Chapter Text
Cheve.
Corrin yawns, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Her dream subsides slowly—sticks (or bones) crunching underfoot, the light of a half-moon above her head, filtered by dark, broad tree leaves, a sense of indescribable freedom and rightness—the thought of returning to that place nearly succeeds in tempting her back to sleep. But she can’t. She has things to do.
She quietly and slowly slides out of bed, conscious of Kaden and Keaton at either side of her. They’re both heavy sleepers, but too much caution is never a bad thing.
The moment she sets her foot on the ground, onto the cold wood floor of the inn they’re staying in (she wishes carpet was common like up in Northern Nohr; Cheve might not get quite as cold at night, but it’s still unpleasant), a voice pipes up behind her, “Corrin?”
She can’t help the smile that comes to her face. “Go back to sleep, Kaden, the sun’s barely up yet.”
“Where are you going?” he asks quietly, blankets rustling as he sits up. His voice stumbles, trips over itself in its sleepiness.
“I’m hungry,” Corrin tells him, standing and popping the joints in her back. She spares a glance at the bed, looking over her partners with a fond eye. Kaden keeps grimacing and rubbing his eyes, and Keaton, separated from Kaden by only the width of the gap that Corrin had just occupied, snores loudly, completely dead to the world. “I’m going downstairs to see if anyone’s awake. I think I can hear someone cooking.”
“You’re leaving like that?” Kaden asks, mustering an unimpressed expression even though he looks like he’s going to collapse back into sleep at any second.
“I was going to get changed,” Corrin defends, slightly embarrassed.
“No, I mean—” Kaden gestures in the vague direction of her head. “You know?”
“…No?”
“Your hair,” Kaden clarifies, crawling over the bed to tug on her shoulder-length hair. Corrin raises a hand, self-consciously mirroring Kaden’s action. “Let me take care of it for you.”
Kaden slinks out of bed and over to his traveling pack, rummaging through it in search of Corrin’s hair brush.
She had cut her hair before the battle—the battle. It had been bittersweet to see strands of her long white hair, cut free by the blade of the knife she keeps strapped to her calf, falling to the ground around her.
She had been in favor of burning it, of leaving no evidence it had even existed. Kaden had almost cried, and Keaton, predictably, had asked to keep some for his collection. In the end they had agreed on scattering it into the depths of Valla.
She remembers standing near the edge of an island, holding bunches of hair in her hand and not wanting to let go. She’d been transfixed, watching it drifting lazily down into the abyss beneath the floating islands, spiraling slowly into deep darkness.
Had it been practical? Yes. Corrin had been growing rather sick of her hair tangling in an ally’s spear, or worse, getting caught inside her own armor. She’d tried wearing it in a bun, but that was restrictive and made her scalp hurt, so this was clearly the best way to go. But had she felt, for a split fraction of a second, staring blankly into the vast empty space beneath the island, like she’d cut a part of herself out? Carved something hollow out of the shape of her identity?
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to dwell.
(She can’t help dwelling.)
“You don’t have to,” she tells him gently, sitting back down on the bed and putting her hands in her lap. Her protest is futile, she knows—once Kaden has decided to do something for someone, it’s nigh impossible to talk him out of it. “It’s not that bad.”
Kaden looks at her, hairbrush in his hand. “You say that because you can’t see yourself.”
“Do you have a mirror?” Corrin asks.
“Who do you think I am?” Kaden responds, affronted.
He pulls a mirror out of one of the pockets on his pack and shows Corrin her own reflection. She frowns.
“Is that really me?” she asks, running a careful hand through her absolutely atrocious hair.
“I know, right?” Kaden agrees, stowing the mirror on the nightstand. “I didn’t even know it was possible to get bedhead that bad.”
That’s not exactly what she’d meant, but she loses her words when she tries to explain.
Kaden sits behind her on the bed, gives her a gentle kiss to the shoulder, and gets to work. His hand is steady and gentle, guiding the brush through her hair with the kind of expertise that comes from long years of practice.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” Kaden says. Corrin closes her eyes, humming to let him know she’s listening. “You’re going to grow your hair out again, right?”
“Yes,” Corrin says. “As long as it’ll go.”
“Maybe I should too,” Kaden says. He sets the brush down and gets to work with his fingers instead, deftly untangling what must be a fairly nasty knot, if it requires that much precision. “You’re so pretty with long hair.”
“Thank you,” Corrin says, still unsure of how to respond to such a sincere compliment, even after all this time. She clears her throat. “I think it would suit you. Then I could help you comb it too, just like you do for me.”
“I hadn’t thought of that!” Kaden says excitedly—perhaps a bit too loud, since in the next second, Keaton groans and flops over, whacking Kaden with his arm.
“Shut up, I’m trying to sleep,” he grumbles, burying his face into his pillow.
“This is a great idea,” Kaden says, a tad quieter than before. He picks the brush back up and goes over the area with the tangle a few times, slowly in order to avoid painfully pulling Corrin’s hair. In short order, he proclaims her to be, “Ready to go out there and dazzle everyone in Cheve!”
Corrin laughs. “I’m not sure if I’ll be doing that much dazzling. We’re trying to be discreet, remember? But thank you. I feel ready.”
“You’ll dazzle anyone who sees you,” Kaden promises, briefly pressing his cheek to the side of her neck and withdrawing in the next second. “I’m gonna go back to bed. I think Keaton needs the cuddles.”
He’s right. Their boyfriend does look exceedingly lonely, all by himself like that.
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate your company,” Corrin says. “I’ll bring something back for you two, okay?”
“Okay!” Kaden enthuses, flopping back onto the bed and burrowing into the blankets next to Keaton.
Corrin gets changed—it’s weird not to be wearing armor, after so long spent walking around in it every single day. It makes her feel happy, light—no armor means no fights, no fights means no constant worry and fear—but it makes her vulnerable. At least she has her dagger. Corrin bends down to pat the side of her boot, to run her fingers along the subtle outline of the weapon’s sheathe. She can still protect herself, if need be.
She hurries down the stairs, steps spurred on by hunger.
A fair amount of guests are already awake, and sit scattered around the room, chatting and passing plates to one another.
Corrin stands in the entrance of the room, drinking in the sight, trying to smile despite the guilt slowly creeping into her.
Cheve had suffered heavy losses during the war. Its allyship with Nohr and its reputation for producing elite knights meant that Nohr had constantly been drawing on Cheve’s soldiers to bolster the forces of its own army.
All too often, Corrin had faced them in battle—how many times had she cut down those wearing armor emblazoned with the Luminary of Cheve, before she’d made things right, united them against the same common enemy?
Goldbrook is a small town, tucked away in the very northeast of the country. Its population barely reaches a few thousand people, from what Corrin’s seen. It’s unlikely Corrin has killed anyone related to people here but… but there’s always the doubt and creeping suspicion that maybe, just maybe…
“It’s in the past now,” Xander had said to her, sometime after she’d finally regained his trust. They’d been tucked away into a small corner of the castle in Lilith’s astral realm, Corrin hunched over and feeling sick, Xander hovering nervously at her side. “I don’t think they blame you for what you did.”
“But I still did it,” she’d choked out, unable to get the image of a bloody shining star out of her mind.
“You had to,” Xander had said firmly, resting his hand on her shoulder to steady her.
Easy for him to say, Corrin remembers thinking at the time. Easy for a man raised to wage war.
But she hadn’t resented him or been angry at his words or anything like that. There was only longing, and then a strange sinking feeling that maybe she shouldn’t want to be like him after all.
Corrin steps into the room.
Her mood isn’t quite ruined by the unfortunate goings-on of her mind, but the experience brings her down enough that she realizes she’d rather spend breakfast upstairs with Kaden and Keaton.
She helps the innkeeper carry up bowls of soup, loaves of braided bread baked perfectly golden, and some kind of food with eggs cracked into it, mushrooms cooked into the whites, and green vegetables sprinkled heavily on top.
It’s not exactly congruous with Corrin’s idea of breakfast, but it smells good and that’s what matters.
“Wake up, sleepyheads,” she calls out, setting her armful of dishes onto the dresser and thanking the innkeeper when they follow suit.
Food taken care of, Corrin closes the door behind the retreated, harried-looking innkeeper and turns back around to begin the monumental task of getting her partners out of bed.
*
“How long are we staying here?” Keaton asks, idly scratching at his ear with one clawed hand.
“How long do you want to stay?” Corrin asks. She picks up a necklace from the jewelry stall they’re standing in front of and examines it, admiring the thin, twisting gold links that make up the length of jewelry. Chevian craftsmanship is so delicate… she’s sure she’d ruin it within a week of owning it. Now, Kaden? Kaden could make something like this last forever. Maybe she should buy it for him. “Do you think Kaden would like this?”
Keaton briefly assesses the necklace. “It’s too pretty for me. So yeah, probably.” He scans the marketplace for a few seconds, considering Corrin’s first question. “I dunno! I was just curious. We definitely need to explore the forest before we leave though.”
Corrin’s eyes flicker over towards the distant treeline, far beyond the borders of the village they’ve been staying in for the past two days. The forests around here are dense and beautiful, boasting tall conifers with thick trunks and needles so dark green they look nearly black.
She does want to run around in there, now that she thinks about it.
“How much is this?” she asks the stall owner.
“What’ve you got?” he asks, eyeing her for any possessions on hand.
Corrin sighs. “Gold.”
The corner of the shopkeep’s mouth twitches upwards in amusement, and he strokes the stubble on his chin with clear displeasure. “Five and it’s yours. Ought to pick up a trade, miss. It’ll do you a lot better around here.”
“We’re not staying long,” she says, picking coins out of her purse and handing them over. He nods, and she carefully stows the necklace in the pouch at her hip. “Thanks. It’s a beautiful piece of work.”
“That it is,” the shopkeep agrees, nodding at her. “Good rest o’ yer day.”
“Come on, let’s go find Kaden,” Corrin says, pulling Keaton along with her to avoid losing him in the crowd. She knows he could find her by scent or sound or sight in a heartbeat if they were separated, but it’s nice to have an excuse to hold onto him.
“I think he abandoned us near the boutique,” Keaton offers helpfully. “Good riddance!”
“Keaton,” Corrin says sternly.
“I’m kidding,” he says, sounding devastated that she’d reprimanded him. “I can’t wait to see his stupid pretty face again.”
She grins. “Me neither.”
They find Kaden almost engulfed in a clothing rack inside the boutique. When he finally spots them, he lights up, joy overtaking his face.
“Look!” he says excitedly, holding up a hanger with a Hoshidan-style shirt on it. “Can you believe they have this kind of stuff here? It’s been two months since it was over! People work fast.”
“Clothes,” Keaton says disgustedly. “Who needs ‘em?”
“Everyone,” Corrin reminds him gently.
Kaden, not seeming to hear their conversation, takes a moment to inspect the piece of clothing more critically. “Though it’s not exactly right. Most Hoshidan clothiers don’t use dye this intense and—” He sniffs at a sleeve. “—smelly. The sleeves are also a little tight, and the stitching is distinctly Chevian all around. It’s a good try, though, and I like how the fabric feels. I think I’m gonna get it.”
“It’ll look great on you,” Corrin says. If she’s completely honest, she knows next to nothing about clothes—growing up in a tower hadn’t exactly been the best place to nurture a love of fashion. But seeing Kaden so passionate about it is enough to lift her spirits. “I got something for you too.”
“Really?” Kaden says, perking up even more and bouncing over to her. “What is it?”
“It’s a—ack, Keaton! Give me a little warning before you do that!”
Keaton’s still clinging to Corrin’s arm, which means that when he sees something off in the corner of the shop and heads over to it, he ends up dragging Corrin along with him.
“Go pay for that, I’ll… look at fabric with Keaton for a moment, I guess,” Corrin says, smiling apologetically. Kaden shrugs and skips over to the stormy-looking shop owner. “Really, Keaton?”
“Sorry!” he apologizes, not really sounding sorry at all.
He releases her arm and digs through the neatly-arranged rolls of fabric, coming up with a magnificently ripped up piece of sackcloth, so out of place among the pristine textiles. What is that doing here? Corrin casts a glance back towards the neat rows of clothing, none of them even remotely looking like the piece of garbage Keaton’s clutching in one hand.
“It’s perfect,” he says dreamily, shoving it into his pocket.
“It’s a little clean for your collection,” Corrin comments, warmth bubbling up inside her when Keaton immediately latches back onto her. “Deciding to change things up a little?”
“It’s a souvenir! And besides, I can roll it around in mud or maybe a carcass later,” Keaton says, trailing just a step behind her as the two of them rejoin Kaden. He’s haggling with the shopkeep, holding up a little carved figurine of a kitsune (in fox form) and making extremely exaggerated demands. “Kaden, let’s get out of here.”
“I,” Kaden says, pausing his negotiations with the shopkeep to raise his eyebrows at the two of them, “am engaged in something VERY important right now. I need my space.”
The shopkeep sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. Or maybe just her nose. Corrin’s not sure if Keaton smells bad right now or not; she’s kind of gotten used to it, which doesn’t bother her as much as it probably should.
“If it gets you three out of here, I’ll take it,” she says, snatching the wooden kitsune out of Kaden’s hand. “Thank you for your business.”
Though that had been a… less than warm interaction, Corrin can’t help but find a sense of deep satisfaction from being able to shop without having to worry about a fight breaking out. Without having to constantly count, count, count, how many emergency rations does the army need, how much money can we afford to spend, how long is it safe to be away from the castle.
She’s shopping, and enjoying the marketplace, and doing it because she wants to and she can.
She grabs Keaton and Kaden’s hands in her own and swings them at her sides, grinning widely. Azura can have fun being Queen. But for Corrin, that was never going to be a real option. This is the real way to live.
*
It’s dark out and the sky is filled to the brim with stars, so many that Corrin thinks they might start spilling down onto the earth. The astral plane had no stars; neither did Valla. And during the times she wasn’t in either of those places, there wasn’t any time to appreciate her surroundings.
In Cheve, it’s believed the dead become new stars in the sky. That belief is reflected in their temples to the deceased, with wide-open roofs and opal constellations painstakingly carved into the black stone floors—in the Luminary of Cheve, the emblem on the flag—in the glittering diamonds set upon the king’s brow, said to be the spirits of the founders of the country.
Corrin, perched on the roof of the inn all by herself, tilts her head back and tries to find her mother.
It probably doesn’t work that way. No, it most definitely doesn’t work that way. Mikoto hadn’t ever even stepped foot in Cheve, as far as Corrin knows, so the local beliefs don’t apply… but still.
What if?
What if Mikoto’s up there, watching her? Would she be proud?
Would she be disappointed? She frowns, tries to quell the doubt with a mental image of her mother’s smiling face—but that gives way to a vision of a sword, a burning pain in her chest, hooves and wings and anger. Above all, grief.
Wouldn’t she have wanted me to become queen like her?
The thought gives her pause.
Surely Mikoto would’ve wanted whatever made Corrin happy.
She touches her hair again, almost without thinking of it, and counts the stars, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twent—oh, I already got that one, searching for any one she resonates with, hoping she’ll see one and go oh, yes. That’s Queen Mikoto.
Not Mother. Not even Mom. Always Mikoto, or Queen Mikoto.
She doubts it escapes the notice of her Hoshidan siblings whenever she addresses Mikoto like that. But… does she deserve to say Mom? She’d… she had…
Panic. Confusion. Screaming. Footsteps in the courtyard, stampeding towards every available exit. And in the center of it all, a hooded figure.
Corrin pulls her knees to her chest, wraps her arms tight around them and tries not to shiver.
She squeezes her eyes shut, and while they’re closed, while she’s trying not to slip into nightmares, it occurs to her that if Mikoto is up there… then who else might be? Who else, among those she had killed, and those who had died for her?
Perhaps that’s why the sky is so crowded. All those people, and she hadn’t saved a single one.
Corrin clenches her jaw, breathes deeply in and out and in and out. She knows it’s going to hurt later, just like she knows she’s going to feel silly later for dwelling on this so long. It had been a war. Of course people were bound to die.
…Somehow, that doesn’t make her feel any better.
*
“You look tired,” Keaton says, flopping over onto Corrin’s stomach. Her hand instinctively goes to scratch him behind the ear, and he melts into her touch.
“What gave it away?” Corrin asks, yawning to punctuate her question. She smiles, half-tilt of her mouth that never fails to elicit a funny, kind of half-lovestruck and half-amused expression from Keaton. “The bags under my eyes?”
“Yeah, and just.” Keaton pauses. His brow is wrinkled. Corrin feels the faint impulse to reach over and smooth it out, to run her hands down the sides of his face. Keaton gestures at her, his hand making a wide arc and accidentally smacking into Kaden’s face. “You know. This.”
Kaden makes appropriately offended noises. Corrin laughs. “Really? All of me?”
“All of you,” Keaton says gravely. “But don’t worry, I know how to fix this.”
“Oh?” Corrin asks, pushing Keaton off her stomach. She appreciates the affection, but Keaton’s heavy and her stomach really is not built to withstand most of his weight for more than about a minute at a time. “So what’s your solution?”
“We need to go roll around in the mud—”
“NO!” Kaden cries, horrified. “We are not covering ourselves in dirt and filth. I’m putting my foot down here.”
“You don’t have to join if you don’t want to,” Keaton says.
“You’ll drag me in anyways!” Kaden says. “You always do.”
“Eh,” Keaton says, not attempting to deny the accusation. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
“No,” Kaden says. “It’s not fun! I always have to spend hours picking rocks out of my hair and I have to wash off in the river because no self-respecting bath house would let me in looking like that and then you have the audacity to laugh at me when it gets cold and—and I never get all of the mud off and it gets gritty and I never notice it until we’re all in bed and my perfect hair—okay-maybe-it’s-a-little-fun-at-the-time-but—”
“Breathe,” Corrin reminds him gently.
“I am breathing,” Kaden says, closing his eyes and schooling his expression. Or rather, attempting to school. His left ear flicks in an aggravated motion every other second and he can’t quite hide the angry grin trying to take hold on his mouth. “I am breathing so, so hard right now.”
“I know,” Corrin acknowledges.
Keaton—having been subject to this outburst many times before, and who will assuredly be subject to it again in the future—spreads his hands. It’s a sign of surrender. For now.
“Okay, so maybe no mud,” Keaton says, which makes Corrin just the tiniest bit sad because hey, she actually enjoys stomping around in a good old mud puddle once in a while. “Um… well, there is that forest.”
Corrin thinks about it.
She thinks about game trails winding through the trees. Fir needles so thick above her head, she can’t see the sky, and moon-dappled ground wherever the tree cover thins. Wind winding through her hair and stealing her voice as she runs.
“I’m not sure if sprinting through a forest at high speeds will help me be less tired,” Corrin starts, and before Keaton can protest, she continues with, “but it’ll be really, really fun. Let’s do it.”
Kaden raises no objections, evidently finding that proposal much more palatable.
The sky burns orange at its very western edge, and three sets of footprints disappear into the thick treeline, denoting the place where Corrin, Kaden, and Keaton enter the forest.
It’s nearly overwhelming at first, how many stimuli Corrin suddenly has to contend with. The animals who awaken at dawn and dusk are coming to awareness—rustling inside their dens, opening their mouths and letting loose their cries into the slowly darkening air. A river whispers quietly somewhere far off, loud enough for her to hear it even from a distance. And a slow, warm wind threads its way in between tree trucks to gently pull at her hair and clothes.
Keaton and Kaden waste no time. They’re both in their beast forms before they even take ten steps, circling Corrin and playfully nipping at her calves. She smiles, absently tracing a hand over the Dragonstone in her hip pouch. She can’t. She won’t use it, not if she doesn’t have to. But she has to admit she wonders what it would be like to wear her other half with the ease Kaden and Keaton seem to possess. Corrin is a dragon and a wild thing, angry and impossible to tame. Not fully human, though she tries her best. Keaton and Kaden… they have something different from her. Something warm. Something sweet. Something whole.
One of them initiates a game of tag; she can’t tell if it was her or not. But she finds herself giving chase, catching flashes of orange fur here and there, or the end of a grey-and-white tail disappearing behind a stand of shrubs.
It’s as good as she expected and maybe more: her feet thudding against the ground, kicking up sprays of dirt when she takes sharp corners; Kaden’s high-pitched yipping up ahead of her, coupled with the occasional half-howl from Keaton; the occasional glimpse of a star-studded sky through the slim dark needles of the Goldbrook Forest.
She tags Keaton and bounds off into the trees, lungs trying to draw in more air than they can hold. It’s properly dark now—twilight doesn’t last for long and it’s such a slippery time of day, those precious few minutes where everything blends together—though it doesn’t really make much of a difference to Corrin. Her eyes adjust better to dimness than most.
At some point Keaton stops to catch a deer and Kaden hangs back with clear disgust written all over his vulpine face, tails poised in a distinctly “don’t come near me” way as Keaton tears into its carcass. The fur around his mouth is wet and bloody, and gristle sticks to his teeth when he grins at her, lips pulling back to reveal rows of red-stained fangs.
Corrin gives him some privacy.
Kaden flops over onto his back and she obligingly ruffles the fur on his chest, set to the background noises of wet tearing and bone crunching. It’s not exactly pleasant but Corrin sees no real problem with this save for the fact that she’ll have to dunk Keaton’s face in a river to clean him off, and trying to clean Keaton is almost impossible on a good day.
There are just some things she has to sacrifice for this relationship. And she thinks that in a completely fond-exasperated way.
Their romp through the forest continues, dropping the game of tag and running for the sake of moving, for feeling, for the fleeting moments of clarity that come between breaths.
If she concentrates enough, Corrin can almost feel something under her skin, buried deep in her chest. It feels like scales rippling under scarred skin. The instinct to shed these layers and lose herself. Hooves and fangs and plated armor.
The three of them run until it’s nearly dawn, and when everything is said and done and Keaton’s face has been washed and the sweat scrubbed from all their bodies and they’re lying in bed together waiting for sleep to take hold, Corrin takes her Dragon Stone out of her pouch and stares at its lustrous surface and tries not to be bitter about it.