![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Blue Lions Week, June 12: Freespace
Everyone starts to avoid the cathedral as best they can, with Dimitri there.
Mercedes understands why, of course. It was apparent the day they all joined together at Garreg Mach, fulfilling a promise they'd made when it felt as though they were still children, even though they had all been adults. They had all changed so much, after all.
Yet it feels as though no one has changed more than Dimitri, their prince, their old friend who used to smile and encourage them and strive forward. Hints of his anger had been apparent in numerous places, the catacombs beneath the church most of all, but now.... He's so much harsher, now. Colder and hotter, simultaneously. He says cruel things that bite into the heart, and does not so much as look at them unless he is coaxed to a meeting of some sort.
From them, he wants nothing - not even their assistance in the battlefield, she's fairly certain, considering the reckless way he flings himself into it without any consideration for those he could work alongside.
Maybe it would be better if no one bothered him at all. Certainly that is what Felix seems to think when she finds him right outside of the cathedral, arms crossing and the bags underneath his eyes speaking of many a sleepless night. "Don't even bother with that beast," he tells her testily. "He won't listen to a word anyone says. Frankly, I'm just waiting for him to lash out and kill someone, like the monstrous thing he is."
And yet here Felix is, staying up as long as his body will allow him before he drags himself to the room that once acted as his school dorm. Mercedes doesn't say anything on that. "Even so," she says gently, underneath the twinkling stars. "I just want to check in on him."
"I'll be here," Felix says, "just in case."
Neither of them says what just in case may be. Both of them only hope that it does not come to be.
Dimitri makes a striking figure where he kneels where there was once a statue of the Goddess: white and black furs brilliant under the filtered moonlight, blue cloak spilling forth from his shoulders, all of him hulking from the armor he refuses to ever take off. She can barely see the gold of his hair, made filthy and limp from battle and a wild life. Something about him feels far too still and dangerous... Like looking through the trees, and realizing a wolf has been lounging and watching, just waiting to spring forth.
These things have stopped many people from approaching him before. They do not stop Mercedes, although she does tighten her hands ever so slightly around the satchel she wears on her shoulder. "Hello, Dimitri," she greets politely from the looming shadows of the cathedral, although she has no doubt he has heard her. Her shoes clack too loudly against stone.
For a moment, nothing, and then there is the slightest shift of his head. "Come to pray?" he asks, venom laced throughout his dark and quiet voice. "Do it far from me, then. I want nothing to do with words that will stay landlocked here to earth, useless and wanting."
Was he always so bitter about the Goddess? Mercedes can't remember him being so. Then again, Dimitri never seemed to share her passion for prayer, or choir. She had written it off at the time; not everyone had to be the most devote person in the room all hours of the day. It would have been unreasonable. But now, as she looks upon him in the state he's in, the words he says...
"I actually came to see you," she says. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to circle around him, give him a wide berth. Yet doing that... It feels as though she would be treating him like an animal. This is Dimitri - her Prince, a friend, a person. So she comes right from behind, and takes care to approach him from his left side. "It's been such a long time since we seen each other, and I know you had to take care of yourself while you were... all on your own." Thought dead, for five long years, doing who knows what. She wonders, and she worries. "I thought I could check over you to make sure that you didn't have any injuries that were too severe."
Dimitri doesn't look at her when she comes around to the front of him. His gaze is focused purely at the floor before him, the rubble - although maybe he's not really looking at that, either. "I am alive," he says tersely. "My wretched heart yet beats, and my lungs do breathe. That is enough."
"Sometimes one can be alive, with a beating heart and swelling lungs, and they are still not well," Mercedes answers gently. Dimitri huffs out some sort of soft and bitter laugh, which could be agreement. "Dimitri... You're missing an eye."
She doesn't know where he got the eyepatch. It's in decent enough condition, which is an impressive thing to realize when his circumstances are considered. It's worn, yes, and she thinks that it would be better to replace the strap sooner than later, but it is still determinedly in place. It held fast when he dove into battle against bandits, only a blur of black and blue from where Mercedes could see him.
All Dimitri does is a faint shift of his head, something that might be a nod. She can't tell. "Does it matter?"
"I think it does," she says, and takes a breath. This is perhaps a risk- no, it is most certainly a risk. Yet she can't do anything if she holds herself back in this. So with that thought acting as fuel for any semblance of bravery, she steps before him. Hands at her skirts, she tugs and sweeps them about, gets them out of her way, and kneels down. Like this, she's directly in the way of Dimitri's attempts to stare a hole through the wall, and she thinks it has some affect. His eye flicks up towards her, hollow and dark, before looking determinedly towards the floor.
He doesn't tell her to get away, at least. That's something. She tells herself it is. "You think wrong."
"Maybe," Mercedes says, although she doesn't think she's thinking wrong at all. Maybe she's feeling wrong... But she doesn't think she is there, either. "But I would like to look at your eye, Dimitri. Would you let me, please?"
A part of her wonders if he might refuse her. Has he let anyone touch him since they all reunited?
Has anyone tried?
It's hard to tell if those same thoughts roll through Dimitri's head, silence falling over them again for just a little longer than she would like. "You can't bring it back," he says at least. "There is no sight to return."
"I'm not expecting to." Mercedes shakes her head. "But if I can make any pain ease up, and make sure it hasn't gotten infected... That would be enough for me."
Another too long pause. "I do not care," he mutters.
Dimitri could mean that he doesn't care about his injuries, that he doesn't want or need her help because it is all meaningless. And maybe he does mean that, but he could also mean that he doesn't care what she does, and so it is up to her own desire on what to do. She chooses the believe the latter as she raises one hand, making sure it is in his range of vision. "Then, excuse me," she says.
He looks far too gaunt, she thinks, reaching forward. At least he's still healthy, still looks like he's somehow been managing to eat well despite being on his own for so many years. How did he do it? Where did he go, in order to survive? She has so many questions, concerns.
But all she really has is a touch, right there against his cheek and underneath his eyepatch.
Dimitri breathes in suddenly, quiet and sharp. Both of them go still - Mercedes with her heart stopping in her chest like her fingertips have stopped against his skin, Dimitri with a single wide eye that is almost shaking with emotion. They stay like that a moment, in the lonely moonlight of the cathedral. She doesn't know what he'll do, what he might say - and she has said him quite a few things, mostly to other people (but not always).
Stillness. Breath. For the first time in a long time, Dimitri's eye looks up and at her face. Her existence.
He doesn't say anything. Neither does she. All she does is very slowly, very carefully, slide her fingers underneath the strap of his eyepatch, and delicately pulls it off from around her head.
Whatever was responsible behind his injury, it had to have been a precise incident. What ruined skin there is seems just small enough to be neatly contained behind the cover of his eyepatch. That means, as she begins to pull it away bit by bit, she gets to see just how much damage there is, and how so much that was hidden away is nothing but jagged and healed over skin.
She gets to see that his eyelid is left hanging, almost stuck halfway and twitching, over an empty socket.
In the overwhelming dark of the cathedral, the shadows there seem almost ravenous and never-ending. It is just a hole that, while she logically knows is an inch or two deep, seems so much worse than that. It would not be the first soldier she has treated with a missing eye, of course; this is the sort of pain and horror war causes. Yet she can still remember Dimitri in the sunny hallways of Garreg Mach, looking to her and smiling and helping her with chores for the church...
With the eyepatch in hand, all she can do is hold it limply in her hands, and stare into the hole. Dimitri, in turn, stares into her. "As I said," he mutters. "You can do nothing. Off with you, Mercedes."
"I haven't taken a proper look yet," she says, a lilt to her voice saying she'll brook no argument. And she won't, either. She thinks she can see what Dimitri is trying to do now, but she's come this far. It would be silly to stop. So she tucks the eyepatch away, into one of her pockets, and leans forward with both of her hands rising up this time. "Then... excuse me as I get a better look."
The moment her palms cup his cheeks, she could swear that Dimitri stops breathing. He only stares at her, a million things going on behind that blue eye of his, and she has not a single clue to what any of them could be.
She can't really focus on his actual eye for very long. Her attention is on the darkness that once was his right eye. As the moonlight begins to shine deeper in, reveals the soft flesh and curve that should be housing an eyeball, it's hard to tell if she feels anymore assured or not. There is no greedy darkness, anymore, but is the sad truth any better? The plain reality of it?
"Let me know if this hurts," she tells Dimitri, and carefully presses one thumb to the ruined skin of his brow. She doesn't go too hard, only enough to test the fragile skin of his eyelid, see if it can move up an or if it is burned or too scarred to move an.
Dimitri does not tell her if it hurts. He doesn't flinch, either, or jerk, or anything else that would signal the shock of pain. She has to assume, can only assume, that there's no pain in the eyelid. That doesn't help her figure out if he's letting it droop on purpose, or if something happened during the attack. These aren't exactly the best situations to look him over... But at least it looks decently healed enough. Not perfectly, but... "Did you use a potion on it?"
For this, at least Dimitri answers. Eventually. "Yes. On it, directly."
Not much more of an answer than that... but at least it explains a lot, mainly the state of the skin directly around it, and why there might not be such visible scars on that side of his face. Slowly, she removes her thumb from his eyelid. "Can you blink with your eyelid?"
No response, not a verbal one, anyway. Just a slow, slightly jittery blink. It stills when it comes to a rest, at least, and she'll take that as a good sign amidst all the other very bad ones.
That answers some questions as well, and Mercedes takes the time to consider what she'll do with those answers. From her knowledge of potions effects and other things that are healed at an accelerated pace compared to how the would naturally go, if she had to estimate how long ago it had healed... The injury is maybe a year old. She thinks. That's not really recent, but... "I think I can offer a little help," she says. "With my healing magic, I should be able to ease up some of the muscle trauma that the initial wound induced and which the potion couldn't quite affect." No doubt busy as it was healing the major injury that was losing an entire eye.
"Why even bother?" Dimitri mutters, although his words lack the bite that the normally would have. Both of his eyelids close, almost in surrender. "This is what I deserve, and we know it."
"I don't know anything about that," Mercedes says quite soundly. "Besides, I don't believe it matters what you deserve."
The dismissive snort he makes is a little more in line with the way he's like around most of the others. "Then what does matter, Mercedes, if not my sins?"
That... is a much longer conversation than Mercedes is really confident she can help with. What can she say to someone that's gone through so much? What would reach him? She's not sure. She's only sure of one thing. "For me, personally... What matters is that I can help someone," she says softly. "And I think I can help you."
But she can only do that if he accepts such help in the first place.
More quiet again. She'd like to believe he's thinking on her words. It's a little hard to tell, with his eye closed as it is, the shadow of his armor hiding everything else. "I would rather you didn't," he says at last, and her heart sinks. "But if my suffering does not matter, then you can do as you like."
Does he know he's moved his reasoning? That he's twisted it about? It's hard to tell, quite honestly, because Mercedes knows he could be clever, but there's no denying the sincerity of his emotions either. Still... One thing at a time. One step towards the horizon. She tells herself that, even as she removes her hands from his face and takes a breath.
For a brief and shining moment, the light of her Faith makes the cathedral almost look holy again. It looks like she felt it did back when she was a student, filling her heart with something warm and indescribable.
Faith works in mysterious ways. There is not knitting of skin to see for an injury like this, no cracking of bones as they fused together while held in place. Looking down into Dimitri's face, light blossoming from both of them, she can only pray that what she does is of any good. It is the same prayer that fades away, sinking into his skin.
They stay like that, her hands hovering over him, Dimitri motionless, and then she pushes herself up onto her feet. "Tell me if you start hurting again, alright, Dimitri?" she says, handing over his eyepatch.
Again, no answer. He does hold his hand out for the patch, however, the black cloth almost disappearing into black metal. She accepts it for what it is, dusting her skirts off and walking around him towards the exit. Frankly, she suspects he won't want her company for much longer, and that's fine. For tonight, she accomplished what she set out to do. Sometimes, that's the only solace she can take.
Halfway down the aisle, past dozens of pews both whole and shattered to pieces, Dimitri's voice echoes after her. "In the next battle, do not bother to heal me. It is wasted on me. Leave Garreg Mach. Go to the Alliance, where Claude von Riegan will put you to better use."
So they're still stuck on this particular bit. Well, she can't really blame him. While she addressed it in her own way, Mercedes can't say she really tackled it head on, not like she did for his eye socket. Regardless, she turns back to face him where he stays alone in the moonlight. "I'll still heal you," she informs him, and can't help but smile at the low growl of a grumble that rolls out of him. "I am devoted to the Goddess before anything else, you know, and I am a healer above all else. Here, I think I can do the most good. If I can help you, then I will help you, and you will simply have to stop me."
If he wanted, Dimitri could likely turn around, charge her, grab her with one metal hand and destroy her bones with a simple twitch of his fingers. She remember him being able to do the same to scissors, the two of them bent over a small table as he tried his hand at sewing.
He does not charge her. He doesn't even turn around. There's just the kind of aggravated huff a hunting hound might make, tired and annoyed at some little thing. Smiling, Mercedes continues on her way.
The wraith in the cathedral is still a living person, and that person is still Dimitri, underneath it all. He is no monster, no beast, no ghost. He is still Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, the man who cleverly got Ashe's favorite snacks for him and who spent so many hours helping her study up for her test with swords.
He is a man who told her to go somewhere safer, away from this little kingdom desperately fighting for its life with no guarantee of survival.
He is just a man who is hurt, too. She wasn't lying when she said that she thought she could do the most good, staying here with the cobbled together forces of Faerghus and with their old Professor. Still...
Mercedes is a healer, as she said. And if she can heal Dimitri even a little bit, help him even a little bit... Then that is what she's going to do.
Mercedes understands why, of course. It was apparent the day they all joined together at Garreg Mach, fulfilling a promise they'd made when it felt as though they were still children, even though they had all been adults. They had all changed so much, after all.
Yet it feels as though no one has changed more than Dimitri, their prince, their old friend who used to smile and encourage them and strive forward. Hints of his anger had been apparent in numerous places, the catacombs beneath the church most of all, but now.... He's so much harsher, now. Colder and hotter, simultaneously. He says cruel things that bite into the heart, and does not so much as look at them unless he is coaxed to a meeting of some sort.
From them, he wants nothing - not even their assistance in the battlefield, she's fairly certain, considering the reckless way he flings himself into it without any consideration for those he could work alongside.
Maybe it would be better if no one bothered him at all. Certainly that is what Felix seems to think when she finds him right outside of the cathedral, arms crossing and the bags underneath his eyes speaking of many a sleepless night. "Don't even bother with that beast," he tells her testily. "He won't listen to a word anyone says. Frankly, I'm just waiting for him to lash out and kill someone, like the monstrous thing he is."
And yet here Felix is, staying up as long as his body will allow him before he drags himself to the room that once acted as his school dorm. Mercedes doesn't say anything on that. "Even so," she says gently, underneath the twinkling stars. "I just want to check in on him."
"I'll be here," Felix says, "just in case."
Neither of them says what just in case may be. Both of them only hope that it does not come to be.
Dimitri makes a striking figure where he kneels where there was once a statue of the Goddess: white and black furs brilliant under the filtered moonlight, blue cloak spilling forth from his shoulders, all of him hulking from the armor he refuses to ever take off. She can barely see the gold of his hair, made filthy and limp from battle and a wild life. Something about him feels far too still and dangerous... Like looking through the trees, and realizing a wolf has been lounging and watching, just waiting to spring forth.
These things have stopped many people from approaching him before. They do not stop Mercedes, although she does tighten her hands ever so slightly around the satchel she wears on her shoulder. "Hello, Dimitri," she greets politely from the looming shadows of the cathedral, although she has no doubt he has heard her. Her shoes clack too loudly against stone.
For a moment, nothing, and then there is the slightest shift of his head. "Come to pray?" he asks, venom laced throughout his dark and quiet voice. "Do it far from me, then. I want nothing to do with words that will stay landlocked here to earth, useless and wanting."
Was he always so bitter about the Goddess? Mercedes can't remember him being so. Then again, Dimitri never seemed to share her passion for prayer, or choir. She had written it off at the time; not everyone had to be the most devote person in the room all hours of the day. It would have been unreasonable. But now, as she looks upon him in the state he's in, the words he says...
"I actually came to see you," she says. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to circle around him, give him a wide berth. Yet doing that... It feels as though she would be treating him like an animal. This is Dimitri - her Prince, a friend, a person. So she comes right from behind, and takes care to approach him from his left side. "It's been such a long time since we seen each other, and I know you had to take care of yourself while you were... all on your own." Thought dead, for five long years, doing who knows what. She wonders, and she worries. "I thought I could check over you to make sure that you didn't have any injuries that were too severe."
Dimitri doesn't look at her when she comes around to the front of him. His gaze is focused purely at the floor before him, the rubble - although maybe he's not really looking at that, either. "I am alive," he says tersely. "My wretched heart yet beats, and my lungs do breathe. That is enough."
"Sometimes one can be alive, with a beating heart and swelling lungs, and they are still not well," Mercedes answers gently. Dimitri huffs out some sort of soft and bitter laugh, which could be agreement. "Dimitri... You're missing an eye."
She doesn't know where he got the eyepatch. It's in decent enough condition, which is an impressive thing to realize when his circumstances are considered. It's worn, yes, and she thinks that it would be better to replace the strap sooner than later, but it is still determinedly in place. It held fast when he dove into battle against bandits, only a blur of black and blue from where Mercedes could see him.
All Dimitri does is a faint shift of his head, something that might be a nod. She can't tell. "Does it matter?"
"I think it does," she says, and takes a breath. This is perhaps a risk- no, it is most certainly a risk. Yet she can't do anything if she holds herself back in this. So with that thought acting as fuel for any semblance of bravery, she steps before him. Hands at her skirts, she tugs and sweeps them about, gets them out of her way, and kneels down. Like this, she's directly in the way of Dimitri's attempts to stare a hole through the wall, and she thinks it has some affect. His eye flicks up towards her, hollow and dark, before looking determinedly towards the floor.
He doesn't tell her to get away, at least. That's something. She tells herself it is. "You think wrong."
"Maybe," Mercedes says, although she doesn't think she's thinking wrong at all. Maybe she's feeling wrong... But she doesn't think she is there, either. "But I would like to look at your eye, Dimitri. Would you let me, please?"
A part of her wonders if he might refuse her. Has he let anyone touch him since they all reunited?
Has anyone tried?
It's hard to tell if those same thoughts roll through Dimitri's head, silence falling over them again for just a little longer than she would like. "You can't bring it back," he says at least. "There is no sight to return."
"I'm not expecting to." Mercedes shakes her head. "But if I can make any pain ease up, and make sure it hasn't gotten infected... That would be enough for me."
Another too long pause. "I do not care," he mutters.
Dimitri could mean that he doesn't care about his injuries, that he doesn't want or need her help because it is all meaningless. And maybe he does mean that, but he could also mean that he doesn't care what she does, and so it is up to her own desire on what to do. She chooses the believe the latter as she raises one hand, making sure it is in his range of vision. "Then, excuse me," she says.
He looks far too gaunt, she thinks, reaching forward. At least he's still healthy, still looks like he's somehow been managing to eat well despite being on his own for so many years. How did he do it? Where did he go, in order to survive? She has so many questions, concerns.
But all she really has is a touch, right there against his cheek and underneath his eyepatch.
Dimitri breathes in suddenly, quiet and sharp. Both of them go still - Mercedes with her heart stopping in her chest like her fingertips have stopped against his skin, Dimitri with a single wide eye that is almost shaking with emotion. They stay like that a moment, in the lonely moonlight of the cathedral. She doesn't know what he'll do, what he might say - and she has said him quite a few things, mostly to other people (but not always).
Stillness. Breath. For the first time in a long time, Dimitri's eye looks up and at her face. Her existence.
He doesn't say anything. Neither does she. All she does is very slowly, very carefully, slide her fingers underneath the strap of his eyepatch, and delicately pulls it off from around her head.
Whatever was responsible behind his injury, it had to have been a precise incident. What ruined skin there is seems just small enough to be neatly contained behind the cover of his eyepatch. That means, as she begins to pull it away bit by bit, she gets to see just how much damage there is, and how so much that was hidden away is nothing but jagged and healed over skin.
She gets to see that his eyelid is left hanging, almost stuck halfway and twitching, over an empty socket.
In the overwhelming dark of the cathedral, the shadows there seem almost ravenous and never-ending. It is just a hole that, while she logically knows is an inch or two deep, seems so much worse than that. It would not be the first soldier she has treated with a missing eye, of course; this is the sort of pain and horror war causes. Yet she can still remember Dimitri in the sunny hallways of Garreg Mach, looking to her and smiling and helping her with chores for the church...
With the eyepatch in hand, all she can do is hold it limply in her hands, and stare into the hole. Dimitri, in turn, stares into her. "As I said," he mutters. "You can do nothing. Off with you, Mercedes."
"I haven't taken a proper look yet," she says, a lilt to her voice saying she'll brook no argument. And she won't, either. She thinks she can see what Dimitri is trying to do now, but she's come this far. It would be silly to stop. So she tucks the eyepatch away, into one of her pockets, and leans forward with both of her hands rising up this time. "Then... excuse me as I get a better look."
The moment her palms cup his cheeks, she could swear that Dimitri stops breathing. He only stares at her, a million things going on behind that blue eye of his, and she has not a single clue to what any of them could be.
She can't really focus on his actual eye for very long. Her attention is on the darkness that once was his right eye. As the moonlight begins to shine deeper in, reveals the soft flesh and curve that should be housing an eyeball, it's hard to tell if she feels anymore assured or not. There is no greedy darkness, anymore, but is the sad truth any better? The plain reality of it?
"Let me know if this hurts," she tells Dimitri, and carefully presses one thumb to the ruined skin of his brow. She doesn't go too hard, only enough to test the fragile skin of his eyelid, see if it can move up an or if it is burned or too scarred to move an.
Dimitri does not tell her if it hurts. He doesn't flinch, either, or jerk, or anything else that would signal the shock of pain. She has to assume, can only assume, that there's no pain in the eyelid. That doesn't help her figure out if he's letting it droop on purpose, or if something happened during the attack. These aren't exactly the best situations to look him over... But at least it looks decently healed enough. Not perfectly, but... "Did you use a potion on it?"
For this, at least Dimitri answers. Eventually. "Yes. On it, directly."
Not much more of an answer than that... but at least it explains a lot, mainly the state of the skin directly around it, and why there might not be such visible scars on that side of his face. Slowly, she removes her thumb from his eyelid. "Can you blink with your eyelid?"
No response, not a verbal one, anyway. Just a slow, slightly jittery blink. It stills when it comes to a rest, at least, and she'll take that as a good sign amidst all the other very bad ones.
That answers some questions as well, and Mercedes takes the time to consider what she'll do with those answers. From her knowledge of potions effects and other things that are healed at an accelerated pace compared to how the would naturally go, if she had to estimate how long ago it had healed... The injury is maybe a year old. She thinks. That's not really recent, but... "I think I can offer a little help," she says. "With my healing magic, I should be able to ease up some of the muscle trauma that the initial wound induced and which the potion couldn't quite affect." No doubt busy as it was healing the major injury that was losing an entire eye.
"Why even bother?" Dimitri mutters, although his words lack the bite that the normally would have. Both of his eyelids close, almost in surrender. "This is what I deserve, and we know it."
"I don't know anything about that," Mercedes says quite soundly. "Besides, I don't believe it matters what you deserve."
The dismissive snort he makes is a little more in line with the way he's like around most of the others. "Then what does matter, Mercedes, if not my sins?"
That... is a much longer conversation than Mercedes is really confident she can help with. What can she say to someone that's gone through so much? What would reach him? She's not sure. She's only sure of one thing. "For me, personally... What matters is that I can help someone," she says softly. "And I think I can help you."
But she can only do that if he accepts such help in the first place.
More quiet again. She'd like to believe he's thinking on her words. It's a little hard to tell, with his eye closed as it is, the shadow of his armor hiding everything else. "I would rather you didn't," he says at last, and her heart sinks. "But if my suffering does not matter, then you can do as you like."
Does he know he's moved his reasoning? That he's twisted it about? It's hard to tell, quite honestly, because Mercedes knows he could be clever, but there's no denying the sincerity of his emotions either. Still... One thing at a time. One step towards the horizon. She tells herself that, even as she removes her hands from his face and takes a breath.
For a brief and shining moment, the light of her Faith makes the cathedral almost look holy again. It looks like she felt it did back when she was a student, filling her heart with something warm and indescribable.
Faith works in mysterious ways. There is not knitting of skin to see for an injury like this, no cracking of bones as they fused together while held in place. Looking down into Dimitri's face, light blossoming from both of them, she can only pray that what she does is of any good. It is the same prayer that fades away, sinking into his skin.
They stay like that, her hands hovering over him, Dimitri motionless, and then she pushes herself up onto her feet. "Tell me if you start hurting again, alright, Dimitri?" she says, handing over his eyepatch.
Again, no answer. He does hold his hand out for the patch, however, the black cloth almost disappearing into black metal. She accepts it for what it is, dusting her skirts off and walking around him towards the exit. Frankly, she suspects he won't want her company for much longer, and that's fine. For tonight, she accomplished what she set out to do. Sometimes, that's the only solace she can take.
Halfway down the aisle, past dozens of pews both whole and shattered to pieces, Dimitri's voice echoes after her. "In the next battle, do not bother to heal me. It is wasted on me. Leave Garreg Mach. Go to the Alliance, where Claude von Riegan will put you to better use."
So they're still stuck on this particular bit. Well, she can't really blame him. While she addressed it in her own way, Mercedes can't say she really tackled it head on, not like she did for his eye socket. Regardless, she turns back to face him where he stays alone in the moonlight. "I'll still heal you," she informs him, and can't help but smile at the low growl of a grumble that rolls out of him. "I am devoted to the Goddess before anything else, you know, and I am a healer above all else. Here, I think I can do the most good. If I can help you, then I will help you, and you will simply have to stop me."
If he wanted, Dimitri could likely turn around, charge her, grab her with one metal hand and destroy her bones with a simple twitch of his fingers. She remember him being able to do the same to scissors, the two of them bent over a small table as he tried his hand at sewing.
He does not charge her. He doesn't even turn around. There's just the kind of aggravated huff a hunting hound might make, tired and annoyed at some little thing. Smiling, Mercedes continues on her way.
The wraith in the cathedral is still a living person, and that person is still Dimitri, underneath it all. He is no monster, no beast, no ghost. He is still Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, the man who cleverly got Ashe's favorite snacks for him and who spent so many hours helping her study up for her test with swords.
He is a man who told her to go somewhere safer, away from this little kingdom desperately fighting for its life with no guarantee of survival.
He is just a man who is hurt, too. She wasn't lying when she said that she thought she could do the most good, staying here with the cobbled together forces of Faerghus and with their old Professor. Still...
Mercedes is a healer, as she said. And if she can heal Dimitri even a little bit, help him even a little bit... Then that is what she's going to do.