Work Text:
It’s the end of the world, and at almost thirty years old, Dorothea knows it.
Maybe she should have known it six years ago, when it actually did feel like the end of the world. When she and her professor and a handful of her old classmates seemed to stare Death itself out of existence. Twice. When she trekked through parts of the Empire and the Kingdom that she had only ever heard long-gone suitors try and fail to wax poetic about. When she… when Edelgard…
Maybe that was the closest to the end of the world. That, and the streets of Enbarr.
But as far as she’s concerned, childhoods are never as pretty as people try to describe, and all her life she has been nothing if not resilient. The Mittelfrank Opera Company would have plenty to say about that, and so would Garreg Mach Monastery. And so would her professor, if they could see her now from wherever they are.
And so would Sylvain.
Sylvain, who has made it a point, in these last six years, to offer her marriage ten times.
Sylvain, who knocked on her door tonight for what she presumed is the eleventh. Who’s sitting across from her at a dinner table in Gautier territory, and who opens his mouth to confirm it.
She’ll have to admit, he’s developed a sense of decorum and tact over the years. He’s lost the wiggle in his eyebrows in favor of a gallant kiss to the back of her hand. He doesn’t lean in her doorway, whenever he comes to her home, as though he intends to darken it with some despicable arrogance. No, there’s something noticeably different about him, something that sets him apart from other nobles—and perhaps from who he was when he tried chasing her skirt eleven years ago. There’s a sparkle in his eye that he makes no effort to hide. A softness in the cadence of his voice, the sort that betrays just how deeply they know each other. What parts of each other’s hearts they’ve touched, and cradled, and taken with then whenever they parted ways in the halls of the monastery and in Faerghus terrain.
Things like that don’t just happen to you when you inherit the title of Margrave Gautier.
“Dorothea.” By Seiros, even the way he says her name and keeps her gaze in between spoonfuls of peach sorbet holds a different kind of weight. “I meant what I said before, about… everything. I’m confident you know that much.”
“I know.” They may be in the corner of a local tavern, a place Sylvain claimed as some old stomping grounds, but she’s allowed to hold onto some of her airs. He told her once that it was one of the things he liked about her. He might have said, years ago, that her stone-cold attitude and the way she held him at arm’s length only spurred the thrill of the chase; nowadays, when he rides beside her on horseback or dares to brush her hand on a leisurely walk, something in the way he carries himself tells her she’s commanded his full respect by virtue of existing. “So did I.”
“I don’t disbelieve you,” he says; he must be leaning back in his seat because elbows on the table are unbecoming, but he inclines his head like he means to study her. “But your answer has been the same every time. And you haven’t told me no. All you’ve said is, ‘Not yet.’ So when? When will you say yes?”
She’ll credit him on two counts: that his tone his measured and far from demanding, and that his words are accurate. She never has said no to his proposals. Perhaps she’s had to stave off an onslaught of girlish butterflies, or memories of a hushed, heartfelt conversation in Garreg Mach’s reception hall. But her answer has hardly been more than a faint smile, Not yet, Sylvain, and a closed door.
“Sylvain,” she says almost in the way that she might issue a challenge; an elbow on the table means little to her when her chin rests so delicately against her knuckles. “Why do you think I haven’t agreed to marry you yet?”
He pauses. And then he chuckles. “That’s a loaded question with a lot of answers, coming from you,” he admits. “Maybe you’ve just been waiting to see if I’ve got all the flirting out of my system. I suppose any woman who knew my… track record… would wait for that.”
To her surprise, Dorothea can’t think of any other woman besides herself these days. She’s the only one he’s so much as mentioned in the time they’ve spent together—not counting Ingrid, who’s been steadfastly overseeing Galatea territory on her own, or Annette, who according to him now happily goes by “the Duchess of Fraldarius.” But she is the only one he’s invited to dinner. Written to regularly. Secured land for in Gautier territory, in her name, and given her time and space to tend. All without need for thanks. All without asking for repayment besides a smile and a reply and perhaps, if he’s in good spirits, a song.
That’s the pleasant thing about Sylvain. He’s almost always in good spirits.
“That may be true,” she concedes as they leave their meal behind and he helps her into her cape, “but I have other reasons.”
“And you’re going to make me guess them all, huh?”
“No,” Dorothea says, and when he takes her by the hand and leads her into the cold, she doesn’t quite let go of him. “I trust you enough to tell you.”
It’s a long walk back to her home, where Sylvain’s horse is graciously being fed and watered, but neither of them minds the trip. In fact, she’d like to think they both quietly relish it, especially in the dark, away from the prying eyes of nobility. “So,” he says. “Your reasons?”
Dorothea draws her hood, and even afterwards her hand still looks for his. It feels so distant, gloved all the time. Perhaps once they reach her house he’ll allow her just a few forbidden seconds to peel them away, to feel out the lines in his palms and the calluses from all that lance work. “Well,” she begins with a deep breath and a vague sweep of her arm. “I think the first reason is obvious. You’ve had to help repair so much in the Kingdom, haven’t you? Not to mention all the responsibilities of being a margrave.”
“I can’t tell if you’re saying it like that because you’re respecting me or because you’re mocking me,” he shoots back, like the hard-to-get quips of old times, but the laugh in his voice, weak though it is, makes itself known well enough. “It’s been years since I’ve inherited that title. It’s not exactly new, and neither are the responsibilities of being a noble. No matter how much of a buffer we’re supposed to be for the north.” He shrugs. “You learn a lot in five years. And then six more.”
Whatever he’s learned, it sounds as though he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “You’ve done good things in those years,” she murmurs. “Maybe I wanted you to see that I see those good things, instead of… what you’ve always thought women saw in you.”
“You can say it,” Sylvain mumbles. “Not talking about my Crest doesn’t make it not exist anymore.”
“Talking about it gives it weight. Relevance.” Dorothea spares him a glance, gestures between them with her free hand. “Whatever this is between us has nothing to do with it, or nobility, or lofty… whatever you want to call it. It never has. We are who we are—together—because of what we’ve done together. What we’ve seen. Sylvain, I’ve told you things, written things, that I never thought I would tell anyone, and your Crest wasn’t even on the list of things I was thinking about when I confessed them.”
“So what was?”
She stops, muscles tense, heart lodged in her throat. All the old symptoms of stage fright with none of the excitement. “How… scared I was. That once you heard them, or read them, you’d… have nothing to do with me anymore.”
In the silence, broken only by their footsteps, Sylvain squeezes her hand. Neither of them has to say, like everyone else. Neither of them has to give any more words to ghosts left over, or walls that haven’t quite crumbled.
“Maybe I was testing you, after all” she admits; the only evidence of her words are the puff of air in the cold. “How long you’d bother waiting for me. If you really did still think there was more to me than my looks or my voice, or…” She shakes her head, locks of hair tickling her cheeks under her hood. “If, at the end of the world, if… you would still want someone like me around. Almost-grandma and all.”
Dorothea’s home is in sight just uphill—the house the men of Gautier built, the stable that shelters Sylvain’s horse—and quite frankly, she can’t tell if it’s relief or regret settling stone-heavy in the pit of her heart. She’s yanked back before she can take a step further, and when she turns, Sylvain is simply standing there, watching her, making her stomach twist all over again. “Do you want to know?” he says quietly. He’s still holding onto her. “What it is I don’t want?”
She nods, but not after a pause heavy with pros and cons. “Yeah. If you trust me enough to tell me.”
Sylvain tugs her close, firm but not forceful, so that she could nearly swallow his words. So that he could feel all almost-thirty years of her. “I don’t want to wait anymore,” he confesses, his voice a low rumble. “I don’t want to not take care of you anymore.”
It takes a while for her next words to come out. “Sylvain,” she murmurs, half-shivering. “I think all you’ve ever done is take care of me.”
He squeezes her wrists, and he reaches for her face, and he slants his mouth against hers like he doesn’t want to wait for that anymore, either. It’s not the first time they’ve kissed, for whatever impropriety that holds. They’ve stolen plenty in the monastery, when she teased him for his skilled tongue and eager hands and other body parts rising to the occasion, however ready or not she was to indulge them. And however many times the world has almost ended for them both, he’s kissed her just before then, too, as though she was the last thing he ever wanted to remember about his life before he left it behind. Pressure, urgency—there is none of that here. There’s only intimacy, the last dregs of patience, and, if she leans enough into his touch, a promise.
“Dorothea—Arnault—” He’s never panted her name against her jaw before, never pressed his forehead to hers before. She thinks she could get used to both. “Will you grow old with me?”
Dorothea thinks, somewhere between the eleventh question and the first yes and slipping on the ring Sylvain’s been carrying on him for half a decade, that impropriety means next to nothing when she could take him inside and get used to more of him all over again.