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Ophelia was hovering at the end of their training session together, and Odin would admit — privately, or within the pages of his most secret journal — to being concerned.
They spent what he considered to be a relatively healthy amount of time together, to the extent that their relationship could ever be viewed as such. Beyond the ravages of a complex space-time conundrum and the rather more mundane issue of war, they did well. They weren’t the closest of any of the parent and child groups in the army, but they weren’t the frostiest.
Still, Ophelia usually said what she meant. Her speech was as circuitous as it needed to be, and as dramatic as she pleased, but it usually was. She spoke or she didn’t.
This, with the hesitation and reluctance? It was odd. And Odin was perhaps ashamed to admit that he hadn’t spent enough time around her while she grew to know whether or not that meant something in particular. Just as his life remained shrouded in mystery for her, hers was much the same for him.
In short, he thought she had something to say; he just couldn’t tell. If there was something bothering her, though, he needed to find out.
You could never tell when you might be leaving something unresolved that would haunt a child for the rest of their lives. Odin knew that better than most.
“Ophelia!” he called. She jumped. “Anxiousness follows you as doggedly as your own shadow. Is there something the matter?”
She hesitated for more than a moment — unusual again, because normally she was so fluent in her verbosity that Odin sometimes struggled to keep up (though only when he had been afflicted by horrifying visions that sapped his energy, of course). “I should have known that your gaze would pierce through any charade,” she said.
“Indeed, I see all.” He offered her a smile he hoped was encouraging. “And what my gaze reveals to me today is that you may have something you wish to impart. My ears are ever listening.”
Ophelia hummed, then, and attempted to disguise an awkward shuffle of her feet by striking a pose. She was off her stride. “I have engaged in a battle of wits with my inner psyche, and emerged victorious in a quest of self discovery! I…” She bit her lip, then opened her mouth to try again. “That is to say, from the depths of my—”
She shook her head. If she had won a battle against a tide of inner confusion as she claimed — and Odin knew she was not a liar by trade — then it was not that which ailed her. Instead, it was the expression of whatever laid within that bothered her so.
“Not every tale must be voiced for the annals of history,” he said, dropping his tone a little. Ophelia blinked. “Legends are written in the moment, but do not get penned verbatim. It is… better to say what you mean than never say it at all.”
“Okay.” Like that, a weight seemed to leave Ophelia’s shoulders. “Right.”
“And whatever you need to say,” Odin said, offering her a slightly less flashy smile, “I’m listening.”
Ophelia nodded, inhaled deeply, and launched into speech once more. “Um, it’s sort of… I prepared something to explain, but it’s not on the tip of my tongue anymore. I’m- I’ve been thinking about things, and I… I’m still your daughter! I’m just also not. And I think maybe I’d like it if you and other people referred to me like that sometimes.”
It came out in a familiar rush, something Odin heard years ago and honestly hadn’t thought he’d hear from someone in his family again. But now, of course, the seriousness made sense. Any worries he’d once had of the possible world-ending nature of something that could upset his child dissolved instantly, and he was left with the aftermath.
Aforementioned aftermath continued speaking, still worried they hadn’t been understood. “I guess it’s easier to explain from the beginning? In the way that normally there are men and women, but I sort of feel like I’m something else as well. Does that make sense?”
There was a lot Odin didn’t know about parenting, and even more he didn’t know about the world as a whole. Experiences he could never hope to understand, kinds of people he would never encounter, challenges he would one day face. Somehow, Ophelia had stumbled upon one of the things he was familiar with, and there was no greater joy than being able to stop them short and end the stumbling that was so unlike them.
“I see!” He went to clap a hand to their shoulder for a particularly encouraging squeeze, and they blossomed like the flower they’d always been. “Your explanations are appreciated, but naturally ring a bell in my mind, harkening back to my times with my cousin; the great Lucina.”
Ophelia blinked. “Your who?”
“My cousin Lucina!”
Ophelia looked down at her shoes for a moment, a myriad of emotions flickering across her face. Ah, teenage angst. The woes of the weight of history, its burden on Odin’s shoulders unnoticed by his peers. “I didn’t know you had a cousin.”
“I do.”
“So I have… more family?”
And here was the kicker, the part Odin had been avoiding practically since she was born — and before that, even, when the matter came up with others of Nohr. His feelings for his family in Ylisse were strong, unwavering. They were also a shade less… complicated than those of Selena for her mother, or Laslow for his mother.
To them, mentioning those who spawned them was inescapable. It formed so much of who they were that if they were to truly display themselves to anyone, it would come up. For Odin, it was safer to avoid mentioning them, instead blustering around the inconvenient fact that was his hereditary claim to a throne in another world entirely.
He didn’t remember if Ophelia had ever asked him about the circumstances of his birth or upbringing. He certainly didn’t know what he told her, if anything. Had anyone told them where babies came from? Their own upbringing was strange enough on its own — if he’d told them that he appeared out of the murky mists of time, they may well have cause to believe him.
Now probably wasn’t the right time to impart the truth — this was their moment, a conversation they must have built up to over weeks or months of careful deliberation. And this was his child; he knew that stealing the spotlight would do no good at all.
That said, if she wanted to know something…
“Some things are better left a mystery until the right time to tell them,” he said. “But there may be some details that could be imparted now, if you are curious.”
Ophelia brightened again, smile like the sun — for as cheesy a descriptor that was, it fit them perfectly. “So… are they my cousin like Laslow is my Uncle Laslow? And you said they’re like me, but how?”
“Questions for the ages!” Questions with very easy to give answers. Answers, Odin had no doubt, they rather needed to hear. “And no, Lucina is the child of my mother’s brother. They didn’t impart the details of their own victory against the demons of the gendered form, but they declared their own lack of gender when they were a little older than you.”
Well, there were a few more details than that. But Odin couldn’t exactly tell Ophelia the full truth of how Lucina discovered their preferences while ‘undercover’ as one of their own ancestors after travelling through time.
“I didn’t realise there’d be someone so… close.” She hesitated very slightly over her words, like she didn’t know if close was quite the right word. She was right, of course — Lucina could hardly be much further away. He couldn’t let them know that, though.
“I’m sure there are others if you know where to look.” Ah, maybe that one was a little too close to the falsehood end of attempting to provide consistent mentorship for them. “Very few people are quite as rare as they think they are. I am sure you can be included within that number.”
She grinned at that, wide and bright, and all the confidence was back in an instant. This was the child Odin knew; the one he knew they could be. “So, when do I get to meet this cousin of yours?”
“That’s a good question!” Odin laughed for perhaps a little too long, given the straightforwardness Ophelia could fairly reasonably assume. “My cousin travels the lands under the power of their own hand, their battles many and moments of respite few. Our paths cross only when the stars will it, I am afraid.”
He couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t really give an answer, when the whole business was up in the air — his reason for being in this land so unfamiliar to a certain cousin. The particulars of when he would return; and if Ophelia would ever be able to come with him.
There was a possibility that she would never meet Lucina, if Lucina was even somewhere Odin could find once he returned. Maybe the stars would will it, or maybe he would be sundered from at least one part of his family forever.
But while he couldn’t know that, he could know something in particular — the time he had with Ophelia was important. So he smiled again, ruffled her hair with one hand, and batted off her halfhearted resistance with the other.
“You don’t need to meet my cousin to be understood,” he promised. Ophelia looked up at him, their expression only briefly confused. “I will listen to whatever you have to say, however you wish to say it. I swear it upon my aching blood.”
Ophelia didn’t answer; she just wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him tighter than she had since she was very, very small. Odin held them just as tightly in return, their head tucked in against his shoulder.
Yes. What he had in front of him now may not have been what he expected, but it was a treasure beyond compare.