An Offered Hand (#070 - remainder)

[rosage]

Title: An Offered Hand
Fandom: Fire Emblem Fates (Conquest)
Pairing: Kagero/Hinoka
Rating: G
Word Count: 443
Note: Summary and prompt are under the cut, as they and the fic contain Conquest spoilers.
Prompt: #033 - queen
Summary: Kagero escapes the war with her life, but not her purpose. Hinoka provides one. 
(Set in a timeline where Saizo dies, but Kagero doesn't.)

For the third time that morning, Kagero centers the circlet behind Hinoka’s head. “Does it not fit?” Hinoka asks. Her top half is still, but the resettling of her leg betrays her. Kagero almost nudges it back in place before remembering herself.

“It fits, but you must keep your back straight. Easy as it is to bend, you are our strength now.”

To her credit, Hinoka doesn’t complain, though it takes visible strain for her to straighten. She has a habit of hunching forward, like she’s atop her mount, ready to spring into the thick of battle. Her battles now are those of restraint, diplomacy, wisdom—traits Kagero keeps reminding them both that Ryoma spent years cultivating.

Kagero dips to smooth an imaginary wrinkle in Hinoka’s robes, which make her look more like Reina than Mikoto. Recently, after days spent locked in her chambers, Sakura appeared in her mother’s priestess uniform. Before noon she’d guided a crying noble child to rest and stuffed her cheeks with more sweets than was proper, earning many people’s first smiles that season—but she is still very much a princess, just as Hinoka still cuts the figure of a dashing knight.

Kagero releases such thoughts, just as she’s released most thoughts of late. She paints every morning before Hinoka rises, canvases streaked with black and red ink, the shapes unidentifiable to even her eye. Without looking at the dates, she can find the page of her diary from the night where she met up with Kaze in secret vigil; the day before that features a cat.

In daylight, there’s no space for any of it. Kneeling, she recites Hinoka’s agenda for the day, then listens as Hinoka repeats it, halting to ask Kagero questions about the minutiae. Since the coronation Kagero’s life has been constant service. Setsuna trains their lady in archery while Azama offers his own sort of counsel, but Hinoka realized a queen needed steadier guidance, and perhaps—in her kindness—that Kagero needed someone to guide.

With the agenda confirmed, there’s nothing else keeping them from leaving the queen’s chambers. Hinoka doesn’t move. This is her one moment of hesitation each day, a moment only Kagero sees. One where her lady is not a queen, but a princess, or a knight, or perhaps just a sister.

Kagero offers her hand. She’s learning, even if it requires fighting her training, that Hinoka would rather escort someone than be escorted—just as Hinoka’s learning that Kagero neither needs nor wants her constant care.

“The throne calls out for your warmth, milady.”

Broken from her haze, Hinoka bids Kagero rise before striding from the room.