come_sailaway | you say the hill's too steep to climb [closed]

you say the hill's too steep to climb [closed]

WHO: Dimitri & CR
WHAT: flower hour aftermath
WHERE: around the ship, the cottage
WHEN: early September
WARNINGS: discussion of codependency, self-destructive behavior, & psychosis; violent nightmares

you pick the place and i'll choose the time (dedue)

Dimitri needs a few days of his own to recuperate; to let the worry bleed away, to let his mind settle back into shape and place.

But then -- well -- he misses Dedue. Not out of any fear; Dimitri just ... misses him. Misses the textured silences, the way his forehead pinches at the buffet food, the sound of his voice when Dimitri can provoke a laugh. Misses all their little rituals and rhythms.

He catches Dedue on the Promenade, calls out to him, and then has to do an uncomfortable half-jog up to speaking distance (how close should he stand? Oh, this is awful).

"I wondered -- would you like to eat together? And perhaps watch one of the documentaries?"

They've both seen the whole sequence half-a-dozen times by now, but if Dedue minds that's news to Dimitri.

and i'll climb that hill in my own way (ossie)

In a text sent to Ossie:
I'm sorry About everything Can I talk to you ? In sand dollars or where ever you prefer

Dimitri just wants to offer neutral ground.

and as i rise above the treeline and the clouds (giles)

For his first few nights in the cottage, Dimitri sleeps dark and deep. He's exhausted beyond dreaming, grateful just to crumple into a real bed, to breathe air not thick with salt. It's a shallow respite, though, and it can't last.

Dimitri's nightmares are quiet, and still. It's for the best. Thrashing in his sleep would quickly prove destructive, if not lethal. So there's no outward disturbance when they start again - only, in the small hours of the morning, a pulse of abject terror from the guest room.

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The garden looks a little... pale. Wilted, maybe. The table is already set with a few different types of biscuits, and Ossie settles himself as queenly as he usually does in the seat. Even in the ugly cardigan.

"It's quite alright. I needed the time, I think. Just needed time."

Dimitri bites his tongue, and nods. The garden ... oh, his heart aches.

He won't sit just yet. He needs to do this in his own idiom; he needs Ossie to know this isn't just more terror, just another way the House broke him. This is his choice, and Dimitri is choosing to make it.

He drops to one knee in the grass, head bowed, wrists crossed atop his leg. "I am sorry," he says. A breath. "My father had no right to say any of that to you, and I should not have let him. I -- I was overtaken by the flowers not long after, which isn't an excuse for the harm I did you, but I hope in explaining myself I can be clearer when I say that I still think of you as a friend. A-and if it is not too late, I would like to call you my friend again. You have meant so much to me in my time here, and been unimaginably kind to me. No apology can express how much I regret letting him hurt you."

Speech finished, he waits. He does not raise his head.

In a voice far quieter and less forced than Dimitri has ever heard,

"You didn't mean it? It wasn't true?"

Dimitri doesn't hesitate. "No. I was sunstruck, and panicking, and he -- he confused me, but that is not what I believe. I am not afraid of you." He leans on the words with all the conviction he can muster; strong as an oath, a truth he is writing for himself. A truth he should have written sooner. "There are few people in any world I trust more than I trust you."

Silence.

A warm hand, pressed so hesitantly to the top of his head.

"It's alright. It's... alright."

Dimitri makes things so simple, sometimes.

"I... I don't... regret. That you know me as I am. If you truly aren't afraid of me. I can't say it's... unpleasant, to have let you in."

The line of Dimitri's shoulders buckles. He still isn't looking up; not out of deference, but because he'd dislodge Ossie's hand from his hair.

"I -- I'm glad," he says. "I don't regret it, either." He takes a shuddering breath. "I know how it must have sounded, but -- I am not my father. His words were not mine. He took everything I -- everything you trusted me to know a-a-and he used it to break you and I -- !"

He cracks. Even now, he can't say it.

" -- I hate," he says, tears thick in this voice, "that he did that. To you."

Edited 2023-10-25 07:18 (UTC)

"You are, in all ways I am concerned with at least, a better man than him."

It was difficult, in the hours after, to sort out that there were two people there. But maybe there's hope for him yet, that he won't see Dimitri lost in the jaws of great men and great empires as he couldn't watch his nephews vanish into.

"I have been broken far worse than what he accomplished, however. He would need to do far better. All he accomplished was sticking me into an old foxhole, one I was able to climb out of again. You did no wrong."

A sound breaks in Dimitri's throat, just short of a sob. He leans into Ossie's hand; that much is real, that much is safe, as his mind cracks and bleeds at the edges.

Ossie lets him be so simple.

His hands are so warm.

"I'm glad you're my friend. I'm glad to know someone like you." Dimitri sniffs and swipes his wrist across his eyes. It's another few heartbeats before he thinks he can get to his feet without stumbling. "I, um. I'm going to stand up now."

He stands up. He sits at the table. He takes a biscuit.

"I ... I want to talk about it. If you want to -- if you can."

It might just be a trick of the light, but the roses seem a little perkier when he raises his head again.

Dimitri settles himself back in the seat and Ossie recognises that the moment has passed, that he must resume being the adult. He still feels unsettled, of course, but that can wait for Giles later. Dimitri, as always, needs him.

"Of course. I'm listening."

Is it Dimitri's imagination, or is it suddenly easier to breathe? The same Spring sun shines, the same Autumn wind blows, but does the garden smell sweeter? Is the air clearer?

"I owe you an explanation," he begins haltingly. "Of -- you know who he is, but what he is ... a ghost. A haunting. His soul is bound to mine, until the day I see justice done. Don't -- don't try to talk me out of believing that. You're not Faerghan."

Dimitri steels himself. His throat constricts; he breathes through it. He feels safe here, and so when the breeze brushes the back of his neck, it's only cool air, not bony hands and withered nails.

"He speaks to me. All of them do. He's always been with me. That was just the first time you could see him."

"Ah," Ossie exhales quietly.

"I wouldn't presume to tell you what to think or feel," he defends himself gently, "but he really ought not talk to you like that. And I hope the others aren't so harsh, either."

"They're ... he's ... "

Dimitri's floundering illustrates more than any explanation could.

" ... he wasn't like that when he was alive," he protests weakly. Normally this is the part where Dimitri recoils, equivocates, deflects, but most of his usual defenses implicate Ossie, which cannot and will not be tolerated. "Dying changed him. He wouldn't have liked you much, but he wasn't cruel."

Dimitri shakes his head. When he looks up, a fragile soap-bubble smile wavers on his face. "You know -- that was the first time I've seen anyone stand up to him. Alive or dead."

"Someone ought to. I might be a coward, but I can at least offer a good piece of my mind from time to time."

He won't argue with Dimitri about his cruelty. Heaven knows his own father wasn't perfect, and he'd probably defend him too.

Dimitri's brushed past it before; he's told Ossie that it's no point of shame, is even one of pride, but he's pushed it no further. Now it bursts out, impulsive, emotional, and as certain as he's ever been of anything.

"You're not a coward."

"Dear boy, I am," he says gently, "it's alright. There's no shame in it."

"No." Dimitri shakes his head. "No, there isn't. But I have never seen anyone else defy my father. None of the strongest and most honorable people I've known. No one. Except for you." His voice quivers. "B-because of me."

Ossie goes quiet, and begins to find his tea very interesting. Quite fascinating, really. You know the liquid part of tea is called the tea soup?

"He just," he says at length with laboured breath, "shouldn't speak to you like that. And a fat lot of good it did either of us. I ran off. Because I am a coward, Dimitri. I really am only good at saving my own skin."

"You tried -- " Dimitri's attempt to wrestle his voice under control isn't about courtesy or decorum, so much as keeping the ability to speak at all -- "a-and that is more than anyone has ever done for me. You looked him in the eye and told him I'm better than him."

Dimitri sniffs, and swallows around the knot in his throat. "Ossie, I've never fought him before. But I did, because -- " His voice hardens. His head twitches, and he projects louder, as if speaking over something -- "because he does not get to speak about you that way. And it was you who showed me I could. I ... I only wish I'd done it when it mattered."

Edited 2023-11-06 03:22 (UTC)

Ossie's jaw trembles.

When was the last time anyone defended him? To his own father, no less. Damnit. Damnit damnit damnit all he suffered in Arcadia is one thing, but he can't even bloody cry at such a display of love and loyalty. He makes a keening sound at Dimitri and inside, in the walls closest to them, there's a sound like pipes bursting, a sudden sputtering of phantom rain-water from the guttering, drops of dew inexplicably forming on the petals of the roses.

"Come here-" and if Dimitri allows it, he's getting scooped up into a hug.

Dimitri's already sliding out of his chair. The movement bumps the table; his cup rattles in its saucer, and a ripple of tea spills over the edge.

All this time, every time it's been offered, Dimitri's hesitated. His grip breaks every fragile and precious thing. He is horrible, ugly and demanding; he must always, always be careful never to grasp at more than is given, never to hold anything so it can't be taken away, never to reach for anyone so they can't recoil. All kindness is conditional, all patience has its limits, and if Dimitri dares to cling, he'll feel the wire beneath the cloth.

This time, it's Ossie reaching for him. He pulls Dimitri in, and Dimitri hugs him back.

There are more words -- Dimitri's had time and time again to think of what he needs to say -- but for now, he tucks his face into the shoulder of Ossie's cardigan, and everything is soft.

Ossie is solid. It's not wire underneath, it's substance. Carved and shaped by unkind hands, but real for some metric of reality. A hand gently goes to Dimitri's hair, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

For the years after his return in London, Ossie was a fantasy come to life. A mysterious gentleman who paid for drinks and asked about people's lives and was funny and charming and delightful. He liked making people happy, he was good at it, and if anyone ever started digging a little too hard, there were always other bars. Other clubs. Other people to meet. Of course he cared about them, he did- truly and honestly- he cared enough to embody their fantasies. But there was always, always, always a necessity of distance.

Even at the uncanny similarities between them, his friendship with Dimitri started as it did with everyone. With play-acting; a chipper gentleman, a generous host, an adult who cares. This, though, this is... authentic. Not because he's put aside those facades, but because Dimitri knows enough to know why he wears them. Because he understands it. The need for roles, the desire to believe in them. Maybe Ossie is a shifting collection of masques, as any Changeling is. But if this is a masquerade, then Dimitri is happy to dance, to meet him as he is, to see what lies beneath through them without unmasking him.

"It matters to me," he says softly, "it matters very much. You are a tremendously brave young man, unparalleled in your virtues. I must be the luckiest man alive to have you in my corner."

"Hh -- "

Dimitri was buried beneath masks before he'd drawn his first breath. The world knew what the Prince of Faerghus was, and what it wanted from him; like a sapling bent by wire, Dimitri grew into that shape. The people who wanted him for a tool, or just wanted him dead, were bound by courtly protocol; propriety kept the people who loved him most at a formal distance. Dimitri lived a desperate childhood sifting genuine care from from a mire of manipulation and ill-intent in a world where even the people he could trust needed to see the Prince of Faerghus. He is the Prince of Faerghus. The Dimitri who isn't was smothered in the cradle.

What he knows -- what he had to learn -- is that masks are donned for a reason. Ossie acts silly and clownish, not to distract Dimitri from danger or to paint himself as harmless, but because he wants Dimitri to laugh -- and when Dimitri does, Ossie's happiness is real. He acts the doting godmother when he wants Dimitri to see him as caring and safe, not to exploit that sense of safety, but because he wants to be safe. He has always, always been gentle with Dimitri, not in the way that someone handles broken glass or a wild animal, but for his own sake -- because Ossie is afraid of what hurting him would mean. Ossie is pretending to be the person he wants to be, and in pretending, he makes it true.

When Dimitri lived the greatest nightmare of his life, of finding someone he cared for dead and bloody on the ground, Ossie held him while Dimitri made an awful teary snotty mess of his shirt, only to reassure Dimitri that it wasn't his fault. What is that, if not love?

Dead nails scrape against the back of Dimitri's neck, urging suspicion, paranoia, violence. He flinches, and clings ever so slightly tighter. "I -- I'm glad." He sniffs. "You're a better friend than I could ask for. I wouldn't feel safe with you if you hadn't proven I could."

Edited 2023-11-14 03:21 (UTC)

Ossie laughs, a gentle thing, not at Dimitri but just in sheer... delight of his existence. That's just being responsible for a young person, he thinks- he remembers it clearly, how simple it was to be delighted by them, how they saw the world.

"The Wyrd was kind in us meeting," he says, and as much faith as he can muster in anything is in good timing and opportune meetings, the Wyrd as simply a path of least resistance to what ought to be.

"My dear boy."

Ossie is so fond of him. Not for anything Dimitri tries to do, or be, but for the things that come as naturally as breathing. Things Dimitri would afford no thought, wouldn't even notice, if not for Ossie's delight in them. My dear boy, Ossie says, and for one quiet moment that's the loudest thing Dimitri can hear.

He buries a sliver of a sob in Ossie's shoulder. He's not letting go until Ossie does.

And it is a long, long while until Ossie lets go. Until all the leaks and the dew and the gutter water dries back up again, until his heart settles back into the usual rhythm, and Ossie gently separates with a kiss to Dimitri's temple.

"There we are. I feel much improved, don't you? Not much a hug can't sort back into place."

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you say the hill's too steep to climb [closed]

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