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Chapter Text

It is six years to the day after Zanza’s defeat that Shulk and Fiora announce their engagement.

They are all gathered for one of their “reunions,” as Dunban calls them-not that any of them have gone far enough to need reuniting. The Colony has grown rapidly these past six years, but it’s still small enough that they see each other every day. Still, Melia can’t deny that it’s nice to have an evening where they aren’t leaders and authorities and heroes, but are just…old friends getting together over drinks and dinner.

It’s a good place for Shulk and Fiora to make their announcement, in Melia’s estimation-it lets them field genuine joy from all of the people who matter most to them, before the inevitable stream of public well-wishers begins. It works. The moment they finish speaking, Reyn roars with laughter, sweeping up the two of them in an enormous hug. “About bloody time!” he declares, as Sharla squeals with girlish glee next to him. By their feet, Riki dances around, bouncing like a rubber ball.

Dunban, for his part, waits for Reyn to finally let the happy couple breathe before speaking up. Resting his good arm around his future brother-in-law’s shoulders, he adds, “I have to agree with Reyn. I’ll admit, I was starting to wonder if you’d ever make an honest woman out of my sister.”

Shulk blushes fiercely, while Fiora puts her hands on her hips. “Oi,” she says warningly, her eyes betraying her amusement, “Careful with him, Dunban. I like him in working condition.”

Dunban chuckles. “Of course, little sister,” he assures her. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting him.”

Somehow, he allows just enough of a glimmer into his eye-aided by the fact that he’s Dunban, the man who once faced down an army of Mechon with a sword and one good arm-to ever-so-subtly imply that that may well change, if Shulk should ever dare to hurt Fiora. The threat certainly isn’t needed-but it’s heard all the same.

It’s only then that they seem to realize that someone hasn’t spoken.  Sharla, turning to the seat by the fire where Melia had been sitting, asks, “Hey, Your Highness, you there?”

Melia blinks, finally escaping the twisting storm of emotions that is raging in her heart. Abruptly, she realizes how rude she’s being. For a girl raised on the ruthless courtly etiquette rules of Alcamoth, it’s an unthinkable crime.

“Oh, yes, sorry!” she blurts, forcing herself to smile. “Congratulations to both of you! You really are perfect for each other.”

Fiora beams, so sweet and genuine that, for just a moment, Melia thinks that maybe everything will be okay.

And then Shulk smiles too, and she knows it never will be.

If she had ever managed to get over her burning love for him-and she never had-that smile would have brought it roaring back all over again. The years have been good to Shulk; he’s grown out his hair and filled out his wiry frame, until he has the same sort of lean swordsman’s strength as Dunban does. He looks confident and kind as he meets Melia’s eyes, and she is briefly convinced that he sees right through her.

But he doesn’t. If he did, he’d be disgusted by the jealousy in her heart, the lust and the envy and all the other components of the tempest filling Melia’s chest. Instead, he just says, “Thank you, Melia. That means a lot, coming from you.”

Melia forces herself to smile, even as she wants to scream. But Fiora is smiling at her, too, and Melia knows she couldn’t ever do anything to hurt a person so dear to her heart.

Melia had expected it to hurt too much to be friends with Fiora, knowing that she had Shulk and Melia didn’t. Part of her wanted it to hurt, so that she could at least have some closure.

It didn’t. Not at all. Fiora was just…too hard to hate. Melia couldn’t do it. And what good would it have done, anyway?

So instead, she and Fiora have become close friends-all while Melia tries desperately to hide the fact that she is still, even after years of trying to deny it, in love with Fiora’s fiancé.

She had thought it would fade, eventually. That it would turn out to be a youthful crush, that she could accept her failure with grace and move on with her life. 

She can’t. She can’t do it. She’s stuck on him. Six years on, and Melia still can’t get over Shulk-still sees him every day, walking around the colony in blissful love with another woman, and thinks of what could have been.

But that’s what hurts most of all. The fact that Melia doesn’t even feel angry about it, because she understands perfectly why he would choose Fiora-why he only ever had eyes for her in the first place. 

Fiora is just the better woman. Fiora is perfect for him. She is warm and kind and caring, yet ferocious and feisty when she wants to be-both traits that are perfect in how they play off of Shulk’s absentminded genius and deep-thinking, contemplative personality. She’s confident enough to take his forgetfulness in stride and assertive enough to yank him back into the real world when he goes on dreamlike tangents in a workshop or a lab. And beyond all of that…when he believed she was dead, he literally tore the world apart until he found her again-and then she helped him tear it down and build something better in its place. Melia admires her, genuinely and earnestly. She knows she can’t possibly compare-she knew it then, and she knows it now.

And so…she can only watch. Watch them be happy and know that she will never have what they have. Watch the man that she has come to realize is the love of her life marry another woman, and know in her heart that he made the right choice.

Suddenly, this small, cozy home, full of warmth and light and all the people she loves so dearly, feels like it’s going to suffocate her.

Melia rises to her feet. “I really am sorry,” she blurts out, suddenly desperate to escape this room, these people, her own heart. “But I’m afraid I have something urgent I need to attend to. I really must take my leave. Congratulations to both of you.”

She doesn’t wait for farewells or questions or for people to see through the pathetically weak excuse she has concocted on the fly. She simply stands, heads for the door, and slips away before she does something she cannot take back.

If she feels the way Fiora’s eyes track her as she leaves, deep and unreadable, she doesn’t seem to notice.

Melia manages to avoid the others for three days. She achieves this mostly by remaining in her least favorite place in the colony: the stately, sterile rooms of the Royal Apartments set aside for her by the remnants of Imperial Alcamoth near the center of the colony.

She hates these rooms. She avoids them as much as she possibly can. They’re too cold, too empty; they remind her of the Imperial Palace in all the wrong ways. They have all the uncaring hostility of the Palace with none of the people that made it home. 

Those people are all dead. Her whole race is nearly dead. She is the Queen of a pitiful group of half-breeds and pale shadows-but she is still a Queen, and her people are still alive.

If only she knew how to live. 

It’s right around then that there is a loud, aggressive series of knocks on the door. Melia blinks. The door is guarded; the two men stationed there, survivors of the Imperial Guards back in Alcamoth, are under orders to not let anyone in.

But the knocking continues anyway. A moment later, a familiar, rough voice calls out, “Melia, open this bloody door, would you?”

Melia sighs. “Sharla,” she says formally, “What do you want?”

“I want you to open this bloody door before I kick it down,” comes the blunt reply. 

Melia considers simply not bothering…then recalls that Sharla is not bluffing. She has kicked down doors before-Melia’s seen her do it. 

She rises from her seat, and opens the door-just in time, as Sharla had been raising a booted foot just as Melia turned the knob. She plants it back down and steps inside.

“You look like shit, Melia,” she observes coarsely.

Melia Antiqua, Princess of the High Entia, would have been scandalized by Sharla’s profanity; Queen Melia of what little is left of the High Entia is far too familiar with it to feel anything but comfort at Sharla’s words. “Why are you here?” she asks. 

Sharla responds with a truly scathing look. “Because,” she says dryly, “last time we saw you, you ran off five minutes after Shulk and Fiora said they were getting married. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on in your head.”

Melia supposes that she can’t deny that. “Yeah,” she admits. “I apologize for being so rude-”

Sharla puts a finger to her lips. “Oh no you don’t, Princess,” she says sharply. “You and I both know I’m not here because you were rude.”

Melia shuts up. Sheepishly, she realizes that she’s fallen into Queen mode without even meaning to. Forcing herself to calm down, she takes a deep breath, and flops heavily on the couch behind her, Sharla following her down a moment later.

The next look Sharla gives her is far kinder and more understanding. “It still hasn’t gone away, has it?” she says softly. “You’re still in love with him.”

She knows, of course. Melia’s never been under any illusion that she’s good at hiding any of her feelings, let alone something she feels so intensely and powerfully it practically makes her ill. Sharla’s known for years-Melia has cried on her shoulder more than once about all of it, and she is more grateful than she can ever put into words for the support Sharla has given her.

So she simply nods. “You said it would go away,” she says numbly, plaintively. She knows she sounds a little childish, but she can’t bring herself to care. “You said it would fade eventually.”

Sharla smiles sadly. She puts her hand over Melia’s, warm, calloused fingers holding her tight. “I thought it would,” she admits. “I’m sorry, Melia. Want to talk about it?”

Something cracks in Melia’s chest. For so long, she has suffered in silence, stayed polite and kind and reserved, holding herself back for the fear of hurting others. And what has it earned her? Lonely days, empty beds, countless nights spent tossing and turning, hollow and desperate and needing more than she can ever have.

It hurts. It hurts so goddamn much. 

The words come bursting out of her, so violently that even she is shocked. She thinks she’s crying; there’s warm water spilling down her cheeks.

“I can’t do this anymore, Sharla,” Melia says, hands clenching into fists. “I…I can’t keep sitting there and pretending that I don’t love him, that I’m okay with…with bottling this up for the rest of my life.”

Sharla’s hand anchors her, tracing her arm, her shoulder. That coaxes more words from Melia’s lips, like a plug has been pulled in her soul and all she can do is swirl around the drain.

“But what can I do?” she whispers, hanging her head. “He loves Fiora. Not me. And she…she’s better than I am. She’s perfect. She’s my friend. I could never hurt her. I could never… take him from her.”

Sharla smiles sadly. “I know, Melia,” she says quietly. “I wish I knew what to tell you.”

Melia sighs, fighting back the surge of irrational anger she nearly directs towards Sharla; the sniper deserves nothing but her appreciation. She hangs her head again. “I just…” she whimpers plaintively.

She doesn’t manage to finish the thought, because it is at that moment that Reyn, naturally, barges in the door with all the grace of a building-sized gorilla on Gaur Plain.

“What’s going on in here?” he asks, only to stop abruptly when he sees Sharla cradling a sobbing, snot-nosed Melia. “Aw, shite, am I interrupting something?”

Sharla scowls at her husband of some two years now, nose wrinkling. “Sometimes, I cannot believe that I have sex with you,” she declares.

The words are too much for Melia’s raging emotional storm. She bursts out laughing, only for it to turn into a hiccuping sort of sob as she buries her face in Sharla’s shoulder.

For his part, Reyn just watches with an awkward, slightly confused look on his face. “Is something wrong with Melia?” he asks Sharla.

She nods curtly as she pats Melia on the back. “Boy trouble,” she says by way of explanation.

Reyn nods. “Ah,” he says sagely-only to begin blinking furiously. “Wait a second. Melia likes a boy? Who’s the lucky bloke?”

That just makes Melia sob harder, which makes Sharla shoot Reyn a vicious glare. Taking a deep breath, she purses her lips, and just says, “Shulk.”

Reyn’s eyes widen. “Wha?” he says dumbly. “But he’s-and Fiora-”

Sharla tilts her head towards Melia. “Yeah,” she says, the single word loaded with meaning in a way only a deeply loving couple can have whole conversations with single words.

He sagged onto the couch next to them, lending his own vast strength to supporting Melia. And, as only Reyn can do, he summed up her whole life with a single phrase: “Fuckin’ hell.”

A few moments of silence pass; despite the pain still echoing through Melia’s soul, she finds she doesn’t mind it, not with Sharla and Reyn here. They’re good friends-better than she deserves, probably.

Reyn speaks up again not long after. “You know we’re here for you, right?” he says, gently but still with the kind of steady, rock-solid surety Reyn brings to everything he does. “Don’t matter what-you can talk to us about it.”

Melia can’t help the smile that comes to her lips, then, at the reminder that she did not just fall in love on their journey; she gained lifelong friends. She may love Shulk, but Reyn is like a brother to her, too. 

(That thought leads to Kallian, and a familiar knot of grief at the center of her soul that she knows will never truly heal-but she pushes it away gently and deftly, knowing that this is neither the time nor the place. She’s become an old hand at steering past her grief.)

“Thank you, Reyn,” she says softly, meaning every word. “I just…wish I knew what to do.”

Reyn smiles sheepishly. “Now, look, I ain’t great with all of…this,” he says, making Sharla snort behind him. “But, I mean…couldn’t you at least talk to Shulk and Fiora about this? Doesn’t seem right to just bottle all that shite up.”

Melia turns a bright, magnificent shade of red. “NO!” she cries, waving her hands. “I can’t! I couldn’t-I could never come between them!”

Sharla raises an eyebrow. “You know, Reyn, that’s not a terrible idea,” she muses.

Reyn perks up. “Wait, really?” he asks. “I was just makin’ it up as I went along!”

Sharla’s other eyebrow shoots up. Then, she sighs. “Yeah,” she agrees, “I could tell.”

Melia, still spiraling into a crisis, bolts to her feet. “I will not tell them!” she declares. “This is my burden to bear! I have no desire to cause any pain in Fiora and Shulk’s relationship! My feelings are irrelevant-they’re perfect for each other, and I won’t get in the way of their happiness!”

Reyn and Sharla fix her with identical looks of skepticism. Sharla asks, “And how would being honest with them cause them pain? Fiora and Shulk are adults like the rest of us.”

Melia flinches a little. “I…” she begins, hands clenched in the folds of her skirt. She can’t bring herself to admit the truth-that she doesn’t want to tell them because she does not want that final proof that Shulk has chosen Fiora over her. She cannot bear the thought of Shulk turning away-of losing what little of him she can have through their friendship.

Sharla sighs again, seeing every feeling that Melia tries to hide, as usual. “One day, you’ll stop punishing yourself for having feelings,” she tells Melia gently.

Melia hangs her head. “I…can’t,” she whispers softly, the admission hurting even more. “I’m sorry.”

Sharla stands, and her arms encircle Melia, strong and sturdy; she’s a soldier too, after all, just like her husband. “It’s okay,” she says. “We’ll help you figure this out. Somehow.”

Melia closes her eyes, and accepts the hug gratefully. 

It really is nice, even as Queen, to have people so willing to help her carry all her burdens. It’s so easy to get lost in the pain of what she doesn’t have, she forgets to appreciate what she does have.

Reyn comes up to join them just as Melia is fully relaxing. “Well, if you don’t wanna talk to them, I’ve got another idea for helping you work through it,” he offers.

Melia opens her eyes. “I…would like to hear it,” she decides.

Sharla frowns at the grin on Reyn’s face. “Well, it’s like I always say,” he declares. “If you can’t fix your problems, you can always drink to forget ‘em!”

Sharla opens her mouth to say something, but Melia…has to admit, the idea of sobriety has rather worn out its welcome with her at the moment.

Before she can think better of the idea, she says, “Lead on, Reyn.”

Reyn, of course, is happy to do just that. 

There are a few establishments serving alcohol and other refreshments in the colony now; indeed, one of the very first discoveries made by the Homs colonists in their new world had been which of the local fruits were best when fermented. Melia supposes that she shouldn’t be surprised; many of the Homs are former soldiers, and if there’s one consistent truth about soldiers, regardless of species, it’s their love of drinking.

Melia isn’t used to the coarse spirits of the bar Reyn takes them to-most of her experience had been with the fine, stately fare of the Imperial Court, drunk for the prestige of drinking it rather than for pleasure-but finds she rather enjoys the atmosphere. It’s a pleasant break from the exhausting routines of being the Queen, and Reyn and Sharla’s antics are always a welcome distraction.

They do their best to include her, to make her feel at home-and she does, really. She’s enjoying herself, enjoying the warm, excited atmosphere. She almost— almost— doesn’t feel like the Queen, but just another young woman out with her friends.

But the freedom in her chest can’t last forever.

She’s sitting in a booth, Reyn and Sharla cuddled up opposite her, when the door of the bar swings open. Melia glances up, and feels the brief flash of hope in her chest die a cold, icy death.

Fiora is standing there. There’s a wry smile on her face, but Melia’s heart drops all the same.

“There you are,” Fiora says dryly. “I’ve been looking all over the colony for you three!”

Reyn tilts his head. He’s drunk the most out of the three of them, and though he’s definitely more sober than Sharla, who’s fallen mostly quiet against him, his eyes are a little glassy. “Why’s that?” he demands.

Fiora crosses her arms. “I was actually looking for Melia,” she says, making Melia jump in her seat.

She’s nowhere near as drunk as Reyn or Sharla, despite largely matching them drink for drink—High Entia simply don’t process alcohol quite the same way, and their tolerances are much higher, to the point where most of their fine liquors would straight-up kill a Homs—but she can feel the slightest haze on her mind burn off abruptly and sharply at Fiora’s words.

“Why were you looking for me?” she asks nervously. 

Fiora purses her lips, glancing around the bar. She looks back down at Reyn and Sharla again. “Can you two make your own way home?” she asks, to which the couple nod slowly. “I’m gonna borrow Melia for a bit. She and I need to have a… talk.”

Melia tries to sink even lower in the booth at that—not that she has anywhere to go, of course. There’s no way this will end well for her.

Sharla and Reyn say their goodbyes; Sharla in particular is winking furiously at Melia, gesturing towards Fiora as if there’s something she’s supposed to say or do. Melia ignores them both as they leave the bar, Sharla practically hanging off of her husband, peppering kisses along the line of his jaw as he laughs. Melia tries not to hurt at how even they have gotten so wrapped up in each other, leaving her all alone. Indeed, between Sharla and Reyn, Shulk and Fiora, Riki and his wife, and counting… whatever it is that’s been going on between Dunban and Vanea that they absolutely refuse to admit to but everyone knows is happening, Melia remains the only person from the original seven who faced Zanza who is still utterly alone.

Fiora’s voice snaps her out of her melancholy. “I’m sorry?” Melia asks, blushing furiously as she turns back to look questioningly at the blond girl.

Fiora rolls her eyes affectionately. “I was asking if you wanted to get outta here,” she said. “It’s a bit… loud in here for my tastes, and you and I need to talk. Ideally alone.”

Melia feels a chill down her spine. Nothing good can come of a talk like that, she knows. But Fiora is her friend—and, honestly, she finds the loud chatter of the crowded bar much more grating now than she did an hour or two ago. So, knowing it will likely doom her, she sighs, and nods.

“Lead on,” she says regretfully. “Where would you like to talk?”

Fiora smiles, and Melia feels her heart skipping in her chest, probably stabbed through with jealousy and suppressed hatred.

“I know a place,” she says warmly.

Outlook Park. Of course, Fiora leads her to Outlook Park.

No matter how hard Melia tries to escape, no matter how far she runs, she always ends up back here, in this place that does not belong to her. This is Shulk and Fiora’s place, not hers. It’s a symbol of their love, the place they return to again and again. It’s the place, Melia rather suspects, where he proposed to her.

And Fiora takes her there without a second thought, not knowing the dark thoughts that have lurked in Melia’s mind ever since she saw Shulk look at Fiora.

It’s a sign of trust, of friendship, of love, that reminds Melia how wonderful of a person Fiora is-and how little she deserves the other woman’s kindness.

Fiora seems oblivious to Melia’s turmoil, sinking happily onto the bench overlooking the setting sun.

Sitting there, looking out over the world she and Shulk had fought so hard for, Fiora sighs. Melia can’t tell what she’s thinking, and that makes her deeply nervous.

“I’m sorry again for dragging you away,” she says. “You must not get many chances to really relax like that.”

Melia feels like she’s walking on a bed of nails, but etiquette lessons from long ago kick in on pure instinct. “It’s quite alright,” she says stiffly, still standing. 

Fiora makes a face. “Still,” she replies. “Here, come sit down. Don’t be a stranger!”

Melia hesitates. Fiora’s right, they’re not strangers. But that’s half the problem-Melia’s life would be so much simpler if she could hate Fiora for the crime of being happy, of having Shulk all to herself. But she knows she can’t. She admires the other girl too much.

She sits down beside Fiora on the bench, and for a while, the two of them simply enjoy the sunset over the world they fought so hard for.

Then, Fiora sighs. “It feels so odd, sometimes,” she admits. “Six years ago, we were fighting for our lives against a god, I was trapped in a mechanical body, and none of us knew if we’d survive the next day, let alone the week. Now…the biggest problems we face are the Sergeant’s yelling and Reyn…being Reyn.”

Melia laughs, even as she bitterly thinks, “Speak for yourself.” She knows that her problems do not feel small-and they will never go away. Years will pass, then decades, and she will never, ever stop loving Shulk. She will watch from a distance as he and Fiora marry, have children-and oh, they’ll have such beautiful children-all the while knowing that she will never, ever have anything close to that joy. There is nobody else in the world who will ever make her feel the way Shulk does.

Still, she cannot bear to take her bitterness out on Fiora, who is still smiling at her, those bright green eyes shining with genuine, unfiltered happiness. That would be a crime she would never forgive herself for-another one to add to the heap.

And so, Melia leans back, and softly agrees, “It does feel strange. I must say, I do prefer peace, though.”

Fiora chuckles. “You and me both,” she says affectionately. “And, no offense to the Machina, but I’m very glad I don’t have to spend the rest of my life made of metal.”

Melia smiles-but it’s a smile tinged with the weight of the knowledge that the rest of her life, if Fiora had stayed in that body, would have been very short indeed. The Machina doctors who had healed her had been blunt; Fiora’s Mechon body had been steadily shutting down for weeks by the time Zanza was defeated. Her life expectancy had been perhaps a handful of days.

(Melia will never, ever admit that for a few horrific seconds, she had felt hope when she learned that. She has hated herself for even thinking it, for daring to imagine a future where she might be able to have Shulk for herself, ever since.) 

Something must pass over Melia’s face, then, in defiance of every attempt she’s made to control herself, because Fiora’s expression shifts again.

For a moment, Melia thinks she sees right through her, that Fiora will finally learn that Melia is a greedy, disgusting, envious woman who craves what Fiora has, who wishes Fiora had died so that Melia could ruin even her memory by claiming Shulk for herself, that Melia is utterly unworthy of even her friendship.

But instead, Fiora’s shimmering green eyes just regard Melia fondly, and perhaps a little apologetically. “There’s…something I want to talk to you about,” she says slowly. “Something I’ve never admitted to the others, before. Not even Shulk.”

That makes Melia stiffen a little. “You can tell me, Fiora,” she promises. “I won’t judge.”

Fiora laughs-a hollow, uneasy sound, a sound Melia feels and understands in her soul. “I’m, uh, not worried about you judging me for it,” she replies. “Well…maybe a little. But mostly it’s just…hard to bring it up, I guess.”

Melia nods, but says nothing, giving Fiora time. 

She’s rewarded a few moments later, when Fiora leans back against the bench, and begins, “Before we won…when I was still in that Mechon body, I knew I was dying. I could feel it happening. And I knew…that if we didn’t win in time, if I…I died before we could stop Zanza…I knew what it would do to Shulk.”

Melia says nothing, but understands precisely what Fiora means. Shulk had torn the world apart to get Fiora back, the first time. Going to such lengths, clawing her back, destroying so much…only to lose her again, this time forever? Melia’s heart clenches just from the thought.

“It…it would have broken him,” she whispers.

Fiora nods slowly. “I couldn’t do that to him,” she says sadly. “Not again. So I…thought about what I wanted to say to him, if it came to that. And I…I decided I wanted to tell him to…to give you a chance. If I couldn’t make him happy…I knew you would.”

Melia’s mind goes utterly blank. She shuts down completely, jaw hanging slack, eyes open in disbelief. She cannot comprehend what Fiora has just said. She refuses to believe it. She can’t believe it.

“I…what?” she blurts out. “Fiora, I-”

Fiora holds up a hand, laying it on Melia’s arm, and she falls silent instantly. “Melia,” she says softly, sweetly, with such heartfelt emotion in her voice that Melia’s heart nearly rends in two. “Please, don’t deny it. I know you love him. I’ve known you’ve loved him since the Fallen Arm.”

Melia sits and watches as six years of lies-six years of a carefully-constructed web of falsehood to protect what little light she has, what few joys, a web that lets her pretend that she is not horrible and envious and greedy- crumbles to ash in front of her. “I…I…” she stammers, still floundering for some way out of this terrible nightmare.

“Melia,” Fiora repeats, forcing her to focus on those green eyes, the ones she keeps expecting to be full of anger and hatred and betrayal-and yet she can only see gentle, understanding kindness. For a moment, she is shocked at the closeness she feels with Fiora…and how much she likes the feeling. “I’m not mad. I’m not going to shout at you.”

Melia lets out a strangled, confused noise, struggling to wrap her reeling mind around the direction the conversation has gone. All she can think to ask is “H-How?”

Fiora, despite the somber look on her face, snorts sarcastically. “How did I know?” she asks rhetorically. “Well…I am something of an expert at what “being in love with Shulk” looks like, don’t forget. And you’ve been shooting him dreamy looks when you think I’m not paying attention for years now.”

Melia…supposes she has to concede on that point. But that does little to change the turmoil now filling her heart. She tries to find something, anything, to say, to try and shift the conversation. But she can’t.

Fiora puts her hand over Melia’s, and Melia realizes she’s clenched it into a fist on reflex. “Melia,” she says softly, quietly. “Please. Talk to me.”

Melia laughs, then, short and sharp like broken glass. “What is there to say? It’s true,” she admits. “I love him. I’ve loved him for years. All this time, even as I’ve considered you my dearest friend, I’ve been… lusting after your beloved. Do you want me to get on my knees and beg for your forgiveness? Because I’ll do it. If it can somehow salvage our friendship, I’ll do it. But I can’t stop loving him, Fiora. I’m sorry. I tried. I tried so hard.”

Fiora does not move her hand. “Melia,” she says more firmly. “You have nothing to apologize for. And you don’t need my forgiveness.”

For a brief moment, Melia considers yanking her hand away. Only the fact that her self-loathing bursts from her lips instead prevents her. “You don’t understand!” she shouts. “I…all I’ve done for the past six years is try and put these feelings aside! I don’t want to take Shulk from you! I don’t want to fight over him! I…I don’t want you to hate me. But…but I love him, and I can’t stop. And the thoughts I’ve had…the things I’ve wanted to do…”

Even as the darkness pours out of the cracks in Melia’s soul, Fiora stays calm, stays smiling, stays kind and warm, keeps proving that she is still the better woman. And that only stokes Melia’s self-directed fury higher.

“I…I wished you were dead, Fiora,” she admits, breath hitching with sobs. “I wanted to steal Shulk from you…I’ve dreamed of taking him from you…I’m a horrible, monstrous person-”

Fiora’s eyes blaze, and for a moment, Melia thinks, “Finally.” Finally, Fiora will hate her. Finally, someone else will see Melia for what she is-a twisted, greedy, evil woman, craving another woman’s lover. Finally, Fiora will have a chink in that perfect, beautiful face.

Fiora lunges for her—and her warm, soft lips meet Melia’s. 

In a fraction of a second, every thought in Melia’s mind goes screaming out the window. Fiora draws back from the kiss, rolling her eyes. “I swear, I had this whole plan drawn up,” she mutters. “I should’ve known that you and Shulk are the same. You both get so wrapped up in yourselves sometimes.”

Melia’s brain is still not restarted. She can only look at Fiora and stammer wordless noises, completely hung up on the kiss and the warmth and the fact that Fiora kissed her and the fact that she liked it and—

“As I was trying to say,” Fiora continues, forcing Melia to pay attention to her, “There’s…another reason I know you’re in love with Shulk. Let’s just say…that I’ve been looking at you a lot over the past six years, for…my own reasons.”

Melia opens her mouth, but all that comes out is yet more mindless blabbering. “W-W-Wha?” she finally blurts out.

Fiora sighs-and have her sighs always been such gorgeous movements that send her hair swaying and her soft lips that Melia knows the taste of now parting? “Look,” she says softly. “I don’t know how you got it into your head that I’d hate you for being in love with my fiancé, Melia. Because I don’t. I didn’t back then, and I don’t now. But we do need to talk. You, me, and preferably Shulk, too. I came out here because I wanted to invite you to that talk, to clear the air a little. Because he and I are getting married…but you love him, too, and I’ll readily admit, that might not be the… only direction those feelings go. So…this weekend at our place?”

Melia stares at Fiora, completely unable to comprehend what is going on anymore. “I…you… me?” she blabbers, trying to piece together enough thoughts to make into coherent words.

Fiora raises an eyebrow. “Shulk too,” she adds.

Melia shakes her head-to clear it, not in disagreement. “F-Fiora,” she asks uneasily, finally able to think again. “What…what do you want, exactly?”

In response, Fiora takes her hand again. “Honestly? I don’t really know,” she admits. “I’m as much in the dark about this as you are. All I know is…Melia, you’re hurting. And we’re doing it to you. You’re our friend—maybe even more than a friend—and we’ve been making you miserable for years. I want you to be happy. Whatever that means for you. Whatever that means for us. So…let’s talk about it. The three of us. Because I love Shulk, but I don’t want to keep him away from you just to be cruel.”

Melia looks down at Fiora’s hand, squeezed around hers, and wonders why she still can’t get that kiss out of her head. “I…” she begins, then sighs. There’s something loose inside her chest now, something she can’t name, but feels warm and bright where before there was a dark, hollow space. “This weekend. Your place.”

Fiora nods. “Thank you, Melia,” she says kindly. 

With that, she rises from the bench, and disappears down the stairs back towards the colony. Melia doesn’t follow her. For a long while, she simply sits there, looking out at the sunset, trying to make sense of what has just happened-and why the feeling of Fiora’s lips against hers still fills her mind.

She sits there till long after the sun has gone down and the stars are all that are left, and still cannot find an answer.

Chapter Text

Melia had thought, after everything, after watching her father die, after seeing her brother transform into a Telethia, after being forced to witness the destruction of her entire species at a monstrous god’s whim, that she had felt every kind of torture and pain a person could feel.

The next few days prove her agonizingly wrong.

It’s the anticipation that’s getting to her; the days slip by slowly, her duties neglected, her aides glancing at her with concern as she floats along in a haze, her mind racing with possibilities and fears and the still-lingering taste of Fiora’s lips on hers.

Melia does not tell a soul about what she and Fiora have discussed. Sharla asks, but Melia fends her off with claims that it “wasn’t important, something about royal business.” Sharla shows Melia only the slightest skepticism at that, doing her the gracious favor of pointing out that Fiora has quite deftly avoided the political development of the colony for nigh on six years now. 

Melia isn’t sure what Sharla suspects, but she doubts it’s anything close to the truth: that Fiora has invited her to…well, to what exactly? Her and Shulk’s bed? Their relationship? Their marriage?

Melia doesn’t know, doesn’t have any idea what form the relief from her torment might take-or even if there is any relief to be had. Part of her is still convinced that none of this is real, that it is just one more cruel joke life has played on her.

But…there’s only one way to know. The way out that Fiora offered her, the light at the end of the tunnel.

When the appointed day comes, Melia finds herself standing nervously at the front door of the small, quiet, but gorgeously painted home that Shulk and Fiora have built for themselves near the outskirts of the Colony. Odd, how they’ve been living together for years-since right after Zanza’s defeat, really-and yet they are only now engaged? Melia briefly wonders if they’ve been sharing a bed all that time…engaging in… carnal activities…

She shudders. That thought, the thought of them, together, is…intriguing. Intriguing in a way that Melia finds deeply terrifying to consider, because there is no jealousy in her heart when she considers the mental image of Fiora and Shulk in bed, and she feels like there should be. Certainly, there used to be, but perhaps that was just the lingering etiquette training and atmosphere of Alcamoth, where propriety had become Melia’s least favorite word by the time she was old enough to understand what it locked away from her. Now, though? Now, all she can think of is what Shulk and Fiora must do behind closed doors, and how she wishes that, perhaps, those doors weren’t quite closed for her.

The front door of the house opens, jolting Melia out of her thoughts.

Fiora stands there, beaming at her in a way that makes Melia uneasy, specifically because of how much it puts her at ease.

“There you are, Melia,” she says kindly, warmly, as if she doesn’t know Melia’s deepest, darkest, most shameful secret. As if Melia has any right to be here, in front of her home. “Come on in! Shulk’s in the kitchen.”

Melia swallows hard. Tugging on the hem of her dress-a simple outfit, one she’d agonized over for hours before finally choosing a skirt and top in muted, soothing colors-she nods once.

“Lead the way,” she says hoarsely, and follows Fiora inside.

Fiora guides her into the hall, and then into the kitchen beyond, where, sure enough, Shulk is standing with his back to her, delicately making tea.

The moment Melia lays eyes on Shulk, she feels the lump in her throat swell.

Six years on, he’s only become more desirable to her. When she’d first seen him, really seen him, it had been his eyes that drew her in-blazing with emotion, alive with conviction, distant and seeing into places she could only imagine. She’s mature-or maybe just traumatized-enough now to admit that there were also other reasons for her interest; he was foreign, exotic, worldly, and she had never left Alcamoth before that ill-fated mission to slay the Telethia. And yet, Shulk was also safe to fantasize about, due to the fact that he wouldn’t seek to usurp or overthrow her like a partner from among Alcamoth’s nobility might have. For a girl with little previous experience with love or even lust, he’d been a powerful temptation.

Over time, though, as she grew to know him, she fell in love with who he was instead of what he was-with his convictions, with his gentle kindness, with the moral strength that saw him spare his enemies and slay his God to build something better. Even his awkwardness and clear preference for machines rather than people came to be something she loved about him-it lent his words an earnest, honest air that was refreshing after a lifetime spent drowning in honeyed lies and veiled threats.

But now, though? Now, the teenaged boy she’d fantasized about has grown into a man she hungers for as she watches him wind his way through the kitchen with the same deft skill that he wielded the Monado with. His blond hair is long and swept-back, his gangly arms have filled out into the lean, graceful strength of a master swordsman, and even the myriad oil stains on his nimble fingers can’t stop Melia from imagining what those fingers would feel like on her, let alone in her. He beams as he sees her, face wrinkling around his eyes into familiar laugh lines. Those same eyes are still just as bright, just as lively-but where they’d once filled with rage and sorrow, now there is only love.

“Melia!” he says warmly-so warmly that she realizes instantly that Fiora hasn’t told him the reason she has come tonight. “Welcome! Can I get you anything to drink?”

Melia looks at him, at the man she once fantasized about proclaiming her Imperial Consort to a cheering Alcamoth, and knows that she would be content to be his housewife, instead, if it meant she could just have him, have a piece of him, have something that wasn’t this howling void where her heart should be. All the lightness and warmth in the world fills this home, and Melia has never felt colder.

She cannot have even that. Fiora got there first. Melia will never even have a scrap of the love that she sees on Shulk’s face as Fiora joins them in the kitchen, her own features lighting up joyously at the sight of her fiancé.

Melia tries to smile back, and knows that it does not reach her eyes. “Hello, Shulk,” she says softly. “No thank you, I’m fine.”

She isn’t fine. She’ll never be fine. Not even the memory of Fiora’s kiss and her promise and her sweet, tempting, hopeful words can make her fine. 

Right?

Shulk shrugs, taking her response in stride. “You know, I feel like it’s been ages since you and I have really been able to sit down and talk,” he says happily as he hands Fiora a cup of tea.

Melia feels a stab of… something. Part guilt, part shame, part anger. Yes, it has been a long time since she and Shulk have been alone in a room together. Because she doesn’t trust herself to be in a room with him. Because even now, with a ring on his finger and its matching twin on Fiora’s, she feels the pull of temptation whenever she lays eyes on him, driving her to madness. She has avoided him for years, terrified of what she might do.

But she can’t run. Not anymore. Instead, she ducks her head in a nod, and lies, “I’ve been quite busy with royal business, I’m afraid.”

Fiora chuckles, and for a moment Melia wonders if the other woman has seen right through her. But no-her smile is bright and warm, her lips (the ones that Melia hasn’t been able to stop thinking about kissing) parted in amusement.

“Well, Your Highness,” she says warmly, “I think you need to get out more.”

Melia can’t help the smile that forms on her face. “Perhaps,” she concedes. It is nice to be among people who aren’t constantly bowing and scraping, people she admires, considers friends.

Well. More than friends. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“So,” Shulk asks a few moments later, when Fiora’s led them all into the sitting room and steaming teacups are laid out on the table in front of them, Melia in a chair across from the blond couple. “Fiora said you wanted to discuss something with us?”

Melia freezes. She glances over at Fiora, who gives an apologetic shrug. Then, she speaks, instead.

“Melia and I had a conversation a few days ago,” she begins, laying a hand on Shulk’s shoulder. “It was…enlightening. For both of us.”

It takes every bit of self-control Melia has not to blush at the way Fiora waggles her eyebrows meaningfully. Shulk raises an eyebrow. “How so?” he asks.

Fiora looks toward Melia again, as if expecting her to speak, but Melia cannot work up the courage. Fiora sighs.

“Shulk,” she begins, apparently easing him into it. “Melia told me that she-“

“I’ll do it, Fiora,” Melia interrupts, making Shulk and Fiora look at her abruptly. “I’ll say it.”

Fiora nods, and falls silent.

Melia takes a deep breath, summoning her courage. She looks Shulk in the eye, and wills the words out of her mouth.

“Shulk, I…I love you,” she says softly. 

It’s the hardest thing she’s ever done, dragging those words from the depths of her heart, taking that risk, hoping desperately that Shulk will not hurt her.

Shulk’s eyes shoot wide open. He jolts in his seat, his gaze flicking from Melia’s ashamed face to Fiora’s reassuring one and back again. He splutters as he spits out his tea, choking on the air.

“M-Melia?” he asks, before turning to Fiora, his face already bright red. “F-Fiora, I…you know, I just remembered a really important thing I have to do back at the lab-”

He goes as if to bolt from the room, and Fiora grabs him by the wrist. Melia is reminded that Fiora is much stronger than she looks, then, as she effortlessly wrestles the Heir to the Monado back into his seat and pins him in place.

“Oh no you don’t,” she says firmly to her fiancé. “You have no idea how hard it was for Melia to say that. You are not going to run away from her, you hear me?”

Shulk is mollified by Fiora’s stern tone, and turns back to Melia. He cannot meet her eyes, and something starts to crack in Melia’s heart.

She knew this was a risk. Shulk is a taken man, engaged to be married to the only woman he’s ever really shown interest in. It is not her place to love him-he is a dear friend, and now, she might have broken that friendship forever. In the pursuit of love, she might have lost something even more precious.

But she can’t go on like this. She cannot keep lying to everyone, lying to her friends, lying to herself. She needs to bring these feelings out, and let them be killed. Maybe then she will finally find peace.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning: how long have you been in love with him?” Fiora prompts softly. Shulk shifts nervously, no longer trying to flee-though that’s mostly because Fiora is practically sitting on him. 

Melia sighs again, resigned to her fate. Blushing deeply, she tries to meet Shulk’s gaze. It takes a supreme effort, but she manages it at last. He looks at her, and she looks at him.

“I don’t know,” she admits softly. “Since the Tomb, I think. At least.”

That’s the best answer she can give; she doesn’t know when, exactly, intrigue and lust gave way to desperate, needy love, when she stopped imagining Shulk in her bed and started imagining him in her life. All she knows is that once he was in, she could never get him out.

Fiora makes a soft noise; Melia hopes that the look in her eyes isn’t sadness, that she hasn’t somehow tainted the memories of finding Shulk again with concern for how she must have hurt Melia in the moment. She shouldn’t; Melia has always known that she had first claim.

Shulk, on the other hand, squeaks. It’s adorable, honestly; if Melia wasn’t struggling against her own shyness, she would have cooed at the sheer look of alarm on Shulk’s face, as if he simply isn’t capable of understanding how profoundly, overwhelmingly in love Melia is with him.

Fiora, on the other hand, has apparently decided that somebody needs to be the mature one here, and it might as well be her. So, as Shulk stammers awkwardly, she interrupts, “Okay. So. It’s out in the open now. I guess now we just have to…deal with it.”

Media stares at her, not quite understanding. “Deal with it?” she asks. “Frankly, I don’t see what there is to deal with. My feelings are my own problem, and I have no desire to come between you and Shulk, Fiora. You two are together; I shouldn’t do anything to change that.”

Melia hurt as she spoke; she knew that she was denying herself, that she was closing a door that some part of her had started to open with her words. But she has to close it, has to keep herself from ruining the beautiful thing that Fiora and Shulk have with each other.

In response, though, the two of them share a look-and Melia feels a hunger in her chest at that look, at the total understanding that passes between them in that moment, without the need for a single word. She wants that, wants that love. But she cannot have it.

Fiora and Shulk turn to her, and Melia wants to scream at the look in their eyes. There’s some pity to it, a little sorrow, a touch of regret. But there is something else to it, too, something deeper and kinder, that makes Melia hurt even more, because it makes it utterly impossible to hate them, despite the pain they have put her through.

Shulk shows no hint of his earlier awkwardness when he speaks. “Do you really think we’ll let you do that to yourself? Spend your whole life just…hurting yourself because of your feelings?”

Melia’s cheeks are burning; she has envisioned confessing to Shulk so many times, but never like this. Never with Fiora here, pulling every secret out of her as if with pliers.

“What else can I do?” she asks softly, exhausted. “I don’t want to hurt you, or Fiora. You two…you’re my friends. More than friends.”

There. It’s out. Melia’s feelings for Shulk…and the small whisper in the back of her mind, the softness that has spread from Shulk to Fiora too, in her own right.

Fiora shifts, leaving Shulk’s side, crossing the space between to kneel down and take Melia’s hands. “Have you ever considered that maybe this won’t hurt us?” she counters in a low voice.

Melia’s head jerks up. “What…what do you mean by that?” she asks.

Fiora shrugs. “I…don’t really know,” she admits. “But you’re talking like you expect us to shout at you, to be upset and angry. But we’re not. I’m certainly not angry, Melia.”

Unable to understand, Melia snaps, “But why, Fiora? I’ve openly admitted that I’m in love with your fiancé! He’s yours! And I want…I want to…”

She falls silent, ashamed, as Shulk’s eyes bore into her, and into Fiora too.

“I’d like to know why too, Fiora,” he says mildly. “I can’t help but feel like you’ve got some kind of agenda here.”

Fiora blinks in surprise, then flushes red. “I…suppose I should probably stop hiding that, yeah,” she admits slowly. Rising back to her feet, she returns to her seat, and begins to speak.

“When I was dying,” she began matter-of-factly, making Shulk’s eyes widen and Melia shrink in her chair, “I…spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen if I didn’t last long enough to beat Egil, or Zanza. How I could…make it hurt less for you, Shulk.”

Shulk flinches, and Melia recalls Reyn telling her what had happened to Shulk when the Mechon had attacked Colony 9-how the quiet, kind engineer had been consumed by hatred and vengeance, how he’d charged into the unknown determined to slaughter every machine he could find. She understands how Fiora, who loves Shulk for his kindness and his cleverness, wouldn’t want him to become that man again.

“I knew about Melia’s feelings,” Fiora continues, “and I…I knew that if the worst came to pass, and I…didn’t make it…I would have encouraged you two to get together. I knew…you’d be good for each other.”

Melia and Shulk stare at Fiora, equally shocked. “But…that didn’t happen,” Shulk says in a deep, heavy voice. “You survived.”

Fiora nodded. “Yes…but my assessment didn’t change,” she admits. “And tell me, Shulk. If I hadn’t survived, if your quest had stayed avenging me instead of rescuing me…would you have refused the chance to grow closer to Melia?”

Shulk starts again, his eyes flicking up to Melia’s, and then looking away again.

Fiora, though, does not let him slip away from her. She rounds on him, green eyes boring into his soul. “Tell me, Shulk,” she demands. “Would it have been so terrible, being with Melia? Does the thought horrify you?”

Shulk grits his teeth for a moment, then relaxes. “No,” he admits softly. “But still-“

Fiora ignores his protests. She turns to Melia next, and asks, “Melia, I can’t say I know that much about High Entia traditions, but I know you’d have been expected to take a consort, right?”

Melia’s eyes widen, realizing where Fiora is leading this conversation. Slowly, softly, she admits, “Yes.”

Fiora’s expression doesn’t change. “Did you ever…consider asking Shulk?”

Melia flinches a little, memories filling her mind. “Yes,” she says heavily, thinking back to the decision she’d made, half political calculus and half the wild romantic fantasies of a girl who’d only ever wanted to be loved. “I was…planning to ask him while we were at Alcamoth, actually. After…after we got back from Prison Island.”

Shulk takes a short, sharp breath, half a gasp and half a groan. Prison Island. Where Melia’s father had died, and Fiora had revealed herself, and all of the things they thought they knew had begun to crumble. 

Fiora leaves them little time to wallow in their grief. Pointedly, she stares at Shulk. “If I hadn’t been there, I think you would have said yes,” she tells him, and her voice isn’t sad, exactly-it’s more understated than that, tinged with a smile, as if she knows exactly the pain she is inflicting with her words but believes it is necessary.

Shulk hunches over as if he’s been struck. “I…” he stammers, searching for words that do not come. “Gahhhh! I wouldn’t have-”

“Shulk, I know you,” Fiora interrupts, laying a hand on his thigh. “The princess you’ve come to respect and appreciate, asking you to be her consort, admitting that she loves you, offering you a second chance to make things right? You’d have taken it, eventually-and I would have understood. I’d have been happy that you had healed enough to love again.”

Shulk moans, then, a guttural, pained thing that seems almost involuntary. His head is in his hands when he speaks again. 

“But you didn’t die,” he argues. “None of this happened. So why-”

Fiora cuts him off again. “But Melia still loves you, Shulk. And I still understand. Now tell me, again-is the thought of loving her back so unthinkable to you? Has it never crossed your mind? Have you never thought of her that way?”

Shulk hesitates. He teeters back and forth, seemingly terrified of what will happen next.

It is then that Melia speaks for the first time in several minutes. In a voice softer than spring rain, she says, “If you say no…I’ll understand, Shulk. If you really don’t see me that way…if friends is all we can ever, could ever, be…then I’ll accept it. But please…I just need to know.”

Shulk falls silent. He opens his mouth again, then hesitates. Then, at last, he looks up, and says, “I…yes, Melia. I would have said yes. I…I could see myself…”

Fiora kisses him, then. “You don’t have to say it,” she whispers. “Not yet. We’ll work up to that.”

Melia gives Fiora an odd look. “Fiora,” she asks, repeating a question from that evening in Outlook Park, “Why do you keep bringing this up, anyway? What do you want?”

Fiora turns to meet her gaze. “I want the three of us to figure that out,” she answers readily. “I want to find some balance here, some… arrangement, that lets everyone be happy. Because you deserve to be happy, Melia.”

Melia stares at Fiora for a long moment. Then, unbidden, a hollow laugh bursts from her lips.

“Happy?” she whispers. “At your expense? I couldn’t. I can’t.”

Fiora crosses the room to put a hand on her thigh, then. “Why does it have to be at somebody’s expense?” she asks.

Melia looks down at her and tries to stop herself from laughing again. She fails. “It’s always at somebody’s expense,” she whispers, her broken laughs echoing off the walls. “Every time I think I’m happy…somebody gets hurt for it.”

As Melia fights back tears, thinking of Kallian and her father and Alcamoth filled with the screams of her people and the roaring of Telethia, Shulk and Fiora share a look, painful understanding spreading across their faces.

“Is that why you’re so determined to stay alone?” Fiora whispers softly, eyes wide. “You…you really think that you don’t deserve to be happy?”

Shulk takes it a step further. “Wait. That’s exactly what this is, isn’t it?” he realizes. “You keep trying to…to punish yourself for surviving? You think you don’t deserve to be happy because of how badly the High Entia suffered?”

Melia sniffles, realizing that she’s shown more of herself here than she ever intended to. She tries to speak, but finds the words are sticking in her throat. “I…” she begins, only to trail off as the pain wells back up. She hangs her head, terrified, curling into a ball as best she can. It’s too much. All of this, too much. It rips at barely-healed scars, tears open seams in her soul.

She hears shuffling, and a moment later, strong, oil-stained hands land on her knees, making her head jerk up.

Shulk has crossed the room, seemingly without thinking, and is now kneeling in front of Melia, his strong, gentle hands encompassing her world.

“Melia. Queen Melia,” he says softly, with enough heat to light Melia’s veins afire. “You are one of the strongest, bravest people I have ever met. You stood by our side when we took down Zanza. You slew the monster that used your people as his tools to try and slaughter every living thing on Bionis. You avenged your family, and your people, and now you’re leading them into a better future. You are kind and strong and good and wonderful, and I-”

His eyes widen, and he stops himself, stops the word they both knew was coming from escaping his lips. He freezes, and Melia looks at him with fear and hope and desperate, tear-filled desire all jumbled up together. For the first time in more than six years, she wonders if, maybe, just maybe, her heart will not be broken.

And then, there is the “Ah- hem” sound of Fiora clearing her throat.

Melia and Shulk jerk to look at her, eyes wide and guilty. “Um…Fiora?” Shulk asks, swallowing heavily. Clearly, he expects nothing good to come of more or less confessing his love for another woman in front of his fiancé.

But instead of being enraged, Fiora beams, her lips curving into a smile, her eyes twinkling with the slightest hint of mischief. “I think you two should kiss now,” she suggests dryly, one eyebrow arched. 

Melia jolts. “B-But…” she stammers. “Why?”

Fiora smiles again. “Like I already said,” she answers, “because I want you to be happy.”

Melia shakes her head. “I can’t,” she whispers. “He’s…he’s yours.”

Fiora comes to kneel by Melia’s side, too, her hand on Melia’s arm. “And I’m saying that it’s okay,” she says, calmly, soothingly. “I’m saying that I want you to. I’m not a jealous person, Melia. I never have been. And besides…what do you think I have to be afraid of? You’ve already said you don’t want him all to yourself-that you don’t want to steal him from me. Well, I don’t want to hoard him, either.”

Melia is reeling, even as her brain howls at her to accept, to stop questioning, to do as Fiora asks. Still, she hesitates. Softly, she whispers, “But-”

Fiora’s fingers fold into Melia’s. “Melia,” she says, more firmly this time. “You have spent six years hurting yourself because of who you love. Stop. Accept that it’s okay to be happy, and be happy. Kiss Shulk, at least this once. If it doesn’t feel right, stop, and you can leave, and we’ll never talk about this again, and we can all go back to being friends. But try it, Melia. Please. For me.”

Some part of Melia’s mind is bursting into laughter about all this, about how twisty this whole situation has become, about how Fiora is trying to convince her to kiss Fiora’s fiancé. The rest of her is yearning to do as Fiora asks.

Slowly, terrified that this will all have been a dream somehow, she turns back to Shulk. They’ve shifted positions again as they’ve spoken; now, they’re all three on the couch, Shulk sitting with Melia practically in his lap, straddling him, with Fiora next to them both, her soft green eyes eyeing the scene approvingly.

Melia looks down into Shulk’s face, sees the love burning in his eyes, and murmurs, “M-may I?”

Shulk smiles a little, and nods.

Once, Melia had stood before the god that had created her, her people, her entire world, and denounced him as a monster, denounced his cruelty and his arrogance, derided him for treating her people as his playthings with no regard for their lives. It had been the most courageous moment of her life, standing up to the creator himself and declaring him unworthy of his creations.

What she does next is a shockingly close second place.

She closes her eyes, and presses her lips to Shulk’s.

Instantly, she knows that Fiora’s proposal will not be necessary; nothing feels wrong about this kiss. It is perfect. Electricity shoots through Melia’s body, like a thousand lightning bolts as she curls into that kiss, as Shulk’s gentle lips chase away every fear and regret she has ever had, as six years of pain vanish like morning dew.

All Melia’s fantasies, all that waiting, all that hopeless dreaming, it all comes to a head in this moment; her, pressing deeper, harder, trying to lose herself in Shulk’s lips and his hands coming up to caress the curve of her hips and Fiora’s hand on her back, patting her reassuringly as the other woman murmurs reassurance into her ear.

At long last, Melia breaks the kiss, coming up to gasp for air. Beneath her, Shulk looks up at her in worship, in awe, his eyes hooded in a way that makes her shiver with need.

“I love you, Melia,” he murmurs, and Melia nearly sobs at how long she’s dreamed of hearing those words.

“I love you too, Shulk,” she whispers back, tears clouding the corners of her eyes.

Fiora claps her hands. “Finally,” she mutters. Melia and Shulk turn to give her skeptical expressions. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. Would you two have ever gotten over yourselves if I hadn’t pushed you?”

They both flush. “Probably not,” Shulk admits. “But also…I can’t help but feel like you’ve still got an ulterior motive here.”

Fiora smirks, and the light in her eyes makes Melia’s heart skip a beat. “Oh, I certainly do,” she agrees. “Would you like to know what it is?”

Shulk nods, as does Melia. She’s expecting the other shoe to drop, the catch to reveal itself; surely, she cannot have something this perfect, this happy, this right.

She is not expecting Fiora to lean in towards her, tilt her head up ever so slightly, and press her lips to Melia’s again.

That first kiss, back in Outlook Park, had snapped Melia back to reality; this one sends her spiraling into disbelief and confusion, her mind coming to a screeching halt as she tries to process how Fiora’s perfume smells like strawberries and her lips are warm and nimble and her hands are around Melia’s waist, tugging her closer in.

Why does Melia feel this way? Why does this kiss feel so incredibly similar and yet so utterly different to her kiss with Shulk? This is Fiora, this is the woman she’s always admired, the one who’s so sweet and kind and flawless, the one who she-

Oh. Oh.

By the Bionis, Sharla is going to be insufferable after this. All those jokes about Melia’s descriptions of Fiora being “not things a straight woman says,” all those knowing smirks as Melia bemoaned her life…Melia’s never going to live them down, is she?

Because, as Fiora pulls back, lips still parted, Melia gasps, “Oh.”

Fiora looks at her, concerned. “Is…everything alright?” she asks. “I…couldn’t think of a better way to make it obvious.”

Melia nods frantically. “Oh, um, yes, I’m quite alright,” she assures Fiora. “I’m just…trying to process?”

“Process what?” Shulk asks.

Melia blushes awkwardly. “Uh…that I’m apparently bisexual?”

Fiora raises an eyebrow. Shulk stifles a laugh.

“Well, then,” Fiora decides. “Welcome to the club, I suppose.”

Melia blushes even harder. “So…are you…was that…”

Fiora, understanding what she’s struggling to ask, simply nods slowly. “Yeah,” she breathes quietly, cheeks flushed red. "Sorry it took so long to get it out…but I didn’t want to scare you away.”

Melia is blushing, but she finds the idea that Fiora is also in love with her to be…a lot easier to handle than she thought it would be. After all, it does make the tangle of feelings in her chest about Fiora quite a bit easier to make sense of, now.

Even so…her insecurities still aren’t gone. “But…why?” she asks.

Fiora looks at her incredulously. “You’re asking why I fell in love with you?” she demands. “After everything you've done, everything you've sacrificed to save me, to help Shulk, to save our world, how could I not love you?"

Melia feels like she’s going to combust. Fiora, the woman Melia has always admired, always been in awe of, has spent so much of this time trying and failing to hate because she was simply too amazing to hate, has spent nearly that same amount of time admiring her from afar? It’s a lot to take in.

“Oh,” she murmurs, still blushing. “Well…I…think I might feel the same.”

Fiora beams, and leans in for another kiss. This time, Melia meets it halfway, and lightning fills her body, just like with Shulk.

Speaking of him, Shulk makes an odd noise beneath Melia at the sight of her and Fiora kissing, somehow both approval and love and envy all at once. It makes the two women-both of them thoroughly enjoying the sight of his eyes blown wide with desire-look down at him with calculating expressions.

Fiora leans in close and stage-whispers in Melia’s ear, “So…would you like to hear what I think we should do next?”

Melia nods eagerly, even as goosebumps ripple up her spine from having Fiora’s lips so close to her ear.

Glancing down at her fiancé, Fiora continues, “I think that you and I should take turns kissing the Hero of the Homs silly until we’ve had our fill of him. Maybe kiss each other some more, too.”

Melia smiles. “I’d like that very much,” she agrees softly.

Fiora puts a finger to her lips. “I’m not finished,” she tuts. “After that…well. Are you expected anywhere tonight, Your Highness? Or can you stay the night?”

Melia’s eyes widen as she realizes what Fiora is saying. What she wants to do.

She shudders as Shulk’s hands roam over her hips. “I can…ohhh…get away for a night,” she agrees. “But…are you sure you-”

Fiora cuts off this latest flare-up of insecurity at its source, by kissing Melia on the lips so fiercely that she promptly shuts up about not being worthy of them or whatever stupid thing she was going to say next.

“Melia,” Fiora snaps firmly, “You are gorgeous. It would be our privilege to take you to bed. If you want us to, of course.”

Melia shivers with need. Shulk is below her, his body pressed against hers; Fiora has slotted herself against her too, and the heat of her body makes Melia feel pressed between them, loved from every possible angle. She craves it. She needs it.

“Please,” she whispers, and then Shulk presses his lips to one side of her neck, and Fiora suckles on the skin on the other, and Melia moans as she allows the two of them to finally show her what it means to be worshipped.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, things go more or less exactly as Fiora had suggested.

For a while, Melia sits in Shulk’s lap, content to press kisses into his lips, his face, his hair-trying to drink her fill of him, to finally sate the roaring hunger that has clawed at her insides for more than six years now. Shulk gamely allows her to lead, smiling as she tries to make up for lost time. Melia has no shortage of newfound enthusiasm for kissing, but it soon also becomes clear that she is a novice in the field. Fiora, ever generous, murmurs suggestions and advice in her ear-and, when necessary, gives Melia… practical demonstrations. She spends nearly as much time with Fiora’s lips on hers as Shulk’s.

At first, Melia thinks that she could be content for tonight with just this-with the kisses and the holding, with Shulk’s hands on her waist and Fiora’s around her shoulders, their lips roaming her face and neck. But then the hunger returns, deeper, needier, and Melia realizes what they’re building towards.

At last, Fiora glances down at Shulk, and murmurs, “I think we’ve teased our man long enough, don’t you think, Melia? Want to take this up to our bedroom?”

For a moment, Melia hesitates. For all that hearing Fiora say “our man” fills her chest with heat, part of her is still convinced that fulfilling the desires she’s finally admitted to is far too greedy. She won’t be that selfish, right?

But then again, perhaps she should allow herself to be greedy and selfish, just this once, just a little. Perhaps she should stop questioning herself and let herself be happy.

Melia looks down at Shulk, the object of her fantasies for as long as she has known him, and bites her lip just at the thought of what these clever mechanic’s hands holding her by the hips will be able to do to her.

“I…I’d like that,” she admits softly. A blush spreads across her cheeks, bright and honest, but she doesn’t take it back.

In response, Fiora kisses her again. Their previous kisses had been mostly chaste, loving things; this one is assuredly not. Her tongue pushes into Melia’s mouth, and soon it is a sloppy, greedy, messy affair, making Melia whimper and moan in Fiora’s clutches. Fiora comes away grinning, and Melia is left panting, desperately wanting more.

“Well then, love,” Fiora tells Shulk, “Take her away.”

Shulk grins, then, and surges upwards with Melia still in his lap. She yelps in surprise, only to find that his arms easily support her weight. That’s to be expected; High Entia are far lighter than Homs despite being roughly the same size, due to mostly-hollow bones and lighter builds, and even with Melia’s half-Homs blood, this means that she is significantly lighter than she appears. She’s never much thought about that before, but now, as Shulk puts one hand on her back and the other under her knees and carries her off like a princess, she finds that she loves this, too. Melia can scarcely believe that Shulk is carrying her upstairs, to the bed she has dreamed of for six years and never allowed herself to imagine actually being in. Fiora follows them, still sneaking kisses from Melia’s lips, making her gasp. Her heart is so achingly full, she fears it’s going to burst.

The bedroom door creaks open, and then closes swiftly behind them; Melia feels the reverberation in her chest, her heart pounding furiously as Shulk lays her out on his and Fiora’s massive, sinfully soft bed, as if she is a precious, cherished thing, something delicate and beloved and worth loving.

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Melia says softly, “I… please, Shulk. I need-”

Shulk leans down and kisses her, the weight of him feeling perfect as it presses down onto her. “I know,” he murmurs into her mouth, his tongue dancing with hers.

Fiora comes around his side as Melia drags him deeper into the kiss, her long legs wrapping around his waist purely on instinct.

“There we go,” she murmurs soothingly as she lays down on the bed, tracing the line of Melia’s jawbone with her lips as Melia kisses her fiancé. “We’ll do this at your pace, Melia. Go as fast or as slow as you want. We’ll do it with you.”

Melia nearly sobs at this kindness, at the consideration Fiora is showing her, the woman who she has allowed into this most private of places. Melia has no right to be here, no claim to Shulk’s heart or his lips or his bed. But Fiora has granted her this easily and freely, and Melia knows that she will always love Fiora for it.

She does not give her answer in words; instead, she reaches for Fiora with one hand, and pulls her in tight, allowing her hands to roam Melia’s body.

Things move in a blur, after that. Fiora and Shulk kiss her up and down, take turns exploring her mouth and lips and tongue until she is on the verge of begging for more. When they do finally cross the point of no return, Melia is almost grateful.

Here, too, Shulk and Fiora take the lead; they are sweetly, deliciously gentle in how they slip her out of her clothes, coaxing her into helping them strip her bare piece by piece. Delicate fabrics crinkle and fall away under nimble hands, her skin heating up as they touch her. The outfit she had spent so long fretting over is divested from her with the utmost care, as if she is a gift so precious that it must be unwrapped with incredible delicacy. At last, she is nude-nude in their bed, a fact that is getting her aroused all by itself.

Melia nearly wilts as the last of her clothes fall away, a sudden bout of shyness overtaking her; she begins to fold up, begins to cover herself as her skin flushes. She has never quite felt fully comfortable or content with her body, with her long legs and rather narrow hips and her smallish bust. Next to women like Sharla, and indeed Fiora, she is skinny and coltish, slender even by High Entia standards.

Shulk and Fiora don’t seem to care. Fiora presses kisses to the tops of Melia’s breasts, working her way down the newly bared skin, while Shulk does the same to her thighs, both of them seemingly driven mad just at the sight of her. It’s terrifying, and exhilarating, and Melia finds herself mewling at the sensation of their lips exploring her skin.

They move to strip as well, and eventually, in between yet more bouts of frantic kissing and trembling, shy exploration, Shulk and Fiora end up similarly bare, and Melia’s heart jumps in her throat.

Shulk is almost exactly how she’d fantasized about him, all lean muscle and clever fingers, his body defined and well-muscled without becoming absurd or overwhelming. Fiora, though, is the one Melia cannot stop admiring. She’s a curving, tawny masterpiece, her breasts larger and her hips wider than Melia’s could ever be, for all that she’s several inches shorter-counting Melia’s wings, at least. Her belly is flat and muscled, and Melia finds herself wanting to lick her abs. Fiora chuckles as she presses closer, the feel of her skin setting Melia’s own afire wherever their bodies touch.

“Bionis, I’ve wanted to fuck you for so long,” she whispers. 

Melia gasps a little at that, at Fiora’s crudeness—or maybe just at the way Fiora nips at her neck. “R-really?” she moans, shivering as Shulk works his way down her body.

Fiora nods, eyes hooded and deep. “Ever since I saw you face down Zanza,” she murmurs, her voice heavy with promise. “Ever since then, I’ve wanted to know what you look like when you’re begging, when you let that Queenly mask down. I can’t wait to finally learn.”

Melia shudders as Fiora dives in for more hungry nibbles along the curve of her neck, down onto her collarbone, her fingers edging closer to Melia’s breasts.

A low chuckle emerges from Shulk’s throat, making both women look down at him.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, Fiora,” he rumbles, eyes twinkling in a way that makes Melia want him even more than she already does. “You always did enjoy humbling people.”

He runs a hand over the swell of Fiora’s naked hip, the gesture so familiar and tender and possessive that it sends a pang through Melia’s chest. The way Fiora unconsciously cocks her hip, pushing into the contact, giving Shulk free reign over her body, is yet more proof of what Melia already knows to be true-that what they’re about to do to her, they have already done to each other a thousand times over. That thought fills her with pangs of lust.

A moment later, Fiora takes Shulk’s hand off her body. “Oh no you don’t,” she says teasingly. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but you’ve got another girl here who needs you to touch her even more than I do right now.”

Shulk snorts, a sound so affectionate it makes Melia’s heart skip a beat. “Of course,” he concedes, before turning his gaze onto Melia, nude and sprawled out before him. “Well, Melia? May I?”

Melia can’t speak. Her throat is too tight with anticipation, too full with love and lust and need. She nods, slowly at first, then more frantically. “Please,” she whispers at last, just as Fiora coils around to kiss her from the side. 

In response, Shulk’s hands run down Melia’s smooth flanks, making her whimper . Her legs part willingly at his touch, exposing her wet, untouched core. Shulk lowers his face down to eye level with it, and then, as Melia is distracted with the feeling of Fiora’s tongue on hers, buries his mouth between her thighs.

Melia cries out in surprise and pleasure at the sensation, so abrupt and yet so perfect, as if she’s been awaiting the feeling of Shulk’s mouth on her cunt her whole life and never even realized it. Fiora pulls back just a little, her eyes roving greedily over the whole of Melia’s body, bucking and arching as Shulk sets to work on her.

“Easy, now,” she hisses into Melia’s ear, her hands on Melia’s breasts and her body pressed up tight against her. “Nice and easy. Let us know if it’s too much, Melia. Let us know if you want more. We’ll do anything you want us to. Let us make you feel good.”

Melia just whimpers as she comes apart under their touch; they have six-odd years of experience to draw on, skills honed on each other that they are turning on her relentlessly, where she has only ever had fingers and a few toys as her companions, until tonight. 

It’s overwhelming, the pleasure they give her so freely and joyfully, taking nothing in return. They make her twist and writhe, her fingers and toes curling as Fiora’s tender fingers play with her and Shulk’s impossible tongue sends her to heights of pleasure she had never even imagined.

And still, Shulk and Fiora keep going. Shulk pulls back, leaving Melia whining, addicted to him after barely ten minutes of his touch, already desperate for more. They spread her apart, expose her to them, treat her kindly and gently, peppering her skin with touches and kisses until she can no longer think. And then, when she is a tight, white-hot ball of need, they take her for their own.

Fiora breaks her most recent kiss with Melia to murmur, “Can we go further, Melia? Is this okay?”

Melia glances down her body, and sees Shulk’s shaft pressed against her, ready to push into her. Her body throbs with need. He waits patiently for her, even as she whimpers just from the sight of him.

Fiora grins against her ear. “Do you want him?” she asks. Melia nods weakly. “Then say it.”

With great effort, Melia summons the strength to say, “P-please, Shulk. I…I want it…”

Fiora kisses her tenderly, proud and loving and all Melia has ever needed, and Shulk obliges her. He pushes into her, slowly and steadily and clearly aiming to ease her into it.

Melia gasps at the feeling, at how full she suddenly feels as Shulk begins to move, ever-so-slowly. This is pleasure beyond anything that’s come before. This is perfection, this is ecstasy, this is-

Too much. It’s too much. In a flash, the sheer sensation becomes too overwhelming for Melia. Her joints lock up, her body, so supple and sweat-streaked and tenderly treated, tries to curl in on itself, shying away from the pleasure of Shulk inside her and Fiora’s body against hers. Surely, this cannot be meant for her. Surely, she does not deserve this.

A sob escapes her lips, a trembling, weak sound, and Shulk and Fiora do not skip a beat. In a split second, they go from tenderly worshiping every inch of her to kissing her, supporting her, loving her without hesitation.

“It’s okay, Melia,” Fiora soothes. “We’re here.”

Shulk, a little more shyly, asks, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Melia shakes her head. “N-no,” she gasps. “It’s just…”

She stops before she can finish. How can she possibly explain the tendrils of grief and sorrow and pain still clawing at her, holding her back? How can she explain the faces of the dead that still haunt her when she closes her eyes? How can she possibly make them understand that it’s not them, not this bed, not this impossibly perfect moment, but that it’s her? That some part of her refuses to accept that this is real, that she deserves this, that she is not a horrible selfish greedy monster who has chosen her happiness over the survival of her people?

And yet somehow, without a single word of it passing Melia’s lips between grieving sobs, Shulk and Fiora understand. A look passes between them, and they are both pressing gentle kisses to her cheeks, as if trying to replace the wetness of her gentle tears with the moisture of their lips.

“It’s okay, Melia,” Fiora says. “Let us love you.”

Melia’s breath hitches. Shulk adds, “You don’t have to be ashamed of being happy, Melia. You don’t have to carry all your pain by yourself. We want to help.”

Melia starts to hesitate…and then relents. They’re right. She knows they’re right. She cannot punish herself forever. She cannot deny herself the things she needs in the hopes that it will somehow return the dead to life. All she can do…all she can do is live.

Bit by bit, she relaxes again, tension and pain slipping away as Fiora’s mouth and fingers work over her skin. Melia gasps, her back arches, and her long High Entia legs wrap around Shulk’s broad, muscled back, drawing him in deeper. As her ankles lock behind his hips, Shulk gets the hint, and begins to move again, pushing into her in long, steady strokes. Melia moans, legs flexing as Fiora pulls her tight. Impulsively, Melia turns her head to seize Fiora’s lips, her free hand creeping down Fiora’s body, and between her legs.

Fiora looks at her in mild surprise as Melia’s fingers fumble at her entrance, and Melia flushes awkwardly. She fumbles to explain, “I just, um…I wanted to…to pleasure you, too…”

Fiora smiles. “Go right ahead,” she agrees, spreading her legs a little wider and shifting positions to give Melia better access. 

Melia is still blushing as her fingers slip into Fiora. “I, uh, don’t really know how to do this…” she admits slowly.

Fiora kisses her. “Neither do I,” she replies. “I’ve never been with a woman before either, remember? Here. Let’s figure it out together, shall we?”

Her fingers cover Melia’s, and as Shulk continues to rock his hips into her, she and Melia begin their own exploration, one of supple fingers and gentle moans and more than a little awkward fumbling. Eventually, though, Melia has Fiora rocking under her attentions, the blonde woman’s lips on her own, and Shulk’s movements reaching a fever pitch as her own pleasure pushes towards a crescendo.

This is everything she’s ever wanted. Everything she’s ever dreamed of. Shulk and Fiora love her, and they love each other, and all that love and connection builds and combines and makes Melia’s first time utterly ecstatic.

When she reaches that peak, when she comes undone at last, when Shulk is jerking within her, reaching his own climax, it is with Fiora’s lips on hers and Fiora’s fingers in every one of her most sensitive places. The world goes white for a moment as Melia’s body ripples with ecstasy, wedged tightly between two blonde Homs and loved to the brink of oblivion.

Melia realizes, then, what she has been missing these last six years.

She wasn’t meant to only love Shulk. She was always meant to love them both, the man who saved their world and the woman he saved it for. She was always meant to be their other woman.

That first time turns into a second, then a third. Melia is taken aback by her own stamina, by how readily her sweat-streaked body responds to Fiora and Shulk even after peaking again and again. It’s as if they’ve coaxed something wholly new out of her, fueled by years of pent-up emotions.

And still, when she finally wakes the next morning, cuddled between Shulk and Fiora, Melia finds herself wondering if this is all somehow a cruel joke–or a colossal mistake.

She’s become tightly sandwiched between the blondes, somehow, with Shulk’s arms around her and Fiora snuggled up against her body, face buried in Melia’s chest. She has to delicately extricate herself from Shulk and Fiora’s arms-they’ve snuggled her so tightly between them, so it takes quite a bit of work to somehow keep them from waking up. Rather than leave—which would require her to find her clothes, which have been flung somewhere in the room, exactly where, she isn’t certain—Melia simply ends up staring out the window at the sunrise, endlessly running through the events of the previous night in her head.

Maybe she should be more embarrassed at her nudity, but honestly, after how thorough Shulk and Fiora were last night, it’s not like Melia has any modesty left to lose. So she just…stretches, and enjoys the dull, satisfied ache between her legs, the feeling of having all her desires finally fulfilled.

In a single night, the whole arc of her life has shifted. Everything she’d thought she knew, her plans for the future…all gone awry, in the best possible way. She had been prepared to deny herself for the entirety of her very long lifespan…and now she doesn’t have to. Maybe, just maybe, she can be happy.

She doesn’t have very long to bask in it before a soft, warm pair of hands wind their way around her waist. Melia briefly stiffens in surprise, particularly as she feels a very… familiar pair of breasts pressing into her back.

“Morning,” Fiora murmurs in her ear, resting her head on Melia’s shoulder. She, too, is still naked, and Melia would like to say that that doesn’t affect her at all, but, well…she is most definitely bisexual, and she is profoundly attracted to Fiora.

Still, even though Fiora’s eyes flash knowingly at the little gasp that escapes Melia’s lips, she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she allows Melia to grow used to the contact, the two of them simply cuddling in front of the window, gently holding each other.

This, too, is not something Melia expected. Fiora snuck up on her, unlike Shulk; she never even realized what she felt for Fiora had grown well beyond mere friendship, until, well, early that previous night.  But she knows now, at least.

At long last, Fiora asks, “So…how are you feeling?”

Melia sighs. “Happy,” she whispers, as though she is afraid saying it too loudly will dispel it all like mist. “But…worried, too.”

Fiora raises an eyebrow. “Worried? About what?” she asks. Her hands roam over Melia’s body, ending up just below her breasts.

Melia forces herself to calm down, to not whimper and whine and beg for more the way she’d done last night. She’d never thought a woman’s touch would set her skin on fire like this…but Fiora does.

“I…don’t know,” she admits. “This just feels so… weird. I keep thinking of ways I’ll mess it up, or what people will think.”

Fiora grins. “Well, I can at least help a bit with that last one,” she offers. “Sharla will be thrilled for us, Riki and Vanea won’t care, Reyn will say something really stupid that I’ll punch him for and then he’ll be the most supportive person of them all, and Dunban…well, he might gently threaten you at swordpoint. Just a little.”

Melia falls silent. A thousand worries whirl in her head, but only one seems pressing enough to make her speak.

“How do you gently threaten someone at swordpoint?” she asks nervously. “That seems…contradictory.”

Fiora just grins. “Dunban will manage,” she assures Melia. “He doesn’t usually get to be the overprotective brother, so he makes it count.”

Melia frowns more deeply. She knows that Fiora’s probably just joking…though she doesn’t exactly relish the idea of facing down the man who’d defeated an army of Mechon singlehandedly in any scenario. “Wait, did he do that to Shulk, too?” she asks, the question coming to her out of the blue.

Fiora shakes her head. “Nah. He had a long time to get used to the fact that Shulk’s his future brother-in-law,” she says, sounding satisfied. “Though I do feel like he regrets never having the opportunity.”

Melia just sighs. The lightness in her heart fades away again at the word brother-in-law, as it serves to remind her that she has just slept with an engaged couple, and there’s no way that the more… traditional members of the High Entia remnant will approve. 

“Fiora,” she murmurs, turning to look back at Shulk, whose face is no less handsome while asleep, “Where do you…see this going?”

Fiora raises an eyebrow. She’s admiring her fiance just as much as Melia is, a distant look in her eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks.

Melia blushes–not at their nudity this time, though. “Am I…” she begins hesitantly, “am I going to be your dirty secret? If you and Shulk are going to get married…then surely we can’t make this… official in any way.”

Fiora arches her other eyebrow. “Would you like to?” she asks softly. “Make it official, I mean?”

Melia hesitates. Does she?

It takes her only a few moments to return with an answer. “Yes,” she says, nodding slowly. “Yes, I want…I want to be yours. To everyone.”

She wants proof that this is real, she doesn’t add. She wants to feel the backslaps and hear the congratulations, wants people to call her Shulk and Fiora’s lover in public, to convince her mind that this is not some unimaginably cruel dream.

And yet…she can already imagine those congratulations competing with mocking, the good-natured teasing developing an uncomfortably cruel edge, the indignant shouts of traditionalists. And she doesn’t think she wants that.

It’s at that point that Fiora, as she always does, cuts right through all the bullshit. She jabs a finger at Melia, and says, “Uh, hello? Your Majesty? You’re Queen of the High Bloody Entia, remember?”

Melia blinks, confused. “Um…and?”

Fiora leans forwards, and Melia swallows down her desire to watch Fiora’s breasts bounce and forces herself to listen, instead. “Melia Antiqua,” Fiora says in the voice that she uses to lecture the man who slew God, “Your father had two wives, didn’t he? High Entia monarchs are polygamous.”

Melia’s eyes shoot open. Funny, how that arrangement could be the cause of so much grief in her life, could be the reason her stepmother tried to have her killed in the Tomb, and yet it has slipped into memory just like so much of her people’s culture. 

“Oh,” she gasps. “Oh! You’re saying-but that was purely for the purpose of having children! Surely I couldn’t just…”

Fiora’s hands land on top of Melia’s, silencing her protests. “I’m saying that if you want to, Melia, one day, you could take a pair of Royal Consorts, just like your father did,” she says, somehow making the whole harebrained scheme sound reasonable, her eyes twinkling with love and kindness and no small amount of mischief. “I’m sure the Hero of the Homs won’t mind being Second Consort to his lovely wife, you know. As for the “children” bit…well. I think we can take care of that part quite nicely too, if you know what I’m saying.”

She nods at Melia’s midsection, the gesture loaded with meaning, and Melia jolts as if electrocuted. “I, um…” she mutters, averting her eyes as she flushes deeply.

Fiora, though, doesn’t let her get away. “You like that idea, don’t you, babe?” she asks pointedly.

Melia nods weakly, trying and failing to brush away the thoughts that Fiora’s words have planted in her mind. A little girl with blonde hair and her wings, a boy with Shulk’s jaw and Kallian’s eyes…her heart is twisting in her chest. The idea had never really been something she considered, before. Now, though…

A moment later, Fiora brings her back to the present. “Melia,” she says, her eyes serious once again. “You don’t have to tell me now whether you want kids or not. Hell, you don’t have to agree to marry us or take us as your Consorts or whatever we figure out right now either. Take your time. Move at your pace. But if you want us in your life…you’ll have us. We want you in ours, that’s for bloody sure.”

It proves far easier for Melia to get the words out than she’d expected. “I…I do.”

Fiora blinks, caught off guard. “You do?” she repeats.

Melia nods. “I…I want children,” she says, more firmly now. “And I…would be honored to have you as Consorts. I’ll…I’ll marry you. Both of you.”

And here she’d thought her life had changed dramatically a few minutes ago. How little she’d known.

Fiora’s eyebrows are nearing her hairline by now, but there is only love in her eyes. “Damn,” she teases affectionately. “And here I thought we’d have to fuck you a few more times before you came around.”

Melia laughs, part of her scandalized and part of her falling even deeper for this girl who came back from the dead. On a whim, she lunges outwards, pulling Fiora to her and kissing her with everything she has. Fiora rolls with it happily, squirming into Melia’s lap and claiming her lips greedily. As Melia feels Fiora’s body against her own, it strikes her again, just how insane this is, how abrupt the shift in her life has been, and how she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Even as she and Fiora make out lovingly next to the window, there’s a groan from the bed, and they turn to see Shulk stirring.

“Hello, loves,” he says, the sheets falling away as he sits up. “I miss anything important?”

Melia and Fiora share a glance, and with a jolt, Melia realizes Fiora’s about to say something out of pocket.

Grinning, Fiora replies, “Oh, nothing much. Melia just agreed to marry us, that’s all.”

Shulk’s eyes shoot open so quickly, it’s nearly comical. Twisting his head from side to side, he nervously asks, “Uh…how long was I out again?”

Melia’s laughter fills the room, a sound that starts out soft and weak and timid, and grows to be a high, clear chime, a note of brightness in a world that is finally coming out of the dark.

Her risk has paid off.

Chapter Text

Melia feels guilty every time she thinks it…but the following two weeks are the happiest of her life.

Even in the best of times in the Imperial Palace, when her father and Kallian were still alive, when her people were still strong and vital and not dying en masse or being turned into monsters, Melia never felt as light, as free, as full as spending her nights with Shulk and Fiora.

They keep up some semblance of normalcy during daylight for those two weeks; Melia still goes about her routines as Queen, still rules and reigns and tunes out prattling advisors, but now she’s able to distract herself with memories—and with anticipation for what Shulk and Fiora will do to her when she returns home that night.

And that says more than anything, really—that Shulk and Fiora’s modest house is already home, not those damned Royal Apartments. If she could not sleep in their bed, nestled bare beneath the covers between the two people who love her most in the world, Melia would rather sleep on the ground than return to those cold, uncaring rooms with their scant remnants of a dead culture.

And oh, the things they do to her in that bed. Melia would never claim to be the most knowledgeable woman on matters of pleasure, with only fantasies and whispers to guide her before Fiora’s fateful invitation, but she finds herself receiving a crash course at the more experienced girl’s hands…and fingers…and lips. Shulk is a patient, generous, tender lover, albeit one that will readily meet… darker urges if the mood calls for it. But Fiora? It turns out that, beneath the gentle smiles and the angelic grace and the warm eyes, she has a truly wicked mind, and the torments she devises for Melia make her knees go weak whenever she recalls them. Fiora takes full advantage of having a Queen begging for her touch, and Melia has never once enjoyed hearing “Your Highness” anywhere near as much as she does when Fiora purrs it, deep and throaty and heavy with desire that must be satiated.

It is perfect. It is everything Melia has been missing. It is the start of a lifetime of joy and pleasure and happiness; she knows that already, knows that she will forever divide her life into Before and After that single evening in Outlook Park.

And yet, at the end of those two weeks, Melia finds herself hesitating once again in the living room of Fiora and Shulk’s home.

It’s the day of their next “reunion,” just about a month on from the last, and Melia knows that Fiora and Shulk intend to reveal the change in their relationship to their friends today.

Despite her trust in them, despite all Fiora’s predictions and Shulk’s reassurances, Melia still hesitates at the threshold.

She has never handled change well, even back before the world was ended and remade. It’s a weakness for all High Entia—they are so long-lived, they simply process things at a different pace. It’s one of the many, many reasons for the depth of the agony her people have suffered at the hands of Zanza—the destruction of everything they knew and loved has left the survivors lurching, in free fall through a world that they are not equipped to handle. They handle it as anyone in their position would…which is to say, poorly. 

Before Melia can sink deeper into the familiar depths of her sorrow, there is a touch on her shoulder. Melia turns to see Fiora there, the other woman’s fingers rolling gently yet possessively over Melia’s skin and clothing.

“Everything alright?” she asks brightly, green eyes shimmering in the evening light. Her hand brushes down the column of Melia’s spine, making her shudder.

“I’m…worried,” she admits slowly, even as her body luxuriates under Fiora’s touch. “What if they take it poorly?”

Fiora does not laugh at her, does not make light of her fears. She simply says, “They won’t,” and her confidence fills the cracks in Melia’s conviction. Her other hand comes around, cupping Melia’s chin, stopping her from staring furtively at the ground.

“Melia,” the girl who came back from the dead says, looking her in the eye. “It’s going to be fine.”

She leans in, and emphasizes her words with a sweet, gentle kiss—though it begins to grow less sweet and gentle the longer it drags on, as Melia impulsively pulls her lover tight to her body, her own hands roaming down Fiora’s back and cupping her head.

When she finally breaks away, it’s with a flush on her pale cheeks and a little more fire in her eyes.

“How do you do this to me?” she whispers, forehead against Fiora’s, the whole world fading into the background except for this beautiful woman holding her tight. “How do you make it all seem so simple?”

Fiora just chuckles, a deep, throaty rumble against the side of Melia’s neck, leaving goosebumps in the wake of her lips. Holding her is like holding lightning in the palm of your hand—she crackles with energy, casts brilliant light in the room just by her presence. Melia feels as though she’s lived her whole life in shadow before meeting her, this girl who eclipses her in every way, and who loves her all the same.

Another chuckle joins hers, even deeper, and a pair of steady arms loop around both women’s shoulders as Shulk finally makes his appearance.

“She does it to me too, Melia,” he laughs, flashing both women one of his easygoing, earnest grins. “Take it from me: if Fiora says it’s going to be fine, it will be.”

Fiora laughs again, swiveling easily in Melia’s grip to press a kiss to the corner of Shulk’s mouth, playful and tender and hungry all at once. Melia watches them kiss, and feels as though she has been let into a truly sacred place, granted something that she does not deserve to see. To a girl used to cold Imperial Courts and disapproving stepmothers and brothers and fathers torn away from her far too soon, being a part of such a gentle, easy display of love feels like floating in the ocean after a life spent parched for water.

She has no choice but to trust them—to follow them into the room where their friends are waiting, arm in arm with Shulk (and with Fiora’s hand just a little too low on Melia’s hip, fingers pressing into flesh a little too greedily, but it’s a little late for Melia to protest, even as her face burns red.)

It will be fine. It will.

The moment the three of them enter the sitting room, Sharla’s eyes are bouncing between them, narrow and cutting.

They all know just how piercing the ex-sniper’s gaze can be, especially Melia; Sharla has always known about Melia’s love for Shulk, and she rather doubts that the fact that she’s entered the room being held tightly by both him and his fiancé has escaped the woman’s notice. As Melia watches, Sharla nudges Reyn subtly, making the man’s head jerk towards them, eyes widening.

They definitely know something is amiss. The secret is slipping already.

Even as her stomach twists nervously, Melia still has to admit how happy she is to see everyone. These times are still some of her most precious—times where she can drop the Queenly mask fully and simply be Melia, a friend and a comrade, a member of the tiny knot of people who changed the world forever.

They’re all here, as usual, with food and drink spread out on the table between them; Reyn and Sharla, peeled away from the lives of a newly married couple; Riki, still just as bright and bouncy as ever despite his small army of children and Oka always requiring so much of his time; Dunban and Vanea, sharing a couch despite insisting—without any of them believing it—that there is nothing between them, and of course, Melia, Shulk, and Fiora themselves.

Dunban is the first to speak when they have all settled in and said their greetings, and Fiora has informed everyone that she and Shulk have an announcement to make. The man who’d broken the Mechon at Sword Valley with one good arm looks them in the eye and says in a perfectly mild voice, "Shulk, if you've gotten my sister pregnant before you've married her, so help me, I will-"

And then, Fiora cuts him off, just as Reyn, Melia and Shulk all choke on their drinks.

“Really, Dunban?” she asks, fighting back a laugh. “That’s what you think our announcement is?”

Dunban, surprisingly, manages to withstand his little sister’s scowl. He’s grown crankier with age—though Vanea seems to enjoy it, the Machina woman putting an affectionate hand on his arm as he grumbles, “Well, if it isn’t, you can laugh at me all you like. But I have to admit, I’d rather you two at least tie the knot before drowning me in nieces and nephews.”

Fiora loses the battle against her laugh. Melia has to admit, she finds it pretty funny too. She and Fiora have already spoken of children—and Fiora has made it abundantly clear that she intends to treat any children Melia and Shulk have as her own, as well. Which means that Dunban certainly will be drowning in nieces and nephews, even more than he realizes.

Perhaps sensing that there will never be a better time for their reveal than this moment, Fiora looks around the room, and draws a deep breath.

“Well, Dunban, you don’t have to worry,” she says airily. “I’m not pregnant. But we are delaying the wedding.”

Surprise ripples around the room. Reyn looks shocked, Sharla suspicious, Riki horrified, Dunban completely caught off guard. Sitting next to Fiora, Melia fights the urge to flinch.

“What? Why?” Reyn asks, looking at Shulk.

Fiora answers him. Reaching down to take Melia’s hand, she announces, “Well, we have to make some changes to the plans. After all, it’s going to be a royal wedding now, isn’t it, Melia?”

Melia winces at the stares suddenly fixed on her. Drawing strength from Fiora’s grip, she sits up rigidly in her seat, and nods. On her other side, she feels Shulk take her other hand.

“I have…asked Fiora and Shulk to be my Imperial Consorts,” she says. “It will require some changes to the High Entia laws on such unions…but I intend to marry them both, and they want to marry me.”

It still feels like a delusion, when she speaks the words aloud. Melia still isn’t sure if she’ll ever believe that this is real. Certainly, the blank, stunned stares she receives from their friends don’t help on that front.

For a heartbeat, Melia thinks it’s all going to go wrong. And then Sharla, her friend, her confidante, the woman whose shoulder she has cried on these six long years, leaps to her feet and hurls herself at Melia in a teary-eyed hug.

“That’s amazing!” she cries, laughing hysterically. “I can’t believe you actually pulled it off, girl! Amazing!”

Reyn is half a step behind. “Bloody hell!” he laughs, wrapping all three of them into an organ-squeezing bear hug as Shulk and Fiora groan painfully. “I better still be best man, you hear me?”

Shulk manages a painful nod, and Reyn relinquishes them, only to slap Shulk on the back so hard Melia swears she hears his bones creak. “Look at you!” he chuckles. “Fiora, and the gorgeous princess I said you’d—”

Fiora clears her throat meaningfully, and Reyn chokes on his words. “Oh, uh, probably shouldn’t say that,” he mutters. 

Fiora smirks, one eyebrow arched. “I can’t believe it,” she stage-whispers to Sharla. “Did you actually manage to train him to not say every thought that pops into his meathead brain?”

Sharla laughs. “Eventually,” she replies, eyebrows waggling. Her husband turns red, but laughs along with everyone else.

The others approach, too, and Melia finds herself at the center of a whirlwind of kindness; Vanea offers her congratulations with her usual gentle warmth, while Riki is gleefully bouncing around like a volleyball, declaring how he always knew that “bird lady” would find herself something like this. 

And finally, Dunban steps forwards, wearing a flawless smile. “Congratulations,” he says, pulling the three of them into a stiff hug, made stiffer by his one working arm. “Really, I’m overjoyed for the three of you.”

Then, he pulls back, and fixes Melia with a look. “Might you and I speak for a moment?” he asks, an odd twinkle in his eye. 

She gulps as she recalls Fiora’s words about a gentle threatening at swordpoint. Fiora seems to as well, given that she glares warningly at her brother.

“Go easy on her, Dunban,” she says gravely. “That’s my fiancé you’re speaking to.”

Even Fiora calling her that doesn’t lighten the fear filling Melia’s chest.

Dunban raises his hand placatingly. “I am unarmed,” he promises Fiora—and the fact that he has to say that does not assuage Melia’s fears. “I merely wish to speak with her for a moment.”

Melia gulps again, but she allows Dunban to pull her aside, just past the door into the dining room. She glances back at Fiora. The blonde girl mouths “I love you,” just as Dunban pulls her around the corner, and out of view.

When Dunban closes the door on the rapidly-developing party, leaving the two of them alone, Melia braces herself, expecting threats, warnings, something.

She has pushed through her fear already. She has overcome her own pain and confessed her feelings to the people she thought would hate her for her love. She has nothing left to fear.

Instead, Dunban lays his good hand on her shoulder. He is smiling, warm and kind.

“I still remember the day we met you,” he says softly. “All those years ago, in Makna Forest. You slapped Shulk across the face.”

Melia winces. Weakly, she mutters, “I…I’d forgotten about that.”

Dunban chuckles. “It was very funny,” he replies. “And I could tell, even then—you weren’t exactly used to kindness, were you?”

Melia falls silent. “I…guess not,” she manages.

It’s true; she hadn’t. She’d been so desperate to prove herself, so overcome with grief at the loss of her men and horror at her failure, that she hadn’t been thinking. It had taken her far too long to work her way out of the mindset she’d begun her relationship with Shulk in. Perhaps if she’d done it sooner…

But that is the past. She has found happiness now. She is going to marry Shulk, and Fiora, too.

Dunban hums. “I think I could tell, even then,” he muses. “That what you felt for him was stronger than anything you were prepared for.”

Melia can barely breathe. “Yes,” she whispers softly, head hanging.

This…this is somehow worse than what she’d expected. She’d thought that Dunban, always the greatest supporter of Fiora and Shulk’s relationship, would be more critical of her, more suspicious of her intentions. But instead, Dunban seems to see through her, see everything she always struggled to admit to herself.

“Ever since then, I have respected you so much,” he continues. “For how much you’ve grown, from that girl in the forest. For how much you’ve faced. How much you’ve lost, and yet continued fighting. You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, Melia Antiqua.”

Melia has to blink back tears at that. From a man like him, words of praise are worth more than gold to her.

Dunban smiles, seeing her struggling to maintain her composure. “Back then, I will admit that I saw your intentions with Shulk with…some suspicion,” he admits. “I think now that part of it was my lingering grief over Fiora, and how Shulk and you forging something together would have…impacted her memory. But even then, I never disdained you for it. And now…”

He trails off for a second, and Melia glances up, finding that Dunban is smiling brighter than ever. 

“I once told Shulk that I believed that he was the best person for Fiora to end up with,” he tells her. “But I think, now, that I was wrong—or at least not completely right. I think that you are perfect for her, too. I think you will make her happy. And she will do the same for you. Be good to her, and to Shulk. They will be good to you.”

Melia can only stare at him. That…sounds a whole lot like a blessing. And also like the most fatherly advice Melia has received since…well, since Prison Island, and Soren Antiqua’s death.

Melia’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Dunban wraps her up in a one-armed hug as the tears finally leak from her eyes. Then, he turns to rejoin the party.

Only then does Melia find her voice. “Fiora told me that you were going to threaten me at swordpoint,” she says.

Dunban pauses, then turns back to her and winks. 

“That’s the best part about being a legendary swordsman,” he informs her. “Eventually, you don’t even need the sword to scare people. Your reputation does all the work.”

And with that, he turns and leaves. Melia follows him a moment later, still not quite believing that she’s still unscathed.

She finds Fiora waiting for her on the other side, while Shulk and Reyn roar in laughter across the room.

“So…how did it go?” Fiora asks. With a jolt, Melia realizes that Fiora is nervous. For all that she insults her older brother, she cares about his approval, too.

As someone who… used to have an older brother, too, she understands. She’d do anything to have Kallian tell her he approves of Shulk, to hear him laugh and hug Fiora as he gives them his congratulations.

But she will never have that. So all she can have is this, instead. It’s not so bad a substitute, she thinks.

Melia straightens her back, and presses a kiss to Fiora’s lips. “Well,” she decides. “It went well.”

Fiora beams. “That’s good,” she says. “So…how long do you want to stay here before we go home?”

Melia considers for a moment. There’s something in Fiora’s eyes that makes her cheeks beat up. “What do you plan to do when we get home?” she asks.

Fiora smirks. She leans in close, wrapping an arm around Melia’s waist. “Let’s just say that it involves him,” she replies, gesturing at Shulk, “You, and a lot of rope.”

Melia shudders. “Uh…soon, then,” she murmurs. “Very soon.”

Fiora laughs. “Not so fast there, love,” she says warmly. “Let’s enjoy being engaged, shall we? Then we’ll go home and make sure your brains get fucked out.”

It really was incredible, Melia thinks, that all of this could have been denied to her so easily, if she had just not made the leap, summoned up her courage one last time.

And now, this is her life. Her wonderful, beautiful life. The sunrise at the end of the tunnel.

Seven and a half months later, Queen Melia of the High Entia marries her Imperial Consorts before the assembled population of the Colony.

It’s the grandest party their new home has seen in its six years of existence. All the races of the world, Homs and Machina and High Entia and Nopon, coming together to celebrate the marriage—however unorthodox—of their greatest hero to the woman who has, half by accident, more or less assumed leadership of the entire Colony.

To be sure, the intervening months had been filled with complications and difficulties; Melia had faced more resistance than she’d expected on the topic of her marriage from her councilors and advisors. Many of them still cling to the old traditions, what few tatters of them remain; some declare that the Consort system was never meant to bind a female Homs to an Empress, while others decry the lack of a High Entia consort, which will “inevitably lead to the dilution of your noble stock!” A few—not many, but a few—are protesting mostly, she suspects, because they are angling to be that High Entia consort themselves. These, she dismisses quite sharply.

(When she returns home to that house on the outskirts of the Colony and relates this to Shulk and Fiora, Shulk points out that the “noble stock” these advisors are so concerned with is in fact the original design of the High Entia as Zanza’s tools of mass destruction and genocide. He says this in a voice that is ever-so-slightly tinged with dark relish at the thought; Shulk is a peaceful man, a kind man, but at the center of his soul, there is, and always will be, a sort of hateful, brutal satisfaction about killing Zanza—about scouring every last trace of the mad Creator from history for what he did to all of them. Melia cannot find it in her to disagree with this feeling—instead, she agrees with it, for Kallian and Father and the thousands of her people who she watched transform into monsters forever. She has especially few complaints when Shulk proves eager to help her dilute the stock of the future High Entia.)

In the end, though, Melia overrides the complaints of her advisors without too much difficulty; there simply isn’t enough room in the Colony, which is still so tiny compared to Alcamoth, for the sort of brutal, backstabbing politics she had been raised with. Melia is the only member of the Royal Family still alive, and Shulk is the hero who saved them all, and Fiora is a member of the Seven. Their three-way marriage may technically not follow any of the conventions—or even the laws—of the Homs or the High Entia, but Melia’s word is essentially the only law the Colony really has anymore, and so it isn’t too difficult to make the arrangements.

When the day comes, it is as beautiful as Melia hoped it would be. Everything seems to align, from Reyn and Sharla as best man and maid of honor to the weather to the gorgeous dresses Melia and Fiora wear. When Dunban walks Fiora down the aisle, Melia thinks her heart is going to burst from love.

There are things missing, of course, people who should have been there; Melia has no one to walk her down the aisle, and her heart insists that she keep scanning for Father’s tearful smile or Kallian’s exasperated grin at the sight of her on her wedding day. She knows she’ll never see them. She keeps looking anyway.

And so, she strides down the aisle alone, towards the altar where Shulk and Fiora are waiting, hand-in-hand. She feels the gazes of her subjects—her people— on her as she walks. She has heard all the whispers over these months—the rumors about her and Shulk and Fiora. Some are kinder than others. They say that Melia begged Shulk for an heir to her dynasty, that Fiora only tolerates her for appearances. They say that Melia has prostituted herself to the Hero of the Homs for political purposes. They say the marriage is all a sham, and that Shulk is devoted to Fiora exclusively.

They say other things, as well. They say that it is true love, that it is hopelessly romantic, that this new world means that new ideas, new traditions, can come into their own. They say good things, too, and Melia will never let herself forget that light will always shine through the darkness.

At last, she reaches the altar. Fiora and Shulk both look at her with awe in their eyes, and for a moment, Melia sees herself as they must see her: the Queen of the High Entia, clad all in white. Resplendent. Beautiful. Unafraid and powerful.

So often, she feels like she is none of those things. But when they look at her like that…maybe she can let herself believe.

She takes their hands. Shulk visibly gets a grip on himself.

“You look incredible, Melia,” he murmurs.

Fiora smirks. “He’s totally gonna rip that off of you later,” she translates under her breath as Chief Dunga approaches to officiate. He’d insisted on it—saying that he absolutely had to be the one to bind the “Bird Lady” together with her “Hom-Homs.” Melia hadn’t had the heart to turn him down.

Still, just before the vows begin, Melia gives the loves of her life a sultry little smile.

“Well,” she says sweetly, “It’s a good thing I had the seamstresses add in tearaway strips.”

Fiora and Shulk both goggle at her, but are unable to respond as Chief Dunga begins to speak.

Melia smiles, and basks in the moment.

Their wife. She’s going to be their wife.

That night, after the vows have been said, and the party has lasted long into darkness, and the toasts have been made, and Dunban and Vanea have been caught making out in a broom closet, and that dress was finally torn off of Melia just as promised, she finds herself sitting on the balcony of that quiet little house, looking out at the endless star-filled sky and the boundless sea beneath, the door open behind her to the bedroom where her husband and wife now lie sleeping, their new marriage fully consummated. Melia, just as bare as both of them, gives a quiet little sigh as she closes the balcony door.

“Father, Kallian,” she thinks to herself. “I made it. I’m happy.”

There is no response, of course—she learned a long time ago that the dead cannot speak. But she likes to imagine that two of those infinite stars burn just a little brighter for a moment.

Then, she turns back to her loves, and returns to bed. As she slots herself against Shulk, she murmurs, only for her own ears, “Thank you. For taking me as I am.”

Shulk stirs, his eyes open, and Melia realizes with a jolt that he’s been awake the whole time. He cracks a grin as Melia stiffens, his arm wrapping around her waist, her wings tucked up under his chin.

“Always, Melia,” he whispers as he holds her tight. This…this is all Melia has ever wanted. “Always.”

She snuggles tight to him, pressing a kiss to his lips. On his other side, Fiora snores gently, her hand sprawled across his chest, so far it is easy for Melia to interlink her fingers with the other woman’s.

Then, at last, she falls asleep, and dreams only of the future, and not the past.

Chapter Text

Just over a year after the happiest day of Melia’s life, she is hunched over the toilet in their house, vomiting up the remnants of her breakfast.

Fiora holds her hair back as she finishes, looking somewhere between concerned and slightly off-put. Melia, though, can’t stop smiling, practically trembling with hope as she leans back, sensing that she’s finally done.

Fiora is the first to speak the trembling hope in Melia’s chest into being. “D’you think you’re pregnant?” she asks.

It’s not an unreasonable thing to ask; both Melia and Fiora have stopped using any form of birth control, and all three of them are generally in agreement that while they won’t necessarily try to get pregnant, they aren’t opposed to it either. 

For Melia, though, there have been…additional concerns. Her advisors have, with varying amounts of tact, impressed upon her the importance of heirs. She is the last of the royal line, after all, and while she is young and healthy, she knows full well that neither of those things can guarantee a long life.

And so, she sits back on her heels, feeling her stomach churn, with Fiora’s arms around her belly. Melia turns to meet her wife’s eyes, filled with a mix of hope and sheer, heart-stopping terror.

On the one hand, she thinks she’s ready. She has won wars, saved thousands, killed gods. She has taken more leaps of faith than she can count. She has come into her own as Queen, ruling justly and fairly as the Colony grows. Compared to all of that, raising a child–especially with Shulk and Fiora there to help–cannot be so impossible.

But on the other hand…she is terrified. 

She puts a hand to her stomach, interlinking her fingers with Fiora’s. “I…don’t know,” she murmurs.

Fiora’s eyes bore into her. “What do you want the answer to be?” she asks softly.

Melia looks away. She tries to put the storm churning inside her into words. At last, she manages.

“I…I hope so,” she whispers.

Fiora smiles, helping Melia to her feet. For a moment, Melia is filled with awe; she knows how badly Fiora wants children herself, knows how she craves a large family and a full, lively house after so long spent alone while Dunban was off at war, or horribly injured. She knows, too, that in her darkest moments, Fiora is scared that some lingering complication of what happened to her at Egil’s hands–of being turned into a Mechon, of having to regenerate her body with Machina technology she barely understands–will make that dream impossible. Once or twice, Melia has even wondered if that fear is what made Fiora reach out to her on that day in Outlook Park.

And yet, when Fiora hugs her, there is no jealousy, no anxiety, no insecurity in her eyes or body. She is merely happy, and loving, and the most reassuring presence Melia has ever felt. 

Melia falls in love with her all over again.

Two months later, the morning sickness–it has to be morning sickness–has only just stopped, and Melia’s faint hope has become a raging fire. Surely, she has to be pregnant now.

They haven’t told Shulk yet. At first, it was because Melia and Fiora weren’t actually sure; now, it’s because Melia, always prone to imagining the worst, keeps fretting over everything that might go wrong. What if it isn’t meant to be? What if she gets Shulk’s hopes up for nothing? What if she…

She doesn’t want to even think the word. So she doesn’t. But her skin gets dry and crackly and her breasts begin to ache and she starts feeling sore all the time, and soon, she and Fiora agree that it’s time to make it official.

They come home from the clinic that evening, with the confirmation in Melia’s trembling hands, courtesy of the Machina matron and her medical scanners: she is, unequivocally and without a doubt, pregnant. 

Fiora seems torn between wanting to burst out laughing and trying to hold it all in so she doesn’t tip Shulk off before she’s had the chance to watch him learn he’s going to be a father. As a result, she ends up sort of vibrating with tightly leashed glee as they come in to find their husband in the kitchen, washing oil stains off his fingers as he prepares to make dinner.

Shulk turns his head as he hears them enter the kitchen. “Hey, girls,” he says warmly, his hair pulled back and his forearms exposed up to his elbows. “How were your days?”

On any other day, Melia would bask in the gentle domesticity of his question, relishing the feeling of coming home to see her husband and feeling such a rush of love for him. But today, she has far graver thoughts on her mind.

Shulk must notice the distracted look on her face, because his smile slowly fades. “Melia?” he asks. “Is…everything okay?”

Melia takes a deep breath as Fiora steps up behind her, lending Melia support with her presence.

“Yes,” she says, cheeks flushing. “It’s just…well…there’s something you should know.”

Shulk’s look of concern grows. When Melia hesitates again, the words sticking in her throat, Fiora rolls her eyes.

“Come on, Melia, spit it out,” she says. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

Melia gets herself together. Stepping forwards, she takes Shulk’s hand and brings it to her belly. “You’re…going to be a father,” she says weakly. “I’m…I’m pregnant.”

She has fantasized about this before—not that Melia will ever admit to it. As far back as the High Entia Tomb, she has idly imagined informing Shulk that she carries his child—that the future of the High Entia royal family grows in her womb thanks to him. 

The reality outstrips all her daydreams. Shulk rocks back on his heels, forced to grip the counter for support as his knees go weak beneath him. Within seconds, though, he is surging forwards, sturdy arms wrapping around Melia, his lips on hers.

When he pulls back again, she realizes that there are tears in his eyes. “R-really?” Shulk whispers. “I…you…”

Melia nods. He’s fully lifted her off the ground now, twirling her in the air like a dancer. His arms are trembling, not with effort, but with disbelief, and tenderness—he’s trying so very hard to be gentle, clearly terrified of treating her as anything less fragile than spun glass. Normally, Melia would be irritated by this, but given the depths of her own anxieties about this pregnancy, she can’t find it in herself to be upset.

Shulk kisses her again. He’s laughing now, crying freely with joy. Fiora joins the hug from behind, leaving Melia fully enveloped in love.

“Watch this,” she murmurs in Melia’s ear. “Hey, Shulk! I think we’ve got some plans to make!”

Shulk’s eyes widen, and Melia realizes what’s going to happen. 

As their husband starts babbling about cribs and wallpapers and various baby-related inventions he can develop, clearly trying to distract himself from the fact that he’s going to be a father, Melia turns to her wife in mild exasperation.

“That was uncalled for,” she says.

 Fiora just smirks. “Maybe,” she admits. “But I think it’s cute to watch him ramble.”

She’s right. It really is.

The next months of Melia’s life pass by like a blur.

Incredibly, Sharla has actually gotten pregnant with her and Reyn’s first child just a few months earlier; at teatimes and dinners with Melia and Fiora, she eagerly regales them with all the horror stories and the things that await them now that Melia is expecting.

From the sound of things, Sharla’s pregnancy has been a mess of morning breath and bizarre cravings and aching joints and mood swings; she rants endlessly about her squeezed organs, saying that she “tries to throttle Reyn for doing this to me every bloody day.” From what Melia’s heard, Reyn has somehow achieved the patience of a saint during his wife’s pregnancy. Or maybe that’s just Sharla’s mood swings talking.

Regardless, perhaps it is merely the joy that fills her as her belly swells, or the soothing effect of Fiora and Shulk’s attentive, endlessly supportive love, but Melia barely has any of these terrible troubles with her own pregnancy. While Sharla finally gives birth to a squalling little hellion she and Reyn name Ashera, Melia feels like she’s glowing. If the way Shulk and Fiora treat her during their—continually very active—sex life is any indication, she might actually be glowing.

Once Melia begins to show, she decides to allow her advisors to draft an official announcement; the message goes out to all her subjects, old and new: the Queen is pregnant. The royal line will not end.

In the old days, when Alcamoth still stood, such an announcement would have been made on the balcony of Alcamoth to a crowd of thousands, cheering and celebrating their beloved rulers. Melia would have stood on that balcony, Shulk by her side, so very far above her people. 

In the Colony, where Melia’s queenship is a quieter, more personal thing, more akin to being the mayor of a small town where she knows each person by name, it manifests instead in smaller ways; well-wishes from people she passes in the street, coos from women in the market, gifts of pastries and knitted baby-sized sweaters appearing as if by magic in front of their home. She has to admit…she thinks she prefers it this way.

And after it all, when the pain (which is terrible, yes, but pain and her are old friends, now) and the blood have passed, when the Machina nurse delivers her newborn daughter into her arms, Melia looks down at the most precious thing in her life and sees Kallian’s pale, piercing eyes staring back at her.

Her breath catches in her throat. Shulk and Fiora, holding her tight, glance nervously between themselves, unsure of why Melia is hesitating.

Tears well up in her eyes. Not tears of sorrow, or grief; tears of joy.

“Shulk,” she whispers. “Fiora. Meet our daughter.”

“Our daughter.” With those two words, Melia finds that some of the pain she’d assumed she’d always carry has lessened. Finally, she has stopped losing people she loves, and started gaining them instead.

Fiora beams at her, and at the child she holds, too. “You said you wanted to name her, right?” she asks.

Melia nods. Shulk is…not the best with names; Fiora had been more helpful, not least as a counterweight to the endless parade of advisors who wanted Melia to choose a “strong, traditional” name, ideally one of the countless previous High Entia monarchs. A few had even suggested that she could honor her fallen brother or father. But Melia will not do that to a child—will not hang a ghost around their neck like a chain the moment they are born. Now, staring into those eyes that once belonged to Kallian, she knows she made the right choice.

Moreover, she notes something else—the child has no wings on her head. This isn’t surprising, exactly—she’s only a quarter High Entia, thanks to Melia’s own heritage, and similar cases in the records show that wings become increasingly less common with each passing generation. Melia doesn’t care. She’d love this child if she came out with two heads.

But that is beside the point. She needs a name. And Melia knows just the one.

She holds her daughter closer to her breast. “Hello, Ethel,” she says softly.

The newly named Ethel does not respond, of course. She’s too busy crying for her first meal. But Melia sees the smile on Shulk’s face, mirrored on Fiora’s, and knows that all will be well.

Two years pass.

Ethel grows quickly, surrounded by love. She’s a quiet child, straddling the line between sullen and thoughtful, but those piercing blue eyes gleam with intelligence. Even being doted on by her Uncles or Shulk, even when she calls Fiora “Mama” just as readily as she does Melia, she remains contemplative, straightforward, gentle. 

Melia didn’t know it was possible to love a child this much. Watching Shulk carry his daughter in his arms, watching her take her first toddling steps, watching her start to grow, each bit of it fills her heart to bursting.

(Something else changes, too. When the nightmares and the memories come for her at night, when she relives Prison Island over and over again, she watches her father fall, and whispers, “I understand now. I understand why you did it.” She would do the same for Ethel, without hesitation, without regret. The memories still come, after that…but they’re not really nightmares anymore. They’re more like…reminders. And she bears them with grace she once thought impossible.)

Still, even as Fiora treats Ethel as her own flesh and blood, Melia can tell how badly her wife wants a child of her own. It never manifests in jealousy or in anger; that is not who Fiora is, and she never will be. It manifests in quiet moments, in the little vulnerabilities she shows at night, holding Melia’s hand or laying a palm across her belly.

Having been married three years now. Melia knows Fiora’s deepest fears; she knows that Fiora fears being broken most of all. She can only imagine the thoughts that course through her as the months go by, and still Fiora does not have a child of her own.

She can’t imagine the strength it takes for Fiora to simply smile, kiss Melia, and raise Ethel with just as much love as before.

At last, though, three years after their wedding, it is Fiora’s turn to hunch over the toilet in the morning, trying to keep a brilliant grin off her face as she vomits.

Melia, playing Fiora’s former role of hair-holder and back-patter, doesn’t even bother hiding her own smile as Fiora finishes and stands to wash.

“Should I even ask it?” she notes, feeling a flutter in her own stomach that she ascribes to joy for Fiora.

Fiora laughs, tears visible in her eyes. “No need,” she murmurs. “I can tell. Took a little while, but I think…”

Melia wraps her arms around her wife from behind, laying her palms over Fiora’s belly. She imagines it round and swollen, as her own was, and welcomes the shudder of desire that passes through her.

“Congratulations,” she murmurs, meaning every syllable. Her stomach is roiling with excitement.

Fiora beams. “Tha—” she begins, only to cut herself off as Melia’s eyes bug out. Releasing Fiora, she drops down to the toilet herself.

It turns out that what she thought was excitement was not. Instead, she begins to vomit herself, as Fiora watches with wide eyes.

A few minutes later, Melia leans back away from the toilet, looking dazed, unsure whether to be excited, horrified, or darkly amused.

She recognizes this feeling, now. It’s morning sickness.

For both of them.

At once.

Unlike normal, Fiora’s voice sounds very, very small.

“Oh,” she squeaks.

“Oh,” indeed. Melia can already think of half a dozen ways that this could go horribly…but she has, after three years of marriage, been quite thoroughly corrupted by Fiora’s impish sense of humor, and so the very first thought she has is quite straightforward.

“Oh, fuck,” she says aloud, giggling. “Shulk is going to flip.”

Once Fiora’s gotten over teasing Melia for her unthinking language—Melia, still the prim and proper Alcamoth girl at her core, almost never curses—she and Melia do, in fact, start figuring out how to break the news to their husband.

Inevitably, because opportunities like this only come once in a lifetime-and because Fiora’s sense of humor is infectious- they choose to spring it on him in the most inconvenient moment possible.

That time comes at a barbecue being hosted by Reyn and Sharla at their house one summer afternoon. Ashera and Ethel, already inseparable—for all that their personalities are utterly opposed—tear around the yard at top speed, tumbling with Riki, whose genuine love for children shines through whenever he comes around. Given that he’s basically a walking cuddle ball who’s more than tough enough to take anything small children can throw at him, he’s pretty much the perfect playmate a child could ever have.

Sharla, for her part, watches from the patio, one hand on the slight swell of her belly and a good-natured frown on her face.

“I can’t believe you got me pregnant again,” she chirps at her husband, who is roasting Armu steaks on the grill. “After what that little hellion did to me, too!”

She gestures over her shoulder at Ashera. Reyn, for his part, throws a hand up in protest.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were the one who said you wanted to have another one!” he shoots back. 

Sharla hisses, “Yes, but you should’ve stopped me, damnit!”

Reyn looks incredulous. “Yeah, because I’m supposed to be thinking with the upper head when you pin me to the bloody bed and go “We’re doing it raw tonight!” he says, making everyone spit out their drinks.

As laughter—most of it horrified—ripples through them all, Sharla looking mortified, Fiora manages to snort, “Well, Sharla, at least you won’t be alone in the maternity ward.”

Melia’s head whips around to stare at her wife, her eyes wide at the sight of Fiora’s smirk. Instantly, everyone falls utterly silent.

Shulk, sitting at the table across from his wives, has a shellshocked look on his face. He’s so speechless, Reyn collects himself first.

“Wait,” he puts together, “One of you is pregnant?”

He points at Melia and Fiora, who share a glance. Once again, Fiora grins. 

“Yup,” she confirms. “Just found out the other day. But here’s the million-dollar question, dear husband: which one?”

She snaps her fingers, making Shulk’s eyes focus. “Uh, what?” he asks weakly, seemingly gripping the table for support. Funny, even with his daughter running around the yard, learning of another child on the way sends him right back into panic mode.

Fiora’s grin only sharpens. “You heard me, Shulk,” she says, gesturing to herself and Melia. “I want you to guess. Which one of your lovely wives do you think you managed to knock up this time?”

Melia barely holds back a giggle as Shulk’s head slowly tracks back and forth between them like a robot. His jaw is hanging open.

At last, he weakly answers, “Uh…Fiora, I guess you?”

Fiora raises an eyebrow. “Oh?” she asks in a dangerous voice. “And what makes you think that?”

Shulk goes very, very quiet. His gaze flits from Fiora to Melia, then back again. His face has become extremely pale.

After nearly a full minute of silence, he realizes, “There’s…no good answer I can give to that, is there?”

Reyn slaps him on the back. “Even I figured that one out, mate,” he mutters, making everyone laugh once again.

After that, Fiora finally relents. Mostly. “Well, as it happens, you’re right,” she says cheerily, laying one hand across her stomach…and the other across Melia’s. “Or at least, half right.”

Shulk’s jaw drops. “Y-you…you mean…” he stammers, as Reyn stares in awe and Sharla spits out her water, coughing furiously.

Melia sighs, having allowed Fiora to have her fun for long enough. “Yes,” she confirms. “I’m pregnant, too. Congratulations, Shulk.”

Shulk visibly does not seem very congratulated. Instead, he promptly keels back in his chair, visibly terrified at the prospect of welcoming what will be, essentially, twins. Sharla, for her part, just groans.

“God, I feel awful for the clinic staff,” she declares. “All three of us getting knocked up at once? What’s next, will Vanea somehow magically get pregnant too?

Vanea chuckles from the far edge of the patio where she and Dunban—the two of them married, now, having finally come clean about the long dalliance that every single one of them had known about for years roughly six months ago—had been relaxing. “Funny you should mention that,” the Machina woman remarks. “I really should finish developing and installing that artificial womb I’ve been working on. I’m already almost done.”

Dunban’s head snaps to look at his wife, followed closely by everyone else. Vanea, seemingly totally uncaring about the fact that she’s just scarred all of them with the knowledge of exactly what she and Dunban get up to, just sips her drink with a smile on her face, as children’s laughter echoes in the background.

Melia makes a mental note to discuss increasing the clinic’s funding significantly with her advisors. She rather suspects that they’re going to need it soon.

Melia’s second pregnancy is rather different from her first.

For starters, her second child is far less pleasant in temperament than Ethel was. Melia’s morning sickness is far more severe this time, as are all the other attendants of pregnancy—the mood swings and the cravings, the joint pain and the swelling, and, as the months go on and her baby begins to move, the seemingly constant battering of her organs by impossibly precise kicks and punches. She spends far more of this pregnancy tired, irritable, and generally struggling to function normally.

Fiora, by contrast, seems to flourish. Her pregnancy isn’t as easy as Melia’s first pregnancy had been, but she bears what discomforts it does bring with the brilliant smile of a woman who has always desperately wanted what she finally has. Even as Melia gripes and complains her way through pregnancy, Fiora glows as her belly swells and her child grows. She seems practically radiant—and she is happy to use her reprieve from Melia’s torments to help ease Melia’s own discomfort whenever she can, along with Shulk, who once again proves himself to be a saint when it comes to supporting his pregnant wives.

(Of course, there is the one hitch that the main pregnancy side effect Fiora seems to experience is that her libido skyrockets. She practically can’t go more than a few hours without fucking one or both of her spouses. Melia would complain more about that, but frankly, she thinks complaining about more mindblowing sex isn’t the best use of her time, even if she ends up being used as her wife’s chew toy more than once.)

Really, it’s as if a baby fever has struck the colony, between the two of them, Sharla, and Vanea, who ends up being true to her word and gets pregnant a scant few months after them. Between Sharla’s daughter Panacea and, eventually, Vanea and Dunban’s son Lanz, it’s soon clear that their children will not lack for playmates.

Melia soon finds herself quite glad that she did in fact expand funding for the colony’s medical infrastructure, when she and Fiora go into labor within hours of each other, and before long are lying in hospital beds next to each other, both cradling swaddled bundles and smiling exhausted but joyful smiles.

Shulk, kneeling between their beds, clutches their hands lovingly, tears in his eyes. Melia watches happily as he cradles Fiora’s son—newly christened Noah—who seems to have gotten his dark hair from Dunban, and Shulk’s deep, expressive blue eyes. He hands the boy back to Fiora, and then he, Fiora and Melia look down at Melia’s child.

She’s a perfect mix of their features; her hair is a dirty blonde, clearly from Shulk, while a pair of white wings make her High Entia heritage clear. She’s too busy screaming at the top of her lungs to make out much else, but Melia loves her instantly, just as she had with Ethel. This girl, she knows, will grow up in a home so full of love it still threatens to make Melia’s heart burst some days. She’ll have siblings to play with and look up to, mothers to teach and love her, a father who will always have time for his children. She will have the world, and Melia will give it to her.

She looks up at Shulk. “I…think this is good enough for me,” she says slowly. “Two children, I mean.”

Her husband smiles. “Of course, Melia,” he says lovingly. “I suppose that means she needs a good name, right?”

Melia nods. Looking back down at her daughter—now quieted down somewhat by her first meal—she beams softly.

“So polite. You’re just the perfect little lady, aren’t you, Eunie?” she asks.

If babies were capable of smirking, Melia thinks her daughter might just be doing so as she suckles greedily. But surely, that won’t be an echo of what’s to come, right?

Right?

As it turns out, Melia’s second daughter and her brother are the most chaotic children she’s ever seen.

From the moment Eunie and Noah are able to walk, they seem determined to tear around the Colony at top speed without the slightest concern. Endless headaches abound for Melia and her spouses where they’re concerned; they’re always in some kind of trouble.

Noah is the quieter of the two of them; he’s inherited a bit of Shulk’s penchant for brooding, and soon picks up some of Melia’s own introspection as well. He’s more careful, more considerate, even at his young age; Melia can already tell that he will grow into a thoughtful, kind man.

Eunie, on the other hand, is completely wild. If Melia had tried with any seriousness to force her into a “ladylike” role the way Melia herself had been forced as a child, she would have rapidly torn her hair out in frustration. Her younger daughter is the polar opposite of Ethel in every way; impulsive and stubborn, and—if her eager recitation of swear words learned from Reyn and Sharla is anything to go by—crude, too. And yet beneath it all, Melia can tell she has a good heart and a strong will. She worries for Eunie, of course—but not as much as might be expected. She knows well that Eunie won’t need to be like her to be a good princess, and a good person. 

(Also, she regularly imagines her stuffy advisors’ horror if Eunie were to become queen. It’s almost a shame Ethel comes before her in the succession—Queen Eunie would be a magnificent sight to behold.) 

It becomes a running joke among the Seven that Noah and Eunie must have been switched in the womb; Noah has Melia’s quiet thoughtfulness, while Eunie’s stubbornness can only come from Fiora. Of course, the two children are calling them both “Mama” from the time they say their first words; they love all their children as their own. That doesn’t stop Fiora from proclaiming that Eunie is “my daughter through and through” the first time she says “fuck,” of course, but then, nothing was ever going to stop that.

Shulk, Melia, and Fiora’s last child is conceived when Eunie and Noah are two.

Unlike with their first pregnancies, Shulk is in the know for this one from the day they actually begin trying; given how Fiora proposes it, it would be fairly impossible for him to not know.

It happens like this: Fiora is out of the house, having gone on a trip to the market while Melia, taking a day off from ruling, spends time with Shulk and the children at home. It’s another blissful day in their happy ever after—and nevermind the fact that there is no such thing, that Melia and Shulk and Fiora still contend with old ghosts and ongoing problems. They can face those, and none of them ever expected a perfect life.

Their children make it pretty close to one, though. Ethel, nearly five years old, has begun asking about swords, watching her father move through old drills in the back yard to stay in shape with curious light in her eyes. Eunie and Noah, still too young to even understand the lifelong mastery on display when Shulk lets them watch him practice, just like watching the pretty lights on the Monado flash.

Melia worries, sometimes, if she and her spouses should be feeding the children’s interest in weapons and war so young. Surely, her beloved children will not have to face the things they faced. Surely, Melia will not fail them so badly as to force them to grow up at war the way she and Shulk and Fiora had to. Surely, they will have peace. But she is practical, and knows that the world she dreams of is not the world they live in. Not yet. So if they wish to learn, Melia will support them.

(And sometimes, when Alvis shows up for one of their unannounced visits, Melia sees the look in the supercomputer’s eye, and feels a glimmer of disquiet take root in her stomach. Perhaps the war she fears is closer than she thinks.)

None of that is happening now, however. Instead, Shulk and Melia are making dinner while their children play around them. In the golden evening light, the sight of Shulk laughing as his children clamber over him feels like something out of one of Melia’s old hopeless dreams, the vivid delusions she once wrapped herself in to cope with the fact that she knew she’d never have Shulk like this.

But the dreams came true. More true than she’d ever imagined. Melia can’t help herself; she presses her way into Shulk’s arms too, peppering his lips and cheeks with affectionate kisses that make Ethel say “Ewwww!” at the sight of her parents kissing, Shulk’s arm winding its way around Melia’s hip.

That, of course, is the moment Fiora comes in, arms laden with bags, which she promptly sets down as her husband and wife turn to greet her.  

Fiora, though, takes one look at Shulk, standing there with one arm around Melia and the other holding all three of his children, Eunie riding atop his shoulders while Ethel and Noah swing on his arm, and gets an oddly intense look on her face. Then, she abruptly turns and leaves. Melia hears her footsteps pounding up the stairs.

She turns to her husband, concerned. “Do you think she’s upset?” she asks.

Shulk looks worried too. “I hope not,” he says, even as the children continue to squeal and play.

A ghost of Melia’s old insecurity threatens to bubble up for a moment, but she tamps it down. She is not the timid girl who watched Fiora come back from the dead on the Fallen Arm. Nor is she the desperate, lovesick girl who took that risk in Outlook Park after six years of self-flagellating denial. She is Melia Antiqua, she is a wife and a mother and a Queen, and she ruthlessly crushes all the old demons that once haunted her nightmares.

She trusts Fiora, her wife, the woman who has been nothing but good and kind to her from the day they met. The woman who shared her own love so freely, and gave Melia a place she had no right to.

Her trust is more than vindicated when Fiora comes storming back down the stairs a few minutes later; she seems less angry, and more…focused.

“Shulk,” she snaps. Shulk—and Melia, too—look directly at her.

Fiora holds up a bottle, one that Melia recognizes instantly. It’s the birth control that the Machina woman who runs the clinic has supplied to them both, after they’d asked her about preventing or delaying pregnancies until they—or, well, Fiora, since Melia is quite content with two children—were ready to have another. Fiora shakes the bottle, making sure that Shulk realizes what it is.

Then, still looking him dead in the eye, she hurls it into the trash.

Shulk goes completely, utterly still. Eunie, Ethel, and Noah take that as their cue to clamber down from their father and set off in search of another adventure, Ethel patiently leading her toddling little siblings off. That leaves Shulk and his two wives staring at each other, one of them stunned, one of them grinning, and one of them very, very excited.

Fiora crosses the space between her and her spouses in the blink of an eye. With terrifying ease, she puts a hand on Shulk’s chest and shoves him back against the wall. Leaning in close, she says matter-of-factly, “I want another one.”

Shulk is one of the smartest men Melia’s ever met. He doesn’t need much of a hint about what Fiora’s referring to. “Are you sure?” he asks slowly.

Fiora grips him by the collar. “I,” she growls in a deep, passionate voice. “Want. Another. One. I came in here to see you and Melia kissing, all of our beautiful children around you, and it made me so. fucking. horny.  I want another child, Shulk.”

Shulk’s eyes flick towards Melia. She gives a quiet nod, for all that she feels like she doesn’t have much to add.

Shulk looks back at Fiora. “I wouldn’t…be against it,” he says slowly.

Fiora beams. “Great!” she declares, hauling him back away from the wall. “Finish making dinner, and then get your ass into the bedroom. We’re starting early.”

Shulk gulps. Hard.

Melia clears her throat. “I’ll…arrange for the children to stay with Reyn and Sharla tonight?” she asks dryly. She glances again at the birth control now lying in the trash, then at the way Fiora has pinned Shulk to the wall, and amends her statement. “Perhaps for a few days, actually.”

Shulk groans his agreement, while Fiora chuckles. “You do that,” she agrees. “And then you come right back here, Your Highness. You and your magic are going to be involved in this, too.”

Melia raises an eyebrow, even as a shudder of lust passes through her. Even after close to a decade of marriage and multiple children, Fiora’s gaze—and Shulk’s too, when he manages to wrest control from Fiora—still manages to set her blood afire. Add in the fact that Fiora has helped Melia explore all the more… erotic… applications of ether manipulation and channeling in ways she’d never have been able to do in her old life, and their bedroom is still just as passionate as ever.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for some teasing, though. “I don’t see why that would be necessary,” Melia says playfully. “After all, it’s not like I can get you pregnant, can I?”

Fiora’s smirk sharpens. “Maybe not,” she says in a voice that promises delicious things in Melia’s future. “But we can bloody well try.”

And try they do. And inevitably, they succeed. 

After a few months, Fiora is well and truly pregnant. As with Noah, she practically glows, radiant and thriving.

She has just as easy a pregnancy as she did before, to boot. Only the bare minimum of morning sickness and aches, manageable mood swings, and so forth. It helps, too, that Shulk and Melia are both old hands at navigating the ups and downs of a pregnancy by now, and are as supportive as Fiora was during Melia’s own pregnancy.

(Of course, the one part of it that doesn’t get old is the sex. Melia had thought that Fiora’s libido had spiked during her first pregnancy. As it turns out, she has it even worse the second time around. There really is nothing quite like getting folded in half by your pregnant, horny wife to make you question everything.)

The children, meanwhile, take the news of their impending younger sibling with varying degrees of excitement, confusion, and interest. None of them are old enough to require the full explanation, thankfully; once Ethel understands that her little brother or sister is growing inside her mommy, though, she’s eager to “talk to them” every chance Fiora gives her. It’s one of the most adorable things Melia could have imagined, watching her eldest child babble away in Fiora’s lap, telling her still-growing sibling all about her day.

Eunie and Noah, meanwhile, are still a little too young to really understand any of it; they’re only just old enough to be walking and talking, and for all that they’re already little bundles of hyperactive energy, Melia has enough practice managing temper tantrums and the like by now to handle the worst of their care so Fiora can rest.

It’s an odd equilibrium they’ve found themselves in; three children and a fourth on the way, with Fiora a housewife and Shulk a tinkerer and occasional guest speaker at the school the Colony has established, both of them married to Her Royal Highness the Queen, a monarch who spends more of her time changing diapers than she does on affairs of state. Melia is tired, and stressed, and constantly juggling an endless treadmill of work and life, and she loves every second of it. Every night she goes to sleep tangled up with her lovers, and knows that of all the futures she could have received, this one is the one she would have chosen for herself.

When Fiora goes into labor, Melia scarcely has time to sprint out of a meeting with her advisors and down to the clinic by the time she hears about it.

She throws open the door to find Fiora, just as tired and beaming just as brightly as she had with Noah, cradling a baby boy with a few tufts of her and Shulk’s straw-yellow hair and eyes the color of the ocean. Shulk, for his part, looks just as awestruck as he had when Melia gave birth to Ethel. Some emotions truly do never grow old or repetitive.

Fiora glances up as Melia enters the room. “About time you got here,” she snarks. “This one was awfully impatient to get out, weren’t you?”

The baby in her arms makes a contented noise as he suckles at Fiora’s breast. He doesn’t respond, naturally, but Melia still blushes at Fiora’s fond words.

“One of these days, I’ll have those advisors executed,” she grumbles as she comes to Fiora’s bedside. 

Fiora lets out a tired laugh. “But then what would you complain about?” she scoffs. “Besides, it’s not like you missed much. We’ve done this whole routine before.”

Melia smiles. “Yes,” she admits, “but it’s not every day you can be there for the birth of your son, now is it?”

Shulk laughs, and internally, Melia can’t help but marvel at how natural the words feel flowing off her tongue. Even despite all the vows, despite how deeply she loves Fiora, she’d always sort of assumed that there’d be some divide when it came to their children, that she would naturally gravitate towards the children she birthed over Fiora’s, but it never happened. Noah is as much her son as Eunie is her daughter. And so too for this one, she can already tell as Fiora gently passes him into Melia’s arms.

Melia looks down at the child, beaming happily as Shulk slips an arm around her shoulders. 

(For a moment, she envisions a world where Soren Antiqua was waiting in the clinic’s lobby, anxious to meet his newest grandchild, accompanied by a pacing Kallian. She luxuriates in the dream for a moment, allows herself to wish for a better world. And then she blinks away the tears her daydream summons, puts the grief back in its place in her heart. She still mourns the dead. She misses them every day. But she will not let what she has lost taint what she has gained.)

Melia looks back down at their son, who looks so much like both Shulk and Fiora, and asks, “What’s his name?”

Fiora smiles. “I was thinking Nikol,” she says. “What do you think?”

Melia looks back down at the child. “I love it,” she declares. “Nikol it is.”

And so, with Fiora’s declaration that now, she’s done having children, Melia’s family is complete.

It’s an odd family, to be certain, and one tinged with plenty of loss and pain. But it’s hers, and she has built it with her own hands, and loves it dearly.

Four children. Two daughters, two sons. A husband and a wife. 

And one Queen at the center of it all.

Chapter Text

One year later, when Eunie and Noah are three, Melia receives a message, and a visit.

It comes from Alvis, who she has always had a…complicated relationship with. On the one hand, he was instrumental to their victory over Zanza, and has continued to offer wisdom on occasion as they build their new world. On the other hand, part of Melia will never forget that her father and Kallian had trusted Alvis, and that they are dead, in part, because he betrayed them.

It doesn’t help that Alvis has begun to act…erratically in recent years. Or at least, more erratically. He disappears for long periods of time, returning randomly and without warning. 

On one such reappearance, Melia finds him waiting for her in her office, his expression distracted, fingers drumming on the arm of his chair. Every so often, his face twitches, as if he is suppressing some unwanted thought—as if he is barely holding himself together.

“Queen Melia,” Alvis says warmly. “I hope you are well.”

Once she’s fought back the urge to order Alvis out of her office, Melia sighs and summons her patience. For all that Alvis is erratic, he wouldn’t bother her unless it was something important.

“What do you want, Alvis?” she asks tersely.

Alvis sighs. “There is…something you should know,” he replies. “And something you should have.”

Melia remains silent. Alvis takes that as a chance to continue speaking—and soon, Melia’s silence is not because she is humoring him, but because his words scare her to her core.

In a steady, heavy voice, only occasionally punctuated by odd pauses or hisses of pain, Alvis explains everything to her. The existence of another universe, parallel to their own. The existence of the Trinity Processor, and Alvis’s counterparts in this other universe. The imminent collision of the universes, which will destroy them all in an annihilation event.

When Alvis finishes, Melia clenches her fist. She’s almost— almost —not even surprised. Of course she cannot have peace. Of course this world she is building for her children is under threat all over again.

“Tell me there’s a way to stop this, Alvis,” she hisses, the faces of her children flashing through her mind.

Alvis tilts his head, wearing that same smug, superior, inscrutable look he had worn as her father’s Seer. Only this time, Melia can tell it’s a mask. Whatever is happening to him, Alvis is slipping. That almost scares her more than the impending annihilation of her universe.

“The merger? You cannot stop it,” he intones. “The Annihilation? Potentially.”

Melia rises to her feet. With every last drop of royalty in her blood, every hard-earned speck of command she can wield, she looks a godlike being in the eye and says, “Tell me how.”

Alvis is silent for a long, painful moment, as if struggling against something at the very core of his soul. Then, he rises, too. His hands go to his neck, and lift something clear—the odd cross-shaped necklace he has always worn, glowing red in the afternoon light.

“You will need this,” he says somberly. “Shulk will know what to do with it. It will let you communicate with the other world’s Queen, as well—you will need to work with her, coordinate your responses. I don’t know more than that, yet. I doubt I ever will.”

He turns, as if to make for the door. Something uneasy rises up into Melia’s throat.

“You’re making it sound like you won’t be around to help, Alvis,” she says.

Alvis pauses, half-turning back to her. There’s an odd little smile on his face, rueful and disdainful and terrified all at once.

“I…do not know if I will be,” he admits. “Or at least, the next time we meet…I may not be so helpful to you. Even now, I am…struggling. This…this is all I can do. Farewell, Queen Melia. Your father would be proud of all you have done.”

And with that, Alvis vanishes again, leaving his words ringing in Melia’s ears and his red necklace like a burning rock in her fist.

She never sees him again. 

For all that she prefers a quiet, peaceful life, Melia is still Queen of the High Entia. When faced with an existential threat, she will move heaven and earth to stop it.

And so she does. She informs Shulk, Fiora, and the rest of the Seven immediately, and before long, the Colony’s best and brightest engineers—among them Vanea, the last person alive who has any experience with constructing such vast machines that work with souls, thanks to her work with Egil reconstructing the Mechonis—have begun to study Alvis’s final gift and prepare plans, and Melia herself has set up the Ether-Net system which will, somehow, allow her to speak with the other world’s Queen.

The first meeting with that Queen is…tense. Melia had expected nothing less; first contact is difficult in any situation, let alone one where the very existence of both worlds is doomed unless they manage to figure out a solution. 

Even so, she doesn’t know what to make of Queen Nia at first. The woman is stiff and formal, showing little of her true thoughts, and Melia is the same; they feel each other out, search for signs of duplicity, and when they find none, begin to get a sense of what lies ahead.

The second meeting is little better. Again, Melia finds her opposite number…not hostile, but certainly slow to open up, and slower to trust. Their meetings are full of facts and figures and expert opinions and little else. Which isn’t bad, exactly, but Melia can already tell that if they are to continue these meetings for the decade-plus they have to prepare for the Annihilation, something will have to give eventually.

That isn’t her intention when she prepares for the third meeting, though. No, what she does has a much more mundane cause; that day, Shulk has been called out to the workshop for an emergency, and Fiora is sick in bed, and it has fallen to Melia to get all four of the children fed and dressed and ready; Ethel has gone to school, at least, but Noah and Eunie and Nikol all require attention and care and Melia feels like she’s running ragged. Eunie and Nikol are finally down for their nap, thank the Bionis, but Noah just will not go to sleep. No matter how Melia bounces and cajoles, the floppy three-year-old just whines and grumbles in her arms, not quite throwing a temper tantrum…yet.

Melia is so frazzled, she barely even realizes that she’s still bouncing Noah on her hip as she half-runs into her office and thumbs on the Ether-Net link that allows for communication between their world and Nia’s. By the time she realizes that she’s brought a child to a vitally important planning session for staving off the destruction of two entire universes, the call has gone through and the screen is lighting up.

Imagine Melia’s surprise, then, when the picture resolves to show Queen Nia every bit as put-upon as Melia herself, her hair a mess, her eyes bloodshot, bouncing a three-year-old toddler with adorable little cat ears on her own hip.

The two queens stare awkwardly at each other, words dying on their lips. Then, Nia coughs.

“I, er, I really am sorry about this,” she says in an oddly strangled voice, as if she’s having to force herself to speak somehow. “My wives are out of town and my usual nanny couldn’t come today—”

It’s Melia’s turn to cough, then. “Oh, no, it’s no trouble at all,” she assures the other woman as she glances down at Noah. “I…had the exact same issue.”

Nia visibly relaxes. “I…I see,” she says. “Well, um…this is Mio, my daughter.”

Melia can’t help but smile. “And this is my son Noah,” she replies. “Say hi!”

On a whim, she waves Noah’s arm for him, and the sheer absurdity of the moment nearly makes her miss the way that Noah and Mio’s eyes have locked onto each other. Young children and toddlers can have truly piercing gazes when they see someone new, and this is no exception; the children’s eyes fix on each other, and though they are too young to say anything, Melia gets the impression that they see each other just fine.

(Many years later, at a wedding between a graceful girl with cat ears and a somber boy with dark hair, Melia and Nia will remember this moment, and laugh at the portent of what was to come—and they will laugh because otherwise they would feel chills down their spines. It feels a little too much like fate, this first meeting that neither Noah nor Mio will ever remember. It feels a little too much like it was all predestined to leave either of them comfortable.)

The children remain entirely silent and perfectly behaved throughout the entire meeting; not a peep, not a cry, nothing. The conversation between Nia and Melia feels easier, more natural; something about the ability to see each other not as stoic, regal queens, but as women, as mothers who want the best for their children, makes the ideas and the plans come faster and easier.

And at the end of the most productive conversation she and Nia have had to date, Melia doesn’t turn off the screen. Instead, she leans back in her seat, Noah now sleeping in her arms, and asks, “Will you tell me about these wives of yours?”

Nia blinks in surprise—but doesn’t turn off the video either. And when she speaks, Melia finally realizes why her fellow Queen’s voice has always sounded so stiff and stilted—it’s because, rather than the formal diction of a woman raised in a royal court, Nia’s actual voice is a thick, lilting brogue so dense it’s almost hard to parse.

“I, er, I suppose,” she says, her control of her accent slipping so completely she can’t even try to recover it. “Whaddya wanna know?”

Melia can’t help the chuckle that slips from her lips. Nia goes slightly pink, closing her mouth sharply and looking horrified.

Melia, though, just smiles. “I had wondered why you sounded so stiff,” she says warmly. “You have no need to put on airs for me, Queen Nia.”

Nia looks startled. “I, er, I had assumed yeh’d wannae talk teh someone as refined as yerself…” she offered by way of explanation.

Melia snorts. “I spent far too much of my life talking to people as refined as myself,” she says scathingly. “I much prefer people to be themselves around me, thank you very much.”

Nia visibly relaxes. “I…I guess that makes sense,” she finally allows. “So…shall we talk, then?”

Melia nods happily. “I would like that,” she admits. “Tell me more about your family.”

Nia smiles, then, her real smile, an impish, half-cocked thing that oddly reminds Melia of Fiora. 

“Only if yeh tell me about yers,” she shoots back.

Melia beams. “Happily,” she agrees.

And so she does. She speaks of Shulk and Fiora, of their children, of Dunban and Reyn and Sharla and all the others she loves so dearly. In return, Nia tells her of her own family; her daughters, her wives, her son. That turns into stories, into pasts, into lives. Melia finally feels like she understands Nia, like she can work with this woman to save both their worlds.

And not long after, their fourth meeting proves to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Years pass. Their children grow, though Nia and Melia never again bring them to their meetings. 

Somehow, Melia balances it all, the demands of Queenship, the construction of the great repository of souls they name Origin, the hectic life of a mother. Even as the Annihilation creeps closer, she always spares time for her family—for what would be the point of saving the world if it left her so alone again?

Ethel, Eunie, and Noah begin training with Dunban, along with Ashera, Lanz, and Panacea. They all take to it like fish take to water; Ethel in particular has all her father’s deadly skill with a blade, though she eventually settles on a fighting style much closer to Fiora’s. Noah isn’t far behind her; he prefers his father’s sword, which makes Dunban laugh and Shulk get an oddly wistful look on his face. Eunie, to Melia’s surprise, wields a staff much like her; even as young as she is, Eunie is stubborn and defiant, a far cry from how Melia herself was at that age.

Nikol, for his part, has inherited far more of his father’s gentle side, along with his engineering genius; he spends far more time in the lab than he does on the sparring field. Melia doesn’t mind; their youngest child is a gentle soul, she can tell already, for all that she knows he has steel in his spine.

Watching them play and train and laugh with their cousins and friends never fails to warm Melia’s heart. Ethel and Ashera are a study in opposites; an uncontrolled storm of laughter and violence against a cool, collected, steely-eyed silver princess. For all that they endlessly fight, their respect for each other is obvious; they are rivals in the truest sense, and they make each other better for it.

Lanz, meanwhile, quickly becomes the third member of a trio with Eunie and Noah, a perfect counterpart to Noah’s often-sullen but ultimately undeniable strength and Eunie’s endless sniping. His laughter often fills the air as the three of them sprint through the colony, raising chaos wherever they go. Panacea, too, is of an age with them, and becomes a close friend, though she is quiet and often keeps her own counsel; Melia suspects that this comes from living in a house with Ashera.

Regardless, she loves them all, her children. Stern, dutiful Ethel, the eldest, straight-backed and regal; Noah, her brooding, dark-eyed son with a heart of gold and a leader’s soul and a romantic heart beneath it all; Eunie, the wild hellion of a girl with thorns to protect the sweetness at her core; and Nikol, the shy tinkerer, the baby of the family with more strength than he knows.

She’s doing this for them. Building Origin, taking such terrible risks, trying to prevent the end of the world. She and Nia know the dangers; Origin is so complex that its administrative AI simply must be sentient, and entrusting the souls of all her people—the souls of her children— to an AI powered by the same core which drove the now-missing Alvis is never something Melia will be comfortable with. But there is simply no better option. She knows it, Nia knows it, Shulk and Fiora know it.

And so, it all comes to a head when Eunie and Noah are ten years old. The Annihilation approaches. Origin must be activated.

Of all days, the day of truth falls on the anniversary of Zanza’s defeat. In the years since, the colony has begun to celebrate it as Founding Day; this year is no exception, as most of the Colony doesn’t know about Origin’s terrible purpose.

And so, as fireworks begin to explode and Melia watches from the balcony of their home as her children tear through the crowd below, she takes her spouses’ hands, and closes her eyes.

And the clock strikes midnight.

In all the time that comes after, Melia will never truly be able to explain what Origin’s activation felt like. A single moment, stretched on and on into infinity. A single heartbeat, frozen in time. Raindrops hanging in midair. Two worlds, held spellbound in the grip of time without end.

And the dreams. Such terrible, beautiful dreams. Thousands of years’ worth. They pass in the blink of an eye. They do not pass at all. They pass one by one, and Melia feels every single one.

A man in a red suit with horns made of smoke is laughing at her. She knows something has gone wrong. She is trapped, helpless. There is nothing she can do but watch and hope—watch her children grow and die and grow again, watch Eunie and Ethel and Nikol and Noah struggle in a war without end, watch Alvis’s final gift play out (and understand that he had planned his own defeat all along, one last devious scheme to finally save the world he helped to create.) She has to watch Shulk hold the very seams of the world together, while Fiora’s consciousness, never touched so deeply by the Trinity as theirs, is folded into Origin itself, into the sword Noah learns to wield.

She watches her children with tears in her eyes as they make one last push for the light. She watches them fall in love, one by one. 

She sees it all. Sees N and M. Sees the City burn, over and over again. Sees Alpha and A, swords crossed as Ontos tears itself apart.

She is freed from her chains. She fights. The man in the red suit—the avatar of all their fears—dies screaming.

She watches Noah kiss a girl with white hair and cat ears on her head as the world ends around them.

And then the moment ends. She wakes up.

Melia’s eyes open with a gasp. She stumbles backwards as the fireworks go off, pulling the others with her as they fall back onto the bed.

For a moment, her mind struggles to bridge the gap between where she was, in her mind, a split second before—watching Noah and Mio try desperately to run towards each other as Aionios came to an end—and where she is now.

And then it all comes flooding back. Origin. Zed. Moebius. Aionios.

The war she was forced to watch. Three thousand years, gone in the blink of an eye. 

A sob rises in her chest. Instinctively, she rolls over, into Shulk’s arms, and presses her face into the crook of his arm.

That wakes him up, too, and long years together have his arm wrapping around her shoulders to comfort her before his eyes have even opened. Once they do, though, she sees instantly that he, too, has awakened from the nightmare.

“Oh,” he gasps. His eyes widen even further when they land on the flesh of his arm–as if he had been expecting to see metal instead. “Melia—wait, we’re back? It’s over?”

Melia isn’t even trying to control the tears blurring her vision as she nods. “Yes,” she says between sobs. “Yes. We won.”

Shulk’s arms tighten around her, and for a moment, there is nothing else in the world; Melia lets herself bask in it, in the warmth of the man she loves, the one her mind is convinced she has not seen in thousands of years.

“The…the children?” Shulk manages, even as Melia weeps in his arms. Melia takes a deep breath, gathers herself back up. 

“They…I don’t think they’ll remember,” she murmurs, mind racing. “Not immediately, anyway. The worlds will merge safely now, but it will still take time. Years, probably. They won’t remember until then.”

Shulk’s eyebrows knit together as he frowns. “Then why do we?” he asks.

Melia shrugs. “We were…at the center of Origin,” she says slowly. “We had…I guess you could call it admin privileges? We couldn’t stop Zed from hijacking the machine, but we did have certain protections. I guess that includes our memories.”

Shulk, always more comfortable with machines than people, nods in understanding. 

Melia has nearly regained control of herself when a groan sounds from the other side of the bed. Fiora rises, her hair mussed, looking distinctly annoyed.

“Oh, must’ve been nice to have those bloody admin privileges,” she grumbles. “You two had a grand old adventure, while I spent three thousand years as a bloody sword!”

Melia blinks for a second. Oh. Right. Lucky Seven. The sword Noah had wielded. The one he’d…

Oh. Melia understands why her wife is annoyed now.

Shulk, of course, chooses that exact moment to stick his foot in his mouth. “I mean, you were a pretty cool sword,” he points out.

Fiora’s eyes shoot open. She stares at her husband, then flicks her gaze to Melia. Melia has to fight back a deranged giggle. More than a decade of marriage, and Shulk still hasn’t quite mastered the art of diplomatic husbandly silence.

“That is so not the point!” she nearly shouts.

Shulk finally realizes his mistake. He throws his hands up in surrender, and Melia’s laughter finally breaks through her Queenly facade. She hunches over, mirth bubbling out of her in fits and starts that make her spouses turn to her in concern, particularly when they transition back into weak sobs.

Shulk and Fiora throw their arms around her, and just like they always have, they pull Melia back out of her sorrow. She takes a deep breath, lets the pain–the pain of three thousand years without her loved ones, the pain of watching her children suffer, of watching them die, of watching them face down evil without her there to help for so long–sit for a moment, before she passes through it, as she has passed through so much pain in her life.

“We’re back,” she repeats. “We won.”

And now they have a few years before their children’s memories return. A few years before Noah can see the girl he loves again–before all her children can see their loved ones again, come to think of it. Even Nikol, if the few glimpses she got of him and that Glimmer girl in Aionios are anything to go by.

They will have to use them well. But for now…it’s a new day, and Melia still has so much work to do.

Fiora, meanwhile, hums to herself, smiling once again. “Yeah,” she agrees, pulling Melia tight and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’m still going to ground Noah for throwing me in the ocean, though.”

That breaks the dam all over again. Melia curls into her wife’s arms, and laughs herself hoarse.

They have to move eventually; to the children, this was just another night, albeit an exciting one, and life goes on. But Melia welcomes the change; she learned a long time ago to take each day as it comes.

Even if she knows that one day, her children will remember Aionios. She isn’t ready for that, yet–isn’t ready to see them contend with the full weight of the world, isn't ready for them to face the memories, isn’t ready to see them fall in love.

But she will be.

Chapter Text

More years pass, as Melia’s children grow into teenagers, ever closer to the ages she knew them at in Aionios.

In her now-weekly meetings with Queen Nia—meetings that feel more and more like reunions with an old friend, for all that she truly shared a world with her for all of a few days—they have increasingly come to suspect that the worlds will finally, properly merge at around the time Noah and Eunie are eighteen.

That’s enough time, she hopes. Enough time for them to grow into their own people, enough time for them to know themselves—enough time that the memories of Aionios, when they come, will not destroy the children she loves.

Naturally, their teenage years are full of difficulties. It’s part of growing up, after all, and for all that Melia loves her children, she must admit that it hurts to watch them struggle with their first steps into adulthood, knowing that she can’t help them with these battles. 

Fiora, meanwhile, mostly agrees…but only mostly. She argues, and Melia slowly agrees, that in at least one respect, their children’s teenage drama is really, really funny.

That respect, of course, is their love lives. While Melia—and Fiora, who had absolutely grilled her wife for details the second she learned—knows that each of her children has a near-perfect partner awaiting them once the worlds merge, they don’t know that, and so are free to engage in all manner of ill-advised teenage flings. While it makes Melia slightly uncomfortable, she knows she can’t intervene without having to explain everything to her children—and she would rather let them have the freedom to learn about relationships than try to sit them down and explain that they should totally wait for their fated perfect romantic partners to magically appear out of thin air. 

(That being said, she does have a great deal of mastery when it comes to ether magic, and a willingness to inflict all manner of unpleasant fates on any partner she deems unworthy of her children. Fiora finds this tendency of Melia’s “cute” and “endearing.” Shulk finds it mildly concerning.)

Nikol is the most straightforward of her children in this regard; he is shy, quiet, and more comfortable around machines than people, and so escapes the vast majority of his peers’ notice. Not all of it, of course—Shulk himself is both a hero in the colony and—Melia will always readily agree— very attractive, and she has seen more than one girl Nikol’s age glance at him, then at Shulk, and get a considering look on their face, as if pondering the possibilities of long-term investment for a rewarding return.

Eunie and Noah, for their part, are…a mixed bag. Eunie, always a wild, outgoing girl, gets quite a bit of male attention; the fact that she’s technically a Princess only makes it worse. However, as a girl who has grown up with a lot of brothers (technically only two, but really three when counting Lanz, who is closer to his cousins in both age and temperament than most siblings are anyway), Eunie is exceptionally talented at… handling men. Specifically, she isn’t above aiming below the belt. If it wasn’t for Melia overhearing her daughter bemoaning the “stupidity” and “uselessness” of most men in the Colony, and the fact that her one attempt at a relationship with a girl—that girl being Sharla’s daughter Panacea—ends in a mutual return to lifelong friendship after a frankly unnervingly awkward two weeks or so, she would have wondered about her daughter’s sexuality a little bit more. As it is, she supposed that Eunie will simply have to find a slightly more intelligent man waiting for her after she remembers Aionios.

Noah, meanwhile, is a bit more complicated. As he pushes further into the wilds of his teenage years, he grows out his hair into the same ponytail Melia recalls from Aionios, which, along with his usually-insightful words, natural leadership, and tendency to occasionally sink into bouts of sullen brooding, promptly catapults him into a rarefied status that Fiora begins to sarcastically refer to as “Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome.” 

To put it mildly, teenage girls apparently quite often mistake “general grumpiness” for being “dark and mysterious,” and find Noah’s bad attitude endlessly attractive, particularly since Noah has inherited just a touch of the Dunban-esque dashing swordsman aesthetic. They literally have to beat the girls off him with sticks. Not that he ever notices, since Noah has also inherited his father’s general obliviousness to female attention.

Honestly, it’s more accurate to say that Eunie is the one doing most of the stick-beating; she comes to view the endless parade of female admirers trying to get close to her for-all-intents-and-purposes-twin brother as “gross” and “stupid,” and devotes quite a bit of effort to terrorizing any girl she finds staring too long at her brother. Watching this process at work soon becomes Fiora and Melia’s primary source of entertainment.

In fact, the only girl Eunie ever allows close enough to Noah for anything to happen is, ironically, Panacea, who shortly after breaking up with Eunie ends up dating Noah, a longtime childhood friendship blossoming into…exactly two weeks of incredibly awkward teenage romance, yet again. After this, Panacea once again returns to being the closest friend of the trio of Eunie, Noah and Lanz, all of them apparently quite keen to never, ever talk about any of the month-long span in which Panacea had dated first Eunie, and then Noah. Sharla, Melia, and Fiora sure do talk about it, though. Often. They have no plans of ever not laughing about it, actually.

And finally, Ethel, always the most put-together, and arguably the most mature, of her children, applies this to the world of romance, as well. She shows surprisingly little interest in the not-insignificant number of men who attempt to court her, including one or two heirs of High Entia nobles looking to recreate a bond between the Throne and the nobility. What few scions Melia doesn’t successfully deter, Ethel either scares off or, in one particularly insistent case, summarily castrates on the sparring field. Eventually, Melia finds herself considering the possibility that her eldest daughter simply has very little interest in sex or relationships.

Imagine Melia’s surprise, then, when she comes home one day to find Ethel in bed with none other than Ashera. The two girls are so engrossed in one of their legendary arguments, even while totally unclothed beneath the covers of Ethel's bed, that they don’t even notice her.

Ashera sports her usual cocky grin as she asks, “Aw, babe, running away already? Not even gonna cuddle?”

Ethel, her face blank and emotionless save for a wrinkling of her nose in faint disgust, begins to gather up her clothes while totally ignoring Melia. “This meant nothing,” she says flatly. “And don’t call me “babe.”

Ashera, always irreverent, raises an eyebrow playfully. “Sure it didn’t,” she scoffs. “I mean, look at you, Silver Princess! All backed up. This was probably the first time you ever had fun in your life!”

Ethel’s eye twitches. “Hardly,” she replies. “I was just trying to shut you up for once.”

Ashera still shows no sign of being ashamed or affected by Ethel’s cold shoulder. “Yeah, well, didn’t work,” she notes. “Now I’m just saying, I think if we were to try this whole thing again, maybe—”

Ethel cracks some article of clothing like a whip as she shakes it out. “No, I think I’m quite alright,” she says dryly. “I’ve found I’m straight, thank you very much.”

Ashera blinks, finally rendered speechless, if only for half a second. “Damn,” she laughs. “That bad, huh?”

Ethel just shrugs. “I wouldn’t call it bad,” she admits. “Just…not for me.”

Ashera sighs. “Fair enough,” she says, smirking. “But hey, if you ever feel like fucking me after a spar again, just ask. Also, your mom’s here.”

Ashera, always the hellraiser, naturally takes any opportunity to cause chaos that presents herself. Ethel whirls on the spot, her eyes meeting Melia’s and widening in the most honest expression of horror Melia has ever seen on her daughter’s face. 

“M-Mother!” she shrieks, diving for the covers. “What…what are you—”

The old Melia Antiqua would have already sprinted for the hills, too embarrassed to speak. Queen Melia, though, isn’t as much of a prude as she once was, and feels only mild embarrassment at walking in on her daughter.

“Sorry, Ethel,” she says mildly. “I’ll leave you and your…”

She trails off, not quite sure what to call Ashera. The two girls glance at one another, as if trying to figure out what to tell her.

“Fuckbuddy?” Ashera offers. “Stress reliever?”

Ethel sighs. “Rival,” she hisses, firmly and resolutely. 

Melia decides to just roll with that. “I’ll leave you and your…rival…to sort things out for yourselves,” she finishes. “Also, don’t forget to use protection!”

Another horrified shriek of “Mother!” comes as Melia closes the door, but it’s too late. Melia is laughing as she heads down the hallway.

Her life really is quite pleasant, sometimes. Especially when her children make her laugh.

That isn’t to say that their lives are all perfect, of course. There are bumpy patches, and unexpected surprises, and arguments aplenty.

One of the biggest surprises, for Melia, comes when Ethel is eighteen. Her eldest daughter, grave and conscientious, always willing to do her duty, comes to Melia not as her beloved child, but as Heir to the High Entia.

“I want to abdicate,” she says quietly, but firmly, as she sits in the kitchen of their home, her back ramrod-straight. She twists a teacup in her hands—the only sign of the internal struggle only a mother could ever notice in her daughter.

Melia blinks in surprise. Next to Ethel, the only other person sitting at the table for the conversation spits out her tea.

“Bloody hell, sis, you’re just gonna drop that on us?” Melia’s younger daughter blurts out. At sixteen, Eunie is only just coming into her own, barely an adult even by the standards of the Homs. She’d whined and moaned about having to be present for “boring Royal shite,” but as a member of the Royal Family—and while technically Noah and Nikol are too, as children of concubines who aren’t technically Melia’s biological offspring, they aren’t a part of the succession—she didn’t really have much of a choice. 

Ethel regards her little sister with a raised eyebrow, but otherwise doesn’t respond. She’s always been far more mature and reserved than Eunie—which isn’t exactly hard, given how Eunie acts, but still.

(Melia has days where it hurts her to see them interact, her two daughters. An older sibling so often taciturn and dutiful, nearly to the point of being cold, but with a ready smile and warm care for the younger sibling who hero-worships them. It’s her and Kallian, come again—and the fact that Ethel’s eyes are still, after all these years, the same piercing shade as the older brother Melia loved so dearly and grieved so deeply does not help.)

But for all that she sees shades of a dead prince in Ethel’s face, she still sees Ethel, not Kallian. She refuses to let the past keep its claws hooked onto the future.

So with the patience of a woman who has been Queen for more than twenty years, Melia raises her teacup to her lips and responds with calm patience to her daughter.

“To clarify, you wish to give up your place as my heir?” she asks gently, but clearly. She will not hide her meanings from Ethel—her daughter is grown now, coming into her own, and Melia will treat her that way. “That is a…significant decision.”

Ethel swallows, nodding as she does so. She continues to meet Melia’s eyes. “Yes,” she says, still twisting her teacup in her hands. Eunie’s barely touched her own tea—in fact, she’d taken one sip only to frown, as if she’d been expecting it to taste different, and is now almost disappointed.

Melia hums. “Might I ask why?”

Ethel is silent for a moment. Even Eunie, so often brash and uncaring for politeness or diplomacy, holds her peace.

At last, Ethel sighs. “I…don’t think I’d be good at it,” she admits quietly. “You’ve worked so hard to prepare me for it, but…the more I learn about everything you do, the more I realize that some of it just…doesn’t suit me.”

Melia makes a thoughtful noise. “You wouldn’t become Queen for many years yet,” she points out. “There were many parts of ruling that I had to grow into as well.”

Ethel shakes her head. “I know that,” she concedes, “But it’s not that I don’t feel appropriately prepared. It’s not that I haven’t been trained—it’s that I’m recognizing my own limitations. That’s the first thing Uncle Dunban taught me—that he taught all of us.” 

Eunie nods along. Dunban, as the arms instructor for all the children of the Seven, had done his job well. Eunie, Noah and Panacea are rapidly growing into skilled fighters. The older children have grown even more ferocious; Ashera and Ethel are two of the finest warriors the Colony has ever seen. Indeed, Dunban once confided in Melia that he rather suspects the two of them could have given him a run for his money in his prime. Given that his “prime” involved facing down an entire army of man-eating robots single-handedly, Melia is rather keen to not let Ashera and Ethel’s rather dramatic rivalry ever blossom into full-on fated dueling. She has enough headaches already without them leveling the whole damn Colony.

Mentally shifting back to the conversation at hand, she presses, “There’s something else, isn’t there, Ethel?”

Ethel nods. She learned long ago—as all of Melia’s children did—that there were very few things that could be kept secret from their mother’s insightful gaze. “Yes,” she admits. 

Before she can explain, Eunie scoffs loudly. “Wot, is it because you don’t got wings or something?” she asks, flicking one of her own white-feathered wings at Ethel as she points at it.

Melia frowns. Ethel had faced some rather unpleasant resistance from the traditionalists among her advisors when she was younger for her appearance; it is an unfortunate truth that just because all the surviving High Entia have Homs blood—and even more in Eunie and Ethel’s generation do—that doesn’t necessarily make them supportive of the thought of being ruled by a mostly-Homs monarch. Of course, many of the same advisors dislike Eunie, too, but that at least is for her… Eunie-ness more than simple bigotry.

Ethel shakes her head. “No,” she assures both Eunie and Melia. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just, well…”

She takes a deep breath, and then refocuses her attention on Melia.

“I don’t think I would make a terrible Queen,” she admits softly. “I could lead, I think. I could command—even if I think I’m better suited to military command than civilian. Maybe I could lead—but I couldn’t rule. Not like you do, Mother. Not… gently. I could make people do what I tell them to do…but I couldn’t make them want to do it. I wouldn’t be a terrible Queen…but I don’t think I’d be a good one, either.”

Melia is silent for a moment. Ethel’s confession has the air of something that has been brewing in her heart for a very long time; it carries the ring of truth to it, and Melia finds that she…can’t disagree. Ethel would be—perhaps even is— a fine commander of soldiers. She inspires loyalty and respect, yes. But Queenship is more than loyalty and respect—it requires a gentler touch than soldiers do, a certain slyness and cunning, a mind for politics that Ethel simply does not have. 

“I hear you,” Melia acknowledges, “And if you truly feel so strongly about this, I will respect your decision. But I also wish to say this: I had many of the same fears, when I was your age. I thought I would be a terrible Queen. But I managed. I learned. And I relied on those around me to help, when I needed it.”

Ethel looks up at her. “I know that,” she acknowledges. “But…well, that’s the thing, Mother. You did that because…well, because you didn’t have a choice. You were the last member of the royal family. Even if you’d turned out to be terrible at it, there wasn’t anyone who could replace you.”

Melia’s mouth curves into a frown. Ethel knows about Melia’s father and Kallian, of course; all her children do, just as they know about Shulk and Fiora’s pasts, about the god they slew and the world they rebuilt. None of them have ever hidden the past from their children.

That doesn’t make Ethel’s words not sting a little, Melia has to admit. But they’re also right, and Melia quickly puts the pieces together.

“Is that why you wish to abdicate?” she asks. “Because you believe you are standing in the way of a better option?”

Ethel’s lips finally curl into a smile. “Yes,” she admits softly. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

(This, too, reminds Melia of Kallian. After all, he was the eldest, the trueborn full-blooded son of the Emperor, the throne his by birthright, his mother even willing to kill Melia to secure his succession.  And yet he never even gave a hint of jealousy at Melia becoming Soren’s heir; there was only ever approval in his eyes. She never did get to ask him whether he or their father was the one who decided to name Melia as heir to the throne over Kallian. She’ll never know the truth. But when she recalls his final words to her, she thinks she knows anyway.)

Throughout their back-and-forth conversation, Eunie’s head has been swiveling between her sister and her mother, the expression on her face making it obvious that she’s only been partially following along. Her wings have been twitching in confusion, her nose wrinkled and her eyes blinking.

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” she demands.

When Melia and Ethel’s heads turn towards her, Eunie finally, finally puts the pieces together. Her wings flare outwards in alarm and horror, her eyes the size of dinner plates.

“Wait a bloody second! No, no, nononononono,” she blurts, arms waving frantically in front of her as she rocks back in her seat. “Absolutely bloody not. No. No way in hell!”

Melia taps a finger to her lips in thought. She’d be lying if she didn’t find the look on her younger daughter’s face just a little bit comical. “Watch your language, young lady,” she says. “That’s no way for the heir to the throne to speak.”

Eunie looks like she’s about to fall backwards out of her chair. Next to her, Ethel is visibly fighting back a laugh.

“Did you not just bloody hear me?” Eunie screeches. “I can’t be the bloody Queen!”

Melia raises an eyebrow. “And why not?” she asks. “There’s a reason I had you sit through all those same classes as Ethel, you know. You’re smarter than you act, and I know for a fact you’re quite good at reading people. You’d be surprised at how much of being Queen is just those two things.”

Eunie glances from Ethel to Melia and back again. “I…” she stammers. “You…I’d lose me bloody mind if I had to do that shite! All the bowin’ and scrapin’ would make me tear my wings off!”

Melia just snorts. “I’ve managed to survive it,” she points out. “Trust me, Eunie, it’s really not so bad.”

Indeed, Melia rather suspects that Eunie might be just what the monarchy needs. For all that Melia herself has settled into a Queenly role that is one part the glorified mayor of a quiet but growing town, and one part the last scion of an ancient dynasty brought to ruin, there are many ways in which she knows she is a relic, an anachronism from a previous age. Perhaps Eunie will shake up the last of the traditionalists among their people and finally allow the role of the monarchy to evolve along with their world.

Or, alternatively, perhaps the reign of Queen Eunie will simply be the funniest thing Melia has ever seen once she retires. Whatever the reason, she rises from the table, and lays a solemn hand on the panicking girl’s shoulder.

“You will make a fine Queen, my daughter,” she assures Eunie. “Believe me, you’ll surprise yourself with how well you take to it.”

Eunie seems to have lapsed into a stunned state that renders her barely able to even process Melia’s words. She gives a sort of bobbled half-nod, only for her head to snap towards her older sister. 

“You’ll bloody pay for this,” she hisses at Ethel, who finally loses the battle against her howling laughter.

“Oh?” she asks her little sister. “What’re you gonna do, Queen Eunie? Have me thrown in the dungeon?”

Even Melia laughs at that one, much to Eunie’s chagrin.

At long last, their time runs out. Melia, Fiora, and Shulk have done so much to prepare for this day; they cherish every moment with their children as they grow, having known this was coming.

It happens on a nondescript morning not long after Eunie and Noah’s eighteenth birthdays. At long last, the worlds merge. Far away, continents are slamming into place, oceans mixing, two worlds overlapping and becoming one. But here, in the home Melia and her family have made for themselves, a far more personal collision takes place.

Melia, having been preparing herself for this ever since Zed’s defeat—really, ever since the moment of combination when her middle children were ten—isn’t exactly surprised when she hears a shocked cry from Eunie’s bedroom. Grabbing her staff out of pure reflex, she hurries upstairs; Shulk and Fiora, as slower risers than her, take a few moments longer, nipping at her heels.

(In the back of her mind, Melia wonders if that time spent traveling alongside Eunie and Noah in Aionios, that beautiful chance to see the capable, kind, good people her children have become, that agony of watching her children fall in love with people from a world they wouldn’t see again for years, speeds her steps along. Maybe this time, she can at least be there to hold them.)

Melia steps onto the hall just as Eunie’s door opens, and her daughter barrels out, only to come to a screeching halt the moment she sees Melia standing there.

It’s the eyes that tell Melia just what has happened. Eunie’s eyes, normally so bright and joyful, are dark with terror and grief and confusion, swirling with emotions she can barely comprehend. Her jaw drops the moment she sees her mother.

“Q-Queen Mel—” she begins, stammering in a way Eunie simply does not stammer. At least, the Eunie Melia has raised for eighteen years.

It tears at Melia’s heart, seeing her daughter so lost. Having another lifetime’s worth of memories appear in your head, full of suffering and loss and pain and triumph and love, is never going to be easy; when those memories clash against the person she already is, and yet are unmistakably hers, it can only be so much worse. Melia herself was spared of this particular torment; her time in Aionios has never been separated from her memories or her consciousness. She remembers all of it…for better and for worse.

Eunie does, now, too, though it will certainly take time for her to sort through it all. The fact that she is visibly unable to decide whether to call Melia “Queen Melia” or “Mom” is proof enough of that. She has memories that tell her both are right—and yet other memories that tell her both are wrong.

Melia only knows one way to respond. She throws her arms around her daughter, and holds her tight.

“Welcome back, Eunie,” she murmurs softly. “My daughter.”

Eunie’s eyes go even wider. She is stiff in Melia’s arms, but as if by instinct, she hugs her mother back. Melia is still standing there, holding her trembling daughter, when the door opposite Eunie’s slams open, and Noah stumbles out, looking just as haunted and confused as his sister.

Just like Eunie had, he stares at Melia in shock and disbelief, though for him, Melia rather suspects that both sides of his memory are in agreement; his Aionios side at Queen Melia being the first person he sees in this strange, unfamiliar place, and his original side at the sight of Eunie willingly hugging their mother, visibly trying not to cry.

“Um,” he says, struggling for words. Down the hall, Melia can see Shulk and Fiora approaching too.

She turns to Noah; the movement reveals Eunie as well, and both her children’s eyes visibly bug out in shock and recognition. Melia also sees the doors to Nikol and Ethel’s rooms opening; her other two children also stumble out into the hall, clutching their heads and looking utterly lost. Nikol stares at Shulk with the now-familiar air of shock on his face, while Ethel, Eunie, and Noah all give each other incredulous looks that would be hilarious if seeing her children acting like strangers didn’t hurt so badly.

Melia takes a deep breath. “Why don’t we…have a family meeting downstairs?” she suggests. “I think we have some things to discuss.”

Chapter Text

With only a minimum of wrangling, Melia soon has her children arranged on the living room couch.

It takes a while for the full explanation to come out, interrupted as it is by sobbing, gasping, the occasional peal of hysterical laughter, and the sheer brain-melting weirdness that’s apparent on all of her children's faces. Eventually, though, she successfully manages to give them at least a basic explanation of how Melia and Nia’s plan to save both their worlds somehow spiraled into a megalomaniacal AI’s deranged interpretation of the human psyche that required them to all be saved by a coalition of teenagers.

As Melia finishes speaking, she surveys her children’s faces. Ethel is thoughtful and reserved as always, her natural coolness now layered over with a commander’s calculating air; Eunie and Noah are torn, half stricken by horror and grief and half full of joy, trading occasional shocked glances at each other. Nikol is the hardest of all to read; his expression is inscrutable, his eyes no longer those of a quiet sixteen-year-old, not quite. They’re deeper now, older.

Melia waits patiently. She lets her children process it all—the memories, the truth, the pain. Only once they’ve done that can they move forwards. She knows that from bitter experience.

At last, Ethel speaks. “The others,” she says slowly. “The ones from the other world. They’re…here now?”

Melia notices the way all her children perk up at that; Noah’s eyes brighten, Eunie’s wings flutter. If she hadn’t already been quite excited to see them reunited with the people they’d fallen in love with, she certainly is now.

”Yes,” she says. “They’ll remember, just as you do. Queen Nia and I intend to hold a formal ceremony as soon as we make proper contact. It shouldn’t take longer than a few days.”

More questions follow that—from Shulk and Fiora, from Eunie and Noah, from Ethel and Nikol—but from that moment, Melia can tell that her children have already fixated on the fact that they will get to see their partners again.

She’s glad it will only take an enormous effort of diplomacy and on-the-fly planning to make it happen. Compared to what she’s willing to do for her children, that’s nothing. 

Two days later—just long enough to find a suitable place, erect hastily-built prefab buildings, and invent proper customs for a royal first contact out of whole cloth—the Queens formally meet for the first time.

It’s a truly inspiring sight. Melia stands with her wife flanking her on one side and her husband on the other, all of them dressed to the nines. Melia rarely feels much need to draw on her childhood of resplendence and power, but when she chooses to, she makes a truly striking figure; Queen of the nation they’ve come to call Mira, clad all in black with her staff in her hand. The only difference from the robot Moebius had so poorly imitated her with in Aionios is the lack of a mask.

The robes of her counterpart are no less striking. Queen Nia is in yellow and red—colors that quite neatly match the hair colors of the two beautiful women standing just behind her, the affectionate glances they shoot Nia making Melia suspect that she is at last going to meet the wives Nia had mentioned so long ago.

Their children are there too, of course, though Melia has kept them back far enough to blend into the crowd a little; perhaps she’s being selfish, but she wants to be able to see the proper reunions for herself. That, and she knows Nikol doesn’t like being stared at. It seems Nia has had a similar idea.

As one, she and Nia step forwards. Though nobody in the room truly expects things to go poorly—and indeed, more than one pair of former enemies turned friends has already made eye contact across the bare expanse of prefab flooring—things remain tense.

Melia and Nia don’t bother with some elaborate ritual. Instead, they allow heralds to announce them, and then simply stride forwards to shake hands, followed by their spouses.

“It’s good to finally meet you properly, Queen Nia,” Melia says warmly.

Nia grins. “Yeh can say that again,” she agrees, not bothering to conceal her accent. A snicker from one of her wives makes Nia’s ear flick, and her next words are far more Queenly. “Pardon me. Yes, it is indeed a fine occasion to parlay, is it not?”

That just makes Nia’s wife—the blond one—snicker harder. She’s taller than the redheaded woman beside her, who—once you get past the more superficial details—looks almost similar enough to be her sister.

“I will never get used to hearing you talk like that,” the woman declares, hands on her hips. “Not when you spend every night cursing like a sailor as we—”

The redhead coughs loudly, elbowing her in the ribs.

Nia just rolls her eyes. “This comedian is my wife Mythra,” she says. “And next to her is my other wife, Pyra.”

Melia greets them both with warm handshakes—quite literally, in Pyra’s case. The woman is hot to the touch. 

“It’s lovely to meet both of you,” she says. “Nia’s told me all about you. This is my wife Fiora, and my husband Shulk.”

More introductions are made all around, handshakes and all the rest of it. As Mythra shakes Shulk’s hand, she looks him in the eye and says, “You know, we’ve met, Shulk.”

Shulk blinks. “We have?” he asks.

Mythra nods “More or less,” she says. “Your great-great-something grandson used us to punch that asshole Alpha.”

Shulk looks very confused for a moment. Fiora, though, puts the pieces together quite quickly. “Wait, you were turned into a sword too?” she asks, making Nia, Pyra, and Mythra all look at her in surprise.

Eventually, Mythra shrugs. “I mean, we kinda are a sword?” she says, gesturing at herself and Pyra. “Long story.”

Shulk’s eyes widen. “You two are Pneuma,” he realizes. “The other part of the Trinity Processor?”

The two women nod, and Melia finds herself suddenly struck by an inane thought.

“Hang on,” she realizes. “Who here actually has been a sword?”

To her mild surprise, every one of them except for Melia herself raises a hand. Fiora for obvious reasons, Nia and her wives as Blades, and even Shulk, who had technically been possessed by the Monado from the age of six or so. 

Melia decides to worry about that one later. “Okay then,” she says. “Shall we stop holding back the reunions?”

Nia grins. “Now that sounds like an excellent idea,” she agrees. She turns to her wives. “Don’t you two be gettin’ into trouble now.”

Mythra smirks. “Wouldn’t dream of it, babe,” she says.

Nia’s eyes narrow. “Alright, out with it,” she hisses a moment later. “What’re you planning?”

Mythra shrugs innocently. “Oh, me?” she asks. “Nothing. I was just going to ask if Shulk was interested in a friendly spar with Rex!”

Shulk raises an eyebrow. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind that—” he begins, only for Nia to shake her head frantically.

“Are ye bloody daft?” she snaps at her wife. “There’s a reason I tried to keep him away from all of this!”

Mythra grins. “But that’s boring!” she says. “A little bit of chaos never hurt anybody.”

With that, she puts her fingers to her lips, and whistles. Within seconds, a familiar broad-shouldered figure emerges from the Alrest side of the room, already roaring his unmistakable laugh.

“There you are!” Rex declares. “About bloody time!”

In that instant, the spell of tension breaks, and the two worlds surge towards each other. Old-new friends reunite, laughing, hugging, and—in a surprising number of cases—kissing.

Leading the charge is, of all people, Melia’s nephew Lanz, who discards all pretense of decorum, charging towards a tiny but powerfully built woman at breakneck speed. Lanz and Sena collide in a painful-sounding crash that would have shattered a weaker person’s bones; with the benefit of a running start, Sena manages to fully leap into Lanz’s arms, her muscular legs wrapping completely around his torso as she mashes her lips to his, both of them crying unashamedly.

Eunie, resplendent in a dress of her own, is even more direct; she marches up to the boy Melia instantly recognizes as Taion with a determined look on her face, and before he can so much as say a word, she grabs him, pulls him to her, and dips him into an all-consuming kiss that earns whistles and catcalls from the onlookers. When she finally lets him breathe, Taion looks utterly dazed; Eunie just looks slightly smugger than normal.

Melia can’t help but smirk at that one. Judging by the look on Taion’s face, the sight of Eunie in a dress has reduced him to a blabbering fool, and Eunie is taking incredible pleasure in it. Melia suspects that there will be quite a few more dresses in Eunie’s future—and quite a bit more pleasure in Taion’s, judging by the way Eunie’s grabbing him. Really, she should probably give her daughter a reminder of proper behavior for the heir to the throne.

But where would be the fun in that?

As much as Melia would love to search for Noah and Mio next, her attention is abruptly derailed as she hears Fiora speak behind her.

“So…is Rex the father of your children or something?” she hears her wife ask Nia. “I know Shulk mentioned that—”

Nia scoffs. “I should bloody hope not,” she says. “Aye, he helped raise ‘em, but he wasn’t involved in any of the conception. I took care of that part.”

There is an—incredibly aptly named—pregnant silence, and then Fiora asks, “Um…sorry, but how the hell does that work?”

Nia’s answering snicker is so loaded Melia can hear the way her fangs flash in the air.

“Did yer wife not tell yeh about my powers?” she drawls. “Interesting things can happen when you control cell division, that’s all I’m gonna say.”

Fiora gets the implications of that just fine. And judging by the way she’s smirking, Melia knows exactly what her wife is thinking.

She decides to take her leave, and go looking for a certain Gormotti princess.

She’s got another plan to put in motion today.

After a few minutes of searching, Melia finds the girl she’s been looking for.

Princess Mio is stiff and awkward in her long, flowing orange-and-white dress, surrounded by advisors and protectors who do not seem to recognize this girl with white hair and ancient eyes. She keeps staring down at her own hands, as if imagining them hardened and callused by battle, clutching disc-shaped blades like an extension of her body. Melia recognizes that look, that body language—it’s the look of a girl who woke up with memories out of time in her head scant days ago, who is still sorting through the soul-consuming pain of a life she lived in a dream world, and the life-defining love for a boy she met there.

Her head snaps up as Melia approaches. Obeying some buried courtly instinct, Mio sinks into a wobbly, awkward curtsy. It’s like her body knows what to do, but her mind has forgotten—or perhaps doesn’t remember learning. “Q-Queen Melia,” she says nervously, surrounded by watching eyes and yet so terribly alone.

Melia looks down at this slight, strong girl with cat ears on her head, and can’t help but see another princess raised in a court that isolated her, that made her turn inwards like a turtle hiding in its shell. She walks up to the girl her son loves, the other half of his soul, and lays a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Princess Mio,” she says gently. “It has been a while, hasn’t it? For me, at least. The last I saw you was as Aionios came to an end.”

Mio stiffens. “You…remember too?” she asks slowly, hopefully. There’s another question buried beneath it, linked to the way her head continually scans back and forth, looking for somebody.

Melia smiles. “I do,” she confirms. “So does Noah.”

Mio’s eyes widen. Judging by that reaction, she hasn’t yet managed to find him among the chaotic mess of reunions taking place in the hall. “Is…” she stammers, “Does he—”

Melia’s smile only grows. Though it isn’t the question Mio has asked, she answers, “He is my son, Mio. And he’s waiting for you.”

She gestures towards the far side of the room, where a familiar black ponytail is bobbing towards them. At last, Noah bursts through the crowd. He comes screeching to a halt as he sees Mio, as if paralyzed by fear.

Melia steps back, and Mio shoots towards Noah as if from the barrel of a rifle. She slams into him with enough force to send him staggering backwards; not that he seems to particularly care, as he’s already pulled her to him and met her furious kiss halfway. 

For a single glorious moment, as people stop and stare in the middle of the crowded hall, Melia can do nothing but beam with joy. Her son and the girl he ended the world for, back together. Two worlds, united. 

Her future grandchildren? Adorable.

For all that the kiss between her son and the princess from another world is a beautiful thing, Melia can tell that there is more to it, as well. There is another side of Mio, after all, a darker, more possessive side. One that turns “My Noah” from tender affection into a nearly obsessive mantra. It’s a side that Melia knows Noah can match—in her time in Aionios, she too met N, after all. There is a madness to Mio and Noah’s love, one that can wrap them up in each other, can make the claws come out when they feel threatened. It isn’t a dangerous thing, not to each other—Melia knows that in the end, the thing that perhaps broke N most of all was the fact that M had technically died at his hands—but it exists nonetheless, a vital, foundational part of their love.

Melia would be more concerned by it if she did not understand it far better than her children will probably ever know. After all, she and Shulk and even Fiora are not saints, either. They fought through a war, once, and fueled themselves with rage as often as righteousness. Melia watched Shulk premeditate a murder, plot to kill a man, stew in his hate and plan out every little detail of his death, and helped him do it. She loved him for it. There were—and are—times where the grief she feels for Alcamoth’s fate, for the deaths of her family, curdles into hatred, and she joyfully imagines Zanza screaming in whatever afterlife he has found himself in, ugly happiness dancing freely in her heart. There are times, on dark nights and darker days, when Shulk’s eyes carry the hints of the “Godcleaver” title he was given, once. There are times when Melia sees him and remembers that she fell in love with the part of him that killed his God just as much as she did with the part that refused to take His place. 

But these thoughts have no place on a day like today. Noah and Mio have all but sucked the air from each other’s lungs and are on the verge of diving back in for a second all-encompassing kiss when Melia gently clears her throat. The two young lovers look up at her, sheepish guilt on their faces for causing such a scene.

Melia, though, just chuckles. Quietly, leaning in so no one else can hear, she says, “I am glad to see you two reunited. Mio, I would like to make you an offer.”

Mio’s ears twitch with curiosity. Still gripping the back of Noah’s head in both hands, she asks, “What?”

Melia’s grin widens. “I am of the opinion that you have spent far too long standing around at this ceremony,” she replies. “You two have a great deal to discuss, I am sure, and the quarters prepared for my family are not too far from here. Noah knows the way back to his own personal room. If you wish to… reconnect with your beloved, I will cover for your early disappearance.”

Mio’s eyes go even wider than before. Noah gives a strangled urrrk, presumably at his own mother more or less giving him and his… girlfriend a direct order to ditch the ceremony and have reunion sex. In a move that proves his wisdom, he does not say a word.

Mio looks at Melia, and asks, “A-are you implying…”

Melia arches an eyebrow. “I imply nothing,” she says mildly. “I merely state that both of you have undergone great turmoil and difficulty recently, and now that you are together again, I will not keep you here, nor do I intend to knock on Noah’s bedroom door for…several days, actually. Do with that time what you wish.”

Noah is definitely looking worried now. Mio, though, seems torn between giving Melia an awed, grateful look, and grinning with truly evil intent.

“Thank you,” she whispers, her fingers tightening even more on Noah’s collar. “I just…I want to know. Why?”

Melia beams. “Consider it some small repayment of the enormous debt both our worlds owe to you two,” she says gently. Then, she winks. “And also a down payment on my future grandchildren. Now, what are you still doing here?”

Mio gets the hint. With a furiously blushing Noah being towed along by his collar, she all but sprints for the exit, long dress flowing behind her. Melia makes a mental note to send a servant droid up later with a meal and some water. The two of them will need to keep up their strength.

She turns around, only to see Queen Nia approaching, just a few moments too late to join the conversation.

“Queen Melia,” she says primly, nodding in respect. “Might I ask a question?”

Melia nods back. “Of course, Queen Nia,” she says in the same formal tone.

Nia arches one eyebrow. “What exactly did you tell my daughter that’s got her running out of here like her ears are on fire?” she asks dryly, one long ear flicking in the direction of the exit Mio and Noah had taken.

Melia can’t help the chuckle that escapes her lips as she replies; “Oh, I may have informed her that if she wanted to drag my son away and lock the two of them in a bedroom for the next few days, I would gladly cover for her.”

Nia is completely, utterly silent for a very long moment. Then; at last, her proper, queenly facade cracks, and she snickers loudly.

“Seems you beat me to it,” she declares. “I was going to tell her to drag that bloody boy off if you didn’t. I’ll ensure nobody asks where she is for the next few days, yes?”

Melia has always respected Nia. In this moment, she considers the other woman to be the most brilliant co-conspirator she’s ever had. “That would be lovely,” she proclaims. “I will ensure they are well taken care of.”

Nia laughs again, shades of her true accent shining through. “I’m sure yeh will,” she replies. “Speaking of which…I took the liberty of drawin’ up a few potential agreements for a royal marriage. Figured I’d get ahead of the curve. It’s best fer all of us if we get those two married before she starts teh show, I’d say.”

Melia’s grin is brighter than the sun. Once again, she and Nia are on the same wavelength. Neither of them bother to ask for odds on how long it will be until Mio showing is a concern. They both know better than to take such an easy bet. “That sounds like an excellent idea,” she says. “Perhaps afterwards, we can try and find my daughter. I believe she slipped off with that Taion boy some time ago.”

Nia’s smile sharpens. “I’m sure it’s unrelated,” she mentions, “But I coulda sworn I heard some very weird noises coming from a broom closet on my way here.”

Melia chuckles. “Well, I’m sure that’s nothing,” she replies. “But if it were?”

“If it were,” Nia laughs, “Then I’d say the future is well in hand, yes?”

Melia has to agree. There’s nothing a mother loves more than to see her children flourishing.

And flourish they do.

Eunie and Taion are eventually found—in a closet, of course. Melia would have been more upset about that if she hadn’t walked in just in time to hear Eunie inform Taion that she was, in fact, the heir to the throne. The look on Taion’s face at that moment is quite possibly the funniest thing Melia will ever see.

She takes some time to roam once she has directed Eunie and Taion to their own room—she and Nia had been quite deliberate in giving each of the former Ouroboros their own spaces, predicting that something quite like this would inevitably happen. She passes countless fascinating sights; Fiora and Pyra laughing like old friends already, a stammering Sena introducing a blushing Lanz to a pair of women Melia recalls as Sena’s parents, Morag and Brighid, Reyn engaging in a friendly arm-wrestling competition with a man every bit as burly and gregarious as he is that can only be Zeke. All over the central hall of the building, a thousand reunions are happening, and a thousand more first meetings. The world is full of laughter and life and excitement.

But Melia eventually finds herself wandering outside, all the same. A space has been cleared there for those who take a more…martial approach to their reunions. Perhaps it’s odd to have a sparring ground be such a core design feature of a space meant for a peaceful first meeting between two worlds, but Melia and Nia both know that their worlds have strong military traditions, and that the skills honed there can foster genuine respect and camaraderie. Also, with how much energy their friends have, they need somewhere to blow off steam.

Sadly, it seems that Melia is too late to watch her husband’s spar with Rex; the larger man is already face-down on the ground, groaning good-naturedly as Shulk stands over him, replica Monado slung casually over his shoulder. Melia grins; Nia has told her quite a lot about Rex, and while Melia can’t deny that the large, spiky-haired man is fundamentally golden-hearted, he also strikes her as the sort who, frankly, needs to have his ass kicked regularly to keep him humble.

A considerable crowd has gathered, about half from Alrest and half from Mira; the Miran half is cheering and laughing at Godcleaver Shulk’s newest exploit, while the Alrestian half is staring, stunned, at their own legendary champion’s swift defeat. Except for Mythra, of course, who is cackling gleefully. She’d clearly seen this coming all along.

Shulk stoops to offer a hand to his fallen opponent. Rex accepts it gratefully, having apparently taken his defeat with a smile on his face.

“Bloody hell!” he laughs. “I’d forgotten how fast you were!”

Shulk grins—and there’s a cockiness to it that, to be quite honest, makes Melia want to drag him off much like Eunie did with Taion. He never grins quite like that except when he’s got a sword in his hand—never turns from the quiet, considerate man she loves so deeply into the self-assured living legend he also is, except when it’s coaxed out of him by a good fight. Or by Fiora whipping out their particularly creative box of toys for special occasions, but that is a topic for another time.

“Wanna go again?” he offers.

Rex raises an eyebrow. “You at least gonna let me get one hit in this time?” he asks. “I wanna make it look good!”

Shulk smirks. He raises his weapon, as Rex does the same.

“Sorry, friend,” he says. “Can’t do that. My wife’s watching.”

Even now, after more than twenty years of marriage, Melia’s heart nearly bursts to hear Shulk call her his wife. She feels the eyes of hundreds of people on her as she puts her hands on her hips, Rex turning his head to see her grinning at the sight of them. She feels no shame, no fear, no guilt at whether Fiora should be called his wife over her. She has long since accepted the truth: they are both Shulk’s wives, both beloved, both at the very center of his heart. She has grown beyond all those old fears, and found something precious waiting for her.

“I would suggest a more sporting match in the interest of diplomacy,” she says, eyebrows dancing, “But I must admit, it is quite rare that my husband gets to play with such a durable toy. I’d hate to deny him a chance to stretch his wings.”

“Ah,” Rex says understandingly. “Suppose that’s fair then. Can’t be disappointing a lovely lady like you, Your Highness.”

He turns back to Shulk. “Welp, guess I’ll give it my best shot,” he chuckles. “Besides, I’ve got a pretty thick skull. Gimme your best shot!”

He raises his sword. Shulk grins.

It’s not a particularly even rematch. Not that anyone was expecting one. But really—it’s a man trained by quite possibly the greatest swordsman to ever live, who won a duel to the death against God Himself, versus a big, strong, but barely-trained scavenger. What other outcome is there?

Melia makes a mental note as Rex gets tossed around like a ragdoll: she and Fiora will need to properly reward Shulk tonight. He’s more than earned it.

Once she’s enjoyed watching her husband mop the floor with Rex for a while, Melia moves on. She strolls across the sparring ground for a while longer, observing friendly matches between old friends and new ones; Ashera against a man Melia vaguely recalls from Aionios as Teach, a Gormotti archer against a shield-bearing High Entia, and countless others besides.

Eventually, though, she spots a particularly intriguing matchup: a familiar head of silvery hair whirls as she faces off against a man with a flaming ponytail and a long, blazing spear.

Even as Melia steps closer, she recognizes two things: one, the two combatants are almost perfectly equal in skill, both at the absolute pinnacle of their abilities; and two, the woman is her very own daughter. 

Ethel snarls as she traps Cammuravi’s spear in a blade-lock, pushing their trapped weapons down as she strains against her new-old rival’s strength. Then, as Melia watches, she disengages, lets Cammuravi lunge forwards for her, adjusting to the sudden shift in positions, and then leaps at him, twin blades flashing silver as she sends the spear clattering to the ground.

When the dust settles, Cammuravi is pinned flat on his back, with Ethel straddling his hips, her weight pressing down on him and leaving him completely unable to move. Her wickedly sharp twin blades are pressed up under his chin, laying against his neck as her eyes practically glow.

“You’re slipping, Cammuravi,” she hisses, face inches from his. “I could’ve had you five times in that last sequence alone.”

Cammuravi raises an eyebrow. “You can have me in any way you would like, Ethel,” he says matter-of-factly, his voice flat and toneless, utterly honest. “And if I am slipping, perhaps it’s merely because I was unaware that you were royalty, last we crossed blades. Speaking of which, your mother is right behind us.”

Ethel’s eyes flare open, and she lets out a squeak as she whips around to stare at Melia, who is watching the entire scene play out with interest plain on her face. She never got the chance to spend much time around Ethel or Cammuravi in Aionios, but she heard quite a few stories from Noah, Mio, and the others. It seems those stories hid at least some of the truth—the truth evident in the way that Ethel continues to straddle Cammuravi even now that there is no particular reason or need to do so.

“M-Mother?” Ethel says, flushing slightly pink. “How long have you been there?”

Melia raises an eyebrow. “Long enough,” she says. Then, she turns her gaze to Cammuravi. “I believe I know you. You’re Queen Nia’s Captain of the Guard, are you not?”

Cammuravi nods, or at least does his best, given the swords at his neck. “Indeed, Your Highness,” he says respectfully. “Your daughter requested a spar, and I was happy to oblige her.”

Melia hums. Then she decides to go straight for the point. “Is my daughter’s chastity at risk from you, Sir Cammuravi?” she demands.

Ethel’s subtle blush suddenly becomes much more pronounced. “Mother!” she hisses, visibly embarrassed for the first time in years. It takes a supreme act of self-control for Melia to hide her grin—particularly when she notes that Ethel still hasn’t removed herself from atop Cammuravi.

Cammuravi lets out a dry cough. “With all due respect, Your Highness,” he says evenly, “I think that my chastity is at greater risk from her.”

As if perfectly timed to prove his point, Ethel growls at Cammuravi, seemingly tempted to discard her blades and grab for his neck with her bare hands.

“You—” she starts to hiss, only for Cammuravi to spring his trap the second Ethel’s blades start to retract. He leaps upwards, making Ethel shout in surprise, the entire dynamic between them flipped in an instant. Soon, her blades have been wrestled from her hands and flung aside, leaving the two of them to roll and grapple in the dirt for several seconds until Cammuravi firmly gains the upper hand. He pins Ethel to the dirt face-up, hands trapped at the wrist above her head, her legs pinned beneath his, his body pressed atop hers. She’s growling dangerously at him, but she’s more or less helpless in this position—and judging by the tinge in her cheeks, she might be enjoying it a little more than she lets on. 

At that point, Melia decides that she’s seen quite enough. She trusts Ethel to take care of herself—and frankly, what she’s heard of Cammuravi from others makes her inclined to approve of her eldest daughter’s apparent choice in partner. Certainly, Melia likes him more than Ashera, at least as a potential son-in-law. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say a near-certain future son-in-law, judging by the way he and Ethel were glaring at each other. 

So, she claps her hands, gaining both young peoples’ attention just as it began to slip back towards each other again.

“Well,” she declares, “I have three things I would like to say to you briefly, Sir Cammuravi.”

Still pinning Ethel, Cammuravi tilts his head. “Of course, Your Grace,” he says.

Melia raises a finger. “First, I would like to remind you—and my daughter—that there is a room available to you, and it is doubtless far more comfortable—and sanitary—than this mud pit,” she says.

Cammuravi nodded, while Ethel made an odd noise beneath him—perhaps a groan, or a squeak. 

“We will take that under advisement, Your Grace,” he agrees.

Melia raises another finger. “Second,” she continues, “Should you ever hurt my daughter, I will rend the flesh from your bones with my ether and scatter your constituent particles to the furthest corners of the universe.”

Cammuravi’s face remains entirely blank. “Noted,” he replies. “Though I feel Lady Ethel is more than capable of exacting her own revenge, should it become necessary.”

Melia hums, though internally, she improves her estimate of Cammuravi to “absolutely guaranteed future son-in-law.”

“And finally,” she says, turning away just as a spark in Ethel’s eyes begins to build, “Welcome to the family, Sir Cammuravi.”

There’s no response this time. Mostly because the second Cammuravi opens his mouth, Ethel lunges beneath him, and he soon finds himself scrabbling in the dirt as Melia’s eldest daughter pins his limbs one by one, years of unarmed training paying off in finally allowing her to pin an extremely desirable man to the ground and leave him completely helpless beneath her.

Melia finally allows herself to smile once her back is turned, and the sounds of grunting behind her start to become obscured by moans, and then the sound of a surprised—but welcomed—kiss.

She has done her work well.

The day of union ends quietly, with a beautiful sunset on the island within the inland sea the merging continents have created. 

The next day, the real work begins. The physical merger may have happened overnight, but the practicalities of sorting out two worlds turning into one—continents reshuffled, cities shifted, people waking up to find mountain ranges in their backyards and oceans on their doorsteps—takes much longer. 

Melia finds herself so overwhelmed for the next few weeks with sorting out all the problems inevitably caused by two very different nations and societies abruptly slamming together that she nearly loses track of how her children fare with their new partners; luckily, she comes home every night to Fiora, who is more than happy to fill her in.

Noah and Mio are, to nobody’s surprise, not seen in public for nearly a week. When they finally are, Noah is wearing a high-collared jacket—and when the collar is briefly lowered, Melia sees why; a pair of truly magnificent hickeys, complete with fang imprints, are visible on either side of his neck. Judging by Mio’s grin, she quite likes marking her territory.

Ethel and Cammuravi soon become one of the most consistent sources of entertainment in the colony; their endless battles on the sparring field draw continual audiences, though they at least have the decency to keep their post-sparring activities out of the public eye. If it hadn’t been for her knowledge of Ethel’s previous encounters with her near-peers on the battlefield, Melia wouldn’t have expected her to be in a relationship built primarily on attempted physical violence. As it stands, she thinks Ethel has excellent taste.

Lanz and Sena are somehow the least dramatic of all the Aionios relationships. Their love is steady, reliable, and understated; only the fact that Morag and Dunban have rapidly become best friends as a result of their children dating–and everyone agreeing that this is utterly terrifying–draws Melia’s attention towards them.

And finally, of course, there’s Eunie and Taion. In Aionios, Melia had been deeply fond of Taion, for how perfectly matched he was for her younger, wilder daughter. Thick-skinned enough to handle Eunie’s barbs and vicious spines, steady and centered enough to be a sort of stabilizer for her mood swings and reversals, strong enough to hang with her relentless energy, and yet deeply perceptive, emotionally intelligent, and incredibly tender and loving, he’d been perfect for the softer, sweeter Eunie that hides beneath her prickly exterior.

In this world, he still was perfect, of course, but Melia’s primary attitude whenever she sees him and Eunie nowadays is laughter. For all his steadiness and intelligence, Taion has been completely gobsmacked by the revelation that Eunie is Melia’s daughter, and is in fact the heir to the throne. The mental whiplash from getting to see Eunie again to suddenly realizing that he, the only member of Ouroboros not somehow related to old heroes or nobility from the old worlds, the lowborn son of Nia’s court librarian, is now being paraded around by the Princess of the High Entia as her future husband is writ plain on Taion’s face every time Melia sees him. It’s not a bad shock, or one that really upsets him, but it is undeniably not what he’d expected. 

That isn’t helped by the fact that Eunie has relished finally managing to crack Taion’s cool, collected attitude; she’s openly embraced her role as Melia’s heir for the first time in her life, all for the sake of making Taion squirm. In fact, Eunie went so far as to ask Melia to formally betrothe her and Taion in the old Imperial way, specifically so Eunie could force every one of the stodgy royal advisors to refer to Taion as “Prince Consort.” Melia had agreed, first because she thought it would be a good way to mollify some of the more vocal traditionalists among her advisors, and then because the sight of Taion realizing what exactly he’d got himself into when the court had knelt to hail him as their future King made her laugh so hard Fiora had had to hold her steady on the platform. Yes, Eunie has that boy well in hand.

And yet, there was still one child of hers who Melia couldn’t help but worry about. Two weeks since the merger ceremony, and yet their youngest son still seemed unwilling to even risk catching a glimpse of his own Aionios partner.

It was a little different for Nikol and Pyra’s daughter Glimmer, Melia knew; they’d fought in very different circumstances from all the others, had made friends with a man who was unlikely to be born into this world for decades. But more than that, where the others hadn’t had time to move beyond their current ages in Aionios—perhaps excluding Noah and Mio if you counted previous incarnations—Glimmer and Nikol had been released from Origin’s cycle of rebirth; they’d lived long, full lives together in the City. 

Melia could only imagine what that had done to them—all those years, all those memories, suddenly dumped on their sixteen-year-old shoulders. She couldn’t blame Nikol for being a bit of a shut-in, trying to handle all that.

But even so, once a message arrives from Pyra begging for them to “Talk to your son before my drama queen of a daughter burns down the royal palace again,” Melia, Fiora, and Shulk decide that they have to stage something of an intervention.

By the time they get Nikol sitting on the living room couch, he seems to already know what they want. That has happened already with him, to an eerie extent; his eyes are unsettlingly old as they stare out of his sixteen-year-old face, the eyes of a wise old man—the man Nikol would be twenty, thirty, forty years from now—rather than a teenager.

He’s been awfully quiet, ever since the merger. He’s asked no questions, shown almost no surprise at any of it—the most he’s done has been to stare at Shulk, seemingly unsure what he could possibly say to the man he’d never known as his father before. 

Melia knew it worried Fiora; overnight, her son seemed to have become a different person. Or perhaps not different, just…changed. Expanded. Grown up.

“This is about my wife, isn’t it?” Nikol asks softly. At the confused looks from the three of them, he grits his teeth, sighing. “Sorry. Glimmer. I spent so long married to her…it’s hard to think of her as anything but my wife now. Even though half my brain is convinced I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Nikol hisses, clutching his head again. Shulk hums sympathetically.

“Yeah, it’s about her,” he agrees with his son, “but it’s about you, too. We’re worried, son. You’ve sealed yourself off for a few weeks now.”

Nikol nods in acknowledgement. “Yeah,” he concedes. “I…I’m sorry if I’ve worried you. I just…it’s a lot to sort through, y’know? The others…they’ve got, what, ten years of memories to sort through? More, for Noah and Mio, I know, but…”

He glances down at his hands, the soft, slender hands of a teenage boy—albeit one that often works in a lab or a workshop, leaving them soot-stained and oil-smeared—as if imagining them wizened and weathered by age.

“Glimmer and I, we lived into our eighties,” he murmurs. “We were married for sixty years. We had kids. Grandkids. Great- grandkids. We lived a whole life together—got to the point where fighting Alpha felt like a hazy dream we’d had when we were children. When we died, we were happy to go, knowing our time was up, that we’d used it well. And now…now we’re teenagers again. Even if we want to do it all over again…how can we be sure? That…it’s a lot to come to grips with.”

Fiora crosses her arms. “Glimmer’s probably going through the same thing,” she points out. “What’s stopping you from at least talking to her about it?”

Nikol chuckles, running a hand through his hair, the way a man in his sixties or seventies beginning to lose it might. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Funny. I spend eighty years growing up, and turn right back into a teenager scared to talk to my crush the moment I get the chance. Must seem pretty silly, right?”

Melia shrugs. “I think you’re facing something that nobody else ever really has before,” she says. “It seems to me that there’s no wrong way to handle it.”

That seems to make Nikol pause and think again. He glances up at Melia. “That…that helps a lot, actually,” he admits. “You really are as wise as they said, Queen Me—Mother.”

Melia flushes a little, ignoring the stumbling slip as Nikol struggles to figure out whether to call her by her title or to call her “Mother.” Fiora, for her part, smiles at the man her son has become.

“She really is,” she agrees. “But I will say that I think you should talk to Glimmer. At the very least, Pyra is begging us to make you. Apparently your wife is going a little bit crazy in the palace.”

Nikol chuckles. “That doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “When she was younger, she always did get a little…well. You met her.”

That last sentence, he directs at Shulk, who snorts in agreement. “I did,” Melia’s husband replies. “I have to admit, I can’t quite believe that she and Mio are sisters.”

Nikol grins. “Neither can I,” he says. “Though from the sounds of it they don’t get along that well.”

Melia chuckles a little. That certainly is an understatement. She’s met all three of Queen Nia’s children by now; Mythra’s son Dirk is quiet and introspective, content to fade into the background in most situations. He’s long since moved out, from what Melia understands. That left Mio and Glimmer, with Mio just two years Glimmer’s elder, and the two of them essentially at each other’s throats in the way only two teenage girls with totally opposite personalities forced to share a home could ever be. Sisters they may be, and on some level they certainly love each other, Melia doesn’t doubt that. But they also have history. The kind of history that wars get fought over.

Really, Melia’s not sure what’s funnier: the fact that Nia, Pyra, and Mythra managed to produce such diametrically opposed daughters, or the fact that both of those daughters promptly fell in love with Shulk’s sons.

Either way, they soon decide that there’s no time like the present; Nikol finally agrees, in the interest of saving the Royal Palace of Alrest, to go talk to the woman who had been his wife, in another world.

Really, Melia can’t possibly imagine this going wrong. Not at all.

All sarcasm aside, Melia really doesn’t know what to expect when they arrive at the Alrestian Royal Palace with Nikol in tow.

Much like Melia, Nia believes in an understated, simple monarchy; though the name is grandiose, the palace itself is merely a slightly-larger-than-average house, albeit one with guards at the entrance.

Those guards recognize them on sight, and wave them through without any fuss; it’s just as well that they do, because the moment they step into the large hall that serves as the foyer, Melia discovers that Glimmer’s made plenty of fuss herself.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU!” she is shouting at her mother, visibly incensed in the way only a teenage girl can be. “Why would you do that?”

Pyra is smiling serenely, and to an unknowing observer, she might appear to be the very picture of gentle, sweet motherhood—and to be sure, Pyra is a deeply maternal woman, sweet and kind and caring. But as Melia and Fiora know well themselves, one of the most maternal of emotions is wrath, and if you look closely, you can see that Pyra has had quite enough of her daughter’s insufferable antics.

“Glimmer,” she says firmly, her daughter’s back still turned to the four guests who have just entered the hall. “Were you ever going to get over your fears and actually talk to him?”

Glimmer blinks, caught off guard, but unwilling to change course or listen to reason so quickly. “T-that’s not the problem!” she hisses.

Pyra crosses her arms. “It is the problem,” she says bluntly. “It’s okay to not know what you want, and to be having trouble processing everything that’s happened recently. But why are you so determined to struggle alone?”

Glimmer hesitates. “I…because…” she stammers, before remembering she’s supposed to be mad. “Forget about that! Tell them not to come before they get here!”

Pyra smirks, finally raising her head to acknowledge Melia, Fiora, Shulk, and their son. “Too late,” she says, and Melia sees horror on Glimmer’s face as she whips around.

That expression freezes, then shatters as she lays eyes on Nikol. The two teenagers blush fiercely, barely able to meet each other’s eyes.

Stepping forwards, Pyra puts a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, her grip visibly ironclad. Glimmer doesn’t even seem to register the touch.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” Pyra tells her firmly. “You two are going to talk. Face to face, eye to eye. Talk about whatever you want. Make whatever decision you want. We’ll all support whatever you decide you want to do. Because yes, your situation is bizarre, and awkward, and hard to even think about—but you are in it together. Figure it out.”

Glimmer clenches her fists, but says nothing. Nikol stumbles as Fiora shoves him forwards, as well. Soon, he and Glimmer are face to face, visibly working up the courage to speak.

Nikol manages it first. “Hey,” he says softly.

Glimmer doesn’t seem to know what to say any more than he does. “Hey,” she echoes.

They’re silent again for a while, until Nikol sighs, “This is…awkward, huh?”

Glimmer nods. “Yeah,” she agrees. “But…I don’t know. I think it could be alright.”

Nikol visibly perks up. “Really?” he asks.

Glimmer shrugs. “Look…we’re sixteen again,” she says slowly. “And maybe it’s just me being stupid and impulsive…”

“Like a teenager?” Nikol points out, grinning despite himself. It sounds like an in-joke, the kind formed out of years of parenthood and grandparenthood, of seeing many teenagers going through the same dramatic struggles over and over again, utterly convinced they’re the only ones to ever suffer them.

Glimmer looks annoyed at the interruption, but only for a moment; then she, too, grins in a familiar way. There’s an edge of exasperation to it, but it’s the exasperation of a woman at the man she loves when he thinks he’s funny—and, to her gall, she can’t stop herself from laughing a little.

“I guess,” she admits. “But, look…I just wanted to say that the reason I hadn’t come to see you yet is because…because I don’t know where we’re supposed to go from here, I guess?”

Nikol nods rapidly. “I was doing the same thing,” he tells her. “I mean, do we just…pick up where we left off? That feels…weird.”

Glimmer hums to herself. She and Nikol are visibly drifting closer together now, hands touching, her slight height advantage over him more apparent than ever. From years of experience, Melia recognizes her body language—it’s a woman who has already made up her mind about what she wants. She’d been wavering before. But now she isn’t.

“I mean, weird is just kinda par for the course with us. And as for the other thing…I could be convinced,” Glimmer suggests, the slightest hint of a grin cracking her lips. “To pick up where we left off, I mean.”

Nikol blinks in surprise. “Really?” he asks, his own features starting to mirror her smile. “Uh…where did we leave off, again?”

Glimmer smirks. “Need a reminder, old man?” she asks. “I mean, I know your memory never went, but damn, we really did get old, didn’t we?”

Nikol chuckles, and it’s an odd sound—an old man’s laugh in a young man’s throat. “It wasn’t so bad,” he replies. “You still looked pretty good, for an old woman.”

Glimmer snorts. “I guess that’s true,” she concedes. “But there’s definitely… advantages to being young again. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Her hands wrap around Nikol’s back, and the two of them finally kiss. Fiora lets out a whoop of victory, while Pyra coughs loudly to get the lovebirds’ attention.

Glimmer pulls back from kissing Nikol with a good-natured look of irritation on her face. “Do you mind?” she asks. “I’ve got some catching up to do with my husband here.”

The sheer easy flow of the word off Glimmer’s lips surprises Melia; “husband” fits so naturally onto the relationship she sees in front of her, the easy familiarity, the ability to love without even looking that took years to develop between her and Fiora and Shulk. In the span of that single word, Glimmer goes from a bratty, slightly snotty teenager to a woman in her own right, experienced and wise and fully in control of herself.

Pyra meets Glimmer’s grin with one of her own. “Oh, far be it from me to stop you,” she tells her daughter. “I just wanted to remind you that you do have a room, if you wanted to continue… catching up.”

She jerks her thumb over her shoulder and up the staircase, and Glimmer glances up it, then back at her mother, then at Nikol.

“Now that is a fantastic idea,” she drawls. Nikol barely even reacts as she hauls him away.

They at least have the decency to get out of sight before the first breathy moan reaches Pyra, Melia, Fiora, and Shulk’s ears. The four of them share a wry grin, all of them reminiscing about bygone years and familiar feelings. Melia feels Fiora’s hand palm her hip…maybe a little bit too low to be her hip, actually.

Pyra grins even wider. “Can I get you guys anything to drink?” she asks.

Melia nods. “That sounds lovely,” she replies. “I get the feeling we’ll be here for a while.”

Another moan confirms that, as does the sound of a bedroom door slamming firmly. After that, the noise blessedly lessens to an ignorable level.

Pyra leads them into the living room, and swiftly brings them drinks, ever the gracious hostess. Soon, she’s sat back down with them, and she and Fiora swiftly get right back to forging what Melia already knows is a lifelong friendship.

Eventually, though, as the occasional noise from upstairs reminds her of exactly what Glimmer is presumably doing to her youngest son, Melia decides to ask, “So…how many children did those two have in Aionios, anyway?”

Everyone glances first at Pyra, but she shrugs, having been a Trinity processing core at the time. It falls instead to Shulk to answer that particular question, which he does after downing a gulp of whatever Alrestian liquor Pyra deemed suitable for the occasion.

“Seven,” he said in the vaguely-hoarse voice of a man who saw far, far too much. “They had twenty grandkids by the time they were sixty.”

The room falls dead silent—which of course makes the noises still emanating from upstairs even more audible.

Fiora nearly drops her glass. “Seven?” she hisses. “What the fuck were they doing?”

Shulk raises an eyebrow. “I think we all know the answer to that,” he replies, making Fiora bark out a shocked laugh. 

Pyra, meanwhile, wags her own eyebrow as she adds, “Repopulating the City, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Melia mutters.

The sounds get louder, more frantic, and Pyra idly leans back in her chair. “You know,” she remarks, “I remember when Mio and I found a stack of… risqué books that Glimmer had gotten somewhere under her bed. They all had a…shall we say…central theme. I wonder…”

A single word is suddenly audible through the walls, unmistakably in Glimmer’s voice: “YES, D-DADDY!”

Fiora chokes on her spit. Shulk settles deeper into his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. Pyra’s grin just gets sharper. “There it is,” she says, chuckling. “Funny. They say that “daddy issues” cause that sort of thing, but Nia is Glimmer’s father. I wonder…”

Pyra’s speculation is cut off by Melia’s loud, exhausted sigh. She downs the remainder of her glass, glances at it for a moment, then asks, “Do you perhaps have anything…stronger?”

Pyra laughs, and goes to check. As she does so, Fiora leans over to put a hand on Melia’s thigh.

“They had to grow up sometime,” she points out, chuckling, but with a soft, tender voice. Her gaze is understanding.

Melia smiles back. “Yes,” she concedes, voice equally soft. “I suppose they did.”

Funny, how this is the moment that finally makes it sink in; her children have grown up. They are taking their first steps into the world, meeting partners of their own. She has done her job well.

Melia Antiqua, who once believed she would die the last of her ancient dynasty, has raised four amazing, wonderful children. And she could not be happier.

She does still want that drink, though.

It ends just how it began—with a wedding.

From the moment they were reunited, everyone knew that this day would come for Noah and Mio. Well aside from the political considerations—Nia and Melia are, to be blunt, quite eager for a symbol of unity for their worlds to ease the transition for those still struggling to handle the trauma and the conflict of two worlds smashed together—everyone is quite aware that it would probably be best for everyone if the first grandchild of Queen Melia and Queen Nia is not born out of wedlock. And Noah and Mio, in Aionios and in this world, are…not the best at remembering to use contraception. It’s probably best to simply play this one safe.

And so, one year after the worlds merge, Melia finds herself in a hall full of joy and happiness.

Mio is resplendent in her white dress; Nia walks her down the aisle herself, and Melia can’t stop herself from giggling at the look on Noah’s face.

Fiora, sitting next to her, wears an equally bright grin. “He looks as stunned as Shulk was,” she notes. “And he’s only marrying one woman!”

Shulk, on Melia’s other side, chuckles good-naturedly. Melia herself squeezes her husband’s hand, then jokes, “You’re right—though I suspect that Mio’s more than enough for him!”

As Nia steps away and Mio ascends the altar, Melia lets herself bask in the cheers. All around the room, her children and their partners cheer. The bridesmaids—Eunie, Ethel, and Sena—have paired off with their own respective boyfriends. Even Glimmer and Nikol are there—giving each other the sort of knowing looks that Melia, Fiora, and Shulk are all exchanging. The indulgent smiles of a couple for whom all of this brings back the fondest, most hopeful of memories.

Though none of her other children and their partners have discussed marriage yet to Melia’s knowledge, she does suspect that Eunie, at least, is getting ideas, judging by the way she’s eyeing Taion across the stage. Her younger daughter’s eyes flick to where Noah and Mio are visibly wrapped up in each other, then back at Taion, as if eyeballing his measurements for the same sort of handsome tuxedo Noah is wearing. Or perhaps Eunie is imagining the looks on the faces of her mother’s stodgy advisors as she declares Taion her husband, and future King Consort of Mira.

Melia is not a betting woman, but if she was, she’d put quite a lot of money on them being back in this beautiful building before this time next year. It’s just as well; Eunie is her heir, after all. She’d like to have the succession secured before she considers retiring and leaving the throne to the next generation.

Back at the altar, Noah and Mio begin to say their vows. They’re so totally absorbed in each other, it’s as if they’re in their own world; not even the whoops and cheers of the crowded hall, with Rex and Mythra and Reyn and Dunban and countless others doing their best to drown everything out, can pierce their focus on each other.

Melia can barely hear them, too—but for a different reason. As she turns her head, she catches a glimpse of the doorway at the far end of the hall.

Her breath catches in her throat. Her heart skips a beat.

Seeing a tear falling down her wife’s cheek, Fiora jolts in alarm. “Everything okay?” she murmurs, her hand on Melia’s.

Melia grips Fiora’s hand without thinking. The tears fall thicker now, streaming down her cheeks. Shulk looks at her, worried.

But Melia doesn’t notice. For there, standing in the doorway—just for a moment—she sees ghosts.

Kallian, looking older and more handsome than ever, smiles sadly at her, still stern, even as age nips at his heels, granting him the gravitas of their father, writ in crow’s feet and laugh lines.  A girl tugs at his robes, white wings on her head pricked high with pride; she looks to be twelve or thirteen, perhaps, and stares at Kallian with the love of a child for their father. A niece Melia will never meet, never see; a girl taken from them long before she was ever born. A possible future, a dream of what might have been.

Beside them, his face weathered by age but kinder than ever, stands Soren Antiqua. His arm is around his beloved son; he is smiling at Melia, tears at the corners of his eyes. He would have loved his grandson Noah so dearly, she knows. Noah has his spirit, his strength, his ability to think deeply and gravely; Soren would‘ve cared little for the fact that Noah’s blood is entirely Homs. He is Melia’s son, and so Soren would have loved him. He would have loved them all, Eunie and Ethel, Noah and Nikol. He would have loved Lanz and Sena and Taion and Mio; he would have been the wise, beloved grandfather of a whole generation, had fate been just a little bit kinder.

Melia blinks, tears filling her eyes, and finds that whatever the figures were—dream, hallucination, figment of her imagination created by such an emotional day—they are gone now. They never truly existed. And still she carries them with her.

Fiora and Shulk grip her hands tightly. “Love? Are you okay?” Fiora repeats, sounding worried.

Melia wipes her tears away. “Yes,” she murmurs, finding that, despite it all, she is telling the truth. “I’m fine.”

She still carries the ghosts. She always will. She will miss Soren and Kallian every day, mourn the lives they didn’t get to live, the holes they left in her heart. But she will not let the pain destroy her. There is a future to build, and a son to watch marry the love of his life. There is a world that she fought for. A war she won.

She is Melia Antiqua. Sister of Kallian, daughter of Soren. Mother. Queen. Wife. And she learned to face her grief and come out smiling long ago.

Somewhere far away, at the altar, Noah and Mio kiss. Here and now, Melia turns to Fiora, and does the same.

“I love you,” she whispers. “I love both of you. Thank you.”

Fiora and Shulk beam. As the wedding around them kicks into gear, full of sound and light and joy, they share a single quiet moment for themselves.

“We love you too,” they murmur, and Melia knows that this is the world she would choose, every time.