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Emmeryn comes back from Plegia in a wagon all her own. Her body broken in ways that would not heal easily, would not heal entirely. For a time, the trauma had locked away her speech, had locked away her memories, but slowly, slowly, her family had helped her adjust, helped her remember. Still, she was not suited any longer for the stresses of the throne, no matter how sharp her mind remained.
Her hands shook terribly, where once her hands had been steady no matter the weight her shoulders had borne. Emmeryn liked to hide her hands in the folds of her skirts, sitting absolutely still and smiling kindly even as rage and resentment stiffened her spine and threatened to choke her. Chrom didn’t deserve her rage, and Lissa had never even earned her slightest exasperation. She would die before she exposed them to the enormous blizzard that had cooled her heart to freezing, that had set her mind on fire with her fury.
Phila comes back to Ylisse on the back of a horse. Just a regular horse, her beloved pegasus shot dead on the sands, riddled with arrows. She has trouble even sitting upright, but she refused to ride a wagon out of pride, out of shame. So she sat on the back of this borrowed horse, missing the way feathers used to tickle her fingers, a guard to Emmeryn’s wagon.
Her hands don’t shake, but her lungs refuse to fill with air. The healers do what they can, but the arrows that had killed her pegasus had found lodgings in her chest, ruining her capacity to breathe once the arrows had been removed and the healing had formed scars inside her chest. She would never fight again, not for queen and not for country.
There is no anger at the way life has turned out to be. She is rational, she is calm where others might run hot. Phila is...ashamed, perhaps is the best word. Despite her best efforts, her knights had died, or suffered her own fate. Emmeryn had still fallen, and all the force of her personality, all her gentleness and her temper and her determination had been locked into a body that could not stand. That was...Phila felt it her own fault.
But Emmeryn did not think so. Would never think so. She held out her shaking hands despite her rage, and Phila would move the world to take those hands in her own. “My lady,” Phila had whispered into Emmeryn’s knuckles, her own eyes closed against the wave of love and guilt that flooded her heart. She breathed shallowly, the only way she could these days, and held Emmeryn’s hands still in her own.
When they were alone, Emmeryn let her gentle smile fade, and her expression was torn with rage and grief. Just for a minute, before Emmeryn had put that away again, and only love remained in her eyes. “My knight,” she answered, before taking back her hands and hiding them in her skirts. “Would you please take me to sit by you?”
“Of course.” Phila answered, slowly wheeling Emmeryn’s chair closer to Phila’s own. They were in one of the parlors attached to Emmeryn’s room, in the living quarters of Ylissetol’s castle. Once they had been her lord father’s, and then they had been hers, and by rights were now Chrom’s, but Chrom had refused. They would always be Emmeryn’s, to him, and he had refused and stayed in the rooms he had lived in all his life.
So they sat in the sun, large windows letting in plenty of natural light. Before, this had been one of Emmeryn’s favorite rooms. Now, sometimes, it infuriated her. Phila weathered the rage, weathered the grief. She had always loved Emmeryn, in all her capacity for cruelty and in all her determination to be kind, and the rage and grief did not scare her.
And Emmeryn accepted all of Phila’s shame and regret, and poured out nothing but loving touches, loving kisses. “I have always been proud of you,” Emmeryn would say, when Phila pulled away from her, regret filling her stomach with unhappy, sickening despair. “I have always loved you,” Emmeryn promised. “I will always trust you, my life, my happiness. They have never been in better hands.
“I will say it as much as you need to hear it.”
And so their days passed. Most nights Phila slept beside her love. Most nights Emmeryn reached with shaking hands to find comfort and steadiness in the woman she loved more than any other. They were together, even when they were apart, when Phila attended her duties, while Emmeryn counseled Chrom.
And then there was their downtime. Where they sat in Emmeryn’s favorite parlor, and kept their hands busy, whenever they wanted to. It had started with Phila. She’d brought her soft yarn, her hook, and she sat in the sunlight while Emmeryn hid her hands in her skirts, and Phila turned those colorful, thick strands into squares she could sew together into a blanket. It kept her hands occupied, and thus her brain, as she thought of how the colors might look together.
Sometimes she thought the blanket might keep Emmeryn warm, when her legs were cold in her chair, and her skirts were not sufficient. And eventually, Emmeryn stopped hiding her hands. Phila loved Emmeryn, from her head to her toes, and had never judged her love for the way her body had not healed. She was only ever grateful that there had been any healing at all. It was a gift, and one Phila treasured, as she treasured Emmeryn.
Phila had never judged Emmeryn for her shaking hands, and Emmeryn slowly accepted that she couldn’t control the shaking, couldn’t control how she would never walk again, and Phila never stopped loving her. Never, not even once.
Because her fingers were nimble where her lungs were frail, Phila kept to her yarn work, and filled the air with gentle words, harmless servant gossip and updates on the way the army was restructuring, after the decimation of the pegasus knights. And eventually, Emmeryn busied her unhidden hands with the needlepoint she had nearly forgotten.
A skill she had begun learning from her mother, before the death of her parents, and then forgotten, Emmeryn plied her clumsy, shaking fingers to the delicate task of turning thread into art. It was frustrating work, and it brought Emmeryn’s patience to the breaking point every day she attempted it. Even when Emmeryn was frustrated, was angry, Phila kept up her talking. About the weather, about how Frederick looked in his new tie, how one of the Shepherds had planted blueberries in the gardens while no one had been looking.
And eventually, Emmeryn would calm, and she would look sheepish, and then reach out to hold Phila’s hand. Recovering wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fun. It was hard on them both, hard for them both, and neither found serenity in the knowledge that they were both suffering to some extent.
But still, every night that they laid in the same bed, Emmeryn would hold Phila’s hand and breathe out, “I love you.”
And Phila would answer, squeezing Emmeryn’s hand gently, “I love you, too.”