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In a different life, Caspar is a farmer.
He is used to rising with the sun. No, earlier. Mornings are too quiet. His body asks for little rest, so whenever he wakes up, he can’t go back to sleep. This was never an issue before the war, and he still fondly remembers lecturing Linhardt on the importance of a full night’s rest. Now, by the time dawn finds him, he’s usually been hacking away at a training dummy for hours. He can’t stand the quiet.
He fancies himself going down to the fields instead of the training grounds. The ground is humid and soft. He can feel it even through his boots. Perhaps a farmer’s boots are not as nice as a general’s, but they feel nicer.
His mind wanders. There is the lack of creature comforts too. This is an easy one. It is true that Caspar had never known scarcity. He had never wanted for anything. There was food on his plate, clothes on his body and a roof above his head. Even a Crestless second son like him was still a blue blood. And so, his plate was always full of delicacies his palate found too refined. The clothes on his body, too elegant and impractical. None of the people he lived under the same roof with felt like family. Then, war came, and that all disappeared. Caspar had become a renegade, a man—a boy at the time he had cast everything aside—wandering across lands where his name would land him in trouble and running from home, where his traitorous head had a prize. For the last five years, Caspar has been taking what he needed to keep going and pulling through without complaints. He's grateful for what he can have. He doesn't covet what he hasn't earned through hard work.
And yet, there is room in his heart for one desire.
Caspar wonders, if he had been born a commoner, would he even have met him? He had once said their fates were entangled. Could those ties stretch across lifetimes—realities? Caspar doesn’t have the answers. But he does know one thing. A life without him would be miserable. Impossible to imagine.
And so, in this different life, he is right there beside him, because his mind can’t accept a world where they are apart.
Linhardt wouldn’t even have to work in the fields. Caspar would. Hard work suits him well too. His muscles, bones and tendons are all he can offer, all he has that can be any real use to anyone. His body is an instrument and it’s constantly screaming for more, more action, more fire, more pain. It feels more familiar than breathing. He gets out of bed and douses himself with cold water before heading out, ready to face the new day.
He wonders how difficult it could be to pull on a plow, to wield a scythe. He bets the trick is all in the purpose. When he rams into his enemies with the strength of a beast of burden, he is wild and reckless. His only aim is to throw them off balance and take advantage of the opening to land a mortal blow. When his weapons connect, it's to reap lives, not grain. A part of him wishes that destroying wasn't the only thing he is good at. Another part of him has accepted the fact. But maybe, if his life had been different, if he could start all over again, he could be taught how to do things right—how to use his body for something else.
Perhaps Linhardt could teach him. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too late for him.
Caspar remembers his instruction, when he was a young boy. As a scholar, he is and always has been useless. But some things had stuck with him. The exact figures elude him—but they are unnecessary. He doesn’t know the volume of water that flows through the Airmid river, but he knows it’s enough to provide water for all of Gronder when the river floods during the rainy season. He can’t understand the chemical composition of fertile soil, but he knows manure is good, and letting the earth rest between crop rotations works. He couldn’t begin to guess how many hectares of wheat are needed to provide grain for an entire family for a year, but he knows the smell of bread, fresh out of the oven, is the meaning of being human.
In a different life, Caspar is a farmer. Some things would be very different. Some things would be the same.
And he would still break bread with Linhardt every day.