(If you consider "the protagonists win" to be a spoiler for Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, then, uh… spoiler warning! Otherwise, there isn't anything at all in here that's a spoiler, even though it takes place right after the events of the game.)

Lead and Follow

I stood in the corner of the ballroom awkwardly, feeling out-of-place in a room full of nobility and administrative officials. Sure, some of the others of the Greil Mercenaries were here—we couldn't very well miss Queen Elincia's coronation ball, after all that we had done to restore her to the throne—but they had all abandoned me to a group of Crimean nobles that had surrounded me, trying to congratulate me or thank me or praise me because I was their "hero," or something.

"Um… Thank you, sir," I mumbled absent-mindedly after another man in some impractically fancy suit finished talking. Hopefully, that was an appropriate response. Fortunately, that man smiled and shook my hand before wandering elsewhere.

I stifled a sigh as a young couple started to approach me. How many more people wanted to talk to me in the same bland way? But before they could speak to me, a familiar voice interrupted them. "My lord Ike!"

I turned and found the newly-crowned Queen Elincia walking swiftly towards me. "Queen Elincia," I greeted. "Congratulations on being crowned queen." My words sounded as empty as those that the nobles said to me, but what else could I say?

"Thank you, my lord Ike, but we both know that my coronation was only possible because of your hard work. I must thank you and the Greil Mercenaries deeply." She paused a moment, shooting a glance at the group of nobility who were still standing by, before saying, "Would you like to dance, Sir Ike? It is only fitting that the queen and the hero dance together to celebrate this occasion."

I frowned. "Um… I don't know how to—"

She cleared her throat subtly, interrupting me.

I furrowed my eyebrows. Was she trying to imply something? …Oh, she was giving me a way out of being interrogated by these nobles. "I would love to dance with you if you don't mind teaching me," I quickly amended.

I extended my hand and let Queen Elincia lead me to the dance floor. The crowd of nobles stared after us for a moment before dispersing, muttering amongst themselves.

The queen took a quick moment to ask to the musicians to play a slow waltz. "Hopefully, this'll be a little easier to learn to dance to. Anyway, as the man, your role is to be the lead; as the woman, I'm the follow. You are going to guide my movements gently with your right arm on my back."

"On your back?" I raised my right hand uncertainly.

Elincia just smiled and guided it to her left shoulder blade before placing her left arm atop my right and grabbing my free hand with her free hand. "Keep your right arm firm. Now, try to feel the beat. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Walk in time, starting with your left foot—like marching on the battlefield, I suppose—and I'll follow your movements. It's obviously more complicated than this, but this is a good starting point."

I hesitated as the waltz lulled in the background. "Just… walk?" He paused for a couple of beats, and then started to march forward.

To my surprise, we managed a full seven steps before I stepped on her toes on the eighth and we fell apart.

"Um… I think you should tense up your arm a little more," Queen Elincia said. "You need to signal to me what you're trying to do or where you're going to step, or else we're going to topple over each other as we just did. So, uh, let's get back in position, I guess—"

"Queen Elincia," I interrupted. "I know you just said that traditionally, the man leads and the woman follows, but why don't you lead right now? You'd be guiding my movements, as you said, and you're the one who knows how to dance."

At that suggestion, Elincia looked away, blushing lightly. Was it really that taboo for a woman to lead? "It would look wrong," she said, "And it might make a bad first impression on me as the queen."

I frowned. "As a queen, you'll be leading the entire country. Would it really be improper for you to lead a single man?" I gently took Elincia's right hand and placed it on my own shoulder blade, reversing our positions. "You'll be the queen who effects a lot of changes in this country. Why not start with conventions of ballroom dance?"

"…Well, I suppose we can give it a try," Elincia conceded. "Well, just follow my movements, which you should sense from the pressure of my arm. Ready? One, two, three, four, five, six."

We started with the simple walking motion that Elincia had just tried to make me lead. Indeed, I could feel the pressure on my back, the firm hand guiding my motion unambiguously as we walked along the edge of the dance floor, navigating through a sea of other dancing couples.

"I'll start to step backwards and sideways, now, too," Elincia told me. "Just continue to follow me as I do so."

Immediately, she stepped to the side, catching me slightly off guard; I shuffled my feet horribly off-beat, but Elincia continued to lead a simple side-to-side pattern. "Don't worry if you mess up; just try to follow back into my lead. If you can help it, try not to look down at your feet, even."

I continued to stumble around for a few more steps, pointedly staring past Elincia's hair, until her strong arm steadied me back into rhythm. She smiled and said, "Good. Now, just stay with me."

After a few more steps, I started to notice that we were following a pattern—a sort of back-side-side-front-side-side motion, following the outline of a box. But just as I got comfortable with this pattern, I felt Elincia's arm dig into my side a little bit more, and I stepped a little more rightward in my initial backwards step—we turned counterclockwise.

"Queen Elincia—?" I started to ask.

"That's right," Elincia assured me as we continued to step in time. "I was signaling a reverse turn—a counterclockwise turn. You responded to my arm pushing against your shoulder; I didn't even have to say anything."

"It seems that you have to communicate a lot with that arm," I noted.

She nodded. "I… I'm a little too good at it; it shows my upbringing, I suppose. I grew up almost completely isolated, and there were fewer boys than girls in the villa; as such, we girls would rotate, some of us acting as leads sometimes. Some of the nobility are not entirely happy with my rather nontraditional background. The fact that I'm leading right now might upset them further… I really shouldn't be queen."

"Hey," I said, "come off it. Without you, there would be no Crimean royalty left at all, no leader left. Crimea would be in total chaos without your presence; a few frustrated nobles are nothing compared to that."

Elincia just shook her head. "It's not just them. I have a lot to deal with once this party is over. An entire country, broken from the war… and I alone must deal with it all, restore it to peace. I don't know if I'm up to it."

"You're doing a great job leading me right now," I pointed out, "and I've never danced before in my life. Leading a country, you'll have advisors, the royal guard, us Greil Mercenaries—a lot of capable people who are ready to do good for the country if you just instruct us to. I'm not saying that it won't be hard, but I'm saying that you're definitely up to the challenge; you're the leader we'll all look towards."

Elincia just blushed and avoided my gaze, giving me an exaggerated tug to signal another reverse turn. "Thank you," she finally said. We finished a full rotation before she looked back to me and said, "I shouldn't think about this right now. This is my coronation ball; I should be happy, at least for tonight. The song is about to end. Do you want to try finishing with a new move? Let's do the follow's underarm turn. On beat four, I'm going to release my right hand from your shoulder, and raise my left. You have six beats—four, five, six, one, two, three—to go under that arm and walk around our hands, back into this closed position. Ready?" She waited a few steps. "One, two, go!"

With that, the reassuring hand that had been on my back this whole dance went suddenly missing, and (after a brief moment of panicked "What am I doing?" that I hadn't felt since Father first started to teach me swordfighting) I did as Elincia instructed, walking under our joined hands, one step per beat.

She turned to meet me as I circled back towards her. She raised her right arm, and I stepped into it, letting her hand come to rest back on my shoulder. After three final follow-up steps, the music concluded.

"That was great," Elincia said as we stepped away from each other. "You're a natural at dancing. It must be the training you've done for battle—careful footwork, good balance, following directions well…"

"Having a good lead and instructor," I interrupted. "Don't downplay your own role in this."

At that, she smiled. "Thank you, my lord Ike." We stepped off the dance floor and paused a moment. She then said, "Now, I apologize, but I must abandon you back to the nobility who seem to bother you so. This is my coronation, after all, and there are others I must greet and such matters to attend to."

I bowed to her. "That's fine. But again, congratulations on being crowned queen. You're the strong leader that this country needs right now, I'm sure of it." The words did not sound empty this time.

Author's notes: I recently have taken an introductory ballroom dancing class, and one of my first thoughts was about how old-fashioned the "male = lead, female = follow" rule seems to be. I'm sure some dance styles/couples/groups/etc. have already changed this up (obviously, same-sex couples, for example), but I thought I might experiment a little with it in fanfiction. I'm not quite sure how I thought of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, but once I did, I felt that the lead/follow symbolism was appropriate, given Elincia's insecurities about being the leader of Crimea and Ike's attempts to console her in the closing cutscene of that game.

Note that, as much as I tried to make the dancing and terminology in this as accurate as possible, I ultimately have only taken one class (and watched a few YouTube videos) about it; I'm no expert. In particular, I have never been a follow (the instructor said that it'd be too confusing to switch back and forth between roles when first learning). Please point inaccuracies out if I've made any.

Finally, although I classified this as an Ike/Elincia romance fic, it's only implied. Radiant Dawn breaks apart this pairing, anyway. (Spoilers, sorry, though it's really up to interpretation, I guess.)

Published January 4, 2015