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guestservices) wrote2022-06-12 08:13 pm
guestservices) wrote2022-06-12 08:13 pm
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AUDIENCE FOR: Dimitri oh fuck i have to put in his last name
this is just a placeholder until you give us a real one
this is just a placeholder until you give us a real one
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Especially in places like these, where gains are so little and our losses are so great.
[ he gets that. it's easy to be dispirited. he feels like death all of the time. ]
Still... most of us have clawed our way out of these situations before. What do you suppose our odds are, this time?
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they glance down at their coffee, making a soft noise, thoughtful. ]
... It depends on how you'd define clawing your way out, I suppose.
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no, before dimitri can respond, there's a burst of stardust.
It is, of course, all properly bandaged and healed as best as the clerics can manage. You are the crown prince of a Kingdom, the only son of the late king. Every resource that can be spent is spent to save you.
Still, there's only so much it can all do. Your other injuries—burns and slashes, lungs full of smoke—are not fully recovered yet. The freshest wounds are huge swathes cut into your back by blades. Even with magic, they will hurt and scar, ugly and painful to look at for the rest of your life.
You do not consider that. Once you can speak, you order your attendants to bring another boy to you—one from the adjacent country of Duscur, no older than you are, and thought by many to be the reason you nearly died (again), despised for it.
...But he isn't who struck you down. This boy is just the last survivor of his village, which your Kingdom burnt to the ground. No matter how much you pleaded and insisted that they were innocent, you are not king yet, and the people of Duscur were sentenced, their houses razed, their people killed, their lands to be annexed into your own.
The country of Duscur, functionally, no longer exists.
No, you nearly lost your life because you leapt to protect this boy from your own men. To catch blades meant for him with your back as you huddle over him, clutching a child who has lost everything. Your back is small, but so is he. In the end, that is all your miserable effort amounts to: you almost die saving just a single life.
When they do bring the boy to you, you learn his name is Dedue. You cannot coax any words from him, shocked and afeared as he must be, surrounded by enemies, and you do not speak the same language regardless. He likely expects to die, as his family did.
Instead—you grasp his hands in fierce relief. You hope your emotions are palpable even if you cannot understand each other, total strangers as you are. You wonder if he understands why you feel like weeping, why you are certainly crying now, so grateful that he survived that your heart could burst.
Because if nothing else—you saved one person. A single life. For all that you have wished for death, your life amounts to something still, because it means that this one precious, invaluable stranger could live.
Dedue will spend the rest of his life telling others that you saved him. But the truth is, he saved you. ]
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when the stardust fades, orion is still holding onto their coffee cup, but they seem... surprised. you can't see their face, but, the shallow exhale that comes after is obvious, and the tension in their shoulders of seeing someone else's life eases after a moment. ]
...What incredible kindness, Mr. Blaiddyd. Was - did you two come to know each other well, after...?