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There is a particularly nasty splinter of grief that has worked its way down deep and festered into a hot, poisonous fantasy that Felix sometimes indulges in his worst moments.
He is not proud of this. In fact, each time that he feels this cruel little infection throbbing, he knows that he ought to be ashamed for poking at it again. Don’t look back, he tells himself, focus on growing stronger. Still, sometimes he falters. The fantasy must be played out to relieve the pressure.
It goes like this: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, the Prince of Faerghus, will be infinitely miserable. Felix’s imagination spins various scenarios that might bring such a thing about, but the ending is always the same.
Let him suffer. Let him sink into the worst depths of his bestial nature, and let the whole world see . Let all of the people who might defend him learn what Felix already knows, and let it curdle their stomachs. Let him be reduced to a wild boar, so that no one else ever falls for his chivalrous facade and lets him break their heart.
Every night at the Officers Academy, Felix dreams of the moment when Dimitri finally gets what he deserves and everyone else is forced to acknowledge that Felix was right.
There is something that Felix had said a long time ago, raw and young and vulnerable, a few days after they had come limping back from putting down a rebellion in the west: “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
And Dimitri had looked at him, eyes dull and empty while Felix’s cheeks were stained with tears, and he had said, “maybe it is for the best then, that you keep your distance.”
So the splinter had first entered him, leeching malignancy for years like a poisoned arrowhead left in a wound. It turned all the prayers in his mouth to charcoal, save for the wish to see the boar ruined .
Well, Felix harbors little faith in the goddess anymore. But in the end, he had gotten what he wanted. The creature who haunted the cathedral that frozen morning in 1185 suffered all of the pain he had imagined and more, and there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind what a vicious, twisted thing Dimitri had become.
But the splinter of grief inside of Felix had burned and ached—not soothed at all, not in any way satisfied.
—
Ashe buys the inn in Fhirdiad four years after the war.
The era of reconstruction is finally ending, and all of them are finding the space to breathe for the first time since the Emperor declared war. For some, that means making homes, not just temporary encampments, boarding houses, endless travel. For others, that means formalizing the unions that had been patiently set aside until the continent was whole and functional again. Sylvain and Ingrid quietly marry early that spring. Annette finally accepts a position at the school of sorcery. Mercedes and the professor return to Garreg Mach. Dedue takes a few months to tour Duscur and brings back an exquisitely forged pin that he hesitantly affixes to Ashe’s cloak, and from there the inn takes its name: the Silver Arrow.
Early in Ethereal Moon, Felix is in Fhirdiad on business, and he comes to the inn for dinner. Ashe knows his tastes well, and the common room smells of roasting lamb and spice. He arrives with Annette at his side and takes a table in the corner with her, expecting to spend a few hours mulling over a source of great irritation.
“So, who is it this time?” Annette asks as she sees Felix taking out his pen and ink while the roast finishes.
“Aurelia von Hymir,” Felix growls out. “A terrible match. Why her family even bothered with an offer is baffling.”
“I’ve heard she’s pretty and plays the harp,” Annette shrugs.
“She’s a spoiled rich heiress with a string of jilted lovers she trades away whenever she catches the scent of a Crest,” Felix counters harshly. “Doubtless she has gambled most of her wealth away bribing that greedy bastard Duvall to recommend her in the first place.”
“I’ve heard that His Majesty sent her a string of pearls,” Annette observes mildly.
Felix blots his page and curses.
“You can’t keep threatening the problem away, Felix,” Annette warns him as he removes a fresh page. “If Dimitri wants to marry someone, it is none of your business. He has his own reasons for it, and if you decide not to ever ask him about them, then you’ll just have to accept the outcome.”
“The boar can do as he pleases. It hardly matters to me. My concern is entirely for the sake of Faerghus.”
“Clearly,” Annette says, although Felix catches her rolling her eyes when he lowers his head back to the letter. “I thought you and Dimitri were patching things up finally. Didn’t you spend all summer with him at Garreg Mach?”
Felix had indeed spent the summer at Garreg Mach, hammering out a new treaty with Almyra’s recently crowned and unexpectedly familiar King Khalid. That is probably where Aurelia von Hrym had caught the scent of her latest quarry and judged her chances favorable. She is a vulture, and Dimitri is being uncharacteristically spineless about it. They will probably make one another absolutely miserable.
The thought of that, which might have once been so sickly pleasurable, now drives Felix to distraction.
At twenty-seven, the collective insistence that Dimitri marry is transitioning from urgent to scandalous. A king without issue and without alliance threatens the fragile peace, people say. The goodwill that Dimitri had earned in Faerghus does not carry much sway in Leicester or Adrestia, but even the courtiers in Fhirdiad are beginning to whisper about him.
Frustratingly, Felix is not able to relish the rumors as he had imagined he would. He listens as the insinuations become harsher and harsher: does the king not marry because he is too proud? Is it some sign of his madness? Does he fear that any children he sires will be lunatics, as he is sometimes reputed to still be? Are his inclinations and tastes so foul and unspeakable that no man or woman could tolerate them? One can see that his eye is missing, perhaps there is more. What else might he lack which would preclude a sensible match?
At fifteen, Felix had craved such vengeance. But he has no stomach for it anymore. Holy Goddess above, isn’t the punishment supposed to end eventually? Dimitri has endured pain a thousand times greater than he ever inflicted upon Felix, and yet it has not stopped.
Felix thought that after Gronder, after the war, surely then he would… he could at least remember how to laugh again. At twenty-seven, it is a slow torture to watch Dimitri work alone every night until his candle is a puddle of wax, to pick at his food, to quietly bow and defer to those insidious courtiers who slander him the moment that his back is turned.
At that moment, the door to the Silver Arrow opens, bringing a flurry of snow over the threshold. Felix glances up as the draft cuts through his surcoat and sees Sylvain and Ingrid hurrying in out of the cold, and trailing behind them…
Outside of the palace, Dimitri dresses like he is trying to vanish. He wears plain black, a hood over his golden hair, which is now long enough to brush his shoulders. His enormous frame shrinks into the corners of rooms, all of the strength and grace turning to awkwardness when there is no weapon in his hand. In any conversation that does not involve charters and taxes, he contributes in nods and monosyllables. Even amongst old friends, even with Sylvain and Ingrid, there is careful distance. No one wants to acknowledge that even Dimitri’s closest friendships bear scars from his years of darkness.
“Well, well,” Sylvain exclaims in delight as he notices Annette and Felix. “I guess our party just grew a little larger. Ashe, Dedue, are you making enough for three more? Whatever it is smells good enough that Ingrid is drooling!”
“I am not drooling!” Ingrid snaps. “But, um, it does smell really good in here!”
Dedue emerges from the kitchen in a cloud of savory steam. His apron is somewhat askew and a few strands of hair have come down from its binding. Felix worries for a moment that something is wrong until he notices the slight redness on Dedue’s neck that is not quite perfectly concealed by his scarf.
“The meat needs to rest before we cut it,” he announces solemnly. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. There will be plenty for everyone.”
“Felix, move your ink,” Sylvain says, pulling a second table close to the one where he and Annette have been sequestered.
“I’m finishing a letter,” Felix snarls, moving his arm to cover the page as Sylvain immediately cranes his neck to look.
“Annette, will we be bothering you if we join?” Ingrid asks, to which Annette traitorously shakes her head.
“Of course not!” she beams, getting up to help Sylvain dragging over the chairs. “Your Majesty, it’s so nice to see you here. You hardly ever get the chance to come to the inn.”
“Ah, yes,” Dimitri concedes, ducking his head. “Duties at the palace often leave me working late, but… Dedue did mention that I might…”
“We dragged him away from his desk,” Ingrid interjects. “Almost literally.”
Dimitri smiles painfully. Felix tries not to fixate on how dark the rings beneath his eye sockets have gotten.
“So,” Sylvain leans forward, a conspiratorial edge in his voice. “Am I losing my mind, or does it sound like Dedue and Ashe might be busy with something other than a leg of lamb back there? Resting the meat, huh? More like—”
“Sylvain, I’m having a premonition about this disgusting joke and no one wants to hear it,” Ingrid cuts him off, although without any genuine anger. “I’m happy for them. It’s been a long time coming.”
Felix resists the urge to storm off to somewhere quieter and lowers his head further down towards the letter.
“Who do you think finally confessed?” Annette speculates cheerfully.
“I would put fifteen gold on Ashe,” Sylvain laughs. “Dedue has his romantic qualities, sure, but he’s certainly, um, taciturn.”
“I’m not sure,” Ingrid muses. “Everyone assumes that you swept me off of my feet, when I was the one who had to propose to you. You all wouldn’t believe the knots he was tying his tongue into…”
“Ingrid!”
“It was terribly embarrassing to watch,” Ingrid concludes, before giving Sylvain a little peck on the cheek.
“What do you think, Dimitri?” Annette asks, peering down the table to where Dimitri has been quietly absorbing the discussion. “Why do people who love each other spend so long waiting to say it?”
“I…” Dimitri clears his throat. “I can only speak for myself, of course. Dedue and Ashe are both far braver and far wiser than I have ever been. But I believe that, even when one is very much in love, it can be… hard to accept. Even if one finds their love returned, there are always reasons, pressures, burdens that might interfere. How can you ask that of another person, to take on all of that adversity? What can you possibly offer in return for their love but your own misery?”
Felix abruptly looks up from his letter, accidentally catching Dimitri’s eye lingering on him as he speaks.
“Some may find distractions to turn their thoughts away from love,” Dimitri continues more softly. “After all, there are always troubles. Always new plights, or old wrongs to worry over. But in the quiet moments, the love is still there. It is not lesser for going unvoiced. There is simply no more hope in speaking it. The chance has passed, but the love will not fade away.”
When he finishes speaking, there is quiet at the table for a moment. Felix finds that he has been forgetting to move his pen.
The moment is resolved by the emergence of Dedue and Ashe from the kitchens, bearing a glorious leg of lamb, a bounty of root vegetables, and a veritable mountain of hot buttered bread. In the short distraction, Felix completes and signs his letter, waves his hand over the page until the ink is dry, and then folds it.
Dinner passes in a blur of cheerful camaraderie. Felix keeps his mouth as perpetually full as he can, eating to avoid Annette’s increasingly probing glances in his direction. Luckily Ashe is full of stories about his siblings, the recipes, the origins of the produce. If they had returned to the previous topic, Felix fears that he might have choked to death on a beet. Dimitri, when Felix dares to glance at him, has retreated back into himself, although at least Dedue is gently assuring that he finishes a decent portion.
Once the plates are clean, Felix shoves his way out from the corner.
“Are you going already, Felix?” Ashe exclaims. “We haven’t brought out the pie yet!”
“Don’t care for pie. Busy. Farewell,” Felix grits out, swatting away Sylvain’s hand, which is attempting to tug him back by the hem of his cloak.
He makes it to the door, then stops. For a second, he hesitates. Then, he quickly turns around, strides forward, and presses the letter into one of Dimitri’s hands. There is no time for him to say anything, or to be anything other than startled.
“Goodnight,” Felix declares once more, slightly breathless, and then he hurries out into the cold.
He walks aimlessly down the street, shoulders hunched against the wind. Snow is still filtering down from the cloudy sky, shimmering slightly in the torchlight. His breath fogs around his face as he hurries away.
That splinter of grief is aching again, although this time not with hatred and not with resentment. Now, the pain is somehow even more agonizing. Dimitri’s words echo in his ears—a fragile declaration that he feels something other than loathing and despair. It is, Felix realizes, what the splinter has actually been begging for these past twelve years: don’t give up on everything. Don’t give me up. And Dimitri hasn’t.
Although his eyes are fixed on the snowy dirt of the road, he can only see Dimitri. Dimitri in the aftermath of his ruin, Dimitri in the quiet desperation of his gilded prison, Dimitri who is still trying so hard to be kind. That is the trouble. It is impossible to hate him when he accepts his fate with such overflowing compassion, blaming no one, caring for everyone, feeling so deeply in ways nobody notices…
Felix feels his eyes burning and roughly swipes a glove over them. This is torture, or medicine—he is not sure which.
“Felix!”
A familiar voice shouts his name from down the street. The door of the Silver Arrow swings open and Dimitri is there, running and sliding in the muddy snow, the unfolded letter in one hand. Couldn’t the fool have waited a few hours and read the thing privately?
“What do you want?” Felix calls back. “Oi, stop running, you’ll slip!”
Dimitri does indeed skid over a few icy puddles. But he does not stop.
“My apologies for detaining you,” Dimitri pants when he reaches Felix. The cold has put a little more color into his pallid face. “I just— I need to understand your meaning.”
“Did I not make it clear in the letter?” Felix asks, brittle, barely able to maintain his composure.
Dimitri wordlessly presses the page into his hand, as though he might confront his own words and realize that they were written by mistake.
Felix snatches the paper up and, in a sudden fit of brashness, reads it aloud, enunciating clearly so that Dimitri will perhaps get the idea through his boarish skull.
“Dimitri, I will not wait any longer. Watching your attempts at courtship this summer has made it very apparent that I cannot suffer the thought of you taking any other until I have made certain you are aware that my love for you has never waned in the years since you rejected it. You pierce my soul. I do not know if there is any hope, and yet you must understand that I still love you. I know I have been a rotten bastard about it, spiteful and abrasive at every chance, but trust that the feeling has never wavered, never changed, never lessened. If I had gotten any notion that you felt the same, I would have been swifter, but you make it so difficult to discern. You are too kind and too good and too worthy, which means that I must be honest: the heart you once broke remains wholly yours, to do with as you please.”
Felix reads the words, finding his voice waning with every line, becoming nothing but a strangled plea by the end. Dimitri looks at him with an expression of awful, shocking pain, as thought Felix had unexpectedly driven a blade between his shoulders.
“Do I need to rephrase it?” Felix finally asks, his nerve threatening to give out. “What about it remains uncertain?”
“Only how it could be true,” Dimitri replies, his voice almost a whisper. “After all the torment I have brought upon you, how could you still love me?”
“Because you’re you,” Felix tells him firmly. “I cannot explain it any better than that.”
“Felix—”
“Don’t let the chains of the dead persuade you out of it this time,” Felix bursts out. “There is no misery, no burden that you will lay upon me that is heavier than loving you from afar like this. If I have misunderstood, then you can simply tell me to go, and I will not bother you with it again, but… but don’t tell me no because you think it will hurt less. It won’t, Dimitri. It won’t.”
The last word breaks in his throat. Dimitri steps closer instinctively. His hood has fallen back, and the gold of his long hair is mingled with melting snow.
“Then I can only tell you the truth,” Dimitri admits roughly, smiling with tears slipping down one cheek. “I never stopped loving you, Felix. I only ever wished to spare you the pain of being shackled to my fate. Back then, I could not even imagine living past twenty, let alone to twenty-seven. I thought it better if you were free of me, but I can see that I failed in that, as well, and only prolonged your agony.”
“Don’t take all of the blame, boar,” Felix huffs out a choking laugh, so relieved that he can barely breath. “I could have mentioned this to you four years ago. Or even before, if you would have accepted it.”
“Perhaps I could have,” Dimitri swallows hard. “But I might have found another excuse. It is hard for me, you know, to receive the happiness I cannot imagine that I deserve.”
Felix opens his mouth, a frustrated condemnation on his lips.
“But, forgive me,” Dimitri adds with a shaky smile, “I want you too much to decline.”
Felix falters, and then, to hide the flush overtaking his face, cranes his head up to kiss him. The kiss feels nothing like the ones they shared over a decade ago, confused adolescents clinging to one another for comfort in a world of broken promises.
This is a tentative kiss, warm and soft and slow. Felix takes his time winding his fingers in Dimitri’s wonderful hair, coaxing his mouth open, vanishing into the sensation of lips and fingers and heat on a cold night. His pulse rises slowly. Dimitri breaks the kiss for a second to breathe, and then nuzzles back in, as though he cannot resist. Felix stands up to his full height and kisses Dimitri hard enough that he will understand.
When he pulls away, the splinter is gone. Just like that, Dimitri has worked it free, and the painful hole it left behind is healing clean at last.
“Will you come back to the inn?” Dimitri whispers against his cheek. “I promise, I won’t make you try the pie.”
“I could be convinced,” Felix admits.