Mahli

Originally written: Summer 2015

Name: Mahli

Species: Human

Class: Assassin

Gender: Male

Pronouns: He/him

Age when written:

Baby Mahli: roughly 2 years old

Future Mahli: some unspecified young adult age slightly younger than canon Future Lucina

Family:

Awakening Fanficverse: Curi (his mother), Henry (his father), Tharja (his honorary aunt), Noire (his honorary cousin)

Headcanonverse: Curi (his mother), Henry (his father), Camilla (his mother), Peri (his sister), Sakura (his honorary aunt - possibly legally his aunt)

Heroesverse: Curi (his mother), Henry (his father), Camilla (his mother), Peri (his sister), Tharja (his honorary aunt), Noire (his honorary cousin), Sakura (his honorary aunt - possibly legally his aunt)

Friends: All of the canonical future kid characters from Fire Emblem: Awakening, plus Emery (an Awakening future kid OC written by the other author of the fanfiction Mahli is from). Kid Mahli's best friend is Cynthia; Future Mahli's best friend is Gerome.

Description:

Background Info
Henry is canonically the best dad in the Shepherds in Fire Emblem: Awakening. Camilla is canonically the doting mother of the group in the Nohrian army in Fire Emblem: Fates. Mahli has one or both of them, and boy does he need it. His story is a bit of a clusterfuck even without going into multiple versions of it. Mahli was originally written for a Fire Emblem: Awakening collaborative fanfiction between Curi and one of her best friends.

Almost immediately after she started playing Fire Emblem: Fates, Curi started shipping Henry with Camilla. So when she brought characters from Fates into the vaguely-defined crossover mishmash she refers to as her "Headcanonverse", what was originally a fictional marriage between her and Henry with some poly elements became a poly marriage between herself, Henry, and Camilla. Then when Fire Emblem: Heroes added a support system allowing the player to S support (marry) one character while that character was S supported to another character, the same relationship began there. This is how their relationship works. Curi has essentially a queerplatonic relationship with Henry, but is not involved with Camilla - they're just friends. Henry has a romantic relationship with Curi and a, well, just standard allo-defined relationship with Camilla. Camilla has a standard allo-defined relationship with Henry and is just friends with Curi. This actually meets the needs of all three of them perfectly even if it seems a little unusual. It wasn't until well after this poly relationship was established that Sakura and Peri were added to the family, even though Curi had seen Sakura in a sisterly light since about the same time as she started shipping Camilla and Henry.

Understanding Mahli's story requires some basic understanding of Fire Emblem: Awakening which spoils at least the first half of the plot, if not the whole game. First of all, the first half of the game involves the country of Ylisse fighting a war against the country of Plegia. The Ylissean military force is a royal militia called the Shepherds. Also, magical zombies called Risen start popping up and nobody knows why. Halfway through the game, Ylisse wins that war and then there's a two-year timeskip. At the end of the timeskip, another war starts and the characters find out that a mysterious NPC that's been offering them intermittent help is actually Lucina, the ruler of Ylisse's daughter who was only born maybe a few weeks prior, from the future. It turns out the new king of Plegia resurrects a dragon-god of destruction (Grima) to destroy the world (the Risen are some sort of magical creation associated with Grima but are never fully explained). To save the world, Ylisse's patron dragon-goddess (Naga) sent the children of the Shepherds back in time to save their parents. Henry and Tharja are canon characters who are actually Plegian dark mages, but defect to join the Shepherds at different points in the game.

Awakening Fanficverse Mahli:
If one version of Mahli can be considered "canon", this is it. Like Lucina, Mahli actually entered the story before the time shenanigans of the plot were exposed. Therefore, Curi tends to conceptualize him in three categories: Baby Mahli, Kid Mahli, and Future Mahli. (Technically Kid Mahli is Future Mahli's backstory, but it's shorter to say than "Dark Timeline Kid Mahli".) At the point in the plot where time shenanigans become an openly acknowledged part of the story, Mahli is somewhere between two and three years old.

Baby Mahli:
Mahli was found as a toddler on the outskirts of an Ylissean town the Shepherds passed on a march. He had been beaten by his biological parents and left out to die. Curi's self-insert immediately decided to take him in and easily persuaded Henry (by this point in the story they had only been married a few months). Of course they had to get permission from their commander (Prince Chrom of Ylisse) and that was a bit more difficult. Their main argument was that they were both dark mages (Curi's self insert defected from Plegia at the same time as Tharja but was from a different unit and had never met her before they joined the Shepherds) so they could cast enchantments on the boy that would keep him safe. Eventually they were allowed to do so as long as one of them was always in camp to keep an eye on him, even during a battle.

Technically, Mahli is about two years older than Lucina. His exact birthdate is unknown, as is his original birth name. Instead, Curi and Henry named him Mahli and celebrate his adoption day every year. At this point in his life, Curi and Henry dressed him in Plegian clothes and cared for him with dark magic. In Plegia the "dark arts" are incredibly prestigious, and the children of dark mages are expected to grow up steeped in magic. Henry is lore-wise the strongest dark mage in Plegia. So even though Mahli wouldn't have inherited their skill, Curi and Henry raised him with the expectation of teaching him to become a dark mage someday.

Kid Mahli:
As a child in what would become the Dark Timeline, Mahli was a bright and happy little boy. He was greatly influenced by his father's cheerfulness and both his parents' love of animals. Since Henry is canonically slightly more fluent in the languages of animals and plants than he is in the language of humans and Curi would sure as hell take advantage of that to learn those languages too, he grew up speaking those languages around the house and is fully fluent. He spent as much of his free time as possible with Cynthia, Owain, and Morgan and was part of their Justice Cabal. He was also fiercely protective of Noire, who he saw as a younger cousin. It was clear pretty early in his life he had no particular aptitude for magic, and instead he wanted to be a thief when he grew up (but a moral thief, of course). His clothing tended towards being Ylissean in style and Plegian in color scheme.

Future Mahli:
Like the canonical future children, Mahli came back in time as a young adult with nothing to remember his dead (in his timeline) parents by except his mother's wedding ring. Well, and his armor, which was Ylissean in style but with a Plegian color scheme and had a golden eye insignia emblazoned on the chest like the golden eye insignias his parents wore (Henry on his cape, Curi's self-insert as a hair clip, a talisman, and a clasp - they look cool sue me). He did not go back in time to help, but to see his father again. He had become a brooding loner who was friends with Gerome and pretty much nobody else in the army, finding his childhood friends grating and obnoxious. He had a nihilistic attitude and had essentially gone from being Cynthia's Robin Hood to being the Robin to Gerome's Batman.

After being recruited into the Shepherds, he did fight for them but made no secret of thinking it was ultimately pointless. He felt he was just waiting around for his parents to die again. He initially refused to speak to Curi at all. After a long period of concentrated effort, Curi was able to get him to admit why he had grown to resent her so much. It turned out that at some point in the dark future while Henry was on his way from elsewhere, the two of them had been trapped in a building with Risen absolutely flooding in. They held off the Risen for a while, but when Curi was down to one tome she abandoned Mahli for reasons she didn't explain. She told him not to leave the room until Henry arrived, then left.

Mahli was barely able to escape from the overrun building with his life when Henry finally did arrive. Given the circumstances and some other factors, Mahli believed Curi had abandoned him for no other reason but to commit suicide. On the other hand, Henry died protecting him. Curi and Mahli's parent-child support arc concludes with her getting enough details out of him to determine that she had actually prepared the room with some kind of magic ritual beforehand. By leaving, she distracted the bulk of the horde long enough for Henry to get there. After this revelation Mahli agreed to reconcile, with the caveat that after spending so long believing he had been abandoned to die it would be difficult to change his opinions about his mother.

Headcanonverse Mahli:
In Curi's Headcanonverse, Curi's self insert, Henry, and both versions of Mahli relocated to Nohr (the Fire Emblem: Revelation route specifically) after saving the world with the Ylisseans. Unlike the canon characters Inigo, Owain, and Severa they didn't assume false names to do so (Laslow, Odin, and Selena respectively). The reasons for the move are not decided and probably never will be. In Nohr, they met Camilla and she ended up joining their marriage. Technically, that made this version of Mahli a prince of Nohr.

When the Nohrians and Hoshidans started fighting together, Curi's self-insert became close to Sakura and they became essentially non-biological sisters. She also befriended the other Hoshidan royals (especially Hinoka and Takumi), and given the estrangement from her biological family that drove her to join the Plegian army in the first place it's possible she may have been legally adopted into the Hoshidan royal family. If this happened, it would make this version of Mahli a prince of that kingdom as well. Meanwhile, Henry grew close to Peri in Nohr. Even though she's an adult, her childish demeanor and tragic backstory made Henry want to adopt her and give her a new set of parents. Curi already liked Peri a lot and though the idea of adopting her hadn't occurred to Curi she wasn't difficult to convince. Camilla took a little more convincing to essentially adopt her older brother's retainer, but it still didn't take long.

Future Mahli stuck around to help his three parents raise Baby Mahli. Baby Mahli will presumably develop a completely different personality due to the vastly different circumstances. Curi, Henry, and Camilla work together to help Future Mahli recover from his trauma. Legally, Baby Mahli and Future Mahli are listed as siblings even though everyone knows otherwise.

Heroesverse Mahli:
Curi is now the Summoner in her version of Fire Emblem: Heroes because fuck you that's why. She summons Henry, Camilla, Future Mahli, Peri, and Sakura (as well as Tharja and Noire - I know Noire isn't currently summonable but I mean neither is Mahli) and the family reunites. Baby Mahli is brought along too, of course, but he's too young to be a soldier so he wouldn't show up in the character list.