#C: more character development for Dimitri this month it turns out | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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While I've certainly found the gay relationships in older FE (i.e. the one's relegated to subtext) much better than modern, subtext is not an equivalent substitution for the kind of confirmation S supports give. I'm really tired of having to rely on subtext for any kind of meaningful representation since it's so easily shrugged off by the broad cishet part of the fandom. And I think shrugging off people's disappointment with "there may be more in subtext" is a little insensitive. (1/2)

That being said I don't see S supports as end all be alls either. I think the system is limiting and I would really just prefer to see S supports and the avatar leave in favor of romances and relationships that can develop more naturally during the plot and save culmination to the epilogues or if appropriate than at some point in the story. (2/2)

You are right in that there is something distinctly artificial about the presence of Avatars and S supports in FE, although like it or not those features are popular enough to where we’ll probably keep seeing them in all non-remakes* going forward. S supports themselves were introduced in Awakening as an update of Genealogy’s purely numerical love growth system, in order to replicate that game’s breeding mechanics. This was a necessary addition in light of how the C-A support system had been employed in the GBA games and Tellius, to develop relationships ranging from the explicitly romantic to the subtextually romantic to the familial and usually not romantic to the completely platonic - and all of these categories either with or without paired endings. FE13 stamps out all that ambiguity to allow the player to make specific, clearly marked choices that lead to eugenics babies, and for all that game’s obnoxious bouts of homoerotic denial it works as both a breeding metagame and an Avatar dating sim. Fates shook things up a bit with two same-sex S supports, but then those are as criticized for being gameplay detriments as much as they are for characterization issues.

Now we’ve come to the third iteration of S supports, for the first time in a game without breeding. My belief is that the only reason they exist in Three Houses is for that secondary function introduced in Awakening, that of self-insert wish fulfillment. It therefore makes perfect sense that Byleth is the only character with S supports, and while I have never bought into FE’s self-inserts and as such care remarkably little about them I understand what they’re meant to represent. It does however highlight the artificiality of the whole mechanic, as it would be unreasonable to assume that the other characters don’t have romantic entanglements of their own outside of Byleth that will be expressed in their C-A supports. Byleth can S rank because they’re meant to be the player, and that’s it. To borrow an observation from @agoddamn, it’s as superficial a conceit as the decision to make Byleth - the amnesiac child of a mercenary with no prior experience - a teacher, which gives them authority to command the game’s armies without needing to be royalty (Corrin), super secret BFFs with royalty (Kris), or BFFs with laughably naïve royalty (Robin).

But is it insensitive to ask people to look to subtext for representation when the game’s S rank options are not to one’s liking? I don’t think so. I’m old enough to remember when subtext was pretty much all you were ever going to get for same-sex relationships in popular media, which for gaming in particular wasn’t even that long ago. Looking specifically at Fire Emblem, there have been all of two inarguably gay characters in the series’s nearly 30-year history, but far more than that who’ve raised enough eyebrows to have people pointing at them as more or less positive depictions of same-sex relationships...and pushback from members of the fandom who don’t care to read them that way. The debates on Ike’s sexuality have raged on for over a decade now, reignited by the existence of Priam, and there are still people out there who maintain that the guy having paired endings with two male characters (and only them) is inconclusive. So yeah, I get the frustration - but does it really matter what other people in the fandom think? For a good bit of the 2000s and (so I hear - not old enough) earlier online fandoms in general were hostile to the idea of slash/same-sex fanwork and kept it walled out of many major fansites, and yet it continued to exist in spite of opposition. Ignore those elements in the fandom, find community elsewhere, and move on.

Besides, this is overlooking the point that reading into subtext can be genuinely fun. Take for example Shadows of Valentia, which produced the series’s second canonically gay character in Leon. Despite this however in the weeks and months following FE15′s release neither I nor my acquaintances in the Tumblr FE fandom spent much time talking about him; rather, most of observation on the game’s queer content focused on the Deliverance, that hotbed of sublimated desires and unusually frank contemplations of non-straight sexuality. In the tumult of everyone in the organization wanting Clive’s heterosexual dick we got Fernand being a frustrated childhood friend turned antagonist and potential rapist(!) via some weird triangulation of desire, Lukas yearning for something he can’t name with his superior officer and Python being the one to coax out the man��s lack of physical desire (for women or for anyone), and Forsyth and Python being massively gay in general but also comically dysfunctional. That’s all far more interesting to parse out than Leon the aging twink pining for daddy dick he’s probably not going to get. Both are entertaining in their own ways, but the Deliverance situation had a lot more analytical longevity. That’s the kind of stuff I’m really looking forward to in Three Houses, from Dimitri’s circle, from Caspar and Linhardt, and from anyone else who presents the material. There’s a lot fewer limitations when you don’t rely on the game to tell you who can and cannot have sex.

*Even though a Blazing Sword remake could hypothetically see Mark the tactician expanded into a full-blown Avatar role, belatedly vindicating the torrent of badly-written Lyn/Tactician fics that flooded the fandom back in 2003.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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theeeveetamer · 5 years

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Extended Three Houses Thoughts

I’m about two chapters from the end of the Blue Lions route but I do have some extended thoughts on the game that I wanted to type up and share before I get back to it. Spoilers below the cut, in case that wasn’t obvious.

So first off I want to say that I have far more positive things to say about this game than negatives, but I do think this game has some negatives. These aren’t in any particular order I just kind of typed them as I thought of them.

I feel like a lot of what this game does was in direct response to Fates. There was a lot of swinging the pendulum back in very noticeable ways, and for the most part I think that’s a good thing.

The seriously slimmed down cast, for one. I was kind of surprised and a little worried when I first picked up the game and I found out that each house only had about seven core characters, but I like it. Fates had too many characters, and most of the time they ended up being redundant. You had, what, eight fliers in Revelation including children, with at least five more characters potentially able to become fliers through their normal promotion paths? When, at most, you probably needed three. And some were significantly better than others, so obviously you went with those and the rest kind of rotted away in your barracks.

With Three Houses each character feels important. Since you can now train basically any character to be anything it also means you can have some fill specific niches. You can have Sylvain be a sword cavalry unit, and Dimitri be a lance cavalry unit, and Ingrid an axe cavalry unit if you want, drop their breaker skills on them, and they can all be useful and important on the same team.

The supports also feel more meaningful. Don’t get me wrong there’s still a lot of re-hashing of already covered territory (basically all of Dedue’s supports involve either cooking or the fact that he’s from Duscur, most of Ingrid’s revolve around wanting to be a knight or marriage contracts, etc.) but the fact that there’s less of them makes this feel like less of a problem. And it’s nice that, now, they don’t try to force every conversation into a C-B-A-S format. Some characters only have C-B, others have C-B-A-A+, etc. I think it makes sense. Not every character will be as close as others, and not all support conversation threads need three parts to be meaningful and impactful. Some need more, some need less. Trying to squish them in or stretch them out always hurt more than it helped.

That said, I’m a little disappointed there’s no match-making to be had. Everyone in this game gets brother-zoned/sister-zoned so fast it’s kind of comical. There are a few A supports that hint at feelings but you can’t actually make them S-support. Also, a character might indicate feelings for more than one other character in their A supports so it’s not definitive. Maybe there’s more once the game is finished, but within the actual main story there’s nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, it makes sense to me. As young teenagers in school there wouldn’t really be any reason for any of them to get married. I thought that might change after the time skip but it doesn’t. I don’t necessarily hate that it’s gone, it’s just a feature I enjoyed fucking around with in Awakening and Fates (and I was looking forward to, hopefully, more gay representation. I was really hoping that they might allow characters to be gay for each other and not just the Avatar character, especially since they included so many lesbian options this time around. But alas, maybe next game).

The exclusion of child characters was a good call. Barring the fact that the exclusion of S-Supports would automatically exclude child characters, I still think it was a good call. Unless the game had a significant time skip (15+ years) then they just wouldn’t have made sense. They worked in Awakening because the central narrative included time travel, but they didn’t work at all in Fates. The narrative only had tentative connections to the “multi-verse/multiple realities” thing. And, let’s be real, it’s fucking weird to have kids walking around that are the same damn age as their parents (and parents that didn’t look a day older than 17). In Fates they’d just needlessly ballooned up the cast of a game that was already way too big anyways. If they did it then they needed to do it like Genealogy, where the main cast was essentially replaced by their children instead of strapped onto the game alongside them.

I was worried that Fate’s poor handling of them meant the series was doomed to include them regardless of relevance. Glad I was wrong on that one.

The calendar progression is pretty cool, as is walking around the monastery. It was pretty fun to run around and figure out where each character liked spending their time, which characters interacted with which, etc. I’m always a fan of a little flavor text and having each character say a few lines about current events was really cool and helped give each one a little more personality. The more structured pace of things makes sense for the school environment. Though it does take out some of the urgency when the mission is “FIND FLAYN IMMEDIATELY” and then you have to wait until the end of the month anyways to do it. But for other things, like a mission to march on enemy territory, it makes sense (your entire army isn’t ready to go immediately, there’s preparations that need done).

The designs of the characters themselves were pretty well done. I especially appreciate how they toned down a lot of the sexualization that Fates became pretty famous for. And considering basically all of these characters are between 15-18 all I can say is THANK GOD. Even their aged up versions don’t seem too bad, though I’ve only really seen the Lions (because I was dumb and didn’t recruit very aggressively).

I’m still NOT a fan of this “silent” protagonist thing. It just makes some of the cut scenes and dialogue sections feel really disconnected and awkward. From what I can tell a lot of your dialogue choices don’t particularly matter, anyways. You only have two options, and for the most part they have the same meaning (”You shouldn’t talk that way!” versus “I wish you would calm down.”) and the character you’re talking to responds the same way regardless of your choice. Or you pick between two different options (”Tell me about the officer’s academy” and “Tell me about the church”) and the characters proceed to explain both anyways.

I think the biggest issues I have with this come from the fact that the game itself is fully voice acted. I think Three Houses fell into the same problem that Breath of the Wild did. Dropping a character that never speaks aloud into a cast of characters that are fully and beautifully voiced feels unnatural. I think they had two options here: Either go back to what they did with Fates (No full voice acting, just some lines spoken here and there) or they needed to have Byleth fully voice acted. After Echoes did full voice acting I really don’t think they would have been able to go back without some serious backlash.

Personally I would have preferred it if Byleth were fully voice acted but they got rid of some of the dialogue “options”. They don’t feel like a meaningful feature, it’s just a thin veneer so they can say they had dialogue options, because that’s what every other game on the market is doing. Part of me wonders if they did this as a response to the Corrin hate after Fates. It’s hard to hate a character when you pick all of their dialogue, right? If that is the case, then they clearly didn’t understand why people hated Corrin so much.

Overall I don’t really feel any connection or attachment to Byleth. That might just be me, though. The three “lords” of the game are clearly meant to be the main focus, especially when it comes to character development. Maybe I’ll change my mind on that after I beat the game.

That said, thank fuck they toned down the avatar hero worship. Circling back a little bit, I just feel like the character of Byleth is handled much better than Corrin. It’s kind of unfortunate that Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses kind of have this avatar hero-worship vibe to them but if we’re going to have to live with it then I guess I’ll explain myself.

In Awakening the hero worship worked. Robin was, essentially, a brilliant tactician that brought a lot of success to Ylisse’s army. There were at least a few characters that were initially wary of Robin, but they were treated respectfully by the story and it’s presented as though they are just exercising a healthy amount of caution.

In Three Houses the hero worship works. It feels much less like worship and more like genuine respect and admiration. Byleth is a professor and a mentor to these young people so it makes sense. There are a few that were initially skeptical of him/her (which is totally justified in the story because Byleth appears to be barely older than them with zero teaching experience) but they come around after Byleth’s skill is demonstrated to them throughout Part 1. The only character I’d say seems to blindly worship Byleth is Rhea, and that’s justified because she clearly knows something about the main character that no one else does.

In Fates the hero worship was excessive. Corrin as a character is nothing really special. He/She isn’t particularly intelligent or particularly skilled at anything. The most you could say is that Corrin is probably supposed to be charismatic (since every character falls at their feet the second they meet) but Corrin doesn’t feel charismatic to me. They have multiple characters that seem to exist for the sole purpose of worshiping the ground they walk on (Camilla, Ryoma, Sylas, Jakob, Felicia, etc.), to the point that I felt it ruined otherwise interesting characters (Camilla mainly). Any character that doesn’t immediately worship Corrin is either forced to come around, brainwashed by the big bad and turned into a villain, or just wanted to love Corrin so much but circumstances made it impossible so they had to be evil. I could make an entire post about how much I hate Corrin but I’ll stop it here since this is supposed to be about Three Houses.

So considering where they were coming from... Byleth is fine. I don’t know if I like them more than Robin, but I definitely like them more than Corrin. I’ll feel more definitively about them after I’ve finished the game and played some of the other routes.

They re-use maps in this game. A lot. I noticed it pretty quickly about five chapters in, but IMO it’s a serious problem that this game never quite seems to shake. If the battle is in a city, they pick one of two city maps. If it’s in a forest they’ve got one of three forest maps. And I’m not complaining about Auxiliary battles because I only did a handful of those (and they always reuse maps for those, even in Fates and Awakening). I’m talking about main story and paralogue mission maps.

Sometimes they have a unique map (like the tomb/catacombs) but it invariably comes back later for a paralogue or another main mission. Sometimes it comes back less than two chapters after it first appeared (the monastery fight right before the time skip and then defending the monastery two chapters after the time skip.) I could understand if they re-used maps across different routes (because Fates did the same thing), but so far I’ve only been in one route and it’s the same maps over and over.

Finally, I have no idea how I’m going to survive playing this game two (three?) more times. I mean, I like it. It’s fun. But it took me like 40 hours just to complete one route I have no idea how I’m going to do all three (possibly four, since I’ve been told the eagles route can be different depending on if you side with the church or not).

#fe:3h #fire emblem: Three Houses #Three Houses #fire emblem #spoilers #fe:3h spoilers #thoughts #opinions #Not really a review but kind of a review

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handfuloftime · 4 years

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Okay, actual thoughts about Three Houses* this time.

All of the Blue Lions really can just be summed up as “Fuck therapy, I’m becoming a knight”, can’t they? I love them all so much.

I mean, I always get attached to my units, but this time around I just adored them. Dimitri, Felix, and Annette were particular favorites.

I was surprised at how easy it was (on normal + classic). I mean, the ability to turn back time was obviously a huge part of that, but I had to restart my first Fates playthrough on a lower difficulty because it was impossible and it took me almost a decade to beat Radiant Dawn on normal, whereas this was...honestly kind of a breeze.

I really liked pretty much all of the changes to battle mechanics, even though I didn’t start really taking advantage of battalions until maybe 2/3 of the way through, and it took me a very long time to adjust to there not being a weapons triangle.

The Academy training stuff was fun. I wish I’d tried harder to recruit other students (I somehow ended up with C supports with both Dorothea and Ferdinand without successfully recruiting either of them--idk, I had no idea what I was doing for the entirety of part one), and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could have been getting a lot more out of the training than I was. The class-changing system felt needlessly complicated.

What I didn’t like about the Academy was what it did to the plot structure--having a month to train and explore between each “event” was really useful from a gameplay perspective, but it felt like putting the actual plot on pause repeatedly. (Not to mention the weirdness of things always happening at the end of the month--it works from an in-universe perspective when the students are being assigned missions, but not for, say, the actual war). So I spent most of part one waiting for the actual plot to show up, and a lot of part two feeling like the structure of the war--especially the invasion of the Empire, where we moved a little farther each month and then headed back to the monastery--made no sense.

A+ character designs, especially the decision to put the enemy mages in plague doctor masks. And the female characters’ designs are a vast improvement over Fates.

I was trying to play through as fast as possible, because I was borrowing my brother’s copy and needed to get it back to him before he left, but I seriously regret not doing any of the part one paralogues. (Dedue, honey, I’m so sorry).

Holy shit, Dimitri’s character arc was something. I haven’t been this fucked up over a Fire Emblem character since...Sephiran, probably? I had a genuine “Oh man, I think we’re the bad guys” moment at one point. And I’m so proud of how much he grew--especially his meeting with Edelgard, even if his sudden commitment to allowing the people to participate in the Kingdom’s government came a bit out of nowhere.

Speaking of character development, I teared up when the epilogue mentioned that Felix became the new king’s right hand.

I’m so curious as to how the other routes play out (I’m really fascinated by Edelgard, and I’m curious as to what the Golden Deer route is about, because so much of this was Faerghus vs. Adrestia). Though the thought of having to fight against the Blue Lions next time around is breaking my heart. Guess I’d better recruit as many of them as possible.

I thought the overall plot was pretty solid (though, as I mentioned, plot events happening like clockwork once a month did warp it a bit weirdly). That being said, I found the ending surprisingly dissatisfying. I was expecting a lot more in terms of answers, and I realize that the paralogues and the other routes probably will answer quite a bit, but still--what was up with Solon and the mysterious mages? Why did Edelgard turn into a freaking gargoyle for the last battle? And okay, Jeritza’s probably the Death Knight, but I’d like a bit more information than just his identity.

And I really wanted more about Patricia, especially since Duscur was the defining trauma for the majority of the Blue Lions, and because the conflict between her daughter and her stepson was driving the whole plot for the second half of the game. Her situation sounded really uncomfortable, but still, “I’m going to slaughter my husband and everyone with him and fake my own death” is quite a leap.

And everything about Byleth and Sothis and Rhea--we don’t even see Rhea again after the end of part one.

And I don’t particularly like how the entirety of Fódlan just ended up as one huge Kingdom of Faerghus in the epilogue--that felt extremely and improbably neat. The Alliance I could maybe see, as a fairly recent and fairly fragmented entity, but the Adrestian Empire just placidly incorporating itself into the kingdom? Makes no sense.

Anyway, solid 9/10, guess I gotta buy a Switch now.

#*by 'three houses' i mean 'an extremely rushed playthrough of azure moon'#fire emblem #fodlanblogging

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demethinkstoomuch · 4 years

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Learning to Read, pt 5: E is for Etiquette

Chapters: 5/26 Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem Series Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro Characters: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Dedue Molinaro, Gustave Dominic, Original Characters, Rufus Blaiddyd Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Canon Compliant, Grief, Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Angst, Fluff, Tragedy of Duscur, Racism, Developing Feelings, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Blue-Lions Typical Mental Illness

Summary:

A series of 26 alphabetically-titled vignettes examining the period where, in the wake of The Tragedy of Duscur, Dimitri taught Dedue to read: a time in which they learned about each other, and the rules of their relationship, perhaps more than about books.

Read on AO3!

A is For Ambiguity

B is for Book

C is for Commendation

D is for Dining

E is for Etiquette

“Eet…” No, it might be short. “Eti…” Dedue considered the messy back half of the word written on the spine of the book before him. It had just happened to catch his eye when he was replacing something they’d been looking at in the library this morning, and it was a thorny title. The first word was fairly incomprehensible, but sounding it out, it sounded more like a name than a word. The second… If it was a word he knew, it couldn’t be Guard, unless R sounds could just vanish when written out, so maybe Guide? Someone’s Guide to… He nodded at it seriously. He didn’t know the word. He quietly took the book and returned with it to where Dimitri was waiting. He placed it down on the table with a thud slightly louder than he’d been expected, causing Dimitri to almost jump out of his skin.

“I am very sorry,” he said, and got waved off while Dimitri settled to look at the book. They’d been planning to head out, but Dimitri wasn’t in such a hurry that he didn’t have a glance to spare for it.

“Gwenolen’s Guide to the Etiquette of the Chivalric Court ? What made this catch your eye?” he asked, inspecting the book thoughtfully. His fingers made a little rainfall tapping against its spine.

“Its title was hard to read, so I grew curious.” Of course, the answer had nicely confirmed his guess. “Do you know what it is about?” Dimitri’s mouth pulled into a closed-up frown.

“Oh, it’s a famous manual of conduct for courtiers of all levels, sectioned by rank. Compared to other books like it, it’s not very much trying to pretend Faerghus is Adrestria, so it’s well-liked, I guess. I had to read a great deal of it in the past.” He looked at the book with his eyes tense; likely, that spoke to his feelings on it. He brought it back down to the table. “Chivalry are the ideals of a knight, and Chivalric, a term to refer to things supporting and supported by those ideals. Etiquette is the rules underlying polite conduct.”

“I thought the word for that was ‘manners,’” said Dedue, whose mother had clucked over the manners of her children until they were (mostly) undeniably well-behaved.

“Ah, well.” Dimitri rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His face was looking better — he was looking healthier on the whole — since Dedue had started cooking some meals for him. Dedue wasn’t satisfied with the response to his cooking when he saw Dimitri’s entire lack of enthusiasm for it outside of his words; still, Dimitri’s color was better, and he was finishing meals now, so the rest would be a matter of understanding and patience. But he couldn’t say Dimitri looked quite right — his hair often seemed completely unattended to, the long blond strands falling over each other and crossing over his face if Dimitri didn’t shake them out of the way, and his eyes were often, between their sleepless shadows and their long stares, worrying in a way Dedue knew he himself sometimes mirrored. Dedue didn’t want to wonder if it would ever be easier — to see, to be, both. He wanted to know. “Manners are the specific actions and words, while I suppose etiquette is more a matter of the theory, that is, the rules and reasons guiding manners?” Dimitri attempted, and then shook his head, causing his hair to fly all over.

Dedue made a noncommittal noise as he ran his hands over the book. The rules and reasons for how people in Faerghus — people in Fhirdiad — people in this castle — were supposed to handle others. Perhaps, then, too, the sort of things that might be expected of them? Of him.

“Would it be alright if I borrowed this someday?” He eventually asked, causing Dimitri to shrug.

“It’s not often used, though I imagine that with... so many new staff members, people might be using it in the near future in order to bring new servants to order and to be accustomed to the castle.” The way Dimitri had paused wasn’t something to overlook — but nor was it something Dedue knew how to press. Still, did the book cover even something like that? “But that’s not to say you couldn’t borrow it for your own study, of course. I think if no one comes looking for it, it shouldn’t be a problem to hold onto it for a while. And you can always borrow it multiple times.”

“Hmmm...Perhaps I will come back for it.” As he turned to return it to its place, Dimitri followed after.

“I do, however, hope you know your conduct to this point has been fine. I’ve no complaints.”

Dedue wondered to what extent Dimitri meant it, and to what extent Dimitri only said such things because he was, Dedue had realized, very much dedicated to being nice. It was true Dedue had always striven to be polite, but that didn’t remotely mean he was faultless.

“Good,” he told Dimitri. It wasn’t untrue — he’d rather keep it that way than much else, even if Dedue was simply being treated nicely. “I still feel I need to understand better.”

***

There had been a time, the day before last, when he had certainly done something wrong. It was possible it had even slipped Dimitri’s mind entirely; it had been a bad day, after a stormy night where Dimitri must not have been able to sleep, not when Dedue certainly hadn’t. That was what had started it to begin with. Dedue hadn’t been comfortable watching Dimitri pace about his rooms for much longer that day. No one should pace that quickly when they were so exhausted that he barely kept his eyes open, but his steps had been relentless. It was too much.

“Is there something you would like to do, Dimitri?” He’d asked, hoping to draw Dimitri back out, pull him away from the corners of himself.

“What? Oh, Dedue, I’m not...” Dimitri had blinked intently, and picked up his voice to put it back on solid footing. His face grew taut, mask-like. “I’m fine. I can’t think of anything. I mean, nothing comes to mind in particular. I’m perhaps just a little tired.”

“Would you perhaps walk with me, then?” Perhaps it had been a lot to ask. Dimitri spent a long moment considering it, enough that Dedue found himself mimicking what Dimitri tended to say at times like these, “It is fine if you’d rather not.”

“It’s no trouble at all, I’d be happy to accompany you.” Dimitri side-eyed him at the common refrain, but that at least pulled something a little more natural, maybe even amused, out of his face. “Where did you intend us to go, then, Dedue?”

“I have not seen much of the gardens. If we could, I would like that.” He’d taken a long pause to consider his options — he had not planned this far ahead. Dimitri gave a little nod, took a long series of slow, methodical breaths.

‘’Yes, let’s go; it’d likely be nice this time of year, wouldn’t it? The weather seems to be quite nice, as well.” With an answer that sounded right without sounding right when Dimitri said it, they headed out. Dedue made a point of keeping his stride relatively short as to not leave Dimitri behind — a bit more of a conscious effort than normal. There was no hurry.

Dimitri had been correct. The air was sweet and sun-warmed, smelling of wet earth — the night’s storm lingered as a scent and a buoyant freshness all around them as they stepped out of the main body of the castle, to a landing above lower gardens. Dedue sometimes had the sense of moving through a hollow shell, a castle of ghosts; so much in it was old, and places that looked as if they ought to have been busy, even recently busy, were starting to collect dust — but it didn’t seem that way on that day, when a great many of its residents went to enjoy this brief sunlight amid the rows of blooming lupines, set in concentric beds amid a kaleidoscope of dreamy, billowing poppies. The lines of sight were blocked by juniper bushes, spaced neatly across the beds. At the center of this garden, which branched off towards other ones or buildings along its sides, was an array of large stones, touched with deep green moss and shockingly-colored lichen; the mountains were here, in their way, with blue bellflowers cascading from their gaps and slopes. Even though there had been people taking their own strolls or an afternoon snack on a bench, the precious warmth had seemed more important to them than Dimitri and Dedue.

He’d agreed with them on that. The sunlight had sunk into his bones; its weight draped around him like a blanket. Something squeezed his heart as he drifted down the stairs, approaching the rivers of blooms. He was alive. This had been true for over a month; he still couldn’t explain why in that moment it had struck him so strongly, so bright and so stinging, as he watched the poppies bob their colorful heads, petals satinesque, in the soaking light. Dedue sifted a sigh through his teeth as his heart squeezed tighter.

Dimitri stumbled ahead of him without warning, not so much heading down the stairs as almost falling over himself — the stairs ran out before he could, and so he landed with his feet on the ground.

“Dimitri?” Dedue asked as he caught up to him. Dimitri’s shoulders jerked up around his ears. Dedue waited for Dimitri to relax even just a little before he continued. “Do we need to go back?”

“No. I was only startled by something,” Dimitri answered with that same strained face as before. “I simply heard something unsettling, or maybe odd is a better word, I suppose. I’m sorry for being jumpy today. After all, everything’s alright... isn’t it?”

“It is.” Dedue had realized even in that moment that the plan may not have been entirely sound, but the response at least let Dimitri’s tension ease as he looked out across the garden.

“...It really is lovely today,” Dimitri said once he’d recollected himself. Dedue nodded.. “I think we may have a kitchen garden somewhere, actually. That might be of some interest to you.”

“It is.” That was all they said as they strolled the outer rim of the garden, towards an archway leading elsewhere. While the green between the gate and the main body of the castle was large, while there were padlocks by the stable, and he’d even heard of a small pasture within the walls, it sometimes felt like he was living in a tightly-wound maze that Dimitri navigated on his behalf, keeping him from smacking into one of the walls that towered over them and cut out pieces of the high, vaulted sky. On that day, his navigation felt almost rudderless.

The path they took hadn’t been properly swept yet — petals torn off of poppies and twigs littered the cobbled walkways. And amid that storm detritus came one thing more than the rest — a young juniper, likely only freshly planted to replace some gap in the line, fallen into the way. Its roots rose sideways into the air, some of the dirt still clinging to them. Dedue crouched down beside it in the name of inspection. A branch still bearing the first traces of pale blue berries had snapped on impact; that much was apparent when he tried to move it. Other than that, though, it seemed unharmed.

“Is it going to die?” Dimitri had asked from somewhere behind him. His voice had a high crack in the middle that carried it further than anyone might have wanted it to, not when it sounded so far-away and truly mournful for the thing. He looked embarrassed, clearing his throat uneasily when Dedue glanced back up to check.

“It is not too late,” he’d answered reassuringly. It was a hardy plant, even if it was young, and Dedue ran his fingers through the scaly needles, still green, still pliant to the touch. “It just needs to be moved back into the ground.”

“...I see.” Dimitri was very quiet, as if that would shove the noise he’d made back in him. While Dedue thought he might be relieved, judging from the softness of Dimitri’s tone, there was also the chance that if Dedue checked those blue eyes, they’d have slipped into the glass jewels that had begun this walk. He wanted to believe he’d heard relief that this plant still had a fighting chance, no matter how rough its first storm had been. It had been a storm that had broken it away from everything it had ever clung to. With a small huff from his nose, Dedue’s lips curved wryly. Just exactly what was he thinking? Whoever had failed to check up on it, leaving it sadly on its side like that, didn’t deserve to work on such a garden as this.

“I can set it back as it should be, rather than waiting. Though I do not have the shears for the hurt branch.” A shame, that. He would have to check on it later. He ran his hands over it, seeking out its main trunk at the core of the whippy young branches, checking for other damage. He lifted it upright, angling himself to face the bed as he held the plant. It tottered unsteadily in the hole it had deserted and tilted back over when he went to remove his hands. It would barely be a trouble to hold it steady while he moved the dirt back over and around it; however, it would take longer. “I am sorry for stopping us.”

When he didn’t get a response, Dedue had looked up and saw that, even if there had been relief before then, it had retreated as Dimitri’s eyes shifted, looking for all the world like a pair of rolling marbles; people had noticed them now, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. Dedue didn’t know what it was — only that it bruised his heart black and blue to watch those frantic jerks of dark-ringed eyes.

“Dimitri,” he’d said, and now, in the present, he’d analyzed every word of that sentence for error; he’d memorized it. “Would you do something for me, please? It is very small, but I would appreciate an extra hand to help me hold this steady.”

He hadn’t immediately noticed the way the background hum of people going about their business had stopped. What he’d noticed instead was that Dimitri had snapped back to Dedue, had nodded and crouched down by Dedue’s side, a rare moment when their faces were roughly level, and Dedue could see the earnest focus the prince put into attending.

“I think I can manage that. I honestly shouldn’t be trusted with plants,” Dimitri had made a self-deprecating noise best described as a laugh impersonator.”How should I hold it?”

It was when he was preparing to answer that question that Dedue had looked up. Had noticed the silence that sucked everything else out of the air. The man and woman half-armored who’d been admiring the bellflowers were shooting strange looks at them. The woman eating sweet buns on a stone bench had stopped mid-mouthful. She’d looked sad, but when Dedue’s eyes met hers, her nose wrinkled in disgust. She swallowed in a heavy gulp without once breaking eye contact.

Even thinking of it now made Dedue’s heart spin in a whirlpool. He’d kept looking from eye to eye, heartbeat slamming into audability as he met those perplexing expressions. Some eyes were on Dimitri with a hard mourning. Some were on him, more disdainful. Not a one lacked tension, fixed on this simple scene. He’d kept wondering, was still wondering — What had made it so wrong? Was there a better way to phrase it? Was the question itself wrong? His heart went on, but his lungs, his shoulder, his arm, his hand had frozen down to the fingers. It must have been at least a little wrong, he knew it was a burden, he’d understood, but Dimitri had answered so calmly and what is about to happen? The air bristled with knives and needles unseen. He couldn’t breathe.

Then someone scoffed, and the tension broke; the pair at the bellflowers turned back to the bellflowers, the distant figures at the edge of the courtyard resumed their stroll, the woman turned her head to take another bite. And Dimitri had asked how he should hold the plant again, as if there was nothing wrong with it.

“...Have I done something wrong?” Dedue had asked while he held the plant as an example, reaching around its base to hold the trunk. His voice hadn’t come out right; it sounded so stunned that Dimitri’s face lost its strange distance, became real and present and worried for him.

“I’m not sure what you mean. You haven’t really done anything.”

Dedue only stared worriedly in response, and did not let go right away when Dimitri’s hand wrapped exceedingly gingerly around plant as directed, his hand all but open around the trunk so he barely touched it.

Now that the anxiety was dying — for whatever had happened, it didn’t seem like something truly terrible would come of it — his face went red as he tentatively let go and began to replace the dirt over the now steady plant. Embarrassing. But it may have been more than that.

He looked up — not at Dimitri, but at the people who were beginning to filter out of the garden with studious disregard. None of them were doing anything. No step advanced towards them. The woman with the sweet buns didn’t come over and scold him; the pair by the bellflowers were now heading towards the stairs as if nothing worth those glances was occuring. Had it only been that they’d noticed Dedue and disapproved? No.

“Are you well?” Dimitri leaned forward until their faces were only a few inches apart. He should still have been asking that question of himself.

“Everyone was staring when I asked you to help me,” Dedue managed.

“Really?” Dimitri looked more baffled than anything else as he glanced up and around at the mostly-vacant garden, morphing to faint irritation as he caught only the backs of these very innocent people. His next words came out flinty. “Oh, I see. Some people are so stubborn and hidebound, it’s completely unreasonable.” He shook his head, trying to wipe the frown from his lips.. “...Let them think what they want. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

An answer which told him many things. There was something wrong. If it was somehow beneath the honor of a prince, why was no one coming to say something? To take it from his hands and scold one or both of them? Why not do something for him? Dedue’s hands on the soil told him to hold back, to go slowly, to be gentle with the juniper. He wasn’t listening to himself. He scooped up the dirt roughly and pressed it down over the top of the roots, where clods tumbled down through the criss-crossing layers. The plant’s trunk shook in Dimitri’s hand as spare flecks of dirt spattered on it.

“I...think that if it weren’t you, no one would have minded, even if it means a prince gets his hands dirty at your request. I certainly don’t mind, and it’s unreasonable that they might.” Dimitri’s face fell back onto Dedue — the sympathy in his eyes felt like an act of will, so intent and honed that it pushed it too hard. But Dimitri’s voice was flatter than that, and his feelings were normally carried there more perfectly than in his face. So it was a milder, less distressed absolution which melted over him like the sunlight, loosening up muscles he hadn’t entirely known he’d tensed. Dedue gently tapped the top layer of dirt down over the roots in response, with the slowness and patience he’d needed before. “I mean that, I truly, truly mean that, understand? I’m not in the slightest bit bothered, and I’m truly glad to help, and as it’s me being asked, that’s what matters.”

“Thank you, then,” he’d said, still uncertain. “We will have to keep an eye on it, but I believe it will be fine.”

“Really? How nice. I know it’d be arrogant of me to act like I was of much help, but it’s nice,” Dimitri had sounded wistful as they’d both stood up to go. “My hands aren’t useless, if only for a little bit.”

Dedue couldn’t ask for more than that, he simply could not get it, not without shattering the feeling that, in having done all of that, even his errors, he may have been a little useful to Dimitri’s heart. The gardens were waiting before them, and the uncertainty and fear could be, for both of them, briefly set aside.

#fire emblem #Fire Emblem: Three Houses #Fire Emblem: Three Houses Spoilers #Dimidue #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #dedue molinaro #Fanfic #My Writing #Learning to Read #This one is cross-posted super late!

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