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“What are we going to do, Lin?” Caspar couldn’t stop clenching his hands into fists. They were alone in the Black Eagles’ classroom, the others having filed out after Seteth, their minds easily made up. Caspar and Linhardt hadn’t been Black Eagles students for months, opting to join the Golden Deer and learn from Professor Byleth, but both of their fathers stood behind Edelgard and her war. “Do you think my dad knew at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion? I saw him talking to Edelgard then, but I never expected…”
“Probably,” Linhardt said. “You can’t exactly plan a war over a Saint’s Day weekend. It does explain some of the stranger letters I received from my father.” He pillowed his chin on his arms, looking up at Caspar.
He sat on the edge of the desk and idly petted Linhardt’s hair. “But what are we going to do? Leaving the Black Eagles isn’t like we left the Empire. I mean, I don’t want to fight our classmates, but we’re going to have to no matter what we do.”
“We could just go into hiding until the war’s over.”
“Yeah, that- Wait, you don’t actually think that’ll work, do you?” Caspar accused.
“No, not really. Wars have a habit of ruining all of the good napping spots.” He yawned. “I suppose it comes down to whether or not we want Edelgard’s new world.”
Caspar picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. With the end of the year so soon, he hadn’t bothered to replace his fraying uniform shirts. Now it felt like a meaningless drop in a meaningless lake. “I don’t think she’s wrong, about noble bloodlines having nothing to do with how strong or smart anyone else, but I don’t think going to war with the Church is going to help anything. Brigid and Almyra don’t follow the Church of Seiros and they have the same problems with nobility she was complaining about.”
“Not to mention everyone leading her army is a noble. I doubt they’ll want to give up their power once the fighting’s over. My father’s probably just trying to expand his own territory. It’s not like Edelgard to be so idealistic when it comes to believing what a noble says they’re going to do.” He paused, lifting his head from his arms. “Do you think she’s just going to execute all of them when the war’s over?”
“Don’t joke about that!”
“I’m completely serious. How else can she guarantee that they’ll cede power to skilled commoners when she asks? If I were her, and bent on this ridiculous war, I’d have Hubert dose everyone with a poison and then just keep feeding them antidotes until their usefulness ended, that way no one could run.”
“...I’m really glad you’re telling me that and not her.” Caspar pulled on his arm and held Linhardt’s wrist. “When you put it that way, we don’t really have a choice, do we? We stay and fight with the professor… You’re gonna stay with me, right, Lin?”
“I would say that going to join Edelgard is too much work, but you’re dense sometimes, so yes. I’m staying with you.” Linhardt stood and pulled Caspar after him by his hand on his wrist. “No use worrying about it now. I’m going to take a nap. You should go eat in the dining hall and bring me back something to have when I wake up.”
“I can do that. I’ll tell Claude and the professor we’re staying, too.” Caspar hesitated at the hallway where they should split. His fingers dug into his jacket cuff. “Hey, uh… Thanks.”
“As a scientist, I would ideally prefer to remain neutral.” Linhardt covered another yawn with his free hand. “But I’m your friend before I’m a scientist, so I guess this was inevitable. Oh well, good night.”
Caspar wiped his completely dry eyes as he walked to the dining hall just slightly too fast to be casual. He was hungry. That was all.
---
The battle for Garreg Mach came too soon. Caspar was still a kid. They were all still kids. Kids leading battalions of soldiers to their deaths. Caspar’s battalion had all returned to the Empire. They were men and women, well, not handpicked by his father, but they were his soldiers first and Caspar’s a distant second. Seteth and the professor - should they call her something else? Eisner felt weird and Byleth was far too familiar - had cobbled together a battalion for him out of reserve soldiers from other companies and former Knights come back from retirement.
Hilda joked that he should be insulted, but Caspar knew he was fortunate to be trusted at all. It was more than just that he was trusted, too. He was the only commander capable of delivering orders loudly and clearly enough for the hodge-podge of warriors to understand and follow. And former Knights! He was ordering around former Knights of Seiros! If anything, the mantle of trust and responsibility weighed him down as he stood on the ramparts scanning the approaching banners.
Linhardt sat on the stone, his weight on Caspar’s legs as he dozed. Normally, he wouldn’t have been caught anywhere near the ramparts. Not because he was afraid of heights, but because of the walking required to get there, but with the battle just hours away, there was nowhere else for him to catch a last minute nap.
The bottom dropped out of Caspar’s stomach when he spotted his family’s familiar sigil, front and center, leading Edelgard’s vanguard. The sweat between his shoulders turned to ice and his knees would have wobbled if they weren’t trapped between Linhardt and the cold stone. With the extra time he had to look from not falling to his knees, he realized that the banner lacked the gold general’s border. “There’s no way my brother’s here.”
Linhardt murmured in response to his voice, but only nonsense syllables came out. He turned his face into the unarmed part behind Caspar’s knee. He took it as agreement. “But if it’s not my father or my brother, who is it? It’s not Edelgard sending me a message; I’m not supposed to use the family’s banner.”
He leaned over and shook his shoulder. “Come on. We should get into position.”
Without fulling waking, Linhardt climbed his body and draped himself over Caspar’s back. He yawned in his ear and took dragging steps. “If you say so.”
The western edge of the defensive line held Ignatz and Leonie, both checking the tension on their bowstrings. Caspar left Linhardt with them, determined not to examine while they held hands before he left. He took up his position with his battalion next to Lorenz, who was mounted on a great, black warhorse.
“...I will not think less of you, should you have any qualms about fighting your countrymen.” Lorenz looked down at him, but out of necessity, not self-importance. If anything, his normally high-strung expression was softened by sadness. His eyebrows and mouth were turned down and shadowed by the upcoming battle.
“It’s not them I’m worried about.” Caspar leaned forward so he could rub his neck under his helmet. “I saw my family’s battle standard. Not my dad, thankfully, and I can’t imagine my brother remembering which end of the sword goes where, so…”
“Hmm, Bergliez…” Lorenz looked out at the barricades, as if they held the answers. Maybe they did. “Do you not have an uncle and aunt around our age?”
“Oh yeah, Uncle Randolph! And you’re right, there’s Fleche, too, but she’s way too young to be here. That must be him. How did you know that?”
“As the future leader of the Alliance, it is critical that I am aware of all potentially valuable romantic partners.”
“Romantic- Ew! Lorenz! She’s eight years old!” Caspar stumbled a step away from Lorenz.
“Fifteen years is not too long of a time to plan ahead, though I will admit that the age difference, even given time, has put her below other candidates.” Lorenz flapped his hand between them. “Don’t worry; I doubt we’ll become in-laws. I’ll be sure to take point if we encounter your uncle.”
“Thanks Lorenz. I think.”
Silence enveloped the defensive lines. There were no more preparations to be made, no more orders to be given. All they could do was wait. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the former Knights in his battalion making half-familiar hand gestures at each other. One man, silver hair peeking out from the bottom of his helmet, smiled and gave Caspar a reassuring wave. With a straight back, Caspar raised his axe and waited.
The first call of Imperial battle horns had his blood aflame and his legs itching to sprint forward, but that wasn’t his signal, not anymore. The first Imperial troops crashed against the line of barricades. They knelt behind their shields at the first wave of arrows, but the metal did little for the fire magic that slithered between the arrows and sloughed against and around the shields.
Silver horns warbled out the call for the Church’s vanguard. Caspar hefted his axe, showing off the sea green paint marking his unit. He swung it forward and then waded into the defenses. Magic buzzed against his skin, hot and itchy and completely different from the sleepy chill of Linhardt’s. His first opponent wasn’t faceless. She was his brother’s age with scarlet hair and scarlet armor that seeped scarlet blood when his axe bit into her side. He howled encouragement to his soldiers, not because they needed it, but because if he didn’t he would scream at the horror of his own actions.
He’d memorized the maps and positions, had walked the battlefield up and down until Lindhardt fell asleep and then woke up again, but the ringing minor trill from the horns still froze Caspar with indecision. There was no choice to make. Follow orders to fall on a weapon. With teeth bared, Caspar launched himself to the sixth position and lost himself in the whirl of battle. Before long, the paint on his axehead was streaked with blood and worse, leaving with people with only his vocal commands to follow.
The orders given via harsh, staccato blarps had nothing to do with his people, but after the fourth repetition of the command, he knew something was wrong. His ears rang with the screech of metal on metal and he struggled to remember who answered to that call. Healers responded to a low warble like a dying bear, but even though Linhardt wasn’t in trouble, his blood ran cold. A barricade shattered in front of him and through the gap, Caspar saw his house’s banner and under it, Randolph. Lorenz rode through the main thoroughfare to meet him and Caspar turned his attention to.. To… Reinforcements! That was the blarping!
His voice sank into the melee and blood, but Caspar’s battalion followed him to the west gate and check on reinforcements. It was blocked by purple magic and soldiers with pure black armor and no commander. Until Caspar turned around. The Death Knight bore down on Leonie, whose horse was stuck in the undergrowth. She leapt from the saddle, rolling on the ground with her shield and bow, not a moment too soon. His wicked scythe cut through the animal, leaving a black and smoking wound-track.
“You…” the Death Knight wheezed through the monstrosity of his helmet. He pointed his scythe at Linhardt. “I know you. You bring life… Even as I bring death. A more pure kill, I could not find.”
The Crest of Cethleann appeared over his hands as they glowed with fierce White Magic. If Linhardt had heard the Death Knight, he paid him no mind, spells tumbling from his lips and healing the not-faceless Ignatz.
The pure-black stallion reared up to charge Linhardt and Caspar had no more time to think.
He did what he did best. Shouted. “Hey Bad Guy! Why don’t you fight an actual warrior?” He charged forward, but the distance seemed impossibly far. What had taken moments when he was returning from a shopping trip in the village took hours as his feet took him closer to the Death Knight.
But war wasn’t a story. The Death Knight didn’t forget Linhardt and aim his scythe at Caspar. Instead, he pulled a spiked javelin from his saddle and launched it at the healer. Time slowed. Caspar felt like his limbs were tied to stones like in his worst training nightmares. Felt like he was moving through mud and not air.
Lindhart’s entire body jerked from the impact and he fell backwards, his hands still glowing as he landed on the ground. Caspar’s heart stopped when the magic winked out. He could feel the flesh in his throat tear as he yelled from the soles of his feet. “Linhardt!”
And then time resumed.
The Death Knight rode Caspar down and sliced him from shoulder to hip. “Foolish child.”
He collapsed onto the bloody ground. Without moving his head, because he couldn’t move anything, he saw purple-black spears of magic sail through the sky. He hoped they’d come from Lysithea. He heard the Death Knight’s voice, but the words were distorted like he was underwater. Tears welled in his eyes, the only part of him that still seemed to work. War wasn’t a story. He couldn’t roll over and crawl over to Linhardt. They wouldn’t stagger away in a rush of broken confessions and healing magic.
Dorothea’s ash-streaked face broke through his tears. “No, you are not dying.” She sniffed and choked on a sob. “I am not losing any of my friends today.” White light lit her face, casting sharp shadows across her soft features. The tear left two clean swathes down her cheeks.
Feeling came back, but it was all pain, all grief, all burning and bright in the worst ways. He tried to speak, but only blood came out. He tried again. “You’re on their side? Won’t Edelgard be mad?”
“Then Edie can be mad!” Dorothea’s words were a shriek, all of her control from the opera lost in the bloodshed. “You’re my friend, Caspar. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I love you,” Caspar said because her hands with literally holding his chest together. She had them on his heart, she knew what he meant, that he loved her as deeply and solidly as he’d never loved his brother, as warmly and softly as families always did in the stories.
War wasn’t a story, but Dorothea was.
She was the last thing he saw.
---
Caspar woke, which was a surprise in and of itself, but was inconsequential compared to- “Linhardt!” He tried to sit up and flailed his arms when a weight held him down. He hit someone in their bearded, grizzled face. “Where’s Linhardt?”
“Shh, calm down, kid. Take your left hand. No, the left one. There you go, stretch it out sideways.” The man’s voice was deep and calming, like his grandfather’s whenever he held Fleche.
Caspar felt around to the left, his fingers first touching rough fabric, then warm, bare skin. The wound across his chest hurt at the stretch of his arm, but feeling him there, close and alive, healed the wound in his heart. He tried to turn his head and look, but his head was bookended in place. “Where are we? Who are you? What happened? How long has Lin been unconscious? Is he hurt bad?”
“He’s doing much better than you. The javelin cracked his shoulder blade, but that’s the worst of it. He’s not unconscious, just sleeping right now. You, on the other hand, have been out for three days.” The stranger rubbed his head in a calming motion.
“Three days?!” His voice broke and he tore open at least part of his chest wound.
“You’re going to be alright, Caspar.”
“Dorothea! What happened to her? She wasn’t-”
The man shushed him and tucked the blankets in snugly around him, with the only exception of his arm reached out for Linhardt. “We ‘chased’ Miss Arneault back behind their lines. No one seemed to suspect her.”
“You’re one of my soldiers!”
He nodded. “That’s right. I’m Marcus, former Knight of Seiros. Von Hevring’s mages got you both stable before disbanding. I imagine they went back to their homes to prepare for the war. The reserve soldiers went back to their own territories, as well. The ten of us packed you two up and brought you here. It’s an abandoned church in Charon territory. Jack served here when he was a boy.” He laughed from the bottom of his chest. “Can’t say which of them aged better.”
“So Lin’s fine. Dorothea’s fine… What happened? What about my uncle, Randolph?” He winced and made a fist under the blanket, even as he tightened his grip on Linhardt’s arm.
“Hmm, I don’t know about your uncle. We were able to drive back the first assault, but the Emperor and several of her lords had a second army waiting. We had to surrender the monastery. I saw the Riegan banners retreat, but everything else is rumors and speculation. Some say Lady Rhea and your professor were killed, some say dragged off in chains, one gout-addled fool said he saw her eminence turn into a great, white beast.”
“So we… lost?”
“That’s about the short of it. We’re gonna get you two boys wherever you’re going and then regroup with the Knights to find out what happened to Lady Rhea.”
“Thank you. For staying. For helping. For everything.” He sniffed.
“This is war, kid. It brings out the worst in a lot of people, yeah, but it brings out the best in others. Von Hevring keeps trying to heal you every time he wakes up. I’m gonna have to have Tim fix up those stitches you ripped, or we won’t be able to stop him.”
Caspar couldn’t help it. He cried. Cried until he was gasping from the pain in his wounds and his soul. “I just want to do the right thing,” he choked out when Marcus pressed a waterskin into his hands.
“We know. We wouldn’t have agreed to follow just any snot-nosed brat’s commands.”
He managed a wet smile and did his best to drink the water. “I’ll make you proud.”
“You already have. Now get some more sleep. We’ll scrounge up some food while you’re out. Jack says he’s got a baby niece or something around here that should have some bread, at least.”
---
“I’m glad you’re okay, Lin,” Caspar said. He sat with his back against the cold, stone wall to keep from moving his torso too much while he ate. He didn’t have a good idea of how bad his wound was other than ‘The Goddess must have wanted you to live,’ which even a skeptic like Linhardt seemed to agree with.
“I’m fine. I had a minor flesh wound. You, on the other hand, had only Dorothea’s magic keeping your insides from being outsides.” He paled just speaking about it, and stuffed bread in his mouth before he could pass out.
“But you fell over! Your magic stopped!”
“I didn’t just lie down for a nap, but I had been healing the entire battle. The javelin hit me with a great deal of force, you know. I didn’t faint, but it did stun me out of the spell I was casting.” He yawned. “I didn’t get up until the Death Knight retreated and then I barely had the energy to stand and Ignatz was still dying. War is so tiresome.”
Caspar sipped his broth to keep from responding. He didn’t believe a word of his nonchalance about his injuries. He remembered when they were ten and Linhardt suffered from a nasty fever for three weeks because he was only pretending to take his medicine. When the soup was gone, he dropped the wooden bowl to the ground and held Linhardt’s hand. “What are we going to do now? What can we do now?”
“In terms of technically possible, I could go home, be a mediocre heir and eventually get conscripted to heal Edelgard’s army… But that would involve leaving you behind, so it’s not feasible.” Linhardt squeezed his hand and let out a long, tired sigh.
Something stirred in Caspar’s chest. Something that had lain sleeping for years, probably since the day Linhardt gave him the lightning charm. He bit his bottom lip and fought the redness in his cheeks. “Not feasible means… impossible?”
Linhardt sighed and leaned over until his head rested on his shoulder. “Are we still playing this game? We’re not at the monastery anymore. We’re not going back to the Empire.”
“Uh, what?” The thing in his chest uncurled and lodged in his throat, turning the question into a desperate croak. Though what he needed, he didn’t have words for. He turned his cheek onto Linhardt’s hair… just to- to cool it down.
“Caspar… I love you, even if you are exhausting.”
“You what?!” Caspar howled. Birds up in the rafters startled and flew out through the hole in the ceiling.
“And loud.”
“You what?” Caspar repeated in a shrill whisper.
“I love you. You love me. Now I’m going to take a nap while you figure it out.” He yawned and put his head in Caspar’s lap. “And we’ll go to Riegan territory, since we allied ourselves with Claude. It’s not that intellectual.”
He was asleep before Caspar’s tongue could unstick itself from the roof of his mouth. Love? Was that the snarly, coily, warm thing in his chest was? It had been so easy to say it to Dorothea, but even admitting it in his head seemed impossible. It would… explain some things. Some dreams he’d assumed were due to familiarity or proximity. His rage and pure terror when he saw the Death Knight’s target. He ran his hands through Linhardt’s hair, doing his best to be gentle with the tangles, like he’d taught him when they were eight and stupid.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest and he let it out, even though it made his wound hurt. He was still stupid, wasn’t he?
---
Once Caspar was well enough to ride a horse, he and Linhardt’s ten, self-appointed guardians loaded them on a steady mare. They had only five horses between the twelve men. The mare was the youngest and the strongest by far, the others carrying packs and not even all of their gear. It was okay. The former Knights doted on them like grandchildren and they were warm bodies when a coldsnap hit in Galatea territory.
“I wonder if Ingrid made it out…” Caspar hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the words tumbled out on their own when he saw the village children with too-sharp cheekbones. The war had barely started; if they were already going hungry the war would surely…
“If anyone made it out, it would be a pegasus knight,” Linhardt mumbled into his back.
Marcus patted Caspar’s leg. “I’m sure she’s fine, kid. This area’s notorious for bad harvests. We’ll lean on old man Charon when we come back through. “
Tim, the youngest of the former Knights of Seiros with only half a head of silver hair, leaned in. “What about Duke Fraldarius? Isn’t he always making grand speeches about the good of Faerghus?”
“Ehh, hasn’t been too pious since the Tragedy. Can’t blame ‘em. But little Cat will yell at her old man if he gives us any guff.”
Caspar sputtered. “Little Cat? You can’t be talking about Thunder Catherine!”
“The one and only. She joined up, oh, a few months before I retired, but I was serving when she was a student. Always in trouble, that one.”
“Thank the goddess Gautier isn’t a few years older. Can you imagine the two of them students at the same time?”
Once he realized they weren’t going to talk about her training or practice regime, Caspar tuned out the chatter. He couldn’t so easily set down the question of what they were going to do next. Edelgard’s declaration of war had explicitly put her at odds with the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, but even Caspar knew that many Alliance lords were close to the Empire. Would they immediately regroup and get back into the fighting? Would one of the border lords try to sell him and Linhardt back to their fathers? Did his father even want him back? A chill ran down his spine.
“You’re thinking too much. Stop. You’re terrible at it.”
With a laugh that was only half-forced, Caspar squeezed the arm around his waist. “I just… You know, I’m worried about what comes next. I like brawling, sure, but killing people is… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”
“That’s a good thing, kid,” Marcus said, pulled from the reminiscing. “The ones that do… They lose themselves. And their families, if they had ‘em. Shallow husks of their former selves. They don’t even live long enough to wash out - just crumble into their own hateful dust.”
“But how do you… How do you stop the nightmares? The guilt?”
“It’s different for everyone. You have to find your own peace. The young bucks in the order will go on about how the goddess brings salvation for everyone, blah, blah. Maybe She’ll help you, but the only bad place to look is the bottom of a bottle.”
Another knight came up on their other side. “You can try focusing on the good you do. Don’t get a big head about the mercies you hand out, but rest knowing that the lives you spared will have knock-on effects.”
“You can always get yourself shuffled out of command and on stable duty or something. It’s not glamorous, but nothing in war is. You’ve seen that, now.” Marcus patted the mare’s neck. “Great listeners, horses. Never judge you or spill your secrets. Love you for the low cost of a nice rub down and maybe a carrot.”
Tim laughed. “We probably don’t have to tell you two to stick together. That’s the big one, after ‘don’t look in a bottle.’ Don’t let yourself be alone. It’ll be tempting. Some days, you feel like you can’t wash the blood off your hands and you don’t want to get it anyone else, nevermind someone you love, but let it go.”
“But blood makes Lin faint,” Caspar protested. He knew what they were getting at, sort of, but chose to say it anyway.
The men laughed so loud that Linhardt woke and grumbled in Caspar’s ear before tightening his grip and settling down against his back.
“I think you’ll be alright. Just don’t get too wrapped up in Riegan’s antics. That boy… He’s all sweetness on the outside, but he’s every bit as deadly as Vestra. Trust your instincts.”
“But my instincts aren’t always to follow-”
“Good. A lot of bad things happen when people just follow orders.”
The trail narrowed and the knights couldn’t walk alongside them, stalling the conversation. Caspar was glad for it. He needed to think. He felt like these friendly talks taught him more about war and fighting than his time at the academy and years of lessons from his father’s people. Maybe it was the kind of thing first borns were told. It couldn’t have been that his father didn’t think there’d be another war. He had no doubt that his father would have found a way to go to war with Almyra if Edelgard hadn’t declared war on the Church of Seiros.
He just wished he’d been told it earlier. Twice a week he had nightmares about the guy with the scorpion tattoo. His consciousness wrestled him into a shallow sleep that did nothing for his exhaustion and for what? The chance they could have gotten information out of the guy? He knew he’d made the right decision. Maybe he’d finally believe it.
He tried to memorize everything the knights told him so he could recount it for Linhardt when he was awake. Maybe he’d talk to Claude about it, see if he knew about not looking in a bottle. One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t have to worry about finding peace. It would always find him and complain he was tiring.