Chapter Text
In spite of the downy softness of her bed, sleep eluded Byleth.
But, she reckoned with a little too much logic, she had slept for half a decade. This loss of sleep was likely expected. It was not as if she were made like other humans, after all. Indeed, even when she slept like the others, her rests were unusually deep. When she had been caught napping under the gazebo, Hilda not-so-tastefully compared her to a corpse.
Perhaps, at this time, it was for the best to stay awake. All the better for her to keep the current events out of her drowning mind.
“Maybe I am less suited for war after all?” Byleth thought idly as she put a deep blue dressing gown over her sleepwear. “How strange…but there’s no use in talking it over with someone.”
Then again, it wasn’t as if she had even tried that. But why would the Ashen Demon have worries?
For a moment, Byleth thought she could hear Sothis scold her. She wished she did…
She grabbed a candlestick and lit it with some flint. Then, taking careful steps, she quietly opened the door and let herself take in the cold, silent air of the Pegasus Moon. She let herself wander silently, wincing at the sight of decayed greens and crumbled stone. The damage done by the Empire still hurt to see, but seeing the residual oil spills and gunpowder that Randolph’s platoon used to further bring Garreg Mach harm gave her a discomfort that she had never experienced before. This place was her first real home, and the Empire had twice tried to violate it.
The strangeness of existence and emotions seemed to be omnipresent in her life these days.
Stranger still, her mind could now capture it all, these life events. Her careful steps, mindful of the black ice beneath her, conjured the image of the river she found herself in, of the ruined cathedral, of the beautiful sunlight that one of her grown-up pupils had been gently basking in. As she guided herself up the stairs, mindful of the guards, she thought of how the pupil almost callously took her out for a quick hunt for bandits. She saw the pretty purple and pink banner that bore her Crest, the symbol of the birth of the Alliance-Seiros Army. She saw Randolph’s pithy, sad attempt at begging for his life, only for her pupil’s sword to swiftly behead him, all with an eerie-looking smile.
It scared her - truly scared her! And yet, the pupil was her life raft. She could not hate him.
Not especially since he looked at her with…fondness? Was that the word? No, it couldn’t be.
It wasn’t as burning and reverent as Rhea’s gaze, nor was it subdued like Jeralt’s. But she felt her skin tingle at the sight of it…
“I feel afraid. Of what, I don’t know,” Byleth thought idly with a downturned, sad mouth. “Where should I go…”
Anywhere more spacious to sort these thoughts, but far away enough from the wreckage below. The third floor of the main building that hosted the teachers’ offices had its lock destroyed, giving everyone free access to the safes and storerooms located there, and even more scandalously, Rhea’s bedroom. As simple yet pretty as the room was, Byleth yearned for air, so she set her sights onto the doors that led to the second highest point in the monastery, with only the cathedral beating it: The Star Terrace.
She had only seen it once before, but once was all it took for her to fall in love with it. The terrace was crafted of marble and quartz, with the main centerpiece being an obsidian inlay of the Crest of the Apostle Timotheos (“Hapi’s Crest, of all things. Interesting.” ). Two small ponds topped with water lilies flanked the inlay, with the bow of the terrace bearing a strange-looking obsidian of an unknown purpose. It was serene and comforting, and more, the perfect place to stargaze.
It would appear that another had that idea in mind.
“Teach? What are you doing up at this hour?”
Holding on softly to the railing was the man who served as a catalyst for all her strange metamorphoses, her former student, Claude von Riegan. He turned away from the sky above and looked upon her with gentle curiosity. He was also in his sleeping clothes, his set being a loose-fitted cotton shirt with billowing sleeves and a pair of equally loose dark green pants. His hair was not slicked with pomade like it had been, allowing it to cascade gently around his face.
“He’s handsome,” Byleth thought suddenly, and her eyes went wide with shock at the thought.
“I…” Her voice croaked. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You too?” He ran a hand through his hair, the curls springing back softly into place as he did. “There’s so much on my mind right now. Sleep just isn’t possible.” He glanced at her with concern. “Must be the same for you, huh? I can see it.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” she said thoughtlessly, walking to him. “I don’t want to think about what would happen if I…well…”
An awkward chuckle. “I’ll make sure that you stay awake. I don’t think you can afford to doze at this point, yeah?”
“Not with the invasion recently. There’s so much to think about,” she said, drawing her chin upwards at the sky. “And I’m…not really used to having so much on my mind, strange as it seems.” She then turned to him, and oh, how sweet and comforting his presence was. And how unused to this she was too! Even in the cold night air, her cheeks felt warm. “But I will say, being up here might be helping a little…”
“That it does, Teach,” said Claude, turning away ever-so-slightly. His face landed upwards, basking in the light of the stars above them. The sky was a clear, deep navy blue tonight, allowing for all the stars in the sky to play above them. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and more than that, the moon was new and invisible. The only sounds that could be heard for miles were cascading pond water and the faint cries of crickets in the fields far below. In spite of the war raging across the continent, this little spot embodied serenity and comfort.
Byleth was struck by the sheer intimacy of it all, and more so as a strange, gentle smile graced Claude’s lips.
“At times like this, I gaze up at the stars to clear my head. I’ve been that way since I was a kid.”
His eyes fluttered east, landing on a set of three glimmering stars, and while they were distant, they nevertheless glowed as bright as sapphires with the luminosity to match. The cluster reminded Byleth of a string of pearls.
“When I look at them, my dreams feel small…” While faint, the light of the stars cast their gentle highlight on his features, making him appear almost as a firefly. “...but that means I feel like I can make them come true, you know?”
Perhaps he had a point. Byleth held to her heart the knowledge of her dear Sothis, who had remembered coming to this world from the Blue Sea Star. In her dreams she whispered it's true name to her: Sirius. The name was ancient, its meaning tied to both its immense glow and its sea blue hue. With practice, Byleth could now spot it with ease at night, even during this time of year when it had receded far beyond their land’s reach.
“Anything seems possible,” Byleth half-whispered, reaching up gently as if to grasp Sirius. Claude glanced at her and huffed out an odd sound - yet, when her eyes flicked in his direction, he seemed pleased.
“You understand, do you?” He asked with a small shiver. How odd, Byleth thought. Was that a form of excitement he was showing?
“I think I do. What stars offer us, what they can do for us…it’s almost like they’re gods unto themselves.”
“Maybe. I never believed in gods when I was a kid,” Claude said softly, now shifting pensively. “The night sky took their place for me.”
“Yes…it’s as comforting as it is overwhelming.” Byleth felt her mind starting to swim, much like whenever she’d enter her states of deep sleep. She gently clung to her sleeping gown, suddenly feeling awash with confusing clusters of images that she thought she could never have remembered.
There was so much starlight…one minute, she was plunging from sky to ground. The next, she was fleeing across the mountaintops, her childlike hand(!) grasping another’s, their fingers the color of a fawn…
“Stay focused,” she thought, shaking the images.
“I knew for the longest time that stars were fixed in the night sky. But I hadn’t realized that they could also guide us…under the stars, we discover new things. We can rediscover things lost with them too.”
“Yes…” He breathed, turning to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him now grasping both hands tightly, no longer confidently at the hip. “We share one set of stars. One sky. One world…”
She found herself facing the man she dared to call friend, and it was as if her lungs had collapsed.
The lights in the night sky convalesced in a set of many colors, all of them softly dancing atop of Claude’s tawny skin. It seemed so oddly natural, seeing him bathed in their celestial glow, from his deep, soft curls to his long lashes to the tip of his perfectly angular nose, casting the whites of his sleepwear into a spectral rainbow. Off in the distance, the pearly constellation seemed to dance behind him, as if he were part of it.
She felt herself nearly falling again - all of her entire being, falling all at once.
The gap in her chest, where her heart ought to be, squeezed.
“Huh…”
If Claude saw this bizarre sensation gripping her, he did not voice it. But she could not help but wonder if he noticed…
Did he notice?
Such an odd thought…
His eyes locked onto hers, and before she could react, he reached for her hand, beckoning her to follow him. She could not read his face at all - light eyes, lips slightly parted, brows high. Seemingly in some odd trance himself -
“Hey, Teach…will you keep talking with me for a while?”
“...of course, Claude.”
Byleth had come to realize that if Claude were not bound to his duties as Sovereign Duke of Leicester (and subsequently Master General of their freshly-made rebel army), then he would make the perfect perpetual party host. He was proven already to be the master coordinator of any kind of celebration, doubly so if it involved food. Somehow, he had managed to cart out a small blanket and a basket of midnight snacks for the occasion: Small meat and liver sandwiches, a peculiar-looking shortbread cookie with nuts on top, a platter loaded with some bread, cottage cheese topped with mint, gold-colored raisins and nuts, Albinean berries, pulpy pearls of Noa fruit, smoked strips of grouse meat, and a piping pot of water with a selection of tea.
She recognized the Almyran pines and the Seiros tea, but there were three new bags she did not recall: One that had the rinds of a green fruit, a black tea mixed with pods that carried a potent scent, and an aromatic tea that appeared to have the remnants of small yellow flowers within them. The blanket itself was thickly-woven and blue striped with tassels on both sides. Most baffling was the “teapot” of choice Claude had chosen - had Byleth not known any better, she would have assumed he took a teapot and a vase and stacked them on top of each other.
But lo, the contraption turned out to be a key to times she had been unable to convert to memory. She knew of it: It was called a samovar , and it was one of many vessels used to make tea in Almyra. Perhaps Jeralt had taken her there at one point in her childhood?
There would be time to muse on that later - this had confirmed her little theory.
“I bet you’ve realized it by now,” Claude began softly, placing water in the samovar. “I wasn’t born in Fódlan.” A soft clink, with the coals for the flames being stoked. “Where I come from, the people of Fódlan are seen as cowards and brutes all at once. Those traits run through my veins…” A downcast glance. “...courtesy of my mother, that is.”
“And your father?”
Claude said nothing. He kept to the task at hand, grasping for the bag with the yellow-flowered tea. “Even with him there, the people around me saw me as an outsider when I was growing up….among other things.”
“Unsavory things.”
“...Unsavory things.”
“Unsavory things,” Byleth parroted softly, testing the waters. “...from your fellow Almyrans.”
“From my fe - “
The lid of the samovar clattered onto the ground. Warily Byleth glanced up, discovering the man in front of her with eyes wider than an insect’s. He stared at nothing, forced into silence.
It would seem that he was trying and failing to embrace rejection. Her bluntness damned her, it seemed.
“If you must know,” Byleth said, trying to soften the edges of her naturally deep voice. Her hands were primly folded on her lap, eyes soft and downcast. She dared not look at him again, and now she too felt her veins and pulse freezing in place. “I had a hunch when I was your teacher.” A small bead of sweat bubbling behind her neck, nerves alight. “It’s faint and vague, like the rest of my memories, but I saw the samovar there, and it just…made me recall.”
Claude’s words failed him, and miserably. His stutter was more like a tittering gasp than anything coherent.
“The first true hint was your braid,” Byleth continued. She felt her cheeks heat up, now pinker than that pretty headband she had worn years prior. Why did she feel like she wanted to run and hide? “They’re worn differently in different parts of the country…”
Her eyes slowly shifted upward, daring to finally meet his once more. He still could not speak. But it was now or never.
“...your true homeland is Almyra.”
With all the speed of a rusted bridge lever, Claude nodded his head. His voice had gone soft.
“...Yes.”
She faced him in earnest, carefully placing the lid back on the samovar. With a gentleness not even she thought she was capable of, she grasped the flowered tea from the man’s hands and placed them in a filter, which in turn went into the teapot on top of the device. The coals were lit, and she exerted that same warmth onto his hand.
“I know I’m just one person,” She began gently, struggling to find her words. “My words are probably empty. But for what they’re worth, I see you as you, Claude. I see a man who has changed me and others for the better. Not a coward, nor a brute.”
Boldly, she separated his fingers, idly massaging the calluses and scars on top. She could see, even with those marks, how tapered and well-cared for said fingers were. She reveled in their warmth.
“...I think I might have hurt you in some way,” Byleth spoke once more, now feeling skittish again. “Do you find me cowardly?”
“...No.” She could barely hear him, but she found herself fixed on him nonetheless. “That notion is based on ignorance.”
She felt his words slide their way into her ear, echoing like the same ripples in the terrace’s two ponds. His fears slid off of him like the same lily pads that the pond carried, floating away, seemingly never to be found again. Byleth could not help but feel that he slipped away from her like that pad, but a petal of it stayed.
Petals were fragile things, and he still had his bared to her.
“There is only one person from Fódlan that I know better than you,” He finally began, allowing for his eyes to fixate back onto her. He winked, and she felt her chest spin again. “That would be my mother.” Another shift - this time, he almost looked sad, as much as Byleth could discern. “She fell in love with a man from the wrong side of the border. Fell for him hard. It was right out of a fairy tale, really.”
“She fell in love and started an entirely new life,” Byleth intoned softly. “...in Almyra.”
“...Yes. In Almyra.”
He gazed upward again, spotting that same string of stars in the sky. “I threw that fact right back in the faces of those who belittled us. My mother is no coward. And my father, he…he’s not a cruel man…”
She could barely hear him now. His eyes flitted away for the slightest moment, right as he invoked his father…
“But saying those things doesn’t mean anything. A…my homeland has its…prejudices. And that’s why I came here…no. I ran away here, to Fódlan. I wanted to see my mother’s home with my own eyes. I wanted a new perspective. Something that could help me change my home for the better.”
Byleth looked down, idly moving the coals away so that the samovar would not boil over. The lid was removed to check, and while the aroma was delicate, she heard Claude puff in frustration. It appeared that some of the leaves had curled and burned, and mixed with the aroma was smoke.
Claude sighed in frustration, grabbing the sachet with a set of tongs and carelessly threw it aside.
“Seven years ago, I finally made it here. And what did I find? The people here look upon outsiders like they’re beasts. Those that don’t say it out loud scurry around the likes of me with fear.” His head fell into his hands. “Fódlan has the Goddess. Almyra has the Wise One and his disciples. They’re different, and yet they have this same exact thing in common.”
The gesture was severe, and even someone like Byleth could sense that it failed to portray how deeply this cut ran through him. This was the cut that opened and festered into his seemingly contradictory nature, she realized.
He was a deer, through and through - prey. Festering, wounded prey, yet proud and strong all the same. And she herself was almost specter-like. Yuri had once compared her to a cat: Unmovable at times, slick at others, often distant, yet protective like a mother to her kittens. Somehow, their natures allowed for them to meld together and form something new.
This was…not a former teacher’s bond with a former student. This much, she was sure of. He was a comrade, a friend, a man…and what was she, but a fellow woman who served him? But this was nothing like mercenary work. The give-and-take of the field whittled to meaninglessness in the face of this tie she had with him. Stranger still, she did not, under any circumstances, want this tie to be cut.
Byleth knew of the rotten hearts of people. The rot she knew of was of a different flavor compared to his, but it was rot all the same. So alongside their natures, they also knew this rot. Were they why she wanted this tie, this bond with him, to stay?
Could they tell her why she now had the squeezing in her chest again?
“But the more I thought about it,” Claude spoke again, regaining energy as he grasped for Seiros’ tea instead. “The more I realized that there was only one way to fight this commonality.”
“What is it?”
“Bring the world together and start anew.”
Squeezing. Squeezing. In between her little gasps, she found a small rush of joy at one of the little mysteries that surrounded him. It slowly started to make sense now.
“...When I was teaching, I took it upon myself to ask the students why they were there. I figured…I figured I could find an answer of my own as to why and how I wound up there,” said Byleth, suddenly feeling hot. “I reasoned that it couldn’t just be happenstance.”
“I agree,” Claude said softly, replacing the water for the new tea. “I know in my heart that it certainly wasn’t happenstance that brought me to the academy. I came here to make my dream come true.”
“So you had a dream too,” Byleth murmured, now unable to look at him. “Come here, become a duke, and usher in change for people like you…”
“That’s right. I’d become Duke, bring the Alliance together, and then the rest of Fódlan into a whole new world, a world with new values…”
“A land with…” Byleth dared to supply, “...no fear.”
“The people here have nothing to be afraid of. They just need to see it for themselves…and I’d do that by breaking down Fodlan’s walls. Let the old ways intermingle with the new, create something different! Start everything over! I’d let people of all different heritages live here, out in the open…”
He took a breath, realizing that his heart had gotten the better of him. He carefully extracted the tea this time, and the gentle aroma led to a far better result. “...I want Fódlan and Almyra and all the rest to realize that for all our differences, we’re also one people, living under the same set of stars. Sharing one sky.”
He gazed upon her, and she shivered. She felt weak, faint, as if she’d burn in Sothis’ very flame itself.
She wanted to feel more of that flame.
“That’s a wonderful dream,” She sighed, a little too breathy for her liking. Why did she feel so hot? “It’s worth sharing with others, you know.”
“You know how people can be hated for simply being different. You’ve lived it yourself,” said he, cranking the handle to let their tea pour through. As he gently offered the saucer to her, he also supplied his hand to hers. “I was someone who…mistreated you. I mistreated you for…being different.” His face was downcast, eyes soft. “I’m sorry.”
*clnk*
Byleth winced as the hot tea splashed on her hand. In her nervous fluttering, she had reached and nearly dropped the cup in shock.
None had ever apologized for treating her like the Ashen Demon before. It made the burning inside her chest stoke, reaching new heights.
“...I think…No. I forgave you long ago,” she said, feeling crushed by the sight of his eyes. “I just…never said it.”
Claude chuckled. “If that’s true, then perhaps my little pipe dream might just come true after all.”
“Can you,” she gasped, trying to get the burning to ease. “Can you live up to that dream?”
“Not too long ago, I would have said no,” Claude replied, and suddenly he too seemed to sound breathless. “But now I think I might be able to. One reason? It’s because you’re here with me. I couldn’t have gotten this far without your help. Of that, I have no doubt.”
Byleth felt the flame encompass her fully.
“You and me, Teach…we can go anywhere. Do anything.”
These strange flames were drawing them together. Even as he finished his little wink, he was swathed in uncertainty, urging to proceed, yet he apparently could not. He seemed to beckon her alongside the flames, but was drowning in them himself.
“I hope that you always walk in step with me…”
A demon like her was not allowed to want. This was something she had lived by for years, until the demon died at Garreg Mach. Sothis birthed her anew, she was raised by her students and by Rhea and her company, and this man guided her into a swath of light that she could not see before. They were from different worlds, yet alike in both dignity and humor - and to imagine she even had the latter within her! So much of this newness, this sureness, this joy, because of him…
She gave herself fully to whatever this was - the ties that bound them, the flames, what have you. Tea and food forgotten, she shyly leaned into him, letting his warmth pool onto her. He gasped and looked down at her bright, jade-colored eyes, and she hoped that for once, he could see through her.
When she took up the mantle of professor, a dam burst open, making her question her identity at every turn. But the river that came with it made her feel strangely whole, strangely…alive. Dreams. Purpose. Desire.
With nary a second guess, her lips brushed the tip of his nose.
“Let’s make that peaceful world you want then, Claude.”
Claude’s mouth went thin, and Byleth winced. Perhaps this was too forward of her. Too eager, being swept away like this.
Her eyes widened like an owl’s, suddenly feeling faint as two sets of hands clumsily brushed through her hair. The flames made Claude tremble himself, or at least she had hoped they did too. This sort of thing, delicate and fair, was all too new for her. He seemed to be the same so far.
He drew himself closer, face etched with a determination, but it was offset by bashfulness. That comparison to a deer proved true, and yet he plunged anyway, gently placing his lips onto hers. The clenching overwhelmed her, and she was now beholden to its source.
She loved the way it made her feel.
So she embraced him and pursed her own lips, kissing him back in earnest. Both were awash with pink, now fully breathless, steeped with something that made them feel like dancing with the same aplomb as the petals in the lakes surrounding them.
Overhead, the pearly star cluster came together above them, glowing alongside its companion above: A flaming orange star. At another vertice was the azurite Blue Sea star and its radiance, and yet another was a vertice with a star of a glassy white hue. It was perfect.
“Claude,” Byleth sighed, eyes open to find that stern countenance returning, but marred by that same deep flush, those same puffs of air. The flame was quashed, and she felt cold. “Claude, I -"
“I have to go,” he sighed suddenly, grabbing at their now-aborted little picnic. He haphazardly packed the food and drink, uncaring of the hot water stinging his hands. The samovar let out a loud clatter and spilled its contents all over the marble. Byleth reached for the precious vessel, but before she could, Claude snatched it out of her hand, almost predatory.
"Ow!"
Claude's eyes went deerlike, and he winged. "I'm sorry - I, ah…"
He slid backward, falling to the shadows, refusing to slide back out. "I…Teach, truly, I…" He spun on his heel. "See you in the morning."
The shoulder cuff of her gown slid off her shoulder, leaving the fading pink of her inner fire in its wake. It was as if a true fire had been doused in haste. Byleth was left alone, with nothing but the stars, an abandoned box of tea, and a dying tempest in her mind.
If she were not so baffled and confused from the new experience, she'd have felt like crying. Idly she traced her hand over the abandoned box of Almyran tea, the one that had that green-citrus scent. The script, to one who would have known no better, appeared almost as a series of peculiar, flowery loops. But Byleth knew better than to see it as such.
"Noomi…basra. Limes."
She dug into the cobweb behemoth that was her box of memories, and - there is was again, that familiarity. Surely Jeralt must have bought her to Almyra before. If he did, then the ties that bound her to Claude held answers beholden not only to her, but to all of Fódlan.
If only he could see it. Unity among people was his ultimate dream, after all. Did she not say she'd pursue it too?
As the stars began to recede for the night, Byleth was left with only her hammering pulse and a pile of fear and sadness in her wake.
