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There’s something to be said about pink hair.
It’s not that weird. Caspar has blue hair, and Bernadetta has purple hair, and Linhardt has green hair. Even their mighty Empress Edelgard has white hair. They’re no competitor, though, to the Golden Deer in a rainbow contest. They have purples, and blues, greens and yellows, and…
Pink.
“Be careful! I’m a delicate flower, you know!” Hilda’s squeal had rung out over the training grounds, higher and softer than any of the usual grunting and yelling. It was a rarity to have joint training lessons, much less ones between the Black Eagles and Golden Deer, but Professor Manuel and Byleth had seem to come to some short of agreement after a bad drinking session, or so they say. He’s not entirely sure, honestly, and no one had ever corrected him.
It hadn’t mattered. Edelgard jumped at the chance to spar with Professor Byleth, and Caspar had been second in line. He got his butt kicked hard by the new teacher, but every time he went down he came up learning something new. It was exhilarating to learn at the hands of a mercenary, to fight in an “unhonorable” way. Why bother with school if not to learn something?
“I told you to be careful!”
Girls. Girls was a reason to bother with school.
Amongst the blacks and golds of their school uniform, Hilda’s pink hair was always eye-catching. There was more to it than that: her sugary smiles, her perfectly applied makeup, the way she fastened her uniform unlike any other. The Black Eagles’ girls were beautiful and he knew it; people everywhere spoke of joining their class specifically after being charmed by Edelgard’s beauty. There were those who would give anything to sit with both Professor Manuela and Dorothea, and others who found Petra’s stories enchanting. Bernadetta, those who managed to catch a glimpse of her, was never forgotten.
There was something different about Hilda. She was beautiful, and charming, and as lovely as any girl in his class.
But more importantly than anything, she was strong.
It was hard to remember. Under that perfectly cut hair and pretty lined eyes, those painted fingertips and lace accessories, were clean cut muscles and strength that could best the best of them. Caspar had thought her lovely and soft, docile and innocent, like the deer that pranced over their house flag. Someone helpless without him to fight her battles.
Then he had watched her cut a soldier in half, eyes sharp and unflinching. Her uniform was gone for leather straps and pink lace, her hair tied up in a ponytail begging to be grabbed, only a leverage point for her to drive her axe backwards to end anyone who dared. Her skirt dripped red with war stains, her gloves worn down from her hilt.
When her eyes met his, he thought she was beautiful.
“Caspar,” Hilda had greeted, high and sweet and dense, nothing like the carefree airy quality she once had in the training grounds. It’s worn down now, sugar brittle rather than honey, and she huffs a pant as she tracks blood on the ground, swinging her relic over her soldier. What a relic it is—a slim handle holding onto enormous power, so much so that it glows. Just like its’ owner.
“Hilda,” Caspar called out in response, wishing then that he had something as special to reply with. Hilda smiles, a crackled little thing.
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying this fight.” A memory of happier times. He was impulsive, and wild, and Hubert often reminded him of it. But Hilda had told him she enjoyed his lifestyle, his feelings of justice, his want for a better world. He fought because it was right to. Back then, he thought it would bring him to the Knights of Seiros, or perhaps a traveling mercenary gang. For a short while, he even played with the thought of becoming a teacher.
He hadn’t thought it would take him to her, the blood of her allies on his hands, the blood of his on hers.
“No,” Caspar admitted, “I’m not.”
Ferdinand says it’s improper to strike a lady first, even in combat. Catherine had asked him what he’d do if he saw violent children, vengeful ones, those who refused to put down their sword even if they were to be skewered with it. Edelgard wanted his pledge to her cause.
He raised his fists. Yelled, even though Hubert told him not to. For morale, for a warning, for himself.
For Hilda.
“I don’t want to fight you, Caspar!” Hilda dodged, side-stepping. It’s such a familiar thing, a move he’s seen enough time to memorize in his head. She never enjoyed sparring, even in the training hall, and she never raised her weapon first.
“You don’t have a choice,” he barked back. His right fist swung in close, the claws of the gauntlet nearly catching her hair, only for her to slip out from under him. She swung her axe upwards, clipping his armor, but not caving it in. Not the same force she had used to cleave the men before her in half.
She didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t want to hurt her either.
The red stains run on.
“Fight me, Hilda!” Caspar cried out. He swung, she dodged, she swung, he dodged. A game if they were younger and sweeter, a hasty cobbled together strategy now that they’re not. Warmth swelled in the arm as Hilda let out her own frustrated cry, her arms bringing her axe up into a perfect arc. A burst of light burns behind her, a glare that forces him to wince. No wonder she was chosen to guard Duke Riegan.
“I won’t.”
Her eyes caught his as the axe came down. Fear, weary anguish, and then, the tiniest spark, hope.
The last thing he saw before he blacked out was pink.
-
“… mmoh tmmwweiii …”
“wwwoan terrr… meeehhh tooonnn…”
“… wwaaaaccc…?”
“…asp…”
“…aspar…”
“Caspar?”
He didn’t die. Edelgard would be angry about that.
The Golden Deer’s healer lingers over him, bright sparks of magic soothing the dull ache of his body. He hurts, all over, a pain that itches under the skin and never more than that. She’s got blue hair, but different than his own. Neatly trimmed and plaited. A healer from head to toe.
Edelgard would have him kill her first, if he had spotted her in time. She wouldn’t even have had to tell him; they went over the basics of war together as students. Only he hadn’t known half of her plan, and she knew all of his.
“Caspar?”
Maybe he just had trouble with girls.
The darkness of sleep was inviting. He had been tired for longer than he thought. War was, well, war. Messy, and chaotic, and even if it seemed like he picked the winning side at the beginning, times changed. People changed.
Edelgard began disappearing. No one knew where she went when the sun fell and the moon rose, and all that was left in her wake were the sounds of rats and cries. The prisoners never complained. They didn’t have the mouth to do so.
Linhardt asked if he wanted to see Rhea once. Maybe it was an invitation to escape, or a test of his strength. He failed, either way, shaking his head and returning to his guard post.
He killed a kid.
He killed many kids.
For the greater good. Fighting for the greater good. Squabbles and matches and spars. Now and forever. The black and white of life was gone, replaced with this dusty gray. They were searching for something better, something greater, something that would give them salvation from this cruelty. It’s why they killed. For the future. For the future of those who lived.
The grey was suffocating.
“Caspar?”
Pink.
“Hilda.” Her name bubbles to his lips with unexpected ease. Caspar coughs, his dry throat stinging, until a cool hand forces him back to spill water into his mouth. It splashes against his lips, his jaw, dripping down below, but he can’t bring himself to care when it feels like he’s awoken to a drought. The water slows to a trickle too soon, and only then does he realize that his coughing has faded away.
He forces his eyes open again to meet those pink ones.
“Hilda,” he repeats, a croak, a wet sound. The “whats” and the “whos” slosh together in his brain at the sight of her, armor free with her hair down. Gone are the ornaments, the makeup, the lace.
Caspar can trace her muscles in her shirt. He could have never done that before.
“Be careful, you’re hurt,” Hilda hushes, patting his shoulder. She presses a towel to his face with startling ease, gentle unlike the flash of hurt he remembers so starkly on her face before she drove her axe downwards. The sound of armor shattering still rings. He thought he’d be dead.
Edelgard’s going to be so mad.
“Am I a prisoner?” Hilda doesn’t stiffen, smiling instead. It’s answer enough, and he breathes through his mouth while he can. Hilda hadn’t been the type to sew someone’s mouth shut back then, but neither had been Edelgard.
“You’re not a prisoner, silly,” she chirps. Her happy demeanor melts in an instance, replaced with sorrow as her hands return to his face. They’re hardened, calloused by war, but they’re gentle in a way he hasn’t felt in years. “Why, Caspar? Why fight with her?”
“It’s for the greater good.” Words echoed in the morning when the sun peeks over the mornings, drowning them in her light. Edelgard asked for courage every dawn, and for peace every dusk. He has their chant memorized to the point he could recite it in his sleep.
“Do you really believe that?”
No.
“My father—”
“What about him?” Hilda interrupts, frowning. She’s upset, an undercurrent of hurt, and then, even smaller than that, concern. “Caspar, why are you fighting a cause you don’t believe in?”
“I do believe in it!” Caspar protests. He does, truly. A world where people are valued for themselves and their work rather than their crests sounds unbelievable, miraculous. He could hardly believe it when Edelgard proposed the idea, and half the time he wonders if they could even achieve their goals. He can’t even picture the world they’re building.
“Then why don’t you look happy in your fights?”
Because its bloody. Because people are dying. Because children are dying, at his hands, at Lin’s hands, at Edelgard’s. Because when he was given the chance to be a savior he had thought it would mean protecting the innocent, not burning down their houses lest the other army get access to supplies.
Caspar doesn’t say anything. There isn’t anything he can say, not as a not-officially-prisoner. Hilda’s hand squeezes his once more, leaning forward.
“Caspar,” she sighs, slow and low, tired in a way unfamiliar and yet so close to the ache of this war. He squeezes her fingers. “What happened to walking your own path?”
Her hair spills over her shoulders onto his. Pink.
“I thought you were going to be free.”
“Well. So did I,” he answers. Curiosity ebbs at him when Hilda doesn’t retreat, her exhales shallow with every closing centimeter. “Why are you fighting? I thought you said you didn’t like it.”
“I don’t,” Hilda says, and he wonders then if she would have been more courageous an Eagle rather than a Deer. She pulls away with a look as the tent moves, shadows of an army on the outskirts.
“Why don’t you leave?”
“I don’t know, Caspar. Why didn’t you?”
The tent flaps shut behind her before he can answer. He can still hear her voice, bright and cheery, as she convinces two men to help her with some arbitrary task. It’s the last thing he thinks about as the grey swims upwards once more, submerging him in its waters.
-
Hilda is a splash of pink in the sea of gold that becomes Caspar’s life. The important people are more of a rainbow, to be fair. Marianne, he learns her name is, is the person who stayed by his side the most often when he was drifting in and out. Apparently the months of stress and starvation were getting to him; he thought of Dorothea for the first time since the battle once more. Her eyes, and her sunken cheeks, and the way she had stumbled and screamed when she saw Hubert.
He hoped she was alive. After seeing her trembling, however, he wondered if he should have hoped for her death instead.
There are others he gets to see. Not a lot of, of course, busy as they are. He at least recognizes Lysithea the second time around; the first, he had thought Edelgard had wandered straight into the tent. Panic would be an understatement. He knows Lorenz, of course, having caught glimpses years ago when Hubert was negotiating with Gloucester territory. And he knows Claude.
Caspar’s a little more uncomfortable with that than he’d like to admit.
“How are you feeling? Marianne said you’re healthy enough to do some training.” There’s a crack running along the side window to the ceiling that Caspar’s been tracing the last two times Claude had come around. He brought books the first time, then Caspar’s lunch, and this time he hadn’t bothered with the distractions.
The room is nice, admittedly. He had never been prisoner before, but he’d seen Ferdinand’s face once during patrol. There had been a wary sort of distance between Ferdinand and Edelgard ever since his father was removed from power, but that night had been different. There had been fear in the way he addressed Edelgard, raw and tepid.
Caspar doubts this is how their Strike Force kept their prisoners. His job was to patrol, to protect, and to capture. What happened after Hubert took the unlucky ones out of his hands was none of his business.
At least, he wanted it to be none of his business.
“You know; I haven’t seen Hilda around lately.” Caspar looks up at the mention of her name, prompting a grin from his captor. Claude continued to speak as though undisturbed, his eyes tracking Caspar’s every movement. “There’s been a rise in bandit activity recently. Last I checked, she was stationed not too far from there.”
“Is she okay?” The words blurt out on instinct before realization crashes down. Stupid, stupid. Caspar bites down on his lips again, but the damage is already done.
“Are you worried about her? That’s a surprise.” That’s not true at all. Claude lies in a way differently from Hubert does—he does this weird dodging of questions even though Caspar knows exactly how Claude feels about him. Mostly. He’s being played, for whatever information he still isn’t sure yet.
It doesn’t stop him from shouting when Claude hints about a fire not far from here.
“Alright, alright! Just one more question and I’ll get out of your hair, promise.” Caspar grimaces, rearing back.
“You don’t mean that. You like being here.” Edelgard hated visiting prisoners; she came back with a deep-set frown every time, her steps wobbly and weary. Claude visits Caspar with a forced smile every time, but his steps always leave more evenly than when he came in. Claude startles, blinking rapidly as his mouth sets in an open smile.
“Ah, that’s… I’m surprised you noticed.” Claude raises an eyebrow, appraising Caspar slowly. “Your smarter than most give you credit for, then.”
“Of course! Wait—is that an insult?” Caspar narrows his eyes, frowning. Bed-bound and weaponless he may be, the opportunities to stand up and fight are quite limiting.
“Not really. I’m just amused you figured that out but not Hilda.”
“Hilda?” Caspar repeats. “What about her?”
“There you are!” Hilda’s call comes at perfect timing, tossing the door open. Her hair’s tied up in a ponytail again today, curling around her face where there’s, surprisingly, a smudge of brown. She must not have noticed, since Caspar’s never seen her anything short of lovely even makeup free. Her eyes dart from Caspar to his guest, pausing.
“Here we are,” Claude drawls, tension melted off his shoulders like waves crashing against the shore. “Miss me that much, Hils?”
“You wish,” Hilda laughs before tipping her head to the side, humming. “Actually, I really, really did miss you, Claude. We’ve just been sooo busy lately, I haven’t seen you around and—”
“And that’s my cue to assign you to help Seteth figure out the groundwork of the cathedral? Thanks for volunteering, Hils, I knew you’d love it!”
“Hey!”
Claude’s laughter fades as he ducks past her throw of hands, throwing Caspar a wink before the door rattles shut. Hilda huffs, crossing her arms even though he’s no longer in sight, turning back to Caspar with a pout.
“I can’t believe him! Ditching me and giving me more work! Ugh, so annoying!” She collapses onto the chair Claude was just occupying with a convincing sigh, turning her pleading eyes Caspar’s way. “I’m so tired already! I had to haul all our broken weapons to the repair merchants!”
That honestly doesn’t sound too bad. Caspar’s caught on commenting on Hilda’s amazing strength, only to pause in remembrance of her distaste of fighting and the memories of how she skirted the topics once in the past.
“Why didn’t you get someone to do it for you? You used to do that all the time,” Caspar reminiscences. There was something funny about how Ferdinand used to serve Hilda more than Edelgard, a source of conflict between them that always arose whenever they had an argument. But Hilda had more than Ferdinand wrapped around her finger; even now, she was flirting with Claude, even unsuccessfully.
She never did it with him though. He swallowed a sour pit in his throat, lips twitching.
“You noticed?” Hilda echoes, brows rising. “Huh. You’re surprisingly sharp.”
“Well, of course—hey! What do you mean surprisingly?” She giggles, tossing her hair back. He tries to pretend not to track the way her locks sway perfectly back around her face.
“Never mind that. Everyone was busy with something else; they would have helped me if they could, but we’re all stretched thin.” Hilda’s voice grew quiet with displeasure as she spoke, turning her gaze away. “If they help me now, then their work isn’t going to be done when we need it to, and that’s going to cause us more work. It’s just more effective for me to do it myself.”
That’s a surprise. Caspar hums, thinking. He’s always thought it was important to offer help whenever the opportunity arose, but it was true that doing so could slow down overall progress. Especially since last he checked, the Alliance wasn’t swimming in riches. Edelgard hadn’t thought they would make it this far.
“Well, why not ask me?” Caspar asks. Hilda blinks, bewildered, before shaking her head.
“What? No way, I don’t want to ask people for their help. And besides, you’re stuck in bed!” Because he’s a prisoner, then. As though reading his mind, Hilda raises a hand before he can speak. “No, Caspar, you’re not a prisoner. You’re our guest!”
“I’m not allowed out of this room! What else would you call me?” A captive, a bound enemy? Even though his room is usually empty besides visits from Hilda and occasionally Marianne or Claude, he’s held the position of guard enough times to know that you don’t need to see the guards to know that they’re there.
No one who ever ran from the cells made it past the walls.
“What are you talking about, silly? You’re allowed to leave, you know.” Hilda teases, laughing. “Here I thought you were staying around for little old me.”
What?
“What! No, no, I don’t know. I mean, even if I did, I don’t want to leave you but. What! When did this happen?” Caspar gapes at her, shaking his head. He grumbles, scratching at his head. Sure enough, he can’t actually remember anyone telling him that he wasn’t allowed to leave the room, but the first days he had been accompanied almost every single waking second. “Why was Marianne always here then? And you too! I was never alone in the beginning.”
“Well, duh! Marianne needed to make sure you were okay. I don’t think we have the room to house prisoners, or I deserve a bigger bed,” Hilda huffs, but her smile grows soft as a pink flush dots her cheeks. “As for me, well, jeez. You should know that.”
He doesn’t. Caspar bites his lips, but the answers don’t come.
“Caspar? Are you okay? Wait, were you really that hung up on being stuck in bed? Why would I capture you? Caspar?” Hilda’s voice drifted in and out as Caspar wracked his head. Sure enough, the memories that were rock solid in his mind seemed to be breaking apart.
“Argh! I had no idea,” he eventually groans, folding his head into his hands. He had been so certain that he was sentenced to a lifetime of imprisonment that he hadn’t ever truly checked if that was the case. Sure enough, no matter how hard he pinched his hands or scowled, he couldn’t think of a time where someone, anyone, actually told him about the terms of his imprisonment. He thought that was why Hilda made so many visits: if she was the one to imprison him, it was only right for her to look over him until he broke and gave them information.
If he wasn’t a prisoner… and Hilda was still visiting…
“Why am I here if I’m not trapped?” He mumbles it, yet Hilda seems to catch his words.
“I don’t know. I figured you would have run as soon as you woke up,” she laughs, heavy with a weight he can’t identify, folding her arms over and laying her face against them. “You didn’t leave, though, so I figured you wanted to stay.”
“But,” Hilda continues, peeking over, “I guess now that you know you’re not a prisoner, you probably want to leave, huh?”
“I—”
He what? Caspar swallows, shaking his head.
The implications twist around him like snakes, sinking their fangs into him and drying out his lifelines with venom. He’s a free man—supposedly. He could leave and return to fight for the Empire, but the idea of standing post once more to a cause so entrenched in blood weighs heavily upon him. He could escape and hide away, perhaps, though it was hard to imagine a future where he’d manage to make it out without someone identifying him and ending his life. He could fight for the Alliance, wearing their yellow banner, but he couldn’t dream of facing his former allies and friends.
“Caspar?”
He raises his head, pink filling his vision once more as Hilda sits onto the bed, twisting her body to meet his. Caspar swallows, low, as her pink hair spills over her shoulders, her pink eyes tracking his, her pink lips parting.
There was always something different about her.
“Your head looks like it’s about to burst,” Hilda teases. “Come on, why are you thinking so hard? What happened to the Caspar who lived his life to the fullest?”
She had said something like that back at Garreg Mach, didn’t she? She had hated fighting, and she wanted to use her time effectively and…
She wanted to live a free life. A life, she had said, like his.
“Ahhh! That’s it!”
“Uh, what?” Hilda rears back, dodging his hands as he pumped them in the air. “Caspar? What’s it?”
“Let me fight for you!”
“Huh?”
The words overflow in his head, overlapping and booming. War, with all its ghastly hands and bloody maws, had been so suffocating. It is so suffocating, enough so that it seemed justice and righteousness was bleak. Of course Caspar didn’t find it fun to fight for this unclear dream on an unclear path.
Girls. Girls was a reason to bother with war.
“It’s all cleared up!” Caspar whoops, stretching his arms. For all the time he’s spent in bed feeling trapped, he feels lighter now than he has in years.
“What’s cleared up?” Hilda asks, shifting away as he straightens from the bed. She gives him space, still gaping, shaking her head. Pink locks fling from side to side as she turns to him, eyes wide in confusion. “Caspar, what are you talking about?”
“I can fight for you.” He feels breathless, at ease. As though the skies been nice enough to open up above him, eagle talons releasing from his perch. “Hilda, you told me you admired me for living my life freely. And I admire you for—uh, well, a lot! You’re kind, and great at multitasking, and you kept coming to visit me and you’re,” the memory of her axe smashing into the Earth rattles in his head, those pink eyes burning as they meet his before softening into that shallow hurt.
“You’re really strong, Hilda. I mean it.”
Silence was his only response, Hilda’s eyes averting as pink bloomed across her face, high on her cheeks and down to her neck. She bit her lip, hands coming up to grasp her hair, pulling it across her face, blocking him from properly looking.
“Ah, jeez,” he heard, mumbled. “That’s really unfair to compliment me like that, you know…?”
“Why?” Caspar asks, tilting his head. “It’s only the truth.” A frustrated sigh broke free from behind Hilda’s hair shield, until finally she softened her fingers, letting strands of her hair fall away until her eyes met his again.
“Caspar, just,” Hilda sighs again, softer, the fight leaving her body as her hands come down, “why do you want to fight for me? Didn’t you just say that I’m… strong?”
“You are strong!” Fast, and beautiful, like magic bursting to life in a person. Even when they were just students, when Caspar hadn’t known how to properly turn on his heel and Hilda had been the pink head from across the training hall he only caught at the end of classes on Thursdays, she had been a flower fit to burst.
But she had been a delicate flower. She still is, eyes wide and bright and hurt when she had caught sight of him on the field, and now pink from ear to ear in front of him. Hilda’s never been a person suited for the chaos of war, and yet she had been the one to approach him on the battlegrounds.
That was why she was strong.
“You don’t want to fight. I want to do what’s right,” Caspar pauses, the words catching in his throat. “Argh! This isn’t hard! What’s right to me is being right by you, that’s all!”
“And then,” he huffs, pinching his eyes, “I want to go on that adventure together we were talking about before.”
Hilda hesitates, biting on her lip. She shakes her head, backing up a step, and yet she lingers within the room, eyes not once breaking away to safety behind her.
“You’re asking for a lot,” she finally exhales.
“I have to fight for what’s right!” He protests. It’s a lot to take in, he’s sure, but there’s never been a better alternative for how quickly his life spiraled in after Garreg Mach.
“Well, why didn’t you do that sooner, then? This is too much, too fast!” Hilda snaps, her words mirroring him perfectly. Caspar sputters, eyes widening at the suspiciously thick tone on her words. Hilda shakes, her fingers curling into fists, yet despite the slightest tremor across her shoulders she squares her jaw and refuses to relent.
“I didn’t realize,” Caspar manages, steady. He raises his hands up in the air, palms open and fingers wide, harmless. He’s not sure if he could take her in a serious fight, crests and all, but the last thing he wants to do is give off the impression. Thinking back, he isn’t sure he ever could, nor that he ever wanted to. “I wanted to protect you back then, too.”
“That’s—Caspar,” Hilda takes in a quivering breath, eyes suspiciously shiny. “We’re in war. I have to do my part, even if it’s fighting.”
She’s right. There’s a difference between a life of freedom and a life of selfishness; despite the guilt and tension over his status in the Empire, Caspar had refused to throw away his national pride and stood ground for Adrestia. No one enjoyed the weight of war, but he fought in it to stop others from taking on that burden themselves. For the people he killed, he saved just as many. It was his version of atonement.
Even so.
Caspar lowers his hands, stepping back until his knee hits the bed. Hilda stares after him, at the growing space between them, before she takes her own step forward. Then another, and another, until her knee brushes his, and her hands fall onto his own.
“Let me fight for you,” he vows.
“Why?” Hilda’s voice breaks on the word, breathless and high. “Maybe when we were kids, Caspar, I’d be happy to hear this. I’ve always wanted a knight.” It sounds like a confession, the Goddess hanging over them, listening with her heart open.
“You looked so—unhappy.” Hilda finishes, her shoulders falling, her fingers tightening around his. “You can leave, Caspar. Whenever you want.”
“So why don’t you?”
Isn’t that obvious? Caspar squeezes her hand, mind buzzing. He had spent the beginning days weighed by both exhaustion and wariness of his surroundings, then cautious understanding of his placement as prisoner, and now free from those shackles, able to decide what path he wants to walk forward on, this time of his own choosing.
Oh. To Hilda, he’s the one with wings.
“Come with me.” Caspar blurts out the words, eyes bright, old promises burning to life. “If I’m going to leave, then I want you to be with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Then let me fight by your side until you can.”
Hilda’s breath catches at that, her eyes wide as her tears finally let loose. She sniffles, pulling away her left hand to wipe at her face with the back of it, even as her right hand stays with his.
“I believe in you, Hilda,” Caspar swears, words stuttering when she leans in enough to bow his back against the bed. He closes his other arm around her, swallowing as she tucks her face into his shoulder. She’s far too light for a woman who could throw him with ease, and yet he finds that he doesn’t mind it at all. Likes it, really.
“You’re strong,” he reminds her, and when she gasps in a watery breath he rubs her back. She feels, more than ever, a woman born from war. “You’re so strong.”
Hilda shakes her head once more, her shoulders shaking as she cries. Caspar holds her close, turning his head to rest against her. He had seen her cry crocodile tears in Garreg Mach, back when even her trembling words across the hall had his head turning despite Dorothea’s tuts. Her cries then had been loud, attention-grabbing, and dramatic; it was impossible for him to not want to rush to her side.
These tears, however, only press him to bring her closer still. Her cries are quiet, silenced, fearful that she may be bothersome. He had thought they would be perhaps heavy and wet like Dorothea’s, high and screechy like Bernadetta’s, or maybe the kind peppered with hiccups like Ashe. Yet her tears, mournful, are accompanied by little more than her soft gasps and unsteady exhales until she can tilt her face up to his once more.
“Are you okay?” He asks, eyes tracing her face. Her cheeks are wet and warmed pink, across her nose, her forehead, and her head has matted to the sides of her face in her turning. Her eyes are bright when they can take in his, her lips pink as they part in a shallow breath.
Beautiful.
“Yeah?” Hilda teases, her cheeks darkening as her mouth quirks upwards. Oops—Caspar hadn’t meant to say that out loud. His mouth opens to apologize only for her to press her lips over his, silencing him with a kiss. He relents immediately, gaping as she giggles. Better laughter than tears, even more so when rather than pull away she relaxes against him.
“I guess I was right about you back then,” Hilda murmurs. Caspar turned his head her way in open puzzlement; she hummed in amusement. “I hated fighting, and I still don’t fully understand why you don’t,” she laughed, softly, shaking her head. “But I didn’t hate watching you fight.” Her voice falls soft, hushed, as her eyes trace the ceiling.
“You always looked so free,” Hilda lets out a slow exhale, shifting until she’s able to lay her back flat against his arm. When she speaks again, it’s firmer than before. Strong. “I wanted that. I wanted to live like you did.”
A life of their own choosing.
“Let’s do it then!” Caspar grins down at her, shaking his one free hand in the air. “As soon as we finish this war, let’s go on a big, grand adventure! Just the two of us!”
“That sounds like a lot of work. Will you protect me?” He doesn’t need to; Hilda is more than capable of holding her own. If she were to declare herself an independent party in the war, he’d back her. But Hilda’s eyes flutter as she speaks, and he realizes then that she’s flirting with him, and asking for his help.
She’s asking for him, on a trip he invited her to. Even just the thought makes him beam.
“Yeah,” Caspar promises, “I’ll protect you.”
Her laughter is beautiful, warmed pink and free.