Chapter Text
It’s freezing when Annette walks into her room. The first bites of the bitter winter chill have finally reached the officer’s academy and they’ve taken residence in her faculty quarters.
She sighs as she sends out a fireball to the tiny heater in the corner- A Constance prototype that will stupendously and quickly fill your room with a dazzling warmth sure to make anyone feel welcome.
It fills the room with scent too, because Constance is Constance, and Mercedes tipped her off. The tiny stove makes things smell like an orchard in autumn.
Annette rubs her frozen hands together, trying to breathe warmth onto them. She’s almost embarrassed to have the thought that she should have just stayed in the library where at least it was warm.
But the library is eerie, even all these years later. Ten years after reopening they still haven’t filled in all the books that were taken away during the war. The shelves upon shelves of religious texts that were boiled down into some reference books. The family lineages struck from the record.
Annette can still look over her shoulder from her favorite seat and see the open space where her family’s lineage was once listed.
It’s not gone forever, she tells herself. Family lines are still listed in well protected, appointment-only archives.
Just not at Garreg Mach.
What use is knowledge of an old nobility for an old world, except to stir rebellion?
She’s lucky to be here at all, she reminds herself. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to be teaching and have purpose in this world she’s carved out with her bloodstained hands. She could be like her cousins, scrambling to find purpose without the rigid paths of nobility.
She could be like so many people she once called friend. Cut down too soon, fighting for homes and ideals that no longer existed.
A little loneliness never killed anyone. She’s been lonely since she was fourteen. Before that if she’s honest with herself.
She has magic and purpose and an ever changing cast of semi-enthusiastic teenagers. She needs nothing else.
A cold breeze hits her face and Annette whips around, ready to slap herself because the curtains are fluttering in the midnight breeze. Annette is famously punctual as a professor in an attempt to get her students to actually be ready to work when they arrive in class.
Ten years on she’s still scrambling every morning to get out the door.
Unfortunately she’s left the window open again.
She crosses the room, bracing herself for the chill and chiding herself for her foolishness.
Annette jumps as she notices the book on her windowsill. It’s written in a strange script that she half recognizes as Morphis shorthand. Not something she actually understands.
Not something she or anyone she knows owns.
Her heart quickens.
Annettte closes the window quietly and reaches out to light the lantern, illuminating the room in a soft glow.
It’s then, and only then, that she notices her bed is unmade.
Her bed is unmade and there’s a head of inky black hair just peeking out.
“Felix!” Annette whispers.
He doesn’t stir.
Annette draws her curtains and barricades her door.
“You shouldn’t leave the window open,” Annette mutters to herself as she opens her wardrobe doors. There’s a brown jacket hanging amongst her things, worn from travel though it looks like he’s at least tried to wipe the dirt off it. “It’s like you want to get caught.”
She wants so badly to wake him. Want itches at her fingers. Felix is a notoriously light sleeper. One of the many reasons he’s still alive.
That, and the white magic spell his father cast with his last breath, unwilling to lose a second son.
She lets herself have one tiny indulgence, brushing her fingers through his cropped hair.
In a lifetime of losses, this one is stupidly painful. It keeps him safe. It helps him blend in amongst a million dark haired mercenaries.
Still, she misses the length. Felix was beautiful as a youth. He still is, war torn and scarred as his life has left him.
“I thought you were in Almyra,” she whispers, knowing he won't answer. She undresses and climbs into bed, nudging him to the side to make just enough space for the two of them.
She’s brought the Morphis book to bed. She won’t sleep. Her heart is still beating almost as quick as her mind is racing because it’s been almost a year since he last climbed through her window and she tells herself every time he leaves that it will be the last time.
Not because he’s dead. Felix isn’t going to die. He hasn’t so far. That’s unacceptable to both of them.
But because he’ll finally make good on his plan to run somewhere far away. Somewhere where no one will notice him.
The Morphis book is incomprehensible, but the sigils make sense at least. Magic is a language all its own, and it’s gorgeous.
“You like it?” a low voice asks.
Annette does her best not to jump because it’s foolish to be surprised by someone who has his leg laced through hers.
“Where were you?” she asks, trying not to sound accusatory.
“Almyra,” he answers like she’s the crazy one.
“Not Morphis?”
“The hell is for me in Morphis?” Felix asks, turning over to look at her properly. The long jagged scar that cuts his face from lip to eyebrow has gotten no better.
“Magic, obviously,” Annette says, gesturing the book that he’s brought her.
“My employer said he had no use for it and gave it to me.”
Annette has an inkling of who Felix’s employer is. It’s not like it’s easy for a Fodlan man to cross into Almyra, even now. He doesn’t blend in there. The sun and the heat don’t suit him. But Felix never mentions him by name, so Annette doesn’t ask.
Felix has a line somewhere. Annette’s not sure where it is, and she’s too much of a coward to try to find it.
“Are you staying long?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “Just passing through. Garreg Mach is convenient.”
It’s not.
Up in the mountains and days away from anything useful. It’s well guarded and crawling with Empire loyalists and he’s crazy for coming here.
She’s so grateful he has.
“Where to next?” Annette asks quietly, placing the book to the side.
Felix shrugs.
“Not sure. Sreng, if I can get hired on a crew in Derdriu. If not, I’ll figure it out.”
Felix doesn’t blend in in Sreng either. Srengese men are all impossibly tall and far tanner than Felix after a year in Almyra.
“You could go to Dagda.”
The suggestion is poison but she says it regardless.
Dagda is the answer, and they both know it. Felix will blend in there. The dark features that rendered the Fraldraius family so distinct in Faerghus are commonplace.
It’s impossibly far away. No one will come looking for him.
Felix doesn’t answer her but she can see the displeasure in his face.
“Are you sending me away?”
“You do plenty of that yourself!” she snaps before calming herself. They’re not here to fight. “I just want you to be safe.”
He rolls back in bed, but he still stares at her as if unwilling to waste one glance.
“A Fodlan embassy was coming into Almyra. I’m worried about rumors.”
“Rumors?”
“Hard to be a shadow in a desert. Every merchant knows one Fodlander outside the obvious. Can’t have anyone making connections.”
“So no Almyra for a while?” she asks.
“I got too comfortable,” he says as if comfort is wrong. “The money was too good.”
“Well I promise there’s no money to be made here,” she tries to joke. His face is too hard.
“A day, maybe two. I’m fucking exhausted.”
He looks it. He probably needs a true week of rest to hope to chip at the bags underneath his eyes.
“I can’t convince you to say any longer?”
“This is a prison cell. Two days or I’ll walk out and announce myself to the Empire and get executed for the crime of refusing to die.”
It’s too morbid for Annette. Felix never used to talk about death like this but it follows him like a ghost, haunting every turn he makes. She doesn’t like it. “You don’t know-”
Felix cuts her optimism off. “I do know. I’m a rebellion waiting to happen. I was too significant.”
It’s true and she hates it. She falls to teasing in defense.
“And humble.”
He refuses to indulge levity. “I had a direct claim to the throne. They spirited away a baby for the same crime.”
Dimitri’s dying words lead to the world’s worst treasure hunt. Felix had looked for the first two years after the war.
The empire found him first, tucked away in a corner of the former Alliance.
No one had heard of him since.
Annette counts the years, hoping some student will mention an adopted sibling with blonde hair and unreasonable strength just so she can stop jumping to the worst, most likely, conclusion.
“If you swore fealty-”
“I wouldn’t,” Felix says quickly. He strokes over her side as if just to diffuse his own anger. To show her he isn’t rejecting her. Felix says he doesn’t judge her choices.
Even if she worries that he does. That the crime of acting like the world was okay when it wasn’t was too much for him to bear. That siding with her professor and her best friend against the church that sheltered her father in his cowardice was somehow wrong. That convincing her uncle exactly which decisions would keep her mother safe, that saving the people she’d been born to protect was an act of selfishness.
Her treason bought her this sliver of life.
His loyalty earned him his exile.
She’s too exhausted by this game, this circle of tired conversation they fall back to every time.. She misses the days when he used to just tease her about her songs. When that was what they had to worry about.
“Felix are you just going to keep doing this forever?”
“Yes,” he says through gritted teeth. He toys with the ribbon around her neck that holds her nightgown closed. It’s a soft offer and she doesn’t bat his hand away.
It should be the end of it. He won’t change. She accepted that years ago.
Still, the year of fear and silence compels her to ask, “Why?”
He freezes, the teal satin laced through his fingers. “Because I have nothing to live for and I don’t want to die.”
She falls quiet, struck by his relentless honesty.
I could go with you.
She can’t. She won’t, and she knows that too. It will consume her for days after he sneaks back out her window and off to who knows where.
So, Annette silences her futile offer by pressing her lips to his.
It’s electric instantly, comforting and urgent with need. It’s their first kiss in over a year and it’s so much easier to spell out how much she missed him and the pure relief at his presence with touch than by trying to find words that wouldn’t be embarrassing in their sincerity.
Her hands slide up his torso, marred with innumerable scars, more than last time she felt him under her hands, real and here and alive.
Somehow, despite everything, he’s still alive.
Felix muffles a moan into her mouth and she wonders when someone last touched him. He’s always hated the feeling of hands on him.
Except hers. She keeps her fingers gentle even as his kisses become more sharp, his teeth sinking into her bottom lip before soothing over with a soft swipe.
She’s needy already, the dormant desire in her belly sparking back to life with his very existence.
Felix tugs on the ribbon and her nightgown falls open, catching just at the edge of her narrow shoulders. The ribbon laced through his fingers, he teases her too tender skin as he pulls the fabric down, over her arms, until it’s pooling uselessly around her middle.
Annette is on fire, relief and want churning together like magic and she finds herself being pushed back against her bed. A laugh escapes her in the darkness as she feels Felix lift her hips with one hand, nightgown promptly removed with practiced ease.
She can still feel the ribbon tickling against her thigh as he strokes at the soft, scarred skin.
“What?” Felix asks quietly as he covers her body with his own. His lips press to the shell of her ear and Annette shivers, sensitive.
She squirms. “The ribbon. I forgot how you were about them.”
He’s stolen countless ribbons from her over the years. Ones in her hair and ones that tie her clothes shut or keep her stockings on. He ends up tangled in them.
There’s a bubble of warmth as she imagines a deadly mercenary off in the wilderness, his rucksack full of useless satin.
She watches his eyes widen, and a rough hand traces up from her thigh to her breast, squeezing, the sensation mixed as the bit of slippery ribbon traces over her nipple.
“How I am about them?” he teases.
She loves it.
She leans up to kiss him again, her hands pulling at the shorn black hair that is still softer than it ever is in her memory. Felix surpasses her expectations. The reality is even better than the rare thoughts of him that she considers an indulgence.
He’s growing hard against her belly and she rolls her hips up into him. They never have much time. They’re exhausted. She wants him, more than air or safety or propriety.
He leans back and Annette whines even though she can see he’s shucking his trousers as quickly as his nimble fingers will allow.
She reaches out to grab his cock as soon as it’s freed, running her fingers over the swollen head. She revels in how his hips jut out into her hand, as if he’s unable to resist her.
He is. He keeps coming back to her because he wants her more than he values common sense or safety.
He’d referred to her room as jail. But he will always in some ways be her captive and she will take the bits of him she gets to hold.
She strokes him slowly until his satin wrapped fingers lace over hers. He takes her by the wrist, lifting her hand up to his mouth, gently kissing her fingers one by one sending electric shocks down her spine.
She’s breathless from the simple touch, desperate for more. He’s unused to softness, but he always remembers under her care.
Felix is slow and deliberate in his motions, thumb tracing up her hand before he untangles himself from the teal ribbon. He loops it around her wrist slowly, lacing his fingers through hers so their held hands are tied together.
It’s awkward to form a knot with one hand, but he manages with teeth and her other hand helping silently.
She doesn’t understand the inclination, but he’s single minded in it. She can do nothing but assist.
He kisses their tied hands reverently, before resting them on the pillow next to her head. It’s no different than one of his favorite games, keeping her from touching him until she’s whining and frustrated and desperate.
And yet there’s something about it. Something oddly familiar that she can’t place in the haze of emotions that rush up into her as Felix kisses her again, his other hand tracing slowly up her thigh to the apex, neglected and wanting.
His fingers stroke through her folds, already wet and wanting and she gasps against his lips.
This is achingly familiar, the urgency of the first time. She’s putty in his hands, shivering from the very first touch and almost grateful he doesn’t seem to want to toy with her. His fingers are relentless, one curling inside as he grinds against her clit.
It’s easy, even with the long absence. The muscle memory still there. His relentless perfectionism as central to who he is as when they’d fumbled together for the first time all those years ago.
These reunions grow more daring with the passing year, but she remains desperate for his touch.
“Please,” she whispers as he slides another finger inside. The stretch already pulling at her with the kind of pleasure pain that a lifetime of fighting has taught her to enjoy.
He answers her with a touch, harder and curling and she is close already. She longs to grab for him but their hands are still tied, still pressing down with delicious pressure and she squeezes his hand as she comes, panting into his mouth.
He’s deliberate as ever, pulling his hand out to slick himself with her come before sheathing inside.
Her thighs wrap around him as he bottoms out inside her, groaning something incomprehensible into her ear. It’s soft and her head is buzzing and the tone means more than the words.
They move together, quiet and urgent. This is how he tells her he misses her.
It’s not just about lovemaking for him, she knows. He lets his guard down, just a little, here.
His hips pound into her and she’s powerless to do much more than whimper as he stutters through the last few strokes before he, too, finds relief. He always keeps moving for a moment after, as if he can’t find rest in satisfaction.
When they were younger he’d sometimes stay inside her, a second round following too quickly for him to bother. But time has passed and they tire more easily, they understand each other better than they once did. So finally Felix finds rest, laying his head in the crook of her neck. Annette kisses his forehead softly, too tired to find words. Unsure what her voice would sound like as she still gasps for air.
He doesn’t find sleep, lips still moving against her neck aimlessly. He’s heavy against her, more real than the pull of sleep or full body exhaustion that she feels.
He pulls their tied together hands up to his lips before unlacing the ribbon.
“I will come back here, you know. As long as I’m alive.”
She wants to tell him that he shouldn’t. That it’s dangerous and she’s not worth the risk.
But she’s selfish and so desperately in love with him so she nods, pulling him into a kiss.
“I worry when you’re gone,” she says, her forehead resting against his.
Whatever reaction she’d expected he doesn’t give it.
He lets out a small laugh. “I once didn’t want anyone to worry for me, but now…” He smiles at her. “There is a value in someone hoping you’re still alive. I need it. It helps.”
She knows what he means. Felix would do well to disappear abroad. To become the ghost he pretended to be.
Still, she’s so grateful that he’s real and he’s here and in a lifetime of wandering he intends to find her every time.
They both fall silent, curling together in her too small bed as their breaths match and at last they both find rest.
Just as the tendrils of dreams begin to find her again, Annette’s memory reminds her why Faerghans used to tie their hands together.
Felix leaves the next night, escaping out her window and reminding her to reinforce it.
“It’s far too easy to pick the lock. You need to be safe.”
“Please be safe in Sreng,” she shoots back. “Boats aren’t safe this time of year and...” she can’t find the words.
Felix shrugs. “A lifetime ago I was trained to run a port city. I know. I’ll be as safe as I can be.”
And he’s off and Annette is desperately alone again.
Weeks pass. The winter comes to Garreg Mach and the first snows coat the ground in a wave of nostalgia Annette will never be able to shake.
Her students hate it and it brings a certain amount of glee to walk them through a snowy forest, not letting the skills that were essential to survival in her home die as she passes them on to the only children she will ever have.
Her students will be her legacy. There’s joy in that. They tease her for being too northern because they don’t know how to politely say Faerghan when the place no longer exists.
Annette Fantine Dominic is the strange, clumsy northern teacher of reason magic at the heralded Garreg Mach.
Well… Today she’s the strange, clumsy, northern, late teacher of reason.
She’d been too caught up in a letter to Mercedes to notice the afternoon bell chime for her advanced reason seminar. The Morphis book has proven invaluable, really. She’s had fun throwing the sigils at her students and seeing what they do with them.
There are voices coming from her classroom, and she can hear them across the courtyard.
“She was amongst the best at destroying the automatons in the Strike Force. Your reason professor was offered a place amongst my Engineers, but has chosen this life for herself. You should all be grateful to learn from such an,” green eyes meet hers as she stands in the doorway of her classroom, “ esteemed mage.”
Hubert von Vestra is looking at her across her classroom, smiling with death in his eyes.
“Professor Dominic. I had hoped to find you before your class,” he says, the polite words not hiding the threat in his voice.
Annette smiles at him bravely. “I apologize. Shall we take tea after class?”
Her students are staring up at her, mouths agape, and it’s so quiet a pin would send all their ears ringing.
Hubert shakes his head. “I’m afraid it must be now. Kindly, we have things to discuss.”
He offers an arm to lead her out of the classroom and she’s not foolish enough to say no. Her skin is on pinprick edge.
“Everyone please continue on your assignments,” Annette calls over her shoulder. “I’ll be back shortly I’m sure.
Hubert towers over her, but she can see from his sharp smile at her words that it’s not true.