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The ceiling of the Riegan estate’s dining hall is an exquisite, complex thing—a work of art, more than anything else. As the world turns beneath him, Dimitri looks up and ponders one’s ability to get lost in beautiful things.
Rendered in fantastic detail above his head sprawls the vast image of a hunt. They’re in the Alliance, so the theme of the day is unsurprisingly deer ; a herd of delicate, graceful does run around the eastern end of the ceiling, chased by a company of mounted hunters and wolfhounds that make up the western end. The leader of the herd is a gleaming, golden stag, head bowed back to lock eyes with the leader of the hunting party, a richly-dressed woman with a bone-white bow pulled back and primed. The shot never comes, obviously, but the painting still carries an air of precipice .
The entire thing is steeped in luscious greenery, reminiscent of the rich forests the Kingdom armies had torn through to make it to Derdriu today. Dimitri idly wonders if they should take more time on their return… enjoy Leicester’s bounties a little more, for if they’re truly as verdant as the scene above, then they must be a sight to behold…
“Leicester’s bounties?”
Oh shit.
Dimitri snaps his eye down to his side, where Byleth looks up at him from her seat, an amused smile on her face.
“Apologies, Professor,” he says. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Mm,” she hums, taking a bite of some roast vegetables. “Learn anything interesting from the ceiling?”
Dimitri doesn’t blush under the observation. He stares straight ahead instead, out to the dining hall filled with the loud, milling forms of soldiers and healers, allies and friends.
“It’s a beautiful painting, is all,” he murmurs, sinking deeper into his chair.
Byleth laughs. Her laugh is a quiet little thing but no less joyful than anyone else's. “It’s okay to be a wallflower,” she says, “but you really don’t have to sit here looking like someone just killed your cat.”
Dimitri frowns. “First of all,” he says, “this is my regular face—”
“Uh-huh.”
“—Second of all, I am not a wallflower ."
Byleth refrains from commenting further by shoving a very large spoonful of mashed potatoes in her mouth and busying herself with not choking on it. Dimitri sighs and casts his gaze out to the hall, where his friends are gathered near the entrance, watching Hilda Goneril soundly drink Felix under a table.
Okay… so maybe he’s a little bit of a wallflower. But he’s not the only one keeping his distance.
“Do you know where Claude is?” He ventures. “I haven’t seen him since we arrived.”
“Me e’fer,” Byleth says through a mouthful of potato. It delights Dimitri to no end to see a woman as powerful as her with manners as terrible as these, surely his old governesses would riot at the sight. “I fink he ‘an off.”
“Ran off? From a party?”
It tracks, however strange it is. After peeling himself away from the infirmary, Claude had welcomed the Kingdom army into the estate with open arms, he and his allies almost chomping at the bit to thank their proclaimed saviours. Dimitri had dug his heels in a little at the praise, but it had only taken a smile and a clap on the shoulder from the duke to bring his stopbanks crashing down.
But after the estate had opened its doors to everyone from high ranked generals to infantrymen, and the tables were piled high with as rich a spread of food as was possible after a siege, Claude had disappeared.
“I kno’ wi’te?” Byleth swallows laboriously. “Strange.”
Strange indeed, Dimitri thinks.
“He’s in the gardens though,” she says suddenly. “If you wanted to talk to him.”
Dimitri aims an amused look at her. “How can you possibly know that?”
Byleth smirks. “Why, dear Dimitri, don’t you know by now that I know everything?”
He chuckles, which makes her smile wider. “Oh, of course, silly me.”
She reaches out with her foot and kicks the leg of his chair, making him jolt in his seat. She waves her fork in his direction. “Okay, now shoo!” she says. “You’re bringing down the mood.”
Dimitri rolls his eye but gets up anyway.
The air outside the dining hall is significantly crisper and only becomes more so as Dimitri steps outdoors. The sounds of the celebration fade away to the distant rumble of music and indistinguishable voices and give way to the gentle hum of nighttime wildlife, wind, and the ever-present lull of waves in the harbour beyond.
The Riegan estate gardens are as beautiful as anything. Though tired after the battle, Dimitri had managed to get a look at them as the Kingdom’s forces and moved through. They’re currently bordered by tents and other temporary lodgings, as the grounds of the estate had been converted first into refugee areas for fleeing southerners, and then into emergency medical space during the battle. With the party indoors they’re currently empty, but the dominating touch of war still reigns strong here.
It looks lovely though. The gardens vary from well-maintained topiary and rolling rose bushes to artful trellis walks, a low hedge maze, and a series of walled courtyards nestled among bursting fruit trees.
It’s the latter that Dimitri ends up making his way to in his hunt for the missing duke. He arrives at the back boundary of the gardens, where a carefully planted pear orchard begins to merge into wilder forests at the edge of the property. There are several tall, ivy-covered walls here that look much less disturbed than the ones closer to the castle. The grass underfoot is much more overgrown, too, and Dimitri wonders how long it’s been since people have been out this far.
Not too long, apparently, because as he rounds the corner of one hidden, walled-in courtyard, he spies the man he’s been looking for—his back turned and his hands planted on his hips, staring up at the top of the wall with an expression of great focus.
“Ah, Claude,” Dimitri says, halting his approach.
If Claude is caught off guard by Dimitri’s presence he doesn’t show it. He turns on his heel slowly, and Dimitri is struck—in a way he wasn’t able to be during their encounters in battle—by just how kind the last five years have been to him, as opposed to how kind they haven’t been to himself.
His hair has grown out, been pushed back, and he’s managed to grow a beard, for one thing, which Dimitri acknowledges is an ability he probably would have been jealous of at some point. He’s broader too, more muscular, having lost the lankiness they’d both had as teenagers. He looks… good. Healthy, despite it all. And when he sees Dimitri he smiles, and it’s as picture-perfect and easy as Dimitri remembers.
They’re both dressed down but Dimitri suddenly feels like the more underdressed of the two, which is stupid, frankly, but he’s still very glad Mercedes forced him to brush his hair before coming here.
“Hey there, Your Highness,” Claude greets, and Dimitri wonders how he still manages to make formal titles sound like nicknames. “What brings you to the gardens this evening?”
“You actually,” Dimitri says, and he may only have half his vision but he doesn’t miss the flicker of surprise in Claude’s expression. “I wanted to talk to you. You weren’t at dinner.”
Claude grins and leans his weight heavily against the wall. “I’m honoured, I think,” he chuckles.
Dimitri’s eye trails down to the dark bottle held loosely in his hand. He raises an eyebrow.
“Are you… drunk?”
“Not yet. Planning on it though!” Claude looks down at the bottle and back up again. “You’re welcome to join if you’d like.”
Dimitri laughs. “I’m afraid I am leading the march south tomorrow, so I must refrain.”
“Whaaat?” Claude rolls his eyes. “Last time I checked, leading an army and having a drink with a friend aren’t mutually exclusive activities.”
Dimitri feels his lips twitch up a little. “Oh? And last time I checked, a drink with a friend and getting plastered in a secluded corner of your property where no one can possibly find you are two very exclusive things.”
That makes Claude’s jaw clack shut, which Dimitri finds himself unduly amused by. He lets his statement hang.
He’s not sure what had made him say it, but he’d had the beginning of a feeling about this situation, and from Claude’s reaction it looks like he’d been right; Claude had never been one to skip out on good food and company, so whatever had pulled him away from a celebration like this one had to have been important, troubling, or both.
The wine in his hand had been what made Dimitri decide on troubling , but it had been the seclusion that had made him want to do something about it. He and Claude had always been very different people, but their similarities, where they existed, were particular things. Dimitri knew what it was to seek loneliness, and he wasn’t about to let his friend wallow in that kind of self-destruction.
Dimitri leans against the wall and Claude huffs as he looks up at him. “Have I slipped so much in five years to have suddenly become an open book?”
“Perhaps I have simply become more observant,” Dimitri suggests. He notices for the first time that Claude truly hasn’t grown much, if at all, since their academy days. He’d always had to look up a little when talking to Dimitri, but never this much. It’s… strange. Not unwelcome, though.
When Claude looks up at him now, he’s smirking.
“Was that an eye joke, Your Highness?” he asks, the beginnings of a laugh playing on his expression.
“An—Oh!” Dimitri stares off into the middle distance for a second, replaying his statement. “No, though I suppose it could be.”
“Hah!” Claude laughs. “Okay, Your Highness—or… Majesty? Which one is it now?”
Dimitri shrugs. “I’d hope you’d remember I prefer a simple Dimitri.”
Claude chuckles. “Well then, Dimitri … now that you’re here…”
He peels himself off the wall and nods upwards.
“Help me climb this?”
Dimitri blanches. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Help me get over this wall.”
“Why?”
Claude rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Because the “secluded corner of my property” I’m intending to get drunk in is on the other side of it, and unlike you, I’m not eight feet tall.”
Dimitri huffs a little sound of amusement, but then Claude reaches up to grasp the top of the wall, and Dimitri can see the bandages that wind tightly around the duke’s abdomen as the hem of his shirt lifts with the motion. It sours the mood a little.
“Should you be moving around?” He asks. “You’re still injured, aren’t you?”
“Adept— hrk —adept observation, Your Highness!” Claude grunts, digging the toes of his boots into the brick. “So a little help would be lovely!”
Dimitri doesn’t know why he does it. Maybe it’s simply because Claude is clearly struggling. Maybe because he’s plagued by an incessant need to please people. Maybe because this entire situation is so charmingly droll, he can almost pretend, just for a second, that they’re seventeen again—and while Dimitri is taking strides towards no longer dwelling in the past, he feels like no one should fault him for wanting to linger a little longer on happy histories.
Regardless of the reasoning, Dimitri sighs, laces his fingers together and crouches down, creating a makeshift step. The smile on Claude’s face immediately makes the whole thing sort of worth it.
“Hurry it up,” Dimitri grumbles, with absolutely no venom.
All he can think about is reining in his strength. As Claude steps into his cupped palms, Dimitri gets an even closer look at his tended injuries through the sheer fabric of his shirt. It makes his heart sink a little. They’d made it to Derdriu with so little time to spare… and although Claude and his allies had made it out alive, the duke had still been struck down on the field before help could reach him.
It’s all Dimitri can do not to wallow in what-ifs. What if they hadn’t taken that five-minute rest? What if they had pushed a little harder on that first night of riding? What if they’d taken that one shortcut? Maybe then Dimitri wouldn’t have to look at this wound now and think about how much he’d almost lost.
So he’s a little hesitant to put any strength behind the gesture. He lifts his hands and Claude with them, and the duke manages to hook his elbow over the wall, but the prospect of putting more force into his grip frightens him a little. At least, it frightens him until—
“Oh, put your back into it.”
“I— gah! —I am!” Dimitri grunts.
“You are not .”
“Excuse me?!”
He’s not whining, because he’s an adult and adults don’t whine.
Claude strains as he tries to pull himself up with one arm. “I saw you— hah! —lift a cart with one hand today—are you calling me fat?!”
He is also not whining, because, like Dimitri, he is an adult. They are both mutually not whining.
“What—No! Are you asking me to break your legs?!”
“As if you could—!”
“I definitely could—!”
“—you calling me fragile, Blaiddyd?!”
“—you’re injured!”
Dimitri bites back a snarl as Claude plants one of his boots directly in his face. “ Hrk! —stop moving!”
Claude’s heel digs in harder. “Then start pushing!”
Dimitri doesn’t glorify that with a response. Chasing a curl of wry annoyance, he grips Claude’s ankle tightly, and gives one last powerful hoist, sending the duke careening over the other side of the wall with a strangled yelp.
There’s a thud, followed by a grunt, and Dimitri’s eye widens.
“Claude?!” He yells. “A-Are you alright?”
“All good, Your Highness!!” Claude yells back.
Dimitri hears a rustling sound on the other side of the wall, then sees the tips of Claude’s fingers reach up over the top and wave.
“You coming?”
Dimitri briefly ponders all of the events in his life—recent and not—that have led him to this moment of cavorting around a garden like a child, with an eager-eyed, self-destructive friend who is far too good at getting his way. He supposes it doesn’t matter, in the end.
He takes two steps back and runs forward, digging the toe of his boot into the rough, ivy-covered stonework and pushing himself up, gripping the edge of the wall and vaulting over the top in one swift motion.
The landing is a little awkward, but at least he’s not in an environment where “the grace and poise of a leader” are necessarily being asked of him. He stumbles a little, his boots wanting for traction on the overgrown grasses beneath, but just as he starts to trip, a hand comes out of nowhere to steady his shoulder.
“Hey!” Claude laughs. “That was pretty cool.”
Dimitri lets out a shaky sigh as he rights himself, firmly planting his feet on the ground. “Hardly,” he says.
“Oh, you’re going to be modest about it?” Claude retracts his hand and walks away. “Nice to see you haven’t changed too much.”
Dimitri finds himself smiling against his will. “That’s…”
But then he sees what lies on the other side of the wall, and he stops.
The small courtyard is closed off on all sides by tall, ivy-covered walls of grey stone, and the grass underfoot is even more overgrown than the grass outside; Dimitri would wager this place hasn’t been tended to in well over a decade, maybe longer. The grass is long enough to crawl over and smother what looks to be the remains of a small titled fountain, and a little stone bench near a far wall, both of which have to be old enough to have been constructed alongside the castle itself.
The entire scene is dominated by a giant pear tree, the roots of which are gnarled and break through the stony foundations of the fountain and yard like ripped paper. The branches and leaves span overhead like a fluttering ceiling and reach high towards the stars above.
What dappled moonlight makes it through the canopy sparsely illuminates the courtyard with a soft, dull light, but the main source of light comes from elsewhere; Dozens and dozens of fireflies ebb quietly through the grass around the tree.
Dimitri watches in silence as Claude walks towards the tree, the movement making the fireflies wink out one by one. With a sigh, Claude collapses against the trunk, his legs tangling under him in echoes of the gnarled roots he rests against.
“If we’re quiet they’ll come back,” he says in a low voice, watching Dimitri’s gaze flit to the slowly disappearing lights. He uncorks his bottle with a pop.
Dimitri comes closer but doesn’t sit. “What is this place?” He asks.
“I don’t know, honestly,” Claude answers with another sigh. “I found these courtyards during the first couple months I was here… this one is the only one completely closed off so—you know me—I had to see what was inside.”
Dimitri slowly sits down across from Claude, folding his legs underneath him and carefully arranging his cloak behind him, so as not to disturb the wildlife. Meanwhile, Claude takes a sniff of the liquor, winces, then takes a swig.
“It’s very… nice,” Dimitri muses, not sure what else to say. Claude holds the bottle out in offering and he waves it away. “I wonder why it was abandoned…”
Claude hums. “Me too, but that’s not as interesting as this—check it out.”
He turns where he’s sitting to point to something on the trunk behind him, and as Dimitri leans in, even in the dim light, he can make out the scratched letters of a name carved into the bark above Claude’s left shoulder.
Tiana, it reads.
“Oh, that’s—”
“My mother,” Claude says fondly, tracing the bark with his free hand. He points upwards, and Dimitri begins to recognise the faint shapes of even more names scratched higher and higher in the trunk.
“That’s my great grandmother—my second cousins—my great uncle,” he recites, pointing to each one in turn. “I think this place used to be popular among the children that have lived here. Like a little hide-away. They’ve been sneaking in and carving their names in the tree for years… you can tell by how tall the tree is; it’s lifted the oldest names all the way up, see?”
He points to where the branches begin to burst out from the trunk, and surely enough, illuminated by pale moonlight, is an ancient-looking set of scratched initials.
“This tree is as old as this estate,” Claude explains. “Old enough that I’d bet you there’d probably a few Blaiddyd names up there if you looked hard enough. Generations of Riegan children have all snuck their way in here one way or another to leave their little mark on the place.”
“That’s… remarkable,” Dimitri admits.
“This tree is going to outlive us,” Claude says softly. “It’s going to outlive everything. In a thousand years, when this place is a ruin, this tree is still going to be here… that’s kind of humbling, isn’t it?”
Dimitri can do nothing more than nod.
“Being here, being the leader of the Alliance… it’s never been about me as a single person,” Claude says, tracing the whorls in the wood with one, careful finger. “It’s always been about making this place better… fostering good and leaving a kinder world behind me… that’s the mark I wanted to make. You get that, right?”
Dimitri meets his eyes.
“You know why I wanted to talk to you, don’t you?” The mood stiffens a little.
“Of course I do,” Claude says. He drops his hand and leans back against the tree.“You’re uniquely single-minded when it comes to matters like this, I remember. I’m surprised you didn’t corner me sooner.”
“You didn’t give me much opportunity to do so.”
“I was injured , as you are so quick to remind me,” Claude retorts, patting his side and wincing.
“Yet cognisant enough to foist off Failnaught and the entire Alliance,” Dimitri can’t help the note of bitterness that slips into his tone. “I didn’t come tearing across the country just to have you leave , Claude. We came to save you, not say goodbye.”
“Please,” Claude begins, “you need to understand—”
“Then explain it to me, Claude,” Dimitri all but growls. He sees the sparse smattering of returning fireflies blink out in his periphery. He pays them no mind. “Explain to me in terms I can understand why you are so eager to drop your nation into my hands and disappear. Because so far all you’ve done is saddle me with responsibility I did not ask for.”
Claude closes his eyes for a moment, inhaling slowly. When he opens them again his expression is steely.
“I’ll say what I said before,” he says. “I have to go. Me being here was never a permanent thing—even before the war. There are places I’m needed, things I want to do, a dream to fulfil. I’d hoped you could respect that. And I’d hoped you could respect that I’m not entrusting part of that dream to you lightly.”
“Why entrust to me at all when you are perfectly capable of doing it yourself?”
“Because I’m not , Dimitri,” he retorts incredulously. “Don’t you get it? You have means and resources I don’t. I have no doubt you’re going to win this war, and—”
“—and the Alliance is not a consolation prize to be given away if we do!” Dimitri snaps. “I refuse to play that kind of game, Claude.”
Claude grits his teeth. “You and I both know the unification of Fódlan has always been the way this story ends, Your Highness. You’d be ignorant to think this continent can sustain itself as it is now.”
“I know!” Dimitri yells. “I just don’t understand why you won’t see this through!”
All of the lights blink out. Only the moon illuminates the courtyard now, casting in erratic patterns through the leaves above. The moment calms and stretches, filled only with the sounds of breathing.
“So what?” Claude says quietly. “You see me as a coward then?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dimitri urges. “You are the single bravest person I know. Brave enough to call a monster to heel and have faith he arrives. Perhaps you are mad, but no coward, Claude von Riegan.”
Claude hums.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“No… no I should be the one apologising,” Dimitri mutters. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice…”
Claude drops the bottle beside him, and runs his hands through his hair, letting out a beleaguered sigh.
“I’m sorry for adding to your burdens, Dimitri,” he says. “But I have to. As… as one last good turn for this place, I’m just putting all the pieces back where they need to be.”
“But that doesn’t have to mean you have to go.”
“ All the pieces, Your Highness—”
“Dimitri,” he corrects reflexively.
“ —Dimitri… I’m one of those pieces.”
“You’re a person, not a piece .”
“You’re really messing with my metaphor here.”
Dimitri shakes his head. “You do not need to be anywhere but here,” he urges. again “With your people, your friends, with—with this fight. Our fight.”
“Dimitri, what have I done for “our fight” so far, exactly? Kept this failed state alive? Dragged my men to Gronder to die? Holed up in a castle and written letters and only waited to risk myself until the war was literally on my doorstep?”
Dimitri thinks that isn’t fair—that he’d done so much more than that. That he’s more a hero than Dimitri ever could be.
That in battles absolutely devoid of civilian casualties one can see that the leader of the Leicester Alliance is someone who understands intimately the true cost of war. That he’s a person who had fought tooth and nail to keep the maw of destruction off his most vulnerable people.
That while Dimitri had toiled and wallowed in his rage, Claude had planned and accounted for every possibility to the best of his ability, that he had taken his scant means and done something with them—even if that thing, in the end, was reaching out to someone impossible for help.
But before Dimitri can voice any of that, Claude keeps talking.
“You’re from Faerghus,” he continues. “You… you love your chivalric tales, don’t you? Well, I’m not the hero, here… I’m the damsel in distress—” he laughs, Dimitri doesn’t; it’s not funny, “ —you’re that hero, Dimitri, here to rescue me and my people in a flurry of steel. I owe you my life… I owe you everything… but I have to go where I can be… where I can be needed . And I’m not needed here. You are.”
There’s something else under that statement, something too shrouded from Dimitri’s sight, but he pushes forward anyway.
“What if I decide I can’t do this without you?” He asks.
“Then you’re a fool,” Claude says. “Or at the very least remarkably self-defeating.”
“What if I order you?”
“Nice try. I’m not exactly a man of Faerghus, though, am I?”
“What if I ask you as a friend, then? Or as…”
He trails off.
The air is still.
They had been something, maybe, once upon a time. They’d been something larger than the sum of their parts—of late nights and shared glances and a hot-blooded, too-close rivalry. A potential that had been lost the moment Dimitri lost himself.
He thinks about that something now, how he sees the thought-dead embers of it in their easy rapport, in the way they’ve fallen back into laughing and joking as if five years don’t lay like a gulf between them. He’d seen it in a letter—a bold, improbable cry for help—and had seen it in his answer. He’d seen it in the amused curl of Claude’s lips—in the crinkle at the corners of his eyes—in sparse touch.
Happy histories, right? Dimitri has never been good at not wallowing.
It’s quiet enough now that the fireflies have returned, flitting about their heads like grounded stars. In their warm light, Dimitri can see Claude’s eyes widen for a moment—just a moment—then he smiles sadly. Dimitri has not often seen that careful smile sullied by sadness. It doesn’t crack the expression one bit.
“Well… that would be something else, I suppose,” he says quietly. “But I don’t think it would be enough.”
“You don’t have to go,” Dimitri repeats weakly. He doesn’t know what else to say—he’s no orator, no charismatic leader...
“I do.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Wrong.”
When had Claude gotten this close? Dimitri cannot look away from his eyes, but he only now becomes aware of how much closer they are. Claude is close , chest almost pressed to his. He’s climbed into Dimitri’s lap, his knees bracketing his thighs, and with his bottle discarded somewhere in the swaying grasses, his hands are free to make the slow ascent up Dimitri’s arms.
“You’re almost as bad at accepting farewells as you are compliments,” he says playfully. His eyes glimmer in the low light; catching in their green depths the sparked reflections of returning fireflies.
“Are you sure you’re not drunk?” Dimitri asks again, almost inaudible. He needs to make sure. He needs to identify the shape of this moment for what it is before he moves.
“I wish,” Claude says. “Maybe then this would be easier.”
“What would be easier?”
“Oh hush.”
He leans forward, and Dimitri sees the bandages wrapped right around his abdomen, where the open folds of his loose shirt leave nothing to the imagination. Dimitri brings his hand up, resting his palm on the small of the other man’s back. He feels the tremor under the fabric—sees the small jolt born from tender touch on tender flesh.
Claude’s hands come up to cup the line of Dimitri’s jaw. He feels the press of light calluses on his skin and smells the warm, heady scent of beeswax and flax that follows archers of his ilk like a shroud.
They had been something, maybe, once upon a time. They’d been something larger than the sum of shared glances and late nights and hot-blooded, too-close rivalry.
Perhaps this is a beginning—because maybe they were actually nothing at all, only two forces stuck in a long-lived wind-up, and Claude’s face inches from Dimitri’s now is the proverbial starting gate.
Or perhaps, more likely, it is an ending. In Faerghus they love their chivalric tales, and they love their tragedies. What walks the line between such extremes? Bittersweet ends to unexplored somethings. Embraces both first and final. Goodbyes, drenched in sweet honey and bitter water.
Dimitri’s fingers curl into the fabric around Claude’s waist. With wide eyes, he stares down the barrel of an ever after that is not happy, but the skin under his fingers his warm, so he does not have it in him to look away.
“I beg you not to toy with me,” Dimitri whispers. “Not in matters of the heart I’m still relearning.”
“Who says I’m toying, Your Highness?” Claude says.
Dimitri could say anything to that. He could beseech him once more to please stay , he could protest, he could chide him for his too-playful tone.
But instead, all that comes out is:
“Dimitri… please.”
Claude huffs a little laugh, and they’re close enough that Dimitri feels the gust of it across his lips, hot and soft. When he speaks it’s barely a whisper.
“I’d not toy with you, Dimitri . I’d just like one last chance to be a little bit selfish, if you’d let me.”
A part of Dimitri hears his name, whispered bare and softly, and loses all sense of reason right then and there. But another part of him hears that ‘one last chance’ and keeps hearing it ; echoing over and over in the darkened hollows of his mind, like clashing steel on an empty battlefield, like hushed secrets in a dusty cathedral, like a call across a vast mountain range.
It would be so easy to lean forward, to close this insignificant distance… so achingly easy… and yet—
Dimitri puts a hand on Claude’s chest, halting his slow push forward.
“Why do you seek so ardently after an ending you do not want?” He asks, the words little more than a breath.
The stillness hangs between them for a long moment.
They do not move.
“How can you be so sure I don’t want it?” Claude finally murmurs.
Dimitri looks up into his eyes, so dark now in the dim night, like the depths of a forest. A man could get lost in such lovely woods, Dimitri thinks. But such a journey seems too ultimate , and he no longer yearns for endings.
He presses his hand harder against Claude’s chest and keeps their little distance distant .
“Because I know the difference,” he says, “between moving forward and running away. And this? This is running away.”
Claude’s hands slip from Dimitri’s jaw, and he leans back, farther away though his knees remain slotted perfectly on either side of Dimitri’s thighs. Something in his heart wants to rail against the retreat, but he is here to prevent a goodbye, not chase one.
“Perhaps I have no choice,” Claude says softly.
Dimitri smiles.
“That seems wildly out of character,” he remarks. Claude lets out a stuttering little laugh.
He sits back on his heels fully, hands limp in his lap. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “This wasn’t fair on you.”
Dimitri realises his hand is still on Claude’s chest—his other hand still on his waist—and he thinks Claude knows this too. So now, logically, might be the best time to let go, to take the open door Claude is offering him.
He doesn’t move. He digs his fingers into the fabric of Claude’s shirt even tighter, holding him fast.
“Do not apologise,” he says. “Just talk to me.”
The sounds of the nighttime fill the air. Crickets, distant owls, the humming hymns of wind and the distant sea… In the silence Claude and Dimitri sit on their precipice, waiting to see who tumbles first.
“I don’t deserve to be here,” Claude whispers. The admission flows over Dimitri like ice water. He lets his hand slip from Claude’s shirt and into his lap to gather his hands tightly in his own.
“For what reason could you possibly think that?” he breathes.
Claude ducks his head and speaks to the ground. “I’m not… I’m an outsider, Dimitri. I’ve never belonged here… in the Alliance… in Fódlan… No matter how much I love it, I can’t give it what it needs. I can’t save it.”
“That’s not true,” Dimitri urges. He knows it’s not true—he can see that clear as day, that Claude’s place is here in the city he loves, with the people he protects… how can he not see that too?
Claude smiles, weak and tired. “But what if it is?”
Oh.
Dimitri is silent for a long moment.
“You’re scared,” he says quietly. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re scared you’re not good enough.”
“Of course I am,” Claude laughs without humour. “I’m terrified . I almost died today—I almost failed because I gambled so many lives on a chance. What sort of leader am I, to play games with the lives of my people?”
“You would have died had you not called us for aid.”
“A good leader wouldn’t have let it get that far.”
“You cannot blame yourself for Edelgard’s horrors,” Dimitri grits out.
“But I can blame myself for my weakness,” Claude says. “I’m the dying gasp of a dying line, an outsider’s son holding together an inherited mess because there’s nothing else I can do… I see good in this place, Dimitri. I see something to foster and love and let grow—a potential for peace that stretches beyond the confines of this continent… but I just… I can’t do it. Not from here. Not as I am. Not as a base-born nothing thrust into power. I’m not what Fódlan needs— you are, you… you miracle-worker.”
Claude pauses to let out a dry laugh.
“I’ve never belonged anywhere, Dimitri,” he continues softly. “I don’t see why that changes now.”
“You’re wrong.”
Claude hums. Dimitri feels a curl of annoyance—not at Claude, but at the world that has led him down this spiralling path of self-defeat.
“You do not have to earn a place in your home,” Dimitri says firmly. “You do not have to fight to belong . Home is a right, not a reward, Claude… and you do not have to be enough to be loved .”
Those jewel-green eyes snap to him in an instant, wide and unreadable. He is silent, however, so Dimitri continues.
“You say you’re not needed. You… you do not have to be needed in order to demand a place here—in order to want to fight for what you love—Is it not enough to simply be wanted?”
When Claude speaks, his voice is smaller and more unsure than Dimitri has ever heard it. “I’m afraid I’ve never really been wanted anywhere either.”
Dimitri squeezes his hands until he feels the fluttering pulse under Claude’s thumbs.
“I want you here,” he says. “Is that not enough?”
A long time ago, when their worries were much less earth-shaking, Sylvain had told Dimitri, Everyone’s got one thing they’re dying to hear.
It had been unsolicited advice for wooing women, but it has stuck with Dimitri regardless. He has long wondered what his one thing is... Perhaps that he is forgiven, or that he can finally rest. He’s not sure he’ll know until the moment it’s said to him… and he’s quite alright with that.
Right now he thinks he might have found Claude’s one thing. He goes still and silent in Dimitri’s arms, save for an odd little noise in the back of his throat. His eyes go wide and he smiles, and it’s a completely unfamiliar thing.
It’s rough, crooked, and raw . It curls his lips desperately and awkwardly. It creases his eyebrows, wets his lashes, and crinkles the corners of his eyes. It’s an expression drenched in joy and disbelief, relief and pain in equal measure. His throat bobs, and for one startling moment Dimitri thinks he’s about to see Claude cry, but he just laughs instead, a shaky burst of air released through trembling, smiling lips.
“You say such strange things, Dimitri.”
“I say true things,” Dimtri replies.
He wants to say it again, not because it’s what he wants to hear. He wants to tell him he wants him here, again and again, simply because it’s true , and because the smile on Claude’s face is the most real he’s ever seen it and he cannot help but think of the work of art that spirals on the castle’s ceilings—of decadence, of richness—of beautiful things and how easily one can get lost in them.
“I want you here with us,” Dimitri says after a moment. “You deserve to fight for this place because you love it, not because of how it may feel about you… though I have only one eye and even I can see it loves you in return…”
Claude lets out a stuttering laugh. Dimitri smiles.
“I will gladly take the Alliance under my care after the war,” he continues. “But I would be remiss to allow her staunchest protector to leave her now—and I know you don’t want this to end any more than I do.”
“I don’t,” Claude murmurs.
“Then stay. Fight this fight with us.”
With no warning Claude tips forward, and Dimitri finds himself sitting stock still as the duke leans down to rest his head on his shoulder. After a second Claude’s shoulders begin to tremble, and Dimitri’s heart stutters and reels as he tries to figure out what’s wrong and—
Oh.
He’s laughing.
Claude looks up at him, face flushed and grin positively blinding. Under the light of the moon and the golden hum around them, Dimitri finds he cannot look at anything else.
“You really ruined my dramatic goodbye,” he says. “Can’t have a single normal moment with you around, can I?”
Dimitri can’t help the laugh that pulls from him, deep and fuller than so many he’s had lately.
Before Claude can move away, Dimitri leans down and presses his face to the side of his head, feeling the downy hair there tickle at his nose. He places a soft kiss on his temple—short, unobtrusive, quiet—and relishes just as quietly in the small jump he feels in the pulse under his lips.
When he pulls back, he sees those dark forest eyes aimed at him, wide and disbelieving.
“Stay,” he says again. “Your story does not end here.”
Claude shakes his head and smiles.
“Alright,” he says. “But I get my bow back.”