Chapter Text
It starts with chills.
It is mid-spring and the low-lying mists are beginning to sweep across Hoshido’s broad plains. They’ll clear up in a few weeks, Ryoma tells Corrin, and then you’ll see how beautiful the blossoming trees are, but Corrin think that they’re beautiful enough as things are now: pastel pale petals drifting down from a blurry white expanse, thin and translucent.
It starts with chills that have him shivering himself awake in the dead of night, as if he were waking from a nightmare although none exists. He has nightmares, certainly, but this is not the same.
Perhaps it is only a slight illness caused by the change of weather; Nohr was never this humid, after all. This is what he thinks for the first week or so. It is simply a small bug, something that will pass just in time for the fog to clear, so that he does not have to spend his first blossom-viewing bedridden. Sakura had been so excited to show him the best hills to watch from.
But the weather continues to cycle warmer and he continues to feel as if his breath is about to freeze in his lungs. When Hinoka frowns at him in concern, he repeats the lie that he’s telling to himself, and she sends for Azama. The staff doesn’t help, but he pretends it does.
True to Ryoma’s word, the fog vanishes, and it is soon time for blossom-viewing. Sakura leads the way to her favorite hill, and Hinoka posts herself at his back like his personal guard. She brings him one of her spare scarves, and he’s grateful for it. It doesn’t stop the claws of ice that seem to be crushing his heart in their grip, but there is something comforting about the silk around his neck nonetheless. Comforting, like Ryoma helping Sakura spread out a cloth for them to lie on as the sun shines down across Hoshido, like Takumi pointing out distant clusters of trees that none of them would have noticed otherwise.
It’s good. The tremors subside, even if the cold doesn’t.
It is the first spring after the war, and flowers can grow even through ash. For the first time since he placed the last stone on Azura’s cairn, he feels like perhaps things will be all right again.
At least, until the tremors return.
He doesn’t shake anymore, not outwardly. No, the tremors turn within, burrowing into his veins and flesh. Corrin feels like his very blood is itching; it sends his nerves twitching like he’s not in control of what they feel anymore. Instead of suddenly waking up in the middle of the night, now he can’t even fall asleep. Whenever he ventures outside, he gets the urge to walk away, something tugging at his instincts, pulling him away from Castle Shirasagi.
He tries to sleep, to lay still, and even though he grows more tired day by day, he can’t. He tries to keep his feet planted, rooted into the earth like the trees in the castle courtyard, but something keep calling at him to move, to walk away.
It takes him one day, without his notice. He spends the entire stroll in a haze, but when cognition returns to him, he can’t find it in himself to be surprised at where he ends up.
The lake, like a jewel in the cusp between afternoon and dusk, is beautiful at sunset, reflecting the violet just barely creeping into the furthest edge of the sky. The grass is cool between his toes, the very air tastes fresh with the sweetness of what comes after rain. The wind through the leaves, if he tilts his head just right, begins to sound like her voice.
The surface of the lake is still, free of ripples, but he hears the splashing anyway.
And oh, there she is, walking down into the light shining in the depths. His blood sings content and he knows what he must do.
The water envelops him like a lullaby, warm and gentle. Sleep comes easy, after that.
———
(sakura tells him that corrin is awake, but not aware, not yet. “it might be a few more days,” she says, her hands grasping her staff so tight that they are shaking.
takumi asks to see him anyway, because the last time he saw corrin, his brother was drifting face down in the middle of a lake.
this is not the first time he has seen corrin unconscious and feverish. of course king garon’s defeat would not stop all nohrian radicals, and many were still unhappy with a prince of nohr turning traitor; at one of the smaller joint feasts to commemorate the new treaty, the dishes had been fashioned out of melted down wyrmslayers.
this is not the same.
“if you don’t wake up, sakura’s going to cry,” takumi mutters sullenly, settling down by the futon. he leans the fujin yumi against the wall–there has been peace for months, but the fujin yumi is practically a third arm to him by now, and he knows ryoma feels the same about the raijinto. must be something about legendary weapons; if it weren’t for the mysterious illness, the fact that corrin had left yato in his room before heading out would be the biggest sign that something was desperately wrong.
“and if sakura cries,” he continues, “nobody will ever forgive you. maybe sakura will, because she’s like that, but you’ll still have made her cry.”
there is no response. takumi sighs and shifts in his seat. the silence is oppressive, and even though he knows that he’s talking to air at this point, he still feels the need to say something.
“see if ryoma ever invites takes any of us swimming ever again,” he says, hating how inane it sounds but not knowing what else to say. “i was looking forward to visiting the coast next summer. thanks for ruining it for everyone.”
“marx can’t swim anyway,” corrin rasps, startling takumi into knocking over his bow.
“marx? who’s marx?” corrin’s irises are blood red, pupils contracting and expanding as his focus goes in and out and in again. “corrin? brother?”
there is no answer, and corrin’s eyes are closed once more.)
———