, and Sara expected her to bow and follow him. But she said, “We should eat something and drink water first. I’ll have a servant pack bags for us.”
Father’s face twisted, as if he wanted to argue, but he subsided. “Fine. That’s…” He looked at Mother, who gave him two thumbs up. “Right. Food. Good idea.”
“Perhaps a bath,” Aunt Ingrid hinted.
“Baths are good,” Father said aggressively.
“While you still think that.”
“I don’t always hate -”
“When you’re angry, Your Majesty, you certainly do.”
“We’ll be well behaved and attentive while you are gone,” Luca told Father seriously. Sara fought the urge to roll her eyes. “I can take a bath too, if that’s our strategy.”
“You’ll be home before us, right?” Sara demanded. “Can we see you when you get home?”
“We’ll see,” Father said, which meant a no.
It was fine. If Sara’s presence would stress him out, she should leave him alone. Helping could be peace and quiet too.
For the first time, Sara wondered if Father got sick whenever he got too angry.
Or maybe he was just sick with worry. Or maybe it was all the same thing,
If Father did that to those people just because he was worried…what did being sick actually look like?
*
Later, in the sanctity and relief of their bedrooms, Sara and Luca conducted a scientific experiment. Likely Reason.
They sat across from each other in Sara’s fluffy pink bedroom, a blanket spread out between them. Lined up in a neat row like soldiers, they organized the unfortunate subjects of their grim experiment: a melon, a branch one inch in diameter, a stone, and a monster skull. Don’t ask where they got the skull.
“Maybe we should ask Aunt Annie how much force it takes to crush a human head.” Sara scratched the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. “This data’s meaningless without context.”
“The object of this experiment isn’t just to see if I can crush a human head too,” Luca said, unnecessarily aggressively. “Training is about knowing your own limits and exceeding them.”
“Since when do you train your strength? You’re a nerd.”
Luca abruptly looked a little shifty. “Obviously I wouldn’t train my strength. That’s a hypothetical. It would be super dangerous if I did that. I’ve never wanted to do that.”
Sara narrowed her eyes. “You just want to crush skulls like Father.”
“Obviously I want to crush skulls like Father!” Luca cried, exasperated. “You’re just jealous you can’t crush skulls at all!”
“You don’t know that!”
“I bet you couldn’t crush the skull of a baby,” Luca hissed.
“I could crush so many baby skulls - never mind. I’ll crush skulls with my giant ax. I don’t need your lame-ass crest.” Sara pointed at the melon. Luca muttered something useless about how she can’t lift a giant ax either. “Melon first. It’s the control group.”
Obviously Luca could crush melons. He did it all the time, just for fun. He used to stomp around the castle pumpkin patch and shove his feet through gourds, pretending to be a dark monster. They had pumpkin pie for ages.
Obediently, Luca picked up a melon and crushed it with one hand. The predictable occurred: the melon’s skin collapsed, and flesh squeezed out onto Luca’s hands. Bright green juice dripped from Luca’s hands onto the blanket. Luca dropped the melon and started happily shoving fistfuls of drooping melon flesh into his mouth. Sara made careful note.
“One blow, crushing motion. Completely destroyed. Smells…fruity.” Sara imperiously pointed her pencil at the next item on the agenda. “Stick. Go.”
“I can break sticks way bigger than this…”
“We’ll do a stick test later.”
“Wouldn’t it be better Reason to get sticks of different lengths, and see how big the stick has to get before I can’t break it anymore…?”
“And what would that tell us about crushing human skulls, Luca?”
Luca folded in the face of superior reasoning. He picked up the stick and held it by both ends. He easily broke it in two and dropped it on the blanket.
Goddess, she had to do everything around here. “You have to crush it with one hand! We have to be consistent in the methodology.”
“I’ll get splinters in my hand…”
“Wrap up your hand in a blanket, idiot.”
Luca grabbed another throw blanket - their current blanket was sticky with melon juice - and obediently wrapped it around his hand before squeezing one half of the stick. It splintered in half, and Luca let the jagged edges of the stick fall into the blanket.
Conclusive evidence. Sara made a note of it. “How much force would you say you used?”
“Some…?”
“On a scale. Out of ten.”
“Um. Two for the melon, four for the stick.”
Sara drew out a little line and carefully made the note. Four was a little close to two, but whatever. “The rock?”
Luca picked up the rock - liberated from the palace garden - and squeezed it with one hand. Nothing happened. Sara made an ominous note. Luca redoubled his efforts, gritting his teeth and squeezing hard, and with a final crack several hairline fractures split the rock like a spiderweb.
He hefted it, satisfied and a little winded. “With another hand I could crush it.”
“Ten on the effort scale.”
“No! Six at most!” Somewhat desperate, Luca added, “A rock’s definitely harder than a human head. So this means I could crush a human head, right? Right?”
“Eight,” Sara allowed. She pointed at the monster skull. “Who cares if you can crush a human head? A monster’s head is where it’s at. Give it a roll.”
Luca stared down the monster skull bravely before picking it up. It was larger than his lap, with two gigantic curved horns spiraling out of its forehead and a gaping maw pock-marked by scraggly canines. Sara had almost cut herself on one of the canines as she stole it. Definitely still a dangerous artifact. Luca eyed it as if it was about to come back to life and eat him. To be fair, it was impossible to tell what Aunt Annie had done with it.
He put two hands on either side of the monster’s head - maybe around where two ears would be. He screwed his eyes shut and pressed inwards as hard as he could. His arms and shoulders tensed with the exertion, and he grit his teeth hard as he threw everything he could into killing their personal monster in Sara’s fuzzy pink bedroom.
After an agonizing minute of effort, Luca finally gave up. He exhaled, dropping the monster skull back onto the blanket. There wasn’t even a fracture.
In large letters on her notepad, Sara wrote ‘ZERO DESTRUCTION’. She turned it around and showed it to Luca, pointing at the indictment with the stubby end of her pencil.
Bizarrely, Luca’s expression crumpled. “I bet I couldn’t kill a monster…”
“No shit, brother. You’re twelve.”
“I bet Father could have killed a monster when he was twelve.” Luca drooped miserably. “…I bet I couldn’t crush a single human head…”
“Of course you can’t,” Sara said, with the characteristic mercilessness of a sister. “Obviously I’d be awful at slicing bandits in half too. Because nobody ever lets us fight anything! You’re way too young for the battlefield, but a fourteen year old -”
“Lord Cyril said he fought in the Battle of Garreg Mach when he was fourteen,” Luca said helpfully.
“Exactly! If Lord Cyril can do it, why can’t I?”
But Luca just looked a little thoughtful. “Lord Cyril made it sound a bit like an emergency…I don’t think that would have happened if his home hadn’t been attacked…”
“His wife was on a ton of battlefields when she was fifteen!” Lady Lysithea was a little inapproachable, but she was very helpful in commiserating over how terrible it was to be condescended to.
“You aren’t fifteen, though.” Luca scratched his nose, mind turning inwards. “I don’t know, Sara. Mother and Father were pretty lucky to have a kid with the royal crest. If something happens to me, who knows when we’ll get that lucky again. And your crest is kinda…”
“I know what my crest kinda is,” Sara snapped. “A fancy crest’s never stopped anybody else from fighting before! Isn’t that what they’re for?”
“Aren’t they for status…?”
“You are being purposefully obtuse!”
But Luca shifted uncomfortably, and Sara finally quieted. She let him gather his thoughts for a few slow seconds before speaking. “Father was so unhappy we saw a fight that it made him sick. You know he’s a pacifist.” Father certainly called himself a pacifist, yes. “I think his kids fighting just stresses Father out.”
“Mother doesn’t give a shit.”
“Mother doesn’t give a shit about much.”
“Don’t curse.” But Luca was honestly usually right, and Sara had to admit that he was probably right about this too. Father was anal about their safety all of the time. Maybe it was less about her and more about him. “I don’t want to stress Father out. I hate stressing him out. We didn’t tell him about the skull thing for a reason.” Sara sighed, putting the notebook and pencil down. “I’ll live with the injustice. I just don’t understand why it stresses him out so much.”
Luca looked down, picking at his thumb. “Didn’t seeing all of the blood stress you out.”
“Of course not,” Sara said immediately. “What, did it stress you out?”
“Of course it didn’t. Who would get stressed out by that?”
“I don’t know, losers?”
“Definitely losers.”
Sara and Luca sat in silence.
“What if there’s a monster,” Luca whispered, “and I can’t kill it?”
“There’s lots of monsters we can’t kill,” Sara said. “You and me can’t kill a single one.”
Luca’s expression screwed up, he suddenly scrambled to his feet. “I want to talk to Dad.”
“What? Luca, he’s still sick -”
But Luca had already begun running for the door, and Sara stumbled over her feet as she jumped upwards to catch him.
It was late at night, late enough that almost nobody but the guards walked the halls of the castle, but Mother and Father were never asleep at this time. Sara chased Luca up four flights of stairs, hissing curses at him as her legs began to burn. She really had to work harder at her training, if her stupid brother could outrun her.
“We’re not supposed to bother Father!” Sara hissed. “What if he’s hyper? They’ll kill us if we talk to him!”
“He’s probably just sad,” Luca dismissed, thumping up the stairs. Little jerk wasn’t even out of breath. He was the nerd, why was he so fit? “It’s no big deal if he’s hyper, anyway. Happy people don’t crush skulls. They’re just like that ‘cause of that thing with the ax.”
“The thing where he almost cut Felipe’s head off because he thought he was a spy?” Sara asked flatly. “That thing?”
He had the gall to look backwards and roll his eyes at her. “And everybody says I’m the scaredy cat.”
“You barely even remember - oh, never mind.”
Luca really didn’t know anything about the real world. It gave her second hand embarrassment. And it made her worry if she was that dumb at twelve. What if she was dumb now? No, that was impossible.
“I don’t care if he’s swinging ten axes,” Luca said, and for the first time Sara heard a tremor in his voice. “I have to talk to him, and I won’t let paranoid rules get in my way.”
“About what -”
Luca collided against the wooden door at the top of the fourth flight, and Sara skidded to a stop next to him. He pulled at the door impatiently, but it only rattled on its hinges. It was locked.
Sara crossed her arms. “Great job. What do you want to do now, jump into his chambers through the roof?”
Luca scowled. He bent down, shoving his eye through the keyhole. “Shut up. I’m going to do dark magic.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up - you’re what?”
But Luca was already pressing a finger to the keyhole. He whispered an incantation, something only beginning magic learners needed, but after a few seconds his finger began to glow a soft black. A bright black light flashed in the darkness, and the door lock clicked open.
“I thought dark magic just blew things up,” Sara said blankly.
Luca straightened and smiled at her, adjusting his pajamas professionally. “Magic holds many mysteries.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“And yet the door is open.” Luca swung it open, gesturing down the long and empty hallway. “After you, sister.”
“Die, brother.”
But the hallway was long and empty, and Sara and Luca found each other walking closely together anyway. There were no torches lit, and no footsteps of guards echoed. Father’s chambers were the only rooms on this floor, and nobody else disturbed him. Sara and Luca weren’t up here all that often. They played around as a family in Mother’s chambers instead, in the Family Wing. That was where all the good shit happened. It was where the family members always stayed, whether it was full-time, on rotation, or just visiting. Poor Derrick was still stuck in the diplomat’s palace forever away. It was inconvenient, so she usually just stuck him in a random room in the family chambers. Nobody had complained yet but Derrick, so she figured it was fine.
The door to Father’s chambers loomed large above them. In the deep night it was a little spooky. Sara wasn’t about to admit that. Maybe some other things were spooky too - egg yolk and axes and taking responsibility - but Sara decided it was mostly the door. There was nothing scary about what lay beyond.
Luca reached out and knocked on the door in three smart raps. After a second, he cautiously added two more. Sara regretted following the moron up here, but she hated it when he had adventures without her. And…and…
The door swung open. Obviously, Father stood before her, backlit by the large candles on his nightstand and writing desk. He was in his sleeping clothes, and he squinted down at them in abject confusion before his eye widened.
“Children? What are you doing here?”
“Sorry for bothering you!” Luca cried. “I know you’re feeling sick and everything so I’m really sorry, I just really needed to talk to you. Also Sara’s here.”
“I’m here too,” Sara confirmed.
Father squinted at them. Luca and Sara tried their best to look angelic and non-stressful.
“Did your mother send you?”
“Uh,” Sara said, “obviously n -”
“Why would your mother send you here? Does she need me for something? This isn’t some sort of emergency, is it?” Father was speaking awfully fast. His sentences were crowded against each other, as if the words wanted to be out the door as quickly as possible. “You said you had a question? That’s not an emergency. What sort of question? You smell of melon. Were you out stomping in the pumpkin patch again? I don’t have much to do with pumpkin pie, it doesn’t smell of anything. Did your mother want pumpkin pie? I don’t have an oven. Come inside.”
Whoops. He was hyper. Very hyper. Un-casually hyper.
Sara tugged at Luca’s drooping sleeve - ‘we really, really should go’. Luca roughly shook her off, as if he couldn’t believe that she was daring to suggest that they follow a rule. Luca was twelve and stupid and hadn’t entirely figured out the difference between broken rules that caused a scolding or a grounding, and broken rules that got other people in trouble. Or that the former was really whatever, and that the latter really shouldn’t happen. A bad incident with Derrick when she was eleven hammered that one in. She still felt bad about that. He was jumping at shadows for weeks.
“We can stay in the hallway,” Sara said, feeling a little awkward. “Um…you know you’re super ‘up’. Right, Dad?”
But Father just scowled. His right hand wouldn’t stop moving - he kept on touching his thumb with each finger in an endless circle. “No I’m not. I know what it’s like when I’m up. I’m very -” He waved his arm, as if that remotely meant anything. “And I’m not that, so you don’t have to stay in the hallway. Come inside, you don’t know who’s listening out here.”
“It’s 0100 hours,” Luca said. Father pointed mysteriously at the left wall. “Uh…okay.”
Sara and Luca glanced at each other. Sara gave Luca a severe eyebrow - ‘now that we know he’s that kind of sick, the obvious next move is to leave’. Luca pointedly ignored her, turning away and rushing into the room before the door fell shut and accidentally locked them out. Sara silently began rehearsing every possible way she would blame Luca for this before she rushed inside after him.
Father began pacing the room, walking in a neat square around the perimeter. Sara had the feeling that they might have interrupted his pacing.
“I don’t even remember hiring that groundskeeper. I don’t think I make the hiring decisions for the staff around the castle. Who did I hire here? Annette and Ingrid. Felix just - showed up? Or was that his father? Which one of them works for me, that’s Felix, not his father, right, right, right - groundskeepers have never liked me, no - never liked them, I think. Major problem. Not a problem at all. Two problems. Ten. Twenty. No, two. Children. Two children?” Father stopped and squinted at Sara and Luca, who were standing politely in the doorway. “Your two children are here. No, not the other ones. There are no other ones. You’re not hearing yourself. You’re not hearing yourself.”
It was impossible to get a word in edgewise while he was like this. Sara didn’t remember hyper Father before The Axe Incident very well, but when they hung out he was mostly just very chipper and talkative. Changing subjects all of the time, yeah, but a bit more coherent than this. They had probably convinced Father to stay in his room when he was like this.
“It’s bad that the children are here,” Father said to himself. He was facing away from them entirely, talking solely to himself. “It’s bad that the children are here. The babies aren’t allowed to see when you’re like this because you are going to hurt them and kill them. No, it’s fine. I’m not like this. What do you want?” Father stopped short, looking at the wall. “Oh, you’re right. No, I don’t think - yes, you’re right.”
“This is what I mean!” Luca cried, and Father finally stopped short. He turned to look at Luca, eye widening, as if Luca had warped in from nowhere. “Why are you always acting as if you’re about to hurt us? Just because you can, that doesn’t mean you will! Why do you keep doing this to me?”
To him? Father hadn’t done anything to him. Father had done something to those bandits. He had done something to a lot of people during the war, as if there weren’t extenuating circumstances. Their family had always made it excruciatingly clear that Father wasn’t sick because of them, it’s not their fault that he abandons you for days at a time, etc etc. He hadn’t done shit to Luca.
Except…
Father’s face twisted into something foreign and ugly. For a second Sara thought it might be anger, and for another she thought it was despair. She only knew that it was ugly. “Do you find me derelict in my duty? My own child? Have I shamed you? How many times must I apologize? I won’t apologize anymore. Byleth says I don’t need to apologize to them. Byleth says it’s not my fault, but if my baby finds me derelict, than -”
“What are you talking about?” Luca cried, a little freaked. “Derelict in what, Dad?”
“Derelict in my duty to avenge the dead.” Oh, finally, a familiar topic. He was always on this when he was super depressed. Sara patted his head over it and gave him some water. He always thanked her, no matter how bad he felt. “I should have killed all of them. You’re upset because I left some of them alive, aren’t you. Don’t be disappointed in me. I’ll find the servant who sold us out and chop his head off. I’ll do it myself. I’ll find all of his co-conspirators and kill them with my bare hands. Will you still be disappointed in me? Please don’t be disappointed in me.”
“Um.” Sara honestly had no idea how to respond to this. “We…don’t want you to kill anybody, Daddy.”
“It’s them or you, Sara,” Father said seriously. “The Professor said that to me. You’re more important than they are. The Professor said a lot of things, I’ve tried to remember them all but I can’t. What were they. She wanted them all dead, I think. She wanted Felix to lay off me but it was fair because Felix said I liked killing people and he was wrong. He was right. No, I remember. No, he was right. No. No, not at all. I don’t even remember hiring that groundskeeper.”
“Is that why?” Luca cried, and to Sara’s shock she saw that he was close to tears. “Do you act as if I’m about to hurt everybody because you’re always about to hurt everybody? Or - or because you want to? You don’t want to hurt people, your brain is just telling you weird things. You aren’t actually like that, Daddy! And neither am I! My brain isn’t telling me weird things, so - so it’s not the same, okay?”
Sara squeezed Luca’s arm, and for the first time he turned to look at her. He was almost as upset as Father. Father couldn’t even notice. “Luca, Daddy doesn’t understand what you’re saying. I don’t understand what you’re saying. What’s wrong?”
Far too late, Sara realized that she had never actually asked.
Luca’s face crumpled - in anger or in sadness, Sara couldn’t tell. But it wasn’t ugly at all. “Shut up. You don’t care. It’s all because of my stupid crest. Dad yells at me every single time he thinks I touched something wrong. I know I keep breaking glasses and doorknobs and - Dad has problems ‘cause he got knocked on the head too many times, I have problems ‘cause I suck - but doesn’t anybody care that I wanted to learn how to swordfight too?”
What? “No you didn’t,” Sara said. She would know. She was literally there. “They tried to teach you when you were six and you kept breaking all of the baby wooden swords. That’s why you switched to magic.”
“I switched to magic because Dad kept treating me as if breaking some swords meant I was gonna grow up to be - to be some kind of skull breaker or something!” Luca dramatically pointed at Father, who was obviously barely processing this. “Just because he breaks skulls! Well, I’m not a weirdo who talks about killing people!”
Sara slapped Luca on the shoulder. “Don’t call Dad a weirdo! This isn’t his fault!”
“It’s sure his fault that he treats me like an explosive!”
“Then bother him about this later!” Sara realized far too late that she was almost pleading. “Dad hates it when we see him act like this. You’re embarrassing him.”
Luca was crying now, fat tears rolling down his poky little cheeks. Too late again - always too late - Sara realized that he had wanted to cry since the beginning of their experiment. Maybe since he had seen Dad hurt those people. “What about what I want? I want to matter too. Everything’s always about you guys and nothing’s ever about me no matter how good I am at everything. I’m some kind of genius or something but I’m not the heir so nobody cares.”
“Oh, second kid syndrome, real original.”
“Why do you care if my problems are original!”
“I’d rather have your problems than mine!” Sara yelled. “You know the pressure I’m under!”
“At least your crest is useless and doesn’t do anything! I want to swordfight, I want to be a cavalry knight or a myrmidon or even just a mortal savant! Nobody lets me do anything!”
“Children,” Father said, quiet and still, “I think I am very up and out right now.”
Why was he interrupting a serious conversation. Sara crossed her arms. “Daddy, I know being sick can make you dumb sometimes, but that was really obvious.”
Despite everything, Father still wasn’t looking at her. He was finally speaking to her, even saying something that made sense, but he still couldn’t focus on her. Just once, wouldn’t he freaking look at her? If he was going to talk about murdering people then he should look her in the eyes when he does it!
“You need to go back to bed,” Father said. “You need to go right now.”
“But you never answered my question.” Luca could be as stubborn as her sometimes. Sara knew he wouldn’t move until he got his answer. No matter how enthusiastic Dad was about murder that day. “Don’t tell me to go before you even hear me out.”
Father jerked his head to the left, staring unfocused at the wall again, but he spoke anyway. “You’re interrupting a lot of important conversations, Luca. No, be quiet, I’m talking to my son.”
Luca’s face crumpled. “Daddy, please. Just tell me. Do you think I’m going to hurt someone?”
“I need you to leave, Luca.”
“I’m not leaving until you answer me!”
Calmly, as if he was using everything he had just to hold back the storm within him, Father said, “Every member of the royal family for generations has hurt people. We kill enemies on the battlefield and we order scorched earths. Yes, Luca. You will hurt somebody. I refuse to let you forget that. You have to leave now.”
They left. Sara grabbed Luca’s hand and tugged him away, and he followed her just as he always did. Together, they broke through the soft flames in Father’s room and back into the depths of the darkness that lingered just out of reach. Far from the shadows that chased them.
*
They got into a lot of trouble for that one. A lot. It really wasn’t funny.
Sara didn’t know the worst part. There were a lot of worst parts. It started with Uncle Felix banging on Sara’s door the next morning asking pleasantly about why His Majesty was convinced that his children visited him last night and started asking him about murdering people. Uncle Felix’s pleasant voice could sound very dangerous sometimes.
They fessed up immediately. Uncle Felix had to leave the room the second they finished their story. That’s how you knew he was mad. Then they were dragged to Uncle Sylvain’s office and had to fess up again, and that was even worse, because Uncle Sylvain was freaked . Uncle Sylvain never mentioned The Ax Incident, but sometimes it was really obvious that he had never forgotten.
“The last few days have been really difficult for everybody.” Yeah, no kidding. Uncle Sylvain’s eye bags had eye bags. One security leak could mean much more, and Father had demanded a complete shakedown of the castle. “Trust me, there’s plenty of things I would like to speak to His Majesty about right now too. But we have to keep him calm for right now, because if we don’t - it’s bad for him, kids. Did you seriously think knocking on his door and interrogating him was the priority for any of us right now?”
Mulishly, and dramatically out of character, Luca muttered, “It was my priority…”
“You should never be your own first priority,” Uncle Sylvain said, and Luca quieted. “His Majesty put your happiness and safety above his own desires and freedom when he asked us to prevent him from seeing you. Her Grace is running this kingdom when she wants to stay with your father. And our priority is to protect the royal family. The two of you endangered yourselves, stressed your sick father, and actively impeded our work to keep you two and the country safe. Do you understand?”
Sara folded her arms, squeezing herself tightly. “We weren’t in danger, Uncle.”
“That’s not for you to decide. Let the adults and war veterans decide what’s dangerous or not.”
“Nothing is for us to decide around here!” Sara cried. “Why is everybody so paranoid -”
“Your Highnesses, you are excused. Both of you go to your rooms.”
In retrospect, they didn’t handle that one well.
Derrick didn’t have to say as much. He just had to raise an eyebrow, sitting on Sara’s bed and scribbling away at his paperwork. Sara struggled enough just keeping up with her homework, and here Derrick was at the top of their homeschooling class and doing three other jobs on top of it with ease. He never broke any rules or messed up or disappointed anybody. Derrick was disgustingly perfect. He was Sara’s best friend, but sometimes she really hated him.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything, Your Highness.”
“You were thinking it.”
Derrick serenely forged a signature. “I was thinking about my horses.”
“You’re always thinking about your horses.”
“So I clearly couldn’t be lying.”
“Ugh! You’re impossible.” Sarah pushed herself upright, heroically rescuing herself from drowning in her pillows. She had ten, but that was just for the aesthetics of her bed. It looked empty without ten pillows. “I didn’t even want to go! I was trying to talk Luca out of it the entire time! The roles were reversed and nobody believes me!”
Derrick meticulously filled in a table, comparing it against several sheets of crumpled paper covered in cramped ink. Sara recognized their chief financier’s handwriting. “I think people are mostly just upset that you did it at all.”
“Did what? Talk to my own damn father?” Sara grabbed a pillow and squeezed it. Normally she liked to pretend it was the ribcage or skull of whoever she was mad at that day, but today her heart wasn’t really in it. “I get it! I know he doesn’t like us seeing him like that! But don’t you think it’s gross to act like he’s dangerous? Father’s sickness doesn’t make him evil, it just makes him weird and stupid.”
Without looking up, Derrick said, “Ax incident.”
“Felipe was fine.”
“Didn’t you just say that he was ranting about killing people a lot?”
“He wasn’t ranting about killing us, so I just don’t see the big deal.”
Derrick muttered something that better not have been ‘of course you don’t’. Sara glared at him, just to emphasize that he definitely hadn’t muttered that. Hastily, he said, “Look, you why don’t you just admit that the attack upset you and Luca? You’re letting them all think you’re being a self-centered brat -”
“They think that?!”
“When you’re obviously acting like that because you -”
“You think that?!”
“ - saw His Majesty do what he’s famous for. Adrestians still have nightmares about His Majesty, you know.”
Stupidly, the words kind of hurt. “Why does he have to be famous for that?” Sara hoped her voice was still strong and princessy, but she knew it wasn’t. “Why can’t he be famous for being a good king and a great father? Who cares if he’s good at crushing people’s skulls? I don’t! I really, really don’t!”
Then Derrick was patting her back, his paperwork abandoned on the bedspread, and Sara was staring fixedly at the paperwork and definitely was not crying whatsoever. That would be just too stupid. That would be the stupidest thing of all.
“If you told anybody that he actually scared you a bit,” Derrick said quietly, “then it would just be proving them right, right?”
As always, Derrick knew. Sara nodded miserably.
“And knowing he scared you would upset your father a lot,” Derrick finished. He leaned back against the headboard, sighing. “Of course, he already said a bunch of stuff in front of you that’s going to upset him when he’s back to normal…this is a mess. You’re right. It is Luca’s fault.”
“Thank you!” Sara straightened too, scooching over on the bed so she could lean against the headboard with Derrick. As usual, he looked a little thoughtful. Derrick was always thinking about something. “I’m going to stand behind the lie. It’s better if they think we’re acting up for no reason. If he knew why it would just make everything a thousand times worse. I’ll tell Luca to save his emotional problems for a time when somebody cares, too.”
“You’re the unsung hero of the Empire, Your Highness,” Derrick said, straight faced. Sara pretended to smother him with a pillow for the sass, and after a second of wrangling she let him push her away. “You still remember your promise, right? That old one?”
“How can I forget?” Sara shoved Derrick lightly on the shoulder again, just for good measure. “Don’t worry, Derrick. Father’s good at keeping himself away from us when he’s worried about spies. And he adores you when he’s not! He’d never do anything to you.”
“Of course not.” Derrick rubbed his shoulder a little, wincing. “I’d never betray us. He’ll get that. Because…you’d stand up for me. Right, Sara?”
“Obviously.” Sara adjusted her approach from shoving to a firm pat on the shoulder. Violence was the solution most of the time, but Derrick was delicate sometimes. “I will attest to your character ‘til my face turns blue. I’ll even make up lies. About - oh, about how your grades are perfect, and you’re respected as a diplomat, how glossy and smooth Aqua’s coat is -”
“That is not a lie! Do not insinuate that Aqua’s coat is not -”
“I’ll even lie and say she’s a good girl.”
“She is a good girl! She’s just a sweet baby, Sara!”
“She almost escaped the stables and ran a lap around the courtyard,” Sara said flatly. “She literally only listens to you.”
Derrick sniffed, picking up his forms again. “Another reason why I’m indispensable, then.”
“You’re indispensable without all of that,” Sara said. “You know that, right?”
Derrick fastidiously went back to his forms, but he couldn’t hide the smile. At least Sara could do one thing right in this house.
But the strangest of all…the strangest person of all, the person who only ever stared them down like a battering ram…
Mother just stared at them.
Mother just stared at them. That was it. It wasn’t The Stare or The Look or even The Eyebrow. She just kind of looked at them.
Sara quailed. Luca quailed. Their intimidation was almost reflexive. Mother’s eyes said nothing - not recrimination, not judgment. She just stared at them. Sara was silently glad that they were sitting on Mother’s bed in her empty chambers, safely locked in the Family Wing - outside their own halls, she always felt just a little paranoid that somebody was lurking around the corner ready to see her behaving badly or getting scolded. And Mother was less intimidating when she was just in her trousers and linen shirt. A little.
Finally, as if she had spent the time divining something obscure about their character instead of just staring at them, Mother said, “You said you didn’t see Dimitri fighting. You lied.”
Sara sighed. That lie had lasted about five seconds. At least Mother wouldn’t tell anybody. She knew the value of a good secret. “Can you blame us? He would have freaked even harder…”
“No. You were trying to protect him.” Sara’s heart blossomed in hope that someone here would approve of her actions. “I would not have done the same. But you and I have different ideas of how to protect people.”
Wow. She said it as if Sara and Luca had grand philosophies on life or something. They mostly just did whatever. Luca, who probably did have opinions about the universe, squeezed one of Mother’s pillows. “Does this mean you aren’t mad…?”
“I’m upset that you bothered him when he was sick.” Mother said the sentence like she said everything else - seemingly flat and passionless - but they flinched anyway. “You acted selfishly. Luca, what was so important?”
It was the first time anybody had actually asked them why they had done it. Sara’s high estimation of Mother rose a few notches. She always heard every side of the story before forming her opinion. Then she never changed her opinion, ever.
Luca looked down at the pillow, picking at the downy feathers poking out from the seams. “I wanted to know why he treats me so differently. I guess it wasn’t the best time, but…I couldn’t crush a monster skull and I felt like it was proof that I wasn’t like Dad…I bet he can crush monster skulls.”
As always, Mother took the question seriously. “I’ve seen him snap the wings of monsters, but I think anything else would depend on the monster.”
“Super not the point, Mother,” Sara said.
“Sorry.” Mother stopped and thought, mulling over what to say, before finally speaking. “Your father is the way he is because of what he’s experienced. If he was brutal with those men, it is because he learned to be brutal. I tried to prioritize efficiency when teaching him, but he ended up combining the two…effective, but it earned him a reputation…”
“I don’t know, Mother,” Sara said flatly, “if Father’s like that because of you, maybe we’re sunk too.”
“You’re very emotional children, so you may be safe.” Emotional? Fourteen year olds were meant to be emotional! Sara preferred the term passionate. “Luca, you are not like your father. You are stronger and your control is worse. Your father’s lack of control may be due to childhood brain damage. Yours is simply the way you are. Many deficiencies in the human body are like that. It’s not the fault of either of you.”
“But that’s what I mean!” Luca cried, dramatically throwing his hands up. “Just because he’s like that doesn’t mean I am! Just because nobody trusts him not to accidentally do bad things doesn’t mean he shouldn’t trust me either!
“Everybody trusts Dimitri very much,” Mother said gently. “We trust him to do everything he can to protect his kingdom, his family, and himself. The effort is difficult, but it’s important. He thinks you have to put forth the effort too.”
“But I do!”
“You don’t want to.” Luca looked crushed, but Mother continued speaking. “I don’t blame you. It’s not fun. But once you master yourself, you’ll be the best. You will achieve what nobody before you has achieved. And you will achieve whatever you desire. Even sword fighting or archery.”
Luca looked away, cheeks burning. “I can’t do those things at all.”
“If you put your mind to it, there is nothing you cannot do.” Mother looked at Sara, eyes boring into her soul. “Either of you.”
There goes Mother’s dual specialization agenda again. Sara looked away, crossing her arms. “What if we can do it just fine, but we don’t want to.”
“If that desire must be mastered, you will master it.” Mother stood up, rolling one shoulder and letting it crack. She stared Sara and Luca down, who fought to keep their backs straight. “We work hard to help others, you two. We work hard to protect those we care about. That is the meaning of all that we do. You must work harder.”
Luca looked down at his pillow again, squeezing it tightly. Holding back. “You’re the ones who keep saying we’re too young to fight.”
“A fight is the last resort we use to protect others. If you don’t understand the more important ways we protect others, then you aren’t ready to fight.” Mother paused, deliberating on something, before she finally spoke. “When your father was a few years older than you, he thought the best way to protect me was to rip off the heads of our enemies and slaughter every last one of them.”
“What is wrong with you, Dad,” Luca whispered.
“Dad is so cool,” Sara whispered.
“I wish he hadn’t,” Mother said plainly. “Those thoughts…the way I attempted to protect him…slid him into sickness. But those thoughts existed before the sickness, Luca. Those thoughts are the result of a man who has broken too much, and thus something in himself was broken. Preventing that from happening to you is how we wish to protect you as your parents. Do you understand?”
They nodded mutely. Luca seemed a little sick himself.
Sara tried to imagine viscerally wishing to harm somebody. She could not. She had never once fantasized about hurting people. The idea was just too alien to her - she could not begin to conceive of it. As a child Sara had attacked and bit other children, but she could only remember feeling angry and hurt. She had never really wanted to harm anybody.
And she knew for a fact that Luca hadn’t either. Where Sara attacked, Luca just cried. Sara never thought about hurting people; Luca was constantly terrified of hurting somebody. Sara wondered if Luca had secretly ever wanted to hurt somebody, and if that had terrified him too.
“You do,” Mother decided. She nodded firmly. “Did I parent correctly?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Sara said dully. “Great job mothering.”
Luca kneaded his forehead. “A+ in being a mother today, Mother.”
Mother seemed pleased. “Good. I have things to do, so goodbye.”
“Bye, Mother.”
“Goodbye, Mom. Love you.”
Mother kissed them both on the forehead and left her chambers without further ado. She didn’t bother changing, so she was definitely off to go train. When Mother wasn’t working she was training, and in the few hours a day she didn’t do either she spent it with her family. Sara wondered if this, too, was protecting them.
Sara and Luca sat in silence on the bed. They didn’t really want to look at each other. There was nothing they really wanted to say. But Sara had to say it anyway.
“But we’re bad people anyway.”
That, at least, not even Luca could deny. He drew his knees to his chest, as if trying to make himself smaller. “I guess it’s a lot easier to crush monster skulls than it is to be a good person.”
“You can’t even crush monster skulls.”
“Neither can you.”
“Yeah,” Sara said, “so it’s probably impossible for us to be good people at all.”
“Then we probably ought to pretend.” The same way that Mother and Father said they used to pretend - the same way, and not similar at all. “We need to become the best, don’t we?”
Derrick, smiling in uncertainty. “At least.”
“Yeah,” Luca said, “at the very least.”
During wartime, you really only had to be the best at killing things. But in peacetime you had to be far more - a fair ruler, a good person. Father and Mother really had to stop acting like their lives were so much harder than Sara and Luca’s. Maybe they didn’t have any homicidal urges to repress or a student to make homicidal, but they didn’t have to balance everything else. In the end, Father hadn’t needed to crush monster skulls at all. Father didn’t have a father to protect.
Sara could pretend to be a good person. After years, she eventually got half-decent at it - or she got half-decent at pretending to be a decent princess, which was close enough. Maybe she thought it could protect herself too - save herself from harm, or from accidentally harming others.
But the image of Father crushing a skull in his hands stayed with her a long time, no matter how hard she worked or how many people she protected, and eventually Sara understood what everybody else had known all along.
