Red Chestnuts
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Written for Improvisation, aka sacae, for the fe_exchange Valentine's Day prompt.
A Merric/Linde story, taking place after the War of Heroes.
In the corner of one rarely-used courtyard of the Academy there stood a fine tree, thick and tall with spreading branches. Its glossy green leaves were like plumed fans, or many-fingered hands, and it had an imposing sense of presence, of dignity.
Linde formed an attachment to the tree during her first year of teaching, and she often walked out of her way to catch a glimpse of it. In the spring, she admired its fountains of deep-red blossoms; in the summer she would settle down beneath its shade to read, or just to listen to the chattering small creatures that made a home in the green-leafed boughs. The great old tree gave her a sense of security, for it had survived and thrived despite much upheaval. It might have been a seedling when her grandparents were children, and Linde- a young woman alone- would rest her cheek against its bark and remember that some things did, indeed, endure.
The children called it a "conker tree," and played a game of some sort with its nuts in the autumn. Linde knew it as a "red chestnut," and when she looked up into the branches laden with yellow-husked nuts, she remembered happy winter days from her childhood, days when she and the princess Nyna put their lessons aside and roasted chestnuts together, laughing over silly things, like whom they might marry someday.
One still autumn morning, when the students showed off their talents by setting fire to leaf-heaps and creating small whirlwinds, Linde gathered the nuts of the red chestnut until her basket overflowed with them. Some irate squirrels chattered at her while she worked, but Linde only smiled at them and the sudden burst of noise they brought to that corner of the old courtyard.
Back in the small kitchen of her apartment, Linde labored over the nuts, paring away the thick yellow husks with their curious spines, then polishing the brown shells that covered the actual nutmeats. They didn't look exactly like the chestnuts she'd seen in the market, or the ones she'd eaten with Nyna long ago, but Linde had learned a bit from her travels. She knew now that the small berries that commoners gathered in the wood were far different from the strawberries that a princess would eat, mixed with cream and meringue; she knew that the bright polished apples in the market stalls of the capital weren't like the small russet apples found in the country. So it didn't entirely surprise Linde that chestnuts off the tree wouldn't be the same as the ones she remembered.
Linde was looking forward to roasting those chestnuts, but it seemed wrong to enjoy them by herself. Chestnuts were best when served to friends, and so she put the chestnuts away in a cool, dry place to wait for the right occasion. That occasion came deep in the winter term, when the chestnut tree stood bare of its many-fingered leaves and icicles shimmed from the Academy eaves. Linde invited a friend and fellow teacher over for some chestnuts, wine, and conversation, and Merric accepted.
Linde put a bottle of pear wine on ice to chill while she prepared the chestnuts. Merric liked chestnuts with sugar, she remembered, and she decided to make a proper "dish" out of them as a treat. The chestnuts filled her apartment with a wonderful scent as they roasted, and once they were out, Linde cracked the shells- nearly burning her finger-tips in the process, though that was always part of the fun. The shelled nuts looked a little different than what Linde was used to, being pale instead of light brown, but again she didn't find that too surprising; she set the nutmeats in a dish, dotted with butter and strewn with sugar. They smelled absolutely wonderful, and it was hard to resist sneaking one before Merric showed up. Courtesy did overcome temptation, though.
Just when everything was ready, Linde heard a knock upon her door; Merric was there, damp curls of hair dangling out from under his familiar blue hood. She let him in, had him sit at her table, then poured him a glass of the chilled wine. Merric remarked upon the tempting aroma of their meal, and Linde smiled as she uncovered the dish of buttery, sugary chestnuts.
Merric's hand hesitated over the dish for one moment, then he selected one plump nutmeat and popped it into his mouth.
"What's wrong, Merric?" Linde's voice rose in dismay as Merric groped for the wine glass; his face had taken on a strange, almost greenish color.
"I don't know what I've done, or haven't done, but did you really need to kill me for it?"
Merric gasped out the words in an obvious state of distress, but he didn't seem angry at her, exactly. Linde rushed to provide him with water instead of the wine; when Merric had collected himself somewhat, at least to the point where he could speak normally, he spoke in very teacher-like tones.
"Linde, where did you find those chestnuts?"
"I gathered them from the tree in the courtyard this autumn. Did they go rancid?"
"No. I don't know if they would be capable of it," replied Merric, though some mirth was creeping back into his bright green eyes. "Linde, were you aware that there are two kinds of chestnuts on our fair continent?"
"No."
"The chestnuts we know and relish might be properly termed 'sweet' chestnuts. The other kind, which grows upon a tree with showy red flowers, is accurately known as the bitter chestnut... or the horse-chestnut, as it's known in some parts. The meat of its nuts contains a fair amount of poison."
"Oh." Linde looked down at the dish of roasted chestnuts. Leave it to her to cook up a meal full of buttered, sugared, poison. "I'm so sorry, Merric. I... I didn't realize."
"Don't worry. One nut's not enough to kill a man- but it's more than enough to make him regret that he's alive for a moment or so," Merric said, and held out his glass of water to be refilled.
"No, I should have realized. I knew there was something... different... about these chestnuts, but I never would have dreamed they were poison. I just thought they were... wild."
It wasn't her fault that she'd been raised in the city and not known where her food came from... but here she was, teaching in the newest, grandest school on the continent, and she hadn't so much as bothered to look up whether red chestnuts were any good to eat.
"I guess those squirrels were trying to tell me something," she sighed. "I thought they were upset with me for being greedy."
But Merric was smiling at her again, and they sat upon her couch, sharing the rest of the wine and discussing happier topics than poisoned dinners. Still, when the wine was gone and the fire down to embers, Merric lived up to his reputation for jests by circling back to the subject of the red chestnuts.
"You do know that there are both bitter and sweet oranges, right?"
"Yes, Merric."
"And you know there are two kinds of almonds as well?"
"Merric."
"I just want to make sure of that before you try to poison me again."
"Oh, you-"
She kissed him then, and if any lingering bitterness of the red chestnuts was yet on Merric's lips, she neither noticed nor cared.
The End
A/N: Horse Chestnuts are definitely not food. They're not even in the same genus as the real, edible, chestnut. But the trees are very pretty. Linde's ignorance of the difference here is grounded in her portrayal in FE12 as a city girl who is surprised by wild strawberries.
I don't necessarily consider this to be an AU; if Elice needed a fair amount of time to recover from the whole Dragon's Altar experience, Linde might have made her play for Merric in the meantime. And Merric, who is certainly friendly with Linde, might have been ambivalent about it all.