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THEN
“I will be there for you. Whether you want me to or not.”
He said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, and he’d meant every word. He even followed through on it, over and over again, until he left for Fhirdiad after the battle at Garreg Mach, where he’d been on the front lines with the Professor.
She was needed elsewhere. Out from underfoot would have been ideal. Manuela, instead, drafted her for the infirmary, unlike Mercedes and Linhardt, out there, fighting. Alongside him. And the Professor, of course.
And then, weeks later, she remembered his words when she heard of his execution—for treason, of all things! As if he could, as if he would, as if he, so steadfast and true and beautiful and—from her adoptive father, and spent a part of the day weeping, a part of it at prayer, and the rest of it in a daze, disbelieving, trying not to let her grief be evident. She couldn’t burden anyone else with it.
She spent more time yet at prayer for him, the crown prince of Faerghus and his beautiful blue eyes that she had, admittedly, been a little afraid of, because she was certain he could see things in her that no one else could. Why else had he watched her so much, even when she couldn’t look him in the eye anymore because it hurt to?
But oh, she longed to watch him back, because he was so beautiful, so achingly beautiful, and she…
She wanted him.
What she wouldn’t have given to throw herself into his arms when he saved her life. What she wouldn’t have given to give herself to him, when she was just a foolish young woman, dreaming, alone, of a prince who could save her—would save her. Would drive away the pain and suffering and misfortune.
How foolish she had been, back then.
NOW
He watched her.
She wasn’t certain that he wanted her to know that he did. But when she went to the cathedral, undeterred by the rubble—or him, frankly—to pray, he didn’t spend the entire time staring at that rubble, the way everyone said he did. She could feel his eye on her.
And, oh, the pang she’d felt the first time she saw him after she returned to the monastery, discovered that he was there, too, alive, but not necessarily well—and saw that he only had one eye.
Deep down, deep inside, something terrible—that terrible something—clawed and raged at the sight of him, wanted to pluck both eyes from whoever had taken his beautiful eye. She could imagine raking her nails down their face, because she was a monster, and maybe it took a monster to right a wrong like that.
She had seen Dimitri look very tired before, all those years ago, but the dark circle under his eye now was much like hers had been, like an angry bruise.
When she went to the cathedral to pray at night, he must have heard her, no matter how soft she tried to make her footsteps so she wouldn’t disturb anyone, least of all him. Her shoes were so loud on polished marble floors, even polished marble floors that were cracked and dusty and not yet completely cleaned after five years of disuse.
He must have heard her, because, even from the cathedral doors, she could see the outline of him in the dark—so much bigger than he used to be—and she saw him slip deeper into the shadows, hunched. Watching.
He watched her, and she felt safe. If she was a monster, and she was, she needed someone to watch over her.
Who better than him? Because he knew. He understood. He always had, or at least she thought he did.
Something dark and terrible lurked inside him, too.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she ventured, but he did not respond, and, after a moment, she clasped her hands, lowered her head, and began to pray.
THEN
“I find you to be a lucky charm of sorts.”
What an odd thing for him to say. But he’d made her smile, and laugh, and all seemed right in the world, for a little while.
There were been bandits in the Kingdom, and the Professor wanted her to come along, and Dimitri, oh, he was like a prince from a fairytale, upon his horse. He shone like the sun, lofty and bold, so far above all of them. Beyond all of them.
She was foolish enough to hope, foolish enough to watch him, when she shouldn’t have. That foolishness nearly got her killed. She’d been distracted—a foolish, childish girl, dreaming of a (her) prince, reaching his hand out to her, pulling her up behind him on his horse, taking her to his castle. Keeping her for his very own.
Even though she was foolish, he saved her. She lay there, on the cobblestones, her life’s blood seeping out between her fingers, unable to properly see the man who stood above her, only the shape of him against the sun, blotting it out, his axe raised.
And then his spear pierced the man’s throat, and the man’s blood bloomed around it and down the front of her jerkin, splattered hot over her as she couldn’t find the strength to keep pressing down on her own belly.
He—her prince—called her name. He made quite the clatter as he stumbled off his horse and to his knees next to her, pulling her close, into his strong arms. He was blood-splattered, too.
“Your hair,” she whispered, nonsensically, lifting a shaking hand, seeing it, too, was bloody, letting it drop.
She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. He looked away from her, then, and she was bereft, bereft of his pretty eyes. It would be nice to die and go to the goddess’ embrace while looking into his pretty eyes.
He yelled for help. He didn’t have any vulneraries left, he explained, when Flayn arrived.
Flayn was so sweet.
He was, too, when she woke up later, in the infirmary tent. He dropped to his knees next to her cot, took her hand, pressed his forehead against the back of it.
That simple gesture must have been a miracle, because it made her want to live, just for a little while longer.
NOW
He watched her.
Not just in the cathedral. When they travelled, and had to stop to make camp, he lurked. He became quite proficient at lurking, staying on the fringes and edges and perimeters, watching, watching. She told herself that surely he watched everyone, because he was still a prince, but some young and foolish part of her said he watched her the most. Maybe he imagined, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, abandoning his desire for revenge, stealing a horse, plucking her off the ground, and racing for the forest, where he’d keep her. Where she would be his, and only his, and he’d keep the monsters at bay through sheer ferocity alone.
A far cry from her girlish dreams of the handsome prince.
Oh, he was still handsome, under it all. That was his face, under the lank hair. That was his eye, glassy and dull as it was, even with the dark circle beneath it.
She slipped away from camp. She needed solace and solitude, someplace quiet to pray. Everyone was on edge, but trying to cover it up with a pretense of good cheer, and they were so, so loud. Her feet carried her into the wood, and she thought, not for the first time, that the darkness and shadows might just swallow her up, and she’d never be seen again.
The night was eerily still and quiet, or perhaps it just seemed that way after the hustle and bustle of their camp. She was certain the river was in this direction, which should give her a clearing even if only on its banks, and the moon overhead, the perfect place for the solitude she needed, but the quiet, the quiet, it was too much.
She heard something—a snap, a rustle—and turned, saw a shape. Her tongue froze in her mouth, her throat seized, but she lifted her chin and kept walking.
Until the ground gave way, the sudden drop taking her breath, her shoe falling off into the dark below.
And then an arm caught her—and that took her breath, too—and dragged her away from the pitfall trap.
She wasn’t sure, yet, whether or not she was disappointed. She’d have to wait until her heart started pounding.
He set her on her feet. She knew it was him, from the bulk of him at her back, from the fact that he said nothing at all as he held her, letting her see what she’d almost fallen into.
Maybe they never would have found her, down there, in the dark.
She turned, looked up at him, could barely see his face at all. His chin was tilted down, his hair falling over his face. She reached up, to push his hair back, but he grabbed her wrist in one dark-gauntleted hand, and they stared at each other.
One heartbeat. Two. Four.
She whispered, “You’re hurting me,” and he dropped her wrist immediately, turned, and left her, alone.
THEN
She spent most of the ball tucked safely and securely in a corner, unobtrusive. Yet somehow both Lorenz and Ferdinand found her there and asked her to dance, but she turned them down and tried to melt into a different, darker corner where perhaps the candlelight would struggle to reach her just that little bit more.
Somehow, Hilda found her anyway. She wasn’t surprised, and had a terrible time turning Hilda down.
Hilda spun her around and around the dance floor, until Marianne was giggling, helpless and breathless, until the giggling stopped because she spotted Dimitri leaving. She tried to cover for the abrupt shift in her demeanour, but of course Hilda noticed, eyes keen and bright and calculating. Still, she made sure they finished their dance anyway—she insisted, and Hilda didn’t complain—and then she slipped away. Got herself a drink, which fortunately wasn’t spiked, and kept her pace sedate as she left the reception hall.
Her feet took her to the Goddess Tower. If she could not find him, she could at least take the time to pray. The doors opened, and she tucked herself into a corner of the cathedral walls, this corner much darker than the ones in the brightly-lit reception hall, and Dorothea left the tower, followed, a few moments later, by the Professor.
After she was certain they were gone, she scurried her way inside, and up the stairs, to a darkened, vine-covered room. She closed her eyes, and lowered her head, hands clasped and trembling.
If a man and a woman prayed here in the tower together…
She waited. She waited and waited, and a pigeon joined her, and maybe he would have to do, if he could be patient.
Her prayers said, her disappointment quashed, she turned to leave, and there he was, just outside the circle of light from the sconce in the stairwell. He watched her silently, his face lit half in silver from moonlight, half swallowed in shadows, but he was so very handsome nonetheless. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and he stepped forward almost tentatively.
Still, they said nothing. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her, and she ached for him in a way that wasn’t fair, not to her, not to him. He was so close but so out of reach, lofty, beyond her, bright and shining and shadowed like the moon.
But he stood here, with her. He joined her, and she lowered her head once again in prayer. She thought he did the same, but she kept her eyes tightly closed.
Then, they stood at the top of the staircase. Her hands trembled, and he noticed.
“Are you cold?” he asked, and didn’t wait for an answer before he removed his capelet, draping it over her shoulders to walk her back to the dormitory. He even offered her his arm.
Her heart pounded so fast and so hard she thought it was about to burst by the time they reached her room. She dared to look up at him, into his lovely eyes, dared to hope, dared to hope, dared to hope.
Took a tentative step closer as he said her name.
There was no one else in the corridor. He reached for her, but he was still wearing his gauntlets—he never took them off, not even to eat—and he hesitated. She bit her lip, and looked down, and took a step back.
He threw caution to the wind, in his way. In such an endearingly him sort of way that she might have burst into tears. He took her hand, and the metal of his gauntlet was cold but she didn’t care, and bent low, and gently, so gently, brushed a kiss to the back of her hand. And then he stepped back, smiling softly, and she bid him goodnight, and slipped into her room.
She dared one last look at him as she closed the door, and he was still there, and she smiled, too.
NOW
He watched her.
He seemed to always be there, somehow, just when she needed him. He’d sweep in, a flurry of motion and brutality, and then he was gone, swallowed by the fog like everyone else.
Her torch guttered. She saw the shape—shapes—in the woods, huge and terrifying; an omen, surely, of what her future would bring.
She could not allow herself to be distracted, but the Professor was being so cautious, far more cautious than normal, and kept arraying the others in such a way that she was blocked from going too far. From straying into the fog, to be lost.
In fractured moments, she imagined being one of them. Being a beast like that, mindless. And she imagined that he would stay here, stay with her, her protector, fierce and dangerous, keeping others out of the wood for their safety. For her safety.
She imagined the way he would stalk between the trees, keeping out of sight, in the shadows in black furs and blacker armour, blending in at night to strike fast and true and disappear again.
She imagined, somehow, that he would never age. He would always be young and beautiful in a way only she understood, underneath the fearsome armour and his shaggy, lank hair. She would always remember how beautiful he really was. She imagined him growing ever more powerful, but finding himself again, as the protector of the forest, of her, of those who would be foolhardy enough to wander too close.
It was easy to imagine, in fact, when she saw the way he actually cooperated with others when she was about to be overtaken by a demonic beast. His eye met hers, and was a little less dull and glassy, but then he was gone again.
That night, back at the monastery, with Blutgang carefully stored away, she went to the cathedral before bed, and he did not slink off into the shadows.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said.
He did not reply, but she knew his head was turned in her direction.
THEN
They met in the dining hall sometimes, and he was ever a gentleman. Polite and kind, but he didn’t eat much. She had to remind him, and she wondered, sometimes, if he found the food distasteful, not up to the standards of the fare in a royal castle, but she didn’t dare ask. Especially because the very thought was terribly uncharitable, beneath them both.
They met in the sauna, and he didn’t seem to know where to look, but to be fair, neither did she, and he fled almost immediately. She didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed. Both, probably.
They met in the training yard, and she asked him for sword lessons because he was warmer than the Professor, and not as scary as Felix, or intimidating as Catherine, or as stern as Ingrid, or nervous as Ignatz, or intense as Petra. Once or twice she thought he might kiss her, but perhaps he was so focused on doing what she had asked for that he thought better of it, and she felt a pang of affection (and disappointment, again) and she was sure that was when she actually fell in love with him.
They met in the otherwise library, very late in the day, and he was distracted and engrossed in his work, until they tried to walk around each other and kept going in the same direction. They both laughed, quietly as if afraid that being too noisy would make someone come running to scold them and tell them to go to bed.
No one came.
With great deliberation, he took off one gauntlet, and then the other, setting them down on the table nearest to him. His hands were scarred, but she didn’t focus on that, peering up at him as he cupped her face, and tilted it up, and finally, finally, finally, he kissed her. His lips were softer than she had ever dared to dream. They were both clumsy, she knew they were, she was so certain he was just as inexperienced with this as she was. But she didn’t care, as she rested her hands on his chest, and kissed him back.
It was the first and last time he kissed her.
He didn’t give her a proper kiss goodbye after the battle, after Edelgard attacked Garreg Mach, after the Professor fell. Not that he didn’t say goodbye, but they didn’t have a moment alone. He’d been distant and distracted, but he found her, and he kissed her hand instead of her lips, and then he was gone.
And then he was dead.
She went to her room, and locked the door, and she didn’t even make it all the way to her bed. She collapsed to the floor beside it and wept until she had no more tears left.
How naive she was, to think that her life could have magically, miraculously, become a fairytale. How utterly foolish to believe that she could have been saved by the dashing prince.
NOW
Marianne watched Dimitri.
“As long as you are carrying on, I have yet another reason to carry on myself. I promise to the goddess of Fódlan that I will never give you cause to despair.”
His words still rang in her ears, days later. Her prince had returned to her, for her, rescuing her again. She was lucky, lucky indeed, that he watched her. Watched over her.
She watched him in the courtyard, standing tall again, with Dedue. Finally, Dimitri was out in the sun when he wasn’t out on campaign where he had no choice. He belonged beneath the sun, with it catching in his hair, which was tied back now and mostly off his handsome face.
“Don’t swoon too hard, Marianne.” Hilda’s teasing voice came from behind her, and Marianne started.
“Hilda!” she admonished, then covered her burning cheeks when Hilda let out a peal of laughter and stepped up beside her. She put her arm around Marianne’s waist, and her head on Marianne’s shoulder, and gave her a one-armed squeeze.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t give you a hard time,” she said. “It’s just that you’re really not subtle. About His Highness, I mean.”
“Oh,” said Marianne.
“But, you don’t have to be.” Hilda giggled and squeezed Marianne in that one-harmed hug again. “Go ask him to share a meal with you or something.”
“I don’t want to bother him…”
Hilda didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything for so long that Marianne finally peeked at her. Hilda looked at her as if she was a very cute but also very slow puppy. “You’re adorable,” she declared. “Anyway, come on.”
And, bold as brass—or, well, bold as Hilda, who was bold indeed in ways that Marianne could never hope to be—she took off across the courtyard towards Dimitri and Dedue while Marianne followed, almost compelled, as if pulled by invisible string.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Hilda said, by way of greeting the two men. They both turned and greeted her politely in return. “Dedue,” she said, when they were done, “I watched you at the axe tournament, and you did this thing at one point, and I was really hoping you’d show me…”
At the stunned silence, Hilda batted her eyelashes up at Dedue, and said, “Please? I think it could really come in handy the next time the Professor picks on me and sends me out after somebody.”
Dedue turned to Dimitri, who shook his head a little with an indulgent smile. “I think, perhaps, this is an opportunity you should not pass up,” he said. “Go on. I’ll be quite all right.”
Hilda grabbed Dedue’s arm in both of hers and dragged him away. He glanced back, just once, and then they were out of sight.
“Marianne,” Dimitri said.
“Dimitri,” she replied.
He offered her his arm. “I seem to suddenly have some spare time,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day. Would you come with me to the market?”
“I’d love to.” She took his arm.
They went past the market, and beyond the monastery, and found themselves in shade of a tree, sitting in the grass. He took off his gauntlets, and she held his hand in both of hers, and wished her magic was enough to heal the scarred flesh.
He turned to her, and stroked her cheek with his free hand, and leaned in and kissed her, for the second time.