Break, mend, and do it again

[incontrast]

Title: Break, mend, and do it again
Series:​ ​Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Rating:​ T (violent references I guess)
Pairings:​ one-sided Dimitri/Byleth hints because it’s AM canon shut up
Genre:​ General, angst
Word​ ​count: 2468
Spoilers:​ Yes
Summary: Following the tragedy in Remire, both student and teacher struggle with the reality of their turbulent emotions.


“It would seem that was the last of them, Your Highness.”

Dimitri ignored him. Between the blood rushing and pulse pounding and harrowed voices screaming in his ears, he could barely hear him, anyway. His attention was put to better use fixed on the line of trees up ahead, where the trunks grew thicker as the depth of the forest started proper. Trying to search any further would be a wasted effort; the enemy had surely used magic to flee at the first available opportunity.

Even so, the thought of letting even one of them escape made him ill. What was a little lost time if it meant he might get his hands on another of those monsters? What wouldn’t he give to make just one of them writhe and scream and confess all they knew before he finally snapped their neck as easily as he—

“Your Highness,” Dedue repeated.

With an irritated grunt, Dimitri tore his gaze away. “Let’s return,” he conceded.

Dedue nodded, but they both stopped short when they turned to find their professor just a few paces away. She looked untouched by the recent battle, although there was an unfamiliar look on her otherwise neutral face—the shadow of something Dimitri couldn’t put his finger on.

“I’m sorry, Professor. They escaped.”

As usual, her reaction was subdued. She only gave a light nod. “There’s nothing to be done about it for now. We need to focus on the village. And you’re bleeding,” she added, a dip in the pitch of her tone betraying what her face wouldn’t.

It took Dimitri a second to realize she was talking to him and he frowned, puzzled, as he glanced down. His gauntlets were splattered with drying blood and his lance dripped thick with it. It was harder to see on his black uniform, but his arms and chest were likewise marked as proof of his overzealous kills.

No, he started to say, it’s the enemy’s, but then he noticed where his shirt was in tatters just above his hip, the glimpse of skin beneath flushed red. Suddenly the stitch in his side felt worse despite having caught most of his breath back.

“You were shot,” she told him, watching his face when he looked up again. “You pulled the arrow out and kept fighting. You don’t remember?”

He honestly didn’t. At his side Dedue watched him with a look Dimitri refused to meet, reluctant to see the unwarranted apology in his friend’s eyes.

Trying to meet Byleth’s was no easier, especially when he dodged her question. “I’m fine. Really. I hardly feel it.”

“We’re not taking chances. Dedue, head back and assist the soldiers. We’ll follow in a minute.”

Despite the direct order, Dedue looked first to Dimitri, who nodded. “It won’t take long.”

“Sit down,” Byleth told him as she approached, in a tone that brooked no argument.

He saw no reason to argue and obeyed, sitting on a fallen tree as the two of them were left alone. On her knees beside him, the professor lifted his shirts carefully and took in the damage for a couple silent heartbeats. He caught the frown in her eyes and felt a flicker of uncertainty, but she finally gave a small shake of her head.

“It’s shallow. It looks like the bleeding’s mostly stopped.”

As relieving as that was, Dimitri thought her reaction a strange one. He had seen her observe much worse injuries among her allies with a blank face. Odd that she would wince at something so minor in comparison.

“You could have made the wound worse by doing that,” she pointed out. “Are you always that reckless?”

While he recognized her concern and couldn’t blame her for sounding annoyed, he was a little insulted by the question. Didn’t she know him well enough by now to answer that herself?

“I－no,” he stammered. “I imagine I was just－I was distracted at the time.”

“Is it normal for your memory to lapse when you lose control like that?”

Dimitri went still, his blood cold.

Lose control. He supposed that was a fitting term for it. She could have said worse.

He looked away, watching where smoke rose in the distance over the smoldering remains of Remire.

There was no denial to be made. He had always known it was just a matter of time until she found out, and yet－

“No,” he said quietly, with a calm confidence he didn’t feel. “I usually remember everything rather clearly.”

Byleth didn’t respond. Her warm fingers pressed firmly but carefully up and down the length of his side, and once convinced that there was nothing worse to be found, she pulled out a clean cloth and gauze from the pack on her hip.

“Mercedes is busy with the villagers, but I think a bandage will do for now.”

She didn’t look at him as she spoke, which was unlike her. Dimitri’s stomach twisted with apprehension.

“Are you… angry with me, Professor?”

He almost hoped so. Anger was better than fear or disgust, but all were warranted after what she had seen.

His words, his behavior… And then, after Solon and his grunts appeared, his actions. Dimitri had sent heads rolling and opponents screaming to their messy, merciless deaths. He had enjoyed every bittersweet second of it—hurting those who had dared to inflict such unreasonable violence and senseless pain—to the point of overlooking his own injuries. He had even considered confronting the Death Knight in those moments before Byleth struck a blow to Solon and chased them off.

Are you always that reckless?

Perhaps her question was a fair one, after all.

“No.” Byleth’s answer tugged him back to reality. “It isn’t you. I’m worried about you. It’s… everything else that’s…” Her eyes narrowed as they fell to the ground, her lips pressed together tight. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’ve just… felt... off recently. Like…” After a moment she shook her head, abandoning the thought. “Take off your shirt.”

The abrupt change of subject left him at a momentary loss. His mouth went inexplicably dry. “...I’m sorry?”

“Shirt,” she repeated with an indicative nod. “Or just hold it out of the way if you prefer. But I’ll have to reach around you.”

“Ah... Right. Of course.”

Byleth waited patiently as Dimitri stripped off his gauntlets, his cape, his sword, his shirt, and then finally his undershirt. Her eyes wandered over his hands, his arms, and he knew her furtive glance down was eyeing the thick scar that started below his ribs and curved around to his back. Her gaze didn’t linger and she didn’t comment, but those two seconds of silent inspection weighed heavily on him nonetheless.

He was glad they were outside the village. He didn’t mind her seeing him this way, necessarily, but the rest of their class he could do without.

He turned his head away as Byleth leaned in towards him, although it was unnecessary given the difference in their heights. She was quick, precise, with nothing in her movements or silence to suggest she was uncomfortable or having second thoughts.

And why would she be? he chided himself. It was only awkward in his mind, as usual, but as guilty as he felt over it, there was no ignoring the brush of her fingertips on his skin as she bound his torso, nor the touch of her warm breath on his shoulder every time she leaned closer to loop the gauze around him. There was no slowing his rapid pulse despite his increasing, irrational fear that she would notice it and realize—

“You aren’t going to ask?” he wondered suddenly, cutting off those thoughts in favor of another that was bothering him. “About…”

Byleth’s movements slowed, and then picked up again.

“I’m not sure what I would ask,” she admitted. “If you want to talk to me about it, I’ll listen.” She cut the end of the gauze with her dagger, securing it with a knot over his opposite shoulder to keep it from sliding out of place. The motion put her arms around him for a few notable seconds. “But that’s your choice to make. I trust you either way.”

I trust you.

That was the very last thing he would have expected her to say.

Dimitri stared at her as she tucked her things away, words catching in his throat and thoughts buzzing in his mind even more loudly than the voices of the dead.

Did he want to talk about it? No. Not particularly. He was long past the belief that putting his feelings into words would heal him in any way.

And yet… if she still trusted him after all that, the very least he could do was trust her, as well.

Sensing his thoughts, perhaps, Byleth merely waited. She was sitting beside him as she had done on many occasions by now, relaxed and within arm’s length. If she was lying—if she felt uneasy around him now—she was hiding it well.

Dimitri drew in a slow breath. His side stung faintly.

“Professor… I… I’m sorry you saw that side of me. It must have been quite a shock to you and the others. I’m mortified by my behavior.” He shook his head with a low, sharp sigh, trying to put those first few moments of madness into words. “When I saw the chaos and violence there… my mind just went completely dark.”

That hung in the air for a few beats.

“I felt the same.”

Byleth’s remark was quiet. Dimitri glanced at her and found her staring ahead with another unreadable expression.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Relieved? No… Even if the two of them were truly the same, that would be no cause for satisfaction. Byleth deserved better than that. She was better than that.

Even so, the weight in his chest grew a little lighter.

“I see… So that happens to you as well, then,” he mused, looking down at his knees. “I’ve told you before… that someday we may find ourselves facing something we simply cannot accept. That’s what the chaos in Remire Village was to me.” His hands tightened at his sides, his short nails gouging the tree’s bark. The noise in his head grew louder and he was only distantly aware of the words coming out of his mouth, low and heated and almost foreign, as if someone else spoke with his voice. “Solon and the Flame Emperor are both beasts who must be eliminated. Demons who kill the innocent. They aren’t even human at this point,” he spat.

Byleth turned to him, but he didn’t raise his head. “Where is this anger coming from?”

She sounded genuinely confused, but there was concern in her tone, too.

Dimitri forced his fingers to ease up, his shoulders to relax, his voice to soften its furious edge. “It must be hard to fathom. It’s true that I don’t have any strong connection to those villagers. And yet…”

He closed his eyes briefly. Never before had he needed to explain his past to anyone. His reputation had always preceded him; his name had been soaked in blood and darkness to the world at large. Until today, Byleth had been the exception.

“You see, Professor,” he said steadily, “I saw the same flames of torment just four years ago… in Duscur.”

That was all it took. The dying wails, the heat of blood and flames on his burning, lacerated skin, the earth soaked in red and drowning under a sea of corpses, twisted and mutilated with their open, empty eyes that watched him and begged him to save them—it all came rushing back, suddenly as real as it had been on that day. His heart hammered against his ribs as fresh sweat broke out along his skin. Trying to keep his breath even only made him choke. He grunted at the phantom pains and turned away to hide his wince.

He felt dizzy, lightheaded with too many sensations and emotions to name, but he forced out his strained voice as calmly as he could manage.

“My father… my stepmother… Four years ago, they lost their lives to those flames. I’ll never forget… I still remember their faces. Their screams. The tortured last moments of every person who died that day—”

He clenched his teeth, trapping more words in his throat. For an instant the stench of blood and smoke was nearly strong enough to gag him and he even tasted the tang of copper on his tongue—but then both were gone just as quickly as they came. Memory, and nothing more.

Dimitri took a moment to steady himself, waiting for the nausea and anxiety to pass. Byleth said nothing, but he felt the weight of her gaze and it made him that much more determined to pull himself together. He was telling her all this so that she would understand, not so she would pity him. He felt embarrassed beyond words that he had succumbed to his panic so easily in front of her.

“But right now,” he went on slowly, gruffly, with effort, “all that matters is that we do whatever we can to help the surviving villagers get back to their normal lives.”

It was something to focus on. Something important and worthwhile. The red-orange sheen in his vision faded and his stomach stopped churning. The voices remained, but that was to be expected. They were loudest in his sleep, secondarily after moments like this one.

He forced himself to his feet, willpower alone keeping him from stumbling on his unsteady knees. With his back to Byleth he made quick work of dressing himself, and only turned back to her after he had pulled on his gloves.

“Thank you. For everything.” He was glad to hear that his voice was once again stable, but his waist-deep bow to her was slow, just in case. Feeling guilty as well as awkward for his unprompted exposition, Dimitri picked up his lance and turned away without waiting for a response or checking her expression—but then stopped mid-step.

He had told her that much of his story. He might as well give her the rest.

“There’s a reason that I came to the Officers Academy,” he said without turning around. “Just one reason.” His tone wasn’t as rough as before, but there was a chill in his words he couldn’t keep in check.

“I came here for revenge. And one day, I will have it.”

He was glad that she didn’t call after him, gladder still that she made no effort to keep pace with him when she eventually followed. He wasn’t sure he had the strength left to fake indifference should he see disappointment in her face.