Chapter Twenty-Five – Alone Again

When the darkness relinquished me, I opened my eyes and found myself back in Garreg Mach. Dimitri hovered over me, his face red with worry. I swore I could see traces of a trail down his left cheek as if he had been crying, but he would never admit it if I asked.

"Byleth!"

He reached out and brushed the hair from my eyes before scooping me up into his arms. He pressed me against his chest, his chin resting against the top of my head. I could feel his heart beating through his chest, pounding like beats of a drum.

And then I felt something funny. Something similar.

But… within me.

Dimitri pressed a kiss to the top of my head and then held me tighter again. He controlled his strength, sure not to break me, but I still made an attempt to wriggle out of his arms. After a moment of holding me more, he loosened his grip and looked down at me.

"Byleth…"

I put a hand against my chest. The steady thump, thump, thump was no mistake. I moved my fingers to my wrist and felt for a pulse, and sure enough, I could feel it tap against my fingertips.

"My heart," I breathed.

And then out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something else odd. My hair fell forward from behind my right ear. It had been so long since I last saw my natural color. But that was what I saw now: dark hair that reflected blue in the light.

"I didn't…" Dimitri placed a hand on my cheek and sighed. "I thought for a moment you wouldn't wake up. When your hair changed, I thought that was it. And I couldn't find your heartbeat, but then… it started."

"She's gone." I grabbed his hand in mine and lowered it into my lap. "Sothis is gone again."

Dimitri stood, and I tried to push myself to my feet. Something felt off, and I wobbled beside my husband. He wrapped an arm around my waist. "You probably shouldn't be standing yet. Hanneman wants to run some tests. I was supposed to go get him when you woke up."

"Give us a minute."

He nodded and then pulled himself away from me when I appeared steady. He walked over to the wall and grabbed the Sword of the Creator which leaned against it. It did not glow in his hand, did not react to him. He came back over to me and held the hilt out to me.

I hesitated. My hand was outstretched, ready to grasp the blade once more, but I couldn't bring myself to lock my fingers around it. It would not awaken for me anymore. Without Sothis, without my Crest, the Sword of the Creator was just bones.

I swallowed my pride and took it.

Nothing happened. No red glow. No surge of power.

The sword fell from my grip, clattering on the floor. My hands shook, and I lowered myself back to the floor beside the blade.

"It's okay." Dimitri knelt again and touched my back. "You're still you."

"I feel weird."

He frowned and tore his gaze away from mine. "I cannot say I understand what you're feeling right now. But I imagine I would feel strange, too, if I suddenly had all my power stripped from my very being." He looked back at me and rubbed my back again. "But Sothis wasn't responsible for all your power. You are still you."

I smiled. "She said the same thing."

"A wise goddess."

The door burst open just as Dimitri leaned his face towards mine, and he rose to his feet. Hanneman clapped his hands together when he noticed me conscious.

"Marvelous! How are you feeling, Professor?"

"Oh, never better," I responded, and Dimitri smiled. The humor was lost on Hanneman, though.

"Fascinating, isn't it? Your physical changes were always entirely correlated to the goddess's presence within you. So, with the removal of your Crest, we also managed to remove your ties to the goddess, thus reversing the changes." Hanneman rubbed his chin, his eyes sparkling behind his monocle.

I reached out for Dimitri's hand to get up, but Hanneman shook his head. "Remain where you are, Professor. I would like to test—"

My sudden cry of pain made Hanneman cease his proposal. Dimitri knelt beside me once more as I hugged my arms around my stomach and doubled over, pressing my forehead against my knees. I lifted my head as another burst of pain shot through my abdomen and gritted my teeth. The air escaped between my lips like a hiss.

"What's going on?" Dimitri demanded as he glanced between Hanneman and me.

"Baby…" I breathed. I relaxed when the pain subsided, exhaling slowly and sitting up straight again.

Hanneman walked over to the table and grabbed a couple instruments from the assortment laid out across it. Dimitri's eye widened when Hanneman came over with an object that appeared to be some sort of flask and another like a large monocle.

"What will you do with those? Should we send for Mercedes?" my husband asked.

"I do not believe you will need to. Your wife is not far enough along for that to have been a contraction nor do I believe the baby is in danger. If my hypothesis is correct…" Hanneman held out the flask towards me. It could very well just be a large vial of blood, but there was something luminescent about it. "This is your child's Crest. As requested, yours has been destroyed. But I suspect that the baby is adjusting to being without its Crest, just as you will need to, as well. Expect pain such as that to be sporadic for a while—perhaps a day to a week."

He grabbed my wrist, flipping my hand palm up. He handed Dimitri the flask and then held the monocle-like object over my arm just below the heel of my hand.

"Indeed. As expected." Hanneman reached back for the flask and then returned both objects to the table. "Now, might we test your reflexes, reactivity, strength, magic?"

"Are you all right?" Dimitri asked me, and when I nodded, he helped me back to my feet.

Hanneman retrieved a piece of parchment and a quill and then ordered Dimitri and I to spar with wooden weapons. He took notes as we fought, though Dimitri lacked his normal vigor. Only once did we have to pause as the pain began again, though Dimitri insisted we stop to let me rest. When I attempted to catch him off-guard as he spoke with a burst of magic, I lifted my hand, only for nothing but the briefest spark of light to appear. Hanneman immediately scribbled more and directed me to try again.

We sparred for nearly a half-hour, a fresh layer of sweat glistening on my forehead by the end. Hanneman finally called for it to end, and Dimitri threw a cloth at me to dry my face.

"Well?" I asked Hanneman. "My magical prowess is naught. What else?"

"Some of it could be attributed to your pregnancy, of course, but based on previous data collected, it appears that your strength has decreased slightly. Your reflexes are still good—surely the reflexes of a talented mercenary, yes?" He moved his hands to grip the parchment lower as he continued to read his notes. "Reactivity is good. You bounced back from parries quickly. I suspect your faith magic will never be what it once was, but you should still be able to master reason magic once again with enough practice."

"That's good," Dimitri offered, and I nodded.

"It seems your stamina has been diminished as well, even more so due to your pregnancy. But do not expect to be able to maintain the level of involvement in battle that you have enjoyed in the past," Hanneman continued. "Overall, however, you should notice little change. Much of your power has always been your own, it seems."

It bothered me that I was relieved to hear this—that I could still be me even without Sothis's power. That I could still protect those I loved without her.

But now that I had gotten used to her voice once more, it seemed awfully quiet without it.

"If I may ask, what do you plan on doing with your son's Crest?" Hanneman asked, shaking me from my thoughts.

I exchanged a look with Dimitri, and he nodded at me. "I think we ought to lock it away. It and the Sword of the Creator. I do not want to keep them with any one person and risk someone getting hurt."

"Where would you lock them?"

I stepped towards the Sword of the Creator and picked it up, holding the blade I once called my own as if it belonged to a stranger. "Back where they belong."

Hanneman returned to his home with all his tools packed away again not long after we returned the Crest of Flames and Sword of the Creator to their rightful places. I suspected he hoped I would change my mind and allow him access to the Crest of Flames, perhaps even allow him to take it with him. When I didn't, he thanked me for reaching out to him and informed me that he would not be staying the night.

For now, we needed to come up with a new plan to deal with the Agarthans. Now that I no longer had a Crest for them to take, they would be unable to use me as they desired. But it was also true that they would likely stop at nothing to eliminate me now, with no barrier in the way to keep them from doing so.

When our friends gathered to discuss new plans, more time was spent gawking over my appearance than devising tactics. Sylvain, who once told me that I looked even more beautiful after my changes when Sothis originally gifted me her powers, now assured me that I was lovelier than ever once again, and that he had missed gazing into my cornflower-colored eyes.

Felix, meanwhile, seemed even moodier than before and avoided looking at me altogether. I kept looking at him, hoping to catch his eye, but he was stubbornly proficient at averting his gaze elsewhere.

Once we got past my new-old appearance, we managed to discuss actual plans. The Agarthans had been quiet, but we doubted that would last much longer. But we would need to take advantage of the fact that they did not know that my Crest, and the Crest of my child who would be their back-up plan, had been removed. If they suspected I still had it, they would continue to treat me as indispensable. And as long as that was the case, they would hold back around me.

We would need to work out further details later, but the formation of a plan had begun. I left the meeting feeling confident that this was almost the end, that we could win.

I put a hand on my bump and sighed. This child would know a world without suffering. I would make sure of it.

Our group began to disperse in time for dinner, leaving Dimitri, Sylvain, Dedue, Felix, and me behind. Dedue walked around the table pushing in chairs and wiping down the tabletop, and I smiled when Dimitri and Sylvain started to help him.

Felix started to sneak out of the room when he thought I wasn't looking, and he froze when I called his name.

Sylvain looked up from the piece of parchment he had picked up off the floor. His eyes flickered between his best friend and me even as he bent down and picked up another piece of scrap from under a chair.

"Wait." I followed after Felix and then linked his arm with mine, pulling him out of the room and beyond earshot of the others. "We need to talk."

Once I stopped pulling him, he loosened my grip on his arm and took a step away from me. "I need to train."

"No, hold on." I blocked his path out of the hallway, leaving him trapped in the dead end. His gaze traveled beyond me, as if he were searching for a way out. "You've been acting weird around me since our fight with Theron, and I want to know why."

"I'm not acting weird," he assured me. For some reason, he sounded genuine. Perhaps he did not know.

My eyebrows knitted together. "Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

This would get us nowhere if this were to serve as our argument. I moved to the side and held out my arm, allowing him a path free. But he did not leave.

"I'm not immune to grief," he finally said. "I have lost people I cared about. My brother, my father, my friends. There have been times when it felt hopeless, but I knew that the only thing to do was keeping marching forward. Everything changed when Glenn died. Everything. But all I could do, again and again, as things got harder, was make the decision to let it happen."

"It's why you were so angry with Dimitri," I pointed out, and he nodded. "Why you hated that he let revenge consume him."

"Yes. And it's why…" Felix stopped himself before he finished his sentence and then started over. "I'm not angry with you. I'm angry with Rhea."

And if he was angry with Rhea, he was in turn passive towards me. Because I was just an extension of Rhea, really. She was the one who gifted me life through Sothis, the one who put me in this position as archbishop, the one who made me the professor of the Blue Lions. Felix connected Rhea with me, so if he felt any animosity towards her, he would extend it to me.

"She had the power all along to save those around her—you're living proof of that. Adonis and Sybil are proof of that. I can't help but wonder if all these deaths have been wholly unnecessary. Maybe my brother didn't have to die. Maybe Dimitri wouldn't have rampaged if she saved his father." Felix shook his head. "It's useless to think about now, especially because it would have been impossible to save them all. Yet I think about it all the same."

"You think about and still you—"

"Move forward," he finished for me. I smiled at him—it was perhaps a bit of a pitying glance. "Take a step and then another."

"I'm proud of you," I told him.

He smiled for a second before finally walking past me so I could no longer see his face. "Don't patronize me, Professor."

"Are you really going to train?"

Felix looked back at me, all hints that he had been smiling gone, except for the light in his eyes. "I think I might get a meal first. Would you like to join me?"

"Sure," I agreed. "And then I'll destroy you in the arena."

As the days continued uneventfully, our team managed to come up with a plan. Without my ability to turn back time, this would have to be executed perfectly. It had been years since I felt such pressure. During my time as a mercenary, I always had my father behind me ready to come to my aid if I messed up. It had never even been a consideration that he could have been lost.

Now, it was all I could think about. Who would die because I ruined some part of the plan?

As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about ruining the plan. The Agarthans would make sure of that all on their own.

I sat with Alexi and Katrina in my room reading a fable written by Seteth that he lent me when the knock on the door interrupted us. I lifted Katrina off my lap and stood, one hand on my back. The pain I had been experiencing over the past few days since the Crest extraction had mostly subsided, but it left an ache in my lower back.

Sylvain stood outside my door, a small package in his hands. His skin was pale, and he glanced past me at the kids. "Can you step outside for a second?"

"Alexi, you want to show Katrina the pictures?" I asked my son, who nodded and picked up the book larger than his head. I closed the door behind me and looked at Sylvain, then at the little box. "What's that?"

"I found him," a third voice interrupted before Sylvain could respond. Mercedes hurried over with Dimitri and Dedue in tow.

Sylvain handed me the box, and I lifted the lid carefully. Within rested a gold-rimmed monocle, the glass shattered within. The light from the sun reflected off the web of pieces, sparkling like stars. Beside it was a roll of parchment tied shut with a red silk ribbon.

My stomach twisted. My heart—my heart—began to beat so that I could feel it weighing within me again.

"Professor Hanneman…" Dimitri said, reaching into the box and picking up the shattered monocle.

I set the box down and retrieved the scroll. The ribbon slid off with little effort. I unraveled the document and bit my lip as the pain of my own heart beating grew stronger with each passing moment—with every word as I read its contents—with every breath.

"They know," I said finally, passing the scroll off to Dimitri. "They know that I got rid of the Crest of Flames because they have Hanneman."

Sylvain cursed.

I watched Dimitri as he read it, his eye narrowing.

"Theron want to meet with me, unarmed and alone," I said when Dimitri passed the letter to Dedue. "To negotiate."

"Negotiate? There's nothing for them to negotiate," Sylvain said. "He'll just kill you if you meet with him."

I looked at the monocle in Dimitri's hand. "I won't go alone, and I won't go unarmed. But I will meet him. And when I do, I won't stop at just cutting off his hand."

Author's Note: I have been busy working on a project for another zine, this time focused on Dimitri. I want to thank everyone who supported My Beloved, the dimileth zine. If you did not read my piece, it is currently posted on AO3 and is entitled, "The Reckoning of Snowfalls and Snowballs." More information about the new zine I am a part of, A King's Journey, coming soon.