An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
SUMMARY: Walking lessons. Alef shares a treasured memory. Gwaelin shares a secret. A decision is made. Now with more DQ Builders AU!
“When I was eight years old, I caught a pox and nearly died.” Gwaelin gasped, but whether she was horrified by what had happened to Alef or his nonchalant tone about it, she couldn’t say. He continued, “I lay abed for two months. Two long, long months. When finally I recovered and set foot outside my bed—well.” He nodded to her bare toes, stretched out before them. “Walking went about the same for me, too. But with more tears.”
Gwaelin found it difficult to think of the mountain next to her as anything but the peak of fitness. “But thou art so—so—”
His mouth quirked. “Heroic?”
Alef laughed. He had a lovely laugh, Gwaelin thought. She’d like to hear more of it. “Not back then, I was not. Back then, I was weak and tiny, made moreso after lying motionless for months. Hardly any time at all could I stand without pain. I had to teach my legs how to walk once more, and it was hard. Very hard. Many were the times I wished to give up.”
Alef smiled softly, recalling some distant memory. “My mother.”
“Did she encourage thee?”
“In her way.” His smile never faltered. “She reminded me, repeatedly, that the blood of the Erdrick runneth through my veins, and heroes did not give up.”
Alef’s tone was fond, but there was something about the anecdote that struck Gwaelin, something concerning that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It had to do with the idea of a young, afflicted son feeling compelled by his parents by an accident of birth, something he had no control over. As Erdrick’s heir, the pressure under which Alef had grown up must have been tremendous. She wondered if he’d ever felt he had any choices in his life at all.
Choice was not something that came readily to a princess, either. Oh, she had the choice of which dress to wear to a banquet, perhaps; or which foods to eat off each plate. But not the choice of which dignitaries to sit next to, or whom to take as dance partners, or whom to flirt with or ignore. All that had been decided by her father and the chancellor, in service of trade deals and alliances. By the fate of her birth alone, even her dinner conversations had been written for Gwaelin before she had learned to speak.
“Such a heavy burden birthrights can be sometimes,” she mused.
Alef smiled that soft, shy smile at her, like sunlight peeking through the clouds, and Gwaelin’s heart tugged again.
