Chapter Text
Sleep has always served as a punishment for Lucina.
She hadn’t known her sleeping behaviors were unhealthy until she learned it from Morgan, who sleeps like a stone. She didn’t believe it at first; her mother had insisted it was normal. But as she grew up she came to realize that waking up every morning shuddering, sweating, her fists clenched tightly enough for her nails to cut flesh—that’s not what princesses do. That’s not what anyone does.
When Grima awakened, the dreams only got worse. “Normal,” her mother had said. Lucina smiles bitterly.
It is a cool night, a welcome change from the blazing heat that had scorched her skin hours earlier. She’d hoped her Plegian blood would protect her from the heat to some degree, but instead it drained her energy even more than her racing thoughts. It was noticeable, too; just today, Laurent and Severa each lectured her on the importance of maintaining her health and keeping up with her beauty sleep, respectively.
Though it doesn’t make the bedroll beneath her feel any more welcoming, she knows they are right. Tomorrow is an important day in their campaign, so surely she needs her strength. Night terrors be damned, she must be at her best for what she hopes will be the final stretch of the fight.
Even so, she can’t help but trace her fingertips over the faint scars riddling her lips, self-inflicted mementos of her most vivid night terrors.
When she sleeps, she dreams of teeth and fire and beating wings. She dreams of her loved ones shredding into red ribbons. She dreams of poison clouding the sky and filling her lungs. She dreams of her mother caressing her daughter’s split cheeks, a mirror reflection of red eyes.
She dreams of enjoying everything she thinks she hates. But she never remembers it.
Now that she knows what she is, she doesn’t want to.
When Lucina finally closes her eyes, she thinks that, just once, she’d like to wake up with neither tears in her eyes nor blood in her mouth.