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Linhardt awakens one crisp fall morning to the smell of cooking fish.
He takes a moment to himself, as he is wont to do – as a rule, he refuses to force his body into motion any sooner than necessary, and as far as he can tell, there is no emergency pressing him into leaving his cozy bedroll or the tent’s shelter to see what his companion is up to. In fact, the smell tells him exactly what he’s up to, and Linhardt is comfortable, so for a few moments he lazes and lets his body slowly work itself up to movement, his toes wiggling and his fingers flexing. It is only when he hears a muffled curse from outside that he reluctantly stretches and crawls out of the tent, squinting in the sunlight.
As expected, Caspar is sitting by the fire, holding a few fish skewers in one hand. The finger of his other hand is stuck in his mouth. Linhardt rolls his eyes as he plods over to him. “Hand it over,” he instructs, plopping down beside him. Caspar frowns at him, but obliges, and Linhardt ignores the spit in order to Heal the burn. “Stop touching hot things.”
“I just wanted to see if it was ready,” he says sheepishly, but as the pain fades, his expression brightens. “How’d you sleep?”
“As well as I can, in the middle of the wilderness.” He nods to the fish. “You caught breakfast. You didn’t even drag me along.”
Caspar snorts. “Well, yeah, duh. I didn’t want to wake you up early today .” At Linhardt’s raised eyebrow, he frowns. “Wait, did you seriously forget?”
“Is it a special occasion?” He hums, taking a skewer from Caspar before he sets the poor fish aflame. “You’ll have to remind me.”
Caspar gives him a serious look. “Lin, it’s your birthday .”
Oh. Now, that does come as a surprise. “Really?” His brow furrows as he does the math. “No, you must be miscounting.”
“Am not,” he says stubbornly. “It’s the seventh day of the Red Wolf Moon. I counted, I’ve checked in every village we stopped in.”
Linhardt frowns. It surely can’t be that long since the war’s end. “Time flies, I suppose,” he mutters, which for some reason makes Caspar laugh.
“You’re just having so much fun with me!” he says brightly, leaning over and kissing his cheek. Linhardt pretends to be disgusted and wipe it off, just to make him laugh more. Which he does. Caspar is very predictable. “And you’re going to have extra fun today. I’m making it super special. Here!” He trades the overdone fish Linhardt’s holding for a more tender one. “Eat up!”
Linhardt raises an eyebrow. “From what I remember, you don’t actually like fish.” Caspar is, in fact, eyeing his breakfast a little warily. “Or fishing, for that matter.”
Caspar goes pink across his nose. Again, predictable. “I like fishing! I’m just not that good at it.”
Linhardt sighs, leaning heavily against his side. “Is this part of the extra special birthday you’re giving me? An extra special breakfast?” He bats his eyelashes at him; Caspar’s blush deepens. “Are you sure you want to eat that disgusting fish just for me?”
Caspar shrugs him off. “I can handle it,” he says firmly, as if he’s facing a daunting battle. “And, um, there’s a town close by. I can get– we . We can get more food there.” He clears his throat, obviously trying to act casual. “If you’re still hungry.”
Linhardt hums his assent, watching with amusement as Caspar reluctantly bites into his fish, immediately pulling a face and just as quickly trying to school his expression. “We’ll see,” he says lightly, before digging into breakfast.
As promised, they’re only on the road for a short while before they spot signs of life. The road grows more worn as they enter a farming community, and they follow the sound of people to the town’s marketplace. Caspar lights up at the sight of it. “This is perfect!” He looks up at Linhardt, beaming. “We’ll find tons of great stuff here. Let me know what you want, okay?”
Linhardt raises an eyebrow. “Oh, are you treating me?” he teases. The two of them pool their funds, so any gold Caspar spends is technically also Linhardt’s; he suspects he hasn’t considered as much.
Caspar confirms this suspicion with an enthusiastic nod. “Yep! For your birthday, duh. C’mon, let’s go!” He takes Linhardt’s hand and drags him toward the nearest stall, and Linhardt lets himself be swept along by his exuberance.
It’s a small community, and their market isn’t exactly impressive, but they do manage to find some neat stalls. Caspar sniffs out a meatier breakfast before they find a bakery and, as promised, he buys two of every pastry Linhardt expresses even a passing interest in. At one stall, a girl is selling handmade trinkets, some whittled wooden animals and tiny pottery pieces; Caspar shows Linhardt all of these with rabid enthusiasm, and lights up each time Linhardt mirrors his interest. Mostly, he lets Caspar pull him from stall to stall and tries to make sure Caspar doesn’t spend all their money as they work their way toward the center of town.
As Caspar becomes engrossed in a weaver’s handicrafts, Linhardt finds himself distracted by a strange… something dominating the town square. It’s a large post, as tall as the town’s tallest building and at least as twice as big around as Linhardt, with branches carved out of it, giving it the appearance of a dead tree. Littered all over the branches and the post itself are tattered cloths, faded and sunworn, tied in place and flapping slightly in the breeze. As Linhardt drifts closer, he sees that some of these are actually articles of clothing that have begun to deteriorate from exposure to the elements. He frowns lightly, puzzled by this, and as he gets close enough to touch a scrap of fabric, someone says, “It’s our memorial.”
He turns quickly to see an older woman, her hair loosely braided and gray at the temples. She’s smiling sadly. “Sorry?”
The woman nods to the post. “It’s our memorial to those we lost in the war.” Linhardt looks back at the post; only now does he notice the bundles of flowers people have left at its base. “Old clothes or worn blankets that they left behind – we tied them up, to remind us of them.” She lets out a soft sigh. “I lost two children. I’ve tied up the blankets we made for their birth.”
Linhardt swallows. The fabric he’d almost touched, he realizes now, looks like an old hair ribbon. “Oh,” he says softly.
“You’re so young that you must have fought as well,” the woman is saying, but Linhardt hardly hears her over the roaring in his ears. That jacket, he thinks, belonged to an older man; maybe he left children behind. Those socks belonged to some young, reckless fighter. The ribbon… what parents had tied that up for the child they lost? What side were they on, anyway? He tries to think back to the landscape they’d trekked through to get here – had he marched here before with the army? How many of these people had he fought? How many of them had he killed?
“ Linhardt .” He starts as Caspar puts a firm hand on his shoulder. He forces himself to look away from the monument; the woman looks concerned, maybe guilty, and Caspar looks… intense. Linhardt lets his bright eyes grab his attention, settle him down. Caspar looks at him searchingly for a moment, then nods, breaking into a quiet little smile. “Okay. C’mon, buddy, let’s take a break.”
Linhardt lets Caspar lead him away from the post, from the woman, from the market. All his senses are dulled; the brightly-colored stalls, the tempting smells, and the chatter of townsfolk all recede into the background. The image of the monument looms over his mind as the question rattles around his brain: how many had he killed? How many? How many?
“Lin,” Caspar says softly, and Linhardt realizes they’ve come to a stop back on the outskirts of town. He lets out a soft sound; Caspar squeezes his hands tightly, and he tries to let it ground him. “Listen, Lin–”
“What are we doing, Caspar?” he asks tonelessly. Caspar is uncharacteristically quiet, and Linhardt raises his gaze, looks him in the eyes. “We killed people. A lot of people. And now we’re just going to… do what, exactly?” He shakes his head. “Trot around and gawk at the lands we invaded? Eat pastries and pretend that everything is fine? What right do we have to any of this?”
Caspar frowns. “We have a right to be happy, Lin,” he says firmly, and Linhardt laughs harshly.
“Do we? How many people died for our happiness?” He huffs, pulling away; abruptly, it’s all become too much, Caspar’s touch and his soft, searching gaze. His kindness. “You don’t understand,” he mutters. “How am I supposed to live with myself after everything I’ve done?”
“I do understand,” Caspar says firmly. “Are you kidding? Of course I understand.” He touches Linhardt’s shoulder, slow and gentle, and Linhardt hates it, hates himself for leaning into it for comfort. “You know I always wanted to be a hero. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t about that.” He steps in closer, wraps his arm around Linhardt’s waist; he leans against his solid, steady weight. “We had to survive. All of us. We didn’t have a choice.”
Linhardt hums softly. Caspar isn’t wrong, really – they had to protect themselves and each other. Perhaps they didn’t have a choice. But… “We’re celebrating my life,” he says quietly. “But so many will never see another birthday. It feels… strange.”
Caspar laughs softly, squeezing him close. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s weird. But… they made choices, too.” He shakes his head. “We all fought for what we believed in; we all picked a side. Maybe it doesn’t seem fair that we’re around and they’re not, but that’s war. Besides, you saved lives too!” Linhardt looks down at him, just to see his bright eyes and determined expression. “Without your healing, even I wouldn’t be around anymore.”
Linhardt laughs weakly. “That is true,” he admits.
Caspar grins, nodding. “Right! Look, what happened… what we did… it was awful. But it’s in the past. Now, we’re here together. And Lin…” His smile softens. “We have our entire futures ahead of us. We have the whole world ahead of us. I think we deserve to be happy together.”
Linhardt hesitates. Perhaps… perhaps Caspar has a point. Perhaps they owe it to the people lost to live their lives to the fullest – or what purpose did their deaths serve? Even that thought feels macabre, but as Caspar says, that’s war. And like it or not, Linhardt was a soldier. “I suppose you’re right,” he says. “Still…”
Caspar nods. “I know. Look, I get it.” He smiles gently, once more taking his hands. “There’s ghosts everywhere here. I’ve felt exactly the way you do now, probably a dozen times since we started traveling together.” Linhardt blinks; he has? How has he never noticed? Caspar catches his surprise and smiles sheepishly. “You were having a good time, so I didn’t want to bug you with it. But that’s not the point! The point is…” He squeezes Linhardt’s hands. “There’s a lot of world to see. A lot of world outside Fódlan. Maybe we should go a little further.” He grins, a little shy. “How’s that sound?”
Linhardt stares at him for a moment. “What? Really?”
Caspar grins, shrugging in a way that’s certainly meant to be careless but betrays how deeply he’s actually considered this. “Why not?” he asks cheerily.
Linhardt frowns. “It’s far.”
“Better than being cooped up in some dusty office, right?”
“We wouldn’t know what we were doing,” he complains. “I haven’t read anything about… anywhere.”
Caspar laughs. “That’s fine! We can learn. Don’t you want to know what weird magic stuff they’re thinking up in other countries?” Well, yes, he does. Caspar can read him like an open book. “Besides, we can start small. From what I’ve heard, we’d have a very willing tour guide in Brigid.”
Linhardt worries his lip. It does sound great – seeing the world, learning new things – but… “That’s quite a big commitment, Caspar,” he says cautiously.
Caspar tilts his head, confused. “Yeah, I guess so,” he says slowly, clearly waiting for Linhardt to elaborate.
Typical of him to miss the point. “Traveling Fódlan is one thing. Are you sure you want to… see the world?” he presses. “With me?”
Caspar laughs out loud at that. Which feels a bit uncalled for. “Why wouldn’t I? Is that seriously all you’re worried about?” Linhardt opens his mouth to insist otherwise – even though Caspar is completely right – but Caspar wraps him up in a hug before he gets the chance. “I’m committed to you,” he says warmly. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts, now.”
“I’m not,” he mutters sheepishly. “I just don’t know how many birthday-related breakdowns you can take.”
Caspar laughs again, and now he picks Linhardt up and spins him around. “I can take ‘em all! Every one you’ve got! You’ll see!”
Linhardt winces. “Yes, yes. Hush, Caspar, you’ll wake the whole countryside – and put me down , I’m getting vertigo.” Caspar gingerly sets him back down, and Linhardt studies him carefully: his dopey, sincere expression, the sparkle in his eyes. He’s utterly sincere, but then, of course he is. Caspar isn’t exactly a good liar. And he certainly isn’t one to do things by halves. “Alright.”
Impossibly, Caspar’s smile brightens. “Alright?” he echoes eagerly.
His smile is contagious. “ Alright , let’s do it. Let’s see the world.” Caspar hoots, and Linhardt wacks his arm, shushing him again. “Only if you won’t give me any more headaches.”
“No promises,” he says cheerily, winking, and Linhardt rolls his eyes. “Look at that, huh? It’s your birthday, but you got me a present.”
Linhardt huffs, going faintly pink. “Sap,” he murmurs, his tone fonder than he’d intended.
Caspar’s eyes go wide. “Oh! And speaking of presents!” He goes rummaging in his pocket, almost pulls something out, then freezes, then says, too loudly, “Don’t look!” Linhardt covers his eyes with one hand good naturedly, and lets Caspar take his other hand so he can gingerly place the present in it. “Okay, you can look now.”
Linhardt obliges. In his hand is a plain blue ribbon, a little crumpled from its time in Caspar’s pocket. He tilts his head as he holds it closer, studying the gentle shine of the fabric and rubbing its softness between his thumb and his finger. “It’s pretty,” he comments, and it is, even if it is rather simple in its design.
Caspar is abruptly shy, his fingers fidgeting. “I thought it’d look really nice in your hair. It’s blue!” He blushes. “It matches your eyes.”
He’s too cute. Linhardt leans down to kiss the tip of his pink nose. “How sweet.” He smiles softly. “But I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to put it in my hair each morning…”
“I’ll do it!” Caspar says, excited, and Linhardt laughs, leaning against him. Precisely as he expected. Something about Caspar’s predictability is endlessly endearing.
“My hero,” he intones. “I suppose I’ll have to stick with you, if I want my personal hair stylist.” He elbows Caspar, who laughs loudly.
“Yeah, you better! Don’t worry.” He softens, pulling Linhardt against his side, right where he belongs. “You won’t have to go anywhere without me.”
Linhardt sighs softly, closing his eyes and letting himself feel it all – Caspar’s solid presence against his side, the warmth of the sun on his skin, the silky-smooth fabric in his hand. Today it’s his birthday, and he’s alive, and he’s grateful for that, grateful to stay that way. “I know,” he murmurs, and for now he lets his guilt go, lets himself breathe. “I’m counting on it.”