Months bled into each other with the slow persistence of a war that had no interest in ending.
The Second Holy War between the Kingdom of Celesta and the Arvatra Empire continued to consu the continent with all the enthusiasm of a fire that kept finding new things to burn. Battles won and lost. Cities changed hands. People died in numbers that stopped aning anything after a while because the human mind simply wasn’t built to hold grief at that scale.
It showed absolutely no signs of resolution. No signs of fatigue on either side. Just the sa continuous, pointless machinery of war.
Amael found the whole thing deeply uncomfortable, which was saying sothing given that discomfort was a condition he’d long since made his peace with. He was positioned quite far from the active battlefields, far enough that the sounds didn’t reach him, far enough that the smoke was just a distant sar on the horizon on bad days. But he wasn’t naive about what that distance actually ant. The violence had a way of spreading, of bleeding outward from its origin like ink dropped in water. The forest where he’d made his current ho sat in the border territory between both kingdoms, and border territories had a tragic tendency to beco relevant once the fighting ran out of more obvious places to go.
He probably should have chosen sowhere more sensibly located.
But he liked this place. The trees were old and dense and minded their own business, the hunting was good, and until recently nobody had known he was here.
He stayed.
As he so often did when the rest of the world was busy destroying itself, Amael was sitting in front of his campfire doing sothing that actually mattered: cooking.
He leaned forward on his wooden bench, turning a long stick slowly in his hands, tending to the at he’d seasoned and secured above the flas with the focused attention of soone who took this particular task seriously. The sll coming off the at was already good, herbs and fat and smoke combining into sothing that made the area considerably more pleasant.
Cooking alone for years had made him genuinely good at it. Not incidentally good, not adequate, actually good. His daily existence, when left entirely to his own devices and not interrupted by Nihil’s training schedules and divine obligations, followed a comfortable pattern: hunt, cook, eat, rest, repeat.
Simple yet good enough for Amael.
Though lately, alone had beco a relative term.
Amael glanced up briefly at the trees surrounding the camp.
It had been approximately since the day he’d fought tatron, the Guardian Spirit of the Kingdom of Celesta.
He’d defeated tatron, yes. More relevantly, he’d saved the two won who had also been fighting it that day, pulling them back from danger.
In retrospect, saving people ca with consequences nobody warned you about.
Because those two won, as it turned out, were absolutely determined to make his solitude as theoretical as possible.
"I have had damn enough of that bald chancellor of yours, Syl, I am telling you!" Lisandra complained. "I am absolutely going to kill him the next ti he opens his mouth in my direction!"
"Please don’t do that," Alphonse said, erging from the trees a step behind her."That particular chancellor is very well-regarded in my court. Killing him would create serious complications that would take years to untangle."
"As if diplomacy is doing anything useful right now," Lisandra scoffed, stepping into the clearing around Amael’s campfire like she was arriving at a place that had been set aside specifically for her. "Both our Kingdoms are going to despise each other forever, Syl. I don’t see that changing. I really, genuinely, do not see it."
"We have to believe it can change, and we have to try," Alphonse replied. "We have to work at convincing our people."
"Convince them how, exactly?" Lisandra asked, dropping onto the wooden bench across from Amael on the other side of the campfire.
"Through words," Alphonse said, settling herself down beside Lisandra with equal calm. "Through argunts, through patience, through—"
"I’m not good with words," Lisandra interrupted, already reaching forward toward the cooking at. She plucked one of the prepared sticks, examined the at on it with brief professional interest, and took a bite. Her expression shifted imdiately into sothing pleasant. "Hmm. Good."
"They don’t listen to anyway," she continued, mouth still slightly full. "When I tell them to stop the war, they tell the most efficient solution would be for to simply kill you, Syl, and then it would all be over."
"They tell the sa thing in the opposite direction," Alphonse said, accepting a stick of at for herself with considerably more grace. "Nothing has changed since we each took power. They don’t respect us—not really. They tolerate us because we have power they can use, but respect is a different thing entirely."
"..."
Amael sat across from them, stick in hand, staring at the two won who had appeared in his camp, occupied his benches, and were now eating his carefully prepared food with the familiarity of people who had been doing this for years rather than months.
This was happening again.
It kept happening.
Every two or three days, sotis more often, they would appear. They’d find his camp regardless of where he relocated it, sit down without ceremony or apology, and proceed to have their argunts and air their frustrations and eat his food.
He’d complained about it at the beginning. Loudly, and with what he felt was entirely justified irritation. But sowhere between the first week and now, the complaints had tapered off. Not because he’d accepted it exactly, more because he’d noticed, with so private annoyance at himself, that he’d started listening to what they said. These two won who ruled warring kingdoms and couldn’t stand each other’s governnts but sohow always ended up on the sa bench, they complained about the sa things he’d spent his entire life resenting.
Duty and expectations.
He recognized it and understood it.
Still. Today he decided to say sothing about the food situation.
"Have you quite finished complaining," he asked, "while stealing my food?"
Both won stopped mid-chew and turned to look at him.
"What?" Lisandra said.
"I’m asking," Amael said, pointing his stick at them, "because this is my camp. My fire. My food that I hunted and seasoned and prepared. And you have both sat down and helped yourselves to it without so much as acknowledging that any of those things belong to ."
"You owe ," Lisandra replied imdiately. "Don’t forget that."
Amael’s brow lifted slowly. "Owe you. For what, exactly?"
It should be rather them who should owe him?
"You saw naked," Lisandra said, completely without embarrassnt, using her trump card. "That is a debt that extends, frankly, for life."
Amael looked at her for a long mont.
"I don’t think," he said finally, "there was particularly much to see. Certainly not enough to constitute a life debt."
The silence that followed lasted approximately one second.
Lisandra went completely still. Then the color rose in her face with extraordinary speed, a deep, furious red that swept from her neck to her hairline in what had to be record ti because she had not anticipated that response and had no prepared reaction for it.
"Y—You—!"
She shot to her feet, glaring down at Amael.
"Besides," Amael continued, completely unmoved by the glare, "you saw half naked as well, didn’t you? So I believe that makes us even."
"Y—You are a man," Lisandra sputtered, pointing at him. "That is completely different!"
"Is it?" Amael tilted his head slightly, his silver eyes narrowing slightly. "Male or female, it’s the sa thing. And yet here you are, complaining about being dismissed and overlooked because of your gender, now very happily using that sa gender to draw a distinction between us when it happens to be convenient for you."
Lisandra opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
The color that had flooded her face shifted from angry red into sothing more complicated and harder to na. She stood there with her mouth slightly open, clearly searching for a retort, until ultimately coming up completely empty.
He had shut her down entirely.
Amael turned his attention back to the fire, adjusting the angle of the at above the flas.
But when he glanced back up a mont later, sothing gave him pause.
Lisandra was still standing. But the anger had drained out of her posture, replaced by sothing entirely different.
Her hands were balled into fists at her sides, trembling slightly. Her face was still flushed, but not with anger anymore, with sothing more vulnerable. Her one visible eye, the right one, the other still covered by cloth since the fight with tatron had taken it was shining in a way that had nothing to do with rage.
"W—We just... wanted to be here," she said, stripped of all its usual fire and volu, it barely made it across the campfire.
Amael blinked. "What?"
"Can we not?!" She asked it like it cost her sothing to say, glaring at him through eyes that were undeniably, embarrassingly glassy with tears. "Is that such a problem? Is it?"
Amael found himself completely without words for a mont. He looked at her, standing there trembling with her fists clenched and her eye wet.
Why was she crying? What was happening? He genuinely didn’t know what to do with this.
His more sensible side surfaced without his permission. He found himself shaking his head before he’d consciously decided to. "I an... I never said that."
"Then why do you ignore us?!"
"Am I the one ignoring you?" Amael asked, dumbfounded. "You two appear at my camp unannounced. Repeatedly. You sit down without asking. You eat my food without asking. How exactly am I the one—"
"S—Since that day, we thanked you for helping us and you just..." Lisandra bit her lips and continued. "You didn’t even seem to care. Like it ant nothing. Like we ant nothing."
"I accepted your thanks?" Amael said raising a confused brow.
"And that’s all?" Lisandra asked.
Amael stared at her for a beat. "What did you want instead? For to pamper you?"
"I don’t want to be pampered!" She flared up once again. "But Syl said that you were like a Hero back then, the way you fought, and maybe you could—"
"Lisandra!"
Alphonse shouted out loud enough to make Amael grimace and shot her a scowl but the latter was too busy to shut down Lisandra as she reached out and grabbed Lisandra’s arm, pulling her back down onto the bench with considerable force, her own face burning a red so thorough and complete it had migrated all the way to her ears. "T—That is enough."
Amael’s gaze moved to Alphonse.
"A Hero," he repeated, in a perfectly neutral tone. "That’s interesting."
"I—I didn’t say it like that," Alphonse managed, staring down at her own hands where they were clenched tightly in her lap. "I simply ant...the way you handled tatron was...it wasn’t...I didn’t an to imply—"
She stopped. Pressed her lips together and stared harder at her hands.
Amael looked at her for a mont.
It occurred to him, not for the first ti but more clearly than before, that the one who dressed as a man was sohow considerably more feminine than the one who didn’t.
"Alright," he said finally. "Stop crying."
"I am not crying!" Lisandra yelped, her head snapping up.
"Of course you aren’t," Amael agreed easily, not wanting to purse this further. He reached over and held out another at stick toward her.
The glare she gave him could have stripped paint. But after a mont of pointed hesitation, she took it, snatching it more than accepting it and dropped her gaze to the ground out of embarrassnt.
"...Thanks," she muttered, taking a small self-conscious bite and staring very intently at the dirt near her feet.
Amael sighed seeing this.
They may be Queens but they were both young won at the end.
"I get it," he said. "You’re exhausted. Both of you. You didn’t choose this war, you didn’t choose to be born with the power you have, and you’re running out of places to put all of it." He glanced between them. "You’re also not that old, either of you. It’s not strange that you’re struggling. What’s strange is the situation you’ve been dropped into."
"We didn’t ask for it," Alphonse said quietly.
"Neither did I," Amael said. "I didn’t ask to be born the son of the Holy Guardian Nihil. I didn’t ask to be the Vessel of Samael’s power. And yet—" he gestured at himself, at the campfire in the middle of nowhere, at the entire strange shape of his life— "here I am. Living in a forest because it’s the only place I can breathe without soone trying to use for sothing."
Lisandra made a sound halfway between a gasp and a choke, her eyes going wide as dinner plates as she inhaled at exactly the wrong mont. "Wh—What?!"
The coughing fit that followed was spectacular. She doubled forward, one hand pressed to her chest, the at stick dangling dangerously from her fingers, absolutely shocked even while choking.
Alphonse’s composure, anwhile, had simply ceased to exist. Her mouth was hanging open.
Amael waited patiently for the chaos to subside.
When things had cald back down to sothing manageable, Amael surprisingly started talking.
About his father and the real issues up there, about what he’d been conscripted into by virtue of his birth. About Samael. About choosing to disappear into forests and mountains because the alternative was being shaped into sothing he wasn’t sure he wanted to beco.
He wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling them any of it. They weren’t allies. They weren’t family. They were, objectively, two rulers of warring kingdoms who kept showing up uninvited to eat his food and argue with each other beside his fire.
But maybe that was exactly why it was easy. They had their own burdens on their own young shoulders. He recognized it because he’d seen it in mirrors.
He watched them as he spoke, watched their expressions move through surprise and disbelief and sothing quieter at the end.
When he finished, the campfire crackled between them. Both won were staring at him silently.
"Well," he said, picking up his own stick again and turning it slowly above the flas. "As you can see, there are people out there having it worse than your. Which doesn’t make what you are going through better. But it’s worth knowing."
"I..." Lisandra shook her head slowly, voice hushed. "I genuinely cannot believe you are the son of the Holy Guardian Nihil."
"Believe it," Amael said. "And trust when I tell you, there is nothing holy about him beyond the title. The title does most of the work."
"You don’t seem to like him very much," Alphonse said staring at him like she had never before.
She had known from that mont he took down tatron that he wasn’t normal. But this was sothing else entirely.
"He’s my father," Amael said, with a complicated expression. "So part of can’t entirely write him off just for that reason alone. And I suppose, buried sowhere under everything complicated, I can appreciate certain things about him." He paused. "But he will never co close to my mother in terms of the love I have. She has never once tried to turn into an instrunt for soone else’s purpose." His gaze dropped to the fire. "He wants to beco Samael eventually. Fully, completely. And that’s not sothing I want."
"You’re afraid," Alphonse said.
Amael looked up at her and nodded. Just slightly, but genuinely. "I am the Vessel of Samael. If I collect all the Sins... I don’t know what remains of on the other side of that. The probability that I stop being and beco simply a continuation of Samael’s mories and will, that probability is not small." Sothing flickered behind his eyes, not quite fear, but the honest acknowledgnt of it. "And I don’t want to disappear. Not like that but..."
"But?" Lisandra had leaned forward, her earlier embarrassnt completely forgotten, drawn into the story with her whole body, too far forward, elbows on knees, single eye fixed on him.
Amael glanced at her, then reached out with a casual hand and removed a small piece of at that had been clinging to the corner of her lips. He ate it without hesitation.
Lisandra went scarlet.
"But," he continued, completely unbothered, "if that is what it takes, if becoming Samael is genuinely the only thing standing between everyone I care about and a world-ending catastrophe then I suppose I’ll take that gamble." He said, his silver eyes glowing and reflecting the flickering flas. "Sotis protecting the people you love asks more of you than you want to give. Sotis it asks for everything. Even the parts of yourself you most want to keep."
He looked at Alphonse when he said it, then held out another at stick to her.
"That is what I believe real love is."
Both won sat very still. The words had landed sowhere deep in them.
Lisandra stared at the ground, chewing slowly, stealing glances at Amael every few seconds and looking away each ti.
Alphonse accepted the at stick quietly, both hands wrapped around it, looking at it rather than at him.
The silence stretched very comfortably between them.
Then Amael looked up at both of them.
Maybe he had waited a bit for them to process everything he had told them.
"I may have a solution," he said casually, "for the idiotic war between your two kingdoms."
Both won snapped to attention very fast.
"What solution?!" Lisandra asked, leaning forward again.
"Are you going to intervene?" Alphonse asked right after. "Co forward and stop it yourself?"
Amael grimaced at Alphonse’s words. "Do you genuinely think I’m so kind of Hero who sweeps in and fixes wars?"
Alphonse opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked away with burning cheeks. "I don’t... I wasn’t suggesting..."
Well, truthfully she was hoping soone as strong and clearly charismatic as Amael could actually stop the war.
Maybe he could actually but Amael knew that by stepping in the matters of Celesta would have Michael on his ass and he would really wish not.
"Tell us!" Lisandra spoke up impatiently and eager. "Stop stalling and just say it!"
Amael looked between them, a small smile appearing.
"The quickest and cleanest way to end this war," he said, "is for both of you to die."
Both won turned to stone.
"Are you..." Lisandra’s voice ca out very carefully. "...going to kill us?"
"No," Amael said imdiately, raising a hand. "Why would I kill you? I said and ant presud dead, there’s a difference." He looked between them, letting the actual idea take shape and sink in. "Think about it. Both of you are the reason your respective armies have any confidence at all. You’re their powerhouses, their symbols, the reasons your soldiers believe they can win. Without you on the field, without you ’existing’ as far as anyone knows, does either Kingdom have the stomach to keep grinding through this war? Or does the whole thing quietly run out of fuel?"
The gears turned behind both sets of eyes simultaneously.
Slowly, like the first light of sothing dawning, Lisandra and Alphonse turned to look at each other.
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