Work Text:
Well, Lord give me a reason
C'mon, show me you love me
I don't want to let it go
Just to watch it fly
And Lord, give me a moment
Any of it, show me
I don't want to feel it
I don't wanna watch it go by
~Nate Ruess, Moment
O.O
On one wind-swept evening, Marianne peered into the Garreg Mach pond and informed her reflection that she might be in love with Linhardt von Hevring.
In love…even the words felt strange on her tongue, like an odd dish flavored with spices that she was not accustomed to tasting. The waters afforded her no grandiose revelation, no violent upheaval or terrified visage rising vengefully from the fish-murky depths, only her slightly puzzled, altogether ordinary face staring back at herself.
She didn’t feel any different. Did she? Maybe there were a few extra butterflies in her stomach, a little burst of sunshine-y warmth every time Linhardt peered at her over the top of his book as if to make sure she was still there. On certain days, that sunshine warmth would strengthen into a steady burning heat in her cheeks as Linhardt held her hands in his and asked her very seriously if she was happy.
“Are you happy today, Marianne?” he would ask, and depending on the day, she would reply with varying degrees of exuberance.
“I am.”
“I am!”
“Well…”
Some days, she would pause, and the silence was enough for Linhardt to nod understandingly. Those were the quiet days, where they would read, or fish, or just lie and exist in each other’s warmth.
It confused her, how much she enjoyed these soft, gentle moments. Wasn’t love supposed to be exuberant? Overflowing, exciting? Was there more to this little nugget of gold that her heart cupped in its quiet recesses?
Marianne hoped for more, and she hoped for less, because someone in possession of a Crest capable of terrible misfortune should not ask for anything at all.
O.O
There was a deliciously happy memory, when they were still students and there was no war.
It was night, and Marianne was just straightening from an evening of prayer to the Goddess. Scarcely had she stood up to work out the kinks in her knees and neck that Linhardt materialized at her side with a puppy in his arms.
“Ah, Marianne,” he said brightly as the puppy snuffled and kicked out blindly, “Just the person I was looking for.”
“Um,” Marianne said eloquently, because there really was no other way to respond to this very odd image of her new classmate holding onto a tiny week-old puppy while looking at her expectantly like her very presence would resolve the whole situation.
“No animals in the holy cathedral!” A scandalized priest was chastising at their backs, but Linhardt just made a placating gesture in his general direction without taking his eyes from Marianne.
“You have a knack for animals, do you not?” Linhardt asked, and Marianne fumbled for words. “Well, that is—!”
“I have to say that I’m more of a cat person myself, but this little mutt decided to disrupt my nightly nap by putting up an unholy wail outside my door.” Linhardt held the squirming pup by the scruff with a carefully neutral expression on his face. “You can talk to her, can’t you? Raphael seems to believe so.”
“I—wait, please.” Marianne hastily took the poor creature into her arms before Linhardt manhandled it to death, curling the tiny, warm body close to her chest as it shivered and whimpered in her arms. She looked back up at Linhardt. “Can we go outside first?”
“Oh, certainly.” Linhardt yawned widely, trailing in her wake as she hurried outside, burningly aware of the priest’s narrowed eyes drilling into her back.
Outside, Marianne took assessment of the tiny creature in her arms. Small, underfed, and extremely young. The poor thing couldn’t open her eyes yet, and there was a delicate boniness to her body that made Marianne fear for her survival.
“I found the mother under our stairs.” Linhardt continued drowsily, as if reciting a lecture too difficult to memorize. “She didn’t care much for my efforts to return her child, so I assume this is a ‘runt’?”
“Oh, poor thing,” Marianne murmured as the puppy snuffled unhappily. “We have to get it something to eat.”
“I trust you,” Linhardt said simply.
And that was that. They wheedled some leftovers from the kitchen staff and fed it to the pup in small amounts. They agreed to take turns housing the puppy on nights, and Marianne volunteered for the first night. It liked her pillow more than Marianne’s most earnest construction of a makeshift bed made of rags and blankets on the floor, and so she spent the night with the snuffling puppy curled by her head. The terrifying thought of rolling over and accidentally squashing the fragile thing made it hard to turn over in her sleep, but it was worth it the next day, when the puppy drank more and actually had enough energy to wag its little stump of a tail.
“I don’t want to keep calling her ‘the puppy’.” Marianne said a week later, as they both watched the puppy stumble across the carpeting in Linhardt’s room as if following the zig-zag patterns. “She needs a name.”
“Fortune,” Linhardt suggested after a beat of silence. Marianne started.
“A bit dated, I’m aware, but I think it suits her perfectly.” He reached out and the puppy eagerly rushed for his finger, gnawing earnestly with button-sharp teeth. “She was unfortunate to have been born to a parent who didn’t want her, and yet she had the fortune of worming her sightless way into our lives. Noisy, messy creature she may be, but fortunate she is to have led me to you.”
It was too early for there to be any beginnings of anything as soul-deep as love, but even then Marianne had blushed bright enough to feel the heat in her fingertips.
Linhardt seemed oblivious to her sudden fluster, preoccupied with the puppy trying to gnaw his finger off. “You claim that your Crest brings about misfortune to those who come in contact with you, and yet I see definitive proof that it isn’t so. Forgive me for being presumptuous, but I would like to observe these effects over an extended period of time just to satisfy my curiosity. That is, if that’s alright with you.”
He looked up at her, and though it felt dangerous to let someone so close to her like this, a desperate, plaintive part of her yearned for this normality, yearned for this stranger that is friendship. His eyes were curious and discernment-sharp, but they were kind underneath all that bald scrutiny.
“I…” Marianne hesitated, but she was only human after all. “I would like that.”
Linhardt smiled, and Fortune yelped from the rug. Marianne’s pulse fluttered.
It was the first time he had made her heart beat a strange, uneven pattern, but it would not be the last.
O.O
She learned to love the unspoken moments, velvety and fragile in their tenuous nature. Maybe this was why she preferred this quietness, this steady companionship and acceptance of her timid nature. Perhaps that was why she grew to love him, grew to love how kind he actually was beneath that veneer of studious apathy.
“Your Crest brings me happiness,” Linhardt had once told her with full conviction, his eyes shining with undisguised certainty, and she had balked at that, because no one would dare say something so contradictory or frankly out loud, would they?
The louder moments hurt a little more. They both hated war, the messiness and the pain. There were times when Linhardt would wake with a strangled sound, desperately scrubbing at a stain that wasn’t there, or the time Marianne stiffened up so tight at a distant crash of metal that her nails cut crescent moons into her palms.
But even they get lost in the bloodshed, and while they collect scars at a slower rate than their louder, stronger friends, the effect is indelible, like every imprint these five years have laid on their hearts. The recovery would be slow, as all things usually are, but this shard of happiness that shone between them like a slice cut from the sun? Beautiful, yes, but was it a luxury they could afford? Was it better to perhaps go off on her own once again?
Marianne knew that war had its time and place, but sometimes the lonely silence was worse than the anonymous cacophony of the battlefield.
O.O
Library nights began with an incredulity.
“I tend to be single-minded and then sleepy when I work,” Linhardt had informed her while they were both students with nothing more than exams looming on their minds. “I practically nap in the library, that is, unless Tomas kicks me out, so I could ask for your help in keeping an eye open for him.”
“U-um, okay…” Marianne had stammered, still unaccustomed to this straightforward friend who had found her not only non-threatening or odd, but actually a worthy companion to bring along to his sanctuary of study. “How should I warn you?”
“Don’t poke or jostle me, for one thing,” Linhardt immediately answered with a grimace that spoke of past experience. “Caspar did that so maddeningly often that I’ve long since left him to his own devices.”
“Should I whisper or call you?” Marianne asked. “My voice will carry.”
“It’s up to you.” Linhardt shrugged. “Nothing violent, but you are not the type, I gather.”
“Oh no, not at all.”
“Then do whatever you wish.” Linhardt took the thickest tome from the top of his tower of books and immediately flipped to one of the latter chapters. “I’ve got an interesting theory to confirm tonight.”
The title, Marianne realized with a sinking heart, was Little Informed Crests and their Histories. She opened her mouth to say something (what?), but before she could say anything Linhardt’s eyes had already taken on that vacant expression of intense focus that brooked absolutely no interruption.
Sighing, Marianne turned to her own thinner volume, a treatise about Faith magic and its relationship to Reason, and began to read until the candle on the table began to sputter and the words on the page started blurring together. Shadows stretched over the ground, playing with the flickering light of the lamps and the swishing robes of the library nuns.
Tomas wandered over to their table with his wobbly gait, holding a stack of freshly bound tomes. “Apologies for disturbing your studies, children, but the hour grows late.”
“Of course, Tomas.” Marianne ducked her head.
Tomas nodded kindly at her, but then his expression soured once his gaze moved past her shoulder. “Goddess help us, the von Hevring boy has gone and fallen asleep again.”
A soft snore from behind her confirmed Marianne’s fears, and she hastily bowed as she scrambled from her seat. “I’m so sorry, I’ll wake him and we’ll be sure to help you clean up.”
“That’s very kind of you, but my assistants are already tidying up.” Tomas shook his head in Linhardt’s direction with a long suffering sigh as he shuffled affably away. “Just help that sluggard out of here and I’ll be most grateful!”
“Of course, sir!” Marianne turned back to Linhardt and was about to reach for his shoulder when she remembered what he had told her earlier. She studied him for a while, her fingers worrying each other as he continued to snore, his head resting on his folded arms across the thick tome about little-known Crests.
“Who are you?” Marianne asked him in helpless frustration.
Linhardt slept on.
Sighing, Marianne leaned in, studying his lax features. There was a cut above his brow, still healing from their recent encounter with Lord Lonato a few days ago, a shallow gash that had bled profusely and was the first time Marianne had seen Linhardt look truly terrified.
Marianne reached out, and a small sigh of white-laden magic flowed from her fingers and briskly knitted up the last of the fading scar, erasing the brown scratch entirely.
Linhardt started awake as the last bit of healing light twinkled away, and he started blearily up at her through a haze of sleepy awe.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly how I thought I’d be awoken,” he slurred. “Certainly much more pleasant than my previous experience.”
“Faith energizes,” Marianne explained simply, because there was nothing else to say. “Reason doesn’t.”
“Fascinating.” Linhardt yawned and stretched luxuriously, his unkempt hair falling over his shoulders and eyes in errant waves. “Well, I certainly prefer your kinder, cleverer self to Caspar’s unruly jostling.”
“T-that’s not true.” Marianne melted into a heap of mortification under the unexpected compliments, and he just snorted gently as he began to sleepily collect his books, barely flinching at the cross look Tomas shot his way.
“Humble as well.” Linhardt’s smile was puckish, glimmering. “You never cease to amaze me.”
O.O
Memories of the battlefield were indelible, of course. One cannot exactly get accustomed to reliving them in the revealing silence of night, but Marianne found that daily habits of normalcy, no matter how false it felt, soothed and healed after the shattering wakes of battles.
Maybe that was why she agreed to take up fishing with Linhardt. She gave up on the sport after the sight of the stranded fish flopping about on the pier nearly brought her to tears, but Marianne found comfort in sitting next to Linhardt while he droned quietly about whatever subject had caught his fancy for the evening.
“I’ve always wondered why this pond was always so well-stocked even after five years.” Linhardt remarked one sunlit evening, his fishing line quietly bobbing on the water as scaly shadows flickered below. “I would’ve thought that with all the stray cats and such, it would’ve been clawed bone dry.”
“The Goddess has her ways.” Marianne said quietly, stroking Fortune’s head. This indomitable dog had managed to somehow not only scavenge and fight her way through five years of disuse and abandon, but had retained her memories of her benefactors and happily accepted their scraps and scratches with no more than a whipping of her skinny tail. Big and bony, she lay with her head in Marianne’s lap, gazing with lidded eyes at Linhardt’s bobbing line in the water.
“Perhaps she does.” Linhardt hums in neutral agreement. “I don’t put much faith in the Goddess but I could admit there are certain mysteries I’m willing to attribute to her divine self.”
“And you’re not curious to unearth them yourself?” Marianne asked in what would’ve been called a teasing tone by anyone braver than herself. “I didn’t know that there was an end to your curiosity.”
“I mean,” Linhardt began with a hint of defensiveness, “I enjoy challenges, but I find equal measures of satisfaction in both the process and the conclusion. That’s the beauty of research, Marianne. The thinking and the figuring out.”
“No wonder you’re such an excellent scholar.” Marianne agreed quietly.
Perhaps she was much too hopeful, but she could’ve sworn that there was a flush of pink that had spread across Linhardt’s pale face before he began fussing over his perfectly maintained line.
Fortune woofed softly, and thumped her tail on the pier.
“See? Fortune agrees with me.” Marianne scratched the panting dog’s floppy ears, and Linhardt laughed, a lovely, dusky sound, as he all but leaned into her side.
“You could say a thousand nothings, Marianne, and that lovesick pup would agree with them all.”
“I doubt it.” Marianne laughed her own shy laugh, and Linhardt’s wry smile gave way to indescribable warmth.
“It’s not impossible. Fortune is a struck creature. ” His words grew soft, bouncing off the wind like the droplets of water off of the fins of a fish. “Who wouldn’t be, around you?”
Marianne started. Linhardt held her gaze even though the fishing line quivered in his hands. Suddenly, the breath of distance between them yawned with unavoidable weight.
His eyes are so blue, she thought stupidly. Have they always been that striking of a color?
Everything fell dizzyingly silent, even on this cacophonous pier with the screaming sea birds and the hoarse humming of the dockmaster and the lapping of the waves against the wooden supports. There was nothing, nothing but the sudden roar of blood in her ears and the harsh intake of breath Linhardt had sucked in as his eyes went from strikingly bright to ocean-dark in the span of a few painfully loud heartbeats.
Everything’s so quiet, Marianne suddenly realized before Linhardt bent his head and she raised her own and they met halfway in something more indelible than a war-torn memory.
O.O
The quiet moments became her favorites. The nothings, the forgettables, the routines. It’s a rhythm that they fall into, an unspoken agreement that smooths out the awkwardness of a first step.
Little things, like Linhardt carelessly leaving a stack of books on his side of the dining room bench that would mysteriously vanish by the time Marianne has walked up to his table. Small but monumental things, like the time they both fell asleep in the library one night and Marianne woke up to discover that Hilda’s delighted eyes were two inches away from her own and that Linhardt had curled into her side like a cat burrows into sunlit corners.
But every quiet night in the library, every bit of low-voiced conversation on the pier, every hushed whisper in the cathedral…those were the moments she far preferred over the loud, weeping desperation of tearing through Imperial and undead forces with lightning-sharp hands to reach the side of him who she loved.
Maybe there was a depth to those moments, a soul-shaking revelation every time Linhardt screamed her name across the battlefield in moments of dreadful exposure, or that one time Marianne saw red and tore apart the Imperial General who stuck a lance through her lover, but those moments leave them pale and shaking, holding each other in the sheer dark of the infirmary as they clutched at the other's warmth and tried to reassure themselves that yes, you’re alive, and yes, I am too.
“I wrote you letters, you know,” Linhardt murmured one delirious night after Gronder Field while Marianne tended to his wounds, gashes from a distant Cutting Gale flung from the hands of a fiery haired girl they once called friend. “Stacks of them, even when everything felt suffocating.”
He turned to her, eyes red-rimmed, and the glow of her healing hands wavered a little.
“But then again,” Linhardt smiled tiredly, stroking her tear-damp cheek, “thinking about you made it hard to breathe too.”
By the time Marianne could summon a reply, he had already fallen asleep under her golden white spells, his emerald hair spilling like grass over the stark white of the infirmary pillow.
O.O
The war ended, and hope blossomed.
Timid Marianne von Edmund was suddenly a celebrated hero, praised for saving the world, and her adoptive father smiled gravely at her as he draped insignia after insignia around her shoulders.
“I’m proud of you,” he told her with great solemnity, and Marianne had to bite her lip from weeping.
Linhardt had vanished to pursue his studies almost immediately after the battle with Nemesis came to its riotous conclusion. Marianne had let him go, because she recognized that dullness in his eyes, the toils war could take on the gentle-hearted.
“I’ll write you this time.” Linhardt squeezed her hands with his, his face drawn and hollow but oh, so adoring. “I promise. I’ll bother you with my letters until I can visit to bother you in person.”
“Take all the time you need,” she murmured, shutting her eyes as he swept his hand across her cheek, sorrow and marvel warring on his face.
“You are inimitable,” Linhardt said quietly, closing his eyes and tottering until Marianne had to scramble to put her arms around him. She held him as he wept into her shoulder, and she wept a little too.
“I’m in love with you,” Marianne confessed through a mouthful of his robe. “Is this a bad time to say it?”
“You’ve always been braver than me,” Linhardt admitted through her hair. “I’ve loved you since I was seventeen and stupid.”
She held him tighter, like gratitude and confusion. He leaned into her touch, like an answer, and suddenly Marianne realized that this was what she was chasing all those confused years. This was her golden exuberance, her sunburst of realization. This was hers, and his, and she liked it.
This was their nugget of gold, but it felt like the world’s richest treasure.
“You’re laughing,” Linhardt observed without lifting his face from her hair. He drew backwards, and like old times, took her hands in his and gazed seriously at her. “Are you happy today, Marianne?”
“Yes,” Marianne gasps out through her delightful discovery. “I am so happy, Linhardt.”
“I am too,” he declared with satisfaction, a relieved smile breaking through on his face as his hands slid up to cup her face as he kissed her on the lips; gently, shyly, like they were sitting on the docks again being brave and foolish all at once.
But since they weren’t on the docks anymore, Marianne pulled him closer, her arms twining around his neck to deepen the kiss, and so she claimed this moment of silence as her own.
.
.
.
fin