Chapter Text
The first time Dimitri sees Love Sickness, it is at Glenn’s funeral.
Ingrid’s shoulders shake with the wrath of the coughing. Crimson leaks from between the pale fingers clenched over her mouth. Roses, and blood. Her father tries to pull her aside, but she curls to her knees, stubborn as an anchor. She will not be dragged away from the casket.
In all the stories, it was nothing like this. Soft petals falling from dainty lips; beautiful, melancholy, almost noble. Especially roses. The most romantic of the flowers, only appearing where love is most passionate and true. The reality is much different. Thorns tear at Ingrid’s throat, cutting the insides of her mouth where she’s too small to hold them. The flowers are crushed and wet, like wads of flesh, as if she’s choking on pieces of her own beating heart.
Eventually, the lack of air causes her to collapse. She’s rushed away. Dimitri stands frozen, compelled by his duty to see the ceremony through to the end. They lower his best friend beneath the earth, while another friend clings to the edges of life. And he’s not able even to cry.
The ceremony concludes. Dimitri hovers close to Rodrigue’s side. Felix won’t look at him. Lady Fraldarius tries to comfort him; that’s far worse. Because Glenn stands beside her. Because his eyes are accusing and his voice is a rasp from the slash severing his throat as his own mother tries to dole out forgiveness on his behalf. Dimitri excuses himself. Glenn is the only one to follow.
Dimitri makes his way to his rooms. He’s taken up residence here every time he’s visited Castle Fraldarius; it’s a second home. A family. That he tore apart.
The door closes behind him. He stands, enclosed, with Glenn, his parents, and the boy from Duscur. Dedue. He stands, greeting Dimitri with a small nod. He wasn’t allowed to attend the ceremony. Is too rightfully frightened to leave these four walls without Dimitri close at his side. His mannerisms are small and timid, but still, with one tiny step forward, one lightly accented pronunciation of Dimitri’s name, the phantoms turn and disappear. Even their whispers, always scratching at the end of his perception, fade. Dimitri lets out a breath that should be a sob, relieved and even more guilty for that relief. Dedue tentatively rests a hand on his shoulder.
“Burying him didn’t help,” Dimitri says, knowing Dedue can’t understand the words. “I don’t know what to do.”
His family returns when Dedue sleeps, and Dimitri wonders how he can find rest through all the screams.
Ingrid’s sickness worsens. She’s too ill for the journey home, so she’s sequestered in a warm room in Castle Fraldarius. Her father and brothers don’t often let anyone in to see her. Love Sickness is not contagious, Sylvain argues. Her friends should be there to support her. But the adults just say she’s better off resting alone.
Its only during one of the nights he can’t sleep that Dimitri discovers just how close she is to dying. He only wants a walk to clear his mind - he doesn’t mean to overhear, but Count Galatea’s voice floods from under the door.
“Is there really nothing you can do?”
“The treatment will not work on an unwilling patient,” the physician explains, tired in a way that tells Dimitri it’s far from the first time.
“Please. There must be a way. She’s only a child. She doesn’t understand,” Count Galatea begs.
Dimitri’s back presses to the wall. She doesn’t understand. Understand what? That she’ll never see Glenn again? That he’ll never again tussle her hair, correct her fighting stance, cheer her on when she beats them all in horse racing? That their promised wedding will never come? Not only that - so many promises, promises that never had the chance to be made, nor fulfilled; days they would never spend together, letters they would never exchange, words of love that would never be spoken. Ingrid understands perfectly well.
The physician says, “Yes, she is young. Even so, acute cases brought on by bereavement are challenging precisely because patients often refuse treatment.”
“If there’s a method that would leave her memories intact-”
“There isn’t,” the physician cuts Count Galatea off. She sighs. “People can cling to the dead much more than they do to the living. Children especially.”
Dimitri’s fingers curl against cold stone. The way the physician is speaking makes Ingrid sound - silly. Stupid. He wants to throw the door open and explain that Glenn doesn’t want to be forgotten. But then, the physician continues, “Trying to convince her to forget him is likely impossible. At this stage, I believe it’s best not to focus on that, but on making her see that her life is still worth living. If she fights, she will survive.”
A bitter heaviness mires in Dimitri’s stomach. How is it any different? Trying to convince her to forsake Glenn’s memory, or to live on without him? It’s the same.
Dimitri stumbles away from the door, through the dark hallways, dizzy and sick and airless and angry. He knows Castle Fraldarius, but every turn feels like a betrayal, a lie, everything unfamiliar and sinister in the clouded night. In a hall haunted by a row of empty armor, Dimitri crouches against the wall, clutched his head in his hands, and tries to appease the dead.
“I will not forsake you,” he whispers. “I will not- Please, I promise- Please do not look at me like that. No matter what, I will endure. I will remember you, always. I-“
“Dimitri?”
It is a voice of the living. Dimitri knows, because it sounds uncertain, and gentle.
He forces his fingers to unfurl, and looks into the darkness ahead. A shadow hesitates behind a suit of armor.
“Dedue,” Dimitri mutters, and the shadow approaches. Dedue crouches in front of him. He must have followed from their room. Dimitri likely worried him, sneaking out in the dead of night.
He doesn’t say anything more - likely doesn’t know how to, in a tongue Dimitri would understand. Yet still, he tries.
“Dimitri, you… hurt. Say… why.”
Dimitri’s hands curls. They dig into his arms, and the pain - it grounds him. It’s a reprieve.
“What makes her feelings more special than mine?” He presses a palm to his chest, and it burns, burns. “I love him, too. And my father, my step-mother - And yet, I have nothing. No flowers to show for it.”
Dedue blinks, barely perceptible in the dark. Dimitri knows he’s being unfair. He should speak slowly, clearly, so Dedue might understand - but it’s precisely because Dedue can’t understand that Dimitri is able to speak at all. Because the words are unacceptable.
But Dedue, not knowing what a selfish, envious monster Dimitri is, reaches out to him. He lays his gentle hands overtop Dimitri’s. Reluctantly, Dimitri uncurls his fingers. He is loathe to let go of the pain.
“I wish…” he says, pressing his palm harder against his sternum, hard enough that the breath is crushed within. “I just wish it hurt in a way others might understand.”
Ingrid’s grief is laid out for everyone to see, to sympathize with. A way that might be cured.
Dimitri’s phantoms are his alone. He was the one who failed them, and he is the only one who can save them.
Dedue mirrors Dimitri, pressing a palm to his own chest. His fingers curl. As if wishing to rip out his own heart.
And Dimitri can breathe briefly, because he knows he’s understood. Not fully, but enough. Dedue can see all the ways love can make someone ugly, too.
-
Gold-edged winter daphne is an evergreen shrub with rose-soft blooms soaked in the scent of nutmeg and honey; hardy, enduring, beautiful. And highly toxic. Every part of it, from root to stem, bark to leaf to berry, will have a man crippled. Dedue remembers the frantic slap of his mother’s hand, knocking the red berries to the snow. He had been young, then, and innocent; he thought that because the flowers smelled so sweet, the fruit must be the same.
The taste of winter daphne is damningly bitter. Dedue knows this, now, 15 years old and violently bereaved of that innocence. The sting of the single petal in his palm still cuts at his tongue. He’d coughed it up quietly, so as to not interrupt Dimitri’s sleep. In the moonlight, it could be mistaken for a different flower, something equally pale and lovely and not so insidious. But the scent does not lie.
Dimitri shifts in his sleep. The daphne petal is the same soft pink as the curve of his cheek. It’s rare, even in sleep, for him to look so peaceful. The wounds on his back still pain him. Worse are the night terrors that have his eyes rolling beneath their lids, choking out pleas in incomprehensible words whose meaning is cuttingly clear. But, for now, he is at rest. Not a Prince with a savage kingdom on his shoulders, not the sole survivor of his family’s massacre, just a boy. A boy with scars, and long lower lashes, and petal-pale cheeks.
Dedue wonders, distantly, if he should hate himself for this. His first bout of Love Sickness, only a few months after his home burned to ashes. After every person that should be here to celebrate and tease him was murdered.
He remembers how his aunt clicked her tongue when his oldest cousin admitted the daffodils she’d coughed up were for the baker’s son down the street. Such pretty flowers are wasted on a scrawny boy like that, she’d said, but never without a knowing smile. Until one day, when the coughing abruptly stopped. That’s when the real teasing began: When should we expect him for dinner? What’s his favorite dish? Guess you’ll finally have to learn to cook, ha! Here, I’m sure Dedue can help-
He remembers his widowed neighbor, coughing up lilacs every year at the end of the Garland Moon. The anniversary of his wife’s passing. Love and grief are a cranky old couple, his grandmother used to say. From the outside they always seem at odds, but really, they’re so entwined that one can’t live without the other. When Dedue asked why she didn’t still get sick during the time of year when his grandfather died, her knitting needles paused. Her smile was wry. Your grandpa and I had many, many years together. Before he passed, I’d said everything I’d needed to, and so had he. Our love had no room for uncertainly. Perhaps we’d do better to call it “regret sickness,” rather than love...
He remembers the particular laugh his grandmother saved for retelling the story of how Dedue’s mother and father got together. They were both hocking up whole flowers before they finally admitted how they felt. You really thought just making her more and more gardening tools would do the trick, she teased, patting his father on the shoulder. Then, she’d turn to his mother. And you weren’t much better! Food is love, yes, but you nearly died instead of just using words instead! Dedue’s mother would sigh about how she wasn’t that close to dying. The private smile exchanged between his parents said more than words ever could.
He remembers. He remembers. It’s all be can do for them, now.
Not only did he survive, not only is he living among their killers; he’s coughing up petals for their Prince. Perhaps that’s why his feelings are taking the shape of daphne. Poisonous.
Dedue looks at it, that one tiny, inconspicuous little blossom, and finds that… no matter how bitter the taste, it is still beautiful. He tucks it into his hand. A small secret, something to call his own in this foreign castle with its hostile people. He will have to sneak back out before dawn, but for now, he can close his eyes with the reassurance that he will not be alone when he wakes.
He holds the petal close to heart. Perhaps Dimitri would think it beautiful, too.