Chapter Text
The salty sea air makes Severa’s skin crawl.
It’s not that she dislikes the smell - to the contrary, she always kind of liked salt on the breeze, the crashing of waves against heavy wood, the creaking of joints and the flap of canvas sails in the wind. She pulls off her leather gloves and tucks them into her belt to run her hands through her hair. She can feel her hair’s silky sheen turned crisp and dry after weeks on the open ocean. Her boots rest in a half-inch puddle of sea muck on the cobblestones, and she sighs deeply as she brushes her bangs from her eyes.
What she wouldn’t give for a nice, hot bath with some of Lady Camilla’s bath salts. Maybe a dash of perfume, some candles, and - the thought freezes in her mind, sending a pang through her chest. She pulls her bag tighter against herself and considers rooting around for Lady Camilla’s parting gift. Instead, she settles for reaching her hand into the collar of her jacket to the gold chain that rests around her neck. It’s got two stones on it, set into soft gold. One pale blue, the other a deep, murky violet.
She sighs again.
She had missed Ylisstol, but as she lets her fingers slide over the intricate details of her necklace, she can’t help but feel like she made a mistake, somewhere. Regret sits heavy in her chest, like a stone pulling on her lungs. It was the same feeling she had felt a decade ago - she sat at these same docks, staring out at the same water, off across the sea. Somewhere out there was Valm, and the Mila tree, and…
She closes her eyes and allows herself to rest against the back of her wooden bench. If she traveled in a straight line across the sea across Valm, she wouldn’t find herself in Nohr. That made it hurt even more. It was something she carried with her, then, something heavy and private. Owain and Inigo understood, maybe. But they had left their homes on good terms. They hadn’t left in the shadow of guilt, and grief, and pain, leaving their widowed mother to raise two children alone. Maybe their own homecomings wouldn’t feel so hollow, so forced.
She bows her head and taps her boots against the cobblestone, watching ripples of brownish green seawater in the puddles around the cobblestones, splashing against the grey. She can see her reflection, the tiredness of her eyes, her wind-burnt cheeks. She wishes she could at least quiet the pounding of her heart. She tries remembering the song Camilla used to hum, sometimes, when she was working late at night. After the first few bars, she gives up.
Severa rests her leather pack on her lap and unfastens the clasps, reaching in and rooting around. She smiles as she withdraws a small pouch of dried meat - a snack for the road, Camilla had called it. The spices were Nohrian, and the scent smelled warm and spicy and familiar. She turns a piece over in her mouth, trying to make the morsel last, trying to close her eyes and pretend things were different.
How strange it was, to be at home after a decade, and feel farther away than ever.
There’s a heavy sound, metal against metal, boots against stone, light and quick and even. Severa doesn’t lift her head, not even when she sees a silvered boot come to a rest at the edge of her puddle, sending out ripples and scattering her reflection.
“I didn’t think you would show.”
The voice cuts like a knife, deeper than any wound Severa had endured these long years. She keeps her gaze steady, unwilling to look, unwilling to believe -
“I got your letter.”
Severa nods. She blinks, surprised to see the surface of the puddle purl with droplets, slowly at first. She blinks again and can taste salt on her lips.
“M-mom, I-”
Even before she lifts her head, even before she can push herself off the bench, Cordelia’s arms are around her shoulders. She manages to wriggle herself upwards, enough to stand, and she throws her arms around Cordelia in return, holding tight, burying her face against her mother’s chest, squeezing so tight she swears she can hear the crack of bone under Cordelia’s armor.
She’s still shorter than Cordelia, damn her, shorter by a head, but it’s the perfect height to bury her face into Cordelia’s neck and stifle her sobs against her skin.
“Mom,” she tries again, her voice muffled and salt-stained and hoarse. She pulls her tighter, unwilling to let go, to part even an inch. Her hands are shaking, she can tell that much, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. She smells like armor-polish and magnolias and pegasus-feathers, and nothing ever felt like home so much in Severa’s life.
“Shhh,” Cordelia shushes her, resting her chin on Severa’s head, running her hands through her hair, holding her tight against her. “Shhh, I’m here. It’s okay.”
“Mom,” Severa gasps, unable to get past that first word. “I’m...Mom, I’m so sorry, I-”
“Shhh,” Cordelia says again, closing her eyes and holding her daughter close. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
But it did matter. It had been ten years. Ten years! How could she expect anything from her mother - any patience, any forgiveness, any love? She had shown up like a bolt from the blue, a mysterious soldier thrust through time, and then she disappeared just as suddenly from Cordelia’s life. And now, she...she what?
Disgust coils in Severa’s heart, a black pain that makes her push Cordelia back with shaking hands, blinking tears from her eyes. “Mom, I…” she shakes her head.
Cordelia smiles, and when she does, the corners of her eyes wrinkle with laugh lines, a careworn smile that is at once curious and kind. It was a smile Severa recognized from her own future - or her own past, as it were. It comes crashing down on her like the waves of the sea against the dock, the pain and uncertainty and guilt and fear, the feeling that she didn’t belong here. This isn’t her mother. Her mother died when she was a child. She wraps her arms around herself and feels her mind sinking, feels the walls coming back up. Its instinctual, practiced, drawing up the barricades, pushing herself back. She sniffles and her soft gaze hardens.
Cordelia’s smile seems to shift to something sad, something pitying, and it makes Severa recede further, deeper. She tugs her gloves off her belt and pulls them over her wrists.
“Sorry for such late notice,” she says at last. “I should have just rented a horse.”
“Nonsense,” Cordelia smiles. “It’s a short ride, it’s the least I could do.”
Severa nods. “Did you tie up at the stables?”
Cordelia extends her hand to Severa, inviting her to take it. “I let her graze outside the port. Have you eaten? Do you want to stop somewhere?”
“I’m okay,” Severa says, her shoulders tense. She stares at Cordelia’s extended hand and begs herself to take it.
Cordelia smiles and folds her hand back into her side, resting it on the hilt of her sword. “Well, shall we?”
Severa nods and follows, her boots heavy against the stone.
Galder Harbor was a busy place, more so since the end of the Ylisse-Valmese war, ten years ago. When Severa had left, it was a quiet port, mostly home to vessels that fished the eastern seas and brought their catch in to sell in Ylisse, but now, it’s a monstrous place, a network of docks and piers and shipyards, winding stone streets crammed with pedestrians, peddlers, merchants, craftsman, all sorts of people, Valmese and Ylissean and Plegian and Feroxi alike.
Wispy smoke pours from chimneys and the sounds of hammering, crackling fires, and hooves against stone accompanies the flap of heavy canvas sails and the distant clash of sea against shore.
The bustle of town gives way to the quiet outskirts, to inns and ramshackle homes, the stables and fields that Severa recognized more readily than the urban development. She had spent time in Galder Harbor, even before leaping back through time with Lucina, but then the fisheries were dried up and the ships were burnt husks. It’s a strange feeling, knowing what could have been.
Maybe that’s why she didn’t belong in Ylisse. At least in Nohr she didn’t have to close her eyes and shut out the smell of ash and cinders.
“Severa?” Cordelia speaks up softly, touching her arm.
Severa realizes her hands were curled into fists. She unclenches them slowly, letting her shoulders sag. “Sorry,” she says quietly.
“Are you okay? We can stop for food. You must have had a very long journey.”
Severa shakes her head and marches on, resolute. It’s almost infuriating - how kind Cordelia is, how caring, how she doesn’t push, even after all these years. Severa’s mind turns with thoughts about what she had abandoned - her mother, her sister...were there new versions of her, now? Had she been replaced? And she couldn’t blame them. Robin had vanished, and then she had, too. She left them alone, to struggle and suffer, to grieve and grieve again, for Cordelia’s lost husband and her lost daughter. She didn’t even have the excuse of being the Fell Dragon.
A pain settles in the pit of her stomach as Cordelia guides her towards her grazing pegasus.
She settles back in the saddle heavily, letting her legs thump against the beast. It’s not an unfamiliar motion. In Nohr, they didn’t have any pegasi - and in Hoshido, they felt different, smelled different, behaved different. It was like they weren’t quite the same. But this, the smell of feathers and worn leather, of boot polish and oil and that distinctly animal smell of the pegasus...she let her hands drift over the hammered lip of the saddle, pressing her nails into the leather. Her mother had replaced the saddle in the intervening years - of course she had, no one should use the same saddle that long, and Severa couldn’t help but wonder how many saddles had been in between.
“All set?” Cordelia asks, setting her boot in the stirrup and standing up to throw her leg over the saddle. It’s a casual, practiced motion, like second nature. Severa winces, knowing her own fumbling probably looks all the worse in comparison.
She nods. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Of course,” Cordelia smiles, fussing with the reins. “Hold on tight, back there.”
Severa nods and takes a breath before wrapping her arms around her mother’s stomach. She knits her fingers together below Cordelia’s sternum, some vague and utilitarian approximation of an embrace. Severa is stiff, distant, trying her damnedest not to make it weird. Because she hasn’t seen her mother in years, and now to be so close...she blinked.
“Ready?”
“Yeah,” Severa mutters, her voice muffled by hoofbeats as Cordelia tugs the reins and sends her mount into a gallop.
Severa can’t stop herself from gasping as the pegasus takes to flight, its hoofbeats trading out for wings beating back the air in gusts of salty breath. Severa tightens her grip instinctively and leans in, closer, settling against the back of her mother’s silver armor. It’s cold against her cheek, framed in wild tangles of red hair in the wind.
“You okay, honey?” Cordelia asks, turning her head.
“Yeah!” Severa manages to curtly spit out against the wind. “It’s b-been awhile.”
Cordelia laughs at that and lashes the reins, tugging her pegasus into a steep climb towards a bank of clouds. Severa watches the land fall away, the sea and port and green fields drawn in stark relief, like a parchment map come alive in the afternoon sun. She watches the people like ants as the move along the docks, loading and unloading ships, climbing into wagons, casting fishing lines into the sea. And then it’s all gone, vanished in a puff of white as they pass through clouds and punch through the other side, emerging into a sparkling white cloudscape of cumulus and bright sun.
Cordelia tugs the reins again and they settle out into a glide, a less tumultuous speed that lets Severa relax back in the saddle. She doesn’t release her death-grip on her mother’s stomach, nor does she pull back. The rush of wind fills her ears.
“How about that?” Cordelia grins, taking both reins in one hand and turning. “Your old lady’s still got it, eh?”
“Mom, can you please keep your eyes on the sky?” Severa burrows her face into her mother’s back.
Cordelia laughs again and shifts her attention back to riding.
Severa is no stranger to the skies, but somehow riding on a wyvern always felt a bit safer than the untamed wildness of a pegasus. And Camilla always made sure she sat in the front of the saddle, so she was sort of sitting in Camilla’s lap, with her arms around her, and -
It was a different situation, is all. Maybe a bit more comfortable than her face against cold plate steel and her hair flapping in her mouth and the cold wind stinging her eyes and drawing tears along her cheeks.
She wipes her face against her mother’s back, using the excuse to pull herself closer, to nuzzle against the steel and cloth and bright red hair that she missed so much.
“Careful, dear,” Cordelia breathes. “You’re squeezing.”
“Sorry,” Severa says, pulling back.
They are silent, for awhile, any speech lost to the wind, private thoughts stewing in their heads as they drift through cloud banks and the bright, sparkling sky. Cordelia tugs the reins and drops one hand to rest on Severa’s as they drop, punching through the layer of clouds and into the bright Ylissean day.
It’s like a punch to Severa’s chest, a hammer against her ribcage, shattering her. She almost falls out of the saddle as Ylisstol Castle comes into view.
Its gold towers sparkle in the mid-afternoon sun, and even from this distance Severa can see the flapping blue-and-silver banners in the wind. She blinks back tears and holds tighter, turning her gaze to look at anything, anything but that stupid castle, the stupid castle town, the fields and glens and creeks. She focuses instead to the west, to the wooded hills, and home, assuming Cordelia hadn’t moved in the last ten years.
She sniffles, unable to stop tears dripping down her cheeks, and squeezes her eyes shut.
“It’s okay,” Cordelia says quietly, slowing her mount’s descent to free a hand that can rest on Severa’s, lightly prying her closed fist from her midsection and threading their fingers together.
“I’m sorry,” Severa says hoarsely, knowing her apology is lost to the wind. She’s been apologizing a lot lately.
They land in a clearing in the woods, a meadow bounded by a sturdy wooden fence and stippled with wildflowers. A few horses graze, some with fledgling wings draped at their sides. Severa wipes her eyes with her glove and clears her throat.
“You’re raising horses now?”
“Just boarding them,” Cordelia pulls up on the reins and brings her pegasus to a slow trot. “We built the barn and fences not long after you left, so we board locals’ horses and the mounts of anyone visiting.” She slides off the pegasus gracefully and offers her hand to Severa, who declines, instead opting to flop awkwardly out of the saddle and land with heavy boots against dirt.
She begins untying her gear back, not looking at her mother, the treeline, or the property beyond. She doesn’t know a lot about dendrology, but Nohr didn’t really have trees, not like this, and Hoshido was so different. Even seeing the gold light filtered through rustling green made her chest ache.
“Here, let me get that,” Cordelia says, taking Severa’s pack and shouldering it. “Oof, that’s heavy! Bringing some rocks with you?”
Severa gives a half-hearted smile and a polite laugh. “Just some stuff I didn’t want to leave behind.”
“Of course.” Cordelia smiles warmly and offers her hand for Severa to take.
Being home again was strange. Even before she left, she had spent most of her time in Ylisstol. She had a room in the castle quarters and everything. She mostly just visited when her parents summoned her, or when Lucina wanted to go riding.
It was hard to know which details had changed and which she had simply forgotten. The crooked porch railing, the chipped paint around the windowsills, the garden of flowers out front.
Their house is smallish, two stories and an attic, with broad windows in the front and back. Severa stares at the attic window, recalling climbing through it to reach the roof, to lay against the shingles with Lucina and count the stars. She closes her eyes, knowing that from the rooftop, she could see the castle.
“I’ll put your things in your room,” Cordelia says, walking up the porch steps and opening the front door. “Take as much time as you need.”
Severa nods numbly, watching the front door shut behind Cordelia. She stands, frozen, hands shaking at her sides. She wishes she hadn’t come back. It would be easier that way, wouldn’t it? To be gone, to just forget all of this, to live a new life with her new name. Instead she was here, back to the front porch she had walked out of ten years in the past, in the dead of night, a bag slung over her back. She had lost that bag on the boat ride to Valm.
She had left because she was hurt, and she was afraid, and she couldn’t handle being those things in a place like this.
And how much had changed? Certainly not the pain and the fear. She rests her hand on the handrail. But she was a different person now, wasn’t she? New scars, new joy, new pain, stories upon stories upon stories to tell. But just like that, she’s nothing. She’s a failure, a liar, a disappointment, a runaway. It takes every ounce of her strength not to cry as she walks up the stairs to the front door.
She closes her eyes and listens. Birds, rustling leaves in the wind, soft voices she can’t identify, coming from somewhere.
She had worked so hard to stop feeling like this.
She wraps her hand around the doorknob and pulls.
The house is quiet as she paces through it. There are soft, hushed voices coming from somewhere up above, not clear enough for her to make out their sources. She idly wonders who it is - one of the kids? Her replacement? There are books and toys scattered around the living room, on the couch and table. There’s a fireplace, ashy and dark. Framed portraits on the mantle. She picks one up and stares at it.
It’s a young girl, born before the end of the war against Grima. It was her, almost. A different daughter. A girl with short white hair and a toothy smile and rusty eyes. Severa sets the portrait face-down on the mantle and leans heavily against it, breathing.
She knew that Cordelia had had children, of course. She HAD to, or else she would never have been born, and Naga knows what kind of nonsense mess that would have been. But it still hurt, knowing that this wasn’t her home, anymore. A different Severa lived here, one with a brighter smile and less fear.
She moves through the house carefully, her boots against wood like the footsteps of a ghost. There are more portraits, paintings on the walls, medals and honors. Decorations from Plegia, gifts from Chon’sin.
She stops in the kitchen.
Out the back window, into the yard, she can see two children.
They’re young, but she had never been good at estimating ages. The taller one is lanky and awkward, the steps of preadolescence sending her tottering around the grass as a wooden practice sword bounces off her painted wood shield. She had done the design herself - a dragon with red eyes. Her white hair is tied up in short, bouncy pigtails.
Opposite her is a younger girl, just by a few years. Her hair is short and red and messy, double so as she leaps through the grass, her own wooden blade drawn. A cloak flaps in the wind behind her, bright purple and trimmed with gold, a dramatic flair as she fails to land a blow and is sent clattering into the dirt. The other girl lifts her sword and shield in triumph, and the battle cry that comes from her throat makes Severa wince.
She knows that voice. It’s hers .
She closes her eyes and clenches her teeth, trying not to let the regret and pain and sadness creep into her heart, even as she feels it growing, pulsing in her veins. No. This is her home. There is home enough for her, here. She doesn’t realize her hands are shaking until a hand touches her shoulder and she whirls, almost throwing a fist at the culprit.
Cordelia had anticipated her movement and side-steps the blow, rolling it into an embrace, tucking Severa against her shoulder. “You can go out and talk to them, if you want.”
Severa doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to be here at all. She wants to go home, and she hates knowing that she is.
Maybe she’ll just never be comfortable, no matter where she is. Not in Ylisse, not in Valm, not in Nohr. Maybe it’s a symptom of being a child whose home burned to ash around her. She wonders silently if the others feel the same way.
“Go on,” Cordelia pushes her lightly towards the back door. “I’ll get dinner started.”
The back door slams behind her as Severa steps out into the yard, and the playing children immediately stop to stare at her.
She blinks at them, at the two pairs of inquisitive eyes staring back at her, curious, expectant.
“Honestly, you need to stop throwing the-” another figure rounds the corner of the house before stopping dead in her tracks.
Severa’s eyes widen. Even before she can finish breathing her name, Morgan drops her armful of toys and bolts across the yard, tackling Severa into a hug, knocking her to the dirt.
“Oh, gods, Sev!” Morgan cries, squeezing tight, burrowing her face into Severa’s neck. “Sev…” She blinks, making no disguise of the tears dripping down her cheeks.
“M-Morgan,” Severa breathes, the shock to her system still processing, arms crushing her ribcage, tears soaking her jacket. She returns the hug, squeezing back. Somehow Morgan always made things hurt less, in her own stupid, bone-headed idiot way.
Severa thunks her skull against Morgan’s, their traditional greeting. “Missed you, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid,” Morgan repeats the incantation, laughing and pushing herself Severa’s prone form. She kneels in the dirt and helps Severa sit up. “Hey, kids? Come on, come meet your aunt-”
“Selena,” Severa cuts her off. “Aunt Selena.”
Morgan grins her big stupid grin. “Aunt Selena. She’s my big sister.”
“Aunt Selena!” cries out who Severa can only assume to be the younger Morgan. Are they both named Morgan? This is going to get overwhelming fast.
The younger Morgan throws her arms around Severa, too, tackling her with her considerably lighter weight than her counterpart.
The older sibling stands over them, arms crossed under a scowl, wooden sword still at her side.
“Selena,” Morgan says, dusting herself off and standing up. “This is Morgan, and this is Severa. They’re Cordelia’s daughters.”
Severa nods, dazed, pushing the small child off of her and climbing to her unsteady feet.
“Sev, don’t you want to come say hello to your aunt Selena?” Morgan helps the younger Morgan to her feet and kneels to dust her off.
“She looks like me.”
Morgan laughs. “Well, I should think so. You are related.”
“Where’s she been this whole time?” The younger Severa takes the younger Morgan’s hand and pulls her back protectively.
“Traveling,” Severa snaps, suddenly annoyed. Gods, was she really like this when she was little?
“Traveling?”
“Did you bring souvenirs?” Little Morgan asks.
Severa nods. She hadn’t exactly brought them to share, but...well, she guesses she can.
“Aunt Jester, can we go creek-stomping?” Little Morgan asks excitedly.
Severa frowns at her and mouths “Jester?” and her sister shrugs.
“No, you both have to get all cleaned up in time for dinner.”
“Okay, okay, fine!” Morgan grumbles, grasping both the younger Severa’s hands and tugging her back towards the house.
“Jester?” Severa gives a smug smile, and Morgan nudges her.
“We all took new names.” Morgan shrugs. “We had to.”
“Yeah.”
They stand in silence in the shadow of the farmhouse, neither entirely sure what to say.
“And you?” Morgan speaks up.
Severa looks up, into Morgan’s eyes. Her smile is bright, her eyes deep and kind and understanding, asking but not prying, nudging but not pressing.
“It’s been a long time.”
“I missed you, Sev.”
Severa grabs Morgan’s arm and pulls her into a crushing embrace. She doesn’t say anything, as much as she wants to - every attempted word comes out as a strangled cry. She DID miss Morgan. She missed her sister. She missed her family. She often wondered if it was easier for Morgan - to not remember the old times, the bad times. Maybe that’s why she found it so much easier to stay.
Morgan pushes her back slightly, enough to speak but not enough to part. You see Lucina yet?”
Severa says nothing.
“Sorry,” Morgan cuts herself off. “I didn’t mean-”
“No, I…” Severa pulls herself away from Morgan. “I’m just tired. Sorry.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Ship from Valm?”
“You can tell?”
“The flight wasn’t enough to blow the stink of sea-salt off you.” Morgan laughs.
“You dolt, I put perfume on!” Severa snaps, and for a moment it feels like it used to. In the grass out back, joking and laughing, the smell of the wind and the leaves and smoke from the something cooking in the kitchen. As if no time had passed at all.
“Come on,” Morgan loops her arm around Severa’s. “Let’s get you something to eat.”
Severa allows her to drag her back into the house, back into that quiet hall of mirrors. It doesn’t feel so empty or dusty this time, the portraits on the walls seem less menacing. Maybe it’s the fading sunlight, the gold creeping through the windows, or the scent of something delicious in the kitchen. Maybe it’s the distance sound of stomping footsteps, laughter, sounds of life and home and family, warm and present despite Severa’s hesitance. She stops in the hallway, listening to footsteps above.
A voice drifts down the stairs, warm and soft and comforting, gruff and kind and Severa’s heart collapses into itself, a black hole in her chest, a void of emotion that consumes her as she watches her father walk down the stairs, a girl on his shoulders.
Severa can feel something inside her snap. She can’t see anymore, everything blurred and fuzzy, the glare of sunlight too harsh in her tears, like liquid gold in her eyes, and she can’t form words, can’t do anything but stand and tremble, stuttering on a single word. And she’s on the ground, legs given out, gasping for breath and pushing her messy bangs from her eyes. She can feel arms supporting her from behind, but she’s not sure whose, but they feel warm and familiar. She tries to push herself up but she can’t, shaking and sobbing and collapsed in the hall.
A voice she hadn’t heard for ten years speaks to her softly, gentle reassurance accompanying soft hands that brush tears from her cheeks.
“Shh, it’s okay,” comes Robin’s soft voice. “It’s okay.”
“D-dad,” she gasps, still fighting for breath.
She leans back against, Morgan, who she finally realized was the one holding her, and can hear Cordelia’s voice ringing in her ears.
“Oh my gosh, what happened?!”
“It’s okay,” Robin says calmly. “She’s just startled, I think.”
“Y-y-you were d-dead!” Severa sputters weakly. “Y-you-”
“I know,” Robin whispers, helping Morgan to prop her up and stroking her hair. “I know. But I’m okay.”
Cordelia helps Severa to her feet and wraps an arm under her shoulders, helping her walk down the hall towards the couch.
Severa collapses into her father’s arms, sobbing with abandon.
“Oh, Daddy, I missed you so much!” she cries. “I’m s-suh-suh-sorry! I duh-duh-didn’t, I d-”
“Shh, it’s okay,” Robin coos, sharing the embrace with Cordelia.
“M-m-mom,” Severa mutters, her voice choking and hoarse.
“We’re here,” Cordelia whispers, pressing her lips to Severa’s brow. “We’re both here. We’re all safe.”
Severa nods weakly, allowing the embrace, allowing her muscles to unclench, the windup-spring to uncoil in a puddle of tears and kisses and warmth and kindness.
Cordelia pressed her to her chest and looks up. “Jester, could you and the kids put on some tea?”
Morgan nods and takes the two bewildered children towards the kitchen.
“Shh, there, there,” Cordelia coos, stroking Severa’s hair.
“It’s okay,” Robin hums. “I’m here.”
“I-I-I-I’m suh-suh-sorry,” Severa gasps.
“It’s okay. Just rest,” Cordelia shushes her. Severa squeezes her eyes shut, resting in her parents’ embrace, pain and fear and anger evaporating from her blood as Cordelia kisses the top of her head and Robin squeezes her hand comfortingly.
It’s black tea, warm and sweet as it runs down Severa’s throat. Her hands won’t stop shaking, so Cordelia rests her hand against Severa’s, bracing her grip to lift the teacup to her mouth. It’s a shock, after so many years of Nohrian and Hoshidan tea. Hoshidan tea was bitter, Nohrian tea cold. But this tastes like home. It tastes like late nights in the supply tent, cross-legged, cataloguing with Lucina. It tastes like tricking Inigo into paying for tea and cakes at fancy cafes and then ditching to go fishing with Kjelle. It tastes like her mother making tea and sitting with her in bed after a nightmare.
She manages a few weak gulps before setting it back down.
“We found him a few years after you left,” Morgan explains, watching the two younger children playing on the living room carpet. Little Severa is trying to teach Little Morgan the rules of some board game that involves little tin soldiers and a big grid, and both are pointedly ignoring the tenseness of the adults on the couch.
“I can’t say I’m entirely sure what happened, myself,” Robin admits, sipping his own cup of tea before adding more sugar. I barely remember anything, but a Ylissean border party found me delirious and naked, stumbling across the border from Plegia.
Cordelia gives a half-chuckle and smiles. “Chrom was called before they even had the chance to cover him up.”
“Quite embarrassing, but not as bad as the pain and confusion I must have caused all of you,” Robin says, suddenly serious. “I...I’m sorry for leaving you, Se-...Selena.”
Severa takes another shaky sip of tea, unwilling to try speaking just yet. She manages another drink with Cordelia’s support and shakes her head. Her voice is still hoarse and riddled with sniffles.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Cordelia says.
“I…” Severa blinks. “I ran away. I left you. All I left was that stupid note, and I-” the panic gets the best of her again and only Robin and Cordelia’s arms around her stop her from shaking.
“Shh,” Robin brushes her messy bangs out of her eyes. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“When you’re ready,” Cordelia says quietly.
It wasn’t the first time she said that. Severa would have nightmares of the dark future past, nightmares of fire and blood and steel and pain, and she would wake in the night and Cordelia would be there, arms around her, lips to her brow, always with those words. When you’re ready.
And she isn’t ready, but she doesn’t need to be. Because talking about before hurts, and it’s easier to focus on now, on where she had been rather than how she felt.
Because her younger self teaches her a board game she knows by heart, and both Morgans ask her to talk about her adventures in Nohr, and she digs out of her bag little gifts - precious stones from Hoshidan springs, curious little toys, carved wooden charms, metal jewelry from Nohrian smiths, mysterious Vallite icons with a language she doesn’t quite know. She brought back a box of spices Camilla had gifted her, the perfect blend for all her favorite meals. She had a gift from Corrin, a little music box with Azura’s song.
She talks about her strange employer, about riding wyverns across dark mountain ranges, tunnels lit with flame, chasms and oceans and spires and towers so high their tops were shrouded in fog. She talks until the children are asleep on the carpet, and Morgan is dozing by the fire, and Cordelia and Robin sit with their hands twined in hers, and she runs out of steam. All the thoughts bubbling in her these long years overflowed and her cup was empty, and she sits in silence, watching the flickering fire, her mother’s thumb gently rubbing her knuckle.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, breaking the silence at last.
Cordelia and Robin exchange glances but don’t respond.
“I was...I was...I shouldn’t have run away. I’m sorry. I…” she takes a deep breath. “I was hurt, and I thought dad being gone was my fault, and, and I thought...I thought if I was gone, maybe things would be better. Maybe you would all be happier without me.”
“Of course that isn’t true,” Cordelia says.
“No, I...I know. I know that now. I...I did a lot of thinking, and…” she looks up, tears shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted. I always tried to hide my feelings, and...I love you. All of you, so much. And I think, the whole time, my biggest regret was not telling you that before I left.” She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.” She blinks. “I m-mean, I mean, if you’ll have me back.”
“Oh, Severa,” Cordelia sighs, pulling her closer. “You’re our daughter. This will always be your home. You’ll always have a place here, and nothing could ever change that.”
Severa closes her eyes.