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Dedue was fourteen when he became Dedue, a man of Duscur.
He stood in the heart of the palace of Fhirdiad, in an excessively large room that still managed to somehow feel suffocating, with deep blue curtains and walls. Men he did not know were deciding whether or not he would live or die. They didn’t say as much—or perhaps they did, as Dedue could only string together bits and pieces of their language and they very well knew it—yet their meaning was clear.
Dimitri stood one pace in front of him, an arm half outstretched in a useless attempt to offer protection, eyes wide and furious as he stared unblinkingly up at his Uncle.
The King Regent hissed, “Why has this swine from Duscur been brought into my home?”
“His Highness the Prince insisted, sir. He has not allowed the boy to leave his sight since…well.” The knight, one from the group who had escorted them here, did not so much as flinch at the memory of the genocide.
The King Regent turned, then, to the pair of boys, looking right past Dimitri’s outstretched form and on to Dedue, who stood at least a foot taller and was thus quite easy to see, despite Dimitri’s best efforts. The regent’s eyes were piercing and cold. His mouth was a straight line. “That is no boy,” he said coolly, eyes never leaving Dedue, “that is a man of Duscur, with bloodlust in his heart and my brother’s blood on his hands just the same as any of his kind. Why, pray tell, was he not disposed of with the rest?”
The discussion continued, but at some point Dedue grew tired of trying to decipher all that was being said.
After, when he safely lay next to Dimitri in a bed much too soft, Dedue mulled over the only words he could remember from the conversation that had somehow, impossibly, ended with him here, sleeping beside the prince.
A man of Duscur.
Strange. Until then, he had just been a boy.
Until then, if anyone had asked him about his home, he would have described the village where he lived, with its little cluster of colorful homes, and the forge where he had just recently begun to accompany his father to work, and the market where the gentle baker always snuck him an extra slice of bread. The village was his home, and Duscur was his country. Beyond that, he had not given it much thought.
But just like everything else, that would soon change, too.
Dedue learned quickly that Fodlan had a way of turning everything gray. The cold stone of the palace walls trapped him within its seemingly endless maze of ramparts and turrets, devoid of all color and life. Outside, the wind was harsh and at times downright cruel, as if the Gods were punishing the people always, and the white, sparkling snow never stayed that way for long, dampening quickly into a muddied sludge, dirtying beneath the boots of passing merchants and travelers and knights. Sometimes, the air itself seemed barren and stale. And the massive gray mountains that towered over them in the distance laid bare, always, the Kingdom’s own insignificance.
Most of the people were gray, too. So Dedue found color where he could get it, collecting it like valued trinkets, hoarding it away for future use. He liked the library for its rows of colorful spines, each denoting a name or title he couldn’t yet comprehend. And he especially liked the books with golden gilt, which so reminded him of the gold thread that had once adorned his mother’s most prized tapestry back home.
Sometimes, when Dimitri was occupied with official duties, Dedue would wander to the portrait hall, bypassing the endless paintings of men in crowns to a strange portrait tucked away in the corner, half hidden from sight and half the size of the rest of the collection. In a sea of gray kings, the young woman in the picture burst fully with color. She had pink cheeks and red lips and bright yellow hair that was not unlike Dimitri’s, though hers was adorned with a ring of blooming lilacs. Cradled lovingly in her arms was a massive ginger cat with a permanent scowl set deeply onto his face. Dedue never asked anyone who she was, knowing the truth was likely to shatter the illusion, to end only in disappointment. Still, he returned to her, and he wondered.
Long after the palace gardener had given up on planting flowers in the sprawling gardens, too familiar with the Faerghus’ brutal winters to bother, Dedue acquired some seedlings off a merchant in town, and planted them in a small pot, which he granted a spot of honor on his windowsill.
They had wanted him to live in the servant’s quarters, but Dimitri had put up quite the fight. (Dedue was supposed to be protecting Dimitri, but somehow Dimitri kept protecting him). In the end, the Regent had relented. He’d been given one of the palace’s finest state rooms because it was adjacent to Dimitri’s own. It was lavishly furnished, with a massive bed of silken sheets and the finest, layered furs, as well as an elaborately carved bookshelf, which Dimitri had helped cover in all the books he was helping Dedue to read, and even a fireplace, flanked by two high-backed chairs. The servants had long hidden the flint from him, and refused to loan him a bed warmer to fill with hot coals, besides, but with some perseverance and the passing of several moons, Dedue managed to acquire both in town.
Despite it all, the bed still felt cold. He fell asleep, most nights, thinking of his lumpy mattress in Duscur, covered in mismatched blankets woven by his grandmother, and his little brothers cuddled close against him for warmth.
Eventually, when Dimitri told him they would be going to the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach, Dedue welcomed it if only for the change of scenary. It wasn’t until he was through the gates, waiting for registration in the massive courtyard, that he realized just how fully he had hated the palace. It was not the glowering regent or the cruel servants, only. The entire place had felt like a tomb, always shrouded in death, reeking with the stench of corpses piled miles high. Garrag Mach was brighter, more vibrant. Less haunted. Dimitri seemed that way, too.
Dedue breathed in the fresh air in great gulps, like he was just emerging from a long stint being trapped underwater. The sky was still gray and the monastery’s walls were built of stone just as hardened and unyielding as Fhirdiad’s palace; It was no Duscur. But perhaps… If his Highness could find happiness here, his own would follow. He could not allow himself to hope for more.
The prince was suddenly swarmed by his old friends. The red-headed one, Sylvain, Dedue remembered, acknowledged him with a nod and a grin, but the other two ignored him. Dedue was more than used to that, and took the chance to observe their surroundings. There were students milling about everywhere, chatting and laughing. Some held boxes of belongs, others were hugging their families farewell. On the far side of the plaza, a girl stood alone. She stood out immediately, because she was the first person Dedue had seen in ages with features that were clearly not of Fodlan. Occasionally, in Fhirdiad, he would trade with a traveling merchant from Sreng or the Southern isles, but not since he had watched the Kingdom knights burning down the city’s Duscur district had he seen…. This girl was decidedly not from Duscur. Still. She had olive-brown skin closer to his own than to the pale tones that surrounded them. Her thick hair was pulled into an intricate type of braid. She saw him looking, and she smiled. He returned it with the slightest of nods.
This girl, he later learned, was not in his and His Highness’ class. Dedue did not mind. He had not had the intention of speaking with her. He was here to serve and protect the Prince, and that had to be his sole focus. Still, he could not deny that it was a strange comfort to know that he was not the only outsider here. There was Claude in the Golden Deer house, and a young orphaned boy from Almyria, who helped out around the monastery and worshipped the ground Lady Rhea walked on. And there was this girl, who turned out to be a member of the Black Eagle house, for students from the Adrestian Empire, though His Highness informed him she was actually the crown princess in a different land.
Somehow, they had all found themselves here. Claude, and the boy, and this foreign princess. Him. Dedue let it be enough.
The library’s only occupants that morning were a green-haired boy curled up in the corner—who, it had not escaped his notice, had brought along a pillow—and Dedue himself, sitting near the fire with a book dwarfed by his too-large hands.
It felt strange, being here when it was so quiet. The only noise was the beating of the wind on the room’s sole window and the crackling of the hearth. Even the librarian, Tomas, had found somewhere else to be.
Then again, it was a Saturday, which meant most of the students preferred to waste away their rare free hours by fishing at the lake or wandering down to the market square for sweets, anything over holing themselves up indoors with school work.
Dedue was not usually the sort to take advantage of these spare hours, namely because his Highness was not usually the type. The crown prince preferred spending Saturday mornings on the training grounds, when it, like the library, was at its quietest, devoid of anyone but Felix and Caspar and maybe a few of the knights. But when Dedue had met Dimitri in the entrance hall that morning at their usual hour, dressed to spar, his highness had instead suggested they eat an early breakfast in the dining hall, afterwards which he had been told, in no uncertain terms, to take the morning off for himself.
His Highness, who had spent the entire meal fussing with his hair, had muttered something about wanting to go to the Cathedral to pray, but Dedue was not so easily fooled. Dimitri’s real motive was Marianne, the soft-spoken, blue-haired girl he was so taken with, who would all but certainly be at the Cathedral herself at this hour. The prince’s eyes lingered over the girl so often lately that Dedue was surprised he did not have a permanent crick in his neck, and the one time Marianne had tentatively waved at him from across the dining hall, Dimitri had nearly managed to slosh his bowl of soup all over himself in his haste to return the gesture.
If doing so would keep that dopey expression on Dimitri’s face, Dedue would happily push his liege towards the Cathedral at every possible opportunity. Still, this new development left him with free time he did not quite know what to do with. What once would have felt commonplace—how many hours had he spent alone in the palace, training or reading or staring at that damn painting, waiting for Dimitri to finish his lessons?—now had him feeling strangely lost.
Despite his every intention, he had put down roots here. Over the past several moons, he had been finding bouts of color in seemingly endless places. To the collection carefully curated in his mind, he had added the bright, brilliant blue of Dimitri’s house leader cape, and Annette’s colorful hair bows, and the crispy browned tops of Mercedes’ delicious chocolate pastries. He had added, also, the silvery tangle of Ashe’s unkempt hair, and his striking green eyes, and the colorful foods that he made alongside him. All of these things he kept cherished, like secret jewels that were his alone.
He feared it had made him greedy. Ashe had volunteered to take an additional shift in the kitchen that morning, Annette was taking tea with the Professor, and Mercedes was on sky watch. With His Highness also otherwise engaged, his options for company were all but depleted. It felt…unusual…to have an entire morning all to himself. He found, much to his surprise, that he almost missed the chaos.
He still could’ve gone to the training yard, had he wished. He probably should have, if the Professor’s record of springing last minute missions on them on Sundays was any indication of what tomorrow would bring. But he didn’t much fancy another roundabout interrogation from Felix, so he’d drifted instead to the greenhouse.
It was his favorite place at the monastery. So much space for vegetables and herbs of every variety, and the greenhouse keeper allowed him to plant whatever he wanted in one of the empty plots of soil in exchange for helping her maintain the greens. The small pot of blue buds he had once kept on his windowsill in Fhirdiad had gradually bloomed into a full garden here. From the market, he’d managed to acquire other seeds as well, even a few spices that were adequate substitutes for the ones commonly used back home. His plants were growing sturdily. Perhaps, soon, he’d be able to teach Ashe a new recipe with its true ingredients. The thought caused his heart to do an unexpected skip.
When he arrived at the greenhouse doors, however, there was already someone inside: a hunched mass and mop of purple hair just peaking out over the top of a large watering can, only partially obstructing his view of the girl he nonetheless recognized as Bernadetta. Somehow, she had worked up the nerve to inquire after her own patch of soil, and had since covered it in an interesting array of cacti and carnivorous plants. The first time Dedue had come across her here, he had made the mistake of asking about them, his curiosity for once rising above his instinct to keep to himself. He could still recall her yelp and subsequent face of terror as she’d covered her head with her arms, as though she was afraid he was going to strike at her. He’d apologized, of course, but he still felt rather miserable about the whole affair. This time, she hadn’t seemed to notice of him coming in, so he backed away carefully. Bernadetta would only leave if he entered, and that wasn’t fair. She had been there first, after all.
And so he had wound up here, in the empty library. At first, he’d made up his mind to simply locate the book he wanted and return with it to his room, in case the encounter with Marianne went so poorly that His Highness wanted to spar after all, but then the atmosphere had bid him stay. The stillness of the room and the warmth of the fireplace cloaked him in their warm embrace even as the frigid wind of the early winter beat down on the library’s window. The winters here were much milder than they were further North, but the winds still had their bite on days like today, and the comfort of the indoors was very welcome indeed. In fact, Dedue found that he was quite enjoying his solitude, which was broken only by the occasional snores emanating from the boy in the corner.
No peace could last forever. Halfway through the second chapter, a sudden, unfamiliar voice sliced through the silence like a newly sharpened blade.
“How much time has passed since you are first living in Fodlan?” the voice demanded, startling Dedue away from the book in his hands. The thick, leather-bound volume was an obscure Faerghus knight’s tale, something Ashe had recommended to him when they’d washed dishes together the week prior (recommended as in wouldn’t stop talking about until Dedue solemnly promised he would read it, but all the same. Dedue had assured the boy he would give it a try, and he was nothing if not true to his word). He made sure to carefully mark his page with a ribbon marker before setting the book aside. Then he turned to face his intruder.
Before him, standing with her arms crossed and her brow furrowed, was the girl from the Black Eagles' class. She seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, but he recognized her immediately, and wasn’t at all surprised that she’d managed to sneak up on him. Today, her plum hair was tied back in its usual intricate braid, but her school uniform was hidden beneath a massive wool cardigan, green with a little brown wyvern embroidered on the chest. He tilted his head ever so slightly as he observed her, his face expressionless. Absently, he noted that the tattoo beneath her eye, the same bright shade as her hair, looked a little like a heart. This was his first time seeing it up close. He filed the image away for his collection. But that was not a very helpful train of thought in the current situation, so he tried instead to recall if he had done anything that might suggest why she was yelling at him.
For all the comfort Dedue took from her—knowing that she was here but that her home was not and that somehow, therefore, she must understand—they had never spoken. He saw her mainly on the training grounds, where it was evident that she was a foreigner just from the swift, agile strokes of her weapon and her quick but silent foot movements, so unlike any fighting style Dedue knew. Dimitri had mentioned that she was the heir to the throne in her own land, and this fact, also, did not come as much of a surprise. Even now, glaring down at Dedue, she had a regal air about her, something that inherently demanded respect. Yet there was a softness, too. It was authority without arrogance. He’d first recognized it years ago in Dimitri, and this girl wore it unmistakably, much the same.
He could not recall her name, a fact that bothered him greatly.
The girl in question continued to stare down at him with narrowed, demanding eyes. When Dedue still said nothing, too lost in his scrambled thoughts about who she was and how he should properly address her, she cleared her throat in impatience. Oh, yes. She had asked him a direct question, hadn’t she? One was usually expected to respond to questions.
“I have been here four years,” he fumbled blankly, watching as the girl’s eyes narrowed into slits.
“You are speaking the Fodlan language with much ease, for only four years.” She spoke the words sharply, like an accusation. It was a tone he was quite familiar with. Perhaps hostility towards Duscur extended further than even he had realized, not just to the other lands of Fodlan but to other nations altogether.
When he said nothing more, the girl continued. “I am tracking you here for a reason, Dedue. Sometimes, I am overhearing you speak, and I am thinking you have strength at this language that I do not. And I have been living here five years now.”
Whatever he had expected her to say, it was not that. “Oh?”
“Yes. I am wanting—no, I am hoping—that you will teach me.”
She looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised in question, but Dedue could only blink back at her. Teach…the language of Fodlan…to this Black Eagles girl? He wasn’t sure he fully understood. Why was she asking him? “You speak the language quite well already,” he voiced, keeping his voice steady so that it did not betray any of his shock. This was the truth, which made it easier. She volunteered answers often in their axe seminars, and he had never once failed to understand her. “I am not sure I could be of much use to you.”
The girl crossed her arms again. Her annoyance seemed to have grown exponentially at his response.
“I do not wish to offend you,” he amended quickly, feeling far more intimidated by her than she seemed to be by him, “I will help you if that is really what you wish. But I do not think you need any more lessons. Also…,” he thought of how often his own words still seemed to elude him, how sometimes, when the Blue Lions all talked over one another in a scrambled rush, he found it difficult to follow along. “I am no expert.”
Petra’s expression immediately relaxed, all her features seeming to soften, as if she were letting out a long-held breath. “Yes, you helping me is still what I am wishing.” She broke into a warm, wide smile, and he furrowed his brow, just slightly, to mask his confusion. What was happening here? Normally his impassiveness would have scared people away by now, but the girl was only growing more comfortable. “I have some fluency, but I am not speaking the language with as much…smoothness…as you are,” she continued, sitting down in the armchair next to his and looking over at him eagerly.
“I do not lie. You speak well. It is only your tenses that—” Dedue paused, still absently clawing around in his mind for her name. It seemed far ruder to go on without a proper way to address her than to simply ask, so he came out with it. “Please forgive me, I am afraid I cannot recall your name?”
The girl with the plum braid and bright eyes and foreign throne seemed completely unfazed by this admission, and Dedue allowed himself a silent breath of relief at her lack of offense. “Of course you are not knowing. Please take my apologies. I am Petra Macneary, granddaughter of the King of Brigid.”
She held out her hand. It was a Fodlan custom, but apparently one they had both adopted.
“Dedue Molinaro.” He encased her much smaller hand with his own, and shook it.
It was one thing to teach Sylvain how to flip an egg, or Ashe how to repot a Cyprus plant. Teaching Petra a language he himself still felt barely proficient in proved an altogether different—and more difficult—beast.
He told her as much, on their second meeting in the library, while failing to answer Petra’s burning question: “…then Caspar said ‘now that’s the last straw!’ but we were not in the stables, and there was no straw. Still, Dorothea was not appearing…I mean, she did not appear…to have confusion. She only laughed, and afterwards Caspar got angrier. Lindhart had to drag him away. But what was his meaning?”
Dedue took a moment to parse over his answer. It was far easier when Petra was asking him about nouns and verbs, and he could recite the rules he had memorized some time ago, hauled up in the Palace in Fhirdiad with Dimitri by his side. The many peculiarities of this language still puzzled him. “That saying means…that he no longer has patience,” he explained carefully.
Petra’s frown deepened in concentration, and she turned adamantly to the dictionary spread out before her, which was annotated extensively in her looping, lopsided script. “I still lack understanding. What is patience having to do with straw?”
He felt like his mind was caked in a thick layer of mud, bogged down by foreign words and sayings. Even now that he mostly understood them, thinking about it too hard was enough to make his head spin. “…Perhaps you should ask the Professor,” he suggested finally. “I am afraid I do not know how to explain it.”
Petra nodded and marked it down on her homework to inquire about later. Still, some time after, once he’d glanced out the window at the darkening sky and suggested it was time to retire to their rooms, she insisted on scheduling a future meeting.
He could not understand why she kept demanding to meet with him. He was well aware that his lessons were…lacking. Surely Professor Byleth, or Professor Manuela, or even the native speakers of Petra’s own house, would do a better job of helping her? But when he quietly asked her, at their aforementioned next meeting, if she wouldn’t prefer someone else as her teacher, Petra just shook her head.
“They do lend me their help,” she said, curling her fingers around the ends of her braid. “My classmates have much kindness. But they are also not knowing what is it like to be without the words to say what they are meaning. With you...even when you are not knowing—I mean, when you do not know—the words either, it is nice to be discussing them with you.”
Oh. His response garbled in his throat, trapped out of reach as words so often were. He could only nod, and bury his head in her dictionary, as if he was consumed by the translations and not by her kindness.
The first time Ashe had asked him to join him in the dining hall, one quiet afternoon after they’d finished their mandated chore of weeding the monastery gardens, Dedue had shook his head.
“You do not have to dine with me just because we have shared duties,” he said solemnly. “It might reflect poorly on you, to associate with a man of Duscur when it is not required of you.”
Ashe’s face hardened. “His Highness associates with you,” he said pointedly. But Dedue refused to be swayed so easily.
“That is different. I am His Highness’ vassal.” His vassal and not his friend, he thought dismissively, though he knew the other boy would protest if he voiced that aloud, so he kept the last part to himself.
“Well, I am your friend,” Ashe continued adamantly, as if he had read Dedue’s thoughts just the same, “And I don’t care what other people think, and besides, I want to know your opinion on today’s dish. It’s Grilled Herring, but I always think they make it a bit too bland here and I was thinking if they just added…” He continued to talk as he began the walk to the dining hall, glancing back expectantly for Dedue to follow him.
But his mind was in a haze. He was still processing Ashe’s words. “We are…friends?”
Ashe’s mouth thinned immediately to a frown. “Dedue. We weed the gardens together for the Professor every week, I’m always hoping our kitchen duties will overlap so you can teach me how to improve my recipes—” Was he…blushing? The flush on Ashe’s cheeks somehow made the freckles dotting his nose stand out even more sharply against his pale skin. Dedue swallowed. “—And sometimes when I’m walking by the Greenhouse I stop in to say hello just because I see you in there through the glass. So yes, I hope that we are friends. Now, c’mon.”
Friends. Perhaps that would be okay. Being friends with Dimitri was, of course, still out of the question. It was not his place to be friends with his future king, not when his own role was to be his sword and shield. But perhaps…with Ashe…as long as he didn’t allow it to get in the way of protecting His Highness….
He told himself it was all right even if it wasn’t, if only because Dedue very much wanted it to be true. And so he followed Ashe to the dining hall.
The taste of the Grilled Herring—too bland, indeed—seemed to linger in his mouth as he recalled the memory. He’d thought of it, unbidden, as he watched Petra run her finger down the index in her dictionary, searching for a word neither of them recognized in Professor Byleth’s homework assignment on tactics. It was one thing for him to have become tentative friends with most of the Blue Lions. They were the people Dimitri was one day to lead for and with. In a way, it was important for Dedue to know them, and His Highness did not seem to mind. But this…. He had no reason for growing closer to a member of a different house. Dedue did nothing without a reason. And yet…this he could not resist. “Petra,” he began, relieved to hear his voice come out steady and sure, much more so than he actually felt. The princess hummed in acknowledgement, not looking up from her book. Dedue swallowed down his hesitation and asked, “Are we friends?”
They had been meeting up regularly, now, for several moons, sometimes to go over vocabulary charts or review sentence structure, but more often, particularly in the past few weeks, to study together for their upcoming certifications. Dedue had tried participating in the full class study sessions Dimitri had organized for the Blue Lions, but they always seemed to end with him being more confused than when they’d started. Ingrid and Sylvain spent most of their time arguing, Felix always left after 20 minutes to swap out textbooks for “hands-on” learning at the training grounds (that was, if he’d bothered to show up at all) and Annette and Ashe worked so well together, and worked through problems with such rapidity, that it often felt like they were gleefully announcing the answer before Dedue had even processed the question. With Petra it was different. She also liked to read questions twice, and talk through the wording to make sure she’d understood it correctly. He helped her with the math, and she coached him through complex battle tactics and hand movements.
The princess’ eyes snapped up from her page. “Yes, we are friends, Dedue. At least, I am hoping we are.” She smiled at him, the tattoo beneath her eye crinkling pleasantly on her cheek.
So Dedue hastily continued before he lost his nerve, thinking of how easily Ashe had asked him and wishing he could have just a slice of the other boy’s certainty. “I hope so as well. Would you like to dine with me? It is time for us to take a break, I think. Unless you had other plans. I understand if you would prefer to eat with someone else.”
He waited for her to reject the offer, tell him she was meeting up with Ferdinand or Dorothea, or that it simply wouldn’t be acceptable for her to be seen with him in a place so populated. But Petra snapped the dictionary shut and gleefully pushed it aside, thrilled at the excuse to put their studying on pause. In the face of supper, anything else could wait. “Absolutely.”
So they made the trek to the dining hall, side by side in companionable silence. This was one of the nicest parts about spending time with Petra. She didn’t insist on constant communication, but when the time came to break the silence, she nevertheless always had something to say. “I think they are serving stir-fry!” she exclaimed as they approached the hall, eyes following a long line of students and knights winding along the serving tables. Dedue could indeed spot vegetable stir-fry on the plates of those exiting the line. He and Petra joined the throng, and he passed her over a tray.
“Do you enjoy this dish?”
“I am liking it greatly! Though nothing here is having as much taste as the food in Brigid.”
“No,” Dedue somberly agreed. “They do not seem to understand the meaning, or the importance, of spice here.”
Petra snorted, earning a few scowls from the knights in line behind them, but she allowed the student on kitchen duty to ladle a large portion onto her plate all the same. Once both of their plates were loaded, Dedue followed her blindly as she easily wove a path through the crowded tables to two empty seats she’d somehow spotted in the far corner, at a table otherwise occupied by monks and bishops.
As soon as Dedue and Petra took their seats, the clergymen stood up. It was a familiar enough occurrence, but Dedue still felt his shoulders stiffen as the men and women shot them glares. It was the only outward sign that their actions had any effect on him.
“I normally wouldn’t question the archbishop,” one of the women tsked, turning to her colleague as she collected her tray, “but I simply can’t understand why those people were allowed in.”
“I was told that the Faerghus princeling insisted. But at least that Duscur beast of his wasn’t on kitchen duty tonight, so he can’t have poisoned our stew,” the man answered. His companion cackled, as if she had just heard the funniest joke in all the land.
They made no effort to speak softly, and the familiar sinking feeling, like a weight baring down on his heart, shoving it unwillingly towards his rib cage and cutting off the air to his lungs, sat heavily in Dedue’s chest. He was used to such comments. He was used to them and he had learned not to mind. Yet…Petra was surely regretting her decision to join him, now. He turned to her, an apology on his lips, only to find Petra glaring daggers at the newly vacated seats, holding her fork in a whitened fist, as though it were a pitchfork and not a dining utensil.
“I am sorry,” he said rigidly, waiting until her eyes met his to continue, “Please do not let them upset you. It is me that causes them to act so…rudely. There are many here who do not take well to a man from Duscur receiving an education at a place like the Officer’s Academy.”
“It is not you alone,” Petra gritted out, overturning her fork with her fingers and stabbing it into her stir-fry with relish. “They are not liking me, either. In truth, they are not liking anyone who has a difference from them, in beliefs or looks or thinking. Brigid is viewed with much harshness by those here, but it is because they are not knowing who we are in truthfulness.” Her anger had hardened her face, and warbled her speech, and her eyes still flitted to where the monks had resettled, at a table to their left that was now far too crowded, while theirs remained painfully empty. “It is times like this that I am most missing home.”
Petra looked away, but not before Dedue saw something far off in her purple eyes that he recognized from the mirror: an emptiness that came not simply from the enormous loss of one’s family and home but from the constant, smaller losses. He knew the feeling all too well. It was the foul taste of Fodlan’s thick stews, which first his palette dutifully rejected, then, by some cosmic betrayal, slowly grew a taste for. The feeling of guilt that always followed such a craving, and the fear that sunk into his bones when he forgot whether his mother had used cranberries or blackberries in her jams, or whether his father had gray or brown eyes. It was spending years learning the history and the culture and language of a country that was not his own, while each day ignoring the glares and the sneers of that country’s people. Partitioning off the parts of him where that stung. And changing himself, slowly, bit by bit, into something they might find more palatable. Carving away at his own insides until the hollowness that was already there from the initial losses became a vast gulf that only continued to widen. Someone else’s clothes and food and strange customs and stranger Goddess until he’d begun to forget his own, or at least until the new and the old became so blurred as to be indistinguishable.
Compromising himself everyday until the old version no longer existed, all for the sake of a new version that could never truly belong.
He did not know how to put all of that into words, so instead he said simply, “I understand.”
And all at once Petra’s face shifted, and that particular brand of familiar sorrow was replaced by a steel that he recognized, too. She took another, determined bite of her meal and did not look back at the sneering monks. “One day I will be returning to Brigid as Queen,” she said sharply, “Then…I will make them see that Brigid does have strength, and much beauty. We will not be a vassal state always. I will be ensuring it. Brigid and the Empire will stand as equals. Soon.”
Soon.
“I have no doubt you will succeed.” And he didn’t. With the iron determination in her eyes, he found that he believed her with almost as much vigor as he believed in Dimitri. But there was something else too, the ache of knowing that his was a land to which he could never return. “If you do mind telling me...what do you miss most about Brigid?” It was not often, these days, that his mind dwelled on his own country and refused to leave, but he suddenly felt desperate to remember that there were still lands apart from this one.
Petra chewed thoughtfully on her food. “My grandfather and my cousins, of course” she admitted after a pause. “I am afraid they will be different than in my memory once I am returning. Much time has passed.” He had never heard her speak of her family before, but he had also never volunteered to share his own. Such things did not come up, when discussing adverbs and direct objects. Now, his memory drifted to the voices that still sometimes floated through his dreams and the faces that grew fuzzier with each passing day. His sister’s mischievous eyes peering through the beaded curtains of their bedroom. His brothers’ booming voices, announcing their presence long before their bodies did. His father’s big, calloused hands over Dedue’s own as they grinded spices in the kitchen, and his mother and grandmother’s calming songs, singing him to restful sleep.
“Of course,” he said softly.
Petra continued, her face breaking into a wide smile. “There is more I am missing, too. Fodlan has frigid coldness, does it not? I am missing the sunbeams, and the waves. I once was swimming in those waters with my cousins, splashing and breathing in the saltiness. Fodlan has its beaches too, but from here to the water, there is so much distance.” Her face was wistful, but not quite sad. The smile still remained as she described long days spent swimming beneath an endless sun, splashing home with burnt cheeks and dripping clothes to await her grandfather’s reprimands. She told him of racing her cousins up trees in Brigid’s lush forests and, going even further back, of accompanying her late father, the crown prince, on his hunting trips around the country. In a voice weighed down by fondness, she recalled the day he granted her permission to receive the honor of her first tattoo, the purple mark beneath her eye, as a reward for cutting down her first rabbit. Petra was seven. “It is a prayer—” she told him conspiratorially, her eyes twinkling with the sacrilege of speaking of prayers to other gods right here beneath Sothis’ roof. Though she leaned in, she also raised her voice as she told it, so that the monks one table over would be sure to hear. “—to the forest spirits. To lend us strength and protection in the hunt.” More than one of the clergymen visibly recoiled, and Dedue had the oddest sensation of wanting to laugh. The noise stayed trapped in his throat, but he felt its reverberations all the same.
It was nice, he allowed himself to decide, being here with Petra, speaking of places beyond not only these walls but also these constricting borders. He was very glad he’d asked her to join him, and even more grateful that she did not seem to mind doing most of the talking.
A part of him longed to tell her about Duscur, about all the things he never spoke of and the memories he clung to desperately but was so afraid to share. As she spoke of her own childhood, his mind bubbled over with memories of his own. It was hard to imagine that he had also been a child, once. Once, when smiles had come easily to his face, and laughter hadn’t felt so out of reach. Those had been peaceful, fearless times, spent running through the fields and collapsing, breathless, beneath trees. He wanted to tell her about all the things he missed. His own family, bright and beaming, before they faced down the ruthless blade of the Kingdom army, and his colorful, precious town before it was burned to ash. Still, he could not quite bring himself to say the words, and Petra seemed to understand, and did not ask.
They sat there, lost in the past, long after the clergymen had stood to leave, shooting them final glares as they passed, until the late afternoon had given way to an early evening, and Dorothea spotted them across the hall and moved to join them, dragging a sputtering Bernadetta behind her. The smaller girl whimpered at the sight of him, tugging on Dorothea’s sleeve in an attempt to stop her path. Dedue took that as his cue to leave.
“I must be returning to His Highness,” he said abruptly, nodding briefly at the new arrivals before making to stand, “Please enjoy your meal.” But when Petra reached out and gave his hand a squeeze before he stood, he briefly allowed his fingers to tangle around her own.
A quiet thank you, for a conversation he had not known he’d so desperately needed.
They still called it language practice, but they began to spend less and less time at the library.
Often they trained together, which was proving quite useful despite their vastly different fighting styles. Dedue had never seen someone so light on her feet. Petra swung her sword and axe like they were mere extensions of her arm, and was more than willing to show him her complicated hand maneuvers, though he could rarely emulate them. In turn, he taught her more about shooting a bow, how to get a firm grip on heavier weapons, and how to stabilize her position to better endure blows.
Once, she took him to see the monastery’s wyverns, and confessed that she was hoping to become a rider. “We do not have them in Brigid, but they are most magnificent, are they not?”
Truthfully, Dedue found them intimidating. He preferred to rely on only himself, and not an unpredictable fellow creature, in the midst of a fight. But he could not deny that the wyverns had a strange beauty too, a presence that made one always aware of their undeniable strength, and perhaps an air of wisdom as well. “I think they suit you,” he said.
They ate the occasional meal together, on some of the nights when Dimitri was dining with the Professor or Marianne, and Dedue was left free. Once, Dorothea joined them, sidling up close to Petra’s side and immediately wrapping an arm around her friend’s shoulders as she whispered something conspiratorially into her ear, which made Petra laugh. Then she raised her voice and chatted amicably told him about an opera she was writing, and eventually ushered Ingrid and Sylvain over, too. Dedue said little, but he enjoyed seeing his friends so happy. Things had been rather solemn since the last moon, when they had watched civilians morph into crazed monsters in Remire Village. Seeing the town aflame, and the monastery overcrowded with orphaned children, had reminded him of things he would rather forget. But when Hilda dragged Claude over, plopping down into a remaining seat and assuring them all that she hadn’t wanted to miss the party, it felt a little like the feast they had all shared after the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion. Like there was still a part of him that could be carefree.
Mostly, however, he kept up with the other students only through Petra, who loved regaling him with stories about the Black Eagles. She told him about Caspar’s antics and Linhardt’s begrudging participation in them, and described at length the ongoing hostilities between Dorothea and Ferdinand, both of whom she spoke of with a particular exasperated fondness twinkling in her eyes. His own stories were never as detailed or numerous, but he did confide in her, quietly, that Ingrid had been much kinder to him of late, that they had even prepared a few meals together, and that Dimitri wanted to ask Marianne to the ball.
…Dimitri, naturally, did not ask Marianne to the ball, and it took half the event for Dedue to convince him to at least ask her to dance. Once that was settled, however, it dawned on him just how out of place he felt there, stuck on the outskirts of the dance floor, feeling far too indelicate and unwieldy to participate. Like he was taking up too much space. So he tried to find Ashe, eyes searching the floor for that familiar silvery hair. He almost ran headlong into Petra instead. The princess jumped back in surprise, nearly overturning the drinks in her hands.
“My apologies,” he said, reaching out to help steady her.
“Dedue!” Petra beamed up at him in recognition. For the ball, she had done her hair in two braids instead of one, and tied them up against the back of her head in a fancy knot. “Are you not dancing?”
“I do not know how,” he admitted plainly. Not this type of dancing, at least.
Petra frowned. “Dancing has strangeness here, yes, but not difficulty. I could be showing you!”
Dedue looked pointedly down at the drinks in her hands. “I do not wish to keep you.”
She followed his gaze down to the punch glasses and widened her eyes in surprise, as if she had forgotten she was holding them. “Oh! Yes!” Her face flushed pink. “I should be getting back, or Doro— or my dancing partner will be wondering where I went!”
“That is quite all right. I would prefer not to dance, besides. Please, enjoy your evening.” He bowed to her and turned to walk away, but a small hand with a wrist laden in colorful bangles reached out quickly to stop him. She had somehow transferred both glasses to one hand, holding the stems carefully between her fingers. The other hand did not leave his wrist.
“Ashe went to the greenhouse,” Petra blurted, her eyes sparkling with understanding. “He is also preferring not to dance.”
He hadn’t told her he was looking for Ashe, she had just known…. Dedue’s eyes widened, but by the time he had processed this information and opened his mouth to thank her, Petra was bouncing away, hurtling towards a pretty brunette dressed to the nines, who wore a giddy smile and had eyes only for her.
Once he was out of the hall and into the fresh air, he took a moment to compose himself, he steadied his shoulders, and then he turned in the direction of the greenhouse.
Ashe, it turned out, did not know how to dance, either.
Under the moonlight, they figured it out together. Dedue catalogued the brightness of the stars.
It was a bright and sunny Sunday when he helped put down a rebellion of his own countrymen. The sky was perfectly blue and streaked with endless white clouds. The snow had given way to an early spring.
When Dimitri first came to him with the news, speaking in a low, even voice, Dedue felt an ache unlike any he had experienced in quite some time.
The people of Duscur are attempting to reclaim their rightful home, and we must stop them.
No: we must stop them because they are bound to fail.
It did not make it any easier.
On the battlefield, seeing the expressions of Duscur survivors as he raised his gauntlets against them, the ache widened to a gaping wound. The way they looked at him, he realized, was not so indistinguishable from the monks who glared at him in the courtyards.
He had done it to save them, to force them to retreat and live to see their varied tomorrows, but it did not matter.
Dedue had known, for a long time, that when the Kingdom burnt Duscur down to ruins, they had stripped him of any chance of returning to his homeland.
Only now did he realize that his countrymen would never have welcomed him back.
As they journeyed back to the monastery, the clear sky broke, and the rain came down in sheets.
The holy days in Fodlan seemed all but never ending. Just when Dedue thought he had made it safely through, another one appeared on his calendar.
Today was the Day of the Saints, and there was a special service and hymn in the Cathedral. Dedue usually went to those. He did not want it to reflect more poorly on His Highness than it already did, having him as his retainer. After four years in this country, it was all too easy to imagine the comments, should he choose to not attend; Not just a traitor from Duscur, but also a verified heretic as vassal to the crown prince—the scandal! Besides, it was expected of students to attend, though it wasn’t strictly mandated. Everyone went. Even Felix, scowling over his folded hands and refusing to sing the hymns, and Claude, who had so obviously, though his own house somehow didn’t seem to realize it, come from a land outside of Sothis’ domain. Even Edelgard and Hubert.
It was Mercedes who had convinced him not to go.
“But why would you?” she said that morning, sounding genuinely confused after he told her, in passing, that he would see her at the mass.
“It is Four Saints Day, is it not?”
“Yes…” Mercedes said hesitantly, her face a picture of confusion, “But Dedue…you do not worship the Saints.”
“No,” he confirmed.
“So why would you attend mass then, silly?” she continued. “In fact, that’s just why I came over here. We assumed you might get hungry while all of us are busy at church this afternoon, so Annie and I baked you cookies! She wanted to be here to give them to you, too, but there was a slight…mishap…in the kitchen this morning. She’s still cleaning. You know Annie.” Her eyes sparkled as she reached into her bag, proudly presenting him with a slightly crushed bag filled with treats.
Dedue swallowed down the cloying lump in his throat. “I think it would be for the best if I attended the service with His Highness,” he said simply. “But I thank you for your kindness, all the same.”
Mercedes’ face fell. “Anyone is welcome in the Cathedral, even those not of the faith” she began after a long pause. Her voice was firm, almost scolding, “But you are not searching for the Goddess, nor are you unsure of your beliefs. You have a religion and Gods of your own, and I know that you still hold them close, no matter what you might say. So why should you be forced to worship at a different alter? The Goddess’ wouldn't want that, and neither, from what you have told me of them, would the Gods of Duscur.”
He immediately opened his mouth to respond, a thousand excuses on his lips, about how this was necessary for the good of His Highness, about how not attending would tarnish the crown prince’s reputation, and reflect poorly on all the students of the Officer’s Academy. About how he was used to swallowing down the person he once was, and it did not matter. But Mercedes’ stern expression made the words stick in his throat. It seemed rather to be thinking too much of himself, to think that his attendance or absence would make so much of a difference. His Highness was already judged harshly for having a man from Duscur in his service. Dedue not attending a church service could hardly make it worse, not when they already expected him to be worse than a beast: a traitor and a savage.
He hesitated, and that was all it took for Mercedes to know she had won. She wore the triumph across her face in the form of a broad smile. “His Highness will be perfectly safe with us and the archbishop there,” she assured him, amusement twinkling in her sea-blue eyes, “And you can join us afterwards for the feast!” She pushed the cookies into his hands and startled him with a quick peck on the cheek. “Enjoy your afternoon, Dedue!” she called back to him cheerfully, waving him goodbye as she retreated in the direction of the Cathedral.
Even so, he’d still felt guilty leaving Dimitri’s side at the Cathedral’s doors, but His Highness had assured him that it was more than all right. “I am glad, Dedue, truly. I can always tell how uncomfortable you are in there. I will see you at dinner, my friend.”
My friend. The words danced through his mind on the quiet walk back across the bridge, my friend, my friend. They sent a flutter through him even as they left a knot of worry in his chest. He was a sworn sword and an impenetrable shield, a weapon. He was meant to be repaying a life debt, not indulging himself. And yet. He had not corrected Dimitri this time. Merely nodded, and taken his leave.
He met Petra in the courtyard, spread out under the shade of an oak tree. The weather had finally warmed, and they could spend time outdoors again, the sun breaking through the clouds and bathing the grounds in its welcome embrace. Petra’s bare legs were stretched out before her, already two shades darker from just a few weeks in the sun. Her face was glowing. She ushered him over as soon as she saw him. “Dedue!”
“Hello, Petra,” he greeted, folding himself slowly down beside her so that his back was against the trunk of the tree. Then he held out his bag of cookies in offering. “Mercedes and Annette made them,” he explained. “Please, help yourself.”
Petra beamed at him, reaching behind her to reveal a similar bag filled to the brim with chocolate biscuits. Then she laughed, the sound reverberating around the empty courtyard and intermingling pleasantly with the chirps of the birds. “Bernie made these for us as well,” she said happily, placing them on the ground between them. “Also, she is wanting you to know…” Petra paused, her face scrunched as if trying to recall the exact words Bernadetta had used, “that she is very very sorry for being frightened by you, and she knows that it is you who is watering her Venus Fly-Trap when there are too many people in the greenhouse and she is afraid to be going in herself. She has much gratitude.”
If the fluttering in his chest had managed to disappear in the time since his departure from Dimitri, that would have brought it back. He grabbed a cookie from each of the bags to distract himself. Holding them out critically in mock appraisal. “We will have to compare them.”
“Bernie will win,” Petra said loyally, grabbing her own set of cookies and oozing with house pride as she explained, “Bernie has very much skill in the kitchen, and is always making us sweets.”
“Ah, but you have never tried Mercedes’ and Annette’s baking,” Dedue said mischievously, feeling a rush of affection for his own housemates as he took a bite out of their sweet, crumbly shortbread. The girls must have woken up early just to make these for him.
For a while, they sat there sharing their snacks and chatting amiably about the merits of each cookie (both of which, ultimately, were delicious.) Dedue could not quell his relief at not having to recite foreign prayers or badly harmonize choir gospels. It felt liberating to be out here in the sun, in a courtyard utterly empty but for the two of them. No sneers or murmurings from unfriendly knights, no monks lurking around him in the hopes of catching him doing something untoward. It was only him and Petra and the endless sky, and for a moment it felt as though they weren’t at Garreg Mach at all, but somewhere kinder, with softer edges and a brighter sun.
Petra was the only one he knew who had never attended church services. Unlike him, she had never conceded in that way to the state that held her hostage, and she hadn’t needed anyone to convince her not to attend this time. Dedue thought that was very brave. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but she spoke before he could. “I am glad you did not go today, Dedue,” she said happily, running her fingers through the grass. “Normally I am alone on these holidays.”
“I am glad I did not go as well,” he admitted. It felt strange to voice it. Freeing.
Their conversation lulled into a comfortable silence, basking in the warm weather and occasionally sneaking an additional cookie, even though both of them had already had far too many. Petra eventually closed her eyes to sunbathe, and seemed content, but eventually the familiar fear crept in, that maybe he was boring her. Petra was a very upbeat person, not as much as Annette, perhaps, but still talkative. He hoped she wasn’t regretting agreeing to spend the whole afternoon with him. “I am sorry, I do not always know what to say,” he breathed finally, breaking the silence.
Petra cracked open an eye, then raised her elbow to rest her head on her hand and met his gaze. “I am not minding the silence, Dedue,” she assured him. He nodded, but didn’t quite believe her. Petra continued, “But if you would like to talk…Ashe is always telling me that friends should be talking about whatever they wish to. It does not have to be something particular.”
Ashe. He knew they were friends, of course, in a vague sense. Ashe had mentioned accompanying Petra to the market on several occasions. And at the ball…well, they had clearly spoken. Yet somehow he had never spent time with the both of them together. The question slid from his lips, more curiosity than anything, “Are you and Ashe close?”
“Yes!” Petra said, brightening immediately, “Ashe is teaching me all about the traditions of being a commoner. And I take him with me shopping, because he knows about the haggling.” She paused, then lowered her voice as if sharing a deep secret, “In truth, he is the one who was first telling me about you, Dedue. He is the reason I asked for your help with this language!”
Dedue’s eyes snapped to hers in surprise, unable to keep the startled expression from crossing over his face. “He was?”
Petra nodded. “Yes. He was telling me that you would understand, and he was right.”
Dedue blinked.
“Actually, Ashe is speaking of you quite often, Dedue,” Petra prodded, raising an eyebrow at him playfully. “About you cooking him meals when the Professor is giving you both kitchen duty, and how you are planting a garden together, and the violets you gave him when he was injured on the last mission—”
Dedue could feel his face heating up, and quickly interrupted her, “Yes. Petra, I am not sure I should tell you, but Dorothea approached me the other day. She wanted to ask if I knew anything about spices from Brigid, and said she was planning on cooking a meal of traditional Brig—”
“Okay, okay,” Petra laughed. “I yield.”
The corners of his mouth quirked up ever so slightly into an almost smile as Petra playfully swatted at him in embarrassment. It reminded him, momentarily, of his older sister, and the way they used to relentlessly tease one another.
His mind wandered back to that day in the dining hall, the first time he and Petra ate together, when she had told him all the things she missed about Brigid. He remembered how the memories had flooded through him, consuming his senses, and how desperately he had wanted to share them, even though he couldn’t bring himself to. Ashe is always saying that friends should be talking about whatever they wish.
“Petra,” he began, more softly, after the laughter stopped and they’d both settled back down against the tree. “There is something I do want to tell you, as my friend. It is about…my home.”
Petra’s hand reached out and squeezed his own, just once, for encouragement. “If you would like to tell me, I would love to be hearing it.”
So he told her. Once he began, it was difficult to stop. He told her that both of his parents, like so many in Duscur, worked long hours at the forge, but that they still ate breakfast as a family each morning. About the feel of his father’s hard, calloused hands over his on the morning bread dough, a sign of a hard-working man who never took the time to rest. He told her of his mother teaching him to grow and identify all of Duscur’s herbs and flowers, about his siblings—his younger brothers and their many antics, his sister trampling over his carefully tended garden in her haste to get him to come play, Dedue. About the four of them sparring with wooden sticks in the backyard, falling to the ground and rolling through the weeds, laughing. His grandmother’s bony fingers combing through his hair, tying it back with a silk ribbon in any color he chose, kissing the top of his head and calling him hersweetest thing. Do not be so serious, sweet child. The sky is not yet falling. But then, of course, it had.
It had, it had, it had.
He didn’t stop with his family, but told her, too, about Duscur the land. He told her everything he could remember best: the shape of the trees, the colorful flags against the brightly painted houses, the endless foliage, the patterned scarves he used to receive as gifts for the new year, and the fresh fruit market that set up shop in his village every Sunday. Finally, he told her what he had never voiced aloud before, what he tried not to think about even in the solitude of his own mind: that all of it was slipping further and further away from him, and he was never going to get it back. “Do you ever wonder...” he asked slowly, his voice raspy from how much talking he’d done, but still he plowed on, “if you have given too much of yourself away…to be here.” If it would have been better had he died in Duscur alongside his family, instead of being his village’s only survivor, the one stuck with the weight of a thousand of his people’s ghosts?
Petra was a good listener. She’d sat through all of his stories in silence, her gaze never leaving his face, her mouth a slight smile, somehow knowing if she interrupted he might not continue. Now she spoke, and it was with a conviction that could tumble walls and shake the Gods themselves down from the heavens, “When my father died,” she said thoughtfully, slowly, “my grandfather knew Brigid was lost. So he surrendered to the Imperial Army, and when the Empire demanded a hostage, to be further ensuring Brigid’s new loyalties, he gave them me, too. For a long time, I carried much anger. How could he let me go with such ease? But before I left, my grandfather told me that I was Brigid’s final hope. I understand him now. He surrendered Brigid to save our people, and he sent me here to be saving Brigid.
“I brought my homeland with me. Yes, I am speaking Fodlan’s language and wearing their clothes and eating their foods, but I am sharing my culture with them, too. Duke Gerth was allowing me to come here to study because he has trust in me. When Edelgard becomes Emperor, she will be aiding Brigid to be free. I am doing that. I have made them believe in me, and my land. And…I like it here also. I am learning so much, but I am sharing much too. I have more than one home, now. Because of this, Brigid and Adrestia will have a greater understanding of one another.”
Of course it is different for her, Dedue thought wearily, she will return some day to her people and restore her country to its fullest self. It had been a stupid question. His loss was different. Worse, a small voice said. But that was an unkind and unfair thought, and he shoved it aside, angry that he had even conceived of it. Loss was not something that could be compared or measured. He had known that since he had first looked into the eyes of a Faerghus prince with straw yellow hair and tear steaks down his face. So he just stared out over the grass, to the tulips blooming in the flowerbed across the way.
Petra continued. “You are not understanding,” she said crossly, “What I am meaning is…you cannot lose who you are. You brought Duscur here, like I have brought Brigid. It is alive in you, and you are sharing it, and making it alive for others, too.”
“Petra, I do not speak of my home often. I wish I could share it as you share yours. You are willing and warm, yet I…” he ended weakly. It felt strange to voice such fears. Strange to admit that he did not feel like an adequate translator, not when it came to describing everything that Duscur had been and was. He could never do it justice. His friend shook her head.
“I am not thinking that is the truth, Dedue. Many people may not know the things you are telling me about Duscur, but they are knowing you. The Blue Lions are not treating you like the monks or the knights do. They know that you have much difference from what they were told to think. You are helping them to understand, even if you are not recognizing it. Prince Dimitri sees Duscur differently, and is not dismissing—dismissive of you, like Edelgard is not dismissive of me.”
“His highness is different,” Dedue spoke stiffly, “He has never seen me…like others do. Like a beast.”
“Then he is only knowing the real you, because you are not at all beastly!”
Dedue looked away, unable, for once, to face her eye to eye. It suddenly felt too vulnerable. As a weapon, he was not supposed to show cracks.
But he was beginning to feel like less of a weapon and more of a boy. “Thank you, Petra,” he said softly. Fondness for her flowed out of him in a great swarm. He would have to compose for her a bouquet of all of his best flowers in thanks. Perhaps Ashe would help.
“Come,” she said suddenly, springing to her feet. “They will be putting out the food for the feast soon, and as they say, ‘the early bird is the one who is getting the worm!’”
He turned to her in surprise. Petra never spoke in idioms. Her grin was wide and gleeful. “Alois taught me that one,” she said brightly.
“Ah. Did you finally decide to find a better tutor than me?”
“Yes. But you are teaching me more than just this silly foreign language!” She linked her arm through his own, even though it took her two strides to match one of his own. “Will you tell me again about Duscur’s trees? Were they sturdy and tall enough for climbing?”
That is what you are thinking of?”
“I am trying to teach Claude to climb trees,” Petra explained nonchalantly, and even though she had never before mentioned the Alliance’s house leader, it somehow did not come as a surprise that she had managed to make friends with him, too. “I am merely wondering if I will be having to also teach you…”
When they reached the dining hall, when Dedue saw his friends waving him over from behind a table laden with giant serving platters, when Ashe’s hand reached out instinctively to grab his own, and Dimitri grinned at him from beside Marianne, and Annette berated him to tell her what he’d thought of her cookies, he could not help but think of how bright they all were.
It was too much to pocket away for the future, to keep stored forever in his mind. He had better enjoy, then, while he could.
He grabbed a plate, and passed it to Petra.