Archive of Our Own ^beta

"It was Shez's idea, actually," Monica justifies, heeding her advice not to immediately alienate Her Majesty with an explosion of unrestrained desire, like she apparently always does. "If I have time to go on an expedition with Shez, and you have time to go on an expedition with Shez—"

"Then Hubert clearly doesn't," Edelgard completes. "Because we can just hurl the entire weight of the Empire onto his shoulders and canter away on a whim?"

"Something like that," Monica says.

Monica is borrowing Marianne's steed, a temperamental creature called Dorte that she only really gets along with under Marianne's watchful eye at the training grounds. After weeks of stabling Dorte's temperament has turned restless, and Edelgard's presence on Ferdinand's steed has proved enough to secure his reluctant cooperation on an expedition.

The risks of the Emperor and her advisor being captured together remain substantial, but they're mitigated by the fact that all of Hrym's bandits were collectively put to rout within the past moon. In a worst case scenario the pair of them could probably burn an entire stronghold to ash, and so despite her misgivings, Monica breathes fresh air and follows Edelgard into the wilderness.

All manner of insects flit and spin about through miles of gentle prairie. Moments of serenity like this are few and far between, and of those, even fewer are spent in confidence that Hubert isn't lurking in the shadows nearby.

"Don't you ever get tired of him?" Monica huffs, scanning the warm horizon for carnations. "He's the most noxious man I've ever met. He's overbearing, cold, hostile—"

"Trustworthy," Edelgard interjects.

"Difficult," Monica says. "Don't doubt that I'll compromise with him for Your Majesty's sake, but that doesn't mean I condone the way his overprotection... limits you."

"I'm not asking you to condone that I'm limited to being Emperor," Edelgard says. "I barely condone it myself, but it's a fact, and Hubert is indispensable."

"At all times?" Monica says. "Does he watch you in the bath? Is he the one who unties your corsets, and tests the water with his dainty toes before you step in, like" —Monica hesitates, failing to ascribe any of Hubert's odious qualities strictly to motherhood or patriarchy— "some sort of overbearing parent?"

"He's not a wicked man, Monica. He's just obstructive," Edelgard says, "and a dear friend."

Monica negotiates around a cavity in the earth, slowing enough that she smells the faint, wet presence of black-eyed susans and cornflowers as they snap under Dorte's hooves.

"If only I could tend to you unobstructed for more than just an afternoon," Monica laments. At the lack of an immediate response, she continues: "What of the rumor that Your Majesty aims to abdicate in the aftermath of Fódlan's reform?"

"The rumor is exactly that. I haven't the faintest clue what abdication would look like," Edelgard admits. "The moment the aristocracy is abolished, every structure that binds me to someone else will change, and my authority will vanish in consequence. It isn't just the end of nobility—I'm abolishing myself and my entire cabinet, Monica. I'd be lucky to keep anything I hold dear."

"Would you even abolish my place at your side? Hubert's too?"

Edelgard gives a wry smile. "Certainly in aristocratic law, but I doubt I could stop you from throwing yourself at my feet and begging to serve me."

Monica burns. "Our bond transcends that of a master and servant," she asserts, despite that Shez would surely claim it's also way too intense and probably doesn't fit the facts. "You speak as though I'm as invasive as he is."

"I accept it all the same," Edelgard says.

The plains are filled with as many butterflies as Monica's stomach. Milkweed as far as the eye can see. Birds and bees everywhere.

"You should tell her how you feel," was how Shez phrased it, staring into Monica's eyes the way she does with everyone she gets close to. "Don't tell me how beautiful Her Majesty would look in these woods, or how your brooch matches her eyes, or how your earrings match her... whatever it was—"

"Her hairpins," Monica had interjected.

"Do you see how I'm looking at you?" Shez had said, getting near enough to make Monica warm. "Can you tell me what this expression on my face means?"

"Perhaps you think I'm ridiculous," Monica had said, averting her eyes.

"No. I think this crush is eating you alive, and I'm concerned," Shez had said. "There's no balance. She's your favorite person but you won't do anything but give her your life in full, and she's desperately trying to get down from the pedestals you keep putting her on, and as someone close to both of you—it's just painful to watch."

Having found no adequate response, Monica's silence had become the answer.

"Monica, why in Fódlan are you out here with me instead of her?" Shez had said, the statement striking like a splinter under a fingernail. "Stop this. You're pretty. You're smart, you're caring, you're a good person—and you're so shameless that I can't believe you haven't already proposed to her, let alone asked her on a date."

The thought had remained uncomfortable through a subsequent week of bloody hands and the complication of incited revolt. Even as Monica exhausted the pages of the Wind Caller's Genesis on the battlefield and Labraunda chafed the skin from her palms in replacement, she'd still declared "I fight for love" and "all I do is for Lady Edelgard" to the fields of the dead. The invitation had finally emerged in desensitization, while Monica and Her Majesty watched the fields of Hrym from the back of a caravan and agreed that, despite the carnage waged on their own people, Adrestia did hold some measure of beauty.

"You don't fight for love," Shez had scoffed at the dining table afterward, with gentle eyes and a mouthful of roast pheasant. "Monica, you're full of shit."

Once again, Monica had found no response beyond spluttering fury that this mercenary—this nobody—dared to speak the obvious.

"You fight for yourself," Shez had said. "You do an awful lot for yourself, too. That's how it should be, but I think you want even more, and badly. It's obvious to everyone around you and it's probably even obvious to her."

"In any case," Edelgard says, tearing Monica back to the present, "We've sacked Hubert with our homework like two delinquent schoolgirls, and I suppose we ought to go frolic in the meadows or braid flowers into our hair to make this all worthwhile."

"And what of the expedition?" Monica blushes.

"What expedition?" Edelgard counters. "Isn't that just some grand excuse? Hand me the mission briefing."

"It's simple routine—doesn't Hubert await a report?"

"Balderdash. If we're supposed to be doing anything then there's paperwork that leads back to an Imperial decree."

Monica scoffs. "Then I'm ashamed to waste your time on my... silly little—"

"Has the Emperor decreed that it's illegal to have fun?" Edelgard inquires. "Because all of Fódlan ought to bow to her dictatorial whims, and serve her at all times, in every way? Because Adrestia's ontological evil ought to be reflected in the oppressed countenances of her military leaders? If this is the truth then she ought to be put to death for being a self-righteous cunt."

Monica chokes on her spit.

"Nobody explores on expeditions," Edelgard says. "I suppose the majority of us enjoy a moment of peace and quiet, and there's certainly a few hedonists who respect us enough to have their orgiastic sex out of earshot from camp—"

"What has come over you?" Monica exclaims.

"Am I obligated to noble manners when I'm alone with you?" Edelgard asks. "Don't you wish to see me unladylike?"

"I've just..." Monica blushes, stumbling along with Dorte as he encounters mud. "I've seen quite a few sides of you, but never this one."

"You've never gone on an expedition with me."

The statement makes sense. It was similarly shocking to witness the side of Edelgard that kills from hatred, and even more astounding to see her naked fear in the wake of the Church's assassination attempt. Monica considers her words carefully. "So is this the version of you that Shez sees?"

"Of course not," Edelgard says. "There's a different version of me for every single person in Fódlan. There's one for you, and one for Shez, and one for Hubert... maybe not one for myself, but you see the gist, and the matter of context."

"So my version of you is—"

"What I'm saying is that I'm beset by the fact of being a public figure," Edelgard says. "Not only that, but my closest confidantes have expectations and desires and purely human misconceptions—and I'd endeavor to correct them if it wouldn't affect my authority as their leader—so I let them believe what they will. It seems the vast majority of Fódlan remains staunchly misled about me anyway."

"Oh, but then nobody truly gets to know you!"

"Nobody does. Because Edelgard von Hresvelg is a symbol," Edelgard says. "The moment the wrong person figures out I'm a human being, the mystique is in shambles. War is hopeless and something needs to inspire soldiers and their families to have hope, or else all that's left is destitution and a pointless legacy of dead children. How can you have hope if it centers a symbol that's as fallible and ordinary as you are?"

"Because of love," Monica blurts.

"Because you're being irrational," Edelgard says. "Because that love centers a version of me that doesn't exist. It's a version that makes you feel hope. Would you still feel hope if you understood that the Emperor you love is just a strange, lonely woman built in the ashes of a scared little girl that died in agony under the Imperial Palace?"

"I would," Monica says. "I would if that's truly who you are."

"Well, who knows about that? Maybe I'm just some queer eccentric with dreams of a bucolic life? Maybe I'm naught but the husk of a hegemon that died in a funereal of flowers?"

"Well," Monica splutters. "Are you?"

"Well, you've got no way of knowing," Edelgard says. "You have me on so many layers of pedestals that you can practically only see up my skirt."

Monica bristles.

"The point is that I don't want you to climb up the pedestals and meet me alone at the apex of the world," Edelgard says. "The point is that thing up there is an eidolon, and if you'd only turn your eyes to the ground you'd find me beside you in the flesh."

"Lady Edelgard," Monica considers, "what am I to you?"

"Someone who shows me care in ways nobody else dares to," Edelgard says. "I only wish I could receive that care as a woman, and not the Emperor you hold me to be."

"Then do you doubt that I love you for who you are?"

Edelgard sighs. "I don't blame you for being misled. Imagine how much damage could be done if anyone else learned I'm nothing but a woman. Even among our generals friendship is so often a farce based on status, or trauma, or unspoken desires, or rage, or the simple complications of proximity—and not only is this war, but it's my war."

"And so you don't trust anyone," Monica concludes.

"I trust you," Edelgard offers. "That's why I'm showing you the version of me that loves you in return."

Monica stops. The first thought in her mind is Goddess, I've got to dismount this horse, followed by Goddess, what in Fódlan does she actually mean by that, and finally, Is this what Dorothea meant when she said Her Majesty's tactical wit extends well into the bedroom—

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're flirting with me," Monica warns.

"Then you clearly don't know any better," Edelgard finishes.

Dorte stomps flowers into the dirt. There are certainly lots of flowers. There is also grass. It is all very interesting.

"If you tell me to stop, I will," Edelgard says.

Monica breathes. "How could I dare to hold you back?"

"Because I would," Edelgard says. "Then maybe we could finally settle down, and you could talk to me about how your favorite flower is also a carnation, and how your favorite tea is also Bergamot, and we could discuss all the other unique little coincidences about the version Monica you show me?"

Embarrassment burns on Monica's cheeks.

"Or you could tell me to keep going," Edelgard says. "We could even pick a direction and get hopelessly lost."

"Your Majesty," Monica stammers.

Edelgard scoffs. "Am I still your majesty? Even right here and now?"

A warm breeze creeps across the hills, rustling through grass like a snake. There are no trees and no substantial bodies of water for miles. Even the footpaths are nothing but faint trails in crushed grass, likely made by deer migrating and sleeping in the fields instead of human feet and carriage wheels. In any case, Monica finds herself in uncharted territory.

Edelgard's unadorned name sits as foreign in Monica's mouth as a second tongue. It's an easy enough word to pronounce, but learned helplessness prevails and she whispers "Lady Edelgard," and soon repeats it, as if persistence could chase the disappointment out of Her Majesty's expression. "Goodness," Monica says, "this almost feels like a dream."

"Why shouldn't we dream?" Edelgard says. "Why shouldn't we play together, and make-believe, and spend our adulthoods trifling with frivolous little fantasies in defiance of an aristocracy that tortured us? We're twenty, Monica. We're twenty and we're ruined."

Monica looks as far aside as she dares to on horseback. "Then are we to imagine a world where we were never—"

"We could imagine anything," Edelgard says. "You could imagine me a stranger. An average, nameless ingénue met serendipitously at the opera. Maybe even a childhood friend never lost—a little girl that's only majestic in the context of a playdate, with all of her friends dead only until the game ends."

A little girl named El, Monica infers. She proceeds gingerly. "Tell me more."

"Perhaps I'm a woman who could meet you exactly as you are," Edelgard offers. "Perhaps I've only ever been a woman. Perhaps there's nothing in either of our lives that ever hurt us, and I've got such an extended family that barely any of my siblings notice if I squirrel away for a couple hours, and it wouldn't matter if I came home soaking wet or in different clothes than I left with—"

Monica balks. "In what circumstance?"

"I've always thought that if anyone ever taught me to swim, it would be you," Edelgard says. "If anyone ever convinced me to hold a particularly soft and friendly rat, it would probably also be you. That's not to say that I'd modify my entire personality just to suit you—"

A lilac saves Monica the complication of looking Edelgard in the eyes.

"But you would convince me, and I'd try it. I'd take trivial little risks and fill my life with these silly little escapades with you, and I'd be happy for it," Edelgard concludes. "Isn't that a lovely dream?"

"It is," Monica says. It's enough that she stumbles over her words and addresses Her Majesty in honesty. "Edelgard, what are we left with?"

"We've found ourselves together in this beautiful countryside, war and captivity be damned," Edelgard says. "So suppose we dismount. Suppose we hitch our horses beside that creek, lay ourselves down in the grass and share all manner of tentative little nothings and averted glances, and then suppose I ask you what your favorite flower really is. What do you say?"

Heart pounding, Monica says, "I haven't given it much thought, but—I'm quite partial to prairie lilies like those."

"As a symbol of passion, they suit you," Edelgard smiles. "Now suppose we dispense with this charade and talk about how lost we really are?"

Monica burns as red as she does under the influence of absinthe. Nothing else needs to be said. Dismounting is a clumsy affair that belies Monica's inexperience as an equestrian, and Edelgard has Ferdinand's steed comfortably hitched to the husk of a weeping willow before Monica extracts herself from her stirrups.

"Careful now," Edelgard says, steadying Monica with gloved hands on her sides.

The contact makes Monica flinch. "I'm being careful," she says. "If you're not careful I'll practically tumble into your arms."

Edelgard's laugh is light, careless. "So knock me to the ground if you must."

"I—wouldn't dare," Monica says, electing to gracelessly drop into a pile of creek detritus. "What kind of advisor would return her beloved liege to her Empire in a state of debauchery?"

"A foolhardy one with no self-control," Edelgard shrugs. "Perhaps one who's being honest with her desires."

Dorte's halter slips through Monica's unsteady hands, and the simple concept of hitching knots escapes her until Edelgard moves to intercept the rope.

"Like this," Edelgard says, no louder than necessary. "One bight goes on top. The second bight loops around and goes inside the first."

"Right," Monica says, watching how her fingers move so intentionally.

"Take the free end around and make a third bight. That locks into the second." Edelgard takes Monica's hands and guides them through the motions. "Pull the hitch tight, and now the free end is your release. Do you feel how tight this knot is?"

"Yes," Monica says.

"Do you think he's going anywhere?" Edelgard says.

"No," Monica stammers.

"Does he have enough slack and grass and water to look after himself?"

"Without a doubt."

"And is he going to tattle on us for getting up to no good?"

Dry grass snaps under Monica's feet like thousands of spines as she allows Edelgard to back her further into the plains. "I would never have dreamed you as seductive as Dorothea."

"I'm many things when I'm at my worst," Edelgard says. "Call it the brash inclinations of a ninth-born daughter."

Twenty paces away and still within view, the steeds graze with neither a threat nor a settlement in sight.

"Surely we both know why we're here," Edelgard says. "Cloyingly romantic ideation aside—what is it that you want, Monica?"

"Um," Monica wavers. "Whatever you'd deign to—"

"Said the advisor to her liege," Edelgard interrupts as she tosses the diadem out of her hair. "Suppose we were nothing but women."

The thrill of helplessly watching an Imperial relic disappear into one of a hundred thickets of fox sedge is only superseded by the thrill of disregarding it.

"Do you think you could tell me 'no' if you meant it?" Edelgard says. "Could you remain true to yourself despite all the power I hold over you?"

Monica nods too many times.

"Are you obligating yourself to yet another form of service to me?"

"My love transcends service," Monica says. "Are you afraid I don't know what I want?"

"Yes." Edelgard's eyes darken. "Are you even aware of what I would deign to do to you?"

Monica swallows. "I wake in ecstasy just dreaming about it."

"Dreams are fickle little things."

"So I want you," Monica blurts.

With no sense of urgency, Edelgard's hands find the brooch on Monica's chest. "This really does match my eyes," she whispers, her ring finger just aside from Monica's pounding heart as she unclasps the brooch and watches the the color of her eyes fall down Monica's chest. The untied cape pools on the ground like blood, or the pits of Ailell, or a bed of carnations, joined and then indistinguishable from Edelgard's flamboyant overcoat until mud soaks through in the shape of a careless footstep.

"I want you," Monica repeats, trembling. "More than I could possibly bear."

Edelgard lifts Monica's chin with gentle fingers, satin gloves against peach fuzz. I'll have you as you are, her expression seems to compromise. I'll have you imperfect.

"Please," Monica whispers.

Edelgard slams their mouths together.

Out of everything their first kiss could be, 'ordinary' would never have crossed Monica's mind. 'Pedestrian' could never quite describe the motion, and 'mediocre' could never quite describe the skill, and 'hesitant' would certainly not describe the tip of Edelgard's tongue on Monica's teeth.

"Did you like that?" Edelgard asks. It's more a scent than a sentence: brief warmth on Monica's cheeks and further implications on her lips.

"Lady Edelgard," Monica whimpers.

"Hardly a lady," Edelgard says, coaxing Monica's chin up once more only to bump noses claiming her again.

Spit tastes like spit. Teeth feel like teeth, nipping gently while Monica's replica earrings tangle into Edelgard's hair and come away with the scent of lavender soap. The rest of Edelgard's braid parts in Monica's ruinous hands and falls into their mouths until Edelgard sweeps it all aside, her pale eyes showing only a vestige of restraint.

"Tell me you dream only of chaste kisses," Edelgard says. "Tell me you wouldn't consent to everything just to please me."

"My body is mine and I give it to you by choice," Monica says. "Please, Lady Edelgard—"

"Never let me hurt you," Edelgard says, vulnerable despite the passion blooming across her face. I'm going to tear you apart, her traitorous eyes say, even as her hands falter on Monica's cheeks and implore please don't be lying, please and let me trust you, I want to trust you, I trust you. "Please," Edelgard begs. "Give me a reason to control myself."

Monica pulls them both to the ground.

"Don't bother," Monica whispers, fumbling with her vambraces between kisses. Her boot snares in underbrush and she kicks it away; detritus seeps into her sleeves and soaks further under Edelgard's heavy body and the distraction of her thigh. "Don't hold back," Monica begs. "I'm yours. Please. I've only ever been yours."

Edelgard tears Monica's collar open and leaves wet kisses down the side of her neck to her clavicle, as far as she can reach without removing the bodice entirely. One of her canines must be chipped on the right for how much her bite dominates to the left: an injury, surely from battle, that Monica has never documented before. The sobering fact is that even Her Majesty's body is temporary and breakable.

At some point between a kiss and a kiss back, Monica pounces into Edelgard's lap and straddles her breastplate, ignoring Edelgard's trembling fingers on her side and how they fail to grasp the buttons sealing Monica's combat dress. Muddy gloves frustrate Edelgard's dexterity even further than her essential tremor, and she finally gives up and bites the gloves off by the middle fingers, wearing an expression that explains her scarred hands with this isn't going to be pretty and I don't fucking care—a dauntlessness Monica returns by moaning pleasure the instant Edelgard finally pulls her out of uniform and, upon receiving breathless consent, squeezes her breasts through the flimsy halter underneath.

"Let me feel you against me," Edelgard urges, despite Monica already working her fingers under the buckles to Edelgard's breastplate. The details of sweaty fabric and the shape of her ribcage beneath are lost the second Edelgard flinches and squirms, the breathless explanation that she's somehow ticklish of all things doing nothing to mitigate the eroticism or Monica's intention of undressing her further.

"Goddess," Monica curses. "Just look at you."

The breastplate falls aside, leaving Edelgard in nothing but a dark, conservatively buttoned chemise that nevertheless betrays the shape of her chest. Accidental contact with her abdomen leaves her undignified and squealing, and as soon as her faulds are undone she has Monica on her lap once again, wearing desire and sweat plain on her face.

"Tell me," Edelgard says, "does there remain anything majestic about me?"

"Do you want to trap me in semantics or would you rather I just make love to you?"

"I'd rather you reflect on how powerful you are. I wouldn't even let a beast pin me to the ground."

"You allowed this," Monica breathes. "You wanted this."

"Then why shouldn't you be absolutely relentless in subjugating me?" Edelgard says, exhilaration shameless in her voice. "Battalions have fought and died imagining me writhing beneath them like a concubine."

Monica capitulates. "I relent because—I fancied you'd take me for everything that I am."

"You won't find a conqueror in me. Neither would I dignify your misconceptions by taking your body as an offering. Did it even occur to your quaint little mind" —Edelgard twists Monica's hair around her finger— "that I'm just as capable of offering myself in return? That I could submit to you as everything that I am?"

"Then—Lady Edelgard, what will you have me do?"

Edelgard plays coy. "What do you deign to do, Your Majesty?"

"I deign only to serve you," Monica splutters.

"You've never dreamed about me beneath you?" Edelgard says. "Never thought of defiling me? Never imagined me soaking wet and pliable under your fingers—"

"Insubordination—"

"Oh, but you would dare," Edelgard says. "Spit in my mouth."

Monica stops. "What?"

"You heard me. You need to see me denigrated and I'm trying to make a point."

"Is this what you—truly desire?"

Edelgard's smile darkens. "Only if you slap me in the face and force me to swallow."

"What," Monica says, softer.

"You're obstinate, my dear Empress," Edelgard says. "I'll have you do quite a lot to me, if only you'd abandon this ridiculous belief that we're anything but equal."

"I'm trying," Monica stutters.

"I'm a common woman," Edelgard says. She parts her collar, revealing pale skin and the edge of what those monsters did to her. "Nothing and nobody. You've picked me up off the street based on naught but desire and folly—"

"You saved my life," Monica says. "You started a war for me. You did that for me—"

"Never a war. Just a coincidence," Edelgard says. "But we hardly even know each other's names. We've never killed and never died. Our lives are ours to keep, and I'm so grateful that we met each other" —Edelgard's breath hitches— "and my dear, you're so beautiful."

"Thank you," Monica chokes.

"Devote nothing to me," Edelgard says. "Play with me. Be here. I'm hardly a pretty sight, but if you'll have me as I am, take me. Take me for granted, for all that you are."

Monica kisses the ridge of her throat and follows the vibration of her voice down her chest. "Yes," Edelgard says, answering the question of a button between Monica's fingers; after two more Monica feels the Crest of Flames on her lips and leaves kisses in the negative space between its lesions; another button and Monica finds Edelgard's heartbeat carelessly interred on the opposite side of her chest; another and she finds hands guiding her hips into delightful, aching contact.

The next button parts between Monica's teeth and tongue, revealing a fractured knot of cartilage at the base of Edelgard's ribcage that bends compliant with the briefest touch of Monica's chin. Edelgard flinches when Monica's hair traces her stomach, flinches again when Monica's fingers caress the mottled skin just above her hips.

The pretext of submission ends just shy of her navel, where Monica's patience wears as thin as her leggings and Edelgard coaxes her back up with shaking hands and an open bodice. Nerve damage is powerless to stop her from moaning at the sight of Monica sucking her bare breasts; an errant elbow to the chest and the unintentional contact of teeth does nothing but humanize both of them through laughter.

This close, Monica's underthings make no mystery of the shape of her body. Edelgard's eyes wander from Monica's bare shoulders to the exposed sides of her breasts, the color of her nipples through the thin white halter, the bare skin and moles between the halter and the waistband of her tights, the curve of her hips under the fabric, down to the outline of her vulva as she grinds against Edelgard's raised thigh.

"Dear Goddess, yes," Monica breathes when Edelgard asks wordless permission with two fingers just above the highest buckle on her leather cuisse.

"The goddess has nothing to do with my desire," Edelgard says, "and I'd wager she has fuck all to do with yours."

"Because I'm in love with you—"

"No, you're not. You're infatuated" —Edelgard traces the seam of Monica's tights— "and you're head-over-heels irrational" —she traces over Monica's clit— "but don't mistake this lust for a romance built over a lifetime."

"Fuck," Monica curses, forehead collapsing on Edelgard's chest while Edelgard fingers her, pushing fabric into her cunt in an achingly empty tease.

"Lust is more than enough, isn't it?" Edelgard says. She rolls Monica onto her back. Monica moans shamelessly at the overwhelming sensation of her own clothing against her skin and wraps her arms around Edelgard's head, kissing her and kissing her deeply until Edelgard finally retreats down the center of Monica's chest.

"It's more than enough," Monica consents. "Oh my goodness, Edelgard, yes—"

Edelgard grins. "Be a good girl and hold my hair back," she says, barely giving Monica a chance to comply before, leaving the tights on, she puts her mouth on Monica's clit and sucks.

The sensation of doing nothing but receiving is foreign in Monica's body. Her own pleasure tends to escape even in masturbation, where her cunt is just a tool Her Majesty might deign to use, where the plateau preceding orgasm is just empty space to be over and dealt with. Monica learns she's never truly indulged herself the instant she squeezes her eyes shut and turns her head away from the idol of her affections, writhing in response to the intricate design of herself.

"Fuck yes," Monica gasps, dripping even through the barrier of her clothing, present only to the sky above her, the obstructive tips of grass to her side, and the woman between her legs. She doesn't care who hears.

For all that Monica knows her, the real Edelgard might as well be that stranger she met on horseback less than an hour ago. A decidedly awkward, sensitive, incorrigible flirt with devastating honesty and piercing moxie—a woman who's ultimately just as confused and lonely as Monica is.

Edelgard is right. This isn't love. It's nothing but attentive care and decency.

"Not yet," Monica blurts, thighs trembling against Edelgard's ears until Edelgard lifts her head in acquiescence. "Don't let me go yet. I don't want this to end."

"Are you begging me to deny you?" Edelgard says. "Do you doubt that I can make you come again?"

Monica answers by pushing Edelgard's head back between her legs. She stops filtering her voice and lets it cry raw and wanting. There's no reason to hide her pleasure if Edelgard can already taste it; no way she'd let Edelgard's hair slip through her fingers unless she loses control climaxing in her mouth.

Resolute strength keeps Monica's legs parted. Edelgard finally pulls Monica's tights down and finds her bare cunt with her wicked mouth even as Monica squirms backwards, wholly out of reflex and not intent. Even as Monica makes the graceless requests to maybe use less tongue and to please just make me come—please—I'm so close, Edelgard's eyes remain full of nothing but adoration and the simple acknowledgment that sex is fun and that this is fun, and between moans, Monica laughs in disbelief of how neglected she's been, how staunchly wrong she is about this woman who's really nothing but her closest friend.

Play with me, Edelgard's eyes say, and her hair slips through Monica's fingers.

True to her word, Edelgard doesn't stop. There's no danger to Edelgard's head and neck that she can't simply prevent through vast strength; no perceptible need for Edelgard to keep relenting just to ask Monica if she feels good or if she wants this, even as Monica has to quell her trembling jaw just to whimper her consent. At some point, Edelgard gives her water and she drinks. At multiple points, Edelgard looks up just to see if the horses are safe and the situation remains as it should be.

In the end, Monica thinks about her life saved at Edelgard's hands and devoted to her in return, and knows it was only ever hers to keep.

Her voice tears to shreds.

The dénouement leaves Monica's face tingling in hyperventilation, legs aching from ignored cramps while contractions devastate her body. "Oh fuck," Edelgard coughs, leaving Monica to curl aside and endure the aftershocks on her own fingers.

"Goodness gracious," Edelgard curses again. She blows her nose into her bare hand and wipes it on grass. The aftermath of sex is filthy. Unlike the ideals of whatever lesbian erotica might be distributed at art fairs in and around the Mittelfrank Opera Hall, wherein postcoital lovers might fall asleep in each other's arms without so much as wiping themselves off, reality is sore and sticky and arrives at the expense of impatient stallions.

"Edelgard," Monica stutters, negotiating with the fraught truth that she's not only debauched her Emperor, but did so with her enthusiastic consent. "Are you alright?"

"You squirted up my nose," Edelgard coughs. "It happens. Just give me a moment."

"I—" Monica starts. "Goodness, I'm so sorry—"

"It's nothing worth an apology," Edelgard says. She drinks and splashes water over her face. "I wouldn't have kept myself where I was if I didn't, on some level, want this."

The situation is too absurd for chagrin. Monica pulls her tights back on and reclines into the grass, numb, with sunlight prickling her skin. "Goodness," she breathes, "imagine you, of all people, wanting this."

"It's both more likely and more complicated than you'd think," Edelgard says. "And complications aside, I can imagine quite a lot."

"And you're breathlessly amazing at all of it," Monica says, drinking when Edelgard brings the waterskin to her lips.

"Hardly," Edelgard scoffs. "Consensus stands that I'm an awkward, fumbling, endearingly amateur lover—"

"Then consensus sees nothing of the passion that I do."

"Oh, don't doubt that I'm passionate," Edelgard says. "One might even call me daring—but that's hardly a replacement for technique, and as fortune might have it my mouth tends to excel only at matters of the state."

"Then I disagree."

"Disagree if you must," Edelgard says. "But don't doubt that I'm capable of mediocrity, Monica—and don't doubt that I, in some silly way, crave it. Don't you remember that incident with my paintings?"

"Oh no, I couldn't bear to—"

"The lesson was that I'm eminently mediocre at a number of things—finesse skills and attention to minute detail among them. And I might be prideful, and arrogant, and all manner of cretinous little things—but it's reassuring to find myself below ordinary on occasion."

"What are you on about?"

"I've had the dubious fortune to be born into the power necessary to change all of Fólan for the better," Edelgard says. "And I execute it to the best of my ability—and so my life is a series of monumental tasks I can't possibly fail, and it suffocates me in exactly the way you think Hubert does."

"And this relates somehow to matters of sex," Monica states.

"Isn't it freeing to be awful at something and do it anyway?" Edelgard says. "Isn't part of the thrill of sex an understanding that, however clumsy we are, we're doing it anyway because we want to? And that we'll feel every part of how mediocre it is, because that's exactly who we are?"

"Edelgard," Monica says, this time with intention. It leads to a chaste kiss where Monica nevertheless tastes herself on Edelgard's lips. "I thought you were amazing. Truly."

"Of course you did. I'd hazard that no matter what I did, you'd have loved it all the same," Edelgard says. "Allow me to be mediocre, Monica. Love me for my mediocrity. It's the most vulnerable thing I could show you."

Monica combs her lazy fingers through Edelgard's hair, separating tangles between her thumb and forefinger, realizing, perhaps belatedly, that nothing about them is ever going to be the same again.

"That feels nice," Edelgard smiles.

Another tangle parts. Edelgard's chemise remains open, exposing the gentle swell of her breasts and the mat of scar tissue between them. The injury resembles an enormous centipede burned into her flesh, with hundreds of faint white legs radiating outwards from the thorax of the main incision. The Crest of Flames is carved into her upper chest by the distracted knife of a surgeon unable to fully restrain a child, surrounded by further evidence of infection and self-injury. Skin peels away in translucent flakes, ashen but soft in Monica's eidetic memory of kissing her there.

Monica kisses her again. It's a kiss that starts with the intention of parting, and ends with the intention of kissing her again.

This close, Monica can see how soft, white baby hairs have returned around the corners of Edelgard's hairline; how she might bloom with freckles if she were ever consigned to a life of leisure by the seaside; how the whites of her eyes are actually fraught with veins and a single blotch of yellow in the corner of her left. Several errant hairs remain below her chin, among the bleached fuzz and soft skin, one of which is so substantially longer than the others that Monica is compelled, upon receiving curious consent, to seize it between her fingernails to yank it out.

Edelgard's teeth are as imperfect as they felt on Monica's clavicle. If Monica's mouth is the color of months of captivity, Edelgard's speaks wordlessly to years.

Monica kisses her again.

Eyelashes brush against Monica's cheek. A string of spit joins their mouths and breaks in an instant. Her eyes are so trusting, Monica thinks. They're so trusting and they pierce her to the heart, burn her to the ground, magnify every tentative little emotion and harrowing anxiety tenfold. Being around Edelgard feels like being alive in the simplest form, with a pounding heart and nothing but muddled, vicious intentions.

Edelgard exhales, and Monica breathes in the same air.

"Your eyes are so beautiful," Edelgard muses, small. "My crimson flower."

Monica kisses her again.

At some point, someone has set Edelgard on fire. She's known the pain of burning and the desensitization that comes after. Monica can scarcely imagine the torture, but under the gentle tips of Monica's fingers, Edelgard only shivers gently and breathes.

"May I?" Monica says, having found herself in Edelgard's lap once again. Edelgard's desperate smile speaks the opposite of what her mouth soon says.

"Dorte's patience wears thin," Edelgard says, somehow having found the wherewithal to deny herself.

"But I've scarcely returned a shred of what you've given me," Monica says in empty protest, having similarly caught herself in the fantasy that they could stay out here forever.

"Your pleasure is yours to keep," Edelgard shrugs. "Watching you feel it is a gift."

Monica looks down. "But I've scarcely served you with intention—"

"Balderdash," Edelgard snorts.

"I mean—right this instant! In this—"

"In this fleeting moment, which clearly precludes any other dalliance henceforth?"

Monica blinks.

"Right. I thought so," Edelgard says. "Now we've just got to get all of this back on."

Heat settles into Monica's stomach at the thought of a future worth living, but she returns Edelgard her muddy gloves without mention, following Edelgard's abrupt shift in demeanor similarly without a comment beyond "we might as well make ourselves presentable."

"Don't delude yourself," Edelgard says, poking through the underbrush in search of her Imperial diadem. "There's no chance of us being presentable in the slightest."

Monica pulls her dress back over her head, disheveling herself. "Even if we sneak you in under cover of darkness?"

"I would never make a malcontent steed wait until sundown on my behalf," Edelgard says. "In any case, whatever privacy I maintain will come undone when, seeing your shining expression and boundless energy, everyone but Caspar infers that you've had an affair and everyone else but Ferdinand infers with whom."

Monica stops buckling Edelgard's breastplate. "Oh no—Hubert."

"Are you presuming that our brightest tactician hasn't already inferred your intentions?"

"I can bear the mortification," Monica assures herself. "It's just the matter of—his awareness of the specifics."

"Monica, my dear friend is not a peeping tom. He might be entitled to question my consent in matters of war, but he's never entitled to violate you in matters of anything."

"Well, he'd better not be lurking in the woods."

"Hubert is not lurking in the woods," Edelgard says.

"And you're certain of this? You're certain he hasn't seen—"

"You coming on my face? Of course not. I told him I'd let you burn him at the stake if he so much as left the war room," Edelgard says.

Monica deflates. "So he's aware."

"Who isn't aware that you want to ravish me?" Edelgard says. "Aren't you just as aware of Hubert's affections for the other jewel of our empire? Aren't you aware of his affections for me?"

"Aware and appalled," Monica says. "What is it with men flirting in manners of patricide, anyway?"

"It's the thrill of a lifetime," Edelgard muses. "And Hubert is as complicated and emotionally constipated as you are."

Monica scrunches up her nose, experiencing a vicious thought that she then voices without interrogation. "You haven't also had sex with Hubert, have you?"

"Of course I've had sex with Hubert," Edelgard dismisses. "Do you really think we aren't capable of making the most heinous decisions when we're both at our worst?"

"And it was awful?"

"Of course it was a disaster," Edelgard says. "We have no business reflecting on it."

Humiliated, Monica helps Edelgard buckle her armor without comment.

"There's a stick in your hair," Edelgard mentions.

Monica shivers, petulant, her thoughts elsewhere while she helps Edelgard fix her faulds in place. The only disaster of this expedition has been that it occurred on borrowed steeds, with neither of them being a confident enough equestrian to fully rule out what forms of prolonged hitching might verge on neglect. In any case Marianne and her beautiful steed deserve none of the consequences, and even as compromise sits unhappy in her stomach, Monica finishes dressing herself.

My crimson flower, Edelgard had said, like a sneer against whatever world Monica might have been left to die in. The hint of romance weighs on Monica's mind the same way that unexpected flashes of skin and plausibly deniable implications used to, and it's horrible. It's horrible and overwhelming, and as Edelgard pulls Dorte's hitch apart in a split second—I told you it was a quick release—Monica thinks about her fingers and thinks about the nature of rope. When she sits down in the saddle she thinks about how wet she still is and how Edelgard's tongue felt on her clit and how it would be genuinely horrific if she started associating the sensation of riding a horse with sex.

"Well, that was delightful," Edelgard says, stroking Ferdinand's steed's mane an an awkward apology for time spent waiting.

"It was," Monica agrees. Especially the part where you were almost vulnerable, she doesn't add.

Most likely Edelgard is thinking about that part anyway.

They seize the reins and leave.

Conversation lulls when the vast plains bottleneck into single-file trenches and narrow bridges. Grasshoppers jump about underfoot like living gravel, pollen turns to waves of allergies, and Dorte finally relaxes when Monica allows him leeway to explore. He stinks, like all horses do, but Monica eventually finds herself mulling over her thoughts despite it.

The emotion that compelled Edelgard to halt Monica's progress down her body is probably the same that appeared at the end, when Monica turned the conversation towards Edelgard's pleasure. Its true name is irrelevant—what matters is that it wore the function of consent—but as soon as the trench widens comfortably enough to bring their steeds parallel, Monica gives voice to her thoughts anyway. "I fear that I've neglected you," she says.

"The fear and neglect are my own," Edelgard says. "I don't doubt that you'd make love to me until the last drop. It's just a matter of finding myself on the precipice of relinquishing control, and hurling myself into the unknown."

"Haven't you?" Monica says. "Haven't you already risked everything—and for what in return?"

"You. Everyone. All of this," Edelgard shrugs. "Why should I view doing right in the world as a series of transactions that I'm owed reparation for? Isn't it enough simply to do right?"

Monica frowns. "And what of doing right to yourself?"

Edelgard swipes her cloak away from the grasp of a briar and, upon consulting a weathered signpost just past, elects to continue in the same direction. "If there's still a child in me," she says, "and I hazard there isn't, but if there is, I think the most I can ever do right for her is to say no. For all the times she was pinned down to be violated—I can at least honor the memory of what it felt like, and protect her in whatever tiny ways remain."

Monica follows, at a distance that's not quite vast.

"The vicious truth is that I'm affected by what's been done to me," Edelgard explains. "You know what it is. You've even kissed it." After a moment of contemplation on the precipice of an upsetting discussion, she concludes, "but thank you for relenting gracefully."

"We're more similar than you think," Monica says. "Violation and all. I've never loved you in simple terms."

Edelgard navigates her steed around the other side of an evergreen, whose needles briefly obscure her from view. "I know it's complicated," she says. "I know there's more nuance than could be fit into words, and there's hardly an ideal that describes any of this."

Monica holds the thought until she can't. "Then, were you actually imagining dalliances henceforth?"

"With all the dreaming I do about politics, you'd be disappointed my foresight hardly extends to people," Edelgard sighs. "If this life were mine to give, I'd surely promise you some of it—but honestly, I'd rather enjoy this quiet little moment for what it is. I might even seize the impulse to draw it out a moment longer."

Monica's chest flutters. "And... what is this to you?" she asks. In the absence of a reply she succumbs to her own impulse and continues, "do we draw it out? Would you have me make love to you after all?"

"Well—the thought of it will surely be enough to do me in, when I find the time."

"Well, I can scarcely be calm about that."

"As if you've ever been calm about me," Edelgard says, "as if every time you wear an outfit or put on armor, you don't imagine how you'd look in every stage of being undressed from it—"

"All right, so I'm pent up."

"—as if you haven't had a debate with yourself on whether you should wear your most sensual lingerie underneath, or nothing at all."

"So I'm very pent up," Monica says.

"Do you think I don't remember that tiny thing you had on when Dorothea and Shez had us foray into Enbarr's night life?" Edelgard says. "Do you think I didn't notice how that slit went all the way past your hip with nothing in sight underneath—or how the bodice pulled away from you when you bent over the table?"

"Lady Edelgard, are you inviting discussion of how pent up I am?"

"I'm toying with you, yes."

"Then of course I noticed that you noticed," Monica says. "What do you think I was trying to do? I would have let you bend me over that table in a heartbeat."

"Really? In front of everyone?"

"Well, they're the ones who saw me in it," Monica says. "I'm not known for my modesty. I would wear it for you again if you asked."

Edelgard curses.

"I'll hold back," Monica promises. "Just know I'll make love to every part of you the moment you let me."

"I don't doubt it," Edelgard says. "Surely your imagination must be running wild."

"Imagining you overwhelmed by sex," Monica says. "Imagine you squirming, fists in the bedsheets, back arching, moaning incoherently, coming inside of me—"

"Imagine being responsible," Edelgard says.

"We've only ever been responsible—for the war and the Empire and everything—but have we truly been responsible for ourselves? Have we had what we want? Have you?"

"Well—for today, imagine Hubert growing impatient and finding us in the cacoëthes of passion."

"Oh, but imagine the passion," Monica says. "Imagine anything other than me flinging you down in the dirt and bedding you among insects—imagine a real date, Edelgard. Imagine us running away to share a life of our own—"

"I can never promise you all of my heart," Edelgard says. "I yearn for far too much, with far too many people."

"We could still watch the stars by the ocean," Monica says. "We could sleep in the same bed, wake up beside each other, dance together. We could be happy, even if it was just another moment."

"I'm afraid you're talking about a world that doesn't exist," Edelgard sighs. "You're talking about freedom from consequences and dissent, in a place where I didn't incite deaths by the thousand. It's nice to imagine, but do you understand what you'd be making love to, Monica? Do you know what this body is?"

"I do," Monica says. "Would you deny yourself the pleasure of living in it?"

"Stubborn," Edelgard says. "Shortsighted. Brazen. Impulsive—"

"—madly infatuated with you," Monica adds. "And I'd accept anything you did or didn't want. Even a version of you that rejects me."

Thistle claws at Monica's leg. Edelgard elects to proceed around the other side of the obstruction, leaving open a moment of reflection.

"Don't doubt that I want you," Edelgard says. "You're a beautiful woman. You have a wonderful heart, a keen mind, and the most adorably earnest spirit—and I have the perspective to know it's all an intentional choice. I envy that you can sustain it."

Monica swallows. "Then I hardly know what to say."

"I want you to make love to me," Edelgard says. "I want to want it so badly. It's just a matter of relinquishing enough control to let you."

"Why do you need to relinquish control?"

"It's how I want to be made love to," Edelgard says. "It might suffice for some women to lie back and dole out instructions, but that draws far too close to simply being Emperor—and besides..." Edelgard trails off, harboring a curious grin. "I never teased you in jest, and I may have stumbled upon something with calling you Empress."

"Oh, heavens," Monica curses.

"Why shouldn't sex be a little silly?" Edelgard says. "A little fantastical? The slightest bit of a farce?"

"Well, I can't say I have much experience beyond stories of maudlin romance—"

"Which is rather self-explanatory, now isn't it?" Edelgard says, turning contrite when Monica's expression falls. "I'd believe in maudlin romance myself, if it wouldn't turn reality disappointing by comparison. Which isn't to say, my dear Monica, that I wouldn't become a maudlin woman beneath you."

Once again, Monica becomes keenly aware of the movement of Dorte's spine and the grade of the terrain beneath his hooves.

"I ground myself in reality," Edelgard says. "Whatever control I maintain over this body is real. How I operate, how I sully my own hands—it's disgusting, and it's real. Bodies are real. I'd never devastate my friendship with Bernadetta by calling sentimental literature useless—and there is something to be said for imagination—but erotica pales in comparison to mess I want to make of us."

Monica's chest flutters. "Now?"

"In time," Edelgard smiles. "The truth remains that we're Emperor and advisor, and even if that dynamic would be very fun to ruin, our time is valuable and Marianne awaits our return. So does our dear friend Hubert."

"Right," Monica says, her tone surely belying disappointment. "Of course."

"But surely you'll remember this," Edelgard says. "Surely your ravenous appetite for sapphic debauchery will be sated for at least the time being."

"I think you underestimate me."

"Well, if you spend enough nights with me in the war room we're bound to lose control eventually," Edelgard says. "Your consent being inviolable, of course—but imagine hurling you onto the table and scattering all of those carefully placed tokens to the ground."

Monica shivers. "Imagine picking up the pieces in the aftermath."

"Well, such is war. Only ever picking up pieces and poring over the smallest detail, washing ourselves of filth, and leaving our ideals where they fall."

At that, the first flashes of Adrestian standards emerge through evergreens over the crest of the next hill.

"It's a shame that we're both so complicated," Edelgard says. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could just say what we want, and have it? If the threat of war were enough to shake some sense into us?"

To the neglect of the path before her steed, Monica turns to catch Edelgard's eye. "Quite idealistic of you, Your Majesty."

Edelgard smiles again, this time tinged with surprise. "Maybe so."

Feigned normalcy colors what remains of the ride. At the camp gate, Edelgard's Imperial persona returns in a seamless transition back to formality; the behavior almost strikes Monica as theatric until she realizes that she really is just witnessing a strange young woman playing at Emperor. The disconnect is so obvious that Monica can scarcely believe her copious note-taking and analysis didn't reveal it sooner.

For Monica's part, the dismount is smooth. Neither Marianne nor Hubert make mention of Monica's stutter between "Lady" and "Edelgard", and Edelgard's departure is as abrupt as anything requiring the Emperor's presence could be, leaving no time for a kiss or even a discussion thereof. Monica spends the remainder of the hour languishing in the communal bath, having rinsed the sex from her body in the stream nearby.

You fight for yourself, were the words Shez spoke that finally sealed Monica's resolve. You do an awful lot for yourself, too. That's how it should be.

So, Monica thinks, cherishing her eidetic memory, that's how it is.