Chapter Text
When you’re backed against the wall, I could be the one who’s always there to break your fall, you are not alone, you’re the sun, you’re the day, the light that guides me through...
In just over a month, Leo would be seventeen. Which meant that in slightly less than half a year, Corrin would be eighteen.
He had never been especially devout when it came to the world of prayer, yet he still couldn’t help but send one up that she’d finally get to leave this place when that day came.
Leo didn’t let his thoughts come out through his words. “You know,” he said conversationally, leaning against the exterior stone of the tallest of the Northern Fortress’s spires, “if one studies in the library, one needn’t worry about all their studying blowing away.”
Corrin, sitting on the walkway, didn’t bother to turn around. Instead, she cast her words over her shoulder, still focused on the papers strewn around her that were weighted down by rocks, sticks, and various other baubles. “One would also be wasting away a perfectly lovely day.”
“You have a strange definition of lovely,” Leo replied, resisting the urge to shiver as the wind blew past, carrying the smell of rain with it. Judging by the clouds, he couldn’t imagine it would be more than an hour before the storm reached them.
“Or you’re just spoiled,” Corrin replied with a shrug. “Did that occur to you?”
Leo crouched down beside her, careful to avoid her work as he said, “Of course it crossed my mind, but it was quickly dismissed for its preposterousness.”
Corrin glanced up, rolling her eyes in his direction, though the gesture was belied by the fondness of her features. “You’re so arrogant.”
“Can you call it arrogance if it’s true?” he returned thoughtfully.
“Don’t you wax all philosophical on me,” she said, aiming a punch at his shoulder.
“It’s a genuine question, Corrin,” Leo said.
“Uh-huh, sure it is.”
Leo settled himself fully on the walkway beside her, crossing his legs as his head fell into a quizzical tilt at the spread of her papers. “...Is this all actually helping you?” he asked, examining what seemed to be a completely nonsensical organization.
“Not everyone can read something once and remember it forever, Leo,” Corrin said with a sigh, propping her chin in her hand. “Especially not…” She waved her free hand absently. “Political stuff.”
“Incredibly dry and boring? Yes,” Leo agreed. “Necessary? Unfortunately, also yes.”
“I know,” Corrin said, downcast. “I know.” Sighing again, she moved to retake her quill.
Silently, Leo intercepted her hand with his. “You’re allowed to take a break, you know,” he said quietly.
Corrin quirked a brow at him. “You? Telling me to take a break from my studies? Who are you and what have you done with my little brother?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m just pointing out—”
“Imposter!” she cried, wriggling backward. “Fiend! Tell me—” She broke off, unable to contain a giggle before trying again, “Tell me what you’ve done with Leo!”
Leo shook his head. “I locked him in the library about three days ago,” he said deadpan. “I don’t think he’s noticed yet.”
Corrin’s giggles turned into full blow gales of laughter, her hand clapped over her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle it as tears gathered in the corner of her eyes.
“It’s really wasn’t that funny,” Leo insisted, crossing his arms.
“But you wouldn’t, either!” she cried. “If someone actually did lock you in the library we wouldn’t know for months!”
He sniffed. “Glad to know I’d be so missed. Maybe I’ll just stay home next time everyone comes to visit.”
“You’d miss us,” Corrin replied in a sing-song voice.
“Would I?”
“Okay, now I know it’s you. No fake could be that rude.”
“You call it rude,” Leo said with a shrug. “I call it a cutting wit.”
“That’s the same thing.”
They fell into silence. Leo glanced up, watching the shift and swirl of the ever-darkening clouds overhead. “It’s been a long time since we’ve all been here together,” he finally said.
“I know,” Corrin whispered. “Especially for more than just a day trip.” She twisted her hands together in her lap. “I’ve missed it.”
“Me too,” Leo admitted. When they’d been younger—far younger, when Corrin had first come into their lives—he, Xander, and Camilla had spent nearly a week out of any given month at the Northern Fortress. When Elise had grown old enough to join them, their trips had seemed to come even more frequently. Leo’s room in the Northern Fortress had become as much of a home as his room in Castle Krakenburg.
Then Xander had grown old enough to begin training with the military, and their visits had dropped off. Oftentimes Camilla, Leo, and Elise would see Corrin without him. When Camilla took to the field as well, sometimes only one or two siblings could coordinate their schedules enough to make the trip at any one time. Once Leo had received Brynhildr and began serving with Xander, it seemed as if the only time all five of them managed to be together was for birthdays.
Garon had gone to Cyrkensia that week, though, leaving no outstanding orders in his absence, and for the first time in longer than Leo could easily remember, his family was finally together for longer than a few hours at a time.
“I forgot how overwhelming it was to have you all here,” Corrin admitted, brushing her hair out of her face as the wind toyed with it.
“Is that why you’re hiding up here?” Leo asked.
“I’m not hiding, I’m studying,” she insisted.
“You should know better than to use that excuse on the one who invented it,” he shot back with a crooked grin.
“...Fair enough,” Corrin said. “But I like it up here. I can see the whole main courtyard.”
Leo resisted the urge to flinch—he had very purposely arranged himself to not see the courtyard far below. “Keeping an eye on the entrance to your domain?” he asked instead.
Corrin shrugged, then said quietly, “It makes me think of the meadow you grew me last summer.” A slight smile tugged on her lips. “There’s still a crack in the flagstones left from the tree we climbed. It annoys Jakob to no end.”
Leo glanced away, hoping he could attribute the flush in his cheeks to the bite of the wind. “It wasn’t that big of a deal,” he said.
A beat passed. “It was to me,” Corrin replied.
Leo’s only thought in response was how sad that was, that she spent her life so disconnected from the real world that such a small gesture from him still resonated so prominently with her almost a year later.
A small, quiet part of him wanted to storm his father’s throne room, to open his mouth and scream that why couldn’t he see what he was doing to her, keeping her here? Corrin’s home, her prison, only continued to oh-so-slowly eat away at the light that had drawn all her siblings to her in the first place, desperate for the peace and innocence they could find nowhere within the confines of Castle Krakenburg.
Logic swiftly reasserted itself. Nohr was a harsh, cutthroat place; its king the stern and inevitable product of its culture. Leo might have been Garon’s son, but to challenge him so brashly would bring nothing but heartache crashing down on himself and the rest of his family. In the end, it would only make Corrin’s situation worse, to say nothing of the consequences that would be meted out to Leo himself.
If Xander were king, it might have been different. On the other hand, it was far from the only thing that would be different if Xander were king.
For now, there was nothing to be done but to keep his screaming locked away in his own head, where it could do no harm, and quietly undermine what brutality he could afford to. It was a skill Leo had found himself growing alarmingly good at once he’d put his mind to it, but every thought he’d had regarding Corrin had come up dangerously, heartbreakingly impossible.
“We should head in,” Corrin said, drawing him back to the present. “Or we’ll get rained on.” Leo nodded, getting back to his feet while Corrin began to gather her papers together. “I don’t suppose you’d help me carry some of these—oh, shoot!”
It was a stupid thing, really. One of her papers had fluttered out of her grasp before she could reach it, floating through the air in a lazy but hurried spiral. Corrin jumped for it, her hand reaching valiantly as she leaned over the parapet.
“Corrin!”
Leo sprang forward without a thought, heart in his throat and his arms outstretched, uncaring of the notes torn beneath his feet.
Scraped fingers, torn nails, feet scrabbling for purchase on the stone walls that had none—
Corrin fell back against him with a solid “Oof.” The force of the impact— steady, real, she’s okay— didn’t stop him from fisting his hands in the folds of her tunic. “What was that?” she asked, half twisting in his grasp to send him a querying look.
Leo tried to take a steadying breath and only found himself blurting “You could have fallen!” in a tone that resembled something too near to panic.
Screaming, the crack of bones, blood on the ground below, thank the gods it hadn’t been him—
“I wasn’t going to fall,” Corrin snapped, an edge of affront in her tone as she pushed his hands away—she’d caught the paper, somehow, he noticed. “I’m not a child.”
He sucked in through his teeth, forcing himself to take a step backward. His palms burned where they’d rested on her, some tiny voice in his head seething unseemly for reasonings he couldn’t think clearly on at that moment. Finally, after a hard swallow, he forced himself to speak. “My apologies,” he said in a brittle tone. “I suppose I overreacted.”
“...It’s fine,” Corrin said after a long moment. “I’m fine.” Her face melted into something a little softer. “...Are you fine?”
Leo scanned desperately for something to lay his eyes on that wasn’t the courtyard far below (dangerous) or Corrin’s face (even more dangerous). He settled for locking his gaze on an ant navigating its way across the top of the parapet. “Yes,” he said after a long moment, his voice still a little tighter than he would have liked. “As I said, it was my mistake. Forgive me.”
Corrin chewed on her lip for a moment. “If you say so,” she said, a hint of concern on her face as she reached up to ruffle a hand through his hair. Leo bit back a sigh, though he couldn’t quite stop himself from leaning into the touch just a fraction.
“...Corrin, darling, are you up here?”
Camilla’s voice reached them only a moment before the tower’s door swung open to reveal her. Leo stumbled backward half a step, his face flushing red as guilt overtook him, as if he’d been caught sneaking dessert from the kitchens before supper.
But it wasn’t as if he’d been doing anything wrong, had he?
Alarmingly, as if he had, Camilla’s lips turned up into the slightest fraction of a smirk. “Ah, and here you are. Did you need some privacy?”
“We were studying,” Leo said, affronted.
“I was studying,” Corrin corrected. “Leo was pestering me.”
Camilla’s smirk turned up a little bit more. “Ah, I see.” She crossed her arms, the long fabric of her gauzy sleeves billowing in the breeze. “Well, maybe you should take your pestering inside before you both catch your deaths out here, hm?”
“We were just coming in,” Leo muttered, already striding for Camilla and the door. Coming in sounded like the best idea he’d heard in a week. Better to be away from the biting wind and uncomfortable questions and back on ground that was solid and flat and low.
He did his best to ignore the fact he could almost feel Corrin’s gaze boring into his back.