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The field was covered in soldiers, some fallen and some still fighting viciously to not become like the others. The grass was so clogged with blood, the air so heavy with the sickening smell of rust and salt, that the earth itself seemed wounded. The sounds of metal clashing and claps of thunder though there was no storm rang through the air, deafening and oppressive, and yet even so the sounds were not so loud that they drowned out the battle cries and animalistic snarls tearing from human chests. A pained scream rent the air only to be abruptly cut off, signaling another fallen, but they joined the stillness on the ground without notice, and the battle raged on around them.
In the chaos that was war, many bodies fell like that: entirely unnoticed until one side won and the dead were accounted for. People would search frantically for their loved ones among the living, and often accidentally find them instead among those whose final breaths had already left them. There was no awareness in the midst of battle, no acknowledgement of any fight but your own and that of those nearest you. It was battle, and it was the only thing a soldier could afford to think about, because a distraction lasting only as long as it took to glance over at a comrade as they fell could mean their own swift death. A single swing of the sword was all it would take to down a distracted soldier.
And yet Chrom found his head turning in reflex, though there was no cue that urged him to look around. No telltale scream, no spell cut short, nothing that could have told him the worst was just about to happen. A simple instinct pulled his focus away from the person that fell beneath his sword, a sudden prickling along the back of his neck and a shudder that shook his spine. He didn’t know why he was looking around, but when he did, the very ground seemed to drop out from beneath his feet, and a pit opened up in his stomach, swallowing his insides and leaving him cold and empty.
It was in slow motion that he watched the tip of the blade pierce her chest. It was in slow motion that he watched an expression of shock and pain cross her blood-freckled features. It was in slow motion that he saw her opponent force the sword farther, up to the hilt, and the blade met the air again as it emerged between her shoulder blades. It was in slow motion as Chrom felt his weapon start to slip between his fingers and in slow motion that he tightened his grip on it again, mouth falling open in a soundless scream. It was in slow motion that, even as he lunged forward, she began to fall, sliding off of the faceless enemy’s weapon.
Chrom’s sword rose, and when it fell, it met the weak spot in the person’s armor between their shoulder and their neck, slicing clean through the chainmail underneath, severing skin and muscle and crushing bone. The stranger had no time to feel pain as they tumbled to the ground, and later Chrom would regret that—delivering them a quick and painless end after their crime—but just then, the enemy didn’t matter. They didn’t exist after they fell from beneath his blade.
It was in slow motion as he turned his back on the dead soldier and his eyes fell to the body crumpled on the ground, conspicuously small and surrounded by others garbed in enemy colors. His legs buckled beneath him, and he fell gracelessly to his knees, Falchion falling from his grip to land with a thud on the ground beside her.
Her clothes were shredded, so soaked in blood that their original color was impossible to distinguish. They had become an ugly, dark brown in some places and a wet, shiny black in others. Her sword lay on the ground inches from her slack grasp, the blade painted red, and a tome was peeking from beneath the remains of her robes, its pages wet and ruined.
Fingers shaking, Chrom reached out and rolled her onto her back, pulling her torso into his lap while her legs remained curled on the grass. The wound was nearly impossible to distinguish through her torn and bloodied tunic, but he pulled the ripped remains of her clothing aside. The blood had already slowed to a slow trickle from the injury, the body having lost it quickly and en masse, leaving the skin painted scarlet. Layers of flesh and tissue that Chrom had never seen before and wished he wasn’t seeing now met his gaze, red and angry and glaring at him like an accusation.
Thank you, Chrom.
“You can’t…” he rasped, fingers tightening on her shoulders. There was no response. Of course not. She had already gone. “No. Please, not you, not you .”
Then he truly screamed, a horrible, tortured sound of agony that tore itself from his throat as he pulled her to his chest, heedless of the blood and dirt. The single note ripped through the air, sustained far longer than his exhausted lungs should have been able to accommodate, and pulled the battle nearby to a stuttering halt. That noise was not one that belonged on a battlefield. Emotional pain was a luxury not allowed in the middle of a fight, so nobody knew how to respond when they heard a noise that couldn’t be anything else echo across the bloodied stage.
Friend and foe alike hesitated in confusion, whipping around to find the source of such a sound, and one by one their eyes alighted on Chrom clutching a single fallen body and curling himself around it while his sword lay useless at his side. As they realized what they were seeing, Chrom’s soldiers one by one echoed his distress, until the field rang with a new kind of pain, and for all the enemy soldiers were certain this was their victory, their hearts couldn’t help but ache for the others.
And then a wrath settled over the Ylissean army the likes of which the enemy had scarcely dreamt of, and fury and agony made their swords sharper, their arrows faster, their magic fiercer. Rage felled foe after foe and drowned the ground in blood as red as the vision of Chrom’s people until not an enemy was left breathing. Prisoners that might have been taken joined lives that might have been spared in a sleep with no end.
Here’s how it’s done.
Through it all, Chrom never found his feet or rose to join his comrades. He couldn’t bring himself to lay the woman in his arms back on the filthy ground, to set her back in a pool of her own viscous blood. There was nothing at all around him, nothing but cold darkness, and the limp body in his arms was his only reality. The harshness of it left his heart shattered, the pieces lodged painfully in his throat. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She was...she was invincible. Nothing could ever touch her. She was always three steps ahead. She was the strength of the entire army, the hope and the courage that fed all of them. She carried them when they had no direction, pulled them through battle after battle without fail, never sacrificing life where it wasn’t needed, never losing a single soldier in battle. She was unbeatable.
I do try and rest when I can, though. A lady needs her beauty sleep, after all.
A broken noise escaped him, a pathetic, breathless sob, and it was followed by another, and hot moisture was streaking down his cheeks and washing clean lines in the blood splattered across his cheeks. He was dimly aware of the people that slowly made their ways to his side, the others that didn’t kneel so much as fall before their beloved tactician, reaching out to touch some part of her as tears overflowed from shining eyes.
What sort of idiot blunders straight into the women’s bathing tent?!
Lissa made no attempt to stifle her grief, burying her face in her elder brother’s shoulder and wailing unashamedly, her fingers tangled with lifeless ones, and Henry and Sumia together took the other hand, faces twisted and wet. Cordelia and Frederick tried to keep themselves composed, as much for Chrom’s sake as their own, but they couldn’t force back the dampness in their eyes or pretend the trails of saltwater on their faces wasn’t there. Vaike stood behind his commander, face twisted as he tried and failed to look aloof. Morgan was clinging to his sister, face buried in her neck and shoulders shaking violently though not a sound escaped him, and Lucina stared in a sort of horrified incredulity, eyes wide and face paler than old ash.
Their tactician lay limp and cold in her husband’s arms, and the army she had directed so skillfully crowded around her, feeling despair fall over them like a cloud, for what was an army without its tactician, and what were they without her? There was no way to make up for her intuition, her keen eye and impeccable predictions that mimicked true clairvoyance.
Partners in crime? Hehe, I like the sound of that. Well, partner, your secret’s safe with me…
When Chrom rose to his feet, cradling his wife gently to his chest, the others rose with him and in silence parted to let him through. The trek to their camp was long, the air around them heavy as in the midst of their grief they all wondered the same thing: what would come of them now? They had cut down the enemies in the latest fight, but without their trusted tactician, what turn would the war take for them? Morgan was of course practiced in his beloved mother’s craft, but there was little chance of him reaching the level his mother had. Would he be enough to keep their ranks strong and undefeated?
I think of you as a great man and...dear to my heart.
Nobody could say anything, not of their fears or their sadness. There would be time to grieve together later, and there would be time after that to figure out their next move, but now they could only support their leader and their prince. His children, suddenly motherless, walked on either side of him, fingers surreptitiously curled in the cape draped around their father’s shoulders.
Chrom was in a daze, separated from real time and the world that was passing by him and anything that wasn’t the weight in his arms and the hair brushing his neck.
I can’t help but think back to the day we first met… Strange, isn’t it, the way fate brought us together? I am a lucky woman to have met you, and luckier still now.