Chapter Text
i. rosemary.
He was seventeen when it first happened, on the night of their return to the monastery from the practical training the students had been sent off to. That was the starting point for everything else, too, but for Felix it marked the beginning of a tortous road he would not be able to turn away from. Nothing as grand and ominous as destiny, which was a concept Felix scoffed at, but something equally forceful.
The three house leaders had disappeared seemingly without a trace in the midst of the chaos that the sightings of bandits had caused. Felix hadn’t paid much mind to where everyone else had been going, much less the boar’s whereabouts, but he might’ve been the first to notice them missing – aside from the boar’s manservant, whose darting eyes betrayed the worry he felt. Felix hadn't said anything; he hadn't needed to.
How foolish, Felix thought. As if the boar could be felled by mere bandits. It was a waste of time worrying about a scenario like that, when other things were far more likely to happen.
Frankly speaking, Felix was thankful for the chance to not have to look at the prince’s face right then. It had been two years since the last time outside the Academy, and the memories of that time still much too fresh and poignant on his mind, like a wound that refused to close.
Dimitri… how bitter it was that the boy he remembered had been replaced by that thing.
As he sharpened his sword in peace, outside the camp the students and the accompanying teachers had set up, he coughed. An inconspicuous sound, nothing unusual with how it came out, but the small blue petals that followed it got his attention as they fell upon one of the hands holding the blade over the whetstone.
The petals were hardly even the size of his pinkie, but the confusion they evoked in Felix was bothersome enough.
Well. As long as it wouldn’t get in the way of his weapon maintenance and training, Felix really didn’t care where those petals came from.
That was his first mistake among the many more he would make.
ii. red & pink anemone.
The boar’s gaze slid over him whenever there was no absolute need to regard him. After their confrontation about the events two years ago, Felix was glad for this, but still his skin prickled with an underlying frustration that he didn’t know the cause for. He still couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and he felt entirely too vindicated whenever the boar’s lips quivered the slightest before settling into a thin line from his aggravating words.
It wasn’t as though Felix took every opportunity to torment him. No, he wasn’t like that – even though the beast deserved no such mercy from him.
(If he was taking out his grief on the shell of the Dimitri he once knew perfectly, well, no one had called him out on it – and no one would.)
Still, Dimitri’s eyes straying from him whenever they so much as threatened to make eye contact also burned holes in Felix, a sensation whose origins he had no clue to how to locate. That hadn’t been what he wanted – what he wanted was –
It was around this time that Felix began coughing out petals again, some weeks after the first incident. Not blue ones, but pink and red and each were coated in his saliva. To someone else, they would have made a rather pretty arrangement, Felix supposed whenever he wiped his hands with a cloth. To him, though, they reminded of faded blood on armour and pretty blushes on pale cheeks from days long gone.
Felix ignored these strange events. Annoying as they were, they hadn’t yet proven out to inconvenience him in any other shape than making it harder to fall asleep at night.
iii. daffodil.
His old man had come to visit the monastery, and Felix did all he could do to be as unavailable and gone from the dormitory as possible. He stayed as far away from the Knights’ Hall, too. The boar tended to hang around there, and so Felix thought his old man would too, under the pretense of caring for Dimitri when all he really was looking at was the ghost of the passed king.
Felix had always hated the way his father looked at Dimitri after the Tragedy – like Dimitri was nothing more than a miniature version of the late king. Perhaps Felix was just mad about the way Rodrigue had spoken of Glenn’s death and he’d begun to look too much into the way the old man interacted with Dimitri. Perhaps that was true. But Felix had never been able to rid himself of the feeling, and seeing the boar and the old man together left a nauseating taste in his mouth even now.
He’d been passing through the entrance hall when he caught a fleeting glimpse of them. He quickly turned around and took the longest possible road to the training grounds, skulking through the first floor of the dormitory and the courtyard beside it. If he’d met with both of them, he probably wouldn’t have been able to avoid sharing a meal with one or both.
And that would have reminded him too much of the old times, which he very pointedly tried to avoid thinking too hard about. He had enough ghosts to battle with, he didn’t need more.
So he found himself at the training grounds, seated at the edge of it rather than going to train by himself as a familiar choked-up feeling tickled his throat. When the coughs came, Felix clamped his palm over his mouth to silence it despite the glaring lack of people around him. The coughing wrecked him and his frame, leaving him breathless and his throat aching, and when he pulled his hand away, he wasn’t surprised to find bright yellow and saliva-coated petals upon his palm.
Daffodils, Felix realized numbly, and he shook his hand to rid himself of them.
”Chivalry,” he muttered, recalling one of the boring and onesided conversations about flower language Sylvain had forced upon him.
The girls really dig a sensitive guy, you know? he’d said, and Felix had been close to smacking him with the hilt of his practice sword back then.
The memory of it only worsened Felix’s mood, and so he gathered himself from the ground and once more wiped his hand onto the fabric of his trousers before sauntering off.
(”It can also mean unrequited love, though… so not a great gift to give a girl you wanna impress after all, huh?”)
iv. wallflower.
Their class had missions just like the other two, and this one took them to deal with bandits en route to the Empire. They usually posed little threat to the students with combat training under their belts, but accidents could still happen.
And happen they did.
Perhaps the professor was more scatterbrained than usual, perhaps the students were, or perhaps the bandits simply were better organized than what the students and the professor had grown accustomed to.
Either way, it all amounted to a big, scattered mess on the foggy battlefield, and Felix didn’t like how it reminded him of the time he’d been fifteen, right by Dimitri’s side and–
A few swings of his sword sliced through the bandits easily enough, once Felix got used to their irregular rhythm of movement. The adrenaline of battle got him going, perhaps recklessly but not as thoughtlessly as some thought, and he held his own just fine even separated from others. Easier to fight without anyone holding him back.
And yet, as the Goddess would have it, Felix stumbled upon the boar’s fight. On foot, because somehow the boar had come down from his high horse in the most literal sense of the phrase, and movements sluggish as he parried off a bandit. Too sluggish, and the boar tripped over his own feet when he’d been forced to back off. The sharp blade of an axe flashed, and Felix’s reflexes took over as he sprinted to deflect the downward swing, heart pounding to the rhythm of his steps–
The axe slipped off the bandit’s hands, the man obviously not having expected anyone to come between him and his prey. Felix’s teeth ground together, and his blade met with the man’s flesh in the next moment, more blood scattering over Felix’s clothes. Nothing unusual, not even in this battle, and Felix kicked the man’s dying body away before he turned his attention to the man he had foolishly rushed to protect amidst the chaos.
The fresh blood running down from the side of Dimitri’s head clued Felix in on what must have happened, and – traitorously – Felix’s heart skipped a worried beat at the sight.
”Fell off from your high horse, did you?” he asked, not as harshly as he intended, as he bent down to Dimitri’s side and pushed his hand over the wound where the blood was trickling down from. Dimitri only stared blankly at him, eyes distant and unseeing, and Felix’s stomach clenched. He pressed his hand over the wound, and this time Dimitri flinched, blinked out of the stupor he’d fallen into.
That’s better, Felix thought, and immediately loathed the sense of relief that flooded into him.
”Felix?” Dimitri’s eyes remained clouded, but at least they regarded him now with some semblance of recognition.
”Looks like a concussion,” Felix muttered, mostly to himself. The blood stuck to his hand when he pulled it away, wet and plentiful, and Felix grimaced as he pulled away from Dimitri and looked down at the bloodied glove. ”What were you doing out here, boar prince? Getting yourself dropped on your head like that.”
”Mercedes,” Dimitri muttered, wincing as he touched the side of his head where the wound was. ”Two of them surprised her, and...” Dimitri glanced away, pursing his lips thin. ”My horse got spooked.”
Felix's lips pursed together tighter in dismay.
”You’re going to get yourself killed like this,” he said. ”What good will that do? Protecting someone and then dying.”
”Perhaps that would be the point of it,” Dimitri murmured, eyes glazed over and voice low like the words weren’t meant for Felix to catch.
Felix’s chest constricted as he finally sheathed his sword, even if it was only so he could grab Dimitri by the chest of his clothes. Around them, sounds of battle went on, but Felix cared not as he stared hard at his once-friend’s face. ”I hate that stupid knightly code of yours,” he said, spiteful and desperate at the same time, ”and I won’t let you pull that stunt on me or anyone else that needs you around for the Kingdom’s future. Got it?”
Dimitri blinked owlishly at him, and anyone else would have found it cute but Felix. Slowly, Dimitri’s lips stretched into a smile. ”Did you just imply you need me as well, Felix?”
”What – no, I did not!”
The boar’s eyes squinted with dizzied mirth. ”Perhaps I misheard, then.”
”You have a concussion,” Felix said, crossing his arms over his chest and pounding heart. He gave up, and looked away into the fog. He really shouldn’t have allowed himself get distracted. ”Definitely not in your right mind.”
In the end, when the battles ended and the fog cleared out, Felix couldn’t say for sure who those words had been directed to.
As Mercedes treated to the boar’s wound, Felix hid himself and coughed up a myriad of petals, all from the same flower but of different colours. Red, yellow, orange – the petals formed a wet colour scheme of a sunset on the palm he coughed them into, and Felix grimaced as he hastily wiped his gloved hand clean.
He didn’t need two mysteries bothering him. He really didn’t.
v. lavender.
Because the students were mostly noble teenagers, it was only natural that gossip and rumours ran around like an untamed horse across the plains. As much as Felix tried to avoid the worst gossipers, he couldn’t avoid all the rumours. After all, one of the nosy people happened to be his, urgh, childhood friend. Who also happened to find some masochistic enjoyment from talking to him.
”There’s this disease that’s been going around for the past few months,” Sylvain explained to him as Felix was trying to get his usual practice in after the worst student rush at the training grounds had eased.
”I don’t need to hear what you do with the girls you take out to town,” Felix grumbled, a sour taste on his tongue just at the thought of where Sylvain might be going with this. He focused his thoughts into picturing shoving a wooden sword into the other’s side, and that eased his irriation off. A little.
”Not that kind of disease!” Sylvain sounded absolutely affronted by the suggestion, and Felix’s lips curled upwards despite himself. Sylvain sighed, before his voice returned to the casual, conversational tone from before. ”I meant… people have been getting sick around the continent, you know? They spit out flower petals. Isn’t it weird?”
Felix nearly stopped mid-thrust. ”What?”
”Got your attention, did I?” Sylvain said, and when Felix turned to look at him, he had that infuriatingly familiar grin on his face, hands raised to the back of his head. ”No one really gets it, but girls are all over it, you know. Some sort of lovesickness, they call it.”
”What, just because people spit out flowers?” Felix snorted. ”How silly.”
”Well, flowers and love go hand-in-hand,” Sylvain said, sounding patient and smug as though he were talking to a little child. ”It’s as worthwhile a theory as any, isn’t it?”
”As worthwhile as listening to you is,” Felix muttered as he went back to mindlessly practicing on the dummy in front of him. If what Sylvain said lingered on his mind afterwards, like an itch he couldn’t scratch off, no one else had to know about it.
The lavender petals that he spat into his palm right before bed and after crossing paths with the boar prince in the dormitory hallway didn’t mean a damn thing.
vi. yellow hyacinth.
”As much as I consider the person I called a friend dead,” Felix said at the dinner after the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, ”I will admit you did lead us well out there.”
”You do have a way of starting a conversation over dinner, Felix,” Dimitri said, his lip curled into a hint of a smile. ”A compliment, even.”
”Don’t get used to it.”
”I wouldn’t dream of it.” Dimitri glanced at him, a question in his eyes, before turning back to moving food on his plate without eating it.
From this perspective, Felix supposed one would find the boar handsome, especially if one wasn’t privy to his true nature. As overly stylized as his hair was, he managed to carry a natural, naive charm that would endear him to many people.
Too bad Felix knew better than to accept that facade.
(Even so… perhaps there was a part of him that…)
”I forgot,” Dimitri piped up as Felix had returned to his own meal, ”to thank you for the last time.”
Felix’s hand paused midway of pushing the spoon past his lips. Over the loud celebrations across the dining hall, his much too loud voice went unnoticed. ”What are you on about?”
”The time with the bandits,” Dimitri clarified, the sincerity in his eyes painful to look at so Felix opted to stared down at his meal instead, ”when I fell off my horse.”
I don’t want you to actually die, Felix thought, but saying those words out loud… would be far too much honesty than what he could possibly handle. So, instead, he said, ”And you keep making me regret it.”
Leaving certain emotions without confrontation was so much easier than dealing with them. But, in the end, they only kept piling up in the corners of Felix’s mind, abandoned and pushed aside until the day would come when they’d overwhelm him.
But today wasn’t that day.
”Even so,” Dimitri said, clearing his throat as if he were about to say something embarrassing, ”thank you. For… what you said then, too.”
It had been a couple weeks since then, so it took a moment before Felix realized what Dimitri referred to. When he did, his face twisted into a scowl. ”I only stated the obvious, nothing more.”
”Well, it wasn’t so obvious to me,” Dimitri insisted, brows furrowed subtly as he looked down at his untouched meal. ”Somehow, I...”
Before the boar could finish whatever it was he had intended to say – though Felix had an idea where he’d been going with his words – Claude had already come up and landed his hand on Dimitri’s shoulder. Felix definitely didn’t pay mind to the casual touch Dimitri’s shoulders relaxed at after the initial surprise.
”Your Princeliness,” Claude said, and Felix saw him bend over Dimitri’s other shoulder. Something about the cheer in his voice rubbed Felix the wrong way, in a similar manner as Sylvain’s. ”How long do you intend to keep the princess and I waiting, hm? You didn’t forget the tradition of the house leaders sharing a meal together, did you?”
Dimitri, to his credit, didn’t seem too startled by Claude’s sudden appearance out of nowhere. ”No, I...” Dimitri hesitated, and his eyes met with Felix’s unimpressed stare. Dimitri pursed his lips before looking up over his shoulder. ”I’ll be right there. My apologies for making you two wait up on me.”
”We’ll be waiting, Your Highness.”
Felix caught the wink Claude sent Dimitri’s way, but didn’t have much time to ruminate over it. Just as suddenly as he had appeared, Claude vanished, leaving behind an oddly solemn Dimitri and just as oddly annoyed Felix, whose hand gripped his spoon much harder.
”I’m,” Dimitri struggled to say, and Felix glanced just at the right time to see Dimitri’s hand rub at the back of his neck, as if embarrassed by something.
Frankly, Felix had no idea what he was trying to say this time, but it didn’t matter either way. So he sighed and eased his grip on the spoon. ”If you were supposed to be elsewhere,” he said, bitterness in his mouth, ”don’t waste your time on me, boar. Save us both the time and effort.”
Dimitri studied him for several seconds, brows subtly furrowed as he obviously tried to interpret Felix’s behaviour into a language he could comprehend. Apparently failing, Dimitri’s shoulders sunk with his sigh. ”I… I will see you later, Felix?”
The question in his voice made Felix grimace. ”If you don’t go blind before tomorrow.”
Dimitri’s laugh was short, forced, and so polite Felix wanted to strangle him. ”I should hope not,” he said. ”I would miss your face, Felix.”
And with that, the boar prince picked up the tray of food and left the table and Felix behind, one considerably more confused than the other.
How was he supposed to take that?
The narrow yellow petals Felix coughed into his hands some time later didn’t offer any answers, either, only more mysteries.
Lovesickness, Sylvain had called it.
Ha, Felix was tempted to snort. In what universe?
vii. azalea.
Remire village as an experience had been anything but pleasant, and the aftermath even less so. Everyone was coughing from the smoke, and Felix would have found it relieving to be coughing for a different reason than usual, had it not been for the petals that descended down to his palms each time he uncovered his mouth.
Asides from the horrible violence the villagers had been driven to – and that was disturbing to watch as it made even Felix nauseous – the major issue lay with the people experimenting on them.
And… the boar prince’s fraying stability.
Felix couldn’t help watching him from some distance, even as he still coughed up both slime and petals with a strange clawing pain creeping up his lungs. From where he was, he saw Dimitri’s agitated, twitching movements clearly as he ran a hand through his hair, occasionally tugging at the blond strands out of whatever feeling it was that had possessed him.
Even the boar’s ever present manservant wasn’t having much luck with him, as Dimitri kept shooing him away with nervous gestures.
Honestly, it reminded Felix of –
Felix’s train of thought got broken off by another coughing fit, and this time it had him bending his back and leaning over his knees as he crouched in a meek attempt at alleviating the wave of nausea and dizziness. A feeling scratched through his lungs until Felix was sure he was going to pass out – until it vanished as soon as it had come, leaving him breathless and heaving over his own knees. Pathetic, he thought, but not as pathetic as him.
He could fool himself just a little longer.
When he later that night slipped into Dimitri’s room, Felix wasn’t exactly thinking. He only knew Dimitri had been pacing around again after a dream, and considering the day’s events, it must have been exceptionally bad. Only the screams had travelled into Felix’s room, but he knew him well enough to guess what the boar was up to. He’d seen enough at the village.
(Sylvain always slept like someone had given him sedatives in his food – otherwise Felix suspected he might have been aware of Dimitri’s reoccurring nightmares that kept waking the prince up. At least that was when Sylvain wasn't sneaking out to the local town outside the monastery.)
They used to sneak into each others’ rooms all the time when they were younger, and a handful of times after they both lost too many important people in Duscur. If anyone were to ask why Felix was doing it now, he could call it an old habit and he wouldn’t be exactly lying about it.
The dormitory rooms didn’t have locks – academy policy, though certain students broke it in their desperate need for privacy – which made sneaking into Dimitri’s room all the more easier, as if it being right next to Felix’s didn’t already make it easy enough. In any case, Felix only had to take a few steps from his own door to reach and open Dimitri’s before slipping inside without much of a fuss.
A single oil lamp on the nightstand gave just enough light for Felix to see every detail on that face when Dimitri’s pacing stopped and he turned to look at Felix in bewilderment, the haunted look in those eyes accompanied by dark circles. Felix’s eyes strayed to the mess Dimitri had made of his hair, which usually was combed and brushed back neatly asides from the bangs, before settling back on the pallid face of his once-friend. Still, the mess of his hair wasn't anything compared to the mess of the room: the floor was covered in both feathers and a destroyed pillowcase, along with shards of glass. Felix ignored them for now, only doing the minimal to avoid the glass.
”Well, you’re a mess,” Felix said and swallowed down the feeling that he had seen Dimitri exactly like this before. It hadn’t been pleasant then, it wasn’t pleasant now – even though both of them were so very different now compared to back in those days. Felix swallowd again to rid himself of the lump in his throat, agitated energy in his veins as Dimitri stared at him.
”Felix,” Dimitri said, voice strangled an uneven. ”What are you… why...”
”The walls aren’t exactly thick enough, boar,” Felix said, forcing boredom into his voice even though his muscles tensed as if readying themselves for an upcoming battle. His voice contained enough sneer to make Dimitri wince again, as though he’d received a physical blow. Good, Felix thought, ignoring the twisting in his chest.
If possible, Dimitri’s face paled further, and he began fidgeting with his hands unsurely. Something cracked, and Felix was quite sure the sound came from Dimitri’s joints. The boar prince himself didn’t seem to notice – how fitting of a brute, Felix mused as he crossed the distance between them with quick, short steps.
If he were honest, he hadn’t thought about what he was going to do about the boar until now when a stupid impulse took over him upon seeing the state Dimitri was in. Maybe, somewhere deep inside himself, Felix was still just that stupid kid that had clung to Dimitri’s company like a damned leech. Maybe, a part of him still–
Felix silenced that part of himself as he shoved Dimitri back down onto his bed. The prince fell unceremoniously, breath knocked right out of him, but his hands instinctively reached to grab Felix down with him. His fingers curled into Felix’s shoulder, probably hard enough to leave a bruise later, but Felix paid little attention to that as he splayed his own palms down on Dimitri’s chest and leaned down.
He wasn’t completely out of his mind, however. He hovered over the boar for a fraction of a minute, lips pursed as he wondered how to articulate the feeling on his mind. It turned out he didn’t have to, as Dimitri blinked up at him, eyes dazed but more aware, and murmured, ”You didn’t use to hesitate.”
”That was before,” Felix said, an ugly sneer in his voice that reflected the stabbing feeling in his heart, ”when Dimitri was still alive.”
Still, he took the invitation, if only so he wouldn’t have to look at the deep pain that crossed the familiar face beneath his own. Pain that was only partially caused by Felix’s words.
His lips pressed down against Dimitri’s hard and unforgivingly, much differently from the gentle and tentative kisses they’d exchanged as children after Sylvain had foolishly gone on about the act like it was a world-shattering experience. It hadn’t been: sure, Felix recalled a fluttery sensation and Dimitri giggling in the darkness they shared, but nothing had fundamentally changed.
Kissing him now – very different. Where he had once been soft, Felix was rougher, unkind with the way he angled his mouth over the other’s. His fingers curled into the chest of Dimitri’s shirt, nails digging in and pressing against the boar’s subtly quivering body.
”Felix,” Dimitri murmured, strangled like he was a drowning man desperate for a lifeline, for anything to hold onto. The sound of his name sent a shiver down Felix’s spine – one of disgust at what he was doing, he decided and discarded it from his mind along with the much too complicated thoughts he’d been having recently.
Felix bit down on Dimitri’s lower lip, demanding the boar’s attention – which he indeed got, if Dimitri’s hand moving up into his hair from his shoulder was any indication. The hand shook as fingers pressed against Felix’s scalp, right beneath the hairtie that kept the messily arranged bun together. Felix sighed against the boar prince’s mouth, despite himself, and something not quite foreign constricted within him.
”Get a grip,” he muttered as he pulled away and opened his eyes to glare down at the flushed yet still oddly pallid face beneath his. Dimitri’s eyelids fluttered until slivers of blue met Felix’s eyes, dazed but attentive as the prince trembled beneath Felix. From what was significantly harder to tell now. Felix’ fingers pressed down on the broad’s chest, curling before Felix continued in a harsh whisper, eyes locked with Dimitri’s, ”What good are you to anyone if you can’t keep yourself in line?”
Dimitri blinked up at him and Felix very much did not watch him lick at his upper lip as he took his time absorbing Felix’s words. Beneath his fingers, Dimitri’s heart beat, fast and uneven. Something sharp tingled in Felix’s lungs as he took in another breath.
”I don’t care about you,” Felix said, though the words sounded much too forced for his own liking, ”but people have a need for you. In Faerghus. Here, even.”
”Here,” Dimitri repeated dully, his voice breathless and choked up but eyes more vibrant than before. More aware of himself. The tightness in Felix’s chest refused to unwind, however.
”Blue Lions,” Felix said. ”You’re their…” A grimace spread over his face as he amended, ”...our leader.” As if to emphasize those words, but without giving the boar time to mock him for them, Felix leaned in for another kiss, just slightly less demanding than earlier. Dimitri’s fingers ran through his hair in response, tugging the hairtie off in the process, but Felix minded it very little as Dimitri’s breath stuttered against his mouth, and the heartbeat under Felix’s palm raced like the horses Dimitri had been riding since he first learnt how.
Dimitri’s mouth pushed up against his, clumsy as ever with things more delicate then battle, and their noses bumped awkwardly until Felix tilted his head for a different angle, sucking in breath through his nose. He bit down, and the sound the man beneath him gave sent shudders through his spine, something too close to–
”Felix,” Dimitri said, fingers cradling the back of Felix’s head carefully, so very carefully, and something nasty scratched at Felix’s lungs again, something threatening to rise up his throat.
”That’s more like it,” Felix breathed, and this time it was Dimitri that brought their lips together hastily, with inexperience and desperation for distraction. Felix sank into the kiss, didn’t think of the much nicer ones their kid selves had exhanged in the dark out of stupid curiosity, and moved his hands to grip Dimitri’s waist.
There it was, the tingling sensation in his chest that always preceded–
Felix pulled his face away from Dimitri’s just in time before the first cough shuddered through him. He’d have rolled completely away if Dimitri’s hands weren’t effectively keeping him on top of the other, but as it was, he could only shift so his forehead landed on Dimitri’s shoulder instead of his face. He coughed hard, each second of it feeling like entire years, but nothing wet came up from his throat even as the scratching sensation crawled upwards, as if thorns were stuck in his windpipe.
He heard Dimitri’s voice, urgent and alert, calling his name, and it only made the feeling worse, something metallic rising to his tongue that Felix made the effort to swallow down just as Dimitri turned him on his back and effectively switched their positions from before. Felix had his eyes screwed shut, even as the coughing subsided and left only a trace of iron in his mouth. Felix exhaled. Inhaled. No petals stuck in his throat or mouth.
”Felix,” Dimitri insisted, his hand pointedly careful as it cupped the side of Felix’s neck. Despite himself, Felix flinched at the touch, at the awareness that a careless move on Dimitri’s part would snap his– ”Are you alright?”
Felix pushed the hand away from his neck and the weight of Dimitri’s body off him. ”Just fine,” he grumbled, disgusted with the out-of-breath quality his voice took. You seem better, he almost said before catching himself. He flicked his now half-lidded gaze away from Dimitri, that strange strangled feeling in his chest making its home there. Felix brought a hand to Dimitri’s shoulder and pushed weakly, embarrassingly so. ”Get off of me.”
”Ah – of course. Of course.” He sounded hoarse, from bad sleep and from… just now, but better than what Felix had heard earlier, when the other had woken so violently from a dream that even Felix had been stirred.
Not that Felix had been in deep slumber to begin with.
”Good,” he muttered when Dimitri pulled away and stood up, and Felix very much ignored the physical urge to reach for the other again. A meaningless impulse – that was all it was. Still, Felix’s face burned as he pushed himself up much more shakily than he’d ever admit to anyone, and his gaze slipped past Dimitri towards the door.
”Are you sure you’re–”
”I’m fine,” Felix said. If the boar was inquiring after his wellbeing, he was more himself now, which was Felix’s goal with this. Not the same Dimitri as before, but the one that everyone else was used to. He’d settle for that. In time, the ache in his chest would dissipate, too. ”Go to sleep. You look pathetic like that.”
He didn’t turn to look at Dimitri’s face, but he didn’t really need to as Dimitri’s smile – a little forced as it always was these days – was audible in his voice. ”Thank you, Felix. Good night.”
Felix only made a vague noise in response, not bothering with the niceties. It was only after he had slipped out of the door that he realized two things: 1) his hair was untied, hanging freely down and 2) he was now faced with a very perplexed-looking Sylvain. One of these was slightly more mortifying than the other.
Unfortunately, Sylvain couldn’t pass up the opportunity to speak once he rediscovered his ability for it.
”Oh, well, look at what the cat dragged out,” he said, and under the dim light the oil lamps cast along the walls Felix saw the grin that pulled Sylvain’s lips upwards. Felix had barely any time to prepare for his nonsense when he already went on, ”A late-night visit to His Highness’ room, huh? Now that’s a surprise, even though... I mean, there were rumours...”
”What rumours?” Felix asked before he could stop himself. Then, grimacing, he retorted, ”Actually, never mind. Anything from your mouth is as good as useless right now.”
The brush of his hair against his own shoulders felt condemning, and Felix tossed it back with an angry roll of his head. Sylvain’s eyes crinkled just so, and Felix’s stomach dropped all the way to his knees.
”I mean,” Sylvain said, voice drawling in the exact way that made Felix despise him, ”you know how young boys like bullying the one they’re infatuated with...”
If it weren’t for the fact that the boar was trying to get some much needed sleep behind the door Felix had just closed, he might’ve screamed. Instead, he only grimaced and gave Sylvain one of his darkest looks, which didn’t deter the other much after their too many years of friendship.
”Go to sleep, Sylvain,” Felix said over the bitter sensation tingling in his throat, the same one he had experienced only a moment ago as he had lain over the boar prince. ”Before I fetch the sword I got in my room.”
”Man, you must be crushing on everyone if you treat all of us all like this,” Sylvain mumbled, but in the silence in the hallway Felix couldn’t miss the words even if he had tried.
The cough came out before Felix could hold it in, after he had already turned his back on Sylvain. This time, it was harder, accompanied by a feeling of something settling into his lungs and filling them, and Felix staggered until he had to put his hand against the wall between his and Dimitri’s doors.
The stone was cold under his sweaty palm, but the taste of blood in his mouth drew in all of Felix’s attention even as Sylvain came to rub at his back and whisper you okay there, Felix, which really was a stupid question at this point.
”I’m… fine,” Felix managed to hiss after swallowing back the awful taste. Slowly, he pushed himself back up and wiped his hand on his nightshirt. ”Good night, Sylvain.”
If his voice sounded garbled and choked, Sylvain had the decency to not comment on it as Felix slammed the door shut behind him, face and chest both burning and aching as though he were suffocating still.
Another cough, and a puff of fragile, spit-coated petals sputtered out. Dots of darker red touched them, but wiping his hands and blowing off the candlelight removed them from both his sight and mind.
This has to be some sort of sick joke by the Goddess herself, Felix thought as he lay down in his bed and again realized he’d left his hair tie with Dimitri.
Like so many other things, Felix resigned himself to never getting it back.
viii. viscaria.
A ball at a time like this seemed nothing but an awful attempt at luring the students into a false sense of security, in Felix’s mind. How foolish on the archbishop’s part. Still, nothing could stop the festive mood from spreading around like the disease it was. Similarly, Felix’s own brand of ill worsened notably over the weeks preceding the ball.
If his lungs constricted particularly hard whenever someone invited the boar to the roof of the monastery – an infamous spot for love confessions – it was simply a coincidence. An inconvenient, annoying coincidence.
Sylvain hadn’t bothered him much about The Incident, as Sylvain had dubbed it the few times they had discussed it. He did keep a closer eye on him, which – in his self-made isolation – Felix noticed and bristled at whenever Sylvain tried to get too close.
He was a well-meaning fool, but a fool nevertheless. At the very least, Felix conceded, he hadn’t uttered a word about it to Ingrid, who otherwise would be another constant presence around him. The boar had the sense to not bother him, though he too gave Felix wary glances whenever he did something as innocuous as clear his throat.
The thinly veiled concern, Felix decided, was still better than the glazed-eyed look Dimitri had worn after the village incident. It had reminded him – two years ago, what had happened, it hadn’t been just a bad dream nor a hallucination.
Felix couldn’t and shouldn’t forget. The Dimitri that was now was a mere shadow of what once was.
And yet…
Watching from the sidelines didn’t remove the sickly taste of blood and flowers from his mouth nor the scratching of something thorny in his chest.
Watching away didn’t do it either.
But why would it – if Felix was right in convincing himself that the boar and the coughing were unrelated.
He could do nothing but refocus on his training and ignore all else.
It wasn’t avoidance, not really. Or so he told himself.
The professor was – to put it mildly – an oddly willful person despite their seeming lack of emotion, and persuasive on top of that. Or perhaps manipulative was the better word for it, Felix mused as he scoffed at the suffocating cheer around him. After all, they had got him to participate in this charade, and that itself spoke volumes of whatever peculiar brand of charisma they possessed.
Each moment that dragged on made Felix regret coming more, though. The mild alcohol could only numb his aversion to people so much, and it certainly didn’t lessen the wary glances his classmates sent his way. The classical music grated on his ears, made him think of too many events he’d been forced to attend to as a child either at the royal palace in Fhirdiad or at Fraldarius estate. Felix remembered the small hand he used to hold onto, the one that made the masses of people much less agitating, and picked up his glass once more.
This was going to be a long night, he mused as he caught a glimpse of Dimitri and the other house leaders being pulled to the dancefloor. A very long one, he amended when Dimitri’s gaze caught his and, for one moment, a look of utter misery that reflected Felix’s own crossed that face.
Dimitri had once enjoyed dancing.
Why he didn’t anymore – well, that was one of the few things Felix didn’t know about the prince.
For some reason, it bothered him, and so he resolutely turned his eyes away from the boar and the others as the music changed for a new dance.
The ache in his chest didn’t conjure up petals in his mouth this time, but Felix would almost have preferred the distraction.
He couldn’t avoid dancing forever, for it was the professor themself that came to fetch him from his corner, their face contorted just enough for the illusion of a smile to appear on their lips. Felix would have thought the professor was mocking him if he believed them to be capable of such – they were nothing if not painfully straightforward in a strangely passive sort of way.
They were a human of contradictions, and Felix had enough conflicts in his life.
”Care for a dance?” they asked, but they were already holding out their hand. Felix scowled but complied just to be able to say he had danced with someone that night.
”No,” Felix said, ”but it doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.”
Besides, this way, he could finally stop being annoyed at Sylvain flirting with whoever crossed his path and seeing Dimitri be invited for a dance again and again. Both were bad enough on their own, but the combination of those two only made Felix moodier.
So.
A distraction was welcome, even if it was in the form of the professor’s much too cold hand guiding him to the center of the dancefloor.
As it turned out, however, that wasn’t as much a distraction as Felix had hoped, as he could see Claude dragging the boar back to the dancefloor with him just when Dimitri had begun to retreat from the others requesting his time. The professor was short – short enough for Felix’s eyes to easily glance over their head at the peculiar pair.
The boar looked like he was supposed to be the one leading, and yet it appeared as though he was the one being led by Claude’s movements. Even from Felix’s position, he could see Dimitri’s composure break as his partner said something, and some flustered nonsense seemed to escape the boar as Claude’s mischievous laughter rang loud and true over the music.
Felix’s attention slipped back to his hold on the professor’s waist and hand, and he saw them watching him silently. Judgmentally, he thought, and it made his face burn with a myriad of feelings he preferred to not dissect. Ever.
”For someone that plays aloof as hard as you do,” they said, voice void of emotion, ”you like paying attention to those around you.”
”To find good sparring partners,” Felix bit out, ”I have to.”
If a part of him wanted to lash out at the piercing stare the professor gave him, that didn’t have anything to do with how correct or wrong their statement was. The crowd that surrounded them piqued Felix’s annoyance, twisted it into a tight knot that swelled in his stomach as his skin prickled from too many stares, the distant sound of Dimitri and Claude’s voices drilling into him like a persistent bee’s buzzing.
”If you say so,” the professor said, apparently settling for Felix’s answer.
At least one of them did.
The Goddess Tower was blissfully empty of people, and Felix found himself able to breathe again, although not all of the tension formed throughout the ball left him. But that was alright. No one was around to press his buttons further, not even Sylvain, who was impossibly difficult to get rid of at times.
Especially since The Incident. At the very lesst Sylvain hadn’t told anyone else about it, not even Ingrid, who would have his head for… one reason or another.
The fresh air around the Tower settled Felix’s nerves, as did the silence that was only broken by distant sounds of merriment. Finally able to breathe, the remaining tension slipped away, and Felix wandered around aimlessly.
Of course, such peace couldn’t last – not for him.
The steps that approached him from behind thumped hard against the stone of the Tower’s floor. The rhythm and weight of them was so familiar that Felix grimaced even before a familiar voice called out, ”Felix. I should have known you would grow weary of the festivities.”
Felix conemplated returning to the entrance hall turned to dance hall, but his feet remained stiffly where they were as Dimitri came to stand beside him, far enough for his presence to fade to the background.
As if Felix had ever been able to ignore Dimitri, even though he had tried hard enough this year and the past two.
Still, he didn’t turn to look at the friend he’d once solemnly sworn his life to in the way only kids did in their lack of foresight. ”I danced. I did my part.”
Dimitri’s laugh sounded distant, polite, and it made Felix’s teeth grind together. ”I’m not here to admonish you, Felix. It seems we had the same thought in mind, this time.”
”How wonderful,” he said, sarcasm dripping into his voice like venom.
”Some things don’t change, do they?” Dimitri continued gently, and something in his voice got Felix’s attention. A strange undertone of uncertainty, perhaps from speaking with Felix like this for the first time since The Incident. ”Even though so many others do...”
”Life’s like that,” Felix said, and pushed the memory from over two years ago out of his mind. His lips curled, his distaste towards himself ever bitter. ”People you thought you knew turn out to be something else entirely.”
Monsters, he thought, and the tension came back, or something else entirely.
”Yes,” Dimitri agreed, his voice closer now. The uncertainty in it now contained painful nostalgia that was difficult to listen to. ”I know people like that, as well.”
Felix glanced to the side Dimitri was at. Even though it was getting dark, the oil lamps kept the area lit enough to offer visibility. The light bounced off Dimitri’s blond hair, the bangs a hot mess as usual. His eyes didn’t turn to Felix’s direction – instead, they looked off into the distance, somewhere Felix couldn’t see.
It was the same as it always had been since the Tragedy.
”I thought you used to like dancing,” Felix said instead of anything that truly needed addressing. The same frustrating tango they’d been stuck in for years now. The helplessness of it annoyed Felix just as much as everything else. ”Even if you were horrible at it.”
Dimitri’s gaze turned towards him then, lukewarm surprise colouring his features. ”I’m surprised you remember,” he said. ”That was… a very long time ago.”
Felix could still recall a much younger Dimitri’s hand squeezing his much too hard in his eagerness to lead – he hadn’t minded it, had only laughed and snorted when Dimitri realized his mistake. The bruises had been worth that look of excitement on Dimitri’s face back then.
(Now, though, there only ever were bruises and coughed-up petals from scarred lungs.)
”I used to care about you,” Felix said, chest tight at the admission. It made him look away, a huffed breath escaping him as he crossed his arms. The sudden chill in the air was to blame, he tried to convince himself. ”I remember many things I wish I’d forget.”
”Used to,” Dimitri parroted him, but he didn’t touch the subject further and let silence fall between them once more, not unlike an uncomfortable blanket of ice. That lasted full five minutes before Dimitri spoke again, with a painfully nostalgic tone, ”You’re correct. I used to enjoy it quite a lot. When it wasn’t… stiff like this. When it was just a pair of kids stumbling around and over their legs… or, I suppose I should say, one of them stumbling and the other… not so much.”
Felix kept his mouth firmly shut and arms close to his chest, hands stuffed beneath his arms to keep himself warm. Let the boar talk himself into exhaustion if he so wished.
”Now,” Dimitri said, ”it seems this is all there is to it. Etiquette. People not quite meeting each other’s eyes. It is all so...” A vague sound left the boar prince, and even without looking Felix was sure he knew what gesture the other was making with his hands.
”It reminds me,” Dimitri continued, solemnly as ever, ”of the growing distance between myself and another person.” A short pause, an inhale. ”Well… at least, tonight does.”
Don’t pretend to be so heartbroken about it, Felix thought bitterly, but he wasn’t sure who the thought was directed to. His throat tickled. Felix swallowed in a feeble attempt at dissolving the feeling.
”I wish,” Dimitri continued, quieter but with more feeling, ”I found a way to close that rift. But it is not easy. Not when that person has already drifted so far. Even so, I wish for at least one dance with them, for the sake of memories that are so precious to me.” Felix’s eyes turned to his side again, as if pulled by an invisible force. With a finger pressed to his chin and eyes gazing downward at his feet, Dimitri looked… small, almost, despite being taller and wider than Felix.
”I couldn’t even bring myself to ask for a dance tonight,” Dimitri murmured, gauntlet-covered finger rubbing at his chin incessantly. ”It is quite pathetic, isn’t it, Felix?”
Pathetic, Felix thought, yes.
But it wasn’t Dimitri that was the pathetic one here, not tonight.
Felix unfolded his arms from his chest and reached his hand out all the while a stubborn frown remained on his face as he waited for Dimitri’s attention to slide back to him. From a distance, cheerful and snobbish dance music echoed.
When Dimitri’s eyes returned to him and his hand, the back of Felix’s throat tingled and tickled, a horrible feeling drumming in his chest like an echo of the past.
The wide-eyed surprise soon changed into something else as Dimitri’s hand descended over the held-up palm, the other going to Felix’s waist as Felix pressed a hand to Dimitri’s much too wide shoulder.
You used to be shorter, he thought. I used to feel better looking at you.
”Say anything,” he muttered into the space between them, ”and I’ll kill you, boar.”
”I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dimitri said with a short, breathy laugh as he adjusted his grip around Felix’s hand. A thorn-like sensation prickled inside Felix’s chest until he looked away from that face just as their feet began moving to the distant music.
”Gauntlets, really,” Felix said just to break the icy tension in himself. And to ignore the way Dimitri’s gaze slid just slightly to the side, away from Felix’s face. ”Your dance partners must’ve been overjoyed.”
Dimitri’s mouth pursed minutely at his remark, and Felix really ought to stop paying attention to details like that if he wanted to retain his sanity by the end of the school year. Maybe it was a deep-seated masochism that kept him there with Dimitri. Hard to tell. Felix didn’t quite understand himself as well as he pretended to.
”You know how my hands are,” Dimitri said, even quieter than the distant music. ”Not many people like seeing them, not to mention holding them.”
”Do the scars bother them that much?” The question came out before Felix could stop himself, and a grimace twisted his face as a result of trying to reel it back in too late. The rapidly cooling air around the Goddes Tower sent another chill through him, and he wished he had taken something warmer with him.
A memory: a nine-year-old Dimitri breaking a drinking glass when Sylvain barged into the dining hall unannounced, startling the prince, and Dimitri trying to hold in a howl as shards of glass bit into his palm.
Memory #2: two months younger Felix holding sobbing Dimitri’s hand and trying to pick out the glass shards before a more competent and qualified person – that being the head maid of the Fraldarius household – came along.
Rinse and repeat. Felix wondered how many times it’d happened over the past two years before he tossed the useless thought aside. How scarred those hands were now, and not just from breaking glasses and training lances again and again–
Felix’s stomach twisted with an ill feeling.
”Yes,” Dimitri said, very far away from him despite his body being so close to Felix’s. His steps were a bit too long for Felix to match, and they both stumbled. Dimitri’s grip on Felix’s hand tightened, but it was his heart that felt like it was being squeezed. ”It… bothers me, too. It’s a bit shameful to admit.”
”Pathetic,” Felix said as he forced them both to stop, and shoved Dimitri’s hands off of him with a sneer on his face. ”You were never like that with me.” A pause, a much too quick breath. ”Take them off.”
Dimitri stared at him dumbly, but at least it was Felix that those eyes saw now. No one else. Some pressure in Felix’s chest went away, but only a little bit. ”Excuse me?”
”You heard me,” Felix said, challenge in his voice like venom.
The hesitation lasted a few seconds longer than it would have in the past, but Dimitri unclasped his gauntlets and slipped his hands free from both the metal and the gloves beneath the silvery glow. They fell unceremoniously against stone, clanking unharmoniously over the sounds from the ball. It was the kind of music they’d been listening to their entire lives, from the moment they’d been taught to wield a weapon.
Dimitri extended his arms out as if expecting Felix to put them where they belonged. ”Here,” he said, as if he were offering a fragile part of himself for Felix to hold – or crush, as Felix was wont to do with him these days.
The hands were more scarred than what Felix remembered – he hadn’t seen them exposed two years ago either, now that he thought about it. The white lines of scars ran across Dimitri’s palms and the backs of his hands, and Felix wondered what in the name of the eternal flames he’d been doing to get so many of them.
”How many glasses have you been breaking?” Felix scoffed. ”You really are a wild animal.”
”Well, some of them are from Mercedes’ attempts at teaching me to sew and other delicate work,” Dimitri explained as Felix took his hands and set one of them back to his waist where it had previously been. ”Last month I nearly cut my thumb off with scissors. I would have if they hadn’t bent, that is.”
That gave Felix a pause. ”How do you – how the–”
Dimitri’s cheeks flushed in embarrassment, and it was painfully reminiscent of a smaller Dimitri with a broken training lance in his hand. ”Believe me when I say I do not know.”
Felix’s own hands were bare, so the one that had latched onto Dimitri’s felt the roughness of Dimitri’s skin, the callouses accompanying the scars.
The irony of Dimitri covering this up like he covered everything else did not escape Felix, and a hysterical laugh tickled in the back of his throat, along with other more complicated sensations.
”It’s always me,” Felix said, pausing when his mouth didn’t naturally come up with a finished sentence. The feeling was there, but not the words.
Dimitri’s eyes slid back to his face instead of continuing to look over his shoulder, and Felix was once again reminded of a man drowning in himself. ”It is always you,” Dimitri said, voice brittle like the glass that had scarred his palms, ”and, for that, I… I am sorry.”
For the first time in what felt like forever, Felix realized Dimitri was really looking at him.
”Spare the apologies for someone that cares,” Felix retorted, huffing in annoyance when Dimitri’s steps became too long for him to follow properly. Stubbornly, he stomped his foot down until Dimitri shortened his step, fingers curling against Felix’s waist.
”Thank you,” Dimitri whispered, and – for a treacherously long moment – his forehead hovered above Felix’s, blue eyes staring into his with a contemplative look to them that had Felix’s heart squirm a little too much. Felix glared up at those eyes in a stubborn refusal to back down.
Dimitri’s expression faltered, and his eyes shifted away during the next step. ”...I ought to go back, I suppose.”
Felix let go of that hand with surprising difficulty, with an ache in his heart he was always covering up with nasty words and anger. The moment was finished, and Dimitri too pulled back, away from Felix and what little body warmth he had offered. Felix watched him put the gloves and the gauntlets back on, each movement mechanical even despite the slight trembling of two scarred hands.
”Hey,” Felix said before he could stop himself. ”Happy belated birthday, boar.”
Dimitri’s shoulders stiffened momentarily before relaxing again. Still, he didn’t turn to look at Felix as he fiddled with his gauntlets with the elegance of an untamed beast. ”Thank you.”
A cough tore its way out of Felix’s throat after Dimitri had gone his way, and it echoed off the stones of the Goddes Tower and through the cold night air. In its wake, light violet pink-bordering petals spluttered out of Felix’s mouth, along with droplets of blood.
It wasn’t me that he wanted a dance with, Felix thought as he glared at the offending petals in his palm, but it’s what he got.
What a poor replacement he made.
ix. oleander.
Jeralt died a few days after the ball, and the monastery wrapped itself up in the misery that came with death and murder. The professor seemed even more closed-off than usual. Classes weren’t exactly cancelled, but they were fewer, and even the house leader became harder to reach as he spent more and more time away from the dormitory.
Felix didn’t mind the extra time in his hands, but.
The atmosphere prickled into his skin, reminded him too vividly of the long weeks after Glenn’s ”passing” as it had come to be called in the Fraldarius household, and no amount of training drills could drive it away entirely.
So, it was a relief when they were called – when Dimitri gathered them and the professor and told them the knights had located the enemy – and given a plan and a target. That Felix could handle, perhaps more for the professor’s sake and not just his own selfish need’s. The mission was rather unremarkable in retrospect, asides from its results: a professor with glowing light green hair, matching eyes, and an outfit befitting that of a prophet.
It was the month following that battle that was harder, equally hard as the one preceding the mission. Grief wasn’t the only thing present now: exhaustion, people overworking themselves for exams and work alike, the boar’s footwork turning sloppy in training.
If the last part got to Felix the most, no one called him out on it, thankfully, though Sylvain kept on pestering him about the coughing that had only grown worse after the Goddess Tower incident. Equally stubborn, Felix insisted it was nothing, though now he couldn’t fool himself and think the boar had nothing to do with it.
Unrequited love, people whispered about the disease that had reared it head across the continent months ago, is the cause, did you hear?
Felix ignored the hearsay, but a part of him registered it and tucked it away into the back of his mind for later introspection – if he ever got to the point where he wanted to revisit the thought, if he ever became even more masochistic than what he already was.
What he couldn’t ignore was the steady downward spiral the boar seemed to have got himself into, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to intervene when he was very much supposed to be done caring at this point. After the embarrassment that was the Goddess Tower incident.
(Or he didn’t know how, anymore.)
That said, he didn’t manage to stop himself from growling ”What in the eternal flames is wrong with you?” when Dimitri misstepped and fell after a particlarly sharp jab from Felix’s training sword. Dimitri’s grip on his training sword was as strong as ever, though, and Felix grimaced at the telltale bend in its shape. ”You try to pass that off as swordsmanship, boar?”
Dimitri’s eyes didn’t rise to meet his, but his voice cracked when he spoke. ”I’m only tired, Felix. Nothing more to it.”
Then sleep, Felix almost retorted, but it wasn’t as though Dedue didn't already do that enough for both of them. On more than one occasion, he had overheard them – Dedue insisting that Dimitri looked pale, and Dimitri grimacing and pushing away the concerned hand on his shoulder – and…
It infuriated him.
That he cared.
To the extent that it hurt himself.
”Pull yourself together, you damn beast,” Felix said and didn’t think of the night when Dimitri’s scarred hand had held his own and how the bridge between them had felt shorter than it had in years.
Dimitri didn’t meet his gaze, but his hand squeezed around the sword's hilt until the weapon bent under the pressure.
It was Felix that left then, just like he had left Dimitri now almost three years ago after that damned battle, blood and petals in his mouth even before the coughing commenced.
How utterly pathetic.
(Felix’s birthday passed in silence: Sylvain and Ingrid got him gifts, as did the professor, but that was the extent of it – and Felix preferred it this way.)
x. monkshood.
And so it all came burning down when the Flame Emperor revealed herself both to the church and the students as Edelgard von Hresvelg. She declared war upon them – not only the church, but the Kingdom and the Alliance as well.
After her mask had been torn off, the boar prince’s own shattered as well – Felix felt ill looking at it, at the personification of rage and inhumanity, and yet he couldn’t get the memory of his words out of his head.
”I’ll hang your head from the gates of Enbarr!” Dimitri had screamed, voice crackling with the same static as years before during the rebellion that had helped Felix realize two things: Dimitri didn’t see him, and the part of Dimitri that once did had been burned alive in Duscur.
Vengeance, Felix realized with disgust, was what had kept Dimitri going all this time.
Not the living people, not – not anything that mattered, but the past that wouldn’t change no matter what justice was brought to the dead.
Not that Felix was any better, he now realized with a sickening twist to his gut. The implication that the Emperor had been involved with the incident that had stolen Glenn’s life was–
But Felix had more rationality than that.
A 13-year-old brat having any part in that chaos was unlikely at best. And yet…
The sickening feeling twisting his gut soon became all about Dimitri again as he paid attention to the boar wandering around the monastery like a man possessed or a cornered animal. Between the preparations for the Empire’s attack and his own training, there was not much time to concern himself with the boar and that he did find some irked him at least as much as the worry he didn’t know where to direct.
The few times he wandered in the proximity of the boar purely by accident, Felix caught him muttering to himself, voice low and so unlike his usual tone that Felix couldn’t help grimacing. He’d heard it before, and yet. Yet.
”El,” the animal that had crawled straight out of Dimitri’s husk muttered under his breath, ”you’ll pay back for everything you took.”
Always about Edelgard, sometimes with that strange nickname that sounded like it should have been affectionate but which had been twisted into a hateful one.
At the end of it all, the day before the Empire’s army was at the doors of Garreg Mach, Felix realized it.
The person Dimitri had wanted to dance with all along.
Goddess, he thought bitterly as he watched Dimitri leap over rubble to chase his way to Edelgard on the other side, truly has the most wicked sense of humour.
They won the skirmish, but lost the battle – and with it, the archbishop and the professor.
xi. black roses.
On what would have been their graduation day, all of them were already on their way back home, and some had possibly already arrived in their own territories by the time Felix returned to Fraldarius with the old man, who hadn’t left him to his own devices but who had only fetched him as a side-thought to the boar prince.
”No, Rodrigue,” Felix heard the boar say for the fourth time, with a tired, brittle voice, ”I cannot ask you to accompany me to Fhirdiad when you are much more needed here.”
”Your Highness,” Felix’s old man returned just as tiredly, ”I would never feel at ease again if something were to happen to you on your way back.”
Felix half-expected his father to say something about the long-dead king again, about the old debts that the king wasn’t around to collect. But Rodrigue didn’t, and Felix didn’t know what to make of it. Nor did he know what to make of himself eavesdropping on them like this, feet frozen on the solid floor of the Fraldarius manor as though his constant emotional paralysis had become a physical one.
”I cannot ask you to leave your territory unattended at a time like this,” Dimitri continued insisting in that strained, close-to-snapping tone. ”I have Dedue, as well as the soldiers assigned to me by the church. I am certain we will make it to the capital just fine.”
Even Rodrigue couldn’t keep arguing with Dimitri when he was in a mood like this, and so he sighed and gave stern words to the soldiers and Dedue in regards to keeping the boar prince safe and sound.
Well, the boar was right about that. He did get to capital just fine – but, not a week after his arrival at the capital, the regent king of Faerghus was found dead in his bed chambers. The news spread fast along with the surprisingly quick discovery of the culprit.
Years later, Felix would remember the way the message had been delivered to their dining room, and how Rodrigue had sighed and opened the letter upon hearing the word urgency, only for his expression to shift from vaguely worried to frozen horror.
Well, Felix would remember thinking, here we go.
”His Highness has been arrested,” Rodrigue murmured, ”for the assassination of the Regent.”
The fork Felix had been holding fell unceremoniously, and the loud clank that followed was only a secondary sensation to the rush of blood Felix felt going through him.
From there, the events continued to snowball further until –
Two months later, after Felix had returned home from subjugating yet another band of thieves, his old man told him, cold rage in his voice and eyes looking right past him: ”His Highness has been executed in Fhirdiad.”
Felix didn’t die, not even when he coughed out a bucket full of black petals from his throat in the nights following the announcement. Unrequited love, the gossipers had called the illness ailing him, but the term didn’t quite match the situation in his mind.
In the days between the grief that had taken over House Fraldarius, Felix came to learn that it was a deadly disease that had claimed lives of many but which should ease off if the person ailed with it learned to let go of such painful feelings.
Moving on , people had said, is the best cure for such heartache.
If only someone like him, who had only ever been running away from his problems rather than confronting them despite his confrontational nature, knew how to do so.