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Selena had seen Niles struggling.
The two of them weren’t the closest by any means, but there was a mutual trust and respect there, and they had gotten together for drinks more than incidentally. And, well, Odin and Lady Camilla both trusted him despite his often nefarious actions, so really, there was only so much for her to lose by being friends with him, despite her initial inhibitions.
She had seen their latest argument. She knew that Niles’ relationship with his daughter was rocky at best, seen it from the way he had become more and more sleepless in the nights after her birth, seen it in the way he would glare subtly at the members of the army who were fortunate enough to be able to visit their deeprealms regularly.
And, well, as much as she hated to admit it, she saw herself in Nina.
She was hurt by abandonment and was pushing any sort of connection away because she was afraid of it being ripped from her again. Selena could have laughed; it was impossible to tell if it was Nina or herself she was talking about.
So when she saw Niles staring dejectedly at Nina’s back as she retreated somewhere (likely to her room), she made a mental note to talk to her after she had finished her tasks for the day.
Which is how she found herself standing at a teenagers bedroom door, trying to hype herself up to knock.
She rapped quickly on the door, lowering her hand and trying to look confident instead of nervous. She had never spoken directly to Nina off the battlefield, and she hoped that she would be receptive to whatever she had to say.
Nina came to the door with a red face and eyes that weren’t quite puffy anymore. Selena offered her a smile, but Nina seemed to ignore it. “What.”
“I just figured you could use some company,” Selena said. Nina hesitated for a moment, looking Selena up and down as though trying to assess her. Ultimately, she opened the door and let Selena in; that had gone better than it could have.
“You’re Princess Camilla’s retainer, right?” Nina asked eventually as she sat on her bed. Selena took the stool by the vanity.
“I am,” Selena confirmed.
“Did she put you up to this?”
Selena laughed before she could stop herself. “I wasn’t “put up” to this. I just saw you running away from Niles and could relate.”
Nina huffed. “So he’s harassed you, too, has he?”
“In a sense,” Selena said. She leaned back as Nina lapsed back into silence, not meeting her gaze. Selena spotted a discarded brush on Nina’s nightstand, and noticed that her hair was only half-braided; that, at least, Selena could do.
“Do you want help with your hair?”
Nina looked up at that, glancing at the brush. She hesitated, and Selena didn’t doubt that there were memories resurfacing in that moment. But then Nina nodded, and Selena stood up and approached her.
She undid the braid that was already there, gently brushing through her hair (the color may have been her mother’s, but the texture was more similar to Niles’ than Selena had anticipated). She separated it into two sections, then one of those into three, getting lost in the methodology of braiding for a moment.
“I get where you’re coming from,” Selena said eventually.
“What do you mean?” Nina asked, and she sounded more dejected than she had earlier; perhaps she was more comfortable with Selena than she had realized. (They’d been paired up on the battlefield a few times; perhaps Selena’s fighting revealed more about her than she thought?)
“With your father,” Selena replied. She tied off the first braid, moving on to the second. Nina snorted.
“I didn’t let you in here just for you to lecture me,” Nina said. “I could get that from my mother.”
“I’m not lecturing,” Selena assured her. “I just know where you’re coming from.”
“Yeah, right,” Nina muttered. Selena wasn’t certain she was meant to hear it.
“My mom… left,” Selena said. She didn’t need to tell her the truth; they were still undercover, after all, and if this conversation went well, Selena didn’t need Nina spilling all her secrets to Niles. “I was eleven, maybe twelve. She didn’t come back until I was sixteen, but even when she did, I was angry. Just like you.”
Nina was silent. Selena finished braiding her hair before she continued. “I was afraid I would lose her again. Afraid that by getting close to her, everything would be ripped away from me all over again. I fought her every step of the way; I made her bring me her desserts just for a shot at talking to me for a handful of minutes, because I was afraid she would rip the rug out from under me if I got close with no barriers.
“But eventually, I gave in. I got close to her again, and she made good on her promise. She didn’t leave me.” I left her, something in the back of Selena’s mind said, but that was something to hash out on the training grounds, not with her friend’s kid who she was genuinely trying to help.
Nina was quiet for a moment, as though she were pondering something.
“He has your best interest at heart,” Selena said eventually. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but he does. I know the deeprealms made it seem like you never saw him, but he came to visit you whenever he could. And even when he couldn’t, you were always on his mind.”
“How would you know?” Nina said, bitterly. “He’s always chasing after Prince Leo.”
Ah. There it was.
“He has friends, too,” Selena said gently. “But I also remember the time he went straight to the deeprealm portals as soon as he finished a report to Lord Leo after a mission that had him awake for three days straight. I remember when he received news that you were sick, and he begged Odin to take on some of his workload so he could see you. His expertise is, unfortunately, something Master Corrin has found invaluable, so they’ve been working him to the bone, but his thoughts were always with you.”
“Then why didn’t he notice I was gone?” Nina asked. Her voice was a little bit wobbly, now. “ Months passed after I left before you found me. Why didn’t he come?”
“Coming back with you was the first time in month’s he’s been back on the astral plane,” Selena told her gently. (She was impressing herself with her patience, she had to say.) “He, Silas, and Peri were sent to report to King Garon on the progress of Prince Xander and Prince Leo’s mission and the death of Iago. Before that, he’d been exhausted with the way the war was ramping up. He didn’t want to bring that pressure to you; he lamented it over drinks many times.”
Nina was quiet again. She wasn’t crying, though Selena suspected that she kind of wanted to. She sighed quietly.
“I’ll leave you alone now,” Selena said. “Just… something to mull over. You don’t have to take any of what I said to heart; our experiences are our own, and even if his reasons were just, he still hurt you.”
Nina didn’t say anything as Selena got up and left her room, shutting the door behind her. Selena just hoped that she didn’t make something worse.