#do i think it makes way more sense tha zebzeb was getting mroe distant as it got closer to Leave Day?

[summoner-kentauris]

im running a day behind for brufonse week! ahaha! half my coworkers are deeply ill! im! having a blast! hahahahahaha! yes! eveything is fine! anyway!

day 3 of @brufonseweek prompt battle / rest. i seem to be doing hybrids by accident i swear im not doing it on purpose. although this one is fairly off topic is i was going for battle. maybe i should just claim it was for rest. anyway.

not posting on ao3 yet because i havent actually edited AT ALL beyond typos. be forewarned. FYI the ao3 versions of my stuff are always more cleaned up

anyway.

cws in tags until i can do this properly on the archive o’3. mainly just heavy angst, and then me debating whether is counts as heavy or not. im a skewed subject yall. also precanon. thats a thing

-

It takes five months. Five months before Alfonse gets tired of the constant fighting, and cajoling, and coddling, and he agrees.

The last time he’d been in Zacharias’ room was, actually, the day before the battle. As he comes to a halt in front of the open doorway, he’s horrified to find he doesn’t remember what he’d – they’d been doing. Probably what they usually did when they ended up staying up late together. Reading. Laughing. Talking. Waking up late in the deepest parts of midnight because Zacharias was screaming from nightmares he’d always claimed he never remembered.

Alfonse would like to think that’s how they spent their last night together. Cuddled around one another, under the thin light little crochet coverlet Zacharias slept under. He always claimed it was too hot, in the castle. Had never denied Alfonse a place by his side, all the same.

Alfonse’s hands curl as other Order members squeeze pass him, into the room. Five months since that last night. Five months, and not a word from enemy forces about a ransom. Not a word from friends about a mysterious stranger turning up. There’d been no body, but then, sometimes people never found a-

He bites back the thought. He’d heard it repeated enough these past five months, when people thought they couldn’t hear him.

“How do you let go of someone you love?” he’d heard Anna talking to the stablemaster, one day. He’d thought she’d been talking about herself, but, “I’m just...worried about him,” she’d added. “We all are.”

Fine. Fine. If this was what they all needed to reassure themselves that he was alright…if packing up all of Zacharias’ things was some act they needed to do in order to sleep at night…if they wanted to pretend that forgetting someone was as easy as sweeping away their things, their memories, their papers and books and shield buckles and shells, and a small blue gemstone button from their trip to Aþál, and right there, on the nightstand, the elegant oil lamp they’d been gifted for helping aid the village near áyfir. On the windowsill a shining orb-stone engraved with their Order of Heroes commissions, under the stone one of Alfonse’s old royal dress capes, carefully folded with the clasps still as stunningly bright polished as they were when Alfonse had shrugged it off and lightly wrapped it around Zacharias’ shoulders, rain pouring down both of their faces and flattening their hair and mixing in with laughs and smiles and… and he’s crying, Alfonse is crying and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Gods. What is he doing? What, by Hel itself, is he doing?

An OoH member has her hand on Zacharias’ blanket.

“Stop,” he orders. His voice is far more hoarse than he expected. He feels like he’s been running for weeks. Even his heart is racing.

No one is looking at him. Everyone, in fact, is trying hard not to look at him.

“That’s mine,” he tells her.

She frowns. “But-”

Alfonse isn’t sure when Commander Anna got here, but she is here. She lays a hand gently on the woman’s shoulder.

“It’s his,” she agrees. Then she frees it from the woman’s hands, and carefully extends it to Alfonse.

His fingers must be numb, because he can’t truly feel the delicate patterns that make up the almost lace-like coverlet. There must be something wrong with his eyes, because where the blanket is usually a pale sunshine blue, today he can’t help but see dark red specks and blood and screams.

There must be something wrong with him, because he can’t breathe.

It doesn’t matter.

None of it matters anymore.

“Thank you,” he says, stiffly. “If there’s nothing else you need…?”

The sight of the gaggle of people who glance over at him sends a bolt of fury through him. Zacharias didn’t like people to be in here. This was his room, no matter what they were trying to do to it.

The anger dies almost before it has a chance to exist, though. He’s tired. Gods, he’s just so tired of this.

Anna watches him, with something unplaceable in her eyes.

“Alfonse,” she says, with uncharacteristic gentleness, “you know we’re not suggesting he’s-”

“I asked,” he cuts her off before she can say it, before she can suggest it, before she can even move to think it, “if you needed anything else from me.”

She stares at him for a moment. And then a moment longer. It would take effort to stop his incomprehensible tears from dropping all over Zacharias’ blanket, and he’s too tired to bother, so he doesn’t. Besides, Zacharias will, when he comes back, understand.

He always does.

Anna stares for a moment longer, then says, “No,” very quietly.

“Well then,” Alfonse responds. He reaches deep inside himself for the part of him he only brings out for court occasions, royal events, anything that means he has to stand up straight and smile and be the crown prince of Askr for the day. Unexpectedly, detaching himself takes no effort at all. And once he does it, the word feels as soft and as fuzzed out as the touch of the blanket in his hands.

He smiles politely at everyone crammed into what used to be Zacharias’ room.

“Thank you all for you help,” he says.

And before they can say anything else, he turns sharply, and departs.