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The trouble starts when she finishes a practice bout with Dimitri, an ache in her knee that has Byleth shaking out her legs before she turns to her next opponent. It continues from there, through the rest of the class until she reaches her last opponent of the day, Felix. Even in training, Felix never lets up, and today is no exception. Byleth’s knee twinges as she steps back to brace herself against Felix’s blade. Then again when he repeats the move, more precise than before. By the end of the set, Byleth’s knee has escalated to full blown aching, any attempt to put weight on it eliciting protest. Thankfully, the next item on the agenda for the class is partner sparring amongst themselves. Byleth waves Ingrid over to take her place with Felix, then walks to the sidelines and sits down, careful to keep her steps short to avoid aggravating her knee more.
She watches her students as she unbuckles her knee brace, hands practiced on the leather straps. When it is off, she leans back and straightens her leg slowly, wincing as she feels the bones grind together. It takes a few extensions before she hears a telltale ‘pop.’
Byleth sighs, finally returning her foot to the ground. She runs her fingers over, then under her kneecap, hoping to soothe some of the pain.
There must be a storm on the horizon, she thinks wearily.
Still rubbing at her knee, she glances at her students. All of them are focused on their opponents, weapons clanging together.
“Switch!” Byleth calls.
She puts them through one more round before she calls a break.
Most of her students go straight to the water station at the far corner of the training grounds. Dimitri, though, breaks off and walks towards her, Mercedes trailing behind him.
“Are you alright, Professor?” Dimitri asks when he is close enough.
Byleth blinks at him.
“Your knee,” Mercedes says, eying her with a healer’s trained gaze. “You looked like you were having trouble with it, before. And you were stretching it out while you were watching us, weren’t you?”
Oh. Around the mercenaries, Byleth’s tricks with her knee are nothing to comment on. She hadn’t realized that this would be a first for her students.
“It just aches,” she says. Then, when Dimitri and Mercedes keep looking at her in concern, she adds, “It’s an old injury. Acts up with the weather sometimes.”
“Ah.” Dimitri nods, flexing and unflexing his hands almost thoughtfully. As always, his gauntlets are on, and for the first time, Byleth wonders whether they serve a similar purpose as the metal brace on her knee. None of the other students wear armor around the monastery grounds. Ceremonial swords, yes, but not armor.
“Can I take a look at it, Professor?” Mercedes asks.
Byleth nods, and Mercedes kneels down, hands alight with white magic.
“May I ask what happened?” Dimitri asks, the concern in his eyes replaced with curiosity.
“Bandit with a hammer, when I was fifteen,” Byleth says.
She never did figure out where the bandit had come from. All she remembers is hearing movement behind her and turning too late to block the blow. Blinding pain, and then nothing at all.
She remembers Father’s worried look when she woke up, and the grim tone in his voice when he’d delivered the healer’s pronouncement: if her knee didn’t heal well, she’d have to use a walking stick for the rest of her life.
Even if it did heal well, there was a chance she might not be able to fight the same way ever again.
It took six months for her to get back on her feet, a miracle according to the healers and an act of sheer stubbornness according to her father. Six months of first being confined to her bed, and then walking around on a crutch. In the early days, her father was there to help her, to hold her weight as she stumbled along, or to carry her when he thought she’d done enough. Or, if not her father, the other mercenaries would encourage her, or tattle on her when they thought she was going too far.
And then her father got word of a mission in the Alliance, and try though he might, there was no way he could justify declining this mission as he had the others, not with bills coming due and salaries to pay.
So they left Byleth in Remire and headed north with a promise to return as soon as possible.
They were gone for three months. The loneliest three months of Byleth’s life.
“Well, it seems to be in good condition, all things considered,” Mercedes says finally, pulling back from her examination. “There are herbal lotions you can use to help with the ache, if it really bothers you. I can get one from Professor Manuela if you’d like.”
“Thank you, Mercedes. That would be helpful.” She’d had something like that in the first year or so after her recovery, but after a while, she’d simply forgotten about it.
If she’s going to keep running around the monastery, perhaps it’s time to use one again.
*
Five years later, Byleth’s knee still aches at the onset of a storm. She’d thought, perhaps, that merging with Sothis would have fixed that particular issue, but apparently not. Or maybe it’s all the running around that Byleth has done since she awoke, from rebuilding the monastery to training the soldiers that trickled back, to say nothing about actual battles and bandit hunts.
Like now.
Byleth lengthens her strides, ignoring the twinge in her knee, and catches up with Dimitri.
“It’s going to rain soon,” she says, shooting a glance at the clouds rolling on the horizon to emphasize her point. “If there’s going to be a battle, it had better be sooner rather than later.”
Dimitri doesn’t look at her, but his voice is mocking when he replies. “Afraid of a little rain, Professor?”
Byleth glares at him. “I taught you tactics. You know what rain does to a battlefield, especially one like this.” Grassy, with few trees around them to hold the ground in place should it become oversaturated. Of all the terrains that Byleth has fought in, mud will forever be her least favorite, and the ground around them looks like it’s going to get very muddy indeed.
Dimitri grunts, but his eye does go to the ground around them, assessing.
“The rats couldn’t have gone far,” he says. “If the mud bothers you so much, you can leave when it rains.”
“I’m not leaving, Dimitri,” Byleth says.
It’s been her constant refrain since their reunion on the Goddess Tower, and maybe one of these days, he will believe her. More than that, though, she refuses to leave him alone on this “rat hunt,” as he calls it. Dimitri is a formidable fighter—an army in his own right—but Byleth is keenly aware of how a misstep or a lucky shot could kill him, and that’s not even counting Dimitri’s disregard for his own life.
They find the bandits at the same time the rain starts, the downpour hiding the sounds of their approach. The group is medium sized, ten or fifteen men huddled in front of a recently put-out fire. The oiled clothes slung over their shoulders suggests that these are somewhat well-supplied bandits compared to the norm.
Neither their size nor their supplies saves them from Dimitri. He bursts out of the forest the instant he sees them, lance slashing through the rain. Byleth follows at a distance, picking off the ones who try to sneak up on him, or those who decide that she poses less of a threat than the six-foot-tall man bearing down on them.
All told, the fight should be an easy one, but the rain drenches the ground in seconds, and the mud that follows sticks to Byleth’s boots, weighing down her steps. Her knee protests with every turn she makes, every time she has to plant her foot to brace herself against a blow. She sinks into the mud as the bandit in front of her presses his advantage, grinning savagely at her from over their locked swords. Byleth leans back, pulling him off balance, then spins around him to slash at his exposed back.
He drops to the ground and doesn’t move again.
Beyond him, Byleth sees two more bandits circle Dimitri, leaping back to keep out of the way of his lance. The bandits glance at each other, then lunge. Dimitri whirls, the tip of his lance catching one in the chest and knocking the other back. In the next instant, there’s a flash of something from the trees, and Dimitri goes rigid as an arrowhead blooms in his chest.
Byleth doesn’t think. Time shatters around her, crashing back into place as the bandits begin to circle Dimitri. She bolts, feet slapping the mud, whipping the Sword of the Creator in the direction the arrow came from. There’s a yelp from the trees, and the feel of her blade connecting with flesh. She pulls the sword back just as the remaining bandit comes bearing down on her, sword a blur of silver as he slashes at her.
Byleth turns to catch his sword on her own, but the mud slows her down. It pulls at her feet, sticking her left leg in place. The swords clash, and Byleth immediately feels pain shoot up her leg at the same time she feels herself sinking further into the mud. The bandit presses down on her, triumph lighting his eyes. Byleth grits her teeth and presses back. One hand loosens from the hilt of her sword, magic burning at her fingertips—
And then a hand clamps down on the man’s shoulder, tearing him away from Byleth at the same time a lance buries itself into his side.
The man crumples at Dimitri’s feet, dead.
There is a moment of quiet, where all Byleth can hear is the downpour and the sound of both her and Dimitri’s breathing, heavy and ragged. She glances at him, trying to see his eye, but the rain has plastered his hair to his face, obscuring it from her gaze.
“Dimitri,” she starts. “Thank—”
He shifts out of his battle stance, though his grip on his lance stays firm, and walks away from the remains of the bandit camp, back to the monastery.
Byleth heaves a sigh. She sheaths the Sword of the Creator before following, carefully picking her way out of the mud.
By the time they make it back to the main path, the rain has stopped, but the mud is still there, thick and sticky in some places and thin and innocuous in others. Either kind does nothing to help Byleth’s pace. Her knee has gone from aching to painful with every step, enough to make her slow her pace on instinct to avoid aggravating it.
Under normal conditions, it takes about two steps from her to match one of Dimitri’s long strides. Now, with her knee blaring a warning every time she moves, Byleth starts to fall behind. First one foot, then another, until finally Dimitri is far ahead of her, barely visible among the overhanging trees. He shows no signs of stopping, nor any signs that he’s noticed her falling behind at all. Byleth huffs and picks up her pace. The sooner they get back to Garreg Mach, she reasons, the sooner she can rest and have Mercedes look at her knee, to say nothing of a proper bath and clean clothes. The rain has soaked into the quilting of Byleth’s gambeson and leathers, weighing her down even more. Overall, the conditions are miserable, and she can’t help but feel a bit of annoyance towards Dimitri for leading her out here in the first place. She told him the bandits could wait until the weather cleared, and she warned him about the rain, and yet he hadn’t listened—
Her foot catches, something twists. Byleth shrieks and hits the ground.
She lays there for a moment, dazed, before taking stock of her body. her knee feels as if it’s on fire. Byleth sits up slowly, careful not to move her left leg, then glances down at it. Her foot is buried in the mud, knee twisted at an angle it probably should not be at. She turns her body slowly, carefully, until she is on her back. Then, she plants her hands in the mud to brace herself and scoots back slowly, careful to keep her left leg as immobile as possible.
Something catches around her boot.
Byleth sighs, reaching forward to wipe the mud off her boots. She knows what she will see before she uncovers it, but she can’t help the swell of annoyance that fills her upon seeing the tree root looped over her boot.
The mighty Ashen Demon, felled by a tree root.
Byleth takes a long breath, then another. On the third, time shatters around her once again, until Byleth is back on her feet and the root is once again hidden in the mud.
Is it a trivial use of the Divine Pulse? Yes. Byleth knows this even as she steps gingerly around the spot where the tree root was. But she is tired, and wet, and her knee hurts enough as is without anything else adding to the problem. Besides, after using it so much for others, Byleth figures she is allowed this one selfish use.
She goes back to trudging through the mud, ignoring the rising ache in her knee until one minute, she is walking, and the next, she is face first in the mud.
The pain roars back a second later, burning up and down her left leg. Byleth lifts her head out of the mud and groans, trying to breathe through the pain. In for four, out for five, just as her father taught her.
When she has her breath back, Byleth risks a look around her. The path ahead is empty, and Dimitri is nowhere in sight. She pushes down the hurt that rises within her at the realization. He was already far ahead of her when she fell the first time, and she doesn’t remember seeing him at all the second time. As single-minded as he was, she doubts he’ll notice when she doesn’t catch up, either.
That thought hurts as well, that Dimitri could forget about her. She shakes her head to try to clear it from her mind and focuses instead on the problem in front of her. She sets to work undoing all the straps and buckles of her knee brace and greave. When the armor is gone, she untucks her pant leg from her boot and pulls it up to assess the damage.
The fabric catching just under her knee is her first indication that something is very wrong. It hurts just to press her fingers to her skin and roll the fabric the rest of the way up. When she’s done, she’s greeted by the sight of her skin red and swollen all around her knee, from her kneecap to the ligaments underneath.
For a moment, Byleth is fifteen again, and the healer is redoing the bandages around her knee.
“It might look bad now,” she remembers the woman saying. “But it’s better than it was when you were brought in. You’ll heal, given time and rest.”
Time and rest are things Byleth does not have, not when she’s out in the forest away from the monastery.
Byleth places a hand on her knee, wincing at the contact. White magic lights up her palm in the next instant, chasing away the pain and lessening the swelling. That done, Byleth pulls the fabric of her pants back down and unhooks the Sword of the Creator from her belt. With a silent apology to the relic, she stabs the tip down into the mud, going until it hits solid ground.
She wraps her hands around the hilt and counts down. Three, two, one—
With her good leg taking most of her weight and the sword bracing her, Byleth manages to stand up. Her knee complains at the movement, but for the most part, the healing magic holds.
Byleth lifts her sword out of the mud and stabs it down again a few feet away. She hops forward towards it. Not the most elegant process, but at least she’s moving, she thinks.
She makes it a good ten feet from where she’s fallen before she forgets herself. Or maybe the Sword of the Creator finally gets tired of being an overpowered walking stick. Either way, it wobbles the next time she tries to hop, and when she plants her left leg to try and steady herself, she crumbles to the ground.
Her plan is to lay there until she catches her breath, but the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps forestalls that. Byleth forces herself to sit up, yanking the Sword of the Creator out of the ground. She turns towards the sound, then freezes.
Dimitri stands a few paces away, chest heaving as if he’d run back to her. His eye is wide, frantic almost, but it narrows when he sees her laying in the mud.
One hand moves towards his lance.
“It wasn’t any enemy,” Byleth says quickly. “My knee gave out.”
Dimitri blinks, and Byleth wonders if he remembers the conversation they had at the training grounds all those years ago.
Apparently not.
“You know magic,” he says. “Heal yourself.”
“It doesn’t work like that!” Byleth snaps. She remembers making a similar plea to the healers back in Remire, on the day the company was to set out on its first mission after her injury.
You can heal it, can’t you?
They had healed it, and though Byleth had been able to walk again, the pain had persisted, no matter how many times Byleth or anyone else healed it.
“I need an actual healer to look at it. Mercedes, or Marianne, or someone else.” I need rest. “Go back to the monastery and tell them to come. I won’t move far.”
She’s not sure she’ll be able to move at all, but Byleth isn’t about to wait in the center of the road. She looks around her, spotting a sturdy tree a few feet away and points to it.
“Tell them I’ll be waiting over there.”
Dimitri stares at her, pure disbelief in his expression. There’s something else there too, something Byleth can’t name. Sorrow, maybe?
Either way, he just stands there, staring at her.
“Dimitri, go.” The sun is setting, and Byleth would rather not have to wait here all night. And yet, Dimitri is still standing there. For all the times that he’s growled at her to leave him alone, or otherwise walked away from her, he is immobile the one time she wants him to leave.
Byleth sighs and looks down. Maybe if she isn’t staring at him, he’ll do what she asks.
Instead, he walks closer, each step slow and tentative, sloshing in the mud. When he is by her side, he kneels down, and pulls her against him.
“Dimitri, what are you—”
“Be silent,” Dimitri growls.
One arm settles on her shoulder, the other underneath her knees. His intent dawns on her a second before Dimitri stands, lifting her off the ground as if she weighs nothing at all.
He starts off back in the direction of the monastery without another word.
Byleth lays in his arms, stunned. She hadn’t thought—
Since their reunion, Dimitri has hardly touched anyone, or let others touch him. Byleth hadn’t even suggested that he carry or help her hobble back because she feared being rejected flat out, and yet here she is tucked against his chest. His strides are sure, measured, one hand on her injured leg to avoid jostling her knee as he walks. The sheer amount of care in the gesture shocks her, though perhaps it shouldn’t. For all Dimitri’s protests that the boy she knew was dead, Byleth knew that some of her kind prince remained.
And here he is, carrying her to safety.
Byleth lets herself relax in his arms, turning her face into his shoulder. Her cheek brushes up against the fur of his mantle, as rain soaked as the rest of their clothes.
“Thank you, Dimitri,” she says.
His arms tighten around her, but he says nothing the whole way back to the monastery.