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[FIC] abalation| fire emblem: heroes - metastable; chapters 7&8
title: metastable
series: fire emblem: heroes
sub-series: feh originals
characters: helbindi, sharena, fjorm, laegjarn, laevatein - all of the feh originals basically
rating: T
warnings: canon-typical violence, fjorm's chronic illness
previously: metastable, chapters 5&6
next: metastable, chapters 9&10
--
Chapter 7
The dead would be buried in spring. Quietly, Fjorm sent up a prayer to the great dragon Nifl as Anna set about the difficult task of collecting the badges of jewelry of the deceased. In being their commander she had the difficult duty of sending them back to their families alongside the dreaded letter of condolences. Fjorm didn’t envy her in the slightest. Thankfully, no one made any remarks of Anna’s usual greed but instead shuffled together into a ring around them to say goodbye.
“Let us remember the fallen,” Anna called out in the dark, half lit by magic and torch fire. “We may be in Nifl, but may they rest easy in Askr’s shade. We move on.”
-
“Here,” Laevatein said abruptly from Helbindi’s side, making him jump.
Then there was a letter shoved into his face and he snatched it away to pointedly crumple it in his fist. Laevatein turned away without so much as a backwards glance. She had completed a task and had moved on, her hand in her satchel and making a beeline for a coughing Fjorm. If she had any qualms about being a messenger, she didn’t show it.
Eyebrow twitching in irritation, Helbindi turned his over to see his name had been neatly written on the front in Múspell’s alphabet. But a closer look at the now shattered wax seal showed him it had been imprinted with the royal Nifl crest.
Helbindi immediately shoved the damn thing into his inner coat pocket.
Snow was still falling and they were still out in the open. This was hardly the time to get distracted.
-
Despite the bone deep weariness, the combined companies had moved as quickly as they could throughout the night. With any luck, it would be approaching daybreak once they reached the Serpent’s Tail Desert, and therefore the edge of Múspell.
The air was dry, a good sign in Laevatein’s opinion. Cold or not, it meant desert conditions were ahead, and that meant they were nearing the exit of the Fang. From there, it was only a day’s march - less, if Laejgarn anticipated their arrival and had sent wyvern-
“Here.”
Laevatein presented the second letter to Fjorm. To Fjorm’s credit, she did not jump like Helbindi. But then again, Laevatein supposed Fjorm had not lived the same way someone from Múspell had during her father’s reign.
She judged to have caught Fjorm in the middle of a prayer if her bowed head and clasped hands were anything to go by. Briefly, Laevatein wondered if anyone prayed to Múspell the way others did to Nifl and Askr.
She supposed Laejgarn had, in a way.
-
She dreamt sometimes. Dreamt like her sister does.
Did.
Her dreams are of a woman with sad and ancient eyes. And each night the woman drew closer, but each morning Fjorm forgot. She forgets that she ever dreamed and of the woman with the dagger. But she could never shake the cold that worsened each night.
This time the woman was an arm’s length away. The woman’s head was bowed and her hair was a frozen waterfall that curtained across her shoulders while she whispered to her blade.
“Not yet.”
“Until what?” Fjorm asked, even though she knew.
The woman looked up and startled Fjorm. She had sad eyes but they were also dead eyes. There was no life inside her. While they stood and stared at one another, dense fog seeped in around the two of them in thicker and thicker swaths until Fjorm could not see below her waist. Even as curious as she was, she could not turn her own head to look beyond.
“Nifl approaches. Please, make your goodbyes.”
Fjorm opened her mouth to ask who she is, what happens after, and would she see Gunnthrá and her mother-
Instead, the fog closed over her and the woman as it did every night, and sank down into Fjorm’s skin and to her bones. Nifl’s breath grew colder and so did she.
Then Fjorm was awake and coughing again. She had been placed back in the carriage, she realized once the worst of the fit had passed. An embarrassed blush burned across her cheeks - embarrassed at the idea that others thought her, a princess of an ice kingdom, too weak to handle a little storm.
Fjorm put a hand to her face to push away the guilt - someone must have had to have carried her in, she had no memory of getting in the carriage herself. She must have slowed everyone down - and sat up. There was simply no time to be sorry for herself when her friends were pushing themselves for the chance that they could save her.
Something fluttered to the floor and Fjorm picked it up. The letter that Laevatein had given her. Or attempted to, Fjorm thought sourly even while she pulled the contents from the envelope, before she had coughed herself into unconsciousness. Hríd’s handwriting, including the much messier one that was surely Ylgr’s, stared up at her and Fjorm felt comfort.
-
Fjorm had clearly been reaching for the door’s handle when Sharena flung it open with a happy laugh. She smiled all the more brightly at Fjorm’s surprised blink.
“We’re here!”
Here being the exit to the Fang’s Pass and a precarious path that wound its way down to the edge of Múspell’s western border. The snow storm had fruitlessly thrown itself against the peaks of the mountains and failed to chase after them. While snow still crunched under Fjorm’s boots, it was a paltry dusting compared to the drifts deeper in the pass. Down the trail, where people had begun to walk two by two, she could see the sun rise to cast vivid purples and oranges across the land and Sharena’s face.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Hopeful,” Fjorm answered, truthfully, even when her lungs twinged.
--
Chapter 8
Every single damn time Helbindi moved he felt that damn letter crinkle stiffly against his chest. Damn thing would burn a hole in his pocket at that rate. Even as he leaned back with his hand to shade his eyes from the midday sun to look for a speck of shadow, the outline of the envelope made itself known again. Again, no wyvern.
Hours ago, while the conjoined Askr and Múspell parties cautiously made their way down the mountain via a narrow cliffside passage a wyvern messenger had met with them to declare herself from Empress Laegjarn’s entourage.
“Urgency is utmost,” the rider had spoken in clipped tones. “Now that I have located you, I will return with other wyvern to bring Princesses Laevatein and Fjorm down the mountain. Your parties may travel with Her Highness' entourage once you reconvene at the desert entrance.”
Helbindi turned his attention to Fjorm, who had stubbornly insisted that she walk as far as possible with the insistence that a horse would be too slow given the unsafe terrain. Kiran, Alfonse and Sharena flanked either side of her while Laevatein had vanished beyond a turn up ahead. She had been surprisingly amiable with the lot, even had gone so far to smile - smile! - at one of Princess Sharena’s quips before the messenger had arrived. Given the ashy pallor to Fjorm’s face, not even accounting for her bone rattling couch, and the messenger Helbindi wasn’t surprised to learn later that Laevatein had marched her way past even the forward scouts.
Behind him, a horse nickered uneasily and Helbindi looked immediately to the sky again. Diving down from the clouds in a V formation came five wyvern. Speedy beasts from what Helbindi knew of their breeds. As they drew closer, Helbindi spotted the lead, splashed in gold and orange markings, with the empress herself second.
Helbindi rolled his shoulders to dislodge the uneasy feeling he had had since leaving Askr - he had not seen Laegjarn since she’d let him go those months past and didn’t relish the thought of another Múspell royal reminding him of what was going on in its reconstruction. The less he knew the better.
There was a minute of mad scramble when people tried making room for the obnoxiously large beasts while Alfonse called an order for someone to notify Princess Laevatein - out of the corner of his eye Helbindi watched a scout go darting down the trail. It probably wasn’t necessary given the bray of the remaining horses and loud echoing calls of the wyvern as they landed.
Somehow, as if the great dragon Múspell had arranged it, a ray of light spilled over the mountains to cast down directly upon Empress Laegjarn and her angular rams horn crown. But even while something settled in Helbindi at not seeing Surtur’s old crown - had it been melted in his defeat? Or had Laegjarn cast it aside in her rule - he caught her gaze.
Rather, he would have, if her eyes hadn’t been clouded over.
-
“Her Highness, Empress Laegjarn!”
Fjorm noted the minute tensing of Laegjarn’s lips - she clearly thought the formality wasn’t necessary either. Regardless, she and her friends all bowed.
“I thank you for holding off on the titles, Sophus,” Laegjarn said, causing her attendant to blush to her ears.
“Princess Fjorm, it is good to see you again,” Laegjarn continued, “even if my definition of ‘ see’ is very tepid at best. As well as you, Kiran, Alfonse, Sharena, and Anna.”
Anna had muscled her way to the front of the gathering to bow as well, Fjorm saw as she strode forward.
“I understand there is much we need to catch up on,” Fjorm said and Laegjarn’s face turned her way. Despite herself, and the fact Laegjarn could apparently not see her, Fjorm felt her face warm at the woman’s attention.
“Indeed. Though we shall have to wait until we have completed the rites to do so.” Laegjarn’s head lifted, as if to look out amongst the crowd. “Where is my sister?”
“HERE! Laegjarn, I am here!” Laevatein burst out from the ranks, face red and winded. She climbed into the saddle of the wyvern to Laegjarn’s right without preamble and with the skill of a learned flier. “Please, we must be on our way.”
Laegjarn nodded. “Princess Fjorm, if you please.”
Fjorm knew, though she did not know how or why, that time was not on their side. Still, a part of her felt the cool of loneliness that she would not have all of her friends at her side.
“Yes,” Fjorm said, abruptly realizing Laegjarn could not have seen her nod of acknowledgment.
“Not without me!” Sharena shouted, startling Fjorm and causing one of the wyvern to lift its wings defensively. She clasped her hands over her mouth. “Oops, sorry.”
“Sharena-” Fjorm began. Alfonse stepped up beside his sister, hand on her shoulder and with a warm grin.
“I would also like to request to accompa-”
"Now, now, hold on a moment!” Commander Anna, arms waving in a negative manner, and Helbindi both stepped forward before Kiran cpuld offer to go as well. “There is no way I can allow all of you to go off into dangerous territory without accompaniment.”
Laegjarn’s eyes narrowed, her voice cool, “Commander Anna, should your concerns lie with Múspell’s honor, I assure you I will see no harm come to them. I consider both Nifl and Askr to be allies and friends.”
Anna flushed as red as her hair as she realized how she had misspoken. “I- Your Highness, I did not mean that you or anyone from Múspell is untrustworth-”
“By the flames this is taking forever,” Helbindi groaned in exasperation and rubbed between his eyebrows. Laegjarn’s attention refocused on where he stood, face carefully neutral.
Helbimdi continued with a spared defiant glance at the empress. "Look, you hired me to watch over these three and Princess Fjorm, right? Then I’ll go and make sure they don’t go falling off the saddle or walk into an acid spring.”
“I- well, I suppose…”
Laegjarn cleared her throat. It was not a quiet noise. Fjorm smiled, eyes soft at her friends.
“Sharena did say she wanted to go first,” Kiran offered, and then mentioned something that involved the word ‘shotgun’ that Fjorm did not understand.
Alfonse sighed in his oft diplomatic - but mostly resigned and long suffering - manner. “We shall catch up to you, Fjorm, as soon as we make our way down.”
“Thank you,” Fjorm said. And then Sharena took her hand.
-
Anna, Alfonse, and Kiran all waved up to them as the wyvern took them higher and higher. Helbindi had been on wyvern back several times for an assessment of the terrain when he had been a general, but it never got easier.
“Please hang on tightly, General!” Einar, the wyvern lord of this damned beast, said. “The winds are very choppy with that storm nearby!”
Helbindi bit back a retort and looked away from the soldiers down below. He could no longer tell who was who now that the parties had resumed their march and turned his attention towards the mountaintops. The ugly purples and greys that had been the winter storm would not go far past the peaks, but the winds still spilled over in erratic gusts, and he knew that the pass was filling in fast with snow.
The letter pressed against him as Helbindi held onto Einar. Maybe he’d read it when they landed.
series: fire emblem: heroes
sub-series: feh originals
characters: helbindi, sharena, fjorm, laegjarn, laevatein - all of the feh originals basically
rating: T
warnings: canon-typical violence, fjorm's chronic illness
previously: metastable, chapters 5&6
next: metastable, chapters 9&10
--
Chapter 7
The dead would be buried in spring. Quietly, Fjorm sent up a prayer to the great dragon Nifl as Anna set about the difficult task of collecting the badges of jewelry of the deceased. In being their commander she had the difficult duty of sending them back to their families alongside the dreaded letter of condolences. Fjorm didn’t envy her in the slightest. Thankfully, no one made any remarks of Anna’s usual greed but instead shuffled together into a ring around them to say goodbye.
“Let us remember the fallen,” Anna called out in the dark, half lit by magic and torch fire. “We may be in Nifl, but may they rest easy in Askr’s shade. We move on.”
-
“Here,” Laevatein said abruptly from Helbindi’s side, making him jump.
Then there was a letter shoved into his face and he snatched it away to pointedly crumple it in his fist. Laevatein turned away without so much as a backwards glance. She had completed a task and had moved on, her hand in her satchel and making a beeline for a coughing Fjorm. If she had any qualms about being a messenger, she didn’t show it.
Eyebrow twitching in irritation, Helbindi turned his over to see his name had been neatly written on the front in Múspell’s alphabet. But a closer look at the now shattered wax seal showed him it had been imprinted with the royal Nifl crest.
Helbindi immediately shoved the damn thing into his inner coat pocket.
Snow was still falling and they were still out in the open. This was hardly the time to get distracted.
-
Despite the bone deep weariness, the combined companies had moved as quickly as they could throughout the night. With any luck, it would be approaching daybreak once they reached the Serpent’s Tail Desert, and therefore the edge of Múspell.
The air was dry, a good sign in Laevatein’s opinion. Cold or not, it meant desert conditions were ahead, and that meant they were nearing the exit of the Fang. From there, it was only a day’s march - less, if Laejgarn anticipated their arrival and had sent wyvern-
“Here.”
Laevatein presented the second letter to Fjorm. To Fjorm’s credit, she did not jump like Helbindi. But then again, Laevatein supposed Fjorm had not lived the same way someone from Múspell had during her father’s reign.
She judged to have caught Fjorm in the middle of a prayer if her bowed head and clasped hands were anything to go by. Briefly, Laevatein wondered if anyone prayed to Múspell the way others did to Nifl and Askr.
She supposed Laejgarn had, in a way.
-
She dreamt sometimes. Dreamt like her sister does.
Did.
Her dreams are of a woman with sad and ancient eyes. And each night the woman drew closer, but each morning Fjorm forgot. She forgets that she ever dreamed and of the woman with the dagger. But she could never shake the cold that worsened each night.
This time the woman was an arm’s length away. The woman’s head was bowed and her hair was a frozen waterfall that curtained across her shoulders while she whispered to her blade.
“Not yet.”
“Until what?” Fjorm asked, even though she knew.
The woman looked up and startled Fjorm. She had sad eyes but they were also dead eyes. There was no life inside her. While they stood and stared at one another, dense fog seeped in around the two of them in thicker and thicker swaths until Fjorm could not see below her waist. Even as curious as she was, she could not turn her own head to look beyond.
“Nifl approaches. Please, make your goodbyes.”
Fjorm opened her mouth to ask who she is, what happens after, and would she see Gunnthrá and her mother-
Instead, the fog closed over her and the woman as it did every night, and sank down into Fjorm’s skin and to her bones. Nifl’s breath grew colder and so did she.
Then Fjorm was awake and coughing again. She had been placed back in the carriage, she realized once the worst of the fit had passed. An embarrassed blush burned across her cheeks - embarrassed at the idea that others thought her, a princess of an ice kingdom, too weak to handle a little storm.
Fjorm put a hand to her face to push away the guilt - someone must have had to have carried her in, she had no memory of getting in the carriage herself. She must have slowed everyone down - and sat up. There was simply no time to be sorry for herself when her friends were pushing themselves for the chance that they could save her.
Something fluttered to the floor and Fjorm picked it up. The letter that Laevatein had given her. Or attempted to, Fjorm thought sourly even while she pulled the contents from the envelope, before she had coughed herself into unconsciousness. Hríd’s handwriting, including the much messier one that was surely Ylgr’s, stared up at her and Fjorm felt comfort.
Dear sister;
I write to you in haste, and apologize for the abruptness, for Princess Laevatein has agreed to pass along a message even as she departs within the hour.
We pray for your safety, Fjorm. I beg for your forgiveness that neither of us are with you at this time. I beg for your forgiveness that I chose to wear the crown before aiding you. (I wanted to sneak into the carriage, but I got caught.)
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Fjorm said to the letter.
Even with her very soul weighing heavy with icicles and fog, Fjorm could feel the kindle of love. She could - would - keep going, aided by her friends’ and family’s warmth.Time and distance will keep us apart for now, but both I and Ylgr will send letters once a week until your return to us in Nifl. (We’ll throw a party!)
May we see each other in our dreams.
With love;
Hrid (and Ylgr!)
-
Fjorm had clearly been reaching for the door’s handle when Sharena flung it open with a happy laugh. She smiled all the more brightly at Fjorm’s surprised blink.
“We’re here!”
Here being the exit to the Fang’s Pass and a precarious path that wound its way down to the edge of Múspell’s western border. The snow storm had fruitlessly thrown itself against the peaks of the mountains and failed to chase after them. While snow still crunched under Fjorm’s boots, it was a paltry dusting compared to the drifts deeper in the pass. Down the trail, where people had begun to walk two by two, she could see the sun rise to cast vivid purples and oranges across the land and Sharena’s face.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Hopeful,” Fjorm answered, truthfully, even when her lungs twinged.
--
Chapter 8
Every single damn time Helbindi moved he felt that damn letter crinkle stiffly against his chest. Damn thing would burn a hole in his pocket at that rate. Even as he leaned back with his hand to shade his eyes from the midday sun to look for a speck of shadow, the outline of the envelope made itself known again. Again, no wyvern.
Hours ago, while the conjoined Askr and Múspell parties cautiously made their way down the mountain via a narrow cliffside passage a wyvern messenger had met with them to declare herself from Empress Laegjarn’s entourage.
“Urgency is utmost,” the rider had spoken in clipped tones. “Now that I have located you, I will return with other wyvern to bring Princesses Laevatein and Fjorm down the mountain. Your parties may travel with Her Highness' entourage once you reconvene at the desert entrance.”
Helbindi turned his attention to Fjorm, who had stubbornly insisted that she walk as far as possible with the insistence that a horse would be too slow given the unsafe terrain. Kiran, Alfonse and Sharena flanked either side of her while Laevatein had vanished beyond a turn up ahead. She had been surprisingly amiable with the lot, even had gone so far to smile - smile! - at one of Princess Sharena’s quips before the messenger had arrived. Given the ashy pallor to Fjorm’s face, not even accounting for her bone rattling couch, and the messenger Helbindi wasn’t surprised to learn later that Laevatein had marched her way past even the forward scouts.
Behind him, a horse nickered uneasily and Helbindi looked immediately to the sky again. Diving down from the clouds in a V formation came five wyvern. Speedy beasts from what Helbindi knew of their breeds. As they drew closer, Helbindi spotted the lead, splashed in gold and orange markings, with the empress herself second.
Helbindi rolled his shoulders to dislodge the uneasy feeling he had had since leaving Askr - he had not seen Laegjarn since she’d let him go those months past and didn’t relish the thought of another Múspell royal reminding him of what was going on in its reconstruction. The less he knew the better.
There was a minute of mad scramble when people tried making room for the obnoxiously large beasts while Alfonse called an order for someone to notify Princess Laevatein - out of the corner of his eye Helbindi watched a scout go darting down the trail. It probably wasn’t necessary given the bray of the remaining horses and loud echoing calls of the wyvern as they landed.
Somehow, as if the great dragon Múspell had arranged it, a ray of light spilled over the mountains to cast down directly upon Empress Laegjarn and her angular rams horn crown. But even while something settled in Helbindi at not seeing Surtur’s old crown - had it been melted in his defeat? Or had Laegjarn cast it aside in her rule - he caught her gaze.
Rather, he would have, if her eyes hadn’t been clouded over.
-
“Her Highness, Empress Laegjarn!”
Fjorm noted the minute tensing of Laegjarn’s lips - she clearly thought the formality wasn’t necessary either. Regardless, she and her friends all bowed.
“I thank you for holding off on the titles, Sophus,” Laegjarn said, causing her attendant to blush to her ears.
“Princess Fjorm, it is good to see you again,” Laegjarn continued, “even if my definition of ‘ see’ is very tepid at best. As well as you, Kiran, Alfonse, Sharena, and Anna.”
Anna had muscled her way to the front of the gathering to bow as well, Fjorm saw as she strode forward.
“I understand there is much we need to catch up on,” Fjorm said and Laegjarn’s face turned her way. Despite herself, and the fact Laegjarn could apparently not see her, Fjorm felt her face warm at the woman’s attention.
“Indeed. Though we shall have to wait until we have completed the rites to do so.” Laegjarn’s head lifted, as if to look out amongst the crowd. “Where is my sister?”
“HERE! Laegjarn, I am here!” Laevatein burst out from the ranks, face red and winded. She climbed into the saddle of the wyvern to Laegjarn’s right without preamble and with the skill of a learned flier. “Please, we must be on our way.”
Laegjarn nodded. “Princess Fjorm, if you please.”
Fjorm knew, though she did not know how or why, that time was not on their side. Still, a part of her felt the cool of loneliness that she would not have all of her friends at her side.
“Yes,” Fjorm said, abruptly realizing Laegjarn could not have seen her nod of acknowledgment.
“Not without me!” Sharena shouted, startling Fjorm and causing one of the wyvern to lift its wings defensively. She clasped her hands over her mouth. “Oops, sorry.”
“Sharena-” Fjorm began. Alfonse stepped up beside his sister, hand on her shoulder and with a warm grin.
“I would also like to request to accompa-”
"Now, now, hold on a moment!” Commander Anna, arms waving in a negative manner, and Helbindi both stepped forward before Kiran cpuld offer to go as well. “There is no way I can allow all of you to go off into dangerous territory without accompaniment.”
Laegjarn’s eyes narrowed, her voice cool, “Commander Anna, should your concerns lie with Múspell’s honor, I assure you I will see no harm come to them. I consider both Nifl and Askr to be allies and friends.”
Anna flushed as red as her hair as she realized how she had misspoken. “I- Your Highness, I did not mean that you or anyone from Múspell is untrustworth-”
“By the flames this is taking forever,” Helbindi groaned in exasperation and rubbed between his eyebrows. Laegjarn’s attention refocused on where he stood, face carefully neutral.
Helbimdi continued with a spared defiant glance at the empress. "Look, you hired me to watch over these three and Princess Fjorm, right? Then I’ll go and make sure they don’t go falling off the saddle or walk into an acid spring.”
“I- well, I suppose…”
Laegjarn cleared her throat. It was not a quiet noise. Fjorm smiled, eyes soft at her friends.
“Sharena did say she wanted to go first,” Kiran offered, and then mentioned something that involved the word ‘shotgun’ that Fjorm did not understand.
Alfonse sighed in his oft diplomatic - but mostly resigned and long suffering - manner. “We shall catch up to you, Fjorm, as soon as we make our way down.”
“Thank you,” Fjorm said. And then Sharena took her hand.
-
Anna, Alfonse, and Kiran all waved up to them as the wyvern took them higher and higher. Helbindi had been on wyvern back several times for an assessment of the terrain when he had been a general, but it never got easier.
“Please hang on tightly, General!” Einar, the wyvern lord of this damned beast, said. “The winds are very choppy with that storm nearby!”
Helbindi bit back a retort and looked away from the soldiers down below. He could no longer tell who was who now that the parties had resumed their march and turned his attention towards the mountaintops. The ugly purples and greys that had been the winter storm would not go far past the peaks, but the winds still spilled over in erratic gusts, and he knew that the pass was filling in fast with snow.
The letter pressed against him as Helbindi held onto Einar. Maybe he’d read it when they landed.