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Ingrid always looks away while Mercedes dresses her wounds. Always with a slight furrow of her brow that Mercedes finds quite endearing.
“Is it hurting you, dear?” She asks, winding the bandages around her arm. The damage wasn’t too bad, nothing a small spell wouldn’t fix but you never know if wounds reopen.
“No. I’m fine.” Ingrid’s eyes flicker over to her in a carefully restrained movement, a gesture to show she’s listening, before she looks away again. “Not the worst battle we’ve fought.”
“Miss Galatea, you have yet to have a ‘worst battle’ given how many times you’ve said that to me.” She’s nearly done but she won’t deny she’s slowing down so she can watch Ingrid’s face. Her green gaze is set upon something in the horizon but Mercedes can’t see what there is to concentrate on in their little tent.
“Maybe that’s a good thing, all things considered.” Ingrid’s eyes narrow, body tensing just a fraction.
“I should think so.” Mercedes sighs lightly, belatedly finishing up. “There, I’m all done.”
Ingrid looks at her with a small but grateful smile and Mercedes can see the tension in her strong shoulders relax a little.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Show me how much.” Mercedes leans in for a quick kiss that’s dutifully reciprocated.
Ingrid’s faraway gaze has changed over the years. At first, it was cute to see her pride taking a little notch, to hear her grumbling about her strategy for the next time. Mercedes is always here to patch her up. But the amount of ‘next times’ are starting to take their toll. Personal pride melted away and Mercedes isn’t sure what’s left.
Edelgard has all but eradicated Faerghus notions of knighthood. And, Mercedes suspects, destroyed a part of Ingrid that was so ingrained into her reason for living that it left her directionless. Perhaps that’s what Ingrid searches for when she sees beyond the tent walls, a reason for her to be patched up to begin with.
Some might suspect that Mercedes’s decision to join Edelgard came insulting easy and perhaps that’s true. But her Ingrid… well, ironically in her most knightly quality, had remained steadfast to their professor and to Edelgard, but not without immense hardship.
“Do you think about running away?” Mercedes asks quietly, moving her lips to her temple.
Ingrid stills, not like caught prey, more like a singer pausing for breath. It’s a while before she confesses.
“Sometimes.” Her voice is barely a whisper, as if she were afraid Sothis herself would hear. “I’m a foolish coward.”
“You aren’t foolish or a coward.” Mercedes murmurs, running her hands along her toned back soothingly. Ingrid becomes pliant in her arms, moulding into her touch and sighing appreciatively. It’s easier like this, becoming physical when the talk threatens to overwhelm.
“I still feel like one. Where would I even go?” She chuckles mirthlessly. “Surely not home. Father has never forgiven me, I don’t see him changing his mind.”
Mercedes hums against her neck. “Then where would you like to go?”
“Anywhere with you.” Ingrid gasps as her teeth gently catch her skin. “If you stay, I’ll stay too.”
So they have chosen to cling together. Fitting, Mercedes thinks, for two women so classical of partners.
“I’m staying. I believe in Edelgard.” Mercedes trials her kisses back up to her lips before pulling back. As Ingrid looks away, Mercedes cradles her cheek and holds her gaze. “And I believe in you, my unbroken Ingrid.”
The knight smiles, and as strained as it is, it’s genuine. Mercedes runs her thumbs under her eyes, over the crinkles that have formed there.
Ingrid licks her lips, looking as if she’s unsure about whether or not to ask: “Do you think about running away?”
Mercedes blinks. “I just said I was going to stay.”
“Well, yes, but,” Ingrid takes her hands, “do you think about it regardless?”
Mercedes thinks about how much she’s wanting to admit. About the messages and questions she had torn time and again before submitting them to the advice box.
“Oh, I suppose I do.”
She’s never stopped thinking about running away. From her father, from her adoptive father, from her life at the monastery. Thoughts of packing up and ghosting away hounded her so relentlessly that even with a course as just as Edelgard’s, Mercedes thinks, what if she just ran away? “Do you think it makes me a hypocrite?”
“I don’t think so.” Ingrid shakes her head, so assuredly, and kisses Mercedes’s knuckles. It’s not the grand and symbolic gesture she had lodged to the Emperor, it’s just what it is, a loving thing. “You’re brave and…good.”
Despite Ingrid’s lack of a silver tongue, Mercedes finds herself blushing anyway. “My, my, for a knight to call me brave.”
“It’s true.” Ingrid insists. “Not many can say they’ve been through two terrible fathers.”
“Many more have been through far worse than I, Ingrid.” Mercedes pushes the affirmation away, she’s not allowed to take it to heart while soldiers are out there dying. Soldiers like her Ingrid.
A rush of possessiveness invades her. Mercedes is not a selfish person, she never has been. But when Ingrid has given herself so willingly, how could she not take when her own life has been served up to the pigs dressed in finery?
She wraps herself around her knight. “Perhaps, if I ever do meet your father, I can add a third to that dreadful list.”
“My father is not… he’s not…” Ingrid is trying to be firm. Bless her.
“Trying to marry off your unwilling daughter is quite terrible, dear. We should both know that.” Mercedes has much more to say on the matter, about how the sinking feeling deep, deep in your gut twists and curdles when a nobleman seems even a little bit interested. Every time her adoptive father took a liking to a particular man, Mercedes would wonder which moment would be the one where her freedom is shattered at last. A shared glance, this is it, she would think, my wings are clipped .
She sighs, the ragged sound rumbling through her body. “Despite everything, I still wanted to make him happy, mostly for my mother’s sake. I can only hope now I will live long enough to tell him ‘no more, I have found love and I intend to keep it.’”
The confession flutters around like a butterfly, making her dizzy.
“...I see.” Is all that Ingrid says for a moment that feels stretched out to infinity. Mercedes can feel how she breathes, the slight stammer of her heartbeat as she thinks. “I think I shall endeavour to do the same.”
Though she daydreamed of it, love has never been an option for Mercedes. Yet here it is, pulling her in for a kiss.