farina | Mausoleum | Fire Emblem 7

Title: Mausoleum
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7
Words: 1,483 words
Summary: What use was this place, this kingdom, without the lady they had all sworn to protect?
Pairing/Character: Kent/Lyn (onesided?), Florina, Wil, Sain
Extra Info: This was originally written and posted on December 31, 2009 for my friend Nico. His prompt was the sentence in the summary + purple hyacinths.
Rating: T
Genre: One-sided(?) romance, reflection, character study lite

Notes:

I want to start this out by saying this ‘fic was never popular. The three reviews I received were all very meaningful, though, so shoutout to Caellach, Mark, and Trevor for being so kind and thoughtful. I saved all the reviews on the ‘fics I deleted and I do always read them before rewriting anything.

KentLyn has always been a bit, uh, tumultuous, shall we say, for me as a writer. I wrote, quite literally, over a hundred fics for them, and I know in all that kerfuffle people just started tuning it out. I won’t lie, I know a lot of it was painfully mediocre. Yes, I was hyperfixated. No, I couldn’t have stopped myself.

Looking back through the rubble years later, not a lot stood out to me as being worth my time to rework or rewrite, but this story did. I was always happy with the title. I was always happy with the characterization. I was always happy with the pacing.

It was not a difficult rewrite, though it did take a few hours to get to a place that satisfied me. Some of the wording was a bit too “modern” (a critique I received that I completely agree with) and I tweaked the scenes to feel more substantial without also being overloaded with detail. Nobody ever criticized the latter point but I felt it during my reread.

The real tragedy in this story might be overlooked or missed if you read everything at face value, so I hope for those looking I was able to capture the situation I envisioned correctly: Kent’s love wasn’t really one-sided. It was, however, too quiet. He believed he needed to keep it quiet/discreet, but in doing so he hid it from not only Lyn but his friends as well. Lyn thought there was something there, too, which is why she stayed on as long as she did, but she left when it became clear to her that nothing was going to change and she did not want to settle for as little as Kent was willing to give her.

This is also why Florina is so “ignorant” and cold to Kent; she thinks he broke Lyn’s heart and left her lonely. She does leave to catch up to Lyn, though. So no, Lyn doesn’t stay lonely.

Lastly, I’m sure this was really obvious, but Kent AND Lyn’s emotional constipation is why everyone leaves. It’s destructive to all relationships, not just the ones of a romantic nature. I feel like this story perfectly captures the poor communication that was obvious in their supports with one another (and in some cases, with others) when the stakes are higher.

(And truly depressing is that...if Kent had confided in Sain at any point about how much he was hurting, Sain could never have left him. But because Kent only busied himself with work, Sain felt they had grown apart, and the gap was too much to bridge.)