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Midnight hung low above the monastery that night - the grounds covered in an oppressive, agitating silence. There was no one to blame, of course - the rest of the soldiers were simply sleeping like normal people - but Annette couldn’t help but feel that it was a very personal and targeted silence, hellbent on torturing her specifically.
Not that she was worried or anything. Absolutely not.
It was perfectly normal for a few of the more seasoned generals to be sent out on overnight patrols through neighboring villages. And it was perfectly normal for those trips to take a day or two longer than expected without any sort of correspondence that they would be late. It didn’t mean there was trouble, per se. Sometimes villagers just needed extra help with chores and needed strong soldiers to aid in those tasks. Sometimes they ran into perfectly defeatable groups of bandits that took a little extra time to drive off.
All of these things and more were perfectly reasonable reasons for that weekend’s patrol to be late, and perfectly listed in the newest page of Annette’s diary as she tried to tire herself out for bed. She reread her swirling script, frowning at the simple errors and crooked letters of her restlessness. Those seemed directed at her too.
Out of all the trips Felix could have been sent on, it really was silly to be worried about this one. Their little army had been back together for a few moons now, and they were finally starting to get the hang of it. Really! Their fighting was more in sync than it had ever been in their schooldays, their skill was far improved, and they had successfully taken out a rather impressive number of enemy troops already. Felix would be fine .
Plus, Ingrid was there, and she was too stubborn to let him die.
Annette sighed, and glanced over at the stack of particularly worn letters at the corner of her desk. As always, her eyes landed on the very first one, the ink fading on the lines where it had been folded and unfolded again and again. It opened easily when she ran her thumb along the scratchy penmanship she had spent the last few years memorizing:
Annette,
It is the 20th of the Red-Wolf Moon, and it’s turning bitterly cold up here in Fraldarius. Your last letter has caused me to reflect on the juxtaposition of our situation: of this bitter war and the hopeful nature of our last meeting. While I am always glad to receive your letters, they tend to leave me with a bit of regret when I’m through. That is not to say I’m ever disappointed by your correspondence. I have just always been a man of action.
Enclosed you will find a ring. I make no apologies for stealing it from my old man’s study. It would have been mine to give eventually. And what’s mine to give is yours to take, as always. I hope you will accept this token, however small it may be, and allow me to ask you for your hand properly when next we meet.
May that time come soon.
Ever yours,
Felix
It had been a very delightful surprise to find that Felix was so affectionate. He was far more tender than Annette had ever expected him to be. Even on paper. She’d discovered this in that hopeful last meeting he always seemed to come back to:
She had been running errands in a village just outside of Dominic when she spotted a suspicious man peeking out at her from behind a shaded building. She covertly followed him to a secluded alley at the edge of town. Cast a fairly dramatic wind spell to knock his hood off.
Any warnings or threats fizzled from her thoughts when she saw him.
After a few moments of floundering, she had demanded to know what he was doing there, furious that he would be so careless as to wander into Dominic territory when it was very clear that her uncle was about to side with the Empire and he was very clearly a Fraldarius.
It all happened very quickly after that:
She scolded him for his recklessness. He told her it was none of her business why he was in the area. She accused him of spying on her, of not trusting her to keep herself alive. He not-so-tactfully insisted that it wasn’t weird for him to be so worried, because he couldn’t live with himself if anything had happened to her.
Who wouldn’t kiss him after an admission like that? They were in the midst of war! Why not give in to her schoolgirl crush and pull him in and press her lips against his and maybe run her fingers through his hair? Life was short, after all. And shorter still in all that fighting.
The kiss itself wasn’t something that Annette remembered in any vivid detail. It was far too clumsy - all stuttering heartbeats and anxious hands. But she remembered the moments that followed. After giving them both a second to catch their breath and cool their raging blushes - when he reached to push a lock of hair behind her ear more gently than she thought possible - something new and precious was born.
Something secret.
It started as a safety measure; to ensure her uncle never discovered her ‘treason’. Reluctantly (and after a heated debate) Felix went back north. Every few months she was graced with a smuggled letter or two - letters that had her falling in love slowly, over time. When she finally broke out of Dominic they had been able to exchange more, but other than that first meeting, the entire course of their relationship had been through paper and pen.
By the time they finally reunited on the day of the millennium festival they had been apart for four and a half years. So when Annette saw Felix stumble into view after she had just secured the left side of the bandit’s base she couldn’t help herself. She ran to him, throwing herself into his embrace with absolutely no regard for the fact that Mercie, or worse, Sylvain, could round the corner at any minute.
Felix had kissed her like the act alone could end the war.
He hadn’t stopped kissing her like that.
Now, a light, quick, knock at the door pulled Annette from her thoughts. She glanced up from the flickering candle at the corner of her desk, blinking the rest of the room back into focus. There was a pause before the second knock, where Annette was sure she had just been imagining it. But when it sounded off again she jumped up, running toward the door, trying (and failing) not to let her hopes get too high.
Felix leaned in to kiss her before he was even fully in the room. His hands found her waist, pulling her flush against him as he lifted her off of her feet.
“Felix!” she hissed, unable to hide her giggle. “Someone will see.”
“Nobody’s around.” His breath trailed along her collarbone as he nuzzled his face closer into her neck. “And no one is up this late except you.”
“You couldn’t wait until morning?” Not that she wanted him to wait, of course. Now that they were reunited, they could spend every day side by side and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Felix pulled away just enough to curve over her, his arms tightening defensively around her waist and his forehead pressing into hers. “No,” he said simply. He smelled like horses and sweat and he desperately needed a bath, but she grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him anyway.
Annette didn’t complain when he pulled her back toward the bed. She didn’t complain when she realized they never put out the light, or put away the letters that had been strewn across her desk. Because when he pressed his hand against the searing skin of her back, and tugged the ribbon from her hair, there were suddenly much more important things to think about.
The fact that their relationship was secret was, perhaps, Annette’s favorite thing about it. While it often meant waking to an empty bed, the thrill of sneaking around all but made up for those cold mornings. She kept her ring on a chain around her neck. He kept her heart safely in his hands. They kissed behind the greenhouse and stole glances during councils and fell in love all over again. Sometimes, if she happened to sit next to him at group meals, he would reach over and hold her hand under the table, dragging his thumb across her knuckles.
So when Annette woke the next morning to the sun streaming in through her bedroom window, and felt for the cold pillow beside her, she didn’t feel lonely at all. She stretched, the sheets pooling around her waist, and sighed when the bell tower in the distance signaled her rather late start.
The dining hall was always a little more cheerful the day a scouting party came back in one piece. When Annette stumbled through the doorway, she was greeted by the sound of Sylvain’s voice chattering on at a nearby table. Ingrid was beside him, hunched over her empty plate and stirring her coffee absently. Mercedes, the dear that she was, was listening with rapt attention, nodding every few seconds and widening her eyes at the parts Sylvain seemed to find particularly impressive.
“Annie!” Mercie threw her arm up to wave when she caught sight of her. “Come and join us. Sylvain was just telling us a fascinating story about their trip back to Garreg Mach.”
“Fascinating is one way to put it,” Ingrid mumbled into her cup.
Annette slid into the seat beside Mercedes, smiling up at her when she patted her hand under the table. As always, her friend had already fixed a plate for her: a large helping of oatmeal and fruit from their newly-blooming garden.
“ Thank you, Mercedes,” Sylvain went on. “As I was saying: Just as we were about to turn back, an entire wave of men crested the hill. And they were huge! Charging right at us with these crazy looking axes.”
Ingrid was watching Sylvain again, grimacing at his wild hand gestures and his valiant account of taking out ‘at least a dozen enemy soldiers single-handedly’. When she caught Annette staring, she shifted her arm, holding up three fingers and mouthing the correct number across the table at her.
Annette hoped she was successful at biting back her laugh.
“Felix will remember,” Sylvain said now. He scanned the dining hall until he caught sight of Felix wandering in through the door to the fishing pond, his hair still wet from his bath. “Felix!” he called out. “How big would you say that one guy was? The one with the huge ax?”
“Half Ingrid’s size,” Felix said easily, falling into the seat beside her and reaching for the lone strip of bacon on Ingrid’s plate. She stabbed at his hand with her fork but he quickly avoided it, shoving it into his mouth before she could retaliate further.
Sylvain frowned, but went on, unphased by Ingrid picking at the food on his plate to supplement Felix’s horrible slights. “I’d say Dedue’s size at least. Wait, where is Dedue? Maybe I can reenact it.” He scrambled up from his seat, rushing out toward the greenhouse and muttering to himself.
Ingrid sighed, exaggerated and loud.
“We’re leaving him here next time,” she informed Felix, their earlier argument seemingly forgotten already.
“Good,” he agreed, pushing himself back up from his seat. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I’m going to get my food to go. I’m not standing around while Dedue lets that idiot perform an entire historically inaccurate opera because he’s too weak to turn him down.”
“Too nice, you mean,” Mercie corrected.
“That’s what I said.”
Felix’s hand caught Annette’s shoulder as he went to leave, and when she turned too quickly toward it she was horrified to see his face just a little too close for completely platonic friends. Unfazed, he straightened back up to full height, holding an old, tattered notebook in her direction. Her notebook.
Annette fought the urge to glance down at her bag where she was positive she had left it.
“You dropped this,” Felix said purposefully.
It took everything in her not to smile, and she hoped that smile wasn’t in any way audible when she replied with a meek, “Thank you.”
Felix only shrugged, his fingers grazing hers for the briefest of moments before he let go, and walked back to the line of students at the front of the dining hall. Somewhere behind her, his footsteps receded, and it wasn’t until Mercedes and Ingrid were well into their conversation about what actually happened on their scouting mission that Annette felt brave enough to sneak a look at the corner of a more recently dog-eared page:
Dinner. Tonight. Meet me outside the gate at 9 o’clock.
Felix was waiting for her at the gate when she arrived, leaning up against the side wall with his hands in his pockets and his focus set intently on his boots. Rocks skittered across the pathway as he kicked at the ground.
“So, Mr. Fraldarius.” Annette snuck up beside him and reveled in his startled flinch when she slid her hand around the sleeve of his navy coat. “Why the sudden date? Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
Always quick to recover, he offered her a smirk. “What? Can’t I take my fiancée out to a nice dinner?”
“Not without a reason,” she decided.
“The reason is because I missed her,” Felix proclaimed as he began to tow her toward town. “I think that’s good enough.”
Not for the first time, Annette found herself wondering what life would have been like if the Empire had never invaded Garrett Mach - if there was no war at all. Would they have had more nights like these? Peaceful walks through non-descript villages? Would they have grown sick of each other with their endless free time?
Would they even be together at all?
“I guess that’s a good enough reason,” Annette agreed. She rested her head on his shoulder, ignoring the jostling of their leisurely pace. “I’d be happy doing anything with you.”
“Good,” Felix said as he pulled open the door to a particularly run-down inn. “Because it’s probably going to be a very underwhelming meal.”
He wasn’t wrong. The restaurant itself wasn’t anything fancy: just a mediocre pub far enough off the beaten path that it would be surprising to see anyone they knew. Most patrons had gone to sleep for the night, the few that remained far too drunk at the bar to possibly remember seeing anyone of note that night. They dined on fresh bread and beef stew. The wine was passable: a little too tart for her liking and far too sweet for his. The bard on the other side of the room strummed a few unfamiliar songs into the near-empty room.
It was simple. It was perfect.
The freckled sky greeted them as they walked back through the crisp night air. Annette pointed out all of the constellations she could remember: Cichol’s Wyvern and Sothis’ Ring and the Blue Sea Star. In another life, this could have been how they spent most nights. They could have gone on countless dates. Felix could walk her home and kiss her on her doorstep and promise to call on her soon. They could have courted properly, had a proper engagement, a proper wedding - no anxious nights worrying when he’d return…
Though, Annette didn’t think she’d change a thing if she was honest.
“You’re chipper tonight.”
Felix’s voice reverberated through the air. Its deep, dulcet tones soothed her very soul.
True, it might not have been the most traditional of tales, but the clandestine love stories had always been her favorite anyway.
“I am.” she agreed.
She skipped ahead a few steps, turning only when Felix refused to let go of her hand and tugged her back. She lifted their arms. He twirled her once, catching her easily at the elbow when she stumbled over her own two feet. “I’m just really glad you came home,” she admitted.
Felix’s smile rivaled the shimmering path of a shooting star; so rare and precious that Annette felt a little guilty she couldn’t always share it with the world. It glittered in the low light of the moon.
“I’ll always come home,” he promised.
Warmth bloomed in her chest. Such earnest, sweet words for someone she once thought to be so very evil. “I know,” she said. And, incredibly, she meant it.
The bell tower in the distance chimed out. Somewhere up the path ahead, the rest of their army was asleep for the night. The anxiety she’d had just twenty-four hours ago was nowhere in sight, soothed only by the feel of Felix’s hand in hers.
“It’s getting late, Miss Dominic.” Felix brought her hand to his lips to press a kiss against her empty ring finger.
“Then you should probably get me home, Mr. Fraldarius,” she teased.
Annette took one last look at the sky above them - clear and bright - and smiled when Felix wrapped his arm around her shoulder to pull her closer. She thought, as she often did, that all that worrying might be worth it if it allowed for midnights like this.