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“Sheesh, do you need to tug so hard?”
Elise flicked him in the nose. “More like am I tugging hard enough! Come ooon, I promise it will be worth it.”
Leo sighed and resigned himself to his sister’s pull. “Elise, you know we’re all busy right now. Father has been working us relentlessly. I suspect he’s planning to invade Hoshido in the near future.”
Elise faltered in her step for a moment, before continuing down the castle hallway. “I know, I know. But—”, and now she had the audacity to look at him with those sad eyes she had been sporting more frequently, “—can’t you spare a minute or two for me? Just one moment…” She trailed off, grasping his hand a bit tighter. Seeing her like this made his heart fall. He brushes the feeling off.
“Fine, if you insist this much.” Elise beams; he takes his hand back. “If this isn’t worth my time, I’m going back to my studies.”
“It will be! Or at least I think it will be?” Before he can retort, she stops at a room. “Here it is!”
“My expectations are ready to be let down, as low as they already are.”
“Oh shut it Leo!”
Elise tries to open the door the wrong way. Leo almost smiles, but instead scoffs. “Dimwit.” He pulls the door open for her. She tugs his head down and covers his eyes with her hand. “What in the gods’ names do you think you’re doing?”
She giggles. “Surprising you!” He sighs.
“I can just close my eyes if that’s what you want.” He does so without her reply. Now she takes her hands off of his face, and leads him forward. He’s tempted to look just to get a rise out of her.
“Aaaand open!”
When he opens his eyes, he pauses a moment. “Elise, you…” Leo hardly can believe it, and his sister simply grins.
“It took a lot of research, but ta-da!” She twirls around a room full of greenery as far as the eye can see. “It’s been my little project for the past year.” She runs to the end of the repurposed servants’ library and pushes the curtain windows open. The sun that illuminates the room seems incredibly unnatural for the eternal darkness Nohr was infamous for.
Leo finally breaks from his daze and starts approaching the plants individually. “Rhododendron.” He lifts another leaf. “Dracena surculosa… Elise, these are native to Hoshido. How did you get them here?”
“That’s my trade secret!” He shakes his head at the fact she seems smug about it, his mind already can come up with a few ways. “I’m just so happy you seem to like it! Yeah that’s right, Leo smiiiled!” He frowns and she giggles.
“I’m… touched.”
That’s enough to cause her whole figure to light up. He shakes his head; was that all it took to brighten her world? “May I ask why you did this for me?”
“Well, that’s easy dummy.” She picks a few dead buds off of a flower. “You said you always wanted to see a garden awhile back. And I guess I did too! It’s so dead over here. Seeing those black trees all the time gets boring.”
That was a lie; Elise had said how beautiful she thought the woods around the castle were. “Is that all?” He stops staring at the greenery and meets her eye. She plays with her pigtail. “Surprising me with this on your birthday seems a bit counterproductive, does it not?” Her eyes widen.
“You remembered?”
He rolls his own. “Why would I forget? Congrats on surviving to 17. Maybe one day you’ll actually act your age.”
“Hah, unlikely.” She pulls a chair next to him. “I’ll leave that to you.”
They sit like this for awhile. She watches the dust float through the room, and he enjoys the rare moment of repose she’s created for them. “Though that doesn’t answer why you insisted on me coming here today of all days.”
Elise leans her head on his shoulder. “Nothing gets past you, huh?” He glances down at her. She always seemed to have a childish polish to her words, but in these past few moments she felt like another person entirely. It unnerved him, a bit. “You’ll think it’s corny.”
Well, that was just asking for a remark, but something in her eyes gets him. “Try me.”
She picks another dead stem. “I guess I just thought that the best gift I could have today would be something like this… All of us, just happy and carefree like we used to be.” Before Leo can think about it, she abruptly pushes her seat back and skips around the few bookshelves. “Well Xander said he was busy today, and Camilla is nowhere to be found, so I guess it’s just you and me!”
He puts his feet on the table. “That is, admittedly, kind of corny. But it’s better than you asking for some outlandish gift like you used to.”
“Father never did buy me a unicorn!”
“Right, that’s what it was.”
He takes a few more looks around at what kind of plants she had been growing. He could identify quite a few as indirect light users. She really had done her research.
“Hey, Leo?”
She comes back to where he’s reclining. “Could I ask something a little… selfish?”
He puts his hands behind his head. “If it’s for a pet dragon or something, the answer is no. Corrin already acts enough like one.”
“No, nothing like that… I just want a promise. That you’ll make time like this for my next birthday.” She extends her pinky. “That’s all!”
The fact she thinks locking it with their fingers makes it more viable is amusing. Ah, he might as well entertain it. “I don’t see why not.” He links fingers with her. “Gods, you act like such a child.”
“Well if I don’t, who will?”
~
Leo doesn’t visit Xander when his day comes around.
He has a lot of feelings towards him— anger, disappointment, an overwhelming emotion of a kind of betrayal. There was some unspoken obligation he expected him to live up to as eldest, and he failed miserably.
Elise did the opposite. There were no expectations for her to fulfill, and yet in hindsight she was trying to accomplish something far greater than anyone else. His thoughts are more complicated on her; he gets waves of nausea and there is always regret, regret for what was left unsaid, regret for what he didn’t see, regret he prioritized sorting his own heart before making sure hers wasn’t bled.
But he made a promise, and this time he would put her before himself.
He kneels down. He would like to say the flowers he lays on her grave are from her garden. It had died since.
“Happy birthday, Elise.”