title: good stone in ruined houses
fandom: fire emblem: awakening
rating: g
pairing: lon'qu/libra
summary: They settle on tiny Chon’sin, shaking with its wounds. In need of able hands, without Ylisse’s coffers. The destruction spells opportunity in its way: towns to rebuild, ashes to sweep away.


The adrenaline leaves them slowly, the ebb of a sick shivering tide. The war is done, Grima defeated. Present and future secured, tied in only slightly tangled twine.

They are halfway back to Ylisstol when Libra asks what’s next. And Lon’qu hesitates, says that a mercenary was all he’d ever been. That when he’d still had the time to contemplate the future, he’d thought there’d simply be a next job.

That, he says, was before-- and then trails off, twisting his wedding ring. Hides a smile in his collar.

So Libra takes him by both hands, bends to meet his eye.

“What if we went home?”

A pause. “Home? Where?”

Libra takes a breath--one of the good ones, where the air smells clean, like spring, new growth. Fresh laundry, no smoke. The kind of breath that lingers in one’s lungs, that one simply doesn’t get in war.

“That’s for us to decide.”

xxx

They settle on tiny Chon’sin, shaking with its wounds. In need of able hands, without Ylisse’s coffers. The destruction spells opportunity in its way: towns to rebuild, ashes to sweep away. Memorials to be held. The quivering, half-made possibility of home for an orphan, perhaps more than one.

Chon’sin was an estranged mother to Lon’qu; a decade had passed since he’d stood upon her soil. Since he’d spoken his native language to anyone but himself, but Libra.

It had been a long time.

The proposal comes haltingly, as Libra beds down after prayers. His voice never leaves the tone of his devotions: raspy-soft, words practiced.

That Lon’qu had longed for the hills of his home comes with the selfsame hesitance.

“Are you certain, Lon’qu? It is only an idea, and perhaps an ill-advised one.”

“I am,” he manages, between breaths like the tides of the Long Sea. “I am.”

xxx

They reach Ylisstol with somewhere to go, a time frame in which to operate. Stay long enough to heal, for the verve of hero-worship to die down. Lon’qu visits the healers for the fractures in his leg, Libra for the burn of Mire on his back.

They endure the ceremonies as well as they can, Libra’s knuckles white in Lon’qu’s grip. The noise, the pomp, the incessant fol-de-rol. At the third one, Chrom flashes an apology of a smile as he lays medals ‘round their necks.

By the fifth, they call exhaustion. Stay in their borrowed apartments, steeping endless pots of tea and sighing. They start again, testing battered bodies, making slow and cautious love. Libra leans in for one last kiss, drags his sweat-filmed body away, declares it time for a language lesson.

Lon’qu speaks his mother tongue with the grace of a mountain stream, where Libra manages pleasantries and counting with pronunciation like a leaking barrel. Early on he masters ‘thank you,’ ‘dearest,’ ‘I love you,’ says them well and often.

xxx

One evening they are summoned to Emmeryn’s old gardens, and Libra says prayers for his comrades who married in the blood-clotted dusts of war, swords hanging above their heads. Hymns are sung then with no dour edge, and the newlyweds are showered with flowers and rice. Libra permits himself a half-glass of champagne, Lon’qu allows a fleeting kiss in public. Chrom claps Lon’qu on the back, promises to search out money for Chon’sin’s aid. Frederick, the circlet of prince-consort on his head, promises to hold him to it.

The next morning they book passage on the fastest ship that they can find.

xxx

The ocean rolls beneath their feet again. This time there is no fire, no terror, no sundered bodies like so much jetsam. Just a cabin with cream-colored sheets, with dried flowers and a shockingly soft mattress.

Still Lon’qu twists and thrashes in his sleep, hissing half-formed curses, pleas for mercy.

Libra wakes him gentle and provides it, holds him steady. Reminds him of the good that they will do, of the life that they will build.

Reminds him they are free to build it somewhere else.

“No,” rasps Lon’qu, foggy. “I want this. I want this with you.”

“Then we shall do it together.”

Lon’qu sleeps again, and this time dreams the smell of fresh grass, of horses and plum blossoms and home.

xxx

The smell is still the same.

Lon’qu expects his knees to give beneath him, expects his breath to all punch out of him at once, but he stands stalwart as he always has.

Libra stands just as tall beside him, eyes closed. Translucent roots thread from the soles of his feet where he walks.

Somebody recognizes them at an inn, knows their names as friends of Say’ri. She offers them a round, a meal on her.

They ask only for directions to where the damage is worst.

xxx

They grow accustomed once more to sleeping in tents over hard earth. Their softened muscles ache, their skin blisters. In the evenings, as Libra practices his cooking and conversation on the townspeople, Lon’qu kneels by the river, ponders the arcana of drawing out sweat stains.

Libra trades his battleaxe for a shorter one, rough-hewn, made for splitting wood. He learns how to find good stone in ruined houses, how to mix mortar.

Lon’qu learns to steady himself off the battlefield. He carries on with women over half-peeled bushels of potatoes. Works himself with such ardor that his sleep is half-dead, dreamless. Some days, he sees no need to wear his sword.

They have less time to spend together, to sit and hold hands and simply exist. To have slow, sporadic conversations about faith, about history, about the birds that they’d been seeing. Still, Libra makes it to their tent for prayers on the bone-deep schedule of a migratory bird, and Lon’qu mostly succeeds in keeping up.

Two months in, Libra adds a prayer in perfect Chon’sin. The cap bursts off of Lon’qu’s heart.

xxx

In the village, there are orphans that need feeding. They follow them around like the ducklings on the pond, with the notable difference that ducklings don’t latch onto their parents’ legs. But Lon’qu can well handle a passenger or two. This has been Libra’s most breathless ambition, one that he has come by degrees to share. How could they possibly refuse?

There is Mai’ya, with her scruffy hair and scruffier dolls; Gen’rai, a dervish of muddy footprints and missing teeth; Qi’lin still speaking in half-sentences, full-throated crying jags. Others, older, who come around for food, for company, to hear Libra sing. But those are the three that hide behind Libra’s skirts, who crawl into their tent at night tugging blankets and shirtsleeves, pleading to be held after a nightmare. The ones that whirl around them as they work, their spread-eagle energy inverse to the things that they have seen.

Their orbit quickens, spirals in, and in time they grow attached, graft themselves into a family like the braided trunk of a bonsai.

xxx

They promise five ways to Ferox they can wait, that their battered Shepherds’ tent serves fine. That other things need building first-- a wall outside the village, a tower for the watch.

It’s peacetime, the villagers say, and make no mistake.

Libra asks them “are you certain?” and Lon’qu stands behind him, frowns. Mai’ya stares up from her perch clung to his leg, and her precious moon face pleads.

They relent, and a foundation goes up beside the river. Three rooms-- one for them, one for the children, one for both. Made from stones scrubbed clean of moss, of blood. Beams of salvaged wood. The thatch on the roof, the oil-paper windows are new.

Libra pulls every splinter Lon’qu gets learning to make furniture.

xxx

When the year is up and the village stands again, it is clear that they can’t leave. Certainly, other villages have been left in ruins, other fields burnt out and strewn with rubble. Other places need their hands--not only willing now, but skilled.

But Chrom’s promises are good ones. Money is trickling in, every emissary bearing brief, earnest letters alongside the bags of coin. Libra has leveraged some messengers too, signing his full priestly title to entreaties for missionary aid. And Lon’qu, who has proven a dab hand with hammer and tacks, will smile shyly and teach anyone who wants to know.

Besides. There’s no leaving the children. Lon’qu wears Mai’ya’s flower circlets, has cajoled Gen’rai into helping with the garden. Qi’lin reaches pudgy hands toward Libra, calling baba, baba. They stumble through their prayers at bedtime, and sometimes do not even cry out in the night.

Lying spine to sternum in their bed, Libra presses his mouth to the nape of Lon’qu’s neck. Confesses that there’s no place he’d rather be.

Lon’qu cannot help but agree with his whole heart.