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A Fire Emblem Fanfiction

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Chapter 2: Coming Home

By: knowlee

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Ranulf had heard of the beorc saying, ‘You never know what you miss until you don’t have it anymore’. Never did he think that he would experience this himself during the time he had been away from Gallia, and from Lethe.

She was currently wrapped in his arms as she was struggling to rein in her runaway emotions. He could feel her tears soaking his shirt, but he didn’t mind. He was just glad that he was finally back home.

It was only supposed to be a two or three day mission; four days tops. Unfortunately though, fate had different plans. He left early that morning, only stopping to give Lethe a proper goodbye. She would have killed him if he left her without doing so.

One thing in particular he remembered was that Lethe didn’t really want him to go. He remembered teasing her about it with the response of, ‘oh so you do care’, but he didn’t dismiss the feelings she was having. He honestly didn’t want to leave either.

Another reason for her being reluctant to let him leave was because apparently she had been having feelings that said something bad was going to happen. Once more he didn’t dismiss her feelings since he knew Lethe long enough to know that when she had something like this on her mind for a while, that it wasn’t a laughing matter. Instead he tried to calm those fears by promising her that he would be extra careful and wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks during his mission.

After making his promise, Ranulf quickly left for Crimea. He had been traveling for quite some time, but it wasn’t until shortly after he passed the border separating the two countries that he felt like he was being watched. He wasn’t sure at first who they were at first, but once he caught their scents he could tell that it was a group of beorc.

At first he figured that they were just peaceful and were traveling to the capital as well, but it wasn’t until he smelt metal coming from their direction that he had a sneaky feeling that there was a slight chance that they might be hostile towards him. After this realization, he began to watch his surroundings much closer than he had before. He did so in a manner that wouldn’t alert them to his knowledge of their presence. He didn’t wish to cause trouble if he could avoid it.

It became apparent though not long after he had entered Crimea’s territory a bit more that not only were they watching him, they were also following him. He knew then that they definitely weren’t peaceful.

He pressed on in order to prevent the group from catching up to him. He felt that he would be much safer within Crimea’s castle walls. But before he had that chance of ever getting there he found himself surrounded. How they got past him he wasn’t sure, but they ambushed him and after a short and rather unfair fight he might add, they knocked him out.

When he came to, he found himself being held prisoner in what he assumed to be the group’s camp. He was tied to a post in the middle of the camp and had guards watching over him. He wasn’t sure what the beorc wanted with him, but from the nasty looks they gave him, he knew that they obviously didn’t like him.

He remembered one of them coming towards him, the leader he figured, and questioning him as to why he was in Crimea. Naturally Ranulf didn’t answer that question since he didn’t want to give away what he was doing. They didn’t like his response though since the next thing he knew the leader was beating and cursing him.

Apparently the only crime they saw that he had committed was that he was a laguz in beorc land.

He wasn’t sure exactly how long he had stayed in the camp, he knew that it was longer than a month or two since he had seen the sun rise and set many times. Either way he knew that during his time there he was constantly thinking of ways to escape. He knew he had promised Lethe that he wouldn’t do anything risky, but as far as he could see it was something he had to do. He just had to wait for an opening in their defenses.

When that opening did come though, he nearly didn’t make it out alive.

He waited until nightfall to make his move. He had already loosened his restraints during the early hours, so after a couple of hours had passed since the sun had set, Ranulf removed his hands from the fastenings and used them to take out the two guards that were watching him.

As he tried to make a quick getaway though, that’s where everything went wrong. Apparently someone had noticed him making his move on the guards earlier and warned the others of his escape. Ranulf attempted to shift into his beast form and use his speed to outrun them, but before he had the chance he ran into the leader of the beorc group.

Ranulf remembered feeling terrified at that moment when he saw in the leader’s hand a laguz axe. He barely dodged the initial attack he sent his way, but when the guy came back for a second try he gave him a deep cut on his back.

To say it hurt was an understatement. It felt like someone had poured fire inside of his body and the pain spread through him quickly. He would’ve collapsed to the ground in agony, if it were not for the combination of his training, adrenaline and his instinct to survive.

With all three of those things coursing through his body, Ranulf found the strength to shift into his beast form, and quickly retaliated against the man. It was sheer luck that his attack landed sooner than he could land his and the man fell to the ground dead.

Ranulf took that chance to run for it.

He wasn’t sure how far away he had run from the mercenaries’ camp, but apparently it was quite far for he could no longer smell their scent. Even though this came as a blessing to him, he still continued to run as fast as he could. As far as he could care, the more distant, the better.

There did come a time though when he had to stop. The adrenaline began to wear off and he could feel the pain radiating from his wound. What he needed to do now was to stop the bleeding, clean the wound and wrap it before infection set in.

That was easier said than done though.

He stopped once he found a stream and used its water to clean his injury. He then took the orange wrap from his waist and used it as a makeshift bandage to wrap the wound, but even though he had put forth those efforts to help his wound he could tell that he was still bleeding badly. In order to stop the bleeding entirely it would require stitching and that was something that he couldn’t do at the moment since he didn’t have the required equipment for the job. Nor could he do that due to the difficult position the wound was located at. He would also need assistance in doing that.

Ranulf also discovered as he sat there, that due to his loss of blood he was beginning to grow tired and weak. It was at that moment that he first began to inwardly panic. He needed to find a healer fast, but he honestly didn’t know where to find one. Heck, he didn’t even know where he was!

He remembered beginning to try and calm himself down since he couldn’t afford to lose anymore blood than he was already. He looked at his surroundings to try to see if there was anything familiar about them, but nothing came to mind. He recalled feeling the fatigue slowly closing in on him and could smell the blood that was slowly soaking his make shift wrap.

Ranulf usually wasn’t a very religious guy especially after the incident that occurred during the last war with the goddess Ashera, but he remembered asking Yune for some help. He wanted to get back home safely and he wanted to see Lethe again. He could have only imagined what she was going through.

He remembered forcing himself to get up at this point and he began to walk through the woods once more. Somehow, even while feeling the fatigue slowly taking over his body, he found himself reaching the edge of the forest. A fleeting thought had passed through his head during that time about how risky it was being in an open area, but for some reason he felt compelled to continue.

He soon found his answer as he suddenly saw a strangely familiar group of people traveling along a pathway near the forest. His tired eyes barely made out that it was in fact a wagon and that little bit of information had helped ease his fears that the group of people were the mercenaries.

He remembered watching as the wagon drew closer and it wasn’t until he noticed one of the members of the group had a particular hair color that it reminded him of someone he briefly knew from his time in the wars. It took him a few moments but then recognition hit him.

“Ilyana?”

Ranulf remembered hearing his voice croak out the word due to him not using it for a while since he was captured. He watched as the wagon came to a stop and the group turned their heads to look at him. He watched as Ilyana jumped from her spot on the wagon and quickly walked over towards him before stopping a few feet away from him.

She looked at him for a few seconds before he noticed her face take on a look of recognition. “R-Ranulf? Is that you? What are you doing here?”

He remembered feeling elated that she had remembered him and for the first time in a while he found himself thinking that everything would be alright. He opened his mouth to answer her question, but before he could get the words out, he found himself suddenly losing consciousness. He had lost too much blood.

The next thing he remembered was waking up while lying on his stomach in a cot that was sitting in a stone building. He looked around him and found that he was in a room of some kind. He remembered going to lean up to get a better look only to find that he was extremely sore and that someone had bandaged his wound up while he was out. This only served to increase his curiosity of where he was.

He got his answer soon enough for right after he noticed the bandages, he heard the door to his room open and in walked an older woman who was wearing white clothing that was drapped across her frame. Once she saw him awake, a smile came across her face and she walked over to him.

“Ah, it’s good to see that you’re awake! We were beginning to think that you wouldn’t get up at all.”

Ranulf furrowed his eyebrows at this. “What do you mean?”

Once again the woman smiled. “You had lost quite a lot of blood. If those merchants hadn’t found you when they did and brought you here to help finish what they had healed, you probably wouldn’t have made it.”

He was confused by her words. “What do you mean, ‘finish what they had healed’?

She quickly put the back of her hand onto his forehead, which had caused him to flinch slightly at the touch. She noticed this and quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. I was merely checking to see if you had a temperature. We’ve been closely checking to make sure that the injury you sustained wasn’t infected so that way you wouldn’t get sick. The injury is healing fine, but it doesn’t hurt to be too careful.”

He remembered quickly apologizing for his action once she explained herself. He guessed he was still too wound up about what had transpired at the mercenaries’ camp to let his guard down.

“To answer your question though, the mercenaries had used some of the vulnaries they had in their possession to help heal the wound slightly until they got here. Plus a young woman who was with the party knew some knowledge about healing and attempted to use one of the staves they had to try and heal you. It was a valiant effort but it was a good thing that they were also headed in this direction to make sure that everything was alright. They saved your life.”

Indeed they did. He remembered making a mental note to thank them later for it. After their conversation, the nurse then set off to retrieve him some food to eat, which he did with relish and asked him if there was someone that she needed to contact to let him know of his whereabouts. He immediately thought of Lethe at that moment. He also needed to contact Skrimir and let him know where he was too, but Lethe was at the foremost of his thoughts.

So with the nurse’s help, he penned two letters: one for Skrimir telling him of his whereabouts and about the men who ambushed him, then for Lethe to assure of her that he was alive and that he would be coming home to her soon. In each letter he wrote passages in them to assure each recipient that they were in fact from him and not from an imposter. The passages detailed events that only he and the other two knew of personally.

The nurse assured him that the letters would be received and would send them off as soon as possible. He couldn’t remember exactly how long it took for the letters to travel to Gallia, but the next thing he remembered was the nurse telling them a small troupe of Gallian soldiers had arrived at the place he had been staying and that they were to bring him home.

Home. That was a word he absolutely relished in hearing. He didn’t think he’d ever leave the borders of Gallia again after all this was over with.

It took a few weeks to finally make to the castle and once he arrived in Skrimir’s throne room, he found himself nearly getting crushed to death at the strength that his hug had. Skrimir let him go immediately after he told him that he was still healing and from the way that his friend looked at him, he could tell that he was missed. And then it was from Skrimir that he found that he had been presumed dead and had been gone for seven months.

Seven months?! He remembered feeling instantly horrible at being away for so long especially since he could only imagine how Lethe had taken it. Speaking of Lethe, where was she?

It was only a few moments after Skrimir told him that he had sent Lyre to retrieve her that he heard the doors to the throne room slam open. He saw Skrimir’s face look away from him and at someone else and then suddenly he smelt a very familiar scent. His heart clenched. Could it be?

He turned around slowly and then found himself looking directly at his mate. The one person who his thoughts had turned to frequently during his time away: Lethe. He felt his voice grow thick and stepped towards her as he spoke her name, “Lethe?”

He remembered feeling his heart break when he saw tears coming from her eyes. He knew that those tears were because of him. He hated himself for that.

Then he watched as she spoke harshly towards him as she walked over to him, “You idiot!”

He felt her fist connect with his chest and normally it wouldn’t have hurt him, but in his weakened state it did. He doubled over at the pain. Then he heard her take a shuttering breath as she spoke again.

“You had me worried sick and thinking you were dead! Do you have any idea of what you put me through?!”

After this he looked back up at her. He knew that she was mad, but at the same time he knew that he didn’t expect her to react to this in any other way than how she did. That was just how she was. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

He smiled as he leaned back up and said to her, “I missed you too, Lethe.”

That comment then led to the position they were in now with her now crying and Ranulf holding her close. If he were honest with himself he knew that he would never let her go and he knew that she felt the same towards him.

Soon he heard her hiccup and bring her face from his chest. He could see that her face had reddened from her display of emotion and that her eyes were now puffy as well. He watched as she brought her amethyst eyes to look up at him. He then took his opportunity to speak.

“I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
She nodded in understanding as she responded, “I know you didn’t. The only people I blame for this are those stupid human scum!”

He knew that since her experiences with beorc that she didn’t use that word as often as she used to, but at this point he could understand why she said it. Although he had nearly gotten to the point where he could forgive those who hurt him, he understood why she still felt the way she did. He knew if the situation were reversed that he’d probably be the same.

The rest of the day after their long-awaited meeting was mostly a blur to Ranulf. The next thing he knew he was whisked off to the infirmary to ensure that the wound he had was properly healing and to prescribe him some herbs and bandages to help treat it. He didn’t see much of Lethe during that time until he finally was freed from them.

She was waiting at the door to the examination room he had been in. Once she saw him, she told him that Skrimir had given her the next few days off due his return and had asked where he wanted to go.

He could only think of one place.

A little while later, with help from Kyza and Lyre, the two had found their way out of the castle and were now in the safe confines of their home. The first thing he noticed as he walked around in the house was how dirty it was. He was surprised at it. Normally Lethe was particular about these things and there wasn’t a day that went by before he disappeared that it didn’t appear spotless. He had supposed that it was part of her military training that caused her to be that way.

Then it hit him. He realized fully at that moment how bad his disappearance and declaration of death had affected her. He turned his gaze from the house and looked back at Lethe to find her looking at him. As if she was still trying to convince herself that he was really there. Then she finally took her gaze off of him and looked sheepishly at the house’s appearance.

“Sorry…, I was really preoccupied during the last few months. I meant to keep it looking nice, but…”

She didn’t need to finish for he could understand exactly why she fell out of doing so.

With quick strides, he crossed the room and engulfed her in a hug. Then he heard her voice. If he didn’t have such good hearing due to his feline ears he would’ve missed it due to it being so low.

“Please don’t leave again.”

Once more his heart broke at the sadness and fear he heard in her voice. He pulled away from her and looked into her eyes. “I can’t promise that I won’t leave again, but I can promise that it won’t be for a very, very long time.”

He smiled to help comfort her and he watched as she briefly returned the smile before it fell back into a frown. “There-there were times when I felt as if I should have ended it.”

Ranulf’s eyes widened at this. Surely she wouldn’t have? He heard her next words, “But I knew that regardless of whether you were alive or not, you would have not let me hear the end of it. So instead I started working a lot more. I wanted – needed – to keep that off my mind. And now, I’m glad I did.”

She smiled at him when she finished her statement. He understood why she had felt the way she did. He knew that he’d be the same too if he were in her place, but was glad she had not given in. Once again he gave her a hug.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through that. If I had reached civilization earlier, I would’ve sent a letter much sooner.”

He heard the confusion in her voice, “Letter?”

He pulled away from her as his eyebrows furrowed at this, “Yes, a letter. Did you not receive one from me?”

He watched as she shook her head. He felt even more saddened now at this revelation. He had thought that she had gotten the letter. This whole situation that she just explained to him was the whole reason why he had sent her a letter separate from the one he wrote Skrimir. He wanted to assure her that he wasn’t dead.

“I swear I sent you one. It was sent along with the one I wrote Skrimir. I thought you had received it by now. Are you sure you haven’t received one?”

He watched as Lethe furrowed her brow and went into a thinking trance. Then he watched as a look of curiosity came over her face. “Perhaps…”

She loosened her arms from his grip and quickly walked over to the small table that sat in one corner of the room. That table was considered to be their ‘catch-all’ as they called it and usually contained spare keys, letters and other knickknacks that happened to find their way there.

He watched as she grabbed small stack of letters that was sitting on the table and began to leaf through them. As she did she spoke, “There was a messenger that came by a couple of weeks ago with some mail for me. I didn’t have time to look through them at that moment when he gave them to me, so they’ve been sitting here since then. Perhaps it’s in here?”

He could tell that she was hoping that it was. He was too.

As she continued to leaf through the letters, he watched as she suddenly stopped and pulled out a letter out of the stack. She set the rest of the letters back onto the table and continued to stare down at the envelope.

“I wish I had looked through this before, this is your handwriting on here, isn’t it?”

He heard the disappointment in her voice and hated that she had just now only found it. He knew what she was referring to. On the front of the envelope he had simply wrote her name. He had left no return name on it, he knew that just by her looking at his handwriting alone that she’d know who it was from.

He watched her look up at him. “I guess there’s no point in reading it now since you’re here, right?”

He smiled and started walking towards her as he teased her. “Well, it was intended for you. I’d rather you read it, but if you don’t want to that’s fine as well.”

Ranulf watched as she looked back down at the envelope and slowly began to open it. He was standing before her as she pulled out the letter. He watched as she unfolded it and began to read its contents.

He knew all the words by heart that he had written so he decided to look at her face to see the expressions that passed over her face as she read it. Her eyes roamed over the words in the letter until they reached the final line, which he decided to repeat it so she could hear it herself.

“I love you.”

He saw her turn her eyes from the letter to look at him. Emotions shone in her eyes and her mouth formed into a small smile. “I love you, too, idiot.”

A big grin came over his face. He knew that Lethe was the kind of person who rarely said those words, since she was big on the whole mantra of ‘actions speak louder than words’, but when she did say them, he knew that she didn’t say them lightly.

He wrapped her in his arms again and felt her arms go around him too. It was at that moment that for the first time in months that he felt at peace. It was also then during that same moment that he realized one thing.

He was home.

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Fin.

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