The next time Marianne caught Felix's sharp glare, he was slumped against a boulder. His right arm ran red with splotches of blood dribbling down from a wooden arrow that pierced through the flesh of his shoulder. That long-sleeve white shirt was undoubtedly ruined, but Felix seemed no worse for the wear beyond having a more annoyed disposition than usual.
"I can't believe that bastard sent me out there with these ridiculous mittens when I have a perfectly fine sword!"
He lifts the iron gauntlets still around his hands off the ground and slams them both down at once, causing a sharp clang to ring out across the canyon.
Marianne gasps at the aggressive outburst and takes a step back. She was nervous already, standing over her raven-haired comrade trying to decide what she should do, but his poor demeanor didn't help. Really — blaspheming the Professor of all people!
Luckily, she clearly wasn't the only one taken aback by Felix's attitude. The scrawny, liberally-freckled Ashe stood to Felix's side with his bow slung behind his back.
He runs both hands through his grey hair and sighs, trying to steady himself.
"Felix please, you must relax." Ashe's soft-spoken voice was obviously trying to come out with as comforting a bedside manner as possible, but the underlying warble of nerves was hard to completely cover up.
"I'll relax as soon as you get this damned arrow out of my shoulder Ubert," he snarls while looking at Ashe with gnashing teeth.
Ashe briefly backs away from the hostility.
But soon enough he puffs out his chest and turns on as serious an expression as his somewhat cutesy, soft features could muster.
"I can only pull the arrow free if you relax!" He 'yells' back, though it was more a slightly raised voice. "Otherwise it's just going to tear your tense muscle tissue apart."
Felix grimaces at the thought and leans his head against the boulder. He shuts his eyes and takes a few deep breaths.
While he gets ready for the makeshift procedure, Marianne peeks her head around the right side of the stone he was sitting against.
The battle for the control of Zanado had been raging for a good while now. Once they arrived at the canyon proper, scouting reports suggested the enemy was hiding out in multiple areas. It was decided that the Knights of Seiros and the Blue Lions class would take different sections, leaving Byleth and his students on their own against a small militia.
They had been given a smaller surface area to cover: A part of the ruins that were believed to be significant by some archaeologists. From the southern entryway, there was only one route into this area across a bridge. The Blue Lions easily crossed this checkpoint and made it onto a semi-circular plateau rising out of the bottomless chasm where a ruined building full of looted, broken chests lay dormant. There were two paths available to reach the other side of the expanse where the bandit leader Kostas sat waiting; one more heavily fortified bridge to the north and a slender, natural rock bridge past the building to the west.
Byleth split his students across both paths so they could flank the small fortification on which Kostas had taken refuge. He had encountered the scruffy, beady-eyed man once before during the assault near Remire Village on Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude months ago, so he knew the bandit would crumble easily against multiple assailants.
Felix had been tasked with leading the northern flank across the bridge.
Obviously that hadn't ended too well for the black-haired noble, who was pulled back so they could tend to his injury. The battle continued without him, and as of yet not much progress had been made to the north. Without a sheer powerhouse like Felix, whose major Crest of Fraldarius provided an edge in combat; Dedue took up the front line. Equipped with an iron shield, Dedue was a wall not many could break through. He was just too focused on protecting Dimitri to really push through.
Yet Marianne did happen to look upon the bridge assault just as the mountainous man from Duscur charged a sword-wielding bandit. He bashed the unsuspecting man with his shield clutched tight to his chest. The war cry Dedue bellowed almost completely drowned out the sound of the bandit's terrified screams as he plummeted to an unsightly demise.
"… Hello?"
The blue-haired cleric pulled her eyes away from the horrors of war and back to Ashe when he calls for her. That leads her gaze to Felix, reminding her why she was here in the first place.
"Are you ready, Miss Marianne?" Ashe asks with a pleasant formality unbefitting their surroundings. "As soon as I pull this arrow free you'll need to close up the wound."
"Um… Of course," she mumbles back with a nervous nod.
He nods back at her, no more confident. Luckily Felix had his eyes closed and wouldn't see the hesitation in those he currently entrusted with his safety.
Ashe kneels beside Felix and rubs his hands together to make them less slick. Then he rests his left hand on Felix's arm while gripping the shaft of the arrow jutting out with his right.
That's the first time Felix betrays that numbness to the pain he portrayed. He hisses out a cuss and briefly tenses up when Ashe grabs the arrow, but soon relaxes again.
"Alright, on the count of three…" Ashe begins after a deep breath.
"One… Two…"
Yank.
The raven-haired boy yelps out and squirms against the rock, his back arcing away from it. A puff of blood sputtered out onto Ashe's shirt, but the rest of the torrent that escaped was only apparent from the river of red flooding down his sleeve.
"M-Move please!" Marianne squeals.
She stumbles forward and drops to her knees beside Felix. Ashe gets up and steps away to give her some room, tossing the loosed projectile over his shoulder. It clatters against the stone floor before rolling away. Thankfully the arrow was completely intact, nothing left behind.
Marianne crosses her palms over the wound in Felix's arm. A bright, semi-translucent green glow obscured the space under her hands.
The boy's spasms slowed and eventually stopped the longer he was exposed to the warmth of her healing aura. It both began to close the hole and sent a rush of euphoric pleasure tingling across his upper body.
Felix lets a carefree sigh escape as his pursed lips soften into a thin smile.
For just a moment, Marianne can't help but smile back — not that he could see her with his eyes closed. It was good to know that she could make even someone as hardened as Felix Hugo Fraldarius feel good.
Her face pulls back into a casual gaze as she feels Ashe rest a hand on her shoulder. She looks up to find the small boy towering over her with a smile of his own.
"If you've got this, I'm going to head back out there. Ingrid apparently found an unopened chest, and they need someone to pick it open."
"Right… Of course." Marianne felt her nerves return as she imagined being alone with Felix, but she had no right to keep Ashe away from where he was needed.
"Just be safe, okay?"
Ashe grins, chuckling at her comment.
"You can count on me!"
And with that he was off, re-equipping his bow so he could fire off an arrow or two across the chasms at their opponents before slipping into the abandoned building.
As soon as Marianne was confident that she had closed Felix's wound enough to be stable, she slowly weans him off the flow of magic. Healing spells could be dangerously powerful when they weren't diluted to cast from a distance, so she made sure he would be fine without the numbing effect before going to the next step.
The blue-haired girl pulls a spool of gauze out of a small pouch she carried and carefully wraps a strand around his shoulder to stop any further bleeding.
Once she was satisfied, she pulls her hands away and stands up again. By now the pleasant smile on Felix's face had been replaced by a general look of cautious, collected ambivalence.
Opening his eyes, those orange irises lay upon her without the sneering daggers she was used to, for once.
"Thanks," he says.
It was a simple gesture of gratitude, but Marianne could immediately tell it was genuine — perhaps even hard for the boy to bring himself to say.
She offers a slight smile in return and bows.
"I… I'm just doing my job."
Suddenly, the sound of a blade cuts through the air to her right. Marianne barely has the chance to react before she hears the sharp metal sever cloth and slice into flesh.
However… It's not her body that takes the blow.
The paralysis that overtook her entire system breaks when she feels a bit of blood splatter against her right cheek. She looks toward the source to find Dimitri standing between her and a snarling bandit. The Prince's arm is cut, and the sword used is still biting into it.
Marianne can hardly say a word. The best that manages to escape is a jumbled sputter of too many thoughts trying to escape at once. However, the emotion she felt is splayed all across her face — particularly in her widened, shaking brown eyes.
Somehow, someone broke across the bridge. Someone who wanted to kill her.
But Dimitri took the hit.
Despite all the terrible thoughts that ran through Marianne's mind about spending the rest of her life being blamed for killing the Prince of Faerghus, Dimitri seemed no worse off than usual.
His free, uninjured arm twirls his lance like a baton. It gracefully spins with an airy whoosh until he grips down hard to stop it.
Then the sharp end thrusts forward, piercing the bandit's stomach with a sickening squelch. He tries to scream in pain, but winds up gurgling on the blood that bubbled out of his throat and down his lower lip. Dimitri callously tugs his weapon out of its human sheath and allows the bandit's body to crumble to the floor.
After it was obvious the limp figure posed no other danger, he looks at Marianne over his shoulder. Though hardened for battle, there was still sympathy in his eyes.
"Are you okay?" He asks.
She simply stares for a long moment before nodding in a silent affirmation.
"Good," he smiles. "Sorry, we let that one slip by. Do try to watch for any danger from here on though. Alright?"
She nods again, voice still gone.
Dimitri seems appeased. He runs off toward the bridge, ready to join Dedue and Byleth as they doubled-down against one of the few remaining bandits.
It looked like the tide of battle was turning in their favor.
But Marianne continued to stand there. Terrified energy wracked her body with shutters. Even when Felix eventually rose to his feet and ran to join his allies, all she could do was stare into the middle distance. At one point she manages to lift a hand and rub some of the blood off her cheek, but staring at the red that stained her fingerprints only made her feel more sick.
The sooner this conflict could end, the better.
Once Kostas was defeated, fighting all around the Red Canyon quickly ceased.
As the Knights of Seiros arrested the remaining combatants to bring them back to Garreg Mach for judgment, Byleth slipped away to find a ledge up high. Ever since the mercenary had arrived, there was a nagging sense of familiarity tugging at his chest. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had never been to this part of the mountains, but he felt a burning desire to get a better vantage point all the same.
Staring out over the natural splendor of Zanado brought on a mix of emotions — even if Byleth's face betrayed no feeling whatsoever.
On the one hand, he was overcome by how wonderful everything was. The air was fresh and reinvigorating, and the dilapidated columns and mossy walls of the old ruins evoked a sense of mystery that made observing them exciting.
But on the other hand, the familiarity was driving him crazy. He knew he had never been here. Yet questions kept echoing through his head.
"Since when has it been called the Red Canyon…" Byleth mutters.
While he contemplates that question, a chill runs along his spine. He felt like he was being watched.
And he was.
"I wonder why it is that you recall this place."
His gaze jerks toward the second voice, which strangely sounded as though it was both directly beside him and ringing through his skull like a delusion.
It didn't take long for him to figure out whom the voice was coming from, but seeing the cascading emerald hair in his peripheral vision confirmed his suspicion.
"You must be weak of heart. Each time I speak, it scares you so," Sothis remarks with a chortle as she floated in the air beside him.
"You surprised me," he responds in that characteristically bland tone of voice.
She rolls her eyes and starts to circle around him.
"Well I figure you should be used to my presence by now," she teases as he turns his head to try and follow her. "Keep this up and I'll have to start comparing you to that sickly blue-haired girl you're always scaring."
Byleth tries to rebut her accusations, but she's having none of it. In fact, she puts her foot down (metaphorically speaking) and moves on.
The two go on to talk about why he feels the way he does about Zanado, a place that Sothis herself feels a strong emotional attachment to as well.
But at the bottom of the canyon, that 'sickly blue-haired girl' watches the curious instructor. Marianne has her right fist clutched in her left hand, seemingly mid-prayer, as she stares up at him.
By now she had wiped the blood away and was over the blunt of her shellshock. But she clearly still wanted to be alone.
Which is why she was naturally joined by another wandering soul.
"Isn't it curious how it always looks like the Professor is talking to himself when he is alone?" Dimitri asks in a somewhat jovial tone.
She replies with silence while looking over him. He had his arms crossed while his icy blue eyes gazed up at Byleth.
For the most part, Dimitri looked as happy as his tone suggested. They had completed their task quite successfully, after all.
Yet Marianne couldn't help but longingly stare at the bandage around his arm.
When it becomes clear she was not going to respond to his question, Dimitri looks over at her. She immediately turns her eyes back toward her shoes in turn, not wanting to catch his gaze directly.
"Ah… I'm sorry if I've disturbed your prayer, Marianne."
"There's no need to apologize," she quickly interjects with hopes of dissuading this conversation. "I just finished."
That just makes him smile and nod.
"I see. What were you praying for?"
There is no escape.
"I was simply asking the Goddess… For forgiveness."
"Forgiveness?" He lets out a breathy kind of scoff in disbelief. "Forgiveness for what?"
He didn't understand. She didn't know why she expected him to.
"I put our soldiers in danger," she mumbles. "Especially Felix. I wasn't paying attention, and—"
He cuts her off.
"What matters is you all were safe in the end. You shouldn't blame yourself for that."
Dimitri tries to comfort her by resting a hand on her shoulder. However, the gesture spooks her more than anything, and Marianne pulls away from it.
That causes Dimitri to grimace as it pulls at the wound on his arm.
Marianne looks mortified to have caused him any pain. An apology screams out of her widened eyes.
"You did tell me I wasn't watching closely enough…"
He couldn't argue, and rubs his neck sheepishly. The point obviously wasn't taken quite like he meant it to.
"And you were injured when you came to our aid, Dimitri."
"That?" He holds up his bandaged arm and offers a slight grin. "It was just a scratch. A small price to pay for your safety."
"But…"
"I would never regret helping an ally, even if it meant losing my own life."
She was stunned. How could he say such a thing?
The longer she spent with Dimitri, the more she started to believe Felix about their fraternizing being a bad thing. Not because he would kill her one day, but because he might kill himself for her. Sooner rather than later.
Being blamed for the death of the future King of a nation left without a birthright ruler was a terrifying thought. Yet… Somehow it was not quite as terrifying as the thought of outliving yet another companion.
Marianne knew she needed to get out of this conversation fast. She could feel herself starting to hyperventilate.
"No, no. That's all wrong."
"Pardon?" Dimitri is taken aback by that, and raises an eyebrow curiously.
"I… I can't… It's just all wrong!" She shakes her head, jostling more hair to fall in her face and hide her from the world. From him.
"You have my thanks for helping in the battle, Dimitri. But I'm afraid I have to ask that you keep your distance from me."
There's a pause as he stares at her, trying to gauge just how serious she was being.
"Is that so?" He eventually asks.
Her response is immediate.
"Yes."
Again he takes a long pause to soak in the moment. He closes his eyes and turns his head to the floor, crossing his arms once more.
"Forgive me, but I will be there for you." There's a sense of indignation in his voice now. "Whether you want me to or not."
"Bu—"
"I can give you space around the monastery Marianne, but if we're on the same battlefield again do not expect me to leave well enough alone. My lance will be your shield as much as it is for any of our allies."
All Marianne does is tilt her head down. She resigned herself to the idea, but was not happy about it.
Dimitri wasn't very happy about leaving the conversation on that awkward note either. However, he wasn't sure where they could go from there.
He turns tail and starts to walk off, cape flowing behind him as he searched for a way up the cliff to meet with Byleth.
Marianne clasps her hands together again, shuddering.
"I'm sorry…"