Not Worth Pursuing
Note: Happy Birthday, Dilandau!
This is a one-shot exploring Dilandau's POV during the first two chapters of "A Means to an End." That story was written largely from Merle's perspective and though that was fun to do, it also felt like something was missing. Konstantya helpfully suggested that I should try writing up something about Dilandau so this is what I came up with. I also chose to use the past tense in this one because I'm really more comfortable writing this way.
It's always a challenge to get inside his head because of everything that has happened to him. And considering there's this extra issue of incorporating (hopefully in a plausible way) his interest in Merle, this was really tricky.
Hope you like it anyway!
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She thought he didn't notice but he always did.
From the moment he had arrived, he had taken note of her presence. He was initially surprised to see her without Van Fanel.
Not that he had had any desire to cross paths with the king of Fanelia, even though the war had long since ended. Some begrudging agreement had been reached between them and they had long since mutually decided to avoid each other as much as possible and on the rare occasions that they needed to be in the same place, they would tolerate each other's presence as civilly as possible. This arrangement had worked well for the most part.
He had half expected to see the young Fanel even though he knew that the latter was busy with his royal duties. But there she was, the cat-girl who had formerly been inseparable from Van Fanel. On her own. It almost seemed incongruous.
She had stared at him curiously when he first arrived and he was ready for some hostility on her part but that never came. It was clear that she had been surprised to see him and suspicious of his motives, but there had been no unpleasantness.
They rarely interacted with one another until she stumbled upon him doing his nightly training exercises. He had noticed her presence then but made nothing of it. She had left immediately, as if she had intruded on a private moment, and he had not expected her to come back.
And yet she did. Night after night, she was there. Watching him most attentively.
He had grown slightly self-conscious but he did not show it. If she would not speak to him or bother him, he would simply ignore her presence. But one night, he decided to set things straight, once and for all by confronting her.
"Don't you have anything better to do?" he had asked.
She had been flustered by his approach and could not meet his gaze with ease.
"I hope you didn't think I'd be stupid enough not to notice you were there," he had said coldly.
And it had taken some time for her to respond. She had seemed nervous and uncertain around him. Intimidated, that had been clear enough and he had enjoyed it.
"Why do you care?" she answered defensively.
He had been surprised by her fierce tone. "Well, if you're spying on me, you're not doing a good job of it," he had said, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm not spying on you," she had insisted.
"So answer my first question then."
She had struggled for another few moments before answering, "There isn't much to do around here."
That he couldn't disagree with and he had shrugged, believing the conversation to be at an end.
"And I'm just making sure you aren't up to anything suspicious," she had blurted out impulsively.
Something about the way she had tried to threaten him had amused him and knowing then how easily she was intimidated, he decided to make the most of it. He had walked closer to her and noticed immediately how unsettled she had become.
"And if I was," he had whispered, "are you going to be the one to stop me?"
Agitated, she had muttered something in reply.
"Do whatever you want," he had said with a hint of warning, "just don't get in my way."
And so he had resumed his exercises, seeming to paying no more attention to her. But he noticed when she tried to act like she was storming off, despite being nervous around him.
Much as he had enjoyed teasing her, he had not expected to see much of her after that.
And yet, there she always was, watching him intently but never saying a word. He was constantly aware of her presence but never acknowledged it. Neither did she make any attempt to interact with had an unspoken agreement to pretend that they were alone even though they were regularly in the same place. It was a suitable enough arrangement.
After a while, he stopped believing that she was there to keep an eye on him. Surely, she had seen enough of him to know that he had no intention of causing any trouble, not out of an intrinsically benevolent nature but because he was too exhausted to pick a fight over nothing. It had been a great struggle for him to survive this long and he wasn't going to squander what little life he had over any petty squabbles.
There was no hostility in her manner towards him and he could always tell when people were being hostile towards him. More often than not, people avoided him and yet, there she was, constantly observing his nightly rituals.
He thought it would annoy him but he found her presence surprisingly and peculiarly comforting. Not that he would ever admit that.
But he sensed that she stayed because he fascinated her somehow. Vain as he was, he could not imagine her being seriously attracted to him, not after such a history between them. But he piqued her interest, that much was clear.
And whenever she wasn't looking, he would steal glances at her as well, trying to figure her out. He didn't normally pay particular interest to people but her unusual behavior intrigued him. So he started noticing certain things about her.
Like how grown up she now was, which was only to be expected after all the time that had passed. The last he had seen of her was during one of the battles, where she clung fiercely to her precious Lord Van. But now that she was on her own, she seemed to have gained a certain confidence. He was beginning to really see her as a distinct individual and what he saw was not unappealing.
She was taller and more graceful, her body more developed. She reminded him of how the twins had looked like and he realized that she was probably the same age as they had been. She had the same feline allure but less of their combative nature, which was only to be expected since she was not a trained soldier.
He had never been on particularly good terms with Naria and Eria but being soldiers of Zaibach, they had all just tolerated each other. Every now and then, they would spar together or exchange sarcastic comments in between training sessions but that was the extent of their interaction.
In retrospect, Dilandau decided that they had been attractive, in their own way, but he had never really been interested in them like that because he had been too focused on fighting and they had been obsessed with their precious Lord Folken.
"What is it about these Fanels that inspired such devotion from cat-women?" Dilandau wondered. But unflinching loyalty was a quality he could appreciate and for a moment, he was reminded of his past loss. But he did not care to dwell on that.
Judging by Merle's presence there, she had somehow decided to take her own path, away from her master's shadow. Considering how attached she had always been to Van, this had surely been a tough decision and Dilandau thought it deserved some credit.
He still wasn't sure what she expected to achieve by following him around every night and he wasn't sure if he wanted to change the current setup. She wanted something from him but she was holding back.
The more he thought about it, and he found himself thinking about it more often than he would have preferred, he wondered if he wanted something from her too. If he wanted their interaction to extend beyond the silences and the furtive glances. There were some moments when he would briefly catch her eye and see a hunger there that he recognized but did not want to believe.
And despite everything, he soon became victim to the same stirrings of desire. He had grown so accustomed to being alone that he had thought himself immune to all this nonsense. But apparently not.
He was reluctantly growing attracted to her and if the intensity of her glances and her constant presence were any indication, she felt the same way. And he found himself imagining certain situations in which they would finally give in to these desperate urges. And at the end of the day, why should they not get what they want?
After all, these were very different circumstances. They were no longer on opposite sides of a war. Some people may object but they wouldn't care about that. Other than their own hesitation, there were no real obstacles to any possible…future?
"What a ridiculous notion," he thought with annoyance, dismissing the idea, "I'm letting my imagination get the better of me. There's no point even thinking about her that way."
He knew that the past always had a way of reasserting itself. It was so easy to dredge up all sorts of unpleasantness during inopportune moments and he had been so involved in difficult moments in her life. Even if, in some bizarre twist, she were to reach out, nothing good could come of it.
Surely she could never want this, never want him. It was too absurd. And as for whatever he felt about her, that was a matter not worth pursuing.
"There isn't really much to do around here," she had said and he couldn't help but agree.
An extended lull in activity such as this was always a dangerous thing. It allowed one's mind wander to unexpected places, to dwell on possibilities that one would never even have considered.
This was why he had to focus completely on his training exercises, to keep himself occupied. He needed to avoid having his thoughts stray to certain people. He needed to avoid getting drawn into situations where he had no control. In his experience, this only led to misery and he already had more than enough of that. He didn't need more reasons to lie awake at night.