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Dimitri’s somewhere near Remire Village when Dedue comes to him.
He’s lost track of what moon it is. It was spring when he was imprisoned; it has been an eon since he escaped. All he knows is that the nights are still warm but not stifling, and Imperial patrols rarely cross through the region he’s in, so he contents himself with a little outcropping of rock for the night.
He leans back against the rock and closes his eyes.
When he opens his eyes, Dedue is standing over him.
“Goddess,” Dimitri swears, and scrambles up.
The last he saw of Dedue was in the prison. “You must run, your Highness,” Dedue told him, the calm in his voice contrasted by his breathlessness and the beads of sweat on his forehead. “You are in no shape to fight.”
Dimitri was half-carried by the soldier next to him. When the prison door was blown open, he had been feverish, freezing, the gash in his leg a line of fire that consumed his body, his ribs a mess, his eye a bloody, gaping hole. Dedue’s face swam in and out of focus and his voice was muffled, like someone had stuffed cotton into Dimitri’s ears.
“No,” Dimitri growled, forcing the word past a tongue that felt too swollen and heavy in his mouth. “I must have her head.”
Dedue looked at him with something almost fond in his face. “You will, your Highness,” he said. “But not today.”
In the weeks following his escape, the dead had constantly visited Dimitri. Glenn spat in his face and called him a coward. His father had glared at him, disappointment in every line of his mutilated body, and told him that Edelgard’s head was the least he owed him. His stepmother, his old combat instructor, the guard who stood by the palace doors, faces he barely recognized yet still failed, all clamoring for his attention.
Until now, he had not seen Dedue. He isn’t sure if he should be thankful for that.
The left side of Dedue’s face is, for all intents and purposes, gone. Dimitri can see the gleaming white of bone through the mess of gore that’s become half of Dedue’s face and the grey-pink of brains underneath it. The rest of Dedue hasn’t fared much better -- his armor is destroyed, missing in many places and completely flayed in others. There’s a gash that spans from his shoulder to hip, visible even under the blood that completely coats his body. It gushes weakly in time with the pulsating of his exposed brain.
Dimitri leans to the side and retches.
“Dedue,” he gasps, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Dedue, I’m so sorry.”
Dedue stares at him impassively with the one eye he still has.
Dimitri’s knees weaken. He collapses back down against the rock. The weight that has taken up permanent residence in his chest grows heavier, constricting his lungs, sending waves of remorse through his stomach. “I left you behind,” he mumbles. He presses the heel of his hand against his eye until it starts to hurt, until he sees sparks. Distantly, he wonders what would happen if he just blinded himself right then. Would the dead still come to visit? Would there still be anyone for them to visit? “I was too weak. I couldn’t protect you. I’m so sorry.”
“You were,” Dedue says. Dimitri’s eyes fly open. Dedue is still standing there, unmoving, staring. Blood drips slowly from his fingertips.
“You were too weak,” Dedue continues. His voice is flat, inflectionless, in a way that Dimitri has never heard it when he was alive. “You could not kill her.”
Dimitri swallows. “No,” he whispers. “I could not.”
He leans his head back. The night is quiet. There are crickets chirping distantly, but he barely notices them through the rush in his head. A light breeze dances his hair across his face. The moon is out, not quite full but almost, casting stark shadows against the stoic landscape.
“You must kill her,” Dedue hisses suddenly, right into Dimitri’s ear. He cringes and turns to look, but Dedue is still standing, two paces away, still staring, his fingertips still dripping blood. He hasn’t moved, but when he speaks again, Dimitri still hears it right next to him.
“Kill her,” Dedue whispers. “You’ve already killed me.”
Dimitri swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. “No-” he starts, his voice cracking on the denial he doesn’t himself believe -
But Dedue is already gone.
His denial is left with the stark shadows and the breeze whispering through the trees.