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“Professor, please. You need to sleep.”
Dimitri’s pleading words echoed around the empty cathedral, but Byleth didn’t look up from the sword in her hands.
“I slept for five years,” she replied coolly. Her voice was perfectly flat, devoid of any emotion. The sound chilled Dimitri to the bone. “I don’t need anymore.”
Tentatively, heart aching with a thousand unspoken words, Dimitri walked until he stood before her pew. Byleth still refused to look at him. Instead, she continued to grind her sword along a whetstone, back and forth. Just as she’d done every night, ever since he found her in the Goddess Tower, surrounded by the corpses of imperial soldiers. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but Dimitri didn’t need any light to know of the Crest of Seiros carved into the sword’s hilt. Of the initials J.R.E just below. Everyone knew that Byleth had forsaken the Sword of the Creator after it failed to save her father. Now she only carried his sword, used it to paint the world red with her revenge.
“Leave,” Byleth commanded. Instinct urged Dimitri to obey, just like he always had at the academy, but he pushed back. He wasn’t her meek student any longer. He was a king.
And more importantly – he hoped – he was her friend.
“No. Professor, you must listen to me.” No reaction. Dimitri pressed on, refusing to be deterred. “You need to rest. To eat. To fight less recklessly.” He paused, realizing that he’d raised his voice as emotions threatened to get the better of him. With a shuddering breath, he forced himself to speak softly. “Please. I beg of you. You must start taking care of yourself, or else you will soon find yourself in an early grave.”
The very thought made his heart twist with panic. Dimitri had already lived through five years of thinking she was dead. He couldn’t do it again.
“Good.”
Dimitri took a step back, feeling as though he’d been slapped. “W-what?”
Finally – finally – Byleth looked up from her sword. Dimitri almost wished she hadn’t. Her expression was as blank as the day they’d met, when he’d had no trouble believing her to be a demon wearing human skin. There was no mesmerizing smile upon her lips, no sparkle of emotion in her eyes. Just emptiness, deep and all-consuming. Threatening to pull him under.
“I will kill Edelgard.” Byleth spoke with cold finality. Her eyes bored into his, unrelenting. “And then I will join my father.”
“No…no!” Barely aware of what he was doing, Dimitri dropped to his knees. He grabbed for her hands, for once unhampered by fear of his beastly strength. Dread hammered at his skull, panic welling up in his throat, so tight he could hardly breathe. “Professor, you cannot mean that! I-I will not allow you to…You cannot!”
Byleth’s gaze dropped to their clasped hands. She didn’t pull away, but neither did she speak. Dimitri tried desperately to calm himself, to find the words that would make things right. He knew of her obsession with revenge – felt it resonate within himself, no matter how well he hid that dark urge – but he hadn’t realized just how bleak her thoughts ran…how close to the way his own had once led…
“Professor…No. Byleth.” Something flickered in her eyes at the sound of her name, more emotion than he’d seen since that awful day. It gave Dimitri the strength to swallow down his panic and press on. “I understand that you feel alone right now. But please know that I – that we all…that I care about you. As do all of the Lions…Seteth and Flayn…Alois. There are so many people whose lives would be worse without you.”
Byleth remained motionless. Unnaturally still. “You don’t understand.”
“But I do!” Dimitri winced at the way his voice echoed around the cathedral, but he couldn’t stop the emotions flooding through him. Tears began to prick at his eyes. “I do, Byleth. After Duscur…all I desired was to be at my father’s side. I welcomed the thought of death.” She twitched at his words, raising her gaze to meet his. Her eyes remained as hard as stones, seemingly unaffected by the sincerity that burned in his own. “That is, until I met you. For the first time in years, I felt hope for the future. That perhaps I might wish for something other than death. And in the Goddess Tower…” He let the words fade away. Byleth didn’t need to be burdened with the knowledge of his schoolboy crush, of his infatuation that clung stubbornly to life even after five years. Not now. Not yet. “Please, Byleth. Do not lose hope. There is more to your life than this quest for revenge. So please do not…do not leave me…”
Tears rushed down his face, sobs trembling through his body. Dimitri knew he should say more, but the words simply wouldn’t come, trapped behind his shameful emotions.
When Byleth pulled her hands free, despair crashed down around him.
But when she wrapped an arm around his head, pulling him forward to rest his face in the warm crook of her shoulder, faint hope flickered back to life.
Dimitri’s sobs increased as Byleth held him against her, one hand stroking through his hair while the other rested gently on his back. Guilt mingled with his weak hope. He was supposed to be comforting her, but eternal failure that he was, Byleth was the one forced to soothe his frenzied emotions instead.
And yet…
As Dimitri wrapped his own arms firmly around Byleth’s waist, she didn’t pull away. She didn’t even protest. Instead, she breathed out a sigh – so faint that he would have missed it had they not been so close – and rested her cheek on the top of his head.
Perhaps she was not as unfeeling as she claimed. Perhaps she still craved the touch of another, no matter how much she denied it.
Perhaps Byleth was not yet lost to him.
Dimitri would cling to that hope, no matter how long he must wait. Even if it meant forever.