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A wall of his own creation stood between him and those he’d once called his friends.
A wall, built from the bones of those who’d been felled by his hand, that smelt of their sorrow and agony. That divide, that insurmountable distance whispered to him, beat him back when he thought to get too close. Voices that had meant great comfort, once, turned into greatest fears, a horror to avoid when his body was too fatigued to march on.
But listening to the whispers was his punishment. Withstanding their hurt, angry shouts was simply the price a creature like him was born to pay. After all, he’d crawled out from the ground, soaked to the bone in blood not his own, demanding more until he drowned in it. He deserved the scorn from the humans around him, sloughed it off in favour of imagining all the ways he could sever that silvery head from its shoulders.
He ignored the sickness that seized his throat. That woman would face the pain she’d wrought if it took his last breath.
And it almost certainly would.
Footfalls padded against the aged marble of the cathedral floor. Light, certain, though not a warrior.
“Give me your cloak.”
Dimitri whirled on Mercedes with a snarl, though the healer was entirely unaffected. “There’s a tear in it,” she barreled on, “and if you think I’m letting you waltz into a battle with even less protection than you already have, you’re mistaken.”
She had been spending too much time around Felix. Even as she spoke, her adoring melody never wavered, and the familiarity of it all made his throat burn.
“Leave, Mercedes.”
“I’m not asking.”
Dimitri scrounged up every inch of height he could—and it was a lot, when he glowered at Mercedes—and bared his teeth.
She’s only trying to distract you, his father hissed. Dimitri’s face must have shown his reaction to the unplanned addition, because that look of scorn overtook her face once more.
Softer, he thought. Not quite scorn—but no. No, the other options were much worse.
“Dimitri, please. Let me fix your cloak.”
“You’re wasting your time, trying to repair a beast’s fur.”
Mercedes shook her head, sunlight glinting off her earrings. Dimitri flinched. “I’m fixing something for a friend.”
Anger and indignation rose like a flame in his chest, and he stepped close enough that, should he shed his armour, he would feel Mercedes’ warmth. He was glad for the distance, for the wall. He would care less if their flesh wasn’t warm when they died.
“Your friend,” he spat, “has not taken a breath in years.”
“You’re breathing right now, aren’t you?”
She doesn’t know what you want, Glenn sighed. She won’t help us.
“Do you think yourself special?” he growled. “Do you think I won’t cut you down where you stand, that I won’t simply wipe your blood off my hands as if it was dirt?”
“I don’t,” Mercedes said—and Dimitri felt a familiar sort of twist in his gut. Mercedes had never backed down from the challenge of caring for someone, even if the person in her way was her target. “But should you prove me wrong, just know I will never haunt you.”
Mercedes. Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes. She’d always been so kind with him, so gentle, that Dimitri was hyperaware of his own strength by comparison.
Dimitri scoffed, making for the cathedral door. He had to put more distance between them, stack up bodies the right way so the light of her gentle soul wouldn’t blind him further. The wall had to become larger, even more threatening, because Mercedes’ deft healer's hands were almost quick enough to pick apart his defences.
Ashe was poised to scream and bolt as he neared the beast. Dimitri felt that reaction was only fitting.
“Your Highness, Professor By—”
“Tell the professor to make use of someone else.”
Ashe’s grip was white-knuckled on his bow, quiver emptied and weariness beginning to nip at his heels. There was an urge to send him away, curse at him until the younger man went to sleep. His eyes, brighter than any jade Dimitri had ever seen, were smeared underneath with disheartening shadows.
“If you’re unable to withstand the demands of war, Ashe, I suggest you leave.”
Please. Please leave.
Dimitri crossed his arms, hoping the pitch of his armour hid the small tremor in his hand; that voice had been all his own.
“Don’t worry about me, Your Highness.”
“The only matter that concerns me is that that woman still draws breath.”
Ashe nodded stiffly, gripping impossibly harder onto his bow. There was blood caked under his fingernails, most of which he’d tried to scratch away earlier. Dimitri had been disgusted with the pitiful display. He wanted to send Ashe back to wherever he’d come from to help them, so that he wouldn’t have to pick out a stranger’s blood from his nails. Or rather, so that they wouldn’t waste time worrying about all the life they couldn’t afford to spare.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
He spun on his heel, and with each centimeter of ground spanning between them, Dimitri could breathe easier.
“Your Highness?”
Dimitri grunted a response. Ashe, Ashe, Ashe—walk away.
“I always thought there was some uncrossable distance between us when we first met. Then, as the year went on, I thought—I thought I felt it closing. Becoming smaller.” Ashe peered up at him through silver lashes, jades shimmering in all of the sun’s horrific glory. “I don’t know where you are now, or how much distance is between us. I just know it feels like a lot. So just know that . . . I’ll be here, whenever you start walking, Your Highness. We all will.”
There was an arrow lodged into his wall now. No matter how many time Dimitri tried to remove it, it stood resolute. He feared more would follow, that eventually someone would use them to climb. But the arrow remained solitary, and no bodies were able to disguise it.
Sylvain had never been anything short of reckless in all the years Dimitri had known him. Reckless, inattentive, and always showing more kindness than he had to spare.
A disaster of red hair was strewn about an impeccably clean, white pillow. Honey eyes were nowhere to be seen, and Dimitri was left to press himself into the corner and make sure the chest under his gaze remained moving.
The rain on the way back had rinsed off the muck, but some things were not washed away—the acrid scent of blood filled his lungs like a perfect poison. Sylvain himself was cleaned and resting, though Dimitri, as per usual, was just a step above a corpse on the ground.
“Keep staring at a guy like that, Your Highness, and he’ll start to get ideas.”
The glower that overcame Dimitri’s face was second nature. “Your stupidity knows no bounds.”
“I’m already in bed! No need to continue with the flattery.”
Throat rumbling in a discontented growl, Dimitri stalked toward the door.
“Wait!”
Goddess help him, he should have left. There was no reason to stay and subject himself to the drivel that was Sylvain’s speech—but that voice was one of happiness and childhood purity. His feet planted themselves into the ground, his very blood freezing in his veins as he eagerly awaited another glimpse into the past of the boy he no longer was.
“Don’t leave.”
“I have better things to do than play nurse.”
“Like what?” It was so rare that Sylvain showed anything close to genuine emotion; Dimitri was lost at the twinge of aggravation he heard amidst fatigued lightness. “Brooding and shoving away everyone who cares about you?”
Honey. Dimitri wanted to see honey eyes, but they were hidden from view as Sylvain tipped his head back against the pillow. His hair . . . It almost looked like a halo of blood, rich and flowing against the cotton underneath it.
It was a cleaner version of what Dimitri had seen on the battlefield.
The sight of Sylvain, crumbling to the ground as he took a gash to the stomach that should have been Dimitri’s, was all too fresh in his mind. He’d prepared to bear another familiar face in the corner of his vision the whole way back to the monastery, but now—now he was staring at the man his best friend had become, oceans away with the crashing of waves to fill his mind. Empty. Lonely.
“Why do you push everyone away?”
“Quiet, Sylvain.”
Sylvain’s brow twisted, his lips curled into a menacing frown—and it would have made Dimitri flinch back if he didn’t have Glenn’s bloodied grimace on the edge of his sight at all times. “Whatever, Your Highness. Just know that no amount of mean words or growls is going to make us stop trying.”
“Stop trying to what, Sylvian?”
Goddess, Dimitri was exhausted. He wanted to go to the cathedral, where people knew not to bother him—where he could collect the words of the dead like fallen rain in his hands, drink them up until his blood hummed with the promise of revenge.
“Stop trying to reach you.” Sylvain scoffed. “Wherever the fuck you ended up.”
Dimitri didn’t feel even a a twinge of guilt as the infirmary door slammed behind him.
A voice not belonging to the ghosts infiltrated his mind, and Dimitri immediately recognized it as Sylvain crying out as he fell. He’d followed Dimitri into the fray on the orders of the professor, who was too busy casting a healing spell on Ashe to take up her usual mantle beside the prince. Sylvain had only recently learned how to master his magic from atop a mount, and his unstable skills were enough to make him forgo the horse altogether. If he’d kept the horse—if he’d stayed as far away from Dimitri as possible—he would have been fine. But no, Sylvain had hopped down, Lance of Ruin dim in his hand, and cried out as a poisoned sword sliced through the gap in his armor. His voice took hold of Dimitri’s decrepit heart in a vice grip, and what would have been panic to anyone else filled his body. Still, as Dimitri had spun around, ready to spill more blood, choke on it, he caught a glimpse of Sylvain easily dispatching his opponent with a Bolganone before collapsing.
And Dimitri—he’d slithered further into his own personal hell. Soldiers upon soldiers were run through with his lance, their gurgling a discordant symphony against the triumphant voices in his head. When there was no immediate threat, Dimitri had cursed everything holy and sinful as he picked up his—picked up Sylvain. He’d unceremoniously dumped Sylvain onto the ground in front of the professor, who’d been joined by Mercedes, before turning back with copper sitting lovely on the tip of his tongue.
Even soaked in blood as he’d been, his shaky hands remained unsteady and his heart would not come undone from the knot it was twisted into.
Sylvain, Sylvain, Sylvain. His anguished voice rang clear like a bell in his mind, outshining the muddled cacophony of his ghosts. Dimitri catalogued the lives he’d taken; the man with the scar below his jaw, the woman with the mismatched eyes—so many, all for the sake of placing him further from those blasted pitiful looks.
Dimitri tried to ignore the scorch mark that now marred his barrier.
Electricity buzzed through Dimitri’s veins—so much so that he was convinced Felix had nicked him with a Thoron.
DedueDedueDedue—he was alive. Dedue was— He hadn’t died. Not for Dimitri, not for a kingdom that had succumb to a tyrant—and he was breathing. His heart pumped blood. His smile was not banished to the darkest corners of the Flames or the most serene landscapes beside his gods.
Dimitri hadn’t lost someone, and that . . . Well. It was as pleasant a surprise as could be expected in the middle of a war.
Dedue had fought tooth and nail to make it back here, so he could fight alongside his former classmates. He’d torn his way through Kingdom soldiers to save a prince who did not know the whispers of the wind from the demands of the dead. Just as they’d been separated, he sent off Dimitri with a smile—a lovely sight Dimitri had not taken the time to appreciate—and a promise that this was for the best. Through everything he’d remained sure and strong; no matter what storm raged or army gathered, he appeared when they needed him the most—when Dimitri needed him most. That was more than he had ever been able to say for himself.
“Your Highness.”
Whenever he had thought of Dedue’s face or voice in the past five years or so, there was always a muddled detail or two; his brow wouldn’t arch the right way or his baritone would miss the tidal gentleness that was so very Dedue.
“What do you want?”
Knowing the face of his retainer stood behind him, changed by time and war and suffering, yet identical all the same—Dimitri couldn’t turn around. All he could do was take a breath, oddly full considering how everything was weighing down on him with the threat of crushing his ribs, and clench his fists. Dedue was back. Now they were one solider stronger for their attack on Enbarr.
“I—”
Strange. Dedue was not one to stutter over his words. Every curl of his lips was planned, his intonation deliberate.
Dimitri turned around, nearly breaking down at the sight of Dedue’s face. So many scars, and for what? Certainly not for a beast such as Dimitri.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Well,” Dimitri said, low with the hope that the quiver with would go unnoticed, “you’ve seen the spectacle. Leave.” I beg of you.
“I’ve been apart from you for far too long, Your Highness. I’m afraid you will have to do a little more than demand I leave.”
A dangerous mix of a sob and a growl shook his throat. “All you wished to do when we were younger was follow my orders, and now that I finally give you one, you disregard it?”
“Yes . . . I suppose there is a certain degree of irony, isn’t there?”
“Dedue—”
“All I could think about for the past five years was making it back here, to you. If you think I will simply walk away from it all—from you—because you ask it of me, I—” Dedue looked away, eyes glimmering more elegantly than any of the stained-glass windows that had once lined the walls of the cathedral. “I will leave,” he conceded, “but do not think I will do so willingly.”
Dimitri spun back around, wordless, and said nothing further. Dedue let out a breath and moved over to the pillar that had been occupied just the night before, and if he noticed the silent rain falling near his prince, he said nothing.
Dimitri’s wall was weak at best, shaken and unsteady under a force of integrity so pure that Dimitri himself had to shudder, readjusting his grip on Areadbhar.
He felt the showers hailing from the sky in his bones long after he’d sought useless refuge in the training grounds. It seemed someone else had had the same idea.
“What are you doing here?”
Rodrigue’s hair, Glenn’s elegance in battle—so many things demanded Dimitri turn back to his ghosts. Tension danced across the air, elegant and inevitable as it twisted through Dimitri’s breath.
“I cannot say.”
A huff. Another strike at the training dummy. He fought better now, Dimitri thought. Quicker, though there was some other change to it all that he couldn’t quite place . . . .
“If you’re going to stand there like a fool, you could at least pick up a lance and spar with me.”
“I—”
“I don’t remember asking.”
Well, Dimitri thought, he’s never been one for beating around the bush, let alone decorum around me.
Dimitri eyed the rack of training lances wearily. Surely he’d snap more than half of them in two if he was to dispel any of the restlessness in the man across from him. Still, he walked over and took one in his hands, barely readying himself in time for the strike aimed at his throat.
This was a dance he knew. There was no one, two, three tempo to fall in step with, no partner to care for tenderly and diplomatically. It was the rhythm of his heart that drove his feet, the rush of instinct that kept his sight sharp and movements sure. His partner did not care for his comfort, and he could grit his teeth and curse without the fear of shattering a false image of safety.
“How many times have you looked into my face and seen someone else?”
Dimitri did not answer, for he was too occupied stepping away from an arch that came close to his leg.
“Answer me.”
He hated—despised the shakiness in that voice he knew so well. It cut into his heart quicker and more painfully than the finest silver blade in all of Fódlan, stinging like a venom of his own making.
“Of course not—”
"Don’t lie to me!”
Rage not his own seared his flesh, but Dimitri used the pain to his advantage and feinted left, where the words pressed like a brand into his shoulder. You did this, someone hissed. He’s like this because of you.
“Your eyes,” he said, swatting the shaft of his lance against the swordsman’s arm.
“What—?”
“People say eyes are the window to the soul. I always thought those who said such things were daft and clueless, romanticizing the complexity of human nature.” The pain that came from the jab grazing his side rolled off his back like water. “I thought that—until I became your friend.”
“What are you going on about?”
“Everything about you comes from the fire of your soul.” Dimitri wanted to drive his training lance into his remaining eye; how clichéd of him, to use such diction that would put a certain redhead to shame. “Your eyes, no matter how much you hate looking into everyone else’s—they’re the colour I imagine your soul to be. I could never mistake you for anyone else.”
Yet another scoff and yet another jab, this time aimed at his head. It was sloppy, though Dimitri bit his tongue around any sort of comment. “Here I thought you’d take this seriously—”
“Felix.”
Dimitri watched those eyes flicker and burn and quake as they refused to meet his own. An inferno lay just behind them, one Dimitri had become very accustomed to getting burned by. He welcomed it, because it told him Felix was still there—that he lived and seethed and hurt just like the rest of them. Just like his father and brother didn’t.
“What are you trying to accomplish, saying things like that?”
Felix looked up, glowing bright under a sky tarnished by darkness and the woes of those fighting under it. His eyes shone like the stars hidden behind melancholic clouds, lost and waiting to be found.
“You wish for me to be honest, do you not?”
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Perhaps Felix had thrown his cautions to the wind, carried away on the breeze smelling of smoke and petrichor, of anguish and viridity. Or perhaps he was losing himself in memories of times past, where his only concern was how to properly grip his sword or recover from a bout with Dimitri. Whatever the case may be, Dimitri was not so foolish as to squander the vulnerability Felix was showing.
“We are damaged men, Felix. We cannot so easily run away from that which haunts us.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“What I mean to say is . . .”
Dimitri wasn’t entirely sure himself. He may as well have been beating his fists against a wall, what with how much he was fighting to string the correct words together. Felix had stuck by him for months on end, watching the man with his best friend’s face parade around and call for Edelgard’s head. Dimitri wasn’t sure there were any words in any language that were able to convey his gratitude.
“My father is dead.”
Rain fell from the clouds once more. Dimitri looked down at his hands, expecting to find them swathed in crimson, but only found them damp with fresh rain. He looked at Felix, who was still peering up into the night sky as if it could offer him answers he wished to hear. Water droplets of all sorts ran down his cheeks, some hailing from the clouds above and others falling from an inferno, hot and unmistakable.
Dimitri had only a few paces to cross before he would be at Felix’s side. Regardless of how much his soul—or what was left of it—cried out for him to move, he did not take those steps; instead, he took that opportunity to check the stability of his barrier.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat.
“I know. And I will see to it that the country he believed in flourishes.”
“Past tense.” Felix tore himself out of the sky, leaving a trail of flames in his wake as he walked towards the exit. “I guess he really isn’t haunting you.”
“Felix—" Felix, Felix—
“Just . . . don’t let me down, Dimitri. A lot more is riding on you than you think.”
Dimitri doubted that; after all, his wall was crumbling under the weight of responsibilities he should have been shouldering for the past five years.
He wondered what to make of the slash running along the bottom of the burn mark.
Dimitri frowned when diamonds glistened under Annette’s eyes.
“Annette?”
Quick as a whip, Annette spun on her heel with her palm wiping at her eye. “Your Highness! Did you need something?”
Dimitri looked at Crusher, leaned up against the wall of Annette’s room at the insistence of the professor. He knew the Lance of Ruin and the Aegis Shield were in similar positions in their owners' rooms. Crusher seemed to reach towards him, beckoning him forward with the curl of an emaciated finger and hissing promises.
“Your Highness?”
Sky and chrysanthemums. Dimitri looked at Annette once more, unsure of what to do with the worried curl of her lips.
“My apologies, Annette. I did not mean to . . .”
What was he supposed to say? “Almost falling victim to the voices in your head” didn’t exactly fall under the category of “spacing out.”
“Don’t worry, Your Highness. But if you need my help with anything, don’t be afraid to ask.”
“Yes, I . . .”
He was staring out into a garden filled with flowers and sunlight. There was nowhere for him to hide amidst warm rolling greenery or an endless canvas of blue. He may as well have been wrapped up in her small, determined arms with how exposed he felt, how the warmth of a sun nowhere to be found never left his face. He wondered how it made it through the skeletons of those he’d slain, and why he was so reluctant to hide away from it.
“I wished to thank you. You saved me just in time during our last battle.”
“Well, I have the professor to thank for that. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she could look into the future.” Annette smiled to herself, a small but sure thing, as she fiddled with the papers on her desk. “I’m surprised none of us have fallen yet.”
“Yes, in that regard, I suppose we are lucky.” Goddess knew how many times it had been the professor’s impeccable timing that saved him from an arrow to the heart. “But regardless of our professor’s hand in our movements,” Dimitri continued, “there is no denying your skill is what made you capable of saving me.”
Annette—she positively beamed. Her hands clapped together in her lap, and the light in her eyes put Marianne’s Aura spells to shame. “Oh! Well, thank you, Your Highness.” Obscurity snuffed out the light, frown gripping her lips once more. “I guess all my practice had to be good for one thing.”
Dimitri stared at the river of unspoken words between them. He found himself wanting to leap across.
“What makes you say that?”
Lips parting and an answer almost assuredly waiting on her tongue, Annette’s breath hitched. A moment later, she clamped her lips shut and turned away. “It’s nothing, Your Highness.”
“Annette—”
“Really. I trained and studied as hard as I did because I wanted to succeed, to—” She swallowed. “Well, it’s nothing now.”
Annette, Annette, Annette—what are you doing? “Training relentlessly in the pursuit of strength is a motive we typically allot to someone else, Annette.”
“True,” Annette sighed, her paper-thin illusion of perfection crumbling around the edges. Dimitri wasn’t sure how to break down the rest of it; he’d never been good at nailing things from a distance.
Instead, he decided to take a stab in the dark. “Gustave is a difficult man, Annette, but there are few other things he loves more than his family. In fact, his family may be the one thing he truly loves.”
Annette shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes. “That can’t be true.”
“Why?”
“Because then he wouldn’t have left.”
Dimitri reached out his hand, only to find there was something in his way. Clenching his fist and offering a quick murmur for his departure, the prince hurried out of Annette’s room.
For years now, he’d relished in the knowledge that there was something terrifying and disgusting between him and the rest of the world—a twisted, maniacal thing that kept him submerged in his own sorrow. Never, not once, had he tried to push that wall down—and frankly, now that he was staring down the monstrosity of his own creation, he wanted it gone.
Not that he ever would. It was much easier to ignore his flaws, in the dark.
“Your Highness, I’m not asking.”
Perhaps it came high time that Dimitri grew a backbone when it came to the people of Faerghus.
Ingrid was this close to pulling Dimitri up onto her Pegasus by his ear alone, bloodied sword gripped in her other hand and staining it red.
“Ingrid, please, I’ll be fine.”
There was no shortage of archers around, mounted or otherwise, and Ingrid would be hard pressed to make it out of here unscathed if she didn’t leave now.
He did his best to give her a reassuring smile. “Did I not tell you you were not to throw your life away for me?”
“Throwing myself in front of a sword meant for you and doing my best to save your ass are two very different things.”
“You have a dirtier mouth than I remember.” Regardless, Dimitri swung up onto Ingrid’s mount with little fanfare. He could only hope he masked the pain moving gave him.
As a steady beating filled the air, Dimitri was quick to remember why he’d always taken to horses instead. Sure, there had been days where he’d gotten through sky watch with Cyril easily enough, but he didn’t find nearly as much comfort in the lofty thump of wings fighting against the wind as he did the thundering of horse hooves.
Ingrid only tossed one glance back at the prince before keeping her eyes ahead of her. “You can thank your insolence for that.”
“My insolence!” Dimitri grinned despite himself. Only Ingrid would take on the responsibility of scolding whoever needed it—even if that man was the crown prince of Faerghus. “I must apologize for inconveniencing you so, Ingrid. I did not realize my childish nature on the battlefield would cause you such trouble.”
“If you’re going to apologize, be serious about it.” She reached back, curling her fingers around his wrist with the unshakable strength and certainty of any knight worth their salt. “And put your arm around me before you fall, yes? We haven’t tried this hard to protect you for so long only to have you fall off and die by accident, Your Highness.”
He frowned, but followed her command without preamble. “Any way I would die would be an accident, Ingrid.”
“Of course. But this would be especially mortifying.”
“Right again.”
He heard the familiar incantation of spells breaking out below him, some unquestionable and some panicked. He peered down, uncaring for the distance between him and the unforgiving ground, and saw Annette staring down at a burnt tome, panicked.
“Ingrid—”
“I can’t, Your Highness,” Ingrid said, regretful and angry. “If I try to get there fast enough, there’s a large chance all three of us will be injured.” She whipped her head around. “ARCHERY! ASSISTANCE, WESTBOUND!"
The whinny of a horse and the pounding of hooves—Ashe tore through the battlefield with an arrow nocked and the resolve of a fighter glazing his eyes. Dimitri wondered, with a sick sort of pride that could only be born from bloodshed and survival, when he’d become such a capable fighter. With rocks in his gut and a darkness blooming like a ghoulish flower in his heart, he came to the conclusion that he’d been too distracted by his masterpiece of destruction to pay attention to the valiant knight of Ashe’s dreams coming to light.
Annette rattled off spells she knew by heart, undeterred by the weakness compared to her previous incantations with Ashe at her heel. Dimitri felt whatever serpent had tightened around his lungs relax.
A familiar head of light hair was slowly making its way towards them—or was it just that he and Ingrid were too high up?
“The battle is nearing its end,” Byleth explained as they hovered above the ground. “You two see Manuela for an evaluation, okay?”
As he dismounted, he hid his wince of pain well; Ingrid had snatched him up just in time, loathe as he was to admit it.
“I’m fine, Professor,” Dimitri said, forcing his tongue to work against the lump of red-hot pain sitting idle at the back of his tongue.
Byleth didn’t pay the prince much mind, instead walking over and saying something in Ingrid’s ear.
Dimitri listened to the decrescendo of the battle around him. Pants of exertion slipped into sighs of relief, light footsteps of the beginnings of a fight broke down into slow, fatigued dragging—but he looked around, counting each of the Lions and most of the foot soldiers they’d walked in with. He bit his lip, worrying the skin between his teeth as he spent a scant moment mourning over those who had died under his watch.
“Your Highness,” Ingrid called, “it’s about time we started heading back.”
Light bounced off of Ingrid’s pale locks, shining like a beacon amidst the dreary misery of battle. She’d torn through enemies to make her way to him, to guide him toward a future filled with light. Though, if he were to be honest with himself, he would admit she hadn’t been the first.
He took one step after another, not caring or whatever strange looks may be tossed their way. He stepped over skeletons that were not there and blood that was fresh against the soil beneath his feet. Ingrid, Ingrid, Ingrid. He pushed past Glenn’s sneer and his father’s disappointed frown, wrapping his arms around Ingrid’s waist. Their armour clanked together, and the musk of sweat and the tang of blood attacked his nose, but Goddess above, he did not care. Ingrid had always been there, just as Sylvain and Felix had, in the corner of his vision, more pleasant than any ghost he’d ever been haunted by.
“Ingrid,” he whispered, “thank you.”
Maybe she was just appeasing him, but she smiled with heartwarming understanding and nodded, hugging him back despite the stained fur of his cloak and the awkwardness of his armour.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
She’d flown over his wall as if it had been nothing more than a foothill—and even though too many of his instincts were crying out for him to shoo her away, demand she fly away and never come back, he guided her down. He showed her the safest spot to hide amongst bones and tragedy and relished in her company, because for far too long, he’d treated the dead like the friends he’d always had.
Dimitri wondered why he wanted so badly to turn back around so grab the dagger. Perhaps it was all a foolish sort of naiveté, thinking that he could simply grab onto a weapon and have everything good about his childhood come rushing back. As he turned back around, however, he knew such was not the case; the professor’s hand was clasped around his, stopping his feet from carrying him into a canyon both inescapable and familiar.
They said nothing as they walked out, but the cheers of the elated—they were unmistakable. They had won. The suffering was officially allowed to end.
One voice, sharper than the rest with only the most honest of intentions, cut through the noise.
“After Gronder and the start of your turnaround, there was still something was off about you. There was no mistaking it when I saw it in the rain.” She turned to him, smile brighter and lovelier than any sun or moon in the sky. “Now I look at you and you seem . . . lighter, I suppose is the word I’m looking for, though I don’t quite think that’s it.”
Byleth reached out, grasping his gauntleted hand in hers with trepidatious fingers. Dimitri wondered when she’d broken through his wall, but he knew the answer to that before he could truly finish asking himself the question.
Professor. She’d had always been there, his steady pillar against all, when blood weighed too heavily on his hands or voices filled his head beyond capacity. Unbeknownst to him, he’d crafted his wall around her as well, caging her in with the wild animal he’d been with no regard to her safety. But Byleth . . . No, she was stronger than that. Had she needed, she could have broken through his wall without so much as a bead of sweat breaking free.
But she’d stayed. And now, he stood in the light, with bones littering the floor around him. He watched as they crumbled into dust with each step he took, fading into the ground with nothing more than a whisper. His comrades, the men and women who’d remained so stubbornly at his side, were far down the road with foot soldiers all around, but Dimitri had never felt closer to them.
“I think,” he said, “that this is just the first time you’ve seen me in the light, Professor.”
And now, as he walked towards his friends, bathed in light and euphoria and relief, he had no intention of hiding himself away from it ever again.