[Challenge 010] Wings of Love: A Cinderella Story
Title: Wings of Love: A Cinderella Story
Challenge #010: Mary Sue/Gary Stu
Game: FE 12 (Heroes of Light and Shadow)
Word Count: 4,031 plus some notes
Characters: OC leads plus Katarina, Merric, and others
Warnings: Clueless Mary Sue, Raging Gary Stu, Idiot Plot, Idiot World, My Unit/Katarina, random Seisen references, and implications of budding romance between half-siblings (don't freak out, please-- no need to hit the back button). Also is based off support conversations for a game that hasn't been officially translated or released yet and thus contains potential spoilers for that game. :/
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
(Part the First)
Once upon a time, in the town of Port Warren, there lived a little girl and she was special because--
No, scratch that. Let us describe this girl. She had a heart-shaped face and a little cute nose, large long-lashed eyes of a striking deep blue, and a cloud of silken fluffy hair that was kind of silvery and kind of lavender and maybe a little bit blue. So you can see right away that this girl was special. And her name was Hyacinthia, though everyone called her Cindy because Hyacinthia was such a grand-sounding name, and what did she think she was? A princess?
So Cindy lived in Port Warren with her mother, who looked just like an older version of Cindy except that her eyes weren’t blue. (This is important). Cindy’s mother was an innkeeper, and though innkeepers in Port Warren had a rather low reputation, Cindy’s mum was the kind of innkeeper who just offered her patrons food, ale, and a bed for the night, without any “companions.” It was a successful inn, but keeping afloat wasn’t easy, and from an early age Cindy was hard at work scrubbing out brass pots, polishing the legs of the barstools, and greeting the guests with a smile. It was a sorry line of work for such a special little girl, wouldn’t you say?
One day, Cindy’s mother sent poor overworked Cindy out to the market with a very long list of things to buy. (The list isn’t important, so we’re not telling you what was on it.) Cindy went to market skipping and humming a pretty tune, because in addition to being overworked Cindy was very virtuous and happy to work so hard to help her mother’s business because special people are just like that, okay? So Cindy was in the market place, and she was engaged in some very tough bargaining to get her mother the very best deal when a pig got loose and starting causing utter havoc, because that’s what pigs do in stories. And the angry pig knocked over a lot of things, including a woman who was in line behind Cindy. And though Cindy wasn’t able to calm the pig down (she wasn’t that special), when she saw the woman was injured she offered to help.
Because Cindy knew magic. Oh, yes. Even though she’d never been to school, she knew several spells, including healing spells. Okay, technically she’d learned them from her mother and wasn’t, you know, a prodigy, but these were some pretty advanced spells for a twelve-year-old who spent her days scrubbing out pots. And so Cindy healed the other woman’s bruises and contusions and a couple of broken nails, and the woman-- a lady with violet hair and a strangely sad expression-- thanked Cindy and then introduced herself as Katarina, a traveling sage.
“My name is Cindy. I’m the daughter of Melissa the innkeeper.”
And Katarina’s sad eyes seemed to grow sharp, and she looked at Cindy closely in a way that made Cindy a little nervous. But then she smiled and asked if she couldn’t help carry all Cindy’s shopping bags home from the market as a means of repaying Cindy for the assistance. And Cindy agreed, and they spent the walk back to the inn discussing what Katarina did on her traveling-sage travels, which turned out to be recruiting talented children for a very special magical school. Katarina went all across the continent of Archanea looking for boys and girls of just the right age to be enrolled in a grand school located right in the royal capital, and there they’d all live and learn magic and turn into powerful mages and healers.
Then Katarina asked Cindy how old she was.
“Twelve last month,” said Cindy.
“Ah, a victory baby!” Because that was the name given to all the children born in the year right after the last great war. There were rather a lot of them. “Well, that’s the same age as the children I’m looking for, Cindy. Eleven or twelve, just old enough to leave home for a few years.”
Cindy thought it was all a marvelous coincidence and didn’t in the least suspect that Katarina planned to recruit her, Cindy, for magical school. Because Cindy was special and special people don’t think that way. They don’t have to think, because other people do the thinking for them and everything just falls into place.
When they got back to the inn, Cindy’s mum was waiting-- and rather cross about it, because thanks to the pig and Katarina it had taken Cindy far too long to home home. Cindy’s mum got even more cross when she saw Cindy’s new friend.
“K-Katarina?” And both her hands went up to fix her hair.
“Hello, Melissa. It’s so nice to see you again after so long.”
Because Cindy’s mum Melissa and Katarina were rather old friends, as it happened. Or acquaintances, anyway. And Katarina asked if Cindy’s husband were at home, and Melissa huffed a bit and said she’d never found a man worth the cost of his room and board, and the two women had a strange kind of conversation that mostly flew over Cindy’s head because twelve-year-olds, especially virtuous ones, don’t completely grasp sarcasm. It was something to do with Melissa looking for a prince and never finding one, while Katarina had ended up with an absolutely perfect knight, and it all sounded rather like a fairy story. But the upshot of it was that Melissa did not want her daughter going off to magic school. Cindy was needed at the inn, and that was that. But Katarina was a persistent sort of woman, and beneath all the sadness there was something hard and a little frightening in her face, and before Cindy knew it all her bags were packed and she was waving goodbye to her mother and leaving Port Warren with all its brigands and whorehouses and angry escaped pigs. But it was all right, because Katarina assured Cindy that she was, indeed, a special little girl.
(Part the Second)
The magical school, otherwise known as the Royal Academy of Magic (Pales Campus), was very far away from Port Warren, but Katarina knew warp magic and so it wasn’t a very hard journey at all. Cindy sneezed every time she materialized, but Katarina just laughed and said that Cindy was cute, because she was.
So Cindy was enrolled in the school and loved every minute of it. She didn’t have many friends, and it seemed that the other students would stare at her a lot and take care to scoot away from her in the hallways, but Cindy didn’t take it personally. She just thought it was because the other students knew where she was from: Port Warren... innkeeper’s daughter... yeah. But she loved studying healing magic and light magic, and she didn’t have to scrub pots, and the food was wonderful and she didn’t have to make any of it. Cindy didn’t realize that it was incredibly strange that she had her own room and a personal maid to pick up her things, she just assumed the RAM(PC) was so wealthy that every student had these things. She didn’t wonder why she had a special luncheon with the Headmistress every week, or why the Headmistress always kept such a close eye on her grades; Cindy just figured that the Headmistress was very attentive. Special people don’t think to ask questions like that, you know.
Cindy also didn’t find it strange she was locked in her room every year when the queen came to school to hand out awards and have tea with all the best students. Even when Cindy won the awards she was locked in her room all day and only let out when all the fun was over. Her maid (who happened to be Katarina’s daughter) would roll her eyes at Cindy on these occasions, but eye-rolling and sarcasm just didn’t sink in with Cindy.
At the close of Cindy’s fifth year at the RAM(PC), news spread through the school that Queen Caeda wasn’t coming to hand out awards that year. Instead, her son the prince would be presiding over the award ceremony. Every girl in the school (well, save one or two) became very excited at the news. Every boy in school (again, save one or two) was rather depressed. Cindy wasn’t either excited or depressed. She was locked in her room that year, too.
(Part the Third)
When Prince Nick arrived at the RAM(PC)--
Hang on. Let us explain about Prince Nick. Nick was the elder child and only son of the king and queen of Archanea. “Nick” might not seem a terribly princely name, but be assured that his real name was Nik-nik-notten, which means something like “fountain of peace after the glorious victory” in archaic dragon speech. Nick’s name was bestowed upon him by his Aunt Tiki, who meant well, but you can see now why everyone just called him “Nick.” Anyway, Nick was not quite sixteen at this point in the story, making him a couple of years younger than Cindy. Most boys of not-quite-sixteen have a bit of growing up to do, and Nick was no exception. He wasn’t terribly tall, and overall he was a bit weedy (his weapons instructor said ‘wiry,’ but she was being kind). People said he resembled his father, and it was intended as a compliment, but in truth Nick looked more than a bit like his mother. Regardless, he was very cute and non-threatening, with huge blue eyes beneath a fringe of hair, which is why all those schoolgirls were excited about a visit from Prince Nick.
[His parents looked alike, anyway-- same color hair, same color eyes. Nick found this disturbing at times.]
Nick, of course, didn’t want to be cute. He wanted to be a great warrior hero like his grandfather, who’d died manfully, fighting against impossible odds and a whole host of wicked, wicked enemies. Not that Nick wanted to die like his grandfather, but... you get the idea. But Nick didn’t seem to be getting to “warrior prince” status any time soon, which was why he was being sent to stupid magic school to look cute and hand out awards and drink tea with stupid mages. And he was rather angry about it. Nick was angry about rather a lot. It made him look even more cute, which was not the desired effect.
[Nick’s younger sister, Keren, was by contrast a wicked little swordfighter who turned into one badass myrmidon. “Keren,” by the way, was short for “Keren-happuch.” Tiki got to pick the name that time, too.]
Anyway, Nick was deliberately late to his appointment at the school. He touched down his pegasus at the RAM(PC) at about ten-thirty in the morning, and he’d been supposed to meet his Aunt Elice for brunch with her staff at precisely ten o’clock. (There are so male pegasus knights in Archanea.) But Nick didn’t care about Aunt Elice’s brunch or her stupid staff or her stupid anything else, and he was sulking on his pegasus out in the courtyard when he noticed a face peeping from a window on the third floor. Nick couldn’t see much at that distance, but he had a impression of a heart-shaped face and a lot of fluffy hair, and the glimpse intrigued him and he was thinking of telling his pegasus to take him up to that window for a better look when some of the school staff caught him and whisked him off to brunch with the Headmistress.
The lunch was boring and polite with everyone calling him “Your Highness”-- even all of his relatives on the RAM(PC) staff. So Nick decided to liven up the salad course.
“Who’s that girl up on the third floor? The one in the corner room.”
Somebody dropped a knife. Aunt Elice sucked in a breath and looked stern. Nick wondered if he’d maybe gone a little too far.
(Part the Fourth)
After Uncle Merric took him aside for a “little chat,” Nick behaved himself for the remainder of the ceremony. He smiled and accepted everyone’s praise and handed out the awards, all the while turning his uncle’s cryptic words over his mind. One thing stood out from Merric’s lecture-- “You will not talk to your father about this.” Well, that was just another one to add to a very long list, because Nick really couldn’t talk to his father about anything. On the occasions they even saw one another, that is. And while Nick was a sulky sort of boy, he was a rather clever one (he’d gotten that one from his mother, too) and he had figured out that the long list of forbidden topics all had something in common. His father-- the high and mighty king of Archanea-- was not allowed to hear about anything remotely unpleasant. If a levee burst and killed ten thousand people, it was a “mild bit of flooding.” If plague decimated a province, the army burned all the bodies and just told His Majesty to avoid that province that season. If blight ravaged a staple crop, the Chancellor moved some numbers around in the budget to hide some additional food imports.
[Nick’s progress reports from his tutors contained a fair number of lies, too, especially the ones that discussed his attitude. But that can simply be called diplomacy-- all royal children are attractive and clever and well-behaved.]
Nick-- being at the age when children are rather prone to rebel-- had come to the conclusion that his father the king was, perhaps, not quite right in the head. This was somewhat unfair; Nick’s father was another of these special people who have other people do the thinking for them and for whom everything, no matter how improbable, just works. This is by no means normal, but if people like this were normal, they wouldn’t be special. At any rate, why the mysterious girl should be ranked with plague, blight, and serial killers as an unmentionable topic was a conundrum to Nick. And Nick, being a stubborn and resourceful kind of boy, decided to get to the bottom of this puzzle. He was going to start by finding that girl.
It should be easy. He’d just show up at the RAM(PC) on a day when no one expected him.
(Part the Fifth)
Cindy spent a great deal of time sighing over the beautiful young boy who’d touched down with his pegasus in the courtyard. Her maid Tina just rolled her violet eyes and said, “That’s Prince Nick, silly. Of course he was beautiful.”
Tina’s father, Sir Chris, was a Very Important Knight serving the royal family, and so Tina had all kinds of stories about Prince Nick. Cindy found herself wanting to know everything-- what was Nick’s birthday? What did he like to eat? Did he prefer cats or dogs?
Cindy quickly became lost in her fantasies about Prince Nick. For the first time, she felt upset about not being allowed out of her room on Award Day. Maybe this next year, for her final Award Day, they’d let her out of her room and Prince Nick could personally give her the award for Weapons Repair? Maybe Cindy would mention the whole not-locked-in-room thing to the Headmistress at their next luncheon together?
Anyway... er... oh, come on. You know how this stuff works. Nick dropped in on the RAM(PC) on a day when Cindy just happened to be mooning around in the courtyard, and he was struck by her perky little nose and sweet voice and all that fluffy hair, and she was struck by his big blue eyes and, er, dainty cuteness. And Nick (not unlike his very, very, very distant ancestor, Sigurd of Chalphy) decided that cryptic warnings be damned he was going to marry the pretty girl with the silvery-lavender-bluish hair and the awesome ability to make weapons unbreakable with the staff of Saint Helarn. But Nick wasn’t a complete idiot and so he first courted Cindy for a while, answering all of her crazy questions about birthdays and favorite candy and whether he liked trained parakeets better than performing monkeys.
As the date of Cindy’s graduation from the RAM(PC) grew near, Nick decided to put a plan into action. First, he tracked down Uncle Merric and informed Merric of his intention to marry “Cindy, you know, the one you keep locked in her room.”
“Only when your mother comes around,” said Merric, and he wiped some perspiration away from his brow as he talked. “Nick, has it ever occurred to you why one student in this Academy would have her own room and a maid and get to use the sacred Helarn staff?”
“Er, no?”
We’ve emphasized that Nick mostly took after his mother, but he did favor his father in some respects, and mental blocks regarding unpleasant truths were among them. But Merric was a sensitive sort of man (unless Elice engaged in a public display of affection, in which case he acted like a tool), and his trademark cryptic lecture just succeeded in confusing the hell out of Nick.
“Oh, I get it. I can’t marry Cindy because her mother is a prostitute.”
“No!” Merric’s handkerchief was really getting a workout.
“But you said she ran ‘an inn in Port Warren.’ I thought all madams were former--”
“Not that kind of inn! Nick, Cindy’s mother Melissa used to be in the army. Our army, during the wars.”
“Oh,” said Nick, and he pretended to understand. “Uncle Merric, what does that have to do with Cindy having Tina for a maid?”
“Nick, do you remember the story of Lord Selis and Lady Julia?”
Nick did. He liked the old war stories and epic poems, though he’d never much liked the story of Lord Selis in particular. The essential inadequate twerpiness of Selis hit a little too close to home.
“Do you remember why they couldn’t get married?”
“Because nobody in their right mind would take Julia when they could get Lakche,” Nick retorted.
Merric had trouble getting any words out after that, and Nick exercised royal prerogative by cutting his uncle off and going elsewhere. The thought of Tina gave him an idea. Tina’s mum Katarina always had spoiled him, and she might be able to get Nick what he wanted this time, too.
(Part the Last)
Katarina didn’t want to be helpful, either.
“Prince Nick, you don’t understand,” she gasped. “You absolutely cannot marry that girl--”
“Is she part dragon?”
“No.” Katarina’s panic calmed a little. “No, she’s entirely human. That’s not the--”
Nick indulged in a brief fantasy of flying away on his pegasus with Katarina tied to it.
“Prince Nick, when I first saw Miss Cindy, I knew it was imperative that I take her away to some place that she could be safe, and learn to exercise her magic, and not be exposed to the world. I did not spirit her off to school so she could learn to be a princess. It isn’t right--”
“You’re lying to me,” Nick said. “Everyone is lying to me. One day, when I’m the king, I’ll make all of you people tell me the truth.”
[But deep down, he knew they’d keep right on lying, because that’s just how everything worked. Some days, Nick hated the whole rotten lying world. Since he was not-quite-seventeen that was perfectly normal.]
Nick resorted then to Plan C. His father was coming back to the capital at the end of the week. Nick kind of felt dirty about going this route, but if he presented his father with Cindy-- beautiful, adorable, lovely and oh-so-special top student at the RAM(PC)-- and asked if he could marry her, and his father told him to go right ahead, then nobody in the lying rotten world could stop Nick from doing what he wanted.
And Nick had figured out a long time before that his dear father had trouble telling anyone No.
So Nick showed up at Cindy’s window one night, and Tina already had all Cindy’s things packed, and they soared off on the short flight from the RAM(PC) to the royal court across town. It was gorgeously wonderfully romantic, at least until they landed and found Katarina waiting for them. With her trademark tome. Her very dangerous Katarina’s Tome.
Tina had squealed on them. Nick cursed the double-crossing servant as he grabbed Cindy by one of her reed-like wrists and yanked her through the maze of corridors that made up Millennium Court. Nick knew every twist and turn in the place from playing hide-and-seek with Keren and Aunt Tiki-- and he knew where his father was most likely to be.
Poor Cindy was panting for breath as they drew up in front of the chamber where the king liked to spend time with his collection of rare enchanted weapons. A tall broad-shouldered figure stood before the door-- Sir Chris, devoted protector of the royal family... and Katarina’s husband of many years.
“Chris! I need to get in to see my father!” Before your crazy mean wife catches us, Nick added silently.
The knight was accustomed to obeying any order from the royal family, but at the same time letting strange people in to the presence of the king was something Chris did not do. He hesitated.
“I’m very sorry, Prince Nick, but I’m afraid I must ask the identity of the young lady accompanying you.”
“This is Cindy. She’s my--” And Nick stopped short, for he noticed something. He was quite familiar with, and quite fond of, Cindy’s eyes. They were a beautiful deep blue, almost a slate color.
They were exactly the same shade of blue as Sir Chris’s eyes.
“Er...” The words stuck in Nick’s throat as Sir Chris and Cindy stared at one another.
And Cindy, being a special girl, had a very special intuition.
“Daddy!” She threw her arms around the tall blue-haired knight, and Chris was rendered speechless.
Right then, Katarina showed up, tome and all. And she wasn’t crazy-mean enough not to be able to put two and two together, and Nick was left speechless in turn by the tirade that Katarina directed at her husband.
“She was sad!” The knight protested of his dalliance with Cindy’s mother. “She was broken-hearted over losing Lord Marth to Princess Caeda, and she asked me to marry her instead, and--”
Nick had already heard enough. He nudged Cindy, who was watching the altercation with those big slate-blue eyes.
“Come on. Nobody’s guarding the door.”
“Uh-huh,” replied Cindy. She seemed to be in a daze.
Nick turned out to be right on the money-- his father the king took an immediate liking to Cindy in spite of the somewhat sordid circumstances of her birth. But irregular things happened in wartime, after all, and the king was happy to hear that his old acquaintance Melissa (“such a sweet girl”) was doing well for herself, and Cindy had turned out to be a fine young lady thanks to Katarina and Elice, and so everything was quite all right in the end. As usual.
So Nick and Cindy were married, and Katarina forgave Sir Chris (he’d forgiven her some pretty terrible things in the past, anyway). And Cindy asked everyone to call her Hyacinthia now, because it was a suitable name for a princess... but nobody did. Except Keren. But she was always laughing at poor Cindy when she said it. Having Cindy made Nick happy-- or less angry, anyway-- and he could reconcile himself with the rotten lying hypocritical world because Cindy was just that special. She was special enough for them both, even. But Nick did refuse to allow Aunt Tiki to name any of the children he and Cindy had together. A man has to have some standards, after all.
The End
Notes:
1) Nik-nik-notten was an underground Egyptian city in Poochie: the Movie
2) There are so male peg knights in Archanea. They’re enemies in FE3.
3) Kerenhappuch comes from the Book of Job. Why? Just because.
4) Helarn staff made weapons unbreakable. It was part of the unused data in FE1.
5) Lakche aside, Selis and Julia couldn’t get married (unless you exploit the jealousy system, hah) because they’re half-siblings
6) Surprise ending “inspired” by the MyUnit/Melissa A support convo.
Challenge #010: Mary Sue/Gary Stu
Game: FE 12 (Heroes of Light and Shadow)
Word Count: 4,031 plus some notes
Characters: OC leads plus Katarina, Merric, and others
Warnings: Clueless Mary Sue, Raging Gary Stu, Idiot Plot, Idiot World, My Unit/Katarina, random Seisen references, and implications of budding romance between half-siblings (don't freak out, please-- no need to hit the back button). Also is based off support conversations for a game that hasn't been officially translated or released yet and thus contains potential spoilers for that game. :/
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
(Part the First)
Once upon a time, in the town of Port Warren, there lived a little girl and she was special because--
No, scratch that. Let us describe this girl. She had a heart-shaped face and a little cute nose, large long-lashed eyes of a striking deep blue, and a cloud of silken fluffy hair that was kind of silvery and kind of lavender and maybe a little bit blue. So you can see right away that this girl was special. And her name was Hyacinthia, though everyone called her Cindy because Hyacinthia was such a grand-sounding name, and what did she think she was? A princess?
So Cindy lived in Port Warren with her mother, who looked just like an older version of Cindy except that her eyes weren’t blue. (This is important). Cindy’s mother was an innkeeper, and though innkeepers in Port Warren had a rather low reputation, Cindy’s mum was the kind of innkeeper who just offered her patrons food, ale, and a bed for the night, without any “companions.” It was a successful inn, but keeping afloat wasn’t easy, and from an early age Cindy was hard at work scrubbing out brass pots, polishing the legs of the barstools, and greeting the guests with a smile. It was a sorry line of work for such a special little girl, wouldn’t you say?
One day, Cindy’s mother sent poor overworked Cindy out to the market with a very long list of things to buy. (The list isn’t important, so we’re not telling you what was on it.) Cindy went to market skipping and humming a pretty tune, because in addition to being overworked Cindy was very virtuous and happy to work so hard to help her mother’s business because special people are just like that, okay? So Cindy was in the market place, and she was engaged in some very tough bargaining to get her mother the very best deal when a pig got loose and starting causing utter havoc, because that’s what pigs do in stories. And the angry pig knocked over a lot of things, including a woman who was in line behind Cindy. And though Cindy wasn’t able to calm the pig down (she wasn’t that special), when she saw the woman was injured she offered to help.
Because Cindy knew magic. Oh, yes. Even though she’d never been to school, she knew several spells, including healing spells. Okay, technically she’d learned them from her mother and wasn’t, you know, a prodigy, but these were some pretty advanced spells for a twelve-year-old who spent her days scrubbing out pots. And so Cindy healed the other woman’s bruises and contusions and a couple of broken nails, and the woman-- a lady with violet hair and a strangely sad expression-- thanked Cindy and then introduced herself as Katarina, a traveling sage.
“My name is Cindy. I’m the daughter of Melissa the innkeeper.”
And Katarina’s sad eyes seemed to grow sharp, and she looked at Cindy closely in a way that made Cindy a little nervous. But then she smiled and asked if she couldn’t help carry all Cindy’s shopping bags home from the market as a means of repaying Cindy for the assistance. And Cindy agreed, and they spent the walk back to the inn discussing what Katarina did on her traveling-sage travels, which turned out to be recruiting talented children for a very special magical school. Katarina went all across the continent of Archanea looking for boys and girls of just the right age to be enrolled in a grand school located right in the royal capital, and there they’d all live and learn magic and turn into powerful mages and healers.
Then Katarina asked Cindy how old she was.
“Twelve last month,” said Cindy.
“Ah, a victory baby!” Because that was the name given to all the children born in the year right after the last great war. There were rather a lot of them. “Well, that’s the same age as the children I’m looking for, Cindy. Eleven or twelve, just old enough to leave home for a few years.”
Cindy thought it was all a marvelous coincidence and didn’t in the least suspect that Katarina planned to recruit her, Cindy, for magical school. Because Cindy was special and special people don’t think that way. They don’t have to think, because other people do the thinking for them and everything just falls into place.
When they got back to the inn, Cindy’s mum was waiting-- and rather cross about it, because thanks to the pig and Katarina it had taken Cindy far too long to home home. Cindy’s mum got even more cross when she saw Cindy’s new friend.
“K-Katarina?” And both her hands went up to fix her hair.
“Hello, Melissa. It’s so nice to see you again after so long.”
Because Cindy’s mum Melissa and Katarina were rather old friends, as it happened. Or acquaintances, anyway. And Katarina asked if Cindy’s husband were at home, and Melissa huffed a bit and said she’d never found a man worth the cost of his room and board, and the two women had a strange kind of conversation that mostly flew over Cindy’s head because twelve-year-olds, especially virtuous ones, don’t completely grasp sarcasm. It was something to do with Melissa looking for a prince and never finding one, while Katarina had ended up with an absolutely perfect knight, and it all sounded rather like a fairy story. But the upshot of it was that Melissa did not want her daughter going off to magic school. Cindy was needed at the inn, and that was that. But Katarina was a persistent sort of woman, and beneath all the sadness there was something hard and a little frightening in her face, and before Cindy knew it all her bags were packed and she was waving goodbye to her mother and leaving Port Warren with all its brigands and whorehouses and angry escaped pigs. But it was all right, because Katarina assured Cindy that she was, indeed, a special little girl.
(Part the Second)
The magical school, otherwise known as the Royal Academy of Magic (Pales Campus), was very far away from Port Warren, but Katarina knew warp magic and so it wasn’t a very hard journey at all. Cindy sneezed every time she materialized, but Katarina just laughed and said that Cindy was cute, because she was.
So Cindy was enrolled in the school and loved every minute of it. She didn’t have many friends, and it seemed that the other students would stare at her a lot and take care to scoot away from her in the hallways, but Cindy didn’t take it personally. She just thought it was because the other students knew where she was from: Port Warren... innkeeper’s daughter... yeah. But she loved studying healing magic and light magic, and she didn’t have to scrub pots, and the food was wonderful and she didn’t have to make any of it. Cindy didn’t realize that it was incredibly strange that she had her own room and a personal maid to pick up her things, she just assumed the RAM(PC) was so wealthy that every student had these things. She didn’t wonder why she had a special luncheon with the Headmistress every week, or why the Headmistress always kept such a close eye on her grades; Cindy just figured that the Headmistress was very attentive. Special people don’t think to ask questions like that, you know.
Cindy also didn’t find it strange she was locked in her room every year when the queen came to school to hand out awards and have tea with all the best students. Even when Cindy won the awards she was locked in her room all day and only let out when all the fun was over. Her maid (who happened to be Katarina’s daughter) would roll her eyes at Cindy on these occasions, but eye-rolling and sarcasm just didn’t sink in with Cindy.
At the close of Cindy’s fifth year at the RAM(PC), news spread through the school that Queen Caeda wasn’t coming to hand out awards that year. Instead, her son the prince would be presiding over the award ceremony. Every girl in the school (well, save one or two) became very excited at the news. Every boy in school (again, save one or two) was rather depressed. Cindy wasn’t either excited or depressed. She was locked in her room that year, too.
(Part the Third)
When Prince Nick arrived at the RAM(PC)--
Hang on. Let us explain about Prince Nick. Nick was the elder child and only son of the king and queen of Archanea. “Nick” might not seem a terribly princely name, but be assured that his real name was Nik-nik-notten, which means something like “fountain of peace after the glorious victory” in archaic dragon speech. Nick’s name was bestowed upon him by his Aunt Tiki, who meant well, but you can see now why everyone just called him “Nick.” Anyway, Nick was not quite sixteen at this point in the story, making him a couple of years younger than Cindy. Most boys of not-quite-sixteen have a bit of growing up to do, and Nick was no exception. He wasn’t terribly tall, and overall he was a bit weedy (his weapons instructor said ‘wiry,’ but she was being kind). People said he resembled his father, and it was intended as a compliment, but in truth Nick looked more than a bit like his mother. Regardless, he was very cute and non-threatening, with huge blue eyes beneath a fringe of hair, which is why all those schoolgirls were excited about a visit from Prince Nick.
[His parents looked alike, anyway-- same color hair, same color eyes. Nick found this disturbing at times.]
Nick, of course, didn’t want to be cute. He wanted to be a great warrior hero like his grandfather, who’d died manfully, fighting against impossible odds and a whole host of wicked, wicked enemies. Not that Nick wanted to die like his grandfather, but... you get the idea. But Nick didn’t seem to be getting to “warrior prince” status any time soon, which was why he was being sent to stupid magic school to look cute and hand out awards and drink tea with stupid mages. And he was rather angry about it. Nick was angry about rather a lot. It made him look even more cute, which was not the desired effect.
[Nick’s younger sister, Keren, was by contrast a wicked little swordfighter who turned into one badass myrmidon. “Keren,” by the way, was short for “Keren-happuch.” Tiki got to pick the name that time, too.]
Anyway, Nick was deliberately late to his appointment at the school. He touched down his pegasus at the RAM(PC) at about ten-thirty in the morning, and he’d been supposed to meet his Aunt Elice for brunch with her staff at precisely ten o’clock. (There are so male pegasus knights in Archanea.) But Nick didn’t care about Aunt Elice’s brunch or her stupid staff or her stupid anything else, and he was sulking on his pegasus out in the courtyard when he noticed a face peeping from a window on the third floor. Nick couldn’t see much at that distance, but he had a impression of a heart-shaped face and a lot of fluffy hair, and the glimpse intrigued him and he was thinking of telling his pegasus to take him up to that window for a better look when some of the school staff caught him and whisked him off to brunch with the Headmistress.
The lunch was boring and polite with everyone calling him “Your Highness”-- even all of his relatives on the RAM(PC) staff. So Nick decided to liven up the salad course.
“Who’s that girl up on the third floor? The one in the corner room.”
Somebody dropped a knife. Aunt Elice sucked in a breath and looked stern. Nick wondered if he’d maybe gone a little too far.
(Part the Fourth)
After Uncle Merric took him aside for a “little chat,” Nick behaved himself for the remainder of the ceremony. He smiled and accepted everyone’s praise and handed out the awards, all the while turning his uncle’s cryptic words over his mind. One thing stood out from Merric’s lecture-- “You will not talk to your father about this.” Well, that was just another one to add to a very long list, because Nick really couldn’t talk to his father about anything. On the occasions they even saw one another, that is. And while Nick was a sulky sort of boy, he was a rather clever one (he’d gotten that one from his mother, too) and he had figured out that the long list of forbidden topics all had something in common. His father-- the high and mighty king of Archanea-- was not allowed to hear about anything remotely unpleasant. If a levee burst and killed ten thousand people, it was a “mild bit of flooding.” If plague decimated a province, the army burned all the bodies and just told His Majesty to avoid that province that season. If blight ravaged a staple crop, the Chancellor moved some numbers around in the budget to hide some additional food imports.
[Nick’s progress reports from his tutors contained a fair number of lies, too, especially the ones that discussed his attitude. But that can simply be called diplomacy-- all royal children are attractive and clever and well-behaved.]
Nick-- being at the age when children are rather prone to rebel-- had come to the conclusion that his father the king was, perhaps, not quite right in the head. This was somewhat unfair; Nick’s father was another of these special people who have other people do the thinking for them and for whom everything, no matter how improbable, just works. This is by no means normal, but if people like this were normal, they wouldn’t be special. At any rate, why the mysterious girl should be ranked with plague, blight, and serial killers as an unmentionable topic was a conundrum to Nick. And Nick, being a stubborn and resourceful kind of boy, decided to get to the bottom of this puzzle. He was going to start by finding that girl.
It should be easy. He’d just show up at the RAM(PC) on a day when no one expected him.
(Part the Fifth)
Cindy spent a great deal of time sighing over the beautiful young boy who’d touched down with his pegasus in the courtyard. Her maid Tina just rolled her violet eyes and said, “That’s Prince Nick, silly. Of course he was beautiful.”
Tina’s father, Sir Chris, was a Very Important Knight serving the royal family, and so Tina had all kinds of stories about Prince Nick. Cindy found herself wanting to know everything-- what was Nick’s birthday? What did he like to eat? Did he prefer cats or dogs?
Cindy quickly became lost in her fantasies about Prince Nick. For the first time, she felt upset about not being allowed out of her room on Award Day. Maybe this next year, for her final Award Day, they’d let her out of her room and Prince Nick could personally give her the award for Weapons Repair? Maybe Cindy would mention the whole not-locked-in-room thing to the Headmistress at their next luncheon together?
Anyway... er... oh, come on. You know how this stuff works. Nick dropped in on the RAM(PC) on a day when Cindy just happened to be mooning around in the courtyard, and he was struck by her perky little nose and sweet voice and all that fluffy hair, and she was struck by his big blue eyes and, er, dainty cuteness. And Nick (not unlike his very, very, very distant ancestor, Sigurd of Chalphy) decided that cryptic warnings be damned he was going to marry the pretty girl with the silvery-lavender-bluish hair and the awesome ability to make weapons unbreakable with the staff of Saint Helarn. But Nick wasn’t a complete idiot and so he first courted Cindy for a while, answering all of her crazy questions about birthdays and favorite candy and whether he liked trained parakeets better than performing monkeys.
As the date of Cindy’s graduation from the RAM(PC) grew near, Nick decided to put a plan into action. First, he tracked down Uncle Merric and informed Merric of his intention to marry “Cindy, you know, the one you keep locked in her room.”
“Only when your mother comes around,” said Merric, and he wiped some perspiration away from his brow as he talked. “Nick, has it ever occurred to you why one student in this Academy would have her own room and a maid and get to use the sacred Helarn staff?”
“Er, no?”
We’ve emphasized that Nick mostly took after his mother, but he did favor his father in some respects, and mental blocks regarding unpleasant truths were among them. But Merric was a sensitive sort of man (unless Elice engaged in a public display of affection, in which case he acted like a tool), and his trademark cryptic lecture just succeeded in confusing the hell out of Nick.
“Oh, I get it. I can’t marry Cindy because her mother is a prostitute.”
“No!” Merric’s handkerchief was really getting a workout.
“But you said she ran ‘an inn in Port Warren.’ I thought all madams were former--”
“Not that kind of inn! Nick, Cindy’s mother Melissa used to be in the army. Our army, during the wars.”
“Oh,” said Nick, and he pretended to understand. “Uncle Merric, what does that have to do with Cindy having Tina for a maid?”
“Nick, do you remember the story of Lord Selis and Lady Julia?”
Nick did. He liked the old war stories and epic poems, though he’d never much liked the story of Lord Selis in particular. The essential inadequate twerpiness of Selis hit a little too close to home.
“Do you remember why they couldn’t get married?”
“Because nobody in their right mind would take Julia when they could get Lakche,” Nick retorted.
Merric had trouble getting any words out after that, and Nick exercised royal prerogative by cutting his uncle off and going elsewhere. The thought of Tina gave him an idea. Tina’s mum Katarina always had spoiled him, and she might be able to get Nick what he wanted this time, too.
(Part the Last)
Katarina didn’t want to be helpful, either.
“Prince Nick, you don’t understand,” she gasped. “You absolutely cannot marry that girl--”
“Is she part dragon?”
“No.” Katarina’s panic calmed a little. “No, she’s entirely human. That’s not the--”
Nick indulged in a brief fantasy of flying away on his pegasus with Katarina tied to it.
“Prince Nick, when I first saw Miss Cindy, I knew it was imperative that I take her away to some place that she could be safe, and learn to exercise her magic, and not be exposed to the world. I did not spirit her off to school so she could learn to be a princess. It isn’t right--”
“You’re lying to me,” Nick said. “Everyone is lying to me. One day, when I’m the king, I’ll make all of you people tell me the truth.”
[But deep down, he knew they’d keep right on lying, because that’s just how everything worked. Some days, Nick hated the whole rotten lying world. Since he was not-quite-seventeen that was perfectly normal.]
Nick resorted then to Plan C. His father was coming back to the capital at the end of the week. Nick kind of felt dirty about going this route, but if he presented his father with Cindy-- beautiful, adorable, lovely and oh-so-special top student at the RAM(PC)-- and asked if he could marry her, and his father told him to go right ahead, then nobody in the lying rotten world could stop Nick from doing what he wanted.
And Nick had figured out a long time before that his dear father had trouble telling anyone No.
So Nick showed up at Cindy’s window one night, and Tina already had all Cindy’s things packed, and they soared off on the short flight from the RAM(PC) to the royal court across town. It was gorgeously wonderfully romantic, at least until they landed and found Katarina waiting for them. With her trademark tome. Her very dangerous Katarina’s Tome.
Tina had squealed on them. Nick cursed the double-crossing servant as he grabbed Cindy by one of her reed-like wrists and yanked her through the maze of corridors that made up Millennium Court. Nick knew every twist and turn in the place from playing hide-and-seek with Keren and Aunt Tiki-- and he knew where his father was most likely to be.
Poor Cindy was panting for breath as they drew up in front of the chamber where the king liked to spend time with his collection of rare enchanted weapons. A tall broad-shouldered figure stood before the door-- Sir Chris, devoted protector of the royal family... and Katarina’s husband of many years.
“Chris! I need to get in to see my father!” Before your crazy mean wife catches us, Nick added silently.
The knight was accustomed to obeying any order from the royal family, but at the same time letting strange people in to the presence of the king was something Chris did not do. He hesitated.
“I’m very sorry, Prince Nick, but I’m afraid I must ask the identity of the young lady accompanying you.”
“This is Cindy. She’s my--” And Nick stopped short, for he noticed something. He was quite familiar with, and quite fond of, Cindy’s eyes. They were a beautiful deep blue, almost a slate color.
They were exactly the same shade of blue as Sir Chris’s eyes.
“Er...” The words stuck in Nick’s throat as Sir Chris and Cindy stared at one another.
And Cindy, being a special girl, had a very special intuition.
“Daddy!” She threw her arms around the tall blue-haired knight, and Chris was rendered speechless.
Right then, Katarina showed up, tome and all. And she wasn’t crazy-mean enough not to be able to put two and two together, and Nick was left speechless in turn by the tirade that Katarina directed at her husband.
“She was sad!” The knight protested of his dalliance with Cindy’s mother. “She was broken-hearted over losing Lord Marth to Princess Caeda, and she asked me to marry her instead, and--”
Nick had already heard enough. He nudged Cindy, who was watching the altercation with those big slate-blue eyes.
“Come on. Nobody’s guarding the door.”
“Uh-huh,” replied Cindy. She seemed to be in a daze.
Nick turned out to be right on the money-- his father the king took an immediate liking to Cindy in spite of the somewhat sordid circumstances of her birth. But irregular things happened in wartime, after all, and the king was happy to hear that his old acquaintance Melissa (“such a sweet girl”) was doing well for herself, and Cindy had turned out to be a fine young lady thanks to Katarina and Elice, and so everything was quite all right in the end. As usual.
So Nick and Cindy were married, and Katarina forgave Sir Chris (he’d forgiven her some pretty terrible things in the past, anyway). And Cindy asked everyone to call her Hyacinthia now, because it was a suitable name for a princess... but nobody did. Except Keren. But she was always laughing at poor Cindy when she said it. Having Cindy made Nick happy-- or less angry, anyway-- and he could reconcile himself with the rotten lying hypocritical world because Cindy was just that special. She was special enough for them both, even. But Nick did refuse to allow Aunt Tiki to name any of the children he and Cindy had together. A man has to have some standards, after all.
The End
Notes:
1) Nik-nik-notten was an underground Egyptian city in Poochie: the Movie
2) There are so male peg knights in Archanea. They’re enemies in FE3.
3) Kerenhappuch comes from the Book of Job. Why? Just because.
4) Helarn staff made weapons unbreakable. It was part of the unused data in FE1.
5) Lakche aside, Selis and Julia couldn’t get married (unless you exploit the jealousy system, hah) because they’re half-siblings
6) Surprise ending “inspired” by the MyUnit/Melissa A support convo.