#dimimari week 2020

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Dimimari Week 3 - Beast (Crest of the Beast)

Summary: Dimitri learns the curse of Marianne's bloodline.

AO3: Lucky Charm

 “I warned you, child! I can hold myself back against my own flesh and blood, but your friends feed my hunger! There will be no escape for you from this forest of demons!”

  His entire disposition changed in an instant. The monster reared back, striking at her with its large claws. Marianne cried out as one claw raked across her. The other claw came towards her and the only thing she found herself staring into was the gaping jaws of The Beast.

  “Marianne!”

  So this was how the goddess had chosen she would die. At the hands of the very monster that had cursed her blood,  the reason for every misfortune that had befallen her. In a way, Marianne was not sad. Her prayers had finally been answered. She only wished she hadn’t found people she didn’t want to leave beforehand.

  But what a beautiful thing her death would be. A slow fall to the ground before she shattered into a dozen pieces, like a single raindrop.

  “Marianne!”

  The raw voice calling for her pulled her out of such dark thoughts. Gathering her surroundings quickly, Marianne found herself most certainly alive. The Beast’s claw was held in place in front of her, blocked by a man who had positioned himself between the cleric and the monster.

   Marianne let out an audible gasp. A blue cape with black fur trim stood before her, dark armor and long blonde hair. The man with whom she had been so happy to reunite with again after five years, only to have him be a completely different person who didn’t care about how many people he struck down, how many people who met their ends at his blade. She was beginning to believe she would never see the young prince she had known again.

  And yet here he was, risking everything for her as easily now as he did then when they first met.

  Dimitri turned toward her. “Go!” He snapped at her. As she watched he shoved the creature back and with his breathtaking strength managed to shake the beast enough to get two consecutive strikes in with his lance. His power rocked her to her very core, it always did, so momentous that she could feel every bit of pain and suffering that he put behind it. But she was so sure that for a moment, the Dimitri in front of her didn’t have revenge in his eyes. He had protected her because he chose to do so.

  Disregarding his command, Marianne gritted her teeth and gathered as much strength as she could muster, blasting The Beast with icy magic before it could strike again at the fallen prince. He reeled in pain, and Dimitri took the opportunity to drive his lance into the creature’s throat.

  Not a creature, she reminded herself silently, as the sight stole her breath away. Maurice.

  He had known her. Not personally, but called her his flesh and blood. There was only one person it could be; the original bearer of the crest she hid, the lost, disgraced member of the Elites.

  Mercedes had rushed over to heal her by time the combined might of her friends had slain him. She felt all the tension in her body leave her in an instant, and she felt only exhaustion.

  Something clattered to the ground in front of her. She looked up to find Dimitri staring down at her.

  “You shouldn’t have gone off alone,” his large body looming over her like the monster had just moments ago. But she was not afraid of him, no matter the state she had found him in when returning to the monastery; she had faith in Dimitri. Tonight had proven her faith in him was not unfounded. He had placed a skeletal sword on the ground in front of her.

  “You could have died,” he bit at her sharply. Mercedes, who was healing her, and Ashe from beside him both reprimanded Dimitri for his harsh words, but Marianne was glad to hear them.

  It meant that under all the pain and madness, Dimitri still cared about her deeply.

~

  A whimper broke the silent darkness of the night.

  Marianne’s grip tightened around herself as her body wracked with pain and agony. Her body trembled as the waves washed over her, a beast attempting to break from beneath her very skin. When she held Blutgang in her hands after Maurice had been put to rest, she thought all her suffering would be over. She could not have been more wrong.

  It felt as though her blood was boiling on her inside, a furious heat that threatened to stop her heart. Marianne clutched her chest, her legs pulled in tight as she silently begged for this to end.

  A knock rang out on her bedroom door, and Marianne’s whole world froze. It was the middle of the night, who would have come to see her? Who would have known she was awake?

  “Marianne?” He called for her, gruff but soft.

  Of course it was him.

  Dimitri stood outside her bedroom door. They had both been avoiding this, the moment they talk about what happened between them before the world erupted into chaos and misery. She had seen the glimpses of the man he once had been in recent days, the one she had fallen in love with.

  But why did it have to be now?

  Marianne waited for a wave of unbearable agony to subside before she answered. “Yes?”

  “May I come in?”

  No! She screamed in silence. No! Please, I can’t burden you with this!

  “What-“ She broke off as a new, fresh stab of pain rocked her body, and Marianne cried out. Much louder than she intended.

  Immediately, she heard her bedroom door whine against Dimitri as he tried to open it. She had locked it before this all occurred, before she had crawled into bed.

  “Marianne!” She had not heard him sound so concerned for her, so panicked, in such a long time, and in a twisted, selfish way it made her happy. “What’s going on?”

  “N-nothing! Nothing I swear!” She just barely got out before her voice cracked in a cry, and her vision went black.

  The next moment that Marianne came up for air, she was in the upright position as opposed to laying across her bed. Breathing heavy, she quickly became aware of a gentle but firm pressure wrapped around her and her gaze dropped to her stomach to find two arms wrapped around her. Dimitri was in her room, she hadn’t the faintest idea of how, holding her flush against his chest as she continued to tremble.

  Gently, Marianne lifted her head to meet his gaze, which was trained on her. “Thank you,” she croaked.

  “I’m not sure what is going on,” he answered. “But I will not leave you alone.”

  Despite the pain, her heart soared. This was the old Dimitri, the real Dimitri, The prince who had been her rock, her confidant. Though not much had changed, they were hardly any closer to his goal of vengeance against Edelgard... she was certain the good in him, the humanity in him was not gone.

  As the beast inside her continued to stir, Dimitri did not leave.

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Dimimari Week Day 1 - Smile (As Your Soul Bleeds)

I havent posted fanfic in a while because of school and work and now this stupid virus... so I’m hoping I can get all my ideas out for dimimari week!

Ao3 (will be updated as the week goes on): Lucky Charm

Summary: Sylvain tries to teach Marianne how to smile, but he never realized it was for someone else.

   “Cheeeeeese!”

   Sylvain stifled a laugh as Marianne’s face curled into another awkward, endearing attempt at a wide smile. She had happily ran up to him, begging him to critique her latest attempt. It was charming, really, the way she had taken his words to heart. And she was getting better, really, her lips relaxing and softening around the edges so that it was starting to look less forced. She had begun to laugh at herself when attempting it - which had really been his intention in the first place, when he suggested she use the word to help her smile - and he saw flashes of what her smile would be. In the gloominess that hung over the monastery in the last months leading up to their graduation, Marianne’s actions were a bit of a beacon.

   “You’re definitely getting better,” he assured her. “You don’t look like you’re in pain anymore.”

   “Oh that’s good,” her shoulders slumped a bit, a bit contradictory to her words, but Sylvain didn’t think that was anything out of the ordinary.

   “Yeah, soon enough no guy in this monastery will be able to resist you!”

   He saw Marianne’s attention return to him in a moment, and he braced himself for an Ingrid reaction - but Marianne only appeared a bit more anxious. “You... you think so?”

   Sylvain was genuinely shocked by this answer. He never counted Marianne as a girl who would care about something like that; he only said it because it was something he would say.

   That was the first sign to him that something else was going on.

   Still, Sylvain did what he does best, and that was lay it on thick.

   “Absolutely! I mean, it’s already hard to keep your eyes off you Marianne. I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

   She blushed. “You’re just saying that, Sylvain.”

   Marianne had never responded to him like this before, at least not that he had noticed. He finally realized though, what exactly it was about her today that was bothering him. She seemed incredibly anxious today over her smile. And he knew that was his fault because of what he had told her before.

   “Look, you shouldn’t take what I said so seriously,” he finally told her. “A smile isn’t the only thing that determines a person’s worth, that’s certainly not how I meant it. You just seem so... melancholic? I just want to see you happy. But you shouldn’t have to force yourself to smile Marianne. In fact, I’d say it’s probably weirder that I can smile on command, even when my life is falling apart.”

   “Why do you smile then Sylvain?”

   “Well, I know I certainly look better with a smile than anything else,” he laughed. “And it really does make things easier to bear; for me. That might not be the same for you.”

   Marianne frowned a bit. “So do you not truly enjoy anything here at the academy? I see you smiling so much.”

   “No! Don’t make me sound like a sociopath!” He exclaimed, though a voice in his head remarked that might not be so far off. “I do smile for real, when I’m happy. That’s when it really matters, you know? That’s when you don’t have to try. You just smile because of the people around you.”

   He watched the corners of her mouth turn up again naturally, and Sylvain released a nervous breath. He was worried he was digging himself a bigger hole with every word he spoke, but her reaction seemed to show he was easing her worries.

   “What makes you smile genuinely?” She asked him, a dreamy look overcoming her expression.

   “I’m happy to be with my friends again, after everything that has gone wrong in Faerghus. Even after everything that has gone wrong this year,” he answered. “Felix and Ingrid are my closest friends, and I don’t trust anyone more than I do them... and His Highness, of course. As much as he irritates me, and works me like a dog, and reprimands me... Dimitri is the only person I wanna see on the Faerghus throne. So being his friend makes me happy.”

   When Sylvain looked over to Marianne, surprised that she had caused him to open up so much, he was a bit caught off guard to find her watching him with a soft expression.

   “Yes, Dimitri makes me happy, too,” a beautiful, genuine smile, unlike any of her stiff attempts a few minutes ago, took over her face and he was mesmerized.

   When Marianne realized she had been caught, however. She turned a surprising shade of red and began sputtering in embarrassment, as Sylvain suddenly realized she had chosen him, one of Dimitri’s childhood friends to judge her smiles.

   And he only saw that brilliant, enthralling smile when Marianne was with the prince of Faerghus, all the way until they were both forced to watch his sanity crumble before their eyes in that tomb beneath the monastery.

   When he heard the news that Dimitri had been executed by Cornelia in Fhirdiad, Sylvain wondered if Marianne would ever smile like she did around the prince again.

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Dimimari Week Day 2 - Sanctuary (Warm Hands)

Summary: An exiled prince finds himself in the territory of House Edmund of the Alliance, and the open arms of someone he's ashamed to see.

AO3: Lucky Charm

  He was hungry, filthy, injured, caked in blood... but damn it all, Dimitri was alive. Contrary to what Cornelia had told the world, the prince of Faerghus was alive.

  Though he was sure he had lost that title, lost his father’s legacy, by now.

  Days blurred together, as he lived by his lance. Every imperial troop he came across he had brought down. Somewhere along the way he lost his eye. He hadn’t noticed when it happened until a moment of rest, when blood from the socket alerted him that something was not there.

  He was a shell of a man. Dimitri knew. He knew he had let everyone he cared about - the professor, Dedue, Felix and Sylvain and Ingrid, Rodrigue, Glenn, his father - all of them had to hate him. They must.

  Marianne.

  That was the one person he tried not to think about. With her kind, but melancholic expressions, her soft voice, her gentle touch and warm hands as she reached out and pushed healing magic into those in need of help. Her bright eyes as she tended the animals at the monastery. The way he saw the same pain he felt reflected in her eyes.

  And then, as if his mind had dreamt it all up, or perhaps his body had taken him there instinctively as he trudged through old memories, Dimitri found himself in a place he knew only from stories told to him during their year at the monastery. He was in Leicester territory, a remote margraviate with unique dark brick buildings and a bustling port.

  Dimitri, monster of a man that he was, wandered through the streets of Edmund - unbothered by the reactions of the people around him. Seeing her seemed like a terrible idea; he didn’t want to see how she reacted to him. He didn’t want to remember their relationship, what could have been. He didn’t want her to try and help him.

  A gasp. Someone in front of him dropped a basket of groceries, and Dimitri looked down to the ground. The skirt of their dress was blue, almost the same shade as the class he had once led, the banner of his kingdom flag.

  He looked up into the shocked face of Marianne. She was familiar, but so different. She had blossomed; she had been pretty before, but now her skin glowed with life. Somewhere along the way since the day the monastery fell, she had found something to hold on to. While he stood, a shell of a man, in front of her. Unworthy.

  “Dimitri,” she choked out. He watched tears form in the corner of her eyes. The only thing they stirred within him was disgust with himself.

  He said no words to her as she ran up and embraced him, held his face as tears rolled gently down her cheeks. His entire body tensed at her touch, those warm hands pushing some life back into his husk. He didn’t want that. Marianne deserved better.

  She reached up and gently inspected the bandages over his missing eye. They were bloody, disgusting probably. He hadn’t changed them since putting them on.

  “Prince Dimitri is dead,” he told her.

  “No, he’s not,” Marianne answered, voice barely above a whisper. “He’s standing right before me.”

  He did not resist as Marianne hustled him inside a nearby building, steeling herself as she removed his bandages, cleaning the wound. He was like a cornered animal the entire time, feeling as though his body was instinctively ready to strike her if she hurt him. He was so much stronger than her. He could break her so easily. She knew that. Yet she showed no fear. In an odd way, she seemed happy to see him, despite the state he was in.

  And yet, for the first time since he had escaped Fhirdiad, since he had lost first the professor and then Dedue, he felt oddly at ease. Behind it all, she was a place of respite for his weary soul. She was a sanctuary he did not deserve.

  All the spoken acknowledgements between them were what made him sure he had to leave. Marianne hoped he would stay. She wanted to pick up where they had left off. But they could never do so. Nothing was going to be the same, and nothing could stray him from his path of vengeance. She gave him an eyepatch. He left without thanking her.

  She deserved better than him. In another life, maybe, he would become that prince, that king, that leader, that everyone saw him becoming. He would live up to every expectation anyone ever had of him surpassing his father. He would be the haven for her that she had continuously been for him.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to see her again, but as he settled in amongst the bones and blood of Imperial troops within the abandoned halls of Garreg Mach, somehow Dimitri knew he would.

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Dimimari Week Day 4 - Seasons (The Goddess’s Reply)

Summary: Marianne's first year living in Faerghus.

AO3: Lucky Charm Chapter 4

I'm particularly excited about this prompt, because I think it's kinda a different style than I usually write. It was also the first idea I came up with for the week.

By the way i know you probably shouldnt overexplain everything, but the title comes from the dimitri/marianne A support where marianne wonders "if this is the goddess telling me i should make something of myself?" dimitri says "that must be why the goddess allows me to live on" and dimitri ends the support with "i promise to the goddess of fodlan that i will never give you cause to despair" So i just kinda thought of this happiness being "the goddess's reply" to their questions and prayers

  The war ended in the eighth month of the year. The Verdant Rain Moon.

  Marianne moved into Fhirdiad Palace the following spring. The flowers of the city were beginning to bud, the cold northern air of Faerghus making one last attempt to deliver the snow. Marianne had only ever seen Fhirdiad in chaos, Cornelia’s Tripp’s and mechanical abominations standing in their way as they raced through the capital to confront her. It was like an entirely different city now. Fhirdiad was a famously clean and beautiful city, and she was happy to see it this way now. It was a wonderful distraction as she came to terms with her responsibilities as the future queen of the united Fodlan.

  For some reason, she hadn’t thought of what falling in love with Dimitri would actually entail; or perhaps she had been avoiding it. Dimitri was a kind, just man, who had faced his own darkness, the horrible things that plagued his mind, and overcome them. He deserved to become king of course, and she would never convince him otherwise. But she, becoming queen... left her increasingly nervous.

  Dimitri had a lot to take care of as well, now that he was to be king, a lot of things needed to be fixed after the war and though he had begun them almost immediately, he was gone from the palace for long periods of time. Her heart aches for him, wishing she could come along but he was worried about leaving the palace empty, and so she and Dedue spent much time together as they waited for the most important person in their lives to come home.

  When he did come home though, those were the best days. She enjoyed nothing more than when he would lead her around the city, showing her the places that meant the most to him and meeting the people. Fhirdiad was beautiful, with its aqueducts just as decorative as they were functional in keeping the water supply clean, to the vast garden as they bloomed over the weeks. She never fell into a rhythm, every day felt brand new; every moment spent with Dimitri felt like she was falling in love all over again.

~

  Summer came to Fhirdiad warmer than she had expected, and Marianne felt the teeniest twinge of homesickness. She and Dimitri traveled to Leicester so they could reunite with friends, and see the city of Derdriu once again. Upon returning, Marianne was surprised to find her awe with Fhirdiad had not faded, still as captivated by the northern city’s beauty and life as before. She was starting to see herself live here, the role of queen still frightening but something she found herself proud of.

  Summer was when the people of Faerghus really came alive, and she spent much of her time traveling around the former country. She was scared to meet the nobles of the west in particular, to get them to accept her as the queen, though much of the nobles in the east were her friends - Felix and Sylvain, respectively, were rising to the heads of both their Houses, which happened to be two of the most powerful in the former borders of Faerghus. With their support, she felt she could lift her chin a little bit higher.

  Mercedes and Annette insisted they be present at every step of the way that Marianne was fitted for her wedding gown, which began around this time. Every thought of being wed to Dimitri sent her blushing like a lovesick schoolgirl, and listening to the dressmakers and her friends made her feel like she was going to combust. She had never imagined herself marrying happily, always assumed it would be an arrangement to benefit her adoptive father. When she returned home to Dimitri after those visits she would hold him and cry; they were happy tears, as she thought about differently her life was now than she had imagined back then.

  Their relationship itself too, changed with the change in season. Sweet and tempered in the spring, like how the world was poised to bloom. In the summer they naturally progressed into something a little more heated. This was such uncharted territory for both of them, exploring new avenues of their feelings for one another, but it never felt wrong.

~

  As the leaves began to change color, the people of the country got to work harvesting the fields and Marianne had to prepare once more for celebration. It was a joyous time as people all across Fodlan celebrated their good harvests going into winter. A little over a full year had passed since the end of the war, and it seemed like the scars it had left had truly begun to heal. It was one of the best harvest years in all of recorded history, as though the goddess, wherever she may be, was celebrating with them.

  But all the time of bliss they had witnessed in this new year had spoiled them, made them forget what obstacles they still had to overcome. The war was still fresh in everyone’s minds, the scars still there. In late autumn after the leaves had begun falling, a handful of Faerghus’s western nobles attempted a coup. Dimitri was joined by Felix and Sylvain to quell the uprising, though Dimitri was injured in the fighting. It felt as though all of Fhirdiad was holding its breath as he was returned home not on horseback but in a medical carriage, the death of their previous king still fresh in everyone’s mind. The presence of their queen-to-be as a specialist in healing magic did little to calm the anxieties of the city, but Marianne thought that fitting as she was equally as upset each day as she cared for him. She saw flashes of the madness he had gone through returning, knowing full well that the entire battle itself had reminded him of the day in Duscur that he lost so many people he had loved. The wound in his mind affected him more than the wound in his chest, and so Marianne stayed by his side, that he might remember all that they had both fought so hard for.

~

  And Dimitri recovered, by the time Faerghus’s chilling winds had brought snow back to the city. He walked out onto the balcony of the palace, and the people of Fhirdiad had gathered in the streets for him, just as they had after he had retaken the capital from Cornelia a year ago. After all the suffering she had known he went through in the past month, at his bedside the entire time, there was nothing that could have prepared her for the rush of emotions that overcame her when she saw Dimitri smiling at the people of Fhirdiad. Ever the intense empathetic soul he was, Dimitri immediately scooped her up into his arms, in front of everyone. Her first real large gathering in the palace, and everyone saw her crying and clinging to Dimitri.

  On the bright side, such a sight made Dimitri and Marianne’s relationship incredibly popular across all of Fodlan, when news spread that Marianne had personally tended to him and not left his side. Dimitri’s more... savvy advisors touted that seeing Marianne express such raw emotion made her seem more human to their subjects, or something like that. Considering she had only really been with Dimitri in public during small festivals or meetings, she assumed everyone by now knew she was just very nervous at the prospect of being a queen. What else could she be but human? She didn’t like his political advisors very much.

  The entire kingdom’s joy in Dimitri’s recovery carried to his birthday, where celebrations rang out all across the country and once again, Marianne found herself traveling with him. Her emotional outburst had made her the center of attention, and suddenly everyone wanted to know about her. Certainly, she knew her adoptive father must be enjoying his own fame, as her home in a former Leicester territory was quite well known. She was just happy that the western lords, whom Dimitri had been quite light on their punishment when considering the trouble they caused, were clearly not as popular as they thought they were. House Rowe, who had once been the major power in the region, now bowed the knee to House Gaspard, led by Ashe.

  Between parties, Dedue told her that Dimitri was glad the rest of Fodlan was finally seeing her as he saw her, though it made him a bit jealous that her attention was constantly being taken away by someone else. She resolved to do something with this information.

  They got on a horse together and rode off early in the morning one day, making tracks in the fresh blanket of snow. Though the path was covered, Dimitri knew it by heart as these were the trails he had rode as a boy, sometimes with Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid, sometimes alongside Gilbert and Glenn, and other times by himself. And they spent the day in the snow, laughing and twirling, throwing snow at one another, that surely if any onlooker did not know this was the king and future queen of Fodlan, didn’t know of the darkness that either of them had pushed their way out of and overcome, would probably have just rolled their eyes at two young, foolish lovers. Because certainly that was how Marianne felt as she danced around her first real snowfall of Faerghus.

  When Dimitri kissed her, it all came rushing back. Everything they had been through, everything they had suffered and all the people they had lost, all the victories and the relief when it was all over. All the ways her life had changed just by knowing him. And Marianne smiled, because even though she was still scared about it all, he would be there.

~

  And then the snow started to melt, the trees began to bud again. At the beginning of spring a year after she had moved to Fhirdiad, Marianne and Dimitri were wed to begin their lives together and guide the people of Fodlan beyond the war that had once divided them.