Chapter Text
Fhridiad Museum didn't interest Dedue much, and the weapon exhibit appealed to him even less. They had so many weapons. Just halls and halls filled with axes, lances, and swords with occasional armor pieces stuffed between them.
A museum guide with narrow ideas of what twelve-year-old boys liked, had tried to show him a silver battleaxe. He could barely look at the display, yet he also wanted to hold the weapon for some reason. It made him so nervous that he fled the scene, leaving his elder sister to apologize to the confused guide.
Dedue wasn't sure if he liked Fhridiad at all. The whole city felt strangely familiar but in a somewhat uncomfortable way, and leaving hometown always filled him with unfounded dread that he could never return. He wished he could have stayed home with grandma instead.
His parents had wandered deeper into the museum while he stayed behind with his sisters. He held his little sister’s hand. Nadia didn't care about the weapons either, they had that much in common, though her disinterest might have stemmed from the fact she was ten years old. He squeezed her hand a little harder every time she tried to slip away from him.
Their sister Ada however, was very invested. She was technically supposed to be watching her younger siblings, but she mostly kept taking pictures of everything on her phone and sending them to her friends. Dedue didn't know anyone who’d care about pictures of rusty old swords, then again, he didn't have that many friends.
Eventually, even Fodlan ran out of weapons and they entered a room full of paintings. Ada took selfies with the portraits she thought looked the funniest. Dedue looked around while still clutching tightly to Nadia’s hand. Several portraits of nobility hang on the walls, but only one in particular captured his attention.
The painting was the largest one in the room, but that’s not why he was so drawn to it. In the Intricate gold frame was a portrait of two men, a King on his throne and a large man in armor standing next to him. A man obviously of Duscur descent in a Fodlanese painting this old would have interested him any other time. Now the King had his undivided attention.
It was strange how he was sure he had never seen the painting before, but it felt familiar. The deja vu feeling was overwhelming and uncomfortable. He felt like his knees were about to give in. He let go of his sister’s hand without thinking.
No piece of art had ever captured his heart like this. The room around him seemed suddenly very quiet as if he was alone there. The king had a serious expression on the painting, but Dedue could easily imagine him smiling. He should smile.
Something resonated with his heart and soul. He reached out to touch the canvas, his fingers just inches away, yearning for something he couldn't explain before he remembered you couldn’t do that in the museum. He retracted his hand slowly.
“He looks kinda like dad,” Ada said.
Dedue hadn't even noticed his sister standing next to him.
“What?” he asked with a raspy voice.
“I said he looks kinda like our dad,” Ada repeated.
Dedue almost asked who, but then he tore his gaze away from the King and looked at the picture as a whole. Ada was correct. The man standing on the King’s right side looked remarkably like their father, if their father had been scarred and stern-looking.
Dedue glanced at the title plaque under the painting.
“Unknown artist,
King Dimitri and his vassal,
1193,
Oil paint on canvas.”
The name of the King was Dimitri. That felt right.
Dedue wasn't sure what exactly a vassal was, but he had a feeling that it was important. It must be if he was in this giant portrait with the King. It felt important to him, like an answer to a quiz that he knew he had read but still couldn’t quite recall.
“I wasn't looking at him,” Dedue admitted.
“The King then?”
“Yeah.”
Ada looked at the painted King to see what captured her brother’s interest. The man looked tired beyond his years, had only one eye, and he should wash his hair. There were much prettier paintings in the hall.
“The painter was very talented,” she said diplomatically.
Dedue nodded, completely disinterested in his sister’s opinion.
“Do you want to come with us to look at the landscape paintings? I think they have flowers.”
He shook his head and continued staring at the painting. Ada shrugged and took Nadia by hand and led her to the next room.
Every now and then an occasional tourist would stand next to him to take a good look at the artwork but to his surprise, no one seemed to appreciate it as much as he did. How come no one could feel what he did.
Ada came to check on him and tried to get him to move a couple of times later, but Dedue stayed in front of King Dimitri’s painting, utterly mesmerized until his parents came to tell him it was time to leave the museum. He shot one last longing look at the painting.
On the way out they stopped by the museum gift shop. His sisters were bickering over postcards and souvenir magnets for their friends. He stood still next to them, lost in his thoughts. The ache had not faded.
In a mild panic, he realized that there probably would have been more paintings of King Dimitri in the museum, and he missed them all. There was little doubt that he could find all of those online, but it wouldn’t be the same.
“That’s the one,” he heard Ada say to their father.
He tried to collect his thoughts and focus on the present. He didn’t see what they were talking about until his father tucked a receipt in his pocket and placed a brand new book in Dedue’s hands, smiling gently.
“Savior King,” the cover said with bold blue letters.
The cover’s art was unmistakenly of King Dimitri, but it still didn't look exactly like he should. Dedue wasn't sure why he felt like that since there wasn't anything obviously off with it. Perhaps he just thought so because he only had seen one picture of the King.
He flipped the book open. The cover was newer artwork, the introduction told him, the artist had born long after the King had already died. The cover image was based on other portraits of the King.
Dedue caressed the glossy cover gently. His parents smiled, their son rarely got this excited over anything. He was an unusually serious child. Nadia laughed at him for ”making heart eyes'' at a book. Dedue felt his cheeks heat up but couldn’t exactly deny it.
Back at the hotel, he crashed into his bed with his shoes still on and opened the book at a random page. There were so many chapters about war. Dedue flipped through the pages.
He stopped at a page with the same image as the painting he had seen in the museum. Out of all the pictures in the book, this one was his favorite. There was a whole chapter for his vassal. Dedue’s heart skipped a beat when he read the name. It was the same as his. His name was very common, there were three Dedues in his grade at school. Molinaro was not an uncommon last name either. But still.
Dedue skipped at the end of the chapter.
“While they behaved as lord and vassal in public, it is said that Dimitri and Dedue were more like family in private. When Dimitri finally fell to illness, Dedue tended to his liege's deathbed, and then took up a post at his grave for the rest of his days. When the time came, they were buried beside each other.”
King Dimitri never married, and the throne was inherited by the illegitimate child of his late uncle. Interesting.
His reading was interrupted by his sister.
“Do you think he’s cute? I don't think he’s cute,” Nadia asked.
“What?”
Nadia pried the book off his hands and waved the cover in front of their sister.
“Ada, do you think he’s cute?”
“No,” Ada said without looking up from her phone.
“Dedue thinks he’s cute.”
Ada looked up at this, “Really?”
“I do not,” Dedue protested meekly.
“You do.”
“Give me my book back, please.”
Nadia only laughed and ran around in circles until Ada took the book from her and handed it back to Dedue.
“Thank you.”
Dedue looked at the picture on the cover once more. Okay, maybe King Dimitri was sort of cute. But just a little.
“Why do you even care about him?” Nadia asked.
Dedue didn't answer because he didn't know why. Why indeed did he care about some long-dead foreign King? How could he even begin to explain that he felt like he had found some long lost part of himself? A part he hadn’t even known was missing. And that he found it from some stuffy old war museum of all the places.
He slept with King Dimitri’s biography under his pillow that night.