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oblivion
The ground is cold with blood.
One would think it would be warmer, all things considered. Blood comes from living, breathing people, after all, serves as their life force, the thing streaming through their veins and keeping them going, keeping them moving. It should be scorching as sunshine, scalding like dragon fire.
No. It’s cold.
The sky is so clear, Linhardt thinks. Not a single cloud in sight. So clear. So blue. He could stare into this abyss forever.
Maybe he might.
He’s almost disappointed when he feels the warmth of healing magic chasing the coldness of blood away. “Linhardt,” a shaking voice whispers, “what are you—why didn’t you say anything? Are you alright? This wound—”
“Just go.”
Byleth’s eyes were once the color of the sky, like pieces of the heavens that rained down and found home in his face. Linhardt can almost imagine it, Saints coming down from the clouds to kiss his eyelids and take him back up to the sky with them, leaving Linhardt alone on the earth, soiled with the blood of all the lives he’s taken so he could keep living. And for what? To have these shattered shards of the heavens all for himself?
“Just leave me,” Linhardt repeats, when Byleth looks too shocked to respond right away. “I should just die. I think I’m about to die anyway, so just—”
“Shut up.”
The ground is so cold, Linhardt thinks. And Byleth’s arms are so warm.
haunted
Byleth is a terrible cleric, in Linhardt’s opinion. He has awful bedside manner, for one. And for such a usually quiet person, he never seems to stop talking once he starts, something Linhardt can’t help but find more endearing than he should.
“I should have been there,” Byleth says, for the fifth time on the fifth day of Linhardt’s bedrest. “I should have been there. I wasn’t paying attention, those other soldiers caught me off-guard, and by the time I realized—I—if I had been a minute too late, a second—”
“Byleth,” Linhardt mumbles, groping blindly around the edge of the bed to rest his hand atop Byleth’s trembling one, “calm down. It’s been almost a week. The only reason I’m still here is because I simply do not want to get up.”
Byleth doesn’t speak for a while, so Linhardt reluctantly opens his tired eyes to meet Byleth’s own. In the evening, with only a measly candle to serve as light, his eyes look darker than ever. “I miss your… blueness,” Linhardt says, weaving their fingers together to pull Byleth closer to him. “It was much more appealing than whatever this mint green palette you’re trying to pull off is.”
“It wasn’t my decision,” Byleth mutters, obediently moving closer until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“It was one arrow, Professor,” Linhardt sighs. “Your worry is appreciated but unnecessary.”
Byleth sighs, soft and resigned. “That day,” he murmurs, “you told me to leave you. To let you die.”
“So I did.”
“How can you say that? Why—Why did you say that?”
Linhardt slants a glance up at Byleth—his brow is furrowed, a frown twisting his lips, his hair messier than Linhardt’s ever seen it. Even his voice seems to quiver from the intensity of his words, so much harder and heavier than anything Linhardt’s ever heard him say in his life. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”
Byleth blinks. “Seen… what?”
“Emotional.”
Linhardt touches his chest, where the arrow had found home in, mere inches from his heart. He had been so close to death, so close to becoming one with the corpses that littered the field.
“Thank you,” he breathes, catching Byleth’s attention again. “For saving me. I never did thank you for that.”
Byleth shakes his head. “Of course. I would have—”
“Would have done the same for anyone else, I know.” Linhardt turns to lie on his side, facing the wall. “I just wanted to—”
“No!” Byleth blurts out, louder than Linhardt’s ever heard him—Linhardt turns back to blink at him, bewildered, while Byleth fumbles for something to follow his outburst up with. “No,” he repeats, “I mean—I meant—I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. If you… died. You… mean more than anything to me, Linhardt.”
Linhardt stares up at Byleth’s face and lets himself hope, for a few seconds, that he means it the way Linhardt wants him to. But he’s long grown past the point of daydreams, and hope has no place on the battlefield for too long. “How very romantic,” Linhardt grumbles, sitting up to give Byleth a withering stare. “Do you tell that to all the other—”
Byleth leans in and kisses him.
For a long few seconds, Linhardt does not move, does not blink, does not breathe. He’s fairly sure his heart keeps beating, but it would not have surprised him in the least if it had stopped for those long few seconds either.
Then Byleth draws away, eyes fluttering open, and immediately Linhardt wants him back, right now, on his mouth, preferably with tongue. But Byleth is already stammering, “I-I should go,” and before Linhardt can so much as drag him back onto the bed, Byleth has bolted out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him.
decomposed
The war is drawing to a close. Everyone knows that. You could feel it in the air, the promise of something coming to an end making everyone buzz with restlessness they couldn’t quite place a finger on the cause of.
At dawn, Linhardt drags himself out of the library, trudges down the monastery stairs, and finds himself wandering to the training grounds. He wishes he were more surprised to find Byleth there, not swinging a sword as he’s used to but casting a Heal spell on a cut on his torso. When the wound closes up, he grabs a knife and makes the same, deliberate slice, and then casts another Heal spell, fast enough that his blood hardly even gets the chance to escape.
“What are you doing,” Linhardt says, too tired to put effort in making his question sound like one.
Byleth doesn’t even look at him. “Training.”
“There are better ways to practice faith magic. And by better, I mean less barbaric.” Linhardt bats Byleth’s hand away and even goes through the trouble of tucking his knife back in its leather sheath. (Should it bother him, that he hardly even blinks at the blood on its edge anymore, when five years ago his legs would have given out at the sight?) “Sit down. You’re tired.”
“I’m not,” Byleth protests, and it must sound weak even to him, because he sits down soon after. Linhardt follows, settling beside him as Byleth exhales heavily. “Alright, maybe I am,” he concedes.
“I thought so,” Linhardt snorts. “A Heal spell can do much more than just fix up a cut. Use one on me now.”
“Where—?”
“Don’t think about that. Just do it.”
Byleth looks confused, but he holds his hands out and does so anyway. Linhardt lets the warmth wash over him, calming and soothing and so, so different from the freezing cold of the silent battlefield. Without a specific target to focus on, the Heal spell flows through his body, warming him up and relaxing his muscles, sore from sitting down and mindlessly flicking through books all day. “There,” Linhardt murmurs, when the spell fades. “You felt that, didn’t you? It still healed, even without a wound.”
“I… I suppose.” Byleth frowns. “But it’s not enough. I need to know how long it takes to close a cut, or mend a broken bone—”
“Shh. Enough with that. It’s late—or early, whichever you prefer.” Linhardt shuffles closer and rests his head atop Byleth’s shoulder, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips when Byleth adjusts to make it more comfortable. “Thank you.”
Byleth mumbles a you’re-welcome. Linhardt patiently waits, letting Byleth fiddle with his calloused fingers a moment, before he grows tired of being patient and waiting and says, “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Sorry.”
“At least try to sound more genuine.” Linhardt draws back and moves to sit in front of Byleth, forcing the man to look at him. “You didn’t even give me a chance to speak that day.”
Byleth can only hold out against the pressure for so long. “You weren’t moving,” he says, so soft and low and hurt. “You weren’t doing anything at all. I thought—I thought I made a mistake. The biggest mistake of my life.”
“Did you mean it?”
“I—what?”
“That I mean more than anything to you.” Linhardt inches closer, nearer, until he’s practically sitting in Byleth’s lap. Byleth, for his part, looks close to passing out. “Did you mean it?”
There is a long pause, where Linhardt is not sure if Byleth will even answer, or if he will simply abandon ship like last time and zoom out of the training grounds at the speed of light, leaving Linhardt in the dust and wondering exactly where they lie. Clearly they’ve crossed the line between just the commander and a general in the army—but what if Byleth had made a mistake, that day? An impulsive, reckless mistake he now regrets?
It, at least, would be something Linhardt is familiar with—being a regret, that is.
“Of course,” Byleth breathes, so quietly Linhardt barely hears him. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
And that, too, is true—Linhardt cannot remember a time in which Byleth had ever lied to him. Perhaps it’s because it’s simply in his nature to be painfully honest, but Linhardt is an optimist at his worst, and right now he wants nothing more than to just hope. “I feel the same.”
Byleth blinks. “You what?”
“You mean more to me than anything in this world,” Linhardt says, and does exactly as Byleth did before and kisses him with zero warning whatsoever. You know, as payback.
The difference is that this time, Byleth kisses him back.
Linhardt has kissed a significant number of people before, none of which he is at all inclined to name, but he can say with full certainty that none of them had ever kissed like this: like everything is on the line, and that with each kiss they were stepping closer to death, to the sort of permanence, of finality, that one could not get with kissing atop inn beds or in the corners of secret underground chambers. Byleth kisses Linhardt like he means it, truly and wholeheartedly and like nothing else in the world matters more than the shape of his lips and the taste of his tongue, and Linhardt is powerless under his touch, like a mortal to a Saint, a worshiper to the Goddess Herself.
“Byleth,” Linhardt breathes against his mouth, and his name hovers in the air between them like a prayer.
Byleth’s hands are in his hair, undoing the messy knot, carding his fingers through the locks. “Linhardt,” he says, eyes half-lidded and lips beautifully swollen, and the world itself quivers in reverence.
Linhardt has no idea for how long they spend that way, tucked against each other’s chests and sharing the same warmth, but at some point Linhardt rests his head against Byleth’s neck again, listening to him breathe. “That day,” Byleth mumbles, gently stroking Linhardt’s hair, “when you said you should just… die. Did you mean it?”
Linhardt can barely even remember saying the words anymore. How long has it been? Almost a month, he’d wager. He’s not the best at keeping track of time, something that Byleth should really be aware of by now. “Why do you ask?”
“Answer my question first.”
“It seems you’ve retained some authority from your teaching days, Professor,” Linhardt muses. Byleth doesn’t respond, clearly waiting for a proper answer, and Linhardt eventually gives in. “I wouldn’t say I want to die. It’s just that I don’t want to live like this.”
“You…”
“I am tired of fighting. I always have been.” Linhardt tugs at a stray strand of Byleth’s hair, tucking it behind his ear. “I am fighting for you and the future of Fódlan, certainly. But when it comes down to that goal and the cold hard ground… the future always just seems so far away.”
But now, wrapped in Byleth’s arms, perhaps it’s a bit closer than it was before.
submerged
Linhardt hears Byleth before he sees him—even over the bubbling river he would recognize the cadence of those footsteps anywhere, on grass or stone or rock or wood.
He is even more familiar with Byleth dropping to the ground beside Linhardt, kicking his boots off, rolling his pants legs up, and dipping his feet in the water. The most Byleth-like part is that he does all this without saying a word, which is so typical of him that Linhardt, for the first time in what feels like a very long five years, laughs, loud enough to scare a pair of birds off a nearby tree.
“What’s so funny?” Byleth asks, but he’s smiling too, just the tiniest upwards quirk of his lips.
“Nothing,” Linhardt automatically says; then, after a moment’s thought, he shakes his head and amends, “You. You are.”
“I’ve never been told that before.”
“Because you aren’t funny. You’re… silly.”
Byleth tilts his head. “Those are different?”
“To me.” Linhardt rests his chin on the edge of his palm. The water is pleasantly cool, and the evening breeze is even colder. “Did you come looking for me all the way out here?”
“This isn’t so far from the monastery.”
“You know what I mean.”
Byleth is quiet again, idly playing with a loose thread on his shirt. He isn’t dressed in his battle armor like usual today, but then Linhardt hadn’t bothered with his usual robes either, so he supposes that makes them equal. It feels strange, to be so casual around a man who always seems so serious. “Yes,” Byleth says, at length. “I was looking for you.”
Linhardt turns to look out at the river. The water sparkles under the moonlight, as beautiful as… “Something you need to say? The war is over. There are plenty of secrets you can tell me now.”
“Yes.” Byleth looks at him, prompting Linhardt to do the same. “Would you like to live together?”
If Linhardt had been just the slightest bit off-balance, he most definitely would have fallen into the river. As it is, he simply sits and stares at Byleth, shocked still, his eyes on the verge of popping out of his skull. “That—I mean—” Byleth folds his hands atop his lap, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “A-As you said, the war—the war is over. And, well, I thought—you mentioned you didn’t want to return to Hevring. And… And you said,” Byleth adds, his voice dipping into something softer, more tender, “that you didn’t want to live like… that.”
“So you’re inviting me to live with you?” Linhardt asks.
“Yes,” Byleth confirms. He pauses, then says, “No.”
“…Which is it?”
Byleth takes a deep breath, then fishes around in his pocket for a very long few seconds, long enough that Linhardt can watch his facial expression change from nervous to confused to panicked, right before he digs around in his other pocket and pulls out a small box. “Linhardt,” he says, slowly but stumbling over his name anyway, “you said before that—that the future always seemed so far away. Distant. So I… want to give you a future that you’ll always be able to see and strive for.”
“This is a proposal,” Linhardt realizes, his entire body going numb.
“Are you dissatisfied?” Byleth frets. “I’ve never proposed to anyone before. I didn’t even pick this ring out myself. It’s the ring my father gave to my mother. I—Should I have just asked for your ring size first? I thought that might have made things too obvious—”
Linhardt grabs Byleth by his collar and kisses him hard, nearly knocking the ring box out of his hands. “Yes,” Linhardt says, their lips sliding against each other’s. “A hundred times yes.”
“I didn’t even ask yet,” Byleth protests, but he stops complaining very quickly when Linhardt kisses him again.
There is a ring waiting in Linhardt’s room, its emerald gemstone engraved with the Crest of Cethleann, the size a perfect fit for Byleth’s fingers—Linhardt is meticulous with his research, thank you very much. But the ring can wait a little longer—right now all Linhardt can think of is that he would like a house near a river somewhere, with plenty of trees to nap under and maybe a cat or two, because Byleth was inconsolable the first few times the monastery cats ran away from him. And right now, all Linhardt can do is kiss this perfect man within an inch of his life.
The future is still far away, still distant. But maybe, maybe—Linhardt doesn’t mind anymore, not if he’ll be sharing the future with Byleth.