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The grotesque skin of the Hegemon dissolved into threads. Dimitri watched as mottled and rough brown scales disappeared into pale skin, glowing in the sunlight.
Edelgard knelt before him, eyes overcast with shadow. One hand trembled around his lance as she opened her eyes slowly, and some part of his heart screamed against the other. He could not kill her, he would not kill her, how dare he—
His other hand stretched out, illuminated by the sunlight pouring out of the window behind her. “El…” he murmured.
Edelgard raised her head, eyes bleak. He smiled, letting out a low breath, and her lips turned upwards in a barely discernible smile.
Please, he wanted to say. Take my hand.
But she didn’t. She tucked her hand into her cloak and removed the dagger from its sheath. Byleth gasped. Dimitri moved his lance, positioning it just at her heart.
But when the hand came out, holding the dagger, Edelgard didn’t throw it.
“...I don’t want to die,” she whispered, hands trembling as she held out the dagger in front of her. He stared at her before letting his lance fall away from her chest. When she still didn’t move, body trembling now, he cast aside his lance and knelt before her, holding her shaking hands in his steady ones. The dagger glinted in the light, held between them.
“You won’t.”
“Save me, Dimitri,” she sobbed.
“I‘m right here,” he promised. “I‘m right here, El. I’m right here.”
Her head fell forward, resting against his shoulder. The dagger dropped to the floor, harmless. Dimitri held her.
They began their moon-long journey back to Fhirdiad that night, battered and wartorn. Edelgard sat beside him throughout the moon. They never spoke a word to each other, only exchanged tears beneath the dim moonlight and sideways looks hidden by the blinding radiance of the sun.
~ / . / . / ~
They decided to keep her in Fhirdiad, in the room down the hallway from Dimitri’s. Gilbert and Dedue had both raised objections about holding her so close to his room, but one good look from Dimitri had silenced them.
“I’ll handle everything,” he said, shaking his head, and closed the door behind him. When he turned around, Edelgard was still standing motionless in the middle of the room. He leaned against the door, crossing his arms. “Annette and Mercedes have agreed to help you become adjusted to life in the Kingdom. Mercedes will be taking care of you for a few moons, but she must leave at the beginning of the Ethereal Moon. Annette will help you for a time after Mercedes leaves.”
She didn’t say anything. He sighed.
“Do you need me to undress you before you can sleep? Or should I call Mercedes?”
She shook her head violently, clearly aggravated with his words.
“It’s already well past midnight. Get some rest.”
Edelgard let out a breath before shaking her head again.
“You can’t? Or you won’t?”
She turned slightly to look at him, her eyes dull and hazy. Dimitri rested his hands on her shoulders from behind. When she did not do anything, he began to guide her towards the bed in the middle of the room. Her feet dragged as he pushed her forward.
Gently, he pressed her to sit down on the edge of the bed and removed her robe, standing up to drape it over her desk chair. When he turned to look at her she had laid down, staring at him blankly through the parted canopy. She followed his movement with her eyes, watching as he walked back over and sat at the foot of her bed. Edelgard pulled her knees up to her chest and continued to stare.
“I know you had nightmares,” Dimitri murmured, his hands limp in his lap. “I heard you sometimes, when I was coming back from training. I didn’t know why you had them. I suppose it wasn’t in my place to know, either.”
Edelgard said nothing, just continued to watch him speak with half-lidded eyes. Dimitri forced his gaze away from her and tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling.
“I wish you had stayed with us,” he confessed in a soft voice. “If you had… perhaps everything could have been different. Everything would have been different, I know it. It would have been better. It’s selfish of me to think that, now that everything has passed. But…” he let out a breath, “despite everything, I will never truly let go of the past.”
He glanced back down at her. Her eyes had fallen shut, and her breathing had grown rhythmic. Her chest rose and fell with each soft breath she took. It was not hard to remember the many nights he had spent trying sneaking out of the castle (sometimes, he would enlist Sylvain to help) only to make it to their meeting place in the forest and find Edelgard asleep. Every night, without fail, he would cover her with his winter coat as a blanket before leaving, and every morning, without fail, she would return it with soft thanks.
His fingers moved as if they had a mind of their own. Gently, he untucked his fur cape from beneath the pauldrons of his armor and laid it over her. She curled into it. Her lips seemed to turn upwards into a smile.
He stood slowly, careful not to disturb her, and then fled.
~ / . / . / ~
His eye flitted to the side, gazing out of the window beside the door. The clouds were beginning to gather in the sky, already preparing for the coming winter. Still the sun shone upon Fhirdiad through ragged slashes in the congregating clouds, enveloping the city with a warm glow—a soft reminder of the remaining summer they had.
He remembered how the capital had looked when they returned from Enbarr; bright golden sunbeams highlighted elated faces, the warmth of the summertime still inescapable in the northern reaches of Faerghus.
It had been a moon since their triumphant return and his last time speaking with Edelgard. Truthfully he had been swamped with work—no one had ever told him becoming the king of a ravaged and war-torn nation could be so demanding, although he had suspected as much—but he was not completely innocent.
It was all a distraction, some treacherous part of his mind whispered. You’re scared. Terrified. You couldn’t bear to face her after everything you told her, after everything she made you remember and feel.
And that part of him was right. Still, he swallowed and raised his fist, knocking on the wooden door before him.
“Coming!” Mercedes’s cheerful voice rang from inside the room. “Ah, Your Majesty,” Mercedes commented, smiling when she opened the door and saw him standing before her.
“‘Dimitri’,” he corrected her gently. “You know that nothing has changed.”
“Ah, I’m sorry… I keep forgetting,” she apologized. “Were you here to see Lady Edelgard?”
“If she’ll see me, yes,” he said, forcing down the terror welling up in his throat.
“I will,” Edelgard interrupted as she appeared in the doorway, seemingly out of nowhere. Dimitri froze, his mind attempting to grasp at reality and failing. Mercedes, however, looked unfazed; she simply turned and regarded Edelgard with a kind smile.
“I’ll go draw up a bath,” Mercedes said, and excused herself. Dimitri pursed his lips as Edelgard fixed him with an intense gaze—evaluatory, as if nothing had changed.
But her appearance said otherwise. Her white hair had been cut (he wondered if it had been done with the dagger) and part of it had been pulled back with braids. The rest of it barely spilled over her shoulders. She wore the blue silken dresses of Faerghus nobility, the ones that allowed women to relish in the short warmth they had during summertime. Her red dress he could see, hung up in the closet and obscured by other dresses the seamstress had sewn for her; all this in the time that he had not spent visiting her. It seemed she would be as resilient as she ever was, while he would be as trapped in the past as he ever was.
“Did you need something?”
“I just thought to… come see you. I have been quite busy this past moon, and I wanted to offer my apologies.” He bowed his head slightly. To his surprise, she let out a good-natured—albeit short-lived—laugh.
“You are a king now, Dimitri. You cannot expect to tend to me as a handmaiden does her mistress. That is why Mercedes is here.”
“Yet…” An inexplicable flash of guilt ran through his veins. It must have shown in his eyes, because Edelgard sighed and shook her head.
“Would you like your jacket back?” She had spoken more in these past few minutes than she had in their moon-long journey from Enbarr to Fhirdiad, some dim part of his mind realized. The realization cut his heart like a slash from a dagger.
“You could have had Mercedes return it for you,” he murmured when she returned with his fur robe in her hands. “To have you hold onto it for so long…”
“It made for a nice blanket at times, despite all the wear.”
He knew what she meant beneath those seemingly unrelated words. Even with all the changes, the memories had become too vivid. Sweet buns stolen from the kitchen, soft looks in their eyes as they sat on the edges of windows and looked out over Fhirdiad. He had gone everywhere they had been during that year together but to her side. She had surely gone nowhere but her own thoughts; somehow, he knew that many nights had been spent curled up by the locked balcony door, wrapped in his coat like he remembered leaving her every night.
“...Keep it,” he found himself saying. “I can always ask the seamstress to make me a new one.” The surprise that flitted across her face tugged the corners of his lips upwards into a smile.
“Dimitri, this is much too large for me. I would only ever use it as a blanket.”
“That is alright.”
“...I’ve had fewer nightmares this past moon. I have less use for it.”
“That is alright.” He was going to regret giving her his coat if the conversation was going to continue like this. Edelgard stared up at him with her lilac eyes, the expression in her eyes indiscernible. Her hands tightened in the folds of his large coat, hugging it closer to her before nodding.
“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice soft. He knew that, deep down, some part of her was relieved. Just as some part of him refused to let him run from his feelings, some part of her surely refused to let her run from the past.
But that part of her didn’t sound suspiciously like the voices of those he’d tried to put behind him, and she never let it chain her down. She’d still avoided the past, had set her eyes on the future—something he never would have dared to do. She had always been stronger than him, after all.
“...Would you like to share your evening meal with me tonight? To...” he trailed off, unable to find a real reason why he wanted to invite her other than to have her by his side again.
“I would be glad to.” When he raised his eyes, hers reflected the tiniest glimmer of understanding.
Yet still, as they traded conversation over the dinner table, he could not dislodge the lump in his throat or the whispers in his mind of how she had moved on, and what had he done? Continued to wallow in the past, despite everything he had been told and taught, that was what.
He did not invite her to dinner again until the next moon.
~ / . / . / ~
It was back—the monster within him.
Murder, kill. No. Murder, kill. No. For Mother? ...No. For Glenn? ...Yes. For Father? Yes.
Faces flashed in his mind’s eye. Mother, Father, shadow and light, Rodrigue, Uncle, luminescence and tenebrosity, El, the dagger, Professor, Mother, Father, Mother, Father—
Someone pulled him up and his eye shot open as, reflexively, he grabbed onto the wrist of the person that had pulled him up and moved to twist it sharply.
“Stop.” The figure, pitch black against the shadows of his bedroom, told him. He did, blinking. His mind felt both too sleepy and too alert to process anything, but he recognized that voice. He would’ve recognized it anywhere.
“Edelgard,” he said, letting go of her hand and forcing down the raging monster that screamed to be let free. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you yelling in your sleep,” she replied simply, still not moving an inch from his bedside.
“It was just a nightmare,” he said, combing a hand through his hair. She sat on the side of his bed. He could feel her gaze pinned on him.
“...Just a nightmare?” she repeated, skepticism apparent in her voice.
“I don’t need you to nag me,” he snapped, ready to order her out of his room.
“I wasn’t nagging.” Her hand lifted his covers. “Move over.”
He stared at her shadowy face, unsure what to do.
“Move over,” she repeated. Hesitantly he did as she said, letting her climb up to sit at his side; she rested her hand on his shoulder and pushed him to lay down.
“...Why are you here?” he questioned softly when he had settled onto his side.
“Nightmares,” she responded curtly as she laid down. Her eyes flickered up towards him for a split second before she reached out and pulled the covers tighter around herself. “...It is alright if I stay here tonight, isn’t it?”
Somehow, that was the answer he had expected her to give. He searched frantically for something to say, but couldn’t find anything—only a “goodnight” managed to fall from his lips.
She stared at him for a moment before smiling slightly. “...Goodnight,” she murmured, and turned her back towards him. He stared at her, swathed in darkness, and let his eyes fall shut.
And the world was bright light and he was groaning, turning to bury his face in his pillow as Edelgard shifted uncomfortably beside him.
“Oh!” It was a young girl’s voice—a handmaiden, most likely on the morning rounds. Dimitri forced open his eye to see a blur of white and beige darting out of his bedroom. Moments later, the door to his chambers shut loudly. He turned his head, sighing when he saw the curtains had been left parted, allowing the sun to spear sunbeams into his room.
“Draw the curtains,” Edelgard mumbled, pulling the covers tighter around herself. Dimitri sat up, careful to cover his missing eye with his hand as he slid out of bed and drew the curtains. Light seemed to disappear from the room, leaving them in speckled darkness. “...You don’t need to cover your face. I have seen you many times without your eyepatch, Dimitri.”
He sighed and dropped his hand, turning back towards her. In the shadows he saw Edelgard raise her left arm, lifting the covers with the motion. He managed a smile and slid beneath her arm wordlessly, burrowing into the blankets. She withdrew her arm and tucked her hands beneath her chin, staring at him.
“...You had nightmares as well. Not as bad as mine, but I could hear sometimes. I would go into your room when you had them. You always stopped screaming when I did.”
Dimitri turned onto his back, staring up at his ceiling. “...Did you, now?” he murmured.
“I never stayed long,” she replied with a soft voice, “except for one time. It was when I had been crowned emperor, and had just returned to the monastery from the Empire.”
“...I had nightmares every night that moon,” Dimitri admitted. “My head would not stop hurting.”
“You complained as such in your sleep,” she recalled. There was a fondness in her voice that he had not heard in moons. “I thought it would be like other times. But you didn’t stop after I came inside. You… you called for me. By name. ‘Don’t leave, Edelgard.’”
He let out a breath through his nose, and then forced himself to look at her. She was still staring at him, her purple eyes filled with indecipherable emotions.
“I couldn’t leave after that. I stayed up all night, sitting carefully along the edges of your bed and placating your cries for your mother and father.”
“...Just as you did for me last night,” he noted, managing a smile. Edelgard. Edelgard. He had called her Edelgard, and not El. Had he really forgotten so easily? He had lived his time at the Academy as though he were the only one who remembered their past together. And yet, he, too, had forgotten.
Slowly, unsurely, he stretched out a hand. Edelgard stared at it, uncertainty in her actions as she took it with her own hand. Their fingers laced together as if on instinct, and he turned onto his side to look at her.
“...You must be tired,” she murmured. “Rest.”
He didn’t remember closing his eyes. All he remembered was the warmth of her hand in his and the sunlight that woke him, seeping in through the curtains and illuminating Edelgard’s white hair as Gilbert’s mild voice from outside the bedroom informed him that it was noon.
~ / . / . / ~
“The Archbishop is visiting today,” Dimitri stated, and didn’t fail to notice how Edelgard’s hand tightened into a fist amongst the folds of her dress. “She said she would also like to meet with you.”
“...Very well,” Edelgard murmured. Moons later, and her voice still had not lost the regalia she had commanded armies with. She pressed a hand to the plaited bun Annette had pulled her hair into.
“Your hair has grown,” he noted. Now, it fell around the middle of her back; of course, the length of her hair never really mattered to him. No matter what, she had been raised to be the regal emperor of the Adrestian Empire. In his mind’s eye, she would always look like that—formal. Imposing.
“So has yours,” she responded, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “If your hair grows too long, it can become troublesome.”
“I know.” Five years of war later, and he had only just begun to understand how much his appearance mattered. Before, it had been golden hair cut with a stolen sword, long blood-streaked locks left to burn in the flames of the battlefield.
“Take care of yourself, Dimitri,” she advised, glancing up at him. She raised her hand, and her fingers brushed lightly through his hair; something caught her eye, and she pulled away to walk down the hallway, greeting a cheerful Annette. Dimitri stared after their retreating forms.
“Your Majesty,” Dedue prompted. Dimitri cleared his throat and turned to his retainer.
“Has Felix arrived?”
“Yes. Do you want to meet him?”
Dimitri considered the question for a moment before shaking his head. “No. Let him be. You know how he gets when the Archbishop visits.” Dedue nodded and followed Dimitri down the sun-speckled hallway. “Is everyone else on the way?”
“Yes. Lord and Lady Gaspard are on the road. Lady Galatea and Margrave Gautier arrived with Lord Fraldarius this morning.”
“You know you don’t need to address them like that,” Dimitri reminded his retainer gently.
“It’s proper,” Dedue answered simply. Dimitri shook his head, smiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Annette pulling Edelgard by the hand out into the gardens. He paused by the window, shielding his eye from the sunlight as he peered out. Annette was no Mercedes (who was except for Mercedes herself?) but Edelgard seemed to quite enjoy her presence—even from here, he could see the slight smile on her face. It was hard not to compare the Edelgard he had once known with the Edelgard of the present, but he knew they were almost the same person.
“...She’s changed, hasn’t she?” he murmured to no one in particular. Dedue said nothing, just stayed by Dimitri’s side until he pushed himself away from the window and continued down the hallway towards the throne room.
What he hadn't expected to see when he arrived was the archbishop and Seteth, clearly waiting for him. Dimitri’s mouth fell open but he remembered his chivalry quickly enough to shut it and bow deeply.
“Archbishop,” he stated.
“Dimitri!” Byleth greeted. “You can stand. Please, don’t greet me like that. I didn’t come here on official business, after all.”
He did as she requested, straightening and smiling when he saw hers. It was hard to remember that five years ago, he had not seen her smile until seven moons into their school year. Now, she smiled like it was second nature, spoke like she had not spent her life showing as little emotion as anyone had ever seen.
But now he was not sure what to do. To greet her as a friend or to greet her as his former professor?
The struggle must have shown on his face (or Byleth had perceived it in his soul—there really was no telling with her) because she tilted her head, asking, “What is it?”. Hesitantly, Dimitri opened his arms and she laughed, slipping her arms under his and hugging him. “There, there. It’s alright. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled, “I just missed you.”
“Missed me, or my constant nagging?” she questioned, a playful tone in her voice. “You are eating your vegetables, right?”
“I wouldn’t dare forget the most important thing you taught me,” he replied, smiling. Of course, they both knew he couldn’t taste what he was eating. Still, nutrients were nutrients.
“How is Edelgard?” she asked in a voice that was barely audible. Her grip around him tightened
“She’s doing well,” he replied. “She doesn’t speak much compared to… before, but she hasn’t closed herself off.”
Byleth let out a breath. “That’s good.” Knowing that Byleth had been worried, something akin to relief washed over Dimitri. He wasn’t sure why. “Did you tell her?”
“Yes. If you wanted to speak with her, I believe she’s still out in the gardens with Annette.”
“Perfect. Thank you, Dimitri.” She detached herself from him, turning to address Seteth. “Stay here. Don’t tell my husband where I am if he comes looking for me. The goddess knows he’ll only cause a ruckus if I deny him a spar.”
Seteth sighed, but the dulled exasperation and recognition in his eyes seemed to indicate his familiarity with this order. Byleth smiled and waved, darting out of the room. Seteth rubbed his forehead, shaking his head.
“Uncontrollable, that one,” he mumbled. Dimitri smiled, and then stumbled as a pair of arms wrap around his neck as a body threw themselves at his back.
“Sylvain!” Ingrid’s voice chided.
“Come on, Ing! You weren’t supposed to tell him!” Still, Sylvain clung to him like a monkey. Dimitri reached up awkwardly and patted his friend’s arm.
“I know you’re excited, but you’re not doing my back any good by hanging onto me.”
And then it all started to feel right, because soon after Sylvain let him go Felix barged into the throne room demanding to know where his wife was, and it took everyone in the throne room plus Annette once she’d arrived at the scene of chaos to keep him from charging through the castle blindly in search of the archbishop. Thankfully, the arrival of Ashe and Mercedes quelled the turmoil long enough, and before long they were all laughing and talking together like they were back in the academy and nothing had changed.
But things had changed. Mercedes had cut her hair again, and Sylvain walked with a slight limp. Byleth was not their professor anymore, she was the archbishop—the archbishop with a golden headdress and advisors and knights and all the responsibilities of the world on her shoulders.
“I’m going to go check on the archbishop,” Dimitri whispered to Dedue and Ashe. “Keep everyone else occupied.”
Without waiting for their response he slipped into the shadows behind them, blocked by Dedue’s large frame, and darted out of the throne as soon as he saw that everyone else was distracted. He hurried down the hallway leading to the gardens, barely able to hold back a yelp when he rounded the corner.
“Boo!” Byleth cried as she leapt out at him, and then bent over laughing. “I’m sorry! I thought you were someone else!”
Dimitri made a face before laughing. “Who else were you trying to scare with that?”
“Ashe,” she responded, and Dimitri couldn’t help but snort. “Edelgard is still out in the gardens, if you were wondering. I invited her to join us for dinner, but… I’m not sure if she will.”
Dimitri shook his head. “It’s alright. I wanted to speak with her, anyway.” He rested a hand on Byleth’s shoulder, and then let her pull him into a hug. “Go on. Don’t let me keep you from seeing your husband. He’s been complaining for the past hour now.”
She let out an aggravated yet fond sigh. “Insatiable, that one.” She squeezed her arms around his torso. “...Listen. I know there are things you haven’t spoken with her about. Don’t be afraid. She’s more resilient than you think.”
“I know,” he said, because he did. He knew Edelgard was stronger than he would ever be. There truly had been no reason to hold his thoughts away with him. “I… thank you, though.”
Byleth’s words were still ringing in his ears when he found Edelgard sitting on a bench among the rows of flowers. It was bright out—the sun was directly over their heads, and he shielded his eyes from the bright rays.
“...You came.”
He slid onto the bench beside her, careful to keep his distance. “The archbishop… wasn’t too harsh, was she?”
“No,” Edelgard said, shaking her head. “Of course not. In fact, she was rather kind.”
“What did she speak with you about?”
At that, Edelgard laughed shortly before responding, “You.”
“Me?” he repeated, incredulous. Edelgard turned to look at him, a small smile on her lips.
“Yes, you. She expressed worry about you.” Her fingers fiddled with the petals of a peony, and her eyes fluttered shut. “She likened us to half-bloomed flowers. I never knew she had such an extensive library of proverbs.”
“She is the archbishop.”
“Yes, she is. But she is more to you, isn’t she? A friend… a mother.”
At that, he froze. When had she become so perceptive of him? So… so much like the Edelgard of their childhood, who knew what he was thinking even with just a shared look. He watched, entranced, as her eyes opened slowly, readjusting to the bright afternoon sun.
“I suspect that if she had been by my side… she would have prevented me from becoming a ruler with a heart of ice. And I suspect that if she had not been by your side… you would have died on the battlefield moons ago.”
He swallowed sharply. Edelgard’s head tilted slightly to look at him before offering him the flower in her hand.
“The archbishop picked it for me. I am not sure what to do with it.” Dimitri took it, glancing at her and then the flower. It was pale pink blooming outwards, leaving the ends of the petals white.
“Turn around,” he said. She stared at him for a moment before doing as he requested, and he tucked the peony into her plaited bun. She began to speak again when he leaned over the bench to pick a daisy.
“I find myself thinking of Mother more nowadays,” she murmured. “I am not sure why.” Dimitri’s hand stilled for a second as she continued to speak. “I suppose the archbishop has brought upon more thoughts than either of us would like to indulge in.”
“Yes,” he mused, “I suppose.” He raised his hands, placing one at the bottom of her neck to hold her still as he brought the daisy up to her hair. Her hand darted out, catching his.
“Wait.” He did, and watched, mesmerized, as she slowly took apart the elaborate braids Annette had set upon her. Her white hair fell free of its restraints, curled and soft to the touch. “Do you remember when I taught you to chain daisies?”
At that, Dimitri laughed lowly and pulled his fingers away from her hair. “Of course. How could I forget?”
“Sometimes, I wish we could return to those days.”
He couldn’t find something to reply with, and just set upon his goal of weaving all the flowers in the garden into her silken hair.
“Stay with me,” she requested, her voice barely audible when he let the finished braid to fall against her back.
So he did, until the sun had set, both of their heads had been braided with roses and peonies and daisies, and they had woven a daisy chain long enough to loop around his head five times.
~ / . / . / ~
“...What a dangerous gift,” she murmured, but he could hear the smile in her voice.
“Parroting my words, are you?” he asked as he settled on the windowsill. The sun beat at his back, but he didn’t mind. He was glad there was even sunlight to beat at his back in the middle of the Lone Moon.
“Nobody else would have dared to give me a dagger. Why would you?”
“I have kept it from you long enough. My only regret is that I could not give it to you personally.”
“Please, don’t have such a regret. You have already done that multiple times. I am grateful to you, simply for allowing me to have it back. Although Annette did seem quite confused as to why she had been told to give me a dagger.”
Dimitri laughed softly. “Perhaps I should have explained to her.”
Edelgard let out a soft breath, something so close to a laugh. “Yes, perhaps you should have.”
They fell into silence, neither comfortable or uncomfortable. The Lone Moon always stirred feelings of unrest, but for those who had guarded Faerghus since the beginning, it was different. It was a reminder of the things that had happened all those years at the monastery.
And he knew Edelgard felt the same because for the first time since she had received it back in the Wyvern Moon, she draped a cloth over the portrait of her and Hubert that hung on the wall beside her bed. She hid away Dorothea’s earrings and did not polish Ferdinand’s clasp of the Aegir family. She refused to let Annette touch Bernadetta’s embroidering kit, hid all of Linhardt’s books and Caspar’s gauntlets in a box beneath her bed, and rolled up Petra’s animal skin rug.
Ghosts of the past. Dimitri was all too familiar with them.
She moved. The blankets rustled.
“If I died,” she murmured, “would you be mad?”
He blinked, turning his head sharply to look at her. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, knees pulled to her chest and arms wrapped around her legs; she was holding something in her hand—the dagger. The canopy had not been pulled apart, leaving her shielded behind a mesh filter.
“Edelgard—”
“Answer the question, Dimitri,” she implored.
“I would not be mad,” he said, his voice hesitant as he carefully picked his words. “I would be… upset. And—well, I would feel betrayed.”
“Why?” Her voice was so soft and small he could feel hot tears threatening to spill forward. He had never heard her speak like this before, so unsure of herself—like a small flower amongst the beds of them in the gardens.
“Because I want you to live, Edelgard. It is true, I wished for your death for five long years. It is true that I hated you. But when I decided to cast out the ghosts of the past, my hatred for you went with them. You were my friend, first and foremost, Edelgard. I didn’t want to kill you.”
“But you had to. You must have accepted the inevitability of it all.”
“I did, but it did not hurt any less.”
“...And so you offered me a hand, hoping that I would take it,” she mused. There was a rustle and Edelgard’s silhouette moved. He glanced up, seeing the dark figure behind the canopy slowly lay down onto the bed.
“I’m glad you took it,” he said, standing. No words fell from Edelgard’s lips, even as he approached her bedside. The dagger, left to lie at her side, glinted in the sunlight as he stepped closer.
He parted the canopy, an inexplicably soft emotion washing over his heart when he saw her curled up in the middle of her bed. With gentle hands, he helped her sit up. She rested her head against his shoulder, eyes shut. He watched her, a deep affection he had not felt in years stirring to life within him.
“...Do you think the past will ever come back to us?”
“Sometimes I wish it did,” he admitted. “I have already learned my lesson about living in the past. Still… I lapse back into it.”
“Whenever I am around.”
So, she had noticed. He shut his eye. “Yes. It tends to happen when you are around.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Something warm rested against his cheek—it took him a moment to realize it was Edelgard’s hand. He blinked open his eyes to see her staring up at him; her face was impossibly close. Surely she could hear his heart thundering, could see the emotions that were running across his face despite his attempts to hold them back.
A knock. “Your Majesty,” Dedue’s low voice called. “A messenger from Gautier territory has arrived.” Edelgard’s fingers tightened against Dimitri’s cheek, but she dropped her hand into her lap. With a sigh, he stood.
“I’ll be there in a moment, Dedue,” he responded. Edelgard had not risen from where she was sitting, and the expression upon her face—shame, riddled with anger that was surely directed at herself—made him feel as though someone had cut his heart to pieces with just a dagger.
Without another thought, he reached out his hand and took hers. She watched him with indecipherable eyes, watched as he raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.
“...I’ll be going, then,” he murmured. She nodded and lowered her head, tucking her hand underneath her legs when he let go of it. He paused at the doorway, glancing back at her.
She had laid down, eyes closed and the tiniest smile on her lips, with the dagger held close to her heart. The heart that she had never lost.
He felt his lips turn up into a smile that mirrored hers, and then left the room.
~ / . / . / ~
Edelgard was waiting for him when he opened her bedroom door, sitting on the windowsill (she had picked that habit up from him, he realized). His heart skipped a beat when he saw that she had left her hair completely free of its usually restraints—she looked six years younger, like the seventeen-year-old girl who had attended the Officers’ Academy alongside him.
She was wearing his coat, hastily hemmed with her (his) dagger so that she could at least walk without the fear of stepping on it. Unsurprisingly, it looks right on her. He can’t help but wonder, not for the first time, what would have happened if she had stayed with him in Faerghus.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” he replied, smiling. She stared back at him, shaking her head.
“How reminiscent,” she murmured, and slid her hand into his. “Go on, then. Lead me away.”
So he did. They snuck down the stairs, hid in the shadows of the garden, dodged the evening patrol and slipped out into the streets of the capital.
“You’ll know where we’re going,” he said, smiling because for once it’s just them—nobody to come looking for them or to come bothering them. And, perhaps it was just him, but the ghosts of the past that seemed to cling to Edelgard had begun to disappear. It was slow and sometimes, he could tell, they came back with even greater force, but they were going.
And she smiled back, amusement glowing in her eyes. “We shall see,” she replied. “After all, I have not explored Fhirdiad for years.”
He squeezed her hand. “Perhaps we should have taken this nighttime excursion earlier.”
Edelgard squeezed back. “No. It’s alright. We have plenty of time for many more nighttime excursions.”
Her words made his heart thunder in his ears—with anticipation or joy, he wasn’t sure. He had a feeling it was both. “Yes, that’s true.”
He led her through the streets, slipping past bakers and city patrollers already awake to earn the day’s wages. He put his arm around her shoulders and held her beside him when the city guard walked by; she smiled and huddled close to his chest when the drunken men of last night began stumbling back to their homes.
“This way,” he said as he led her into the outskirts of the city. They had been wandering the streets for who knew how long, but he didn’t care. Just being with her—El—was enough.
She made a soft noise of recognition and smiled as he began to run up the grassy hill leading into the forest; holding his hand tighter, she ran at his side.
“I haven’t been here since you left,” he admitted once they dove into the forest, brushing branches that never would have bothered them years ago out of their faces and stepping over roots they’d had to climb over back then.
“Well, I suppose that makes two of us.” In the darkness of the night, he could barely make out his own hand. Her pale face and white hair was all he could see, and suddenly it had become her leading him, because she had always been the one to lead him around when they were children.
The clearing hadn’t changed at all in the thirteen years since they’d first discovered it. The purple sky, whispering of daybreak’s arrival, irradiated the trees, and shadows stretched across the clearing in long, lanky forms.
“Dance with me,” he murmured, because it was nothing less than instinct. Here, he had learned to dance under her tutelage.
Here, he had fallen in love for the first time.
Edelgard didn’t give him an answer, just tightened her hand around his hand. He bowed to her, smiling. She laughed under her breath, soft and so similar to a flute’s trill.
He led her around the clearing, and she held him close. Nothing in the world seemed to matter anymore—at least, not to him. He spun her beneath his arm and watched the excitement, the joy, the life, come back into her eyes.
“It’s funny,” she breathed as they swayed in time to some imaginary beat, “how much I can despise dancing when it is not with you.”
He drew in a breath, but she cut him off.
“I know what you are going to say, Dimitri. You don’t need to apologize. We were children back then, with the weight of the world on our shoulders. Asking me for a dance back then would not have solved anything.”
“...Yes. I know.” But it did not hurt any less than it had back then, knowing that even if he had danced with her back during the ball, nothing would have changed. He spun her one last time and then dropped her hand, bowing deeply. “Thank you, Edelgard.”
The sky was brightening, and the shadows were elongating. Her face was covered in his shadow, and the back of his head was illuminated by the purple and pink sky. Still, she smiled.
“How nostalgic,” she commented. “To be able to see this place again…”
“You told me your first dream for the future here,” he said. She turned her gaze away and smiled.
“Yes, I did. And did you not tell me here, for the first time, that if I carved a path you would rise up to meet me?”
At that, Dimitri laughed. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
She let out a breath through her nose, so akin to a laugh. “I suppose… I must thank you for that. I told you back then, during the war, that you were the reason I had not lost my heart. But I had lost my heart,” she confessed, “until I saw you again. I had lost my heart when I threw that dagger at you, and you returned my heart when you returned my dagger.”
She lowered her head, keeping her gaze on the ground of the grassy clearing they stood in. Dimitri reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, gently lifting her head to look at him.
Edelgard paused, and then smiled slightly. “...Thank you,” she whispered, “for everything you’ve done, Dimitri.” He swallowed back the clambering emotions of the past as she slipped her arms around his stomach and pressed her forehead against his chest.
“...Of course, El,” he replied in a soft voice, and held her when she pulled him impossibly close.
There was no need to say anything. They had returned to the past he had spent too long dwelling on, back to times when they had not needed words to know what the other was thinking. He closed his eyes and rested his chin atop her head. Her hands tightened against his back and she pressed her forehead closer to his chest.
The sunrise came between the canopy of trees, dappling the two of them with pale sunlight. Edelgard took in a deep breath and shifted her head to look up into Dimitri’s eyes. He stared back. They both smiled, and then laughed. Their eyes fluttered shut, their lips brushed.
Daybreak had come.