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Sleep had never seemed so far away.
Felix rose from his bed some time past midnight. Nervous energy buzzed in his chest cavity, his thoughts raced a mile a minute, and he was tired of closing his eyes and assuring himself that in just five more minutes, he’d be drifting off at long last. He wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon. He might as well burn some energy.
He pulled on the breeches and starched white shirt of his Officers Academy uniform, and belted his ceremonial sword around his waist. He toed into his boots before opening his door and leaving the safety of his room for the Monastery grounds.
He remembered the tour they’d all been given quite clearly, but it was still unsettling to be beyond the familiar, comforting halls of Castle Fraldarius. The unaccustomed setting felt strange, stilted, and the cover of night didn’t exactly help matters. He placed a steadying hand on the bannister as he hurried down the stairs to the first floor, and scanned the area before starting off in the direction of the training yard. It was silly, to be so discombobulated. He’d be living here for a year, he reminded himself. Just like his father, and his mother, and half of his bloodline leading all the way back to Kyphon. Another link in an infinite chain. He’d do himself a favour by acclimatizing himself quickly.
It was, he rationalized, just that he was overwhelmed.
He hadn’t been quite prepared for how it would feel, to see Dimitri again.
He hissed in a breath between his teeth, and shook his head, hand falling instinctively to the hilt of his sword. None of that, he told himself firmly.
It occurred to him that the doors to the training ground might be locked, and he’d come all this way for nothing, but they fell open to his touch and allowed him entrance. It was dark and silent as the grave in the yard, but the moon was high above, and he felt an ease come over him as he breathed deep the scents of leather and metal and sawdust.
He’d found a great deal of comfort in the yard in the past three years. In those moments where nothing seemed to make sense, the sword always did.
The sense of unfamiliarity still permeated everything, but it wasn’t nearly so bad, here. He felt only slightly awkward as he moved his feet to settle into the first motions of a warm up, his boots sliding in the dust. He drew his sword smoothly, the sound of it hissing from its sheath sending a tingle up his spine, and when he sliced the air before it, it all came together in a sweet, satisfying hum.
He fell into the motions.
It wasn’t long before his shirt clung to his back, until sweat was dripping down his chest, until he began to wish he had put his hair back up to keep it from clinging to his neck and shoulders and forehead as he moved. But it was good, clarifying, and when his muscles began to ache pleasantly from the exertion, he thought that, perhaps, the unfamiliar bed would not stop him from sleeping tonight, after all.
A sound caught him off guard, far too close at hand. His heart leapt into a gallop, and he spun, sword at the ready, unsure of whether he expected to see a fellow delinquent student, a displeased faculty member, or some villain.
His heart stopped beating when he met the sapphire eyes of a ghost from his past, standing only metres away.
Their gazes locked. Felix could not quite remember how to breathe.
“I did not expect to see anyone here,” Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd murmured, and inclined his head. “Forgive me.”
Everything rushed back in -- breath, heartbeat, and thought. It staggered him.
And then he sneered.
A villain, then, after all.
“Following me?” he demanded. His voice sounded too harsh, too demanding in his own ears. He flinched from it. He didn’t care, one way or the other.
Dimitri blinked, and shook his head so hard his hair shook from side to side. When had he cut it, Felix wondered? He’d always worn it longer, in all the years he’d known him, and it had been nearly to his shoulders when they had seen one another last. He looked ridiculous with it short like that. Like he had shown a barber a portrait of his father at his age, and asked him to do it just like that.
He didn’t know why he cared. It just -- didn’t suit him, was all.
“Never mind,” he snapped, cutting off whatever further protests Dimitri might have in the making. He didn’t want to hear it. Whatever peace he’d achieved here felt a million miles away. “I don’t care what you’re doing. Goodbye.”
He sheathed his sword and started away. Too fast, really, practically jogging to the doors, but he couldn’t help himself. The very air they shared made him feel dizzy, angry, confused -- made him feel far too many things.
He made it to the edge of the yard before that familiar voice called after him, so damnably gentle.
“Would you like to spar with me?”
No.
He certainly did not.
And he ought to twist about and say as much, to throw the refusal in the beast’s face and hope it hurt. Why would he put himself at risk? What could possibly convince him to cross swords with someone with such a taste for blood and pain? The risk far outweighed any possible gain.
But his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth. The refusal would not come.
And, after a long moment of struggling with it, he whirled about, drawing in a deep breath to face Dimitri once again.
“Defend yourself, then,” he snapped, and then his sword was singing from its sheath and he was charging him.
Dimitri’s eyes widened. For a moment, Felix thought he ought to pull back his strike, wait for the prince to signal that he was ready. Certainly, every lesson he had ever had in his life told him that what he was doing, right now, was dishonourable at best.
But he needn’t have worried.
At the last moment, Dimitri threw up one gauntleted forearm, and caught the blow in a screech of metal. Felix’s teeth seemed to scrape over one another, horribly discordant, as he fell back in a staggering step. A real blade would have cut right through that vambrace. Dimitri must have known that the standard issue that came with their uniforms was practically dull.
Over his arm, held in the defensive position, his eyes glittered like ice, cold and dangerous.
Felix smiled.
“There he is,” he murmured.
Dimitri lowered his arm, slowly. He shook it out, and then regarded Felix evenly, his jaw set in a striking line. “Whatever you think of me,” he said, his voice strangely soft for his strong, solid posture, “I need you to know that it isn’t true. Not the way -- not how you think it is.”
Felix laughed humourlessly. His sword shook slightly. The image flashed through his mind -- Dimitri, face dripping with blood, eyes wild and inhuman, lance held almost limply in one hand, and the other held the remains of…
He gritted his teeth.
“If you want to spar,” he said roughly, “arm yourself. Otherwise, just let me go to bed.”
And damn him, damn them both. Because in that moment, in the silence following his growled ultimatum, he could not help but think that Dimitri looked… sad. Desperately, painfully sad.
He almost started to open his mouth, to blunt the edge of his words, before Dimitri turned all at once, his half-cape fluttering. Strange, how he was still fully dressed. As if he hadn’t even tried to sleep. Felix watched him, sword held before him, its point wavering, as he went to the weapon racks at the far end of the yard.
He selected a sword, not a lance. Felix held his tongue, biting back the instinctual, lifelong protest. No! Fight me with your best weapon! Or don’t you take me seriously?
Had he ever wanted anything as much as he wanted for Dimitri to take him seriously? To respect him? To see him as a worthy protector, defender, companion, shield?
He shook his head. None of that!
When Dimitri turned back, sword in hand, Felix watched him with a knot in his stomach. He tried not to notice the way his hair fell over his forehead. The way his body moved with such strength and grace. The way he towered over him as he approached. He tried not to remember a hundred times they had met in the yard, just like this. Tried not to recall how they were the best memories of his life.
If there had ever been a Dimitri, if that boy he had fucking lived for had ever really existed, this was not him. This was a monster, a wild animal, wearing him like a coat.
Felix’s lips pulled back into a snarl, and he lifted his sword to charge him.
They met in a clash of steel. Dimitri’s sword arm was as strong as it had ever been, and Felix immediately was forced to adjust the angle of his thrusts to account for him. Even with his secondary weapon, Dimitri’s sheer, raw power was nothing to take lightly. The only advantage Felix had was dexterity, speed, finesse. He intended to use them. He intended to win.
He danced to the side, boots kicking up a cloud of dust as he moved. His sword slashed against Dimitri’s side, a clean, solid hit. Dimitri spun to meet him, an oof of surprise escaping his mouth, and his weapon caught Felix’s at the hilt.
The power behind the blow sent him reeling, crashing and tumbling through the dust. His head spun from the inelegant fall, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself up, onto his feet, weapon held ready. His hair tumbled around his shoulders. He really should have knotted it back up.
Dimitri regarded him uncertainly. Felix hated the way he could read his face so easily, hated how he saw the concern so clear in his eyes.
“We don’t have to do this,” Dimitri said.
“Shut up,” Felix shot back, and ran at him again.
This time, he feinted right and then dove left, circling back around him with a sliding step through the dust and slashing across his back. Dimitri gasped in alarm and fell forward, halfway through recovering to meet him, and twisted about as he stumbled so that he faced him. There was a little stitch between his eyes, and his lips were folded down in concentration, but there was no sign of the animal Felix had seen at the Western front.
Despite it all, he couldn’t help but think he would feel better if he did see it. If he knew, undeniably, that it was there.
Their swords crashed together on their next meeting, and the next. Felix panted, and the thrill of the fight sung in his veins. There was a simple, kinetic pleasure in this that was impossible to deny. He’d never felt as if he could really keep up with the prince, never in his life, until now, today. So much had happened in the last few years. He was a different person, now. He was strong enough.
Just as he had always wanted to be. For his Dimitri.
He faltered on a swing, and was forced back. He bared his teeth, raised his sword, prepared for the next clash. He made the mistake of meeting the other man’s eyes.
Dimitri regarded him with open concern. The expression on his deceptively handsome face was soft, even sweet, with consideration. Despite the hair, despite how tall he’d gotten, despite the poison of vicious, red memories turning everything to ash and blood, Felix was struck in that moment by how very little he appeared to have changed.
His breath caught in his throat.
Dimitri came at him, sensing his moment of weakness. But his strike was weak. He was too concerned, playing too light. Felix turned his sword easily, used his momentum against him, and danced out of his way. He turned, planting a kick square in the centre of Dimitri’s back, and sent him tumbling down into the dust at his feet.
He twisted, sword at the ready, prepared to continue if Dimitri got back up… but he did not. He merely laid there, panting in the moonlight, until he released his hold on the hilt of his sword and turned over onto his back.
“I yield,” he said, quietly.
Felix let the tip of his sword fall. It occurred to him that he’d never heard Dimitri say the words before, not to him. He’d finally done it. Bested him.
It didn’t feel like much of a victory.
He dropped his sword arm to his side. Images and ideas, different times and feelings all collided in his stomach. It was impossible that the Dimitri he had known, had adored so completely, could still seem so real. His head spun with the conflicting emotions and sensations. He had seen what this man was, what he was capable of doing. It ought to erase whatever he might have once felt, wanted.
It didn’t.
He sheathed his sword. He felt dizzy, like the whole yard was spinning wildly around him and he couldn’t make it stop. He needed -- he needed to put as much distance between him and Dimitri as he could. He stepped over him, eager to reach their doors. The thought of fighting his way uselessly to sleep was almost tantalizing, compared to this.
He didn’t expect the hand that seized his ankle and tumbled him down.
He hit the ground all at once. If not for the thick sawdust laid out over the yard, the wind might have been knocked out of him. At his side, Dimitri laughed faintly.
“I still remember Glenn’s old tricks,” he puffed, the open mirth in his tone incongruous with Felix’s spinning head. “Our fathers clucked their tongues, but even they couldn’t deny what Glenn always said, could they? Use anything you have, when you need to win.”
The bitter, cold laugh forced itself from his lungs. “And you needed to win right now?”
He heard Dimitri moving beside him, and then he was there, leaning down over him. His expression was so very sincere it hurt to look at him, and yet it was impossible to look away.
His eyes were the worst part. Just as they ever were.
“Yes,” Dimitri said. He was so close that his breath misted on Felix’s face. “Because I thought that, if we were down here in the dirt together as equals, there was a chance that you might...”
He trailed off. Those wonderful, haunting eyes bored into Felix’s soul, searching for something he didn’t know if he had to find. Felix couldn’t bear the contact, and his own eyes fell to his strong nose, to the striking line of his jaw, and to his lips, so very close. He thought he could inhale and catch Dimitri’s breath in his own lungs.
A hand against his forehead.
Another on his shoulder.
He’d replay this moment a hundred times this year. A thousand, even. He’d fantasize about it, he’d curse it, and he would analyze it again and again, trying to ascertain who it was who closed that distance between them.
In truth, he thought that it was both of them at once.
Their lips met. Dimitri’s were soft and careful, and he kissed like he thought that Felix might melt away if handled too roughly. Felix reeled with it, his last tenuous connection to this reality breaking apart as he met his mouth with eagerness, with excitement, because hadn’t he waited all his life for this moment? For the time to finally come when Dimitri saw him -- him, more than anyone else, and chose him to be at his side, forever?
The quiet, wet sound when they parted was loud enough to echo around them. Felix’s lashes fluttered, and he gazed up into his face. His heart thudded like a stampede in his chest.
“Felix,” Dimitri breathed.
Feilx swallowed. Hard.
“Let me up,” he said, and was proud of how even and expressionless his tone was.
It seemed to take forever, Dimitri withdrawing and then climbing to his feet. He reached down. offering him a hand to regain his own footing. Felix accepted, despite how little he wanted to. He knew he’d struggle to rise on his own. The last thing he wanted was for Dimitri to see him like a turtle on its back.
He brushed off his breeches. He could not tell if his thoughts were racing… or if his head was empty. Only that he very badly wished the stars would stop whirling overhead.
“Felix,” Dimitri said again, soft and kind, but --
That was enough to break the spell.
Felix turned away from him, raising his arm to wipe at his mouth in bitter erasure of what had just happened.
He regretted it instantly.
“Don’t come near me,” he said, softly. “Just -- don’t. You -- I don’t -- I don’t know you. Do you understand? I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m exactly who I’ve always been,” Dimitri murmured.
But Felix shook his head, hard, rejecting the very idea. It couldn’t be. He gritted his teeth. “No. You’re not. I saw you, Dimitri. I saw you at the Western Rebellion! You can’t pretend that didn’t happen! You’re an animal. A wild boar! I saw it. I saw it. Will you deny me the truth of my own experience?!”
It was a blessing when Dimitri didn’t reply. Equally so, when he didn’t call after him as Felix walked away.
If he tried, Felix didn’t know what he might do.
His feet took him back to his room by himself, while his mind was occupied with other matters. He wished he could stop thinking, stop touching his lips with the pads of his fingers, stop remembering the way Dimitri’s beloved face had twisted into a terrible mask of hate and brutality.
There was one blessing for him. When he laid back in bed, and pulled the covers over his body, sleep did come, enveloping in its embrace almost instantly.
But peace?
Peace did not make an appearance that night, and he felt its absence long after.