#plusquam

"Hah. And you know me so well?" As though Gerome had ever acted out of more than common courtesy - out of respect for his father's duty to the Exalt. "Morgan is dead."

"And Morgan will stay dead."

What? Lucina truly could not know of this. Of whatever game Gerome played now. He walked away from Minerva with his hands up and palms facing forward. Did he clean your blood off his axe?

"I have a preposition."

Your hand clenched around your knife. You could kill him. He's wide open. Instead, you said, "I'm listening."

"We are in the distant past, years before our time. Changing fate is what all of them want. But... it would not do to change too much."

You damn well knew that already, and it agonized you. How do you prune the bad and keep the good? How do you guarantee any of you will ever be born?

"Marth, Caeda, Michalis. All of these names, childish they may be, serve a purpose."

"What, making Owain happy?"

Gerome frowned. "Kris had a hand in this, I admit."

"Kris isn't a real hero."

"According to Kris, Kris is a 'heavily debated historical subject.'" You could hear the air-quotes on that one. Despite his nonsensical tales, both Owain and Lucina held deep passion for the past. Many an argument you snuck past in summer evenings, and you recalled, ever so distant, Gerome skulking around some of them.

"I'm not suprised," a smile crept into your voice, and you grimaced to push it back down.

"We must distance ourselves from the people of the past. We do not belong here."

"You just don't want me blabbing to your mother."

Gerome moved his hand, and you prepared to strike, but he merely massaged his temple. Much good it did him behind the mask. It's the gesture that counted. "The Cherche of this world is not my mother, and she never will be. But yes."

The Robin of this world was not your father, and never would be. Papa was long gone and Dad was buried under a mountain of flowers.

You blinked.

"And what do I gain in return? For not proclaiming your huge forehead to the high heavens?"

Where Gerome was a stick in the mud before, he truly has become even stiffer since you spoke last. And riling him up remained just as fun. You could never resist.

He scoffed. "I won't tell Marth of you."

Now it was your turn to scoff. "What should I care if she finds out?" Distant wingbeats, ever closer, beating over your heart. A grin split your face. "And what should I care if I dispose of you right here and now?"

The undead wyvern crashed into the clearing, snapping branches and bushes along the way. Its head lolled further than before, taking a loop around its neck before settling in your direction.

Gerome dodged back to evade the spray of plant matter and dirt. As you jumped atop the wyvern and readied your magic, so did he climb Minerva and take out his hand axe.

"Indeed. Perhaps I should be off to tell him now, that his dear sibling faked their death and joined the one who killed his parents."

"Indeed. Perhaps I should be off to tell him now, that his dear sibling faked their death and joined the one who killed his parents."

He would not dare. "You insignificant wretched worm. You lot play at being heroes of justice, and yet you stoop to blackmailing me. Aren't you supposed to die for me?"

As a mage, you held the advantage in the air, especially since a wyvern's resistance was much meeker than a pegasus's. The two-faced wretch could count himself lucky you did not have a wind tome on hand, but thunder would fry him well enough.

"I never participated in your play acting. Marth became my only liege once you betrayed your kin." His voice rose to carry over Minerva's liftoff, not a step behind you.

Your kin. What a riot. And yet, it told you something very important - the fools had no clue of Master Grima's face, as he had ensured.

The two of you circled over the treetops, neither attacking, neither retreating.

First of!! I dunno if I talked about them before!! (I have the memory of a goldfish). The silly codenames!!

As I may or may not have mentioned before, the inspiration for this came from the Project Thabes mod for Awakening. In the ferox duel, the mod replaces the generics with inigo, severa, owain, and gerome. The awakening trio get their fates names (a coward's move, but one i understand), but gerome is named michalis, which i just enjoy soooo much???

so when i initially planned out for all the future kids to band together with lucina, i decided they all had to have codenames! otherwise there's really no point in lucina having one....

merric for laurent was the biggest no brainer of all of them, with caeda for severa being a close second. feel free to interpret why. gerome was obviously taken from the thabes mod, and the rest were... a challenge... to come up with!

owain actually gave me a lot of trouble. what WOULD he name himself? i've not finished shadow dragon myself (I only played the prologue so far... haha...), and most i know of the cast comes from mitosis. and scarf's new mystery lunatic reverse run on youtube. and it was that run that reminded me. that kris's confect is an item in the game. meaning that awakening era people know kris exists. except wasn't kris' deal that they like. did not want to be noted down in history.

hence kris being a "heavily debated historical subject". which of COURSE owain would name himself after an unsung but vitally important hero of the shadows.

others i may discuss as they come up? eh, we'll see. not every future kid is gonna be important (god knows that's way too many characters for me to handle), but they will be There. main focus of course being the fp3 squad, with the addition of two others. it is very obvious who it will be, i think.

next up, pairings!

most pairings werent set, outside the ones that are my obvious favorites (panne/lonqu, henlivia, chrobin (duh)). others were up in the air and just happened as i wrote. as i thought about gerome in this, and chatted about the subject with friends, frederick/cherche came to be for this fic! (and for the shrek au, oddly enough. it may have just been on my mind, and i thought chrom missing freddie's wedding was funny.)

it suited my purposes best if gerome had a stronger emotional tie to the blueberry siblings, and a knightly duty to protect them served just that. hence the dialogue of lucina being his liege. he's so utterly disinterested in getting to know the people of the past that i needed that extra bit to keep him coherent. he won't get close to anyone, but he'll do anything to support lucina's aims as though they were his own.

which brings me to the next subject, lucina's PoV! This is the first perspective switch in all of plusquam (not just because I couldn't meet my 4k benchmark with morgan alone this time). Since Morgan and Lucina act separately and won't encounter often, I needed the extra time to establish her character here. To me, there's a clear dissonance between how Morgan views her and how Lucina is. Both of them are unreliable narrators to varying degrees, yet how they differ is where the meat is.

Like, for example, Morgan completely rejecting that Lucina is Robin's child as well, and not just Chrom's, because Grima told them Lucina was different. As compared to the actual Lucina still deeply affected by Robin, and even engaging with grimleal theology on an even field because of him and the other plegian influences in her life.

there's also the matter of her narration style. I waffled back and forth on whether to give her second person narration as well, but ultimately decided on third person limited, with a catch - she exclusively refers to everyone, including herself, by their codenames.

in both their perspectives, i want to create separation between their original names and who they act as. With morgan, this succeeds because the viewpoint has no need to mention their name whatsoever, and with lucina, it succeeds because she's the one creating that distance in her own mind. it's fun to play with!

ah, siblings. so different, yet so similar.

as for the pronouns situation on lucina's pov. well. schrödinger's transgender.

minor thing. i hate adapting canon scenes close to script, hence me just freestyling when lucina and co meet chrom and squad. there's also just... no future portal risen roaming about, which would've made the point moot anyway. that's a very interesting consequence to play with.

having an endless army of generic undead is lame. having to draw on the actual dead of the immediate area - now we're getting spicy!

despite everything, i have grown attached to the risen wyvern and its chittering ways, but it sadly has to go. there's a reason morgan never named it. farewell my sweet prince. aurgh. i mean. this thing has been with morgan through the entire past so far. and it just fell apart more and more over time. crashing into a wall and breaking its neck, having half its throat torn out - poor thing. good thing it can't feel pain anymore.

that is, i think, all i wanted to blabber about? if you're a reader of plusquam, hi, i love you, i hope you have a great day, you may summon me for one turn of battle without expending an action and i will appear as a shimmering blue specter to protect you from harm.