tw: alcohol, medical drama

The specifics of how she'd gotten into her current situation were fairly fuzzy, Leonie knowing that it involved her making some sort of bet while drinking to excess in one of the rare taverns she hadn't previously been blacklisted from because of nonpayment on her tab. She didn't remember what it was she'd said, or why she'd made the challenge in the first place, but what she did know was that she was a woman of her word, even if her word was given when she'd been drinking. "So what, exactly, do you want from me?" she asked the burly man she was sitting alongside, him looking her over from head to toe. "I can't promise you I can get it done if it involves money, but other than that? Consider me yours."

"Hell no, it doesn't involve money! Just some traveling, some adventuring, and maybe some drinking, I saw how much you could pack away in that tiny body you've got!" Howling in laughter, Balthus shook out his shaggy, long hair that clearly hadn't been washed in a while, while Leonie watched him, her legs instinctively crossing tightly at his laughing. "I've been looking for someone who could keep pace with me in all ways, and I think you're the one. Fancy being able to catch up after all these years out here."

They were quite far from Garreg Mach, where they'd first met while she'd been attending the Officers' Academy, and the fact that their paths had crossed in a nondescript tavern was almost too good to be true. She wasn't going to dwell on that, though, and instead she tried to bring the conversation back to where it had started: him supposedly wanting her for something. "Yeah, well, I could use some adventuring. Bet there's all sorts of people who could use a mercenary wherever you're planning on going."

"The life of a roaming mercenary, sounds like a good one." He'd stopped laughing, just to focus wholly on looking at Leonie, at how the sunset light was reflecting in her orange hair and on her tanned skin. "Also helps that you're easy on the eyes, it'll help us out in a pinch if we need to get out of paying for something."

"Implying I'd use my looks to bail on a tab, that's classic." It was also true, but Leonie wasn't going to admit to it to someone she'd just happened to run into the night before during her drinking session. All day she'd been holed up in the room she'd been renting at the tavern's attached inn, hoping that she'd be able to avoid paying for the multiple drinks she'd ordered after she'd lost her focus on what she was doing, but she hadn't been successful and had ended up escaping through the window, finding Balthus outside looking like he'd almost been waiting for her. "I prefer to get out of paying for things in other ways. Of course, if I had the money I'd pay for my drinks every time, but liquor's expensive."

"Only if you get the good stuff," Balthus replied, reaching towards Leonie with one of his gauntlet-adorned hands, and she flinched away before he could touch her shoulder. "Hey now, I don't mean to hurt you. Just wanted to give you a good pat on the arm or something like that."

"With your gauntlets on," she pointed out. "Which, by the way, why are you wearing those out here?"

He blinked, looking at his hands and how they were armed even though the rest of him wasn't. "Er, because the King of Grappling never can be unprepared for a fight, that's why! Would hate to get caught dead without a way to pummel someone into the ground."

"You know what, I get it. Don't want someone to get the drop on you in a place like this." Gesturing wildly to the open nothingness that surrounded them, Leonie realized with it starting to get dark and her having ran out on her payment for her drinks, she wasn't going to be able to go back to her room and get a good night's sleep. Her arms sank as the realization really hit her, causing her to look at Balthus with the same kind of interested look he'd been giving her while they'd talked. "By chance, where were you planning on sleeping tonight? Not at that inn, was it?"

"No way, that costs money or getting into more debts that I can't afford." Leaning forward a bit, Balthus showed that he had a bag strapped to his back, which Leonie raised her eyebrows at. "Got my tent and sleeping bag right here, I'll find somewhere to set up camp and rough it like a real adventurer. Why do you ask?"

"Because I drank too much last night and can't afford to pay off that debt, so my room at the inn is as good as gone." She was lucky she hadn't left anything behind when she'd climbed out the window of the room, and that she'd boarded her horse for the night at the nearby stable (which…she'd have to go back and get that, she remembered). "Mind sharing the tent with me, especially since you're planning on having me adventure with you in the future?"

Without so much as a second of thought, Balthus replied, "Sounds good to me! Just keep in mind that I'm, y'know, a bigger fella and this tent? Not exactly the biggest."

"It can't be that bad," Leonie told him, expecting him to be overexaggerating a bit, but she was quickly proven wrong when he'd set the tent up and found that even when he was laying in it, his legs, in their sleeping bag, stuck out the end and his broad shoulders took up most of the space inside. This left her with very little room to lay down without being on top of him—which didn't matter, as he used her like a pillow to cuddle all night, keeping her warm and adjusting her back so that it felt as relaxed as it ever had. By far it was one of the worst sleeping experiences she'd ever had, but more because it was on the hard ground and in a flimsy tent, not because she'd been held by a big, strong man all night.

In fact, Leonie kind of felt like she could get used to those sleeping arrangements, as long as the ground they set up camp on was a bit softer. Not that she was going to tell Balthus that and have him insist they sleep in his tent every night, because she'd much prefer having a bed in an inn to sleep in, but if it came down to it she'd be fine. That following morning they went and retrieved her horse and headed off together, him leading her in the direction of Fódlan's Throat as that was where he'd been intending on going once he found his adventuring partner. "We've just got to go visit my old friend Holst before we're on our way out," he explained as he walked alongside her on the horse, her riding slowly as to not leave him in the dust. "Once I've settled some things with him, we'll go off to Almyra and then lands beyond!"

"New places and experiences, I can get behind that," she said with a nod, before realizing where he'd just said they were going and gasping at the coincidence. "We're going to be in Goneril territory, that means we can see Hilda too! Do you think she'll find it funny that we're going together?"

Balthus scrunched his face in thought for a few seconds, before punching upward with one of his gauntlets. "If she sees us, she'll find it fantastic I've found someone to keep me focused on my goals, but I don't know if she'll see us. Hasn't she gone off and found some noble guy to marry already?"

"You know what, that's true, but I…don't know if she's done that or not." To say that Leonie had done a horrible job of keeping up with her former classmates in the time since the war would have been an understatement; she'd focused on traveling and drinking herself into tavern tabs she couldn't afford, she didn't know what anyone had done with themselves except for maybe one or two people. And now she knew what Balthus was up to, obviously, so that made it two or three people. "We'll just have to see when we get there. How long is it going to take?"

"Few days, with how slow we're going. Don't worry, though, we'll make it safe and sound and Holst'll be thankful we made it at all." Dropping his arm so that it swung by his side, Balthus looked at Leonie on her horse before shaking his head. "Bet we could go faster if you lost the steed, but I'm not going to make you do that out here in the middle of nowhere."

It would have been quite cruel for Leonie to abandon a horse that she'd taken care of for years, but she didn't want to be burdening Balthus as they went on their journey, so she promised him that she'd leave the horse behind when they left their visit with Holst. True to his word, it took a few days of them stopping to cook meals of food he'd shoved in his bag and sleeping in the tent together to arrive in Goneril territory, and then another half-day past that to get to actually meet with Holst, as he was for unknown reasons when they got to his home.

That visit lasted nearly a week, which was spent with them getting to have decent meals that they weren't expected to pay for, and sleeping in beds that were clearly meant for much more regal guests. Leonie mostly kept to herself, always looking around for any sign of Hilda having been around, but on occasion she'd hear snippets of whatever conversations were going on between the men. Holst seemed incredulous that Balthus had found someone who would go with him on a journey with no real destination in mind, especially someone he'd only known back when they were fighting on the same side of the war. Balthus, though, seemed to be insistent that Leonie had joined him of her own desires to travel, and she didn't feel it would be appropriate for her to intrude on the conversation to back up his statement.

The reason she felt that wouldn't be appropriate was nothing to do with how it would be getting involved in someone else's conversation, but rather with how she'd been flattered by his complements on her drinking skills and how he'd seemed innocent enough with his desire to have a travel companion. Sure, Balthus was a nice enough man, he may have been big and burly and not exactly easy on the eyes, but she wasn't in it for what he looked like—she was there because he needed a friend to travel with and she didn't have anything better going on in her life at the time. Anything would be better than going around Fódlan and getting blacklisted from taverns after not being able to pay for her bills.

Before they finally left Holst (and Fódlan in general), they were given some new supplies to make last while they were on their way. "Consider it a parting gift from the country as a whole," Holst said to Balthus as he handed over the bag that contained a new tent and a second sleeping bag, with some various other goods tucked inside. "If you go as far as you say you plan to, this may be a final farewell, so let's make it count."

Not wanting to address that statement until it wouldn't be seen as making a scene, Leonie didn't get the chance to ask what Holst had meant by that until they were already on their way to crossing the border out of Fódlan. "How far are you planning on us going?" she finally asked, watching her companion switching which shoulder he was carrying the new bag on. "I can't help but think that maybe you didn't tell me the truth about what we're doing."

"Don't know what you mean by that," he replied with a grunt as he got the bag exactly where he wanted it. "We're exploring! Traveling the world! Seeing what sights there are to be seen past the lands we've all heard of! I'm not stopping until we're so far past this place that no one's heard of the King of Grappling before!"

"That…shouldn't be too far, then." Thinking about how it would be absurd to assume even the people in Almyra would have heard of him and that title, Leonie accepted the answer and felt slightly excited at the prospect of finding new places to explore. She'd never thought she'd be traveling for the sake of seeing what else the world had to offer, as she'd always told herself she'd be a mercenary like Jeralt had been, but instead all she'd done was create a name for herself as a drunkard getting kicked out of taverns. This was going to be a new lease on life for her, and it was having her help Balthus with what he wanted to do with his life as well, so they were both going to benefit.

There was one more stop they had to make before they were able to properly start on their journey to lands beyond Almyra, and it was one that they didn't decide on making until the day before they made it. By that point, they'd done quite a bit of sightseeing and a lot of sleeping in their new tent together, not as tightly packed as they'd been in the original tent but still close enough together that they were more or less one on top of the other. They were both slightly desperate for a nice, warm bed and perhaps a good meal of anything other than what they could hunt and forage themselves, and the idea that they'd be able to get that was what led them into the small Almyran town that they could have easily bypassed.

"I wonder if what people have been saying about this place is true," Leonie mused as they entered onto a road paved with worn rocks and dirt. "That the Almyran king is stopping through here today and—"

"Probably not, just take a look around at this place!" Gesturing grandly with one gauntlet, Balthus gave a hearty chuckle. "Not exactly the kind of place I'd hang around if I was a real king, y'know. But as the King of Grappling? Yeah, I can handle being somewhere like this."

Based on the fact that she could see what was undeniably a royal brigade of horses and carriages up ahead of them, Leonie knew that the rumors they'd heard as they'd been crossing through the country had been true, but she was going to wait to see when Balthus would notice it as well. "Fair enough," she said when she saw him look straight ahead at the congregation and not say a word about it, "but let's stop to get a meal while we're here. It's still too early to call it a night, but a good meal and maybe a drink will do us both some good right now."

Continuing to be oblivious to anything going on around him, Balthus rambled on about how he'd stay far away from small, rural towns if he were a real king, only to find himself face-to-face with a real king when they entered the tavern. "What are you doing here?" Claude asked, his tone showing just how stunned he was to see Balthus in front of him. When some of the guards with him raised their weapons, he waved for them to lower them immediately. "No, this guy's no problem, I'm just—Leonie? What are you doing here with him?"

"Traveling," they both answered a split-second apart, only for Balthus to continue with, "and aren't you supposed to be sitting in some stuffy throne room like a king would?"

"Ignore him," Leonie cut in, trying to position herself between Claude and Balthus but finding that she wasn't quite able to do so, given that she was smaller than them both and lacked a weapon on her fists or guards around her. "He's not used to the idea that someone in a position of power can actually care about the little people. I think it's great that you're visiting with those who don't live in your bigger cities here in Almyra."

Claude pursed his lips together, dismissing his guards so that he could speak to the visitors without them breathing down his neck. "That's great and all, but it's not explaining why you're here, in this town in Almyra, rather than somewhere in Fódlan where you belong. And with him? Leonie, what's going on?"

"We're traveling companions now," she replied cheerfully, seeing the look of dismay wash across Claude's face. "Balthus wanted to explore the world and I needed to get away from everywhere I owe money, so it was a win-win that we paired up and started journeying."

"I mean, if it feels right to you, but I wouldn't trust him with my life even if I had to." Shrugging (which was barely noticeable as an action given how large the robes he was wearing were), Claude looked at Balthus and saw that he looked visibly offended. "It's nothing personal, I've just heard enough stories about you from Hilda to know that you're not the type of person someone with actual sense would hang around."

"I'm sure that's meant to be an insult, but you're saying someone blacklisted from most taverns in Fódlan has sense, and I can't be sure that's right." Barking out a laugh, Balthus paused to see if Claude found what he said as amusing as he had, but when he was met with silence he merely continued laughing for a few more seconds.

"There's nothing that can possibly go wrong with this arrangement," assured Leonie, who really wanted to believe the words she was saying to her regal friend. "We're just traveling companions, nothing more and nothing less. I'll protect Balthus, he'll protect me, we'll live in our tent Holst gave us and hopefully not get kicked out of anywhere we go for non-payment because what would we be paying for other than meals?"

"I…guess that makes sense." Just by how his eyebrows were furrowing as he was speaking through his thoughts, it was clear that Claude didn't think it made sense at all. "Just come back to Almyra if you find you need anything. If you're serious about traveling, it'd just be further to return to Fódlan than it would be here, and you'll always have a place with me." Then, for good measure, he added, "This mostly applies to Leonie, not you, Balthus. You're welcome to come back but I can't say I've got a place for you."

Balthus nodded. "Guess a real king doesn't have what it takes to go up against a king who gained his title from fighting, that makes perfect sense to me! If anything happens to Leonie we'll be back just so you can play protector like you want to."

"That's not what this was about at all!" Stomping down on Balthus' foot, Leonie felt herself getting angry that these men were fighting over her like she was some maiden in need of constant protection. "Nothing's going to happen to me that wouldn't happen to any other adventurer in the lands past Almyra, and even if something did happen, I wouldn't need the king of a whole damn country to bail me out!"

Seeing just how serious she was in that moment, Claude looked at Leonie for a few seconds before nodding. "Right, sorry to imply that you aren't strong enough to handle anything on your own. But just in case…keep me in mind, will you?" He didn't wait for an answer before calling for his guards to come back, and soon they were gone, his words lingering on Leonie's mind long after the whole royal group had left.

Why would he even think that something bad would happen to her while they were gone? She'd been traveling with Balthus for a little while already and nothing had happened so far, so was Claude just trying to get her to rethink what she'd already done, or was he assuming things were going to fall out of their honeymoon period soon?

When the winter moons descended on the travelers, they'd made it out of Almyra and were in lands beyond what students learned about in Fódlan, places where there were language barriers to overcome and new cultures to learn. The first bitterly cold snowstorm they endured, it got to the point that Leonie was in the sleeping bag with Balthus, both of them shivering together to try and get warm because the thin walls of the tent were nowhere near enough to protect them from the wind and cold. After that, whenever they'd find a snowstorm on the horizon they did all they could to find somewhere with solid walls and a bed to sleep, whether it be an inn or the house of someone who'd see two frigid travelers and offer them a place to sleep.

Somewhere in the midst of fending for themselves in these new places, Leonie had found herself realizing that perhaps her unwavering faith in Balthus was coming from somewhere that wasn't just her trust in him as a companion. She would see him and feel her chest tightening, her mind starting to think about what their end goal with their journey was. Were they going to split off from each other whenever they got somewhere one wanted to stay and the other didn't, or were they going to be committed to being there for the other for the rest of their lives? She honestly wanted the latter option to be the plan, because she was almost dreading the day where she'd have to split off from Balthus, in all of his bumbling idiot nature.

"Why do you keep staring at me like that?" he asked her one day, as they were sitting out on a cliff's edge, overlooking a winding river they'd talked about following for the next part of the trip. "I know I'm a good-looking piece of man, but there's a lot of other things you could be looking at out here. Like…the river, the sunset, the sky itself…"

"I'm just thinking, that's all," she replied, not wanting to get into having to hash out her feelings verbally. "Mostly about how we've come all this far, we've made it to places we're strangers to, and we've done it together. Isn't that neat, don't you think?"

"Oh, definitely! No one out here's begging either of us to pay off money to things we owe on, we're not getting kicked from places for non-payment, we're kind of revered as gods whenever we walk into a new town, it's all pretty cool to me!" Balthus grinned, before letting the corners of his lips retract with a small twitch. "But, and you go ahead and tell me if I'm wrong, I think you're not really thinking about it like that. You're thinking about it as something else, huh?"

Averting her eyes so that she wasn't making it quite as obvious that she was indeed thinking of their traveling as something else, Leonie took a look out onto the river below them and sighed at how peaceful and tranquil it looked in its frozen banks, the day being a relatively warm one after a streak of frozen ones. "Why did you ask me to come out here with you in the first place?"

"Because you seemed like the kind of woman who'd enjoy this sort of thing. So I took a chance and asked you about it, and you agreed to come."

The day she'd been asked to come with him was still a fog, because she knew she'd been drinking the night before, so Leonie couldn't try to refute his claims of how it went. "I guess I agreed to come with you because I felt like it was a good idea at the time," she said slowly, her eyes following along the riverbank and the nearly stationary water within it. "And don't get me wrong, it was! It was the best idea I've made since fighting on the right side of the war. I just…"

"If you want to tell me you've got the hots for me, you don't have to be so scared." His statement came out of nowhere, she felt, and with her cheeks blazing she turned to him, only to see that he was now looking away from her. "I definitely feel that way about you. Didn't think I'd find a traveling companion I'd want to spend the rest of my life with, but that's what I've got right next to me."

"Balthus…I had no idea that's how you felt. Because, yeah, I feel the same way. Just didn't want to make things awkward between us if you hadn't fallen in love with me like I have with you." The words felt cheesy and wrong on Leonie's lips, her always having relegated herself mentally to a life of freelancing and mercenary work, no time for romance, but she truly felt the emotion behind the words she was saying. "Guess we can stop trying to hide the fact that we both enjoy our nighttime sleeping arrangement, huh?"

He laughed, looking at Leonie with his face almost as visibly heated as hers was. "I'd been waiting for you to say that since the first night," he admitted, "mostly because you're such a good person to cuddle with. Strong arms, strong core, hugs back just as hard as I hug her, it's a perfect match, really."

Up there on the cliff, they sat together for quite some time, eventually moving closer together until their bodies were touching, and it was there they remained until night had fallen and the chill of the air began to get to them both. After getting up carefully as to not fall over the edge, they headed back to the little town they'd been staying in during the cold snap, the feeling of incoming snow showers strong in the quickly-clouding sky above them. That night they were kept awake by the howling of the wind shaking the thin windows of the room they'd been given to use, entangled in one another's arms like they'd been waiting to be for such a long time.

No matter where they were staying, whether it was in someone's home that had been offered to them despite the language barrier or their tent somewhere in the wilderness, not a night went by without them ending up all over each other before they fell asleep. Some nights all clothes stayed on (especially when outdoors), others they were stripped before they'd blown out the candles lighting the room; Leonie hadn't known what to expect when she bared her heart to Balthus, but she certainly was caught by surprise by how genuinely gentle he was with her. Yes, they could get heated and rough while tossing and turning with each other, but he always made sure she was in control and she got to call the shots, even though if she gave him permission, he became quite the animal.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before their nightly escapades turned problematic, but there was never a night where she felt she needed to regret anything thing that they'd done. It was merely a good way to spend the time before falling asleep each night, and if they weren't somewhere that getting incredibly close was possible, the kisses that they covered each other in easily made up for it. Their love and passion for each other quickly began to drive them to travel further, to find the perfect place for them to build their lives together, and their nightly activities did nothing but make them want their happy ending more.

Their need to find somewhere more permanent to stay than a tent along an unbeaten path became more prevalent about a year after they'd first set out of Fódlan, when Leonie began to suspect that not all was well with herself. She was drained of energy not long after they'd set out every day, to the point that she was getting carried by Balthus so that they could continue traveling, and oftentimes she'd cause them to lose an entire day of progress because of waking up sickly and maintaining that feeling the whole day. It didn't need to be said what the probable issue was, but there was no real way of verifying it because of the language barrier between them and the people in the country they were currently in.

The initial plan had been to push forward and continue looking for the perfect place to live out their lives for the foreseeable future, but with every passing day it seemed that Leonie was only getting sicker and weaker. She was losing her ability to eat anything and keep it down, she could barely walk alongside him for longer than a few minutes, and it was growing increasingly obvious just looking at her that her illness stemmed from the exact same thing causing her abdominal muscles to disappear into a hard, swollen mass that she was reluctant to let anything brush against.

It wasn't the decision that he wanted to make, but seeing her being forced into his arms for their daily traveling had Balthus choosing to turn back to get her medical help. "I'm not going to let you die on me out here, not if it'll leave me all on my own," he told her, as she weakly nodded in understanding of what he was telling her. "I remember what I said to ol' Claude back when we saw him, I'm not going to have lied to him about what I'd do for you."

"We're…going back to Almyra?" she asked in reply, thinking about how long it had been since they'd left the country and entered places unknown. "That's a far way."

"Not really, not when we've just been doing a lot of backtracking and exploring the same place over and over again. Trust me when I say I'll get us there within a moon's time." Bending his head down to gently kiss her on the forehead, Balthus saw how incredulous Leonie looked at the claim, but he wasn't going to back down on it. "Just you wait and see, it'll all work out and we'll get back to somewhere where we can actually communicate with people and you'll get the help you need."

With every passing day, Balthus would repeat his promise that he'd get her all the help she needed, and Leonie would mumble something about how she appreciated the effort, always trailing off after attaching a but to her statement. She didn't want to think about how long their return journey seemed to be taking, but she also didn't want to ask him if he was going to be able to get her the help in time. Some days she felt better and could walk for longer periods of time with him, other days she was completely unable to do anything, and while she slowly gained the ability to eat more (although not anything close to what she had been eating before this had happened), she was still sick more often than not. Once she got to the point of being able to make it through the day without having to hold up progress every hour, they were able to start moving faster, especially when she would have the energy to walk alongside him for a longer stretch.

They were crossing back through towns they'd previously stayed in, sometimes stopping if nightfall was upon them but otherwise breezing through unless it was time to eat, in which case they'd be there long enough to procure a meal and be on their way. The people in those towns must have noticed something was different, if they recognized them at all; Balthus was constantly looking determined rather than his usual carefree self, and Leonie had grown gaunt in her illness, minus the steadily-growing bump her stomach had turned into, sapping all of her muscle and energy to maintain its growth. It wasn't even that large, but for someone who'd always worn form-fitting clothes and armor, and who had withered down to skin and bones, it was strikingly noticeable.

A moon had passed since they'd turned back and while she was doing better, Leonie was still not the person she'd been before she'd gotten sick in those first weeks of being pregnant and they both decided that it would still be best to return to Almyra and see someone who they could freely communicate with. That turned out to be the best course of action, as it wasn't but another week when she woke up in excruciating pain in some poor woman's bed with blood staining the sheets beneath her. She screamed for help, but no one came to her aid for quite a while, until Balthus was there, his body as white as the sheets formerly had been, scooping her up and explaining that he'd brute-forced his way into getting a horse for them to ride on, to get them to their destination faster.

It was still over a week before they crossed back into Almyra, and while the bleeding had stopped after the first day, the pain had not subsided in the slightest, and it was taking all of Leonie's strength to not throw herself off of the horse to try and bring herself some sort of physical peace. Her back constantly ached, like she'd pulled multiple muscles at once, and the pain was radiating all across her core, which had gotten sensitive to the point that she was writhing in pain any time the wind blew in her general direction, her skin feeling like it was on fire. Beyond that, she would occasionally feel like the palms of her hands were on fire and had to resist tearing at the skin on them with her fingernails, and her feet felt just about the same way.

She must have been simply unbearable to have to be around, but Balthus never once complained about how she was acting; in fact, he was doing all he could to be supportive, short of harming her and abandoning her along the path. He was insistent that they'd get her the help she needed, and so when they came to a town in Almyra where the residents spoke the same language as them and were willing to help, he immediately relinquished control over Leonie to the local healer, an older woman who'd cracked a toothless smile when Balthus had asked her if she knew how to fix most problems. His faith in her experience was quickly proven to be misplaced, when she'd gotten her new patient settled in her home and realized that she didn't have the slightest idea of what to do in order to fix the situation.

"I'll throw everything at the book at your woman, but I'm thinking you'll have to write to the capital to see if they can send anyone with a bit more practical knowledge." The older woman cackled, holding a healing tome in her hand, while Balthus nodded at her suggestion, glancing towards Leonie and how she was curled up in absolute agony. "Based on what you've told me I'd think I'd know the answer to solving the problem, but that's the medical world for you. Never know what weird thing will happen next!"

"How long will it take for a letter to get there?" he asked, having to pull his eyes away from Leonie when he watched her tense up and scream out in pain for a moment. "Because, being honest with you, I don't know how much longer she'll be able to handle this."

"Few days, perhaps a week. Probably would be faster to deliver it yourself, straight there and back, but I don't know if you're interested in leaving your woman in my hands." At that point, Balthus was willing to do anything if it meant stopping the suffering his traveling companion and dear love of his life was going through, and because he couldn't confer with her on the matter first, he made the decision to head to Almyra's capital himself, first to see if he could find anyone trained in medicinal arts and second to see if perhaps he could cash in on a promise that had once been made…

It took almost two full days for Leonie to realize he was gone, and by the time that she was aware of his departure she'd only had the mental clarity to understand why he'd left for a few hours before a heavy fever set in, her body adding chills and flashes of sweating heat to its already lengthy list of ailments. The poor older woman in charge of her in Balthus' absence tried her best to fight the fever, but there was little she could do given her lack of knowledge on such matters. The next thing Leonie could vividly recall was the sight of an old friend staring her down, his face full of concern, while she heard Balthus talking about her right next to her, someone's strong hand holding hers tightly. She tried to speak but found no voice to be had, her throat dry and her jaw locked, and instead she was left trying to focus on who was staring her down.

She was no longer in that little town, in the old woman's house; when she could get her wits about her she saw that she was in a much more regal room, attendants coming and going with a familiar etching sewn into their clothing. It took a long time for her to fully piece together what had happened in the time since she'd fallen feverish, and when she did have the whole story she did nothing but lay in the bed with Balthus at her side, feeling hopeless and like she'd done something horribly wrong to spite the Goddess and earn the fate she'd acquired while traveling.

"You know, Leonie," Claude said to her on one of the many days where he avoided his regal duties just to keep her company while she was recovering, "when I said you were strong enough to handle anything, this wasn't really what I had in mind. Wyvern accident? Sure. Getting ambushed by rogues? Definitely. All…this? Not so much."

"Nobody goes into a life-changing adventure thinking the worst thing that's going to happen to them is their body shutting down when it's supposed to be nurturing a life," she replied, a deep sorrow in her voice as she spoke. It was mentally difficult for her to process what she now knew she was going through that whole time—her body trying to reject the child it had been growing, only to succeed at killing that life but refusing to let it go. When she'd finally been brought in to the trained healers on Claude's staff, her body was flooded with infection and she was days, if not mere hours, away from succumbing to it, delirious and running at too high a body temperature for too long a time.

"And I'd rather you let this be the end of your life-changing adventure." Sounding stern as he looked at her, arms crossed over his chest while he watched her carefully, Claude did not seem to be playing around with his stance on the matter. "I get it, you were out there having the time of your life, but you could have died because of where you were and the lack of care you could receive there. Stay closer to home, if not back in Fódlan itself."

She pursed her lips together, thinking about that possibility, but then she thought about how much she'd enjoyed the thrill of traveling with Balthus at her side and couldn't bring herself to want to go back. "I'd rather stay around here with you than go back to Fódlan. Almyra's not the grand adventure we were looking for, but it's not somewhere that we're notorious for ducking out on tavern tabs and debts."

"I can find a spot among my knights for a mercenary such as yourself, provided you can get back to fighting form after this, and Balthus…well, he can do as he pleases, I'm not too concerned about what he does." His stance relaxing as he let his arms fall away to his sides, Claude hoisted himself up out of his seat and came to Leonie's bedside, her sitting up with moderate pain to meet him more on his level. "I'll go see what I can do right now, but before I go, understand that I don't want to be 'that guy' trapping you somewhere, I'm just thinking about the health of one of my dear friends."

"No, I definitely get it," she told him, cracking a smile. "You literally saved my life, I should spend the rest of it returning the favor." He laughed at that, while she wasn't fully sure if she meant what she'd said or not, and when Balthus came back later that day she told him the decision she'd made there with Claude.

Predictably, Balthus was not the happiest about his life of traveling to lands unknown being cut short by his love's medical emergency, but he reluctantly decided that giving her a place to live healthy was better than seeing more of the world. "Hey, at least with us being around here, if it happens again—"

"Implying that it could happen again," she interrupted, him stumbling over several syllables in surprise at what she'd said. "I mean, how likely is it that it could, hm? I don't think that I have the, well, ability to go through that again."

"—no sense in saying that if you don't know it for sure!" Slamming his fists together, Balthus looked rather fired up at his own words. On the other hand, Leonie was not looking forward to his inevitable methods of testing that idea, even though she had been deeply longing for their intimate moments in the time since she'd first fallen ill.

But a line had to be drawn somewhere, and she chose to draw it right there, with words she'd never actually thought she'd say to anyone. "If you're planning on possibly killing me a second time, at least do me a favor and marry me first."

Little did she know that part of what Balthus had been doing in their time stuck there in Almyra's capital was figure out a way to make Leonie his forever, and so he was prepared for such an ultimatum. They were married by the end of the year, back in Fódlan so that their friends could all attend (although they did travel with Almyran royalty, and everyone made it no secret how they were there to see Claude just as much as they were there to see the wedding itself), and from there their new, less-travel-filled lives began to take shape. True to his word, Claude had found Leonie a position to hold in his personal guard, and even though it took a long time for her to find the physical strength to perform the duties, he was patient and kind with her about it. Balthus found his own thing to do in the areas around the capital, taking out rogues and bandits with his gauntlet-laden hands that everyone grew to fear.

They were as close to happy and content with their lives there in Almyra as they could possibly get, although when they'd fall into bed in their nice home near the castle, they knew that something was missing that would complete what they'd been given. While they weren't actively and intentionally going to try to have a child, not after what had happened the first time, they knew that if the chance fell into their laps they would be grateful for it. Over the next four years, they were greeted with situations much like the one that had brought them back to Almyra on a permanent basis, although they were always taken care of before the infections and near-death experiences could happen again. But there did come a day where Leonie, once again fuzzy on the specifics of how she'd gotten exactly where she was, had to stand in front of the king of her new home country, apologizing to him for needing to step back from her position as second-in-command of his guard for a temporary amount of time, while cradling her stomach in front of her, the child within it kicking and punching and feeling incredibly lively.

To her amusement, Claude's response to that apology was simply, "I've been waiting half a year for you to finally tell me you're stepping down for a while. Go on, I don't want to be the reason something else bad happens to you."

"At this point, the only bad thing that could happen is this little one being just like their father," she replied, bowing her head as Claude cracked up in laughter. "And thank you for understanding. The doctor thinks they'll be born within the week, and I don't want to risk it happening while in formation."

He waved her off as he tried to collect himself. "Stubborn as always, and dedicated to the job you've been given, I couldn't ask for anyone better to have protecting me. I'll be fine in your absence, just take care of yourself until you have the baby to take care of. Oh, and make sure your brawl-happy husband takes care of you both, I'm looking forward to the break in incident reports about him attacking innocent farmers."

Without missing a beat, Leonie looked straight at Claude and said, "And that's why them being like their father would be a bad thing." They parted on that lighthearted moment, and while Leonie made her way slowly back home, she thought about how she'd once told Balthus that she'd be his if what he wanted didn't involve money; she hadn't known that it would involve love and starting a family after many failed attempts, but she was beyond thankful she'd made that choice to follow him into the unknown all those years ago.

A/N: I was a fool and asked for a ship to write a while back and was told that even though they have no supports, leonie and balthus would be a neat dynamic, and while it WAS a fun dynamic to write, I really don't know what possessed me to do this to my girl leonie