Chapter 13

Many years ago…

Cassian and his friends entered the church classroom, as loud and unruly as they usually were before the priestesses would tell them to settle down. But this time they needn't bother, as the group spotted something that made them all fall silent. Well actually, it was someone. A new student sat in one of the desks at the front of the classroom, on the far side.

The boy had pale skin, an angular face and very long dark hair. He was hunched over his desk somewhat, looking rather anxious. He glanced around the room and saw the group staring at him, which made his grey eyes go wide and he quickly looked away. Though after a few moments he peered back at them again to see if they were still looking at him.

Cassian overcame his surprise at seeing a newcomer and quickly strode over to the kid. The dark haired child, who looked to be around the same age as Cassian, visibly stiffened and cast his eyes down at his desk as Cassian loomed over him.

“Hey there, what’s your name?” Cassian asked, placing his hands on his hips as he looked down at the kid.

The newcomer turned his head up to look at Cassian with confusion, not responding to the question. 

“Hey, I asked, what’s your name, new kid?” Cassian pressed, now crossing his arms over his chest.

The boy said something quietly in a foreign tongue, looking nervous.

“What, don’t you speak common?” Cassian sneered in derision.

The kid just gave Cassian a look of complete non-understanding, cocking his head slightly to the side.

Cassian rolled his eyes, then pointed at himself. “Cassian,” he said firmly. Then he pointed at the newcomer and raised an eyebrow in question.

The foreign student raised his own eyebrow, then pointed uncertainly at himself. “Balthasar…” he said slowly.

“Balthasar? That’s a weird name,” Cassian said dismissively, but Balthasar just continued to give him a confused look. “Ugh, whatever,” he added with a shrug, then walked back over to his friends.

Cassian proceeded to talk and laugh with his friends about how weird the new student was as they took their usual seats in the class. While waiting for the priestess to be ready to teach, they kept looking over at him and jeering, while Balthasar kept glancing back at them with a worried look.

“That’s enough boys,” the priestess called out across the classroom from the front, giving them a stern look. She waited for a moment for all the students to settle down before she spoke again. “Today we have a new student joining us, who comes from very far away. His name is Balthasar, and he doesn’t speak the common tongue but he will learn how to over time. Please be kind to him and make him feel welcome, as the gods would will it.”

Cassian and his friends stifled their snickers, glancing over at Balthasar again, who was quietly watching the priestess with confusion. 

Balthasar became an easy target for Cassian and his friends to pick on for a laugh. It was very easy to confuse him, and funny to watch him struggle to understand. Because he couldn’t speak the same language as them, he didn’t have any friends, and Cassian would find him always alone, keeping out of the way somewhere. But that just made it easier to give him a rough time without the priestesses finding out.

Cassian eventually learned that Balthasar had come to their kingdom alone, with no parents and nobody knew who he was. He lived in the church with the priestesses, and spent most of his time reading a single book he had brought with him in his own language, or scribbling in a notebook. Though Cassian also sometimes found him looking through the pages of illustrated books written in common, confusion marking his features.

Once, Cassian and his friends were playing hide and seek in the forest, and while he had been looking for a good hiding spot he had stumbled upon a strange sight. Balthasar was kneeling next to a rock beside a pond, a dead frog and a bloody knife laid out on the rock, scribbling away in his notebook. Cassian was a little freaked out by this, and backed away slowly, though in doing so accidentally stepped on a small branch which snapped loudly. Balthasar looked up, glancing over in his direction in confusion. Cassian had quickly made a run for it, too freaked out to give Balthasar a hard time over his strange hobby right then, though he certainly did so later on when he was with his friends again.

The years of this went by and Balthasar remained quiet, and remained a target for Cassian and his friends. Increasingly, the orphan could be found in the company of black cats, who would curl up next to him when he was sitting under a tree reading. Slowly however, it became less easy to make him cry, and instead he would give Cassian and his friends a steely look under a scowl when they tried to tease him.

Balthasar was also quickly growing quite a bit taller than the rest of them, making it harder to pick on him as they couldn’t look down on him anymore. In fact, soon he was looking down on them, much to Cassian’s chagrin. And as they were going through puberty, Cassian was confused to realise he found Balthasar’s face to be increasingly attractive.

One time during their lunch break Cassian was sitting with his friends and he kept glancing over at Balthasar, who was sitting alone as usual. Cassian’s friends started getting on his case about why he was looking at him so much, and eventually managed to get him to admit that he was attracted to him. His friends proceeded to have a field day ribbing him over that, and Cassain was trying not to burn with embarrassment under their teasing. Then he noticed Balthasar get to his feet and started making his way back inside, passing past the group on his way.

“Hey Balthasar, looking good,” Cassian called out, trying to assert dominance over his friends by showing that he didn’t care about them poking fun at him.

Balthasar stopped in his tracks, and slowly turned his head to look at Cassian with confusion.

“Thank you, I guess. You are not too bad yourself, only ugly on the inside,” Balthasar said in perfect common but with a heavy accent.

Cassian’s eyes went wide with shock and his mouth fell open slightly. “Y-Y-You understand me now?” he exclaimed, as he had thought since he had never seen Balthasar speak that he still hadn’t learned the language.

Balthasar scowled at him with dark heavy brows. “Of course I can?” he said, looking at Cassian like he was an idiot.

“But… I’ve never seen you talk to anyone,” Cassian explained awkwardly.

“That is because there is not anyone around worth speaking to,” Balthasar said haughtily. “Especially not you.” He turned and continued walking away from the group.

Cassian was left to pick his jaw up off the floor, and once his friends had recovered from their own slight shock they burst into laughter at him. Cassian balled his fists and stared at the ground in embarrassment. 

The tension between the two of them only grew after that day. Now every time Cassian tried to tease Balthasar, he would retort with some quick witted or scathing remark that left Cassian looking like a fool. But Cassian couldn’t help but keep coming back for more, strangely enjoying the banter between them. That was, until the priestesses sent Balthasar off to apprentice under the castle chirurgeon and Cassian was enlisted to serve in the army.

They would still see each other from time to time. Cassian was a bit of a show off, a personality trait that often landed him in the infirmary. Balthasar seemed to enjoy getting to stitch him back together, smiling smugly every time Cassian winced in pain. Cassian tried to hit on him a few times, but Balthasar would just look at him with derision.

Despite his ego, Cassian was a good soldier, and after several battles he ended up getting promoted to captain of a unit. He was young, and brash, and thought he was invincible. But that turned out to be false when he led his group of men into a large, messy battle.

He thought he was being clever. He was going to flank the enemy, route them, then be showered in accolades. He was not expecting to end up surrounded and outnumbered. He watched as his men were cut down around him, and felt real fear for the first time in his life. Cassian was cut down as well, and passed out bleeding in the mud surrounded by bodies. The enemy must have thought they killed him, because they left him lying there.

Cassian thought he was dead too, until he came to and blinked his eyes open to find a familiar face looking down at him in concern. Balthasar has been sent out as a field medic for this campaign, and was now kneeling in the mud beside Cassian, pressing firmly against his almost mortal wound while yelling at him in his mother tongue. Cassian’s vision was unfocused, but he thought he saw tears in the other man’s eyes, before he passed out again.

When he next came to and looked around groggily Cassian realised he wasn’t lying in the mud anymore but in a cot instead, the fabric roof of the medical tent hanging over him and the smell of blood filling his nose. He felt stabbing pain in his torso, and looked down to see Balthasar leaning over his blood covered body. The medic seemed to be swearing under his breath as he worked. The pain overcame Cassian, and he passed out again.

The third time Cassian regained consciousness he did so more slowly, and upon opening his eyes found it was quite dark. His vision slowly adjusted to the dim lighting, just a few small lanterns illuminating the tent, their flickering lights causing shadows to dance along the walls. Cassian turned his head and saw a figure seated in a chair next to his cot.

Balthasar was asleep in the chair, though didn’t appear to be at all relaxed. He had his arms crossed over his chest and seemed to be still almost scowling in his sleep. Cassian thought there was a darkness to the skin under his closed eyes, though it was hard to tell in this lighting.

Cassian turned his attention down to his body, but quickly found that he was covered by a blanket. He wanted to pull it off to see what state his torso was in, considering how much blood had been on it last time he had seen it and the stabbing pain he felt all over, but he found he didn’t even have the strength to move his arms. There was nothing he could do but lay his head back down on the pillow and let out a sigh. 

This seemed to be enough to stir Balthasar from his sleep, as the medic suddenly jerked awake, eyes flying open and staring ahead at first in panic before they turned down to look at Cassian. The soldier smiled up at him ruefully, and Balthasar’s panic seemed to subside, his eyes lighting up now instead.

“By the gods, you’re awake!” Balthasar exclaimed, uncrossing his arms and sitting upright as he stared at Cassian’s face in disbelief.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Cassian croaked out, realising how dry his throat felt. Balthasar quickly grabbed up a cup of water off a side table and held it to the soldier’s lips so he could drink. Cassian gulped it down while trying not to choke on it. When Balthasar pulled the cup away Cassian smirked up at him. “Surprised to see I’m alive? Disappointed perhaps?”

“By all rights you shouldn’t be, you absolute fool,” Balthasar growled as he set the cup aside, giving Cassian a glare. “I really thought you might never wake up…”

“How long have I been out for?” Cassian asked, then felt worry building in his chest. “How goes the campaign? What about my men?”

Balthasar sighed deeply, leaning back again in his chair. “You’ve been barely clinging onto life for days. How this petty little war fairs is no longer your concern. And your men are all dead,” Balthasar finished sharply, looking Cassian straight in the eyes and frowning.

Cassian felt his chest tighten painfully, and it was like all the air had suddenly been knocked out of his lungs. When Balthasar saw his distraught expression, his own features softened a little bit, and he glanced away.

Cassian had led his men into a trap and now they were all dead, and he would have been too had the man he’d bullied throughout childhood not worked for days trying to save his life. Cassian couldn’t understand why. Balthasar looked so tired, like he had barely slept. Why would he put so much effort into saving someone who had always treated him poorly? Why did he care so much?

Cassian suddenly felt incredibly guilty about everything. About the way he had treated Balthasar, but mostly about the way his overconfidence had gotten a whole unit of men killed. The guilt felt like a dark, slithering thing in his guts, which twisted and coiled around itself. He felt like he wanted to be sick.

Once he was stable enough to be moved back to the castle via wagon, Cassian had plenty of time to sit with his guilt as he recovered. And there sure was a lot of it. Every day he thought that he should have died there in the mud with his men, that he didn’t deserve to live on. But then he remembered that Balthasar had fought tooth and nail to give him this second chance at life, despite everything Cassian had ever done to him, and then Cassian would feel guilty about trying to wish it all away.

Cassian hadn’t needed Balthasar to tell him how much of a fool he was many times over before he left the field infirmary. His own stupidity was now crystal clear to him, and he didn’t understand why he hadn’t been able to see it before. Internally, he beat himself up every day as his body slowly healed. Each night he would dream that he was bleeding out in the mud again, or that he was alone in a fog with figures closing in around him. He often woke up crying.

When Balthasar returned from the field Cassian felt too ashamed to face him, though he didn’t really get a say in the matter. Balthasar insisted on personally evaluating his recovery, barging into Cassian’s room to perform the examination. Cassian couldn’t exactly complain about that, though he remained completely confused as to why Balthasar seemed to care so much. He would have assumed the chirurgeon hated him.

It took a while before he was even able to walk properly again due to the extent of his injuries. Once he was able to, he would hobble around the castle, feeling completely useless, wondering what the point of keeping him alive had been. He would likely never serve on the battlefield again, and Balthasar had said that regaining full strength could even take years, if it was possible at all.

Cassian ended up spending a lot of time in the church, the same one he and Balthasar had been educated in, looking for answers from the gods. But the divine maidens looked down from their stained-glass windows silently, unhelpfully. So, he asked one of the priestesses, who advised him not to dwell on the unchangeable past but look for what he could tangibly do to improve the future. It was strange, he wasn’t exactly sure, but he could have sworn her eyes turned pale blue as she spoke to him.

There wasn’t anything Cassian could do to bring his men back from the dead. But Balthasar, someone he had mistreated, was still here, and perhaps he could try and make amends with him. Cassian owed him that much at least after saving his life.

However, once Cassian was mostly recovered, Balthasar went back to treating him coldly. Any traces of the care he had had when Cassian was his patient seemed to have vanished. Balthasar seemed annoyed by Cassian’s presence when he came to visit him, and resisted the soldier’s attempts to make friends with him. It was understandable really, considering the way Cassian had acted towards him for most of the years they had known each other.

Meanwhile Cassian gained employment as a training officer for the kingdom’s armed forces once he had recovered enough to be able to take on such a position. He found this sort of job suited him well, giving him the opportunity to try and help the young soldiers not make the same sort of mistakes as he had. However, there were many times when he felt like his advice was falling upon deaf ears, though that shouldn’t have been very surprising to him given Cassian had intimate experience of being just like these young men. But he tried his best, and hoped he was making some sort of difference.

Cassian didn’t give up on Balthasar. He kept on trying to be his friend, kept trying to make up for the years of bullying and to repay him for saving his worthless life. And despite Balthasar continuing to rebuff him at every turn, Cassian found he was starting to develop a certain affection for the chirurgeon, who was now running the infirmary alone as his predecessor had passed away.

So, Cassian started trying to flirt with Balthasar. While superficially this seemed to anger the chirurgeon, Cassian was sure he could see another emotion in his eyes as well, a certain spark of interest. This became a fun little game between them of push and pull, of Cassian coming onto Balthasar and then the chirurgeon threatening him, usually with a knife.

Eventually Cassian got what he wanted, when the taller man pushed him against a wall in frustration and then proceeded to kiss him angrily, scowling the entire time. That made Cassian’s nerves feel like they were burning and drove him to continue to try to goad Balthasar into angry makeout sessions in the future. Their passion was like lightning, sparks always flying between them.

Then the jester showed up, and suddenly Cassian wasn’t Balthasar’s only friend anymore. That was fine though, Cassian was only a lot jealous that Balthasar showed his little pet actual genuine affection and care while his eyes still burned with hatred when looking at the soldier. But given the age gap Cassian had just assumed it was like a father son sort of relationship.

At least he had thought so, until one day he walked into the infirmary to catch Thedrick sitting in Balthasar’s lap with his mouth pressed against the chirurgeon’s bare shoulder.