I have had this one-shot in the works since I finished my first Ike/Soren story; finally, it's done! It is very much a friendship story, although romance can certainly be spotted for those looking for it. The bond between Ike and Soren is not the only one shown, either—there are a few others present towfards the end. May you readers enjoy it!

Spoilers: Takes place at the end of Path of Radiance, so if you haven't gotten there I suggest backing away just to be safe.

Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is not owned by me by any means, nor are the abundance of characters.

The Time Spent Waiting

"You may die if we let you onto the battlefield in your state."

Ike was being quite narrow-minded when he had made that statement. Forget dying in the midst of a battle; Soren was dying as he stayed behind while everyone else did the fighting.

He had made it so far while staying in decent enough strength to go on. Why had it all fallen apart then, just as the final encounter loomed? For one of the few times in his life, his emotions had overpowered his rationality, and how he despised them for doing so.

A sharp gasp slipped through Soren's teeth as his spell book was knocked from his hands. He swiftly turned to pick it up, but as he crouched down to snatch it he was pushed to the ground himself. His eyes narrowed into a glare; whoever had the gall to hit him from behind would be struck by lightning... When he turned to find his enemy, however, he instead caught sight of an arrow zipping over his head while his commander stood only a few feet away.

"You should know better than to turn your back on the enemy," Ike warned as he swung Ragnell, sending a wave of magic at the archer that had targeted Soren. The sage rose to his feet and attempted to look composed and unfazed, but a more conspicuous scowl than usual and eyes avoiding those of Ike's were enough to convey the humiliation that he felt. In his attempt to evade eye contact with Ike, Soren spotted Oscar and his horse headed away, towards Kieran and a decent number of beorc soldiers that he was trying to fend off; that meant that he and Ike had been left alone to eliminate the remaining mutated laguz nearby. He would have to wallow in embarrassment afterwards.

Soren approached Ike and the two of them glimpsed around the area to find where their opponents had disappeared to. Prior to his distraction, Soren distinctly recalled seeing a dragon and cat laguz; however, only the dragon laguz was visible at that moment. "I'm going to weaken it head-on," Ike spoke, clearly observing the dragon, "When I back off, cast thunder. Hopefully that will be enough..."

The sage nodded in agreement. "Don't do anything reckless. If you get caught in its flames, it will be over," he returned to his regular role of being precautious.

Ike did not visibly acknowledge the remark, but Soren knew that he had heard and processed it. The general dashed forward and sliced from a distance at first, a slash of Ragnell's magic breaking through the scales of the dragon's torso. Blood gushed out, not red as was common to both laguz and beorc; it was a sickly green and brown concoction. As the twisted creature writhed, Ike hurried to it and used its leg as leverage to reach its chest, which he jammed his sword through into what he was hoped was its heart. Even from a distance, Soren could tell that Ike had not put enough thought into where he was stabbing despite his honourable desire to end the laguz's life as quickly as possible. The swordsman realized this, too, and therefore pulled his sword out and escaped the range of the dragon's flames that were being breathed every which way in utter panic. Once Ike was far enough away, Soren murmured an incantation that generated a burst of lightning to strike down the dragon. Even after collapsing to the ground, the laguz shuddered with dimming life.

Soren began walking toward it, but stopped as he saw Ike step onto the creature's chest and, much more calculatedly than before, pierce its heart with his blade. The regret in Ike's eyes was apparent, along with a great level of disgust. Seeing that his commander was enduring a moment of distraction, Soren began approaching the fallen dragon to urge Ike to rejoin the battle. Pity the warped laguz as he did, Soren could not bring himself to feel upset enough to allow anyone to stand helpless in the midst of battle. As he climbed atop the corpse and made his way toward Ike, Soren faintly noticed a pair of glowing forms in the thickets nearby... eyes. It barely took a second for Soren to deduce that the eyes belonged to the missing cat laguz from earlier; however, a second was all that it took for the feral cat to pounce forward with Ike as its target.

Ike, torn and bloodied, deadweight on top of the dragon that he had killed with mercy in spite of its intention to kill him and all of his allies, friends... that unyielding compassion that he showed to people based on their hearts instead of anything else...

That was the image that flashed through Soren's mind for a portion of an instant before he felt teeth bore into his right shoulder, and claws into his left and right arms. He fell under the weight of the laguz, but it was quickly pulled off as Ike knocked the beast aside and skewered it without hesitation.

"Soren! What were you thinking?!"

"That I would rather die than see you dead," Soren said softly to himself, alone in his tent. Somehow, despite that preference, Soren was alive while Ike may very well have been staring death in the eyes at that very moment... And the sage had no way of knowing.

With a sigh, Soren peeled off the remainder of the bandages wrapped around his left arm. He cringed slightly at the resistance of the dried blood that kept the bandages plastered to his skin; although, he knew that it was better that the blood was dry and not fresh. After tossing the stained fabric to the ground, he picked up a softer cloth and submerged it into a large bowl of warm water sitting atop a table. With removing his left hand from the water, he gripped the cloth with his right and ran it over the skin that was newly bare. The reddish-brown hue promptly vanished to reveal the true pale tone of Soren's skin, as well as four thick, darker lines that seemed slashed across his upper arm. Once he judged his arm sufficiently free of blood, he returned the cloth to the bowl and began work at removing the remaining two sets of bandages that covered his right shoulder and arm. His fingers fumbled at the tie, however, through a combination of using his weaker hand and the constant pain bursting out from his wounds. As minutes passed without any progress, Soren concluded that he would need to seek help from one of the other forced to stay behind.

He walked to the tent's entrance and pushed the door aside through enduring the throbbing in his arm. He had no intention of stepping outside to show his frailty to the world—his skin cut open, fragile torso exposed, and will too weak to conceal his dismay in it all. Instead, he waited until one of his allies came into sight; his relief was almost overwhelming when Rhys was the first person to enter his view, yet another mercenary left behind for his ill-health. "Rhys!" he called out. The bishop turned toward him almost immediately, and it hardly took a thought for him to realize what Soren needed his assistance with.

Soren retreated into his tent as soon as he saw that Rhys was on his way. When the healer stepped inside, he spared no words before beginning to unravel the bandages intricately wrapped about Soren's arm and shoulder; as the Greil Mercenaries had all come to learn, words were generally a waste when addressed to Soren because they were often not returned, especially when his mind was buried in suppressed emotions. As Rhys cleaned away the blood that covered nearly half of Soren's upper body, he remarked aloud, "The gashes on your arms have closed up nicely. It's so fortunate that you got to Mist before you suffered more blood loss than you could recover from."

Darkness began closing in from the corners of his vision, but Soren knew that his eyes were wide open. He remained still as his eyesight completely blacked out, the last image that he saw being Ike kneeling on the ground in front of him. "Damnit!" Ike cursed. Soren heard him, knowing that he was just by his side; however, that did not change the fact that he sounded so distant, almost as though he were not really there. It was as though Soren's sense of touch was all that existed at that moment, the pain overpowering all other senses. He could feel as Ike hastily, yet somehow gently, took Soren's arms and draped them over his shoulders. "Hold on," he urged, and Soren grabbed the fabric of Ike's shirt as tightly as he could manage.

The general locked his arms underneath Soren's legs and lifted him off of the ground. Upon feeling the cool wind against his face as Ike began hurrying across the battlefield, the black that clouded Soren's vision began slipping back to the edges of his eyes. The sight of Ike was considerable reassurance, although he could also see that Ike's cape was steadily becoming a deeper and deeper red. The realization that it was his blood seeping into the cloth was enough for Soren to want to return to his temporary blindness. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face into the crook of Ike's neck.

"Don't," Ike ordered evenly.

Soren opened his eyes a crack; it felt like a far more arduous action than it should have. "What—?" he questioned, not bothering to concern himself with the fact that his lips were against Ike's skin.

"Do not pass out." Unlike when he spoke his first order, Ike's voice wavered more with each word that he spoke, "If you fall unconscious, you may not wake up... so just stay awake, Soren," Ike held onto him tighter as his pace increased considerably. Soren shut his eyes again; he opened his mouth with the intention to say that he would try, but all that escaped was a sharp breath. "Soren. Please!"

"Oh my gosh! Ike, what happened?!"

Before a response was even given, Soren could see the light of healing being emitted from Mist's staff even through his closed eyelids. He had kept conscious just long enough...

"I am grateful to Ike." When Soren took notice of the subtly bemused stare he was being given by Rhys, he realized that he had spoken aloud, and to someone who had not even been in the previous battle, no less. In an attempt to explain himself, Soren elaborated, "We were far away from the others when I was injured. He carried me to Mist; there would have been no way that I could have made it so far on my own."

Rhys secured the bandages about Soren's arm and shoulder with a knot. "I'm quite surprised," he commented with a slightly playful smile on his lips, "that you allowed yourself to be attacked from behind. You're always more careful than that." When his remark was met with silence, Rhys understood that Soren was done with socializing. He double-checked that his nursing duty had been done properly, and then gave the sage a nod goodbye before turning to the tent's exit.

Soren frowned as he suddenly grew aware of the fact that as things stood that instant, he would be left confined to his tent after Rhys left. "Wait," he halted the healer with that sole word, "could you assist me with one more thing?"

"Certainly," Rhys responded without hesitation, "What is it?"

Unwillingness to acknowledge his own limitations nearly overcame Soren, but his desire to escape his tent and his thoughts proved more imperative at that time. "I..." he dithered, "I cannot get my robes on myself..." As though sparing him the embarrassment of having to further request aid, Rhys gathered up Soren's robes from where they were neatly folded, not too far away from another set of clothing that had been shredded by the claws of the cat laguz. He was able to fit the robes onto Soren without much difficulty despite their complexity; perhaps it was because he was accustomed to helping others who had been injured getting dressed, or it could also have been that Rhys' outfit was similar in its complicated nature. Since Soren had found himself crippled, he had only allowed Ike to provide him with such assistance, and needless to say the swordsman was not quite as familiar with such clothing.

With eyes half-closed and a hand supporting his drooping head, it was quite clear that Soren was growing bored of watching Ike flipping and contorting his sage robes in hopes of them appearing more like the human form than a mass of fabric. "You're looking through more than you have to," Soren piped up at last. "I won't be needing my cloak, for one, if I'm stuck in this forsaken camp, anyway."

Ike abruptly stopped fiddling around with Soren's clothes. "You mean I have been dealing with multiple articles of clothing this entire time?" he asked in exasperation, yet with a slight, hopeful smile tugging at his mouth. Soren merely gave him a stare that told Ike that he was not amused without having to use any words. The general's face lost the faint smile; Soren had not shown any sign of contentment since he received his injury. Under normal circumstances, he would at least provide a smirk and taunting remark at another person's blunders, which translated into Soren being entertained. It upset Ike that Soren had taken to reacting to every situation callously, without any redeeming element of happiness whatsoever. He sighed to himself as he pried Soren's cloak out of the pile of clothing in his arms and tossed it into a corner.

He continued his analysis of robes in silence, choosing to ignore the brooding sage to avoid becoming utterly bleak himself. "Finally," Ike said to himself as he was able to identify the top, outer layer of Soren's robes. Soren himself had already managed to put the lower half of his outfit on; he was forced to admit defeat when it came to bending his arms to put on the upper layers.

Ike temporarily left the remainder of Soren's accessories on the table as he began work on clothing his companion. Soren cooperated as much as his body would allow him, guiding his hands into the right places while relying on Ike to pull the sleeves over his arms. The swordsman picked up Soren's sash, and as he reached for the belt as well, he was interrupted, "Don't bother with that. I won't have use for carrying a tome around here, either." In response to yet another of Soren's pessimistic comments, Ike shook his head to himself and then returned to Soren. He carefully slipped the sash around his waist and tied it into place; his hand lingered momentarily on Soren's side before moving away with reluctance. The sage watched this action with intrigue, and somewhat with appreciation. "Ike," he spoke, prompting his commander to look at him again. His lips curved up at a corner into a smirk, "Figuring those robes out was a truly pathetic display from the man leading an entire army in war."

His traditional, snide comment was met with an assured grin from Ike. He was glad to have had such an effect on him, simply through a genuine change in his mood.

"I have been in here for far too long." Soren's statement was timed appropriately as Rhys finished fitting the sage's clothes on.

Rhys stepped back and smiled at Soren. "Well, now you can feel free to get out. Go and make some friends with the people you're usually insulting," he said with serious intentions, yet a noticeably teasing undertone; with Soren's cynical view of people, the mocking portion of Rhys' words was all that he took notice of. Upon detecting the scepticism in Soren's stare, the bishop insisted, "Really, you should converse with some of the others here. I, at least, find it interesting to hear how they have come to be ill-suited for battle. They're all much more fascinating than my story of simply getting sick often," he added, chuckling, "I would ask you for your story... but I know better than to expect you to share it."

"Very true," Soren could not deny, "I will... take your suggestion into consideration." In actuality, Soren had suddenly grown interested in the idea of learning the stories of others. All that was written in his reports were the names of those injured, never how those wounds came to be. It had never even occurred to him that he was not the only one who had fallen victim to an enemy for an emotional reason, as opposed to sheer incompetence. "Thank you, Rhys," he said, for both his physical assistance and the potential distraction that he had offered.

The frail healer gave a smile full of strength. "Anytime. Please, don't hesitate to ask for my help if you need it," a subtle laugh meshed into his smile, "I won't tell anyone about it; I know that you'd hate that." Unable to disagree with the statement, but having no desire to comment on it, Soren remained silent as Rhys took his leave, still serene in spite of Soren's bitterness.

He waited until no one could be seen from the view out of his tent door to step out into the camp. His eyes squinted as much as they could without closing completely, the light of the sun overwhelming at its highest point, particularly after having been hidden away in a tent for such a long time. The weather always seemed to be ironically optimistic at the most depressing times; Soren did his best to ignore it like he did upbeat people.

Searching about the immediate area, he almost immediately found that he was not the only one spiting the high-spirited weather with a foul mood. Lethe sat with her back leaning against crates of supplies, her stare resentfully locked on a gash in her arm as she ran her tongue over it again and again. Soren's reports had said that the laguz was out of commission because an injury significantly impaired her mobility while in her transformed state.

"Does that honestly heal the wound?"

The glare that had been set on her own weakness turned toward Soren and his question. "If anyone has the answer to that, wouldn't it be you, know-it-all human?"

He did not wince as she bitingly spat out 'human' instead of 'beorc', which she had been so careful to use while in the army. The word did not apply to him in any case, and he also found amusement in her hostility as it undoubtedly had the same roots as his recent indifference. "Then I'll ask this: how did a superior laguz get a wound severe enough to keep her from battle?"

Lethe's brow furrowed and her fangs showed in a grimace to accentuate her frustration even more, although when she answered, her disapproval was aimed at someone other than the prying sage, "Ugh, it was that Muarim! Sometimes he just freezes in front of a beorc enemy, can't bring himself to attack. Being a slave to them for so long must have messed him up badly." Her face settled into a more melancholy expression, but it faded just as quickly afs it had appeared when she began vigorously licking her cut again. "It," she spoke when her mouth was free, "It would have been unfair for him to die in such a way. I had to protect him."

"Hm." A look of disapproval was directed at Soren once again as he let out a light, thoughtful noise. He thought that it was somehow interesting that his and Lethe's intentions had been so similar when they received their injuries; however, he would never voice the thought aloud. "I'll leave you to whatever you're trying to accomplish," he remarked with ridicule that prompted Lethe to simply ignore him and carry on with her task dismissively.

Continuing to explore the camp as though he had never been there before, he heard a jumble of muttered curses and the sloosh of material being submerged in water. Soren rounded a tent to its front where he spied the Greil Mercenaries' archer scrubbing his jacket in a wooden basin while mumbling more colourful words and wearing a glower that could put Lethe's to shame.

The sight prompted Soren's lips to curl up in the most entertained smirk he had mustered since his injury. "I would love to hear how this came about."

"Too bad there's no way in hell I'd tell Ike's little helper," Shinon jeered, flicking his head back to keep his ponytail from tumbling into the water that he laboured over. He heaved the jacket out and wrung it. "Damn, why the hell has it come to this point? Me, incapacitated at camp, while that inexperienced general is out there, either saving our asses or screwing everything up for all of us." He unravelled the thick material in his hands and scowled at a patch of blood that stained the left side. "Goddamn Rolf..." he mumbled to himself, although the way that he shook his head as he said it showed more concern than annoyance.

"Ike, your cloak..."

"It'll come out," Ike responded without turning his head to see Soren. He arms were as outstretched as much as he could manage while holding the cape in front of him, water slipping off of its edges and dripping into the stream underneath it. The shoulder and upper back area was darkened significantly with once-dry, then-soaked brown.

Without any evident sound or expression to give his thoughts away, Ike dropped the cloak onto the grass next to him and then settled down himself. Soren tentatively took a few steps closer, wobbling with the discreet dizziness that had been present since he was attacked. Ike moved his hand off of the grass as though leaving a space next to him especially for Soren. The sage accepted it, loosely falling to the ground and inwardly wondering about the strain that would be involved when he got back up. "When Mist and Oscar team up, there's no domestic job that they can't accomplish!" Ike elaborated with a beaming face that was hopeful enough for both of them.

"It's remarkable," Soren said as he moved to shift his weight onto his palm, but quickly withdrew when he foresaw the pain that it would trigger. Noticing the movement, Ike cautiously drew his friend closer to let Soren's weight rest on his shoulder. His action further provoking Soren's statement, he continued, "that a person like you would abandon the front lines to look out for someone like me."

A stern face overtook Ike as he circled an arm around Soren. "It's better this way," he said without any evidence of thinking his statement to be anything other than fact, "I'd rather have my clothes stained by the blood of a friend that I helped to save than an enemy that I killed."

"So you'd prefer to have not saved Rolf and be out there killing than to be here now?"

Soren's expression grew smug when Shinon notably pouted and turned his head away from the sage. He knew that that was the only answer that his fellow mercenary would be giving him, so he closed the conversation that had never truly had a chance to develop, "Fine then. Brood about your choices here; I have better things to do, anyway."

After Soren turned to wander to other areas of the camp, Shinon glanced in his direction still scowling. He was not fond of the reclusive tactician understanding him and wondered how he managed to do so in the first place. Shrugging his speculations off, Shinon resumed his war with the blood stain.

A snore was the next sound to draw Soren's attention. It was a subtle snore, very different from those of drunken or old men, yet clearly masculine nonetheless. He curiously walked to the area that he heard the snoring coming from: hidden behind one of the many tents. Soren froze for an instant when his eyes were greeted with the scaly back of a wyvern, but his nerves settled when he spotted the beast's master sitting next to it, using its uncomfortable-looking back as a pillow. The strategist mentally leafed through his list of army recruits and did not take long to identify the name of the unusual snoozing man that was once captain of a Daien force. "Haar," he said aloud as the name came to him.

The dracoknight's eye opened and focused itself onto Soren. "You want something?" he asked, a yawn closing the question.

"No," Soren replied abruptly while scanning over Haar and failing to find an injury on him. He rethought his response, "Why are you not out fighting?"

Haar yawned again, and then casually reached backwards and patted his wyvern's side, bandaged up. "She got a little cut up last fight. Jill was being hasty again, rushing in with a vengeance. She has her father's spirit, but no understanding that sometimes you just need to sit back and have a nap—relax a little," he let his arm slip from his wyvern's damaged skin and shut his eye once more, "I hope that Shiharam's watching out for her now, since I can't be there..."

Slightly interested in hearing more, Soren waited for further words. Instead of sentences, Haar began breathing in silently and letting out deep sighs of sleep. Unsatisfied with this sudden closure, Soren was tempted to give the man a toe-jab in the ribs; he resisted the urge and sought stories elsewhere. It awed him in a way, to learn that so many others had done exactly as he had.

When he looked to the camp's edge where the troops had marched off that morning, he saw one of Elincia's childhood friends and guard, and recognized without a thought that he was yet another person to add to the list of people incapacitated after protecting another. Soren already knew it as a fact, as the origin Geoffrey's injury had become the favourite gossip of the army:

A lance paladin had been charging toward Elincia when Geoffrey positioned himself between them and met the enemy's weapon with his own. He was overpowered and was tossed from his horse, breaking his leg in the process. At camp after the battle was won, Elincia visited Geoffrey in the first aid tent and expressed her disapproval in front of all of the healers and other soldiers that had been wounded; she chewed him out for protecting her when she had deliberately told him time and again not to. The word of the witnesses was that the brave Crimean knight had been speechless.

Soren walked up to next to him and folded his arms over his chest. He focussed his gaze on the empty scenery that spanned in front of them, but also watched Geoffrey from the corner of his vision.

"Elincia came to see me before the battle," Geoffrey spoke up, prompting Soren to look to him completely. The knight kept all of his attention ahead of him as he added, "She told me to take care of myself until she returned—then, she said, we'll be living a new life, but it will still be us and Lucia and Bastian, together."

A light 'hm' of acknowledgement hummed from Soren's throat.

A new voice invited itself into the conversation, "I was woken up by Jill before the army left." Both men looked to Haar as he walked up and swiftly lowered himself to the ground with a weary stretch. "She told me to stay here and just wait until she came back so that we could visit her father's grave when it was all over."

"Someone told me to wait for them, too," Lethe remarked, staying slightly distanced, "It was Muarim. He said that I fought for him, so he would do the same for me and return safely no matter what race his enemies were."

Shinon approached and sat cross-legged next to Haar. "Rolf came to me and said, 'Shinon, just wait till I come running back to camp at the front of the army! I won't let you down!'" his voice fell out of a tone that imitated Rolf to his own callous rasp, "Stupid kid..."

Arms still crossed, Soren contemplated his own interactions from before the army set out. No words crept out of his lips as he watched the landscape, visualizing the hopefully cliché image of Ike emerging over the horizon with a countless number of allies following close behind. A twitch pulled at his mouth's corner and he relented to it and formed a discreet smile.

"Watch for it, Soren," Ike addressed his friend who was sitting in the tent's corner, stretching his arm as far in front of himself as he could manage with a bitter stare directed at it. Ike crouched down in front of him, urging Soren to turn his attention to the words being spoken; he complied and met Ike's eyes. The general grinned, "In a little while, I'll step up over a hill," he dramatically waved his arm in the shape of an arc as he continued, "just me, at first, and then the whole army will follow and we'll all celebrate!"

His tactician rolled his eyes and leaned back against the tent fabric as much as he could without it collapsing. "I think that it's too optimistic to say that everyone will be returning with you," he said lethargically.

Ike shrugged before standing up straight again. "Maybe, but I swear I'll be back, so wait for me until then," he looked down at Soren who carried on pretending to ignore Ike's enthusiasm. In a last effort to leave on a positive note, Ike added, "I'll bring the mercenaries back, too, so we can go back to our regular lives. This high-class living will never be the life for me."

Still hushed, Soren thought, "If it isn't for you, then it isn't for me. It's hardly repayment for all that you've done for me, but... I'll wait here, just as you told me to."

I feel that the flashbacks of this fic are definitely its strongest points, but I'd like to believe that it was still effective overall in some way. Please, everyone, let me know what you thought about it. I love the feedback!