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Ashe knew he couldn’t avoid the greenhouse forever. Truthfully, he couldn’t avoid it for even a moment. Ever since he’d arrived on the Garreg Mach grounds, the glass-walled building consumed his every waking thought and his every dream. Well, not the building, but the man he’d spent so many hours in there with. Its gravitational pull increased with each moment he spent he spent in the monastery until it became a black hole pulling him inextricably towards the heartbreak within.
Dedue was dead, had been for almost five years. Deep down, Ashe had always known he’d fall protecting Dimitri. He’d just thought they’d have more time. Even as the Imperial army bore down on Garreg Mach, even as the Blue Lions fled back to Fhirdiad in defeat, he thought they’d have more time. Dedue was so strong, so much stronger than he was in every way, and it had never crossed his mind that there was a world where Dedue would fall and he would live.
As soon as he’d heard that Dimitri had been sentenced to death for the murder of his uncle, Ashe knew that Dedue’s death warrant had been signed as well. The man would never allow himself to draw breath while Dimitri was harmed, one way or another. As soon as he heard, he stole the fastest horse he could find, leaving a generous pile of gold and a hastily scrawled apology in its place, and raced towards the capital, but it was too late. When he arrived, the city was silent in mourning and fear, and quiet whispers told him everything he needed to know. Dimitri was dead; Dedue was too. There had never been any other option. Except Dimitri lived, and Dedue was still gone.
There had been one terrible moment where he’d seen Dimitri and a seed of hope had sprouted within him. One man had risen from the dead—why not two? When Dimitri confirmed after the battle that Dedue was dead and the hope was torn from his chest by the roots, it felt like it took a part of him with it.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, Ashe thought, if he’d known. Dedue expected hate from everyone he met, accepted it without complaint, was so selfless that he rejected friendship so the people he cared about wouldn’t be tainted by association with him. Maybe this loss would be more bearable, if he’d only known he was loved before his death.
Maybe he would have valued his life more, Ashe thought on the darkest days. Maybe I could have saved him. Even as these thoughts spooled, unwanted, through his mind, he knew they were false. There was no world in which Dedue wouldn’t sacrifice his own life for Dimitri, no matter how much he was loved. And that hurt just as much, in a different way, knowing that he wasn’t enough to have saved him.
Regardless of whether or not Dedue knew he was loved, regardless of whether or not that would have mattered, he was gone. The only remnant of the countless hours they’d spent together was the greenhouse that somehow seemed to take up half of the monastery, impossible to avoid for even a moment.
Ashe had imagined how he’d confront the greenhouse again. He considered bringing flowers or lighting a candle as a memorial. He debated asking Annette to sing one of the traditional songs of Duscur that Dedue had taught him while they’d tended the plants together. He contemplated making one of the closely-guarded family recipes that Dedue had shared with him, now that there was no family left, and having a silent meal with his memories.
In the end, it wasn’t anything so romantic. There was a war on, and there was an army to feed, and Ashe was the only person at the monastery who knew the first thing about growing vegetables. That was how he found himself standing outside the glass doors, taking deep, grounding breaths as he worked up the courage to open the door.
After losing Dedue—and Dimitri, and Lonato, and the thousands of resistance fighters who had died trying to stave off the Imperial invasion—plants were nothing. At least, that’s what he told himself. It would even be true, if they weren’t the plants that he and Dedue had tended together, that had blossomed alongside their love (or at least, his love—he hoped it had for Dedue as well). The plants that they’d raised together, first in companionable silence, then to the sounds of their conversations as they got to know one another, and finally to the bittersweet melodies of the songs of Duscur that had disappeared from the world four years beforehand, as they sang together when nobody else could hear. Seeing the flowers they’d planted reduced to a graveyard, a visual reminder that Dedue and the life they could have had was gone, was more than he could bear.
The plants were dead, he knew. Nobody had tended them in years. The greenhouse had remained remarkably unscathed through the war and the years of neglect, with only tiny trickles of water filtering through the cracks in the glass to sustain the life inside. Nothing could have survived.
It would be better to just get it over with, Ashe decided as he flung the door open and stepped inside before he lost his nerve. He knelt down in front of the nearest garden bed and began pulling up the dead plants to make space for the new plot of vegetables. He tried to empty his mind and pretend he was somewhere else, doing something else, as he avoided looking at what remained of his dearest friendship, the friendship he thought they’d have time to grow into something more.
He started to move to the next flowerbed when a flash of red in the corner of his eye froze him in his tracks. For the first time, he allowed himself to actually look around the greenhouse and take in the scene. As he’d expected, most of the plants had withered and died over the last years. What he hadn’t expected was the patch of brilliant blooms in the back right corner. As he crossed the room in a daze to kneel in front of the display, Ashe could almost hear Dedue’s voice as he taught him about the flowers of his homeland, about how they needed a dry environment to survive. They had adapted to survive in even the harshest conditions, Dedue had told him once. Much like Dedue himself, Ashe had always thought but never had the chance to say.
Ashe realized he was both laughing and crying as he sat there, staring in awe at the beautiful garden that had survived—thrived, even—despite everything. The laughter died on his lips as he realized that he was looking at all that remained of Duscur. All that remained of Dedue. He couldn’t let them die.
With a new energy, Ashe started tending to the flowers. He cleared away the old blooms and dead leaves that had accumulated over time and pulled up the dead plants on the edges of the plot to give the garden room to grow. He swept away the debris that littered the path through the greenhouse. Finally, he stepped back to admire his work. The blooms of Duscur had been growing wildly despite the harsh conditions, but now they looked loved and cared-for as well. He realized that he’d fallen back into singing the folk songs Dedue had taught him, the ones they would always sing when they worked in the greenhouse together. Ashe smiled, knowing that the flowers weren’t all that remained of Duscur after all.