Chapter Text
At the monastery, everything is different.
It's... overwhelming. Jeralt has always been cagey about his past, about Byleth's mother and their early childhood, to the point they learned that asking questions about it was an exercise in futility. He wanted to keep them safe from something; they'd accepted that.
And now: the girl in their head, fully awake for the first time they can remember. The unnerving weight of Rhea's gaze, piercing them over and over with a question and an expectation - clearly they are something to her, but what?
A teaching job that they've suddenly been thrown into with no qualifications, at one of the most prestigious academies on the continent.
They panic silently immediately upon accepting it, going to ravage the monastery's libraries for anything resembling a manual that will tell them how to do this job. Byleth is not in the business of failure. There isn't a whole lot - mostly they end up sidetracked into books on the history of Fodlan and the church, which is just as well, given there is a shocking amount of information Jeralt evidently thought unimportant to provide.
But, to Byleth's surprise, they don't have much trouble acclimating to the profession. In fact, they're told, they take to it like a duck to water.
Lectures consist mostly of something they've always wished people would let them do more of: discussing the interests they're most passionate about. After people seem to react positively to their first few, uncertain sessions, they spend several near-sleepless nights planning a curriculum in meticulous detail. Ideas flow one to the next with ease; a synthesis of everything they know about their students' strengths and weaknesses, memories of training and fighting with Jeralt, and the wealth of information from strategy textbooks over the years. Byleth can't remember feeling so invigorated since... well, since the first time they picked up a sword.
More challenging is the social aspect of it.
There are people everywhere. Unavoidable. And while Sothis is sometimes able to offer advice on how to interact with them, sometimes her voice is just another lost in the clamor of the crowds. Their students especially...
That old, nervous itch about being around people considered their peers tap-tap-taps insistently in the back of their mind. Byleth tries to ignore it best they can, tries to think of the students as just subordinates on a mercenary job, anything to give them some model of how to interact with them.
The thing is... the model doesn't fit.
"You want to... have tea with me?" Byleth asks, dumbfounded, and Annette nods enthusiastically, clasping her hands in front of her chest.
"I just got ahold of the perfect blend!" she squeals. "Please, Professor?"
Oh, go bond with your student, Sothis scoffs, so Byleth agrees.
They have no idea what to expect, finding it rather unlikely that this will have a positive outcome even if it doesn't devolve into a negative one. But Annette doesn't seem to mind how stoic and quiet they are. She does most of the talking herself, soliciting Byleth's opinions and advice with genuine delight at the attention. "This was so fun!" she says at the end, apparently oblivious to Byleth's surprise.
And the thing is: it keeps happening. Byleth doesn't seem to have to do anything to earn their students' respect or admiration. They keep waiting for the novelty of the enigmatic professor to wear off and to start getting complaints from faculty and staff about their cold demeanor and unnerving habits, but it doesn't happen. The most that occurs is Seteth pulling them aside a few times to explain some social faux pas they've made in their ignorance of the customs of the church, but it doesn't seem to actually bother anyone very much.
"The students keep wanting to see me during my free time," they tell their father over an evening meal. "I don't understand it."
"Byleth," Jeralt snort-chuckles into his beer, "I think they like you."
Why, they just barely keep themself from saying, because it could too easily be misconstrued as self-pitying. It's just that there's no logical reason for it. Is there?
Everything is different, here. Byleth doesn't know whether or not that's a good thing yet.
But as the months slide by, somehow slow as molasses yet quick as a dragonfly's wings, they find themself settling into it. The weight of scrutiny lifts from their shoulders, and they find it easier and easier to just be. They soon have a nickname for nearly every stray cat in the monastery, plying them for affection with fish from the pond and sweetmeats from the kitchens, until seeing Byleth on break without a scruffy cat purring in their lap is more noteworthy than the opposite. Before long they're issuing their own invitations to tea, finding it an easy way to get to know someone better, and it becomes simple enough to prod the other person with questions and comments so Byleth doesn't have to carry the conversation. On more than one occasion they've been praised for being a good listener, which seems more a byproduct to Byleth than anything else but each time it's said with such sincerity they can't help but accept the compliment.
They make jam in the kitchen with Mercedes and Annette; learn how to garden with Ashe and Dedue; spot misplaced items with an eagle eye to the point that they become the de facto lost-and-found of the monastery.
Once, they start losing their words in the mess hall on a particularly sensory-sensitive day, and no one hassles them or looks at them askance for it. Instead there's only concern, and as Byleth tries and fails to grasp the words to explain what's wrong, hand halfway lifted to their hood before they stop at the realization that they can't explain that either, Dimitri and Mercedes finally shepherd them outside. Are you hurt or sick? Mercedes asks. Do you want us to go? And Byleth shakes their head no to both questions, sinking to the ground in a quiet corner of the courtyard behind the mess hall, their students guarding them from prying eyes as they flip their hood up and take deep breaths until the buzzing fades.
"Professor? Are you with us again?" Dimitri asks.
What was that? neither of them demand, but Byleth feels they should try to explain anyway. "That's - it just... happens sometimes. When there's. Too much," they stammer, and grind their knuckles into their eyes, "I didn't. Sleep well. It's." The last thought doesn't go anywhere, and Byleth looks up, searching their eyes for the judgment or pity that must be there.
Instead, "Do you need us to help you back to your room?" Mercedes asks, and there is still only genuine concern on both of their faces, if a bit of awkwardness in Dimitri's, and more comprehension - if foggy - than they could ever have expected.
If Byleth knew how to explain the brand-new emotion swelling in their chest, they would... but they don't. So instead they plant flowers.
They like gardening, they find. The greenhouse is quiet but resplendent with life, and it reminds them a bit of the days when they ran wild through the forest with only Ladybug and the trees for company. It's satisfying, to watch something under their care blossom and grow, tucked in soft peat, nourished with water and bonemeal, inching day by day toward the sun. They find a book on the language of flowers in the library one day, and there's a soaring in their chest as they think, Oh. I can do this.
They don't know how to console or comfort with words, their efforts at encouragement or admonishment clumsy at best. But they know how to grow flowers, how to clip the delicate stems and wrap them into a bouquet for delivery upon their next rounds of the monastery. And, while they don't always have flowers with the correct meanings in their slowly growing plot of the greenhouse, they can usually round out the edges of their vocabulary with fresh cuttings from the marketplace.
Oxeye daisy (patience) and hollyhock (ambition) to a student who recently failed a certification exam. Goldenrod (encouragement) and dandelion (overcoming hardship) to students who seemed downtrodden, and occasionally sunflower (loyalty, but mostly for its cheerfulness). Pink roses (gratitude) and freesia (friendship) as thanks for thoughtful gestures and kind words.
At first the students seem a little bewildered, but it seems Ingrid catches on quickly; for a time students run straight to her to consult. Soon it becomes simply commonplace to see a member of the Blue Lions walking back to their rooms with a fresh bouquet. Once, when Sylvain's antics reach a particular low, Byleth presents him with columbine (faithlessness) and white catchfly (betrayal) and walks away without a word; Ingrid collapses into hysterics in the background. When Lonato dies, Byleth takes painstaking care to put together a bouquet of snowdrop (consolation), elderflower (compassion), and azalea (take care of yourself) to present to Ashe, and he promptly bursts into tears in the middle of the cathedral.
Marigold (grief) and white peony (bravery) to Sylvain after Miklan; blue tulips (trust) and a single iris (hope) to Dimitri after Remire; a similar bouquet to Dedue, after people murmur about him during Flayn's disappearance.
Careful and tentative, like a crocus in spring, Byleth tests out the art of making their inner emotions explicit.
"You seem happy here," Jeralt says one evening, like he's trying out the words, and Byleth contemplates this.
"Do I?" they wonder.
"Yeah," he says, "you do."
Is that wrong of them, when Jeralt is clearly so uncomfortable here? When the shadow of Rhea's intentions dogs their every step? Byleth doesn't know.
It all comes to a bit of a head after the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion. They lead the Blue Lions to a narrow victory over the other two classes, and the warm glow of pride Byleth feels lights them from the inside out. They've never had reason to feel proud of another person before. It fizzes, like cider.
And then, after the celebratory feast: Dimitri. Earnest and honest and serious, as always. Broaching, with his usual lack of tact, the conversation Byleth had finally felt safe not to expect anymore.
When you first came to lead our class... you unnerved me.
Never smiled. Never got angry. Void of emotion. Uncaring of others. Impossible to read.
He does not speak any of these things the way others have done in Byleth's life, like an accusation or condemnation. Instead - it is as if he finally solved a puzzle and is bringing the results to Byleth's attention. As usual when they have no idea how to respond, Byleth freezes, expression locking, spine straight.
It was as though you had no humanity whatsoever, Dimitri says, and Byleth must have flinched, visibly, because Dimitri rushes to follow it up with You're different now.
No, Byleth wants to wail, No, I'm not, but they stand and nod mutely as Dimitri describes how he has been able to decipher the humanity in their words and actions in the half year since, how invaluable they are to him, how glad he is to know them. Byleth stands and listens and maybe even smiles a little bit as the rest of the Blue Lions catch up and add their voices to the chorus, thanking them for the victory, for the school year, for being who they are.
It should be Byleth's crowning moment.
It's not.
There are too many half-formed thoughts, too many vague pains lancing across their mind with no discernable origin nor point of termination, just dissatisfaction and the feeling of something slipping through their fingers like sand. They give up on sleep, drift to the empty cathedral with its fractals of moonlight thrown through the colored glass. They love the acoustics here. They never gave thought to singing a day in their life before they came to the monastery, but the hymns in this place leave them transfixed, make them want to overcome the tune-deafness Jeralt says they got from him, even if they understand only about a third of the religious content.
They don't know why they came here, precisely. It's not as if there'll be any singing in the dead of the night. But there's a certain quality the cathedral has, something about the wide vaulted spaces, the hollowness of it, that makes Byleth feel alone even surrounded by people in the pews. Makes them feel infinitesimal in a way they've only experienced camping on rolling plains and looking up, up into the vast night sky and its crowded, distant splendor of stars.
It's comforting in a way they're not sure they can explain.
There's a footstep.
Byleth whirls, hand flashing to hover over the pommel of their dagger.
"Professor?"
It's Mercedes. The moonlight limns her silhouette, softening already-soft features until it looks like she could fade away like a mirage.
Byleth's throat works. They sink back into the pew, gaze fixed on the smooth stone floor.
"Are you alright?" she asks, step-stepping closer. The sound rings through empty space.
"What about you?" Byleth makes themself say. "It's the middle of the night."
"Ah, me?" Mercedes responds lightly. Byleth's senses prickle as she comes nearer and perches on the edge of the pew beside them. "I have trouble sleeping, now and again. It doesn't cause me too much trouble, but when it does happen I like to come here to pray."
Mercedes and her faith. They don't understand it, but they envy her, a little, for having something she can believe in with such simple clarity.
"But I've never seen you here at night, Professor," Mercedes placidly plows on, "Do you have insomnia as well? Or is there something troubling you?"
The silence must stretch on for a little too long while Byleth tries to figure out how to order words into anything resembling an answer, because Mercedes amends, "You needn't feel like you have to tell me. I am your student after all, even if we are close in age. I wouldn't want to pry."
Byleth's tongue unglues; this one's simple. "No, it's okay." And then the words are falling out of their mouth, spurred on by some combination of the cocooned reality of the cathedral and Mercedes' unassuming manner. "That's actually - what I was thinking about, a little. I've never had people like you - like all of you, before."
Their fingers curl in on their coatsleeves, Byleth's constrained version of a wince. They're so much more eloquent during lectures, but then, they always have a lesson plan to go off of.
Sure enough, Mercedes' head cocks to the side in confusion. "Students?"
"No," says Byleth, and then the word friends sticks in their throat, because what if they've been assuming too much? "People who - " People who like to spend time with me, but do they really?
It was as though you had no humanity whatsoever.
What if everyone felt that way - feels that way - and is just too intimidated to tell them?
Why did they think this was any different?
"Friends?" Mercedes prompts gently.
Byleth's eyes dart away to the side, but their silence and convulsive swallow give them away.
"Professor," Mercedes says, "I truly don't mean to pry, and I didn't mean to eavesdrop. But I was one of the first to leave the feast, and I overheard the end of your conversation with Dimitri. He said something thoughtless to you today, didn't he?"
"I - " Their fingers tremble. They don't know what to make of it.
It was as though you had no humanity whatsoever.
They tell her everything.
Not just their conversation with Dimitri; they go back to the start, a messy unraveling of their life in front of her, and half of the things they're saying it's the first time they've expressed it to themself, either. They keep stealing glances at her, looking for annoyance or impatience, but there's only a slight furrow to her brow as she nods and makes soft sounds and says, "Go on."
So: they tell her. About the alienation. About how some things others find easy have always been hard; about how the things they should've found hard have always been easy. About how confused they were, until Byleth made the simple deduction that they themself were the problem.
"I think," they say. They stop. "I think I forgot, that. That loneliness wasn't a prerequisite of being me. I think I forgot that I was lonely. It was background noise, like a heartbeat." Like my heartbeat, they don't say. Their gaze is distant, voice near toneless as they finish the story. "But it's different, here. People want to spend time to me. People listen to me, without Jeralt telling them that they should. People here try to understand me. And then, Dimitri..."
It was as though you had no humanity whatsoever, he said, and all Byleth could think of was the countless times people said, What's wrong with you?
"I haven't changed since I came here," they say, straightening up, and think of their conversation with Jeralt, "I'm just... happier. That's all."
Mercedes is silent for a long, spun-out moment. Byleth is too nervous to look at her face.
"It seems to me," she says, finally, delicately, "that you have been done a great disservice by the people around you so far."
They look up and find her frown deepened, fingers twisted around each other in her lap, something like pity in her liquid lavender eyes. No - not pity. The same as that day she and Dimitri shielded Byleth from the crowd when they got overwhelmed in the mess hall. Something like - compassion, and it lodges in Byleth's chest like a strangely wrapped gift they can't begin to know how to open.
"You remind me... well." Mercedes' hands clench tighter in her lap, gaze suddenly faraway, consumed by a deep and sad nostalgia. "I don't mean that you're like a child. But you remind me a bit of my little brother. I haven't seen him in many years, but - many considered him a difficult child. He didn't get along with others easily, and he could come across as arrogant. But if you took the time to listen to him, to understand him - he was the sweetest boy in the world. I worry that, without me..." Her voice wavers, and Byleth is about to reach out, put a hand on her shoulder, try to say something to comfort her, but she shakes her head, refocuses on the present.
"What I mean to say, Professor," she goes on, "is that it may take more or less effort for any two people to understand each other, but if people in the past would not put in that effort for you, to meet you halfway, that is no one's fault but their own. And their loss," she adds on with a frown. "Personally, I don't find you so difficult to understand, and though you may be my professor, I also consider you my kind and attentive friend."
Her eyes are so clear, so certain. Suddenly, it's nearly impossible for Byleth to think. They feel like a great weight has been slid off of their chest - or like a dam has been released, full of unnamable emotions that without even realizing it they had long ago stopped allowing themself to feel.
"I've... never thought about it that way," they manage finally, voice a bit choked. "Thank you, Mercedes."
She shakes her head. "Thank you for always being there for us students! If I had been you, I might not be able to be so open with others."
That startles a smile out of Byleth, wry but honest. "I think you're the first person to ever describe me as 'open'."
"Well!" Mercedes brings a hand to her mouth with a chuckle. "I like to think I'm better at reading people than most. And it's not as if I've been bereft of practice at Garreg Mach. You're hardly the only eccentric person here."
The heavy atmosphere in the cathedral is lifting. Byleth feels limp but refreshed, like a wrung-out cloth. Like the earth after rain. Mercedes is right, isn't she? There are students here with their own peculiarities, some similar to Byleth's, and their classmates adapt to and appreciate them. Bernadetta, who gets overwhelmed in crowds and needs a lot of time alone in her room afterwards. Linhardt, who often stays up the whole night researching and operates with an unselfconscious lack of tact, and who reminds Byleth, in general, uncannily of themself in their teenage years.
...Dimitri, who struggles to connect with others on a personal level but patently longs to do so; who approaches absolutely everything with the same level of whole-souled intent.
"I can give Dimitri an earful for you if you need me to," Mercedes says mildly, as though reading Byleth's train of thought.
"...No," says Byleth. "It stung, to hear him say that. But I think the more important part is what he said after. He tried hard to understand me the past six months. And now, he thinks of me as a friend." They're smiling, again. "It would be hypocritical of me to berate him for his bluntness."
"If you say so," says Mercedes, and she's smiling, too; indulgently, though they're not sure of whom.
"And Mercedes?"
"Hm?"
"If you ever need to talk, or for me to give someone an earful," the words untested in their mouth but forging ahead all the same: "don't hesitate to come to me. Alright?"
"Of course," she says. "Byleth."
*
Jeralt dies.
It's brutal and sudden and not even Sothis can stop it.
"To think that the first time I saw you cry... your tears would be for me," Jeralt gasps out, and Byleth bends over his body and keens.
The old drumbeat starts up in their heart; alone alone alone. Now that they have started crying they don't seem to know how to stop. They return to the monastery in a daze; brush off the awkward hands of their students; curl up in the corner of their room in the dark, mud-streaked cloak pulled close around them, the scent of blood cloying in their nostrils.
I think... I think I'd survive, they'd told him. But how can they when he has always been their only tether to the human world? How can they when he has been the only constant in an ever-shifting, chaotic existence? They are an infamous mercenary, a beloved teacher, a renowned strategist, but right now they feel like nothing but a lost child, alone in the tent and wailing for their father to come back for them.
"Shh, shh," Sothis soothes, running ghostly fingers through their hair. "Sleep, child. Rest, and cry as much as you need in the morning."
Somehow, eventually, they do.
*
They wake to afternoon light streaming in through the window, dust motes swirling in the rays. There is a crick in their neck and their limbs; they fell asleep sitting up and jammed against the walls, still ensconced in the cloak Jeralt gave them when they were seventeen. Their throat is dry. Their eyes are crusty. Distantly their head is pounding.
A light rap at the door; instinct tells Byleth it isn't the first time.
"Professor?" It's Ashe's voice, hesitant but earnest.
"Your little ones are calling for you," Sothis says unnecessarily, a light hand resting on their shoulder.
Byleth clears their throat, the sound awful and ragged, and croaks out a "Yes?"
"We - some of us, well... we just wanted to - "
"We'll leave it outside your door if you're not ready to see us," Dimitri breaks in, firm but as gentle as they've ever heard him. "But we wanted to all wish you well."
"...Coming," Byleth says, a little less hoarsely. It takes entirely too long to summon the strength to push themself off the ground, shamble toward the door and turn the lock. They know they must be a sight, hair plastered to their face, still in the same clothes they stumbled to their room in last night, bags like bruises under their eyes. By the time they make it to the door, they half wish the students have given up waiting and gone on with the day. Still recovering from a head rush, they swing the door open, waiting for the mass of light and color to resolve itself into an image, and...
Byleth stares.
The entire Blue Lions class stand arrayed outside the door, nervous but sincere. Their arms are overflowing with flowers, the air perfumed and heady with petal-scent. Blooms of every color and size and shape, the meanings flickering through Byleth's head on automatic, long since encoded from hours of poring over books and working in the greenhouse and laboring over how best to convey their message with a bouquet. Asphodel, snowdrops, and chrysanthemum from Ashe; verbena, white hyacinth, and sweet pea from Mercedes; statice and magnolia, white and pink roses from Ingrid. Annette clutching goldenrod and red carnations like an offering, her own eyes red-rimmed; Dimitri, fidgeting anxiously with a fragrant bundle of chamomile, sage, and thyme; Sylvain, his casual, exaggerated body language belying the seriousness in his eyes and his armful of red poppies and yellow pansies. Dedue, with a splendid spray of flowers Byleth doesn't know the names of but that they recognize from his garden plot in the greenhouse which he always tends with such care. Even Felix is there, a fistful of daffodils thrust out and red to his eartips.
"...Professor?" Ashe ventures. "Is this okay?"
"Oh," Annette bursts out, "It's too much! I knew it was too much, right away - "
Byleth bursts into tears again, loses their grip on the doorjamb and crumples to their knees.
The students burst into a worried frenzy, hovering like hummingbirds, but Byleth is already shaking their head, smiling tremulously through their tears, struggling to gasp out the words: "No, it's - thank you," they say, wavering voice alien to their ears, "I'm happy, I'm just - so happy."
If happy is an odd word to use less than twenty four hours after their father's death, no one mentions it. Instead they all rally around their sobbing teacher. It's all a blur of motion and noise but someone bequeaths all of the boquets of flowers upon Byleth's room, crowding them onto every conceivable surface until the room is a riot of color, Byleth's own love language mirrored back to them loud and clear everywhere they look. Annette stays with them, rubs their back and lets them cry onto her shoulder while Mercedes tidies the room and Ashe dashes to the kitchens to whip up something for Byleth's breakfast-slash-lunch. Dimitri and Dedue stand guard at the door, shielding Byleth from prying eyes and politely turning away anyone who asks about the commotion.
I think I'd survive, they told Jeralt that one day years ago. They never knew they could be so wrong and so right at the same time.
Wrong because back then they had been thinking of it purely in physical terms; they knew how to look after themself, knew how to wield a sword. But now they know: if they'd lost Jeralt back then, they don't think they ever would have fully recovered from it. Perhaps they would have melted from the face of the earth, become the fey and feral thing people so often took them for in youth. Jeralt had been their home, the only person who had ever understood them, and Byleth doubts they could've stomached staying with the mercenaries without him.
But - by so many twists of fate - they had been right. They have another home now; another family. For the first time in their life, they have somewhere to belong.
Byleth sobs on the floor, chest caving in from the gaping hole their father has left, and knows - inexorably - that someday, somehow, they are going to be okay.
*
(When they merge with Sothis, they have to relearn themself again; but it isn't nearly so difficult as they thought.
Staring at their reflection, the hue of their hair and eyes in the half-light: Byleth tries out the thought, I am not entirely human, and is startled to find they don't mind.
It's not a confirmation of what people have said about them, not in the way they feared. Byleth will choose what this means to them: a greater power to protect those whom they love.
And does it matter, whether or not this is the root of their strangeness? Byleth is Byleth is Byleth.
They know who they are.)