Curses Built on Kindness

The first thing Elise learns- before any offensive spell, before even the proper way to hold a staff- is how to properly diagnose injuries.

"You can't treat every wound the same way," her tutor says.  "Magic lingers when it hurts a body, while blades leave different prints entirerely. And that's not even counting illnesses, curses, poisons, and all those other things."

Elise learns, then- she learns to tell apart an axe wound from a sword one, a fire burn from an ice burn. She's dedicated; more than anything, Elise wants to be useful. She does not have Xander's sheer strenght, does not have Leo's focus, does not have Camilla's touch with wyverns. If she is to be a healer, she has to be the best one that ever was.

She likes to practice in her everyday life, too. She observes people while they play with her, try to dissect any hint she might see. Here; Effie being slower than usual, Elise easily evading her as they play catch; something is wrong with her ankle (turns out she'd sprained it earlier, falling down the stairs.) There; Xander bypassing her as she hides in an obvious spot (bad eyesight, she'll have to convince him to get glasses soon.)

It becomes a second nature, to her, a reflex anytime her gaze sets on someone; what is wrong with you? What happened to you? How could I help, if I had my staff with me?

When Father assigns Leo a new retainer, an exhuberant young man who speaks in big words and bigger gestures, her eyes zero on his hands. They tremble when he's not flailing them around. Nerve damages. He has callouses on his palms. Former swordman. Training accident?

When Father assigns Camilla a new retainer, a competitive young woman with a sharp tongue and a sharper gaits, her ears strain to pick apart her voice. Somewhat hoarse. Somewhat deep. Throat damages. No visible injury around the neck, no trace of magic. Smoke damages? Got caught in a fire?

When Father assigns Xander a new retainer, a charming young man who likes pretty women and makes it know, she focuses on his smile. It's a bright thing on a bright man, a pleasing sight unlike Peri's own, and there is something wrong with his teeth there is something wrong with his face there is something wrong there is something wrong something wrong something wrong-

Oh.

It dawns on Elise as he's leaving. 

He's cursed.

There are different types of curses.

The most common type are those cast directly by dark mages. These stick to the skin like a coat of shadows; overwhelming, but ultimately shallow. It's easy to recognize them; they tingle aon skin-to-skin contacts.

Some are hereditary. These are weaved into the blood; you can recognize them from the ooze around open wounds. These are always trickier to break, woven as they are in the depths of a body.

Laslow's, though, Laslow's is neither. Laslow's curse is anchored far below his skin, pulsing with every contraction of the muscle, but it does not flow through his veins. It's like a poison, or an illness, encroached in his entire body. It's a subtle thing too; Elise believes she the only one to have notices. It only becomes really obvious when he's dancing. When he moves, it's like the world itself stops to look at him. Elise would swear she's seen the wind curl around his ankles like an affectionate cat.

"Believe it or not, I was a really shy kid."Laslow says, blowing on his tea. They're talking about it, his dancing, because it's as good an excuse as any for Elise to spend time with him, and because Laslow can talk about dancing for hours if you let him. He's cursed, she's sure of it, but he seems unaware of it and she doesn't want to panic him by breaking the news recklessly, so she's decided to hang with him until she figures out what this curse exactly is. "My mother thought dancing would help me get in touch with my body, among other things."

"You? Shy? Now that's a thought."

"It took hard work to become the ladykiller I am today, I'll have you know!" Work evidently still in progress, as ladykiller would imply actual success, but Elise is polite enough not to cut him off. "It runs in the family, I'm told. My mother was also really shy. And my father's mother had trouble with humans, too."

"I'm glad to hear your father was somewhat functional, at least."

"Oh, he very much wasn't." Laslow laughs. "Though it was less him being scared of people than people being scared of him. He was certainly a bit excentric."

Laslow is obviously in a good mood, yet that sentence gives Elise pause. She does know, of fathers feared by people. That is not something she would joke about.

"Was your father a good person?" She asks, which is about five different shades of poorly worded, and gods she wishes she'd bit her tongue before those words had spilled out.

Laslow blinks, obviously surprised by the sudden change in the conversation's tone. There is a second of silence, and Elise wants to smack her forehead against the table.

"... He was kind." He says finally. "And he loved me. For better and for worse."

Which is, all in all, better than anything Elise could ever say about the king.

Crows adore Laslow.

Unbelievably so. They flock to him in full murders, landing on is shoulders and begging for pets. One time, Elise swears she sees one slipping a shiny trinkey in his hands, though he's quick to hide it.

She wonders if it's part of his curse. Laslow doesn't seem to mind, though; he coos at the crows and give them cute little nicknames and offers them crumbs of bread when he can. Elise has never heard of curses that did not bring pain and misery. Nohrian curses are all about dragging someone down, not up, or- watever neutrality Laslow seems to feel towards the crows. But then again, Laslow isn't Nohrian. Maybe they have different, more benign curses, in his homeland.

"My father favored crows. And snakes, and wolves, and most animals, really. The scarier the better. I think he related to them." He tells her once. One of the crows has landed on her knee. "His mother was a wolf, after all."

Wait, hold on, what? "How does that work?"

"Well, I don't actually think he was literal about this. I think he meant he was raised by one." He absentmindedly scratches under a crow's chin. "But as far as he was concerned, that was his real mother."

Weirdly enough, that's something Elise can relate to. Corrin is not her sibling, not by blood, but... but in all the ways that matter, they're family.

"Father told me she always watched over him. She's long gone now. I've never met her. But he told me she watched over me, too." He smiles then, something more subdued than his usual one, but more genuine, too. "Sometimes, when I dance, it feels like she's dancing with me."

Elise wonders, briefly, if in Laslow's homeland, it's possible to curse someone through love.

Sometimes, when the Moon is full, Laslow sneaks out of camp.

Well, that is innacurate. Laslow sneaks out of camp at night rather often. Perhaps he still is a little shy; he refuses to practice his dances in the daylight. But sometimes, when the Moon is full, even Elise cannot find him.

"You should be more careful sneaking out after me, you know." He scolds her without heat. "Haven't you seen the pawprints all around camp? The full Moon rouses many kind of beasts."

"As if you weren't the one inviting them so close to begin with." She huffs. "You go dancing with your grandmother, don't you?"

Laslow shifts uncomfortably, clearly losing ground in that conversation. "Something like that," he says, and doesn't elaborate.

"You're cursed." She finally tells him one day. No decorum. No buildup. He pours her tea and she tells him.

Laslow blinks. "I'm... sorry?"

"You're cursed. Have been ever since we first met. Probably before that." She picks up her cup and passes him his own. "Sorry. I didn't want to tell you before I knew what it was. But it has been months, and I still don't know, and I figure you deserve to know."

"Ah." He blinks, slowly. "It's alright. I knew." 

"... It was a gift." He says at last. "From my father."

"The curse?"

"Yes." He picks up his own cup, fiddling with the handle. "He was a dark mage."

Oh. "I always assumed he was a swordman. I thought you got that strange fighting style from him."

"Nope, all my mother, I'm afraid. Dancing and fencing both require precise footwork." He stirs his tea, though he hasn't added any milk nor sugar. "My father was good with knives, though. And bodies. Taught me quite a lot on that front."

He was kind, Laslow had told her, a while ago. Not he was good. He was kind.

"Do you know," she asks, "why he cursed you?" Do you know, she wants to say, what exactly he has done to you?

"Because he loved me. Because he wanted me to live." Elise wonders, briefly, if he inherited the smile from his performer of a mother or from his father who seems to love too much. "Because he wanted me to live no matter the cost."

"There, there." He rubs her back in circle, sympathy in his eyes. "You know Xander won't stay mad forever."

Elise grumbles, shoving her head further into her knees. "I just wanted to help." Call her childish, perhaps, but Elise would like to believe in a world where humans can lift each other up, would like to make a world where reaching out is all it takes to keep everybody safe. She knows she shouldn't have healed those pirates. She knew better. But she wanted to believe, wanted to believe that good deeds appeal to good deeds.

Perhaps it's in her nature, to trust, like the frog and the scorpion in the tale. Perhaps that is her biggest flaw.

"You are too kind, lady Elise." Laslow says. "And it's a good thing! Reaching out to others is good! But... you ought to be more careful with that."

"I know, I know." She sighs. "One day I'll get all of us killed by trusting the wrong person, yada yada."

"Well, yes, I suppose." Laslow sounds strangely unsure at these words- as if himself didn't fully believe them. His voice is steady again at the next sentence. "Mostly though, I meant that sometimes, kindness is the cruelest thing you can offer someone."

What.

Elise turns her head towards him. "Explain." Her experience with cruelty certainly did not involve kindness.

She is met with silence. "Laslow."

He shifts his weight, on the right, on the left, clearly hesistant. "...Would you... like to hear a story, about my father?"

... Well. That is, unexpected.

"We lost our village when I was a kid." He says. Even now, he's being awfully vague; no time period, no proper location. "My mother died, and it was just my father and I on the run. Food quickly became scarce."

If nothing else, Elise believes she's lucky, to have never known hunger. She has heard terrible stories, in the past; of people forced to eat bugs, or mud, when famine striked.

"One day, my father left me. Told me he was going hunting." Laslow makes a clean gesture at his elbow. "He came back missing his entire forearm."

Oh. 

"He told me he got into a fight with a bear. He told me he managed to blast its paw off, though, so we could have warm meat tonight. Can you believe him?" Laslow casts a glance towards her. He's still smiling, but there's something in his eyes. Distress. "The man lost a limb, had to burn off his own elbow to stop the bleeding, and he wanted to reassure me that we would be able to eat tonight."

"It has been, what, a decade? And I still can't forget this scene. This man cut off, got his arm cut off for me, because I was weak and hungry and he was too kind to ask me to wait another day with an empty stomach." Laslow looks down. "I think this will haunt me until the day I die."

Laslow's tone is flat as the surface of a lake, and there is something lurking in the water. Something terrible and horrifying, something Laslow can only speak of in half-truths and elusive wordings. Elise can tell. She can tell from the tension in his shoulders, from the way he averts his gaze, from the quickening pace of his heart. There is something more here than what he's telling her.

"I'll be careful." She says, instead of the thousand questions pressing inside her head. "I'll be more careful, from now on."

"And that's all I ask of you, Lady Elise."

The battle is brutal and bloody. There is not a single person who doesn't come by the healer's tent; Xander,strong and fierce, bleeding his guts out. Effie, sturdy and true, her armor in tatters. Beruka, swift and deadly, arm in shreds.

All, but one.

"Has Laslow come by yet?" Selena asks her as Elise patches up her leg. "He was all the way front, I lost sight of him.

Elise curses and passes her staff to another nurse as she rushes out.

It's stupid. It's stupid and she knows it, if he's alive someone is bound to bring him by. It's stupid but he's her friend, this annoying, philandering, traumatized man, and what if, what if he was a corpse already, what if no one will bring him home, and so Elise is running.

There are bodies everywhere, Hoshidians and Nohrians. Not a speck of grey hair is to be found among that red. Elise runs, screams her lungs hoarse, until finally, finally,

she

finds

pawprints.

She does not know the name of Laslow's grandmother. Perhaps wolves don't deal in names at all. But if she's really out there, looking out for Laslow, then Elise prays that this will lead her to him.

The trail leaves the battlefield, at least, which she supposes to be a good new. It sinks inside the nearby cedar forest, hiding in the shadows of the great trees.

"Laslow!" She screams. "Laslow!"

The trail grows odd. The pawprints, she finds, don't look like paws much anymore. The fingers are too long. The pad too shallow. Yet, just a few meters ago, she could have sworn-

She hears a whine.

Laslow.

And here he is, as she'd hoped. And here she is, as she'd feared. He's curled into a ball between two thick roots. Like this, she can't see his face or his front, but judging by his hasty breath, he must be in pain.

"Laslow!" She calls, rushing to his side. 

His body stirs. "Elise...?"

"It's me. She crouches next to him. She extends a hand to flip him to his back; she needs to see the damages to heal him properly. "I came here to-"

"DON'T!"

She freezes, hand still hovering over his side.

"Don't," his voice cracks, "please, don't look at me, I can't..."

Elise does not flip him on his back. What she does, however, is look, truly look at the curled form in front of her.

This is Laslow. There is no doubt about it. Same voice. Same hair. Same clothes. But...

His spine, she notices dully, has too many vertebra. His limbs are too long, too, covering his head and stomach. So is his hair. Wait, no. His hair isn't any longer than usual. But there is hair on the nape of his neck, thick as a horse's mane.

"Laslow," she asks, voice low as to not scare him, "what happened to you?"

He does not answer.

"I'm going to heal you now. I won't look, I swear. But I need to heal you. Is that alright?" It won't be nearly as efficient as if she could actually see the injury, but he seems adamant in not letting her see his face. If he still has one at all.

Slowly, she sees him nod.

She lets her magic flow through his body. His curse pulses through his every cell, greedily taking the offered spell to mend the wounded body. Perhaps he'd been literal, when he'd said his father had cursed him to survival. 

"Thank you." He croaks at her. He still isn't showing his face.

"Can you come back to camp?"

"Not yet." A pause. "My grandmother... knows of no other gift than fangs and claws. I can't come back until she knows I'm safe and she can take them back."

Ah. Alright, then. "I'll tell the others you're okay. Drop by when you come back."

He nods again. Then, surprisingly, he blindly reaches out for her with a hand. It has five fingers crowned with flat, trimmed nails, which is admitedly a little weird, when the bone has obviously grown and pierced the skin to become white claws.

She takes that hand with no hesitation.

"The crows will guide you back." He says. "The crows will always guide you home."

She feels the tingle in her fingers before she understand what he's done to her.

"What a strange place you must come from," she muses out loud, "where curses can be laid by love and kindness."

He snorts. "You have no ideas."

"I don't know the first thing about curses, yet alone whatever you and your father cast," she says, "but I hope you'll find your way home too. Whatever that may be." 

He snorts. "You're too kind." She thinks he's shaking his head. "That is not a mercy."

And it occurs to her, suddenly, that she has no idea what Laslow considers home. Is it his homeland? That village he was chased out of? Is it Nohr? The castle? Or maybe the woods where he can dance with the crows with only the Moon as a witness?

(Does he know?)

"I'm sorry." She says honestly. "I know of no other gift." Kindness and curses and fangs and meat- perhaps it's all the same, in the end.

"It's fine." He makes a vague gesture of the hand. The bone claws have shrunk in, leaving only tiny white dots at the tip of his fingers. "Just go back to camp."

"Alright. See you there." She turns around, pauses. "You know..." She shouldn't speak, she thinks. She's only going to add another curse under his skin. But she has to make him know. "Until you figure out what your home is, you're always welcome among us, Laslow."

And then she takes off, eyes up to look out for crows.