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Dimitri let his friends’ voices wash over him, leaving Annette and Constance space to catch up with Hapi. He was technically still part of the conversation, even if he could barely claim to be participating, but it would be rude to just leave and he didn’t really want to go back to meetings and paperwork and whatever other duties he had lined up for the day. Eventually he’d make his apologies and excuse himself, but Dimitri didn’t want to return to work just yet. The past few nights had been plagued by strange dreams, and the lack of proper rest was catching up to Dimitri, filling his brain with cotton and making his body just a touch sluggish. Not enough that most people would catch it, at least.
Hapi, unfortunately, was not most people.
“You hanging in there, Didi?” she asked, glancing over at him. Dimitri blinked a few times to bring himself back to the present.
“I’m fine, thank you, Hapi.” He managed a smile for her. She clicked her tongue, unconvinced, but Constance started updating her on some experiment or other and Hapi let Dimitri’s weak assurances lie for the moment, though she gave him a significant look before letting Constance draw her into the story.
Dimitri resisted the urge to rub his wrists as she turned her gaze from him. Really, he was fine. Lack of sleep and nightmares were nothing new, even if that morning he’d woken up with his wrists rubbed raw. He was sure he’d done it himself; he remembered enough of last night’s dreams to know they’d been about being locked up in the Fhirdiad dungeons, where in real life he’d been manacled to the wall by his wrists. Perfectly plausible for him to have tried to twist the remembered manacles off in his sleep, except with no real manacles there he’d only managed to succeed in using his excessive strength to rub his own skin off. Dimitri had done worse things in his sleep before, though these days Dedue usually stopped him.
That was the other factor contributing to the restless nights. Dedue was away from Fhirdiad on a diplomatic trip, and while it had been planned months in advance and was entirely necessary, Dimitri had gotten used to Dedue’s presence at night and felt his absence keenly. It was a tad embarrassing—Dedue had worried this very thing might happen, and Dimitri had assured him that he’d be fine on his own. And he had been! The first week after Dedue, along with Sylvain, Mercedes, and Ashe, had set out for Duscur to advance the repatriation process Dimitri had slept fine. Not as well as he did with Dedue there with him, but fine.
And then Annette and Constance finally had the time and resources to start working through Cornelia’s laboratory.
All Cornelia’s workrooms had been sealed in the immediate aftermath of retaking Fhirdiad due to lack of time and people to safely handle whatever magical experimentation she’d been doing there. They had been left alone for months, but the time had finally come to reopen them. Annette and Constance were in charge of the process, their knowledge of magical theory and research necessary for the safety of everyone involved, and they had asked to call in Hapi, who was by far the most knowledgeable of Cornelia and how she thought. Dimitri’s own memories were too fragmented and sharp to be of any use for anything other than making him anxious and irritable, something everyone seemed understandably eager to avoid. Dimitri preferred to avoid that too, but if it had been useful he would have suffered through it. Instead he was useless to the process, fit only to officially welcome Hapi to Fhirdiad.
Even then Dimitri felt unnecessary. Formalities complete, Dimitri could only listen to his friends’ reunion as if from a distance. He’d never learned how to chat in the way that seemed to come so easily to all the girls he knew—other than Ingrid, but Ingrid was an exception to many of the things Dimitri associated with womanhood—and came especially naturally to Annette and Constance. Hapi didn’t talk as much as the other two, but there was a naturalness to the way she spoke, as if she were always being exactly herself. Dimitri always felt even clumsier in his speech around her than he usually did, all his own flaws more evident in immediate comparison to her nonchalance. He could kill the mood with just a few words, and Hapi was always able to save it with the raise of an eyebrow and a pithy comment.
Dimitri knew none of them tried to exclude him from the conversation—Annette frequently tried to draw him in, directing comments at him or asking questions—but there was always a heavy feeling in his stomach that he wasn’t meant to be there, that he was an intruder, unfit to chat and laugh as one of them. Dedue was better at reassuring him he was misreading these things, but Dedue was away, and Dimitri couldn’t believe it on his own. Instead, there was only the yawning distance between him and where he wanted to be, laughing with the girls like he belonged there.
Eventually, it all became too much and Dimitri excused himself back to his paperwork and meetings with nobles and administrators. The girls bade him goodbye, and Hapi once again fixed him with a look, pointed enough that when she showed up in the king’s audience chamber several hours later Dimitri felt no surprise. He waved away the guard who’d shown her inside, and as soon as the door was closed Hapi started talking.
“I love them, but Coco and Nettles have way more energy than I do,” Hapi said, walking over to the ornate table Dimitri used as a desk and propping herself against an edge that was mostly clear of papers. “You’re more my speed.”
“Ah, thank you.” Dimitri set down the updated tax proposal from Count Charon, letting out a breath of relief that he didn’t have to scrutinize tariff numbers any longer. “Would you like a chair?”
“Nah.” Hapi shook her head. “This is good.”
He didn’t quite have to crane his neck to maintain eye contact, but she did rather loom over Dimitri, seated as he was, and he shifted in his chair, dropping eye contact briefly.
“Are you sure you don’t want a chair? I feel a bit like I’m being interrogated.”
“Good, because you are.” Hapi smirked. Then, her face turned serious as she continued. “Don’t lie to me this time, Didi, I can see the bags under your eyes. Well, you know what I mean. I just got a tour of Cornelia’s lair, you know, and I’m not in the mood.”
“Right,” Dimitri said, shoulders slumping. “Have at me, then.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” She reached out and ruffled his hair, knocking a few strands loose from the hair tie holding them back. Dimitri didn’t bother trying to neaten it. “I’m just checking in with you. The way Nettles was talking, just about everyone else is out of Fhirdiad at the moment, right? It’s only the three of you here?”
He nodded. She was indeed right. Not only were Dedue, Sylvain, Mercedes, and Ashe in Duscur, but Felix and Ingrid had been called back to their respective regions to handle pressing situations, leaving just Dimitri, Annette, and Constance in Fhirdiad out of their class at Garreg Mach. Yuri and Balthus didn’t call the city their home, busy running whatever Yuri got up to that Dimitri did his best not to see; Sylvain was convinced Yuri wouldn’t cause any real trouble for Faerghus, at least, and while Dimitri thought Sylvain was rather biased when it came to Yuri he was willing to agree with him.
Regardless, it meant Dimitri had few of his friends nearby since the Cornelia-related sleep issues arose. He’d been briefly tempted to talk with Annette about his dreams, but he worried that if he expressed any anxiety around their opening up of Cornelia’s rooms, she’d insist on closing them back up immediately on his account. They’d already been boarded up for too long and Dimitri would rather rip the bandage off than let it fester any further. Besides, their best chance at finding a solution to Hapi’s curse lay in Cornelia’s notes and materials, and Dimitri would not let that be put aside in favor of giving him a week or two of better sleep. Hapi didn’t deserve that, and Dimitri was not so weak as to intentionally delay Annette and Constance finding the key to ridding her of her condition.
Dimitri could handle it, even without Dedue, or Felix, or Ingrid, or Mercedes, or Sylvain, or, or—
“Hey, Didi, you in there?” Dimitri blinked and looked up at Hapi, her mouth downturned as she looked at him. He scrambled to come up with a response.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I can’t say I’ve been sleeping the best recently, and everyone being away makes it…more complicated.”
She gave him a couple soft pats on the head.
“There we go,” Hapi said. “It can’t be easy around here with Coco and Nettles rooting through Cornelia’s life like that. I haven’t even been here a full day, and I’ll probably have trouble sleeping tonight, too.” She made a face, scrunching up her nose in mild distaste.
“I keep dreaming about her,” Dimitri admitted. Hapi tilted her head, inviting him to continue. “About when she imprisoned me, and what she said when we defeated her. And when I wake up I feel like I really have been locked in a cell or fighting for months instead of sleeping at all.”
“Sounds unpleasant,” Hapi said, and he could tell she meant it. “Has your sleep been getting better otherwise, or is it still as bad as it was in the war?”
“Better,” Dimitri admitted. “Dedue’s been a great help. I’ve been having fewer nightmares and been able to fall asleep easier since—” He cut himself off, face flushing. “Well, he’s been away the last couple weeks, and I told him I’d be fine while he was gone, but I seem to have misjudged how empty the bed feels without him.” Dimitri ducked his head, afraid he’d said too much.
Hapi, however, looked delighted.
“That’s sweet,” she said. “Inconvenient for you right now, clearly, but incredibly sweet.”
“Thank you.” Dimitri self-consciously pushed some of his loose hair behind his ear, cheeks still warm. Redirecting the conversation slightly, he continued. “I’m getting used to it; the timing of Annette and Constance’s work is not ideal, but it’s too important to put off any longer, and I’m managing as well as I can.”
“Yeah, it’s bad timing for sure,” Hapi said, and Dimitri could see her struggling not to sigh in resignation. “I get why it has to be done, it just sucks for you. And me, now that I think about it. Ugh, I probably won’t be able to sleep well tonight either, not after being back there.”
“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said. “I wish we hadn’t asked this of you.”
Hapi shook her head.
“No, it was right that you asked me. I do know her research best, after all, and if there’s a way to fix my curse it’s probably in those rooms. I’ll put up with it; I don’t have a kingdom relying on me being well rested, at least. And the beds here are very nice.” Hapi paused, clearly thinking about something, then grinned.
“I’ve got an idea, Didi,” she said. “I’m gonna sleep like shit while I’m here, you’re going to sleep like shit alone in that giant bed of yours, what if we team up? And not just because I bet you have the nicest bed in this place and I will jump at the excuse to sleep in it.”
“Oh,” Dimitri said. It wasn’t a bad idea. Certainly he tended to sleep better with someone nearby—Dedue, generally, but Felix had conceded to share bedspace with him enough times Dimitri knew it wasn’t a unique skill of Dedue’s—and it had been months since he’d reacted poorly to someone waking him up, so it was probably safe. He’d still warn Hapi of the possibility, of course, but he didn’t think he would be a danger to her. And she seemed to think it would help her sleep better, so… “Yes, I suppose we could try that.”
“Great.” Hapi made an affirmative hand gesture. “We’ll defeat those bad dreams for sure.”
+++
Dimitri came to awareness slowly. The manacles around his wrists and ankles clinked as he sat up, opening his eye to see the paved stone floor—wait, only one? He should still have two, if Cornelia had him in the dungeon after she’d killed his uncle and framed him for it. He’d had two in the last few dreams, he was sure of it. Why—
“Hey, Didi.”
Turning towards the voice revealed Hapi, who was also manacled to the wall. She looked just as he’d seen her last, down to the loose sleep shirt and wrap pants she’d changed into before bed.
“Hapi,” he said. The way his voice cracked on the second syllable made him wince. “Where?—”
“You’re in my lab, of course,” a new voice said, a familiar blend of coquettish and threatening, and dread crept down Dimitri’s spine. “How kind of you to bring my favorite little girl back to me, princeling.”
“Oh, shut up.” Hapi rolled her eyes flippantly, though Dimitri could see how stiffly she held her shoulders. “Didi didn’t bring me to you, you did some weird magic shit from beyond the grave or something. I should have guessed you’d manage some crazy thing like this.”
“You give me far too much credit, girl. I had no hand in arranging this, though I have no intention of squandering the opportunities I’ve been given.” Cornelia smiled, showing her teeth. Dimitri’s skin crawled. This woman had arranged the deaths of his father, his uncle, she’d manipulated his step mother into believing her father was against her, she—
“Now, now, play nice, little prince.”
Dimitri shook his head, trying to stop the ringing in his ears. He was half on his feet, the rough metal of the manacles digging into his skin as he strained against them. He hadn’t even realized he’d moved, let alone tried to attack Cornelia. Memories of the years before he’d regained himself flooded through him, how often he’d act before conscious thought, how often the act was excessively violent, how little he’d cared once he’d realized what he’d done, and Dimitri sunk down, chains rattling.
Cornelia laughed, and it echoed in the stone chamber, harsh and loud. Both Hapi and Dimitri winced.
“I’d forgotten how fun this was.” A chair suddenly appeared, and Cornelia sat in it, her skirts swirling around her legs as she settled. “I should have spent more time playing with you, princeling. Especially after your stepmother abandoned you to die with your father. You wanted a mother to love you so badly, didn’t you? I saw how you watched Patricia, how desperately you wanted her to teach you needlework and all those frivolous lady’s skills. She told me everything, you know, because she trusted me, held me even closer than she did your father, but I always saw more than she did.” Cornelia leaned forward, closer to Dimitri. She smelled of death, the sharp tang of dark magic, and a hint of the perfume Dimitri associated with his stepmother. He wondered, briefly, which of them had worn it first.
“Perhaps you knew, deep down, that you weren’t ever going to be her real daughter. But you wanted to try anyway, didn’t you? Learn how to be a good girl so your stepmother would love you, right?” She sat back, laughing. Dimitri jerked back away from her, hair falling forward to hang limp in front of his face. She may as well have slapped him open handed in the face, or torn his chest open and pulled his heart free of his ribcage. It would have hurt less. “Pathetic. You should have come to me, princeling. Nothing could make you Patricia’s real daughter, but I could have gotten you close. Ask dear Hapi if you don’t believe me.”
Cornelia glanced over at Hapi, a cruel smirk across her face, and Dimitri couldn’t resist looking at her too. Even from a few feet away Dimitri could tell she was shaking, though whether it was fear or anger—or both—Dimitri couldn’t tell.
“Don’t talk nonsense, hag,” Hapi said, bristling. “You didn’t make me anything.”
“No?” Cornelia’s smirk widened. She put a finger to her mouth and tilted her head, feigning being in thought. “That doesn’t sound right. Without me you’d have looked more like our lumbering prince than the beautiful young woman you appear to be. My magic did that for you.”
“Shut up,” Hapi spat. “You didn’t make me a girl.”
“True,” Cornelia purred. “I just made you look like one. A lovely one, at that. Think how pretty His Majesty would be if I’d done the same for him at that age.” She sighed, dreamily. “If only it wouldn’t have been inconvenient to my plans to show my hand that early.”
Dimitri felt unmoored. Cornelia had known ? She’d seen Dimitri with Patricia and been able to tell how badly he wanted his stepmother to sit him down and teach him to sew, to embroider, to do all the things noble girls do? How much Dimitri wanted to sit with this incredible woman and learn to be like her? Cornelia had seen, and had the power to—to do something , apparently, if Hapi, beautiful, effortlessly female Hapi, were like him, had been declared to be a boy, and needed help to become otherwise, and instead she’d said nothing, kept Hapi’s existence from him when they were living in the same castle for so many years, keeping Dimitri from knowing he wasn’t so desperately alone. Instead she’d made one of her final acts telling Dimitri that the woman he’d so wanted to impress, to be loved by, to become, had hated him for not being enough. For not being her real daughter.
That had been it, Dimitri had thought as Cornelia’s body grew cold on the ground. The final proof that it was all some childish fantasy that held no place in reality; that he was never meant to be that girl, and he would only ever be His Majesty Dimitri, son of Lambert and King of Faerghus.
And here Cornelia was, from beyond the grave; not content with killing that part of him once, she had to come back to stab its corpse. Dimitri had been trying to ignore the feelings of wrongness since childhood, had chalked it up as another of his aberrant flaws, like his uncontrollable strength and bouts of wild fury. He hadn’t understood it, not really, because the thought of becoming a girl was so impossible Dimitri had never perceived it as real , as something he could want. But it was real, it was, in some fashion, achievable—look at Hapi, just look at her—which meant Dimitri could want it. With a few words Cornelia had ripped through the sense of self Dimitri had desperately built up and was trying to hold together and revealed the vast, gaping emptiness inside him. She’d opened the wound and Dimitri couldn’t pretend not to feel how much it hurt anymore.
Through the fog of his thoughts Dimitri could hear Hapi shouting at Cornelia. None of the words registered, though, no matter how hard he tried to listen. Instead, a rushing sound got louder and louder, muffling Hapi and Cornelia’s voices even further. Everything felt like it was slipping away, and Dimitri felt his body give out, collapsing to the floor, but he didn’t hit hard, cold stone like expected. Instead—
“Didi! Didi, wake up.”
There were hands on him, and Dimitri curled tighter around himself. The chill of the real world crept through his nightclothes, and Dimitri didn’t want to face it, the chill or Hapi, who still called his name.
“Didi, please just let me know you’re here and not still there, alright?” Panic was seeping into Hapi’s voice, and the guilt of worrying her was enough for Dimitri to uncover his head.
“I’m awake,” Dimitri said. His voice cracked horribly, and there were tears dampening his cheek.
“Oh, thank fuck.” Hapi took a deep breath in, then froze, and Dimitri recognized her catching herself before a sigh. Instead she let the breath out slowly, controlled and definitely not a sigh, and leaned back against the pillows.
“How much of that do you remember?” she asked.
“More than I’d like,” Dimitri admitted, closing his eye again.
“If you remember, then we have to talk about it,” Hapi said.
Dimitri scrunched his eye closed tighter. He really, really didn’t want to. If he had his way, he’d have locked the whole topic and all the tangled feelings that went along with it up, like they’d done with Cornelia’s lab and rooms, and left them sealed up forever. But the whole situation with Cornelia had already been allowed to fester far too long—when they’d opened her rooms back up they’d been musty and full of decaying experiments, and the thick layer of dust over everything made them look as if they’d been sealed up for years and years longer than they had been. Annette had immediately started coughing, Constance had made the most aristocratic face of disgust Dimitri had ever seen, and Dimitri himself found breathing the dank air like a physical blow to the chest. Letting the dream, what Cornelia had peeled back and exposed with cruel claws, fester like her lab wouldn’t make anything better.
Reluctantly, Dimitri opened his eye again and lurched to a somewhat seated position. Hapi looked relieved that he didn’t protest any further.
“Where do we start?” Dimitri asked.
“We’ll start with me.” Hapi sat up so she was facing Dimitri properly. “Hi, I’m Hapi, when I was born everyone thought I was a boy, but I decided I was a girl. When Cornelia held me captive, she found that out and thought it would be an interesting magical experiment to try to change my body to be more conventionally female. I went along with it, partially ‘cause I had no choice and partially because if she was going to be torturing me anyway I might as well get something I actually wanted out of it. Now no one can tell I once lived as a boy unless I tell them or they look really, really closely.” She took another deep breath, closing her eyes on the inhale, and held it for a few seconds. When she let the breath out she opened her eyes.
“Your turn.”
Dimitri wrapped his arms around his legs miserably.
“I always wanted to be a girl instead of a boy.” Dimitri paused, breath shaking after just the one statement. “Always. But everyone needed me to be a prince, so I had to be a boy. And now they need me to be king, which means I have to be a man. And I don’t want to be, but it’s my duty so I’ll endure it for the wellbeing of Faerghus and its people.”
“Oh, Didi.” The look of pity and understanding in Hapi’s eyes was almost too much for Dimitri to bear. It itched, and Dimitri wanted to claw at his skin until it stopped.
“Listen,” Hapi said after a few moments of silence. “Fuck them. Fuck your duty.”
Dimitri stared at her in disbelief. How could she say that?
“The people accepted me as their king, even after everything I did,” he said, gripping his wrists in his hands—the scrapes from the night before felt fresh again, but Dimitri hardly registered the physical pain. “I have a responsibility to them. There’s already been so much unrest, I can’t prioritize myself if it comes at the cost of peace in Faerghus.”
“Well that’s a dramatic way to think about it, geez.” She shook her head. “I’m not telling you to go out today and announce that actually, Faerghus has a queen instead of a king, alright? We can work up to that. Or not at all, if you decide that’s best. Whatever, that’s a problem for later. The thing is—” Hapi scooted closer to Dimitri and took his hands. “Being the king is your duty, sure, but that’s public. You don’t have to be ‘the King’ with me, alright? You can just be you. You can be her. No one else has to know until you’re ready for them to know, but you can’t keep hiding all the time. It’ll tear you apart.”
“I don’t know how to be her,” Dimitri said, voice a whisper. “I was taught to be a prince, a king. I wasn’t taught how to be a girl.” Cornelia’s words from the dream echoed in Dimitri’s head. Patricia hadn’t wanted Dimitri to be her son, let alone her daughter. She would never have taught Dimitri how to be a girl, even if Dimitri had gotten up the courage to ask. Even if it wouldn’t have been stealing what should have been time spent with her real daughter, Dimitri was unfit for it. He could barely use a pair of scissors without breaking them, and the shame he felt knowing he’d repeatedly fail so badly his stepmother would give up teaching him in frustration kept him back from asking her.
“I didn’t know either,” Hapi said. “I learned. You will, too. I can teach you. Plenty of people would help. You can’t tell me Nettles wouldn’t be bouncing up and down in excitement if you asked her to teach you girl stuff at breakfast.”
Dimitri could picture it. Annette loved any excuse to do makeup on or with her friends, and she would be delighted to add another person to the list of friends she could do makeup stuff with. Even if that person was Dimitri.
“Are you sure people will be okay with it?” Dimitri whispered. “What about Dedue? And—and Felix. And—”
“They’d both follow you to the moon and back, you think being a girl would phase them at all?” Hapi sniggered and shook her head. “They’ll be the biggest Queen Didi supporters out there. So will all your other friends. I guarantee it.”
She spoke with a confidence Dimitri couldn’t quite share, but was beginning to feel the seeds of it take root. Dimitri’s friends had accepted the worst of him already, the inclination towards indiscriminate bloodshed and raging fixation on vengeance that had filled the shell of a person he’d become, uncaring of anyone else and unwilling to accept their attempts to reach him; surely they could accept this, too.
“You really think I could do it?” Dimitri asked, shivering slightly in the early morning air. “Be a woman in private and—and figure out the rest later?”
“I know you can,” Hapi said. “And you’ll have help.”
“You’re right,” Dimitri said, thinking of Dedue, and Felix, Annette, Ingrid, Sylvain, Ashe, Mercedes—they would help. They would offer all the love and support they could. Her hands shook as she pictured her life going forward, and Hapi’s hands kept them steady, the warmth of her hands seeping into Dimitri’s own. “I will.”
“Attagirl.” Hapi squeezed her hands gently and leaned in to bump their foreheads together. Dimitri leaned into the contact, feeling the exhaustion of the past few days—the past few years —fall away, replaced by a bone deep sense of relief. The decision being made, Dimitri felt as if her breath came more easily, and the sudden rush of air sent her into a fit of giggles, giddy from how light she felt. Hapi joined in her laughter, the specter of Cornelia forgotten in the growing light.
+++
As Hapi had predicted, Annette took only a second upon hearing Dimitri’s gender explanation to start bouncing in enthusiasm, offering her assistance with everything she could think might be relevant to a burgeoning girl. Constance was equally supportive, though her offers of support took the form of going through Cornelia’s research and reverse engineering what she’d done for Hapi in a “fashion not so deeply macabre.” According to Hapi, the energy in Cornelia’s rooms was entirely transformed after that, Annette and Constance buoyed by a constructive, creative drive that made the place feel less oppressive and shadowy, banishing the memory of the woman who’d kept Hapi prisoner.
Hapi continued to sleep in Dimitri’s room with her, but neither of them experienced so vibrant a dream of Cornelia again. She continued to shadow Dimitri’s dreams for some nights, still, but never so vividly as that first night of Hapi’s visit. The stone floors and chains never felt quite so solid, and Cornelia would stalk around Dimitri in the dungeon or her lab, but she never spoke or got close enough to Dimitri to touch her, and her image blurred more and more with the shadows. As her presence continued to fade, proper rest was more easily had. Even when Dimitri woke them both with a nightmare, Hapi would stroke her hair and it wouldn’t be long before they both fell back to sleep.
She thought she and Hapi were being subtle, but when Felix came back from Fraldarius one of the first things he asked Dimitri was if the rumors about the king bringing the same woman to his bedroom every night meant Felix would finally be replaced as Dimitri’s heir. He’d been trying to get himself pushed down in the line of succession ever since Dimitri had declared him next in line out of a lack of other close blood relatives and a genuine belief Felix would do right by Faerghus, despite his desperation to stay away from the throne. Unfortunately for him, Dimitri was going to have to disappoint his hopes. Blushing, Dimitri explained the situation. Felix accepted her account with a thoughtful hum and a “that explains a lot, actually,” seamlessly working it into his understanding of the world. Dimitri itched to ask what, exactly, her secretly being a girl explained, but ultimately decided she didn’t want Felix to lay out all the ways she’d failed to be a man. Not that Felix would mean it like that, of course, but it was all still too fresh of a wound to poke at, even if it had started to heal.
Ingrid was a little more taken aback by the situation, and while it wasn’t the most comfortable conversation, it had ended well enough. She’d pledged her continued fealty to Dimitri as her queen, which was a terribly Ingrid thing to do, complete with kneeling in front of her and offering up her sword. Blushing, Dimitri accepted it; Ingrid’s cheeks were equally dusted pink, and she stumbled slightly standing up, refusing to take her eyes off Dimitri. Clearly embarrassed, Ingrid rattled off a plausible excuse and walked away just a bit too quickly. Dimitri wouldn’t claim accepting herself after years of denying herself made her an expert, but Ingrid has clearly left the explanation deep in thought, and about more than just Dimitri’s choices.
Mercedes, Ashe, Sylvain—all of them accepted her far easier than Dimitri could have imagined, with hugs and smiles and exclamations of happiness that she’d found who she wanted to be. Mercedes immediately offered to assist Dimitri with any question she had about womanhood or the various skills required to master it, nearly as enthusiastic as Annette in her desire to help. Ashe seemed determined to scour the library for tales of gender swapping knights to present to her, and while Dimitri wasn’t sure he’d find anything—and if he did, that it wouldn’t all be women dressing as men—the intention was kind, and she looked forward to seeing what he’d turn up. Sylvain asked if she’d want him to flirt with her now, which was clearly meant to be supportive, but was mostly awkward, considering Sylvain had all but stopped his indiscriminate flirting and Dimitri didn’t look any different than when Sylvain had left—as far as she could tell, though everyone else had been telling her she looked happier, but she still didn’t like to think about her appearance. The idea of being flirted with as a woman by Sylvain reminded her of how male she looked and—no, it was deeply uncomfortable, and Sylvain could feel it too, because after a few seconds he laughed a bit too loud and said something self-deprecating before changing the subject entirely. Dimitri let him; she’d understood what he’d been trying to say.
And then, of course, there was Dedue, who listened to her nervous, rambling announcement of her gender with the same quiet intensity he always gave her, and by the end Dimitri couldn’t believe she’d felt nervous about his reaction for even a second. If she couldn’t trust in Dedue’s love for her, there was nothing sure in the world. She spent the next several minutes trembling while Dedue held her, offering gentle reassurances in his first language. Dimitri let him soothe her, pressing her face into his shoulder and trying not to cry from how stressful revealing, over and over, such an important part of herself that she’d hidden for so long had been as her friends returned to Fhirdiad, and the sheer relief and surprise at how easily they all embraced it. She told Dedue as much, voice muffled by his shirt and the tears she was holding back. Like Hapi, Dedue reminded her how much they all loved her and wanted to be happy. That did make Dimitri cry, but it was the good sort of cry, and Dedue kissed her afterwards, even though her face was gross from tears.
That night, since the Duscur delegation had returned, Hapi removed her things from Dimitri’s room, relocating to Constance’s suite with a wink that set Dimitri’s face on fire and made Dedue laugh.