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The last thing she remembers is nothing before she was lifted from her body and carried off to float in the balance. Legends become constellations; she should become part of the nothingness of the sky when she dies.
She does not know who it was that plucked her from nonexistence, what creature wrapped its hands around her and pulled her from her tomb but when she wakes in a familiar bed, eyes wide, breath heavy, she thinks for a moment that she has been dreaming all along.
She was nothing. No more. The kinetic energy in some part of the moving rhythm of the world.
And yet, she looks upon her face in the mirror on the vanity.
Flushed with sleep and confusion.
‘You have a new opportunity,’ A voice whispers in her head, pulling on the bond at the back of her neck, ‘Be wise with it.’
-
Edelgard spends the subsequent day shaking. Hands and knees trembling. Violation in its purest form, she should not be alive.
And yet, as she heaves a breath through tears she had forgotten to cry, she is.
-
“They are growing desperate,” Hubert informs her, one day at her war table. Edelgard has followed the steps to this moment, the precipice before she dove into true havoc, “They have sent you seven letters.”
Edelgard eyes them on the silver platter. She lifts the first letter, cold fingers dance across the wax seal as she pops it open to read its contents. This was not her choice the last time, it is her choice now. Perhaps it would be wise to make use of the time she has bought herself.
“Stall the attack,” She says, eyes scanning the careful writings. A concise argument. Edelgard knows she loses either way, she is a strategist by nature, and this is an opportunity to, if nothing else, place her chess pieces on a winning side. Another roll of the dice. Another play at the game.
She hears Hubert’s surprise and does not look towards him, instead, she lifts her writing utensils and carefully words her response.
-
A Letter written on sheepskin parchment; it reads:
“Dear His Royal Highness Claude von Riegan,
I hope this letter finds you in good health, I would like to apologise for my late response, I have spent some days under the weather. I wish you to know I have read each of your letters with the utmost care and have taken my time to deliberate upon yourself and your advisor’s words carefully.
I should like to state that I am open to discussion, and request a meeting, in-person to discuss the terms. We are, after all, on the precipice of war with the religious state so time would be of the utmost essence to quell growing frustration.
You are welcome to meet with me at my encampment. Your forces will also be expected, my army will have been prepared in advance.
Unfortunately, prose has never been my strong suit, I apologise if this reads without sincerity.
I look forward to achieving a swift understanding.
Welcome regards,
Edelgard von Hresvelg, Emperor of the Adrestian Empire”
-
The silence seems to stretch for miles as the sea of soldiers’ parts across the battlefield, she walks on muddy ground with conviction. The inside of her cloak pasted with splashes of soil and mud. The rain hits them hard; it makes the gold that curls from her head shine. She has kept them waiting, a tactful decision on her part as she strides forward. Edelgard is not a tall woman, not by any means, but today she feels a million miles above them as she approaches the barely sheltered tent, pitched in the centre of the no man’s land they have carved out. Her cloak catches the wind, she is accompanied by Hubert. He looms behind her; her forces are frightened of him and he makes the other side panicky.
Claude’s forces are ragtag in comparison, but still a threat, she is glad for the distance from them. He has always led with a degree of compassion first; she would be lying if she said she did not understand the fire in his mouth. She has never been compassionate; she has convinced herself that compassion is a lost cause on herself. Yet she still hides, as no doubt, Claude will know. Edelgard, stoic and arrogant, knows that he sees her. He is lucky, she thinks, that his timing was swift (you allowed him to be, she reminds herself, this time around).
Slowly she raises a hand to signal for Hubert to stop, as she pushes past the flap of the tent. She has not seen Byleth or Claude in quite some time, at least not up close. She allows them a courteous nod; it is time for negotiation.
Claude’s argument is… well-founded. An alternative route to dismantling the grasp of the church and their false idealism that does not include the deaths of thousands and allows her to remain in power of her empire. Albeit, technically ruled by a council of three if Dimitri were to agree (a likely outcome, she thinks, Dimitri has a quest of his own, but he is not like me), aided by advisors.
Hours are spent, hot and heavy in a tent built for no more than one or two people. Decorum maintained, treaties outlined, the pieces move carefully across the board.
“It was good to see you again, Edelgard,” Byleth breathes, and the Emperor stops briefly to look back at her with a small albeit, fond smile.
“And you,” She nods, dipping her head low as she ducks from within the tent, her fist raised in the air. A signal to stand down, she watches as her army lowers their weapons. This is a show of courage, Claude could have them surprised but he won’t betray her trust, as hard it was to win.
It does not stop her body from melting when she hears the clatter of a disarming force behind her.
-
Dimitri creates a more complex problem than expected. Edelgard watches Claude pace around the office they have holed themselves in. He has a diplomat’s tongue but no real strategy, Edelgard has a strategy but no tact, Dimitri is… well as Dimitri always has been. She knows he is panicked that she has stood down, a scared little boy.
“He feels much more than the rest of us, it’s why he created a monster of himself,” Edelgard observes, “He and I have always been a hairpin away from destruction, it’s part and parcel of our existence in this world.” Her eyes have drifted out the window, she hears Claude stop and feels his eyes on her.
“You stopped yourself,” Claude speaks almost indignantly, she feels her lips quirk upwards.
“Yes, this time I did.”
“When did you get so cryptic?”
“I have always been cryptic,” She rolls her head to look at him with a smile.
-
“They cut me open on a crest,” She states casually one day and Claude’s head snaps to look at her, Edelgard suddenly feels very small under his gaze.
“What do you mean?” Claude is inquisitive, he always has been, and she knows that.
“All of us, all my siblings. They lay us on the crest beneath the palace and cut us open,” she pauses, “I am the sole survivor.”
“Not technically.”
“He is my stepbrother,” She corrects.
“Still a brother.”
“Still a brother.”
-
A night comes where she is staring at the roof of her dark tent, eyes inventing constellations on a plain night above her.
‘You have made it this far,’ The voice mumbles somewhere behind her eyes, it makes them sting at the edges with tears.
I deserved to die, she thinks.
‘It’s over with now,’ The voice reminds her.
But is it? She asks the sky, Am I ghost playing games in a life I shouldn’t have?
‘You have much to learn.’
-
Byleth comes to her for tea sometimes, they sit in quiet and drink together. It almost feels friendly but Edelgard thinks that Byleth knows something is off about her. The Edelgard sat here, with her knees pulled up to her chest, drinking tea is not the Edelgard she knows.
One night when Byleth meets her eye it is as though she understands fully.
She smiles at Edelgard genuinely for the first time.
And this time Edelgard smiles back.
-
She stops wearing so much red.
Instead, she chooses black.
Neutrality is important.
-
“Where did the horns go?” Claude asks teasingly as she enters the newest base, they have decided to call home in the search for Dimitri.
“I like it,” Byleth defends, standing from her chair.
Edelgard feels self-conscious as they study her. She is dressed in a more modest approach, the dress is entirely black and structured, a high neck and a skirt which falls below her knees, a draped red cape is pinned to her hip on the left side of her body, and pulled across her torso, secured with a long decorative gold pin as it drapes down over her opposing shoulder. She has even pulled her hair back into a long braid.
“I like it too,” Edelgard responds as she takes her seat.
-
His hair has almost matted to his head when she sets eyes on him, more animal than man. He looks dreadful, Edelgard feels the newly found heart in her chest crack when she sees him. Her brother is a mess, tired and weary and his sanity is held together by a string, he drops to his knees. Edelgard walks to him before Claude can stop her, she hears the shift of a guard somewhere behind her to monitor her back. To strike if necessary. Dimitri is not going to strike her, in another life, another flash she pulls a dagger too quickly.
She sinks to the ground in front of him. Heart and shoulders heavy with something she cannot explain as she reaches out to place her hands on his shoulders and look at him. She did not look at him the last time.
“We know who they are,” Is all she manages before he sinks forwards into her, she is half scared for a moment he will do to her what she did to him.
Instead, they sit in wet ground, while he cries.
She does not move until he does.
-
In the nights that follow sometimes, she hears him scream and she winces.
The scars across her body burn.
-
They have never fought side by side before, there is something incredibly beautiful about the whole affair. Something poetic. She is sure Claude would know what the words she is looking for are. Perhaps she will ask Dimitri one day.
She is careless with a swing; the dagger is swift.
The familiar kinetic nothing is swifter.
-
When she wakes Mercedes stands over her, her body aches.
For a while, she drifts too and from consciousness.
In the end, she walks away fine.
She is lucky.
-
Eventually, they all sit around the large, round, wooden table. An eagle, a deer and a lion. Edelgard listens to the other two discuss as she feels the familiar pressure on the back of her neck, she eyes the windows with their coloured glass inlays.
‘You have done well.’ Is all it says as it fades.
Yes, she thinks, perhaps I have