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asherienTitle: Smile
Genre: gen
Fandom: Fire Emblem 6
Characters/pairings: Elphin/Mildain, Percival
Summary/prompt: "I imagine Etrurian women are not as delicate as you expected." FE 100, theme #69: Smile.
Warnings: Not entirely happy with this for some reason.
Even now, his mirth sings in his unseeing eyes, twitches at the corners of his thin lips, lingers in the dance-like sway of his hips. He is not ashamed to stumble, or to gasp and reach for Percival's arm, but he is too proud to flinch at the whispers trailing behind him.
"Fragile," he hears in an echo from the halls. "Like a woman."
He does not answer, and restrains his knight from doing so on his behalf. "Let them think so," he whispers, and then he smiles as if he is deaf instead of blind.
Like a woman – sunlight curls spilling over slender shoulders and down silk-clad back, long, thin fingers stretching across Percival's arm as they might across a lyre. Perhaps fit for a princess. Hardly fit for a king.
He does not see the smirk flash across the face of the man before him, the son of one of the many nobles slain in the war, or the way it flits away the moment Percival looks in that direction. He does not see that this noble's son is a burly man with a heavy jaw and meaty hands that could snap his wrists at a moment's notice. But he hears it in the introduction, in the slightest emphasis on king before his name, in the creak of the chair and the groan that follows it as the man takes his seat.
"Has the offer been considered?" An offer of alliances – more like a threat of hostility, of another war bubbling beneath the surface. An offer that would have Etruria on its knees, begging for the favor of traitors.
"It has." He does not see the smile return on the other man's face, or see the satisfaction in the way he leans forward and licks his meaty lips. "And we shall refuse. The title of your father has been awarded to a man more loyal than he, and with him it shall remain."
It is enough to hear the slight gasp, the stammering shock so foreign in such delicate dealings. "You must reconsider."
The mirth in his unseeing eyes dances down to his lips and pulls them into a mocking smile. "And why? Because my kingdom needs your support, your men? Or. . . because her king is 'fragile', 'like a woman'?"
Silence stretches across the room and pools between them, until the fragile king speaks again.
"Perhaps in your time in exile, you have forgotten some things. I imagine Etrurian women are not as delicate as you expected."
They are not words fit for a princess or a king. They are purely his own, like the smile on his face and the song in his steps, so different from the clamor he hears, but does not see, as the petitioner and his men are escorted out of the room. He will face whatever comes next with laughter.
Genre: gen
Fandom: Fire Emblem 6
Characters/pairings: Elphin/Mildain, Percival
Summary/prompt: "I imagine Etrurian women are not as delicate as you expected." FE 100, theme #69: Smile.
Warnings: Not entirely happy with this for some reason.
Even now, his mirth sings in his unseeing eyes, twitches at the corners of his thin lips, lingers in the dance-like sway of his hips. He is not ashamed to stumble, or to gasp and reach for Percival's arm, but he is too proud to flinch at the whispers trailing behind him.
"Fragile," he hears in an echo from the halls. "Like a woman."
He does not answer, and restrains his knight from doing so on his behalf. "Let them think so," he whispers, and then he smiles as if he is deaf instead of blind.
Like a woman – sunlight curls spilling over slender shoulders and down silk-clad back, long, thin fingers stretching across Percival's arm as they might across a lyre. Perhaps fit for a princess. Hardly fit for a king.
He does not see the smirk flash across the face of the man before him, the son of one of the many nobles slain in the war, or the way it flits away the moment Percival looks in that direction. He does not see that this noble's son is a burly man with a heavy jaw and meaty hands that could snap his wrists at a moment's notice. But he hears it in the introduction, in the slightest emphasis on king before his name, in the creak of the chair and the groan that follows it as the man takes his seat.
"Has the offer been considered?" An offer of alliances – more like a threat of hostility, of another war bubbling beneath the surface. An offer that would have Etruria on its knees, begging for the favor of traitors.
"It has." He does not see the smile return on the other man's face, or see the satisfaction in the way he leans forward and licks his meaty lips. "And we shall refuse. The title of your father has been awarded to a man more loyal than he, and with him it shall remain."
It is enough to hear the slight gasp, the stammering shock so foreign in such delicate dealings. "You must reconsider."
The mirth in his unseeing eyes dances down to his lips and pulls them into a mocking smile. "And why? Because my kingdom needs your support, your men? Or. . . because her king is 'fragile', 'like a woman'?"
Silence stretches across the room and pools between them, until the fragile king speaks again.
"Perhaps in your time in exile, you have forgotten some things. I imagine Etrurian women are not as delicate as you expected."
They are not words fit for a princess or a king. They are purely his own, like the smile on his face and the song in his steps, so different from the clamor he hears, but does not see, as the petitioner and his men are escorted out of the room. He will face whatever comes next with laughter.