Chapter Text
For months after joining the Officers’ Academy, Dorothea sincerely believed she would never grasp Faith magic. The Black Eagles’ healing unit consisted of Linhardt and everyone’s personal stash of vulneraries, and she would have liked to keep it that way. The professor clearly thought she was horrible: they kept dabbing at their forehead as they tutored her. Usually, she’d feel flattered that her presence made people sweat.
“Really, it’s that bad?” she said.
“Some talents require time to bloom,” they said, their voice full of authority and their face gently stressed.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know the gestures or the incantations. She could even twirl herself in the air while healing. For all her technical competency, people’s wounds would only be healed halfway, and she’d have to call Linhardt to finish the job. She would prefer to follow Manuela’s footsteps and become an excellent healer and medic to her current job on the field, which was to stand behind Petra or Caspar and cast Thunder. What a shame! She was an awful healer.
She used to think that she’d only use magic for self-defense. Then she thought that at least they’d be far away enough and the lightning bright enough to keep her from seeing the worst of what she was doing.
I’m good at this, she thought, her eyes flashing with afterimages and the top of her tongue dry from the ozone released by her thunderbolts. The sight of her enemies jolted by their doom, their faces turned to the sky, stayed in her eyes no matter how hard she tried to blink it away.
#
To help train her in Faith, the professor occasionally asked her to attend to students in the infirmary. Manuela was happy to provide extra instruction and have an extra pair of hands to speed up the work, even if Dorothea sometimes did the entire thing, the incantation, the arm movements, the float in the air and spin around, to no effect. Sometimes all Dorothea did was restock the shelves, check and document the medicine stores, take the sheets to be laundered or burned, and greet people as they came in to be treated.
Her most frequent visitors were Caspar and the Blue Lions, on account of their collective zest for flinging themselves into harm, but occasionally she got treats. That was to say, sometimes her friends came by. Petra twisted her ankle jumping down a tree and said charming, excitable things while Dorothea tried to blast her swollen leg with as much healing magic as possible. Ferdinand took a blow to the head while on a training mission and was laid up in the infirmary to be Dorothea’s personal head injury training dummy; there, her failures were an opportunity to make fun of Ferdinand and watch him wince and feel pity for him. And once, even Edelgard had to come by.
When Edelgard came, Manuela was out for lunch. She trusted Dorothea to treat anyone who came by, she said. Chances were, she needed a midday drink and knew Dorothea wouldn’t begrudge her that.
It was hot and thundering outside. Edelgard came into the infirmary with her hair ribbons damp and spots of rain on her jacket. Even though it was noon, Dorothea had to light the lamps to see.
“Poor Edie,” Dorothea said, unwinding the towel Edelgard used to staunch the bleeding. She had to cut the silk-lined glove off her hand and looked up at Edelgard as she did so. Edelgard didn’t seem to notice or mind. Dorothea felt both a stab of envy, for her own want of riches, and a more delicate concern for Edelgard’s refusal to show pain. The cut was messy and rough along its edges; the kitchen cooks needed to sharpen their knives. Still, she didn’t wince when Dorothea dabbed the wound with alcohol and herbs.
It was the first time Dorothea had seen Edelgard’s ungloved hand. It was less dainty than she supposed it’d be, with its callused palm and fingers. The skin on the back of her hand looked soft, though it was marked by cuts, burns, and more unusually, her little finger had a march of scars all along the outer edge. She recognized the shape as rat bites: she had seen beggars and convicts with them, and other orphans, too. When she looked up, Edelgard was staring directly at her, looking like she might command Dorothea to forget what she saw.
Dorothea pulled her sleeves back. “Look,” she said, holding her wrist up to the lamp. “We match! I learned why no one sleeps in the alleys behind Saint Seiros’ shrine the hard way.”
“We do.” She turned her hand so the rat scars were not facing Dorothea. “I’m sorry. Enbarr should be a kinder city.”
Dorothea knew a dodge when she heard one. She pinched the edges of the wound closed. “This should be easy enough. I’ll have you out soon.”
It was a good thing, she thought, that she hadn’t been entrusted to care for Edelgard’s face. Palms were a forgiving part of the body, and she knew she hadn’t done a beautiful job. The wound scarred as a thin, raised white line. She had Edelgard make a fist, bend her fingers back, and bring her thumb to each of her four fingers.
When Edelgard was satisfied with the results, she crossed her arms, keeping her bare hand between her elbow and her body. “Are you thinking about joining the support mages?”
“The basic heals spells are easy enough, but I’m hopeless at the teleportation spells and the more advanced heals. Whether I want to be good at it or not, I’m much better on the attack.”
“‘Whether you want to or not?’” she said, sounding amused. “Are you saying there is nothing you would kill for? Not the goddess? Or Adrestia? The right suitor, if one should arise?”
“If I have to kill to get a husband, I’d rather be alone,” Dorothea said, wrinkling her nose. “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need any of this, would we?”
“It depends,” Edelgard said, tilting her head to the side in sincere thought. “What kind of perfect world are you thinking of?”
“One where everyone’s happy. Or one where I’m happy, at least. A house in the country, a house in the city, and a hot bath whenever I should want it.” She knew how selfish she sounded, but she had never had her own home or even her own furniture, and even at Garreg Mach, if she wanted a hot bath, she had to cast Fire on the bath water before getting in. “And I’d like someone there so I won’t be too lonely, but that’s so in the air. What does your perfect world look like, Edie?”
“War would be unavoidable, at first. But it won’t be war without purpose. It’ll be for the people—all people, not just the nobility. And out of the fires of war, we’ll forge a more perfect, lasting peace. I’m willing to stake my head on it.”
Lightning flashed. The thunder was so close that Dorothea felt it in her sternum and in the empty space in her throat. She turned to look out the window, but was aware of Edelgard’s untroubled posture, as though she would have accepted being struck by the heavens without complaint. Dorothea knew when she asked Edelgard for her perfect world, she’d see just how small and minor her dreams were, but she hadn’t expected the point to be underscored by lightning, which she so often thought of as her element to command. Dorothea would have no place in the world Edelgard imagined. Of course not. How could that world have any room for someone as selfish as her?
She was staring at the window, feeling sorry for herself, when Edelgard put her hand, the still-gloved one, on her elbow.
“I can see you there,” Edelgard said. “In your country house, taking a bath after spending the day walking in your gardens.”
She felt a strange sort of orphan wretchedness that disguised itself as a squirming, pathetic gratitude for the warmth of Edelgard’s calluses on her skin. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “In your perfect world, I’d stay in the city to be closer to you.”
#
She eventually did get Linhardt to tutor her in white magic, although he was even worse of a teacher than she thought.
“I’m a principled man,” he said, lying in the grass without even putting a blanket to separate himself from the dirt. He had brought a book to shield his eyes from the sun and a pillow. Of course he brought a pillow. “Bloodshed is fundamentally immoral. Teaching you magic so you can become better at helping our friends become better at bloodshed is therefore immoral.”
“So, what?” she said. “I should let our friends die because I’m that bad at learning Heal?”
“Our lack of skill will make them more strategic in their battles and less inclined to engage in needless fights.”
“If only everyone was as logical as you,” she said, patting his side. He squirmed away. She grabbed his shoulder and forced him to look at her. “You know that’s not going to happen, so you might as well teach me.”
He said that if she practiced next to him, he might find it in him to give her some pointers in between naps. It was so condescending that she could have strangled him. She almost went right back to the monastery. His advice was not exactly helpful, but not exactly unhelpful, either. It was somehow too technical and too vague at the same time; in other words, useless for the time being.
The last thing he said before she went back to town was, “You don’t see Hubert honing his white magic skills. He’s so bad at it that even the professor gave up. You’re that type of mage. Nothing wrong with it. Graduating from here means you can start off as a lieutenant in the Imperial Army, doesn’t it? You’ll have plenty of eligible potential husbands there.”
“I’ll be married long before then, I hope!”
“But what if you’re not? Don’t get mad at me for being honest with you.”
It depressed her to imagine herself being useful to another person. She’d rather have people be useful to her, for one; but she also couldn’t imagine the mind of the type of person enjoyed, or even relished, being a tool for someone else’s purpose. Hubert, obviously, and Dedue seemed happy enough in their roles. But neither of them were strictly normal, and it seemed so hopeless: pouring all of your efforts into another person, throwing your whole self into it, and getting what in return? Her mother had died sincerely believing someday they’d go to her father’s house and live there as family.
All of that love and devotion put into people who could never return it, like pouring water into a hole.