#imitori

at first, he stares at him with nothing but pure wonder spreading across the canvas of his face—the gesture seemed… strange, in a way—strange as it can be, coming from dimitri in particular. vincent’s eyes widen; innocent, doelike, their sepia-brown now coated by a shining lustre, their old chaste glow restored once more. he blinks. one, two, three times, before the position itself of dimitri’s arms registers in his thoughts, their specific placement suggesting only one thing—and at that, vincent smiles, then chuckles in a way most angelic, his laughter as if manifesting itself in a lily-white shimmer of light. ah, right, he thinks to himself as he takes a step forward, closely followed by another; and his heart stings in an emotion simultaneously filled with tender ardor and dolor as he silently reminisces on times of loneliness long past, where warmth was a thing nonexistent and this kind of simplistic affection was merely a distant, bittersweet memory.   (                   after all, you cannot truly appreciate something until you lose it, as they say. years apart only made his heart grow fonder.   )

“   ah…   ”   it is a whisper nearly inaudible, gone as soon as it came. adorned with a crown of teeth, his smile is open and radiant—it’s the only thing that could come close to visualising the warm, fuzzy feeling overtaking his battered heart. after years of suffering came years of delight, of merith rendering him near delirious with gratitude… and, above all, adoration.   “   ah, dima…! if you want a hug… you can just say it.   ”   vincent straightens himself, now standing directly in front of dimitri, his frame towering over him from head to toe. shorter, thinner, weaker—defenseless, easy to tear apart; against it all, filled to the brim with trust. it is a feeling bizarre but most welcome, the safety coming not from himself, but the presence of another. 

   ‘    is  that  why  you  appear  to  be  so  hollow?    ’   it’s  a  simple , if  shocking ,  statement.   one  that  falls  from  her  before  it  can  be  caught  and  tucked  safely  back  away.   five  years  gone  and  she’s  grown  so  much  bolder  with  her  words.   if  only  they  were  spoken  sooner.   she  had  seen  the  darkness  that  feed  off  him  but  did  not  act.   no  longer  would  she  stand  by  idle  to  his  self  destruction.   ‘    as  your  friend  i  am  begging  you  to  find  something  worth  living  for  that  doesn’t  rely  on  what  you  can  no  longer  hold.    ’

    a  sigh.   words  alone  wouldn’t  be  enough , she  knew  that.    ‘    —— your  ghosts  will  not  serve  you  well , dimitri.   but  i  will  try.    ’

there is plenty of words he could use to describe this feeling—to sculpt it, chisel it into a figure, nick and pick until it is no longer just a thought but a real, physical representation of this sick ache growing inside his chest, blooming from weeds into wildflowers; there is plenty, yes, but his mind blanks, speaking only of one. 

yearning. senile, ever-growing, horrifying yearning, stained with regret-filled agony, soaked in blood of men that had fallen by his hand as well as his own. yearning that has been blossoming within the old cage of his heart for years, accompanied by the soft hum of bereavment, its continual presence an endless reminder of what had been taken from him, that he had thought lost. it makes him sick, the weight of that feeling—years, five years, he chose to spend in the silent embrace of detachment, listening only to his heart in the reticence of solitude, his grief a heavy shackle that denied him all life. five years he did not live—only existed, only was.

five years, he waited. 

just to face rejection—bitterness, hatred. five years. he lets his fingernails dig into the flesh of his palms, roughened by pulling at the chains of war. five, five, five long, long years. vincent wills his body from turning away, from escaping back into the confines of his barren room—his tomb, his self-dug grave. the breath he takes hitches in his throat, but he dares not sob—dares not cry.

cyanosed lips, a pair of eyes schooled into emptiness, ghostly pallid skin. he looks like a ghost that haunts itself, not much better in his despair than dimitri himself. a face that has not met emotion in five years breaks into that of a man on the verge of tears, a feigned restraint before the storm. this feeling            it’s too much, too present, he cannot name it, cannot say it—

“   is that it?   ”   the sound of his heels hitting against the marble floor is near immaculate, a clear, light click, one after another.   “   is—is that it? do you truly want me to leave?   ”   i’ve waited for so long—i’ve waited for so long.   “   say it. say it, and you will never see me again. look me in the eyes… and tell me to leave.   ”   by the end, his voice falls quiet, but it remains sincere, sincere as it could only be. carefully, he forces his lips to curl into a smile, its welcoming nature a thing of the past—now it seems only sorrowful, a crack spreading itself over thin glass. 

          ❛ why, hello there, handsome. i don’t think we’ve formally met, hm ? ❜ though her tone was certainly flirtatious, just as always, that was far from the intent. and whether they’d met before or not, klaudia knew that her face and name were subject to be lost among the endless list of noble houses and their heirs that a prince was required to remember. she on the other hand ... she’d remembered his visage quite well. just how could one forget the prince of her own homeland ?

          ❛ i am klaudia dragomirka of house dragomir, ❜  she introduces herself, sparing no change in her tone. oh dear, she could almost feel the piercing glare of the prince’s dear knightly friend cutting through her from behind as she offered a slight bow in greeting. it was a real shame. klaudia wasn’t all that bad ... no, she was just a bit wicked.

          ❛ it seems we are to be classmates of the same house this coming year. ❜

grave suggestions . / accepting.

 “coward.” you sneer. you, harsh and burning, are cruel. you know this ; you were born into a cruel world to cruel people, who let other cruel people do terrible things to you. you were born to be sheer and snarling, a knife sharpened to perfection. you were made to be the monster this world hates so much. and no one hates you more than dimitri alexandre blaiddyd. does he have his reasons? oh, you are sure he has many. you cannot even think of where it could begin. duscur, perhaps. but that incident seems so far away, if just for the fact that you were pulled away just before it happened, and down, down, beneath the castle, into the dark, where they had lined up all your siblings, and a strange man stood, and -

    no, enough. the past is the past. it hurts, of course. everyday, your body aches with what was done to you and what you survived, but the pain means nothing when the people of fodlan suffer before you, and you have all this power - all of it - and it would be wrong of you to sit back and let things continue. 

 dimitri is determined - pigheaded, to say the least. stubborn. even if you told him what you wanted, explained your past, what the crests and the church are doing to the land, and the truth of those who slither in the dark, would he believe you ? would he even care ? for whatever reason he hates you, it seems so wild and ferocious that he would never back down. oh, how you would love to join hands with him in friendship, show him the truth, and walk unified to destroy the church. no more bloodshed; the two of you are the centrepiece of this conflict. 

 alas, the war continues. your heart hurts, but you can accept reality as fast as anything. the truth is that there is no way past this. one of you shall die. one of you shall die. 

 but you, little lying girl, aren’t you hiding something from yourself ? when you were nine, your uncle whispered into your ear that that boy had taken your mother from you. he held you like a carrot over her head, denied her visits, until she snapped, and the next you saw her, face gaunt, you were riding home to enbarr. already accustomed to your uncle’s lies, you had ignored him. he said nothing but disgusting things, after all.

  but something must have stuck, when your mother had turned away from you a year later, as your arms shook with agony, and your siblings screamed around you. something must have slipped into your mind: if that boy had never been there, would mother have saved me? does she even love me anymore?

 so perhaps, something juvenile and ugly inside you has always desired a fight to the death with dimitri. so perhaps - 

when night fell, the monastery was not necessarily left dead silent- its students and guards still milling about one by one they all succumbed to the demands of the flesh. training, studying, and socializing all took its toll, but felix was quick to assert that his aloof demeanor meant that he was found wanting in the last category. a boon when one also considered it meant he had a third reserve of energy to expend on training when the typical liveliness had more or less died down. 

the new professor gave him a new goal to strive towards, his failings attributed not to a lack of skill but a clear gap in experience. there was only one real remedy to amend that.

                                                  —which brought him here. to an arena that wasn’t quite as abandoned as he was hoping.