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caraidean · 5 years

Text

Delayed Confession

Participant(s): Titania, Ike ( @radiantxhero)

Words: 2,551

Type: Base Conversation

Summary: Following the events of Path of Radiance, Ike asks Titania about the nature of her relationship with his father. After a moment of hesitation, she speaks up about her feelings for her former commander and has an emotional outburst that leaves her vulnerable.

Content Warning: Character death mention; Copious angst; Entirely accidental self-harm

radiantxhero-moved: "Are you in love with my father...?" [I COULDN'T PASS THIS UP]

Those words made her freeze for a moment, almost dropping the knife she had been holding. She stared at the broken axe handle she’d been trying to at least somewhat salvage into something else, before suddenly shoving it off the table in a burst of violent energy that overcame her other instincts. It took a slightly shuddering breath to steady herself, turning to face Ike with a guarded expression on her face.

He didn’t use the past tense.

…well, he’d have been wrong to. She sighed, closing her eyes and suddenly feeling so much older than she was used to. How was she meant to answer that question? She’d been hoping that instead of asking it he’d either never notice or just come to the conclusion himself without help, never raising it around her. Perhaps that had been too much tact to ask for.

What was she meant to say? Maybe the truth was the simple version. Maybe it would just be best to get it all out at once, like yanking an arrow out of her arm. So she forced her eyes open, oblivious to the tears starting to gather as she let out one of the few secrets she’d kept from everyone around her in the mercenaries.

“I always was.”

Ike remained silent as his question seemed to sink in, a jolt running through his body as Titania abruptly shoved the broken axe handle she’d been working on to the floor, the clatter of wood on stone surprisingly loud in the tense silence. Doubt at bringing this up sunk its claws into his belly, and Ike nearly backed away to let them both recover – but, he needed to know from her, in her own words.

It wasn’t going to be something easy to talk about. But, it seemed, almost nothing was where his father was involved.

She looked so…tired. Worn out and worn down. It reminded him so much of the time he accidentally eavesdropped on her mourning his father’s death. Titania was not someone he saw vulnerable; it was the rarest of occurrences, and it was always a little unnerving when it happened.

I always was.

That cut right to the heart of it, didn’t it?

Ever since he was a boy, Ike had been confused as to the relationship between Titania and his father. He understood that they were good friends and close comrades, but there was just…something else at the fringes that always boggled him.

This went far beyond just that time in Gallia, after his father…This clearly went way back.

“Why…didn’t you ever act on it? I…I know how hard his death hit you. Didn’t quite understand the full…scope of it ‘til now, but….,” he trailed off, shifting his weight out of discomfort, banging the side of his curled fist idly against his thigh. “He cared about you as well.” It was both a fact, and a bit of a question.

You both cared for each other. Why did you never act on your feelings? You were by each others’ side for as long as I can remember…

“It was complicated.” Titania said heavily, unable to meet Ike’s eyes. The room was heavy with the awkward silences that the pauses in the conversation brought, the woman overwhelmed with her own memories while she knew Ike was dealing with it from his own point of view.

“I - …I cared for your mother as well. More than it’s possible to easily explain.” She managed to say eventually, running a hand through red hair and groaning a little. “So, naturally, I could never do anything back then. It would not have been fair to anyone involved, never mind the obvious moral difficulties. Then, after Elena passed…her memory lingered, Ike. Your father never moved on - and it was hard for me to do so as well. I just kept waiting, hoping that eventually there’d be a time when we could just move past it all. I think he knew I was waiting, too, but we never said anything about it.”

She drummed her fingers idly on the tabletop, a few memories flickering through her mind - memories she decided to keep private. Ike wanted an explanation, but some things she had to keep to herself, being either far too complex to explain or far too intimate to want to.

“I waited for years, Ike.” Her shoulders sagged, and she seemed to crumple before him under the weight of her grief and doubts. “But in the end it was for nothing. I lost…two people I loved very dearly. And I never managed to make them understand how I felt before they passed.”

Complicated seemed like an understatement, especially after Titania voiced a new bit of information. She had loved Elena in the same way, too? Ike supposed that made sense. He still didn’t remember much about those early years, but he knew Titania had been around a lot, and that she knew his mother just as well as she had known his father.

Still, a part of him just didn’t understand.

If they had all cared for each other, why avoid it? From the way Titania had spoken of their time in Gallia, as little as that happened, it had sounded like it had been a good time in everyone’s lives. Up to…a certain point. What did anything else really matter if they all cared for one another? How was it fair that Titania had to wait, and wait, and wait?

Brows furrowed, Ike spoke up, “You all….cared for each other. Shouldn’t…shouldn’t you have been there for each other when…mother was no longer there?” He didn’t mean as just comrades, as just friends – but what they were, something that ran deeper than that. Ike understood if nothing really happened, the loss too great or too soon, but if they truly cared about one another, why not take some solace in that? Ike didn’t remember much about his mother, but he knew she was kind, and would not have begrudged them for becoming close after her death.

As much as he understood it, Ike couldn’t help feeling some frustration at his father.

Swallowing, Ike looked back to Titania.

She looked so…defeated…

“…I’m sorry,” he managed to get out, voice heavy. He was sorry for dredging up so many memories, sorry for what had happened, sorry that things hadn’t gone differently. Maybe…Maybe if he had been better, faster, he could have saved Greil from his death, and things might have been different for them.

Titania deserved far better than she had received.

Shouldn’t you have been there for each other when mother was no longer there?

Something about those words cut through Titania’s sadness like a knife, searing her mind as it reopened old wounds and frustrations. She tried to get a grip on herself, but failed - and brought her fist and forearm down on the wooden table, hard, cracking it almost in two.

“I TRIED TO BE! BUT HE WOULD NEVER LET ME!” Anger was mixed with the despair in her voice now, the redhead storming to her feet as emotions she’d kept hidden away quietly since even before Greil’s death surged back to the surface. No more half-truths and gentle lies or creative interpretations of the events now, just pain and frustration from almost twenty years of life. "Whenever I raised the subject - whenever we talked about it, he would always decline! Not because he did not care for me, but for some ethereal reason he refused to tell me about! At every turn I tried to be there for him, but he would just push me away again and again! And he would never tell me why!“

That was the true pain that always ached at her about the failure of her dreamed relationship with Greil. Not that it hadn’t happened - but that his rejections had never been explained. Had he just been honest with her, she could have taken that, but…

“So I waited and I waited and I waited and even after we had both moved on he still would do nothing! He knew I was waiting and he never intended to do anything about it!”

Her anger gave way to a low, keening moan as she rested against a wall, nursing her throbbing hand to her chest for a moment as tears ran freely down her cheeks. “I was never right for him. It was never the time. And it never will be.”

Ike flinched when Titania slammed her fist down onto the table with enough force to elicit a crack from the wood – a sound he at first feared had come from bone, until he saw the fissure in the table top.

Very rarely in his life could Ike recall Titania getting angry enough to shout or yell, or to inflict unnecessary damage. It was natural, considering everything that she was saying, but it was unnerving to see; Ike had known her his entire life, and it was more than a little scary to finally see her as the utterly human person she was rather than what his childish memory could pull up.

It was like the very moment he realized that his father was fallible. The moment when his father was struck through, and that there was no saving him.

Ike let her shout, let her get out all that she needed to. She’d kept this from everyone for years. And…he was the commander now, this was part of his duty; everyone in the company was his responsibility, not just on the battlefield but off it as well.

“…I…I don’t think I have any of the right words to say…If there are any right words to say at all,” Ike spoke up hesitantly once Titania slumped against the far wall, the young commander taking several measured steps towards his deputy commander. “But I know that…that without you, my father wouldn’t have continued on the same way that he did. You were always there, by his side no matter what, and he knew he could depend on you.”

Very similar to how Ike depended on her now.

“That doesn’t…excuse that my father played a large part in the pain you feel now. I know love is…is no simple thing, but he shouldn’t have left you to wait for him as he did,” he continued, the pads of his fingers brushing over the crack in the table top as he walked beside it. “You gave him your all – would have given him even more than that. It was…It was a selfish thing for him to do, but my father did a lot of selfish things in the effort to do what he thought was best for everyone in the long run.”

Ike had a very strong feeling that the Medallion was behind part of his father’s reasoning for not letting Titania closer. Perhaps, also, his past in Daein. Ike only knew what Volke had been able to tell him, and that, of course, did not include his father’s thoughts.

“No. It wasn’t fair, but that was the choice he ended up making.” Titania said in a heavy voice, shifting to wipe away her tears with her good hand while keeping the other pressed to her chest. She’d need to check it with Rhys later, she could tell - the bones may have fractured when she broke the table.

Dammit. She’d need to explain that away to the rest as well, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself - she was lucky that her outburst hadn’t brought anyone running. She stood there in silence now, staring at the ground with lips slightly pursed as she moved through her thoughts and eventually gave a helpless shrug.

“Your father just did what he thought was right. But perhaps he could have stood to explain it a little more.” She shook her head, stepping away from the wall and walking past and around Ike with a forced look of calm on her face even as she knew she continued to cry.

“You should get back to work, Commander. The others will be up and about soon enough.”

Ike knew life wasn’t a fair thing, but he had considered his father to be a fair man; even with all that was kept from Mist and himself, he didn’t think it wholly unfair of his father to have done so, even if he wasn’t happy about it. But this…Ike couldn’t imagine the pain of waiting for so long, only to have any sort of real answer dashed.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Ike sighed.

“He could have said something, acknowledged it, even if it wasn’t a definite answer at the time. All I can do is apologize on his behalf…since he is no longer here to do so himself. I don’t think he ever meant you harm, but…”

But, it was no excuse.

Letting his hand drop, he nodded wordlessly, turning his attention back to the crack in the table.

“Get that looked at by Rhys as soon as you can, understand? Can’t have our second in command with a bad hand,” Ike murmured, clearing his throat as he continued, “I’ll get this out of here. See if Boyd and I can’t salvage it. If not, I suppose we’ll have some good fuel for the fire tonight.”

Titania needed time. Ike wanted her to have it.

“Rhys has had to fix more than one injury that people won’t explain. From you and Mia, mostly, but I’ve had my own fair share.” Titania’s lips twitched up into a faint smile at his order. She let out a sigh, keeping her hand cradled to her chest as she stared down at the floor for a moment.

“Greil never meant anybody he cared about harm. I’m sure whatever reason he had for keeping so quiet…it was to protect me somehow. Protect all of us.” She said, quietly. Her eyes finally strayed from the floor, meeting his own gaze once he looked away from the table and trying to harden themselves despite the tears still gathering in the corners of her gaze.

“A rejection would have been kinder. But, I wonder…would that have been the truth either? Maybe it was something to do with Elena.” She let out a heavy sigh and shook her head once more. “I guess we’ll never know now.”

She lowered her injured hand to about her waist, wincing as she felt the bones complain at the movement. She had the composure not to look too embarrassed as she stepped around the shattered table on her way out, pausing to meet her commander’s eyes one last time before she left.

“Don’t you ever think less of your father for this, Ike. This was between me and him - and perhaps more of the fault lay with me.” She shrugged, helplessly. “To you…the commander always did his best. Always. But perhaps it’s good to remember that nobody was perfect.”

With that, she stepped outside, intent on finding Rhys before anyone else spotted her nursing her injured hand - or could ask too many questions about what had happened to that table. She wouldn’t be surprised if Ike took the blame on that himself…

#Caring Deputy;Titania #reflection's sharp edge;titania thread archive #History Had Its Eyes On You;Thread Archive #radiantxhero #A Missed Opportunity;Titania & Greil

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