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“You ready?”
Edelgard nearly fumbles the hairpin in her hand. Over her shoulder, in the full-length mirror near her dresser, Hapi leans against her doorjamb, the end of a stick of jerky dangling from her mouth.
“Soon.” She flips up one of her long braids, starts pinning it in place. It’s absurd, really, how much of a struggle her hair has been this morning. Halfway through coiling her usual buns, she had remembered—today is different. Today is special. She’d finished them, but she couldn’t wear a hat with them, and they looked strange under a kerchief. So she took them down and brushed her hair back out, dreamed of keeping it loose like when she was younger—but it really is so distinctive. Best to hide it.
The end of the jerky disappears once inch at a time as Hapi studies her, mouth twisting. “You’re not canceling on me, are you?”
“Of course not.” Pin. Pin. The other one up. “Goodness knows, it would take me another two months to get Hubert to clear an entire day for us.”
Hapi saunters in, stretching hard enough that her swishy green shirt shows rather a bit of belly. She’s not taken much to Adrestian fashion except when absolutely necessary—she looks stunning whenever Dorothea takes her shopping or the event inexorably calls for it, but categorically decided that anything that needed to be taped into place and held up on stairs is too much work for every day. Instead, she just puts together whatever she feels like.
And in doing so, Hapi has thrown noble fashion for a loop. It is tradition, after all, to emulate one’s Empress. But that tradition doesn’t help the remaining flowers of Adrestian nobility know what to do when their caustic foreign Empress throws their high lacy collars and overwrought jewelry into a sartorial blender with plain leggings, riding boots, and whatever else catches her eye. Watching them squirm, Edelgard will admit, has been satisfying. Today, with no plans for court whatsoever, Hapi has dressed down even further, with short-cut trousers that leave her lush thighs bare, rough-hemmed like she’d made them herself.
Hapi stands behind her in the tall oval of the mirror, framing her in distractingly ample cleavage, and plays with the wisps that escaped her braids. “You look like Mari. It’s cute.”
“Well.” Edelgard sees herself pink a little. She really is weak. Hapi is her wife, they’ve been intimate in one way or another for years, and still—well, she’s stunning. “I do need to put it away somehow.”
There are three or four scarves piled on her dresser, as she’s not quite sure which would look best, or whether a scarf was even her best option. Hapi grabs one of the ones she was less sure about—a grassy green with purplish-red flowers, possibly actually one of her own—and drops it over her head, twisting it into a lopsided piratical swash that doesn’t even hide all of her hair.
Edelgard blinks at herself, wide-eyed. It sets off the lavender in her eyes, even makes her skin look different somehow. Though it does not in the least go with the tidy red riding blouse and black trousers she’s chosen for the day.
A day off. Vacation. Just two women having fun, not the Emperor and Empress of the land. She feels her heart trip a little faster, turns to look up at Hapi for real.
“Not your style, huh?” Hapi says.
“I did also pick out a hat. I think I might go with that.”
Hapi shrugs, with the tiny lopsided smile that means she’s actually a little excited but doesn’t want to show it, and unwinds the scarf. She pops it on her own head instead, holding the ends under her chin like a Faerghan granny. “You will want a hat pin, my dear,” she says, putting on a tremulously terrible little old lady voice.
“I’ve been a terrible influence on you,” Edelgard says, and pulls her down for a quick kiss.
“Look at you, smooching a granny,” Hapi says with a snort when they’re done. “I’ve been a great influence on you.”
She has, Edelgard thinks, as her wife fusses with her own scarf, knotting it at the nape of her neck to look less like a granny but still hide her now-famous flame of red. Who else gives her permission to be happy like Hapi does?
🕗
Edelgard has only a vague idea of their plans, really. She gets the impression Hapi has actually bestirred herself to put something together—there had been a secret meeting or two with Dorothea—which in itself is flattering. And a bit flabbergasting. “It’s just stuff you’ve wanted to do for a while,” Hapi says with a shrug, sauntering to the royal stables. “Hey, fuzzbutt.” That’s for her placid valkyrie’s mare, who promptly bumps her whole nose against her chest. “Yeah, you’re gross, I love you, come on.”
Riding has never particularly been Edelgard’s thing, though she’s hardly unversed, and Ferdinand had inevitably gifted her with a prize Aegir palfrey, white as her hair and a little high-strung. The stablehands have already readied both their horses, turned out in plain tack and not the gilded scarlet of the official imperial mounts, and they leave by a back gate at a rolling walk.
Faint motion follows them, disappears into the city. They have a perimeter, of course. Hubert would allow no less. But they are not to be troubled. Edelgard, raised in the constant attention of royal security, doesn’t blink. Hapi, still getting used to it, peers around like she’s trying to track them.
“They’ll be subtle,” Edelgard reassures her as they turn onto one of the thousand-year-old stone roads of Adrestia. All roads lead to Enbarr: this one right to the palace.
“Sure. Good thing I don’t care about privacy.” Hapi flashes her a blink-and-she’ll-miss it smile over her shoulder, then stirs her mount into a trot with barely more than a pat to her neck. She rides like nobody Edelgard has ever known—not with Ferdinand’s uncompromising mastery, but with an effortless, uncanny ease, like her horse knows her every whim. Which can’t really be ruled out, given the peculiarities of her nature.
Edelgard huffs, applies boot-heels with far less grace, and matches her pace. Up out of the bustle of the city, turning to follow a narrower and emptier road north along the shore. “C’mon,” Hapi calls, smoothing to a canter. “We don’t wanna miss brunch.”
“Brunch,” Edelgard blurts, and feels her mouth water. Her poor palfrey snorts under her, disgruntled at the unexpected jolt, but Edelgard knows abruptly where they’re going. There’s a tea house here, out amongst the scatter of noble pleasure houses, that’s long been beloved by Enbarr’s glitterati, but Edelgard has never made it out. It’s a long ride just for tea or brunch when she can have anything ordered up from the palace kitchens. She’s always busy. Never gotten around to it.
She’s smiling, she realizes. A whole day. No trouble at all to ride half an hour just for an indulgence. The sun is bright, the smell of the sea wild and fresh. It’s warm but not cloying, especially with the wind coming off the shore, carrying salt and a faint chill. The shadow of a wyvern’s wings pass over her, and Edelgard pays it no heed. It would be part of their perimeter, blending with the other air traffic and keeping it far from their charges. Hapi, for once, doesn’t notice either. She’s too busy grinning back at her in the wild sea wind.
By the time they ride up to the tea house, Edelgard’s hat is already gone, and Hapi leans over from her light saddle like it’s nothing and kisses her temple, turned into an awkward mash of faces by the stomping palfrey. “Forget about it,” she says, red eyes sparkling. “You look cute.”
“I’m not cute,” Edelgard says, putting her nose in the air before dismounting. “I embody the grandeur of the empire.”
“Uh-huh,” says Hapi, and sneaks one quick tickle in under Edelgard’s elbow as the smell of tea and pastries wafts out to greet them.
🕘
The tea-room is understatedly elegant with a countryside air to it, and the spread is, unsurprisingly, fantastic. Edelgard can catch the smell of the finest Hresvelg blend almost immediately, and a few other little pots provide some variety, including the spice-and-fruit blends Hapi prefers. At least a dozen sorts of miniature pastries and cakes are spread out, along with fresh fruit, clotted cream, coddled eggs, finger sandwiches, arcanely cured meats, and the delicately seared fish that finishes nearly any table in Enbarr.
They have the room to themselves, and the staff has a refreshingly light hand—they’ve clearly been told to give them space. And it is, in fact, delicious. Hapi goes cross-eyed at her first bite, and Edelgard almost forgets to eat herself because she’s so caught up watching her. It’s the silliest thing. Edelgard would dislike it from anybody else, dislike it even from Hapi if she hadn’t gotten caught up so quickly in her heart, but she eats like she’s having sex. She always has. Especially with a spread like this.
Garreg Mach, Edelgard remembers. Those precious months of schoolgirl ease, at least the slices of it between her work with Hubert and as the Flame Emperor. She happened to be sitting late in the dining hall the first time Hapi slunk up, peppered by the sideways glances of those more narrow-minded students, and went bug-eyed at the menu. Try the saghert and cream, Edelgard had suggested, impulsive.
It wasn’t like that wretched business with Aelfric hadn’t already happened. Yet more proof that the Nabateans and their creations had no business in the human world. Yet more proof that the Church couldn’t be trusted with the power they had, hiding people underground like that. She had already decided to leave Abyss well enough alone, and to give them a chance to grow beyond the long shadow of the Church once she had removed those who cast it.
She had already heard Hapi mention things, offhand, like she was talking about a bad spate of weather. Kidnapping. Experimentation. Edelgard needed to bite the inside of her cheek, school her face to stillness, keep some wild noise from escaping her clenched jaw. Somebody else like her. Somebody else who’d survived that indescribable hell. The Ordelia girl, at least, she’d been prepared for, but this—this had caught her entirely out of nowhere, made her ache to reach out her hand.
She could only do little things to reach out back at school. Like share a favorite dessert. The quivering in her veins had been so unfamiliar that she almost wondered if something was odd with her Crests, reacting to Hapi’s unfamiliar powers, before she realized that she was simply nervous. Nervous and hopeful. And Hapi had eaten it, cross-eyed, cream smearing her lips, like she had never tasted anything like it. Grinned and reached for more in one moment of unguarded joy as Edelgard’s heart rattled in her chest.
“Mm, pass me one of those little cheese thingies over there?” Hapi says in the sun-drenched tea-room. “Those look great.”
“They are,” Edelgard answers, and this time she gives into temptation, avoids Hapi’s grabbing hand, and presses the pastry to her wife’s lips. She could, she thinks vaguely, have removed her gloves. But she’s gotten used to going through them even faster since Hapi sauntered into her life. It’s fine business for the milliners of Enbarr, at least.
“Oh, is that how it is,” Hapi says, with that delightful little smile of hers, and wraps her lips around the cheesy-sweet tidbit. There’s maybe a hint of a blush dusting her cheeks—she gets self-conscious sometimes, even when she’s shameless—but she doesn’t hold back. Her face slackens a touch as the sour-syruped cherry baked inside bursts on her tongue. Red dribbles on her lip. “Fuck, yeah, that’s good.” She takes the second bite just as sensually as the first, then licks crumbs off combed cotton without hesitation, hot and damp against her fingertips.
“Good girl,” Edelgard murmurs, because she really can’t help herself sometimes.
Hapi smiles indulgently, flips her the bird, and scoops up a dollop of clotted cream to smear across Edelgard’s lips in answer.
🕚
They try everything, stuff themselves, and slowly fill in the corners as the shadows shorten across the polished parquetry floor. And manage to not have either a food fight or sex. Mostly. Hapi had bitten her ear, which given how sensitive they are, nearly counts as both as far as Edelgard is concerned. Imperial faces get wiped down in the bathroom, and if the staff disapproves, they are too wise to let it show.
They spill out into the morning sun. Edelgard is a little overfull, hazy from the sheer pleasure of such good food—even with her fast metabolism, she usually doesn’t eat this much at once, especially these days—and Hapi slides an arm around her waist, leaning close. “Sooo.”
“Ah—yes? Please don’t tell me you think we should be riding anywhere anytime soon.”
Hapi snorts. “Fuck, no. Hey baby, imperial horny-hat, she who beat up the church, wanna go make out?”
Edelgard can’t help a snorting giggle, then turns her head in turn to lick the edge of Hapi’s ear in return, earning herself a little breathy gasp. “On their front porch, really?”
“Nah, I know a spot, ’s not far.” Hapi grins and catches her hand.
The tea-house is set privately back from the road, inland amongst a tiny scatter of cottages, and behind those is a little swath of oak forest, rolling up towards the foothills. The forest closest to the path is well-trodden, open to view, but Hapi leads her deeper, unerringly finding the narrow natural paths of the wilder woods through the thickening underbrush.
A few minutes in and they’re lost to the outside world. The air is rich with the scent of green growing things, birds and insects humming around them, and at least twice Edelgard catches some skittering movement in the underbrush. And tries not to squeak in surprise. She’s never been entirely comfortable in untamed forest—not that she wants to let it show around Hapi, who could probably live out here for a year with nothing but a knife and also likes teasing city-slickers. Compensating, she knows, for how hopelessly out of place she feels at times. Still.
They push through a thicket—not a thorny one, at least—and it opens up into a little mossy divot in the forest, clear of shrubbery under a sprawling beech with a trunk that could swallow them both with room to spare. Edelgard privately admits she’d been imagining a secret forest cottage, perhaps, or at least a garden with a picnic blanket. Something more comfortable for—well. “You think this will…suit?” she asks, trying not to sound too dubious.
“What, you don’t have sex in the woods on your bucket list?” Hapi flops down in the moss, wiggles her bare legs in it, and grins lazily up at her. “I do.”
“What does a bucket have to do with it?” Edelgard asks, blinking, face heating slightly.
Hapi stretches, pillows her head on her arms. “Y’know. The list of stuff you wanna do before you die.”
Edelgard freezes for one thin second.
Secure her throne. Clean out the corruption in Adrestia’s nobility. Dismantle the Chuch’s power. Unite Fódlan under human rule. Drive those who slithered in the dark from the continent. All checked off. Rebuild a unified government that affords no privilege to noble blood and crests, opens opportunities to all, propagates learning and civilization, and is stable enough to survive her early death.
That one’s still in progress.
So is Linhardt’s research, of course, in tandem with Lysithea, who’s suffering the same slow decay. Hapi isn’t, at least. She’s made sure of that in every way she can. No addition of a second Crest, only corruption of how her inborn one interacted with her physiology and will. Corruption she’s slowly but surely been able to overcome. It would, in fact, have been far, far harder to drive out the Agarthans without the army of monsters that rose at her beloved’s hissing sigh, raising her on their shoulders as they thundered through the underground city, empress of a power vaster and more wild than any force Adrestia could bring to bear.
What does Hapi know?
Edelgard forces herself to move, relax, crouch down to play with a tendril of Hapi’s unruly hair that’s sprung free of her scarf. No need to trouble her. Especially not when Linhardt’s research is still promising. There’s every chance she’ll be fine.
Hapi pouts, a twist of her mouth that is distractingly kissable, and reaches up to boop Edelgard’s nose. “You’re spacey, Eddy. Is it nap time? I could also go for nap time.”
It’s slightly teasing. Edelgard almost never, in fact, takes naps. Does her best to avoid it. Maybe once in the past month—her sleep hasn’t exactly gotten any better, especially not with how her joints have started to ache at times, and she’s started to feel small tides of fatigue lately, no matter how much sugar she eats. Lysithea had mentioned the same sorts of symptoms about a year ago.
Wait—has she been napping more recently? Has Hapi noticed?
A soft hand cups her cheek.
Edelgard turns her hand into it and kisses the heel of Hapi’s thumb. “If I napped out here,” she says, “I’d wake up with ants on me.”
“So?” Hapi says with a shrug, sliding fingertips tenderly over her face, tracing her ear.
“I still don’t understand how you could possibly be so blasé about that sort of thing,” Edelgard says primly.
“City girl,” Hapi says fondly, and the soft brush of her hand down the side of Edelgard’s neck makes her sigh, melting a little into her touch. This—this is nice, at least for a moment, with the sun dappling red-gold through the coppery beech, the rich mossy air around them. Edelgard arranges herself with care, kneeling to straddle Hapi’s waist, a little dubious about burrowing fully into the moss, even though the snug black riding trousers she’s wearing afford her far more protection than her wife bothers with.
Edelgard bends to kiss her and Hapi opens to it eagerly, a hum of contentment into her mouth. She’s a lazy, sensuous kisser, always has been. Edelgard had thought, once, that she wouldn’t be much of a one for open-mouthed kissing, but Hapi had spun her all around the first time they’d kissed in the strained winter days of Garreg Mach, left her moaning outright. Now she looks for ways to repay the favor: the soft bites along her lips that make Hapi rumble with contentment, the way she melts when Edelgard cradles the nape of her neck.
Never her throat, where Cornelia had left her scarred and mangled, to be ever covered with a scarf except in utmost privacy. Not that Edelgard of all people would ever question that. She’s hardly keen about attention paid to the scars that mar her own belly and sternum, the seams up her legs from where they’d dug for her marrow.
Hapi’s arms slide around her, wandering up her back, and Edelgard lets herself sink down further, leaning on one elbow so she can let her other hand wander. She is—weak to breasts, a vice without doubt. She digs her fingertips into the generous swell of one, luxuriating, and then slides a hand up under Hapi’s shirt as her wife practically purrs, arching under her.
She—could certainly take Hapi, here on the moss in the wild. She’s still a little dubious about sliding down her own pants here, even as welcome heat starts to coil low in her belly, but her fingers, her mouth—
“Relax, Eddy,” Hapi says against her lips. “What’s wrong, what d’you need?”
Edelgard pauses, that thin thread of icy uncertainty twanging again. “You’re not usually this solicitous, Hapi. This is a day for both of us, is it not?”
Hapi sticks out her tongue. “I’m your wife, aren’t I allowed to be solicitous?”
Your wife. Her chest warms pleasantly. Yet still…she doesn’t quite know what to say, but it must be hanging on her face, because Hapi huffs. Then sits up, shirt and demeanor falling back down.
“Okay, yeah, I wanted to get you really kicking back and enjoying things. If it’s not working, it’s not working. We can head back or whatever.”
Edelgard feels a line deepening on her forehead. “I have wanted a vacation, I’m not heading back, Hapi, just—why? Why is this so important to you, now?”
Hapi hisses through pursed lips—a habit she still has even now that she can sigh normally without fear. “I was trying to be subtle.” Silence hangs. “Okay. Yeah. I know that you’re sick.”
She manages to sound almost calm. Her face is a little crumpled, and she’s dropped Edelgard’s gaze, eyes searching the leaf litter with some mix of sullenness and worry. Her hand is still touching Edelgard’s, a little hesitant, ring finger and pinky barely holding on as Edelgard’s own hands go still, ice freezing her veins.
“Who told you,” Edelgard says, too busy trying to keep her voice level to even make it a question.
“Nobody, jeez, you don’t need to go bite somebody’s head off. I kinda put it together from some stuff Sithy said. Linny too. But it’s not like they told me, I just knew you and Sithy had some of the same shit done, so…”
Lysithea. Of course. She’s becoming more and more open with her condition—it’s becoming subtly obvious, and while she’s never been as blasé as Hapi, she’ll blurt things. Edelgard can’t even begrudge her. Her choice. And of course she and Hapi had gotten close, first the common ground that bound them all together, then the fact that Lysithea both bakes and grudgingly feeds bits to anyone who hangs out in her kitchen and Hapi is a dear stray cat who never leaves if you feed her—
Edelgard’s heart aches, intensely, briefly, and she clenches her jaw. “It was not my wish. For anyone to know.”
“I know. The Bert told me. Hey.” Hapi’s voice goes softer, about as soft as her sarcastic soul can manage. “I get it. You don’t want anyone to make a big deal about it. But you’re worth, like, at least a little deal, kind of a smallish deal, I married you and everything, and you’re not very good at living, so…yeah. Vacation!”
Edelgard focuses on her instead of the middle distance, startled. Hapi’s flung an arm wide, brought up a wry and sheepish smile.
“It’ll be fun,” she adds, and Edelgard isn’t sure that even Hubert could make those words more bitterly ironic.
Not very good at living. It rattles under her ribs. Hapi had—changed that, she’d thought. She realizes she has no idea what time it is. What else Hapi has planned. Out here, hopelessly lost, in this silly little stretch of woods.
For a moment, she is tempted to go back. Do some of the paperwork in advance that she’ll otherwise be catching up on tomorrow. Train, relentlessly building her strength so that she has greater reserves when it starts to truly fail her—Lysithea’s starting to lose muscle tone, but she’d never had much to begin with, given her specialty and regimen—perhaps Ferdinand would have time—
She’d be sulking. No pretending otherwise.
“Let’s—not speak of this,” she says at last. “I…admit I have no idea what time it is.” It’s a slightly dizzying thought. Before this bracing little conversation, it might have been a relief. “Do you…have further plans?”
Hapi’s quiet for a moment, eyes scanning her worriedly, and then squints up at the sky, holds up a palm. “It’s not long after noon. Plans are whatever. I figure we won’t be super hungry until dinner, and that’s back in Enbarr, but we could stay here or go roll around the city…”
Edelgard pats down her hair wisps and reaches to give Hapi’s hand a quick, conciliatory squeeze. “Let’s head back to Enbarr, I think. The marketplace is delightful in the afternoon.”
🕐
The ride, at least, gives Edelgard time to settle her nerves. It’s slow at first—neither of them quite wants to trot until they’ve digested further—and she keeps her eyes on the road, only occasionally looking to Hapi. Hapi, in turn, watches the sky, the sea, distant and abstracted. Barely even bothers to hold the reins—not that she needs to—and turns her ring around on her finger, over and over.
Uncertainty gnaws in Edelgard’s belly.
They hand the horses to a groom at the back gate of the palace and slide out into the city on foot, and Hapi finally stirs up idle chatter. Hoping the donut cart will be out today; Edelgard doesn’t see why not. Could see if there’s weird new stuff down at the dock stalls. The traffic picks up as they pass into the busiest stretches of the city, and Edelgard slips an arm around Hapi’s waist, almost guiltily, so they don’t get separated.
Hapi leans against her without hesitation, at least, and Edelgard breathes a little easier.
Usually, even if they go down here, it’s with at least some amount of obvious retinue, so they pass in a bubble of privileged space, absorb the scraping deference of the merchants, hear the city hush around them. Now there’s no such shield—though without her hat, and with Hapi’s undeniably distinct complexion, Edelgard does hear the occasional whisper in her wake. The perimeter, she suspects, is moving through the crowd behind them, gently defusing the rumors.
Hapi snorts as a knot of people close behind them, whispering, and leans to talk in Edelgard’s ear. “Better disguises next time.”
Edelgard feels a strange flutter in her chest at the thought of next time. She isn’t sure whether it’s dismay at the idea of Hapi continuing to raise a fuss or excitement at the thought of a day out unspoiled by—that. “You might be hopeless.”
“Rude. I could get a fake beard or something. One of those big glittery coats.”
Edelgard can’t help a giggle. “You’d look like a pirate.”
“A mysterious pirate. Just off the boat from Morfis, here to ravish a maiden. Yarr.”
“Ravish!” Edelgard pinches her side, making her squeak.
“What? Isn’t that what pirates do?”
“Bold of you to assume I’m a maiden,” Edelgard says airily. “Besides, where would you put your breasts?”
“See, that’s why I need a big coat. Maybe one of those shirts with all the ruffles. Cover ‘em up even if I can’t tape ‘em down all the way.”
Edelgard fumbles to imagine this, and can’t help thinking of the version where the ruffled shirt isn’t buttoned up all the way and an entrancing glimpse of cleavage peeks through. Also the fake beard has got to go, and she can’t help but think she’d turn the tables on her ravisher. Or at least have booted feet over her shoulders as she—well, they’re not doing that in the marketplace.
Hapi kisses her temple.
At least—at least she’s relaxing again. The guilt still gnaws, especially when she feels the stiff hunch of Hapi’s shoulders, wary under her hand. They fetch a snack from a market stand to soothe Edelgard’s difficult metabolism, already burning through the giant brunch. The little paper cone of sugar-glazed nuts disappears quickly, and they mill aimlessly with Hapi’s shoulders still scrunched into a knot—
“Kitty,” Hapi says abruptly.
Edelgard gasps, feeling her heart lift. “Kitty?”
The little marketplace cat Hapi’s noticed is mostly grown, lanky, aggressively friendly, and spotted like Count Bergliez’s prize cows. They duck into a cranny out of the flow of traffic to pay their respects. The little thing’s meowing like it’s never been fed in its life, but it’s obviously well cared-for, flealess and clear-eyed, and Hapi laughs as it sniffs her pockets. “Look at you, mister big pleading eyes. Champion grifter. You wanna go work for Yuri-bird? I bet he’d have a job for you. Pay you in pigeon, that’s your favorite, yeah?”
Edelgard, in a moment of unabashed weakness, crouches to wrap it up in her arms and put her nose between its ears.
The cats back at Garreg Mach had never liked Hapi. It was the corruption, she’d realized later, the ways Cornelia had twisted her powers towards the monstrous. They’d put their ears back at her and edge away, to her dismay. Edelgard, of course, has always had her weakness, particularly to one slinky black cat—perhaps one of her own Hresvelgian Whiskers, a brave footsoldier in the conquest of Garreg Mach—who liked to hang out by the fishpond, begging scraps and becoming luxuriously warm in the sun. And who would allow Edelgard, in time, to reduce it to a purring puddle in her lap.
Such a puddle she’d had one weekend afternoon—coursework done, training over, a few precious hours before an unwanted meeting with Solon—when Hapi had wandered past the docks, to the wary hisses of cats and sideways glances from fellow students. Her own Black Eagles, no less. Edelgard had shot them a pointed look and called for Hapi to join her if she wished.
She’d been hesitant. Prickly from the unearned disdain of others—understandably. Not wanting to scare off the contented cat. But it had been relaxed enough to allow a few pets, with Edelgard rubbing gently between its ears as it dubiously sniffed Hapi’s curled fingers. I’m like you, Edelgard had wanted to say, so earnestly, as Hapi’s face softened, as she cooed about how soft and warm the cat was. Please see me. I’m like you.
That had come later, when Edelgard had finally worked up the courage to tell her bits and pieces. Not everything, of course. But that day had stuck with her. Had it been the first time Hapi had given her a nickname? She can’t quite remember. Years ago by now…
Damn it, she wants years with her. All of them. But there’s no point in letting herself feel that kind of frustration.
“Hapi,” Edelgard says, voice small, still with her nose between those soft black-and-white ears because that’s easier than looking her wife in the eye. “Are you angry with me? For not telling you?”
A pause. Then, weary, “Fuck. Eddy, don’t ask me that.”
Edelgard feels her brow furrow, looks up at her with a faint twinge of guilt in her belly. Hapi’s the one looking away now, shoulders hunched.
“I was dumb,” Hapi says, like that explains everything.
“I do keep my secrets close,” Edelgard says gently. “And I hardly think my symptoms are obvious yet…”
“Not that,” Hapi grumbles. “No. I just…wanted to believe this could be a thing. That we could really grow old together, that we…that I wouldn’t be alone again. So that was dumb. But also I—”
“No,” Edelgard blurts, and before she realizes it, she’s let go of the cat to hold Hapi’s face in both hands, urgent, staring into startled red eyes. “No. Whatever else I—even if I give into my body’s weakness—I meant what I said. I will never willingly abandon you. I will never betray you.” Hapi makes one tiny whine in the back of her throat. “Please. Never think yourself a fool for that.”
Hapi’s lip trembles once, dangerously, and she bites it, and brushes fingertips tenderly over Edelgard’s face in return. “It’s not your fault,” she says, with great care. “If Linny doesn’t figure it out. It’s not your fault.”
The cat headbutts Edelgard’s elbow insistently, and her chest clenches, and she pulls Hapi into her arms, squeezing her tight. “You’re dangerous sometimes, you know,” she murmurs into her hair.
“Yeah,” Hapi mumbles, and the nervous hunch to her shoulders finally starts to loosen. “I get that a lot.”
🕒
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur, color and noise, and there are whole moments when Edelgard can almost forget that Hapi knows and the world has tilted under her feet. She, accustomed to the luxuries of Enbarr, doesn’t pay much attention to shopping beyond a pearl-and-gold hairpin that stands out stunningly in Hapi’s sunset-red curls. Hapi, on the other hand, is still getting used to having an allowance and a roof over her head, so she picks up more than a few odds and ends, left to get packed up and shipped to the palace’s majordomo. A glittering scarlet-and-gold scarf, for the next time Edelgard might wish to hide her hair, and a pair of matching bracelets. Most notably, an avant-garde vase that’s so entrancingly ugly that she’d fallen in love.
Well, Edelgard thinks, if word of that gets out, the ladies dutifully fashion-chasing their Empress will have an even worse time of it. Oh, she loves her so.
Edelgard, allowing herself sheer self-indulgence, pulls Hapi up the stairs to one of the premiere fashion-houses of the city. Here, of course, they are known, though the aging and savvy assistant has the good grace to allow them informality, seeing as they’re also in everyday clothes without an obvious retinue.
“Oh boy,” Hapi says, with a quirk of her lips. “You’re gonna make me dress up, aren’t you.”
“You did say you wanted me to relax,” Edelgard says, arranging herself comfortably on the sofa in the luxurious little atelier. “Please indulge me.”
Hapi laughs a little. “Fine, fine. All right, lady dress wizard, thank you. Uh.” More things she’s getting used to, runaway girl from a tiny village that she is: Enbarr ateliers, their nigh-infinite supply of dresses, and their perfectionist service. “Nothing without a high collar, I don’t care if you need to break out the tape, and lots of cleavage. For reasons. Surprise me?”
“She most often wears green,” Edelgard puts in, trying not to blush too obviously—reasons, the little brat. “Or imperial red, of course. I think we might want to try some other options.”
The options spill forth, and Hapi passes in and out of the screen. A high-formal number in gold-trimmed black, layered, backless, with the clear military inspiration that Edelgard herself has injected into Enbarr’s fashion scene; it’s buttoned all up to the chin, but cunningly and swiftly rearranged with pins to mock up a strategically placed keyhole, a potential alteration. A few more everyday dresses, at least by the standards of this house, in the draped and ornamented bare-backed layers that Dorothea so enjoys, but it’s the colors that stand out: burnt-orange for one, well-balanced with Hapi’s eyes and skin, and an understated but intriguing deep blue.
“Yeah, I think this is it,” Hapi says, when she comes out in the next one and Edelgard’s jaw drops. It’s another avant-garde trend—elegant minimalism mixed with wildly creative cuts. Pearly cream silk hugs her like it’s molded to her skin, with a few tell-tale pleats and wrinkles from the pin-fitting. The high collar she always requires is a separate piece entirely, and the rest is a wildly asymmetrical cut: one shoulder and arm bare, one sleeved all the way down to a point resting on the back of her hand. The skirt, too, a gracious swirl on one side and slit to her thigh on the other. The half-back is practically standard, and the swish down from the single shoulder affords her some lovely cleavage. The subtlest shot-through touch of gold catches the light, and the cream sets off her complexion, and Edelgard is, for a moment, lost in bliss.
Hapi gives one of her adorable little smiles as she catches Edelgard’s eye, but as she looks down at herself, she just says, “It’s almost as weird as that vase, I like it.”
“It is considerably lovelier than that vase,” Edelgard says decisively. She hadn’t necessarily intended to buy something, only enjoy dressing up her wife, but this one is a clear winner.
“Fighting words, Eddy. That vase has changed my life.” Hapi snort-giggles and turns slowly in the kaleidoscope of mirrors. “Shit,” she says, sounding impressed, no doubt one of her how the hell did I get here moments. “I’m turning into a fancy Enbarr lady. Kill me now.”
“That is, in fact, the role you chose when you wed me,” Edelgard says, fond in her dryness. Her exact words had been more like holy shit, please tell me this doesn’t mean I get stuck with any part of empireing. It’s not as if she wouldn’t also cherish a politically active Empress, but this—well, she’ll make it suit her goals that somebody can’t gain such power simply by marrying nobility if they don’t have the talent and drive.
Also Hapi can bring monsters to solve their most deadly problems with a single breath. That’s rather an unprecedented role for an Empress of Adrestia, and hardly a secret. No useless Enbarr lady here. Not ever.
There are a few more measurements, thanks to give, and Hapi’s jarringly different street clothes to change back into, and they saunter out into the golden light of afternoon in a far, far happier mood.
“Heck,” Hapi says, stretching and watching the seagulls wheel in the sky. “It’s almost time for dinner.
🕖
Dinner, Edelgard considers, as they pass with a gracious lack of fuss through the VIP back door of the third-most-famous restaurant near the opera, has got to be Dorothea’s fault. She’d commented once, if Edelgard’s memory served, that the Green Manse was the only one of the hip theater restaurants that was so good that no date could ruin it, which given her track record with dates was saying something.
Dinner unfolds by candlelight, and is, in fact, good enough that even Edelgard, who is not given to such things, feels herself going cross-eyed at the first bite. The food’s almost deceptively simple, rich with subtle flavor, and the waiters hover, switching out glasses of wine that make the flavors seem to vibrate in their mouths. Feather-light crepes with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. The best fish and bean soup she’s ever had, coiling with leeks. Fresh-pulled pasta with a macerated tomato sauce that bursts like sunlight on her tongue. A braised rack of lamb that allows Edelgard to take delicate nibbles of meat, all she cares for on most days, while Hapi feasts, with buttery little potatoes and smoky onion jam.
They finish it all with a madly elevated take on saghert and cream, crafted to a perfection that would make even her own palace pastry chef jealous, and ooze slowly out onto the darkening street, full of wine and food. Edelgard feels almost dizzy with the sheer sensuality of it all, and she leans on Hapi’s shoulder, plays with her dangling sleeve. Dusk is spreading over Enbarr, the harbor aflame with sunset. They drift, almost inevitably, to the boulevard that runs along the grand canal: aglitter at night, the last stop for any truly romantic tour of the capital.
It’s not just the lingering haze of dinner, Edelgard is realizing as they amble into the open breadth of cobbles, lined with lamps and benches. It’s the rolling fatigue, arbitrary, unwelcome, and in all the beautiful sprawl of her city, the buildings new and old, the mosaic of wealth and stunning poverty that she’s spent so many long nights trying to untangle, right now the only thing she can see is a little wrought-iron bench.
She sinks down and bites her lip against a sigh.
“Eddy?” Hapi asks, because of course she does, damn it.
“I’m just a little tired,” Edelgard says, forcing deep steady breaths in hopes of shaking off the watery exhaustion in her limbs. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
It’s a thin excuse. She—well, they both know it now, don’t they?
Hapi settles warm at her side and rubs circles on her back.
The last blood-orange of sunset flickers on the water, and across the canal, she can see the lanterns coming on one by one as the lamplighter makes their way down the boulevard. A gondola passes, song echoing softly. Closer. Further. Fading. Voices of the city drift.
“I thought the nightmares would get better,” she blurts. A moment of weakness. “Once we defeated the Agarthans.”
Hapi gives the sort of grunt that means she’s listening and butts her forehead against her temple.
“I. I don’t know why I thought that. Perhaps I just…needed something to tell myself. But we’ve broken their power—you’ve broken their power. Fódlan is free of them, and still I trouble you at night.”
“No trouble, dummy,” Hapi says, not unfond.
Edelgard finds her hand, fidgets with her fingers. Hapi’s nails are less bitten than they had been at school, during the war. She’s less anxious than she used to be. Good. “You…never seem to get them. The nightmares.”
“Gotta get my beauty sleep,” says Hapi vaguely. Even though she has her hard-won control. Even though she’d never been quite sure if yawns counted as sighs, just trained herself because she didn’t want to risk it. Or because sunlight helps keep her mood up, Edelgard’s never been quite sure which. “I don’t dream,” Hapi adds after a pause, abruptly frank in turn. “I mean, I guess I do, because I heard once that if you don’t dream for real, you go crazy. But I don’t remember them. Just nothingness. Haven’t since I was little.”
“That’s…” Edelgard squeezes her hand gently. “Probably for the best.”
“Yeah.” Hapi opens her mouth, framing Edelgard’s temple with her teeth and—biting. Just lightly. Edelgard squawks in bewildered annoyance. “Also we’re on vacation. How’s walking?”
“I…” Edelgard shoves off the skull vampire, lovingly, and Hapi licks her fingertip instead, glove and all. “I’ve certainly rested. Let’s see—”
“Don’t push it.” Edelgard sighs through her teeth and wills Linhardt an immediate breakthrough. This really is going to be it at this point, isn’t it? “But it’d be all romantic and shit to dance if you’re up for it,” Hapi finishes.
Edelgard blinks, genuinely taken aback, then brushes fingertips over Hapi’s cheekbone, smiling fondly. She’s lost the scarf on her hair, Edelgard realizes abruptly. Maybe at the atelier—they’ll send it over, she supposes, they’re conscientious like that. The glory is loose, catching the lamplight. “Romantic and shit,” she echoes.
“Yup.” Hapi’s eyes soften.
“Well. I suppose that is the point, isn’t it?”
“Don’t know where you got that idea,” Hapi says, and leans in to thread an arm through hers. Edelgard gathers herself, chin firm. She doesn’t need help up, she’s not that bad yet. But she can rise, arm in arm. That’s nice.
There’s a faint violin waltz drifting down from one of the late-night sidewalk cafes, clashing with the gondoliers singing over the canal, and by the time Edelgard picks up the right rhythm, Hapi’s already arranged herself, arm snug around her waist, catching Edelgard’s hand.
“Hapi,” Edelgard says, puffing out her cheeks in faint annoyance. She is used to leading, had through most of their variably successful lessons.
Her Empress blows her a fat little raspberry and pulls her close into the warmth of her body, and Edelgard feels a faint flutter in her chest in spite of herself. Hapi leads in gentle nudges, a little awkward, but at least she’s staying off her toes. She’s never bothered to wear perfume, not even trying to cover the whiff of dark-magic must and the peculiar animal warmth that’s pure Timotheus, but dark magic has always been the scent at Edelgard’s side. Some might find it disturbing, but to her it’s sheer comfort. She rests her head on Hapi’s shoulder, breathing her in and melting slowly into her as they take a sweet, formless waltz.
“I guess,” Hapi says quietly into her hair, “I also wanted to say. I’ll be there. That’s all. Not gonna run away from this, if that’s what you were scared of. I mean, I did marry you, even if you’re a butt.”
Edelgard lets out a shaky sigh, feeling her cheeks tug in a smile. “That’s the technical term, is it?”
Hapi plants one on her forehead, a little messy because they’re still sort of dancing. “I use technical terms for everything, doncha know.”
“I didn’t think you were going to run away,” Edelgard says, squeezing Hapi’s shoulder firmly. “I just…didn’t want to worry you. Either Linhardt and Lysithea fix it or they don’t, and either way a fuss won’t help.”
“You,” Hapi says, slow and decisive, “are a huge dummy.”
Edelgard makes a disgruntled noise. “I am a resourceful strategist. I united Fódlan. I am ushering in a new age of the world.”
“Yeah, you’re still a huge dummy,” Hapi says, and kisses her forehead again. Then she hesitates a moment, squeezing her hand. “Sorry I put my foot in my mouth back there.”
“Accepted. Conditionally.” The tassels on her scarf tickle Edelgard’s nose. “I may have to punish you later,” she says, entirely fond.
“Oh no,” Hapi deadpans. “Do not throw me in that briar patch.”
Edelgard lets herself laugh. “Next time. Let’s clear another vacation. Take me back to that lovely spot in the woods. And bring a blanket so I don’t get intimate with the ants.” She indulges in a quick squeeze of Hapi’s luxurious rear. “We’ll see if your forest can muffle your screams, pretty girl.”
Hapi breaks into a laugh, a deep dusky hint of a blush rising in her cheeks. “Yeah, should’ve thought of the blanket. Long as you don’t want me to wear that dress in there, it would die in like two seconds.”
“No, that’s for the next time we need to make enough of an impression at a party that we can get away with leaving early.”
“And going home to fuck, I hope.”
“Well, that is one of the joys of an early exit, is it not?” Edelgard leans into her for a moment, unabashed, soaking up her warmth. “I must apologize, too, if I seemed temperamental.”
“Pff,” Hapi says. “Nah. Just prickly, and you’re just like the prickliest about anyone knowing anything, I expected it. I know you, Eddy. It’s okay.”
“I—had to guard my secrets,” she huffs.
Hapi squishes her a little. “Also you’re a prickerbush.”
Edelgard lets space come between them, just enough to look up at her. “I’ve never understood how you’re not,” she says, sudden and frank. “It—stunned me. Right from the start. The way you’d just talk about things like they were normal.”
“I mean.” Hapi’s mouth purses, and she loses rhythm for a moment. “They are. For me. Like, they happened. And we’re different. And if I talk about it like it wasn’t that big a deal…” She hesitates, stilling entirely. “Maybe I’ll believe it and it won’t hurt as much.”
“Oh,” Edelgard breathes. “Oh, Hapi.” She reaches up, runs fingers tenderly over her round dark cheek. Silence stretches. The night birds start to sing. Hapi’s eyes search hers, a little uncertain, before she leans into her hand.
I mean, she’d said once, idly, like she says anything important, who the fuck knows? Some monster could eat me, or somebody could kill me and get it over with, or lock me up and forget about me, like any old day. So I might as well eat all the best snacks right now.
“Dance with me,” Edelgard whispers, sudden and a little urgent. Never. She would never let any of that happen. She’s the Emperor of Fódlan and no force will move her. But…well. She understands, more or less. “Let’s. Just dance.”
“‘Kay,” Hapi says, quirking a smile as the last thread of tension breaks, and the violinist down the boulevard strikes up a new tune, and Edelgard finally, truly, relaxes into her wife’s arms as she sweeps her up through the golden light of their city.
art by nonbinarytree
