Work Text:
When the war ends, Dimitri asks Marianne to cut his hair.
There are other things—the work of a king—to start and finish and continue and other people to ask things of, but he sees her standing alone gazing at a portrait in one of the offshoots of hallways in the Adrestian emperor's palace and he asks and she closes her eyes.
The portrait is of El, standing next to an older brother, her arms around him. The paint is faded, the unfinished background leaving them in a void, but she is smiling brighter than he had ever known her. It's a smile that happens right after laughing, from remembering the joy of only a moment ago, perfect and fleeting.
He imagines there is a counterpart, where they had stood still and serious, but then a sister had burst into the sitting room with a shout and they had laughed so easily in the way children do and the portraitist had set aside that moment to paint on a different day, on a smaller canvas that would be set aside until the newly crowned emperor had found it.
Marianne says, "When we were at the academy, I thought she was radiant. I had never spoken to her, could never speak to her, but I was certain of that."
He watches Marianne open her eyes and then, very quietly but with a clarity such that Dimitri does not have to struggle to hear, to listen:
"She looks happy."
"Yes," he says, because saying anything else feels too much of a confession, too regretful, too joyful that he was able to witness this moment trapped in varnish. "She does."
The scissors are procured from Manuela and are made for cutting bandages and gauze rather than hair, but Dimitri finds it distasteful—and it can only be distasteful, not cruel, at most because they've done worse and had worse be done to them—to root through their pockets for a simple pair of scissors.
Marianne holds them close to her chest, her head bowed slightly, ever so slightly to not offend royalty, except Dimitri would not be mind, would prefer it if Marianne held her head up high to gaze at Derdriu's sea or daybreak at Faerghus or to think and live without worrying about what other people thought of her. She's on her way, has been getting there without him, but he can't stop himself from being selfish in the smallest ways. (He would also prefer for her to look up, because, if she leaned forward too much, she'd stab herself by accident.)
He has considered comforting platitudes before, especially when they were younger and stepping around each other on tiptoe simply because they didn't know what do with each other: different houses and nations, prince of Faerghus and daughter of a Margrave, a praying girl with her hands too tight together and the boy who occasionally watched her with a vague sort of recognition in his eyes.
Vague if only because he didn't want to commit it to being spoken, to declare it to the world that did not exist between them. He was afraid that it'd die before anyone would say anything, he was afraid that someone would do precisely that.
He thinks they are too old for anything trite, and have been for a long time.
Dimitri tells her, "I asked you to do this because I find you to be brave. This is not as nearly as dramatic as sewing wounds shut or spelling burned flesh, but you have the hands of a healer and I trust you."
When Marianne works, she is steady and meticulous, clear-sighted and strong, even if she doesn't truly believe it. No matter the place, no matter who's looking, she's the same with a lance in hand on the battlefield as she is with a knife the kitchen and it's no different now with a pair of scissors. It doesn't matter if she's never cut someone else's hair before; the her in the mirror is the same.
Every draft that blows through can be felt on the back of his neck. He touches it each time to feel the same cool skin, his heartbeat, if he focuses hard enough. It's a bit strange; he hadn't had that habit before despite it being about the same length.
Marianne wrings the rag used to wipe the mirror clean as he looks from it to her.
"I'm sorry," Marianne says. "I couldn't get it right."
He assures her, "I'll grow into it," and then, in what was awkward at best at cheering her, "Silly to admit it, but when I was young I found my father's hair to look atrocious. Perhaps that is also the duty of a king..."
She smiles and even if it's only out of politeness he feels brave enough to ask, "May I write to you? When you return home."
"Is that not to be expected—the margraviate is a part of Fódlan." There's a note of unsurety in her voice, of her not looking to take his words in a way that presumes too much. It should be expected, he thinks. But not for that reason.
"I mean to you, Marianne von Edmund."
She says, slowly, "I'd be honored."
"As would I."
She smiles and this time it feels like a gift and not a returned favor, and he lets himself think it isn't entirely out of the niceties of manners.
The letter comes faintly smelling of summer. Pressed flowers hidden between the pages of tidy, looping script.
Dimitri lets himself have a moment to open the study's window, feel a moment of the warmth of the sun, a reminder of a fairer place where those flowers grew, before a cold wind makes him close it again.
Then, he sits down to write back.