Chapter Text
Is this really the same warrior who led the valiant charge? Slumped over a sticky wooden table with a sloshed tankard and beer foam in his stubble? No one’s telling him to get out because he’s not… technically causing any sort of disturbance, though his snores are almost loud enough to drown out the shouting around him. He reeks of ale and sweat. Someone passes by and delivers a hearty slap to his shoulder, disturbing the hairs on his face when he wrinkles his nose.
Leonie, holding back her dissuasion, steps up. There’s a sort of feeling one gets when they jump from a high riverbank, only to hit ankle-deep water instead of a nice, deep watering hole. Or the water’s warm and mucky and filled with bugs. Or there’s too much fish shit that settled into the sediment.
… Mild disappointment. That’s what it is.
It only lasts for a fleeting second, before Leonie forgets all about that feeling.
“Hey,” she starts. No. Wait. Maybe she ought to be more formal? She clears her throat. “Excuse me, sir!”
A man with a dark, bushy beard laughs. “The captain’s not gonna be waking up anytime soon! We’ll carry him out before ya close up for the night!” He stares at Leonie for a moment, probably only just realizing that she’s too young to be a disgruntled barmaid who wants to clear the table for other customers. “Er, did ya need something?”
“Yeah,” Leonie says, never tearing her eyes away from this slovenly, smelly, drunken man who probably couldn’t even count his own fingers before he passed out. “I want him to take me on as his apprentice.”
Her father, along with all the other capable men of the village (which didn’t really add up to much, in the face of bigger numbers and sharper weapons that they just didn’t have access to) banded together to deal with the poachers-bandits before the end of the month. Brave hunters together, armed with wooden spears and bows and traps of no use against anything more intelligent than a wild boar, and valiance… and courage…
Did absolutely nothing.
Not even a burning desire for revenge against those who wronged them and stole precious resources would be enough. Leonie had watched from the kitchen window, standing beside her mother, as her father and all those other capable men trudged back through the gates with their heads hung in shame.
“No,” Jeralt says. He closes his eyes and presses his cheek back against the sticky surface of the table. Comfy.
“You don’t even know my name yet! …Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Leonie.”
“I don’t care.”
“Jeralt, right? Your friends told me you’d be in a bad mood.” Leonie, completely undeterred, scrapes a chair across the floor to sit beside him. The man with the dark bushy beard helplessly shrugs even though Jeralt isn’t even looking at him. “Listen, I know what you guys are doing for us. For our entire village. We’d starve to death in the winter if it weren’t for you. So— thanks for all this. I really, really mean it.”
Jeralt grunts.
“Don’t bother.” One of bushy beard’s companions chimes in. He has a plain face, one that Leonie is sure she’ll forget about later no matter how hard she tries to commit his appearance to memory. “We didn’t do it out of the goodness of our hearts. That ain’t our way, you know, we get paid actual bullions for our troubles. It’s a job to do.”
That’s how mercenaries operate. Yes, yes, she knows. She’s not an idiot, thank-you-very-much, she’d like to believe she’s sensible and knows as much of that as she knows the way sharp pointy objects work around meat. An arrow piercing through the hide of an innocent deer. Snares digging to the bone of a rabbit’s leg. They hunted those poachers in the same fashion she would shoot quails from the sky as practice and for lunch, except not quite, because taking a human’s life is very different from the respectful symbiosis with nature that they adhere to out here. The bandits didn’t respect that. They took and took and took until there was nothing left for the villagers and maybe that’s why they deserved to be hunted down and slaughtered just like wild game, but without the unsaid thanks and prayers to the goddess for such bountiful previsions.
They deserve to die, and her father and all the other hunters didn’t deserve to suffer such humiliation from being unable to do anything. Right? And it wasn’t as though a mere child, not even old enough to pass off as a barmaid, could have done anything about it either.
Powerlessness is a horrible thing. Leonie sees what she has to do, and this guy’s crappy hangover won’t get in her way.
“Let me be your apprentice.”
“Go away.”
Don’t be unrealistic. Her father said that to her, when she asked him how the hunt went. If all these strong hunters couldn’t do anything, then what could his daughter do? She knows how to catch small birds and rabbits and how to skin a deer, but she can’t hunt another human being. She can’t fight another human being. Sparring with the local boys doesn’t count because they never even break each other’s noses.
She’s going to be his apprentice, damnit, and learn how to defend the village. Because next time, what if the Gloucester family doesn’t bother sending mercenaries? What if they randomly decide it’s not worth it, and the village certainly can’t afford to purchase the services of a militia this skilled. Or led under such impeccable leadership. What if they’ll always be a soft target for bandits and poachers and highwaymen to gnaw and claw away at until there’s absolutely nothing left, as if Sauin village never even existed in the first place?
Jeralt swats at the air, mumbling in his drunken daze and his voice thick with the stench of beer.
“Let me be your apprentice!”
“Leave me alone.”
Her father didn’t leave the house for two days. Leonie saw how it crushed him. His leg was all stitched up from where a steel sword slashed at him, and he couldn’t walk for a while. He should’ve stayed in longer but he needed to provide, and Leonie’s mother suffers from aches in just about all her joints from a lifetime of hard work.
They weren’t the only ones. Times were getting tough and their garden plots could only provide so much for this many people.
And then, then the company arrived atop horses gleaming with sweat and heavy hooves trampling the mud flat, without so much as a grand speech or gloat of reassurance. Atop their shoulders they carried swords and lances and axes and even a couple of them riding in the back held tomes carrying the arcane art of magic like, like fire and elfire and whatever else there is. No one in the village uses magic.
They set out in the morning, came back in the evening, set up camp just outside the village and that was that. What had caused so much suffering for the past two seasons is nothing more than a leisurely hunt to a militia of this caliber.
“Let me be your apprentice!” Leonie slams a hand down on the table.
He lifts his head like it’s as heavy as stones. Three of his men are trying to urge Leonie to leave now, and maybe come back the next day or the next or just give up altogether, but they might as well be gnats buzzing around her shoulders.
“Not to brag or anything, but I’m a very fast learner and— okay, well, I’m not too great with things like math and history because, we don’t really have much of a need for things like that here, you know? All the textbooks we have are secondhand and we didn’t exactly ask for them, they’re just misprinted stock that traveling merchants didn’t want anymore and gave to us for free in exchange for lodgings. Practical stuff, though? I’m great with my hands and I’m the best marksman among all the kids my age here, even the boys—“
Jeralt holds up a hand, palm out. “Stop talking.”
“Oh. Okay, sure! So, what d’you say?”
“Leonie, right?”
“Yessir!”
The buzz is already wearing off. Wait, since when did it become a buzz? Curse his blood. Curse everything. Jeralt staggers up to his feet, nearly shoving the table over with his unsteady movements. Damnit. Leonie shoots up to her feet as well, eyes bright and fiery and nothing at all like the eager squires and wannabe-squires he’d met before.
She’s rough, unhewn, porous and jagged and completely unrefined. A pebble left by a dirt road, completely unremarkable. Not even worth a second glance.
Jeralt ignores the confused protests of his men and gestures for Leonie to follow him out of the inn. The sky is dim with the last remnants of sunlight, dusk before nightfall; it’s pleasantly cool outside. A mosquito whines past his ear. Jeralt crushes it in one fist. The buzz is already nothing more than a vaguely comfortable hum at this point.
Wait, Leonie is still talking. Like a merchant peddling wares and talking big about them, pretending like an ordinary carved spoon is something extraordinary taken from the wood of a tree revered by the first followers of the goddess herself. Some bullshit like that.
“Captain Jeralt! We shouldn’t have let this kid bother you— we’re sorry! You can go back to your tent to sleep, we won’t let anyone else disturb you!”
“Leave us alone.” It’s easy to make them go away. They always listen because they trust him. Alright, they’re gone, and Leonie obviously doesn’t care.
She wasn’t bullshitting.
Here’s a nice little oak tree, with branches low enough to reach up and grab if he makes the effort to jump. It’s close enough to the village that they can still smell the cooking fires but far enough that they can’t hear anything but the wind rustling low through the bushes, and a faint hush of water from the nearby river. Leonie had finally stopped talking, now waiting for Jeralt’s verdict.
“Kid…” He rubs the back of his neck, sighing with all the weariness of someone who had been to Hell and back. “I’m not looking for any apprentices right now.”
“But your company will be staying here for at least another month, right? That’s what your friend said! I won’t forgive you if you change your mind in a couple seeks, so I’ll change your mind right now. That way, there’ll be more time for you to teach me.”
“Teach you what.”
“How to be as strong as you, of course.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, but there isn’t even a hangover for him to have the excuse to tell her to ask again in the morning. When, hopefully, she would have a good night’s rest to sleep on it and realize how ridiculous she’s being and drop the question altogether.
Okay, so he’ll make sure she has a full night to have an epiphany and change her mind. How old is she, even? Can’t be any older than…
Jeralt sighs again, this time a bit harder. He’s not a good teacher. He can’t be a mentor. This girl doesn’t know what she’s talking about. To be as strong as— that’s the sort of thing kids who believe in storybooks say, when they don’t know how hard life can really get. Yet, there’s no naivety in the way she carries herself, so determined that she readily admits she can’t do math and brags about her marksmanship in the same breath. Of course she’d want to be strong, then.
They routed a half dozen bandits this afternoon. It wasn’t terribly difficult. But they had to do it, because no one in the village could (and it’s what they were paid to do as mercenaries, besides).
And the townspeople even had the kindness to offer his company free drinks at their lonesome inn-slash-tavern after all they’d done.
“You can’t watch me at work. It’s too dangerous. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Of course I know that. I’d die out there,” she says so candidly that Jeralt forgets to pretend he’s suffering from a fake hangover.
“Is that so.”
“That’s why I need to learn from the best of the best. Your company is called the Jeralt Mercenaries. Who else would I ask?”
He could think of a few other men and women under his command who would be more than happy to teach Leonie how to swing a sword around, but he suspects that wouldn’t satisfy her.
“We… couldn’t do anything.” Leonie’s shoulders tremble. “My dad is one of the strongest hunters in our village. I’m not bragging about that, it’s a fact. But he, and all the other men, couldn’t stop those bandits from coming into our village and taking whatever they wanted. And i thought to myself, what could I even do? I’m just a kid who helps tan the leather and trim the fletching.”
“You said you’re one of the best.”
“I’m strong and I work hard. But that’s not anywhere near good enough.”
Jeralt considers this for a moment. And considers it a while longer. And continues to think as the sky begins to darken and he hears his mercs laughing and telling stories at their camp. Then he points to that oak tree, and to the lowest branch.
“Can you grab that branch with both hands?”
She does easily enough and without question, feet dangling less than a meter above the dried mud and grass. The branch slightly creaks but holds fast.
“Hold onto it. If you’re still here by morning, I’ll let you be my apprentice.” Shit, maybe he’s still drunk after all.
“You should’ve heard her speech, it was like a… like a rambling nonsensical stream of consciousness. Don’t look at me like that. What I did isn’t cruel. It’s the kind of thing she was expecting, right? A test of strength, or… I told you, stop looking at me like that. I can’t teach her what she wants, because I’m not even sure what she wants. Or she tells me what she wants but I don’t even think she knows what she really wants. She’s just a kid, even younger than you…. I think? Pass me another bottle. That one over there, yeah. C’mon, stop looking at me like that. Please.”
He’s up at dawn, gasping awake with another one of those bad dreams, the insides of his mouth utterly foul with the aftertastes of last night’s drinks. The bedroll beside him is empty. Jeralt wipes a calloused palm over his face, digs at the grit caught in the corners of his eyes, and pushes himself up to his feet. The blood rushes to his head. He stumbles out, greeted by a misty dawn that hasn’t even met the sunrise proper yet.
This way, that way… where was it? Through the trees, that way. Definitely that way. Wasn’t too far, he made sure of that. Weren’t her parents worried? Or did that kid make impromptu camping or sleepovers a regular thing that they didn’t need to worry? Or did they feel safe and sound, now that there was a band of mercenaries just outside their front door— oh, of course, Greyson must have stopped by to let them know that the honorable Captain Jeralt was looking after their daughter, nothing to worry about, she just wanted to have a tour of their authentic genuine mercenary camp.
He curses as his face hits a spiderweb that’d been spun between reaching branches. What was he thinking? The kid didn’t mean any harm. Sure, she was kind of a nuisance, and she talked a little bit too much, but she just wanted… to be better than less than good enough. Because she’s just a backwater country bumpkin who never met a proper soldier, much less a proper mercenary, and now her tiny world’s been flipped upside down by the momentous arrival of a band of capable mercenaries who know how to deal with poachers-slash-bandits. She probably thinks they’re the coolest guys in the universe.
It wasn’t too far from the village. This path is slightly beaten and only wide enough to put one foot directly after the other. Last night was a daze, or he’d already willed himself into forgetting most of it. That’s what he’d say, though it isn’t much of an excuse. He wasn’t— it wasn’t a big deal. Spending a night outside beneath a tree is completely safe, especially within earshot of both a village of hunters and a camp of mercs. Those bandits would still be licking their wounds from the previous day’s fight, so they’d know better than to come lurking around too.
He stumbles into a clearing where that little oak tree stands proud. Leonie is curled up in the grass with hair dusted with morning dew, peacefully sleeping like a cat. Her arms are bent, elbows tucked into the curve of her body, and he can see that her palms are scratched up and bloodied from the effort of holding onto that tree branch through the night.
Byleth looks up at Jeralt from where she kneels beside the sleeping girl. She has one hand lightly resting upon Leonie’s back.
Jeralt’s shoulders sag. “… Don’t look at me like that.”
Byleth once spent three whole days and four whole nights who knows where, in the middle of the woods out in Empire territory, and she returned as if nothing unusual had happened at all and seemingly unconcerned that no one could find her during that time. Jeralt doesn’t know why she left or why she came back. She never spoke of it again.
It just wasn’t a big deal, is all.
Jeralt’s daughter is.
Weird.
Leonie knows that there’s a lot in the world she hasn’t seen, a lot of different people she hasn’t met, blah blah blah, but this has to be an exception to that norm she’s so badly missing out on. Regular people blink, for starters. Has she blinked at all yet?
Leonie’s arms hurt. Her shoulders are on fire and it hurts when she bends her elbows and she swears she can hear her knuckles creak whenever she tries to bend her fingers. Not that she tries to bend her fingers too much, because they hurt. She doesn’t quite have the eloquence to describe each node of pain and each horrible ache, but it hurts. A lot.
Well, that doesn’t matter.
“Look, I’m sorry. It was a rash decision and you caught me in a bad mood. Nevermind… that’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have told you to do that.” They’re back at the camp and sitting by a smoldering fire while Byleth cooks eggs and slabs of salted meat on a dinged-up copper pan. None of the other mercenaries have emerged from their tents yet, but noises of early morning routines drift from the village. They have time to talk before the day properly begins, so might as well. “Why did you listen to me?”
Why, because it’s simple. “I want to be your apprentice. I was serious about that.” Leonie looks down at her scratched up hands. “… I couldn’t do it, anyway. I fell asleep at some point and let go.”
“That should be proof enough that I’m not fit to be your mentor,” Jeralt says, unable to make eye contact. He waits for a moment, as if expecting one or the other to say something to refute his point, but they remain silent. Byleth is seemingly very, very focused on making sure the yolks don’t break while they cook. Or she’s listening like a hawk. He can’t tell. The silence stirs an uneasy feeling in his stomach, and he finally lifts his head to look at the two of them— his daughter, and this girl who barged into the tavern last night and demanded that he make her his apprentice.
Do mercenaries even have apprentices? That sort of thing should be reserved for blacksmiths, and tanners and butchers. He’s not a mercenary by heart, he’s a knight. Always has been and always will be, he supposes. This is just a temporary gig until. Until something else happens to upheave his life like fate seems to be so fond of doing frequently enough. Is Leonie the latest cataclysm? Was she sent here by unseen destiny to shake his life once more? Or the other way around?
Leonie stares hard at him with that same look in her eyes from the night before.
It’s a different kind of unease that stirs him, now. Like the complete opposite when Byleth stared at him, unblinking, neither smiling nor frowning as he had recounted what he told Leonie to do last night. There are feelings he can’t get a read on. That’s different. He’ll mull on that later. “… I can teach you some basic swordplay. You ever fought with a sword before?”
“Yesssss!” Leonie pumps a fist in the air, momentarily forgetting how much her muscles scream in protest to sudden motions like that. Her excitement is contagious enough to crack a lopsided smile from Jeralt. Byleth doesn’t react, nor does she look up. “I mean— no, I’ve never fought with a sword before! I mean, yes, thank you, I can’t wait to get started! I should show you what I can already do, right? With a bow? That’s the only weapon I’ve trained with, it was mostly my dad and some other hunters who taught me the ropes, but I figure hunting and fighting must be totally different?”
“Slow down. My company will be staying here for at least another month.” The bacon smells heavenly. He inhales deeply, to buy himself time to collect his thoughts and to savor the savory odor of cooking pork. “It’s too early for this… hey, why don’t you have breakfast first and chat a while with the other mercenaries. I need to… go close my eyes for a little while longer. Headache.”
“O-Okay.” Don’t get ahead of yourself. That’s a good bit of advice and Leonie is a bit proud of for telling herself that and keeping herself sitting instead of running off after Jeralt as he shuffles to one of the tents and ducks inside. Self-discipline. Step one. No, Captain Jeralt will tell her what step one is. Will there be a training regime? A schedule? What could step one possibly be, in her journey to becoming the best of the best?
The bacon sizzles and pops loud enough to startle Leonie. Oh, that’s right, her arms and hands hurt like hell.
“Oh, I didn’t even introduce myself. Sorry for being rude.” Her present company says nothing. Leonie too busy riding that high of excitement to really care. “The name’s Leonie! And you’re… Captain Jeralt’s daughter? Um?”
“Byleth.”
“Byleth, gotcha! You know, I think we might be about the same age. You kinda look like my age, at least… how old are you? I’m fifteen.”
Byleth shrugs.
“… You’re also fifteen?”
Another shrug.
“Huh? What’s that shrug supposed to mean? Can’t you just tell me how old you are instead of playing coy like that? What’s your problem?”
She’s sliding the eggs and bacon onto a couple of plates, like she didn’t even hear Leonie’s questions.
“Well— geez, if you’re gonna be that rude! Sorry for trying to be nice!”
Byleth, of course, says and does nothing as Leonie gets up and stomps away. She looks down at the two plates of food she’d prepared, turns her head in the direction where Leonie had gone, and glances back down, now unsure what to do with two plates all by herself. Should she go after Leonie? But she was mad. That might make her angrier, even if Byleth offers the eggs and bacon. But wasn’t Leonie hungry?
“Captain Jeralt? Hm… he’s a dependable fellow. The kind of guy you’d definitely want at your back in the heat of battle. No one swings a sword harder than the Captain! Haha! No, but really… there’s a reason why all of us are following him, and it’s not because of the measly pay. He’s just an easy sort of guy to trust, you know?”
“Ehh, to be honest, I dunno if I’ll be sticking around any longer. I’ve had my fair share of experience being a mercenary, and Captain Jeralt’s company is a bit different from the others I’ve worked for. There’s something about the Captain… that’s a bit off. Say, why do you even wanna be his apprentice, anyway?”
“They call him the Blade Breaker! Cool moniker, right? No idea who came up with it, but he’s certainly strong enough to shatter swords with his own lance. He used to serve the Central Church as a Knight of Seiros before forming the company! Doesn’t really talk about it at all, I happened to find out by chance when some booze loosened his lips one evening. Ohh, yeah, he’s a drinker. Doesn’t ever seem to get hangovers, though. Hah! Wish that were me.”
“His daughter is weird. Never talks to anyone. I’d be careful around her. Between you and me, kid, I dunno if she and the Captain are even related.”
Captain Jeralt is strong and wise and a good leader and sensible and likes to drink maybe a bit too much, but what jaded soldier worth his salt doesn’t? Leonie tells everything to her parents, leaving out the part where the Captain told her to hang from a tree branch all night, and instead says she fell by the river and scraped her hands playing the other day and that’s why she needs that special herbal balm they use for soothing broken skin. Her mother is weary and happy that Leonie has found a new project to fixate on. Her father doesn’t say much but he neither disapproves, still stewing in his failure to save the village.
Someday, Leonie will be the one to save the village using all she learned from the mercenaries currently saving their village. Then her father won’t have to worry anymore and he can be proud of his daughter, who learned how to protect everyone from the mercenary who protected them all first.
Something like that.
Then, Jeralt tells her that he’s no hero.
“We did it because it’s a job,” Jeralt says, pulling arrows out of the makeshift targets they painted on trees. The kid’s a better archer than he had expected, so that’s a somewhat pleasant surprise. “Not out of the goodness of our hearts, or because we took pity. The Gloucester family paid us in advance. That kind of incentive is irresistible to mercenaries like us.”
Leonie knows better, able to read everything between the signs. The mercenaries don’t intrude upon the villagers’ daily lives. The drinks at the tavern are free, but they’re always careful to make sure the chairs are pushed in at the end of the night and that the owner is thanked properly for his hospitality. Jeralt drinks and drinks and drinks and somehow there’s still plenty of ale to go around for the rest of his men. She saw Grayson flipping a shiny coin to Granny Sofia in exchange for an apple without even haggling or bargaining. These mercenaries are fair and just and kind and it isn’t just about the money. Would Grayson have demanded the apple for free if the Gloucester family weren’t so generous with that advance payment?
She thinks a little more. Jeralt is bringing the arrows back.
“Heroes don’t do good deeds because they would, but because they would and can,” Leonie slowly says, stretching her arms. They’re no longer sore from that night spent hanging from the oak tree. Well, maybe they’re a little sore, but she was insistent on jumping straight into training as soon as possible.
“Hm… never thought of it that way. Seems kinda harsh.”
“You think so? That’s just what I think.” She takes the bow again. Jeralt taps her shoulders and legs, adjusting her stance, pointing out where her grip is off. “My dad and the other men of the village tried to fight back against the bandits before. They’re not heroes, because they couldn’t do anything about it. Even if they tried.”
“Hey, that’s cold.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Captain Jeralt. I love my dad more than anything in the world, and I respect his efforts. A lot. But he knew he wasn’t strong enough because— see, he’d hurt his knee a few years ago and now he has a limp. That bad knee doesn’t slow him down when it came to hunting game, but it wasn’t going to do him any favors in a fight against a bunch of bandits who fight dirty. But he still went out anyway, because… I dunno, honor? Pride?”
“So you don’t actually respect him.”
“That’s not—! I’m just saying, he shouldn’t have been so reckless!”
Thwip. Slightly off the mark. Jeralt taps her knuckles, has her adjust her grip again, and mumbles something about where the wind is pushing.
“Then,” Jeralt grumbles, leaning back against a tree with his arms folded. “Heroes need to be strong, not just brave. Is that it?”
“I knew you’d get it, Captain!” Thwip. The arrow lands a little closer this time. “I can throw myself headfirst into as many battles as I want, but, that won’t mean anything if I don’t win any of them. People won’t think I’m a hero or a brave warrior. They’d just think I’m some crazy lady who doesn’t know when to call it quits! If… if my dad died out there, I would never be able to forgive him. But he came back alive, because he didn’t keep trying to fight until he couldn’t anymore. I said I respect his efforts, but I respect his will to live more than that. Would I have felt better if he didn’t give it a shot at all? Well… that’s hard to say.”
“You’d probably end up calling him a coward.”
“Maybe, maybe. …Yeah, you’re right. I would’ve been angry at him for sitting at home while all the other hunters left to fight. But I think… I’d like to think that I’d figure it out eventually, that his bad leg meant he wouldn’t have stood a chance at all. I get it now, right? My mom is one of the best trappers in the village, but she can’t use a blade on anything but wild game she catches. Without my dad, it’d just be the two of us, and if the bandits broke through the gates again… argh! I’m sorry, Captain Jeralt, but I can’t focus like this!”
“Hey, you’re doing fine. But if it’s bugging you this much, you should probably go talk to your parents about it instead of me.”
“I can’t let them worry.”
“You’re their kid. Believe me, it’s their job to worry.”
Jeralt’s words hang heavy in the silence that follows. Leonie fires off another arrow, half-heartedly, the bowstring not even drawn back all the way. The arrow lands in the grass only a few steps in front of her. She never thought too hard about where she stood with her parents because there wasn’t anything to think hard about. They love her, and she loves them, and sometimes they’ll bicker and she threw more tantrums as a child than she’d like to admit, but they’re family. And she can’t make family worry so much. Maybe her dad thought the same thing before he tried to fight the bandits off, too.
“Yeah… alright, that makes sense. I guess you’d know what it’s like, being a parent yourself and everything.”
His shoulders stiffen.
“Oh— by the way, how old is your daughter? I asked her the other day but I, uh, kinda lost my temper when she wouldn’t answer and I ran off. I was planning to go apologize after today’s training.”
“Ahh…” Something passes over his face, twisting his expression and deepening the wrinkles over his brow. Then it all smooths out and he forces out an awkward chuckle. “We don’t celebrate birthdays. She never cared about things like that, so we both kinda lost track of the years.”
“Huh?! You’re joking!”
“Mmh, ‘fraid not.”
“So that’s why she didn’t tell me… ugh, I was such a jerk!”
She nearly startles at the large hand that suddenly clasps her on the shoulder, causing her to fumble with the bow. Jeralt looks just as tired as he did when she confronted him at the tavern, but now he’s smiling and his eyes aren’t bloodshot. At least. Leonie straightens up and hesitantly smiles back.
“We still have a couple hours of sunlight. I’ll show you how to hold a sword, c’mon.”
“Right—! I really got distracted, didn’t I? Sorry about that!”
Everything about her is rough and unpolished, but hunters don’t need finesse. Not like those regal knights with all that pomp and circumstance. Frankly, maybe she doesn’t even need to be trained to such an extent, seeing as she’s already more capable with a bow than most young recruits Jeralt had met throughout his life, both in his knighthood and during his career as a mercenary, but it’s exactly as she said before. All the strength she possesses now doesn’t count until she’s strong enough— no, more than strong enough.
What is it that drives such a young person to attain great skill?
Leonie wants to protect her home and the people she cares about. It’s nothing so grand like a twisted revenge plot or a reclamation of honor or clawing up her way into nobility. Jeralt’s seen plenty of that before. This girl is… refreshingly simple. Headstrong, and stubborn, and passionate and all fired up and simple.
Simple like Byleth, but possessing all that fire he had always wished his own daughter would have.
Alright, back to training. “So you want me to teach you how to be a hero for your village. Is that right?”
Thwip. Bullseye.
“Huh? No, I just want to be a capable mercenary like you. Didn’t I say that before?”