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reginlcif-blog · 8 years ago

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"I'll take the fall for you."

loyal to a fault ─ accepting

they’re children. of royal birthright & regal bearing, but they are merely children.

small fingers clasp a similarly small hand ( as if he’ll lose his sister throughout the grand halls of their home ) and they’re always laughing while following the other. they’re an energetic duo, carrying on as children ought to. ephraim is a reckless boy, full of life & energy. he cannot be stilled for the life of him & it drives their instructor ( as well as their father ) crazy. his face always beaming; the sun is put to shame against such a bright smile & eager eyes. but he is young─young, and foolish. prone to error & still learning his boundaries. eirika, his dear sister & closest friend, is quieter but just as wild as her brother. she falls into his antics without a second thought & often spawns games of her own creation for them to play. to which ephraim follows her as she does him.

it is eirika who takes the blame in her brother’s stead for the trouble they’ve given their caretakers. for a prank gone awry, one they have been caught in after she’s tripped while they ran through those large halls. and how she so gracefully fell & busted her lip against the hard floor. their father cannot hold such a stern expression against the softer curves of such a sad, sad look. he concedes; but discourages from such behaviour in the future as he urges a cleric to tend to her state.

eirika climbs into bed beside her brother later that night. her lip had been tended to & healed over quite well. had no one seen the bloodied mess she was in only hours before, they would have never known she took such a fall. she asks him to read to her & ephraim ( e’er the playful boy he is ) teases her for such a childish request─but, ultimately, he gives in as easily as their father. ephraim states he’ll only read to her on the condition that she not let the blame solely rest on her.

she agrees, and settles.

they’re children. older, now─ but only just & falling into their roles as future leaders. but, they are still children.

he finds his attention grabbed for the first time by a gradoan general─appropriately dubbed the obsidian─with a skill unparalleled throughout magvel. ephraim is enamoured. he follows the man & presses at every chance he can get to challenge him─to learn his craft & learn for himself that same caliber of finesse with a spear. sir dussel agrees after some time & some amount of goading from the young prince, and takes him on. it feels like he has found something that calls to him─something new which has his heart race faster & harder than their games had in the past.

eirika… had her own reservations about her brother’s newfound passion, but supported him in his endeavours nonetheless. there is no need to learn to fight in such times; surely peace could be maintained without violence.

but just the same as when they were younger, she takes the blame of her own accord when he’s shattered a window out of carelessness. ( much to ephraim’s surprise; she has told him to not carry on with his training indoors more times than he can count ) the new general to their knights is less lenient toward the matter, for he knows she is truly not at fault─but her steadfastness to defend her brother has him give in. such determination & will is commendable, though wasted on something so trivial. she realises she doesn’t care; she is proud of herself that she could protect the one who so often protects her, if only in such a childish fashion.

eirika only hushes her brother when he later protests her doing that again, and instead urges him to not do it again lest she truly gets upset with him.

he agrees with a laugh.

they’re just children. thrown to the wolves as their kingdom crumbles around them.

he sucks in a strained breath when he shifts on his side. ephraim is the heir of a throne robbed of it’s king, though he knows not such grim news. shy of an adult, yet hardly the child he once was. he has grown into a remarkable figure; a man an entire nation would follow without a second thought. and ephraim remains as he always was─the sun that brought the dawn of tomorrow. turquoise eyes shone when that radiant smile pulled at soft lips & his people knew what hope meant when he lead them. though he acted without talking things through with others, and often followed the whim of his heart─ephraim was a natural leader. in his heart were only the most sincere of best intentions for his people.

he was, truly, a fit heir to the renais throne.

but here he lay; looking worse for wear & struggling to find his breath with the slightest movement he makes. though he intended to draw attention the attention of the invading grado empire’s forces onto himself so his sister & father may escape, ephraim instead met the harsh end of betrayal─as well as it’s blade. eirika isn’t around to chide him like she used to for being so foolhardy. the realisation weighs heavy on the chest which aches from the wound his small company has been trying to treat. ( with difficulty; there is only so much four men and a handful of vulneraries can do ) it begins to sink in that, while his loyal retainers & close friends are not far from him─without his sister, he is truly alone in the world. his eyes drift & he struggles to stay comfortable as he waits for sleep to finally take him.

ephraim thinks of home; he worries for his kingdom & how his people fair against the invasion. he counts how many stars he can see peaking through the overhead foliage. then he closes his eyes and tries to remember those days he’s snuck off on horseback with his sister & those afternoons spent in the countryside, but… then he remembers eirika & he is stricken once more with the cold blooded fear that she might not have made it out. that he might not make it out to see her. heavy eyelids flutter open & he tries to pull himself from his oncoming drowsiness─to call out to kyle or forde for some sliver of reassurance. forde gives him a sideways glance when he moves, but ephraim cannot find the energy to raise his voice.

he knows he won’t be able to tell her not to blame herself for it. ephraim will not be able to tell eirika to not take blame, should he not make it. but exhaustion wracks his body & he settles back down against his desires to urge the message along. no, all he can do is whisper into the night that she forgive him for being what he always has been─reckless.

but they’re only children. oh, god.

they’re just children!

she whispers apologies that fall on deaf ears between fingers bloodied by their game of war. the dead hears not the woes of the living; he hears not her stifled cries & the throes her of grief. tears mingle with the shuddering breath she struggles to find. they’re hot as they roll down her cheeks & are the only thing that ground her to the realty she bears the unfortunate witness to. he’s dead; her dear brother─someone beyond the thought replaceable─will not bring one more his brilliance onto a world that needed it. a world that needed him to lead his people─not her. she had the respect of their kingdom, but ephraim? he had it’s loyalty; it’s love. their people would heed him faster & better than they would her.

renais needed ephraim more than it needed eirika.

silence eventually comes. numbness takes her. eirika sits beside herself in the privacy of her tent, and she mulls over her memories of him. she tries to convince herself it is a dream & that she’ll awake only to hear ephraim’s laughter as he tells her how silly of a dream it is─but she cannot shake the reality. ephraim was dead, but still he lived on. through her, ephraim lived.

her hair is short now; cyan tresses have since been discarded as she’s discarded her former self. it doesn’t feel half as odd as it was when she first cut it. the weight of her brother’s armour no longer feels foreign & unusual on her shoulders, and the balance of his lance is one she’s now familiar with. she plays like she played when they were children & were so commonly mistaken for the other. how they would exchange mannerisms and clothing and act as the other to confuse their caretakers while they ran though the halls of their home. it wasn’t as easy anymore; she was not her brother but she must convince others that she is─that she was dead & it was ephraim who rode their people to victory. his clothing hung less & less loosely on her body with each passing week, and with months behind her she no longer remembers the lilt to his voice when he found something amusing, or when he was trying to mask disappointment. no longer does eirika’s heart stutter when she hears her brother’s name from another’s lips; nor does it flutter when she is the one who answers with a voice that no longer sounds like her own.

‘ remember that these achievements will go down in a name that is not your own, ‘ she recalls kyle saying when she’s pulled ephraim’s─no, hers; they were hers now─retainers aside to speak with them privately. it doesn’t matter, she remembers telling herself.

for even in death,

she would take the fall.

#eirikc #ᵗᵉˢᵗ ᵐʸ ʷⁱˡˡ & ᵗᵉˢᵗ ᵐʸ ʰᵉᵃʳᵗ ─ in character #ˢʰⁱⁿᵉ ᵃ ˡⁱᵍʰᵗ ⁱⁿᵗᵒ ᵃ ᵈᵃʳᵏⁿᵉˢˢ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳʷⁱˢᵉ ˡᵉᶠᵗ ᵘⁿᵈⁱˢᵗᵘʳᵇᵉᵈ ─ sacred stones #under a read more for length because i have no self control whatsoever #i'm sorry mobile users bc i know read mores dont work for hell but i had to do it im sorry

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