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Soggy, wet earth suddenly changes under her boots into something solid. Petra looks down at her feet and darts away, seeing crashed bones and parts of disfigured arms. She grits her teeth.
“Darling, is something wrong?” behind, Dorothea halts her horse, dismounts it.
“Fallen soldiers,” Petra kneels, staring into the mess of dirt and rotten flesh. “Can’t understand which army is.”
“Goddess…”
Petra hears the other riders approaching through the dense woods. A few shouts here and there, people looking upon the pile of the dead with disgust and exhaustion. Petra sighs too. The road has been grueling, and even the possibility of a detour causes tremble and sigh of distress.
It isn't hard to see how fear slowly creeping out in others' eyes. No one wants to deal with a pile of bodies – no matter what, they can surely bypass it in one way or another. But the thought that they could end up like one of those fallen soldiers hungs now heavily in the air. She feels that thought wandering around in the patrol. Such thoughts was impossible to outrun.
“Petra, stop. What are you…” Dorothea squints. “Petra!”
Petra closes the eyes – or, what she thought was the eyes – of a dead man on whom she stumbled. Whispers the prayer, Fodlanish one, because she wouldn’t dare to bury people in the realm of stranger spirits of Brigid. Enemies or allies, they all came from the same foolish Goddess of this land, and shall return to Her in their death.
“Sorry for me stepping on your body, old friend,” she taps on the half-flayed skull. “Find rest and prosper.”
Silently she pulls up and looks at Dorothea. The grimace on a woman's face, at first, she considers just a disgust, but the darkened eyes and brow furrowed in a way that felt more intimate – Petra knew there was something more. A pain for a brother. Of course.
“Don't even think about touching me with those dirty hands for the next week or two.” Dorothea warns.
Petra shrugs.
“Clay in the earth,” states Pofessor. Not a single emotion was on her face as she walked in, her cape dragging through dirt and rot; just pure disregard and indifference. She was a strong woman, nonetheless, even during such a dramatic change. “Rain swelled the ground up. This mass grave was unlucky to be in the midst of the wrong soil,” she turns to the soldiers – breathing, living, the mass who felt no different from the ones under their feet. Expendable material with no name whatsoever. Petra shivers. “Go to the convoy, inform Her Imperial Majesty. We can’t go any further.”
One of the soldiers rushes back to the convoy at the command. Everyone stays silent.
“Earth pushes the dead out of its loins, bad sign I know.” Petra finally speaks out, which causes the entire patrol to lose its grip and begin the dreaded whispering.
Professor lets them. It is good to get some relief, even if it is a chaotic talk and – after all – acknowledging death in front of your eyes. Edelgard would never have approved of such whispering, but Professor, on the other hand, always had a gentle heart and a good soul. She lets them talk and be scared.
“Byleth, dear, can we move on now?” Dorothea looks at everything except the bones and the mud. The wind blows in her hair, but it does not suit her; a flower such as Dorothea would deserve a sea breeze, which would look like a jewelry on her. Not the wet and freezing wind of Fodlan. Messy. Wrong.
Petra wants to go home.
“We can’t re-bury them. There is no time nor place for that,” without a single emotion on her face, professor looks away . “But I still can pray for them?” she asks genuinely; like she was lost. Like a human. Petra is not used to seeing her teacher as real human being, and she never understood how they can be so close in age.
The Professor knew everything. Byleth did not.
“Eddie would be mad, probably.” Dorothea’s limbs weaken, and she leans on Petra for support.
“I asked you, not Edelgard.”
“Oh.”
Petra and Dorothea share a look. Between them starts a silent discussion, filled with shoulder shrugs, lip bites, rolling eyes and sighs. Of course they both want to farewell fellow soldiers, no matter how and when they died – but the idea of Edelgard, scolding them for excess sentiments and time wasted, terrified them nonetheless.
Finally, they came to terms. Dorothea takes Petra’s hand in hers.
“You pray. We will go back and report all ahead.”
“Alright.”
Petra climbs onto Dorothea’s horse. Helps the other women to get in, too, carefully taking her by the hand. Saddle wasn’t meant for the two, but Petra is too tired to walk on her own, and a little pain seems to be worth it. Back in Brigid her father taught her how to ride bareback, anyway.
Before they go, Byleth asks them hushly:
“Is that a right thing?”
They both look at their beloved professor, standing on her knees in the middle of the rotten, muddy pile of flesh and bones, with her hands linked in a prayer.
“Yes, By,” Dorothea pulls a forced, weary smile. “Let us hope so.”
And then Petra shouts, and the horse runs through the rocky landscape back to their convoy. The tight grip of Dorothea’s arms around her waist made it all a bit easier.
“I’m present in sorrow for your loss.” Petra carefully places words while they are on the run.
“For what?”
“You all are children of the same land. In that grave was yours brothers-sisters of spirit. I’m sorry for loss you have in that,” she is silent for a bit, before spilling out the whole deal. “I looked in your eyes and saw a great sadness. I believe it can be hard for you to see the dead like that. Friends, enemies, all still live souls.”
Dorothea turns her head away to the horizon. Gray skies and fog, silent forest blurs before their eyes as they run back to the main camp. And a mass grave, behind their spines. One which the earth herself wasn't able to hold.
“Yes,” she buries her nose into Petra’s neck and sighs. “I guess you are right, my darling. We are all the same.”
Petra watches, on certain mornings, as Dorothea makes herself ready. She will place that small little mirror on something, step back to see all of herself in it; and she twists, changes her posture, her stance, her expression. With incredible care, she fixes her clothes and her hair, and Petra never understands how she can see anything in that small little mirror from so far away.
Dorothea merely laughs at her questions about that, and only kisses the bridge of Petra’s nose. A non-answer. The only answer.
And Petra knows life was not too kind to Dorothea before the Officer’s Academy. She knows that from whispers spoken in the ranks of the soldiers; who dared to speak of her fiance’s name in a such wicked manner. Petra does not understand these rumors, she hates the Empire in which the private life of another is a currency and a weapon. A strange and cold continent, this. Realm of a singular, crushing banality.
Heart aches for home. Almost a stab into her chest.
When she returns to Brigid, she will definitely give Dorothea many mirrors. She will build her castle, very vast and grim, like all things in Fodlan; to remind Dorothea of home. And in every room, with her own hands, she would put the walls made completely out of mirrors.
“Like the view?” Dorothea’s voice is a melody. She smiles, her gaze finding Petra’s.
Petra blinks, the image of her homeland escapes her grasp. She shakes the remnants of sleep from her limbs, and pushes herself to the edge of their shared bed. The straw stuffing crackles.
“You are always caring for the view,” inhales morning coldness, and emptiness. “Even in this… wartime…” the right word twists on her tongue. She would try to explain in Brigid’s, but even there, the word has long since escaped her. Her native language has started to slowly slip away. “This… war situation.”
Her face is surely scowling. This weather really gets on the nerves; this sunless, weeping sky, and eternal gray. Petra buries herself in the coarse wool blankets as much as she can.
It smells of burnt-out campfires, of fabrics left too long in a campaign satchel, of wet earth. She has grown familiar with this scent; now it’s almost natural to everyone in the army. Petra finds it hard to imagine a morning without it.
“In wartime, it’s even more important to look beautiful.” a final touch – small, silver earrings – and Dorothea turns to face Petra once more, and smiles. She approaches the bed slowly, bends over the sleepy woman, and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead.
“Why? An enemy’s blade does not look on the face.”
“Why?” Dorothea echoes. “Don't you understand?” she almost turns to leave, but Petra's arm shoots out, reaching around her waist, holding her fast. A quiet growl.
“Please to be explaining yourself.”
Dorothea meets her gaze. Uncertainty across her face, a thing Dorothea rarely allowed herself to show in front of people. The question had caught her off guard.
“Oh, come now, Petra. I’m only joking.”
“You are not joking. I am reading it on your face.” Petra rests her head against Dorothea's back, inhaling the floral perfume. She gifted it to her. It was a long run all over the capital back in the days; searching for the one, the perfect scent that would suit Dorothea as if born to her. Home taught her that a person's smell was among the most important things for the spirit. Needed to be treated with reverence. Like everything that makes the body. “The soldiers... they like to talk. About you. They speak ill. They do not believe you are a warrior. Your body is too... clean of presence. Fools.” her grip tightens slightly. “They do not trouble you?”
Dorothea is silent. Still faced away from her, she looks at her nails.
“What do I care about their thoughts?” she says. “Let them think whatever. I would rather be remembered as a lady than a blood-soaked soldier.”
“You are the strongest fighter I have been seeing. Why to hide it?”
“Because it matters to me,” Dorothea shifts. Her hands rise to cup Petra's face, holding it as if it were something impossibly fragile. “I want to look noble. Not like a street rat. I’m not a disgrace to dirty one’s boots when they’ll step on me.”
“Why would anyone step on you?” eyes wide. Then – “And I would be loving you even if you were covered in mud,” Petra declares, hugging tightly around Dorothea's waist and pulling her down onto her lap. Dorothea lets out a little screech, tumbling onto her knees, but never tries to put up a fight. Her fingers find their way into Petra's wild, unbound hair, tangling in the little braids. “Why must you play a role for anyone?”
“Don’t you think of me as a noble lady?” Dorothea laughs.
“I think of you are as the mostest beautiful woman in all the existing world,” Petra takes Dorothea’s hand in hers, pressing a hundred tiny kisses from her palm to the wrist. Dorothea shivers, letting out a breathy, ticklish laugh. “You will be beautiful always. And you do not need to hide the Warrior inside in you for this. It is also making you beautiful, like your beauty. All your parts are making you… you.”
“You flatterer,” Dorothea gasps through her laughter and blush quickly covers her cheeks. “Oh, you are a terrible flatterer!”
“I speak in only truth. It is you who speaks in falsehoods with your explanations now.” Petra continues her attack, lips everywhere – on the curve of neck, on the hand that barely tries to push her away, on a flushed cheek, on the collar of the dress, just above the swell of her breast. Laughter echoes. Perhaps the whole camp can hear it. So be it. Petra has never hidden anything in her life.
They can feel a heavy, deliberate crunch of boots outside their tent. Then a cleared throat. Both women know he can move as silent as a shadow; this is a warning, deliberately given. Dorothea pulls the blanket over Petra's half-naked body, smooths her own hair; but she doesn’t manage to slip from Petra’s lap before Hubert enters the tent.
And he is not surprised. He knows everything. He always does.
“Dorothea, day patrol. You move out in thirty minutes, Ferdinand is leading. Petra, hunting party, western sector. Immediately.” he stares at them for a second. Then, he coughs again, and sighs more calmly. “Good morning, you.”
“Morning, Hubie,” Dorothea waves at him, with no intent to get out from Petra’s lap. “We’ll be on our way in a moment, let me just finish some preparations.”
“Very well,” he bows, in his own, arrogant manner. But at the very corners of his lips could be seen a ghost of a smile that he showed only among the Eagles “Until then.”
And then he was gone. The tent flap closes, and Petra and Dorothea are alone once again. Dorothea makes a move to actually get up and continue her preparations, but Petra would not release her from the hold.
“No. It is enough, Dorothea.”
“Let me go! My hair still needs…”
“No hair. It is enough.”
“Petra!” now she truly began to struggle, but Petra's arms were strong nonetheless, no matter how many hours Dorothea spent on the training grounds trying to change that fact.
“I will not be releasing you until you say your “noble lady” act is a foolish thing. Please.”
Dorothea sighs. She pulls the blanket from Petra's head and shoulders, pressing their foreheads in a surrender; and laughs.
And then a distant roar. The rumble of the earth from a few hundred pounding hooves. They stared at each other with a horrifying understanding. Hands automatically reaching for weapons, Petra shrugging into her armor in a second.
An attack.
Camp had been found.
They fought back to back. The stench of cinders, blood, and sweat, the trampled bodies of soldiers underfoot. Horses will not step upon the dead – and so the steed, taken from some fallen soldier, and now Petra's, scoops off in fear and disgust, running side to side, eager to throw off its back the barely-conscious, exhausted Petra.
In the thick of the crowd, she had lost Dorothea. None of the Eagles visible either: she tries to find but one familiar face, but the dust raised up by hooves and the blood flooding her eyes blurred her vision. She hears the Professor’s cry, but she is nowhere to be seen.
Someone strikes her horse. Petra jumps off, dodges an arrow – it flies right past her, tearing her sleeve. And finds its mark, it seems, in some poor wretch.
The poor wretch is Dorothea.
The arrow scores across her cheek, leaves a cut.After fighting off another enemy, Dorothea naturally goes to her small mirror and looks at her face. Petra’s eyes widens, but before she can shout a word on the matter, a shadowy figure of an enemy soldier emerges from the fog behind Dorothea. Petra runs at him.
“Hold. Your attention!” Petra spits through gritted teeth, parrying the enemy's blows.
“I’m holding! Holding! All under control.”
“Do not let it choke–,” she is thrown back, but Petra quickly returns her balance and strikes forward again, locking blades with an enemy. “...choke your Warrior! Dorothea!”
She has no right to be annoyed, isn’t it? Only can encourage, remind Dorothea.
When the last foe is fallen, and the dust settles upon the earth, Petra allows herself to turn to Dorothea, who had not left her sight since. The noise died. Dorothea falls. Petra is not fast enough to catch her, collapsing powerless to the ground beside her. Her weapon drops from her hand.
She crawls slowly to Dorothea, and then sees the great, gaping wound upon her fiancé’s stomach.
Her first act is to lift Dorothea’s head from the ground, laying it upon her knees – she tries to find a pulse. It beats. Petra exhales heavily, her hands moving to cover the wound on the stomach, while Dorothea suddenly begins to laugh, own hands reaching for the arrow-striked cheek.
“Can you imagine, darling, I fought half the battle with this hole in my side,” her laughter turns into a ragged cough. “And I felt it not. Or rather, I felt the piercing, but 'twas so strange... Augh... I knew of the wound, but in the battle, it didn’t seem to matter. I’m swinging my sword, and thinking, “Goddess, I gotta die from this wound from any moment now! Why do I still stand? I must surely fall!”. And yet I fight and fight... And now I seem to be dying, huh?”
“You are not dying,” hisses Linhardt, who has approached and knelt before Dorothea. He places his hands over Petra’s, covering the wound, and mutters something under his breath. He looks no better than they do. “Such wounds are difficult to die from.”
“Truly? How wonderful…” laughs Dorothea. “Linnie, sweetheart, be a friend and hand me the mirror on my belt. Can’t lift my hands right now…”
“There is no mirror here. And. Just lie still. You’re not gonna die, but the recovery will be a bother anyway. Shit, Petra! Remove your paws at last! I am trying to work here.”
Petra immediately takes her hands away and leaves the healing to Linhardt.
“No? It is always with me... My mirror…” Dorothea is seized by another terrifying coughing fit. “It is…”
“Why do bother to need it now” Petra takes her hand in hers and frowns. “You were nearly be killed because this mirror. Why?”
“Why?” Dorothea replies and shifts her gaze to the now almost blue sky. Petra looks up too, trying to see what Dorothea has found there; and sees nothing. For her, even the rare sun in the sky seems unbearable now. It was a bad battle. And the sky gave her no answers.
Soon, Linhardt leaves them alone, rushing off to the other wounded. Petra asks her that one question again, and this time Dorothea answers:
“I don't want to die ugly.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t wanna die ugly.” she rolls her eyes.
"Death hand chooses not in between beautiful and ugly, my dearest.” Petra huffs and places Dorothea’s hand over her own chest, where her heart lies.
“But the living do, princess. That’s the thing.”
“I…” Petra grimaces. “I am still not quite understanding.”
“I don't want to be an ugly corpse, darling, alright?” Dorothea looks her in the eyes, her voice hoarse and more serious than ever. “How many dead have we seen these past years? They are all... In the mud, in blood, torn apart. I don’t want to be found like that. I don’t want... you to remember me like that. Did you not say yourself that in Brigid there is nothing more sacred than the body?”
And what could Petra say to that? Something like, “no, of course you will return from the war alive, beautiful, without a single scar”? Foolishness. People often do not return from battle alive; Petra remembers perfectly well how she was waiting for her father, day and night, a little girl in her grandparents’ hold. Until her father’s mutilated, bloodied, blue body was carried into their house.
One returns from battle changed, not oneself. And Eagles have many battles awaiting.
“I will remember you as the most beautiful woman in the light of sun. As you will always be and you is.”
“Nonsense. We remember even the dearest ones only by their last face in the coffin”
The mutilated face of her father flashed before Petra’s eyes again. She curses.
She is accustomed to look upon the faces of fallen enemies, but she never noticed how Dorothea avoided it. Now she sees it; the gaze lifted to the sky when the ground around appeared to be filled with dead.
“You would be dear to me even if in hundred times you be smear in mud,” Petra looks away. “And also If then if I... If I was to die ugly. Face turned out outside. If you bound to find me in such state. Would you…”
“No, no, Goddess, no! Petra!” Dorothea tries to rise, but the pain strikes her. She slowly sinks back, supported by Petra. “You would never be... Damn it all, how dare you repay me with my own coin?”
“I’m not paying you. My coins are in tent.” Petra scoffs.
Something swirls inside of Petra at the sound of Dorothea's laughter. She loves this part of her – when she laughs in the face of decay. Petra would never look her own problems in the eye with such a smile and laughter.
“I know my beliefs are stupid. This whole idea with a beautiful death... In the end, we are lying in the mud regardless. And we are still alive!” again, the laughter-cough. “But... I just cannot rid myself of these thoughts. I cannot overcome myself.”
Petra is silent. She kisses her fiance on the forehead and brushes away the – covered in dried blood – bangs stuck to her face
Petra’s smile is thin. What is there to say? That memory is a flawed vessel? That all faces will be blurred in the end, no matter what? She can pay thousands of bards to sing of Dorothea’s beauty, and raise hundreds of monuments of her. Words and stones. They would do nothing.
All of the stupid possible promises felt like a salt in her mouth. Instead, she leans forward, her forehead against Dorothea’s – silence against the sky that had given them no answers.
“Petra, get your arse up and help me carry the wounded,” shouts Linhardt from the other side of the landscape. “Or help Caspar and Professor deal with the dead bodies, I don’t know! Leave Dorothea alone, she’s not dying yet.”
Petra wants to go home.