003 » i wrote a song about being weak

[bladehand]

fanart by Living201882687.
for dimitri at animehamlet.

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[animehamlet]

[is it sadder, the hound that sees his master slaughtered before his eyes and runs for the hills to try and carve out its life among them, or the hound that sees his master slaughtered, waits patiently at his side and stands diligently in his pooling blood?

well; dimitri supposes they will find an answer. his professor has always been inscrutable in some ways; that thing that unnerved him, that thing that enamored him, that thing that tore his heart asunder when even it couldn't protect someone so seemingly infallible from how utterly wretched this world was.

byleth proves himself corporeal. rather than capitalize on this luxury and go to the emperor's palace to pull her spinal column free from its bearings and dedicate her bloody throne to those whose bones it rests so snidely on top of, he... plays at domesticity? normalcy? whatever bile and curses are thrown dimitri's way by the dead and those he sends into their arms, this has to be insanity.

the office is a nest. a hole. something. dimitri avoids it out of newfound principle for the first few days - he curls into the confessional, wedges himself between bales of hay that have rotted five times over and squeak lively if pressed. byleth may have illusions of what this place once was, what he is, and what to make of it, but dimitri doesn't have the time to spare for such fancies.

he screams himself hoarse at the goddess's feet where glenn spits at them both, asks why is he taking so long? and he torments himself knowing he cannot dredge up a satisfactory answer, because glenn knows, sees inside his head, pries open his skull and sneers at what he finds. dimitri debates throwing himself off a parapet and wondering exactly how many rocks he will feel his body break upon before it all ends - the only brave thing you'll have ever done, his stepmother sighs.

she never looks at him. she never has. when he's nearly halfway over the wall his ever-roving eye catches some distant blur of bright hair accented by the utterly ridiculous contrast of his professor appearing to be carrying crockery around while dimitri prepares to finally put his crest of blaiddyd to its final test. it's absurd.

he doesn't do it. his stepmother barks a laugh - galled but unsurprised, shakes her head, and walks back into the screaming flames. dimitri doesn't know if that's what has finally consigned him to be discarded - it must be. they still berate him, but they do not fuel him with their rage and grief from that point on.

the cardinal's room changes, in the barest ways. broken glass disappears - a pity, it is as effective a weapon as any other - and the pieces of his armor end up scattered in another corner. the fact he has been unable to suit himself without assistance since the tragedy mocks him every moment - his shell, his inevitable funeral regalia, beckons him, but his fingers fumble and his knees lock. there's a sluggish, bone-deep exhaustion that starts to worm its way through dimitri as the faerghan winter's darkest, coldest nights make themselves known in earnest.

take him. do it. take him, finally, an egregious oversight corrected. he challenges, dares - blinks and still feels a pang of impotent rage, befuddlement and disappointment when he clears the haze from his eye and one of the few hours of a new day's sun greets him.

his gut burns - dimitri snatches at his shirt's hem to hike it up (and so naturally it rips) so he can properly glare at still-angry mottling around where that knife had seen fit to nest and where he would have left it for lack of care and the convenience of having a new weapon to pull free if need be. the glaring does nothing but confirm that even his own body is impotent at killing who most deserves it.

sometimes he corners himself under the desk and simply stays there, a creature looking for the tightest nook it can manage. even that instinct fails him tonight - he sprawls on the floor, upper half propped against a wall, catching a rat so lucky (or unlucky, because it still finds its way to him) to be fat on the eggs of nesting birds and carefree even in this monastery that it's no effort at all.

he could crush it. the thing squeals with indignation and it's effortless to prevent it from writhing and twisting and biting him - he's stopped much larger things from such similarly desperate efforts. dimitri's ever-tense jaw works and he swallows thickly.

somewhere in his standoff with a pest still screeching desperately for its life, dimitri hears the distant sound of footsteps and drops the rat entirely. he watches it scramble away - wonders if it will be so stupid as to show itself so brazenly again.

he hopes byleth comes back with a knife or a garrote, but his professor has an armful of blankets and dimitri is sure with the way he feels the befuddlement on his own face that it must be clear to the other man. one is of the expected sort of fare - cheap, standard, undyed. the archbishop's courtesy towards a cold night and nothing more.

the other is familiar in a way that makes him scoff - he knows that patterning, how it was thrown amongst the furniture they'd all played around while their fathers left to debate. how long did gautier last before it inevitably fell? did cornelia butcher all of their horses in the same way as she had blaiddyd's, or had she found some other circus to make of it all?]

...Is that so, Professor?

[he nearly slurs, disbelieving on both fronts. if byleth is resorting to sleeping with a corpse, he is both perverse and doomed - though this is a glorified tomb, so perhaps there's no better place. it will be cold, byleth says? he'll manage, won't he? five years away from all of them and he still had his fingers and toes. dimitri glances towards his own frostbite-scarred feet, tremoring with exhaustion as he tries to draw them closer towards himself.

he hurts, viscerally. the cold gnaws at every stricture stretched drawn across him, old and new. his eye slowly drifts back to the professor, to the blankets, to the slats in byleth's makeshift repairs that will inevitably still have howling winds worm their way in.]

Then you'd best hope those sheets are enough for you.

[dimitri doesn't crawl back under the desk, eager to welcome the chill in until it either takes his heart or starts taking his digits. it is an urge, incredible, incessant - but he doesn't.]

[bladehand]

[ Dimitri is not well. He was never well — Byleth knew that even when the man was a boy who tried to hide his suffering behind a smile — but he sees things, now. Talks to them. Gets lost in his visions and fantasies, swears and yells at them, is tormented by their mocking sneers and grins. Sometimes Byleth plays along with such fantasies; other times, he does not. An old mercenary from Jeralt's group used to say that when a man was mad, it was better to act like his visions were real than to challenge him that they were not, but Byleth hasn't seen much improvement from Dimitri with either approach.

Rot. Gangrene. Disease. Decay. Byleth has seen all of these things and never even flinched at them, but he has no idea how to stop his beloved student from decomposition of the mind.

Today, especially, he does not wish to humor whatever horrors Dimitri has been seeing. He thought he heard a rat when he entered the room, but he doesn't hear it now, which bodes ill for the creature's fate, save that there is no blood on Dimitri's hands (at the moment). The professor stares at him for a moment, his gaze inscrutable, then calmly deposits his blankets on the bed. ]

I said, "I'll need you to sleep with me," Dimitri.

[ The professor walks over, then lowers himself to a crouch, peering at Dimitri where he has huddled under the desk, shivering, pathetic. Still glowering despite the tremble in his limbs. As for the mottled bruising gash over his stomach where the knife was before Byleth extracted it — well, looks like he could use some more healing treatment, if of course Byleth can convince him to accept it.

Is this sleeping with a corpse, truly? A corpse would never look so frightened, so haunted, so alive. No — it isn't a corpse that Byleth sees before him, but perhaps he is guilty of being perverse. Perhaps he is equally doomed.

Even after all these years, the gleam in Byleth's eyes as he looks at Dimitri — it is still so strangely fond. ]

Come out from under the table.