Sitting at his desk in his monastery office, Byleth had shrugged off his archbishop duties for the moment to rest his eyes, his head laying on his folded arms on the desk. Sleep never came easy for him, whether he was dead tired or not, due to the weight of the position he'd taken on at the conclusion of the war; he'd never seen himself as being archbishop, but someone had to fill the role, and given his closeness with the goddess there really wasn't any other choice for the job. Him ascending to the top spot of the Church of Seiros brought in quite the wave of new changes to the reunited Fódlan, some being social programs and others being social expectations.
He closed one eye, then the other, and let out a deep sigh once the room was darkened from his perspective, only to be jolted right back to sitting up by the sound of the door opening and footsteps coming in. "I didn't catch you at a bad time, did I?" Ashe timidly asked, holding in his hand a couple pieces of paper, and Byleth silently shook his head to let him know that the timing was fine. "That's good, it's nothing important, but I wanted to hand these off to you before I forgot."
"Set them on the desk," Byleth told him, and he did as directed, stepping backwards once he no longer had the papers in his grasp. "What are they related to? The new wave of rebuilding reforms? Students at Garreg Mach? A correspondence from Fhirdiad?"
Ashe stiffened up, his normally pale face brightening so that his freckles were more noticeable than usual. "No, none of that. They're documents related to the thing we've been discussing as of late, the one involving the orphans being held in town." He seemed almost ashamed to be talking about such matters, based on how he'd began to fidget as he spoke, but the way Byleth gave the papers a glance before looking at him with a calm, gentle expression made him relax just a bit. "I-I figured you'd appreciate having them now rather than when you finish up later, just to give you something else to think about instead of all the things you can do for the church."
"I appreciate the thought." Never one for using a lot of words, even to the person he cherished most in the world, Byleth's eyes slowly moved back towards the papers. "I'll look at them in a moment. Thank you."
Bowing before taking his leave, Ashe seemed more skittish than a knight in the service of the archbishop (who he happened to be in a relationship with) would typically be. Byleth thought nothing of it, waiting for the door to close before picking up the papers to see what the deal with them was. When he saw what the headline scribbled down on the top page was, he immediately set them back down and sighed, bringing his hands up to his face to rub at his tired eyes. So much for getting a nap in, not when he should do his work to be able to handle what those papers asked of him.
While he was going through paperwork relating to his role as archbishop, Byleth couldn't help but think about his father and how he would've reacted to seeing his son in such an undesirable position within the church. Jeralt had tried his hardest to keep him out of the grasp of anything related to Seiros, but his failure in that regard had helped Fódlan grow into something new and previously unattainable. And while Byleth could only feel thankful that his father's hands had ultimately ended up being tied on the matter and he had to give up his son to the church he so desperately had tried to escape, he also found himself wondering what would have happened if they'd never crossed paths with anyone from the monastery when they had.
Not on a personal or romantic level (although Byleth knew that if he'd never taught at Garreg Mach, he never would've become in tune with the goddess or met the love of his life or lost his father), but merely in regards to the relationship he and Jeralt shared. Would it have grown stronger as they traveled together as mercenaries, or would there have come a time where he'd be cut off for being too old to be hanging around his father? He'd been sheltered his whole life, so forging his own path was difficult enough at the time he'd been forced to do it, but the mere idea of having to do it under different circumstances made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. There was no way that Jeralt would have wholly cut him loose into the world without preparing him for him, but he could never be certain based on how their lives turned out.
But there was very little he wouldn't give up to go back to his childhood, living life under Jeralt's guidance and self-sufficient behaviors, instead of having one of the loftiest positions in all of unified Fódlan, behind only the king (and even then, that was a matter of one's personal perspective on the church). He'd prefer to be cutting down bandits whenever they'd run into trouble than filling out religious laws that were meant to be enacted as soon as possible, to fix the problems the previous archbishop had allowed under her reign. "You're overthinking things like always, kid," he heard Jeralt's voice say, somewhere in the back of his mind. "Don't think too much about the past, what matters is your present."
His present, which had a dead father and a world of unexpected responsibilities and a boyfriend-slash-knight that would drop everything to help him in any way. "Someday I hope I can be half as decent of a father as you," he muttered, glancing towards the papers that Ashe had brought him earlier. "There are far too many children in this world that need the tough love you gave me in my youth."
It was always a given that someday he'd be talked into taking orphans in as his own children, especially since his boyfriend was an orphan himself and had quite the soft spot for others in that position. Byleth just didn't know what would happen first—the church being wholly accepting of their archbishop getting married, or the church being wholly accepting of their archbishop having children. He was certain they'd both be tall orders, no matter how much he and Ashe both were appreciated by the people of the church, but he'd never gotten around to bringing them up with advisors to gauge the reaction. But now that he had those papers on his desk, perhaps that would be something to look into sooner than expected.
Especially when he finally read past the headline on the first page and saw that the first child had been born on his father's death day, and that connection immediately sent sparks coursing through Byleth's otherwise still veins. "Is this…your way of telling me what I need to do?" he asked, the question directed at someone long gone. "I suppose it would be fitting enough that you want me to give guidance to a child who shares such an important date with you, but I can't say I'm certain it's time."
Jeralt's words echoed in his mind again, reminding Byleth that he was overthinking what he was being faced with. He couldn't concentrate on anything else while he held that paper, seeing the details of the little orphan girl currently being cared for by shopkeepers outside Garreg Mach, and even when he set it aside his thoughts kept drifting back to it. It had to be a coincidence that this was the child whose information Ashe brought him as the top page, when she had that important date in her life, but none of the other children brought as much interest to his mind as she had. This was undoubtedly Jeralt's way of reaching out to the son he'd prematurely left behind, and while Byleth wasn't sure if it was time to take in a child for himself, he couldn't let this go unnoticed.
The next chance he had, he and Ashe were there to visit the girl, spending time with the family who were currently watching over her, before taking her into the monastery just to see what her reaction was to the place. She seemed to immediately hate the guards and anyone holding weapons, and the religious motifs were far from anything that interested her. But when they took her out to the small graveyard, she began to tug at their hands, leading them to the shared grave that Byleth's parents had, and sitting down in front of the headstone like she'd been called to that very place.
Coincidence with her birthday or not, that seemed like quite the sign that there was a divinely fated reason this girl had shown up in the area, and even if it was the biggest relationship jump they could make, taking her in as their own was the only option. After all, overthinking it would've only disappointed Jeralt, and Byleth was hoping to avoid doing his father's memory a disservice while building his own life.
A/N: just something short and sweet for father's day, about byleth reflecting on how his own father was and how that'd lead him to being a father in his own right. having ashe as his other half here really made the adoption aspect work out even better, imo