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“I still think it was that Duscar Vagrant. Jeritza was odd, to be sure, but he was still an upstanding member of society.”
It was hard not to hear the accusations, even after Dedue had spearheaded the search for and rescuing of Flayn. One would think that the whispers would have died down. But no, of course not. Dedue had not anticipated any less.
“Excuse me?” Mercedes had been walking with him, but had stepped to the side, moving before he could grab her.
“Maybe Jeritza knew he’d be blam--”
“Excuse me.” Mercedes had put herself between the speaker and their companion. The smile on her face was soft, saccharine almost. It was one of the most fearsome expressions that Dedue had ever seen crossing a person’s face.
“What?” The speaker did not know the situation that he had found himself in, seeing, as most did, Mercedes’ softness, and only that.
“You don’t truly believe that do you?” Mercedes tilted her head to the side, falsely inquisitive. “Professor Byleth and the other staff were able to rather definitively show that Professor Jeritza was tied to poor Flayn’s kidnapping. And that students were deemed innocent. All students.”
“Mercedes.” Dedue gathered himself enough to speak. “We are going to be late.”
“So we are. I apologise, my friend.”
There was a bit of an emphasis when Mercedes said friend. Dedue closed his eyes, holding in a sigh. It was… admirable that she would do so, but it wouldn’t do her any good in the long run. He told her as much once they were away from the gossipers.
“Does it matter? You are a friend, and you have been nothing but one of the most upstanding students, and stalwart of friends.”
“I am of Duscur.” That should have explained everything, but the expression on Mercedes’ face indicated that he would have to spell it out. “You know as well as I what Fodlan thinks of Duscur and its people. As your friend, I would not want you to be tarred with the same brush.”
“But that makes no sense.”
“People do not make sense.”
Mercedes looked as if she was going to argue another point, or rather cajole another point to enter into the exact paddock that she wanted it to be in, but they had reached the classroom. He held the door open for her. In a stubborn fit of pique, Mercedes took a seat beside him.
“People shouldn’t be able to say whatever they wish about you.” she said, staring down into the pages of her book.
“No. But they will anyways. I know you mean well, and your sentiment is appreciated, but it will not change anything. Not until more work has been done.”
“I see. I wish you would let your friends do more for you, Dedue.”
What could he reply to that with? It was not his place, and Professor Eisner had stepped into the room, making any possible reply moot.
“The axe is a sword.” the Professor reminded their students before setting them to find partners for sparring. “You cut along the same lines. Concentrate on those as you spar, and let us not have any accidents this time.”
Somewhere there was a twitter of giggles while Annette blushed. The last axe lesson ended when she had sprained Felix’s ankle, and neither had yet to live it down.
Dedue paired off with Ashe, which was not as much of an unfair fight as it might have looked. Though Dedue certainly had power, and more body mass to put behind his actions, Ashe was quick on his feet, dodging around one blow after another.
They clashed and parted.
Free sparring was unlike going through the set plays that Professor Eisner liked to drill them in. Set plays had prescribed series of actions. The Agent attacked, the Patient defended. The Agent reacted in a set way to that defense, making the Patient defend anew, and so on back and forth until the play stopped with a “death blow” to someone’s neck or chest. Free sparring was when the movements and action-reactions that had been drilled into them got to be used in a non-life threatening situation. The motions settled into their muscles so that even if they were distracted, they could bring up their weapon on instinct.
Dedue thought he had an opening. He swung down from Lover’s Guard, bringing his whole form to bear behind the blow. With real weapons, against a real enemy, he could easily cleave a man through from shoulder to hip. Even if that person was wearing armor, there wouldn’t be any recovery.
That is, of course, if he hit.
Ashe had been waiting in Wyvern’s Tooth Guard, the head of his axe low and to the right. He stepped offline from Dedue’s attack, bringing his axe around to “help” Dedue’s smash into the ground. Another quick action had Ashe stepping on the axe’s head with one foot, further trapping it in place. He swung up, stopping himself just before his wooden axe could break Dedue’s jaw. In a real fight, Dedue’s head would have been cleaved in half, or cut from his shoulders.
The knowledge of his death if this weren’t a simple spar did not disturb Dudue. It was a cold assessment, thought and put aside. What stuck with him though was this: the class hadn’t learned that counter yet.
Dedue had looked ahead in the curriculum, had talked with the Knights of Seiros, gone to Gilbert Pronislav’s weekend axe seminars, and could guess at where Professor Eisner was going to lead them next. They hadn’t yet covered the counter attack that Ashe used.
The two separated and got ready for the next bout.
After the class ended, Dude stayed near Ashe as they put away the training weapons.
"That move you used. You have a good eye for axe work."
“Thanks,” Ashe rubbed the back of his head and blushed at the praise. “I want to concentrate on archery, but sometimes it’s good to get in the fray like that.”
“Have you looked ahead in the course as well?” Dude asked. He had not seen Ashe at any of the seminars for axe, though he would go to Shamir's archery lessons. An awkward frown crossed Ashe's face.
"Ahh... no. I. That is..."
"I do not mean to imply that you have done anything wrong."
"It's not that."
Dedue waited him out, taking up the time by straightening the way that the training axes hung over the edge of the barrel while Ashe found what he wanted to say.
"You see, before Lonato took me in, I was a thief. No better than a common bandit like the ones we put down at the beginning of the school year. I learned how to use an axe, back then. The professor's classes have really just cleaned up what I already knew."
“That is surprising.” Of all the explanations, a past as a thief was not what Dedue expected. Ashe was painfully earnest, not at all like the men the class had fought, nor the opportunists that had continued to ransack the darkest corners of Duscur, feeding on the corpse of his homeland like a vulture.
Ashe forced out a laugh. “I guess, but I did what I had to do. I’m trying to be better than that.”
“Hmm. You certainly have.”
A stricken look crossed Ashe’s face. It was strange. Dedue didn’t think that he had said anything untoward. Unfortunately, they did not have the opportunity to speak, and Ashe had been called to sit with the professor for supper. It wasn’t until late in the evening that Dedue found time to speak with him alone.
Ashe let him in with a nervous huff of breath that wasn’t quite a laugh but it wanted to be. It was not quite one of Ashe’s usual sounds of discomfort, as if, so long as there was something funny to be found, then everything would be okay, even if the world was falling to pieces around him. The change pushed Dedue of kilter. As Ashe was not acting as he usually did, so Dudue could not find the way forward to heal what had been rent between them.
“I apologize.” Dedue said, fumbling for the words. “I feel that I have offended you.”
“No, no I just.” Ashe ran a hand through his hair. “I had a thought that. Maybe… maybe I had said something that--”
Dudue cut him off. “You did not.”
“There are a lot of bandits in Duscur, aren’t there, though?”
“Yes, but as you said, you are working to better yourself. You always work to better yourself. There is no reason for you to compare yourselves to those who disgrace what is left of my people, or prey upon the devastation that is still there.”
Now Ashe laughed. “True. Hard to find bandits in the library, finding inspiration from tales of the Kingdom’s founding.”
“Indeed.”
While Dedue was doing well enough in the weapons and tactics classes, one place that he was lacking was in magic classes. The formulas of Reason magic were more esoteric than his father timing the heat of metal just right before transforming the misshapen blobs into knives or shears or horse shoes. Faith magic felt just as unreachable. He had no faith in the religion of Fodlan, and he felt no reason to speak to the gods of Duscur. They would not answer for something as paltry as a school work in any case.
It was good then that he had housemates that did understand how to make the randomness of the sigils and motions into casting spells. Annette, for all her scatteredness in a kitchen, could order the formula for a fire spell faster than anyone, save perhaps Dorothea of the Black Eagles House. (He had heard whispers about how the nobles of Fodlan had natural talent for magic, and how Dorothea had surpassed near every noble in the entire academy through sheer, smiling, grit. Annette, of course, could still give her a challenge.) Their extra studying sessions were also just as scattered as her former Kitchen prep.
Or, they used to be.
“This is new.” Dedue said as he looked at the neat stacks of paper next to the slate and chalk.
“Yep!” Annette poked her head out from behind the tall stack of books she had gathered and placed at her end of the table. Oh dear. “You know how you stepped me through organizing myself for cooking? I’m trying to do the same thing for studying.”
Dedue picked up one of the paper stacks: notes on wind spells, the formula for condensing air, tactical purposes of using Wind rather than Fire or Blizzard or Thunder. The next stack was the same, but for fire spells, and the third was also the same but for thunder spells. To be honest, the only one that made sense to Dedue was Fire and the spells that derived from it in more destructive ways.
The stacks and piles did remind him of the advice he gave her for how to have fewer kitchen mishaps. Everything had its place, and she could move from one to the other without losing the notes of one subject in the detritus of another subject.
“Oh, we’re not working on that today.” The piles of paper were swept up into one pile and tucked next to the stack of books.
The soft alarm Dedue had felt on seeing the books came back. He held in a groan, closing his eyes a moment. She was going to have him go over faith magic. Again.
“I admit that I had done somewhat poorly on the last exam but--”
“No buts. We help each other out all the time don’t we? This is just more of that.”
Dedue remembered the disastrous events at the stables, how Fodland’s fauna rejected him even though it’s flora welcome him. He remembered coming to her defense on the battlefield, and cheering her on at the academy black magic tournament, and how she had done the same with a well aimed Wind and sitting in the audience of last month’s academy axe tournament. Give and take, trade for trade.
Perhaps he could put his faith in that notion of friendship, and it would allow the rest of those mysteries to unfold.
Mercedes closed the door to the infirmary. There was a cold that was hitting the Academy hard, with all houses having a couple people resting in the infirmary. Dedue’s big chest made his coughing resound in an echo chamber, so he sounded, perhaps, worse than he actually was. He wasn’t helped by the fact that he still wanted to be up and about, shadowing Dimitri as he tended to do. Manuela near had to tie him to the bed just to get him to lie down.
“Oh, we have to do something.” Annette said, worrying at her nails with her teeth. She and Ashe waited outside while Mercedes talked with Manuela.
“Ms. Casagranda recommends that he rests,” Mercedes said, her quiet voice soothing even as she untied and re-knotted her shawl. “But if he will actually do that is another matter altogether.”
Ashe leaned his chin in his hand as he thought. “Maybe… Maybe we could make him something? He’s told me about his family some, and what Duscur food is like. Maybe we can have him rest if we give him some old comforts?”
“He’s told me a little as well.”
“Lucky,” Annette said. “That sounds like a great idea. The kitchen should be free now, let’s go!” She dragged the other two behind her.
Between the three of them, and a surprised professor who let them take the rest of the day off, they were able to make a soup that -- at least according to Ashe -- had the strong flavors that Duscur cuisine favored. The steam of it curled around faces even as they put together the rest of the tray with brown bread and a pot of ginger tea.
Dimitri was just leaving the infirmary as they came back, and held the door open for the trio. Dedue was sitting up in bed, leaning back against the headboard and coughing into his fist. On the table beside him was a few books, gifts against boredom from Dimitri, and a cup of water.
“You shouldn’t be here.” He said, trying to glare narrowly at Mercedes, Ashe, and Annette. It settled into an expression better suited to a rather stubborn foal. He was about to protest more, but the tray was put over his legs, and the scent near punched him in the face.
“We know it’s not exactly the same,” explained Ashe as he pulled over two more chairs. “But we hoped that it would taste a bit familiar?”
Dedue ate a spoonful of soup, grimacing only a little. No, it was not perfect, but it had touched just enough on the old flavors and scents. More importantly though, it was a gift from his friends. Any lacks were easily overcome from that.
“It is perfect, my friends. Thank you.”