Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

xiv. white chrysanthetum.

At first, Felix failed to recognize him. Which was, in retrospect, hilarious and ironic, because most of the others seemed to catch on pretty fast as to who the husk of a man before them was. Perhaps it was because others were preoccupied by the sight of their long-lost professor beside the beastly thing, their hand gently pressed over black as night armour and their voice calling the beast ”Dimitri”.

Back in the academy days, everyone had taken Dimitri at face value. Felix had felt sick just watching it. He had known better. Dimitri had known he knew. And yet Felix hadn’t thought – hadn’t thought that the perfect prince masquerade would end one day.

Stupid – stupid. He hadn't wanted this.

Now the boar’s hair lay limply around his face, uncombed and unwashed for who knew how long. An eyepatch covered one eye, and the remaining one was so cold and lifeless calling him a corpse would only be accurate instead of insulting.

Five years of searching and for what? To find a corpse masquerading as –

No, that wasn’t right. The corpse wasn’t masquerading anymore. What had been peeled away was the mask itself, and Felix found it difficult to watch despite having seen it in Dimitri all those years ago.

But the corpse’s body had grown – if he’d been wide before, he seemed doubly so now, and the five centimetres of height difference had stretched into well over ten, if Felix estimated correctly. He loomed over most of them now, even Sylvain, who actually wasn’t noticeably shorter than the thing before them but their presences had become vastly different.

Even so, majority of the attention seemed to be directed to the professor and their unchanged appearance – and while, yes, Felix agreed that earned some attention, he felt inclined to point at what had once been Dimitri and say that demands a bit more attention, don’t you think. But he didn’t do that: instead, he stood frozen in his own shock and irritation, with an old feeling in his chest he hadn’t wished to experience again.

He had searched for Dimitri for nearly five years – or even longer than that, really, perhaps ever since the Tragedy took so much from both of them.

But now that he was before Dimitri(’s remains) again, he didn’t know what to do.

An old helplessness resurfaced, and Felix hated it more bitterly than he had ever hated what Dimitri had become.

What the hell happened to you, he wondered as he watched the corpse retreat from people that had once considered him a friend. He’d get his answer soon enough, once they officially returned to the monastery.

”Dedue’s dead,” the beast answered to a question from one of them – Annette, perhaps, Felix hadn’t paid attention to anything but the tension crawling through the beast’s form and the way the those fingers sunk into the metal of his spear. ”He died to save me, and yet it was all worthless in the end.”

The laugh that escaped the beast then rang hollow, maniacal and empty, and Felix turned to look down at his own clenched hands and the hilt of the sword at his side. The sound of the monster’s voice sent a crawling feeling down his spine, as though dozens of spiders were climbing it down. ”None of you should’ve come for a worthless promise. Not for a boy that no longer exists.”

Felix looked up then. Dimitri’s face had changed, something painful right under the surface of anger and exhaustion. Against the ruins of the monastery, the beastly misery was almost fitting. The droplets of dried blood on the sickly pale skin looked dark, glaringly so to Felix’s eyes.

It was as though death itself had sunk into his bones and made its home within what had once been Dimitri, and Felix felt either bile or blood rise into his mouth the longer he kept watching him. Eventually, the beast spared him the effort and turned away to leave with staggering steps that echoed off the walls that remained.

”You were right, Felix,” Ingrid said to him that night in the dining hall that had only suffered from a severe case of dust infection over the years. ”He was alive.”

The meat must’ve been spoiled, because it tasted awful on Felix’s tongue. ”If that thing can be counted among the living,” he muttered, staring down at his plate and thinking about how the boar used to (politely) shovel his own food there just to finish the meal faster. ”Looks like a corpse to me.”

Dimitri had moved himself to the cathedral and hadn’t shown his face since. Goddess only knew what he was doing. Felix didn’t want to think about it.

Gilbert, Gustave, whatever his name was, had brought up the disturbing rumours about the suddenly lost and killed Imperial troops from months and years back. Somehow, Felix had never heard of them, and that made his stomach twist just as much as the rumours themselves. So that’s what he’d been up to, when I was busy looking for his sorry self, Felix thought as he glared down at his meager meal, from all the wrong places.

It didn’t surprise him, not with the last memories of Dimitri he had. Not when he knew of the boar’s twisted nature, the violence that bubbled right beneath the surface, just waiting for the right trigger.

Was that all there was left now?

Felix couldn’t finish the meal, despite Ingrid’s disapproving stare when he got up to leave.

He had places to be at.

The cathedral had never been Felix’s first choice for a place to spend excessive amount of time at, and even now the atmosphere gave him chills. The half-collapsed pillars and roof gave way to rubble, a pile of which the boar stood before at. He didn’t seem to be doing much, only staring upwards somewhere Felix couldn’t see.

The same as usual, then.

Felix’s throat went dry, but he didn’t tear his gaze away.

Self-torture had never been his favourite pastime, and yet he always fell straight into the habit of it. (Always for his sake, because at heart Felix was still that stupidly loyal brat despite growing out of the ideals of knighthood and chivalry.)

From this distance and through the cathedral’s heavy silence, he heard the beast’s mumbles, the rising and faltering voice that would have broken any decent person’s heart.

But Felix’s heart hadn’t been whole to begin with, so a few more cracks on it didn’t make much of a difference. So he kept on watching, a numb feeling in his chest and a wondering thought of whether he and the old man really ought to have accompanied Dimitri back to Fhirdiad almost five years ago.

Before realizing it, Felix had taken a step forward – away from the pillars, towards the sorry excuse of a man – that then became two, three, four until Dimitri’s sighs became intelligible.

”Just wait for a little while,” he begged, voice strained and gauntlet-covered hands in his hair, ”father, Glenn. Not much longer… I promise, her death will come. You’ll have her head. Her blood.”

Felix’s steps faltered, his heart stuttered like somebody had punched it. Even his old man had finally begun to mention Glenn less and less over the years, but.

There it was, once again. Back at the academy, occasionally a distinct but muffled scream from Dimitri’s room would become audible in the middle of the night. When Felix had paid attention, he’d make out Glenn’s name. So he quickly stopped paying attention to the details, and likewise, Dimitri stopped going to sleep before him as the months trickled on like sand through an hourglass. Though there had been… one exception that Felix still recalled with shame. The taste of Dimitri's mouth on his had long since faded, but the memory of the act still haunted him like a best friend intent on embarrassing him.

Either way, Felix didn’t think he could turn a blind eye to this so effectively, and that made him clench his jaw until it ached.

And yet – yet he found that he didn’t have the strength to deal with this right now, that he’d much rather deal with Dimitri like he’d dealt in the past and avoid him until Dimitri’s problems would, hopefully, go away without his interference. They never did, regardless of Felix’s actions or lack thereof.

But he stayed regardless, standing rooted on the spot and watching the beast and its wide back in utter silence, with a heart so heavy it could be falling through the stone floor under his feet and a taste so acidic on his lips that Felix felt like vomiting. And if that wasn’t the most fitting description of their relationship, Felix at least couldn’t think of a better one.

xv. geranium.

Etheral Moon 25th, 1185. The millennium festival should have been in full swing then, but the date also marked five days since Dimitri’s 23rd birthday. One day since the former Blue Lion House had reunited with one another. Weeks since Felix had departed from Fraldarius territory once more, this time only for a half-hearted search while Sylvain and he made their way toward Garreg Mach.

Felix stood in the cathedral and watched passively as Sylvain made his way to the creature, his step too carefree in the somber atmosphere. Felix had half the mind to stop him, but perhaps this one time Sylvain would learn from his mistake on the first try. Not that Felix counted on even that thing to stop Sylvain from horrible self-management.

In the overwhelming silence around the cathedral, Sylvain’s voice was as loud as the front lines of a war. ”Hey there, Your Highness,” he said, and Felix grimaced when he saw Sylvain’s hand reach down to the beast’s shoulder. At the very least Sylvain had the sense to not approach the beast from its blindspot – Dimitri merely raised a hand to slap Sylvain’s away with a harsh flick of his wrist.

”What do you want.” The disdain in Dimitri’s voice had even Sylvain flinch visibly, but – unfortunately – he didn’t give up on the beast like he should have.

With an easygoing tone and the usual mask of carefree indifference, Sylvain said, with a short laugh, ”Just wanted to say, happy belated birthday, Your Highness. Your birthday was some days ago, wasn’t it? You’re twenty-three entire years old now, buddy. Something worth celebrating. We even have some of that infamous Gautier Cheese Gratin you used to like so much–”

”Birthday?” Dimitri repeated, and the hollowness of his voice contrasted Sylvain’s so much that Felix’s grimace deepened. ”Corpses have no need for those.”

”Well,” Sylvain said after a beat of silence. ”At least your corpse needs to feed itself, Your Highness. Come on, the cheese ain’t eating itself.”

”Go away,” the corpse growled, and Felix didn’t need to see the expression on Dimitri’s face for his stomach to twist all over with a deep sense of disturbance, familiar from all those years ago when he’d first become aware of that Dimitri had more faces than one.

”Go away,” the corpse repeated, voice turning hollow again. But the underlying rage didn’t go away, and Felix heard it as clearly as he used to hear the church bells ring through the monastery each morning.

Felix wondered which the beast hated more now: the Empire, or himself.

(”You’re a damned fool,” Felix said to Sylvain later on their way to the dining hall. ”You were asking for trouble just now.”

Sylvain shrugged, as careless with his own life and wellbeing as usual. ”The Gautier Cheese Gratin was worth a try,” he said. ”You never know what kinda thing will pull Dimitri back from whatever abyss he’s in right now.”

Felix shoved the hilt of his sword to Sylvain’s side mercilessly until his old and idiotic friend made a satisfying oof sound. ”Reckless idiot,” he said, his voice not containing as much seething as it did exhaustion. ”You thought cheese would fix that… that thing.”

”It usually does with girls,” Sylvain said, and Felix seriously considered plunging the tip of his sword through his friend’s foot.)

xvi. red carnation.

The aftermath of their first battle as a somewhat organized army was… to put it bluntly, unsettling, and even Felix felt tight beneath his skin, highstrung and restless after what he’d seen the beast do and heard it say.

Monster, it called itself now, and it wasn’t wrong.

Felix thought: it really would have been better if you had died back then.

At least that way, Felix wouldn’t keep losing him. Death should be done at once, instead of whatever torture this was.

But even so, the words didn’t come past his lips, some stubborn part of him refusing to utter a thought like that aloud. Even now, that stupid, child-like part of him wanted to find a shard of the old Dimitri to hold onto, to pull back from the pit he’d fallen into, to hold until the beast would leave both of them be –

It was utterly pathetic how desperate he was for even for that scrap of a person Dimitri had been at the academy. Utterly pathetic how Felix now looked at the beast retreating from the battlefield and away from their professor and even so felt the thorns of an unconfessed love pressing brittle in his lungs. Even when he could clearly see the blood sticking to the furs the beast had coated himself with, Felix’s heart could only ache and bleed from painful love, not the hatred he had tried to cover himself with.

Always running away while still staying in the same place – that was him, that was them, although Dimitri had never ran away. Instead, he had let himself be trapped in the jaws of a past too hungry for blood. Had those jaws snapped shut around him for good, now?

No, Felix decided.

But he didn’t have the strength to pull him out of there.

”Again,” Felix said empathetically to the professor that had been stupid enough to think some tea would calm him down, ”do something about that thing, professor. Before it hurts us all.”

Felix’s insomnia hadn’t got better over the years, so he found himself wandering to the cathedral that night by himself once again. The guards didn’t pay him much mind after they realized where he was headed off to – no one dared to disturb the beast’s nest, he figured. Out of sight, out of mind, they probably thought of Dimitri. While Felix had operated much the same only five years prior, the idea still made his lips curl in annoyance as he hurried his steps, ignoring the cold northern wind that seemed to do the impossible and seep through the thick fur of his clothes.

On the bridge, the wind was worse, and Felix buried his hands under his arms, a scowl on his face as he nodded to the guards that let him in. The cold didn’t let up inside the cathedral, but at least the wind didn’t get in. Felix let his hands fall back to his sides as he entered the inside of the cathedral, where between the rows of benches and before the large pile of rubble sat the thing Felix was there for.

This wasn’t the first night Felix had come to check up on the boar – not the first time since reunion, and certainly not the first time in general. Even after their relationship had fallen into nothing more than shattered pieces of a shared past, Felix had –

Well, it didn’t matter. Felix hadn’t done enough, hadn’t been enough, and the boar was what he had always been since the tragedy.

But there was no fixing what the five years of absence had done. Not without time, which none of them had, and not without patience, which Felix had a very limited amount. Goddess, he thought as he approached Dimitri from behind, where’s that lapdog when you need him.

Dead, apparently. Felix didn’t like the thought, and he couldn’t grasp why. The blind obedience had been sickening.

(It had been almost nice to see someone else notice the little things off about Dimitri when no one else seemed to pay close enough attention – even if Dedue and Felix treated the matter with the two extremes of a solution.)

Felix didn’t bother keeping his steps silent, mostly to avoid startling the beast. Dimitri didn’t react to his presence in anyway, attention elsewhere but he wasn’t talking to his ghosts either. Felix’s brows furrowed as he tried to decide if this was good or not, until the slight shifting of Dimitri’s shoulders caught his attention. Along with slow, heavy breaths that came out forced and shallow.

”What in the flames are you doing?” Felix peered down past Dimitri’s shoulders, and the moonlight helped him direct his gaze to the black gauntlets that had been tossed to the floor. In this light, the bloodstains on them were difficult to make out, so Felix didn’t bother checking for those and let his gaze drop to what the beast was doing with his hands.

He hadn’t noticed Felix’s presence yet, or else he’d have growled at him or let out some other fitting noise, so Felix got a pretty clear view of Dimitri wringing his hands and fingers, the scars scattered on them deep and visible under the pale moonlight. Or, instead of wringing, it was scratching: Dimitri’s nails dug into the back of his other hand, like claws, and scratched at the skin hard, the movement strangely absent-minded yet frantic at the same time.

The thing was – normal humans could make themselves bleed like that as well, but they didn’t have the unfortunate side effects of a Crest that granted abnormal levels of strength. Dimitri’s skin had broken under the nail doing the scratching a while back already, and the dark colour of blood trickled down the victimized hand and tainted the tips responsible for the harm.

The sight of it made Felix nauseous, but not as nauseous as the look on the beast’s face he caught a glimpse of when he circled around to the front of the man just sitting on the cathedral floor. The same dead-eyed look Felix had seen before, but now several times darker with the bags under his one visible eye.

It was as though there truly was no one inhabiting that body anymore, not one scrap of the human Felix had once known and adored with the fervour of a child.

Felix crouched before he could think anything more and closed his hands around Dimitri’s wrists. He tugged hard, grimacing when blood stained him, until Dimitri’s nails no longer dug into the broken skin of his other hand. But the blood still trickled down, and Felix felt it wet his own glove-covered hand. The sensation itself wasn’t anything new, so Felix stopped paying attention to it.

It was only then that Dimitri’s – the beast’s, the boar’s – attention slid to him, neck shifting awkwardly until one eye glared at him from beneath dirty bangs of hair. ”You,” he said, voice hoarse and uneven, much scratchier than before. ”What do you think you’re doing?”

”What do you think you’re doing?” Felix shot back with a snarl. ”Wasn’t today’s blood enough for you, you damn beast?”

Dimitri stared at him like he was the idiot in the situation. ”It keeps me awake,” he said like Felix should have known that much. Perhaps because Dimitri’s body was at its limits from exhaustion, his voice sounded smaller than Felix had thought it capable of. ”It keeps the dreams away.”

”No, it doesn’t,” Felix said, bile in his throat as his fingers curled tighter around Dimitri’s wrists. On one of them, his fingers brushed over something that was neither skin nor fabric, but Felix’s focus was on the face he hovered over. ”Do you think I don’t know why you refused to let some wounds be healed back at the Academy? I’m neither blind nor deaf, boar.”

It was always the hand wounds that Dimitri kept hidden from Mercedes and professor Manuela. Felix had, even without wanting to, noticed the way Dimitri’s hands would go behind his back to hide themselves whenever Mercedes did her post-battle survey of her classmates’ injuries. Asides from whatever stupid self-consciousness Dimitri harboured about his hands, Felix knew he had intentionally preserved those wounds, only to pick them open later.

Well. Felix didn’t have proof, but the conclusion was logical.

The night at the Goddess Tower five years ago had somewhat confirmed it.

(Felix’s way to deal with heartache was to train until his muscles ached and his mind turned numb to stupid thoughts – in a way, his method contained much same with Dimitri’s, though it was less dramatic and a little less physically harmful.)

”Did it help then, boar?” Felix spat the words out just to cover up his own weakness. His nails dug into Dimitri’s skin, very far from drawing blood. Felix wasn’t a gentle person, and he wasn’t being gentle now – despite what it might look like to an outsider peering in. ”Did it help with the nightmares?”

He had expected violence, for the boar to shove him off, but Dimitri only looked at him with his blank, unseeing stare, lips downcurled. Felix didn’t dare to think that perhaps subconsciously Dimitri still trusted him to do no harm, not when the far more likely reason was that the boar thought him as the ghost of a long-dead person.

”Nothing helped with them,” the boar said, grunting as he shifted on the floor, almost squirming but settling down soon after. Then, in a darker tone, the thing continued, ”But it helped me feel alive. The pain did, that is.”

Felix’s skin felt much too tight around him, like it might burst at the invisible seams at any moment. He ground his teeth together, jaw clenched so hard he could feel it in his gums.

”But not anymore,” Felix said, voice flat despite the feelings coiling in him like a venomous snake.

”A walking corpse is just that,” the boar said. As tired as he was angry. Moonlight spilled on his face and highlighted the chapped lips as they moved. ”A corpse.”

”Goddess be damned,” Felix hissed, ”are you even listening to yourself?”

The boar’s eye slid shut, a trembling exhale following. ”It makes them quiet for a while,” he said, ”if you must know.” Another sigh, and his voice gained a manic edge to it as he continued. ”Glenn… father… stepmother. None of them keep quiet if I don’t – if I don’t –”

Felix’s fingers dug into the boar’s wrists then. ”They’re dead,” he said, though he knew it to be useless. ”No one is talking to you but me.”

”I gave them my eye,” the boar said through heavy, almost frantic breaths. His eye slid open again, and Felix shuddered despite himself as Dimitri’s voice dipped low before rising again. ”They didn’t leave, but they stopped. Just for a bit. But they continued again – I won’t – I won’t be rid of them until I have her head or I die...”

The manic undertone bled into his words with such intensity that Felix tasted bile in his mouth, and he relented his hold on one of the boar’s wrists just so he could pull at the dirty mane of hair. Dimitri didn’t retaliate with his freed hand, which only shook useless against the thigh it had fallen back on. So, even the beast could still feel battle exhaustion. Interesting.

”I don’t know why I bother,” he said with as much venom as he could force into his voice through the hurt. ”You’re never really going to lift your gaze up from your own damn feet, are you? You’re never going to see a damn thing around you, since your eyes are blind to reality and your ears clearly have ceased working too.”

His fingers slipped off the beast’s other wrist, as well as the disgustingly dirty hair, exhaustion catching up with him as he looked away from the face that insulted every dear memory Felix still had stored somewhere in the back of his mind. Dimitri said nothing to him, only continued muttering incoherently he begun to rock himself back and forth as he sat cross-legged on the stone floor that was much cleaner than when Felix had first arrived.

And yet, Felix’s eyes trailed back to the beast not even a full minute later, having caught a glimpse of Dimitri’s hands moving again. He was ready to snap once more – stop hurting yourself, stop hurting everyone around you – until he saw that Dimitri didn’t continue scratching at the scabs of his wounds and scars. Instead, his fingers gingerly rubbed at something wrapped around his wrist. In this light and from this angle, Felix couldn’t tell what it was but Dimitri was being awfully gentle with it even in his absent-minded (and manic) state. At least he wasn’t muttering about the ghosts anymore, though the heavy silence that stood between them now wasn’t any better.

Five years’ worth of silence had been more than enough to Felix, but he didn’t have the energy to disturb the one forming between them now. Instead, he watched Dimitri’s fingers brush over what looked like a hair tie wrapped tightly around a wrist.

He had not seen the beast put his hair up, not that it was long enough to completely warrant a hairtie. Dimitri had never worn his hair up, either; he’d proudly let it touch his shoulders and allow Felix run his fingers through it as children. With some embarrassment, Felix could even remember his shameful attempts at braiding the hair that had shone golden under sunlight.

If Felix squinted hard enough, he could tell the too hair tie was frazzled and much too stretched; it wouldn’t hold up the bun he used to wear now. If he squinted harder, he could see the resemblance to the hair ties he had used back around the academy year – Felix had become a slave to mindless routine at the time, and the hair ties had all been the same kind, from the same Fraldarius merchant that used to come by to the family house.

Once, a hair tie had been left behind in a place that Felix had yet to visit again in the monastery. He had never gone back to retrieve it, out of embarrassment and inability to look at the boar straight in the face for the weeks following the incident.

Don’t do this to yourself, don’t give yourself hope. Something fragile like that – Felix couldn’t afford to have it shatter as it had before.

That this – that this thing remembered and treasured something that hadn’t gone up in flames that day nine years ago –

Felix shook the inane hope away, for it was just that. Inane. Useless.

”It’s strange,” Dimitri’s voice interrupted his internal confusion, his tone achingly exhausted once more. Anger accompanied it, but it drowned underneath the oppressive weariness. Felix’s heart picked up the pace regardless, too preoccupied with the line of thoughts his mind had gone to. ”I can never push your hands away, Felix.”

Crouching in front of the beast was already sending an ache through his knees, so Felix sunk to sit down on them instead as he tugged the beast’s hands toward himself again. ”Because you can’t pretend with me,” Felix said as he got a closer look of the band around the relatively scarless wrist. ”I know what you are.”

”Yet here you still are,” the beast with Dimitri’s face said, voice falling so quiet Felix had to strain his ears to listen. The singular eye looked at Felix like it was only seeing him for the first time through the haze of internal pain Dimitri was now consumed by. Dimitri’s thumb still rubbed over the hair tie on his wrist, but the boar didn’t seem to notice that himself.

(A hand tugging the tie off his hair in a desperate jerk of a motion, lips parted beneath Felix’s, fingers clinging to the back of his head and keeping him there – almost as if saying don’t leave me, Felix, don’t you leave me too. The boy Felix had sworn his life to drowning in the mind of a beast.)

”Yet here I still am,” Felix confirmed with a thin voice, lips pursed together as he observed the other’s movements. He could say sorry for not being there to help him when everything went down with Cornelia. He could say sorry for not finding him sooner. But he had no voice for such things.

Apologies wouldn’t fix the damage, anyway – not the one inflicted upon Dimitri, not the one Felix was inflicting upon himself even now.

”Foolish,” the beast said, and for once Felix couldn’t help but agree with the thing that wore his friend’s face.

xvii. yellow roses.

Afterwards, Felix found himself back at the Goddess Tower and at the mercy of cold winter winds. He could still feel the press of Dimitri’s scars against his fingers, even through the leather, and a memory from long ago flitted across his mind from this very place. Boar had cast aside the gauntlets he always wore that night, for him, and Felix’s chest constricted as he thought of it now while he rubbed his gloved hands together in attempt to chase out the ghost of a feeling touching Dimitri had left behind.

Back then, he had watched Dimitri walk away from him, not knowing how things would change only in a matter of weeks, unaware of short months that would turn into excruciating years. Back then – back then the boar hadn’t quite looked him in the eye as they had danced, but his bare hand had been in Felix’s, the scars pressed against Felix’s calloused palm.

It had been the closest thing to honesty between them in years at that point, and the memory of it had burned in the far edges of Felix’s mind through the nearly five years of separation. Now, at the scene of the memory, regret flashed through Felix once more. He didn’t like regrets – hated having any, hated people clinging to them instead of moving on and seeing to the things they had left to do. And yet he always found himself doing things he hated with Dimitri.

At heart, Felix was still that stupid naive boy, whose dearest wish had been to spend his life at Dimitri’s side while laughing at Sylvain’s idiocy and watching Ingrid marry Glenn and take up knighthood at his side. That boy was hurt and in pain, almost unrecognizable under the bruises his heart had taken over the years, but he was still there, and Felix realized it now as he gazed up at the clear full moon hanging above the monastery.

Under the pale light, the reflection of the sun’s beams, he felt vulnerable, like his own facade had been forced down for the first time in a long, long time.

Yet here you still are, the boar had said.

”And here I still am,” Felix muttered as his hand rose to his chest, right over where his heart was beneath the layers of clothing and skin. The traitorous thing was beating much too hard from the idea that somehow, beneath the many layers of bloodlust and revenge, Dimitri still existed and waited to be pulled out.

But the thing was – Felix didn’t know how to do that. He only knew how to hurt, how to prod at wounds until they opened, which words to choose to hurt the person the most. He had been raised a warrior, not a savior, and Felix knew his own weaknesses well enough by now.

And yet the mere possibility that Dimitri had chosen to keep something of Felix instead of his ghosts… Felix’s heart pounded and his lungs ached with a feeling that had become more frequent again over the past few weeks after years of relative calm.

To think, he thought, not with bitterness but reluctant surrender, I’d be sick for a thing like that. His fingers splayed against the fabric over his heart, and he could almost feel its beat.

Under the moon, the truth was easier to admit – that it was not any duty to his father or the Kingdom that would keep him trailing after the beast, but the fact that even after all this time Felix still wanted to chase after that boy from his childhood until he would finally catch up and be able to tell him, don’t run away like that again, Dima.

A shallow, loathsome laugh escaped him at the thought. ”How idiotic,” he said out loud just to make the silence more bearable. ”As if a thing like that would happen.”

Even to his own ears, his voice sounded weak.

The thorns in his lungs prickled and grew, and Felix coughed once, twice, before the sound of approaching footsteps reached his ears. They weren’t as heavy as the boar’s would have been, but they were heavy enough for Felix reconize who it was and for a grimace to settle back on his face.

”Done with your flirting for the night?” he asked as he glanced at Sylvain’s approaching figure. His voice didn’t shake. Good. He looked back toward the low-hanging moon. ”I’m not in the mood for your shenanigans, Sylvain.”

”That’s how you greet the guy that came all the way here to check up on you, Felix?” Sylvain said and forced a laugh out of himself. Despite the warning signs, Sylvain came all the way to stand by Felix’s side, the flippant smile audible as he continued, ”That’s pretty heartless.”

”I’m quite sure that was my reputation at the academy, so why are you surprised?” Felix jerked his hand away from his chest, only to cross his arms as he sent a defiant stare in Sylvain’s way. Under his friend’s gaze he felt even more vulnerable than before. He’d seen that particular stare from Sylvain far too many times over the years as they had looked into the rumours regarding Dimitri’s survival: sharp, entirely too knowing.

”I doubt anyone thought you were heartless,” Sylvain said with a snort of a laugh. The easygoing smile was painful to look at when it made him think of the person already on his mind, so Felix turned away once more. ”Well, at least they wouldn’t have if they had got to know you, that is.”

Felix said nothing, and silence fell between them like so many times before through the months they spent together searching for Dimitri in their fathers’ stead.

”Besides,” Sylvain said, softer, ”I doubt anyone that could see you now would ever call you that.”

”What’s that supposed to mean,” Felix bit out, trying to school his expression into something harder, something that would drive away the vulnerability and the image of the hair tie around the beast’s wrist printed on his mind. It didn’t quite work, as the only thing it accomplished was bringing heat to his face as his ever cruel mind conjured up the memory associated with a hair tie long-lost in the recesses of his and Dimitri’s past. A memory that should have been sweet, had it taken place under any other circumstances; a memory of two teens kissing with all the clumsiness that time brought with it.

He had wanted to forget that one so badly, and yet his mind always clung to memories Felix wished to toss away as though it was bent on hoarding and containing all of Felix’s misery for a full-on exhibition.

And now it felt like Sylvain was looking through that exhibition, beneath full moon and over the soft thumping in Felix’s chest.

”It means,” Sylvain said, brows wrinkled as he – for once in his Goddess-damned life – tried to pick the right words, ”you look like… you look like you’re feeling, Felix.”

”You say that like it’s a rarity,” Felix said, turning his eyes down to deflect Sylvain’s gaze off of him. The stone floor beneath his feet remained dirty with dust, rubble and mud that had yet to be cleaned. Then, Goddess curse his lips, he said, voice much more raw than even he himself expected, ”I’m not – I’m not without emotion, Sylvain.”

For several seconds that felt like full minutes, Sylvain said nothing, obviously absorbing his words and tone. Felix was about to speak again when Sylvain finally responded, ”I didn’t mean to imply you were. I… Better than anyone, I know you’re not.”

Another lapse of silence went by until Sylvain cleared his throat once more. ”Is this about Dimitri?”

When has it not been hung precariously on Felix’s lips but didn’t slip out. Instead, he went for the lie he’d tried telling himself before. ”Nothing I do or feel revolves around that beastly thing.”

Sylvain snorted, and Felix caught sight of the smile dangling on his childhood friend’s lips. ”Come on, Felix. You know I know you better than that, don’t you?”

Sylvain came to stand closer to him then, but had the sense to not reach out to drape an arm around Felix’s shoulders as he usually would. ”This is probably a bad time to bring this up,” Sylvain said, ”but you talk in your sleep, buddy.”

The night air felt much colder on his face then, his heart stuttering out of surprise until it regained its usual rhythm. Felix’s skin tightened and prickled, and he sent a narrow-eyed glare to the man that never seemed to realize the harm his actions caused. ”Sylvain,” he snapped, but something in him was trembling and that something leaked into his voice. ”I told you to drop this. Mind your own business for once.”

”You’re gonna hate me for saying something so sappy, but,” Sylvain sighed, and something like sincerity emerged into his voice, ”I don’t want to see you hurting. I get that it’s much to ask, with everything that’s happened, but...”

”Hurting,” Felix repeated the word like it was one of Sylvain’s unholy attempts at cooking anything else than the cheese gratin Dimitri so loved. (Felix rather liked it too, but Sylvain didn’t need to know that.) ”I’m not the – I’m not the one hurting here. If you want to see hurt, go back to the cathedral and look to your heart’s content. Look at everything that thing did in today’s battle.”

The memories came fresh, unbidden: of a beast leaping over the fences to reach the enemy commander quicker, ignoring the professor and everyone else but the enemy, the fur-lined cloak flashing red with fresh blood. As ever, the sight sickened Felix, and even thinking of it now made his insides tremble with – agonized grief, anger, confused sense of loss that he thought he might have been starting to overcome.

And yet, the thing he had found inside the cathedral just earlier, many hours after the battle, had been more fragile than the glasses Dimitri had spent a lifetime breaking by accident, even before everything changed. Wrapped around that creature’s wrist was a hair tie that at least resembled the ones Felix used to tie his hair up into a bun – usually unseen beneath all that armour, but Felix had seen it and lost his breath for the stupidity of it all.

The beast had rubbed his fingers over it like it was a comfort, one lifeline he had at the bottom of his own sea of misery and violence.

Maybe now it reminded Dimitri of Glenn, but it had never been Glenn whose hair a nine-year-old Dimitri clumsily tried to arrange into a proper ponytail. It hadn’t been Glenn whose hair younger Dimitri had tentatively played with when he was tired and sharing a bed with Felix.

”Felix,” Sylvain’s voice broke through Felix’s reverie, brought him back to the moment. ”You can’t say that while making that kind of face if you want to make me believe you.”

All these unwanted, unwarranted feelings coursing through Felix like boiling water did not mix well with Sylvain’s well-intentioned but ultimately useless prodding. ”Fine,” Felix snapped and turned fully towards the other, arms crossed over his chest and hands clenched into fists. ”You’re right – is that what you want to hear so badly, Sylvain?”

The rant bubbled out of him before his mind could catch up with his mouth – as was usual with him, and as always Felix couldn’t quite stop himself in time. ”You keep pestering me about the cough – yes, I’m sick. Lovesickness, you called it back in the academy.”

Felix laughed bitterly, borderline hysterically, at the word. Lovesickness. It had always sounded like nonsense, but what else could it be when constantly thinking of Dimitri brought physical pain on top of the mental aches? The five years had put his mind and body at ease for long stretches of time when he got busy with something not Dimitri-related, but there were just as many weeks when Dimitri was constantly present despite his absence and presumed death.

”And yes,” Felix said, a bitter and bloody taste on his tongue as something scratched at his windpipe, the sensation so familiar Felix easily ignored it after clearing his throat, ”it’s about… that thing. Boar. As ever.” Felix’s nose wrinkled. ”Pathetic, isn’t it? Getting sick for… that.”

Sylvain, to his credit, hadn’t flinched away when Felix had raised his voice, hadn’t even taken a step backwards when Felix had subconsciously inched closer as if looking for a fight. Under the pale light, Felix couldn’t make out every detail of his expression, but he saw the downward-curled mouth and the pinch between brows – Sylvain was taking him seriously. Good. Or was it? Felix almost wished the other would laugh this off and they could pretend this hadn’t happened, just like other people tried to pretend the last five years hadn’t done irredeemable damage to whatever was left of Dimitri.

But Sylvain didn’t.

The Dimitri-sized chasm in Felix’s chest had never felt so immense before, and the slightest sliver of hope only made it worse, because Felix knew better than to believe in it but he would still cling to it despite that better judgment. Because he was still, irreversibly –

”It’s not pathetic to love someone, Felix,” Sylvain said, his voice as clear as the crisp nighttime air between them. His lips pulled into a tight smile right after. ”I know I have no right to say that, with the way I am, but…”

”So don’t,” Felix interrupted, only to be interrupted himself by the cough ripping through his throat. Hoarsely, with a hand pressed over his mouth, Felix managed, ”Stop analyzing my feelings.”

What Felix didn’t expect was for Sylvain to move toward him right then and wrap his arms around his smaller frame, surrounding him with unwanted warmth to combat both the cold of the night and the agonized mixture of resignation and hope.

The hair tie. The scarred hand Felix had held at the Goddess Tower many years ago. Blue eyes that had looked past him, brimming with sadness and longing. The month before the Goddess Tower: hand in Felix’s hair, holding him still, begging for him to stay where he was. Other events that blurred between one another, their exact times and places vanishing from Felix’s mind and only leaving Dimitri and himself in.

”Felix,” Sylvain said quietly, still audible even over the coughs that kept echoing into the night, ”you don’t have to suffer by yourself.”

”Again,” Felix muttered as he swallowed down blood and pride, not returning the embrace but standing in it anyway, ”you’re saying this to the wrong person.”

And five years too late.

(Felix’s hands shook as he tried to get the blond hair to obey him. Glenn had taken to braiding Ingrid’s hair for her, and he’d shown Felix how to do it, but in practice it was much harder, especially with hair shorter than Ingrid’s. Still, Felix was determined to see this through, if only to prove his brother that he could do this on his own.

And, well, maybe it was nice to do something like this for Dima. Maybe that was the primary reason Felix had wanted to learn how to braid – he got curious about how Dima would look with one. His hair wasn’t long enough to a full braid like Ingrid’s, but smaller braids should do just fine, even though they were more delicate work.

Felix’s brows scrunched up with concentration as he fumbled with strands of blond hair when the head they were attached to shifted again. ”Dima,” he complained, ”I won’t get this right if you keep doing that.”

A blue eye peered at him, but this time he didn’t move his head to face Felix. ”I’m sorry,” Dima said, bright and honest, and Felix’s chest puffed with an odd sort of pride and contentment. ”I like watching you, Felix.”

Somehow, that broke Felix's concentration way more than Dima moving around had.

”Will you teach me how to do it?” Dima went on to ask.

”My brother taught me,” Felix said, hesitantly. ”He might–”

”Glenn teaches me other things,” Dima said, and Felix saw the side of his mouth curve into a pout. ”I want you to teach me this.”

Felix’s face definitely heated up then, at the prospect of Dima wanting specifically him to teach him something instead of their older childhood friend or Glenn.

”Anything for you, Dima,” he said.)

xviii. chamomile.

They were to meet with his father and some reincorcements at the Valley of Torment, and Felix couldn’t say he was looking forward to it despite his prickly comment regarding Rodrigue’s potential reaction to the boar’s current state of being. It hadn’t got anything out of the beast, which was disappointing but not surprising – ever since that one night, he had not said a word to Felix.

His father had been the one to first believe in Dimitri’s survival, and as much as Felix hated to admit it, the logic of it had been sound enough for Felix to believe in it, too. Enough to keep searching, at least, even though admitting so would be far too revealing. Sylvain had seen through his grumblings, in any case.

For better or for worse, the old man had never seemed to notice Felix’s illness. Felix had gone out of his way to hide it – it also helped that outside the academy and away from Dimitri the coughing had become rarer, though still triggered if Felix lingered on the memories for too long – so it wasn’t surprising, but even so, Rodrigue had always gone more out his way to look after the crown prince than him.

Felix supposed it was the age-long Fraldarius curse, to be so entwined with the Blaiddyd house that their own family ceased to matter.

The stories had never suggested it, but Felix wondered if Kyphon had ever resented Loog for the tight hold he had over his life, like some inescapable fate.

Felix knew he did, just as well as he knew his old man didn’t – ever in love with the past he shared with the dead king.

(The worst part was that Felix took after his father in many more ways than he cared to admit – and that, perhaps, was one of the reasons he could hardly stand looking at the man, the mirror of the person Felix could be on his way to become.)

In the heat of Ailell, the beast never took off his furs nor armour, which included his gauntlets. The beast sweated like a man – smelled like one that hadn’t washed in months, too, and that made Ailell even worse – but no complaint left his mouth. Sylvain, on the other hand, complained on the behalf of the entire army, and Felix’s head quickly started to ache from hearing the same thing day after day.

Thankfully, Ingrid was there to shut him up. Somehow, she had even less patience for Sylvain’s crap than she had back at the Academy – though, Felix supposed as he stared at her and the tight lines of her face from the corner of his eye, the entire situation they were in was just as stressing on her as it was to their more soft-hearted companions.

The bitterest part of Felix thought do you understand how being around him was for me, back then before he silenced that voice by clenching his jaw and taking a long sip from his water skin. If his chest ached, he didn’t register it – numb to it, his mind off in more important places. Like how he would much prefer the midwinter in Gautier territory to this heat that dove deep into his clothes and made his legs sluggish.

There was, Felix found, something immensely gratifying in seeing the boar shrug Rodrigue’s hands off before the old man could touch him for the healing spell he was intent on casting.

”Wasted effort,” he heard Dimitri retort.

Yes, Felix would have thought once upon a time, with the anger of his seventeen-year-old self, it clearly is.

The battle ended without casualties on their part, and Lord Gwendal’s forces deemed it fit to not go on a suicide mission after seeing Dimitri glower at them from the side of their commander’s corpse. Even the beast didn’t deem it necessary to chase after them, instead opting to stand deathly still the next few moments until Felix’s father joined them and got off his horse.

”Do try to temper in your joy, Your Highness,” he said at the sight of Dimitri’s severe, unfeeling face, the humour in his voice ill-fitting for the situation. Felix said nothing, only pressed his lips thinner – and saw Dimitri do the same as he grumbled, ”You never change, Rodrigue.”

Felix observed his father observe Dimitri. Seeing the subtle shifts between a myriad of emotions on a face so similar to his own was unsettling to say the least, but the touch of grief that flashed in Rodrigue’s eyes felt validating, at least. Even if it wasn’t Dimitri his father mourned for – as always, it was the dead king and whatever was left of him in the world of the living.

To this day, seeing his father look at Dimitri like that twisted Felix’s insides into a tight, frustrated knot of anger. With no way to articulate his feelings without snapping and this definitely not being the right moment for it, Felix’s jaw only clenched tighter as Rodrigue finished studying Dimitri and went on with his ramble about how much a relief it was to see him alive, to which Dimitri gave no visible reaction.

Corpse, he had called himself, and he still very much looked like one – sounded like that too, as he refused to turn to Fhirdiad, to the people that kept waiting for him.

The living held no power in his mind, and yet…

What truly surprised Felix was his father looking Dimitri straight in the eye and asking, in that unnervingly steady voice, ”Which is more important, the dead or the living?”

That.

That had never happened before.

Dimitri’s eye narrowed, and his voice cut like a blade through the air as he hissed, ”Silence.”

It should have been too painful to watch, and yet… Felix, ever the masochist, kept his eyes firmly on this unfolding scene – and that was why he saw every detail of Dimitri’s changing expressions when Rodrigue gestured one of his knights over and revealed the late king’s Relic, Areadbhar.

…Well, as many details as he could without standing right in front of the boar’s violence-worn face.

In truth, it was the most emotion he had seen on Dimitri’s face since the night he caught the boar scratching his skin open, and not all of it was desperation or despair. Not that the look of utter reverence that crossed that face was much better – frankly, Felix had the urge to smack it off, because that’s not how you should look at objects, you fool – but it was something different, and Felix would take it as proof that there was still something worth searching for in the corpse of a man.

Not that he had much need for proof, not when he was going to stick around anyway.

”Areadbhar,” Dimitri whispered hoarsely, voice thick with that reverent emotion. From Gilbert’s side, Felix could see his hands shake when he accepted the ivory lance from Rodrigue’s hands. ”Father’s...”

”It is yours, now,” Rodrigue said, voice much gentler than moments ago when he had argued with Dimitri over the direction the army ought to go. ”I managed to steal it back from one of Cornelia’s underlings. It is about time for it to return to its master’s hands.”

Felix snorted, unable to control himself. Even so, Rodrigue’s gaze didn’t slip to him as he muttered, ”As understated as ever, father. Getting that back must have been a struggle.”

Dimitri’s jaw clenched and unclenched a few times in his attempts at finding the words to say, and when he finally spoke, it was with a heavy voice tinged with emotion, ”I… I am grateful, my friend.”

Rodrigue smiled softly at that, and Felix tore his gaze away as a wave of dizziness washed over him.

Damn this heat. Damned Ailell. Damn his father – and damn this precarious hope in himself that would be as easily crushed as egg shells.

He’d always called Sylvain a fool, but it always took one to know one, didn’t it?

The old man joined forces with them, which Felix hadn’t expected but should have seen coming when Rodrigue brought up the promise he had made with Dimitri’s father, thus squashing all of Felix’s hopes that perhaps Rodrigue had let go of some of his own delusions over the years.

But no, of course he hadn’t.

Felix didn’t know why he bothered expecting anything else from his father.

The entire way back to the monastery, Felix avoided the man, using the dizziness that had been chasing him since the Valley of Torment as an excuse.

Not that it mattered much, as his father was busy catching up with Gilbert and throwing glances at the beast’s backside at every chance he got.

The memento of the dead clearly meant more than his still living son, but Felix couldn’t muster up the energy to feel properly bitter about it. He carried grudges like weapons, but even he grew weary of it.

He couldn't expect his father to be better when he himself wasn't.

”Felix.”

Back at the monastery, avoiding the inevitable became a bit too difficult, especially when Felix’s habits were so well-known not only to his friends but also to the old man himself. So, turning around and seeing Rodrigue stand at the entrance to the training grounds wasn’t as much a surprise as it was accepting what was eventually going to happen anyway.

”Father,” Felix said and took his time returning the training sword to its proper place in the weapons rack before again turning toward the old man. ”I was busy. Make it quick.”

Rodrigue had the gall to chuckle at him. ”Always so brisk with your words,” he murmured before shaking his head as if in disbelief. ”Have some tea with me, won’t you?”

Felix wasn’t sure whether to be thankful no one else was around or not. ”Make it quick,” he repeated as he walked up to the exit. The sand scrunched under his feet, and Felix nearly sighed in relief when his steps didn’t falter. ”My time’s better spent training than chatting nonsense.”

”You needn’t worry,” Rodrigue said. ”Just a quick cup in the quarters I was kindly given. I only wish to catch up with what’s been going on with you, Felix.”

”Right,” Felix muttered. ”I’ll believe it when I see it.”

The familiar scent of chamomile tea wafted through the room as Felix entered before his father, and that alone tipped Felix off that he hadn’t been the intended target for the invitation. Felix inhaled, swallowed down the sting, and pretended that it didn’t matter. Over the years, things had been better, despite the secrets Rodrigue never noticed that a father perhaps ought to have.

”That was his favourite,” Felix made the remark regardless, out of old spite. ”I take it I’m the back-up plan.”

”Preferably,” Rodrigue said with a sigh as he pulled out a chair for Felix, ”I’d have had both of you with me. It would have done His Highness good to reminisce of better times, but it appears he is in no mood for such.”

”He does enough brooding on his own just fine,” Felix said as he sat down on the offered chair and let his father pour tea for him. Felix didn’t move to add honey into it, only pulled the cup closer and looked down at its contents. The few times he had shared a moment like this with his old man and Dimitri had been before the rebellion, and Felix could remember very little of them but one detail had always struck him as strange – the solemnity with which Dimitri gazed down at the tea, the tremble of his fingers when he murmured, ”It smells divine, Rodrigue.”

Rodrigue poured a cup for himself, and they remained silent for a few long moments as Felix waited for the old man to get to the point behind this.

”...It was your birthday not too long ago,” Rodrigue eventually murmured against the edge of his cup, eyes on the surface of the liquid just as Felix’s had been just now. Neither of them were very good at making eye contact with one another, not since Glenn. ”Forgive me for not being able to procure a present for you.”

”...Was it?” Felix asked before realizing – yes, it had been almost two weeks since his birthday, not that it had dawned on him earlier. His gaze flitted away from his father and around the relatively bare and dusty room instead. It looked barely even slept in. ”...I’m not a child in want of pampering.”

Two months and almost two weeks since Dimitri’s birthday that Dimitri hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate – or have anyone around for it. Not that the beast cared or knew, as lost as his sense of time had become. Still, Felix's mouth filled with petals whenever he thought of it. Quickly, he took a long sip to cover it up, swallowing both the burn of the hot tea and the taste of iron.

”Perhaps not,” Rodrigue admitted. ”But even so, in these times, a little bit of light does all of us good.”

Again, Felix thought of the emotion in the beastly voice when Dimitri had received Areadbhar. The tremble, the quake, the disgusting reverence for a memento. ”That lance,” he said, annoyed with himself already, ”helps enough.”

Asides from that one night, it’d been the most affected Felix had seen the beast get by the deeds of someone living rather than the ghosts he so eagerly spoke to at the cathedral. It was just as fine a birthday present as anything, considering Felix had spent – he remembered now – the actual day in bed, a rare fever having overcome him and a petal-filled cough wrecking him in the privacy of his room. Sylvain had been nice enough to sneak off to the infirmary to get him some medicine.

”You took it back when you went mad and dashed to the capital behind my back, didn’t you?” Felix asked, rubbing his thumb over the porcelain. He didn’t remember much from that time, in all honesty: he had been so ill following the news, he’d barely noticed his father’s absence from the house. Felix chuckled, the sound much more raw than he’d intended, and his stare returned into his cup filled with Dimitri’s favourite tea. ”You and he are so alike with your recklessness.”

”I will admit,” Rodrigue said with a heavy sigh, ”I am not proud of my conduct back then, especially since retrieving the Relic was the only thing I could accomplish. Had I done something earlier, perhaps His Highness wouldn’t have...”

Turned out the way he did, Felix filled in the words his father didn’t speak. ”It doesn’t matter what you should have done,” he said as he stared at the wrinkled reflection of himself on the tea. The very picture of a hypocrite, right there. Felix cleared his throat to rid himself of the persistent ticklish feeling in there. ”What matters is doing what you can right now.”

Rodrigue’s stare on him was a tangible thing he could feel on himself, so Felix pursed his lips and didn’t lift his head up. ”Yes,” the old man said, something relieved in his tone that Felix couldn’t understand. ”You are right, Felix… and thank you. For staying by His Higness’ side after you found him.”

What was Felix to say to that?

His destiny had always been woven into Dimitri’s, for better or for worse, and while he resented it, shaking those chains off wasn’t something he could do with his human strength alone. He might have promised not to die before Sylvain, and Sylvain promised likewise, but it wasn’t to him Felix’s life had been sworn.

”It wasn’t as though I could go home,” Felix said at length, lifting his gaze just enough to make sure Rodrigue saw the tight, displeased line of his mouth. ”Regardless of that fool, the Empire must be stopped. Innocent people saved. I didn’t do any of this for a beast that thinks itself dead.”

The silence between them weighed less than the knots in Felix’s chest, and so he was content to let it drag on as they both sipped at the tea neither of them particularly cared for.

xix. blue salvia.

Felix continued visiting the cathedral well past what would be the curfew back in the academy days. The beast wasn’t always there – not now that Rodrigue kept going there, as well. Felix supposed their short argument after the battle in Ailell had done something to strain the relationship in Dimitri’s mind.

Still, the beast had accepted the new armour Rodrigue had gifted him along with the dead king’s Relic. In fact, Dimitri was busying himself with said armour that night in the middle of the cathedral once more.

This was what Felix walked in on: Dimitri’s back turned to the entrance as usual, his low murmurs the only sound to break the silence asides from Felix’s too loud steps, his posture hunched protectively over both the ivory lance and the pieces of silvery armour. Upon getting closer, what Dimitri was doing became much clearer: he was polishing the pieces of already well-maintained armour.

Felix’s voice cut through the air sharply: ”So, you still have the presence of mind for something like this.”

Something clanked against the stone floor, and Dimitri’s shoulders visibly jumped. Felix’s brows furrowed – he had been deliberately loud in his approach just to avoid startling the beast.

”Go away,” the beast growled. ”Rodrigue’s not here.”

”As if I’d search for my old man,” Felix snorted as he came to hover over Dimitri and set his eyes on the pieces of armour set before them. The candlelight burned low around them, yet bright enough for a task like this. ”...Polishing an already polished armour seems like a useless thing to do, even for you.”

Without being prompted by the other, Felix sat down to watch Dimitri work. From the corner of his eye, he saw his jaw clench, clearly annoyed by his presence. Good, Felix thought and stayed perfectly still where he sat.

”It gives me something else to do with my hands,” the beast finally said after a short pause. The words still came out in a low growl, but the way he hunched over the chest plate his hands used a cloth to rub clean screamed exhaustion. ”Not that they’re much good for anything but killing.”

Felix wished he could feel something else than heart-wrenching guilt at those words – even rage would be better than it. Perhaps it was the illness, constantly getting worse nowadays, combined with the small glimpses of a person beneath the hatred and vengeance. Like hot chocolate amidst the dead of the winter: surrounded by the cold, one mug of warmth was heavenly, not well-appreciated enough other times.

”Like you’re anything special,” Felix said lowly. ”Like you’re so different from the rest of us.”

It was a good night, because Dimitri didn’t start speaking of the ghosts as he had in Ailell. Instead, he shrugged. ”I seem to recall,” he said, tone distant, ”that you were good at braiding.”

Only now Felix noticed Dimitri’s hands were bare, neither gauntlets nor gloves covering it. Thin scars covered the pale skin, but no blood accompanied them tonight. Felix’s shoulders slumped despite himself, and he exhaled.

”That was Glenn,” he said, narrowing eyes at Dimitri’s profile as though the beast would begin speaking to the dead once more at the mention of Felix’s dead brother. ”I wasn’t that good at it.”

”That is not how I remember things.” The man still didn’t turn to look at him, but Felix could read his expression well enough from his side. A low, broken chuckle escaped Dimitri. ”But then again, it doesn’t matter.”

Felix said nothing to that, but kept his eyes on the hands rubbing a dampened cloth over the curves of silvery plates, over the darker sections that made up the depiction of the Blaiddyd Crest. In the candlelight, the scars on the backs of Dimitri’s hands were only barely visible. There weren't too many of those, his palms were the real battlefield.

Felix used to love holding those hands in his, used to love entwining their fingers as he dragged Dimitri along when Sylvain suggested something absolutely stupid Ingrid would scold them for later before joining them in the dirt and grass herself. That was before everything became stained in blood in his vision at that rebellion, when he no longer could reconcile the new Dimitri with the old one.

He still couldn’t, not when the beast pushed everything of old Dimitri away from it, but the anger had receded.

He’d been feeling ill ever since Ailell - more than usual – and that was the excuse he would later justify his actions with to himself.

He reached out to the hand closest to his, slowly just to make sure the beast caught sight of his movements – he was not in the mood for broken fingers, thanks – and soon his fingertips touched the back of the hand he had once known much better. The beast startled, even though it had seen the approach and decided to allow it, and his wide frame stilled for one precarious moment.

Felix stilled, as well. He had patience as shallow as Sylvain’s fake personality, but he also wasn’t a reckless fool that dove headfirst into suicide missions like the corpse, Dimitri, beside him.

(Yet, he followed him – and wasn’t that just inviting death in sooner?)

Eventually, the beast sighed, his shoulders sagging with with the air rushing out of his lungs as he turned up his hand for Felix and spread his fingers just like he had when they were both younger and smitten with each other’s company.

Just like back then, Felix took the wordless invitation and entwined his fingers with the other’s and pressed both their scarred and calloused palms together. They no longer fit perfectly, the way they had all those years ago, but –

It could be good enough, Felix thought as he watched Dimitri continue his work with the chest plate with only one hand, fingers reverent as they brushed down metallic surface.

One day, it could be good enough.

If only Felix wasn’t running out of time, and Dimitri out of reasons to keep going.

xx. edelweiss.

The next time Felix saw the beast come undone with emotion other than anger was at Myrddin, when a familiar, ridiculously tall man of Duscur returned to their lives unannounced and rather unremarkably.

Amidst the battle, there was no time to catch up, but from the corner of his eye Felix saw Dimitri’s head continually tilting toward Dedue, as though he couldn’t quite believe the other was truly there amidst them. Felix’s own chest tightened with relief he could not place – he had done nothing but spout awful anger-soaked words at Dedue back at the academy, and fine, maybe he regretted that just as he regretted many other things – right before he dove back into the chaos of battle that was as familiar to him as ballroom dancing was to most other nobles outside Faerghus.

Magic burned on his fingertips, and lightning burned through another soldier’s armour. Another corpse at the boar’s feet, a useless offering that only twisted the metaphorical knife in Felix’s gut further.

It’s only a matter of time before the ground beneath us collapses, he had said, because despite the small moments far in-between the bad ones, this was Dimitri’s suicide mission he’d dragged all of them on.

The ground beneath Felix’s own feet had begun shattering years ago – had been shattering ever since, despite Felix’s best efforts to stay on unbroken ground.

”Don’t – don’t ever throw your life away for me again.” Dimitri’s voice was loud enough to even reach where Felix rested against the wall of one of the houses left untouched by the chaos of battle. His eyes fluttered shut, he only listened as familiar exhaustion washed through him, accompanied by the same dizziness that had become commonplace since Ailell.

”As you wish, Your Highness.” Dedue’s answer was quieter, but the relief in it felt like a punch in the gut.

How can you be happy with that, Felix wondered, but he wasn’t asking it only from Dedue. Beneath his arms, his hands clenched, nails digging into numb skin through thick leather gloves. In the farthest corner of his mind, the memory of the beast’s hand allowing his to hold it played.

When Felix coughed, both blood and flower petals came out, and the petals were so covered in crimson and spit that their original colours could not be distinguished no matter how hard Felix squinted.

He knew others would be more than happy to throw a quick celebration – a meager one, as they still needed to ration their meals – for Dedue’s return, and he wasn’t going to deny them that. Only to avoid it himself, as he was already plenty exhausted himself upon returning to Garreg Mach. Carrying on straight from the Bridge of Myrddin had been an unpopular idea, and perhaps due to whatever little spark of relief Dedue’s return had brought, Dimitri hadn’t fought hard against the idea of returning to the monastery for a while. Now that Dedue had returned, there was little need for Felix to keep watch over the beast, too, so he had kept his distance from both Dimitri and Dedue.

Not that avoidance could go on forever – he knew it from the academy year, but some things he was still long ways from growing out of.

Sylvain somehow managed to rope him into attending the second Blue Lions reunion – though Dimitri was absent from this one as he was busy drowning himself with his ghosts, as usual – and Felix, for the life of himself, couldn’t remember how he had done it as he watched the others speak animatedly about the things that had happened during the five years.

Thankfully, the dining hall was full with the knights of Seiros and Fraldarius soldiers as well, so Felix figured slipping out unnoticed wouldn’t prove too much a challenge after a while of tolerating Sylvain’s nonsense, Ingrid’s frowns and occasional gentler smiles at Dedue, and everyone else being just a tad too cheerful for the time they lived in.

He hadn’t expected Dedue to be the one to gesture him to come along with him toward the kitchen.

”I wish to make some dessert for everyone,” Dedue said to him in an unnervingly even tone and even more even stare that Felix was unable to meet. ”Will you come along?”

”Oh no,” Sylvain said from Felix’s other side. Felix just knew he was recalling the unfortunate incident with the Gautier Cheese Gratin, so he promptly shoved his elbow into his friend’s side before the idiot could speak further of it.

If he hadn’t been waiting for the chance to slip out, he would have said no.

”Sure,” he said instead, even while knowing that Dedue wasn’t inviting him because of any pre-existing cordiality between them. If anything, he expected Dedue to elbow him in the face as soon as they got to the kitchens – and, Felix admitted, he kind of did have it coming for the things he said to him five years ago. The sentiment behind his words was still true – blind obedience is disgusting and helps no one, least of all the boar – but perhaps there had been a better way to go about it outside of mocking Dedue and his and Dimitri's relationship.

Dedue merely nodded at him as the rest of the table cheered – Annette’s delight at dessert made Felix sigh and all right maybe he’d try his hand at it if he must – when he and Felix left for the kitchens that should be blissfully empty by now.

”Don’t burn the place down,” Sylvain called after him, with laughter that grated on Felix’s nerves with how reminiscent of better times it was.

The short walk to the kitchens had been a silent one, but Dedue finally opened his mouth as the door slid shut behind them. ”I wished to thank you – and to ask something.”

”Thank me,” Felix repeated. Had auditory hallucinations found him now too? As if one delusional person wasn’t enough at the monastery. ”I don’t recall ever doing something for you.”

Dedue dropped the ingredients they had picked up from the supply storage along the way, his back turned to narrow-eyed and very flabbergasted Felix. As he began chopping up vegetables for the quick salad he was obviously intent on making, Dedue said, ”For looking after His Higness, of course.”

”Looking after–... what in the flames would give you the idea that I would waste my time like–”

”Annette told me she’s seen you wander to the cathedral at night frequently,” Dedue said calmly and without turning to look at him. Felix’s cheeks burned, but the feeling behind the heat flaring across the skin could have been anything, not just embarrassment. ”I have been informed that is where His Highness spends most of his nights.”

Felix’s mind blanked out. Annette. Of course she would – she spent way too much time working hard instead of taking care of herself or minding her own business. Of course she would have been the one to see him cross the bridge to the cathedral and draw conclusions. He hoped she wasn’t going to turn that into a song – as amusing as her song repertoire was a whole, he wouldn’t care much for that addition.

”Maybe, just maybe, I have been going there to pray when no one’s looking,” Felix said slowly, grimacing at his own words. ”There’s many number of reasons I could be going there, so don’t thank me for something I haven’t done.”

He could sense Dedue rolling his eyes even as the man kept slicing tomatoes, the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board as loud as Felix’s heartbeat in his ears. ”You never struck me as the kind of person with a habit for praying.”

Dedue knew him better than he had imagined. Felix’s lips curled at the words, a huff escaping through his nose. ”Whatever,” he said, pursing his lips. There was something that had been nagging at him, though. ”Why aren’t you with him now, then? The beast you followed so dutifully back in the academy.”

”Because it is not only His Highness I wished to meet again,” Dedue said, voice quiet and tone almost melancholic underneath the stoicism. The knife’s blade slammed against the board once more. ”When Ashe told me everyone wished to celebrate my return, I simply couldn’t refuse.”

”Ah, of course.” Felix couldn’t say anything bad about Ashe, really, despite how silly and outright dangerous his idealization of knighthood was. Years hadn’t changed that part of him much, but at least he wasn’t a suicidal fool like some other people Felix knew. ”...What were you going to ask of me, then? I’m not his babysitter, so no, I’m not going to take over your watch of him.”

”That is not it,” Dedue said with a huff that would have sounded exasperated if Dedue wasn’t the most ridiculously patient man Felix had ever met. Excluding when it came to Dimitri’s safety and honour. ”Perhaps this is useless prying on my part, but… You are ill, correct?”

Had Felix been holding anything when the so casually spoken question shot out, he would have dropped it and it would have shattered into thousands of pieces if it were something breakable. As it were, the only thing to fall was Felix’s heart – all the way down to his stomach, but it had already been in pieces for years so nothing of importance could shatter now.

”What gives you that idea?” he asked.

”On our trip back, you avoided everyone.”

”That is not unusual for me.”

”Yes,” Dedue agreed, ”but Sylvain seemed unusually concerned by that.”

Ah. The curse of having childhood friends that actually cared for him. ”That doofus worries a lot more than his exterior suggests. Pay no mind to–”

Unfortunately, a wave of dizziness washed through him right in the worst moment, and with it came the coughing and the rattling, unsettling feeling in his lungs. Felix stumbled backwards until his back met with the door, and there he trembled until the nausea went away, slowly but surely, and left him with heavy breaths and embarrassment at proving Dedue’s assumption correct so soon.

”You were saying?”

”Damn you,” Felix cursed and tried to push himself off the door with very little success as his legs kept on trembling. ”Fine, I’m not… at my best. But I’m not getting in anyone’s way on the battlefield.”

Dedue glanced at him over his broad shoulder then, and Felix clenched his hand into a fist, fingers curled over the petals coughed into his palm. Even so, a few petals fell, and Dedue’s eyes trailed to the mess on the floor at Felix’s feet. ”I was not worried about your battle prowess,” he said as he lifted his gaze to meet Felix’s, ”but yourself, rather.”

The chopping sounds ceased, and the knife was put down.

”I was never nice enough to you to warrant such concern,” Felix said, sneer slipping into his voice before he could help it.

”No, you were not.” Dedue turned to him fully then, arms crossed over a wide chest, his scarred lips a thin line.”I cared not what you said about me, however. It was the way you lashed out at His Highness that truly bothered me – but I have had time to think about much, ever since the day I helped His Highness escape from the dungeons.”

Felix had a terrible feeling about where Dedue was going with his words, but nevertheless persisted, scowling at the man. ”Don’t put any strange ideas on me. Whatever you’re assuming–”

”It is a sickness of the heart,” Dedue murmured, ”which you’re suffering from. Is it not?”

”A sickness of the heart,” Felix repeated, grimacing at the sound of it. Not that it was untrue, but it made the situation disgustingly more dramatic than just spitting out petals was. Though Felix couldn’t deny the roots of such sickness, not anymore and hadn’t for a while. ”...That’s one way to put it, I suppose.”

”We of Duscur have heard stories of it. Of the Hanahaki disease,” Dedue said then, much to Felix’s surprise. ”It was a common thing to talk about when I was a child. I was quite surprised people of Fódlan hadn’t heard of it before our academy year.”

”The what?”

”Hanahaki disease. You didn’t know the name for what ails you?”

”I never said that’s what ails me–” A cough, accompanied by spit-coated petals sticking to his chin. ”...Damn it.”

”The Hanahaki disease,” Dedue continued unperturbed, though Felix saw his eyes narrow minutely, an expression of a feeling Felix couldn’t name crossing them in that moment, ”is an unfortunate consequence of perceived one-sided love. That is how it is described. There are many stories in Duscur that give details of it, though the disease does not originate from there.”

”What does this have anything to do with what you’ve been saying?” Felix muttered as he wiped his chin clean of both the spit and the flowers that thankfully weren’t covered in blood this time. His lungs ached, however, and dizziness buzzed through him. ”Fine, I’m sick, but–”

”Love,” Dedue said plainly, ”makes people behave irrationally.”

Felix was both glad that Dedue had chosen the discreet route for this talk and annoyed that he couldn’t escape from the situation with his dignity still intact. The vulnerable feeling Dedue’s narrow gaze instilled in him was reminiscent of that night with Sylvain at the Goddess Tower – when Felix’s chest had been too full, when that damn hair tie burned vibrantly in his mind like a sign of Dimitri still being in there somewhere.

Now, Felix’s skin ran hot with a similar feeling of exposure: Dedue could see right through him, like Sylvain, and he didn’t know what to do other than resort to his juvenile anger that he hadn’t yet grown out of. The words came out with difficulty, too thick in his mouth. ”Don’t – don’t –”

”I have only ever known His Highness from the moment he saved me,” Dedue said, and the emotion in his voice was unmistakably gratefulness. Adoration, even. Felix’s stomach rolled at the feeling Dedue wasn’t ashamed of showing. ”But you knew him long before that. And I failed to take that into account five years ago.”

”Knowing him a long time doesn’t amount to much,” Felix said, sighing afterwards. ”Fine, he was my childhood friend. The closest one.”

Dedue nodded. ”I have always had a hard time imagining how His Highness used to be like before the Tragedy. But you have memories of that time. And I now realize… perhaps that is why you lashed out at him so often.”

”There’s a simpler explanation,” Felix said and forced himself to smile sarcastically, even though it didn’t feel right on his lips. He still itched to run, to escape Dedue’s gaze that felt all too piercing on his skin. The doorknob pressed awkwardly against his back, and yet Felix’s legs felt too weak still to properly support him. ”Perhaps I’m just a bad person.”

”I do not believe that to be the case,” Dedue said. The room felt even smaller as he frowned at Felix. ”I saw you protect our classmates more often than not, even back in the academy. Even His Highness, when I was unable.”

A distant, blurred memory came to mind: a dazed boar just behind him as Felix’s palm shifted and twisted on the hilt of his sword, determined to not look behind again but refusing to leave him regardless. It was so long ago, and yet nothing much had changed, asides from Felix’s feelings – sickness – growing worse.

He coughed again, but no petals came out this time despite the scratching in his lungs and the fluttery, leafy feeling in his throat. The kitchen felt too hot, suddenly, and Felix claustrophobic. ”Get to the point, already.”

Dedue remained silent for a moment, scrutinizing Felix and his face. Felix’s eyes shifted off to the side, just so he didn’t have to watch Dedue watch him. ”You are in love with him,” Dedue said, as though he was making an observation of weather and nothing more, ”and ill for it.”

The silence that followed was deafening over the roar of Felix’s blood in his ears. Sylvain had thrown the implications in the air before, but he had never accused him directly of being the kind of fool that couldn’t let go of a stupid childhood crush. Sylvain didn’t need to, not with words. It had been Felix that admitted it that night.

”And?” he said, shoulders sagging as he let his weight fall back against the door. His head ached, but not as much as his heart. Slowly, his eyes slid shut. ”It doesn’t matter what my feelings are. They’re not going to help the situation.”

”Feelings themselves do not,” Dedue agreed. ”But your actions are not meaningless.”

That night at the cathedral when his hand slipped into the beast’s, the beast’s fingers allowing his to curl between them, flashed through Felix’s mind, an obsessive thought that shouldn’t matter when most other times Dimitri’s stubbornness and vengeful drive got in the way of everything. Felix sighed, but it came out as a choked laugh. ”Aren’t they? I’m just as big a fool as my father.”

Dedue didn’t say anything for a while, and for a moment Felix dared to hope the conversation was done. But Dedue didn’t turn back to his vebetables, only pursed his lips thoughtfully as his stare weighed on Felix like bricks. ”You may be aware of this,” he began at length, slowly as though considering each word, ”but after the massacre of my people, I came to the castle with His Highness.”

”As his servant,” Felix said, waving the hand not covered in petals dismissively. ”I am aware.”

”My room was situated right beside his, naturally,” Dedue said, ”as it was what His Highness wished for.”

”Makes sense.”

”I recall the early weeks especially well. His Highness barely slept, but when he did, he often woke up screaming loud enough to wake me as well.” Dedue’s face stiffened, expression darkening. Felix couldn’t tell what his own expression was like – he remembered well enough how it was to sleep in a room adjacent to Dimitri’s.

”I recall clearly,” Dedue continued, ”some nights like that when His Highness sneaked into my room. But it wasn’t me he was looking for.”

Felix’s heart came treacherously close to stopping.

”I remember waking up to him calling out your name,” Dedue said, his mouth relaxing ever so slightly, close to smiling. ”He sounded so desperate. And horrified when he realized it was my room he had come into. His Highness would apologize for days on end for such behaviour.”

Felix’s gaze dropped to the floor before he could help it, face burning. ”...That boar…” Then, he sighed again, shrugging his shoulders. ”We used to sneak into each other’s rooms when we were still kids, especially when we had bad dreams. Some habits die harder than others.”

Dedue nodded. ”Those nights showed me how he cared for you. How he needed you. So I was rather surprised when we met at the Academy.”

”Look,” Felix snapped, and this time he managed to pull himself away from the closed door, ”I’m not going to apologize for everything I said back then.”

”That is not what I’m after,” Dedue sighed. His arms twitched at his sides restlessly, with what Felix assumed was the need to do something. ”I merely wished to ascertain whether my suspicions were correct. I must admit, I am rather relieved that they were. Although it seems you have suffered too long, just as His Highness has.”

Being offered condolences and pity had never suited Felix well, and he furrowed his brows at the other man while discreetly wiping his hand clean. ”I don’t need your pity.”

”I understand,” Dedue said, a small smile tugging at his lips. ”Receiving compassion… It was difficult for me too, once. Perhaps… it still is.”

Goddess, what would it take for this man to shut up?

”If you’re done now, I have something to say to you too,” Felix said, brows furrowed deeper. This time, he met Dedue’s gaze head-on and kept it. ”I know the boar said it already, but don’t you dare go dying on him again. Or any of us, for that matter. It would be… rather annoying.”

Dedue’s mouth twitched into a clear smile while Felix’s curled down into a defiant frown. ”I shall endeavour to not cause undue annoyance to you and His Highness, then.”

”Good.” Felix finally walked to the counter Dedue had been working on. He took the knife and continued where Dedue had left off, conscious of the mild amusement he could sense coming from Dedue’s direction. ”...I’ll help you with the vegetables.”

When all was said and done, Felix sighed and rolled down his sleeves. ”You can return to the others, I’m going to the cathedral.”

”...For prayer, I presume.”

If Dedue wasn’t so serious all the time, Felix would think he was making fun of him. ”...What else would I be going there for?”

This time, Dedue did chuckle.

On his way to the cathedral, as he was walking across the bridge leading to its doors, he caught a glimpse of a girl that couldn’t have been older than Annette had been back in the academy year. In passing, Felix felt uneasy at the intensity the girl stared at the cathedral with: her head didn’t turn toward him as he passed her nor did she acknowledge him at all.

She only stared.

But it was easy to pass off as reverence at what was being rebuilt, and so Felix did just that and didn’t give a second thought to the girl with brown hair and eyes that burned with both fire and ice.

By the time Felix returned to his quarters, exhausted in every sense of the word, the night had crawled upon the monastery. Someone had left a lit candle on the room's solitary desk not too long ago based on how little wax had dripped, and little ways from it stood a cup of still steaming tea and a package of what looked like tea leaves when Felix inspected it.

Beneath the package was a folded note, which Felix took out and unfolded, though he could guess its contents and sender well enough.

Tea from Duscur that has been shown to alleviate the symptoms a little. -Dedue

Felix shook his head in mild dismay – there were so many other more important things to worry about than himself – but thankfulness sprouted as he took a sip from the tea, which was delightfully spicy and almost scalding enough to numb his tongue.

He called out your name, Dedue had said, and Felix could easily picture a younger Dimitri wandering aimlessly into a room and saying ”Felix?” with a barely quivering voice, blue eyes wide and watery.

Felix had been the crybaby, but Dimitri had had plenty of teary expressions of his own back when he knew how to cry.

Inhaling through his nose, Felix took a longer sip that burned his lips just to rid himself of the memory that his mind conjured up too readily, too easily considering how Felix had tried to forget.

But, he supposed, that meant his mind was at least able to latch onto something other than the absolute worst memories.

Sometimes he had doubted it.

xxi. marigold.

Despite the common belief, even the beast had to sleep sometimes. Felix had occasionally walked in on him dozing off in the cathedral, but he had quickly awoken to the footsteps while Felix cursed the heels of his boots. Sometimes, though, he wasn’t at the cathedral.

Those times Felix would back right out, cross the bridge, and head back to the knights’ hall and sure enough he would find Dimitri curled up over the sofa located before the fireplace. He slept differently than how Felix remembered, but that was no surprise: Dimitri had lived and slept like a beast the past years, and that carried on as he still remained a beast despite the occasional cracks that threatened to show a human beneath.

Dimitri mostly slept while sitting now, back usually pressed against a wall of some sort, hand curled around the handle of a spear – Areadbhar these days, and he clung to the Relic like it was his last lifeline. That was when he slept at the cathedral.

But sometimes he would curl up over the sofa in the makeshift library section at the knights’ hall while the fireplace was still burning and casting weak light over the face turned towards the heat. The way Dimitri’s tall and broad body barely fit the sofa made it look as uncomfortable as sleeping on a horse, but Felix would keep that complaint to himself as long as Dimitri got some sleep for once.

The nights spent at the knights’ hall tended to be the calm ones most often, though Felix never stayed for long enough to find out just how many nightmares Dimitri could handle before giving up on sleep for the night. Just long enough until Felix’s own insomnia would begin to give way to sleepiness.

Tonight was one of those nights that found Felix at the knights’ hall with the sleeping body of Dimitri. Occasionally a knight or two would walk in to return a book or for something else Felix didn’t much care about, but none of them dared to approach or even look in Felix and Dimitri’s direction. Sometimes it would be Dedue, either bringing Felix tea or telling him he’d take over for him – the latter which Felix often refused, since he couldn’t sleep anyway and training would be counterproductive.

He wasn’t watching over Dimitri every night, despite what the professor and Sylvain had come to believe. No, that was mostly Dedue. But every now and then – like tonight – Felix couldn’t help but go to him, even if just to stand in the distance.

In tonight’s case, however, there was very little distance between them, as Felix had sat down at the feet of the sofa and as a result, Dimitri’s steady breathing indicative of sleep tickled the back of his neck. Dimitri had initially faced the back of the sofa, so his back had been turned to Felix’s, but he had shifted and turned around with a loud exhale of a sigh only minutes ago, and now Felix was entirely too aware of the breath against his neck.

If he glanced behind, he would see that Dimitri looked properly washed for once, undoubtedly thanks to Dedue. There were things Felix had been willing to do, but bathing the beast hadn’t been one of them, not when he didn’t know what would trigger his next coughing fit.

Dimitri would never know how much Felix suffered over him, and it was better that way.

Instead of looking back, Felix kept his eyes on the fire, with a familiar surge of restlessness in his veins. He’d never been that good at sitting and doing nothing, but tonight he didn’t have any weapon maintenance to do and training was out of the question.

That restlessness only grew over the next passing moments until Felix found himself unable to stay still and rose to his feet with the intention of fetching himself a book to pass the time with until he would become drowsy enough to make his way back to his quarters and actually manage to catch some sleep.

As he was climbing up to his feet, however, a huff from Dimitri halted his movements.

”El,” came a low mutter from the sleeping form behind Felix, who slowly looked back towards Dimitri on the sofa. The beast’s face had contorted: gone was the almost peaceful expression from the last time Felix had glanced at him, replaced by a tight grimace and a sleep-heavy voice that still managed to shake with anger. ”El… kill…”

A horrible feeling that had nothing to do with his persisting illness rose up Felix’s throat as he listened on, feet rooted to the place as though they too had joined up in torturing him further. Felix had once been better at walking away – much, much better – or, at least, he thought he had been.

Now, his lungs closed up and his legs remained stiff.

Dimitri breathed out, ”Sister”, like a terrible curse.

All air escaped from Felix’s lungs, as though he had been struck right in the gut.

(”I wish I had siblings,” Dimitri had once told him on one of his many visits to Fraldarius, lips curled down as he picked at the grass both of them sat on.

”It’s not as great as it looks like,” Felix said, looking up so Dimitri wouldn’t see the pout on his own face. I don’t need more competition for your attention.

Dimitri’s laugh was a much nicer sound than the birds above them, and Felix smiled a little and reached out for the hand beside his. ”Still,” Dimitri said as their fingers curled together, ”I wish I had a sister, at least.” Then, more grumpily, ”Maybe then I would stop being mistaken for a girl.”

Felix snorted, held onto that hand more tightly than he should have, before saying as sincerely as an eight-year-old possibly could, ”It’s not their fault you’re so pretty.”

”Stop saying Sylvain things!” Dimitri squeaked, an unmistakable flush on his cheeks as he looked away from Felix and toward the ground.

”Soooorry,” Felix said, extending the vowels with a grin that refused to leave his face, without sounding very sorry at all. Then, in a more worried tone, ”Don’t be mad, Dima?”

It took a few seconds, but Dimitri soon peeked at him from beneath his blond bangs, a grin spread on his lips, ”I could never be mad at you, Felix.”)

A sickening kind of understanding spread through Felix as he watched Dimitri’s sleeping face twisting minutely from one expression to another. The girl Dimitri had wanted a dance with – the Flame Emperor – Dimitri’s target for vengeance. His sister.

”Is this some kind of twisted joke?” Dimitri had asked five years ago, and Felix could still recall the hysterical laugh accompanying them. It was one of the moments he hadn’t let himself forget out of habit for misery – this is what he is, this is what Tragedy did to him – but he hadn’t ever thought he’d receive a more horrifying context for it.

It was a question Felix would rather like an answer to, as well.

But before any of that, before Felix would go back to his quarters and mull over this revelation – or whether he’d even drawn the right conclusion - Felix reached out to tug at Areadbhar tucked awkwardly beside Dimitri on the sofa.

Just as expected, the beast’s hands shot out as soon as he did that, startled into immediate awareness by the slightest movement, to grip the spear and to push Felix away from it. Felix stumbled backwards, would have collided with the fireplace if he hadn’t been ready for the strike and regained balance quickly, as Dimitri gripped the lance so tightly Felix was sure he heard something begin to crack.

Maybe it was the remains of his heart.

The wild look in Dimitri’s eye burned as the beast looked around, as though expecting Edelgard herself to jump out of somewhere. ”Edelgard,” it hissed, spite and righteous anger bleeding into the name, and really, Felix hated how immensely Dimitri’s own feelings had destroyed him.

”Not here,” he said to the beast and gathered himself. Dimitri seemed to relax at the sight of him, though frankly Felix was surprised Dimitri saw him at all. His heart pounded still, but exhaustion was beginning to catch up with Felix finally. So, he turned his back on the other, throwing his hand up carelessly in a dismissive wave at the confused creature that still contained fragments of the Dimitri Felix missed painfully. ”Scatter back to your cave, Your Beastliness.”

Before heading back to his own quarters, he went to knock on Dedue’s door. ”Your turn,” he said through the thick wood after he heard the first sound of movement, and immediately continued making his way upstairs, ignoring the buzzing mess that consisted of his feelings and memories.

xxii. red tulips.

Next up, Gronder Field. More messy feelings to be expected. Felix grew so weary of them – but might as well get it over with. The sooner the war ended, the better, even though it felt much like marching into their own deaths. Yet, Felix’s eyes never strayed from the back of Dimitri’s head, and his legs followed. Still chasing through the mud of grief and heartbreak. Felix was the biggest fool of them all in this court of jesters, but he was starting to come to terms with it. Kind of.

(”Dima, Dima, wait for me–!”)

The coughing never seemed to stop these days, even with Dedue’s tea that soothed his throat just right. He tasted blood in his mouth more often than not, and the dizziness haunting him since Ailell washed through him when he so much as glanced in Dimitri’s general direction. Sylvain noticed, and worried – worried so much more than what was necessary, even when Felix pushed him aside and told him to put his focus on where it ought to be.

This wasn’t the time. Not when there were so many things more urgent than the illness borne out of a love that refused to wither, just as stubborn as Felix himself.

Even his old man had noticed by now, though he didn’t know it was anything worse than an ill-timed cold. Still, he took the time to scold Felix, just like when he was a child and Glenn was still around, with a worried face that was directed only at him, not at Dimitri or any Fódlan map.

Disgusting, Felix wanted to say, but a part of him – a part of him had ached to be noticed for so long, he couldn’t deny the old man the chance to care for him entirely. Just this once, he thought as Rodrigue tucked him in and stroked his hair and Felix pretended the flush on his cheeks was fever-induced.

Useless effort on his old man’s part, of course. Felix had been ill for far longer than the man would ever know.

”Felix,” Ingrid said, lips pursed and eyes narrow with worry. ”You should stay behind. It’s obvious you’re still very ill.”

”Not ill enough to stay back and do nothing,” Felix retorted and glared at her nose instead of the familiar green eyes. ”Who knows what that idiot will do without me.”

Especially when Edelgard was leading the enemy army this time around. Felix’s stomach twisted into hard knots, the memory of the beast’s hiss for his sister’s head fresh on his mind. Can he really kill his sister, he wondered.

Then, a more disturbing thought: not without killing himself too.

He’d been calling this whole campaign Dimitri’s suicide mission all along, but perhaps it was even truer than Felix had believed before. Felix’s lips thinned into a downward line as he looked away from Ingrid entirely. ”I’m not going to get myself killed,” he said, a bitter taste of blood in his mouth, ”but I won’t let anyone else do something that stupid, either.”

Ingrid exhaled, the sound heavy and regretful. ”You’d better not,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. ”Glenn was one thing, but I cannot bear the thought of losing you, Sylvain, or His Highness on top of that.”

”Then it’s not me you should be scolding,” Felix scoffed, ”but those two suicidal fools.”

”Maybe,” Ingrid said, voice surprisingly small. Felix turned to look at her, only to see her head hung low and hands clutched together anxiously. ”But, please, Felix… please be careful.”

He knew perfectly well why she was saying this to him, perfectly aware of Glenn’s ghost that continued to hover above them all despite their best efforts to move on – well, save for Dimitri, who clung to the ghosts as though they were his lovers.

Bitterly, Felix thought: none of us are cut out for this sort of life.

The Battle of Gronder became an even bloodier mess than they had imagined beforehand: old classmates were cut and slashed down, corpses piling over corpses, and screams that sounded too familiar echoing across the fields. The battle for Myrddin had been nothing compared to shis, but there was no time to ponder over the harsh reality of war, only to fight and survive and protect his allies, shoving them out of the way if necessary.

Felix’s lungs burned, but it was a familiar burn from the exertion battle brought with it, and the number of enemies he cut down increased – no point in counting, it didn’t matter, and Felix’s eyes were searching for something else anyway.

Thankfully, Dimitri was as stupidly conspicuous as always, his roars audible even over the warfare.

For one passing moment, Felix felt sympathy for Kyphon trickle into his mind.

Serving a stupid king must have given him much grief all those centuries ago.

What a cursed thing it was, to be born into House Fraldarius.

The thoughts of the inescapable fate washed away as soon as they had appeared as Felix’s sword sank into another’s flesh, the soldier less armoured and their flesh easily cut despite how they nearly dodged the strike. Purple hair cascaded down as they fell, and a pained whine – a call for homeland not in Fódlan – followed before Felix finished the job with a sharp stab of his sword.

A familiar face, perhaps, had Felix spared more than a glance.

But there was no time.

His fool of a king was out there.

(”I’m going to spend my forever with Dima,” Felix had declared to Glenn with his face as red as a rose . ”You have Ingrid. Back off.”

Glenn laughed, his hand in Felix’s hair. ”Jealousy is not a good look on you, Felix.”)

”Edelgard!” For what it was worth, Dimitri hadn’t got himself killed yet, despite making himself the most obvious target by running off and shouting like that. By the Goddess, Felix would strangle him himself by the end of the battle.

At least, his roar made tracking him easy even through the the chaos of a dying battle. The Imperial soldiers had begun to retreat under the attacks from both the Kingdom and the Alliance forces, though in the confusion the two non-Imperial armies had also battled each other instead of unifying against the shared threat.

That Emperor and her right-hand man were truly a fearsome pair, but even so, the battle wasn’t turning in their favour. Even as the central hill burned, so did Imperial soldiers, but their screams faded under the thunderous roars of a beast hunting for revenge.

It all felt so very far away now – the beast, Dimitri, holding Felix’s hand, their fingers entwined, and the hair tie wrapped around his wrist like a memento of better times – but Felix was a fighter, and the flickering flame of hope had yet to die out completely.

He pushed on and cut through his enemies, as singleminded as he always was and always would be – for that was him, Felix Hugo Fraldarius, and he would cling to his identity with all his might even if ghosts threatened to steal it from him.

(Dima’s face broke off into a toothy smile as he said, ”I’ll never let go of your hand, Felix. I promise.”

”And I won’t let go of yours,” Felix murmured, shy but transfixed by his friend’s smile.)

In the end, Edelgard escaped. Gravely wounded, but alive nevertheless. She left behind a field of flames and a mountain of corpses, though Dimitri had played a bigger part in its creation than she as she had been content to watch and wait for his approach. Felix had been too busy with his own hill of death to see what he had done to his victims, the poor fools getting in the way of a man hellbent on taking their Emperor’s head.

His own sister’s head.

Felix’s lips pursed thin at the thought that came with the memory of a younger Dimitri mourning a missed chance for a dance.

Gronder Field was a testament to the ruins of both Dimitri and Edelgard and what their relationship once had been – or could have been, in better times, and perhaps Felix too would have been happier in that dreamy what-if world.

But in reality they got this: two siblings and their nations at war, with oceans worth of blood spilt between them, all of their past acquaintances dragged into the ongoing massacre.

Somewhere, Felix’s father was assisting the healers: he knew this as surely as he knew the feeling of Dimitri’s heartbeat against his fingers from years and years of holding onto Dimitri’s wrist before Dimitri began hiding it along with the rest of himself.

Somewhere, Ingrid was scolding Sylvain for his recklessness yet again – the same old song, the same old words, and Felix could imagine Ingrid’s tired irritation as though it were his own. As though they hadn’t lost enough loved ones – but that was also a reason for why Sylvain did what he did.

Dedue must be somewhere close by, too, but as Felix’s eyes caught sight of Dimitri’s hunched form, the rest of his thoughts whizzed out and only the sound of his own hurrying steps registered.

And a girl, approaching Dimitri at the same time as he from a different side, something manic and decisive in the rhythm of her stride.

Felix caught the glint of a dagger slipping from her sleeve, and –

Time runs out like a thief into the night.

Felix had always had faster reflexes than Glenn – it had been one of the few things he bested his brother at, even though it had never scored him a victory in their sparring matches. But Glenn had praised him for this quality of his, and Felix had puffed with pride whenever he got so much as a compiment from his older brother.

Father used to watch them sparring, always making time to catch at least some of it, but his presence at the training grounds vanished soon after Glenn’s death, leaving Felix alone to train, train, train until his lungs and legs ached.

Felix had always been the fast one, while Dimitri had the ridiculous monster strength the Blaiddyd bloodline was known for.

Even as the rather mousy-looking girl struck the dagger toward Dimitri’s vulnerable neck as he sat on the ground, back turned towards her, Felix still closed the distance in time, heartbeats loud in his illness-rattled chest.

Dimitri, his heart called out, Dima.

The dagger sunk into his flesh, too deep, too close to his heart, but in the heat of the moment Felix barely noticed as he struck her with a thunder spell, magic tingling on his fingertips as the girl screamed like a banshee of revenge, of the dead getting their tribute, her words a hollow echo of Dimitri’s from before.

Her words died with her soon enough – or perhaps he simply didn’t hear them over the pain that now erupted through him like an earthquake. He sunk to his knees just as Dimitri whipped around, finally awoken from whatever stupor he had been post-battle, and a wet cough escaped Felix along with blood and petals.

Despite the situation, Felix still found it regretful he couldn’t hide it from Dimitri completely.

(Glenn’s voice, scolding him: ”You don’t need to copy everything that I do, Felix!”)

”Felix,” Dimitri said, cradling Felix’s face between his hands. One of them lacked the usual gauntlet, Felix noted distantly through his laborious and pained breathing. The blood on the hand – Felix couldn’t tell if it was Imperial blood or his own. It didn’t matter.

There was still time, but not much, not with the branches in his lungs and the dagger shoved deep between his shoulderblades.

Felix opened his eyes, exhaled, and glared at the face so close to his own. It was the closest he had seen Dimitri’s face up close for many years, and cold, exhausted fear shone on it like the fires behind them across Gronder. A flash of anger rose in Felix, but it too was a tired feeling, its flames exhausted away over the years of helplessness.

Petals stuck to the corner of his mouth, but Felix paid it no mind as he lifted a hand to his lips to tug the glove off with his teeth. He somehow managed to pull it off, even between wheezing and spitting out petals that thankfully didn’t bear resemblance to a rose's.

Goddess, how mortifying it would have been to cough roses on Dimitri as he slowly died both of his illness and the dagger stuck deep into him.

Dimitri stared at him unseeingly, uncomprehending, until Felix sighed and brought his uncovered hand over Dimitri’s bare hand filled with scars he’d been so self-conscious of at the Academy. The sole visible eye widened in understanding – finally – and he let their hands fall from Felix’s face, instead choosing to drape his thicker, clumsier fingers between Felix’s like he had done an uncountable number of times in the past.

Dimitri squeezed, hesitant and scared, and Felix sighed through the tightness in his chest.

”You are, without a doubt,” Felix wheezed out, blood dripping down his lips, ”the biggest fool I’ve ever met.”

Dimitri’s hand shook in Felix’s, and the one pressed against his cheek didn’t fare much better. Or perhaps it was Felix’s body, trembling from the pain and and over a decade old love that shouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.

”You shouldn’t have,” Dimitri said, voice low and cracked, ”I was the target.”

”Just because you want to die,” Felix said back with as much sneer and dignity as one spitting flowers and blood could manage, ”doesn’t mean we want you to. Or that I’d let you.”

”More than the dead,” Felix continued as he leaned up to push his forehead against Dimitri’s, ignoring the blood and sweat that mingled, ”the living need you. Lift your gaze up from your damn feet, and you might actually see something for once.”

Dimitri’s eye squinted at the sudden proximity, his lips quivering as he said, ”I promised them, Felix. I promised.”

”The dead don’t care,” Felix groaned. ”Only the living do.”

Dimitri’s nose brushed against his, and Dimitri’s breath felt like a ghost on his lips. Felix held his hand tighter, with all the dying strength he could muster. Dimitri’s fingers trembled, and Felix sighed, allowing himself the last concession, ”I care, Dima.”

The bitterest part of Felix felt satisfaction at the sight that followed: Dimitri’s face going slack, eye as wide as it could be, as though he had been struck with a blade himself. Felix hated himself, for that feeling, but somewhere between the cracks of Dimitri’s expression was the boy Felix had missed every day for who knew how long, the one he’d been looking for with the same desperation Sylvain and Glenn used to make fun of him for.

(”Felix, come on, Dimitri’s going to hang out some other time, it’s not the end of the world.” Glenn’s hand in his hair, as soothing as it was mocking. ”I’ll take good care of him for you, alright?”)

”Felix,” Dimitri said, painfully choked, his fingers gripping Felix’s hard enough to hurt, ”don’t go.”

Another, harder fit of coughs followed Dimitri’s words, but Felix smiled despite himself and the disgusting mixture of blood, saliva, and petals wheezing out of him, sarcastic but somehow still genuine as he squeezed Dimitri’s fingers. ”Tag,” he rasped into the space between their mouths, ”you’re it.”

Sorry, Sylvain, I’m going first.

(Children’s feet stomping over a grass field, and one of the children reaches out for the other, fingers barely brushing at the dark blue fabric of a tunic –)

Did I finally catch you, Dima?

xxiii. rain lilies.

Through the thick furs of his cape, the sun’s shine felt suffocating, overbearing as Dimitri stood at the monastery’s graveyard, in front of the one specific grave he had never wished to look at. Felix Hugo Fraldarius, the stone declared, and the engraved letters burned through Dimitri’s heart, filling him with guilt.

Footsteps approached him, but Dimitri didn’t need to look up from the many bouquets of flowers covering the grave to know who it was. ”Rodrigue,” he said, and the name sent another dosage of pain through him. ”It appears I keep taking your sons from you.”

Rodrigue stopped at his side, his hand raising to his arm and touching it when Dimitri didn’t move away. It was… almost comforting, even though physical touches still put Dimitri on the edge. ”Your Highness,” Rodrigue said, unbearably understanding and accommodating even in his grief, ”you have never taken anything from me.”

Dimitri laughed, the sound short and hollow. ”Neither of them had to die. If I wasn’t–”

Rodrigue’s hand pressed down more firmly, and Dimitri went silent, gaze still downcast. ”Glenn and Felix,” he said with a quiet emphasis, ”only did what their hearts thought right in the moment, the impulsive boys that they are… were.” Rodrigue paused, perhaps to collect himself after the slip-up. ”Felix, in particular… he’s a stubborn boy, but he always does what his heart feels is right.”

He didn’t want you to die went unsaid, but it lingered in the air and in Dimitri’s head. Despite it all, Felix hadn’t wanted him to die.

”I didn’t want him to...” Dimitri’s voice trailed off and his shoulders fell as his gaze went up toward the sky. Clear, cloudless. Too bright and warm. Dimitri’s tongue felt clumsy in his mouth as he murmured, ”...It ought to be raining.”

Rodrigue’s hand moved up to his shoulder, and settled there when Dimitri didn’t shudder away. ”It has been raining long enough, Your Highness,” he whispered. ”It’s time to let the sun in, don’t you think?”

The weight of Rodrigue’s hand on him as well as those words made Dimitri deflate, something awfully twisted in him beginning to unknot itself. Slowly, painfully slowly, but it was a start. ”Perhaps,” he said, unsurely, ”perhaps you are right, my friend.”

He cast his gaze down once more upon the fresh rain lilies on the grave, rather unremarkable among the other more colourful flowers people that didn’t know Felix that well had left.

”It’s not the time for regrets,” he murmured to the grave and its exhibition of flowers. ”Is that not right, Felix?”

If a grave could agree, Dimitri mused, perhaps it would feel like this.

A memory, long-forgotten by Felix but which had recently resurfaced in Dimitri’s mind:

Dimitri, now a fourteen-year-old boy with more ghosts than years to his name, rather wished he hadn’t come to this ball at all, despite knowing Lord Rodrigue had only meant well and to give him a chance to socialize after long months of recovery and isolation. Still, as he stared at his too bare and scarred hands, Dimitri wished he hadn’t come, even though Fraldarius had always felt like a second home to him before.

The girl he had chanced a dance with had grimaced at the sight of his hands – at the feel of them – and the look remained imprinted on his mind. Disgusting, what ugly, brutish hands.

Would El have said the same? The thought vanished as soon as it emerged.

Walking through the back garden of the Fraldarius estate offered very little in terms of peace of mind, as the memories of Glenn came trickling back strong and left him trembling as he folded his arms and hid his hands. He felt sorry for leaving Dedue back at the dancing hall by himself, but he had asked Rodrigue to show Dedue to the unoccupied gardens so as to give the other boy some peace from the narrow-eyed glares the nobles sent his way.

”Dimitri?” A familiar voice called out to him, traces of anger not directed at Dimitri audible in the way it said his name. Dimitri lifted his gaze to see his friend of many years walk up to him from the eastern side of the garden. ”Got fed up with the old man’s idea of cheering you up, huh?”

”Felix,” Dimitri breathed out, uncrossing his arms out of the sheer relief hearing and seeing Felix evoked in him. ”What a relief. I thought you might be ill, since Rodrigue didn’t say–”

”Fuck him,” Felix said, voice cracking from anger, eyes flashing as it was his turn to cross arms over his chest. He hadn’t bothered with formal wear, which wasn’t a surprise, but made Dimitri feel all the more awkward in his stuffy clothes.

Dimitri gasped, scandalized. ”Where did you pick up such language–”

”Never mind that,” Felix said with a long, irritated sigh. ”It’s a pain to have all these nobles around. Come spar with me, if you’re not going to bother with them.”

Dimitri perked up at that. He couldn’t deny he wasn’t in the mood for dancing anymore – as enjoyable as El had initially made it for him it just wasn’t the same now – and sparring with Felix had always been fun and engaging, especially with Glenn supervising…

Felix had turned his back to him without waiting for response, walking away through the silence surrounding them.

Dimitri blinked, and suddenly he could almost see the garden alight with flames around them, hear the crackling and the screams, see Glenn’s back turned toward him as he walked away from the prince too cowardly to follow.

Run, Dimitri, Glenn’s voice whispered, urgent and broken, run.

”Wait,” Dimitri choked out, heart threatening to race right out of his chest as he reached his hand out towards Felix’s retreating back, ”don’t go...”

”What are you talking about?” Felix’s head flicked towards him, narrow eyes staring at him over the other’s shoulder as a hand closed around his. The familiar feeling extinguished the flames in Dimitri’s mind, and the unperturbed stare calmed him as Felix muttered, ”We’re going together, as usual.”

”Right,” Dimitri said, a little breathless as he stumbled forward, ”of course.”

”Your Highness,” Rodrigue said gently, ”it’s time to go.”

”Yes,” Dimitri agreed, though it pained him to do so. ”There is much I must overcome.”

And indeed, when he lifted his gaze and turned away from the grave, the sight that greeted him was this: the remaining Blue Lions standing close together, their gazes on him gentle and waiting, as well as Alois, Seteth and Flayn. Gustave. Off to the side stood the professor, their arms crossed but posture relaxed, a small smile upon their lips.

All of them, waiting for him.

Lift your gaze up from your damn feet.

With a deep, anguished breath, Dimitri walked forward, step by step.

Reached his hand out.

You might actually see something.

And they reached their hands out to him in return, despite it all.