farina | All or Nothing | Fire Emblem 7

Title: All or Nothing
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7
Words: 1,499 words
Summary: Ostia is going to war.
Pairing/Character: Oswin/Serra with mention of Hector/Florina and other characters.
Extra Info: This was originally posted on January 18^th, 2012 as “practice writing” and was 855 words long.
Warnings: Mention of character death and the death of children.
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, romance

Thank you to @trash-god for the beta work again. MWAH!

Notes:

This story ranked #2 in the last “What should I rewrite?” poll, so after rewriting the winning story, I decided this one deserved its time in the sun.

Also, @serrafew took the time to comment on that poll to say they were rooting for this story, and that blew my mind, so this rewrite is for them (sorry, I don’t know what your AO3 username is to dedicate it properly)! What’s truly wild is that, even though they said they’d been searching for Serra/Oswin fic for years, it didn’t really click for me until I went to AO3 to check: there are literally zero ‘fics on AO3 for this couple. I thought they were just saying they were hoping to see new stuff for the first time in ages—not telling me that there just wasn’t anything at all! ☹

Then again, considering Sain/Fiora only has five stories in the tag on AO3, I shouldn’t be surprised.

The original version of this story garnered 7 whole reviews, which may not sound like a lot, but even in 2012 it was an unprecedentedly high number—especially for an uncommon ship. I tried to keep all of the original comments in mind when rewriting this.

Per the comments: Serra was very convincing and in character and the reality of the post-war world was excellent (some didn’t make it, communication failed), but the story needed a little more fleshing out emotionally to feel complete, and there were a couple of expository lines of dialogue that needed to go.

As you can imagine, the original story was pretty bare bones and so in this rewrite I (once again) crafted a whole backstory for these characters and the life that they’ve been living since the war. It worked so well for “Waiting for the Rain” that doing the same thing here just felt natural.

The two biggest changes in this rewrite were:

1. There was a headhop from Oswin into Serra’s head right in the middle of the original story. This was intentionally done but made me feel batty on a reread (even though it did read as well-placed), so I switched the whole story into Oswin’s perspective.

2. The end of the story was originally Serra’s “Whatever would you and Lord Hector do without me?” line. A lot of reviewers mentioned how much they liked it so it felt bad to change, but the story changed too much to keep it in its original form. Instead, when Serra says this line it’s more subdued (almost a rhetorical question) and she follows it up with a question that helps echo the title of this story: “You know I will give it my all, don’t you?”

The original story felt a little meaningless from Oswin’s perspective; it was like he was there to deliver the bad news and listen to Serra be sad about how much she specifically has lost (and then we see that she just can’t take being left behind again and tells him how it’s going to be). While the foundation of their relationship felt pretty solid, and I love Serra-taking-charge in general, I knew I could do better in a rewrite by simply ensuring that one of the losses was something they ended up grieving together.

It's hard for me to explain what I think this added to the story, but I hope it made Oswin feel more compassionate and real, and that it made Serra and Oswin feel closer and more united. He understands some of her grief intimately and all the rest of it he witnessed in real time; he knows her parents abandoned her; he knows how she feels about being left behind and how she worries and this is what compels him to allow her to join him on the battlefield again.

Due to the backstory I concocted, I had the same problem I had with “Waiting for the Rain”: there were a few things I wanted to add to this story that I couldn’t find room for, and it was especially disappointing to not be able to find space to talk more about the loss of the children and how Serra and Oswin must have grieved (separately and together) or about the fact that Oswin should very well have been able to retire comfortably soon (at his age).

Alas.

The real tragedy here is in knowing the turn the war takes. Even if the two of them don’t die, we know they will be forced to grieve again soon.