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The fight was not a particularly hard one. Perhaps his standards were skewed after so many years of knowing battle and not much else, but this was the kind of fight where he found his body moving as if Sothis herself possessed him - without much thought, less with skill and more on instinct. Bones broke under bones as the Sword of the Creator felled soldier after soldier, red uniforms hardly distinguishable from bloodstained skin (not that it mattered, they tore all the same).
It was an easy fight, easy for a human, let alone an automaton born - no, built, automatons are built - on the battlefield, or a vessel of the progenitor god. And yet Byleth's body felt as heavy as stone and his mind as fragile as glass.
His father had once said that killing gets easier over time. It was in a conversation with a newcomer to their mercenary band, a newcomer to mercenary work in general. He had been a hunter before he joined, Byleth thinks. He doesn't remember, not that nor the man's name or his face, nor most of the people he's met in the fog that was his life before Sothis. But he did remember what he said, about how killing humans is different than killing animals, way more different than he thought and how does he do it and keep doing it. And he remembers what his father said, because he had always remembered his father and always will, and how he had glanced with unease at Byleth when he said it.
He knew why, maybe not then but at some point he did realise, of course. Because the thing is, it never got easier for Byleth - it had simply always been easy. He cannot say that he had liked killing, but he, a slight young man under his father's wing, never flinched or cried or mourned after taking a life even when full grown grizzled men wept. He understands, now, why none of the mercenaries save his father stayed in touch. Killing had always been too easy for him.
At least, until it wasn't. His father was right, for most, killing gets easier the more they do it. But for Byleth, it only got harder. The soldiers he killed and keeps killing might have been faceless strangers in red, but he knows that they are Ferdinands and Bernadettas and Linhardts, people he doesn't know but whom somebody else does, somebody who drinks tea with them and returns their lost items and waits for them to come home. Killing got harder because loving got easier, he supposes.
There was also another matter that made this battle hard and that was that he had somebody to protect. Several somebodies, but the one relevant now was the one-eyed man slumped against the wall and bleeding from several wounds. They had gotten seperated during the skirmish and evidently Dimitri saw a group of enemies (not too large, just a patrol squad most likely, but still too much for one man) and rushed right at them instead of retreating or calling for reinforcements. Byleth remembers Dimitri's decent B+ on his strategy paper and almost weeps for the second time in his life.
So, Byleth had come to defend him and, as was stressed, the fight was easy and over soon enough. Or at least it seemed that way. Byleth was just shaking the blood off his sword and turning to look down at his former student when he heard the sound of more coming. His body was already readying itself for the moment more enemies round the corner, but he kept his eyes on Dimitri. His gaze turned sharp when Dimitri tried to stand.
"You shouldn't have come here. Why have you come here?" said Dimitri, voice slightly hoarse and lacking intonation, as it had been since their reunion. The he lets out a bitter little chuckle. "Is this what you wanted, to have them all die by your hand? I suppose we really aren't so different, you and I, Ashen Demon."
Byleth ignores the sting that comes, unexpectedly, from hearing that moniker from the lips of a man who once called him human. "I had to. You would be dead now if I hadn't."
There's that bitter chuckle again, bordering on laughter. "You had to, is that right? No, you have no obligation to save beasts from beasts. You are here because you wanted to be. And if it is really for me, you are wasting your time."
Byleth's stance relaxes a little. It seems the others have engaged the enemy, from the sounds of swords and magic, allowing Byleth to turn his full attention to the man before him. His eyes roam over his body, pinpointing the injuries' locations and then he kneels down and reaches out a hand, Faith magic sparking from his hand.
But before his fingers can even hover over Dimitri's body, Dimitri slaps his hand away. "I said you're wasting your time!" His voice is loud and his movements are erratic scrambling alongside the wall as if intending to climb it or bury himself in it. Byleth can hear the cracking of glass in his mind.
The shouting has likely alerted the enemy. At least a few of them might escape and arrive soon. Byleth's gaze hardens again and he straightens up, Faith magic dissolved, the hand that gives life once more the hand that takes it away. The weight of killing lifts from him once again.
"You don't dictate how I use my time. You don't let me stop you from going on your rampages and you don't let me heal the damage afterwards. That gives me precious little options on how I should use my time on you. But there is one thing I have to - that I want to do and I ask that you let me."
He gives Dimitri one last look, a look he hopes and dreads is less fitting on an automaton and more on a living human, and before he turns around, he pleads: "Just let me protect you."
And that is when killing becomes easy again, for the same reasons it had gotten harder. When you love and when you protect.