#its my headcanon that mark's name gets dropped from the legend of the rgb lords really fast

[allyphase]

and the Tactician stood proud, as she always had

It was over. The soldiers had retreated, the line had been reestablished. Quiet returned to the throne room of Castle Ostia, and Mark pressed herself into a corner, slid down to sit on the floor, and sobbed into her hands. 

When was the last time she’d been caught off guard like this? When had she been ambushed, left without a plan...? When had she ever had to give orders over the roar of battle, trying to be heard over the screams of the dying? 

Her throat ached from the strain, but it sobbed anyway, forcing sound to her lips stained with salt. She curled her body into itself, the backs of her hands to her knees, and prayed to anyone that’d listen that she was free, that no one would look to her for direction, that the weight of so many lives had been lifted from her shoulders, for now.

What honorable commander started the game when she hadn’t even put her pieces on the board yet? Who developed their side without allowing her to respond in kind? Who cornered her when she should have been safe, when they were resting, unprepared for battle? 

A smart commander, she had to admit. Had she the chance, she may have done the same. 

Heavy footsteps charged away from the group, as the soft hum of healing magic and murmurs of comfort began to swirl around her, trying to mask the sounds of a battlefield dying slowly. Someone placed a hand on her shoulder, but they must have seen how it startled her, so they pulled away without another word. She didn’t bother looking up to see who it was. 

She thought, somewhere, she should be celebrating - no lives had been lost, and the castle had been reclaimed - but her mind only could remember the piercing eyes of the sniper, the crashing of the walls around her, the fierceness of Hector’s demand - Mark, we need a plan! 

It felt like a miracle, that the battle had ever ended. Like they had expected a miracle, from her. And with her victory, suddenly Mark, the girl from nowhere with a broken chess set and an empty stomach, was the Tactician, a title, a miracle worker who would win them an impossible war. Her quiet voice had become the foundation of peace, ordered to boom loud enough to fill villages, castle halls, the entire Dread Isle. Her name was one with weight, a legend on its own, that would stand the test of time, stretch beyond her life. 

The weight threatened to crush her, break every bone in her too-weak body. But there was nowhere to hide from it, not for her. Not for a deserter, not for an unlucky girl who kept stumbling into justice. How could she ever admit, that her almost precognition was from years of harsh schooling, from drills being forced into her head, from endless battles where her soldiers wielded wooden spears and the banner she flew was the one she now fought? 

She couldn’t, was the simple answer. She couldn’t force the words past her tongue, couldn’t dare to imagine the betrayal in her lieges’s eyes as she admitted that she wasn’t the miracle worker they wanted, that she was just a girl from Bern, and she was afraid.

An ambush wasn’t difficult to respond to because of the amount of soldiers, or the unfamiliar terrain, or the need to think quickly, decisively. Any normal battle would test the skills of all on the field, in the dodge of an axeblade, the retaliation of archers, the hum of magic just below the chest. No, an ambush was difficult because it forced all of life to become a battle, where every hallway could have enemies down it, and each point of light in the dark could be a lantern or an eye of a sniper, already aiming an arrow to her heart. 

The Tactician held herself in her arms, and cried until she couldn’t anymore.