Chapter Text
For both father and son, Byleth was cursed with the killing blow. The ordeal was but a flicker in a sprawling battle, a simple whip of her sword. She didn't realize the sick irony of it all until her blade was finally buried at Ashe’s collarbone—Sword of the Creator notwithstanding, she’d done Lonato in with the same stroke.
A high-pitched sob mingled with Ashe’s scream. Marianne. She’d tailed Byleth throughout the battle, healing when necessary and occasionally finishing off Byleth’s quarry with a bolt of levin. Her duties had placed her in the perfect position to witness her classmate’s death. Byleth had forgotten. She turned to catch Marianne’s eye at the sound, guilt snapping at her at the girl’s look of horror. Between Marianne’s grief and the sight of Ashe’s corpse, his cheek already burning on the coals of Ailell, Byleth was doomed to return to the monastery feeling every bit the hollow monster the masses believed her to be.
“It was necessary,” Marianne later conceded in her wisp of a voice. But it had been a week since the ambush, and Byleth still caught the holy knight sneaking glances at her in the halls. Sometimes, she thought they might be full of rage. Other times, fear.
Byleth enjoyed neither, but was big enough to admit that she deserved both.
Which is why she denied Claude’s suggestion of keeping Marianne on as her adjutant when they marched on Myrddin. “She doesn’t trust me,” she said, the words dropping to the map between them like lead.
“What?” Claude looked to her with rare surprise. The reaction was gone in a moment, wiped away in favor of a practiced smile. “You’ll have to elaborate, my friend. I can’t think of a single person in this entire monastery who doesn’t trust in your abilities, let alone a member of the Golden Deer.”
“My abilities aren’t the problem." She crossed her arms and frowned at the figurines across the map, trinkets they’d procured to represent their meager lives. “She was troubled. After Ashe.” At the dimming of Claude’s smile, she turned away, pacing about the table to avoid his gaze. “I’ll need time to rebuild trust. For the next battle, perhaps I’ll take on Flayn instead.”
The only answer was the click of her boots. After a brief quiet, she dragged her eyes to meet his.
All of her students had grown in her absence, but Claude most of all. He’d whetted his charm over the years, wielding it as deftly as Byleth did her blades. His boyish interest in schemes had matured into renowned tactical prowess. Then there was the care in him that Byleth hadn’t seen in his schooldays. It came in glimpses, but it was there: a Claude who occasionally trusted his comrades enough to take the persona of the grand Duke Riegan and lay it down.
That was to say nothing of his physique. Taller than her now. His shoulders broader, his body no longer roped with the lean muscles of a young noble playing warrior but that of a man. Sown with scars, too, a fact that Byleth discovered after Claude invited her to the sauna after a long bout at the training grounds. She couldn’t help but stare then, taking in the scars across his torso, the pale knotted tissue become islands in his golden skin. She only remembered herself at the sound of his chuckle.
“Like what you see?” He’d teased, and it struck her then that his voice had deepened too.
It wasn’t the only time she’d caught herself staring. Claude had always been handsome, but five years was apparently enough for him to stir her blood in a way that might’ve been welcome, thrilling even, if not for their roles to play in this war. Her eyes were drawn to him in inopportune moments—discussions at the roundtable, training sessions, the long nights they spent together poring over their ledgers. But she liked to think that, since the sauna, she’d become rather good at not getting caught.
What was it that Dorothea had once told her? That Byleth stared as if she could see straight to her soul. It was amusing to her then, but under this new Claude’s gaze, she found herself sympathizing with the young singer. She’d spent an entire life mystifying others. She was unused to anyone looking at her as if she were something familiar and known.
Claude was fixing her with such a stare now and it took everything in her not to recoil. Gone was the easy smile. Leaning forward, hands braced upon the table, he studied her with the same focus he’d shone on the map not moments before.
She might’ve shivered, if she didn’t feel carved of stone.
“You can’t seriously think she holds that against you,” he said.
She didn’t bother wasting her breath on a lie.
“Byleth.”
She was never one to fuss over titles and formalities, but hearing her name caught in the rush of Claude’s breath still startled her. Not Teach or friend but Byleth, a new development that had taken place in the weeks before Ailell. (“If we’re to end a war together, we should be able to call each other by name, right, Teach?”)
He righted himself, walking along the edges of the table to her. There was a ripple in his brow, rare evidence that even the silver-tongued duke occasionally needed time to find the right words to say. “I know it’s only been a few months for you. But this war has been raging on for five years.”
“I’m well aware.”
With a stern look, he continued. “I say that to remind you that this isn’t the first time we’ve lost someone we once considered a friend. Last year, Annette—” He stopped himself, banishing the thought with a small shake of the head. “It might’ve been the first time Marianne’s seen it firsthand, but she knows the stakes. We all do.”
“Even so.” Byleth let her gaze drift to the space behind his shoulder out of an old habit, searching for Sothis there.
Claude frowned at the periphery of her vision. “What else? Let me ease your thoughts, my friend.”
And there it was. The earnest Claude, so different from the suspicious boy that coveted her sword and strength from the back of the classroom. With a slow, measured breath, she replied, “I only wish I could have fought alongside you sooner.”
After a moment, he placed a hand upon her shoulder.
“You couldn’t have helped that. And you’re here now.” Byleth lifted her eyes to his. So intent on hers, so green, with a tenderness that managed to cut through the guilt that plagued her. “The circumstances forced your hand. And it’s not as if it’s your fault we’re all caught up in this war.”
Oh, Byleth thought, remembering a young princess cowering beneath an axe. But it was.
But that wasn’t a secret she was keen to reveal. Certainly not now, likely not ever.
“I suppose,” she allowed, looking away when Claude’s hand squeezed.
When she didn’t respond, Claude reluctantly released her. His head tilted ever so slightly to the side, a gesture Byleth remembered well, his braid often swaying with the motion. “Maybe we should take a break. Get some rest.”
She nodded, looking to the exit. “Yes.” As he moved to clear the table, she flexed her hands as if to wake her nerves. A familiar shame simmered at the pit of her stomach. “Have the knights returned?”
The question gave Claude pause, the map half-rolled in his hands. “This morning. But I don’t think collecting reports from the knights is the most productive way to settle your nerves.”
“No reports,” she assured him. At another one of his stern looks, she added, “I promise.”
He gave her a skeptical grunt in response. With that, Byleth moved to exit the room. She was stopped partway by Claude tapping the rolled map against her arm, imploring. “You do know you can count on me, don’t you? Not just on the battlefield. For whatever you need.”
Byleth stared. The words were unlike him, not in their portent but in the way they were said. Almost sheepish. Tentative. Something about it all nearly touched her, until she remembered that she didn’t deserve it. Not after she’d bloodied her hands with the ghosts of her students, or else abandoned them in their time of need.
“Yes,” she said, before rushing out the door.
Tonight, he couldn’t give her what she needed. Nor would she have asked.
The first time was after Remire. After the Flame Emperor had extended their hand to Byleth and she’d refused it as if by reflex, her head still swimming with the memory of kind village folk struck crazed, then dead. As the Emperor warped away, Byleth felt a lacking in her chest, an intuitive sense that it truly was yawning and empty. Surveying the spoils of battle, she thought about how, once, she’d died in Remire for Edelgard. Despite all evidence that Byleth had survived that and this gruesome massacre, it somehow felt as if she’d died yet again.
It was not an unfamiliar feeling. She and Jeralt had seen and survived gruesome before. They’d retrieved men, women, even children who were tortured for years. Carved their path through entire villages painted red, the stink of decay ripe in summer heat. On the road, she’d learned that humans were fickle, contradictory beings, and so she knew well that when faced with the worst of death, it was not uncommon for them to seek evidence of their survival in another. To remind themselves that their blood still ran warm. After the worst battles, Byleth would often return to an inn with the walls beating, the entire building breathing with survivors trying to fuck themselves alive, alive, alive.
It was an aspect of the mercenary life that she and Jeralt had never discussed. But while Byleth didn’t have a heart, she did have a body, and it didn’t faze her to tend to its needs. When they finally had a mission so terrible that slipping her own fingers between her legs wasn’t enough, she took no time to find a willing partner in the company. If Jeralt was aware, he was kind enough to look away.
Lucky for her father, such missions were few and far between.
But then, Remire. The worst in ages. And immersed in the monastery as she’d been, Byleth was bereft of a forgettable face to bed.
Byleth spoke with her students amongst the wreckage, her praise for their conduct on the battlefield as glowing as the situation would allow. They’d managed to save most of the villagers, but not all. Privately, Byleth soothed herself with the knowledge that the rabid villagers were far too animal to suffer much fear, and her students were skilled enough to grant them a quick death.
By the looks on their faces, Byleth had done a good job of appearing as she always had—professional, stalwart, emotionless in the face of great disaster. But Claude’s stare was piercing. His brows pinched in a frown.
Her house leader had always been too clever for his own good.
As the rest of the class dispersed to deliver aid to the surviving villagers, Claude approached her instead. “Teach,” he said, “You know it’s okay if you’re upset, right? Pretending to be unaffected doesn't do anyone any good.”
She blinked at him, fighting against the tremor in her empty, empty chest.
“I’m just saying—” His voice had aged in an afternoon, gained a wisdom that was too old for such a young face. “If you need a minute or two, I can—”
“You’d best get to work.”
They looked to Shamir as she settled in at Byleth’s side. “To have Duke Riegan’s heir among the relief efforts will help morale.”
Claude was rattled enough that it took a few moments for him to recover. He flashed a half-hearted smile, blatant evidence that the day had worn him through. “I was just telling Teach—”
“Your professor has her duties. You have yours.” Shamir nodded to him, carrying herself with enough authority that one might’ve mistaken her for a noble herself. “Run along.”
The corners of Claude’s smile tightened in his irritation, clear to the likes of Byleth but missed by most else. He glanced at Byleth just once before he grudgingly stepped away.
Byleth looked out upon her students as they worked. She’d seen more than one of them die today. A mage caught Raphael by surprise, a Fire spell burning straight through his chest. Lysithea had tried to strike Solon all on her own in an uncharacteristic show of rage. A villager rushed through Ignatz’s blindspot and planted a lance in his back. Now, they assisted the knights in putting out flames and dressing wounds, more than a few of their cheeks tear-streaked. She didn’t realize how she’d lost time staring until Shamir’s hand fell upon her shoulder.
“You did well,” she said, and Byleth was relieved the archer wasn’t so dishonest as to fake a smile.
On the contrary, Shamir was grim as ever, wearing the tragedy of the day without shame. Her hair was mussed with fight. There was a smudge of dried blood across her jaw, a streak of dirt on the cut of her cheek. Byleth wondered what a picture they must look, the two of them struggling not to buckle under the day's weight.
Shamir’s frown dug deeper. She’d never been a talker, but Remire seemed to have loosened her tongue. “It never gets easier,” she said.
Byleth nodded, and the movement felt so strange that she wondered whether she’d been still for hours, leaden while the others toiled away. She peered at herself in the shine of Shamir’s eyes, watched her reflection go dark as they filled with a warrior's recognition—not quite pity, not quite kind.
As Shamir moved to lift her hand, Byleth reached up to pin it in place. She squeezed until Shamir’s knuckles cut into her palm. Until Shamir’s chin dipped in acceptance. Until she could hear the drum of her pulse in her ears.
After leaving Claude to his own devices, Byleth sought Shamir out. The rest of the monastery was in the thick of dinner, which made things easy for her. She knew Shamir liked to avoid the crowds. She found her sitting in the Knight’s Hall, the building emptied and quiet but for the scrape of steel against stone. She walked round the couch, propping her arms against its back and leaning forward to look over Shamir’s shoulder, her words a puff on the archer’s ear. “The whetstone I gave you?”
The dagger skirted the gritted surface without pause. “Yes.”
“I’m glad it’s still of use.”
“It’s adequate.”
They fell into comfortable silence, enjoying the rhythm of the sound. With the monastery halfway to ruin, sound carried further than it once did. If Byleth listened closely enough, she could hear laughter from the dining hall on the wind.
“I assume you aren’t here to watch me hone my blade.”
Byleth had leaned closer without realizing. Strands of Shamir’s hair tickled her cheek. “No.”
Shamir came to a stop, resting her dagger on her thigh. “Then what?”
The question struck a lonely pang in Byleth’s chest. The truth was that she’d come for help. For a hand to draw her back from the edge. But neither of them were particularly talented at spinning words, so rather than say as much, Byleth turned her lips to Shamir’s hair. When the knight remained still, considering, Byleth traced a path lower, her lips closing around the shell of her ear.
Relearning a body wasn’t something she did often when she was on the road, but Byleth found that the process was quick. A nip earned a stutter in Shamir’s breathing just as she remembered; her finger twitched at a swipe of tongue. Before Byleth could drift lower, expose the infallible woman for the human she was, Shamir righted herself in her seat, putting her out of the reach of Byleth’s wanting mouth. “Passion or pastime?”
“Pastime,” Byleth easily replied.
Shamir turned, her eyes narrowing as she appraised her. “There are others who are willing.”
Though Byleth wasn’t certain of who she meant, she could’ve sworn she felt parchment tapping against her arm. “Our arrangement is less complicated.”
Shamir nodded, allowing that. “It is.” She studied her another long moment before reaching up, calloused fingers finding their place on Byleth’s jaw. She drew her in, angling her head just so as she pressed her mouth to hers.
Her touch was light, an assessment of Byleth’s hunger. Byleth slipped her tongue along the seam of Shamir’s lips in answer, the archer granting her a soft grunt of amusement before deepening the kiss.
They came apart at a rustling outside the hall. They looked to the entrance, waiting for someone to appear. Byleth grew uneasy. Laughter was still audible from the dining hall, but it was late, and it was not improbable for someone to be walking about after their meal. And the thought of a witness, of word traveling throughout their small army…
“Your room,” Shamir said as she stood, moving to leave without so much as a passing glance.
Byleth followed. It was hardly a comfort that the arcades were empty outside.
She supposed it didn't matter. She wasn’t tied to anyone, had never been, and this was also true of Shamir. Even so, she found it difficult to ignore the thought of what such gossip might do to a pair of green eyes.
Shamir was on her at the closing of the door. She’d shucked away the caution of their kiss, her fingers tangling themselves in Byleth’s hair and yanking at the root. Byleth gasped—she’d always been the most vocal of the two—as teeth dragged across the slope of her neck, a tongue laving across the welt they left behind soon after.
As quickly as Shamir had drawn Byleth to her, she released her and pushed her to the bed. “Off,” she said, her coat already shrugged from her shoulders and tossed to the floor. They removed their clothes in silence, Shamir smirking as Byleth made quick work of her armor and positioned herself in bed. “If you’re so impatient, summon me after you’ve undressed next time.”
“So confident that there will be one,” Byleth sniped back, though they both knew the prospect was likely with the war having no end in sight.
Shamir’s knowing look was her only acknowledgment of this before she moved to join her.
Byleth hummed as Shamir settled in above her, straddling her leg and slotting her mouth over hers. Byleth’s hand drifted to the back of her neck, the other finding its place on Shamir’s hip, pulling her close. She shuddered as Shamir resisted, withholding in just the way she liked, her kisses deep while her breasts hovered too far above, hard nipples occasionally ghosting over Byleth’s skin.
At the sound of her growl, Shamir broke the kiss and punished her for her impatience with a hard nip to the lips. Then, as if to appease her, she slid down, taking Byleth’s nipple into her mouth, hands steadying her hips when she jerked in reply.
Sensitive. She had always been sensitive there, and if Byleth had been quick to remember Shamir’s favored spots, clearly they had that in common, with the way her tongue was flicking against her. When she was satisfied that Byleth wouldn’t buck her off, Shamir trapped her other nipple between her fingers to end its neglect.
Shamir pulled away soon after, blowing cold breath across Byleth’s breast before rising to watch her flush and squirm under her pinches. Not one to bow in the face of a challenge, Byleth peered back, surprised to see that old sympathy return to Shamir’s gaze. It was gone before she could react, Shamir’s head dipping to once again toy at her nipple with the tip of her tongue.
Hands settled at Byleth’s hips, this time guiding it in slow motions against the leg propped between her thighs. Under Shamir’s grip, the movement was awkward, but even then Byleth was pleased by the flutter of pleasure as pressure glanced across her clit. “Like this,” Shamir said, lips traveling across the swell of her breast.
Byleth nodded, placing a hand on Shamir’s upper back and grinding against her leg as demonstrated. It only took a few tries for her to find the right angle, that familiar angle that focused pressure perfectly between her legs. She sighed, a confirmation that she’d found her rhythm. To her delight, Shamir moved her leg forward to meet her. Her hand rose once more to Byleth's breast, rough as it squeezed and pinched. Lips returned to the red tracks she’d left behind on Byleth’s neck, alternating between sucking and biting to bring blood to the surface of her skin.
Trapped beneath her, Byleth tipped her head back to offer the whole of her throat with a moan. Her hips rolled with more purpose, the burning between her legs reaching a plateau. Through her haze, she registered Shamir’s hand leaving her breast to disappear between her own legs, the sound of her touching herself loud between their breaths and wet.
Struck by the idea of better uses for Shamir’s fingers, Byleth grabbed a fistful of her hair, wrenching up and biting at her lower lip. Shamir shivered despite herself, angling her head to allow Byleth to travel lower and mark her own claim across Shamir’s collarbone. Byleth glanced between their bodies and, as if sensing it, Shamir’s hand slipped deeper between her legs, fingers disappearing and reappearing, glistening in the low light of her room.
Her mouth watered. Moments later, Shamir pulled back and righted herself, withdrawing her hand and placing it at Byleth’s lips. She gripped the archer’s wrist without hesitation, hungrily taking her fingers into her mouth, curling her tongue, dragging her lips across the knuckles and back again to strip them of all evidence of Shamir’s arousal. Shamir hummed in approval, dark eyes growing darker still, before tugging away from Byleth’s grasp.
She closed her eyes, tempering her annoyance as Shamir extricated herself from her. A mistake. She jolted at the hard flick to her clit. “Boring you, am I?”
Byleth scowled. “You're dragging.”
By the pleased lift of Shamir’s brow, this was the sort of defiance she was looking for. She climbed up the bed, smirking as she caught Byleth’s glance at the stripe of moisture on her thigh. “Move it along, then,” she said, swinging her leg over Byleth’s shoulder, the weight of it jerking at her hair spread beneath.
Byleth bit back a hiss, craning her head to pull the pinned locks free before rising up to plant her mouth over Shamir’s center. There was a sharp inhale above her. A soft thud as Shamir braced herself against the wall with a spread hand. Byleth glared up at the knight, spurred on by her reaction, vying for victory even here.
She gripped at the swell of Shamir's ass, guiding her hips against her mouth as Shamir had done hers. Shamir allowed it, malleable only when she could reap the benefits of it, nearly purring as Byleth lapped at her clit.
Byleth scoffed against her cunt. As unaffected as Shamir made herself out to be, her clit was already swollen, red as if Byleth had been suckling at it all night. Greedy thing, primed for rougher play. After closing her lips around it with a hard suck, Byleth grazed at its edges with a bit of teeth.
There was a strangled sound above her. Shamir shuddered, fighting for restraint. Byleth repeated the maneuver between long licks, the tip of her tongue dipping just past her entrance and teasing with fluttering flicks. Soon, Shamir’s hips were moving of their own accord. Byleth ground her mouth up against her in tandem, unable to help a moan of her own as Shamir’s slick coated her jaw.
As the muscles of Shamir’s thigh twitched against her ears, the knight’s hand darted down, once again grabbing at Byleth’s hair as if to hold her in place. “Wider,” she grit out, resurfacing a dormant habit in Byleth to open her mouth and offer the knight the flat of her tongue.
The pace of Shamir’s hips turned desperate as she ground down, angling herself to drag her clit across the pink muscle. Her head tipped back, a pleasured growl finally tearing itself out of her throat. Byleth’s hand flew up to spur her on, fingers pinching at Shamir’s nipple while the other dug its nails into her ass. Shamir came with a shudder and a gasp.
Byleth caught her, her hands returning to Shamir’s hips and holding her there, suckling cruelly even as Shamir’s thighs pressed painfully at her ears. If her clit had been swollen before, now it was throbbing.
There was a louder thud as Shamir’s hand left Byleth’s hair to join its sister on the wall, the knight groaning and cursing her as Byleth rendered her helpless, drawing out her orgasm until pleasure flirted with pain. “Enough,” she finally hissed, and only because Shamir’s legs were trembling against her cheeks did Byleth finally allow her to pull away.
Shamir grabbed at her with a fervor bordering on rage, and yes, this is what Byleth wanted. She moaned as Shamir turned her onto her side and pulled her flush against her, crushing her breasts to Byleth’s back. A hand gripped at Byleth’s throat, calloused fingers, archer’s fingers, pressing hard at the sides. Before her next breath, a knee parted her legs, fingers gliding easily across the cleft of her and rooting themselves inside, hooking onto the hidden part of her that made her see stars.
“Bitch,” Shamir hissed fondly into her ear before beginning to fuck her, the wet slap of Byleth against her palm filling the room.
Byleth gasped, struggling if only to feel Shamir’s hand close tighter around her throat and pin her down. She was embarrassingly slick, sopping, but Shamir didn’t comment on this as she might have back when these nights were a regular habit of theirs, instead choosing to bring her mouth to Byleth’s shoulder and grip her in a hard bite.
Yes, this is what she wanted. A reminder. A pair of hands and lips to drag her body back to the realm of the living and wrench the breath out of her chest. Shamir knew this. She delivered. A kindred spirit, the two of them singularly focused in relearning how to feel.
Shamir’s fingers left her, and before Byleth could lament their absence, bemoan the fact that she was suddenly, painfully empty, there was a hard press to her clit. As Shamir's thumb ground circles into her, Byleth grit her teeth and demanded, “Harder.”
Shamir paused. It wasn’t an unfamiliar request. The first time they’d done this, Byleth hadn't even learned how to cry. Brutality was the only relief she knew. She’d begged for the full brunt of Shamir’s rough lovemaking. On her part, Shamir hadn’t hesitated, just as in need of a kinder violence as Byleth was after the battle. They threw themselves at each other and left the bed sated and bruised.
Now, it was only Byleth in need of mending. And though she couldn’t see Shamir’s face, she knew the knight could only be pitying her when she nodded against her cheek and murmured, “All right.”
She trapped Byleth’s clit in a hard pinch, sending a bolt of pain shot through Byleth with a cry. Shamir swiped across the raw bud before she could recover, pushed her knee through the crook of Byleth’s leg to prevent her from closing them against the assault.
Byleth bit her lip as Shamir rubbed at her, interrupting the rhythm with a sharp slap between her legs again and again, and rocked her hips into the vicious cycle.
Shamir jerked her knee, hiking Byleth’s leg higher, plunging her fingers into her in the freedom of the wider angle. There was a sudden bite of pressure as Shamir breached her with her fingers, then another, then another, and as the fire building between her legs grew to unbearable heights, Byleth grasped at Shamir’s wrist in a bid to slow, to let her use her hand to find release. Then she was empty again, Shamir briefly abandoning her to fend her off with a slap to her clit.
“Stay down."
Another pinch had Byleth melting back against her chest, a mewling mess as the knight parted her, fingers alternately traveled across her clit and delved into her in rough circles, toying with her until Byleth wasn’t sure whether she was crying for mercy or for more. As her strokes grew more deliberate, as the grip of Shamir’s fingers turned from pinch to slow, hard roll, curses unspooled from Byleth’s lips in sobs.
She arched back against Shamir, groaning as the grip on her throat tightened, casting her gaze to the ceiling as her breath thinned and vision blurred. And for the first time in days, she felt. Pain. Pleasure. For one long moment, Byleth was not a woman nor a killer nor a goddess, just a body ringing with pure sensation, the burn between her legs keeping her warm.
And she broke.
The hand around her throat released her in favor of clamping hard across her lips. The one between her legs turned brutal, plunging into her too deep, too much, with a sound that would have shamed Byleth if she could hear it over her cries. Byleth bucked hard against it, but Shamir held fast—always had—drawing out her release as Byleth had done hers while smothering the audible evidence of their tryst.
Byleth’s shouts trickled into whimpers as her orgasm receded from its sharpest edge. Chest heaving, she twitched as Shamir subjected her to another flick. As her room came into focus, she became faintly aware of the ache rising in her chest, the moisture seeping from the corner of her eyes and spreading across the swell of her cheeks.
Shamir pressed a kiss to her temple as if to distract her, the breath that rushed from her lips almost a hush. Byleth’s head spun as she struggled to recover, failing against the feel of Shamir burying her face into the crook of her neck. The fingers against her were gentler now, ghosting across her slit in with a promise to guide her from one peak to the next.
“Shamir,” Byleth murmured, immediately hating how she sounded as if she were on the brink of weeping, her breath hitching on the name.
There was that hush again. “Stop thinking,” Shamir said. “I've got you.”
And Byleth believed her.
She closed her eyes, pretending not to notice when Shamir lifted her head, offering her lips to catch a rolling tear. She willed herself to forget—the screams, the blood, Marianne’s horrified sob—and focused instead on the curve of the hand cupping her breast. The fingers pushing deeper into her, stoking greater fires. The body curling around hers, just as scarred and wanting and empty, trying desperately to root them both here.
Chapter Text
As their attack on Myrddin approached, Claude found himself waking with Byleth on his mind. If he were honest with himself, this had been true most days of the past five years and then some. But such thoughts were typically colored with pathetic, hopeless things like yearning or gratitude or lust. It had been a while since he’d thought of her with concern.
The first few weeks after her disappearance might’ve been the last time. Those miserable days when his worry intermingled with stubborn hope. Before that, there was the month after Jeralt’s death. He was shaken by how broken Byleth was then, the young professor easily slipping back to the husk she seemed to be when she first arrived at the monastery. Only her tears, streaming suddenly in passing moments, promised that the woman beneath the mask was still there.
And now, this. Claude would have to be blind to miss the change in his Teach. She floated aimlessly through the halls between meetings. If she didn’t outright avoid the Golden Deer in the dining hall, at the sound of their laughter she excused herself and stalked away. That her somber mood had to do with Ashe was an easy guess. But when she finally, grudgingly confided in him about Marianne (just a crumb, but Claude would take it), everything clicked into place.
The past five years hadn’t been easy for any of them. But he couldn’t even imagine what it must be like for her, to hurtle from her father’s death into Edelgard’s betrayal into the throes of war. He shouldn't be surprised that even the simple act of dining with them pained her. Their faces, scarred and weathered now, were reminders of all the time she’d lost.
In the council room, Claude could spot guilt in every line of her drawn face.
He’d wanted to embrace her. It had only taken a matter of weeks for him to admit that what he felt for Byleth was far deeper than a schoolboy crush (“All those years waiting didn’t tip you off?” Hilda had teased) and the appeal of acting upon it grew day by day.
But Byleth was unflappable, a riddle he couldn't solve. So different from the men and women he’d charmed in her absence. What affections she did bestow upon him were superficial at best, and with the time they spent together leading the rebellion, it was only logical that she treated him with far more familiarity than the other Deer.
Claude settled for a touch to her shoulder, deciding it would be disastrous to pull her to him and kiss every trace of her despair away.
He dragged himself out of bed and decided he would search for her first thing. Remind her to eat breakfast. Confirm whether she’d gotten some rest. There was much to do for the battle ahead—he was chasing after a bold idea; needed to find a discreet way to reach Nader—but he added a smile from Byleth to his list of goals.
Crumbs. But for Byleth, he could live off crumbs. For her, it would be enough.
A hunch carried him to the roundtable. Sure enough, Byleth was there, poring over a sheaf of papers. Claude strode over, sitting on the table beside her in a smooth motion.
Byleth looked up as he placed the light breakfast he’d swiped from the dining hall before her—a pastry on a plate. With a slight lift of her brow, she turned to him, eyes drifting from his smile to the empty chair set beside his dangling legs. “That’s rude.”
Was that a bit of humor he heard?
He braced himself on his palms and leaned back, stretching above the wood. “A stickler for decorum, are you?”
“Always have been,” she said flatly. “Such behavior is unbefitting of a noble.”
She made no attempt to imitate Lorenz’s voice, but the intention was clear. Claude cracked a grin, relief rushing through his veins. He nudged the plate closer. “Does delivering breakfast to a lovely lady make up for it?”
The pause that followed was brief, but long enough to spark worry that he’d overstepped. But Byleth only looked between him and his offering before setting the papers aside and gingerly taking the pastry in hand. “Thank you. I haven’t eaten.”
He snorted. “I figured as much.” He peered over at the papers as she took her first bites, smiling at her quiet hum of approval. The pages were covered in a looping script, elegant enough that he struggled to make it out. Cursive Fódlani had never been his strong suit. “I’m guessing it was a good read?”
She nodded, the pastry flaking at her lips. “Notes from every meeting held over the past year at House Gloucester.”
“Lorenz talked his father into sharing them with us?”
“‘Course not,” she said. “Turns out Lorenz is quite well-liked among the servants there.”
“Lorenz? Well-liked?” Claude chuckled. “Who would’ve thought.”
She shot him a scolding look, but by the twitch of her lips, he knew she was suppressing a smile of her own. She tapped the pages. “The Count will be difficult to manage even if we do get him on our side.”
“When,” he corrected. “And I could’ve told you that. I’m afraid you’ve wasted your morning, my friend.”
Byleth, as always, was undeterred. “There’s valuable information here. A dark mage is stationed at the bridge, and they have demonic beasts on hand. We’ll have to prepare ourselves accordingly. Hire more battalions.”
He nodded, running numbers through his head. “It’ll be tight. If we give Sylvain an airborne troop, we could afford a smaller force for Felix. But he’s not exactly the most charismatic leader so maybe that’s for the best.” At her grim nod, Claude asked, “Is there more?”
“Yes.” A shadow passed across Byleth’s expression. “It appears that the Empire has Ladislava stationed in the region, along with a general from House Aegir.”
“Ah.”
The name sucked all the air from the room. Byleth lowered her eyes once more to the page, the text a handy excuse to avoid his study. As his lips parted to soothe her, she said, “Not now.” She slid the pages to him for his own perusal, firmly adding, “We’ll discuss when we come to it.”
And though he might’ve pressed on any other day—a nasty habit of his, chasing after everyone’s vulnerabilities—Claude found himself eager to preserve Byleth’s good mood. Their banter, her smiles. His goal was met so much quicker than he expected. With a nod, he agreed.
“And thank you again, for the breakfast.” She turned to him with another curve to her lips—he was being spoiled today—only for him to choke back a laugh at the dusting of pastry spread from the corner of her mouth to her cheek.
With a furrowed brow, Byleth asked, “What is it?”
“You just have—” He hesitated at the thought that reared up in him. But in the end, Claude was a man determined to bring his thoughts to fruition, and only a man. He leaned forward, placed his fingers beneath her chin, and gently used his thumb to brush the flakes away.
Byleth stared up at him, wide-eyed, and Claude wondered whether anyone would believe him if he told them the Ashen Demon was capable of being so adorable. He smiled, cursing the gloves his regalia required of him as he let his fingers linger on her skin for a hair too long.
“There.” He forced himself to pull back, his hand returning to its place on the table. “Looks like you were pretty hungry there, Teach. You really scarfed that down.”
A whisper of hope rose up in him as Byleth's cheeks pinked. “I feel like I’ve prepared enough for today’s meeting. You should do the same.”
Claude chuckled. “Always the taskmaster.” She said nothing, busying herself with gathering up the plate and her notes. He watched with a soft smile.
So rarely was he earnest, but with Byleth, Claude found it was getting easier over time. He waited for her to catch his eye. “I’m glad you’re in better spirits, my friend," he said, his voice stripped of all pretense. "I figure it goes without saying but… you had me worried.”
And yes, her cheeks were pink, weren't they? They certainly weren't the porcelain they’d been a moment before.
With a grin, he added, “Seeing as I was the one who forced you to take some rest yesterday, I suppose I have the right to take credit for that.”
Rose turned to scarlet, though Claude was puzzled to see a hint of guilt resurfacing in Byleth’s gaze. She tugged her coat higher, securing the cloth over her shoulders.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose you should.”
The month marched on, and to Claude’s pleasure, Byleth’s mood held steady. There was, of course, the occasional lapse. Evenings where she grew listless, disappearing into herself. But for the most part, she was lighter when she reported to their morning meetings, if a bit tired. After Marianne invited her over for tea, the two women exchanging apologies and assurances in a haze of lavender, Byleth achieved an even greater peace. He supposed he'd call it a win. He wouldn't go so far as to call her content, but she was certainly calm.
Meeting his military goals seemed just as imminent. Nader received his missives positively, assuring Claude that he’d lead troops into Myrddin on the day of the assault. All that was left was arranging a wyvern to take their messenger—an Almyran merchant seeking an escape from the war—back to their homeland in return.
A little over a week out from their march, Claude found himself with most of his to-do’s checked and a sudden surfeit of free time. A bit giddy with this newfound freedom, he spent the afternoon trawling about the monastery in search of his classmates.
He found an odd group having tea in the gazebo: Lorenz, Dorothea, Hilda, and Sylvain. Two pots of tea (bergamot and some sort of fruit tea by the smell of it) sat at the foot of a tiered platter of pastries.
Claude pulled up a chair from a neighboring table, relishing the flash of Lorenz’s annoyance with a grin. “Making good use of our funds, I see.”
“This is all within budget, I assure you.” Lorenz lifted his cup to his lips, his pinky out at the angle most befitting of a noble. “We’ve pooled our own finances.”
“Really?” Claude cast his intrigue across the rest of the table.
“It was Lorenz’s idea,” Dorothea said. “Weekly tea parties, to increase morale. We all agreed that we could do with a bit more of that, so we all chipped in.”
“I see.” Claude wasn’t sure whether he would’ve approved it had Lorenz proposed the idea to him, but he had to admit that the cloud that constantly hung above Dorothea seemed to have fled from their table, chased away by tea and treats. “In that case, who am I to stop you? Though I have to say, I’m a bit hurt that I wasn’t invited.”
“Our door is open to any and all,” Lorenz said in an unconvincing drawl.
“Besides,” Hilda teased, “It’s not like you’ve had any time to spend with your dear old Deer, now have you, Mr. Leader Man?”
The tone of her question was odd, suggestive with a tinge of glee. Then again, it was Hilda. Claude bore it with a roll of the eyes. “Well, I have time now. Get to it.” With a lazy wave of the hand: “My morale, it needs increasing.”
“Lorenz and I have just been listening to these busybodies,” Sylvain said, tipping his head to Hilda and Dorothea. “Always running around the place shoving themselves into everyone else’s business. Who knows how they ever manage to fit training in.”
“It’s not like I seek these things out,” Dorothea protested. Claude noted that Hilda made no move to defend herself, nor did she seem compelled to. “Word gets around! And everyone’s eager to talk about something other than this stupid war, so of course they’re going to be chatty. Maybe you don’t hear anything because people know you’re utterly untrustworthy—”
“I can name a few who trust me just fine—”
“Taking someone to bed doesn’t mean—”
“I’m surprised,” Claude cut in, “that the heir apparent to House Gloucester would stoop so low as to engage in gossip.”
Across the table, Lorenz huffed. “I admit that it’s not the most becoming pastime. However, it can be quite fruitful. Some scholars say that gossip is just a rudimentary form of reconnaissance, deployed especially among the fairer sex—”
“Oh, shut up, Lorenz.” Hilda leaned forward, elbows on table, chin on the heels of her hands. If he hadn’t already suffered years of their teasing, Claude was sure that Lorenz would have clutched his pearls at her lack of etiquette. “It’s not like we’re talking about politics here, we’re talking about sex.”
Claude choked on a biscuit, managing a glare at Hilda as she grinned. Faintly, Lorenz muttered, “Among the nobility, they are one and the same.”
Ignoring him, Hilda said, “Oh, don’t look so scandalized, Claude. Considering…”
Suddenly, all eyes were trained on him. Claude affected an easy smile even as a note of caution sounded in him. “Considering…?”
“Goddess, are you really going to make me say it?” Hilda sat back, her hands whipping off the table. Not nearly as dramatic as her old tantrums used to be, but dramatic all the same. “Are you sleeping with the Professor or not?”
He was sure Hilda meant to rattle him, but the question eased his mind. He laughed, relieved if a hint bitter. “That old chestnut.” Claude sat back with a smirk. “No. And by the way, that rumor’s been floating around for quite a while now. Surprised it took you so long to notice.”
Sylvain cackled beside him. Those alarms, so quickly dispelled, returned with a force as a look of worry came over Hilda's face.
“I knew it! I told you! There's no way he closed the deal. Ow!” Sylvain rubbed at his arm and glared at Dorothea, her hand still raised from her sharp smack.
“It seemed unlikely to me as well." Lorenz primly sipped his tea as if appearing dignified would make his tawdry interest in the matter any more respectable. “Claude hardly spends his time in the Knight’s Hall, after all.”
The Knight’s Hall?
“Well," Claude said, "that’s a new detail."
He looked to Hilda, channeling his curiosity. Thankfully, she knew him well enough to see past his affected indifference. With more than a hint of apprehension, she explained, “See, the soldiers are saying that someone saw the Professor kissing someone in the Knight’s Hall.”
“Is that all?” His cheeks ached at the corners of his grin. “If one of our informants came back with a report that vague, I’d have them retired.”
“Well,” Dorothea paused as Claude’s eyes snapped to hers, “people are saying it was one of our generals. But it's not any of us, obviously, so no one knows for sure. But we thought… I mean, we’ve always thought… You and the Professor…”
His stomach turned. The traces of sugar on his tongue turned to ash. Claude was never one to care about the whispers in the barracks, but...
By the way Dorothea and Hilda were looking at him, his good old shell must have cracked. He put more effort into his air of nonchalance. Brought his hands to rest at the back of his head and sat back. It was a bit too much, maybe, considering that a moment later, Dorothea said, “They're just rumors. It might not have been the Professor in the first place.”
“Right,” Sylvain said, speaking Claude’s own morose thoughts aloud. “I’m sure it was the other woman with neon green hair.”
“Maybe it’s just not true,” Hilda offered.
“I, for one, believe it,” Sylvain said. “Have you seen her lately? The Professor’s hard to read, but I know how to spot a woman who’s been well sexed.”
Fingers curled into fists at the base of Claude’s skull.
“Incorrigible,” Lorenz scolded, the glance he not-so-successfully snuck at Claude laden with pity.
Sylvain followed suit, his gaze quickly softening with an unspoken apology. “I’m just saying.”
The pause that breezed between them was brief, but unbearable. Hilda broke it with a chirp. “Ignatz and Marianne are getting along well. He’s been spending a lot of time comforting her since Ailell.”
The change in subject only offered passing relief. As their table moved on, Claude found himself mentally shuffling through every soldier he’d ever seen with Byleth. Wracked his memory to determine whether anyone else had ever managed to make her laugh or smile. His cup of tea sat before him, cooling.
After peppering the conversation with a few polite hums and Claude-like jibes, he excused himself. Though he claimed it was the never-ending duties of a duke that required his leave, he found himself walking to the training grounds. An axe, he decided, would be today’s weapon of choice. His dummy a stand-in for the sour feeling at the pit of his stomach, blank enough to hold the face of every knight.
Chapter 3
Notes:
It'll be quick, she said. It'll just be a oneshot, she said. A week later I have 5.5 chapters drafted with more to go.
I really intended to speedrun this bad boy before life got crazy these next two weeks, but since that doesn't seem viable, I will offer this morsel in the meantime. Next update coming as soon as I have some room to breathe.
Chapter Text
“There are rumors.”
Byleth looked to Shamir, the revelation warding off sleep. “What?”
The knight didn’t pay a glance to her, too focused on pulling on her boots. “A soldier saw us in the hall that first night. Ran his mouth. I shut him up, but the word is out.”
Panic fluttered at the back of Byleth’s mind. “You shut him up?”
“I was persuasive.”
Of course she was.
“How much of a word?”
“They know you’re involved. He was discreet enough not to name me.” Shamir stood, fully clothed. Her eyes made a quick pass over Byleth and the damp spot on the sheets, sharpening with a smug satisfaction that tempted Byleth to climb onto her all over again. “I’m telling you this because I thought you might be concerned.”
She was.
It was irrational. As Byleth was constantly reminding herself, she wasn’t beholden to anyone, and despite Rhea thrusting the responsibilities of the archbishop upon her, she was no saint. And the professionalism required between teachers and students was gone now, so what did it matter whether her class knew who she let between her legs?
The class, perhaps. But, her traitorous mind offered, what of Claude?
“We march in three days,” she said. “We have more pressing things to worry about.”
“So we do.” Shamir’s hands rattled at her belt, making sure it was fastened. Then, as if they were simply passing each other in the hall, she walked to the door. “See that you remember it.”
In hindsight, Byleth should have noticed her comrades’ odd behavior sooner. Sylvain’s grin was a tad too wide upon greeting her lately, almost impressed. Soldiers she hardly knew turned their heads as she walked by and leered. And Hilda had been regarding her with even more curiosity as of late, asking after her evenings and whether she’d spent them well.
Only Felix, bless him, was apathetic to the goings-on. Knowing how little he cared about idle talk around the monastery, she wouldn’t be surprised if he were completely unaware.
“The flame spell should take them by surprise,” Byleth said, dragging her finger across the map. “You’ll engage the frontlines in close combat while the mages under your command attack at range.”
Felix scoffed. “My own spells extend my range just fine.”
“But you can’t deploy them and wield your sword at once.” He’d recently gained his certification as a mortal savant, and while Byleth was impressed by his progress, he was far from mastering the skills of the class. “Perhaps one day. Even then, experience in leading a battalion will be helpful. Battles are hardly carried on the back of a single knight.”
Felix was overeager but not ignorant. He conceded her point with a grunt before his attention drifted over her shoulder, drawn to footsteps at the door.
“Busy?”
Byleth turned, a wick of panic lighting in her as Claude sauntered towards them. With a small shake of her head, she said, "Just finishing up.”
“Great.” He tossed a smile Felix’s way. “I’m gonna steal Teach for a sec. Give you a bit more time to fly free.”
“By all means,” Felix muttered, stepping away.
Byleth noted how closely Claude tracked Felix as he stalked to the door. Lately, he’d reverted back to the crafty charmer he was when she was still his professor. Disingenuous. Guarded. She’d reasoned that their upcoming assault had him falling back onto old habits in search of a greater a sense of security. He certainly wouldn’t be the only one. But watching him watch Felix, she was surprised to see his smile fall so thoughtlessly, a bladed suspicion slotting into its place.
“Is everything all right?”
His expression went neutral again, a switch flipped. “Peachy,” he replied, his tone a shade too bright. “I have an update on Myrddin.”
She nodded, assessing him. Waiting.
Claude had always been a hard one to read, but now that she knew her name was getting tossed about in the monastery, she spent her spare moments combing through their interactions over the past month, struggling to determine whether they’d changed. For the life of her, she couldn’t decide.
They’d spent more time apart in the past week, but such was to be expected when Claude was pulling at strings only a duke could reach, weaving together a strategy that would secure their win (or so he claimed). When they were in the same room together, there were always others present. Seteth. The war council. Once, Catherine and Shamir. In their company, he spoke to Byleth as he always had. But it had been some time since they’d talked alone.
“We’ll be supported by additional forces from House Riegan,” he announced, offering a letter to her. “They’ll enter Gloucester territory with Daphnel troops and make sure Lorenz’s old man has his hands full. It’ll keep his forces away from the bridge. And the troop will have a good number of fliers on hand, so if we’re desperate for reinforcements, they may be able to send some our way.”
Byleth nodded, glancing over the letter to confirm that the promises in its contents were aligned. To her relief, it was marked with the Riegan seal. “Can we trust their command?”
“Yes,” Claude said readily. “He’s a long-time retainer of my family. Frankly, I trust him more than some of the men in these halls.”
“High praise,” she murmured, continuing to read. Her lips twitched as she reached the signature at the bottom of the page. “Nardel?”
“That’s him.”
“It isn’t your best work, Claude.”
He paused. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Oh, please.
While Claude somehow, embarrassingly, had the rest of Garreg Mach fooled, Byleth had spotted his subterfuge a mile away. She and Jeralt had even joked about it in the early days. (“How dangerous could she be?” Byleth had asked, speaking of Rhea. “She hasn’t even noticed the Almyran under her nose.”)
Fódlan delighted in its isolation, and its Almyran population was middling at best. They were rare even in Goneril territory, most of them failing to make it past the Throat. As a result, the culture of Fódlan's eastern neighbors was a mystery across the continent. If asked to identify whether a migrant hailed from Almyra, Duscur, or Brigid, most citizens would struggle to tell them apart. Such was the result of a government rendering them more specter than people.
But Byleth was hardly of Fódlan, and she’d traveled widely within and across its borders. She’d spent most of her life fighting alongside warriors from Brigid, Dagda, Almyra, and more. And while Hilda’s brother had done a good job of keeping the legendary warriors of Almyra out of the public eye (a preventative measure to keep the populace from getting too nervous or starry-eyed, Jeralt had explained), Nader’s name was traded freely among mercenaries, and with the utmost reverence.
It didn’t bother her that Claude wasn’t compelled to share his heritage with her. It was of little consequence to Byleth, changed nothing about her loyalty or fondness for him. But this? Well. This was just lazy.
She passed the letter back with a smirk, pleased to find that Claude’s smile was weak at the edges. “If you have confidence in him, so do I.” Then, feeling cheeky, she added, “He wouldn’t want a defeat to sully his reputation, besides.”
His smile definitely faltered at that. His hand lifted to the back of his neck, scratching in a rarely seen but distinct tell. “What commander would?”
A chuckle escaped her. “Indeed.”
She turned to gather up the notes she’d taken during her meeting with Felix, only to find that when she looked up, Claude was fixed on her in an awestruck stare. Byleth looked back, puzzled, until she realized it had been some time since she’d laughed.
She’d missed it. She’d never missed it before. Not before being saddled with a teaching job she’d never asked for, at least. Back then, laughter was an alien thing, one of many human impulses Byleth couldn’t understand. But now, even as they prepared to forge into death and despair, Claude made it easy. It was always easy around him.
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
It was Byleth's turn to stare. Claude shifted on his heels, his mouth twisting as if even he was surprised by the proposition. He averted his gaze, and if Byleth didn’t know any better she might’ve said he was nervous—
“It’s been a while since we’ve spent time together. Just the two of us. Hasn’t it, my friend?”
She was still holding her notes. Would it be better to set them down? Would it be better, if only to show him that he had her full attention?
“We have a hard battle ahead,” Claude continued, rushed as if he was trying to fill the space between them. Impatient, as if the few moments Byleth took to respond were an eternity too long. “I’d like to take it off your mind, if I can. At the very least, I’d like to try.”
He was nervous. For such a little thing. For her. Even on the frontlines, she’d never seen him wear his trepidation so openly. He was nothing if not confident, always assured as he tirelessly gleaned information from every person and circumstance. But now, standing before her, he could barely look her in the eye.
It was a bad idea, she reminded herself. A mismatch. Byleth didn’t deserve it—deserve him—and neither did Claude deserve her. He was the last person suited for someone so doomed, more weapon than woman. Not him, who was so full of life.
Even so, she flung her logic to the side, feeling so light without it, it was as if she were in free fall. Against all reason, she found herself saying, “Yes.”
Her day went on. Byleth drifted through her usual arrangements—council meeting, lunch, a bit of training and a wash. But after that, with their soldiers handling much of the manual preparations, she was gifted with a brief window of time.
She walked leisurely about the monastery, dipping into the greenhouse to tend to newly-planted seeds. Her mind wandered just as aimlessly, phasing through tactics, comrades (she needed to get Lysithea those texts on Seraphim, she reminded herself), and of course, Claude.
It would be wrong to say that she felt as if she were a girl again. She’d never been so silly as to giggle over pretty faces in the villages they passed through, and she didn't consider that to be much of a loss. But when her thoughts did glance over their upcoming dinner, she found herself smiling at empty space, flushing at nothing. In her adulthood, she’d managed to discover her own silliness after all.
Her musings brought her to the officer’s academy. Of the campus buildings, it was most ghostly of all. The Golden Deer and its recruits could hardly stand to look at it with its tattered banners and empty rooms, unsettled by the ruins of their schooldays inside. Byleth didn’t pass through there often, but when her mind was restless, she found that it offered a much coveted solitude.
That was not to be the case today. As she walked past the banners of the Blue Lions, there was a sniffling next door. She slowed, turning her head slightly to look into the Black Eagles classroom. When no one was revealed by her cursory glance, she stepped inside.
“Dorothea?”
The singer faced an old bookshelf, her shoulders caved in, shrinking her already small frame. She jerked at the sound of Byleth’s voice, relaxing when their eyes met. Hers were flared red, a mess of mascara and tears. “Professor,” she said, searching for an excuse as Byleth walked to her. “I was just—”
Byleth knew how empty words could be, so she kept quiet, opting instead to slide her arm about Dorothea’s waist and pull her close. She didn’t resist, her head dropping onto Byleth’s shoulder as easily as a rag doll’s. They stood there, Dorothea weeping and Byleth peering at the object held tight in her hands.
After some time, Dorothea said, “He gave this to me.” Her fingers unfurled, revealing a satchel of leaves. She offered it up to Byleth. She drew in a whiff of tea through the cloth.
“He?”
“Ferdie.” Dorothea spoke the name so quietly it barely took shape. Her face crumpled as it left her lips. “He’s going to be there, Professor. Isn’t he?”
Byleth tightened her hold. She couldn’t lie. “Yes. It seems so.”
She couldn’t tell whether the sound that bubbled up from Dorothea’s throat was a laugh or a sob. “He’s kind. Did you know that? He’s kind.” She shuddered, the satchel disappearing into her fist in a dead woman’s grip, so rigid it would take all Byleth’s strength to force her to let go. “He cooked for me once. He wanted my respect. Me. A dirty commoner.”
“Hush,” Byleth scolded, wrapping her other arm around the singer, joining her hands.
This time, the sound that left Dorothea was certainly a laugh. “Such a stupid man. Worked so hard just to make me a couple of treats. He helped a merchant sell his wares for a bit of sugar. Can you believe that? For a couple of cookies, he worked in the fields.”
She buried her face in Byleth's hair, chasing comfort. Byleth let her, letting Dorothea's tears run with the sweat on her skin. She rubbed her back, her hand idly passing across her spine and back again. The motion uprooted yet another sob.
The bag fell to their feet as Dorothea embraced her, gripping so tight that Byleth’s breath fled from the crush of her lungs. There they stood, Dorothea crumbling and Byleth catching the broken pieces in her arms. No matter how Byleth hushed her, she couldn’t drown out the words.
“We’re going to kill him, aren’t we, Professor? We’re going to kill Ferdie. We can’t. Please, I don’t want to. Please...”
“Shamir.”
The archer’s eyes lifted along with those of the stablehands’. Their presence was almost enough for Byleth to hesitate, but it didn’t take much to shuck off the thought. If questions weren't raised by her demanding Shamir’s attention so suddenly, then they certainly would be by her mad dash through the arcades to find her. She’d come too far to stop now.
“I need you,” Byleth said, affecting a tone sharp enough that the request might be mistaken for business. But it was an odd time of day, the sun low and the world golden, and it was impossible for Shamir to misinterpret Byleth’s intentions. The red tinge to her eyes alone betrayed the contours of her need.
She couldn’t be sure if it was surprise or annoyance that brought Shamir to ask, “Now?”
Byleth glanced again at the stables, the horses, and the men watching their exchange. “If you will.” Shamir frowned at her, the import of an entire conversation passing between them. “Report in ten minutes.”
“Twenty.”
Byleth gritted her teeth. By the look on Shamir’s face, there would be no argument. “Twenty,” she agreed. Before regret could take her, she took her leave.
Byleth raced to her quarters, fists clenched and head ducked to avoid the eyes of passersby. But while her eyes were trained on the ground beneath her feet—stone, grass, soil, stone again—all she could see was Dorothea, clutching at her so desperately that there were still marks of her nails across Byleth's shoulders. Crescents carved into her skin, marks of the damned. Byleth resolved to take Shamir so far that those calloused fingers would have no choice but to claw them out of existence.
Sothis, her shoulder was still damp with her tears—
“Byleth?”
Claude stood outside her room. If he’d prepared any charming pleasantries for her, her poor state had him casting them aside. He went to her, his open concern settling over her like ice. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at him, struggling to make sense of it. He should be smiling. He was always smiling, and yes, Byleth had always wanted his feelings to reach his eyes, but not like this. She swallowed, catching the flicker of his eyes to the hollow of her throat, and said, “The dinner. I… Claude, I…”
His face fell.
“I have a meeting,” Byleth managed. “I forgot.”
“Oh. Well, that’s—” Claude’s expression went blank, suspended as he searched for the right reaction, carved out the right mask. The one he managed was dubious at best, more pained than teasing. “That’s gotta be a first. First you sleep in for five years and now this. Gone are the days of you lecturing me to be more organized, huh, Teach?”
She sighed as the world righted itself again.
“I guess so.” Then, before she could stop herself, she gripped his upper arm, the touch striking her like lightning. “I’ll make it up to you.”
Claude glanced at her hand as if he’d felt it too. As Byleth moved to drop it back to her side, he caught it, giving it his own squeeze. “After Myrddin,” he said, something between a promise and a demand. His thumb ran across her knuckles. His voice purred low. “Don’t overwork yourself, my friend.”
Byleth would remember this from the safety of her room. Claude’s face as she lied to him. How slow he was to turn away. She would remember the feel of his hand in hers as she dragged Shamir to bed, think about his gloves with distaste as the knight pushed her fingers between her legs. She would remember—the feel of his muscle beneath her palm, his wonder at the sound of her laugh, the hope in his eyes—until Shamir battered her enough to forget.
Later that night, she would gasp at the mercy of Shamir pressing into her, the pace of her hand furious, and wonder what good it was to be heartless if you could still fall in love.
She left for the sauna hours after Shamir's departure, a change from her usual routine of sleeping off their activities and washing herself in the hour before dawn. But tonight, though Shamir had worked her until she was aching, she couldn't find rest. Visions of Ferdinand (laughing, bleeding, dead) plagued her whenever she skirted the edges of sleep.
Byleth crept into the sauna on weak legs. She sat in the heat, a dull throbbing at her temples. She hadn’t had water for a long while. She would have to find some on the way back to her room. Perhaps that would help. At the very least, it might ease her headache, which persisted even as her limbs went molten and heavy at her sides.
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the wall, paying attention to the small sensations that proved she still lived. A small pinch in her left shoulder, from sparring with Raphael. Welts that burned as soon as she’d stepped into the steam, running up and down her back. A stiffness in her fingers. Aches in her thighs. Obvious who she could thank for all that.
But with her eyes closed, she could imagine a different source. Larger hands, deeper groans. A beard tickling her skin. Gentler—of this she was sure. She frowned. For whatever reason, the idea struck her with the urge to cry. She might’ve surrendered to it, indulging in this sudden sorrow, if not for the creak of the door.
She opened her eyes, her vision—perhaps blurred with sleep after all—revealing a familiar figure in piecemeal. Tanned skin, light scars. Dark hair, swept back. Pinpricks of emerald through the mist.
“Claude.”
He stared at her with something like horror in lieu of a reply.
Sitting up, Byleth became aware of the fold of fabric at her waist. She must have dozed after all. The corner of her towel had fallen, exposing her breast.
She dimly registered that a proper woman would be embarrassed by this. But she’d never been proper, had never blinked at bare bodies in her father’s camps nor their careless rutting. When she looked down at herself, it wasn’t her nudity that shamed her, but what it revealed.
Shamir had been careless with her bruising. There were many healing and some fresh. They decorated the skin she’d so carefully kept hidden, her shoulders, neck, and chest covered with dark patches only a lover’s mouth could leave.
Claude’s gaze flit between each mark within reach. A muscle in his jaw twitched as Byleth lifted the towel to cover herself, dazed as she murmured, “I’m sorry.”
The knob of his throat bobbed. “How long have you been in here, Teach?”
“Not long,” she replied, despite the fact that she had no way of knowing. She took in the towel around his waist with a passing glance. “How was dinner?”
The question came out slurred. Strange. Something about it brought Claude hurrying to her. He placed the back of his hand against her forehead, then her cheeks. She leaned into the touch, drinking in the texture of his skin, alternately rough and soft. “Claude?”
“I didn’t—” His reply, snappish enough to surprise her, was cut short. He corrected his tone, detached as he said, “I went to train instead.”
“The whole time? But it’s so late now.”
A wry chuckle. “That it is.”
Claude was so rarely angry, but the expression he wore now could only be that. With him leaning over her, she could see that he was near seething, his lips shaped by a rare scowl and his glare—not quite directed at her—fierce enough to cut. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, unsure of what she was apologizing for.
At that, his fury wavered. He drew in a deep breath. “We need to get you out of here. Get you to bed.”
“That’s true,” she replied, only realizing by Claude's frown that it was an off-kilter reply.
“Come on, then.”
Careful. Always so careful. In his mannerisms, his smiles, his fingertips at her arms as he guided her out of her seat. In the way he turned away as she dressed and placed a hand at her lower back, bracing her moments before she stumbled.
In the morning, she would realize he must have carried her. It was the only explanation for the gaps in her memory, their travel from the sauna to her bedroom completely absent. Even so, when she reported to the council meeting that day, they were as proper as their duties required them to be. No one in the room would have known that the night before, Claude had laid her to sleep.
Chapter Text
It was a wonder they took Myrddin. When they began their march, Claude half-expected he’d be shot off his wyvern’s back within minutes, his last thoughts on Byleth and the white flash of Chandra’s scales. But in battle, he slid into a keen focus, his sight piercing and shots striking true. With the roar of his soldiers behind him, he carved a path across the bridge, leaving a trail of arrow-studded bodies in his wake.
His rampage was furious enough that even Raphael had noticed. On their slow walk back to the monastery, he clapped a heavy hand across Claude’s back. “Bows and arrows aren’t really my thing, but if I could shoot like you? Man, you were ruthless today.” Even Felix agreed with a generous nod.
So perhaps it was a boon that Claude had a battle to pour his heart into. Who knows how he might’ve raged otherwise after the week he’d had.
Really, he only had himself to blame. He was the one who’d tended to that little seed of hope after leaving Lorenz’s tea party, after all. He’d watched Byleth from a distance, waiting for clues. The warmth of the looks she shared with members of the council. The company she kept outside the meeting room. After days devoted to this, he found nothing noteworthy and fell back into a sense of a security, chiding himself for believing such fickle gossip. He’d even called the rumors about them baseless, after all.
Claude hadn’t planned to ask her to dinner. The request burst from him before he could stop it, wrenched free by her clever barbs and the sound of her laugh—her laugh—and it wasn’t until she was blinking at him that he’d realized what he’d done. He hadn’t expected her to say yes.
And somehow, he hadn’t expected disappointment. He hadn’t expected her to lie. Quite embarrassing for the self-proclaimed embodiment of distrust. But Claude had learned to trust Byleth even before she’d placed her father’s secrets in his hands. He’d shared his dreams with her. He watched her die and even then, he clung to the belief that she’d return after five long years.
It was only meant to be a casual dinner, but her cancellation stung all the same. He left for the training grounds hungry, his heart restless and wanting, and threw himself against those wooden dummies until every nerve in him shrieked for rest. While the exercise took the edge off his initial upset, it offered little to prepare him for what came next.
Byleth, half-delirious in the steam. Proof of the rumors painted across her skin. That alone had been enough to break him, but then—the weight and warmth of her body in his arms. Her grateful murmurs as he tucked her in, her room still reeking of sex.
War had been hard on their rations, but their soldiers were resourceful ones, easily ferreting out kegs of ale to make up for the shortcomings of their celebratory "feast."
“I’ll make sure we’re well-stocked for our next victory,” Claude assured those around him, but his promise was swallowed by a raucous song from the next table over.
Ignatz chuckled beside him. “Even if we aren’t, I think everyone will get along just fine.”
He managed a laugh himself as he took in the state of the dining hall. Leonie had climbed onto a table to conduct the drunken chorus. Hilda and Dorothea were taking turns at discreetly refilling Marianne’s glass. Predictably, Sylvain and Felix were on the brink of a brawl, shoving at each other while Lorenz regaled their corner of the room with tales of his chivalry, alcohol turning his noble cheeks pink.
Meanwhile, Ignatz was as content to sip at his drink as Claude was, surveying their friends’ antics with a fondness warm enough to loosen his collar. “I know we’re in awful times, but it feels nice to be here again. I wish we could stay like this. Here, in this room.”
Claude tipped his glass to him. “Perhaps we could solicit an artist to make sure this scene preserved.”
Ignatz flushed with surprise, as if he’d been caught. “Yes. Perhaps we could.”
Claude brought his drink to his lips to hide his smirk. It never failed to amuse him that the soft-hearted knight still believed he had anyone fooled. The drink simmered down his throat, coating his tongue with peat. With another scan, he found Shamir in the far corner, sipping at the same whiskey. “You and Shamir work well together.”
The pair had found their rhythm, it seemed, with Ignatz riding with the cavalry and Shamir positioning herself at a distance, sniping those who attempted to engage him before they could get close. The two of them took the northern edge of the bridge by storm, puncturing the enemy's frontlines well enough that Byleth was able to burst through the Empire’s defenses before Claude’s contingent reached Ladislava.
“I have a lot to learn from her,” Ignatz admitted. “But I do think it’s a bit easier for her. She doesn’t know the Black Eagles like we do.”
Did, Claude silently corrected. The Black Eagles were long gone. But Ignatz had a point. It was a sad but useful advantage, and one they’d benefitted from. While Byleth busied herself with the Empire’s paladins, it was Shamir’s arrow that did Ferdinand in.
Claude had mostly avoided Byleth since that night. Byleth, on her part, didn’t seek him out. Their conversations were kept simple, business-like. She didn’t even poke any fun at him when meeting “Nardel.” Even so, in the aftermath of the battle, he could tell from afar that she was glad Ferdinand’s death didn’t rest in her hands. She was able to look them in the eye, for one. (Even Claude, though it was a rushed glance.) She left Myrddin exhausted but not haunted, leagues better than the state she was in after Ashe. It was enough for Claude to feel indebted to Shamir, regardless of where he and Byleth stood.
“I should thank her,” he said, excusing himself to walk to Shamir along the edges of the hall.
Out of the corner of his eye, a bright head of green pushed towards the same destination. In spite of everything, his pulse sped quicker. Though it would have been easy to turn back, his pride smothered the thought, surrendering his will to his moving feet.
“Shamir,” he called, coming to a stop before her. A second after, Byleth hesitantly walked up at his side.
Shamir lifted her head, looking between them. Claude pointedly refused to follow suit, no matter how tempted he was to look at Byleth. It had only been a matter of hours, but he was dismayed to find that even that was enough for him to miss the sight of his Teach.
“What is it?”
Her faint suspicion amused him. A woman after his own heart.
“I wanted to thank you,” Claude said. “I heard. About Ferdinand.”
“I wanted to do the same.”
His shoulders tensed at the sound of Byleth’s voice. Not a battle cry, not an order, just Byleth. His resolve, pathetic after all, shattered, and he looked to her out of the corner of his eye.
Shamir, too, turned to her as if expecting more. When Byleth said nothing, noiselessly deferring to Claude, he said, “I’m sure you know by now how difficult it is for us to fight against a familiar face. Not that it’ll stay our hands, but we’ve joined the fight only recently, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that at the critical moment, one of the Golden Deer might hesitate. We can’t afford that.”
Shamir nodded.
Claude knew he was verbose, but he was vaguely amused by the stark difference between the two of them. Both distrustful archers, but beyond that, there was little else they had in common. Talking to her now, he was reminded of his early conversations with Byleth.
“Personally, I know Ignatz would’ve been wrecked.” Silently he added, Byleth, too. “We won’t put the responsibility of facing every single one of our former classmates on your shoulders, but I wanted to make sure we gave credit where credit is due.”
“Yes.” Byleth was almost cautious beside him. “Back there, I was… I’m grateful.”
Strange. It was unlike her to stumble over her words.
Shamir took a slow sip. “Your thanks is appreciated, but unnecessary. I did my duty.” Beside him, a soft huff. Then, inexplicably, Shamir’s gaze on Byleth softened to a degree Claude had never seen from the brooding knight. “I'm glad you won’t lose too much sleep over his death. You need the rest.”
It should have been an innocuous comment, but Byleth stiffened, looking back at Shamir with a gaze equal parts touched and scolding, and oh, Claude thought, oh, and he wondered if he’d been shot off his wyvern after all, if this night was the fever dream of a man caught in his death throes and it was his own blood painting his vision red. That would be preferable to being caught between Byleth’s bashfulness and Shamir’s care, to feel so at a loss while his own army’s celebration raged on.
“She certainly does.” He grinned, his hurt digging into the very roots of his teeth.
Hilda found him nursing his glass outside, feet dipped through the surface of the pond. “Needed a breather, Mr. Leader Man?” There was the sound of her fumbling as she took off her boots and sat beside him, dangling her legs off the pier. “It’s a bit too early for you to run away from us like that.”
He wasn’t in the mood.
He shot a glare at Hilda to communicate as much, impatience written in the planes of his face. She sighed. “Marianne saw you on your way out. She thought you looked upset. And you are upset... aren’t you?”
He took another sip, whiskey pouring into him like liquid smoke, more fuel to his blood.
“What the hell, Claude? It’s so hard to get you to shut up when we need some peace and quiet, but now you don’t want to talk?”
“It’s Shamir.”
Even the water seemed to still. “What?” Hilda said. And if she was trying to fool him, she wasn't trying particularly hard. It was a question without a lick of surprise.
Claude was too tired to be this furious, but he was so damn sick of everyone keeping things from him and— “You knew.”
Her tongue darted out in a nervous lick of the lips. “I suspected.”
“Since when?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Yes. No. The truth was Claude regretted knowing anything at all about this whole mess, and if he could choose to forget it, he would've gladly done just that. But he’d seen how Shamir—irritable, indifferent Shamir—looked at Byleth so kindly and how Byleth became so flustered in turn, and he couldn’t let that rest.
This, Hilda read easily. Taking a deep breath, she said, “It was when I saw you the other day. You know, at the training grounds?”
Claude remembered. He’d caught Hilda on her way out of the grounds after Byleth turned him down for dinner. She waved Raphael to go on ahead and stopped to scold Claude for not eating. Asked him to join them. Ultimately, he slapped together some slipshod excuse about his stomach being unsettled with Myrddin around the corner. She didn’t buy it for a second, but she was used to his little white lies by now (who wasn't?) and decided to let him be.
“I walked by the dorms on the way to dinner. Everyone was already at the hall by then, more or less, so it was pretty empty, but I saw Shamir way up ahead. I figured she was going to eat too, but it was so weird because I was already late heading over and I’ve never seen her in the dining hall past, like, six. Then she knocked on the Professor’s door and—”
If she went on, Claude didn’t hear her over the roar in his ears. He leaned back onto his hands and glowered at the stars. Though he was nowhere near drunk, the movement made his head spin.
“No one else saw. I don’t know if that’s something you care about, but…” After a beat, she murmured, “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
But he should have.
Claude prided himself on his intellect. His assessments were precise and instincts acute. He knew most people better than they knew themselves. Had he bothered to think on it, it should’ve taken a fraction of a second for him to realize that Byleth and Shamir were cut from the same cloth. Mercenary. Deliberate, both in action and in speech. Both outsiders in their own way, with the Dagdan hardly fitting in with the Knights of Seiros, and what a fool he was to think he had a monopoly on that similarity. He couldn't think of a better match.
It’s not like a duke that peddled falsities like cheap trinkets ever made any sense.
“Hey,” Hilda prodded. She hadn’t been so patient with him since Byleth blinked out of existence, and the realization made him want to spit. “What are you thinking?”
His eyes narrowed, picking at the stars and planets above. “They’re good together,” he said, his tone far lighter than he felt. “I’m surprised, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Shamir’s incredible. Plus, she wasn’t some snot-nosed student in her class. Hell, I bet she’s already taught Byleth a few things.”
It was a joke he could have delivered normally had it been about anyone else, but here and now, it curdled at the back of his throat.
“It makes sense,” he repeated. “I’m embarrassed, I guess. I should have seen it coming.”
Hilda paused before gingerly asking, “It’s ‘Byleth’ now, huh?”
He broke the surface of the pond with a gentle kick in the silence that followed, the splash doing little to distract her.
“Oh, Claude.”
Hilda’s voice was weepy and pitying, and he refused to look at her and see his misery on her face. It really was a mistake to let her know him so well, wasn’t it? He held fast, rigid even as she looped her arm through his, pulling close to his side.
“Come on, have you seen them together? Like, really seen them? They don’t even talk to each other outside of our council meetings. They spend maybe thirty minutes together over the course of an entire week because the Professor spends all of her time with you!”
“Obviously that’s not true.”
With a frustrated growl, Hilda said, “My point is, I really don’t think they’re that serious.”
“When have you ever known Teach to be anything but serious?” Claude snapped.
“Claude, if you would just tell her—” Her grip around his arm tightened, and Claude couldn’t be sure whether it was meant to comfort or scold him. Softening, Hilda said, “You don’t see the way she looks at you.“
No, he didn’t, and clearly it didn’t matter, and he refused to take much more of this so, with a gentle tug, he pulled himself free. “G’night, Hilds.”
She pivoted to watch him as he stood, dripping water over the planks of the pier. He retrieved his boots in a smooth swoop. Threw his hand up in a cursory goodbye. As he walked away, he dreaded the sound of her footsteps behind him, heralding her persistent attempts to bring him comfort. But it never came. Whatever grief she’d seen in him was enough for her to surrender and watch him flee.
There was no solace waiting for him in his room. Without the din of the dining hall and a drink in his hand, Claude could only sink deeper, losing himself to rueful thoughts. He took in his scattered books and disheveled sheets with a scowl. He’d changed so little since leaving the academy. It had taken no time at all for his messy habits to return now that he had no servants to make his bed.
Rare for a dirty half-breed to be so spoiled. At least, that’s what his half-brothers had always said.
He made quick work of his gloves. Tore at his cravat and cape and sashes, frantically tossing each article of clothing to the floor. He slowed only when he was left in his smallclothes, his breathing heavy and gut tangled, an unsalvageable mess of thread. For a long moment, he stared at the pile of his regalia—Duke Riegan’s regalia—with utter contempt. Then, with a measured breath, he took each in hand and brought them to his closet, his movements stiff with practice as he hung them up.
He swept the mess from his sheets, paying no mind to the thunder of books. Couldn’t be bothered to do little else but climb in. He stretched out across the mattress and threw his forearm across his eyes, as if this would be enough to banish the memories of the night.
It was ridiculous to be upset by something so little when they’d taken such a huge leap. In a single day, Claude had achieved more than he’d dared or cared to imagine towards defeating the Empire and uniting the Alliance. Uniting Fódlan. But then, Byleth could never be a little thing when she was the very reason he’d come this far, the catalyst for his ambitions to be realized. All those years ago, he knew she would be the key to his success. He never anticipated wanting more than that. Someone with which to share his dreams.
He could still share his victories with her, he reasoned, whether or not she was with Shamir. But to be spoiled is to be greedy, and he found himself wanting—
He found himself wanting.
Claude didn’t believe in gods, but if they were real, he knew they’d be cruel. He needed very little proof of this beyond how he’d found Byleth that night. Cheeks flushed, guard down, towel askew, every bit a fantasy of his come to life. Finally, he’d seen Byleth as he’d always wanted—sleepy, love drunk, and yes, as Sylvain put it, well-sexed—and he’d played no part in it. He was only a witness to her satisfaction, someone to appreciate another’s passion on her skin.
He wished he’d never seen it: the path Shamir had traced. By the shade of the bruise, he could tell what parts of Byleth were worth savoring, the constellation of love bites a guide to her most sensitive points. The shoulder. The throat. By the look of it, Shamir liked to tease, taking her time in moving to the center of her breast. He wondered whether Byleth was as quiet in bed as she was out of it; whether she was the type to chase her pleasures or the type to shy away from them and squirm. He bet she liked how Shamir’s hair brushed across her skin as the archer’s mouth found her nipple, and he knew exactly how to imagine it now, could recall the exact shade of dusty pink, and it made it ever so easy for the vision that was pumping anger through his blood to shift, blinking him into Shamir’s place.
Claude grit his teeth at the tight fit of his smalls. The growing pressure between his legs.
If gods were real, how they’d laugh.
He reached down to grip himself, the touch a jolt that rattled his breath. When was the last time he’d touched himself like this? Filing through his memory, he guessed it was in the month after they successfully defended the monastery, back when he was drunk on Byleth’s presence and the future heralded by her return. But he hadn’t known the shape of her then as he did now. Frankly, even as he indulged in fantasies, he hadn’t even entertained the idea that the sultry Byleth he imagined could be real, as if the fact that she was beyond his reach meant she was inaccessible to anyone else who might want to take her to bed.
He squeezed. His cock twitched despite the simplicity of the touch, swelling against his fingers. Teetering between disgust and desperation, he yanked his waistband down and let his head fall back against his pillow as he was freed.
His forearm returned to its place across his eyes as he stroked his thumb across his foreskin, pressing firmly beneath the ridge of his head. He began moving his hand in short, slow strokes, his breath hitching as his thumb passed back and forth across the border between shaft and tip, enjoying the brief moment of resistance offered by his raised flesh.
He’d begin higher than Shamir did, kissing at the junction of Byleth’s neck and jaw rather than the slope of her throat. Maybe it was presumptuous to think he knew better, but he had a hunch she’d like it by the way she looked at him when he placed his fingers beneath her chin. He’d guide her just like that, too, his lips searching for a tender spot after gingerly angling her head to the side and up.
There would be nights when he was impatient, too eager to be bothered with the scenic path Shamir took across her shoulders. He’d use his tongue to trace the lines of her collarbone. Take her nipple into his mouth and toy with it until it knotted against his tongue, a cupped hand bracing the weight of her breast.
He was pathetic, lovelorn, already iron in his palm. He lengthened his strokes but kept them slow, failing to bite back a low, needy grunt as he pulled at his foreskin harder than he’d intended, velvet snapping back over the sensitive head.
He guessed she would squirm. He would make sure she squirmed, his fingers crooked into her, stroking good and slow until she was dripping and swollen between the legs. Perhaps that’s what Shamir did. Perhaps she preferred to wait until Byleth was keening before moving to taste her, fingers pumping as her tongue pushed against her clit. Or, maybe, Byleth was the one who was deliberate in her attentions, driving Shamir as hard as she did him in their spars, and as spiteful as he was, he was only a man, and whether it was Byleth pressing her tongue to Shamir or the other way around, the image was enough for him to groan aloud and hate himself immediately after.
His hand quickened of its own accord, pushing him into that perfect precipice where his thoughts were throttled by the need of his body, every limb of his wired with the promise of release.
Stars, goddess, gods, he wanted her. He wanted her moaning beneath him, her legs hooked over his shoulders as he sank into her. He wanted to know the fit of her, how snug she’d be around his cock. He would cover her with his own marks, lay his own claim, drive into her and take them both to a place where the world crumbling outside was nothing but noise and her body pulsed around him with her own release and—
He uncovered his eyes, throwing his arm aside to prop himself up and raising his knee. Planting his foot into the mattress, he bucked into his hand, tightening his grip. Curses spilled from him like water, pouring between heavy breaths, satisfaction so close he could taste it, as bitter and earthy as Almyran pine and finally, there was a coiling at the pit of him, his pleasure cresting in a matter of seconds or hours. He felt himself spilling across his fingers before he felt it, a strangled cry clawing its way out of him as he came apart.
Claude pressed his fist to his mouth as he pumped himself through his peak, his hand newly slick and gliding. The thrust of his hips grew shallow and uneven as stray remnants of his pleasure hit him in waves. He rode them with muffled grunts, shuddering as they ebbed away. Once his blood had cooled and his lust cleared, he took stock of the scene he made.
He grimaced at the state of him, his hand and stomach messy with his own spend. Lazily shimmying out of his smalls, Claude wiped himself off and tossed them with the rest of his dirtied clothing. Dropping back against the pillow, he drew in a deep breath through his nose and waited for the pleasant buzz to fade from his limbs, listening for sounds in the hall outside.
He’d been louder than usual, embarrassingly so. He’d rather throw himself into a ravine than suffer the teasing or embarrassment of anyone who might’ve heard him. But the distant sound of laughter was proof enough that the celebration still went on, leaving him the interim lord of the dormitory. When he walked down the hall to wash, the only person there to pity him was himself.
Chapter Text
There were few things that made Byleth nervous, but it turns out an audience with the Alliance’s roundtable was one of them. Claude announced the meeting a few days after they captured Myrddin, calling it a necessary measure to ensure Count Gloucester and the rest of the Alliance lords were firmly on their side. Also necessary was Byleth’s attendance.
“I’m flattered you trust us enough to handle something this important, but you can’t really expect us to see them without you,” Claude said to her, so many times, in so many ways. “If we want to convince these lords to fly the Crest of Flames, we need the archbishop at our side. You understand, don’t you, Teach?”
In the scant amount of time they had to prepare, Judith took Byleth under her wing and briefed her on the knowledge required to attend such a meeting. The hours they spent together left her stupefied, covered in a light sheen of sweat as she tried to memorize the numbers of Margrave Edmund's latest harvest while parsing out the differences between a policy and a decree.
After spending one too many minutes agonizing over the procedures to be taken in the event that a clear decision couldn’t be made due to abstained votes, Byleth sighed. “I’m grateful that our council meetings aren’t run like this.”
“I’m sure that’s by design,” Judith said. “That boy wouldn’t replicate this nonsense to save his life.”
Byleth hadn’t seen ‘that boy’ in some time.
It had only been a week and some change, but their estrangement had stretched on long enough that she wasn’t quite sure who was avoiding who. They worked well enough, taking their own meetings to discuss the measures they needed to take to keep the Great Bridge of Myrddin secure. But their banter had become superficial. Their eyes rarely met. She was sure that, in better circumstances, Claude himself would have been coaching her to navigate the circuitry of his state, but they hardly talked outside of their meetings since he’d found her in the sauna. When they did, the conversation was, at best, stilted and polite.
Byleth could hardly complain. It was her fault for falling to a lapse of judgment just because he’d come to her with twiddling thumbs and hopeful eyes. Had she done the right thing and reminded him of their roles, they would be as they always were. A formidable team. Friends.
And though she felt weak at the thought of him being more, she dearly missed her friend.
The day they were to set out for Derdriu, Seteth called on her to report to Rhea’s quarters.
She hated that room.
It was pompous, ghastly in its self-indulgence, and somehow, even after years of Rhea’s absence, redolent with the cloying scent of lilies. It was impossible for Byleth to step inside without being struck by the memory of the archbishop cradling her head upon her lap. She hadn’t visited it since the monastery’s restoration, when Seteth offered it to her in lieu of her old quarters. "For optics," he said. Thankfully, he hadn’t pressed her on that point in some time.
Seteth stood at the foot of the bed when she arrived, hands clasped behind his back. He greeted her with a slight bow of the head. “Thank you for taking the time, Your Grace."
“There’s no need for that, Seteth,” Byleth said. A frequent phrase traded between them now that she’d been saddled with Rhea’s position. An empty change, in truth. Byleth hardly tended to the archbishop’s duties (hard to, with the church in disarray), nor did she have any plans to. Still, Seteth had yet to shake the behavior required of Rhea’s advisor. It shook her more than she cared to admit, as if it were proof that she and Rhea could share the same skin.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ll have to forgive an old man his customs.”
“You’re not so old.”
Something about that lit Seteth’s eye. But it was a temporary amusement, his expression quickly reverting to its usual somber state. He gestured to the bed. “I wanted to give you this.”
On the duvet sat a parcel of paper and twine. Byleth tentatively weighed it in her hands. Though it was flexible, bending easily to the pull of gravity, it was heavier than she thought.
“Here,” he added, pulling a flat, square box from atop the dresser and taking it to her. “If you choose to use it, you’ll also need this.”
Byleth returned the parcel to its place to accept the box, frowning as she opened the lid. Immediately, she slammed it closed. “Seteth,” she snapped, his name a warning.
“I am not requesting anything of you. I’m merely giving you another tool to curry favor with the Alliance lords.” His expression turned knowing, paternal, and though she knew it was immature, Byleth instinctively dug in her heels. “I trust you’ve heard the rumors about the roundtable. A lion’s den is kinder.”
She narrowed her eyes. Seteth sighed. “In any case, the Goneril girl knows that I’ve passed it onto you. She’ll be prepared to assist you, if you so wish. Do as you will.”
Byleth was told they’d meet for departure east of the cathedral. It didn’t occur to her why that might be the case until she saw Hilda and Claude standing beside their wyverns, their restless wings beating gales into the cobblestones.
“There she is,” Claude exclaimed, “The woman of the hour!”
She frowned at his showmanship, far too enthusiastic to be true. “What’s this?”
His brows knit over his smile. “What’s what, Teach?”
“All this,” she said. “I didn’t realize we were flying.”
Claude chuckled, and goddess, Byleth hated how easy it was for him to be so false. “You didn’t think we could ride there in a day, did you?”
Salty, she muttered, “I suppose I didn’t think much at all.”
Claude’s grin—damn him—turned genuine. It was no great secret that Byleth wasn’t fond of flying. She’d let Manuela take over that particular unit for her class, standing aside while the healer ran seminars on how to best care for wyverns and Pegasi. Byleth was a swordswoman after all, and after a life spent perfecting her footwork, it felt unnatural to quite literally cast her control to the wind. When she did fly in battle, it was only when Lysithea couldn’t warp her to where her talents were necessary, necessitating Claude, Hilda, or Sylvain to sweep her from point A to point B.
“Don’t worry, Professor.” Hilda hoisted Byleth’s bag onto her shoulders in one smooth motion. “It’s only a few hours. It might even go faster, depending on the wind.”
Byleth would very much prefer if it didn’t. Claude’s grin grew wider, intuiting this despite her lack of a reply.
She weighed her options, as she tended to do. Chandra, Claude’s wyvern, was a beast. An albino mare of a species that was rare and particularly wild, far larger than the wyverns Fódlan favored and nigh impossible to tame. Byleth assumed she was Almyran-bred. Perhaps even a longtime companion of Claude’s. It would explain their ridiculous maneuvers, looping across the sky at such speeds that just watching it made Byleth want to grab the rooted item nearest to her and hold.
Hilda’s wyvern was also one she used in battle. It was slower than most but muscled, ideal for carrying Hilda’s heavy armor, Freikugel, and a tomahawk, just in case. It was a steady, easy flier, and if she had no other choice but to fly for hours, Byleth supposed it could be worse. As she moved towards Hilda, she was stopped with a loud, thoughtful hum.
Hilda patted their bags, all fastened to her saddle. “Sorry, Professor. I don’t know if I’ll be able to take you up.”
Claude tensed beside Byleth as she asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, not to say that you’re heavy or anything, but Mora’s carrying all our bags and I don’t want to overexert her. We don’t have any time for rest stops.” Hilda shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to ride with the great Claude von Riegan.”
Byleth chanced a look at Claude and found him glaring at Hilda, as intent on throttling her as she’d ever seen him. Feeling Byleth’s eyes on him, he slapped on a grin, his eyes murderous above the flash of teeth.
“As much as I’d love a riding partner,” he shot Hilda a wink more akin to a snap of jaws, “I’m pretty sure Teach would be more comfortable with you. Plus, we wouldn’t want to scandalize any of the lords by having me fly in cozied up to the archbishop, now would we? I’m on thin ice as it is.”
“Oh, when have you ever cared about causing a scandal?”
“Can’t we have Claude carry some of the bags?” Byleth suggested.
“We could but,” Hilda put on the same pout she’d perfected charming the boys of Garreg Mach, “it took a while to strap them onto Mora in the first place, and redoing everything would put us behind schedule. We wouldn’t want to be late.”
“We could always have her ride with Lorenz—”
“Lorenz is already there.”
The situation was as aggravating for Byleth as it was for Claude, but she had to admit it was incredible to see someone outsmart him until his jaw dropped. He recomposed himself with a clearing of the throat, his tone treacly sweet. “Those are his bags, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, I told him I’d bring them over!” She chirped. “See, he decided to head out this morning. I guess you didn’t hear. We talked about it at dinner last night. He’s really feeling the pressure of convincing his dad to join our cause, and after Myrddin, he’s in a really good position to win him over and improve his standing with the people in his territory. I know he gives you a hard time, but I think he just wants to prove that he’s a leader who can stand on his own, whether or not the leader of the Alliance is around. So I told him I’d do him a favor and lighten his load so he could get there faster. You know, give him a head start.”
Byleth brought a hand to her mouth in the guise of a pensive pose, pressing her lips to her knuckles to hide her smile. Claude didn’t notice, so focused he was on glowering at Hilda as she climbed onto her mount. “You talked about all that, huh?”
“Sure did!”
After a beat, Claude resigned with a growl. He was solemn as he turned to her, and for the first time in days, they looked one another in the eye. Under his gaze, Byleth suddenly felt lonely, reaching, and she was only mildly reassured to see his own frustration waver, a dejected look fighting to take its place.
He turned away. “Guess it’s you and me, Teach.”
He led her to Chandra’s side, holding her by waist as he helped her into the saddle. Byleth swung her leg over to straddle the mare, trying to look composed as every bone in her screamed for solid ground. She waited for Claude to join her, only to find him studying her from below.
“Not to put you on the spot, but,” his chest rose and fell with a badly hidden sigh of agony, “do you want to sit in the front or back?”
His eyes closed briefly as if to shut out the sound of Hilda’s snicker across the way.
On one hand, avoiding an awkward position in an already awkward enough situation. On the other hand, falling. Byleth looked at him, telegraphing this war of hers with an anxious frown.
Claude bit the inside of his cheek. “Front it is.”
She should’ve picked falling. At least then she would have a nice shortcut to the earth below, because down there was safety, was control, and really, there must have been a reason Sothis didn’t give humans wings, so why on earth did they insist on trying to fly? Now, she was trapped, pinned between Claude and Chandra’s horns, forced to lean back into him to avoid sliding down the reptile’s neck.
The worst part was she liked it. Not the blasphemy that was flying, of course, but it was nice to feel Claude like this. He was warm even in the nip of the clouds, and surrounded by him, she discovered his scent—a woody, spiced musk that went straight to the pit of her and nestled deep.
They cruised in uneasy silence, Hilda conveniently an ample distance away. Within the hour, just when Byleth couldn’t take it anymore, Claude said, “You don’t have to hold on so tight. It’s not as if I’d let you fall.”
Byleth reluctantly loosened her hold on the saddle. “Not even tempted to?”
Even in the breeze, she felt the tickle of his huff against her ear. “Please don’t joke about that.”
It was the most candid thing he’d said all day, the reprimand gentle if annoyed. She leaned back against him in silent apology, searching for a comfortable place to lay her head. After some time, she found the courage to speak again.
“I wanted to apologize for the other day,” she said, pausing as Claude tensed behind her. She adjusted herself, moving slightly to the right to buy a fraction of time. “The dinner. And then… after. I regret it. You can’t know how much I regret it.”
For a time, only the wind filled her ears. Then, Claude’s tenor. “I’m not angry with you, By.” She was startled by the nickname. Found she liked it very much. “I was just… surprised.”
“And embarrassed?” She suggested, taking a well-informed guess.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Byleth gasped as Chandra suddenly flapped her wings, speeding faster. Claude grunted an apology. He adjusted his grip around the reins—it seemed he'd gripped them too tight—and steered her back into a more comfortable pace. They went quiet for a bit. He must’ve felt awkward, she thought. It was rare for him to make a mistake in flight.
Claude spoke again, so gentle it shamed her. “You didn’t have to lie like that. It’s okay for you to enjoy a good thing. That you… found someone. You could’ve told me.”
Her pulse beat against the thin skin of her wrists. ‘Finding someone’ was such a pretty way of putting it. The very thought of sharing the truth chipped at her pride. Byleth was never one for words, so how could she possibly find the right ones to tell Claude that every day, she felt herself splintering? That she could hardly think about love when she needed a heartless fuck to forget those who died?
“It didn’t seem relevant,” she said, kicking herself at the inadequacy of it. “But, the way I handled things was improper. Unprofessional. I’ll make sure nothing like it ever happens again.”
“…Unprofessional,” he repeated, the word weighted.
She nodded, closing her eyes. Now that they were talking, she felt as if she could relax. But her position still wasn’t quite right. She fidgeted, searching. Perhaps if she were able to lean on his shoulder…
“Are you—” Claude began, oddly strained. “Are you uncomfortable?”
“Only a little,” she admitted. Sheepishly, she added, “I can make do.”
“No, I’ll—” He took the reins in one hand and shifted back in his seat, and the momentary lack of security was nerve wracking enough that Byleth didn’t even think to consider why a man might. Her hands flew back to the edge of the saddle, her knuckles white.
The danger only lasted for a moment. Claude’s arm promptly returned to its place around her as he bid her to lean back. He placed her against the crook of his neck, resting his chin against her head as if to keep it in place. This, Byleth found, felt right. She settled in with a contented sigh.
Even with her ear against his throat, it was hard to tell if the sound Byleth heard was the wind or a hitch in Claude’s breath. But there was no mistaking the rumbling at her back, his voice rolling through her in a soft quake. “Is that how you want us to be? Professional?”
The question caught Byleth off guard. Puzzled her as much as it flustered. No, she wanted to say. She wanted the dinners, the laughs, the smiles that reached his eyes. But it was a dangerous game they were playing, and they were already taking plenty of risks.
“We work well together. In a way, we’re partners,” she replied, feeling his shoulders dip. “But, no. It’s not all I want us to be.” She swallowed, wondering what kind of woman she was to struggle with this when she could slit a throat without so much as a blink. “I’d like it if we could be close again, too.”
And perhaps she imagined Claude turning, his lips ghosting across the crown of her head. “I’m glad,” he murmured. “For what it’s worth, as partners go, you’re far more than that to me, my friend.”
“I feel like an ass.”
Hilda snorted, her hands busying themselves with adjusting Byleth’s hair. “Don’t let them know that. If you feel nervous, just remember that Lorenz and I are waiting right outside. And listen, I know Seteth can be a bit out of touch, but I really think this will work. ”
Unfortunately, Byleth thought the same. Still, the picture she made in the mirror was an unwelcome sight. A white gown clung to her beneath robes ornamented purple and gold. Two braids framed her face (Hilda’s admittedly stunning work), and while Seteth had been kind enough to forego the ridiculous headpiece, Hilda wouldn’t hear her arguments against fishing the diadem he gave her out of its box.
Barring the braids that called Sothis to mind, Byleth was a near copy of Rhea, lilies or not.
She felt unmoored as she had in flight, as if as soon as she turned from her reflection, all that made her Byleth would disappear. It occurred to her that this might be a welcome change, at least for Seteth. Certainly, for the lords. Perhaps even for Claude. It was one thing to be an able soldier, carving out deaths. But Rhea had carved out a whole nation, her puppetry of the church far more powerful than the swing of a sword.
Byleth was one of those puppets. Though she didn’t know the exact shape of Rhea’s intentions with her, she knew she always had been. She took a breath, willing herself to be the empty vessel she was born to be. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”
A hush came over the room at the opening of the door. Byleth delicately folded her hands at her waist as she scanned the roundtable, taking measured looks at the Alliance lords. Goneril, Edmund, Ordelia, Gloucester. When she finally came to Claude at the table’s head, she found him gaping at her, peering as if trying to tell reality from dream.
“Lady Byleth,” Margrave Edmund said, standing from his seat. “Welcome.”
Chairs scraped across the floor as the others followed suit. Byleth lowered her eyes, a soft voice not-quite hers saying, “There’s no need for that.” Reluctantly, they returned to their seats, politely listening to the click of her heels as she moved to sit across Claude. Her robes rustled. Ignoring his uneasy expression, she nodded in a bid for them to continue. “Please.”
The rumors were not only true—they were generous. The lords were obstinate and vicious, spending hours embroiled in what was less of a discussion than an exchange of petty barbs. Duke Goneril was the most reasonable of the bunch, but even he became incensed when Count Ordelia suggested redirecting the troops at Fódlan's Throat to support the efforts at Garreg Mach. Almyra, he argued, was still a threat—a country of barbarians waiting for the first chance to invade.
Byleth glanced at Claude. He wore his mood like a tempest even as he kept silent, elbows on the table, interlaced hands hiding his mouth from view.
“Do you have nothing to offer, Duke Riegan?”
Their attention was drawn to Count Gloucester, his glare cutting across the room.
“Seeing as you called this meeting, I must admit that I expected something of an argument from you. As one might.”
“And one might expect this council to have the heart to hear it,” Claude replied, not missing a beat. He sat back, his posture relaxed as he rested an elbow on the arm of his chair. The very picture of defiance, rankling the count with a grin. “But, as these things go, I figured you'd all need to air out your grievances before lending me your ears. Took a bit longer than I thought it would, but considering how much we’ve said and what little we’ve achieved, it seems I was right.”
Within moments, Claude had assumed every bit of power his bloodline granted him, his gravity seizing them by their throats. To see him deploy his mercurial charm towards something greater than tricky conversations and playful schemes thrilled Byleth as much as it terrified her. Even as she warmed beneath her robes, she had to wonder if the Claude she knew was a carefully constructed lie. It was a possibility she’d privately entertained more than once, and one that upset her more than she'd like to admit.
“The reality is that the war is here,” Claude said, affecting a more somber air with a minute change to his bearing that Byleth couldn’t place. “Leicester’s neutrality has brought us this far, and even then it was imperfect. Some of us had to bow to the Empire out of necessity. Now, I don’t begrudge them that,” he looked meaningfully at Gloucester, “but the choices made for the good of our territories came at the cost of a united front. We can continue to pour our resources into our own individual interests, or toward fending off an invasion that may never come. Or, we can admit that a broken state is a dying one, and join together to defeat the Empire before they finish us off and sweep up the pieces.”
Claude’s glanced across the faces of his council, a predator circling his prey. In the next moment, his persona slipped into something softer, as if to nurse the blows he himself had dealt. “We’re not asking you to deplete your treasuries or surrender your harvests. We’re asking you to align on a vision. One of a stronger Leicester that won’t need to bow to the Kingdom or the Empire in order to survive.”
The quiet that followed simmered. Looks were exchanged. Finally, Margrave Edmund broke the silence with a clearing of the throat. “If I may,” he said, “I’d like to know the opinion of the church.”
Byleth’s breath caught as the room turned towards her. Her fingers curled atop her lap. A part of her thrashed against the expectation put upon her—to represent an institution she had no love for nor loyalty to; to speak when she had so little to say. But she was needed here. Claude needed her here. That alone was enough for her to call upon that woman in the mirror and step aside, allowing her to take her place.
She wondered if Claude could hear it, the moment when she split.
“It’s no secret that the church is in shambles. In the same way that Leicester has been divided, so have our denominations. In fact, they have been in conflict for some time.” At this blatant admission, Margrave Edmund and Count Gloucester shifted in their seats. “The Holy Kingdom has our scriptures running through its veins. The emperor is a descendant of Saint Seiros herself. But the church has aligned itself with the Alliance because it shares its vision for harmony. It’s something that has eluded us—not only the Alliance or the Church, but all of Fódlan.”
“And you would achieve your vision by way of war?”
Byleth turned to Count Gloucester. “We would achieve it by the means necessary.”
His laugh had her fingers clenching the folds of her robes. “And are you speaking as the archbishop, or as a mercenary? The Ashen Demon, wasn’t it?”
Byleth was a quiet woman. It was not often that she was struck dumb.
Claude sat upright, his scold like a crack of the whip. “You’re out of line, Gloucester.”
“On the contrary, I’m performing my rightful duty. To my people and my faith.” Smug, Count Gloucester rested an arm against his chest, the opposite elbow propped upon his wrist. Byleth’s tongue bittered. Lorenz had a habit of taking the same pose. “You can dress her in your fineries, but a mercenary is a mercenary. An archbishop does not dirty her hands with the sins of battle.”
“Rhea appointed Byleth herself—”
“Lady Rhea was in dire straits. Duress, one might say. So tell me, Lady Byleth.” The smirk the Count shone on Byleth was sickeningly smug, the expression of a warrior who assumed his battle was already won. “What deems the Ashen Demon worthy to speak on behalf of the church?”
Byleth had faced beasts and men. Twice, she’d defied death. And still, this petty and thoughtless room had shaken her. She’d never trembled with a rage quite like this.
To be Byleth or to be Rhea. Another force, wild and howling, struggled to crawl its way from between the halves.
“I have looked the Goddess in the eye.”
She was speaking as she always had. Yet the lords watched her as if she’d summoned thunder, her reply shaking the walls of the room. She stood to face Gloucester, standing as Rhea in her chambers, hands folded but power unfurled, a demand for their devotion dragging them to the maw of her vacant chest.
“I have heard her voice. By invitation of Rhea herself, my filthy hands have touched the throne of the Holy Tomb. What you need faith to believe in, I’ve lived.” The Count’s indignation melted to wonder, fear panting at its edges. It was not enough to sate her, but still, Byleth preened as she drank it in. “It doesn’t matter whether I am mercenary or archbishop. Whatever you decide, Sothis will be your judge. And she cares little for the whims of men like you.”
Chapter Text
“Byleth, what was that?”
She raced away from him, strands of hair lashing back in her rush through the palace. Claude followed, just shy of running after her, itching with the need to see her face. Her face. Not the woman who stood across him at the roundtable, that spirit who bore down on their necks in that room.
It had been shocking enough to see her in Rhea’s finery. But to see her assume the very airs of the erstwhile archbishop, to become menace hidden under a thin veil of grace, chilled him. Not since he’d seen Byleth first wield the Sword of the Creator had he been steeped in such terrible awe.
“Byleth. Teach. Come on,” Claude pleaded, hurrying to match her pace. “Say something.”
“What would you have me say?”
He staggered as Byleth came to a stop at the door to her quarters. He’d selected it himself. Rumor had it that the room was fashioned for a former duke’s favored mistress, the quality of its design just a hair shy of those made for the duchess herself. Byleth’s position was the only reason his request hadn’t raised any brows among the staff, but by the look of her, regal and fierce as she turned on him, its fineries were lacking. Claude was gripped by a sudden urge to correct it, to whisk her away to Almyra and offer her the trappings of a queen.
With a sharp exhale, Byleth shifted on her heels. He’d been silent too long. Claude rushed to catch her shoulder before she could turn away.
“I need to know. After all that, are you okay?” Up close, he could see anguish behind her eyes. His fingers traced the slope of her shoulder, stopping to pinch at Rhea’s ostentatious collar. “These clothes… You disappeared, my friend.”
Byleth was so still and pale she could have been sculpted from marble. Claude wanted to touch her to see if she cooled his hands. Then, coming to life, an empty smile carved itself between her cheeks. “But it worked, didn’t it?”
Anyone who’d borne witness to Byleth’s display would have laughed. Claude was shocked that the lords didn’t hurt themselves in their scramble to appease her. But the scorn behind the question shocked him. Such a new and horrible timbre of her voice. It pierced him as an arrow would, burrowing deep into his gut.
At a loss, he croaked, “Why do you keep pushing me away?”
The question hung between them. Byleth’s glare weakened at it, briefly replaced with a pity that bit more viciously than any of the poisons on his shelf. When she didn’t deign to answer him, he roughly added, “Yes, it worked, but—”
“Then it doesn’t matter,” she said in hollow reply. Her fingers flew to the clasp of her robes, the golden millstone around her neck. She tugged as if it couldn’t come off fast enough before turning to her bedroom door. “You got your archbishop, after all.”
Claude couldn’t get out of this meeting fast enough. It was one thing that Judith delighted in taking her sweet time reviewing his work, but she’d insisted that Claude, Lorenz, and Byleth report to her in the cathedral of all places. After all he’d been through, the very thought of a holy space made him itch. He assumed that for Byleth it was much the same.
But: “I’ll have someone’s head if I have to sit in that stuffy old room again,” Judith declared. “Besides, it’d do you some good to put on a show of faith every once in a while.”
While Claude had to admit this was true as a political leader in Fódlan, it wasn’t as if faith had done him much good so far. It certainly wasn’t doing him any favors now.
They waited five minutes, then five more for Byleth to arrive. “Strange,” Lorenz muttered, a disappointed twist to his mouth. “The Professor is rarely so late.”
“She’s had her hands full. She did just replenish our coffers, after all.” Claude seated himself on the pew, ignoring Lorenz’s frown as he spread himself out in recline, his arm resting across its back. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
Based on her recent behavior, it wasn’t such a leap for them to believe it. Byleth flew with Hilda on the way back from Derdriu, and upon touching down in the monastery, she immediately withdrew to her room. Claiming that she needed to tend to the abundance of responsibilities neglected in their absence, she’d spent the last few days scurrying away from their meetings with the utmost haste.
Claude let her. Considering the aftermath of the roundtable, he could do little else.
He’d never seen her in such a state. Her performance aside, the Byleth who fled through the halls was—relative to her typical disposition—frenzied, an animal railing against its cage. It was as if even she were trying to outrun whatever power she’d unleashed unto the council and Claude, in all his concern, was only getting in her way. And with all the silence and the discomfort that lay between them, Claude was oh-so-willing to stay out of her way.
He ushered the meeting along, passing revised accounts of their inventories to Judith’s hands. It was a silly thing, but he was proud of them, their numbers higher than they’d ever been and still gleaming with fresh ink. And despite all he said about the old hag, he was still, at heart, the little Almyran boy who only knew the love of Fódlan through Judith’s affections. As Lorenz prattled on about priming his father for Claude’s arguments prior to their deliberations, Claude devoted his energy to keeping his anticipation in check as she flipped through the report.
After much perusing, Judith smiled. “Good work.” She flicked a fond gaze to Claude in a rare show of sincerity. Gone in a flash, but enough. “I’m surprised you managed this much. I thought they’d spend all their time quarreling about the amount of support to provide.”
“There was plenty of bickering. Don’t let all this fool you.” Feeling generous under the glow of Judith’s pride, Claude nodded to Lorenz. “But there would have been more if not for young Gloucester over here pitching our case.”
“I… Well, I…” Lorenz fumbled for a reply, years of practiced decorum gone to waste. He cleared his throat, lifting his chin a bit higher. “Thank you. However, I merely explained the situation at hand. It was the Professor who convinced my father to follow your lead. I can’t imagine what she said to him, but it would seem he left the roundtable a more pious man.”
By the end of their stay, Count Gloucester became the pinnacle of generosity, promising a slim majority of the soldiers in their territory to the war effort and a significant amount of food. So yes, Claude thought dryly, it certainly would.
Judith returned the report with a quirk of her brow. “Where is that pretty little Professor of yours? After all the work she put in, I’d like to thank her myself. You didn’t scare her away, did you?”
Claude chuckled, looking aside to hide the sting of her tease. “Flattering as it is, I highly doubt Teach would be sent running by the likes of me.”
He wasn’t sure whether the irony of it all made him want to laugh or cry. Byleth did run from him. After offering him friendship not hours before, she’d sent him away. She didn’t even bother to look at him before she closed the door.
Claude used to believe they could make their own little pocket of the Goddess Tower wherever they were—a space to confide in each other. Share their fears and dreams. But ever since she cast him out, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d imagined their bond. He couldn’t decide if that was worse than the alternative—that it had existed, once, but Byleth found she preferred pouring her woes into Shamir’s arms instead.
The prospect haunted him. Sapped at his sleep. Since Derdriu, Claude had pondered on every instance he’d avoided her in the lead-up to the meeting and retreaded the few conversations they had. He counted the number of times he’d reminded her of her importance to their cause—the archbishop’s importance—and collected a mountain of evidence that suggested he’d thrust the position onto her as much as Rhea had. He hadn’t even asked her before painting their troops in the Crest of Flames.
Claude would’ve never asked her to put on those robes, but he’d made his bed and would waste away in it. If he’d made Byleth feel like it was imperative, how could he blame her for running to another? What innocence could he claim?
“Ah,” Lorenz said brightly. “There she is now.”
Byleth strode in at a brisk pace. Claude’s hand, lax a moment ago, tightened its grip on the back of the pew as he fought the impulse to jump to his feet and greet her. He rooted himself, watching her approach with the faint amusement expected of a man watching his colleague (partner, he thought with distaste) arrive so late.
Byleth didn’t pay any mind to him, stopping in front of Judith with a bow of the head. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”
Judith looked on her with a puzzled smile, taken aback by her deference. “As far as I’m concerned, after this success, you can take all the time you need. Little Claude has done an adequate job reporting your progress while you’ve been away.”
“Little Claude? Adequate?” His glare snapped to Judith. “What happened to ‘good work, Claude,’ ‘how on earth did you manage this, Claude?’ Now that Teach is here, suddenly I don’t get any credit?”
“Be grateful for what you get, boy. You’ll find another opportunity to stroke your ego soon enough.” Ignoring his scowl, Judith placed a hand on Byleth’s shoulder and smiled. “Congratulations. Not many could face the Alliance’s roundtable and leave unscathed. I don’t know what you did to those old goats, but it’s nothing short of a miracle considering the time you had to prepare. The goddess must have been smiling on us that day.”
There was a twitch in Byleth’s shoulders, an imperceptible caving as if to shield herself from the remark. “Thank you,” she murmured, looking tortured by the praise. “It was difficult, but I’m glad it all turned out okay.”
Judith’s laugh was sharp with surprise. “You could learn from her modesty, boy.”
“Yeah, all right,” Claude muttered, shooting Judith a dour look that she caught with practiced ease. He turned back to Byleth immediately after, guilt flooding through him under her vacant stare. “But, really. Thanks for that, By.”
Judith and Lorenz shifted on either side of him. Claude immediately regretted the slip of the tongue. He could practically hear Judith adding the nickname to her supply of ammunition against him and Lorenz spinning his next lecture about the importance of titles, regardless of personal ties. Worst of all, he was reminded of their audience, and though Claude could write entire tomes to repent to Byleth after reflecting upon his sins, with their comrades around, there was only so much he could say.
Byleth looked back at him soberly, likely having realized the same. Carefully, he continued. “I hope you don’t feel like I used you… because I sort of used you.”
Claude knew he wasn’t the most upstanding man, but he wasn’t expecting his admission—especially of a slight that was obvious to both of them—to trigger such a flash of surprise.
The seconds Byleth spent thinking, studying him with the slightest pinch to her brow, felt like a lifetime. “Nothing you asked me to do was unreasonable,” she replied. “It’s as you said. For our efforts to succeed, you need the archbishop at your side.”
There was the soft creak wood upon leather, a pew groaning under a gloved thumb.
“I appreciate that,” he replied, his frustration circling beneath the surface. “But it’s natural to feel uncomfortable, even if we can’t be picky about our methods. And you are having trouble adjusting to your role, aren’t you?”
Byleth’s eyes were eerie, gorgeous things. After she’d come back from the dead, it had taken time for Claude to look at them directly. So luminous and crystalline it was a wonder that they didn’t mirror his poor face back at him. And when her stare became a warning, they blazed.
She wanted him to drop it. That much was obvious. He was sure that even without their audience, that would be the case. On any other day, it would’ve been enough to silence him, but her silent rebuke was the first chip in her defenses he’d seen in so long. Rather than warding him off, Claude felt as if she’d gifted him a lake after weeks of wandering the desert, thirsting for a drop.
“This is what the archbishop wanted,” he continued. “You must understand why. The Sword of the Creator… What happened with Solon… You’re special, Teach.” But, Claude thought, willing her to understand the concern behind his words. “You’re in power now. Not Rhea. I know it’s not what you expected, but maybe it’s just a matter of building your confidence up a bit. Making the position yours.”
It would only be noticed by those looking for it—the curling of Byleth’s fingers beneath her cloak. As was typical these days, Claude found himself wondering whether he’d said the right thing.
Before Byleth could reply, a new set of footsteps bounced between the cathedral’s walls.
“I have news.”
Claude’s mouth went dry as Shamir marched to them, Byleth turning on her feet to receive her. The timing of their arrivals didn’t elude him, but if the stalwart knight was the reason for Byleth’s lapse in punctuality, they were disturbingly good at covering their tracks. Byleth received the report with an expression as impassive the one Shamir wore as she delivered it. The height of professionalism. Slates wiped clean.
He listened with a scratch in his throat, decidedly parched.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Claude froze above his desk, the documents he’d compiled for Judith only just returned to their drawers. Shamir leaned against the door frame, arms crossed. She was silent in her approach, he noted. Utterly so. A great feat on the monastery’s creaking floors.
He slid the drawer closed, fishing a key from his pocket to lock it. “Am I?”
She stepped inside. Considering her prowess at stealth, Claude knew she allowed him to hear the click of the door. “A third army poses a serious threat. It’s foolish not to surveil them.”
He righted himself to meet her eye. Cracked a patient smile despite the blister of resentment in his chest. “Not any more foolish than weakening our preparations to face the army we already know and love.” He walked around to the front of his desk, leaning against its edge in disarming repose. “Besides, they’re traveling through Ordelia territory, and Adrestia’s had their fingers in that mess for some time now. There’s still plenty of animosity towards the Alliance government for not taking greater action against them, regardless of where Ordelia’s loyalties officially lie. It’s too big a risk.”
“Their people hold as much animosity towards the Empire as we do. The territory’s ripe for a rebellion against Adrestia, and a show of strength against two armies will make it easier to recruit others to our cause.” Shamir canted her head to the side, disorienting Claude with the familiar gesture. “Lysithea’s a key asset. Considering their history, Count Ordelia’s guilt will give us leverage.”
“A bit callous, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know you to worry about such things.”
A sharp laugh scraped out of his throat. “My feelings are hardly the only ones that matter.”
It was more biting than he intended. A crack in his polite veneer. Sure a sign as any that Claude was getting messy with the situation at hand.
Byleth loomed between them, summoned in less than ten words. Shamir’s brow knit then relaxed again. “I was afraid of this.”
“What’s that?” He said blankly, daring her to say it.
“You’re upset that I’m fucking her.”
And yes, Claude made it a point to know what blows were coming to him, but no amount of intelligence could have prepared him for that.
He gripped the edges of his desk as rage rushed hot through his veins. His head dropped forward as he reined himself in, eyes sliding closed with an amused grunt.
Shamir placed her hand on her hip. Vitals exposed, a dare in a stance. “Something funny?”
“It’s just,” Claude began, pushing himself up from the desk and walking closer, “you say so little.” He stopped, towering over her, and met her gaze down the bridge of his nose. He grinned, mirthless, more a wolf baring his fangs than golden deer. “I never thought I’d have to tell you to watch your mouth.”
She peered up at him, by all obvious indications unfazed. But Claude could see the twinkle in her eye. Approvingly, she murmured, “The duke has teeth.”
He didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction, every muscle of his staying perfectly still.
“I trust I don’t have to tell you how unwise it is to let your emotions affect your decisions in wartime,” Shamir continued, cool enough to make his blood boil. “But considering our increase in resources, we can make do. That said, you should know I have no loyalty to Byleth, nor does she to me.”
Her words hung in the air for one long moment. Claude balked. “What?”
“It’s a simple agreement. One we’ve had for years. Sex, and nothing more.”
“But—” He cut short. How utterly naive he sounded. Claude wasn’t a stranger to bedding someone to fulfill his basic needs. But if this had really gone on for years, there was something about the way Shamir and Byleth carried on about it that was foreign to him. Judging by the fondness he’d seen in Shamir after Myrddin, it wasn’t bereft of sentimentality. On either side.
“Your agreement aside, what is she to you?”
Her fingers tapped against her hip in thought. “A friend. I care for her. But not in a way you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
Shamir sighed as if she tired of talking. To be fair, Claude couldn’t say he’d heard so many words from her in one sitting before. “We’re sellswords. Whether we’re sworn to the Knights of Seiros or the Leicester Alliance, peddling ourselves is all we know. We are our own wares. In that way, we’re not so different from the common whore.” The anger that reared up in Claude was immediately dispelled by the look of sorrow that briefly passed over Shamir’s face. “What we do for each other isn’t uncommon among our kind. In our line of work, it’s easy to forget that our lives and bodies are ours. So we remind each other. That’s all.”
Shamir was no-nonsense, every sentence of hers composed to be clear and direct. Even so, her explanation baffled him. No loyalty, but care. Care, but no love. Claude turned the revelation every which way and grew more righteous as he did. What Byleth accepted was one thing, but he knew without question that she deserved all that and more. Loyalty and devotion. Love and care both.
More to himself than anyone, he said, “She could have told me she felt this way.”
“She could have.” The look Shamir shone on him was so indulgent as to be tooth-aching. “But you have too much to give.”
Claude stared at her until the weight of his thoughts drew his gaze to his feet. Drained of his anger, he didn’t feel the need to look up at the sound of Shamir walking from him, nor at the turn of the knob. She paused before leaving him to his reflections. “I don’t have any more to tell you. Take it up with her from here.”
Notes:
Y'all. I hate Claude's "apology" in the game. I get that he can be manipulative, but seeing as this takes place after he's (presumably) started to see Byleth more as a person than a tool, it made no sense to me that he was so casual about "comforting" her afterwards. So, apologies for the blatant novelization, but I couldn't help but try to massage it into making sense. More misguided attempts to communicate coming soon!
Chapter Text
Byleth found that it was quite convenient to have a lover so hawk-eyed. It took little to beckon Shamir into following her after their council meetings—a question in a passing glance, a motion that might be mistaken for a flex of her fingers at her side. But the knight saw it all, and Byleth waited in the corridor for only a few minutes before she heard Shamir’s boots clicking down the stairs.
Just before Shamir reached the landing, Byleth slipped into the stream of worshippers headed to evening mass, trusting her to follow. With an inconspicuous distance between them, they waded through the crowd. Rather than join the parishioners in stepping through the cathedral gate, Byleth quashed the few reservations lurking in her and banked left.
“Here?” Shamir raised a brow. “We could go inside. You have access.”
Byleth turned her back to the Goddess Tower and crossed her arms. “Are you nervous?” She gestured to the cathedral with a jerk of the chin. “It's a full mass. They shouldn’t hear.”
The cathedral's service was always a loud affair, but lately Seteth had ratcheted up their pomp to distract from Rhea's absence. Besides that, Byleth had rarely seen anyone wandering about this lonely bridge without a silly, romantic superstition to guide them. It was a useless path when there was still light out, especially when so few had access to this supposedly holy ground. As far as Byleth could remember, only one person regularly darkened this doorstep. She was surprised she couldn’t smell lilies on the breeze even now.
Shamir knew this as well as Byleth did. She mulled over the proposition before sidling over to her, an intrigued crook to her lips. Their kiss was as they’d done in the Knight’s Hall, searching and slow. Byleth let her other hand drift to the back of Shamir’s neck, drawing her deeper with a flick of tongue.
The knight slipped her hands beneath Byleth’s coat, letting them roam along the skin of her waist. As she began to wonder whether Shamir might be too content, cautious after all, her grip tightened, nails digging as she pulled roughly at Byleth’s hips.
Byleth resisted and tightened her hold around Shamir’s neck, messaging that she would brook no argument as she said, “Let me do you.”
There was a question in the lines of Shamir’s brow. Byleth couldn’t blame her. She’d been selfish as of late, propositioning Shamir with little more than a spread of the legs. But her current need was of a different texture, one that tugged her every which way. Byleth was so terribly tired of letting things happen to her. She desired little else but to be the one acting for once. To move.
She pulled Shamir further into the tower’s entryway, deep and grand enough that, from the south, they disappeared from view. In a smooth motion, she shifted her weight, swinging the both of them and shoving Shamir against the door. Behind them, the service sounded its welcoming hymn, its first chords becoming one with the crash of steel.
There was only a moment to appreciate Shamir’s expression—uncommonly shocked, but pleased—before Byleth surged up across the few inches the knight had on her and took her bottom lip between her teeth. Upon release, Shamir smirked, exposing her neck as Byleth worked her way lower, nibbling at the edges of her choker, hand searching for its clasp. It took seconds to remove it once found; Byleth bit at the skin beneath as it clattered onto the floor.
“I’m assuming,” Shamir began, her nonchalance doing little to hide the hitch in her breath, “you have an excuse ready if we get caught?”
In the distance, Seteth began his sermon in the odd baritone he took on in the cathedral and nowhere else. At the boom of his voice, Byleth pressed her thumb against the pulse point beneath Shamir’s jaw. She smirked above the scriptures he recited, his piety a blurry mess to her ears. “No. I don’t.”
She nudged the collar of Shamir’s coat aside with the bridge of her nose before sucking at the swath of shoulder it revealed. Her free hand traced the fastenings at her waist. When she pulled back, glancing down to work at Shamir’s belt, the knight murmured, “Because you’d like to be.”
In a fraction of a second, Byleth saw: light cutting through colored glass; the solemn faces filling the pews. A woman with hair the color of sea foam standing at the pulpit, bidding them to stand. That the woman was faceless, a canvas rather than Rhea herself, made bile rise in her throat.
For the first time, Byleth wondered what Sothis would think of her depravity. She unbuckled Shamir’s belt, imagining the deity’s disgust as she said, “Yes.”
She imagined the doors of the cathedral thrown open as she pulled at Shamir’s pants; the look that might’ve overcome Seteth’s paling face as she dragged them down. Shamir glanced to the building as it purred with the wishes of the devout, trembling from its polished floors to the tips of its spires. Byleth savored the rare lick of anxiety in the knight before she sank onto her knees.
Byleth was getting reckless. But as she guided Shamir’s leg over her shoulder, she couldn’t bring herself to care. At most, she wondered what a witness might see: a blaspheming archbishop, or a mercenary doing as one does. She hummed as Shamir’s fingers found their place in her hair. At the roar of another hymn, Byleth leaned forward and placed her mouth between her legs, looking up for her reaction as if in prayer.
After, Seteth found them loitering at the well. His frown on them was uncertain, passing across the lines of their bodies in search of delinquency. Shamir took a swig from the flask in her hand in reply. He sighed. “Must you? Here?”
“No rule against it.”
“While that is true,” he said, turning sternly on Byleth, “it doesn’t exactly behoove you to take advantage of it.”
“I understand, Seteth,” Byleth said, wondering if she looked as weary as she sounded. “Give me one night.”
She must have, judging by his sympathy. Seteth drew in a slow breath, glancing to the front of the cathedral. Only a few were still walking the bridge, the trickle of parishioners long gone. “One night.” Inexplicably, he softened with a private smile.
“What is it?” Byleth asked.
Seteth chuckled, so fixed on her that Shamir might as well have faded with the setting sun. “Rhea wasn’t immune to the burdens of her station. She railed against her responsibilities more than you could ever know. Had she had the opportunity to guide you, you may have found that you have more in common than you realized.” His gaze lingered. “You almost look like her, in this light.”
Byleth’s stomach churned as he shook his head, raising a finger in warning. “One night,” he repeated, looking between the two of them before walking away.
Byleth swallowed as acid rose beneath her tongue. When Seteth was out of earshot, the early evening broke with a snort. She scanned the area in search of its source before it bubbled into a giggle so unfamiliar Byleth spent a good few seconds thinking she’d imagined it entirely. But there was Shamir, head bowed and shoulders shaking.
“Like Rhea, huh?” Shamir said with a warble to her voice, the last of her laughter threatening to break free. “You think I’m the only Knight of Seiros who’s been eaten out by the archbishop?”
The corner of Byleth’s mouth twitched. She plucked the flask out of Shamir’s hand. “I think you’ve had enough.”
“Fuck off. It’s funny.”
Byleth took a drink herself as Shamir chuckled for a moment longer. As her amusement faded, the knight propped an elbow against the lip of the well, leaning back to look skyward. In that moment, Byleth was struck by how beautiful Shamir was—always, but especially when she allowed herself to be soft.
Hazy with alcohol and the remnants of pleasure, Shamir murmured, “Catherine would have a conniption.”
It was the first time she’d mentioned her partner in so vulnerable a moment, but Byleth was unsurprised by how lovingly she said her name. She recognized a tender spot when she saw one, had heard enough of their bickering and knew Shamir’s heated gazes well enough to recognize her want. So Byleth said nothing, opting to take another drink to give Shamir the semblance of privacy she herself would prefer.
“You’re lucky,” Shamir said in that same faraway tone, “to have a choice.”
Byleth rocked the flask back and forth, listening to the moonshine slosh inside. Not more than a finger or so left, she’d bet. “I don’t. Not for this.”
There was a shifting beside her. When Byleth received no reply, she turned to find Shamir watching her with a look so frigid Faerghus itself would’ve hated to brave it. Instinctively, Byleth adjusted her stance, a minute change in preparation to defend herself from a coming blow.
Shamir's hand lashed out as quickly as a whip, snatching her flask back before Byleth could process the loss. “Do whatever you want,” she hissed, “but don’t lie.”
A myriad of sharp replies stuck in her throat. Shamir brought the flask to her lips, her glare stinging on Byleth’s cheek, and gulped until the last of her drink was gone.
The reports on the incoming armies were closer to rumors than anything, but they were enough. An unsettling consolidation of forces on both sides. Indications of multiple generals bearing crests. With whispers that even the Emperor herself was marching on Gronder, it was becoming patently clear that there would only be heartbreak ahead.
Claude wore a grim smile as he dusted off the map, their notes from the Battle of Eagle and Lion still smudged across the landscape. He didn’t bother with the brave face, standing above it with an expression close to pained. With a small shake of the head, he said, “As far as big class reunions go, this one's gotta be the worst in history.”
“So it’s confirmed, then?” Felix asked sharply. “The boar prince lives?”
“We can’t be certain,” Byleth replied. “They’re flying the banner of House Blaiddyd, but it’s possible they’re just loyalists counting on a win to oust Cornelia from her seat.”
“But why take the Empire head-on?” Lysithea asked. “Even without taking the Alliance into consideration, pitting a force that small against them would be suicide.”
“Since when has a real knight ever shied away from suicide?” Felix sneered.
“Mind your tongue,” Catherine warned, her forearm falling onto the table with a thud.
Byleth knew when a fight was budding. Thankfully, before Felix could stir the pot further, Sylvain said, “It has to be him.”
The room reoriented itself, attentions shifting with the tension in the air. Dorothea frowned. “How do you know?”
“Felix and I are here,” Sylvain began, his hand moving across the surface of the table as if painting them a picture. “That covers House Gautier and Fraldarius. Annette’s gone. So’s Ashe, not that he ever had the Gaspard crest to begin with. If both sides are accompanied by crested generals, there aren’t many other Faerghan options left. It leaves House Martritz and…”
“Galatea,” Judith solemnly finished across the table.
Felix understood. Sucked at his teeth. Meanwhile, Sylvain nodded, transfixed by the wood beneath his fingers as if it were lit with the crest of Daphnel itself. With a grimace, he said, “Ingrid would fly for no one else.”
The air in the room grew heavy with foreboding. Byleth looked across the council and ached for them. Such desolate faces, haunted by the memories of precious friends. She heard glass shattering in the distance. The ticking hands of time.
Not for the first time, she questioned whether she was truly doing them a favor by saving them from the blades and spells that stopped their hearts. All she'd done was force them to witness more violence, more death. But Byleth had seen too many of their violent ends; she was not so naive to think that a death on the battlefield was one that would let them rest in peace.
Silently, she promised them—herself—that they would live. Perhaps it was selfish. But then, so was war.
They ended the meeting early. Most rushed into the hall upon dismissal. Others, Byleth among them, dragged their feet. She walked to the map, pacing to survey it from every angle and picking at the faded scrawls. (Hilda frontlines, one of her notes said. It was crossed out and replaced by a line in a neater hand. Raphael. Hilda - no chance.) There was the sound of footsteps as Claude took his place at her side.
“It would be foolish,” she said, still examining the map, “if Edelgard didn’t claim the central hill.”
No response. In its absence, she traced a hand down the hill’s slope and down to the lower left corner. “It may be best if we avoid it altogether. Concentrate our efforts to the west. That way we’ll avoid altercations with House Blaiddyd and maybe even position ourselves to ally—”
She stopped as a gloved hand covered hers, lifting her fingers from the page. Byleth looked up then, her throat clenching as she met Claude’s gaze. There was a heat to it, a lurking curiosity that made Byleth feel as if she were one of the books he pored over in the library, secrets waiting to be unlocked.
“Enough,” he chastised. “Come to dinner.”
Against reason, Byleth could’ve sworn that something stuttered in her chest.
“With all of us,” Claude added, casual enough that a listener wouldn’t have noticed the bitter bite. Then, with enough sincerity to shame her for years: “We’ve missed you, Teach.”
At some point between walking to the dining hall and finishing her plate, between Sylvain’s shameless flirting and Dorothea’s sniping, between Leonie and Felix dashing to the training grounds after finishing a fourth of their meals, and Raphael battering poor Ignatz’s back as the bow knight choked on a laugh around his bite of bread, and Hilda trying to rope Marianne into teasing Lorenz, and Catherine appearing with a keg over her shoulder and an armful of teetering pints, and all the glances Claude thought he was sneakily sending her way, watchful and pleased and sometimes even happy, Byleth realized she’d missed them too.
Sylvain was the last to leave, getting up from the table when the clock struck twelve and predictably shooting her and Claude a suggestive grin as he bid them goodbye. Claude took it in stride, cracking a joke about getting Byleth to bed soon enough, which provoked little from her beyond a rolling of the eyes. When Sylvain’s fiery head of hair was out of sight, she muttered, “Sometimes I wonder if he’d behave if I just slept with him.”
Claude sputtered through his drink. She looked to the keg at the end of the table, long empty, then to the glass in her hand, half-full. She rarely got so careless with a bit of ale, but perhaps the Alliance lords had contributed a stronger brew for Garreg Mach. She shrugged, too content to care, and took another sip.
Judging by the lazy grin on Claude’s face, she wasn’t the only one feeling its effects. “My friend, if that’s your approach to disciplining a wayward student, then I may need to start putting more effort into terrorizing this monastery.”
“You wreak enough havoc as it is,” she replied, belatedly recognizing the bald interest in his words. Breezing past it, she said, “And you aren’t my students anymore. Now you’re just dirty old knights.”
“I take offense to that.” Claude placed a hand on his chest with enough dramatic flair to tempt Byleth to punch him. “I am a young and spry duke.”
She snorted. His expression went soft. In an instant, the air was too warm. The hall, too small. She pushed her chair back and stood. “I’m going for a walk.”
He smirked, so amused that Byleth regretted not punching him when the impulse struck her. “Do you require an escort? Or is my dear old Teach sending me off to bed?”
“Your commander can take care of herself,” Byleth replied. Despite her logic screaming to do otherwise, she added, “But you can come along if you want.”
There was that heat again—that glow to Claude’s eyes that threatened to blind her if she looked too long.
“My commander, is it?”
Byleth swiped her glass from the table and downed the rest of the pint, her mouth was so dry. She set it back onto the wood with more force than intended, wiping at her lips with the back of her hand before striding to the hall’s double doors. Just when she thought her trek would be a solitary one, boots on stone sounded behind her, announcing that Claude followed close behind.
He kept his distance. He’d been doing that quite a lot recently, and though she couldn’t name it, Byleth craved something more. For him to walk beside her and chat as he always did, at the very least. But with how she’d been treating him, lying to him in one moment and fleeing in the next, it was a request she didn’t have the right to make.
She let her feet guide her, the Officer’s Academy soon appearing before them. The footsteps behind her faded as she approached their old classroom, still emblazoned with the banners of the Golden Deer. She turned and found Claude standing on the grass, hands in his pockets.
“Here?”
Byleth nodded, her mindless certainty wavering. “You don’t have to come with me.”
But Claude shook his head. Ushered her on with another one of his smiles. Reluctantly, she turned from him and stepped through the door.
The state of the room never failed to unsettle Byleth. Aside from its coat of dust, it was as if they’d never left. A couple of Raphael’s training weights were still stacked in the corner. The trash can was still full of bawdy love letters to Sylvain. Judging by the books on their desks, Lysithea was reading up on healing spells when Fódlan came crashing down. Likewise, a book on war tactics sat on Claude’s.
It was still miraculously open when she’d returned, in the middle of a chapter on minimizing civilian casualties when battling near or in residential areas. She closed it back then and was grateful for it now, but by the way Claude’s fingers lingered on its cover, she wasn’t sure it made much of a difference.
She drifted to the front of the room. There was still an outline of the human body on the chalkboard. With the Empire marching on the monastery, Byleth thought it imperative to give her class a refresher on a person’s vitals, at once a lesson on how to protect themselves and how to kill.
He chuckled behind her. “I hate this place.”
Byleth looked to him. Whether by the ale or the late night or the ghosts of days long gone creeping about the room, she saw two Claude’s at once. The man smiling at his past with disdain. The boy with sharp eyes on a future for the taking, not quite knowing the price he’d have to pay.
She moved to the front of her desk, hoisting herself up to sit on its surface. “It’s strange,” she admitted, “but it comforts me.”
“You always were full of surprises.”
Claude sat beside her, the brush of his cape electrifying against her arm. Heady with the mere suggestion of him, Byleth said, “It still holds some good memories.” She nodded to the far corner. “I found one of your poisons there. You tried to steal it back from me for days.”
“Well, it was a lot more fun than making another batch,” he said with a wink. He gestured to the shelves along the northern wall with a nod of his own. “Now, that’s where Lorenz first accused me of trying to steal your virtue.”
“He did not.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Claude said with exaggerated offense. “I’ll have you know that none of your students were half the angels you thought we were, Teach. Have you seen yourself? Half the reason we were so motivated all the time was because it was a treat to be pinned down by you in our spars.”
“So he was right, then.”
With a cheeky grin, he said, “Well, I never denied that.”
Byleth scoffed, snuffing out the flicker of pleasure at the back of her mind. “Not that I’ve ever had much virtue to steal.”
For someone who knew all the markings of a tender spot, Byleth was particularly bad at not pressing on one. The air grew thick as their minds turned to the same image—Byleth half-asleep, her lack of virtue on full display. Mercifully, Claude’s defiance to his noble bearing didn’t (always) preclude his tact. He kept quiet and allowed the cursed thought to pass.
In their silence, Byleth’s mind wandered to sweeter things. Marianne smiling over a birthday bouquet. Leonie rambling about her father’s merits long after class. After spending so much of her life as a husk, it only took a few months for their motley crew to make her laugh.
“You all taught me how to feel here,” she said softly.
It was the truth. Too much of it, in fact. Rather than tease her, Claude said, “I remember.”
He stared ahead as if he were watching the memory play out before them. “It was after we went to Zanado. Not the first time, mind you. The time you went off by yourself—which is still one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done, by the way. After Seteth gave us a talking to, you brought me back here and let me have it. It was the first time I saw you get so angry. Get so… anything.” He paused before shooting her another wink. “I decided I’d rather make you smile from then on.”
Her cheeks warmed. Praying that the shadows disguised it, she drawled, “What did I ever do to deserve such kindness?”
“I never said it was kindness.”
Byleth turned to him, her brow knit in surprise. As coldly as he spoke in the war room, Claude admitted, “I wanted to use you. Even before you got the Sword of the Creator, you were a weapon to me. Making you happy ensured that you wouldn’t run off with Dimitri or Edelgard. It kept you on my side.”
Before she could suffocate under the crush in her chest, he turned more fully to her. The tactician turned human again, his eyes steeped in guilt. “Teach. You have to know that’s not how I feel now. I haven’t for a long time. You do know that, don’t you?”
His honesty was more choking than the room's layers of dust. Byleth searched for something to say, an assurance that she truly believed him when he called her his friend. But all that came to her lips was, “I don’t care if you use me. That’s what I’m here for. Use me however you want.”
Claude’s eyes went darker than the shadows they sat in. An awful thrill flared in her as his voice pitched low. “Don’t say that.” Then, more fiercely, he spat, “You deserve better.”
The mirthless laugh burst from her before she could stop it. Byleth realized it was almost freeing to be such a mess. With how she floundered about the monastery these days, trampling over all the etiquette and conduct expected of her, what did it matter to spill more hopeless truths?
“This is what people need of me. What I deserve is irrelevant.” Hearing the words aloud brought a pinch to her throat. Softer, she added, “I don’t know how else to be.”
Byleth had seen Claude wade through many a tragedy, but somehow she had never seen him so devastated. She nearly flinched at the sight of it—the collapse of his facade and the heartbreak that lay behind.
“Do I make you feel that way?”
That stare again. That soul-gazing stare. Byleth decided she hated it: hated the way Claude knew her and his talent for drawing out impulses she’d never thought possible. The silliness and the blushes. Desire at the simplest look or touch. It was too much. He was too much, and she didn’t care if it was cowardly that she turned away, because how else would she ever breathe?
She counted the floorboards until their borders began to blur. It was only when Claude said her name, a rasped thing that flew from his lips, that she understood why. She touched her cheeks, her fingertips wet as they came away.
He sprung to his feet. At once her vision went beige and gold. “Byleth,” he said. “Byleth, no.”
She looked up at him, mesmerized by his concern. Even in the dark, Claude’s eyes were impossibly bright. He cupped her face in his hands and Byleth let him, even though she’d just been talking about how she felt didn’t matter. Even though she’d never needed anyone to tend to her tears before and certainly not Claude.
She wanted to run, to fling him away. But instead she let him hover over her, brushing at her tears with those godforsaken gloves. When even that didn’t stem their flow, Claude began to panic. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Will you forgive me?” When Byleth didn’t respond—couldn’t, with how deeply she was caught in the rush of him—he graced her forehead with a kiss.
Her breath caught. Claude brushed his lips against her temples in an effort to soothe her, mistaking it for the onset of a sob. He went on, desperately trying to erase her tears with kisses at the corner of her eyes, across the apples of her cheeks. Byleth tipped her head back, awash in the stream of apologies he whispered against her skin. It felt only natural, as if Claude was returning to where he was always meant to be, when he finally found her lips.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. Claude released her as if stung, so guilty one might’ve thought he’d struck her. “Byleth. By, I didn’t—”
She threw her arms around his neck and reclaimed her kiss.
It was perfect. He was perfect, tasting like ale and patience and the salt of her tears. As frightened as he was moments before, Claude was quick to reciprocate, embracing her as if he couldn’t bear to let go. Byleth tangled her fingers in his hair, scratched at his scalp. The desk scraped across the floor as he pressed closer, and it was as if they were flying again, the only things that mattered in the world her body and his.
She was as breathless as she’d always imagined she would be when caught in this whirlwind of a man, the space between their kisses only allowing her the slightest of gasps. But it hardly mattered when Claude was clutching at her so, when his hand was cupping the nape of her neck as their kisses grew deeper and she could feel him stirring against her stomach, his body warm and solid between her legs.
He had angled her head back, his mouth traveling along her jaw, when they heard shouts in the distance.
Claude was loath to pull away, his breathing heavy as he glared at the classroom door. The ruckus grew louder, joined by the sound of people running through the halls. At the sound of their names on the wind, he scowled.
He turned to her, working to find a quip, or perhaps something more, but it seemed that Byleth had achieved the impossible and rendered him speechless. Rather than attempt to speak for him (a worthless endeavor, she knew), she touched his cheek. He grasped her hand in an instant, firmly pressing a kiss to her palm.
Outside of the room, louder yells. Urgent stomps.
With a soft growl, he untangled himself and stepped aside, silently gesturing for her to go on. Byleth stepped down from the desk, discreetly wiping at her eyes as she left the room.
There was a light at the far end of the arcades. She walked briskly towards it, the darkness seeping away to reveal Cyril with each step. Upon spotting Byleth, his eyes went wide. “Professor!” He rushed to her, stopping with an awkward half-bow, his lantern swaying in his hand.
“Cyril.” He was clearly upset. Whatever news he brought was clearly far more urgent than their rendezvous in the classroom. Even so, Byleth was irrationally nervous that Cyril could see evidence of Claude on her skin. “Is something wrong?”
He nodded. “A scout just arrived. He’s saying that the Empire and the Kingdom armies are approaching Gronder quicker than expected.”
“How much quicker?” Claude asked.
Byleth glanced up as he appeared, noting the muss of his hair and his crooked cravat. She prayed that Cyril didn’t notice.
“She’s saying they’ll be there by late afternoon,” the young knight replied, his report edging on frantic.
Beside her, Claude drew in a deep, slow breath. They looked at one another, grim and wanting. Understanding him as she always had, Byleth turned to Cyril and said, “Ready our mounts. We’ll leave at dawn.”
Chapter 8
Notes:
Heads up that this is one of a couple longer chapters coming at you, and that things get sad before they get sexy. But, considering where we're at in this story, I figure you knew that. 🥲 Enjoy!
Chapter Text
They reached Gronder when evening was encroaching on the afternoon, the field blanketed with a dense fog. Silence revealed the faint sounds of clanking armor and snorting mounts in its depths. With a wave of the hand, Claude beckoned their troops forward.
Byleth demanded his attention with a rough nudge. He followed her gesture to the south, to a red orb in the sky. In seconds, others appeared alongside it, the arc of them growing larger as they plummeted. They stained the fog orange, landing before their forces and setting the field ablaze.
Hilda cried his name moments before another projectile whistled above their heads. It landed squarely behind them, cutting the shouts of his troops short with the crack of flesh and bone. Blood rushing, Claude swung himself onto his mount, rearing her up into the air as he shouted, “Go!”
As Byleth directed, their army moved west, rushing to the source of the flame spell fired moments before. Claude’s higher altitude granted a hint more visibility, and he watched as blurred masses of soldiers collided in the mist. A wave of blue washed in from the east, banners of House Blaiddyd fluttering. There was a lull in the bedlam as they met the Alliance forces, as if the entire army had sighed at once with a lick of hope. But soon, blue bodies began replacing the gold, the air filling once more with guttural cries.
They were attacking. They were killing them, Claude realized, and the fog was thick but not so much that the Holy Kingdom couldn’t tell scarlet from gold. As he readied himself to swoop closer and fire into the assault, a javelin whizzed past his ear.
Claude whipped an arrow from his quiver in an instant, nocking it as Failnaught flared to life. A lance dispelled the mist with the same otherworldly glow a short distance away. He aimed as feathers beat against the fog, Ingrid rising to meet him with Lúin in hand, a reaper on white wings.
No. No, no, this was going all wrong.
“Ingrid,” he greeted, as casually as if they’d run into each other in the Academy’s halls. “Fancy seeing you here.”
As impaired as his vision was, he could have sworn he saw her lip tremble. “I don’t want to fight you, Claude.”
He forced a grin. “What a coincidence! Neither do I. Seeing as the feeling’s mutual, how’s about we make a night of it? You talk to that commander of yours about allying with us, we take down the Empire, and I’ll rustle us up some dinner. ‘Cause here’s the thing.” Failnaught pulsed as he drew the bowstring taut against his cheek. “I like you. But if you decide to toss another one of those pretty little spears of yours my way, I don’t intend to lose.”
Ingrid grunted, the sound both amused and resigned. She adjusted her grip on her weapon. “I’m sorry. I have my orders.”
A tomahawk pierced past him, cutting across her shoulder before either of them had a chance to move.
Behind Claude, the beating of a wyvern’s wings. It flew close, bringing Sylvain into view. His countenance was grave, his cheek already spattered with blood. The Lance of Ruin shone at his side, completing their trio of weapons that had seen countless wars.
“What’s going on down there?” Claude asked, keeping his arrow trained on Ingrid as she recovered from the blow.
“Dimitri’s not budging,” Sylvain reported in a deadened tone. “Our troops, theirs, his. There’s no talking to him. He doesn’t care who dies.”
Despite all the layers of clothing he wore, Claude had never felt so cold. He nodded, lowering his bow. Though he knew it was futile, knew that Ingrid had always lived for king and country and little else, he turned to Sylvain and said, “Talk to her.” He guided Chandra into a dive at the wyvern lord’s nod.
“We have no allies,” Claude bellowed above the heads of his forces. “If they aren’t wearing our colors, show no mercy!”
His command swept across the battlefield from the throats of his commanders, the lot of them echoing his words. It was still not loud enough to drown out the memory of what Claude heard from Sylvain before the wind began to roar in his ears.
“I’ve missed you, Ingrid,” he’d said, his voice shaking. She charged him in reply.
As a cruel joke, night fell as the fog began to lift. By the light of their torches and embers of the burning field, Claude bore witness to chaos. Mercedes, felled by Ignatz’s arrow. Petra, her side bloodied as she made her retreat. Dimitri, ambushed and pierced by countless Imperial spears. Up ahead, a purple light briefly illuminated Hubert’s face. A soldier's sick gurgle soon followed.
Byleth’s westward strategy had enabled them to push towards Edelgard, but as Kingdom forces dwindled to the east, they found themselves suffering more blows from the central hill. Chandra roared as Claude ripped at her reins, careening into a sharp dodge as another projectile hurtled past. Once righted, he sped to its crash site to assess the damage.
Soldiers lay crushed beneath the rubble. By the light of Dorothea’s healing magic, Claude spotted Raphael fallen nearby. Bile flooded his tongue at the image—Raphael trembling above his mangled leg, taking short hissing breaths above jutting bone. Dorothea wept as she frantically struggled to ease his pain.
There was a flicker nearby, a flash of red robes. Claude fired, killing the Imperial mage before she had a chance to finish her spell.
“We need to take out the ballista,” Byleth shouted when he swept past, looking half-mad in the light of the Sword of the Creator, her hair matted with the blood of those it felled.
“Count on it,” he cried back.
He flew east, only straying from his path to order Leonie and Felix to do the same. He led them in surging up the hill, Felix tearing through the Empire’s rogues from below and Leonie aiding Claude from atop her Pegasus from above.
Just when the ballista came into view, a sudden heat seared at Claude’s back. Chandra veered away more by animal instinct than by his command, narrowly avoiding another spell from the heavens.
“Look out!” He shouted to Leonie as fire began to rain.
They reared up into the clouds seconds before the spells landed, setting fire to the slope. It consumed what bodies it could along the way, whether they were adorned with Alliance armor or Imperial robes. For a long moment, they simply watched, horrified by the display.
Claude wasn’t so delusional as to think himself a good man. He was as selfish as he was idealistic, as prone to treating people as tools as he was to making his loved ones laugh. He vaguely recalled being young once, naive, and joking about exactly this: the hill set aflame. But he’d yet to do something so gruesome in a true battle—killing those loyal enough to fight for him as a cheap trap.
At the sound of a cry below, his mind whirred back to life. “Get Felix out of here,” he ordered Leonie before flying to the ballista to finish the job.
Smoke filled the air even with Chandra flying high. Claude tore the sash from his shoulder and wrapped it about his nose and mouth. The night somehow grew blacker than it was before. The acrid taste of ash forced its way past the cloth.
At the sight of the ballista, he dove. It sat on a raised platform, as he remembered. Its operator cowered at its base, flames already dancing at the ends of their hair. Still, Claude pushed lower, and it was only later that he would question why he’d rush to kill someone who was already sentenced to burn at the stake. The only answer—that he wanted to witness the death of the person who’d rid his people of so many loved ones, and Raphael of all his good cheer—would come to haunt him.
It was just his due when the operator lifted her head, terrified.
She had always been terrified.
Bernadetta. Edelgard chose to do this to Bernadetta, and her cheek was already blistering, fire already crawling up her spine, and by simple logic and his own singed skin, Claude knew she didn’t even have the privilege of crying without the heat eating at her tears.
She reached for him. Either the pain had blinded her or rid her of her reason, or else it made it so that nothing else but her salvation mattered, because she reached for Claude, the man who continued to wage this war for his own little dreams, and wailed. “Please,” Bernadetta begged, her meek voice graveled with smoke, “I just want to go home.”
He didn’t know whether he was granting mercy or seizing at it when he let the arrow soar.
It was nearly midnight when their efforts finally precipitated Edelgard’s retreat. A dazed, doubtful murmur rippled across the field as she turned tail. Then came the cheers.
Claude trembled between Chandra’s beating wings. Lightheaded, he steered her to the forest, his control clumsy as they landed with a spray of dirt. His dismount was more a falling. He clutched at her reins to steady himself, pressing his forehead to the cool of her scales.
He didn’t know how long he stood there. Whether he was weeping or screaming or staring into her blinding white. He didn’t care to know much of anything until he heard that odd sound behind him—a warbled thing that might’ve been his name.
He flinched as hands fell upon his shoulders. But the touch of whoever came to him was ginger, their will as stalwart as it was patient. They drew him closer and Claude let them, the echoes of battle giving way to the kindness murmured at his ear.
“Claude,” she said. Though he didn’t know it, he’d yearned for that voice, husky and steady and reduced to breaths by his kiss not a day before. “Go ahead, Claude,” she said, and at that his stomach lurched as if he had been always waiting for her permission, the command of his body tied to her by a string.
He fell to his knees and retched until he was empty, until all his aches were middling compared to his stomach’s wracking cramps. His body wouldn’t stop shaking no matter how he willed it. But Byleth was holding him, draping herself over his back, dirtying his silks until they were honest, finally painted with a modicum of the blood on his hands.
She wrapped her arms about his shoulders, pressing her lips to his temple as he keened. And it was there on the forest floor that he understood he was doomed to love her, this woman who never failed to return him to himself.
When they returned to the battlefield, he stood before his army and announced their feast.
Claude followed through on his promise. With the Alliance lords’ contributions, their reserves were stocked well enough for a true celebration. He closed the war room for the week (“Give them some space to heal, boy.”) and had the staff put on a grotesque banquet, lavish enough that its festivities—namely, the imbibing—stretched on for three days.
One for each army, he privately entertained. But it was just as well. He’d be remiss to deny that he didn’t partake. As was required of his station, Duke Riegan and a handful of his generals found themselves at the center of the revelry more often than not, setting aside their own feelings in service of urging their troops’ merriment to greater heights. It was only when Claude left the dining hall that he allowed himself to wallow in the guilt the liquor was meant to dull. He expected that for Hilda and them, it was much the same.
Byleth joined them only once. Claude’s heart damn near stopped when he saw her, all traces of blood and mud cleared from her skin, stoic and gorgeous as she watched their foolishness from the back of the dining hall. Her expression shifted as their eyes met, a tender look that had Claude tripping over the mercenary-turned-lush beside him to chase her as she turned towards the door.
“Teach!” He panted as he caught her outside of the hall, struggling to keep his voice even. “Leaving so soon?”
Byleth slowed, her hair stark against the shadows of the hedges (well-trimmed again, now that Cyril had returned to maintain the grounds). She turned to face him, her patient smile unable to mask all of the pain that lay behind it. “I… couldn’t. All of that. Not this time.”
Faced with her honesty, Claude found himself compelled to surrender to his own. He became painfully aware of how he must look to her: another noble fool dancing about in his fancy sash, an unearned crest and birthright lurking in his veins. He could only think of how ugly, how tasteless he must seem. When he spoke next, his voice was raw, stripped of all its affected triumph.
“You know I don’t want to do this, don’t you?”
Relief rushed through him as her face fell with utter sympathy.
“Of course I do,” Byleth breathed, the words so thick with pity he had no choice but to believe her. She paused, gauging the ramifications of her actions, before reaching for his hand. Her touch struck through him as it always did. “I know you didn’t want any of this.”
Claude nodded, his gratitude knotting in his throat.
The night was as clear and beautiful as ever, their troops roaring with the rush of victory in the hall at his back. He cared for none of it, especially not with the alternative set before him—Byleth tending to him with a sorrow to mirror his own. His pulse quickened as he turned reckless, stepping closer and raising a hand to her cheek. His lips had hardly brushed over hers before she pulled away.
Byleth shook her head, gently taking his hands in hers and letting them fall. In the kindest scold he’d ever heard from her, she murmured, “This isn’t the time.”
Before he could respond, there was a stirring at the door behind him. They separated as Alois stepped from the hall, greeting them with a pleased and red-faced grin. With a heavy glance to Byleth, Claude turned to him, feeling the edges of himself blurring as he forced himself into the role of easy upstart Duke once more. He thanked him for his service. Smirked at his terrible jokes and teased. Didn’t bother to turn when the knight’s face fell, his hand rising in protest. Instead, Claude let Alois speak for both of them, hopelessly bidding Byleth to stay a bit longer as she took her leave.
Throughout the rest of the celebration, his chance meetings with Byleth were fleeting, few, and far between. Lucky her, she’d built a reputation on being aloof, and no one bat an eye when she slipped away. But still, Claude craved her, dwelling on their kiss in the Officer's Academy in the passing moments between false cheer and grief.
He wanted—needed—to know what it meant. Whether it was drunken fumble or something more. He so wanted it to be more, though he didn’t know what more he could possibly ask of her after their victory at Gronder. Such great change between them over such a short stretch of time. He wasn’t sure how to begin walking back to her after the tectonic shift beneath their feet.
On the third day, with his cowardice blunted by a finger or two of whiskey, he resolved to try. He sought her out, beginning with a knock to her door. He wandered the grounds when it went unanswered. But from the Officer’s Academy to the Knight’s Hall to the library, there was no Byleth in sight. Then, with a wild spark of an idea, Claude went to the stairway outside of the audience chamber and began to climb.
He paused at the landing, enjoying the soft shimmer of delight that always passed through him on the Academy’s third floor. As a student, Claude would have given a limb to access it and scour Rhea’s quarters. Back then, Seteth kept it under lock and key, even stationing guards on the terrace to watch for those infiltrating by wyverns or Pegasi (something he found out through his own bold and stupid attempt). Nowadays, Seteth kept its doors open in hopes that Byleth might come to replace the archbishop in earnest, curling up on her bed one day like one of the Academy’s many stray cats. A waste, both for his purposes and Claude’s. He was sure that by now, whatever records Rhea kept on the church were wiped clean.
The sound of conversation drew him further in. He tread softly on the tile, calling upon the old days of sneaking about, back when he hadn’t been expected to assume all the pomp and circumstance of his position. He made it halfway down the hall when a familiar voice had his heart freezing over.
“Ten years ago in Dagda,” Shamir said. “We were hired by a lord to seize a carriage traveling to the border. Wasn’t until I saw the girl inside that I realized why.”
He moved closer, hugging the wall and breathing in relief when he found Rhea’s bed empty, confirming that the voices were filtering in from the terrace. He kicked himself when Shamir paused, her ears no doubt perking up at the sound.
“And?” Byleth asked, prodding her on.
She listened for a few seconds longer before continuing. “She was young. Too young. And running. I’d seen it before. Begged us not to leave her there when we returned her. Bastard didn’t even wait for us to leave before he started beating her. Our leader wouldn’t hear me, so after we collected his gold I went back to kill him.”
“As I would.”
Peeking through the door, Claude saw the two of them on a bench, Byleth resting her head against Shamir's shoulder in repose. The natural ease of the position provoked a miserable want in him.
“Didn’t manage it,” Shamir admitted. “Found them in the bed chambers. He threw her into my shot. Had to find a new company after that.”
They let the silence breathe. A beat later, Byleth spoke. “Seven years ago. A minor lord in the Kingdom. He’d had a child by one of the women who worked his fields. It was an easy job. Jeralt could’ve done it himself but the lord insisted on having the Ashen Demon take care of it. We needed the money and everyone figured I didn’t feel much of anything anyway, so they strong-armed Jeralt into letting it be.”
Shamir turned ever so slightly, her head leaning on Byleth’s, the minute action speaking volumes.
“The child couldn’t have been more than five months,” she finished softly.
When she’d first arrived, Byleth was so blank the Golden Deer had wondered whether she could truly be human. A statue, they’d whispered. A doll. That Byleth, Claude could imagine standing above a slaughtered mother and babe. But his?
“Have we found it yet?” Shamir asked. “Something worse?”
After some thought, Byleth shook her head. “Is it awful if I say no?”
“It’s awful no matter what we say. We’re awful people.”
Byleth laughed, and his world fell away. Claude stared at the ground beneath his feet, the sound echoing terribly in his ears.
“Remind me why I come to you for comfort,” she said.
“You’re a glutton for punishment.”
“So I am.”
Shamir slipped an arm about her waist. As she turned to pull Byleth closer, she stopped short, spotting Claude out of the corner of her eye. Her quiet sympathy only fueled his envy, as black and repulsive as the monstrosity that consumed Miklan all those years ago, all for the crime of coveting a role that wasn’t his to claim.
Claude left as quietly as he’d arrived.
How stupid he was to think that her laugh was only his.
Against all odds, she came to him.
Claude stood dumb at his bedroom door, blinking at Byleth as if his vision would clear. As she canted her head at him, he remembered himself, leaning against the doorframe and letting his lips spread in his trademark grin.
“Hey, Teach. To what do I owe the honor?”
With the slightest quirk in her brow, she said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Way to make a man’s heart stop,” he replied, his aching. “What for?”
“Have you been in here all day?”
Claude bit his tongue. It was the night before the council meetings were to resume, and he had in fact been avoiding his generals to enjoy what little time he had left to steep in his misery.
“What,” he teased, “you didn’t think I looked this good without beauty rest, did you?”
He might’ve imagined the way Byleth’s eyes passed over him—his white shirt, linen with its ties at the collar hanging; the loose trousers he wore to bed. Regardless, she fixed him with a look that clearly communicated that she wasn’t going to entertain his nonsense. “We need to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting.”
“Is that all?” Claude muttered darkly. He pushed off from the doorframe, beckoning her in. “Come on in, then. But don’t blame me if people start talking, what with you being here so late.”
“They talk plenty as it is.”
Yes. They certainly did.
Claude sat on his bed, waiting as Byleth nudged his chair aside to lean against his desk. His eyes passed over her, the pose calling their night in the classroom to mind. His scan stuttered at her hands, empty of any documents or notes. With a bitter smirk, his gaze snapped back to hers. “So. What exactly are we preparing for?”
Her expression was cool, composed, and utterly unashamed of being found out. “I haven’t seen you around much lately.” Her tone went so soft as to needle at him. “I thought I’d check in.”
“Is that all I needed to do to get you in here? Mope around for a bit, sleep in more? The more I learn about you, Teach, the more I think I wasn’t enough of a delinquent back in our schooldays—”
“Don’t do that,” Byleth snapped, putting a stop to his pontificating. “I know you, Claude.”
He closed his mouth with a click of teeth. Stared up at her as prey might when caught.
“I saw you after the battle. I know how terrible it was. How terrible it can be.” Shadows lurked behind those otherworldly eyes. “I want to be there for you. I understand if you don’t feel like you can come to me after—”
“Our kiss?”
Byleth paused. “Gronder,” she corrected. “I want to make sure you’re going to be okay.”
After his own pause, a harsh laugh pierced through him in disbelief.
Yes, he’d stumbled. Kissed her before he knew what he was doing, his meticulous control weakened by the sight of her smiling among their Deer and a good drink or three. But Byleth had kissed him back. More than. She’d seized him when he had the decency to pull away, and Claude was not so lovesick that he could have imagined her tongue running along his bottom lip. Somehow, even with years of practice, no fantasy of his came close to the truth of how shattering it was, and though he wasn’t the one she could lean against on the archbishop’s terrace, trading stories of mercenary days, he also knew that whatever had passed between them that night was not so easily thrown away.
Still, in a small patchwork of sentences, she’d swept the one moment of bliss Claude could claim in the past few months—the past five years even—to the side.
He was almost impressed.
The longer he stared, the more Byleth began to fidget. Subtle things. The shift of her weight from heel to heel. A finger picking at the edge of his desk. Finding some victory in her discomfort, a rueful chuckle slipped from his lips.
“That’s rich. On the contrary, my friend, these past couple months, you’ve made it exceedingly clear that it’s you who has no interest in coming to me.”
Byleth frowned. “This isn’t about me—”
“No, it never is, is it?” Claude leaned back, drawing from a well of cruel nonchalance even as he recognized how pathetic he was, lashing out at her for something so simple as finding her comfort—her laugh—in someone else. “All this time I’ve been standing exactly where you are now, begging you to let me in. I’m a petty man, Teach. Do you know how infuriating it is for you to ask me to pour my heart out when you won’t do the same?”
Suddenly, Byleth was wearing a stricken look he’d never seen before, and it brought him back to his right mind like nothing else. He’d hurt her again. Before he could scramble back and retract everything he’d just said, a shutter closed behind her eyes. “I don’t have much of a heart to pour from.”
That’s right. They’d never talked about it, didn’t even have the time to address what he’d learned after he pounced on her in all his stupid youth and ripped her father’s memories out of her hands. And while he’d had years to learn how to live with his suffering, Byleth was spat into this new world straight from her loss, and he hadn’t even thought—
“By, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” she curtly dismissed. That perfect, terrible mask clicked back into place. “That’s what this is about? You want me to talk to you more?”
It sounded so trivial when she put it that way, whiny and not quite right. “I want to be there for you.” Then, with more fire behind it: “I meant it when I said you can count on me for anything. But it’s like you don’t want to believe me.”
Stiff and prompt as if she’d practiced saying it many times before, Byleth said, “But I can’t.” She crossed her arms, locking herself away. “There are some things I can’t ask of you, Claude.”
There it was again: that dark, viscous feeling, crawling across his skin. As if to shuck it off, Claude bit out, “But you can ask them of Shamir.”
The mask fell. Byleth's lips began to form the shape of the word, How— only for her to stop herself. Rethinking it, she asked, “Who told you?”
“Don’t insult me,” he groused. As if he wouldn’t notice. As if Byleth hadn’t been bolder as of late, shooting Shamir invitations in heated glances across the council room. “No one needed to tell me. I know you, too, Teach.”
He almost thought he’d done it again—ignited that fury he’d seen in her after Zanado. Then he recognized her restless stare for what it was.
Panic. The infallible Teach was panicking, her mind whirling before him even as she stood frozen, and really? Was what she had with Shamir so precious that she wanted to protect it from him so badly?
“This isn’t what I came to talk about,” she said in clipped reply. It would’ve been enough to censure him once upon a time, but now, it merely glanced off him.
As impatiently and tediously as reading from their ledgers, he intoned: “I’m not okay. Every night I question who I am to do this to my soldiers, to strangers, and especially to my friends. Gronder was the worst hell yet and I’m well aware that I’m the one who dragged us into it for a pipe dream that may or may not come true. I’ve felt dead inside ever since the killing stopped and starting tomorrow, I’ll have to plan the next time we do it all over again. And the only person who comes close to understanding any of this, who has been at my side ever since I finally decided to do something in this useless war, can’t even tell me when she’s hurting.”
Claude paused at the traitorous crack in his voice. After taking a breath to steady himself, he coldly asked, “Is that what you came to hear?”
Byleth stared at him, stunned. Her arms loosened at her chest, drifting to her middle as if to hold herself together. Softly, she echoed, “You’ve felt dead inside?”
It was gentle enough to shock him. He searched frantically for a way to sidestep the question. To form a breezy reply. But the more he scrambled, the more he realized it was too much. That, for as much as he offered to lay his heart at her feet, there were some wounds that were too raw. Parts of himself he would not, could not, say aloud.
He could have laughed at the two of them—hypocrites, each trying to get the other to budge.
In his silence, Byleth stepped forward. She stopped when he looked up as if, somehow, after all his pining, he might suddenly discover the strength to deny her. When he did no such thing, she reached for him, fingertips grazing across his shoulders. Wary of scaring him away, she was slow to lower her hands.
When her palms were molded to the curve of him, she asked, “Is this okay?”
He laughed at the absurdity. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against her stomach. “Is this?”
A hand drifted up, nestling into the hairs at the nape of his neck in lieu of a nod. Claude shivered at the simple intimacy of the touch.
Armor wasn’t the most comfortable place to rest his head, but it was Byleth’s. He closed his eyes, coasting on the rise and fall of her breaths as the sturdy leather warmed against his skin. If he had the courage to move higher, press his ear to her chest, those breaths would be all he heard. This shamed her somehow. But it was only one more facet of the miracle of her, this woman who had such a talent for achieving the impossible. Communing with the goddess after a life without the church. Eluding death and carving through skies. Pulling at his heartstrings until he, the man who babbled away to survive, had nothing to say.
Breaths or heartbeat, he didn’t care what she had or didn’t as long as she could hold him like this, wonderfully and inexplicably alive.
“I never wanted this for you,” Byleth said softly, her voice coming down from on high. “Any of you. I thought you’d only use what I taught you to fight off a bandit raid or two. Never this.”
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. But he’d had enough of them, the useless things. He frowned, willing them away.
He thought, instead, of Byleth taming a room of stubborn lords in Lady Rhea’s robes. Teaching an Academy of young nobles in a role that had been foisted on her. Standing above a babe, blade unsheathed, killing in the Ashen Demon’s guise. How easy it must have been to lose herself in those masks of hers. He certainly knew the feeling—juggling the other selves one had to assume in order to get by.
“How often do you feel this way?” He asked.
Her fingers twitched at the back of his neck. Relaxed only when she came to terms with her answer. “Most days.”
If she was immune to pangs of the heart, he would gladly feel them for her.
“And that’s why you go to her.”
There was a stutter in her breath. Claude pulled back, his hands lifting to sit on her hips, anticipating the push and pull between them as they took turns at being the most skittish in the room.
“I’m just trying to understand, Teach,” he said, his voice rough. “Will you help me?”
That sheer uncertainty when she met his gaze. Only a lucky few had ever gotten to see this version of her, timid and feeling. Claude reveled in the fact that he was one of them.
“It helps me forget.” Byleth frowned as if this were the first time she’d thought on it. “With her,” she flushed, making it impossible to misconstrue what she meant, “I can’t… think. I don’t dwell on the future or the past. It clears my head. Helps me do my job. I can focus on what matters again when morning comes.”
“Sure sounds romantic,” Claude muttered, unable to help the sharp humor lacing the reply.
“It can’t be.” Byleth absentmindedly stroked the short hairs at his nape, sending pleasure trickling down his back. “Then, there’s little reason to hide the worst parts of ourselves. We can know each other without being ashamed.”
He was suddenly painfully aware of her hips in his hands. The patch of skin above her shorts.
Bold. He, too, was getting bold, but he couldn’t help inching his hands towards it, thanking fate that she came to him after the hour he’d placed his gloves aside. Byleth tensed as his thumbs brushed past her clothing, her stomach rippling beneath them, muscle revealing itself even in that small peek of skin. Claude was ashamed it took so little for his desire to flare, twist so greedily at the core of him.
“And when we kissed?” He asked, his voice deeper, treacherous in how it exposed the bent of his thoughts. “Did that… help you?”
Byleth tensed yet again, and oh, she was all muscle, and whether she really had shared her body with Sothis or not, there was no doubt that he was holding pure power in his hands.
“Claude.” Her rebuke tapered into silence. Her warning became a plea.
Claude studied her, coming to understand the death sentence Shamir delivered unto him. That what he was chasing, what he wanted for them, was more than Byleth could take. Likely, it was far more than what she wanted in the first place. A simple agreement. A friend and lover to warm her sheets.
He had too much to give.
“Okay,” he murmured, more to himself. Then, to Byleth: “Okay. Show me.”
She frowned at him, puzzled, only for her eyes to widen as realization set in.
“I won’t ask for anything more than what you’re willing to give,” he promised, heart drumming. “Show me how to help. Take what you need.”
“Claude,” she said again, horror skirting at the edges of his name. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever heard her voice shake before. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” he began, his hold on her growing just a hair tighter, a request for her to listen. “For once in your life, Byleth. Use me.”
Byleth’s hands twitched at his shoulder. The back of his neck. They were the exception. The rest of her was stock-still. Cold, shocked stone. When she came to life again, her tongue flashed to lick at her lips, sparking the memory of how it felt against his. “It’s not—”
“Professional?” Claude chuckled. “My friend, we crossed that bridge some time ago, don’t you think?”
Her hands squeezed at his shoulder. It was a small touch, innocent, and still it warmed his blood.
“You really want this?”
A small, pitiful laugh fell from his lips. He peered up at her, allowing himself to fall victim to his hope, before nodding. “Yes. I do.”
Byleth considered him, her stare traveling every line of his face. “It’s a bad idea, Claude.”
It was. If not for the war, then for his sanity. But it was a weak attempt at rebuffing him, what with her pupils blown, her voice deeper than he’d ever heard it, and if she’d meant to ward him off, then she should’ve never let him hear how it sounded—that husky pitch wrapped around his name.
He should have known. Crumbs. Crumbs was all he would ask of her now that he finally found himself at her feet.
Claude swallowed his pride. “Does it matter?”
The hand on his shoulder was firm as she slipped into thought. Then, wondrously, it began to move, whispering across the slope of his neck. Claude held his breath as it came to cup his cheek. The gesture was of a nebulous affection, one to precede an embrace or a rejection depending on her whims. His stare remained steady on her, refusing to break.
He saw the moment Byleth made her decision. Apprehensive as she was, the tension drained from her shoulders. Those luminous eyes became still water, drawing him deep. Her fingers traced his jawline, nails scratching through the hairs, before resting beneath his chin, applying a bit of force to tip him up.
His breath deepened as he melted for her, his mind muddling as her thumb traced his bottom lip. She added a bit of pressure, up and in.
Claude opened himself for her, heat shooting to his groin as she pressed deeper into his mouth. His tongue rose against the pad of her thumb, inviting her to push further. Byleth lips parted, surprised by the feel of it, or else at the sight of him so eager to please. Her grip at the back of his neck tightened, and Claude understood that he truly was prey all along, begging to be hunted and hers.
With another lick to her lips, she said, “Let me lead.”
Chapter 9
Notes:
I didn't mean to leave y'all at that cliffhanger for so long! But as it goes, life gets in the way. Fall's a busy time for me, so I won't be able to keep to that 2-week beat I was on before this chapter. But trust that the next is drafted and coming to you eventually. In the meanwhile, enjoy some kind-of resolved sexual tension. 😘
Chapter Text
It was a bad idea.
Byleth slipped her thumb from Claude’s mouth to his chin, gently holding his jaw in place. An unnecessary measure, considering how willing and eager he was to welcome her kiss.
When she pulled back, his eyes were heavy-lidded, dark and forested beneath his lashes. After all the hell he’d raised in her class and out of it, she was charmed to find him tamed by so little. She drew him to her again, her lips dipping lightly across his, experimenting with different angles and noting their effects.
It was an awful idea.
Byleth had spent so many nights imagining this. She’d mined every iteration of it—the two of them, whether in love or in bed. All ended in tragedy. If they even managed to end this war, Byleth would go on to fight other battles. Claude would go on to find a noblewoman for his bride. They would tangle themselves up in each other until they had to shear themselves apart, and if they ever reunited there would be little left to do in each other’s company but hurt and bleed.
It was a terrible idea.
But Byleth wanted it. She’d never wanted much of anything before. But Claude was fueled by nothing but ambition and dreams. His vision for a new world and his determination to mold it had captivated her from the start. He taught her how to smile and laugh and rage like no one else, and before she could even think to stop it, he’d taught her how to desire, too.
And ever since their kiss, she’d wanted him.
It was shameful how she wanted him. How, with Gronder still fresh in their minds, her thoughts still wandered to the memory of Claude’s arms. As vividly as she remembered his despair on the forest floor, she’d find herself recalling lean muscle binding her, hips pressed to hers. Had Cyril never called for them, she would have let Claude take her then and there, the two of them debauching her old desk.
It was infuriating how he'd bewitched her with just a taste.
Shamir deserved better than to be bedded by someone with another on their mind, so Byleth had refrained from seeking relief in her beyond conversation, a change the knight did not question. And for her own dignity, Byleth distanced herself from Claude. It was an act of preservation, honestly. A feeble attempt to keep him ignorant of this side of her, debased as it was. Besides that, she’d seen him after Gronder, heaving and gasping for air until his throat went raw. When she wasn’t thinking of her want, she was thinking of his sobs, and who could blame her for thinking that space might help him heal?
As many of her decisions had done, it only hurt him in the end. The clever Duke Riegan paraded the monastery, but it was obvious what a show it was to the practiced eye. There were days when there was hardly a sight of him, and it didn’t take long for Byleth to find herself back where she’d always been—fumbling and riddled with regret.
But then, there was tonight. Byleth, drawn to him with the intention of providing some comfort. Claude, beckoning her closer and practically begging to be ensnared. Not five minutes and his hands were tracing at the edges of her armor, his tongue so good at matching hers. He wasn’t even making an attempt at hiding the growing bulge in his trousers, and it was all enough for Byleth to admonish herself for keeping away for so long.
It was as if she’d been swept up on the wind, terrified and exhilarated by the rush. For all her obsessing, she’d never truly accounted for the possibility of this.
Byleth pulled away to study him. His expression was halfway to dumb, but his gaze was piercing. A marksman’s focus, pinning her as a target even with her hand on his throat. Beneath them, his chest rose and fell on a weighty beat.
Slow, she reminded herself. She wanted to make it good for him. If she was going to commit a folly such as this, he might as well enjoy it as she did.
With a single finger, Byleth lifted one of the ties at his collar, bobbing it up and down. “Off.”
Claude hesitated as he processed the command. Then, with admirable speed, he dragged his shirt up and over his head.
She was on him before it passed over his eyes. He gasped as her lips found his collarbone, sending the shirt flying across the room with a flicked wrist. Byleth pushed, guiding him until he was leaning back on his elbows, and moved lower, fine hairs tickling as she blazed a trail down his chest. He smelled as she remembered him—flight and spice and pine. It clouded her senses as much as it lit her alive.
Claude held still for her, struggling to keep his breathing steady. She let the sound of it guide her, relishing its hitches; lingering at the places where it left him in a rush. As she migrated off-center, gravitating towards his beating heart, his lips parted with a shaky laugh. “You sure know how to show a man a good time, Teach.”
The tone of it—sparkling and pretty as most false things are—gave her pause. He’d surrendered to her, that was true. But they were guarded people, and it was hard to break old habits so easily. So Byleth wasn’t surprised to find that even with his eyes darker than she’d ever seen them, the glitter of those pretty emeralds gone, he was still clinging to his composure for dear life.
There was a flash of pink as he moistened his lips. He looked pointedly to her armor, shamelessly lingering on her chest. “Seems unfair.”
Talkative. Far more than Byleth was used to, but it was hardly a surprise that Claude conducted himself in bed as he did out of it—running his mouth in preference to laying himself bare. Something about it pleased her. Confirmed more than ever that it was Claude she was bedding, the man who was nothing if not measured, all charm and poise.
She went damp at the thought of breaking him down.
Claude jolted as she cupped him. “You didn’t ask for fair.” His jaw went slack as she wrapped her fingers around him through the cloth and stroked.
Her anticipation pooled hot. Byleth tested the feel of him, searching for a sense of what he liked. When his eyes fell shut, she repeated the motion, dragging her palm across the arc of him, circling its heel across his tip. He shuddered beneath her, withholding still, rewarding her with grunts when she sought groans.
Byleth clucked her tongue. “Stubborn.”
He lifted his head, face falling as she stepped away.
His disappointment didn’t last long. Byleth shrugged her cloak from her shoulders, the heavy cloth falling to his floor in a heap. Claude watched, transfixed, as the unbuckling of her belt sounded between them soon after. As it slipped from her waist, Byleth paused, weighing it in her hand. She considered it for a moment before going to his desk, turning her back to him to set it down. Her choker came next.
The room was silent as she removed her bracers, Claude’s stare boring into the clasps of her armor running down her back. Primly, she said, “I’d clear those books, if I were you.” Five seconds hadn’t passed before their crash.
She smiled to herself, setting the bracers neatly beside her choker. She turned to him only to lean against his desk as she removed the bracer at her knee, all the while ignoring him and idly looking aside as if she were undressing in solitude. Bracers gone, she untied her boots and set them beside his chair with a tidiness that was out of step with the mess of the room. When her hands touched the waistband of her shorts, there was a heavy exhale from the bed.
Byleth looked to Claude with a coquettish tilt of the head, as if she couldn’t imagine why he’d be affected so. But he certainly was affected, still frozen in the position she’d placed him in, mouth watering, cock straining against his trousers. Even so, there was a mote of concentration in his brow, refusing to give.
She took her time pulling her shorts down her hips. Stepped out of them and began to fold. When she turned away to set them aside, there was a chuckle of pleased disbelief behind her.
“You’re amused?” She asked, with little interest.
Claude’s eyes, fixated on her hips, rose under her gaze. He’d lifted himself while she was turned away, leaning towards her and perching his arms atop his knees. “Just enjoying the show.”
“I would certainly hope so,” she said evenly, pulling at her tights.
A smirk tugged at his lips. “You can leave those on.”
“I don’t believe I asked.”
Claude glanced aside, mouth opening around his grin, tongue curling against teeth. It was a smile she hadn’t seen from him before, amorous and real, and oh, Byleth thought, this was fun, wasn’t it? The two of them teasing as they’d always done? How naturally it came to them even here?
She didn’t bother to fold the tights, instead kicking them to join her cloak on the floor. She returned to him in her armor and underwear, lifting Claude’s brow as she approached. “Forgetting something, Teach?”
She chuckled, warming as he glowed at the sound. As she stepped into place between his legs, Claude’s hands floated to the back of her thighs. She allowed it, combing her fingers through his hair. “You have to earn these.”
That damned focus of his returned in full force. A hand rose to trace the curve of her rear. With his voice deeper than she’d ever heard it, he asked, “And how would I do that?”
Byleth smiled down at him, suddenly flooded with an affection that should have scared her. Signaled her to stop. But she was too far gone, too fond of the man who wanted nothing but to please her, and far too caught up in this game they played.
Her hand slowly closed to a fist around his curls, letting Claude settle into the tug along his scalp. Far gentler than her rough handling of Shamir, but even so, his eyes went a hair wider in surprise. She craned his neck back, granting herself a full view of the knob of his throat, naked in its rise and fall. With his bravado quickly draining, she purred, “You shut up.”
She waited. When he kept silent, his gaze storming on hers, Byleth relaxed her grip. Pressed a light kiss to his forehead. “Good.”
Defiance flashed across Claude’s face, silver and razor sharp. His lips thinned as he suppressed a retort. Byleth placed her hand on his cheek, rewarding him, before brushing his hands away and sinking to her knees.
She trailed her nails down his sides. Before her, battle-hewn muscle contracted in response. And yes, she’d seen it all before—Claude’s stomach bared in the sauna or in the training grounds on sweltering days—but it was another thing to hold sway over it. She leaned forward to taste him, the shape of his abs surfacing under her tongue.
As simply as that, Byleth suffered a lash of impatience. A sudden greed. She hadn’t seen him yet, but she’d felt enough to know the shape of him, to know that she wanted him fucking her until there was a quake in her legs. To alleviate her need, she mouthed him through the cloth.
Claude’s hips jerked beneath her, his hands curling into fists as she worked her way up his shaft. She hummed against him, pleased, and she could have sworn she heard those tall walls he’d built around himself crumbling as she neared the tip, right beneath the sound of their cunning and cautious duke hissing, almost angrily, “Fuck.”
Byleth knew to hone in on a weak point when she saw one. She slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants and smallclothes at once, pulling at both. He lifted his hips to aid her, as urgent as he’d been to remove his shirt. His clothes were not even halfway past his knees when she greeted his cock with the flat of her tongue. Finally, finally, Claude’s lips parted with a throaty groan.
Hard as he was, his skin was utter silk on her lips. Claude’s thighs flexed at either side of her as she worked her way to the head of his cock. She failed to restrain her own sigh as she took him into her mouth.
His thighs. Byleth hadn’t thought of them. She’d admired his shoulders, deceptively lean and strong enough to spear an arrow over hundreds without so much as a blink. But his thighs were all muscle, broad in their strength, corded with enough power to drag a wyvern to the skies.
She pulled her mouth across him, dipping teasingly over his tip and back again until Claude made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a whine. She gave no warning before sinking deeper, sliding him over her tongue.
“Fuck, By,” Claude gasped (By, now, she noted), his legs so tense she thought he might snap. Byleth wished he would. As long as she was the one to do it. As long as she was the one making him make those delicious sounds, rendering him so thoughtless that his hands bunched into his sheets.
She deepened her strokes, relaxing her throat and keeping her pace steady as his breaths became anything but. “By,” he choked out once more, lost in the torture she was subjecting him to. Encouraged by this, she hastened, attuning herself to the tells of his body—the twitch of muscle, his groans and their change in pitch. As a telltale shudder ran through him, he gasped, “Wait. By, wait.”
She’d ruined it.
Byleth pulled back as promptly as she’d flung herself at him, cowing under her shame. Claude had come to his senses, clearly. Had realized that he couldn’t—shouldn’t—do this. Or worse, he didn’t want to, and all she’d done was confirm that any love he felt for her was best kept platonic and this night swept from their minds and—
“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting back on her haunches. “We can stop.”
“What?” Claude stammered, sensing the shift in her mood. “No, it’s just that I—I was close.”
“Yes?” Byleth frowned. Stupid in her confusion, she asked, “Did you… not want that?”
He laughed, dragging a palm over his face. Muttered something to himself too quick and quietly for Byleth to catch, though by the shape of his lips as he said it, it certainly wasn’t a phrase from Fódlan.
“As much as I was enjoying myself, I want to take care of you, my friend.” Claude paused, the endearment in so intimate a scenario bringing a smile to both of their faces. After a moment, he uncertainly added, “Unless you’d rather not.”
Take care of her. He called it taking care of her. Byleth often thought of what transpired between her and Shamir as care, too. But theirs was far coarser than this, and they’d never named it so confidently.
But he wanted it. To take care of her.
The pressure in her chest eased.
Byleth ran her hands up his calves. “You will. After.”
Claude’s breath caught as she grasped him again, rising to her knees. He’d softened slightly in their fumbling, but she could amend that. Byleth looked up at him as she leaned forward, his cock brushing across her cheek as she pressed her mouth to his inner thigh.
He swelled against her fingers; what green that had returned to his eyes dimmed.
“You didn’t think I’d let you off that easy, did you?”
So rarely did Claude’s mind go blank, but now, he was at a loss for words. Byleth slipped her mouth around him, still holding his gaze. Then, in an oath she’d never heard him swear before, he breathed, “Goddess,” and let his head fall back.
She picked up where she left off. It didn’t take much for Claude to catch up. He panted as she worked him, swirling her tongue around him on the upstroke, mercilessly dragging him closer to his peak. Before long, he was reaching for her, hand moving towards her hair. Byleth readied herself for the payback for her earlier treatment of him, a yank and pull that would send pain shooting through her roots. She nearly faltered when he brushed the stray locks behind her ear, gathering them loosely in his fist to hold them so kindly from her face instead.
She felt him watching her. His hips straining to keep still. His next exhale was a shaking one, prolonged and full. His hips twitched suddenly, pushing his cock further into her mouth. Before he could apologize, she tugged at them, wordlessly giving him permission that he seized eagerly, rocking to the beat she set. She took him in further and sucked as he pulled away.
His thighs went taut as iron. He throbbed between her lips, spilling with a low groan that unraveled into a string of hard breaths. Byleth hummed around him, encouraging him to enjoy his pleasure, contentedly massaging her tongue against him as he came.
When she released him, she was thrown back into herself, ever more cognizant of her own desire and the evidence of it dripping between her legs. She wasn’t helped any by the sight of him. Chest heaving, lips parted. All resistance, all artifice—gone. All that was left was Claude and his want, and perhaps a touch of wonder to it, too. He still looked at her as if he couldn't tell whether she was reality or dream.
Barring their battles, she’d never seen him so thoroughly wrecked.
She straddled him with an urgency that was selfish, unconcerned with the afterglow he was wading through. She dragged his hands to her armor and demanded, “Get this off me.”
Afterglow be damned, Claude rasped, “Yes.”
They met in a frenzy, his mouth hot and needy on hers as he undid her clasps. Byleth moaned at the feel of it—his hands running down her back, the brush of fingertips against every sliver of revealed skin. He drew back only to kiss his way down her neck, his teeth finding her collarbone before he licked away the edge of pain. When the last of the clasps clicked free, she parted from him to toss her armor aside. He dragged her back the instant it fell, hands braced along her spine as his mouth found her breast.
Byleth gasped, the touch of his tongue bolting through her more powerfully than any spell. Spurred on, Claude raised a hand to knead the other and it was then Byleth realized how soft the pads of his fingers were, the mild callouses proof there was a benefit to those gloves after all.
He teased her until she ground down on him, the dampness of her underwear an unmistakeable demand for more. He gripped her rear to guide her against him once, twice, before lifting her and twisting to push her onto the mattress.
As he climbed over her, Byleth was struck by a sense of vertigo—a terrifying feeling of being unmoored, not unlike her fall into the canyon five years past. But Claude was there to keep her, his body solid and there, and she clutched to him as she would a lifeline.
Claude trailed his lips along her jaw. Nibbled at her breast. Tongued at the knot of her nipples until she was panting, and only then did he pull back. His fingers were at her underwear before Byleth could miss him, yanking them down her legs so roughly it was a wonder they didn’t tear. And while Byleth had gone slow for his sake, she was pleased that Claude had no intentions whatsoever to do the same for her, his mouth closing around her pussy before she had a chance to breathe.
She moaned, overwhelmed by the very sensation of him. The hot pressure of his tongue. His beard rough against her thighs. He pulled from her only to groan, “Gods, By, you’re wet.” And perhaps he was vengeful after all, because he gave her no room to respond before he pressed onward, setting upon her like a man starved.
Byleth gasped as he learned her, his mouth mapping her with the same meticulous focus he paid to his books, his strategies, her moods and smiles. When he finally sucked at her clit, she sobbed in relief, her earlier anticipation coalescing into a lit coal beneath his lips, dense and radiating from the inside out. She could hardly tell whether her eyes were open or closed. Just barely registered the crescent of his smile. She was too greedy, embarrassingly close after so little, and she only had the wherewithal hook her ankles over his shoulders in a plea for more.
With an approving growl, Claude dragged her closer and lifted her hips, the angle leaving her at his mercy. Her next moan was guttural, an animal sound. As she moved her hands to her mouth to stifle herself, he caught her wrists, pinning them to the bed.
She came in sparks. The first, faint. A shiver against his lips. The next, a throb that pitched her moan low, rendering her senseless beyond the juncture of her thighs. Claude’s eyes flickered to her then, bright with promise. He redoubled his efforts, his hold on her wrists tight as he pressed hard licks to her clit until she was pulsing beneath him, bucking into his mouth with a stream of mewls.
He lapped at her as her pleasure ebbed away. She suffered happily until he withdrew, returning to herself in time to be annoyed with his smug grin.
“Good?” Claude asked, making a show of wiping at the wet smothered across his chin.
“I thought,” Byleth began, weakly grasping at her former authority, “I told you to shut up.”
He grinned and crawled up to meet her, kissing her temple far too sweetly for where his lips had been last. Byleth willed herself to ignore the pure fondness of the gesture. In her attempts to distract herself, she shifted, feeling him stiff again against her hip.
“You’ll have to prepare me.”
Claude’s brow knit, puzzled, before a heated understanding set in. “Right.”
He stroked her cheek, granting her another kiss before letting his hand wander, feeling at her breasts and hips on the way down. When it finally dipped between her legs, that self-satisfied quirk returned to his lips. “I don’t think you’ll need much help, my friend.”
Byleth’s reply broke off into a gasp as he smoothly slipped a finger into her. Stars blinked into her vision as pushed deeper, searching her inner walls. She was tender, still swollen with the bliss he’d wrenched from her, and it was a shock when his fingers pressed at the spot to reignite her, drawing a sharp breath.
“Good?” He asked again, this time with earnest concern.
She nodded. Murmured, “Another.”
The second slid into her as easily as the last. Even so, Byleth tightened around them. By Claude’s pause and the shift in his breath, he’d felt it too. He pumped into her, his fingers crooked at the same spot. She sighed, letting him study her, watching for signs of distress.
Tentatively, he asked, “Another?” There was a twitch against her leg at her nod.
Claude’s fingers were larger than Shamir’s, and reached deep. But he was kind as he stretched her, unhurried in his movements. It didn’t take long for her to adjust, or for impatience to flare in her again, his strokes only reminding her that soon, he would offer more.
Intuiting her growing need, Claude brushed his thumb across her clit. Lifted it at the sound of her gasp. “It’s okay,” Byleth reassured him, almost groggy as she added, “Feels good.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad,” he said, warmly enough that a note of warning rang in her ears. It was quieted by his arm snaking around her waist. He turned onto her side and gathered her to him. Hiked her leg over his hip with a squeeze of her thigh. A strange ache bloomed in her chest as she found herself tucked against him in a wanton embrace, his lips briefly closing around the shell of her ear before he asked, “Okay?”
She nodded, too drowned in him to do much else.
Claude handled her tenderly, his thumb rubbing as his fingers moved within, beckoning her flush against his palm. She painted kisses along his neck as her world became him—the embers his fingers stoked in her; his scent, now tinged with sweat. Soon, the moans rolling from her were layered with his breaths, weighty again.
A lusty pressure built at his fingertips. Before long, it was unbearable as it was perfect, Byleth somehow feeling too full and too empty all at once.
“Claude,” she breathed, slipping her hand between them, reaching.
He stilled, his cheek turning against her hair as he asked, “You’re sure?”
She pulled away to look at him. Claude peered back, as anxious as he was yearning. With more than a little guilt, Byleth realized he’d pocketed an expectation at the back of his mind—that even here, she might turn him away.
She nodded. “Are you?”
His patent concern gave way to disbelief. “Byleth,” he chuckled, and for all that he’d done to her, it was her name on his lips that made her stomach flutter. “I’ve always been sure about you.”
And she accepted what she’d known all along. The suffocating truth that this was too much, and she would gladly bear it. She had learned how to hurt ever since she’d learned how to feel, so what did it matter that she was headed for disaster? She loved him enough to endure it. When the time came, she would love him enough to let go.
Claude’s withdrew his fingers. His eyes shut, savoring as he ran his hand across his cock, slicking himself with her. They reopened, fogged as he slipped a hand around her calf to hike her leg a bit higher over his hip. Poised himself at her entrance, his tip just barely pressing into her heat.
Her only warning was a flicker of worry and reverence in Claude’s gaze. She touched his cheek, hoping to dispel the former and recognize the latter, before he pushed in.
Byleth gasped, forgetting herself as she found her fit around him. Gone were her scars, her breasts and limbs. There was only an unfolding, her body welcoming him by giving way, and as he pressed deeper, she understood his fear. So full with him, and still she craved more. She wanted them woven together to an impossible degree; to climb into him such that they would never be apart.
So many nights with a handful lovers. None had ever felt quite like this.
Claude’s head fell forward with a tortured groan. The fingers at her leg pressed hard enough to bruise. After a moment to catch his breath, he began with a sway of the hips. It was enough for them to share a shudder; not nearly enough for relief. His hands migrated to her rear, gripping her through a surer thrust. She moaned in approval, pulling from him a low, rolling string of words that were definitely Almyran, and almost certainly a curse. He buried his face in her shoulder as eagerly as a homecoming, the two of them holding each other as they found a slow, rolling rhythm that rendered them mindless, too engrossed in each other to allow for thought.
It wasn’t long before they discovered the limitations of their position, the movements it allowed far too gentle for their need. Byleth pressed her weight against him, relieved when Claude so willingly rolled onto his back, and ground into him with a sigh. She let herself feel him—his stomach, firm and flexing beneath her hands; his grip at the seat of her hips. She didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she opened them, gracing herself with Claude’s expression. A marveling.
She wanted to make it good for him.
With a smirk around her next breath, Byleth rose and fell onto him with a smack.
“Oh, fu—” Claude’s eyes flew shut as she began to ride him in earnest, alternately driving her weight into him and slowing with a wind of the hips.
She indulged in the sight of him—his grunts of pleasure, the pinch of his brow. So focused she was on him that she didn’t recognize the shortness of her own breath, the pressure he’d so carefully planted in her on the brink of bursting, until Claude’s half-lidded gaze glinted with knowing and he raised his fingers to her clit.
Byleth mouth fell open; her gaze dropped to where they were joined. Claude pressed harder. She needed little more encouragement than that.
She went faster, fucking him as much as she was dragging herself against his fingers. Claude rubbed circles into her just the way she liked, somehow already knew just the way she liked, and soon Byleth was all sharp edges, cut with a pleasure as euphoric as it was painful. Claude planted his feet into the mattress and raised his hips, thrusting up into her as she stilled under the very force of it. If her first orgasm had come in sparks, her second was a crash, rippling out to the very tips of her toes.
As Byleth cried out, there was a flicker of a realization that they should have been quiet, that sound carried through these empty dorms, but then Claude was pouncing on her, pinning her to the mattress, and if she thought he’d filled her before it was only now that she realized how wrong she was, now that he was burying himself in her in earnest.
Patient. He had been oh-so-patient for her but now he was thoughtless as to how raw she was, her orgasm still trickling through her veins. He was as she’d wanted him—unrestrained, no lick of composed and glittering duke in sight.
Byleth wrapped legs around his waist and dragged him deeper; he buried his face into her neck, murmuring praise. And curiously, there was Almyran again, a phrase whispered too tenderly to be a curse, slipped between groans.
Before she could think more on it, Claude paused after a hard thrust, suspending his pleasure. “By,” he gasped out, “should I—”
“Shut up.” She fisted at his hair and pulled his lips to hers, bucking her hips to meet him thrust for thrust, and it was all the blessing he needed to fuck her with an intensity that promised an ache the next morning and made her vision blur.
He went taut in her arms, a bowstring pulled, before breaking with a guttural cry. His rhythm shattered, his release rendering him incapable of anything but deep, uneven strokes. Byleth held him through it all, fingers roaming across his back until he went lax. He fell forward, pressing lazy, grateful kisses to every inch of her skin within reach.
Their breaths slowed together, the room settling into a quiet as hazy as their thoughts. A kind of silence, but not quite so empty. Maybe even a kind of peace.
Just when she entertained the thought of holding Claude tighter to her, indulging in this comfort for just a moment longer, he lifted himself. Their eyes met. Inexplicably, they melted into a pair of shocked laughs.
Hoarsely, Claude asked, “Was that okay?”
Byleth nodded, untangling herself from him. He slipped from her and glanced between her legs. Though he tried to hide it, his eyes flashed with a dark pride. “We should get you something. For that.”
“I’m sure we have something in the infirmary,” she said, watching as he got up and looked about. After a moment, he picked up a cloth hanging from his bedpost. The House Riegan sash. He tossed it to her with a smirk. Reluctantly, Byleth used it to wipe herself, unable to help the thought that Lorenz would have a seizure if he ever knew.
Claude shook his head. “I know a recipe. It’ll be easier if I make it for you. More discreet,” he said. “Something stronger for now, but I’ll get you a tincture you can take moving forward, just to be safe. I'll get it done in the morning. Won’t take much time.”
The thought of the morning gave her pause. There were rules to this. Pillow talk was kept to a minimum. Shamir never stayed the night. Gingerly, Byleth said, “I’ll find you before our meeting, then.”
Claude’s confusion was quickly swept aside by a practiced neutrality. “Right.”
Before discomfort could settle between them, she teased, “Lots of practice making it, I assume?”
With a harsh laugh, he replied, “Hardly. Let’s just say I took the same approach to preventing any stray Riegan heirs as… well. You.”
It was accusing no matter how casually he said it, and a wonder that Byleth didn’t notice his jealousy before. As regret settled in, she said, “We can forget this ever happened—”
“No.”
The dismissal was convulsive. Unlike him. Claude averted his gaze. A moment later, he climbed back into bed, stretching out next to her with a thin smile.
“It’s not as if this is a chore. To be honest, Teach, I think I’m getting the better end of the bargain.” She stared at him, unconvinced. Finally, he scratched at the back of his neck and added, “Do me a favor though. Stay a bit? It would just… feel strange. If you left so soon.”
No. The rules would say no. But then, the rules didn’t have to contend with the way Claude was looking at her. Byleth nodded, settling back into his arms. He was asleep for hours when she finally found the nerve to leave him. She returned to her room in silence, willing herself to forget how tightly he held her. It was not unlike how he’d done on his wyvern, a quiet promise that he wouldn't let go.
Chapter 10
Notes:
...Well, hello. 🫣
Friends, let me tell you about the utter saga this fic has been through. During the last update, I was in the middle of moving states, starting a graduate program, reeling from another big life milestone, and then my computer crashed in the middle of it. I fully believed that all of my files for this fic had been lost and was totally devastated. So imagine my surprise when I found some old versions of them while cleaning out my old Dropbox.
Luckily the draft was pretty polished. I brushed it up, made some tiny revisions to older chapters, gave the fic a snazzy new title (always hated the old one), and I'll probably move this over to a new account to keep my smuttier fics separate from the rest.
I was only able to find an old, rough outline for the rest of the chapters, but it's something. I'm hoping to finally wrap this up after I turn in my thesis and revisit the Merceus chapter to jog my memory. That's most likely to happen this summer. A ways off, but hopefully I don't pull a Byleth and disappear for years this time.
If there are any of my old readers out there, I love you and I'm sorry this took so long. 🫶🏽 Enjoy.
Chapter Text
Shamir was right—it was unwise to let the heart direct decisions in wartime, especially when there was Merceus for the taking. It would have been more responsible to let her sniff around and gather intel on how their troops might infiltrate the fortress through covert means. Claude had to admit that if anyone could find a crack in those impenetrable walls, it was her. Still, he was a proud man with a grudge and a reputation for schemes to protect, so Byleth had only looked mildly disappointed in him when he insisted on taking the reins.
He was heartened, somewhat, by her unwavering confidence in his ability to rise to the occasion. He might even earn it, if he ever learned to keep his hands off of her.
But here Claude was, bending his archbishop over his desk, their ledgers askew and rustling with the force of his thrusts. And how could he be blamed now that he knew the feel of her, clinging to him so tight?
He’d never thought those eyes could grow so dark. He wondered what manner of sin it was to stain them so.
Claude placed the flat of his hand at the small of her back and pushed down, opening her up for that angle she loved. Byleth made that sound for him—that godforsaken mewl he’d never imagined even in his filthiest dreams. She was dripping for him tonight, so wet that his cock glistened in the low light of the room. He groaned, only for Byleth to look at him over her shoulder with a frown.
“The guards,” she whispered.
Claude paused, taking a moment to process what she said and why it mattered. With a chuckle, he pulled her up until she was braced on her hands and clamped his across her mouth. “You’ll have to keep quiet then,” he purred, his breath blowing hot across her ear.
He grinned at her shiver. The faint squeak of protest. He grazed his teeth across the slope of her neck to tease her further and, cursing their own impatience for the layers of clothing between them (her armor, his coat and shirt, albeit in disarray), wound an arm around her to keep her firmly in place.
While Claude preferred the view of their last position this one somehow made her even tighter, knocking all thoughts from his mind outside of him and her and the peak they were racing towards. Muffling his own groan against her shoulder, he adjusted his strokes to fuck her harder, on a slower, steady beat. He was rewarded almost instantly by Byleth melting against him, dampening his palm with her moans. He darted a hand between her legs, rewarded by a barely stifled yell as he circled her clit.
It was swollen and oversensitive, still afire from the time he'd spent laving his tongue over it atop his latest stack of correspondence from the Alliance lords. Her hand flew to his wrist, clutching in a bid for mercy. But he’d had her enough times to know what she could take, to know when she was at her limit and when she would gladly suffer, and if these nights were all Claude could glean from her, then he would milk it for all it was worth.
He rolled her between his fingers, gratified by how Byleth pulsed around him, her greedy cunt squeezing and pulling him deeper. Claude groaned shamelessly into her ear, “I can feel you,” and as if he’d cast a spell, that well in her, brimming with heat, burst.
He held her flush against him as her knees gave out. Ground against her as she rode out her orgasm, spilling with those fucking mewls. When the spasms around his cock slowed, he nudged her back onto the desk, planting his hands on her hips and snapping into her, the slap of their skin resonating to his bones.
Byleth stifled her moan, managing to sound scolding through the quake in her voice. “They’ll hear—”
“Oh, like I care,” he shot back, bucking into her roughly enough that her mouth fell open around a silenced cry. Byleth’s hand returned to cover her lips, the gesture doing little with the clap of their bodies and Claude’s brazen grunts filling the room. But it made such a pretty picture for him that it was almost a shame when he finally found the release he was searching for, fierce enough that his vision went white.
He gripped the swell of her ass as the last of his pleasure seeped through him, indulging in a few lazy strokes to push his spend deeper. The sight of his cock drawing in and out of her—slick with a milky sheen of her arousal and his cum—might’ve stoked new fires in him on another night, but they’d been at it for a long while. He fell forward, draping himself over her with a ragged sigh.
Below him, Byleth’s hand drifted back onto the desk, serving as a rest for her forehead as she caught her breath. She shot a foggy glare at him as he finally withdrew. “The guards will have informed the whole monastery about this by breakfast.”
“They might.” Claude pulled his trousers up, covering himself. Wistfully, he said, “If only someone had thought to direct all patrols to the ground floor for the night.”
He fought back a grin as Byleth stared, her sex-throttled mind still slow. It dawned on her with a smile. “Bastard.”
He let his lips spread. Tossed over her underwear and shorts. As she pulled them back on, trying unsuccessfully to hide the lingering shakes in her legs, she chided, “You shouldn’t abuse your power just to get off.”
“I’m not.” Claude sat in his chair in sated repose. “I’m abusing it to get my best commander off. It’s important for the war effort. Increases morale.”
That got a laugh out of her, a rare, ringing one. He warmed under the look she always gave him when she was impressed by his audacity, beaming at her as she approached.
Byleth cocked her head as she looked down at him, looking every part a woman from the heavens. He brushed her fingertips with his. Watched as her tenderness blinked away.
“We won’t capture Merceus like this,” she said.
A bucket of water wouldn’t have chilled him so thoroughly. Claude supposed he should be grateful for it—these reminders of what they were. Lovers in body only. Friends and colleagues beyond that. He’d yet to kick the painful habit of fooling himself, seizing at any and every gesture between them that painted the illusion of something more.
“We’ll capture Merceus,” he assured her.
“I suppose you and Hilda have already found a way to sneak in?”
Claude made a show of rolling his eyes. “Have a little faith. For all we know, Hilda might be the master strategist we’ve been waiting for all along.”
Her smirk flickered with the candlelight. “Last I heard, she was thinking about dressing you up as Edelgard.”
“Had to scrap that one. With my voluptuous figure? They’d spot me from a mile away.”
Byleth gave his stubborn, wayward curl of hair a tug. “In any case,” she continued, “perhaps we should move our meetings to the afternoon so we can actually get something done. Raphael’s still healing. We’ll need to decide if Cyril’s ready to replace him.”
Thoughts of what Byleth might do with her nights if he had no claim over them flit through his mind. Ugly things, all of them. There and gone.
With a light sigh, Claude muttered, “S’pose we should.”
In truth, their upcoming assault on Merceus had Claude a bit on edge. Schemes were his strong suit, but even with the maps and battle histories and even blueprints Seteth dug up for him (turns out he could be quite generous, when the situation was dire and the records church-approved), it was clear that Merceus had earned its reputation. It was well-staffed and well-constructed, its defenses ironclad. After several nights of wringing his brain dry, Claude realized Merceus would not be taken by stealth alone. Their path to victory, then, would be a delicate balance between sneaking their way through the walls and battering them from the outside.
In theory, calling on Nader's assistance should be a simple endeavor now that the famed warrior had established himself as just another one of Claude’s retainers in Derdriu. But the more Claude schemed, the more he realized they were in need of bodies: reinforcements that, frankly, the Alliance had no means to give. The solution that presented itself was daring, even by his standards. It would be a bold, foolish step towards the dream of opening Fódlan's borders, at the cost of revealing Nader's true origins. Perhaps even his. That more than anything gave him pause.
But there was far more than his seat of power in the Alliance at stake, and no time to twiddle his thumbs. Claude resolved to send two missives on his fastest wyvern: one to Nader and the other to Holst. He even made a point to oversee the messenger's departure himself, staying behind to watch until the beast had turned into a mere speck in the early dawn.
That was two weeks ago, not long after he first took Byleth to bed. Responses were received and messages exchanged. Against all odds, Claude had arranged for the three men to meet in Derdriu in two days time. Their forces would depart for Merceus just days after his return.
Their rendezvous was in itself a miracle, but Claude had little opportunity to celebrate. There were still moving pieces to tend to, a fragile network of turning gears. Shamir's last report indicated that their misinformation campaign was running smoothly so far, but fate was fickle. They still needed to procure more Adrestian uniforms. They were at least two hundred short.
When he'd run himself ragged dwelling on the plan's risks and its merits, Claude decided to grant himself some respite and pour himself some tea.
He didn’t even make it out of his chair.
“You!” Hilda stormed into his office, a cloud of pink whipping behind her. “I have a bone to pick with you!”
Claude sighed, settling back into his seat. “You know, I was just thinking about how I’ve missed our friendly chats.”
“Nuh-uh. Don’t you dare try to charm your way out of this, mister.” She stomped her foot on his rug. Claude idly wondered if he should get it cleaned. “When exactly were you going to tell me you were fooling around with someone?”
That caught his attention. Claude frowned up at her. “What?”
“Oh, you know exactly what I mean! Do I have to spell it out for you? When were you going to tell me you had a lo-ver?”
As Hilda spoke, a peek of purple appeared in his doorway, because of course it did. Claude’s glare speared over her shoulder. “Trying your hand at ‘rudimentary forms of reconnaissance,’ eh, Lorenz?”
Lorenz, to his credit, flushed at the accusation. “It wasn’t my intention to disclose my knowledge to anyone beyond those involved. I merely spoke with Felix about the matter and Hilda accosted me afterwards. You know how persistent she can be.”
Hilda squawked in reply, though Claude didn’t care to make out her words when there was such an ache growing behind his eyes. “And what, exactly, is,” he said, “the matter?”
Lorenz cleared his throat. Turns out, bright red did not complement the colors of House Gloucester. “You’re an intelligent man. I should hardly need to explain.” At Claude’s dead stare, he said, “But if you insist. Earlier in the month, Felix and I were… disturbed from our sleep.”
A bothersome warmth crawled up the back of Claude’s neck. Now was he blushing? No. He refused.
“Of course,” Lorenz continued, “you can imagine he was quite upset. He had apparently planned for a rather intense training regimen in the early morning and had to change tack due to a lack of rest. Now, on my part, I wouldn’t have thought to address this with you—”
“And yet?” Claude interrupted, so polite as to be malicious.
“And yet, I couldn’t help but feel it was crucial to do so.” Lorenz paused, his fingers moving to pull at his collar before he stopped himself (decorum, you see) and placed his hand thoughtfully atop his temple instead. “Now, Claude. We are both young men—”
There was a barely hidden squeal of delight and oh, that’s right, Hilda was still here.
“I, of course, understand the burden of carnal desire. And it is no secret that many of our unmarried peers have taken to sowing their wild oats, as many of their brothers and fathers have done before them. Had this been a practice you’d taken up while we were in the Academy—”
“You insult me by assuming it wasn’t.”
“—it would not have been relevant. But now, you are our sovereign duke.” Lorenz frowned at him with enough austerity to make even Seteth jealous. “Your conduct, even in the most intimate of spaces, must be informed by your duty to the Alliance.”
“Psh, I don’t care about all that.” Hilda pushed past him, thudding her hands onto Claude’s desk. “Who is it?”
Before he could respond, Lorenz insisted, “But even that is the matter, you see. Your personal affairs, whether you like it or not, are political by virtue of your position. When you step into battle, you’re putting your entire lineage as well as the governing power of the Alliance at risk. And if you’re not to take a bride—”
“Lorenz.”
“—then I must ask you to consider the possibility that an heir may result from your illicit affairs and choose your partners accordingly.”
Where to begin.
Claude brought a pensive hand to his mouth as he considered where to go from here. It was his fault, he supposed. He could plot out his actions and mannerisms to a tee, but he wasn’t immune to the proclivities of the male ego. He’d spent years believing Byleth was untouchable, too sacrosanct to seduce. To find that he could have her, whittle her down until she was a thoughtless tangle of moans and need... Well. It was quite the feather in his cap. Which is to say, that first night, Claude wasn’t only apathetic to being heard by Lorenz, Felix, or whoever happened to be walking the halls. He wanted it.
Besides that, he thought it’d be funny.
“Who is it?” Hilda repeated, intimidating enough for Claude to wonder whether he should have her interrogate Imperial prisoners in her spare time.
“Hilda!” He feigned a look of disappointment. “Frankly, I’m hurt that you’d take Lorenz’s word for it so easily. Surely he misheard—”
“Oh, there was no mistaking it, I assure you,” Lorenz said soberly.
In another failure to keep his ego in check, Claude smirked.
Hilda heaved such a great gasp one might’ve thought she’d uncovered some great conspiracy. Like the Alliance secretly being ruled by the prince of their greatest enemy, for example. “Claude, if you don’t tell me, I swear—”
“Tell me this, Lorenz.” He turned in his seat, decidedly ignoring Hilda fuming above him. “What qualities should I be looking for in a partner for my illicit affairs?”
Lorenz stood a bit straighter, so unfazed by the question Claude was sure he’d been waiting for him to ask all along. “She must pledge allegiance to the Alliance, naturally. Due to the scandal the alternative would lead to, she should be unmarried as well.”
“But of course,” Claude agreed with an indulgent purse of his lips.
“And obviously, a woman with ties to nobility, even of a minor line, would be most ideal.” He paused. “This is perhaps the most important point. I say this not out of prejudice, but out of practical concern.”
“And what’s that, exactly?”
Lorenz fell briefly into thought. “You and I have had our spats. However, my dedication lies first and foremost to the Alliance. Seeing as you are its leader and a friend, I say this out of goodwill. You know as well as I that any heir born to a common mother would not be accepted by the roundtable. His mother, whether she is your bride or your paramour, requires a certain level of esteem so that your heir might claim his inheritance in the unfortunate event that it becomes necessary.”
With a puzzled smile, Claude demurred, “There are plenty of commoners who hold much esteem.”
Lorenz sighed. “Yes, but… you must understand. It’s a matter of good breeding.”
What little fun Claude managed to cull from the situation fell away. As his gaze cooled, Lorenz said, “It’s exactly this that concerns me about your current liaison. I have accounted for the women of our class that night—” Claude shot Hilda a look. She rolled her eyes. “—which can only lead me to conclude that your lover is… perhaps… not of the proper pedigree.”
“Lorenz.”
“I understand now that the Professor’s spoken for, you may have felt compelled to find another—”
“Enough.”
It wasn’t until he saw how they were staring that Claude realized how viciously he’d said it. It was unmistakably a command, delivered not by a friend or classmate but their leader in every sense of the word. He might’ve felt worse for it, might’ve even remembered that Lorenz was harmless at the end of the day, if not for how sickened he was by the talk of breeding and pedigrees that shadowed him no matter where he fled.
It was, perhaps, the first time either of them had managed to rattle him. Claude struggled to recompose himself, dropping his hands from the desk to conceal their shake.
They were spared the pain of continuing the conversation by a knock at the door.
“Professor!” Hilda exclaimed, an anxious warble in the word.
Byleth stood at the threshold of his office, perfectly impassive, her knuckles still poised against the doorframe. She looked between the three of them, taking in the scene with detached curiosity. “Am I interrupting something?”
Claude wasn’t fooled for a second.
Lorenz shook his head with zeal. “Of course not! Just some idle conversation.”
She nodded and stepped inside. “Claude and I have our daily meeting.” She bobbed the sheaf of paper in her hand to emphasize the point. “If you could—”
“Yes! Of course.” Lorenz cleared his throat, beckoning Hilda with a wave of the hand. “Come now, Hilda. Let’s leave them to it.”
Hilda must have been shaken as Lorenz was, considering how she followed his order without a single gripe. Byleth calmly watched as they hurried out.
At the click of the door, Claude solemnly asked, “How much of that did you hear?”
Byleth avoided his gaze. As good an answer as any, as far as he was concerned. “He means well.”
Claude’s heart sank. Anger blurred into something more vulnerable, a thrashing thing that begged to be soothed. He eyed her as she laid out their work, gauging her mood. “A well-meaning fool is still a fool.”
“I wouldn’t call him a fool.” She perched herself on the chair in front of him, immediately poking at his unease. Byleth rarely sat before him in this way. She always found her place standing at his side or sitting at the corner of his desk. Never this: a visitor requesting his audience. “He said nothing wrong.”
Claude gaped at her. Before he could form a reply, she curtly added, “In any case, that’s not what we’re here to discuss—”
“No,” he snapped. “You don’t get to breeze past that, By. Don’t tell me you’re actually entertaining his nonsense—”
“But it isn’t nonsense,” she said, far too evenly for his comfort. “He was only reminding you of the realities of your position.”
Again, she made no attempt to impersonate Lorenz. Still, Claude was bowled over by their similarity. “You can’t be serious.”
“Claude,” she began, digging up an old tone that was chiding as it was pacifying, and all of a sudden he was a student again, peering up at a woman he couldn’t reach. “The way he breached the conversation may have been wrong, but you do have the Alliance on your shoulders. There will be a day when you need to think of heirs and finding a proper bride. He’s simply bringing it to your attention sooner rather than later.”
The livid, spoiled boy in him lurched forward. But the tactician, ever-rational and astute, stopped it in its tracks. A single word in her lecture gave him pause, heavier than the others. If he knew her—and he knew her—it was tinged with resignation, and if she were resigned, then...
Claude straightened in his seat, his focus narrowing in on her as he asked, “And what do you think makes for a proper bride, Teach?”
It was subtle, but it was there. An imperceptible look of sorrow flickering across Byleth’s face, a passing cloud. His breath hitched at the possibility that Lorenz’s lecture had pierced her as much as it had him. A thought began to take shape before him: that Byleth had already worried over her eligibility as his partner, his bride, before.
Byleth tapped one of the pages she’d set on the desk. “We have too much to do to be distracted by this.”
If she really wanted to deter Claude’s curiosity, she’d have to do a lot better than that.
“It’s a simple question,” he said, unrelenting. He reached across the desk, his hand outstretched and waiting for her to take it. “I’ve come to you for all kinds of advice before. What makes this any different, my friend?”
Byleth blinked once, twice at his offering before fixing him with a stern frown. “It’s as Lorenz said. It’s not like you to think it bears repeating.”
Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps Claude was too hopeful again, searching for a sign that she might want him the way he wanted her. But his heart was racing despite the distance between them, his ears ringing with every word despite how quietly they spoke, and for someone who sought out hidden meaning in the tiniest detail, this conversation was laden with it, and—
“And if I told you I’m not particularly interested in finding a woman who meets his qualifications?”
Oh, how those divine eyes flared.
“Then I’d continue to remind you that one day, the circumstances will have you change your mind,” Byleth snapped, lashing him back. “It’s how the world works, Claude.”
With enough heat to match her, he said, “You know better than to think I care for how this world works. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To rebuild it anew?”
“Yes,” Byleth replied, sounding positively strangled. “But for now, this is the world we live in. Whether we want to or not.”
Claude pulled back in his seat. A knowing settled over him, elating him as much as it reminded him of his capacity to be cruel. Because there was Byleth, suddenly more jittery than he’d ever seen her, less a demon than a caught rabbit.
Byleth snatched a handful of the pages between them. “I see that we’re not going to get much done here," she said tersely. One that, Claude noted, was shaded with panic more than anything else. “I’ll do my part of the work on these ledgers tonight. We can review them tomorrow.”
He couldn’t manage more than a nod, watching as she rummaged through the sheaf in her hands. She stormed away to outrun his reply. Even if she hadn’t, Claude had no confidence that he'd be able to form one, what with his head spinning in quiet revelation.
Later, while the monastery slept, Claude knocked at her door. There was a pause before Byleth answered, just long enough to worry him. He listened for signs of life behind the wood, dreading the purr of low voices and rustling of sheets. But there was only the scrape of a chair. Byleth peeked out at him moments later, the shadows under her eyes betraying her lack of sleep. He glanced none too subtly over her shoulder, a bitter relief washing over him at the sight of her empty room.
“Hey, Teach. Got a sec?”
She frowned. There was an unspoken semblance of order between them since they’d started sleeping together, one that barred Claude from seeking her out. With a roll of the eyes, he clarified, “To talk.”
She colored with a pretty blush. “It’s late,” she said, more an observation than anything, before stepping aside to let him in. “Don’t tell me you’re still scrambling to finalize our plan for Merceus.”
With an affronted twist to his lips, Claude said, “Give me some credit. No, in fact, I’d say all that’s sorted.”
“Sorted?”
More or less. He and Nader had conspired to start recruiting men in Almyra ahead of their meeting with Holst. Ask for forgiveness, not permission or however the saying goes. Nader's projections were always a bit inflated when it came to battle (comes with the win-loss ratio, Claude supposed), but even accounting for his unwavering optimism, it seemed their Almyran reinforcements would amount to just under half their numbers at Garreg Mach.
It was better than nothing. It would have to be enough.
“Trust me,” he said. Despite Byleth’s suspicious eye, Claude knew she did.
He cleared his throat. With a shrug of his shoulder, he drew the purpose for his visit from beneath his cape. “I have something for you.”
In an instant, her suspicion fell away. Claude had worked so hard to coax Byleth out of herself, but now he questioned whether he’d ever managed to get her to wear her feelings so openly before. Stricken, she reached for her father’s diary the way a skeptic would a ghost.
He handed it to her. Watched as she ran her fingers across its leather cover, so transfixed he wasn’t sure she’d notice if he left the room. “I thought it had been destroyed. You had it all this time?”
Claude nodded a bit guiltily. “I'm sorry. I should have returned it sooner. Before the invasion, even. I know it’s overdue.”
It was shameful, how long he'd put this off. But Byleth seemed too enamored with the diary's return to care. “How did you...? The attack on the monastery. When did you even have the time?”
"I made time," he replied. "When the Empire came to Garreg Mach, I figured you'd be too focused on the battle to think much about your belongings. When you ordered us to retreat, I swung by and picked this up before leaving. Kept the rest of the Golden Deer waiting for a bit, actually. I thought Seteth was going to kill me before Edelgard did."
Byleth frowned. "But I kept it hidden."
"Badly." Claude scoffed. "C'mon, By. Did you really think the Empire wouldn't go around ripping up floorboards when they ransacked this place?"
With a wan smile, she teased, "I suppose I should've consulted with you."
"That probably would've been in your best interest, yeah." Claude smiled softly as she cracked open the diary to its early pages. He'd read it enough times in her absence to know, roughly, what she was reading. Jeralt's odes to Sitri were nauseating at times, but they made Byleth's eyes gleam like nothing else.
After some time, she closed the book and simply held it, appreciating its weight. "It's good you kept this from falling into the Empire's hands. But why not destroy it, then? Why keep it for so many years?”
There was something about the way she said it that made Claude feel accused somehow. Made him question whether the Empire's interests were at the forefront of his thoughts when he wrenched at Byleth's floorboards all those years ago. The likely answer was, probably. But it was strange, then, how little that mattered to him now.
“I knew you’d be back,” Claude replied simply. She looked up at him, so transparently touched it made his own cheeks warm. But when she turned back to the diary, there was a persistent tension in her brow. Some errant worry he'd yet to brush away.
“Something’s weighing on you.” Claude chuckled at her startled glance. “Is it still so surprising that I can read you, my friend?”
Byleth’s lips curled. He couldn’t be sure whether she was fighting the urge to smile or wince. “No,” she conceded. They were silent for a moment, Byleth lost in her thoughts and Claude waiting to see where she would steer the conversation. She moved to place the tome onto her desk and lay her fingertips on the cover. “I was thinking, maybe it would have been better if it were destroyed.”
He studied her, mapping the tense line of her shoulders. “How do you figure?”
Her fingers twitched, her nails scraping into the leather. Her voice was hollow when she spoke again, with no more substance than an echo in a cave. “You read it, didn’t you? The archbishop of Fódlan is a demon, just as they say. A monster." Even softer, she said, "I shouldn’t even be alive.”
“Byleth,” Claude breathed, her name forced from him by the pang in his chest. “What are you saying? You’re a wonder.”
"Rhea would say the same," Byleth snorted. He was surprised by how it stung. “I don’t even have a heart.”
“And?” Claude rushed across the room and gripped her by the arms, gently turning her towards him. There was a shine to her eyes he hadn’t seen since that night in the Officer’s Academy. Her tears were brighter now, harshly revealed by light of her room. “You’re kind. Generous. Trustworthy.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“But it’s what matters,” he insisted. “Hearts are wasted on people with less than half your virtue. Just look at Fódlan. Look at me.”
Byleth’s eyes flashed suddenly. “Don’t talk about yourself that way.”
A breathy laugh escaped him before he could help it. Claude reached up, relieved to see her feelings return even in the tiniest of sparks. “There she is,” he murmured, cradling her cheek in his palm. He brushed gently at the corner of her eye, warding off a tear that threatened to spill.
His lips glanced across hers. It was meant to be brief, a fond touch to lend her some comfort. But she pinched her eyes shut and shook her head as if he were demanding more. “Stop,” she whispered, even as she leaned into him.
Byleth’s hands whispered across his waist in an invitation to draw closer. Claude hesitated before he took it, stealing another feather-light kiss. She quietly took another in return. Recognizing the cycle they were caught in, he chuckled. His own eyes fluttered shut as he put a modicum of distance between them, gently nuzzling the tip of her nose with his. “You’re giving me mixed signals here, Teach.”
Her hands gripped at his shirt, bunching the fabric. After taking a slow breath, Byleth dropped her head to rest against his collarbone and shuddered.
“Claude,” she began shakily. “I don’t think we should do this anymore.”
Claude grew very still.
He told himself that he expected this. He knew it was coming. He was too greedy, had pushed her too far. But no amount of knowing could blunt the pain of it. If anything, the inevitability made it worse.
He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat before stepping back. His hands lingered on her arms before he let them fall. Then, because he had always been a dirty liar at heart, he smiled.
“I understand.”
Byleth stared up at him, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. Her expression was shifting too quickly to be decipherable, cycling between hurt and confusion and some other awful emotion from each second to the next. Then it cleared, resolving itself to the stony mask Claude had worked so hard to chip away. “I’m sor—”
“I love you, you know?”
Byleth froze. Before silence could wedge itself between them yet again, Claude scoffed at himself. He looked aside, sheepishly scratching at his neck. “Ah. I could’ve timed that better. But that’s what I came to say.” He took a breath to steady himself. “I’ve already watched you die once. Or twice, technically. It’s not like I’m expecting either of us to—well, you know. But tomorrow I leave for Derdriu and with Merceus around the corner… not to mention whatever else this war throws at us. I could never forgive myself if I let that go unsaid.”
He was rambling. He couldn’t stop himself. He had nothing if not his words, the pretty little sentences and white lies. And what else was left for him now, what with every wall he’d ever built around himself threatening to collapse?
Claude bit the inside of his cheek, punishing himself, before looking to Byleth. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Teach. It’s not like I expect anything in return.” He was speaking too brightly. Neither of them believed it. He cleared his throat, hesitating before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was rougher. Honest. “I meant it when I said I’d take what you were willing to give.”
Byleth’s lips parted and closed. Then, with all the finality of a death knell, she said, “Thank you for telling me.”
And that was that.
In all the battles he’d fought, all the awful years of war, Claude had never made a hastier retreat. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He couldn’t even be sure he bid her goodnight in the end, or whether he closed the door. He barely registered the pillars he passed, the cobblestones, or how the moonlight spilled over the monastery grounds.
When he finally reached his quarters, it seemed that his bed simply appeared before him, the sheets empty and cool. He stared at it and wracked his brain for some memory of where he’d been, whether it had taken him minutes to return or whether he’d wandered for hours. But he came up empty. All he knew of his night was that he was with Byleth, and then he was alone.
Chapter 11
Notes:
Fair warning: the violence in this chapter is a bit more graphic than the chapter on Gronder Field (bc I reread this fic and decided I needed to emphasize the horrors of war even more, I guess?). I also went back and rewrote a bit of last chapter to be more accurate to Claude's "Golden Scheme" (which is also described in this chapter) and tweak the circumstances of how he kept/returned the diary. More rambling in endnotes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There weren't many mercenary habits Jeralt endeavored to keep her from, but when Byleth was young and in training, drinking was one of them. Odd for a man who, if not for the demands of his sword, would’ve happily glued a pint to his hand.
It was a practical matter, of course. Dulled senses were bad enough on a job but potentially even worse in the aftermath, when the two of them retrieved their bounties and retreated to inns teeming with sellswords who were not so lucky. Jeralt relaxed, somewhat, after they’d made a name for themselves and recruited their own company. (How many years had that taken? She still wasn’t sure.) Byleth remembered how vigilant he was when he brought her to a tavern to have her first drink, then her second, then her third and fourth. By the end of the night, there was hardly a flush on her cheeks nor a glaze to her eyes. When Jeralt asked after her state the next morning, she had little to report other than the ale made her feel “cozy.” He’d stared at her a moment before chuckling to himself. “I don’t know what I expected,” he said.
Looking back now, Byleth realized he was feeling for the boundaries of her humanity even then.
On her part, she was never one to crave the comforts waiting at the bottom of a pint. Again, it was a practical matter. She’d never been drunk, not truly. Even in high volumes, her thoughts would only be lightly blurred, not muddled, by the strongest of brews. She liked the ceremony of imbibing more than its effects. Drinking had always been a social practice, a way to commiserate or celebrate with others after a mission was over. She liked to think it made her seem like less of a demon among her father’s men, back in the days before she learned to laugh.
Jeralt would’ve been at a loss to see her now, haunting the cathedral well late at night by her lonesome and nursing his old wooden flask. But she’d undergone stranger changes since arriving at Garreg Mach.
Footsteps sounded on the nearby cobblestones, heralding some strange specter. Moments later, Shamir appeared at her side. With a vaguely amused grunt, Byleth said, “You’re getting better at announcing yourself.”
The knight reached over, plucking the flask from between Byleth’s fingers. She shook it gently, gauging the weight of its contents, before fishing her own flask from her coat pocket and handing it over. “You’re running dry.”
“You have my thanks,” Byleth purred. She tapped it against the flask that remained in Shamir’s hand before taking a swig.
Shamir observed her before following suit, draining Jeralt’s flask of its last drops and frowning as the liquor settled on her tongue. “This is whiskey.”
Byleth nodded, turning to lean back against the stone walls of the well. “Spoils from the last bout at Magdred Way. Seems the bandits looted some merchants before we caught up to them.”
“It’s not often you seek out a bottle.”
It was a firm tone, nearly erring on reproach. Byleth took another sip to wash away its sour taste. “Are you here to scold me, Shamir?”
The knight stared her down evenly, the night passing between them. The monastery had gone preternaturally quiet in its preparations for Merceus. So many soldiers, and not a single laugh or cry on the wind.
Shamir eased off with a short shake of the head. “No, Your Grace.”
Byleth should’ve known better than to give her the opportunity to deal a precision strike. The Goddess Tower loomed at her periphery along with the memory of Rhea’s robes. She gripped harder at the flask as if to brand its smooth surface with her fingertips and hissed, “Don’t.”
Shamir quirked a brow. A subtle twist of the knife.
They drank in silence. Or rather, Byleth drank and Shamir looked on—past the walkway’s stone walls and over the gorge that lay beneath. It was rare for Shamir to look so pensive. There was a time when Byleth would only bear witness to such moods from the safety of their pillows. But she noticed Shamir slipping into such interludes more often as the war went on.
“Would you return to Dagda?” Byleth asked.
After the war. Assuming there would be an after. Assuming they survived.
Shamir’s hair passed across her cheek as she shifted. That same lock was brittle on their march back from Gronder, caked with blood and sweat and ungodly grime. “I have nothing to return to. But the more I think on it, there’s not much to keep me in Fódlan either.” Shamir lifted her flask only to remember it was emptied, lowering it with a disappointed frown. “And you?”
Her laugh was a choked, wet sound. Byleth fiddled with the mouth of her flask between her fingers, pushing her thumb into its hard edge. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Is it?” Shamir asked, eyes cutting through the dark.
It hadn’t been long since Byleth was last pinpointed like this. Since a marksman who knew all her cracked parts set their sights on her and took aim. But Claude, at least, had the decency to stay his hand when she was cornered.
But, Claude.
Byleth drank.
“Do we have all we need?” She asked, stiff and businesslike. No slur to her words, no waver in her vision. The world remained steady and deceitful around her, as if it were at peace.
“Ignatz left for Merceus this afternoon. We used messages we’ve intercepted from Enbarr to forge the royal seal on the letter he carries. It’s convincing. I have no reason to believe their generals will suspect anything.”
“And the uniforms?”
“We’re fifty short.” Shamir tapped her flask absentmindedly against the well. Just twice, but enough to betray some concern. “I’ll propose that we reserve a small number of snipers and wyvern riders to go without disguises during tomorrow’s meeting. We’ll keep close to camp and fly in to storm the ramparts once you’ve breached their defenses.”
As good a plan as any. Byleth nodded and promised, “I’ll vouch for you.”
They went silent, and Byleth tried to ignore how mention of the war council had dread circling at the pit of her stomach. She wouldn’t mind if it were a noble discomfort, purely borne from the fears that came with risking her and her students’ lives. But a large part of her anxiety was frivolous. Selfish. It would be the first time she faced Claude since he left for Derdriu, flying from her and the confession he’d laid at her feet.
She felt hunted by the memory of that night, as if a great beast of Zanado panted at her heels. It wrenched her open, the way he looked at her. Devoted in spite of it all, his gaze still wrought with the same worship he shone on her during their nights together. Even worse, there was the way Claude stared at her across his desk after Lorenz’s painful reminder of his (and their) duties, like she was a riddle he’d finally solved. All-knowing and soul-gazing and full of hope.
She had promised herself, hadn’t she? That she would let him go when the time came?
It wasn’t that Claude surprised her, it was that she didn’t move fast enough. Claude didn’t reveal that he loved her, he’d only damned them by speaking it aloud. Of course he wanted her, this man so prone to reaching for the impossible. Byleth feared as much. She’d already known.
She took a long draft from the flask, and it wasn’t until it touched her lips that she realized her hand was trembling. Not a shiver but a quake, a traitorous fit of muscle that had ale dribbling from the corners of her mouth. But Byleth couldn’t stop it—the shake or her mindless thirst—and it was only when Shamir pressed a firm touch to her wrist that she brought the flask down.
Byleth swallowed, brew and humiliation running thickly down her throat. Her breath was short suddenly, each sharp inhale sticking in her chest. She hastily swiped her mouth against her sleeve and tried to ignore the moisture skirting across the back of her knuckles, not of the ale she spilled down her chin but on her cheeks.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered, “I won’t have much more to give.”
The leather of Shamir’s gloves were thinner than Claude’s and softer from years of wear. They brushed gently at Byleth’s face, catching the prickling tears at their corner of her eyes. Her skin cooled in their absence as Shamir delicately took the flask from her and set it on the wooden cover of the well.
She studied her, so grim and condoling and beautiful that Byleth was suddenly wracked with loneliness, felt it rolling beneath her feet as an undertow threatens to drag a swimmer into an unrelenting wave. She didn’t realize she’d moved closer until Shamir gently gripped her chin, stopping her when their lips had just two breaths between them.
“That’s enough.”
Byleth stared at her, her cheeks blazing shades deeper than any liquor had ever managed to color them. “I’m sorry,” she rasped.
Shamir’s next breath was a bit heavier than the others. The kiss she pressed to Byleth’s forehead was chaste and final. She withdrew from her and for a moment, Byleth felt forsaken, a horrific feeling that brought on the impulse to cling to Shamir and keep her close. But Shamir seemed to have accounted for this—she knew Byleth, albeit in her own way—and remedied it by guiding her to sit with her on the cobblestones. They sat there, pretending Byleth’s tears weren’t wetting her shoulder. After some time, Shamir wound her arm around her and drew her closer to her side.
It was a beautiful night. Clear and temperate, the best yet of the Harpstring Moon. In its clarity, Byleth could see a star her father once pointed out to her: one that hung high above most others and, if you looked closely enough, occasionally flashed the red of a young rose. At the time, Jeralt spoke of a people who believed that star to be the eye of a vengeful goddess. The story went that humans once battled the goddess in hopes of enslaving her and making use of her divinity. They lost, but succeeded in blinding her in one eye.
The goddess cursed humanity to live in an endless cycle of war and peered down nightly in hopes of witnessing the battles fought in the dark. The star itself was the glint of her good eye, revealing where she sat to view the carnage from the heavens. Its flashing betrayed her thirst for blood. It was said that she took so much joy in these wars that she’d stay as long as she could just to see the gruesome remains by daylight.
“See for yourself,” Jeralt told her, and she did. After battling through the night, Byleth would always look skyward and find that it was the last star to blink away in the light of the rising sun.
She knew now that the story he’d shared was blatant heresy. As head of the Church of Seiros, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Shamir,” Byleth said, sounding so small one might’ve thought she was a girl again, asking her father how to live. “What are people like us supposed to believe in?”
Shamir frowned. “I didn’t think you cared for what we’re supposed to do.” Her hand drifted down Byleth’s back, past her waist, and fell lightly upon the cool earth. “As far as gods go… I think we make our own.”
There were times Byleth wondered how much of Sothis was still left in her. Whether, if she delved deeply enough, she might find a strange unfamiliar girl slumbering at the corners of her mind.
She lifted her head from Shamir’s shoulder, searched the stars, and wept.
“We’re playing dress-up,” Catherine said, pinching at the doublet laid out before her dyed Adrestian red. “Is that it?”
“I doubt it,” Lorenz said, holding his own doublet up for examination. He frowned at his assessment, shooting a sharp glance at Claude from across the council room. “Claude always has a little something extra up his sleeve.”
“Always.” Hilda leaned against the table, digging her elbows into the thick fabric of her own disguise. Propping her chin in the palm of her hand, she said, “So out with it, Leader Man. What’s the plan? Are you dressing up as Edelgard or what?”
Claude snorted. “I thought about it. But even with all the generous help we’ve culled from the lords of the roundtable, we couldn’t quite foot the bill for that fancy gown. I’d like to think I came up with a decent solution, though.”
He nodded towards Ignatz, the painter’s eyes glassy from a long night of travel. “Ignatz did us the favor of delivering a letter to Fort Merceus. It shared news of reinforcements coming in from the capital, along with the name of the ‘Imperial general’ who’ll be leading them. Considering your intel on the fort’s layout, Shamir, I wondered if you’d—”
“Shamir and I discussed her leading our snipers in a separate contingent,” Byleth cut in.
The stutter in Claude’s facade was imperceptible, but it was there. A twitch in the cheek. The vague suggestion of a grimace. Byleth might’ve thought she’d imagined it if not for the look he gave her, pleasant and oh-so-constructed. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” Shamir said, before laying out her logic at a characteristically precise clip. To Byleth’s relief, Claude listened earnestly, his gaze open but calculating as the situation would demand.
“Well,” he said lightly, “who am I to ignore the wisdom of our lovely Teach?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Byleth saw Hilda glancing between the three of them with undue concern. She willed herself not to think of it, focusing instead on swallowing around the taste of bile creeping up her throat.
“I take that to mean our false general is supposed to be a woman?” Byleth asked.
Claude nodded hesitantly. “Ideally. It wouldn’t be too out of a place for a man to have that name, but better that than to give their guards any reason to ask questions. And it can’t be you, Teach. You’re too recognizable. We’re already taking enough of a risk trying to have you and the Sword of the Creator blend in with the crowd.”
“I’ll do it.” The room turned towards Catherine who shrugged with a casualness at odds with the weight of the responsibility. “Have a flier carry Thunderbrand in and I’ll retrieve it from them once the fighting starts. Besides, it’ll be good to practice my swordsmanship without it for a while.”
“I can handle that, so long as you promise not to leave me out to dry,” Sylvain offered. “House Gautier doesn’t need another one of its sons turned into a beast.” He ignored the deadly glare Felix was leveling at him across the table, turning to Claude instead. “Is that it?”
“Far from it,” Claude replied. “While I was trying to come up with a strategy, I couldn’t stop thinking about an early conversation Hilda and I had about infiltrating Merceus. She said something then, about having someone open the doors up from the inside. These disguises and our deception goes a long way in making that possible, but possible isn’t enough. I wanted to get us as close as we could to a guarantee.”
He stood suddenly, directing their attention to the map on the table. At the moment, two figurines were placed on the parchment as representatives of their forces and the inimitable fort.
“Think of what happened at Gronder Field.”
The name sucked all the air from the room and spat it back out. There was a subtle croak to Claude’s voice when he spoke next. “It was chaos. The moment Dimitri turned on us, we panicked. When we realized what was happening, we turned to our allies. Reconsolidated our forces.” Claude reached into his pockets and drew out a third figurine, placing it at an angle near the Alliance. “We’ll be recreating those conditions. When we march on Merceus, a third party is going to attack us.”
His pronouncement shocked the council, but especially Marianne, whose chair scraped across the floor as she straightened in her seat. “We’re going to be attacked?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve taunted more enemies just for the sake of your scheme, boy,” Judith hissed.
“I didn’t taunt our enemies. I recruited them.” Claude grinned under their baffled looks. “It’s all for show. I met with General Holst and arranged for reinforcements to join us from the east. If everything goes according to plan, the gatekeepers at Merceus will think the Alliance is attacking their precious reinforcements as they arrive. In their panic, they’ll open their doors to give us shelter. And we’re in.”
It wasn’t a bad plan, but no reasonable soldier would go so far as to say it guaranteed their entry. “What are our numbers now that this third army is accounted for?” Felix asked.
Claude hesitated before he named it, and the council bristled. “That’s still below the threshold of what’s recommended to seize a fort, let alone the Stubborn Old General,” Lysithea said.
“It is,” Byleth murmured. She glanced across their circle of sullen, battle-worn faces. Out of habit, she turned to Claude as she reminded them, “But greater victories have been won with less.”
His gaze softened for her then steeled over, somehow more impenetrable than before.
“I’d love nothing more than for this plan to work,” Judith said, “but I’ve got some bad news for you. Apparently the notorious Death Knight has been placed in charge of defending Fort Merceus.”
The news brought a touch of ice to Byleth’s veins. But Claude’s grin turned hungry, teeth turned to fangs. “Even better. We can make a point of zeroing in on his location during the siege. What better way to strike fear into the hearts of the Empire than taking down their prized general?”
“No.”
His head whipped to face her. Byleth couldn’t blame him considering how fiercely she’d said it. But Claude had never seen what the Death Knight was truly capable of. She’d made sure of that. He’d never seen how his scythe could glide through bone like butter, or Lorenz disemboweled. Once, the Death Knight struck Hilda with a spell from such a distance that her death almost escaped Byleth’s notice. If not for her wyvern laying beside her, Byleth wouldn’t have recognized the body. Since then, she was burdened with the knowledge that the Death Knight’s range could extend to nearly half the length of the cathedral bridge.
“Defeating the Death Knight isn’t our goal,” Byleth said firmly. “Capturing Merceus is.”
There was an awkward pause before Claude countered, “Obviously. But he’s been a thorn in our side for far too long. Since before the start of the war, even. Overwhelming his defenses means we’ll finally be well-positioned to target him. It’s best we end this now. If not, then when?”
“The Death Knight is a single adversary. A formidable one who will require a concerted effort to defeat. Seizing the fort is challenge enough and we’re better served in the long-run by whittling down Imperial forces than engaging him head-on.”
“Teach—”
“You’ve entrusted me with our command, isn’t that right?” Byleth snapped. She glared up at him and realized she was angry. Angry that he reached for these ridiculous ambitions like a child grabs at shiny new toys and that he insisted on wearing that awful, lying smile. “I won’t be moved on this.”
Claude stared blankly back at her, trying to make sense of her resolve. Finally, his lips parted with the softest, defeated huff.
The sound woke them. They became aware of their audience, the council’s polite silence settling over them like smog. As always, Claude sprung to the rescue and resumed his good show, winking and grinning and doing everything to distract them short of dancing on the tips of his toes.
“Guess we’re a bit out of sync today, huh, Teach?”
Her eyes narrowed in reply.
Claude stiffly turned to face the room. “Well. That’s the plan. You all have better things to do than watch mom and dad fight.” He assessed them for a moment before taking on the sober, regal bearing Byleth had last seen him don at the roundtable.
“This won’t be easy. But neither was Gronder. Neither was Myrddin. And Teach is right. I’ve entrusted her with our command for a reason. I have faith that all will be well, as long as we have her on our side.” Claude looked out on the glum faces circled about the table before waving his hand to adjourn the meeting. The breezy gesture eased no minds. “See to your preparations.”
The room filled with the sound of shuffling papers and feet. Heavy doublets were folded and gathered into weary arms. As Byleth moved to leave, Claude reached for her. His hand hesitated for a fraction of a second before resting on the table beside hers. “A moment of your time, Teach?”
Hilda was last to leave, looking so furtively between them that Byleth now had no doubt she knew something was amiss. Frankly, she suspected Hilda knew quite a bit more than that. It would be unsurprising considering just how close she and Claude were. During their schooldays, they danced around each other so insistently Byleth assumed they’d eventually be matched.
“I didn’t mean to undermine you,” Byleth said, dismissing her wandering thoughts.
Claude briefly parted from her to make sure the door was securely shut. “This isn’t about that.”
Byleth braced herself for the worst: Claude pouring his tender soul at her feet again, or else Claude taking his heartache and turning it back on her, gutting her across their tattered map. Thankfully, when Byleth rose to face him his expression was carefully devoid of the ardent feelings he’d shared before his flight to Derdriu. He seemed more skittish than anything else.
“Teach,” he began. “This is for your ears only, but there’s actually more to my plan.”
Of course there was. It was a plan devised by “The Master Tactician,” after all. And after the ambush at Ailell, Claude had been very careful to keep key aspects of their strategies close to his chest.
“Thanks to Edelgard, the Imperial army is more unified than I would’ve expected,” Claude admitted. “It’s clear we won’t win unless we pull out all the stops. But there are a few aspects of the plan that might be difficult for our allies to swallow. Namely, the source of our reinforcements.” Before she could ask, he rushed to assure her, “They’re trustworthy. I swear it. But in the event of any backlash in the aftermath, I’ll need your support.”
“Of course.” Byleth waited for more detail, or else a dismissal. In the absence of either, she frowned. “What else? You’re being cryptic, Claude.”
She meant it to be scolding, but all it provoked from him was a sharp laugh. “Yeah. I tend to do that.” Claude rubbed at the back of his neck before meeting her gaze. His eyes bore into hers with a clarity that was stunning and almost honest. “Chandra is my best mount. I’ll be useless if I leave her behind. But, I can’t exactly strap her to Sylvain’s wyvern along with Thunderbrand on our way in. And as you might have guessed, being the only guy in Fódlan who rides around on a white wyvern makes you a bit easy to identify.”
Byleth understood. “You’re marching with our reinforcements.”
“I mean, it’ll sure help them believe this show we’re putting on, don’t you think?” Claude said with a grin. “Not that I think you’ll miss me much. But I won’t be able to be your eye in the sky this time, my friend.”
But it was more than that.
This wasn’t just their usual afternoon routing bandits. And at least they’d known the layout of Gronder Field. But Merceus was an enigma. The intel Shamir had gathered was impressive, but largely limited to the fort’s outer bailey. They weren’t even sure if the blueprints Seteth provided them with were up to date. The fort’s impressive number of soldiers was one thing, but there might be traps they hadn’t accounted for. Beasts to contend with. Let alone the Death Knight. It was a death trap in the best of circumstances, and to waltz into it with allies you hardly knew—
An awful thought struck her, almost rotten enough to wrinkle her nose. “How long have you known?”
Claude’s eyes went flat. His brief silence spoke volumes. Byleth could see cogs whirring behind the green. Then, with an insufferable chuckle, he said, “C’mon, Teach. Don’t get all paranoid on me now.”
It was a credit to her teaching that he managed to block her strike.
Byleth hadn’t registered how she moved to slap him, her hand flying of its own accord. Now it hovered inches from his cheek, his fingers wrapped securely around her wrist and gripping tighter when she attempted to pull it away. She flushed with shame and fury, her fingers balling into a fist. “Stop that,” she rasped. “Stop pretending. I thought you and I were past this. I thought…”
Claude’s smile had fallen some time between her hand rising and him catching it. He was looking at her so tenderly now, raw and true. It was for her benefit as much as his when he delicately worked her hand open, interlacing his fingers with hers. Byleth gritted her teeth as he drew it closer, guiding it to cradle his cheek.
It had only been days. A matter of days, and she’d missed this. The soft bristle of his jaw beneath her palm. How he basked in her touch like the monastery’s cats lazed in the sun.
“I didn’t tell you I love you because I have a death wish,” Claude said, his voice low and graveled. “I told you I love you because I do.”
Byleth failed to speak. She’d always had more faith in action than in words, but what her body wanted and what her logic dictated was at odds. She wanted to kiss him. To thrust him onto the table and lock themselves in. And the more she willed herself to ignore it, the more Claude’s steady gaze wavered, betraying that he knew.
Claude turned his head at a minute angle as if to brush his lips across her wrist before stopping himself. He squeezed her hand instead, and let it drop.
“Rest assured, Teach. I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.” A lilt gradually returned to his tone, but it was a pale imitation of its signature bounce. “I know we have what it takes to free Fódlan from the Empire’s rule, and I fully intend to witness the world we’ll build once the fighting’s ceased. With you at my side. In whatever capacity that may be.”
“Claude—”
“With that said,” he chirped, retrieving his smile from between their feet. “As much as I enjoy your company, we both have quite a bit of work to tend to. And I wouldn’t mind a bit more time to lick my wounds. That’s only fair, right?”
Byleth’s fingers curled once more. Silence passed between them. Finally, she dropped her gaze and took a respectful step back in reply.
Claude stared at her a moment longer before placing his hand on her shoulder as a soldier would to any ally. “I’ll see you on the battlefield, my friend.”
When they left for Merceus, Byleth would wish she had the courage to look at him as he took his leave.
They arrived at high noon. Byleth stood nestled behind several rows of cavalry, swallowed up in a scarlet cloak. It was only one of the measures they’d taken to keep her hidden, and a flawed one. A reasonable onlooker would think it strange that anyone would be covered in this heat.
It was sweltering beneath the fabric. The summer sun was merciless, bearing down on them in the dead air. She was been placed among men who towered above her to take advantage of her small stature and obscure her from view. This offered some shade, but the relief was minimal. Byleth did her best to endure the uncomfortable layer of hair sticking to the sweat on her skin.
From this distance, Byleth could hear Catherine bellowing to the gatekeepers but couldn’t discern the words. The man that peered over the parapet responded in a thin tenor that was even harder to make out. After a brief exchange, he turned to his partner to confer.
“What’s taking them so long?” Marianne whispered ahead of her. She was also cloaked, though mounted. “Shouldn’t they have let us in by now?”
A white blade, curved and serrated, peeked out from beneath the edges of her cloak.
“Marianne,” Byleth said softly. “At your hip.”
Marianne shifted the cloth off to one side with a nervous squeak, disappearing Blutgang from view. “I’m so sorry.”
The poor girl sounded as if she was about to cry. Byleth willed more kindness into her tone, hoping to achieve the softness she’d always imagined a mother might have. “Have faith, Marianne.”
There was a light sniffle. A little nod. “Yes.”
The gatekeeper returned and looked down to Catherine with a reedy yell. Low murmurs rippled from the frontlines, reaching them as Catherine yelled back.
“They’re asking for more identification,” the man in front of Marianne reported. “The name of another Imperial general who can vouch for us.”
“And? Did she give them one?” Byleth asked.
“No,” he replied as Catherine shouted on up ahead. “She’s told them to refer back to the letter.” After another wave of whispering, he said, “Says giving them a name would be pointless since we weren’t requested, but sent directly by Edelgard.”
It was a decent counter, but this was still more scrutiny than they could afford.
When the gatekeeper turned away to consult with his colleagues, Byleth scanned the battlements. Merceus’ snipers hid themselves well, but she could see the crowns of at least ten, fifteen heads poking out from behind the parapets.
“Professor,” Marianne whimpered, “Where’s Claude?”
“Faith, Marianne,” Byleth insisted, even as the word ‘retreat’ lay poised at the back of her throat.
In the gatekeeper’s absence, even their mounts had gone silent.
Then, chaos.
A horn sounded, blanketing them in its wailing. Soldiers skittered across the battlements like insects, their fingers pointing east. Their forces turned in unison and saw horses, wings, blades and fangs glinting. Hope draped in the colors of gold and green.
At the back of their army, tucked amongst their wyvern riders, Sylvain shouted, “The Alliance approaches!”
Bless him—it didn’t have the resonance of a victory cry, but a warning. A reminder of the roles they were here to play. His troop fell in line, yelling with the same panicked urgency, their cries carrying across their army like wildfire. Lorenz stoked the flames, shouting somewhere amongst the cavalry, “Let us in!”
Their words echoed in the mouths of their soldiers. Their voices rolled into a clamor, real fears fueling their performance and spilling free.
The fort swam in Byleth’s vision as their forces lurched forward in desperation, though not the sort their Imperial audience might have assumed. But the gatekeepers had yet to reappear. Just when Byleth began to worry that they truly had been found out and left for dead, the stone walls shuddered. An awful groan filled the air as the Stubborn Old General opened its gates.
The soldiers choked around her, swallowing cheers. “Steady,” Byleth barked, low enough to be lost in the yelling but loud enough to be heard within her immediate vicinity. She moved forward, stalking behind the cavalry.
“Wait for the signal,” she reminded them before they crossed the drawbridge, subtly drawing her cloak further over her face. The air within her hood was suffocating now, especially with men pressing in on her during the brisk march in.
Before setting out, the generals had agreed to maintain their subterfuge for as long as possible, hoping that they might actually be escorted into the heart of the fortress. They’d also agreed that it would be a respectable victory if they managed to gain entry for their troops at all. As the doors to the inner bailey came into view, Byleth realized their ideal scenario might actually be feasible. She nearly stumbled in shock.
The doors parted wider, offering them all a glimpse of the inner courtyard. Byleth couldn’t see much through the cavalry, but she could hear. Roars sounded from within. A black mountainous wall of muscle rose and heaved over the top of their soldiers’ heads.
“Demonic beasts,” Marianne whispered.
“As expected,” Byleth reminded her and all who were inclined to overhear. “They’re preparing to deploy them against Claude’s army.”
There was a rustling beneath Marianne’s cloak, about where the hilt of her sword would be. “Unless we stop them.”
“Yes.”
They fell quiet as chains rattled at their backs, announcing the drawbridge’s closure and the crossing of the last of their troops.
They were in.
Byleth held her breath as the threshold offered her a fleeting shelter from the sun. When she stepped once more into the light, the courtyard unfolded before her in earnest. Imperial soldiers ran about, tacking up their horses and gathering their weapons. Others exited the courtyard to urge civilians to find shelter. Handlers worked to release a number of demonic beasts from their binds.
Most of their men hadn’t made it through the inner doors when Byleth was struck with the inkling of being watched.
She let instinct guide her gaze to the tower at the eastern corner. There, the Death Knight stood, a dark cutout against the sky. He looked out over their troops, scanning their faces. Byleth’s hand inched towards the hilt of her sword as his helmet paused, turned inexplicably towards her.
Nearby, a demonic beast threw its beaked head back with a screech that had its handlers wincing. It beat its wings in its impatience to be freed.
Byleth’s hood was blown back in the gust. Cloaks billowed, revealing weapons the color of bone.
As the Death Knight raised his hand in command, she cast the cloth aside and drew the Sword of the Creator from her hip. “Now!”
So it began.
Lysithea, by way of a silver axe, then a javelin.
Hilda, with not one but two arrows in her throat.
Felix, who successfully felled a mage but failed to account for his allies. Byleth was grateful she managed to reverse time before he could fall forward, revealing whether or not the miasma had eaten through to his spine.
She was becoming softhearted after so much bloodshed. There was a time when she didn’t flinch at even the worst of gore. But Byleth knew her students as well as she knew their viscera now, and she couldn’t stomach the sight. Sometimes, she didn’t even wait to see whether death had truly come for them before she drew time back.
Leonie, for instance. She was flying low over the courtyard to charge the winged beast when Byleth saw an arrow shoot towards her falicorn. She didn't give it the chance to land, instead tugging their battle back by the second and cutting its trajectory off at the source.
The Sword of the Creator wicked itself of the archer’s blood upon its return. As it recomposed like a column of vertebrae, Byleth remembered Sothis’ warning. Know this power is not infinite, she’d said. It was why Byleth used her power to protect the lives of her students out of the countless others who gurgled their last breaths around her. It was why, before every battle, Byleth had nightmares that she would reach for the hands of time and find air.
A familiar shriek drew her attention to the center of the courtyard. Marianne had fallen from her horse. She was clutching at Blutgang as a grappler stalked towards her, her knuckles as white as its blade. A dull ache pulsed behind Byleth’s eyes as she began to reach for her divinity. Moments before she stilled the world, an arrow tore through the attacker’s cheek and rooted itself in his jaw. The grappler howled around the wound, giving Marianne just enough time to drive her sword into his gut.
Byleth tracked the arrow’s path to the ramparts and found Ignatz glaring down at the battle, glasses flashing, another arrow already nocked. A long line of snipers stepped to the parapets alongside him and aimed.
Shamir’s plan was successful, then. Their strategy was working. Byleth’s pulse hastened to an impossible, hopeful rate as their archers picked off their enemies with brutal precision, clearing a path to the central keep.
Before she could revel in this for long, a dagger was thrown into her upper back with impressive force, nearly rooting itself below her right shoulder to the crossguard. Byleth gripped her sword harder, fighting against her body's reflex to drop it from shock. She turned to face her attacker as he dashed towards her, barely managing to reach behind her and tear the dagger from her own muscle in time to slash him across the throat.
“Professor!”
Magic washed across her wound, numbing and gentle. It was only enough to stem the bleeding, which meant Lysithea’s reserves for faith magic were running low. As another swordsman ran towards them, Byleth cast Nosferatu his way and let out a soft sigh of relief as the gash began to knit closed.
A noxious, violet cloud hurtled past Byleth. She turned to Lysithea, whose hand was outstretched and still faintly smoking, before the swordsman hit the ground. She looked so much older here, her features aged with deadly focus and hair flaked in patches of dark brown and red.
“The keep,” Byleth directed.
She gave Byleth a curt nod. “Yes.”
They moved in with mages and mercenaries following close behind. Out of the corner of her eye, Byleth could see movement from above. Shamir had seen them, then, and ordered some of her archers to support them as they stormed the keep.
They’d be infiltrating from above and below. Byleth suspected that the building was bleeding men, deploying some to defend against the second wave of their assault. She’d heard the moment Claude’s troops made their way into the fortress. The battle cries tripled in volume, as did the thunder of wings.
Jeralt had always warned her to be on guard in the thick of battle. But as Byleth grew older and earned renown in her own right, she learned to recognize the signs of an oncoming victory. That particular sense of elation that made her feel so powerful as to be disembodied, less flesh than the channels of adrenaline pumping through her blood.
She kept Lysithea close behind her. Together they climbed the keep, making quick work of its dwindling lines of defense. Byleth and her men cut down the swordsmen and grapplers that charged towards them. The mages focused on decimating those in heavy armor, their flames roasting them within their own steel. Lysithea defeated the last of them, the soldier falling to the ground with the clang of metal. She and Byleth watched, almost dazed, as the stranger shrieked and writhed before them, their chest plate black and smoking. When they finally went still, all they could hear was the violence raging outside.
In the quiet, Byleth realized there was one enemy that had yet to appear.
There was a sudden howl from down the hall. A lone swordsman emerged from the stairwell and rushed towards them. Byleth tightened her grip on the Sword of the Creator’s hilt in preparation, but an arrowhead burst from his chest when he was meters away.
The swordsman fell forward and revealed Shamir standing on the steps behind him, lowering her bow. She looked at Byleth, bright with an exhilaration that mirrored her own. “The Death Knight…” she began.
They scaled the remaining levels of the keep to the ramparts. Byleth looked out upon their army from the walkway, Shamir and Lysithea at her side. She hoisted the Sword of the Creator above her head and willed her voice to carry to the far hills. “The Death Knight retreats!”
There was a lull in the tumult.
Merceus was theirs. They’d won.
The Imperial soldiers that remained scrambled for the exits. When their forces gave chase, Byleth turned away. Her hands were trembling again, so bloody she almost didn’t recognize them. She’d just begun to hitch the Sword of the Creator to her hip, sparing herself from the embarrassment of dropping it, when a streak of white cut across the sky.
It was the first she’d seen of Claude during the battle. She’d spent a good amount of time soliciting their fliers for reports when his troop made its way in. But when Hilda fell, it was made clear that her attentions were needed elsewhere. She decided to trust that if their leader found himself in mortal peril, she would hear the screams.
This should have been Claude’s victory lap, but Byleth knew how he moved in battle. Chandra was flying to kill. She just didn’t understand, for the life of her, what he was barreling towards. Then she saw his mark, horned and obsidian, fleeing to the far corner of the fort.
Claude nocked his arrow, aiming for the Death Knight by Failnaught’s glow. Though Byleth couldn’t hear him from the distance, she knew he certainly spoke. She knew because the Death Knight turned to face him, and because she knew Claude and the way his ego tended to spill from his stupid mouth.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her hands finally stock-still.
The arrow flew. Lightning bolted down from the heavens.
Claude died without a scream.
He'd fallen halfway to earth when Byleth seized time and pulled.
Byleth stands above her forces, Sword of the Creator above her head. The Imperial soldiers are fleeing from their victory-drunk troops. She turns to Lysithea and snaps, “Warp me to the northwest.”
Lysithea frowns. “What? But—”
“Now, Lysithea,” Byleth commands.
She lands unsteadily on the cobblestones and whirls on her heels, trying to place herself in the scene she witnessed. It takes time for her to spot the Death Knight in the distance, galloping away. With a glance to the sky, Byleth sees that Claude and Chandra are already in pursuit.
She runs, and it's only when she’s moving that she realizes how drained she is, her body unmarked but worse for wear.
“Claude!” Byleth calls, but he doesn’t hear her. She’s too far.
He raises his bow. Byleth shuts her eyes when he falls.
Again.
Byleth stands above her forces, Sword of the Creator above her head. The Imperial soldiers are fleeing from their victory-drunk troops. She turns to Lysithea and snaps, “Warp me to the northwest.”
Lysithea frowns. “What? But—”
“As far as you can,” Byleth commands.
Byleth lands on the cobblestones, pivots on her heel and runs. The Death Knight is indeed closer, enough that she can see his horse’s tail wicking in its gallop. She looks to the skies and finds Claude in pursuit. He glances at her before diving towards the Death Knight with renewed determination.
And Byleth realizes he feels even safer with her there. Trusts her to the point of foolishness.
She actually hears him when he slows Chandra and takes aim. “Hey, how long’s it been? Five years? Who’d have thought you’d end up an Imperial general…”
“Claude,” she shrieks, trying to will her tired feet to move faster. She grips the Sword of the Creator and gauges the distance, but she was too far.
“So, you wish to die,” the Death Knight muses.
Claude chuckles as Failnaught pulses in his grip. “As antisocial and unhinged as ever, I see.”
She sees Claude hit the ground this time, his skin mottled red and black.
Again.
Back. Farther back.
Before stepping onto the ramparts, Byleth turns to Lysithea and says, “Warp me to the northwest.”
Lysithea frowns. “What? But—”
“As far as you can,” Byleth insists, before turning to Shamir. “Announce the Death’s Knight retreat. I’m going after him.”
Seasoned as she is, Shamir doesn’t question the command.
Byleth lands on the cobblestones, pivots on her heel and runs. The Death Knight is close, enough that she can see his horse’s tail wicking in its gallop. She looks to the skies and finds Claude in the distance. She hears the faint sound of Shamir announcing their victory. Sees the moment Claude notices the Death Knight’s line of retreat.
If he insists on hunting the Death Knight down, then…
Byleth whips the Sword of Creator as soon as she can see the intricacies etched into the Death Knight’s horns.
The Death Knight senses the attack. “You.” He yanks at his horse’s reins to dodge. The tip of Byleth’s sword skates across the cobblestones on its way back. “Whether I kill you or you kill me, I’m looking forward to this.”
From within his helmet, his eyes glow red like starlight.
When lightning tears through her, Byleth realizes her deaths have always been soft ones. The embrace of eternal darkness. The long fall into the monastery gorge. By the Death Knight’s hand, her skin splits open and blisters. Her entire body becomes an open, searing wound. It’s the worst she’s ever felt, so terrible she can’t even be grateful when the pain blinks away with the death of her nerves.
Time reverses without her calling for it. Her knees buckle beneath her when all goes still. Byleth trembles as she looks down at her hands and finds them bloodied but intact. The Death Knight stands lifelessly before her. Lightning hangs over Byleth’s head, eager to land.
To the east, Claude hovers in place. He and Chandra were spearing towards them when Byleth died. Panic has made his eyes wide and honest. The cocky smile he taunted the Death Knight with in all those other iterations is nowhere to be seen.
Byleth takes this halted moment to hold herself. Her sob is lonely without anyone to hear it, joined only by her tears pattering onto the stones.
Maybe if she goes back. Further back. Maybe if she doesn’t wait for Shamir to tell her the Death Knight’s fleeing. Maybe if she asks Lysithea to warp her out of the keep.
She reaches for the hands of time and draws them back slowly, so as to memorize every second that passes before Claude’s death. The lightning returns to the heavens. The Death Knight turns away. She’s on the ramparts, Shamir and Lysithea on either side of her. And then…
And then.
Byleth’s foot hung over the threshold of the ramparts. She stared at it, willing it to pull back in unison with the seconds she sought to erase. Neither budged.
“No.”
Byleth wrenched at the hands of time, but they resisted her. There was a pulsing ache at the back of her skull, growing stronger with every pull. A dizziness overcame her even as the world stubbornly stuck in place.
Know this power is not infinite, Sothis warned. Far later, she’d laid her ghostly hand on Byleth’s shoulder after her father’s death. If turning back the hands of time was not enough to save his life, you must accept that what came to pass was fate.
Byleth screamed. It was a feral sound. Ragged and broken, so wrought with grief that Byleth wondered whether Shamir and Lysithea would return to the flow of time with it ringing in their ears. As the last of it left her lungs, Byleth’s vision cleared. She fought to ground herself. To root herself in the solid stone beneath her feet and listen to the echoes of her voice ebb away.
In this still and silent world, she remembered her father.
Byleth didn't think about drinking with him at the taverns, or of fighting at his side. She remembered, instead, a day she’d spent with him at the monastery. They were walking through the market together when they came across a florist’s stall. The florist was arranging bouquets of roses, daisies, and other standard fare. But Jeralt looked past the large blooms and reached for a humbler bouquet of valerian, its clusters of flowers merging into a cloud of white and pink.
“Your mother’s favorite,” he said, smiling so warmly that even the florist blushed.
As he lay it on Sitri’s grave, Byleth had wondered what it was like to love.
Byleth let the world come alive. All at once, the noise of battle rushed in. The roar of beasts in the near distance. The incessant clash of worn weapons and snap of bowstrings. She turned to Lysithea. “Warp me to the northwest. As far as you can.”
Lysithea frowned. “What? But—”
“As far as you can.” Byleth turned to Shamir. “Announce the Death Knight’s retreat. I’m going after him.”
Seasoned as Shamir was, she didn’t question the command.
Byleth knew where to turn when she hit the cobblestones. She knew exactly how far the Death Knight would be. Knew that if she looked to the sky, she’d find Claude there, darting towards them and trusting her to the point of foolishness. It was this trust, maybe, that compelled him to tease.
“So, you wish to die,” the Death Knight mused, raising his hand towards him.
Claude chuckled, drawing the bowstring tighter across his cheek. “As antisocial and unhinged as ever, I see.”
Byleth sprinted forward, readying her sword to strike. She felt—the weight of her weapon and her feet on solid stone; the drum of her pulse, miraculous and baffling, and Chandra's wings lending her a cool breeze. Trusting fate, she cried, “Jeritza!”
The Death Knight started, turning to her as Claude let the arrow fly.
Their attacks struck in unison. The tip of Byleth’s sword slashed across the Death Knight’s helmet at an angle, skating down its right horn. Claude’s arrow speared toward him and glanced off the palm of his hand. The knight hissed, reaching up to grip at his mask. It was then that Byleth noticed a crack spreading across the metal. Minute shards fell between his fingers. A sliver of pale skin peeked out from beneath.
The Death Knight’s blood dripped down his helmet’s carved metal teeth as he kept it in place. He swung his scythe as another of Claude’s arrows came spearing towards him, deflecting it in mid-air. He looked between them, breath rattling from beneath his mask. “If you wish to slay me, follow. The appointed hour is at hand.”
Byleth stared at him, struggling to understand. There was defeat in the way the Death Knight spoke. More than that, there was a hint of fear. But that godforsaken ache was back again, throbbing behind her eyes. She could hardly think with her vision going dark at the edges.
“What are you going on about?” She heard Claude ask. “The appointed hour for what?”
A faint whistling filled the air, drawing Claude’s gaze skyward. "Leave or die," The Death Knight hissed, before spurring his horse into a gallop and resuming his retreat.
As Byleth lifted her head to find the source of the sound, the world tipped on its axis. She wouldn’t have known that she’d fallen if not for the pain at her shoulder, clean and ringing down her arm.
“Teach?”
She could see colors and some shapes. Chandra, a mass of white as she landed in front of her. Claude, a smear of yellow as he came running. The shape of her hand, groping across the floor. She tried to press into the ground to lift herself and greet him, but didn’t have the strength. She was so dizzy, her stomach churning as if it was determined to turn itself inside out. She heaved and new color flooded her vision, red spilling across the stones at her cheek.
“Byleth!”
Byleth struggled to keep her eyes open as Claude gathered her into his arms. She tried to lift her head and found that she couldn’t. She could barely make out his face. She coughed and her chin felt wet suddenly. Her mouth tasted like a sword.
Claude brushed her hair from her face, his breath short and frantic. It took more effort than it should have to shift the strands. Felt sticky. “No, no, Byleth. By. What happened? What’s wrong?”
That day in the market, Jeralt had smiled when she bought her own bouquet to decorate her classroom. Chrysanthemums as yellow as the banners of the Golden Deer.
“Don’t do this to me.”
The last thing she heard was Claude’s heart thundering.
What was fate to the power of a goddess?
He lived.
Notes:
This chapter was a BEAST. I work off of outlines and tend to see where my characters guide me within my overarching plans, and so much of this chapter took me by surprise. Jeralt's presence, for one. Claude's yapping during the war council, for another. It got to a point where I was concerned that our Duke was being a little too wordy compared to how I've characterized him, but a good amount of dialogue is lifted directly from the game and I kind of like the suggestion that he's become chattier because he's hurt and vulnerable post-breakup.
AND THE BATTLE????? Y'all I haven't written an action scene since chapter 8 of this fic three years ago. I know Merceus is a big turning point in VW so I hope I did it justice.
TLDR: this chapter was a huge challenge and I loved writing it. 🥺 Hopefully I wasn't too rusty and y'all enjoyed it too. ♥️
((Also yes the last bit of this chapter was based on actual gameplay. Every damn VW playthrough, I swear...))
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