A/N: *barges into the party very late with half-deflated balloons and a stale cake* Hi all! FE3H might be 2+ years old, but here I am, finally dropping my first work for the fandom. Oops. Joining the writing scene late for a given fandom is becoming a bit of a habit. I should work on that...
Anyway, here's a little Edelgard one-shot/character study. It's a bit experimental on my part, and to this day, I'm not entirely sure why I wrote it. Say what you will about her morality (or lack thereof), but she's a fascinating character. I wanted to explore her emotions after Jeralt's murder. [Oh yeah, spoiler, I guess? This has spoilers for Chapter 9 on (and spoilers from all 4 routes, really). But if you haven't finished the game yet, why are you even here?]
Anyway. I'll stop rambling. Without further ado, "Silent as the Grave."
Silent As The Grave
She shouldn't be here. Especially not with him trailing her every move. But this place drew her in, a magnetic force she couldn't resist.
The belltower chimed on the hour: the usual five melodic tones, then a single bell. One in the morning. As usual, the nightmares pulled her from any semblance of sleep—she only tried sleeping at Hubert's nagging, really—but tonight, the night air did nothing to soothe her, either.
Every time she closed her eyes, the scene replayed in her head over and over. The chapel in ruins. The carcasses of demonic beasts contorting back into human corpses. The students shrieking with relief over being rescued. The captain of the knights gently yet annoyedly urging them to run along so he could investigate the scene. That red-headed she-devil lingering to murmur a word of thanks. Then the flash of the knife in the dark, before anyone could retaliate. That particular moment always replayed twice in her head, as if taunting her own ability to stop the slithering bitch.
Why hadn't she seen it coming?
If only she'd disposed of Monica when she had the chance. Hubert even suggested it, offering to handle the dirty work as he so often did. His plan would have worked, too: a staged accident with faulty equipment and the jumpiest horse during riding lessons—a skill everyone knew Monica never executed well. Everyone would have believed it. But she ordered him not to carry out the plan, all for fear of what they would do.
Them. It always came back to them.
She shook her head, hoping to clear it. Whenever she thought of them, Thales's voice seemed to creep into the edges of her mind, whispering about burning the gods and devouring the heavens.
Her mind jumped to the professor's tears. She'd never heard Byleth cry, laugh, scream, joke—the woman never expressed big emotions, only tiny hints of feeling in vulnerable moments. But in the moment Jeralt's eyes closed, her professor actually wept, a raw, agonized wail. Even at the funeral, Byleth still cried openly.
The sight of someone so strong turned into someone so broken made her blood boil. Her fist unwittingly clenched around the stem of the flower she held.
This whole situation...they had the upper hand, and affairs were spiralling out of control. If she didn't find a way to rein them in, some way to check their violence, they would run rampant across the world, unchecked.
And yet, if her retaliation was too brazen, then Father would—
No. She couldn't entertain that possibility.
The doom of murder always hung heavy in the air, but it couldn't be his. She couldn't let them steal her last family member. Perhaps Hubert would know what to do. Just that morning, they heard the knights talking about a potential hideout within the Sealed Forest. If Byleth got word of it...yes, they probably could hide their own revenge behind the professor's. If the grief-stricken teacher led the charge, then Thales and Solon couldn't blame her for Monica's death, right?
"I-I promise your death will be avenged," she murmured.
The words came bursting out her lips before she could stop them. Don't talk to the dead, you fool. Jeralt can't hear you, but someone else might! And yet the words wouldn't stop.
"This wasn't supposed to happen, you know," she admitted. "I never intended for you to die. And if you did fall, it was supposed to be on the field of battle, fighting to a glorious, valiant death. Not a dishonorable stab from behind. For that, I'm sorry."
An odd tightness caught in her throat, like a vague memory of the tears she forgot how to shed.
"I'm sorry, but I will not ask for your forgiveness. And I will not pretend to hope that I can somehow repay the debt that I now owe you," she continued. "But...all I can do is explain to you why you died."
That tightness stung in her throat again, and all at once her knees wavered. She succumbed to the sudden weakness and knelt in front of the fresh headstone.
"Captain Jeralt, you died because underneath this mask I hide behind, I am nothing more than a coward."
Coward—yes, that was the word for it. And now that she said the word aloud, she couldn't stop the rest of the confession. The words, the guilt all came pouring out like water from a burst dam.
"I was a coward when they first took us into that basement. I could have used the dagger to kill one of them; they never found it under my clothes. I could have killed them, but I was too afraid of what they might do if they caught me. I could have killed myself to make their experiments fail, but I was too scared to face the afterlife. When the Crest of Flames manifested for me, I could have killed them all. But I feared how they might retaliate, what else they might steal from me.
"They're holding my father captive, you know. It may not look like it, but he's their prisoner. If I don't do their bidding, they'll kill him. And all of this, it's all transpiring because I...I'm too scared to lose him.
"I'm under no delusions. I know that obeying Thales's orders causes senseless acts of violence like your death and the calamity at Remire Village. And the hundreds of thousands of lives those demons claim is an unjust trade for my father's life. The just ruler would take the altruistic approach and put the needs of the many over the needs of one. But...but he's my father. And I'm a coward.
"Perhaps you think me vile. You'd be right to do so. I find myself vile, to be frank. Sometimes I wonder if one day I'll go mad from this double-life I'm leading. Perhaps someday my psyche will break and only the mask will remain. The guilt...it isn't lost on me.
"My quest—this crusade against her—it's the only thing that anchors me. Her lies, her exploitation of the people, the lives destroyed by her abominable crest system—it must all come crashing down. It's unjust."
Every Emperor knew the story; it was handed down, the Adrestian birthright of each generation. House Hresvelg guarded it closely: the true nature of the Crest Stones, what actually happened during each Rite of Rebirth, the dragonkin lurking in the monastery halls.
The occult roots of the Church of Seiros.
And all in pursuit of reuniting with a family member.
Maybe that was the reason she despised Rhea so much. Perhaps, in the archbishop, she saw what she hated most about herself: a love for family so fierce that she'd damn the rest of the world to protect those she loved. Still, Edelgard knew—even if the Church came crashing down, if not one whisper of a Saint or trace of a Crest remained, the guilt would never disappear. Toppling Seiros might assuage the guilt, but it would never erase it.
"I firmly believe that my path can create a better Fódlan. I have to believe that. It's all I have. And yet...the coward in me wonders if it will all be worth it. Every day, my soul is bound with a heavy chain. A chain made of the victims who've been slaughtered in this quest of mine. Your blood now adds a new link to that chain. But somehow, I think, yours will be the heaviest. Yours will be the one that sinks me into the darkest, deepest circles of hell."
As if any hell could be worse than what I've already endured, she thought bitterly.
"What a contrast we two are," she whispered. "You, a guiltless man and stalwart knight. And I, a princess whose guilt outnumbers the stars. Captain Jeralt, may I make one request?"
The wind surged abruptly, as if his soul answered.
"I know it seems...audacious of me, to ask anything of you. But grant me this boon. Captain, when I die someday, whether that be tomorrow or decades hence, when my soul is ushered into the presence of whatever god, demon, or ethereal consciousness will judge me in the afterlife, find me. Come to me and demand to know what I did to ensure your life—and the lives of so many others—were not lost in vain. You died for a cause you did not know about or believe in. It is only fitting, then, that you should be the one to hold my soul forfeit if I do not build a better world in the wake of all this sacrifice. If I do—if Fódlan rises from the ashes of this conflict stronger and juster and safer and happier, then leave me to whatever punishment the goddess has for me.
"But if I falter...if Arundel and his ilk eclipse this land in darkness eternal or I become a tyrant myself, then you must see to it that I'm tortured until eternity ends and the worlds begin anew. Hold my very soul forfeit against your own. Be my judge. Can you...can you do that for me?"
The wind gave one last gust, then stilled.
She smiled. An answer if she ever heard one. "Thank you," she said, standing and giving a slight bow.
She nearly turned to leave, but her mind turned to the odd, whispered ramblings she'd heard in the halls: one from a female, the other a male. I will get you back, Mother. The dead must have their tribute. Why must you torture me so? Have you come to haunt me as well?
Too many people in this monastery were tortured by the memory of the dead.
"Oh, Captain Jeralt, if I may ask one more thing—not for me this time, but for Byleth. Please...please don't let your spirit linger around her. There are already enough people in this monastery driven mad by the voices of the dead. Let's not add her to that list, shall we?"
The air remained still.
"Very well. I take my leave, then," she said, this time dropping into a full curtsy.
She pressed the red carnation to her lips, then gently set it atop the headstone. Surely the wind would sweep it away, but until then…No, an empty gesture was all it was. But leaving it somehow made her heart feel a little calmer, and at last, the edges of fatigue pulled at her eyelids.
"Until we meet again, Bladebreaker. At the end of this blood-forged path."
A/N: Did I take some liberties with TWSID by having them holding El's father captive to coerce her into working with them, as she reports in this fic? Yes. That detail isn't strictly canon, but I do wonder if it happened in the background. That's just something they would do.
And if Edelgard comes across as an inconsistent mess of emotions and rationales in this fic—good. That's exactly what I was going for. She as a character is, in my opinion, struggling with a tidal wave of feelings and responsibilities far too heavy for someone her age, all wrapped up with a messy bow of buried trauma and survivor's guilt. A little mental and emotional instability is a natural consequence, and I wanted to depict some of that, especially in this moment in the story.
I really do need to write more FE3H content, but for now, this will have to do. Thanks for reading!