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Eirika isn’t quite sure what it was that awoke her, not that it truly mattered. The sleep she had managed to wrestle from her unending thoughts had been fitful at best, and the walls of a bedroom once so familiar to her had been no comfort after the long and heavy battle. She finds herself struggling to settle, fighting against a heart that beats too heavy and a mind that runs too far, and before she could convince herself otherwise she flings a nightgown over her slight frame and takes to the corridors.
She is not reprimanded by any one of the members of her army that are standing guard at that hour. Instead, she is met with looks of solemn understanding and heartfelt cautions. Part of her wishes they did, wishes to be ushered away from the sights of her old home and the heaviness they bring.
Part of her wishes that Orson had let the place fall deeper into disrepair. If that had been the case, she wouldn’t be stumbling across torn tapestries and painted portraits left to slowly perish, wouldn’t be left to pick up the pieces of her past residence and wonder how to return it to a home. Eirika hopes, in this moment, that Ephraim is deep within sleep’s blissful embrace, that he is in a realm of peace. There would be time for him to follow these same steps, to clutch at crushed stone and mourn; for now, it is Eirika’s turn to bear this burden. She carries it slowly, languidly, dragging the heavy emotions as she does her tired, aching feet.
She despairs silently, her body trembling and her face subject to a slow and steady trickling of tears. The princess of Renais dares not awake those subjects of hers who have managed to find a moment of rest.
No, her reasons were not quite so pure. She was no longer the girl who had dashed down these halls, searching for her brother to bother for a game or a moment to share, searching for comfort and joy. She is the commander of an army, a leader and a beacon of hope for her people. She can not afford to let them see her like this.
Still, Eirika was not foolish enough to leave the castle walls, lest there be additional troops waiting in ambush. Her duty weighs heavily, and with it, an understanding of the weighty importance of her life. Perhaps this very duty is why she finds herself heading to the throne room, reasonably far from the sleeping quarters arranged for the night.
Eirika winces as the large double doors creak with the strain of her weight against them and silently prays that it went unnoticed. She does not have much time to feel remiss, however, as she finds herself in unexpected company: the Silver Knight himself leans against the eastern wall, arms crossed before his chest and gaze lazily pointed downwards. It appears that the sound of the door had not alerted him to her presence. His scarlet hair obscures his face in such a way that his face is hidden from view, and if one was unfamiliar with the man, it would be easy to imagine him sleeping.
Eirika knew better. “Seth,” she whispers, and is greeted by a pair of deep crimson eyes flashing to hers.
“My lady,” Seth returns, just as quiet, and Eirika is struck by just how tired he looks in this moment. Although he has straightened from his previous posture, his body is visibly heavy, head pulling his gaze away almost as soon as he had given it to her. It was enough time, however, for the princess to catch the deep bags that plague them. “I apologise if my being here is… insensitive,”
Insensitive? The word rolls around in Eirika’s tired mind a moment before she catches on to the implication: this was the last place either of them had seen the late king, and there was undoubtedly a strong sense of guilt attached to that fact. “There’s no need,” Eirika responds, shaking her head, dislodging a tear from where it had been working a path down her cheek in the process. Hastily she wipes her face with freshly calloused hands, hoping in vain that Seth had not noticed her own countenance as she entered.
A heavy silence falls over the two of them as Eirika slowly makes her way to her loyal knight. There is a sense of panic building in her chest, urging her to hasten her approach, go to him, but she wills herself against it. The last time she witnessed Seth this languid was immediately after they had departed this very room and he had received his blow from Valter. The sight of Seth like this opens her heart to that same brittle ache, and she worries that, if she were to move any quicker, it would shatter her.
When Eirika next speaks she is almost beside him, only a few steps from reach, and yet he still has not lifted his eyes to her again. “Seth,” she calls to him in a fervent hush, and reaches towards the man.
He visibly flinches at her touch, and when his eyes meet hers she notices tear streaks that mirror her own alongside wide eyes. Eirika says nothing, but cannot contain the small gasp that escapes her. She has never seen Seth cry before, not even when the Moonstone’s lance pierced his shoulder, or as he bled onto the both of them as they rode endlessly towards Frelia. Eirika had not imagined that he wasn’t hurting at that time, just that he was simply a man of steel and a tempered heart: a true knight of Renais. To see him hurting so visibly now was simply unfathomable, and the panic from prior surged against Eirika’s ribcage once more.
Almost as if he could sense her growing concern, Seth steps away, pointedly turning his face from view without disrespectfully turning his back on his charge. “Please excuse me your highness,” he manages a somewhat even tone, a testament to his resolve in his duty as an infallible pillar, “I did not intend on disturbing you.”
“Wait!” Eirika begs, and finds that she has reached for his hand without thinking. Again, those pained eyes meet with hers, and her resolve strengthens. “Please. I don’t want you to leave.”
For a moment she feels a squeeze, Seth’s hand tightening ever so slightly around hers, and the panic abates minutely before he pulls his hand free with a supreme gentleness. “I do not wish for my lady to see her knight as I am now.”
“Seth, you are more than just my knight,” Eirika assures, stepping towards him as he instinctively inches away. Seth is a predator on the battlefield, seeking out and exploiting weaknesses in the enemy’s movements to achieve victory; yet, under the gentle gaze of the future queen of Renais, and with the events of the day weighing heavily on him, he shrinks away like prey. Eirika speaks to him with a softness reserved for the soft, a tone entirely unused on the Silver Knight. “You are human, as am I. We cannot expect to soldier on eternally, indifferent to the tragedy around us. Please, mourn without holding shame in your heart.”
Eirika has become too accustomed to grief in the weeks that followed the fall of Renais, encountering losses and tragedy at every turn. She grieved for her father, for her people, but more than any of that she grieved for the loss of peace, of the world before the war. Her ability to maintain her senses and put grief aside was due to those who stood beside her, with Seth playing no small part in that. His protection and guidance had been invaluable, yes, but simply his familiar and unshakeable presence in her life was all the more valuable.
Seth shakes his head slightly, the only show of dissent he could ever allow. “I am simply your knight, Eirika, nothing more, and it is my duty to act as your sword and shield. I cannot allow my personal shortcomings to distract you or tarnish my performance of my duty.”
The absence of honourifics or titles does not pass unnoticed, and a strangled sob threatens the gates of Eirika’s lips. “Seth I beg of you,” she begins, voice wavering, “don’t push me away.”
There’s so much more she wants to say, she must say, but her voice is strained with her own unrelinquished tears. Eirika loves Seth, she knows this, knew this when he rode with her to safety and again into the fray, knew this in every war council and sparring match, knows it in his subtle smiles and his firm demeanour and his sturdy eyes. She loves him as a knight, as a citizen of her beloved nation of Renais and as a man: human and imperfect. A man with determination and fear and a strength that defies it.
They stand there, the defiled remains of the throne room falling away from their minds as they come to grips with a harsh reality: before Eirika and Seth are a princess and a knight, they are only human, and all of humanity suffers the curse of weakness. Perhaps it is this very curse, or, perhaps, the tears of anguish spilling over despairing pools of blue that breaks the faithful knight’s resolve. Seth stumbles forward, embracing his future queen and holding her against him, the both of them trembling with the tears they have yet to shed.
Eirika returns his embrace without hesitation, burying her face into his chest and allowing herself to weaken, to melt into his warmth and mentally catalogue every press of his body against hers: his hands cradling the back of her head and her waist, his forehead against her crown as his body is wracked with barely restrained sobs.
Seth allows himself this one weakness, to grieve the memory of Orson who he had lost not once, but twice now: one death by his betrayal and the other by Seth’s own blade merely hours prior. He grieves alongside his beloved Eirika, who rubs soft circles into his back even through her own tears. Even as he cries he mumbles apologies into her silken hair, begs for forgiveness, laments his weakness. He’s nonsensical, he knows this, but he cannot help it, unable to fully relinquish his knightly resolve.
Seth does not dare pull away, not until the last of his tears are shed, not until his body has returned to steel, and his heart to tempered stone. If he were to pull away before that, to see the renewed softness and passion in the princess’s eyes, he would not have the resolve to refrain from indulging the desires that have plagued him, to take her lips in his own and carry her far, far away, where war could not touch either of their hearts, where she did not have to queen and he did not have to be strong.
Eirika belonged to Renais, as he belonged by her side. But just for tonight, Seth thought traitorously, they could belong in each other’s arms.