Yours Will Be A Happy Future

Lucina is the first one to leave.

It's something they'd discussed, among the future kids; none of them could stay after the war. Some had planned to stick together. Some had planned to settle nearby.

But, regardless, none of them belonged here. This world, this future- it is not for them. There is a wall, between them and this world, built with bricks of horrors that will no longer happen and memories from a past that never was. It's in the very tongue they speak, in their accent that no one can place, in their borrowed words from other survivors.

Lucina loves them, her comrades. These people she fought against and fought with, who bled with and for her, who understand her without need to filter out their common pidgin. Lucina loves them, the Shephreds. This father who smiles though he's grieving, this aunt she never really got to know, this little girl she used to be who will never become her.

Lucina loves them all, and she refuses to see any of them ever again.

She boards in a port in Valm. She stands on the deck to watch the shore get further and further away, her last ties to this bloody war vanishing into the horizon.

I dare you, she thinks, friends, foes, family, gods, History. I dare any of you to be so bold as to find me.

It only gets easier to breathe from here.

---

She picks up a job as a sellsword in Tellius.

Not like she has any other option. Lucina is good at one and one thing, and that is killing. Her future had left little space for anything else. (Perhaps she should have picked up earlier, that Grima lurked within her mother. How else could Lucina have inherited such an affinity with destruction?)

Her new team is... nice. It's strange, to battle with people she does not know from the inside out. But she likes it; what she knows of them, she knows because they tell her, not because she is a decade ahead of them. What she knows of them, they know she knows, and she has no need to hide.

"You remind me of a friend." Ike tells her once, while they're polishing their swords. You remind me of a friend, and Lucina tenses up for a second- and then she remembers, that there is no way for him to know of Chrom, or Ylisse, or even of Naga, and whatever ressemblance he can see in her can't possibly be related to any of that.

"You know we don't care, right? That you are Branded?"

Branded means something very different in Tellius. Lucina isn't quite sure what it means, exactly, but as she's only ever heard it whispered with hateful glances, she assumes it's a slur of sorts. It's dumb luck, really, that she'd packed her butterfly mask. She would have ran into way more trouble without it.

We don't care that you are Branded, Ike says, and Lucina knows what he means is human, taguel, or else, you fight well and that's all that matters to me. But a tiny part of her can't help but hear it as you are more to us than the princess of a doomed country. You are more than just a tool to save your family. Naga's heir as you may be, for us, you are only Lucina.

"Thank you." She replies, and if her voice comes out a little choked, he doesn't mention it.

---

Ike's mercenaries rarely ever forage for food. The job pays well enough that they can spend money on food, and besides, they don't have the time to go pick berries. That being said, every once in a while, they indulge in hunting game, if only for the bow practice.

It's elbow-deep inside a deer, carefully plucking its insides out, that Lucina finds the letter.

"What in Naga's name-"

"Oh! You got an Invitation too?" Rolf perks up next to her. "Ike gets one every year."

"I don't think anything that ended up in a deer's stomach was intended for me specifically." The paper feels wet in her hands, yet the ink hasn't stained. That is some crazy quality paper-

Her breath hitches.

"I don't know. I know Ike has found his Invitations in stranger places."

The letter

The letter sports her name.

---

"It's a fighting turnament," Ike explains, sorting through the armory, "takes place in the Outrealms. Happens once every year."

"How," Lucina's voice is white as bone, "how did they find me?"

Ike shrugs. "The Invitation always finds its recipient. I found one in my boot, once."

She's shaking all over. It's not so much the mystic of it that scares her- Lucina is no mage and has long accepted that this is a domain that would forever surprise her- but the fact that she can be found. Even now, on the other end of the world, she cannot hide.

"Hey." Ike's voice is a deep green, like pine trees. It's an anchor in that storm of emotions. "Whatever you're running from, I assure you, this is unrelated."

I'm not running, she wants to say, except from memories and a burning legacy, but instead what she replies is: "what do you know?"

"Trust me." He replies, unfazed by her outburst. "This place is completely divorced from our reality. It is too bizarre to be."

There is something out there that you cannot understand but it is watching you shouldn't be a comforting thought, but- it kind of is, in a way. Lucina fears the empty nights far less than anything that bears a face.

Ike stares at her, for a bit. "... I think you should come. Getting to go all out in battle without worrying about consequences can be... good."

There's something in how he says that, heavy with meaning and experience, and so Lucina has no choice but to listen. "Who would we even fight against?" She asks, trying to calm her frenzied heart. "Each other?"

"Possibly. And warriors from other Outrealms." He makes a low noise. "They're good people. It's nice to talk to folks who are completely unrelated to your life, too."

Ah. That's... yeah. Yeah. Lucina gets that.

"That's where I met Marth." He continues. "I think you would like him. He gives good insights." And Lucina's heart goes highwire again.

"Who now?"

"Marth?" Ike turns to look at her, puzzled. "My friend who looks like you. I told you about him, remember?"

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