Fire Emblem Fan Fiction / Fire Emblem Fan Fiction ❯ Epiloguery ❯ Hiding ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Fire Emblem and stuff © Nintendo

A Jill drama with Lethe/Jill romance. Both of whom are female. Hope you can dig it. Another chapter will follow immediately after in the timeline, so any questions might want to wait until then.

Hiding
by Radish Anarcane

“The nearest village is about two miles away, you can stop hiding.”

Lethe gave Jill an annoyed stare. “Wearing a cloak is not hiding.”

“But hiding in a cloak is.” Lethe only grunted. “Daein is ruled by Begnion, now, anyway. You won’t be attacked just for being laguz.” Lethe’s snort reflected her own disbelief in what she just said.

“Tell Ranulf that.”

“Huh?”

“In Crimea, before the reconstruction, when the people weren’t dependent on laguz workers and were free to ignore all the nice laws their king made about treating laguz equally. Ranulf was attacked by a mob at the port.”

A laguz attacked in a Crimean port…that sounded very familiar. “I think I was there when that happened.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah...,” Jill trailed off. She didn’t like talking or even thinking much about her life before joining Ike. Her life as an utter fool. Though if she knew Lethe, she knew the cat laguz was fighting with a savage bout of curiosity right now. And she knew Lethe.

For both Lethe’s sake and her own she changed back to the original subject. “Really, though, nobody will see you. The manor has been empty for months, nobody would come here.” She walked nearer Lethe as they moved down the path. “And if anyone did, you’d smell them coming,” she said with a tap on Lethe’s nose.

Lethe wrinkled it slightly in response. “My nose is better than yours but hardly fool-proof. Why do you want me to take this off so badly, anyway?”

“I can hardly see you for one thing.” This was true. Though she never said as much out loud, she greatly appreciated the usually clear view of Lethe’s wonderful legs. But mostly… “And I just don’t like you having to hide what you are,” she said in a more serious tone, taking both of Lethe’s hands as they stopped in front of the door.

Lethe smiled slightly as their foreheads touched together. “That’s sweet, but…,” her sentence trailed off as she was distracted by Jill’s finger tracing down her cheek.

“We could make it just the first thing you take off,” Jill suggested with a playful smile.

Jill’s playful smile was returned with a small laugh added to it. “I won’t be able to smell anything but you, then.”

“In that case we can just lock the door again,” Jill replied as she presented the key to open the door, somewhat awkwardly with their heads still pressed together as they were.

“Hmm, well, why didn’t you mention that before?” Lethe almost purred.

Jill’s eyes turned away, her mood changing visibly. “Father never liked having the door locked while anyone was home. He wanted his people to feel as welcome as possible,” she answered mutedly.

Lethe’s response was a soft kiss followed by a supportive embrace. Jill smiled into Lethe’s shoulder. Small at first, but growing until it reached the limits of what her face was capable of. Lethe would hold her like this for as long as she needed. Even forever if she asked her to.

She picked her head up and returned Lethe’s kiss with one of passion, passion that grew much as her smile had, until it would soon eclipse any comparison to smiling if not for a sudden interruption.

“Lady Fizzart?”

Jill suppressed a groan of frustration, and then suppressed another as Lethe seemed unaffected, her eyes locked on their visitor before sniffing the air. “Downwind,” she said as though making a point. ‘Right, so her nose isn’t fool-proof,’ her foggy mind eventually put together. ‘That’s great,’ it added bitterly.

-

She’d heard rumors that the young Lady Fizzart was returning to Daein. She finished her chores early so she could visit the manor to find out for sure, and maybe welcome the Lady back home.

No one would go with her. There were other rumors, too. Rumors that only she refused to believe.

She found the gate open and a new spring was added to her step. She walked through it and down the paths of the courtyard, spotting an empty moving cart as she made her way to the front door. There she saw the unmistakable red hair of her Lady and without thinking called out to her.

Immediately she realized she appeared to be interrupting something. Hands over her mouth and blushing bright red, she came closer to apologize and, of course, find out who the young Lady’s lover was so she could tell all her friends later. Though when she came closer she saw that the Lady’s companion had the face and build of a woman, and concluded she must have been seeing things.

“My Lady Fizzart, it is you!” she exclaimed brightly. “Is Begnion allowing you to assume lordship of Talrega? We would all love to have the Fizzart family watching over us again.” ‘As soon as we stop believing those filthy rumors, anyway.’ “Maybe you can protect us from Begnion. All they do is take control of our schools and fill the children’s heads with rubbish about how to treat sub-humans. An arrow between the eyes is all—” Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard what sounded an awful lot like a hiss coming from her Lady’s companion. Confusing as that was, her mind quickly darted to another realization that she hadn’t stopped to let her Lady speak since she’d started talking. “Oh, forgive me, my Lady, sometimes my mouth just gets a mind of it’s own!”

The young Lady Fizzart looked at her for a moment before answering. “The magistrate only gave me permission to move my belongings out of the manor. I do not know who will take lordship here.”

“Oh, it figures they wouldn’t let a real Daein rule anything.” Her Lady seemed to stiffen slightly at that, and she happily assumed it was from anger at Begnion. “Begnion wants everything under their thumb. They’re nothing but vultures, feeding on what’s left after Crimea’s savagery.”

“I don’t know if they would have let me rule or not,” her Lady said sharply. “I did not ask.”

The sudden shock of this answer threatened to make real thinking occur in her head. “What?! Why not?!”

“I do not want to.”

“W-w-why not?” The rumors began to repeat in her mind, but she forced them down.

“I am going to live somewhere else.” She failed to notice that this was not a direct answer to her question.

“W-where?”

“Gallia.”

If we were to use an analogy of gear-works for the workings of the mind, we would say that the gears of Lady Fizzart’s visitor had just violently jammed.

‘It…it must be a joke.’ Her gears slowly moved back into harmony as she gave a hearty laugh. “Very funny, my Lady Fizzart. How long have you been playing a joke on me?” Stepping foot in Gallia would be suicide, and she couldn’t really wish to leave her father’s lordship behind. And to even consider that those rumors might be true was absolutely absurd.

“I’m not joking.”

Her gears hit a definite rough spot as she fought to keep the rumors from providing an explanation, though try as she might, she couldn’t think of anything else. But she was just a simple farm girl, she told herself. She couldn’t expect to understand what lords and ladies did. If her Lady would just say the rumors weren’t true, she would believe her, and she’d make sure everyone else did, too.

But she couldn’t just ask her directly. That would be most audacious. So instead… “My Lady…forgive me, but…where have you been all this time? You have not been seen anywhere in Daein for months.”

“I was in Crimea,” her Lady answered plainly.

Her heart lurched. “W-why?”

“To fight for its freedom from King Ashnard,” her Lady answered plainly again.

The world seemed to spin. The young Lady Fizzart, fighting with Crimea against Daein. Against her own father. When she went to her Lady outside the capital the day the kingdom fell and told her to flee...did her Lady have a good laugh after she left? “W-w-why?!”

“Because it was right,” her Lady answered a little more than plainly.

“Right? Betraying us?”

“I did not betray y—”

“Betraying your father? That was right?!”

Her Lady glared at her. “My father—”

“Did he even see it coming?!” Her Lady opened her mouth again, but she continued. “Was he taken by surprise at all when his own daughter STABBED HIM IN THE BACK?!!” The last few words were screamed with her eyes squeezed shut in anger.

When she opened them and looked into her Lady’s eyes she realized she’d just shouted insults at an enemy soldier with nothing to shield her from retaliation. And she was very afraid.

-

Jill did not like this girl. From the moment she started speaking she did not like her. Interrupting that kiss was a bad start. Then calling her a “true Daein,” which bothered her for reasons she did not want to admit. Calling the Crimean invasion savagery and Begnion vultures without a thought for the true savagery that Crimea suffered under Daein rule, and ignoring the savagery Talrega suffered under Daein order. One demonstration after another that she didn’t have a thought in her head, and with every passing moment Jill wanted her to go away with an ever-more burning passion.

But what the girl said about her father took things to another place entirely.

She had wept out all her sorrow over her father’s death. She’d held none of it back. But what she had held in was the anger. Anger that grew into rage. Anger that grew into hate. Anger that was now going to be released.

“YOU KILLED HIM!!!” Lethe cringed at the volume and pitch of Jill’s voice. “YOU BETRAYED HIM!!!” Jill stomped closer to the girl as each accusation was hurled. “YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE GODDESS-FORSAKEN COUNTRY!!!” Jill took a ragged breath before continuing. “He came here to escape Begnion’s corruption only to be killed by yours!! You let him start a family, build his trust, and then you kill him!! Force him to die in shame, in the defense of his own land’s destruction!!”

“Jill,” Lethe said with a hand on her shoulder, but Jill failed to notice.

“YOU betrayed my father!! And you betrayed ME!!!” Jill gasped for air and calm as tears streamed down her face. For a moment it seemed as though she was finished. But as much as she wished she could stop there, more anger remained.

“AND HE LET YOU!!!” Lethe cringed again. “He HATED what he was doing, HATED what he was defending, KNEW Daein was wrong, KNEW it wasn’t worth serving, and he still gave his life for it!! He HATED how he had to raise me, HATED the lies the schools taught me, but he still let it happen!! He let you betray us both, and then he let you kill him!!”

“Jill,” Lethe said again with more force while shaking her shoulder. Jill still did not notice.

“They told me…his last words…the last thing he said was my name.” Her vision completely blurred by tears, Jill could no longer see the quivering girl in front of her. Which was just as well, as she was no longer talking to her anymore. “And he had NO RIGHT!!!” she sobbed. “NO RIGHT to think of me then!! Where were his thoughts of me when he could have surrendered?! Where were his thoughts of me when he decided to fight to the death for no reason at all?! Was it to punish yourself, father? Some perverted sense of justice that you should die for your mistakes?” She shook her head. “Well then, what did I do? What did I do to deserve losing my father?! Why didn’t you think of that you selfish BASTARD!!!”

“Jill!” Lethe shouted, turning her around and wrapping her arms around her. Jill shrunk into the embrace and broke down completely, shaking them both with the strength of her sobs.

-

Paralyzed first by fear and then by wonder, the visitor from the nearby village simply watched as Jill’s tears slowed bit by bit, minute by minute in her companion’s arms until eventually there were only sniffles. With sudden curiosity and the single-mindedness of the empty-headed she looked to the companion and asked, “Who are you?”

Both Jill and her companion turned to look back at her, Jill with some shame added to the anger that remained in her eyes. “I am Lethe,” the companion answered, then turned and looked to Jill questioningly. Jill looked back with a confused look and a nod. “Her lover,” the companion added.

The gears jammed again. “B-b-but…you’re a…” she stammered.

“A what?” they both prompted her with extraordinary interest.

“A woman!” she continued, aghast.

Jill and Lethe seemed frozen for a moment before they both gave a relieved breath, Lethe pairing hers with an also-relieved, “Oh.” A second later she continued with, “Yeah,” as if to confirm the village girl’s assessment of her gender.

This all seemed very strange to the girl, and her mind began putting things together in an uncharacteristically intelligent fashion. The large cloak. The hiss. The stripes on Lethe’s face she assumed were tattoos. Gallia. And now this strange paranoia they shared over what she said Lethe was. “Why…are you wearing that cloak? This is hardly the weather for it.”

They exchanged another paranoid look before Lethe answered, “It sounds like you already have a theory.”

The girl didn’t have quite enough spine to confront her suspicion directly, so she asked another question. “Where are you from?”

Jill and Lethe looked at each other again before Lethe sighed and brought her hood down, revealing ears that gave an answer her mouth soon confirmed. “Gallia.”

“S-sub-human!” the village girl gasped, and was met with a hiss from Lethe, causing her to flinch.

“Didn’t the schools you were complaining about teach you we don’t like that name?”

For no reason she could think of after the fact, she actually answered Lethe’s question, albeit quite shakily. “I-I’m done with school.”

“Hmph. Beorc let their children out of school too early.”

To this she responded in a way she later agreed made much more sense. She turned and ran back to the village as fast as her legs could carry her.

-

Lethe was watching the girl’s form fade into the distance when Jill took her hand. “Come on, we better finish here quickly before the village sums up the courage to do something stupid.”

Lethe grunted in agreement as they walked through the door. She gave the foyer a cursory examination before giving Jill a more thorough one. She looked tired. Exhausted. As if from prolonged exertion.

Jill saw Lethe looking at her and gave her a smile. “Well, at least this means you don’t need to wear that cloak anymore, right?”

Lethe allowed herself to laugh, knowing Jill needed a change of mood. “Yes, I suppose I don’t.” Jill’s months of exertion were finally over, and Lethe would allow her to rest.