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Byleth has never woven roses together before.
Roses have always been for the noble gardens, to be looked at but never touched. Her hands, rough as they are, are more suited to grass and wildflowers, sprouting along hills and muddy roads, never kept confined by garden walls. Roses are dignified and elegant and uncompromising; she’s reminded of this when another stem, crowned by white petals, snaps in her hand.
Maybe it’s just Garreg Mach roses, she thinks, and picks up another to struggle with.
When she was young, her grubby hands used to weave wreath after wreath, of grasses and flowers and weeds. She’d present them to her father with a solemn, intense stare, and without fail he would smile brightly and ask, “Is this for me, kid?”
He always wore them so proudly.
Usually, there would be a few mercenaries laughing behind their hands about the fact that the legendary Bladebreaker was decked out with dandelions and sloppily woven grass. Sometimes she would stare at them until they stopped, wholly unnerved by her expressionless gaze, and sometimes her father would fix them with a glare before turning back to his daughter with a smile.
She always wanted to return it, but could never quite figure out how.
Sighing in frustration, she absentmindedly picks open the stems with her nails in a vain attempt to make them more flexible, like the flowers she’s used to handling. The petals fall each time the flowers shake, and soon there’s a puddle of white at her feet, a snowfall that got lost on its way to winter.
The Garland Moon is no time for snow, with its warm breezes and even warmer sun. What it is the time for is young women giving garlands of white roses to their friends, fancies, and lovers. It’s never been something that she’s been interested in, for she’s never had a lover, fancy, nor even a friend steady enough to want to give a garland to.
This year, however, she does.
As she rises with a sigh, she tugs the strap of her satchel, full of white roses from the greenhouse, over her head. There are plenty of other young women that she knows would make better use of these than she, and there’s no sense in wasting them. Practicality demands she end this series of failed experiments.
Seteth will understand, of course, if she doesn’t present him with a garland. In fact, he’d probably commend her on trying to remain subtle about their relationship, but that still doesn’t stop the bitter disappointment from rising in her heart. She wanted to see his smile when he received it.
There are papers waiting for her review in her office, she’s sure, for there always are; stacks and stacks of them grow every minute, it seems, with no end in sight. Seteth takes the mounds of paperwork in stride, for in his hand the quill is mightier than the sword, but in Byleth’s, the quill snaps. She doesn’t have it in her to go back there just yet, and so instead she retreats to an isolated wall of Garreg Mach after apologetically returning the flowers, where the wind tousles her hair and familiar dirt finds its way under her fingernails as she climbs atop it.
The breeze is gentle as it billows through her clothes, warm and tender as a hug. There’s no blood or iron in this wind, just the earth before rain and the faintest hint of flowers.
Last year they were at war, and there was no time for garlands or summer breezes.
When she closes her eyes, she feels at peace, the day’s frustrations fading away. She’s more at home out here on the wall, wearing the clothes she once donned as a mercenary rather than her archbishop’s robes, surrounded by open air rather than strait-laced nobles. She can only imagine what they would say if they saw her now, legs dangling over the wall and hair tossing in the wind. It almost makes her smile.
She can only imagine what Seteth would say if he saw her now, and that does make her smile. In her head, she can hear his exasperated tone as he points out how filthy the wall is, and then his yelp of surprise as she tugs him down to sit next to her. They’d make a fine pair, she thinks, the archbishop and her advisor- no, the archbishop and her fiancé- perching on the wall like a couple of crows as Seteth caws about how dirty his pristine white pants are getting.
The mountainside beneath her is a green sea, a wave rising to meet the monastery walls and crashing against it, crowned with a foam of fluffy dandelions. With a small push against the stone, she flies off and down to meet the billowing waves, stirred by the wind, and lands in a puff of dandelion seeds and bouncing pebbles. The fall is a nice, freeing moment- the sort of bold thing she used to do when she was younger, jumping from rocks and trees to find that exhilaration of flight for just a few seconds. Flayn would join her, if she could, and Byleth’s sure that Seteth would faint from worry.
A little over a year ago, before the battle of Gronder Field, she was here with both of them. Her relationship with Seteth had been kept a secret, even from Flayn, up until that point, so as to not disturb the war effort. However, with the impending battle, both agreed that Flayn should know, in case of the worst, and took her out for a picnic on the mountainside in one of Seteth’s more impulsive and, in his mind, irresponsible moments.
Flayn, however, already knew, and Byleth knew that she knew, for Flayn is highly perceptive, and her father painfully obvious in his attempts to conceal his affection. Still, to her credit, she pretended to be shocked, even if her smug grin at having her suspicions confirmed was just as ill-concealed as Seteth’s soft looks in Byleth’s direction.
As she lays down in the grass and flowers, her arms tucked behind her head, she remembers the way his hand rested on her waist, gentle and sure, as he asked his daughter’s permission to bring Byleth into their family. That moment still clings to her like syrup, a sweet reminder of his affection and steadfastness. When she is with him she feels grounded, as if she is no longer drifting from place to place, as if she has a home.
All of her life, she’s never had a home, and yet she’s found it in him.
When she closes her eyes, the wind and earth around her melt away, and all she thinks of is him. The scratch of his beard as he kisses and nuzzles her cheek in the morning, urging her to wake up. The way his skin smells right after bathing, when the floral tones of his soap nearly overpower the warm, smoldering scent not unlike wyverns that he always carries with him. The sound of his laugh catching in his throat when he’s surprised before erupting into a sound much brighter. The way his lips taste after he’s been drinking his favorite tea, spicy and punchy. The way his hair looks when it’s about to rain, softly curling in the humid air.
Rain.
She can smell it in the air, and see it in the clouds fast approaching Garreg Mach. She should go inside before a downpour drenches her, she knows, but she doesn’t. Instead, she idly thumbs at the flowers surrounding her, and wonders if she haunts Seteth the way he does her.
The calluses of her hands, roughened by battle and hardship, gliding over his shoulders as she rubs and kneads, trying to help him relieve some of the ache. The way she always comes back to their room smelling different each night, of earth or food or sweat. The rare sound of her laugh that he seems so entranced by. The new flavor of her lips each time he kisses her, for she never can quite settle on a favorite tea. The way her hair, choppy and uneven and tangled more often than not, brushes against her shoulders.
They are so different, in many respects. A saint and a soldier. The steady precipice and the wave that comes to meet it, one standing strong throughout centuries, the other changing each moment and never returning the same. A rose and a dandelion, one carefully cultivated and pruned, the other growing wild among fields and along roads and between stones.
Almost carelessly, she plucks a dandelion- still yellow and not covered in seeds, fluffy and white- and she remembers again how she used to weave these into crowns as a child. She plucks another, then another, and an idea begins to form. Slowly, carefully, her fingers find familiar patterns, and she weaves.
She runs into the monastery just as the downpour begins in earnest, the storm chasing her inside like a mother hen would her chicks, herding them into the warm barn for the night. With a fierce shake she deposits most of the water clinging to her and her satchel onto the floor, and lets the rest drip off onto the stairs as she climbs up to the Archbishop’s bedroom.
It always feels strange to acknowledge it as her bedroom, or even their bedroom, because even when Seteth is with her, it always feels just a little too grand, a little too big, a little too empty for her to feel comfortable. She’s solved the problem by adding clutter everywhere she can- gifts from students and faculty, trinkets from the marketplace, books that she’s never read before, and more.
Life at the monastery is almost suffocating, but in this room she can suffocate it right back, allowing her collection to swallow it up until it has no room left to breathe.
When Manuela saw the room, she shrieked in horror and urged Byleth to quickly clean it up before Seteth saw and thought twice about their engagement, only half in jest. Byleth had to reassure the frantic songstress that Seteth wouldn’t mind that much anyways, given the state of his own room (which he insists is both “organized clutter” and “dusted twice a week, thank you very much”).
Admittedly, he had balked at the both the size and state of her collection compared to his own, considering the fact that he’d been at it for a millennia and she’d been at it for a year, at most, but after some organizing and dusting, and ensuring that there would always be at least one free table and chair, he’d settled quite comfortably in beside her, with his own things slowly and naturally migrating in.
He is in one of these chairs when she enters, his brow scrunched and his lips settled into a frown as he reads a sheaf of parchment, no doubt official papers of some sort. His expression instantly lifts with his eyes as he sees her, but settles downward again when he realizes how wet she is.
“Were you out in that storm?” he asks, setting aside the papers and immediately rising to greet her. “Really, my love, I thought you would exercise better judgement than that. You’re soaked to the bone.”
His list of admonishments continues as he helps her dry off and change clothes, her satchel and its precious contents almost forgotten. Out of all of them, she realizes, not one is telling her to change; all are simply expressing concern.
He pauses for a moment in the middle of drying her, a fond but exasperated smile creeping onto his face as she stares up at him from beneath the rumpled towel, her hair in disarray.
With that single look, she knows that he loves her just the way she is, downpours and all.
“Honestly, you are incorrigible,” he says, leaning down to kiss her forehead.
“But you love me.”
“So I do. Very much.”
When he leans down again, his lips meet her own.
Her satchel is definitely forgotten by the time she’s cuddled up in his arms, both of them wrapped in a blanket by the fireplace, but suddenly she remembers.
“Oh! Seteth! I have something for you.” She nearly trips on the blanket as she jumps up, rushing over to retrieve it, and does trip on the way back, falling into Seteth’s arms. He lets out an undignified shriek as she comes crashing down, but it soon turns into laughter as they try to untangle themselves. Eventually, they do, and sit facing each other, close enough to still share the blanket. “You have to take off your circlet first.”
“That is curiously specific. Why?”
“Please? For me?”
“Very well,” he sighs, and does so.
To an outsider, it wouldn’t seem that significant, but it is to Byleth. He’s never seen without it in public, and even when they are alone, he only takes it off to bathe or sleep, and that’s only if he remembers. Sometimes she’ll have to gently slip it off his head in the middle of the night when he forgets, and he’ll usually make an adorable little frown before groggily saying something nonsensical in his sleep before relaxing again.
“Now close your eyes.”
“There are quite a lot of steps to this, aren’t there?”
“Shhh,” she smiles. “Just do it.”
“Very well.”
Obediently, he does so, and she fishes a circlet of dandelions out of her satchel. With careful hands, she places the crown upon his head, and pauses to delight in his pensive expression as he tries to figure out what exactly she’s doing. She takes her time making sure it’s secure, with a kiss on each pointed tip of his ears that makes his nose crinkle as he tries not to laugh. They’ve always been a bit ticklish.
“You can look now.”
When he opens his eyes and turns to the mirror, he’s silent at first, and his expression surprised. She feels her heart sink.
“You were expecting roses, weren’t you?”
“I love it.”
“What?”
He turns back to her and presses a kiss to her lips. “I love it. I am touched that you would make this for me.” His fingers brush over her cheek, softly, tenderly, as he tucks some of her hair back behind her ear. “Something like this, that comes from your heart… It means more to me than any traditional garland could.”
“Oh, Seteth. I love-” Before she can finish, her stomach interrupts with a loud growl, and he laughs.
“You should get something to eat, my love.”
She starts to rise, nodding, then spies his circlet on the floor. With an impish smile, she snatches it up and puts it on, darting out of his grasp before he can stop her even as it bangs down onto her ears, being much too big for her. “Bye, honey!”
Seteth laughs in response, and when she turns to look back at him she sees her dandelions sprouting from his head, and a smile on his face, and love in his eyes.
Byleth has never woven roses together before, but when she sees that look on his face, she knows she doesn’t need to.