Work Text:
Fodlan is bizarre.
To Grandpa Oswald’s credit, he did warn him ahead of time. When he attends the Officers Academy, he’ll be classmates with fellow high-standing children from all over Fodlan, people of a different breed than the Alliance nobles. Most notably, those of Faerghus is said to embody the values of chivalry passed down from Loog the Lion King, a far cry of the culture of the rampant deception in the Alliance Roundtable.
“They are also not human like you and me,” he said.
It was ruled by the Church after the War of Eagle and Lion that the spirits of Faerghus are to be treated no different than humans on the basis that despite their unusual forms, they are capable of having intelligence, emotions, and the ability to worship the Goddess. Moreover, they are capable of passing down Crests just like humans, and thus, equally blessed under the Goddess’s eyes. Odd that it took until the war for such a thing to be declared, but if Claude had to guess, it was simply the result of Faerghus’s victory and perhaps, the reason they were fighting in the first place.
Claude couldn’t find any pictures, so he had to make do with words and his imagination. The spirits of Faerghus… descriptions vary, but generally speaking, they resemble plants that grew legs and arms. They come in all shapes and sizes-- anywhere between the size of a mouse to a bear. Specifics are vague since the Riegan manor isn’t equipped with books specialized on this topic. Gramps said such materials are even pricier than the average book in Fodlan, a lot pricier due to rarity. He also made an offhand remark about Faerghan laws.
Why this is the case is a mystery to Claude, which only fuels his curiosity. His time at Garreg Mach will surely answer some questions. “How exciting!” he thought.
And he did find them! But…
“Claude, I really do mean it. Your company has been invaluable to me— so much so that I… I’m nothing less than certain about my feelings. I love you dearly.”
… he really is swooning over a turnip, isn’t he?
Dimitri, the Crown Prince of Faerghus, is the most adorable(?) turnip he’s ever seen. The way he bounces excited when his gaze lands on Claude-- the way he adorably trains with his tiny lance and accidentally destroys the floor tiles… it’s all too cute! Claude never thought he would be so drawn to sentient vegetables of all things, but as he grew accustomed to monastery life and everyone else not batting an eye to the existence of talking veggies, Claude naturally melded in. Before he knew it, he fell for the charming turnip prince as if he was no different than a human.
Even now, he isn’t even sipping tea like a normal person. He jumped into the teacup and soaks up the liquid into his body with a comfy, warm expression. Claude could watch the turnip prince drink(?) tea all day!
“Oh, Your Turnipness! I…!” Claude picks up Dimitri’s bulbous turnip body and pecks him right below his stem, letting out a soft giggle as the prince’s leaves brush his nose. “My dear prince, how can I not feel the same way!”
Dimitri nuzzles into Claude’s cheek and pecks him in return, full of joy and love. This entire scene is laid out in the open for the entire student body to witness and the story spreads faster than the time it took for King Lambert’s turnip corpse to be burnt to a crisp. It was like the end of the world and some people unironically thought it was. Sylvain, the philandering eggplant, laughed like no tomorrow and temporarily lost his voice in the process. Felix, the grumpy brussel sprout with a vicious tongue on par with the hottest of peppers, sharpened the blade as he briefly contemplated gutting the boar in turnip’s clothing and his human lover. Ingrid, the butter squash carnivore, does her best to be the responsible one before the chaos awakens a meat-craving fever, causing her to bite one of the humans in the monastery. (She apologized profusely after she snapped out of it.)
Eventually, the news reached Edelgard’s ears. She was inflicted with a sudden craving for vegetable stir fry, which is convenient for her since vegetable flesh happens to be one of Dorothea’s favorite dishes, too. The fire of passion inside of her decided that she will not lose to the turnip-human couple, even if it’s over the corpses of boiled potatoes and roasted asparagus.
(Later, Dorothea, unaware of the princess’s thoughts, sits at the dining hall thinking, “Edie looks so kissable like this,” as Edelgard violently bites into a non-sentient raw onion, not realizing that it isn’t a turnip. However, through sheer indomitable will, she eats the whole thing anyway.)
When Edelgard asserted her dominance by declaring war on the Church, the once-charming turnip prince screamed bloody murder.
Imperial soldiers fell one by one by the fearsome turnip prince. Human blood spilled on the earth the way Claude spilled his heart when he confessed that he’s half-Almyran to his darling at the Goddess Tower. The Immaculate One appears, Byleth disappears, and Edelgard retreats.
A month later, Dimitri was declared to have been executed via boiling pot, and although Claude had faith that he escaped due to the lack of his beloved’s boiled corpse, there was a turnip-shaped hole in his heart. He made a vegetable garden in memory of his sweetheart.
Later, rumors of the One-Eyed Turnip started popping up, and Claude’s heart shot up.
After saddling Hilda with work she never asked for, which is the norm at this point, Claude takes a wyvern to find the lost prince. “Don’t worry, Hilda, I’ll be back soon. Pinky promise.” And she said, “Oh, fuck off,” which Claude gladly did because he can’t keep his turnip lover waiting.
It took a lot of investigating, but after a month of searching, Claude descended upon a secluded cave in the Garreg Mach forests. There, a small camp was set up and at the center of it was a turnip roasting a fat boar over a campfire.
Claude called for Dimitri’s attention, giving the poor turnip a shock.
“C-Claude!” Oh dear, the poor little turnip is shivering in fear! “It can’t be… are you here to haunt me, too?” Such a droopy-looking turnip!
“I’m not dead, love! I heard rumors about a one-eyed turnip and came to find you.”
Indeed, there is an eyepatch over the turnip prince’s right eye. How could that have happened? Perhaps during his escape from Cornelia’s clutches? Claude walks and leans in to embrace the turnip. The boar is burning.
“Dimitri, what happened?”
The turnip prince recounted the horrifying events that happened at Fhirdiad. Cornelia, the holy woman from Adrestia, framed Dimitri for killing his uncle and launched a coup against the throne. In captivity, the turnip witnessed all sorts of horrors, like Cornelia making cornmeal out of her dissenters! She made bread with bushels of sentient wheat! She ordered them to be cooked into meals, and dined with her traitorous army over the suffering of the people! The sadness and rage in Dimitri’s voice were all too powerful for Claude to not shed a tear.
In fact, he’s shedding up a whole ass waterfall.
“Join us, Dimitri. I’ve been balancing the Alliance to avoid civil war, but we can still help you and the resistance in Faerghus. I heard that your friends are still kicking.”
Some of his fellow Golden Deer is in contact with a few of the Blue Lions even after the war’s start, so that’s how he heard about them aside from his spies. Dimitri nuzzled into the crook of Claude’s neck, eating up the warmth of his beloved’s body heat.
“I swear upon my father’s lance, I’ll do anything to protect you.”
And so, the two made their way back to Derdriu and summoned a secret meeting at the Riegan manor on what to do. Hilda was ready to throw hands for how long Claude took, but okay, cool, they got a game plan now that the prince of Faerghus was discovered to be alive. Felix’s dad would definitely be super happy now that the son of his one-sided crush is discovered to be alive.
It was pretty smooth sailing and Claude wondered why the hell it's so smooth. It’s almost like the enemy gave the other side half a decade to make their first move and are caught off guard that they’re moving now. Arranging a meeting at Ailell was easy, though the Faerghan army looked kinda… cooked by the time they got there. Rodrigue, aka Duke Green Bean, was overwhelmed with joy and the morale of the Faerghan army shot up like how fireballs shot up the Fhirdiad School of Sorcery during the coup.
After that, a bunch of shit happened.
The battle at Fhirdiad was an anticlimactic one when one of the bishops warped Dimitri right in front of Cornelia and slapped the tyrannical woman with Areadbhar. She whispered something about Dimitri’s mom but Claude couldn’t hear anything since the turnip prince kinda stabbed her in the face. There were a bunch of weird machines too, but they all deactivated when the cornmeal witch drew her last breath, so that was cool.
There was a victory party after reclaiming Fhirdiad with Dimitri crowned as king. Claude feels bad because “His Turnipsty” doesn’t roll off the tongue like “His Turnipness” does, but it’s okay because Dimitri gives him his signature turnip snuggles and cuteness heals all. They dined over a feast made out of Cornelia’s flesh just like she did after the coup because the irony is funny. Ingrid said it was tasty because of course, she did.
However, the war is still going on, and after the initial victory in Fhirdiad, the war was locked into a stalemate. When the professor returned five years later, it only then did the ball start rolling.
Victory after victory, the professor’s guidance was flawless as if they could see into the future. Merceus, Enbarr, and even the mole base, Shambhala, fell easily, barring a few mishaps here and there. Okay, there were some weird things like Merceus being wiped off the map, Rhea face-tanking the thing that wiped the fort off the map, and well, the fact that mole people exist, but overall things were pretty good. Like, there wasn’t a single casualty after Byleth’s arrival and it’s kinda fucking nuts. Dimitri said that he likes the crunchiness of nuts and Claude agrees.
Still, there was one thing that was bothering him and after much badgering, Rhea finally spilled the truth.
“Long ago, there was an ancient civilization that fell to ruin from civil war. They had strange technology, one of which was the javelin of light that you saw at Merceus. Both sides had access to them, but there was one strange consequence that no one foresaw. The weapon that was created to bring upon death… created life in the strangest of places.”
Claude read about Faerghan legends about how lances were considered holy weapons, a concept that existed before Areadbhar did. Even so, could it really be that…?
“The javelin of light… could it be that the legends of Faerghan lances are connected?”
Rhea nodded. “It is very likely, yes. I’m not sure if the spirits were certain that their origin was the javelins, but the similarities are uncanny. There must’ve been some suspicion back in the day.”
The origin of life of a new race, one that had to fight for their freedom after humans took over before they could even learn how to communicate, the great Elites who shared their blood and weapons with the spirits, the machinations of Nemesis and the Agarthans who turned them against the Nabateans…. Rhea, who was also Saint Seiros herself, laid out the true history of Fodlan.
As if a burden lifted off of his shoulders, Claude relaxed, but Dimitri was unsure what to think of it. Byleth is dissociating.
And then, Nemesis’s army came rushing in.
The alliance between the kingdom and, well, the alliance, stood steadfast against the undead army. Humans and vegetables alike stood against the undead Elites, and as Claude and the Professor wombo combo’ed the old man to die twice over like he deserves, the final blow was delivered when Claude shot a non-sentient packet of peanuts into Nemesis’s mouth with Failnaught. It was his secret weapon since apparently, Nemmy here is allergic. Dimitri said that he kissed him for his charming creativity so he might as well score a second one after this hell of a war.
The King of Liberation fell, and the crowd goes fucking wild. Dimitri didn’t just give him one kiss, but three. One for surviving, one for his plan, and the last one because he felt like it.
The celebration went on for days and although things needed to be done soon, the couple took this opportunity to relax. Then, Claude summoned his Turnipness to the Goddess Tower and proposed.
Dimitri cried his turnip-flavored tears as Claude presented a single emerald ring before him.
“Yes, of course! I accept, beloved!”
The ring fits perfectly over Dimitri’s stem, and when Claude returned from Almyra, he promised to have a ring for him ready.
Years later, the two kings of United Fodlan and Almyra reunited at Fodlan’s Locket. A lovely moonstone ring adorned the Almyran king’s left ring finger. Fodlani and Almyran, human and spirits-- all of them joined together to celebrate the two king’s wedding, a new dawn for all.
There is much to do for the young couple as the fires of war start to die out. Reconstructing Fodlan, building bridges over millennia-old canyons, and setting the path to their own personal futures… Dimitri couldn’t get rid of all of his fears, but with Claude by his side, he knows that the effort will all be worth it.
The Elites made a grave mistake of taking King Nemesis’s side in the far past, but their legacy had a kernel of light that they could bring out into the present-- the idea that man and spirit can be united as one.
“You know, I wonder how they managed to do it. Uh, have children, I mean,” Claude said out loud without thinking. That got a laugh out of the turnip.
“I think it’s a rather simple matter, love-- one that I’m more than willing to explore if you so choose.”
“Really?”
Dimitri smiles and shyly says, “If it’s you, beloved, I wouldn’t mind being your breedable turnip lover. Perhaps, even submissive.”
Claude laughed right before he kissed his lovely turnip husband, sealing the legendary unity between man and veggie.