Territory (new Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn fanfic)

[queenlua]

Stefan brings a delegation from Grann, to petition Empress Sanaki for his nation's independence.

But the real negotiation occurs between their respective unlikely attendants: Zihark and Naesala.

~7k words.

Read here on AO3.

misc warblings about it under the cut

I... think I meant to write this for Krad's last birthday? or half-birthday? I have a very distinct memory of working on it while in some business hotel in NYC last year (spurred by some kind of convo about "wouldn't Zihark/Naesala be a great ship"), but that business trip was a monster and I passed out on the keyboard and forgot about the piece entirely until a week and a half ago, when I randomly found it in my files, reread what I had, and was like "hey, this opening cooks actually" (correct) "and also it's almost done, why don't I just finish writing it." (...at that time the piece was ~1.5k. So uhhh I personally don't count it as "almost done" if I had to quintuple its length to get it to done, but, y'know, hindsight is 20/20! I THOUGHT I was almost done and that's the important thing.)

I wanted to be able to do the "hi friend I wrote you some porn" thing, but despite my best efforts, I could not for the life of me get Zihark and Naesala to actually fuck (look how is ANYONE supposed to bang without like thousands and thousands of words of weird tension beforehand), and was thoroughly planning to just apologetically post some T-rated material... uh, until 9pm on the night I was wrapping this thing up, and while making some edits to the last scene I was like, Oh, Actually, There Should Be A Blowjob Here, Who Fucking Knew. Cue me fretting for a bit to make sure that action actually worked there and I wasn't just forcing it / frazzled from my day or whatever, and then deciding yeah it works, fuck it, #shipit, etc

The Sanaki/Naesala vibes were another little surprise I wrote my way into. I knew that Naesala was going to, like, start annoying rumors at court and such, but I didn't know there was anything to them until I somewhat-late-in-the-game added that bedroom scene and it clicked like "oh wait I need to crank up the vibe between them As Weird As I Can Get Away With."

Really fuckin fun little piece to crank out in any case; I should do more giftics :)

(also sanaki's so goddamn fun I hope I get to write more of her in the future sighs into hands)

Comments

[kradeelav]

'hi friend I wrote you some porn' VIGOROUS SOLIDARITY HANDSHAKES god i love how this is what makes so many online friendships go round ;D

i also love the vibe of you doing this in between your giant tellius birdfic with sanaki featuring also there - i feel like the mainline games didn't get quite as much time to chew at how interesting she would be flaws/insecurities and all and delightfully human all the same but all of these stories is like sooooo the detail that she needed. :D

OH ANOTHER THING I LOVED is naesala fondly thinking of how sanaki and reyson are similar with the 'i angy' vibes and then *also* projecting a little of reyson onto zihark as well. :P bro you need to fuck that bird so bad.

[queenlua]

sanaki's a fascinating character and imo if there were to be a third game or something you could do so much with her—an older!teen sanaki who's had some time to recover from being caught flat-footed by Sephiran, with a whole mess of troubles facing her nation and no goddess looming this time... she's COOL. LOVE her. etc

(also YEAH bwahaha god naesala's. got it so bad. and that whole deal conveniently fills out a slot on the Lua's Absolute Favorite Things bingo card: "fucking other people b/c you can't fuck the person you actually want to fuck (but that won't stop you thinking about that person the whole time!!!)" lol)

[ellerean]

"Who fucking knew" is such a vibe, and I'm here for this.

[queenlua]

amazing how you personally can be the one to write every word of a story & you'll still get hit in the face by a revelation like that lol. writing is nonsense!