Chapter Text
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Linhardt had known Caspar practically for all his life, had been well aware his friend was unable to cope with magic attacks. When they had found themselves on opposing sides at Fort Merceus, Linhardt had made sure to not use his full strength as he flung his gusts of cutting winds at him.
All he had wanted was to force him into retreating from the battlefield. Maybe like this, he had hoped, they might be able to come together again one day, after Edelgard’s seeming madness had been put to a stop.
But something happened.
It happened so quickly that Linhardt couldn’t at first comprehend what was going on. Caspar screamed in agony, so loud and gurgling it made Linhard’s blood freeze. He had never heard his friend scream like that, no matter the injury.
Something was definitely wrong.
Caspar’s axe slipped from his hands, he collapsed to the ground.
The green-haired stared at the scene in front of him as Caspar’s men shuffled in confusion and horror, raised their weapons towards the mage.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed a javelin closing in on him.
It didn’t hit, something about which Linhard hardly cared that moment, and instead met a huge metal shield with a loud clang.
“Don’t let your guard down, boy!”
Gilbert rushed past him, swung his axe at the now headless battalion and proceeded to cut a path through the opening Caspar’s fall had provided.
Linhardt slowly approached Caspar’s motionless body as pools of blood formed around him. The mage hated the sight of blood, the smell, all of it. It made him sick to his stomach.
But he had decided to come back, to fight in this war, even if it meant he was going against his home country, his former allies, classmates. He’d been prepared to see familiar faces die.
Or so he had thought.
He felt the nausea roll through him, way worse than all those years ago when he had been forced to kill a person for the very first time. This was so different from everything he had experienced before.
It burned him up from the inside. He shivered.
Caspar was still alive, breathing lightly, but surely not for long anymore. Countless wounds adorned his body, Linhardt couldn’t tell if it was his attack that had opened them directly or whether they were the result of Caspar’s armor bursting into dozens of tiny, sharp pieces.
“Heh…”
Caspar opened his eyes, a tiny smile flying across his face. Linhard’s mind locked up, was he supposed to do or say anything? There was nothing he could say in this moment, was there? The situation was obvious.
The only thing he could think of was to drop to his knees, blood be damned, to be able to better hear whatever his friend was trying to utter. Battlefields were always so loud.
“See…? Told you this is our first and last fight… I’m just glad... it was you…”
The mage tried to swallow down the urge to throw up. Breathing was so hard.
He knew it was useless to heal his blue-haired friend at this point. The wounds were too numerous, the blood loss way too high, Caspar’s life slipped away much faster than he would ever be able to restore it.
All Linhardt could do was watch as the warrior weakly raised a hand, but couldn’t get wherever he had wanted it to reach. He thought he heard him say his name, but wasn’t sure. Caspar’s words were hardly anything but rattling whispers at this point.
In typical fashion, however, this was nothing to keep Caspar from trying again with all the energy he had left.
“H...ey, Linhardt, I…”
Caspar’s hand sunk, his eyes lost focus.
All that was left for Linhardt to do was to close his friend’s eyelids with shaking hands and to lay him down with as much dignity as possible. He rose, stared at his own robes soaked with blood.
Was it Caspar’s blood or his own?
Maybe some of the armor pieces around had dug into his own skin, but he couldn’t quite tell.
Everything felt so numb.
Arrows and fireballs kept flying over his head, clashing swords and lances were nothing but a drowned hush in his ears.
The only thing he could really hear were footsteps approaching him from behind, slowly but steadily. Maybe someone had come to prey on the situation and end him. Maybe it would be better this way. Maybe he should still fight. He wasn’t sure.
The footsteps came to a halt, and somehow Linhardt managed to muster the strength to turn and look behind him.
He found Byleth, who swallowed upon the sight presented to him. Silence fell between them, the noises of the battlefield still hadn’t quite returned yet.
It was almost impossible to hear the professor either.
“It’s okay for you to retreat for now. If you can’t fight in this state, that’s fine.”
Linhardt’s gaze darted back and forth between his commander and the dead body to his feet.
“...do you offer this to everyone?”
“Yes.”
“I see. But no worries, I’m fine. Just a little exhausted, so I think I would like to… stay behind the front lines for a while.”
He yawned, but Byleth’s raised eyebrow told him immediately the professor was easily seeing through this facade. Despite that five-year gap, Byleth probably had heard so many of Linhardt’s yawns that he could tell right away when one was genuine and when it wasn’t. If he was able to do with with every person in this army, it was quite impressive.
Byleth held out his hand.
“If you don’t want to leave, at least stay close to me for now. You’re too vulnerable.”
“I am not
–
”
Linhardt sighed, disputing this man was useless, he knew it all too well. He always managed to be right somehow.
“Come”, Byleth invited him again, soft voice ringing in the mage’s ears, “I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to die here.”
One more time Linhardt looked back at Caspar’s lifeless figure, hesitated for just a moment, feeling the regret that it was impossible for him to retrieve the body.
He swallowed and finally took Byleth’s hand as the warmth of it slowly made the nausea ebb away and they kept fighting their way through the fortress.