Three-sentence fics, 10/17

[shinon]

Took some more requests! Why not!

Fire Emblem
FE4:
It would be natural to hate the man who burned you and your army alive - but it would be natural, after being burned alive, to be dead. And he must not have been dead, here in this half-lit world between worlds where, improbably, their eyes met again, so Sigurd had other questions.

Like: “Was she happy?”

FE7:
1. Even after a year in Caelin, Lady Lyndis remained firm in her conviction that pants were both uncomfortable and impractical. Watching Kent try to explain the proprieties was, for some (Sain), a great spectator sport. If he brought up horsemanship, you knew he had already lost; Lyn could then point out that generations of Sacaen women had had no difficulty riding in garments much like hers, “so maybe Lycia is simply bad at designing saddles.”

2. “My dear Kent, we’ve been having this debate since we were trainees, and after all this time I would be sorry to see it end - arguing such extremely petty points with you has begun to feel in a way like coming home - but the fact remains that you’re wrong: a squirrel is just a mouse that’s learned how to climb.”

“I keep telling you, they’re completely different animals -”

“And a hedgehog is a mouse that’s been promoted to General.”

3. It really was providential, how the scattered parts of Lyndis’s Legion had reassembled under Eliwood’s banner. And yet Kent, ever unfeeling, looked askance on Sain’s immediate desire to go catch up on the gossip with Serra.

“But it’s not gossip,” Sain insisted, “it’s… …social reconnaissance?” and slipped away with a cheery wave, narrowly escaping that lecture for now.

4. Apparently his most recent conversation with Lady Lyndis had provided ample food for thought, because Kent had been pacing the perimeter of the camp with an abstracted look on his face for easily a quarter of a mark, and almost jumped out of his skin when Sain cleared his throat.

“Oh,” he said stiffly, “I didn’t see you there.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

FE8:
1. Most people who knew Rennac would not have thought that “heartbreak” was within his emotional repertoire. You could just as well devastate a jeweler’s scale. These people might be interested in the look on his face when one night, after he and Princess L’Arachel cleaned out all comers at the card table, she used the entire take to found an orphanage.

2. That old saying about gift horses did not apply in Rausten. This was a beautiful, well-balanced blade, and a boon from the princess, and Rennac already dreaded whatever arduous and ill-compensated use she would make him put it to. What had he ever done wrong, he wondered, to make her like him so much?

3. Lady L'Arachel's retainers stood a few paces behind her as she launched into a speech.

"Tell me something, old man: is it possible to roll your eyes so hard that you die?"

"If anyone could, it would be you!"

4. “Listen, I’m a reasonable man. I merely want to register that Prince Innes’s haircut is at least eight years out of fashion, and I should be paid double for having to look at it.”

To Dozla’s guileless “What’s double nothing, again?” he only glowered and took another long pull.

Etrian Odyssey
EO2U:
1. His head snapped back under the impact, and he could hear cartilage doing things it shouldn’t. For a moment he just stood there, staring upward, thinking, Yeah, I probably had that one coming; when he finally breathed out it came with a pop and a gush of blood. He lowered his gaze to his assailant’s and said, tiredly, “We done here?” and did not wipe the blood away.

2. Violetta had this way of looking at things, where you could tell she saw what was really there - not just what she expected or the way she wanted things to be, not only what was nice and pretty and convenient, but the truth.

And, okay, he hadn’t chosen to be here, he was just the most expendable guy around - and he wasn’t much longer for this world anyway, so what the hell did it matter, in the long run?

But somehow he wanted to be something she would want to see.

3. The battle’s over, the flames die down, and once again there’s only one bearer of the mark; the failed Fafnir steps over the corpse of the real deal; Ginnungagap’s systems resolve the error and start channeling power back to him and, a hundred years too late, the transformation completes.

Bertrand returns to his senses in a body that is his and not his, just before the final door, just in time to see the Black Guardian staring at him in horror and judgment as she finally disintegrates.

It’s her fault, he thinks, it’s their fault, for relying on him, for not seeing what this curse of Fafnir has turned him into - but as he steps up to face the Core at last, bracing for the next hundred years in hell, he knows that thought’s not gonna be much comfort.

4. There’s this weird sort of peace of mind that comes with profound blood loss, and it’s not like he’s looking for it (Chloe kicked him in the shins and told him “stop trying to die,” and you can’t argue with that without looking like a complete dick), but sometimes a battle goes south and you just kinda let it happen, right? And wish these damn kids would stop bringing you back from the edge?

Sleep is almost as good.

5. You have spent your entire life to date trolling Flavio unmercifully, but now that you’re officially a couple, you wonder if you should ease up a little. “Why are you like this?” he says, exasperated, because you suggested a stroll through the noble quarter and for a second he actually thought you were serious. But if you try to pull your hand away, he grabs it again, so you’re probably in the clear.

6. “You would tell me if you ever changed shape again, right?”

“‘Again?’”

Flavio turned to Arianna, but her face was just as blank, and if they both thought he was making stuff up as usual then wasn’t it possible that, maybe, he was?

7. His best friend was being pulled away into a world of queens and monsters, ancient disasters, beings from the sky sculpting people into shapes they should never have occupied - and here was Flavio, a no-name orphan whose only claim to fame was climbing trees, pretending like he was still relevant, like there was any place for him in all of this.

More than ever he wanted to hold onto him, take care of him, make things easier somehow, make things normal - but he reminded himself every time the need came on him, The Fafnir Knight belongs to legends now. Not to you.

8. Weird as it was to see someone using War Heal at mealtime, it was even weirder that Chloe was using it on herself, and not some idiot who’d stood in her way. After repeated questioning, she finally admitted, “Wulfgar had short ribs,” and displayed the shallow imprints of canine teeth on her hands. “I can still win.”

EOV:
1. For context, the request was "A brouni gliding down from Yggdrasil with a chicken." My current party contains a Brouni (Alberich), so I used him. Lorelei, Sabine, and Mel are my dragoon, masurao, and pugilist. This explanation is already longer than the story itself.

“He did say he was good at animal handling,” said Lorelei, her expression neutral, as she watched Alberich shrink to a tiny feather-shrouded speck below them.

“Yes,” said Sabine, “very well, but what will we do for healing now that our botanist has run away?”

Mel, oblivious to this discussion, leaned out over a protruding branch and shouted down to him, “YOU GOTTA STICK THE LANDING!”

2. Mel was many things - a noblewoman traveling under a really shitty incognito; an expert barrage brawler; a devoted friend; Alberich’s probable cause of death - but she was not that great at picking up girls.

“Hey,” she said, unsubtly flexing in the direction of a pretty Fencer standing outside the guild hall, “you look tense. Just FYI, I know a lot about pressure points…”

Herbert West - Reanimator
The nauseating yellow-gray fumes pouring from the ruined house and laboratory deterred any investigation for several hours; when a definitive excursion could finally be attempted, a small blond man no longer truly matching the description of the local doctor was found chained to a tree.

“My associate,” this manikin said, in a voice so hoarse it was hardly comprehensible, fixing a feverish gaze on the ruins, “my friend - he’s destroyed me -”

Thirteen bodies lay in the cellar of the outbuilding.