Chapter Text
Gaping at the post-battle scenery with shaking cat-like pupils and trembling fists, she couldn't help to feel a shiver down her spine at such vulgar display of war prowess that the Turkiyean had just done.
What boorish fellow, so unreserved in their post-war celebrations. Brigitta wrinkled her small nose in a barely disguised distaste, looking at the aftermath of what would later be referred to as Balt-Rhein’s and Turkiye’s final ground battle on the Southern Rumeliana theatre by the scripts.
She threw a long, sideway glance at a few skewered heads of Balt-Rhein’s defeated troops, at the bodies piled up just before Espada’s opened gates and at the grimy, sweaty Turkiye soldiers trotting around in the wasteground pillaging armors and the likes from the corpses.
Pink eyes stared up at the pasha with wolf—wait, this cannot be, must be her post-adrenaline syndrome acting up—hide hanging nicely on his broad shoulder, black moustache gently caressed by the wind as he rode his stallion on the barren wasteland outside of Espada's sturdy gates. He strode past the dusty ground, littered with the Imperial soldiers' still fully clothed corpses left and right with sweat slicked face and blood splattered clothes.
(Brigitta noticed a while later with no small amount of astonishment, that despite it all, the smile on the man’s face never wavered, not even for a bit. Neither did the shine in his black, black eyes.)
Without even realizing it, she had stuck one of her feet to the dusty ground right outside the reach of Espada’s sturdy walls. Her hand rubbed at her chin thoroughly, consumed in a deep thought over the admittedly trivial yet intriguing matter at hand.
“Huh? Miss Brigitta? What are you doing?” One of her henchman looked at her outstretched foot and downward, pondering gaze questioningly.
[Those eyes, as if betraying his whole appearance of untamed wilderness and reckless abandon, were astonishingly tender as he met with a few of his soldiers, barely standing yet still grinning with every inch of their faces.
They’re kind, in a way not unlike her late, dear father’s were when they had just finished a particularly tough order and gingerly awaited the spoils of war to be properly collected and redistributed.]
Brigitta was so absorbed in her self pondering that she didn’t even realize that the owner of said obsidian eyes was already moving to her general direction, horse steps pounding on the ground beneath and creating a thin shroud of dust around him. When she raised her gaze from the ground, she could already see his wolf mantle swaying not far from her line of sight.
Huh!? There is really a wolf on his shoulders? Is it alive? Is it dead? Anyway—
“Lince! Good work back there! Today’s victory would not have been possible without your help!”
Huh!? No, he’s coming this way, what to do!? Her internal self started to panic being exposed to such blalant display of familiarity, so much that she instinctively tried to hide her lithe, seemingly delicate figure that she usually flaunted over proudly behind her henchman’s trembling one.
“—Hence, regarding the prisoners and weapons we took as booty—
She braced herself as best as she could, waiting for the continuation of Kurt’s booming, large voice.
“It’s our wish that they all be turned over to you!”
Eh? Her eyes blinked owlishly at the surprisingly easy admission of the loots to Lince’s care, a practice uncommon when it usually became much of the troops’ most anticipated epilogue of every triumphant siege.
Without her even realizing it, red started to bloom on her two cheeks.
“HUUUUH!? You mean it, General Sir!?” Abandoning her previous uneasiness, Brigitta ran toward the general with flourishing steps, bringing her closer to those beguiling, strong yet tender eyes that she became interested to in the first place.
Vaguely registering Kurt’s proud speech about the Turkiyean people’s appreciation to a great display of battle valour and their nation’s economic strength, Brigitta could feel her cheeks became redder and redder by the seconds. Her insides were warm in a way that’s once familiar and foreign, throwing all of her earlier assumptions regarding the Turkiyean army out of the window.
No way.. I shouldn’t feel this way just because of a mere war loot, yet.. It’s such a brazen yet amazing decision for him to make...
“..Until this battle concludes, we leave Espada in your hands.”
(Such blalant display of trust to the people you would usually call hired muscles is uncalled for in Cuore’s long standing hypocrite tradition of looking down on every single act of overt confrontation and all the messy bloodshed that it brought in its wake.
Not when they, the mercenaries, are essentially a clutter of patchwork consisted of various kinds of social pariahs, only united by the sheer need to survive when no one else will give them the protection that they need.
Brigitta had never known that outside of her big, messed up clan that was the closest thing that she could had as a family, she could get herself a look that were neither thinly veiled condescending scorn or outright wide-eyed terror that she so very used of getting from every single outsider that she had met.)
Huh..maybe becoming allies with Turkiye is not so bad after all...
“Miss? Excuse me? Why are you still standing over there?” One of her subordinate waved a hand over her glazy, dreamy eyes to no avail.
“Don’t tell me that the big guy had scared her so much that she froze in her place!?”
With little hands cupping her cherry red cheeks, Brigitta stared off to the retreating back of one Kurt Kurt Pasha.
(Her earlier doubts and fears regarding the prospect of Lince’s latest ally, at that moment, was nowhere to be found.)