You are the hero who has risen to the challenge of restoring order, and she is the ruthless aggressor who unleashed the chaos of war across your homeland.
Yet still I hide,
Behind this mask that I have become
My blackened heart,
Scorched by flames, a force I can't run from
Now from the beginning, Sothis had told you that there was a limit to this power – you found this out the hard way when you tried in vain to save your father, and you do not expect that you will be able to save him now.
But what is different this time is that you'd had a little bit more time to test the limits of your power, to get used to it and develop a feel for what you can and cannot do.
Almost everything is possible, but only a few of those probabilities are probable.
The flow of time has its own set of forces acting upon it, much like a river is forced down the path of least resistance by the steady pull of gravity.
Your many battles, then, have become countless experiments, greetings and invitations to let you get to know that force: If you send one of your followers to attempt the same thing twice, the results do not usually vary by much – the soldier might score a lucky hit, or miss with one of their attacks, but by and large the outcomes were so similar that you practically learned to predict them over time.
But if you sent a different soldier with different skills to engage that same enemy?
Then the result might indeed be quite different.
That is precisely what you are trying to do now, only on a much greater scale.
Try as you might, a river cannot flow uphill, and if you try to leave its flow in the rapids, the currents will drag you back ird n pull you forwawithout mercy.
But what rivers can do and have done since time immemorial is to branch out into deltas and rivulets on their journey to the seas.
So what you are looking for, if you want to have any hope of changing the outcome, is a natural branching point, a change not so wild as to throw the stream of events into unpredictable chaos, but still significant enough that, given time, it could not possibly lead you down to the exact same result.
This leaves you with at least one very obvious option: Much like you might choose a different soldier to take down a particular bandit, you must now choose a different king to confront the brewing troubles within Fodlan.
You must choose to teach a different house, and with it, a different ruler to make your disciple. Now from the outset, you might have said that Edelgard looked like the most promising option, strong and put-together where her fellow house leaders were either worrying devious or far too soft and naive to face the realities of the world.
But you had gone with her before, and your time with her proved to be a dead end.
Whichever criteria you once chose by, they had clearly led you to choose wrong.
Once, you might have appraised the young leaders with a purely strategical outlook, but as you stand before Rhea once again and are prompted to choose your house, you listen to a different voice, perhaps one that you had hitherto neglected:
Having seen them all die, you're inclined to follow the compassion you never knew you had before you arrived here for the very first time.
Claude is shrewd, Edelgard is strong, but Dimitri… Dimitri looks he he might need your guidance most of all.
You remember the ghostly image that never was, the one you maybe never met, lost, confused and thoroughly broken, crying for help he no longer knew how to accept.
You don't know to what extent you'll even be able to prevent the horrors that befell him, and you already know that there is probably a lot more to him than his sincere, chivalrous demeanor suggests, but insofar as you remember, he was always a good kid, beloved by his many friends, and always going out of his way to help people – when your father died, he immediately swore that he'd help you in any way he could, as surely as if your suffering had been his own.
You're not sure if that moves you but you feel like it should, and if nothing else, that leads you to take a chance on him.
Thus, you choose the Blue Lion House this time around, knowing that this would likely lead you down a path where you end up fighting for the holy kingdom of Faerghus in the coming war
Right away, you realize that you're dealing with a completely different animal here, and not just because of the stylized golden felines on the banners:
For one thing, they manage to get through the introduction in an orderly fashion without scampering off in all directions like headless chickens.
For all that they fall over themselves to welcome you as one of their own, there's a certain stilted politeness that none of them can really help – Dimitri can't get them to drop the honorifics either.
Even so, the Prince is unmistakably one of the bunch:
His friends tease him with embarrassing anecdotes and chine him with the occasional playful shoves in a way that Edelgard's never did. By and large you find yourself with a much more close-knit group: Many of them know each other from childhood, and the ones that don't fit in easily with the rest, as many of them share the same hobbies.
Before long you know everything about heraldic tales, the finer culinary arts and the stories behind everybody's weapon collections.
It's a wholly different atmosphere, like a tight-knit family almost. The Eagles were much more individualistic and independent-minded. They'd generally tell each other exactly what they think if they were mad, (even if Bernadetta would immediately follow it up with an anxious flurry of escalating apologies) and then they'd go their own ways, but these kids, they're different… which isn't to say that all was fine and dandy – there is a lot more emotional charge here, for better or for worse. The air is often markedly thick – Ingrid doesn't talk to Dedue, Felix doesn't talk to Dimitri, and then there's all that mess with Anette's and Felix' fathers, and the closest Dimitri comes to dealing with it is to ignore all the hostility in hopes that it will eventually go away.
To respond to Felix' aggression would be to acknowledge that they are not friends anymore…
and the Prince wants to badly to be friends, to be accepted for all his scars and imperfections – So he puts out goodness into the world in the timid little hope that some of it might one way find its way back to him.
One day he will tell you that he couldn't stand you once – you suppose that you must have been too much like Edelgard for his tastes.
But you will only find out when that is long past and he stands before you ready to swear a blood oath to avenge your father.
Whatever his personal feelings, the Prince made a point of befriending you from the get-go, and saw it as a matter of honor that you be integrated into the group; He wants you to like his classmates and implores you to appreciate their strengths and overlook their weaknesses – He wants you included at all the victory feasts, and dutifully speaks to you after every mission or training session – but there's something stilted, reluctant about how he stands there, an uncertainty trembling just below the pristine surface.
He always turns vague when the subject turns throughout the future, and with all the hopes that are pinned on his eventual rule of what you soon come to know an a brittle, unstable kingdom, that is worrying enough.
It was one thing to encounter the consequences of the widespread dissatisfaction, to have Edelgard explain to you about the rebellions and disunity amongst the church and the fruitless obsession with crests – it's another to stand next to Sylvain as he is forced to cut down his brother, or to observe Ashe wailing over the corpse of his adoptive father.
You stand there as a veteran, drenched in the rain, but though Dimitri has surely drawn blood before – you heard one story from Felix, and there's another version of it that he tells you himself – it never leaves him cold.
Nothing ever does.
He is Edelgard's opposite in every possible way, a beautiful disaster, so filled with bursting feeling that he can hardly contain it. Where she was an impenetrable wall, he's a wide open book, transparent as glass, and just as fragile, and as sharp and piercing where he breaks, and he seems doomed to do that a lot.
You no longer think that 'naive', 'soft' or 'impressionable' are the words for it, he's none of those things, indeed he know the ugliness of this world very well – it stares out at him each day from his very reflection.
And yet he weeps over the casualties he cannot avoid – he nearly faints with joy when you find Flayn, he burns with rage when you make your way to Solon and breaks down in shame before you right after the fact.
You've seen all this before, but when you're standing next to him, living through things that affect him and his friends, you cannot be unfazed.
He's most certainly compelling – a beautiful disaster, a tragedy walking just waited to unravel.
This world should not be a place where someone as sincere and genuine as him is doomed to failure, but you can't help but think that he is. You can't say in good conscience that he has the markings of a great leader, but you understand why others would hang their hopes around his necks, you don't see how anyone wouldn't believe him when he says he hopes to make a better world, not when he takes on their causes and burdens and their feelings to the point that he almost forgets to feel and live his own.
He's what is commonly known as a 'hopeless case': He breaks everything he touches, he's no good at anything other than fighting, and irresistibly drawn to all that is pitifully terrible and doomed – a patron of orphans and outcasts, a lover of terrible puns, terrible cooking, and everything else that anyone might take pity on. He sees the inequality in the realm, but he can't quite bring himself to condemn the lords or traditions, musing to himself that surely they must have their place and reason too, and that maybe just maybe, everyone should just get along.
It's not sophisticated, that hope of his, nothing like Claude's vast dreams or Edelgard's well-honed ambition, a sickly bird fallen out of its nest, still wet and crumpled in its broken eggshell -
But that's precisely why you want to keep him sheltered in your hands, not because you think you can, but because he deserves it.
In their own way, he and his sad little band of friends stir more feelings in you that you had ever really known.
His sincerity soothes you after a lifetime wasted hanging onto Rhea's double-edged affections.
You can no longer just pass through this world like all places are alike, untouched by memory of them, nor can you roll down the path of your destiny like the boulder Sothis had once likened you to – If you tried to be again swept up in whatever Rhea and the others kept telling you about what your great divine destiny had to be, something would hold you back, a pull towards the tale of this young man and his devastated homeland, and the people that dwelt therein, all the legends you'd never been told and the world you had never been part of – You could almost imagine yourself as a character in one of those stories, not the untouchable messiah that you were in your last life, but the gentle guardian angel guiding the heroic shining paladin on his path – Dimitri certainly comes to look at you like a godsend, and you find yourself smiling more and more each day…
And yet, you cannot forget about the forces that are already plotting your destruction, so very, very near.
During the mock battles, you notice that Ferdinand has taken your old spot in the formations, ever to the right, just as Hubert stands at his lady's left. Despite his best efforts, it does not go well – For the Black Eagles, that is.
You still see Edelgard in the hallways.
When you see her and Hubert whispering together around the monastery, you can't help but think that they must be scheming something. They are the hands of the ever-ticking clocks that surely bids your happy days to be over.
You don't want to see her, she reminds you too much of her bloody remains impaled upon your sword – but it's like she's going out of your way to be in your sight.
She inevitably shows up to your seminars, she takes as many of your courses as she can fit into her schedule though she has homeroom and mission briefings with Manuela this time around, and even outside of classes you'd think she was ever so subtly going out of her way to speak to you.
The thought that your classes are rather popular in general is far from your mind: Is she still trying to sway you to her side? To enlist you for the empire and her pointless bloody conquest, like she did back in Remire, and will likely do again when you return there?
Like you could do that, knowing what was right around the corner.
Did she know everything, the whole time, putting on that reasonable, composed face day and night that now seems like nothing short of cold mockery, feigning concern when she might have known exactly who instigated the rebellions, or where poor Flayn was being kept that long-long month?
The more you relive these days you once breezed through, the more and more you notice.
Was it at her behest that some of her classmates were transmogrified in the old chapel?
She was plotting to take the sword of the creator for herself, wasn't she?
She must have been, if was was behind the mages that came for it…
But even if the crest stone wasn't already within your chest, how could she have possibly hoped to wield it if that crest of yours was supposed to have been lost to history?
Hers was a crest of Seiros, right?
But knowing as you did now, that Rhea was the goddesses' own daughter…
Perhaps she had figured that this was close enough for her nefarious purposes.
What bitter irony, that the descendant of the Saint's own shining paragon should be the one to rebel:
Star of dawn, so full of pride,
fallen angel, devil in plain sight:
There she stands, more surprised about your presence than the bandits because she knew everything about those.
There she is, whispering with the badly-disguised creature that is due to kill your father.
Badly disguised herself, now that you look back at her in hindsight, even as she stands right before you. Could you really have been so blind? Was it like Claude had said that last time, that you were all distracted? That, like Seteth said, you had all missed the blackness of her heart?
She was barely even hiding it, standing there musing about how she would have done all in her power to pursue things to the bitter end if she had been in Lonato's place. How overblown, if not suspicious she finds it that anyone would be concerned about Rhea's would be assassination – and there's Hubert who finds the prospect positively hilarious, always slinkering around her like a shadow, his snide, mocking voice – and Edelgard joins in right with him, choose to keep him around and makes it a private joke with him how little they really care about the 'impudence' of the sacrileges they have orchestrated themselves.
How did you ever not see this?
She slips into some old habit halfway through one of the battles, maybe she forget where she was and threatened to drain all your blood for real, like she would have done with her porcelain mask on.
She's positively blasé about bringing up a possible future where she and Dimitri would fight much to the boy's disquiet, indeed after the fact, she challenged both her fellow house leaders in the light of day, dismissing it as a joke afterwards, though she must have known it to be a grim and bitter certainty.
What's the matter with her?
Dimitri, you find, has been wondering that since he arrived, much like you have – last time, he must have lingered in the corners when it was you and not Manuela escorting Edelgard to her missions. He hesitates as he does with all things that concern the life he no longer sees as wholly his own but there's more to it, something hard to place that stops him in his tracks short of saying anything definite, like there is some mute yet definite instinct telling him to back off, to stay away in clear recognition that she is something to be avoided, a mark almost as plain as her unnatural silver hair.
But Dimitri, being as he is, heartbreakingly kind and also heartbreakingly self-destructive, cannot wholly stays away and extent some vague downcast semblance of friendliness that brushes off her steely focus.
First, you think that what you're picking up is a simple puppy crush, and a rather ironic one at that, given how you already know that the two young heirs are fated to be enemies, but once you start piecing together the full story, you start doubting everything that you still thought was genuine about the connection you once had with the princess in another life -
In your heart, you can't bring yourself to deny it, but it doesn't fit together with the truth that you now see before you…
How, in that long, long year you had spent together, had she never once told you that she had a brother?! A brother who, one might add, had been studying at this very academy all along, this whole damn time.
Even now, she seemed to rebuff all his kindness; Each hesitant, heart-wringing attempt to act as a brother shot down with a challenge – actually, you're still not sure if that's truly how he sees her, they wouldn't have grown up together, and he didn't find out until much later, so it is quite possible that he regarded her with a much different feeling at the time, one that might me intensified now that neither of them were little children anymore.
It was probably a very complex soup of emotions – He must be longing for those distant days full of light, when he could come home to his parents' embrace after long blissful afternoons spent with his most special friends. Perhaps he just wished to hear his mother's voice again, finding her shadow in the features of this girl whom he hardly knew, whom he could barely stand, and who most certainly did not have his best interests at heart.
He wanted so badly to be her friend again, and cut himself once again on the icy spikes of her heart.
But Dimitri and you were in the same boat, really.
Like you, he was trying to reconcile his most treasured memories with the reality before him.
How could she not tell you about her own brother?
She had never introduced you, never even mentioned the young Prince as anything other than a rival. She'd told you that story about her parents meeting at the goddess tower, never once mentioning that they split up, or that they were anything other than each other's one true loves – but maybe that's how she'd wanted to remember it.
Sure, she had mentioned once or twice that she had stayed in the kingdom at one point, even told you about how she once had a crush on some young noble that she met there, like a normal girl would have – and indeed, the person that Dimitri describes in his stories seems perfectly ordinary, vulnerable, touchable, a bit bossy perhaps but most certainly human – At some point at least, the girl you both remember must have been real.
You wonder what has become of her.
Replaced perhaps, just like Monica and Tomas?
The truth might be even worse.
You think Dimitri suspects it when he picks up that dagger, maybe some part of him knew it all along since he had pieced together his uncles' involvement, but he doesn't want to accept it.
You fear to think what it would do to him if he were to know the truth.
But now that you have seen it with your own eyes, you cannot deny that she is working with the ones that killed your father.
'Their greatest creation' they called her…
Brought into the world through some bloody means that somehow involved the slaughter in Duscur.
Just what in the world is she?
What is she?
What is she?
What IS she?
It still doesn't add up.
Under the circumstances, you cannot blame Dimitri for getting swept up in his feelings, but with him in such a state, at least one of you has to stay level-headed.
Despite yourself, you recall the words of a silver-haired girl on an occasion that now never happened, telling you that people couldn't be reduced to just allies or enemies.
Yes, she clearly said that her ominous allies had their filthy hands in that pointless slaughter that killed Dimitri's parents and led to that horrible misdirected backlash against people like Catherine, Ashe's brother and Dedue's whole people – but in the same breath that she brought it up, she had rebuked them for it.
She would have been what, twelve? There's no way that she could have been involved directly, even for someone of her skill.
What would the heir to the Adrestian empire even have been doing in Fhirdiad? The story might make sense if she were merely from some lesser-ranked branch of the Hresvelg family tree, but for the Emperor's favorite concubine to abscond with a crest-bearing heir without any further consequences, even in a time of political turmoil?
Now that you had the time to think it through with some distance, you actually believe what she told you about Remire. She was too genuinely upset the first time around, and even now, she showed up right away to make sure to tell you she would have prevented it.
One might accuse her of being irresponsible, for she clearly knew who she was getting in bed with – but she has no reason to lie. She had no idea you and Dimitri were watching when she expressed her disgust of them.
It's probably an alliance of convenience, not that that makes it any better. It's certainly unscrupulous, prideful, megalomaniac even, if power be the motive.
But the idea that they're in cahoots seems a little too convenient and simplistic.
You don't think that you'll have much luck explaining this to Dimitri, however – He wouldn't listen if you argued the facts with him. What he needs now, more than anything, is your support.
You still dare to hope when he gushes to you about how you're just like the heroes in the legends and how he might get to be the Wilhelm to your Saint Seiros, but he's starting to worry you very much.
…
A chill goes down your spine when you awake in Rhea's lap.
Giddily, gleefully, she hopes so badly that very soon, you will finally disappear, like someone else's fuzzy dream disintegrating into morning.
You will be the sand that someone else will rub away from the corner of your eyes, your body but the throne that will be taken possession of 'when our creator rules this wayward land once more'-
You know that she only wants her mother back, you understand that, having lost your father, you really do…
But when she finally leaves the room, it's like a weight was lifted from your chest, and a shadow from your soul.
...
You don't see much of her or Hubert in those last days, and it doesn't surprise you – you already know why.
Any moment now, she must be departing for Enbarr, and this time, she won't even think of asking you to come.
So you're all the more surprised when there's a rap on your door, as your in your room looking over preparations for a graduation ceremony that will probably never happen. It's fairly late and you weren't expecting any more visitors, but behind the heavy old woodplanks, you are met with the most peculiar sight:
She's got a travel back slung around her shoulder and holds the handle of another with her gloved fingers. In her hair is a flower that you got her for her birthday out of the common courtesy that you absentmindedly extend to everyone. Despite everything, you still remember her favorite one.
She's come to talk to you before.
With the passage of time, she told you more and more, even seeking advice, or expressing her sympathies – last time you saw her, you think she said something about what was happened to your father, and how she would help you get revenge if you so desired – You don't know to believe. At first, it was easy to blame her for things she hasn't done yet, but it gets hard to keep that up, day after day.
Before long, you found yourself falling back into your old automatisms and habits, speaking back when spoken to, while your soul retreats as far from your face as it possibly can while still remaining attached to your body.
It was almost like having to be around Jeritza when you knew what he was up to, that he was sure to meet his end but not quite yet, but unlike him, she would not do you the favor of staying away from you.
You know you're a fool and yet, she somehow makes it past the door arch, uncharacteristically fiddling with her thumbs.
You know why she's ready to leave, and that she cannot be convinced otherwise, but as to what brought her to your doorstep, you are utterly confounded.
"Edelgard? What are you doing here at such a time?"
"...I'm leaving for Enbarr in the morning, for urgent business, and before that, there's something I wanted to ask..." her voice seems to carry more weight than such a simple inquiry would merit. "Have you perhaps found any more lost items recently?"
"...lost items? Why? Have you lost something…?"
"...perhaps..."
It's unusual for her not to meet your gaze.
"You'll have to be a little more specific."
"It's a dagger with a blue velvet hilt, a simple design, but good quality steel… Do you think you might have see it somewhere?"
"...I don't think so..."
"Oh. I see… well, it doesn't matter anyways. It's not important. I should probably just get a new one. That's what Hubert would say, which is probably why I came to you instead of him..." She smiles at you, bitterly, with half a mirthless snicker. "There's nothing special about it, it's just that I've had it a long time… I barely even recall how I got it anymore..."
She must be aware that she had clearly failed to insert much levity in what had evidently become a loaded conversation.
As the rain patters down outside, she somehow ends up placing her bags on an empty spot on your desk while she sits down next to it, careful so as not to overturn the steaming teacup that you somehow end up handing her, and you end up having to remind herself that she cannot remember the days you spent together, that it was you who made it so they never were.
"I'm sorry..." you say, but it's not exactly about the dagger.
"Don't trouble yourself over it. I would have had to get a new one sooner or later. To move forward, we have no choice but to discard the past sometimes. There's no point in dwelling on a past that you can never return to."
Again, you are struck by how Dimitri is her opposite in every possible way. He would balk at that, saying that taking time to grieve one's losses is what makes us human. He'd err on the opposite side, terrified of dim memories fading and hot tears drying up, unable to forgive himself for taking the space that he filled and the air that he breathed.
Only that he would probably imagine her face in such a moment to be hard and impenetrable, not frowning in contemplation. "Picture a broom. If it's broken, you cannot sweep the floor anymore, so, after a time, you replace the brush. Then later still, you replace the handle – replace enough parts, and it's no longer really the same broom, long before you replace the last piece you had left from the start… so it makes no sense to dither, really, even if it's that last piece…
You either move forward, or you curl up and perish – and you can't afford that luxury when you're responsible for others..."
"...-is this still about the dagger?"
"Perhaps not. But say, professor, have you ever heard the story about Theresia the second?"
"Was she one of your ancestors?"
"Indeed… One time, so the story goes, an artisan from what is now part of the Alliance made his way to Enbarr to present the Emperor at the time with a new invention. As the story goes, he had thought of a metal contraption, a kind of loom that could be operated without the need for the hands of a weaver, a sort of mechanism of gears and clockwork. He expected to be handsomely rewarded for his clever apparatus, but instead, the emperor at the time was horrified: 'My poor citizens!' she cried, 'how shall I feed them, if these devilish contraptions do all their labor?' Back in those days, the empire was still closely interlinked with the Church, and as it happened, the archbishop at the time happened to be visiting at the time. Dissatisfied with the emperor's verdict, the inventor took it up with her, arguing that surely, the church would value his ingenious work, for he envisioned a world in which no one need to do backbreaking labor, and this, he thought, would surely be what a benevolent goddess would wish upon her faithful – but she was sorely mistaken. The archbishop was disgusted, incensed even, as if the man's gearwork were somehow a deadly affront to herself and her goddess. She ordered the man's work smashed, and she decreed that if he were ever to build another, or share his knowledge of the mechanism with any other man, they would sever his hands and sting out his eyes to prevent him – The man left in disgrace, and came to be regarded as almost a heretic, and no history records what happened to him afterwards…."
"You think the Church was wrong to smash the contraptions." you assert, not even bothering to phrase it like a question. She's a bit surprised that you don't much respond to her questioning the church, but before long her brow creases as she drags an explanation from her brains, as she perhaps remembers that you were raised apart from the faith of Seiros.
You watch as she composes herself, thinking hard about how to phrase her next statements, as if she deemed it important that they not be misunderstood, especially not by you. "It's not that I think Theresia was entirely wrong – Some people would have lost their work if such machines had come to be commonly used. They could find new work, but for some, it would probably have meant that they would have had to go through a time of considerable hardship. I would be a naive, deluded fool to deny that… but even so, I truly believe that both Theresia and the Church were in the wrong. In the many years since, how many people could have lived easier lives? How many impoverished commoners could have afforded the much cheaper winter cloaks that could be made with such contraptions? Is the work as a spinner or weaver really so fulfilling, so well-paid that it should be preserved? Or should they perhaps have gotten rid of the inequality that caused the people to be dependent on such work in the first place… if you look at it from more than just a short-sighted, parochial perspective, then you cannot escape the conclusion that for hundreds and hundreds of years, our people have been robbed of more comfortable, more dignified life, all because both Lady Theresa and the church wanted to avoid a temporary inconvenience!"
You're beginning to understand what she's getting at.
"Such hard words for your own ancestor...numerous people losing their whole livelihoods isn't exactly what you'd call a 'temporary inconvenience'."
"...of course not. Perhaps I phrased this poorly. I apologize if I sounded callous… Thank you for reminding me, my teacher. Even still, sometimes some amount of hardship simply can't be avoided. And neither can change. It can only be postponed, and the longer that goes on, the more the misery drags on, and the more people suffer as the flawed system slowly crumbles on its own. The world does not really go in circles – only spirals, that wind down slowly, but steadily. As a mercenary, you must surely know this… I believe a thinker from around the time of the Crescent Moon war called this phenomenon 'creative destruction'. For the new to arrive, the old must first be wiped away. This is why those whose power is founded on the old order will resist change such change by all means, and sustain states of misery and stagnation for years and years, because they have confused peace and stability… Even if they say that perpetuating cruelty and misery was never their aim, that is still what they do."
"But couldn't you say the same about the chaos that results from such change? Is the result of that not suffering as well? And who gets to decide that anyway? What of the people who have to live through such chaos? They must be asking why the bloodshed had to happen during their lifetimes. Why did they have to suffer? Why their families? Who decided that they are acceptable sacrifices? How does anyone the right to decide that?"
"Someone has to! Otherwise all this meaningless, irrational slaughter will just go on and on and on!"
She's no longer even pretending to be talking about her ancestor's stance on mechanical weavers, though the only reason that she is speaking so plainly is that insofar as she knows, you have no reason to suspect that she's not talking about hypotheticals.
She takes a moment to gather her composure, doubtlessly wondering what you must be thinking of her uncharacteristic outburst.
"It's one thing when you let yourself get swept away by the tides of circumstance, and then call that 'fate' once you have surrendered yourself to it – With this world being as it is, many people can do nothing but beg and plead and grovel for a salvation that will never come…
But I'm surprised that one such as you would think so... Perhaps you simply do not realize the terrifying power that you possess.
The injustices of this world will continue whether you interfere with them or not. Those who sit idle can only claim that their hands are clean because they take the world around them at face value and never considered how and why the world that surrounds them came to be as it is, what advantages they've been given, what power they truly hold, and what responsibility they have, for what they do, but also, for what they don't do... because it's difficult, or because it's inconvenient, because it's thankless work for which they will be hated, and because no voice from the heavens will ever tell them that they were absolutely right, and that all their sins were justified…
All it takes for cruelty to triumph is for those who could put a stop to it to do nothing. This is especially true for those of us who through whichever circumstance received more than our fair share of power… Once you realize what you are capable of, there is no turning back."
You stand there, quite a bit stunned.
You don't really know what to say – she has clearly had more time than you than think about those words, and pressed for an answer, you could not possibly have responded with the same degree of sophistication.
You're overwhelmed – before you could form an opinion, you'd first have to break down in your mind what she's even really saying.
So with your mind thus occupied, it's your dear old heart of stone that does the talking:
"...why are you telling me all this, Edelgard?"
You see a series of realizations alighting on her face, feeling after feeling, thoughts sparking further thoughts.
"...why indeed..." just for a moment, she doesn't meet your eyes.
"I suppose that would be because even I am not immune to 'creative destruction'…"
You think she almost said something else. "I should have known better, really. As emperor, I must stand alone. I, more than anyone, must keep moving forward, and discard the useless past, no matter how badly I wish to hang onto it. I cannot afford to be swept up in my own, selfish feelings, even if it means renouncing someone I-"
Before you can ask if she's talking about Dimitri, you hear footsteps drawing near.
"Lady Edelgard?"
She doesn't even wait for Hubert to arrive – maybe she doesn't want him to know that it's you she's been talking with. He would only worry – and given that you've cut down his lady once before, you can hardly blame him.
"Farewell, my teacher."
She looks into your eyes one last time after she dashes out of the room, holding the door open with one foot because her arms are busied with her bags.
"I'm glad I met you, even if it was only for a brief time."
That is the last you see of the princess.
When she appears before you in the holy tomb, only the emperor remains.
You know she's not holding anything back when she finally uses her magic.
Her mask crumbles away like Dimitri's idealized illusions of the past – At long last, he has finally met her: The real Edelgard von Hresvelg, whose impassive, dead-eyed stare meets him from the gap he had ripped in her helmet when he tore off the porcelain mask he has now crushed underfoot, every second of her unblinking colorless gaze now an affront to everything that he has lost.
He has no time or patience for her explications; Everything she says merely tightens the noose of her guilt; Every word she speaks is a brazen affront to the victims of her crimes, every silence an admission of guilt, and try as you might, you cannot hold him back -
And you realize, then, that nothing in your power could have stopped this war, no matter which of them you might have got a hold of – Because this time, it's not her who throws the first stone.
This time around, the declaration of war comes from Dimitri's lips when he promises to hang her head from the gates of Enbarr.
…
You tried your hardest not to plunge down that ravine;
You curse and scream as your feet slip, but no amount of clawing at the dirt will help to accomplish anything other than bloodying your nails, and even as you tumble down in free-fall, all your fear is for Dimitri. How could you leave him like this?
You should have warned him about the coup… you wanted to, you really did, but in his current state, you weren't sure how to do it – hoping to find just the right moment, you missed your window of opportunity.
"Wait! Dimitri…!"
You remember faintly, lying pierced and opened in the darkness, arms curving at odd angles as you tried to raise them up, and a cold tide coming in, and all you can think is: Not again! How could you allow this to happen again?!
But you can't feel any legs for you to kick with, and instead of screams, your voice is bloody gurgles, and its no relief at all when the water takes you.
Every half-dream you could have is consumed with nightmares of waking, and when you finally break through, you rush from your dark slumber like a guard who fell asleep on the job – but it's too late. You recognize this creek on whose brackish muddy banks you find yourself sprawled, willing your sluggish limbs into submission as one would clean a dusty house of cobwebs after a long journey.
Your body shows no sign of disuse; Instead, the holes torn in your clothing are all filled up with pristine pale flesh.
You wonder what became of those children that Dorothea took in now that she was never here to adopt them. You wonder if anyone ever listened to Linhardt's rambles, or encouraged Bernadetta to make friends…
And there are new worries now, indeed the number of people you're panicked about has just about doubled. When you met Dimitri – if you met Dimitri, in that other world, he said that he had led all his followers to their deaths… Dedue. Rodrigue. Gilbert. - and what of their children? Cheerful, enthusiastic Anette, fierce, independent Felix, who in some ways reminds you of your own follies, and all their other friends and classmates -
You think of Ashe and Ingrid telling you about their favorite legends, about Mercedes' consideration and her own, closely-guarded dreams, and Sylvain in all his byronic complexity -
And Dimitri… oh poor Dimitri… you never should have taken him down there with you.
…
It's even worse than you expected.
Both the current state of the country, and what you find waiting for you down at the foundation of the goddess tower in the goddess tower.
A/N: At this point I'd like to note that this is only supposed to be a possible order. None of this immature "my favorite route is the canon route" BS.
One of the great things about 3H in particular and videogames as an art form in general is the real nondeterminism that you get precisely by not imposing an order and leaving it wholly up to the player which routes to play first or last. In a book or TV show there would have to be an order which would imply something about each version's validity – here, no single route has all the info, and you can play them in any order and still be plot twisted to hell and I think this makes an important statement about reality that I didn't mean to undermine here.