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The clanking of chains.
The rustling of fabric.
Shamir sat up against the cold wall of her cell, trying in vain to find a more comfortable position. She had been locked up for over a week now, and the shackles bruising her ankles seemed to have become embedded in her skin. A week since she had been unable to move a single muscle without feeling a sharp pain spread throughout her body.
A week since she had been wondering when she had started to screw up.
When she had chosen to become a mercenary ?
When she had left Dagda ?
When she had joined the Order of Seiros ?
Or when she had rallied to Edelgard's side to stand against the Church ?
Probably a little bit of all three.
Shamir let out a long sigh, running the tongue on her lips dry. Thirst in a dungeon was much harder to bear than the scorching heat of the Dagda desert. Even more so when the stupid guards amused themselves by taunting her from behind the bars. Perhaps if she had made the same choice as them, she would be on the winning side. Perhaps she would be drinking a pint of beer instead of languishing in a cold, damp cell.
Perhaps she would be drinking a pint of beer with Catherine.
Catherine, who had begged her to join her. To stay with her.But no.
Shamir abandoned her. Shamir left her alone. And Shamir regretted it.
Now that she had lost the war, now that she was preparing to be executed, Shamir realized how much she had missed Catherine all these years.
How she would have loved to see her again, despite the conflict that separated them.
The archer felt guilty for not having spent more time with her. She had joined the Empress's ranks shortly after accepting the advances of the blonde swordswoman.
Indeed, after several unsuccessful attempts at seduction, Catherine had finally managed to provoke that little thrill in her stomach that she hadn't felt since the death of her companion.
Although Shamir initially saw her as nothing more than a noisy, clingy fly, she had come to appreciate her presence by her side.
Her loud voice, one she could recognise from several metres away.
Her beautiful blonde hair, soft and thick, in which she loved to bury her face when she was tired.
Her tanned skin, darker and warmer. How she would have loved to run her fingers and lips over it just one more time.
And above all, her blue eyes, bright and deep. Every time she saw them, she felt herself turning back into a shy, hesitant teenager. It took her a while to understand what that meant.
That she was in love. That she was in love with Catherine, her annoying, loud but nonetheless captivating partner.
Shamir had a hard time accepting it. First of all, because the blonde was a girl.
Unlike some people, she had never seen homosexuality as something wrong or unnatural, but she had also never thought she could be attracted to women.
And if there was one thing Shamir hated, it was stepping out of her comfort zone.
When she arrived in Fodlan, she realised that it wasn't a taboo subject, as it was in some branch of the Church. You only had to give one look at Petra and Dorothea, kissing without even bothering to hide, to understand it.
Shamir had hesitated and doubted. For a long time. Before taking the plunge.
And it had worked. The few weeks spent with Catherine had been a few weeks of happiness, the kind of happiness she hadn't felt since the death of her old partner.
But she had to ruin everything. She had to leave. Against the Church.
Against Catherine.
She wasn't really in favour of Edelgard's ideals, but she wasn't really against them either. She had never felt concerned by these stories of emblems, after all. But the Empress had seduced her, waving a full purse in front of her nose, dangling the possibility of returning home before her eyes.
And Edelgard did kept her promise.
Shamir returned to Dagda and stayed there for a year.
By day, she worked to assemble a mercenary troop for the Empire. By night, she went out to get dead drunk in seedy taverns. And tried to forget Catherine in the arms of another. Every time she woke up in an unfamiliar bed, she was overcome with guilt.
Had she really made the right choice? Was this really what she wanted?
To slave away like a beast all day long. Getting drunk on increasingly stronger alcohol. Sleeping with strangers and then waking up with a massive hangover.
Over and over again.
Shamir had managed to keep up this lifestyle for a year. Then she cracked. She had to leave Dagda before she went completely mad.
She needed a breath of fresh air to avoid drowning in work and alcohol.
Back in Fodlan, Shamir would surely find Petra again, the poor girl didn’t have any other choice but to side with the Empire.
Perhaps she could even see Catherine. Perhaps her partner had finally realized that Rhea wasn’t as good a person as she wanted people to believe. She had returned to Fodlan with this hope secretly buried in her heart.
The disappointment had been all the greater.
Catherine had not changed sides, quite the opposite. The betrayal of Edelgard – Shamir’s betrayal – had only strengthened her convictions.
The archer saw it on the battlefield. It was the first time they saw each other in over a year. The hatred mixed with sadness she had seen in the blonde’s eyes had left a bitter taste in her mouth and kept haunting her for days.
It was clear now : there was no going back.
They had avoided fighting each other, however, in that battle and all those that followed. Because there had been many more. For five long years, the Empire had fought relentlessly, gaining more and more ground against the Church.
Until the professor returned. Until they emerged from the hole they had fallen into long, long ago.
Like a flower, Byleth reappeared to change the course of war.
They should have supported the Empire, they should have joined their former students, almost all of them had joined Edelgard, after all. Only Dorothea and Bernadetta had chosen to stay by the Church’s side. Shamir did not know why Byleth had also chosen to fight against the Empire, but who could even imagine what was going on in their professor’s head.
She still remembers Edelgard’s expression when she learnt that her teacher – and more than just her teacher, she knew it – had risen up against her and sworn to eliminate her.
This war had broken many love stories.
Petra lost Dorothea.
Edelgard lost Byleth.
And she lost Catherine.
As soon as the professor entered the fray, the war took a radical turn. The Empire was crushed, literally. In just a few months, Byleth had accomplished more than the entire Church had in five years. Little by little, Edelgard and her army lost ground, crushed by… everything.
The professor’s talent as a strategist, their charisma that brought together the Alliance, the Kingdom and the Church.
Shamir had remained loyal to Edelgard. She didn’t really know why, she wasn’t the kind to be enslaved by such things as loyalty. Perhaps the mere idea of having to face Catherine’s reproachful gaze dissuaded her from joining the professor. She no longer knew what to think, everything was happening too fast, . She was losing everything she had left.
She was losing this war.
At least she hadn’t been killed during that terrible battle, where she saw Edelgard and Hubert, her servant faithful until death, fall.
But Byleth warned her, before locking her in that cold cell : Shamir would not escape execution.
Strangely, this news left her cold. She screwed up, she knew as much. It was only fair retribution.
Shamir had lost all sense of time, she no longer knew how many days or weeks she had been there. She had stopped counting after a fortnight. More than fifteen long days without a single visitor. Except for the guards, who spat on her when they brought her meals. Not a world, if not some insults here and there. Who would want to talk to someone like her ? Not Catherine, apparently. Shamir had waited for her to come, full of hope. The blonde couldn’t not come to see her, could she ?
Catherine was the only person she wanted to talk to before her execution, just one last time, that was all she asked.
To apologize, to ask for forgiveness. To hear her voice, to see her beautiful blue eyes.
But Shamir hadn’t seen her on her first day of imprisonment, nor on her second.
Nor on the third or fourth.
Nor on any of the days that followed, in fact.
She was alone, completely alone. The hours, days and weeks all blurred together. The walls spun around her. Little lights danced before her eyes when she moved, the only flashes of light in the darkness. She was suffocating, but each breath she took was more painful than the last. The chains bit into her ankles, covered in dried blood from her damaged skin.
She was cold, hot, hungry, thirsty.
She was alone. She couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted it all to end.
***
The clanking of a key in a padlock.
The rustling of satin fabric.
Shamir sat up against the cold wall of her cell, listening intently to the sound. It drew nearer.
Strange.
Usually, the guards stopped well before, leaving her bowl at a distance she could barely reach.
And, indeed, it was not a guard. With his emerald hair and beard, it was not difficult to guess the identity of her visitor. Seteth. He spoke in a cold, cutting voice.
“It is time for you to face the judgement of the Goddess”