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Chapter Text

Byleth is not used to this ceiling yet. The bed is too soft. There’s humming outside coming with the first wakes of dawn, and too much of it. Although her nightgown has been lying at the foot of her bed, the entire night has been spent awake, staring at the ceiling with her armor on. Armor. Her second skin, she’d been taught to think of it as. 

Her fingers trace a meaningless pattern on her chestplate. It’s as hard as always, yet for some reason far too rough. All the students wear the same uniform, albeit styled differently depending on who you see. A severe lack of plating. No knee guards, not even chainmail. Exposed skin just waiting to be pierced by arrows or other forms of malicious metal; possibly even poison, if one were to let their guard down. But it speaks true of them well enough. None of them have any true combat experience to speak of. None of them have ever had blood on their hands. Unlike her. 

A sigh leaves her nose as she closes her eyes. Lesson plans, choosing an affiliation, living in the monastery, being a professor. All of it so foreign, when in reality, the most foreign thing to be found here is her. Byleth rolls over so that her face is buried in her pillow. The thought of going outside is overwhelming, but staying in this unfamiliar room seems suffocating in its own right. Her head feels like static noise. 

She bolts straight up from her bed when she hears two knocks at her door. It’s possible that someone could have tracked her father on their way to the monastery, after all; a surprise attack to lure them out wouldn’t be out of the question. It makes the sight of a smiling Claude von Riegan standing at her doorstep doubly unexpected. 

“Top of the morning, Teach,” he says, words and tone easy as always. He tilts his head slightly. “Were you up all night? Doesn’t look as if you were resting.”

“I was,” Byleth lies. Her gaze lands on the neatly folded fabric in his arms. “What is that?”

“Ah, this. Just a special delivery, courtesy of the Golden Deer,” he winks. It seems to be a habit of his, she notices, before his face returns to its usual nonchalant state. “Well, actually, Rhea was planning on giving this to you. It’s your own Officer’s Academy uniform. You’ll be living and teaching here from now on, so you might as well get as comfortable as you can. Really feel at home, y’know?” 

Byleth’s brow furrows. Her gloved fingers rub at the snug plates of her forearm. Home.

“Well, “home” might be a bit of a difficult concept for a former mercenary to grasp,” Claude continues, and Byleth wonders if her thoughts were always this open. “And you’re free to wear whatever you want, of course. You can just think of this as a welcome gift of sorts. Personally, I’d prefer a feast, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be my call. For now, at least.” 

He puts the uniform in her arms. She can see a pair of white knee socks, a cloak, and most bafflingly, a pink headband resting on top. It’s vaguely familiar, she thinks, until she remembers that the last time she’s worn one of these was when she was hardly able to lift a sword. Something about it makes her stomach wither away. 

“I’m not used to wearing things besides my armor,” she says. “Changing would take too much time if we are ever to be attacked.”

“Hey, and that’s totally your call,” Claude says, putting his hands behind his head. “To be honest, it really doesn’t matter to me whatever you decide to wear. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that a new change of clothes was all you’d need to feel like you fit in. Figured it was worth a shot anyway, though.” 

She looks him in the eyes. As ever, the smile doesn’t reach them. “Is that all you wanted from this?”

“What, don’t believe me? I’m hurt, Teach,” he answers. He and the smile are unwavering in their laid-back confidence and Byleth is not sure if it’s intriguing or irritating. “But if you really wanted to know, I thought I’d get the jump on the other house leaders by presenting you with a token of appreciation from yours truly. You’re fascinating, Teach. And I’d like to spend the next year or so finding out what cards you’ve got up your sleeve.”

When Byleth looks up again, he’s already perfected the timing of his wink. “Besides; you? Me? Golden Deer? We could be great together.” 

Her eyes immediately fall back down to the glaring pink headband, foreign as ever in her foreign arms. “I’ll think about it,” she manages. 

“Good, good. You do that. And hey, even if you don’t know what “home” means, or if you’ve even got it in you to see it as that… you can at least look the part until you do.”

As he leaves, Claude turns around to wave one last time at Byleth. She waves back, though she doesn’t understand what for. They’re probably going to see each other later in the day anyway. 

Back inside her room, she sits on the floor with the uniform pieces neatly spread out in front of her. Never in her life besides in courier tasks had she ever been able to touch, much less wear, such high-quality fabric. It feels like her head is full of nothing but Claude’s rambling voice, thinking aloud as he seems to love doing, as she slowly removes every piece of her armor and pulls on the uniform one by one. 

She looks at herself for a long time in the mirror. Her whole body feels uncomfortably light, and her legs are far too exposed. Leggings, and preferably knee guards, must be considered if she’s to ever wear the skirt outside. But, she finds that if she drapes the cloak over her shoulders, it’s not too terrible, if only for the fact that she often bundled up in her cloak with her armor on as well. At last, she picks up the pink headband, only to find a pin drop to the ground when it unfurls. 

Her eyes widen. A miniature Golden Deer insignia is right between her fingers. 

“You can at least look the part until you do.”

Home. Still so foreign. It couldn’t ever come to someone so easily, to be certain. But…

She lets her arms wrap around her now thinly-covered waist.

Surely there’s no harm in pretending. 

BONUS:

“Teach! So you put it on after all, huh? Looks good.”

“Claude. I certainly hope you did not gift the Professor with such menial items as to win her favor. Tell me, should that not be awarded through your ability, and not schemes?”

“Please, Your Majesty, ‘twas only a housewarming gift. I’m rather surprised someone of your stature didn’t have it in you to consider Teach here might need a bit of a warm welcome to adjust. Or was hospitality never your strong suit?” 

“More than hospitality, I simply think it suitable to compliment when one looks lovely in a new change of clothes.”

“I did not ask for your opinion, Dimitri.”

"Yikes. That's cold."

Chapter Text

“It’ll be harder to sleep at night if you let one of your little pupils die out there.”

“Don’t let your guard down, ever.”

“Whatcha thinking about, Teach?”

Byleth’s fishing line snaps. Claude had spoken so suddenly that she’d completely lost focus on the fish she was attempting to reel in. She’d been hoping that she could catch a big one to cook later with the students, too. Morale has been low lately, yet all she’s managed to hook today are the small fries that no one’s particularly excited to see in the dining hall. Maybe it’s some sort of sign.

“This month’s mission,” she answers. “And how long have you been standing there?”

“Oh, maybe for the past five minutes or so,” Claude says. “Your stone-face was the teeniest bit stonier than usual, so I was trying to decipher what it could mean, but every hypothesis seemed unlikely. Thank you ever so much for humoring me, though.” He sits down next to her on the dock as she tugs another earthworm onto her fishing hook. “This something you do often? To relieve stress, if I may be so bold and hypothetical?”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Byleth casts her line out again, staring far ahead. “I’m trying to think of where everyone should focus until we face the bandits for our mission.”

“Figures,” Claude opens up his book again; it seems to be on tactical planning and battle formations. “It is going to be the first real battle experience for a lot of us. But we’ve been doing pretty good so far, haven’t we? Compared to where we were before you showed up, Teach, we’re leaps and bounds ahead in terms of what we’re capable of.”

It’s only been a month, she thinks, but bites it back. Above everything she’s come to know about him, she’s learned Claude isn’t the type to sugarcoat his words. “That isn’t what I’m concerned about. I just wonder if the students will be okay.”

“‘Okay’ in… what sense?” Claude raises an eyebrow. “It isn’t like you to be so vague. Hit your head on something this morning, Teach?”  

“‘Okay’ as in-” Byleth pulls in the fifth loach of the day and rips the hook out of its jaw, “Will they be alright with taking someone’s life?”

Claude may or may not have said “Teach,” in the brief pause he allowed. All Byleth can hear is the sound of him considering her. Something about it makes her desperate; in what way, she does not know, only that it confuses her further. 

“I’m not good with words,” Byleth says. “All I can do is give directions to the best of my ability. I can promise I won’t let any of you die. But beyond that, I…”

“I hear you, Teach,” Claude answers. He’s very good at picking up where she leaves off, and for that she is grateful. “But trust me when I say this: none of us would be agreeing to go on this mission if we weren’t prepared for the consequences.” He gives her his playful smile again, throwing her off guard. “I mean, just take a look at where we are. This is a military academy. No good in being here if we can’t ever put our skills to use, right?” 

Byleth lets her shoes skim the water’s surface. “I suppose so. This is inevitable, isn’t it?”

“That it is,” Claude says, and his voice hardens for a moment. “And the church can’t shield us from everything forever.” 

“Shield us?” she echoes.

“Bah, it’s nothing. Listen to me ramble,” he stretches his arms high above his head and winds them a couple times, but is not quite careful enough to avoid nudging Byleth in the process. “How about this, Teach? You just focus on mentally preparing yourself and coming up with the best strategies you can before the big day. As for me, I’ll be in charge of keeping morale up and smoothing things over if anything unsavory happens. Fair deal, right?”

She’s ashamed at how eager a corner of her is to just leave all the talking to someone else, and to one of her students, no less. “But that isn’t fair to you,” she says. “You’re one of my students as well. The emotional responsibility is mine to bear, no matter how difficult I find it to handle.” 

“All this talk of students and teachers and roles and  responsibilities and other ‘R’ words… doesn’t that just wear you down, Teach?” Claude sighs, putting his arms behind his head. “I’m not just saying this for the sake of it. Let me help you out, as a friend. There’s nothing we can’t do if we just lend each other our strong suits. You and me, I know we’d make a good team.” 

Now it’s Byleth’s turn to consider him. A friend. She feels her brain fumbling for the definition. When she thinks about it, really thinks, perhaps she's never had anyone to consider as such. Allies, maybe. Acquaintances, yes. Trade partners, certainly, and now 'student' as of late, but a friend? The inclination to apply that label to anyone must have withered out and gone dormant for much, much longer than she realized.

Finally, she asks, “How long does this offer stand for?”

His smile is a tad too bright. “For as long as you need it.” 

She stops feeling the wriggling of the earthworm between her fingers. Every day of her life had been such a matter of give and take and survive that an offer so obvious, so unconditional was completely outside of her world. It felt as though she were coming across a ghost for the first time and struggling to confirm the existence of such a nonsensical concept. Claude was very much like that. Yes, he was so very much like that. 

“Granted, there will be conditions to offering my aid, as all is fair in love and open trade,” Claude smiles. “So, about your life up until this point; Captain Jeralt is your blood father, isn’t he? I figured there was some realm of possibility for adoption being a factor, since you two really look nothing alike. Maybe you just got everything from your mother? Or the apple really does fall that far from the tree? ...Weird apple. Either way, it’s still astounding how you managed to- Teach? Hey, hold on! Were my theories that laughably wrong?” 

“Yes,” Byleth says. She lugs her basket of mid-sized fish across the ground and toward the dining hall. “Now if you have the time to interrogate me, please help me cook these fish for the others.” 

“Yeesh, tough crowd,” Claude sighs. “It couldn’t be that fish could be her way of trying to motivate everyone…”

Or could it? 

Chapter Text

“Claude, please help me.”

“Sure thing, Teach,” Claude says, going on his tiptoes to return a book to its place on the shelf. “Just let me put this back and I’ll- what are you doing with that giant tray of tea?”

“I don’t know,” Byleth looks incredibly lost, perhaps more lost than Claude has ever seen her. “I ran an errand for Ferdinand and now I have tea.” 

It feels like he’s staring out of the wrong side of his head. “And you just merrily strolled all the way to the library while carrying that? How did you manage not to bump into anyone and drop everything? Or did I actually hear something crashing down the stairs earlier- wait, was that you?”

“I didn’t drop anything,” Byleth says. “I came because I thought I would invite you for tea.” 

“Teach, this is incredibly flattering and all, but-”

“But what?”

“This is absolutely not how you invite someone for tea. Sorry.” 

“Oh,” Byleth looks down at her tea tray. “I suppose it’s rather new to me. I’ve never invited anyone for tea before.” 

“Yeah, I could tell as much,” Claude sighs, lifting up a hand to tousle his hair. “Here, let me take some of that off your hands, first. Then we’ll make our way to the garden; the ideal location for tea parties.” Claude reaches over and picks the teapot up off the tray with one hand, and carries two teacups with the other. Byleth immediately lets out a sigh at no longer needing to balance everything with pinpoint accuracy. 

“Sorry about this,” Byleth says as they walk down the stairs from the library. Students are giving them looks as they pass by but Claude pretends not to notice.

“No worries, Teach. Just think of it as both of us playing to our strengths.”

She raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Well, sure, my Teach may be skilled in the sword and is a tactical force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, but Professor Claude is an expert in all things prim and proper,” Claude smiles. “So it’s pretty fair. Unless it’s one of those ‘student surpasses the master’ moments? Sorry Teach, looks like I’m graduating early.”

Byleth frowns. “You’re one of the least prim and proper people I can think of.” 

“C’mon, don’t I at least beat Raphael? No offense to him, of course, he’s a swell guy.”

“You can use a spoon better than Raphael.”

One, two beats of silence.

“That’s it?!”

Byleth coughs a little. “I’ve never done this before. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tease me.” 

Claude’s eyes are drawn to the little sparks of emotion that just flitted across her face in the last minute or so. It might be the most expression he’s seen from her yet. And could that be a hint of embarrassment in that monotone voice?

It occurs to him that she hasn’t exactly had it easy either up until this point. Moving from battlefield to battlefield with only her father to rely on, growing up as a recluse from human contact and all the teachings of the church; at first it made him wonder just how much of this world she did know about, but eventually came to understand it must have been much lonelier than she would ever realize. Upon coming to the monastery, she’d been coming into contact with all sorts of people from cultures she’s never heard of, teaching and battling and watching her world grow little by little. She’s been trying her best, all this time. Even as she fumbles to invite him to tea, an alien concept this stoic and tactfully adept sellsword has somehow never had contact with. 

Something about it is endearing. He wants to see this enigma grow more and more.

“Alright, alright. I’m sorry, Teach,” Claude closes his eyes for a moment. “If you ever need help with anything like this again, just call on me and I’ll walk you through it, no teasing attached. Or my name isn’t Professor Claude von Riegan.” 

“Oh, so you’re the professor now?” Byleth looks up. “Please have the next lesson plan finished by Friday, then.”

“I’m sorry, you’re the professor, I’m just a lowly grasshopper who can’t draw a bowstring.” 

“That’s what I thought.”

“What is in this tea?” Byleth stares down into the deep brown liquid in her cup.

“Almyran pine needles! A home specialty, if you can call it that. It’s my fave.” 

Byleth frowns. “It tastes like I’m drinking a tree.”

“Well, you aren’t supposed to be drinking the tree, Teach, just… extract of it, if you want to get technical about it,” Claude shrugs a bit. “Different strokes for different people, I guess. Or are you just a tea connoisseur? Ah, well. If you come to my homeland someday, we can try all the different kinds of tea you want. There’s tons of things you can’t find here.” 

He does not miss the way Byleth’s eyes shine at the suggestion. “That sounds nice,” she says.

“Glad to hear it,” Claude smiles. “‘Till then, I’ll leave the tea shopping up to you, Teach. I’m not picky.”

Claude isn’t sure if Byleth realizes when she smiles back.

“I’d be happy to.”

Chapter Text

Claude has been making a habit out of surprising Byleth at the fishing hole as of late. Sometimes they talk strategy, other times they talk lesson plans, other times they discuss the looming omnipresence of the goddess and the scope of her influence on all of Fodlan, and other times they talk about tea. Either way, Byleth has grown accustomed to the presence of her house leader, despite her familiarity with silence and how Claude is its antithesis. 

Even so, as she sits on the dock with her toes skimming the water once again, his approaching footsteps make the bottom of her stomach start to hurt. It likely has something to do with the deafening quiet of the monastery at night, or the fact that they have not spoken since daylight, or everything to do with the Sword of the Creator’s weight resting on her lap. It’s odd. Though it no longer pulses with the red energy it radiated earlier in the Holy Mausoleum, every now and then it seems to beat in her hand. It’s much lighter than it appears, to the point where it feels as though she’s wielded it since forever. Her eyes move away from the sword and settle on the ripples of the pond when Claude does not move to take his usual place by her side on the pier. 

“I don’t have any more answers for you,” Byleth answers to his stare. “I’ve told you all that I know.”

“You don’t make a very convincing case, Teach,” Claude says. “If ‘all that you know’ is comprised of playing innocent and giving the classic ‘I don’t understand’, that doesn’t amount to much. Solid performance, by the way. The stone-eyed stare really sold it.” 

She isn’t sure why her chest hurts. His comments on her eyes have never made her happy. “I am not the descendant of Nemesis. Jeralt is my father. There is no way they’re related.”

“And how are you so sure of that?” Claude asks. His tone does not lighten. She wishes he would sit next to her already instead of stand right in her blind spot. “Aren’t you curious to see just how far back your family tree goes? How much do you even know about Captain Jeralt, really?”

Her lungs feel twisted. Layer by layer, she can feel his words, his eyes, peel her skin away. Her nails scratch into the grooves of the Sword of the Creator, damned thing it is, if there were nothing she could do to be rid of it and just live-

“How can you be sure he’s even your-”

“He is,” Byleth turns, letting her gaze burn into him. “Jeralt is my father. And if you keep questioning me…”

Claude blinks at her. She cannot tell what he’s thinking. “...If I keep questioning you?”

Byleth stands up, rearing the sword behind her head in the direction of the pond. 

“T-Teach, no! No no no no no, hold your horses -” Claude splutters, reaching out to grab Byleth’s sword arm before she can spear herself a fish.

“They will not be held,” Byleth frowns at him while struggling to get her arm out of his grip. “Now let go of me.”

“Teach, seriously, what’s got you so upset, I don’t understand-”

“Jeralt Eisner is my father, and I am his child,” Byleth says. Her gaze falls to their boots. The wrist in Claude’s hand goes limp. “Don’t lump me together with Nemesis.” 

Neither of them speak. She wonders if Claude can feel a pulse beneath his fingers. Her throat hurts from having spoken so roughly and it just then occurs to her that she had been saying all of this within earshot of the dormitories. The tips of her ears start to warm. Suddenly she is grateful for the darkness. 

“I gotta say, you never stop surprising me,” Claude says at last. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you so heated, Teach. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

Byleth, too tired at this point, heaves out a sigh. “Did you even hear what I said?”

“Sure did. Pretty sure at least one of the students or passing guards did, too.”

“Claude.”

“I kid. I heard you loud and clear, Teach,” he nods. His hand leaves Byleth’s wrist to card through his hair as he lets out a sigh of his own. “Sorry. It was rude of me to keep sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. I should have known it would be a sore spot for you, but I still kept pushing. Think you can forgive me?”

Byleth lowers her sword arm to her side. “...It’s alright. I don’t blame you for having doubts. But from now on, please take my words for what they are.” 

“Humblest apologies, Teach, but you seem to be such an enigma that I’m physically incapable of trying not to pry every detail out of you,” Claude shrugs, but not without giving a passing wink. “There’s no rush, I know. But I’m still not going to give up until I know absolutely everything. Who knows? Maybe I’d even tell you some secrets of my own.” 

“Watch your language, please,” Byleth says, but Claude does not miss the slight tugging of her lips into the start of a smile. “You are still my student, after all.” 

“Bah, ever so formal, huh Teach?” Claude laughs a bit and puts his hands behind his head. “Student, teacher, whatever; when it’s just us two, we can be friends. I’ve never been one for titles, as you could probably tell by now.” 

“You say that often,” Byleth says. Her eyes flicker between the Sword of the Creator and Claude’s hand. “That we’re friends. I don’t know what to think of it.”

“Think of it however you like, Teach.”

“That isn't helpful.”

“Hm… you make a very pressing argument,” Claude hums before looking at her. “How should I put this? It’s just… whatever we are.”

Whatever they are. This is an easier concept to grasp. To be seen as such a thing simply by existing; she had thought it to be taxing at first, especially with ‘Professor’ now coming short of her next name, but somehow this term is much simpler. She likes it. 

I like it, she thinks to herself again as Claude walks her back to her room.

I like it, she thinks as his face brightens when he notices the small Golden Deer insignia is pinned on her uniform.

I like it, she thinks as she falls into bed and closes her eyes until the next dawn; a dawn where she is bound to see him again. 

Byleth finds it easier to wake up in the mornings now.

Chapter Text

It is the first time in her life that Byleth has felt this content. Of course, that was not an insult to her father and his teachings. She’s well aware of his efforts to keep her safe and even bring her joy on some occasions. But it is undoubtedly the first time she’s felt this so strongly, to the extent that she is unsure of what to do with the feeling. Thanks to her students’ intuition, their plan to rescue Flayn from the Death Knight had been successful. Now, with the Battle of the Eagle and Lion just around the corner, the whole monastery is abuzz, and everyone’s motivation spread like a plague. Byleth, at a loss, simply made a pledge to herself; to devote this strange feeling of contentment to protecting this time and those existing within it. To ensure this emotion will last, for as long as possible. (Sothis was very quick to reprimand her at the thought of turning back time to stay in this period forever.)

Now, there is only a week remaining until the grand battle begins, and her Golden Deer are the most excited she’s ever seen them. Normally the students would either mill about or leave the classroom immediately following the end of a lecture, and yet today there is a bubble of questions circling her desk. 

“Professor, I gotta get stronger for the Battle of the Eagle and Lion!” Raphael’s booming voice is at the forefront of the line. “Do you think you could help me come up with a meal plan that’ll give me more muscle just in time for it?”

“Raphael, I was here first,” Lysithea grunts, pushing her way to the desk and looking to Byleth with her ever-sincere eyes. “Professor. I’ve been thinking it would be of great use if I were able to wield the Levin Sword in time for the battle. Would it be possible to learn how to use it in a week’s time? If you deem it helpful, I am more than willing to invest as much time outside of class as necessary.”

“I… I want to help, too,” Marianne’s soft tone follows. “I want to extend the range of my healing magic. Maybe learning the basics of riding would be nice… if it’s possible.”

“Oh, I can help you with that, Marianne!” Leonie chirps. “Professor, do you have time after this? I was thinking we could ask Captain Jeralt for some tactical advice based on our starting positions on the field. I’ve been dying to get his input on my plan so far!”

“You can pester Captain Jeralt on your own time, Leonie. In fact, I would say you do enough of that on the regular,” Lorenz shakes his head, missing the glare Leonie shoots at him. “I, for one, planned to personally invite the Professor to tea and discuss the best possible lesson plan tailored to my skills. Though the breadth of what I can accomplish is staggering, surely focusing on one or two areas in preparation for the battle would prove to be a higher priority.”

“Um, if it’s not too much trouble, could I maybe join you on that?” Ignatz puts up his hand in his usual meek manner. “I want to polish up my sword skills just in case things get, uh... confrontational during the real thing. After all, it never hurts to be prepared, right?”

“Wow… all so motivated,” Hilda sighs the very specific Hilda-sigh she does when coming into contact with effort and sincerity. “Professor, I just wanted to ask if I could sit this one out.”

Lorenz rubs his temples as if willing his brain not to melt. 

Byleth gives a small, confused smile as she looks to each of her Golden Deer. “I’m glad to see you all so excited. Let’s talk about this together during tomorrow’s class. I think Claude would appreciate a chance to discuss our strategy as well.” 

“Speaking of Claude…” Hilda starts, eyes darting around the classroom.

“Where is he?” Lysithea finishes.

“Oh, I saw him. Ran outta the room the second the bell rang! Looked like he was in a real rush,” Raphael says. “Maybe the dining hall was serving up his fave dish again!”

Byleth finishes making a note in her planner and stands up from her seat. “I’ll go speak with him. The rest of you are dismissed.” 

After staying for a few more minutes to console one or two students with the sentiment that no, she is not “blowing them off”, that they will talk about everything properly with Claude tomorrow, she makes her way to the second floor of the dormitories. If she had to guess, right around now he would be in his room devising some sort of scheme, probably something like creating an explosion as a distraction, or using camouflage tactics to stall out the battle and seizing the victory by virtue of being the last ones standing, or-

“Aha! Hello, stomach trouble!”

Byleth sighs. Not again.

“Claude?” she calls, knocking on his door gently. “May I speak with you?”

“Gah! Teach, is that you? Hold on a second, just let me finish mixing this up and I’ll- agh!” 

Byleth winces at the sound of shattering glass. “Are you alright?” she asks once she regains her composure. 

“Oh, yeah, I’m great, it’s just- ohhh, there goes the carpet. Uh, Teach, what do you say you come in and… I hate to ask, but come save me and the carpet from myself?”

Byleth raises an eyebrow. This is not a request she’s ever been given before. But it is Claude asking it of her, so that’s half of the expected outcome. Even so, she still finds herself short on words upon seeing a sheepishly sighing Claude behind the small hole burning itself through his carpet. 

“So, uh… great lecture today,” Claude says. 

Byleth continues staring at him.

“Look, I can explain,” he reaches up to fiddle with his braid. Another habit of his. “I may or may not have gotten a tad too eager to mix up some new concoction before the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, and then when you called me, I was so shocked that my hand slipped-”

“Claude, you just made acid.”

“Hey, it was an honest, rookie mistake! I didn’t know that infusing it with that many samples of miasma would turn the compounds downright corrosive,” Claude protests. “But on the bright side, I learned something new. I’ll be tucking that little nugget of wisdom somewhere into the memory bank for later.”

“Acid is not allowed.”

To her surprise, Claude lets out a genuine laugh. “I know, Teach, I know. It’s just… something’s got me so restless. I didn’t know what else to do with the energy besides funnel it into something I could tinker with.” 

Byleth blinks. “You, too?”

Claude blinks back at her. “Hm? Me, what?” 

“You also don’t know what to do with this feeling,” Byleth says. “We’re the same in that regard.”

He tilts his head with an amused smile. “What’s this, now? Could our stone-faced Teach actually be feeling a smidgen of excitement? And here I thought you almost weren’t human. At first I thought my imagination really was running with the idea, but you’re becoming more expressive by the day.”

Byleth shakes her head. “I don’t think it’s excitement. I don’t really know what to call it. I just know I like the way things are now.” 

“Ah, Teach, that’s easy,” he puts his hands behind his head. “You’re happy. That’s all there is to it.”

Happy. The word seems to bounce around her skull rather than stick to it. She’d heard the word numerous times before, but the inside of her heart seemed to blink out when trying to connect her own memories to it. Even now it was blinking and stuttering, but the vaguest of images started to appear; that of his face.

Somehow, she’s alright with that definition.

“We should clean this up,” Byleth says at last. Claude gives a curious smile before leaving to retrieve some towels.

“Teach?” Claude says as they scrub the remnants of acid stains off the floor.

“Yes?”

“Let’s do our best to win this thing.”

Byleth smiles. “We will. No acid needed.”

“You wound me so, Teach...”

Chapter Text

Byleth drapes her cloak over Claude’s shoulders. It was expected for him to be exhausted, given how spectacularly he’d delivered during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, but what she was not expecting was for him to eat two pheasants and promptly fall asleep on the table. Almost all of the students had filed out of the dining hall by now; only Byleth and the other two house leaders remain sitting at the same table. Despite how hectic it had been earlier, there’s only a slight humming in Byleth’s ears now, and the dim light of the candles on the table seems to soothe her soul. A contented smile reaches her face.

“You seem pleased, Professor,” Dimitri remarks, winding his shoulders a bit. “As does Claude. Though I suppose some respite is well deserved after the Golden Deers’ victory today. You all fought brilliantly.”

“I agree,” Edelgard hums as she takes a sip of water. “The feast, while not as… extravagant as Claude had made it out to be, was still enjoyable. Don’t think for a moment that I am satisfied with my loss, though. At the next mock battle, I will be giving it everything and more-" her lilac eyes turn piercing, "-since that is what it will seem to take to defeat you, Professor.”

Byleth shakes her head. “You give me too much credit. My students prepared tirelessly for the battle. It’s thanks to their efforts that we won.”

“Please do not discredit yourself, Professor,” Dimitri says, earnest as always. “Many of the other professors, and even Lady Rhea, are thoroughly impressed by your skills. You deserve to have confidence in at least that much.”

“Truly,” Edelgard nods. Her fingers trace the lip of her cup. “How I dearly wish you had been able to join the Black Eagles. Your experience and prowess would have been invaluable to the Empire.” 

“Invaluable is an understatement,” Dimitri says. “The Professor’s father is none other than Jeralt the Blade Breaker. It’s only natural for the skill to carry over. Birds of a feather, perhaps?” 

Byleth shifts a bit in her seat. She’s never found it particularly pleasant to be in the center of attention like this, and yet everything she does seems to only push her further into the spotlight. She quietly curses her father for it, though she realizes he’s not very different in that regard.

“On that note, Professor, there is something I’m curious about,” Edelgard says, turning her head to Byleth. Her gaze is piercing. “Who is your mother? Did she also attend the monastery? How did she meet your father? I’d be very glad to know.”

“Ah. I would like to know this as well,” Dimitri leans forward. “Your father must have been the spitting image of chivalry, no doubt.”

“Actually,” Byleth starts, her line of sight darting away from their expectant eyes. “I don’t know, myself. My mother died shortly after I was born. I can’t even recall her face.”

“I see,” Edelgard says after a moment’s pause. When Byleth turns, Edelgard’s face is solemn in the candlelight. “Forgive my imprudence. I should not have let my curiosity get the better of me.”

“I apologize as well,” Dimitri bows. “If I may ask just one more thing… is there anything you do know about your mother, Professor? Anything at all?”

She thinks for a moment. Somehow it seems wrong to simply regurgitate the affectionate words her father had used; those belonged to him and him alone. Instead, she pulls out the black box containing the ring he had bestowed to her a moon ago. 

“This is my mother’s ring,” Byleth says quietly. “It’s all we have left of her. My father told me to give it to someone I love with all my heart, when the time comes.”

“What a lovely keepsake,” Edelgard smiles. “And? Have you found any candidates worthy of it?”

“Edelgard!” Dimitri chides. “It is rude to go around asking people, much less our Professor, about such personal matters! Have we not pried enough for one night?”

“Please, Dimitri, it’s all in good jest,” Edelgard laughs softly. “You’ll make a liar of yourself if you say you don’t wish to know.”

“Well… that’s not-” Dimitri takes a moment to clear his throat before continuing. “I will leave it up to the Professor whether she would like to indulge us or not. It is her choice, after all.”

Byleth’s fingers rub small circles onto the top of the ring box. “You want to know if I… love anyone?” 

“Yes, if you would be so kind,” Edelgard nods. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, Professor. Plenty of students here at the monastery are searching for potential suitors as well. It makes for a much more common conversation topic than you would think.”

“Though of course, matrimony should never be the primary reason one would want to attend an institution such as this,” Dimitri interjects. 

Byleth is unsure of why heat starts to prick at her cheeks. “I... don’t think I do. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. Even if it were to happen, I wouldn’t be able to tell.” 

“I would not be so quick to dismiss it, Professor,” Edelgard muses. “I’ve been told that once true love blossoms, it’s impossible not to feel it. I’m sure you, too, will come to realize it when it happens.” 

Byleth can’t help but occupy herself by wiping a grain of rice off the side of Claude’s lip with a stray napkin. “I hope so,” she says.

For some reason, both the house leaders go quiet as they watch her. Byleth raises an eyebrow. “...Is something wrong?”

“If I may be so rude, Professor,” Dimitri starts, “Might I ask... how you feel towards Claude?”

“Well, look who’s curious now,” Edelgard teases, much to Dimitri’s embarrassment. “But I admit, I would like to hear the answer to this as well. You two are together very often. I may even say it’s rare to see one of you without the other.” 

Byleth looks away. “That isn’t true. We each have our own schedules to attend to.”

“True or untrue, there still is a question at hand, Professor,” Dimitri says- no, pushes; it takes Byleth a moment to realize. “What do you think of him?”

She glances at Claude, folded up in his arms on the table and snoring softly without a care in the world. She’s felt for the last while that something heavy was weighing on his mind. Being able to see him now, relaxed and content as can be, puts her own heart at ease. 

“He’s an odd person,” Byleth says. “He always seems proud of his ability to read others, and of how self-reliant he’s become, but somehow… I worry. I feel like I can’t leave him alone.” 

“Oh, so that’s all it is?” Edelgard’s words bubble into a quiet laugh. “I didn’t know it was more of a maternal instinct sort of relation. How amusing.”

Byleth shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is, exactly. I’ve never been good at understanding how I feel. But when I’m with him…” Her eyes, having never left him, soften. “I feel happy.” 

She’s surprised when Edelgard and Dimitri have very little to say after that, simply nodding their understandings and bidding her a pleasant remainder of her evening. Byleth, after pondering for a while over how to go about waking Claude up, starts to stack up some leftover plates sitting on the other tables. 

He can rest just a little bit longer, she thinks to herself as she cleans.

When her back is turned, Claude touches the corner of his lips with the most secretive of smiles.

Chapter Text

“Ooh, Professor, there you are! Come join us!”

Hilda’s near-squeal of an invitation smacks Byleth upside the head. She had been wandering about the market browsing through the newest shipment of weapons until Hilda popped up behind her, nearly making Byleth drop a silver sword onto her toes in the process.

Byleth turns to face Hilda’s sparkling eyes. She’s never seen her this excited before. “Is something the matter?”

“Only the most important occasion of the year, Professor!” Hilda exclaims. “Just look at the vendor who’s come in; it’s finally time to start picking out dresses for the ball! You’ve got to come, or else you’ll lose your chance!”

Byleth looks over Hilda’s shoulder. Sure enough, a stall has been opened with arrays of colourful dresses and accessories hung up and laid out on numerous tables. How long had that been there? Maybe she had just been looking at the weapons for too long while they were setting up. Either way, a bubble of excited girls has already blown itself up around the shop. Does Hilda really plan on infiltrating it? It seems dangerous.

“It looks busy,” Byleth looks back to Hilda. “You should hurry before everything’s gone.”

“Professor, didn’t you hear what I said? You’re coming too! The way you are, I bet you haven’t got a single dress to your name, do you?”

“That's not true. I have a nightgown.”

“That is completely different!” Hilda cries. “This is going to be your first taste of a real ball, isn’t it? All the gentlemen will be dressing up to impress, so it’s only polite to return the favor! It’s completely unacceptable to look anything less than stellar on such an important night.” 

Is it really so important? It’s only one night, and dresses aren’t cheap, either. Sure, she does have some funds to spare, but that’s been going towards protective gear and new weapons for her students. And even then, she hasn’t done a good job of separating her own income from that of the church’s provisions, so it feels doubly wrong to think she’d be embezzling her salary towards a one-use gown. 

“I wasn’t planning on going,” Byleth admits. She tears her eyes away from Hilda’s before they start to burn holes into her face. “I would be perfectly content with just watching you all have fun.” 

“Oh, no more of that!” Hilda sighs loudly before grabbing Byleth’s hand. “Come on, all the girls from the other houses are there already!” Upon seeing Byleth’s confused face, Hilda nods. “If you aren’t going to buy one, then at least help us decide, Professor. Time is of the essence, and feedback of the utmost importance!” 

By the time Hilda manages to drag her over to the stall, Byleth is immediately lost. The eruptions of squeals and clamoring voices send her brain into disarray, and she finds herself being constantly shoved in every direction by girls tripping over each other trying to get to the same accessory. It’s hard to breathe through the pure concentration of chaos, made only worse by the smell of various perfumes mixing together. When one student’s elbow sends Byleth toppling sideways, the only coherent cell left in her mind is asking her how she ended up in this foreign, terrifying, war-stricken land.

A steady hand catches her and puts her upright. Dizzy, Byleth looks up to thank her rescuer, only to see Mercedes standing at her side with an amused smile. 

“Please be careful, Professor,” she says. “It would be terrible timing for you to sprain an ankle days before the ball!” 

“Thank you, Mercedes,” Byleth sighs in relief as she’s pulled away from the crowd. “But I should be going. I have no plans to attend the ball.” 

“Oh, is that so?” Mercedes lifts a hand to her chin. “That’s a shame… Here I thought you would have appreciated the chance to go.”

Byleth tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

“I have heard quite a bit about you, Professor,” Mercedes starts, “namely that you’ve been a travelling mercenary for almost all your life. My first thought was that it must have been hard, not having a home to return to every night… but if that’s true, you’re strong enough to never let it show!” She giggles a bit to herself at that. “Something like a ball might seem outside of your experience… but that’s all the more reason to try it, don’t you think?” 

Byleth’s head somehow feels empty, but swimming with thoughts at the same time. For whatever reason, the overwhelming sincerity in Mercedes’ voice makes her chest feel tight. She isn’t sure how to respond.

“Seeing the other students enjoying themselves is enough for me,” Byleth manages, before realizing it’s more or less the same excuse from before. Her gaze lands on a soft pink gown hanging from a rack. “Someone like me would be... out of place there.”

“Nonsense!” Mercedes smiles, sweet and pure. “The students simply adore you, Professor. Even the other teachers are known to get together and dance amongst themselves, too. You deserve a break for always working so hard!”

It’s astounding. Mercedes’ words are so gentle, they actually make it harder to argue. Sentences start to form and tangle in Byleth’s mouth. She’s heard her father’s voice at every turn telling her to never let her guard down, lest she be stabbed in her sleep or worse and yet here she is, standing in front of this fluffy pink embodiment of everything she’s never thought herself to be, and beyond all rational thought, she finds herself wanting to wear it. Why? What excuse does she, a bloodied mercenary, have to allow this? Her cheeks start to warm.

“You aren’t what you do, Professor,” Mercedes’ eyes soften with her smile. “You’re who you are.” 

The words won’t come. To be someone. She's never thought about something so unconditionally simple, to be something besides her occupation, never until today.

Mercedes walks up to the pink dress and pulls out a coin pouch. She turns to Byleth, ever smiling. “So is this the one you wanted, Professor?”

Byleth, stunned silent, nods. 

Byleth’s eye twitches. She hadn’t thought it possible to have one’s makeup, hair, and dress fitting done all at the same time, but the female students have proven her wrong. Now she sits on a vanity stool in Dorothea’s room, with Hilda fussing over her dress and accessories while Mercedes pulls her dark hair through a brush. Other girls have been passing in and out of each other’s rooms asking for spare blush, powder, earrings, and even shoes. Though she would have expected the evening of the ball to be busy, the sight of so many girls becoming one collective hivemind with the sole goal of looking pretty is baffling. 

“Ah!” Dorothea’s mascara wand draws away from Byleth’s face for the fifth time that evening. “You’ve got to stop moving, Professor. You’re making this much harder than it needs to be.”

Byleth’s nose scrunches up; it feels like she’s about to sneeze. “I’m sorry. I’ve never put on makeup before.” 

“Professor, move your arm just a bit, will you?” Hilda says, fiddling with a white floral brooch in her fingers. “I need to find just the right spot to put this on you.”

“I appreciate it, Hilda, but you don’t need to go out of your way to-”

“Don’t be silly! I made this just for you the second I found out what kind of dress you were wearing,” Hilda delicately pins the flower above her heart. “I figured if I made you a special accessory, you’d feel twice as motivated to go! I’m a genius, I know.” 

“Hilda, how do you think I should go about styling her hair?” Mercedes’ brow furrows in thought as she holds Byleth’s hair in an incomplete ponytail. “It’s so uneven, I’m not sure if I can put it into an updo without having it fall apart.” 

“Oh, I have hairpins and some styling wax in my vanity, if you need them,” Dorothea looks up for a moment to point Mercedes to the right drawer, then returns to fluttering about Byleth’s lashes. “Stay still, now. We’re going to make you look gorgeous, Professor- not that you have much room to improve, of course.” 

Byleth’s sweaty palms curl into fists on her lap. This still doesn’t feel real. The dress is itching her skin, and her arms and shoulders are exposed, but she doesn’t feel any colder. It’s as if the tension swirling about the monastery over the past month has crammed itself into this one room, crawled into the recesses of her mind, and started banging pots and pans at maximum volume. Everything is too much. When she thinks of how her father would react to seeing her this unprotected, every fiber of her body wants to shrivel up and hide. 

She lets her thoughts and eyes wander for just a moment. The other three girls around her are perfectly made up and dressed to impress, Dorothea in a deep red cocktail dress, Hilda in a delicate white skirt, and Mercedes in a navy blue gown. Byleth wonders what the other students will be wearing, but her mind lingers on Claude. He’s never seemed the type to enjoy dressing up. Will he just wear his uniform as always? But he is still a noble, so it stands to reason that he would have some kind of formal attire representing the Alliance. And no matter how gaudy the suit, he’d definitely stuff himself into it if it meant giving the Golden Deer a better reputation. Byleth smiles a bit at the idea. 

“By the way, Professor, you've no doubt heard the rumors of the Goddess Tower, haven't you?” Dorothea beams while patting blush onto Byleth’s cheeks. “Who’s the lucky one you have in mind?”

“Ooh, I want to know, too!” Mercedes’ entire face brightens. “Maybe if I have time, I’ll see who I run into there.”

“Agh, it’s so romantic! I bet if I go, I’ll find a whole lineup worth of guys hoping to get a glimpse of me in the moonlight,” Hilda sighs. “But back to the Professor… I feel like I have an idea of who it is.” 

“Really?” Dorothea’s eyes widen. “Who, who is it?” Mercedes leans in closer over Byleth’s shoulder, ready to catch even the quietest of whispers.

Byleth looks away. There’s no guarantee that meeting up there and making a wish would make anything come true. Wishing and committing are two different things; it’s silly to think just meeting in a place by coincidence would bind two people’s fates for eternity. She would certainly hope not to see anyone she despises there, lest she be bound to them for the rest of her life with no rhyme or reason behind it. 

But Claude spoke often of the future. A future he was working towards, a future he hoped to make with her strength at his side. Surely in all the times he’s mentioned it so casually, he had just wanted someone with the ability to wield a Hero’s Relic to pave the way and strike down any opposition by force. But here in Dorothea’s room, sweating in her dress, she wonders for the first time how much of his presence she earned through her demeanor versus her sword. What is it that he values in her, truly? It bothers her, he bothers her; his words, poisonously nonchalant and insidious, get under her skin. 

“You’ll come running at the chance to see your adorable little Golden Deer again, right?”

“Don’t forget it, Teach. You and I will meet here again."

An unidentifiable feeling causes her face to warm. It isn’t fair to think she’s the only one like this, so much so that it's nearly infuriating. “I don’t have anyone in mind,” Byleth says. 

It tastes like a lie before it even leaves her lips. 

Chapter Text

Byleth falls in love with Claude at the ball. 

It all happens incredibly quickly. Dorothea applies Byleth's lipstick and gives her a pair of low heels to wear for the night. Mercedes gathers her hair into an elegant updo, and Hilda adds a light pink fascinator as a finishing touch. As they approach the reception hall, Byleth feels as if she’s floating across the ground. She can feel pairs upon pairs of eyes on her, but somehow it doesn’t matter. 

She watches Edelgard and Dimitri twirl gracefully in the middle of the floor in each other’s arms. But even as she watches, even as the music starts to play, the night doesn’t seem to begin, nothing feels real, not until she spots him. 

When Claude sees her, his entire face brightens, and Byleth wonders if the light in the room comes from the chandeliers or his smile. He looks handsome, even more so than usual, dressed in a black tuxedo jacket with gold trimmings and a silk cravat at his neck. Surprisingly enough, he’s wearing his pair of high boots, the ones he uses while horseback riding. Byleth had given those to him as a gift a moon or two ago. Something about seeing him use them as part of his formal attire makes her happy.

“Looking good, Teach,” Claude winks. “I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting you to get all gussied up for the ball. Consider me pleasantly surprised.” 

Byleth is shocked at how easily her smile comes. “I could say the same to you. I didn’t think you were the type to care about dressing up.” 

“Oh, I’m not. You’ve got me all figured out there,” he chuckles under his breath. “But even I have to put in some effort for these things too; you know, formalities and all that. With that being said-” he does his rehearsed, but not yet perfected gentleman’s bow and offers her his hand, “-care to dance, Teach?”

Her heart squeezes to the point of pain. Her eyes dart away from him. “I’ve... never danced with anyone before.”

“That so?” Claude says, though he doesn’t look the slightest bit surprised. “If that’s the case, maybe I’ll rephrase that.” He clears his throat before extending his hand once more. “Might you do me the honor of being your first dance, then?”

Byleth’s lips part once, twice, then pause. Every thought in her mind is filled with him, she wants to take his hand so badly, but it feels as though her heart and body are at odds with one another. Somehow, something about this still feels inherently wrong beyond explanation. But how wrong can it be if she wants to do it this much?

She can feel his eyes on her. A wave of joyous relief washes over her as he takes her hand, mindful of her fingers, yet firm and secure in his grip. Suddenly all the thoughts drain out of her head, and everything feels right. 

“Dancing’s no big deal. Just follow my lead,” Claude grins at her, pulling her towards the center of the floor. “You trust me, don’t you, Teach?”

It’s so easy, so natural to return his smiles now. “Yes,” Byleth says, “I do.” 

As they begin to sway and twirl, Byleth’s eyes stay glued to their feet. While it’s true that she’s being careful not to step on his toes, it also proves too difficult to look him in the eyes. Why is that, she wonders, she’s looked at him plenty of times before while instructing him and teaching him various weapon techniques. This shouldn't be hard, or new, or anything, so why does it feel like it is now? It must be the stuffiness of the hall, the warmth of both the lights and the boy in front of her, the hand settled on her waist so comfortably, the beating of the heart underneath where she’s placed her palm. Her head feels as though it’s been pumped with hot air to the point of bursting. It hurts, but she’s never been happier to be in pain. All at once a feverish heat rushes to her cheeks; it makes her glad, so glad that he is her first dance. She realizes that she doesn’t want anyone else to be here in front of her, that no other soul could ever make her feel as strongly as him. There is no replacement for him, not in all the world. The millions of thoughts racing through her mind nearly drive her mad, all on account of this scheming fool, but for some reason it’s far from bothering her. 

“You alright, Teach?” Claude asks. She doesn’t need to look to hear the smile in his voice. “I haven’t stepped on your toes yet, have I? I don’t think I have. Please tell me if I have.”

“No,” Byleth says, “but I’ve figured out something that’s been bothering me.”

“And what would that be? I was about to say “let me guess”, but educated as my guesses are, they never seem to quite hit the mark. So do indulge me, if you’d be so kind.”

Byleth looks up at him at last. “I could kill you, Claude.” 

Claude stutters the beginning of a sentence out, before it melts into a laugh. “I know, Teach. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

His face, more earnest than she’s ever seen it, is suddenly too hard to look at again. “I just wonder if…” she trails off.

“Hm? What is it you wonder?” Claude presses. “There’s no shortage of mysteries to be pondering, but something tells me that isn’t what’s going through that brain of yours. Am I right?”

Her face begins to burn. “I wonder if… it’s okay for me to be doing this. This isn’t how I-”

“Tut-tut-tut. Say no more, Teach,” Claude says. “I getcha. You must find it unreasonable, preposterous, downright blasphemous for a rugged mercenary to be indulging in the luxuries of girlhood, is that it? A big old “this isn’t how I was raised”? A gargantuan “I’m so out of my league”, mayhaps?”

She points a frown at his chest. “I don’t like the way you phrased it, but… you aren’t wrong.” 

“Of course, of course. I'll get to the bottom of this mystery, or my name isn't Professor Von Riegan,” Claude nods. “But tell me something first, Teach. Are you happy right now?”

“Yes,” Byleth answers without skipping a beat. 

“Good,” he smiles down at her. “And if that’s the case, does anything else really matter? Do you have to live your life within the boundaries of labels and obligations? Maybe I’m not one to talk, but it sounds suffocating to me.”

Her fingers idly grasp at the fabric of his jacket. “...I suppose so.”

“All anybody wants is to do right by themselves without doing wrong to anyone else,” Claude continues. “If, someday, your joy were to come at the expense of someone else’s well-being, you can weigh out what needs changing then. But until that day comes-”

The strings and harmonies seeping through the air come to a crescendo. Claude lifts her hand up with his, stepping away to let her twirl under his arm before untangling himself from her hold. The hall is silent with the end of the first song.

Claude gives her fingers one last squeeze before pulling away. “You can let yourself be happy.”

Something unknown to Byleth coils up in her throat, constricts her lungs, makes somewhere behind her eyes sting as he’s swept away to another dance. It’s okay. It’s okay for her to feel, to be happy, to live a normal life. All of these things she didn’t realize she never allowed herself to have, it’s okay to have them, to want them, to strive for them. The blood on her hands doesn’t matter anymore. 

It’s okay for her to love him. 

Several other students approach her to dance, and it’s painfully clear how much she accepts out of courtesy and courtesy alone. When she looks into their eyes, she feels nothing but longing; longing for their eyes to be the one shade of green that would let her know she’s safe. Everything is so much easier now, ridiculously so. She thinks she could even bring herself to look at him now that she knows the truth. 

Had she known how much everyone else would pale in comparison, she would have looked at him more when she had the chance. 

The moment Byleth reaches the top of the Goddess Tower, she flings off the heeled shoes Dorothea lent her and sinks to the floor. Her pinky toes feel scratched beyond belief after all that dancing, and sitting in the near silence after being saturated in the commotion of the ball leaves a terrible ringing in her ears. 

I knew I wasn’t cut out for this, she thinks to herself and sighs, but stops before she can say it was something to regret. If it weren’t for the ball, she may have never realized the extent of her feelings up until now. That alone she wouldn’t trade for the world, little of it as she knew.

She curls up her legs and leans her pounding head against her knees. The night air feels like the perfect balm to her flushed skin, and the pitch-black sky lets the stars shine brighter than she’s ever seen them. Falling asleep here and waiting for the ball to end almost sounds like a better idea. 

“Teach? Is that you?”

Byleth nearly jumps out of her skin. She turns to see Claude coming up the stairs, looking quite sweaty and exhausted himself. 

“So this is where you’ve been,” Claude’s face relaxes. “I figured you might’ve been tired out from all the festivities, but the Goddess Tower sure wasn’t where I was expecting to find you.” He sits down next to her and pulls his cravat out from his collar. “So, any reason in particular you’re up here tonight? Besides the fact that you couldn’t bear the ball anymore and just had to escape.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Despite her earlier resolve, Byleth catches herself looking away again. “What about you? I thought festivities were your favorite.”

“Bah, far from it,” Claude rubs the back of his neck. “Sure, I do love me a grand feast when the time is right, and some music and fun’s all well and good, but a lot of the appeal of these noble dances really flies right over my head.” He takes a moment to lean back on his hands and stretch out his legs. “I wasn’t raised around this sort of thing, you see. While I did technically inherit a fancy title, that doesn’t mean my upbringing followed suit. It never changed who I was on the inside… at least I hope it didn’t.” 

“Is that why you said it was so tiring to live your life within expectations?” Byleth asks. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Claude sighs. His hand idly continues to rub at his neck as his gaze meets the stars. “I get that some people-” he fakes a cough, “Lorenz- would write it off as me not being able to count my blessings. But I’ve counted them enough, if I do say so myself. All the good, and all the bad.” 

They go quiet for a moment. It had never occurred to Byleth that Claude could come off as ungrateful or lazy to some. Sure, it was easy for her to disprove those claims since she had been keeping such a close eye on him, but from an outside perspective it would make sense for them to see him as irresponsible. When weighing it against the truth, it hurts to imagine. 

“I guess, more than anything,” he continues, “I hate the idea of being some title or status before I’m even seen as myself.” He turns to her, moonlit and sincere. “You of all people would know what I mean by that, huh, Teach?” 

Byleth’s grip around her knees tightens. She feels vulnerable to be understood, but in a good way; she's glad once more it is him. “I do.”

Claude clears his throat. “Anyways, that’s enough of that. Say Teach, you have heard about the rumors surrounding the Goddess Tower, haven’t you?” 

She nods. “They say that if a man and a woman make a wish here tonight, the goddess will grant it without fail.”

“Yup, that’s the one,” Claude nods. “Pretty silly when you think about it, yeah? There’s no way that just bumping into someone at the Goddess Tower guarantees any chance of success. Especially if you’re clinging onto some hefty wishes.” 

“I thought the same thing,” Byleth says.

“But, I will admit that I like to take some extra luck wherever I can get it,” Claude says. “So, since the stars seem to have aligned for us here tonight, why don’t we try throwing a wish out there?”

Deep down, Byleth knows what it is she wants to wish for, but she swallows it down. “What would we pray for?”

“How about… for our ambitions to come true?” Claude fiddles with his braid. “You’ve never seemed the selfish type, but I’m sure even you’ve got an ambition or two.”

Byleth’s fingers tangle and untangle themselves. “I do, but… it’s more of a hope, than anything.”

“Oh, yeah? Enlighten me.”

Her eyes settle on the array of stars above them. “I want to stay and teach, and guide you all. For as long as I’m able to… I want to protect this time, and everyone within it. I’m… happy here.”

Claude’s earnest smile makes her breath hitch. “I figured it would be something like that. That selflessness might be what I like best about you, Teach.”

A sudden rush of joy floods into her heart. So there is something he sees besides the weapon she wields. Already a part of her feels calmer to know it.

“How about you? What do you dream of?” Byleth asks him.

“Well now, there’s a loaded question,” Claude closes his eyes and smiles. “It’s a pretty big dream. Not to mention it would take me a staggering amount of effort to explain, and you are still my Teach- see, there’s just too many excuses at my disposal, and so little time.”

Byleth frowns. “So I don’t get to know?” 

“I’m sure you will someday, when the time’s right. But for now, if you would…” he leans back on his hands once more and turns his head to meet her eyes. “I would love for you to be a part of that dream with me, Teach.”

Her eyes widen. It isn’t the first time he’s suggested moving on with her strength at his side. But here, at the top of the Goddess Tower in the cool night air with the stars aligned above them, everything feels more important. Without a single mention of a Hero’s Relic, or a Crest, or any borders between their standings. Just her, next to him, content. She has never felt safer, more at home than she has right here.

“I’d be honored,” Byleth says softly. 

Claude blinks as if one of his ears has stopped working. “...Really? You’ve gotta stop taking me by surprise, Teach. Or have you mastered the art of jest without me noticing? When did you get so far ahead of me?”

She shakes her head. “I meant it, Claude.”

After another moment’s pause, his face splits into a bright smile. “...Right. Right, of course. You aren’t that good at joking yet. Guess that just means I have to hold you to your word.”

“Yes,” Byleth smiles back. “You’ve got no say in the matter.”

“Ah, maybe I don’t, but the goddess sure does in this tower tonight,” Claude claps his hands together in a praying gesture. He deepens his voice for dramatic effect, just as Byleth figured he would. “Oh, divine Goddess! Hear our prayers! We beseech you and your radiance! Please, grant us that which we seek!”

Silence. He still doesn’t move from his praying position. 

Byleth tilts her head.  “...Do you think it’ll work?”

Claude lets go of his hands and stretches out his wrists a few times. “Who can say? I mean, it’d be wonderful and more than a little convenient if she were to grant our wish, right? But whether or not our dreams actually come true is up to us, of course.”

A small, guilty thorn pricks at her. She’d hate to think his prayer went unheard because of her wishing for something different. Surely someday she’ll make it clear to him what it is she truly hoped for. 

“Ah, we should probably head back soon,” Claude sighs. “I’m sure everyone’s looking for you. Just promise to save a dance for me, okay, Teach? I swear, so long as it’s not one of those goofy noble dances, I am a treasure on the dance floor!” 

Byleth looks down to her toes. “...Do we have to go back for that?” 

“Well, generally speaking, yes, that is where all the music and food is being held captive for the purpose of dancing and levity.” Claude blinks. “...Unless you’re asking what I think you’re asking.” 

She’s certain her face is flushed, but she prays the darkness will be enough to cover it, anyway. She looks into his eyes. “I want to dance, Claude. With you.”

“...Here? Now?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Byleth forces herself to keep looking at him. She wants to remember everything about this moment. Every word, every breath, every line of his face, she wants it burned into her memory. A night of so many firsts, with him shining ever so brightly. His green eyes are bewildered, the same look when he sees her reel in a huge fish, or when she comes up behind him while he’s reading. It’s lovely. He’s lovely. Every fiber of her being wants to tell him so.

Claude had been fingering his silk cravat for the past minute as if contemplating whether to put it back on or not. However, he takes one more look at Byleth and tosses it to the side with her shoes. 

He smiles down at her and offers his hand once more. “Then without further ado; may I have the honor of this dance, Teach? A dance, to us and our dreams.”

Byleth isn’t sure how to tell him that he is her dream. She settles for placing her hand on top of his and smiling at his moonlit face. 

“You may,” she says to the boy she loves.

She wishes she could tell it to him always, that he may, whenever the time, without needing to draw a second breath or any semblance of consideration, he may. 

They dance into the night until the faint echoes of music from the hall go silent.

Chapter Text

Byleth can’t breathe. She’s been curled up crying under one of Jeralt’s fur cloaks for so long she’s lost track of time. His blood has long since dried on her hands and is beginning to crack.

Weep if you must, she can hear Sothis whisper, but at the very least you should wash the blood away.

Still choking on her sobs, she shakes her head. She has nothing left of him otherwise; no trace that he existed at all. Her father. She knew this day would come eventually, and so did he, yet the sheer inequity of it all crashes down on her like a waterfall. Her eyes are swollen, both with tears and the vision of watching him be stabbed. Over and over again, unable to stop it, at the mercy of some godforsaken fate. 

There must be no Goddess after all if she would let him die so cruelly, Byleth thinks as she buries her head further into the sofa. It takes a moment for the implications of that thought to sink in, and it only serves to make her burn deeper with shame. She doesn’t feel Sothis’ presence anymore. The girl must have left her be, pathetic and inconsolable as she is. Though half of her is grateful, being truly alone feels as though a hole has opened up in her chest, a hole so deep it could never begin to be filled. Normally, on the rare occasions she would get upset, she would at least be able to grasp some idea of what would make her feel better. But now there is nothing. Nothing but this helplessness to eat her heart away.

There’s a loud knock from the door. Byleth shoots up from the sofa, completely disheveled and unwound, only to see Claude standing in the doorway. Their eyes connect in a fragile line. If she had to guess, he came here, unable to sit still, to search for answers. Surely it must have crossed his mind that she would be here. Even so, her mind and body are close to melting. There’s nothing she can say or do to fill the space between them. Perhaps there never has been.

“So you were here after all, Teach,” Claude says quietly. “Sorry. I should have known better than to barge in. I won’t try to make any excuses.”

Byleth tries to say something, but it breaks in half the moment she opens her mouth. Her entire body is ten times heavier. It takes far too much effort for her to simply sit upright and begin to stand up. When she does, her legs start to shake. 

“It’s okay, Teach,” he shakes his head. “I’ll give you your space. If you need anything… you know where I’ll be.” 

Something in Byleth’s throat bursts. In one, two panicked strides she stumbles over to Claude just as he starts to turn his back and leave. Her stained hand grabs at his wrist, stopping him in his tracks. Her blurred gaze stays fixated on their feet. She isn’t sure what she meant to accomplish by doing this. Her head is pounding and nothing makes sense anymore.

“Teach,” Claude’s voice almost makes it sound like he wants to reprimand her, but it seems to fall apart with his second breath. Still, he turns around to face her. She hates it. She hates that he has to see her like this, but every part of her mind is crying out for him so loudly she can’t hear anything else. 

“Don’t go,” Byleth chokes out. 

Their deafening silence is filled only with the soft sound of her tears falling. But he doesn’t leave. After what feels like an eternity of him just watching her, evaluating her, a hand places itself gently on her head. The unfamiliar sensation of a hand stroking her hair; she must have definitely felt it at some point, maybe when she was young. The memory seems to be light years away from where she is. It only serves to make her lips tremble harder. 

“Curses… why do I have to be the one to clean out the Captain’s room?” A loud voice echoes from the hall, approaching closer to the office. Both of them jump. “And now, of all times… we need to give the Professor all our support. I can’t imagine...” 

“Blast,” Claude hisses under his breath, “Alois? What is he-” he glances to the door, then to Byleth, then to the door, then to Byleth again. Her head is spinning. She blinks, and in the next moment Claude tugs her to the corner of the wall and swings the door in front of them, casting both of them in shadow as he holds her to his chest.

“Sorry, Teach,” Claude whispers in a tone much higher than she’s ever heard from him. “Put up with me just until Alois is gone.” 

Put up with you, she wants to say, but her vocal chords have withered away and died at this point. I’ve never wanted you to go.

Byleth rests her head upon his chest, reveling in the sound of his heartbeat. She had done the same for her father as he drew his last breaths; listened as it slowed, slowed, and stopped entirely, never to beat again. To be close to someone dear, to feel their pulse and know they were still with her- she hadn’t known the sound of being alive was such a precious thing. Her fingers tangle themselves tightly in his uniform jacket, trying in any way possible to bring herself even closer. 

Nothing can separate them if they are this close, she thinks, long past the point of reason. No one will die. No one can leave her. 

She can feel how uneasy Claude’s hands are. First he places them on her shoulders awkwardly. Then they move to her waist, then one hand rises to touch the back of her head while the other stays on the small of her back. They stay settled like that as Alois comes into the room, sighs to himself, and leaves. 

“Where could that Professor be?” Byleth can hear Alois mutter as he turns the corner. “We need to make sure she’s alright...”

Once Alois’ footsteps fade away, Claude calls for her gently. She can only hum a response when words fail her yet again. 

“I think they’re in the process of burying Captain Jeralt right about now,” Claude says to her. His hand continues to idly stroke her hair. “Do you… want to go? Maybe bring some flowers? I know a special arrangement we use back home. It won’t be exactly the same, but… I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

“There will be a lot of people,” Byleth whispers into his uniform. She seems incapable of speaking any louder with her throat in such a state.

“I know. That’s why I think we ought to head to the greenhouse first. That way, we can take our time arranging the flowers before going to the-” he cuts himself off. “...Before going to see him.”

Byleth nods. Slowly, she removes herself from his hold and finds herself immediately missing the touch. Why? She’d gone so long without it she figured she never needed it again. It almost scares her. To know it, then lose it, then be tempted to bother him for it again would be a vicious, painful cycle. She needs to stop before she acts even further beyond herself. This isn’t a face she should be showing to her students. 

“Let’s go, Teach. You’ll be alright.”

Byleth’s gaze falls back down to their hands. This is not a face she should be showing to her students. But she knows he wouldn’t see it that way.

Silently, she nods again. As they walk out of the room, she reaches for his hand hesitantly. The moment he feels her fingers touch his palm, he grips them tight without turning around. 

“First things first, let’s get that blood off your hands, yeah?” Claude speaks in his usual easy tone, as if all is normal. “You don’t need to punish yourself any more. We’re going to make this right.”

Every part of her is still in pain, yet his words shine like the smallest of stars. A tiny glimmer of hope. He’s very much like that, in all he does. 

He won’t see her even if she nods her response. She squeezes his hand tight instead. He squeezes back, a secret sign, as if no other words between them are needed.

Chapter Text

When Byleth wakes, Claude is sitting on a chair at her bedside. She blinks once, twice, and lets the world come back into focus. He’s dressed in a loose shirt and rolled-up pants, with a book held over his face with one hand. The slight creaking of his chair as he rocks back and forth is the only sound in the room. Orange rays of midday light shine through the curtains beside them. There’s a steaming teacup on the dresser; the air smells of Almyran pine needles, earthy and warm. Like a dream, all seems right. All seems right, and yet she almost wishes he hadn't come. Her heart can't handle much more of him. It's beginning to hurt.

“Claude,” her voice comes out as little more than a whisper. 

He lowers the book and breathes out a sigh before giving her a wry smile. “Morning, Teach. Have fun in dreamland?” 

Her head is still pounding with the last moments she remembers. She struggles to sit up and presses a hand to her forehead. “What happened? How long has it been?”

“You’ve been out for a little more than a day,” Claude says. He leans forward in his chair. “I’m sure you remember, Teach. You beat Solon to a pulp, and with nothing but a pair of gauntlets! To put things very lightly, I’d sure hate to be your enemy.”

“I was angry,” Byleth says. “It seemed appropriate-” she looks away, “-at least until I saw all of you.”

It’s still fresh in her mind. Solon’s blood was such a cold, dark red it was borderline black. Long after he fell silent under her she struck at him, again and again until his face had melted into nothing but a mound of raw, reddened flesh.  Even now she could nearly feel the blood on her skin. She looks down at her hands, now wiped and pristine, but never truly clean. It had been a long, long time since she’d gotten that angry, and the first time her students had ever witnessed her in such a state. Just remembering it makes her burn with shame. How could she ever face them again?

Byleth shuts her eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”

“Don’t apologize, Teach,” Claude is quick to answer, as if expecting such a response. “It was a long time coming. We all knew how you were feeling, and supported you from the beginning. I doubt anyone was surprised to see you react that way.” He puts his hands behind his head. “Who knows? Maybe they were even a little relieved.”

Byleth raises an eyebrow. “Relieved? Why?”

“I don’t know if I can put this in a way you’ll understand, but…” he laces his fingers together on his lap. “Sometimes it’s good to see a mask break every now and again. It reminds us that there’s a real person beneath it. Let me tell you, staying too long under there can get suffocating.”

“A real person?” Byleth frowns. Her fingers grasp at the sheets. “What have I been all this time, then?” He opens his mouth to object, but she cuts him off. Her blood begins to boil, her voice begins to shake. “No, I see. I’m a tool for your plans. A Relic-wielding, Goddess-chosen tactician who’s the key to making your ambitions come true, as if I ever asked to be in this position. That’s all I’ve been to you from the start, haven’t I, Claude?” 

“Teach, no ,” Claude grabs a handful of his hair and tugs as if willing his mind to move faster. “That isn’t what I meant. It’s true that when I first met you, all I could think of was how I could use you to get closer to my goals. But that was before I knew who you really were. And now that I’ve seen the person underneath that cold surface…” he swallows, then looks her in the eye. She’s seldom seen his eyes so sharp. “...their presence is now invaluable in my life. In every sense of the word.”

Something stings at her eyes. Her chest still feels tight with irritation, but grows tighter still at the thought of remaining upset at him.

“If there’s anything you take away from this, let it be that,” Claude continues. “That I trust you, Teach, and I need you by my side. Not for any Crest or a Hero’s Relic or any of that madness. I need you because…” he gives up on finding the right word, “...you’re you. Don’t doubt that anymore. Please.” 

When she hesitates, lost for words, Claude slowly reaches his hand out. She reaches back. He finds her pale fingertips easily, then grips them tight as if to bind the words to her skin. It gives her a sense of finality, not just to their conflict, but to everything. Her father, her life up until this point, the person she is now; it all seems to sink into her with one squeeze of her hand. 

“I always knew you were something extraordinary,” Claude says with some kind of softness in his voice. “But seriously, don’t do anything crazy and get stuck in another dark void ever again. I’ll admit, when I lost sight of you, I broke out in a sweat. And I won’t have any dreams to be chasing if I’m dead from worry, will I?”

To be faced with the reality that she is much more important than she could have dared to imagine; it’s a foreign concept to her, yet somehow it’s no surprise that he would be the one to make her realize it. Foreign concepts and Claude seem to walk hand in hand. And he’d always liked to say she could never stop surprising him.

“I’ll try,” she manages.

“I still have so much more I want to ask you, Teach, but I’m sure you’re tired,” Claude says, easy as ever. It soothes her. “Rhea’s been hovering around you ever since you got back to the monastery. I have no idea what she’s planning, but you’ll be safe in here, at the very least.” 

Byleth smiles. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to protect you.”

Claude winks back. “It’s a two-way street, Teach. But all that aside… What the heck kind of power could turn your hair and eyes that colour? I mean, I know it’s technically divine intervention, but it’s still just baffling. That kind of transformation’s only ever happened in tales of old. Old, moldy tales, at that.” 

“Do I look odd?”

“Well, if by ‘odd’, you mean stick out like a sore thumb, then-”

Byleth frowns and squeezes his hand, hard.

“Ow! Uncle uncle uncle, I’m sorry, what I meant to say was-” Claude clears his throat and looks into her new eyes. “It’ll take some getting used to, so I’d better study them some more. Do you mind?”

His curious, playful eyes are endearing. She can look back into them without a single concern.

“Not at all,” she says.

Chapter Text

The night before the Imperial invasion, Byleth stands in front of her father’s grave with her hands clasped in prayer. Only the quiet whispering of the wind passes through the air. Her mind races. From which angle will they invade? Will they use a pincer attack after deploying a bait troop somewhere else? The monastery doesn’t have nearly enough manpower to cover all the possible entrances, and given the sheer number of students who will need to be evacuated, their forces are thinner than ever before. The students. All she’d sought to protect, all threatening to be trampled over in mere hours. Her eyes have been throbbing for the past week at the thought; sleep has had trouble finding her. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, brings her clasped hands to her forehead, and breathes a heavy sigh into them. Never has she been the most devout follower of the church, yet the contingencies upon contingencies piling before her leave her with no choice but to place her cards into someone else’s hands. Surely Claude would voice his distaste with that train of thought. He’d reprimand her for giving up so soon, that she can never shirk the responsibilities thrust upon her by declaring fate to blame. He’d say something just vaguely uplifting enough to light a spark of possibility in her heart as he always does without fail, because he needs to hear it just as much as she does.

Byleth’s eyes, now half-open, frown at her boots. She wants to hear him, needs to hear him and his encouragement more than ever, but he’s nowhere to be found. The past two weeks have been nothing but chaos. Tension has blown the monastery to its breaking point, and all that pressure is set to be released in less than a day. No matter how selfishly she wishes to see him, no one is in the right mind to be leisurely enjoying themselves when the world around them threatens to collapse inward at any moment. No one is the same as they were, and to pretend to be as such would break the already-delicate balance that barely keeps the academy afloat. It’s not the time to be selfish. It’s time to fight. 

“It’s not the time to be selfish,” Byleth whispers to herself. “It’s time to fight. It’s not the time to be selfish. It’s time to fight.” 

Her eyes clamp shut yet again. It’s hard, so, so hard to force the words out of her throat. She misses him. She wants to see him, dance with him, have tea with him, talk leisurely by the docks and read beside him, to be with him. Had she known everything would come crashing down like this, she would have stopped time and given herself another week, just one week longer to cherish the moments they shared. In this moment, she wants nothing more than to run away from everything and live the rest of her life feeding only off the solace those sweet memories brought her. 

But she swallows it down, for her sake, and his. Neither of them need to be saddled with unnecessary emotion. What they need is to survive, so that those sweet, warm memories will not simply be a relic of a bygone era, but ever-present in their future. 

Byleth opens her hands. Her mother’s ring, now warmed by her palms, shines in the moonlight. She holds it between her fingers and touches her lips to it in one final prayer.

Please let him be safe.

“Professor, Claude,” Hilda says. “You’ll lead the way, won’t you? You won’t let any of us fall, right?”

The eve of the invasion has dyed the reception hall a deep, unsettling orange. Byleth, surrounded by her knights and students, nods. 

“I swear it.” Her answer is rehearsed and recorded, burned into her vocal chords. Even so, saying it out loud makes her lungs feel twice as small. She has to remind herself to breathe deeper when her head begins to spin. 

Catherine places a strong hand on her shoulder, making her jump. “We’ll be waiting for you on the battlefield. If there’s anything else you need to prepare for, best do it now. This could be it for us, but we’ll be damned if we go down without a fight.”

Byleth nods again, simply because her throat feels so tight it can’t push any words out. When everyone’s loud footsteps fade away, she looks up to see Claude still in front of her, just as she had hoped. 

“So,” Claude says.

Despite everything, Byleth can’t help a wry smile. “So.”

“The Emperor and her army’s finally upon us, huh?” Claude scratches the back of his neck. “Even though we’ve had so little time to prepare, the two weeks still felt like an eternity. Everyone, from the teachers to the knights to the students, just utterly beside themselves with stress. It drags on, you know? Makes everything twice as hard. Honestly, the situation now doesn’t even feel real yet.”

“It wasn’t stressful for you?” Byleth asks.

“Oh, no, it absolutely was,” Claude laughs hollowly. “I’ve still got questions upon questions to ask Rhea, but I figured I wouldn’t get so lucky. Crest Stones, Heroes’ Relics, the validity of Seiros and Nemesis’ mythology; with so much still unknown to us, how could I just up and die? I’d probably become a walking corpse by virtue of curiosity.”

“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Byleth chides. “With how animated you’d be, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Imperial army made a Demonic Beast out of you.”

“Is that so?” Claude’s eyes are amused now. “I’ll be sure to eat you first, Teach.”

Byleth legitimately does not know how to respond. When Claude begins to chuckle at her bewildered face, small laughs of her own begin to leak out of her as well. Despite everything, it’s still too hard to not enjoy being with him. She missed this, missed him so much. 

“All joking aside, though,” Claude says once his laughs subside. “Do you really think we can possibly survive this battle, Teach?”

“It isn’t looking good,” Byleth admits. “But we’ll find a way. We always do.” 

Claude smiles loosely, as if he’d been waiting for that answer. “Right, right. This is coming from the one who literally cut their way out of eternal darkness, after all. I’d expect no less.” 

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“‘Course not. I couldn’t forget a thing about you if I tried,” Claude says, easy as always. “There’s so many things… dreams that I want to see come to fruition. And when I reach them, I want you to be there, to see me at the finish line. So, Teach…” He takes a breath. “No, scratch that. You’re so much more. You’re my cherished ally and friend.”

“‘Teach’, ‘friend’... none of those words can fully encapsulate what you’ve come to mean to me,” Claude continues, pointing a smile to their shoes. “We aren’t connected by blood, but I can feel that our hearts know each other. There’s a bond there that can’t be broken, not by war, time, or anything.” He looks up, and into her eyes. “So even if our paths diverge, and we’re forced to say goodbye, I know that we’ll meet again. For lack of a better word, I’m going to gratefully call you my friend. And I’m holding fast to the belief that this isn’t how we end.”

Something coils up tight in her chest and makes her want to cry. Her hand reaches into her pocket, reaches for the small black bag containing her mother’s ring. She finds it and grips it tightly, then hesitates. This isn’t the time, she thinks, but there seems to be no better opportunity for a promise than now, after such heartfelt words. 

After a moment longer, she takes a deep breath and lets go of the bag. There isn’t much more to be said, nothing more to promise. His words just now were clear as day. They will survive, and they will live to see the future he dreams of. That’s all she could hope for. 

“Thank you, Claude,” Byleth smiles. Her eyes shine with a newfound adoration. “You’ve given me hope. I swear I will do whatever it takes to protect you.”

“Hey, thank me after the battle, Teach, when we’ve all survived and riding out the waves of our victory,” Claude winks. “No matter who or what you really are, I’m always going to be on your side. You can’t count on much in this world, but you can count on that.”

Again, he reaches out his hand. And again, she places her fingers on his palm and watches as he grips them tight. Byleth squeezes, and again, he squeezes back; their secret sign, because no words are needed. 

I love you, Byleth wants to say so badly, but it gets tangled in her throat and slides back down to her stomach. As they let go and make their way to the battlefield, she swallows down her feelings and pushes them aside once more; for her, and for him, and swears to do so as many times as necessary. 

“Everybody here, young and old, is in your hands.”

The air is stagnant with dirt and the smell of blood, and Rhea’s voice is somehow calmer than she’s ever heard it. It’s almost as though the archbishop could hear Byleth’s panicking mind, and spoke with such clarity as to cut through it all and leave her bare. But watching the waves of Imperial soldiers storm through their defenses, it’s hard to silence her thoughts entirely, hard to keep the pressure and insecurities from spilling over. 

Byleth shakes her head. “I’m too inexperienced. I can’t answer to all your expectations.”

“You will be fine, Professor,” Rhea stresses, placing her gentle hands on her shoulders. “You have the Goddess’ divine protection on your side. If need be, my advisers are more than willing to guide you on your journey. I have already given them the order, after all.”

When Byleth looks up at her hesitantly, she’s met with Rhea’s soft, mysterious smile.

“This is your destiny, Professor,” Rhea whispers. “It is time for you to find the courage to rise to it, and be what you were always meant to be.”

Byleth bites her lip for a moment, then lets go to shakily blurt out: “There’s someone I love. If… if I am to fall before you, could I ask you to-”

“No more words, dear one,” Rhea shushes with a shake of her head. “Turn that concern into strength, and fight your way to a brighter tomorrow. A tomorrow where you can laugh from the bottom of your heart, and tell your beloved how you feel, with your own voice.” She smiles once more. "I am sure you have no intention of letting me do all the work for you, do you not?" 

Her heart swells with a determination she hadn’t thought to have. Byleth nods one last time before running to the entrance to help evacuate the students. 

Had she known that she was going to fall off a cliff and into a chasm and be knocked unconscious for the next five years, perhaps she would have told him she loved him after all. 

The last audible thought in her mind as she fell was a loud, loud, loud I’m sorry that followed her down the chasm and into her endless dreams of his smile.

Chapter Text

hey do y'all know this song? you should know this song

Five years. 

The thought echoes through every corner of Byleth’s mind, renders her speechless, makes her knees weak and her mouth dry. She barely has the strength to keep herself walking in the vague direction of the monastery. Where has everyone been? Have they been eating well? Are they even alive? 

Five years. She shakes her head. Even if they were to leave this world prematurely, she taught them better than to die without a fight. Her Golden Deer would have given their pursuers nothing less than Hell; their deaths would resound through tale through tale to last for all eternity. But what reason does she have to believe they’re dead at all? Knowing her students, they’d drag their feet back to Garreg Mach even if they were missing a limb or two, just to uphold some lofty promise made years ago. She can’t stop her fond smile. They are silly, reckless, steadfast to a fault, and they are her pride and joy. Of course they would be waiting for her. 

Byleth bites her lip with the first steps she takes up the Goddess Tower. She should have asked the man who found her more about what had become of the Alliance; what had become of Claude. She’s equal parts hopeful and prepared for dread. There’s no way he would simply go into hiding at a time like this, and surviving was second nature to him. And yet, something keeps her incapable of keeping calm. A man of his stature must be on list after list of wanted heads to take down for Alliance territory, and if he were to let his guard down for just a moment- oh, the fool could think himself in circles and forget to sleep and spout such heartwarming nonsense once someone’s earned his trust, it wouldn’t surprise her at all if he were to wake one dawn with a knife in his back-

Byleth’s hand flies to the dagger at her waist. At the top of the tower, someone stands looking out over the monastery’s skeleton of rubble and debris; someone dressed in... a very familiar shade of yellow. Her breath gets caught in her throat when the stranger turns around. 

Claude’s familiar green eyes widen in the daylight. However, his face quickly melts into a knowing smile, as if he hadn’t had to ask anything, as if he had been waiting for her all this time. Absolute faith. Byleth wonders if this is some sort of dream, some delirious mirage conjured up by her mind simply for the sake of torturing her. It just can't be, the boy she loves, the leader of the Alliance, abandoning all his duties and wandering to a thief-stricken ruin just to answer to some promise, is he absolutely stupid-

“You overslept, Teach!”

Byleth feels like she’s been struck by a tidal wave. Her feet seem to carry her to him on their own.  He’s taller now, his shoulders broader and the lines of his face sharper. Still she can see shades of the boy she knew, but there’s something new in the air about him. Something claimed, something stronger and wiser. He’s hardly said anything, yet she can feel it. She can feel how much must have changed and how much he must have paid for it, how the time that passed in her absence must have taken his last shards of innocence with it. A floodgate opens in her heart, lets all her emotions come rushing back out so suddenly she can hardly stand. 

He’s alive. He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

Her hands rise upward to hold his face. She isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, but she knows he’d prefer a smile, so she tries. It comes out wobbly and pitiful, but just as she expected, he smiles back, and this time his eyes follow.

“You didn’t have this before,” Byleth whispers, patting where his sideburns turn into a beard. 

“Hey now, is that any way to greet a man you’ve kept waiting for five years?” Claude laughs, leaning into her hand. Byleth isn’t sure if it’s her own tears getting in the way, but his eyes look a bit shaken, too. “I happen to think it suits me. Doesn’t it make me look… I don’t know, gruffer?” 

Lovely. You’re so lovely, always.

“I don’t think that’s the word I’d use,” Byleth’s voice is close to trembling, filled with relieved euphoria. Her fingers reach up to brush at the stray lock of hair hanging in front of his eyes. “What happened to your braid?”

“Ah, it got singed off. Flaming arrows are a real pain in the arse, you know? Unless I’m the one employing them, of course.”

“I miss it,” Byleth says softly.

All of a sudden, an indiscernible emotion floods Claude’s eyes. She stops breathing altogether when his arms find their way around her waist and pull her close. There’s something frantic about his moving, as if something inside him had broken. He drops his head onto her shoulder and squeezes her tight. Her toes arch up off the ground to meet him, to accept him and all that he is.

“You miss it, huh?” Claude whispers. “Let me tell you, Teach… you have no idea.”

Byleth has never cried out of happiness before. As the tears begin to spill over and roll down her cheeks, she marks it down as another thing Claude has taught her how to do, among other things. Other things like wearing a uniform, learning to dance, inviting someone to tea, being happy and falling in love. All of these things, she may have never known without him. Every inch of her is floating, shining bright with gratitude for him.

Her fingers tangle themselves deep into the soft fabric of his shirt. Part of her knows they cannot allow this moment to last. After this brief joy, they will have their work to resume, and a world of responsibilities to answer to. They will likely not have many more moments to share between them like this, as just Byleth and Claude. Once she lets go of him, they will return to commander and right-hand, as if nothing had changed. It is what she must do, for both their sakes and his ambitions; to swallow down her feelings once more and put all her efforts into making their dream a reality. Until that brilliant new dawn will wash over them both, she must devote herself to her duties in favor of loving him, because he is the dearest thing in the world to her, and to see him happy is all she has ever wanted from the beginning. The overwhelming sincerity of that truth fills her with a strength she hadn't known she possessed, Relics and Goddess-granted power be damned. 

Byleth grips his shirt tighter and swears it upon her pained, unbeating heart. She knows it to be true, and she decides that she loves him enough to put herself aside and wait for that day to find them. 

“Welcome back, Teach,” Claude says at last, and she can hear his smile.

Byleth closes her eyes and smiles wider than she thought possible. 

“I’m home,” she says, and does not know why it feels so strange on her lips until she realizes it is the first time in her life she has ever said so.

Chapter Text

♫

“Teach?”

Byleth looks up from the teapot in her hands to see Claude leaning on her door frame yet again. He’s been coming to check on her every night since she’d come back and helped to restore the monastery. It baffles her somewhat why he does so when she has never dared ask for his time outside of war council meetings and surely both of them are exhausted. Still, she appreciates every small moment with him whenever they arrive at her doorstep, even if she finds herself missing him the second they finish reviewing their plans for the coming day and bid each other goodnight. Quickly she pushes the emotions down.

“Was there something you needed?” Byleth asks.

“Don't mind me, I’m just here to visit, as per usual,” Claude says. When his gaze lands on the teapot, his eyes widen slightly. “Is that…? Oh, wow. I haven’t seen that thing in ages.”

“I just found it earlier, along with the rest of the tea set,” Byleth says, running a palm over the cracked porcelain. “I thought for sure it had gotten crushed with everything else, but somehow they were more or less intact inside my closet.” 

“Well, isn’t that a lucky find,” Claude smiles and makes his way inside her candle-lit room, easy as breathing. “I remember, Teach; you running up to me after a busy day of classes, just to share some tea and pastries with your favorite house leader. Man, does it ever feel like it was just yesterday...” 

Byleth frowns. “I was never running to you.” 

“Ah, forgive my choice of words, I meant ‘bounding excitedly’,” Claude corrects himself, smiling wider at her displeased face. “But, it’s been a long day, wouldn’t you say? I’d argue there’s no better way to cap it off than by sharing a cup, for old time’s sake. How about it, Teach?”

“I’d love to, but…” Byleth sheepishly looks into her closet at the one remaining box of tea leaves. “I’ve heard this kind isn’t very good. I didn’t know until Hilda told me, and it’s been sitting in here ever since.”

Claude raises an eyebrow as he picks up the dusty box and scans the label. “Yikes. Tea of the Saints, huh? I remember having it a few times when there was nothing else on the table. Isn’t this stuff as bitter as they come?”

“I don’t have any pastries to help with that, either,” Byleth sighs. She looks up at him. “I don’t suppose you enjoy your tea bitter, with no sweets?” 

“Ah, you speak too soon, Teach,” Claude nods and reaches into his pocket. His hand re-emerges with several wrapped candies in it. “Ta-da! A special gift from Lysithea, for promising to leave her alone for five minutes.”

“Will you never stop bothering her?”

“Bothering? I prefer to call it ‘teaching her to loosen up before that tiny head of hers explodes’,” Claude shrugs. “But look at us; we’ve got our tea, and we’ve got our sweets. Let’s get brewing, shall we? Time is of the essence, after all, and you never know when we’ll get a chance to do this again.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Byleth says over the sound of Claude immediately leaving to fetch some hot water. 

“Wow,” Claude coughs ten minutes later, “this tastes awful. Is this the zest of life my grandpa kept mentioning, or just what happens to tea that’s been left in a closet for over five years?” 

Byleth’s tongue is not happy. She crinkles her nose. “The mint candies don’t mix well with it.” 

Claude heaves out a sigh as he puts the cup back on the saucer. He tips his head to the ceiling and kicks back in his chair, and for a moment in Byleth’s eyes he’s just the same as he was five years ago, before the warfare and stress began. “Well, I suppose you can’t get everything you ask for, huh? But still, it would’ve been nice to at least have a decent spot of tea before getting back into all the chaos.” 

Her smile to him is soft. “You could have waited until we got a chance to go to the market and buy some nicer tea.”

“Maybe so,” Claude chuckles, running a hand through his hair again, “but I meant what I said earlier. Moments like this are so fleeting, you know. You’ve got to take your victories where you can get them, but I guess it’s not too surprising that I got in over my head with it. Typical Claude, huh?” 

Byleth’s fingertips trace the lip of her cup over and over. She sadly stares down at his calloused hands. “You’ve seemed so restless lately. Even more so than usual.” 

“Have I?” Claude chuckles again, but there’s no humor in it; it sounds sad and resigned to the accusation. “Here I thought I’d been doing such a good job of hiding it. Since when did you get the upper hand on me, Teach?”

“I know you’ve been checking on me every night, when you think I’ve fallen asleep,” Byleth closes her eyes. “I know that on the first night I came back, you stood by my door with a candle, but you didn’t come inside. When you look at me... it’s as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Her finger passes over a crack in her teacup. “As if I’ll disappear at any moment.” 

For a while, neither of them speak. Her dim room is filled with their silence, not unpleasant, but not welcome, either. Claude lets a small sigh out of his nose.

“Old habits die hard, Teach,” he says quietly. “You were gone for five long years. Of course I knew you couldn’t have really been gone, but with every passing day, it felt more like something I was clinging onto for dear life. Something to keep me waking up in the mornings, to keep me going when all I could see was mutiny, bloodshed, and land ravaged so badly no crops could hope to grow from it again. Sometimes, the fact that you’re back now is…” he takes a breath, runs his fingers down the ear of his cup. “Well. It doesn’t feel real, to be honest.” 

She isn’t sure what to say. This has never been an issue between her and anyone before, that she hasn’t felt there enough for them to feel secure in her presence. Her quiet has always been what was expected of her, what came most naturally to her. Never was it inconvenient, never was it something she sought to change, much less something she knew how to go about changing. No matter what she says or does, she realizes that between them is a gap that is impossible to fill. He is left with the scars of a world gone by and a void in her absence, while she has woken up in the midst of its madness not a day older than she left it. Her hands tighten around her cup. There is still so little she understands, in herself, in the world, in him. Yet one thing cries true to her in their silence: that he needs her, much more than she had ever thought possible, and she has absolutely no idea what to do with that information but Goddess forbid she sit before him and do nothing now that she has it. 

Byleth stands up, watching how Claude’s eyes follow her, surprised. She reaches her hand out to him and smiles one of the smiles only he could draw out of her. 

“Care to dance?” she asks him. The words are odd in her mouth, but she likes it all the same. 

Claude blinks at her. “There’s… not a lot of room, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“There’s no music. Unless dancing in silence is your forte, in which case, wow, colour me impressed and afraid.” 

“I know a song.”

Claude blinks again, his head drawing back with it in one incredulous motion. “You’re going to sing for me, Teach?”

“Should I not?” Byleth asks, hoping her absolute panic is not showing on her face because she has never sung for anybody in the history of ever since the day she was born. 

After another moment’s pause, Claude’s disbelieving lips turn upward, his hand meeting hers with a now-familiar weight behind it. 

“You drive a hard bargain, Teach,” he says, his other hand settling on her waist so naturally as if not a day has passed since the night of the ball, as if he knew it was meant to be there; as if he was meant to be there. 

Now it’s Byleth’s turn to stand in confusion, blinking pointedly at his chest once more. It’s astounding just how much she hasn’t the faintest idea of what to do now. 

“Hey,” Claude nudges her, his voice teasing as ever, “isn’t that your cue? Where’s your plan to serenade me in the moonlight, Teach?”

She steps on his foot, hard. Once she’s satisfied upon hearing his pained half-yelp, half-breathy chuckle, she clears her throat and lets the words flow out with the moving of her feet:

Moon river

Wider than a mile

I’m crossing you in style

Someday

Her voice is shaking slightly trying to keep up with their careful dancing. She can feel his smile, feel the heartbeat under her palm quicken. It encourages her to keep going, to sing just a bit louder, just for him and him alone.

Oh, dream maker

You heartbreaker

Wherever you’re going

I’m going your way

She closes her eyes. Her father would sing this melody often for her as a child on her sleepless nights, would say with nothing but all the love in the world that it was her mother’s favorite song. A part of her feels more exposed, more vulnerable than ever, yet his warmth allows her to continue to be all she is, all she ever was. 

Two drifters

Off to see the world

There’s such a lot of world to see

As if he understands, both the song and her, he gives a squeeze of her hand. She squeezes back, their secret sign, because nothing else is needed between them as they step in small circles around her run-down room and the lopsided table adorned with its bitter tea and broken porcelain. Nothing else, nothing but them. Her eyes connect with his in a gentle line.

We’re after the same rainbow’s end

My huckleberry friend

Moon river

And me.

With the soft fading of her voice, Claude lifts his arm to let her do one last spin, to let her back meet his chest tenderly before unfurling themselves. When she looks up at him, his face is brimming with an emotion she can’t describe. She’s certain her face looks much the same, but somehow she doesn't mind. Everything seems alright.

“Think I can ask for an encore, Teach?” Claude grins. 

It was mortifying, and doing it again is something absolutely no one else could ask of her and if anyone but him heard her she’s going to throw herself into the ocean to become a collective spirit with the fish. So, of course, she says, “Just this once. After this, you’ll be the one to sing it instead.”

“Sounds perfect. I've always been a quick study,” Claude says. “And to be quite frank with you, I couldn’t think of a better thing you could leave me with.”

Oh. 

A part of her truly exists within him now. Her song, clumsy and vulnerable as it is, reached him. For whatever reason, a rush of joy fills her heart upon the realization, warms her beyond compare. She’s left warmer still when he drops his head to her shoulder once again and takes a deep, deep breath. 

“It isn’t meant to be a duet,” Byleth smiles, patting his back softly.

“We can fix that,” Claude smiles back. 

Chapter Text

“Sorry, my friend,” Claude chokes out as he bleeds to death in her arms. “I guess I’ll be… passing on the torch to you, now. It burned for… a pretty good run, wouldn’t you say?”

“Don’t say anything else,” Byleth nearly hisses out, her reddened hands gripping him tighter even as she can feel him leaving. “We’ll get you help. You aren’t going to die, Claude. I won’t allow it.”

He struggles for a moment to sit upright, but falls back into her arms. A resigned sigh leaves his chest, deflates his frame. “It’s alright. It’s alright, Byleth. We know this isn’t a wound the mages can treat in time. But don’t worry.” One of his muddy, gloved hands reaches up, struggles to touch her cheek. She grasps at it, leaning into it with all her might. She squeezes her eyes shut and sucks in a breath to keep her chest from shaking. It doesn’t work. The ground beneath her feels as though it’s on the verge of collapse, a cruelly familiar sensation.

No, no, no, please, no. Not again.

The beginning of Claude’s sentence snaps in half when he chokes on his blood in the process. “It’s okay. I trust you. I know… you’re the only one who can do this. There’s no one else I’d want to… to see this through.”

A clamped noise escapes Byleth’s throat. She shakes her head. “No, I can’t. I need you.” You’re the only reason I’ve made it this far.

A breathy chuckle leaves him. Slowly, his hand slides from her cheek, and his index finger taps her nose softly. Her eyes flood with tears. She can nearly hear the sound of her heart breaking.

“Pretty as a star, even in tears,” his fading eyes follow his smile one last time. “As expected of... my Teach…” 

The battlefield goes silent with the final shallow falls of his chest. The ear-shattering sound of breaking glass explodes across every crevice of her brain and splits her vision into a million stained pieces. 

Go back, she begs the Goddess who has long since proven deaf to her cries, go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back.

Time does not move. It leaves her and his corpse frozen, cradled in her arms for the rest of eternity. His flesh begins to rot and grey. His smile and the strings binding her heart together crumble into oblivion.

Byleth forces her eyes open. Her chest is heaving, sucking in desperate breaths as if she hadn’t breathed in decades. The world is spinning, her ceiling nearly swimming from the tears pooled in her eyes. It takes her more than a few moments to remember exactly where she is and what timeline she occupies. When she sits up, she groans at the feeling of sweat clinging to her back and nightgown. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and leaves the hand resting against her forehead as she tries to regulate her breathing. 

The Divine Pulse’s side effect of hellish nightmares seems to worsen with every use. She supposes it must be the price to pay for cheating death, for every soul that leaves the realm with the timelines she’s spliced apart. The dreams have been so frequent as of late that it’s now difficult to tell which of these moments are actually realities she went back in time to fix, and which are simply the torment of her darkest fears. The intense overlap of the two leaves little room for clarity. 

She curls up tighter and rests her forehead against her knees. The shaking still won’t subside. Recently, the nightmares have been of Claude meeting his end in various gruesome ways. Sniped straight through the head while atop his wyvern and falling into the sea, trampled over by a battalion, leaping in front of her only to have his chest sliced wide open; it never seems to end. Her teeth sink into her quivering lip. Was it by her hand that he has suffered endlessly in countless other realities? How many times must he have died? 

The molten tears burning her eyes are dangerously close to falling again. Unable to keep her thoughts at bay, she shakily steps out of bed and makes her way to the second floor of the dormitory. 

The floor is cold under her feet. She hugs her arms to herself, gripping them tight as if willing them not to crumble away. She’s hardly sure of what she wants beyond the fact that she needs to see him. She needs to make sure he’s alright, that he’s truly here, that he hasn’t prematurely met his end because of her. She needs to know she wasn’t wrong; that all of what she’s done is not a mistake if he’s lived to see the end of it. 

Knock knock. Byleth’s trembling knuckles tap two notes onto his door. There’s the flicker of candlelight licking at the floorboards. She doesn’t know the exact hour, but he’s still awake this late into the night. Normally she would scold him, but now she welcomes his bad habit with open arms. 

The door opens. Claude stands in front of her, tall, warm, and smelling of Almyran pine needles, and all at once her heart leaps. 

“Teach? What’re you- ow!” he’s immediately cut off by Byleth’s fist colliding with his chest. It’s firm. It’s there. He’s there. Her brain processes the information, and moves to the next step. 

“You’re on the battlefield. Answer within ten seconds or less,” she says to his chest. “A small but unified troop of archers lies waiting on the other side of the ocean. What do you do?”

Claude blinks at her. He takes a moment to reply, “I’d find the commander and take them down with a sneak attack before they can counter. It would send the troop into disarray, and create an opening for our own fliers to dismantle the rest of them in a unified offensive.”

“Wrong,” Byleth says. “It’s too dangerous to fly off on your own. You are to let me handle any archers before proceeding. You will not advance until I give the signal that it’s safe.” 

She can feel his disbelieving stare. It makes her burn with all the unsaid words scorching her throat. “Teach-”

“Next question. You’re injured, and you suspect that the enemy is going to unleash a battalion on you within the next minute. What should you do?”

“Well, if I’m not permitted to fly out of harm’s way, I’m assuming I can’t afford to give up my position, or I must be protecting an important stronghold,” Claude’s hand moves to hold his chin. “In that case, the best choice would be to call for backup troops and hold out until they arrive, right?”

“Wrong,” The word tastes so awful in her mouth, “You must retreat. No matter how important the position is, no matter how much momentum we may lose, we can regain it so long we regroup and come up with a new strategy. No stronghold is worth losing the commander of our army. Nothing is worth losing you.” 

Claude’s lips curl into a frown, his eyes frustrated and sad. It’s the face he makes when he longs to understand a concept, when he can’t bear not knowing the truth. “Teach, what is-”

“Last question,” she says. Her throat begins to strain, half-knowing what will happen. “I am about to suffer a fatal blow. What do you do?”

“I’d intervene,” Claude answers within a second. “Whether it be by attacking the enemy directly, or putting myself in front of you if I-”

“No!” Byleth shakes her head. Her fingernails bite into her shaking palms. “You can’t! No matter what happens, you can’t throw your life away for me. You- I…” She squeezes her eyes shut. A part of her fears hearing the terrible sound of shattering glass as she does so. 

“...I can’t afford to lose you.”

The silence stretches the hall and her lungs taut. Over the deafening sound of her blood pumping in her ears, she softly wonders how she must look in his eyes now. Ever since the beginning she had tried all she could to act as a guiding light to him, to always keep her calm, to inspire hope and remain as professional as possible while doing so. It was her duty, it still is; and yet here she stands before him now, sweating and disheveled and shaking, begging him not to leave her. Her entire being feels like it’s about to crack and blow away in the wind. Byleth’s body instinctively jumps and is brought back to earth all at once when Claude’s warm hands settle on her shoulders.

“You must have had a long night, my friend,” he says to her, voice filled with a sort of tenderness she can’t measure. “Come inside. I have some tea.” He puts a steady hand on her back and guides her into the room, and the way his eyes don’t leave her even as he sits her down on the bed and drapes the blanket around her shoulders makes her want to cry. 

Her swollen eyes scan the room. It’s the same one from all those years ago, and maybe it’s because they’ve grown, but it feels smaller than ever. Either the monastery’s walls weren’t holding up as well as they used to, or Claude’s somehow gotten messier. Maps upon maps, books piled on books, snubbed out candle after snubbed out candle; every part of it is what he used to be, and more.

Her gaze finds him, as it always does, settles on the sudden broadness of his back as he pours out the hot water. The thought lingers in her mind, only resounds louder as he comes back to her and places the warm cup in her freezing hands. She stares deep into the dark tea, the kind they’d shared so many times because it reminded him of home. Every little thing is so familiar that it feels like he hasn’t left at all. 

It’s all what he used to be and more, and she adores it so. 

Claude pulls up his desk chair and turns it around to lean his arms on the rail. His eyes, full of warmth, make her feel warm. 

“You must have been some kind of worried to come knocking on my door at this hour just for a pop quiz,” he teases, though the dryness of his smile lets her know he isn’t being condescending. “Did something happen?”

Her fingers trace the lip of her cup again and again while her eyes focus on one fold of the blanket in particular. “I never told you, but one of the abilities I’ve been granted is the power to turn back time. Even before my hair turned this colour.”

Claude blinks. “...Wait. You’re serious?” He stops to rub his forehead. “Actually, hold on. This entire exchange is giving me deja vu.”

A small smile finds her. “Me, too.”

“Well, among other things you’ve managed to accomplish, such as cutting your way out of a black hole and fusing with some sort of god and sleeping for five years straight without dying somehow, I guess I have no reason to think time manipulation would be out of the question,” Claude takes a much-needed breath and rubs the back of his neck. “You… really never thought to tell me?”

Byleth frowns. “How was anyone going to believe me? And besides, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Everyone’s always lauded me for having impeccable tactics and innovative strategies on the battlefield.” She shakes her head. “They’d lose all faith in me if they were to find out I only made it this far through witchcraft.” 

“You have a fair point there,” Claude says after a brief pause. “No doubt that would get suffocating. You’ve always been one for keeping appearances, haven’t you?”

She wants to tell him it isn’t true, but quickly realizes she’d be lying. She bites her lip.

“...What have you seen?” he asks, carefully, as if treading through a field of bombs. 

Her eyes shut at the memory, too painful to recall. “...The first time, it was you. We were facing the Death Knight. You were trying to finish him from afar. Do you remember?”

His eyes go wide. “Don’t tell me. I actually...?”

She nods. Saying out loud that he was torn in half by a critical scythe swing seems like it would tear her lungs apart. 

“That- that’s crazy,” he laughs, but it’s painfully obvious how uneasy it comes out. “We won that day, we took him down! I remember, Teach; you sent in Ignatz first to whittle him down, then we pushed in Hilda- she was barely scraping by and made sure to complain about it plenty after- then you and I went in and delivered the finishing blow.” 

She looks away from him. Every part of her hurts. “That’s what you remember. But I… I failed you. And I cheated death to make up for my incompetence.” 

Claude’s entire face falls. She’s hardly ever seen him look so hurt before, not even with the deepest of wounds she’s forced him to fight through. Her fingers tighten around her cup. “I think one of the side effects of this power is the nightmares. They seem to get worse every time I use it. It was bearable at first, but… But I kept seeing you, and I couldn’t tell what was my fault anymore and-”

“Teach,” Claude whispers. “You’ve been going through that alone, all this time?”

She tries her best to smile for him as she takes a sip of tea. “I’ve always been one for keeping appearances, haven’t I?”

“Don’t joke about this,” Claude shakes his head. “You should’ve told me earlier. Way earlier. If there was anything I could’ve done to put your mind at ease, even by just a bit, you know I would have-”

“There’s nothing to be done,” Byleth smiles sadly. “It’s the same for everyone. We prepare tirelessly, fight all of our battles never knowing what the outcome will be. Pray as we might for things to turn out well for us, that road of hope and success is still covered in the corpses we’ve made.” She looks up through her lashes at him. “That’s what it means to be a soldier, Claude. And you know that.”

She can tell he tries to think of something to say back, but it all leaves him in a heavy sigh and a rub of his neck. “You don’t leave much room for argument, do you, Teach?”

“It’s an objective truth. You aren’t supposed to be able to argue with it.”

“Bah, ‘objective’ this and ‘argument’ that; it’s pretty obvious what my objective truth in this situation is.”

Byleth raises an eyebrow at him. “And that would be?”

Claude stands up. Her eyes follow him as he takes the teacup out of her hands, places it on top of his dresser, then proceeds to grab one end of the thick fur blanket and wind it around her several times until she’s nothing more than a wrapped bean. 

“Excuse me, what are you-” she splutters as she tries to push her face out of the cocoon he’s made. 

He places a hand on the back of her head and pulls her in so that her forehead meets his abdomen. “Why don’t you sleep here tonight? You’ve got tea, a warm blanket, and a blathering fool here to bore you to sleep as a last resort.”

All the blood rushes to her face. “You know how bad this is going to look to the others if they see me coming out of your room.”

“I’m pulling an all-nighter to finish catching up with these extraordinarily boring royal documents, so I’ll be here to wake you up by dawn,” Claude nods. “Don’t worry about a thing, Teach; you just get some rest. We need you out there.”

Byleth stares down at his feet. “And what about the blathering fool?”

Claude slowly pats her head once, twice. “He needs you, too.”

She can’t stop the tiny smile tugging at her lips. How very like him. She pulls up the blankets so it’s draped over her nose, and another rush of blood floods into her head. Everything here smells of him, perfect and warm.

“Goodnight, Claude,” Byleth says from behind the blanket.

Claude gives her one last pat and a smile before turning to his desk. “Sweet dreams, my friend.”

When at last she wakes, the first thing Byleth sees is Claude’s tanned, calloused hand in front of her. She hadn’t dreamt of anything at all. Her eyes follow up his arm before settling on his face. 

Liar, she thinks with a smile. He’d fallen asleep after all.

When she looks at the desk, it’s still scattered with papers. It might look even messier than before, somehow. The last thing she’d seen before passing out was Claude’s silhouette poring over the stacks of paperwork, one hand with a quill scribbling furiously and the other hand gripping at his hair. It was a lovely sight, but to see him having pulled his chair back up to be at her bedside with a half-opened book in his lap is lovelier than she could have ever imagined. 

Carefully as to not wake him, she shifts to a half-sitting position and lets the blankets slide off her shoulders and pool around her. The first rays of dawn are seeping through the windows and casting shadows over his face. Her heart feels endlessly at peace. What a fool. Her fool. Something in her chest skips at the thought. It skips again when she catches herself looking at his half-parted lips.

She tilts her head to look closer. How fascinating they are, his lips. On the battlefield, they’re wide open, yelling out commands and battle cries that light fires in the hearts of all who hear. When in council, they are eloquent, poised, all at once charming and relentless in his beliefs. When interacting with others, they lift, they smirk, they effortlessly spin tales of grandeur and schemes alike without so much as a single hitch in his breath. And yet here, in front of her, they are thin, parted, quiet. Vulnerable. 

She wants to kiss them, these lips that have inspired her, infuriated her, sweetly tormented her and occupied her thoughts again and again and again. These lips, capable of so much, seemingly everything except for the words she longs to hear. 

Someday.

Byleth touches two fingers to her own lips and traces them over Claude’s. He lets out a contented sigh through his nose and shifts in his chair; she smiles at him all the while. 

I love you, she thinks over and over as the edge of dawn washes over them both.

Chapter Text

Hilda slams her hands on the war council table and looks up at the Golden Deer. “We have an emergency on our hands, people.”

“I really don’t see what the big deal is, Hilda,” Ignatz frowns. “All we did was rescue a dancer from that burning town. Is it so odd to think she’d want to show her gratitude to the man who saved her?”

“And even if that were the case, aren’t you overreacting to some degree?” Lorenz flips his hair out of his eye. “It is impulsive to presume she immediately has ill intentions towards Claude.”

Hilda shakes her head. “You guys don’t understand the gravity of the situation! I’ve seen that woman. The way she looks at him? She’s definitely vying for something she wouldn’t have the means to get otherwise! It could be anything! His Relic, his status, his territory-” she gasps as if the thought had struck her like lightning. “Oh my gosh. Even his life!”  

“Are you sure she wasn’t trying to ask him for seconds at mealtimes?” Raphael asks. “She must’ve been starving all alone in that town. Makes sense she’d be hungry!”

“Of course not, Raphael. I swear, your brain is intrinsically linked to your stomach!” Lysithea crosses her arms across her chest. “In any case, it’s still suspicious for someone with as little traceable background as her to be hanging around the leader of the Alliance so much. I suggest we stay vigilant and keep an eye on her.”

Marianne clasps her hands together and looks at her boots. “I’m not sure… it could be that she’s just afraid, and the person who saved her would be the one she feels safest around. If that’s the case, I’d hate to separate them by force.” 

“I don’t know,” Leonie furrows her brow. “With a name like Odessa, I know I’d be keeping my guard up. Claude may be a tactical genius, but one morning I saw him struggle to eat his soup for five minutes before realizing he was using a fork.”

“I remember that,” Lysithea rubs her forehead. 

“He really didn’t notice. He just kept eating,” Ignatz says. “It was almost impressive.”

 “Anyway,” Leonie shakes her head. “If we aren’t careful, he could end up with a knife in his back.” 

“My thoughts exactly, Leonie,” Hilda nods. “But, there is still one veeeery important factor you aren’t taking into account. One tiny little thing- actually, scratch that. It’s the biggest game-changer here.” 

The group sinks into quiet confusion. Raphael pulls a piece of jerky out of his pocket and tears off a huge chunk in his jaw. About ten seconds pass as they wait for him to finish chewing.

“Sorry,” he says after he swallows.

Hilda clears her throat. “Let’s not kid ourselves. The professor is going to be heartbroken if some dancer from the middle of Nowhere Town steals Claude away.”

One, two beats of silence. 

“Splitting into groups would be the most subtle approach,” Lysithea says.

“I agree,” Leonie clenches her fist. “We’ll get that woman off him faster than I can draw a bowstring!” 

“I… I’ll help, too!” A determined frown etches itself onto Marianne’s face. “I don’t want to see the professor get hurt.”

Lorenz groans and slaps a hand to his forehead. “Somehow I feel as though simply bodyguarding would be easier a task than this.” 

“It can’t be helped now,” Ignatz nods. “Even if Claude isn’t in any significant danger, we can’t risk the professor’s heart by leaving the situation be!” 

“Her heart’s gonna break if the dancer gets too close to Claude?” Raphael’s eyes go as wide as dinner plates. “Where is this lady? I’ll pick her up and carry her away if I have to!” 

Hilda pats his shoulder awkwardly. “I… didn’t quite mean it literally, but your enthusiasm is going to be of great use, Raphael.”

She turns to the rest of the group. “Alright, guys. Let’s get to work.”

OPERATION 1: DISTRACTION (IGNATZ & LORENZ)

Ignatz hadn’t seen many dancers in his lifetime. He had always associated them with tales of old, thought to only exist in the most luxurious capitols to serve as a sort of currency or decoration. He’d likened them to fairies, both in their movements and their existences. Maybe there are more of them out there than I’d known, he thought, and the thumping of his heart and sweatiness of his palms that followed when he approached Odessa definitely let him know that his hunch was correct.

“You know I’m bad at talking to beautiful women, Lorenz!” Ignatz whined moments before he was shoved into her line of orbit, “Surely I’m going to trip over my feet, or- or say something outlandish that’ll scare her off, or worse!”

“That is precisely why we’re making you do this, dearest Ignatz, it adds authenticity! Now will you get in there before she’s whisked away by someone else, we could very well lose our chance!”

From there, it was all over. Ignatz shuts his eyes and sighs to himself. Sure, he had wanted to protect his professor’s heart, but why did it have to come at this cost? Now he’s out here sitting in the middle of a field with the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life, and he can’t even paint her in perfect conscience because of everything that’s been set up before him and now he’s just made a stuttering fool of himself for no discernible reason when he just wants to paint -

“Ignatz? Is everything alright?” Odessa’s violet eyes blink at him, bringing him out of his stupor and dropping him back in front of his canvas. 

He shoots straight up on his stool. “Y-Yes! Couldn’t be better!” 

Her lips curl into a curious smile with the slight tilt of her head. “You’ve been mixing that paint for quite some time. Is my hair such a unique colour?” 

Lorenz chuckles and squeezes Ignatz’s shoulder a bit harder than necessary. “Never to worry, fairest Odessa, he’s just ensuring we capture the perfect, darkest shade of black to truly bring out your hair. It is quite lovely, by the way; may I ask if you use any floral oils?”

Odessa closes her eyes and cards her hands through her curled locks. “Yes, I’ve begun using some as of late. I’m very impressed that you noticed.” She looks up and smiles. “And may I ask what you hope to gain from this, Lorenz?”

“Whatever could you mean? Ignatz here is my dearest, most personal painter-”

“And it seems as though he works best alone, if I may be so bold,” Odessa settles her hands back onto her lap. “I can’t imagine a soft-hearted, sensitive individual such as your dearest Ignatz not feeling the slightest bit pressured by your looming over his shoulder.”

Ignatz waves his hand a few times as if to bat the accusation away. “D-Don’t worry about me, I’m used to working under pressure! But he’s right, I do want to capture your hair as best I can. The way it moves and shines in the light; I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“You flatter me,” Odessa says, reaching a hand behind her neck to move her hair back over her shoulder. “In truth, I’m rather surprised myself at the quality of the oil. Apparently it’s made from a flower native to Almyra-” Her violet eyes challenge Lorenz’s- “-so I wouldn’t have expected you to appreciate it fully.” 

Lorenz swallows. Ignatz’s rough sketch lines start growing wobblier as if just listening to her words is venom flooding his ears. She may or may not be more of a predicament than they initially thought.

“T-That aside, Odessa,” Lorenz takes a moment to regain his composure. “As a travelling dancer, you must have been to the Empire to perform at least a few times, yes? My family’s territory is situated awfully close to the border, you see. If you would so give me the honor, I would be happy to accompany you to a stage worthy of your presence.” 

Ignatz nods a few times to himself from behind his canvas. As expected of Lorenz to keep the ball rolling, even at the cost of himself! Oh, he realizes then, there is no way he’s letting Claude live down how much of an inconvenience this was after this is over.

“Ah, of course, the Empire,” Odessa stretches out a hand to let her eyes gloss over her painted nails. “Yes, I’m very familiar with it. It is where my parents were murdered, after all.” She smiles, cold enough to nearly freeze Ignatz’s joints in place. “Such places don’t easily leave the mind of an impressionable youth, wouldn’t you agree?”

Ignatz’s entire body breaks out into a cold sweat. This is not working. He and Lorenz pause for several seconds to shoot each other a mutually panicked glance. 

“How are you going to fix this?” Ignatz hisses to him. 

“I-I’m terribly sorry!” Lorenz clears his throat loudly. “I beg your pardon, I sincerely did not mean to dredge up such unpleasant memories! Please, if there is anything, anything at all I can do to relieve you of sorrow, let me know. ‘Tis a nobleman’s duty!”

“Thank you, Lorenz, but it was at the hands of none other than the noblemen you speak of that usurped us of our court status and attempted to end our bloodline,” Odessa’s voice is entirely void of pain. A shiver crawls down Ignatz’s back. “To be quite frank with you, you would see me long dead before I would run to someone as self-satisfied as you for understanding.”

Ignatz can’t feel the palette in his hand anymore. He soon realizes this is because it is on the grass now. When he stiffly turns his head to Lorenz, his entire face has turned so pale Ignatz can nearly see his skull. Lorenz’s mouth opens and closes several times, but hope is scarce. She has almost entirely torn him and his being to shreds in the span of five minutes. 

In response to Lorenz’s attempts of forming a coherent sentence, Odessa smiles again. “Never to worry. I’m sure an existence such as yours would be better suited to inhaling and exhaling indefinitely to provide nutrients for the plantlife, Lorenz.”

The universe implodes. Lorenz excuses himself and staggers back in the vague direction of the monastery. A single hollow gust of wind blows through the field, leaving Ignatz and his wobbly-lined canvas and his fallen palette with Odessa.

Ever smiling, Odessa tilts her head at him. “How fares the painting, dearest Ignatz?”

Ignatz snaps his brush in half.

OPERATION 2: SHOPPING (HILDA, MARIANNE, & LEONIE)

 “Hilda, Marianne, I do appreciate your concern, but you really needn’t accompany me,” Odessa looks at the girls on both sides of her. “I simply wanted to take a stroll through the market, is all.”

“Oh, no, absolutely not!” Hilda shakes her head and twirls a lock of hair around her finger. “You saw how close that arrow landed to your foot, Odessa. Who’s to say that assassin isn’t still on the prowl?” 

“Let us keep an eye out for you, at the very least,” Marianne says. Hilda takes the opportunity to turn to Leonie, situated comfortably high on a rooftop, and shoots her a thumbs-up. Leonie waves in response. “You never know what could happen.”

Odessa’s features seem slightly tinged with amusement. “If you insist, then. Thank you again for your hospitality. It’s quite the surprise; I hadn’t expected a wayward dancer to garner this much attention out of the blue.”

“No, no, it’s our pleasure!” Hilda links her arm through Odessa’s. She takes the lack of immediate rebuttal as a positive sign in the plan. “It’s not every day we get to see a travelling dancer in these parts. I’m sure you’ve got all sorts of keepsakes and stories; it stands to reason we’d be at least a little charmed by you. Right, Marianne?” 

“R-Right,” Marianne nods. “You must have seen all sorts of people and places. People like me, who hadn’t known much about the world outside of the church, are probably curious about you.”

Odessa is too late in hiding her chuckles behind a hand. “Curious as they are, it matters little to me. There is only one person in mind whose attention I truly wish to draw, after all.”

Hilda laughs a tad too loudly as she starts to walk her through the market streets. “Oh, no, are you kidding? Who could it possibly be?”

The dancer’s eyes seem to look through Hilda instead of at her. “You aren’t a fool, Hilda. I’m certain you have some idea.”

Hilda’s laughter turns shaky. Marianne swoops in, ever cautious: “Could it be… um, Claude, by any chance?”

Odessa puts a finger to her lips. “I will neither agree with nor refute that suggestion. But he’s certainly caught my eye, as it were.”

“Yeah, well, I mean, Claude, he’s- he’s nothing special, when you think about it,” Hilda waves her hand. It astounds Marianne how she is still laughing somehow. “You know, he may be a noble, but he sure doesn’t act the part! In fact, he can be a real klutz. He’s actually terrible at washing dishes! Isn’t that a hoot? Master tactician, Alliance Leader Man, bested by a pile of dirty plates! Who would ever want that? Right, Marianne?”

Marianne nods hurriedly. “Y-Yes. The other day, he- he was struggling to eat some soup, and-”

“A fork! It turns out he was eating it with a fork the whole ti- ridiculous, right, can you believe this guy? Because I can’t. I just can’t believe this guy.” Hilda is very nearly wheezing from how quickly the air is leaving her lungs. 

“On the contrary, I find it incredibly charming,” Odessa’s covers her smile to no avail yet again. “So even a man as powerful and charismatic has such moments of clumsiness. I knew he was no ordinary noble since the moment I laid eyes on him in that fire.”

“I-I don’t know, maybe you just inhaled too much smoke and it made you see him funny,” Hilda frowns and shakes her head. “Really, Odessa, we’re saying this because we care about you: don’t get your hopes up! We’ve known Claude for much longer, and we’re here to say that he’s definitely too caught up in his goals to even think about settling down. At this point he’s more likely to marry his wyvern, if we’re being totally honest!”

Odessa’s eyes look far in front of her as she smiles. “I don’t mind waiting in the slightest, if that’s what it will take. All I am certain of is that he is truly unlike anyone I have ever known; in this life, and likely my next.” 

The trio goes quiet and stops in front of a jewelry stand until Marianne speaks up once again: “And you’ll stop at nothing to have his attention?”

“Of course,” Odessa says as if it were as easy as her next breath. She picks an emerald brooch off the table and lets her gaze wander deep into the gemstone. “There is nothing you can acquire in this world without making a move of your own. Money, status, security, love; if you truly desire it, you must allow nothing to get in your way.”

Her eyes, lost in the emerald, become the half-lids of the moon. “To be lost on those cold streets, used and alone… I will not allow it. Never again.” 

Neither of them speak. The noise of the bustling market is the only sound in their ears until the unmistakable whoosh of an arrow splices itself into the ground next to Odessa’s foot. 

“W-We should go,” Marianne blurts out, gently taking Odessa’s arm. 

“Yeah-” Hilda turns quickly and shakes her head violently at Leonie. Leonie simply shrugs and drags a finger across her neck. Hilda shakes her head one more time before turning back to Odessa, “We’d better get you someplace safe.”

“This assassin of ours does seem to be out for me,” Odessa says over the murmurs and hustling of bystanders clearing out from the area. “But first-” she turns to the vendor as if all is right, “I’ll be taking this brooch, please.”

MID-OPERATION STRATEGY MEETING:

Hilda slams her hands on the war council table again, only this time her head hangs low. “This isn’t looking good, guys.”

Marianne touches her chin in thought. “She really is fixated on him, isn’t she?”

“And she’s powerful,” Ignatz sighs. “No matter what we say, we just can’t seem to get her thoughts off him.”

“They were off him enough to attempt to take my life,” Lorenz huffs, flipping his hair over his shoulder. “Were I not a man of my status, I would have-”

“Not a great time for a lecture, Lorenz,” Leonie crosses her arms. “We need a new plan, and soon, because nothing else we’ve tried has worked so far.”

“She’s a tough nut to crack, that’s for sure,” Hilda bites her thumbnail. “I should’ve known. It’s always the women who’ve been wronged before that have the most iron-clad wills!” 

“I know we called for a mid-operation meeting, but…” Marianne glances around the room. “I wonder where Raphael and Lysithea are?”

Lorenz sighs. “Leave it to those two to be late for such a pivotal discussion.” He crosses the room and reaches for the doorknob. “I will retrieve th-”

Lorenz is promptly cut off by Raphael crashing through the door with Lysithea cradled in his arms. The door meets Lorenz’s nose in a tenderness that would make a brawler cry, though no one particularly pays attention to him as he curls up on the ground hissing profanities for the next minute.

“Emergency!” Raphael booms. Lysithea covers her ears and kicks about in his arms, “Raphael, would you put me down now?! We don’t need to run anymore!”

“Raphael, Lysithea! What’s wrong?” Hilda asks, wide-eyed as Lysithea settles her feet back onto the flat ground and brushes her dress off. 

“We did some scouting, and we overheard some crucial information,” Lysithea’s eyes are sharp. Everyone (except Lorenz, who is still curled on the floor) leans in and holds their breath to catch her next words:

“The two of them are going to have tea together,” Lysithea says.

One, two beats of silence.

“Oh, no,” Ignatz rubs his temple.

“No,” Marianne covers her mouth.

“No!” Hilda cries and slaps her hands to her face. “Drat! This is what we get for messing up!” 

“W-What do we do?” Raphael’s face is covered in sweat, and he hasn’t even been working out, which is slightly alarming to all present. “If we don’t get her away from Claude, the professor’s heart- it’ll break!”

“Do I need to snipe someone?” Leonie says and puts her hand up. “Because I can snipe someone.”

“O-Okay, everyone, don’t panic,” says Hilda, panicking, “we just need a plan. When is this tea party happening, Lysithea?”

Lysithea shakes her head. “We couldn’t hear all the details, but it’s definitely happening today. We need to get to the garden and intervene before it’s too late!”

“B-But we don’t have a plan,” Marianne looks close to biting her fingernails from how close they are to her face. “If they’re already on their way, how can we keep things from proceeding?”

“We don’t have time for a plan, people!” Hilda says, slamming a fist onto the table. “We’re out of options. The only thing left to do is to go by the seat of our pants and pray! We’ll come up with it as we go!”

The Golden Deers give one final nod of understanding before running out of the war council room. Raphael, the last one to leave the room, turns around and scoops a cursing Lorenz off the floor to carry him over his shoulder before proceeding.

FINAL OPERATION: TEATIME

“Almyran pine needles?” Claude smiles. “That’s kind of you.”

Odessa’s smile is as sugar-sweet as the Deer have ever seen it. “Oh, so it was to your liking, after all? I thought I’d pick out something that might remind you of home. I’m glad I made the right choice.”

“That is so not true!” Hilda hisses from behind the hedge she and Lorenz have situated themselves behind. “I saw her asking people if they knew what kind of tea he liked!”

“Quiet, Hilda,” Lorenz, now with a tissue in one nostril, hushes her. “We need to stay quiet to give the others an opening.” 

“It’s looking like we’re gonna have to be making the openings ourselves, Lorenz,” Hilda tsk-tsks and peers deeper through the hole in the bush she’s made. “What could they even be talking about…?”

“So, if what I’ve heard about you is correct- and feel free to correct me, of course-” Claude begins, easing back in his chair, “You were originally born in the Empire? And by a twist of fate, you somehow ended up a travelling performer?”

“Yes,” Odessa leans her chin into her palm. “I was the only daughter of a minor noble of the Empire. However, my parents were assassinated by another family in an attempt to take over our land and end our bloodline.” She closes her eyes. “I managed to escape at the last minute, and decided to start my life anew… though it was not easy, of course.”

“I see. Unfortunately, cases of families mysteriously dying off in “accidents” are more common than we’d like to admit,” Claude furrows his brow. “And all for the power of Crests and rivalry… it’s asinine. It must have been rough on you.”

“Perhaps,” Odessa lips are cunning behind her teacup. “But I believe it could not have all been in vain if it lead me to you.”

Hilda’s fight-or-flight instinct activates. She puts two hands behind her head in the Deer Signal they managed to establish beforehand. Leonie, situated at the hedge parallel to theirs, nods and stands up before Claude can open his mouth to respond. 

“Alright!” Leonie emerges from the shrubbery with Ignatz on one of her shoulders and Marianne on the other and starts walking behind the gazebo. Claude and Odessa visibly jump in their seats at the sound of her impassioned cry. “Who’s ready for training? Ignatz, you better be ready to be shotput across the field today, because I’m not holding back!”

“Leonie, I don’t think this was part of the-”

“F-Fear the Deer!” Marianne, face bright red, cheers and pumps a fist into the air meekly before looking back down at Leonie. “Was- was that right? Fear the Deer-”

Leonie mouths a very large I don’t know to Hilda as she passes by her and Lorenz’s hedge. Hilda shoots her a thumbs-up. Sure, the execution wasn’t perfect, but they’ve ruined one possible romantic interaction and that’s the only goal they had in mind to begin with. Also, Claude owes them his life for it.

Claude coughs into his fist. “Apologies for that, I don’t know th- actually, it’s not important. Things can get a bit rowdy around here, despite the fact that… nothing’s usually happening at the gazebo at this time.” He squints slightly.

Odessa giggles. Hilda rolls her eyes so hard they nearly fall out of her skull. “I don’t mind in the slightest. You’ve quite the colourful cast here. Tell me, Claude, I simply must know; do you have many dancers like myself back in Alliance territory?”

Claude cards a hand through his hair. “Well, I’m sure they’re out there, but they’re definitely more of an oddity in the seas of the Alliance.” His expression falls somewhat. “Political situations can get pretty tense over there, you know. While we go around and function under the guise of peace, there’s a hefty amount of internal struggle in relations. There always has been. And right now, I’m enacting my plan to end that cycle.” 

He shakes his head and chuckles a bit. “Ah, forgive me. I’ve rambled on a bit too long. What I meant to say is that we don’t usually see you and your friends dancing about; that’s reserved for the real privileged folk, if you get what I mean.”

Odessa’s eyes are shining. Hilda takes it as a warning sign of the oncoming storm. “Of course not. You’re rather charming when you ramble, to be frank.”

Hilda turns to Lorenz, but he puts a finger to his lips and grabs her wrist. “Wait,” he whispers.

“Charming?” Claude winks. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard such praise.”

“It’s true. I know I haven’t been here for very long, Claude, but I’d truly like to repay my debt to you somehow. If, perhaps in the next battle, you see that my skills are beneficial to your goals… ” Odessa tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and looks up at him. “You would consider appointing me as your personal dancer? I know that to be affiliated with a territory as renowned and innovative as the Alliance, I would-”

“Oh my gosh, Lorenz, what happened to your face?!” Hilda exclaims, tugging Lorenz up from the hedge and dragging him across the field behind the gazebo. “You poor thing! Let’s get that checked out right away, shall we?”

“Thank you for your concern, Hilda, but I, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, will be fine. ‘Tis but a door injury,” Lorenz says, rubbing at his nose with a bit more stupor than necessary. “My nose may be dislocated, but it’s nothing the infirmary can’t-”

“Your nose is dislocated?!” Hilda yells, accidentally-on-purpose making eye contact with Claude as she winds her fist back, “Hold on, Lorenz, I know just the trick to put it back into place-” 

An ear-splitting crack echoes through the entire courtyard as Lorenz gives one final cry and falls limp to the floor. No one speaks for about twenty seconds.

“I fixed it,” Hilda announces loud enough for them both to hear as she drags Lorenz’s lifeless body across the grass. Thank you for your sacrifice, Lorenz.

Claude runs a hand down his face and sighs loudly. “I’m sorry, Odessa, what was it you were asking? Something about a permanent position in the army?”

Odessa coughs a bit. “Yes, well, that’s not… quite what I meant, but I did want you to evaluate my performance in the upcoming battle regardless.”

“I see. Of course,” Claude nods and taps his gloved fingers on the table. “I will admit, we are lacking slightly in supportive units. To have you around does seem it would raise morale and open new strategic options we didn’t have previously.”

“Already thinking of the future, are we?” Odessa takes a sip of tea. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking much of the same.”

“Don’t be coy, my friend,” Claude laughs a bit. “We’ll let your battle prowess do the talking first.”

Hilda pumps her fist. Yes!

“A girl can dream, can’t she?” Odessa sighs. “How cruel. I thought you kinder of a man than to dismiss my ambitions entirely.”

“Oh? Ambitions of your own, now? And what could those entail?” Claude asks.

“Forgive me if I may be so bold, Claude,” Odessa reaches over the table and places a delicate hand over his. “But I’ve always dreamed of seeing the flowers native to Almyra, with the king at my si-”

Hilda flashes the Deer Signal in less than a second.

“My body is ready!” Raphael’s booming voice echoes across the entire field, and Claude and Odessa spin to see him with his arms wide open. Lysithea stands about five feet away, magic crackling at her fingertips. 

All the oxygen leaves the garden. Hilda starts to wonder if maybe this was a bad idea.

“Damn it all,” Hilda hears Claude say before the ensuing Bolganone explosion engulfs the field and blows the tea table over. 

OPERATION AFTERMATH:

No one’s spoken for five minutes now. Hilda and the rest of the Golden Deer have been standing in a line in front of Claude and left to stare at either him, the ground, or the ashes all over their boots and clothes. The only sound in the war council room has been the occasional cough, and the constant irritated tapping of Claude’s boot against the floor.

“Unbelievable,” Claude sighs and folds his arms across his chest. “Absolutely unbelievable. You know, I’ve gotta hand it to you. I genuinely have no idea whether to be furious or astounded at you guys.” 

“You could try being impressed and thanking us,” Hilda suggests quietly.

“And what would I thank you for?” Claude throws his hands up in the air. “For being respectful ? For ruining negotiations? For burning the garden to a crisp? I know there’s a lot, but you need to calm down, here!” He groans and runs his hands down his face. “Forgive my language, but are you all stupid? Was this whole thing a well-thought out, elaborate prank? Did you all have a big laugh? Because I’m not laughing.” 

“We only did it because that dancer was cozying up to you way too much, way too fast!” Lysithea protests, swinging one soot-covered arm in front of her. “Have you no sense of self-preservation? What if she was a spy?!”

“If I thought that of you or anyone else who joined our cause, we’d never be getting anywhere,” Claude frowns. “I’m not trying to put up any more walls. I understand your concern, but did you really think I wouldn’t have been able to handle myself if things got risky? That calls to question my own ability in the eyes of my comrades.”

“Either way, she was suspicious,” Leonie unknowingly smudges more ash across her nose with her thumb. “I don’t think we made the wrong call.”

“You need to be more careful, Claude,” Ignatz says. “There’s more at risk here than you realize!”

“Yeah,” Raphael nods. “Like the professor’s heart!”

All the air is sucked out of the room. No one dares speak. 

“Raphael, darling,” Hilda coos, turning him around and pushing him out of the doorway, “Come with me for a moment, will you?”

“I believe he wants to get blown up again,” Lysithea says lowly, and follows them out of the room. 

Claude runs a hand down his face for the tenth time that day. “I’ve heard enough. My intentions with Odessa were purely political. I thought she would make for an interesting ally to have, that’s all. I didn’t think I’d need to stress that to my own housemates, but you learn something new every day, I guess.” 

Lorenz, face swollen and now with two tissues up both nostrils, sighs and turns on his heel. “You’d best check in on the professor after this. I can’t rest in good conscience until you do.”

“Why would I need t- Teach will be fine,” Claude shakes his head. “She understands.”

The Deer start to file out of the room one by one until only Marianne is left.

“She cares about you immensely, Claude,” she says to him gently and pats some soot off his shirt. “I’m sure you know that.”

Claude lets out a long-held breath and runs his fingers through his hair.

“Yeah. I do.”

Byleth is not sure how she ended up with a drunken Claude draped around her shoulder the following evening. They had prevailed in their latest battle and recaptured a port from the Empire, and upon the suggestion of a feast, suddenly the whole monastery was ablaze. Though there wasn’t that much alcohol, Claude definitely downed just the right amount to flush his cheeks and slur his words, and before long he had been shoved into her lap by the other students and tasked with escorting him to his quarters. Though she doesn’t suppose she minds; it feels as if she hasn’t seen much of him lately, and being close to him in any way is something she could count her blessings for.

When they reach his door, Byleth gives his wrist a squeeze. “Look, Claude. We’re back at your room.”

“Bed,” he murmurs. Byleth can’t help but smile as she opens the door and leads him inside to sit him on the bed. This scene seems awfully familiar. He’s still way above his regular body temperature, so she leaves him be on the blankets and leaves momentarily to  fetch him a glass of water. When she returns, he grabs the glass and drinks greedily until a trail of water spills out and over the edge of his lip. 

“Don’t make a mess,” Byleth chides him, though it sounds more fond than anything as she wipes away the leftover water with a handkerchief. 

One of Claude’s hands reach up to curl around her wrist gently. “Is everyone gone?”

She chuckles a bit. “Well, not gone, I’d hope. But there’s no one else in the dormitories right now, if that’s what you meant.”

He blinks slowly before letting out a yawn and flopping sideways onto the bed, still latched onto her wrist. “Good. Too noisy down there.” He puts his wrist over his eyes for a moment before moving it aside to look at her directly. “I’m actually not that drunk. I may have just wanted an excuse to get out of there.”

Byleth sighs and pats his hand. “You’re still drunk enough for the both of us, I think.”

Claude chuckles and rolls over so he’s on his stomach. “So? What’d you think of the dancer?”

Byleth raises an eyebrow. “Odessa, right? She never left your side, from what I recall.” 

“Yeah, and she was only ever dancing for me, too,” Claude sighs. “It was a shame, really. She’d have so much more potential if she would focus on spreading her attention around equally.” 

“She definitely worked at her own pace,” Byleth says. “Not to mention she rarely took instructions from me.”

Claude rubs his eyes and yawns. “Yeah. I’m no master tactician, but I’d keep her off the front lines.” He gives Byleth’s wrist a squeeze. “There’s already someone else I’m used to having by my side, anyway.”

Byleth smiles. “And who could that be?”

Claude lets a contented sigh out from his nose and shuts his eyes. “I wonder.”

Both of them are silent for a few moments. Claude opens one eye to look at her again. 

“...You don’t have anything else to ask about her?” Claude says slowly.

Byleth tilts her head. “What would I have to be concerned about?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just… you didn’t feel threatened at all?” he blinks. “I thought you’d be at least a little uneasy when she first showed up.”

She shakes her head. “She’s not a tactician, nor does she have the experience I do. Our skill sets are entirely different. It wasn’t as if I was going to be replaced.” Her eyes dart away from him. “But…”

He squeezes her wrist again. “But…?”

She allows him one tiny, tiny smile. “But I suppose I would be a bit envious of the time she spent with you.”

Claude grins and sits up. “Then how about a spot of tea, to make up for it?”

Byleth puts a hand to his chest and pushes him back down to the mattress. “You’ve had enough for one night, thank you very much. Now get some rest.”

“Awww, but Teach, I don’t have a curfew now, do I?”

“You will if I give you one, for tonight only,” Byleth stands up and starts tucking the blankets under him. “Sleep well.”

He pokes his head out from the bundle she’s wrapped him in. “And my goodnight kiss?”

Her chest warms. Byleth laughs softly and strokes his hair instead. “Maybe when you aren’t drunk and smelling of rum, Claude.”

“I’m holding you to that, Teach.”

“Mhm.”

When Byleth shuts the door behind her, she lets a long breath out of her chest. With every passing day, he truly doesn’t make things easier for her. Her head turns sharply behind her at the sound of a whisper:

“See, I told you she’d be jealous!”

“Shhh! You didn’t know that!” 

“What’s going on?” Raphael asks.

Byleth’s face is very nearly lit aflame. She curls her hands into fists and hurriedly stomps back down the dormitory stairs.

She hadn’t known choosing the Golden Deer was going to mean the death of her.

Chapter Text

Byleth’s head, hands, and heart are heavy. For whatever reason, the circlet on her head has doubled in weight today. Perhaps it is the lilies that Seteth had tucked into it that morning, or the march they had just returned from, but the evening sunset feels as though it saps her energy by simply standing in it. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. As much as she wants to collapse into bed and not wake up for several years, she’s had her time to do that already. And there is still one more brightness in her day worth seeing.

“Claude?” Byleth calls, tapping her knuckles against his door. “Are you in? I’m sorry to bother you when we’ve just gotten back from a mission.”

“It’s no trouble. Come on in, Teach,” Claude calls back.

When she opens the door, she nearly drops the stack of paper in her hands, for numerous reasons. The first of them being that Claude appears to be unbuttoning his shirt even further below his already-open collar, and the second of them being the white wyvern poking its head through his window. Her brain is unsure of how and what to be reacting to first, so she settles for harshly spinning on her heel to put both of them out of her immediate sight. 

“W-Why didn’t you tell me you were undressing?” Byleth squeezes her eyes shut and grips the papers so hard her fingernails come close to cutting through them. “I could have come back another time.”

Claude laughs. “Relax, Teach, I’ve still got something on underneath. Come on, even I wouldn’t be so rude as to invite you like that.”

“You’re plenty rude already,” Byleth mumbles and shakes her head as if to shake the red out of her cheeks. 

“Don’t be like that; see, I’m buttoning it back up now, okay? All is safe. No flesh to be seen, no sensitive eyes to be burned. That’s how the saying goes, right?”

“That isn’t a saying, and Goddess forbid you have it buttoned all the way up this time,” Byleth says. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll die on the battlefield from cold symptoms.” 

“Jeez, were you always this stingy?” Claude chuckles to himself, and Byleth very much doesn’t like that she can hear his amusement. “This is what Barbarossa garb looks like. Let’s just call the collar a… personal refinement, if you will.” His tone turns nasally. “A shocking revelation in wartime fashion, to disarm and impress all nobles in the years to come! Pop open the collar, milord, ‘tis not a joust otherwise!”

Byleth says nothing.

“Hey, I think I look good in it,” Claude protests. Byleth just sighs and turns to face him. ‘Good’ hardly even begins to describe it. 

“Clothing aside, I wanted to discuss some of the notes I took during the last war council. But…” Byleth’s eyes move away from Claude and onto the heavily-breathing wyvern that’s halfway through his window. “Must your wyvern be here as I do so?”

“What, does she bother you?” Without even looking, Claude reaches a hand behind him and scratches the chin that’s immediately drawn to his fingers. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. My Orion here is sweet as sorbet; probably because she went and stole some. Isn’t that right, Orion?” He pecks a tiny kiss to the side of the wyvern’s jaw, eliciting a happy grumble from its throat. The waft of its breath smells more like fresh, bloodied meat than sorbet. 

Byleth takes a step back. “I’ve just… never seen a wyvern that colour before. And I’ve never been very good with heights.” 

Claude blinks, eyes wide. “Seriously? But you were instructing students on flying skills all the time. You’ve clearly got expertise behind your words.”

Byleth shakes her head. “It’s simple enough to learn through study, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. Why do you think I’ve been letting you do all the training for the flying troops since I got back?”

“So the highest you’ve been is…”

“The back of my father’s horse,” Byleth counts her fingers, “Or maybe a rooftop? No… perhaps a tree. Yes, a tree seems more likely.”

“Wow,” Claude scratches the back of his head. “Colour me surprised. The infallible Enlightened One, wielder of the Sword of the Creator, brought to her knees by a wyvern with a saddle on. Could’ve fooled me.” 

Byleth’s cheeks warm slightly. Her eyes flicker away to the now-interesting corner of the room. “It’s not something I just announce to people. Somehow, the idea of not being connected to the ground in some way is… unsettling to me. I’d lose all balance if I tried to fight like that.” 

“Well, it’s true that riding while fighting is a skill that must be honed, like with any good instinct,” Claude says, “but riding for leisure is something else entirely. There’s no need to fear for your life or how well you can swing a sword when you just want to feel the wind on your skin, right?” 

Byleth raises an eyebrow. Her foot retreats into the carpet in another half-step back. “What are you implying?”

“I’m implying, dearest Teach,” Claude says, reaching out his gloved hand to her, “that you look absolutely exhausted, and very much like you could use a break; specifically in the form of a leisurely ride through the evening skies. I’m sure you’d like it, given the chance. And you know neither of us will let you fall.”

“I… I don’t know,” Byleth looks down again, grasping tighter onto the papers. “You aren’t wrong, but this isn't something I should complain about.” One tip of the lilies keeps brushing against her ears as she turns her head. “I can’t run from everything the second I get tired. I wouldn’t make much of a figurehead if I-”

“Come now, my friend,” Claude comes to her and lifts his hands to finger the lilies on either side of her circlet. “When you’re here in front of me, you aren’t some holy vassal or master tactician, or any sort of figurehead. You’re just you.” Gently, gently, he smiles and lifts the circlet from her hair. “You’re just Byleth. And you don’t need to be anything else. I’d hate if you were, in fact.”

Neither of them speak. All is silent, save for the thousands of voices in the recesses of Byleth’s mind, screaming I want to kiss him I want to kiss him I want to kiss him at the top of their tiny lungs. Quickly she swallows the urge down. 

“Can I be honest with you for a moment?” Byleth says instead.

“Be my guest.”

“I don’t like wearing this circlet. Or the Enlightened garments in general,” she closes her eyes. “Seteth is always quick to remind me that I’m the spitting image of Rhea in her younger years, and I can’t help as though everyone else sees me that way, as well. It’s as if, little by little… I’m replacing her existence. I understand why that’s the case, but... I don’t know how I should feel about it yet.” 

“I figured as much,” When she looks up, Claude’s eyes are sad. “I know a part of you wishes you could go back to just being our Teach. Again, I’m sorry if I’ve dragged you into something you never meant to be a part of. But this means everything to me. If you’d allow me to be selfish for just a while longer...” There’s now an ever-ambitious shine in his gaze, the one she finds herself melting at when he’s deep in thought. “I swear to you it’ll change the world as we know it. For you, for me, and all of Fodlan.”

“I know,” she says softly. “And besides-” a small smile touches her lips, “-you all continue to call me ‘Professor’ for a reason, don’t you? I’ll never be entirely gone, as long as I have you.” 

A smile reaches Claude’s lips, too, and she feels brighter just seeing it. “Why, how sweet of you to say.” Slowly he steps away from her and turns to place the circlet on his dresser. “Hold on for one second; I’ll find you something to wear. You can get rid of that robe, if you feel like it.”

Byleth’s fingers tug at her sleeves idly. “Are you sure?”

“It’s fine,” he calls to her as he rummages about his dresser, “the altitude’ll be much higher where we’re going, so you need to make sure you layer up. Can’t have our Commander Teach die of cold symptoms on the battlefield now, can we?”

She takes a moment to place her papers into a separate pile on his desk. When he turns back around to her, her mouth forms the shape of a small ‘o’. “It’s the marshmallow jacket,” she says. “I thought you’d gotten rid of it.”

“Marshmallow jacket?” he repeats as if the words had burned his tongue, “I’ll have you know, this thing is way warmer than it looks! Marshmallow or not, you can circumvent some of the puffiness by adding a well-tied scarf to the waist and it looks positively dashing-”

Byleth bounds forward and takes the familiar jacket out of his hands. “I don’t mind.”

Claude blinks at her. His now-empty hands are still suspended in the air. “That was fast.”

Byleth pulls the jacket on and wastes no time in buttoning it up to her neck. She lifts her head up to smile at him. “You wouldn’t happen to have that scarf on you right now, would you? The one with the fluffy things. I like those.”

Claude’s lips curl into a curious smile back. “You mean the pom-poms, Teach.” After he retrieves the scarf for her, she starts winding it around her neck, until Claude tut-tut-tuts and starts tying it into a knot for her.

“You’ll need to have it on tight, or else your beloved Fluffythings are gonna be flying into the clouds, my friend,” he says. 

Byleth frowns. “I’m aware of the terminology now, thank you very much,” the reply comes out muffled from behind the scarf.

Claude’s smile spreads to her anyway as he gives a half-bow and extends one of his gloved hands to her. “Well then, my dear Teach, shall we depart? The evening sky awaits.”

Though she tries to cover her mouth, a giggle slips out regardless. She places her hand in his, takes a moment to love the feeling. “We shall. Your proposition couldn’t have been any cheesier, but we shall.”

“You never stop wounding me so, Teach…”

The moment Claude pulls Byleth up onto the back of Orion’s saddle, her hands immediately fly to grab at his jacket. Orion is constantly swaying, letting steam out of its nose, stamping back and forth slowly as if testing the firmness of the ground. Every little reverberation that runs through the wyvern and into the saddle feels like it’s tossing Byleth’s stomach upside down. Her feet are unsure of where to hook themselves now that they’re in the air, so she settles for gripping them as tight as she can into Orion’s sides. It lets out a displeased grunt at that; she quickly removes her heels, but they don’t feel safe just flopping straight downward, either. A bit of a distressed groan comes out of her throat.

“You okay back there?” Claude calls, turning to look over his shoulder at her. “Try to relax. Neither of us are going to let you fall-” he winks, “-not for very long, at least.” 

“That’s not comforting,” Byleth shakes her head and grasps at his jacket. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Your saddle clearly isn’t meant for two people. There’s nowhere to put my feet, and we’ll be so high up-”

“Being high up’s the entire point, Teach,” Claude laughs. “Just breathe. You trust me, don’t you?”

No, I love you, you fool, she nearly spits out, but she settles for putting her forehead against his back instead. “Maybe we should stop this after all. No commander can have a fear this silly, much less afford to be seen shirking their duties to fly around on a wyvern-”

“Teach, have you ever touched a cloud before?”

She blinks. “No, why would I have ever-”

His next sentence comes out as a blurted breath as he kicks his heels into Orion’s sides, “Well there’s a first for everything, ready, set, go!”

Byleth opens her mouth to say something, but her diaphragm seems to rise so quickly with Orion’s massive leap that it crushes her lungs and any words they could have pushed out. The world blurs into orange and brown as the wyvern launches itself up into the sky. It takes Byleth several stunned moments to realize that they are actually off the ground, that they are high, high above the monastery, and falling from this height will most certainly kill her. It takes her rear starting to lift off the saddle that causes every cell in her body to send electric shocks to her brain, which then commences the screaming. It’s hard to even hear it over the sound of the wind knocking her ears and skull back and forth, and her hair ends up in her mouth several times but her arms don’t dare leave Claude’s waist.

Her mouth also seems to be on autopilot. I sound ridiculous right now, she thinks, but all that comes out is a repeated string of “Get me down get me down get me down get me down”. About ten seconds of this pass with her eyes squeezed so tight she sees sparks, and she learns to scream something else:

“Claude!” It’s little more than a shriek now, and she’s surprised she hasn’t heard any sort of cracking from how hard she’s squeezing his sides. “Get me off this thing, please!”

Her face burns when she hears him laugh loudly. “Come on, you’re not dead yet! Isn’t it fun, getting out of your comfort zone every now and then?”

“No!” she shrieks, slamming her forehead into his back. “The zone is the ground, and I want to be back on it, now! Claude!”

“Hey,” he calls, placing his hand over her clasped ones. “Look up, Teach. Come on.”

At last, the spinning seems to stop. When she cracks open one eye, she can see that Orion’s wings are spread out fully on both sides, gliding on the wind. She can’t see a single trace of the ground anymore, but what’s replaced it are misty layers of clouds, tinted pale pink and deep orange for as far as she can see. The lights meld into one warm colour and reflect off the clouds, onto Orion’s white wings and onto Claude’s silhouette. Her heart seems to settle somewhere in her chest, shaken upside-down and clueless but utterly taken. It feels as though a bloom has opened inside her.

It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful. 

Her nose and ears are freezing cold, but the sight of all of it makes her want to melt. Now that they’ve seemed to find a stable current to ride, it feels just like being pulled in a carriage, but much smoother. She slides forward to press herself closer to Claude, ever warm and beautiful.

“So?” he turns back to smile at her, reaching out a hand to sift through the clouds beside them. “When you’re not dying, it feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

Byleth is completely windswept. Her hair is blown in every direction, and she regrets not tying it up because she must look like a dumbstruck, gaping fish, but all she can do is nod a response at him anyway. After a few more moments, she finds the courage to let a hand trail off his waist and reach for the clouds below. It feels like a rush of cold nothingness passes through her. She draws back her hand almost immediately, but she’s left blinking at her fingers afterwards. Never in all her life had she thought a cloud would feel that way. That’s one more thing Claude has taught her; one more thing only Claude could have taught her. 

She pushes the hair out of her face and lets out a deep breath. Her throat is raw from yelling, and her voice nearly blends into the whistling of the wind. “It’s amazing.”

“Isn’t it?” he winks at her. “To be honest, at first I wasn’t too big on heights either. But once you get up there, there’s no better medicine to clear your head.”

She takes a moment and closes her eyes. It’s true. As if being thrown this high into the air had poured everything else out of her mind, nothing is left inside but the sunset, the odd sensation of the clouds, and him. It almost makes her want to laugh, to think that being catapulted into facing a long-time fear would instill such a calm within her. Imagining him feeling the same at a different point in time makes her feel all the more closer. 

Byleth looks up at him through her lashes. She wants to tell him it’s only because of him that she would ever be up this high in the first place; that so much of what she's done and felt has been because of him, but saying so seems like it would break the air surrounding them. Instead, she settles for wrapping her arms tenderly around his chest and resting her cheek on his shoulder. The setting sun flickers in and out of view through the clouds. His heartbeat is palpable under her palms, and she realizes there is nowhere else they would rather be; nowhere else she would rather be, for the rest of her days.

“Thank you,” Byleth says, holding him tighter.

The hand that closes over hers makes a soft warmth wash over her. “Anytime, Teach.”

When next she opens her eyes, she can see one of Orion’s bright pupils glancing at her sideways. She can’t help but chuckle and pat her side gently, as if to praise her for a job well done. 

“Getting acquainted back there?” Claude asks, his smile audible. “Hold on tight; I’ll take you to a secret spot of mine.”

Byleth raises her eyebrow. “When would you even have the time to find any secret spots?”

“Well, that’s for me to know and for you to never find out, hopefully, before you decide to saddle me with more work,” Claude laughs and whistles to Orion, signalling their steady glide back down below the clouds. 

“Of course,” Byleth frowns at him, “because I’m known for pushing my responsibilities onto others, aren’t I, Claude?”

“I jest, I jest,” he chuckles, giving her hand a gentle pat. “You could afford to rely on me a bit more, you know.”

Her heart clenches. Always so sincere. She falls silent as the world beneath them slowly starts to come back into view. The ocean is under her feet once more, and her breath leaves her upon seeing the clearing Claude must have been referring to. A small shoreline of golden sand, surrounded by a winding cliff covered in deeply-coloured blooms. How he must have found such a place is beyond her, but to question it seems like a disservice in the face of its beauty. 

Byleth’s stomach immediately settles back into the right place when Orion’s feet finally meet the top of the cliff. An elated breath leaves her; all her muscles feel like they’ve been injected with liquid, yet Claude hops off Orion like it’s nothing and proceeds to shower the wyvern in chin scratches and kisses. 

“So?” Claude grins to Byleth, though his hands have yet to leave Orion’s jawline. “Was that about everything you hoped for?”

“If what I hoped for was overwhelming panic and near death, then yes, it surpassed all my expectations with flying colours,” Byleth sighs, taking a much-needed moment to comb her hair back into place.

“Don’t be like that, you seemed to be enjoying it by the end,” Claude puts a hand on his hip. “Do you need help getting down, Teach? You look a tad shaken.”

Byleth frowns at him and begins to swing her legs off the saddle. “No, I’m perfectly fine, thank you very mu-” All the air leaves her the minute her toes touch solid ground; the rest of her legs follow suit by collapsing in on themselves. She blinks and all of a sudden Claude’s chest is there.

“Whoa!” His arms are embarrassingly ready to catch her. He pulls her up, chuckling all the while. “You alright there? I gotta say, you certainly have an interesting definition of ‘perfectly fine’, my friend.”

Her cheeks burn at how unaffected he is by everything and how he must not even know it all drives her mad. Reluctantly she squirms out of his hold. “What did you even want to show me, anyway?”

“Take a look for yourself,” Claude says. He turns out to the setting sun, just starting to dip into the ocean. His chest rises slowly and lets out a long breath. “I think the view should tell you enough.”

Byleth turns. The shimmering of the water causes one of her eyes to shut on instinct, but she forces it open after a moment. When she looks up beside her, Claude’s face is more at peace than she’s seen it during this whole moon. His eyes closed, his lips relaxed, taking in the slight saltiness of the crisp ocean air. 

The ocean. She’d only ever visited a few times, and all of those times ended with sand in her boots and clumps of blood floating in the water. It isn’t a place for fun, her father had said, not for us.  

She joins Claude and closes her eyes. The air is light and soothing in her ears. She can feel the stems and petals of flowers tickling her ankles. All she hears is the blowing of wind and the waves crashing against the shore; with the sound of each wave, she feels her body grow lighter. She had never known the beach could be so beautiful.

A smile touches her lips when she sees Claude next to her, his eyes still shut. Maybe it couldn’t be a place for fun; their battles dictated that much. 

It can just be one more place where I love him, Byleth decides. 

♫

“So this is what you wanted me to see so badly?” she asks him softly, as if rousing him from a dream.

“Yeah,” his contented smile makes her feel safe. “I’ve kept this spot to myself for a while, now. Turns out when you clear the remote area of some Demonic Beasts and land right when the sun sets, you get a killer view. I’d say it was well worth the effort.”

“There’s so much open sky,” Byleth tilts her head up. The stars above them are starting to glimmer through the clouds. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Claude chuckles again. “Back home in Almyra, there were tons of clearings like this. Ever since coming to Fodlan, it’s been harder to find them, but at least they’re still out there. If I couldn’t have a place to get away from everything and clear my head, I don’t know what I’d do.” He looks down at her, eyes soft. “Open skies, vast, rolling fields, oceans to swim in from day till night… there’s still so much of this world you haven’t seen, Teach.”

Suddenly she feels small. Her gaze darts away from him. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Nah,” Claude shakes his head. “I’d say the opposite, actually. That just means you’ve got so much more to see, learn, and experience. And, if you’d let me… I’d like to be the one showing you all those things.” 

Warmth floods into her face once more. Suddenly, looking at him is too hard all over again. Him in this moment, next to her, ever sincere and glowing in the setting sun, is too much. She wishes he would stop, yet simultaneously prays for this moment to never end.

“After the war is over,” she manages, quietly, or else her voice and everything else in her will give out.

He nods solemnly; a little too much so, so it must be for dramatic effect. “After the war is over,” he repeats, before letting his eyes travel far, far out into the horizon. It’s a beautiful sight, Byleth realizes, the green of his irises now speckled with the golden light of the sun, encapsulating all the stars he’s ever wished upon. 

“When that day comes to pass,” Claude smiles, “I hope the dawn that we see will be just as bright as this.” 

Byleth’s heart jumps when his gloved hand closes around hers, jumps further when he squeezes tight like he’ll never let go. When she looks up at him, his sun-speckled eyes are already watching hers.

“And I want you by my side to see it.”

Her heart feels as though it could burst, yet she couldn’t be more content. She squeezes back, and dares to hope the smile she returns to him is even half as beautiful as his. 

“I’ll be there,” Byleth promises.

The two are silent for a peaceful moment, the crashing waves filling the space between them. Neither of them jump very much when Orion lets out a frustrated grumble from the flowers. Claude, still holding her hand, leads her to the wyvern and lifts one of his hands to scratch at Orion’s jaw. Byleth uses her free hand to help scratch the other side, eliciting a high-pitched growl as Orion tries to nuzzle into both their hands. 

“So I’ve been thinking that I wanted to have you meet my parents in Almyra, once the war is over,” Claude says, reaching up to get to the side of Orion’s mouth. “But is there anywhere else you’ve been curious about seeing, Teach? I'll take you there.”

“Maybe Dagda? I remember Shamir saying it was an interesting place,” Byleth says. “Or maybe even Brigid. I heard the ocean there is nice.” She looks down at their boots. “But anywhere is fine so long as I’m with you.”

She can already hear his grin, infuriatingly charming as it is. 

“So the whole world, then?" Claude's upturned lips and sparkling eyes have a scheme written in them. "I’ll mark it down, Teach.”

Byleth scoffs. The whole world, with Claude?

It didn't sound like a bad idea to her at all. 

Chapter Text

♫

“Ever the pious one, aren’t you?”

Byleth turns to Claude, his face half-cloaked in shadow. She stands partly facing him, partly facing the two open coffins on either side of her. The air smells of flesh and dried blood. Moonlight seeps through the cracks of the Holy Mausoleum, but does not touch any of them. 

Byleth’s clasped hands fall in front of her. Her gaze trails to the side of the floor. “Am I being presumptuous, burying them side-by-side?”

Claude stops to think for a moment before shaking his head. “No,” he says, carefully walking up to join her at the altar. “No matter how bitterly they hated each other in the end, they still shared some kind of fondness in their past. I think that much is worth commemorating.” 

He swings a long, slow glance between the sheets covering Edelgard and Dimitri’s faces. “There isn’t much else left to remember.”

Her heart clenches. She reaches for the top of the altar, where two bundles of flowers lay. Carefully, as if simply brushing them would light them aflame, she slips the flowers in and rests them so that they are grasped in their hands. She lets her gaze rest on the sight of her two former students. Like this, it seems as though they are laying in a field together, free of pain and bloodshed. Like this, everything preceding this moment seems like nothing more than a bad dream. She wishes for it to be true so badly it hurts.

Byleth’s throat feels tight with a foreign pain she hadn’t known she could feel. “These are the same type of roses I gave Edelgard on her birthday. She put them in her room.”

“I remember,” Claude says. “She took good care of them.”

Byleth’s fingers ghost over Dimitri’s gauntlet-bound hands, now adorned with small white blooms. “And Dimitri seemed so happy when we had chamomile tea together that time. I can only hope he liked the flowers themselves just as much.”

Claude takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m sure he does.”

“Tell me, Claude,” her eyes close. “Do you remember the celebration we had after the Battle of the Eagle and Lion?”

“I do,” says Claude. “The four of us ate and talked into the night until everyone else left the hall.” He turns his head up to meet the moonrays. “It felt like, just for that one moment in time, there were no boundaries. No limitations. No formalities. Just the four of us as one. I’ve never forgotten that feeling.” 

“That’s odd,” Byleth whispers. “Why can I hardly recall a thing?”

Deep down, she knows exactly why. The Edelgard and Dimitri she saw in the Imperial throne room were so painfully different from the ones she wanted so badly to remember, they overwrote any semblance of happiness they could have once shown. She bites down on her lip to keep it from trembling, but it doesn’t help. All that is in her mind is the sight of Dimitri, smoking in his armor from the onslaught of fire spells launched at him over and over again. Having cast aside everything, and hardly even able to keep grasping his weapon, uselessly limping forward while uttering curses under his breath. 

“I will have your head, Edelgard,” Dimitri growled, again and again and again. “I will have it. I will, I will, I will.” 

His cape was beginning to engulf him in flames. Still, as if he could no longer feel it, feel anything, he kept trying to inch closer to the throne. Byleth had tried to reach out, to call his name, but Claude grabbed her arm and said nothing. He only shook his head.

“There must be something we can-”

“There isn’t,” Claude said. When he looked down at her, his eyes were flooding with pain. As if to convince both her and himself, he said it one more time, more firmly: “There isn’t.”

It took Byleth a few moments to realize that the mage leading the assault must have cast a Freeze spell on Dimitri, locking him in place. The entire entrance to the throne room burst into flames at Hubert’s command.

When all was said, done, and bled, Dimitri’s charred body was hardly recognizable. 

“To the eternal flames with you,” he choked out, lips curling into what resembled a grin upon seeing Edelgard’s corpse folded in half on the carpet feet away. “El.”

Hours upon hours later, his last tangled words had yet to leave her mind.

“I’m not particularly devout, Claude,” Byleth says, eyes lingering on the sheets. “I never have been. But when it seems so unthinkable to imagine them both living, both being happy at the same time-” she looks up at him, and it takes much more out of her than she thought to keep the tears at bay, “what else can I do but leave the cards in someone else’s hands?”

It’s too painful to look anywhere. She dips her head to the ground and tries to keep her shoulders from shaking. It doesn’t work, but they are slightly comforted when Claude’s arm finds their way around them and holds her tightly to him.

“You can make a promise to them to not let it be in vain,” he tells her, his voice firm, and she knows it’s to keep them both standing. “To make this world better, into a place they’d be proud to see.” 

“How do I know if I can do that?” Byleth shakes her head. “What if my power isn’t enough?”

“No one knows. In life, there are no easy roads to happiness. But if everything were set in stone, we’d never try to accomplish anything. Never roll the dice, never take any chances to be more than what we are.” Claude takes a breath. “We’ll swear to remember them, Teach. Every little thing. The two of us, we’ll remember that they lived, with everything they had. And we’ll win this for them, too.”

He looks down at her. When she meets his gaze, his eyes and smile are a bit shaky. She imagines she looks much the same, if not worse when she tries to return it.

“Yeah?” he squeezes her shoulder.

“Yeah,” Byleth leans into him, hiding her face in his neck. “Let’s do that.”

The four of them stay in the moonlight for a long while, relapsing in a funeral of flowers and unsung dreams. 

Sleep well, Byleth wishes as she closes the caskets over her students' sleeping faces.

Chapter Text

♫

The insects of the Verdant Rain Moon have left bites all over Byleth’s arms. Her fingers have been drawing scratches against her chest for so long she’s forgotten when she started. As she sits in front of her father’s grave with her bestowed garments folded in front of her, the moon hangs high above her head, and she ponders how pathetic it must think she is. 

A quiet sigh leaves through her nose; she presses her forehead against her knees and tightens the arm wrapped around her legs. No matter how she presses her fingers to her chest, there’s no sound. No feeling. She doesn’t know why she expects there to be with each new attempt. Her father’s heart was loud and comforting, and she’d listened to its last beats slowly fade away. As she is now, every movement feels wrong and unwarranted, a blessing too great for a walking corpse. Her stomach turns at the thought; every part of her hurts. 

She’d never in her life been so upset about feeling less than human. Why start now? 

Byleth doesn’t move when she hears footsteps on the grass behind her. As expected of him to come looking for her the moment she wasn’t in her room. A jacket smelling of pine needles gently makes its way around her shoulders, but the kindness only hurts more.

“You’ll catch a cold sitting out here, my friend,” Claude says, his soft words acting as grease for the knives twisting into her. 

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Byleth lifts her head up to gaze at the name etched into the gravestone. Two fingers push where she believes her heart to be. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“There could be any number of reasons why they didn’t tell you,” Claude sits down next to her. His legs are crossed and his fingers are laced in his lap. “It may be hard to believe, Teach- and trust me, I’m having enough trouble wrapping my head around it myself, but-” he turns his head to look at her. “I think the biggest reason is that they didn’t want to hurt you.” 

Her nails dig into her arms. “And they didn’t think it would hurt me more to live this long, only to find out I was born to be a vessel for a goddess I don’t revere?” Byleth’s eyes fall to the pile of robes and lilies at her feet. “No one thought I had the right to know?”

“No one’s saying that,” Claude shakes his head; his voice is somewhat strained. “I’m not the biggest fan of her methods either, but Rhea, she’s…” he takes a breath. “She had her own reasons, her own wounds that lead her to withhold this much for this long. Not that what she did wasn’t still awful, but… you get what I mean.” 

“I know,” Byleth’s gaze trails to the side, far away from him, before she closes her eyes and buries her face back into her knees. “I’m just sad.” 

The fabric of the robes and Claude’s jacket rustle with the wind blowing between them. There’s a faint echo of crickets coming from somewhere far away; somewhere she wishes she could be.

Claude says nothing. After a long while, he reaches out to put his arm around her shoulders, but the touch feels wrong. She immediately backs away from him as if lightning had tumbled through him to her. His jacket falls to the ground.

“Stop it,” Byleth blurts out, drawn sharp as steel, “don’t touch me.”

“Teach, please,” Claude’s eyes are more hurt than she’s ever seen them. “Didn't I say that whatever you were, it wouldn’t matter to me? I still mean that. I always will.”

“But it matters to me,” her eyes squeeze shut. “I thought I was doing so well. I thought I finally deserved to feel things, to be happy, to live for what I believed in-” her sentence breaks halfway; she gulps in another shaking breath that bleeds into her voice. “And now, I’ve gone right back to where I was; a heartless mercenary. It’s all I’ve ever been, Claude. Now just leave me alone. Please.”

Claude’s expression softens into something she can’t see through. Part of her knows he won’t ever push her away, yet another part of her wishes he would, if only so she wouldn’t have to live with the possibility of it ever coming to pass. She can feel her very core crumble into a million tiny pieces when he reaches to hold her anyway.

“Stop it,” she chokes out, though her attempts at pushing out of his arms are feeble at best. “You’ve got to get away from me, Claude. Or else I’ll end up-”

“What, killing me?” his smile to her is somehow both wry and pained. His arms find their way around her shoulders and pull her to his chest. “For some odd reason, I find that hard to believe. Still, I challenge you to do your worst when the time comes.”

Byleth gives up, settling for a defeated groan. “I might as well accept it now.”

She can feel him nod. “Yes, yes, feel free to. But before you do that-” Claude lifts one hand to shift her head to the left side of his chest. “You hear that, don’t you?”

It’s a quick sound, the lub-dub that pounds under her ear. The anger melts out of her and turns into a soft sadness, a tender longing that fills her from head to toe. Her fingers grip at the front of his shirt, and she can only nod her response back to him.

“That’s the sound of you in there,” Claude’s fingers start to card through her hair, gently working through the tangles. “Every lesson, every memory, every battle and tea party; everything you’ve given me is right there, Teach, ever since the first day we met. I daresay you’ve existed in me as if I’ve known you all along.

“You say you don’t feel human, but look at you now, agonizing and crying in my arms over it. You’re human as can be,” he continues, rocking her slightly in his lap. He dips his head down close enough for his lips to brush against her ear. “If not having a ‘real’ heart bothers you so much, you can rest easy knowing it’s in mine.”

All at once, tears flood into Byleth’s eyes. It feels as though a dam in her has been broken, a river only he could reach. The emotions crash through her and leave her raw at the shore of his hands, yet something within her is so content to be there. That’s right. He had sworn that day that their hearts were connected. Whether such a thing even resided in her seemed to matter little when she felt strong enough to fill two of them. Perhaps that was what it truly meant to share a life with someone.

In that moment, a whisper of her father’s voice passes through her mind:

“One day, I hope you’ll give this ring to someone you love as well as I love her."

One of her hands starts to reach towards the pocket containing the small black bag. It occurs to her that this isn’t the first time she’s thought to do this. Though she’d known for a long while this ring was not going to anyone else, she wonders if her father would be alright with her decision from where he was resting under them. 

Despite it all, a smile touches her lips. If he were here, he’d definitely tell her to save it for after the work is done. She isn't sure why, but it's easier to swallow this time around. 

“Something wrong, Teach?” Claude shifts to look at her, but she buries back into his chest to listen to his heart once more.

“Nothing,” she says, closing her eyes and committing the beating of their hearts to memory. “Nothing at all.” 

After that night, the Golden Deer insignia he had given her so long ago rests over the left side of her robe. 

Chapter Text

When Nemesis finally falls, the sound thundering through the air could almost be mistaken for a building collapsing. Though it should come as no surprise, his body houses no blood; rather, the very particles holding the animated corpse together start to evaporate into nothingness. It smells of rust and ash. Byleth coughs a few times to ensure none of it has ended up in her lungs. Is it truly over? For some reason, part of her is still wary of the ashes coming back and reshaping into yet another apocalyptic form. 

It takes a while for the rest of the world to come back into focus. The first thing to hit her is the elated cheers of the Alliance soldiers scattered around the battlefield, but the second thing is-

“Claude,” her lips form the shape of his name without even needing to think, and she whirls on her heel to catch him somewhere in her sight, “Claude!”

A wave of relief washes through her to see him standing up with a calm smile, though there is dirt smudged across his cheek and a possibly-fractured arm cradled in his hand. They are feet apart, but his eyes connect with hers in a line so quietly joyous she feels it could light her aflame. 

All the thoughts leave her head at the implication in his eyes, that it is over, that they have won, that all they have struggled through for years is on the cusp of redemption. Before she realizes, her sword is clattering onto the field, and she runs to him so quickly the world becomes a blur.

When at last he is right in front of her, she opens her arms, and she comes crashing into him with a force that knocks both of them backwards and onto the ground once more. She hears a winded grunt come out of Claude’s throat when they make contact, but his arms circle back around her regardless as he buries his face into her shoulder. 

“We-” Byleth gasps, unsure if she’s about to laugh or cry. “We did it. We won, Claude.” 

It may be the first time Byleth has ever seen him speechless and she isn’t sure if it’s from emotion or the fact that she launched herself straight into his chest just seconds ago. Either way, all Claude can do is nod and breathe out a long, long sigh. 

“I-” Byleth snaps up, quickly propping herself up to look at him. “I’m sorry, your arm- are you hurt?”

Claude lets out a breathy chuckle before lifting up a hand to tap her on the nose. “I’m hurt, but I’m with you.” 

The smile that splits across her face hurts her cheeks. Unable to muster any words, she brushes the stray lock of hair out of his eyes and plants an elated kiss to his forehead. A rush of warmth floods into her face, but she can hardly bring herself to care.

We lived, she thinks to herself as he bumps their foreheads together with the most genuine of laughs, we lived. 

♡

A sense of deja vu tickles at the back of Byleth’s head as she finds herself on the stairs of the Goddess Tower once more. It must be the second time she’s come here to find him, since the first was their reunion after she’d fallen into her five-year slumber. It all feels like so long ago in retrospect; ever since her return, every day has been nothing but planning, battling, and a constant balancing act of gains and losses. Even now, her calloused hands are ready to fight some impending threat, for any moments of peace she could salvage were fleeting at best and nonexistent at worst. Could this really be the end of that constant cycle? Her body might not even know how to deal with not having her armor on anymore.

She reaches the top of the tower, and the scrambling thoughts in her mind immediately soothe themselves at the sight of Claude bathed in the sunset. He’s rid himself of his jacket for a loose white tunic and pants. She can’t help but smile when she sees he’s still wearing those riding boots she’d given him all those years ago. He looks out towards the sky, its warm orange hues washing into the tower and casting shadows upon the ground.

Her shadow quietly joins his. “There you are,” she says, feeling her eyes soften.

His head turns to her, calm and expecting. “I knew you’d find me.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly subtle, sneaking out of the dining hall like you did,” Byleth closes her eyes and clasps her hands behind her back. “Everyone was telling me to bring you back to the festivities.”

Claude sighs, though a wry smile remains. “Come on, can’t an Alliance leader have a bit of respite after all that’s gone down? Festivities or not, you’d think the whole ‘winning a war’ thing would get me off the hook for a good minute or two.” 

Byleth laughs softly. “Knowing the Golden Deer, I think your chances were slim from the outset.” She looks up at him beside her. “How are your injuries?”

He winds his shoulder a few times. “The medics worked their magic, and I’d say it’s functional enough. It’s still kind of sore, and writing should be a pain, but we’ve all dealt with worse.” 

“We have.” It feels a bit painful to admit. Byleth takes a deep breath before slowly letting it out. “Do you really think it’s over?”

“Well, yes and no,” Claude puts a hand on his hip, his eyes ever fixed on the horizon. “In terms of the fighting, our main adversaries are gone. I imagine all we’d have to take up arms against for the next while will be smaller rebellions that are bound to crop up here and there.” His hand reaches up to rub at his forehead. “But in terms of the reform that’ll follow... this is just the beginning. We’ve got more than our fair share of work cut out for us on the road ahead.”

“To be fair, we’ve known that from the start,” Byleth tries to sound reasonable, but thinking of the workload threatens to melt all her muscles on the spot. “Seteth told me we’ll need to have the coronation ceremony as soon as possible before things get hectic again-” she frowns, “meaning it’s happening at first light tomorrow.”

Claude chuckles a bit. “As expected from the archbishop’s advisor. Always on track, isn’t he? ”

“I think he could afford to be derailed every now and then,” Byleth rubs at her temple. “I know Rhea said I was going to have help, but at this point I might as well just be a proxy for Seteth’s instructions.” 

Claude chuckles again, and the light hitting his smile makes Byleth’s breath hitch in her throat. “Now’s no time for nerves, Your Grace, you’ve got a whole country to guide from here on out. And…” his eyes shift away from hers; his smile is dry once more. “You might have to get used to me not being around to help.”

She blinks at him. “What do you mean?”

Claude rubs the back of his neck, still averting his gaze. “The truth is, I won’t be able to make it for the coronation. I’m sorry I can’t be with you for such an important event, but I’m certain you’ll do great.” 

A panicked rock plummets through her core. Her eyes widen. “You... won’t be there?”

“I’ve got to return to my homeland,” he turns to face her now, and she can’t tell if his calm expression is forced or not. It scares her. “And as for the future of this new, unified land… I’ll be entrusting it to you.”

She tries to say something back, but no words come out. It feels as though a carpet has been pulled out from under her feet and left her to fall down a bottomless pit. 

“The Fodlan blood that runs through my veins… I’ve made use of it the best I could.” Claude looks back out to the sunset. “Now I’ve got to use my other bloodline to change my homeland for the better. After all, I do have royal connections there, insignificant as they may be. It’s time for me to struggle all over again and see what good I can do.” At last, his face seems to soften slightly when he looks back to her again, but she doesn’t feel the warmth. “I’m sure you understand. This is something I have to do; if I don’t set my sights higher, don’t try to reach out to the lands beyond Fodlan… I’ll never get to see the world I’ve dreamt of creating.” 

I know, Byleth wants to say so badly it hurts, I know that better than anyone. But she still can’t force it out. The words get tangled in her throat and slide back into the pit of her stomach. Her head is pointed down at their boots, but her vision begins to blur. Something hot and painful pricks at the back of her eyes.

“You’ll be alright,” Claude puts a hand on her shoulder. “You’re the successor Rhea appointed, and now, you’re also the hero who saved Fodlan. You’ll be a beacon of hope for those who are struggling to survive in war-torn lands. And they’ll come to rely on you, just like they used to rely on Rhea.” He gives her shoulder a squeeze. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But you’re the one person who understands what I believe in for this world; the only one that I can trust fully with this responsibility.”  

A wave of anger crashes through her and floods into her cheeks, stings at her eyes, forces her to grit out her words through her teeth. “I…” her sentence breaks. Her fingernails dig into her palms. “I can’t…” 

“...Byleth?” Claude calls softly after a moment’s pause. “Are you-”

“Are you stupid?!” Byleth bursts out, finally lifting her teary gaze to meet his. “Do you really think I’d be able to accomplish any of those ‘heroic’ feats if you weren’t there?!” Claude’s eyes are wide with shock, but the words keep spilling out. “Everything I’ve done, all of what I am, it’s only because… because you…” 

Byleth is not sure where she is going with this anymore. It’s all too much to even begin explaining. The very foundation of her happiness is slipping away and it’s enough to make the ground beneath her start crumbling. There is so much tied to Claude, so much of her definitions and emotions intrinsically linked to him, that the mere possibility of his absence leaves her raw and confused. 

“Was I really so terrible at this?” Byleth rubs away the tears rolling down her cheeks, but to no avail. Her voice is tripping over itself, hiccuping and unsure. “Did I really make you think I’d be okay without you?”

Her fingers ball into fists against her eyes. “Did I really make you think I didn’t love you?” 

The words feel so odd, both when they linger on her lips and once they fumble their way into the open air between them. After all this time, the words she had been so careful to avoid, for both her sake and his, have torn through her. Against all odds, there is something within Claude that turns her so terribly selfish. He is a fool, perhaps she is as well, and the time has long passed for them to put a name to this careful distance of theirs. To end the delicate dance of knowing, yet pretending not to. 

Claude’s hands settle onto her shoulders. “Byleth,” he says, as though the weight of the world as he knows it is resting upon her name. “Look at me.”

She does. It’s hard to see him until she blinks the tears out of her eyes, but they come rushing back anyway. It’s frustrating. She wishes it would stop. 

Just as she opens her mouth to say something, to apologize for being selfish, for holding him back and lashing out, he leans down and kisses the corner of her eye. 

“C-Claude,” her voice is much higher than she intended for it to be, and she burns inside for it, but her mind is too busy running laps to focus on anything besides the fact that he kissed her just now. 

Claude says nothing, but he slides his hands down her arms until he’s grasping at her hands and rubbing slow circles into her palms. She isn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, continue being angry, or all of the above. Whatever the case, it feels as though she could float away at any moment, and the only thing keeping her anchored is the feeling of his lips touching her skin. They stay like that for a while, Claude holding her hands and kissing the tears away until her shaking subsides. 

“I’m sorry,” Byleth whispers once she finds her voice again. The tips of her ears are burning, his face is so close.

“Don’t be,” Claude says at last, his eyes shining with something soft and gentle as they stare into hers. “I should be apologizing to you.” 

Before she can even ask why, he wraps her in a hug so tight all the air nearly leaves her. “Of course I knew,” he buries his face into her neck. “I should have said something sooner, but arrogance got the best of me. I figured, between us… there was no need for words. But I didn’t realize that would only start to hurt you as time went on. I never meant to put you through so much pain. And for that... I’m sorry, Byleth.” 

All she can do is stare back at him. His sun-speckled eyes are filled with a sincerity she could have only dreamed of seeing years ago.

“Actually... I’m sorry for much more than that,” Claude touches his forehead to hers. “I’ve worked you down to the bone on multiple occasions, knowing you would always be on my side. Back when I first saw you wield the Sword of the Creator, I wanted to use you to make my dream of a new world come true. And here I am now, hurting the person I treasure more than anything by leaving to pursue that dream.”

Claude closes his eyes and smiles, a sad but hopeful smile. “For you to say you love me so loudly, even after all of that… you’re not as bright as I’d taken you for, are you?” 

For whatever reason, Byleth can’t help but smile back, can’t help but nuzzle closer to him regardless. “That’s right. I suppose it takes a fool to know one.” 

He kisses the tip of her nose. “If you’d let this fool run one last errand, I promise this will be the last time I hurt you.”

Claude pulls away from her slightly to retrieve a small black box from his pocket. All the air leaves her lungs when he reveals the golden ring resting inside. 

“Please… I hope you’ll accept this,” he says. “It’s all too true that I was eager to use your power to my advantage when I first discovered it. But before long, I realized that the world I dream of doesn’t mean much if you aren’t by my side to see it. In other words… I need you just as much as you need me.” he shakes his head. “No, even more than that, I’m certain.” 

“Of course, there’s still work to be done, so as much as I’d like to propose here and now, that isn’t what this is,” Claude continues. “I just want you to think of this as my promise. My promise that you have my heart, that my feelings won’t change, and that I will come back to you, no matter what.” 

For the first time, his eyes seem hesitant when they meet hers. “Would you do me the honor of accepting it?”

The world feels like it’s progressing in slow motion. Her hands move to gently wrap around his. Upon looking closer, the ring is actually composed of three rings. Two thinner bands cross over each other and are connected by a thicker lattice-like band with a golden crescent moon in its center. Touching the two ends of the moon is a round emerald gemstone, reminding her of a very familiar pair of eyes. 

How very like him. It’s so like him, in fact, that it feels as though she might just start crying again.

“Yes,” Byleth whispers. “I will.”

Claude smiles back at her. Carefully, as if she might break from his touch, he holds her hand up and slides the ring onto her finger.

“I have a promise for you, too,” Byleth says, like walking through a dream. “Give me your hand.”

At long last, her mother’s silver ring finds its way onto his finger. The way it fits so perfectly, it must have been made for him, just as she must have lived to find him. She holds his hand for a long while, gazing at the shimmering silver against his tan skin. The air around them feels like it could collapse inward at any moment, yet she’s oddly content with the idea so long as he remains with her. 

“Look at us,” Claude chuckles. “Aren’t we prepared?”

Byleth closes her eyes with a smile. She takes his adorned hand and rests it against her cheek, leaning into it as if to remember every last sensation, to carve in the proof that he is finally hers. Never in all her life had she known a feeling so gentle and sweet. Claude was an endless ocean of these adoring memories, and she had longed for years upon years to forever remain in its tide. 

“I love you, Claude.”

When she opens her eyes, Claude is already looking into them. He raises his other hand to touch her cheek, and she lifts herself up on her toes to meet him in a soft kiss. 

She kissed Claude, and the first thing she felt was an overwhelming rightness. As if every universe and timeline had aligned, and everything she had ever done in her life had finally made sense. Time slowed until she could feel where eternity lay, and every cell in her body began to grow warm and turn to air. Here, in this moment, she felt as though she knew everything about Claude. His past, his future, the way he moved and breathed. She felt his breath and tasted the salt of her tears. 

There, in that moment, nothing had ever felt more right. 

Even when they part,  his warmth feels nearly scorching on her lips. When their eyes connect, Byleth’s chest aches. Claude’s smile is beautiful, and she has never seen him so happy. 

His left hand strokes Byleth’s cheek, brushes away the tears. “Thank you for everything, Byleth. I’ll be back before you know it.”

She looks up at him through her lashes. “I’m holding you to that promise.”

Claude pinches her cheek and laughs at the yelp that escapes her. “Hey, have some faith. How could I ever let someone like you go?”

Byleth bats his hand away, but quickly grabs it back to nestle into it again. “I’ll miss you,” she whispers.

“We’ll only be apart for a short while,” Claude teases, though his voice softens immediately after. “But I’ll miss you too.”

“You’d better,” Byleth jabs back, grinning as he cups her face in his hands again. “You've made me wait far too long to not say that back.” 

Amazingly, Claude lets her drop it there, and settles for pulling her head to his chest in a warm embrace. 

“I love you,” Claude says. “With everything I am. And the next time we see each other, it’ll be at the dawn of a whole new world.”

Byleth’s heart feels whole. She buries her face into his tunic, grasps at it with her hands, takes in the light scent of oranges and pine. Everything she has done up until now was not a mistake after all, if it meant she was able to be here now. 

“We will,” she whispers against his smiling lips, “and what a peaceful, happy world it will be.”

The warm sun of their evening washes over the tower, over their rings, over them. All is quiet, and all is right.

Chapter Text

It is the second Saturday of the Red Wolf Moon, and Claude’s letter should have arrived by now. The moon hangs high in the sky, but Byleth is left tapping her fingers against the stacks of documents she must have signed off by the end of the week. No one is left in the council room except for her and Seteth; however, his voice is beginning to numb her ears, and thinking of Claude seems to soothe the ache a bit.

She closes her eyes. It’s been almost three months since his departure, but it doesn’t get any easier. Though she supposes anyone would have a hard time detaching themselves from the guidance and companionship of someone she’d been fond of for five years, it’s still surprising to her how often she’s kept awake by thoughts of him. Has he been eating properly? Does he still find himself fighting often? How far has he gotten with his negotiating in Almyra? She only gets glimpses of it all from the scribbled letters sent to her window every two weeks or so. After a long day of negotiating on her own end, the last thing she wants to hear is Seteth reminding her of the next dawn’s work when Claude’s letter should be tied to the foot of a young wyvern with a golden handkerchief tied around its horns-

“A hem .”

Byleth’s gaze shoots up from the documents to Seteth’s twitching eyebrow. Uh oh. Given the stuttering of the brow movement, she may have drifted off for longer than usual today. 

“I am glad to see you are still among the living, Your Majesty,” Seteth closes his eyes, though his brow remains irritated. “Now, if I may be so intrusive, did you hear a single word I’ve been saying for the past five minutes?”

“No,” Byleth says without hesitation.

Seteth allows one sigh to part his lips and he rubs his forehead slowly, as if to massage the blood back into it. “Your Majesty, I beg of you, do not make me repeat myself. I understand you are burdened with the weight of maintaining relations, but please consider that you are not the only one who must bear that duty. I am simply here to make operations flow as smoothly as possible. To that end, I ask that you do your best to help me in that endeavor, for everyone’s benefit. And you may start by listening to me when I speak to you.”

Byleth nods. “Right. I’m sorry. Could you repeat the last part again, just one more time?”

“Very well,” Seteth crosses his arms. “As we have discussed, Brigid is considering opening more of their trade routes now that the Empire is no longer restraining their exports. You will be meeting with the main marketing official tomorrow along with their ambassador to establish trust and, if all goes well, begin overseeing possible routes for construction.” 

“I see,” Byleth stretches her arms out over the table and holds the position for a while. “That’s worrisome. I’ve never had to overlook major construction projects before.”

“I fear I am not as familiar with the topic either, but surely there are capable hands within the nation available for hire who can offer their feedback. Leonie's village comes to mind,” Seteth nods to her. “Once we can get the routes approved, it should not be a difficult task to pass on.” 

“Diplomacy with strangers is something I need to approach with care, as well,” Byleth sighs and leans back in her chair. “It would reflect badly on us all if I were to say something ignorant over negotiations. I suppose I’ve some etiquette to brush up on tonight.” 

But he could make anything work. People would fall left and right just to be in his presence, just to hear him speak. 

“If it is the Almyran king you are concerned about, I would have no fear.”

Byleth’s head snaps up to Seteth once again. “How did you know?”

“You often have a certain look on your face at the end of the day,” Seteth says. “Chalk it up to age if you like, but I can see that is the face of a forlorn lover with too many words they long to say.” 

Byleth blinks at him. “Has anyone told you you’re frightening, Seteth?”

“On multiple occasions, yes,” Seteth speaks plainly while jotting a note into his planner, as leisurely as discussing the weather. “Perhaps I should begin keeping a tally.”

Byleth looks away, fingers rhythmically stroking over her ring. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t the time for sentimentality.”

 “Indeed, there is much work to be done,” Seteth nods. “However, I doubt you will have to wait much longer. You have yet to hear what I first intended to say, after all.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I have overheard whispers here and there of what is becoming of Almyra,” he says. “Rumor has it that the nation is slowly considering more diplomatic endeavors with Fodlan, starting with small steps, such as increasing trade routes and lending us more of their soldiers.” 

Her eyes widen. “So that means…”

Seteth smiles. “Yes. It would appear that Claude has been making substantial progress in his movement. I expect you will hear from, if not see him, very soon.”

“How are you so sure?” Byleth asks, though her heart feels ready to somersault out of her chest at the very idea. 

“I, too, was once in love, Your Majesty,” Seteth looks to the window as if expecting something to be there. “And I continue to be, even now. Do not doubt that feeling.” 

There is a palpable sincerity in Seteth’s words, so much so that to question them would be disgracious. All she can do is nod and return his smile, and they leave it at that. 

When Byleth returns to her quarters later that night, there is no letter at her windowsill. With a silent sigh, she removes her flowered headpiece and prays to at least see a happy dream of him. 

Byleth is dreaming of chasing a fleeting sunset when she’s woken by a weight suddenly falling on top of her. Her entire body jolts awake and her hand flies to the dagger under her pillow. She blinks a few times in the darkness with a scream halfway up her throat, when-

“Claude?”

Her brain can hardly process it. From where he’s flopped face-first over her, she can make out his hand, lifting up two fingers in a casual salute.

“Von Riegan, in the flesh,” he confirms, voice muffled in the blankets. 

“I- what are you-” Byleth’s cheeks are flushed. She hurriedly pushes the hair out of her eyes before taking a deep breath and sitting up. “You scared me half to death. Why are you here?”

Claude’s arms wrap around her waist, only causing her head to spin more. “Missed you,” he mumbles, burying his face further into her. 

“How did you even… is Orion out there?”

Claude nods.

“You know you shouldn’t be here,” Byleth sighs, patting his back gently. “Don’t you still have work to do?”

Claude nods again. Byleth can’t help her smile. So despite all the briefly exchanged letters and the miles between them, he had been thinking of her just as much as she had him. It’s somewhat comforting to see him at a loss for once, and more than a bit endearing to see his composure all but melted away, just for her. The thought enables her to push business out of the way for now.

“Well,” Byleth chuckles under her breath, “I’m glad you’re here. I missed you, too.”

Claude nods one more time. Byleth raises an eyebrow at how long he’s gone without speaking, but quickly places the blame on fatigue and starts stroking his hair instead. It feels a bit more windswept than usual, but still as soft as she remembers. She’s no longer sure of the hour, and the room is a bit colder than before since he's gone and left the window ajar, but nothing seems to be of much importance when he’s crossed valleys just to lay in her lap. It vaguely crosses her mind that perhaps this is what it’s like to keep a dog.

Her fingers are idly playing at his ears when one of Claude’s hands close over them. He squeezes tight, as if trying to remember the feeling of her hands all over again. 

“What is it?” Byleth, still smiling, whispers to him.

Claude doesn’t move. He simply holds tight to her hand, and after a long while, finally speaks into the darkness:

“Let’s get married.”

Byleth blinks at him. His sentence doesn’t register immediately. It takes a few moments for his words to actually stick to her brain rather than bounce around hollowly in her skull. His hands are so feverishly warm they feel as though they might leave burns behind.

At last, Claude shifts his head to look up at her from her lap. “Soooo… is the silence a no? Please don’t say no. That would be a mite embarrassing.” 

“Are you serious?” Byleth asks.

“Believe me, if I weren’t, I would have turned the wyvern around a couple miles ago,” Claude chuckles. His expression is wry for just a second until it melts into a sheepish smile, in turn melting Byleth’s heart. “Sorry. I know I’ve sprung up on you at a bit of an inconvenient time, but... I had to ask.”

Byleth readjusts herself so that she’s sitting up straight, propped up on her hands. “No, I just… why now? I thought we were going to leave that for when all your negotiations were done.”

Claude sits up as well so that he’s cross-legged on the bed. He rubs the back of his neck. “At this point, I’d say we’re actually nearing the end of it. I’ve done about all I can; all that’s left is to hold a formal meeting and see where it gets us. And of course there are still some loose ends that need to be tied up, but…” 

Byleth tilts her head. “...but?”

Claude heaves out a sigh. “Sheesh, I’ve really got to spell out something this simple for you, don’t I? Can’t teach an old Teach new tricks or emotional awareness, I suppose.” 

“What is that supposed to-”

She’s cut off by Claude suddenly moving forward to pull her into his chest. His arms circle around her shoulders and squeeze so tightly she can nearly feel the air leaving her. Though she wraps her arms back around him, the only sound in the room is the quiet clacking of the window against the wall, and the whistling of the night air. All at once she’s reminded of how warm Claude is, how broad his shoulders are, how strongly his heart beats for her. It all comes crashing back to her, almost bringing tears to her eyes.

“I’ve had enough of waiting,” Claude whispers to her, sending shivers down her spine. “I want to be with you, Byleth.” 

So much hot air has rushed to her head it feels ready to pop. Careful not to break out of his hold, she leans back and rests her palms against his chest. She looks up at him through her lashes, trying to think of the right words, only to see herself reflected in his eyes. 

Her thoughts go quiet. The need to question his legitimacy seems to diminish itself, as if his gaze alone were enough to answer everything. Rather than questions, her head is left with nothing but the hot air and feverish daze loving him appears to leave her in. Her mouth feels dry.

“When will the ceremony be?” she manages.

Claude hangs his head as if her very words had smacked it down. “You know, shouldn’t I at least get a ‘yes’ from the first proposal I’ve ever meant in my life? This is supposed to be a world-shattering event! Universes should be colliding right about now! The very stars, exploding !”

Byleth bends down so that her head is level with his, and presses a soft kiss to his lips. She smiles when she notices him freezing stiff at the touch.

“Does that suffice?” she asks once she pulls away. Her smile grows wider upon seeing the downright goofy grin on his face. 

“Consider them exploded. Thoroughly,” Claude says, wrapping her up in his arms again and desperately pressing kisses wherever he can get to; her forehead, nose, cheeks, chin, lips. “In fact, I predict a one hundred percent chance of a meteor shower tonight.” 

“That would explain how you got here,” Byleth laughs, returning the pecks to him.

"I happened to be an astrologist in my past life," Claude lets out an elated sigh and leans his weight on her until they both fall back onto the bed. All Byleth can do is smile and continue carding through his hair.

“You know you’ve places to be, Mister Von Riegan,” Byleth teases.

“Painfully aware of it, Your Majesty,” he presses a kiss to her jaw. “Don’t worry. I’ll be out of here by dawn, and no one’ll have noticed I was gone.”

“I don’t know if you might have forgotten this, but you’re the king of Almyra.”

“Ahhh, details, details.”

Byleth’s eye twitches. It had been over five years ago that she first learned of the storm that was having one’s hair, makeup, and dress fitting done all at once. Of course, it was something to hone to over time, but between then and becoming the archbishop she had never returned to the practice, and thus was never quite prepared to undergo ever again. To top it all off is the pressure of the most magical moments of one’s life; their wedding. This is all a necessary evil, she knows, as it would be immortalized in all future history books if the queen of Fodlan attended her own wedding with knives under her armor. But still-

“Hilda, I found more of those flowers you wanted! But there weren’t enough, so I had to grab whatever else I thought was pretty from the greenhouse.”

“Oh, you’re a lifesaver, Leonie! Put them down over there, would you? I’m going to coat them in resin before attaching them to the veil, just to make sure they don’t start falling apart in the middle of the ceremony.”

“Resin? Are you sure you have time for that, Hilda? The veil is so long…”

“Marianne, if you have time to worry out loud, you have time to finish braiding the professor’s hair!”

“R-Right! Can you leave the pins and makeup on that chair, Lysithea?”

But still-

Judith doesn’t even whisper a warning before yanking the corset strings so tightly Byleth can physically feel the air squeezing out of her ribcage. 

I want to see my husband.

All the noise leaves the room. Byleth, nose itching from the smell of makeup and hair product, glances at the women watching her. 

“Just be patient, Professor,” Lysithea smiles. “The next time you see him, it’ll be with all the bells ringing.”

“I bet our dear old Claude is positively beyond himself with all sorts of mushy feelings!” Hilda, settled on a cushion on the floor, stretches her arms out in front of her. “Don’t worry, Professor. I’m sure he’s thinking much the same.”

Byleth blinks. “Did I say that out loud?”

Leonie puts a concerned hand to her cheek. “Oh, no. We’ve totally lost her.”

“It’s not very surprising,” Marianne’s eyes are gentle. “I doubt you’ve had even a moment to meet since Claude returned to the monastery, have you?”

Judith leans an arm on the back of Byleth’s chair. “Do you want to see the boy, Your Grace?”

Byleth’s fingers glide over her ring. “Of course I do, but… we just don’t have the time. I’m sure preparations on his end are busy as is, and Seteth still has to come get me for the pre-ceremony rituals.” 

“You know, back in my day, marriages were a much simpler affair,” Judith waves a hand in the air. “You get the dress together, you get the suit together, sign some documents, then ride off into the sunset for a duel.”

“A duel at sunset?” Hilda repeats with the tone one uses when gazing upon moldy bread. “That doesn’t exactly sound like the most romantic itinerary.” 

“Romantic or not, you’re still warriors at heart; or maybe I still am, who knows?” Judith chuckles. “Either way, all this pre-ceremonial rite sounds like a whole lot of wyvern dung to me. Marriage is a celebration of joyous union! It’s nothing short of counterproductive to keep the lovers apart.” 

Byleth raises an eyebrow. “What are you saying?”

“ I won’t be doing the talking,” Judith says, turning to the soldier posted outside the room. “You there! I need you to deliver a message to Nader.”

“Judith,” Lysithea stands up. “What on earth are you planning?” 

“I’m leaving the queen to you girls,” Judith winks at them. “Get her to the courtyard in the next twenty minutes. Oh, and make sure you don’t bump into Seteth on the way there, or else this whole plan is a bust. And I’ll be held responsible, so don’t mess this up.” 

Hilda nearly drops the veil in her hands. “Oh no. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” 

Leonie clenches her fist with a daring smile. “Alright! Operation Courtyard Rendezvous is a go!”

Marianne copies Leonie’s fist-clench. “I’ll do my best!”

Byleth’s corset suddenly feels too tight again. 

“I am just saying that nothing would represent the love between Claude and the professor better than a rose brooch hand-tailored by the Gloucester jewelers. The expenses have already been covered by yours truly!”

“I get where you’re coming from, but doesn’t that seem a little too grandiose? Theirs is a romance that transcends all odds and conventional symbols of love. A rose feels too on-the-nose for them.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Ignatz, but could you take all these robes off me? I kinda got used as a walking coat hanger by the tailors.” 

“C’mon, chin up, kiddo! You still haven’t decided the colour and length of your wedding robe.” 

Claude, having tried on the nineteenth robe of that morning, speaks with his head cradled in his hands. “Nader, with all due respect, I am literally getting married this afternoon. As a bachelor’s gift, could you please stop calling me ‘kiddo’? And whichever is fine, they all look good.” 

“What’s with the long face?” Nader leans against the back of Claude’s chair and pinches his cheek; Claude bats him away at lightning speed. “You’d think you’d be more psyched up, choosing the robe you’ll wear to wed a beautiful woman. The queen of Fodlan, no less!”

“I agree with Nader. ‘Tis the duty of the nobility to look fitting on every occasion, especially their wedding !” Lorenz shakes his head. “If we are to be witnessing the first-ever union of two neighboring nations, it won’t do for you to be anything less than the spitting image of Almyran culture.” 

“Hang in there, Claude,” Ignatz pats his shoulder. “I get that you must want to see the professor, but it’s only a matter of time. Until then, we should get you looking as best you can before the ceremony, right?”

“Why don’t we try on the blue one?” Raphael smiles a big, warm smile that crinkles his eyes. “I think the professor would like blue on ya, since you don’t wear it all the time.”

Claude is in the middle of opening his mouth to object against that one shade of indigo in particular when a soldier’s voice rings out from the door: “Sir Nader! I have a verbal message to deliver from Judith.” 

“Judith?” Nader’s eyebrows meet his hairline. “She should be helping the archbishop right about now. What’s the message?”

“Right. She says, ‘I’m sending the queen to the courtyard for an intervention. Have Claude over in twenty, and if you want your nads intact, don’t let anyone see him’.”

Nader rubs his face. “That woman. What did my nads ever do to her?”

“Wait, hold on, never mind them,” Ignatz’s eyes are wider than dinner plates. “Judith’s staging a rendezvous just hours before the wedding? What is she thinking? We still aren’t done the preparations!”

Lorenz slaps a hand to his forehead. “Just splendid. I’m loathe to say it, but we can’t very well just leave our professor out for a one-sided reunion.” 

“Yeah! The professor might be on her way there right now!” Raphael tries to pump his fist, but the robes nearly come sliding off him all at once. He looks to Claude instead, carefully cradling the fabrics in his arms. “What do we do, Claude?”

Claude chuckles and reaches back to run a hand through his hair. “Judith really is something else. To think she’d take a gamble like that, just for this? You’re right, Lorenz. We can’t leave them hanging.” 

His eyes scan the room, finally landing on the mess of robes in Raphael’s arms. Claude looks up to him with a grin. 

“I’ve got a plan.”

From where she is huddled at the door with her Golden Deer, Byleth is confused. In all her years as a mercenary, she was often relied on for the transport and protection of goods. Never in all of those years had she thought the day would come where she would become said goods in order to see her husband. 

“I don’t know about this,” Marianne says, hands clenched tight in a last-minute prayer. “Isn’t it too risky?”

“Like it or not, this is the best chance we have,” Lysithea nods. “If we know that Seteth is coming, we need to make sure he’s in sight before making our move so the professor won’t run into him later.” 

“We’ll be counting on you for a good distraction, Marianne!” Hilda flashes her a thumbs-up. “Just like we practiced, okay?”

“It’s sweet of you girls to worry, but you don’t have to do this,” Byleth shakes her head, suddenly feeling very unprepared. “I can always just wait until the ceremony to-”

“Seteth’s coming!” Leonie’s head ducks back into the room from the hallway. “I’m getting into position!” 

Hilda gives her one final salute. As Leonie sprints out of the doorway, footsteps thundering against the floor, Byleth realizes that it is too late for anyone to come out of this unscathed. 

There’s an audible yelp from the approaching Seteth, signalling that Leonie has passed him. Marianne sucks in a breath and bounds into the hall. Lysithea stands up, and Byleth can hardly utter a word before Hilda has her up and cradled in her arms. She’s surprised for only a moment before remembering the axes upon axes she’s seen Hilda melt through on the battlefield, and chooses not to say anything.

“G-Good day, Seteth!” Byleth can tell Marianne is trying to sound natural, but the high pitch of her voice gives it away. “What are you doing here?”

“Ah, Marianne. I was just on my way to fetch the archbishop for the final rites of passage. Was there something you needed?”

Marianne casts a glance over her shoulder; Hilda places her dominant leg in front while leaning her weight on the other. Lysithea scuttles in front of her, still carefully hidden in the doorway. 

“O-Oh, nothing much,” Marianne says, turning back around.  “I was simply wondering what kind of rituals must be involved before an archbishop is to marry. It seems like quite the ordeal.”

“Might we discuss this another time, Marianne? I am glad to hear of your interest in the topic, but I fear that I must retrieve the archbishop as soon as-”

“C-Claude!” Marianne cries out too loudly, as if the thought had tumbled into her head all at once. “I-I had some concerns about Claude. You see, the other day, he- he was trying to eat some soup, but it turns out he was using a fork, and-”

“ Now! ” Lysithea yells, dashing out into the hall while keeping her frame close to the ground. Hilda, roaring out a battle cry of her own, releases all the energy pressed into her legs and charges behind Lysithea.

Byleth blinks; the world moves in slow-motion. As they come barreling toward Seteth, the first thing she sees is the dilation of his pupils and his jaw falling open in utter shock. She’s surprised that no sound leaves her throat when Hilda swings her back once, then tosses her up in the air as if she were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. There’s a single shing of a magic sigil opening, and a small gust of wind placed perfectly under her is enough to bounce her over Seteth’s head entirely. All the air comes crashing back into her lungs when she lands straight into Leonie’s waiting arms at the end of the hallway, and it occurs to her then that she hadn’t been breathing through that whole sequence. 

“What is the meaning of-” Seteth stutters, “Your Majesty! What in the world are you-”

“Oh, Seteth, it’s awful!” Hilda exclaims as if nothing had just happened. “Last night I saw Flayn come out of a boy’s dormitory room, and-”

“ What?! ” 

Byleth is afraid this entire exchange might give Seteth sensory overload. 

“I’m sorry!” she calls out to him over Leonie’s shoulder as she’s whisked away in her arms. 

“I don’t think this fits on me,” says Raphael, covered in five robes layered around his massive frame. 

“Sorry, Raphael, but I don’t think you have much of a choice,” Ignatz gives him a pat on the back. “Just put up with it for now. Claude, are you almost ready to go?”

“Ready and willing,” Claude says, voice muffled from behind the three layers of robes draped over his head and wrapped around his waist. “Is Lorenz in position?”

Ignatz looks out the window. Lorenz, standing with his horse below the monastery’s second floor, gives him a single nod. Ignatz flashes a thumbs-up back. 

“He’s ready,” Ignatz lifts up the multiple tails of Raphael’s cloaks and gently pushes Claude’s wrapped figure underneath. “All we have to do is smuggle you down the stairs and out to the horse, and you’ll be at the courtyard in no time.”

“If you don’t make it out of here in one piece, just know that it was an honor training you, kiddo,” Nader says, solemn enough to pass for a funeral speech. “Best I ever had.”

“All my pieces are going to be intact and married , Nader, never you worry,” Claude flatly protests from under Raphael’s cloak curtains. “Alright, Deer, let’s move out.”

“Remember, Raphael,” Ignatz says to him as they shuffle down the hall, “if anyone asks, you’re in the middle of suffering from a terrible cold, and we’re taking you to the dining hall to get some warm soup because it’s the only thing that makes you feel better.”

Raphael’s entire body is moving along the floor with the fluidity and grace of a brick. He nods stiffly. “Cold. Dining hall. Soup. Got it.”

Ignatz’s gaze lifts up upon hearing the giggling of children bounding up the stairs and into the hall. A young boy and girl, no older than nine, come running at the sight of the giant man wrapped in what appears to be patterned curtains. 

“Whoa, he’s huge!” the boy gapes at Raphael as they pass, only coming up to his knees. 

“Hi, mister!” the girl calls, her innocent voice ringing out. “How are you?”

“I feel great!” Raphael says without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m on my way to get some soup because I- oh,” he clears his throat. “Because I’m sick !” 

Ignatz, feeling a sort of intense pain he hadn’t known he could feel, squeezes his eyes shut and prays for them to make it out of this battlefield to see the next sunrise. 

Once the children pass, another set of footsteps comes tumbling down the stairs from the upper floors. Ignatz nearly jumps out of his skin to see Seteth, sweatier than he’s ever seen him, dashing toward them.

“You there!” Seteth comes skidding to a stop in front of the three. “Have you seen the archbishop? She- she’s been-” he fumbles for the right word, “-abducted!”

Before Raphael can open his mouth, Ignatz blurts out, “N-No, I can’t say we have. I was simply on my way to get Raphael some soup. He’s suffering from an intense cold, you see.” 

“Yeah! That’s why I gotta wear all these robes,” Raphael nods. “They were meant for Claude, but-”

“Claude,” Seteth whispers, eyes widening. “No. Could it be that those two plan to…” 

Ignatz feels a single bead of sweat roll down his back. This is not good.

Seteth clears his throat and stands up straight. “Ignatz. Raphael. I sincerely hope you are able to get your soup before the ceremony, and that you can recover in due time. And if you happen to see Claude anywhere-” his green eyes pierce through Ignatz’s soul- “I am trusting you to let me know.”

Ignatz swallows. He can barely muster a nod. “Y-Yes, sir.” 

Seteth nods back. He spins on his heel and starts breaking out into a speedwalk yet again, but he bumps roughly into Raphael’s shoulder on his way before passing. The trio manages to take a few more shuffles forward until Raphael stops in his tracks in stark realization.

“Oh, no,” Raphael looks behind him in horror. “My meat!”

Ignatz, running short on prayers, spares a glance. Sure enough, one of Raphael’s beloved meat jerky strips is abandoned on the ground. Before Ignatz can even move, Raphael is spinning around and bending over to collect the precious meat, causing the hidden Claude bundle to collide with his chest and fall on his back; into the open air. 

“Ow!” the Claude-bundle yelps upon making impact with both the ground and the jerky. 

Just as Ignatz is praying for Seteth to magically lose his hearing, the advisor turns around only to see a pair of bare feet poking out from a cocoon of robes, Raphael half-bent over to move said cocoon and retrieve a piece of jerky off the floor, and Ignatz trying desperately to turn the robe-clad Raphael back around to cover the cocoon on the floor.

Ignatz, having completely run out of both prayers and options, does the only thing he can think to do. 

“Claude, I’m so sorry about this!” Ignatz cries, shoving Raphael out of the way. Seteth’s footsteps start pounding to them, and Ignatz uses both his hands to roll the Claude-bundle around the last corner and push it down the stairs.

Each ‘ow’ that echoes down the stairwell feels like it cracks into Ignatz’s skull. 

“ Lorenz !” Claude splutters out once he finally manages to get his head out of the robes. 

Lorenz, far from fazed, can only sigh before throwing the wrapped Claude over the back of his horse and slapping its rear end. The entrusted steed lets out a whinny that rips through the air before bounding away in the vague direction of the courtyard.

“It was truly nice knowing you, Claude,” Lorenz says to the sky, trying desperately not to hear Seteth’s exasperating breathing just feet away. “A world without you will be ever so dull.” 

The sound of footsteps rustling along the grass seems to ring out from where Byleth has hidden herself in the gazebo. Her spine shoots up straight in her chair. The urge to dive into a hedge and become one with the shrubbery is nearly unbearable in her bodice and lace underskirt, but she forces her eyes in the direction of her pursuer regardless, until-

“Claude?”

Her lover stumbles into the gazebo covered in dust, twigs caught in his hair, and half-wrestling numerous robes off his body. A horse whinnies in the background. Claude, panting as if he had just run all the way from Almyra, takes a huge gulp of air before giving her a two-fingered salute.

“Hi,” he says.

By the gods, I love him so much.

“Where in the world did you come from?” Byleth’s face splits into a smile as she bounds to him, gathering her skirt in her hands. She looks down at his feet and blinks. “And why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

“Hold, milady, you shan’t get too close!” Claude sticks one arm out (as the other is still trying to untangle a robe from around his waist) to keep her at bay, and does a half-hop backwards. “I’d hate to get this grime all over your fancy dress. If your preparations have been going anything like mine, it must’ve been a whole ordeal and a half to even get that on you.”

Byleth can’t help but laugh as she carefully starts brushing the leaves and twigs out of Claude’s hair. “I happen to think grime adds a bit of character. You might have a bit too much going on here, though.”

Claude sighs, but Byleth can tell he’s just putting on a pouting face to get her to coddle him more. His hands rise up to gently wrap around her wrists, his fingers rubbing circles into them. “Oh, tell me about it. I actually lucked out to get away with only this much, you know, considering I did get shoved down a flight of stairs and then fell off the back of a horse like the hotcakes my grandmother was oh-so-terrible at making.” He opens his eyes to look at her. “I don’t miss those.” 

Byleth laughs again, giving up on the dirt removal and instead pulling his head to her with both hands. Despite his protests, he immediately settles into the crook of her neck and his arms fasten around her waist as if it’s been years since he’s done so. They stay like that for a while, Claude tracing idle little circles on the back of her bodice and Byleth slowly stroking his hair.

“I missed you,” she tells him.

“Right back at you,” Claude murmurs into her. “I probably owe Judith my life for setting this up.” He thinks on that for a moment. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

“It’s more surprising you didn’t lose your life trying to get here at all,” Byleth teases. “I’m just glad you made it in one piece.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say, what about the ends justifying the means and all that,” Claude hums. “Still, I could have very well come close to dislocating my nose, and what consequences would that have had on my roguishly handsome face?” He slides off her shoulder and stands up to face her, lifting up one hand to brush a lock of hair to the side of her forehead. His eyes are playful. “I think we could thank it with a kiss.” 

“Thank it for what, surviving?” Byleth nudges his chin to the side with two fingers, but she’s smiling so much her cheeks hurt. “And aren’t the kisses supposed to be reserved for the ceremony?”

“Ack, how stingy!” Claude whines, trying to nuzzle closer despite Byleth’s pushing. “Come on, you never charged me for kisses before today. What further lengths must I go to beseech my lover for a singular smooch?”

Byleth utters a curse in her mind. There is absolutely zero reason for her to be as charmed as she is by this fool.

“For today,” Byleth says, fully giving in at this point, “nothing.”

Claude smiles back. The turned lines of his lips are all she sees as he leans in, breath just shy of her own.

“Your Majesty!”

Byleth feels like her skull has just been beaten in by a hammer. She jumps out of Claude’s arms and turns, only to see Catherine and Shamir feet away. Catherine sighs and scratches the back of her head, while Shamir simply stands beside her with her arms crossed over her chest. 

“So this is where you’ve been hiding away all this time,” Shamir does not look amused. “You know you’ve sent the entire order of knights into disarray looking for you, right? Sorry, lovebirds, but your time is up.” 

“Damn,” Claude clicks his tongue. “Who gave you guys the slip?”

“You have Nader to thank. For as long as he’s been the face of an army, he sure hasn’t mastered the art of lying,” Catherine laughs before wrapping her arm around Byleth’s shoulders and guiding her away. “Come on, Your Grace, Lady Rhea’s waiting for you.”

“R-Right,” Byleth nods, though she manages to look over her shoulder one last time to get once final look at her lover before he’s thrown into the wringer once more. Unfortunately, it appears to have already started, seeing as how Shamir is dragging him in the opposite direction by the ear, despite Claude’s very loud complaining. 

“Did you tell Seteth I’m sorry?” Byleth asks Catherine.

Catherine takes a shaky sigh and squeezes her shoulder once. “Seteth is in a… fragile state at the moment. You’d best offer him the apology personally.”

Byleth hangs her head down. “Right.” 

It is not until Catherine pushes her into the audience chamber and closes the door behind her, not until Byleth realizes she’s staring at her feet and has to lift her gaze to see Rhea standing backlit through the glass, that she remembers the last time they had properly spoken was when the truth about her heart had been revealed. Even at the coronation ceremony, it had been difficult to look Rhea in the eyes, fearing some harmless remark about the familiar hue of her own irises would pull the rug out from beneath her feet. No one seemed to want to acknowledge that Rhea was weak; that she would never return to her former glory, as if saying it aloud would be akin to stepping on the shards of stained glass surrounding her.

Since becoming Byleth’s advisor, Seteth has mentioned little of her, leaving Byleth to assume Rhea has been spending her days quietly in the monastery, just shy of Byleth's view. She wonders if this is where Rhea truly wants to be, given all she has seen; given all she has no choice but to continue seeing. Byleth’s lungs, stricken with deja vu, feel tight.

“Sweet child,” Rhea whispers.

Byleth looks away again. Though she had known a pre-ceremonial ritual would be in order, she fears that no amount of time will ever be able to drain the unease from her chest when Rhea is near. 

“You must want the crest stone back,” Byleth’s fingers curl around her wrist. “Is there a special procedure I should be aware of?”

Rhea’s eyes fill with a pain Byleth is sad to recognize. Rhea shakes her head. “No, dear one. You misunderstand. In truth, there is no such ritual to be performed. The reason why I have summoned you here today is because…” she takes a slow breath. “I wished to speak to you in person, at least once, before your soul is to be joined to another. I hope you can forgive my moment of selfishness. Or rather… all of my selfishness leading up to this moment.” Rhea closes her eyes. Her hands are clasped tightly in front of her. “I do not need the crest stone back. I must allow myself to let my mother- let you - go free, as you were always meant to.”

Byleth swallows a lump in her throat. “What do you mean?”

Rhea’s gaze settles on a spot of light shining through the glass. “I desperately longed to see my mother again. To be held in her arms, and to witness her bring salvation to this land once more. At numerous times, I found myself thinking that I did not care how many lives I would have to sacrifice to achieve that goal. But you, sweet child, are different.” 

Byleth raises her head. “How so?”

“I wished for you to become the progenitor god; to accomplish all that I could not. However, I was so blinded by my grief that I have never once seen you for the person you truly are.” When Rhea opens her eyes, they meet Byleth with an emotion so palpable she could nearly reach out and break it. “For all the pain I have caused you… for the expectations and loss I have forced upon your life… I am sorry, Byleth.” 

Byleth’s mouth is dry. There’s an odd, swelling sensation behind her eyes. She realizes all at once what it means to be seen . 

“You’re right,” Byleth says at last. “Of course there has been pain and suffering, and losses I will never be able to forget. But for each of those moments, there has been so much joy; so much I never thought was possible to feel. All because you and my mother chose to bring me into this world.”

Her throat feels tight. When she looks up, she can see Rhea’s lips trembling.

“Thank you, Rhea,” Byleth smiles. “I’m glad I was born.” 

With movements as fluid as water, Rhea glides across the floor to Byleth. As she pulls Byleth to her chest in a tender embrace, Byleth notices for the first time the light scent of floral oil and lilies. Its lingering familiarity makes her heart ache. 

“You have grown so strong,” Rhea whispers to her. “Sitri and Jeralt would be proud of who you have become.” 

Byleth takes a deep breath. She allows her arms to circle back around Rhea, and is surprised by the warmth she finds there. 

“I hope so,” Byleth says. “I forgive you, Rhea. I will never trust you. But I forgive you.”

Rhea squeezes her tight, wrapped in the shining colours of the stained glass. 

“Please do not deny me the joy of ever trying, dearest Byleth.” 

♡

Despite their extensive practicing, Alois is crying before the cathedral gates open. Byleth can tell he’s trying his best, but the tears are rolling and his face looks like it’s in pain from how hard he’s clenching his muscles. She can’t help but smile through the lace of her veil.

Byleth, with her arm linked in his, gives what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze. “We haven’t even walked inside yet, Alois.”

“I’m sorry, Your Grace! I just… I’m simply overcome!” Alois scrubs his suit sleeve across his face. “To think that I would be the one walking you down the aisle… if only he could see you now, Captain Jeralt would be- be so-” he politely relegates his mouth to the inside of his elbow. “- wauuuughhhhhh !”

Byleth looks down at the train of her dress, pristine white and speckled with flower petals. Just a few years ago, her father would have been telling her to stay away from such impractical gear. Yet it occurs to her now that they had never spoken about the prospect of her getting married. Given the workings of her heart at the time, it seemed an impossible topic to breach. Part of her stings with a slight regret, but she can almost hear his voice now:

Looking good, kid.

Byleth looks over her shoulder to Catherine and Shamir, both of them holding the train of her dress. They’re handsome, dressed in suits for the occasion. The idea of her holding trains for them at their eventual wedding makes her happy.

“Don’t you start too, Catherine,” Shamir says, deadpan as ever.

“I-I’m not!” says Catherine, eyes red and very much about to start. “There’s just… pollen. In the air. And I can’t wipe away the tears if I’m holding this, now, can I?” 

“Saps. Every last one of you,” says Shamir, but she’s smiling anyway. She nods a signal to the guards on either side of the gate, and soon the familiar clinking noises of the gate rising ring through the air. Alois wipes the last of the tears from his face and clears his throat, though his eyes are still swollen.

“Shall we go, Your Grace?” Alois’ voice is shaking, but happy.

“Together,” Byleth nods, and they make their way down the aisle. 

The choir inside the cathedral is much louder than she would have imagined it to be. Though she should have expected the entirety of the monastery’s population to be attending, she still feels her cheeks warm from being watched by so many eyes at once. There are a few gasps, several murmurs, the giggles and exclamations of children, and hushed whispers of “Professor!” from one side of the cathedral in particular. 

When she meets eyes with her beloved students, the tears in their eyes nearly draw out her own. Her head feels as though it’s filled with hot air. Since when could one person’s happiness inspire the joy of so many? Who could have known that just one day, choosing one path would have given her so much? Was it alright for one person to be this happy?

Every question is answered when she sees Claude waiting for her in front of the altar. As handsome as he is in his gold-trimmed robes and sash, it’s the sunlit smile on his face that steals the breath from her lungs. 

When she reaches the altar, she steps forward and lets her hands find Claude’s expecting ones held in front of him. Seteth clears his throat and begins reciting some sort of speech preceding the vows, but the blood rushing in her eardrums drowns the words out. All she can feel is the tenderness in the air, the slight dryness of Claude’s palms, and the tight coil in her chest. 

As Seteth is still reciting, Claude squeezes her fingers twice. A signal. Byleth looks up and is slightly alarmed by the playful gleam in his eyes. As if they were a spell, he mouths several silent words: 

Shall we get out of here?

Someone in the front row yawns. Seteth’s gaze is focused on the text in his hands. The stirring in Byleth’s chest tells her she wants to kiss Claude, badly, and nothing else is of much importance. 

She nods. 

“-and with that, do you, Claude von Riegan, take Byleth Eisner as your betrothed?” Seteth closes the text at last. “In times of illness, times of sorrow, and times of joy, to remain in each other’s souls until death do you part?” 

“I’ll let you figure that one out on your own, Seteth,” Claude says without even looking up. Before Seteth can protest, Claude lifts two fingers to his lips and blows a sharp whistle that pierces the entire cathedral and cuts the choir’s hymn short. 

Oh no.

Within three seconds, Orion comes crashing through the side of the cathedral wall with an elated roar. Screams scatter in the air along with the dust and debris spraying from the left side of the hall. Byleth is surprised at how unsurprised she is, and even more surprised still when the smile won’t leave her face. 

“Your Majesty-” Seteth’s voice is higher than she’s ever heard it, but she ignores the prospect of imminent death for later. 

Claude grabs Byleth’s hand and starts running to Orion. She gathers up what parts of her train she can fit into her free hand and stumbles after him. Once he jumps onto Orion’s waiting saddle, he pulls her up into his lap in one sleek motion. Without even having to utter a word, Orion turns and makes a massive leap back in the direction she came from. 

All of a sudden, the air is thin, and the wind is whistling through Byleth’s ears. She keeps her arms fastened around Claude’s neck as she feels them rising higher and higher. Her eyes are squeezed shut, until his hands come floating down to unfasten the veil from her hair.

“You won’t be needing this,” Claude says over the wind, and lets the veil go. Byleth watches it flutter away violently in the breeze behind them.

“I liked that veil, thank you very much.”

“Sorry,” Claude chuckles, brushing stray locks of hair from her updo away from her eyes. “There’s just a sight I’d much rather be seeing at the moment.”

Byleth looks out over Orion’s horns. The monastery is small. Far, far away, as if these clouds above it were a sanctuary just for her and Claude. Her husband.

Her husband . Something about it rings differently in her mind now. She turns back to her husband, golden and beautiful and perfect, and cups his cheek with her hand. 

“I believe I’m owed a kiss,” Byleth smiles. 

Claude smiles back. “I knew you weren’t so stingy.” 

He leans in close enough for her to feel his breath once more-

-then wraps her up in his arms and dips them off the edge of Orion’s saddle. 

Before Byleth can even start screaming, he seals her voice and heart with a kiss.

It’s messy. She finds that falling through the air and kissing doesn’t make for a good multitasking project. Their teeth bump and she bites his lip by accident; still, the euphoria coursing through her makes her feel light enough to float into the clouds. Somehow, everything is right, and she is exactly where she has always been meant to be. 

Their backs meet Orion’s saddle again, knocking all the remaining air out of her lungs. From where Claude is nestled into her, still clutching her like she’s all that matters, she can feel him laughing. It’s a joyous sound, a beautiful sound, one she wants to wake up to until the end of time. Before she realizes, she’s laughing, too.

Claude pulls her up into a sitting position. The joy in his eyes is beyond words. He opens his mouth to try to say something, but Byleth takes his face in her hands and kisses him once more. 

Yes, she thinks as they glide high above the skies in the light of their new, beautiful world, I knew we would be great together after all.