Chapter Text
There’s a war. There’s always a war.
First, a woman in white, plunging a dagger in the heart of a man twice her size.
Then a man in black, dripping with furs, eyes shadowed and gaunt.
Then a woman in red, horns curling up to the sky, her axe bared at the dragon that towers above her.
Then a man in gold, pointing his arrow at the heavens, eyes steady and unwavering.
Then a woman in white, draped in ceremonial garb, drifting down like a feather from the stars—
The girl in Byleth’s dreams is confused.
“You again?” she asks. Then, looking around, ”Here? What could you have possibly done?” Her wild mane of hair flutters as she shakes her head. “You mortals are truly impossible.”
There’s a sharp lance of longing that plunges through Byleth’s heart. She swallows thickly. “Who—?”
The girl narrows her eyes. “Hurry up and awaken,” she scolds. “The faster you progress, the faster you’ll remember.”
She blinks, and then she’s in her tent, Jeralt ducking under the flap to tell her to get ready to move out.
By the time she’s dressed, the dream is a distant memory.
She dreams more nights than not. The scenes differ, sometimes. Sometimes they’re younger, eyes soft and warm and unburdened by war, and sometimes they’re older, and Byleth is kissing them—
The girl gets progressively more irritated by Byleth’s lack of recognition.
“Honestly,” she huffs, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. “Abusing my powers like that, and then having the gall to forget me! Who do you think you are!”
“...Sorry,” Byleth murmurs.
She huffs. “I’ll tell you one more time—the last, I swear! My name is—“
“Sothis,” Byleth says. She wakes up.
The dream again—a battlefield. She has names to the faces this time, whatever the reason. Seiros, the woman in white and gold with fury in her eyes, and Nemesis, the man in chains and fur who reeks of death.
Then it shifts—now it’s Byleth who faces Nemesis, and by her side is the man in gold.
He glances back at her and winks. His are a brilliant green, set aflame by the dying sun. “You trust me, right?”
“Always.” The word is out of her mouth unthinkingly. No doubt, no hesitation.
The turn to Nemesis in tandem, weapons at the ready.
“Clau—“
“Kid, it’s time to move out.”
Byleth blinks the sleep away, a name on her lips.
Jeralt has a hand on her shoulder—undoubtedly what roused her. She’s lying on the ground, blankets bundled around her in a makeshift nest. She’s in her tent, not a raging battlefield, and the man next to her is her father, not—
Not who?
She takes a few steadying breathes, closing her eyes to ground herself. Her head is spinning.
Jeralt frowns, leaning forward to press the back of his hand against her forehead. “You okay, kid?”
“...Dizzy,” she manages. “Just a little. I had a strange dream.”
Jeralt makes a low noise, and she looks up at him. His mouth is twisted with concern, the furrow of his brow adding years to his face.
“I’m fine,” Byleth reassures him.
She rises, deliberately slow, and finds her coat where it’s draped over her pack.
“It’s a long road to the Kingdom,” Jeralt says. “If you’re unwell...”
“I’m fine,” Byleth repeats sternly, buckling her sword belt with short, precise movements. “I’ll move out with the rest.”
Her father sighs, then ruffles her hair with a gloved hand. “Stubborn,” he says fondly. “Just like your mother.”
She almost smiles.
“Captain!” a mercenary shouts. “Emergency!”
Jeralt releases a breath. “What?” he says, striding out of the tent. Byleth follows at his heels, a hand falling to the hilt of her sword.
The mercenary outside is flanked by three... children isn’t the right word, even as young as they are. Students, perhaps, judging by their uniforms, but—
She knows them.
She remembers them, remembers loving them and killing them in turns—remembers pressing a kiss to the girl-turned-woman’s mouth in the same breath as bringing a sword down on her head—
The girl tilts her head, lavender eyes cool and calm. She’s looking at Byleth, not Jeralt, but her eyes hold curiosity, not recognition.
Byleth remembers to breathe again.
“...hate to cause trouble,” the golden-haired boy is saying, bowing at the waist, “but your assistance would be highly appreciated.
Jeralt sighs, and the girl’s eyes turn back to him. “If they followed you here, it can’t be helped,” he mutters. “We can’t let bandits take the village. C’mon, kid. There’s work to do.”
Byleth nods.
The third, his hair a tousled mess and green eyes twinkling, winks. “Pleasure working with you,” he chirps.
The motion is so familiar that she’s sure she’s known this boy her whole life, and it takes a moment to collect herself.
The dream.
“Claude,” Byleth murmurs.
The boy’s smile falters for a split second. There’s a long beat of silence. Every pair of eyes is on them.
He—Claude—laughs. “I suppose my name is getting around, huh? New heir and all that.”
Byleth is frozen. Claude, Claude, Claude—
He pulls her tight, face buried in the crook of her neck. “I’ll come back for you,” he promises. “We’ll see our dream through together—”
“Sir!” a mercenary calls. “Bandits approaching!”
She jolts out of her stupor, catching the tail-end of Jeralt’s concerned gaze and the narrow-eyed glance of the girl in red.
“Move out!” her father barks. “Set up position at the edge of the forest, use whatever cover you can!” Then, turning to the students, “You three, pull your weight. We’re helping you, but we’re not putting our necks out for nothing.”
Claude offers a lazy salute, grinning crookedly, then scampers off, calling for high ground.
“Young lady, with me, if you will,” Jeralt says. The pale-eyed girl nods, following after him.
Byleth meets her father’s eyes, and they exchange nods.
“With me,” she tells the boy in blue.
“Of course,” he replies. His voice is deep and smooth. He bows, formal but not stiff. “I am Dimitri. Thank you for your help.”
“Byleth,” she replies, then turns to stride across camp. Distantly, she hears Jeralt barking orders to the rest of the mercenaries. “Come,” she orders. “We should set up before the bandits realize you’ve found help.”
He trots after her obediently, half a step behind as she threads though the outskirts of the forest towards the sentries. A few more mercenaries tag along, forming a small squad.
“We came from the north,” Dimitri pipes up. “They’re likely coming from the same direction.” He pauses. “Unless they decided to circle around to cut us off.”
She hums, drawing a mental map. “They won’t circle,” she tells him. “The forest is too thick. They’d slow down too much and you would’ve escaped.”
He nods. “That makes sense,” he agrees. “You’re well-versed in these matters. How long have you been a mercenary?”
“My whole life,” she answers, brief but patient.
“And the leader—Jeralt, was it?—is your father?”
“Yes.”
Dimitri makes a thoughtful sound, then cuts himself up abruptly when Byleth stops in her tracks. She holds a finger to her lips. Quiet.
Distantly, she can hear the clamor of approaching bandits. Jeralt’s sentries had likely retreated already, if they were this close.
She takes off, veering to the side to find the clearing she had scouted the night they made camp, and Dimitri shadows her heels. The remaining mercenaries split off, melting into the forest with a sharp hand gesture from her.
“Across the clearing,” she orders. “We’ll take them by surprise when they run in.”
He nods, dashing across to cover in the foliage as the raucous clamoring of the bandits reaches a crescendo.
She scampers up a tree, crouching on a low-hanging branch just as the first sounds of battle reach her ears—some of her mercenaries engaging early. She unsheathes her sword, blade whispering against oiled leather, and watches Dimitri unsling his lance.
She lets the bandits trickle in, lets them run from their previous scuffle, abandoning their comrades, and waits until the last of them step foot into the clearing—
Then she strikes, dropping down from the boughs and burying her sword in the last straggler.
The others turn, shouting in confusion, and Dimitri leaps into action, running one through with his lance and spinning to deflect a poorly-aimed blow with a sharp clash of metal-on-metal.
Confident in his ability to not get himself killed, Byleth whips around to face her own opponents. Enraged and surprised, the bandits are clumsy and ill-prepared as Byleth falls into a familiar dance, blade flashing between enemies like a silver sprite.
It seems like mere moments before the enemies in blade’s reach are gone, blood pooling on the forest floor. Her eyes turn to Dimitri, who looks to be finishing off the remaining few.
He whirls his lance, dancing between enemies, all cold poise and grace. His strikes are heavy, massive force delivered by a deceptively slight body, eyes narrowed in grim determination.
But Byleth sees what he doesn’t—an archer poised to strike, hidden by the shadows of the forest.
She draws a breath, makes to call a warning—and then she’s struck by a vision so sharp she nearly doubles over with the force of it—
She presses a kiss to his brow, the fur of his cape rough and caked with blood under her fingers, his eyes dull and haunted.
She breathes a promise against his skin, and she thinks she might be crying—
She acts on pure instinct.
She darts forward, grabs a fistful of his cape, and yanks. He stumbles, blue eyes wide, and Byleth pulls him close, twists around him—
The pain is sharp and cold, lancing through her shoulder, and she hisses through her teeth.
The boy makes a shocked sound as she releases her death grip on his cape and deflects a sword strike from an opportunistic bandit, ignoring the fresh wave of pain that blooms from the arrow, then counters with a thrust, and the bandit falls with a gurgle.
“You’re unharmed?” she asks, flicking her blade with twist of her wrist, sending blood splattering onto the grass.
He blinks. “Y-yes,” he manages. Then, “Your shoulder—”
Byleth pauses, assesses the damage. The wound is shallow, the arrow slowed by the thick weave of her coat. With as much as she’s moving around, it would be more of a liability to keep the arrow in.
With one swift movement, she reaches back and yanks it out. He winces.
“I’m fine,” she offers, rolling her shoulder experimentally. The arrow drops from her hand, landing in the grass noiselessly. “I’ll see a healer after the fight.”
He’s still gaping at her, and it’s not until Byleth shoves him out of the way of a descending axe that he shakes himself out of his stupor and finishes off his would-be attacker with thrust of his lance.
She nods, stepping away, and takes off towards the archer that’s begun to flee, location compromised.
She’s faster, though, and the archer falls under her blade, as does one more bandit that decides to try his luck now than she’s wounded.
Dimitri catches back up to her as the last body slumps to the ground.
“That’s all of them on our side,” he says. There’s still the noise of battle echoing around them, and Byleth straightens, wiping her blade on the dead bandit’s clothes before moving to sheathe it.
“We need to meet up with the others,” she says, then sucks in a sharp breath when her movements jostle the wound at her shoulder.
It’s not much, but it’s enough that Dimitri notices. “Shouldn’t you take care of that?”
“I’m fine,” she says. She’s been saying that a lot, she notices idly. “We need to meet up with the others. The fight is still going.”
He looks like he wants to protest, but Byleth takes off before he can so much as draw breath to speak, leaving him with little choice but to follow.
Dimitri stays by her side and she scours the forest, searching for pockets of fighting and swiftly ending any battles they come across. The mercenaries seem to suffer little, if any, losses, and when they finally come across Jeralt and the girl, the two seem no worse for wear other then some dirt on their clothes, finishing off what appears to be the last of the bandits.
“Edelgard!” Dimitri calls, and the girl turns.
Byleth mouths the name noiselessly. Edelgard. The name seems... right, somehow—
Backlit by the dying sun, she curtsies, her smile soft and so, so warm.
“Together,” she says, “we will bring a new dawn to this country. You and I. I love—”
Byleth collapses.
She’s dreaming again, she thinks.
Sothis is reclined on her stone throne, eyes narrowed and face twisted in consternation.
“You’re infuriating,” she informs Byleth. “Of all the mortals to get saddled with, I get the most impossible, frustrating one in the world.”
“Have I met them before?” Byleth asks. “I keep… remembering. I know them, I think.”
Sothis huffs, crossing her legs and looking away. “Time is difficult. Even moreso for you. There’s a thousand decisions that can be made in every moment, but picking one doesn’t change the flow of time. It only creates a new path. They continue onward, diverging more and more, creating new branches, but never crossing.”
Byleth blinks. “What does that mean for me?”
Sothis turns her eyes down, brilliant green and nearly luminescent, and sighs.
“It means,” she says, “that you’ve broken time. Congratulations.”