Work Text:
perhaps i
don’t deserve
nice things
cause i’m paying
for sins i don’t
remember
- milk and honey, rupi kaur
Edelgard is twelve. She knows the feeling of leather restraints on her skin, soaked with blood. She knows her siblings, their voices, their cries of pain and suffering. She knows the silence.
One by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one.
Falling silent.
Still.
One day at a time.
They are ripped away from the world, one life at a time, all nine of her siblings. One life for each year that she can remember living above ground, living in the light. Her siblings fade into the darkness until all that remains is Edelgard. What is left of her anyway.
Edelgard is too young to understand what is being done to her. Why these horrors are being done to her. All she knows is that when she does something wrong, sometimes her parents would punish her by sending her to her room or taking away her paints.
She must pay for her mistakes and learn from them so she does not do it again. She learns quickly.
(She does not know it yet but time and time again she will choose to go to war.)
She is twelve and this is all she knows.
She knows that she must have done something absolutely heinous for her to deserve such a punishment. Her parents have told her before that the punishment should match the wrongdoing. When she would not share her paints with her younger brother for fear that he would ruin them, her paints were taken away.
She must have taken away somebody else’s siblings to warrant her own siblings being taken away. But she is twelve. She does not remember taking away anybody’s siblings.
She does not deserve her siblings and their gentle laughter and affectionate presence.
She must have carved into the skin and flesh of another human being, deep enough to rend hollow wounds into their very soul to warrant the experiments that tear her asunder and stitch her back together, not quite herself but entirely her own. But she is twelve. She does not remember the feeling of metal against bone, the weight of an axe carved from bones in her hands.
Perhaps in a past life then. In another time she has committed these atrocities, these sins. A time she can not understand or imagine or fathom because this is the life that she knows, the only life that she remembers. Perhaps this is the one time that she has to pay her sins.
That thought helps her get through the darkness. That thought helps her stand up on her own two feet, a crutch when she does not have the strength to hold herself up even as a great weight settles upon her shoulders.
She does not know how many lives will weigh down on her shoulders. She does not remember how many lives will weigh down on her shoulders.
She does not know that this cruelty happens to her in every timeline, every universe. She does not remember. The crutch that she leans on is one built on a false assumption, a lie. She does not know this yet. She does not remember any other life but her current one.
But even as she stands up, she realizes that she will drown, weighed down by the lives she does not remember taking and the lives she has yet to take. The inch of dark waters that sits stagnant in her cell- the blood and tears of her siblings, has begun to rise.
She does not know what she must do yet. She does not remember what she has done.
She does not know yet, how many lives will be lost in a war of her own making. She does not remember a war that would tear the entire nation apart and if she is to pay for such sins of hers, she can only pay this debt with the nine lives that reside in the tomb in her chest, she can only pay, nine lives at a time.
(This number grows to ten before Edelgard truly understands it. Her mother dies while Edelgard is under the earth, in the dark.)
Edelgard is eighteen when this number grows to eleven. She stands on her own two feet now. There is strength in the way she holds herself. She has to or the weight of what she now knows but does not remember will crush her. She has learned to deal with the swell of the dark waters that lap against her hip, an immovable reminder of the sins that she has already paid for and the sins she will have to pay. The knowledge of what she needs to do chills her to the bone, the waters lack any warmth here. Cold and dark. It no longer overwhelms her, threatening to drown her for reasons she now knows but does not remember.
She teeters on a cliff, torn between light of hope and the swirling disappointment of the depths. She tells herself that she can not let others close to her. She can not pay if there is nothing left for her to pay with.
Her father passes away, a withered husk of the proud man Edelgard has known.
The kind man who has taught her how to write and read. Who has bestowed gifts and trinkets upon her, has promised her the world but ultimately leaves her a broken shell to try to fill. It takes everything in her to not let this shell flood with the metallic taste of darkness that would otherwise overwhelm her. Her father, who would tell grand stories of princesses and dragons and heroes to help her sleep. Lies that she believed in.
The weight of the crown is heavy on her brow. She struggles to keep her head lifted high. The crown presses her down, deeper into the waters. She has the crown, the rule, and all she feels is the crushing weight, knowing what she must do and what she will do. If she had thought that the weight that she has long carried in the harsh set of her shoulders and tomb of her chest was heavy, having the crown simply magnified that weight until she was on the verge of breaking, folding in on herself.
She was foolish to think that she had learned to cope with the ominous waters and graves that form her mantle, she thinks, as the crown forces her head underwater until she is sinking headfirst to lay helplessly at the bottom.
She thinks about those stories, those lies.
There were no heroes in her story.
Only monsters.
She does not think she deserves anything less.
She does not remember deserving anything more.
Hubert becomes her shadow. He has grieved her disappearance and rejoiced at her return. Edelgard warns him that he may have to pay the price like her siblings did. He tells her that he will gladly pay any price, even his life, if it means that he can remain at her side.
They are inseparable. She does not deserve his loyalty, his dogged determination to see her will through. His willingness to do the dirty work so that she does not have to- to the point of learning dark magics. She forbids him to learn such magic for the price will be too high (and she will already pay too much).
She does not remember.
But she knows now.
Edelgard is fifteen when she begins to understand what she must do.
She begins to understand the magnitude of her sins and why she has paid the way she has paid. She wants to change the world so that nobody else will ever have to pay the way that she has, for things she knows but does not remember. But to change the world, she has to start a war. The knowledge falls over her like a tidal wave, crashing over her and dragging her out into the depths of the darkness where nobody can hear her pain, nobody else can understand what it is like to be drowning in the knowledge that the blood of her siblings and her mother will never ever be enough to pay for her sins.
Edelgard does not know that she will pay with more than the ten lives of her siblings and mother.
She does know what sins she will have to pay for, but she does not remember them.
Hubert tries his best. He never quite understands fully. She does not expect him to. Burdened by the knowledge of what is to come, she knows he will make good on his promise to her. He will end up like her siblings, and her mother.
(In other timelines, Hubert becomes number twelve.)
She does not deserve him, she thinks.
Edelgard is seventeen when she finds some freedom at the Garreg Mach Officer’s Academy. She is no longer under the shackles of her uncle. She can do more of what she wants than before. She knows that this will not last though. The knowledge of what she must do no longer threatens to rip her away with every breath that she struggles to take while in its current. The waters sit just below her chest, it presses in on her, a difficult reminder to breathe.
Days at the academy are idyllic, peaceful, she finds herself enjoying it more than she would care to admit. This scares her. She does not deserve these simple days. She knows it will not last.
She learns and she prepares as best as she can. Borrowing and stealing knowledge and skills, maybe if she works hard enough, she will know enough to counterbalance the knowledge of what is to come and maybe it will be easier to bear. Maybe she will learn to swim. Maybe she will learn to properly bury the dead that she does not remember in a grave of their own.
It never gets easier. She never learns to swim. She never finds a place to lay to rest.
Then she meets Byleth.
Byleth who knows no boundaries. No chains. No shackles. Who stares at her like she knows. Like she remembers.
But what does Byleth know? What does Byleth remember? Because most days, Edelgard can scarcely believe what she knows but does not remember.
There’s a familiarity to Byleth, something that makes Edelgard’s tattered soul hum in contentment. Byleth saves Edelgard’s life- standing before her and protecting her from a foolish plot of her own making, a whirlpool that draws her deeper and deeper in. She is so used to the feeling of the water against her skin, the cold metal of heavy armour of an emperor long since extinguished pressing against her ribs, pressing against the tomb in her chest and the graves on her shoulders, that she does not realize that she is the one who is trapped in the vortex until Byleth saves her.
Edelgard wonders if it would have been better if Byleth had not done that. If she simply let that axe strike true, what would happen?
Would Edelgard finally be absolved of her sins? The ones that she knows will no longer happen- no, the ones that she does not remember would still crush her in her grave, grinding her bones to dust so that they may blow away in the wind only to start all over again.
However, to have her suffering cut short would not pay for her sins. She does not deserve such a simple end.
She does not know that Byleth saves her every time.
She does not remember.
(In a small pocket of time, Byleth takes the axe in her back, eyes wide, staring at the burdened, frightful young girl who knows too much but at the same time, remembers too little. This pocket has been sealed shut by a goddess, only to be reopened, time and time again solely so they can be sealed shut again.)
Edelgard dares not to hope that Byleth would choose her, choose the Black Eagles. Byleth who is so free and curious and looks at her with such strange understanding and warmth, would choose her, would choose to be weighed down by her and her sins and the price that she must pay.
(Oh goddess, please let Byleth choose her.)
But she hopes anyway, because she has forgotten what hope feels like and the warmth and anticipation in her chest can not be hope no, no, no, because she can not hope because if she hopes then she knows there will eventually be a price and she does not think that she could pay this price.
She does not know that she has hoped.
She does not remember.
(In most timelines, she pays this price, no matter how much she does not want to.)
Byleth chooses the Black Eagles.
Edelgard has never soared so high. She knows that the inevitable fall will be a terrifying price to pay but she can not help herself from gathering the warm winds of Byleth’s presence beneath her wings and soaring into those crystal blue skies. Yes, there is a heavy black suit of armour that waits for her every time she lands- chaining her down again in the deep waters again until she can gather enough of herself to spread her wings and fight against the skeletal hands that grasp at her being again.
She knows that there is so much that she could learn from Byleth. There’s a spark in learning from Byleth, that somehow the knowledge is different. She thinks that this knowledge will really be enough to counterbalance the weight of what is to come.
Byleth is kind and caring and brings her tea and sweets, and talks to her like they are equals. Byleth showers her in gifts and meals shared together, lessons and discussions. Byleth makes her feel something beyond the frigid darkness that soaks her to her bones and the bones which are not hers pressing down on her very being. Byleth listens to Edelgard, listens to her story, her past, her nightmares. Byleth does not press, she does not judge. Byleth ignores the millions of skeletons in Edelgard’s closet and the dead which haunts every part of her. Byleth listens not just with her ears but with the essence of her very being.
When the nightmares come, Byleth clears away the fear and the terror that wraps around Edelgard like a stranglehold, threatening to drown her once again. Byleth opens the door, letting the brisk night air absolve some of the tension. Byleth sweeps into Edelgard’s room like a gentle breeze, and when they take a walk around the darkened monastery grounds together, Byleth’s warm presence lifts her above the towering waves where she feels so light. She can see the stars in the night sky.
Edelgard finds herself hoping, dangerously, hoping.
Byleth has chosen her once. Edelgard hopes that Byleth will choose her again.
Hubert does not like Byleth. He warns Edelgard time and time again not to stray too close to those crystal blue skies for there is nothing below Edelgard there but the dark swirling ocean of knowledge that constantly reminds her that she can not swim and to soar is to risk falling and drowning and never being able to surface again.
Hubert does not understand everything that Edelgard tells him. But he knows that if Edelgard has to pay the price here, to lose those crystal blue skies, she would never be the same again.
She does not know what losing Byleth will do to her.
She does not remember.
Jeralt is Byleth’s father.
Edelgard has only spoken to him a handful of times in the past. She knows him mostly through his interactions with Byleth. She knows that they are close, the way they go fishing together, in the relaxed way that they sit. Jeralt talks in his low, gruff voice and Byleth listens.
When Kronya stabs Jeralt, Edelgard feels the knife slice into her own flesh as if she could atone for this sin by offering up her own life.
She wishes she could have stopped Kronya. That she could send this monster wearing the skin of an innocent girl away before Jeralt is lost.
(She does not know that Byleth has tried, and tried, and tried again to undo what Edelgard wishes. And time and time again Solon slaughters that wish.)
Edelgard does not count Jeralt among her number of lives. He is not hers to pay with, she thinks as she watches Byleth collapse in on herself in her grief. Crystal blue skies are dotted with grey clouds. Rain splashes down as Byleth cries. The skies thunder in time with the shake of Byleth’s shoulders as she sobs. The tears do not wash away the blood. Instead the blood spreads into a tidal wave, pulling her further into the swirling waters.
Jeralt is another life added to her debts. The Blade Breaker settles around her throat, like a lost soul returning to a familiar place of rest except here there is anything but rest- an anvil chaining her down. The graves on her shoulders have been spoken for, the tomb in her chest is not his to haunt.
Perhaps one she can never pay for.
Byleth could never choose her. Not after this.
She does not know who Byleth will choose yet.
She does not remember who Byleth has chosen before.
She does not deserve Byleth anyway.
Edelgard does not deserve Byleth.
The goddess makes this clear when Byleth returns from some otherworldly darkness, returns unknowingly to both of them, with all of Edelgard’s hopes and dreams. Byleth who is touched by the goddess, her once teal hair now poisoned by the one that Edelgard hates so much but still prays to all the same.
Byleth, in all of her goddess touched glory, would never choose her. Edelgard knows this.
She does not remember this.
But she knows this.
The waves close in over her head again. They’re all she has.
Edelgard is eighteen when Byleth chooses her.
She can scarcely believe it. She thinks this must be some kind of a fever dream that after so many dark mornings and too still nights, she has finally lost it. That the shadowy waters have dulled her senses to the point that even the reflection of a distant world against the surface of the waters feels like light, feels like hope.
Byleth chooses her and she soars, breaking through the choppy waves and back into the light.
Byleth is real, Byleth is present. She does not deserve Byleth, or the rest of the students that follow with her.
Byleth has moved through her own grief, parting the greying clouds with rays of sunshine and crystal skies, standing on her own two feet like Edelgard had done before. But Byleth does not carry the weight of her loss on her shoulders, she stands tall and poised- shoulders relaxed like she had never touched such weight.
Edelgard wonders what her secret is.
The knot that binds the weight of her sins to her tired shoulders loosens when Byleth chooses her. Edelgard feels like she can breathe again but how can she breathe when Byleth stands before her, her very presence stealing the air from her lungs and saving it in banks of air and drafts beneath Edelgard’s battered wings.
She soars higher into the crystal blue and for once in her life, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she has finally paid for all of her sins.
Byleth stands between her and Rhea’s monstrous form.
Edelgard knows too well how monsters lurk under the skin of a person, ready to split apart and swallow you whole with gnashing teeth and churning waters. She thinks of her own monster. Wings chained down by the weight of the lives that she will take and the second monster that she wears as a heavy set of black armour with a mask, white like the bones in the tombs that she came to plunder, white like the bones of those that she has yet to know will pave the road to her goal.
White like bones of those that she does not remember yet.
She does not know how real that monster under her skin is. How her flesh will twist and mutate into something unrecognizable, the dark waters raging beneath her new form as she becomes the very price she must pay. Far more gruesome than the monster of iron plates and steel blades is the monster of flesh and bone.
(How Byleth will inevitably strike her down.)
She does not remember.
She does not deserve Byleth’s choice. Her kindness, her guidance, the small smiles reflected in the softness of her eyes, the warm winds at her wings, the way that Byleth slowly makes the graves on Edelgard’s shoulders begin to find rest.
Edelgard is eighteen, when Byleth becomes number twelve.
Hubert is not number twelve this time. He stays at her side, exhausted, ever faithful to her.
She does not know what is to come.
She does not remember what has come before.
She plummets, spiralling out of the sky. She is lighter now without the Flame Emperor’s mantle crushing her, abandoning it when Byleth chooses her the second time. But perhaps it has been protecting her all this time instead. The monster on the outside kept her safe on the inside. But the dark armour has been discarded, lost to the streams of other times. But the weight of the dead clawing their way out of their brief respite as another is added to the tomb in her chest drags her down all the same.
Hubert is right. Maybe she should have listened to him. She has flown too close, too high. She is addicted to the taste of freedom and weightlessness she could only feel when she was soaring. She has dared to hope when she should not have. She knows better but she does not remember what hope feels like, she could not have recognized that she has hoped until it is far too late.
Byleth stands between her and Rhea’s monstrous form. Sword in hand. One second she is there, she is present, the next second she is gone.
The ground opens up beneath Byleth. A cavernous maw gapes wide, broken stones and jagged teeth as the Immaculate One roars in pain, bringing part of the cathedral down. It swallows up Byleth whole and an avalanche of rocks closes the mouth and Edelgard feels like she can not breathe, all the air sucked out of the world, her entire world is flipped upside down as her sky disappears into the earth, below ground, a full circle, Edelgard thinks. It was where the tomb in her chest was built.
Edelgard claws at the earth until her knuckles bleed and her palms are scraped raw. She rips at the earth like she might uncover a sealed pocked of sky that will fill her lungs again because Byleth has chosen her and if she can not find Byleth then how can she go on carrying these graves on her shoulders that Byleth has begun to bury.
She collapses in on herself like her lungs do.
She does not deserve Byleth. She has always known that. She has always known this would be the inevitable price. But to know it. To know this visceral pain and loss put her right back into her those leather restraints. That she had never been able to escape Those Who Slither in the Dark. That she would never finish paying for her sins.
She should not have gotten greedy, held her so close, flown so far. Now she holds Byleth impossibly closer, a space carved for her in the tomb in her chest, too close to her heart.
She paid that price.
Her mangled form breaks upon the violent waves- like a broken eagle, struck down by an unnatural predator that should not exist in the skies, dashed upon the breaking surf.
She does not know how she will go on.
She does not remember how she has gone on.
The Black Eagles. No, her friends. (When does she have friends? Have they always been there? She knows she does not deserve them because she knows that she still has debts to pay, sins to pay, prices to pay, and they will pay with their lives. She does not remember how many spaces in the tomb in her chest are filled with their broken bodies, and how many more lay empty.)
The Black Eagles pick up her broken from from the waves. They pluck her shattered soul from the clutches of the darkness, where she is drowning in the sinister currents, lungs filled with the salt and blood and tears of the sins she is beginning to know and understand now.
She does not deserve them. She does not not deserve the Black Eagles, she screams until her throat is as raw as her hands and the Eagles stand around her as the sky which no longer exists begins to cry. None of them leave.
Byleth has chosen her. That was all that she could ever dare hope for. What she never imagined was that the other Black Eagles would choose her too. She does not deserve to be their choice. Not when there is so much that she knows and still even more that she does not remember.
She no longer has Byleth at her side, but perhaps her fall has jarred something loose, something that once has been bound so tightly she could not see it.
As the days wear on, she begins to see Byleth in and among the Black Eagles. The impression of Byleth’s presence, which is left behind in the Eagles who have learned to fly in those warm and fair winds. Those winds which can not be seen, only felt, but Edelgard sees those winds in the way the Black Eagles fly. The Eagles who still fly in those same patterns, with those same bad habits and silly quirks as if the winds were still there. Even if the sky has fallen, the world continues to spin.
Dorothea is kind. Dorothea is gentle. Dorothea hates the amount of blood that is shed in the war but she stands tall, resolute. She is not picky about who she spends her time on, her energy on, her compassion on. She does not hold back. She is who she is and she is and she is so unapologetically. She gives and gives and gives until Edelgard thinks that she will have nothing left to give and Dorothea simply smiles and continues giving anyway. Dorothea holds her gently in the crumbling ruin that is the cathedral. Dorothea holds her with such gentleness and warmth that Edelgard feels that she might fall apart all over again because nobody else has shown her such compassion. Such compassion begins to mend her some of those wounds in her soul, her warmth blossoms over her skin in such a way that Edelgard can not help but feel.
Byleth.
Edelgard does not deserve Dorothea. She does not deserve her strength and compassion. (In some timelines, Dorothea is number thirteen.)
Ferdinand is a hard worker. Ferdinand has a sense of self that Edelgard envies. Ferdinand knows who he is, what he wants, and he puts everything he has into what he does. He does not understand the weight that she carries on her shoulders, the weight that has been there for as long as she can remember. Ferdinand does his best to take on some of her responsibilities. He handles the administrative duties, supply chains, basic management, taking those things off of her desk so she can focus on the frontlines of the war. He does this quietly, takes an extra share of work without ever flaunting it. And while he does this, he goads her, he challenges her. A two pronged attack, just like Byleth has taught them. He gives her the time and space to get back on her feet while encouraging her to become better, to do better.
There is better, if she is capable of finding it. She reaches out, grasping.
Byleth.
Edelgard does not deserve Ferdinand. She does not deserve his hard work and encouragement. (In some timelines, Ferdinand is number fourteen.)
Caspar is honest. Caspar is brave. Caspar is not afraid to tell her like it is. He does not hide behind secrets and lies and disguises and masks. He is not afraid to rush in headfirst against poor odds. His trust and faith in Edelgard is unwavering. Caspar does not need to know why something must be done. He knows something must be done and will do it. He finds her late at night when she can no longer sleep, suffocating in nightmares, new and old. They spar, trading blows in a way that is instinctive, primal. For a moment, Edelgard can cast aside the mantles and etiquettes of her title. In these punches and kicks and blows, she lets her crown be knocked askew, and the knot in her chest is dislodged with the motion. She does not soar like she once did but she finds that she can breathe easier when she is breathing harder.
He understands not of the suffering and price she must pay, but is doing all that he can because he knows that she is suffering. Edelgard finds him one night when they are at Garreg Mach, slowly moving rubble aside in the cathedral, searching, seeking, refusing to give up, pursuing.
Byleth.
Edelgard does not deserve Caspar. She does not deserve his honesty and bravery. (In some timelines, Caspar is number fifteen.)
Linhardt is carefree. He does not worry but she knows he worries about her. He wanders from moment to moment, day to day, with his eyes cast skyward and head in the clouds. Edelgard envies such a life. She has no sky to look to anymore but what she would not give for a day to herself, relaxing and eating sweets. But the price she has to pay is already high enough and she can not afford to pay any more than what she has already given. He treats her broken hands in the ruins of the cathedral, healing her with faith that seems ironic in the light of what has just occured.
He does not handle her with kiddie gloves like some of the other Black Eagles and even her generals do. Linhardt is uneasy at the sight of blood, but he treats her wounds all the same, pushing past his fear even as her blood stains his sleeves and the blood of countless others poisons his magic. He helps physically mend some of her broken pieces together. He sets this part of himself aside for her, for the dream that she believes in, and in this action Edelgard sees.
Byleth.
Edelgard does not deserve Linhardt. She does not deserve his worry and his faith. (In some timelines, Linhardt is number sixteen.)
Petra is a person of action. Petra perseveres time and time again, working tirelessly to improve herself. She is already intelligent and capable but she strives to be better. She does not want other people worrying about her on or off the battlefield. She keeps her head down, dutifully doing what needs to be done. Petra is patient with her even as Edelgard changes her mind three times over how the simple task ought to be carried at first, calmly accepting new instructions. Petra is the future queen of Brigid, even with that knowledge, she carries herself with a lithe grace that makes Edelgard feel inadequate. Petra tells Edelgard stories and anecdotes of Brigid, tales that, for a moment, make Edelgard forget where she is, who she is, what she must do, and the things that she does not remember.
Petra provides interesting and helpful suggestions and ideas during meetings, her viewpoint so different from everyone else there and even though the words are not always there, Edelgard knows the intention is there. Sometimes her thoughts are so intriguing that Edelgard can not help herself but listen and hear.
Byleth.
Edelgard does not deserve Petra. She does not deserve her perseverance and perspective. (In some timelines, Petra is number seventeen.)
Bernadetta is quiet. Bernadetta is careful with her time. There are many things that need to be done in the face of a war. There is no place for hiding or running. Bernadetta does what is needed in spite of her discomfort. At the end of the day, Edelgard knows that all Bernadetta wants to do is to retreat back to her room, but she takes a deep breath and sits in the dining hall with everyone else, hands clasped firmly around a pot of red carnations that she nurses back to health- a survivor of the destruction that befell the greenhouse.
Bernadetta does not say much. She sits and watches and works, even as her entire form trembles with anxiety and fear, she keeps Edelgard company in silence. The other Eagles dare not brave the silence with Edelgard, filling the air with their warm chatter, but with Bernadetta, the silence is warmth enough, easing some of the tension in her shoulders. Bernadetta appears and disappears without warning. Brief pockets of her presence open up to Edelgard, carefully managed so that Bernadetta will not burn out. She always seems to sense when Edelgard could use her silent company. In that silence, Edelgard can experience.
Byleth.
Edelgard does not deserve Bernadetta. She does not deserve her silence and her time. (In some timelines, Bernadetta is number eighteen.)
Hubert picks up her limp form in his arms. His own form straining from exhaustion. He carries her battered and broken being back to her room. She stares as they pass by Byleth’s now uninhabited room, empty. They had won. But at what cost? All for her goal, all for a distant dream that she only knows but does not remember.
Hubert has changed during their time at the academy. Byleth has lifted him up on gentle winds. He may not have a pegasus but he soars all the same, on wings of his own that he never thought to look for.
It is not about whether you deserve it or not, the Black Eagles have chosen her freely, the Black Eagles have chosen to give freely, Hubert tells her.
It is not about deserving it. Maybe it has never been about deserving it. The Black Eagles have chosen her because they believe in her.
It takes Edelgard five long and difficult years, sheltered amidst the dark waters that threaten to drown her, buoyed by the wings of the Black Eagles and in turn, sheltering them with her own still healing wings, before she can begin to understand what Hubert is trying to say. She does not quite believe in it. But she knows now.
She does not remember learning this lesson before.
Edelgard is twenty-three when Byleth returns. The number has stalled at twelve even as the graves trail down from her shoulders to pool like a cape around her feet.
(In her twisted logic that she has known since she was twelve, she knows that she could repay such sins faster if this number but Edelgard can not let the tomb in her chest open again for she fears that if the tomb opens again the next number will take her heart with it.)
She stands taller now in the goddess tower. Her stomach flips uneasily as her world rights herself, the sky taking its rightful position above her head, sunshine smiling down at her, reflecting off of mountainous tidal waves kept at pay by feathers and careful planning.How long has it been since her world looked like this? Edelgard is beginning to think that it would never go back. But here she is.
She stands before Byleth. She is not weighed down nearly as much by what she knows and what she does not remember.
Byleth stands before her, looking exactly the way that Edelgard remembers her.
Free. Unburdened by the weight of what she does not remember.
Byleth chooses her again. In her choice, Byleth promises something else as well. Perhaps something Edelgard has never even considered. Not only warm winds to help her soar but a warm nest to land in when she is tired.
Edelgard feels every tired fibre of her being, so carefully put back together over the years by the Black Eagles, soar. The breeze is gentle against her face, no longer a driving gale of water, buffeting her very soul.
Edelgard does not think she deserves such.
With the Eagles at her side and crystal skies above her, Edelgard soars.
They claim the Alliance.
Byleth is every bit as brilliant and unorthodox as Edelgard remembers. Edelgard loathes fighting her former classmates but accepts the inevitable. She knows what she must do.
But Byleth guides them like a precise tornado. Driving them deep into weak points with such command and force that their opponents have no choice but to crumble, all the while sparing as many as she can.
As they soar past the Alliance and through the Kingdom on favourable winds, Edelgard begins to understand how Byleth endures the weight of such loss, the weight of what she knows and perhaps also does not remember.
There are tales of a mountain which holds up the sky.
Byleth stands on such a mountain. She does not carry it on her shoulders. She climbs it with her feet until she stands above it and this weight does not weigh her down but instead carries her. It drives her forward and upward, ever higher, bringing the Eagles with her to greater heights.
Byleth tells her that their sacrifice will not be in vain because they are reaching ever higher and as long as she keeps trying, keeps doing, keeps going, she will have no regrets.
The Kingdom falls beneath swift currents of wind. Dimitri breathes his last.
Byleth could not spare him.
As the air leaves Dimitri’s lungs for the last time, Edelgard gathers it up under her own wings, power to drive herself forward. Her own mountain perhaps. The graves that pool at her feet are beginning to look metamorphic, a foundation compacted together in such a fashion that even when Edelgard lands, she is above the towering waves which crash harmlessly at the base.
Dimitri looks like he is at peace at last, he is no longer troubled or plagued by what he knows and what he does not remember.
The number has stalled at twelve. It does not move with Dimitri’s death. For the first time, the graves that she does not remember do not feel heavier either.
For someone who has prided herself for learning quickly as a young child, she sure learns slowly.
They flock together over a meal before they march on Fhirdiad. The Black Eagles huddle together, sharing what might be one last meal, holding each other close with outstretched wings.
Edelgard does not know what lies ahead.
She finds herself not caring what she does not remember.
Tomorrow, it might not matter anyway.
(But she can not let everything be in vain.)
In the quiet of night, when all of the other Eagles have finally fallen asleep, Byleth sits with her under the stars, holding her hand so gently, so reverently that Edelgard feels like she might actually shatter. Even in the darkness, there was still light.
They march on Fhirdiad at first light.
Edelgard is twenty four when she loses Byleth for the second time.
The numbers do not even matter at this point. The tomb in her chest is wrenched open, never to close again, her heart lost somewhere in the scrabbling hands that reach out and wrench Byleth from underneath her wings.
They have just struck down Rhea, in all of her monstrosity. Rhea, who has ordered Fhirdiad be set ablaze, trapping and killing hundreds and thousands of innocents. Rhea, whose blood runs green on the streets, a stark contrast to the orange red flames that burn on around them.
Edelgard is elated at their victory, as Rhea’s body lies motionless. She lands, breathless, turning in time to hear Byleth’s weak gasp and see her collapse onto the ground.
Edelgard’s world shatters. The ground falls away from underneath her, the sky is torn away. All she knows is the crush of dark waters that she has miraculously left so far behind, miraculously found high ground to shelter away from, that she has somehow foolishly forgotten.
How could she have forgotten?
What is the point of all the lives that have been paid, all the blood that has been spilled if Byleth does not live? What is her victory worth if Byleth does not get to see it with her? She flings herself at Byleth’s prone form, clutching at her too-still, lifeless body. She squeezes Byleth in her arms so hard that she thinks something in Byleth’s chest cracks.
She presses her ear to Byleth’s chest. There is no heartbeat.
There is no wind. There is no warmth. She is drowning in the violent waves. The mountain that she thought she stood on has eroded beneath her very feet. All the graves are broken open, blood pouring forth to churn with the dark waters. All the air in her lungs pushed out by a flood of metallic darkness.
Edelgard is twelve again, tossed in the raging currents. Edelgard is twelve again, not quite understanding what is happening to her all the while thinking that she knows why things are the way they are.
Everything that she came to believe in is a lie.
She is foolish to have believed that she could do any different. She is foolish to have believed that she deserves anything more or less than what she knows she will get. She is foolish. But she has hoped.
In the end, Edelgard has won but paid the ultimate price for her victory. She does not remember, but she realizes that it does not matter what she remembers because the war is over.
She no longer just knows that she has started a war, she no longer just knows she is in the middle of a war. What she knows now is what she remembers.
She screams, all the pain and suffering that she has borne for so many years finally exploding out of her in a wave.
Sothis, oh goddess. If you are really there, please, this can not be the end. This can not be Byleth’s end. She is worth so much to me. She is worth so much more. I do not deserve her, I know but please. Look not on the sins that I will continue to pay for time and time again, but that I will pay anything for Byleth.
She repeats this prayer like a mantra, words spilling forth from her lips like a waterfall, neverending, pouring against Byleth’s neck.
There are no more times. A gentle breeze whispers.
There is nothing left for Edelgard to not remember, washed away by rapids of her own design and currents forced upon her.
She is so caught up in her grief and suffering, in her screaming that she nearly misses the dull, muted, pulse under her ear. A second pulse. Stronger. A third . And forth and fifth. Edelgard listens, a sixth pulse, seven, eigh t- not sure if what she is hearing can possibly be real. She dares not to hope because ( nine) she has hoped and fallen (ten) and at this point when she is drowning (eleven, twelve), she cannot take it if she is wrong again.
(One pulse for every life that has clawed their way out of the tomb in her chest.)
Thirteen.
(The tomb lays empty at last, bereft of any life.)
She finally raises her head to find Byleth smiling gently down at her, sunshine embracing her as the waters part and evaporate, leaving her in Byleth’s warm presence. Byleth, who reaches into the tomb in her chest and carefully cradles the only thing left in there against her very soul, Edelgard’s heart.
Edelgard’s whole life falls into place and she knows, deep down in her soul that this is it, there is nothing left for her to not remember.
“What is this I hear about you not deserving me?”
Edelgard laughs. She cards her hand through Byleth’s now teal locks. Byleth has chosen her again. Byleth has returned to her again.
Edelgard is twelve when she thinks that she does not deserve the people around her because of the tomb in her chest and the graves on her shoulders.
Edelgard is twenty four when she finally understands that it does not matter what she knows but she does not remember, that it does not matter because Byleth has chosen her.
Byleth does not choose her because she is deserving but because she is Edelgard.
Edelgard soars.