Archive of Our Own

It is said, child of Fraldarius, that in your first moons of life, you were quiet. Your keen eyes took in everything around you with fascination once your world consisted of more than light and dark. You loved to be held, by your papa and your mama, the duke and duchess, and by their heir, your brother, Glenn. It is said that your little fingers grasped clothes and hair and hands in a tight grip and refused to let go.

It is said that you met an older boy with a shock of bright red hair, toddling about on sturdy legs; a baby girl with golden hair, born the Moon before you, who was supposed to marry your brother, but you of course were far too young to understand such things; and that you met a golden prince, with the prettiest blue eyes in the world, and you stared at him, quietly, whenever he was in your field of view.

It is said, descendant of Kyphon, that when your mama and the prince’s papa (for the prince had no mama of his own) put you down together on a quilt on the floor—both of you on your plump, well-fed, round bellies—you gazed at each other for an hour or more, cooing and babbling and gurgling a language only the two of you could understand. It is said that the first person you smiled at who was not your mama or your papa or your brother was your prince. And your papa and your mama and the kindly king—because that was, of course, who the prince’s papa was—could not see the ephemeral blue thread tie itself around your small, slightly pudgy left pointer finger; they could not see that it trailed towards your prince, and became teal where it ended, tied around his right pointer finger.

It is said that as you grew, you and the prince were inseparable. That you clung to him, and insisted on sitting with him or holding his hand. That when the prince smiled, you always smiled too, even when you were sad, or felt slighted, or were hurt—if the prince had smiles to share with the world, so did you.

When he left your sight, you wept, because you were lost without him. The redheaded boy and the golden-haired girl were your dearest friends, but you understood that they had families and lives that were apart from yours. It was only the prince’s departures, no matter how long or short, that left you so bereft. Your life was tied to his.

It is said, son of Rodrigue, that you could see the blue and teal thread that to all other eyes was invisible, as far as you knew. You liked to admire it, when you and the prince couldn’t be in each other’s company because he had to live in Fhirdiad and you had to live in Fraldarius. It was a pretty thing, and it was yours. And if you tried hard enough, you could just barely feel his heartbeat when you closed your eyes and concentrated as hard as you could.

It is said, Felix Hugo, that you were promised to your golden prince by the goddess herself, and no one could break that promise.

Except you.

You could see the thread, one end tied around your finger and the other around his, and it would stretch or contract depending on how far away from each other you were. You knew that wasn’t quite the way it was supposed to work, but perhaps you and your golden prince always did everything a little bit differently. After all, you aren’t a lady; you never were, you never could be. You’re not a rough and tumble boy, but nor are you gentle, especially not now—that is a strength you decided not to hone, not after you watched a beast inhabit the flesh of your betrothed. Not after you tried to cut the thread with a tiny pair of scissors stolen from your mother’s embroidery notions—not after the sharp little blades passed through the thread and you watched it turn grey, and you couldn’t feel your prince anymore.

To you, the duke’s only remaining son, that boy was dead and buried and you told yourself, as you refused to weep into your pillow like the lady you weren’t, that you would forget him.

Dredging up the past like that hurts you. You still don’t cry like you used to when you were a child, before you first picked up a sword—after you first picked up a sword—until that day, on a wreck of a battlefield, when you watched the prince who was no longer yours enact terrible violence with a rictus grin. But the past hurts nonetheless, an ache in your chest, in your belly, and your off hand, with its grey thread, dangling uselessly, a destiny severed.

You don’t like to think about it anymore, or the way you severed the thread that bound you to him. But that is a part of you—it is part of the patchwork of you, Duke Fraldarius, as much as your black hair, your amber eyes, your distaste for sweets, your discomfort with eye contact, your sharp tongue and tender but guarded heart; traits superficial and marrow-deep.

You think about it more than you ought, those old hurts. You pick at them like a scabbed knee from falling on cobbles in summertime, though now you’re grown and a duke and you can’t sit and cry as you might have once, with your prince kneeling beside you with worry etched on his most beloved face, tears in his bright blue eyes, too. He was tender then, too; unscarred, unhaunted. Both of you, so young and sweet, as soft as Faerghan children can ever be—a consequence of your most privileged positions, the loftiest of the harsh north’s children. Though there was nothing that could keep you protected from the future, was there?

Sometimes, when your hands aren’t otherwise occupied, you’ll lace your fingers together and discover your thumb rubbing over the skin of your left index finger, right above the knuckle. It’s where a ring could sit, now, if your signet ring didn’t fit best on your right hand. It’s where the ephemeral grey thread lingers, trailing off into nothing, eventually, no matter how close your prince—now your king—sits or stands next to you. When he laughs or smiles, claps you on the shoulder with perhaps a little too much force, you smile too, just like you used to, even though it’s not the same, even if something inside you still aches. It’s fine, you say, smiling and hiding your pain. You can handle it, because you’re a Fraldarius, but every moment spent in his company is a reminder that you you can’t see the end of the thread tied around his finger.

Because you severed it. You told yourself, for a decade, that he did it. That it was the prince, your betrothed, who severed the thread, because he changed—the boy who was your prince died that day. And then he died again, and still, it remained; it didn’t turn black and disappear, the way it was supposed to, when word reached your family’s castle via rider that your prince had been executed for a crime you knew he didn’t commit.

You knew he wasn’t dead, because the thread didn’t turn black and dissolve away, back to wherever such destinies originate. But you also couldn’t find him, because it was broken, which you finally explained to your mother—and only to your mother—years after the fact. You knelt on the floor in front of her and rested your head on her knee. She stroked your hair, and she listened, and you wished you hadn’t cried away all your tears when you were just a boy.

But you found him, after a fashion, after years. And even more years later, you remain ever-faithful, ever-present, at his side, his former betrothed. That promise made so long ago, when you were just your father’s second-born child. Before everything else happened. Before the old man died and the prince became a king.

The king—your king—has not pressed the claim. It was made by two dead men, and now it’s his word that is law, and you are Duke Fraldarius and, within reason, of course, you two can do whatever you damn well please about your own betrothals.

So you have chosen to ignore it. Both of you, carrying on with ruling and decrees and tournaments and balls and official state visits from other queens and kings and the archbishop and policy proposals from Duke Aegir and Count Gloucester and treaties and the endless, endless work of governance.

You always knew uniting a continent wouldn’t be easy, of course, but nothing prepared you for the reality of it all, you say one winter evening before the hearth in the royal parlour, sipping mead, staying warm.

“Pardon?” the king says, dragging his eye from the flickering flames and to your face.

“Governing,” you say, gesturing vaguely with your glass. “It never stops.”

The king chuckles. “You could take a leave of absence,” he says. “Head home, see your mother, your uncle, and cousins. I would grant it to you without hesitation.” He is kind, and to him, this seems a kindness, but then he glances at you, and his eye widens. You’ll never know what it is, exactly, that he sees in your face in that moment, but he smiles gently at you, his head tilted almost boyishly—ridiculous, as you’re both now closer to being thirty than to being twenty—and he says, “It was a simple offer, Felix. You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do, including taking a vacation.”

“Good,” you mutter into your wine glass. “Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

“Dedue does that.”

“Dedue is a happily married man.”

“His wife also keeps an eye on me.”

The king isn’t wrong about that, but the truth of the matter is that everyone keeps an eye on him. He’s the most important man in all of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, after all; it’s your job, collectively, to keep him safe. And you all do.

After everything you have endured, together and apart, you will fight fiercely to protect your king—wherever he may be, however he may be. You know now, even with your broken thread, that you will follow him to the end of the world. To the eternal flames and back. There is nothing—nothing at all—that could keep you from his side.

“Felix?”

You like the way he says your name. There was a time when your king called you “your Grace” and you called him “Your Majesty” for an entire week after his coronation and it was the most dreadful thing imaginable. You broke first and called him by his name, and you saw a fraction of the weight of the world come off his shoulders. He was so relieved in that moment that it was almost heartbreaking.

How simple a thing a name is. How much joy it brought to him—and to you—to call each other by name, after only a week.

“Where have you gone?” the king asks. You blink at him. “You seemed very far away.”

Perhaps you were. You sip your mead. “Not far,” you say. “Never far.”

Winter is your favourite time of year. You are your mother’s “winter baby,” after all. She will never let you forget. Her winter baby, once betrothed to the prince born at the solstice—two sweet children of bitter Faerghan winter.

There is a stillness and a silence that descends on the busy, overwhelming world when it snows at night; the sky above dark and nearly starless, the moon obscured by clouds. You know your king feels the same, which is why you stand together on your balcony, just barely close enough to share body heat, listening to the silence, observing the stillness. You glance up at him when he’s not looking, knowing it’s not particularly fair since you stand on his right and he surely can’t see you. But he’s beautiful, in what light from your suite that illuminates him, especially now that he’s started to wear his hair tied back at the nape. You’re still tempted to reach up and push a few stray strands away from his eye patch; the temptation is so great, in fact, that you clench your fist and place it briefly on the balcony railing before hissing at the cold metal and shoving your hand in your pocket instead.

This close to each other, there would be but a scant few inches of thread binding you to him. There’s not enough light for you to see the remnants of it if you looked for it now, so you don’t bother.

“Are you cold?” asks the king, looking down at you in concern.

“Not particularly,” you reply, which is very much the truth. You are built for the cold, just as he is. Built for this place.

Built for each other, probably. You rub your finger with your thumb, just above the knuckle and imagine you can feel the knot in the thread. You imagine you can will it back into existence, for your king has not yet wed. Will he ever? Or is he content to be—alone is not the correct word, perhaps, because he is always surrounded by people who love him.

Though none of them could ever love him so fiercely or so well as you, could they, Duke Fraldarius?

“Are you?” You ask the question belatedly, looking up at him. He turns fully to you, leaning his elbow on the railing. You tut at him, making him stand upright again. “Your tunic will get wet,” you scold.

Your king laughs at you. You glare and he laughs harder.

“You worry about my clothes more than Dedue does,” he says, and you huff and you grumble. He flings a heavy arm around your shoulders as he turns you both back to the snowy gardens.

You don’t quite mean to lean against him the way you do, but he is very warm. Maybe it’s his crest, or his larger size, or just something that makes him… him.

Before you can think of a rebuttal, your king looks down at you again, this time with a blinding and brilliant smile, and says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

The first time you truly regretted severing the thread was the day of your prince’s coronation. You thought he was resplendent in the blue and white and gold finery prepared for the occasion. A massive fur-lined cloak on his shoulders made him look even bigger than he already was, black leggings visible beneath his white and gold surcoat made his legs look even longer. He bore his gold crown atop his gold head with dignity and grace, and you feared, for just a moment, that you might weep from it all.

People around you spent so long waxing endlessly poetic about beautiful women—professors, songstresses, archbishops, and more—but they never stopped to appreciate how devastating a man’s beauty can be.

Perhaps it’s for the best, for if someone spoke out of turn about your new king’s beauty, you might be honour-bound to duel them to the death for him.

But that night, after the ceremonies and feasts and music and dancing were done, and you were alone in your room, you worried at what remained of the thread. You imagined you could feel it in the callused fingers of your sword hand, imagined it whole again, imagined it healing because your king loved you again—still—and that you could run to him and fling yourself into his arms. You could promise you would make a good husband and consort; that you would be faithful and true; that you had never, not once, entertained the idea that you could ever have someone else, because you were his soulmate, and he was yours.

In the quiet recesses of your heart, you begged for a second chance, cursed when the thread did not repair itself, and, alone in your cold, empty bower, you wept yourself sick for the first time in almost ten years.

Going for “a walk” is not a light undertaking for a king and a duke. There are guards, knights, and/or armsmen to take into account, all eager to keep you under a watchful eye.

So you and your king just don’t tell them.

Like two boys ready to make clandestine mischief, you bundle up against the cold and sneak together through secret passages and servants’ corridors until you enter the gardens through a small, disused door. The moment snow crunches underfoot and your silvery breath mists in the cold air, you, Duke Fraldarius, have to suppress a laugh. The lampposts in the garden give you just enough light to see that your king’s good eye all but sparkles with mirth, and he bites his lip as he looks at you.

And then he dashes away.

You gasp.

Your king is built for quick bursts of speed, with his long, powerful legs, but you have stamina. You’ll catch him soon enough—or, you would, if he didn’t stop suddenly and hunch down behind a wall. You skid to a stop before him, and he presses his finger to his lips.

On the other side of the wall, you hear footsteps, and you nod. You mustn’t be caught, then.

Listening until the footsteps fade, you put one hand on your king’s chest and peer around the wall before nodding to him. Together, you sneak past the guard on patrol to make your way around a fountain and weave between snow-smothered flowerbeds, silent as thieves in the night.

You hide around walls, duck behind snowy hedges, never once getting caught. This perhaps wasn’t what you had in mind when you agreed to go for a nighttime walk in the royal gardens with your most beloved king, but some not insignificant part of you thinks it might be much better.

The second time you regretted severing your bond with your prince—now the king—you were up late together, working out the final details of a trade proposal with Brigid. He was so concerned with fairness, and you were so concerned with him; with his exhaustion, with his shaking hand that made his handwriting increasingly difficult to read, with the clear signs of the headache he was intent on pretending he didn’t have.

He dropped his quill. Deliberately, though it was with anger and frustration as, a moment later, he pressed the thumb of his left hand into the palm of his right and glowered. You sighed at him and got to your feet and went to the locked cabinet that held a variety of potions, tonics, salves, and ointments for your king. You were one of only three people who had a copy of the key. You retrieved one particular salve, perched yourself on his side of the desk, and took his hand. You pulled off his glove, revealing the rough, shiny skin on his palm. He said your name, told you that you didn’t have to, but you did anyway.

He may be the king, but that most certainly does not mean you listen to him. You, Duke Fraldarius, have the privilege of disobedience, under certain circumstances which include for the king’s personal well-being, that the king himself granted you. Others would never dare, unless he was in imminent danger.

You, descendant of Fraldarius—you are the only one who can, will, and does defy him, and on a regular basis at that. Never maliciously, but always with his best interests in mind.

So you disobeyed him then, when he insisted that he was quite fine, thank you. You rubbed the salve, with its warm, earthy scent, into his palm with your thumbs, even as he continued to put in a token of protest, until he finally stopped talking. He sighed, then leaned back in his chair, and watched you with a single, bright, heavy-lidded eye. You continued to massage his hand far longer than was strictly necessary, and when you repeated the process with the other hand for good measure, he eventually leaned his head back, closed his eye—and fell asleep.

You carried your king to bed, and he woke up and muttered and mumbled as you tried to get him changed. He wanted to help, but mostly got in the way. By some miracle, though, he ended up in a nightshirt and in his bed and fast asleep under the covers, which you drew up to his chin.

For several long moments you watched him sleep, and rubbed your left index finger, and saw nothing, nothing at all, that connected you to him, just the tattered, grey thread that trailed beyond the length of your finger.

“Do you remember,” your king says, “when Sylvain told us that this tree is enchanted?” He rests his hand on its trunk, and looks up, up at the towering tree, the wide spread of its branches covered in snow rather than leaves. It will all fall off sometime tomorrow, surely, but for now, it lends it a magical sort of air in the lamplight.

You used to have picnics beneath its canopy—the four of you, and Glenn sometimes when he wasn’t too busy being older, and even your parents would join you, too, if they could convince you that they weren’t intruding. The old king used to take up so much space… the new king would now, too. But there was no one who could ever be anything but small in the shade of this tree, not even those born of the line of kings and queens who were always just a little bit on the unreasonably large side—or, at least, unreasonably large in your estimation.

“I do remember,” you say, gazing at your king. A leaf had fallen off the tree and landed on Ingrid’s shoulder as you sat beneath the tree playing a board game. It had startled her, and to save her from embarrassment, Sylvain had insisted it was good luck, but she needed to make a wish.

Your king tilts his head back, gazing up at the snowy branches. You can’t quite see the gentle smile on his face, but you know it’s there because of the soft and wistful tone of his voice.

You know it’s there because you know him so well.

He stands in profile to you as he gazes up at the branches, and even without full daylight, you love watching him so unguarded like this, the softening of his features, the way it allows you to take in the curve of his brow, the slope of his nose, the plushness of his lower lip, the jut of his chin, no longer quite so pointy with age and growth.

Devastating beauty, this one. In your estimation, at least.

“That summer, when I spotted a fallen leaf,” he says, “I wished to hurry and grow up, so that we could be wed. Years later, one autumn as the leaves fell in earnest, I wished over and over that you would be my soulmate again.”

Your breath catches in your throat, and you put your hand over your chest as you feel a pang of heartsickness, of loss, of long-buried hurts. You say his name. He looks at you, and you know immediately that his smile is sad.

“It is quite all right, Felix. I needed to say it aloud, but you don’t need to respond. In truth, I should not have burdened you so—please, forget I said anything at all.”

Forget anything your king says? “Never,” you say, your voice choked. “I won’t—”

Won’t what? You don’t know what you want or can even say.

He looks down and nods. “Of course. I am sorry. We should head back inside before someone actually notices we’re gone.”

As he tries to step past you, you grab his wrist, your fingers tight. He’s the only one who can handle your strength, descendant of Kyphon, just as you’re the only one who can handle his—the last known descendant of Loog. “Don’t. Don’t walk away from me, Dimitri.”

“I had thought we would return together—”

That isn’t what you meant and he knows it. He meets your eye steadily, and you meet his in return… and then you release him.

He makes it some small handful of yards away before you get him square in the shoulder with a snowball, which breaks apart on impact.

He’s still as a statue for a moment. Two. Then he turns, slowly, and regards you with a solemn expression. “I see,” he says, before stooping to gather an alarming amount of snow in his hands. You don’t stay still long enough to actually see his snowball before it hits you in the thigh, sending you running for cover with a howl of indignation.

The third time you regretted severing your thread was that very morning, over breakfast. Your king has been eating better of late, and that morning he ate his porridge, topped with nuts and dried fruit, with a particular gusto, as if he actually enjoyed it, which he said he did.

You mentioned receiving a package from Garreg Mach, which contained a single children’s book. You passed it across to your king, and watched the beaming smile cross his face at the parable about the friendship between a wolf pup and a lion cub. He met your eyes and the delight you saw on his face would have taken you out at the knees had you not already been sitting.

Goddess save you, Duke Fraldarius: you still love him. You just wish he still loved you, too.

“Do you yield?” you demand from the relative safety of the opposite side of the ‘enchanted’ tree from where your king is, crouched behind a shrub which offers him precisely no protection or coverage.

If either of you moves, it’s anyone’s game—there’s no guarantee which of you will win the bout. You are tied, both of you pelted with an equal number of snowballs (sixteen) (you are very wet and very cold).

“Never,” he calls back.

Stalemate. Of course.

“Call it a draw?” he suggests.

“Never.”

Your king gusts a sigh. “I knew you’d say that.”

You can’t stop yourself from grinning. “You could always yield.”

“I will not.”

“Neither will I.”

“The draw seems the most sensible option.”

“Do I look like a man who cares about being sensible?”

“I couldn’t say,” he says. “I can’t see you.”

You roll your eyes. “Come out from behind there, then.”

“No, thank you, I am covered in quite enough snow.”

A testament to your finely-honed snowball fight skills. You grin again.

“Your Majesty.”

“Oh!” exclaims your king. “Dedue. Flayn. Hello.”

You peek out from around the tree trunk.

“Your Majesty,” Dedue repeats. “Please come inside. Bring Duke Fraldarius with you.” Because Dedue is, well, Dedue, and far too polite for such things, he does not say, “If you must.”

Your king stands upright. You look at the snowball in your hand, then back at him. He brushes his shoulders off. You look at the snowball. You look at your king.

“I do suppose it is getting quite late,” says your king, in his most reasonable tone.

“And cold,” Flayn adds.

You look at the snowball. You do not listen to your better angels. The snowball curves gracefully through the air and lands on your king’s shoulder.

You win.

Huddled in front of the hearth in the king’s parlour, your hands cradled around a mug of tea, you grin. “I won.”

Your king sighs, but he sounds indulgent when he says, “Yes, Felix. You won.”

When you glance over at him, you can see him smiling as he looks into the fire from under his thick blanket. You are both made for the cold, but there are limits, and being covered head to foot in snow is among those limits. But you’re both warm now—perhaps even cozy, not that you would ever deign to use a word like that.

Perish the thought, Duke Fraldarius.

As you watch him watch the fire—he hasn’t yet noticed you staring, since you are sitting on the side with his bad eye—and admire his profile in the light, you think you could live for your king’s smiles as much as for anything else. Certainly nothing foolish like duty or expectations or, goddess forbid, tradition.

Those soft, genuine smiles of his could sustain you for a lifetime or more, if you had multiple lifetimes.

With a soft stifled sigh—nostalgia, longing, heartsickness—you lift your teacup to your mouth, and catch something out of the corner of your eye: blue thread, tied to your finger.

You drop your teacup.

Your king insists on summoning Flayn to make sure you aren’t burned from the teacup-dropping. Your immediate impulse is to argue with him—but you stop at the genuine anxiety etched across his face, and you understand immediately, so you let it go and allow her to look you over.

Which you find to be somewhere on the scale between embarrassing and mortifying, considering you’d dropped the tea on your lap, and Flayn is barefoot and wearing only a nightgown and you have no idea where to look with her husband nearby—and with the way that Dedue has to keep your king calm through it all.

You feel deeply foolish as you walk Flayn and Dedue to the door. And you feel almost as though you’ve done something wrong as you go to your king, who sits slumped in an armchair with his hand over his face. He doesn’t try to stop you from pulling his hand down—his right, with your left, and you see it, you see it, you see it. Blue thread that gives way to teal as it reaches his finger.

He opens his eye, and it meets your gaze for only a moment before sliding away, as he stares at your hands.

“Oh,” says your king.

“Oh,” you agree, because that’s all you can manage.

He looks up at you again, his lips parted, expression entirely unguarded. You realise how often he’s unguarded with you, how patient, how soft.

You step back as he stands, but only enough to give him room. He lifts his hand to your cheek.

“There you are.” His thumb brushes your cheekbone, then he tilts your chin up, like something out of a love story. His lips—a little chapped, but still soft—touch yours with a tenderness he will insist that you deserve. His other arm goes around your back, tucks you close against his body, and you deepen the kiss, demanding more from him. You think perhaps you’re greedy.

He would argue you aren’t greedy enough for his affections, but that will come later, and it is only because he would like for you to demonstrate how easily you match his desire for you.

“I waited for so long, Felix.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, then your forehead, and you know with undeniable certainty you’ve never experienced something so tender and so sweet. “For this. For you. For us.”

Dimitri waited so much longer than you did. You’ve waited for a few years, but he’s waited for over a decade.

“I’m sorry, Dima,” you say softly, wrapping your arms around his waist and resting your head on his shoulder. “I’m a bit stubborn.”

“I know.” He cards his fingers through your hair, which you’ve left unbound since coming back inside. “But I would have you no other way.”