The eggs are asleep, and finally Philza and Missa can catch a moment to themselves. Unfortunately, catching that moment means admitting to the injuries they have been hiding from their children - fussing over scratches while having arrowheads lodged next to your spine is the duty of a parent on Quesadilla Island, but an exhausting one.
Missa's quick fingers manage to pull said arrowhead from Philza's back, the momentary flash of pain causing him to nearly drop the iodine solution. He doesn't, though, just a little stain on the floorboards, and so he continues applying it to the wound in Missa's leg.
He barely notices the scratch of a needle against his back, but Missa cannot help but whine as the gauze is pressed against his wound.
"I hate it here," Missa manages, thankfully in English as Philza is in no position to twist and see his translator. "Why is everything trying to kill us?"
"The island fucking hates us, is why," Philza grouches, reaching over for a bandage. He's managed to get Missa's leg to stop bleeding, but it should still be covered. "Enjoy the island my ass."
Missa giggles a bit, even as he tapes a dressing in place over the arrow wound. He says something in Spanish which is definitely too fast for Philza to parse; he tries to turn and look, only to be gently pressed back into position.
"It's nothing," Missa assures him. "But the skeletons! Why are they so bad?"
"The skeletons aren't even the worst of it," Philza groans back. "If you ever see glowing eyes and nothing else? Run."
There's a long pause, and Philza hopes that Missa understands the severity of his warning - a Nightmare Stalker is exactly that, and Philza knows Missa is not nearly equipped to handle one. If he struggles as he does, he doesn't want to think about how his partner would suffer in his stead.
"It's okay," Missa pats his shoulder a few times, leaning around his wings to do so. "I'm good at running. It's my special talent!"
"You're good at a lot of things," Philza promises.
Missa doesn't reply; this time when Philza turns, he is allowed to. His entire body aching he sits himself up and twists himself around, taking Missa's face him his hands.
"You are so good," he promises. "So, so good. There's nobody else I would want to raise my eggs with."
There's more on the tip of his tongue; Philza quashes it as Missa closes his eyes, rest of his expression hidden by his mask.
Philza can see Missa struggle with his words for a bit - he's always amazed how someone can make themselves understood in two languages - before eventually receiving, "you are the best egg father."
"We have the best egg child," he retorts.
"We do!" Missa's entire body language perks up. "Chayanne is the best egg child, and he is ours. We are so lucky."
"We really are."
Philza isn't sure when it happens, but eventually he realises that he has leant forward, his forehead resting against Missa's mask. He closes his eyes and savours it, feeling as Missa loosely places his arms across his bare back - Philza needs his for support, one either side of Missa's hips and taking his weight, but otherwise he would do much the same.
The two of them stay in silence for a while, savouring each other's presence. The pain is still there, from protecting their children, and yet... In a simple house of oak and glass, for a moment it is all peace.
"Run away with me."
This is not how Philza had ever meant to bring it up, but the words slip out of their own accord.
Missa startles, eyes wide and spine straight as he blinks himself out of the peaceful haze, "qué?!"
"Run away with me," he shifts so he can see all of Missa's face, taking both of his partner's hands in his own. "Take the children, and run away. Find a way off this island, and to another world - one where the skeletons are the /only/ thing to worry about. I'll build you another house and we'll make it a home. Any colour you like, with a fence and walls and real bedrooms and a kitchen for Chayanne and gardens for Tallulah... You can have your own music room and kick Wilbur out for trying to steal your guitar, and we can sit on the roof in the moonlight and you can sing and I'll dance with the children asleep beneath us and no risk of zombie horsemen on our tail."
"But how-" a small whine catches in Missa's throat. "How do we get away? They said we cannot leave."
"There's always a way to leave," Philza says. "We just have to find it."
There's hands in his wings, and Philza startles.
"Your wings are so big... If they healed, you could fly away," Missa says, something wishful in his tone. "Up and up and far, far away, so far they could never catch you."
"And leave you behind?" he asks.
"You'd come back for Chayanne. And I... I could follow you then?"
"Even if something happens to Chayanne, I'd come back for you," Philza promises. "I won't leave you here, not in this hell."
"You wouldn't leave anyone here, if you could help it."
"Probably," Philza admits. "But I wouldn't come back for them, not if I didn't know I could escape again - I'd come back for you."
"I'll wait for you," Missa seems almost to melt in Philza's touch, whimpering as he curls in on him. Philza isn't even sure what he said wrong, just that his egg partner is clinging to him, whimpering.
"We might not always be together," he tries to reassure. "But I will always come back for you - I'll always find you. There's no point in running away if we don't run away together; if some day I /can/ fly away, I'd only do it to come back with help."
The whimpering turns to sobbing, and Philza adjusts his position to hold Missa properly. The hands in his feathers dig deep - one finger catches on some tape holding one of the litany of dressings in place - but Philza just holds Missa and worries.
Why this reaction? Was it something he said?
He stops talking just in case; Missa clearly wants a hug, so he just holds him, understanding only odd words of the broken fragments of Spanish between the sobs.
Eventually the tears slow; Missa pulls away, still sniffling.
"And... Spreen can come?"
"He can live next door, if he wants," Philza promises; it'll be a little hard to negotiate with Fit, but interpersonal drama is just a part of life. "A whole new town for /everyone/ - all of the islanders, and all of our friends. Maybe if we let his ex in Forever will even stop hitting on me."
That earns a laugh, if a bit of a wet one.
"I want to dance with you," Missa says.
"With no zombie riders," Philza promises. "Maybe tomorrow we could dance a bit at the Favela? But, one day, we'll do it somewhere safe."
"On the roof, under the moon?"
"I'll make a roof specially designed for it."
The tears slow some more, and Missa drops to actually lie on the bed.
"Do you really think we'll escape?" Missa turns to Philza and asks. "We broke the Wall, and the Federation-"
Philza moves to lie beside him - on his front while Missa is on his back - and takes a hand. "We will. I promise."
"But-"
"Someone cleverer than us will work it out," he smiles to Missa. "We've just got to survive while they do."
"And if they don't?"
"Then I'll burn the Federation to the ground."
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A Minor dispute.
Put it behind you. Deal with it.
No, this isn't related to devoted fans and their discourse lol (even if i had to take a jab at them with the title lol)
Ike: I have to ask, Sephiran. What are you after? What’s this all about?
Sephiran: Why do you wish to know? You would achieve nothing by learning my reasons. You would help no one. I lost faith in lesser beings, and desire an end to them. That’s all.
Ike: So why did you save me on that day?
Sephiran: May I ask you a favor, Ike? Tell me how you feel about it now. Can you bear recalling those horrific memories?
Ike: Yes… I’m fine, now. But I suppose at the time I wouldn’t have been able to take it.
Sephiran: All beings endure tragedies for as long as they continue to live. It has always been the case that suffering is unavoidable. And this grim reality plays out over and over, in every country, under every ruler… As long as there are beings who feel, they will feel pain.
Ike: So what? We should all just give in and die? Put it behind you. Deal with it.
Sephiran: Do not make light of this…
Ike: I’m not. Sephiran, I’m extremely grateful that you once helped me through a terrible time. But we have to accept that occasionally we all have to deal with hard times. I’ve had pain, I’ve had suffering, and I have gotten up and moved on. I don’t try to forget what happened that day. I just accept it… And neither that or anything else will ever stop me.
Sephiran: You are a strong man, Ike, son of Gawain. But not everyone is as strong as you…
This scene is unlocked if you've seen Ike's FB.
Of course, Ike here doesn't know the fuck he is talking about, as he later expresses by wondering why Sephiran is suddenly called Lehran (maybe if the game left Miccy/Yune talk to him before the start of the map, instead of letting him do all the convo it would have been different?).
So, in a way, it isn't as callous as Ike telling Lehran to put the genocide of his people "behind him" or to "deal with it", because he doesn't know what Sephiran is talking about.
But in a way, I have the feeling if Claude or Petra told Dedue to "put the massacre of his family" behind him or to "deal with it", Claude or Petra would have received a certain amount of shit, even if, when they would have said those, they wouldn't have known what the fuck Dedue went through.
Anyways, Ike later learns what, or who, Sephiran is, and talks to him. Maybe he will apologise for his callous words, spoken when he didn't realise what he was talking about ?
Ike: Sephiran... I mean, Lehran...
Lehran: I can't apologize enough. I was so terribly mistaken, and now there's nothing I can do to help.
Ike: Don't worry.
Lehran: What?
Ike: Wanting to do something that matters is enough. Sometimes, how you feel is more important than how you act.
Lehran: Ike I... there's no one that I think more highly of...
Ike: No time for compliments. We still have work to do here.
Lehran: Yes... yes we do.
Lehran apologises for having wanted to destroy the world (and drops Altina in a trashcan because Ike is now the person he thinks the most highly of!) - and in the general scale of things, yes, Sephiran has much to apologise for, so he better start pulling his weight and try to make up for having tried to kill everyone.
But the "your people were genocided? No biggie, deal with it!" is completely ignored - or it is, again, another example of Ike talking shit and the game convoluting himself to make sure he never faces any consequences, even if, in this situation, the consequence would just have been an apology, like the one he gave to, iirc, Mordecai and Lethe after calling him subhumans but not realising calling someone "subhuman" was insulting.
Sure, the line he gives after the fight against Sephiran still holds value :
Ike: If death is what you really want, then I’m not going to let it happen on my watch. I don’t care what you’ve gone through. I don’t care how much you’ve suffered. What you’ve done is unforgivable.
It's not because you suffered, or went through the worst humankind can offer, that you can inflict the same on people!
When Lords like Marth, Seliph, Leif, Roy, Eirika, even Elincia try to understand people and what led them to act as they did - without ever giving excuses or wondering if they could walk with their respective antagonists - Ike here refuses to understand, and only condemns.
Is it because Ike isn't a Lord, so he isn't concerned with some general "making sure this situation never happens again"?
But then, he is the one to say those :
“But, even the dumbest creatures will love their family, their friends and… even love others. They will all have things that they can’t afford to lose.”
“We know that we’ve messed up. We’ll do our best to avoid more war and to make peace our highest priority. Ashera, just give us one more chance. All we ask is for one more chance.”
“You were like a mother to all of life– Your children still require a mother like you. When you watch over us, we don’t always do things that make you happy and sometimes we even disappoint you. Still, I think we would like you to continue watching over us. How about it?”
“We all need to work hard to accept each other. As long as we don’t try and run away from our mistakes, then I’m sure we’ll be able to see each other again one day.”
How can you do you "best" to avoid more wars, if you don't even understand why the current one started, or don't care about the reasons that led the fucker who started this current war to, well, start it?
How can we talk about acceptance if we don't "care" about what the others live through?
So, on top of writing a check his ass can't cash - since he will leave Tellius and not be there to "avoid wars" or make sure people "accept each other" after promising the goddesses "we" will exactly do that - Ike's words here are empty.
-> In a nutshell, Ike reveals with those battle quotes and conversations that he is not ruler/leader material - but we knew that since RD's start since we followed Miccy and Elincia - and more importantly isn't the kind of person asking "why" things happen, they just happen but somehow everything will work out when it will happen again - because the why, or the cause, wasn't identified - and I think it's a perfectly fitting answer for the Tellius Saga and the larger Branded "issue" : we will never know why it happens, it just happens.
(can we say the epilogue, with Ashunera returning, is an ultimate "fuck you" to Ike's empty promises at the end of this chapter, since it starts with another war happening in the background?)
---
Back to that nonsense of a battle convo, I find it really interesting how Ike is basically thanking Sephiran for having wiped his memory when he was a child, to help him "deal" with the fact he witnessed his father stab his mother, because at that time (when he was a kid), he wouldn't have been able to deal with it.
But then, Ike tells Sephiran to "deal with" the tragedies he witnessed and lived through...
After thanking him for sparing him the "deal with it" step- he now asks Sephiran to take - when he was a child.
WTF?
Ike explains how he is thankful, but he ultimately had to "got up" and "move on" from the pain, and accept it. And that's precisely the point, Ike managed to take on that pain, "get up and move on" thanks to Sephiran's own meddling and help - else, by his own admission, he wouldn't have been able to "take it".
But now, he asks Sephiran to take his pain, without any magic amnesia to help, and deal with it?
And while I hate the idea of trauma olympics, grown-up Ike (even in POR) can now deal with the fact his dad killed his mother thanks to Lehran's magic amnesia - but he tells Lehran to deal with and get over - 1) the genocide of his tribe, 2) assassination of his great (etc) granddaughter because she had his blood, 3) the loss of his powers for a crap reason and the knowledge that laguz are bound to "die" if they mingle too much with beorcs as he personally witnessed it, 4) severe depression after realising he is not a laguz anymore but not even a beorc since beorcs will use pitchforks at him even if they regarded him 10 seconds before as sage, and the rest of Tellius' general fuckery? - without magic amnesia or plot hax?
Reyson was very close to pull something similar in FE9 when he tried to erase people in the Forest using "ancient magic", but abandoned the idea when Leanne was found - if PoR!Ike learnt that, would he have told Reyson to "get over" the heron genocide and Naesala's betrayal?
Of course not, because I'm pretty sure Ike knows, before meeting Reyson and even picking Leanne, what happened in Serenes.
And in RD, when he says those words, he doesn't know (but he later will!) that Sephiran is a heron.
Tl;Dr :
Supreme Leader's "minor dispute" is frowned upon by everyone, even if she might genuinely not know about what Nemesis did that made Rhea so enraged, in a doylist reading, Supreme Leader is a character who ignores a genocide to push her own specist agenda.
Doylist reading of that RD scene is, Ike telling Sephiran to man up and deal/get over the genocide of his people - but unlike Supreme Leader, when he comes to learn the truth of Sephiran's despair, he dgaf.
Thankfully, this scene is only triggered if Sephiran survives, so Ike can later explain his behaviour : he doesn't care what kind of suffering Sephiran endured, since nothing justifies what he was trying to do (kill everyone).
Even if the thing he should care, but doesn't want to, is, for part, a genocide.
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