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"If you do this, they will forget you," says Sothis. "To that prince, you will never have existed."
They were going to lose. Both of them knew that. The way to Enbarr was riddled with traps and battalions, none of which they had the capacity to fight anymore.
There were two of them left…just Byleth and Dimitri. Their friends, their allies, and all of those who supported them vanished behind the fires of the eternal flames. They were consumed by the blaze at Gronder Field that Edelgard’s army had unleashed as a last-ditch effort of escape, crushed under stampedes of imperial soldiers, murdered on the bloodied grounds during battle.
When Mercedes was run through by the Death Knight—her own brother—it should have rung in the end. Their best healer was gone.
When Annette tried to avenge her best friend’s death, she had fallen in a hopeless heap at the Death Knight’s feet, and her father Gilbert soon after he enacted his own revenge.
Ingrid burned with Bernadetta atop the archery tower in Gronder in a futile attempt to save her from Edelgard’s desperate wrath. Ashe tried to be her backup, but he too succumbed to the collapsing structures never to be seen again.
Sylvain took arrows to the heart for Felix, whose poisonous anger at losing his most trusted comrade spurned him on to become a beast. The death of Rodrigue was another nail in the coffin, making him bitter beyond recognition, even as Dimitri had finally started to realize that vengeance was not the answer to defeating the Empire.
Felix had charged into battle, uncaring for his well-being, and met his end as he sought nothing but death.
With no one else left to protect the prince, Dedue sacrificed himself so that Dimitri and Byleth could escape, claiming them the last hope for the Kingdom of Faerghus.
“Do you not have things you will regret? Accomplishments you wish to achieve?” Sothis presses, almost pleading in a way she has not seen before. She props her chin on her fist, balancing her elbow on the arm of her stone throne. “I do not expect to comprehend the whims of humans.”
Byleth laid back on the damp grass that peeked through the rotten floorboards and watched a star streak across the night sky. There were many of them blooming across the black like baby’s breath spattered on a dark meadow. The dilapidated home she and Dimitri hid inside of had a hole in the roof, and she could see the light shadow of the full moon.
Her body relaxed as she looked up. If only for a moment. "What would you have liked to have been?” she asked Dimitri, turning her head to the side to look at his covered eye. The black eyepatch was stark on his pale skin. “If you weren’t a prince?"
Dimitri’s lip twitched. A ghost of a smile. It did not reach his eye. "A commoner...a blacksmith, a farmer," he said with a hoarse whisper.
She nodded. "I would've liked that too," agreed Byleth. "Fishing for our meals...washing our laundry together."
“A simple life,” he said. When he looked at her, she caught the sadness on his face that he tried to hide, the crease between his brows. “You could have lived that.”
She brushed her hand against his fingertips. He hooked his fingers onto hers and their hands twined together.
“I wouldn’t have met you,” she spoke into the silence.
A summer breeze wafted by, soft on the ends of Dimitri’s blond hair, golden like the sunlight.
“There’s no turning back,” he said after a moment. His hand squeezed hers. He was not wearing his gloves this time. She felt every crack on his skin, every scar that nicked him.
“There isn’t,” she said.
Tomorrow, they would march on Enbarr.
Sothis glares at her now. “I will ask you one more time,” she remarks. Her gaze is fiery. “Will you not regret your decision?”
Fort Merceus is a sea of blood and gore. The thankless cries of those who had dared to charge against them fizzled out into the sunset and their last breaths were whisked away with the darkening horizon.
But there were only two of them, and Edelgard came. Angry and vicious and conniving. Dimitri, for the life of him, begged for her to spare his people, to spare Byleth. But she was too far gone from the student either of them had known years ago.
In the end, there were too many of them.
Byleth found that as she watched the axe Aymr being ripped from her torso, she felt nothing but relief that at least Dimitri was safe.
He screamed her name, of course. She saw the soldiers’ spears rushing toward him and willed it not so. To stop this, to save him.
She was surprised then when it did stop. So, when the celestial bodies whirled and halted their rotating blur, the world changed. Blinding light exploded in front of her.
“I won’t regret it.”
Byleth stood at the crest of a hill, a basket of cooking herbs in her hands. She passed it to the blond man who observed her.
“Ah, so you’re the one who moved in down the road?” he inquired. “I am Dimitri.”
She nodded. “Byleth,” she answered.
“I thank you for your kindness. These herbs are so fragrant,” he said with a grin. His head tilted. “But really, we should be gifting you something. It’s only proper that your new neighbors welcome you.” He nodded toward the home at the base of the hill where the river ran. “My family and I would be honored to welcome you for dinner.”
She smiled back, bowing her head. “I’d be glad to.”
“You’ll just let it go, then?” sputters Sothis, her green eyes wide. “All that pain and suffering? The war? For this?”
“For him,” Byleth says.
The goddess looks at her with an uncertain stare. She sighs. “Then let time take a different course.”