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If Dorothea had first met the Monster Prince of Faerghus as he was at their reunion, she might have been afraid of him. But war had hardened Dorothea too, and she knew what manner of flower the cluster of thorns before her had sprouted from.
Byleth sat beside him on their old classroom bench, her hair combed sleek by Mercedes’ gentle hands and pinned through with sparkling silver clips by Annette’s neat fingers. Dorothea had put the make-up on her herself, the subtle kind that nobody realised Ingrid was wearing. Her eyes a little brighter, her mouth a little redder.
Dorothea doubted anyone would be able to guess how hard it had been to get her ready.
It had been like the first time Dorothea and Annette had tried to put make-up on Ingrid. Their Professor, so talented on the battlefield, had spent half an hour twitching her eyes open when she shouldn't, wrinkling her nose when Dorothea tried to set her face with powder. But they'd gotten there, in the end.
However much trouble Byleth had been, she, Mercedes and Annette had known they were saving the harder task for last.
Dimitri had clearly been through a lot, even before he’d first come to Garreg Mach. The five years of war had only changed him for the worse. And while he’d seemed better these past few months, he still had... problems.
For one, Dimitri hated to be touched.
Dorothea recognised herself in it. A much, much younger her, from when she'd first been taken to the opera in Enbarr. When years of fearing for her own safety, hiding from violence, and sleeping in places she wasn't meant to be still gripped her. Years when a hand on her arm could only mean danger.
Even though her mind had known she was safer at the opera, she had still tensed whenever someone took hold of her hair. Had still resisted letting herself be vulnerable, letting herself close her eyes and trust that the person in front of her wouldn't hurt her.
Even after all these years, she had never fully lost that caution. She doubted Dimitri would, either.
Dimitri recoiled as Dorothea’s fingers brushed his face, smearing lotion into the prince's dry skin while Annette and Mercedes attempted to do something about his unruly nest of hair.
“Dimitri,” Byleth said, an edge of gentleness to her practical manner. “You don’t need to do this if it’s uncomfortable. There’s a war on. The Alliance lords have already heard your actions. They don’t need to see you dressed finely.”
“I insist,” Dimitri grunted. “If my looking… presentable would smooth relations between the people of Faerghus and the people of the Alliance, then… I’ll do whatever is needed.” He actually smiled at her. “And as you have already been through our comrades’ attentions, I wouldn’t want to stand as any less than your equal.”
Byleth had inclined her head, returning his smile with soft warmth. It was sweet, really.
Edie had always talked about Dimitri as if he was nothing more than a brute, a useful idiot at best. So Dorothea had expected to take a dislike to him when she joined their class. It had been the Professor she'd been interested in, after all, especially after the little incident with Ingrid's betrothal. And, well, Dorothea wasn’t going to turn down a chance to get to know some of the Faerghus nobility a little better. For practical reasons.
Dorothea and Dimitri had never been particularly close, but she'd found his utter lack of charm surprisingly... well, charming. How utterly straightfoward he'd been, how he truly never had an ulterior motive when he asked someone in their class to spar with him, give him advice, or join him for dinner.
Well, with one exception. The Blue Lions' not-so-secret secret, which Dorothea had learned easily enough as soon as she'd joined their class. That the Prince of Faerghus was clearly besotted with their Professor, a fact that had apparently been long obvious to everyone but Byleth herself owing to how awful he was at hiding it.
The class made a sort of game of it. Dorothea and Sylvain sitting at the side of the training grounds, eating a cracker every time the prince looked longingly at the mercenary had stolen his heart. A second cracker for every time his flustered admiration was so obviously distracting that Felix yelled at him.
As much as she’d had her cynicism over whether such an infatuation could possibly last when he became king, given her own experience with being the object of the nobility’s desire, it had endeared him to Dorothea. The way he was so unselfconsciously in love with a commoner. The way he couldn't keep secrets, the way he could barely lie. Edelgard's opposite, in that regard.
A low growl escaped Dimitri's throat as Mercedes' comb caught on another tangle.
“Sorry,” he murmured, catching himself.
“That's okay, Dimitri,” Mercedes replied.
“Here,” Byleth said quietly, offering her hand. Dimitri took it. Gripping down hard and hissing painfully through his teeth as Mercedes pulled the comb through. Dorothea wasn’t surprised that Byleth was the one his nerves made an instinctual exception for. It was really a shame that Byleth didn’t have the talent for hair or make-up that she, Mercedes or Annette had, it could have made this whole affair a lot easier.
Dorothea tried to think of when she'd first come to the opera. When her own hair had been so filthy and matted that they'd sheared most of it off. Dimitri’s hair, longer than she’d imagined with his cloak’s thick fur cuff removed from around his neck, had the same jagged uneven edges they’d had to disguise in Byleth’s hair, from where they’d both clearly been cutting their own hair with a blade for years.
“Ooh, maybe we could braid it,” Annette suggested.
“I think that would look just adorable,” Dorothea said with a smirk.
“Well, if… that’s what you think is best,” Dimitri replied. The prince had clearly not had to think about his personal presentation in quite some time.
“Trust us, Dimitri,” Mercedes breezed. She turned to Annette. “Half-up, I think.”
Annette paused, comb poised. “Dimitri, can we…” She gestured to the string of his eyepatch. “Take this off, just for a minute? It’s a little hard to work around.”
Dimitri froze. “…Certainly,” he murmured.
Dimitri covered his blind eye with one hand and took the other from Byleth’s, reluctantly, to untie the thin black cord. Dorothea would finish that side of his face when he tied his eyepatch back on – she wasn’t going to ask him to uncover his wound when he clearly didn’t want to.
“Thanks!” Annette chirped. Working with a comb each, she and Mercedes began to separate his hair, brushing the sides back from where they fell over his face. Dimitri’s shoulders stayed locked.
Byleth reached for his raised hand, the one not clutching his eye, and laced her fingers through his. “I’m sure they won’t be long,” she assured. Dimitri lifted his head slightly, an almost nod, and let her lower his hand. With the hair pulled back from his temples, he more easily resembled the handsome young prince Dorothea had met. His long face and taut jawline, exposed from beneath the messy shield of his lion’s mane.
Dorothea had met Manuela when she’d first arrived at the opera. Her awe at being invited to get ready in the same dressing room as the diva had only partially tempered her fear. But Manuela had been nothing but kind. Spoken to her freely, asked questions, distracted her as the costumier worked. Manuela knew how to calm a nervous new singer.
Perhaps something like that was what Dimitri needed.
“They'll make an opera about this, you know,” Dorothea said, smiling cheerily as she smoothed her brush under Dimitri's good eye. Just a little powder, to hide how tired he looked. “About you.” She wondered if he’d always been this tired, but hidden it better.
“...I hope not,” Dimitri replied, eyelid fluttering as he tried not to scrunch his eye shut. “I don't think I'm a... particularly good role model.”
“Well, people don’t always listen to stories to learn a lesson,” Mercedes suggested.
“You don’t need to be a role model,” Dorothea laughed. “Just an exciting character.”
“The Professor would be in it too, of course,” Annette piped up.
And so would Edelgard, Dorothea supposed.
When the war had started, Dorothea had thought she could get through to her. Edelgard and Hubert had been decent enough to her when she was in Black Eagle House, after all. But when the crown fell upon her head, little Edie's walls rose. Always surrounded by advisors, the nobles who had thrown their lot in with her that seemed, to Dorothea, to be no less corrupt than those Edelgard had righteously deposed. So Dorothea had fled to Faerghus, pled for sanctuary with House Galatea. Ingrid had taken her in, despite their last words to each other before Garreg Mach fell being cross ones.
“Maybe Dorothea could play the Professor,” Mercedes suggested.
“The Professor? Well, I’d definitely think about coming out of retirement for a role like her,” Dorothea replied.
Byleth inclined her head, her eyes still on Dimitri. “I’d be honoured if you were to play me, Dorothea.”
“I… think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves,” Dimitri said. Dorothea had to catch his face to stop him from turning his head to avert his eyes.
“Dimitri!” Mercedes protested. “Your hair won’t be even if you keep moving.”
“…Sorry,” Dimitri sighed.
“Have you ever been to an opera, Dimitri?” Byleth asked.
Dorothea smiled to herself, noting the beat where Dimitri remembered that he couldn’t nod while Mercedes and Annette held his hair. Annette was whispering something to Mercedes.
“Yes,” Dimitri replied. “Though they’re not as popular in Faerghus as I gather they are in the Empire. We have songs, and plays, but… operas are rarer. I had never seen Dorothea or Manuela perform before we came to Garreg Mach, for instance. It… well, I never had much reason or opportunity to visit Enbarr.”
He had tightened his grip on Byleth’s comforting hand again while he spoke, holding her knuckles against the side of his thigh. The casualness of the movement suggested to Dorothea that he hadn’t fully realised he was doing it. She’d never seen Dimitri do something like that consciously without some kind of flustered production.
“They’ll make changes, of course,” Dorothea breezed. “Less briefings. Maybe a love story, to keep things exciting.” If she was really going to distract Dimitri while they worked, well… perhaps some kind of flustered production was exactly what they wanted. Dorothea smiled innocently, tiredly, as if she was explaining how stage lighting worked. “I suppose, with the Professor always by your side… it would make sense, from a writing perspective.”
When he had been younger, Dimitri had been easy to tease. He would turn red, and blurt out a hurried excuse. She was expecting a similar reaction from him today, and she got it.
“Dorothea, that-- I--”
What she wasn’t expecting was for Byleth to do the same. Their often inscrutable Professor. Averting her eyes, pressing her mouth closed. A brief flash of pink that lingered on her cheeks.
“From what Ingrid and Mercedes have told me about Faerghus…” Byleth said. “Dimitri wouldn’t be allowed to marry a commoner, would he?”
Mercedes and Annette twisted the hair they’d swept back from Dimitri’s face into a braid, leaving the rest to fall around his neck and shoulders.
“Not… necessarily,” Dimitri stammered. “Even if things were as they were before, I… don’t exactly have family left who could disapprove of such a match. And… I suppose I hope things will be different. Faerghus was far from perfect, even under my father.”
Dorothea knew Ingrid’s ills better than she knew Mercedes’, but she knew they were of a kind not dissimilar to her own. The three of them needed to marry, even if Dorothea’s need came only from her own desire for some security, rather than the need being put upon her by a family. Ingrid would be happier becoming a knight, Mercedes serving the Church. Dorothea simply didn’t want to be back on the streets.
“I believe you can make things better, Dimitri,” Byleth said quietly. Their exchange, which felt far too earnest to be conducted in front of three teasing onlookers. But it was what Dorothea was happy to expect of them. As much as Byleth had her own strange sense of humour… there was a straightforwardness to both of them. A trust.
Dimitri was still a noble, of course. Dorothea wasn’t ready to completely believe that he wouldn’t change his mind when he took the crown. But… she hoped he could keep meaning what he said, she really did. A better world than the one they’d lived in before the war… she wanted to believe it was possible.
Mercedes and Annette were whispering again. Mercedes reached into her bag, and drew out a small satchel of dried plants. Dimitri stayed still, as Mercedes wove the long stem through his hair. A cluster of small, pale flowers, in Faerghus blue. A forget-me-not.
Dorothea didn’t need to ask why. They’d lost enough in this war, Dimitri more than most.
“You’re ready, Dimitri,” Mercedes said.
“Thank you,” Dimitri said. He tied his eyepatch back in place, and Dorothea examined his face. No, she didn’t think she needed to do anything else to him, actually.
“I’ll let Gilbert know we’re ready,” Byleth said. She seemed the safest choice, considering that Mercedes and Dorothea both almost came to words with Annette’s father every time they ran into him. Annette and Mercedes began to pack their combs and pins away at the next bench, and Dimitri buckled his heavy cloak back around his shoulders.
“…Are my feelings still so obvious?” Dimitri asked. He interrupted himself before Dorothea even had the chance to answer. “Apologies, I shouldn’t put you on the spot like this.”
Dorothea shrugged. Perhaps she shouldn’t speak so boldly to the future King of Faerghus, but she’d seen how his classmates spoke to him. If he wanted to offer himself as an equal, she was going to take him up on it. “I’ve known a lot of nobles who profess their feelings all the way up until it comes to taking responsibility for them. Is that who you are, Your Highness?”
“…I don’t know,” Dimitri replied. “I… you’ve met her, Dorothea. It’s hard to imagine anyone being worthy of her.”
“Well, I think that’s her decision, isn’t it?” Dorothea said. Faerghus, or at least the nobility Dorothea had met this year, didn’t seem the most adept at handling romantic relationships. “I suppose that’s in some of your knightly tales, isn’t it? The romantic pining. Your love against your duty. It makes for good stories, certainly. It’s up to you, whether you want her as a story or as a person.”
The Monster Prince of Faerghus nodded quietly, heavy gauntlets lying across his lap as flowers twinkled in his braided hair.
As far as stories went… this was certainly one Dorothea wanted to be true.