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The dying vestiges of blood and thunder take longer to fall away each time she wakes up screaming. Morbidly, Dorothea wonders if they’ll follow her into the waking world eventually.
With a sigh, she sits up and begins to peel the sheets from her sweat-soaked body. Outside, the midsummer sun beats down mercilessly onto the streets of Enbarr, blanketing the city in a suffocating heat.
As she does most mornings, Dorothea goes through the motions of her morning routine almost automatically, thoughts of her old friends consuming her attention. In the three months since their impossible triumph at Shambhala, the Black Eagles have scattered across Fódlan and beyond, leaving Dorothea alone to grapple with the ghosts she birthed during the war.
The one Black Eagle she has seen lately is Ferdinand, who has taken over the role of Prime Minister. To his credit he does his best to visit her every couple of weeks, but the residual stilted awkwardness from their academy days together puts a damper on conversation, and the few times she’s brought up her nightmares to him, it’s been clear that they experienced the war very differently. Ferdinand measured the passage of the war in terms of major victories like Derdriu and Fhirdiad; To Dorothea, the only sign time passed was the change in the color of tabard the men she butchered wore as they died.
She hasn’t seen Edelgard in person since the end of the war; the emperor has been kept busy ruling over the reunified territories, Lysithea at her right hand and Hubert at her left. Edie at least sends her a letter every week without fail, but a letter is a paltry substitute for the comforting presence of one of the few people who would likely understand some of what haunts Dorothea.
Dorothea makes her way to the bathroom on unsteady legs. Splashing some cool water on her face, she chances a look in the mirror, and grimaces. The bags under her eyes are particularly ghoulish today.
The last time Dorothea heard from Linhardt and Caspar was when a letter in Caspar’s overeager scrawl arrived for her from former Kingdom territory a month ago. Behind her in the mirror she can see the letter, still lying on her desk with the enclosed sketch of some cats – courtesy of Linhardt – pinned to the wall above. She’s sure that by now they’ve left the Kingdom and are off Goddess-knows-where doing Goddess-knows-what, and for a moment she can’t help but feel slightly bitter that they came out of the war as unscathed as they did. She mentally chastises herself; with how hard she works to hide her internal struggles on the rare occasion necessity forces her outside, she’s in no place to judge her friends on appearances.
A beautiful illustration of some Brigidian plants adorns the wall next to the cat drawing, serving both to lighten up the room somewhat and also as a reminder of where Petra is now: back in Brigid, having departed barely three weeks after the war ended with Bernadetta in tow. Dorothea can’t find it in herself to begrudge either of them their well-earned retreat. She supposes Petra’s invitation to her still stands, but she can’t stand the thought of dragging them down with her depression, not when Bern had seemed so excited to go somewhere outdoors for once.
A quick glance back at the clock in her bedroom reveals that it’s nearly five in the afternoon. Later than she’d like, but she doesn’t have anywhere to be before seven. Manuela had invited her to a production at the opera, and seeing as her days largely consist of sleeping too much and eating too little, she found no reason to decline the offer. Dorothea rinses the taste of sleep out of her mouth. She reaches the end of her mental class roster, and with it the Eagle she most wishes she could see.
Byleth’s whereabouts were even more of a mystery than Caspar and Linhardt’s. Dorothea has heard nothing, not even a whisper of her since the Eagles returned to Enbarr in the aftermath of the sacking of Shambhala. She’s asked around, but Edie hasn’t mentioned her in any of her letters and Ferdie is similarly unsure of her whereabouts. She’s thought about searching for Byleth herself on some of her better days, but she’s always managed to drum up some shaky reason not to, regardless of whether she misses Byleth so badly that some days she feels half her heart has been scraped carelessly out of her chest. A tear rolls off the corner of Dorothea’s face, jolting her out of her rumination, and with a forlorn sigh and a heavy heart she does her best to put Byleth out of her mind and forces herself to continue getting ready.
After selecting the least crumpled dress off of her bedroom floor and picking out a matching pair of earrings, Dorothea starts on her makeup. First, some concealer for the dark circles rimming her eyes, followed by a brief swipe of a tube lip-tint across both lips. A few more finishing touches and a quick brush through her hair, and Dorothea thinks almost nobody could tell that the girl looking back at her in the mirror struggles to get out of bed most days.
- - -
By the time she slips out of the door at half past six, the heat has abated somewhat; the summer sun still hangs heavy in the sky but has fallen just enough that the buildings around where she lives block the light.
The opera house is in the adjacent quarter of Enbarr to her apartment, so she should be there comfortably in under twenty minutes, but Dorothea hurries anyway. Some part of her feels uncomfortable outside, as if her torpor has made her unfit to be seen under the light of the sun.
The longest fifteen minutes of her life later, Dorothea finally ducks into the enveloping dim cool of the lobby. She spots Manuela in the same instance that Manuela spots her, and the two rush to each other. Manuela loops her arms around Dorothea and kisses her lightly on each cheek in greeting.
“You came!” Manuela says, excited in a way Dorothea hasn’t seen her since the Officers’ Academy. “At least one of my invites went through,” she adds, some familiar bitterness sinking back into her voice. “Can you believe it? I invited the whole former Strike Force — only Edelgard had the grace to reply! Honestly, those kids.” She shakes her head, disapproval writ clear across her face.
“Oh, Edie’s coming?” Dorothea asks. She perks up a bit at the possibility of seeing Edelgard, but Manuela’s apologetic expression quickly stifles that hope.
“She said she’s very sorry, but she can’t make it,” Manuela laments. “Pity, but it’ll be nice for it to be just us opera girls again, won’t it?”
“Right…” Dorothea says, unconvinced. She’d agreed to come under the assumption that at least some of the other Black Eagles would be present and open to catching up after the performance, and while she’s not about to leave over their absence, she’s a little put out. Given how empty her days have been lately, any small talk is bound to be excruciating if it’s just her and Manuela.
Before Dorothea can really decide how best to address the developing situation, someone from the production comes to fetch Manuela, and she’s left alone to find her way to her seat.
Evidently Manuela was optimistic in her expectations, as an entire box is reserved for the Eagles. Every seat around Dorothea’s is empty, in contrast to the rest of the house, which is packed with opera-goers eager to witness the return of the Divine Songstress to the stage. Slightly saddened in a way she can’t articulate at the sight of all the empty seats, Dorothea picks a seat in the front row of the box where she doesn’t have to see all the Eagles who aren’t there and settles in to watch the show.
The house lights dim, and the buzzing chatter of the audience begins to fade into an impatient silence when the door to the box opens again, casting a sliver of light across the seat next to her. Framed by the bright halo of the doorway, perhaps the last person she would expect to see here enters the box and sits in the seat next to hers: Byleth, making possibly her first appearance anywhere since the end of the war. Dorothea does a double take, certain she must be mistaken, but no matter how many times she blinks, she only becomes more confident that this really is her missing friend and former professor. Overcoming some of her shock, Dorothea goes to say something, to try to verify without any doubt that this really is Byleth, but the curtain draws back above the stage, pulling her attention back to the performance. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Byleth turn to watch the opera as well, and Dorothea begrudgingly accepts that her many questions will have to wait until the performance is over. Unfortunately, this resolution does little to alleviate the mystery of Byleth’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance, and it pesters her like a horde of gnats all throughout the opera, leaving her barely able to focus on the show when she would normally be spellbound. Beneath it, some inscrutable strand of anxiety runs near the surface of her thoughts: what if Byleth left because of her? The rational part of Dorothea dismisses this out of hand, but the irrational voice weaves it into her ever-growing tangled web of insecurities, and it ensnares more and more of her thoughts as the opera continues on and Byleth sits silently beside her.
- - -
Predictably, the part of the opera that Dorothea can actually appreciate through her mounting stress is fantastic, and Manuela might as well have never left the company for how natural she still seems on the stage. The house lights come back up, and Dorothea chances a glance over at Byleth now that she can see properly, to make sure one last time that she’s not imagining her presence-
It’s like looking in a mirror.
Byleth looks positively haunted. At the very least, she’s clearly not been sleeping; bags under her eyes match Dorothea’s hidden ones in color and size. Her hair has returned to its original pleasant shade of darkened teal but looks a mess.
Involuntarily, Dorothea sucks in a sharp breath at the sight, and Byleth gives her an apologetic shrug. “Sorry,” she says. Some of Dorothea’s worries abate; Byleth clearly has some troubles of her own, but at the same time she feels a twinge of guilt at how self-centered her panic had been.
“Professor,” —Byleth winces, and Dorothea belatedly remembers how at the end of the war in the ashes of Shambhala, she’d asked the Eagles to just call her Byleth— “Byleth, where have you been?”
“It wouldn’t have been acceptable to let my students see me like this.” The way she phrases it, a fundamental requirement rather than a want, strikes directly at Dorothea’s core. She very much understands the feeling. For Byleth, she thinks, the feeling must be tenfold; she always took her duties to her students as a matter of utmost importance.
“Byleth…”
To the average observer, Byleth must look as serene as always. Only Dorothea’s years of practice reading her expressions allows her to divine the true depths of the discomfort she’s experiencing. “I should be going,” Byleth says, standing to leave. The first person who might possibly understand what she’s going through is about to hide away outside of Dorothea’s life once more. She’ll be alone again, ineffectually trying to explain the cause of her insomnia to Ferdinand. Dorothea panics and decides to take a leap of faith.
“Actually, would you like to come back to my place for a drink, Byleth?” she asks, hoping against hope for any more time with Byleth that she can cling to.
Byleth freezes, her back still turned towards Dorothea. Slowly, she turns around, apprehension writ small across her face. Her expression reminds Dorothea of a deer caught unawares.
“You don’t have to, obviously, but I thought it might be nice to talk, especially since we haven’t-”
“I’d like that, Dorothea,” Byleth says, softly, and oh the little ghost of a smile she gives Dorothea is at once heartbreaking and heartwarming. Dorothea’s seen her full silly grin so many times that its absence now feels like a hole in her heart, but she’s still smiling at Dorothea and because of Dorothea, and that alone is enough to make her night.
- - -
One quick hello-congratulations-goodbye to a flushed and happy Manuela later, Dorothea leads Byleth outside of the opera house and down the street. Dorothea’s discomfort in the afternoon seems so far away in Byleth’s presence, and Byleth seems quite content to follow her lead, so they take their time on the way back to Dorothea’s apartment. The sun has fully set, but the air still clings to its warmth as they make their way through the mostly deserted streets in companionable silence. The walk is so pleasant that Dorothea feels something akin to disappointment when they arrive at her building, but the mounting chill in the air ushers them inside relatively quickly.
Dorothea leads Byleth inside her apartment, nervous excitement only slightly tainted by the sting of embarrassment she feels at the state of her room. She leads Byleth to the couch in her sitting room and takes her coat to hang by the door, before fetching a bottle of wine along with two glasses from the kitchen and returning to her patiently waiting guest. Byleth sits rigidly on her couch, and Dorothea sits down next to her, tucking her legs up under her as she places the wine on the table.
“You can relax, Byleth,” she says, affection winding its way into her words at the sight of how awkward Byleth looks. She hopes Byleth doesn’t quite realize how Dorothea feels just as anxious as Byleth looks, and she almost doubts her decision before Byleth finally crosses her legs and leans back. To anyone else, she might look uncomfortable, but Dorothea knows her well enough to know that this is as relaxed as she’s going to get her for now.
“Would you like me to pour?” Byleth asks, clearly unsure.
Dorothea waves her off, uncorking the bottle and pouring them each a glass, before handing one to Byleth and cradling her own.
“So, Byleth,” she says, doing her best to calm herself, “where have you been?” Something about Byleth makes her feel at ease, and this helps greatly soothe her nerves. She swirls her wine in the glass, waiting for Byleth to say something.
“Enbarr,” Byleth says eventually. “Ever since the war, I…”
“Can’t sleep as well as you used to?” Dorothea says. She’s desperate to make the connection, and it comes off as too eager to her ears. She bites her tongue, feigning levity as she stares at her glass.
Byleth shakes her head. “It’s been… hard,” she says, with some difficulty. “Did you know they used to call me the Ashen Demon?” She pauses, looking lost for words. “You remember how I was when I arrived at Garreg Mach.”
Dorothea nods intently. She could never forget the strange first impression Byleth had made; an over-proficient yet naive woman who never laughed or smiled but went about everything with such endearing sincerity. In the years since, she’s held the remarkable privilege of seeing Byleth grow into more openly showing her emotions, but that same pervasive earnestness still runs through every word and every gesture.
“I see them, when I try to sleep,” Byleth continues. “Not the people I killed during the war, but the ones before. The first time I killed, I must have been no older than twelve. He didn’t expect the kid with the knife to be a threat.” She sighs. “Some days… I think I might be the Demon again. I feel so… numb. It’s like I don’t deserve to smile or laugh or be happy or do anything that normal people do. Not when I’ve dealt so much death.”
Byleth does an admirable job of appearing unaffected, but her hands are still shaking almost imperceptibly. Dorothea wonders if hers are doing the same but can’t bring herself to look. Instead, she places her still-full glass on the table and cautiously takes one of Byleth’s hands in both of hers. She half expects Byleth to jerk back at the contact, but she acquiesces, and Dorothea begins gently rubbing circles around the base of her thumb. The hand is scarred and callused, but it’s warm and she finds some comfort in it. Byleth seems to feel the same, as she allows some of the tension to bleed out of her shoulders and leans back into the couch further, letting out a little sigh.
“Would it help if I told you what haunts me, Byleth?” she says carefully, not wanting to scare this vulnerable side of Byleth back into hiding.
Byleth nods.
“I see the people I killed during the war,” Dorothea begins, haltingly at first. It’s the first time she’s spoken in depth about what plagues her to anyone who might actually understand, but her confidence builds with every comforting glance Byleth gives her. “You’ve seen what thunder magic does to people. How many times over did I inflict that on people who didn’t have a choice but to fight for a cause they didn’t believe in, for lords who barely viewed them as people? That’s what I see when I close my eyes.” She tries to leave the next thought unvoiced, but the words spill out of her lips anyway. “The people I killed for Edie haunt me more than the ones I killed for the Church.” It feels tantamount to treason to speak it aloud, and yet saying it brings a sickening kind of relief, even more so when Byleth nods with an understanding expression.
“I don’t feel any guilt for the people I killed during the war,” Byleth says. “More would have died if the Church was allowed to remain in control. But I understand. The deaths I caused as a mercenary were all my choice. I chose to remain as a mercenary and to continue fighting and killing. At Garreg Mach, Rhea made it very clear that we had no other options.”
Dorothea laughs. Bitterness hollows out the sound, but she feels better hearing her own thoughts repeated in Byleth’s firm voice; the threads of anxiety that’s been eating her inside all evening loosen their grip on her. “And I chose to fight for Edie.” They sit in silence, Dorothea continuing to brush her hands over Byleth’s. “I’m glad I did,” Dorothea says eventually. “Thank you for talking with me about this, Byleth. I feel selfish for letting it bother me this much.”
Byleth shakes her head firmly, by far the most emotive she’s been all evening. “That’s not true at all,” she says fiercely. “It’s a good thing to hate killing. That’s the only reason I know I’m still human, some days.” She’s so unusually passionate that Dorothea is at once taken aback and enraptured. “Even Edelgard suffers from what we went through the war. She’s always told me that we could neither afford to lose sight of the end nor to lose track of the means. But we won, Dorothea. It’s over, and it will never have to happen again.” It’s perhaps an overly optimistic message, but Byleth speaks with so much fervor that Dorothea finds herself swept away in the undistilled hope in her words.
“You’re right, as usual, Byleth,” Dorothea sighs. She glances away, catching sight of Byleth’s untouched wine and giggling. “Look at us,” she says, draping herself over Byleth’s lap and looking up at her fondly. “You’d think we were both three sheets to the wind with all the sadness we’ve been sharing, yet neither of us has had a drop to drink!”
Byleth chuckles ever so softly, and Dorothea’s heart melts just a little at the sound. “That’s true. I don’t like the taste of wine.”
“Neither do I,” Dorothea admits. “Though it’s more that I’ve seen Manuela drunk one too many times.” The sudden melancholy shift sits in the air, and Dorothea worries that she’s ruined the budding moment between the two. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Byleth,” Dorothea says awkwardly.
“I’m glad I came,” Byleth agrees. Absentmindedly, she runs her free hand through Dorothea’s hair, and Dorothea practically chokes. All of a sudden, Dorothea is unbearably aware that she is very much in Byleth’s lap, holding hands with her, and that Byleth is allowing her to lie in her lap and is even stroking her hair, and she’s looking at Dorothea with an overwhelming fondness. “Why don’t we talk about good memories?” she suggests.
Dorothea is having trouble focusing on anything but the hand in her hair. “That sounds lovely,” she manages, blushing at how long it took her to formulate a complete sentence. “I remember… the night after the Battle of the Eagle and Lion. Everyone was together, and it was the first time I really saw your smile.”
“I remember that.” Byleth smiles. It’d be a small smile on anyone else, but on Byleth it’s practically beaming. Dorothea does her best to capture the moment in her mind, how pretty Byleth looks in the lamplight, the feeling of gentle hands in her hair and strong thighs beneath her back. She wants to treasure this feeling forever, the contrast between the surreal bliss of this moment and the abject misery of the last few months serving only to further gild it. “I remember when I woke up after the battle of Garreg Mach,” Byleth says. “I barely knew where I was, or even who I was, but then I got to see you and all the rest of my students — my friends — and it was like I’d never left. I’ll never forget how glad I was to see you, Dorothea.”
Dorothea’s heart pounds loudly in her ears. Surely this is just Byleth being her usual earnest self, right? Surely, she doesn’t mean it how Dorothea interprets it, surely—
“You always made me feel the most welcome,” Byleth says, looking her directly in eyes now. Dorothea feels like she’s drowning in those blue irises, and she doesn’t really mind all that much. “I…” Byleth stops herself, looking embarrassed.
“What were you going to say?”
Dorothea can’t find it in herself to be ashamed of how audibly desperate for Byleth’s words she is, but Byleth either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because she says, “I… I really only went to the opera because Manuela told me you’d be there tonight. I wanted to see you.”
Dorothea forgets how to breathe. As her brain tries to make sense of the rush of feelings Byleth’s words bring crashing down on her, she comes to a devastating realization: she is completely, assuredly, ruinously in love with Byleth Eisner. Byleth shifts awkwardly beneath her back, and Dorothea searches for something to say. She feels like if she says nothing, she will be letting this something between them die before it is born. She and Byleth are the chick, and this mounting shell of silence between them is the egg, and Dorothea can’t think of anything to crack the shell. She wracks her brain desperately and manages to find a treasured memory from a treasured evening at the monastery. The memory is slightly embarrassing, but it feels right, and she can’t – won’t – let the first thing that she’s wanted since the war’s end slip away from her.
“Do you remember,” Dorothea says slowly, both afraid and excited, “the night of the White Heron Ball?”
Byleth nods, not breaking eye contact. “You told me you wrote me a letter.”
“You didn’t receive it, but you were there anyway. It’s silly, but… it felt like the Goddess herself sent you there.”
Byleth grins. “She did, in a way,” she says, cryptic as usual, then pauses. She looks thoughtful. “You never told me what was in that letter. Why did you want to meet with me alone?”
For the second time tonight, Dorothea takes a leap of faith. “So I could do this,” she says, and pulls Byleth down into a kiss. Dorothea kisses her with desperation and hunger, but Byleth isn’t kissing back, and she pulls away, heart sinking. She’s misread the moment horribly. She can barely bear to look to see the expression on Byleth’s face, but she forces herself to face the fallout of what she’s done. When she does, she’s met with the sight of Byleth gazing at her gently, a tiny smile on her face and a look in her eyes like Dorothea is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Her fingers still card through Dorothea’s hair.
“Oh,” Byleth says. Dorothea was prepared for her to yell, to push her off, to storm out of her apartment and out of her life. She is not, crucially, prepared for what happens next, which is that Byleth presses forward and kisses her.
Byleth kisses her like she needs her, and Dorothea is all too happy to respond in kind. The hand in Dorothea’s hair forms into a fist, giving an experimental tug, then two, three successively more confident and forceful yanks. Each pull sends a jolt of heat through her core, getting her so worked up that she feels like she’s going to explode if she doesn’t get as close to Byleth as she can. Standing up with one hand holding Byleth back against the couch, Dorothea hikes up her dress then sits down straddling Byleth’s lap, then starts to grind down onto her, dampness soaking through her small-clothes and leaving a trail on Byleth’s exposed thigh. She takes Byleth’s hands in hers and pins them to the wall above the couch, coaxing a moan out of her, which Dorothea quickly smothers in another kiss.
They lose themselves in the throes of passion. Dorothea desperately wants to experience Byleth, to know her and to taste her and to feel her, and Byleth is all too eager to be known, to be tasted, to be felt. At some point in their exaltation, Dorothea is fairly sure she knocks over either the wine bottle or the wine glasses; instead of stopping to deal with it, she wordlessly guides their entwined bodies into the bedroom, pushing a very pleased-looking Byleth down onto her bed and straddling her hips. She goes to pull down her dress, but Byleth catches her wrist unexpectedly.
“Actually,” Byleth says, and Dorothea’s heart swells with dread, “could we wait on that?” It’s hard to see in the darkened room, but Byleth is very clearly apprehensive about something. Did she push too far?
“Of course,” Dorothea says, swallowing thickly, wondering what she did wrong.
“It’s… I would like to do that,” Byleth adds hastily, sounding embarrassed. “If you’re still interested and available, that is. Just…” She covers her eyes with a sweat-drenched arm, and mumbles something Dorothea can’t quite make out.
“Could you repeat that?” Dorothea says, as fear gives way to confusion. She bends down to try and hear better.
“I want to see you in the light, the first time,” Byleth whispers, and all the tension melts out of Dorothea. Byleth would be a hopeless romantic, wouldn’t she?
“Of course, darling,” she murmurs into Byleth’s ear. She presses a tender kiss to her forehead, then rolls off of Byleth to lie on her back next to her. Dorothea dares to think she feels loved. “Will you be staying?” she asks hopefully.
“As long as you’ll have me,” Byleth says, snuggling up to her side.
Dorothea’s heart swells with affection. Draping an arm over her beloved, Dorothea pulls a blanket from the base of the bed over the both of them, reveling in Byleth’s sleepy little pleased groan as she gets comfortable next to her. “Goodnight,” she whispers, pressing another kiss to Byleth’s forehead, before closing her own eyes.
- - -
The nightmares still come that night, but when she wakes in the early hours of the morning and Byleth’s comforting warmth is still wrapped around her, Dorothea starts to see how things might just get better.