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Dedue was…distracting him.
Dimitri could say that about very little these days. Only the slow encroach of war pulled him from his grim contemplation of the damage to the cathedral. (He couldn’t say what drew him to it so reliably; was it the sunlight that poured in from above? The stars? The way the rain made the polished marble floors--stained here and there with blood that would never fade--run with mud, no longer so protected from the elements but ruined by them, hurled from the height of honor and grace back into the inescapable march of a constantly changing world…) Occasionally, Gustave or Byleth or Rodrigue would try to tempt him away from his vigil with food or rest or even training, and Dimitri sent them away every time.
Dedue did not do this. He only stood at Dimitri’s side, as prepared and attentive as if they would momentarily depart to attend to the duties of a crown prince, and seemed to regard the rubble and the ghosts he could not see with the same grim acceptance as if Dimitri were embroiled in some ugly but necessary task.
It was unendurable.
More than once, Dimitri had felt the poisonous words piling up behind his lips. Dedue had heard him snap at everyone who’d approached and must know it was only a matter of time before Dimitri’s ire turned on him. But every time Dimitri turned to regard Dedue, his eye would widen into an unblinking stare until he reminded himself, yet again, that Dedue would not disappear when he looked away.
As the sun set, Dimitri said nothing, listening to the murmurs and sobs and hisses of the dead and occupying his mind with the next steps on their way to Enbarr. (He did not think of the end result--of even more foolish dead, like those at Myrddin, or the countless civilians who would be caught in the crossfire, or the reality of it when Edelgard’s headless corpse hit the steps of her palace--)
As the stars came out, Dimitri began to shift his weight restlessly.
Finally, toward midnight, Dimitri turned and regarded Dedue with an eye turned pale by the moonlight. “None will disturb me at this hour. You need not stand watch.”
Dimitri had changed.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he had backslid. It was painful to see him like this, like he had been in the early days after the Tragedy. This 'Dimitri' had always been there, but like a wound eventually scarred, Dimitri had eventually recovered some level of outward peace, even if much of it was a facade. He had at least eventually more or less agreed to care for himself, bathe and eat regularly, and had always slept in a bed without any question.
But now...the effects of their years apart hung on him like the weight of that massive cloak. For five years, Dedue had wondered what had become of him. He'd imagined half a dozen options, even though he'd known that the more optimistic ones were unlikely.
Now he knew. Or...at least had an idea. Dimitri conducted himself like a wild man, rough and sharp and growling. He reminded Dedue a bit of a starving dog, one that feared a kick to its hollowed ribs at any moment.
It hurt him to see. But it hurt Dedue far less than it must hurt Dimitri. Dedue could bear it. It was far less painful than the absence had been, anyway.
Dimitri didn't seem to speak much anymore. Gone were the long hours of endless babbling, an unbroken stream of Dimitri's thoughts washing pleasantly over Dedue's ears. In its place was a silence broken only by quiet muttering to himself, and the occasional glance Dedue's way (and the look in his eye when he looked back was as if he was seeing a ghost). He clearly hadn't forgotten that Dedue was there, but neither had he chased him off, as he had the Professor and the others.
The night wore on. Dedue did not ask for him to go to bed, nor to take a moment to eat or drink. The others had already failed at that. Dedue only stood, a silent reminder.
Until Dimitri finally spoke to him directly.
"Until you are ready to retire, I will remain. It is better to be safe than sorry."
That statement instantly inspired a childish flare of spiteful obstinacy in Dimitri. He vented it in a scoff, rolling his shoulders and shifting his weight to a slightly broader stance, as if he were preparing to resist a physical bid to cart him off somewhere to rest. “What good is that? You should be familiar enough with my habits. Tiring yourself out to no purpose will only catch up to you on the battlefield.” And I believe I was clear about you not throwing your life away, he was tempted to add.
But he, too, was familiar with this dance. The more signals he gave Dedue that he was concerned for Dedue’s wellbeing, the more Dedue would push back against Dimitri’s right to consider it.
"But it will not catch up with you?" Dedue said a little archly, though he restrained himself from raising an eyebrow out of his neutral expression. "You have sent all other attendants away, so if you are not yet prepared to retire, then I am who is left."
That got Dimitri to turn with a snarl, instinctively tensing his shoulders under his cape in a way that made him look larger than he really was. “You are categorically mistaken. The dead attend me at all hours, and I will not have you join them even in life. Go away.”
"I will not."
Dedue did not flinch from that loom - did not alter his facial expression or raise his voice. The statement was as firm and immovable as his shield on the battlefield. "It is not good for a living man to be alone only with phantoms."
Dimitri let out a stricken, uncomprehending noise that could not be called a laugh. The complaints of the dead crowded in his ears, competing with his very thoughts, and he raised his own voice just to be heard above theirs: “If you feel so strongly about that now, then perhaps you shouldn’t have left me!”
Silence. Dimitri wished for noise again, to crowd out the instant regret that shocked through him.
Of course there had been a time when he’d blamed Dedue for dying, just as nonsensically as he’d blamed his father and stepmother and Glenn. It was unavoidable. But to do it to Dedue’s face, as a living person? After all he’d sacrificed to return to Dimitri’s side?
It was insanity. Surely Dedue would see that Dimitri was too far gone to be swayed from his course, and so…that was for the best. Feeling the anguish at the edges of his own expression, Dimitri smoothed it back to one of cool indifference and pretended not to await the sword above his head.
Well. And there it was.
It was a sin Dedue knew he was not innocent of. He had thought of his own culpability many times since that night in Fhirdiad. He had known, even then, that he was condemning Dimitri to a life he did not want, to a solitude and likely a misery beyond description. Dedue had known even then that the kindest thing likely would have been to let Dimitri go, like putting down a lamed horse. It would perhaps have been kinder to let Dimitri's pain end.
But Dedue could not do that.
He could not. Not when Dimitri's survival was the only thing that gave him hope. Perhaps it was a selfish cruelty, and nothing more.
But he would do it again. Gods help him, if it came to it, even seeing the wretch Dimitri had become, Dedue would do it again.
"...You are right," he finally said. "These last five years, you have borne the consequences of my decision, and I will spend the remainder of my life atoning for it. You are right to be angry. I do not even blame you if you hate me." His fingers curled into his palm, so tightly the rivets of his armor creaked under the strain. He meant it; even if Dimitri hated him for the rest of his life, Dedue would bear it.
"But..." He swallowed against the rough, smoky tone that entered his voice, "As long as I live...I will never...never regret saving you. Never."
Dimitri’s lips parted at the first words, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. How could Dedue think--but how couldn’t he think that? Of course. This was still Dedue after all these years, and no matter what else he’d come to learn from living with his people, he would always be so stubbornly cleaving to hope that Dimitri would escape every circumstance Dedue could not. Insisting on approaching their every conflict with patience and thoroughness no matter how quickly Dimitri wanted to rush them to a bitter conclusion.
…Understanding Dimitri’s broken, misshapen feelings more intimately than any other person Dimitri had ever known, living or dead.
Having his eardrums pierced with red hot pokers would have been preferable to hearing the tears in Dedue’s voice, knowing who had put them there, and Dimitri’s emotions spiked again into something approaching panic. His impulse to shake the sense into Dedue inch by inch if he had to had him close the distance, but he only got as far as clutching Dedue’s shoulders before he encountered the armor. It creaked under Dimitri’s grip, but even his monstrous strength was not enough to crush through it to Dedue’s bones, because those Duscur colors meant Dedue was protected by something far more resistant to Dimitri’s temper than simple iron and steel.
Instead, Dimitri’s grip slackened and he dipped his head between his arms with a wretched noise. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It--they--are ceaseless, Dedue, and I…! I cannot resist them any longer. I am not strong enough.”
There was so much else he couldn’t work out from behind the lump in his throat, so much more Dedue deserved to hear than that paltry excuse, but Dimitri only got out: “Please, I could never--I could never hate you, Dedue, think every ill thing of me I deserve but not that.”
That admission seemed to strike Dimitri dumb. The cut expression on his face wrenched at Dedue's heart, but he could not regret this, either. This was what it meant to take responsibility for his words and actions. Once more, Dedue did not flinch, even as Dimitri grabbed him with that haunted look in his eye. Dedue only met it, placid and willing. If Dimitri meant to kill him then Dedue would accept that.
But he didn't believe Dimitri did.
Only a few moments later, Dimitri relented, and that grieving tone in his voice pricked at Dedue's eyes, too. His hands lifted to Dimitri's elbows, supporting him in case his strength entirely left him.
"...You have nothing to apologize to me for." It was Dedue who put Dimitri on the path that led to this place, in this way. Dimitri could hardly be blamed for it.
In spite of everything, just as it had when Dedue first appeared on the bridge, Dimitri’s eye was welling up with tears that dripped to the cracked marble beneath them. And still, the dead pressed in on him with their agonies.
“Why did you kill me?!”
“Why are you still suffered to live…”
“March to Enbarr. End our suffering. Bring me her head. March to Enbarr…”
Dimitri wilted into Dedue’s supportive grip, absently starting to shift his hands over his ears before recalling that would do him no service except to deny him Dedue’s voice as well.
“I owe you…far more than mere apologies,” he rasped. “But none of it will ever come to pass.” I fear dying with lingering regrets, he didn’t say, but a tremble passed through the arms clinging loosely to Dedue. “Revenge is all that remains to either of us, and it will…”
He grit his teeth against the horrible truth he’d been neglecting. The truth he'd been fighting and siding with the ghosts against, because if he gave into the despair implied by these words, he might as well lay down his weapons and permit the very next enemy soldier he encountered to take his head.
“It will not be enough…!”
Oh Dimitri.
To see him express such despair near to broke Dedue's heart. It was not true that there was nothing left. Dedue had seen that first hand these last five years. There was so much more hope in the world than he ever could have guessed; their dream was alive and well, sprouting up in pockets wherever the survivors of Duscur could find a bit of fertile soil. The Faerghus army, too, and all of its might was thrown behind Dimitri as it had never been, five years ago. If Dimitri had had the kind of resources then that he had now, things could have been so different.
But if Dimitri couldn't see that for himself, then there was nothing Dedue could do to make him. The last five years had left deep scars; that much was obvious even so soon after Dedue's return. They would not heal overnight, if ever.
But it would not be the first time Dedue had stayed by Dimitri's bedside while he wept and raged against the injustice of it all.
"...Even if it is not, I will be there with you, until the very end." Dedue squeezed Dimitri's arms, fighting back the way that promise tightened his own throat. Only when he thought he could speak without his words being strangled did he go on. "...I will not leave you again, so long as I live."
Something about Dedue being on the edge of tears as well, and the words, and the fact that he was providing his unquestioning support even as Dimitri withered and wailed in front of him--that he was here at all…it all struck Dimitri in a place that wasn’t prepared to suffer again, like a lash across his back. He let out a noise somewhere between a sob and a mad, cracking laugh, shaky and fragile.
On some level, he knew it still wasn’t safe for him to be this close, and not only because of his madness or strength. Perhaps it was crossing a boundary Dedue hadn’t meant him to cross when he wound his arms about Dedue’s torso and shoulders and pulled tight, draping Dedue’s shoulder in a sheaf of unwashed blond. But the voices calling for revenge had worn down Dimitri’s ability to resist so many things.
“I missed you,” he squeezed out, too faint to be heard over the dead, but perhaps that was not so for the living.
Dedue's surprise lasted only a moment - and then his arms swept around Dimitri, clutching him tight despite the armor that separated them. Gloved fingers laced into Dimitri's bedraggled hair. Dedue took a deep, shaky breath and pressed his cheek against the side of Dimitri's head.
"...I have missed you as well. More than words can possibly say."
Dimitri tensed and trembled in Dedue’s arms, but made no reply.
For a time, Dedue simply held him. Despite everything, despite the war and the crumbling monastery and how tormented Dimitri still clearly was, for those moments when Dimitri was in his arms, Dedue, at long last, felt at peace. He heaved a soft, contented breath against Dimitri's hair.
After a small eternity, during which the incessant cries of the dead nonetheless seemed to Dimitri to reach him at a lower volume, he mastered himself and drew back. Dedue might be devoted, but he was not an endless reservoir of support that Dimitri could feel free to suck dry, even now.
And he perhaps deserved more than Dimitri’s bitter silence; at least gratitude. But as Dimitri tried to think of something more appropriate to say, his head throbbed with the onset of another headache and his eye dulled.
There was no help for it. Sleep would not come, even if Dimitri begged, and his nightmares would consume him alive when it finally did. He felt no urge to go through the motions, and so, aware that he was disappointing Dedue in the same way he was forever disappointing everyone else, he turned his gaze back to the rubble without a word.
The moment was over far too soon (though no span of time would have been long enough for Dedue). Dimitri drew back and visibly pulled back inside himself. The line of his shoulders looked too exhausted for words. Dedue would have stood here all night without complaint for his own sake, but Dimitri clearly needed rest.
"Your Highness...is it your intent to remain here all night?"
Please. Dimitri. Not Your Highness, not now…
That fleeting moment of intimacy was already too far past for Dimitri to make such a request. And, in a way, he was not even the Dimitri that Dedue had known any longer, so perhaps it would be akin to a lie.
He sighed. “And what would you advise me instead?” he asked. There was a sprig of honest appeal in the question, even if he was unable to keep the undercurrent of seething resentment from it. “Whether I invite it or not, my ill-fated rest will not come for me so soon.”
It was a start. Dimitri was giving him more leeway than anyone else had gotten - and Dedue knew that sigh. It meant Dimitri was at least considering Dedue's wheedling appeals.
"Even if sleep will not find you, I am sure your body would benefit from, at least, a warm bath perhaps, or to lay for a time. It is cold here, and surely your body is weary."
Dimitri gave some thought to both. The bathhouse wasn’t so far, but envisioning all the steps to stripping out of his clothing, locating the soap, preparing the water, actually attending to himself…they seemed suddenly endless and insurmountable in his mind, even though he knew with complete certainty he was still physically capable of them all.
“Not so weary as all that. And I don’t mind the chill.” Dimitri closed his eye and noted its dryness and the throb of pain through it that told him he’d strained it, probably from staring so intently at Dedue so routinely. “...But I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
He passed a hand over one of the clasps on his cape and gave Dedue a questioning look that was a distant cousin to his sheepish smiles of the past. “Could I.” Dimitri seemed to forget the next few words for a moment: “Trouble you.”
Dedue could not help the smile that briefly spread across his lips.
"It is no trouble." He took one step closer, then made an inviting gesture back towards the entrance of the cathedral.
"I will gladly attend you."
This time when Dimitri closed his eye, it was to let out a sigh of something very close to relief. The others had certainly offered to help him where they could, but their hesitation and the visible fear in their eyes when he moved too quickly or spoke too loudly told him he could not entrust any of his vulnerabilities to them. Perhaps only his former professor was the exception.
Dedue, though, had already seen him at his very worst, in all ways, and Dimitri could convince himself that Dedue would not flinch.
At least until it happened.
“You are no longer my vassal,” he pointed out firmly, nonetheless taking the lead as he had when they were still students here. “Do not behave as though you are. I am asking you as…”
As a friend, stuck in his throat and would not come out.
The look in Dedue's eyes softened, even if he schooled his expression back to its old neutrality. There was a certain sadness about the loss of their old roles, when they still didn't live in a world where they could openly be more than prince and servant, but Dedue understood Dimitri's position. The fondness was still there in his voice when he spoke.
"It is my pleasure to assist you. Please do not think it is obligation."
He fell in with Dimitri in their solitary parade back through the monastery grounds to the dormitory, back up the old, familiar stairs and down the hall Dedue had walked hundreds of times. It had been cleaned up, and several rooms were obviously occupied - Dedue wondered if everyone had naturally gravitated to their old rooms from a lifetime ago. His own he had not yet looked at, but it didn't much matter one way or another. He had not arrived with much of anything beyond the armor and clothes on his back anyway.
The door to Felix's old room was closed, as was Sylvain's beyond - but the door to Dimitri's old room stood ajar when they arrived. Dedue pushed it open and, after a quick look around, entered a room that was much cleaner than Dedue had expected. There were even candles laid out for, he presumed, Dimitri's use. Dedue began the task of lighting them; after a few moments' work, warm light bloomed in the room only previously lit by the barest moonlight.
As he so often did, Dedue understood without words. Dimitri inclined his head in assent and did not break the silence between them as they strode all the way from the cathedral back to his old room, which he had not set foot in since the day the Empire attacked. He was aware that it was not presently in use, but that it had been looked after in any way was a surprise to him, and he wondered if perhaps he’d gotten the room wrong.
Baffled, he looked around at the candles and general lack of dust and detritus, and then his eye lingered on Dedue. “Did you…?”
Dedue shook his head.
"It was not me. I have not had the time." He set two lit candles each into a sconce, and then turned to regard the room again now that it was better lit. It had been cleaned well, made ready for Dimitri to step in at any time, it seemed. "Perhaps Annette, or..." He noted a sprig of dried lavender on the desk. "Mercedes, perhaps. I am sure your friends have understood you had other business."
Dimitri blinked his surprise. Of course it made sense now that he actively considered it; they were only just back from Myrddin and Dedue had spent the entire day with him (which Dimitri found he regretted a little more every time he thought of it). But he couldn’t imagine who else would have…
He was trying unsuccessfully to imagine Rodrigue when Dedue made those suggestions, and Dimitri followed his gaze to the desk at Dimitri’s elbow. The sprig of lavender there was nearly identical to one Dimitri remembered keeping near it for a time at Dedue’s urging, for the sake of improving his sleep. The pang of nostalgia mingled with a wash of something dangerously close to shame, that he hadn’t even noticed his allies taking these steps to make him comfortable--too busy wedging himself into alcoves where he could see any approaching attackers and resigning himself to a thin veil of nightmares between days.
“What a waste,” he murmured, nonetheless unable to look away from the room as he worked off his gauntlets with tight, mechanical movements, carefully adjusted to not expose any buckles or clasps to too much of his strength. He set them awkwardly on the floor in the corner, unable to shake the sense he was tainting the room with them, and the rest of him as well.
Not such a waste, Dedue thought but did not say, and moved to help Dimitri remove his armor.
It was nostalgic, doing this kind of task in this room. The walls were scarred by the ransacking that had happened, and the beautiful blue blanket that had once been provided for Dimitri's use was long gone, replaced by more martial bedding at some more recent point. But it was still as if Dedue had stepped back in time.
He had mixed feelings about that. Garreg Mach had been the most freedom, and the least obvious hatred, he'd experienced in years, back then. He'd made some friends, and had at least been out of Fhirdiad. But compared to where he had ended up after the breakout, Garreg Mach could not compare. It had been just another cage back then, for both of them, just a larger one than Dedue had become accustomed to.
Dimitri probably didn't feel the same way about it. Dedue wouldn't bring it up. He worked in companionable silence, setting the armor carefully aside with the great cape as each piece came free.
Finally, Dimitri was bare of both armor and cape, and looking much less enormous. He'd certainly grown in the last few years, but not nearly as much as the cape had made it seem. If anything, Dimitri could use more food.
But Dedue had already had one victory this night. He would not test his luck.
"That is better." Dedue did not quite smile, but the implication was there. "It will be easier to rest now."
Dedue’s help made shorter work of the process than Dimitri had anticipated, and he rolled his neck to one side and the other once he was free of his chestplate and pauldrons. You don’t deserve this, came a voice as loud and recurring as any ghost’s.
I’m aware.
He snorted. “I cannot promise much success at that.” Then, not entirely able to disguise the admiration in it, he let his eye rove over the meticulous planes of Dedue’s armor. “Will you. Not require help as well?”
The look in Dimitri's eye flushed Dedue through with pride. He stood up a bit straighter - considered insisting he could manage - but in fact, after a moment's thought, he was not actually sure he could completely remove the entire suit without assistance.
"...I believe you are right," he admitted. "I cannot reach some of the buckles well." Or, truthfully, at all. His pauldrons in particular would be a difficult stretch. But he could at least begin on his own. Removing his gauntlets, Dedue unpinned and unwrapped the wide scarf around his neck and, folding it carefully, set it aside on the desk.
"I...could use assistance, if it is not troublesome."
The flash of something like a wry smile crossed Dimitri’s face. “I will gladly attend you,” he said in a slightly lower voice.
Then, perhaps realizing he’d far overtaxed his own ability for levity, the expression dropped and he reached demonstrably for the pauldrons, so Dedue could correct him and direct him elsewhere if needed. “It is a magnificent set,” he remarked. “Can I assume a Duscur blacksmith, or did you have to get it altered?” Money was tight in the Kingdom these days; Dimitri knew firsthand that blacksmiths could no longer afford to be picky with their customers.
Dedue couldn't help a smirk - and then the smirk twitched into the ghost of a proud smile.
"I will take the compliment. I was one of the smiths." He gave Dimitri a knowing look, even as he moved to unbuckle his bracers while Dimitri handled the pauldrons. "Not alone, of course, but...this was a gift, from many good friends and neighbors."
Dimitri’s hands froze in the act and shook. He quickly let go of the buckle before he regretted it, taking a moment to collect himself before reaching out again.
“I see,” he said when he could trust himself to speak. I must ensure you are well enough to return to them when this is all over, he knew better than to voice. “And. Would you want to do that again? Smithing?”
Dedue's smile took on a bittersweet edge.
"No. It was something to occupy my time, and something useful to my people. But I have already passed along all I recalled." He reached back to touch Dimitri's hand, and then to squeeze it once Dedue was sure he wouldn't be in his way. "My place is here."
“Ah.” Dimitri couldn’t keep the note of disappointment out of his voice as he eased aside the first pauldron and set about the next, but Dedue reaching for and then squeezing his hand slowed him to a stop.
He had a wild instinct to press his forehead to Dedue’s knuckles that the angle fortunately stopped. Instead, he covered them with his free hand.
“I…” Avoiding Dedue’s gaze, he shivered. “I feel the need to tell you something quite mad.”
Dedue canted his head, surprised but not alarmed.
"What is it?"
Briefly, Dimitri felt an old fear. That he would say this aloud and Dedue would feel compelled to meet him at the same intensity, even faked. Or that this would finally be the line even Dedue could not bear for him to cross, and Dimitri would be pushing him away.
But there was a sense of freedom to the realization--not the freedom of escaping unscathed, but the bloodied, shambling freedom of having left part of himself behind in the trap--that none of it mattered. Even if Dedue didn’t recoil from him, Dimitri had never been at liberty to give himself over to these feelings, and never would be again; if Dedue did pull away, Dimitri could hardly quarrel with his reasoning.
He sucked in a deep sigh and let it out, releasing Dedue’s hand as he would a bird or butterfly he feared to crush and returning to his task. “I’m afraid my feelings for you have always been rather inappropriately strong,” he commented lightly. “I’m aware it’s improper, but I hope you will take it as a compliment.”
Of all things, that was the very last confession Dedue could have imagined Dimitri making right now. Given how adamant he'd been that Dedue should leave him to his brooding alone, how readily he'd insisted on driving off all others trying to reach out to him, Dedue would never have expected Dimitri to make himself so vulnerable as to admit that out loud, as he was now. Years ago, at Garreg Mach perhaps, he might have anticipated it. He even seemed to recall moments when it had seemed to him that Dimitri was moments away from speaking what was left unsaid between them. But that was many years ago now, and Dimitri's awkward shyness no longer seemed to be an aspect he showed to anyone.
And yet, Dedue supposed he couldn't blame him for bringing it up now. He'd thought Dedue dead for half a decade. He'd tried pushing Dedue away and showed his belly in the trying, and it had not worked, and Dedue had not hurt him. If the shoe had been on the other foot, if Dedue had truly believed Dimitri dead, only to learn differently, he knew he would not be nearly so restrained.
For all his attempt at casual lightness, Dimitri's vulnerable feelings seemed to Dedue as delicate as the petals of a rare orchid. If he handled them rashly, Dedue would surely bruise them - but if he hesitated too long, it would be no better. He returned to his own task while he considered all of that, keeping his eyes forward as if he were dealing with a nervous cat.
"...I have always known," he finally settled on.
Dimitri didn’t know what kind of reaction he’d expected, but Dedue’s silence was understandable. He found it easier to focus on disentangling Dedue from his armor than to think about what might be happening in Dedue’s mind, and set about actually trying to think of some other topic to ease the conversation with. It…was a familiar but strange inclination, like a muscle Dimitri hadn’t exercised in years that could no longer so easily bear the stress of his demands on it.
So he hadn’t sifted through to an appropriate topic (dandelions were especially multitudinous in southern Faerghus this time of year, though not quite so readily available at the monastery’s elevation) by the time Dedue actually responded, and Dimitri nearly dropped the pauldron he was holding.
“--Ah.” Attentively, he set it down with the rest of the pile accumulating on the desk and chair, and promptly ran dry of things to say. It seemed useless to apologize. He yearned for the cathedral suddenly, to watch the moonlight slowly give way to the bloody cast of the sun and think of little but the silence that would follow when he finally achieved his goal.
After Dedue is situated, he insisted to himself. It was still the case that Dedue, like Duscur, had few allies, and Dimitri would not suffer him to rely on their goodwill in Dimitri’s own absence. “Shall I get your greaves?”
That seemed to have been the wrong thing for Dedue to say...but he wasn't sure there was really any 'right' thing. The entire topic of discussion was fraught. Those feelings had always been obvious, but there were half a dozen reasons they never could have acted on them, and every reason to conceal them from everyone around them. To have anyone notice would have been dangerous to a degree that was not worth considering. There had simply been no possible profit in discussing it.
But it was a surprise to realize that Dimitri didn't seem to be aware of how reciprocated his feelings were. Dedue almost asked himself how Dimitri could possibly not have realized - but it was Dimitri. Of course he'd never consider that anyone might feel that way about him, let alone Dedue. The silence while Dedue was stymied was loaded, but there was little Dedue could do about that.
He couldn't help the flush at the offer. Dedue could manage his own greaves - but further, for Dimitri to unbuckle them would mean he would need to kneel, and Dedue wasn't prepared for that from him. Not now.
"The sides, please." He gestured to the buckles that held his breastplate to the back, positioned such that it was genuinely difficult to reach them. He lifted his arm to give Dimitri space to work - and eventually found his words, even if he couldn't quite bring himself to speak them in Fodlan's language.
"...I don't want you to think you're alone in feeling so strongly."
The embarrassment, Dimitri supposed, made sense--Dedue had learned to guard his feelings with nearly as much tenacity as he’d always guarded Dimitri, but beneath that armor he was still only a man. And Dimitri didn’t yet know how to shape his regret into words. Of course this had gone exactly as badly as he’d always expected that it would, but at least he was beyond feeling anything about it beyond a rush of the self-loathing that had become background noise in his mind. He only wished he’d been able to hold his traitorous tongue to keep from complicating things for Dedue, since they’d evidently silently agreed to cope with the facts by ignoring them utterly.
He set about loosening Dedue’s chestplate without another word, marveling again at how they used to flow out of him so easily. At times they’d even been able to ease situations for him instead of make things more awkward, but at this stage Dimitri sort of doubted they could possibly help.
The reluctant Duscur words put a jab through him as sudden and violating as if he’d stepped on a nail; Dimitri realized he was putting too much stress on a strap in the instant before he separated it from its casing and released it. “Dedue, that’s…!”
It took some fumbling through the dusty vocabulary in his mind, but hopefully he strung together enough Duscur words to convey his meaning: “There is no expect for mutual. My heart is spoiled anyway.”
Dedue's flush darkened, hearing Dimitri fumbling through trying to use Dedue's language to convey something so...personal to him. Dimitri probably had not spoken Duscur in five years, it was a wonder he could recall it at all. But at the same time, it...touched Dedue that Dimitri still tried, for his sake. He reached to catch Dimitri's hand gently in his own, though he still felt too bashful to look at Dimitri too directly.
"Please don't feel you have to answer in my language. I know it's...hard enough to speak of these things already." Terribly hard. After so many years keeping them in the depths of his own heart, it still felt dangerous to let them out.
But it was more dangerous not to. Dedue realized that now; if he let Dimitri pull away now, Dedue might never reach him again. He took in a breath and steeled himself.
"It's not out of obligation. I have also always..." Even the words in Duscur seemed to evade him; Dedue squeezed Dimitri's hand as a substitute. "...But I would never demand anything from you."
Dimitri blinked, wavering on his feet. Of course there’d always been the possibility that Dedue might even truly…but Dimitri was so personally inextricable from the loss of Dedue’s family that he couldn’t imagine that level of tenderness being extended towards him with sincerity. (Of course, Dedue was also tied to the loss of Dimitri’s own family in much the same way, but that was obviously very different and not the same thing at all.)
So there had been times he’d flattered himself with the suspicion. But to take it seriously…and to only be able to embrace it now, in the rubble of a divided Fodlan, at the lowest point in Faerghan history since Leicester’s sedition (if even that), after their childhood and young adulthood had been denied even friendship, after watching Dedue die for him, after learning that Dedue had left his people voluntarily to honor a bond that Dimitri could no longer even muster the will to respect…
The injustice of it all would destroy him if he let it.
He sucked in a breath with a cut sound, unexpectedly feeling something prick at his eyes, though he couldn’t identify what--like a flavorless texture that had nonetheless made him think of home. “...I’m sorry. I have nothing left to give.”
That intensity no longer burned so brightly inside of him; if Dedue fell on the battlefield right in front of him, would he even react? Would it even occur to him to demand that Dedue save himself, or would that effort be expended on cutting down Dimitri’s own enemies? He no longer knew the answer.
Dedue blinked, and then turned his head to frown softly at Dimitri.
It seemed like he'd understood Dedue, even with the old language barrier at least partially back in place, but to respond like that, as if it were not Dimitri himself who had first broached the topic, Dedue couldn't be sure. Dimitri could just as easily be sliding back into the self-loathing that seemed to cling to him as heavily as that great mass of fur. In fact it was the most likely scenario.
But Dedue could not risk any misunderstanding. Not about this.
"...I am not asking you," he repeated slowly, in Dimitri's language, "for anything. I have always understood that it cannot be, and I do not begrudge that. But you have placed your heart in front of me." He touched the metal of his own breastplate, still encasing Dedue's own chest, and then made a gesture with that same hand, opening it palm open as if in display. "And I will not disrespect you by pretending I do not feel the same."
No, I…!
Dimitri found himself staring at Dedue’s outstretched palm with nearly as much horror as if it contained a still beating heart. How had he managed this? He wasn’t worthy of Dedue’s affections in the first place, and even knowing Dedue would never lie to him he couldn’t quite convince himself that Dedue was serious--but even if he’d ever managed to deserve that kind of attention from someone like Dedue, that would have been years ago. As he was now…this was like a cosmic joke he’d brought on himself.
That you had to suffer that way all along…
That I must put you through still more--
How do I push you away now without making it a rejection?
I should not, I cannot, I will not, and yet…
I wish for it to be.
(A part of Dimitri was beginning, quietly, to panic.)
Taking Dedue’s outstretched hand with the light, gentle movements that betrayed Dimitri’s worries of harming him, he clasped it between both of his and held it close to his own chest.
The words didn’t come for awkwardly long. Dimitri was distantly aware of a burn in his face, but couldn’t attach significance to it.
“...Stay with me.”
Even if it hadn’t come out so small and wretched, he trusted Dedue would not take it as an order, but know it for the request it was.
At last, Dimitri finally relented, and Dedue's eyes softened. Dimitri had always had a tender heart. The world was a harsh and unforgiving place, and it chewed up and spat out tender hearts like his without remorse. But even injured and scarred and bleeding, that same heart still beat in Dimitri's chest. Dedue had thanked the gods every day from the moment he'd heard of Dimitri's survival, and now he thanked them that the Dimitri he knew persisted, despite everything he had endured.
It was impossible under the circumstances to resist the urge to brush Dimitri's bedraggled hair out of his face. Just this once, Dedue allowed himself to indulge it. His fingertips caught the edge of those long bangs and swept them gently behind his left ear. His fingers lingered on his cheek for a brief moment.
"I will not leave you," he promised.
Dedue gently squeezed Dimitri's hand, and then let his free hand begin to fall.
Dedue’s answer came as no surprise. Dimitri yearned for it and mourned it at once; that he should be so bold as to make that request after trying with all his might to assert the opposite was something of a surprise to him, but at the same time disappointingly typical.
“You lack resolve,” his ghosts reminded him in what should have been the silence afterward.
But Dimitri was too focused on Dedue to acknowledge them. His breathing had hitched without his consent when Dedue touched his face, and Dimitri briefly closed his eye to savor it, heedless of the tear that escaped when he did. It was a mistake; instantly he slipped into a dream where, as Dedue’s hand started to fall away, Dimitri caught it and pressed it back against his cheek. Nuzzled into the palm like a hound that had been chained up outside for weeks.
Your hands are so warm, he seemed to be saying. I had forgotten.”
--He was awake.
His head had lulled forward and Dimitri had reflexively caught himself before he tipped straight into Dedue’s shoulder, eye flashing open and cheeks ablaze. His hand flinched sheepishly away from Dedue’s and he relaxed his grip on the other one without quite letting go.
That tear, that gesture, that comment was like a knife thrust directly into Dedue's heart. It seemed to twist inside him in a wrench of long-postponed grief, grief that Dimitri could have ever been alone long enough to forget and grief that Dedue had not touched him in so long that it was longer since they had parted than they had known one another. His own breath hitched in his throat.
But before Dedue's self-control over his urge to pull Dimitri close could quite snap, Dimitri wobbled and Dedue felt the reminder that Dimitri desperately needed sleep in a cold wash as abrupt as having a bucket of water dashed over him. Automatically he caught Dimitri beneath the elbow, just in case he wavered again.
"Your Highness, you must be abed."
Dimitri was busy desiring death at the moment (if less in the frustrated, exhausted way he’d learned to ache for it and more in the idle, useless fantasy of escaping an endlessly complicated and/or embarrassing social situation he’d engineered for himself), and he had every expectation that this wave of actual sleepiness would last exactly as long as it took for him to curl up in a bed or on a floor somewhere. Despite that, it admittedly sounded like a fair enough compromise.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, avoiding Dedue’s eyes and taking a step back and to Dedue’s other side to avoid the temptation of leaning into Dedue’s steady grip again. “I can at least finish helping you.”
Dedue only gave him that look, the one that said he knew exactly how far Dimitri was pushing himself, and how much he was not fine. But there was no point arguing with him on at least one point; as long as Dedue was still armored, Dimitri would have an excuse to delay retiring even further.
"...Very well," Dedue conceded, and lifted his arm to allow Dimitri to access the buckles on that side. "We will make short work of it, then."
Bizarrely, Dimitri felt his own face assuming an expression of mild, curious innocence, in an automatic response to Dedue’s unspoken accusation. (The realization had him absently scrub at the tearstreak with the heel of his hand in what hopefully seemed more like a bid to get more hair out of his face.) But when Dedue didn’t deny him, Dimitri set his mind back on the task.
While he still had to be delicate with his strength, the years of trial and error under circumstances that did not inspire much interest in controlling himself had taught Dimitri more about his own limitations. He knew on sight or by feel whether something he touched was too likely to be crushed under his strength, and could sense more reflexively when he was taxing something too much. Armor, as a rule, had to be capable of taking a lot of abuse to be useful, which was the only reason Dimitri didn’t think much of handling Dedue’s.
So they did in fact make short work of it, and by the time it was divided into pieces again and spread about the room like Dimitri’s, Dimitri lingered, still lost in the craftsmanship. “It won’t necessarily stop a Relic,” he fretted. “Or a mage. Perhaps we should look into arming you with something that will reduce their efficacy…”
Well, if nothing else, Dimitri did still know his way around armor. Duscur's techniques were not so different from Faerghus's that it slowed Dimitri down at all. In short order, the entire suit lay disassembled, and Dedue was left protected only by the warm gambeson and soft pants he'd worn beneath his carapace of armor. At another time, Dedue would have taken the time to collect it, check it over for damage from the battle, polish and oil it.
But, despite Dimitri's distraction, it was well past the middle of the night now, and he was likely only still on his feet from pure stubbornness. Dedue could hardly blame him for wanting to take a look at the pieces - and at another time, Dedue would indulge him. He could just imagine how the Dimitri of five years ago would have lit up with delight and babbled on about the work, how it would have warmed Dedue's heart with pride. He was even now doing a bit of that, and Dedue was loath to interrupt it.
But he was more loath to let Dimitri procrastinate until he collapsed where he stood.
"That can all be done in the morning," he reminded Dimitri gently. "You must rest."
“Ah. Yes.” He had promised. Or, well, perhaps not in so many words--but it was impossible for Dimitri not to feel sheepishly obligated to reward Dedue’s patience with cooperation, even if another part of him strained again for the cathedral. (He was no longer wearing his armor. It wouldn’t be safe. He would collapse on the way.)
Scanning the room and giving the window a wary look (the narrow openings would discourage arrows, he was aware), he eyed first the bed, and then the carpet, already knowing Dedue would insist. But if Dedue left…
This is ridiculous.
Dimitri pulled back the covers, a bit surprised to discover just how luxurious an actual bed seemed, even though this one was no longer as plush and fine as he seemed to remember. I’ll dirty it, he thought distantly, but that was no longer important and already true of anything he touched.
Still. It didn’t feel awkward to sit, but it did feel strange to lie down. Dimitri curled into a tight ball, childishly aware of both the hollow of the space beneath the bed and the vulnerability of the seconds it would take him to scramble to his feet if they were attacked. Uneasily, his eye flickered up to meet Dedue’s and then away again, keeping Dedue in his peripheral vision. “I…meant to ask you more about the village. You said it wasn’t in Duscur. What was it like there?”
Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.
Dedue sensed that Dimitri was procrastinating.
He'd actually crawled into the bed without further complaint, which was a bit of a surprise to Dedue, but he'd accept the victory. But then the way he'd curled up so small and tight, the way his eye darted, reminded Dedue of nothing more than a child who feared to sleep alone in his own bed.
Well…that was nothing new. If Dimitri was too nervous and lonely to sleep in this chamber alone…Dedue could understand that. It wouldn't be the first time Dedue had kept Dimitri company overnight.
And Dimitri had asked him to stay.
“It was in Gautier,” Dedue began as he moved to lock the door. I'm not leaving. Don't be alarmed. “The village was small, only a bit more than a dozen families, but we managed.” He returned to the center of the room, knelt and then bent down on his hands and knees to check that no assassin had taken up the space beneath the bed before they'd entered. Dedue should have done that when they entered, but he hadn't thought of it at the time. He was rusty, but he could scold himself for it later. He pushed himself back up to his feet and moved to check the window was latched, too.
“Our village was mostly young families. Not many soldiers,” he went on as he did so. “We were smithing, and my presence was enough of a liability. The people in Gautier care more about the Sreng than the Duscur, but it was best not to draw too much more attention than that by having too many unattached young men.”
Dedue pinched out the candles as he spoke, one and then the other. With the room dark again, he came and sat on the side of the bed, watching Dimitri for a signal for whether he wanted Dedue to give him space, or to join him where Dimitri would know he was there even in his sleep.
Whichever Dimitri preferred, Dedue would not make him ask.
Despite himself, Dimitri let out a tight little sigh when Dedue locked the door, understanding what it meant. And he sat up in some alarm when Dedue checked under the bed, at first assuming Dedue was only doing so because he’d spotted something of note, but him checking the window and pinching out the candles had Dimitri reluctantly easing back down.
I can afford to leave this to Dedue. How many times had he thought that, during their year at the academy? At Fhirdiad castle, even, when part of letting Dedue act as his vassal was as much to protect Dedue as Dimitri.
And…how many times had he thought it. After?
Dimitri was now accustomed to the searing rejoinder: Dedue is gone, because of you.
But the Dedue who joined him on the bed was solid. Dimitri felt the tug at his own blankets as the mattress gave under Dedue’s weight, but still he stared, for a long moment.
Belatedly, he blinked his stinging eye and realized he’d lost the thread of the conversation. Shifting back to give Dedue room, he made the effort to shift his long limbs out of their tightly wound state, alien and vulnerable as that felt. “...Abominable. To be obliged to concern yourselves with such things, even with Imperial soldiers picking over Faerghus’s festering corpse like the maggots they are.” But Gautier would have been the most rational choice. Fraldarius would be mad; Galatea would be madder still, considering not only the politics but the inconsistent yields. Few other lands remained that were not in some way beholden to the Empire.
His anger was pricking Dimitri back to awareness, and his eye caught and held on a figure that loomed beside the desk. (It had not been there before; he could be certain it was not wholly there now.) “...But. It was…peaceful, then? As much as can be expected,” he clarified bitterly.
Dimitri seemed to freeze up for a bit; Dedue considered drawing back, but ultimately decided to only give Dimitri a moment, and was rewarded for it by Dimitri's uncurling. The signal of pulling back to make room was unmistakable, even in the dark. As when they were young, when Dimitri would sneak him into his room in Fhirdiad, Dedue slipped under the covers. The space was much snugger than it had been then; how long now was it? Seven years? Eight? They'd grown so much since then, changed and been scarred.
But they were both still here.
Dedue's own eyes stung. He sought out Dimitri's hand, but didn't seize it, only offering his own, just as he had years ago.
"...Yes. It was peaceful." It was the reality that they did have to worry about 'such things,' but even so, they had eked out a living, little by little. "...Of course we had our struggles, but I have nothing to complain about."
Dimitri latched on to Dedue’s hand out of boyhood habit before he thought better of it, but it wasn’t like he would have made a different decision if he had. His lips turned faintly upward into an expression just a shade too self-mocking to be a smile. “Hm. To think of you there, all this time…”
His voice had quavered on the word. There, as opposed to here. It filled him with fear. With regret, with howling envy, grief, frustration--so many unworthy, selfish things. Perhaps there existed a world in which Dimitri had been able to join him, or perhaps that was a world that saw Dedue die. That saw even his own community reject him, again.
Sensing that his grip was starting to become too tight, Dimitri let go, shifting it to gather Dedue’s fingers into his palm and run his thumb across the knuckles nicked and dented from the forge and battle alike.
“I would not change it,” he whispered.