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He watches Lucina sink Falchion into Grima’s body (or maybe it’s Robin’s, yeah, it’s always been Robin’s after all) and for a moment she’s just as tall as Chrom used to be in his memories. For a moment Robin smiles through the blood the way all their parents must have smiled, like martyrs.
Doom dissipates from their world, dries the clouds upon their heads clear, lets gravity drop back on their shoulders, pool in their knees, anchor their feet to the ground below.
It knocks Inigo’s lungs upside down.
Then Lucina crumbles to the ground and she’s a knot of cuts and bruises and grief but she’s looking up and there’s raw joy prickling her eyes.
Inigo knows it because it’s the same for him.
They’re all quiet for a while; the sunlight hits them like spring after the snow has melted away and there’s nothing but tender, green grass beneath.
Brady walks slow steps around them, Maribelle’s staff clutched in his hands, as he mutters a string of kind words, makes their wounds glow and itch.
At some point the streets of Ylisstol start their murmuring too: it climbs the walls of the castle in gusts of warm air, carries disbelief and hope and all what’s left with it like a homage, a memento. It grabs them by the collar and shakes them to their senses.
Cynthia and Owain are the first to run back inside, run back where there’s still life, where there’s people waiting for the good news.
Grima has been defeated, we’ve won, we’ve made it, it’s over―
Inigo hollers it all down the edge of the castle roof.
.
They throw a bunch of old, dusty bedsheets on the floor of Lucina’s room, empty every closet until the pavement disappears under layers of blankets and pillows. Kjelle grumbles under her breath about frivolousness but she helps them out anyway, takes her armor off for the first time in a time longer than Inigo can remember.
It’s their first peaceful night from the day they were born and they spend it huddled together on the floor of their princess― no, Exalt’s bedroom, a heap of sore bones and newfound dreams rustling like sparrows clustered on spread soil.
Owain finds his way by Inigo’s side in the dark, wraps an arm around his waist without actually pulling him closer, just to make sure he’s there and that he knows Owain is too.
He’s been doing it since their mission in Plegia but there’s something more to it now, something new in the way they let each other in, let sleep take over every inch with no hesitation.
It makes Inigo wish for the dawn to come in slowly.
.
“You look sleepy.”
Nah glances up at him from her spot near the fireplace. She’s been on patrol duty together with Cynthia and Gerome for the past four days and the manakete inside of her is starting to get sharper, the green of her eyes wilder.
“I’m positively exhausted,” she says and it makes something inside of Inigo clench so tight it kind of hurts. “Lady Tiki is being quite… encouraging though. I guess.”
He remembers his father, knees pressing on burnt, sterile ground, blood stains on his hands and his clothes. They used to pray together sometimes, pray for the ears of a dragon long gone.
Now their heavens have ears that can listen, and a voice that can talk.
Inigo is sure his father would be overjoyed if he knew.
“That’s good,” he says, has to clear his throat as he crouches down by her side. “Really good.”
Nah just nods, maybe hums under her breath but it’s lost to the crackling of the fire, to the warmth turning back to ashes years of disheartening silence and one way conversations with graves that should not have been theirs to mourn.
It makes Inigo wonder about the charred wood that still creaks below his sternum, about how heavy the things he’s lost can be.
Maybe that’s just how loss itself works.
“I’m going to write it all.” Nah’s voice’s always got a certain shakiness fraying at its edges but it feels like molten steel now. “I’m not letting anyone forget, not even when it’ll be just me.”
Inigo inhales thick smoke, swallows the burnt and the dirt.
.
He’s feeling antsy.
He knows there’s no reason for him to be, yet leaving Ylisstol still feels glaringly wrong somehow.
“You’re picking at your scabbard,” Owain states, no real judgement in it. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“Well, if only somebody would’ve stayed behind at our Exalt’s side instead of following me―”
“Lucina can look after herself just fine. And don’t you forget the valiant heroes that lurk in her shadow, ever alert to the dangers that still roam our beloved halidom―”
“That’s enough, thanks.”
Owain merely laughs, ruffles Inigo’s hair in some poor attempt at reassuring him. Not that it doesn’t work every time.
“Ah.” Inigo stops, almost stumbles: in front of him there’s the house he’s grown up in until his parents never came back and he was taken away by the troops. “We’re here.”
Ivy has claimed the most of the walls, clawed at the bricks and the mortar, turned it all deep green. It’s kept the house from turning into an empty shell, alive even as risen made life seem the most volatile of things.
Owain is staying quiet for once, and Inigo can’t see his face because he’s got his eyes glued to the front door (the red paint has faded and the wood is chipped, the doorknob is missing) but he can hear his footsteps by his side and that’s enough to stop him from kneeling down like a pilgrim in front of the ruins of his temple.
He’s still alive, he’s still the proof they were alive too.
“You know,” he says out loud, probably. He hopes so. “My mother was really good at playing hide and seek.”
He can see Owain turning to him out of the corner of his eye. “Olivia?”
In any other situation Inigo would take the chance to give him a taste of his own medicine, something along the lines of No, our great universal Mother Naga the holy manakete, and Owain would bite his lips into a poorly disguised smirk, maybe shove him with no real intent.
Right now he doesn’t do that.
“She had a talent for finding the most improbable places where to hide, I swear.”
The door opens up for him without too much wrangling, caves in with a high pitched whine; inside, the house is painted in hues of dust and mold and there’s a field mouse quickly scrambling away from them.
Inigo steps in first, thankful for the silence they’re both keeping. It’s refreshing compared to his mother’s singing voice that won’t stop howling in his memories, projecting afterimages of a child he no longer is leading him through the hallway.
“There was this cupboard in the kitchen― She hid in there one time, no idea how did she manage to fit inside.”
Owain makes what should probably sound like an impressed noise, soft and low, and truth be told it makes Inigo laugh a little.
“I searched for so long I actually ended up crying.” His voice still sounds way too thin though, way too earnest, the memories from that day too vivid. “She rushed to me and she wouldn’t stop apologizing, it was almost funny… Mother and child sobbing over an hide and seek session went bad.”
This time it’s Owain who laughs, presses a callous palm against Inigo’s nape as if it could be enough to hide the longing tearing them both apart, eating up, hollowing them from the inside.
They’re still alive, so that’s enough.
.
He visits his mother’s grave the day after. He knows Owain has gone too in the early morning and that now he’s off somewhere, doing something.
Probably hunting, or reciting poems to trees Inigo hopes can’t really hear his atrocities.
“Just so you know,” he says, sits down in front of the grave with a huff. “Whatever that guy might have told you, don’t listen to him.”
There are weeds and moss covering up the stone so he starts plucking and scratching, careful not to touch the flowers: his mother used to love the humblest things.
“I’m doing just fine,” he adds after a while and he knows he’s being stubborn but then again, children are allowed to be stubborn with their parents, or at least that’s what Severa told him years ago.
He tries to dance for her, spins himself around for hours until his legs bend and his vision blurs, until he can’t hear his own thoughts over the thumping of his heart in his ears anymore.
It feels like the worst performance he’s ever given, like a closed cupboard in an empty house.
.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
He’s just come back to Ylisstol and he’s already being overwhelmed by the passing of time, the noise, the constant pulse beneath it all.
In front of him Cynthia grins like a wild beast; the smell of the barn is making Inigo feel a bit queasy but she’s utterly unaffected, tall and undefeated in her throne of hay and mud.
“And I can’t believe you managed to drag Severa into it, that’s seriously impressive.”
“I didn’t drag anyone, I just asked!”
They both know Cynthia’s asking often tiptoes around the fine line between questions and orders but neither of them bothers to admit it out loud. No point in stating the obvious.
“She wants to bring back the pegasus knights just as much as I do, you know, she’s putting real care into this.”
For a moment Inigo wonders if there’s anything Severa wouldn’t put care into, if there’s a way to stop her from giving the whole of herself away without a second thought.
That’s not just her , something in the back of his mind objects, and he admits defeat to it.
“Do you think we should follow our parents’ footsteps?” he asks instead. “Is that the right choice?”
Cynthia blinks up at him like she’s not sure she’s heard him right, head cocked to one side, the whole blue of the sky reflected in her stare.
“There is no right choice, Inigo,” she states and for a second it’s his father speaking through her lips, calm and true and wiser than he will ever be. “There’s only what you want to do.”
.
Before, when the dark felt like part of their skin, sticky and ice cold, reeking of iron from their rusty weapons and rustier blood, they didn’t have much to eat.
“This stuff is so much better than bugs,” Owain declares like he’s singing the praises of long lost heroes (Inigo supposes he kind of always is, in his head), then shoves another spoonful of venison stew in his mouth, making a point of being as noisy as humanly possible. Gross.
“I don’t know,” Inigo retorts, his own bowl of food warm between his hands. “Bugs have that crunchy factor…”
“Don’t say that while I’m eating!”
“I’m eating too.” And honestly it’s kind of surreal, kind of alienating because he’s not used to this, he’s not used to not being on guard for every little thing or feeling clean or safe or anything― anything the aftermath of their win has brought him.
He’s not used to having.
The meat in his stew is tasty, the potatoes and carrots sweet; he chews it all up thoroughly, waits for the warmth to settle down in his stomach like a dead weight.
For once, guilt doesn’t come.
When they’re both done (it doesn’t take long, in the end they’re still two starved wolves), Owain lets himself fall flat on his bed with a content sigh. “That was good.”
“I guess so, yeah,” Inigo concedes, and they both laugh.
Their hands are touching but they choose not to comment, not when Inigo’s got his head turned to the wall and Owain’s humming an old feroxi lullaby to himself. Probably a memory of his father.
That night Inigo dreams of kind words and slow dancing routines, of his mother’s pirouettes and the taste of warm stew.
.
“I believe our parents are watching over us,” Lucina tells him one day.
They’re walking through the streets of their capital and everything is filled to the brim with sounds and colours and smells so vivid they make Inigo’s head spin on itself just a little bit.
“And I believe they are happy.”
A girl with rosy cheeks offers them a basket full of fresh eggs, some children swirl around their legs with flower crowns in their hands. They drape some on the both of them in the middle of the market and Lucina smiles her brightest smile, giggles without holding back as she bows down shimmering with glory, enthroned once more.
Inigo thinks that if it’s her, if it’s his friend and comrade and Exalt with flowers hanging askew all over her forehead, then he will believe her.
(He always has.)
.
His dancing has gotten better.
He’s gone back to his house too and he’s started to clean it up, room after room. His kitchen wasn’t any different from how he remembered it, just a bit quieter, and when he opened the cupboard there was nothing inside.
Not his mother, curled up and ever waiting, not the war that took her away from him, not a single accusation.
Only a few cobwebs and the weightless, breathless realization that the world wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
Since then he’s started to dance again: he throws himself into it every night, the way he used to when he was younger and prone to sneaking out, and it doesn’t feel quite as hopeless as before.
“Let me say,” Owain declares with his usual I’m about to make you regret thinking that starting a conversation with me could ever be a good idea, “that I consider myself utmost honored for you, my friend, have deemed me worthy of gazing upon your private performance―”
“Owain.”
“Okay, okay, you go. Geez.”
Inigo bows his head to him, tries his best to hold back a snicker because right now Owain is his audience and snickering at the audience would be pretty distasteful.
Instead he counts to four in his head and music wipes the world away. There’s room for just his body and the motions he’s practiced for so long he doesn’t even need to think anymore.
He dances and there’s nothing holding him back.
When he stops he can feel the flush on his cheeks, the trembling in his shins, the silence ringing in his ears.
“I, uh,” he starts, but the next moment Owain is up and rushing to him, grinning down with a smile that’s all scrunched up, all folds and freckles and pride.
Inigo kisses him.
It feels like that night in Plegia, the leftover adrenaline shaking them both from head to toes like drums parading through their bones because they’d made it , except this time death is nowhere in sight and all their cuts are mended, all their bruises faded.
“You’ll make a wonderful dancer,” Owain murmurs, nose pressed against Inigo’s temple, and he sounds like the embarrassed kid he his but that’s what makes Inigo drag him closer.
“I know,” he says, hides his laughter in the crook of Owain’s neck.