Chapter Text
Paralogue 1
The Blade Breaker II
TW : Depression, Suicide
“She’s gone!”
“You don’t know that!”
“It’s been years, Alois. Face it, we’re all that's left of them.” Leonie grit her teeth in anger against Jeralt’s other apprentice. They were all the other had left, and yet he just kept disappearing for days at a time in a fruitless search for her, for Byleth! The daughter of their captain that they had to watch die right in front of them. “You need to stop this!” She gestured around to their mercenary crew who was awkwardly watching this argument unfold between their two captains. “The Blade Breakers need you here in the present, not trying to fix some past that we can NEVER get back!” She couldn’t keep delaying departures because Alois decided he needed to look around for her. Money ran out, animals fled from hunting grounds, desperate wartorn bandits kept rushing them when camping grounds became unsafe.
Alois tightened his fist as he turned away from his fellow apprentice, “Jeralt would have kept looking, no matter how hopeless it seemed. You haven't even looked for her ONCE since she was flung off that cliff by that pale monster. The same monsters who took Jeralt from us! Don’t you care about taking back what they stole from us!?”
“How dare you! You NEVER loved Jeralt the way I did!”
“Loved? You only ever saw him as your idol, you never saw him as a human! As a father who loved his daughter before he indulged you! And that daughter had done nothing but love and care for you the second she saw you in that school, how could you just abandon her like tha-”
Leonie punched Alois across the face before her mind could catch up to her. Both were left stunned by what former Deer had just done. “I…” Alois turned around and began to walk away, “Alois, wait!” It was too late, that one moment after years of tension between the Blade Breaker’s two captains had finally broken their doomed relationship. “So that’s it then?! You care more about finding his daughter's dead body then you do about upholding his legacy?!” He didn’t respond. Soon, he was gone. Jeralt, Byleth, and now Alois, why did everyone have to leave her?! She looked around at all the Blade Breakers, the older ones eyes traveled to Alois while the newer ones simply looked away. “What?!” Nobody responded to their now solo captain. “Shows over! We move out at dawn!” Leonie stomped back into her tent, she couldn’t stand looking at them anymore.
Leonie laid alone on the ground of her tent, her final conversation with Alois still replaying over and over in her head. She never looked for Byleth once, goddess, her childhood rival had been lost to her long before that day the Empire invaded. She wanted so badly to forget about her final words to her, “It's like you don't appreciate Captain Jeralt at all, or how lucky you were to have him around your whole life! Ugh! It still really bothers me! You might be his kid, but I'm still his best apprentice! Got it?!” Why? Why did she say that?! Right after Jeralt died she accused his daughter of not loving him enough! She just lost Jeralt, her emotions were all over the place and her temper around Byleth had never been great even before that, but that wasn’t an excuse.
She couldn’t look for Byleth, what if she found her just to confirm that she was truly dead and that those really would be her last words to her first friend…What if she was alive, what would she even say after all these years? For some reason that terrified her more than anything else. She began to curl in on herself, what was wrong with her?! No wonder everyone left, she would leave her too if she could…
Just keep working, she told herself. One job after another. One battle after another. She had to keep working, if she stopped for even a second she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from looking for Alois. Forget about Alois. Jeralt was gone, she needed to keep going for him, she needed to keep going for her. She was doing this for them, how could Alois not see that?!
Keep working, keep going, there was a war going on and there was plenty of work. She wouldn’t need to ever slow down, she never stayed in one place for too long. As soon as a job was done it was on to the next. From the Kingdom, to the Alliance, to the Empire, and back, over and over again, forever if she had to!
But despite everyone’s beliefs, this war couldn’t last forever. Soon the work slowed down, and with it so did she. Leonie sat by a campfire just outside of Remire Village. A village torn by experiments before being torn by war, finally rising from its ruins. All she had to do was guard the village from bandits while they rebuilt. She never took jobs that lasted this long, but money was tight and her Blade Breakers were hungry. So here she was, having a meal with a Knight of the Resistance as he recounted everything that happened over the past few months.
The Blade Breaker sighed tiredly, “So it’s true, Byleth’s back…” She heard the rumours of the Goddess’ second coming, of Fodlan’s divine savior, she didn’t dare let herself hope and yet…She smiled, “Alois was right.” She looked up, light reaching her eyes for the first time in years, “Is he with you guys?”
The knight slowly looked down into the fire, “No, Alois…he...he died in our final push to Shambhala.”
Leonie felt her heart stop, the light that reached her eyes but a fleeting moment before reality came crashing down on her. “Oh…of course.” Her last words to Alois echoed in her mind, goddess what was wrong with her… “I should have been there with them…”
The knight sadly chuckled, “It’s funny, we had actually been looking for you for the past nine months. But every time we investigated rumor of your location, all we arrived at was someone telling us you were already gone.”
“Yeah…that sounds about right.” She never looked for Byleth once, and yet she spent all this time searching for her. This whole time, she thought people had done nothing but leave her but…maybe she was the one leaving them? What were her last words…to Jeralt? She never liked to think about that, she had kept them from her mind since the day she became the Blade Breaker. She was so scared that her last words would be something horrible like they were Byleth’s. But…what were they…right; She promised to support Byleth if anything happened to him. She never believed for a second that anything could happen to him, and when reality came crashing down…what was wrong with her…”Byleth, she’s at Garreg Mach right?” The knight nodded their head. Leonie stood up, it wasn’t too late. She had to make up for everything the two of them had lost. Tomorrow, her and the Blade Breakers move at dawn.
…What the hell was she looking at? Off in the distance was a large white dragon flying towards Garreg Mach, more specifically towards the church. The beast let out a ragged and desperate roar before crashing down into the building. Was…was Byleth facing that thing?! She snapped the reins of her horse, forcing the Blade Breakers to scramble in order to keep up, Leonie needed to get to her now!
She rushed towards Garreg Mach, she could barely see with the wind that rushed into her eyes and she could barely feel a thing as the cold air bit at her skin, but she had to keep going. Keep riding, never slow down, not even for a moment. Soon she reached the gates, rushing past the keepers who didn’t have any time to react to her. They scrambled to keep up and try to stop her but she didn’t care, she needed to get to her. She needed to see her again! She needed…she stopped as she looked up at the goddess tower.
Byleth…she was standing at the top of the goddess tower with her eyes closed…She…she took a step towards the edge. “No…” What the hell was she doing?! Leonie snapped the reins on her horse, this couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be real. Not when she finally found her, not when Leonie was finally there for her, not when she was RIGHT THERE! Why wasn’t she there when she needed her?! Why was she only here now?! She kept going, desperately reaching out to her friend like it was her final breath of air, praying that by some absurd, miraculous, impossible way that she could still reach her, that the hateful vitriol she spewed wouldn’t be her final words to her!
…But it was too late. For just one fleeting moment, she got to see her first friend again before reality came crashing down.
She’s gone…
“And don’t think I forgot about you.” Leonie said to her childhood rival. Goddess, what has it been, 5…6 years maybe? She hadn’t seen Byleth since she was a little kid, seeing her again after all these years rekindled her old competitive flame that was beginning to die out. “It’s good to see you again, By.”
Not even half a second after she said that did Byleth shoot forward and embrace the frankly stunned future mercenary, “It’s good to see you again too.”
She wasn’t expecting this from her previously stoic childhood rival. The hug felt warm but desperate, like she was making up for so many years of lost time together. The apprentice chuckled, By must have gotten a lot more affectionate since she saw her last. Leonie returned the hug and squeezed tighter then she was being squeezed. She wasn’t going to let Byleth beat her in anything…goddess did she miss this…