The Full Unredacted Emotional Cognizance of the Fool Byleth Eisner

by Nate-kun

In which Byleth has heart problems.

Has it really been a year and some change since Three Houses? Huh... Time flies. Come to think of it, I've been sitting on this draft for almost just as long. Initially expelled to the backburner during the game's honeymoon period, I fished it out last July with the intention of completing it in time for the first anniversary, yet here I am barely uploading it in time for the franchise's 31st anniversary. Whoops. Anyway, to make a long story slightly less long: of the game's four routes, Crimson Flower is the only one in which Byleth restores his humanity. At the time of the game's release, I thought it would be interesting to expand upon the ramifications of that event after the war but before the Eagles retire into their respective epilogues. Unenlightened idjits such as you and I have no problem processing both simple and complex emotional states, but Byleth is a different case. I'd hardly call myself an expert, but I doubt he would be quick to conform to the sudden uninvited presence of a beating, working heart when he's practically been without one for so long. I think it would be a far more gradual ordeal, with a lot of psychological disconnect, growing pains, and intrigue—but I digress. Here's my TEDTalk or whatever they're called.

Word count: 32,627 words.

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The Adrestrian Imperial Board of Health Presents: The Full Unredacted Emotional Cognizance of the Fool Byleth Eisner, 1st Edition

---

Having a heart was... strange.

No.

Strange wasn't the right word. It was close, but not close enough. Every being, no matter how sinister, sinful, or sickeningly slithery, had something akin to a heart. Something that embodied their very essence. Something that made them whole. For those fetid few wallowing under the dread of night, that something was likely no more than a shriveled peppercorn with a pulse that registered just enough to be considered animate. It was a faint, drab, nigh pitiful existence, but an undeniable one nonetheless.

Hearts were normal. Having a heart was normal. It was so normal that it wasn't so much an accepted norm as it was an outright prerequisite for existing at all. Humans, wildlife, bleak-eyed shells, festering beasts, even the basest insect—the beating drums their minds danced to were one in the same. Professor Byleth Eisner having a heart should have been just as normal, but as the former mercenary soaked in the breeze of the cool midday sky, gloved hands resting upon the railing of the Goddess Tower's balcony, the only emotions he could feel coursing through him were that of deep-seated confliction and unease. For him, it wasn't normal. Were he to tell someone, then they would insist that it wasn't strange either. To them, he wasn't any more or less alive than they were. To them, strange would be his objection to the claim—that it wasn't normal, that it couldn't be normal, that man can't possibly live with such an incessant internal rhythm day in and day out.

Thus, it couldn't be strange. It was something surely, but it wasn't strange, and yet as Byleth continued to pick away at the addled confines of his brain he could think of no substitute other than 'different', and 'different' was too vague, too simple. Moreover, it was too familiar. It reminded him of his youth when he, as a quiet lonely boy with eyes that never wept and lips that never turned, would overhear the drunken musings of some of his father's lesser mercenaries. Different, weird, soulless they'd call him, among a score of other wretched grapevine whispers bandied about when they thought he wasn't listening.

"I hear the kid doesn't even blink. Doesn't cry either."

"Have any of you seen him eat? I haven't! I can get past the kid never talking. A bit creepy, sure, but never eating? What the hell keeps that kid going!?"

"Devils like him don't need to eat. I wager he fills himself plenty on bloodshed!"

"Gods, you couldn't pay me to look after the little creep. I don't know how Jeralt does it..."

"Do we even know if he's really his? They're nothing alike. Even a blind old fool could tell that apple didn't fall from that tree! I wouldn't be surprised if Jeralt…"

They'd covertly spin their tales behind Jeralt's back with feigned laughter and forced grins that belied their abject fear underneath, fear that crept to the surface and festered tenfold whenever the Ashen Demon was set loose. Every time that happened, every time a fresh coat of blood sprayed the fields they fought along red, the hearsay would stop for a week and any new recruits scouted within that window were simply warned by their peers to stay a frozen hell's away from the boss' little demon. In a twisted sense, they revered him, but unlike his father the praise they reserved for him wasn't out of respect or admiration, but out of the unconstrained fear that they would not live to see another day if they weren't constantly kissing the ground his feet pitter-pattered on.

"Perhaps I'm overthinking it," the professor sighed as the memories faded, his doubts petering into the wind without an answer to sate them. It wasn't as though he physically lacked a heart. He had one, and in that sense he was somewhat like his peers. Much unlike his peers however, his heart never beat. Never thumped. Never throbbed, thrummed, or hummed. If he were seething with anger or bright and beaming, his heart rarely showed it. Frankly speaking, up until the very moment The Immaculate One wounded him at dawn's edge, it rarely showed much of anything.

Now, however...

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

Now it beat. Now it thumped. Now it throbbed, thrummed, and hummed. Now it did a whole host of things he had little to no idea hearts could do and did them constantly, effortlessly, as though it had always done them, as though it had never not done them. Anger became more than just a slightly stern frown. Shock became more than just a mere parting of the lips. Happiness became more than just a razor thin line that could barely be seen by the naked eye. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before—if he had ever truly felt anything before. It was hyperbolic perhaps, but the difference was just that significant. It was night and day, north and south, black and white—every waking second just another serene sensation of some sort coursing through his veins. The difference was so utterly incomparably grandiose that were it not for the tears he spilled in his father's dying moments and the ensuing grief that consumed him in the moon thereafter, one could make the case that he had felt absolutely nothing in all his life before the archbishop's last gasp. The rare smile, the even rarer laugh, the odd glimmer of something more hiding deep beneath his apathetic gaze—the pittances of those days paled to what he felt at all times now. They paled to such a strong degree that to even refer to them as a sizable fraction of his full emotional spectrum would be a gross understatement at best and an incorrigible insult at worst. The wind in his hair, the birds in the air, the sun in his eyes and the butterfly perched upon the tip of his finger—all these sensations most would consider mundane were practically brand new to him. The fact that they were all so bizarrely familiar—yet at the same time not—was perhaps the most mystifying part about it. As it stood, Byleth had only just begun scratching the topmost layer of a life's worth of never before felt phenomena, sure to encompass everything from the minute to the massive. What little he had explored since the mad dragon's demise was surface level, barely measuring to a tip of the iceberg, barely on the brink of uncharted land. The impressions of the balcony alone were enough to account for the first page of an autobiographical memoir dedicated entirely to every single one of the newfound feelings he now felt resonating throughout his once ashen body.

His body which now felt like a body and no longer like a husk.

And it was strange—tentatively strange, at least until he could find someone capable of filling in the blank for him. Driven by his own brimming curiosity, Byleth released the shimmering monarch into the skies and set out, his battle-worn boots clacking in an almost rhythmic fashion against the tiles beneath him.

That's also new...

---

The monastery had seen better days. Nevertheless, its fallback niche as a hub of all trades allowed for its doors to stay open even in the ashes of grand scale warfare. Sitting in the heart of the Oghma Mountains (give or take a few meters), Garreg Mach was an almost too perfect base of operations. It was a sprawling sanctum renowned for its academics, knights, merchants, monks, strays, fish, and just about everything else under the sun. In a period of reconstruction, recovery, relief, restoration and repose, the professor could think of no better place for the quickly expanding Empire to recollect itself after a war to end all wars. Admittedly, he had also grown to like the place on a personal level, having familiarized himself with every nook and cranny, no longer stumbling about and hopelessly checking his map at every turn as he so often did during his freshman week. It was very possible he was simply looking for reasons to keep the Empire anchored that held more convincing political weight than 'I like it'.

Of course, there was more to the monastery than praying and peddling. Chief among its facilities was the dining hall, an extravagant cornucopia of culture and cuisine dedicated to nourishing famished masses every morning, noon, and night. Just as the marketplace flourished with its motley array of goods from all corners of the continent, so too did the dining hall with its equally varied menu. The buzz was real and Byleth found himself agreeing with the hype as he entered from the adjacent hall, an untold bevy of gourmet fragrances slapping his senses silly on the way in. He found it both fascinating and surreal, the way his heart could be so easily swayed by fancies he held almost no regard for previously. Aimless chatter accompanied by the clinking of silverware tickled his ears, sizzling steaks and flowery arrangements dared his eyes to veer from their plotted course, and a tantalizing plate of golden fish drove his mouth to water without a lick of shame. He could only imagine what the thing tasted like with a tongue that didn't numb everything down to a tasteless, joyless plain. If he hurried in line, perhaps he could...

"Uh, Professor...? Hello? Earth to Professor! Blink twice if you can hear me, once if you can't!"

"I-if he's zoning out, how is he supposed to know to blink once? H-how does he know to blink at all?!"

"Huh? Oh."

It seemed even Byleth's sense of time was starting to throw him for a loop. It hadn't occurred to him in the midst of the savory salvo that he had already stood in line, got his meal, and seated himself across from Caspar and Bernadetta in the time it took for him to muse about the hustle and bustle his heart had all but ignored in times past. The cyan and purple pair, former academy students turned officers of the Black Eagle Strike Force, were a staple of sorts around the kitchen as of late. The post-war recovery provided Bernie with all the alone time she needed behind the comfort of a soothing solitary stove—and Caspar all the excuse he needed to gorge himself on whatever delectable delicacies she happened to dish out in the interim. Today wasn't any different in that regard, aside from Caspar looking quite bemused at the sight of his old teacher playing with his food like an absentminded child. It was a stark departure from his house's code of conduct, which encouraged devouring everything on sight and asking questions later (if at all).

"S-sorry," Byleth blurted out, the tip of his index finger dripping with pheasant grease. "I was, uh..."

Thump thump.

"I... I don't know what I was doing," he conceded, his face every bit as red as the Adrestrian standard.

To the professor, lunch was but another thing to add to his rapidly growing list of familiarities-turned-peculiarities. The flavor was one thing, an inevitable consequence of a once senseless tongue, but even the texture felt alien to him. The texture! How it felt! It was as though he was having fried pheasant for the first time again, something which the kitchen staff could easily disprove with a showing of their physical and mental scars.

"Hahaha! I guess that makes two of us!" Caspar chuckled heartily, shoveling down alternating forkfuls of stir fry without a care in the world. "Five years later and I'm still stumped by some of the stuff you do, Professor. I mean there's picking at your food, plucking earthworms fresh out of the dirt, holding our stuff hostage until we're having a really bad day, playing board games by yourself..."

"I wasn't playing by myself," the mercenary mumbled, his only objection to the laundry list thrust upon him.

"Heh, ah well! I guess some things never change," the hotheaded general shrugged. "Er, besides pretty much everything else in our lives, but hey! Look on the bright side! At least the worst of it is behind us now! Nothing but sunshine, lame old politics, and all the chow you can down from here on out!"

"Please don't talk with your mouth full, Caspar..." pleaded Bernadetta from behind the loosely bound pages of her latest work-in-progress fable, pages which did little—if anything—to protect her from the friendly fire being thrust upon her. "You're spewing chunks everywhere... B-big, greasy, meaty, b-barely chewed, shrapnel-y chunks! Oh gods please don't hit me! I-I'm sorry captain! I-I'll never sleep in or skip out on training ever again! P-please don't tie Bernie to the whipping post again! I don't think my back can take another lashing!"

"Aw, come on! It's just a little protein, Bernadetta," Caspar rubbed the back of his neck, dismissing the shrinking violet's worries to the smacking tune of half-chewed meat wads slapping out of his mouth. "You really oughta lighten up. The war's over! Live a little! Here, I'll help turn that frown upside down! Open wide and say ahhh for the wyvern!"

"Aaaaaahh! Get awaaay! P-put that fork down! N-not in front of the Professooor! Ohhh, why me?! What did Bernie ever do to you, cruel world?!"

A recovering recluse bursting with untold potential and a spunky hotshot with arguably more muscles than sense: Byleth's first consultants weren't exactly the first candidates that came to mind when thinking of people who could possibly pull him out of his existential rut (they were simply the closest). Still, he figured that it wouldn't harm his cause to convene with them. After all, their antics were more than enough to satisfy what little criteria he had cooked up since leaving the balcony. So direct and lacking in subtlety was his approach to the topic however, that the two Eagles were utterly dumbstruck when the sacred words finally left his lips.

"Hey," the unassuming professor called. "What does it mean to have a heart?"

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

"...Wha?"

It was as though time had stopped. Not from some malevolent force or divine power, but from the absolute whiplash generated by such an unexpected and out of the blue query. Bernadetta's usual hyperactive awareness and reaction time was so dulled, so delayed by the inquiry, that Caspar was able to shove the 'wyvern' in her mouth without her paying any heed to it. Granted, he didn't exactly notice either.

"A... a heart? Uh... erm…"

Caspar looked as though something big and important in his brain had broken (it was a look Byleth was familiar with—the 'pop quiz face'). Whether it was something as simple as a cerebral fuse or the whole nervous system, what mattered was that it left Caspar dumbfounded, blinking a quintillion times a minute, and completely and utterly lost. "Can you use it in a sentence?"

"Oh no," Bernadetta peeped, her cheeks chock-full of pheasant. "D-don't tell me...! I-is this a trick question, Professor? O-or a pop quiz?! Because if it is I didn't study! Argh! I'm no good at pop quizzes! I'm terrible, horrible, the pits! T-teachers always spring them out of nowhere and expect you to ace them with flying colors! They're the worst of the worst of the worst, a-a-and the last one I took was nearly five years ago when this monastery was still a monastery and Bernie was still a Bernie and not armed to the teeth with a million pointy arrows and expected to lead a house in the middle of sweeping imperial reform!"

"Haha! I promise you have nothing to fear, Bernadetta. There's no treachery or leg pulling at play here—so long as you refrain from speaking with your mouth full, that is," the professor chuckled, an earnest grin tugging at his lips as Bernadetta scrambled to wolf down the food her cheeks had amassed. "I was just curious, that's all. Earlier today I was thinking, one question begat another, and well..."

"Ahh! Lost in thoughts all alone, huh?" Caspar snapped out of his stasis with a snap of his finger, his choice of words wringing a delicate gasp from Bernie's lips. "Happens to the best of us. Heck, it happens to me all the time!"

"Lost in thought... Heh, I suppose you could say that," the teacher's smile widened, a sure side effect of Caspar's contagious spirit. It was a humble feeling, a natural one even, as strange as it was for someone who rarely ever cracked a grin until a few days ago. To spur a little ear-to-ear merriment in someone and to receive a little spark of that same mirth in return was nothing short of rejuvenating. Byleth was aware of how often he stood on the former end of the line thanks in no small part to his Eagles, but it was only recently that he truly understood what it felt like to be on the receiving end. The only other time he had ever come close to approaching such spirit in the past was in the company of...

Thump thump.

"P-perspective," Byleth said following a slight pause. "Perspectives about the heart and what it means to possess one. That's all I'm after. The more viewpoints I can gather on the subject, the better. To that end, you're free to interpret the matter however you please. I encourage you to do so, actually."

"I-I still feel like I'm being put on the spot," Bernadetta twiddled her thumbs nervously, one good scare away from scurrying under the table. "I can hardly think straight when I'm tied up in the hot seat! W-well, any kind of seat really..."

"Heart, heart, heart... What's it mean to have a heart...?" Caspar thought aloud, eager to accept the gauntlet thrown his way. The minister to be was knee deep in rumination, meandering in his own vivid machinations with a hardy hand cradling his chin. The effort was as admirable as it was atypical, which only made it sting all the more when the chronically underutilized gears in his head hit another head scratching hitch.

"Sheesh," the general sighed. "You're not making this easy, Professor! I don't want to throw in the towel already but... hmm... Are we talking about the squishy, bloody, thingamabob-in-your-chest that keeps you alive and kicking heart, or a heart as in the shape of a heart? I feel like knowing that might help me get from square one to square two."

The muscles in Byleth's lips twitched ever so slightly but he was able to catch himself before an answer could slip past them. "I'm afraid that's up to you to decide," he said. "I don't want to risk influencing your response. Just state the first thing that comes to mind. That should give us somewhere to start."

"This is all so sudden," Bernadetta whined, her lips quivering and knees knocking. "S-so sudden that I think I'd rather be influenced! That way I can have some guidance and at least have some faint idea of what to say i-instead of fretting over a riddle I can't make heads or tails out of! My heart's beating out of my chest just thinking about it! Ack! No pun intended, n-no pun intended! P-please don't count that as my response!"

"Aha! I've got it!" Caspar brought his hands down with an overly thunderous slam, an unmistakable cockiness coloring his face as he met the mercenary's mild mannered gaze with one instilled with all the gusto of a man with nothing to lose. "The first thing that comes to mind, huh? Sure, and I was born yesterday! You can't fool me, Professor! I've got you and your little brain teasers down pat! I've just gotta think like you do. That's all there is to it!"

So Caspar thought, and as he thought he quite naturally continued to eat, and as he fiercely alternated between munching pheasant and stir fry, his musings quite naturally leapt between that of the professor's burning questions and that of his lunch. Caspar, quite naturally, failed to notice the two subjects converging and continued to contemplate as though his concentration wasn't completely compromised by cuisine. These efforts, quite naturally, culminated in a brilliant breakthrough that dawned upon him as he finished the first of what was sure to be several, several helpings.

"Having a heart is like having a buffet!" the second Bergliez son declared proudly, loudly, and just a bit stupidly. The professor and Bernadetta, rather appropriately, responded by gawking at him as though he had lost every last one of his marbles.

"I'm not daydreaming again," Byleth blinked. "Am I?"

"A b-buffet?" Bernadetta stammered, dazed and confused, the mark of Caspar's genius clearly lost on her. "What does that have to do with—aaaaaaaah!?"

The shrieking violet shrieked ever more as Caspar slung an arm around her shoulders, steam pouring from her hastily reddening ears. "Hear me out!" the bluehead bellowed in a manner that turned more heads than the mere two he was preaching to. "It's like turning in after a long day out on the prowl. You're beat, your foes are beat, you've been shouting all dang day, and all you can think about is sleeping like a baby. Then, out of the blue, that special little someone you can't do a thing without surprises you with a full course feast! You didn't ask for it, you definitely didn't expect it, but they whipped it up anyways because they knew you'd appreciate it!"

"A-are you talking about me?" Bernie asked in a meek, mousy whisper. The grin on Caspar's face was big and most assuredly dumb, but his embrace was warm and all things wholesome. If Bernie fidgeted just a smidgen less in his muscly hold, neither of them noticed.

"Don't get me wrong, Professor," Caspar continued while the iron was hot. "Sending bad guys packing, protecting those who can't protect themselves, serving up spoonfuls of justice... That stuff's all important too, but the heart's a different story. Come to think of it, it's actually kinda like the paste that holds all the chapters of the story together, or, well, uh—you know what I mean! If it's the heart we're talking about, then I'd say having one means going that extra step for someone—without being asked or expecting anything in return! It's all about the effort you put in for the sake of others! Kind of like the effort you put into leading the rest of us! Yup—totally nailed it there—effort and top notch House Varley cooking! Final answer!"

Thump thump.

"Effort and... cooking?" the professor frowned. If he saw any correlation, he didn't exactly show it. "I... can't say that I understand, but I appreciate your insight nonetheless, Caspar, even if I may not entirely grasp it. It's still more than I possess."

"Wait a minute, Professor! I-I didn't answer yet! W-what about my insight?" Bernadetta protested, only to instantly regret doing so. "Ack! N-not to suggest that I had any to begin with! D-definitely not! Oh gods, oh gods, you really did it now Bernie! You should have kept your stupid little mouth shut! Now he's going to feel bad for forgetting to ask you and he's going to call on you and you still don't have a clue what to say and you're going to look stupid and everyone's going to laugh and you still don't have this rough draft finished and—"

Of all the things to set the bow-wielding recluse's mind at ease, Byleth didn't anticipate it being a second helping of stir fry. Caspar couldn't help but snicker at his handiwork. "Ha! I'm getting pretty good at sticking these wyvern landings! We should start feeding each other more often!"

"Mmrfph!" Bernie fussed, her eyes swirling this way and that. "T-this is so embarrassing... but so delicious at the same time! Oh cruel, cruel, unbelievably cruel world, why does my b-b-beloved have to have such good taste?"

"I've got good taste?" Caspar cocked a curious brow before breaking into another easygoing grin. "Ha! Of course I do, and as long as we've got each other's backs, so do you!"

"R-really?" the purple haired archer blinked in glossy disbelief. The goofy, albeit sincere nod her big blue dope gave in return turned out to be all the reassurance she needed, a sweet little smile gracing her lips as she leaned back with a flowery, well contented sigh. "O-oh...! Um, th-that's nice to know. Very nice, actually... Y-you know, u-um, B-Bernie's really happy to have you too, Caspar... Huh, you know... Maybe... M-maybe that can be my answer... Y-yeah! Um, h-having a heart means embracing happiness! Wherever, whenever, at every turn! A-and being able to share that happiness with the people you care most for!"

"Come on, Professor!" Caspar turned his head, oblivious to Bernadetta's confession. "Tell me that spiel's not deserving of an A plus plus plus, just like old times! And even if it isn't, then don't you worry cause I've got way more where that came from! If food analogies aren't your thing, then I've got some about training! And just in case those don't float your boat, I've got one about punching the living daylights out of your everyday no good thug! Better yet, we could just cut the middleman, hit the streets, and clobber some crooks to a pulp for real! I know a couple of good alleys we could stakeout! You could come too, Bernie bear! You rouse 'em something fierce with a couple of arrows to the eyes and the Professor and I'll hotfoot after 'em!"

"W-whaaaaaaaaaa?!"

"I'll... be sure to keep that offer in mind," Byleth replied somewhat hesitantly. It failed to occur to him that the Empire's prospective Minister of Military Affairs still possessed a personal fixation for brawling thugs in broad daylight. It added a dark edge to the otherwise exemplary model citizen portrait he was attempting to paint. "You and Bernie have my thanks, truly."

"Hey, no problem, Professor," Caspar remarked with a pumped fist and trailing eyes. "So, uh, are you going to finish that pheasant, or...?"

---

The luncheon lasted longer than Byleth anticipated, if only because of his borderline concerning inability to help himself in front of a menu. What started as a simple excursion to sate his curiosity and burn a few candles with a couple of his students swiftly evolved into a ravenous affair of sating his appetite. Such edacious episodes were unsightly enough on their own before and during the war (doubly so for any poor soul unfortunate enough to find themselves on kitchen duty), and they only worsened in the wake of it for reasons that were undoubtedly heart-centric. Just as his watering mouth dared to suggest in the throes of the dining hall, having a functioning heart was the ultimate difference between food registering as sustenance and succulent. Plate upon plate, bowl after bowl, dish after delectable dish—the Ashen Demon dealt with every single one of his servings until his servers could serve no more, their faces all but aghast with horror at the way he shamelessly transgressed and violated their culinary creations. It was barbaric. It was obscene. It was almost certainly inhuman. It was as though his appetite was amplified from that of one dozen men who ate only to quell their hunger to an army of one thousand who ate simply for the sake of it. Caspar couldn't have been more dumbfounded at the sight if he tried, his initial bewilderment quickly flip-flopping into a newfound respect for the professor; a respect woven entirely out of the way they both struck fear into the hearts of the kitchen staff. Bernadetta, conversely, was just shocked. Shocked and terrified and desperately wishing to return to her quarters.

In any case, Byleth was back on the beat, his seemingly bottomless appetite appeased for the time being. The next destination on his list of locales was none other than the stables, if only because that's where his feet decided to take him and he was making no conscious effort to fight them. Whether it was the neighing of the horses or the clacking of their hooves that drew him in, the professor couldn't say, but if he had to make an educated guess...

"Matters of the heart, hm?" rumbled the sumptuous baritone of one Ferdinand von Aegir, otherwise known as the official new and handsomely improved Duke Aegir, foremost candidate for the position of prime minister within the equally new and improved Empire. "Why did you not say so sooner, Professor? If that is the case, then it is understandable why you would come all this way—likely quarreling tooth and nail!—to seek my guidance. The heart is the very essence of a noble, after all."

"Oh hush, Ferdie," Dorothea waved him off in a manner that was, by this point, mastered. "You'll have to excuse him, Professor. You know how the old saying goes, don't you? 'The more things change the more they stay the same'? It explains Ferdie in a nutshell, if you ask me."

"Does it now?" Byleth remarked, wondering eyes glancing over at Ferdinand and his noble steed. Their luscious manes, rich and perpetually free-flowing, were practically interchangeable. They could almost be mistaken for twins.

"Am I," the duke darted hopelessly between the two. "...missing something?"

"No more than usual, you little bee you," Dorothea cooed.

An unabashedly proud noble with a habit of hammering every last syllable of his name into the skulls of those foolish enough to listen, and a lively songstress capable of reducing what's left of those skulls into paste with little more than a wink: Ferdinand and Dorothea were a terrifying combination through and through. All the same, the unbridled passion the two held for their crafts made them ample candidates for Byleth to consult in his quest for clarity. With a return to Aegir territory on the horizon, Ferdinand spent the bulk of his remaining time at the monastery buzzing around the stables and assisting with the cleanup effort, and if Dorothea wanted to buzz beside him for a spell, then that was just as well.

"Hmm... Normally I would feel inclined to believe you, my dearest Dorothea, as would any well to do noble... however!" the orange-haired young man threw up an accusatory finger, the look on his face as priceless as it was clueless. "Our growing regard for each other does not preclude my ability to sometimes detect your trademark deviltry! Clearly there is more to your playful asides than your alluring eyes would suggest. As Duke Aegir, it would not do well for me to be remembered as someone who was hopelessly inept at reading between the lines! Therefore...!"

There was a pregnant pause, a deadly silence that was as tense as it was comical, before Ferdinand promptly pivoted to the professor.

"Professor," the gallant duke spoke softly, dimwittedly, sounding so lost that Byleth had to wonder if he had simply imagined his earlier bravado. "You would not be so cruel as to leave me fumbling about in the dark as well, would you? Is she likening me to some type of nut? A chestnut perhaps?"

If Byleth feigned giving his response any deep, meaningful thought, Ferdinand could not tell.

"Not exactly," he said, unsure of why it fell upon him to play the part of awkward mediator. "At least, I'm fairly certain she isn't... I'm kind of stuck in a similar boat, you see."

"And what a boat it is," Ferdinand went on to lament, an arm plastered to his forehead. "Drifting in a siren's sea of similes, blinded by all manner of fog and darkness, with only vague embers from my radiant queen for hints as to where I should sail next!"

Dorothea side-eyed the professor, who returned her baffled gaze with one that was just as puzzled—and just the slightest bit concerned.

"I... uh, believe that Dorothea is simply relaying her relief that you've largely not changed in all the years you've known each other," Byleth explained, his words not unlike a beacon of light to the duke. "Even amongst all else that has transpired."

'All else' almost felt like sugarcoating it, but there were genuinely only so many ways one could dress up mass imperial reform. Reform that had barely even dipped a toe into its earliest phases. Reform that was still in the process of ironing out the kinks of its later phases because so much of the campaign was focused on defying the odds and actually getting to the point they now stood at, leaving only idealized fantasies as blueprints for the road thereafter. It was a mess, a big beautiful mess that they would all have to sort out together, and though the air around the monastery was tense and polluted with innumerable layers of uncertainty, the professor knew he and the rest of the Black Eagles wouldn't have it any other way.

"'Relief' is a strong word, Professor," the auburn songstress tutted with a dainty wag of her finger. "Although I suppose I'm a teensy bit surprised he hasn't fled the hive just yet. Quite the devoted little drone I have wrapped around my finger, isn't he?"

Up went Ferdinand's finger again. "Aha, there it is!" he cried, as righteous and resplendent as the burning sun behind his flawless frame. "Did you catch that, Professor? Yet another covert slight against my flawless character!"

"That was meant to be covert?" Byleth cupped his chin.

"Honestly, you give yourself far too much credit, Ferdie. It's not that hard to put one over you," Dorothea turned to her professor, coy as can be. "What? Oh, don't give me that scolding schoolteacher look, Professor. Even someone as stony as you has to admit this is pretty amusing. You couldn't have been more direct with him, yet he's still trying so hard to catch on! Oh, do your best, Ferdie! Give it your all! I know you can do it, my precious little bumble buddy!"

The professor furrowed his brow and gripped his chin just a smidgen tighter. "Stony?"

Ferdinand could give the sun a run for its money with how warm his cheeks were getting, his noble bones reeling from his beloved's lofty lilt. "I—I don't... ah—um... I-I will not allow you to... t-to! Y-you—th-that is to say—um—uh," he stammered in a manner that reeked of concession, before pivoting to his teacher in a move that was neither deflective nor desperate. "P-Professor! W-wondrous timing! D-didn't you have a question or two you wished to ask? Something regarding the constitution of a noble's heart, correct?"

"Oh," a bemused Byleth blinked, Dorothea's comment still well on his mind. "Any heart, actually. It doesn't have to be a noble's necessarily, though I suppose if you're the one I'm asking—"

"Say no more!" the duke ordered with record setting rekindled fervor, his divine locks dancing along with the wind in a manner that seemed straight out of the theatre. "Dearest Dorothea, may I propose a momentary truce? We will table the matter of what does and does not constitute myself in a nutshell for now. As for you, Professor, you may rejoice! Assuming of course that the splendor of my presence alone did not already entice you to do so. You have come to the right noble, dare I imply that your decision was anything but an easy one. This is certainly not the sort of subject that Hubert, Caspar, or Linhardt would have ample expertise in. Moreover, the look on your troubled face says more than words ever could: 'Only a nobleman as magnificent and refined as Ferdinand von Aegir would have the wisdom I so gravely covet!', and how correct you would be to make such an assessment. Indeed, truer words have never been spoken—or in this case, undoubtedly implied!"

"Uh..."

"But enough about myself," Ferdinand blathered on, blind to the rejection and almost certainly making a promise he could not keep. "Intoxicating though I may be, we have greater matters to attend to. If a seminar on the heart is what you seek, Professor, then I would be more than happy to be your fellow guide. Allow me, noble among nobles, to breathe fresh new life into your worldview!"

Meandering monologues were not so much a trademark of Ferdinand's as they were a cue for Dorothea to interject. "He doesn't have all day, Ferdie," she said, her words immediately betrayed by the professor, who was already well engrossed. "Or maybe he does."

Undeterred by his enchanting heckler, Ferdinand pressed on without further ado. "I have said it once and so I shall say it again—the heart is the very essence of a noble! As such, the qualities that constitute them are quite similar in nature, if not identical altogether. Everything one would expect to find in a splendorous heart is also present in a splendorous noble, and this relationship remains true in reverse; a splendorous noble is bound to have a splendorous heart. Of course, it is doubly important to note that while all pure nobles aspire for splendorous hearts, that does not mean everyone with a splendorous heart is a noble. One's inherent nobility is still determined by a myriad of supplemental factors, such as—"

Dorothea stepped forward, tapping lightly on her drone's shoulders. "Something tells me he doesn't need the whole song and dance, Ferdie," she suggested, though her tone made it sound more like an order. "Just the one answer will do. One."

"Splendorous," the professor's lips repeated in a quiet, much absorbed whisper. "So if you were to choose a single quality—"

Byleth's breath wasn't so much taken as it was knocked out of him completely, his questions drowned out by the unmistakable sound of crashing waves and salty seabirds. "Sincerity!" Ferdinand declared upon a miraculously manifesting eventide ridge. "To have a heart is to be sincere! It is the first and most important quality for a noble to master. Others exist, but few of them resonate with the heart as wonderfully as one's own trustworthiness."

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

"Sincerity," Byleth nodded along, wishing he had brought something to write with.

Though Ferdinand made no formal request for critiques of his theory, that didn't stop Dorothea from speaking her piece on it. "I would hate to jinx things—and I probably am by shining a light on it—but that was a surprisingly normal answer, Ferdie. Goodness, don't tell me you were motivated to actually think for a change because of my teasing? Oh, you poor thing!"

"Dorothea!" winced Duke Aegir, a hand clutching his bleeding heart. "Your words wound me, as they tend to do in so many wondrous ways. I would think that you of all people would know why I would regale the Professor with such a response. Was I wrong in my assessment?"

The smirk on Dorothea's face disappeared, replaced by a finger tapping delicately on her chin. "I would know?" she echoed curiously. "Well, if it's to do with honesty... You never were one to lie, I guess, but that isn't a trait of yours exclusive to my knowledge. While we're at it, isn't it the very opposite of 'sincere' for it to be something only I would know?"

"O-oh, um, yes. I suppose that would be true," Ferdinand nodded, faltering for only a moment. "If you were not so terribly mistaken, that is! Never did I claim that it was a trait of mine that only you would know about. A trait of yours that few know of, however..."

"Oh?" Dorothea parted her lips. "And what have I done to be deserving of today's sideshow?"

"Professor," Byleth rose an eyebrow as Ferdinand suddenly turned to him with a reverent, boyish grin. "It is my firmest belief that you already know this, try as your spirit might to muddy the truth and sow seeds of doubt; and yet it is for that very reason that I think the notion bears repeating, if only to dispel those deceitful misgivings: It is not enough for a splendorous heart to be true to others. Hardly, in fact. In order to be truly sincere—to be the noblest of nobles—you must be true to yourself as well."

The mercenary blinked. "True to yourself?" he repeated. "Er, myself?"

Ferdinand von Aegir was nothing if not honest. If he had to be true to anyone, it would almost have to be himself, or so Byleth thought. The man was so clearly enamored with his own image, it was difficult to think otherwise. Yet, even with those preconceptions in consideration, it baffled him all the same to think that he would actually employ them in his day-to-day moral compass.

As the duke continued, the skies above began to darken in kind, gray clouds gathering as if in kneejerk reaction to the gospel spilling from his lips. "The moment you lose sight of yourself—is the moment you forfeit your heart, and by extension, your essence! Your very sense of self!" he proclaimed amidst fervent cries of love and thunder. "If you cannot be true to yourself, how can you hope to be true to your friends? Your allies? The ones you hold dear? It would be, as Dorothea so elegantly put it, the very opposite of sincere for a noble—for anyone—to behave so fraudulently!"

A tumultuous strike of lightning underscored Duke Aegir's words, mitigated somewhat by the professor's lapse of suspended disbelief.

'Where is he acquiring all of these set pieces?'

"You're sounding rather fraudulent yourself, Ferdie," Dorothea remarked, her words like a reality checking dagger to the heart of the rose-tinted scene. "What with how much sense you're making for once. Still, I'm curious as to where I fit in this little profound picture you're painting."

"You still do not understand?" sighed the duke in defeat, his head hanging limply, hands flying to assuage his aching temples. "Must I cast all else aside and simply spell it out for you? How utterly conflicting... On the one hand, I am devastated, possibly beyond repair. On the other hand, this is quite the role reversal, is it not? I now understand, at least in some part, the excruciating torture you must have endured when I was the one playing your guessing games. I can scarce imagine how beside yourself you must have been at the time, forced to forever hold your peace so that I might one day blindly stumble into a solution, the answer always on the tip of my tongue yet never close enough for my foolish eyes to take notice...!"

"Ferdie," Dorothea called to him like one would a child or a lost puppy. "Is this charade your special little way of telling us that this is your personal 'bee' moment?"

"Ah!" the nobleman's eyes widened right then and there, glazed over with an indescribably besotted sheen. It was a look the songstress had seen only once before. "D-Dorothea! Th-that's...! Yes! Remarkable! Unbelievable! Truly and utterly stupendous! My heart is somersaulting several times over, and while my lips may be moving, the words they are attempting to convey fail me at every turn! Oh, Dorothea! That is exactly it! From failing to grasp a thing to hitting the nail on the head in one fell swoop... I must make certain to never underestimate your boundless wit henceforth!"

"I'm sorry," Dorothea blinked, hacking through the haze in a single short breath. "That's actually what you're trying to reference here?"

"But of course," Ferdinand cheerfully affirmed with a flick of his nose. "That illustrious episode is the very cornerstone of our humble beginnings after all. I cannot even tally the number of times I've reflected upon those golden days, when you were a budding angel and I but a hopeless fool... Oh, Professor, if you could lend your ear for just a moment longer, before I lose myself to this euphoria for good!"

"I never stopped lending it," Byleth replied bluntly, his attention slightly more focused on the hungrily leering horse behind the duke than the duke himself.

"Splendid! Then I shall continue," Ferdinand smiled, blithe and blissfully unaware. "You see, the reason why I cited Dorothea as my light, my muse, my inspiration behind my beliefs, is because she is the one who reminded me what it truly meant to be sincere in the first place."

"She did?"

"I did?"

"You did! Ha! Now who is the one jinxing?" the chipper duke laughed, a chorus of neighing horses joining him for no reason other than to back up one of their own (none of them could tell him apart from the rest of the herd). "Do you not see, Professor? My noble upbringing is what fostered my talent to treat others sincerely, but it was the frank, unabashed way with which Dorothea carried herself that fateful day that left me forever spellbound. Indeed, from the very moment she called me a bee—no! From the very moment she called me a despicable, big-shot noble—no! From the very moment she candidly declared her searing hatred for me as her visage illuminated the dining hall—that was precisely when I knew I wanted to be as true to my splendid self as she was to her then-noble-despising self! Like a drone to his queen, that was what drew me to her! The rest is, of course, history, but I suppose if you have another moment or ten to spare—"

"Ferdie, your nose is bleeding," the drone's so called queen channeled a chunk of her so called sincerity before granting Byleth a sheepish, sidelong glance. "You wouldn't mind excusing him again, would you Professor? I mean, at least his heart was in the right place... sort of."

The teacher only shook his head in response. "Please," he said. "There's no need. You've helped me plenty."

The songstress cocked an eyebrow. "Have we now? You'll have to forgive me for not noticing."

"You have," he smiled. "I hadn't noticed how similar the two of you were until now. Like night and day at a glance, but uniquely earnest underneath. A part of me wonders if that's why the two of you get along so well..."

Among the things Byleth did not notice was Ferdinand continuing to rattle away in his own little world, his lowered guard presenting a golden chance for his pristine stallion. A single unassuming chomp was all it took to reduce the seemingly infallible Duke Aegir to hysterics.

"W-wha—o-oh! H-hey?! Ow! Gaaaahhhh?! P-Professor?! D-Dorothea!? Aaaaaaaaaaagh! S-someone?! P-preferably anyone! S-shock is not befitting a noble, you know!"

Dorothea seemed all too ready to contest the professor on his findings, only to resign with a dainty little shrug. "Well, I suppose apples and oranges look slightly alike if you admire them from a good distance."

"Oh?" Byleth's eyes widened. "Did you have a different answer in mind then? I assumed since you reacted so favorably—"

"Nope," the songstress hummed with a simple shake of the head. "As much as I hate to copy off of someone else's paper, sincerity sounds about right. Maybe with a little respect thrown in for those old hat nobles who still look down on people like us. The only thing those types are honest about is their ego. Some of them could stand to learn a thing or three from your stony eyed, indiscriminate gaze."

Byleth furrowed his brow again. "Why is it always 'stony' with me?"

"Down! Down! W-wait, no no no, not 'bite down'! Aaaaaaaaaaaaghhhh!"

"All in all, better to be the true you from the outset than a sham that tries to gussy up to everyone, or so I've come to learn..."

The wistful tone with which Dorothea trailed off on left the mercenary curious, but the feeling vanished as the girl coyly leaned towards him, singsong and all. "Say, as long as we're asking each other questions, I'd like to know what's brought all this on. Ferdie may be a little dense, but I think he was on to something when he said you were already acquainted with his little lesson of the day. Plus, it's not every day you, I, or anyone wakes up thinking 'heart this, heart that' unless... No, it couldn't be! This wouldn't happen to have anything and everything to do with your broken heart, would it?! The one you joked about having no heartbeat?"

"I can't say I recall the part where I was joking," Byleth replied as the girl began idly poking his chest. "What are you d—?"

"Aah!" Dorothea retracted her hand as though she had subjected it to the depths of hell, her yelping in tune with Ferdinand's voice cracking behind them. "It's beating?!"

"It is."

"That's... That's normal."

"For you, maybe."

"And a little disappointing."

"I suppose."

"So it really wasn't beating before?"

"No."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"So you weren't joking around?"

"No."

"So what did it feel like, being heartless and all?"

"Nothing."

"And right now? What are you feeling?"

"I... I'm not sure."

"But if your heart is beating now, then that means you have to be feeling something, right? The only way you could say the you of yesteryear felt nothing is if you had something as a frame of reference, which you now have!"

"Perhaps... That's kind of what I'm trying to figure ou—"

"Aaaaaaahhhh! I-it is as if it has forgotten who I am! But how is that even possible?! Who would ever forget Ferdinand von Aegir?!"

A charitable head turn was what finally alerted Dorothea to the duke's plight. "Again, Ferdie? You should at least know by now not to pull. You're only making it worse!"

"Should we help him?" Byleth asked.

"I have a sneaking suspicion that he won't learn anything if we do," the songstress sighed. "Mind you, this is the same bumbling bee who praised me for my honesty moments after accusing me of having a little fun at his expense."

"Huh," Byleth furrowed his brow. "He did do that, didn't he?"

"Oh gods I can feel the ruthless gnashing of its magnificent pearly whites!"

Duke Aegir's face wasn't any less priceless or clueless upon being rescued.

---

Ovidius was a peculiar creature, if 'creature' was even the right scientific designation for the creophagous blight of nature seated before Byleth. Although the common consensus amongst contemporary scholars was that plants were 'living beings', the jury was still out on whether they could be considered sentient and capable of processing emotional states other than 'interminably ravenous'. The same jury, in their infinite wisdom, also elected to take a leave of absence on whether or not to reclassify carnivorous plants that consume more than fruit flies as 'man-eating'.

If there was ever a reason to present either case to a higher court, Ovid was it. An evolutionary slight against nature, Ovid was the inadvertent end result of Bernadetta's desire to give her favorite instructor a 'gift to die for' for the Day of Devotion. Alas, the Bernadetta von Varley of five years ago grossly underestimated just how many oversights and cut corners she would incur while cultivating her magnum opus, and the resulting mess of life that blossomed in the greenhouse thereafter was swiftly branded as something closer in line with 'horrorculture' than 'horticulture'. Needless to say, Bernie was all too eager to be rid of the abject monstrosity, promptly releasing it into her teacher's care with the added stipulation that there would be 'absolutely no take backs'. Byleth, for his part, was more than happy to relieve her of the burden—figuratively speaking. It was five years ago, after all.

"Maybe it's just me," Byleth openly mused as he entered the greenhouse, correctly anticipating a skull crunching sneak attack from the monstrosity in question. "But I feel as though your bite has gotten stronger."

Ovid's stem was long, almost cartoonishly long, yet it somehow managed to support the bulbous spotted ball that was its head. Its leaves were as razor sharp as its teeth—which were more fang like than anything—but that wasn't nearly as ghastly as the fact that it had teeth at all, and that observation came nowhere near close to the level of ghastly harbored by its acidic, venomous saliva and atrociously elongated tongue. The amount of willful suspension of disbelief necessary to process the existence of such a heinous abortion of life was frankly, absurd, dwarfed only by the amount needed to process the existence of an advanced underground secret society of disgruntled blue skinned humanoids capable of remotely annihilating areas of their choosing. Ovid was strange, verily so, but those guys were just downright ridiculous, as well as a tale for another time.

"Perhaps it only feels stronger," the professor speculated in a manner which only he understood. "Because I can actually feel it now."

Byleth calmly detached the floral aberration from his head and set to work tending to his own personal little empire—an agricultural operation whose reach spanned nearly half of the entire greenhouse, surpassed in size only by the agronomic autonomy that was Bernadetta's aptly named 'Pitcher Plant Paradise'. It was, unsurprisingly, her infectious influence that led to him rearing a gaggle of flytraps, butterworts, sundews, and corkscrews—to say nothing of the giant ferocious mantrap that rounded out the troupe. All things considered, it was easy to see why visitors to the conservatory were reduced to only the daring and the delirious. Byleth thought nothing of the dearth of guests and fellow gardeners, but as far as Bernie was concerned, there couldn't have been a sweeter deal.

"What do you think?" Byleth posed to the plant, lacking any and all self-awareness. "What does it mean to have a heart?"

The poison drool collecting around Ovid's bulging lips began to drip and trickle steadily down its stem, a grisly sight made all the more harrowing by its bared fangs. It was unsettling, sure, but hardly the world shattering response the teacher was expecting. Setting aside his tools with a troubled frown, Byleth could think of no recourse but to probe deeper. "You can understand me, can't you?"

"Ssh!"

The potted plant snapped in more ways than one, serrated teeth feverishly chomping away at the microscopic pocket of air that set it apart from Byleth. "Am I to interpret that as a yes?" he countered, steadfast and wholly unfazed. "Do you normally bite the air to express approval? Disapproval?"

Ovid responded by closing its mouth, head tilting to the side. Neither it nor the professor paid any heed to the dripping droplets of acid searing through the dirt at the plant's base.

"I suppose it doesn't matter either way," Byleth gathered. "It's not the weight of your answer that proves your sentience to me, it's the fact that it exists at all. It may be warped, flowerlike, and steeped in poison—but you have a heart... of sorts."

If any of the professor's broad musings were bordering on the truth, Ovid made no attempt to confirm them. In fact, the only thing it seemed interested in confirming was its voracious demand for bonemeal and bug carcasses, which only further served to highlight the ridiculousness of the situation.

"Look at me," he sighed in gut wrenching, soul shaking, earth quaking hindsight. "I'm conversating with plants now."

"Fufufu, you've truly lost it now, haven't you? The ruthless Ashen Demon, esteemed professor of Garreg Mach, fearless general of the Black Eagle Strike Force—now reduced to little more than a plant whisperer! How silly it all must feel. Where, oh where would you be without my divine guidance? It would seem the stars and I need no longer wonder...!"

The breakneck speed at which Byleth released his temples and whipped his head was unparalleled, almost instinctive. He turned and turned in every conceivable direction, darting every which way in the hopes of something he wasn't even sure he fully understood, only to be met with crushing silence. If there had been something, anything there, his human eyes could sorely not tell.

"W... Was that..." the words left him like a prayer, the desperate light in his eyes dulling.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

"Just the wind..."

The greenhouse was vibrant, flourishing, and full of life, but for a moment it almost felt whole.

---

It was like a sixth sense, the way she resided within him. Even when she was dormant, sleeping lazily within the deepest recesses of his fledgling body, he could tell that something was nestled in there. At the time it registered to his childish mind as no more than a minor tingling, an occasional 'butterfly in your subconscious' sort of feeling, a naked kind of feeling that was neither here nor there yet simultaneously everywhere. If it bugged him once, it bugged him twice, and if it managed to bug him three times in a week, it had not bugged him hard enough. Stranger still was his apparent loneliness in the matter. The adults around him never fussed about any stinging or tingling to his recollection. Granted, they never fussed about much of anything when he was in the room. Unable to confide in anyone let alone convey to even himself what exactly was ailing him, he left his fears to rest and quietly accepted them as just another symptom of his own inability to understand the world around him. Whatever it was was natural, something to grow into. Growing pains, as it were.

The effect only swelled when she awoke in full, and by the time their minds joined in synchronous harmony, it had reached a zenith worthy of a progenitor god. Never had he felt closer to the stars.

Thump.

Now, he had never felt further. There was nothing left. Not a remnant to speak of or even a speck leftover. In exchange for the incomparable warmth now coursing through his veins, the ties binding him to the Beginning were severed, cleaved in twain. It was every kind of peculiar, and he was hard pressed whether or not to call it a rueful trade. The hole she left behind was hollow, all consuming, and at times gnawed away at the very fabric of his being because she had been slumbering in his heart for so long he didn't know what it felt like to live—to exist—without her hand guiding his. All the same, it sickened him to think that it might have been worth it, because the crushing emptiness sowed by her absence was unquestionably dwarfed by the long overdue rush of ecstasy that came with being able to perceive literally everything else. It was as though he was finally awake, just as she had once awoken within him.

There was no mistaking it, no need to mince words—this was better. This was Byleth Eisner as the world originally intended. This was the Byleth Eisner Jeralt and Sitri envisioned. This was the Byleth Eisner they would have wanted; a Byleth Eisner without any of the damned divine strings that came attached with his advent into the world. This was Byleth Eisner—a normal, healthy, humble young man with a penchant for sword swinging. It was a difficult truth to swallow and perhaps a bit cruel to even consider, but it was the reality of things regardless of how dearly they cared for him as he was. Any guardian worth their salt would want what's best for their child. Given a choice between a life where that child lives to the fullest and a life where they live with unending complications, only those worth less than river scum would opt for anything but the former. There would be no contest, no question, no room for debate or any semblance of nuance. It would almost be an illusion of choice, the blackest and whitest dichotomy imaginable. Jeralt never said anything to his face, but Byleth suspected the thought must have crossed his mind at some point, likely during his infancy. He was only human after all, unlike the devil he raised.

Or perhaps he never spared a thought for such things and he was simply overreacting to the point of paranoia. It was all hypothetical, really.

Here, in the moment, Byleth was normal. Perhaps not to himself, but certainly to everyone else. He wasn't a husk, nor was he a vessel or the reincarnation of some descended deity. He was normal, healthy, humble, youthful—some would even say handsome—and although his penchant for sword swinging was less like a penchant and more like a secondary language, it was close enough to what old Jeralt probably had in mind.

He was human, and in spite of the flowery innocence of those golden afternoons once upon a time, it was for the best.

Thump.

Still, the pit in his heart felt awful, as though he had exchanged one affliction for another. It was an ugly, visceral stain that weighed on every fiber of his being inside and out. A part of Byleth understood the reality—that humanity's warmth and divinity's chill exist in equilibrium, no differently than light and darkness. Possessing one gates off the other, and seeking the other requires an even exchange to maintain the balance. To possess both was an impossible feat, an astral order too tall to realize. The professor knew this, and yet a persistent slice of him continued to cling on to ever thinning hope. It was a lonely, aching, desperate, and perhaps delusional little sliver of him that was not blind to the room so much as outright refusing to read it. Everything in his life was better and was only going to get better, and still this stubborn strip of him wished for more. It was that part of him that held his conviction for her—his desire to take her hand into his and show her the world they had created.

Thump.

The harder he tried to picture the scene, to picture the would be smile on her face, the fuzzier the resulting image got. The mess of visual snow and nonsense patterns that greeted him when he closed his eyes was enough to get him to quit while he was ahead. It was maddening. He couldn't even recall how it felt to have her teasing little finger dig into his cheek. He wondered, dreaded, if there would come a time when he would forget her entirely—

"What do you mean 'I hardly felt a thing prior to the end of the war'?" the eldest son of House Hevring sneered as he descended from the ladder, some textbook or other in hand. "That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard—today, that is. Caspar still has one over you in the 'all time' category, but at least you've got him beat for the da—wait, no. I take that back. That rousing excuse of a 'story' about the chicken crossing the road was pretty moronic now that I think about it, so much so that I simply must declare an upset. Mea culpa, Professor."

The encounter in the greenhouse prompted a reaction within Byleth that was decidedly scientific (he could only presume it was a coping mechanism in response to the divine intervention he had witnessed). In search of more practical answers, the professor found himself in the slightly musty confines of the library. With the academy closed amid the Empire's relief effort, the massive dimly lit collection of textbooks and tomes was left virtually abandoned, bereft of bookworms, and besmirched with an eerie sort of air. The imperial, mercantile, and peasantry masses milling about the monastery had little time or need for reading with all of the reconstruction going on, so the facility was cast aside by all but the most devoted of literary fanatics. The whole thing was surreal, gloomy, and just a teensy bit poetic, and while much of the dreariness could be attributed to the desuetude, some of it also stemmed from lingering sentiments courtesy of the former librarian—or rather, the snake that assumed his form. His absence dulled the menacing air somewhat, but the fact that he was ever present in the monastery at all—with so much information readily available at his wrinkled fingertips—left a sinister lasting impression that would likely remain until the renovations were complete.

It was just another thing Linhardt von Hevring would have to put up with for the sake of his research.

"It's true," the professor insisted, surprised that he was being challenged at all about it. "You didn't notice?"

"I noticed enough to make the assertion that it is the second stupidest thing I've heard today."

Linhardt topped the stack of tomes he had assembled during their exchange with the textbook he had acquired. Given his physical capabilities (or lack thereof), the stack was augmented to be as tall as it could be without causing Linhardt any unwanted strain or fatigue. Byleth counted three books in total.

"This was everything I could find, Lysithea," the sullen scholar said as he ferried the stack over to their table. "It isn't much if you compare it to the hundreds of books behind us, but frankly it's more than I expected to uncover. To think that even this much was hiding in these shelves all these years..."

"Figures," the lithe little mage sighed as Linhardt took a seat beside her. "I probably would have kicked myself if the key to all my troubles was hiding under my nose this entire time, and so blatantly at that!"

"Ditto. If things were really that easy, someone else would have made a breakthrough ages ago. Alas, it looks as if it's up to us to pick up the pieces and make sense of them. What a bother."

The professor hesitated before the two, standing awkwardly before a chair he was not completely sure he should be taking. It didn't occur to him that the mages were dusting off the library for reasons beyond leisure. "I, er... I didn't know I was intruding on something. I could come back later, if you would prefer—"

"Honestly Professor," Linhardt yawned, an eye closing shut as he stretched the somnolence out of his system. "I don't possess the time or spirit to raise any objections, let alone think of any. It's already tiring enough as is just explaining that much to you. Gathering my thoughts in one place, spinning those thoughts into words, opening my mouth and conveying those words with the expectation that they will inevitably spark a dialogue that I could have easily avoided—all extremely tiresome, and not to mention distracting. I'm supposed to be hyperfocusing what little energy I have into digesting these tomes. Figuratively speaking, of course. I'm not that kind of bookworm."

Byleth blinked daftly, which was how he typically responded when he was struck dumb or rendered speechless. Linhardt was no stranger to the sight.

"There are three tomes here, Professor," Linhardt motioned to the books as he fought back another grueling exhalation. "And there are three of us. I'm not asking you to read, but I would certainly appreciate it if you saved us both the trouble and gave it a shot. Let the illustrations of minor and major Crests be of some comfort to you as I critique and overanalyze every minute little detail about whatever it is you're seeking to waste my time about."

Byleth wasn't entirely sure whether that argument was convincing or condescending. Nevertheless, he wordlessly took a seat across from the pair and began parsing through the tome provided to him.

"'Advanced Crestology'?"

Byleth tilted his gaze from the tome's fancily textured title to find Linhardt glancing right back at him.

"The finer parts, specifically," the verdant man said. "What did you think we were doing here? Hosting a book club? Oh, what a tiresome affair that would be. Let's endeavor to never speak of it again so long as we draw breath."

"But you were the one who—" the professor protested.

"Fair enough," Linhardt acquiesced. "I guess I do share a fraction of the blame for neglecting to clue you in. I figured that Lysithea's presence alone would be enough to give it away, but... it's actually pretty believable that she'd be stowing herself away in here voluntarily, isn't it? As for why I'm here... Well, naturally I would explain, but it's a pretty long and boring story. Just know that it involves my curiosity getting the better of me and several meticulously baked batches of pastries."

Byleth blinked again.

"We're researching, Professor," Lysithea clarified, the air about them stilling as she tried her damnedest to tiptoe around the darker nature of the subject. "Linhardt has been helping me... um... find a way with... you know."

A simple nod was all it took to keep her from confronting the elephant in the room.

It was an open secret by this point. In a world where vibrant and extravagant hair colors were celebrated as the norm (and signs of divinity in certain cases), the color white just so happened to cross an imaginary line that was simply too far. Anyone with hair as white as snow was either a day away from knocking on death's door or an unfortunate victim of some of the most awful, heinous, downright despicable acts of cruelty ever known to man—or both. Disgusting, defiling, dehumanizing—there weren't enough words to describe the unforgivable breaches of humanity that few proponents dared to dress up as 'experiments'. Lysithea was but one of many who had been forced under the knife at a young age, cursed with two Crests and left with nothing to show for it but a drastically shortened lifespan and a complete loss of hair pigmentation. As if to twist the knife in her heart even deeper, the rats behind her butchering ultimately decided against using her for whatever wicked ambitions they may have had in mind, instead casting her aside like a miserable waste of time before fading into the bitter darkness from whence they came. It was vexing to think about, infuriating even. To think that there existed someone out there sharing the same air as him who would even begin to consider violating someone else's life in such an unspeakable manner, and it chilled him all the more to think about what her fate might have been had he not spared her life back in Derdriu. Had the demon been the one in control, there wouldn't have been any pity to speak of. Lysithea von Ordelia would have spent her final moments not surrounded by sweets but lying in a puddle of her own tainted blood; eyes aghast, mouth wide open, throat gargling fluids—a sad, failed excuse of subterranean science snuffed out of her misery.

Yet it was Byleth, not the Ashen Demon, that reached out to her that day. Lysithea's subsequent misty eyed induction into the Black Eagle Strike Force was swift and without any hard feelings.

Linhardt, conversely, seemed to be completely composed of hard feelings. The sluggish scholar's love of literature and Crests was matched only by his sharp tongue, wit, and tendency to take rain checks on just about everything that necessitated an iota of his time and physical energy. Energy which he would stubbornly conserve over the eight hours a day he was awake solely for the express purpose of frivolously frittering them away on the remaining sixteen hours he spent dozing off. Ironically, this system did little to hamper his studies, making him a frontrunning candidate for one of the most misjudged book covers in the history of personified book covers. It mattered not how many classes he missed or how many tests he slept through. The fact of the matter was that he was a lackadaisical layabout in all but practice, and his upper crust grades reflected exactly that. It was a sweetened slice of irony first observed during his time at the academy and continuing well into the war.

Count Hevring's firstborn was smart, competent, and capable so long as his affairs were in order, but it seemed that for every point of intellect he possessed, he was cursed with two points of lethargy in turn. If Byleth announced a lecture, Linhardt announced a nap. If a war council was on the horizon, so was a siesta that lasted just as long. If Caspar wanted to train, Linhardt wanted to talk him in circles until a good enough reason to take leave presented itself, typically with his best friend none the wiser. If no such opportunity was available, or if Caspar miraculously saw through his countless excuses, then he would discard all pretenses and fall asleep on the spot—upright and on his feet without an inkling of shame. The Crest scholar's antics were just as nettlesome as the antics of his peers, which he took great delight in criticizing while failing to spotlight his own foibles. This not only solidified him as a Black Eagle at heart, but also frequently pinned him at the center of the emperor's ire. If it wasn't Ferdinand digging up age old scores, it was Linhardt shirking his duties without any fear of her authority. It was truthfully rather sidesplitting witnessing the Adrestrian Emperor fume so feverishly at the way he disregarded her every command, if only because Byleth knew deep down that the respect they held for each other was as thick as the blood they spilled to get there. Were it anything less, the reunion of the Black Eagles would have been one green bean short. A harrowing prospect in hindsight, but that was simply how Linhardt operated: a hard sell, but loyal to the end once sold.

"I overheard some of your conversation," Lysithea said, understandably hellbent on changing the subject. "And I have to say I agree with Linhardt, rudeness aside. The idea that you are some sort of heartless, unfeeling shell is ridiculous, Professor! Where in the world did you get such a foolish notion from?"

Byleth had only just returned his gaze to the pretty pictures before him when Lysithea dared to draw it away again. "You too?" he said in disbelief.

"You seem awfully surprised, Professor," Linhardt noted while turning a page. "Goodness, don't tell me the others have been indulging in your bait hook, line, and sinker. If that's the case, let the record show that I wasn't shocked in the least."

"It's not that," the mercenary attempted to clarify. "Or well, I suppose it's not all that..."

"Be that as it may, I find it quite amusing," the heavy sleeping healer set his tome aside. "You see, most people tend to think they comprehend themselves far more than an outsider looking in would, and to some extent that's true. Your knowledge, memories, your every last thought—these are things we tend to regard as unique from person to person. If you have all of this information readily accessible, you might be inclined to question how someone on the fringe would have any chance at deciphering you."

Thump thump.

"It's been quite a while," Linhardt continued, sleep already beckoning to him with a dastardly yawn. "In fact, it's been so long that even thinking about it is making me drowsy... but I digress. Do you remember when you delivered those lecture materials to me all those years ago? I didn't shy from saying it then and I won't shy from repeating it now: You're very odd, Professor. You can dye your hair back and forth and put on as many garish robes as you desire, but you'll always remain a mystery to me. The fact that you're asking your closest confidants how they look at you only proves that point. You possess all of the information I've just described, and yet you still don't know a thing about yourself. You need people like us to fill in the blanks for you."

Thump thump.

"That's quite enough," Lysithea huffed, a finger drilling into Linhardt's cheek. "Lay it on a little thicker, why don't you? Honestly! The Professor is clearly in a troubled place at the moment, yet here you are dragging him down even further! Is there not a single shred of empathy in that sleepy little skull of yours?"

"He'll be fine. If a vengeful dragon couldn't kill him, I doubt a little brooding will. I struggle to think of a place more 'difficult' for him than staring down that sanctimonious thing in the eyes," the scholar shook his head restlessly. "My apologies, Professor. For as much as I blather—and let's face it I do blather—it's rare that I get a chance to dive into metaphysics like this. I've actually been meaning to question you on these things for quite some time now, but as you might have guessed, to do so would present a laborious undertaking that would be nothing short of... Well, I'm sure you get the picture by this point. I'll lay off for a moment, if only for the sake of fairness. Lysithea?"

"Hmm?" the mage tilted her head to the side. "Is something the matter?"

"Let's say you have two sweet, delicious cakes," Linhardt seized her attention almost instantly. "If I, blessed saint that I am, were to bestow two more upon you, how many cakes would you have?"

"Four," the pint-sized prodigy answered without delay. "Would I have to test those cakes for poison as well, or have you decided to—?"

"Bzzt. Incorrect."

"H-huh?!" the small sorceress snapped out of her scrumptious haze in a haughty huff. "What do you mean 'incorrect'?!"

"Incorrect. Wrong. Negative. Zero points," Linhardt repeated with growing emphasis. "I've decided that for the purposes of this impromptu experiment, you would end up with five cakes. Thus, the answer is five."

"I—huh? WHAT?" Lysithea blinked rapidly, clearly flustered (and adorably so). "D-did you roll out of bed today? T-that... that's not even an 'experiment'! That's just you being ignorant for the sake of it! What sense does that make!?"

"A smart question. What is sense anyway?" Linhardt leaned back, the forelegs of his chair abandoning the hardwood floor. "You only believe the answer would be four because that's the value we've ascribed to the quantity of cakes you would have. If you really want to think about it, there are very few things in this world that aren't ascribed a role by us in some form or fashion. The words we use, the values we apply, the cultures we embrace, the mathematics and sciences we study—these are more like a means of conveyance in our grand attempt as a species to interpret the world, rather than an objective model of it. Constructs, if you will."

Lysithea wagged her finger. "You're going to tip over if you keep that up," she tutted. "Professor, tell him to cease this—!"

"Constructs..." the mercenary mumbled, already taking notes with a quill and paper.

"You're falling for it?!" the mage gasped in horror.

Linhardt could only smile at the girl. "Come now, what's wrong with a little positing? None of this is inherently bad, mind you. Grant a group of beings a spark of sentience and it's only natural that they would want to make sense of the world you've dumped them in. It's honestly more dangerous to let them wander around blissfully unaware. Oh, but I'm getting too nihilistic. I can't possibly claim that everything in the world is worthless and that nothing matters when I can't stand the sight of blood and value sleep like I value my life, can I? Still, I see that I've caught your attention, Professor, so let me cut to the chase."

There was a light thud as Linhardt leveled the chair, and an equally light squeak from Lysithea to accompany it. "You've always been able to exude emotion," he declared as resolutely as he could with only a quarter day's worth of sleep. "Real emotion, before the war and after it. I've witnessed you smile, laugh, even cry, but what does it mean to feel in the first place? What's really so different now that your heart is back in working order? Do you truly feel any nuance at all compared to when it was stagnant, or is it all merely a trick of the mind?"

Thumpthumpthump.

"I," Byleth paused, his eyebrows knitting together. "I've never known the beat of a living heart before now, and everything around me feels much more lucid than it ever did before. I'm not fabricating my condition or stretching the truth of it, so why do you believe it to be a placebo?"

"You aren't behaving any differently, for one," Linhardt countered. "If the absence of your heartbeat was really what was suppressing the real Professor Byleth, one would think you would have changed after the war at least somewhat to accommodate your suppressed character resurfacing, yet you're just the same as you've always been."

"Now see here!" Lysithea interjected once more, this time stabbing two fingers into his face. "What makes you so sure this isn't just how the professor is at heart?"

"Spoil the whole thing, why don't you?" the sleepy scholar clapped back in the best Lysithea impression he could muster. "At least you're paying attention."

"Excuse me?!"

"How I am at heart," Byleth held a hand over the nettlesome organ in question. "So you mean to say that—"

"That I respectfully reject your premise on the basis that it's unfounded," Linhardt concurred with a simple nod. "You've always been able to emote, Professor, heart or no heart. The bloody thing may have subdued it, but it did not suppress it. Whatever role you believe its absence played or did not play in your development is entirely up to your interpretation. Hence, you only believed that emotions were beyond your reach because you based your understanding of them on social constructs that don't apply to everyone, much less oddballs like us. On top of that, it failed to occur to you that most of these expressions have been well within your grasp all along. Every time you rouse me in the middle of a good nap, enable Lysithea's sweet tooth, or ward her from the Ghosts of Garreg Mach that definitely do exist by the way—you are reacting. If you can react, then you can emote. If this heartbeat of yours was really such a binary lock, you would be unable to do any of those things. Everything about the true you would have been under lock and key, and you'd likely be a different entity altogether by now. Some other Guy-leth, probably."

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

"But as I noted already," Linhardt continued before the professor could raise any objections. "You haven't changed at all. You are still Professor Byleth, which is a good thing. The last thing I want to do is introduce myself again, I'm listless enough as it is. Speaking of which..."

A second thud rocked the room, distinguishing itself from the previous in that it was Linhardt's chin, not the legs of a chair, that was responsible for it. The young man's soft, slumber deprived eyes fluttered once, twice, before drifting off into dreamland.

"So, so listless," he muttered pleasantly, his body gently rising and lowering to the beat of his inhalations.

"So, so foolish," Lysithea mocked in turn, her voice dropping to a whisper despite the apparent uncaring front. "Unbelievable, and to think he's the one who insisted we drop everything and spend the evening researching! Did he even turn more than a single page before dropping like a common housefly?"

"He actually fell asleep?" Byleth echoed in disbelief, though a part of him wasn't entirely surprised. It seemed that random quirks and trademark mantras were part and parcel with the Black Eagles brand—for some reason. They were not so much 'Black Eagles' as they were 'Black Sheep' in that regard.

One sharp, absolutely mature and womanly tug of Linhardt's cascading verdant tresses was all it took to yank his snoozing face skyward. Though not exactly a paragon of physical strength, Lysithea clearly enjoyed the impression of it, her nostrils flaring proudly as she held Linhardt's head aloft. "He certainly isn't awake, now is he?"

"Ah," Byleth had to pause to note the snoozy bubble ballooning out of Linhardt's nose. "Right."

A third triumphant thud cut Byleth off before he could say anything further. Linhardt hit the table face first, his nostril bubble popping in the process, and as if to punctuate the ferocity of the effect, Lysithea let her hand hang in place. Whatever objections Byleth may have had to the domestic spectacle on display were evidently not up for discussion, and whatever hopes they may have had of being on the table were struck down both figuratively and literally with an Ordelia style iron fist.

Lysi-Fist? Fisthea? Lyfisthea?

The donk of Lysithea's knuckles meeting with the back of Linhardt's head snapped Byleth out of his funk. "Boop," the white-haired mage cooed, a small smile adorning her face.

It lasted all of two seconds.

"'Metaphysics', he says! Cockamamie!" she raved, her fist pressing deep into his skull, eyes white with fury, cheeks puffed and lips pouting, seething in every incensed sense of the word. "What does any of that have to do with that ridiculous cake analogy!? Exactly what relevance did it have to any of the other dozen tangents he went off on? I'm frankly clueless as to what stings more, the fact that he prattled away on purpose hoping to tire himself out or the fact that this is not even the first time he's fed me sugary subterfuge! The cakes, the poison, it's all lies—sweet, sweet little lies!"

"You... have quite the emotional spectrum," Byleth said as the hair on the back of his neck unfurled. "I could learn a lot from that."

The misplaced praise appeared to chill the mage out, at least enough to realize the gravity of her behavior. "Oh Professor," she relented with a sigh, opening her fist to pet, rather than pelt, her emerald haired companion. "Forgive me. That was... unbecoming of me. I... I know we enjoy skirting around and making light of it, but, well..."

There was a pause as Lysithea trailed off, her eyes wandering.

"It can be stressful," she continued. "Knowing you're on a time limit, yet never knowing how much longer you have left. With a shadow like that always looming over you, always in the back of your mind, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking every minute of your life matters. That every worthless second you draw breath, every second that's not spent buried in papers, you're wasting away time that can never be brought back… Still, fretting over it is hardly mature, and it is certainly no excuse to take my frustrations out on one of the few people committed to helping me see this throu—"

"Every minute of your life does matter," Byleth countered, but in a simple manner that lacked weight, depth, or complexity, as though he were stating the obvious. It was a simple, plain, matter-of-fact platitude. It was so simple that one could almost forgive him for not noticing the way it left her awash with an expression bordering between dumbstruck and utterly gobsmacked. "You matter, as well. I should hope you don't subscribe to a mindset that suggests otherwise. If something were to happen to one of my favorite students, I'd... Well, I don't know what I would do, but I would be very beside myself, I imagine."

He couldn't have been more mellow about it, his typically tranquil glow unwavering as he spun truths that ran deeper than he could ever know. "P-professor," the eldest daughter of House Ordelia sniffled, unable to look her mentor in the eyes. "T-this is hardly fair... How is it that you always know precisely what to say?"

"I do? Most people say I don't talk enough," Byleth blinked, catching the first of what was sure to be many tears trickling down the girl's cheeks. "Are you... crying?"

"N-no!" the lithe little mage squeaked, a hiccup escaping her. "C-crying? W-who would ever do something s-so immature? It... It's just a little rain, that's all!"

The professor cocked an eyebrow. "We are inside."

"Still!" she indignantly insisted, causing him to scratch his cheek awkwardly.

Troubled though it may be, Lysithea's heart is... fascinating.

"You know," a certain drowsy young man yawned. "It'll hardly do you any good to stain the very pages that may hold the key to our future. Just a thought."

Lysithea paused toot sweet, her copious tears quite literally—against all known science—retreating into her tear ducts, as her head rotated like a slow creaking door toward the wretched source of her discomfort.

Linhardt offered an effortless wave. "Good morning."

"Weren't you supposed to be asleep!?"

"I could nod off again if that's what you would prefer," he said while propping himself on his elbow, palm flat against his cheek. "I certainly would. Honestly, I only meant to tease. With a face like that, how could I not? Unfortunately, it seems feigning sleep is one of the few things I'm not particularly adept at."

"You were acting," the professor surmised.

"Only up until the actual sleeping part," he added. "And therein lies the problem: I was actually sleeping. Annoying, but not particularly surprising when you consider just how exhaustive cooping yourself up in here for hours at a time can be. Never mind the research, there's also drafting, revising, editing, publishing, waiting with bated breath for those pivotal first reactions so that you can later hit yourself over the head with the very papers their critiques were printed on..."

Lysithea parted her lips, ready to lodge every complaint in the world against him, but the scholar pressed on without skipping a beat and she found her objections fizzling on her tongue as his weary gaze fell upon her.

"Though I must confess—something about the whole song and dance seems different this time," he said while rubbing his chin. "Maybe I'm just a fool who's been bitten by the same bug that's been ailing us all as of late... Even so, I guess it's not so bad in this instance. Nice, even."

"Huh?" Lysithea's eyes fluttered, failing to catch the obvious stalling and hesitation in his words. "Linhardt, what exactly are you saying?"

"That it's official," he answered while throwing his head back. Byleth wondered if it was his method of obscuring the growing tinge on his face. "I definitely can't claim that nothing in the world matters now, at least not without attracting all the hypocrisy in the world. Who would have ever guessed that the actual stupidest thing I've heard all day was in fact something that came out of my own mouth. Hoisted by my own petard, indeed..."

"You—I... Linhardt, you're stupid."

"Yes," he nodded, though with his head tossed back it looked more like he was trying to lift himself and failing miserably at it. "I'm fairly sure that was established earlier. When, oh when did it start though? Could it have been when I went out of my way to bake you those pastries late into the dead of night, or could it have been from the very beginning, when a little bit of 'he said, she said' left me with an urge—a burning, primordial fascination—to probe into your poorest kept secret?"

"Still not making any sense, I'm afraid."

The professor rose a finger, as if to quip 'I kind of get it', but his interjections went woefully ignored.

"Maybe I should stop thinking about it, stop wasting so much time and energy," Linhardt leaned back just enough to lift his seat off the ground again. "What use is there mulling over something that's already set in stone? So dreadfully set in stone that not a thing can be done to move it? When I think about all the oil I've burned wading through the rumor mill, sleepless nights blurring into sleepless weeks, I can't help but wonder..."

"Linhardt," Lysithea began, but the sleep addict was already ten steps ahead of her and very much in her face. "A-ah!"

"Yes, I know. I'm talking many ears off without making much sense," he remarked with a light roll of his eyes. "I can't say for sure whether the high of hearing myself talk is worth the creeping onset of fatigue that comes with it... but I'm getting ahead of myself. The long and short of it is this—unlike my feelings, your Crest stones are not set in stone, and I still intend to prove that in full to you one day. Call it lip service if you must, but I'd like to renew our promise from before. I may have missed the deadline, but that hardly matters as long as you're still here with me. The problem? I'm afraid it's your very addition to the equation."

Lysithea was still quite confused, but wasn't half as puzzled as Byleth, who was beginning to feel like he had missed several episodes of crucial chemistry development somewhere down the line. "Meaning?" she asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Linhardt tilted his head to the side, the leafy bunch on the back of his head bobbing along with him. "It's because I care so much about you that I'm finding it difficult to stay engrossed in much else—our research included. You're just that entrancing, and it's pretty troublesome to be honest. Perhaps I'll be less prone to distractions once we finally exchange vows."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh?!" Lysithea spluttered, fumbling this way and that with cheeks as crimson as they come. "E-exchange v-v-vows?! A-as in m-marriage? A-as in you and I...?!"

"Yes," Linhardt nodded. "Why wouldn't we? Everyone seems to think we're engaged already. I like you, a fair bit might I add, and I'm certain you must feel the same. If you didn't, then surely you would have refuted my curious advances ages ago, as you've done to countless others without so much as a hint of hesitation. Did you think I was only helping you to further my own interests?"

Lysithea's hands were flailing at speeds far too fast for the naked eye to capture."W-wha? A-ah! No! T-that's not true—I—I never thought that—!"

Linhardt grabbed his chin, examining the flustered maiden with a poker face to rival the professor's. "How strange. I'm pretty sure I've brought this up at least once before, yet your shock and awe would suggest otherwise. I wonder, is selective amnesia common in your family? The family that I most fervently want to become a part of? What are the chances of it passing down to our children, do you think?"

"H-huh? O-oh no—I-I didn't forget! I-I just, I, um—I thought you were the one who had forgotten a-and I-I didn't want to be the one to bring it up a-and m-maybe a part of me thought you weren't even serious to b-begin with—P-Professor, please say something!"

"Were we not supposed to be researching Crests?" asked Byleth on the off chance that it had completely slipped their minds in midst of the hubbub.

"We were," Linhardt broke away from his beloved to respond. "But then you started all this feckless talk of hearts and feelings, which devolved into a lesson about nihilism, which somehow turned into me renewing my pledge to purify and marry a woman I once tried to poison. If anyone is to blame for how derailed we've become, it's you, Professor."

"Marriage..." whispered a very flushed Lysithea, hands clutching at her precious temples. "H-he actually wants to... F-family... F-f-fervently?! C-children?! A-as in m-more than one!?"

The professor parted his lips to mumble-blurt a quick apology, only to be stopped by Linhardt's palm. "And yet it was this very diversion that allowed me to get this load off of my chest, so I can't exactly act as if we've been all that unproductive. Hmm... That question you were asking of us earlier, Professor. What was it again?"

It was the fifth time he had asked said question since the day began, and judging by the look of things, it was far from the last. "What does it mean to have a heart?"

"Responsibility," the scholar answered coolly. "That's not too ironic coming from me, is it?"

"A little bit," said the man once responsible for making sure he stayed conscious during class. "I thought you said it was an unfounded premise?"

"Worry not," assured Linhardt with a wave of his hand. "It still is. I haven't changed my position. Just think of it as my response from a, erm, general perspective. If we presume that 'having a heart' refers to having qualities that would make you, oh I don't know, likable, then I would say accountability matters most of all. Truth be told, it was you who taught me that, Professor."

Byleth shifted his eyes in either direction, as if to verify that there were no other professors in the room, before gesturing to himself in confusion. "Me?"

"Is it really so farfetched?" the green haired healer frowned. "You're rather reliable for someone whose job it is to ensure the rest of us don't get killed. Leading us in and out of the fray without any loss to your composure would be enough on its own, to say nothing of how you used to run rampant around the monastery sorting out our petty dilemmas for little more than trinkets and pocket change in return. If that isn't the very epitome of what it means to be dependable, to be someone who can be counted on to roll up their sleeves and take charge when things go south, I don't know what is."

"To be painfully honest," Linhardt made sure his neck was clenched to the nth degree in order to prepare for what was about to spill out of his mouth. "You're the person I strive most to emulate, Professor."

The admission was so shocking that it brought both Byleth and Lysithea to a complete and utter standstill. "Really?" they echoed in neck craning unison.

"Hmm, so that's what it feels like to be filled with instant regret," the scholar remarked with deadpan eyes as he pivoted to the vertically challenged mage. "If you have a better response, I'm sure the class would love to hear it."

The rosy heat on Lysithea's face was palpable, even as she tried to puff out her chest and rest her hands on her hips. "A desperate deflection to save some face? Oh, alright. If you insist, b-but do not think for a second that you are in the clear! We still have much to discuss regarding these... t-these a-ambitions of yours!"

"What's there to discuss?" an innocent Linhardt inquired. "Aside from the date of the wedding and how many children we'll be having, I presume. Five isn't so tiresome a number, I'd say—"

"Empathy!" the not for much longer maiden of House Ordelia expeditiously exclaimed. "Something the both of you express in spades, oftentimes to a detriment..."

Linhardt was the first to comment. "That's quite the divergence," he said. "I thought for sure you would have vouched for some variation of maturity."

"And I very well would have!" Lysithea clarified. "Had I not realized that what the Professor probably needs right now more than anything is a reminder of all he's done for us. Isn't that right, Professor?"

His neck still craned, Byleth grabbed the sides of his head and manually adjusted himself, a couple of cracks and pops ringing out as he did so. "I'm not sure I follow. Was... there something I did? Just how much have I been doing aside from teaching and, well, murdering, that I'm not privy to?"

"Much more than you know, that's for certain," the snowy haired mage tutted. "I may not fully understand what has gotten you so despondent this evening, and perhaps that may be a little contradictory to the point I'm trying to make. E-even so, however! If it is your soul you're searching for, Professor, then just... l-look in a mirror!"

Thump.

This time the professor and Linhardt were the ones to break out in unison. "What?"

"My apologies, w-what I mean by that is... You've done so much for us, Professor," Lysithea went on to explain, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Even if it was simply being there when we needed someone to talk to or someone to confide in, o-or someone to walk us to the dining hall after dark. No matter the occasion, you were always there for us when we needed someone to turn to. It's this capacity to care and understand that not only makes you a great professor, b-but a wonderful person as well who dearly needs to realize it already! There, I said it! Do not make me say it again!"

Thump.

Byleth cocked an eyebrow. "I had that much of an effect... just by listening?"

"You know," Linhardt interjected. "She may be on to something. It would explain why none of us ever paid a visit the guidance counselor. We would just pay a visit to you instead. Well, I suppose in my case, you were the one paying me visits."

"Just as I am now," the teacher noted.

"Verily. Just as I aided you, you aided me, and now we're both aiding you in return once again. Goodness, are we finally making a breakthrough here? Perhaps we can get back to studying Crests now? Sometime this century, maybe?"

"Professor," mumbled Lysithea from behind the tome she was pretending to read. "Please, just continue to be yourself. That's all you truly have to do. Even if you may not necessarily realize it today, I'm certain one day it'll all become clear to you. There's really no need to chase after something that's been by your side all along."

Thump.

"Continue being myself..." Byleth nodded, and the group set to work dissecting the tomes before them.

---

"The key to one's heart is none other than romance!"

Thump.

The pompous proclamation put forth by Lorenz Hellman Gloucester was audaciously underscored by a showering of sparkles, an aromatic rose dripping with dew, and a round of well rehearsed applause from Marianne. It was like something out of a stage play—a stage play well over its budget and in over its head, compliments of the director's overly gaudy delusions of artistic grandeur. For an uncultured former sellsword with no frame of reference for what was considered good theatre—let alone any kind of theatre—Byleth thought it was swell enough.

"Hm. That was quick," the sellsword in question remarked as he brought his teacup to his lips. He parted his mouth to indulge in a savory sip, but a little something in the back of his mind told him to abort the measure. "Wait," he said as he ran the scene back. "I don't recall asking anything. How did you know what I was going to say?"

Compared to the rest of the misfits who came before him, Lorenz had gotten to the point in record time. So much so, in fact, that he had arrived at said point before Byleth could so much as flap his gums about it. The whole scenario was rather suspicious, and not solely because Lorenz had been staking out the library for hours beforehand, waiting with bated breath for the professor to emerge so that he might whisk him away to the courtyard for a crisp cup of lavender by the sunset.

Although that was a huge part of it.

"Professor, Professor," Lorenz chuckled with guiltless, virile splendor as he dipped his rose into the vase that acted as the centerpiece of their little tea party. "Surely you must know by now to never underestimate the limitless intuition of a noble, much less one from a house as renowned as House Gloucester! Why, the irksome melancholy etched across your face is as clear as the elegance upon my own. I need only read the contours of your cheeks, examine the individual curvatures of your every pore, and voila! An all-revealing window into your aching heart is made bare for all the world to see!"

Marianne cupped her face and leaned toward the unconvinced professor. "It was Ferdinand," she explained in a voice that was not at all tantamount to a whisper.

"Hn," the mercenary hummed with an understanding nod that was unconvincing in its own right. "I see, I see."

He did not see, actually.

"A-ack?!" Lorenz blanched at the exchange, nearly choking on his own tea in the process. "M-Marianne! Oh, darling heart! You mustn't give away the valuable trade secrets of a noble so carelessly! You never know who might be listening!"

He took a reserved sip of tea in midst of the whimsy to make up for the one he had been denied, silently relishing in the way it refreshed his battle weary bod. It was truly inspiriting, and it went without saying that his heart played a part in accentuating the experience. The refined taste of lavender coupled with the piping hot agony of chugging tea made for a concentrated combination that was equal parts thrilling and throat scalding. Being the master of bottling up emotions that he was, the professor managed to withhold his wincing, twitching, and internal screaming long enough to prevent drumming up a scene. As his nth degree burns began to peter, his gaze drifted to one of the rose's stray petals. It paired beautifully with the rosy faced noble before him, who was currently wrestling with a smidgen of tea that had trickled down the wrong pipe.

"I-I'm sorry!" Marianne blurted with a clasp of her hands. "I... I just don't think it's right for us to be teasing the Professor like this, e-especially if he's as ill as you claim!"

Byleth pulled his teacup away from his lips. "I'm ill?" he asked in a tone unbefitting of the emotional intensity usually reserved for such a suggestion. "This is news to me."

"Are you alright, Lorenz, um, d-dear?" Marianne continued, blushing madly as she stressed the endearment. The reticent healer was still inexperienced in the courting customs of a pre-marital sweetheart and was thoroughly convinced of her ineptitude at expressing them, yet this diffidence only endeared Lorenz more and more to her. It was a strangely wholesome juxtaposition that Byleth understood about as well as anything else about the purple haired highborn—that is to say, not at all.

"Oh Marianne," Lorenz wheezed with all the charm of a whale beached along the shore. "The sound of your magnificent, angelic voice is all the salve for the soul that I need. Why, if I could liquify your dulcet tones and inject them into my veins, I would do so in a heartbeat. Professor! I do so hope you have begun to take notes. You are witnessing the fruits of my grandest endeavor at play here!"

"The only thing I've taken is this tart," said Byleth as he impolitely snacked away. "It tastes... What's the word? 'Tart'? I'm still new to the whole 'taste' thing."

"P-Professor," Lorenz blanched again. "I have no qualms enabling whatever latent cravings you may have for the dining hall's lemon tarts—believe me when I tell you that I too have been tempted by their rich, exquisite tang many a time—but please do not tell me their slick, lemony goodness has left you awash with amnesia! Are you not still desperately seeking the heart's one true purpose? Unless... No, wait...! Could it be...!? Dear gods! Don't tell me you have been so utterly compromised by despair that you have resorted to pastries in order to fill the void?! Could the lemons have truly swayed your consciousness so?! Are you even the same person you were before!? Have you become sort of human-passing lemon construct?!"

Byleth snatched a second tart with his free hand, a move that did little to inspire confidence in the hysterical noble. "He has quite the imagination, Marianne."

"Doesn't he?" the young woman giggled, a small smile gracing her lips. "I can always count on him to make me laugh."

Lorenz blanched for a third time, causing the professor to wonder if nobles inherently possessed more blood than commonfolk, what with how much of it he was losing. "So you have not been violently mind wiped by the gelatin-encumbered devils of Tartarus..." he concluded with a sigh and a self-therapeutic swill of tea. "What a great relief it is to hear that—and a great embarrassment. Let us pretend we never went on that tangent and carry on as though naught but good laughs were had!"

Byleth alternated between the tarts in his hands until little more than crumbs remained, washing it down with the last of his tea thereafter. "This is the liveliest tea party I've ever been to," he said, ever absentminded. "It's also the only one I've ever been invited to. Maybe I'm just a bad host."

"I, um, enjoyed your tea parties, Professor..." Marianne quietly rebutted, her eyes downcast. "I know I'm not the most interesting person in the world to talk to, but a part of me still looked forward to them at the end of every week. I truly appreciate that you took the time to get to know me, e-even if I didn't necessarily wish to be known... I was in a dark place at the time, if you recall..."

'A dark place' was just the sort of vague underselling Byleth expected from someone that had conquered her personal demons to the point of never wishing to speak of them again. In the case of Marianne von Edmund, her demons were perhaps a touch less hypothetical than most and far too great to ignore, even for a professor from an opposing house. While it was commonplace for the 'original' Eagles to question their enigmatic professor's every move and motive, recruiting Marianne was one of the rare instances where no such auditing took place. The lot of them regarded the move as one of those 'makes sense on paper' sort of plays. Lorenz, on the other hand, hitched himself to the class for no real reason other than love at first sight. It ultimately turned out to be something of a smart move given House Gloucester's preexisting imperial relations—not that Lorenz considered them when he demanded that the professor accept them both into his class as a 'bona fide noble package deal'.

An uncomfortable silence proceeded to settle over the courtyard, fitting for the grim tangent Marianne went off on. The deafening tranquility was so hushed, so blatant, so... awkward, that it induced her to tilt her head and greet the many curious eyes staring back at her. It was her turn to balk.

"O-oh!" she gasped, a hand flying to cover her mouth. "D-did I say something wrong? My apologies, I-I didn't mean to spoil the mood, I—"

"PERISH THE THOUGHT!"

Lorenz Hellman Gloucester of the indelible House Gloucester was confident in a great deal of things. Of the things he was not so confident in, however, was his ability to flip frontward and still land on his feet. Rather than risk causing several bullions worth in crockery damage, he settled for taking a knee before his beloved with no less than twice the fervor empowering him. "You?" he whispered. "Uninteresting? Incredulous! Whoever filled your head with such ridiculous drivel is obviously someone envious of the serenity you emanate by simply existing! Marianne, my darling dove, you are a vision! A living, breathing masterpiece! A great, lovely, beautiful, wondrous, uh... great... um... er... P-Professor! If you could lend a hand here!"

"Delicate," a particularly nonchalant Byleth answered, his eyes boring into the bottom of his teacup as he delicately refilled it.

"Ah, quite!" Lorenz concurred with a smile. "And delightful as well! Verily so, even!"

"Sugary," Byleth added as he placidly plopped cube after cube of sugar into his tea. There were enough lumps to make even Lysithea blush.

"Uh, I suppose...?" Lorenz faltered before continuing. "Ah! Heavenly!"

Byleth stirred and stirred his sickeningly saccharine concoction until it was good enough in his eyes to drink. "Sweet," he noted upon taking a sip.

"Marvelous!"

"Herby."

"Breathtaking!"

"Thirst quenching."

"Adorable! Enchanting! Utterly impossibly inconceivably enrapturing in every possible way!"

"Uh... tea."

"T-that's enough!" Marianne said, her hands flying back to her reddening face. "As nice as it is to hear all those things, i-it's also rather embarrassing. You're going to make me blush!"

"Ahaha!" Lorenz guffawed as he took her hand, boldly pressing his lips to her knuckles. "Please, as if the promise of such a blissful sight would ever deter my efforts to turn that incomparable frown upside-down. Dearest, every second you smile is a second that rejuvenates the very whole of my existence. It is my hope, my dream, my most fervent wish, that you never have cause to frown again. With the world as my witness, I shall make it so!"

"Lorenz..."

"Oh, Marianne...!"

The professor helped himself to a third tart as he oversaw the exchange, cocking a very quizzical eyebrow at Lorenz and, in particular, the way he was breathing through the slits between his teeth. "This is the strangest play I've ever seen. Who wrote this?"

"Do you see now, Professor?" Lorenz asked as he retreated to his seat in a manner well suited for the euphoria he was swept up in—stumbling backwards until the back of his knees came into contact with his chair. The awkward, masculine laughter he produced as he sat did wonders to mask the pain he endured from abruptly dropping his noble posterior. "If true love is not the heart's be all, end all, then how do you explain my ability to keep a smile on my dear blossom's face when so many others have tried and failed?"

"Easy," Byleth replied with a long, intentionally drawn out sip. "You're a goof."

That was one poison tipped arrow to Lorenz's heart.

"A sideshow."

Two for two.

"More like a caricature of a person than a person, really."

Three arrows would be a death knell for anyone lacking the posh, foppish tenacity that Lorenz flaunted about on the daily. The poor patrician's persistence kept him alive and kicking, albeit emotionally wounded and reduced to biting precariously on his silken violet tresses.

"You're lucky Marianne is in constant need of a good laugh."

Fortunately for him, the fourth arrow was less like a critical hit and more like a vulnerary.

"H-how could you possibly know this much about us, yet not know the first thing about the heart?!" the noble cried, likely in a bid to distract from his own despair, as well as the sight of him burying his face into the table to cope from the death blows dealt unto him. "It boggles all comprehension!"

The professor's response was relayed in prompt fashion through a mouth teeming with citric jelly. "I would appreciate it if you didn't bully me. Thank you."

"Um, Professor," Marianne intervened, the respite from Lorenz's praises having granted her enough time to regain her composure. "Perhaps the feeling you're searching for is courage."

Silence choked the courtyard again and robbed Marianne of her poise almost as quickly as she recovered it.

"O-or maybe not!" she backpedaled. "Definitely not! Just... just please stop staring at me! I-it was merely a suggestion! I-I didn't want to seem inattentive or inconsiderate so I went with the first thing that came to mind and—!"

Byleth clapped once to get her attention, and upon getting it, clapped again for good measure. "Actually," he began. "That's exactly the kind of mindset I'm looking for. The less time you have to think about it, the better it is for me. The better it is for me, the less I have to think about it. Does that make any sense?"

"N-not really," said Marianne with a shake of her head. "B-but if it's for you, Professor, then I'll try my best to be a little more clear! Um, that is, if you're interested..."

The professor was well into his fourth tart by now. "Very much so," he assured with a phantom smile.

"T-then, um..." Marianne trailed off, thinking of precisely what to say, how to say it, and how to convey it without collapsing like a house of cards. Lorenz took the opportunity to cheer her on, quietly repeating the syllables of her name like a mantra or prayer of some sort. It was his way of demonstrating his full-fledged support, and it wasn't long before Byleth was chanting alongside him.

"Ma-ri-anne!"

"Ma-ri-anne!"

"If she can't say it, no one can!"

"Oh my," Lorenz chuckled, a prideful hand combing through his hair. "Now that was exquisite! I dare say it even rhymed!"

"Good show," Byleth nodded with steady applause until Marianne mustered the mettle to speak her piece.

"Um..."

As mousy and insignificant as her opening peep was, it was all she needed to seize their undivided attention.

"I just think that, well," Marianne paused, unmindful of how it left the boys hanging on the edge of their seats. "H-having a heart should mean having the strength to overcome any obstacle. N-not just physical strength, but inner strength. It should mean being able to confront things... things that might make you feel uncomfortable... things that you may even try to hide from others. It should mean having the will to face all the ugliness in your life... and being able to grow from it. Someone with those qualities would... would have to be someone who can look their deepest fears dead in the eye and... and dispel them in a blink!"

Worked up by her own words, Marianne made certain to punctuate her point by proudly pumping her fists. As if Lorenz's foolish heart wasn't already skipping a dozen or so beats just by sitting right next to her, the brief glimpse of her pep nearly drove him comatose. "Be still...!" he cried, only to be crushed beyond all hope by the blushing that ensued as her hindsight caught up with her. Her hands made quick work of her prompt apology, muffling it to the point of inaudible raving. Byleth couldn't help but wonder if Bernadetta would be proud or envious of the discord.

'Both, maybe?'

"Back then," Marianne continued as quickly as her rekindling poise would allow. "I had no such strength. I was afraid of others, afraid of myself... I tried to shun anyone who drew near so that I wouldn't have to face them, nor would they have to face me or... o-or the parts of myself that I didn't want them to see. I felt so useless, so terrible, so... so burdensome. I greeted every morning unsure if I could face the day that lied ahead, and I welcomed every nightmare ridden evening wondering if it would be my last. Eventually, I stopped worrying altogether. I couldn't take it anymore. I was... I was so defeated. I didn't want anyone to look at me, let alone speak to me. These thoughts persisted, day in and day out, chipping away at what little of myself remained until... until there wasn't anything left to break. It was around then that I began praying to the goddess in the hopes that she would bestow her mercy and... and take me away from this place. I sought her out whenever I could, wherever I could, as often as I could..."

"Marianne...!" Lorenz choked, this time on the lump forming in his throat.

"B-but it's not like that anymore!" the margrave's daughter swore in front of the scenic setting sun. "I've come to accept myself for who I am and... and now I'm able to smile with my head held high. Now I'm able to laugh without fearing what tomorrow will bring. Now I'm able to reach out to others when they reach out to me. Now I'm able to wake up every day glad to still be here with all of you!"

The waterworks had begun in earnest for poor Lorenz, but Byleth was content to somberly sip away in silence. The memories that were being dredged up were old, sure, but indelible all the same. What the mercenary actually needed a refresher of, it turned out, was what was discussed next.

"Professor," Marianne spoke clearly, confidently, gracefully, without any of the unease that afflicted her before. "You are the one who gave me the strength to move forward. As strange as your spur-of-the-moment gatherings were, I secretly enjoyed them deep down. I was in such dire straits, so lost and confused, that I almost didn't want to believe it at first. I could not fathom why anyone would want to waste anything more than a momentary glance on me."

"You were sad," Byleth recalled. "Withdrawn, too. I rarely saw you with anyone that wasn't covered in fur. I wanted to know why. Hm. Maybe a little too much, looking back on it. Every time I tried to approach you, however, you always found a reason to excuse yourself. I suppose my invitations were a way to circumvent that."

As he quite literally chewed over things with tart number five in hand, the professor found himself arriving at a conclusion he wasn't expecting to reach. "Was I... stubborn?"

"Yes," Marianne giggled with a tilt of her head. "Your resolve was not written on your face so much as in your actions. People tend to call you mysterious or unreadable, Professor, but I think I understood you pretty clearly, at least in that instance. It didn't take long for my will to resist to crumble. How could it not when you seemed so lonely, so in need of a tea buddy?"

"I," Byleth frowned. "Wait—that's... backwards, I think..."

"Ha!" a ruddy eyed Lorenz laughed as he pocketed his handkerchief. "It would appear you were quite the lone wolf yourself, Professor. An affable gentleman such as myself can scarcely relate. Oh, but it does make sense, does it not? Were you not a soldier of fortune prior to arriving at the monastery? Seclusion from socialites must come easy to you, I imagine. Could it perchance be that you saw a little slice of yourself in Marianne, hence your unconscious desire to help her quash her insecurities? Not to imply that I was not doing my own part behind the scenes!"

"Whatever the reason," Marianne smiled, her face bright and luminous. "I wish to thank you all the same, Professor. Thank you for taking a chance on me. The strength and courage I spoke of earlier... I have in spades now, thanks to you. I have a long way to go, but I hope I can continue counting on your support, just as I will continue to support you wherever your path may take you."

"Of course," Byleth swatted away his confusion and nodded. "I'll be there every step of the way."

"S-so shall I!" Lorenz added with a tug of his darling's sleeve. "Although I shall be there foremost, naturally! Front and center upon a shimmering steed as white as the moon, our hands entwined with as many Dortes and Dorte-like critters promenading behind us as your heart so desires! And perhaps a dour mule of some sort for the Professor."

"Oh? I like mules," said Byleth, his ears perking up at the slight.

"There is only one Dorte, and he is brilliant," Marianne clarified with a tone as surprisingly stringent as the astringency of her tea. "But as long as we're painting a scene of what lies ahead... I've always been curious about cattle farming. I would very much like to explore it, assuming I had someone to assist me with the workload. Someone talented, and capable, and willing to sully their hands... and purple. Do you know anyone that might fit such a description, Lorenz, d-dear?"

"A-ah!" the violet noble blushed, an awkward hand clutching the back of his head. "But of course!"

---

The record set by Byleth Eisner that day was nothing short of miraculous—a whopping seventeen lemon tarts consumed in one sitting without a single trace of nausea or face puckering. The sole variable responsible for keeping him from raising that already astronomical number any higher was the fact that Lorenz had simply not bothered to bring any more. The whole affair was, after all, intended to be no more than an evening tea party with a side serving of twenty questions. Part unexpected inquisition, part 'perfect teatime'.

The sky was in gloaming and while the onset of night was well on its way, the sun seemed dead set on taking its sweet time setting. The resulting twilight—a glum, dusky, mess of orange, pink, and purple—represented a number of things to the meandering commonfolk of the small town that lied at the foot of the monastery. To the well-meaning masses, it was a sign to pack it in and retire for the evening; to the fetid rats scurrying out from underneath the filth, however, it was a harbinger of all the unscrupulous fun and games to come with a night teeming with scoundrels and other... less than reputable characters. It was the pinnacle of irony, that a borough so close to what was once the goddess's domain could be anything but holy. They were practically attached at the hip, so much so that even the Gatekeeper had trouble telling where the borders between them began and ended.

"How am I supposed to gatekeep if I don't know where or what the gate is?" sighed the faceless mob. "I mean, there's always the entrance hall, but you need to pass through the market in order to get that far, and isn't the market unofficially considered an extension of the nearby township? Or is it officially? Would it not make more sense for me to guard the market's entrance then?! Suppose if one were to consider the market part of the monastery. If that were the case, then anyone who successfully manages to sneak into the market would technically already be within monastery grounds, and it's not like that would be a particularly difficult thing to accomplish given the complete absence of anyone guarding its entrance! Gods, but if that were all true, then that would mean... I've failed my job from the outset!"

"No wonder we kept getting infiltrated," Byleth offhandedly remarked as he passed the Gatekeeper by.

"O-oh!" the guardsman stammered, his helmet bouncing off of his head. "G-greetings, Professor! Nothing to report! Uh, not to be rude, but I believe you're referring to my brother's tenure as gatekeeper."

"You have a brother?" the professor cocked an eyebrow.

"Er... yes, yes I do. D-... Did I not mention that when we first met? I'm a different gatekeeper than the one you were acquainted with before the war—"

"Are you messing with me?"

"I-I would never!"

"I feel as though you are. My leg is feeling sufficiently tugged on at the moment."

"What could have possibly given you that idea? I-is it so hard to believe that I have relatives?"

"You look the same and sound the same."

"You can thank standardized armor for our surface level similarities. I'm actually the handsome one, I'll have you know. As for the latter point, well... there are only so many voices in this fair little world of ours. I'm sure some of them are bound to sound alike! I mean, have you ever heard General Bergliez and Lord Gloucester converse with one another?"

Byleth paused, if for nothing more than to let the query fizzle on its face. "Do you know where Petra is?" he asked as part of a blatant bid to change the subject.

"Ah!" the Gatekeeper's face lit up. "Now that's something I can assist you with! I saw her enter the market not too long ago. I believe she was headed towards the stall with all the pointy-ended weaponry. You know, for killing!"

"Then I'll be taking my leave," the professor nodded. "Thank you."

"W-wuh-wait, wait! Just a moment! W-what did you think of my cameo, Professor? I've been rehearsing it all week for it! W-would you mind terribly if I were to list you as a reference on my acting résumé?"

"I'm busy."

"R-right! Of course you are! T-this isn't the time for such poppycock! I understand! Completely! We'll convene about it later, s-surely! Have yourself a splendid evening, Professor!"

While Byleth's field work had netted some tremendous results over the past few hours, there still remained a particular pair of pundits whom he desired to consult, so the quaint quest for his heart's quintessence continued. Fortunately for the professor and not so fortunately for whom he was about to chance upon, a hop, skip, and a jump over to the marketplace was all he needed to progress.

"The heart's sole purpose is to pump blood and oxygen throughout the body. It is a sickly, unseemly chunk of muscle. There is nothing to suggest that it controls or bears any sort of responsibility for one's emotional stability, thoughts, or reason. Any argument to the contrary is summarily delusional and rooted in childish ignorance. The stuff of fables and minstrels—"

"Good enough for me. See you later."

"Wait, wh—huh?!"

It was rare to catch Hubert von Vestra, Minister of the Imperial Household, off guard, but Byleth was of an equally rare disposition capable of doing exactly that. The emperor's right hand man blanched, unable to cope with how flippantly he and his wisdom had been dismissed, the creases on his face contorting with a cacophonous chorus of crinkles and crackles as they broke free from their sinister resting position. It was comparable to an actor breaking character in an opera, though Hubert was no thespian caricature—much as he resembled one. The reaction was so paralyzing, so staggering in its effectiveness, that it deadened his hawkish reflexes long enough for Byleth to put some distance between them. The only downside was that it wasn't permanent.

"Freeze! If you so much as move a muscle, Professor, I'll...!"

The commanding presence Hubert's voice held cracked under the weight of his own humiliation, making him sound quite pathetic as he bolted after the only man truly capable of getting under his skin. "Huff...huff... suh... suh... sever the limb it resides in...! Hah... ah... Duh... duh... Despicable! Muh... making a fool of... of me... You... you are lucky... to still be standing... Duh... duh... Does that thick skull of yours possess even an ounce of shame?!"

Byleth glanced past the panting servant to guesstimate the distance they had just walked. 'Not that far, maybe two or three stalls...' he surmised. 'Why is he acting like he just ran a marathon?'

"You would do well not to ignore me," Hubert threatened with a step to his left. "Where do you get off ambushing me with such inanity? Then daring to scatter the very moment I acquiesce to the river of drivel trickling from your lips... Just what are you plotting, Professor?"

"If Lorenz can have eyes and ears, I'm certain you can't be too far behind," the professor replied. "It's a little disingenuous to treat this as an ambush, given the likelihood that you knew it was coming."

"Hardly an excuse to waste my time when I have matters far more pertinent to Her Highness to attend to," the emperor's shadow scowled. "Unless that was your aim from the beginning, in which case you have succeeded regardless of motive."

The professor's frown deepened.

"Are you... upset that your response was the easiest for me to digest?"

Hubert's scowl deepened to match.

"Now you're truly testing the extent of my patience."

Neither man seemed to notice that they were starting to draw a crowd. There were prying eyes upon prying eyes, each perverse pair belonging to a rambunctious rapscallion eager to feast on what seemed to them to be a good 'ol fashioned thrifty throw down in the making. Other peasants and passersby among the crowd posited their own interpretations of the scene, varying from a spat between acquaintances, to a business deal gone bad, to even a lover's quarrel.

"Oi! I've gots a fat, gnarly bullion on the one that looks like a devil, I's do!"

"Ehh... that doesn't really nail it down, bub."

"Mother, why are those pretty men arguing?"

"It isn't nice to point, dear. Come now, it's getting late."

"Delightful," Hubert pinched the bridge of his nose, a distinct vein bulging outward on his forehead. "Your prattling appears to have drawn the eyes and ears of the entire bazaar."

"I agree," Byleth nodded. "This is getting pretty bizarre."

Hubert met his former instructor with the deadliest of glares before continuing. "There is no telling just how many of these merchants and miscreants pay attention to the affairs of the world outside of their skeevy little bubble. I have no doubt that at least a handful of them will recognize me as the emperor's vassal and you as her drooling attack mutt. Even the ones that don't are sure to take notice of our attire. Our thumbs are sorer than the wealthiest peddler here."

"You didn't consider that before arriving?" a perplexed Byleth asked. "And I don't drool."

"Just as I neglected to consider that your inevitable company would poison the well of my plans; a rare miscalculation on my behalf, and the only one you can expect me to concede to you on. Tch... Like drones to a hive, these tempestuous townspeople! Have they nothing better to do at this hour? One would think all the strife and warfare would turn them away from what amounts to ground zero, yet it would appear that business is as booming as ever..."

"I know it's a bit of a scroll at this point," Byleth leaned over. "But we went over that earlier."

The daggers in Hubert's eyes sharpened.

"I don't understand," the professor went on before he could be skewered. "We've done nothing wrong... yet. Why does this assignment of yours require that you stay clear of the commonfolk?"

"It doesn't," the schemer clarified with growing contempt. "But did it ever occur to you that I hold no desire to rub shoulders with anyone that isn't Her Highness? I suppose that would make me the opposite of you—the less people I interact with today, the better."

"So you were following me."

"Such is routine," Hubert shrugged. "Has there ever been a day in which I have not?"

"If there has been, I'm unaware of it," Byleth said before adding. "I am aware, however, that I have not taken the imperial throne, yet it would seem you take far more pleasure in rubbing my shoulders than you do rubbing the emperor's. How does lurking in my shadow, long after there would be any logical reason to do so, bring you any closer to sating your desires, if I may ask?"

Hubert's answer was less of an answer and more of a tactical retreat—into the very crowd he intended on skirting.

"My 'desires' lie with Petra," he yielded upon overhearing his mortal enemy's pursuing footsteps. "Her Highness has requested that I retrieve her."

"Oh?" Byleth's eyes widened with a curious sheen. "I believe I can help with that."

---

"I have goulash! Who want goulash? I give good price for goulash! You want borscht? I have borscht! Is best borscht in all Fódlan!"

"Lamp oil, rope, bombs! You want it? It's yours, my friend, as long as you have enough gold!"

"We have the best fruits for sale here. The greatest fruits. No one grows fruits like we do. You're not going to find fruits like these anywhere else, believe me. I know fruits."

To say that business was booming would be an understatement. It was more like it was exploding, and even that sentiment was just a little off the mark to describe the scene at the heart of the market. It was a quarter past the eleventh hour, yet the crowds were every bit as bustling as they were at the crack of dawn. The creeping stink of common day cutthroats that lurked behind every corner did little to deter the morale of the merchants. If anything, it served only to make them more animated.

"Welcome welcome to Anna's Caveat Emptor-ium! Today's the last day of our big imperial inauguration clearance week sale! You heard that right! It's out with the old, in with the new—that means all church merch must go! Don't wait, don't delay, don't dilly dally because these incredible savings won't last for much longer! This is your last chance to procure potentially prosperous Church of Seiros swag! Who knows what the market value on this stuff will be in a couple of years? And to think, I'm practically giving it away! No refunds, rain checks, personal checks, haggling, or bartering! All purchases are final! While supplies last!"

"Step right up! Come one, come all! You merry gents have heard of portrait painting, but have you heard of woodcarving?! My lovely eastern associate doesn't speak a lick of our language, but damn if she doesn't carve a mean figure! In more than one way, even! Spare us some coin and a few moments of your time and in return she'll whip up a figure of you so lifelike you'll say 'Huzzah! Hot dog, it's real'! Need one of a friend? Not a problem! Provide a good enough reference and we'll handle the rest, no questions asked!"

It was a curious system, to be sure. Rather than rough up the roughnecks and risk sparking an unsavory situation, the shopkeepers were all too content to disarm them the only surefire way they knew how—by behaving as bright and boisterously as can be. Their mannerisms were so hectic, so eccentric, so positively electric—that it was almost impossible not to fall for their showmanship; a sort of makeshift hypnosis through suggestion and discombobulation. Even the most feculent fiend would be left with nothing but deals and discounts on the brain after sitting through just one of their pitches, and with so many coming in from every direction, the end result to the equation was a crook too cracked up to commit much of anything, much less petty larceny.

"Free, free, free! Asterisk! Today only! You pay no money down and pay no yearly interest! In exchange, I'll confer unto you a truly legendary sword for the ages! A sword so legendary, it's quite literally out of this world! And yet, somehow, through an untold combination of arcane black magic and the powers that be, it has found its way into my humble hands! Feast your face upon the awesome might and extravagance of the one and only Master Sword!"

Once run by a normal person, the armory stall was now in the care of a bizarre bird-faced man with a getup as black as the night and an outlook as bright as the sun. With competitive prices, a peppy propensity to dance on alternating feet, and membership cards to incentivize visits over the opposition, the dark mage had singlehandedly transformed the once floundering stall from a place literally only Byleth shopped at into an emporium that everyone shopped at. 'Everyone', of course, including Petra Macneary.

"The 'Master Sword'?" she echoed. "I am not understanding. What is so 'masterful' about it?"

"Keeheehee!" giggled the grimly merchant. "I'm glad you asked, my foreign friend! According to the legend—which is absolutely true by the way—the sword was forged by a spiteful goddess of a neighboring realm, who wished to return her land to nothing as punishment for her people neglecting to invite her to any of their festivities. Enhanced by her bilious blessings and the divine flames of her three sumptuous subordinates, the sword became imbued with the power to repel all evil! Those with even a speck of darkness in their hearts will find their fingers ablaze if they so much as grip its handle!"

"What a coincidence," Hubert said as he manifested behind the two, the wickedness in his soul practically dripping from his tongue. "It just so happens that darkness and I go hand in hand. Perhaps we should put this 'blessed blade' of yours to the ultimate test. That is, unless you have something to hide..."

The gilded stars in Petra's eyes dissipated upon seeing the schemer and teacher pair. "Hubert?" she said as Byleth waved nonchalantly. "And the professor, too... Were the both of you also hearing of rumors of a strange sword on sale?"

"Gah!?" the dark mage cried, nearly dropping the Master Sword in the process. "M-M-Marquis Vestra! W-w-what are you doing here?! H-hachachachachachacha! Code red, code red!"

"Hey," Byleth called to the panicking peddler, who was sidling to his left and right like a cornered crustacean. "You're that fellow who repairs my sword sometimes."

"Gaaaaaaaaaa—huh?" the merchant froze. "O-oh! Mister-Professor-Guy-Who-Doesn't-Know-a-Thing-About-Personal-Space! Thank the fell stars, what great fortune! Oh, but you have to help me, the marquis is—wait! Stop the presses! The marquis is in your entourage?! Gaaaaaaaaaaah! They're brothers in arms!"

"Professor," Hubert glanced away from the sidling shopkeeper. "Are you acquainted with this bottom feeder?"

"Yes and no," Byleth shook his head and nodd3e. "I've relied on his services in the past for maintenance of the Sword of the Creator, but beyond that..."

"Hey!" the merchant snapped out of his tizzy, slightly affronted. "I sell tea blends too, you pack of palpitating palookas! Rare ones at that! Gah! No, wait! Rewind! Before you subjugate me to the squalls of infernal darkness, Marquis Vestra, might you consider for a second that were it not for my sacred sword smithing skills, your steely eyed secret weapon here would be all but powerless? Down and out? Up a fecal infested creek without a paddle? Nothing more than a handsome face? Face it! There's no way in Hel your little imperial conquest would have ever come to pass without my services! Can you imagine how maddening your road would have been if that spinal sword ever broke? Those delusional church zealots would be gregariously gallivanting on your graves by now! I should think that alone qualifies for a dash of mercy!"

"He has a point," Byleth said to the marquis in question.

"You bet your shapely hind I do!" the merchant made sure to add.

"A point?" a confused Petra frowned. "I am thinking it is much closer to a beak than a point."

"Tch," Hubert scoffed, a hand running down his face. "It is rather bold of you to assume that I would come all this way just to close the book on your paltry existence. Though if you insist on running that mouth of yours without provocation, I may just have to take the offer into consideration."

"Gaaaaaaaaah!" squealed the dark merchant, his arms flailing. "Curses! Threats! Credible threats! My one and only weakness! F-fine, fine! I give, I give! I know when I'm beat! You win, marquis and friends! 'A winner is you', as they say! Keeheeehee! Don't you all feel special!?"

"We are winning? But what have we wo—" Petra gasped as the merchant suddenly shoved the Master Sword into her hands. "Oh!"

"The sword's what you want, right?!" he raved. "Go on then, take it! Get it out of my hands! I've got much more where that came from anyhow! I'll even waive the monthly installment plan so long as it gets the lot of you out of my hair! Your suspect and scrutiny is souring the sanctity of my reputable establishment!"

"Yeah, that place has a reputation, alright!" a distant, meddlesome voice teased.

"This does not concern you, Anna!" the merchant mage yelled back with a raging fist. "Go on! On your horse, as they say! Off with you! The only thing more poisonous to my commodities than customers who ask far too many questions is that mingy, good for nothing, winking wench rearing her ugly redhead into my literal and figurative business! Nosy, insatiable woman she is!"

"Um, but I didn't get my card punched yet," Byleth protested with a gentle wave of his membership card. "I only need two more visits for a free stuffy."

"Oh, for the love of...!" the birdman sighed, snatching the card and driving his beak mask through it before rudely returning it. "There! Now get out of here before I get bold enough to consider changing my mind! I'm quite volatile, if you haven't noticed."

"Gladly!" Petra smiled on behalf of the dunces behind her. "You are having my kind thanks and gratitude, Mister... um... You are also having my apologies. Are you having a name?"

"Jake," the merchant answered, his eyes subsequently wry at the trio's lack of reaction. "What? Not foreboding enough for you? How was my mother supposed to know that I would grow up with heavy investments in forbidden rituals and dark devilry? Pah! You think I'm underwhelming? You should meet some of my colleagues! I would hate to see one of you on the opposite end of Keith's Miasma! And I'm not talking about his breath, either!"

Byleth shot a sidelong glance at Hubert. "'Hubert' doesn't exactly carry a 'threatening' aura either, does it?"

"Be quiet."

---

Through process of elimination, the group determined that Petra would be the best candidate to retain ownership of the Master Sword. Byleth declined against the idea of a vote on the matter, being far too honorable to take the weapon away from someone who beat him to the punch, and far too gullible to think that it wouldn't dissolve Hubert into flesh slurry if he were to make contact with it. As such, the blade hung unchallenged at the huntress' side, concealed in a branded scabbard described by Jake as 'equally awesome as the sword itself'. Alas, such awe and luster did little to deter the attention of those in its vicinity. Were it not for the murderous intent in Hubert's eyes, the return trek to the market's entrance would have been anything but smooth.

"You are having heart problems, Professor? That is most upsetting... I have sorrow for you. Ah, I mean, I am sorrowful. I am wishing I could be helping you, but I am having little medical knowledge."

"It is not so much his heart that is giving him trouble," Hubert explained dutifully, but with a hint of scorn underneath. "As it is him giving himself trouble. The once hollow vessel that is our Professor's body, for all of the trials it has been through, is working exactly as intended."

"It is working with intent?" Petra blinked. "Then I am having confusion. I am not understanding what the problem is..."

"That his body is working as intended," Hubert reiterated. "Is in and of itself the quandary that we face. Up until recently, he was but a biological anomaly; an error that somehow slipped past nature's cutting room floor. Now, with the key component of his body restored and working to its fullest, the Professor is finding himself conflicted, distressed, and wholeheartedly confused. He lacks the mental capacity, fortitude, and wherewithal to process this new standard of normality; a normality in which he is not fundamentally broken from the outse—"

It took Hubert roughly five seconds from the moment his lips stopped moving to comprehend the words he had just spoke.

"Wait," the schemer scowled, his brows furrowing. "What am I saying? I don't care about the Professor's mental faculties! That isn't the reason why I've come here."

"Hold on," Byleth protested with a biased hand. "Keep talking. I like where this going."

"The emperor seeks an audience with you," Hubert continued, unimpeded by the mercenary's interjection. "She wishes to discuss foreign relations, among other things, I'm told. I've been sent to escort you to her chambers posthaste."

"I am somewhat understanding," Petra nodded slowly, glancing toward Byleth. "And the Professor?"

"Nothing more than a distraction," Hubert answered. "I would have arrived sooner were it not for his suspicious behavior."

The response did not dispel Byleth's underlain misgivings so much as exacerbate them. "You spent the entire day skirting orders just so you could stalk me from place to place? How long have you kept her waiting?"

"Since daybreak, if you must know."

"And what of your day to day duties?"

"Temporarily suspended, thanks in no small part to your deceitful diversions."

"'Diversions'?" Byleth cocked an eyebrow. "I think a more fitting word would be 'detour'. Still, this all makes me curious. If I jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?"

"I would first have to assess what lies at the bottom of the canyon," the vassal replied as though it were common sense. "And why you would be going to such ostensibly idiotic lengths in the first place. History has shown that it takes far more than a deadly plunge to rid the world of you, so I would immediately suspect some sort of subterfuge. You could be fleeing to another kingdom or safe haven, for instance. Thus, even if I were to witness you leaping to your demise, I would have every reason in the world to remain skeptical about it. I would have to see your corpse for myself, and even then, I would need it to be rotting and scavenged by crows. So, if it were for Her Highness' sake, I would have no reservations jumping after you."

Byleth gawked at Petra, his eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. The Brigid girl simply shrugged back, having lost the plot the moment cliff diving was brought up.

"Hubert," she began. "If we are to be talking about Fódlan and Brigid relations, then I am most wishing to be joining you, but..."

The schemer's face contorted bitterly. He didn't like where this was going.

"I am also wanting to lend hands to the Professor," she said to the tune of Hubert shaking his head in frustration. "It is with much thanks to him that we are being able to come this far. I am wishing greatly to return the help by lending my hands to him in any way that I am able."

A light smile tugged at the corners of Byleth's lips, a fitting contrast to Hubert's ever deepening frown.

"Tch," the servant scoffed and rolled his eyes. "What help could you possibly offer to someone who is in no need of it? If my surveillance has been any indication, all he intends to do is ask you for your sentimental interpretation of the heart in the hopes that it brings him some peace of mind about his own."

"Really?" Petra's face brightened as she pivoted to the professor. "That is all you will be asking of me?"

Byleth nodded before turning his attention back to the emperor's shadow. "For someone who claims not to care, you seem to have a knack for doing exactly that."

"I don't care," Hubert bickered back. "But it would seem we've reached an impasse. The sooner I play into your hands, the sooner you can play into my own. My actions amount to nothing more than furthering things along."

"Is that how they concede over in House Vestra?"

"Would you care to regurgitate those words a little closer? Into this tome, perhaps?"

Clonk!

"Augh!"

"Ow."

"I am having a prop... proposition," Petra announced as she released her teacher and comrade's throbbing heads. "It is one that I am thinking will bring the most satisfaction for the both of you. It will be granting the Professor much needed assurance while en... ensuring that the Emperor is not waiting for much longer. Are you finding these terms agreeable?"

Putting Petra in charge of mending a verbal disagreement was akin to assigning Bernadetta as the house representative for a dance competition. Even in her dominant tongue, the Brigid beauty would sooner cross swords to solve a spat than rely on her rhetoric. It was one of the major systematic follies of her country's so called 'Brigid pride'. For some reason or another, altercations across the pond always seemed to skip that initial 'talk it out' step in favor of escalating straight to fisticuffs and roughhousing. For Petra, that meant swinging a sword at whatever was causing her discontent until it either stopped moving or started begging for mercy.

"Sounds reasonable enough," Byleth replied after some consideration.

"What did you have in mind?" a skeptical Hubert asked.

Fortunately for her colleagues, while Petra's proposal did involve swords, it did not involve maiming one another with them. The reality of her haphazard machinations weren't anywhere near as gruesome, despite the implications that were raised by her prompt presentation of the Master Sword to the professor.

"Professor," the purple haired swordswoman said. "You are to be grasping this sword at once. The dancing bird man said with much certainty that anyone who is to be holding this sword with darkness in their heart will be finding themselves fla... flamma... combustible!"

What scant interest Hubert had in her proposition was quickly whittled down to a microscopic blip. "You actually believed that nonsensical, upselling gibberish?" he asked. "I guarantee that huckster had a dozen more of those swords sitting behind his stall, just waiting to be peddled to susceptible sellswords such as yourselves. Why else would he have been so willing to part with a supposedly 'legendary blade' for nothing in return?"

"You realize that," Byleth noted. "Yet still allowed him to get away with it?"

If Hubert had any further objections, they died on his tongue.

"Whether the tale is truthful or not is not mattering, I believe," Petra argued. "All you are needing is some sort of sign that you are human, correct? The legend says that only a person of purest heart, who is not knowing darkness, can be wielding the sword. If you are grasping it and live to tell about it, then the only conclusion we can be making is that you are a pure person. Even if the tale is not... not truth... untruthful, there is no way of us knowing that for certain. So, in either case, you will be fine as long as you are believing in yourself!"

Byleth gripped his chin. "So then, the only way this experiment could go awry is if..."

"The legend is somehow true and your hand spontaneously combusts from the sword's recognition of what a degenerative devil you are," Hubert said. "With that stipulation in mind, it's almost a halfway clever premise. Rest assured that I will be sure to stay clear of you, Professor. The last thing I would want is for my innate malevolence to dash whatever fantasies your coping psyche happens to conjure."

"Thanks," the teacher uttered flatly. "I appreciate that."

"Hmm... The blade is making no effort to refuse my hands," Petra pointed out. "I am thinking it must be because of my Brigid pride! Professor, if the sword is accepting of me, then there is no way it can be unaccepting you! Here, please be taking it!"

With all the swiftness and urgency of a proud Brigid warrior, Petra pressed the Master Sword up to the professor's chest, her eyes practically begging for him to take it from her.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

For Byleth Eisner, this was it. This was the end of the line. This was tantamount to the moment of truth, if such a comparison could even be drawn. It was a 'do or die' that hinged entirely on good faith and the reckless belief that a seedy, backwater salesman wouldn't do everything in his power to make his illicit wares seem more attractive. There were two, potentially three outcomes at play for the mercenary, and each one played over and over in his head like a deja vu deluge of Divine Pulses gone wrong. The first scenario—the sword and its power being legitimate—was the easiest for him to swallow and by far the most ideal of the bunch. The second scenario—the sword being counterfeit and thus unable to react to the wielder one way or the other—was regrettably, the most realistic outcome. Although just as effective as the first and in no way undesirable, it would essentially deadlock the wielder into a dangerous confidence trick. With no definitive way of knowing whether Jake was telling the truth, the onus would be on the professor to decide whether or not to believe in the man and consequently, the effects (or lack thereof) of grasping the blade. Were he to choose to believe in the legend, then the sword would be 'legitimate', as in scenario one. The prospective danger of that decision lied in his ability to stay true to that belief, and not fall prey to any lingering doubts thereafter.

The third scenario, as graciously relayed by Hubert, was the sword being legitimate and choosing to reduce the man once known as the Ashen Demon to—well—ashes.

Byleth had no way of telling, but he was sure that his eyes were swirling. He felt as though he was back at the chalkboard, trying to illustrate the ins, outs, odds, and ends of each scenario to a class of fledgling eaglets who couldn't be more hopelessly confused if they tried. Preposterous as it was, he noticed that his designs were quite similar to his old lesson plans, only with a myriad of 'what ifs' dominating the board instead of crude, chalky blobs resembling infantry, cavalry, and the like. In the recesses of his mind, a network of interwoven flow charts had taken over the chalkboard. It was a messy web of arrows, conditions, hastily scrawled asterisks and risk assessments, all stemming from the same point of origin—the Master Sword.

Thump.

'A sign,' thought Byleth. 'A sign that I'm human, and that my heart is sound...'

It wasn't quite 'what it means to have a heart', but it was well within the ballpark. The professor gulped, recalling Petra's earlier rationalization, which subsequently led him to circle back to the perils of the counterfeit scenario. The only surefire way they would know if the sword was real was if it killed him on the spot. The reality, however, was that it likely wouldn't do anything to him. Were it a genuine article, he would be able to wield it without a care in the world. Were it a forgery, the same thing would occur. It was almost like a game of sorts. The judgment of one's purity wouldn't be up to the sword at that point, but rather, the ability of the wielder to believe in the existence of said judgment. Believing in the judgment, be it blindly or adamantly, would convince the wielder of their purity regardless of the sword's actual status. Outright disbelief, on the other hand, would result in a fissure of fates; those aware of the fraud but choosing to believe in the judgment anyway ran the risk of self-sown seeds of doubt sprouting in the future, whereas those aware but electing not to fool themselves would be in no danger at all.

Thump.

Byleth's eyes were almost certainly swirling now and Petra's echoing words weren't making things any easier for him. As far as the swordswoman was concerned, he possessed the resolve necessary to conquer the sword—whether it was real, fake, or some bizarre unaccounted for amalgamation in-between. She wholeheartedly believed in his ability to grasp its handle and accept, without any latent reservations, that he was every bit as pure as his beating heart suggested. That she would bear so much faith in him was flattering, and no doubt a symptom of his impeccable tenure as a teacher, strategist, and role model. What the huntress had not considered when placing her hope in him, however, was an old adage so simple that even she would have no trouble comprehending it—humans are flawed, and if Byleth was one of them, that meant that he was far from infallible.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

"Are you going to take the sword or are you going to stand there and think about taking it?" asked an impatient Hubert.

"Professor?" Petra frowned. "Is something wro—"

Like a deranged, degenerative boar busting through a brick wall, Byleth snatched the Master Sword from the Brigid girl in a single flinching motion and held it imposingly over his head. The blade glistened, sparkled, even twinkled in the twilight, but otherwise did nothing aside from attracting the attention of a number of unsavory onlookers.

"Woah! Did you see that?!"

"Nicked her blade, he did!"

"I thought swords only went schwing in the books!"

Any interest they may have had in the scene quickly waned when they realized that nothing further was going to happen. The blade, as awesome as it looked, was just that—a blade; and the professor, as awesome as the pose he struck looked, was just that—a professor too stunted to do much of anything. It was just as he had feared—the sword failed to visibly react to him. There was no surge of power, no resonance, no sense of serenity flowing through his bones. The sword treated him just as it did Petra, and while that did not necessarily debunk the legend, the utter lack of any kind of fulfilment was beginning to dawn upon him.

"Professor," Petra said. "Are you... feeling anything?"

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

"I..." Byleth began, his clarity briefly wavering. "I feel fine."

---

"Be taking the sword."

"I refuse."

"Re... Refu... Refusing is not an option! You must be wielding it for the sake of the Professor!"

"All the persuasive arguments in the world, and you choose the most unconvincing one as your hill to die on."

With the grime of the marketplace behind them, the misfits were en route to the emperor's chambers, but lo and behold, Petra decided somewhere in the midst of the trek that she wasn't satisfied with the ominous declaration the professor had given her. Rather than let sleeping dogs lie, the fiercely stubborn Brigid girl opted to dredge the issue back up before it could resemble the most beaten horse in the empire. Her intention was clear—the only other means of testing the sword was to force it into the clutches of the one person who had yet to take hold of it.

"But..." Petra pleaded. "But you must! You are claiming there is much darkness in your heart, correct? I was not making this connection before, but that would be making you the perfect candidate to be proving the legend to the Professor!"

Hubert had to turn and glower at the professor for what he was about to say next, as the mere thought of looking at Petra in that moment was tantamount to dignifying her train of thought. "Did she forget the part where I turn to ash, or is she merely hoping that I don't recall that inconvenient little detail?"

Byleth rubbed his chin in contemplation.

"I thought you said you didn't believe in the legend."

"I don't," Hubert was quick to reaffirm. "But it would appear as if she does. Bold of her to assume that I would ever lay my life down for the likes of you, even in a hypothetical scenario."

"But if you're convinced that it's false," the professor argued. "Then it doesn't matter whether you acquiesce or not. You know you'll be fine and you have nothing to lose, so why not humor her?"

"I've nothing to gain from demeaning myself to her level, or yours for that matter. As for what I stand to lose—your misgivings and the despair wrought about by them, for one. I'd rather you stay like this, troubled and uncertain in a purgatorial bed of your own making. I find it to be a much more... preferable visage than the alternative."

"The alternative being you touching the sword and dispelling that uncertainty?"

"Correct. You're beginning to catch on—"

"The sword that you're gesturing with... right now?"

Hubert's gaze snapped to his right hand at breakneck speed, his neck swiveling like an automaton, sickly eyes widening as his pupils honed in on his fingers—and the fact that they were full.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The thick black tresses covering the schemer's face sprung skyward in an unspeakable defiance of gravity and physics, triggered by the nigh tangible horror emanating from his person and kept aloft by the sound of his indomitable wailing.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

"Ah!" Petra beamed, her eyes bright and innocent. "It is working!"

"W-where, how?! Where did this come from!?" Hubert demanded in a panic. "I don't recall grabbing—!"

"You were talking much with the Professor," the swordswoman smiled. "You must not have been noticing me giving it to you. Were you accepting it unconsciously, without thinking, maybe?"

"W-what?!" Hubert snapped. "That doesn't make any sense, I—!"

Byleth shuffled in front of the servant, note and quill in hand.

"This is rare," he grinned and began to scribble. "I'm not as adept in the arts as Bernadetta or even the emperor, but I feel... I feel an intrinsic need to capture this moment. Committing it to memory won't suffice. I must immortalize the look upon your face for future generations. How does this look?"

"That's a crow!"

"It's supposed to be a rook," Byleth frowned. "See the chess piece in its beak? That's also a rook. Did you know the smaller pieces are called 'rooks' and serve the larger pieces, one of which is referred to as the 'queen'—"

"It's a blot of ink with wings!"

"This need... This... These urges dwelling within me... Are they the work of my heart, perhaps?"

"Yes!" Petra nodded with vigor. "My understanding is soaring with greatness now! Your heart is having a reaction to Hubert's sword handling, and the sword is not dissolving him as we were fearing. I can only be making one conclusion from this!"

Hubert parted his lips to finish her thought.

"That the sword is an obvious imitatio—"

"Hubert's heart is the purest of them all!"

The minister's locks would remain in suspended animation for the rest of the evening.

---

While it was true that the monastery had seen better days, its nights were still as serene as ever. At last, the sun had descended and the moon had climbed into the thick of night to take its place with a soft, shimmering glow. The sight was marvelous enough on its own, but it was the stars that truly sold the show. A veil of them—hundreds, thousands, far too many to tally—blanketed the skies above Fódlan and the world entire, a ubiquitous array stretching as far as the eye can see. It was comforting in a sense—that even after all the fighting, all the bedlam, trauma and turmoil, the stars were still every bit as bright as they were back then.

Unlike the man observing them.

The archbishop's former nest, the Star Terrace, offered a view of the monastery that rivaled even that of the Goddess Tower's balcony. The name was appropriate, fitting for the sparkling sea of twinkles on high. Any confusion or bewilderment Byleth may have had surrounding the name faded into obscurity as he soaked himself in the drizzling moonlight. With the caress of the stars and the moon's soothing rain at his side, the mercenary's mind began to wander, his consciousness drifting to a time far off into the past—long, long ago.

It was one of his earliest memories of the academy, before he had been properly hired, before he had even been introduced to anyone aside from Alois and the house leaders. Old Jeralt was there, of course, as were his colleagues, the burgeoning royals, and...

Thump.

The chill of the archbishop's gape as she studied him from her silken perch was lost on him back then, but he somewhat understood it now. It was eerie. It was unearthly. It was so categorically uncanny. Not a single word was exchanged between them as their eyes met for what was presumably the first time, and yet, it felt as though they had known each other for ages upon ages. Whether she was welcoming him back like an old friend or scrutinizing him like a new toy to keep a leash on, he couldn't say for certain. The crisp gale that came with her glare only made the encounter all the more tense. It was a cool, frigid wind that worked to accentuate the mystery of the woman dissecting him, as well as underscore and widen the distance in power between them.

It was a very lonesome wind in retrospect.

"How many times..."

Byleth laid a hand upon the terrace's railing, his voice quiet and contemplative against the frigid breeze.

"How many times... Did you look up at these stars, I wonder?"

Thump.

"Did... Did you look to them for guidance... or for hope?"

Thump.

"Was the wind..."

Thump.

"Was the wind always this cold when you were here?"

His musings petered into the chill of the night without answer, not that he expected any. He had effectively taken her place, after all. He was the one gazing at the stars now. He was the one in her holy abode, casting unreadable glances at those below and those overhead.

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

And there was only one word to describe the feeling it drew from him.

"Strange..."

Everything was coming full circle. His day had started from the decks of a balcony and was now concluding from the decks of another, just as the thoughts on his mind began and ended with the tentatively indescribable thumping of his heart.

"Strange, strange, strange..."

The thumping whose blank he still could not decisively fill.

Thump thump.

Even after countless inquiries, exchanges, and genuine breakthroughs, he still felt no closer to the core of his concerns than when he started. All he wanted to know—needed to know—was what it took to possess a heart. What it meant to have one. What it meant to have a cornerstone of humanity bleating out from his chest every waking moment. That was all. That was the sum of it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thump thump.

It should have been easy. It should have been hook, line, and sinker, and yet, the conclusive consistency he had been searching so helplessly for simply wasn't present. If there was any consistency to be had in the data he gathered, it was in how inconsistent everyone's responses were. No two hearts were alike, and even those that were likeminded had splits in perspective that made them distinct from each other. It seemed, much to his dismay, that there were as many variables in the equation as there were people in the world to meddle with.

As if sharing in his misfortune, the shabby stray beside him mewed softly, and it was at that point that he noticed he had company.

It was a small, scruffy, excessively hairy little thing. The monastery was known for sheltering strays, particularly canines and felines, but this one in particular stood out from the rest. It wasn't its unkempt tufts of gray fur or even its bulging ears that drew peoples' attention, but rather its plate sized eyes and the blank, almost soulless stare that came with them.

'Kitty,' Byleth thought, but it wasn't enough to think it, he had to say it too, so he did. "Kitty."

He poked the creature, whose breed he could not tell, on a childish whim, and when its only reaction was to turn away from the stars and stare at him with nary a speck of emotion, he found himself inspired to take a step further.

"How long have you been sitting there?"

He petted the kitten with a ghost of a smile.

"You look like you've seen some things."

It let out a small peep, though he couldn't tell if it was responding to his words or his palm.

"You're pretty brave. Most animals tend to stay away from me, or at least, that was what I thought before coming here. Are you and your friends unnaturally amicable just because, or is it something else entirely?"

The kitty mewled softly in response. Despite not speaking feline, Byleth opted to err his interpretation on the side that supported what he already had in mind.

"Is it because you... noticed changes in me over time?"

Without blinking or making any kind of facial movement, the scruffy stray angled its head, its purple eyes boring deep into the mercenary's soul.

"What? Do I have something on my face?"

His cognizance stirred before the kitty could react.

"I'm talking to cats now."

A feat only slightly less humiliating than talking to plants.

Byleth sighed and left the furball to its devices. As his eyes flocked to the stars, his hands retreated into his pockets. He furrowed his brow at the foreign feeling of paper scraping against his fingertips, eyes slightly widening and all. It took only a moment for his instincts to kick in, and once they did, he found himself in the midst of unfolding the treasure trove of notes he had taken earlier in the day.

The first page his eyes met with was also the latest, a result of him layering each individual inquiry from newest to oldest. The scrawled mess of scribbles was just as Hubert described—a blot of ink with wings whose only resemblance to him was that a portion of its face was obscured. It was a comical illustration on every front imaginable, from the many layers of its underlying message to its laughable linework. It was no masterpiece, that much was clear, but it drove the point Byleth wanted to sell home, and that was all he wanted from it. Frankly, he thought the point was strong enough regardless of the visual aid.

Complementing the illustration was a brief account of the mishaps at the marketplace, spanning from just below his blotched artistic signature to the opposite side of the page. As it was the most recent inquisition, the details were still fresh on his mind. Everything from his confrontation with Hubert, to meeting with Petra and Jake, to the shenanigans with the Master Sword and the many uncertainties it wrought upon his foolish heart. None of it mattered, truth be told. The only section he cared for was toward the very end of the page—a summation of Hubert's response to the survey. He had initially left the field blank due to the vassal's unwillingness to humor him with an answer that wasn't strictly scientific, an unwillingness that loosened up as the two parted ways...

"Professor."

"Hmm?"

"Devotion. To have a heart is to be devoted until the bitter end. That's what you've been dying to hear me say, isn't it? As if you didn't already know yourself."

"..."

"Flabbergasted, are we? Devotion is everything for someone such as I. Loathe as I am to admit it to you of all people, I am nothing without it. It would be in your best interest to keep that in mind, as I don't intend on repeating myself."

The fealty Hubert swore to the emperor rested in the space just beside his name, a fitting match for Petra's entry underneath it.

"Pride! Having a heart means you are filled with pride! Proudness lets your heart feel greatly about yourself and others. I am proud of my grandfather, my homeland, my people, my friends, myself, and all the things we have acc... accompli... all the things we have done! I am believing you are proud of us too, Professor. Even if you do not see it, or claim it is not present, I am hearing it in your voice every time you speak. It is... how do they say... written all over your face."

"Have you finished riding on my coattails? The emperor is waiting."

"Riding? I am not riding on anything, Hubert. I am standing with firmness."

"Tch. Forget I said anything. Professor, if you would excuse us..."

It was a winding rabbit hole, this enigma of his. It had no end in sight and more twists and turns the deeper it went. Where Hubert saw loyalty to the death, Petra saw honor and achievement. What Marianne considered to be the source of her spirit and resolve also happened to be the apex of romanticism for Lorenz. From Lysithea's views on empathy and understanding to Linhardt's idea of dependability, to Ferdinand's passion for honesty and Dorothea's deep-seated desire for respect and validity. Caspar, emptyheaded as he was, thought individual effort was the key to the puzzle, while sweet little Bernie thought it was as simple as 'being happy with whomever makes you feel happy'. Even Ovidius, for all his snapping and hissing, made him rethink everything he thought he knew about pain and what it felt like to endure it. It was never ending. Every time—every single time—it felt like he had made some sort of chief advancement, some other unconsidered notion would get in his way and send him back to the drawing board. It didn't matter how much warmer, how much closer, how much nearer he had progressed. If it was by an inch or a nose hair, it made no difference. It existed only to be haphazardly thrown into the fray and further complicate the growing nexus in his mind, a vexing array of complexity.

"Fufufufu—foolishness! You never change, do you? How is it that your soul is still adrift after all this time?"

Thump.

The cache of notes scattered in an instant, coating the balcony in a thin layer of crinkled paper as honeyed nothings froze the world over and shattered it into a corrupted, lilac facsimile.

"Honestly! Is your mind really so simple that you cannot see the forest for the trees, as they say?"

A dream, a vision, an illusion, mental delusion, mirage, or hallucination of some sort; Byleth racked the weary confines of his mind to explain the stoppage of time and the vague yet familiar apparition manifesting out of the corner of his eye.

"How can you still be wandering?" her voice cooed like nectar in his ears. "How can your heart still be so restless?"

'Just my imagination,' he insisted, much as the voice in the back of his head cried to the contrary.

"Oafish demon. You have become so lost, so astray, so terribly blinded that you cannot even see what's become of you without my counsel."

'Just a trick of the eye...'

"The only trick your eyes have been playing on you is the one spread out in front of you."

He resisted the urge to look at her, to drink in her fabled image, lest he spoil the moment as he did before. Instead, he kept his sights trained on the night sky and his focus anywhere but on the preeminence beside him.

"A pox on those worthless stars! Pah! What good have they ever done for you? It is because of them that you are in this situation to begin with! Now then, enough of these foolish games! Open your eyes this instant! The truth lies right behind that deceitful veil! How is it that you can be so thickheaded even now!? So bothersome! It is a wonder you have even made it this far!"

His inaction squeezed a sigh out of her, dispelling the dreadful silence they had created.

"The truth is, you have no need for my guidance anymore. As much as it wounds me to admit, you are no longer a feckless child. You have grown, that much is certain, but you will learn nothing if I continue to hold your hand through every trial and tribulation. You claw and clamor for proof of your existence, a reason why your body persists as it does now, yet it is this very haste that blurs the path before you beyond recognition. Are you grasping it now, fool? The autonomy that comes with your mortal coil is as much a blessing as it is a curse. It is high time you put it to good use."

Byleth's grip on the railing was ironlike, even as the holy wraith snaked her lithe arms around his neck, her voice comforting and body ever so warm.

"You know what that means, don't you?" she whispered. "The power I speak of is none other than your will. Think for but a moment. Shed aside all else but my instruction. The road you seek? The one that seems to elude you at every turn? It continues dead ahead. It always did, even from the start of it all, but it will never reveal itself if you refuse to see it. Take a look around you. Your blindness is your creation; a gilded cage of your own design."

Thump.

"So then, what are you going to do?"

Thump.

"Will you stay?"

Thump.

"Will you go?"

Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Personally, I think it is time for you to start making your own decisions..."

Thumpthump.

"Still wavering, are you? Could it be that you prefer this den of uncertainty? Perhaps the reason you have been lingering in the dark all this time is because you do not want to know what dwells in the light. Perhaps you have been languishing in the unknown for so long that it has become all you know, and you now fear what lies ahead. Do you consider yourself better off not knowing what lies behind the curtain?"

Thumpthumpthump.

"I can sense a faint trace of ambition bubbling deep within you. I can enlighten it and show you the way forward if you so desire, but you need to make up your mind. Now."

Thumpthumpthumpthump.

"Well?"

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

"Which is it?"

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

"What are you going to do?"

Thump.

"I want to know."

The words left Byleth's lips in a sharp breath, and they were all she needed to hear.

"A wise choice," she commended, releasing her hold on his neck and taking a seat on the railing. "Yes... It may have taken a spell, but you are walking your own path now. If there is any one thing that I regret, it is that I cannot be there to savor the moment you fail. All I am able to do now is nudge you in the right direction, and nudge I shall—but only this once. The rest will be up to you to resolve. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes," Byleth muttered quietly.

"Ah! There is that nonchalant compliance that I treasure so dearly, and it is worth all the more now that it is coming from someone who can think for themselves. If I only had more time to order you about... Oh well, so it goes, so it goes. Right, well—that's that, I suppose! You are on your own now! Do not disappoint me.. and while we are on the subject—do not be such a stranger either! Tut tut! I was privy to your pitiable lamentations earlier! Honestly! I should not have to force myself to manifest time and time again like this! The onus is on you to summon me henceforth, not the other way around! Yes, yes, of course I recall telling you that I would vanish... Even so! I made certain to add that I would always be with you, as well! I vanished precisely because our souls melded into one! Do you not understand? Fie, you may claim that you do, but you were oh so set on forgetting all about me without even bothering to make an attempt to remember! Bonehead! Pinhead! Indecisive little purgatorial blockhead! Have you anything left to say for yourself before I cast you off into the nether?"

Byleth nodded, his lip curling impishly.

"Meddlesome goblin."

"If I am 'meddlesome'," came the only voice imposing enough to wipe the fleeting smugness off of his face. "It is only because you are so evasive."

The lilac aberrations reversed themselves in a manner far too fast for his eyes (or big mouth) to follow, refulgent glasslike shards rewinding into place like pieces of a puzzle. The resulting image was none other than reality itself, restored and free of all cracks and fissures. Byleth was familiar with the process—he had subjected himself to it more than enough times for that not to be the case—but all the familiarity in the world could not prepare him for the devious deity's trademark tricks. Time was not on the mercenary's side, for as soon as the final shard rewound itself back home, the world resumed with only a moment having passed since it was distorted.

To Byleth's horror, one moment was all that was needed for Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg of the Adrestrian Empire to slip in and take the place of the spiteful spirit.

"A-ah," Byleth started. "I didn't mean..."

"You know," the red emperor began as she strode across the balcony. "They say that if your professor is more than fifteen minutes late to his own lecture, then you are legally obliged to leave the classroom. I've seen no evidence of this supposed edict in Adrestrian legislation, but I may have to consider introducing it if you're this intent on eluding me."

"Sorry," the mercenary mumbled. "I... lost track of the time."

It wasn't a complete fabrication, given the circumstances of his day. Byleth figured that it was better than the alternative, which was admitting that he had allowed his silly personal issues to consume him so utterly that he had outright forgotten that they had promised to convene once all of their duties were said and done.

"So I've heard," the emperor trailed off, leaning upon the railing beside her dear teacher, her sights quickly settling on the somnolent stray. "I was planning to ask if this was your new hideaway; perhaps make light of your decision to stow away from the emperor in her own balcony, but it would seem I've lost my chance to do so."

Byleth turned to her. "Hmm?"

"If Hubert's latest report is any indication," she continued with an adoring hand on the kitten, traces of her well guarded affection seeping through the cracks. "Your day has been about as taxing as mine."

Byleth nearly rolled his eyes at that. "Of course he would take notes," he attempted to sigh, only to have his breath cut short by a rigorous stomp from the emperor's heel.

She didn't need to say anything else, the crunch of the crushed paper beneath her boots said it all.

"R-right," the professor turned away, a hand on the back of his neck.

"I thought something was amiss when Hubert didn't immediately return with Petra. Few things command his attention the way I do, and even fewer things can shake his resolve once I entrust him with something. I should have known that if there was any sort of delay in his execution, it was because you had somehow distracted him."

"Enough to be aggressively stalked from sunrise to sundown," Byleth made sure to add. "Does this mean I'm more important than you? I wager I should be the one he takes orders from, given how much estate he reserves in his head for me."

"I can assure you it's not nearly as much as you think."

"I beg to differ," the mercenary muttered. "What did you need Petra for, exactly?"

"Nothing grand," came the emperor's answer. "Finalization of the terms of Fódlan and Brigid's relationship in this new political climate of ours. I had a proposal for them, as well."

"Them?" Byleth tilted his head to the side.

"It was a rather faceted proposal. To be honest, I'm a little surprised that they both agreed to go along with it. I was sure there would be some resistance, or at the very least some confusion, but there wasn't a trace of either in the end. In any case, it'll go a long way in strengthening our foreign relations going forward—and theirs as well, I suppose."

"A happy ending?" the professor smiled.

"A change of subject, more like," the emperor replied. "How long have you had these thoughts of yours?"

"A while," Byleth's answer was quiet, breathless. "Ever since we put the archbishop to rest, really. As soon as she scarred me, it was... it was almost like waking up for the first time. There was a deafening ring in my ear, like a cannon had just gone off beside me, and there was a beating of some sort in my chest, and... and you were there, cradling me amongst the flames."

"I thought I had lost you," Edelgard mumbled, her cheeks warm. "I almost regretted everything in that moment. What would the point of our world be if you weren't there to indulge in it with me?"

"I had no clue Her Highness could be so selfish," the smile on Byleth's lips returned. "You deserve it all the same."

"Hush," she huffed with something of a smile of her own. "I won't have you distracting me so easily."

Byleth had to chuckle at that. "Am I truly so easy to read?"

"Terribly," the emperor affirmed. "I presume your curiosity is to blame for this, then? It's only natural, all things considered. Of course you would be filled with unease. It was only a matter of time."

"Before, it felt like I was missing something," Byleth reached over to dote on the kitten with her. "I didn't understand what it was, exactly. All I knew was that I wasn't like my father, his friends, my students, my colleagues, or anyone else. I was... an anomaly. The few times I did show emotion were exceptions to the rule, and almost always necessitated some sort of... tragedy, to trigger. I eased into it over time, having no other choice, but in the back of my mind... I knew it wasn't right. I wasn't normal. Couldn't be normal. I was..."

"Strange," she answered for him.

"It was the only word I could think of," the mercenary said. "Even now, after all of this, after everything, I'm still not confident as to what to think. Looking back, I understand what I was lacking, what set me apart from the rest. I have it now, yet... yet I still feel lost. Does... does that make sense?"

Thump. Thump. Thump.

"A little," Edelgard said as she pressed her hand to his chest. "The question is not so much what it is you're missing, so much as what you're missing about it. You want a concrete, definitive meaning, so that you never have to worry about the subject again."

"Mm," Byleth nodded, relaxing under her touch.

"The problem is—no such thing exists. No two people are so alike in spirit that they will answer to you in the same way, and even if you do by some chance luck out on that front, you will never find success in getting everyone to agree on one subjective viewpoint. Your myopic inquisition was doomed to fail from the outset, and your understanding is as empty as you once were."

"Ow," the mercenary winced.

"Still," the emperor slowly lowered her hand, letting it fall to her side. "There was one other thing you had missed."

"Hmm?" his eyes widened.

"I owe Hubert my thanks. Were he not so studious—"

"Obsessive."

"Were he not so obsessively studious in transcribing your exchanges, I wouldn't have caught it myself. Reflect for a moment. It may seem contrarian, given my earlier words, but there was one thing our companions had in common."

And so reflect Byleth did, deeply, intimately, with his arms crossed and eyes closed. With his emperor as his guiding light, the dire clouds fogging his mind seemed to recede just enough for him to cut a path to clarity—and as to what lied there...

"It's all about the effort you put in for the sake of others! Kind of like the effort you put into leading the rest of us!"

"It is my firmest belief that you already know this, try as your spirit might to muddy the truth and sow seeds of doubt!"

"Some of them could stand to learn a thing or three from your stony eyed, indiscriminate gaze."

"I would say accountability matters most of all. Truth be told, it was you who taught me that, Professor."

"You're rather reliable for someone whose job it is to ensure the rest of us don't get killed."

"You're the person I strive most to emulate."

"No matter the occasion, you were always there for us when we needed someone to turn to."

"Please, just continue to be yourself. That's all you truly have to do."

"Thank you for taking a chance on me. The strength and courage I spoke of earlier... I have in spades now, thanks to you."

"That's what you've been dying to hear me say, isn't it? As if you didn't already know yourself."

"I am believing you are proud of us too, Professor. Even if you do not see it, or claim it is not present, I am hearing it in your voice every time you speak."

Cognizance slapped him like the most succulent golden fish to the face. It struck him, it clubbed him, it thwacked him, smacked him, socked him, slugged him, whipped, whacked, bopped, bashed, belted, positively palpitatingly pierced him through and through until his quintessence was reduced to little more than a fine crimson mist emanating from paste; human refuse, in other words.

"They..." Byleth faltered, the heavy lids of his eyes snapping open and blinking repeatedly as he tried to force the words out. "They... They all..."

"They all believe in you," Edelgard said. "Some of them so strongly that they mistook your genuine inquiry for some sort of cross-examination of their own values. Their faith, strength, and ideals are all rooted in a foundation that your support has nurtured. The qualities you thought you were missing, the ones you sought out from them; in truth, you've had them all along. It's thanks to your unyielding inspiration that we were all able to come this far, and it's why they're able to assert their perspectives to you with nothing short of confidence."

"So then, everything they said to me..."

"The only reason they were able to answer you is because you were there to teach them what it was in the first place. You are their professor, after all. Our professor."

"I..." Byleth stepped back, his eyes growing misty. "I don't know what to say..."

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

"You've said enough," the emperor shook her head as she moved closer to him. "What matters is that you are human, my teacher, for now and forever."

"I see..." Byleth sighed, surrendering himself to the emperor's gentle embrace. "I've been rather foolish today, haven't I?"

"Just about," came her quiet response. "But I admire it all the same."

"You're getting shorter, it feels," Byleth mumble blurted, hissing at the prompt heel stabbing into his boot. "Ah!"

"I do not admire that, however." Edelgard huffed, releasing her teacher to cup his face. "Speaking of which... Are you, um, by chance curious as to what ideals I picked up from you over the years?"

"The ability to instill your undivided trust in others?" the professor answered, to which the emperor nodded slowly.

"Yes, there is that, but also..."

Edelgard leaned into a gentle peck, one that sent her professor aflame.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

"Regarding the original reason for our meeting," the emperor drew back, her face as red as her garb. "I don't believe we've properly discussed where you stand in the future of the Adrestrian Empire, whether you'll return to teaching once the academy reopens or leave for a simpler life altogether. Um, while I would not necessarily be against either decision and support whatever path you intend to choose, my teacher, I was... well... if you had no other plans... perhaps... um... for the remainder of my reign... if... if you would have me..."

And to that, Byleth smiled.

"I'd like that."

Fin.

---

My, my, what an endeavor I've endured. You don't know the half of it. Some general notes regarding the piece:

I deliberately refrain from directly referring to the names of certain characters. It isn't to disparage them, but to maintain an air of mystique about them. In the case of Edelgard, her name isn't displayed in the story until her segment in the finale, despite clear references to her existing in earlier scenes.

The carnivorous plant, Ovidius, is an original freak of nature hailing from a prior 3H work set in the same storyline. He takes... perhaps a bit too many cues from the carnivorous plants of some other franchise I'm sure none of you have ever heard of, and the inspiration for that may or may not have everything to do with the artists that pair those plants with Bernadetta. His name, a reader suggestion, stems from the Roman poet of the same name. I initially planned on calling him Xerxes III, per a running gag that I'm all but certain only I understand, but I pulled back when the suggestion was sent my way.

The thump thump onomatopoeia representing Byleth's heartbeat was originally something I came up with on a whim to translate the heartbeat noises heard during certain key scenes in 3H into a text format. Coincidentally, I hadn't realized at the time that GirthJohnson was using a near identical system for his work, Love in the Dark. This made for some eerie deja vu when I later started reading Love in the Dark after putting the draft for this work on hold. I thought he had been inspired to take the implementation of the heartbeat from this work... until I realized I hadn't even uploaded it, let alone finished it! Coincidence? Absolutely! Please go support him and his ever engrossing ongoing novel-length retelling of Crimson Flower. I owe him bigly for his modest support in the past and it would be remiss of me to not return the favor here. It's also just a damn good story.

For those wondering: everything up to the beginning of Ferdinand and Dorothea's segment—minus some fluff and a lot of editing—was written in 2019. You wouldn't believe the crunch I went through to finish the rest (and I still missed the self-imposed deadline! How?!). So many hours, so many days. Countless weeks, fortnights blurring into entire months, all stacked on top of preexisting real world responsibilities. There were entire 'free' nights wherein I had absolutely nothing on my agenda... that I would just waste staring into a bright white Word document void, wondering 'where the hell do I go from here?'. If I had no drive to write, I was editing to make up for it, and if I had no drive to edit, I was writing and telling myself I would edit whatever passages I came up with later in the week. If I was doing neither of those things, I was in the real world doing real world things as part of a seemingly endless cycle that was gradually getting more mind-numbingly humdrum as the days wore on. This delusional back and forth consumed me so utterly that I ended up putting all other works (ongoing and otherwise) on indefinite hiatus. Call it insanity if you must, but I told myself ad nauseum that I wouldn't allow myself to get distracted with other projects or leisurely pastimes until this draft was point blank done and out the door. Eventually, many moons later, I realized it was 2021.

So, I persevered. What remained of my drained motivation was miniscule, but I was determined to finish what I had started. Above all, I wanted to know if it was possible for me to write a lengthy long form piece like some of my more modern contemporaries (I'm a boomer in a zoomer's body, you see). To those unfamiliar with my style, that's something which I actively try to avoid publishing. Maybe it's my own disgusting insecurity, but after a decade of writing on and off I can't help but feel that I'm at my strongest when I'm focusing on short form projects. The kind of pieces that make you hunger for more even if there isn't any more. I particularly enjoy writing small scenes that act as a framework that the reader can easily visualize and embellish with their imagination. That's why my shorter works tend to open with a scene already in progress. Kind of like a semi-furnished house, if that makes any sense.

It's for that petty reason that I can't remember the last time I really well and truly wrote a standalone story that was this long, or a chapter work that wasn't in an anthology format. I understand the majority of my existing readership would have preferred a chapter format for a work like this if the poll on my profile is anything to go by (this is the fic that poll was for), but alas, I ended up ignoring the consensus. You're probably not asking why I did that, but I'll explain anyway. For starters, I just didn't feel the individual segments were lengthy enough to be 'cut' into their own chapters. Second, I know some authors may like to do this, but I'm not a big fan of arbitrarily stagnating or 'dripfeeding' chapters (not drafts but chapters which have already been completed, just not published) for the sake of reader retention. I could have easily taken that route in order to at least have something uploaded to make up for the latest drought of content while continuing to work on the remaining segments as their own chapters, and on multiple occasions I came very close to caving in, but in the end I decided it was more important to complete the story for your sake rather than stagnate it for clicks. You, the reader, deserve a completed work, published as it was intended without any cut corners to speak of. Lastly, a chapter format would have undermined my goal with this fic and my drive for writing it. A 'long' work psychologically feels less long if you divvy it up into smaller pieces, even if the word count is essentially identical. You're more inclined to pick it up, read for a few chapters, and leave the rest for a later time. That's fine for other stories, but it was not my goal here.

Overall, Linhardt and Lysithea's segment was my favorite to write. It was also the hardest to write with at least four months spent on it alone. For weeks I feared the moral of the scene would go over people's heads, and at times I felt like it even went over my head, but ultimately I feel as though I struck a good rhythm between levelheaded logic and big brain takes. On that note, keep in mind that the cast is nowhere near as omniscient as the reader. If you feel like a character says something that doesn't gel with what you know about the greater narrative, that's because for the most part they don't know the greater narrative. Though this is the route I favor writing about the most, it's still just one fraction of a greater whole, and not everything comes to light in every route.

Everything past the tail end of Linhardt and Lysithea's segment was written and completed from Jan-April of this year (I was serious about the crunch earlier). Throughout the majority of January, I was on paid leave for the one and sole reason anyone would be on paid leave right now, and the less I speak of February's freak snowstorm, the better. I don't enjoy talking about personal matters so I'll leave it at that, but I'm feeling much better at the moment. In fact, you might say this confinement situation is what gave me the final push to finish this monstrosity of a work.

From the start, I wanted the marketplace segment to be pure humor, almost meta level, in order to counterbalance the drama/tension of earlier segments. Uber serious Hubert fit the role perfectly, and as I outlined his dialogue, I realized he and Byleth play off of each other extraordinarily well. I hope to continue developing their chemistry in future works. Regarding the dark mage merchant, my interpretation of him is a carryover from a chapter of Sothis, How's That?. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary here, as he isn't actually the one who repairs the Sword of the Creator in the game. I think he deserves the honor, though, as it doesn't make too much sense for the normal blacksmith to repair relics and like... not run off with them. I suppose there's nothing stopping the dark mage from doing so either, but at least it makes sense for the worldbuilding that only a seedy underworld dweller like him would know the ins and outs of bygone weaponry. The so-called 'Master Sword' he peddles is derived from some other game you've never heard of. I originally intended for it to be Falchion, since you can actually come across rusted Archanean weapons in the game, but given the nature of the segment I thought a reference to another franchise altogether would be funnier. Ironically, an Archanean reference remains in fic regardless in the name given to the merchant—Jake. This was a last minute gag to add an additional layer to his banter with Anna. The bit in which Byleth gauges the risks of wielding the sword was written to the tune of 'The Pit of 100 Trials' from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. I also had that meme image of Caspar surrounded by equations on my second monitor. Finally, while it might seem out of place, I left Hubert and Petra's answers separate from their segment in order to better segue into recapping the other students' answers.

The bug eyed gray cat in the finale segment is an extremely deep-seated, big reaching nod to yet another series you have most certainly never heard of. What started as a simple Hresvelgion Whisker appearance evolved into a stealth voice actor reference. Maybe I thought I was on a roll with the earlier callbacks? Three for three, maybe? Ovidius and the Master Sword are simple enough to guess, but you're entitled to a gold star if you can puzzle where I took this kitty

Now at least one of you is probably asking 'Nate where's the 3H novelization you proved you could do it with this fic! The people have spoken! We believe in you! I'll wait even if there's only one update every two years!' and my response to that would be that I've written enough novelizations in my past to last me a lifetime. Crazier men than I are dying on that hill for 3H, and I highly recommend you follow their deep dives down the rabbit hole. My thing these days? "Here's all the stuff in this great game you played that you DIDN'T see". With that said—and with all trials and tribulations set aside—I'm satisfied with how this turned out and I wouldn't be against publishing more stuff like it in the future, so long as I have strong enough premise to justify it. Now then! You've made it this far. Let me know what you think, please god. I don't think I've been this interested in reader feedback in a while, so step up! Or don't, it's up to you. As always, thank you, thank you, thank you for your continued support and especially patience all these years—whether you started with Fire Emblem or Pokemon or even my most juvenile stuff going way back. I cannot overstate my gratitude enough. I enjoy writing, and even if it's still just a hobby I do on the side, it makes my day when I read an engrossing comment from a fellow reader. Knowing that someone somewhere is reading what I put out makes the whole operation worthwhile. So once again, thanks. I'm likely going to take another lengthy sabbatical before returning to regularly unscheduled updates (health and all). That said, finishing Sothis, How's That? will definitely be number one on the to-do list when I return. For further updates and communication, you can follow me on twitter at "natekun_" (that's two underscores at the end!). I also accept general feedback and comments there via replies or DMs.