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The lakewater is cool to the touch. Linhardt kicks his legs a little, sighing at the cold relief from the sun’s rays, but stills when he realizes that’s hardly going to attract any fish closer to him. Once the water stops rippling, he retrieves his encyclopedia on Fódlan fish species from his bag to set on his lap and stares at the lake, waiting for something to arrive.
It’s not often he finds himself venturing without Caspar by his side, but Caspar is home in Bergliez territory, and Linhardt isn’t about to just not put this encyclopedia, a gift from one of his tutors, to use. It’s already a little worn, but Linhardt can’t help it. Fish are nice. All they do is eat and swim and look either stupid or pretty. They’re also quiet, which people certainly can’t say the same for.
Sunshine sparkles off glimmering scales, dragging Linhardt away from his thoughts—a fish drifts languidly around his ankles, and he flips through the pages with vigor. White trout, the heading reads, above an illustration of the fish currently swimming next to him. A stark white fish that gleams in sunlight…
Linhardt wishes he had asked Father for a fishing rod for his birthday. It’s unlikely he’s actually strong enough to fish up anything he might catch, but he thinks it would still be fun—
Something rustles from behind.
Linhardt freezes; the white trout picks up speed and vanishes into the other end of the lake. Perhaps it’s just a squirrel, he tells himself, but somehow he can’t believe that, because he’s heard squirrels in the woods before, and they don’t rustle about like that, nor do they scare fish off. He tucks the book back in his bag and lifts his feet out of the lake, but then he hears it again—movement, twigs cracking. Footsteps. Voices.
He scrambles to stand up, the grass soft beneath his feet, but he’s too slow, and—
“Hey! Who’s this kid?”
Linhardt thinks he must blank out for a moment, because one second there’s nothing but the trees and the lake, and in the next there are people emerging from the woods and standing around him, tall and muscled and with swords and knives hanging off their belts—he stands, frozen in place, trying to will himself to run, but all he knows is that his hands are trembling and he can’t get them to stop.
One of the men steps forward, grabbing his arm—he opens his mouth as if to speak, but Linhardt can’t think and his hands seem to move of their own accord—the man yells in pain and flings Linhardt down to the grass, sending him sprawling. “Hell was that!” he’s shouting, clutching at his face.
“Boss! That was magic, innit?—”
“Wind magic, saw some stuck-up mage using it once—”
“This kid’s gotta be a noble!” someone says. “Look at those clothes. Don’t he just look like he got gold? And no street rat knows magic without havin’ studied it.”
The man who had grabbed him snarls, and his arm shoots out to grip a fistful of—Linhardt squeaks—his long hair. “And here I was, thinkin’ I could just ask you where the nearest damn town is,” he spits. “What do you know. Maybe you are a noble, and I can fetch ourselves some nice sacks of gold if I dangle you in front a’ your loaded parents…”
Father wouldn’t care, Linhardt thinks, struck by a sudden wave of lucidity when he realizes who these men are. Or he would, but only because I’m his heir and I’ve got to pass on my Crest, and nothing else about me actually matters, and what would be the point anyway, to value me more than you care about me—
He flings his arms out, calls on the same power that had gathered at his fingertips earlier, and blades of wind cut across the man’s face, drawing blood that splatters across Linhardt’s own cheeks. The man howls, his grip loosening, and Linhardt wrenches himself away, grabbing his bag and tearing into the woods—he can hear more shouting behind him, and then thundering footsteps, and for a few seconds he knows nothing but the fear driving his racing heartbeat, spurring him to run and run across sharp twigs and branches that pierce his still-bare feet—blood drips down his face, mixing with tears he furiously scrubs off—
Something whistles past his ear, and Linhardt dives to the ground, rolling over mud and dirt—a dagger thunks into a tree trunk right in front of him, buried nearly hilt-deep. Where am I? He can’t be too far from the estate anymore, can he? But he doesn’t know the woods well, only knows the trail that leads from the entrance to the lakeside, doesn’t know where to go now that he’s barreling through the overgrowth like a madman. Linhardt looks down at his hands, sees the man’s blood smeared across his palms like the damning evidence it is, and can’t bring himself to stand up.
Blood on his hands. He wipes it off on his clothes, but the stains remain, red and accusing. Blades of wind—when had that ever happened? No, no, when Linhardt practiced wind magic in his garden, it had always been gusts of wind that ruffled the leaves on the tree he and Caspar laid beneath, gentle breezes that kissed the Angelica herbs Mother used to plant around them—never something that hurt.
Never something that could kill.
Someone grabs his arm and jerks him roughly backwards—Linhardt turns to meet furious eyes and a cruel sneer, bloody cuts scored across the bridge of his nose. “There you are, you little rat,” the man says, and Linhardt knows he should do something, should cast his magic again, should run and save himself, but—
But he looks at the blood, the wounds, sees how close they had come to the man’s eyes, and his hands are shaking, again.
The man’s grip tightens, and Linhardt can’t help the whimper that leaves him. “Where do you live, boy?” the man hisses. “Don’t tell me you’re related to von Hevring?”
No, no, no, Linhardt’s thinking—don’t tell Father, don’t tell Father, because somehow all Father will do is blame this on Linhardt, tell him how he’s disappointed and he’s no good as an heir— use magic, wind magic, but even when he gathers the strength to lift his other arm, the man only snorts before forcing him to the ground, sprawled on the mud. “Don’t even try, brat. You went ahead and ruined both my day and my face. Maybe I’ll let you off easy if you tell me just how much gold your daddy’s got…”
Blood drips onto Linhardt’s face. It’s warm. Magic fizzles, sparks, dies in his scraped palms.
Briefly, he realizes the forest has gone quiet—no footsteps, no voices. Where are the rest of the men?
The bandit growls, reaching behind him and pulling out—Linhardt goes dizzy with fear—a long sword, glinting menacingly in the sunlight. “You either talk now,” the man says, leveling the blade above Linhardt’s throat, “or you never talk again. Which one is it, brat?”
This close, all Linhardt can think of is the sword, pressed cold and dangerous to his skin. He’s spent enough time with Caspar to know the sharpness of a blade when he sees it, and he can tell almost immediately this one is dull and blunt. Painful. What would happen? he thinks, like an absolute idiot. If I just let him…?
Linhardt thinks about all the blood that would spill from his neck. He read, once, that the average adult human body has five liters of blood in them. If the bandit were to lower his blade right now, were to cut straight through him, were to… were to…
“Fine.” The man grins. Something cold settles in the pit of Linhardt’s stomach. Fear? No, he thinks—it feels more like resignation. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a choice.”
His arm moves—
A blur of blue. Then the man is yowling, tumbling off of Linhardt to grab at his shoulder—blood is spilling from a wound that hadn’t been there two seconds ago.
There’s someone standing in front of Linhardt, dressed in black, holding a sword. They hadn’t been there two seconds ago either.
Linhardt scrambles to his feet, stepping backwards until his back is pressed up to a tree. The newcomer doesn’t look much older than him, maybe by a few years or so—their blue hair is dirty and unkempt, the long, uneven strands tied in a short, low ponytail. “Who the hell—?” the bandit curses, squinting up at the strange person’s face, then recoiling in what looks like shock. “Hell! You’re not… You can’t be…”
They say nothing, only hold their sword with expertise unexpected from someone who looks so young.
The bandit sneers, brandishing their own sword. “Heh. Imagine what my men would say if I told ‘em I took down the Blade Breaker’s son, huh?”
“They’d say nothing,” the—boy?—says. His voice is low, flat, almost bored. “Because they’re dead.”
“You—what!”
“They’re dead,” he repeats. “I killed them.” And then he moves.
Steel scrapes against steel, the sounds singing in the woods—Linhardt wants to hide, to run while this boy keeps the man busy, but his legs are shaking too much for him to take so much as a step forward. This is nothing like watching Caspar and his brother spar—at least then Linhardt knew the older Bergliez wouldn’t do more than give Caspar bruises Linhardt could just fix afterwards. This is a fight to the death, where Linhardt can see the boy going for the bandit’s neck, face, eyes, heart—where Linhardt watches blood spill from every new wound each person takes—
I should help, he thinks, I should do something, and he feels it again, the magic ready at his fingertips—but the blood, the blood, and once again it’s gone, leaving only a barely-teenage boy fighting for his life against a grown man.
The bandit throws the boy to the ground, kneeing him in the gut—the boy grunts, lifting his arm to swipe up at the bandit’s face, but the bandit kicks the sword out of his grip. “No way a kid like you even touched one of my guys,” the bandit sneers, spitting in the boy’s face as he looms over him. “See how you like it if I chop off your damn arm—”
The boy calmly removes a knife from the inside of his coat and buries it in the bandit’s neck.
For a moment, nothing happens—then shock and fury and confusion descend on the man’s face, all at once, and as if on cue the blood spurts out like a fountain, spilling onto the boy’s chest. With a huff, he pushes the bandit’s crumpling body off of him, jerking the knife out of his throat and tucking it back in some hidden scabbard. Blood pools beneath the bandit’s body, staining the grass crimson.
Linhardt feels his legs give out beneath him, and he collapses onto the ground, knocking his knees against the tree’s gnarled roots. He looks down at his hands—still red. Still bloodied.
Mother had always prided herself on her healing magic. I want you to be like me someday, she had told him, before she died and let her Angelica plants wither along with her. A fixer. A healer. With faith magic, you can fix anything.
But he hadn’t been able to heal her from her illness, and now—and now—
“Hey.”
Linhardt blinks. Looks up.
“You alright?”
The boy’s standing over him, looking down at him with dull dead eyes blue as his hair. He seems to have wiped the blood off his face with the end of his red-stained coat, but it’s still smeared all over him; coupled with his blank expression, it paints a frankly horrifying image. But Linhardt takes the hand the boy extends to him anyway, if only because Linhardt can still feel blood on his own face, and they probably don’t look much different.
He swallows. “I’m… I’m fine. T—Thank you.”
“Are you hurt?”
“N… No.” Linhardt looks down at the grass directly beneath him, still verdant green and untouched by the spreading pool of red. If he has to see the blood any longer, he might pass out; he can certainly feel himself getting lightheaded. “H-How about you?”
“Just a bit.” The boy looks down at himself, and Linhardt struggles to do the same. Cuts litter his body, around his arms and stomach and one on his cheek, but nothing major. “Okay, well, bye now.”
“What? Wait!” The boy’s fast, already having turned away—Linhardt has to tug on the edge of his coat to get his attention back. “You—Let me help you. I-I know healing magic.”
The boy frowns. “Don’t need that. These’ll heal on their own.”
It’s a line Linhardt’s heard a million times from Caspar that he blurts out the same response he always uses in turn: “Are you serious? Just let me do it.” And then, at the boy’s confused blink, he hastens to add, “As thanks for helping.”
“Oh… okay.”
Linhardt leads him back to the lake—they pass by bodies of the other bandits, all of them bleeding out on the grass, all of whom Linhardt avoids looking at. (He thinks he should be ashamed of himself—what healer feels relief at death? And yet, here he is, shying away from people who died because of him.) “You should wash all the—the dirt off first,” Linhardt tells the boy, who’s remained entirely silent the entire walk back. He can’t bring himself to even say the word blood. “That makes it easier for me.”
The boy continues staring.
Linhardt frowns. “What? Oh, okay, fine, I won’t look or anything.” He turns around so his back faces the lake, busying himself with searching for his shoes he had left behind here. His scabbed feet throb in pain from all the barefoot running he did, but that’s a problem he’ll have to save for his bedroom—he hopes there are enough band-aids in his drawer.
“You don’t like blood?”
He stares at the grass, the question ringing in his ears. “What kind of person likes blood?” Linhardt mumbles, but it’s a weak reply.
Silence, then a hum of affirmation. “Guess so,” the boy says. There’s the sound of shuffling clothes, and then a splash of water. “You should wash off too,” he suggests. “You’re filthy.”
Linhardt turns around, intent on glaring the boy down, but the boy, now submerged in the lake, remains as expressionless as he’s been since Linhardt’s met him. “Speak for yourself,” he grumbles, but the boy has a point—there’s mud caked on his clothes, his face is wet with you-know-what, and his hair feels tangled and dirty. And after all the effort he had spent on taking care of it… “Don’t look.”
“‘Kay.” The boy dunks his head in the water, scrubbing at his hair.
It takes only a minute for Linhardt to realize the whole not-looking thing was pointless, because the surface of the lake is clear enough that they can both see each other without even having to squint. At least the boy doesn’t seem to care very much, more concerned with staring at the fish circling his legs. Linhardt does his best to wash off the worst of the dirt, wincing whenever his feet brush against the rough lake floor, staring into the middle distance to avoid seeing the water run pink with… with.
From behind him, the boy tugs at his hair, just hard enough to be noticeable. “Your hair’s so long.”
“I know.”
“There’s a lot of blood in it.”
Linhardt stares at his reflection in the lake. Even as the water ripples and wavers, he can see the blood across his face, stark red against his pale skin. “I… I know.” He reaches around himself to touch his hair, and immediately feels the strands matted with—with—Goddess, he can’t even think it.
There’s a considerate pause. The boy touches his hair again, and when Linhardt turns to face him, he looks almost fascinated, the most emotion Linhardt’s seen him express so far. “Want me to wash it for you?”
“You—er, you don’t have to—”
“But you don’t want to,” the boy interjects.
He makes a good point, which is why Linhardt huffs and turns back around, crossing his arms and staring pointedly at some rock on the lakeside. “Okay. Fine. Don’t pull too hard.”
Another hmm, which seems to be the boy’s primary method of communication, then careful hands gently run down Linhardt’s hair. Linhardt sighs and leans into the touch—this is usually Caspar’s job, since he likes his hair as much as this boy seems to (actually, all the other nobles Linhardt knows tell him they like his hair too, but whatever), and he finds himself relaxing a little.
To think someone who can kill so easily can be so gentle.
“It’s too long for battle,” the boy says, when Linhardt thinks most of the dirt must have washed out of his hair by now. “If it gets any longer, you’ll trip on it and fall and die.”
“I-I’m not going to battle!”
“Oh.” The boy frowns. “But you know magic.”
Linhardt grumbles and shakes his head, letting the water fly around and whap the boy in the face. To his credit, the boy doesn’t blink. “Healing magic. It’s… It’s not for the battlefield.”
“But the wind—”
“An accident,” Linhardt interrupts. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
They dry themselves off as best as they can in the midday sun; once they’re both back in their clothes, still dirtied but wearable, Linhardt places his hands over the boy’s arm and focuses, trying to bring out the magic he usually reserves for Caspar after training. The Heal spell sparks to life, a bit literally—Linhardt’s magic still isn’t refined enough to guarantee painlessness, and the boy winces, the first sign of pain Linhardt’s seen. “Sorry,” Linhardt murmurs.
“S’okay.” The boy dips his legs in the lake, perfectly still. A moment passes, two—Linhardt moves to concentrate on his bruised shoulder—then fish begin to approach, one by one until there are four of them swimming around the boy’s feet, glittering beneath the sunshine.
Linhardt stares. He recognizes the white trout, but the other three are only vaguely familiar. Airmid Goby? Caledonian Crayfish? He moves to work on the boy’s torso next, where the wound is deeper and harder to heal without hurting him more. “Do you like fish?” he blurts out. Anything to distract the both of them.
“They…” The boy blinks down at the lake. “They taste good.”
Linhardt probably should have expected that.
“I like fishing,” the boy adds. Linhardt looks up at that, momentarily forgetting he’s supposed to be focusing. “It’s… calming, and… I don’t have to think.” A pause. “And I always catch a lot. So… we always have plenty for dinner.”
“You have family?”
“My father.” He looks contemplative for a moment. “And the mercenaries.”
Linhardt’s hand falters. “M-Mercenaries?”
“Yeah.” The boy looks at him. “You didn’t know?”
Well. Right. Of course. It isn’t as if just any child could pick up a sword and suddenly be able to kill (urgh) bandits twice their size, so logically Linhardt should have expected him to be something along those lines, but… It’s still a little disarming, now knowing he’s talking to a mercenary instead of a kid his age.
Or maybe Linhardt should have known from the start, when he had seen the boy plunge a knife through the bandit’s throat—but he drives the thought out of his head. Right now, this boy likes fishing and has family. That’s what’s important.
“I do now.” Linhardt stares down at the wound; it’s closing up easier than he had expected, and he has to hide a smile. This is magic, real magic—the kind that heals rather than hurts, a gentle white glow instead of deformed blades of wind he had never been able to cast until that very moment. Like this, he can pretend his hands aren’t still cold with a dead man’s blood. “Okay. I think you’re fine now. Does anything hurt?”
The boy flexes his arms, rolls his shoulders. “No.” His legs stay motionless, the fish nudging against his ankles. “Thanks.”
“Just to pay you back.”
“It was my job anyway,” the boy says. “To get rid of the bandits in Hevring territory, I mean. I just happened to find you too.”
Oh. Well, that makes Linhardt feel significantly less important. “Still, you helped me, so thank you,” he mumbles, looking away. Somehow he had managed to keep his bag throughout that entire ordeal, and the corner of his book peeks out from inside. “Where will you—”
“You need to cut your hair.”
Linhardt scowls. “I like it long.”
“But it’ll get messy and tangled again, if you ever go running through the forest again.” He reaches into his coat and pulls out, of all things, the still-bloody knife he had used to kill the man. “Here. You can use this.”
“Use it… for what?”
“To cut your hair.”
“What?” Linhardt sputters. “But why—I said I don’t want to! And even if I did, I wouldn’t use a knife!”
The boy frowns, looking oddly dejected. “Oh. Okay.” He pockets the knife, looks contemplative, then reaches behind himself to untie his own ponytail. Linhardt watches in bemusement when the boy hands over the white strip of cloth he had used to tie it, looking proud of himself. “Here. You can tie your hair with this. Then it won’t be such a bother.”
“I…” Linhardt stares at the ribbon. It still looks new, unlike just about everything else the boy is wearing. “I can’t accept—”
“I’ll tie it for you,” the boy says, and Linhardt can’t even bring himself to protest when the boy steps out of the lake, sending the fish scattering, and crouches behind Linhardt to take his hair in hand. His touch is still careful, still gentle—Linhardt leans backwards again, more on instinct than anything else.
“Why do you care so much?” he asks, when he feels the boy tug on the ribbon to ensure its tightness. It’s a low ponytail, much like the boy’s previous one, and it drapes over his shoulder.
The boy steps back to sit beside him on the grass. “I’m worried,” he says, bluntly. “If you get attacked again, I won’t be there to wash your hair for you. So you should keep it clean.”
“That’s…” a really weird thing to worry about, Linhardt means to say, but he figures that would be more than a little rude, considering this is, well. “That’s nice of you.” He reaches to touch his hair, feels specks of dirt still caught in the strands, but he can hardly blame the boy for a bad washing job.
The boy shrugs. “I like your hair long too, after all. I don’t really want you to cut it.”
Linhardt feels his cheeks warm. “What?”
“I like—”
“No, no, don’t repeat it!” Plenty of people have told him they like his hair, but aside from Caspar, they had never said it so—well—sincerely. Which is more than a little ironic, because he’s also never met anyone so perfectly devoid of emotion. Still… Linhardt fiddles with the end of his ponytail, feeling much more self-conscious than he should be. “I should give you something too. It’s not fair if I don’t.”
The boy looks indifferent. “I don’t—”
Linhardt casts his gaze around them, and doesn’t hesitate when he sees his bag. “You like fish, don’t you?”
“Yeah. But you don’t have to give me a fish. I can catch one myself.”
“That’s not it, silly.” Linhardt retrieves the book out of his bag and thrusts it towards the boy, who blinks owlishly down at the encyclopedia. His eyes latch onto the illustration of a fish on the cover and seem unable to move on from it. “This book’s all about Fódlan fish. Maybe you can learn something.”
“But…”
“I already memorized everything in it,” Linhardt tells him, though he thinks he may only have memorized maybe half, “so you don’t have to worry. I’ve got extra notes inside too.”
The boy slowly takes the book into his rough, calloused hands—there’s awe and fascination in his eyes again, looking at the book the same way he had looked at Linhardt’s hair. It’s barely noticeable, with his seemingly-perpetual dead-eyed stare, but it’s there, and Linhardt feels oddly special that he gets to see it. “Thank you.”
“Kid! Where’d you go?”
The boy’s eyes widen, and he snaps up to look around, expression sinking back into emptiness. “I have to go.”
“Was that your family?” Linhardt asks. The voice had been faint, but still strong and definitely audible. Mercenaries, his mind reminds him, and he has to swallow down a trickle of fear.
A hmm of affirmation. “Stay safe,” the boy tells him, reaching out to touch his hair again, for the briefest of moments, “take care—” and then he’s gone, disappearing into the trees. Linhardt stands, in an aborted motion to go after him, but—where would he go? Who would he find?
He stays in place. The ribbon in his hair is soft to the touch—careful, gentle—and Linhardt realizes he had forgotten to ask for the boy’s name.
Splash.
Linhardt peers up from his book, just in time to catch the professor dropping another fish into his half-full basket. “A Queen Loach,” he notes. “Those are rare, aren’t they?”
“Hmm.” Byleth recasts his line, gaze unmoved. “I’m looking for more Bullheads.”
“Those are even rarer. They—”
“Breed slowly and in small clutches,” Byleth says. There’s a tattered book open on his lap, an encyclopedia on Fódlan fish species, which Linhardt hadn’t expected—though he supposes if there’s anyone who would unashamedly haul an encyclopedia to the fishing pond, it would be the professor. “But they’ve got valuable vitamins. Good for speed.”
“Those are in that book of yours, I suppose?” Linhardt shuffles closer, making sure to tuck his own book in his bag as he kicks off his shoes and rolls up the ends of his pants. The book looks vaguely familiar, like something Linhardt may have owned in the past.
Byleth nods, looking over at him as Linhardt dips his feet in the pond. The water is pleasantly warm from sunshine. “Don’t move too much. You’ll scare away the fish.”
“No need to warn me, Professor. I know how fish work.”
Time passes. Linhardt dozes. Byleth fishes. He catches two more (neither of them Bullheads) before he sighs and withdraws his line, shooing away the cats that had begun to paw at his basket. When Byleth turns so his back faces Linhardt, the setting sun casts rays of golden light across his blue hair. “Your hair’s getting long,” Linhardt remarks.
“It’s fine.”
“Doesn’t it tickle?” Linhardt reaches out to brush his fingers against the strands curling at the base of Byleth’s neck, expecting a stern frown or a swat of his hand—
But he stares incredulously when Byleth leans, almost imperceptibly, into the touch.
The moment is gone as abruptly as it had come, disappearing so quickly Linhardt wonders if he had just imagined it; Byleth’s already standing up, hefting the basket of fish in one arm and his fishing rod in the other. “Coming?” he asks. “They’re serving saghert and cream for dinner tonight. You shouldn’t spend another three hours sleeping and miss another meal.”
“Alright, alright, since you’re inviting.”
(Linhardt turns around to face the sparkling waves, sunlight reflecting off the backs of glittering white trout, and misses the lingering glance Byleth sends the old white ribbon tied in his hair.)