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A sweet clemency washes through him as he cranes his neck up towards the brazen blue sky. 

I’m home. 

Claude feels his knees grow weak. He swallows, allowing the last of his jittering nerves to pass through his body and find repose. He breathes in a sigh of warm air, an attempt to still the desperate race of his heart. But as he stands in front of the glass door and his reflection curves and gleams against kaleidoscopic, sunlit mosaic panes, he can’t help but see the boy he once was. Now he is tall, rough-hewn, rugged, and wrinkled with the remnants of war. But still, his bronze skin melts into the reds and violets and teals and yellows of the stained glass door, the one he once came home to every day. He would bring his finger to the cool surface and trace the waves of his funny, distorted young face. And he would smile, because heavens, it was so much easier to smile back then. 

Claude’s smile now is bittersweet. It tugs on him like a begrudging blanket in the morning. It reminds him that he yearns for that boy, his braids wild and unkempt and feathered up like a wild crown of palm leaves, his brown skin kissed and enshrined in Almyran sunshine which never seemed to diminish, his feet snugly fitted into the sandy, open-toed sandals he never took off, because he loved how his mother had sewn the straps with a delicate gold trim and adorned the top with a bright green tassel. He yearns for that boy who was unflinchingly himself, unharmed by the world, bearing the heat of the day with a lopsided smile dimpled into his pudgy, burnt cheeks. 

Like yesterday, he remembers the day his mother had gifted him those sandals. He closes his eyes, and like a fire of rebirth, the memory cleanses him. The setting sun had painted the tan, terracotta balcony a mystical orange, a color out of a dream. He could taste heaven’s marmalade on his tongue as he overlooked the city, his head barely peeking above the parapet. The capital, Halabi, was as picturesque as the most vibrant storybook. The spectacular panache palaces and spearlike silver towers inspired awe, but so too did the thousands of domestic, radiant rooftops winding along every road in sight. Their wild colors and shapes were mesmerizing—but even more mesmerizing were the families and individuals who emerged from them. Claude’s favorite thing in the world was to watch the eclectic citizens pass by, who might as well have been ants given how far from the ground he was. Mothers and merchants, children and warriors, artists and mathematicians—all were invaluable threads in the vast tapestry of Halabi, a novel, harlequin identity that no other place in the entire world could emulate. 

That evening, Claude had been so eager to observe the city that he had jumped just a bit too mightily against the parapet. He had the scare of his life as he watched his flower crown fly from his head. But he’d managed to catch it. The sigh of relief that passed through him and soothed his thumping heart was colossal. 

He’d donned that little woven circlet since breakfast, poppy and marigold florets holding on for dear life every time Claude whipped his head to the left or right, up or down. And even though it was nearing his bedtime, he wasn’t ready to take his crown off—it was his birthday after all, his sixth one. And even though his half-siblings sneered at the little boy wearing a girlish wreath of flowers, Claude didn’t care. The day prior, he’d gone with his mother into town to purchase the flowers from the market, he’d watched her string the dewy stems together with her needle and thread, and he’d beamed as she ordained him with it the next morning, wishing him a happy birthday and kissing him on the forehead.

Claude’s brow tightens in a desolate ache as he thinks of her kiss. How long he’s gone without it. How desperately he craves it, despite how big he’s grown, despite how manly the world tells him he must be. He’s still his mother’s son, and nothing will change that. His mother, the one person who truly, from the bottom of her heart, loved him when he was a child—sweet Khalid, prince Khalid, he hears her whisper, and he bites his lip to quell its tremble—is right behind this door. His gut yawns with a desperation to see her. But, he digresses. The sandals, the sandals, he reminds himself, forcing himself to dwell on the memory, wallowing in the poignancy, the warmth, the flickering joy he had found in a life filled with so much tumult and strife.

His mother had called Claude away from the balcony’s edge, beckoning him close. He had skipped up to her, his young, balloony head barely reaching the chiffon sash cinching her waist. She’d sunken to her knees to meet her son—albeit unsteadily, as she had her hands mysteriously clasped behind her back—and before he knew what was happening, she pulled two sandals from the air, one in each hand. Happy birthday, my little wanderer, she’d said. His mother’s smile had been warm and sweet like a buttery baked saffron cookie. Her lily-white fingertips traced the stitchwork of the toepost and the leather sole, drawing Claude’s eyes to the shimmering silk string and entrancing him in its wandering whereabouts. He took the sandals in his hands, hands which he swore were just a bit bigger than he remembers—my, my, Khalid, you’ve already grown so much since yesterday! his mother had exclaimed—and brought them right up to his face. He scrutinized the russet hide of the insoles with a scrunched nose, pressed his fingers to the plush footbed to see if they’d make a cozy home for his heels, and dragged the nail of his thumb along that beautiful, handcrafted trim that he’ll never forget the sight of. Ornate fragments of satiny gold fleeted along the wide, black upper strap like the tail of a comet. Flecked with bright gemstones, the trim traveled up the backing until it reached the clasped anklet, two rows of resplendent thread embroidering the edges of the cord. And from its front, a green tassel was attached. It dangled loosely from a tiny gilded bauble engraved with a crescent moon, a reflection of his heritage. Claude remembers smiling like a wyvern pup at the sight of the bauble and its emerald tassel, which was his favorite shade of green; he could already feel its fine filaments tickling the top of his feet. 

He had been so busy admiring the sandals that he hadn’t even thought to put them on. They were the most beautiful pair of sandals he’d ever laid eyes on, and he didn’t even realize sandals could be beautiful! He’d never cared much for fashion, up until that moment. Claude resolved from then on to always do his utmost to appear as marvelous and put together as this pair of sandals, to blind the world with his bedazzling visage and elegant, effortless suave. The sandals inspired a reckless confidence within him that couldn’t have been awakened otherwise. He wanted to be beautiful, too, but he wanted to earn it, like how his mother had. She’d spent hours upon hours handcrafting these sandals to perfection, and every delicate detail showed for her toiling efforts. Claude admired her for her tenacity and dexterity, but more importantly, he felt his heart swell like a burning star, because he could feel his mother’s love in his fingertips as he traced the silk needlework. He could see the actualization of everything she’s done for him in the intricacies of the gold designs. 

Claude squeezes his eyes further shut and flexes his fists, the feeling of his mother’s sandals in his hands a lost yet comforting phantom. It was always so overwhelming to remember how intensely she had loved him. Not a single soul in the world loved him like his mother did. His ma. Oh, his ma. His heart surges, and he almost can’t bear it. Claude blinks away the tears he’s fought back for almost a decade. 

He remembers how she laughed, how it sang like the plucked strings of a lute. Khalid, they’re not for looking at! They’re for wearing! she’d said, her voice still ringing with harmonic amusement. He’d argued, however, but ma, they’re so pretty! I can’t ruin them with my dirty feet and my ugly toes! And again, she’d laughed, now tossed amongst a riptide of hysterics. Claude squawked out a noisy little giggle of his own, which only served to double the volume of his mother’s guffawing. Before long, mother and son were laughing themselves to tears, their bellies bouncing and their chests rasping with the effort. It eclipsed them like a star, and for a brief, burning second, all the world’s meaning had found its home in their warm laughter. 

In that moment, Claude—no, no, Khalid, Khalid was his name, still is his name—was loved. Loved like he’d never been before and never would be again. Loved like he was worth the effort, and even then, it was effortless, because heavens, his mother was so, so effortless. 

Claude shakes his head in self-reproach as a tear wets the corner of his eye. He wipes it away with the base of his palm as swiftly as he can. Ma, he laments, and her name in his head is a quivering requiem.

He finds himself coming back down to reality. He’s reminded of all the long years spent loved only in memory and how they’ve culminated to this bittersweet, sniffling moment. It’s oddly silent, but understandably sublime. Forgotten are all those long nights grieving the absence of his mother’s hands combing through his hair, aching for the time when his bed was a safe haven and not a prison for his dread. When he’d go to sleep without the weight of a steel dagger clutched in his shivering hands, his scalp sultry with sweat, his insides torn to bloody ribbons with fear. Claude has spent so, so long waiting for the day he’d come back home and into the embrace of his mother’s arms. He will never be the same boy he once was, but goddess, he wants to be. He’ll do everything he can to try. 

He swallows. He peers into the stained glass door once again. He sees himself and is scared, scared like how a little boy might be, but courageous, all the same. Ma had always been like that, he reminisces. She’d taught him to conquer his fears, despite all odds, despite the little nagging voice in the back of your head that’s always out to get you. She was utterly fearless, borderline reckless, and Claude takes after her in that regard in every way. 

With a shuddering sigh, Claude curls his left hand into a loose fist, and he raises it, poised to knock. Though, he takes a long moment, hesitating, wondering what she’ll think of this boy no longer lost behind the doors of remembrance. The boy who is now a man—a kind, sanguine, and righteous man who thirsts for good, but all at the cost of being a hurt man, nonetheless. A man with a shrouded precipice of despair looming over him in the dead of night. Claude’s breath escapes his throat in a tight puff, and he fears the inevitability of coming clean about his hardship. He cannot bear the thought of burdening his mother like that—but equally so, he cannot bear the thought of her being ignorant to his suffering. Because only she would understand it, only she would cradle his head in her hands and kiss the top of it, murmuring a halo of motherly devotion into his roughened hair and soothing his silent cries with fingers as delicate as a deity’s. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so dreadful to lay his sins and regret before her—even if it hurt her, even if it killed her, Claude’s sure she’d come forth with her arms outstretched, just so she could hold him. His mother’s selflessness had always been so endless, after all. 

But it’s been nine years. Nine years since he left Almyra for Fódlan, nine years since he changed his name, nine years since he last saw his mother’s face. Claude prays that she remembers him and loves him just the same as she used to, despite everything. Despite his meandering, war-torn soul, his wrinkled brow and his relic-bruised fingertips, his sore shoulders and his laden eyelids, his heavy head burdened with the infinite weight of responsibility. 

Despite everything, Claude prays that his ma’s love is still there. 

He knocks. Three quick raps, plink, plink, plink. The sound is bright and melodic against the thick, painted glass. 

He looks at his feet as he waits… and waits, and waits, and waits. He’s not one to fidget, but he kneads his hands restlessly. His world slows as he takes one deep breath after the other, one deep breath after the other, one deep breath after the other…

The door creaks open. If his world had been slowing then, now it’s come to a complete stop.

Claude looks up. The smallest yet most poignant of smiles quivers at his bottom lip like water as he looks at his mother standing before him. Oh, goddess, his mother, his mother, his ma, she’s here, she’s right here. The emotion in Claude’s chest plumes like the great feathers of a phoenix, and he is cleansed by its lapping flame. 

Silence pervades between the two of them. His mother only stands and stares, blankly, for a long, agonizing moment. 

But then at last, with a gasp, it hits her. And all of the sudden, Claude is no different from the little boy he used to be. 

He watches the whites of his mother’s eyes widen until they swallow verdant peas of green. Her mouth hangs dumbly agape as if an anvil had been dropped onto her tongue. Her lips quiver with the effort to lift its great weight, but she finds herself frozen beneath the shock. Claude can only watch, his smile growing more and more by the second, as his mother recognizes him, slowly, but surely.

She takes a ginger step forward, crossing the threshold of the large doorway on soft, tentative tiptoes. Claude watches her hands float upwards like clouds of rising mist to touch his face, holding him in place and feeling his hardened skin with her thumbs, which are far, far softer than Claude remembers. She holds her son’s face like it’s a delicate glass statue. She feels him as if he is not real, lightly pinching his cheeks and repositioning her palms countless times, over and over and over again. Claude loses himself to its cyclical serenity. She tilts his head ever slightly, questioning his very existence, questioning her very existence. As if she is to wake herself from a cruel, lucid dream. But Claude does not fade to dust at her touch—in fact, he only feels himself grow more real, more present, more alive. He looks his mother in her eyes and sees himself reflected in the meadows of her long-suffering love. 

Finally, ever the braver of the two, Claude’s mother manages to croak a single utterance from her throat.  

“Khalid,” she says. 

Khalid, he repeats, and it is like a sacrament. It grants him peace, more than he’s ever known.

Khalid nods—furiously. Gentle yet firm, he grasps her by the wrists, reassuring her uncertain, searching hands and riveting them in place. He’s been too cold without her. He doesn’t think he can bear another moment without her. He doesn’t think he can live another second without her, not any longer. He won’t settle for that. He needs his mother, he deserves his mother, he’s earned his mother. His ma. His sweet, old ma. Khalid’s upturned eyes gleam with milky constellations of multihued emotions. 

“Ma,” Khalid replies, his voice a watery whisper, a blessed cry of thanksgiving. He smiles, and so too does she. 

“Oh, Khalid! Khalid, Khalid, my boy, where have you been!” she wails, throwing him into an embrace that tears like a tidal wave. They sway against each other, the swooping strength of his mother’s hug truly a force to be reckoned with. But regardless, Khalid’s arms are tightened around her in an instant. He holds her against his chest—she’s now shorter than him, he can barely believe it—and does his best to steady his breathing for her. But he knows he need not try. His mother always managed to calm him with nothing but her glowing presence, even when he never knew he needed it. 

“Ma…” he repeats, her name wisping in the wind like a reverie, his nose buried into the nest of her dark hair, earthy as a great oak tree. It’s streaked with little silver rivulets, Khalid notes. They glisten like fine satin string, actualizing the soul-deep wisdom his mother has earned the right to show for. 

“My baby, where have you been? Heavens, I can’t believe it’s you. Oh, Khalid, my baby, my son, I thought I’d never see you again,” his mother cries, her voice a trembling, incredulous whisper as she pulls her son impossibly closer. Like she wants to bundle him in the blankets of her heart and never let him free. She seizes the thick, pillowy fabric of his tunic, and Khalid can feel her muscles flux with a great agony. Her strained motion pulls at his heart harder than it does his clothes. Fiery maternal passion courses through her like something magical. It is as if the Crest of Riegan ignites in her blood, a mother’s love for her son truly fearful in its vastness. Her spirit sparks alight around the two of them, shrouding Khalid in a pillar of scorching affection.

His mother’s physical and emotional desperation strikes alarm through Khalid. He can’t bear to see her in pain like this, let alone feel her! “Ma, I’m here,” he soothes, bringing up a hand to cradle her head under his chin. With a shudder, she seems to relax, but only just a bit. The ferocity in her crushing, enfolded arms still splinters like logs of a bonfire. He lets out a wry, breathless chuckle, his lungs struggling against his constricted ribs. “I’m here, I’m here, please, don’t suffocate me!” 

“Damnit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, boy,” she apologies, loosening her hold with a palpable reluctance. She leans away from her son, trying to compose herself, but she is seemingly taken aback once again, just as she had been at the door. She gives in, and she can’t take it any longer. She throws Khalid into another embrace, and—

“Ma!” Khalid sputters out, groaning as she crushes him for the second time. “That hurts!” he shrieks in protest, though he is powerless against the brute force of a mother who’s gone too long without a hug from her baby. 

“Oh, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you, Khalid, I’ve missed you so, so much—”

“I’ve missed you too, ma, I’ve missed you too!” Khalid wheezes out a vigorous laugh from his flattened lungs. “Now, for the love of my lungs, let me go!” 

With a begrudging sigh, his mother finally heeds her son’s words, and she slumps weakly against him. At long last, Khalid is liberated! He heaves a languid, exasperated sigh of his own. 

He couldn’t believe he had been so tormented by his sentiments prior to knocking on the door. His mother is just as ridiculous as he’d left her, he thinks with peculiar delight. A self-indulgent grin spreads across his lips as his mother wedges her head between his chin and his chest, his hand still swathed in the tousled waves of her loose hair. In turn, Khalid seems to swathe his mother in equanimity—tremendously, she collapses into Khalid’s collarbone, the blinded passion that once rattled her skull now but a dull, rosy afterglow. Her chest rises and falls like tidewater in the night, lapping at the sandy shore of her own tempestuous spirit. His mother’s own tranquility then descends upon her son as well, taking him by the hand and bathing him in rippling moonlight. 

“Khalid,” she breathes into the frills of his jabot, and his name sounds forlorn, yet tender all the same. “You are a stupid, stupid boy. Stupid. And mean.”

Khalid beams at the sound of her sweet voice which completely contradicts the callous words she utters. “Am I?” he quips, and he succeeds in getting a reaction out of her—and quite a ferocious one at that. Near immediately, his mother’s head jerks upright, and she leans back to scrutinize her waggish son. 

“Yes, you little skunk! You kept your poor, old mother waiting nine years! Nine years, just to see her son’s face again! It’s cruel! Cruel, I say!”

“Ma, I was kind of busy—” Khalid says, before he’s interrupted. And—oops, yep, that headsmack was deserved. (She’d always given him little cuffs like that, even when he was a boy, but they’d never, ever hurt, not one bit. They’d always been out of fiendish love rather than malice. Khalid doesn’t want to dwell too long on how much such a little act of restraint means to him.) 

“Busy, busy, busy! Ugh—” His mother slurs a wild string of Almyran curses, and Khalid can’t help but huff a snort into his knuckles. “Who knew my son would be getting all wrapped up in some silly Fódlan drama!”

“Ma, it was a bit more than just ‘some silly Fódlan drama.’ I was at war. Actually, I was… a leader—at war. The leader. Of the Alliance. Y’know, Claude. That guy. That’s me, ma.” She stares at him, her face unreadable as a Srengese tome. He prods further. “Y’know, the King of Unification. Pretty cool name, actually,” he remarks coolly with a pretense of nonchalance and his hands propped up behind his head. Another sarcastic bout of silence floats like a feather caught in an updraft between them. 

“You knew that was me, right, ma?” Khalid prods once again with a cheeky, fanged smile on his face. 

All of the sudden, his mother growls at him, her curled lips and furrowed brow a blinding beacon of her gobsmackage. “Boy, don’t play me for a fool. Of course I knew that was you, you little skunk! I’m being sarcastic!” She bonks her own forehead as a not-so-subtle way to lightheartedly insult the intelligence of her sweet little skunk of a son. 

“Hey, I’m being sarcastic! I think I got that from someone…” Khalid taps a teasing, contemplative forefinger to his chin, and finally, his mother seems to break. She scoffs bitterly before breaking out into a fit of laughter, seizing her son by his biceps and throwing her head back onto his chest. Khalid grunts at the impact, and he can’t help but be coerced into a hysterical fit of his own. His mother’s laughter was always so contagious, it danced and sung like an arresting waltz, and with a small, entranced shake of his head, Khalid finds himself falling back into a cloud of warm nostalgia. 

“You aren’t a lick different,” his mother retorts with a tongue sharp and sweet like sour candy. She lifts her head from her son’s sternum. Khalid’s lips beam with surrendering authenticity—his mother’s joy has completely and utterly ensnared him. As Khalid thinks of something to say, however, his mother seems to beat him to the punch, as her expression lifts, and a gasp overtakes her. 

“Except for your face! My word, Khalid,” she says, bewildered by whatever is on or about his face—Khalid isn’t exactly sure what, though. Perhaps all of it. “Heavens, I hadn’t even thought to look at you! Oh, look at you! You’re so…” She can’t seem to think of the right word to describe her son’s visage, so she instead compromises by snatching his chin in her stern, unyielding hand. Khalid jolts at the suddenness of it, his mother’s grasp electric like a shock of lightning. Though, his smile persists either way—actually, it only seems to grow. Goodness, his mother was always a fiery one. She turns his face over to one side, scrutinizing it and leaning forward to drink in every little crease, crinkle, and dimple. Then, she curiously rubs her thumb over the fleecy facial hair trailing her son’s jawline. Khalid curls an eyebrow at her, his lips pursing in apprehension of whatever it is she has to say. He can practically see the gears turning in her head as she examines his side whiskers as if they’re the most fascinating things in the world.

But he couldn’t have possibly prepared himself for the absolute sucker-punch of mortification his mother socks right into his gut. 

“What is this?” she interrogates. “A little boy’s beard?” 

And now it’s his turn to gape at her, absolutely flabbergasted. (And utterly humiliated.)

“Ma!” Khalid exclaims, flushing with agitation in an instant. His shoulders bounce with awkward bouts of laughter in spite of her brutal comment. “Ma, it’s a chinstrap! They’re all the rage in Fódlan!”

Thrice, his mother clicks her tongue, and she shakes her head, disapproval carving into every wrinkle of her glowering face. “Boy, what happened to you? What other horrible things has Fódlan done to you? Have they watered you down like they do all those other chalky nobles?” She jerks his head to its other side, looking at his opposite cheek with equal disdain. Khalid grunts through gritted teeth, placing a hand atop hers and peeling off the vice grip of her fingers as gently as he can. She finally relents with a gruff sigh, and her hands swing down to prop upon her jutted hips. 

“Ma-ah,” he drawls. “You don’t think it’s handsome? Look how sharp it makes my jawline! Look, look!” He strains his neck to point feverishly at the striking curvature of his jaw, but his mother only rolls her eyes, unimpressed. “C’mon, ma, it’s so handsome! Aw, c’mon, don’t give me that look! Ugh, give me a break—!” 

“Khalid, no—that thing is embarrassing. And you actually trim it like that? On purpose?” 

“Ma, oh my—” Khalid drapes a hand over his face, and he thanks his mother for having children with an Almyran man, because without all his blessed melanin, he’d be red as a beet. Either way, the fumes of his mortification permeate like the smoke of a ruined meal over a frying pan. He mumbles against his palms, “I can’t believe you’re beard-shaming me right now, ma.”

“And I can’t believe you’d come up to my doorstep with that puny thing! Seriously, you’ll disappoint your father!”

“I know, I know, he always had the gnarliest beard,” Khalid says, and the words are a wistful breath of nostalgia. He pictures his father, his stormcloud of wiry whiskers brewing at the bottom half of his face like an omen. Khalid heaves a rapturous chuckle as he remembers the looming patriarch of the Halabi royal family—and the king of Almyra as a whole.

His father, King Sa’id, is an elusive man, to say the least. Khalid never knew him as intimately as he had known his mother. He was the king after all, and still is; though Khalid was no such thing, he was damn near close, being leader of the Leicester Alliance and all, and so he empathizes with the myriad responsibilities that have you collared and leashed and toiling endless days and nights. Either way, even though it was clear Sa’id loved his Fódlandic wife, that love seemed to be a lucky exception to his reserved ways. For, he never quite held the same fondness for his mixed son. It was an interesting phenomenon, and Khalid always wondered why it was the case. Sa’id was always a reticent man of few words, but whatever words he did utter clanged like relics of umbral steel echoing in the darkest of caverns. 

Khalid remembers how greatly he revered his father when he was a boy, but that glinting wonder has dulled to a rusty indifference. Though he takes after his father’s pragmatism, he owes every part of his personality to his mother. In retrospect, Sa’id never even seemed to have much of a personality for Khalid to model quite at all. It’s an interesting revelation, for sure. 

Sa’id wasn’t a bad father per se, but he definitely could’ve been better. Khalid never truly understood what his mother saw in him. Probably the diamond diadem. Oh, and of course, that gnarly beard. (Khalid did get his rugged handsome looks from his father, after all. Though perhaps, not his incredible beard growing genes…)

“How’s he, anyway?” Khalid asks, oh-so-smoothly diverting the attention away from his own beard, which he thought was his most dashing quality, but now he thinks he has a new insecurity to grapple with. Either way, his thumb and forefinger hold his chin in ponderance of his father. 

“Tired,” his mother remarks. “He’s holding on, though.”

Khalid’s brow furrows. He side-eyes his mother with suspicion. “What do you mean ‘holding on’? He’s okay, isn’t he?” 

His mother’s lips thin into a taut line, and she takes a languid step to the side, further opening the wide glass door and ushering her son inside. Khalid steps through the threshold, and his eyes are drawn to the dreamy, dancing colors of his old home. They play his heartstrings like a harp, humming old tunes in his ear and urging him forth to further bask in its wonder. He looks up to the tall, arched ceiling, and it still shimmers with the glossy, azure tile that always reminded him of the midday sky. Now, it seems to distantly remind him of Dimitri, the king’s noble blue cape cascading like a waterfall down his shoulders yet whipping like the howling winds of the north when he marched. Really, the color of his ceiling is nearly identical to the royal sapphire hue that is Faerghus’s idiosyncrasy. But, Khalid shakes thoughts of Dimitri from his head, as begrudging as he is to do so. He’d love for Dimitri to come see his home some day, his real home—and meet his mother. That would be an interesting day, for sure. One for the history books. But Khalid hasn’t even yet found the courage to tell Dimitri his real name—so that visit will have to be prolonged until Khalid’s anxieties finally loosen their clawing coil in his gut.

Khalid turns to face his mother once again, who stands idle a few feet away. She’s very tan now, her skin tone almost identical to Khalid’s own, which itself has grown more pallid with his years spent in the west. But his mother’s slim facial features will always give her Fódlandic nationality away. She’s uniquely beautiful in that manner, Khalid notes. When he was a boy, he could always spot her in a crowd due to her too-straight, too-silken hair, her narrow, angled nose which always caught the sun on its bridge, and her sylphlike lips, impossibly slight—and of course, her skin as soft and white as a cloud of meringue. In Almyra, she stood out, but never in a bad way—at least to Khalid. Maybe he’s biased. 

He peers into her emerald eyes, the ones which she gifted so generously to him, and he grows wary. His demeanor sours as his mother chews her lip and averts her gaze. 

“Well?” Claude prompts, awaiting for what she has to say about Sa’id. 

“He’s sick. He’s fine, but he’s sick.” 

“Well, if he’s sick, I don’t think he’s exactly fine, ma. What’s he sick with?”

She shakes her head. “Some heart disease. I don’t know the details. I don’t wanna know the details.” She mutters something in Almyran—it’s so rushed that Khalid can’t exactly understand what she’s saying, not to mention Khalid’s Almyran is a little out of practice—before turning and strutting towards one of the open, welcoming side rooms of the foyer. Her son trails loyally at her heels. 

The sharp clacks of their shoes against hardwood soon muffle to padded footfalls as they walk onto a blood-red rococo carpet. The scarlet-stained wool dances with rivers of outpouring detail, golds and silvers knitting a grand lattice of eye-catching abstractions. They swirl and encircle themselves, creating hypnotizing, annular patterns. But amongst the enigmatic subtleties hide depictions of great animals and even greater humans, ones stiffly poised with pride and framed by the wavelike detail so prevalent in the rest of the carpet. Khalid can’t help but envision Edelgard and her crimson ambition. The driven self-identity she always wears on her sleeve and bears like a scar over her heart seems just as upright as the individuals illustrated and woven into the carpet, Khalid notes. And though Edelgard is a woman learning to live in an imperfect world, and she is still healing from the spiritual blindness her despair had inflicted, she is noble and kind and thoughtful. If only she could see Halabi—if only she could glean a different world and witness firsthand the kind of society she so desperately yearns for. It would open her eyes, for sure, to new possibilities she never even dreamed of. She would love it here, Khalid thinks, even if she might get a nasty sunburn. He cracks a wry smile at that notion. 

Khalid’s eyes observe the rest of the room; walls still tiled with glossy, creamy diamonds, window panes still circular and enclosed in wooden frames, overlooking the verdant backyard garden. Distracted, he saunters over to one of the large windows and peers youthfully out of it, eyes reflecting the wild shrubs and herbs which burst from the ground in an unkempt discord. Flamingo flowers and spineless yucca border the terracotta walls, and Khalid remembers when he was eye-to-eye with their short stalks—if he stood up to them on a particularly windy day, he’d fall victim to a poking cheekful of sharp leaves. The golden barrel cacti were forever out of reach, and even though Khalid had always wanted to run a hand across their bristles, he got the spiny recompense he deserved every time. But nothing could compare to the warm rainbow of the flower grounds, a little garth nestled into the corner of the grander garden. Tea roses bloomed with blushing sublimity, violet Almyran cyclamen popped from the bushes like petite pairs of butterfly wings, and white striped lily hung elegantly from painted ceramic pots. It was all a dream to behold. Even more so now, however, because Khalid never thought he’d behold it again. And though the garden is overgrown now, it’s still mostly the same as he remembers it, with only a few new leaves and flowers cropping up here and there that he can’t quite put his finger on. 

“Your father and I would always come and sit out in the garden after you left,” his mother says, drawing her son’s blissful attention to her. He looks behind him, and his mother catches his gaze, laying a hand over his shoulder. 

“Really?” he asks, his wonderment not at all dulled but more in a state of unanswered curiosity. “How come?”

“It always reminded us of our little boy,” she says simply. “It’s wild and avant-garde and… magical. Just like you.” A ray of her laughter pours over Khalid, and he blinks with sunbathing languor beneath it. He turns his gaze to the sprawling garden once again. 

“It’s just the same as I remember it,” Khalid remarks quietly, in awe of its unique and still unchanged beauty. 

His mother pats his shoulder. “So are you, Khalid.” He smiles, delightfully flustered at his mother’s well-meaning comment. He looks at her once again, and she returns his grin—though, not with the same ferocity as her son. Khalid realizes that she must be dwelling on thoughts of his father, and he soon grows apprehensive. 

“Ma, are you worried about baba?” he asks gently, and her heavy sigh seems to answer his question. His mother backs away from the window, slowly approaching the ebony roundtable in the middle of the room. Khalid follows her. 

“Yes,” she says with gruff reluctant. “He almost never visits the house anymore. It’s easier for the doctors to watch over him if he stays with them in the holy sanatorium.”

“So, he isn’t in hospice or anything?” 

“No,” his mother states. And the way the veins in her neck pop suggests that she might have had to swallow down an unspoken ‘not yet.’

Khalid shivers. Truly, he’d never imagined his father would be ill in such a manner. The king was always a shining beacon of prosperity for Almyra, a sturdy foundation that never wavered and never gave in to oppressive forces. Yet now, he’s a patient in a hospital. And Khalid can glean from his mother’s reticent demeanor that he isn’t getting much better. 

Khalid approaches the edge of the table with his mother. “When’d this happen?” he asks, and his mother pulls out a chair for him, gesturing for him to sit. He does, and he lets out a sigh as he sinks into the cushioned chair and relaxes against the curved wooden back. His mother takes a seat on the edge of the table, her strained fists buried in her plush, cotton skirts. 

“A couple months ago,” she answers. “Honestly, sweetheart, don’t worry about him. I’m sure he’ll be fine. We have the best doctors in Almyra out there taking care of him. You’ll see him soon.” Her reassuring smile bears a dull light that is somewhat forlorn, but Khalid doesn’t want to spend any more time dwelling on morbid hypotheticals. He takes his mother’s words as they’re said, and he nods. 

“Alright then,” Khalid says. He scratches at the nape of his neck, diverting his eyes. The two of them fall into a brief silence that’s broken by, of course, his blazing mother, her voice scorched with rash concern. 

“Khalid, you look all… roughed up. You weren’t killing yourself out there in that war, were you?” 

“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?” he remarks with awkward, intermittent laughter.

“But Khalid, baby, you were…” His mother weakly and unspecifically motions with her hand before it thuds unceremoniously back into her lap with a sigh. “You were… out there. Leading the Alliance, weren’t you?” She says it like a question, but both of them know the answer, clear as day. 

Khalid hesitates for a long moment, hating being the one to validate his mother’s worries, before nodding slowly. “Yeah, that was me.” 

“What in the hell was that like? And how did you… well, how did you…” she stammers, her words wispy and uncertain like lingering dust clouds. No matter how hard she searches, the words don’t seem to come. Khalid eyes his mother with sympathy. He understands what it’s like to feel wordless, hopeless. He attempts to fill in her thoughts. 

“Stay alive? Not lose? Yeah, I ask myself that every day.” 

“No, no, Khalid. I know how you did all that. You’re smart, you were always good at staying out of trouble. I mean…” She pauses once more before heaving a long, laden sigh. 

“Ma, what is it?” 

“How did you… handle it? Khalid, you’re still… you’re still…” she stammers, and Claude can’t help but notice how her bottom lip quivers as she forces out her final words. “You’re still my little baby,” she whispers, her voice suddenly deeply emotive and crumbling like a great yet old and wizened statue. Khalid is taken aback, and he averts his eyes, a grim, almost guilty disposition distorting his visage. Like he’s wronged his mother for doing all that he’s done, like he shouldn’t have put himself in danger, because seeing his mother pained and worried and all for him… it’s awful. He can’t bear it. Poignancy tugs at his throat. 

“I…” He doesn’t quite know where to go from there. His mother only moves from the edge of the table, coming forth to embrace her son once again. Her hold is just as strong as it had been at the door, but Khalid no longer feels that desperation for air he once did. He lets his mother’s melancholy consume him and suffocate him, as if feeling it like this could somehow right all the wrongs he’s committed. His trembling arms are fragile, fraying strings around his mother’s back compared to her own, which are oppressive as steel rods. Yet either way, he still holds her as she holds him, trying his best to not utterly tear himself apart at the sound of her caring voice.  

“Please, stay here. Don’t go out there and get yourself killed. Please, Khalid. I just can’t bear the thought of you risking your life out there,” she whispers, frantic and watery as she plants a kiss to the side of his head. A shudder passes through Khalid’s spine and shakes him to lucidity. 

“You always did, though, didn’t you?” he inquires with feeble conviction and feigned defensiveness. 

“It’s okay when it’s me. It’s not okay when it’s my son,” she whispers, her voice a gentle wail. Her vice grip seems to impossibly tighten. Khalid can only go limp under her embrace. 

He reflects on her words. He supposes he’ll never understand a mother’s reasoning, why she’s able to freely put her life on the line for a cause she believes in, but the thought of her child doing that is simply intolerable. Khalid supposes it is a parental instinct that he does not understand, may never understand—and he finds it impossible to sympathize with his mother. He wishes he could, but the toiling cyclone of heartache pulling apart his chest still speaks to him either way, even if he cannot fully understand where it comes from. 

“Ma, I did what I had to do. If I hadn’t risked my own life, thousands of other lives would be in ruin. That is the cost of war, ma, it is.”

His mother shivers against him before letting him go at last. She brings a tender hand to his cheek, and Khalid swears he can see a glimmer of bittersweet sorrow glaze her eyes with tears. She smiles in disbelief as she breathes, “My son, you are so wise.” 

Khalid huffs a self-effacing chuckle. “Thanks, ma.”

His mother lifts her hand from his cheek, and he laments its absence for a moment. But she instead draws a finger through his hair, tucking loose strands behind his ear which is still ornamented with the same earring he’d worn since he was a boy. His mother seems to notice, and she hums something tearful. 

“This earring, Khalid,” she remarks, before pulling up a chair of her own and sitting in it, knees brushing against her son’s. “It’s the same one you always wore, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he brings a finger up to toy with it, the tiny gold rings jangling pleasantly in his ear. “It hasn’t rusted a bit, either.”

“Well, of course. You know I can’t stand cheap jewelry,” she laughs. 

Khalid laughs along with her. He doesn’t quite know what to say, really. But in an instant, he is shocked, as his mother takes both of his hands in her own and begins to scrutinize them. Khalid’s brow lifts in confusion as her eyes skim the length of his fingers over and over again, but… his heart leaps to his throat as she thumbs at the base of his gloves and begins to peel them off. His world seems to slow to an agonizing snail’s pace as the black leather slowly strips from his skin. Wait, no, no, no—

“Khalid!” his mother shrieks, seizing his left hand and vaulting from her chair, its legs creaking comically against the floorboards. Khalid’s body jerks upwards at the force of his leapfrog of a mother, lithe and bouncy as a spring, who still grips him impossibly tight. And of course, she reacted in such a way because, goddess, why’d this have to happen like this? Khalid groans internally. 

“Are you engaged?” his mother yelps. She grips the base of his left ring finger, which is adorned with a small but beautiful silver band, engraved with bejeweled lavender florets. Khalid’s face bursts into a divine flame, and he feels numb under the all-encompassing heat of his embarrassment. 

“Uh… maybe? Yes?” Khalid answers. And his mother simply throws herself back into her chair—it tilts backwards a bit with the force—winded by the revelation. She still holds her son’s hand in her own, eyeing the engagement ring with such incredulity that Khalid worries she’ll burn it out of existence with the ogling laser of her disbelief. 

“Khalid, you must tell me who it is! Now!” she commands. And it’s the one time Khalid feels like disobeying his mother. 

A roughened yet still somehow youthful face, eyes dewy and sweet like fresh mint leaves, short, tousled hair reflecting the same ancient, holy hue. Khalid’s heart does somersaults in his gut as he thinks of Byleth, his fiancé, his soon to be husband, his world, his god. He remembers how Byleth had given him this ring just a few days ago—it’s surreal, and Khalid regrets running off so quickly, but he needed to come to Almyra as soon as possible. Despite that, he wishes he could’ve brought his fiancé with him. Oh, his fiancé! Khalid can’t believe it. He’s in love, and it’s bliss, it’s euphoria, it’s everything he’s ever wanted. But before Byleth, Khalid never even knew he wanted someone like him. But now, he sits here, engaged to be married, and it feels like a dream. 

“Khalid, look at you! You’re smitten!” His mother’s words interject his thoughts and jolt him awake. He’s pulled back to reality and wonders what his mother means; but then he realizes that his daydreaming must have shown on his face, as he grows conscious of the aching corners of his mouth and has to force them down with a great effort. 

“Well, no, uh, I—y’know… I dunno! I dunno, uh… well, sure, yeah, I—I guess,” Khalid stutters, and it’s the most incomprehensible string of ‘words’ he’s ever uttered in his life. 

“Well, c’mon, out with it! Who’s the lucky lady?” 

Khalid freezes. Oh, dear. Well, that is a clean slap in the face if he’s ever felt one.  

His mother hit the nail on the head about Byleth being lucky—to be wed to Claude, perhaps now Khalid von Riegan of all people is quite the lofty privilege, he thinks with a smidgen of egotism. However… Byleth is very plainly not a lady. What would his mother think of him? Her son will not produce pureblooded grandchildren to carry on the Riegan heritage. Her son will be othered by the people of Fódlan, especially by the northern folk in Faerghus, who tend to be far more conservative than those of Leceister and Adrestia. Khalid might not be trusted. He perhaps may never receive the unequivocal validation for his love that he deserves, no matter how official his marriage or public his romance may be. Fódlan is certainly no stranger to same-sex couples, but the nation is divided on the matter. And to consider the other side of his identity, Almyra has never been too keen on same-sex arrangements, either. They are not uncommon, but for a future king, such a thing would be a wild controversy. What about family values? Heirs? Legacies? Khalid and his husband would be a point of contention for the rest of their lives, and possibly even far past their deaths. 

But Khalid knows this. He is fully and painfully cognizant of the risk he’s taking. He prides himself on his pragmatism—his ability to lull the strain on his heart made tense by emotion in order to make assiduous and astute decisions that will yield both the greatest benefit and the smallest loss. However, Khalid has spent his entire life thinking this way. He has honored his hard-nosed cognition by treating every single life decision as if it were a problem in a mathematics textbook, a simple addition and subtraction with a single correct answer and a formulaic solution. But may he not finally liberate himself from such taxing endeavors? May he be selfish, just this once, on just this one front, and find solace in a love so teeming with beauty and so blooming with possibility and prosperity and so gleaming with joy and humanity? Khalid believes he’s earned it. Byleth lives in his heart like a butterfly, light and heavenly as he descends upon a soul worn and weary. Khalid needs Byleth, he needs his fiancé’s love to pass through him like revelation and heal him and help him through this rocky new world they’ve created. Khalid will not accept anything or anyone else. 

It pains him, because if his mother does not accept him, they then have no choice but to be diametrically opposed. If they can touch down on equal footing, that would be wonderful, but if she still holds disdain, there will forever be a cavernous, blackened rift between them. Personal understandings that will never be mutual. Hands that will never fully grasp one another in the same kind of love they once knew. Their affections would be turned bittersweet; both of them would long for what they cannot have. And the thought of it kills Khalid, it really does. Byleth and his mother are perhaps the only two people in this entire wicked world he cherishes more than his own life, and that’s saying everything. 

Khalid has always put himself first. Always. It was the first thing his mother taught him when he was a boy. But in teaching such invaluable lessons, she managed to capture her son’s heart and chain it to her own. Khalid would give his life for his mother’s in an instant, as he’s sure she would hers. But it’s overwhelming to realize that the other individual who he would willingly give his life for, his fiancé, may be at odds with her. It’s so strange, and it’s so terrifying, and Khalid doesn’t like it. Not one bit. He dreads the truth, and he normally never does. 

“Ma,” he begins, capturing her attention. Her eyes widen in a fascinated instant, awaiting the answer she so hungrily craves. But Khalid is not willing to provide it so easily. Perhaps ushering her away from the matter at hand will be the best course of action. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to tell people yet. There’s a reason I kept my gloves on.” He glances at them forlornly as they lay limp and discarded on the table. He should’ve just taken his ring off before he came…

“But Khalid, I am your mother,” she beseeches, taking his hands in her own and cupping them dearly. He can’t help but crumble as she does. She peers into her son’s eyes and pleads with a blinding longing, one so bright that he can barely comprehend it. Khalid only sighs, averting his gaze with a wavering smile, as the white spotlight of her compassion beats down on him like the aching heat of the mid-afternoon sun. He shakes his head, and he can feel his mother squeeze his hands in response. 

“Sweetheart, what is it you can’t tell me? Is this woman some gangster, or a wanted criminal?” His mother gasps—quite unnecessarily, Khalid might add. She doesn’t seem to notice her son’s dramatic eye roll, which derides her and her inane exaggerations. “Is she from a forbidden land? Is she an enemy?!”

“No, ma, no, no! Not at all! I just… it’s hard to… explain…” His voice trails off into an insecure mumble. He shuts his eyes, his eyelashes tickling his cheeks as he grimaces at his own ineptitude. His mother’s excitable body language relaxes, communicating a subtle yet palpable compassion as she leans forward and lets her head loll to a gentle tilt. Khalid braves a look at her; he must admit, the entreaty of her pursed lips and sympathetic brow does its job well. He almost feels like blurting out his truth right then and there, but his mother interrupts his thoughts. 

“Khalid, remember what I’d always tell you when you were a boy? Whenever you’d come crying to me about some silly thing one of your brothers or sisters laughed at you for? I told you that I will always, always be there for you. When the rest of the world no longer feels safe, you can always come back to me. Because I will always love you, no matter what. Okay? You understand that, right?” 

Khalid lets her words wash through him with an eloquent nod of understanding. Because, really, she’s right, and Khalid would be a fool to deny it or run away from it. He does his mother a disservice by questioning her so, by doubting that he would be accepted with open arms and by fearing whatever disdain she may place upon him. In the depths of his soul, Khalid knows that no matter what, his mother will shelter him, she will keep him safe when nobody else will. She was the only person who did that, anyway, when he was just a boy like she’d referenced. His mother was his only friend, his only getaway from the cruelties and complications of the outside world. She was his rock, his pillar of peaceful solitude, and his eternal other half. 

So why should any of that change now? 

Khalid sighs deeply once again, and he finally crests the summit of his mountainous nerves as he moves to look his mother in the eye as he speaks. “Alright, then. Well, y’see, uh… the ‘lucky lady’ actually just so happens to, uh… well, not… be a lady… at all?”

His mother blinks at him. Slowly. Two times. Khalid cracks quite an awkward smile. But he feels like an entire waterfall of anxious sweat is pouring over his scalp right now.

His mother gulps. Acerbic as ever, she says, “And?”

Now it’s Khalid’s turn to blink. Slowly. Very, very slowly. “Um… what?”

His mother clicks her tongue. “I knew it. I always knew there was something up with you.”

Khalid’s jaw drops. To the crust of the earth, it drops. “Ma? Mama? Mother? Excuse me?”

The corner of his mother’s mouth seems to twitch, and her smile lines stretch strenuously as she attempts to keep them from spilling into a shameless ear-to-ear grin. She closes her eyes, lackadaisical as she waves her hand to dismiss her son’s god-shattering stupefaction. “Eh, you were always a little…” Her eyes wander the room, daydreaming the right word to say with an infuriatingly casual air about her. Lost in a windstorm of his own crippling mortification, Khalid feels the steam sputtering from his ears and overheating his face to temperatures near melting—no, near exploding. He cannot believe this. He can’t! It’s impossible that she’s known! Right? It’s impossible, right? Right? 

“Zesty,” she finishes, and Khalid throws his face into his lap. 

“Zesty…?” he mumbles into his trousers, cynical and wondering how it all got to this, and his mother howls a boisterous laugh like a hyena. She pats her son’s heavy head with motherly zeal. He groans something incomprehensible and miserable. 

“Khalid, dear, don’t be embarrassed. You were never ashamed to be yourself, and I think that’s beautiful,” his mother remarks, an attempt to quell her son’s tumult, but he only seems to grow more chagrined by the second. 

“But—” Khalid protests, though ultimately he has nothing left to say. He lifts his head from his lap, thwarted by his mother’s insurmountable omniscience. He looks at her and is reminded of all the feral freedom he had as a boy, and he’s grateful his mother had given it to him, but he hadn’t realized it’d led to her somehow having gleaned all of his absurd secrets hiding in the depths of his heart. His sexual orientation, of course, being one of those secrets. Though, as a child, was he even aware of his own preferences? Was he aware that, apparently, somewhere along the line, his mother had figured out that he likes boys, too? Had she figured that out before even he did? Much to Khalid’s annoyance, that notion is funny, and a lopsided smile splits across his face as he resolves to embrace his sweltering embarrassment. 

“Sweetheart,” his mother begins, gentle yet still mildly amused by the whole ordeal. “All I care about is your happiness. Are you happy with him?” 

Khalid doesn’t hesitate to nod. He finds strength in that affirmation, a familiar warmth shining through him as he envisions his fiancé in all of his sage green, sanctified glory. Khalid curls his left hand into a fist in some desperate search for a touch that isn’t there, yet somehow, the ghost of it is still just as comforting. Khalid can practically feel Byleth’s spirit emanating from the silver ring he’d given him, making a home in Khalid’s body and soul and heart—a heart which has now grown large enough to house the two people he cherishes more than life itself. 

One of those darling people places her hand over Khalid’s clenched fist, easing its aching tension with her healing touch. “Then I’m happy,” his mother says with a smile. 

Khalid realizes in an instant just how wonderful his mother’s compassion feels. To know that she’ll always take him in and accept each and every part of him is a comfort warmer and kinder than anything of this world. Seldom does Khalid know unconditional love, let alone feel it as intensely as he does now. Even Byleth is sparing in his affections, but his mother does not pull her punches. She will rain down a squall of thundering kindness on all whom she adores whether or not they think they’re capable of bearing it. Because to her, they’re all worthy of it, nonetheless. 

Khalid feels himself convulse with youthful laughter. His shoulders bunch up and he dips his chin, his chestnut cheeks blooming with a rosy fondness. “Thanks, ma,” he says, and his mother only breathes a dreamy sigh.

“Khalid, you crack me up. Now, who in the world is this man? Is he treating you right? Do I need to have a few words with him? Because, oh, if he messes with my son, he’s going to have to face the wrath of the Demon Queen herself!” His mother shakes a vengeful fist, baring ivory canines sharp as spearheads. An impassioned flash of choler glints in her green eyes, and Khalid grows frightened for a moment. A vivid image of her grasping Byleth by his shirt collar, shaking him, and upbraiding him with her blade of a tongue sends an unpleasant shiver down his spine. Her ubiquitous ire seems to have found its way into their conversation, despite Khalid’s best wishes to keep it at bay.

“Ma, no!” he exclaims. “He’s nice! I swear! No, I think you’d like him.” His mother side-eyes him, the corner of her lip lifted in speculation. “Seriously, ma. I really think you would.”

“You really think so?” she retorts, crossing her arms.

“Oh, yeah,” Khalid affirms, enthused. A saccharine smile dimples his cheeks as he thinks of his beloved, how compassionate he is, how tender and attentive he is. How divinely selfless yet endlessly secure he is. His mother would love somebody like Byleth—tenacity and humility work in tandem to fuel his mother’s flame, and those same two halves embody Byleth’s spirit as well. Surely, they would get along, Khalid thinks. Byleth’s disinclination towards speaking would prove to be an entertaining balance to his mother’s loud blathering, as well, Khalid thinks with a flicker of wry pleasure.

“Well, then, I think I have to meet him,” his mother banters, leaning forward and snickering. 

“Yeah, I think you do.” The ache in his cheeks only grows—the thought of his mother meeting Byleth, oh, it just seems like bliss. He never thought that day would come, but… here it is. Just within reach. He can’t believe it, not for a second. 

“Oh, Khalid, y’know,” his mother begins, pushing herself out of her chair and gesturing for her son to follow suit. They continue to carry on their conversation as they exit the cozy side room and walk further down the foyer. “I can’t say I’m surprised that you’re in love with a man, but I suppose I just never expected you to actually go down that road.” The hall melts seamlessly into the expansive kitchen, another ornate, tasseled rug carpeting their path. The walls are lined with colorful, glassy platters and hanging wooden cutlery, while the quartz countertops showcase painted pottery stuffed with variegated floral arrangements. His mother had always loved color and complexity in her environment, and the exotic decoration of the kitchen serves to emphasize that. Her environment is sprawling and loud, just like she is. That realization brings a gleeful smile to Khalid’s face. 

“Oh, really?” he inquires back. “Well, if I’m being frank, I guess I thought the same thing myself. Never thought I had it in me to pursue true love. I’d say great minds think alike, but that idea isn’t the most pleasant one, so…”

“No, I’m glad. I’m proud of you, Khalid. I guarantee you, ninety-nine percent of those stuck-up nobles over in Fódlan don’t follow through with their heart’s desires. But you know who did?” 

Khalid smiles. He wordlessly points a finger at his mother—he winks as he does—and she just about jumps for joy. She jabs a thumb at her puffed-out chest. “Me!” She then outstretches her arms in an arching display of gilded pride. “And look at me now! I’m all the better because of it!” She relaxes with a laugh, and then she playfully punches Khalid in the shoulder. He sways with the simultaneous force of her winding strength melded with his bubbling amusement. 

“Yeah, I can’t help but wonder who the hell you’d be now if you never eloped with baba,” Claude remarks.

“Certainly not your mother,” she says, decisive but sarcastic all the same. 

“Well, then, thank the heavens for your rebellious spirit.” 

“Sure, sure. You are a handful, though, y’know. Anyway, Khalid, I don’t know if you’re just prattling on about your crazy old ma to avoid talking about yourself, or if you just love me that much—but please, I am dying for more details about this fiancé of yours. What’s his name? What’s he look like? What’s he do, like, is he in the army? A commander, maybe? Or—is he one of your advisors, or your tactician, or uh… oh, I dunno, is he just some guy you found and picked up off the street? What’s his deal?”

“Hey, now, slow down! That’s a whole load of questions that I cannot answer in one breath. But, uh, would you believe me if I said yes to all of them? Because…” Claude chuckles, incredulous that his mother’s assumptions how all managed to be wildly different yet irrefutably true nonetheless. “Yeah.”

His mother spews a wild guffaw. “You’re kidding! Your…" She counts on her fingers as she lists off what she'd just rambled on about. "…advisor-commander-tactician-fiancé is some homeless man?” 

“Okay, well—a bit more nuanced than that,” Claude says, “but all-in-all, sure. He’s an ex-mercenary. He was actually pretty infamous back in Fódlan. Called him the ‘Ashen Demon.’ Scary, right? He’s a savage, a ruthless warrior.” Khalid takes an intense step forward; he relishes in the way his mother’s eyebrows shoot up in intrigue. 

“Doesn’t sound too different from me,” she remarks with a debonair flip of her hair. 

Khalid laughs. Buoyant and enthused, he flatters, “He really isn’t. A master of his body and his weapon, drop-dead gorgeous, a natural charmer…”

“Oh, stop it, boy! You’re embarrassing me!” his mother exclaims in faux-protest, though Khalid sees right through her machinations. The mischievous, self-seeking glint in her green eyes gleams like a limelight. Khalid only shakes his head and clicks his tongue. 

“You always loved being buttered up, ma. Don’t fight it.”

“Oh, whatever. So, this fiancé of yours, he’s just like me? A beautiful but terrifying force of nature, hm? Tell me more. How’d you meet him?”

“Ha. Now, that’s a story. Let me paint the picture for you. Flashback five or six years ago, I’m clad in my Garreg Mach uniform, still wide-eyed and seventeen. Met him in the middle of the night, when my idiot peers and I were being chased by some bandits. Oh—funny sidenote, those ‘peers’ were the Tempest King and Emperor Edelgard. Anyway—” Khalid intentionally dismisses his mother’s disbelieving scoff and wild outcry of bewilderment, though it’s a toiling battle to choke back the laughter clawing up his throat. “Anyway, chased by bandits, utterly helpless, fully convinced we were toast. And then boom, this rugged androgyne of a mercenary emerges from his little house, sword in hand and face all hardened. I can’t lie, at the sight of him, I’m a wee bit spooked. But I don’t dwell on it, ‘cus without a word, he swoops in and saves our lives. Strikes down those bandits like they’re nothing. 

“Ma, I was in a trance. I tried to control myself, I swear, but I started flirting immediately. I mean—” Khalid snaps his fingers for emphasis. “Boom. No hesitation. Yeesh, it’s kind of embarrassing. He was so much older than me back then, too…” Khalid holds his head in his hand, chagrined by the memory of that walk back to Garreg Mach and the feral flirtation that had seized him like a deathly spirit and puppetted him against his will. Well… at least it worked, right? 

His mother pushes a sigh through her teeth, smirking and throwing her head back. She whistles. “Khalid, Khalid, Khalid. Goodness gracious. Only my own son can have a love story crazier than mine.”

Khalid laughs. “Yeah. He came back with us to the monastery and, well… the rest is history. He was made a professor—my professor. ‘Teach’, as I liked to call him. Still call him that sometimes. Old habits die hard, I guess.” A wistful smile splits across his face as he calls upon the memory of his fiancé the evening he’d strutted into the Golden Deer classroom and announced himself as their new professor. The light Khalid’s face shone with must’ve glowed bright enough to illuminate the whole night sky. He still remembers the way his heart burst with a radiating, all-encompassing fire, and he could’ve sworn his fate had been sealed the moment he locked eyes with Byleth. Like he could see his whole future sparkling behind the oceanic depths of Byleth’s eyes, bathing him in adoring deference and bidding his undying loyalty. And Khalid wouldn’t have had it any other way. The sublime wonder that’d made its home in Khalid’s heart that fateful day hasn’t dulled a wink. Without it, Khalid fears he never would’ve made it to where he is now—no, he knows he wouldn’t have. Byleth is his everything. His every breath and his every heartbeat, his every drop of blood and his every despairing tear. His every hope and his every dream. He owes all of himself to Byleth. 

His mother interposes his poignant reminiscence with a damning question. “Well, what’s his name?”

Khalid’s breath catches in his throat, and his cheeks puff up in fright. Often, he forgets the weight of his fiancé’s identity. Though, his mother had never bothered to stick her nose in the matted, grimy fur of Fódlan’s politics and diplomatic affairs. She always wished to remove herself as much as possible from the country and anything to do with it, but Khalid doesn’t know how much that facet of her might’ve changed since he left.

“His name is, um… Byleth,” he says quietly and reluctantly. 

“Huh,” his mother says. “Do I know that name from somewhere?” 

Shit. Khalid shrugs, though internally, he panics. Oh, she’s going to freak. “I dunno, do you?” he says obliquely. He places both hands behind his head, totally-super-nonchalant.

“Do I…?” she parrots, scratching the crown of her head and tapping her foot in a pensive deliberation. Khalid, ill at ease, prays that she doesn’t. Byleth is an esoteric figure, most well known by the world simply as the Enlightened One—it’s quite the grandiloquent epithet, Khalid might note. His mother would certainly poke fun at it. 

“Well, I’m sure you read it in a book or something. Anyway, wow, it seems you really redecorated in here,” Khalid remarks, suddenly very fascinated by the decor of the shiny, colorful kitchen. In a desperate attempt to draw his mother’s attention away from the true identity of Byleth, he circles the counter and lets his eyes wander to the walls. He drinks in the diversity of the miscellaneous knickknacks which perch on miniature shelves. “Oh, I like this one,” Khalid mentions, eyes fixed on a little ceramic wyvern statuette. Ivory, pearly scales glisten under the light that filters through the window pane framing the figurine’s curled-up body. “Looks like my wyvern!” 

A brief bout of silence follows before Khalid meets his inevitable demise.

His mother gasps, and it makes Khalid jump terribly. “Khalid! Are you engaged to the Enlightened One?!” she bellows.

Khalid chokes on his own spit. He freezes. Oh, we’re really in it now, he laments internally, locking gazes with the wyvern statuette, outpouring his heart’s deepest pains to its omniscient little eyes.

“Khalid,” his mother hisses. He can hear her stepping ever closer, encroaching on his position, poised to strike. “Khalid.”

“Well,” Khalid begins, clearing his throat. “Did I mention how, uh, this little guy looks like my wyvern—”

“Khalid!” his mother shrieks like an animal, and strangely enough, her voice is overwhelmed with joy. It tosses Khalid off balance—he’d expected her to be… well, actually, he didn’t quite know what he expected. He’s pleasantly surprised, either way. His anxiety is often unfounded. He turns around, an awkward smile on his face, and in a blinding instant, his mother is running at him and throwing him into a feral windstorm of an embrace. 

She squeezes the very life out from his lungs as she hugs him. Nigh unintelligible, she yatters, “By the gods in heaven, I can’t believe it! Khalid, Khalid, my crazy, crazy son! Oh, hell, I knew it, I knew my son was irresistible, I just knew it! I raised you right, boy! You’re just like your mother! Oh, I couldn’t be more proud, I couldn’t—”

“Ma, stop! Now you’re embarrassing me, good grief!” He peels his mother off of him, and she’s bouncing on her heels with excitement. 

“What a player you are! Look at you, my sly little fox! I can’t believe it!”

“Ma, calm down—”

His mother just about screams euphoric bloody murder. “Khalid! This is incredible! Incredible, I say! Oh, you are incredible! You are incredible, my son! Almyra is in good hands! Oh, goodness, you! You—!”

Khalid shakes with laughter and peers his mother in her eyes. Whether or not he realizes it, he’s lifting the veil which enshrouds who he is. The mask which he wears, tight as his own skin sunken to bone, feels weightless now, when once, it was all he could feel. All he could know. For better or for worse, Khalid believed he could never push the key into the lock of his own mind’s prison. He laid dormant while Claude took the reins and steered him towards greatness. He idled in weakness and solitude while Claude schemed and got his hands dirty. He remained innocent while Claude made sacrifices. Khalid knows how necessary all of those measures were, but when he stands here before his mother, he ponders what could’ve been if he’d taken a different path. If he’d had the strength to remain in his old home and wallow in his misery long enough to where he could bear it. 

But it’s a fool’s endeavor to think Khalid would’ve ever done that. He’d always been too self-righteous for his own good, as Edelgard had once said to him. Quite a damning case of the pot calling the kettle black, but Khalid hadn’t even the wits to disagree. What Edelgard had ever meant by her enigmatic remark, Khalid may never truly know. But he knows a few things of his own: the lengths he will go to to see the fruits of his dreams flourish in the untamed garden he calls Fódlan are endless in theory, but measured in practice. He’ll go the distance to ensure his and his allies’ safety, but he will not go so far as to where he loses sight of the path back. If a course of action poses too big of a risk or threatens too big of a loss, he won’t deign to it. He and Edelgard are sorely different in that regard. She will do anything—anything—to achieve her goals, if the mausoleums of murdered men left in her wake can speak to it. But Khalid would rather be laid amongst those men than be called a hypocrite. And doing as Edelgard did would certainly grant him that humiliating title. He knows he is not better than her in certain ways, but in terms of rectitude, he is. As he’s always been. He’s always been good—too good, perhaps, for his own good. 

And that’s why he had to thrust himself into action. That’s why he couldn’t bear the torment of being helpless, being discriminated against, being hated. Being spit on, being ignored, being worthless. Rather than let those things consume him and rot him from the inside out, he let them set fire to his body and soul. He let his anger light a spark within him that drove him towards initiative. He needed to make a change, and he needed to do it fast. He was a naïve boy bursting out the sides with a vocation bigger than himself, but that didn’t matter to him. He’d figure out how to carry the weight when it finally settled over his shoulders. But when he was young and as swift as the wind, nothing could catch him just yet. The world passed by him in a blur as he chased the endless horizon.

For those reasons, he had to leave. He had to say goodbye to his mother. And he doesn’t regret it. But what he does regret is putting aside the part of himself who had known her. 

Without the tortured prince, the righteous king cannot rise in his stead, he’d always told himself. But what he failed to realize was how the righteous king cannot exist without the tortured prince to hurt in his stead. Khalid had done everything he could to throw that poor young boy away. To not hurt, to not cry, to not feel. But now that he knows that boy once again, Khalid realizes that he and Claude are one and the same, and they always have been—and he never thought his mother would be the messenger of such a truth. 

Khalid believes himself to be his own savior. Whether the world views him as a sanctified neoteric or a delusional iconoclast, he cares not. Let the world think what it will. But in his home, in the arms of his mother, there are no such things as saviors. Here, Khalid doesn’t need to be saved. He just needs to be, and that’s enough. 

“Khalid, my dear,” his mother begins. “You look as though you’re about to cry. Did I… did I scare you?” she asks in sincerity, tentative, and a little dense, honestly. 

Khalid jolts to lucidity. He shakes his head—though, he can feel what she might be referring to, what with the unbearable blaze behind his eyes that stings like poison and the arrow of watery equivocation notched through his throat. He sniffles, mostly against his will, and feels embarrassed. The last time he cried was five years ago, and the sensation of his body writhing with uncontrollable wails and groveling with emotive weakness was so unpleasant that he vowed never to do such a childish thing again. But was it so childish? He hadn’t cried after he’d found out Byleth had disappeared—well, not directly after. He had been as sentimental and expressive as a rock when the terrible news descended upon his ears. No, it had been when he’d returned to his room that night and pulled his notebook from his desk. He’d opened it, and inside it laid a folded-up note. In Byleth’s handwriting, it’d read, ‘Tea tomorrow at noon. Don’t forget. Don’t be late. From, Teach.’ The note had been from a few days prior. And Khalid had forgotten. The guilt that gored through his gut in that moment has carved an indefinite scar into him.

He hated how it felt to stain Byleth’s words with his own tears. He hated how it felt to be so moved by three curt sentences scribbled onto a yellowed slip of notepaper. He hated how it felt to love someone so intensely, and how his absence felt like a gnawing, bleeding hole transpierced through his gut. To need someone, to be completed by someone, and to then have that someone ripped away from him—it hurt more than any wound. He remembers from that night how heavily he’d considered throwing himself from his window. Being dead would be better than feeling that pain.

He supposes Byleth’s case wasn’t too different from his mother’s, then. Because the last time he had cried before then had been the day he’d left his home for the last time. The day he’d seen his ma for the last time. 

“Khalid,” his mother whispers. “Dear, are you upset? What’s wrong?” she pleads, her hand coming up to rest on her son’s cheek and wipe away the tear that daubs it. Khalid finds that even though his mouth hangs agape, he cannot croak out a single word, lest he humiliate himself. He can’t speak his thoughts—he won’t do them justice. For once in his life, he’s at his wits’ end. And the thought of that only extracts his cries with greater ease. 

His mother’s face distorts into something awful once Khalid lets out a whimper of unabated heartache. She pulls him close once again, speechless but nonetheless compelled to keep her son as close as humanly possible. Khalid, in turn, hugs her with transfixing force. 

He manages to speak, though his words are brittle and weak and they sound nothing like him. He’s almost frightened of the foreign cadence of his tone—is this even Khalid’s voice? He doesn’t know this new man who’s allowed his feelings to control him, but Khalid finds he doesn’t have the strength to protest. “Everything I’ve done,” he begins, breaking to catch his hiccupping breath, “was for… for…” He’s betrayed by his sentiments as a bawl strangles him. He wants to curl up and shrivel into a putrid carcass and never be seen, touched, or dealt with ever again in his life. He hates how this feels, he hates every part of it—

His mother rubs his back. “It’s alright, Khalid. It’s alright, whatever it is. I love you. I love you, more than anything.” 

In that instant, Khalid realizes that it is not the act of showing emotion that he hates. It’s himself. And so he hugs his mother tighter, burying his crinkled and tearstained face into her bird’s nest of braids, wishing he didn’t have to feel this way, and hoping that somehow his mother could assuage the plague of his sorrows. 

“…was for you, ma,” he finishes, voice cracking at the sudden epiphany he’s revealed unto himself. All the fighting, all the suffering, it’d all been so one day Khalid could see the sun shine again. And he had known all that time that his sun waited in Almyra, and that it wouldn’t be going anywhere. It’d be sitting here in his old home, patiently, eagerly, waiting for its poor, aching son to return home. But he’d have to save himself and all his friends and the entire world first in order to get there. He swore as such to himself.

And so he did. To see his mother again, he did. To be happy again, he did. And those two truths cannot exist without one another. 

His mother lets out a sigh. It’s warm and fulfilling against him, but he can glean his mother’s endless bewilderment and awe that floats in its wake. She breathes, high-pitched and confounded, “What?” 

Against all his good senses, Khalid chuckles. “Stubborn as ever, aren’t you, ma?” he snivels, a wry smile on his face. 

“Wha—hey! I am not stubborn!” she opposes with irate urgency.

“Think you’re proving my point, here,” Khalid replies, a witty edge to his tone. He sniffles wholeheartedly. 

His mother only scoffs. “Well, you’re ridiculous. Fighting a war for me? C’mon now. Don’t pull my leg.”

“It’s—ma, you’re ruining the moment. It’s metaphorical—”

“Metaphorical, my ass! You know I’m not booksmart like you, I don’t know what all that means!” 

“Ma, seriously, I was trying to have a moment with you—”

“Khalid, we’ve been ‘having a moment’ ever since I opened the front door and laid eyes on you. And you know I—”

“But you’d fight a war for me, wouldn’t you?” Khalid interjects, a little late to his response, but he sticks the landing either way. He finds that his smile falters once his mother grows silent and pensive. 

After a profound pause, she says, “Yes, Khalid. I would.” 

Khalid nods. He only squeezes his mother, hoping to return to her what feelings of doting suffocation she’d bestowed unto him earlier this fateful day. 

“I hate to admit it, Khalid,” his mother begins, solemn yet bittersweet all the same. “But I think you’re stronger than I’ll ever be.”

“I think that’s ‘cus you’ve made me to be,” he says. 

They both laugh. It’s peaceful.

☽

When Khalid was young—when he was a slave to his ambitions—he was nothing but a fool. He never had time to spare for tears, he never had enough room in his head or heart to indulge in introspection. He didn’t want to burden himself with himself—there was just so much to do, wasn’t there? He thought it best to leave his sentiments behind at the threshold of his old home and save them for when he returns. 

But he never truly thought he’d return. He’d steeled himself to never cry again, to never feel again. So when he had crossed the threshold of his old home earlier today, he had been thrust into a different life. A new reality—one which he had longed for, fought for, lost for. One which he could barely believe, one which he could barely handle. And he’d picked up the remains of that boy who knew the feeling of tear-stained cheeks and ran with them. That boy became a part of him once again.

Khalid finds that he cannot quell the rainstorm of tears flowing from his eyes and shrouding his vision in a watery veil. His knees hit the carpet, and he clenches his jaw as he wails. He tries to choke back his emotion like he’s done for years and years, but that habit has died a brutal death. Anguish throttles him. He can’t breathe, he can’t see—he can only feel. 

He holds the sandals gently in his hands. They’re worn, battered, dirtied. Loved. Dust collects on their soles and the gold trim frays at the edges. The green tassel has thinned, clumps of dull fibers either threadbare or missing altogether. The little bauble, engraved with the Riegan crest, still holds on tight, and Khalid stares into it. A glowing, golden reflection of his heart and his mind, it shows him himself and the wild spirit that lives tigerish and unbound. The same spirit he shared with the boy who fit into these sandals, who wore them with pride, who felt as though he could almost fly if he ran fast enough. Who imagined, who loved, who cried and struggled, who failed and fell but always stood back up again. Stories and dreams and poignant memories fill these sandals now that Khalid cannot any longer. 

His sobs subdue and turn silent, but he allows his tears to wash him clean. It feels like respite, at long last. It feels like home, the way his face dampens with his own overflowing emotion. It feels like childhood, it feels like his mother’s love. He can’t bring himself to let go of that feeling.

Khalid brings the sandals to his chest. He hugs them. He closes his eyes, and he is healed. He is home.