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Byleth felt like he had been struck by magic, seeing Monica’s blade, reddened with Jeralt’s blood. An unpleasant tingle from his spine to the back of his head. Relax. Rewind.
Back.
This time he would kill her, he was ready. The Sword of the Creator warmed in his hand, all but quivering with rage, he struck wordlessly, Jeralt turned to look at him with shock, the Sword connected. This time he was treated with the full expression of pain and surprise on Jeralt’s face as Monica’s weapon slid between his ribs. Byleth registered the pale, unfamiliar face for a moment, no more, and then he was on his knees, sliding his arms around Jeralt. It must be treatable. There was no way that it all ended here.
“Sorry,” the voice rasped. “It looks like I’ll have to leave you now.”
Leave? The tingle spread to fingertips, hands shaking, over-warm with flowing blood. His chest hurt, deep and tight; it was hard to breathe. Had he been stabbed, also? His vision blurred, eyes hot, he could barely see Jeralt’s face as his eyes opened--
“To think that the first time I saw you cry, your tears would be for me.”
Tears?
“It’s sad, and yet… I’m happy for it.”
“Thank you… kid.”
He sat, waiting for more, waiting for one more word, for one more breath. The only warmth he felt was from the burning in his chest and the tears flowing like an unstaunched wound. After an eternity, he was parted from his father and returned to Garreg Mach in an uncertain haze. He briefly remembered Rhea’s soft words, dismissing him from a briefing without a word having left his lips. Byleth, encouraged by her words, found himself drifting toward Jeralt’s room.
He stood there, burning, trembling, struggling to breathe through the heat of it all. Every inhale smelled like horse and alcohol and leather. Like Jeralt.
“It must have been fate.”
Byleth sucked in a breath, ragged and hot over the pain in his chest like coals. He said nothing, frozen in his father’s room. He heard Sothis murmur his name with concern and alarm as his throat constricted, and then they were back.
Back.
This time he ran, a line of fire from his lungs to his throat. He was thrown back in a flash of lilac, he heard his father shout his name, punctuated by a gasp of pain. He couldn’t bear to see it again.
Back.
“Byleth”
This time he leapt after Jeralt with a throbbing headache and an unsteady gait as soon as the Divine Pulse subsided. He remained his shadow through the ride to the chapel, and was never further away from him than the Sword could reach as they rescued the students, confident in his own. He noticed their concerned and confused gazes and ignored them. Jeralt, once the fighting was over, reached out to delicately touch his nose.
“Are you alright? Did you get hit in the face? Your eyes are watering.”
Byleth made no move to brush his hands away and, after a moment, said: “Just dirt. They’ll be fine.”
This time he was able to stand directly at his father’s back while Monica danced around him. He glared at her with all the heat he felt in his chest and she wavered in surprise, then stepped inside his guard. He grabbed her wrist as she made to slide her curved knife into his belly. He felt her bones crack like brittle wood, saw her expression turn from smug to pained, and in an instant something black and sinuous had appeared from behind her and struck out at him. Byleth didn’t move as the thin ribbon sliced through his side, shockingly cold like it was leaving a streak of ice across his skin. He heard his father stumble.
Back.
He herded Jeralt well away from the chapel, standing directly in front of Daisy as if daring her to trample him as he wavered unsteadily. He could feel their concern, and his students’, but they waited patiently while the Knights scoured the area. Monica appeared where she had not been a moment ago and skipped toward his father, thanking him with a smile on her face. Byleth homed in on her like an owl on a mouse, lunging barehanded for her throat.
The pale stranger must not have anticipated his lethal intentions without the sword. Jeralt shouted his name angrily and he could hear his mount gallop toward them as his hand squeezed tightly around her throat. It wasn’t so easy to strangle someone as Ashe and Ingrid’s books made it seem. Monica kicked and kneed and scratched, her throat tensing.
A hand grabbed him by the back of his jacket and yanked him back with shocking ease. Monica slipped through his fingers like water, dancing back with only a stagger to show that she had tangled with the Demon and he heard Dimitri talking into his ear.
“Professor, I need you to calm down. It’s alright, she’s not an enemy--”
There was a flash of dreaded lilac and pain washed through him like the lightning under his skin had increased tenfold. He lay dazed on the ground, Dimitri’s arm uncomfortable under his back. He heard his students shouting, felt Dimitri struggling to lift himself onto his elbows, heard a horse squeal in pain and fright and heard her stumble. He heard an ominous crunch, his gaze was drawn unwillingly toward it and he did not even allow himself fully register the still body lying beside Daisy’s twitching form.
Back.
The same as the first. This time when the man appeared, he was able to use what little Reason he had to keep the magic from knocking him off his feet entirely, sliding the man’s field across his own. His head was throbbing. Jeralt turned and shouted angrily at the man, Monica, startled, leapt back at the sudden hostility, demanding to know why the man was here.
The stranger raised his hand again and Byleth placed the Sword against the barrier and drove until his wrists sparked in pain against the pressure. His strength and willpower, his goddess-given ability, was unable to pierce it before the fire spell struck, Jeralt too close to dodge. His lance did little to shield him. He fell without a sound, the brightness of the flash leaving Byleth half blinded as he stumbled to his father’s side, legs feeling as wobbly as a newborn lamb’s. His gloved hands touched flesh, a horrific mesh of char and raw, wet redness.
Jeralt never opened his eyes, never felt Byleth’s tears on his skin, never heard Byleth scream and scream, rising to a nearly inhuman pitch. He felt like there was a raging fire in his chest, lightning under his skin.
Someone clad in Knight armor attempted to pull him away. It happened so quickly. His muscles uncoiled and he was upon the man, fingers digging in, metal buckling as he shrieked his outrage. He lunged for the man’s throat, but a strong pair of hands grabbed the nape of his coat and his head snapped back. He felt a tingling numbness as his own lip was pierced as his jaws closed. He felt the pressure of magic users attempting to subdue him, like a noose slowly tightening.
“What in the hell--”
“By the goddess--”
“Professor!”
“Hush now.”
Back. This time Sothis’ doing.
He let out a desperate shout for his father, to warn him, but his throat was nearly closed with grief. Jeralt turned--why did it look as though there were two of him now?--and had him under the elbows in three long, quick strides, shouting his name. Everything sounded muffled, his ears felt warm, too, was that normal when you cried? His arms slid around Jeralt, futilely grabbing everything he could cover. Monica’s knife was sharp as it slid through his left forearm and into Jeralt. Then it felt numb. His father toppled forward, trapping him under his weight.
“No more, no more,” he whispered, he whispered into Jeralt’s tunic, echoed by Sothis.
Yet, he wrenched the wheel of time away from her once more, unwilling, as if a slave to the inferno where his heart should be.
Back.
He could barely muster the strength to fling the Sword at her, already stumbling toward the pale man. The man stepped aside, sensing no danger, and Monica backed away in shock at seeing him suddenly so near her. His muscles felt like water as he and Jeralt collapsed on the earth together. He slid his palm over the wound and cast Heal, newly learned and unfamiliar, trying to ease his father’s pain. Red and clear droplets rained down onto Jeralt’s slack face.
“You’re crying?” His father murmured, eyes opening, they were warm and earthy, and Byleth tried to memorize every fleck of amber as they widened in shock.
He lowered his head to his father’s. He smelled like sweat and fresh blood and leather and dad. Remember this.
“Byleth, Byleth,” his father murmured, his voice rough and tender, his fingers fumbling blindly across his face. Byleth held his father’s hand to his cheek until the fingers went slack and Jeralt’s eyes slid closed. Remember this.
There was a fire in his chest and lightning under his skin and water in his eyes as he crouched, trying to shield his father from the rain.
“No more,” he whispered as his body heaved weakly. Sothis had a death grip on her own power. “No more,” she agreed softly.
When a hand reached for him, he did not lash out, but he would not relinquish his hold on his father. Someone placed their palms on his shoulders and gently pushed him up, murmuring his title in a vaguely familiar voice. He lifted his gaze from Jeralt’s tunic, the coldness of his father’s flesh burned into it, but he saw only darkness. He was struck with vertigo, and then he felt nothing more.
He did not know how much time had passed. Sometimes he would think he would wake, his body numb or burning in turns, he would catch glimpses of people, Manuela, Rhea, the Blue Lions, students from other houses. Sometimes someone would hold his hand, familiar and calloused, and he would turn his head to see his father, he would whisper his name, throat swollen and sore. And then Manuela would come and there would be nothing again.
Now he found himself with Sothis, the green-haired woman crouching on the ground out of arm’s reach, watching him. Even trying to feel for the Divine Pulse made his vision go white with pain.
“Don’t. You’ve nearly killed yourself, do you know that?” She scolded him, her voice lacking its usual bite. “I cannot believe you so foolish as to try to fight fate, even for your father.”
Byleth was quiet for a moment, and then thought at her, as she did at him: “What good are these gifts if I am powerless to fate?”
“Byleth, you have already changed so much, you are not powerless--”
“What good is power if I cannot save the one I love most?”
She went quiet then, for a moment, and then tried to reach out to him. He shunned her comfort.
He didn’t speak, and she, after trying a few times, stopped trying to get him to respond. Byleth was content to sit and pretend he did not feel anything, that he didn’t feel like there was a ragged hole in his torso and that his throat and eyes didn’t hurt. That he wasn’t trembling. That he wasn’t feeling more strongly than he’d ever felt. At last, he stirred and turned his head to look at her.
“Does…” he began, slowly, his voice oddly thick and alien in his ears. “Does the pain ever stop?”
Sothis started and looked at him attentively, then she sank back on her haunches, eyes dark. He knew her answer before she gave it, but he could hope. “No. I’m sorry.”
He rubbed his chest, over the star-shaped scar, and wondered, not for the first time, if he was broken.