Archive of Our Own

Autumn at Garrag Mach Monastery brings with it unforgivingly frigid winds, a rising sense of trepidation as violent encounters around Fódlan increase, and the distinctly charming sight of Ashe Ubert’s cheeks permanently colored with a ruddy blush. That last fact has hardly anything to do at all with the number of important matters Dedue needs to devote his time to, and yet it becomes the one thing he can’t stop thinking about. If it was anyone other than Ashe, it would vex Dedue to no end, but – it is impossible to be vexed by Ashe. Wholly unimaginable, Dedue believes, to look at those eager eyes and determined smile and think anything bad at all.

“Either you have devised a way of looking at the board through the side of your head, like an owl,” Dimitri whispers in class to him, “or you cannot stop looking at Ashe.”

Dedue blinks, flushes with shame, and immediately snaps to attention.

“I was merely stretching a kink in my neck,” he lies desperately. He has sworn to protect his liege with his life, but he’s made no such promises about the truth when his liege embarrasses him like this.

“Interesting,” Dimitri says pleasantly. “It astounds me that some of our classmates believe you have difficulty carrying on conversations, when you can lie so convincingly.”

“It is not a lie,” Dedue gripes, adding, “Your Highness,” for propriety’s sake.

“Whatever you say, my friend,” Dimitri says in a noticeably self-satisfied tone, but he drops the topic. Dedue is infinitely grateful, because he doesn’t know how to respond to either of those things – the truth behind the accusation that he can’t stop staring at Ashe, and the unbearably warm feeling that curls through his chest at Dimitri’s casual use of my friend .

He tries desperately to listen to and process Byleth’s lecture about battalion usage through narrow canyons, but it’s difficult when he’s focusing all his energy into not looking at Ashe, who’s earnestly listening to the professor with a puzzled look on his face. There’s a small furrow in his brow, and he looks a little angry; Dedue knows that this means Ashe isn’t understanding some part of the lesson, and he’ll be studying late with Annette again. Perhaps he’ll even ask Dedue a few questions about it, if they find the time to –

Dimitri passes him a note. You are once again very dutifully not looking at Ashe, it reads.

Dedue very respectfully crumples up the missive as the crown prince of Faerghus has to put his head in his arms and have a silent laughing fit at the baleful look that Dedue shoots him.

.

“Dedue,” Ashe’s unmistakably earnest voice calls, loud and clear, “Dedue!”

Dedue has told him a thousand times over not to get too close, not to publicize their friendship. If the cruel things that people say about Duscur to him were to be transferred to Ashe, he’s not sure that he could let them slide as easily – but here Ashe is anyway, uncaring of the hateful looks that passing monks are giving him as he jogs across the entrance hall to meet Dedue.

“Look at the peppers I found when I went to town!” Ashe says as he gets closer, waving a small bag around. “I thought they’d go well with that stew you mentioned last week. Perhaps we could try to make it for our classmates tonight?” He’s beaming up at Dedue with an incandescent smile. He gives these kinds of emotions out so easily, so freely. It’s terrifying. It’s beautiful. It’s not something Dedue should be noticing at all.

“I would like that,” Dedue manages to say after a moment. They turn to walk to the kitchen, and he takes the bag from Ashe, peering closer at the ripe green chilis, the last of the frost preservation spell melting off. They look – familiar, somehow.

“Ashe,” he says, frowning, “these are imported. From Sreng.”

“They are,” Ashe looks pleased. “You have a very good eye.”

Dedue is mildly horrified at the nonchalance of it all. “Ashe,” he presses as they pass through the dining hall, “these are quite expensive.”

“Well they seem appropriately priced to me,” Ashe says thoughtfully. “After all, they require a preservation spell and several days travel to arrive here.”

Dedue takes in the sparkle of mischief in Ashe’s gaze and the slight tilt of his lips. “You are willfully misunderstanding me,” he says. He’s surprised to hear his own voice come out soft, and fond.

Ashe laughs. It’s a clear, jubilant sound. “You’ll never get me to admit to that,” he says, teasing, looking up through his lashes at Dedue. “Besides, you mentioned that Duscur chilis tasted different. Sreng is the only different chili the import shop was carrying today.”  Dedue’s breath catches.

“A bit foolish of you,” he reprimands, but even that is ruined by the slight smile he can feel overtaking his features. “They’re far more potent than Duscur chilies, but – I am thankful, Ashe.”  

Ashe is still smiling. It is ridiculous. Ashe is ridiculous.

.

The first time he’d ever really interacted with Ashe had been after they’d put down Lonato’s rebellion. Fate has a cruel hand; Ashe had been the one to fire the final shot against his own father, his eyes wide and afraid. Dedue had been right next to him, spinning his axe around, and he’d seen the way Ashe’s eyes had been wet, filled with tears.

His aim had never faltered, however. True to the end, the arrow had found its mark.

Dedue goes searching for Ashe when they get back to the monastery, and finds Ashe in the cathedral, slumped in a pew, looking broken. He doesn’t know this boy, but he knows that this isn’t the Ashe he sees in the classroom. This Ashe carries older hurts and scars, things from a time before and during Lonato. Things that make the corner of Ashe’s mouth turn down in a bitter frown as he stares up at the Goddess statue.

Does this make you wish you had more than one god to demand answers from , Dedue wonders, but out loud he says, “I wanted to thank you, Ashe.”

Ashe turns, seemingly unsurprised by Dedue’s presence. The frown disappears to be replaced by wide eyes.

“What for, Dedue?” he asks, and his voice is wavering.

“His Highness would have been dead if – “ Dedue pauses. There is no tactful way to say if you hadn’t shot your adoptive father before his lance could pierce your crown prince. To tell someone you were forced to weigh your father’s life against the one person in the world who will always be worth more.

“Oh,” Ashe says morosely, “I know. I would do it again. That is what knights do, is it not?”

No, Dedue thinks, that is not what knights do at all. Knights throw themselves in front of the blade, die, and never have to deal with the regrets of the living. Dimitri’s knights all threw themselves in front of the blade, and never had to take responsibility for their deaths.

Dedue would not want sweet, sincere Ashe’s ghost to be added to the retinue that already haunts Dimitri in the shadows. What Ashe did was worth more, he thinks, than what a knight is willing to do. 

“The living are the ones that carry the dead for the rest of their lives,” Dedue finally says, remembering his own ghosts. “What you did required a great deal of bravery. It was not…a simple matter of honor or chivalry. It was something more.” He hesitates, and then finds that he cannot stop himself from adding the truth, the truth he has been thinking since he saw Lonato easily accept death at the hands of the boy he took off the streets. “I believe Lonato…saw that, and was proud of you. I believe he was proud of you even as he took his last breath. I am sorry if that is inappropriate – “

Ashe bursts into tears. Dedue’s heart squeezes in his chest and he is overwhelmed by a sharp, painful emotion as he takes in Ashe’s shaking shoulders, but to his surprise Ashe tugs on his arm and Dedue sits down in the pew, bewildered and worried.

“Thank you,” Ashe says, hiccupping on a sob, “I – I’m so – I keep thinking Lonato knew I would have to – he understood – but I still – “

Dedue is at a loss for words. He is not someone that people cry to. He is too imposing, too dull, too devoted in his single-minded service to Dimitri. But here Ashe is, opening his heart to a stranger.

He has nothing to say. But he places a hand on Ashe’s shoulder and lets the other boy cry; he will not leave Ashe to be alone. Someone who gives their private, vulnerable emotions away like this so easily – well, he will protect that.

(There is something else. Something small and inexplicable in him that sinks its teeth into Ashe and can’t let go. Something he finds himself powerless to resist.)

.

Lunchtime is still a novelty for Dedue. There was no one he truly considered a friend as he was shuffled around from place to place following Dimitri as they both grew older, but here at the monastery - their classmates load their plates and pile into benches with each other, shoving and pushing and arranging themselves until Dedue is in the middle of a huddle about what to buy their professor for her birthday before he even realizes it. 

“A sword,” Felix says, squished between Ingrid and Sylvain. It’s the only placement that keeps him mildly in check from insulting Dimitri and getting punched by Dedue. “She likes swords.” 

“She uses swords, you maniac. That doesn’t mean she keeps a ceremonial collection big enough to supply a small army,” Sylvain says fondly, throwing his arm around Felix. 

“Maybe we should bake her a cake!” Mercedes chimes in. Her eyes glaze over slightly. “Oh, I can already imagine it. Two tiers, with a jam filling. Do we have strawberries left?” 

“Mercie, I’ll help!” Annette’s face is determined, and she clenches her hands in fists. 

On Dedue’s right, Ashe leans towards him, and he tilts his head down without even asking so Ashe can murmur into his ear, “Perhaps we should make something for the professor as well, Dedue, once Annette has safely exited the kitchen.” 

“It would be my pleasure, if the kitchen is still standing once Annette and Mercedes have finished with it,” Dedue says back in a low voice. Ashe muffles his laughter behind his hand.

“Do you have any ideas, Your Highness?” Ingrid pipes up. Dimitri looks deep in thought, his chin propped up in his hands. 

“Oh, I - I think some kind of token of our class would also be nice,” Dimitri says, looking down. A faint flush covers his cheeks as he looks down at the table. “I actually - already found something in town and had the shopkeeper set it aside. It’s a brooch in the shape of a lion, and we can commission it to have blue accents. If it’s alright with everyone, we can purchase it as a class gift.” 

There’s a swell of noise as everyone immediately chimes in, reactions varying from instinctive refusal (Felix) to unbridled approval (Annette) to suggestive hollering (Sylvain). Dedue hides his own smile in a bite of food, choosing not to comment on the prince’s flustered demeanor as he admits that yes, Ingrid, he did go to town last week with the express purpose of finding a gift, and no , Sylvain, he doesn’t think that’s weird at all, it’s from all of them. 

It’s surprisingly pleasant, sitting with everyone like this. Dedue doesn’t usually contribute much to the conversation, but he appreciates the warm hum of chatter around him. Meals with the Blue Lions house always fall into a comforting kind of pattern - Felix and Sylvain engage in tension-filled conversation that the rest of them avoid, Ingrid talks to Dimitri when she isn’t lecturing her other childhood friends, and Mercedes regales Ashe and Annette with different stories.

Dedue finds a kind of peace in it that he is loathe to admit out loud. He sits between the two halves of the table, sandwiched in the middle of Dimitri and Ashe, and he reflects on how much their professor has changed them. Before Byleth, they all took their meals separately, and never paid much attention to the thought of acting together as a class. Now, though - she has changed them.

He clears his throat, but no one at the table seems to notice, engaged as they are in needling DImitri. He looks around a little helplessly, and sees Ashe staring right back at him. Ashe immediately pinkens, but he smiles encouragingly at Dedue. 

“What is it?” he asks loudly, his voice somehow pleasantly carrying over everyone else at the table. 

“I think we should surprise our professor with some tea and snacks, in the same way she is fond of dragging all of us out for tea,” Dedue says slowly as everyone turns to look at him. “I know she is partial to bergamot and chamomile. Perhaps we could - “ 

“I have an excellent chamomile blend we could give her!” Dimitri blurts out, as if he’s unable to stop himself. Sylvain grins and leans across the table. 

“Chamomile’s your favorite, isn’t it, your Princeliness?” he asks, winking. “Now I know you can’t taste anything, so do you like it because of its exquisite blandness to your palate or because a certain blue-haired professor - “

Felix seems to step on Sylvain’s foot, if the pained noise that Sylvain springs back with is any indication. “Tea is tea, you idiot. The boar probably needs it to calm his bloodlust.” 

Dedue frowns. “Felix. Do not mistake my silence for permission to speak to his Highness like that.”

“It’s alright, Dedue,” Dimitri says with a pained look on his face that indicates that it probably isn’t alright. “It’s no matter to me.” 

This is an old song and dance. Felix opens his mouth to say something cutting that Ingrid will let slide if it’s about Dedue, but will punch him for if it’s about Dimitri. Dedue is resigning himself to a ruined meal, when Ashe speaks up. 

“I think we should get back to the matter at hand of how to surprise our professor with a tea party,” he says firmly, frowning slightly at Felix.

“Yeah, Felix, stop ruining the conversation and try to plan with us. For Byleth’s sake!” Annette says, glaring and looking about as threatening as a kitten. The combined forces of Ashe and Annette seems too much even for Felix, who closes his mouth and settles for growling mutinously. 

“May I suggest someone pretends to faint to get her out of the classroom long enough for us to set up?” Mercedes offers, beaming. There’s silence as everyone gapes at her for a moment. Even Felix seems to forget his anger in favor of shaking his head like he can’t believe what he’s just heard.

Ingrid frowns. “That’s dark ,” she says. “The professor is going to get scared.” 

“It’ll be a light faint,” Mercedes says. 

Sylvain looks astonished. “ What ,” he asks, “is a light faint?” He seems to consider it for a while, and then adds, “And how do I accomplish it?” 

“No one,” Dedue says firmly, “is fainting. I imagined that one of us would ask our professor to spar for a bit.” 

Dimitri sighs in relief. “An excellent idea, Dedue,” he says. “Who’d like to - “

“Me,” Felix cuts in, his eyes narrowing as he dares anyone to suggest otherwise. Nobody does, and they resume their conversation after a moment, hashing out the details. Dedue leans back, satisfied with his contributions to their professor’s birthday plans. 

These are the moments he did not think he would ever have. With his classmates surrounding him, his prince relaxed and at ease despite the teasing, and people - Ashe - looking at him like the things he says are delightful, he feels young and free. 

And if he’s hyper aware of the warm press of Ashe’s body against his side, well - it reminds him that he has a heart too, and it still beats. 

.

He often finds himself on stable duty with Ashe, when he’s not assigned to weeding with Dimitri. The professor seems to think Dedue can be convinced to think about a Great Knight certification if he’s around horses enough, but the professor is, in that respect, wrong. Dedue is never riding a horse into battle. 

“That seems like an unnecessarily strong sentiment,” Ashe says, laughing quietly into the mane of a white-grey steed as he combs it down. 

Dedue is unmoved as he cleans equipment. “Horses can sense fear,” he says stolidly. “It is only practical to not be reliant on such a creature.” 

“You’d never let me down in battle, right Ella? Right? That’s right,” Ashe coos. His horse - Ella - whinnies and gently nuzzles into Ashe’s palm. Ella’s been promised to Ashe as soon as he can pass his Bow Knight certification - but that’s still a long way off. Dedue regards him with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 

“There’s still time to reconsider and choose the smarter path,” Dedue says dryly. Ashe gasps and reaches up to shield Ella’s ears. 

“Don’t listen to him,” he tells Ella seriously. “You’re going to be the smarter of us two on the battlefield. You’re the smartest girl I know, besides Annette. Unfortunately,” he says thoughtfully, “Annette has you beat by a little.” 

Ella flicks her tail back and forth and patiently stares at Ashe.

Dedue stands and stacks the gear he’s holding against the wall. “Ella is a horse ,” he says. “Annette is smarter by quite a bit, as is every other girl who is a person and not a horse.” 

Ashe laughs, putting the comb aside and looking at Dedue. “Do you want to take her out for a ride? She needs some exercise, and if you’re not busy…” 

Dedue wants to balk and say no thank you but Ashe’s eyes are very green and Dedue physically forgets the words. “I’m not busy, no,” is what he finds himself saying instead, and the resulting smile from Ashe carries him through the nightmare of saddling Ella up and climbing on. 

Ashe is a warm weight in front of him as he holds the reins, guiding Ella out of the stables and through the front gate. People give them looks as they pass by, eyes narrowing as they see Dedue. He touches his earring and looks straight ahead after he meets the gaze of the first few. 

Once they get out into a more open, sparsely wooded area, Ashe urges the horse into a canter. 

“Hold on to me,” he calls over his shoulder to Dedue, smiling. “I don’t want you to fall off.” 

Dedue gingerly places his hands around Ashe’s waist, and the sight of Ashe’s narrow hips disappearing under Dedue’s wide, calloused palms makes Dedue feel like a lumbering giant. It’s awkward, but it still sends heat racing up his spine, the kind of heat that worms its way around the emptiness in Dedue’s chest and breathes along the edges of the void that’s overtaken him.

“Relax,” Ashe says from in front, his voice calm and gentle as Ella takes a sharp turn and Dedue hisses under his breath. “I’ve got you, Dedue.”

Dedue believes him. 

.

“So, Dedue,” the professor asks him one evening with badly concealed interest, “you’re getting along rather well with Ashe these days.” 

Dedue regard her over his cup of tea. “Indeed. After all, you do keep assigning us to do work together,” he points out. 

Byleth’s nose scrunches up, ever so slightly. They’ve all learned, in their various ways, how to read her face, and now that they know it’s difficult to imagine that she was ever called the Ashen Demon. For Dedue, especially, it’s a little disheartening to hear; she’s just as inexpressive and stoic as he is, so what does that say about him?

But perhaps what it means is that they are both more than what others see or think. Byleth has her own social cues, and right now the way her fingers are lightly tapping against the table and her gaze is more wide-eyed than usual all scream that she’s trying to worm information out of him, as subtly as possible. Unfortunately, in this respect the professor is much like Dimitri - both are about as subtle as Flayn with a fish. 

“That’s not what I mean,” she says calmly, thought she’s leaning forward in her chair as he leans back. “Dimitri’s mentioned that you seem to spend time outside of assignments with Ashe as well. You two cook together quite a bit, apparently.” 

Dedue takes a sip of his tea as he tries to hide his smile. “Ah, his Highness mentioned that, has he? When did his Highness get a chance to mention this?” 

Byleth’s answer is instantaneous. “Last night, when we took a late night walk around the gardens,” she says, blinking up at Dedue as if the answer is perfectly normal. 

Dedue nods. The smell of the cinnamon blend steeping in the delicate porcelain that Byleth keeps is fragrant and inviting, warming him to the core. The thought of Ashe - and the thought of a wide-eyed Dimitri talking to an equally wide-eyed Byleth about Dedue and Ashe - is not as overwhelming here, in this space. It feels instead like a pleasant kind of longing, one that Dedue is slowly becoming more familiar with.

“And do the both of you take many late night strolls like this?” Dedue asks. 

Byleth nods slowly. “Yes…” she says, hesitating, as if finally realizing that she may be the one walking into a trap here. He smiles slightly at her, amused and feeling terribly fond of his prince’s clumsy, oblivious passes at an equally oblivious Byleth. She seems so young in these moments. 

“So, Professor,” Dedue says, finally putting his teacup down and leaning forward. He can feel the beginnings of a laugh building in his throat as the faintest pink tinge covers her cheeks. “You’re getting along rather well with his Highness these days.” 

“I - “ Byleth opens and closes her mouth, completely flustered, before she clearly gives up and buries her face in her hand. “You’re hilarious, Dedue,” she says, her voice muffled. “Our enemies should fear your sense of humor more than anything else.” 

“I will take that as a compliment,” he says dryly. 

.

He isn’t a fool, not in the way that most of the people around him seem to be. He knows what it is that unfurls in him, warm and insistent, at the sight of Ashe. There is no denial in him, no need to push those feelings down. 

But knowing what something is and putting words to it, naming it - those are two different beasts. He keeps his head down and tries not to linger too long on what it means when Ashe asks to cook or garden with him , or what it means when Ashe does the same with the others, like Annette. It’s a dangerous road to go down, and Dedue does not see it working out in his favor. 

And the truth is, he thinks as he walks with Ashe to the greenhouse, he is not the kind of person to deserve such luxuries. The hollowness that lies dormant in his chest is rivaled only by the darkness in Dimitri; no matter how pleasant their time at the Academy may be, Dedue doesn’t miss the late nights Dimitri spends pouring over Kingdom records and the feverish look in his eyes when he sees enemies. 

This is not a game. There is a shadow they still need to wipe out, and when the time comes to do it Dedue must stand in front of Dimitri as his sword and shield. He must be unyielding and unflinching. He cannot risk anything but complete devotion in that moment. 

“That cat !” Ashe suddenly exclaims, and all of Dedue’s morose thoughts fly right out of his mind as Ashe leaps into action, shoving past Dedue and tearing down the length of the greenhouse. Dedue makes a muffled noise of surprise and jogs after him, watching incredulously as Ashe darts to a patch of plants and plucks a mewling, protesting bundle out. “You again! You’re ruining my garden!” 

The cat seems to be unfazed by Ashe’s heated protests and instead contents itself with yowling and trying to wrap itself into Ashe’s arms. “No!” Ashe says, his tone accusatory even as he rearranges his hold and gently cradles the cat. “You keep doing this! I feed you, and what do I get? You trample my hard work!” 

Ashe doesn’t look very threatening at all. It’s not for lack of trying - and Dedue knows that on the battlefield Ashe is a force to be reckoned with - but it’s hard to take him seriously when Ashe is furiously lecturing a cat that he can’t seem to stop petting. Dedue quietly smiles to himself and crouches by his own patch of plants, gently snipping one off and carrying it back. 

“Here,” he says, leaning over Ashe’s shoulder and dangling the flower he’s picked. The tabby stops trying to bat at the drawstrings of Ashe’s hood and reaches out for the flower instead. “It can play with this for now, and we’ll plant some catnip in the meantime. It’ll give the cats something to do in here.” 

Ashe looks up at Dedue through his lashes, his eyebrows slanted low. “No! That’s encouraging their bad behavior!” 

Dedue laughs gently. “Ah, yes. Perhaps, like you, I should simply cuddle them instead?” 

Ashe sighs and looks back down at the content bundle in his arms. The cat is tearing the flower in Dedue’s hands apart, but Ashe is smiling now. “They’re just so cute ,” he says helplessly. 

Ashe is so close. If Dedue took one step closer, he would be able to rest his chin on Ashe’s silvery gray hair, slide his arms around Ashe’s waist, pull him back into an embrace. The thought of it burns, slow and molten, through Dedue’s veins. He wants to hold Ashe in his arms. He wants to know what that would feel like, if only for a moment. 

He contents himself with simply brushing a hand over Ashe’s shoulder. It is weak of him, perhaps, but the spirit that sits in his ribs stretches towards the simple physical contact and yearns for more. The part of him that burned away years ago, the part that’s restless and angry, pacing like a caged animal as it waits for Dimitri’s next command - it quiets, and it falls asleep as he gardens next to Ashe. 

Like this, his fingers deep in the dirt, occasionally responding to Ashe’s light chatter with remarks tailored to make Ashe blush and laugh - he feels like more than just a sword and shield. Like this, the emptiness in him is bearable. 

.

The night of the ball, Dedue watches as Dimitri and Byleth both somehow avoid ever making eye contact, even accidentally. Claude - who is not as subtle as he thinks he is - keeps trying to guide Byleth over to the side of the floor the prince is on; Byleth, somehow, keeps resisting. Dedue shakes his head and goes to get a glass of water. 

On the way, he spots Ashe leaning against the wall, playing with the strings of his ever present hood. He looks melancholy. Dedue switches his path almost unconsciously, changing his direction to meet Ashe instead, when he sees a girl with short black hair bounce up to him and ask something. 

Ashe looks shocked, his eyes wide and his mouth falling open. Dedue can imagine the soft oh that the other boy would have uttered, can imagine the way Ashe will grip the girl’s hands with a delicate strength, and suddenly - suddenly he doesn’t want to imagine anything else and he needs to get out of there. 

He leaves. He changes course, again , and he walks outside. How does Dimitri do it? How does Dimitri spend so much time with Byleth and still have the strength to not ask her to dance? To not throw away everything he’s worked for for the sake of one more moment with - 

Well it doesn’t matter now, he thinks, blindly finding his way to the greenhouse and kneeling by the plot of violets he’d planted. It was foolish from the beginning, to allow himself to look at Ashe like that. 

“Dedue!” 

He feels a piercing pain through his chest when he hears the voice, one he would recognize anywhere. Perhaps, he thinks, the only one other than Dimitri’s he has memorized. He stands and turns, a violet with crushed petals clutched in his hands. 

“Ashe,” he says evenly, even though he wants to say nothing at all and turn and leave. It’s humiliating, to be reduced to such a mess over seeing a girl ask Ashe to dance, but it’s more humiliating to see that Ashe has, for some unknown reason, followed him all the way out here. 

The moonlight makes Ashe’s pale hair and eyes glow even more brightly, and it almost hurts to look at him. “You left,” Ashe says, breathless. “I wanted to - well, I was looking for you.” 

Ah. There it is. With a few simple words, something flutters in Dedue’s chest once again, thumping irregularly with hope. He swallows hard as he looks down at Ashe. 

“I...was uncomfortable there,” he admits, quiet and slightly ashamed of it. He shouldn’t care, not about Ashe with someone else, not about the way students that aren’t in his house avoid him, and not about the cavernous void in his chest. 

But he does . He does , and he just doesn’t like to think about it.

Ashe is looking at him so very carefully. “I was too,” Ashe says slowly. He smiles, a little self-deprecating. “I didn’t really learn how to dance. By the time Lonato realized I didn’t know, it was time to leave for the Academy.” 

“You don’t know how to dance?” Dedue frowns. “I was sure that Annette would have forced you into learning.” 

“Oh, she doesn’t - know,” Ashe laughs nervously. “No one - well, now you know, but that’s about it. I - “ he stops, fiddling with his hood again. “I don’t know a lot of things I should have, I guess. I’m just pretending to fit in here, mostly.” 

His voice is small, and Dedue does not ever want to make him feel like this. It’s unbearable, and it’s - it’s not right. He slowly reaches out and tucks the crushed violet into the breast pocket of Ashe’s jacket, mildly regretting his own fit of madness that ruined the flower. 

“You’re not pretending,” Dedue says. He clears his throat. “Not - not with me, at least. You do fit in here, Ashe.” 

Ashe’s eyes glimmer with something that Dedue sincerely hopes aren’t unshed tears, but the smile that Ashe gives him is tremulous and infinitely precious. It aches to see and not be able to touch that smile with his own lips, to feel what it would be like to swallow that private, vulnerable part of Ashe down all for himself. 

Selfish, perhaps. It is one of the only things Dedue is starting to think he might allow himself to be selfish about. 

“Violets are my favorite,” Ashe says in a shaky voice. Dedue nods. 

“I know,” he says. Ashe laughs, and then sniffles. 

“Do you - “ He stops and takes a deep breath, seemingly collecting himself. “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me?” 

Dedue feels the world go breathlessly out of focus around him, everything narrowing down to the person standing in front of him. “You said you didn’t know how,” he manages to say, hoarsely. Ashe laughs nervously. 

“I’m sure I can figure it out, if it’s you. I - I trust you.” 

Oh . Dedue is gone. “Oh,” he says faintly, and he offers his hand to Ashe. “I see.” 

He doesn’t say the words back, doesn’t say the million different things on the tip of his tongue. Flowery lines, the kind that Sylvain tosses around casually. Biting declarations of loyalty, the way that Felix does. Formal, stilted, layered words that are dripping in adoration, like Dimitri and the professor exchange. 

None of that matters. None of that can hold a candle to the indescribable feeling that overtakes him when Ashe accepts his hand and steps into his embrace, his other hand gripping Dedue’s bicep lightly. He lets his own hand drop to Ashe’s waist and feels a current of adoration sweep through him; he feels like he’s holding something precious in his arms as they slowly sway to the faint strains of music coming from the hall. 

“I’m glad my first dance was with you, Dedue,” Ashe says into the stillness of the night. Dedue smiles, rare and true. 

“Truth be told, this is not much of a dance,” he says, but his tone is soft and Ashe only laughs. “But I am glad it is with you, as well.” 

Dedue isn’t a man of superstition, and certainly not a man prone to believe in the superstitions of a land that isn’t his own. But in that moment, laughing and slowly twirling with Ashe, he finds himself wishing that he’d chosen the Goddess Tower to wander off to instead. 

For the first time, there is something he wants - quite badly.

.

Like everything else good in his life, it falls apart immediately, crumbling into dust before his eyes as Byleth’s father is murdered and the entire monastery is plunged into a blanket of despair. The darkness that’s always made its home in Dimitri’s heart seeps into his gaze instead, and something equally despondent seems to descend in Byleth as the two of them feed off of each other’s need for vengeance. 

Dedue devotes all his spare time to running after his prince, and Ashe spends his time running after Byleth. Their house is falling apart; Claude keeps giving them morose looks when he thinks no one’s looking, and Hilda and Lorenz have taken to dropping off expensive packets of sweets that they just happen to receive from their respective noble houses. 

Just once, Ashe pulls him aside early in the morning before training, his brow furrowed. 

“Dedue,” he says, “you’re okay?” 

The question throws Dedue. He focuses on Ashe’s hand, gripping Dedue’s coat, and tries to empty his mind of the memory of that hand clasped in his own. 

“Yes,” he says after a moment, looking back up at Ashe. “I am fine. Are you alright?” he asks. 

Ashe is frowning now, looking at Dedue like he’s a puzzle that can’t be cracked. A second passes, too long, fraught with tension as they both stare at each other. 

“Yes,” Ashe finally says. “I am.” He steps away, smiling sadly at Dedue, and turns to go. Dedue’s heart is in his throat. 

“Ashe,” he calls out, and Ashe looks back at him with his eyes wide. “Thank you.” 

Ashe’s answering smile is honey sweet, and it’s also the last thing of Ashe that Dedue gets before war finds them. 

.

When Dedue was fifteen he saved a young knight’s life. In the middle of the panic and confusion, and the numbness that was settling over him at the sight of his dead family, he’d seen an arrow aimed for a young boy taking deep, bracing breaths in an alleyway and reacted without thinking. 

He’d known the boy was with the foreign force. Pale skin, blonde hair, the royal colors of Fhirdiad - it wasn’t a difficult guess. And yet - and yet. Dedue had never known a life outside of the forge, had never known to do anything but be kind and brave. The boy had looked scared. That was all. 

He’d stumbled, the arrow digging into his back, and then fallen to his knees in front of who he would later learn was Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. The boy’s face twisted into a mask of cold fury. 

“No,” he’d cried, “no! Will you be another ghost that died for me? Will you haunt me as well?” 

We are reborn, Dedue had wanted to say. Our gods and goddesses do not let us haunt the living, for we know that regrets have no place with the dead. 

He had been able to do nothing but fall to his knees and gurgle up blood. His world had closed in, vision narrowing down to that halo of blonde hair. 

Later, he would learn that the arrow had miraculously avoided piercing his spine and paralyzing him instantly. Later, he would be told that the vision he’d thought he’d had of the boy screaming, jumping in front of Dedue’s body and taking the five arrows that followed the first, had been real. Later, he and the boy would stare at each other with glassy eyes and touch their mirrored scars. 

“I will never allow this to happen to another one of my subjects,” the crown prince had told him hoarsely. “Do you believe me?” 

Dedue thought of the sadness he’d seen taking root in the heart of the boy in the alley, and the darkness he now saw twined with that in the heart of the future ruler of his burned homeland. That anger never landed on Dedue, and instead always skated past to land on the generals who had led the march. 

“Yes,” he said, and he felt every fibre of his being thrum with his sudden, certain belief. “I do.” 

.

They drag Dedue away when they announce Dimitri’s execution, and Dedue lets them, putting up a token resistance. His mind is already set; Dimitri will not die as long as Dedue is still alive. He waits until the guards lock him into a prison and leave, then extracts the lockpick set the professor had all of them sew into their clothes and picks the lock, just like Ashe taught them. 

Cornelia’s entourage spares no thought for the man of Duscur they left to rot in their cells - why would they? Dedue draws a hood over his face and hurries through the streets of Fhirdiad until he finds Shamir waiting at their pre-arranged safe house. 

“You’re sure of this?” she asks, her voice low and accusatory. Dedue has never been surer of anything in his life. He has lived for five long years with nothing but ash and dust in his past, and nothing to look forward to in the future but Dimitri; giving up his life feels like coming home. The blankness in his chest no longer stirs, and whatever had begun to take root while he was at the Academy is long dead. 

In the morning, they switch Dimitri with Dedue, and the trick isn’t discovered until later that afternoon. Cornelia seethes with frustration, and Dedue regards her blankly; she doesn’t get the satisfaction of knowing anything about what he’s thinking. She will not win. Dimitri will rise. Dimitri will always rise. 

And maybe - well. Maybe, when Dimitri does rise, everyone else that Dedue holds dear will rise too. Maybe it will all work out, and if it is Dedue’s life that is the price for everyone’s happy endings, it only makes sense. Dedue has always been the shield, the protector, the wall in front of everyone else. His life has been forfeit for a long time.

They drag him to the chopping block at dawn, the executioner’s axe glinting dully. Dedue looks at the sky and wishes he could have seen Dimitri, one last time. He tries to remember Dimitri smiling, and thinks of the night of the ball, and the faces of his former classmates fill his thoughts. 

I’m sorry , he thinks wistfully, that I will not keep our promise . He takes a deep breath, and waits for the swing of the axe. 

It never comes. Instead, he hears the familiar thwack-thwack-thwack of arrows hitting their marks, sinking into bodies, and all around him Fhirdiad guards drop like puppets with their strings cut. 

Pain blossoms across the base of his spine, and he drops too. The last thing he recognizes before the darkness consumes him is a battle cry he’d thought he’d forgotten, words from long ago that he somehow still understands. 

For Duscur . 

.

Duscur is, to his surprise, quietly growing in leaps and bounds. They take him to a quiet seaside town, one he’s never been to before, and leave him in the care of a cranky old lady named Rika who prods at his unfeeling arms and legs and gleefully tells him he should be dead. 

He can barely respond to that. The arrow hit his nerves; his body is having trouble cooperating with the instructions from his mind, and he spends most of the time it takes to transport him there and the first week of his stay alternating between sleeping and morosely refusing to talk. What good does it do, his survival? Dimitri has, by all accounts, disappeared. Everyone has scattered to the winds and the Empire has control of Fhirdiad. 

He should be dead. He agrees. He tells Rika as much. 

“You’re built like a large rock, and you’ve got the brains of one too!” Rika says irritably, leaning on her cane and drawing white magic sigils in the air. “No one lives for no reason, boy. Now am I going to waste my time and magic on you, or are you going to die like this? No friends, no lovers, no children?” 

Dedue doesn’t answer, and instead lets the sibilant sounds of the Duscurian language wash over him. He knows how to speak it but his words come out interspersed with Fodlan’s language, because it’s just - been too long. On top of everything else, he feels like a stranger in his own land, and he closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to keep looking at the ornate bangles covering Rika’s knobbly wrists; they remind him of his mother. 

Contrary to what Rika says, she comes in every day and scolds him in the same manner, always asking him if he plans to die like this. Dedue can feel himself slowly sinking under, as if the ocean is lapping at his feet and consuming him, wave by shallow wave. The world feels dull. 

By the end of the week, however, her healing magic has done enough for him that he can sit up without assistance, painful as it is, and he’s positioned himself in a chair by the window when Rike comes hobbling in. This time, she’s carrying a tray that she marches over to him. 

“Here you go, boy,” she says, plopping it down. “Put some strength back in you, for the love of all the gods.” 

He doesn’t care much about it, but he says “Thank you,” because politeness is ingrained in him. She looks carefully at him, takes in his dull eyes as he stares back and wonders what she sees. Does she see the emptiness in him, tangled up with the guilt and loneliness? Can she see that even though these are his people, all he wants are those foreigners that everyone here hates? Does she understand that he doesn’t deserve to be here?

Rika sighs and goes to sit in the other chair, lowering herself slowly and groaning as she settles in. “These bones,” she says, fussing with her cane. “They’re not what they used to be.” 

Dedue looks down at the soup in his lap. She’s not the one who cooks; he’s heard the faint tinkling laughter of a younger girl flitting in and out of the cottage as he rests. It smells good and it brings tears to his eyes; he wishes that, like Dimitri, taste eluded him, and he wouldn’t have to sit through the memory of his burning mother every time he ate something here. 

“I was there, you know,” Rika says suddenly. Her voice has gone distant and she’s looking  away from Dedue, towards the window that overlooks the cliff that her cottage is perched on and the ocean beyond. “The day that Faerghus invaded.” 

Dedue feels, suddenly and miserably, like he’s intruding on something he shouldn’t see, a sadness in the old lady that he shouldn’t be witnessing. 

“My sons did not make it out alive,” she continues. “Neither did my daughters. My husband died protecting me. What use did I have then, to stay alive? What is the point of living when you must bury your children yourself?” 

He has no answers to that. The weight in his own heart feels selfish in front of Rika’s old body, and the way her voice seems to echo with the heaviness of her ancestors before her. 

She finally looks back at him, and the gentle smile that graces her face makes the wrinkles stand out like little paper folds. It feels like kindness. It feels like a warmth that Dedue remembers receiving so long ago, and it feels like he is a boy again, young and reckless and full of life in a way he hasn’t been in so long. 

“I have done a great many things since, and any one of them could have been my point for living,” she tells him. She reaches over slowly, covering his hand with her own. “Even if I had lived only to wait for years and years until I could look after you, boy, it would have been worth it. Life is measured in kindness. What kindness are you going to live for?” 

Dedue watches, distantly, as a clear drop of liquid lands in his soup, and he realizes, surprised, that it’s his tears. As if a flood gate has opened, they cascade down his cheeks and drip past his chin.

“I don’t know,” he says hoarsely, “if I have any kindness left.” 

Rika’s knobbled hand reaches out and wipes a tear off. The pads of her fingers are rough and callused. “You do,” she says, and she sounds sad and hopeful all at once. “You do.” 

.

Healing is long, painful, and frightening. The girl that cooks for Rika is another healer, and she puts him through the grueling paces of relearning how to use his legs and arms. He fumbles and falls over and over again, feeling betrayed by his own body’s weakness. 

“You should be dead!” the younger healer - Kana - says cheerfully every time he grits his teeth and frustration seeps into his expression. “Your body’s just relearning what it means to be alive. It will take time. Like a baby!” 

Between Kana’s infectious cheer and Rika’s grumbling care, Dedue feels like he should regain full use of his body in no time - but a year passes and he finds, to his horror, that he’s still weaker than a newborn foal. 

It’s hard to get up in the morning and keep going when he knows that just miles away, the country is falling into ruin. It’s unbearable to be faced with the knowledge that his prince is missing and that he doesn’t know if any of the people he cherished in his Academy days are dead or alive. 

And, late at night, when the moonlight streams across the silvery curtains that Rika put in his room, his chest aches, hot and painful, as he thinks about a man with lithe fingers and freckles shaped like little stars. He dreams about dancing, about a smaller hand clasped in his own - 

He has Rika change the curtains to red ones. He can’t take it after a while. 

The townspeople come to meet him after a while, curious at the war veteran that never comes down from Rika’s cottage. They stare at the Fhirdiad colors of his plate armor, neatly stacked and kept clean in a corner, and desperately skirt around the topic of why Dedue was so devoted to the enemy. They bring him small offerings, talk more once they realize he understands the language perfectly well, and stare at his legs pityingly. 

He doesn’t respond much, if at all. The laconic, stoic part of him isn’t an act anymore; it’s become who he is. But maybe there is some truth to the sentiment that your people are, at the end of the day, your people . They ask nothing of him and welcome him into their fold anyway. 

So when he can, he totters out to the garden and laboriously plants, cultivates, and harvests. He spends an entire day baking bread according to a recipe that should only take a few hours, but takes longer as he insistently waves off a giggling Kana’s help. He tries, to the best of his abilities, to give back the only parts of himself that aren’t ravaged by war. 

“I’m still going to get you through weight training and everything,” Kana tells him one day, scribbling notes in her healer’s notebook. “You’ve lost a lot of muscle mass, but it can be gained back. In the meantime, all this rest is good for you.” 

Dedue pauses from where he’s slowly lifting and lowering his leg and fixes her with a look. 

“It has been,” he says dryly, “a year and a half of rest. I think it is a bit too much rest, at this point.” 

Kana frowns at him and pushes her glasses up her nose. “I don’t care if you’re our patient, I will throw something at you,” she threatens ineffectively. “I mean , this is probably the only chance you’re going to get to learn how to live during times of peace. When you go back to the war - “

“ If I go back to the war, with the state my body - “

“ When ,” Kana says with a fierce glare. “You will be healed. And when you go back - and I know you’re going to go back, you keep looking away like you’re looking for other people - when you go back, and you win, you will know how to live your life afterward. Is that not an important skill?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that. 

.

Three years pass as if in a dream. News takes so long to reach this edge of Duscur, and the people of this land learned years ago how to live quietly under the oppressive banner of House Kleiman. Dedue trains and re-trains his body, and in his spare time he gardens, or cooks, or reads. He teaches the village children what he remembers of bending and shaping little pieces of metal for crafts, and designs a more efficient bellow system for the blacksmith. Kana and Rika receive a fresh wave of patients that flit in and out of the cottage; Dedue hobbles around with Rika, looking comically large next to the old woman, and quietly watches as she performs complex healing spells on soldiers that seem as though they might never wake up. 

“The body is a strong thing,” she croons, floating her hand over the wispy strands of a woman’s hair. “But the mind struggles to believe it. I will help you wake up.” 

“Are these men and women of Duscur drafted to fight against the Kingdom?” he quietly asks Kana later. She gives him a sympathetic look. 

“You don’t really want to know the answer to that question,” she says, patting his hand and walking away. He frowns, and begins to do some research. 

His arms begin to remember how to use an axe again. He gets a response from the Duscur steward he’d written to, and begins to put the skills he learned at the Academy to use, taking a map of Faerghus up on the wall and poring over it with notes on all the nobles he remembers meeting during his time by the prince’s side. 

Rika nearly brains him with a ladle when she first sees him with the map and his papers spread out over a crate he’s using as a makeshift desk. “Resting!” she screeches. “Not planning the next war!” 

“I am resting,” he protests, immediately sitting down. “Look.” He feels like a child again, hiding a smile as Rika curses him under breath, rolls her eyes fondly, and goes back to stirring her concoction in the other room. 

Perhaps without him even realizing it, something has taken root in his chest and began to grow. A part of him he hadn’t realized was missing is slowly being filled in with every passing day that he speaks his own language and looks at troop movements that are of his own people. 

He will never be completely at home here. He still looks for flashes of blonde hair in the corner of his vision, or catches himself turning for a much shorter, silver-haired partner in the kitchen or the garden that he never finds. He hums Annette’s tunes under his breath and introduces the village children to Mercedes’ recipes for cake. On his map, Gautier, Fraldarius, and Galatea are marked off for no particular reason other than the fact that Dedue likes the thought of those little pins representing his friends, alive and whole and healthy. 

Duscur will never again be his only home, but it is a home. For reasons he’s still unravelling, it feels important to look out the window of his room in the cottage and think, with a fierce swell of pride, that he has something to protect here. 

He spends his fourth year of rehabilitation conditioning his body to become an immovable wall again, and at the end of that year he calls for one of the Duscur generals that helped rescue him and he presents his plan to remove House Kleiman from the Empire’s power and - hopefully - strike a deal that limits the drafting of Duscur soldiers. 

General Talo is silent for a long time, taking in Dedue’s meticulous notes. 

“This is a good plan,” he finally says, and Dedue feels a weight lift off his shoulders. “But if this is to be implemented, you understand that you will have to fight by our side for a year? Perhaps more?” 

Dedue inclines his head. “I made the plan; I am, of course, aware of that.” Talo shakes his head. 

“You won’t see your family,” he says gruffly. “Rika says you’ve got people you need to get back to.” 

Dedue sighs and thinks about a night, so long ago, where they all promised. How beautiful the monastery had been then, he thinks wistfully. It doesn’t hurt any more to think of it. Instead, it feels like an inevitability; like he has set himself on a path that will, invariably, end in the welcoming arms of his friends, no matter how long it takes. 

“They would understand,” Dedue says past the lump in his throat. He thinks of a bruised, bloodied boy kneeling in front of him in the infirmary nearly a decade ago and promising with the fervor of a king. “They would do the same thing.” 

.

When he says goodbye to Kana, she bursts into tears and hands him a scarf woven with blue and gold patterns. 

“Sorry!” she blubbers. “I know you’re off to a war and you’re not going to wear it but you’re my friend and I’m going to miss you and - “

“Stop crying, girl,” Rika says, leaning on her cane. Her eyes looks suspiciously wet. “Let the boy speak.” 

Dedue gently extracts the scarf from Kana’s grasp and throws it around his shoulders. It smells like the spices that Kana used to cook this morning, and he feels a rush of fondness. 

“To prove you wrong,” he says, his voice thick, “I will wear this over my armor at all times.” 

Kana sobs harder. “That’s so stupid!” she says, and she hugs him and continues to cry. “Don’t get blood on it!” 

Dedue holds her close and thinks about her own whispered story of the older brother she lost to the massacre. “I will surely get blood on it,” he says softly, “and I will come back to get your help to wash it clean.” 

Kana blinks as she draws back. “Really?” she asks. 

“Really?” Rika echoes, seemingly surprised. Dedue looks at both of them. 

“I have much left to repay you both for,” he says. “And one day, there are some people I would like you to meet. My - “ he hesitates, and then plunges ahead. “My family. One day, I would like you to meet my family.” 

.

One year turns into one year and several months, and he learns what it means to fight under the banner of Duscur. They rise in the morning and pay their respects to their deities. There are holy words recited after every battle. They leave scraps out for the crows, because legend says they contain the souls of famous generals watching over them as spirits. And there is an almost obsessive dedication to life-debts, to the point where Dedue quietly wonders if some of his devotion to Dimitri didn’t come from this clearly rampant trait amongst his kin. 

His body is honed again into the fine weapon it was - better, now, as he learns more techniques on how to stand his ground, how to plant his feet and take a hit. He thinks vaguely about that Great Knight certification Byleth was so insistent on, and he grudgingly thinks that she was probably on to something. If you could only see me now , he thinks ruefully as he passes by where his battalion's horses are stationed. 

The fight takes them south, towards the center of Kingdom territory, and Dedue begins to hear more frequent news of the noble houses and where loyalties are falling. He’s not happy to learn that Lonato’s former lands are now controlled by an Empire ally; it twists in his stomach like poison, the thought that good, chivalrous Ashe might be the next person on the other side of the battlefield. 

He has to believe that all of his classmates have kept their promise. He has to believe that Dimitri has found his way, that the mysterious army that scouts begin to report are striking out at strategic locations under an old flag of Blaiddyd are his friends. It’s the only thing that keeps him going, some days, when the moon is full and he desperately tries to remember all the things that five years and a nearly fatal injury have begun to make him forget - the sound of Mercedes’ laugh, the look of concentration on Sylvain’s face during tactical games, the little cluster of freckles that were sometimes visible near Ashe’s collarbone when his hood fell to the side. Those things must be within his reach again in the future. 

He did not - he did not know . That there could be so much left in life to cherish. He did not know, until he lost them all. 

They win back strategic choke points and set House Kleiman up to have more leveraging power with the Empire. The drafting of Duscur men and women drastically decreases, and General Talo himself oversees the signing of new accordances. As soon as the ink has dried, Talo turns to Dedue, who has assumed his instinctive position of watchful shadow at the general’s back. 

“Let’s get you back to your other family, shield-brother,” Talos says, smiling, and Dedue’s heart sings, loud and clear, at the sound of that. My family , he thinks with a fierce swell of possessiveness. Mine . 

.

Myrddin is a tactical nightmare, but it’s outer edges can feasibly be attacked by a ranged fighter with good mobility. Dedue knows this, when he arrives, so it shouldn’t surprise him that Ashe is the first person he sees. It shouldn’t be unexpected. 

And yet. And yet . 

His breath seems to leave his body for one incandescent moment as he sees Ashe’s impossibly powerful thighs cling to his white-grey horse - who, hopefully, is a still surviving Ella - as he loosens an arrow and shoots, his aim unwavering even as his horse darts from side to side to escape attacks. He has another arrow nocked and ready to go in the blink of an eye, the movement smooth and practiced, and he trains his bow across the treeline to see - 

Dedue doesn’t hear it, but he can see the moment Ashe’s weapon drops and his mouth forms the shape of Dedue’s name, his arms falling slack. His entire body sways forward, his eyes so wide - 

Dedue leaps forward before the incoming line of soldiers can attack Ashe, his shield clanging against the plate armor of the knights. He hears the familiar sound of arrows hitting their mark, and he falls easily into a pattern of waiting a second for Ashe to cripple the knights before moving in for the kill. Working in tandem, they take out the row of knights, before Dedue turns to look at Ashe. 

There are no words, but the sight of Ashe - alive, whole and healthy, furiously galloping towards Dedue with his arm outstretched - is enough. Dedue takes the arm and lets himself swing up onto the saddle behind Ashe, and then, like music to his ears - 

“ Dedue ,” Ashe says, voice choked with tears, and Dedue laughs, breathless, and says in return “Ashe,” savoring the way it feels to finally say his name again. “Ashe,” he says again, and in front of him a full body shudder passes through Ashe and he twists around to look at Dedue. 

Those eyes - Dedue had forgotten what it felt like to look into them. He had been holding on, for five long years, to a memory that he’d begun to suspect he’d reconstructed in his mind of that night at the ball. How much of that overwhelming longing had he really felt, and how much of it had been him, in the depths of his miserable recovery, hanging on to the one thing that represented hope? How much of it had been real ? 

Everything, Dedue thinks when he sees Ashe’s watery gaze, his eyes soft and fond even as he says “I thought you were dead ,” everything is real. The rest of the world melts away, for just a second, and he feels certainty settle into his bones. Everything about Ashe - brave, funny, kind Ashe whose body trembles in front of Dedue, his breath coming in short little gasps as he keeps talking and stumbling over his words - everything about him is it for Dedue. 

But this is war. Ahead of him, he sees a distinctive formation of battalions, most of them stopped as they stare back at Ashe galloping in with an extra rider. And, at the far end of the field, he sees a distinctive blue cloak and blonde hair. His heart leaps in his chest, and he finds himself easily sliding back into his role. 

He hears his name. He knows what he has to do, even as he gets off Ashe’s horse, even as his grip lingers for a second too long on Ashe’s hand, even as he can’t resist from looking back, for one moment, at Ashe’s wide-eyed, terrified gaze. 

He turns away. He plants his shield. He looks back at his liege, who is looking at him with a frantic, half-crazed look and an eyepatch. 

“Your Highness,” he says. 

.

Everything is different when he reunites with his old classmates. Some of the changes are endearingly simple - Mercedes’ hair is shorter, cut off in a fit of rebellion as she tells him, laughing. Annette has started wearing little heels in an effort to mask the fact that she’s one of the only ones who hasn’t grown even a little. Ingrid has a fascination with hair clips that she tries to desperately mask. 

Some changes are less amusing. The scar that edges up the side of Ferdinand’s neck, hidden for the most part by his longer hair. The new tattoos gracing Petra’s arm, which she tells him, quietly, mean rebellion . Byleth’s pacing, late at night, her steps echoing through the wall that she shares with Dedue, as she tries her best to keep from falling asleep, afraid of never waking up again. 

And Dimitri, who is missing an eye. Dimitri, who stands in the cathedral all day, silent and angry, haunted by a past that Dedue has somehow healed from. Dimitri, who pushes Byleth away but cannot stop gazing after her like she’s dead too. 

His prince , whose life Dedue had intended to die for. 

“It was worse before you appeared again,” Byleth tells him when he asks her to look after Dimitri, to see if he’ll eat today. Her voice is raw and painful to hear. “He was - he’s actually kinder now, if you can believe it.” 

Dedue closes his eyes for a moment and remembers the black-eyed fury that Dimitri had sometimes gone into in the first few months they’d known each other, his grip bruising as Dedue restrained him from unleashing his fury on whatever unsuspecting soldier had spoken rudely. 

“I can believe it,” he says quietly. He takes a closer look at the dark circles under Byleth’s eyes and feels a pang of sympathy. “I would tell you to sleep, Professor, but I doubt that you would follow my instructions.” 

She laughs, hollow, her gaze trained on the prince. “If you can’t even call me Byleth, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take instructions from you.” Her voice is tired and empty, broken despite the confidence she usually exudes during their war councils. It feels strangely familiar, and it takes him a moment to place why; he’d sounded the same, years ago, in Rika’s cottage, staring out at what he thought was the end of his life. 

He remembers the soup, warm and comforting, and Rika’s voice telling a story. He remembers a small act of kindness, and a reason to live. 

“Will you watch over the prince for a while?” Dedue asks softly. “I will go make us something to eat.” 

Byleth laughs, a little broken. “I would quite enjoy something you cooked, Dedue. I have...missed it.” 

He gives her a small smile and sets off for the kitchen, tucking his scarf tighter against him as he steps out into the chill of the night air. It’s quiet outside, save for the faint footsteps of those on watch, and the sound of wings as wyverns and pegasi lazily circle the monastery. The lights in most of the rooms are out, though he thinks he sees a glow coming from Linhardt’s room, of all places. 

Dedue expects the kitchen to be dark as well, but to his surprise the wall sconces are lit. When he steps inside, the figure at the stove whirls around, a spatula raised defensively. 

“ Who - oh, Dedue! You scared me!” Ashe says, his glare immediately melting away. Dedue raises an eyebrow as he eyes the cooking utensil. 

“Were you planning on defending yourself with that?” he asks. Ashe looks at what’s in his hand and seems surprised, immediately putting it down. 

“I could have,” Ashe mutters. Dedue takes the chance to just look at him. 

Ashe - has been avoiding him, he’s pretty sure, since the battle at Myrddin a few weeks ago. It shouldn’t be so easy, when they’re all constantly training and fighting together, but Ashe keeps managing to slip away, always disappearing in a flash of blue whenever Dedue moves toward him. He's taller now, and his hair is longer, falling straight into his eyes sometimes. His shoulders are broader, and he holds himself differently. He still exudes kindness and cheer, but it’s tempered by an even, experienced gaze. He is striking in his gentle confidence. 

In front of everyone but Dedue, anyway; here, he hunches his shoulders and turns off the heat, looking away from Dedue. 

"I'm just about done," Ashe says, putting a lid over the pot. "I'll get out of your way." 

"Ashe," Dedue says, feeling helpless and unsure. It had seemed so easy, seeing him for the first time on the bridge, that he'd forgotten that five years had passed. Five years of Ashe's life that he doesn't know, five years of war that he wasn't around for. "You don't have to leave."

Ashe gives him a smile that seems forced. "Its really quite alright," he says, and he moves to brush past Dedue, who acts on instinct and grabs his wrist stopping him from walking away. Ashe stops and turns, slowly, his cheeks flushing a familiar red as he looks up through his lashes at Dedue. 

“You are avoiding me,” Dedue says, and he tries to keep the hurt out of his voice but it shows anyway. Ashe flinches minutely, and looks down again. 

“I - I’m not,” he says, weakly. Dedue wait, silent, his fingers still loosely circled around Ashe’s wrist. If Ashe wanted to, he could easily slip away - but he doesn’t. “I can’t be - I just don’t want to bother you.” 

Dedue frowns. “What do you mean?” He tugs on Ashe’s arm. “Look at me, Ashe. Please,” he adds, his voice dipping lower. The flush on Ashe’s cheeks intensifies as he meets Dedue’s gaze. 

“I know you need to look after his Highness and I don’t want to disturb you from that,” Ashe says in one breath, the words tumbling out as if he’ll lose the courage to say them if he doesn’t say it fast enough. “And I’m not going to take away from that, I - “

Dedue has heard enough. “Ashe,” he says, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest, “I do not spend all my time with his Highness.” 

Ashe’s brow is furrowed. “I know,” he says. “But I don’t want to presume anything. Five years is a long time. I don’t expect that you would - have the time to spare on me anymore. Or that I - meant as much - still mean as much - as you do to me.” 

“I told you,” Dedue says, “five years ago, that you fit in here. That you weren’t pretending. Did you think I was lying? You don’t have to presume anything, Ashe. You are still…” He trails off. What is Ashe to him that Dedue can say out loud, into the stillness of the night as Ashe gazes up at him with luminous eyes? How can he say you are everything without handing his heart over completely?

“You are still my friend,” he settles for finally saying, and it seems paltry and insignificant to put the word friend to the depth of emotion he feels so he adds, “I missed you,” quietly, awkwardly. 

Ashe’s face crumples, and he says, his voice trembling, “ Goddess , Dedue, I missed you so much,” and pitches forward, his hands curling in Dedue’s overcoat as he leans his forehead against Dedue’s chest. Dedue wraps an arm around Ashe, his entire body thrumming with the renewed knowledge of how this older, taller Ashe fits in his embrace. It feels like a selfish, stolen moment while just a little distance away his prince and his professor mourn; but this is Ashe , and so Dedue allows himself to be weak, for just a second, and hold Ashe. 

.

His long, painful recovery in Duscur taught him about the true importance of rest in a way that he doesn’t think any healer has ever been able to enforce. So he understands, to some degree, when he catches Ashe limping his way past the gardens and towards - somewhere, presumably, to do some kind of work. 

Dedue stays for a moment in the shadowy alcove by the wall, watching. Ashe is a master of stealth - normally, if he doesn’t want to be caught sneaking, he won’t be. But he’s just regained consciousness from a terrifyingly well-aimed short axe that threw him off his horse and left him with the majority of the right side of his body bruised and broken. Dedue is still not quite over the nightmare of returning to their encampment at the end of the battle and finding Ashe lying in the infirmary tent, looking so small and fragile. 

“Ashe,” Dedue finally calls, softly. Ashe jumps and whirls around, wincing and shifting his weight from his bad leg. He looks very, very guilty, and the sight of it shouldn’t be as amusingly endearing as Dedue is currently finding it.

“Dedue!” Ashe says with forced cheer. “Fancy meeting you here!” 

“Indeed,” Dedue walks closer, sweeping a critical gaze over Ashe’s body. He’s only been cleared to move back to his room; he isn’t supposed to be off bedrest yet. “Quite an interesting place to meet someone who should be in bed.” 

“Do I have to?” Ashe wheedles. “Look, if I got out and made it this far, it clearly means I can keep going.” He blinks up at Dedue from beneath long, silvery lashes, and Dedue’s breath escapes him for one incandescent moment. 

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Dedue says once he regains his wits. He sees the way Ashe wilts, and so he adds, “I can certainly sit out here with you if you’d like a change of scenery, however.” 

Ashe brightens. “I’d like nothing more,” he says, smiling. Ashe slowly drags his injured foot with him over to a small table with two chairs. This part of the garden is often used for taking tea, Dedue knows, and it used to be somewhere lovers went. With the high, hedged walls and sparse placement of the tables, it had been as close to romantic privacy as you could easily get on the monastery’s grounds. 

War has changed it, irrevocably, just like it changes so many other things. 

But here, as he settles into the seat across from Ashe, he can pretend to himself that this is what sitting in this garden means - that Ashe wants Dedue, yearns for him with the same kind of cosmic intensity that Dedue feels. It's not so hard to imagine, even now, with the way Ashe is looking at him, his chin propped up in his hand and a tiny, serene smile on his face.

“How was your day?” Ashe asks. “More interesting than mine, I hope?” 

Dedue smiles. “Yes,” he says. “Though my time cooking tonight was not quite the same.” 

“I knew it was you,” Ashe says, brightening. “I could taste it.” 

“Impossible,” Dedue counters. “It was a simple fish stew. I followed a Faerghus recipe.” 

Ashe pouts. “It tastes different,” he insists. “It’s...warmer. A more robust taste. Like a…” Ashe trails off, and then to Dedue’s delight his cheeks flush red.

“Like a what?” Dedue prompts. 

Ashe looks down and mutters, “Like a hug.” 

Dedue’s heart soars somewhere into the cloudy night sky, and he tries to control his own voice when he says, evenly, “You know you do not need to look to my cooking for that, Ashe.” It is, perhaps, a bolder statement than he’s ever made, judging by the startled squeak that comes out of Ashe’s mouth at that. 

Ashe looks up with wide, surprised eyes, and Dedue holds his gaze even as he can feel his own cheeks flush with heat. He means this. He may never get Ashe in the way he wants, but this kindness - he wants it to mean something to Ashe.

“Okay,” Ashe says unsteadily after several long moments. “I - yes. Okay.” There’s a comfortable silence for a few more seconds, and then Ashe says in a small voice, “Really?” 

Dedue reaches over and clasps Ashe’s shoulder with his hand, smoothing his thumb across the soft blue fabric. “Really.” 

.

Late one night, as he’s walking back from the greenhouse, he sees Ingrid on the landing of the first floor dorms. Dedue pauses and raises an eyebrow as Ingrid freezes, one foot mid-air as she makes to take a step down. 

“I can explain,” Ingrid says weakly after a prolonged moment of silence, finishing her descent down the stairs and coming to stand in front of Dedue. 

“I hardly see why you need to,” Dedue says mildly. He can guess - there’s light spilling through the crack of Dorothea’s door, and he can hear the strains of faint, happy humming. Everyone else is asleep. 

“It’s just,” Ingrid says, and then her face twists into something painful. “I...can’t. You know. This isn’t something that can happen for me...for real. If any potential suitors caught word of this...well, it would be over for Galatea.” 

He thinks carefully over what he wants to say next, how to offer her a small piece of kindness he wishes someone would offer him. How to tell her that if it's permission she's looking for, she has it. 

"Once this war is over," Dedue finally says, "Faerghus will be different. You will be different. You know as well as I that Galatea will not have the same fiscal problems it has now."

Ingrid winces and twists her hands into the fabric of her tunic. When she speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper. 

"I’ve never allowed myself to have this,” she says miserably. “Maybe I don’t know how.”

Dedue bows his head and remembers an echo of Kana’s words, laced with hope. “I cannot say I am well-suited to any advice in this field,” he says. “But I will say this - someone once told me that after I won the war, I would need to know how to live my life in peace. That those were important skills to have as well. I do not think it is...foolish, to be afraid of what it means to live in peace.”

“No?” Ingrid laughs mirthlessly, but the look in her eyes is desperate as she gazes up at Dedue, like he might have the answers to everything she needs. “Is it not foolish to be afraid of something that can’t truly hurt me?” 

“Anything and anyone can hurt you,” Dedue says. “But your courage does not come from never feeling fear. Your courage comes from moving forward in the face of fear. And - “ he glances at Dorothea’s door again, where the humming has stopped. He can see the shadow cast in the light seeping through the cracks of the door, as if someone is standing right behind it with bated breath, listening carefully. 

“Is she not worth the fear?” Dedue asks softly. Ingrid looks back at the door, to where Dedue is looking, and she inhales sharply.

“Goddess,” she says thickly, “she really is.” She looks back at Dedue. “Thank you.” 

Dedue thinks of the way his entire body jolts with electricity when he catches Ashe’s gaze, the way his heart seems to lodge itself firmly in his throat every time Ashe talks to him. Caring about someone is the most overwhelming thing he’s ever felt; some days, he thinks that he’s bleeding from his fingers with the force of it, his devotion and adoration spilling over into everything he does. 

“I understand,” he says quietly, “the fear. That’s all.” 

“Good night, Dedue,” Ingrid says, smiling sadly, and then she turns and walks back up the stairs towards Dorothea’s room. The door is thrown open before she even reaches it, and Dorothea is standing there on the other side, her eyes shining wetly and a hand covering her mouth as she looks at Ingrid. Ingrid laughs and reaches out, skimming her knuckles across Dorothea’s cheek, and then she turns back to Dedue. 

“I won’t tell you that this worrying is useless,” she says, “because I understand it. But everyone knows who you look at these days, and I just - I think it’s important to remember he’s looking back at you, too.”

Dedue goes very still for a second, and then he says, simply, “Good night,” and turns and walks back towards his own room. Fear is the right word for how it feels to think about Ashe looking back at him, sometimes, because the longer that this war drags on and his king is feral - the more he’s beginning to think that he cannot offer Ashe the life he deserves. 

.

Gronder Field comes and goes, and the aftermath of it gentles their king in a way that Dedue did not think was possible. He doesn’t quite know how it happens, either; all he knows is that when they get back to the monastery, it is raining, and Byleth asks Dedue to go to Dimitri’s room in a trembling voice.

When he gets there, Dimitri is sitting on the bed in a loose tunic and trousers, which marks the first time Dedue has actually seen Dimitri without his fur cape on since he got back. Dimitri’s body is bent over his knees, his head in his hands. He looks - small, without the added bulk of the cape and his armor, and so vulnerable. When he hears Dedue approaching, however, he shoots to his feet, his single eye wide open and already filling with tears. 

“Dedue - “ Dimitri says in a choked voice, and then he’s inhaling, deep and ragged, and tripping over his own feet in an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness as he rushes forward to throw his arms around Dedue. Dedue goes still for one agonizing moment before he exhales and forces his limbs into cooperating. 

He brings his arms up and around Dimitri, patting his shoulder gently as Dimitri just holds him and trembles violently. Dedue remembers the nightmares, the tormented teenage years that he and Dimitri spent together, and the swell of loyalty and fondness that overwhelms him is staggering. 

“Your Highness,” Dedue says in a low voice, “are you alright?” 

Dimitri draws back from the embrace, wiping his face and looking exhausted as he steps back. “Alright - I should be asking you that, Dedue. You - you gave your life for me, you came back from the dead - and I have not even properly thanked you. All I did was keep pushing on, and I - “

Dedue holds up a hand, and Dimitri falls suddenly silent. It’s not often that Dedue will ever act like this, or speak the words he’s about to say, but - there are times when Dimitri looks at him like this, like a scared, lost young boy, and Dedue knows that it would be cruel to respond to him as anything but the scared, lost boy that he was when he met Dimitri. 

“Your Highness - Dimitri ,” Dedue says, and Dimitri sucks in a sharp breath. “I did not, for one second, doubt that you would not find it within yourself to be the wise and just king I laid my life down for.” 

“Even when I was - “

“ Never .” 

Dimitri shakes his head. When he speaks, his voice is tremulous. “You should . You can’t just follow me blindly - even Byleth lost faith in me for a while, I’m not - I can’t pretend that this didn’t happen.” 

“You are a good man ,” Dedue says. “It is a little blind, but only in the way that friendships are sometimes. And as for Byleth...it was harder for her than anyone else. It is different with her. For me, for the man I consider my king, my friend, my - my blood , sometimes - for me, this is enough.” 

He thinks about a boy, so long ago, his eyes crazed as he’d asked will you haunt me too?

“I know that you have demons that haunt your steps,” he adds, his own voice rough. “I have no doubt that the road ahead of you is not easy, or pretty. Healing never is. But I have known you through your worst times, and I will know you through your best. In this regard, I will not falter.” 

Dimitri squeezes his eye shut again and he whispers, “I do not deserve this - not from you, not from Byleth, and not from anyone.” 

Dedue takes a step forward and squeezes Dimitri’s shoulder. “Let us decide what you do or do not deserve from us,” he says. “Give us the dignity of that choice.” 

.

It feels as if the entire monastery collectively exhales when Dimitri comes back to himself, as if the sliver of hope that was planted so long ago finally blooms, lush with the belief that they now place in their king. Dedue easily lets his guard down amongst his friends, everyone sharing relieved smiles and tentatively relearning their standing as a house united. 

The lack of tension might explain why he’s suddenly and abruptly taken aback by the monk that takes a plate of stew from him while he’s on dinner duty, looks him in the eye, and empties its contents over the table. 

“I don’t accept dog food from the dogs of Duscur,” the monk sneers. There has to be some irony in the holy garb the monk is wearing while he says it. 

Dedue blinks, nonplussed. There’s sudden silence around them as every person within earshot freezes and looks over - some in disbelief, some in curiosity, and some with a controlled impassivity that suggests that they might feel the same way. Dedue’s hands are frozen over the pot he’s been ladling stew from, his mind blank with shame and more than a little anger. 

He can’t - this hasn’t happened in such a long time. Foolishly, he’d begun to believe that it might not happen again. Not to his face. Not like this. 

There’s the clicking noise of the gas range being turned off, and then, quicker than Dedue can see, Ashe - who’d been overseeing the second batch of stew -  is stepping up to his side, twirling a kitchen knife in his fingers. There’s a pleasant smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes, which are cold and flinty. 

“I do so hope I heard you wrong,” Ashe says evenly. 

The monk scoffs. “I don’t have time for this,” he says, and he turns to go. 

There’s a whistling noise past Dedue’s ear, and then to his surprise the knife flies through the air, slicing into the monks robe and embedding itself into the nearby wooden beam. A collective gasp seems to ripple through the accumulating crowd, and Dedue feels his own mouth part in shock as he looks down at Ashe. 

In that moment, despite Dedue’s stature, Ashe seems to tower over him as he folds his arms across his chest and says, slowly, with a dark tone to his voice that Dedue’s never heard before, “I said - I hope I heard you wrong.” 

The monk’s face drains of blood and he scrabbles to clutch at the knife. “He’s attacking me!” the monk shrieks, and when it doesn’t seem like any of the nearby guards seem inclined to do anything about it, the monk shrinks away from Ashe’s direction and shouts, “What am I supposed to do? Pretend to accept that - that - that beast of Duscur?” 

Ashe reaches for another kitchen knife and starts twirling it through his fingers. He tilts his head. “I hope I heard you wrong,” he repeats, “and I hope you weren’t insulting someone because of the land they were born in, which is not a trait that can or should be changed. I sincerely hope that a man that spreads the word of the Goddess is not spreading the word of such hypocritical lies.” 

Dedue finally, finally finds his own voice, and he puts his ladle down and puts a faintly trembling hand on Ashe’s shoulder. 

“It’s alright,” he murmurs to Ashe. Ashe looks up, and his gaze immediately softens into something recognizable and fond. Dedue feels like he can somehow see the stars in Ashe’s eyes. It’s breathtaking. 

Ashe nods, and Dedue turns back to the monk. “If you cannot accept food from me,” Dedue says pleasantly, “then you do not have to. Of course, I cannot guarantee that any other establishment that would like to remain in the good graces of the king will serve you food either, but that is certainly a chance you can take.” He beckons over the next soldier waiting in line for food, and just like that the hush that had fallen over the crowd lifts. People begin to converse in low tones, fascinated as the monk struggles with the knife still attaching him to the wall, and a few brave souls offer Dedue smiles. 

Ashe pats Dedue on the arm and goes back to his own station. It takes Dedue the entirety of his shift - a solid few hours of cooking and serving food - to truly wrap his head around what happened. He knows , of course, on some basic level that he has people here that will support him. Sometime in the last six years, he has grown up and shifted his views on what he finds acceptable; there was a time when Dedue would have let a comment like this slide off his back like water, but things are different now. He is different. 

He is a man now that has fought for both Duscur and Faerghus, and he does not forget his people as easily anymore. But to see Ashe - peaceful, kind Ashe who Dedue has never seen raise a hand against anyone outside of training and battle - to see Ashe, of all people, respond so quickly and with so much fervor - 

Dedue cannot stop thinking about it, cannot stop the burning feeling that seems to eclipse his heart. Looking at Ashe feels like looking at the sun now; so bright it almost hurts, but so good . He and Ashe take their dinner later, after they’ve finished serving the rush, and then meander together towards the general direction of the greenhouse. Ashe is chatting about some new technique that he and Bernadetta are working on and all Dedue can think is he’s the brightest thing in my life . 

“You’re not even listening to me,” Ashe says, only mildly accusing as his gaze sweeps over Dedue’s expression, searching. “What’s on your mind?” 

“What’s on my - “ Dedue feels a small smile bloom at the corner of his lips. “Ashe, surely you know. You threatened someone today.” 

“Yes,” Ashe says patiently. “For you . And you’re smiling about it, Dedue, I hardly think what I did was wrong.”

The for you rings in Dedue’s mind like the peal of silver bells. He can admit to himself that he wants those words to mean so much more than they really do. 

“It was quite a sight to see,” Dedue finally says, when he finds the words to reply with. “Thank you, Ashe. It means a lot to me.” 

Ashe stops, a few paces from the door of the greenhouse, and looks at Dedue seriously. “Dedue. You - surely, you know. That I - you mean a lot to me, too. My defense of you today was - nothing . Anyone would do that. But I would - I will always defend you.” 

Does Dedue deserve hope like this, hope that comes in the shape of Ashe’s beautiful face framed in the moonlight? When Ashe looks at him like this, how much longer can Dedue keep pushing back the tide of his own feelings? How easy would it be to give in, to close the distance between them, to finally know what Ashe’s lips feel like - 

Dedue swallows and looks away, and Ashe sighs. 

“I know,” Dedue says quietly, looking over the fishing pond. “I do.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ashe smile ruefully. It looks melancholy. 

“Well,” Ashe says, moving towards the open doors of the greenhouse, “as long as you know, Dedue.” 

.

A few weeks after Gronder, Dedue is assigned to second watch out by the gate with Sylvain, who forgoes his usual steed and lance in favor of his simpler mage’s robes. He’s shaking his hands out, wincing as he stretches a freshly healed shoulder, when Dedue walks up to him. 

“Ah, Dedue!” Sylvain says cheerfully. “Dinner tonight was fantastic, like it always is when you’re on duty. It almost made up for the fact that I’m awake in the middle of the night watching the trees.” 

“We are not,” Dedue says calmly, planting his shield in the dirt, “ watching the trees .” 

Sylvain pulls on a pair of gloves to protect him from the worst of his own spellcasting. “Well we’re watching for things coming from the trees, which is never gonna happen with you glaring everyone into submission, ergo - we’re really just watching the trees.” 

Dedue smiles, slightly, but chooses not to comment further. They lapse into a comfortable silence as they scan their surroundings. The valley below is dark, save for a tiny cluster of lights as the night watchmen in the village below make their rounds. It’s a peaceful, quiet night, one that almost masks the fact that they’re sitting in the middle of a war-torn land, the hills ravaged constantly by thieves and Imperial soldiers. 

After a while, Sylvain shifts and glances back towards the monastery. “Ah,” he mutters to himself. Dedue looks over, waiting for an explanation when Sylvain meets his gaze. To his surprise, there’s a faint blush rising over his cheeks. 

“No,” Sylvain says, “it’s just - Felix usually wakes up around this time and goes prowling through the monastery. He climbs to some roof or the ramparts or something, but I don’t see him out tonight.” 

It’s not a secret that Sylvain and Felix need each other in a way that no one else can really comprehend - in a way that not even the two men in question seem to be able to face. But it’s something entirely different to actually see it, to hear the way Sylvain’s voice becomes helplessly soft on Felix’s name, as if the very sound of it is the most important thing in the world. 

“Do you often - “ Dedue begins, meaning to ask do you often go out to the roof with him , but Sylvain’s blush intensifies. 

“I’m not stalking him or anything!” Sylvain blurts out, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, uncharacteristically awkward. “I just worry about him, is all, and I’m usually on watch with him so I see him do it anyway, but - “

“Sylvain,” Dedue says calmly, stopping the hurried flow of words. “I hardly believe this qualifies as stalking.”

Sylvain frowns. “I guess,” he says. He’s thoughtful for a moment, still stealing glances to the castle behind him. “It’s just comforting sometimes to know he’s there, y’know? That he hasn’t run off?” 

“He - “ Dedue stops. He was about to say he wouldn’t , but that’s not the truth - he does not know Felix well enough to assert that, and it has always seemed as if Felix is restlessly searching for something always out of reach. 

But there is one thing true in the universe that Dedue knows, and so he grimaces and says, “Maybe he would run off, but he would always find his way back to you, Sylvain.” 

Sylvain looks at him, surprised. Dedue doesn’t know when he became a well of advice, the words coming from somewhere unknown in him, but it is - nice. To be able to tell his friends what they so desperately need to hear sometimes. To offer them small kindnesses in life, things that aren’t just protection on the battlefield, soaked in blood. 

“Hm,” Sylvain says noncommittally. “Maybe.” He’s silent for a while longer, and then to Dedue’s mortification he squints at Dedue and asks, “What’s going on with you and Ashe?” 

Dedue nearly falls over from his shock. No one has directly said anything about Ashe to him in a very long time - trust Sylvain, he thinks despondently, to confront him about this. 

“There is - nothing going on,” he says, but he’s been silent for a moment too long. 

“No, I mean, I know that,” Sylvain says easily. “If there really was something going on, Ashe would look a whole lot happier. What I’m asking is - when are you going to actually confront him about this?” 

Dedue absolutely hates the direction this conversation is going, and not only because he’s uncomfortable talking about his very private feelings. He’s also acutely aware of the implication that everyone seems to throw at him these days, that Ashe might, despite all odds, feel the same way, but - it does not matter, and no one seems to understand that. Dedue has a job to do, a kingdom to win back alongside his king. And Ashe has his own knighthood to achieve, his own dreams of serving as a staunch protector. 

Their lives are not destined to intersect like that. 

“The two of us...would not work together,” Dedue finally says. He clears his throat. “I cherish the time we spend together here, but our futures will draw us apart. I have always known this.”

Sylvian snorts. “Right,” he says. An indescribable look passes over his features. “I think that’s a load of bullshit, by the way. You should be a little more invested in chasing your own happiness.” 

Dedue is not feeling charitable towards his friend anymore. “Funny you should say that, considering you’ll pursue anyone but Felix.” He can hear the petulant tone in his own voice.

Sylvain’s face twists, and he drops his head into his hands. 

“I guess happiness is always a lot more work than it seems like,” Sylvain mutters. “It makes hypocrites of us all.”  

Dedue finds it hard to disagree. 

.

At Fort Merceus, Byleth sends Dedue and Ashe to fight their way through the right side of the winding corridors of defenses. “Draw enemy fire,” she advises Dedue, “to give Ashe some time to unlock the treasury carts our scouts saw.” 

As he dismounts off of his horse, Ashe stretches and flexes his fingers, grinning. “Who knew being a thief would be so handy ?” he asks. “If only my ten-year-old self could see me now!”

Byleth huffs out a near quiet laugh at that, but Dedue is helplessly staring at Ashe’s long, nimble fingers and being barraged by thoughts that are markedly indecent for a battlefield. He shakes his head once and offers an absent smile before he looks back down at the battle map. 

It distracts him. Ashe distracts him, as they move down the confusing maze of Merceus. Dedue keeps turning around, looking back, as Ashe darts from corner to corner, his eyes narrowed and body fluid, graceful. His own armor protects him from most blows, and so he lets his eyes linger, lets himself move slowly and fight with half his attention diverted to Ashe - and so he forgets, just once, to scan the sky before moving forward and motioning behind him for Ashe to do the same. 

He hears Ingrid’s voice shout “ Dedue, Ashe! ” with a frantic note in her voice, and that’s all the warning he gets before he sees a javelin arcing through the air, trajectory clearly headed somewhere behind Dedue. There is a moment where everything seems to move at a glacial pace, and it feels like he’s wading through molasses as he turns; he sees it unfold in a terrifying, heart-wrenching moment of clarity. Ashe, out in the open, wearing no armor but the leather guards on his shoulders; Ashe, hair blowing slightly with the breeze whistling through this corridor, mouth slightly parted and eyes wide with shock; Ashe, with a javelin slicing through the front of his coat like a knife through butter, his bow falling out of his grip and his body unceremoniously dropping to the floor.

Dedue roars with anger; the sound makes the wyvern rider look down, but Dedue is faster and far more furious. He throws his hand axe with so much force that it slices clean through the wyvern rider’s own armor, the wyvern screeching in panic and confusion as its rider slumps over. 

He hears Ingrid’s voice screaming but he only has eyes for Ashe, crumpled on the floor with his hands pushed against the wound, looking so small and breakable. He rushes forward and crouches down, trying to gather Ashe in his arms without jostling him. He can’t think straight, can’t think past the whimpers coming out of Ashe’s mouth, torn from his throat like it costs everything in him to even make the sound. 

“You must live,” Dedue tells Ashe, his voice low and dark, and Ashe looks up at him with fear in his eyes. 

“I don’t...want to die,” Ashe manages to get out between laborious breaths. He takes his hand, stained crimson, and tries to reach for Dedue’s face; he’s weak and he misses, clutching at Dedue’s armor instead. “Not...like this…” 

Dedue can’t hear anything else come out of Ashe’s mouth, cannot bear to hear another word laced with misery. 

“No more talking,” he says decisively, and he hears the way he sounds - cold, hard, unfriendly. Unfeeling . Next to the urgency and terror in his heart, an ugly sliver of self-hatred worms its way in. Ashe may be dying and he still sounds like - this - he is not worthy of this man. He may never be, he thinks frantically. 

“De…due...” Ashe begins, clearly ignoring Dedue’s instructions. He cuts himself off with a groan, and Dedue runs faster, back to the point he remembers Byleth marking off. He saw Ingrid shoot off the flare for immediate medical attention, and he holds his breath and sends a fervent prayer to every god he knows, and then Ashe’s Goddess too, for good measure. 

Not him , Dedue thinks desperately as Ashe continues to struggle to reach forward and touch Dedue’s face, hazy and delirious with pain. His gaze is unfocused, pale green eyes fluttering shut and then blinking rapidly open, and Dedue finds, to his surprise, that his own gaze is suddenly blurred over with a wetness that he quickly blinks away. 

He hears the unmistakable sound of dark magic, and he looks up to see Mercedes neatly step out of Lysithea’s warp portal. Her gaze is sympathetic, but her voice is firm and controlled when she takes one look at Dedue and tells him to set Ashe down at the makeshift medic tent and make himself scarce. 

He listens and turns blindly away, trying to control his own rage and grief as he stares down at his gauntleted arms, covered in Ashe’s blood. 

Selfish, selfish man a little voice in the back of Dedue’s head whispers, because for just one, aching second, Dedue had bitterly thought give the injury to anyone else but him; give it to the professor, or the prince, but not to him. 

Not Ashe. Never him. 

.

Ashe heals. Dedue feels hollow for a few days, a phantom echo of grief lodging sharply under his ribs. Though he visits Ashe in the infirmary, sees the rapid progress the other man makes, is treated to those precious laughs and converses late into the night with him - he can’t help but feel the lingering pain of it, as if Ashe is dead and not, in fact, right in front of him. 

It frightens him. Is this what it means to really, truly care? All these years, he’d thought his life-debt to Dimitri - his friendship with Dimitri - had been the most powerful force in the world, and now - what? He’ll throw it all away because Ashe blinks those wide eyes and smiles?

He’s distressed about it. He’s very distressed, which is perhaps why when Dimitri asks him one night, as they’re pouring over maps of Enbarr by candlelight, why he seems so tense, the truth unravels from his lips like a torn thread. 

“It is Ashe ,” Dedue says hotly, before he can stop himself, and then at Dimitri’s raised eyebrow - interested, very secretly trying not to smile - Dedue plunges ahead through his mortification and admits that he has miscalculated. That his heart has attached itself to someone and he doesn’t know what that means. That the enormity of the feeling is enough to leave him feeling bereft, upset, and lonely. 

Dimitri listens carefully, and then nods without an ounce of judgement. 

“I am afraid too,” he says simply. Dedue exhales and then tilts his head, puzzled. 

“For me?” he asks. “Or for you, your Highness?” 

Dimitri taps the edge of his quill against the parchment and looks thoughtful. “For you, that you might let this chance at your happiness go under the convenient excuse of fealty to me. For me, that I may ruin the happiness of not one, but two of my dearest friends. And also - “ he seems to hesitate, and then plunges ahead too, a flush covering his cheeks, his voice softer. “I also know the feeling. Of - my entire heart feeling like it is beating for one person only. What a - what an awfully large feeling. I didn’t know I was capable of it.”

Dedue is a little stunned at that. What can he say to this? He remembers the echo of Sylvain’s words from not too long ago - Happiness is more work than it seems. It makes hypocrites of us all . 

Is it easier to see that in others than to find it within himself? Slowly, haltingly, he tells Dimitri, “I believe Byleth feels the same way about you.” The unspoken so why are you so afraid hangs between them in the silence. 

Dimitri nods, slowly. “Against all my better judgement, perhaps.” 

That’s it. No denial, no self-deprecation, nothing. His king simply accepts the love that he is being offered, as if it is that easy, as if it is anything short of life-changing. Dimitri looks steadily at Dedue, a slight smile overtaking his face as he waits for Dedue to speak. 

“It wouldn’t work,” Dedue says suddenly. He grips the worn wooden armrest of his chair. “Ashe is - he wants to be a knight. I could not - I serve you , your Highness - it would be improper.” 

Dimitri makes a tsk noise and shakes his head. “Try again,” he says. “I am...thinking about asking the archbishop of my entire religion to tie herself to me. I am fairly sure that two of my strongest advisors will soon be in bed with each other, no matter how stubborn Sylvain and Felix are. I am not creating a kingdom where anything as unimportant as rank or title will stand in the way of happiness. You know this, Dedue.” 

Dedue grits his teeth. He does know this. Why is this - why is this the thing that defeats him? Why can’t he look at Ashe and see a future, instead of seeing everything that stands between them? Everything that can go wrong? 

He puts his head in his hands and tries to breathe through the sudden pressure on his chest, the unmooring feeling of not being worthy enough. Someone like Ashe - someone as kind, courageous, and chivalric as Ashe - deserves a romance that is equally as grand. Something full of big gestures and sweeping speeches and all the things that are awe-inspiring; all the things that Dedue is not, all the things that Dedue cannot give Ashe. 

“You love him,” Dimitri says simply. “That is enough.” 

.

I am in love with Ashe , Dedue says to himself in front of the mirror the day before they march for Enbarr. That is now an unshakeable truth of his life, somewhere up there with other unshakeable truths about Dimitri, his friends, about Kana and Rika out in Duscur. Things that are not going to change no matter how much he worries; emotions that will only grow stronger over time. 

He almost died , six years ago, and he learned in that time what it meant to be kind, what it meant to want to live, what it meant to grow up. The truth is that Dedue is afraid of what it means to love Ashe so wholly and incomparably - has been afraid of it since years ago, a boy with nimble fingers and silver hair flashed him a genuine smile and asked to be put on kitchen duty with him instead of actively trying to avoid it - but he is stronger than his fear. 

He sets out from his room early, before anyone is even awake to train, and heads straight for the cathedral. He knows Ashe better than he’d like to admit, and he finds the other man bent over in a pew, lips silently moving. Dedue slides in to sit beside him and waits. 

The cathedral is mostly empty at this time of dawn, when the sun has barely even crested the horizon; there are a few monks still lighting candles on the far wall, and the only other people that Dedue recognizes are Marianne and Hilda, quietly conversing by the corner with the saint statues. It’s peaceful. There’s hardly anything to show that the entire monastery will empty out the next day and march for the biggest battle of their lives. 

From beside him, Ashe stirs, and Dedue turns in time to see him sleepily blink and light up with a smile. “Dedue,” Ashe says, voice quiet. “I was hoping to run into you today.” 

Dedue offers Ashe a small smile. “Ashe,” he says. “Good morning. There is something I would like to tell you.”

Maybe it’s something in his tone - low, gently, impossibly laden with meaning despite Dedue’s best efforts - that gives it away. Ashe’s eyes widen and for a second Dedue sees elation cross his face, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and he has a moment to wonder if perhaps he’s been too obvious in his affections - before Ashe’s face falls.

“I have something to tell you, too,” Ashe says quietly. “You may not like to hear it, though.” 

Dedue is instantly on high alert. “Is everything alright?” 

Ashe huffs out a laugh. “Everything is fine. It’s just...well. You know my mother and father owned a restaurant in Fhirdiad.” 

Dedue nods slowly. It’s a story that has come up often in his conversations with Ashe. 

“The building was recently put up for sale again. My younger sister told me about it. We couldn’t afford it before, but now, with our inheritance...it just seemed like the best way to accomplish what I wanted.” 

Dedue frowns. “What - what do you want?” he asks, unsure of where this conversation is going. 

Ashe looks away. “Dedue,” he says, “his Highness has indicated to me that after the war is over he’ll offer me a knighthood. I don’t plan on accepting.”

Dedue jerks back slightly, feeling like he’s been punched solidly. 

“What?” he asks, dazed. Surely, he heard wrong. Surely, Ashe has not decided to suddenly, on a whim, refuse the one dream he’s been working towards for his entire life. 

“I can’t ,” Ashe says, his voice taking on a steely quality. “Dedue, how can I be a knight when the values - they don’t mean that much, not anymore. There is no chivalry until everyone in Faerghus lives under a united, fair banner. Until we welcome and accept everyone, regardless of rank, or status, or - or where they were born.” 

Dedue finds himself floundering, a panicked feeling growing in his chest. “But what,” he asks, “are you going to do instead?” 

Ashe’s posture is rapidly becoming more closed off and rigid as Dedue reacts in what, he suspects, is the worst way possible. He can’t seem to help himself, not when the one person that everyone expects to achieve lofty, dreamy ideals - along with Ingrid - is sitting next to him and looking angry and jaded. Who has done this? Who has made Ashe give up on the most beautiful things? 

“I’m going to open an inn. Foster peace, instead of cause war. I’ll take up my sword - metaphorically, I mean, I guess I’ll take up my bow - when it is needed, if his Highness asks it. But I want to build relations with people, build a community . I want - “ Ashe stops, suddenly refusing to meet Dedue’s gaze. 

Dedue swallows. “What do you want, Ashe?” 

“I want to cook the dishes you’ve taught me, for the people of Fhirdiad,” he says in a near-whisper. “I want to improve what people think of Duscur. It’s - enough is enough. I want to make a place where everyone is welcome.” 

Oh . Dedue reels back as if he’s been slapped. He did this. He pushed Ashe off his path, made Ashe question things, made him shoulder Dedue’s burden without Dedue even noticing it. How can Dedue face himself? How can he claim to love Ashe when he’s done this to Ashe?

A small part of him knows that Ashe is his own man, that this is a decision that Ashe has made for himself. But the larger part of him, the part that’s been scared and angry and lonely for over a decade now, the part that’s quietly locked every clamoring part of himself away under the cover of disinterested apathy and steadfast, unquestioning loyalty - every part of him that he’s been using as a crutch to face the truth crumbles away in the face of Ashe’s declaration. 

He did this. He’s responsible for this. He ruined Ashe’s chivalric ideal. 

“Dedue?” Ashe asks, sounding nervous and unsure. “Please...please say something.” 

Dedue shakes his head, clasping his hands together and looking away from Ashe. 

“Why are you giving up on your dream?” he asks hoarsely. His voice breaks. “Ashe. If this is about…me…”

Dedue can’t see his face, but he hears Ashe’s sharp inhale. There’s a long moment of silence and then - 

“Is it so wrong?” Ashe asks, his voice like steel. “For my life to be influenced by the man I love?” 

Dedue’s world shifts under him in that moment. He feels unmoored as he slowly looks back at Ashe, meeting his defiant, steady gaze. It’s - it’s too much. Dedue thought he was ready to hear those words, but not like this. Not when he feels the hot sting of shame and guilt curling in his chest. Not when he feels like a greedy, selfish monster for getting this part of Ashe. 

“I - “ Dedue is at a loss for words. He’s never at a loss for words, never stutters like this, never starts and stops and tries to speak when he doesn’t have anything to say. The beautiful thing he should say back gets stuck in his throat. 

Ashe’s gaze begins to grow cold. Dedue doesn’t know where that iron strength comes from, but its easy to forget that Ashe has it, under the soft-spoken words and nervous, blushing smiles. Right now, though, Ashe is staring him down like he can see past every lie Dedue’s told himself, like he sees to the heart of who Dedue is with a startling clarity. 

And its very, very clear that Ashe is disappointed by what he sees. 

“I see,” Ashe says quietly. He shuts his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath. It sounds fragile. Then he stands, moving past Dedue and pausing at the last moment. Dedue’s gaze is fixed on Ashe’s hand, trembling in his line of sight. 

“The worst part,” Ashe whispers, the words barely reaching Dedue, “I think you do feel the same way. I think I know you.” 

Dedue feels like he’s shattering. “I can’t,” he says, and he barely knows what he’s saying. All he knows is the cloying, choking feeling of not being good enough. Of never being able to give Ashe all of his devotion. 

“I know,” Ashe says again. “I really do.” 

.

Dedue goes to a bar.

It is, perhaps, the single most perplexing things he’s done yet in the years since he escaped from Fhirdiad, and he’s done a fair number of things his younger self would have been shocked by. But this? Running away to a place that stinks of cheap alcohol and is permeated by an air of general misery as everyone waits for the troops to depart for Enbarr the next morning? Willingly subjecting himself to this because he’s running away from the man he’s in love with? 

This is - this is definitely a new low. 

Dedue hesitates on the threshold as he scans the room, and is almost surprised when he sees Sylvain tucked away in a corner, staring coldly down at an almost-empty bottle. Dedue is tired and doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he figures that Sylvain may just be having a worse day than him. 

He goes and sits in front of the other man, and Sylvain’s expression changes for only a brief moment before he slumps down further into his seat. 

“Did his Highness send you to come find me?” Sylvain mutters. He sounds bitter, and Dedue frowns as he waves off the waitress that approaches them. When he first walked in, he had half a mind to drink; but now, with Sylvain in front of him, reeking of desperation and hurt, he’s lost the drive to use alcohol as a means of forgetting about Ashe. 

“No,” he tells Sylvain. He doesn’t say anything else; he doesn’t have to, really. He just sits and waits, staring Sylvain down, because he knows that the other man has never been good with silence around anyone but Felix. 

It takes a few minutes, but Sylvain’s face crumples. “Don’t - don’t look at me like that,” he says plaintively. 

“I am not looking at you in any special way,” Dedue says calmly. Sylvain groans. 

“No,” he says darkly, drumming his fingers across the table, “you reserve looking at people in a special way for Ashe .” 

Dedue sucks in a sharp breath, and Sylvain laughs without any mirth. 

“Struck a nerve, have I?” he asks ruthlessly. “Why aren’t you off with him anyway, on a night like this? Why aren’t the two of you fucking - “

“Stop talking,” Dedue says flatly, narrowing his eyes. “You can say what you like about me, but you will not cheapen Ashe like that.” When Sylvain opens his mouth again, no doubt to add something just as callous, Dedue says firmly, “You are better than this, Sylvain. There is no need to take such cheap shots.” 

The fight seems to drain out of Sylvain’s body, and he sighs and tips his head back. He eyes the glasses on his table and says to Dedue in a resigned tone, “Cheap shots literally, or figuratively?” 

Dedue snorts and begins to stack the glasses in a neat pile. “Both, apparently.” 

They’re silent for a while, and Sylvain fiddles with the neck of the bottle in front of him for a while before he says, “I’m sorry. For, uh, earlier. But - why are you here?” 

“Why are you ?” 

Sylvain shakes his head. “I’m a good for nothing scoundrel that destroys everything he touches. The bar is the safest place for me to be. You’re - you , Dedue.” 

Dedue fixes him with an unimpressed look and Sylvain snorts. “I’m serious. What got you upset enough to come down to this level?” 

“It’s nothing important,” Dedue says, his throat closing up as he thinks of Ashe saying the worst part is I think you do feel the same way . “Why are you here, Sylvain?” 

Sylvain takes a long drink from the bottle. “Because I’m in love with Felix and I don’t know how to say that to him without fucking it all up. Because I’m pretty sure I’m a cruel, unlikable person, and Felix might be the only person who won’t hesitate to tell me that to my face if I ever told him I feel this way. And because I think I might die tomorrow anyway, and then it all won’t matter.” 

The words tumble out of Sylvain’s mouth like it hurts to say, like he might lose the courage to say them if he doesn’t do it fast enough. Dedue lets him talk, even as the aching hollowness in his chest cries out in sympathy. He knows the feeling. He knows it intimately . 

“What do I do , Dedue?” Sylvain asks. “How did I get like this? How do I fix it?”

Deude startles. No one has ever asked him, outright, for help. Not like this. Not in an area he’s clearly not cut out for. 

He won’t lie to Sylvain. He’ll repay honesty with honesty, at least. 

“I don’t know,” Dedue admits slowly. “I think I have ruined any chance I had with Ashe, so I don’t know.” 

Sylvain’s head shoots up, his eyes wide. “How did you do that,” he demands, more of a statement than a question. “Ashe and you are the kindest people I know! How either of you can hurt each other is beyond me, honestly.” 

Dedue raises an eyebrow. “We are just people , Sylvain. I can make mistakes too.” 

He says it unthinkingly, the words falling out more to console Sylvain than anything, but the force of his own statement hits him like a punch in the chest. A mistake . Is that what this is, his running away? Or is that what falling for Ashe was? He blinks, once, twice, and his chest constricts painfully as he thinks about Ashe’s steely determination in the church, his unflinching drive to do the right thing. He thinks about six, almost seven years of dancing around the one person that has looked right through him like he sees , like he understands, like he knows the parts of Dedue that long for peace and quiet, a gentle smile and a place to call home. 

Sylvain is looking at him carefully. “ Did you make a mistake?” he asks evenly. 

Dedue passes a hand over his face. “Maybe,” he says quietly. “Yes.” 

.

He leaves a basket of violets outside of Ashe’s door. The war ends in a nightmarish haze of blood and fire in Enbarr, but Dedue remembers one thing clearly through it all - the flash of purple on Ashe’s coat, Dedue’s token placed where the entire world can see. Ashe wears his heart so openly on his sleeve, and now he holds Dedue’s heart too. 

Dedue knows that at Enbarr he will win, or die trying. When Edelgard’s mutated form collapses, when the blood across his cheek is drying and there’s a slowly growing cheer outside, when Dimitri and Byleth step into the light together - 

Dedue always knew he would win at Enbarr, or die trying. But he has won, and he is not dead, and he does not know what comes next.

And then, like the sun breaking through the clouds after a thunderstorm, Ashe is there beside him, infectious joy tugging at the corners of his mouth as he sings a victory song, and Dedue lets himself get swept away with the crowd, a step behind Ashe, his eyes fixed on silvery hair matted with blood, and for now, at least, this is what comes next. 

.

Ashe hasn’t said anything to Dedue all night long at the feast celebrating their victory and the king’s engagement, and Dedue hangs back at a small table and looks at his drink with trepidation - both because it’s extraordinarily strong and because Dimitri and Byleth are heading his way. They’re holding hands, which is sweet, but he’d rather not face them or any of the others right now. 

Everyone has partnered off for the night, and it only serves to acutely remind him that he’s alone. Whenever he looks up, he’s treated to Ashe’s flitting from group to group, laughing with his head thrown back, beautiful and bright, and he wonders if Ashe feels the same sudden hollowness that he does. 

“Dedue!” Dimitri says, forcefully clapping a hand across Dedue’s shoulders. “Why do you look like that drink has done you wrong?” He doesn’t hold his strength back like he usually does, and Dedue gives a slight wheeze at the sudden pain between his shoulder blades. 

Byleth gently tugs at Dimitri’s hand, putting some space between him and Dedue. “Sorry, sorry, he’s had a bit to drink. He’s forgetting his strength.” 

Dimitri looks ashamed and immediately starts apologizing, but Dedue waves him off. “It’s alright. These drinks are stronger than usual. I wonder who - “

“Ashe mixed them,” Byleth blurts out, and then she immediately looks guilty. “He said he was practicing for his…” she trails off, and Dedue sucks in a pained breath. 

“So he told you,” he says. Byleth nods slowly as Dimitri looks between the two of them. 

“I think almost everyone knows of his plan, now,” she replies, and recognition crosses Dimitri’s face. 

“Oh, the knighthood,” he says. “Mm. A shame, but I can’t exactly blame him. He’s got the right idea.”

“Does he?” Dedue asks flatly, staring down his king. “It was Ashe’s dream , Your Majesty.” Byleth’s brow furrows as she looks at Dedue, like she’s trying to puzzle something out. 

Dimitri shrugs, seemingly unbothered by Dedue’s apparent ire. “Dreams change, Dedue. And he knows that if he ever wants it again, there is always a place for him amongst my knights.” 

“Is this why you turned Ashe down?” Byleth asks. Her eyes are kind and sympathetic, and Dedue burns with shame. Ashe deserves her sympathy; he does not . 

“Yes,” he mutters, looking away from her and back to the hall. Ashe is chatting with Annette as he gathers his quiver of arrows from the side of the hall where they’d all stored their weapons. Maybe he’s leaving, and Dedue’s chest tightens uncomfortably as he thinks of how Ashe still hasn’t said anything to him. “I made a mistake,” Dedue continues quietly. “It is hard for me to accept that he’s...changing his whole life.” For me , he doesn’t add, but he has a feeling Byleth understands anyway. 

Byleth seems like she’s about to say something when Dimitri cuts in. “How is that any different from you, my friend?” he asks, leaning forward. “You changed your whole life after Duscur for me.” 

Dedue feels knocked off-course. “Of course it’s different,” he says, but even as he says it he’s not sure. “My world...had ended. There was nothing better waiting for me. It was a choice I do not regret, but a choice born out of misery all the same.” 

“And what exactly do you think Ashe did for all those years since Edelgard first attacked?” Byleth asks. “You know his struggles under House Rowe. You know he doesn’t speak much of those years he spent being chased by them because of his association with the Kingdom. His world ended too - long before any of ours did, when we killed Lonato.”

“I…” Dedue trails off as he remembers a sobbing, heartbroken boy who had reached out and pulled Dedue down to sit next to him with trembling fingers. He remembers grief, heavy and overwhelming, clawing at his insides and reflected across Ashe’s gaze for as long as he’s known him. 

“Maybe Ashe’s choice isn’t that upsetting at all,” Dimitri says. “Maybe you just see yourself in it, and you want...better, for him.” 

Dedue shakes his head, feeling unmoored. “My choice to serve you was a good one, Your Majesty,” he insists. 

Dimitri gives him a small, sad smile. “Perhaps,” he says. “But it has always caused you a world of trouble. It’s not an easy route, devoting yourself to a cause. In many ways, a knighthood in our post-war country won’t be as difficult as Ashe’s idea will be, and I’ve no doubt it’ll give him a world of trouble as well.”

“Yes,” Byleth chimes in, “trouble you’re not responsible for. All you can do is help , Dedue, and a path is always made easier when you’re on it with the one you love.” At this, she squeezes Dimitri’s hand, and they share adoring smiles with each other. The rest of the world might as well not exist, and Dedue clears his throat as envy sweeps quietly through him. 

“What if,” he begins haltingly, and they both turn to him, “he doesn’t want - “

Byleth’s eyes widen as she glances at something over his shoulder. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she says quickly, and Dedue turns around, heart in his throat, to find Ashe staring at him with an intensity to his gaze that has heat sweeping through Dedue. 

“We need to talk,” Ashe says in a tone that brooks no arguments, and Dedue finds himself nodding frantically, his pulse thundering in his ears. Ashe nods at Dimitri and Byleth, bowing with a respectful, “Your Majesties” that has Dimitri laughing and Byleth stammering as she realizes that the phrase now includes her. Dedue bows as well, turning to follow Ashe, who spins on his heel and walks off.

“Good luck,” Byleth calls out softly, and Dedue has no idea which one of them it’s aimed towards. He follows Ashe out of the great hall and out past shaded walkways, gardens, and more until they get to a set of stairs that lead up. There are people milling about everywhere, but barely any up here as they get out onto the battlements; Ashe has always had a knack for finding a way to high ground. 

They find themselves atop the high western wall, facing out towards the city streets. There’s a distant sliver of the ocean glittering on the horizon, something that Dedue misses a little from his time spent by the seaside in Duscur. It’s colder here, the wind whistling sharply through the breaks in the stonework and tousling Ashe’s hair. Under the light of the almost-full moon, Ashe looks ethereal, silvery strands of hair blown into a halo-like disarray. 

Dedue swallows hard, his veins thrumming with adrenaline, and Ashe smiles faintly. 

“You look afraid,” he says. “I’m not going to yell at you.” 

Deduce winces. “You should,” he says. “You have every right to.” 

Ashe shakes his head and steps closer, peering up at Dedue with searching eyes. “No. I’m not - I was hurt, not angry. And then I was just...sad.” 

Dedue is reaching a hand out to smooth away the tense lines of Ashe’s shoulders before he even registers what he’s doing, and he stills his movement as he realizes. It’s instinctive, suddenly, to want to hold Ashe; the longing floods over him like the tide washing in, filling in the parts of him he’d always steeled away for war. Maybe this is what’s left, when everything is over; moments like this where he’s allowed to want for things. 

Ashe’s breath catches and he grabs Dedue’s wrist as he retracts it. “Don’t,” Ashe says, voice raw. “Whatever you were about to do. Please. Keep going.” 

Dedue takes in a deep, shuddering breath. Ashe’s fingers feel like brands encircling his wrist. He reaches forward slowly, and Ashe slides his own hand down to wrap around Dedue’s forearm as Dedue gently rests his palm against the junction of Ashe’s neck and shoulder. He lets his thumb rub slightly against Ashe’s jaw, feeling bolder by the minute, and Ashe’s eyes flutter shut. 

“I’m sorry,” Dedue says, his voice dropping into a lower register. “I was wrong.” 

Ashe swallows, the muscles of his throat working under Dedue’s palm. “Why?” he asks thickly. “Why didn’t you choose me, that night before we marched for Enbarr?” 

“Ashe,” Dedue says helplessly, overwhelmed by the anguish in Ashe’s voice. He’d never thought - he would never have imagined Ashe could have thought he wasn’t worth choosing. It’s never been about Ashe. It’s always been about Dedue, and the way he’s always felt like an echo of a real person, like someone who died almost a decade ago as his home and family burned. 

“I know it’s because I turned down the knighthood,” Ashe continues. “I’d always looked at you, and I’d always hoped you’d been looking back, and I never dared to say anything because you were so devoted to your cause.” 

“I have been,” Dedue says numbly. He brings his other hand up to cradle the other side of Ashe’s face, trying to say all the things he can’t express in the sweep of his fingers across Ashe’s skin. “I - since that first autumn after Byleth joined us, Ashe. You are a hard man to look away from.” 

To his horror, Ashe’s eyes shine wetly. “It doesn’t feel like that,” he says. “It feels like I wasn’t worthy enough for you to choose to be with me. I know it was because you were scared when I talked about my plans for the inn; I know that Dedue, but oh, I can’t - I just wanted you to choose me. I wanted to be worth that, Dedue.” 

Ashe is beginning to tremble violently underneath him, and he’s so, so hurt; Dedue’s been selfish, moving through this as if his feelings were the only ones that mattered. The hollowness in his chest fills and fills and fills with the feeling of the man he loves in front of him, heartbroken, and he just wants Ashe. It’s so simple. It’s just Ashe. It’s always been him. 

“I’m sorry,” Dedue says again, more firmly, his own voice rough. “I truly am. I was frightened, you are right - you know me well, Ashe. But I was wrong . I made a mistake, and I can only hope you will give me a chance to show you how much you are worth to me.” 

“I want - “ Ashe says, and then his voice breaks on a sob, and he says, “I want you, Dedue. I just do. I always will. And I woke up that morning before our march and saw the violets and I thought - he loves me, but it’s not enough, and I needed it to be enough. Because if it wasn’t enough, then I’d spend the rest of my life - “

Dedue presses his lips to Ashe’s forehead, letting his touch linger before he pulls aways and looks down at Ashe, who stops talking and stares up at him, mouth slightly parted in shock. 

“Someone once told me that I would need to learn what to do with myself after the war,” he says quietly, thinking of a cottage filled with the warmth and care of two women who rebuilt him. “I have spent so long feeling empty, Ashe. It was easier than constantly reliving the pain of what happened in Duscur. But I have changed. I have grown older. And through it all - since the moment I stepped foot into Garreg Mach - “ 

He stops and traces a stray freckle along the curve of Ashe’s jaw, feeling the way Ashe slowly inhales, as if he’s holding his breath. “You have always been someone that made me feel like me again,” he says slowly, “instead of just a burned husk of a man. I adore you, Ashe, and I do not know if I can put into words just how much. For the first time in my life, I dream of a future - a place where I can come home, hang my shield up, kiss you, and then put on stew for our patrons.” 

Ashe’s mouth drops open further, and he stammers, “P - patrons - our - our ?”

Dedue feels very presumptuous all of a sudden and he draws back, alarmed. “If that’s what you want, still - “

Ashe yanks hard enough on Dedue’s collar that he’s cut off by surprise, and then Ashe’s mouth is covering his own, kissing him with a burning intensity that sets lightning skittering under Dedue’s skin. Kissing Ashe is a revelation; his soft lips, his muffled groans, the way that his clever fingers reach up and thread through Dedue’s hair, bringing him to exactly the level that Ashe wants - everything reminds him of how real Ashe is, of how real his love and loyalty to this man is, of how real Dedue is here, in this moment.

“If that’s what I want - “ Ashe says between kisses, his voice suddenly lower. Dedue kisses him harder for that, pushing him back until Ashe’s back is up against a wall. “Of course I want - “ 

“Then so do I,” Dedue murmurs, and Ashe shakes his head, a smile curling across his mouth. “I want whatever you want. I want to be with you.” 

Ashe’s body is warm and insistent as he presses closer to Dedue at that whispered admission. “I want you to be happy,” he says simply to Dedue. “Whatever we do. I just want us to be happy. I should have led with that, instead of the whole ‘abandoning knighthood’.” Under the layers of both their coats, Dedue can feel Ashe’s heart beating jackrabbit fast.  

Dedue smiles, and he can feel something novel take root in his chest at the way Ashe talks about happiness, so sure of himself and of Dedue. “I am,” Dedue says, nudging Ashe’s nose with his own and delighting in the soft laugh that the action elicits. “I am happy, right now, with you. Wherever we go, I will be happy.” 

Then he pauses, and pulls back, watching in bewilderment as a lone tear slips down Ashe’s face, slowly. “Are you - “ he begins, and then the tears begins to fall in earnest, even though Ashe is smiling, and then laughing at Dedue’s confusion. 

“Happy tears,” Ashe tells him, his voice giddy. “I just - I practiced what I would say to you so many times - I never thought about what you might say back, and it’s - I love you. Have I said that yet? I love you.” 

Dedue laughs too, and then swoops down to pepper kisses across Ashe’s face, tasting salt. “I love you too,” Dedue says, and then he adds, softer, “I always have.”

.

The first autumn after the war ends comes with a vengeance, with the cold seeping deep into the castle at Fhirdiad. Dedue has never liked it much - the large, cavernous rooms are too frigid and empty - but for the first time, he barely registers it. He spends his nights on the top floor of a cozy inn, curled up in front of a roaring fire with Ashe and laughing at the disgruntled look on Ashe’s face as he discovers that Dedue thinks his permanently ruddy cheeks are charming. 

They’re not in Fhirdiad for long, anyway; right before the first snow is scheduled to hit the mountain passes, Dedue bundles a complaining Ashe up into more layers than he needs and takes them west. They stop at a ridiculous amount of inns on the road and Ashe endears himself to each and every innkeeper, slyly teaching them Duscur-inspired recipes in the name of talking shop. 

“I’m infiltrating the Kingdom’s cuisine, one recipe at a time,” Ashe says confidently to him at night, half-sprawled across Dedue’s chest. Dedue rolls him over and pins him to the mattress, fond and exasperated all at once. 

“What an excellent spy you’d make,” Dedue says dryly, leaning down to kiss him. Ashe makes a happy noise and surges up, carding his fingers through Dedue’s ponytail. His hair goes past his shoulders, now, but he likes it; it reminds him of his father, and that kind of thought hurts so much less when Ashe runs his fingers through it and pronounces it perfect for pulling at. 

Rika was right, he thinks, when she told him that life was measured in kindness. All the parts of him that were torn apart when Duscur fell are slowly being stitched back together in his chest, cobbled together with the love and warmth that Dedue has in this new future. Not just from Ashe - from everyone. From all of his new family. 

And so, more than a year after he left his homeland, he goes to a cottage by the sea and knocks on the door, waiting for the cranky sound of Rika shouting “If you’re not dead, dying, or carrying someone who’s dying, go away!” and Kana adding “No, whoever it is, please stay, I’ll be there in a second!” 

From beside him, Ashe is vibrating with excitement. Dedue smiles as he squeezes their intertwined fingers and says, “I’ll be sure to let His Majesty know that his coronation incited less excitement than this.” Ashe shoots him a look . 

“His Majesty was less excited about his coronation than I was. I’m sure he’ll understand,” Ashe says primly, and Dedue opens his mouth to reply when the door opens and a shrieking Kana throws herself into his arms. He catches her easily, still holding onto Ashe with one arm, and laughs. Rika appears in the doorway, leaning heavily on her cane and looking shocked. 

“Boy!” she says, sounding awed. “You’re back.” 

Kana draws back, adjusting the scarf that Dedue still wears with a proud look on her face. “You’re back, and you won . Like we told you would. And,” she hesitates, her smile growing as she sizes Ashe up. “You brought your family. Like you told us you would.” 

“Oh!” Ashe says. Dedue glances at him as a smile blossoms across Ashe’s face. “He said what ?” 

“Why are you surprised?” Dedue asks Ashe. “You know what you are to me.” He looks at Kana, and then adds, “The rest of the people I want you to meet are coming later this week. Including, ah, the king.”  

Rika’s cane taps impatiently against the floor as Kana gasps and looks so elated she might faint. “Finally found something kinder worth living for, eh?” she asks. “And yet, still couldn’t give us some warning about the king descending on our humble little town.” 

“The king lived in the rotting ruins of the monastery for years, he has no standards” Dedue says dismissively. “As for the rest - “ He pauses and glances around, drinking in the sight of Ashe in his homeland. He thinks of the ring burning a hole in his pocket, and the way it might look on Ashe’s fingers. He thinks of their home in Fhirdiad, of the laughter that echoes through it, of the way he can imagine tiny feet running through it, and maybe a part of him will always be fifteen and burning and shuttered away behind stone walls - but a part of him is also twenty-five, and in love, and free. 

He thinks of a broken man, saying I don’t know if I have any kindness left and Rika saying you do. You do. 

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I’ve found kindness worth living for.” 

.