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“– really, you can’t conceptualize Dark magic the same way you do Black magic if you ever want it to work for you,” Lysithea says, “It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking Dark magic is something of an in-between of Black and White magic, since the name is so misleading, but it’s more like… okay, what’s the difference between White and Light magic?”
Annette thinks for a moment, her hair – longer now than when they were teenagers – swept back into a bun and turning red-gold in the candlelight, long strands falling out haphazardly to frame her face. A pair of reading glasses balance delicately on the bridge of her nose, wobbling as her whole face screws up in concentration. Lysithea is hopelessly endeared.
“Uh,” she says, “is that a trick question?”
“Not at all,” Lysithea says, inclining her head a little.
“Okay, then. Um, well, White magic is used for healing, and Light magic is offensive, right?” She shakes her head, “Um! I mean, of course I know that’s right. You can’t trick me!”
Lysithea nods. “Right. When you use White magic to heal another person, you’re drawing on natural magic. The magic of the body. Similarly, Black magic – fire, wind, thunder – is all drawn from nature.”
Annette’s leaning forward to look at Lysithea’s haphazard scribblings on the blackboard of their old classroom, her pretty mouth pursed in concentration. “Okay,” she says, “so Black and White magic are natural. What are Light and Dark?”
“The Compendium calls them Celestial magic.” Lysithea frowns. “There honestly isn’t that much writing on Dark magic to begin with, and it’s certainly not usually connected to Light magic. But you have to understand what Dark magic is in order to stand a chance at casting it, and this is the best explanation I’ve found, especially for someone already well-versed in Light magic.”
Annette nods. “So, then–”
“Woah,” a familiar voice calls from the door of the classroom, “What’re you kids doing out so late?”
Lysithea wants to scream. Annette was just getting it – she could see it in her eyes, that now-familiar light that means she’s about to tip headfirst into comprehension – and if you interrupt Annette in the moments before she grasps a topic it slips through her hands like smoke – and – ugh.
Oblivious to Lysithea’s inner turmoil, Annette turns around, stray curls bouncing. “Oh, hi, Sylvain! Lysithea and I are just going over some Dark magic basics,” she exclaims sunnily.
Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “Are you now,” he says, not really a question. Lysithea does not like that look on his face, equal parts playful and calculating. It reminds her too much of Claude, and Claude wearing that expression never spelled anything good for Lysithea. “It’s good to see you’ve changed your mind about studying with others, Lysithea.”
Lysithea can feel her face heating up, and she fights it back down alongside the urge to look away. “Yes, well. I still don’t make a habit of it. Annette’s unique insights are always refreshing, so I make an exception.”
That eyebrow creeps ever higher. Lysithea hopes, venomously, that it gets eaten for good by his hairline. “Refreshing. I’m sure they are.” She hopes next time she sees him he only has one eyebrow, and everyone is laughing at him. “Our Annie always did have that effect on people.” She hopes he gets picked up by a circus.
Annette is looking between the two of them like a lost puppy. Lysithea bites her tongue hard to keep from saying something that will make Annette’s gaze turn disapproving.
“Well,” Sylvain says, “I’ll be off, I guess. Don’t overwork yourselves, alright? Wouldn’t want either of you dropping from exhaustion. Goddess knows you’re both stubborn enough for it.” He mutters this last, making his way toward the dormitories.
“That was weird, right? Tell me that was weird,” Annette says after a moment, frowning at the space he’d vacated.
Lysithea heaves a sigh. “He’s weird. Don’t worry too much about it.”
Annette nods, looking down at her haphazard notes. Lysithea follows her gaze to the tree and pair of wings she’s doodled, ‘white/black’ and ‘light/dark’ scribbled next to them respectively. Lysithea is hopelessly endeared by it. Annette stares intently at this for a moment before groaning.
“Shit,” she laments, “I totally lost it!”
Lysithea makes a mental note to put salt in Sylvain’s tea as soon as the opportunity presents itself, and patiently restarts her explanation.
See, Lysithea isn’t stupid. She wasn’t the youngest person in her year at the Officer’s academy for nothing. She can pick up complicated spellwork in a matter of hours, decipher ancient runes in days. She’s a competent, functional almost twenty year old with a more pressing sense of her mortality than most and all these things mean that she doesn’t have time to waste pretending she doesn’t know her own mind.
So she can admit it: Lysithea is definitely head over heels in stupid, embarrassing love with Annette Fantine Dominic. She has been for – oh, hell, probably a year now. She can actually pinpoint the precise moment she fell in love, or at least the moment she realized.
It was a moment a lot like this: she’d been explaining the differences between physical exhaustion and magical exhaustion, late at night in the library bent over a dusty old book with Annette pressed right up against her side, and Annette had that same almost-got-it look in her eyes, and then a fucking bird crashed into the window, and Annette shrieked and dropped the book and by the time they’d gotten their bearings she’d lost it, and–
And Lysithea hadn’t been annoyed at all. Had wanted to explain it over again. It didn’t make sense – she was on a schedule, she didn’t have time to be saying the same things over and over again – and yet something about Annette’s big turquoise eyes had Lysithea so totally wrapped around Annette’s little finger that she knew, in that moment, she’d do anything to be allowed a little more time by her side. To be a footnote in her story, like maybe when Annette’s sixty and has long since taken over Hanneman’s old office and Lysithea is long-dead someone will ask Annette about magical exhaustion and maybe Annette will think of Lysithea for a moment as she answers. Like maybe that would be enough.
So yeah. Stupid, embarrassing love. Lysithea has long come to terms with the fact that she’d do basically anything Annette asked just to see her smile. She’s lucky Annette hasn’t figured it out yet – though based on the looks Sylvain had given her, her days with even that small mercy are numbered too.
She is sure it’s the beginning of the end when Annette comes to her a few days later, pulling nervously at the sleeves of her dress, and asks her if Sylvain can borrow a book from her personal collection. Lysithea stops where she’s reshelving some of the many books she’d borrowed last week and stares at her.
“Why can’t he ask me himself?”
Annette goes faintly red. “He, um. Seemed to think you’d say no if he asked.”
Lysithea hums. “He’s not wrong,” she says.
“I’m really not sure why he thought I’d do any better – I mean I know how protective you are of your books, you barely let me touch them and we’re best friends–”
That draws Lysithea up short. “Isn’t Mercedes your best friend?”
Annette blinks at her. “Well, yeah, Mercie and I are best friends, but you’re my best friend too. You can have lots of best friends.”
“The definition of the word ‘best’ would disagree with you,” Lysithea says, trying desperately to regain something like control over the conversation. Best friend. Lysithea is Annette’s best friend. Or one of them. Or whatever. That… is more than she’d ever thought to hope for. Lysithea can be happy with that. More than happy.
Annette rolls her eyes. “Okay, well, Mercie is like… like a sister. I’ve known her forever, she was around for all my embarrassing haircuts and acne and stuff. You’re… um. Not like that.”
“Oh? What am I like then?” Lysithea tries her damnedest to affect disinterest even though she’s suddenly desperate to know the answer like she’s maybe never been about anything before.
Annette flushes and looks away. “Um. Like… I don’t know. You push me to be better. You make me feel… I don’t know. Competent. Self-assured. You’re…” She gets a sort of determined look in her eyes and looks right through Lysithea, who does her best not to shiver. “You’re like no one else I’ve ever met, Lysithea.”
And, hell. What’s she supposed to say to that?
Thankfully, Annette saves her from having to think of something. “A– anyway! Um, the book Sylvain wants is The Magic of Charms, Amulets, and Talismans. Obviously you don’t have to let him borrow it! Just, um, Linhardt already has the library’s copy out, and you know how he can be with deadlines, and I was really hoping to discuss chapter sixteen with him, and –”
Goddess, this girl is going to kill her. Lysithea cuts off her rambling before she gets lost in it, “Yes, okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll bring it to dinner tonight. Tell him if he bends the spine I’ll push him into the pond.”
The way Annette’s face lights up makes the whole thing worth it. She looks like the sun. Lysithea’s skin feels like it’s on fire and that’s even before Annette throws her arms around her neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she’s saying, wide grin crinkling the corners of her eyes. She’ll have magnificently lovely crow’s feet when she’s old. Lysithea wishes she could see it.
Annette dashes off, nearly sending two lamps and a stack of books tumbling to the ground in her wake. Lysithea feels bowled over, hollowed out, staring after Annette long after she’s left the room.
From one of the nearby tables, Linhardt raises an eyebrow at her. She doesn’t stick her tongue out at him, but it’s a very near thing.
The real problem with all this is that it doesn’t stop there. Suddenly, Lysithea realizes, every request anyone ever has for her seems to come through Annette. Ingrid wants her help getting her new pegasus used to Dark magic – she sends Annette to ask. Ferdinand wants her to procure for him a particular kind of tea that’s only grown and blended in Ordelia territory – he sends Annette to beg her to write home for it.
Edelgard looks on in amusement as Annette nearly topples over a bush, rushing off after having interrupted their teatime to ask on Leonie’s behalf to speak to some of the children in town about how to keep safe when learning magic – when Leonie had gotten such a fan club among them, Lysithea wasn’t sure, although it wasn’t as though it didn’t make sense.
“Annette certainly has had a stunning number of requests for you lately,” Edelgard says, face pinched like she’s trying not to laugh outright. Lysithea groans.
“I’m aware,” Lysithea says. A moment passes, Edelgard clearly waiting for Lysithea to go on. She sighs. “It’s Sylvain’s fault.”
“Hmm.”
And just like that Lysithea’s launching into the whole story: her weakness for Annette – which leaves Edelgard infuriatingly unfazed, couldn’t she at least pretend she didn’t know? – and how Sylvain had picked up on it, must have told the whole damn Strike Force, because now whenever any of them want anything from her they send it through Annette, the one person Lysithea can never refuse. How suddenly, Lysithea finds herself complying with request after request, all because Annette turns that plaintive gaze on her. It’s exhausting.
Edelgard regards her for a moment after she finishes and then sets down her cup of tea, clasping her hands on the table before her. “Do you think Annette knows?”
Lysithea resists the urge to bang her head off the table. “I– she’s not stupid. She has to have realized something, right? It’s not like I’m subtle.” Edelgard mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like subtle like Caspar’s hammer and then raises her hands placatingly at Lysithea’s resulting glare.
Lysithea changes the subject, but Edelgard’s question sticks with her. It’s another few days before Lysithea gets the opportunity to ask. They’re sitting together at one of the tables in the library, reading silently, when Annette suddenly gasps and says, “Lysithea!”
Lysithea raises an eyebrow. Annette takes this as permission to continue, or maybe she’s finally realized she doesn’t actually need it. “Um! Lorenz wanted me to ask you if he can have Thyrsus this weekend! He’s visiting his parents, and you know he’s totally okay with you having it, but he thinks they’ll be weird about it, and–”
Lysithea sighs. She’s perfectly happy to love Annette in silence for the rest of her life – honestly, she is – but not knowing whether Annette knows that is going to bring her to a much swifter end than expected. “Annette,” she says slowly, “do you know why everyone’s suddenly got you running every errand related to me under the sun?”
Annette turns slowly red. “Ah. Um. Yes,” she says, and Lysithea goes cold down to the tips of her fingers.
“You do,” she says. It’s not a question. She feels vaguely sick.
“Um. Yeah. Wait,” Annette says, looking for just a moment as wild as she ever has, “do you?”
Lysithea scoffs. “Of course I do.”
“O– oh. Um! I’m really sorry, Lysithea! I thought – I didn’t mean – oh, this is embarrassing. I’ll – stop bothering you now!”
Lysithea is left, staring after her, again.
She’s not actually sure they’re talking about the same thing, at this point. After all, Lysithea’s huge, obvious crush certainly isn’t embarrassing for Annette. And she doesn’t think she’d given Annette any reason to think she was bothering her. So, empirically, there must be some kind of misunderstanding. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
But all that stark rationality she prides herself on doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel awful to have the object of her terrible, doomed crush nearly burst into tears at the mention of it. Annette had said, after all, that they were best friends. Maybe the acknowledgement of her feelings had been the breaking point. Maybe Annette knew – had known all along – and was content to ignore it as long as Lysithea did. Maybe –
Maybe, says a stern, patient voice in her head that sounds a lot like Edelgard, you need to talk to her. And, to her credit, she does try. Every time she catches a glimpse of Annette she all but breaks into a dead sprint to try to speak with her, but either she’s already disappeared around one of the monastery’s endless labyrinthine corridors, or there’s someone else there, and Annette manages to excuse herself and slip away before Lysithea can corner her.
Lysithea feels desperate and on edge. More than anything, she misses Annette like a limb. She finds herself turning toward no one in the library whenever she comes across a particularly interesting passage, jotting down recipes to share before remembering that they’re not speaking, working until the sun rises and not even noticing because Annette’s not around to keep her in check. Worrying that Annette must be doing the same thing, wherever she’s holed up, because they’d always checked each other in matters like this.
She hadn’t wanted to resort to cornering Annette in her room, but after almost a week of this Lysithea can admit she’s miserable, and from what she’s heard from their mutual friends Annette is too, and more than that she’s tired. Which is how she finds herself standing in front of Annette’s door at four in the morning, hoping against hope that she’s even there.
Lysithea knocks. After a moment she hears the desk chair scraping against the stone floor and then the door creaks open. Annette is rubbing sleep out of her eyes, her sleep-mussed hair and the papers strewn haphazardly on her desk painting a vivid picture – Annette, nodding off in the middle of reviewing her notes with her arms as a pillow – and Lysithea’s traitorous heart gives a violent kick against her ribs.
“...sithea? Lysithea?” Annette is saying, the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. Lysithea snaps back to herself.
“Annette,” she says, hates the softness that creeps into the word, “can we talk?”
Annette looks crestfallen. “Um, if it’s all the same to you, I’d actually rather–”
“It’s not,” Lysithea says, pushing past her into her room. Annette squeaks in protest. Lysithea just pushes the desk chair so it faces the bed and plops down in it, motioning for Annette to sit in front of her on the bed and then crossing her arms. Annette sits, though she won’t meet Lysithea’s eyes.
Lysithea is silent for a moment. She can see Annette squirming, and she feels sort of bad, but she didn’t actually figure out what it was she wanted to say before she showed up, and she needs the time to put her thoughts in order. Then, she says: “Annette, why do you think all our friends sent you to ask me for every little favor they needed?”
Annette sighs, looks downright miserable. “I– isn’t it obvious? Are you really going to make me say it?”
“I’ll start, then,” Lysithea says. Annette looks startled, but nods gratefully. Lysithea takes a breath. “Sylvain realized something. About me. He must have said something to the others.”
Annette looks confused, transfixed. “What did he…”
“That I– ugh, that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t give you if you asked. That I’m really, embarrassingly wrapped around your little finger. I … Annette, I care for you. As your best friend, but also–” a breath for courage, “but also as something more than that. If you’ll have me.”
Annette’s mouth has dropped open. One minute she’s sitting on her bed, curled in on herself like she can hide from the whole conversation, and the next she’s throwing herself into Lysithea’s lap, arms haphazardly around her neck, the force of her sending the chair toppling backward, stopped only by the desk behind it. Lysithea makes a little oof and then Annette’s peppering kisses all over her face, mumbling “yes, yes, yes.”
Lysithea lets herself indulge in it for a moment before forcing herself to pull back. “Annette–” she says, voice choked with emotion. “I thought–”
And then, like a dam being broken, Annette is speaking. “Oh, Lysithea, I’m so sorry, I thought – it was so stupid, but I was so embarrassed, because I thought you’d figured me out, and were trying to let me down, um, gently, or – or just let me know that you knew and weren’t interested, I thought you didn’t– I–”
“Slow down,” Lysithea says, huffing in amusement, hands coming up to rest lightly on Annette’s hips.
Annette takes a breath. “I thought – well, I knew it was pretty obvious that I loved you,” and the word love punches Lysithea through, “and, um. I had assumed – or, like, they all implied – they were giving me excuses to talk to you.”
Lysithea makes a confused sound. “You’ve never needed an excuse to talk to me,” she points out, “you could have come to me with a recipe for a cake made of dirt and fish and I would have made it with you just to be near you.”
If possible, Annette’s pretty blush gets even redder. Lysithea, impulsively, kisses her, and though she’s not usually one for impulse the happy little gasp she gets in response as Annette brings her hands to Lysithea’s jaw is absolutely worth it.
After a time, Annette breaks their kiss to turn her head away and yawn into her hand, and Lysithea makes the executive decision to put them both to bed. They wind up curled together, Lysithea’s face tucked into the crook of Annette’s neck, Annette’s arm slung over Lysithea’s waist, their legs tangled together.
They sleep late into the next afternoon. Lysithea wakes up first, Annette’s hair tickling her nose, and the softness of Annette’s face in sleep as the afternoon sun washes over her face steals the breath from her lungs. She rests her head on Annette’s chest, listens to her heartbeat.
That evening, when they’re bent over the notes Annette had fallen asleep on, trying to make sense of them, Annette leans back suddenly, brows furrowed.
“What?” Lysithea asks.
Annette shakes her head. “Just – which of us was right, do you think? Like – were they asking for my sake, or because you – um –”
“Because I can’t say no to you?” Lysithea teases. Annette flushes and nods. “I’m not sure. I have to admit, though, I’m curious too.”
When Lysithea asks him, Sylvain only shrugs. “Little of column ‘A’, little of column ‘B’. Did it work?”
And, though Lysithea will never, ever give him credit for it as long as she lives, it did.