Yuuri took aim and threw the baseball; it flew in a graceful arc towards Conrad, who caught it squarely in his mitt and tried not to look too surprised at the strength of which it had landed. Perhaps Yuuri had grown physically as well as inwardly, after all.

“Do you think I’m making the right decision, Conrad?”

“I do”, the soldier replied, readying himself to throw the ball back to Yuuri.

“Wolfram doesn’t think so”, Yuuri said doubtfully, keeping his eye on the ball. “Neither does Gwendal.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Heika. Gwendal simply isn’t used to… ah, taking the passive approach in these matters, that’s all.” He threw the ball, watching Yuuri take a few steps back to compensate for Conrad’s longer throw.

Ball safely in hand, Yuuri shrugged, raising his voice slightly now that he stood further away. “I just think that there’s not enough proof. Even if the assassin did look like he was from Big Shimaron, there’s no way to tell for sure. And even if we assume he definitely was, there’s still no evidence to prove he received his orders from there. He could have been born in Big Shimaron and travelled away. Or his parents could have been from Big Shimaron and the assassin might never have set foot there in his life. It’s not enough to declare war over if I wanted to. And I don’t.”

“I agree”, Conrad replied, and caught the next throw which came just as hard as the last. Yes, there was definitely more force in that arm than there had been, he mused. It had been nearly a month since what had been become being referred to as ‘the incident’, and Yuuri had made a swift recovery since the morning on the balcony. Conrad had not spoken of it to anyone. Josak had wisely kept his mouth shut, knowing instinctively that Conrad preferred to keep whatever had gone on between he and Yuuri and private. It seemed that Yuuri had not seen fit to enlighten anyone else on the matter either, which Conrad had been grateful for. The few minutes snatched between them had somehow been a moment of deep intimacy; something which both of them instinctively understood without having to explain to the other.

Yuuri, for his part, had discovered that the feeling he had woken up with on that day which now seemed so long ago (but which was nonetheless etched into his memory with a vivid and almost unreal clarity), had not gone away as he had predicted. If anything, the feeling of… whatever it was, had increased. Sometimes it lay in the shadows of his awareness, lurking there like some hidden facet of a more powerful self. Other times he might speak and hear it in his voice, completely unintentionally. At these times, he felt almost embarrassed at the way in which the guards would snap to attention, or in the way that Gunter’s eyes would widen and grow watery-eyed in wonder and admiration, or even in the way Wolfram would refrain from calling him ‘wimp’ for the whole of the rest of the day.

Yuuri felt embarrassed, too, at the very nameable feeling that he sometimes awoke in the mornings with. Dreams hovered on the edges of his consciousness at these times, half-remembered and half-repressed for fear that they were somehow wrong (and also for fear that Wolfram might read his mind and discover why Yuuri had become so much more eager to get out of bed a while before Wolfram did each morning). Sometimes he grew restless, and prowled the castle at night while waiting for his mind to catch up with his body so that he could sleep. At these times, Conrad (who was far from oblivious about such matters, for all his silence on the subject), seemed to know without asking when Yuuri wanted company and when he wished to be left alone to think in relative privacy.

Conrad watched Yuuri now, taking his time in tossing the ball back. It was, he mused, a difficult and somewhat awkward age to be for Yuuri, who was clearly old enough to know what he wanted, but not experienced or quite self-assured enough to know how to go about getting it. Numerous times - particularly on the nights when he shadowed Yuuri’s footsteps through the more or less empty corridors and silent hallways – he had thought about saying something. Just to give Yuuri a gentle nudge in the desired direction. But always, he had pulled himself back. Better, Conrad had decided, for Yuuri to make up his mind in his own time, and learn to approach things in his own way and on his own terms. Conrad could wait. He had gained a lot of practice.

“Catch, Yuuri!”

He arched his arm back and threw, knowing he would not have to hold back, trusting that Yuuri could now catch whatever was thrown at him. The sun beat down on both of them, making them sweat lightly beneath their respective uniforms. Yuuri stretched out his arm and jumped to catch the ball in mid-air, and Conrad allowed himself the freedom of an unrestrained smile in answer to Yuuri’s grin of pure pleasure at time together, uncomplicated.

Time still, plenty of time, for Yuuri to grow just that little bit more. Conrad would wait. He was good at waiting.

And perhaps, perhaps, in any case…

“Here it comes, Conrad!”

… Perhaps it would not be such a long wait after all.