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~*~
“Professor,” Seteth begins, and immediately regrets it.
Byleth doesn’t stir. She stares straight ahead, numb, her eyes boring holes through Seteth’s chest. The shadow on her shoulders is suffocating, monstrous. Grief is a demon no sword can slay.
“Professor,” Seteth tries again. The word tastes foul on his tongue. It doesn’t apply. It isn’t right. The young woman standing before him isn’t a teacher. She’s a child. A daughter.
“...Professor,” Seteth tries a third time. He can hear himself echoing through the somber halls of the faculty offices. He is as stern and bureaucratic as ever. It gnaws at him, just as it did a few short weeks past, in the immediate aftermath. Talking about his theory about Monica and Tomas, the imposters in their midst, unable to muster any sympathy. Just straight to business.
Slowly, achingly, like the shifting of tectonic plates, Byleth finally lifts her gaze. There’s an anguish in her eyes that doesn’t reach her face, yet it plunges itself into Seteth’s heart as surely as a dagger between his ribs.
For a moment, just a moment, she looks so much like…
No. He’s seeing things. A father’s bias for a girl who’s just lost her own.
“Professor,” Seteth says, for the fourth time, like three knocks without an answer before you let yourself through the door. “I received your request to take over Jeralt’s quarters as your own office. I took the matter to Lady Rhea, and I am afraid she has denied your request. Catherine shall be elevated to the post of knight-captain. These quarters will become hers. Any of Jeralt’s personal effects will, of course, be returned to you.”
“I see,” Byleth says, scarcely above a whisper.
Say something, for Goddess’ sake. Seteth fidgets, clearing his throat.
“...Jeralt will be missed,” Seteth says, wincing at the sound of his own distance, the cool professionalism habitually honed into his voice. “He was a great man. A true servant of the church.”
“No,” Byleth murmurs. “He wasn’t.”
Seteth blinks, taken aback. He tries to find words-- some comfort, some protest, anything at all-- but Byleth is already walking away.
~*~
Seteth spends the evening clearing out Jeralt’s quarters himself.
It’s not his job. He could have ordered any of the knights to do it in his stead. Alois, maybe. And Goddess knows that while he’s sorting a man’s life into boxes the paperwork will be piling up.
And yet, Seteth can’t bring himself to spend another evening penning missives by candlelight. He owes Jeralt this much, at least. Seteth is not a warm person; his stiff condolences to Byleth were proof enough of that. But the simple honesty of working with one’s hands. Effort. Duty. Respect. These are things that Seteth understands.
Jeralt doesn’t have much to his name. Of course he doesn’t; he was a mercenary, living on the road. He didn’t own anything he couldn’t fit on his back or in his saddlebags.
His horse would go to Byleth, naturally. Perhaps she could ride on in his name, as a paladin or even a holy knight someday, though honestly she seems just as likely to set him free in the foothills. His weapons, those would get sent to the smithy for cleaning and repairs. Seteth wonders if Byleth would bring them to battle; or if they were destined to be hung reverently over a fireplace, starring in hearthside tales of the hero who wielded them.
Jeralt owns little beyond that. His armor. His clothes. A half-empty ink set. A hip flask, still pungent. A sketched portrait of a woman with adoring eyes. Amateur at best, but done with love.
Then there are his books. Tactical primers, mostly, dry fare for bedtime stories, though he did own a single weathered copy of Fodlan’s fables.
And a journal. Fallen behind his bookshelf. Or, perhaps, hidden behind his bookshelf. Seteth ferrets it out with a swipe of his feather duster. It lands, open and face down on the floorboards.
Seteth tuts at his own carelessness, lifting up the book and smoothing the pages. It’s a journal, it seems, in Jeralt’s rough, practical hand.
Day 20 of the Horsebow Moon. All is cloudy. I can't believe she's dead. Lady Rhea said she died during childbirth. But is that the truth? And still, the child she traded her life for doesn't make a sound…
The world fades into shadow. Time flickers and skips. Before Seteth knows it, the cathedral’s tolling evening bell, and the monastery rings with the chatter of students on their way to the dining hall.
Seteth doesn’t hear a thing. His head is pounding. He sits hunched over at Jeralt’s writing desk, his skull reeling, his heart tied in knots.
Manuela and Hanneman peer in at him from down the hall, their eyes dark with concern. When Flayn appears beside them, wondering at all the fuss, Manuela takes her shoulder with a reassuring squeeze.
“Seteth?” Flayn calls, hovering in the doorway.
Her voice pierces Seteth’s clouded thoughts like a sunbeam. He takes a deep breath and sighs, straightening up in his seat, his stony expression ticking into what little of a smile he can muster. “Hello, Flayn.”
“I brought you a fish!” Flayn chirps, proudly showing off her catch. Inexplicably, she has it swaddled in cloth and held in her arms like a baby. A familiar, bewildered fondness bubbles up in Seteth’s chest.
“It is a lovely fish,” Seteth says gently. He rests a fond hand in Flayn’s hair.
“Shall we go down to the dining hall together?” Flayn asks, smiling bright.
Seteth glances at the boxes of Jeralt’s belongings set neatly on his bed. He hesitates, wondering if he should bring them down to Byleth himself-- but then he pushes the thought aside. He’ll send someone to do it after dinner with his daughter.
Some things are more important. His worries can wait.
~*~
Unfortunately, his worries will not wait forever. And just two short weeks later, at the dawning of the Pegasus Moon, after the incident in the Sealed Forest, Byleth has essentially come back from the dead…
“Answer me, Rhea,” Seteth urges, agitated. “What is the meaning behind Byleth’s transformation? What exactly are you hiding?”
“There is nothing of which to speak,” Rhea deflects. Seteth will not have it.
“What did you do to that child, Rhea?” Seteth demands. “What did you do to Jeralt’s daughter?”
Seteth’s outrage, his indignation, one father to another, sharpens his words into fangs. In another time, in another life, Rhea would have merely begged him to drop the subject with something approaching shame. But in this life, there’s a crack in her composure. The mask slips early, and pride, wretched pride, sets her lips into a line.
“How dare you,” Rhea hisses at him. “How dare you , a servant of the Goddess, speak to your archbishop in this manner?”
“We were kin long before we were clergy,” Seteth fires back.
He hears the rustling of chainmail and swishing tabards, the clanking of armored boots on the tile behind him.
“Rhea,” Seteth begins, mournful. “Before you do something that cannot be undone. Before it’s too late. For your sake, and for the sake of the church, I am afraid I must ask you to come with me.”
Rhea stares at him, face flush and fuming with anger. Down at her sides, her prim, perfectly manicured fingers clench into fists.
“No, Seteth,” Catherine says behind him. “I’m afraid you have to come with us. ”
~*~
Small, and afraid, Flayn stands before the gathered crowd, her clasped hands a shield in front of her heart. But she doesn’t stand alone; Byleth loops a protective arm around her shoulders, and Flayn gazes up at her in gratitude. With that hair, and those eyes, Byleth almost looks like…
A sister. But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
“Please,” Flayn begs, her head bowed. “I didn’t know where else to turn…”
The Black Eagles stand assembled before her, Edelgard at their head, Hubert looming ever in her shadow. Judge, jury and executioner.
“It looks like our announcement is coming early…” Hubert mutters cryptically, but Edelgard swiftly raises a hand for quiet. She taps her chin, thinking.
The pieces fall into place. Jeralt’s journal. Seteth returning Jeralt’s belongings to Byleth. The questionable circumstances surrounding Byleth’s birth. Seteth’s “sudden illness” and removal from the Church hierarchy.
A memory: Edelgard’s open contempt against the nobility and the Crest system. People rising to power through the circumstances of their birth and through no merit of their own.
“You must be part of the system to change the system,” Seteth had told her then, with something that sounded dangerously like sympathy.
“Maybe,” Edelgard had muttered. “Or you can tear it down.”
There was no love lost between Edelgard and the church. A good man who serves a tyrant deludes himself that his hands are clean.
And Seteth wasn’t a good man. He was a censor, a bureaucrat, a book-burner--
“ Please, Edelgard,” Flayn begs. “He’s my father.”
Edelgard snaps her gaze up, sees the anguish in Flayn’s eyes.
In that moment, she, too, sees a sister. A sister lost long ago.
Edelgard crosses the space between them in three hurried strides, and takes Flayn’s hands in her own. Edelgard looks her in the eyes; first Flayn’s, then the Professor’s.
“Prepare for battle,” Edelgard declares.
~*~