Work Text:
You wake up to a dark, mostly empty hospital room in Derdriu. Apart from the hospital bed you currently lie in, you see a small couch and a table, with a flower basket whose contents were already wilting by the time they were delivered to your hospital room. Your arm’s got an IV that slowly drip-feeds antibiotics, nutrients and painkillers into your burnt, damaged body, which despite a successful skin graft treatment still shows extensive scarring. It’s hard to look down at your body, as your neck is cradled by a brace that impedes further movement, but even if you could, the bandages over your face limit and blur your field of view.
The reason you are awake, the reason your eyes dart around the room, dimly lit by the full moon shining through the window, is because your sleep has been interrupted by a visitor in your room, who just moments ago was standing next to the table and the flower baskets. You know who it is, and you know she has come by to see you at your lowest.
Because, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, you surely are at your lowest right now.
You don’t remember the accident. You said goodbye to your fiance as you left your home one afternoon, and your memory cuts out soon after. Apparently, it had involved a semi-truck, and when you were pulled out from the flaming wreckage, you couldn't even remember your name. However, the concussion that caused your memory loss would end up being the least of your problems. Skull and neck fractures only compounded what had happened to your body, as tire tracks and flames alike had deformed you beyond recognition. You do not anticipate the day the bandages are removed, as you know the visage that will meet your eyes will retain none of the elegant charm you once possessed, Lorenz. You know this, and your parents and relatives surely know this as they winced when they first looked upon your broken body trapped on that hospital bed. She knows this too, and that is why she's visited your room as you sleep, pain dulled only by morphine and fatigue.
You met Mercedes 4 years ago today, at a house party hosted by one of Garreg Mach University’s fraternities. This wasn’t the sort of party you normally attended, as you saw such gatherings as below you, but you had promised Ferdinand you’d come, and you never go back on your word. Some cretin had thrown up on your shoes, hastening your departure, and you were mid-apology to your friend when you spied her dancing in the living room. Mercedes was wearing a thin dress with a newspaper print pattern, and her movements were quick, angular, even violent. Her light brown hair, cut short in a bob, somehow caught the incandescent lighting of the living room perfectly, almost forming a halo around her head. So despite your anger, embarrassment and disgust, you simply had to approach her, ask her name, and try to charm her.
Mercedes was many things: sweet, kind, patient and understanding, but innocent was not one of them. She longed for you and wanted you to share a bed with her, even encouraging you with tight embraces, sweet nothings in your ear, and eager, pressing kisses. You, Lorenz, were the prude who declined all of her “dangerous advances”, who denied himself the intimacy she offered and you so deeply desired simply out of principle. It did not help that she could also be simple, vulgar even, as she often demonstrated to you by sunbathing on her balcony, nearly nude save for her old, tired underpants. Even she would agree, as she herself once said, “the sunlight isn't very flattering on me, is it?" It wasn't; the sunlight filtering through the city skyline revealed all of the uneven peaks and valleys of her body, rendering it less an object of your reluctant desire and more like an ugly landscape.
Mercedes ultimately would never be the sort of woman you could take home to your family, who would fit in with high society comfortably, who could fill the role your upbringing had inevitably reared you for and she completely lacked. Any attempt at teaching her propriety or manners would be contrary to her nature, which secretly you couldn't help but admire, even as you resented it publicly. So you did what was expected of you, Lorenz: you ended your relationship with Mercedes, and broke her heart into just as many pieces as your skin was torn to by tire, fire and glass that afternoon. Instead, you courted and proposed to a woman who was prim and proper, physically endowed and well taken care of, and someone who would never speak back to you. This woman, as well adapted as she was to your social class and lifestyle, was the exact opposite of what had drawn you to Mercedes, what had compelled you to seek out her company right up to the point where your morals and ideals won out over your heart and your loins.
And that’s why Mercedes is here at the hospital, visiting you in the dead of night long after everyone has left you alone. Your fiance? Vanished from your side and your life, telling you and your father that she could never spend her life with a man as deformed and damaged as you were now. Mercedes would have never abandoned you, Lorenz, because her love for you went beyond your good looks and your sharp wit. And so it is that a ghost, the memory of the woman you once loved, visits you in your sleep, dressed just as she was when you met her at the frat party. The difference is, Mercedes no longer has kind words for you. She can only offer you sympathy, or maybe it’s pity and you can’t tell the difference. As she speaks to you, her newspaper gown catches on fire, to remind you she isn’t really here, and that she’ll never grace your life again with her presence. Especially now that she’s met Claude.
Mercedes met Claude the week after you tossed her love away like garbage to be collected by someone else. He soothed Mercedes’ anguish and pain, calmed her mind, and took her off her clothes in his beer-soaked apartment. Free from your stifling sense of propriety and class, Claude had his way with Mercedes, much like you often dreamed of doing but never did, and she was more than happy to let him do so. Whether Claude really meant the words he said as he held Mercedes in his arms on that night does not matter, Lorenz; what matters is that he fucked her, and you didn’t. But you will never know this. You will never know that Mercedes now considers you a bad memory, a man she should not have wasted her time on, that she considers Claude a blessing in disguise to get her back on her feet, and that she’s ready to find love again, whether it be with him or someone else. Yes, she will find it, but you won’t. You had already found true love, and willingly given it up. Your memory is all that’s left.
You see sirens laughing at you, all bearing the face of your former fiancee, and Mercedes' dress keeps smoldering as she turns away from you. You wake, fall asleep, and relive her visit, her words and the sirens all over again, and again, and again. You will see them in the mirror once you've had your bandages taken off, and you will see her at home when you wallow in your solitude. For you Lorenz, whose name was once uttered with affection, this is your burden, and your burden has a face and a name, and that name is Mercedes von Matritz. Her presence will always remind you that for the rest of your life, love will always rhyme with pity.