Work Text:
"Are you still working right now?" Hilda asked, looking rather disturbed. Byleth didn't actually drop the sword she'd been cleaning, or react visibly, but she was more startled than she let on. Maybe she had been working later than she meant to.
"It's not that late," Byleth said, instead of any of that, and gently placed the sword back in its spot.
"It literally is," Hilda said, "Look, I'll show you!" Byleth was abruptly very glad she'd put the sword down, as Hilda grabbed her by the hand and began to tug her outside. For someone who refused to do any work if she could get away with it, Hilda had a very strong grip. And very muscular arms. Byleth redirected her thoughts away from Hilda's arms.
As it turned out, Hilda wasn't wrong. It was dark out, the stars shining in the night. The courtyard was shockingly empty, even considering the time. But…It was hard to wonder about that when Hilda was still holding her hand.
"The stars are nice," Byleth said, for lack of anything else to say. She wasn't sure why she felt the need to say anything.
"Aww, you like star gazing? That's actually really cute, I would have never guessed." Byleth was too busy processing the fact that she'd been called cute to stop Hilda from flopping down on the ground, taking Byleth down with her.
"I'm getting dirt in my hair for you," Hilda complained, but she didn't let go of Byleth's hand.
"You don't…have to?" Byleth replied. Hilda sighed.
"No, no, I'm going to. As gross as dirt is, it's the easiest way to look at the stars together," she said.
"Dirt isn't gross," Byleth said, "I find good things on the ground. Like feathers." Hilda gave her a look of serious alarm.
"Is that where you've been finding all those feathers? Jeez, I hope you've been cleaning them before you hand them out…" Byleth had, in fact, been cleaning them.
"Mhm," she mumbled.
"Good," Hilda said, "I've been making charms with them, it'd be awful if those were covered in dirt and germs. Gross!"
Dirt and germs had never particularly bothered Byleth, and she was starting to wonder if she was the weird one for that. Feather charms were probably very nice, though. She kind of wanted to see examples. Instead of asking that, Byleth stared into space at the stars. Hilda nudged her.
"Do you know any constellations?" she asked. Byleth thought.
"No," she said, "But that bright one lets you know which way north is." With the hand not still being held by Hilda, Byleth pointed at it.
“Since it’s always at a fixed point, you can use it to orient yourself, so that you’re always heading in the correct direction,” she explained.
“That sounds like way too much effort,” Hilda decided, “I’ll just let you be my guiding star instead!”
“You should really learn this, just in case,” Byleth said. What if Hilda got lost in the woods, and Byleth was in some stupid multi-year coma again? Yes, logically, Claude would come find her, or convince someone else to go find her, but it was still a concerning scenario.
“I don’t want you to get lost in the woods,” she tried to explain. Hilda giggled, and said, “Well, I won’t get lost if you’re with me.” She squeezed Byleth’s hand, and Byleth’s thought processes briefly shut down entirely. She was still rebooting when she heard a cough coming from nearby.
“You know, I asked you to go get Byleth for an emergency meeting, not to…lay on the ground holding hands like otters, right?” Claude asked, holding back laughter. Hilda spluttered with embarrassment.
“You couldn’t give us just a couple more minutes?!” she complained. Letting go, finally, Byleth stood up and brushed herself off.
“We’ll be going,” she said, and headed off in that direction, ignoring Claude’s “Hey, wait up a minute!” as she left. She felt like she had something to think about, but wasn’t quite sure what.
At least the present she found, dropped on her desk the next morning, didn’t require any thinking. The charm, with its feather and star, had obviously come from Hilda. Byleth would thank her for that, later on. Maybe while they did more stargazing.