To Those Who Are Never Going Home
is a Fire Emblem: Three Houses Dark Fic, written by MadameHyde, and details the worst case scenario that could follow from a combination of the Crimson Flower and Azure Moon routes.
15 years have passed since Edelgard conquered all of Fódlan and won the war she started against the Church of Seiros, Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance. The church is no more, as are the Kingdom and the Alliance. And in their place stands a Garreg Mach Monastery that has been converted into an Imperial officer's academy, as well as new territories for the Adrestian Empire that have had their culture and identity completely erased. And despite the Emperor's insistence that she would deal with them once she had finished her war, Those Who Slither In The Dark still operate in the shadows, stronger than ever.
Trying his best to survive this nightmare of a postwar dictatorship, Felix Hugo Fraldarius retires from his dangerous life of a mercenary and hopes to take a quiet teaching job as an instructor in the Officer's Academy. But his job is far from quiet: in between running into his old friends from the land known as Faerghus and old enemies from the war, Felix's life is turned upside down when he's pulled into the shadow war Hubert von Vestra has been fighting against Those Who Slither In the dark.
The fic has since been removed from the internet.
Tropes:
- 11th-Hour Ranger: Petra becomes one of the main members of the Gray, but only at the very tail end of the story when she shows up to stop Hubert's execution, fight Hegemon Edelgard, and defeat Thales once and for all.
- Abusive Parents: General Ironfang is a belligerent bully towards his daughter Faustine, and is even okay with his son Markus torturing her. And while he's truly Thales in disguise, the seamless nature of it indicates that the real Ironfang was already a horrible parent.
- Adaptational Jerkass: He's already dead by the time the story takes place, but what little we know of Gilbert paints him as being far more unlikable than the good, yet very flawed man he was in Three Houses. For one, when Markus was revealed to have been cheating on his wife with an oblivious Annette and she got the blunt of the criticism for it, Gilbert was among the many people who treated her as if she were the scum of the Earth for having no way of knowing he was married.
- Adaptational Villainy: Played with: Edelgard is a brutal tyrant in the non-Crimson Flower routes of Three Houses, but Crimson Flower tones down her nastiness thanks to Byleth's influence. Here, despite being married to Byleth and Crimson Flower being partially canon, she has still brutally crushed multiple countries under her heel, destroying their cultures while having secret police round up and kill any dissenters.
- Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. The main characters hear Hubert's moniker for Thales and his ilk, "those who slither in the dark", and decide that "Twisted" is far less of a mouthful.
- Affectionate Nickname: Felix lovingly calls Alessia "Little Wolf", a nickname that catches on with Annette and Sylvain.
- Blood Magic: Edelgard bites her own hand to transform into her Hegemon Husk form.
- Blue Blood: Most of the characters were once nobility—Felix, Annette, Hubert, Edelgard, Ferdinand, Caspar, Hilda, and Sylvain.
- Broken Pedestal: Edelgard has become this to just about every member of the Black Eagles strike force sans Byleth. Even the sycophantic Hubert is disgusted by her constant game of softball with the people she swore to destroy, and grows to view her as pathetic for it. When she finally helps them fight Thales and pays for it with her life however, they start to respect her once again.
- Continuation Fic: The fic continues the story of Three Houses fifteen years after the Crimson Flower ending.
- Cool Teacher: Felix seamlessly plays the part of a stern mentor and fun uncle to his students, and they are fiercely loyal to him in return. Annette, Mercedes, and even Hubert are similarly beloved, and the latter's arrest at the hands of Edelgard is the last straw before a rebellion among the students.
- Dark Fic: Along with all the swearing and gore, this fic pulls no punches in showing how terrible of a place Fódlan has become under Edelgard's regime. People are kidnapped and cruelly experimented on by Twisted, entire cultures are erased with survivors becoming social pariahs at best, and a good number of named characters from the game have died.
- Dark Is Not Evil: In the years since the war, Hubert has shed a lot of his nastier traits and become a genuine force for good after seeing just how depraved the Twisted's experiments are and being disgusted by Edelgard's refusal to pull the plug on them. He's still a brutal master of the dark arts and still loves wearing dark and sinister attire, but he's a good man and headmaster who will move mountains to protect his students from harm.
- Former Regime Personnel: Felix, Mercedes, Annette, Ignatz, Alois, and Shamir are all survivors of the old institutions of Fódlan who have taken up residence at Garreg Mach after the war.
- Generation Xerox: Dimitri's son Alexander looks and sounds a lot like him, while having his mother Marianne's eyes and tenderness. He's also inherited Dimitri's madness, but he has a far better handle on it and never hurts anyone who doesn't have it coming to them.
- Good Counterpart: Felix is this to Dimitri: both are Faerghus nobility that lost everything to Edelgard's insurrection, and Felix even looks similar thanks to wearing an eyepatch over a wounded eye and wearing his hair long. But unlike Dimitri, he manages to deal with his anger, grief, and trauma in a healthy way and never lets himself fall into the horrific depravity Dimitri did as the "Boar Prince".
- Good Is Not Soft: Hubert has mellowed out over the years and is a far better man than he used to be. But he is still unfailingly brutal towards his enemies, and is A-OK with torturing them for information should the need arise.
- Growling Gut: When Felix and his friends make a pit stop at Arianrhod while preparing for their final assault on the Twisted, Caspar's stomach lets out a huge rumble that convinces him to break for lunch. Annette's stomach is also described as "rumbling appreciatively" for a big meal Felix treated her to before getting intimate.
- Hate Sink:
- Markus von Engel is a boorish, sleazy Jerkass who horribly abuses his sister, is a serial adulterer who failed his lover Annette and his daughter Alessia, and does everything in his power to undermine Felix and Hubert. Even when he's revealed to be Myson of the Twisted/Slithers in disguise, he's still a nasty personal foe to Faustine while the real Markus is indicated to have been just as horribly unlikable in life.
- His father General Ironfang is just as loathsome, often bullying and belittling his daughter and rubbing it in that Felix was on the losing side of a war that resulted in his culture being erased. Much like with Markus, this bleeds into his real identity with Thales, who gets far more personal than his canon counterpart ever did by tearing apart Caspar, Ferdinand, and Edelgard's families and forcing Felix and the Grey to fight their loved ones as his enslaved "New Ten Elites" thralls.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Hubert had one offscreen in the intervening years between the game and the fic. He's fallen out with Edelgard and is one of the few major Imperial officers actively opposing the Agarthans.
- Edelgard redeems herself after being defeated by the heroes in her Hegemon Husk form and joins them to wipe out those who slither in the dark once and for all.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Played with. Hubert expects to die when he uses Aymr to kill Byleth, who has been turned into a living weapon, when the Gray face Thales in Linhardt's overtaken lab.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Felix and Sylvain were incredibly close prior to the latter's death, with Felix considering him to be a surrogate brother. When it turns out that Sylvain is alive, no love is lost between the two.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Felix is even gruffer and ruder than he was in canon and has quite a foul mouth. But he's still a good man who deeply cares for his friends and students, and is an adorable surrogate father to little Alessia.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: While Those Who Slither/Twisted are dealt with at the very end of Crimson Flower, it's all handled offscreen which gave the impression of Thales/"Arundel" getting away with ruining Edelgard's life and manipulating her into throwing Fódlan into chaos to dissatisfied fans. Here, karma finally catches up to him years later in the form of Hubert gutting him with Edelgard's axe.
- Love Makes You Evil: Thanks to Byleth developing health problems as a result of losing her crest, Edelgard decides to stall on eliminating the Twisted in hopes of them curing her, as her problem is due to her Crest. And thanks to her refusal to do what needs to be done, Edelgard enables them to continue ruining lives with their disgusting experiments while going out of her way to try to execute Hubert for picking up her slack.
- Manly Tears: When he sees that the gentle, kind Marianne has been turned into a monster with a nearly-broken mind thanks to the Twisted's experiments, Felix breaks down crying.
- Prematurely Grey-Haired: Caspar and Hilda are going gray despite only being in their thirties thanks to the stress of life in Edelgard's united Fódlan.
- Past Experience Nightmare: Felix has these about the Unification War.
- Rage Breaking Point: When Hubert and Felix case a TWISTD facility in what was once Faerghus, Felix breaks at the sight of the Lance of Ruin without its Crest Stone. He goes on to overturn the cages once used to house the Crest Experiments, and desperately tries to fix the Lance of Ruin by putting its Crest Stone back into place.
- Song of Courage: Faerghus once used war songs for battlefield direction, and the Blaiddyd War Song is used in this way.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- Felix and Mercedes both remained loyal to the Kingdom yet survived the Imperial War, an outcome not possible in the original game.
- Sylvain is a downplayed example, having remained loyal to the Kingdom and survived the Imperial War before ultimately dying in a failed rebellion some years after the war. Then it turns out he's a straight example when it's revealed he's been alive the entire time.
- Too Kinky to Torture: When Edelgard has Hubert dragged off to the palace dungeons and tortured, he literally laughs it all off and shows no fear or signs of breaking after being put through multiple lengthy sessions.
- Tortured Monster: Flayn, Marianne, and Byleth are all reduced to these thanks to the Twisted's experiments. Marianne gets better, but Flayn and Byleth do not.
- Weight Woe: Annette is briefly self-conscious when she notices how fit and lean Felix is thanks to his life as a mercenary while she's gotten a bit chubby and soft due to her more sedentary lifestyle.
- Won the War, Lost the Peace: Edelgard has defeated the Kingdom, Alliance, and Church, and in the process has allowed her Agarthan "allies" to completely trample her newfound peace.
