Their time in Ylisse ended up being well-spent, Kjelle pulling strings to get her friends permission to stay in the castle for as long as they wanted, which meant days and nights just spending time inside its historic walls learning more about her life and who she really was. By the time they finally parted, all on good terms and saying their proper goodbyes at the port rather than through a letter, all air had been fully cleared and they were able to look back on all the time they'd had together fondly. Tears were shed, lingering hugs were given, and even the former enemies who'd once fought in the streets of Garreg Mach were able to part on the happiest of terms, breaking apart with a teasing reminder to not forget the other's birthday under any circumstances.
As a bonus, in those last days before they left, they were able to properly meet Kjelle's soulmate, a rather brash woman named Severa who immediately took a dislike to all of them, but Dorothea most of all. The cattiness and arguing had felt like those early days back in Fódlan as a quartet, but Dorothea remained strong and forced her way into Severa's heart, eventually breaking her down into a relatable person who shared a love of fashion and glamour with her, much to Kjelle's awe and slight dismay. But at the end of the day, Severa was still harsh in her treatment of others, and that was the big takeaway they'd gotten from her in their interactions over those days.
"Guess we can't all end up with pleasant people as soulmates," Ingrid said once they were on the ship bound for Fódlan, their overseas excursion drawing to its close. "But as long as she's happy, that's what matters, right?"
Ingrid being the one to say that made sense, she was on fantastic terms with her soulmate and they had planned so much for their lives together in the short time they'd had to do it, but the other two ladies weren't quite as optimistic about things. "I mean, they've known each other for a long time, maybe she's not such a bitch when they're alone," Leonie replied, glancing toward Dorothea as she spoke. A master at thinly veiled comments, she was not, because Dorothea knew without a doubt that it was a reference toward who her own soulmate was. "Maybe next time we see Kjelle, we can get an update on that."
"You think there's going to be a next time?" While Ingrid asked the question that none of them knew the real answer to, Dorothea headed elsewhere on the ship, fully intending on spending the trip home trying to distract herself from what she knew she needed to do next. Now that there wasn't the pressing issue of making sure that their runaway friend wasn't in any danger, that left addressing her own soulmate problems as the next task, something that needed to be taken care of before she resumed her tour schedule with the opera company. She either needed to head off to Derdriu and hope that the person she was looking for was there, or write to Hilda and get him to visit Garreg Mach instead. With how much traveling she already had done in her off-season, she wasn't exactly looking forward to having to do even more after getting home, so the second option was the one she took.
By the time they landed in Fódlan, Dorothea had written her letter intended for Hilda and sent it off before they'd even gotten back home, anticipating a response in her mailbox within a week of return. What she got instead, after getting to the apartment and finding it exactly as they'd left it in their hurried rush to get on their way to Ylisse, was Hilda herself already there, knocking on the door within an hour of them getting there. "I rushed out here as soon as I got your letter," she explained, "which I know is super unusual for me, but soulmate matters? Totally something I want to deal with right away."
"You wrote to Hilda to deal with this?" Leonie asked in disbelief, grabbing her ponytail and making sure that it was properly obscuring the back of her neck. "That was a horrible idea, Dorothea, especially if you told her—"
"She only told me who her soulmate is, which is fine because I already knew who yours was to begin with." Shushing Leonie with a hand motion that mimicked grabbing her lips and holding them closed, Hilda looked at Dorothea with a wistful, almost apologetic look. "If I'd known this sooner, I would have given him an earful about how to treat you right, but I didn't know anything. I'm so, so sorry about what the rest of your life is going to look like."
"You aren't the first person to say something like that to me," Dorothea assured her, hoping to take at least a little of the guilt off her shoulders. "Apparently, he's a real uptight prick, from what I've gathered and what I saw myself. A prick with a fondness for wine and blatant flirting with strangers."
"I wouldn't go that far; Lorenz isn't that bad when you get to know him deep down. It's just the process of getting to know him deep enough to make it matter." Shaking her head, Hilda glanced at Leonie, who was still adjusting her ponytail, mouthing something in her direction before going right back to talking to Dorothea. "And if you don't get to know him deep enough, it's really okay because he's super easy to tune out. Just tell him you'll take him to a show and sleep with him and he'll be a happy guy."
"Something tells me I should have expected to hear that," she grumbled, pressing her thighs together as a means to put pressure on her mark. The more she learned about Lorenz, whether it was new information or a rehashing of something she'd previously been told, made her wish that she'd been given a better soulmate in all of this. "Do you think that, once I can talk to him and we're both familiar with what we're meant to be, he'll chill out or do you think I'm in for a bad time?"'
Hilda scrunched her face as she thought about the answer, Leonie behind her wildly shaking her head with wide eyes. "He's definitely not going to be changing as a person anytime soon, but he's been so caught up in the idea of having a soulmate that matches him at his social level that having someone like you instead…well, I don't know!"
"Someone like me? What's that supposed to mean?" Dorothea was already sure she knew exactly what that meant, Lorenz was fixated on his standing in life and she didn't come from a family with any notability whatsoever. "You think he's going to reject me as his soulmate because I don't have a family name to hide behind?"
Laughing, Hilda clarified things right away, holding up two fingers that she wiggled as she spoke. "No, I meant that you're famous and have talent, two things that Lorenz, dear, sweet Lorenz, lacks severely. He's coasted through life on his family's money and the title he's sure he's going to inherit, and to have been paired by the goddess with someone who made her own living on her own merits, it'll be humbling for sure."
"I think that's good, isn't it?" Humbling him could make him a better person, and Dorothea couldn't see why that could be considered a problem of any sort. Yet Hilda stood there in front of her, trying her hardest not to keep laughing, with Leonie behind her with a grimace on her face that spoke louder than any words ever could. "Oh come on, here I am trying to find the good in this situation and you're both making it hard for me. Why did I have to be the one to get paired off with him?"
"We all can't be prince-getters," Hilda dryly said, nodding backward with her head toward Leonie, whose grimace grew deeper at the call-out. "Nor can we all be people who fall immediately in love with their soulmate, like Ingrid obviously did. Some people have to fight to make things work out in the end."
But nothing that had been said made Dorothea feel like she wanted to be fighting to make a relationship with her soulmate, and had instead deterred her from wanting to even speak to him to attempt finding shared ground. Unfortunately for her, with so many others being aware of the situation, there was no getting out of an arranged meeting, and Hilda was more than glad to do the planning and setting up for it, getting Lorenz (and Claude, he was coming too) to arrive in Garreg Mach. This was for what was planned as a simple lunch at a café near the apartment, one that had been properly vetted beforehand to make sure it wasn't going to be too busy for the conversations, in case they got loud and potentially aggressive, a warning that made Dorothea all the warier about going through with it.
There was one significant detail left out of things when the plan had been run by her, something that Hilda had failed to mention entirely, and so on the fateful day weeks later, when Dorothea walked into the café she found that there was already a familiar face sitting there to listen. "Well if it isn't the troubled songstress, been pushed into any streets lately?" Sylvain jokingly asked, Dorothea's jaw dropping as she saw him get up from his table to come greet her. "Or are you completely in 'soulmate meeting' mode? Shouldn't be disturbing your focus, huh?"
"What are you doing here?" she managed to ask, while he grabbed her in a hug and nearly lifted her off of her high heeled shoes. "Sylvain, seriously, why are you going to be here for this? Don't trust that it'll go well?"
"Look, when Hilda tells you that there's a chance a smarmy bastard's going to get what's coming to him, you don't take that without wanting to watch it for yourself." Setting her back down on the ground, Sylvain flashed her a giant smile, which was all-too-tempting to smack right off of his face. "Point is, I'm here as a body to get in between you two if things get heated. Unless you want to take it out into the street, pull a Kjelle on him, that sort of thing, then I'm staying out of it."
As her jaw hadn't fully recovered from the mere sight of Sylvain being there, Dorothea let it continue to hang as she took in his blunt answer, realizing that the expectations from everyone were that the meeting was going to go horribly. Even when Leonie came in a few minutes later, unfazed by Sylvain's presence as she'd been in on that aspect from the start, she didn't seem like she was expecting things to go very well for her friend. "Loving these reassuring words, you two," Dorothea muttered, physically pushing her mouth closed to keep herself from saying anything further.
"It'll all be fine, we're just playing with you," Leonie said, ribbing her with an elbow that was covered with a shirt of fine fabric, her dressed up the nicest she'd been in a long time. "I'm sure you and Lorenz'll do great finding things you have in common with each other. I already know me and Claude'll be experts at it."
"And if it starts going bottom-up, I'm here to stop it for you," Sylvain reminded her, heading back to his table and trying his best to look like just an average patron at the café, not someone who was there working as a freelance guard.
The ladies took their places at tables on opposite sides of the room, menus and tea kettles already set up for the occasion. Waiting for anything to happen was the longest part, difficult to stay seated and calm while time went ticking by slowly, the door to the building staying closed for the longest time. Every so often, Dorothea would glance over at Leonie to see how she was handling the wait and found her fiddling with her sleeves (eventually rolling them up past her elbows) and collar (which ended up popped, her hair cascading over it like a waterfall in sunset). There was the fear that they'd both been stood up, that Hilda hadn't managed to get the guys to show up after all—and then the door opened.
Just like he had on the night of the festival, Claude looked regal without being too over-the-top about it, to the point that if one wasn't familiar with his lineage they wouldn't have ever suspected that he was actually royalty. On the other hand, Lorenz looked like he was trying far too hard to look like his name and title mattered, and just at the sight of his formal top and pressed jacket, Dorothea found herself internally scowling even if she kept her visible expression as pleasant as possible. While Leonie got up to physically greet Claude, Dorothea could not be bothered to do the same for Lorenz, something that he noticed right away.
"No hug to say hello?" he asked, voice sounding slightly hurt and disappointed. "I would have expected better of you, my love."
Those two words rang in Dorothea's ears, a reminder of the end of their last conversation where she'd used those words on him in a mocking way, and she shuddered where she sat. "I didn't think it would be appropriate for strangers to greet each other that way," she replied, knowing that a denial of what he wanted from her would get under his skin. "Sorry, but I'd only hug you like that if we were friends before this."
"Oh, but we are more than friends, so it would only be appropriate for you to show some sort of affection toward me." Pulling out his chair and taking a seat, Lorenz flipped his hair out of his face once he was sitting down comfortably across from Dorothea, trying to not let his disappointment in her behavior show. "What a wonderful turn of events that led to us being here, together, don't you think?"
She knew the sort of answer he was expecting from her, and she refused to give him it. "It's definitely a turn of events, can't exactly say that it's wonderful." Watching his eyes twitch at her complete no-sell of his attempts at getting her to open up, there was a feeling of victory rising within Dorothea's heart. If she could keep up this attitude and behavior, maybe this meeting wouldn't be so tricky after all.
That was her plan for the first little bit, while they shared tea and made awkward eye contact with each other, Lorenz trying his best to get to know her and be romantically forward while she refused him every inch of the way. But there came a point where she started to realize that she wasn't doing herself any favors in treating him with such indifference, because this was the man she was fated to be with. The goddess herself had assigned him to be her lover, and she was taking everyone else at their opinion and word about him before getting to know him herself. She looked at Lorenz, seeing how his attempts at cordiality had completely ended and he was merely sitting there, waiting for her to lead the conversation, and with a sigh she said, "Look, can we start this whole thing over? I'm having second thoughts about how I've been going about this and—"
"What, have you come up with more ways to try and put me down?" he asked, bitterness evident in his voice that hadn't been there before. "I know that you have zero interest in me, you have made that incredibly clear thus far, but you would like to get to do it all over again? Is that really what you are asking?"
Flinching at the way he'd said all of that, exposing his read on her behavior and how not-wrong it was, Dorothea knew she needed to save face before she was having to get Sylvain dragged in to save herself from her own mess. "I'm asking you if we can start over so I can do it right this time. I…I really should have come into this with an open mind and heart, and I've realized that now."
"Very well, we can start over." Rising from his chair, the mere act of Lorenz going to the door to start back at the beginning had everyone else in the room who was aware of what was going on looking at Dorothea, confused, but she played it off as well as she could. She stood as well, waiting until Lorenz came back to greet him the way he'd first wanted her to, with a hug that lasted for just a moment and gave her quite the smell of the rather strong cologne he'd put on for the occasion. Now, this time, instead of starting with him being hurt by her decision to not greet him, they were starting with her coughing at the smell and how it burned her lungs.
Once she'd gotten control of her coughing, they returned to conversation, this time not as pointed and angry as it had been the first time around. There still wasn't a whole lot being said that was changing Dorothea's mind on the man across from her being her soulmate, but she was slowly realizing that he was a different person to her than to others, simply because they had that fated bond. He was still condescending and a bit of a prick, but he seemed genuinely interested in getting to know her better, and she was doing her best to meet him where he wanted her.
At one point, mid-conversation, they heard the other pair getting up, Leonie calling out, "We'll see you two later! Have fun without us supervising!" while Claude laughed audibly until they'd both left the building. That was when Sylvain left too, mentioning that he was going to make sure everything was going to end well there.
In their absence, Dorothea realized it was now just her and Lorenz there, together, nothing stopping them from getting into a fight beyond their own self-control. "I suppose this would be a bad time to bring it up," she started, raising a hand to twirl one of her delicate waves of hair, "but I've heard a lot about your feelings toward people who don't come from big, rich, important families. Care to share about that?"
Lorenz seemed a bit taken aback by the question, going so far as to clear his throat a few times before giving any sort of response. "Yes, well, as the heir to everything the Gloucester family name stands for, I have always tried to surround myself with people cut from the same cloth, so to speak. There have been many exceptions made over the years, of course, but my closest friends and confidants have been nobility to some extent."
"So how do you feel about your soulmate not meeting that rule of yours?" Watching the way his eyes widened at her revelation, Dorothea felt almost bad for throwing it out there when they were trying to do things right, but it was a bridge that needed crossing. "I'm not noble, I'm not secret royalty, I don't have a family that has any big role in society."
"But you…but you're a…"
"Fódlan-famous opera singer? I got there from my talent and talent alone, I didn't need mommy or daddy to pay for my way to get to the top, it was all my voice." There was a clear internal struggle happening inside Lorenz after that, him sputtering and starting to say words that never finished, his eyes unable to meet hers for some time. "Sorry to burst your perfect life bubble like that, but it's just how it is."
"How could the goddess set me up in this way?" he asked, his whole body slowly leaning forward until he was almost slumped over the table. "The Gloucester name has always been noble-blood bound, there is no way the goddess would expect that to change. Surely you have some sort of relative that fits the bill."
She shook her head, knowing that doing so was only stomping Lorenz into the ground further than she already had. "Can't say that I do. But why does it matter? The people you're trying to impress would probably think it's more interesting that you're soulmates with one of the most talented opera singers Fódlan has ever seen than if I was just another noble."
The damage had already been done, and Lorenz was not going to accept her workaround on this one unchangeable aspect of who she was. "You not being a noble may seem fine to you, but think about future generations of…of…" He was shaking, trying to come up with the word he was looking for, and while he was running through all of his possibilities, he looked straight at Dorothea. His eyes were shining in his anger, but all Dorothea could think about was how lovely the color was, how it matched perfectly with the etching on her skin that had told her this was her soulmate. This was the man she was supposed to love.
A man so worried about her not being from a notable family that he couldn't even think straight. "Hey, you don't need to stress out any longer, I definitely get it." Now it was her turn to stand up, just as an attempt to diffuse the situation. "There has to have been some mistake, I can't be expected to be with a guy who doesn't see me for myself, so if you're going to get hung up on my family, that's the end of this for me."
Without another word she went to the door, leaving to find Sylvain on the other side rubbing his cheek. "Turns out trying to playfully flirt with a woman out with her soulmate is a horrible idea," he said to explain why he had such a nasty red mark on his face. "That Claude really can lay it on you if you're not careful. But, uh, you need me for something?"
"I'd recommend going in there and calming Lorenz down, he's losing his mind over something I have nothing to do with." Smiling innocently at Sylvain to get the point across that she had literally done nothing wrong, Dorothea watched him process her words before going back into the building, allowing for her to walk down the street to her apartment in her best dress and highest heels, looking like royalty but ultimately being nothing close to it. She knew her worth, and if Lorenz couldn't see it? That wasn't her problem.
Not only did Dorothea have to deal with Ingrid being head over heels in love with her soulmate, but now she had to handle Leonie and her constant disappearances and reappearances with new stories about her adventures back in Derdriu. "I'm telling you, it's so much better being back there this time around," she said after one return trip, her neck wrapped tightly with a scarf that she'd been gifted from Claude. "I feel like I'm welcome to do things and that I'm actually loved, it's such a great feeling!"
"Because your last time spending this much time in Derdriu was ruined by a certain purple-haired menace, huh?" Dorothea asked her, sounding annoyed but rightfully so. She already knew the answer, and she was still harboring harsh feelings toward the man in question after their encounter, feelings that had yet to find a chance to be resolved. "I'm super happy for you, but maybe you can stop rubbing your good luck in, hm?"
"I'll try, but no promises." Those were some famous last words for Leonie, who proceeded to continue talking about her excellent trips after they'd happen, much to Dorothea's growing displeasure on the matter.
There was a tipping point that she reached one time, when Dorothea came home expecting to find an empty apartment and finding Claude sitting on her couch acting like he'd belonged there the whole time. "Uh, how'd you get in here?" she asked, closing the door behind her and knowing exactly what she was going to get as an answer.
"Leonie let me in, we just got here not that long ago."
Dorothea slowly nodded, her eyes drifting down the hallway to Leonie's bedroom. "Right, because that makes perfect sense, I ask her to stop rubbing in her luck and she brings the whole prince instead!" A pause, while Dorothea's eyes snapped back to Claude and how he was sitting in the same spot someone else had preferred earlier in the year. It was too good to pass up making a comment about it, and so she told him, "You know, if I was paid every time there was a member of a royal family sitting on my couch, I'd have been paid for it twice. Which really isn't that big of a deal, but…"
Looking at her trying to make sense of what she was saying, Claude eventually laughed. "Here I was, thinking you were trying to tell me that you've had Dimitri over here sitting on your couch, but then I realized that you were talking about Kjelle. How funny that it's two members of a royal family who'd rather not own up to that role, that adds quite the layer to the whole thing."
"Yeah, it—wait a second, I highly doubt you and Leonie just casually bring this up between the two of you." Rushing to stand right behind Claude, him looking up at her while she stared down at him, Dorothea continued, "You have to have known already that Kjelle was a princess before the rest of us, is that what you're trying to tell me?"
"I mean, yeah, I knew that about her, it's kind of surprising that none of the rest of you did. I'm the one she was talking to before she fully committed to going back to Ylisse, I told her that running away from her real life and responsibilities wasn't going to get her anywhere, which she had quite the response to, because hello, pot meet kettle and all that, but she sure listened to me." Laughing for a moment, Claude let his eyes squint as he kept looking up at Dorothea and her unamused face. "How did you not know that she was royalty of some sort? She's got a royal branding on her hand!"
"You expect me to have known that before seeing it everywhere in Ylisse? I'm not the one who grew up in royal circles," she replied, stepping back and shaking her head at how Claude had known something that would have been mighty helpful for the rest of them to know as well. "Or noble circles, for that matter, even though that would help me out a whole bunch at this point."
"Lorenz will come around to you, when he realizes that you're the best he's going to get. Dude just gets a bit too caught up in his own vision of what his perfect world should look like." Claude sat up normally, now facing completely away from Dorothea. "I've known him since we were teens, not a super long time when you think about how long others have known each other, but he's always been focused first and foremost on making his family proud. Hard to relate to that when you've run away from your family and all of its expectations, but I guess I get why he wants everything to be according to his plan."
"But it's not going to be all according to his plan, since I don't fit into his neat little box he expects me to fill." Shaking her head to move past talking about Lorenz the best way she could, Dorothea went right back to where they'd been before getting derailed. "Anyway, why didn't you tell any of us that Kjelle was a princess? Why did we have to go chase her down to find that out for ourselves?"
He let her question hang in the air for a moment before answering, "Because it wasn't my thing to tell you. She didn't want anyone knowing, aside from those who already knew. If I'd told anyone for her, that would get back to her parents somehow, which could easily create political drama that I definitely want no part of."
"Right, because it would be traced to you out of everyone who'd crossed paths with her while she was here." Crossing her arms over her chest, Dorothea felt like she'd just sent a serve toward Claude that he wasn't going to be able to retaliate against, but she was proven wrong with a few simple words, him saying that he was the only person she'd seen who knew the fact for certain. "Wait, really?"
"She came to Fódlan as a guard, remember? Even getting here she wasn't playing her royal role, no one would've guessed she was a princess if they weren't told, but I already knew because…well, because I did. Unwilling royalty and all." He chuckled, before sighing. "Wish I'd been able to spend more time with her while she was here, it's always great to see someone you have that sort of connection with."
"What are you two out here talking about?" Coming down the hall from her bedroom, Leonie looked like she'd just spent a bit of time readying herself for a day out with her soulmate, dressed about as nice as she ever did but with actual effort given in making sure her clothes looked fresh. "It's not something that an interruption is going to ruin, is it?"
Claude stood up before vaulting himself over the couch, nearly taking it down with him as he flipped over it. "No way, we were just finishing up anyway," he said, giving Dorothea a wink before grabbing Leonie's arm and pulling her into him. "You're looking great, let's go do whatever it was you were telling me about, yeah?"
She was more than happy to oblige, and soon enough Dorothea was left alone in her apartment, the only sounds she heard the echoes of her footsteps and breathing as she walked around, trying her best not to lose her composure. All her life, she'd been waiting to meet her soulmate and see what kind of person they were, and now she was left wishing that she'd been given someone better. Someone more like the friends she'd made that she loved so dearly. Someone more like the soulmates those friends had ended up with. Someone the exact opposite of whatever Lorenz was trying to be.
Her feet took her down to Ingrid's bedroom, barely used anymore as she was spending almost all of her time in Faerghus with Ashe. Ingrid had been her first real love, the first person she could have seen herself spending her life with, but fate was a cruel mistress and gave her away to someone who seemed to share the same ambitions in life that she'd always held dearly. Their relationship and following friendship were things she'd always treasure, but it would have been a lie for Dorothea to say that she didn't wish that everything had turned out different. "I miss you," she sobbed, collapsing into Ingrid's bed and taking in a deep breath of her close friend's scent. "I miss everything about you, I wish you were mine instead of…"
Instead of what, exactly? Instead of belonging to someone else? Instead of having been forced to separate because they weren't soulmates? Instead of getting to live out her dreams with someone who was meant for her? All of that felt bitter and not like something Dorothea should have been feeling, not when Ingrid was now so happy with the life she'd been given. There was no way that she was going to give any of that up for anything, not with how much she seemed to be looking forward to with her future. Leonie, too, wasn't going to give up even a bit of what she'd been given, even if it meant giving Dorothea someone that she knew was going to be there for her.
That was how Dorothea ended up wrapping herself up in sending letters to Hilda, looking for a way out of the whole mess that finding her soulmate had brought into her life, and getting nothing useful in return. Talking to Hilda was a process, weeks spent waiting for her responses if she ever was going to write one, and after moons of the often-unanswered letters Dorothea decided that she'd just be better off going to meet Hilda herself, instead of waiting for guidance that never was going to come. That was how she ended up in a carriage to Derdriu on her own, on an off week as her touring season had started and she had the time to travel a bit for her leisure. This time, she dragged with her a trunk full of her professional dresses that she performed in, so that she could leave Derdriu to go straight to her next concert hall without any delay, and she embarked on this journey alone to prove that she could do it.
Instead of finding Hilda waiting for her at the transportation hub, she found Lorenz in her place, looking highly annoyed at the prospect of seeing his soulmate. "When I was told I needed to pick someone up on Hilda's behalf, I never expected it would be you," he growled when he saw Dorothea approaching him wearing a look of disgust on her face. "What business do you have around these parts?"
"I came to see her, but I guess she decided I'm not worthy of her time," Dorothea replied, sounding just as upset as she felt about being shafted like she had been. "I mean, I suppose this gives you another chance to reconsider how you feel about me, seeing as you're too noble to abandon a visitor without anywhere to go, hm?"
Giving her a once-over, Lorenz shuddered but knew he'd been called out. "I suppose that is true, and with your trunk of belongings it only seems fair to assume that people would see you for being a performer rather than as some nobody…" He gave a long sigh, offering Dorothea a gloved hand to hold. "Until Hilda realizes that you are her responsibility, I will take care of you any way I can. How long are you to be here for?"
"Just a few days, I have a show in Arianrhod that I have to be in attendance for, given that I'm the top billing performer." Batting her eyelashes, Dorothea was attempting to lay her importance on thick but Lorenz seemed disinterested, leading her and her giant trunk to his personal carriage, where they were driven by someone employed by House Gloucester back to his dwelling, a mansion that Dorothea felt intimidated by. This was the kind of life she would get to live if her and Lorenz could see eye-to-eye with one another?
It seemed almost unreal how the life of this mere noble seemed more majestic than the royal life she'd gotten to experience when she'd been in Ylisse. The next time she saw Leonie, she was going to have to compare stories about her time getting to explore Claude's lifestyle with whatever she was about to endure there in the Gloucester mansion. Lorenz made quick work of getting her whisked away into an isolated wing of the home, insisting that she keep her distance from the main parts of the mansion due to the presence of "prejudiced" people that would tear her limb from limb. "You mean people who think I'm lesser because I'm not from the nobility?" she asked, watching as Lorenz made sure that even his family's servants and maids knew to stay away from the room she was in. "Do you really think that people who aren't noble are invalids or something?"
"I would never think such a thing," he assured her with his voice low, "but my parents, I cannot say the same for them. Any lover I have brought home has been torn apart if not of the nobility, and I would rather you not have to endure the same sort of treatment."
With an extended eye roll that had one of her eyelids positively fluttering, Dorothea gave Lorenz the most aggressive pose she could muster—shoulders held high, head tilted slightly to the side, one hand placed perfectly on her raised hip while the other hand had knuckles on her chin. "I see, I see," she said, sounding every bit as unamused as she looked. "Tell me, Lorenz, why should I be here if this is how you're going to treat me?"
"This is merely for your own safety and happiness, I promise that you will be perfectly fine if you stay in here at all times." Seemingly missing how annoyed Dorothea was with his method of keeping her safe from his family's judgment, Lorenz reached toward her with loving hands that she coldly rejected, earning a small gasp from him. "Please, my love, allow me to embrace you as all soulmates should."
"I'm not playing your stupid games right now, Lorenz."
"Games? I must confess, I see no 'games' here aside from the hard-to-get one you're choosing to play with me." His face twisting into a smile that showed almost no real happiness behind it, Lorenz attempted to grab Dorothea again, only for her to step right out of his reach. "I don't understand, what are you getting at with this? You came all this way to spend time with me, did you not?"
She pursed her lips together, giving a loud hum that was meant to be an audible cue to his thick head that she wasn't enjoying what he had planned. "I did come all this way to be treated like an actual person, not some creature that needs to be locked up and isolated from everyone else! Lorenz, can't you see that you're enabling your family's thoughts about non-nobility by treating others like this?"
"What else would I do? Allow you to be subjected to their cruel taunts and comments?" Even with her attitude being pointed directly at him, he was remaining steadfast in his decision. "I understand that this was not the trip you had in mind when you decided you would give me another chance, but it truly is for the best."
He took a few steps backward, toward the door to the room, and she stared back at him, maintaining her pose until she saw him reaching for the doorknob, at which point she ran toward him, nearly barreling right into him. "I'm not some animal you get to keep in a cage," she snarled, catching him by surprise and having him blink a few times at her aggression. "My family does not matter when it comes to us being soulmates, my background has no impact on what kind of person I am, I can't believe that I'd be dumb enough to travel here in my free time just to see if you could see me as myself and not my name."
"That…" Lorenz uttered the one word, then opened the door behind him. "That just isn't possible, not to everyone el—"
"I don't care about what everyone else thinks, Lorenz!" Finally losing all of her composure entirely, Dorothea grabbed him by the arms and shook him. "The only person whose opinion matters right now is yours, but you're so busy worrying about what everyone else thinks that you seem to have forgotten that!"
His eyes went wide as he heard footsteps behind him, coming from the other side of the open door followed by a voice calling out asking if he was fine; he slowly shut the door and looked at her, almost blindsided by the change in personality she'd undergone. "Dorothea, I get that you are not going to accept what I'm doing or why I'm doing it, but you need to understand that the world I live in is quite different than the one you live in. I have to bring you in slowly and carefully to keep you safe."
"And I get that you're not going to accept why I think that's an absolutely shit answer, but you have to understand that there's no difference in our worlds at all." Watching as he winced at her vulgarity, Dorotha found herself not caring even slightly about what he was going to say about that. "I'm a songstress, my name holds more power across Fódlan than you could even imagine yours ever carrying, and yet you think you need to keep me safe? Me? The one who has a security detail the likes of which only royalty can regularly command?"
"The Gloucester family name is revered across Fódlan as well," he retorted, starting to lose his normally-formal personality in exchange for one a bit punchier. "Plus, we have money and power, two things you and whatever family name you have can't say they carry."
Raising her hands as if she was going to grab his face and shake it intensely to try and get his brain thinking straight, Dorothea clenched them into two fists that trembled with the pressure she carried in her fingertips. "My family, my background, my whole life outside of us knowing each other doesn't matter, you idiot! I am not my family, just like you aren't yours, and I can't believe you just can't see that for yourself!"
With that, she backed away and threw herself onto the bed that was set up in the room, her anger blinding her to the fact that it was easily the nicest bed she'd ever laid upon. "Perhaps allowing you into my family home was a poor choice on my part," Lorenz muttered as he opened the door and greeted whoever was on the other side, meeting them outside as he closed the door promptly behind him. Without him there to antagonize her, Dorothea spent a lot of time cursing her poor luck, cursing her soulmate mark with its purplish-gray color, cursing her willingness to give him a try, and cursing the fact that she was alone in a room that she had no interest in being in. When she tried to get out a little while later, she found the door locked from the outside, meaning that Lorenz had trapped her in there with no means of escaping.
He wasn't gone for too long, but long enough that she had decided that he was holding her hostage and that she needed to break out the first chance she got. "I'm not an animal, nor am I a prisoner, you know," she told him with an air of annoyance strong in her voice and facial expression. "If I'd known you were planning on locking me in here, I would have waited at the hub in Derdriu for Hilda to finally show up."
"She never planned on picking you up," he replied after seeing how much fury was held in Dorothea's eyes. "From the beginning, she had me in on the plan, and I figured I needed to play the role of unwilling participant to gain your trust. Hilda wants to live vicariously through us both until she finds her own soulmate, after all." He then went on to explain that he hadn't locked the door, a servant had because the room they were in was typically unused and kept locked to keep guests out of it for one particular reason. "This room is meant to be used as a…post-marriage consummation suite, as the story goes," he admitted, face reddening at what he'd said. "But as there are no impending marriages, I figured it would be an easy place to keep you hidden away."
Dorothea slowly panned her eyes over to the bed, which she'd found so warm and inviting, then looked back at Lorenz in horror. "You're trapping me in the room that your family members decide to have sex in? Really?"
"Not my family, thank the goddess, but visitors to the gardens who have their weddings here." He grimaced as he saw how angry she was getting over that revelation, but he persisted nonetheless. "This has been my go-to room for hiding visitors of my own in for years, starting back with when I would sneak Leonie here to…ahem." Lorenz coughed to clear his throat and his mind, brushing his hair out of his face to show Dorothea his soulmate mark for the first time, an intricate design that wrapped from his jawline to his temple and was colored in the most vibrant, and recognizable, color that she could imagine. "See if this would show up with her color, which as you know was not the case."
Squeezing her eyes shut, Dorothea shook her head wildly. "I'd rather not think about how you used to lay all sorts of women in this room, thanks."
"My apologies for that." Bowing his head as he put his hair back in place, Lorenz kicked at the polished stone floor with his toes. "At any rate, I returned the moment I knew it was safe because I wanted to propose something to you. Not marriage, and at this point I don't foresee that changing, but something else. Something I had been considering since I first heard about the kind of woman you are."
"What, a non-noble woman?" she asked, opening her eyes simply to glare at him until he made it clear that wasn't the case. "Oh, then go on, I suppose. This probably has to be at least somewhat worth my time."
"You have made it very clear that you have no interest in adhering to the standards the Gloucester family would prefer all members to follow, and your lack of noble family would already put a black mark on your name to start." Wincing as Dorothea went right back to glaring at him, he quickly followed with, "None of that matters, however, because your lifestyle is simply incompatible with my own, nobility being ignored."
Taking a moment to process what he meant by that, Dorothea replied, "I can't say I really understand what you're saying there. Do you really do anything outside of sitting around, judging people from humble backgrounds, and waiting for the day that your parents keel over so you can take over the leadership of the family?"
"There is more to it than that," he laughed, a welcome sound despite all of the harsh feelings flying around, "but at the end of the day I suppose you're right in that summation. But needing to be present for daily affairs here would mean that traveling with you would be impossible, and I would never ask my soulmate to give up her career to appease me."
"That's…oddly sweet of you," she said, realizing how big of a decision that was for him to have been willing to make. "Let me guess, that's something that was a problem between you and other ladies you've been with, hm?"
He winced again, this time with eyes slightly unfocused as he thought about past situations he'd been in. "Only one or two, most women I've romanced have been rather lacking in their day-to-day lives and were looking for an in with the nobility through me."
"Right, because saddling themselves with someone like you would be worth the potential title and wealth." It came out a lot harsher than Dorothea intended, because she was meaning to make a joke about things but seemed to have cut Lorenz deeply instead; she was left apologizing to him for a few minutes while he tried to explain to her that he was a much better person than what she'd seen and experienced. "No, no, I'm sure you're a decent guy deep down, it's just your whole…nobility is best mindset that's the problem."
"It isn't a mindset so much as a way of life in the Gloucester family," he corrected, sounding somewhat dejected still from her earlier slight. "Unfortunately, that is one of those things about myself that I cannot change, the family that I came from and the lessons they imparted into my soul."
"Then I think we're never going to be seeing eye-to-eye on things." Dorothea was glad that they'd been willing to have a more stripped-down conversation where she was able to pare away pieces of who Lorenz was to see the man underneath, but she couldn't see any point in going further. "The goddess screwed up in making the two of us soulmates when there's just too much familial baggage to look past."
"That does seem to be the conclusion we're coming to here, yes," he agreed, before slowly walking her over to the bed, sitting down on it and gesturing for her to sit next to him, something that she did after some hesitation. "I have waited my whole adult life to meet the woman I was fated to be with, just to find out that she and I are just that—fated to be together but nothing else. No spark, no desire, just a string of fate through our markings that ties us to one another."
She nodded, feeling very much the same about everything that he had just said to her. "It's almost like the goddess overlooked some key details about your family when making this decision," she dryly said, resting her hand on her inner thigh over her dress. "Almost feels like a waste that the rest of my life is going to be spent having to assure people that it's okay that I already have my soulmate, I'm not interested in him and would rather be with them."
"You're planning on doing that?" he asked, offended and incredulous, and when she nodded he took a moment to accept that for what it was. "I see. I suppose that I could do the same, it is quite easy to get women to follow me wherever I go by flaunting my name and title, but it would always feel wrong to…" His words trailed off as he looked at Dorothea, meeting her eyes with a gaze that meant no wrongdoing or harm. "Always feel wrong to forget that you're meant to be mine."
A memory flashed into Dorothea's mind as she found herself staring back into Lorenz's eyes, something that Leonie had told her when they'd been talking about him, about how she'd been sleeping with him for money and how she mentioned he wasn't great in bed. While there was always the chance that she'd been lying to try and make her feel worse about who she'd been paired with, it was still possible that she'd been telling the truth from the start and that what she was about to say was going to be a huge mistake. "There's nothing saying that we can't have a strictly non-romantic relationship, just to make this soulmate thing worth it," she told him, causing him to make a double-take when he realized what she was implying. "I mean, I've never had much of an interest in being with guys, but if you're my one and only…"
"You want us to have a sexual relationship without the attachments?" he asked to clarify, and wording it that way made Dorothea feel a bit less sure of it but she nodded anyway. "Well I would—I have—what kind of noble do you take me for? Sleeping around with someone that I am unattached to? Can you imagine the scandal?"
"The risk's there for me too, with my career and all. One wrong move, one slip-up, and my reputation's tarnished for being promiscuous. But we were paired together for some reason, and right now, that's the only one I can really think of." Posing her free hand under her chin to give herself a slightly angelic and innocent smile, she watched as Lorenz sputtered and considered what she'd just proposed over and over, until he admitted that he couldn't think of anything better as a workaround.
Over the duration of her stay there at his family home, Dorothea was able to get a rough plan for how their future was going to be handled hashed out with Lorenz, starting with the fact that it wasn't going to ever be a point of contention that they were soulmates. They were undeniably linked together but that was not going to mean anything in a romantic sense, and if either of them tried to push that matter in a serious way all bets were off on how things would be handled going forward. But, as long as they were both respectful of the other's wishes, they could interact as often as they pleased in non-romantic manners, which could vary from just talking as friends to more explicit behaviors. There was also going to be an understanding that they were allowed to seek romantic partners as they both wished, but their partners needed to be aware that they did have a living soulmate that they had an agreement with to keep in mind.
By the time she was on her way back to Garreg Mach, Dorothea had shared a bed twice with Lorenz and could see herself welcoming him into her bed back home whenever she felt he deserved it, because what Leonie had said before had been completely wrong (at least from her perspective, as limited as it was). Lorenz was much more useful as a bedmate than he was as anything else soulmate-related, and as long as he kept his mouth shut about her family or her lack of noble title, she was going to be very accepting of his sexual gifts whenever they saw each other going forward.
But that was something to be addressed in moons to come, because Dorothea needed to get back to focusing on her touring and the career that mattered more to her than the love of her soulmate ever could.
The apartment in Garreg Mach sat empty for moons on end sometimes, the only person who still lived there committing herself to her work rather than spending time at home. Ingrid had gone to Faerghus to be closer to family and to be with Ashe on a more permanent basis, Leonie was with Claude and his rotating living situation, whether at his home in Derdriu or wherever else it was he happened to have a house of his own, and despite her better judgment Dorothea had made it a point to never let the apartment go unlived in for too long. The rooms that had once belonged to the other ladies sat virtually empty, but still with just enough in them that when they came back to visit they had a place to sleep, if just a tad crowded because they never came alone and their rooms had never been meant for one person to live in.
Life didn't revolve around those visits by any means, but it definitely broke the monotony of the touring and working life to plan out a trip where friends would be there in Garreg Mach at the same time as her. Dorothea started to put those plans together oftentimes before the previous visits had ended, just so that she always knew who was going to be there with her when she'd be back home. Leonie and Claude, Ingrid and Ashe, even once it was Kjelle and Severa coming all the way from Ylisse to recall the summer that had changed everything, they all were welcome in the apartment as long as Dorothea was available for it. It didn't always go according to her plans, and she would occasionally be spending her limited off days there on her own just for someone to pop in to see her; oftentimes this would be friends who still lived in the town, but that number slowly started to dwindle over time because of them finding their soulmates and chasing them to the ends of Fódlan to find their happiness.
If anyone was to come visiting the apartment unannounced from afar while Dorothea was there, though, it was most often Lorenz, who had made good on their agreement to not force the soulmate issue with her too much. Their encounters were usually short, them spending time together catching up before making the decision of how their night was going to be spent—sometimes Lorenz got to sleep in someone else's empty bed, sometimes it was in hers with her right next to him—and then they would talk until it was time to tuck in. While it wasn't the traditional way for soulmates to handle one another, it was the way that best suited them and their clashing personalities and ideals.
On at least three separate occasions, Lorenz had popped in when Dorothea had brought someone else home with her, a woman that she'd met while on tour that she had made an amorous connection with; he was quick to explain that he was Dorothea's soulmate but that he had no issues with her dating someone else and would be charmed to get to know her better. By morning the woman would be gone, Dorothea would be displeased, and Lorenz would be confused about why what he'd done was a problem. "It would be wrong of you to lie about having your soulmate," he reminded her, tapping her on the nose as he spoke. "Honesty is your biggest selling point in this world."
"I'd never lie about knowing my soulmate, but I would lie about you being alive," she replied through her teeth, forcing the words out in the kindest way possible just to watch him recoil at their sharpness, even if it wasn't meant to be malicious. "You're a menace, Lorenz, and I hope when you find someone you'd rather be with than me, I'm allowed to ruin it for you."
"And why would I let you do that?" he asked, moving his hand down to grabbing her chin instead, while she huffed at the close contact. "Why, when I find someone who can look past me having my soulmate…that will be the day I find myself no longer needing you and everything you offer me."
After one too many times of going through this same song and dance, no matter how playful it was, Dorothea found it inside herself to jerk her head out of his grasp and gaze into his eyes, her expression making her feelings on the whole agreement incredibly obvious. "Well, keep your head up, Lorenz, and keep your love for whoever's stupid enough to want it. The goddess did us both a disservice on putting us together forever, but we've got to make it count somehow."
He smiled at her, reading the look in her eyes as one that was looking for comfort but not love, a companion in her bed but not one in her life, and she slowly joined him to return the favor. "Then shall we go make it count the only way we know how?"
"Wouldn't have said anything if I didn't."
