The Lady of Hresvelg

by KendrixTermina

In which I have a whole lot of feelings about that whole business with the credits song that I am hereby trying to process, and Edelgard pines for Byleth in every possible timeline.

6. Heretic

You are the famed warrior who was destined to take over your country at the dawn of a new era, and she is the one who will disrupt the status quo that preceded the upheavals from which you would emerge victorious.

I look to you

Like a red rose

Seeking the sun

No matter where it goes

….

Even on the way to the monastery, your father keeps casting worried glances at you and looking, at any juncture, to make sure of your well-being without making it incredibly obvious in front of a bunch of precious heirs and someone as… challenged in terms of nuance and discretion as Alois is.

You must acknowledge that he has every right to be confused.

The first time around, he'd remarked that he'd never seen you cry at all before -

Best not to think about it.

It seemed like just an observation then, but now, part of you wonders if he was doubting all along if you ever really responded to his love. You used to wander by yourselves, and so you were just you, just another odd duck in a band full of people with various reasons to leave their homes for a life of swinging the sword, but now that you've met more people and spent more time seeing how they respond to you, even reading how he described you in his diary, or knowing how even Dimitri misunderstood you at first -

You used to think that your father always understood you just fine, even explained to others to make allowances for you. But what he did because it was right and fair and the doubts he might secretly have felt are two pairs of shoes. You thought that if you do what people ask of you they can't doubt your intentions. You certainly wouldn't want to think that your father wouldn't know how important he is to you, for all you'd think that that was obvious, but, you're not sure what you failed to do to make this apparent.

He certainly didn't know what to make of you sobbing into his arms as a grown adult when you never even did so as a child, and much less how to parse that you went back to your usual composure so quickly and left the tent straight away as if you were expecting visitors, resolute and silent as if nothing happened.

It's hard enough to conceal the disorientation at finding your body how it used to be, when the divine power was only leaking out bit by bit instead of suffusing its whole substance. Muscle memory be damned, you can't go swinging your ordinary steel blade as if it were the sword of the creator, much less fire off a 'ruptured heaven'. You've got your own hair again, your own eyes – Like the last time, you find that you can't access your full power until you reach the point in time where Sothis originally granted it to you. Some quirk of the space-time continuum perhaps, a sort of failsafe so that you don't get cause and effect muddled beyond what you can untangle.

The upshot is that you almost stumbled when you rushed right out of bed without taking a moment to adjust. Though you suppose that it would ever harder to justify if you suddenly woke up with green hair.

The most you say to explain yourself is some some vague, noncommittal mumbling about how you 'dreamed about a war'. You might have said something like this before, you're not really sure, but you would surely have meant something different then – but you had to answer something, you know he doesn't like it when you pretend to be fine when you aren't. If your remaining time together is bound to be short, the least you can do is make it easy on him, make sue that he knows-

He lets off a little once he gets that answer, it probably makes things make a little more sense in his head. You've described your strange dreams to him before. You couldn't necessarily appreciate how he might be wondering if they had something to do with Rhea's meddling, or what it might mean for you to do something so uncharacteristic right before Alois stumbled upon the two of you and escorted you back to the monastery.

But unfair as it is, you have other things to worry about, like the house leaders. So far, you don't think your slip-up this morning made any difference: They seem as impressed with you as they've ever been, but you more than ever you notice the hints of intensity shining through beneath Dimitri's noble veneer, or the cold, analytic reserve underlying Edelgard's refined politeness.

She's an actual girl again, no carapace, no tendril, no eerie wilowy-fingers or cracked leathery blackness surrounding withered black lips – she's even wearing those ribbons again, there's still hints of youth softening her sharp triangular face.

You don't think it shows on your face very much, but it's hard to look at her, much less at Dimitri, well-groomed, neatly combed, with both of his eyes. You know he's forcing down whatever revulsion he felt at seeing you fight because he doesn't want to treat you differently, because he hopes that doing his best to accept others might make them overlook the taint he feels on his own soul, and you certainly don't want to give him any sort of wrong impression that might make him feel rejected, but how can you face him, when he doesn't know what you did, in that other world when he actually came to trust and accept him?

It's almost a relief that you're supposed to be focusing on Claude now.

Edelgard didn't tell you what she was planning but at the very least she was pretty upfront about trying to recruit you. Claude is certainly the extrovert of the bunch – he's much more approachable than Edelgard, and thoroughly lacks anything like Dimitri's stilted politeness. Even so, his intentions were no less blatant: If anything, he's downright irreverent, even to 'their royal highnesses', outright admitting his plans to rope you into his plans with casual impertinence. Though you suppose it makes sense: The nobles of the Leicester Alliance are pretty proud of their form of government: They bow to no King, but form a commonwealth or republic where all major decisions are voted on by a council of influential nobles, each representing their own region. Claude's future position was to be more like the chairman of a committee than that of an absolute rulers, and it was by no means certain – Even while teaching the other houses, you could not miss that Lorenz definitely had an eye out for his job, and you would soon learn that Hilda's brother was another viable candidate – the individual noble houses had traditional positions, but those could shift over time as the families themselves rose and fell in power – for example, Marianne's father had recently ascended to the highest council of five as his influence and wealth had grown, pushing out a house whose heirs had not possessed crests in generations. Claude's role, if he wished to keep him, would require him to be an actual politician, someone who could sway others with their charm and negotiate alliances to enforce what they want. To an extent, all rulers needed to do this, but Claude would need to be extremely aware of it. He certainly had all the ingredients to be a slimy politician par excellence, especially once he grew up to acquire that serious, masterful presence you'd seen from his older self.

After all, Alliance laws tend to be permissive and allow each of their subsidiary regions a lot of leeway to govern themselves, being designed to promote commerce, trade and manufacturing. As a result, merchants and artisans of plebeian backgrounds had a lot more influence there compared to the other two territories – In Faerghus, the populace was poor and the godess-given social order was absolute, and the Adrestian empire was extremely centralized despite its size, so that the technological advancement that came from its long history and distance from the church had mostly benefited the wealthy capital without touching the outer provinces – indeed, aside from Petra, every single Adrestian student you had gotten to know well was from the capital. The Golden Deer, by contrast, had the most commoners out of any of the houses.

Of course, the talk and the reality were two pairs of shoes: In the end, only the nobles got a vote, which meant that the vast majority of the populace didn't. And of the commoners in your class, most were merchants. Commoners without any money still didn't have very much to say – Leonie was the only genuine village peasant, and she had gone into debt to come here. But still, at least she was here, the only commoner who had got here without any connections. Everyone else was either wealthy, or had connections to nobles, or had sweet-talked nobles into sponsoring them. Dedue was best friends with the prince. Ashe and Dorothea used to be dirt poor, but then one got adopted and the other got famous.

But still, the presence of Ignatz, Rafael and Leonie might at least be proof that some things were at least less worse in the Alliance. That could be a start – maybe, if you gave Claude a poke in the right direction, you could improve on that. At least, it might serve as a template based on which to improve the whole of Fodlan.

The biggest unknown in all this plan remains Claude himself. You've already seen beyond doubt that he's certainly going to be competent when he grows up, even if he looks like a mischievous party boy now. Heck, even his younger self always did have his more thoughtful moments. But is he trustworthy? Responsible? Is he really the sort of person who should be given the reins of Fodlan?

The last thing you want is another Edelgard. Sure, he supported you against the Empire once, but before that, he played nice and neutral for five years. Granted, the Alliance is smaller and more vulnerable… No. You know from your last attempt that this conflict is by no means as clear-cut as you once thought it was. From a pragmatic standpoint, you can see why someone would want to join with a church led by you but not with a roaring rampage of revenge spearheaded by Dimitri at his worst, or even how someone might back the empire without being completely evil, for example if they had a legitimate gripe with the church. From a more distant standpoint – cold as it may be – Dimitri and Edelgard might look like the heads of two warring factions neither of which looks particularly appealing. If you have your own, smaller holdings to protect, why not sit back as they smash each other's heads in?

But do these times truly call for such indiscriminate slimy methods, the sort of man who would fight you on Tuesday only to ally with you on Friday?

Then again, his actions, inconsistent and self-serving as they might have seemed, had without a doubt saved his people. If that's not what a good leader is supposed to do, then what is?

Still, there was that mysterious secret ambition of his to consider. What could be so grand that it might make ruling a country seem like drivel by comparison?

If there is any way to find out, it would probably involve getting close to him.

So – to the Golden Deer classroom you go.

The whole bunch turns out quite irreverent, not all so much as Claude, but – You're not sure how much they all believe in this institution except as a means to an end. it's a contrast of night-and-day compared to the Blue Lions.

You do take note that Claude makes a point to stress how his classmates are all from distinct backgrounds, each with their own colorful personality – that's a good value, at the core, but, as house leader, he's already that much of a politician: He's trying to cultivate a group identity or a brand image: The Golden Deer (TM). Perhaps it's a way to make up for the national unity that the Alliance itself doesn't quite have – the fact that so many of them are commoners means that they would not have been too involved with politics to begin with – no, even the nobles are all following their own pursuits, the territories themselves are a lot more independent.

You suppose that the Alliance's more decentralized federalism might also have it's downsides, out of the three factions they probably have the least centralized power and might be the least effective at pooling their resources. It's the smallest faction, surrounded on all sides and backed against the mountain range that severs Fodlan from the wilderness beyond – not the faction you would have chosen to begin with if your aim had been to win a war, and yet here you are, betting on a darkhorse.

…

This – This is worse than you feared.

You're not sure what you expected behind Claude's friendly facade, but as soon as you spend five minutes alone with him behind closed doors, the first thing he does is suggest various devious ways to cheat at the mock battle. He listens only out of idle curiosity for your plans, and even then only for so long as they keep working up better than whatever resourceful alternatives he has cooking.

The mask falls real fast, or at least the topmost layer.

You're regretting this much, much quicker than the other two.

He wears a taunting smirk that nothing can seem to wipe off his face while his eyes remain impenetrably analytical; Despite his more expressive front he is, in a way, much more impenetrable than Edelgard. With her it was a question of learning to read her, and that came pretty naturally to you anyways; On the occasions when her feelings did make their way from the depths to the surface, what emerged was often pure and without artifice.

But as for Claude, it's like everything he does is meant to pursue at least five constantly shifting objectives, carefully filtered through many layers of convection, thought you are fairly certain that 'shits and giggles' is always mixed in there with all the other assorted motivations.

Maybe his older self was so masterful that you forgot what a devious little gremlin he used to be.

One thing common to both versions of him is certainly the way they stride around like they own the place. He's certainly not someone who just happened to tumble into a position of leadership.

Still, you suspect you'll be seeing a lot of that impish little grin and that infuriating little gap in his eyebrow.

This persists straight through the battle; He might be listening to your orders for now, but that doesn't mean he can't take a crack at trying to fluster the other house leaders into lowering their guard. "Woo, a real life princess!" "Admit it, your highness, you got a thing for Edelgard~"

You suppose it's that obvious, though really, Claude has no idea.

Still, it mostly doesn't work, Dimitri is too serious to be dragged into any debauchery.

Claude has a lot more luck at getting banter out of Edelgard.

Meanwhile, your attention was on making sure that Lorenz doesn't run ahead on his own like he did every single time that you've been through this same contest with slightly different variations. (You needn't have worried. This time, it's Ferdinand who breaks formation)

The first time you did this, you were actually concerned about doing this right and living up to everyone's expectations. Now you know the drill by heart – it helps that you've got to know every single one of your opponents intimately enough to know all their weaknesses. You worked hard to help them overcome it after all. You feel a little bad about using that knowledge against them, but your plan requires that you keep this job and get in Claude's good graces, and that means you need to win this again. Best not to think about what might happen if you end up having to fight them again. It was bad enough when the greater part of them were relative strangers, but now they've all been your friends and comrades, apart from the ones you're set to know this year.

It's certainly an opportunity to get a feel for this all-new roster of yours. You took four more besides yourself and Claude. Lysithea, Leonie and Lorenz eagerly volunteered themselves, but though you took Hilda and Marianne on the assumption that their inclusion should even out the team, they seem amusingly surprised every time you actually expect them to… do anything. Left to their own devices, they'll just keep "out of the way" and talk. Well, to be honest, it's mostly Hilda talking at Marianne, but you think she means well. Despite her laziness and interest in fashion and gossip she has yet to display the typical symptoms of Mean Girl Syndrome; It seems like she's legitimately looking to befriend the quiet girl. You often saw them standing around together, in the past, or well, rather the future from now, and that's wonderful – you just wish they'd go form a wonderful friendship outside of class.

Still, your strategy works out.

First time around you were sized up with waiting, expectant eyes. Dimitri, for his part, simply did as you ordered – he generally tends to follow authorities, that one. Not Claude. It's been a long while since the last time and it felt even longer than it actually was, but you're still extremely certain that none of the others gave you this much questions and backtalk as you were discussing your tactics. You suppose that as a teacher – insofar as you still think of yourself as one after having been a monarch and an archbishop and whatnot... you should be glad to find yourself to have eager, involved students. But right now, the questions make you sweat to justify your reasoning without resorting to claiming that you've seen the future. Lucky for you, Claude seemed to decide to take a chance on you, or maybe, the chance to observe you.

You sense that you'll have to be careful with that one. He's sharp and he's sure got his eyes on you, moreover, you have no idea how far he should be trusted. But seeing how little gets past him, that might actually incline him to believe that you simply deduced your ideas from what you saw of the other two's performance against the bandits. At least, he buys it for now. You're exceedingly fortunate to have been born with such a natural pokerface.

At the celebration that follow your obligatory win, he seems friendly enough. He makes a point to stress the importance of teamwork – in that sense he's maybe not so different from the others.

Also, apparently, he cooks! Even if the cheese was stolen from the dining hall.

It's a solid life skill, as Claude himself points out when you inquire, but it's not necessarily one you would expect from the heir to a wealthy port city. You might perhaps have expected the preference for lavish spices because of his territory's flourishing trade, but you don't think you've ever tasted them in this sort of combination.

You certainly couldn't picture the other two house leaders serving their whole house a homecooked feast – or being that much for partying in general. The Golden Deer appear to be the resident party animals of Garreg Mach… with a few pointed exceptions. Poor Marianne keeps sticking to her corner or staying close to Hilda, and it seems that all the additional chill everyone else got was deducted from Lysithea's portion. Despite her rather telling touchiness on the subject of her relative youth, she actually seems pretty serious and motivated – you should have no problem with her in your class and she'll probably be a joy to instruct, but… there's almost something hectic or urgent to her desire to prove herself, enough to make you wonder whether there might be a deeper reason beyond a simple interest in academics or a perceived need to compensate for her youth-

Then there's Leonie. She seems laid-back enough in the company of your classmates but unfortunately for you, you seem to be the main exception to that.

Lorenz, Rafael and Hilda are having a heck of a time though, eah in their own ways, and Ignatz at least finds the togetherness comforting, though he seems a little shy and uncertain still – that one will probably need some friendly nudging. Marianne is shaping up to be another obvious problem child. She seems a bit overwhelmed with life in general, whether it's maintaining her room or even doing her hair. You don't get the impression that she's very used to being around people. There's clearly a sort of backstory here as well.

Both her and Lysithea present evident unsolved mysteries, as if Claude wasn't enough…

As soon as the others have cleared out of the room he seems to want to cut a deal or, at least made sure he's asked to help you out and nicely do his part as house leader.

One moment, the smooth charming party boy makes the smirkey gremlin look like an illusion, the next, he shows up again, subtly inviting you to be his partner in crime.

After seeing him with the others you don't even think it's necessarily fake, or, all facade, but – it's method acting in which his actual personality is helpfully employed. It's probably not that he doesn't actually want to be friends with you, but that's not all he wants, and he knows that you know it. You can never quite shake the feeling that you're being deliberately disarmed and constantly analyzed, like he's subtly letting you know things here and there and observing how you respond.

Even when you have no reason to doubt his words you're left wondering why he's telling them to you. You can see why others would mistrust him. Having seen his deeds in the future you're inclined to think that he's probably not a bad person, but even still, he's someone with a certain intelligence and excellent survival instincts; you simply know that you'd do well to remember that, aware that, in a pinch, he probably wouldn't hesitate to use them.

He says one interesting thing, intriguing both in itself and as the first possibly clue to the mystery behind him – something about how he didn't necessarily grow up in the lap of luxury, and how you got that in common – at very least, he appreciates having an instructor who's had some actual practical life experience out on the street. That speaks for him, but - Strange claim, for the grandson of a Duke. For all you know, he might be making this up to make himself seem more similar to you, to get you to trust him.

...

In any possible situation, the first thing Claude ever does is start thinking.

What are your enemies after? What's the matter with the relics? If the rock around it is rather dull-colored, why is it called the 'red canyon'?

You understand why some might think him callous. When you go put down Lonato's rebellion, he seems way more interested in Catherine's famed weapon and shuts down Ignatz' understandable discontentment by referring to the further damage that the rebels might have done, had they been allowed to keep maundering through the countryside.

At first one might suppose him even more unflappable than Edelgard once you came to expect his friendly facade. But his feelings, as you would come to learn, simply set in later. They tend to hit him with some delay; Maybe he simply needs some more time and space to process them, once his whirling mind is no longer occupied by pressing questions or matters of survival.

In those moments, you at times find him surprisingly quiet and thoughtful, pensive even, though you suppose that you've glimpsed some of this from talking with him around the monastery throughout the passing months, and certainly with his older self.

Dubious as his intentions with you might be, he sees no use in denying them. It's almost refreshing to have that out of the way, really. As long as you've been here – and especially since your crest and your ability to wield a legendary relic came to light – people have looked at you and seen power.

Rhea had her own plans for you, Seteth and the others were looking to you to be the church's savior figure, Dimitri feared you, at first (and seeing how you've deserted him out of cold logical calculation, he might have been right to), though he acted friendly out of obligation, and Edelgard of course tried to rope you into whatever she was scheming behind your back.

At least Claude schemes to your face.

You're not sure how much of it as convenient act, or, tactical ingratiating, but at least you kind of know what he thinks when he's being friendly to you. He's very much looking for a partner in crime, yes, but he clearly likes being let in, or whenever he gets anything out of you. You're not sure that It would be safe to say that he wants to be your friend, but he's certainly looking to make you an ally. He's offering to look out for you, to make himself indispensable though useful hints, for all that he's clearly looking to be answered in return. It helps that you're not being singled out like it was with Catherine or Cyril at first – Claude probes just about everyone for information, even his other classmates. It's like the first thing he thinks of when he meets a new person is to figure out a way to extract their secrets, background and personal history.

You're simply no different - As he's under the impression that you're a newcomer and not wrong in suspecting that your upbringing was somewhat sheltered one way that he does that is by offering to show you the ropes around the monastery, though he stops soon once he realizes that you… 'catch on quick' as he explains it. It's not like he could know that you're doing this for the third time now. You suspect that by the time the dance competition comes up he'll have staked out all the good dancers in your class.

If anything it pays to keep him close – astute, seasoned and unattached to conventional notions, he's not the worst guide to the world around you that you could have chosen.

If your goal is to get a broader understanding of what's going on here, choosing him certainly wasn't a mistake.

He tends to make a point to be where there are secrets to be learned so you learn quite a lot of things just by sticking close to him. You find out quite a lot of things about handy, helpful factoids about all of his classmates. You learn that his frequent twirling of his arrows is not just a gestture of overconfidence but an actual exercise to keep the tendons of his hand stretched and limber. You learn that you encounter with the three house leaders was not, as he once put it (quite uncharacteristically) a wink of the heavens, but that he ran your way not just to flee but to get help, having noticed numerous hoof- and bootprints on the road.

You come to partake in his disconcerting pool of knowledge concerning poisons and other means of assassination, though what you find on him, or see him fiddling with never approaches the lethality of the sorts of implements you were wont to find in Hubert's possesion.

As a teacher you would have to commend him, really, for all that he loves partying and mischief he is always learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge. You've been told often that you're adept at acquiring new capabilities but you've only really done what was required of you for particular goals such as teaching your lessons; Claude instead appears driven to master all that he can; In all your time at the monastery, it never occurred to you to wonder why your father is always kept so busy until Claude points it out. In all the time that you've been wielding the sword of the creator, you never heard that legend about how it was once used to split a mountain...

...

You might be beginning to understand somewhat.

You can't yet say that you've uncovered any secrets, this would already have been known to most members of the Alliance already and in and of itself it poses more questions than it answers, but it's a puzzle piece that was certainly missing from your picture of the whole situation:

Turns out that Claude had only recently been recognized as the official heir of house Riegan.

Taking that into account, it's all the more impressive that he had deduced so much information about his classmates when you met him: He could only have met them recently.

It also explains why Lorenz is so goddess darned suspicious of him; It's not just a matter of tact, prejudice or callousness, when you really look at it he's got every reason to be suspicious. He's actually something of a serious politician under all his vanity and as such he must be concerned about his beloved Alliance falling into the hands of a complete nobody stranger who came out of nowhere unexplained. You like Claude but you must admit that his conduct can't have helped matters here – to be fair being faced with that kind of suspicion would probably explain his wariness – but still it looks all too convenient that the previous Duke and his daughter just so happened to 'disappear' just before he turned out like a gift from the heavens just as House Riegan was despairing for lack of heirs. In theory, there shouldn't be a doubt about his identity given that crest of his, but the nature of his blood did little to explain the contents of his head. If you take his devious nature on the one hand, and his obvious interest in his grandfather's relic on the other…

You can see the sort of conclusion Lorenz might have drawn.

But could Claude really be the sort of person who would murder not just his own uncle but an innocent girl his age?

That seems to go much too far, and it's too heavy an accusation to throw around without proof.

But whatever the truth is, he must have come from somewhere.

'Not from the lap of luxury', he tells you. You can't deny that he's far too sharp on the survival skills for a typical noble, not so well versed in protocol, as Lorenz often laments.

Some Riegan's bastard child then, hastily legitimized to avert the crisis of succession?

The way he tells it, he's certainly making himself sound like he's a lot like you: An ordinary average joe just living his life until he suddenly learned of his magical destiny and the meaning behind the strange power he now thinks of as his crest. Maybe even an ordinary village person like Leonie – but he might be telling it this way to draw you in, maybe not even lying but letting you misunderstand however you might want.

It sounds too much like one of these books where some intrepid heroine learns that she was secretly a princess and then got swept up in a life of glamour, luxury and court intrigues.

But wherever he came from, it seems like he left all on his own, to pursue that grand destiny, whatever nebulous goals he has of which the curiosity he actually admits to might not have been the least, and it seems that his parents let him go as long as he agreed to keep their secrets, though he would have been what, sixteen at the time?

He says his parents raised him to be self-reliant – that he certainly is. You've seen plenty of it, the way he struts around like he owns the place, doing whatever he wants, sticking his nose wherever it guides him. You can't help but be impressed. For all his mischievous party boy act he's probably more adult than you in some ways.

When you were his age you never even asked questions. Your destiny found you, practically beating you over the head.

…

You've discovered Marianne's secret! It's got nothing to do with ominous experiments whatsoever.

She's been spotted talking to the monastery cats, her horses and even assorted wildlife like birds.

So that's what her crest does - It's like she's basically one of those princesses in folktales. To think that a crest could have such a profound impact!

It rather makes you wonder just how much yours might have impacted your daily experience in ways you would never have noticed because you never knew anything else.

You're almost tempted to reevaluate Catherine's silly claim that hers somehow attracts bad weather.

When you bring this up in your next conversation, however, she says something that stops you dead in your tracks. Turns out she's spent around the kingdom nobility's many numerous crest bearers and developed a knack for guessing which people have which crests. That, in itself, wouldn't be too preposterous, you've heard from Hanneman that it's possible for a trained individual to hazard a good guess on sight, but what really alarms you is her casual remark about how Lysithea seems to have two.

A scholar would have second-guessed themselves first and ruled out all possible opportunities for error before concluding anything that was so at odds with common knowledge, but Catherine as a more practical, instinct-driven person just comes right out and tells you what her senses are telling her, even if she's never seen another case before: She's pretty certain, though. She's got a crest of Charon herself and has seen very many people in her neck of the woods that had something like a crest of Gloucester. The major variant, too, in the latter case, which would certainly make sense for someone with great magical talent.

You spend the next few lessons trying hard not too stare too conspicously, looking back and forth between Lysithea and Lorenz, trying to see if you too can pick up on this elusive commonality. (All you see is that Lorenz has bought himself a new of those artificial rose pins recently; The new one is a slightly lighter, more orangey shade of red)

When you talk to Linhardt about it in exchange for answering some of his questions, he tells you something about an explosion in Hanneman's lab, presumably when Lysithea would have been tested right upon enrolling. From the looks of it, both of them have been on her case (as well as Marianne's – you better tell them to maybe ease up on her, though you don't think this will be that necessary; They're good people deep down) – neither of them seems to suspect that they've got a second specimen right under their noses, though.

Were it not for that dark inkling in the back of your mind and all those ominous circumstances surrounding the only other case you know of, you might have supposed that this was just a very rare occurrence, the jackpot of the genetic lottery so to speak. To a warrior like yourself or Catherine that wouldn't seem more unusual or inexplicable than Lysithea's extraordinary talent, but your nerdy friends waste no time in explaining to you that this should have been completely impossible due to the way that a crests' presence in the blood tends to work. If two people with different crests have children, their kids might inherit one or the other, but never both. You get told that there are flowers that, when you cross a red with a white one, you get pink flowers, but in other cases, you only ever get white or red at different proportions, and that crests are like that – you're pointed to examples such as Seteth or Flayn who each have different crests, or indeed yourself, who have one different from your father's, not both.

The only way to get two different kinds of flowers on that sort of plant might be something like a graft on a fruit tree, that would meld it to a cutting from a completely different plant, but… Hanneman drifts off when you ask if that might also be applicable to humans and excuses himself for absentmindedly speculating at your face. Still, he seems glad to have been consulted and listened to; Linhardt, too. They might only ever talk about their particular interests, but they still get as sad as everyone else when what they have to say isn't seen as interesting or worthwhile; Probably, they like to be listened to every bit as much as the next person.

That just gives you even more of a guilty conscience about the things you don't dare to tell them yet, especially since Hanneman would probably pleased to know that he's probably not too far oft with his talk about 'grafts'. You remember that bit Alois told you about that time he overheard your father saying that his unusually youthful appearance (for his age) was due to being healed by an infusion of crest-bearing blood. Looking at Rhea having the same crest on the one hand, and her story about how she'd once saved him from the brink as a young man, it is easy to put two and two together. You've never met your paternal grandparents and they are probably long dead, but you wouldn't be surprised if they had no crests at all. Then there's your own case, anomalous as it may be. Having that crest stone implanted could also count as a sort of 'graft'; you don't doubt that this is where your crest came from. Even so, you only have one. Not your father's. Catherine, too, only has one, even though she had also been healed by Rhea – but she gained no additional crest from it since she already had one from birth.

Then again, Hanneman himself admits that given that Lysithea clearly does exist, the theory itself might need some further refining. Maybe it really was just a random stroke of luck. He's got his share of theories about how that might affect her body, but he can't confirm or deny them until he can persuade her to volunteer as his guinea pig. For her sake as well, you leave him a vial of your blood to entertain himself with. You once again thank your lucky stars for your natural poker face when Hanneman idly finds himself wishing he had more actual data points to compare with so that he could more easily tell what's just you and what's actually due to your crest. It doesn't help that the only other confirmed holder of the crest of Flames is only remembered in dubious legends from a thousand years ago.

Poor Hanneman. Your unusual circumstances as being at least partially an artificial homunculus has got to screw up his results even more, and the second specimen he so wishes for is right under his nose, sitting in his classes every other day – not that she could have been accounted as a 'typical' specimen either, but then again, the crest of Flames seems to be an anomaly by default.

But perhaps you've gotten to accustomed to thinking of everything that pertains to that realm of things that only you know as much too separate from the larger world – In truth your snooping has hardly gone unnoticed, and you really should have noticed, Lysithea is one of the sharper tools in the box if there ever was one, and if she had erred, it would be on the side of being too confrontational, so it's not long before she presents you with what she knows you know.

It's true that you had some intention of getting answers out of her – maybe Claude is rubbing out of you – but once you actually speak with her, that quickly slides down the priority list on a cushion of guilt. You have other responsibilities to her, to her growth and her well-being and the direction her career, and she's just so tired about being seen for just about anything other than who she is and who she works hard to be, to be the forest missed for trees such as her age and yes, her crests (plural), tired of seeing anything she ever archives ascribed to factors beyond her control rather than efforts she puts in every day, and if you were ever even the slightest bit counted among that number you have all the more of an obligation to make it up to her and be one person who does not do that for a change. "Talent" is hardly a happy gift if it's supposed to dictate the path of your life for you, if it restricts options rather than expands them. If her path is laid out before her simply because she's "gifted" such a gift would be closer to a curse – but what makes all this even harder in a way, is that she's not like Sylvain, who was content simply to escape the expectations. She actually is very driven to succeed, so much so that it seems like a painful, urgent need which is probably what fuels her relative impatience, abrasiveness and even a certain ruthless edge.

Here's someone else who's got her life more figured out than you despite being much younger, and that even though she's only just past the edge of childhood. But it is precisely that commitment to her path that sets her up to be in the crossfires of all that hated talk about "talent". In

Later you will look back at your conversation and think that you should have suspected that there must have been something more pushing her onward than simply the many expectations heaped on an heir and an only child, but for now, you drop the topic of crests completely and do not pick it up again. Her previous tutors have deemed her to be a natural at offensive magic and decided that this is a path she ought to be pursuing in part because of her magic-enhancing major crest and they were probably right, but you've also heard her mention how she thinks that true enlightenment ought to require a thorough understanding of both reason and faith, quite the sophisticated philosophic opinion even if it comes from a high, youthful voice – you recall also that she was quite pleased when you got her that goddess statuette for her birthday a while back… or was it in another timeline? In any case regardless of your growing doubts toward Rhea and the church you're glad that you let Rhea teach you all about faith magic the last time around if only because you now get to take Lysithea up on her words and offer to get her closer to enlightenment in the way that she would like to pursue it.

...

"The Son of house Aegir is not so easily swayed~"

In your place, another person may have groaned in despair. You for your part simply acknowledge what happen and resolve to try again. This latest recruiting project is shaping up to be a particularly tough nut to crack; It's like you can feel the time ticking away.

You remain sober enough to understand though – since he is heir to one of the empire's most influential families, you can see why he would wish to stick to its designated house.

It's not like he knows that you're trying to save his life.

You simply don't want to watch him die again on that bridge, and that alone was your intention when you brought it up to Claude that you might conspire to get some of the other students to switch class. As it would turn out, he really liked that idea.

And yes, at some point during the ensuing he inevitably broke out the most shit-eating smirk he could manage and implored you to "Go fetch some strong ones so we can get an edge of the other houses", he was probably seconds away rubbing his hands together and breaking out in an evil laugh, but he also ended up saying a whole lot of surprisingly mature things, about how what he liked most of the academy was that it brought people from different backgrounds together. So why should they really stop at the borders of their territories? Bringing others into their fold could only help foster cooperation across Fodlan – and yes, no doubt, Claude's opportunities for networking with powerful future leaders – but he seemed genuinely psyched about the whole 'cross-cultural understanding' part. In a sense, it fit his marketing scheme: Anyone who wants could be a Golden Deer™. Lorenz took a bit of umbrage with that and felt that this made light of the Alliance's unique traditions, but in the end he, too, would not terribly mind some political connections. So the bigshots in your house were definitely on board with your plan.

Sylvain, Linhard and Felix were relatively easy to sway; They like you. They're hardly what would be considered easy to impress, but you happen to be uniquely suited to impressing them, as a mysterious powerful warrior with a rare crest and what not.

At this time in his life Felix was already sort of distancing himself from his former friends and classmates and looking to thread his own path, and you, being the mighty sword fighter that you are, seem like the perfect vehicle for that. Last time around you don't think he regretted staying with the kingdom so you're not sure that you should be encouraging that tendency of his, but it's what he wants, or thinks he wants. After all you wish to keep him from what he would currently consider a senseless death.

Sylvain probably joined to stay with his lifelong friend, whatever he might be saying. Ingrid and Dimitri weren't exactly happy about that and the former made sure to lambast him for ditching his oldest friends just so he could switch to a class with more girls. Sylvain genuinely laughed it off though. He said that simply studying with people from another country didn't mean that he was going to move there, and, being himself, cracked some joke about how, if he were to move, he would most definitely pick Adrestia, because concubines.

"I've heard the current emperor had, like, six of them in total, on top of his actual wife!"

"Wow, then Edelgard must have, like, a ton of little brothers and sisters!" Anette suggested then. "Or maybe not – She never mentioned any."

None of his Dimitri's classmates would have fully understood why he got so mad then, or why he went on to rant about how Emperor Ionius couldn't have loved any of them properly if he lacked the guts to stand with the one he loved. As often, he's seeing things in too simple black and white, but you can't precisely blame him. It's a bit weird to imagine your parents, or parental figures, with someone else. You felt a bit weird too when you started hearing about how your father was with some nun from the monastery during his time here before it began to dawn on you that this nun and your mother were one and the same.

"You better not say this in front of the princess, Your Highness! I think her mother was a concubine."

Yet even Sylvain – no, especially Sylvain – must have understood that the old practice of concubinage had mostly been kept alive by nobles looking to form political alliances, produce plentiful crest babies, or to simply indulge in decadence and use those of lower status like things.

It's not unlikely that somewhere in Adrestia, some individuals are in quite happy, benign multiple-person marriages, but that was probably far from the norm. From what you're told, many people in the kingdom looked at it as a symptom of the empire's godless degeneracy and their estrangement from the church, something that they themselves only knew from stories before the foundation of the kingdom, when the Faerghus region used to be a hotbed for beliefs from pre-imperial times, but once it split off, the church had apparently enforced their beliefs quite thoroughly, so that the Holy Kingdom with its holy knights was now considered a haven of piety or virtue, enough so that Dimitri's response didn't seem out of the ordinary to his friends. Given that you've once helped Dimitri run his country though, you can't say that the kingdom is truly all that different with its brutal repression of its neighbors and insistence on crests and the like – but it's certainly a problem in all of Fodlan.

But that considered, Anette really did point out something interesting there: It is strange that Edelgard doesn't have any siblings (not counting Dimitri). Yeah, she didn't tell you about him, but she did mention her father's wife and many lovers and how he took them for the express purpose of producing many heirs. You would think that would have resulted in at least a couple more babies other than just Edelgard. Edelgard did have the desired crest(s) but it's unlikely that all those other ladies would immediately have given up all their ambitions of producing royal babies and the prestige and influence that would bring to themselves and their families. Perhaps the emperor had trouble conceiving?

It's not like you can go and ask Edelgard. You might have, with the version of her that grew to be your close friend or confidant, but the one here has only known you a few weeks and not spent nearly as much time with you as, say, Claude. She's probably rather peeved that you're looking to poach her house members.

Well, one way or another, Sylvain does end up joining your house despite his friends' protests – and why wouldn't he? As far as he knows, there's nothing more on the line than where exactly he will spend the next year. It's a purely academic decision, heck, you're not even sure he's considering his education so much as his own fun, but why shouldn't he? It's not like he's expecting there to be a war or anything, or that he would have to fight his old friends beyond some friendly competition at the next mock battle.

Given his love of slacking off and partying, he fits right in with the other Deer; At most, he ends up butting heads with Lorenz over who can pick up the most girls or some nonsense like that. Soon you spot him giving pep talks to Marianne or, perhaps not as surprising to you as it might have been to others, actually discussing politics with Claude, something about how to deescalate the situation in Sreng, to which Claude ends up listening quite intently and floating his own ideas here and there. They basically hit it off. Most likely, both of them found it convenient to forge some superficial bond for fun, and then found out that the other had a lot more depth and intelligence than he let on, and that was that.

Similar things could be said for Linhardt. You bet that whenever you're out of earshot, they'll soon start swapping tales about how to sneak in into the monastery's various secret chambers or what peculiar secrets the other students might be hiding (indeed you suspect that part of his reason for joining might have involved a chance to get closer to Marianne's and Lysithea's respective secrets; You'll have to make sure that he doesn't bother them too much, as if Lorenz and Sylvain weren't enough to worry about. ). Even within your earshot you've caught the discussing quite a few things that some might have termed 'blasphemous', like when Claude grilled Linhardt about relics like he usually probes people for information, and realized soon that he had come to the right place: Soon Linhardt was discussing his theories about how the origin of crests might be differently than what is commonly assumed, or that one time he asked Catherine to let him hold Thunderbrand: "You know where the relics come from?"

"The goddess, supposedly?"

"Exactly. So once they hear that, everyone stops thinking about it. No one wonders about what they are, how exactly they work, what their true nature is-"

"Tell me more, friend."

Needless to say, Claude turns out quite pleased with the 'reinforcements' you have procured, or at least, he finds them useful. Though you suppose that it's his nature to try and at least superficially get along with anyone who might prove to be a useful connection later on, the other house leaders included – so, despite your nefarious plot to sway their classmates, you actually end up spending quite a lot of time with them. Claude makes sure to bring you when you can when you're supposedly so popular. You're sure Sothis would tease you about this if she could talk to you right now.

It's not funny to you, to be with those two who, though never in the same world, had each become so important to you, to have them sit across from you, so unfinished and young, regarding you as an interesting stranger, clueless about the guilt that burns within you or the wrath that they might feel if they knew what you do – still, you can't say that you hate it. You realize that, if this goes well, this will be the last time that you'll all spend time together like this as friends.

You know the clock is ticking, though nobody else does – except Edelgard, perhaps.

Did she care at all when she crossed that threshold, did it also crush her to leave all this behind?

No, that's not fair, you know well that she must at least have regretted you, and why not her friends, if they would have stuck to her to the end if not for your influence?

This is not like last time, when you thought her a power-mad traitor. Though she may have been misguided, you can't say in your heart that she's evil. Her methods might be wrong, and what she's planning might be going too far, but she was probably brought to this by desperation, some unknown event you don't know about, some 'death' as she considered it.

You can't bring yourself to avoid her or push her aside. You look at this version of her that's not yet as guilty and you wish that she could stay this way. It's impossible of course, she'd have to want it, too – but while you're both here, why would you not want to linger a while?

Dimitri, too, seems to feel the same, though you're not sure what he thinks about you. He treats you with friendship just out of principle, and takes every defeat you deal him as an opportunity to learn from you. You try to say encouraging things to you, but you do so with the evident grating awareness that it probably won't be enough, that you can't break the ice of change the trajectory of his life with just occasional chitchat.

Sometimes you feel exceedingly sorry for him, in a way you only could after having known him well, because he's just that sincere and really, honestly wants to be friends with the other two leaders, and they simply don't feel the same way. Claude shares his general preference for peace over no peace so he's receptive enough, and Dimitri will take any peace he is given – that's probably why they were able to work things out in that other timeline – but he's probably being played a whole lot more than he realizes. Edelgard is probably quite aware of the politics below the surface, but not Dimitri – he would probably be incensed at the suggestion. It's not that he doesn't have the foresight to expect schemes but he genuinely, thoroughly wants to be friends.

Seeing the three of them happy together like that is heartrendingly bittersweet – but even though you've chosen to go with Claude who very clearly seems to want that same thing, you do not dare to hope that this might continue into the future.

For what it's worth, the other two are fairly cool with your recruiting schemes. Though she's clearly more annoyed than she would like to admit, Edelgard decides to see this an a reminder and an encouragement to make sure she makes her class more appealing. She says she will be useless as a leader unless she gets people to follow her for her own merits, not only because of her titles or where they happened to be born. Dimitri doesn't even put up a fight – ever knightly and sportsmanlike, he cracks half a sad joke about how he would never want to stand in the way of his friends' personal development or choices. His real feelings might have been entirely different matter – at least Felix' desertion must have stung. There's no way that it could have been written off as a whim.

Between all these new 'acquisition', Claude floats some ideas of his own, though they're not exactly what you would expect, but the surprise is largely positive. He doesn't tell you to simply nab the richest, strongest or the more influential ones, but instead presents you with some fairly innocuous choices like Petra or Anette. Now, Anette is certainly a hard worker and Petra has many admirable qualities from strength to positivity to leadership and thoughtfulness but they're still not exactly what you expected. When he overheard your conversation, Sylvain certainly cheered at the prospect of attracting more cute girls, but you doubt that Claude's motivation would be as simple as that.

A common denominator between them seems to be that they're not against devious tactics but still fundamentally honorable. They're not ruthless the way that Hubert, Felix or even Lysithea might be, or the other two house leaders. Indeed, Petra once told you that her preference for 'attacks that are surprising' comes from her preference to choose whatever keeps her allies safe. Is that what Claude values? You've got to give him that: In the last world, he did get his people through the war with a minimal amount o casualties. But in yet another, the first one… well. At the time, you didn't question it. It seemed like the most obvious thing imaginable that anyone who wasn't evil would fight the empire by default. You thought of them as a self-evident enemy.

You heard many considering Claude's neutrality as a spineless self-serving ploy; The more level-headed would describe it as simple self-defense, the more insightful as a ploy to keep the Alliance united, his eventual strike simultaneous with the Kingdom's as taking advantage of an opening or a chance when it finally presented itself.

But now you're not so sure, or, you notice the contradictions that are more evident once you have some very rough idea of the mind behind it: Five years of very defensive play, followed by what was essentially a reckless charge, a desperate attack at two better armed foes which cost his people many soldiers. Sure, he tried to talk Dimitri down then, join forces… but when pressed, he didn't back away. Something doesn't add up. He really must have some other goal, some other ambition.

Behind this was the assumption that the Empire would have gone and bulldozed the Alliance sooner or later anyways if Edelgard wasn't hindered – would she even halt at Fodlan's borders? You had simply bought into the church's view of her as something like a wildfire, discarding all your earlier impressions of her as a fundamentally rational person or rather, distrusting them, since you had been mistaken about her before.

But even evil people have some sort of goal. Even actual ruthless conquerors would pursue something, spoils and bounty maybe – the same is true for good people. Whatever goals you have, good or evil or anything in between, you need resources and steps to archive them.

Edelgard would have specific goals that she is pursuing, a cause that she believes in, just like Seteth or Dimitri. From hearing her at the parlay you could tell she at least truly believed that she was doing what she said he was doing. She had an objective which is, as even Dimitri acknowledged in the end, to remove the rule of the church. It wasn't just a front or rederrick to conceal a lost for power. She wouldn't fight anyone who didn't get in the way of that goal, just because of… logistics. She doesn't have infinite resources.

Five long years she left the Alliance alone. Five long years, when you think of it, Claude's actions almost did more to help than to hinder her. Even just half the alliance's forced would have been a boon to the church – once he did ally with you and send you troops, it allowed for your decisive push into imperial territory in timeline number one. When you think about it, it was Claude who first attacked the empire, and only then did they send their troops to his door.

It looks like a gamble, a desperate one that he lost one time (you're not sure he died, but would crawling away in disgrace after spending an army for some cause they did not understand be so much better?) and won another time – but only because of a second gamble which relied on you and Dimitri bailing him out, and he still had to cut his losses and leave.

He did tell you (and Dimitri) back in Derdriu that his plan probably looked much less haphazard than it actually was, but you wouldn't believe him.

It honestly starts looking rather reckless and irresponsible, downright bratty, especially with him running off and leaving the mess to you afterwards.

Well, all this boils down to might be as simple as the realization that he, too, is only a man, with amazing strengths and tragic weaknesses like anyone else.

It's not like you can ask him – the man who handed you one of the very relics he is chasing now, discarding this whole pursuit (you realize now), doesn't even exist yet – not here.

It certainly seems like he was attempting… something beyond just fighting the empire, but you can hardly asked Claude about a scheme that he hasn't hatched yet.

He's still a boy, you can't tell how he might grow, or decide – you've got to hope that he will tell you what he's doing if you're still at his side by that point.

There was some aim – didn't Ignatz also say something about 'building the future' back when you -

And here he is, all small and innocent, his face is still all round.

Better not to think of that future, it will never come to pass now.

The ulterior motives are fairly blatant when he floats the thought that you might suggest to Seteth that surely his 'sister' would benefit from taking some classes if she's already living near such a formidable institution, he wants a chance to squeeze information from her away from her guardian's watchful eyes. There's no way that you're selling her out, but lucky for Claude, you suspect that he might get his chance anyways once she joins your class – after it happened both of the last two times you're pretty sure now that she'll join you again.

It's hard to think of any questionable motives he might have when he suggests that you recruit Cyril, however. You'd think that they would be diametrically opposed since Cyril often guards a lot of the places that Claude would really really like to sneak into, and for the most part Claude doesn't seem to have much patience for any sort of follower's mindset, but against the odds he seems to have a soft spot for the kid, like he felt responsible somehow. Unexpectedly mature of him really.

He could really just have asked you, but leave it to the 'embodyment of distrust' to make extra sure to present his case and even rope his classmates into it. This is how you learn that Lysithea has apparently been giving him reading lessons. Claude even made sure to have Hilda give you her best googly eyes: "You know what they say about the brutes from behind the mountains, I mean, my family's been fighting them of for ages, but once you get to know him, you'll see that he's not like that at all! I was pretty surprised~"

"Most people tend to surprise you, once you get to know them," Claude says meaningfully, like there's something he's not saying, but then he cracks up The Smirk and flexes his rhetorical prowess on you: Aren't you church personnel`? If he's a ward of the church, aren't you responsible?

"Well, the church did take him in, " reasons Hilda, "...but he does work very hard. Honestly a bit too hard, even if I know how that sounds coming from me. I was shocked to learn that he lived at our family's holdings before, I'd have to have a world with my old man about it to be honest."

Well, her family, you suppose, is in the same boat as Sylvain's, except that you don't catch her reading books about Almyra. It's a bit of a reminder that she is an idle rich girl after all, but once the discrepancies had been brought to her attention and a few enlightening conversations, her natural compassion seemed to have won out.

Claude nods along with her, including, old enough, the 'old man' part.

"Excuse me if I'm missing something here, teach, but if they're making him work, how exactly is it charity, anyways? I mean, you'd think that Rhea would at least be able to get someone to teach him how to read, seeing as she's got a school on the premises, right?"

You'd actually brought this up to Seteth once before, and he agreed – you say this. Claude finds it strange that Seteth would be the one looking out for the kid's personal development when Rhea sees him every day. It would seem to have improved your opinion of Seteth.

Since Cyril clearly wants to keep working you don't have him pulled from such duties entirely, you can sort of understand, seeing as you too have done your own part in the mercenary guild since you could think, or as early as your father would allow. You know what it's like to feel at a loss when asked about life plans you don't have and asking yourself, isn't helping where you can enough?

But you certainly see the difference between that and the leisurely youth and tailored education many of the nobles and merchant kids received, or even your own life where you always had room and board and your father looking out for you.

Maybe right now he doesn't want to do anything else but help out at the monastery, but if he ever changes his mind, he should be able to, and have the means to do it, right? You think you can drop him right into the more practical subjects, but he'll need some extra tutoring before he could even dream of approaching the more theoretical ones. He simply doesn't have the same background knowledge as the others – at last, it would be great if he could read. That would come in handy if he wanted to, say, pursue some administrative position in the church. So you join forces with Lysithea on that one.

Then you start thinking. Cyril is obviously an extreme case in that he's never had any education at all, but he's not the only one who has gaps. Maybe you could talk to Seteth about instituting catch-up classes for students from less privileged backgrounds or something. Seteth seems like he is at least somewhat aware of and sensitive towards the problems brought on by class differences.

"We'd only get platitudes from Rhea, wouldn't we?" he says, sprinkled in amidst a longer speech in which he very much liked the idea and offered to sponsor such a program insofar as he could.

It seems at first like just one of those things he says, where he acts like he doesn't respect or truly care about anything, probably more than is actually the case, but – it sticks in the back of your mind like a fly caught in a spiderweb.

As for Anette and Petra, recruiting them works easier than you expected – Anette is already friends with Hilda and Lysithea and easily motivated by accommodations and academic prospects, as for Petra, Claude winks, smiles and unsubtly dangles the implication of political favors and cooperation before her. Even if that must be tempting for her, she's not the sort to change her plans just because of that. If she didn't actually like you, Claude, or both of your leadership styles, she would probably refuse, but neither would she let potentially displeasing her Imperial hosts keep her back from chances to further political connections or her own personal development.

Ferdinand is still taking a whole lot of you very limited time… but it's not like you could recruit them all, no matter how much you wish you could it's simply not realistic – Hanneman and Manuela are already kind of shooting you looks.

...

You still know nothing about Claude.

Correction: You know a whole lot more about Claude, and his classmates, and the Alliance itself, just not the bits that you want. A mosaic picture of him emerges, but it's still hard to make heads or tails of it without crucial context.

But does the person before you count for nothing?

You know now that he likes Poetry. You saw him arguing about it with Lorenz and discussing some convoluted interpretation to one of Anette's songs. You know he likes to be out in nature and to broaden his horizons – you've seen him sitting outside with Petra or Shamir, asking them questions about their corners of the world. He's certainly an open minded person, yes… but there seems to be something more to that when you go on that mission to scour the port of pirates and he finds it very important to clarify that your opponents are definitely not the Almyran navy.

You've been inside his room, covered in un-finished contraptions and a mess of half-read books. You know he practices regular meditation.

He's definitely got some backstory there, but you're not sure if it's consistent with what he's told him. When you go with Lorenz to mop up some uppity noble (...isn't that that one Turncoat?), he goes full on dont-you-know-who-I-am on the clueless nuisance of a man. He seems unfamiliar with protocol as you know it, but he acts just a bit too imperious to have been living as a commoner until last year… You're pretty sure you heard Hilda mentioning that he told her some funny anecdote about his combat instructor, which sounds not like something a random village boy could afford.

Maybe he did not go straight from his village to Derdriu… who exactly is his father?

At least you're pretty sure now that he definitely didn't assassinate his uncle. That was Lorenz' own father, and he seems to have killed Raphael's parents right along with him – the future bodes ill for the Alliance if its lords go around assassinating each other.

You can barely imagine the relief of the few remaining Riegans when a potential capable heir showed up out of nowhere – or rather, the desperation that must have driven them to back such an unknown dark horse candidate.

Out of the three, Claude's position is somehow the most precarious and the most certain at the same time. Precarious because he has viable rivals whereas his own past is in doubt – and certain because he's already pretty much taken over where Edelgard has to stage a coup and Dimitri was just patiently waiting to turn eighteen only to be upstaged before his butt touched the throne.

Claude is already being whisked away on Alliance business no and then, attending the occasional meeting for his aged grandfather, slowly but surely, expertly inserting himself into the political webs and networks as if he's been doing this all his life.

The Alliance is already as good as in his graft even while he sits here warming his school bench; What a sly, ingenious man.

One day, you find a note from him in the advice box:

"Professor, am I weird?"

You can pretty much picture the soft, uncertain expression he must have worn as he was writing this.

You consider asking him, but -

You think he might be losing patience with you ever since you got your hands on the "mountain breaking sword" he was so interested in. You're not hiding anything from him out of malice. You're way in the dark yourself. You wish you could think of some way to show him this.

...

Claude is not telling you anything new when he brings up the rumors about the relics being haunted by incidents of misfortune.

Knowing what you do about what happened with Sylvain's brothers, having seen it with you own eyes-

It should have been harder to believe if there weren't any such tales.

Yet it never registered before that what you were asked to do was essentially a coverup. Like what Catherine was made to do.

"Tell no one – people would lose faith in the nobles if they knew that one of them turned into a monster."

…

With so many of you sneaking around looking for answers, it's no surprise that some of you might wind up at the library at the same time.

One day, Edelgard is behind you like a looming shadow, just as Claude was about to explain his latest theory to you, and the two house leaders just stare at each other with piercing eyes, two equal mysteries.

You don't know it yet, but you will never quite stop wanting to kick yourself about this missed opportunity. They were so close to telling each other the truth, a hair's breath from joining forces…

But neither of them is like Dimitri, willing to take risks and put himself in a vulnerable position for the sake of mutual understanding.

They had good reasons to be wary. Neither of their lives had given them very many reasons to trust – and you were hardly any better, for you didn't know near enough at this point to fully trust either and vouch for each of them before the other. You couldn't have said if either goal or ambition was desirable… so they part ways with an unsubtle warning about not getting in each other's ways.

You know what Edelgard's planning even if you're still trying to grasp why, but you have no idea about Claude.

He says that it's a selfless dream, that his secrets aren't really anything that special. Clearly, he's still trying to actually recruit you. Still trying to sell you on following him…

Not that Edelgard has given up.

...

You don't know why you even remotely trust her in any kind of sense. You just think you have seen evidence that she is also pursuing these truths, if only for the self-serving motive of getting dirt on her opponent. You approach her one day when almost everyone else is in the cathedral.

You were leaning on the wall in the back behind the rows of seats while everyone else is praying. Claude came with you; He's entertained enough in observing the rites and sermons from the sidelines and making the occasional comment, agreeing with some things and disagreeing with others. But Petra has more to add to this conversation than you do, so before long his attention is focused on her and he seems to forget everything else in the room, absorbed in the finer points of spirituality and philosophy; He's theorizing about how a country's historical circumstances might influence its beliefs. Shamir looks bored. Not far from you, Hubert is smirking to himself; You suspect that if he got to air his thoughts, even Claude would think them crass.

Dedue is keeping his distance even from the others in your small cluster of foreigners and non-believers, which includes many of the Adrestian students. Edelgard is with them, her expression completely unreadable. She couldn't just keep to her room, not when she's supposed to be representing her house and her country – staying away completely would probably have been deemed too much of a slight with that crimson cape hanging of her shoulder; but halfway through, she excuses herself. Hubert does not follow – perhaps he's volunteered to keep an eye on her classmates, or they're simply not planning anything for today.

This is your chance, the only one you might get: Almost all the monastery complex would be very close to deserted now that all its inhabitants were crammed in here for prayer. If you follow her now, the two of you shall have the building complex almost all to your selves.

Still you know better than to tempt fate, and so does she. She stops in her tracks when she notices your steps behind her; You make sure to listen for anyone else's breath before you speak:

"Tell me just one thing. The church is...hiding something, right?"

"The Relics. Investigate them."

That, it appears, is all she can say before she disappears back into the darkness.

...

You make sure to take the time to go fishing with your father whenever you can squeeze it into your schedule.

You might not be able to change what's coming to him but you'll damn well make sure that he knows that you care about him before that happens. At first it kind of seemed to confuse him, but even so he did seem touched, insofar as his usual gruff attitude would reveal that.

When you can, you even bring Leonie and Alois along even if it means that you have to endure them. The three of you end up sitting at the pond, or in the Gardens, or even at Alois' house. His wife ends up commenting on what a cute family you seem to be.

Come father's day you even make sure to contact the two of them so you can all organize some surprise outing, not that any of your modest proposals would ever seem good enough to Leonie. Everything you do is somehow "not enough appreciation".

You're father, for his part, seems pleased that you've taken her under your wing and tells you to get along nicely. That might be the one teaching of his that she didn't seem inclined to listen to.

Then again your father wouldn't know how much harder it can be to deal with her when you're not him… especially if you're you. From what you've seen she's pretty chill with the other Golden Deer, it's you in particular that she seems to have a problem with.

You suppose even you can't be popular with everyone, wanting more than you already have would be greedy.

In some ways you're not too different from Leonie; You're from a common background, you like fishing, you have a sort of pragmatic fighting style, not to mention your similar choice of profession. If you had an annoying younger sister (very annoying), she would probably be just like Leonie – sibling rivalry included. You kind of get her frustration – unlike you, she never found out that she secretly has a rare forgotten power nor did she ever have a priceless relic falling into her hands.

She needn't have worried, though. Your father's more mundane legacy, including his mercenary band, will probably be hers to carry on, while you remain to be swept up by your own lofty destiny.

You won't be permitted to keep lingering in this ordinary world for much longer.

….

You thought you had reached your quota of unforeseen surprises when Claude not only confronted you with an old drawing of… Rhea (not that he would recognize her in that form), but pointed your attention to that bit on her forehead that looks a whole lot like a crest stone.

- All this in a heavy old tome which Seteth promptly confiscates; This is all but an admission. You shouldn't have needed Claude's blunt, outside perspective to realize it:

The church is undeniably hiding things. Curating and manipulating what sort of information is available to the current public.

You feel a fresh sting of disappointment… your feelings are already pretty numbed out when it comes to Rhea, but you trusted Seteth -well, can you really fault him? Surely he's just keeping his own secrets in order to protect himself and his daughter from being targeted.

All in all you are glad that he doesn't push poor Flayn too harshly even when he decides that the two of you should try pressing her – no, it might be precisely because he understands why someone might want to keep certain things private. He's got his own secrets in the end, and his promise to his parents. Also, you've come to realize that for all his show of being a grand trickster, he is simply not all that ruthless. In the last battle he tried to rile up Edelgard with the classic "Look a mouse" maneuver but seemed taken aback when she was genuinely upset by it, which was somewhat out of character for her, come to think of it. There might or might not be a longer story to it, but even without knowing it, Claude didn't laugh at her.

And here's another thing to admire about Claude: Even when new information seems to align with his quest, he maintains an objective look at things.

He changes his tune right away when he suspects that Solon may have wanted you to get suspicious of the church. Claude is certainly a politically savy to his core: His first thought is 'cui bono'? He sure doesn't want to be playing into anybody's traps… come to think of it, the Agarthans appear to have been involved in and supporting several independent rebellions. You assumed that they must have been more connected than you first thought o this common threads, but now you're beginning to think that they're deliberately looking to stir them up – in fact that must have been what Solon had in mind when he leaked those classified material to yourself and Claude. To use him as an agent against the church… is this what happened to Edelgard? Did they feed her false information of fake crimes beyond what the church actually did? Or even of real crimes, but with the clear intention to deceive her into an alliance… Still, she can't have been so deceived as not to know the sorts of things that they were up to. There were demonic beasts in her armies. Even if the church is seriously corrupt, wouldn't she just be driving out the devil with the beelzebub, possibly on false information? Was she just a tool here the whole time?

You can't say. You might not have any right to speak here because you're pretty sure that you were a tool all along.

But the bottom line is the same: There is more than one enemy here. Yourself and Claude are simply finding out in the opposite order. He was already suspicious of the church but only just seems to have learned of the Agarthans (its not like they infiltrated his country or killed his family – he only recently came to Fodlan's political stage), and you always knew of the Agarthans and their affiliation with the empire, but all the while you didn't realize that you'd been working for a very dubious organization all along.

Was the entire conflict that was ostensibly between the Empire and the Kingdom really nothing but a puppet war between Shambhalla and the church?

(If you have to be someone's puppet in the end, Claude is starting to look like the best option at this point...)

…

You dance with Claude at the ball, like you've done it twice before, but this time it's different.

You get now why he'd seek you out as you were standing there all on your own, sticking out like a sore thumb; Maybe it's in part to overcome his own feelings of awkwardness but mostly, he's probably genuine in not wanting you to feel left out since he knows full well what it feels like.

It becomes all the more clear after he follows you to the goddess tower.

He's almost as new to official balls as you are; What he says about how he can put on the trappings, but not change who he is on the inside? You feel that. Even the third time around, you don't exactly feel very much like a prophet or a messiah...

Well. Old habits die hard. You definitely don't believe him that he just so happened to feel tired out by the crowd just as you were about to leave – He was definitely tailing you. Unlike Edelgard or Dimitri, he's most definitely no introvert. On some level he's still kind of telling you what he thinks you want to hear.

But his shields have somewhat lowered – he openly shows you his ambition now, as well as his irreverence toward the Seiros religion, even if he's just sort of letting it slip to observe your reaction. If only he knew just how right he is about that whole bit "even goddesses must party sometime". You distinctly remember Sothis clamoring about how much she would rather be dancing.

It's strange – in all this time, you still haven't really learned what he's planning, or what his deal is, but you feel that there is a bond between the two of you.

"You know," he says then, just as you were walking back to the dorms without a care in the world, breathing in the cold evening air, "Sometimes you're so unflappable that it almost seems you know exactly what was going to happen-"

Well, you could not predict that he was going to say this, and he probably noticed. You have got to be careful around him. He is sharper than one of Zoltan's blades.

…

You know that anger is a natural state of grief, and that people sometimes lash out when they're not at their best.

If it were anyone else, in any other situation, you'd just keep listening, giving them the chance to vent their woes while remaining a calm and grounded pillar beside them…

But not this time, not when the very same reason that has Leonie acting like this is the pain that cuts you to the core.

You're tired of this, again and again, and you can never do anything about it.

You wish she would be quiet.

...

If you had the energy to be mad you might have been offended at Claude's suggestion that you smile, keep up appearances and act like nothing's wrong when your father just died.

It's probably for the better; Lacking in fire, your exhausted mind still understands that he's here to check in on you. Like Dimitri and Edelgard did when it was their turn to be in this situation, he's simply offering you the strategies that got him through the worst parts of his life.

He had to be this way; Most likely, he didn't want his detractors to realize that they got to him, or he was doing his best to be strong for his mother so that she wouldn't feel guilty for putting him in a world that was never going to welcome you.

He's not just here for you though – you are certainly a genuine part of it, but his eyes do keep darting to the diary on your father's old desk.

To your own great surprise, you tell him everything, or very nearly so.

About the Diary, about your past, even about Sothis, withholding only those things where you could not explain where you know them from without sounding like a complete lunatic.

At that moment you were simply tired and frustrated and you're not exactly certain that you weren't converged upon in your moment of weakness – You'd certainly deem hi capable of actually swiping your father's diary by himself if you hadn't let him.

But it felt good to get it off your chest, and looking back you come to realize that this came to be a crucial turning point in your relationship.

Under the circumstances, you could not have deceived him even if you'd wanted; After telling him all that, he must have realized that you were really being honest with him and not withholding the answers he wanted out of any ulterior motives.

Rather than suspect you, he now seems determined to help you find the answers for your own sake as well, like some sort of private investigator. He has, in short, truly become your ally, and begun to think of you in similar terms.

You're not sure if he'll dig up anything that Rhea didn't already tell you in that alternate future, but you appreciate the thought. He seems to think you should be a whole lot more mad and concerned about all that. To some extent he's probably trying to sell you 'finding out the secrets of the church' as something that's in your interest as well to get access to the walking, talking piece of damning evidence that you are, but it feels like he's truly looking out for you.

No, he IS looking out for you. He genuinely thinks that this will help you as well; He's merely putting your interests in alignment. From your own experience, you know that's what great leaders do: Think win-win. It might not quite fit with traditional ideals of chivalrous sacrifice, but you're enough of a pragmatist not to lament that; The world isn't always a zero sum-game. For Claude to be winning something he wants doesn't mean that somebody else must be losing. If you can't rely on someone else's loyalty, you can at least expect that they'll be loyal to their own interests once they've been brought into alignment with yours...

Now, you have truly forged a contract with him.

...

You want to believe Edelgard when she assures you that she'll do whatever it takes to get justice for your father. It looks very much like a heartfelt declaration.

But how exactly is she planning to accomplish this if the culprit's her own ally?

...

You'd like to believe Claude, too.

He probably means quite a lot of things when he says that he'll help you, even if it means going against Rhea – some of those serve his agenda, other implications signal an intention to stick to your side even if it should become politically inconvenient.

You know what they say about the devil you know, but in this case he's beginning to seem like the better bet. He's an unknown where Rhea is a known quantity, but what is 'known' about her is that she might not consider you more than a convenient meat bag. If Claude stabs you in the back in the end at least you won't see it coming.

In the end, there doesn't turn out to be a need to go against her – a little well-places flattery and convingly presented strategic observations from Claude and bam, he's convinced her to let you go into the sealed forest in such a cunning manner that she probably came away thinking that it was her own idea. A cunning mastermind she is not.

She's rather pitiful, in a way, a lost child lashing out cause she can't find her mother, disguised in the ill-fitting garb of a leader, a position that you knew she found little enjoyment in.

Whatever it is that she is or isn't scheming you think you already know why.

More than once you take suspiciously long to answer because you have to make sure to keep straight who already knows what. You try also to gauge the extent of the gaps in your very own knowledge.

And sure, you might tell yourself that while there's not much catharsis left to be found in killing Kronya a third time, you can't afford to let her go free…

But actually, no. You're absolutely looking forward to beating her ass; For once, yourself and Leonie are of the same heart and mind.

The Agarthan assassin's death has got to 'fate' too, let's see how she likes it.

You run into Solon again; His rambles make marginally more sense now that you know something of his history but that makes him no less repugnant.

At least the time comes and you feel your old power waiting at your fingertips again, leaving you little choice but to use it if you're hoping to get out of this empty void.

Before you stands an empty throne.

Who knows what other indescribable things have their eyes on you here.

The light still feels every time as if you're losing something; like part of you is being burned away.

Maybe you lose something every time you come here; It's not like you'd be able to tell after the fact. You can only judge your memories from with the eyes you have right now, and you can only feel what is left.

Everything goes like you think it went the last few times, your return, your making quick business of Solon and subsequently losing your footing before you could do very much about it even with prior warning, and the chilling instinct that takes hold of you when you awake in Rhea's lap.

Whatever knowledge your mind might hold, your body is still subject to the limitations of the here and now, too weak for either fight or flight, so all that's left at your disposal is to freeze, holding still like you're nothing but meat.

You have not stood frozen like this since… no, not even in childhood amid your first forays in battle. You might not have had that capacity then.

Little wonder then that when you first arrived here, she must have seen you as nothing more than this:

a vacant vessel, waiting to be filled, and any sign that you were anything else would have been taken as sign of someone else waking up.

You wish your father was still here. He was always your roots on the earth. It takes you quite a bit of time spent with the Golden Deer before you've convinced yourself that you're real again.

You also wish you could hear Sothis, not only because you miss her, but because it's very easy to see how you're separate when she's speaking to you as a distinct person, ordering you around and what not.

After you've assisted Marianne with grooming the horses at the stables and helped Hilda to produce a suitable gift for Raphael's sister, what passed in the Archbishop's chamber soon fades away like a bad dream.

After that, you start preparing your students for the mission at the holy tomb as if you're training for a real war – after all, there will most likely be one. The ceremonial importance of the ritual flies as an excuse with most of them, but Claude might not be convinced.

He doesn't disagree with the course of action itself, however: "There shouldn't be any danger for us, but… you be safe."

...

Be careful? What did Claude mean by that? What did he think was going to happen down there?

Even if he had somehow anticipated the common confrontation, why would he think that you would be in any particular danger?

He said that it seemed strange that you'd be expected to go through a ritual to gain a revelation after you've supposedly already spoken with the goddess before, and if it were anyone else, anyone remotely less sharp, you might just chalk it up to Claude not understanding it since he's not a particularly religious person – that's how you wrote off your own doubts the first time around.

But didn't even Mercedes and Anette say something about it had seemed oddly redundant?

Claude couldn't possibly know what's being played at this point, otherwise he would have been more direct in his warnings. He probably had little more than a bad premonition, a lone alarm bell in the night being fiercely rung by his instinct and intuition pulling at the cord hand in hand. If he had proof, and thought that proof would sway you to his side, he would've told you by now – instead you realize that he's being cautious so as not to make you too suspicious, same as you.

He won't say something out loud if it would come off as a pipe dream or a baseless accusation, much like you've kept your time powers to yourself because it's too wild to be believed and perhaps out of some worry of what both your enemies and allies might do with that information.

But as it stands, you know a few things that Claude doesn't, for all that he's probably doing his best to sleuth them out just about now – such as what Rhea actually did with you.

You supposed that she expected you, and your mother before you, to simply be a baby-sized vessel for Sothis and nothing more, or that she assumed that 'you' were simply Sothis with amnesia and that all she'd have to do would be to nudge you into recovering your memories, her endeavor failed when you simply grew up to be another, separate person like your mother before you, for all that you were more 'successful' in the sense that you were able to speak with Sothis and receive her power. Perhaps she could have taken over your body at any point if she had wanted to, but she didn't. She might not have remembered it at the time, but seeing as she once had many children of her own such as Rhea and Seteth, it's not all too surprising that she would have refused to effectively kill an innocent baby. Maybe you unconsciously reminded her own her own children; She was always scolding you, but also comforted you during hard times… it's actually somewhat sad to consider, given how she was often harshly critical of Rhea.

You think that Sothis probably would have been more sympathetic if she had known that that's her daughter, but at the same time, it's proof of just how far she must have fallen from her beginnings as a noble saint…

You're only just beginning to understand how much.

Because Claude is right. He probably doesn't know just how right he really is.

You'd rather not believe this, but neither you can't really think of any better explanation.

Rhea… wasn't just passively hoping that her experiment had worked out after all, or hanging on to that hope in denial.

She brought you down there to kill you.

There's not really any other way to put it: The reason she was so giddy leading up to the ritual, and the reason for her disappointment once nothing happened when you sat on that throne… is that she was hoping that all the thoughts, emotions, wants and memories that constituted you as a person would be extinguished in that instant, leaving you a blank empty meat puppet for someone else to possess.

Whatever transformation she was hoping to occur, she was actively looking to bring it about. That's why she recruited you so that she could keep an eye on you. That's why she made sure to keep you away from your father, make sure he's always busy with dangerous missions.

You're not sure that you can accuse her of falsely winning your trust, if she had thought all along that you essentially were Sothis in some dormant, sleeping state, but she must have known that she would be erasing what your father considered to be his child.

It would be one thing if your existence had simply been an unintended side effect of an attempt to bring back someone else when you would never have existed otherwise, but she was definitely looking to destroy you, the young adult you that stumbled past her doors following some effusive string of fate.

The realization sinks down your body like a cold, sobering shower.

It's an old, scabbed-over wound by now, and this realization merely adds insult to injury at this point. Maybe you would be mad if you were a normal human, you don't know, but to you it feels like you can't really summon any hot feeling because you already know that her attempt will be futile. It's not like she poses any real threat to your life now, you know that you'll sit on the throne and nothing will happen. There's little reason left to get mad on your own behalf.

If there's much feeling at all it's a resigned sort of pity, yet another confirmation that yes, she never cared about you as a person after all.

It's old news at this point; you're much more concerned about what she's doing with the rest of the country.

As all those many threads, questions and mysteries whirr round and round your mind, you don't realize how you're getting embroiled in a different sort of destiny, until one day you're sitting on your desk trying to focuss on correcting the Golden Deer's various homework.

You remain absent in mind when you hear a knock on the door, even as you're responding on automatic, fully expecting no one else but Claude or maybe Seteth.

But it's neither of them.

The heavy door reveals none other than Edelgard when you pull it aside.

She says she has something to discuss with you.

You'd wonder what in the world she's doing here, if you had not seen this sight before:

This is just like that time she came to ask you about her missing dagger, the exact same sight of her framed by the door arch, the same travel bag slung over her shoulder, the same flower in her hair which you extended to her on her recent birthday out of the same habitual courtesy, with this slight look of tension to her shoulders which she would otherwise keep straight.

Except this time, you had not been nearly as stiff around her throughout the year, nor nearly as reluctant to respond to her attempts at conversation.

You couldn't exactly think of her as a lurking traitor anymore, and it must have influenced how you acted, be it ever so slightly -

This time, she turns to you with a rapid motion as soon as you'd close behind her, and speaks to you with a slight, reflexive half-bow what clearly took her an uncharacteristic amount of effort to lay bare:

"Professor Byleth, I- I like you!"

Under the circumstances, you think you might be forgiven for gaping like a fish.

It's not every day that your recurring arch-nemesis confesses their love for you, even if she's still a schoolgirl with purple ribbons in her hair, and not yet the unrelenting icy-faced, horn-crowned young conqueror who'd brought an entire continent to its knees – actually, that's not quite right. She's already sneaking around with her mask on, orchestrating the political theater for her eventual takeover.

But there she is before you, grasping the strap of her bag with a slight tremble in her hands, a certain pinkness undeniably obvious on her pale, near-translucent complexion.

This is…

Actually not as surprising as it could have been, to be honest.

You already knew that she had great respect for you, that she lamented not getting you on her side even onto death. For those generally inclined to crushes, a crush is often a common side effect of that sort of admiration, nothing more, nothing less.

Still, to think that all along, she used to feel this way about you...

You think back to the first time around and your many tea times in the gardens; In the end you must confess that this could surely have been construed as such a situation, now that you think of it – back then you were still very inexperienced with forming bonds or your feelings, so you can't really say what, if anything, touched your immovable heart yet; You can't really recapture your naive impression from them, not without superimposing the complexities of what you know now.

She never made such a confession back then, not even towards the end of the term… but you might have your answer right then. Despite all, she must somehow have hoped that it might not be the end after all.

You had dismissed all those moments long ago, thinking yourself used and betrayed and everything you'd seen to be fake, but last time around at the latest, you'd since come to realize that she was probably simply pursuing her own justice. She must have felt just like you, really: Making you her enemy must have been the last thing she wanted, but she was still ready to stand against you because as far as she was concerned, you were on the wrong side. An evil upon the world, clinging to 'unreasonable ideas of justice', not necessarily out of your own fault. A pawn of the goddess, she once called you. You're not sure about the goddess, but you were most certainly Rhea's pawn back then. Both of you pawns then?

All things considered, you must have broken her heart pretty bad back then. You weren't the only one who felt betrayed then – especially since you made off with all her friends (bar Hubert) who would otherwise have backed her loyally like they did against Dimitri.

She sure did a great job at hiding it – no, she never concealed it at all. What she did was soldier on regardless, giving up whatever she must, crushing her personal feelings, pursuing her justice no matter the personal cost.

When you think about it, it's actually achingly tragic – if not outright noble, in a way.

Well, you've got to react somehow, pull yourself back to the right-here, right-now of this particular world and timeline.

"Uh..."

You're very, very stumped.

She awaits your answer like a blow. Most likely, she must have been steeling yourself for what she knew it would be, knowing well that it would probably still sting one way or another.

"I'm… very... honored that you think so. But you do know that I'm technically still faculty here, right? You were placed under the care of the Church when you came here, and with your status this could outright cause a diplomatic incident-"

You're not sure how convincing it would be to speak about wanting to avoid the appearance of improper coercion or favored treatment, considering that she could probably have you executed without much of an explanation next time you set foot on Adrestian soil; Professor or not, you're still legally a commoner.

But you needn't have worried. She catches your drift immediately. Good, old, reasonable Edelgard.

"I understand. I-I've been expecting this outcome, of course..." she assures you, in her best class-president-leader voice, though you know her well enough to tell that her wavering heart isn't quite cooperating with the mature reasoning of her mind right now. You can almost feel some sort of metaphysical tally of points decreasing, marked by a characteristic sound effect.

"I just wanted to tell you, before the year ends, because I didn't want to spend my life regretting that I never did."

"That's very mature of you."

"Hardly. I apologize for putting you in this sort of uncomfortable situation."

"Edelgard. It's perfectly normal for a healthy young woman to have a crush once in a while."

"For an ordinary young woman, perhaps. But I will soon be ascending the imperial throne. The emperor must stand alone, relying on no one. As such, I can't afford such indulgences…"

"So you wanted to tell me this because today is your last chance to act like an ordinary young woman? In that case, it's not necessarily bad that you did so, you know."

You take a seat on your best and gesture for her to take the chair at your desk.

"I wish I could give you some more advice on that, but when it comes to that topic, I'm not really the right person to ask. Maybe Manuela would be better suited to this. I really wasn't lying when I told you that I had no kind of experience with such things."

"Actually, you haven't told me before." she says thoughtfully.

Oops. You slipped up. Even you can tell that there's an odd sort of mood in the room now, the scent of secrets being disclosed and unspoken feelings teetering just below the surface – You'd best clarify any misunderstandings.

"Honestly, even if I didn't work here right now, I wouldn't really know how to respond to a confession like that. I'd probably be asking you for more time to think it over. I never really got close to anyone before I started working here, not in that way or any other. It was always just me and my father. Our mercenary band was my whole world, fighting, and commanding our men was my whole life. That's probably how I got good to be good enough at that to be giving you lessons though I'm only a little older, and pretty clueless at everything else. Compared to you and Claude, I probably don't have that much actual life experience. You already know what's important to you and to what purpose you want to devote your lives – I'm still searching for something like that. Even my becoming a mercenary was simply because that's what my father used to do."

"And then, you got roped into being a professor?" she asks, managing a thin smirk at least.

"I wouldn't put it that way. I do enjoy my work. I experienced much that I wouldn't have otherwise. And it's a way to help people, in my own way. But that doesn't mean that I'll stay one forever. I'm pretty sure Claude is still trying to recruit me as a general for the Alliance or something."

"And will you take him up on his offer?"

Straight to the point as usual.

"I'm not sure yet. I might. I suppose it would depend on what he wants my help for. If it's a righteous cause, I'd have no reason to refuse."

"So that's how it is..." she says with a slight, formal smile. Perhaps she's reflecting on what she might have said to better sway you at Remire Village. "Well, if you do accept, I confess that I shall be slightly jealous of him. N-Not because of what we discussed earlier. You're a very capable and dedicated person. No doubt that you'll be a great asset to any faction you might associate yourself with."

And that was that. There were a few more pleasantries and one last cup of bergamot tea before she departed, leaving you behind in a cherished garden of yesterdays and neverweres.

Maybe it's you who ought to be jealous of her (and Claude) for being so self-directed.

Even so: Your impression wasn't wrong, you think; You mean the very first one you had, that she and you are similar. Both of you adored, charismatic leaders (with perhaps a bit of a dorky side in private). Both of you stoic pillars of strength. Both of you frightening generals. Both of you often perceived as somewhat distant, working hard so that your feelings might reach the ones you care about in other ways.

What cruelty of destiny then, that you were fated to be foes.

As the only one to wield the same power as you, she truly seemed made to be your perfect enemy.

But was it truly inevitable? You think back to that first timeline, when you stood side by side for a little under a year. It felt natural enough, back then. You remember that one time just after you'd won the battle of the eagle and lion, when she said she no longer wished to recruit you as a warrior for the empire, but looked only for your continued guidance. You had effectively netted yourself a possible position as a royal adviser right there.

It's hard to say now, with eyes of hindsight, if you would have accepted it. But probably yes. You don't know why you wouldn't have – certainly not because you were such a devout believer that you wished to keep working to the church. It wouldn't have been a bigger change than going from mercenary to professor, and you would have been able to keep working with all the former Black Eagles. Maybe then you would have receives this confession somewhat later, when you were surer of yourself, and Edelgard already crowned. Perhaps something could have come of it, or maybe not, but you think that you would have remained close either way.

Yes, you think you could have lived like that, if only she didn't have to go and start a war.

...

"Soooo… Edelgard likes you? You mean like like?"

Claude finds that bit of gossip more amusing than anything else. Somehow – well informed as he is – he must've heard that she'd gone to your quarters and that you spoke with her for a while. Maybe he was antsy that she'd get her hands on your promising human capital since she never officially rescinded her offer to recruit you for the empire. Whatever it was he suspected it seems that he was on the wrong track for once cause he burst out laughing once he heard it, that said, if he could laugh about it that might be a sign that he was no longer as suspicious of you. Indeed his wide, surprised eyes are kind of adorable.

"Looks like poor Dimitri never stood a chance!"

He doesn't realize just how right he is. "Still," he adds, once he's calmed down somewhat, "I would've thought that she's way too focused and serious to bother about that sort of stuff. But I guess deep down she's not so different from anybody else…

If you weren't one of the few people around here who's even more popular than she is, that would've earned you a lot of enemies. Dimitri's too darn proper and repressed to ever act on it, but I'm pretty sure Hubert and Ferdinand both have their sights on her in their own weird ways. Actually, I think even Dorothea hit on her once or twice."

"Dorothea I can believe, but ...Ferdinand? Isn't he always trying to compete with her? Besides, he's set to be the next Prime Minister, I don't think it's anything that simple."

"Few things are ever as simple as having just a single cause. But whether he realizes it or I think he's also trying to impress her. I mean, even I have to admit that she's got her charms - But more importantly, she tends to be the type of strong leader figure that tends to inspire a certain... fanaticism in others. This world being what it is, I guess you could see how many would be drawn to a leader like that – In a way, it's not so different to how others might cling to gods. Though personally, I've never seen the appeal in surrendering all you to someone greater than you. In the end, everyone that has ever been elevated or worshiped or treated as a hero remains just an ordinary person, as fallible as anyone else..."

"So what do you think a leader should be like?"

"You're getting right to the point there teach – The truth is probably that no single person has what it takes to decide every single thing by themselves. I don't much believe in virtuous heroes. Still people are born in different situations, with more or less influence than others. So I think the best you can do if you wind up in such a position of influence is to use it as best as you can to encourage others to think and decide for themselves, for example by giving others the freedom and knowledge that they need to do so."

"Freedom and knowledge, huh? That's not a bad ideal, if I might call it that."

"No, you've got me, guilty as charged. Turns out I'm just a soppy dreamer deep down inside. Although-..."

"What?" you ask, bluntly, once he trails off. He seems to be used to it by now.

"You know how I said I don't believe in Virtuous Heroes? I stand by that. But you know, the closest thing I've ever seen in real life to that sort of virtuous hero is probably you, teach."

"I'm not that special."

"Which is exactly what a cliched hero of justice would say. It downright pisses me off sometimes. But you know, the fact that someone like you actually exists does make my secret soppy dreams look less soppy by comparison, so I guess I ought to thank you… After all you've done, there's hardly anyone in these walls who doesn't look up to you. Everyone worships the ground Rhea walks on because she's the archbishop, which makes her a standin for the importance that everyone's got pitched on the Seiros religion, but you just came here last year and you're nearly as popular as she is."

"Because I can wield the sword of the creator?"

To your surprise, he shakes his head.

The feeling looks subtle on your face, but you are taken aback, not in the least because you think this answer would have turned out very different if you had asked him just a few months earlier.

"Nah. By itself, that would only give you the same sort of dogmatic obedience that Rhea gets. But I think that many here would follow you even if you decided to go against her."

"That's some dangerous speculation right there."

"Maybe – but to have such influence on some of Fodlan's best and brightest… some would say that it's you who's the dangerous one. That alone wouldn't be that strange for someone who's been a warrior and a leader in real life and death settings all their life, but it's more than that. You put people at ease. Everyone feels more certain when you're around- Ignatz, Marianne, Lorenz..."

"Lorenz too?"

"Especially Lorenz. He acts all high and mighty but when you get down to it he's not made of very strong stuff. He seems like exactly the sort of person who would be drawn to follow after strong leaders."

"I'll tell him you said that."

"No, you won't." He's probably right about that.

You sigh. The earlier, more serious words simmer in your mind, marinating as the more lighthearted exchanges occupied your attention.

Somehow, in all the multiple lives you had lived, you never found the time right to voice those thoughts. The cat's already out of the bad, the doubts have been said out loud and the veils lifted, nor would you be shattering anyone's illusions, so why not?

"I've been told things like that before. Many have called me a hero. Others, a demon. Some have even done both," and you're thinking more than a little of Dimitri with that last part. "It just happens and I don't really understand it, cause I'm still just the same me. I'm-"

You nearly reached for the words 'only human', but with the knowledge you have now you're not sure that you're technically right. "I just wanted to help where I can."

You reflect on that hastily assembled statement, and find it to be very true. For most of your life you never really questioned yourself or the world around you, but now that you've got Claude pressing you for all these answers, it's increasingly impossible to evade the questions.

You began this because you wanted to stake out if he could be trusted, but after all this what you wish the most is that you could make him trust you.

All of this is really making you realize your limitations even after you've technically liberated an entire continent twice over. All you still don't know. All you've never experienced.

"What I'm trying to explain to you, what I have been trying to explain is - It's not that I'm hiding things from you, and I don't think I'm better than anyone either… it's just hard to understand things that even I don't fully understand that well. It would be ridiculous to say that I'm just like anyone else, but all I ever wanted is to be helpful. That's why I started helping out in my father's band to begin with. He went through all this trouble to look after me on his own – more than I ever realized, probably, now that I know he's been keeping me away from the church, so I decided that I would help as well. I've never been very good at expressing myself, so it's no surprise that people tended to be wary of me – so all I could properly do for them, to show that I'm on their side, is to help them, or to listen to their problems or their stories..."

Claude, so far, appeared to be listening intently. Behind his eyes, the gears of his mind were ticking away, absorbing each new grain of information without yet forming a conclusion.

"And let me guess, in an organization like a mercenary band, everyone has a story."

"It's not so different from the monastery."

"I see… I get what you mean." You can't tell if you got through to him or not. He might still be thinking it over. In a sense it's refreshing. He may admire you, even find you an inspiration, but he isn't going to go and pull you on any sort of pedestal "Thanks for sharing this with me."

"Edelgard isn't the only one who's just an ordinary mortal in the end… So if you're looking for a miracle worker to make all your schemes happen, you might be disappointed."

At first, he laughs at this. "Don't you worry teach. You've been more than helpful enough for me, even as an ordinary mortal. And besides, I've come to like you quite a bit for your own sake, regardless of your many very useful qualities~…

Which is why I've got a word of advice for you. You might not have been raised with the Seiros religion, but you still grew up in Fodlan where it's influence reaches to every corner – You're very big on this 'blessed are the meek' thing in this country. There's this idea that a hero is someone who humbly accepts their lot and turns the other cheek – of course, what people preach and what they actually follow are two pairs of shoes. Few actually live up to that ideal. But it's still an ideal that exists in people's minds. 'Have faith and trust not in your own understanding'. That's how the people in Fodlan think of a hero. When they think of heroes, they picture someone like that. Someone like his Princeliness, or like you – ironically enough, you might be a lot closer to that ideal than many believers. But that's all it is. An ideal. An idea. In other places, they have different ideas of what heroes are like. In some other places, they picture heroes a little differently… Like for example, they might think of a hero first and foremost of someone with great valor who attains great glory."

"Or a hero who's a schemer?" Your toneless reply somehow only serves to make your slight teasing more apparent. You're not like you once were. It starts to be noticeable when you're doing the blank face on purpose.

But Claude's not daunted in the least: "Why not? There's nothing wrong with being helpful and devoted to others, or with being valiant and strong. Both are good qualities sometimes. But in the wrong place, trying to be valiant and tough will just lead you to act stubborn and irrational, and trying to be helpful might lead you be deceived and get you taken advantage of. A hero who gets themselves killed for the sake of being tough or honorable can't win anything or help anyone. So it makes no sense to insist that there's only one way to do things right.

It's laudable that you wish to be helpful to others, but that doesn't mean that you have to do whatever they say without ever questioning their motives."

Your eyes narrow. You decide to go right for the elephant in the room: "Are you speaking about the Church?"

"I'm not talking about anything in particular. Just looking out for a very special friend of mine."

The admission hangs in the air for a moment, heavy as lead;

Then he leans back with his hands behind his unruly curls, and disperses the thick atmosphere by cracking a joke:

"Figures that I'd want to keep you around, after all you've just informed ,e of the iron princess' only weakness! We might want to think about how we could use that little fact to our advantage~"

"Something like that wouldn't work on her."

"You're probably right..."

"Claude." you say then. His joking facade evaporates in the commendably brief split-second it takes him to note that you are dead serious.

"You said something about… being cautious as the Holy Tomb. So I want you to know that – if anything should happen to me, there, or sometime later, you should wait for me."

"Wait for you how?"

"Just… wait. I'll be back, okay? No matter what happens, or how impossible it seems, no matter how we might be separated."

"You know that you're not doing a very convincing job at making it look like you don't know something I don't, right teach?"

"Maybe. But I'll still be back. Remember what you said, about the Millenium Festival, and how we were all going to meet up there no matter what? I can't tell or promise you anything else right now, I really can't, even if I wanted to. But I can tell you that I'll be there five years from now, come hell or high water, even if the festival is canceled or if it starts raining fire from the sky."

"That's a bold promise there. But somehow, despite myself, I feel like I should believe you."

...

you're none too surprised when Claude outright admits that he tried to get in here by himself. Between his speculations of whatever powers the opening mechanisms of the holy tomb (He always does ask the right questions) and his remarks about hearing Rhea and Seteth arguing, you don't have any doubts left.

This school more and more resembles a maggoty apple in your mind, I mean you had Dimitri in the bushes looking for intel on the enemy, Claude in the walls, Edelgard's soldiers lurking in the underground passages, Linhard was probably sneaking around here somewhere too…

When the imperial army shows up as expected, Lysithea doesn't need long how to figure out how they got in.

Claude, too, immediately assesses the situation: "Grave Robbers."

You suppose that the 'Flame Emperor' and her army could be classed as such.

Takes one to know one. Dimitri would never have tolerated anyone disrespected any sort of holy ground, but Claude, you think, would not be deterred from such a purely sentimental crime that might have hurt people's feelings but created no living casualties. Not that it matters much, because Edelgard got here first. Not that it's a fair comparison – that sort of feat is probably easier to pull off when you've got a whole army backing you instead of acting by yourself.

Might as well be water under the bridge as far as it concerns Claude; He quickly adapts his plan; If he couldn't get the information from the stones themselves, he might as well get it straight from Edelgard, so he makes a beeline straight for her and begins his interrogation right away, parrying whatever pesky axes are swung his way to hinder him.

When she proves too taciturn for his tastes, he succumbs to the temptation he'd been itching with from the get-go and goes straight for her mask -

The face behind it, however, does not seem to have been something he anticipated.

His surprise seems quite genuine.

Today, you learned that even the unflappable Claude from Riegan can be blindsided.

He expected to oppose a small underground organization with tendrils in many places, but the outright large-scale involvement of another faction seems to have thrown all his calculations for a loop.

You fight her off but fail to capture her, same old same old.

Claude looks more grave than you've ever seen him. Those excellent instincts of his are squaling in alarm. He's more right than he knows he is, the gears of history are turning.

But though the events are unfolding much the same it does make a marked difference that you're going through this motions at his side, because both Rhea and Dimitri would consider it unthinkable to even look to a reason for such an action, as if any explanation would be an attempt to justify it.

Claude, however… Well, he knows to clarify that he can't agree with such brute force approaches lest he be misunderstood (which mean's he's switched on his political rhetoric, carefully measuring what he says; If he weren't being careful he might 'forget' to sound appropriately appalled even if he really was.) but though he can't agree, he's wondering why Edelgard might do this.

I mean, so were you and Dimitri back in your days, but when it comes to Claude, something as simple as 'because she's evil' isn't going to cut it.

He has many, many questions. "She knows secrets, " he notes, "And Rhea too."

His concern for the future and his disdain for the bloodshed are very very real but even so the depths of his eyes light up with a sparkle; His thoughts and motions slowly take on some manner of a hound who has smelled blood. It must be tantalizing for him, really: Two people who have all the answers he seeks are right there, and they're not telling him.

He knows better than to jeopardize his chances with heroics. Instead he fires up his mind to process whatever new morsels of truth he has been given.

On brand for his long-standing interest in the relics, the stolen crest stones take center stage in his pondering. What are they, really?

Even you don't really know this though the one in your chest is pretty much responsible for the better part of your existence.

Edelgard called them "Infernal power masquerading as medicine"… and after all you know now, you're inclined to agree. Not only do they apparently eat people, you can't say that anything good had come of the obsession with them.

But even though she said that, she did take them herself, ostensibly to use them and their 'infernal power' for her own designs. Perhaps they were the pay that the Agarthans wanted for backing her – or the means to it. You've seen that they can be used to create demonic beasts… is it that? Then again, there were a couple of crest stones in that big axe of hers. That's another reason why she might have stolen them.

…

Edelgard's proclamation sounds very different, now that you know much more about the church than you ever did any time that you wound up as its leader. Shows how much you were really trusted, or maybe just how little you really knew.

Where is the lie when she speaks of corruption and deception, of cover-ups and the upkeep of harmful institutions? How are you supposed to trust an institution wit so many secrets hidden in its closets?

The speech is the same as it's always been, but your eyes are opened now, like when you learn a foreign language, suddenly turning gibberish into words. Being in the present of Claude's inquisitive mind has opened your eyes and ears as well.

Of course you're not just suddenly start believing the next best person's gibberish just because you started to have doubts about the church – this goes for Claude as much as it pertains to Edelgard.

At worst, she may simply be using the untrustworthy church as a pretext for her conquest; the way she spins it still seems a little self-serving, especially the part about the other countries being illegitimate offshoots – she might be playing to the revanchist sentiments among the imperial nobles there, which is a dangerous thing to let fester even if it were just for the sake of politics.

Claude, for one thing, had many snappy cynical comments about military rule to dispense. For all his scheming ways, you're beginning to realize that he's not actually all that ruthless. He clearly endured much hardship, but unlike Dimitri or Edelgard, he had both parents with him until he went and left the nest of his own accord. There isn't the same sort of edge and desperation behind his actions. He's got whole other sorts of cracks in his heart, but valuing ones's own life, and those of others, is a perfectly normal, profoundly human thing, notions of chivalry be damned.

Still. Edelgard's claims, while convenient, are hardly implausible. The Church did mediate in the establishment of the Kingdom and the Alliance – but weren't they just trying to keep the peace? Could they really have so much influence? Didn't those revolts still involve people who wanted to rise up for their very own reasons?

No. You know that they've been hiding and manipulating things behind the scenes, orchestrating plots and framings like the one that claimed the life of Christophe Gaspard.

Besides… there's something Manuela once said, about how the Monastery was conveniently located in the middle of the three countries even though it predated both the kingdom and the Alliance by many centuries.

The evidence was practically staring you in the face, out of every single map you've been pouring over in every single war meeting.

Still, even if you acknowledged that the Church had its dark sides and was in dire need of reform, did she have to start a war over it? Wasn't there anything she could have done that didn't claim the lives of many soldiers and peasants as collateral damage?

Deposing her own father by force still seemed iffy though… but what do you know? He might as well be the one who did whatever it is that was done to her, whatever it was that she thought was akin to death. Maybe he deserved it – it's not hard to believe with all the examples of less-than-stellar parenting you've been made to witness. If only you'd spent more time investigating the empire's inner politics while you had the chance. It's not like you knew there would be a war, you were told your task in this would be to instruct these people in the proper use of swords.

Claude's removed, political perspective might have seemed distant and univested to some, but there is a certain clarity in it. It strikes you that he summarizes the events how they might be described in some distant day's history books, from a bird's eye view, when none of the present factions would be all that relevant to the present anymore, or like a conflict in a distant country, as if he didn't have a dog in this fight: He says she sent out a call to the lords that rule the land and the people themselves, to stay out of her way or back the church and become her enemy by extension.

Never before would you have taken the first option seriously, not had it seemed thinkable not to back the church – the land of Fodlan was full of believers to whom that institution was precious, besides, it goes without saying that when someone is attacked you've got to help them, especially if they're innocent… but were they innocent? Even if they weren't, this was still an act of unpremeditated aggression. She was clearly out to conquer the whole country, or that's what they all thought… but they thought that, in part, because it seemed unthinkable not to back the church.

But from a more detached perspective, say, that of Claude, wouldn't it be conceivable to see the Church and the Empire as two equal evils? Or not even evils. Just opponents. Misguided ones, or just players pursuing their interests. Both had resorted to shady, unethical actions. I mean, Rhea had some nerve to be talking about 'not tolerating this violence'. Backing the church might be the considered the chivalrous thing, the historical obligation, but from a pragmatic perspective, you could describe it as risking your life and limb for an untrustworthy faction.

No one had believed that Edelgard would seriously refrain from crushing someone who "stayed out of her way", as she asked, but didn't she do just that the last two times as long as the alliance remained neutral? If she genuinely believed in what she was doing, why wouldn't she honor that agreement? Actually now that you think of it, both in your first and second attempts, Claude was the one to attack first.

Who knows what he's going to do this time around.

Whatever he might have been planning, it's clear that the unforeseen eventuality of Edelgard's attack had put a pretty big damper on it.

But, as he makes sure to tell you, he's not the sort of man to just roll over and die. So the Golden Deer and yourself get to work to ready your weapons.

…

None of his apparent frustration does anything to dent that sheer gall of his, though.

"Here she is—Her Majesty!" he comments when they meet on the battlefield. "Looking pleased as a dog with a stick! What exactly happened to make you this way?"

You'd like to know this, too.

But she remains unfazed, resolute, unshakeable. You're not goig to get a plea for pity out of her:

"I'm simply seeing through a promise I made to myself a long time ago."

She's more open than you would have expected – Claude, in turn, won't be dissuades from holding something much resembling a normal conversation between the blows, despite or maybe because of the serious matter. In their own way they're both hard-boiled enough to do this; Dimitri was wholly aghast when he charged out the gates earlier and quite unable to be talked to.

"Isn't this much force excessive?" asks Claude, not without a hint of real concern but still alltogether to much like they're casually brainstorming policy proposals. He almost gets a bit mouthy: "Thanks to you, my own long-held ambitions are nearly destroyed!"

"If you don't want them to be destroyed completely, I suggest you turn tail and flee."

You're sure that must have stung; more than you, or even Edelgard herself could probably understand at that point. But he's still not too proud to turn and flee when the evacuation is sounded.

…

You feel that there is a choice upon you;

Closer and closer it looms, while you still lack the information you would need to make it in good conscience.

You still don't know Claude's deal and he's far too sharp for you to press him for answers without his getting suspicious. So you turn elsewhere.

"There is a war coming, so I need to know… What's your impression of Claude? Do you think we can trust him?"

Hilda looks at you in disbelief. "Why're you asking me that? I don't really know anything about statesmanship..."

"But you know about people. You noticed something fishy about Monica right away. Ypu can be quite observant sometimes- "

"Please don't, professor. If you keep saying that, then everyone will expect me to know such things. I might even be chosen to represent my house..."

"Then I'm asking in secret. As your friend. You might consider it gossip."

You're faintly aware that this probably sounded quite awkward coming from you.

"Well it's bad to gossip about your friends behind their backs-"

That, in turn, would have been more convincing coming from anyone else.

"I mean – I get why you'd have your suspicions. Claude hardly ever says what he really thinks. He keeps his cards close to his chest. But he's still our friend. He might be a schemer, but in his own way, he's actually pretty reliable. He comes through for you when you need him, and he does keep his promises. I'm sure we can trust him."

Not too long ago, you would have thought such a statement naive, but now you know Hilda better than you used to. She might have looked quite frivolous, being concerned with makeup, fashion and gossip while everyone else around her was invested in noble ambitions. But after three times of seeing everyone here run themselves ragged for their high ideals and all the suffering that came out of what this society values, you're beginning to think that Hilda might actually be one of the most sensible, mature people currently enrolled at this institute. Even if this crazy society were altogether different, people would still make friends, flirt with potential mates and make friends. In a way, the sort of everyday enjoyment she pursues is much more real than anyone else's lofty political ideals. So you're hesitant to just dismiss her statement.

And you don't know if Hilda has spent enough time with you to learn to read you, or if you're the one who has become more transparent, but she very much noticed that, and doubles down with a smirk: "Besides I don't think you need to worry at all. By now I've gotten very good at telling Claude's fake smile from his real one, and lately, when he's been talking with you, it's always been real."

...

The last time you ran after Rhea while she was holding off the imperial army on her own, it was definitely to protect her – The first time, maybe, out of actual burning warm attachment, then, at least out of resigned obligation or as a matter of principle.

Now, as you stumble down the hill retracing your own steps of old down the old repeated refrain of events, aware with every second that your precious time is running out, it occurs to you that maybe, like Cyril, like Catherine, you should be screaming instead – for answers, for justice, for any goddamn indication that you're anything more to her than convenient warm bodies.

You don't know. You're half figuring you'll decide when you get to her, once you confront her, far away from the eyes of her followers before whom she would never reveal herself -

But in the end, you never have to make that choice, not yet.

For now, your old friend the gaping ravine takes it out of your hands.

You're not as frustrated as you could have been when you realize that you're losing your footing, because you understand now at last that you never could have prevented this war. It was more or less inevitable will all the instability raging through this land. Rhea's own capital and base of operations was infiltrated by agents of at least three different factions; The Kingdom was on the verge of collapse, the all but mired empire in the hands of an ancient foe.

Between Dimitri's preexisting grudge against the empire and his lonesome pursuit of vengeance, the Agarthan's plots, the various revolts against the Church, the Church's own questionable actions, Edelgard's ambitions and Claude sneaking around, both Fodlan at large and Garreg Mach as a microcosm of it were sheer powderkegs on the brink of explosion – in fact, you wonder if there's any more secret conspiracies you ought to be aware of. At this point you wouldn't even be surprised if there was a secret town hidden under the monastery or something.

As someone who valued freedom and life itself, Claude could certainly not condone this campaign of forceful military subjugation, but when he spoke about his ambitions being crushed, he wasn't so decrying Edelgard's takeover as that he was simply dismayed that she had beaten him to the punch before his own schemes could be realized.

If Edelgard hadn't tried to nap the sword of the creator when she did, Claude would have swiped it. He had already scouted out that secret hiding place near the holy mausoleum – the same one he helpfully mentioned when your class was planning to stand guard there. Even if Edelgard had never declared war on the church, even if Dimitri never made any boasts about what he'd like to do with her head, Claude would still have made his move, seeking whatever it was that he sought -

You never quite found out. There simply wasn't enough time to be trusted and peel back all his layers – by this time, Dimitri had already fully disclosed his tragic backstory, Edelgard had long since made her offer at Remire, and, in hindsight, generously hinted at her true sympathies.

But Claude? No such luck.

Your only consolation is that he might conceivably say the same thing about you.

---

While El has a very special place in my heart and will probably always be my personal favorite, Claude is a pretty close second. He's such a deep, layered guy? I love his dynamic with Byleth? (#BroTP)

Why did we get Ferdinand, Felix and Sylvain, you wonder? Free Real Estate. Paralogues. Foreshadowing. To emphasize certain things? Because I want to use certain lines in part II. Also, I just think they're neat. Meanwhile Anette, Linny and Petra just strike me as the most "natural" recruitee choices for Verdant Wind. There's cute supports and overlapping philosophies.

Some of Claude's 2cents on heroism were inspired by that time I watched this 80s TV show on the ancient Indian epics. The Avatar Krishna is in many ways a figure not unlike Jesus, the embodiment of a god of order and protection. He is also a trickster. That's very different from the western conception where the heroes are meek and helpful whereas the bad guys are full of guile and deception. There's a strong idea of "honorable yes but stupid no" that you still see in Indian culture to this day for better or for worse. The closest thing in the west is the modern German constitution which was deliberately designed for efficiency & idiot-proofness over idealism because look what exploitable holes did last time, but that's an idea so far from the christian cultural mindset that it took ppl here till the 20th century to think of it.

This also went in the opposite direction sometimes – if Lord Rama were in a greek or roman play, he would not have gone into exile but seized the city once it became plain that the citizens supported him and you wouldn't have had this plot twist (at least it was one to me) that his half-brother turns out to be good & loyal. It was rather fun to guess which things would be predictable because of universals of the human psyche, and which would be different.

And that's sort of the role that Claude has, being someone who comes in to this dysfunctional dogmatic world with different (if not necessarily better) preconceptions and ends up having a broader perspective because of it. Once you start to think of it even the middle ages & the ancient worlds had huge differences in how they thought of 'heroes'.

I also have a lot of feelings about how the profile from Cindered Shadows listed Byleth's interests as "helping & listening to people" and noted "being trusted" as one of their likes.

VW made for a natural turning in this story point because the Church's shadiness and Edelgard not being evil are amply hinted though not fully expounded upon. I mean some of Byleth's dialogue options are written as very much wanting to save Rhea, while Claude is kinda subtly and carefully trying to break it to them that she's not to be trusted – more on that next time.

When you really think about it, Edelgard is a lot like Homura from PMMM or A2 from Nier Automata: Someone who appears villainous at first because she is acting based on information that the main characters don't have at first, so her actions don't make sense. She starts out knowing a lot of the settings disturbing secrets from the get-go – that the entire world view is fake. And I mean that's not even so rare in our world for wide helds beliefs in society to turn out to be fake.

When I first played through it I was struck by what an immense sense of isolation that must be. She had this knowledge just dumped in her lap – most likely, no one will believe her. She's alone in this big illusion.

So a bit of what the timeloop format accomplishes here is to increasingly put Byleth in Edelgard's shoes. Another thing is that long before this started going anywhere near full on enemies-to-lovers territory, the kind of enemy that Edelgard appears to be sort of shifts. She goes from evil traitor to tragic monster to worthy opponent.

Essentially we're traversing the routes in order of black-and-white ness: SS is a basic b&w messianic story, AM is still fairly archetypical but we have flawed heroes & sad villains, VW is a lot more pragmatic & big picture and everyone is actors with agendas. CF then is a deliberate choice of that which is constructive over that which makes you feel like a hero.

I guess another thing 3H had is common with PMMM or NierAutomata (though those are otherwise very different media) is that everything you're told about the setting and what everything in it means is subverted to hell and back.

"You thought this was your classic medieval fantasy? Actually the medieval stasis is deliberately enforced on what's rly a post-apocalyptic setting, the heroes from the past were possibly actually bad guys " and so forth.