Chapter Text
Byleth scratched behind those white, fluffy ears, her mind absent from the present, her gaze lost through the window and the night.
She was looking inside her, to the throne, the woman sitting there with a frustrated expression on her face.
There was so much to talk about, about her crest, about her still heart, about how they had just turned the hands of time as if it was a path that could be walked willingly instead of the current of a river always in one direction.
Byleth had used the last bit of her stamina to help Hubert and Ferdinand as they went through their supplies and gave orders. Getting everything ready for their march back to Derdriu.
She was so tired, exhausted to a point where even thinking or feeling was too much.
Her back was against the cold stone, her limbs numb and her fingers working without her thinking.
She was there, looking at Sothis, fearing what it’d come.
“You called me here…”
“I did, I’m tired of you running away from yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well what I’m saying, even if you don’t want to recognize it to yourself.”
Byleth, her body, rearranged herself, her legs crossed as she kept petting little Fish. The cat purred in her hands, completely unaware of her inner dialogue.
“Byleth, what are you doing here?”
“I’m following orders.”
“Why are you following orders? What do you want for your life?”
Byleth remained silent, her eyes fixed in the woman living in her mind. She had answers, she knew she could reach for them if she wanted. They were at the edge of her consciousness, ready to stare right back at her when she stood to greet them.
Yet she resisted.
Yet she resisted, as she had never done in her life.
“What are you afraid of?”
She looked for her sword without thinking about it. Her hip was bare, her belt naked. She felt her palm warm and her jaw clenched. Her muscles were tight.
That was her answer, unrequested, as she didn’t want to look for it.
“What are you afraid of?” Sothis hopped down her throne and started the long descent to her. Her frown grew with each step she took, her voice harder, her determination a weapon she pointed at her.
The words played on her tongue, ready to be said and made real just by being pronounced.
“I’m following Lady Rhea’s orders. I’m making sure Edelgard is safe, and…”
“And…?”
The seconds dragged along, each heavier and longer, time mimicking them now that they were aware of how powerful and yet malleable it was. Sothis reached the end of the stairs, she was at least a head shorter than the knight, but her presence seemed to engulf everything else.
Her hands stopped petting the animal that slumbered in her arms.
“Byleth…”
“I’m good at it…”
“You do things because you’re good at them and people around you reward you for it. Do you enjoy them?”
“I have never done anything else.”
“That’s it! You fool! I’ll coddle you no more! You hide and run away from yourself all the time, you refuse to see exactly what’s in front of you. You only let yourself be free when you have a sword on your hand and that’s not what a free being does!” Her tone turned from stern to worried. “Please, Byleth, stop running away from this.”
Byleth flinched as she lectured her, incapable of answering with a witty sentence or her usually detached observations.
She felt cornered. The answers now more difficult to keep at bay, the truth she didn’t want to look at mocking her, grazing her nose and just getting out of her grasp when she reached for it.
“Sothis… I don’t know how to deal with this, I’ve never felt like this before, I don’t know what to do with the fire that’s burning my chest.”
“I know, child, and you have me to blame for that. But you’ve grown, that’s behind you now, you’ve shown that you’re able to be more than you thought you could be.” Sothis grabbed her hands, there was something motherly about her, something that compelled Byleth to kneel and look at the short woman’s eyes looking for comfort and understanding, for something she had missed so much and for so long she didn’t know she needed.
Something Jeralt hadn’t been able to provide.
Something her strange upbringing hadn’t covered for.
Something the comradery and the knighthood of the knights hadn’t been able to give her.
Something she couldn’t find in Edelgard and the Eagles, so open and warm.
Sothis smiled at her, a little yet powerful smile.
“I… I don’t know what my next mission would be, I don’t even know when this mission will be over. I do know that I’ll be sad to part ways with her. Edelgard has been… different. She is different and there’s something about her that makes me want to believe in her, want to know more about her.” She ignored what had been discussed between her and the Emperor merely hours ago.
That was something she didn’t have the energy to think about at that moment.
“But you’ll be assigned to a different mission and leave her?”
“I’m a knight. It’s part of my responsibilities.”
Sothis let go of her suddenly, she seemed ready to smack her.
“You fool! You never think about the future! You never think at all! You let yourself be pushed by the world around you without thinking about what you want, what you wish, what’s that you like!” Sothis groaned, hiding her face behind her fists. “You just… exist, Byleth. You just exist… and that’s not living, that’s surviving.”
Byleth blinked, startled. She hadn’t expected that change in her tone, it had seemed to her that their conversation had reached a level of understanding but now it was sinking to something even deeper.
Fish stirred in her lap, as her hands stopped petting her. She meowed, displeased for the lack of attention. Calloused fingers resumed their soft scratches behind her ears.
“I don’t understand.”
“You said you want to know Edelgard better, that you’ll be sad to part ways with her, right?”
“I do.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Byleth! You have a crush on her!”
“A crush… on Edelgard?”
“You hopeless child…”
“Ah…”
“Yes”
“A crush on the Emperor of the Adrestian Empire?”
“Aha”
“The woman that wants to break tradition and bring her Empire into a new dawn?”
“Correct”
“The Emperor whose willpower is so strong that she’ll wage war on those who oppose her?”
“I think so”
“Crap…”
“Agreed.”