Yea, so I got sick of seeing the same pairings over and over again. This is just a little something that I work on when I've hit a road block with my more "serious" works..thus, this is not a serious work. I have no intention of going through the trouble of planning these things or extensively screening them for errors. I simply hope to inspire a little more creativity amongst my fellow few fire emblem scribes…in that vein if you have any requests that aren't considered the norm, feel free to ask for 'em in a review. Couple things though:

-If you're going to request a pairing, please give me some sort of scenario to go with it.

-I make no promises that I'll actually do what's requested. This purely for my own enjoyment, though I do fulfill a request, I'll message you saying that I've done so.

-No slash, het, yaoi, or yuri.

The Angel and the Dragon

The mighty nation of Bern is a hard and unforgiving country carved from the bones of the mountains by the sweat and tears of miners and the blood of soldiers. The architecture native to its immense capital reflects the hard past in its uncompromising and uniform lines, hard granite and rigid streets. Iron and copper form the skeleton and ornaments of a hundred towers ringing soaring walls and fortified buttresses. The mightiest can never afford to show weakness or warmth to the outside.

Yet, beauty survives. The cold and bleak sunsets break themselves on the spines of the Carcinieness mountain range and fall in a wide sheen over the many, artificial lakes surrounding the main city. Mountain goats, surer of foot than any man, traipse over razor sharp rocks in games of courting or play as their young recklessly hurdle after. Wild flowers, carefully plucked from grassy balds atop remote peaks, are cultivated in the occasional window. If the city is hard and unforgiving of variance, it is also beautiful in its austerity: a queen chiseled by an exacting hand from marble.

But even a queen of marble has her hidden soft spots. You could spend a lifetime in Bern and never find them, but they're there: the old woman near Bronze Fountainhead who has been lovingly weaving her cloaks since before the birth of King Bernard or the young man who gives away bouquets of wild flowers every year on the first day of April.

Warmth and love survive in the unlikeliest of places and there are no more unlikely than Soldier's Quarters on the eastern edge and there is no place of greater warmth and love than the house that sits at the end of endless rows of other houses just like it. On the outside, it is the same as all of the other stone-wrought houses made specifically for the lowly enlisted ranks of Bern's soldierly.

A heavy, oaken door on black iron hinges makes the forbidding mouth of an ugly house. There is no greenery because all the ground is stone and swept daily by biting winds, unprotected as it is near the top of a slop. There are no decorations because what need have soldiers of such ephemeral things as welcome signs and frescoed walls? But crack open that door and immediately there is a warm fur rug waiting to receive your feet. Everywhere hang drawings and paintings, some donated by grateful artists, others left by laughing children. A warm fire is always burning low under the mantle and soft, but thick drapes block out the chill and long summer suns. During the morning and all through the afternoon, its warm halls ring with the laughter and silly cries of children coming to learn their arithmetic and letters. Evening brings the poor to receive food and instruction in return for whatever they can spare. Dusk sees old friends and young couples seeking console and a kind word and night brings a restful peace seldom seen in the mortal world.

"Lucius! Luuuuciuuusss!!!" Well, usually it does.

"Blasted, no good, worthless, I-can't-believe-I-even-put-up-with-you, you son of a two cent whore! If I have to wait one more…" Dust leaps off any standing surface it might have taken refuge on while the neighborhood strays bolt as swiftly as they their beating legs can carry them. The demonic screeching finally halts when a serene, if slightly winded, voice answers in reply.

"Vaida, please be quiet. You're keeping Victoria awake and if you're not carefully, you'll wake up Miss Damien next d-," he never gets to finish.

"Silence! I don't give a wyvern's arse whether that stupid sow sleeps or not! It's not like I'm getting any sleep." The wyvern commander's eyes bores into the fair haired man's blue orbs, daring him to contradict her.

Several years ago, he might have cowered before her glare. Today, he simply gives her a sly smile. After all, Lucius has had several years practice with which to get acquainted with her moods, though outwardly they seem to range only from homicidal to murderous.

"I suppose…but I could have sworn that I woke up next to the fire place this mourning because I had been driven from my bed by some horrendously loud snoring." His smile turns into a smirk that nearly cuts his genial face in two.

Vaida rolls her eyes, "Impossible. I do not snore."

Vaida feels surprise as Lucius starts laughing and not just one of the ethereal chuckles of amusement that he so often gave to the children he taught, but a full laugh from deep inside his chest. Vaida can only mumble something half incomprehensible as the former bishop kisses her fully on the lips. Vaida nearly purrs as she hooks one of her much stronger arms around his slender neck.

"You do too snore," he says, his blond hair an encircling curtain around her face. "I also regret to say that you have begun to allow your duties back into your dreams again."

"Stop being so roundabout, priest. I am not one of your idiotic flock that-" she hits him with another withering glare when she caught him murmuring something (…certainly are not…),

"-that you can placate with obtuse parables. Speak plainly." Vaida continues the glare, which he returnes with his characteristic smile. "And just what were you saying?"

His eyes crinkle with another hidden smile, "Well, to the first question, you've begun talking and wrestling around again. Several nights ago I awoke to find myself being cudgeled in the nose. When I tried to fend you off without waking you as well, you began to choke me. Something about foul curs daring to challenge your honor. However, given that it seems to be my fault that these fits come over you…" his hand moves lovingly over her belly, badly distended by her nearly completed pregnancy, "I can hardly cast any blame."

"No, you can't…" her lips move as close to his ear as possible without actually touching it, "…and what was that you were mumbling like a spoiled little child?"

The former priest of St. Elimine comes as close to snorting as he ever does. "As I was saying, you most certainly are not, nor ever were, one of the parishioners in my care."

"And a good thing too as I'd probably scare off the helpless little lambs…speaking of lamb, bring me some brazed wyvern steak from the market. And don't you dare bring me back any of that third rate carrion they try to hawk off at Merchant's Row. Go to Cutty's. And make it rare. I want it to still be twitching when I eat it." Vaida is falling back into her command voice, a habit which she practices daily, both on her soldiers and on her family.

Lucius offers her another smile as he pulls himself away…though he has to wait a bit before she actually lets him escape. "And I thought women were supposed to crave chocolates. No matter, I was planning on visiting several of your rider's families along with those of the third mountain infantry. There's a sickness going around that worries me and they will need help. I will bring you back your snack, then go to visit them and be back in time for supper." With that said, Lucius glides past her and out the door, his golden hair reflecting the descending sun.

Vaida smiles inwardly as she watches her husband of five years leaving, inwardly still in disbelief that she was even married, much less married to someone such as Lucius. Everything about Vaida is physical and mundane. She loves the roar of armies and wyverns, the feel of the rushing wind and the challenge of being King Zephiel's Knight Commander despite her gender. Lucius, however, often seems to her to be a hold over from an ancient kingdom no longer in existence. He is warmth, light, love and laughter, the gentle hand and the offered shoulder. Nothing about Lucius could be described as mundane.

She thought she would die young in pyrrhic glory, serving her beloved Zephiel with her bloody lance and now she is the mother of two daughters with a third child on the way. By the snowy bodice of Sainted Elimine, how had it happened?

Though she can remember it all, Vaida still does not know how it still happened. However, as she sits and reflects on all that has past and is passing, she can't help, but be happy.

Vaida winces as the child Lucius so confidently affirms is a son kicks inside of her. She gives her own stomach a sharp slap and then growls out, "Kick all you want, my little one. Kick, claw and scream your silent screams. I have broken countless vicious wyverns, warriors, and your two wild sisters. I've even broken your father, who in times past destroyed whole armies single handily. And when the time comes, I will break you and rest assured little one, every blow will be repaid."

The kicking stops and Vaida gives a small, but satisfied hmph, before lying her head back down on the pillow Lucius had provided.

And then the baby starts kicking again.