Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and I have no money. Please don't sue me.

(PLEASE READ:)

"Ends" functions as a prequel of sorts to my other fic "Four Letter Words" but can be read on its own if you've played the SS, AM, and VW routes. It will be slightly less canon-compliant in its last two chapters. I decided to post this as an off-shoot story instead of relying too much on flashbacks in FLW, which is also M!Byleth/Edelgard.

"Ends" was beta-read by Kaltmacher07 and Raj8, and is dedicated to KobsterHope07. It has already been cross-posted on Archive of our Own.

Thanks for reading. As always, reviews are greatly appreciated.

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ENDS

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ashen DUST

...

29 Garland Moon, Imperial Year 1186

With a boom like thunder, the gold-filigree double doors were thrown open wide, and Byleth marched into the imperial throne room with his ragtag army following behind him like ghosts. They were survivors first and foremost — all that remained of their class at Garreg Mach Monastery's Officers' Academy. Beyond that, what they were to him remained nebulous. Students? he might have wondered under better circumstances. Soldiers? Friends? Colleagues? Disciples? The lines between them had somehow blurred over the course of the war, becoming virtually indistinct.

But he was too angry to think of such things now. After a hard day's worth of fighting through Enbarr's narrow streets, battling imperial forces outside churches and opera houses, alongside canals and through markets packed with panicking civilians, spurred on by the closest thing to fury he's ever felt, there was no one left to stop him now. He had already informed the others in no uncertain terms that she would be his and his alone. The Ashen Demon would finally have his due.

His jaw was set hard, his muscles tensed to strike. For Flayn, he reminded himself as he gripped the Sword of the Creator's hilt more firmly. For Father. For Sothis. For Claude and Dimitri. For the Blue Lions. For the Golden Deer. For Rhea.

Like a beacon, Edelgard sat upon the Hresvelg throne with Aymr held loosely in her hand and her rapier lying across her lap, impossibly alone and paler than he remembered. The great hall, large enough to fit hundreds of people comfortably, was shockingly devoid of imperial soldiers. The hues of sunset spilled in through the windows near the vaulted ceiling, bathing the tiled floor and crimson carpet in an orange and pink glow. The dying light glared off her war crown.

Byleth didn't stop, didn't speak. His bootsteps were sharp and staccato as he purposefully crossed the hall in long strides. He was already halfway to the throne by the time her voice cut through the heavy silence like a knife.

"Professor," she called out to him with an infuriating half-smile, sounding as composed as ever. "I suppose you think you can defeat me. Is that right?"

He stopped and stared at her. He said nothing, letting the question to hang in the air between them. Of course I can, he thought, his mouth twisting. He had already left another of his students lying in a pool of his own blood on the pavement just outside the palace gates.

Hubert's failure to prevent them from reaching the throne room could mean only one thing, but if Edelgard cared that her loyal vassal was dead, her carefully-guarded expression certainly didn't show it. Her lilac eyes remained as cold and calculating as that day in the Holy Tomb.

Slowly, so slowly, she pulled herself to her feet, using the throne as support. Her flamberge rapier clattered to the ground, but she made no move to retrieve it. She stood tall against a backdrop of Adrestia's golden twin-headed eagle with wings unfurled over the Crest of Seiros. Clutching Aymr in one hand, she surveyed the room, taking in the worn faces of those she had once called her classmates. Some she had even called friend.

"I will never give up," she told them at last as she stepped down from the dais and onto an outstretched crimson carpet. Her every movement was slow and measured. "Even if my arms and legs failed me, I would still find a way to move forward." At the bottom of the stairs, she paused, raised Aymr, and aimed it at Byleth's heart. "I did promise when next we met, one of us would breathe our last. Prepare yourself, my teacher."

He needed no more of an invitation than that.

He rushed her with the Sword of the Creator in both hands, and the two came together with a clash, their weapons locked in a red-hot glow.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The quote occurred to him now, dim and distant, through a fog of adrenaline, fatigue, and rage. Something Jeralt had been fond of saying with his acerbic sense of humor. It may have been years since Byleth was Edelgard's instructor, but he could tell at a glance that she wasn't fighting with her full strength. She had moved to parry too slowly, and just the act of locking blades with him had caused her to grimace and her forehead to break out in a thin sweat.

Against all logic, she seemed to be holding back, and he wasn't sure if that was just a clever ruse or a sign of injury. Experimentally, he pushed harder and observed her stance as she pushed back. Normally, she could throw him back with her prodigal strength, but here she was, visibly compensating with one arm over the other when he knew she would ordinarily use both. Countless training sessions with her had taught him that she didn't have a dominant hand.

Ah, he thought, realizing. So it was true then. He withdrew his sword quickly and ducked under her follow-up swing. She had been severely injured at Gronder Field. The final revenge of Dimitri and Claude and everyone else who fell that day.

If she had been fully rested and fighting at full strength, then he knew this battle could have gone either way. With that relic in her hands, she fought like a raging storm; she could take him and the rest of the Eagles on all at once and still come out ahead. She had been his star pupil, after all, for good reason. She had always been the first to class and the last to leave, eager to ply him with questions about governance and strategy, especially theoretical ones, and improve. If only he had known then that this knowledge would eventually be used against him and everyone else at Garreg Mach.

This, however, was nothing like their brief encounter in the Goddess Tower. This would hardly be a fight at all.

With the distance closed between them, and like so many of their training sessions before, she went on the offensive at once, darting away and leading with the swiftest and strongest strike she could muster. He parried her blow for blow, content to let her tire herself out. Once or twice, she even had to take the time to catch her breath and expel the blood from her mouth. Every jab was slower than the last, every swing a little less forceful, her breathing growing more and more ragged with every lunge. But a part of him expected this: Edelgard had never been one to passively stand by and let the fight come to her. She would not try to shirk fate. As inexorable as it was, marching ever onward, she would meet it head-on.

There was nothing honorable about this. Nothing valiant or heroic. He could clearly see the pain written in the lines of her face as her composure wore out, the desperation in her lilac eyes, and the defeated sag in her shoulders — and he wondered if the others saw this too. She did not even have the shadow of a chance at winning, and she knew. The educator in him wanted to stop, his feelings of rage slipping from his grasp, replaced instead by what could only be pity. This was a look he had seen many times at Garreg Mach — according to Catherine, the look that said 'No matter what I do, I cannot win.' This was a dying woman going through her final spasms, determined to play out the last act of the opera, to follow her path to its violent, bitter conclusion.

It was difficult to believe that, if it hadn't been for Sothis, he would have died for her. From the extent of her unseen injuries, not even the Divine Pulse could save her now.

Even after everything she had done, Byleth found himself unable to hate her. It was hard to, after seeing her like this. How had it come to this? he wondered, revisiting old regrets. Where had he gone wrong? How had he not noticed? Again, he found himself wishing for Sothis, for her comforting presence and words of encouragement. What would the Goddess herself have to say about the path he had taken?

By this point, Edelgard was all but swinging blindly. He deflected her attacks easily, swatting Aymr away as easily as an adult swats away a child's toy axe. Their fight had gone on long enough.

After sidestepping another one of her charges, Byleth flicked his wrist, and the Sword of the Creator came unraveled, pooling at his feet. A second flick sent it coiling around one of Edelgard's armored greaves. He pulled and she fell backwards, spilling onto her cape. Aymr fell to the tiled floor with a thunderous crash.

With yet another flick, he retracted the Sword of the Creator. Then he went to stand in front of her.

There was no hatred in her eyes as she scrambled to her knees and tried, unsuccessfully, to rise. She was simply too tired and her armor too heavy to gather the necessary momentum. Even while using Aymr as leverage, her entire body trembled just from the effort of holding herself upright. If it weren't for that, she might almost have been kneeling for a coronation. She spat the blood out of her mouth, flecking the crimson carpet.

And Aymr, he noticed, was no longer glowing at all. As if it too recognized the end in sight.

"It looks as though . . . my path will end here," she said softly, breathing hard. All he saw was a sea of red. Even her teeth were stained red. "My teacher . . . claim your victory."

Much like he did in the Holy Tomb when confronted with the truth, he froze. She must have seen the hesitation in his eyes because her voice rose sharply. "Strike me down. You must! Even now . . . across this land, people are killing each other. If you do not act now, this conflict will go on forever."

She bowed her head, her voice gone so quiet that only he could hear. "Your path . . . lies across my grave. It is time for you to find the courage to walk it. If I must fall . . . let it be by your hand."

Any lingering hope he'd had for her surrender was dashed instantly upon hearing her final request.

He tried to remember the girl who had helped him find his bearings when he first came to Garreg Mach. The dutiful house leader who had painstakingly helped him plan their monthly missions. It was hard to reconcile that girl with the woman who kneeled in front of him now, wavering under her own weight and begging to die. Hesitatingly, he raised his sword. He could taste the bile rising in his throat, sharp and bitter.

Below him, a gauntleted hand on the floor clenched into a fist. "I wanted to . . . walk with you—"

His mouth twisted again as the words left her lips. He could feel his resolve faltering. If he didn't do it now, then he never would. In one fluid motion, he brought the sword down and cut her off mid-sentence. He felt some resistance at first, but the sword cut through smoothly with a wet, sticky sound.

He closed his eyes. Distantly, he heard the telltale thump and clink of gold as a helmet-sized mass hit the floor. The clatter of bone as something heavy slumped sideways with a sick squelch. The rattle of armor as it came to a rest. Then nothing. The silence in the room and in his chest was loud. Louder than everything else, louder than he ever thought possible.

Would they write songs and operas about this moment? he wondered. How the valiant Hero of Fódlan fought and killed the monstrous tyrant? Would they play it up and make it sound like an epic battle between two foes who were always destined to meet this way? Or what it truly was — an execution, and only a week after she turned twenty-four years old.

This is what you wanted, isn't it? he asked himself. What you came here to do?

His eyes burned just like they had when Jeralt died. He could feel something warm and wet trickling down his cheeks, but his arms remained locked in place, his hands gripping the Sword of the Creator with white-knuckled intensity.

Wordlessly, Byleth turned away and opened his eyes. Before him swam so many stunned faces. A bloodied, badly-beaten Caspar propped up by an exhausted-looking Linhardt. Dorothea with her teary eyes glued to the grisly scene behind him, her hand cupping her mouth. Petra with her glassy stare and bruised knuckles gripping her bow. Bernadetta with her face buried in her hands, chest heaving, repeating a string of denials. Even Ferdinand was ashen-faced with a tinge of green, looking like he might be ill. A somber-looking Seteth shielding a trembling Flayn from the view. Dedue with his impassive, dead-eyed stare.

"Is it . . . over?" Caspar asked breathlessly.

Seteth placed a hand on Flayn's shoulder to steady her. "It would appear so."

"So ends the 1,000-year-old Hresvelg legacy," muttered Linhardt tiredly. "How unfortunate."

Instinctively, Byleth crouched and ran the flat side of his sword along the carpet, trying to get the worst of the blood and gore off. Then he cleaned the other side the same way. A part of him hated the idea of taking it with him. When he rose again, he almost felt disconnected from his body, like it was moving forward without him, and he had been left kneeling by his student's already-cooling corpse. He felt his body slip the blade through the loop of his belt.

"This way," Byleth said, his voice wobbling as he floated past them all and towards a side corridor. He wanted — no, needed — to get away from this place, away from her. "We must find Lady Rhea."

"P-Professor?" Dorothea questioned, her voice brittle. "We can't just . . . Shouldn't we. . . .?"

"Professor Byleth?" Flayn tried as well.

He didn't wait for them, didn't answer. Already he was probing the hole in his chest like a scab, exploring the feeling that he had lost something irreplaceable. A heaviness that settled in the center of his chest. He didn't know why. She betrayed us, he told himself, balling both of his hands into fists. She betrayed me.

Victory had never felt so much like defeat.

[...]

The next morning, after a lengthy search throughout the palace for Rhea and a short, restless sleep in Enbarr's church, their forces regrouped and prepared to leave Enbarr for Garreg Mach. The archbishop was still babbling to herself, last he'd heard, which the Knights of Seiros and the faithful were both taking hard. Luckily, Seteth had been able to "procure" a noble's carriage for Rhea, and he, Cyril, and Flayn were tending to her.

It meant little to Byleth. When he thought about returning to the monastery, when he thought about the Church of Seiros as a whole, all he could taste was bile. Still, he was somehow able to rally the strength to gather the last of his Eagles and the Knights together and, with help from Catherine, Shamir, and Alois, lead them through the city, as silent and somber as a funeral procession.

They moved slowly, snaking through a conquered city in mourning, and it was Petra who pointed to the top of the city gates as they neared. "Professor," she said stiffly from behind him, "look."

When he turned to look at Petra, to see where she was pointing, it was as if a shadow had fallen across her bronzed face. He followed her finger and looked up. Atop the city gate, a small, silvery banner was flying alongside the victorious Crest of Flames. It was so small; he had to shield his eyes from the morning sun to see it. Only, the longer he looked, the less it looked like a banner and more like—

He turned away abruptly.

"Goddess," choked out Ferdinand, "is that—?"

Somewhere behind them, a panicked Bernadetta asked, "What? What is it?"

No, thought Byleth as the hollowness in his chest throbbed painfully. No, Dedue. What have you done?

When he finally left the dungeons, carrying Rhea in his arms, Dedue had been nowhere to be found. Byleth had wondered where the burly man had gone. Now they all knew.

He refused to look at any of his Eagles. He clenched his jaw, feeling helpless. "Don't look," he told them, but it was too late; the damage was already done. Already someone was crying again. It sounded like Bernadetta. Farther away, he heard someone retching. Maybe several. He lowered his gaze to the ground, watching the flagstones pass under his horse's hooves. He refused to look up again until they were leagues from Enbarr, moving farther into the mountains, and they could no longer smell the sea.

Justice had never tasted so bitter.

[...]