Work Text:
“My light, have you given the question any more thought?”
Byleth fumbles the dish she’s in the middle of drying, catching it before it passes her knee. The war might be long over, but her reflexes haven’t dulled. A part of her wonders if she would be fifty, throttling the courier every time he managed to approach without her knowing.
She can’t take the chance that, one day, it would be her child who surprises her like that.
Her El knows better; they’ve endured the night terrors, the midnight assassins, the blades that dug an inch from their spines. Byleth was never much of a storyteller, but an entire epoch is carved into her body in scars. War has changed them in a way that they would never recover from - they can cling together, their broken pieces sometimes aligning enough to give them the image of being whole.
Their hypothetical child would be born into a Fodlan that had never seen war. And that’s why Byleth stood by Edelgard’s side against the church and Those Who Slither - to fight so future generations wouldn’t have to. That’s all Byleth was ever good for, fighting, so much so that she’s begun to go a little mad in her happily ever after with the love of her life.
She’s been swimming through rapids since she was born; she became used to it, good at it. Now she’s been pulled to a world unfamiliar, flopping on the shore, gasping for breath that won’t come. The guilt has been the most suffocating - shouldn’t she be happy? Isn’t this what they wanted?
Her reprieve has been her El, who understands exactly. Byleth was born a weapon, but Edelgard was carved into one. Edelgard takes up painting in her idleness, painting the scenic mountain landscapes that make up their little cabin home. Once, she paints it all in flames, crimson brushstrokes consuming the greens and browns. Byleth hadn’t needed to ask why.
But Byleth is a creature of routine, and she does what all great mercenaries do - she adapts. She throws the chickens their feed in the morning, checks for eggs, heads off to milk the goats. She grinds flour and churns butter and hangs up the wash. She cooks lunch for her and El and they eat together by the window, the East-facing one that lets in the sunbeam, and they chat about anything but the war. It’s an easy life, not without labor but one without fear.
Byleth, the Ashen Demon who slew armies with her blade, who destroyed the Immaculate One, who brought Shambhala to its knees, is terrified right now.
“We don’t have to decide right now,” Edelgard continues. “You don’t need to force an answer for my sake.”
“It’s been months,” Byleth responds. She places the plate down on the counter, then sets the cloth near it. “I at least owe you some response.”
“You owe me nothing. A child isn’t a matter to be rushed, for all our sakes. Only respond if it would help you reach a decision.”
Children are supposed to have dreams of the future. Byleth heard about this, once - children who play princess, who play mother, who play soldier. Children nipping at their parents heels while they work at the mill or the smith. Children who spin stories so intricate that there’s not enough parchment in the world to contain them all.
Byleth had no such presumptions. As a mercenary, each day was about making it to the next. She made it as far as she did because she didn’t waste time dreaming - she acted.
Being renowned as a mercenary wasn’t a thing to celebrate. You left widows, you left orphans. Mercenaries didn’t get the hero’s welcome of soldiers; they got paid and they got out. Byleth never set aside gold for when she grew too old to lift a blade; she spent it on drink, knowing that day would never come. One day, and hopefully not soon, someone would track Byleth down and challenge her. They would kill her, and probably rightfully so. If they were kind, they would leave her body in a ditch. And then Byleth would have plenty of time to dream.
But now here she is, having shorted herself in this future she never thought she’d have. Gently, Edelgard takes her hand and leads her to sit down at the table. Byleth realizes she’s been staring into space.
If her child asked her for a bedtime story, what could she tell? There would only be heroism in their war once all of the veterans had died. She still thinks of the students she killed when their birthdays come.
“I’m not suited to be a mother,” Byleth finally says.
“There are many less suited than you.”
“That doesn’t make me suitable.”
The word ‘mother’ comes to Byleth in abstract, like trying to piece together scripture from stained glass. She thinks of Rhea resting Byleth’s head on her lap. She thinks of warmth. She thinks of the pained look in Jeralt’s eyes. She imagines herself heavy with child, “glowing” and “beautiful” and all those other lies they tell mothers. She imagines a child swaddled in El’s favorite fur blanket, nursing from her breast.
Years ago, her heart lay dead in her chest. Her body functioned to destroy, not to create. Even if El would be happy, tiny hands embracing her scarred finger, Byleth doesn’t deserve it.
“We’ve spoken about this before,” Edelgard says, returning her to reality. “You are not heartless. Even when you had no reason to, you came back. You ran into flames to save your former students. The hours you spent by Dorothea’s side, channeling all your energy into healing her so she wouldn’t wake up in pain - that wasn’t just duty.”
“A child doesn’t need a soldier.” The image of her child surprising her and winding up the victim of Byleth’s war-forged reflexes enters her mind unwelcomed. “I couldn’t be tender like a mother could.”
“What was Jeralt to you?”
The first time Byleth tried to lift one of his lances, it knocked over all the other weapons in storage, creating a clatter so loud that birds miles away took off in a start. She had been unharmed, but she remembers the look Jeralt gave her.
After promising up and down to never enter that room again, she had the pleasure of picking her first toy weapon - she chose sword, and Jeralt whittled it himself from the great oaks of Remire. She liked to heft it over her shoulder, following Jeralt like a duckling, training herself to walk the way he walks. When he stood over her, teaching her how to stand properly while wielding a weapon, she never felt more proud.
During those long marches through the woods, Jeralt told her stories about all sorts of endeavors - her favorite was the one about the lost horseshoe and the drunk bandit. When she grew too tired for her little legs to keep up, he hefted her onto his shoulders and kept marching unbidden. Byleth felt so tall, then, like she could have reached up and plucked one of the stars from the sky.
Jeralt had rarely held her, but he would cut the thickest part of the steak for her. He said “I love you” fewer times than she could count on one hand, but he kept a section in his diary of all the things she liked and foods she wouldn’t eat. He had always been there, steady and immovable as a mountain.
“He was my father,” Byleth says, “but it’s different.”
“This will be ‘different’ no matter what. We are both women, after all.”
“And you would prefer the role of mother?”
Edelgard allows herself a small smile. The one who bore the title of ‘emperor’, a mother. She doesn’t have to speak for Byleth to understand. Fertility had been a curse for her - having a period only slowed her down in combat. And she doubted she could carry a child to term considering her dead heart - and she couldn’t raise it, not before she would end up dead in a ditch - which rendered the entire menstrual cycle pointless. Still, the worry was always there that some accident would leave her expecting, and then she would be unfit to defend those she loves any longer, all so she could give birth to a stillborn like herself.
For Edelgard, though, these things had been denied to her. People sometimes said the goddess had a sense of humor - Edelgard was technically fertile, but unable to carry a child herself. Even those who accepted her as a woman still expected she would, regardless of dysphoria, impregnate a consort to produce heirs for the throne. That’s expected no longer, not in the new world they created, not since Edelgard abdicated the throne.
“What if the child we would adopt never takes to us?” Byleth says. Quietly, she adds, “what if it resents having me instead of a true father?”
“You’d make a far better father than none at all. You’d make a far better father than most of the men down in the village, I would argue.”
Her mind is about to snap from all the different directions. She’s listening to Jeralt snore in the Remire woods. She’s closing Hilda’s eyes as the war horns sound. She’s holding her child who’s falling asleep to her heartbeat. She’s dumping the last of the bandits into their mass grave.
“I need more time.”
She stands up. She’s decidedly not crying - that’s not something she’s capable of doing. Even if it feels warm on her cheeks, surely it’s a trick she’s playing on herself.
Edelgard strokes her thumb over the back of Byleth’s hand once more before letting it go. “Take all the time you need.”
When Byleth was about eight, the old cabin had a leak in the ceiling.
The sound of water dripping in the bucket eventually drove Jeralt mad, so he went into town and came back with an armful of straw. The two sat down side-by-side on the creaky wooden floor. A yealm, he told her, was bundled straw which made for sturdy thatched roofs-- Byleth had paid half-attention, but hadn’t been able to stop muttering the word ‘yealm’ all day.
Once they had their yealm, Jeralt got up in the rafters and tore out the old thatch to the base. The job became way bigger than he thought for the old cabin in Remire, he griped, but it was nice to have somewhere to sleep that wasn’t a tent. “Pain on my old back,” he said. (He said lines like that for years and years, always ‘too old’ for the job but never failing to complete it.)
Every so often, he would come halfway down the ladder and Byleth would hand him more yealm. Eventually the roof was finished and they had a drink for their handiwork-- beer for Jeralt, milk for Byleth. She still remembers raising their mugs in a toast to a job well done.
She wishes she paid more attention now, up in the rafters herself. She still thinks of the word ‘yealm’ and smiles.
Even though it’s been so long, she can still remember his voice. The first time she lifted her toy sword, she held it ‘all wrong’-- he had said gently, chuckling. “You want to hold it so the heel of your hand is on the top of the pommel,” he said, his great, scarred hands positioning hers, “and you want your thumb up against the guard. See? Like that.”
It took her weeks to get it right. It took her years to hold her own in a spar. The first time she disarmed him, Jeralt had absolutely beamed. He wasn’t one to ever smile much, either- a grin here, a smirk there- but whenever he did, it was for her.
Holding a blade is second nature to her now, the sword practically an extension of her arm. But sometimes, when she picks up a sword even now, she still hears that baritone that made a little home in her heart.
Maintaining a thatched roof is an all-day job, if not an all-week job, like Jeralt said. The biggest pain is having to keep climbing down from the rafters. She imagines herself as Jeralt, reaching down and grabbing another bundle of yealm from her eight year old self. People had described her expression as blank- soulless, even. She hoped that her wide-eyed admiration for him came across. (A little part of her knows it did.)
She stops before sundown to herd both the goats back into the barn. The doe is heavy with her child, ambling about with a mouthful of grass and a belly nearly dragging on the ground-- doesn’t seem to bother her at all. The idea of her having to be like that still makes her crinkle up her nose.
But there’s an orphanage at the village which is further down the mountain. Kids lose parents all the time, Byleth thinks, but she can’t help wondering how much of it is her and Edelgard’s fault. She wonders for a minute, then makes herself stop wondering.
The goats get a bit anxious as the coyotes start howling. They’ve been getting bold, Byleth thinks. She’s not afraid to sit out here with a bow and arrow if needed, catch the coyotes sneaking up to the chicken coop. And then her thoughts drift back to Jeralt, how he taught her how to string a bow.
Byleth never thought she had the capability to be a teacher, but her time at the Officer’s Academy had brought something out in her. A part of her misses it. Watching her students grow into themselves, the little she was privileged to see, made her feel something she’d never felt before. She imagines teaching a child how to thread a bow, her scarred hands atop theirs. They’d take a potato sack and paint a target on it, same as Jeralt did, celebrate with a drink and a milk when the kid hit the target the first time.
“You’re smiling,” Edelgard says, when she returns to the house. Byleth realizes she is. “What could have you in such a good mood? Not that I’m complaining.”
Byleth shakes her head. “Just thinking.” She leans in; Edelgard meets her halfway for a kiss.
“Come on. Go on.”
Edelgard nudges the baby goat forward toward its mother. It takes approximately two steps before turning around and sitting right down near her, looking up at her with its big doe eyes.
She lets out a sigh, especially as Byleth starts to laugh. “I am sure this must be quite amusing to watch,” she says, a hint of a smile in her voice as well.
“The former Adrestian Emperor defeated by a little goat.” Byleth squats down and brings the bottle to the baby goat’s mouth, but it turns away. “She wants you to do it, El.”
“Oh, for…” Edelgard trails off, taking the bottle. The baby goat finally accepts it, drinking the milk greedily. “This is from your mother, you realize, little one. You could have received this by walking just a few steps over to her.”
“I think she’s imprinted on you,” Byleth says. The mother goat watches the scene ambivalently, the other kid nursing from her on shaky legs. “You’re her new mama.”
“Is that so?” She can’t hide the little smile on her face. “I haven’t the faintest clue why. You’re the one who helped deliver them.”
“I suppose you just have that kind of energy.”
Once the kid finishes its bottle, it attempts to climb up Edelgard. She takes it in her arms and pets its face. The kid has black fur dotted with white just like the mother. It lifts its chin for her to scratch, too.
Byleth takes a seat nearby. “I suppose we finally have kids.”
“How droll.” Edelgard rolls her eyes, still smiling. “I suppose we do. They’re going to need names.”
Both the goats came with the cabin and the barn. Neither has ever responded to any particular name, but every so often, Byleth catches Edelgard trying to call the doe something like ‘Heidemarie’ or ‘Ernestine’. She suspects Edelgard is practicing names on the goat that aren’t necessarily meant for it, but she doesn’t mind.
“Justine,” Edelgard says, innocently. Byleth recognizes the names. “Joachim for the other kid.”
“You realize,” Byleth begins, “if you ever want to use those names for our children, people will think you named them after the goats.”
“I thought former Adrestian royalty would be recognizable as the inspiration for the names.”
“Still, we would call for Justine to come in for supper and both the child and goat would come running.”
“That may be a bit awkward indeed.”
The kid has fallen asleep in her arms, a section of Edelgard’s sleeve in its mouth. She continues stroking behind its ears. In the air is something fragile, new. The other kid has finished nursing and has taken to trying to climb up the crates in the barn.
Edelgard doesn’t dare to disturb the peace by saying the unspoken. She instead places the kid down on the hay, gentle to a point. Her hands have taken so many lives-- Byleth knows the sensation. It had felt wrong to handle the kids, picturing the ways she could hurt them, so small and fragile. But she didn’t.
“We’ll be back soon, little one,” she says, rising. She and Byleth leave the barn. The sun has come from behind the clouds, shining down on the mountains.
“It would be a moot point if the kids already had names,” Byleth says, after a minute. “The ones we would adopt. Not the goats.”
“It would do to at least be aware of some names, just in case. Regardless, you’re suggesting we would adopt multiple.”
Edelgard is looking at her. The roots of her hair are growing back in chestnut brown-- Byleth so badly wants to run her fingers through it. She makes a mental note to head to the post office in town; Edelgard has been expecting correspondence from Lysithea about her own Crest removal recovery.
“Kids are like goats,” Byleth finally concludes. “Better to have a few. Hypothetically speaking.”
“Of course.” Edelgard intertwines her fingers with Byleth’s. “Hypothetically speaking.”
Jeralt always complained about the amount of sweeping the old cabin needed. If you didn’t sweep, the mice would be a step behind, he always said. And then you had to place down traps for them, and he had stepped in them more than once in the dark after a bit much drink.
Byleth never minded sweeping, though. There’s something satisfying about collecting all the dust and detritus into piles. Once the floor is clean, the earthy color of the wood brightens the room.
Then comes dusting away the cobwebs, washing the walls, cleaning the window. The spare room she’s working in has barely been touched since they moved in-- they almost never have visitors. Hubert made the journey out a few times, rode three days on horseback with a backpack full of tea bags and books from Enbarr. He had staunchly refused to let them clean the spare room for him then. “Not while Lady Edelgard is in recovery,” he said. Byleth had wanted to point out she herself wasn’t in recovery, but the implication was clear-- Byleth was not to leave Edelgard unattended.
Edelgard had been rather grumpy about the affair. The reason they had come out here, she reminded Hubert, was because Hanneman and Manuela gave them the go-ahead to finish her recovery in the fresh air of the mountains. She told Hubert he didn’t need to spend nearly his days visiting sleeping in the armchair. Hubert, though, said he slept better in the chair than he did in bed; easier for him to get up when she needed him, he reasoned.
The memory of Hubert, back ramrod straight in the chair, sleeping with his head high and hands folded, still makes Byleth chuckle. Edelgard had already worked through the majority of the books he brought. He was expected to bring Ferdinand next time-- “should we get a larger chair for the happy couple?” she had asked. Hubert hadn’t liked that one very much.
A knock comes on the open door. Byleth turns around. Edelgard is still in her nightgown, leaning in the doorframe. “It’s early to be working.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Byleth says, continuing to mop. “I kept thinking about the spare room.”
Edelgard watches her, expression unreadable. “I’m certain Ferdinand and Hubert will be delighted.”
The next visit has to be low-key, Edelgard had instructed. The Prime Minister turning up at some nondescript town in the mountains would draw undue attention to Edelgard and Byleth. Byleth had reassured her that ‘low-key’ is Hubert’s entire forte.
Byleth hums. She did intend to have them stay here-- but in the future, she would have to figure out another arrangement for them or future visitors. It’s a small little room, not ideal for a couple.
She does think it would make for a nice nursery or child’s bedroom, though. It’s just a short walk down the hall from the master bedroom. They would take turns, Byleth reasons. She’s a light sleeper- always has been, probably always will be- and she wouldn’t mind getting up to take care of a baby. The thought of El holding their baby, though, makes her heart feel full.
Finally, Byleth puts the mop aside and joins her wife. “What would you like for breakfast, my heart? We have an abundance of goat cheese right now.”
“I’m aware. I’d like some with toast, please.”
Edelgard sits at the kitchen table while Byleth slices the bread and puts the kettle on. Soon, she serves Edelgard her breakfast and sits down at the table with her. There’s two more chairs at the table for guests, but sitting like this now, it feels like the table is only half-full.
Every day becomes a little easier. Byleth doesn’t jump at shadows as much. Edelgard sleeps through the night more often.
During the war, so many dramatic battles changed the course of history. She remembers when the Kingdom fell, or when the Immaculate One collapsed. Moments where life fundamentally changed overnight.
Byleth keeps waiting for a single moment when she’ll change her mind, but it never comes. Instead, it’s in every moment. Painting the spare room. Watching Edelgard introduce the baby goats to grain. Recounting Jeralt’s favorite stories over tea.
Edelgard has gone to bed early. The chestnut-brown has grown from her roots out several inches. Soon, it will overtake the white shade. Byleth slips into bed beside her, huddling up close to her wife’s warmth.
“El.” She wraps her arms around Edelgard, her chest flush with her back. “I’m ready.”
She doesn’t need to clarify. Edelgard looks back at her, a searching look in her lavender eyes. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.” She places a kiss on Edelgard’s jaw. “I am.”
They just listen to the crickets for a moment, and then Edelgard releases a breath. Byleth can sense she’s smiling, even turned away.
“We could go down the mountain tomorrow,” Edelgard says. “There’s an orphanage in the village.”
“I would like that.”
Byleth imagines the smile Edelgard reserves when she’s holding the baby goat in her arms. The sense of fulfillment she gets, instructing their imaginary child on everything from farm work to fishing. The emptiness of the spare bedroom, all painted and furnished.
“It’s settled, then.”
Edelgard turns around, gazing into Byleth’s eyes. This is real, Byleth affirms. She still doubts herself, and she may never not-- but Jeralt had his doubts, too. But she believes in Edelgard, as she always has. She believes in the promise they made. And she believes in their ability to do this together, reaching into the dawn.