SAKURA BEFORE THE GRAVE. — メ
wolfhednar:
when everything had ended, there hadn’t been the opportunity to know what would come of it. like portraits framed from another lifetime, he remembers pulling dimitri from the rubble of castle fhirdiad — that fallen grandeur, too, was something that had yet to sink in — and recalls throwing out the barest of explanations ( ❝ celica and i found it ❞ ), the inadequacy of words almost laughable when held up to the chamber at the end of the dungeons, the cold blowing mist of cryostasis; to blond hair, longer; to shoulders, broader. to arms strung up on columns, chained by crystalline fetters, and that singular, embedded stone eye. to celica’s voice, distant like a solemn windchime somewhere miles away. do you wish to help him?
felix can hardly bring himself to look at the dimitri that sits here now on this hilltop, lest his mind begin to affix that same grotesque vision onto a body to which it didn’t belong, as though with enough exposure, he might be able to force himself to swallow the impossible taste of what it meant.
but reticence is saved the effort, as well as the silence that would have settled and lengthened between them like the shadows of nascent twilight. but what comes out of the other’s mouth is perhaps the last thing he would have expected.
❝ —what? ❞ rumination is forgotten for sudden and sharp incredulity; eyes snap around to stare at dimitri as if he’d just announced he was planning on abdicating the throne. even that might have been less alarming. had he heard right? facing a sentient beverage on the battlefield; constance and hubert; neither of them have anything to do with either of them, as far as he knows, so the similarity to the bizarre dream he’d had the day before is too uncanny to be coincidence.
❝ that’s… unbelievable. ❞
“Certainly one of the more colorful dreams I’ve had,” Dimitri said with a bright laugh—a genuine laugh, unable to hold back as he glanced at the smaller boy’s shocked expression. The muscles in his chest ached, stiff from disuse. Had it been that long? The thought forced the air out of his lungs, quieting him. The peals faded, ringing out into nothingness across the pink-tinged expanse of sky before them as the prince’s gaze shifted towards the horizon.
Dimitri sat quietly, contemplative as he held onto the glass that Felix had offered him. “I suppose after everything that’s happened, it would be a blessing to be able to stop believing...” His voice trailed, speaking to something beyond the Fraldarius heir. His eyes developed a glassy quality to them, still trained where the sky met the sea. The prince made no effort to hide it. What was the point, when the worst parts of him had not only been realized, but showcased for all to see? There was nowhere to retreat to anymore, and he would have to confront that fact sooner or later.
“Somewhere out there, my home is nothing more than debris,” Dimitri said, with eyes hidden under a neat curtain of blond bangs. His words seemed to float out of his mouth, disconnected from the person uttering them. “My parents’ graves sit under piles of rubble. And I—!” The sentence cut off abruptly, the words strangled in his throat by the sudden lump that had formed there. He remained quiet, though a starburst of cracks formed underneath his grip on his glass.
