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In the thralls of war, foot soldiers and generals alike tend to lick their wounds in private. There are times for rallying— times for lighter stories, clean of blood and grime, settled on rotten logs and sipping drinks that burn the whole way down. Tonight isn’t one of those nights. Not while the yearning empress is still breathing, lurking and snarling in the dark, set to tear into their throats with whetted fangs.
Combing blood out of cotton candy tresses and wincing at the sting of her own still spilling, Hilda wonders who would be ideal to bother this evening, all things given.
It’s not as if she wants to prod, though typically she really does. Insistent as some may be that she lacks emotional tact, she understands the quiet that slinks around their camp, heavy and thick as ichor. She knows the grief is a strangling thing with its hands around all of their throats.
But Hilda doesn’t cope well in silence. Her instinct is to fill it, and hardly with anything meritable. Claude, often her most willing target, is off of the table tonight; she really should be poring over maps with him in his tent, offering her clever wit, thinly veiled behind a lace of apathy and boredom. She should be giving her all as his advising general, close as they are to the beating heart of this war.
Tonight, she’s weary. Her arms ache even with the simple task of brushing her hair, trembling with vigor as if her comb is the weight of Freikugel itself. She hardly got the worst of it today. She can’t even work her tongue around a complaint— not with Ignatz writhing and moaning a few tents to her left, struck by an arrow tipped with viscous toxins still working their way out of his system.
Still, she’s never been one to sit pretty and quiet unless she has it all in spades. And tonight she doesn’t— tonight, she’d like to pick at the wrinkles on someone else’s brain to avoid the throbbing of her own.
With Claude out of commission, and half of their house tied up in Ignatz’s tent, her list is whittled down to bare bones. Sylvain has been unbuggable for weeks, his guilt after Gronder a tangible shroud around him that even Hilda’s charms can’t breach. Even Felix has tried and bore no luck, but Hilda hardly thinks he’s doing much better himself, lost as they’ve been since the death of that chivalric blonde woman.
Lysithea, a normal pleasure to tease, has hardened to steel in the last few months. Her focus is razor sharp even on the rare nights they do have to relax, and for some reason, Hilda doesn’t have it in her to shatter it. Not when she sees the pale and shaking exhaustion already fighting to rip their sorceress apart at the seams— the oozes of leftover magic always seeping through the pores on her hands, a slow bloodletting of her reserves.
Lorenz is an option, but even pondering the sound of his flowery vocal drawl exhausts Hilda further— not quite the reprieve she’s seeking. He’s probably taut from head to toe, pacing with his hands laced behind his back or fruitlessly scrubbing the grime from his armored boots.
As it tends to, her mind flits to hands clasped in prayer and soft locks like the feathers of an indigo bunting draping over folded fingers. Even in battle, bathed in muck and crimson, her hands stay clasped as she whispers reverent spells to bathe them all in light.
Hilda isn’t a devout woman. She hardly feels the need to atone for anything, ridden with guilt as they all are, pointing gleaming steel at the necks of students they used to clean gutters with back at the monastery. When faced with Marianne, her quiet tenor hardly loud enough to catch, Hilda almost understands the act of prayer.
Even thinking about her is a bit of reprieve. It’s enough to unwind the tight coils in her shoulders, still hiking up to her ears as the adrenaline from today’s fight has yet to wane. Marianne would know just what to offer at a time like this— always the right amount of bashfulness, gently reprimanding the teasing but making no move to leave Hilda’s side. Blushing to the tips of her ears like she can hardly take it, but moving closer still.
Their healer is likely at the archer’s bedside, mustering up the last pools of her magic to soothe his aching limbs. Hilda is glad for it— glad to see the girl find merit in this war, loathe as she is to admit her own worth. It’s hard to deny a thing like that when she’s the one bringing the shine back to their eyes after particularly hard blows.
Or maybe she’s not at his bedside, if the soft call through the draped fabric of Hilda’s tent is enough of a giveaway.
“Hilda?” It’s muddled, quiet as her voice is even without the barrier between them, but she hears it. “Are you still up?”
Almost certain she’s hallucinated the sound, lost in thought about the girl as she was, Hilda jumps up from her bedroll to part the thick fabric and see for herself.
She’s there, bone tired and sagging so heavily that Hilda worries a swift breeze could cart her away. So she makes quick work of it, uttering Marianne’s name in a chiding tone and ushering her by her shoulders into the warm hearth of her tent. The healer offers no protests, pulled easily along and almost seeming relieved to have the choice ripped from her grasp.
Hilda slips the tent shut behind them and settles down on the bedroll with Marianne in tow. It isn’t cold out tonight, but keeping the place sealed staves off the humidity, thick enough to suffocate with the bog around them. And without needing to unpack the thought, she always prefers her time with their healer to be something private— something sacred, only whispered between the two of them.
“Coming to my rescue so late at night?” Hilda teases, helpless to the urge. “What has this damsel done to deserve such luck?”
“You were hurt,” Marianne replies, matter of fact. Her fingers glow lightly, competing with the dimmed lantern and clearly itching to reach out and touch. The sight of her weathered knuckles leaves Hilda’s throat dry and kills any further goading on the tip of her tongue. “We ran out of vulneraries.”
It’s undeniably an exaggeration. Hilda’s cuts have been trickling, the air far too moist for the blood to cake, but they’re just scratches in comparison to her comrades. Her bruises throb lightly beneath her armor, but that’s hardly anything to fret over after a battle as fierce as today’s.
“And Ignatz?” Hilda challenges, fiddling with the clasps of her breastplate. “Are my wounds really so dire?”
“He’s asleep,” she answers, too weary to be put off by the teasing. “The poison will flush out by morning.”
It’s quiet for a while, and the air is dense between them with something unnameable. Hilda can’t help her unwavering stare as she peels off her own armor, watching Marianne’s eyes cut up and down her figure. From anyone else, it would be a ravenous thing, their intent crystal clear in the places their eyes choose to linger. With Marianne, Hilda knows it’s nothing of the sort.
She kind of wishes that it was.
So Hilda makes a show of it, her pace honey slow and sweet as she works the countless clasps around her ribs and shoulders. Her arms are already bare, so she moves to her greaves next, losing her art of seduction as she works the caked mud out of the crevices to get them undone.
Marianne doesn’t waver. Her lips are parted, but in exhaustion rather than want. Her eyes follow Hilda’s movements, but it’s with patience rather than rapt attention. That unaffected demeanor only winds Hilda up further in this one-sided game.
“May I?” Marianne asks, fingers still glowing and itching at her side, nodding to the scrapes along Hilda’s bicep.
Something shatters in Hilda at the gentle sound of it— the earnest tone, oblivious to the insidious bubbling of her friend’s thoughts. Marianne is devout even now, dredging up all she has to give for some wounds that’ll mend on their own within the week. It may be some sick form of atonement for the healer, but still— still she pushes past her limits, and looks sorry for the little that she has left to offer.
“Mari, you don’t have to,” Hilda answers, bridging the gap between them with her own callused hands on the pale ones in front of her. Marianne looks immediately disappointed, apology rearing up in her throat as her brow furrows and her lip trembles. “You should rest. It’ll be no good to waste your energy on something so small.”
“Then—” she continues, insistent and returning the grip on Hilda’s hands as the magic fizzles out of her. “No spells. You can at least let me clean them.”
This is an optimistic change in the noblewoman. To see her drawing closer, yearning for touch instead of shying away in fear of her own misfortune, is a blessing. Hilda has always wanted to kiss the talk of curses and omens out of her apologetic mouth.
Knowing this, Hilda can’t help but acquiesce, nodding her agreement and fetching her first aid kit. If anything, it’ll wipe that pitiful look off of the healer's face. Marianne clearly needs something to do, and Hilda is hardly one to deny a good pampering. That’s probably what drew the bishop to her tent so late in the first place.
Marianne is gentle in her ministrations, wincing in Hilda’s place as she dabs the wounds with antiseptic. It’s a slow process— slower than it ought to be— and Hilda is content to lean back and relish in the touch, let alone the sight before her.
Even so worn down, Marianne is quite like one of those oil depictions she kneels in front of so staunchly. All soft blues and pale yellows and mellow purples blooming beneath her downturned eyes, begging to be smeared or admired in equal measure. Hilda isn’t quite sure which she’d prefer.
The pale expanse of her neck is a beckoning thing as she tilts her head, leaning in further to wrap gauze around Hilda’s bicep. Her touch lingers a bit longer than necessary, firm and curious as the ax-wielder flexes back in question.
“I—” she stutters out, withdrawing her hand and cradling it to her own chest. “Apologies, Hilda. I’m not sure why I—"
“I hardly mind,” Hilda cuts in, her smirk a honed blade, though her eyes stay soft. “Now, I think it’s your turn.”
Marianne looks horrified for a moment, set to shuffle back through the tent flaps and into the bog. Hilda catches her by the elbow before she can follow through with the thought, her touch gentle but insistent.
“I’m not wounded,” the bishop argues, her cotton white cheeks blotting with pink. “And it’s late. I should let you rest.”
“Well that doesn’t seem fair,” she pouts back, her grip unrelenting. Something shines in Marianne’s eyes even as they fail to hold contact, and Hilda knows she isn’t pushing into unwanted territory. “I’m not one to take without giving back.”
Marianne looks genuinely baffled at that, her refusal of the claim evident even without her words. It draws a chuckle out of Hilda, and gives her the leeway to worm around to the healer’s back, working her hands into the mussed topknot on Marianne’s head.
She gasps at the contact, shooting to sit up straight as Hilda feels for the ribbon holding her hair together.
“Hilda…?” she questions, rigid and cautious. “This isn’t— necessary.”
The noble only offers a hum in response, carrying on in her venture to untangle each baby blue knot, root to end. It’s a nearly matted thing, likely up for days in that disheveled updo, laden with dirt as they’ve trudged through never ending swamps. Marianne barely winces at each tug, long accustomed to the prodding from her intricate hairstyles during their days at Garreg Mach.
No, her reaction is quite the opposite. Instead of wincing at the pull of her scalp, she unravels in Hilda’s hands, her shoulders sagging back down to their perpetual hunch and her breath slowing to match the pace of the fingers working behind her.
“It might not be necessary,” Hilda calls back, voice low and awfully close to the shell of the bishop’s ear. “But it was painful to look at, Mari. Let’s just say I’m doing it for my own sake.”
“I haven’t had the time,” she defends, but it’s hardly a strong refute with how lax her voice has gone. “I apologize if I’ve been hard on the eyes.”
Knelt behind her, Hilda gives a blue lock a slight tug of reprimand for the comment, unprepared for the bishop’s bared neck as her head lolls back. It’s a tantalizing thing to have so close— to watch the bob of her throat as she swallows, so lost in the rhythmic movements that she hardly realizes what she looks like.
“I didn’t say that, ” Hilda denies, shaking her head and blinking Marianne back into focus. “You’re always easy on the eyes, Mari.”
She does mean it, but she said it for her own sake. The response is just as she’d hoped; the pale neck before her blooms crimson as a Gloucester rose, close enough to grace with her lips if she dared.
“You shouldn’t joke like that,” Marianne retorts with more apology than bite. “Coming from you, it’s—”
“Why would I joke about that? It’s deathly serious, you know,” Hilda interrupts, separating her hair into even strands to begin weaving them all together. “If you’d just indulge me a little, I could turn everyone’s eyes to you on the battlefield.”
Marianne blanches at that, shaking her head and tousling the sections Hilda neatly laid out. She tsks in mock annoyance, her unfortunately unmanicured hand rising to cradle the bishop’s jaw into stillness.
“Okay, just for me then,” Hilda continues, pleased to feel the healer turn to putty under her touch, halting in her movements. Her pulse flutters birdlike under the pads of her fingers. “I’m fine with that.”
“I—” Marianne sputters, her eyes just meeting Hilda’s as the latter tilts her head back. She lets her hand linger, thumb dipping lightly into the plump skin of her cheek and yearning to trail further towards chapped lips parted in shock. “Alright, then.”
The admission is a quiet vow— an acquiescence. It must be the late dusk talking, or the stuffy air around them, or the imminent question of tomorrow that the war brings with it. Hilda doesn’t care to know. Not with Marianne so pliant below her, eyes more open and willing than the noble has ever seen them before.
“Glad we’re in agreement, then.” Hilda smiles, coy and foxlike with real tendrils of warmth beneath, and releases her grip on the healer’s jaw to continue her braid. Marianne looks lost without the touch, leaning back to grasp for some semblance of contact.
It’s endearing in an almost crippling way. Almost enough to send Hilda’s hand flying back, settling again at the junction of her neck. She has work to do, though.
Hilda takes her time on the braid, tousling out the folds as she goes to give it depth. Marianne doesn’t seem to mind in the end, her eyes fluttering shut in compliance, content to follow whatever whims her friend is chasing.
“There we go,” Hilda finishes, securing the ribbon at the base and tossing the finished braid over the curve of the bishop’s shoulder. “Beautiful.”
When her blush rises again, Hilda doesn’t fight the urge. Her lips are dry against the curve of Marianne’s throat, but the huff of breath that sounds out is clear enough. She can only crane her neck further, offering the expanse of it like a white lamb at the foot of an altar.
Hilda has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sometimes she thinks that’s all she knows how to do— to take and take and take until the well runs dry.
But with the sound of Marianne’s rapid breathing filling her ears, fluttering against her mouth, hungry and all consuming, this feels a lot more like giving.
It’s easy to cradle her jaw again— to pull the bishop’s spine flush against her chest until they’re nose to nose.
“This okay?” Hilda asks, finding her own voice to be muddled and distant. She asks, knowing from the shine in Marianne’s eyes alone that it is; knowing that she’ll appreciate the question either way.
Marianne nods, their noses bumping at the gesture, and licks her lips. Hilda chases the movement, diving in with her own to taste whatever she left behind.
It unspools so fast in her grasp. Hilda doesn’t think the bishop has been kissed like this before— with the reverence that she deserves, that she so willingly bleeds out of herself— but she’s quick on the uptake. Hilda guides with a hand against her cheek, caressing until her lips part in compliance.
She lets her other hand wander, curving around a slouched waist until her grip is firm enough to tug, turning to brace the healer on her lap. The angle is much better like this— much easier to deepen the tangle of their mouths, to pull each other impossibly closer.
Normally, Hilda isn’t in charge in a game like this. Normally, she’s the one falling pliant in her tryst’s hands, letting them have their way and hoping whatever reward she deemed necessary before is worth it in the end.
With Marianne panting softly against her, hesitant to give back and clutching her hands against the fabric of Hilda’s shirt, it doesn’t feel like a game at all. Hilda is reaping all of the rewards already, lacing each kiss with what she hopes is discernible encouragement.
Marianne keens softly as a hand cards through her freshly braided hair, mussing it unapologetically at the scalp. Hilda won’t mind doing it all again, and as the breathing quickens against her mouth, she doubts the healer will either.
“Good?” Hilda pants, parting just enough to form the word. Marianne can only nod, pressing herself closer.
She’s beautiful, writhing like this, uncertain of the noises coming from her own mouth. Hilda wants to draw more of them out of her, so she lets her mouth trail further, kissing again down the side of her flushed neck and darting her tongue to wring the sound out.
“ Goddess, ” Marianne breathes above her as teeth gently graze her collarbone. It’s the first real word she’s uttered in a while, and Hilda has to bite back a witty remark before it’s set loose. It would do no good to startle her now; not as she’s just warming up, years worth of harbored tension finally unraveling.
Hilda almost understands the healer’s coddling of her horses, careful of the mare in her lap lest she frighten her before she’s saddled and reined.
“Yeah?” Hilda encourages instead, fingers digging into the plump flesh of Mariannes hips, fiddling with the hem of her bodice in question. Her armor was already removed sometime before she made her way to Hilda’s tent, leaving only the soft blue cotton of her dress, hardly fitting for battle.
Marianne leans further into the questioning touch in affirmation. Hilda tries to remain gentle with the delicate buttons down the center of her chest, kissing down her neck all the while, but the string gives easily under her fingers, snapping and falling towards the bedroll.
“Oops,” Hilda mumbles, lips perched in the divot of her clavicle and not sounding apologetic in the slightest. Her grin gives her away entirely, and Marianne can surely feel the curve of a smirk pressed against her skin. Not that either really mind. Marianne can’t seem to form a conscious thought at all, already reduced to heaving breaths from such little contact.
At least Hilda thought so— she should know better than to assume the gears aren’t always turning in that pretty blue head.
The hands gripping Hilda’s blouse loosen and tighten in a silent debate, itching to drift further but clearly hesitant. It’d be easy to tease her tentativeness— her inexperience, her self-doubt even in the face of something so sure. That’s the easy way out for Hilda, faced with anyone other than the bishop.
Something about Marianne leaves her heart just as soft and pliant as the tender flesh cupped in her palms. That same feeling boils the quip on Hilda’s tongue to ash, leaving nothing but the desire to kiss away the aftertaste.
So instead, gentle as she can muster, Hilda presses on.
“Mari,” she mutters, voice thick. “What do you want? Let me take care of you.”
It’s hard to make the words sound sincere, for all that Hilda wonders if she’s ever spoken them aloud before in such a string. It’s a foreign offer to fall from her lips–– as foreign as this all is to Marianne, who sighs warily at the sound of it. An even playing field, then.
“I don’t know,” she huffs back, quieter than her panting breaths. “I haven’t—”
Hilda silences the hesitation with another kiss to her lips, open mouthed and far from elegant. It has the desired effect, bleeding the tension out of Marianne once again, her frame tilting even further into Hilda’s lap.
“That’s alright,” she soothes into the minuscule space between them. “Just chase what feels good. Take what you want.”
She emphasizes her point with a nudge of her knee, barred by the fabric between them but firm enough against the bishop’s inner thigh to coax her jaw slack— all the better to dive further into her mouth. Marianne chases the contact before it’s withdrawn, likely unaware she’s even doing so at all.
Hilda swallows the fire in her own throat and lets it burn the whole way down. This isn’t about her tonight. It’s a silent vow, but one the noble makes all the same in the back of her mind; if they die tomorrow, slain by the swords and tomes of their former classmates, she wants Marianne’s last evening to be good. She wants her to know a gentleness that the bishop so rarely musters up for herself, but offers freely to her comrades.
So she carries on, hiking up the hem of Marianne’s skirts until the soft fabric of her undershorts brush against Hilda’s thighs. It’s far more vivid like this, the heat of real skin, tacky and malleable and hot enough to burn. The bishop keeps chasing that pressure between her thighs, rocking herself forward and panting softly at her own soothing movements.
Even with Hilda’s own arousal untouched and waiting, she feels the heat of it like it’s her hips canting back and forth. To watch the slackening of the bishop’s features, every scowl line and furrow uncoiling into something lax, is satisfying enough on its own.
Hilda doesn’t quite know how to be gentle. She knows how to lie back, how to make the right noises and arch in all of the right places and sway herself along to someone else’s whims. She knows how to soften herself into something palatable, loosening hard lines of muscle into moldable putty.
Marianne isn’t asking for soft— gentle, maybe so. But they’re hardly the same thing.
No, the bishop’s noises only grow more urgent, more wanting, as Hilda flexes her thigh into something solid— something easier to chase. Muscles that Hilda veils behind puffed sleeves and thick skirts, her illusion of a dainty noble shattered as she turns to stone, firm enough to writhe against. Hilda has always been a paradoxical woman.
She twitches under each press of Hilda’s lips to the crook of her shoulder, the center of her chest, the jutting bone of her collar, all sensitive enough to pull quiet moans from the bishop’s mouth. Even muffled as they are with Marianne hiding her face in Hilda’s blouse, it might be the loudest the girl has ever been.
It’s not an urgent affair, though it probably ought to be given their sheer illusion of privacy behind the mere fabric of a tent. Hilda should be muffling the sound even further, stilling the rustle of dresses and stifling moans with her palm. But trying to tell Marianne of all people to quiet down feels blasphemous.
Their movements aren’t hurried and Hilda won’t rush them. Marianne is still tentative, adjusting her hips just so until the grind turns sweet in all the right places. It’s obvious when she’s found her rhythm, her breath stuttering around a whine that she tries to choke back.
“Good, Mari,” Hilda soothes, arching her own thigh to match the bishop’s increasingly frantic movements. Her voice sounds far more wrecked than it should, clothed and untouched as she is. “You’re doing so well.”
Marianne keens, though whether it’s because of the firm pressure between her legs or the tender praise, Hilda isn’t sure. She carries on with both regardless, mumbling affirmations and unintelligible oaths as the bishop nears her precipice.
“ Hilda— ” she breathes, or at least it sounds like she does. It’s hard to catch, soft as the sound is, but Hilda hears the pleading tendrils running beneath.
“Close?” she whispers back, lips lingering in the shell of her ear.
The healer nods, a jerk of movement against Hilda’s shoulder as her grinds turn stuttered and desperate.
“Still need—” Marianne cuts herself off with a hum, the thought lost in a particularly sweet slide of her hips. Hilda can garner her meaning, anyways.
“I’ve got you,” she mollifies, finally carding a hand beneath the bishop’s dress and towards the hem of her undershorts. The heat radiates even above the cloth, and Hilda lets out a moan unbidden at the feeling of bare skin against her palm on Marianne’s stomach. “I’ve got you, don’t worry Mari.”
Her palm slides further as Marianne leans into the touch, dipping beneath the loose hem of fabric and carding through soft curls. It’s easy from there— easy as the warmth guides her touch, as hips shift until fingers are pressed exactly where they ought to be.
It only takes a slight dip into the hearth of her, the heel of her palm pressed tight and circling against her swollen bud, for Marianne to go taut in her grasp.
She arches beautifully, jaw slack and spine bowed as her thighs tremble against Hilda’s. There are crystalline tears sprouting at the corners of her eyes, glimmering against the dim light of the flickering lantern, and Hilda can only chase them with her tongue. She slows the pace of her palm, soothing instead of firm, and kisses the trail of salt down her cheek as the bishop’s shivers wax and wane.
“So good for me,” she praises, whispers likely gone unheard as the aftershocks rack through her. “So beautiful.”
Once they’re past the thick of it, trembles fading into sated stillness, Hilda maneuvers them both to lie back on the bedroll. She weaves a dry hand through a blue tousled braid, unraveling it as she pulls the bishop close to her chest.
Hilda has never seen the healer so at peace— so content in her own skin, lips itching upwards rather than their perpetual downward scowl. There’s no knot between her brows for Hilda to soothe with her thumb, and even the typically gaunt lines of her cheeks seem full, lush with color that rivals the blooming violet beneath her eyes.
It’s mere minutes of that before the tension resurfaces, bubbling up in a sinister furrow that Hilda wishes she could freeze over.
“What about—” Marianne starts, her eyes cutting up to Hilda’s, pained and apologetic and guilt-ridden, all in a peaceful silence that didn’t beg for it. “I should… Return the favor, no?”
Hilda shakes her head before the sentence is even finished, her own face still lax. And really, she means it; just watching the bishop fall apart was enough to untie something in her own chest that she didn’t know was knotted. “No, Mari. I’m okay. Don’t worry about it.”
She tries to emphasize her point with a soothing squeeze to Marianne’s shoulders, nestling her further into her chest, but the bishop only tenses in return.
“So you don’t want me, then?” Her question is pained, soft like an admission of guilt behind the curtain of a confessional.
The lie is quick and sharp on the tip of Hilda’s tongue. She moves to fiddle with the beds of her nails, forcing a practiced flush of her cheeks in feigned embarrassment.
“I already finished.”
Marianne goes stock still against her, and Hilda can hear the gears turning behind her tight expression. It’s almost enough to pull a laugh from her chest, but she stifles it, carrying on in her feigned bashfulness until the bishop relaxes.
It might be wrong to placate her like this— to lie to her face after such a display of vulnerability. Hilda doesn’t often harbor guilt, though. The healer carries enough of it on her own hunched shoulders to last the two of them a lifetime.
“Really?” she mumbles, perplexed. “But I didn’t even…”
“You didn’t have to,” Hilda teases back, her sheepish look warping into something raptorial in an instant. “Just watching you was enough.”
Marianne makes an exasperated squeak of a noise, burying her rosy cheeks into the plush of Hilda’s chest, and the latter finally lets out the laugh that she’s been fostering.
“If you really want to return the favor,” Hilda carries on, eager to make her blush burn brighter, “I’m free tomorrow night. And the night after, and after that, and after the war…”
Marianne peeks up at that, her cheeks cherry red, spreading all the way to her ears. Her smile is soft, though, and her eyes are even softer.
“Very well,” the bishop says, shy and sweet and tender enough to wipe the grin off of Hilda’s face. “I think I’ll take you up on that.”