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To say the world was unfair would be an understatement.
The world was a vast place full of trees that gave you oxygen, flowers lining gardens that smelled of heaven, and wild creatures adding in a mix of unpredictableness to the thing they called life. It was supposed to be beautiful, sparkling brighter than jewels and diamonds.
But to Dimitri, the color had faded from his already dark eyes the moment she fell. His long, blonde hair stuck to his forehead from the rain, unkempt nails digging into dirt and mud and earth until he couldn't feel them anymore.
“P-professor?” he called out weakly above her, his voice shaking with fear.
“I'm here,” Byleth says, all clear and strong the way she's always been. Pathetic, that's what he is, the way he can't decide if he wants to cry and curse the one who did this to her or die right alongside his beloved.
The metallic taste of blood and the feel of it beneath his hands doesn't phase him anymore. He doesn't think it ever did, his shy, charismatic counterpart buried somewhere within when he swore out vengeance on everyone that wronged the ones he cared for.
And yet somewhere beneath that, much further under the surface, there was a kid who just wanted to protect his family. To run around aimlessly and come home to dinner on the table. To pretend he wasn't in the wrong by killing whoever Rhea sent them after. Byleth had been the one to find him, pulling him out of the water when he finally snapped, proving Felix's claims of him being a boar correct.
This world truly wasn't fair.
He's snapped out of it when she slowly reaches up to grab his gloved hand, his lance long forgotten as the rage of battle around him falls on deaf ears, and if he squints hard enough then the one trying to comfort him right now wasn't her.
It couldn't be. She was fine, her bright green hair and irises carrying more humanity than his ever would. She wasn't going cold, her skin wasn't turning more and more pale from the blood loss, a wound deeper than the vows they spoke to each other on that special day.
His thumb strokes over her wedding band, something that would become a constant reminder that yet another thing was being taken from him far too early.
He prays to lady Rhea—no, to god? To whoever will listen, that this is all some sort of sick joke. She'd taken worse hits before and healed up within days, and this couldn't be that much different, her breath labored while she looks at nothing in particular; as if it's taking everything in her not to scream.
“Dimitri, look at me, please,” Byleth pleads, her fingers tangling in his bangs to push them out of his face. He doesn't notice he's frozen until she's cupping his cheeks, trying to bring him back to her if only for another second.
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I—” he trails off, eyes wide as tears start to well up in them. He shakes, violent tremors that he wishes he could blame on the cold, and once he starts crying, he can't stop, his lips quivering and heart thumping loudly, “I s-shouldn't have run off on my own, then you-”
“Don't do that, okay? It's not your fault,” she tries to sit up but winces at how much effort it takes, her senses overwhelmed and the gashes covering her burning as hot as the hilt of her sword when she first obtained it, the relic glowing orange like the sun.
She settles for staying in her original position, and somehow that hurts him more, knowing the one that used to lift him up was slipping from his grasp.
He shakes his head, “I-it is my fault. If I wasn't so reckless we could've come up with a plan, but I dragged you into this mess and now what? We- you know I'm not good at goodbyes. I can't.” he stutters.
“Then don't say anything,” she utters, “and you can do this. You're brave. The bravest I've ever met. You can tell the others that we won. Edelgard's team's been defeated.”
“You can tell them that yourself once I get you out of here,” he insists, trying to lift her up once, twice, before he realizes she's giving up, her body heavy and breathing gradually slowing to a dangerous zone that makes alarms blare in his mind. They were running out of time.
And so he starts to talk as if it'll save her, like him stalling will bring forth some sort of divine intervention. But it won't. Not until he's avenged the dead, and he so desperately hopes she doesn't join the growing pile of torment at his feet.
“We still have so much to do. A family to build, a place to protect, y-you still haven't met my dad, either. I can take you to- we can-”
“Darling.” Byleth cuts him off. It's almost reassuring in a way that he hates, stopping him from rambling on and on and making things worse for himself. He faces reality, however much he doesn't want to, and he sees the woman he's devoted his life to, a sad smile so full of regret and fear it makes him wonder what he should feel.
Anger. Remorse. Hatred.
Nothing would fix this. He'd go to the place he's called home for years and walk down the halls feeling like a stranger. They'd look at him with something akin to sympathy, but no one would ever truly understand why it broke him into a million tiny pieces. He shattered back then, the kid that wasn't him accidently throwing a rock into the fragile glass he called his soul.
And he shatters again now, those same pieces that she glued back together thrown across the floor and battered until they were unrecognizable.
“Hey, Dimi,” she says, a nickname she's only ever used once. Right, and he was supposed to be brave.
“Hey,” she says again, a little louder to get his attention, and if they weren't where they were right now she might have felt bad for how he jumped in surprise.
“You know I love you, right?” she poses it like a question he already knows the answer to. He can make out Claude calling his name from a distance, but he can't understand anything else the man says.
“Please don't do this to me.” he begs, squeezing her hand tight. Please take me instead, not her, he thinks, but of course no one hears. She's small compared to him, thin and shivering and somehow not panicking.
Instead of waiting for an 'I love you' back, she attempts to sit up again, however much of a struggle, and she kisses him. Hard. Probably harder than she should considering her lack of strength, but it didn't matter. She needed him to know how she felt before she left.
He kissed back, sniffling and holding her other hand in his. He interlocks their fingers, and for a moment he can forget any of this is real. He'll have her embrace him when they're in the infirmary, whispering sweet nothings to him and suggesting they retire, take a vacation, something.
The tangled mess that was his emotions began to unravel with the press of her lips, an unspoken passion swirling between them that wouldn't leave this spot. He wouldn't let it. He didn't care that the others were yelling for him, or if a bandit was seconds away from slicing his head clean off, it was only her that mattered.
“I love you, Byleth, so much. Gods, what am I- what do I do without you?” he says as they separate, his voice distorted. She understands everything he doesn't speak, and she gives him a silent nod. Confirmation to what he can't ask, tongue sitting flat and useless in his mouth.
Is there a future without you in it?
“Just... live. Live for me. You can't give up, okay?” she coughs, specks of blood coming up and hitting the concrete. She sighs, staring at something behind him over the horizon.
He wants to say more, that he's sorry for what happened, that he's sorry he can't even give her a proper goodbye. But it's too late. The woman goes still under him, arms that would have fallen from weightlessness if he hadn't been holding them going limp, and worst of all, she's still smiling, eyelids half shut and chest never rising or falling.
She was gone, and he was being hauled to his feet, forced to leave her behind, and that was the last thing he would ever hear from her.