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The halls of Castle Pherae felt just a bit emptier than they had a moment ago, and Lyn couldn’t help but be unsettled by the shift. It wasn’t the lack of music, or conversation, or any shortage of drink that chilled the room around her - it was the absence of a spark of green, a glimmering smile, a voice so soft even the wind could drown it out. It wasn’t like she could be surprised - Mark had a habit of leaving without saying goodbye.
Hesitantly, Lyn picked up her skirts and walked towards the doors of the castle, green eyes searching for their mirror in fabric, hoping to catch her tactician before she truly escaped, forever. It wasn’t the color that gave the fleeing tactician away, but the motion of her skirts, being pulled under her familiar traveling cloak. She didn’t seem to hear Lyn coming, so she slowed her approach. Her gaze lingered on the image of Mark, still wearing the formalwear Eliwood had asked her to. It wouldn’t be appropriate for you to be at a coronation in your traveling clothes, he’d said, as gently as he could.
“You’re leaving already?” Mark turned at Lyn’s voice, offering an apologetic smile as she paused buttoning up the inner layer of her cloak.
“I was supposed to be on the road an hour ago,” she signed in return, glancing past Lyn at the still-lively party. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t stay more.”
“Eliwood doesn’t seem the type to throw you into the cold after one night,” Lyn countered, stepping forward. “Surely he offered you a room in the castle to stay in.”
“He did,” Mark answered, her gaze dropping slightly, “and I declined.”
“Why? You’re that eager to get away from us?” Lyn let the smile drop from her lips, let the hurt shine through plainly on her face. “We haven’t seen you in so long, and you disappear after less than a week.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark repeated. “I’m not trying to run away from you. I just get restless.” Mark, too, had lost her smile, and something deep within Lyn ached at the casualty. Would that she had never spoken - that she might get another few moments with Mark’s gentle smile before it left her, before Mark pulled her hood over her head returned to being no one but a traveler in green.
“I can’t tempt you with a dance? Just the two of us?” Lyn extended one of her hands, calloused from the sword, but Mark’s hands, so focused on her words, did not meet it.
“You should have asked earlier,” she replied simply, bringing her gaze back up to meet Lyn’s. Her reddish eyes glanced past her bangs, the faint makeup she’d allowed Lyn to apply still kissed her lips, and her eyelids still weighed heavy with shadows. She had always been pretty, in her own understated way, but tonight, she stunned, pulled all eyes to her.
As a leader should. As a tactician never dared to.
“You’re not getting changed?” Lyn felt herself reaching for anything, anything to keep Mark closer, for just a little bit longer. “Surely you don’t mean to travel in that nice dress.” She held Mark’s gaze for as long as Mark let her.
“I’m bringing it with me, in my pack. I’ll be going up to Etruria, next, and Eliwood believes I’ll need something nice to wear.”
“A nice gift.” It was Lyn’s turn to drop her gaze, glance back towards the party. “Did you say goodbye to Eliwood and Hector, at least?” Mark waited for Lyn’s eyes to return to her before responding.
“I did. I looked for you as well, but didn’t see you.” A pause, like she needed a breath for her next sentence. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll miss you, you know.” The words left her lips before she could consider them, before she could debate the vulnerability of we versus I, before she could try to calculate which would have a greater effect on her tactician. Regardless, Mark stiffened, her hands lowering slightly.
“I know. I’ll miss you all as well.”
“Then stay!” Finally, Lyn closed the distance between them, taking Mark’s hands in hers. “Stay here, with us. Just a little while.” She pulled the tactician’s slender hands to her chest, trying to ignore the flutter deep in her stomach, the wide-eyed stare Mark gave. “Eliwood or Hector would be happy to have you, or-” ( you could come live with me-!) “-you could come back to Sacae with me. Just like before.” Before the war, before Mark had planted her feet in history, before Lyn was ever Lady Lyndis of Caelin. What would she do, if she had the choice to go back, knowing what she knew now? Knowing Mark as she did now? Part of her wanted to say she would never leave. She knew that wasn’t true.
The offer still hung in the air between them, but Mark’s eyes were stone, and she shook her head gently as she pulled her hands away.
“I can’t do that, Lyn. You know that.” She took another step back, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, pulling the cloak tighter around her. “I will be back to visit, sometime. I promise you that.”
“And how would I come visit you, should the thought take me?” ( Should the thought grip me, and not let me go? ) For that, her tactician had no answer.
“I don’t know,” she signed, eyes dim with the admission. “You could send it to someone in Etruria. Lord Pent, maybe. He’d be able to reach me.”
“It’s not the same, Mark...! Surely you understand that!” She wanted, more than anything, to reach back out to Mark and grab her, hold her like a ship with no sail, keeping the tide from taking her tactician, her tactican, her, her, her .
“I do, but there is no better solution I can offer you. I’m sorry.” The rope slipped from Lyn’s hands, even as she dug her heels against the dock, and the ship began to drift away, like it always did...
Lyn stepped back, watching her tactician do the same. No, the tactician, the Lycian tactician, not hers. Mark was never hers, not in the way she wanted her to be.
“Be safe on the road,” she offered. The only thing she could. “Please.”
“I will. I always am.” Mark turned towards the door, but hesitated. “I will see you again, Lyn. I promise.” Lyn could only nod, watch as her- as Mark, left the castle behind.
She didn’t mean to linger so long at the window, watching the green cloak get smaller and smaller in the night until she was nothing but a glimmer in Lyn’s imagination. Nothing but a shred of fabric on the breeze, nothing but a smile and a laugh and a steady guiding hand. She meant to enjoy the rest of the night - a marquess’s coronation was an event hopefully held once in a lifetime - but she could only stare out at the village below and wonder if Mark wandered their streets, if anyone she met knew who she was. If Mark herself knew how treasured she was, by the people she’d left behind.
How treasured she was by Lady Lyndis of Caelin, how treasured she was by Lyn of the Lorca.