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In the end, what broke Dimitri wasn't the pain, or the starvation, or the purge of his old supporters. He could ignore that, shove it behind the spite and rage that were the only things he could let himself express. When Cornelia had him flogged, he spat in her face. When she left him alone, in complete darkness, for three days straight, he chewed open his own hands rather than beg for water. When she made him watch her torturers pour molten lead into the Minister of Agriculture's mouth, he stayed silent. He wouldn't give in.
No, what broke him was when a routine walk from his cell to the interrogation room took him past Dedue's mangled, faceless body.
The guards let him run back and check for breathing, let him cry out in horror when he found it, let him hold his friend in his arms for just a few seconds.
And then they dragged him away.
As was more and more common these days, Cornelia wanted him taken apart for samples. The usual mage was on standby to heal him and he hated her hated her hated her because he knew exactly what it took to keep someone alive with that degree of mutilation.
But he hated himself more.
Dimitri knew that Dedue wouldn't let him rot in the castle dungeons. He knew that at some point, his friend and companion would mount a rescue attempt. And he knew that there was no possible way that one man could get past an entire city's defenses.
This hadn't been a tragedy- it had been an inevitability. And he'd just let it happen.
He lost time. One blink, and then Cornelia was taking a thin knife to his belly. The next, his stomach was intact but his heart was on the table. The healer mage frowned as she focused on keeping it and him alive. A third blink, and there was nothing left but a thin scar suggesting that anything had happened at all.
He was groaning, he realized. Deep, pained groans that had nothing to do with the knife, or with the steady stream of blood flowing from the needle in his arm.
The mages let him stew in his own misery as they worked. There was no need to move quickly, not with him paralyzed and helpless and unable to so much as twitch in the direction of sabotage. It was three hours and as many blood draws in when they brought Dedue in, throwing his unconscious form to the ground like a heap of potatoes.
The healer mage handed him a confession, one like the many he'd spat on or torn up or otherwise refused to sign.
This time he dipped the pen in ink and wrote his name on the little horizontal line.
Cornelia ruffled his hair, releasing the paralysis spell. "Go on," she said.
Dimitri yanked the needle out of his arm as he rushed to Dedue's side. He let himself cry over his friend's punctured eyes, bleeding ears, missing tongue. He ran hands along the scars of injuries healed wrong, some deliberately so. He tucked his chin into Dedue's shoulder, and wrapped his arms around the battered, broken form of what used to be a strong, resolute man.
There wasn't a good ending for him here. There wasn't a good ending for either of them here.
He kissed Dedue on the forehead, gave him one last hug.
And then he snapped his best friend's neck.
Cornelia took him back to the desk and handed him another confession.
He signed it. He signed all of them. He told that them he killed his uncle in a violent rage, that he was planning to raze Faerghus himself rather than let someone else have it, that he was a coward who couldn't see anything other than his own survival. He confessed to every nasty, cruel thing they could think of, no matter how degrading or outrageous. Yes, of course he beat his servants. He frequently had his soldiers mount him like a dog. He had a fiancé once, but he'd strangled her and buried her in the garden.
(It was plague, he didn't have the energy to say. It was plague.)
After a while, he stopped bothering to read them. It didn't matter anymore.
A week later, they bathed him, dressed him in his school uniform, and took him on his final walk. One of the guards stuck a coin in his mouth.
"Easy now," said the other one as he nearly choked on it. "Don't die before the show."
Much of Fhirdiad had been crammed into the castle courtyard, and for the commoners it would be the only time they'd see it. They and turncoat nobles alike were eager to see the end of the demon prince, and cries for blood rang out as he stepped into the day. The crowd pressed against the partition keeping them from the stage, reaching out as if to tear him apart themselves.
Dimitri looked up at the sky instead of the heaving masses. It was the first time he'd seen the sun in months.
Cornelia was waiting for him there alongside her favorite executioner and a nervous historian. She patted him on the head as he walked up the steps. "We'll take good care of your body," she promised.
He'd been taken apart too many times to trust that.
The executioner (a large man, patient and controlled, secure in the knowledge that his position would be safe for a long time) held out a hand expectantly. Dimitri spat the coin in it. The shouting of the crowd momentarily turned into a hum of approval.
An insistent hand on his shoulder bade him kneel, so he did.
"Good boy," Cornelia purred behind him.
Dimitri focused on the blue sky and the splinters under his knees as the historian started a speech. There was wind in his hair and the scent of roasting meat in the air. Peddlers were pushing their way through the crowd, hawking sausages and beer to the watchers. Vultures flew through the sky in lazy circles, waiting for the body wagon.
The temperature was unbearably comfortable. The weather should be poor, he thought, on an occasion like this. But there wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and the breeze was calm and cool, and the sun was gentle. It washed away the cold of the dungeons and the pain of his wounds. He could almost close his eyes and wish himself somewhere else, somewhen else. He wanted to go back to his school days, when everyone was alive and war a thought that no one took seriously.
But that wasn't possible, was it?
"Any last words?" asked the historian.
Dimitri watched the sun's glare dance on the stage, reflected by the executioner's blade. "Just get it over with," he whispered.
The sword bit just slightly into his neck as the executioner steadied himself. Dimitri focused on his heartbeat, trying and failing to calm himself. There was nothing he could do now. Nothing anyone could do, except fail and die.
The blade rose.
The blade fell.
The crowd's roar filled his ears as his consciousness faded.