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The first sign that something is amiss, Felix notices, is when he sees Dedue walking around the quickly disassembling camp under the pretense of a flimsy excuse of an errand. That the man himself doesn't seem to quite agree with whatever Dimitri asked him to do is another one, and Felix gets it-- he'd much rather maintain his position as the prince's shadow as he is wont to do after a battle. They both know the reason Dimitri sent him off though, and while Dedue is too mindful of his given orders, Felix doesn't share the same level of thoughtfulness. He makes his way to the prince's tent, and pushes his way in without preamble.
He expects to be chastised and told to leave. What he finds, instead, is Dimitri hunched over his seat and staring at nothing in particular with one unblinking eye, dried blood — not his own, it hasn't been his own in a long time — streaked through his face. His armor is spread out in a messy pile across the tent's floor, as if he had pulled each piece out and thrown them off as fast as he could, which he probably did.
It takes him more than a minute to notice the intruder.
"Felix," he says, wide-eyed but without any semblance of surprise or feeling whatsoever in his voice. "Do you need something?"
Felix needs many things. For this forsaken war to be over. For it to never have happened in the first place, so he wouldn't have to mourn people he'd always thought were going to outlive him. For Dimitri to look alive again.
He can't say any of that, so what he does say is—
"You look like hell. Haven't you asked someone to draw you a bath?"
"We'll be moving camp soon. It would be pointless."
He has a point, but Felix is undeterred.
"So you're saying you plan on going up there, to beckon your subjects into marching forward with your face coated in who-knows-whose blood?"
At that, Dimitri frowns. It's short of becoming his only expression, these days, Felix thinks. He raises one hand to his face and scratches a dirty spot under his cheekbone. The blood crumbles, getting under his fingernails like dirt. He looks at it, a sad sort of acceptance on his face.
Felix watches in consternation, wondering how they let it get to this point. He hates how much Dimitri frightens him nowadays, not in the way he frightens his enemies in battle, but in the way Felix can't read him like he used to. It makes him remember the tales of restless spirits the servants used to tell him, where the friend the hero had made in the woods turned out to have been dead from the very beginning and they had missed the obvious signs, like Felix did. He wishes that Sylvain or Ingrid were here, but Sylvain hasn't been quite able to look at Dimitri in the eye since the incident with his brother all those years ago, and Ingrid had been missing since that scouting mission three weeks ago.
But Felix is nothing if not a man of action, and as such, he takes a look at Dimitri's desk, pointedly ignoring the mess of papers strewn across its surface in a very haphazardous fashion, and grabs the water pitcher lying near the corner of the mess. Someone, probably Mercedes, had left a few medical supplies for the prince. It should work well enough for what he plans on doing. Felix pours some water into a small basin, and that's what draws Dimitri's attention at last.
"What is this?"
"The bare minimum," Felix answers as he soaks a piece of clean gauze. "Isn't it bad for morale to have your leader show up to gather his troops like he crawled out of a beast's belly or something?"
Dimitri looks at him, frowning as if about he's about to ask what is he trying to provoke him about this time, and for a moment Felix's resolve falters. Maybe it's too much, the excuse too thin, the worry in his act too evident. He's too close to revealing something he spent years trying to smother out with no avail, but then Dimitri sighs and shrugs.
"If you say so."
And since he's gotten this far, Felix has no choice but to oblige. He puts a tentative hold to Dimitri's chin to steady him as he scrubs his face clean of blood. Like this, it looks more like dirt than anything. It reminds him of the time they had tried to follow their fathers to a hunt, and Dimitri had slipped face-first down a gully. His face had gotten covered in mud and blood as he bit back tears and Felix had said that he looked even more like a boar than usual, but he still helped him wipe his face clean when they rushed back to the castle before their fathers got back.
He works in silence, and Dimitri doesn't seem keen to say anything either. It is then that Felix reaches a conundrum. There's a rust-red splatter going from the bridge of his nose to somewhere on the right side of his forehead, and right in the middle of it lies the eye-patch. He wonders if he's about to cross a line or if Dimitri will tell him off and say he can do the rest himself, but he can't bring himself to ask.
Dimitri takes the decision for him. He draws his face away from Felix's hold and pulls the thing off.
"It's fine."
Felix has seen it before, the sewn-up scar tissue over his eyelid, but it doesn't look fine. He might be biased, though. For him, that wretched eye-patch and what led to it becoming a permanent fixture on Dimitri's face are reminders that this is not the childhood friend he knew like the back of his hand, but a stranger wearing his skin. That's what he tries to convince himself of, at least. The idea of Dimitri being twisted beyond recognition due to a single life-changing incident is easier to swallow than to think that maybe that maybe something could've been done before it was too late. But like this, with him setting aside the symbol of what he's become with such ease for Felix, it's difficult to convince himself that this is a stranger.
He says nothing. He doubts he'd be able to speak even if he had something to say, so he nods and continues his task, squeezing the rust-stained fabric over the basin.
The quiet that takes over them is a different type of silence than before, and Felix busies himself in a struggle with a piece of blood caked Dimitri's hair as he pretends to focus on that more than he has to. The alternative is acknowledging the quizzical way Dimitri is looking at him.
"Does it hurt?" he asks, because he's not in the right state of mind to filter himself. His voice is softer than he'd prefer, but there's a treacherous part of him that does not want this quiet to end.
"It's been a long time," Dimitri answers in a strange tone. It should sound like deadpan exasperation, if the look on his face in anything to go by. "You'd feel the same thing if I went and poked right under your eye." It's a try at a joke, Felix realizes. It doesn't land at all, but the attempt is enough to ease his concern. And it must show on his face, because Dimitri raises an eyebrow at him.
The old feeling of tightness constricting his heart pulls at it with a vicegrip, so Felix takes the mature approach and pokes him in the eyelid with the wet gauze.
Dimitri flinches back and Felix thinks for a chilling second that he took the worst possible course of action, but when Dimitri looks at him he looks less like he's about to retreat back into the state Felix had found him in and more like a befuddled, oversized cat. He reaches out with the gauze again, touching the tip of his nose and snapping his hand back just as fast. Dimitri's eyebrows crease, but Felix can see that he's biting back a smile.
It's perhaps that that's making him this bold. That stupid little gag seems to lift the weight off of Dimitri's shoulders, letting him breathe for once. Felix realizes then that he's okay with the responsibilities that had once hung over him like a cage. It had made him feel angry and helpless, how they were fated to become their fathers. He'd once spited Dimitri for that, for his mere existence forced him to become the very thing he'd sworn not to. He knows it to not be true, now. This mantle is the one thing he has to make Dimitri feel less alone in his forsaken duty. If that's what it takes for him to able to shed all of his armors, to let go of the crown weighing him down, to have someone that could stare him down as an equal, even if only for a short moment of respite like this, then Felix will take it. The title and the lands and even the damned Crest.
He reaches out again, if only to get his mind out of the sobriety of his revelation, but this time Dimitri is expecting it. He grabs Felix's wrist with one hand, pushing his thumb into Felix's palm, just so he can get his grip on the gauze loose enough for him to take it with his other hand.
Dimitri then proceeds to swipe a wet streak through Felix's face. Felix blinks, not quite expecting it. In hindsight he should have, but between Dimitri's pleased almost-smirk and the steady, firm press of his hand on his wrist, he's unable to choke out a single coherent thought. Dimitri, curse him, seems to sense this.
Instead of giving Felix room to breathe, however, he does the exact opposite. He runs his hand down Felix's wrist, effectively taking hold of his hand. His thumb presses down against Felix's palm, and he has to contain the urge to curl his fingers around it.
"Thank you, Felix," he says, and Felix can't look away. It makes hope burn through him, the way Dimitri says his name, and he can't find it in himself to smother it out.
It's dizzying, like the ground is about to give way and so, Felix reaches blindly behind him for support. What he finds, instead, is the bowl full of bloodied water. His hand slips and he barely catches himself on the desk when the basin goes to the floor, drenching their feet and breaking the spell. He crouches down as fast as he can, making a show of grabbing the offending bowl, but really, to avoid Dimitri's eye however he could afford.
"I—" he starts, unsure of what he should even say. I'm sorry, I will call someone to clean up right away, I will be taking my leave now, please forget everything that just happened. Nothing seems to make the cut, not when they were about to... they were what, exactly? Felix feels foolish all of a sudden, for entertaining the very idea that this feeling he carried with him for far longer than he remembered could get anywhere.
It's Dedue who saves Felix from himself as he announces his presence outside the tent. Dimitri beckons him in, somewhat numbly. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix can see Dimitri putting the eye-patch back on just as Dedue gets through the tent's flap. The thought that crosses his mind is embarrassingly pleasing.
Dedue looks at him, unsurprised by his being there. He probably knew from the moment Felix had asked him what he was doing running around the camp, and he curses his transparency. There is an acknowledgement of something in his eyes, however, and Felix has to look away lest he humiliate himself any further.
For his part, Dedue turns back to Dimitri to report on his chore. He tunes out their conversation as he considers slipping out of the tent unnoticed. Maybe it would be for the best—
"—and all the mounts are saddled and ready. We wait your orders, Your Highness."
"I see. Very well, I will see to it," Dimitri says, approaching the tent's exit where Felix had slunk to. Dedue follows after him and Felix thinks that maybe he should've stayed put. "You may go and find someone to dismantle my tent as I attend to this. Waste no time."
Dedue bows and takes his leave. It's just the two of them again, and Felix wants to bolt. The reality of what transpassed just moments ago is sinking in, and shame is settling over his skin.
"We'll be moving ahead soon," Dimitri says, looking out of the tent as one of his hands hold the flap open.
"Yes," Felix agrees, and feels dumb for it soon after.
It's then that Dimitri looks back at him. He's not quite smiling, but the way his face crinkles looks gentler than every other expression Felix has seen from him in a very long time.
"Ride beside me?"
Felix's throat feels so tight he almost fails to answer, "If you want me to."
The look in Dimitri's face is worth the mortification this type of unabashed honesty causes him.