Archive of Our Own

7.

Blood on his hands.

Here’s the thing. Linhardt would have preferred it far, far more if his spell had been a proper one—just thunder, just electricity, just something to shut that boy’s mouth up quick and fast. It shouldn’t even leave a mark, just a little spark and sizzle, not enough for him to cry to his father but enough to make him run away squealing. Definitely enough to wipe the sneer off his face, and enough to stop him from ever again saying the second son of House Bergliez was stupid.

But there had been something hot, something terrible, something frightening making Linhardt’s hands shake, blurring his vision, and then suddenly there was a zigzag jolt of solidified lightning cracking through the air and plunging into the boy’s arm.

A scream—a long, drawn-out, terrifying sound—and blood on Linhardt’s hands, bright red splattered across his pale, trembling palms.

In the end, Linhardt heals him. Of course he does—he doesn’t have much of a choice otherwise. But when the calm glow of faith magic subsides, there is no smile or thank you Linhardt has grown accustomed to from Caspar; instead the boy shoves him away as soon as the wound closes, scrubbing at his face and spitting, “Monster! My da was right! You, you, Hevring, you’re a—a—”

He never finishes, because he turns tail and runs without looking back. The blood on Linhardt’s hands is still wet, still dripping onto the grass beneath him.

He washes his hands at the river Caspar always plays in.

It’s far from hygienic, but he doesn’t want to go back to the estate with bloodied (don’t look don’t look) hands and explain to Mother and Father what had happened. The water is freezing cold, even beneath the afternoon sun, and Linhardt fixes his thoughts on the stinging chill. The stream runs pink.

Caspar sits beside him, his feet submerged in the water. He’s not looking at him. He hasn’t looked at him for the past half hour.

“Are you okay?” Caspar asks, eventually, when the river water is clear and sparkling under the sunshine again. It’s a beautiful day—Caspar had pulled Linhardt out of bed to play because of the nice weather. Now the cool winds and cloudless sky feel like they’re mocking him.

“Fine.”

There’s not much else to say. His hands are clean, but Linhardt washes and washes. If he pulls his hands out of the water, there’ll be no chill to distract himself with, and then what? “I’m sorry,” he offers. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know.”

But Caspar’s still not looking at him, his feet motionless in the water rather than kicking and splashing, and he isn’t smiling, and he won’t look at him, and Linhardt wants to grab his wrist and turn him around, wants to say, Look at me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen, I never wanted to hurt him, I just wanted to help you. He washes and washes and washes until his hands are pruney and his skin is chafed, but the slickness of blood stays between his fingers, tingeing the water an invisible pink.

Linhardt does not use thunder magic again.

11.

“Ow!”

Linhardt cracks a reluctant eye open, blinking sticky drowsiness away. Caspar’s crouched on the grass, bracing himself up on one hand, the stick he had been using as a substitute axe a few ways away from him. “Caspar?”

“S’ nothing! Just a scratch!”

“I know. Come here anyway.”

Caspar drags himself over to the base of the large tree Linhardt’s fallen asleep by—it’s far more than some scratch, and despite having little medical experience Linhardt suspects he’s sprained his ankle, but it’s nothing his faith magic isn’t used to. Caspar slumps against the tree trunk, frowning down at himself as Linhardt’s hands skim over his foot. “Sorry.”

“Hm. It’s alright.” Caspar never apologizes for this. Or, well, doesn’t apologize so sullenly, anyway. Linhardt would know—he’s been practicing his magic on Caspar for years now, considering how often he runs around and gets hurt while practicing how to swing an axe, because that’s cooler than the lance his older brother uses, or whatever. The first time Linhardt had put his magic to any practical use—and the first time his Crest had manifested—was to heal Caspar, after all.

The familiar warm glow of faith magic washes over Caspar’s ankle. Some of the other nobles and political figures Father pushes Linhardt to talk to always say they hadn’t been able to cast healing magic as well as him when they were his age, and that it’s probably got something to do with his Crest, but Linhardt has a feeling it’s just the constant practice. Unlike his previous interests, he never gets tired of learning more about his magic either, even though it takes far too much energy for him—for once, he supposes, it’s because there’s something to keep him going.

“What’s wrong?”

Caspar blinks up at him. “Huh?”

“You’re…” Linhardt shrugs. “Acting weird today.”

“No way! Am I?” Caspar frowns, and it’s so uncharacteristic of him to look genuinely upset about something that Linhardt feels almost dizzy. “It’s nothing. I feel great! ‘Specially now that you fixed me up again.” He moves his foot around, but he makes no move to get back up, and his frown stays in place.

I doubt that, Linhardt wants to say, but he’s too tired to carry what could be a long conversation, and now that Caspar’s next to him, it’s comfortably warm enough for him to rest his head on Caspar’s shoulder and close his eyes. Caspar makes a little noise and shifts to accommodate his head better.

“There’s obviously something wrong if you’re so down,” Linhardt finally murmurs, when the silence grows oddly tense. Caspar jolts next to him, but Linhardt makes no move to move away. He’s not just about to give up a perfectly good sleeping position like this.

There’s a pause, where Linhardt closes his eyes and lets his hand rest atop Caspar’s other, outstretched leg. Tired and sore, his magic tells him. Linhardt lets it flow gently, slowly, like the rise of a rolling wave across Caspar’s leg, enough to relax his muscles.

“Lin,” Caspar starts, voice the softest Linhardt’s ever heard, “am I dumb?”

“What?”

“I said, am I—”

Linhardt pushes himself to sit up a little straighter; this unfortunately means he has to move his head away from Caspar’s shoulder, but he supposes the situation is dire enough to warrant that. “No,” he says, firmly, without even thinking.

“But—” Caspar’s brow furrows, and Linhardt wonders fleetingly, irrationally, if his magic could smoothen that out. “You’re way smarter than me and you understand stuff so much faster and you can even do magic and that’s only for like, real smart people and your—your spelling’s better too, and… and, yeah.” His frown deepens. “All I can do is… punch stuff.”

“You know there’s no real measure for intelligence, right?”

Caspar stares at him. “What d’you mean?”

“It’s true there’s academic intelligence,” Linhardt allows. Caspar has never been much for studies, though admittedly, neither is Linhardt—information just comes naturally to him, whether through context clues or learning the lesson on the spot as he takes whatever exam his tutor gives him. It makes things more fun than just memorizing the textbooks. “But there are other things to be smart about.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like…” Like knowing how to comb my hair just right. Like remembering my favorite tea even if I know you’re not a tea person. Like getting me this ribbon when I started picking at my hair, even when I didn’t mention anything. Like being… yourself. Because that’s enough. “I don’t know yet,” Linhardt decides, “but I’m sure they’re out there.”

Caspar huffs and crosses his arms. “That doesn’t help at all!”

“Well, learning what they are is half the fun…”

“Maybe for you, it is,” Caspar grumbles, turning away from him.

There’s bitterness in his voice, and Linhardt can feel a pang of pain in his chest—he doesn’t want Caspar, his only friend, to be jealous of him, when all he ever gets are Father’s judging glares and Mother’s pitying gazes. They want him to inherit Father’s title and land, continue the bloodline, pass on his Crest… and for what, Linhardt doesn’t know, when he could be doing so many other things in life. He sees the way they look when he’s talking to them about his newest interest, sees their hopeful expressions crumple into too-familiar disappointment when he brings up candy ingredients, or constellations, or different species of fish.

Am I different from others, Linhardt had asked Mother, once. She had smiled, all kind hands, smelling faintly of Angelica tea, and changed the topic. That was answer enough, for him.

“You know there’s nothing wrong with you, right?”

“Huh?”

Linhardt isn’t quite sure of what he’s saying, because the cool wind and Caspar’s warmth and the shade of the giant tree are all coming together to lull him back to sleep, but he figures he has to say something. “Who cares what your father or your brother think about you? I like you the way you are.”

“Oh!” Linhardt’s closed his eyes and laid his head back on Caspar’s shoulder, but he’s fairly certain Caspar’s cheeks go pink. “Uh… you, uh, me too. I like you too! I mean, I like you how you are too, Lin.”

“Hmm, really? Even if—”

He doesn’t even get to finish thinking of some suitably outrageous personality trait, because Caspar, sounding much more like his usual self, is already barreling on with, “Yeah! No matter what! I don’t care about your even-ifs. Linhardt is Linhardt.”

Linhardt blinks. “Oh. That’s…”

I didn’t mean to hurt him, won’t you look at me again, please…

“That’s good to know.”

No matter what. The words chase him into his dreams, his head pillowed on Caspar’s shoulder.

16.

So cold…

“Lin? Lin. Linhardt!”

Linhardt opens his eyes, and immediately has to close them again when something wet falls in. Rainwater—he’s drenched to the bone. How had he not woken up?

“What are you doing?” Caspar’s standing over Linhardt, his tattered overcoat over his head. This is one of the few times Linhardt’s looking up at Caspar instead of the other way around, and he can’t say he particularly dislikes the view. “Sheesh, you’re really something else. This is new, even for you, sleeping out here in the rain.”

Linhardt yawns. “This is new for you, too, staying out here in the rain.”

Caspar pouts. It’s unfairly adorable. “I got worried! I couldn’t find you anywhere, and it was getting late. I thought something might have… happened.”

Ah. That makes sense. Everyone’s been on edge since Flayn’s kidnapping, and it’s not like Linhardt hasn’t noticed the way everyone’s just a little bit jumpier, more suspicious, more paranoid. The professors have issued a rule for everyone to go around in pairs or groups, too, though Linhardt hasn’t exactly taken care to adhere to that. “Oh.”

“That’s it?” Caspar frowns.

“I’m sorry,” Linhardt offers, half amused and half genuinely apologetic. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. Help me up?” He extends a hand up to Caspar—his body, weighed down as it is with soaked clothes, feels several times heavier than it usually is.

Caspar rolls his eyes but reaches down anyway and grabs his hand in that tight, unmistakably Caspar grip—which then tightens to painful proportions when thunder booms overhead, loud and threatening. Linhardt doesn’t quite hold back the little yelp he lets out at Caspar’s death grip, and Caspar doesn’t quite hide the way he visibly flinches away from Linhardt.

(It’s that look again—the shock, the fear. The blood on his hands.)

“You shouldn’t have come out,” Linhardt gently tells him, pulling his hand away from Caspar’s too-tight grip.

Caspar seems to reach out for him again, his arm stuttering awkwardly in mid-air, before it drops back down to his side, hands clenched into fists. “S-Shut up.”

“I suppose I’m flattered that you went out in the rain just for me.”

“Lin, seriously.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Linhardt pushes himself up in the end. There’s no need to bother Caspar with another burden of his. “Let’s go in. We’re both going to catch a cold, at this rate.”

“Y… Yeah.”

Caspar toys with the old grounding charm Linhardt had made him years ago as they walk to Linhardt’s dorm, and it belatedly occurs to him that Caspar’s room is upstairs, but he can’t bring himself to care about it that much. Besides, Caspar comes over every time a thunderstorm rolls around and pretends to be incredibly invested in talking to a half-asleep Linhardt until Linhardt gives in and invites him to stay over for the night. It’s nothing new, and Linhardt’s come to like the warm company on cold nights, but that’s not something he plans on telling Caspar anytime soon. The embarrassment may be too much to bear.

“Did you bring sleepwear?” Linhardt absently asks, once they’re at his room. He should probably clean the floor up a bit—there are books and research papers scattered everywhere, and he’s already getting some of them wet from rainwater just standing there—but that’s a problem he assigns his future self to deal with. Or perhaps future Caspar, as Caspar is as much his best friend as he is his professional room-cleaner.

“Oh. No.” Caspar blinks up at him in a bad show of innocence.

Linhardt scowls. “I do not want your sweat all over mine.”

“Come on, Lin! Please, for the last time, I swear!”

“Clean my room up next time you come over, then.”

Caspar groans. “Fine. Just don’t make me go out again.”

“Lovely, thank you.” Linhardt rummages through the sparse contents of his closet for a moment before retrieving his usual nightclothes. “Get whatever you like. They’ll all be big on you anyway.”

“Hey! I’ve been doing a lot of growing, alright, really, Lin, you’re the one at fault here for growing too fa—” Caspar cuts himself off with a panicked noise that sounds halfway between a squirrel and a baby bird. “What are you doing?”

Linhardt pauses from where he’s tugging his uniform over his head. “Um… changing?” He usually doesn’t change in front of others, but the wet clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin has him eager to get out of them. Besides, it’s just Caspar—in fact, it’s because it’s Caspar that he’s doing this at all.

Caspar’s whole face looks on fire. “Can’t you change somewhere else?”

“Why? Are you bothered?” Linhardt teases. He tosses his uniform to some unfortunate corner of the room, hoping it doesn’t end up drenching his research notes. He’s well memorized everything he studies that writing them down is just courtesy by this point, but it would still have been a waste of his effort. “You do this all the time, you know. I’m just, ah, returning the favor, you could say.”

“Er. I guess you’re right,” Caspar reluctantly concedes. “Still, your bathroom’s right there!”

“Ugh, fine. I’ll take a shower first, if you don’t mind. Feel free to change in private here, or whatever.” Unless you want to join me, he doesn’t offer. Nothing good would come out of that, and even if he’d be half-meaning it as a joke, Linhardt doubts he’d be able to say it without sounding a tad too genuine for either of their tastes.

Caspar grumbles something Linhardt doesn’t hear, which is probably for the better—really, it’s not like Linhardt is stupid enough to fool himself into believing Caspar’s mild embarrassment is anything more than just that. Mild embarrassment. There’s no point in wondering if Caspar would ever look at him the way Linhardt wants him to, if he could ever drag his gaze down Linhardt’s back and hips and…

He probably shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like these when he’s naked in his bathroom, Caspar a mere closed—not even locked—door away, probably changing as well.

Taking too long in the shower would be a tell-tale sign of what he wants to do, so Linhardt finishes up quickly and goes out when he’s clothed again, for the sake of decency. “Don’t waste water.”

“Seriously, you waste more water than I ever could.”

“Ah, apologies if I take too much care of my hair, then. I wouldn’t want it to end up like yours, after all.”

Caspar opens his mouth, shuts it, then storms into the bathroom. “Just for that, I’m gonna make sure I get water all over the floor!”

He pulls through with that promise, perhaps too much, because the water begins to seep in from beneath the door—two books from the library fall victim to Caspar’s little flood, much to Linhardt’s displeasure. He’s just glad he had read both of the books cover to cover already, and they’ve been sitting on his floor for long enough that he doubts the librarian remembers he had borrowed them at all. When Caspar, dressed in Linhardt’s comically-oversized nightclothes, comes out with a victorious grin and even more water flooding out into Linhardt’s room, Linhardt just flicks his wrist for a burst of wind magic to push both him and the water back. “Lin!” he whines.

“Why complain? I just dried your hair for you.” Linhardt tosses the book he had been half-heartedly reading back onto his desk—nowhere on the floor is safe anymore, but that really just means more work for Caspar during clean-up duty—and watches, the warmth of fond amusement tingling in his chest, as Caspar harrumphs and flops onto the bed with him.

“Do you hear yourself sometimes? Dried my hair. You can’t fool me, you were planning to make me hit my head on your bathroom floor and then frame my concussion as an accident.” Despite his words, Caspar is already wriggling beneath the blanket and snuggling in to wrap his arms around Linhardt’s torso like he’s hugging a teddy bear. “You really do have the biggest blanket in this place.”

“I deserve nothing less.” Linhardt lies on his side so Caspar can tuck his face in the crook of Linhardt’s neck, and Linhardt can rest his chin atop Caspar’s ruffled hair in turn.

He knows, he knows it’s just Caspar caring nothing for social norms and what it means to sleep with someone so closely, so intimately like this, but—Linhardt has never been the best at controlling his thoughts.

Linhardt has always been able to fall asleep under five minutes, no matter where he is or who he’s with, and this is no different—if anything, the warmth Caspar emanates just makes him ready to fall asleep that much quicker. Really, just having Caspar there is enough. Life at the monastery is so much more different from the comforting constancy of the estate, where Linhardt already knows everything there is to know about it. The estate is unforgiving—the monastery is unfamiliar. Linhardt doesn’t know which one he wants to run away from more.

Still, the monastery has Caspar, and that’s why he stays. His solid, steady lighthouse in the middle of a thunderstorm—it’s too embarrassing to ever say aloud, but he thinks they both know it to be true.

Linhardt’s teetering on the line between awake and asleep—those few imperceptible moments, where every noise sounds far away and every thought begins to trickle into dreams—when he hears Caspar whisper, “I want forever to be like this.”

Two things: 

1. Linhardt had not been aware Caspar could sound so poetic.
2. Linhardt had not been aware his heart could beat as fast as it is currently going. It is somewhat worrying. He should probably do something about it, before Caspar notices. He does not.

“What?”

No response—Caspar’s asleep, all even, snuffling breaths. Linhardt briefly contemplates shaking him awake, because there is simply no way he is just going to let Caspar have the last word in this—but, well, he doesn’t even know what he’d ask if Caspar were to wake up. What do you mean “forever?” Do you mean with me? Do you mean with both of us? What do you mean? Why like this—why with me? Because when the thunder booms in the far distance and Caspar’s grip tightens around Linhardt’s torso, all he can think about is how forever shouldn’t mean bloody, shouldn’t mean hopeless, worthless, useless, shouldn’t mean bloodstains and tear stains and other things river water can’t wash away.

But Caspar’s asleep, and Linhardt doesn’t know if he’d even say any of that if he weren’t. He leans into Caspar’s hug, wondering idly if his long hair will tickle Caspar’s nose and send him sneezing awake.

“Okay,” Linhardt murmurs, breath brushing the top of ruffled blue hair, “I’ll be there.”

And then the war comes.

19.

Blood on his hands.

Caspar helps wash it off, wraps bandages around his chafed palms. The once-delicate skin there is now rough from the burns and scabs that come from an overuse of magic, particularly fire, but the pain is a distant thing—if the war’s done anything for Linhardt, it’s help him get used to the perpetual sense of numb detachment.

He had read, some years ago, about how thunder magic was more practical than fire or wind—more destructive and effective, had a wider range, left fewer side-effects on the caster. But he had never bothered to learn thunder magic in the monastery, even when the professor had brought it up, and Linhardt doesn’t care to start now.

“There. All done.”

Linhardt picks at the bandages. He’s already getting the urge to tear them off and scratch at the scabs until they open up again, to see the blood flow down his arm, pretend he can still feel something. “Thank you.”

Caspar looks at him. “Don’t scratch it.”

Linhardt scratches it, both out of habit and out of petty, irrational spite. Caspar sighs and reaches out to hold onto his wrist, gentle but firm. “Come on. Let’s not waste what few bandages we’ve got.”

“It’s rare of you to be the rational one between us two.”

“Hey, I’m plenty rational!”

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”

Caspar shakes his head, but when he speaks again, his voice is lower, more serious. “Lin, are you… you know, okay?”

“Why do you ask?” Linhardt asks, knowing full well why.

“I dunno. You’re more… distant today than usual.”

And—there’s something so Caspar about the way he says it, like it’s no big deal and it’s just a temporary problem and it’ll go away when Linhardt feels better, but he never feels any better, because they’re at war and they keep fighting and Linhardt’s lost count of how many times this same thing has happened, how many times Caspar’s had to clean the blood off his hands because Linhardt couldn’t do it himself, how many times Caspar’s asked if he was okay because he can tell, they can both tell Linhardt’s getting worse with each passing day. Sometimes Linhardt wonders if he’s ever going to be the same after all this, if he’s ever going to feel anything ever again when—if—the war comes to an end.

Softly, Linhardt murmurs, “There were…” But he trails off, because he doesn’t know if he can say it, can put it into words without his shoulders shaking or his eyes warming. Caspar doesn’t prompt him to continue or try to calm him down, just sits and waits and holds his wrist, and something about that eases Linhardt into his next trembling words.

It probably means something, that Caspar is the only one who can make Linhardt feel anymore—but he doesn’t want to think about what that means.

“There were… bodies… on the ground.”

Caspar doesn’t look away from him. “Yeah.”

“I mean. Obviously. But—I—I wasn’t looking, I was rushing and I wasn’t looking, and I tripped on one, and—”

And how is he supposed to describe it, the way he fell and banged his knees hard against the blood-slick ground, the way he had come face-to-face with a fresh corpse, had felt the warmth draining from that soldier’s skin? How is he supposed to describe the way he had automatically held his palms over the graying skin, but no comforting glow of healing magic came to his shaking hands because there was nothing to be healed?

“I… It was…”

They’re barely adults, just turned 19, two years into this war, two years of being on the run with only themselves to fall back on, and what do they have to show for it? Ten years ago, the worst they ever got from a fall were grass and mud stains on their palms—now their hands are lined with battle-worn scars and magic-burnt scabs. Ten years ago, the only reason they fell at all were because of tree roots and lakeside rocks—now it’s bodies, now it’s corpses, now it’s people he couldn’t save.

Linhardt inhales, exhales, tries not to think about how the air rattling in his chest should be someone else’s. “Is it… worth it?”

Caspar doesn’t say anything for a moment, just holds onto Linhardt and kneads the back of his palm with his thumb. There’s more strength than necessary behind the action, as per Caspar, but Linhardt closes his eyes and welcomes the mild pain, uses it to steady his stuttering thoughts. Then, “The war?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. It isn’t over yet, is it?”

“Must we wait until its ending? We might—” Linhardt chokes his next words down—We might be dead before that happens. “It might not even come at all.”

A pause. “Lin.”

He swallows. “What?”

“Come on. Look at me?”

Linhardt does so, opening his eyes—he’s met with the smile he’s known for over a decade, now, and though he knows the exact angle of its curve, the exact way Caspar’s eyes crinkle and shine—it takes him by surprise, all the same. How can you still smile at me like that, he wants to ask—how can you still think I’m anything worth smiling for?

“We’re gonna be alright. Okay?” Caspar tightens his grip on Linhardt’s hand, their fingers now locked together, like Caspar would pull him off the battlefield before he ever has to get hurt, like he would pull him straight away from death itself. “Maybe not now. Maybe not for a long time. But someday. Someday, when the war’s done, we can travel around and we’ll get to see all of Fodlan, or more, and we won’t have to fight ever again. It’ll be alright.”

No, it won’t, Linhardt’s traitorous mind wants him to blurt out; it won’t be alright, I know that, you must know that, it won’t be alright. We’re at war, my love. There’s nothing to hope for, here, no guaranteed happy ending, only death around every corner. Only blood on my hands and so much more on yours. He wants to reach out and pluck every optimistic thought Caspar’s ever had out of his head, wants to stick his hand in his chest and squeeze the hope out of his heart. There’s no room for any of that on the battlefield, not when Linhardt knows, statistically speaking, that the two of them are no match for armies millions of times their size. There’s no room for hope and happiness in this war, only death to clog up the chambers of a bleeding heart.

But—where would Linhardt be without that hope, without that happiness. Without that smile.

“Yes.”

Caspar blinks. “Huh?”

Linhardt looks into those brilliant blue eyes—the color of that cloudless sky, the color of that clear river water—and squeezes his hand. “I’m… I’ll look forward to that. When the war is over… whenever that happens.”

There’s a short, surprised pause, as if Caspar hadn’t expected Linhardt to say that—Linhardt certainly hadn’t—before Caspar beams, bright and blinding and the only thing keeping Linhardt from fleeing this war. “Yeah! You better! And—Lin, come on, quit scratching your hands, I’m serious.”

They fight, they kill, they bleed. The days wear on just the same. Caspar’s fighting for hope, for justice, for everyone. Linhardt’s fighting, selfishly, fearfully, for the two of them.

Blood on his hands—Caspar washes it off for him. At night, when he thinks Linhardt’s asleep, he kisses the cooling burns on the roughness of his palms; Linhardt closes his eyes and engraves the fleeting, feather-soft touches to memory, if only to have something he can live for.

22.

The monastery is dark, at night.

This is nothing new to Linhardt—he had roamed these halls for a little over a cumulative year, as a student and as a soldier. The darkness is no stranger to him, not when he had gone back to his dorm late after staying too long in the library several times.

The problem is that the darkness now takes on new shapes wherever he goes.

It’s irrational. He knows that. Ghosts aren’t real, ghosts don’t exist, but the ghosts follow him anyway, breathing down his back, trailing cold nails along his arms, reminding him of all the people whom he had weathered the very skin off their bones, all the people he had burned up until they were screaming for mercy. He can close his eyes all he likes, but he will see them—he can run away all he likes, but they will dog his footsteps well into his dreams.

“Lin?”

“Caspar.” If it were anyone else, he would have summoned fire magic in an instant. But he would know that voice anywhere—in war, in sleep, in death. “It’s late,” Linhardt says, turning around to face Caspar standing a few ways away behind him. “What are you out here for?”

“Uh, I was gonna ask you the same. I came looking for you.” Caspar grins as he jogs over to walk beside Linhardt. “The war’s over! Why’re you here all alone?”

“It’s…” Not over, not really, Linhardt wants to say. Look at all the bodies. Look at all the families. But he swallows the words down, because there’s no point in thinking about those they’ve lost, those he failed to save. There’s nothing he can do for them now but run away from their ghosts. “I was just thinking.”

“Hmm.” Caspar tilts his head a little, and Linhardt belatedly notices they’ve been walking together for a few minutes. To where, he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t mind either. As long as he’s with Caspar, it doesn’t matter. “‘Bout what?”

“About what comes next now, I suppose.”

“O-Oh?”

The waver in Caspar’s voice is uncharacteristic, but Linhardt doesn’t feel like pushing it. “There’s not much to think about, really. I suppose I’ll just focus on my research again. Holing myself up in a library without a war breaking out around me sounds heavenly right now.”

“Oh,” Caspar mumbles.

And now he sounds almost disappointed. Linhardt tries not to let his confusion show when he asks, “What about you?”

“Huh? Like what I’m gonna do now?”

“Mm.”

“Well…” Caspar trails off for a moment, crossing his arms as he walks—he’s foregone the full-body armor for once, now that there’s no real need for it anymore, and Linhardt is treated to the sight of his muscles under the tight black shirt. Linhardt surreptitiously looks away. “I haven’t really… you know, thought about it much. The war’s just ended, after all! But…” He shrugs and forces a strained laugh, so fake it physically hurts Linhardt. “I don’t exactly have a future, y’know.”

“You—”

“I mean, not literally,” Caspar interrupts, “I’m not planning on dying anytime soon, after everything, but—I’m—” His next words come out pained, like a sharp truth he’s ignored for a while, knives scraping against the inside of his throat. “You know… a second son. Yeah, I’ve got part of the inheritance, but… so what? I don’t get much else from that.”

Linhardt waits a moment before speaking. “Perhaps you should have taken the opportunity to grab some money before we fled the estates those years ago, then.”

Caspar snorts, sounding a little more like his usual self when he says, “You mean I should’ve pulled a Linhardt-esque heist, huh? How much did you steal, back then?”

“Oh, you know… quite a lot. The professor was rather grateful.” Linhardt had stolen more than just money from Father, of course—his books, his troops, his healing staff. His identity, for some important but forge-able documents that allowed him and Caspar safe passage through war-torn areas constantly monitored by Empire soldiers. He feels a little dirty, sometimes, when he casts faith magic with the stolen staff or buys expensive medicine with stolen money, but there’s a twisted sort of satisfaction knowing how much trouble he’s causing Father, even when halfway across the country. The perfect problem child, in Linhardt’s humble opinion.

He had stolen one more thing. It was likely the last thing his father would notice, after everything else, but it was also likely what would affect him the most. Good. Linhardt had wanted that, when he had picked the lock on the ornate chest open and slipped Mother’s wedding ring onto his own finger—he wanted Father to hurt. Perhaps it was unnecessarily cruel and vindictive of him, to take away everything that mattered to Father, everything he had left of Mother after she died—but what had Father ever done for him to deserve anything less?

“But you haven’t answered the question,” Linhardt remembers. “Surely there’s something you want to do, now that the war’s…” It’s not over. It’ll never be over, not for as long as I remember it. “Come and gone?”

Caspar shifts uncomfortably next to him. “Ah. Well. I… do kind of wanna travel around.” He pauses for a second, arms behind his head. He’s staring up at the night sky, alight with stars, and Linhardt follows his gaze. It’s quiet, for once. “We did a lot of traveling in the five years before we came back here, yeah. But it was all fighting, right? I don’t think I got to appreciate our surroundings that much. So I kind of wanna do it again, now that I wouldn’t have to worry about a war anymore.”

“Hmm. That sounds nice.” Linhardt yawns, covering his mouth with a hand.

He briefly wonders if he should say something else when Caspar makes the decision for him. “Are you sleepy? Okay! Let’s get you to bed!”

Linhardt gives him an odd look. “Oh… alright? You’re not usually this enthusiastic about putting me to bed.”

There’s a crude joke waiting to be made there, and if Linhardt were a different person (read: Sylvain), he’d probably make it. But he doesn’t even need to say anything else for Caspar to go a bright, blushing red. “Uhh…! I don’t know, I’m tired too, you know. Say, can we stay together tonight?”

“Sure,” Linhardt agrees easily. He had been half-expecting the request, and if Caspar hadn’t asked it first, he would have extended the offer himself. “But please bring your own sleepwear this time. I still doubt mine would fit you.”

“I’m literally as tall as you already!”

“Er. Do you know what literally means?”

Caspar scampers back up to his dorm to nab his clothes, so Linhardt takes that time to get in the shower, watch as dirt and mud and other unsavory things (don’t look, don’t look) from the battlefield wash down the drain. Traveling around Fodlan… the concept is certainly very Caspar-ish. Linhardt can’t imagine him staying in one place for too long, or settling down with some nice woman—the thought makes his chest ache with the sort of pain he wishes he weren’t familiar with.

Truth be told, he himself can’t actually imagine slipping away to research Crests again after the war, like it had never happened at all. Crests are certainly interesting, and they have certainly kept his interest for far longer than anything else, but—sitting all alone in a library sounds more lonely than peaceful, now.

Linhardt scowls. His self from five years ago would have jumped at the prospect—now something twists in his gut at the thought of seclusion. There’s a difference between the sort of quiet he likes and the silence he now abhors—before, there had been no clear line separating the two. Now empty silence just reminds him of the remains of a battlefield—silent bodies, silent corpses, silent ghosts whispering in his ears.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

The water feels nice on his skin—there had been very few opportunities to shower during the years he and Caspar were on the run, and even then the chances they did get were in cramped inn rooms where the water was just as dirty as the rest of them. Even now, it’s still hard to get used to having clean water again. Linhardt sighs, the soft sound drowned out by the spray of the shower—he wonders if anything will ever be the same for any of them now, if they could ever go back to what they were five years ago, untainted by blood and war.

He doubts it.

Caspar comes in a few minutes later, hair still damp from his own shower (Linhardt’s almost disappointed he hadn’t used his—but that’s unimportant) and dressed in nightclothes that actually fit him (Linhardt’s definitely disappointed this time—but that’s also unimportant). He makes a face at the mess that is Linhardt’s room, which is rich coming from the guy who can’t fold clothes to save his life. “You need to clean this place up.”

Linhardt shrugs. “Why should I? We won’t have to live here after tonight.”

“Oh.” Caspar blinks, as if that’s something he had forgotten—Linhardt can’t blame him, considering the only thing keeping him from forgetting that as well is the dread in his stomach at the idea that he may never see Caspar after this again. “Right. Oh, well. Hey, make some space, Lin!”

Fitting on the bed hadn’t been a problem five years ago, or seven, or ten—in the past, it had seemed like all beds they shared stretched to accommodate them comfortably. Now Linhardt has to press himself against the wall on the side of the bed just so half of Caspar’s body isn’t dangling off the edge of the bed. “This is ridiculous,” Linhardt says, well aware there’s a spare mattress somewhere in the monastery and saying nothing about it.

Caspar, arms already wrapped around Linhardt’s torso, just grins. It’s near-blinding in the darkness, despite there being only faint starlight from the window to light his face up. “You love it anyway, don’t you?”

Linhardt just huffs—accidentally sounding too sincere if he answers I do is a risk he’d rather not take.

Caspar doesn’t go to sleep just yet, something Linhardt can sense even when he lets his eyes close—one of his hands reaches up to play with Linhardt’s hair, so gently and lightly that Linhardt barely even notices it. He leans into the touch, half-asleep as he is, and relishes in the little sigh Caspar lets out. The last time they had slept together in this bed, five years ago, Caspar hadn’t been bold enough to touch him like this—but he had said…

“Do you remember what you said, that night?” Linhardt murmurs. He’s seen Caspar jolt in surprise, whirl around and slice into an enemy’s chest with his battle axe if they so much as breathed too loudly—but Caspar only hums, fingers still threading so gently, so lightly, through Linhardt’s hair. (He would know his voice anywhere—in war, in sleep, in death.) “Five years ago. Before the war.”

“I’ve said a lot of things at night.”

“Well, yes, many of which didn’t make sense,” Linhardt allows, cracking an eye open to see Caspar’s amused smile. “But I meant—the last time we slept like this, right before the war started… don’t you remember?”

Caspar pauses—it’s momentary, and if Linhardt were anyone else, he wouldn’t have picked up on it. But he isn’t anyone else, and he’s long grown used to every little thing there is to know about Caspar. “Yeah.”

Linhardt lets the quiet drag on for a while, almost drifting back to sleep just from Caspar’s hand in his hair—but when it becomes obvious that Caspar doesn’t plan on elaborating, Linhardt sighs. “Do you still… want that?”

Another pause. “Want what?”

And—he can’t take this anymore. Linhardt reaches up—a bit difficult to do, when there’s barely any space between them to move at all now—and tilts Caspar’s chin up to face him properly instead of staring at some innocuous spot on his chin. (Look at me. Look at me again, please.) “You said it yourself,” Linhardt says. His voice is wobbling, just slightly. Perhaps if he ignores it, it’ll go away by itself. “You said…”

Ah. He can’t even speak now—there’s something bubbling in his chest, something desperately close to the kind of immense disappointment he doesn’t remember having felt before.

“Lin?” Caspar whispers. His hand moves from his hair to his cheek, and it’s only then that Linhardt notices he’d been facing away from Caspar, too, like a complete hypocrite. Of course. That’s all there is to him, isn’t it. “Lin, I—I’m sorry, I don’t—I just—”

“You can say it, you know,” Linhardt blurts out, as fast as he can, because if he keeps the words in his mouth a second longer he risks choking to death on them. “If you don’t want me around anymore.”

Because forever shouldn’t be bloody, shouldn’t be hopeless, worthless—

“No!”

Linhardt blinks, pretending his eyes aren’t uncomfortably warm—Caspar’s shot up in a sitting position, pulling Linhardt up with him, both of his hands clasped around Linhardt’s shaking ones. Shaking? Had they been shaking? The bed creaks beneath them, a cat meows outside the dorm, and Linhardt can’t think of anything but how warm Caspar’s hands are. “What…?”

“I meant what I said,” Caspar’s saying, voice so fast the words are slurring together in a near-incomprehensible mess. “I-I—do want a forever with you! It’s always been you, Lin! I mean, we’ve been together for practically forever by this point, so why would you think I wouldn’t want you around anymore? I’d probably walk off a cliff and die if you weren’t there to stop me! And you’d overwork yourself and forget to sleep for a week if I weren’t there to put you to bed!”

Ah. Those are all correct. Linhardt’s almost surprised. His hands are still shaking, and he can’t quite get them to stay still (because he looks down at them and all he can see is red on his palms, red smeared across his fingers, so much blood), but then Caspar squeezes them in his warm grip and Linhardt, inexplicably enough, feels them steady. “That’s… Yes. You’re right.”

Caspar huffs a small laugh. “Never thought you’d say that to me.”

“You still—” Linhardt swallows. “You mean it. You still want…”

Caspar nods. There’s that same gleam of determination in his eyes, the one he gets whenever he’s about to step into battle and come out of it victorious. “What I said that night…” He clears his throat, and Linhardt can just barely make out the blush creeping up his neck. “I meant it. I think I always will.”

Linhardt breathes. Breathes, breathes, breathes until his lungs can’t take it anymore and he has to exhale hard, the air hot over his arms. “Caspar—”

“And you do want a forever with me, right?” Caspar interjects. Linhardt opens his mouth to scold him for being rude, but Caspar just barrels on like he’s always done, and Linhardt can’t find it in himself to stop him. “‘Cause all throughout the war, that was the only thing keeping me going, you know—every time I got caught in a losing fight, I just thought, there’s no way I lasted this long just to die now, because then that’d mean I wouldn’t get to spend the rest of my life with you like I’ve always wanted—”

“What?”

“Don’t interrupt! If I stop talking then I’ll never get the guts to say all of this again, I memorized this speech and everything!” Caspar near-wails. “What I mean to say is—oh, shit, where was I—see,” he sulks, “you made me forget everything, great going, Lin.”

Linhardt isn’t aware of the laugh bubbling up his throat until he’s snickering uncontrollably, and only Caspar’s grip on his hands is keeping him from falling back on the bed. “You… made a speech?”

Caspar pouts, a humiliated blush on his cheeks. “Lin, quit laughing, it’s not that funny!”

“This might be the only time I’ll bear witness to you having memorized anything outside of class,” Linhardt says, trying to push down his smile and utterly failing. “It’s a momentous occasion. Let me have it.”

“Hey! I memorize plenty other things. Like—” Caspar shakes his head. “Like stuff about you.”

A pause. “Quite the smooth talker, aren’t you,” Linhardt mumbles, barely keeping himself from stammering. It’s not like Caspar to throw compliments around so freely, and if he’s being honest, it’s both unnerving and somewhat. Well.

Addicting might be the right word.

“Ugh! Listen—” Caspar leans in closer until their faces are closer than Linhardt can remember, his expression an endearing mix of determined and embarrassed. “My point is. What I’m trying to say. It’s… that—”

“I’m in love with you,” Linhardt tells him.

These are words he has harbored in his heart for years upon years upon years. He first came upon them when they were fifteen, and Caspar had dragged him out for a stroll in the city near the Bergliez estate, and Linhardt had thought he’d hate all five hours but instead he found himself wanting to stay with his best friend a little longer. The words best friend had sounded wrong, then—and then he’d thought ah, I’m in love with him, like every protagonist in the bad romance novels in his library, and then everything seemed to slot into place.

They were words he brought into battle. They were words he brought to the war. They were words he cradled in his chest at night, when Caspar slept with his arms around him, calming and comforting and so caring, that Linhardt had thought, again and again and again, what if I said it now, what if I told him now. They were words he kept hidden. They were words he smeared like blood across his palms. They were words he wanted to forget, if only so he would stop thinking about the shock on Caspar’s face if he were to ever say them.

After all, Linhardt had never thought he would fall in love at all—had never thought he would ever have to think these words, to say these words, at all.

“—I lov—oh come on,” Caspar groans, burying his face in the crook of Linhardt’s neck, “I told you not to interrupt, now my speech is double ruined.”

“Caspar,” Linhardt laughs, except the sound comes out a lot wobblier than he expects.

Caspar looks up at him in alarm, and Linhardt can see him visibly pale. “L-Lin! You’re crying! Wait, don’t cry, everything’s okay, right? Uh—” He casts a look around the dark room, probably deduces there’s no looking for tissues here, and lifts the edge of the blanket up to dab at Linhardt’s face instead. “Did I do something wrong? My speech can’t have been that bad, right?”

“Say it, would you?”

Caspar blinks. “Say what?”

Thoroughly embarrassed, Linhardt scrubs at his face with the blanket, more to avoid eye contact than anything. “What you were just about to say.”

“Oh.” Caspar flushes, possibly for the third time this conversation. “Right. I… uh… I love you. I’m in love with you.”

“See? You could have just led with that.” Linhardt tilts his head a little, smiling at the way Caspar just grumbles about Linhardt being unfair and beating him to the confession before he finally murmurs, “Well, does this mean I can kiss you now?”

Caspar stares at him, long enough for a bright blush to overcome most of his visible features, until he finally says, “You know that’s not something you need to ask permission for, right…”

“Consent is important,” Linhardt argues, but he can’t stop the smile sneaking its way onto his face. He doesn’t think he wants to, either.

“Okay, yeah, but when the person you’re gonna kiss just said he loves you—”

“So,” Linhardt interrupts, pressing close enough for his breath to run hot on Caspar’s cheek, “I can kiss you now?”

“Ah.” Caspar leans in closer, the embarrassment in his expression giving way to a kind of fondness Linhardt had noticed before but never been able to give a name to. He supposes he knows what it is, now. “Yeah. Definitely. Please.”

Linhardt has terribly little experience in the art of kissing—he’s vaguely aware he had given his first kiss to someone, but for the life of him he can’t remember who it was. He supposes it doesn’t matter, now that this is the first kiss he will engrave in memory—Caspar’s eyes fluttering shut when Linhardt closes the distance between them, the chaste meeting of their lips after years of close-but-not-close-enough. Caspar’s lips are bitten warm, and Linhardt is barely even thinking when he tilts his head even further to deepen the kiss and run his tongue over the chapped skin. Caspar makes a satisfying noise, his hands running up Linhardt’s arms and pulling him closer—

And Linhardt notices, belatedly, that his hands are shaking again.

Caspar realizes that almost as soon as Linhardt does, because he pulls back and clutches Linhardt’s hands in his once again, grip warm and reassuring and so—loving, Linhardt can describe it, now. “You okay?” Caspar asks, pressing their foreheads together. His mouth is already reddening, and Goddess if Linhardt doesn’t want to see them perfectly swollen. “Your hands are—”

“I’m alright,” Linhardt says, huffing a laugh when Caspar’s eyes widen at his rough voice. “I think it’s just—I don’t know. But I’m more alright now than I have been in years.” He leans forward again, and Caspar smiles into the kiss, but his hands don’t leave Linhardt’s again. Steadying them, washing the blood off of them, like he’s done so many times before, like how Linhardt wants him to keep doing, again and again all the way into forever. “I love you.”

Caspar kisses his chin, the line of his throat, the jut of his collarbones—and, really, Linhardt just knows he’s only making a token attempt at keeping below Linhardt’s usual neckline, but he can’t bring himself to care. “I love you,” he murmurs, almost reverently—Linhardt shudders, gasps softly under his lips. “You’re so good, Lin, so beautiful, I really…”

“C-Caspar.” If Linhardt lets Caspar keep saying those things, he’s not going to be in the right state of mind for this. “Hold on. Wait. Please.”

“Sorry!” Caspar yelps, jerking away immediately. There’s an undertone of panic in his voice, and when he looks back at Linhardt, the unsureness in his expression, as if he’s done something wrong, is almost comical. “Uh. I didn’t know… I wasn’t…”

“No, don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Linhardt presses a brief kiss to his cheek for his troubles. “I just wanted… You remember what you said, that time?”

“Er. Which time?”

“You…” Helped wash the blood off my hands, that time, helped wrap bandages around myself when I’m supposed to be the healer between us two, made me feel something when I thought I couldn’t anymore. “You said, when the war was over…”

Someday, when the war’s done, we can travel around and we’ll get to see all of Fodlan, or more, and we won’t have to fight ever again…  

“Ah!” Caspar leans forward, eyes nearly sparkling. “You… remember? I thought for sure you didn’t, when I brought it up a while ago and you didn’t say anything—”

“I didn’t know if you remembered.” Linhardt smiles. It feels a little more watery than he prefers, but he figures if he’s going to cry again, it might as well be tonight, when it’s too dark for Caspar to see how his eyes puff up in the least flattering way possible. “So. I’ll ask you again. Do you still really… want a forever with me?”

Because it’s hard to believe you would, Linhardt doesn’t say. It’s hard to believe you watched me miscast thunder magic on a child, watched me make him bleed, and still want me. It’s hard to believe you fear thunder and lightning the same way you feared me, all those years ago, and still want me. It’s hard to believe anyone would want me at all, when Mother called me different and Father called me hopeless—all this blood on my hands, and still—

“Yes.” Caspar nods. He hadn’t even bothered to think about it, it looks—or maybe he’s already thought about it, time and time again, and his answer has been the same for so long that there’s hardly any chance he’s going to change it now. “Always, Lin.”

Linhardt inhales, exhales, inhales. The taste of air has never been so welcome. “Take me with you.”

Caspar stares at him for a solid second, then finally says, “Sorry, what was that?”

“Take me with you. On your travels.” To be somewhere far away, where they weren’t unwanted second sons or useless problem children, where they were both loved, and wanted, and free—and with each other, most of all. Linhardt swallows, leaning in for another kiss he can taste saltwater in. “Please,” he murmurs when they separate; “I don’t want to be without you.” I hadn’t known I could be so in love with someone before you.

“Oh, Lin…” Caspar sighs, soft and so unlike him. “As if I could ever be without you, too.”

Someday, when the war’s done… it’ll be alright.

well,

sometime in the far future

Blood on his hands—

But it’s easier, now, to blink afterimages of the nightmares away.

Shafts of sunlight are seeping in through the thin curtains over their window. Caspar is already awake when Linhardt’s eyes open, but he’s playing with Linhardt’s hands rather than paying attention. “Morning,” Linhardt mumbles.

“Ah, mornin’.”

“You’re certainly preoccupied.”

Caspar smiles, fingers tracing the burn scars on Linhardt’s palms. They haven’t hurt in years. “Was just thinking. Of… before.”

“Hmm.” Linhardt doesn’t even have the energy to shrug just yet, nor does he know how to do so while lying down anyway. “They’re not very good memories, are they?”

“Not all.” Caspar lifts Linhardt’s palms up to his lips, and kisses his hands good morning the way he used to kiss the closing wounds. “But I like to remember a few.”