Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lysithea winced. Then she winced again for good measure.

Part of it was because Cyril had warned her – in terms that were somehow both insulting and complimentary – that her hands were too delicate for this job. Part of it was was pride - just because she was a student at the academy didn’t mean she couldn’t do basic chores, but Cyril seemed to think she was only good for spellbooks and lectures. Part of it was that it was embarrassing that she couldn’t carry firewood even after it had been chopped up, and she had been so insistent that she’d be fine.

Most of it was just that the splinter really did hurt, a lot more than it should have.

“It might hurt a bit,” Cyril said, not looking up from her hand, so she didn’t know how he knew she was wincing.

“I’ve had worse,” Lysithea said flatly, which was true.

Cyril bit his lower lip in concentration as he brushed the flat end of his pocket knife against her finger, coaxing the tiny fleck of firewood with a patience that he didn’t seem to exhibit in most any other situation. Lysithea sighed and looked up at the forest canopy above them, afternoon sunlight streaming through the trees. She didn’t like to look at her own injuries, however minor and meaningless they were.

“Maybe next time you can see if they need help in the kitchens,” Cyril suggested, and Lysithea scowled. It wasn’t her fault she was setting him back from his work.

It was completely her fault she was setting him back from his work.

“There!” Cyril said, sounding almost triumphant. Lysithea’s finger still throbbed, but when she looked down at her hand she saw the splinter was gone. Cyril grinned at her almost shyly, adding, “Hurts less now, right?”

“I’ll get some gardening gloves from the greenhouse next time,” Lysithea said, to avoid having to admit her finger still felt on fire. “You shouldn’t have to do this all yourself.”

“I don’t see the point in that,” Cyril said with a frown. “It’s my job to do it and I know what I’m doing. I don’t want you getting hurt just because you don’t think I can do it on my own.” His finger brushed hers, slightly, and Lysithea realized he maybe did know it still hurt.

“Friends help each other, Cyril,” Lysithea said with a frown. It was an oft-repeated refrain; one that Cyril didn’t seem to hear. “And besides,” she added, grabbing his hand more tightly and flipping it over. “It’s not like you escape unscathed from these jobs of yours, even if you do know what you’re doing.”

Cyril glared at her and tried to pull his hand away, but Lysithea held on triumphantly. The back of his hand did have its fair amount of scratches. It wasn’t fair to bring it up – she knew for a fact he’d been clearing thorn bushes from the monastery perimeter last week.

“That’s my whole point,” Cyril said sullenly. “I can handle another splinter – I don’t see why you should have to.”

Lysithea didn’t like that line of argument much at all. With her other hand, she lightly traced a scratch running from his knuckle to the center of his hand. “I don’t see why you have to, either,” she said. “We do have gloves and vulneraries and things, you know.”

Cyril opened his mouth to argue – although Lysithea couldn’t think of how he would argue against basic first aid – but before he could answer, a loud voice called through the woods, cutting him off.

“Hey, Cyril, did you need any help with that firewood?” Claude called, crashing through the bushes as he made his way into the clearing. “Seteth was hoping he could get a couple of people to help him – oh hello . Did I interrupt something?”

Cyril glared at Claude, unimpressed, but that was nothing particularly new. It took Lysithea a moment to realize why her house leader was standing there with such a goofy grin on his face. Although Cyril had turned, he hadn’t dropped her hand, and Claude was staring at them sitting on a downed tree trunk, Lysithea clutching Cyril’s hand in hers.

An immature, melodramatic, stupid reaction. Just like Claude to jump to such nonsense, when she made it no secret that she liked to help Cyril out with monastery chores from time to time.

Lysithea dropped Cyril’s hand and stood up quickly, but to her annoyance, Claude kept smiling.

“I can come back later,” he said. “If you two were in the middle of . . . a conversation.”

“We were in the middle of carrying firewood,” Lysithea said, picking up the same stack of logs that had given the offending splinter moments before. Cyril made a strangled sound that caught at the back of his throat, but she began marching towards the monastery before he could stop her. She turned and called over her shoulder to Claude, “I suggest you carry some yourself if you’re so intent on being useful.”

When Lysithea got back to the monastery grounds, she dropped the firewood in the pile and made her way back to her room without waiting for Cyril to catch up. Looking over her shoulder, she could see him walking along with Claude, his stack of firewood piled practically over his head.

Even from this distance, she could tell that whatever Claude was talking about, Cyril was annoyed.

***

It was a clear, cold winter’s evening, the sort where you could count every star in the sky and where the moonlight seemed bright enough to light your way without a candle. The air was calm and still. Somewhere in the distance, Cyril could hear an owl crying out into the darkness.

Lysithea appeared to notice none of this as she pulled him along deeper into the gardens.

“I’m glad we got all away from all that; Hilda can be so meddlesome at this sort of thing,” she said over her shoulder.

“Sorry – what sort of thing?” Cyril asked. Lysithea was jumpy tonight; moving from topic to topic at a rate he could scarcely keep up with. She was like this when she was nervous, which was usually before an exam or a battle. Cyril wasn’t sure why she’d have much reason to be nervous tonight, though.

“Oh, you know,” Lysithea said, waving her free hand wildly as if that provided the explanation for her. “Balls, dances, social gathering. Silly things like that. Hilda loves dancing and she loves making people do what she wants. Meddlesome!”

She dropped Cyril’s hand as she walked forward, and for a brief, irrational moment, he almost grabbed it back, if only because Lysithea seemed a little bit wobbly on her feet. She hadn’t seemed wobbly when they were dancing together – it was Cyril who had been stepping in all the wrong places and awkwardly bumping into everything. But maybe she had gripped his shoulder harder for balance than he’d realized. Or maybe it had taken a while for her glass of champagne to go to her head.

Either way, Cyril was saved from having to catch her by the presence of a very useful stone bench, which Lysithea took a seat on. She kicked her feet back and forth a few times and smiled at Cyril, as if she expected him to do something.

Cyril tentatively took a seat on the bench next to her, which must have been the right thing, because she smiled even brighter. Lysithea was awfully pretty when she smiled, with her hair like moonlight and her eyes shining like stars, and Cyril wondered if she maybe should go back to the ball to be with all her friends, rather than wasting the night out here alone.

Before he could suggest it, though, Lysithea grabbed his hand against and leaned in close.

“I am sorry, you know,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “That you got dragged into all this nonsense. I’m sure you had better things to do tonight.”

“I mean, Lady Rhea asked me to help out,” Cyril said with a shrug. “But there wasn’t much to do, once things got started.”

He’d been rearranging champagne flutes for the fourth time that evening when Hilda had found him, dragging Lysithea behind her. The ensuing conversation had been loud, and confusing, and mostly between Hilda and Lysithea, and it had ended with Hilda pushing them onto the dance floor over Cyril’s insistences that he didn’t know how to dance and Lysithea’s complaints that Hilda was being very immature.

The dance had been mostly apologies, and gentle swaying, and Lysithea’s hand gripping his shoulder too tight while he clutched her waist as if that would keep him upright. When Lysithea had suggested they stop halfway through the dance, Cyril had been equal parts mortified and relieved, but he’d agreed readily. He’d expected her to go find someone else to dance with, some noble from her class who knew what the steps were. Instead, she’d grabbed his hand and pulled him after her, leaving the ball and its warmth and its candlelight for the gardens and the moonlight.

“This entire evening is just – it’s just an excuse for people to be ridiculous,” Lysithea was saying. She waved her hands energetically as she talked, her shoulder bumping against his, and Cyril tried not to think about the way she’d held onto him while they were dancing, since she’d clearly not thought much of it at the time. “The whole legend of the goddess tower, and all that – you know about that, right?”

“Sort of,” Cyril said with a shrug. “I think I know the basic details, at least.”

“It’s so silly , and half our class really believes it, you know,” Lysithea said with a derisive snort.

Cyril opened his mouth to answer but was caught off guard by our class . It was true he helped out in battles now and then, and their professor let him sit in on archery seminars when he had time, but he’d never really felt part of their small little group before. He blinked at Lysithea, wondering if she’d realized what she’d even said.

She didn’t seem to notice his shock, though. “It’s a charming enough folk tale, I suppose,” she was saying. “But you’d have to be an utter fool to think that wishing on the right star would bring you true love or anything like that. And that’s not even why we’re here, right?”

“It’s a nice enough story, I guess,” Cyril said skeptically. “I’m not sure it has to be more than that. Sometimes people just like nice stories.”

“You’re not really interested in things like that, though, are you?” Lysithea asked. She was kicking her feet again. Her shoes had jewels on the buckles. “Chivalry and romance and legends and things?”

Cyril pulled his eyes away from her shoes and their buckles and realized she was staring at him very intently. “I mean,” he said, and swallowed as his voice cracked. “It’s fine, I guess. I just don’t have a lot of time for it.”

“Exactly,” Lysithea exclaimed. “Who has time for dancing and true love’s kiss and all that; there’s so much to do besides all that.”

Somewhere in the distance, the garden hedges rustled, and Cyril looked away sharply at the sound. When he looked back, Lysithea was staring at her own shoes.

“Would you be interested, though?” she asked. “If you had time?”

Cyril swallowed again, but his voice still sounded wrong. “Maybe,” he managed to say. He forced himself to look over at Lysithea who blinked up at him. He might’ve imagined that she was leaning in closer.

“Maybe?” she repeated. Her voice was softer. Her eyes were stars. Her hair was moonlight.

“You know,” Cyril said with a shrug that he knew explained nothing. “If someone was interested.”

“Yes,” Lysithea agreed. “I absolutely understand.”

Cyril wasn’t intending to kiss Lysithea, not really. But if he leaned a little closer as she looked up at him, if she wanted to lean up and kiss him . That was different.

Lysithea smiled at him again, soft and warm and happy in a way she never seemed to be around anyone else. Her hand brushed against his and, okay, maybe Cyril was going to kiss her, if that was what she wanted, if that was why her eyes were slipping shut and she was leaning that much closer to him, in the moonlight, in the starlight.

The crashing through the bushes was so loud that even Lysithea heard it, and as she jerked back Cyril was embarrassed that he hadn’t heard it much earlier.

Claude wasn’t even trying to be quiet.

“I'm just saying, Teach, if you haven’t been to the goddess tower before then tonight is the perfect chance to check it out.”

Lysithea launched herself to the other side of the bench with a deftness that she generally reserved for battlefields and extra desserts. If she had more time, Cyril suspected she might’ve launched herself into a nearby shrubbery. But unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, given how thorny some of the surrounding bushes were), Claude spotted them as soon as he walked into the clearing, leading a very bemused professor behind him.

“Cyril! Lysithea! This is a surprise!” Claude exclaimed, not sounding surprised at all. “Speaking of goddess towers – are you two out here making wishes? And without a chaperone?”

“We don’t need a chaperone to sit on a bench , Claude,” Lysithea huffed, standing up and crossing her arms. “Cyril and I just thought the dancing was getting awfully boring, didn’t we, Cyril?”

Claude’s eyes sparkled with amusement as he shifted his focus to Cyril. “Bored of Fódlan balls already, Cyril?” he asked, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “Such a pity. When I saw you two dancing you both seemed to be having a perfectly good time.”

“You’re impossible , Claude,” Lysithea said. Raising her head high, she stomped past him and Byleth, and to Cyril’s regret, she didn’t bother to pull him after her. “I’m going back to my room,” she announced with scowl. “Clearly this is a public thoroughfare for reprobates of all sorts.”

“Hey, you were here first!” Claude called after her, but Lysithea had already disappeared through the bushes.

Cyril kicked a pebble and hoped maybe they would forget he was there. No such luck.

 “Sorry about that, Cyril,” Claude said, walking over and taking Lysithea’s place on the bench next to him. “I’m taking Teach to see the goddess tower; I honestly figured anyone skipping out on the ball would’ve found a better hiding place.”

“Nothing to hide from,” Cyril said, a little too quickly to be believable. “We were just talking.”

“Ah, well, I’m sorry to have interrupted the conversation,” Claude said with far too mischievous a smile. “She likes talking to you, you know. More than she likes talking to most other people.”

“More than she likes talking to you, I guess,” Cyril muttered, but Claude didn’t seem offended.

“Probably true!” he said with a laugh. He stood up and held his hand out to Byleth. “Shall we see if anyone is ‘just talking’ in the goddess tower, Teach? Could be fun.”

Byleth didn’t take his hand, but followed after him. Before she left, however, she turned and looked over to Cyril.

“Maybe see that Lysithea gets back to her room safely, Cyril,” she said softly. “I’m sure she’d appreciate that.”

It was the first time she’d offered him advice that wasn’t about battle tactics or archery form. Cyril wished he could more clearly understand what she meant by it.

***

The reunion at Garreg Mach wasn’t the first time Lysithea had seen Cyril since the war began, really. The knights of Seiros had passed through Ordelia a fair amount of times, and her father was holy enough (and embittered towards the Empire enough) to offer them shelter for the night. So there had been snatches of conversation, dinners on opposite sides of the hall, even one night where they stayed up until nearly dawn, sitting on hay bales at the end of the stables and never quite making eye contact as they talked circles around the war and the future and each other.

So yes, Lysithea had seen Cyril now and then, since leaving Garreg Mach. It wasn’t a surprise to her that he was taller and his shoulders were broader and his eyelashes were stupidly long when he blinked at her, slowly, still surprised at the things she said to him.

She was pretty sure she hadn’t been this close to him in a long while, however.

And he had definitely been wearing a shirt every time she’d seen him before.

So, she figured, it was reasonable that there was still a lot to adjust to.

“You could’ve avoided that arrow, you know,” she grumbled to him as she poured water of the rag he’d handed her. It would be faster to heal the wound with magic from the jump, but Lysithea already felt the tug of exhaustion in her bloodstream after a long and pointless battle against some dangerous, desperate thieves. She added darkly, “You could’ve avoided that fight altogether. I had it.”

Cyril shrugged. The knights had arrived towards the end of the battle; Lysithea had barely realized who he was when he rode in front of her to cut a bandit down.

“He’d lined up his shot,” he said, wincing as Lysithea cleaned the wound at his shoulder. “I didn’t much like the thought of him getting a chance to make it.”

Lysithea frowned. “I would’ve been fine,” she said, but she wasn’t even sure she convinced herself as she said it. She traced a finger on a jagged line that ran down from his collarbone. “When did this happen?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Two years back. Empire skirmish,” Cyril said.

“Does it hurt?” Lysithea asked, leaning in slightly. Whoever had healed it had done a shoddy job, too quick and not clean.

She wished it had been her, instead.

Cyril shrugged. “Arrow wound hurts more,” he said. It was the first time he’d acknowledged pain at all.

Lysithea rolled her eyes to avoid the pang of guilt that she hadn’t taken the archer down faster. “Hold still, then,” she said, pushing through the weary ache that reached down into her bones and dousing her hand with white light.

She dropped the rag on the low stone wall where Cyril was sitting and pushed her hand against the wound. Faith and healing had never been her specialty, but it was a simple enough procedure, and she narrowed her eyes in concentration as she watched the flesh stitch itself back together, layers of new skin appearing as the light focused to a finer and finer point.

Still, she faltered, slightly. Her magic was strong but her body protested. Cyril caught her as her knees buckled, holding her upright as she stumbled forward.

“That’s probably enough,” he mumbled, looking at her and not at his injury. How could he know.

Lysithea gritted her teeth. “It’s not. Hold still,” she said. His hand tightened around her elbow and she readjusted her other hand to rest against him, absently tracing the scar down towards his rib cage, wondering how much he was lying when he said it no longer hurt –

“Ey Cyril, Seteth wants the knights to come talk with Byleth about – oh wow! Huh. You two didn’t waste any time, did you?”

Cyril, in his defense, probably panicked as much as Lysithea. Unfortunately, his solution was to pull her closer, not to spring away, as if Claude were another enemy archer he needed to foolishly throw himself in front of. Lysithea’s magic burst erratically across his shoulder, shooting off into different directions before flaring out into nothing again.

Lysithea scowled, pushing herself off of Cyril and shaking her hand a couple of times as pins and needles shot through it. A rookie mistake; not that Claude or Cyril had the training to spot it.

“Go see Marianne tomorrow,” she told Cyril, picking up his shirt and handing it back to him. “She’ll want to make sure your shoulder doesn’t scar.”

“Not coming to the meeting, Lysithea?” Claude asked her cheerfully as she stomped away. She ignored him with what she hoped was a dignified silence.

They were back at the monastery for good now; she’d have plenty of chances to yell at him later.

***

The problem with reading, Cyril discovered, was that after a while it really started to hurt your eyes. And he needed his eyes on the battlefield. He certainly needed it more than he needed to learn about the King Loog and the Grey Knight or whatever was happening in this book. He set the book down and closed his eyes for a moment.

“You should go to bed if you’re tired,” Lysithea said. She was curled up on the couch next to him, so absorbed in her own book that he was surprised she’d even noticed what he was doing.

It looked worse than what he was reading, he had to admit. He was getting pretty good at reading, but some of the books she pulled off the highest shelves (or asked him to grab for her) were still utterly incomprehensible to him.

“You going to bed?” he asked. “It’s getting pretty late.”

Lysithea frowned. “I want to finish this volume before the march tomorrow,” she said. “It’s just a few more chapters.”

“Couldn’t you just finish it when we get back?” Cyril asked. He was jumpy about tomorrow’s march. They were heading into Empire territory, if the battle went well. But he and Lysithea had an unspoken agreement that they never speculated that a battle might go poorly. They would always return. She could always finish the book later.

She didn’t like this particular suggestion, however, judging from her expression. “That sets off my whole reading schedule,” she said. “If I finish this one tonight, I can start a fresh volume when we return to the monastery. It’s easier to pick up.”

“You’re a gremory now,” Cyril said. It wasn’t a reminder she needed, but it was one she liked to hear, and she smiled as he said it. The smile disappeared when he added, “I feel like a full night’s sleep is more important than studying faster.”

“I have a schedule,” Lysithea said with a frown. “I don’t want to fall behind.”

“We’ll be at Enbarr soon, if we keep sharp,” Cyril said. “You’ll have all the time in the world after that, won’t you?”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Lysithea’s face changed, a strange mixture of displeasure and . . . he could have sworn it was a moment of fear. They didn’t talk about after the war. They didn’t talk about upcoming battles. Cyril wished he could take Enbarr back, but before he could apologize, Lysithea spoke, quietly, her voice far away.

“I haven’t told you much about my childhood, have I, Cyril?” she asked. She put the book down and pulled her knees to her chest, staring straight ahead rather than at him.

“Your childhood? I – I guess not,” Cyril said with a shrug. He didn’t like to talk about his, so he’d hardly asked.

“It’s just –” Lysithea started, then stopped. She took a long, shuddering breath. “I don’t think I’ll have much time to study, after the war. If there is an after the war.”

“Because of your childhood?” Cyril asked. It was hard to follow her train of thought, but he could tell from her face it was important.

“I – yes, because of – yes,” Lysithea said. “Listen, Cyril, there’s something I want to tell you. I don’t talk about it much, but –”

She broke away as a rattle echoed through the library. Cyril’s looked to the front door – no one wandered into the library this late at night; so the jiggling door handle was unexpected. Just as the door swung open, Lysithea dropped her book, leaned over Cyril, and quickly blew out the candle on the table beside him, leaving their little corner of the library shrouded in darkness.

She wobbled uncertainly against him, but when Cyril put an arm around her to steady her, she didn’t pull away.

Claude walked into the library, his own lamp illuminating him in the partial darkness. He was whistling an aimless tune as he walked down the first row of shelves. Lysithea tensed and gave a frustrated snort, and Cyril half expected her to call out to Claude to stop whistling while she was trying to read. Instead, she curled up closer to Cyril, as if making herself smaller in the space would keep Claude from seeing her.

Claude’s whistling continued as he stopped in front of a shelf, peering at the books in front of them. He took a couple from eye level and flipped through them before absently tossing them on the table behind him. (This earned him another annoyed huff from Lysithea, but he appeared not to notice.) Eventually, he selected a book and, after a moment of flipping through it, appeared to like the contents. Still whistling, he turned and made his way out of the library, swinging the door behind him halfheartedly so it didn’t even latch all the way.

With Claude’s candle gone, they were left in the dark.

“Sorry,” Lysithea said after a moment that was too long. “It’s just – Claude can be a lot sometimes. I didn’t  - I don’t feel like talking to him right now.”

“That makes sense,” Cyril said. He waited for Lysithea to move away from him, or pick up her book again, or light the lamp beside them. She didn’t.

“Do you want to –” Cyril started.

“No,” Lysithea said before he could finish the question. She sighed, and shifted against him, curling up in on herself in a way he was used to seeing, when she got lost in her books and disappeared from the world. Cyril had long wanted to pull her against him when she did this, to give her some tether to the reality she wanted to escape. Now that it actually happened, he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“It’s getting pretty late,” he said, which was the opposite of what he wanted to say, but all he could think to say.

He felt her tense, for a moment, but then she sighed, letting her head fall fully onto his shoulder. “I know that,” she said, her voice cross. Her voice was always cross when you told her something she didn’t want to hear. After a moment, she added softly, “I just – can we just stay here for a bit? I’m so tired, Cyril.”

Cyril wanted to ask her what she was going to tell him, about her childhood, about her books, about why she was always tired. He couldn’t figure out how to trace back that path. He wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

So instead, he reached his arm around her more fully, pulling her against him, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The shelves came into focus, slowly, books upon books that Lysithea had memorized. Cyril tightened his arm around Lysithea and didn’t ask her what they had that she so badly needed. Lysithea held onto his hand and did not tell him.

***

When the war ended, Lysithea was alone.

Granted, she was in Enbarr, along with the rest of the army. She was in the royal palace, even. But she would only hear secondhand tales of when the emperor finally fell. For her, the war ended not with a final, meaningful death, but as lines of troops slowed, then stopped, until it was only her, standing alone in a corridor, the reinforcements finally gone even as the thrum of magic electrified her veins.

She stood, watching the stairwell, listening for footsteps, keeping the magic on her palms. Then she heard the cheer of the Alliance army and she turned and she ran.

She ran down the corridor and into the large entry hall of the palace, which had become a ruined battlefield of its own. She ran past the wreckage and the bodies and out onto the palace steps. She ran past her allies as they took stock of the battle and past enemy soldiers that eyed them suspiciously but offered no further resistance.

She found him where he always was after battle, near the knights of Seiros but standing away, tending to his horse even as his eyes darted around his surroundings, always on the lookout.

Cyril had to be there, because he was always there. But it wasn’t until she saw him that Lysithea’s knees properly gave out, from relief, from exhaustion, from the pure pent-up adrenaline of secretly believing that this was the time he would be gone.

She stumbled forward, her steps suddenly slower and shakier. But Cyril caught her elbow faster than should have been possible, meeting her halfway.

“Careful, there,” he said, as if that would stop her adrenaline. He kept hold of her arm, looking at her intently. “Everything alright?”

“I lost you in the battle,” Lysithea said. It was another one of their informal, unspoken agreements. Stay close when you can. Keep an eye on each other. He had broken it. “You doubled back,” she said, trying not to sound accusatory.

He nodded, his expression regretful if not apologetic. “Enemy troops on the lower floors,” he explained. “We had to head them off.” His grip on her arm tightened slightly, and Lysithea was surprised to feel his fingers on her cheek, tracing a scrape she hadn’t noticed. “Did you get hurt?” he asked. “If I had been there –”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Lysithea cut him off. “I was just worried about you, that’s all.”

Cyril frowned and dropped his hand. “Next battle I’ll stay closer,” he said. “I promise.”

When Lysithea laughed in reply, his frown only deepend. And she couldn’t really blame him. It was a wild, unexpected laugh, one she had hardly meant.

“There is no ‘next battle,’ Cyril,” she said, reaching out and grabbing his hand, not letting him get too far away from her. “The war is over. We can – we can stop fighting.”

Cyril held her hand too tight, looking at her so intently she thought he might be looking straight through her.

“What now, then?” he asked softly, and something in the way he asked it made Lysithea’s knees feel unsteady again. Thank the goddess he was still holding her up.

“Well,” she said, trying to answer his question, a thing she was good at. “We find Rhea, of course. And we go back to Garreg Mach. And I guess I’ll return to Ordelia, at some point. And you and me – well –”

“Yes?” Cyril prompted, and Lysithea forced herself to look back at him.

“There’s a lot I want to talk to you about,” she said. “We haven’t had time, but – I want you to know.”

“I want to hear it,” Cyril promised. “Whatever it is.” He glanced around them, always on alert, before darting his gaze back to her, that same intensity keeping her in place even if he hadn’t been holding her closer than she was used to. “Do you want to tell me now?” he asked.

Lysithea surprised herself again by shaking her head. She’d always lived in the present; she’d always had to. It seemed selfish to give herself future plans. But maybe, just this once –

“We have time. The war is over,” she said, and the words tasted beautiful. “For now, I just want to – I want to just be here, with you. Okay?” A moment of panic seized her, and she added, “That’s what you want, too, right?”

Cyril kissed her, and she felt silly for worrying.

It was unexpected, maybe, but maybe she’d been expecting it for as long as she’d known him, or nearly. Cyril pulled her closer, and by the time she’d wrapped her arms around his neck, his hands found her waist to pull her closer still. In the back of her mind, Lysithea remembered them dancing together when they were students, fumbling and confused and clinging to each other in a way that made things both bearable and so much worse.

She clung to Cyril now, and he was still stable and calm and there in a way that made the whole world feel safe. But if she was still a bit fumbling, and still a bit confused, it no longer bothered her. Cyril was steady and warm and holding her tightly and his his hands were so calloused and his kisses were so soft, and it didn’t matter if the whole army saw them at all, there wasn’t a single person Lysithea cared about right now besides the two of them –

“Lysithea.”

Claude’s voice was like a bucket of ice water, and Lysithea pulled away with a scowl on her lips so intense she might have been about to cast a fireball directly at his head.

“What is it, Claude?” she demanded. Cyril had dropped his arms and stepped away, which already made Claude the worst person on the continent. She didn’t need his teasing to make him even worse. “Don’t you have someone else you could be bothering?”

The bite of her question dropped off as she turned to him. Claude wasn’t grinning at them, or waggling his eyebrows, or winking at Cyril as if Lysithea couldn’t clearly see him. He wasn’t even smiling. He carried a letter and a frown, and Lysithea’s stomach plummeted.

“I actually can’t,” he said. He waved the letter half-heartedly. “I need you to take a look at this. The Adrestian minister of defense wrote it, before he died. It’s about – I think you’ll want to read it.” He looked at Cyril, then back to her, and added softly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s – it’s fine, Claude. Your timing has never been good before; why start now,” Lysithea said. She tried to smile but it turned more into a grimace. Claude returned the expression.

Still, she reached out and squeezed Cyril’s hand before following after Claude to read the letter. “We’ll talk later, okay?” she asked him. His hand in hers was all the confirmation she needed.

The war was over now. They had time.

***

Claude was tired. Claude couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t been tired, but he was extra tired now. He’d killed Nemesis himself, had seen the so-called king of liberation take his last breath, and yet he halfway expected a messenger to come running up to him at any moment to announce that the fighting was not over, that there was yet another, additional enemy marching on them at this very moment, another challenge to overcome.

He supposed peacetime would be its own challenge. He was looking forward to it.

For now, he had to bid goodbye to their last moments as soldiers, as pleasant a goodbye as he had ever known. They hadn’t had time to make it back to Garreg Mach that evening. Instead, they made camp a few leagues away from the battlefield, one final war camp to rest and recover. He walked through the rows of tents, stopping to chat with generals and foot soldiers alike as he found them. He chased Hilda away from the healer’s tent, where she was desperately fussing over a very flustered Marianne, who was desperately fussing over everyone else. He stopped to admire Ignatz’s sketch of the sunset. It was truly beautiful tonight.

He’d made it to the edge of camp when he spotted Lysithea and Cyril. They hadn’t even bothered to leave the perimeter.

Cyril should have been in the healer’s tent, by all definitions. He had a black eye and his shirt was torn and Claude could’ve sworn he’d seen one of those awful demonic birds flying directly at him at one point during the battle. None of these things seemed important to him, at the moment. Instead, he sat on a rock at the edge of camp, his arms around Lysithea’s waist, looking up at her with intense, unwavering concentration. She knelt on the same rock, leaning over him, whispering something that Claude couldn’t make out.

He wasn’t really eavesdropping when he walked closer, he reasoned. He’d been checking on all the soldiers. 

It was, probably, the most boring conversation he’d ever eavesdropped on, and he’d once heard Annette tell Felix a list of every pastry she’d ever eaten.

“I don’t care,” Cyril was saying, as Claude walked up behind them.

“You should,” Lysithea replied.

“Well, I don’t,” Cyril said again. Claude wondered if all their conversations were on this theme.

Then Lysithea leaned down and kissed Cyril, and Claude realized he’d wandered into far more than he’d bargained for.

Maybe she’d been healing him before. Maybe they’d stopped kissing to argue about whether Cyril cared or should care or whatever it was they were arguing about. But when Lysithea kissed him, it was as if that was all they had been doing, and could be doing, and would be doing for quite some time. Cyril’s hands wrapped around Lysithea’s waist and he pulled her against him, and Lysithea grabbed at his shoulders for balance, then tilted his chin up to bring him closer.

Claude cleared his throat loudly and stomped on a nearby root for good measure.

They broke apart more slowly than usual, and they didn’t break away. Instead, they both just stared at him, too tangled up in each other to really properly move.

“We have tents, you know,” Claude said, crossing his arms and tapping his foot in a way he knew annoyed them both. “Pretty good ones, if you’re looking for privacy or anything.”

Cyril blinked at him, as if he couldn’t quite remember who he was. “Did you need something?” he finally asked.

It wasn’t a rude question, not once you got to know Cyril. He was like that, always cutting to the heart of the matter, always matter of fact. The way he held Lysithea, now, seemed matter of fact, as if they had always been together and it was everyone else who was stupid for only now noticing.

Maybe that was the case, in a way. Claude had certainly always thought they were dancing around each other like two wyverns who couldn’t even walk, but the last 2 months had been weird enough, they could tell him they’d been married for six years and he’d roll with it at this point.

“Just making sure everyone’s alright,” he said. Unable to resist one final swipe, he added, “You two seem to be doing just fine.”

“Marianne said they didn’t need help in the healing tent,” Lysithea said, her voice just a little panicked, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. Claude caught the way Cyril’s hands tightened around her waist. Maybe he’d always been this protective.

“Nah, Lys, she’s right. For once we don’t need anything from you two,” Claude said. He cocked his head and grinned. “Maybe just a wedding invitation.”

“Oh, sod off, Claude,” Lysithea said. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

It was the nicest thing she’d said to him in months, if not years, but that was clearly the end of the conversation. Lysithea’s hair fell like a curtain as she leaned back down to kiss Cyril again, tugging him closer by the back of his neck impatiently. Cyril shifted his hands to pull her into his lap.

Claude felt, for the first time in as long as he’d known them, a deep sense of secondhand embarrassment. It was one thing to amusingly know you were the third wheel. It was quite another when the first two wheels didn’t seem to notice or care that you were even there.

He hurried away, towards Byleth and the sunset and the rest of the army and the bright, beautiful day that stretched in front of them. The fighting was over now. They had time to explore both what was new and what had always been.

Lysithea and Cyril, he decided firmly, could figure both of those things out without his help.