Chapter Text
Felix needed all his fingers and at least a few toes to count all the times and reasons he ever wanted to kill Dimitri ranging from the perfectly logical to absolutely ridiculous. This newest request was probably a little of both, which was why Felix settled on crossing his arms and gritting out, “Do you even know what you’re asking me?”
“Well, sure,” Dimitri said. He smiled slightly, but Felix knew him well enough to recognize the edge of wariness to it. “I am the one who asked, of course.”
“And you want me to head a diplomatic mission to Kleiman?” It was functionally the so-called Dukedom’s last stronghold even after the rest of what was once Faerghus swore fealty to a newly crowned King Dimitri, though Viscount Kleiman made noises of loyalty until he stirred up a fuss when he deprived him of Duscur.
So he invaded the territory he claimed was his, as one did, and Dimitri preferred to settle the dispute through negotiation rather than arms, which Felix did not.
“Why not send you?” Dimitri asked, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. “I trust that you have the Kingdom’s interests at heart.”
Felix wrinkled his nose before gesturing towards the paper-strewn desk - if Sylvain was here, he’d take Dimitri to task over its state - and the letter laid flat with a paperweight. “Why not send someone else?” he wondered. “It’s not a matter of interests, it’s about choosing someone fit for it.”
“Are you saying you’re unfit, Felix?”
“Yes,” he said easily. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword, the perfect example of why diplomacy, negotiating, peace were scarcely his strengths for all he’d tried to do the best he could since the end of the war.
“Well,” Dimitri mused, “I can’t send Sylvain because he’s busy on the border, not that I think it would be kind to order him elsewhere with Mercedes about to have a baby, and I certainly can’t send Ingrid after the…debacle last year.”
At that Felix couldn’t resist a slight smile, when Ingrid finally grew weary of betrothals and humiliated Viscount Kleiman himself, her latest suitor, in a duel. It was less than the bastard deserved for the least of his crimes.
“Perhaps I’ll challenge him to a duel then too,” Felix mused, only half-serious. “We can have it finished quickly and I’ll be back in Fraldarius before Wyvern Moon.”
Dimitri actually scowled. “Do not,” he warned him. “I am trying to outlaw duels of honor; you’ll undermine my efforts if you do that, and you’ll risk angering him even more when you win for conditions he won’t honor.”
Felix rolled his eyes before falling into the chair opposite him. “Angering him more?” he echoed with a snort. “I don’t understand why you’re falling all over yourself to please a man who might’ve had something to do with your father’s death.”
He regretted his words as soon as Dimitri’s hand, resting on the desk, curled into a fist, knuckles whitening. “I’ve told you,” he said in a low voice that made him stiffen, “the instant I have enough evidence, he will pay, but until then the last thing I want is to plunge any part of Fodlan into another war.”
Felix straightened while an uncomfortable sensation twisted in his gut. His face fell into his hand, and he admitted, “I know. You may not believe this, but I don’t particularly want that either, even if House Fraldarius by itself could crush a house as weak as Kleiman.”
“Then we are on the same page,” Dimitri said, and the tension in his frame unraveled.
“Not yet,” he denied, shaking his head. “I still think you should send someone else.”
“Oh, I am,” he said.
Felix jumped and glared across the table on him. “Then why are we even having this conversation? Did you just want my input all along?”
“Ah, well, that too, I suppose,” Dimitri agreed with a wry sort of chuckle. “Actually, I still insist you go, I just won’t send you alone.”
“Even I’m not foolish enough to travel all the way to Kleiman alone, boar.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean a retinue or an escort,” he said, “but a partner of sorts? Someone you can work with and might be a…tempering influence on you so you don’t challenge anyone to a duel.”
“All right,” Felix said, and from the way Dimitri smiled he couldn’t help his wariness. “So long as it’s not Lorenz Gloucester.
“Oh, it’s just Annette,” Dimitri told him.
His heart skipped a beat before tightening, the feeling utterly familiar and utterly unwelcome. If Felix had been holding something, he would’ve broken or dropped it…how very like her, like Annette.
“A-Annette?” he said, trying for nonchalance, though he couldn’t hear his own voice for the thrumming of his pulse in his ears.
“Yes!” Dimitri sounded far too eager for Felix’s liking. “She’s between terms at the Royal School and even offered to take a sabbatical if your mission lasts a little long, but she agreed.”
“She did?” He gripped the edge of the desk to ground himself or to distract him from saying something incredibly stupid or revealing. “Does she know that she has to work with me?”
“She does,” Dimitri said. “I’ll admit she didn’t seem especially pleased about that, but I assured her as I will you that the two of you work very well together.”
“We haven’t worked…together since the war,” Felix reminded him.
And he’d done his best to avoid her since, skirting away from her at functions they both attended, not allowing himself to meet her eyes, stowing her letters unread in a drawer before she stopped sending them, burning every letter he found himself writing before remembering they wouldn’t be welcome.
But Dimitri wouldn’t know any of that; he’d been careful, and only Ingrid knew…anything, and even she puzzled it out for herself without him telling her.
“Then you’ll have the perfect chance to work together again!” Dimitri said, and his tone - as if he thought he was handing Felix the best gift he possibly could - filled him with irritation.
So he tried a different tactic than rejecting the idea outright. “Sending me is well and good despite my doubts,” Felix started, “but Viscount Kleiman is an enemy, regardless of how you want to avoid any battle.”
“And?”
He swallowed, self-conscious under Dimitri’s thoughtful gaze, before explaining, “Do you really want to send A—her into a potentially dangerous situation?”
“It doesn’t have to be dangerous,” Dimitri protested, “though I acknowledge the risk, especially with these unverified rumors of sinister things like Demonic Beasts afoot.”
“Then—”
“I hardly think Annette would appreciate your argument, Felix,” he observed with a lift of his eyebrow. “Did you forget how she saved your life during the war?”
Felix’s fingernails dug into his leg through his trousers. “No,” he said through gritted teeth, “and I haven’t forgotten how her own uncle almost killed her either.”
“This won’t be like that,” Dimitri assured him. “She’ll have you and House Fraldarius’ best troops with her as an escort.”
And wasn’t that the problem? His jaw twitched, and he hoped that was the only way the tightening in his chest manifested.
Arranging the logistics of the actual journey was something of a nightmare that Felix was more than happy to shunt to his steward and captain. “We need enough force to intimidate him but not enough he’ll see us as a proper threat and think we’re attacking him.”
Lukas, the captain - one who served under his father and took to Felix’s ascension about as well as could be hoped - did as asked while the steward, Marcus, grumbled something about how Duke Rodrigue would never have relied on intimidation.
He pretended he hadn’t heard.
It was simple enough when someone other than a judgmental steward threatened to capture his attention.
His stomach flipped when he spotted Annette at the base of the steps leading up to the castle’s main entrance. She clutched a large bag in both hands and wore a traveling cloak draped over her slight frame, her hair, glittering almost gold in the sunlight, plaited crookedly at the back of her head. She wore an absentminded smile as she shifted from foot to foot, but it faltered when her gaze drifted up and landed on him.
“Good morning, Felix!” she called up to him with nary a quiver in her voice. It always amazed him how steady she could keep it when he used to know her so well even he could see and hear all the little things that betrayed her feelings.
“Morning,” he replied as he took the stairs down to join her.
His heart raced faster with every step closer, and Felix wondered how he was supposed to survive the weeks of travel and negotiation spent in Annette’s company.
When was the last time he saw her anyway? Not so long ago as Sylvain’s and Mercedes’ wedding, but she lived in Fhirdiad and he spent most of his time in Fraldarius overseeing his most important charge.
Sometime late in winter, he guessed. Perhaps when he was forced to linger during his last visit when a storm swept through and stranded him. She’d had fewer freckles then, he was sure.
Only when Annette’s cheeks turn pink did Felix realize he stared and tore his gaze away.
She flushed so easily and at the slightest provocation. He once delighted in it, in teasing her for her quirks and, when he grew more courageous, complimenting her just to watch the color rush to her cheeks. Sometimes she would huff at him and roll her eyes too, and that was its own treat, but eventually a smile would prod at her lips and he would have no choice but to lean down and to—
“Are you ready to go?”
Her voice jerked him from his spiraling thoughts. His own face warmed - what was he doing, daydreaming about her already? - but he said, “Yes. Let’s go.” He glanced around, only then realizing she was alone. “Wait, is no one coming with you?”
Annette’s brow furrowed with confusion. “Why would someone else come with me?”
“You’re…” Felix scrubbed a hand over his face in an attempt to collect himself. “Your uncle isn’t sending someone?”
“Why would he?” she wondered. “He can’t spare anyone just to chaperon me, Felix, and my father’s place is here anyway.”
He pressed his lips together and didn’t say what he thought about her father, not eager to pick a fight before they even left Fhirdiad (practicing his diplomatic skills, as he would’ve told Dimitri). “Is he coming to see you off?” he asked instead.
“Oh, I already said goodbye to him and Mother yesterday,” she told him. She smiled very slightly and added, “I haven’t left Fhirdiad since I moved here, so I’m a little eager to be off.” With that she started leading the way towards the stables.
Felix followed and, watching her struggle with her burden, reached for her bag. “Let me—”
“I’m fine,” Annette said, tugging it away from him and speeding up so she walked a few paces ahead of him.
Three years ago Felix might’ve insisted, but now he settled with curling his hand into a fist and pretending even that slight rejection didn’t sting.
(No more than the first one did.)
Unfortunately it was not a simple matter of mounting their horses and joining the small retinue of Fraldarius knights and soldiers before riding through the city and beginning the journey in earnest. Of course it wasn’t when all his so-called friends insisted on paying their respects or wishing them luck, or something.
Felix could appreciate Dedue’s silence especially then, when he only offered him a nod and said, “Good luck.” (And he managed to keep his own expression flat when Annette hugged him.)
Belatedly he remembered Dedue had more cause than most to hate Viscount Kleiman for the subjugation of Duscur, so he said, “Thank you.”
“I almost wish I could go with you,” Ashe confessed before returning to the castle with Dedue. He helped Annette shorten the stirrups on her gray mare’s saddle.
“Do you want me to take any letters for your brother and sister?” Annette wondered.
“Ah, no, that’s all right,” Ashe told her, smiling. “I don’t want to trouble you since Gaspard is still pretty far from Kleiman.”
“You can always bring them to live with you here,” Ingrid suggested without looking at him. Her gaze swept clinically over Felix, as if she was inspecting him for wounds, before sliding over towards Annette. Then, heedless to the other conversation, she leaned towards him and whispered, “Are you all right with this, Felix?”
“Does it even matter?” he wondered in a low voice. When Ingrid raised an eyebrow, he said, “It’s fine. I have my doubts, but they have nothing to do with—it doesn’t matter.”
No, if only his doubts could be limited to whether he and Annette could work together peaceably, but life would never commit the crime of being so simple.
When did it even get so damn complicated?
Ingrid rested her hand on his shoulder, and maybe it was a sign of how…rattled he was that he didn’t bother shrugging it off.
“Don’t duel him,” she warned him.
“Hypocrite,” he retorted.
She rolled her eyes and said, “I think there’s a little more at stake now than my hand in marriage. Lives, for example, and the stability of the Kingdom we’re all trying to rebuild.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Felix said. “Believe me when I say I wish everything could be solved with a duel. Fewer casualties, and it’s something I actually know how to do.” His gaze drifted to Annette then when she laughed at something Ashe said, right as hers flitted to him.
He frowned at his boots and ignored the hand squeezing his chest.
“You’ll be fine,” Ingrid assured him. “I doubt you’ll want to hear this—”
“Then spare me.”
“—but I personally think you’re a lot better at, well, peace than Glenn would’ve been.”
He glared at her, and to his gratification her face flushed very slightly. “Thank you,” he said, not even bothering to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “That makes me feel so much better.”
Ingrid sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she told him. “I only meant that you’re…different. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be, and I think His Majesty must see that too.”
Felix couldn’t think of how to respond to that despite his persistent doubts, so he settled on a shrug.
Annette hugged Ingrid, whose eyes widened in surprise before she smiled and returned it while Ashe grinned at him.
“I’m not hugging you,” he said.
“That’s all right,” Ashe said, his grin not faltering in the slightest bit. “Travel safely. Take care of each other.” He offered Annette his hand and helped her mount her horse, his other hand resting on her waist as she vaulted up.
Felix pinched his eyes shut for a heartbeat, a part of him wishing he’d thought to do that first. He mounted his own horse and grabbed the reins to steady her when she shifted her footing beneath him.
Ingrid laughed, and even Annette giggled. “You look so uncomfortable.”
“Shut up,” he grumbled as his ears warmed.
And after Annette offered Ingrid and Ashe one last wave they rode away through busy streets that still showed signs of Cornelia’s rule and the war before leaving the castle and city behind them.