You are the redeemer, looking to restore this flawed, imperfect realm to the rightful glory of days past, and she is the tragic agglomeration of all its fault, the flame of chaos that would burn it all down, the inevitable, ultimate consequence of all that is wrong with this world.
Cross my heart
Making vows I know will be betrayed
A sad girl's pleas
Live only for a breath and then they fade
So. Much. Death.
The emperor had challenged the gods – challenged the whole world, until the foes became to many even for her to endure.
She had, however, escaped with her life and retreated with a good amount of her forces – she'd taken heavy losses, but they were far from annihilated, and the woman herself had escaped with her life.
That, of course, sits ill with Dimitri – but you cannot continue this campaign, not right now.
Your soldiers are wounded, you're out of supplies and you're still deep within enemy territory, you got as far as you did because their lines were stretched thin, but if you have her the chance to pull back her remote forces, they would surely close on you like a trap…
Besides, your allies are shaken. You actually can't say for sure that you aren't.
The ranks of your foes were filled with so many familiar faces.
You're not sure if the destruction was as complete as it was the last time around when neither you nor Seteth had interfered in this battle. It wasn't a complete mutual annihilation. A fair bit of the imperial forces managed to retreat, and you think you saw some alliance troops making off as well – not to mention that your former students from the Blue Lion house are refreshingly not dead.
You can easily guess why – Without you here to temper the Kingdom's assault, or to keep Dimitri from pursuing the imperial forces further, it's not hard to see how there could have been no one left alive.
So as bitter as this ugly, pointless slaughter may appear, it is, in a sense, a victory.
But not everyone managed to flee: Bernadetta was up on the hill when the retreat was sounded; She kept shooting her arrows through the curtain of flames, made deadlier still by the fires, but she couldn't run, not with all around her burning.
This morning you thought lowly enough of Edelgard to assume that she'd callously left her to die, but you find that her sorcery engineers had taken some precautions to make sure that the center of the platform would not burn. They might have intended to have a mage warp her out at the end of the day, even so, the emperor must have known that if the tides of war turned against her, this mission could easily become a suicide commando even if it didn't start out as such.
By the time the smoldering flamed has burnt themselves out, she must have died from smoke inhalation or the mounting heat. Was she hoping to the very end that the others would come and get her?
It leaves a very bad taste in your mouth -
You can't imagine that she would have volunteered, not unless she'd changed almost completely from the timid girl you once knew.
But were your hands clean? You once thought that Edelgard was clearly the villain and that Dimitri was an innocent victim of her wrongdoings, a hero even -
But now you'd backed him as he lead everyone on this mad chase, with no regard for their safety, or even the loyalty of his followers, determined to throw his life away when so many were building their hopes upon him, wishing for him to save his kingdom from perdition...
You'd been told once and again that though you were a good executive leader you had never had much drive in the larger scale of things, that you tended to go down the path of least resistance and do what is asked of you regardless of whether you liked it. That's probably how you ended up on path set before you by the church the last time around.
You had never felt much driving you – The first time when you experienced anything like that was when you first started to become invested in your class and wanted very badly to ensure their well-being; and you surely felt something with regards to tracking down your father's killer.
Sothis once called you a boulder that tumbles whichever way it's pushed.
But right now you can't afford this. For Dimitri's sake, and for everyone else's, you need to put down your foot and confront him. You've got to stop him through nobody else will...
….
At last, the rightful king returns.
Given the remorse he feels for his less than stellar deeds he can hardly believe that his people would welcome him back; It's almost like a spiritual experience to him, a profound moment of coming home that you can't quite understand without a faith or a home of your own.
The pragmatic mercenary in you thinks that there people would have welcomed anyone with cheers who would rid them of Cornelia's yoke, and all they'd heard of their new king was that he'd beaten back their foes. They were rebelling before your army even got to the capital, all they needed was hope – Dimitri needed hope, too, so you don't tell him that.
You don't think anyone could blame him for escaping with his life, rather, it was likely his inability to forgive himself for that which had broken him to this degree.
What brought you here was a moment in the rain where you didn't come to blows as you had feared – instead, the young prince somehow wound up crying in your arms, though you could scarcely fit them around his huge, bulky form complete with all his armor.
But when he returned with you to the camp, something in him had changed.
The man beside you was no longer the brutal general you all had endured for the last couple on months, but neither was he the repressed, mercurial young man you had known at the academy – He couldn't go back to the illusions of childhood, but in a world that was no longer strictly black and white, it was possible for him to attain something other than pitch black damnation even if he had fallen short of immaculate holiness, nor was it any longer required for his enemies to be certifiable demons for him to justify opposing them.
The next day, he stepped before his allies as a new man – having granted his troops the much needed recovery time, Dedue and Gilbert had been able to convince him to partake in a hearty meal, a warm bath and a good night's sleep. He turned up with his once wild hair tied back, still a somewhat martial luck far from his younger self's neatly combed Prince Charming getup, but a whole lot more civilized. He finally felt worthy of his father's shining white armor graven with the emblems of his family's legacy.
He's back. Or perhaps he's more present than he's ever been, you do think Dedue said it best that all the disparate sides you had seen of him were ultimately sides of the same coin, and that what you were seeing now was a new state of harmony between light and dark.
Some of your allies, such as Felix and Lorenz, aren't convinced all at once, but they clearly want Dimitri to suceed and Felix in particular is ready and willing to help him if atonement is truly what he wants.
And here's the most tragic thing:
In a private moment on the walls of Fhirdiad castle, he tells you that he never really desired revenge, rather, he felt it was his obligation – He was overwhelmed with feeling, unable to process this world injustice, and the wrath gave him a purpose where he could find none, a crutch to cling to, at first, which had eventually swallowed him whole.
He'd been raised to be dutiful and honorable above all things, so all his life, he had considered only what he must do, what he ought to do, especially once weighed down with the burden of being the only survivor.
What he wanted to do – well, he never thought he deserved to pay heed to that. But all along, it was completely different, and yet, not all that surprising. Though tried, tested and matured, you recognize the young man from the academy there, the one who was passionate about helping little orphans and protecting the downtrodden, the one who once wished so much for peaceful solutions.
And there's another thing that finally makes sense: All the times you spotted him talking to himself, assuring his fallen loved ones that he had the resolve to take down Edelgard. He seemed so obsessed with destroying her, so why in the world would he be worried that his resolve might falter?
Because, it would seem, some part of him had never wanted to fight her and still didn't want to – you once feared what he might do in pursuit of her head, now you're worried by the hurt he would suffer in striking her down.
His own peace of mind could be best served if he could somehow make peace with her or failing that, offer her mercy, but what he wants may not be the same as what she desired.
Either way he seems determined to liberate the victims of her rampage.
Of course you want the same as him, more so than he knows, or than you can even explain to him at the moment. If you could convince her to surrender, if you could stop her without destroying her, that would be great – but you're not sure that she could ever accept living in this this world as it is now after all she had done to reject it.
You knew well that she had no such compunctions about fighting him...
…
Oh, but poor Dimitri!
All this time he wanted to avenge his parents, but he was so swept up in his feelings that he never stopped to think and work out in detail what actually happened.
But now that he has the presence of mind to actually investigate what occurred and look at it with a somber, discerning eye, the truth he finds is worse than he expected.
Himself and his father were indeed betrayed by their own family; It just wasn't Edelgard.
Some imperial representatives were involved, chief of all Arundel, but there were just as many culprits in the Kingdom's own ranks, corrupt, bigoted nobles that spurned the King for the high unforgivable crime of wanting to make peace with the neighboring countries.
Not to speak of the most startling co-conspirator of all:
The king's own wife, Dimitri's own stepmother, the only maternal figure he had ever known.
Even you can't get over how vile that is – sure, Dimitri described her in glowing terms, but he was not the sort to speak ill of the dead and might have felt that he owed her simply for taking him in though he was not her son by blood – The red flags were there from the beginning, that she hadn't mentioned her own daughter at all, that Dimitri was afraid to approach her for something as trivial as to teach him to sew, what he'd said about seeing her 'leave him behind and dissapear into the flames', that Cornelia got her position thanks to her interceding -
You're not sure how much you can believe of Cornelia words, clearly she was trying to mess with Dimitri. You're rather proud of him for not taking the bait as you know he would have none to long ago.
To tell Dimitri that his mother ditched him because she loved her biological child more seemed like the kind of fear a troubled child would cook up all on their own, or what you would tell such a child if you wanted to confirm everything they'd ever feared.
You wish you could go back to the early days of your first timeline and interrogate Edelgard about her parents, clearly she hadn't told you anything but perhaps you might have been able to figure out something from her deflection – At least it should be possible to figure out if any of the other imperial nobles knew of her mother having mysteriously returned at some point, though from what Gilbert had told you about Rodrigue's investigation that might have been futile as she never turned up.
Besides, for how little you know about mothers since you never knew your own, you find it hard to believe that someone who could leave twelve year old Dimitri to die and coolly walk past the hacked-up bodies of people she had lived with for years would be capable of any sort of sincere love for a daughter she'd never known.
Many of the kingdom people see the empire as an ominous monolith but having spent two years with Ferdinand and the others you know a whole lot more about its inner workings than anyone here possibly could. Arundel was the current regent, in a government comprised of Prime Minister Aegir and those who backed him in the insurrection. You recall Linhardt expressing surprise that his and Caspar's fathers had turned on the Prime Minister to back Edelgard instead – hard to believe that Arundel could be regent if he and Duke Aegir weren't all buddy-buddy. That would make him an enemy of Edelgard's father – his powers were rather curtailed upon Arundel's return.
If she wanted to see her husband, why work with the man intent on dethroning him, who, indeed, was supposedly exiled to the kingdom for those same political machinations? As for her daughter, she had been in Fhirdiad for years before that, as the king's wife, she could have seen her any time.
And if she was unaware of her brother's nefarious machinations and in fact opposed to him, why would she recommend Cornelia, and why would she be taken alive? Why not kill a witness?
You knew some things that Gilbert and Dimitri didn't, in particular, about the true nature of that group that was behind the slaughter in Duscur, the ancient enemies of the goddess whom you had once pursued to their lightless lair.
You know, at least, that Conelia had many of the corrupt nobles under her sway long before the coup against Dimitri, that the regent was supposedly too busy with frivolities, perhaps, too enticed - that Cornelia, were she a normal human, would have been much older by now, and your mind even goes back to Edelgard's story about her parents and the supposed love at first sight, that tale of her father being irresistibly drawn to a beautiful stranger he met at the goddess tower…
To begin with it was rather suspicious for one girl from a minor noble house to bed the two most powerful men in Fodlan right before their fall from grace…
And what does this mean for Edelgard, their 'creation'?
Had they orchestrated her entire existence from the beginning?
If her mother was their operative, did that make her half-Agarthan?
She has this accursed crest that nobody should have, that you have because Rhea 'created' you, not from scratch per se. She'd told you this story like a remainder of a purer, more distant past before she became the person she is now, but that last speck of purity might have been as illusory as Dimitri's supposed happy childhood with his kind beloved step-mother. She wasn't like Dimitri, she hadn't believed it quite as wholly, well aware that she was probably choosing to take it at face value, but at the same time, she had treasured it, decided to hold on to it because at least it could be true.
Now you knew for a fact that it wasn't.
You know to little to conclude anything for sure, but one thought which you cannot escape is that the Agarthans had the kingdom every bit as infiltrated as the empire was, and that there were just as many corrupt individuals cooperating with them. There were few innocents here.
Perhaps they had always meant to have the two countries fight, and it appears that until your interference at Gronder, Edelgard and Dimitri had both been playing straight into their hands… but so had you. The last timeline had likely been exactly what they wanted, right up until you got a hold of their location, and you could scarcely take credit for that; If the imperial arsenal wasn't staffed with such loose cannons as Hubert or the Death Knight, the future would have looked grim.
You're not sure where you are now, if you have escaped the rails of their plan yet, or if you ever will… all you can do is press onward.
…
Seeing as you've reclaimed most of the Kingdom's territory, and that fighting both powers at once had not worked out so great for the empire at Gronder, it shouldn't be too surprising that they had geared up for a preemptive strike against the Alliance. If they won, the Kingdom would be encircled, but if they lost, you might band together – it's relentlessly aggressive but it makes a terrible kind of sense.
Only when you hear who's commanding the enemy forces do the reports give you pause – The Empire's Regent? He's taken power?
What about Edelgard?
You're surprised that you still fell that pang of worry though she's your dreaded enemy that would not let you live if given the chance to kill you.
You hear she's still in bed from the wounds she sustained at Gronder – her uncle took power while she was still in critical condition.
She left on her own two feet when you fought her, but you realize now that she must have been standing on adrenaline.
An unbidden image shoots through your head – the emperor, bleeding through crude, hasty bandages and coarse raw stitches, some quick, careless workaround. Certainly Hubert must be kneeling at her side, perhaps Dorothea, wishing she'd learned to master healing magic like in that other life where you helped her overcome her initial aversion to it to great effect... of all her classmates, she always showed the most regret about turning against Edelgard.
Yes. It is almost a pang of worry, over an enemy whose death should be cause for celebration.
It must be an old habit that you never quite shook off.
…
The, one night, there is a knock on the threshold, and as soon as you open, Ashe has all but spilled into your room, his face in a veritable state.
"Professor I- I don't know what to think-"
He tells you of the results of his investigations. His conflicted feelings about Catherine. What he learned about her actions. Her involvement, and his foster brother's death.
All the while he speaks, he looks so very anguished and conflicted, torn between all he's ever believed, his admiration for someone he used to think of as a hero, and the sense of justice he once saw as simple and absolute.
In simple and objective terms, what you've learned is simply vile. The you that still waltzed into Garreg Mach would have called bull on it in a second and if you're honest your father would have done the same. You try to reconcile it with the valiant, admirable Catherine you know. The one who made you think that despite your occasional misgivings, the Church can't be that much a bunch of zealots if an outlaw like her is not just allowed here, but protected, and people like herself, Cyril and Shamir get taken in.
But you do recall how she threatened you – was it in this world or the last one? - , how it once stung, though you didn't know what to do with the feeling at the time, the feeling that she wasn't seeing you but just the interest Rhea had in you. And, to be fair, - and that was definitely the last world – you recall how she once discouraged Caspar, a different Caspar than the one who now serves in the imperial army – from idolizing her too much.
You try your best to confront Ashe but it's not like you really have that much wisdom of your own to share. There are many things he could legitimately feel about this. Hate, forgiveness – no one could blame him for either. But only one is what he actually feels. Once he was young and pure and now he's finding out where the boundaries of his forgiveness lie.
You're not even sure about yours.
When you confront Catherine, she denies nothing. As she sees it, she has her beliefs, others have theirs, and though there might be coexistence, there can be no understanding.
But she has no delusions of being a pure hero. Her doubt comes through like drywall behind peeling paint, but she cannot doubt, not when she has so much staked on her faith, done so much for it.
To question whether her actions are right is to take on more guilt than she can bear.
You think back to Dorothea – the other Dorothea – and what she said once, about whether putting down rebels is really part of the churches' teachings. You don't find the passion in you that you would need to rush to the defense of 'your' side. You see how this might be seen, from a certain point of view, as a system that can lead to situations like Catherine's -
Even if you don't suppose malice where simple failure seems enough to you.
But you do see incompetence; Catherine's suspicion that Christophe was only being used, the tacit implication that he was a scapegoat… it reminds you so much of what was later done with Lonato, or the Western Church, indiscriminate purges where there should have been investigations to uncover the patterns behind the crimes, find the ones pulling the strings in the back – How come that Edelgard and Hubert were able to uncover Shambhalla's location in just five years, when Rhea had thousands of years in which she did little but cut off the heads of the hydra?
You wonder if you're being selfish, tinged by your own lingering disappointment at something that now never happened… but the one you blame isn't necessarily Catherine.
You feel sorry for her, because you know how it is to put your faith in someone who disappoints you. (You're not sure, at that moment, if you mean the other world's Edelgard or Rhea)
You don't so much see slavish devotion as you see yourself, and what you have known of ignorance – especially now that you've seen how much the people of Faerghus depend on their beliefs, how much their traditions pervade their society.
Catherine was raised to trust Rhea above all, no, more than that, she idealized her from a young age, owed her her life – sometimes you get the impression that she even has a bit of a crush on her, though nothing ever came of it. When she learned of Christophe's involvement, she was torn, and turned to someone she had been taught to trust, just as Ashe was turning to you now. If the person she had come to had been anyone other than Rhea, Catherine's life could have been very very different.
She would not be tormented by this guilt every day.
At this point you do not seriously consider the possibility that the church was in any way involved with the tragedy, but you're disturbed by how even Catherine seems willing to excuse the casting of scapegoats to "keep the order." You know very well by now that Faerghus has not exactly been orderly these last years. You've seen how they all were willing to pretty much follow Dimitri off a cliff if you had not been the one to confront him.
Certainly, loyalty is a grand thing, but there must be limits…
Still. You were told that the rebels Christophe was involved with did supposedly have plans to assassinate Rhea. So even if she didn't go about it in the best way, she was just protecting herself, right?
But its enough. Enough for you to remember Edelgard's speeches and proclamations, Hubert calling you a puppet of the goddess, the things they had said, about the church's supposed corruption and tyranny, the many accusations that Seteth had dismissed as propaganda. He, too, had observed that Edelgard's soldiers seemed strangely motivated to have been simply sent out by the empire's greedy corrupt lords. Weren't they really just like Lonato or Christophe? Manipulated as they might be, did they not have legitimate grievances?
You realize that you know very little about this organization that you're about to wind up as the leader of for the second time in a row. You still think that Edelgard is putting out twisted bad-faith accusations, but you can no longer dismiss them as baseless either…
The Church might have had its flaws, this world, as it was, wasn't perfect, but that didn't justify tearing it all down, and killing hundreds in the process, right?
Even an imperfect world was worth saving. Even an imperfect world gave you no right to destroy it.
You're sure that's what Dimitri would think. There's no need to even ask him, even the question would probably make him mad – but you're really no different than him, at least in this one respect:
Once, good and evil seemed obvious, but now you're confused.
...
Claude has some nerve, to ask you to cooperate after your last meeting took place on a battlefield.
Didn't you kill some of his allies? His classmates?
If he wasn't meaning to double-cross him, that would be quite cold of him, too. You wonder if he's taken in Rafael's little sister like he thought he would. Or does he really care only about winning?
Many of your allies don't trust him, Ingrid least of all.
You're not sure how you would have decided, but you support Dimitri in fully taking charge, and what he wants is.. well, to be honest, back in your mercenary days you would have called this 'walking into a trap'. Those who didn't know Dimitri back at the academy remark that he is greatly changed.
But greater is the change in you, because you agree to this. Long he remained neutral, but Claude has now antagonized the empire so he's the enemy of your enemy.
It might not feel good to set out to save your former foe, but it was the most constructive course of action, something you would both benefit from. It's in Claude's own interest to play along, and he expects you to come because it benefits your faction.
You know how Dimitri thinks of it of course – for him it's a matter of principle to help those in need. That you stand to gain something is practically a negative, but Dimitri has grown to the point that he will not hurt himself for the sake of claiming 'purity'.
You think of the young prince who chased after a young mischievous Claude, mistaking his obvious flight for a distraction maneuver. He's no longer that naive boy, so you have faith in his decision. After all, he's proven your belief in him right beyond all your expectations.
And he does it again. Against all odds, what you find in Derdriu is without doubt an ally. You don't doubt that he's pursuing some objective of his own, but it aligns with yours. He wants to get at the empire's regent.
But his offer of cooperation seems genuine. He really asked you for help though he had all the reasons to begrudge you, simply because it was his best bet at saving his people. You're not sure Dimitri would have done that, honestly. He seeks peace wherever he can – that's why he reached out to build a bridge, putting himself at risk to win Claude's friendship, something Claude himself claims he would not have done if the roles were reversed – but he would not compromise on his principles of switch friend and foe at his convenience. Claude is, without doubt, a very different sort of person than Dimitri is, and you can't make heads or tails of him before you're forced to gear up for battle.
He seemed to have his own reasons to target the empire's regent – that man who's been so clearly messing with Dimitri, playing at being his uncle while planning this deluge of war all the while.
He made your hairs stand on end from the very beginning.
Even when you first saw him speaking with Dimitri, something about him unnerved you, and you felt the urge to grab Dimitri and take him far, far away from that poisonous tongue – back then you had no rational explanation to justify such action, but now you have your own suspicions.
It is here that Dimitri surprises you, and you think back of that time you saw him picking through the library at night. You realize that he's been done, all the time Dedue alerted you that the prince was sneaking through the library in the night -
He was never quite as naive as you thought, nor as defenseless as it seemed. He was onto him all along, so close to getting the dirt on the true culprit before Edelgard's actions sidetracked everything.
Now he can finally demand answers – but he fails to take the bait, he no longer allows Arundel to use their supposed kinship to pull at his feelings.
All things considered, you're very proud of Dimitri – even if the operation doesn't end up turning up very much. Both Dimitri and Claude turn up empty-handed.
Arundel proves too strong and too stubborn to be captured alive, and you get nothing out of him – that is, Claude and Dimitri don't, because they don't know what you do.
They haven't lived through all this once before, or seen what you've seen.
Dimitri would never consent to having an enemy's body defiled and Claude knows better than to suggest an autopsy. But you, for your part, can definitely guess at what it would reveal. This dark magic, and especially the turn of his words are far too familiar.
That was definitely an Agarthan. A slitherer, as Hubert might say.
You even suspect which one, it comes back to you now, for twice you lived through it, what Edelgard said about 'giving her uncle the signal', and who showed up then in order to plunge you down that ravine – Thales. Your father's killer, as surely as Kronya was. Dimitri wasn't the only one to attain long-outstanding justice today.
Perhaps Claude was onto him, too. You'll never know. You can't make sense of him. You don't know what he's thinking. You understand just enough to grasp that he played you, read you very well – He expected you to talk sense into Dimitri. He knew you'd take Fhirdiad, and that you'd come to his aid…
Though he downplays this, and says it only looks that way – and then, he starts all this talk about dissolving the alliance, even handing you his relic. You've seen how Dimitri treasures his – how it's a symbol of their family pride! - and you wonder how he can give it away so callously. Later, Lorenz will be outraged that he would end the Alliance's glorious legacy so easily, and you'll try your best to be tactful in reminding him that he too, did switch sides. You don't think that that future he envisioned would have ever come to pass, even without Claude giving the rains to the kingdom, he would never have marched in at the vanguard of the alliance – indeed you know very well that you just spared him from pointless death.
But all of this is later.
Right now, you don't know what to think. You were just beginning to think that Claude might be a heroic person rather than just a scemer, and then he tells you that he's leaving, that ruling the Alliance was only ever a means to an end, a stepping stone or secondary goal, a far cry from Dimitri or even Edelgard who saw their respective realms as the be all end all of their destinies. You can't say that it's a bad think that Claude has a life outside his job, but you can't help but think that he sounds just a little irresponsible, especially compared to Dimitri – is he just washing his hands of the people who believed in him and died for him, or very nearly did?
He was never too decisive to begin with, what with his whole 'neutrality' gig – but you don't feel like you can really pass judgement on him without knowing his reasons, his background…
He doesn't dwell on it, but you do hear him wondering what might've been in you had chosen him.
Clearly, he has esteem for you, the very makeup of his plan shows his regard.
You do wonder what might have been if you chose his house, but it's too late to ponder that now.
Though you lived a whole other life, you now find it hard to imagine a life in which you didn't get to be an honorary Blue Lion, so much have they shaped you. They've really taken you in as one of their number, made you indispensable to them, nay, Dimitri made sure to include you at every step of the way, dragged you to all of their meetings and celebrations.
Dimitri says that you taught him how to live, but just as truly, you might say that he taught you how to feel, and what it's like to belong somewhere.
Still, you think that if you had chosen to walk alongside Claude, you might have gotten to know him better. He seems so in-control, but observant as you are, you catch fleeting glimpses of another side beyond that, more pensive, less certain – He probably has his own long story as well, same
as all the other students.
You wonder wherever it is he is going now.
…
Once back to work, Dimitri wastes no time in overworking himself. You've even had Dedue sending you a concerned note about it.
He wants so, so, so much to make up for what he's done – to better the plight of his people; And one step on the way to that goal is to take back the fortress city of Arianrhod.
But what you find there is not the confirmation for your causes' justices that you were longing for after the situation with Catherine, and expected to find in a renewed confrontation with the enemy, but yet more doubt -
You were already wondering why you hadn't seen them before. What had gone different, when you didn't start out leading the church to begin with… Hanneman and Manuela.
Good-hearted people every bit as much as what you'd thought Ferdinand to be – you are met with them here as your enemies, and more than their magic, it's their words that tear at your heart.
Manuela has wholly discarded the trappings of a healer and comes at you baring the steel fang she wore strapped to her thigh. Always she used to talk to you about how she hated seeing promising young souls breathe their last in her infirmary – and what reason would she have to side with the same group as the Death Knight who had stabbed her once?
Then again, both of them were originally citizens of the empire. Manuela's barbed words to Dimitri sting even if they're no longer quite accurate, for he knows that he has been a beast in the part -
Even he understands why people would side with someone other than him. He can no longer dismiss the fallen foes as followers of pure evil as he once did – no, that veneer of rage was probably a warped means of protecting himself to begin with.
The imperial mages rain destruction down upon you – Hanneman is with you, speaking of his dreams, and how he doesn't mind dying for this 'new' empire, as if it's somehow different from the corrupt, elitist, scheming entity of the past, the ones that he left behind…
You sat in the same staff room for the better time of a year – twice over. The two of them had their quirks, they weren't the most tactful or sensitive, but you can't believe that they would support unilateral conquest. Perhaps Edelgard was using them, like her organization had made use of people like Lonato and the western church, or even the events at Duscur, and if so, that would be truly reprehensible, but – Hanneman was no fool. He left the old Empire. And for all that Manuela could be loopy and irresponsible sometimes, there were moments where you felt that she'd made some very sharp political observations…
Of course, even smart people might be left astray by their heart's allegiance to their home countries… but the reason you knew this so well was because you'd seen the lengths that your own faction had gone to support their rightful prince even when he might not have seemed to merit it, at least not from the view of someone who didn't know him well…
What made them so different from you?
You needed to know, because you did kill them.
You wonder how many more of your former allies you would have to slay.
…
Next on your map is fort Merceus. You have no need for traps or infiltration as you did when you came here with the church's troops only – Dimitri actually had enough soldiers but a head-on assualt.
Mercedes seems oddly apprehensive, but you can't suss out why. She keeps deflecting the discussion towards you – aren't you working too hard? Aren't you taking on too many responsibilities, just because others ask you?
Before you met her and the others, you would honestly not have known what do do at all without your father telling you what the next point on the agenda was.
You're on edge the whole time, waiting for the javelins of light to drop – but they never do, and that perhaps unnerves you most of all. Something's going on here, under the surface, that you still don't quite understand.
Instead of getting saved by the Death Knight's whims, you actually defeat him, and have all the time in the world to take possession of the fortress, all the time in the world for Mercedes' to unclasp the enemy's skull-like mask, revealing the long honey-colored hair of… Jeritza von Hrym? You'd all suspected that, just from finding Manuela in his room, and the timing of his dissapearance – but that's not the name Mercedes calls out while she kneels at his side -
"Emile!"
Emile? Her brother? The one her mother wasn't able to bring with her when he fled her monstrous second husband who only wanted them for their crest? The one she spoke of when she reminisced about the few tolerable bits of her childhood? The one she had sometimes compared to Felix?
That's right. Mercedes was originally from the Empire.
Under circumstances like that, it was not too hard to believe that her once sweet little brother would have grown up to be a twisted person…
You recall that bunch of monastery children who refused to believe that Jeritza could have been a bad guy, mentioning that he had taught them swordplay – some might have said them same about Dimitri if they had seem him how he was none too long ago.
Your victory tastes of Ashes.
You thought the empire was just a bunch of ruthless conquerors, but they seem as convinced of their righteousness as you.
Heck, you thought the Death Knight was just a whimsical madman, but as it would turn out, even he has a sort of tragic backstory behind him.
You keep an eye on the exits and make sure to keep the possibility of evacuation in the back of your mind, but the flying projectiles never come.
You feel this overwhelming heaviness weighing on your back, the dire awareness of how complex this world is and how treacherous its ground is to act upon.
But at least, you've won.
There is next to nothing between your troops and the capital now.
You've got the emperor cornered – very soon, you'll be able to put an end to this conflict and there will be no more bloodshed, and then, hopefully, the peace that comes after will convince you all that it all was worth it.
When you speak about this to Dimitri, he finds it only right that any fighting should be painful lest we forget how valuable each life is and become like to our enemies…
Because, he says, each life is precious – even that of someone like Edelgard.
Even after learning that the woman that would have been their only connection was most likely a traitor, he still considered her his sister.
He said that he wanted to accept her, 'like his people did for her', but what he wishes for might not be what she want…
…
But you know how Dimitri is. Of course he wants to talk to her. Even he thinks it a fool's errand. A matter of principle. Felix might once have called it ego.
Ultimately, Dimitri doesn't like conflict, the feeling that he has to detach himself from his human compassion… even less so now that he knows fully how much that can be a temptation for him.
He's willing to have peace with anyone who's willing to have peace with him – that worked with Claude, because he was willing to buy peace at any price he could stomach.
Edelgard, however, is a different matter…
Still, standing there before Dimitri, looking into his earnest blue eye, it's hard not to get swept up in his urgency of feeling.
His heart is so full of it that it's contagious.
He must be thinking of this little girl he knew long ago – you're thinking of the young woman you used to have tea with, the one you thought you knew, the one you used to believe in -
You don't even spend a secong wondering which answer to pick.
You're sure she'll agree to speak with you.
You sure she can't want this waste…
You counsel Dimitri to treat with her.
...
Dimitri tells you that he wants to understand why she did this, what drives her forward, what her lilac eyes believe in.
He's serious about it, as surely as he knows how good intentions can drive you to uglyness.
But the answer to those questions might have been a whole lot closer than Enbarr all along.
You remember Petra talking about that pamphlet she got sent, complete with a letter asking her to join up.
There had been many papers like that, scattered everywhere. You don't know how her copyist got them all to look so similar to each other, or how she even produced such a large amount in secret.
You saw some when Seteth ordered you to gather them all up and dispose of them but back then you didn't pay it any mind – you were told she was just claiming whatever was convenient to her, slandering a force for good.
This time around Dimitri ordered them all burnt and forbade anyone to look at them, the very sight of him enraged him back when he considered Edelgard to be evil made flesh.
Now of course he knew that the world was more complex, not all evil had the same root even if it aligned – there had been Arundel, there had been Patricia, the Kingdom's own corrupt nobles, and only then there was Edelgard.
In the end it was Sylvain of all people who turned out to have a stray copy. He always was a lot more intellectual than he thought, too cynical to believe much of its promises but just cynical enough to believe many of the accusations.
You understand right away why he held on to the paper - his thoughts on the events in Duscur certainly proved him to be one who looked beyond the surface and the common wisdom when it came to politics, you could also see this in his attempts to educate himself about sreng. But you'd also heard him speaking with real fear of what might happen if the church pocketed the relic that his family had relied upon -
And this text was full of horror stories regarding the wrongdoings of the church, overreach corruption, abuse of power, cover-ups not unlike what happened to Christophe… but were they supposed to believe this from one who had herself conspired with the enemy and deceived them all? Wouldn't she just claim whatever was convenient and got her what she want? It's the talk about what she wants that gives you pause, and brings you all the way back to that conversation long ago, when she won your respect as a visionary of sorts – a world without crests… No wonder Sylvain couldn't throw away the paper. Dimitri had certainly acknowledged that there was overreach, arrogance and obsession, but he said also that the nobility and their power were necessary to keep the order. Heck, he probably said this thinking of his friend, knowing how much the Lance of Ruin had contributed to holding the northern march.
If Edelgard was going to claim that everyone else was just fine with the status quo she was certainly talking out of her ass. So the difference between them would have been in the means of accomplishing that – There was no need for war, said the King, no need to tear down cherisched traditions that have existed for a long time and for good reason – instead what's needed is that the ones at the top do their job as intended. That the nobles should actually be noble, that they should actually protect and serve their subjects not reign capriciously. The world should not be torn down, but restored to its rightful path, by the rightful king, basically. You can certainly see Dimitri being such a virtuous ruler – Lorenz probably believes this too, that's why he joined your side so easily.
Edelgard had supporters, too. Many of them. Brave, passionate, death-defying – in a sense, what they think is much much more important than what she thinks.
All along you had opposed her because, as Flayn put it, the people certainly didn't want to have their lives upended and spent for some abstract ideology. Because, as Dimitri said, she was tyrant forcing the weak to submit to her strength.
Even if one doubted if she ever truly meant to grant these promises, this here was what her followers had wanted; Nay, didn't you hear that she brought the corrupt nobles to heel even during the last five years?
All along you've been fighting people like Lonato, or Christophe. People who had legitimate gripes with the church. People who want to get rid of the nobility. Who are you to tell them that they should let themselves be ruled over? But you have supporters too. The kingdom and the Alliance had supporters, even when you stayed out of the fighting and stuck to the church.
Perhaps it's simply not so easy to define something like "the will of the people" - they weren't a monolith, there were hundreds of thousands of them… but there ought to be only one right solution.
Even so, no voice from the heavens would come and tell you.
Your father wasn't here, Sothis was gone, and even if you were to save Rhea you were no longer sure if her words should be followed.
You're a warrior. You don't know large-scale politics. You're not sure if you can confidently say which way to do this is actually best.
You didn't use to get why everyone was so obsessed with crests, but that was easy for you to say, seeing that you got a rare legendary one – though you never knew it, never cared.
Still, can you truly say that you have no dog in this fight? You wouldn't be in your current position if you couldn't wield the sword of the creator. Dimitri's the Prince because his father's older brother had no crest. By all accounts that uncle of his was a useless man but what's to say that he wasn't like Miklan? That he simply turned out that way because of how he was treated.
It's not like simply handing the crown to the eldest child was that much more logical than doing it based on crests. At least crests had actually something to do with ones' fighting prowess unlike birth order, but you doubt that you'd see people being thrown away left in right for being a younger sibling -
Sylvain probably put it best when he said that only the aftermath would decide which of them had been in the right, when the victors put down the history books.
As you rack over your brains over that paper in preparation for the parlay, it starts to make way too much sense in the dim candle light. Your eyes ache in the dusty darkness, and at least you admit to yourself what you'd been denying for a very long time… perhaps Dimitri wasn't the only one who had rejected those who betrayed him because he feared what he might do if he allowed himself to feel his feelings in full – strange that this would ever be a concern that you of all people would have to worry about. Maybe all this time you have focussed so much on Dimitri's problems in order to avoid your own doubts and your own growing uncertainties.
But now that Dimitri himself had posed the question of whether Edelgard could be righteous… now that you've allowed yourself to consider it, now that he, sincere as ever and so full of feeling, had openly bared the source of his doubts to his friends like Edelgard never could have, you've run out of places you can hide from this.
Dimitri isn't the only one. You… liked her, once. She was special to you. You felt an affinity to her. You know it wasn't an illusion, just like you know that she's most definitely going to show up to that damn parlay.
You didn't want to admit that you felt that you had something in common with her – that you liked a 'demon' like her, an enemy of everything. With the kingdom people you felt like you really belonged – just you, Byleth, not the Vessel of the goddess – but there's still the side of you that is different, the one that got you mistaken for a cold, heartless sort of person at first.
All the times Edelgard said she lamented making a foe out of someone who was so similar to her, someone who could have understood her… you felt that. You felt that as much as she did.
You don't want to destroy her any more than Dimitri does.
She's not a demon at all. She never was. You can't believe it, no matter what she is or how she came to be. Sometime long ago, she must have been an innocent girl that Dimitri played with – just like Jeritza used to be.
What you're going to fight now is nothing but a sad, tragic product of this cruel unfair world. A simple destroyer coalesced from all the injustice, a mere consequence; She would not be wreaking
But what can you do? You can't let her rampage through the land like a wildfire.
…
But a wildfire is not what meets you in the field, flanked by only Hubert, who is very not impressed. He probably invited himself along, you can tell that he considers this a waste of time.
The emperor is… unreadable. Calm. Stoic.
Not frenzied or tragic at all but icy and firm.
Her capital is surrounded, yet she doesn't waver, doesn't betray a single sliver of weakness.
She speaks in resolute, practiced words, each inflection deliberately chosen:
She continues to make a terrifying amount of sense –
"It may be hard to believe, but this is the path that leads to the fewest casualties in the end. Don't you see?
The longer we took to revolt, the more victims this crooked world would have claimed. I weighed the victims of war against the victims of the world as it is now, and I chose the former. I believe that I have chosen the best path. The only path.
That is what I have devoted by life and my power to do."
There's no hesitation or uncertainty in her voice at all. She believes this like she believes the sky is blue, like she knows it in her bones. She sounds so much like the person you got to know at the academy – you can't deny now that she existed. Your disciple; Your friend; Your confidant.
You're not facing a greedy tyrant spouting self-serving rationalizations.
You definitely get what she means, because you have experienced a little bit more of this world more.
You think of everyone back at the camp – Sylvain, Mercedes, Dedue, Ingrid… So many of them suffered because of corrupt nobles and obsession with crests.
You can definitely see why her classmates would support that even if most of them were nobles themselves – they never liked the lives they were forced into. And one needn't ask why Dorothea would be interested in that…
But Dimitri isn't having it – this cold, sweeping calculation… and who can really blame him?
You know him well enough now to guess exactly what he must be thinking. It is obvious on his face: Of everyone who died in the war, and why exactly it was their turn to die for the greater good. Why did it have to happen in their lifetimes, ruin their lives in particular. He must be thinking of their unheard screams -
and asking who exactly gave Edelgard the right to decide this.
"Someone has to take action and put a stop to this world's endless, blood-stained history!"
Oh Dimitri… that's a fine thing to believe in, individual action. Personal virtue is admirable and important, but should the order of the land really depend on whether people feel like being virtuous and listening to others?
There were many things Edelgard didn't know, like how Dimitri had spent the last years, how he had seen many things in hidden away in desolate slums, but she was right about one thing: Dimitri was a prince. Not everyone in the slums had Gilbert trying to find them and give them an army.
Wasn't his own father virtuous? Did he not get killed because the larger corrupt system would not let him get away with reform?
Sure it would be nice if everyone could just band together and agree on what do do – but first, they would have had the opportunity to do so, and that was simply not the case. Don't we all make our choices in the context of a system, of circumstances, that can make it costly to be virtuous and easy to get away with corrupt actions? In a setup with blatant loopholes for the abuse of power, someone will always take advantage of it...
The conversation never gets to concrete policy. They get hung up on the abstracts. Dimitri's getting emotional. He's made up his mind.
He no longer blames her for things she didn't know, but he's still very fixed in this idea that he has of her, of someone who is definitely stronger than him.
Someone who got over some childhood crush better than he did, who pushes all feelings aside like things to be stepped on.
But it is Edelgard who is the first to give up on the meeting – like she always thought… like she told you as early as when she introduced herself, it can't be helped if no one understands.
She's determined to walk her path regardless, alone if she has to. To her, that would make no more sense than to keep praying in vain for liberation. – You've seen already that she would keep going even if there were no one else beside her.
Then Dimitri does something that is only right but also a little bit cruel. He won't be denied this last bit of catharsis – you're aware how much he needs it.
That breaks through Edelgard's reserve at last. She stares, seems off-balance for a moment; The glare Hubert shoots them is something to behold.
But without doubt, she does recognize the small blade that Dimitri holds out to her.
She didn't seem to have made the connection before this very moment.
A she smiles, a little bit broken.
Dimitri was probably convinced – and even you almost feared – that she would be petty about this. Say that she never cared to begin with, that it was forever ago, mock his soft open heart.
She is, and does, the exact opposite of that.
She doesn't hide, or deny, that he was important to her, at the time, that knowing him helped her to get through whatever it was that made her refer to herself as someone who was long dead.
She gives belated thanks -
And you wonder, what exactly did they do to her?
What was it that followed her, into those uneasy dreams?
You don't know about that little girl Dimitri used to know, but then again you never knew her – but as for the person you met at the academy, she's still alive, at least no less alive than you can claim to be with your unmoving piece of rock for a heart – and she's turning to leave.
...
There will be no surgical strike this time.
Hardly anyone here has memories of Enbarr – Flayn is just another student this time. The people of Faerghus are tired and worn out, they want to end all of this before their resources are spent.
Dimitri of course insists that there will be no pillaging or needless destruction, but you'll be taking the city in a full-on assault -
You know better than to expect its revival.
After the last time, it's so full of memories, familiar places… and faces that had once stood beside you. They don't know that, but regardless, none of them are happy to fight you.
It tears at your soul.
Caspar, bless his heart, actually believed that you and Edelgard would be able to come to an understanding. But he's from a warrior clan. He knows what awaits him.
Linhard, in his last moments, laments that he had to live in such a dismal time.
Dorothea only sees your being at odds as a confirmation that your side must be in the wrong, that it's the church, and not Edelgard, who is cruelly making you fight.
Then there's Hubert. Hubert's almost a comfort. He doesn't curse and he doesn't cry.
He doesn't buy Dimitri's turnabout one bit – makes sense that someone like him wouldn't put stock in redemption or sudden epiphanies: "Here comes the Savior King with his hands stained red… "
Trying to talk him into standing aside only nets Dimitri the name of silver-tongued liar.
The fight is ugly. You've seen Dimitri hack through enemies like butter, but if he's got one weakness, it's probably magic.
"This is not your path to tread! You fools don't even know what you're doing! Those who know nothing can understand nothing. Ignorant you have lived, and ignorant you shall die!"
You don't die.
Dimitri takes him out in one single hit – it was over the moment he got the mage within the reach of his lance.
Once more, you leave him on the palace stairs.
This time you don't ask the question that you posed to Seteth – You know that Dimitri doesn't want to kill Edelgard any more than you do, but you also know beyond doubt that he could never walk the same path.
The captain of the palace guards in a surprise – So much, even Shamir hesitates to loose the arrow she'd already nocked without thinking: "I cannot bring myself to kill you... You're a princess of Brigid. A hostage of the Empire."
"That was the truth in the past, but it is a different truth now. I am...the will of the emperor!"
How differently the winds of fate have tossed her about this time. Edelgard's on the defensive. There is nothing more to be gained from allying with her. Petra could probably have left if she wanted – but it seemed that she, too, had become a true believer this time around.
She had no reason to want anything to do with the old regime, and you've seen that she very much has the courage to stand up against it, if that's what she thought she must be doing.
But Edelgard had called her operation a 'revolt'.
She doesn't hold back either. She uses every dirty trick she can pull off so as to have a chance against at you, and by sheer determination, she manages to keep you a good while, before she was doomed to breathe her last on foreign soil.
None of your companions have any context for the dark mages that jump out of the woodwoorks as you proceed deeper inside, or for the paroles they shout, though you have seen their like before.
It wouldn't hurt to thin their numbers.
…
Not long ago, Dimitri had said something about how they must respond if it was the emperor's wish to go down fighting, as if he were doing her a favor.
But as soon as he sights her, all he has left is disgust.
Is that what all the research on demonic beasts was meant for?
But… how? Why?
This never happened last time. Was that down to what meager influence you had?
These attacks just keep coming, incredibly fast, straight through the walls, time and space and blackest magic wrapped around withered black carapace.
Red lights glint in pools of black - and of course she has wings.
Why would she want an existence like that, from which she had stripped away all meaning?
Her body, her mind, her heart, her very soul – she had jettisoned it all, fading like a footprint on the beach.
Except that she made straight for Dimitri, the commander, the one whose death would end this, as if you weren't even reflected in her eyes. The chain of your sword intercept her path, and then…
"Facing you, I grow weak..."
That doesn't even sound like a girl's voice anymore, or a human voice.
It pierces you to your dephts.
Even like this. Even like this-
You stand frozen in the headlights longer than she does. Were it not for Dimitri's timely intervention, she would have skewered you with her claw.
Though she might have dispensed with everything else, she still has will. And that, she holds on to to the end, even when everything else had crumbled away all around her.
…
You were never anything other than alarmed when you noticed that razor-thin smile on her lips.
Who knows how coherent she really was, if she missed Dimitri's neck.
He just… reacted, as one might expect from a lifetime of fighting.
Your response might have been the same.
There's nothing more you can do here, so you leave.
Of course you're tempted to look back, but when you notice Dimitri as much as beginning to do the same, you're quick to grab his hand and get him out of here.
The last thing he needs is one more ghost haunting him. Let the undertakers deal with that mess.
At least you can count on Dimitri to make sure that she gets properly buried this time around.
With him to look out for, you can't afford to look back.
…
You wait for that letter.
Like the javelins of light, it never arrives.
You don't find any more dark mages in the palace, not since you've struck down their leader.
They must have discarded their broken tool once she ceased to be of use to them.
How typical of those bastards!
Dimitri sets about evacuating the remaining citizens and establishing a chain of command throughout the large territories that have now somehow fallen into his lap.
Still no letter.
You know their hideout was somewhere in Goneril territory, but you doubt that you could find it by memory.
Rhea's found at some point, severely weakened as usual, but alive. As there is still no letter to be found, she does not go about exerting herself. She seems satisfied to yield her position to you and settle down somewhere quiet to recuperate. The place she chooses are the ruins of Zanado. Catherine goes with her. Last time, she was naturally upset over Rhea's death, but then she marched off to marry Shamir and become something of a local folk hero, making a life of her own.
Now she remains in the arrangement that had thus far brought out all the worst in her. She reminds you of the you from the previous world.
But it's what she wants, isn't it?
You don't expect that you'll be visiting Rhea strictly more often than what is expected of you.
Dimitri prepares for his coronation. He insists that you officiate and it takes all of the former blue lion house to convince Gilbert to accept to participate as his shieldbearer, but it works out.
Gilbert… no, Gustave actually offers to pledge his services to you, in case you ever wanted your own right-hand man, you suppose. You could probably use one as archbishop. You'll need one when the letter comes.
Time passes. You scour the church archives for evidence of corruption but nothing much remains in terms of evidence. Even so you make sure to get yourself new Cardinals.
Dimitri, as expected, turns out to be a great king. The people love him, and why wouldn't they? He's a likeable figure, noble but never condescending, very empathetic, always an open ear for the little guy… the fervor about him already portents that he will be remembered for the ages right along ancestors such as Loog or Blaiddyd himself, if not held to be greater than them. He's viewed as a bringer of peace, and you are getting called the 'Guardian of Order'.
It helps that he is very motivated by his past failures. You'll have to conspire with Dedue, Ingrid, Sylvain and Felix to make sure he takes a nap once in a while.
He couldn't wait to set to work, and just like he always hoped to, he ends up doing quite a bit for the poor and the downtrodden. The rights of minorities, too, were always an issue that had been dear to his heart. Tapestries show him playing with little duscur children – and look at that! He even got you on there, with your great big archbishop collars, since he argued that he couldn't have done it without you. Somehow that feels much better than having the whole mural to yourself.
But of course Dimitri always saw himself as a servant of the people, and his reforms certainly reflect that. Fodlan becomes what later historians might have termed a 'constitutional monarchy'.
Sylvain made peace with Sreng, and on top of that, there's some Prince Khalid from Almyra suing for peace and asking to bring a delegation.
All in all, it seems like a golden age is just around the corner for Fodlan and the world.
There can be no doubt that this is a much better outcome than the last time, unless you were the sort to insist on wearing a crown – which you aren't. You've got more than enough on your plate with the archbishop job, and here you thought being a professor was a lot of work.
Many lives were lost, but compared to the mutual annihilation of the last time, it's very much a bargain – Both Faerghus and the Alliance took casualties in the war, especially the former, but they weren't utterly destroyed. The Alliance civilians would have been nearly unscathed as only Derdriu saw any direct fighting, even if many of their soldiers were lost at Gronder.
The Kingdom had suffered much, but it had been rebuilt greater and better.
You don't know where he is, but this time you know for sure that Claude lives. He's probably still scheming his schemes somewhere out there, doing whatever being the Sovereign Duke got in the way of. And Dimitri lives! Dedue lives, and all of their classmates, and hey, even Lorenz.
Besides, Dimitri had not just reestablished the order in Fodlan, he had improved it, made it fairer -
And you get to actually be part of it, not a bargain basement standin for Sothis or Rhea.
There's only one problem: There's still no letter, and at this point you're beginning to consider that it will never arrive. Hell if you know what Hubert might have been thinking, it came out of the left field even the last time.
You've lost people you cared about, so you would not say that everything is perfect, but it's good enough: As far as it concerns the world directly around you, your immediate surroundings, the people you personally know, everything is good.
It's not just Dimitri and the other Blue Lion students who got to live – Even Gilbert, and Judith, and Rhea, whom you don't want much to do with but don't wish any evil upon either. Since he wasn't holding down Faerghus this time (since you liberated it) it's even possible that Caspar's father might be alive.
If you had chosen Dimitri's house the first time around, you didn't think that going back to the beginning would ever have occurred to you, except perhaps to see if you could somehow save some of the other students – Maybe you could try to recruit some of them into the Blue Lion house? Or better yet, extent the invitation for the class reunion to all of them.
You didn't expect Edelgard or Hubert to show up, but as for everyone else… you already knew that the other Eagles might do it. They did back when you chose their house!
But then what about the remaining Agarthans? Had you known nothing about them, this story would have looked very complete, like something straight out of a heraldic tale – the heroic rightful king had fought off the evil conqueror and peace was restored. But all this time, other forces had been pulling the strings in the background.
You had certainly broken their networks of contacts, disrupted their plans, thinned their numbers and killed many of their leaders, but there was still a whole town's worth of them out there – and they had lurked in the shadows for centuries. This certainly wasn't the first such scheme they'd ever hatched. There was no way that this was anything other to them than a mere setback.
It was then that you began to understand the impossible decision that was being asked of you.
You had a choice between a scenario in which the world as you knew it would be largely reduced to rubble in exchange for vanquishing the long-term threat, and another where most of the people you had grown close to and knew by name could live in peace and prosperity, but at the cost of leaving the bigger picture unresolved.
Fodlan would have peace while Dimitri reigned, and most likely, during the rule of his immediate descendants as well, but by then, their enemies might have regrouped, and there would be no guarantee that this whole twisted game wouldn't start up right from the beginning, coming back to plague future generations…
Clearly this couldn't be it. There had to be a third option somewhere.
If only you'd have gone down this path first, you would never have seen the cracks in your understanding of this world, and you would have been very happy here. You might have lived like a normal person, maybe even married, insofar as your duties as archbishop would leave you the time for it.
But now, the knowledge burned at the back of your mind – knowledge only you had.
Did that not make it your responsibility?
…
"Why does this still trouble you so? Have we not removed all of Cornelia's former accomplices?"
"Yes but there's got to be more of them. The one who passed as Thomas was sent in from an Alliance territory..."
"Are you sure that you're not neglecting your duties as archbishop over this?"
"Keeping the people of Fodlan safe is part of my duties… they were scheming to have you killed, you know. Like your father before you. Don't you think we should investigate more? Don't you want to know about that business with your stepmother-"
"It's strange to hear you say that, professor. You were the one who told me not to get hung up on old grudges and obsessions when I should be focused on ruling my kingdom."
You know very well why he's saying this. You know how difficult it was to him to get to a point where he could live with not knowing just so he could function. To push him further seems in bast taste – but in the end, he's the one who can't let the matter rest:
"Assuming that you did discover them, somewhere in a hidden hideout. What would happen then? Wouldn't they respond to that? Wouldn't that just bring war across Fodlan once again, so soon after we've just recovered from the last one?"
"They'll do that anyway if they resurface."
"If they resurface, you and I will rise to meet them with our full strength."
"If we still live, you mean. If we're not old and grey by then. Shouldn't we want to take care of this while the ball is in our court rather than to keep kicking down the can to the future?"
"I think that, above all, our role is to preserve the peace we have right now instead of jeopardizing the safety of our subjects for some hypothetical future – We might not be there, but others will. Just because our enemies could return, that does not mean that we'll be successful. We'll just have to keep having faith in the people, now, and in the future."
"You've matured." you say, with a smile, because it's true. He's technically older than you now, isn't he?
Dimitri is a good ruler, besides, he knows his limits now. When you've recognized them, the best you can do is focus on what you can do inside the sphere of your influence and accept what lies outside.
But you couldn't accept it. You had no right to claim that Shambhalla was outside your sphere of influence, because it wasn't. You had laid waste to it once before and freed Fodlan from it's threat forevermore. Not because it was your 'divine mission' or because you weren't allowed a life of your own, but because the Agarthans were dangerous. There's no way you could let them go unchecked, if such a thing was within your power.
The moment you conceive of that thought, you know that Dimitri would never forgive you, if you were to sacrifice this peaceful, orderly world as it is now where all his friends have their dreams realized and his family's legacy continued, all of it for the future or some better way or further knowledge that might or may not exist.
He would think you little better than Edelgard – Cold hearted and calculating, just a tyrant with power, one of the strong, forcing your decision on others because you have that power, Ashen Demon indeed. You can't say he would be wrong. Who put you in charge? Who are you to decide?
The chosen of the goddess? You never truly believed that the first time around.
Dimitri would count himself betrayed, and even if he did not remember this, you would always know, every single time you spoke to him. You weren't even sure if you would truly be able to return to this outcome, if you did finally decide that it was the best you could get.
But the threat of Shambhalla and your memories of their evils burn in your mind… Remire, your father's death, even the massacre that claimed Dimitri's own parents.
If you acted, you might be judged guilty, but if you didn't, if you could have stopped their future evils but refused, did that not make it your responsibility as well?
As somebody once told you:
"Once you realize what you are capable of, there is no turning back."
Oh, but screw it. Duty be damned, you actually care about Dimitri and all your former students a lot more than you do about some possible future you would never seen. Maybe you could have made this decision without batting an eyelash before you came to Garreg Mach, but now -
Dimitri, sitting across from you, notices the change in your eyes long enough to look concerned, but he thinks of worry long before he would ever consider suspicion: "Professor?"
The frozen image of his soft, sincere face singes itself into the back of your eyeballs.
...
Your father probably wasn't expected to be tackled into a hug when he came to wake you up that morning.
Neither did he expect you to weep.
He's quite startled at that, actually, since he was expecting the version of you who had never known regret.
...
So, Claude. He said something about how he wished you had picked his class, and what he might have done then. Get answers, maybe. You'd like some of those yourself, so, you decide to take him up on his bargain. At least you'd find out what his idea for the future is, if it's any better – after all, you still haven't the slightest idea what his deal is. He's the biggest blank on your mental map, insofar as you're aware of, so choosing his house seems like the quickest way to remedy that.
As soon as you can manage, you dry your eyes and go find him.
…..
Congratulations, you have now made it through roughly 85% of this fic's sadness content!
You know that one episode of Star Gate where to escape from the humanoid replicatos they have to doublecross the one nice and innocent one? That's kinda the vibe I was going for at the end, that, or, "Sacrifice Chloe". I wanted all the routes to feel 'important' and like they were crucial experiences for Byleth even if they're not the 'final' outcome. I defs felt the need to acknowledge that AM lets you save the greatest number of named characters that Byleth actually knows even if I personally find the other outcomes (other than SS) better in some regards.
While I'm sorry to have gotten sidetracked I'm kinda glad that I didn't finish this before Cindered Shadows and the revelations from the interview came out, because CS fits quite well into my plan for the narrative. Turns out like El was even righter than I already though she was, especially with the additional revelations from the interviews. Or that's my opinion anyways.