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It was two am and the Garreg Mach kitchens were presently on fire. Well, perhaps ‘on fire’ was a bit overdramatic, Byleth thought, but given the amount of smoke billowing out over the fishing pond, it wasn’t a terrible assumption. If it wasn’t for what sounded like Dorothea Arnault’s cursing and the ozone scent of a hasty thunder spell, Byleth would be running to start a bucket line.
Instead, she pushed open the doors and walked past Dorothea and a shocked (horrified? nauseated?) Edelgard and began opening windows. Then she turned to the ovens to identify the source of the smoke. It was billowing from a baking tray of something unidentifiable, which was currently being soaked and electrocuted by the thunder spell.
“What are you making?” she asked the two women.
“Brownies,” Dorothea said, deadpan. “Or more accurately, Edie is making brownies, and I’m making an attempt to keep the monastery intact” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure either of us are succeeding.”
“Oh,” Byleth said. “I think they’re a little overdone.”
As the smoke cleared, she surveyed the kitchen. The counters were covered with cocoa powder, and it looked like someone had exploded a bag of sugar across the floor. Edelgard had managed to dust the front of her previously-red nightgown with white, and her cheek had a smear of chocolate. Byleth considered licking it away, but decided all evidence pointed towards the smudge being baking chocolate, and therefore too bitter to eat on its own.
Partially buried in the drifts of wayward flour, Byleth found the source of the smoke. The pair of cooks had clearly been working from a slightly singed recipe written in Mercedes’s hand, and though she called for cooking the brownies for 40 minutes at 350°F, penciled in next to it was an equation suggesting that cooking for four minutes at 3500°F would be equivalent. The handwriting seemed to be Caspar’s. Next to it was a scrawled note that 3500°F was the rough temperature of a cast of fire. Lindhart’s. That explained the state of the kitchen, then.
Byleth turned to the pair in front of her. “Why are you up baking at two am? Couldn’t sleep?”
Edelgard avoided her eyes and was silent for a beat. “The brownies were supposed to be a surprise,” she said said, at last.
“For whom?” Byleth asked.
“For—“ she paused, blushing under the chocolate. “For someone special to me.”
Dorothea snorted. Byleth considered who the brownies must have been for. Edelgard wouldn’t have let Dorothea help with her own present, Hubert didn’t like sweets, and she wouldn’t do something like this for Ferdinand. Maybe Bernadetta, then?
“Would you like help?”
Edelgard got somehow redder, and shook her head. “No, it’s fine, I wouldn’t want to trouble you this late at night!”
Dorothea started giggling and then laughing in earnest when Byleth looked at her askance.
“Ok, but here. Let me at least get the chocolate off your cheeks,” Byleth said, dampening the edge of her sleeve. She tried to be as gentle as possible as she reached out to Edelgard, but her lilac eyes went wide as the cloth made contact.
“Ah, sorry, Edelgard! Just hold still a moment.”
She held stock still this time as Byleth began to wipe across her cheekbone. Byleth could feel the warmth radiating from her through the nightgown’s thin silk, and her eyelashes looked so soft as they fluttered shut. The smudge now gone, Byleth pressed a kiss to El’s cheek right where it had been.
Dorothea winked at Edelgard and smirked when she buried her face in her hands.
“Good luck with clean up, and here’s hoping your special someone likes them!” Byleth said, turning and walking away.
The last thing she heard was Dorothea calling out “I know she will!” with a smile clearly audible in her voice.
———
The next morning, Byleth awoke at dawn, as usual. She reflected on her dream of a blonde woman wielding the sword of the creator, as usual, and made a note of it in her journal, as usual. She threw her usual clothes on, making a note of the trace of grainy baking chocolate still clinging to her jacket cuff, not as usual. She smiled to herself at the memory.
The walk to the training grounds was as usual, as was her morning exercise routine, and her breakfast. It wasn’t until she sat down at in the cardinals’ room at the usual thirty minutes before the war council that she noticed another unusual thing.
There, placed at her seat, sat a plate full of what could be generously described as brownies. Unlike the batch from last night, they weren’t pure charcoal, but instead were somehow both burnt and undercooked. On top of the pile, smudged with chocolate, was a note in Edelgard’s handwriting: “For my special person. Love, El”