Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

         Bernadetta is the first to fall.

         Sweet, shy, nervous Bernadetta—she’d come to Byleth three weeks into the school year, shaking and stuttering as she’d asked to transfer classes, little hands wringing at her chest. Byleth had said yes- he’d said yes, and he’d taken her amongst his beloved fawns as one of his own. They’d had tea together every Tuesday afternoon, Byleth sitting cross-legged on the ground outside, Bernadetta in her room; the door cracked open between them, their tea and snacks arranged neatly atop a silver tray that would double as a doorstop. A compromise, they’d called it. As the months passed, they’d moved gradually out of her room, first into the greenhouse, then the garden, slowly but surely working their way up to the more populated areas of the monastery.

         By the time the ball had rolled around, she’d been comfortable enough with crowds to let Hilda coax her onto the dancefloor, flushed from the eyes they drew but no longer so viscerally afraid of them. When their dance had come to an end, she’d been smiling—wobbly and unsure but there, distinctly thrilled and more than a little bit proud—as she’d curtsied, a bit shaky from lack of practice, and Hilda had cooed adoringly and pressed loud, smacking kisses into her cheeks as Bernadetta squealed her embarrassment, and Byleth remembered the older girl telling him, once, that she’d always wanted a little sister.

         Bernadetta falls, not thirty minutes into the first day of the battle—her shrill, terrified screams carrying across the battlefield as she’s ripped down from her horse by a mass of sick-dead-pale-wrong soldiers. Byleth’s entire world seems to end at the sound- he doesn’t know what happens next, can’t see because that’s how grossly outnumbered they are, but he feels it, deep in his chest, the moment she dies- the moment her strangled screams fall to silence.

         No.

         Byleth reaches back, world going black around him as time fractures—splits to pieces to be re-assembled at his will.

         He sends Bernadetta northwest with Hilda and Lorenz, sandwiched between the two knights for fear of her being unseated again. Hilda rides up front, breaking through the line with that brute strength she’ll swear up and down she doesn’t have, leaving Bernadetta to dispatch those knocked off balance by her axe while Lorenz covers their flank, alternating between healing and offensive spells as needed.

         It doesn’t matter.

         An arrow from across the field breaks through Flayn’s neck. Byleth doesn’t see it happen, but he hears Seteth’s agonized wail as his daughter’s body drops off her pegasus, cuts through the air like a stone to land in the purpled, muddied waters of the swampland below. Three more arrows come in quick succession, taking advantage of Seteth’s shocked state—one catches his shoulder, threads the needle to find a home in the seam between two plates of his armor. The next takes his thigh, travels cleanly to pierces his mount behind it, pinning the two of them together.

         The third catches him just below the eye, punches straight through to the other side of his skull, killing him instantly.

         Byleth remembers Flayn’s first day as one of his Deer. She’d been so, so excited to be there, to be allowed to socialize with not one but multiple people, freely, without Seteth, well-meaning but nonetheless smothering, breathing down her neck. She’d brought three blank notebooks and too many pens and cookies for the class that were way too hard and packed with too much salt and the tell-tale crunch of eggshell, but everybody had eaten them—even Lorenz, stuffy and snobbish as he could be—because they could all tell how desperately she wanted them to like her, how terrified she was that they wouldn’t.

         Byleth remembers Seteth, stormy and condescending and petty in his distaste, masked so thinly behind a veneer of courtly politeness. He’d been so suspicious of Byleth for so long, then just desperate to get his daughter back, and then so grateful to have her back that whatever silent grudge he’d held was lost. Barely concealed hostility turned to awkward, off-kilter congeniality—the other man clearly unsure how to address Byleth when he’d spent so long openly scandalized by his existence—while Byleth, for his part, remained too busy with his fawns to care. But then the war had come; endless strategy meetings and long nights spent pouring over troop movements with cold, over-steeped tea and stale bread. Months dragged on, the campaign started looking up- their forces were on the offensive and winning, gaining traction, and suddenly, where that small seed of camaraderie they’d been all-but-forced into planting was given room to grow, it flourished.

         If Byleth had found a family in the Deer, he’d found something else in Seteth. To call it more real than what he had with the Deer would be doing them a disservice, but it was nevertheless difficult, sometimes, with his fawns. He would always be ‘Professor’ to them. Always ‘Teach.’ Always this stern authority figure; somebody to look up to and learn from. He was never just ‘Byleth,’ had never been just ‘Byleth,’ not for a very long time (Even with Claude, who Byleth regarded as his very best friend—his very first friend, and he would always be so, so special, for that—there was a gap; a distance between them that couldn’t seem to be bridged, that Claude didn’t seem to want to bridge, like he didn’t think he was worthy enough to do so), if he ever had been at all (Sometimes, he thinks back to his youth and wonders, because for all that his father wrote over the years in that notebook of his, he never once called Byleth anything other than ‘the baby’ or ‘the child’ or ‘the kid’), and he hadn’t even realized how much he’d needed to be just Byleth until Seteth had called him by name one morning—not even looking at him, too absorbed in the little wooden pieces they’d been moving about the war table as they’d worked through the what-if’s of a siege.

         Things had changed after that, between Seteth and Flayn and him; a little family inside of a family.

         Byleth remembers every breakfast he’s ever taken with the pair. Remembers countless hours spent sitting at the pier, watching the fish swim around and around and around with Flayn beneath the moon when the idea of sleep was too daunting for either of them. Remembers playing chess with Seteth in his office between war meetings as his daughter took her tea in the corner, the pinned-together manuscript of her father’s latest pet project resting on her lap.

         Absolutely not.

         The world around Byleth fractures, broken like so many mirrors.

         Byleth orders Flayn onto Seteth’s wyvern and sends them south through the forest with Ignatz. Leonie rides ahead to act as a lure, attracting the attention of the demonic beast prowling the opposing treeline before falling back to the brush—the beast, mindless as it is, pursuing her without a second thought. Leonie keeps it occupied, dancing deftly through the trees atop her mount with Ignatz jumping in where necessary to keep it from getting too close. Seteth and Flayn stick to the treetops, taking pot shots with arrows and spells alike until the beast is felled.

         Still, it doesn’t matter.

         Marianne, who’d been safely maintaining a medical post in the north, is overwhelmed during the night on the third day of the battle when a small battalion of Nemesis’ troops somehow manage to sneak past the front line. She fights tooth and nail to protect the wounded soldiers who’d fallen back to her care, backed by Raphael and Lysithea, but it’s no use. There are too many of them- too many milk-pale husks who don’t feel pain, willing to fight through injuries that would ground anyone else.

         Raphael and Lysithea find Byleth the next morning, bloodied and exhausted and broken inside. Raphael is a mess of tears and half-sentences when he tries to relay the news and Lysithea- she won’t even look at him. He’d had to throw her over his shoulder and carry her away, kicking and screaming and lashing spells at his back.

         Byleth remembers early mornings with Marianne in the stables with Dorté. Remembers Saturday afternoons in the cathedral, weeding through the advice box together and cleaning the statues of the saints every other week to the soft melody of Marianne’s humming. Most of all, though, Byleth remembers Marianne coming to sit with him after his father had died. She’d brought him his favorite jasmine tea and cookies stamped with sugared flowers, and stayed with him in the cemetery for hours—a silent, comforting presence—even after the sun had gone down.

         Byleth refuses.

         It takes a lot, going back so far, especially when Byleth doesn’t know how far back he actually needs to go, but the air around him cracks all the same as he wills himself back to the dawn of the previous morning, just to be safe.

         He sets himself up at the medical post this time, calling Felix and Sylvain back from the front to hold it with him. Felix complains the whole way, grousing about being taken away from the action, but he’s been with Byleth long enough to trust his orders, to know that he doesn’t do anything without reason.

         Still, it’s not enough.

         Nemesis takes advantage of the trio’s absence from the front line, finally coming out of his hole to hammer against their forces with everything he has. Leaving the medical camp in Felix and Sylvain’s hands, Byleth rushes back in time to see Petra cut from the sky with one mighty whip of Nemesis’ blade. Cyril goes into a rage, dropping from his wyvern to fight back the forces converging on his paramour’s broken form. She’s alive, but just barely- her spine is broken from the fall, and even with immediate access to the best healing magics in the land, she’d likely never walk right again, if she ever did at all. Claude tries to help his protégé, quelling the tide with arrow after arrow, but he only has so many.

         By the time Byleth has cut a path to them, Petra’s long since stopped breathing, and the only thing keeping Cyril going is desperation and hate.

         Byleth remembers that same boy, not long ago, following after Petra with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. Forever and ever, Byleth remembers the two promising each other in the yard the day before they’d been sent to march on Nemesis’ forces. It had made him so boundlessly happy to witness the easy love blooming between the two of them- mayhaps even happier to hear Cyril speaking so brightly of the future without even stopping first to consider whether or not his precious Lady Rhea would have a place in it.

         Byleth refuses. He refuses to let that love die.

         Blood seems to pool in his brain as he forces the word into crystalized darkness. Every inch of him aches as he searches for a point to anchor himself to- his mind pounds, relentless. It feels like his teeth are shattering; splintered, bloodied fragments in his gums as he feels the whiplash-tug of being dragged through time and space to someplace else.

         (Byleth doesn’t know how many more times he can do this.)

         He staggers back to reality several hours earlier, halfway through the journey to Marianne’s outpost with Sylvain and Felix and a small contingency of their troops. He sways blearily on his horse, exhausted beyond measure, and Sylvain reaches out in a haste to right him before he falls, “You okay, Professor?” He asks, brows creased in concern.

         Byleth straightens himself on his mount and waves the young general’s worried hands away, “Fine,” he assures him as he pulls his horse out of formation, “You keep on towards Marianne’s with Felix and the troops- I need to get back to the front before Nemesis notices I’m gone.”

         He makes it back in time to hold the line, to drive Nemesis back into his hole, but it’s only a temporary solution.

         There are just too many.

         Every time Byleth tries to split his forces, they get overwhelmed- but there’s no other choice. If they were to cluster, the only way they’d be able to push through would be east, straight through the swamp- just where Nemesis wants them. With such a large group, it’d be impossible to stick to the dry parts of the land. Dozens, likely hundreds of their troops would succumb to the toxins in the water before they’d even make it halfway across- and that’s not even accounting for enemy movements. They’d be blocked in on all sides within minutes of losing sight of the plains, and then-

         Then it’d just be a waiting game.

⬭⬭⬭

         The battle drags on for three more days.

         Byleth has to call upon the power of the divine pulse a seemingly insurmountable number of times—Raphael, barreling into a fight he knows he can’t win to divert attention from the medical camp. Leonie’s body, bloodied and broken between the jaws of a demonic beast. Hilda, screaming as she’s burnt alive within the confines of her armor. Felix, bisected by Goneril’s axe as he leaps to block a swing Sylvain hadn’t seen coming. Over and over, he watches his precious fawns fall, and each time, it takes that much more out of him.

         Byleth doesn’t know who the last death is—is no longer in enough control of his mental faculties to be able to discern who is who beyond a basic understanding of friend and foe—but he knows that when they fall, everything seems to break. The world around him does more than just fracture, it shatters.

         Only, this time, Byleth hasn’t the energy to pick up the pieces.

⬬⬬⬬

         “You absolute moron!”

         Byleth’s head snaps up at the familiar reprimand, winces against the pain it causes- only he doesn’t care, can’t bring himself to, because-

         “Sothis!” Byleth throws himself into motion, aching feet carrying him up the steps of the dais to the progenitor god’s throne. The goddess stiffens as he falls to he knees and gathers her in his arms, cradles the back of her head with one hand as he buries his face in her hair, “Sothis,” He’s tired. He’s so, so tired- and yet, he’s happier than he can recall feeling in weeks, “I’ve missed you so much.”

         “I…” Sothis hesitates before relaxing into his embrace, eventually bringing her hands up to rest against his shoulder blades as she returns it, awkward but firm, “I’ve missed you, as well.” Then she’s wrenching Byleth away from her and swatting him over the head. Byleth knows it isn’t real, that nothing here really is—that this is just a figment of his mind’s eye; a space created by Sothis to act as their meeting place—but it hurts all the same, “What were you thinking?!”

         Byleth grimaces- ducks his head, chastened, as he sits back on his heels.

         “Just how many times must I impart upon you the value of your life?! Honestly, at this point, one would think you’re trying to lose it!”

         “I’m sorry.”

         Sothis huffs, planting her hands on her hips, “No, you’re not.”

         Byleth sighs, fingers curling over his thighs, “No, I’m not.” He lifts his head to peer up at his old friend, “They’re my children.” Byleth did not sire them, did not carry them to term or birth them—but make no mistake, they are his, in all the ways that matter, “What purpose do I serve, if not them?”

         Something in the goddess’ face softens, at that. She exhales, long and wearied, and reaches forwards to cup Byleth’s face in her hands, rubs her thumbs over his cheekbones, “Something greater.” She confides softly, “You wage a war against an ancient evil- there is no war without loss.”

         Byleth pulls his face away, casting his gaze aside, “I can’t accept that.”

         Sothis scoffs, drifting backwards to ease down onto her throne. She crosses her legs, propping a haughty elbow on the armrest and flicking her fingers, “Figures,” She sighs- and she’s scowling at him, but her tired eyes are gleaming, and she still sounds so endlessly fond, “Selfish man.”

         Byleth’s brows thread together as he frowns, the thought he’d initially overlooked forcing its way to the forefront of his mind, “You said we wouldn’t be able to talk anymore.” And he doesn’t pitch his words up at the end like he should, but Sothis knows his mind- knows the statement for the question that it is.

         The goddess’ face goes pensive. She thins her lips, nodding with a sense of gravity that is beyond Byleth’s level of understanding, “I did.”

         “Then how. How are you here?”

         Sothis stares him down with a gaze like cut glass, tone sharp and accusatory when she speaks, “I have no way of knowing for certain, but if I were to guess, it would have something to do with the fact that you’ve been continuously using divine pulses for the last week with little to no respite between them.” She scoffs—a harsh, ugly sound to emerge from such a dainty, doll-like being, “Honestly! You did more than turn back the clock, you great oaf- you went and broke it entirely.”

         That…doesn’t sound good.

         “And the pieces?”

         “Mere powder, now.” Her already intense frown deepens, “Time is something with a physical form, you realize? Pieces can be broken off, cherry-picked and rearranged as needed, but the pieces will never be completely whole again, will never be what they were. Each deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction is that much harder to achieve cleanly—the pieces of the puzzle can only be made so small before they’re no longer distinguishable from one another. Repeat an event too many times and you will soon find yourself standing amongst nothing but the shattered fragments of past failures.” She pins him with a Look- the face she adopts when she’s telling him things that she thinks he ought to already know, “There is a reason I never let you use more than a handful of pulses for any given event.”

         It’s Byleth’s turn to glare now, as he stands from where he’d been kneeling, fists clenched, “So I should have just done nothing, just watched them all die?! Were you in my shoes, you’d have razed mountains to ensure their safety, drained seas until nothing but beds of dust remained- and yet, you sit there atop your almighty throne, lecturing me on my willingness to persist?!”

         Sothis sighs, heavy and wearied, as she leans back, bracing her elbows on the arms of her throne, hands pulling into little loose balls over the crumbling stone. She tips her head back, eyes sliding shut, “I believe there is a saying, you humans have-” one eye peeks open to regard Byleth in tired, bitter amusement, “do as I say, not as I do?”

         Byleth crosses his arms over his chest, refutes, “They also say that those who cannot do, teach—and yet, here I am; a capable practitioner of both.”

         Sothis opens her eyes, but, in a decidedly uncharacteristic move, remains silent. Merely sits there, observing him. After a long moment of silence, Byleth pushes his agitation down, directs his attention back to the matter at hand, “What happens now?” If the clock is truly broken, ground to dust and given over to the mercy of the wind, what is it that will become of them?

         What has already become of his children?

         Sothis bows forwards at the waist, crossing her arms over her thighs as she presses her palms into her biceps, leaning her weight into her lap, “So long as you’re unconscious, I cannot know what has become of your physical form. I cannot tell you what the world will look like, when you awaken,” She straightens up, runs her palms down the length of her arms and lets them drop into her lap so that she might smooth over the fabric of her dress, “But I can tell you that time, however fragile, is infinite- it can never truly be destroyed. There is- there remains something, somewhere, but-” She sighs, eyes squeezing shut, expression almost pained.

         Byleth realizes, haltingly, what the goddess is trying to tell him—he’ll wake to an intact point in the timeline; sometime before he started meddling, or maybe after, depending on what’s closest. But how far did the damage reach? How long did the cracks stretch- a year in each direction? Two? Three? Ten?

         (Byleth thinks of Flayn, who lost untold centuries to sleep, who woke to find nearly everything she knew and everyone she cared for gone. He’d never been able to fathom her pain, what she’d lost- had only sympathized, and hoped he’d never have a reason to learn. Here, now, as the yawning idea of going so far forward or back digs a chasm in his gut, as his heart freezes in his chest at the very notion… he can never claim know Flayn’s grief so intimately, it is not his place to presume, but now, he thinks, he has found his own version of it.)

         Silence rings between them, so loud it’s deafening.

         Byleth’s vision blurs as a sudden bout of vertigo overtakes him. At first, he thinks it shock, or something else unknown, but then he remembers. It has been years, but he knows this particular brand of nauseated delirium- remembers what it means.

         He’s waking up.

         Byleth staggers, stumbles forward and braces an arm on Sothis’ throne.

         The progenitor god reaches out to grip his forearm, craning her head to peer at him through her bangs, brows creased and frowning. She speaks- she must. Her mouth is moving, words are presumably emerging, but Byleth doesn’t hear them as his world blurs at the edges and his hearing narrows to the single, muted thump of his undead heart, and the distant, grating sound of shattered glass being crushed underfoot.

⬬⬬⬬

         When Byleth wakes, it feels for all the world like breaching the surface of a storming sea after knowing nothing but untold eons in the crushing darkness of its depths. He sucks in air like he’s starving for it, the sweet pull of oxygen a stark juxtaposition to his mottled vision; black and blurry at the edges. His body snaps up from its prone position seemingly against his will, one hand falling to brace against the straw-stuffed mattress beneath him.

         Byleth looks around, fingers curling slowly over the sheets as his breathing catches up to him.

         He can’t recall the last time he slept in a bed—months, mayhaps more. The march to meet Nemesis had him sleeping on thin bedrolls and the occasional heaping of pelts, but even before that, back at Garreg Mach, Byleth hadn’t properly known his mattress in months. Most nights had found him in the war room or Seteth’s office, hashing out strategies and overseeing troop movements. When he had slept, it was slumped over his desk, minutes stolen during meetings when he could no longer keep his eyes open, or, most often, seated upright in the armchair in the office that had once-upon-a-time belonged to his father, but had more recently become his own.

         He had avoided falling into deep sleeps, when he could—too paranoid in the wake of his last long rest, too disconcerted by the empty throne he’d all-too-often find himself standing before.

         Tentatively, Byleth calls out, voice pitched in a hush, “Sothis?”

         Silence.

         Byleth’s jaw tightens, and he knows better than to be disappointed—at least, he should. The last few days have been so emotionally draining, it’s a wonder he can still feel anything at all, let alone hope, but…

         Somehow, he had, just for a moment- just long enough for it to be dashed.

         Shaking his head at his own naivety, Byleth evens out his breathing and forces his shoulders to relax—

         Only for them to shoot up to meet his ears as the bedroom door is thrown open. On instinct, Byleth brings up a hand, Lightning crackling at his fingertips as he swings one foot out of bed, “C’mon, kid, I know you’ve been having a hard time sleeping lately, but-” The man in the doorway—familiar, so familiar; looking at him whole and breathing hurts in the most wonderful way—freezes, mouth open around words that don’t quite make it past his tongue.

         The electricity dancing between Byleth’s splayed fingers fizzles out lamely.

         “...Father?” He breathes, the hope swelling in his chest so heavy that he feels as though he’s going to suffocate beneath it.

         The man who wears his father’s face, who walks with his gait and speaks with his voice, slowly pulls his eyes away from Byleth’s outstretched hand, settling his gaze on Byleth’s face. His eyes twitch, pulling tight at the corners as his brows scrunch together a fraction of a fraction, and Byleth-

         Byleth knows that look. It’s been years since he’s seen it, but he knows that expression.

         “Father!” Byleth is pushing himself from the bed before he can think better of it, crossing the room in three long strides to bury his face in his father’s chest. The man’s whole body tenses, arms extended awkwardly to accommodate Byleth’s unexpected embrace.

         Face hidden in his father’s shirt, Byleth’s mind races.

         He tries to think- to force him to recall how far back he’s gone, when it was he’d stayed in this room, but he can’t remember. Byleth’s memory has always been spotty at best—something Sothis had once guiltily admitted was likely her fault—and while it had improved immensely following Sothis’ initial awakening (and even more-so after his and the goddess’ final coupling), everything from before that time is a blur. He remembers bits and pieces of events that had impacted him developmentally, but the more monotonous information is lost on him. He’s stayed in hundreds of inns over the course of his life- after a while, they all start to look the same.

         “Captain Jeralt, sir!” One of Byleth’s father’s mercenaries tumbles through the door, out of breath, nearly barreling into his father’s back in his haste.

         Byleth snaps to attention, relinquishing his grip on his father and taking a quick step back. His scattered thoughts are cast aside at the intrusion, swept away under the threat that something might be wrong, leaving Byleth to observe the situation from beneath a veil of cool indifference with a familiar sense of distanced calm.

         “Sorry to interrupt, but your presence is needed!” The mercenary relays after he’s taken a moment to compose himself—curiously keeping his attention on Byleth even as he addresses his father, gaze flicking up and down Byleth’s person like he’s never seen him before in his life. Byleth narrows his eyes at the scrutiny, suspicious; the man pales and sets his sights on their proper subject.

         In his periphery, Byleth’s father frowns, his whole face creasing with the gesture, “What’s happened?”

         “Students from The Officer’s Academy, sir-” The mercenary reports, back ramrod straight- but Byleth is no longer listening. Is already pacing back to the bed to sweep his cloak unto his shoulders, fasten his sword to his hip—so light, so small compared to the Sword of The Creator; doesn’t fill his hand the same—and collect his gauntlets.

         He breezes past the pair, the effort it takes not to break into a sprint verging on painful, and ignores his father’s narrowed eyes on his back as he excuses himself from the room and down the splintered stairwell of the inn—utterly exhausted and yet somehow more awake than he’s felt in months.

⬭⬭⬭

         The urge to touch is tremendous.

         Claude is so young, hair so spiky- face so smooth.

         Byleth’s eyes lock onto him and for a moment, there’s only joy. Elation, as his chest wells with fondness—but then his old friend’s eyes find his and there’s just. There’s nothing. Claude smiles at him, but it’s distant and wrong. An empty mask of weaponized charisma that Byleth hasn’t been on the receiving end of in years.

         It hits like a slap to the face.

         Byleth tears his eyes away from the man who had once been his most treasured ally, uncomfortable under the calculating weight of his smile, and fixes his gaze on his father as the man comes to fill the doorway of the inn behind him.

         He looks to Byleth with narrowed eyes, a question in his gaze.

         When Byleth doesn’t answer, he pins him with a stare that says they will be having a conversation about this later and steps past him, closing the distance between himself and the trio of nobles in four easy strides, Byleth dutifully falling into step behind him.

         “What’s the meaning of this?” He asks, his voice a low, displeased rumble.

         Dimitri steps forwards, every bit the regal young prince Byleth had once known him to be—and it hurts, in a way, to look at him.

         If Byleth had offered more time to the boy- had he allowed his attentions to stray beyond the loyalties of his chosen house… would the snarling beast he’d met on Gronder that day… would Byleth have been able to reach him? Or, perhaps, could he have prevented such a creature from ever coming to exist in the first place?

         The young man sweeps into a bow, cape fluttering gallantly with the movement, and Byleth casts his attention to Edelgard, so dainty and unsuspecting in her girlish lavender bows and pretty silk cravat.

         Byleth could strike her down right now- sever her head from her shoulders and be done with it before she could so much as twitch in her own defense.

         But, no… Dimitri and Claude would leap to the defensive immediately, and even if Byleth did nothing, made no attempt to attack them as well, his father wouldn’t stand for it. He would cut them down, nobility be damned, and then there would be three major territory heirs dead, and for what?

         At the end of it all, Nemesis would still rise—only, this time, there would be no chance at a united force to offer opposition.

         Hmn. A united force.

         Had Edelgard, Byleth wonders, ever been in a place where she might have accepted a middle ground? She had been privy to Those Who Sliter in the Dark- in the end, had even extended a hand to point the way. Had Byleth known of the secondary threat, before that day… would anything have been different?

         No matter how Byleth had deployed his troops in those final weeks, it hadn’t been enough.

         Foolish of them as it was in hindsight, win or lose, they hadn’t been expecting the war to continue past that day in Enbarr. They’d lost so many- burned through so many caches of supplies making that final push, to ensure that they had every advantage.

         And they had- only, after that, there’d hardly been anything left to throw at Nemesis.

         ‘You know better now,’ Sothis’ voice swims through Byleth’s head, unbidden- and it isn’t her, not really. Rather, it is the imaginary her- a tiny piece of Byleth shaped in her image, made to deliver advice in her name.

         Yes, Byleth thinks.

         He does.

⬭⬭⬭

         Byleth doesn’t remember the skirmish with the bandits being particularly difficult last time, but this time, it’s almost laughably easy.

         Byleth cuts across the field with deadly precision, mindful of the young house leaders’ strengths and weaknesses in a way he hadn’t been the first time. He doesn’t direct them verbally, because in this new timeline (and he will be having a crisis about that later, he knows—but, right now, there’s work to be done) he hasn’t yet the authority to, but he commands the fight in other ways.

         Dimitri, like before, favors a straightforward approach, charging ahead with a single minded sort of focus. His body moves in hard lines and brutal displays of strength, his spear angled down, down, down as if intending to force his enemies into the earth.

         Byleth keeps pace with the young prince so as to keep him from getting swarmed, slices weapons from hands and aims practiced jabs at weak spots before moving onto the next opponent, knowing Claude will pick off his scraps. Edelgard, meanwhile, takes up position by the edge of the battle, jumping in occasionally to down those knocked out of the central mass and introducing the sharp end of her axe to any bandits who dare to split off towards Claude.

         It’s a dance, fast and bloody and sharp.

         Once the battle is over and the bandits’ leader has retreated—disappeared, more like; didn’t even stick around this time, just ran as soon as it became apparent just how outskilled his little troupe of thieves was—Byleth sheathes his blade and paces over to Dimitri, chest heaving in the center of the clearing.

         Wordlessly, he pulls the prince’s half-splintered spear from his grasp and tosses it aside, pulling the boy’s forearm up to get a better look at the place where his sleeve has been sliced halfway off his arm. The cut is shallow enough, though it must hurt if the way Dimitri’s breath catches at Byleth’s touch is any indication.

         Byleth pulls one of his gloves from his hand with his teeth, his other hand still occupied gripping the young prince’s arm, and reaches down to cast a healing spell, knitting the boy’s flesh back together. Once Byleth is satisfied with his work, he drops the boy’s arm and pulls his glove back on, then casts his eyes to the corpses littering the ground.

         He finds what he’s looking for quickly enough; shoves the toe of one of his boots under the staff of a spear, dropped by one of the bandits, kicks it into the air and catches it. It isn’t a great weapon by any stretch of the imagination—the blade is dulled from lack of proper maintenance and it’s rusted in places—but it will be a suitable replacement for the prince’s old one until they return to the monastery.

         Wordlessly, Byleth offers the spear to Dimitri.

         The prince looks at him with big eyes, lost and confused and stained at the edges with sadness, and Byleth remembers the man he becomes, feral and bloodthirsty but just as sad beneath it all.

         “By!” His father’s voice carries, impatient, across the clearing.

         Things will be different, this time, Byleth promises himself as he presses the spear into the prince’s baffled hands.

         I’ll make sure of it.

Chapter Text

          Byleth realizes that what he’s been given should be classified as a gift. Foresight, a chance to prepare—but now that the fighting is over and the initial burst of adrenaline has died down and Byleth finally has room to process? Byleth is not thinking tactically, anymore. Byleth is thinking about the undoing of every meaningful thing he’s ever worked to achieve, the unmaking of every bond he’s ever forged, the unbecoming of every person he’s ever loved.

          At least if Byleth had ended up after, he’d have the closure of knowing that it was real, that it had happened—because for all that it went to shit at the end, it was his life and he’d loved living it. Wouldn’t have traded the moments between the madness for anything—but now, now in the before… Byleth doesn’t even have that.

          None of it was real—not in any of the ways that mattered.

          Not in the ways the world would remember.

          Byleth heaves a breath and lifts his arms to push his hands back through his hair. He can’t spiral—he can’t. Maybe one day, when all of this is behind him, but right now he needs to get it together. Alright, so. Changing the future, averting the apocalypse—what’s step one? 

          Tomas and Jeritza are probably the most pressing concern—well, second to Edelgard, but Byleth still hasn’t a clue how to approach that particular issue, so it’s getting a pin put in it, for now—but he can’t get rid of them both so soon after arriving at Garreg Mach without raising eyebrows and drawing unwanted suspicion to himself.

          Jeritza could be persuaded to defect, maybe. Byleth would never trust him completely, but he can understand him, can put himself in his mind. The man lives for the scarlet dance, nothing else; wandering from battle to battle in manic search of a challenge. If Byleth can prove himself a worthy opponent, offer him a challenge greater than the one Edelgard has promised him, it shouldn’t be too difficult to turn the man’s head and keep it there.

          Tomas—or, rather, Solon—Byleth is less sure about.

          He cannot be allowed to live, though, that much Byleth knows beyond a shadow of a doubt.

          Byleth would be inclined to poison, personally. Tomas, as everyone knows him, is an old man. Incapable of taking a step without heavily leaning on his cane and prone to quick exertion. Something silent would do just the trick. Hidden away neatly as a heart attack, something to simulate a quiet passing in his sleep, but—

          Byleth might have killed his fair share of them, in the end, but he doesn’t know Agarthans. Not like that. He knows how much pressure it takes to break their bones and how long it takes to choke them out, knows how much blood they can lose before they drop from it and how much magic they can ward off before they’re susceptible to damage from it, but he doesn’t know them in that particular sense. Isn’t keen enough in his knowledge of their immune systems to know what types of poisons might work if any, let alone the correct dosage—enough to be lethal, but not enough to be traceable—and he hasn’t the luxury of working by trial and error. He’s got one shot at removing Solon from the board. If Byleth fails, Solon will know of the threat, would know that somebody in Garreg Mach knows- or, at the very least, has reason to want him dead.

          So, tempting as it is, Byleth refuses to risk it.

          A blade, then; old reliable, as it were.

          Messier, though, with more than a little bit of forethought required. Byleth has mastered the art of killing without making a mess of himself, but what of the scene? What of the body? Timing? Witnesses? There are just too many factors, too many things that could go wrong.

          This is so much more Claude’s purview than Byleth’s.

          Byleth’s eyes shift to the man in question, considering.

          He will need help, in this new time. Independently inclined though he may be, if war has taught him anything, it is the benefit of allies. No matter how much he might want to handle this on his own, to sweep this all under the rug before anyone can even realize anything is wrong, so that nobody will ever know the war torn world Byleth lived in to even be a possibility… Byleth isn’t so arrogant as to think that he can do it on his own. He’ll need people he can trust, or, at the very least, people he can use , to get done certain jobs that would otherwise be more difficult for him to achieve alone.

          His father is a given—Byleth will explain the circumstances as soon as he sees an opportunity to—but Claude, as precious a friend as he’d been in Byleth’s lost future…

          Claude is a risk.

          He’s smart, yes, and Byleth had learned much of the more subtle side of warfare from him, but he is, ultimately, a selfish man. He holds his own ambitions above all others; no matter how much he might care (and he doesn’t, not for Byleth, not in this new time—and the thought of that truth alone hurts, hurts, hurts ) he’s a master at separating himself from the sort of bias that might distract him from his goals.

          Byleth wants nothing more than to reach out to the boy that had become his best friend, to open himself up to his council, but.

          If he’s being honest with himself, he isn’t certain that Claude would help him.

          Not…

          (Byleth’s brain screeches to a sudden halt, something dangerously like hope bubbling up in his chest)

          Not if confronted directly, at least. He’ll need to subtly attract Claude’s attention, appeal to the boy’s compulsive need to know the unknown and bait him into it, little by little. It will be a game to Claude, at first, as most things tend to be to the young lord at this point in his life, but the more invested he becomes in Byleth’s obvious (to him, at least) machinations, the less humor he’ll find in it. The more he’ll seek to seriously understand. Byleth will tip the scales, then, either by cutting the boy out of the flow of information he’ll be feeding him under the guise of sloppiness (or otherwise cleverness, on Claude’s part), or by upping the stakes enough that Claude will be unable to resist cornering Byleth for a more earnest discussion, no longer satisfied by scraps.

          Yes, that could work.

          Claude will probably not even be angry at the deception, Byleth thinks. If nothing else, he’ll understand the need for secrecy, will respect Byleth’s manipulation because it is not dissimilar to what he himself would do in such a position. Might even be proud, upon finding out that every dirty psychological game Byleth knows, he learned from him.

          Byleth nods to himself, pleased. Yes, he’s certain that will work.

          Next—and much more of an unknown—is Dimitri.

          Dimitri, the boy who will become a man lost to the madness of revenge should his path continue uninterrupted.

          It would be highly beneficial, Byleth thinks, to have him as an ally—well, more frankly put, to have the Kingdom as an ally. But, realistically, Byleth isn’t sure that he should lean too heavily on the idea of having his support. If Felix’s griping is to be believed, even as a student, Dimitri had been unstable—though, to what degree, Byleth has no idea. If he is to place his trust in the young prince, it will need to be a cautious thing. He will do his very best to guide the boy, to steer him from time’s intended path, but he cannot reveal his cards. Not until he is certain beyond all doubt of Dimitri’s allegiance.

          “Copper for your thoughts?”

          Idly, Byleth casts his gaze aside to where Claude has strayed from the other lords to wander beside him, hands clasped high on the back of his neck. Byleth looks at him for a long moment, not so much considering his words as he is waiting long enough to give the young man the impression that he is.

          “You couldn’t afford my thoughts,” Byleth tells him flatly before adjusting his pace to leave Claude—and, by extension, Edelgard and Dimitri—behind and join his father at the head of the train.

          At his retreating figure, Claude laughs.

          Byleth, knowing full-well what that particular laugh means, suppresses a chuckle of his own.

⬭⬭⬭

          If Byleth was uncomfortable with Rhea’s attention the first time around, he’s downright disturbed by it now. Her eyes catch on his hair the moment she sees him—his hair, that he doesn’t even realize until that moment has retained the chalky mint coloration it had brightened to after his fusing with Sothis (suddenly, all the double-takes his father’s men have been giving him make sense)—and she smiles at him, bright and present, in a way she hadn’t the first time.

          When they meet her in the audience chamber, she’s still sporting the same saccharine expression and Seteth is glaring daggers into Byleth’s forehead.

          ‘Who are you?’ Byleth can practically hear the man demanding, ‘ Why have you come here? What do you want?’ 

          It might be amusing if it didn’t hurt so much; seeing the man who’d once gripped his shoulders and called him family regarding him with such cold distaste—caustic bordering on revulsion, ill-contained venom and affront dripping from his every word.

          After they leave the audience chamber, Byleth’s father pulls him into the Knight Captain’s office, closes the door behind him, and plants himself in front of it, arms crossed over his chest.

          He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to; Byleth can read the accusation in his eyes.

          Byleth doesn’t know where to start—says as much.

          “Start with your hair,” His father says, impatient, “Start with the fact that yesterday you couldn’t tell Reason from Faith and today you’re performing both schools of magic with the ease of a specialist. Start with—” His father pauses, glancing aside then back to him, visibly concerned, yet still insistent on dressing it up as agitation, “Start with why you reacted the way you did to me this morning. Why you seemed to know what was happening before Abram could get six words into his report.”

          That’s… a lot to start with, Byleth thinks.

          ‘My hair was bleached green when I fused with the Goddess, Sothis, who’s been living in my head since I was a child. I studied Reason after learning the hard way that sometimes physical weapons aren’t enough, had Marianne and Manuela and every other healer I could get my hands on teach me Faith after you died in my arms, bleeding from a festering wound that I hadn’t the first idea how to treat. I reacted as I did for the same reason- because you died, you were dead, have been dead for years, and I’d begun to forget the sound of your voice. I knew because I’ve been through this all before, because the Goddess in my head taught me how to turn back the clock, except I’m greedy and unyielding so I went and broke it instead.’

          Byleth has never been one to pull punches—be they words or fists—but he feels that this particular topic, at least, needs a bit more of a lead-in than that.

          What that lead-in might be, Byleth has no idea.

          (Not to mention… with Solon skulking around, who knows which walls have ears.

          Behind his back, Byleth casts Silence, waits the moment that it takes to envelop the room, locking everything in place.)

          He opts for starting at the beginning.

          “My mother’s name was Sitri.” Byleth says, watching as his father’s eyes twitch wide, the way his stance grows stiff, “She was a nun here- died giving birth to me. You faked my death and stole me away even though my stillness scared you.” A pause, the silence damning, “You didn’t love me- couldn’t, no matter how hard you tried. Wouldn’t be able to for many years.”

          That’s what had hurt the most, when his father had died; reading those words in his journal. Page after page of how uneasy Byleth had made his father, dozens of paragraphs describing the deep feeling of wrong that would manifest in his gut whenever Byleth would look at him. The years of guilt that he would endure, all the sleepless nights spent wondering what was wrong with him, that he couldn’t bring himself to care for his own son.

          For what had felt like an eternity, Byleth had been unable to even grieve properly, too hurt and heartbroken by the revelation that the man that he’d looked to for as long as he could remember hadn’t seemed to know him at all. That even after his father had eventually come to love him—vividly, madly, as fervently as only a parent could—he still hadn’t had any inkling as to whether or not that love was returned, was too damaged by guilt and uncertainty to dare assume. At the realization that his father had died not knowing.

          “Byleth, I-” His father begins, voice thick, eyes straying. They return to Byleth, then, brows furrowing. He’s hurt, Byleth sees now. Agonized at the idea that Byleth knows there was ever a time when he didn’t have his father’s love, “Where did you…?”

          “Your journal.” Byleth says, frowning- then, as he realizes that that way only lies misunderstanding, “You gave it to me- will give it to me- in another life. Another time.”

          Byleth knows he’s not making sense, not being as clear as he should be, but how could he be? How does one ever manage to relay any sort of meaningful information without having to sacrifice tact for directness? Byleth has gotten better at speaking since his tenure as a professor at Garreg Mach, at articulating his thoughts—because how else was he to teach? (Poorly. Byleth remembers his first few lessons in agonizing clarity. Long stretches of blank stares and awkward silences, too many eyes looking to him for answers he didn’t have)—but the emotional side of such communication is still largely difficult for him.

          Scrambling now, under the realization that even though he’d known they needed to have this conversation, he hadn’t really considered the emotional ramifications of having this conversation, Byleth feebly adds, “You died,” as if that could possibly clear anything up at all.

          “I… died?” His father is eyeing him carefully, now, looking at him with an expression that Byleth has until now only ever seen on Seteth; like he’s three seconds away from declaring Byleth delirious with fever and sending him off to Manuela for treatment and never letting him get out of bed for fear of him breaking.

          (Byleth comes to the sudden realization that it is incredibly likely that he is visually distressed right now- which, while not exactly new to him, is something incredibly new to his father, who up until this morning wasn’t even entirely sure that Byleth had emotions, let alone was capable of expressing them.)

          “So…” Byleth’s father shakes his head, reasoning with himself, “So you had a bad dream? Byleth-”

          “It wasn’t a dream,” Byleth insists, “If it was a dream, how could I have known? The things I know about my mother, about you? How could I have known who was outside without listening to Abram’s report? How could I have known who Alois was before he crashed into the clearing? How could I know Seteth and Rhea and-” Byleth blinks, remembering the member of the family who’d been absent, “Seteth has a daughter, Flayn. She’s his daughter, but he and everybody else will introduce her as his little sister, because nobody but she and him and Rhea know the truth. 

          “How could I know that, father, from a dream?” Byleth raises a brow, “Unless you’re willing to concede that I’m prophetic, now?” 

          Byleth steps towards his father, pressing a palm to his chest and searching his face because he needs his father to believe him- hadn’t even considered for a second what he might do if the man didn’t, “I know because I lived it. I know because as far as my memories are concerned, nine years ago I was appointed professor of the Golden Deer. I went through an entire year of teaching them, getting to know them. Every new skill I’ve acquired since then has been to protect them, to help them hone their own so that they might protect themselves. I know because you died and the world was plunged into war—”

          Sucking in a sharp breath, Byleth steps back, turning on his heels to pace as he lists the next events on his fingers, like somehow that makes his manic claims more valid, “Dimitri lost his mind, Edelgard turned her blade to the heavens- Rhea went missing and I got thrown off a cliff and Claude was left picking up the pieces for the five years it would take me to come back from what I’m pretty sure looking back was the literal dead.

          "I know because I woke up downstream from Garreg Mach three years ago, reunited with Claude and the rest of the Deer, was appointed head of an army and the Church and have been fighting tooth and nail ever since.” Byleth shakes his head, breathes and takes a moment to compose himself because this is not the time to get hysterical.

          Suddenly, he wishes he’d gone with his first draft of this speech. It had been a lot more matter-of-fact, a lot less raving lunatic.

          Groaning, Byleth scrubs his hands over his face and readies himself for a Divine Pulse.

          As if realizing that Byleth has given up on the conversation, as if he knows that Byleth is about to bail—though, in fairness, he probably thinks Byleth is just going to force his way out the door, not zap himself back in time—his father says, “Wait- By, just-” At some point his father had gone from blocking the door to leaning against it. He’s got one hand pinching the incline of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut, his other hand held out in a placating gesture, “Wait.”

          Tired and not seeing any harm in it, Byleth waits. He waits and watches his father for a long handful of minutes as he stands there, processing, before finally removing his fingers from the bridge of his nose. He opens his eyes and asks, almost tentatively, like he isn’t sure he even wants to know, “And the hair fits into all of this where?”

          Byleth blinks.

          “The Goddess Sothis was living in my head.”

          His father tips his head back against the door and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, sounding that mix of scandalized and faint that has Byleth wondering if he and Seteth are somehow distant relatives, “Of course she is.”

          “Was,” Byleth says, pulling himself back to composure, calming under the realization that, for whatever reason, his father believes him, “She’s gone now.”

          His father runs his hands down his face, the motion tugging at his lower lids as he peers at Byleth from over his fingertips, “She’s… gone?”

          “Our souls were merged.”

          “And that…turned your hair green?”

          “And gave me control over the flow of time.” Before, Byleth had needed to rely on Sothis using her Divine Pulse for him- had needed to get her express permission to use it outside of battle—permission that she usually denied. After, Byleth was free to use Pulses whenever he wanted, however he saw fit.

          “Of course it did.” His father squeaks out breathlessly, probably in shock.

Chapter Text

          All and all, Byleth’s father takes the information… well. He remains mostly straight-faced and calm through Byleth’s recounting, enough so that Byleth feels comfortable falling into his usual prompt, to-the-point manner of speaking, no longer dancing around phrasing for fear of causing discomfort. Occasionally, Byleth will need to pause or repeat himself, his father getting this far-off look of distant amazement, but it never seems to be because of the subject matter itself. If anything, he seems to be… almost marveling at Byleth.

          At one point, he asks offhandedly when Byleth got so loquacious, to which Byleth, instead of expressing surprise that his father knows what ‘loquacious’ means, merely looks at him dryly until he seems to realize—right, being thrown into a professorship and made head of a religious organization will do that to a person. Clipped, vague statements were all well and good when Byleth was off the clock, but insofar as teaching or strategizing was concerned, he’d quickly learned that elaborating from the get-go was better for everybody in the long term.

          (And if he’d wandered through the first half of his life assuming that his father was able to telepathically interpret his blank stares and low hums, well… Byleth knows better, now.)

          The talks don’t go on for very much longer, after the rough timeline is covered. They agree that it’s best for both of them to call it, for now, and come back together after dark to talk more about what their exact plans will be. Until then, his father needs to re-acquaint himself with the goings-on of the knights in his absence and start going over patrol routes and such details, and Byleth needs to move into his personal quarters.

          Well, move back in.

          —Not that there’s actually much moving in to be done, mind. Byleth’s material possessions as a mercenary were few and far between, usually limited to the clothes on his back and whatever weapon he was currently holding.

          Really, all Byleth does is prop his scabbard up against the doorframe, pull the hunting knife from his belt, and get started on carving Silence runes into the various support beams and posts boxing in the room—nothing that will hold 24/7, but it will make casting the spell easier and less energy consuming than it might otherwise—careful to hide them in the shadows or lesser exposed portions of the wood.

          Once he’s finished with that, Byleth sits down with a fresh notebook plucked from his desk (pre-stocked, like last time, with all the stationary and calligraphy materials he could ever need) to record his own more detailed account of the timeline and their known enemies, obfuscated by the made-up alphabet that he and his inner circle had used to communicate during the war.

          Admittedly, it’s not much more detailed than the run-down Byleth had given his father, but it’s a start and it seems like the thing to do.

          Once Byleth is done with that, he goes back through the notebook with a red-inked grading pen, filling the sizable gaps he’d left between events with notes and ideas—spitballing, mostly—until is brain is a jumble of symbols and he needs to push the notebook away, lest he forget how to write uncoded text altogether.

          Shortly thereafter, as Byleth is staring at the wall trying to reconstruct his scrambled thoughts while simultaneously fighting the urge to break down in tears, there’s a knock at his door. It’s one of his father’s lieutenants, telling Byleth that his father likely won’t be able to visit him tonight after all, overtaken by the mess of paperwork left undone by the man still technically holding the position of Knight-Captain.

          Byleth nods, not pleased, but understanding.

          It would probably be suspicious, anyways—Byleth and his father sequestering themselves behind closed doors multiple times for such long stretches so soon after arriving.

          It’s almost like we’re up to something , Byleth thinks wryly as he sends the lieutenant away.

          The rest of Byleth’s night is spent getting started on as-a-whole lesson plans and more individualized ones, catering neatly to specific students. Or at least, it was going to be.

          Byleth makes it halfway through the Deer’s individual assessments—a whole lot of ‘ on track already ’ and ‘ further focus on already developed skills ’—before it hits him, suddenly.

          Do they even need him?

          From day one the Golden Deer had been more akin to a family than a class of teenagers. They had their spats, as all families did, but at the end of the day—no matter what Hilda might say about leaving them to die, or how much Lorenz would gripe about Claude being a terrible leader—they would go to the ends of the earth for one another.

          The Black Eagles… Byleth’s not touching that mess with a seven foot pole, though given how many of them had later defected to the Deer—all of them, save Hubert, Ferdinand, and Dorothea—he can only assume such was not the case for them.

          Then… then there are the Blue Lions. Byleth isn’t quite sure where they fall on the scale, exactly. They’d all seemed friendly with one-another, at a glance, but—Byleth’s mind goes to Dimitri; isolated in his anger and alone in his pain—clearly, they hadn’t been close enough to hold together.

          The reality is…

          Byleth would love nothing more than to teach his precious fawns again, but the more he thinks on the matter, the clearer it becomes that perhaps such a thing isn’t the wisest course of action.

          Claude, Byleth knows, will be alright no matter what. He has a good head on his shoulders and knows well-enough the struggles of both the common folk and nobility so as not to do anything drastic, and he’s charismatic enough that accumulating allies won’t be difficult, even without the title of Duke Riegan. Edelgard, on the other hand, rather resembles a child with a hammer who sees only nails, while Dimitri is a bomb waiting to go off if left unchecked.

          Hypothetically , if Byleth could get a whisper in Edelgard’s ear soon enough, he might try to avert disaster that way—but the girl is unyieldingly stubborn. Trying to reason with her, Byleth has found, seems to be about as productive as trying to talk a locked door into opening- not to mention, it’s very likely already too late. Everything Byleth knows has suggested a great deal of pre-planning on Edelgard and Hubert’s part; it’s almost certain that they’ve been quietly arranging their pieces for years at this point. No matter how Byleth might endear himself to the young princess, he isn’t so confident in his likability as to think that he’d be able to get her to abandon what very well seems like half a lifetime of scheming so easily.

          Dimitri, of the two, is the more approachable option.

          Byleth thinks of how he’d been, after his father had been killed. About the anger that had remained after the initial anguish had passed. Rage slamming against the walls of his chest like a caged animal, ready and raring to be let loose. He thinks of what might have become of him, had Claude and Marianne and all the rest of them not been there to pick him up and dust him off and ground him. To fill the cracks in his heart with their warmth, to talk him down whenever he began to act drastically.

          It would have been rather easy, Byleth thinks, for him to have ended up like Dimitri had; feral and all but foaming at the mouth, made selfish by his thirst for vengeance.

          Where Edelgard is a dangerous gamble, Dimitri, Byleth thinks, could still be salvaged. A guiding hand here, a nice gesture there—enough love and compassion and understanding and, Byleth thinks, the prince could do good things, be a good man.

          (Part of Byleth thinks he might have already made this decision hours ago, as he’d stood before the prince in that clearing, looking at him as he was but remembering him as he would be. Broken and hurting and so utterly alone in his grief that he’d nothing left but violence and hate to keep himself warm.)

          Byleth closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and reaches forward, closing the manila folder he’d been organizing the Deer’s curriculum in and pushing it aside. Then, resigning himself to a much more uncertain future, Byleth fetches his pen from the inkwell, pulls a fresh folder out from his desk, and writes, in crisp, clean letters.

          Blue Lions Lesson Plans.

Chapter Text

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd

             Relies too much on brute strength. Focus on precision movements rather than broad sweeps, as well as being able to tell when one or the other should be used. (Perhaps run some indoor combat trials? See how long it takes him to realize swinging his lance as he’s wont to do in a narrow hallway won’t get him far.)

            Would benefit greatly from some classical fencing lessons with a rapier.

Dedue Molinaro

            Often preoccupied with his allies’ safety, specifically where Dimitri is involved. Not necessarily a bad thing, but he hasn’t yet developed the blocking power to be able to back-up such protective inclinations.

            Additional hand-to-hand experience and shield practice with a focus on footwork and proper blocking stance needed. Speak with Golden Deer professor about joint training with Hilda.

Felix Hugo Fraldarius

            Stiff behind his blade; movements are snappy where they should flow. Focuses too heavily on the offensive without considering the benefit of letting an enemy come to him. Learns best from hands-on training, with little patience for book learning.

            Latent Reason abilities—enlist Annette (preferably; more patience) or Lysithea (alternatively; attitudes might collide in a learning environment) to start him on the basics before moving to practical combat applications and field-learning for the rest. Disposition and obsession with swordplay makes him ill-suited to being a primary magic unit, but a secondary focus in Reason will give range to an otherwise close-quarters combatant.

            Has potential to lead well if he can get over his stubborn insistence on fighting alone and learn how to cooperate in group settings (rift likely caused by a perceived superiority over his peers—a balancing act, I suspect, between general haughtiness and a pathological fear of growing attatched to others; he seems to think that by distancing himself via condescension and condemnation, it will protect him from the pain of what he feels is their inevitable death, abandonment, or otherwise, betrayal—must learn the value of others and understand that having flaws is not inherently bad). Group with Ingrid, Sylvain, Dimitri, Ashe, and Annette for additional tactics lessons on battalion maneuvers and encourage non-academic conversation whenever possible.

            Would benefit greatly from additional guidance from Seteth.

Sylvain Jose Gautier

            Like Dedue, is often preoccupied with his allies’ positioning in battle. Must either learn to trust in their ability to keep themselves safe so as to not be so distracted or learn how to remain aware of them in battle without fully committing his attention to them.

            Much smarter than he Incredibly gifted lancer, particularly when mounted. Has the potential to be a formidable magical unit with both offensive and supportive capabilities. Start Reason and Faith training as soon as possible—initial lessons from myself, Annette and Mercedes only. Once he’s learned the basics, move immediately to acclimatizing him to casting while mounted.

            Needs a female friend other than Ingrid (assertive nature and childhood-spanning relationship likens her more to a maternal figure, whom he regards more as an authority than an equal); see about arranging for weekly tea times with Mercedes, Annette, and (eventually) Bernadetta. Perhaps a book club could be arranged?

            Might also benefit from Seteth’s guidance, so long as it is provided under the correct pretense and in a way that doesn't cause him to feel as though he is being disciplined.

Ingrid Brandl Galatea

            Fighting style is too clean; daily combat drills with a focus on underhanded maneuvers. (Perhaps a few joint-training sessions with Claude?) Prone to getting tunnel-vision during aerial combat, specifically when it comes to targeting grounded foes; needs to be made more aware of her surroundings when engaging a target. Would benefit greatly from having another ally in the sky to watch her back, in the meanwhile.

           Pair with Dedue for chores whenever appropriate—preferably for something innocuous such as cooking duty or greenhouse shifts.

Ashe Ubert

            Prone to combat nervousness and second-guessing his attacks. Work on confidence. Keen shot with a bow, but is accustomed to using it for hunting more than for combat; needs to learn how to nock, aim, and loose arrows more quickly, in a more high-stakes environment. Start on riding right away—perhaps put together an obstacle course outfitted with targets for him to run through while mounted? (Speak with Leonie and Petra regarding the specifics)

            Lancework is solid, in theory, but he’s too used to fighting against other lance users in practice spars to be ready for the variety of weapon-types he’ll be exposed to in the field. Pair off with Dedue, Felix, and Annette for sparring—he’s light on his feet with excellent instinctual reflexes (if he could only learn to trust them), so it shouldn’t take him too long to adjust.

Mercedes von Martritz

            Incredibly gifted Faith user, but prone to leaving herself open to attack. Perhaps look into a flight certification? Would remove her from central action while increasing her mobility for a greater maximum support radius and a better overall view of the battlefield. Would act primarily as a magical support unit but it would be smart for her to have a melee weapon on-hand should she need it—a lance would be the most practical, giving her the reach needed to extend beyond her mount’s wingspan with relatively little practice. Only difficulty will be managing to control the movement of such a weapon one-handed with her current level of musculature. Javelins, perhaps?

            Joint training with Ingrid and Dimitri.

Annette Fantine Dominic

            A veritable Reason prodigy. Smart and tactically cunning but often panics—forgetting strategy altogether when faced with melee fighters—and is prone to tripping over uneven terrain during prolonged altercations. In theory would benefit from an aerial mount to remove the threat of her clumsiness, but likely it will take some time before she has the balance and thigh/core strength to pull off such a thing, if she is ever able to manage it at all. (Flight drills with Ingrid and Mercedes?)

            In the meantime, focus on hand-to-hand and axe combat to get her comfortable with close quarters fighting. Joint training with Felix, Dedue, and myself.

     Jeralt huffs quietly to himself, setting the loose stack of papers aside as he regards his son’s sleeping form, slumped over at his desk.

     If there had been any doubts as to whether Byleth was telling the truth or not (or, at the very least, what he vehemently believed to be the truth), they’d been alleviated the longer the two had spent talking. Some things were fuzzy, yes, but for the most part his son had been able to recount events with a startling level of clarity—this… dossier on the students only further proves that.

     (Nevermind that Jeralt is still struggling to wrap his head around it all—Byleth had been one step from a full-blown breakdown in his office when he’d thought Jeralt wasn’t going to believe him earlier. Jeralt needs to suck it up and get with the program; real or fake, the kid shouldn’t have to be dealing with all this shit by himself.)

     “By,” Jeralt grumbles, reaching out to lay a hand on his son’s shoulder.

     The response is immediate—every muscle in the kid’s back tenses, splayed fingers twitching from lax to stiff in less than a second. His breath comes out harsh, at least until his snapped-open eyes flick up to find Jeralt looming over him. He relaxes, then, an expression of unspeakable relief washing over his usually stoic face.

     “Father…” He breathes as he pushes himself up from the desk, the emotions he’d shown gone just as promptly as they’d appeared. Beneath him, unorganized papers speak everything from sketched-out lesson plans for the class as a whole—

Monday:

A Period: Weapon & Armor Upkeep*

B Period: Basic Battlefield Tactics & Battalion Management

[Snack & Social Break]

C Period: Per-Student Classroom Focus

D Period: Combat Medicine

E Period: Basic Faith Magic

[Daily Chores & Afternoon Break; Reconvene at Training Grounds]

F Period: Per-Student Training Focus

G Period: Per-Student Training Focus

*performing, not teaching

To more individualized lesson plans—

Dimitri / Monday:

C Period: Advanced Strategy w/ Felix, Sylvain, Ingrid, Annette, & Ashe

[Stable Duty w/ Sylvain & Ashe]

F Period: Lancing Drills w/ Ingrid, Ashe, Sylvain & Mercedes

G Period: Fencing Drills w/ Felix

     —and shit. For a moment, Jeralt just stares, silently proud and simultaneously, inexplicably saddened- because his kid really had thought of everything, hadn’t he?

     (It just drills home that much more how real all of this is. Just how many years of his son’s life he’d missed. How much he’s had to weather alone what Jeralt had sworn to himself he’d always be there for.)

     Jeralt’s straying eyes catch on the folder beneath Byleth’s forearm- or, more aptly, the label scrawled on it in a near foreign hand—so much neater than it had ever been during their days as a mercenary, “What happened to the Deer?” Jeralt asks, frowning down at the bit of parchment.

     Byleth sighs, sitting up and palming at his neck as he rolls his head, chasing away the stiffness that falling asleep in such a position would bring, “Our downfall was our numbers.” He says, matter-o-fact but so utterly tired- in a way that Jeralt thinks has very little to do with his actual energy levels.

     “Nemesis outnumbered us, hundreds to one—probably more.” He looks down at his plans, “Claude and the rest, I know, will flourish even without my guidance, but… If I can keep the Lions together, keep Dimitri together, and secure us the loyalty of The Kingdom and its forces from the beginning…”

     Jeralt crosses his arms, frowning, “We’d be the one to outnumber them.”

     Byleth nods, sighing, “The Alliance being split in its loyalties had us operating with half of an army from the very beginning. Then there were the casualties of our campaigns—minimum, but felt—and those lost at Gronder Field. In the end, it didn’t even matter that most of the Kingdom forces ended up defecting to our ranks after Dimitri fell- the aftermath of Fort Merceus cleaved our forces to a third of what we’d had going into the fight. Nevermind that our casualties during the march on Enbarr were minimal, no matter the outcome, so far as we were concerned the war was supposed to end that day—have you any idea the amount of supplies we burned through? The march on Shambhala took such a deep gouge out of our rations that two days into the battle on the Plateau, we were pulling back contingencies of troops to go hunting.”

     Byleth shakes his head, pushing away from his desk and standing, “If we can have Faerghus with us from the beginning… even if we can’t prevent the Dukedom, the death of every Kingdom and Alliance soldier at Gronder that had occurred at the hands of the other can be prevented and pushed unto the enemy instead.” He moves, collecting his papers into a neat stack and carefully tucking them away into the cream-colored folder, “It’s a big risk, changing something so big so early, but… I’d rather take this risk than go into that fight again with nothing.”

     “Hey,” Jeralt says, stepping forward to lay a hand on his son’s forearm, “Whatever you think is best, kid, I’m behind you.” Goddess knows he’s got a better head on his shoulders than Jeralt ever had when he was his age.

     “…of course,” Byleth says, glancing up at him quickly before moving to tuck his documents into the top drawer of his desk, “What time is it?”

     Jeralt sighs, shifting back, “A little after one- thought I’d stop by and see if you weren’t still up.” It hadn’t taken as long as he’d been expecting to go through the Knight Captain’s things, but it had still taken quite a while, “It’s too late now to be talking, though, and you’ve got classes in the morning.” He just wanted to make sure the kid got to a proper mattress. He’s too damn young to be breaking his back sleeping hunched over a desk.

     “Mhn,” Byleth hums, bending to ease open the bottom drawer of his desk and retrieve another folder buried beneath a stack stationery—this one unmarked. He offers it to Jeralt, “These are profiles on all our known adversaries. Commit them to memory then get rid of them. If you forget anything, I’ve got my own copies, but they’re coded and I’d rather not give form to the key if I don’t need to.”

     “Understandable,” Jeralt tells him mildly as he tucks the folder into the folds of his coat. He’ll look through them first thing once he’s back in his rooms and burn them soon as he’s done—the less time such knowledge spends out in the open, the better.

     Byleth walks him to the door, and there’s a moment then where they just sort of stare at each other. Jeralt pondering his son- this new, different version of him that overtook the old one entirely overnight, and Byleth… well, Byleth could be thinking just about anything—if the last few hours have taught Jeralt anything, it’s just how little he actually knows about the kid.

     The thought prompts Jeralt to sigh, raise a hand to rub at his jaw as he reaches for the door handle with the other.

     Byleth’s palm on his forearm slows the action, pulling Jeralt’s attention back to his son, who in turn looks back at him, eyes fixed on his chest, though, rather than his face.

     Jeralt frowns, opens his mouth to ask, but then Byleth is ever-so-slowly stepping into his space and wrapping his arms around his middle in a tight, solid embrace. He sucks in a breath to hold against Jeralt’s chest, eyes squeezing shut as his fingers close over Jeralt’s shoulder blades. Every line of his body is tense, every muscle contracted, like this is isn’t something he thinks is allowed, and- and that’s just-

     Jeralt pulls his hand back from the door handle, closes his arms around Byleth’s shoulders and neck, pulling the kid closer against him. Byleth melts into the touch, sagging against his chest with a heavy sigh, his grip going slack.

     “I missed you.”

     Jeralt pushes out a heavy breath as he lifts a hand, cupping Byleth’s head at the point where it meets his neck and dipping his chin to press his lips into his crown.

     “I know. I gotcha, kid.”

Chapter Text

     Standing in the audience chamber the next morning, Rhea and Seteth and Hanneman and Manuela waiting dutifully to hear his verdict, it is increasingly difficult to make himself actually say the words—because deciding that he’s going to take on the Blue Lions and verbalizing that he’s going to take on the Blue Lions are two very different things, Byleth finds.

     Logically, he knows that this is for the best despite the risks that such a big change can and probably will bring to the timeline if applied this early—so many unknowns thrown into the mix so soon.

     But it doesn’t matter if he knows what’s coming if he can’t prevent it.

     Better to go in prepared for anything and half-blind than all-knowing with nothing practical to show for it.

     Actually making that sacrifice, though, is difficult—and, make no mistake, it is a sacrifice.

     Or, at least, for Byleth it is.

     He’s not arrogant enough to think he played such a big part in the Deer’s lives that he fundamentally changed the course of their character development in the short year they’d spent together before the war—likely, they will all grow into the same fine men and women they had been even without him, but.

     The selfish part of Byleth can’t help but to wonder if there’s really any point to it all, if he cannot see to that himself. Cannot be there for it.

     (He’s already got to reconcile himself with the fact that the exact Deer of his timeline will never come to be. Their personalities will remain, but everything they weathered together that had drawn them so close—the good and the bad, love and laughter alongside tears and bloodshed; their entire history—is gone. Gone and never coming back. Almost like it never existed in the first place.

     It’s only been a few days, but Byleth can already feel himself going mad under that realization. Can feel the grief sinking its talons into him when he’s nothing else to focus on. The despair threatening to render him a husk of a man, mourning the loss of things that never happened, and—if he does this right—never will.)

     The Deer are his children, his family. He loves them like he’d never known he could love anything- but here, he is a stranger to them. Proven by Claude’s hollow smiles and the way Marianne had ducked her head and demurred when they’d crossed paths in the hallway yesterday afternoon. By Raphael and Leonie’s gazes passing right over him in the dining hall as they’d scanned the room for a free table at this morning’s breakfast, where once the two open seats at his side would’ve been all it took to have them bounding over to join him.

     He is a stranger to them now, and if he does not fall into the role he’d once taken as their professor, he fears he may never be anything else.

     So, Byleth is afraid. Afraid of making that last push.

     Afraid enough that he must pulse back three times in quick succession—once to alleviate the awkward air that had cropped up when Byleth had merely stood in silence upon hearing the question, once after giving his answer, because it had felt like denouncing his family and he just couldn’t, and a third time after selfishly choosing the Deer and then hating himself instantly for putting his own wants above the lives of the people of Fódlan.

     “The Blue Lions,” he sounds out the fourth time, the words twisting terribly in his chest.

     He cannot afford to allow these feelings to cling to him. It isn’t the Lions’ fault that they aren’t the Deer, and even if he has chosen them with an ulterior motive, they are still to be his students. Still children placed under his care who deserve nothing short of the very best that Byleth can give them.

     (He will love them, he had decided last night. Maybe not in the way he loved his fawns, but he will love them all the same.)

     Rhea smiles beautifully, as she would have no matter his choice, and that’s that.

     Flayn makes an appearance soon after, the warmth of her smile a balm to his hurt. So genuinely thrilled is she to meet him that Byleth cannot help himself from telling her that she’d be most welcome to sit in on his lectures, if she’d like—no matter the weaponized glare he’d known it would earn him from Seteth.

     Her entire being brightens, and it is truly impossible to be sad when subjected to the smile she gives him, “That would be most lovely, Professor!” She bubbles happily before quickly turning her joyous expression to Seteth, the very picture of hopeful anticipation as she bounces lightly on her toes, the silk of her skirts puffing cutely around her at the motion.

     Seteth opens his mouth, presumably for some sort of scathing denial or another, but Flayn is still smiling at him, eyes glittering, so he very quickly snaps it shut, crossing his arms and adopting a sour expression that Byleth is extremely familiar with.

     He never was very good at saying ‘no’ to Flayn when she gets like this.

     Seteth huffs, quick and displeased, and Byleth feels a curl of amusement at the subtle way the old Saint’s hair shifts to accommodate to the unhappy slant of his ears, “Perhaps,” Seteth allows, tone pained, “Though it might be more gracious of us to allow our new Professor to acclimate to his position, first.”

     Flayn’s expression curdles as she reads the dismissal for what it is, but she’s mature enough not to argue with him in the company of a perceived stranger, so she merely falls back, sulking silently as Rhea and Seteth go on to detail the month’s mission.

     The mock battle is nothing new, so Byleth pays them only half a mind and is eventually dismissed alongside Hanneman and Manuela. On his way out, Flayn waves him off happily, both hands dancing through the movement, and though Byleth’s loss still feels great, this, at least, is one friendship he knows he can yet have.

⬭⬭⬭

     When Byleth arrives in the Blue Lion classroom—some several minutes later than he’d wanted to, on account of needing to stop back in his room to retrieve his notes and the week’s handouts—the students are already gathered and waiting, all seated peacefully at their desks- save for Sylvain, who is seated on the desk he seems to share with Felix, backwards facing with his feet on the bench and an arm braced behind him as he chats with Ingrid on his other side, the young woman only half-listening as she works on cleaning and polishing a pair of riding boots.

     The Gautier son’s orientation has him noticing Byleth well before anyone else, his steady stream of pleasant chatter slowly dying off as he glances at him first casually, then with a more critical eye as he realizes Byleth isn’t dressed in any conceivable variation of the Officer’s Academy uniform. His brows furrow, pieces snapping together behind his eyes as Byleth continues down the aisle.

     Ingrid is the second to notice, looking up at Sylvain’s drop-off into silence and then turning in her seat to follow his gaze when she finds him distracted.

     The rest of the class catches on relatively quickly, after that, each of them stopping whatever it was they’d been occupying themselves with in favor of peering curiously after Byleth as he comes to a stop at the end of the center aisle before the Professor’s desk. He sets down the folders he’d carried in under his arm and moves to take off his cloak—leaving him moderately more approachable looking out of his armor, dressed instead in a loose white tunic that dips at the neck to mid-sternum, tucked into a pair of high-waisted black leather trousers, and matching boots—before turning to address the class, arms coming to a casual fold over his chest as he angles his head and flicks his gaze to the redhead in the second row, “If you could find your seat please, Sylvain.”

     There is a pause, awkward and surprised, before the boy is clumsily clambering down from the desk to seat himself properly behind it.

     Byleth dips his head once in thanks, pleased.

     “You’ve probably heard by now,” He then begins, if only because it seems to be the most comfortable segue into an introduction, “But my name is Byleth Eisner, and as of today, I am the acting Professor in charge of the Blue Lion house.” Another pause, as Byleth dutifully ignores Annette’s small, confused, ‘whaaaat?’ and the faint slap that follows as she hastily claps her hands over her mouth, eyes wide and cheeks crimson as she wilts in her seat.

     Mercedes giggles softly beside her as she reaches to lay a consoling hand on her back.

     “Today will be relatively simple, so far as lessons go,” Byleth goes on as he drops his arms to brace his hands on the lip of the Professor’s desk, “We’ll move to the training grounds and run through some spars so I can get a feel for where you’re all at, and then tomorrow we’ll begin our studies in earnest.” A beat of silence as he watches the small sea of faces before him process the information. Then, “Are there any questions before we get going?”

     Sylvain leans forward, leaning one elbow on his desk as his free hand raises lazily into the air, “Aren’t you a bit young to be a professor?” He asks, and almost immediately there is the flare of Ingrid’s nostrils beside him, a thump of a knee under the table as she lifts her leg to jam the heel of her boot down on her friend’s foot, “What?” Sylvain winces as he shifts down the bench away from her, shooting her a look that manages to be wounded and incredulous all at once, “It’s a valid question.”

     “I’m old enough, I assure you.” Byleth says, pinning the boy with an unimpressed stare—though, privately, he is amused at the showing. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to see his young general behave in such a natural manner. Too often was he faking levity; plastering on smiles to hide sad eyes and a crumbling spirit.

     “Yeah, but… how old?” Sylvain tries again, casually sitting back to avoid the punch Ingrid aims at his shoulder. Her fist brushes past him and she scowls, then redirects the hit, opting instead to swat his chest with the back of her hand. Absentmindedly, Sylvain pinches up her hand by the cuff of her sleeve and directs it away from him.

     Byleth sighs, eyes slipping closed.

     It is a question that, frankly, he does not want to answer—least of all because he isn’t quite sure himself. Logic would say that, physically, Byleth had been twenty-nine. Here, he is supposedly twenty, but a good number of physical traits have carried over from his timeline. The color and texture of his hair—from needle-fine and pin-straight to thick, fluffy waves that lick at his jawline—the brightness of his eyes, his body’s capacity for magic, any muscle memories picked up over the years, and, as he’d noticed as he was cleaning himself this morning, some of his more violent scars. Even the boxy point his ears had adopted after he’d fused with Sothis has followed him back.

     Add in the complications of being the vessel of an ancient goddess and losing five years to a magically induced healing coma (Did his body age during that? He’s never been able to tell), and Byleth has absolutely no idea where that leaves him.

     It’s tempting to give Sylvain an approximate, if only to create an inconsistency in his known history that will find its way into Garreg Mach’s gossip mill—but the whole point of his little breadcrumb game is to leave subtle discrepancies that only Claude will notice or think to poke at. Fudging something as easy to cross-reference as his age wouldn’t just be obvious, it would be immediately identifiable as a lie to anyone with a basic grasp of mathematics.

     So Byleth merely opens his eyes and says, suddenly much more tired than he was moments ago, “If my perceived inexperience bothers you, I invite you to take your complaints somewhere that won’t cut into our class time.” He shifts, cocking his chin as he resists the urge to slip into monosyllabism, “Are there any other questions before we begin?”

     Silence.

     Byleth pushes away from his desk, “Very well. Let us away, then.”

Chapter Text

     The Lions follow after Byleth like a row of soldiers lead to march, stiff and uncertain where the Deer had always been quick to break into conversation the moment there was a pause long enough to accommodate to one. It makes Byleth uncomfortable, frankly- makes him wonder if he perhaps had come across as too strict, earlier. He’d needed to be stern, with the Deer. They were so keen to derail lessons, so prone to distraction that he hadn’t been able to be anything less if he’d wanted them to get anything done in any sort of timely manner.

     The Lions are more organized than that, though. It… was perhaps an oversight on Byleth’s part to assume he’d need to corral them in the same way he had the Deer.

     Byleth slows his steps, meaning to let the Lions catch up so they’re walking alongside him instead of trailing behind him, but they only adjust their paces to match his. He slows evermore, stepping off to the side and coming to a stop. The Lions trickle into a confused cluster—save for Felix, who just looks annoyed at the hold-up, and Dedue, who Byleth has yet to discern how to read.

     “So long as I’m not giving instruction, you’re allowed to talk amongst yourselves,” He tells them, frowning, “In fact, so long as it isn’t overly disruptive, you’re allowed to do whatever you want,” At the generally baffled looks he’s getting, Byleth adds, “That includes now.”

     Confusion persists. Felix’s scowl deepens.

     Byleth sighs. He had really hoped, this time, to skip the part where his first few days of teaching were spent in a perpetual state of awkward discomfort, “I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I want you behaving at all times. I’m…” He hesitates, then decides, yes, this is a concession that needs to be made—even if he can’t be fully truthful, “I’m used to working with my father’s men. They’re prone to getting out of control- I shouldn’t have assume you all would behave similarly.”

     A silent shift into half-understanding.

     Progress.

     “If there are any informalities you’re worried about offending me with, don’t. I’d like for my classes to be a place for you to get away from all that, if at all possible.” Byleth considers attempting a smile, but quickly discounts it. He’s not quite sure how to make his face make such an expression deliberately, and has too much pride to be willing to suffer through the embarrassment that a failure of one would bring, “Alright?”

     A stilted pause, before—

     “Ah- of course, Professor!” Dimitri interjects, jittery, his voice emerging just a tad too loudly for his tone to sound natural. Felix winces back and takes a step away from him, face scrunching with distaste. The prince’s hands gesticulate rapidly as he speaks, “We did not mean to make you feel unwelcome! We sought only to show respect where it’s due, b-but if you’d like us to take on a more familiar tone with you-” his eyes flicker the rest of the class, “-I’m sure we would all be amenable?”

     Felix scoffs loudly, rolling his eyes while Sylvain falls forward to hook an arm around Dimitri’s neck, knocking the boy into a half-bend, “Sure thing, Highness!” He says, grinning, before looking to address Byleth, casually apologetic in the way that liars tend to be, “Didn’t mean to ice you out Professor, you’re just- you’re kind of terrifying, y’know?”

     “Sylvain!” Ingrid hisses, stepping up to detach the redhead from the prince, “He didn’t mean it like that, Professor,” She’s quick to assure Byleth, “You’ve just got an aura that demands a certain amount of… obedience,” then, blanching as she realizes how that might be taken negatively, rushes to backpedal, “Which isn’t a bad thing, I simply meant to say-”

     Byleth huffs a small breath, amused, and puts the poor girl out of her suffering, “I’m well aware of the impression I give off,” he concedes—though he could have stood to be more aware of it. He had simply forgotten, after living for so long in a world where everybody around him had understood that there was no malice behind his resting glare, just how intimidating his default expressions can be to those who don’t know any better, “I’m sorry to have scared you all.”

     “Scared is a strong word, Professor,” Mercedes chastens in her usual airy, vaguely amused tone, “You just don’t look the type of person to appreciate being disrespected with idle chatter.”

     “Hah,” Byleth says more than laughs as he turns to continue towards the training grounds, lest Felix lose patience and keep on without them. He lifts an arm, idly flicking his wrist in a silent ask that they join him, “So long as you give me your attention when I ask for it, you can disrespect me however you’d like.”

     A scuffing sound and a startled, strangled noise have Byleth glancing back over his shoulder in time to see Dimitri recovering from what looks like an instance of nearly tripping over his own feet, Dedue gripping his bicep to steady him. Mercedes steps up beside him, one hand outstretched to pat at the space below his opposing shoulder-blade, “You really must watch where you’re going, Dimitri,” she chides good-naturedly, “I’d expect this sort of thing from Annie, but you’re supposed to be a prince.”

     “Wh- hey!” Annette pipes up, taking offense to the slander.

     Dimitri clears his throat, hands lifting to signal his friends away, “Yes, of course, Mercedes,” and as Byleth turns his attention back to where he’s going, he hears the boy say, “Thank you, Dedue.”

⬭⬭⬭

     Somehow, Byleth hadn’t expected that Jeritza would be here.

     Then again, Byleth’s previous trips to the training grounds had been kept almost exclusively to the afternoon and evening hours—his knowledge of when Jeritza could and couldn’t be found there extended only as far as, ‘he’s not here right now,’ and after Jeritza was unmasked and fled, what time he had and hadn’t spent there wasn’t really important enough to make note of.

     Lovely, now, for him to know that the man apparently occupies it in the mornings.

     If his new students notice how the fingers of Byleth’s sword hand twitch at the sight of the masked blond in the corner seeing a cluster of younger students through introductory swordplay stances, they make no mention of it. Merely follow after him—not like ducks in a row, this time, and though they are silent it is a casual, comfortable thing—as he comes to lead them to them to the weapon racks at the opposite and of the training grounds.

     Byleth gestures to the stone steps leading up to the exterior walk, “Feel free to take a seat, if you’d like.”

     There are some stray, uncertain glances cast his way—Dimitri, Ashe, Ingrid—but for the most part, the Lions are content to find a spot and plop themselves down without much forethought. Mercedes daintily dusting off the place she plans to sit before smoothing her skirts down as she lowers herself, Annette throwing herself onto the slab of stone beside her with little regard for its cleanliness. Sylvain sitting not on the stairs but in front of them, legs stretched out before him as he braces his elbows on the step behind him, Felix huffing at him as he comes to a stand a few feet to the side.

     Ingrid, when she sits, takes up position two steps up beside Sylvain, rolling her eyes at the way he tips his head back and waggles his eyebrows at her with a grin. Dimitri lowers himself down beside her, looking almost comically out of place given the length of his limbs, while Ash seats himself on Sylvain’s other side, next to Annette, and Dedue climbs the steps to fall into a militaristic rest behind the crown prince.

     “We’re not going to get into anything complicated, today.” Byleth reiterates once they’re all settled, “I just want to get an idea of your skill levels before we properly begin so that I can instruct you all accordingly.” It would be suspect, after all, had he simply blown into class with a personalized curriculum set for all of them—all without meeting them or seeing any but Dimitri in combat.

     “The ‘game’ we’ll be playing is a relatively simple one,” Byleth continues, “One at a time, you will all select a weapon and attempt to either disarm me, land a physical blow to my torso, or otherwise knock me down. If you can manage any of the three, you win,” A moment, to allow his words to process, “Conversely, if I manage to disarm you, land a physical blow to your torso, or otherwise knock you down, you lose. Simple, yes?”

     “Uhm,” Ashe pipes up, lifting a tentative hand, “Does the force behind the blow matter?”

     “No,” Byleth assures him, “A light tap will suffice, if that’s what you’d like to do.”

     “So, when you say physical blow…” Anette begins, appropriately nervous.

     “Magic doesn’t count, no.” Byleth says, “You can still use it, of course—you’ll just need to be a bit more clever than indiscriminate casting.”

     The young Reason mage closes her mouth and nods as she drops her gaze, contemplative.

     Byleth shifts his attention back to the class as a whole, “Is there anything else that needs clarification?”

     A period of silence, as the Lions’ eyes dart amongst each other, as though that will prompt more questions.

     “Alright,” Byleth nods, “Do we have any volunteers?”

     The words are barely out of his mouth before Felix is stepping up, arms crossed, “I’ll go.”

     Yes, Byleth supposes—that was probably a given.

⬭⬭⬭

     Felix, to the surprise of nobody, chooses a sword, and when Byleth selects a sword of his own from the rack of training weapons, he’s gifted with a flinty-eyed look of appraisal. Then, when Byleth finds his place across from him and eases himself into his usual left-handed sword stance, the look shifts from assessing to smug.

     This will be quick, then.

     “Mercedes, if you’d like to do the honors?” Byleth asks, not looking away from the Fraldarius heir as he takes a combat stance of his own.

     “Oh!” Mercedes perks up in Byleth’s periphery, caught off-guard by the sudden address, “Of course- on ‘go’ then?” she takes their silence as an affirmative, “Three…two…one…go!”

     Felix, predictably, is off like a shot as soon as the words pass through his classmate’s lips, sword shooting forward to aim a jab at Byleth’s stomach—the obvious target, considering Byleth has adopted a stance that purposefully leaves the stretch of his torso exposed just enough to be enticing, but not so exposed as to seem like an intentional opening.

     Three things happen simultaneously:

             1.) Byleth spins his sword down into an underhand grip, pulling back and away from himself to seamlessly parry Felix’s blade.

             2.) Byleth steps forward, hooking a heel behind the ankle of Felix’s dominant leg and kicking back, tearing his foot out from under him.

             3.) Byleth’s off-hand rises to collide with Felix’s forehead as he throws his weight forward, following through with the momentum to flip the boy to the ground.

     Felix stares up at the sky, wide-eyed.

     “Out.” Byleth says.

     There’s a stretch of shocked silence, then—

     Sylvain throws his head back and cackles.

     Byleth exhales, displeased but unfortunately not surprised. Still, the goal of the exercise is to make the students aware of their weaknesses, not to publicly humiliate them, “Thank you, Sylvain,” He speaks, cutting the redhead a sharp look from the corner of his vision, “for volunteering to go next.”

Chapter Text

     The Gautier heir has a little more color in his face by the time he takes up position across from Byleth, giving the lance he’d grabbed off the weapon rack a few experimental jabs, “So, uh,” He chuckles as he steps back into a combat stance, grinning in a way that he’s definitely hoping is charming, “You’ll go easy on me, won’t you Professor?”

     Byleth stares at him, cold and unimpressed, and after a long moment says, “No.”

     “Alright!” Mercedes declares cheerily, clapping her hands together, “Are we ready to begin?”

     “Nope.” Sylvain sounds out, eyes wide as he pops his lips around the end of the word.

     “Go ahead, Mercedes.” Byleth tells her.

     Mercedes giggles, then counts down with words like notes escaping a wind chime.

     It’s Byleth’s turn to advance first, ducking low and keeping his arms close as he shoots across the space. Sylvain, to his credit, reacts quickly, spinning his lance into a vertical hold and striking back at Byleth’s oncoming slash. Byleth allows the hit to land, ducking back and falling into a crouch before springing up again, this time aiming a straight jab for Sylvain’s head.

     The lancer yelps and leans back to avoid it, startled. Never having planned on the hit landing in the first place, Byleth is already recovering, pulling his sword back and reaching forward with his off hand to grip the shaft of Sylvain’s lance. He tugs it back just long enough for the boy to pull back against it before punching forward, striking the flat of the wooden blade into the young noble’s forehead with a hollow thwack.

     “Augh!” Sylvain grits as Byleth drops his sword to grab the lance with both hands, taking advantage of the redhead’s momentary disorientation to twist the weapon, forcing him to relinquish his already loosened grip on it unless he wants his arms spun into a knot. Ducking back and assuming a lancing stance, Byleth lunges forward again to jam the butt of the weapon into Sylvain’s stomach.

     The boy staggers back, arms coming to cradle his midsection as he drops blearily to the ground.

     Byleth steps away, releasing the lance with one hand and twirling it into to a casual hold at his side, “Out.”

     One knee in the dirt, Sylvain wheezes, “You already took my lance,” He groans, pushing himself to his feet, though he’s still hunched forward a bit, “D’ja really have to hit me with it, Professor?”

     Byleth lifts a brow, “Did it hurt?”

     Sylvain looks at him, slightly baffled and more than a little affronted, “Uh, yeah.”

     “Good,” Byleth steps forward, Faith already pooling in his palm as he reaches out to relieve the pain, “Consider it incentive to not let it happen again.”

     Sylvain scoffs, dropping his arms from his stomach to allow Byleth’s magic better access, “You wouldn't happen to be related to Felix, would you?”

     Byleth grunts noncommittally, lifting his hand from the boy’s midsection to address the angry red imprint on his forehead.

⬭⬭⬭

     Byleth takes down Ingrid in a similar manner, then Dedue, bare handed, by ducking his axe and charging on to abuse the boy’s momentum, hooking hands around his knees and lifting to deposit him onto the ground behind him. Coming after him is Annette, who piped up to volunteer with what looked like a great deal of effort, only to then take on an expression that suggested she was immediately regretting doing so. Byleth decides to go easy on the poor girl, leaving his training sword where he’d propped it against the weapon racks before his match with Dedue.

     This time, when Mercedes counts down, it’s a more tentative thing, sounding almost as though she’s wincing around the words. The word go has barely left her lips before Annette has snapped her arms up to cast, a bright, glowing glyph springing to life before her palms. The air at her feet kicks into a gust, swirling at her ankles as she shoots off two blades of Wind in quick succession.

     Byleth remains rooted where he is, position barely disrupted as the magical crescents crash into his body and shatter into flecks of energy.

     Across the yard, Annette pales, face stretching into something akin to horror. Then she squeezes her eyes closed, jaw clenching as the whirlpool of air circling her calves kicks high enough to begin displacing her skirts. Two more blades of Wind, much larger than the last, spring from the glyph, spinning rapidly as they cut through the air towards Byleth.

     Byleth ignores the magic breaking against his skin and takes a step forward, then another.

     Annette’s eyes peek open, quickly slamming shut again as she realizes he’s still standing. She jerks her aim lower, blasting another volley of Wind at Byleth’s shins.

     Byleth walks through the blades, barely phased by the spell that—compared to what he’s spent the last three and a half years enduring—might as well have summoned an actual gust of wind.

     The glyph at the young mage’s fingertips warbles, lines bleeding opaque and jittery as she tries to hold the spell in place- but she hasn’t yet the stamina for it. The glyph bursts apart into strands of light, the air orbiting Annette’s legs stilling with it. Her eyes snap open, irises darting desperately about the yard in search of an out.

     She finds none, and can then only watch as Byleth crosses the yard to meet her.

     He reaches her and she squeaks, hands coming up to block her face with her forearms as she flinches back. Byleth blinks slow around a sigh, closing his hand into a two-fingered point and reaching out to prod the girl in the ribs, forceful enough for her to feel it through the layers of her uniform, but not so harsh that it has any chance of hurting, “Out.”

     Annette makes a sound in the back of her throat, high and confused, and her forearms part a crack so that she can peer at him.

     Byleth drops his hand and makes a sweeping gesture with his arm as he flicks his gaze to the Lions, excusing her to return to the rest of the class, if she’d like.

     She skirts around him, giving him a wide berth—as though he might decide to attack her more violently after all—then quickly skips into a brisk walk once she’s past him. She sinks stiffly onto her abandoned seat beside Mercedes when she reaches the steps and ducks her head, bangs falling over her face as her hands come to a tight fold over her lap.

     Mercedes looks to her with a concerned frown, reaching out to press one hand between her shoulder blades as her other finds the girl’s knee.

     Byleth exhales, shifting his body towards the Lions—vaguely aware, at this point, that Jeritza’s class has abandoned their drills to watch the proceedings, “So long as you see them coming, physical combatants are relatively easy to overcome with magic,” He speaks, voice projecting as he returns to his place in the center of their little makeshift arena, “It is other mages that will most often pose the biggest challenge for you to dispatch without aid on the battlefield.” Byleth lifts a demonstrative hand and pulls Lightning to his fingertips, allowing the sparks to dance for a moment before waving them off and dropping his arm, “Unless you’d like to exchange spells until one of you runs out of casts, you’re going to need to go for a physical blow in order to disable them, or otherwise utilize a combination of magic and your terrain to overcome them.”

     Annette, who has looked up to absorb the information with a concentrated furrow to her brows, snaps her attention to Byleth, mouth opening as her hand twitches off her lap—presumably intending to ask for clarification.

     Byleth raises a hand of his own, bidding her pause, and continues, “My magical resistance you will likely only see in enemy commanders, which you will almost always attack in tandem with a team. In the instance of your average infantry mage, however, even if your spells won’t do anything to directly injure them, they will at the very least work to displace them.” He drops his hand, tucking it neatly behind his back as he goes on to explain, “Knock them off their horses. Blow them off a cliff or into a solid object. If there’s a lake or earthly fire nearby, see that they end up in it—send them flying high enough or far enough that the force of the landing will remove them from the fight.”

     Annette nods curtly, the gears in her head turning as she visibly loses focus.

     Byleth puffs a breath through his nose, pleased, “You had the right idea, aiming for my legs.” He commends, pulling her attention back, “If I was an infantry mage, I’d have fallen flat on my face.” A pause, as Byleth makes a point of meeting her eyes. Then, “You did very well, Annette.”

     The young Reason mage inhales deeply, posture straightening as her eyes alight, “I’ll do even better, next time!” She declares, brows knitting tight as her hands curl into determined fists.

     Byleth dips his chin in an approving nod, then shifts his attention back to the class at large, “Do we have any more volunteers?”

     A silence, thick, as the Lions look amongst each-other.

     Byleth sighs. Honestly, though, he is surprised that it took this long, “Dimitri,” Byleth speaks, prompting the boy to jerk to attention, “do you take any issue with going next?”

     The crown prince stares at him for a moment before abruptly shaking his head, “N-no!” he insists, “Of course not, Professor.”

     “Good.” Byleth shifts his gaze, “Ashe,” the way the boy stiffens at his direct address tells Byleth all he needs to know, “if it would make you more comfortable, you may stay after class for a private spar. Mercedes,” Byleth’s eyes move on, “Are you alright to spar now, or would you like to join him?”

     “—Wait, that was an option?!” Sylvain cuts in, looking only slightly betrayed.

     “For those who need it, yes,” Though Byleth wasn’t going to tell them as much until they ran out of willing volunteers, “As your teacher, it is my job to always urge that you at least try to step beyond your comfort zone, but the very last thing I want is to cause undue stress. So, while I hope that you can trust that I would never ask you for anything I do not think you capable of delivering, it is also important to me that you all understand that if there is ever any part of a lesson that you feel truly overwhelmed by, you need only tell me, and I will be more than happy to work with you towards finding an alternative.

     “That said, I do still reserve the right to deny such privileges if I feel that they are only being invoked in the name of laziness-” Byleth sighs, wearied by memories of Hilda, Linhardt, and Sylvain coming to him with increasingly ridiculous reasons that might excuse them from their least favorite lessons—as if Byleth did not know Hilda to be fully capable of cleaving a man in half should she put her mind to it, did not know Linhardt to be a brilliant tactician if given the opportunity to be, and Sylvain to be infinitely more capable of Reason and Faith than he’d like people to believe, “-though I ask that you please do not put me in a position where I need to do so. Neither of us will be pleased with the outcome.”

     Byleth exhales, eyes slipping closed, “Well then,” he opens them, turning his attention back to Mercedes, “Mercedes?”

     The white mage smiles, though it’s stiff around the corners, twitchy beneath her brows, “I’m not in any shape to take you on, Professor,” she laughs, airy, “I’d much rather get some offensive experience before being pitted against someone of your skill level, if it’s all the same to you.”

     Byleth frowns, regarding the girl for a long moment. He’d few interactions with Mercedes von Martritz in his previous timeline. Limited to glimpses caught in the gardens or cathedral and, after his father had passed, Faith lessons—but Byleth had been much more invested in the magic than he’d been in the person teaching it. She’d been incredibly talented, though, he remembers. Mayhaps even stronger than Marianne.

     But, looking back, Byleth cannot ever recall seeing her cast any sort of attack magic.

     That will definitely be something to prioritize, then.

     “Stay with me after class,” Byleth says, finally, not wanting to draw out this exchange with the rest of the house watching, “We can talk about our options,” Then, shifting his gaze to Ashe, “And you, Ashe?”

     The grey-haired boy perks in his seat, lips parting, “Uhm, I…” he trails off, decidedly uncomfortable with being singled out, “I think I’m fine to go during class, Professor.”

     Byleth keeps his eyes on the boy, allowing a brief period of silence in which he might change his mind. When he doesn’t, Byleth dips his chin in a nod, “Very well. Dimitri—” in Byleth’s periphery, the prince’s shoulders square, “You’re up.”

Chapter Text

     Dimitri lifts a training lance from the weapon rack, fists clenching almost imperceptibly over the wood as he tests how tightly he can grip the staff without damaging it. Of the students assembled, the crown prince possesses the most knowledge of Byleth’s fighting style, so Byleth opts to forgo his usual sword in favor of a pair of wooden training axes, twirling them idly at his sides as he waits for Dimitri to finish his inspection.

     The prince looks up from the lance in his hands and meets Byleth’s gaze, then slowly settles back into a fighting stance. The students’ anticipation is palpable as Mercedes counts them down, Byleth flipping his axes into a combat hold—and for the first time today, neither party makes any move to attack when she says ‘go.’

     They merely stand there, watching one another.

     After an almost too-long stretch of nothingness, Dimitri ducks in and stabs forward once- a quick, testing sort of jab.

     Byleth huffs, spinning his left axe up to catch the lance and knock it off-course before lunging in and dodging around the prince’s extended arm to aim a slash at his stomach.

     Dimitri jerks back, avoiding the hit and returning his lance to a resting hold.

     Byleth pushes in, swinging one axe down in a hit that will reasonably never connect—doesn’t matter, though, because Dimitri is reacting, raising his lance to block out of sheer defensive instinct. Byleth cleaves up with the axe in his off-hand, hooking the wooden staff securely between his axe blades and yanking it skyward as he lifts a foot to aim a hard kick to the boy’s freshly exposed stomach.

     The prince’s eyes widen, quick to understand Byleth’s intentions, and he twists his grip, jerking one end of his lance down to block the hit with the flat of his forearm. He grunts against the effort, teeth bared against the discomfort of such an awkward bend.

     Byleth expels an amused chuff, pulling back to plant his foot back on the ground where it belongs. Decouples his off-axe and swings it up to hook it over the staff of the prince’s lance with its match, pulling Dimitri down to his level, then—before the boy can realize what he’s about to do—he cranes his head back and bashes forward, careful to aim higher than he would were this a true combat encounter so as not to break the boy’s nose.

     Dimitri cries out, head snapping back, and Byleth moves in quick, sliding a foot between his legs, catching his ankle, and kicking back.

     The crown prince topples to the ground.

     Byleth drops his axes at his feet, frowning against the fresh ache blooming in his skull. He lifts a hand, distantly aware of the shocked silence that’s overtaken the training grounds, and pushes his hair back, pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead and blinking his starburst vision back to clarity.

     Stupid man, not-Sothis chides.

     Byleth suppresses the urge to roll his eyes at his own inner monologue and wanders over to Dimitri, who is still spread out in the dirt like somebody who can’t quite figure out how they got there.

     “Out,” He says mildly, bending down to pull the prince to his feet.

     The boy comes easily—mostly because he’s still too dazed to do anything else—and it’s only once he’s firmly back on his feet that Byleth notices the smudge of scarlet lingering behind his bangs.

     Frowning, Byleth reaches up and pushes back the boy’s hair, “Hmn,” He hums, inspecting the split skin with distaste, then sighs low through his nose as he calls Faith to his free hand and presses it into the wound. The split is a small thing, so it isn’t much more than a second before Byleth is pulling back to inspect his work.

     Healed nicely, but-

     Byleth’s brows knit, and without thinking he quickly swipes the pad of his thumb over the tip of his tongue, then lifts his hand to rub at the little scuff of blood on the boy’s forehead.

     —It doesn’t occur to him until after he’s already recalled his hand and brushed the boy’s bangs back into place that he probably shouldn’t be taking such liberties with the crown prince of Faerghus. Dimitri, looking at him with wide eyes and flushed ears, seems to have come to a similar conclusion.

     (Another thing he will need to train himself out of—the Deer had been such a tactile bunch; always patting backs and slinging arms over shoulders and ruffling hair. Byleth had gotten so used to the touching, so thoughtless with his hands because it had never mattered with the Deer. Had been welcomed, even. The Lions are not the Deer, though- they aren’t as strait-laced as the Eagles by a mile, but they’re still steeped in formalities. Nevermind that Byleth would like to eventually see those formalities done away with, it’s been one day. Not even to mention that, save for Felix—contact acceptable during sparring, but otherwise, unless your name is Sylvain, Marianne, or Bernadetta, Do Not Touch—and Sylvain—back/shoulder/arm pats usually welcome, too tall for head pats; generally a no on hugs, but needs them sometimes—he doesn’t know the Lions’ boundaries like he’d known the Deer’s. Hasn't yet figured out which students welcome touch and which are averse to it.)

     Not allowing his slip-up to show for what it is, Byleth sighs, wiping the thinning blood on the inside of his wrist for lack of any better place and addressing the boy as though completely oblivious to the social blunder he’d just committed, “Your lancework was solid, and you did well to gauge my reaction time before moving in for a proper strike—but you made the mistake of assuming that I would be fighting you on equal terms. Why?”

     Dimitri only blinks at him, owlish.

     Byleth sighs, nodding for Dimitri to rejoin the class, but the prince only lingers, brows drawn as his eyes search Byleth’s face for something inscrutable. Slowly, so that the boy might reject the touch if it offends him, Byleth reaches to press the pads of his fingers into the cloth over Dimitri’s bicep, applying the barest amount of pressure as he gestures towards the waiting Lions with his free hand.

     Dimitri jumps—so, not quite averse to touch, but not used to it, either; Byleth notes—and goggles at Byleth for a second before flushing and beating a hasty retreat back towards the rest of the class.

     “The reason you all have been losing to me today has nothing to do with my being more skilled than you,” Byleth tells them as the prince finds his seat, “You all lost because you expected me to play by your rules instead of my own.”

     Not even Felix, at this point in the timeline, Byleth realizes, was expecting Byleth to fight any way but cleanly. The boy would fight dirty himself, certainly, but he was still the son of a Lord, still trained by noble instructors who clung to noble ideals that would in the end harm their charge more than help them. His only experience with sneakiness in combat scenarios at this point was perhaps Sylvain, but then, Sylvain’s way of handling Felix has always been underhanded in a much lighter, sillier way—prodding him teasingly in the ribs, tugging the ribbon from his hair mid-spar, ducking in to drop a kiss on his nose then dancing away in a fit of laughter as the boy inevitably exploded into a puff of angry crimson profanity.

     If the Gautier heir had ever seen any more battle-practical openings, he’d certainly never thought to exploit them the way Byleth would’ve.

     Land of Noble Knights, indeed.

     “If there is to be only one thing you leave my class with, let it be this,” Byleth begins, cutting his gaze to the class, “There is no honor to be found in bloodshed. No such thing as a clean fight when your life is on the line. You may uphold such principles in your personal lives and in regulated bouts, if it pleases you, but if you intend to live as a soldier for any length of time, you’d do well not to take such notions onto the battlefield with you.

     “What is more noble, do you think—to live to serve another day, or to perish at the first opportunity because you’d rather death than a dishonorable fight?” Byleth lifts his chin, narrowing his gaze as he tucks his hands behind his back, “Ideals can only go so far before they become ego. You’d do best to not get the two confused.”

     Silence rings in the wake of his speech, uncomfortable and unsure, and Byleth wonders if he had, perhaps, been too harsh on them; a slap where a pat would have sufficed. Briefly, he entertains using a pulse to take back his words, for it is clear that not all are ready to hear them—Ingrid in particular looks as though she has been struck, caught somewhere between anger and illness—but, no.

     It is a necessary lesson. The sooner they learn it, the better.

     Byleth releases a breath, tired, before he collects himself, blinking the glare he tends to  slip into during lectures away in favor of something more placid, “Ashe,” He says, “I believe it’s down to you.”

⬭⬭⬭

     Byleth decides against using a melee weapon for this particular match-up, and Ashe, on his part, surprises Byleth by selecting an axe. The boy takes up position across the field looking anxious but determined, and Byleth is pleased to see that he hasn’t been discouraged by Byleth’s lecture or the many consecutive losses of his peers.

     “I’m ready, Mercedes,” He says, grip tightening on the handle of his axe.

     Byleth lowers himself to a crouch, hands palm-up at his sides, fingers curled, to foreshadow his weapon of choice for the bout.

     Mercedes counts them down; three… two… one… go.

     The two take off towards each-other simultaneously, paths fated to meet in the middle of the field. Byleth lunges as soon as he’s in range, and Ashe drops into a slide, fisting a handful of dirt and throwing it up into Byleth’s face. As Byleth recoils, Ashe pushes up off the ground and swings.

     Byleth throws out a hand, shooting a powerful but otherwise harmless burst of Faith to propel him sideways out of range, then another from his opposite hand to launch him back at the boy, half-blind from the dirt in his eyes. Ashe dodges around him and lifts his arm high to throw an elbow at Byleth’s back.

     The hit connects, and Byleth plants one foot forward to catch himself before it can knock him over—but it was still a hit, still made contact with Byleth’s torso.

     There’s a moment of startled silence before—

     “Alright, Ashe!” Sylvain hoots from the sidelines amidst a spattering of quieter praise.

     Byleth stands to his full height and ignores the ache at the base of his spine as he turns to address the boy, who is blinking incredulously at his own hands like he didn’t expect that to actually work. Pulling his shirt from his pants to wipe at the dirt on his face, Byleth huffs a pleased laugh as he blinks his vision clear and says, “Excellently done, Ashe.”

     Ashe jerks to attention, “T-thank you, professor!” he chirps.

     Byleth drops the hem of his shirt and steps forward to ruffle Ashe’s hair—and, shit, he realizes as his hand connects with the boy’s head; he’s doing it again. Ashe only beams at him when he pulls away, though, so Byleth makes note of it as he gestures for Ashe to rejoin the rest of the class and moves on.

     “While I wouldn’t advise making a habit of throwing dirt in the faces of students and staff during spars, it’s a most effective trick on the battlefield—especially when many people’s first reaction will be to try and clear their eyes with their hands, sometimes even dropping weapons in order to do so.” He tells them, then, “That’s all for class, today, but I want you all to write out a list of what you believe to be your strengths and weaknesses skill-wise, as well as what you would like to prioritize learning during your time in this class, and have it on my desk by lunch. If you feel comfortable doing so, I’d like it if you could also tell me some things about yourself; likes and dislikes, hobbies, your favorite tea time snack—anything you would have me know about you.”

     “What about you, Professor?” Sylvain drawls.

     Byleth frowns, “Pardon?”

     The redhead is smiling lazily from his seat at the base of the stairs, one knee bent, elbow propped, forearm hanging downwards, “What’re your likes and dislikes, hobbies, favorite tea time snack?” He asks, grin going roguish as he wiggles his fingers from where they dangle from his unfettered hand. Ingrid frowns down at him, unamused, but makes no move to admonish the behavior.

     “Ooh, yeah!” Annette pipes up, “D’you like sweet things best, or spicy?”

     “Ah, I-” Byleth blinks, completely caught off-guard, “Spicy, I suppose.”

     “And the other things?” Ashe inquires, politely curious.

     It’s a testament to the true extent of Byleth’s people-skills, or lack thereof, that he seriously considers pulsing back and rephrasing the assignment so as to avoid having to answer. 

     Don’t you dare, not-Sothis warns.

     Thankfully, he’s saved from having to make the decision as the bells ring, signaling the end of the period, “Another time,” he says, “Dismissed—Mercedes, if you could stay behind to speak with me, please.”

     There’s a little ‘aww ’ from Annette, but otherwise the abrupt drop of the subject is taken peacefully as the bulk of the Lions pull themselves off the steps and filter out of the training grounds while Mercedes, meanwhile, makes her way over to Byleth.

     “You don’t know any offensive spells,” Byleth says once she reaches him.

     Mercedes’ gaze falls to the ground, brows creasing, “No, Professor.”

     “You have no experience with standardized weaponry.”

     “I-” Her face twists. The knuckles of her folded hands are white, Byleth notes, “I had an archery instructor when I was a child, but I haven’t held a bow since.”

     “Sparring with me as you are now won’t teach you anything you don’t already know,” Byleth decides, “Do you still hold an interest in archery?”

     Mercedes looks up at him, her shame-faced expression shifting to one of cautious curiosity, “I’m… not disinterested in it.” She says carefully.

     “Our first goal will be to familiarize you with ways to apply Faith offensively—since you are, as I understand, already rather talented in the school, it should be easier than otherwise starting you on a whole new school of thought.” Byleth says, already rewriting Mercedes’ planned curriculum in his mind and adjusting her schedule accordingly, “From there we can get a start on basic Reason, while in the background working on archery and lancework as secondary skills.” At Mercedes’ wide, slightly scared eyes, he is quick to add, “I want you to be able to protect yourself in the event magic isn’t an option for you, and bows aren’t very viable in close-encounters. I’m not asking you to be a master, just knowing the basics is fine; if you decide afterwards that you’d like to further the skill, excellent, but the choice will ultimately be left up to you. Do you understand?”

     Mercedes nods, a bit more color in her cheeks, “Yes, Professor.”

     “Good.” Then, “The martial training will be difficult in the beginning, and everybody’s limits are different, so if you ever feel that I am pushing you too hard, let me know.”

     “Of course, Professor.”

     “That is all, then." Byleth says, dismissing her, "Enjoy the rest of your day, Miss Martritz.”

     Mercedes smiles, offering him an informal curtsey and a pleasant, “Thank you for your time, Professor,” before floating her way out of the training grounds after the others.