You are the ruler who brings the dawn of revolution, and she just so happens to be in your way.

The blue moonlight

Cuts across our sight

As pure and clear as a ringing bell

Reaching for us in the night

...

As soon as you've trudged your way back to the monastery, you find Claude looking out over the valley, awaiting you there in the light, as casually as if you'd simply forgotten to rise early in the morning.

There is no fateful duel and certainly no gruesome heap of dead imperial soldiers – he simply greets you, and then he unpacks the snacks. Light smiles are on your faces, and it's a strange feeling – a moment of truth among the rubble that used to be the enduring icon of how this world used to be and the order of this land as people used to understand it.

You being here together feels right, and somehow transcendent.

You've worked with this version of him before, he was your ally when you fought alongside Dimitri, but you didn't know him so well then; You had no clue about the stories graven in his face.

He doesn't have the context to explain your resurgence like Seteth and Flayn did, but accepts your story pretty quickly. Normally you'd be mildly unsettled that he's come to read you so well that he's this confident that you're not lying, except that it's a definite upgrade, a long ways off from the young man who kept throwing jabs and questions at you with a hard gaze filled with suspicion.

To think that he was actually waiting here, convinced that you would actually return… so much for the 'embodiment of distrust'.

He claims he was just staking this place out 'cause it's a strategic location, but – no. Actually that makes a whole lot of sense and is definitely something he would do. You just beat him to it the last couple of times. Who knew that he was this close all along, probably right around the corner when you found Dimitri or when you were dueling Edelgard?

Despite everything, it feels like coming home.

As the shadow lengthen, he walks with you in the starlight and fills you in on many things, including the last… well, in a sense, it truly has been five years now, has it? Since you fell off that ravine. Maybe more. You wonder if making you live through this so many times was Sothis' idea of paying you back for those lost years.

You notice that Claude seems to pick up when your focus softens a little bit and skips ahead to the next thing that might possibly be new to you. You don't think he's concluded anything, but it is worrying how sharp his instincts are – or it would have been, once upon a time. Now you rather feel a pang of fondness.

It's not like you don't appreciate it, you've heard all of this already. You're not sure you want to hear again about Rhea being kidnapped, Dimitri being ousted and all that – it seems Cornelia had the whole clan massacred this time around, all the distant cousins included and all that. There is however never any mention of Lorenz leading the anti-imperial faction.

It is not long then until Claude puts his cards on the table, at long, long last. First he tells you his reasons right under that same, starry sky – then, once you've caught up with his classmates in the morning, he finally unveils his ambition – just to you at first, in the confidence of his chambers. A privilege indeed, seeing as some might consider this politically explosive news… but by 'some', none would mean you. If you look at this reasonably, with the common sense that should be obvious and ubiquitous yet often proves surprisingly hard to find in the circles where it counts, you would have to admit that he really wasn't kidding when he said that his secrets don't amount to much, surely not compared to Edelgard who went around referring herself as the vengeful shade of someone long dead.

So, he was born in another country? That's it? Duh! People live in different countries. That's barely noteworthy at all… if this world was a sane one. Seeing the prejudice that you've seen Dedue, Petra, Cyril and Shamir deal with, you can understand why he'd go out of his way to hide it, especially in his precarious position as the last hope of the ruling house. If his affiliation came to light, it could probably mean war between the two countries. People would probably look at him as some shady foreign actor looking to meddle in Fodlan's politics… which is basically what he really is, for all that you know that it's not as straightforward of that, and not remotely as sinister…

He always seemed the shadiest, and yet, out of all the house leaders, he's the only one who ostensibly came to Garreg Mach for all the expected reasons: To get a ruler's education, and to forge political Alliances.

To think that the secret ambition that he jealously guarded by any slimy, underhanded means was something as innocuous and selfless as word peace -

Or world domination; It all depends on how you look at it. It's like he sees the whole world from some high perch far above the maps. In a way, his vision is even more far-reaching and ambitious than even Edelgard's, and loftier still: She set out a clear, circumscribed goal which she looked to attain with such means as were clearly within her grasp in a foreseeable amount of time. Claude's plan – more a dream or a vision really – is downright utopian by comparison. It's a product of his spirit and intuition, not his rational mind – that, so he tells you, didn't really start thinking it feasible until he met you, and perhaps that's why his other self in the other worlds played a whole lot more defensively… but now he is in fact, actually grasping for the sun, longing to see that view he once glimpsed in his heart manifest before him with you at his side.

It's not like he doesn't have guts: To enroll at an institution that was specifically founded to oppose the threat of Almyra and use it to his advantage, to speak boldly and proudly of 'busting open Fodlan's throat', to essentially destroy the country as it is now and the long-established world-order with it…

He always felt a bit… lukewarm, to you, whenever you insisted that you must save Rhea, all the more insistent for the guilt that you felt over your inner resistance and resentment to the thought that she's a beloved figure though she might have wronged you personally:

"For better or worse, she liked you a lot… but I do not think it would be good for her to return as archbishop." "I certainly have things I want to ask her."…

When he starts speaking of a world without her, the right question finally dawns on her, and he seems to exhale in relief when you thought he would chide you:

"Do you hope she's dead?"

"That's a dangerous question, teach… I admit I have given it a lot of thought."

He's just lying to protect himself in a sense, just like Seteth or Flayn. He values life more than honor or glory, for is life not delighted in left or right of any border?

For all his secretiveness, he doesn't have the same sort of edge that Dimitri and Edelgard have – you can't say it's not admirable. He doesn't like Rhea but he's hardly hungry for her entrails or thirsty for her blood. He has the same sympathy for the archbishop that he would have for any other thinking being, even if she is his enemy… but there could be no doubt that he regards her as such.

Dimitri's words about how the crests and relics are ultimately necessary to maintain society evaporate in the light of the revelation that other countries seem to do perfectly fine without them – and did not Shamir as well find something odd in the local abundance of strange powers?

Someone as single-minded as Edelgard might be easily counted as biased, but here is Claude as well, accusing Rhea of much the same things – lies and distortions and keeping the populace convinced that this unjust system is the only way. If anything, what Claude levels at Rhea's feet is even worse: The land of your birth is a backward, isolated backwater and you didn't even know it, because like everyone else here you more or less thought of the borders as the limits of the world. Even Edelgard who is farseeing in time thought of it as such, of people with crests being allowed to "rule the world" and how "the world" could have only one ruler by which she meant that she must defeat Dimitri. You thought that if Rhea had one redeeming feature, it's what she was willing to do to protect outcasts like Shamir and Cyril. You're sure she really thinks of the monastery's residents as a flock for her to protect even if it meant getting captured and mauled by demonic beasts. She probably truly believes that, but her action look now like those of a Queen who throws crumbs to the impoverished peasantry while she pockets all the heavy taxes for her lavish palace.

You don't think she particularly cares about Fodlanese or Almyran or anything like that – you're all just humans to her, humans who work for her or against her. Whether you work for her as her underling or claim to worship her mother is probably all the same to her, Sothis is her family as much as her deity. She's probably acting out of fear, keeping the land that she controls apart from the chaotic heathens that she doesn't – but the consequence of that is still that the country is closed-off and that those of other faiths are viewed widely as uncivilized Barbarians.

It seems perverse to praise her for saving Cyril when her policies are the reason he was orphaned and mistreated in the first place, and similar things might be said about Catherine. Their devotion looks like that of battered spouses crawling back for more punishment.

There is prejudice in Almyra as well, as there is mistrust of the neighbors across the river in every little village; some of it is probably human nature. Yet there's places that have more of it than others, and hence conditions that foster its growth, or counteract it.

You think of all you have seen thus far, of Dedue, Cyril, and Petra, the whispering in the monastery about all the ones who did not welcome strangers from such places and all the horrors they endured, and the bitter wars between Faerghus and Sreng, all of it, on Rhea, and you would feel your heart harden if it wasn't already stone.

Almyra, too, has its own follies, and Claude is intent to dispense with them both. Fodlan, however, looked like the more urgent problem: Since the neighbors showed no sign of cleaning up their unstable powderkeg of a country, Claude decided that he would do it for them….

Left to his own devices, he might have raided the monastery himself, and if it wasn't for Edelgard declaring war or Dimitri swearing vengeance, you assume that he would have made his own move sooner or later. You don't think he would have started a military campaign of his own, that's not his style, he prefers subtler, more precise methods, surgical methods relying on diplomacy or subterfuge. He would not outright fight the church; Perhaps he would have assassinated Rhea and then pull on all his political strings to install some affiliate as the next archbishop; Maybe Marianne – who knows if he could have pulled it off, if he would have had the nerve to go through with that risk…

In the end, he didn't have to. Rhea had been removed for him, the status quo of Fodlan had been thrown into disorder, and Claude would be damned if he did not take advantage of it. That's why he attacked the empire: To seize the seat of power for his own grand purpose. That's what Ignatz meant when you fought him at Gronder in another lifetime, the Alliance Leader's ambition.

Ever since he first offered to lend you a hand and kept his word to you and Seteth, you never saw Claude's policy as more than a means to keep the Alliance together. You never considered that his stance of neutrality might be a reflection of his true beliefs.

But now he's telling you that the Church's current leadership must go, and the crests must go, and "Edelgard is probably trying to do something very similar.". Claude wouldn't be fooled by propaganda or the like – he really believes that. Maybe he always did – that, or he informed himself over these past five years.

He speaks of pulling in the church's support to sell fighting the Empire as a moral cause to the greater population… which implies that he doesn't think it is a moral cause.

He sees nothing wrong with her goal. His critique is of her public relations: "Her methods are too extreme for the people to get behind." He has absolutely no personal beef with her at all, he simply thinks she can't do it – Or that he can do better. To be fair, she probably thinks the same.

Their dispute is not a disagreement in what to do, but at best, of how exactly to do it, or who's the best man for the job. A cynic might say that they're both simply struggling for the seat of power, a poet, that both were pursuing extraordinary goals with extraordinary means. Backed into a corner and left with the smallest territory, Claude had simply resorted to guile instead of brute strength:

Concealing his own goals from even his closest allies while using every dirty politician trick in the book. Professing a religion he didn't believe in, using them only for political benefit, offering to save Rhea whom he knew to be dangerous to get at influence and information, telling each ally and supporter what he wanted to hear, promising the merchant lax regulations and free trade to secure himself wealthy backers…

If you did not know him better you'd be unsure about who bought whom. Edelgard kept pragmatic secrets and swept unfavorable truths under the rug, but even she declared her intentions from the get-go: Her soldiers all knew what they were dying for and backed her precisely because they agreed with her convictions. But all those who rejected her values opposed her fiercely.

Claude, however, deceived people so that he would not have to fight them.

Edelgard gave all her classmates the option to bow out; Claude is blatantly using the knights and the Alliance lords… and yet he's not double-crossing anyone in the sense of leading them to harm – in fact, he has everyone's best interest at heart, a better country, a peaceful world, the least possible loss of life… but you can't deny that the knights and the Alliance Lords would probably reject the proposal of creating a more unified, more secular Fodlan. That is, they would reject it now, just as you would have rejected leaving Rhea to her fate. You're the wedge he's using to take possession of the church, but you're also a friend he's looking out for. He was right to warn you against the church and he was doing it for your benefit as well, hoping that when the time is right, you would come around to his way of thinking all on your own, once you knew what he knew – and now he was looking to do the same both with the rest of the golden deer, and the world at large.

Because that's one of the most beautiful, most remarkable things about him: None of the prejudice he endured ever made him bitter or combative, though he had every right to be and no one could have blamed him for being angry. Instead he looks even at his worst experiences as something to be understood and analyzed – he doesn't so much blame people as he blames causes, patters and institutions.

Unlike Dimitri who saw people's inner beliefs as rather immutable, and Edelgard who had long since given up on being understood by others, Claude seemed to think of people and their beliefs as something much more malleable. Whereas the other two had seen no path but to fight to the death when they found that they had a hard disagreement, Claude would look at someone like Lorenz not as an other that there could be no fellowship with or as an antiquated obstacle to be crushed, but as precisely the sort of person he wanted to convince – and just this once, it seemed he had succeeded, for Lorenz stuck with Claude, officially to keep an eye on him, but quite lucky because he was less narrow-minded than his father and saw how Claude's plans could benefit the Alliance.

Claude haf said that above all, his goal is to give people the freedom to think for themselves where beliefs and cultures can freely coexist, that is, to broaden people's horizons and perspectives, to enlighten time so that they may think freely… he had done that for you, and now, he's resolved to do it for the whole world.

You're not sure that it can be done – not completely, not in your lifetimes – but every step closer to that vision of his is a step away from an irrational world drenched in a sea of blood.

He used to be your student, but now he's the one telling you to have more faith in yourself and your position. You always saw it as only another task that had been placed on you, something to do for others. You must guide the church; You must cleanse the wicked ones in the name of Sothis, your mission, your destiny, our duty… something given to you by someone else.

But Claude wouldn't hear such talk from Marianne and he wouldn't hear it from you – he can't afford to, or he'd have to swallow the 'destiny' of being doomed to be an outsider who belongs nowhere. He believes that people can free themselves of such conceptions, that one's 'fate' is not up to the random chance of one's circumstances.

After you had spoken, you would look at yourself in the mirror, with your ornaments and ceremonial robes marking you as the 'Enlightened One', and tell yourself: 'This person… me... is the leader of the resistance army'.

You didn't feel that when you were the arch-bishop, or even god-monarch of all this land, you didn't really feel it – and you don't think Rhea ever did, either. Behind that maternal facade of hers she was always some lost, frightened girl left in charge of the house, trying to maintain its homeostasis until Mama comes home, ripping the stuffing out her dolls in frustration too busy hiding from the shadows and the sounds of the wind to realize that she's in charge and personally responsible for everything that happens.

Being the product of her desperation and the object of her hope, you've tried your best to be responsible from the first, but you were no more free than she was, never as free in body, heart and mind than you are now as a technical puppet ruler with Claude as the man pulling the string behind you. As it would turn out, he and you are almost perfectly matched: He's the planner, and you're the enforcer. He comes up with his schemes, and you carry them out – better than anyone else he could wish for, he says. But without him, you wouldn't have direction.

You hardly thought about yourself or your origins before he came into your life and started asking questions.

Still, what a paradox – he flat out apologizes for brazenly using you, but at least he does that, and he's the first person to actually sympathize with you over how you've ended up as the leader of a religion you don't even believe in – un-blinded by the upbringing that would make him see it as the highest, holiest honor, he's one of the few ones that could.

(You miss Dorothea all the more)

But if this world was sane, it should have been obvious. You're older than you look, so having you stuffed in these holy garments should look even more ridiculous than it truly is.

Even having ascended to the highest rank once before, you don't feel it in your bones yet but you begin to consider that being Rhea's designated successor isn't just a list of things you have to do – to follow what others want from you, like you always did – but a list of opportunities, things that you can do.

Not even just because of Rhea, or because of Sothis, but because of you. You once heard Claude ominously musing that many among your number might follow you, and you specifically, even if it weren't for Rhea, or if you were to outright turn against her. And he's certainly saying that because it's very convenient for plans of his own. You're not so dumb that you don't notice that you're being set up as a figurehead, a bargaining chip for Claude to both take control of the church and avoid displeasing the Alliance lords by marching under the Alliance banner and thus challenging the empire.

You flinch a bit when you see the flag that's hoisted instead – it's just like the one that Seteth made, and on it is the Crest of Flames… the Crest of Sothis, really, and her symbol, though none would take her name in vain. Back then you were fighting beneath it as her avatar – now, you're paradoxically working to get rid of the importance of crests and religion why making use of the social and cultural pull that the use of those symbols provided. You can certainly imagine how the citizens of Adrestia might not see it that way, or think you hypocrites.

You might look a blank slate, a puppet, while Claude is the man behind you, the dark vizier with his own agenda. Yet strangely you feel more in control of your on life than when you were set to rule this land in your own name as its messiah. Rather than having your fate dictated by your origins, you are using them, like Claude is using the mixed blood that ties him to two influential houses. You're finding that being left to mind the church means that you're in charge of it, that you can change it and mold it as you think it right.

Strange that you would feel stronger and freer through becoming someone's subordinate.

When you have the audacity to bring it up to him, Claude laughs fondly. "It's not strange at all – Actually, I think it's much more natural than the opposite would be. Great things can happen when people understand each other and work together instead of getting hung up on their differences."

He's believed this a long time, but he smiles like he didn't really feel it in his heart before today.

...

You do feel a little sorry for the knights though, when you see Hilda and Claude both ramping up their charm to try and rope them into backing you.

Hilda has clearly become something of an A-list schemer in her own right, and the pair of them work together as a straight-up frightening dream team.

It appears she has become something much like Claude's most trusted right hand woman – it makes a whole lot of sense, apart from the obvious similarities in their gifts and priorities, he has the sort of local knowledge and observational gifts he's do well to get his hands on, and unlike him, she can actually play innocent in a halfway convincing manner.

The Knights of Seiros are not the only ones joining you.

Petra, Linhard and Ferdinand have fled much like the first time they joined forces with you. Exactly like that, in fact – a lot of the time, they say exactly the same things, like there was a cosmic switch somewhere that locked them into one path or the other. You wonder how many of your former students you could get to come with you in this manner.

Felix, Sylvain and Anette though… have not so much renounced their old allegiance as they have jumped off a sinking ship. You suppose that they, too are hoping that their self-interests will line up with Claude's. They showed up together, clinging to their friendship with little else left. They're a bit more pragmatic than their friends and family, and you've already seen how ready they are to walk off a cliff for their doomed kingdom. They didn't want to ditch their old home – they simply saw no hope. Felix puts it like an obvious choice and deems everything else to be suicidal but his crass words doth protest a bit too much.

Sylvain has no illusions either, in that he thinks his father would definitely consider this a betrayal no matter how reasonable it seems. "Now I've gone and done it – I wonder how I'm going to die."

Part of you revolts when he muses whether it's his father or Dimitri will kill him first, but you must remember how Dimitri was before he found his way again… how he was when he scared a young Felix out of his wits. Sylvain's not even bitter or resentful and neither has he really renounced Dimitri – he's simply being realistic, or what registers as such to him.

You can't help the sinking feeling of disappointment, when the last you remember of Dimitri is this heartrendingly genuine person wanting so much to serve his subjects. You don't want to consider whether or not he'd be capable of killing one of his own childhood friends. You know he values them very much and that their leaving would tear at his soul, but anyone who's not directly opposing the empire, who refuses the pointless, hopeless fight against them, hop and down the cliff…

The way he used to see things in black and white, he might consider that the same as helping them or associating with them, like he sees Edelgard as associating with his father's murderers.

You don't have the heart to tell them that Dimitri is probably alive.

When you hear of some mysterious army marching on your position from the north, you're not the least bit surprised. You've talked it over with Claude and you're not too doubtful of his intentions as he once had the same intentions without your suggestion. You want to work together – so you make sure that you've got the bridge of Myrrdin secured right on schedule so that you might meet him there in the expectation that Gilbert will meet you there again to request your assistance. But you're tied down with internal Alliance politics, and the effort is slow to get off the ground. Claude needs to manage the Gloucesters; Lorenz seems willing to help him and get him to reel in the rest of the lords to support him, but only if he gets the Empire off their backs. Things don't exactly stall out, they simply proceed carefully, so you weren't too worried. You were actually hopeful, really – Claude's a good negotiator, Lorenz can't be facing you on the bridge if he's right beside you, and somewhere during the proceedings you manage to talk Ashe into defecting from Cornelia's forces – you think he'll fit the Golden Deer, being an archer from a common background and all that, and besides well used to using trickery to survive while keeping a noble heart. You can understand now why he'd surrender to the Alliance

For once you're actually optimistic. You dare think that you might actually have chosen the right person, the right one to make peace…

But Gilbert never shows up, nor is there any sight of any other kingdom soldiers.

Perhaps your apparent neutrality looked like complicity to him, your obvious larger strategies and unclear intentions too untrustworthy; It not unlikely that this Dimitri never got over his initial perception of you as someone that creeps him out.

Maybe it's a little bit of all these things, but probably it's none of them and he didn't consider anything about you at all and simply charged ahead with no thought of strategy.

He crossed the river somewhere else, at greater loss to himself and the territories he's been blowing through: Tempest King indeed. That he turned out to be alive should have been happy news but you suspect that it's just a prelude to worse, and though they're probably attributing your foreknowledge to nothing more certain than an experiences warrior's well-honed instincts, you think everybody around you is starting to notice.

They remember the uncharacteristic outbursts from Dimitri's last month at the academy; Those who were formerly from Faerghus remember more. It might have been kinder if he'd never come back, never been found and given the reins of a country so that he might dash it against the wall of his personal vendetta. You'd never ever want him to be dead, but you wish so badly that he could just live somewhere quietly, perhaps together with Dedue.

You know he's going to his doom, and you're tempted to leave your encampment and disappear into the night to seek him, but even if you did that – and it would be all too irresponsible under the current circumstances – there would be no point. You managed that only just barely in a world where you had a year's time to win his trust.

...

Remember when you came to Gronder with Dimitri and fought Claude, while he argued that there was not reason for you to quarrel and that you should just let him go?

You're having a bit of a deja vu.

At last, you stand above that same killing field from a whole other vantage point, facing what Claude terms the worst class reunion in history.

The Kingdom warriors and the Imperial soldiers are butchering each other all across this strip of land, and you're about to descend on them like opportunistic vultures, looking to take advantage of the carnage.

You're seriously having to remind yourself: You're doing this to make a better world. You're doing this for Fodlan's new dawn…

The possibility of encountering Edelgard was, of course, accounted for. Claude is the sort of man who accounts for all that needs accounting, and Edelgard needs being accounted for if anyone ever did. On your own, without a plan, even you couldn't take her – yet you are the one who comes just about the closest to being able to take her, so any strategy to deal with her must perforce include yourself. Cruel fate, for both of you.

Still, you can only agree with Claude's assessment: If she were not tied down by powerful fighters, she should surely mow her way through your soldiers like a knife through butter, and you can't deny that, given that she did exactly that to the army of Faerghus the last time around.

Claude is not especially keen on her head or Dimitri's, but he makes no motion to hide that the lives of his followers are his fist priority. He might prefer talk, but unlike Dimitri, he wouldn't turn his back on a possible foe to archive that; He might be an idealist in his goals, but he's a pragmatist in his methods.

He told you once – you and Dimitri – that if your roles were reversed, he would most certainly not gamble his own life on coming to Dimitri's aid the way that Dimitri himself once did, and he wasn't kidding. He has his own dream to look out for, after all.

Dimitri is on his own. Any Alliance soldiers that show no interest in cooperating will be treated as hostiles – Claude will shoot first rather than be the first to get shot at; Dimitri and Edelgard are on their own. Claude doesn't strictly want them dead, but if they don't look out for their own survival, Claude won't hold himself responsible for what happens.

Once you wondered how the Kingdom and Alliance fought at all – it seemed contrived, tragic, wholly unnecessary. Now, you deem it almost inevitable. A consequence of who it's leaders are.

If Dimitri were in a different mindset, he would reach out his hands and Claude would gladly take it, but as he is now, he can only barge through until the leader of the Alliance responds in self-defense. Dimitri as he is now cannot ever accept a world with her in it, and Claude can't accept anything steamrolled upon him by force or being swept under the rug before he can stick his nose in it, precisely because he is so intent of enabling people to think for themselves.

Perhaps he is even counting on both enemy armies spending each other, even if would rather have the Kingdom as allies…

But unlike them, he knows to focus on the real threat, which is the empire with its larger army, and the formidable engine of destruction at it's head.

You're not the only one who's been committed to the task of keeping the emperor at bay: He's sending both you and Lysithea, easily his two strongest warriors. Felix has volunteered for another ugly task. Hilda has been termed the 'secret weapon', for all that this embarrasses her – She is somehow intended to distract the other commanders who were last used to great effect against their foes – like Hubert, you'd presume.

Claude was tactful when he explained this, but also resolute and clear. "I'm sorry to ask this of you – I know both of you were close with her at the academy. But is has to be you two."

And Lysithea is quick to assure him that she understands – she probably would have protested if she thought he was doubting her resolve, though her shaking fist betrays some feelings being forced down.

In the end Claude wouldn't have asked either of you if he wasn't sure that you could do it. He's simply being considerate, and he's also very right:

After all, the enemy you're discussing is Edelgard.

You've seen her dodge attacks by jumping on the tips of her toes with her other leg raised straight into the air in a long line; She's shrugged off what should have been devastating magical attacks, torn up the ground with a single strike, and she's been known to throw her shield into the air to grip her axe for a two-handed strike, pelt the ground with craters before catching that heavy thing nearly without effort…

She is a goddess of war and a demon of power:

Behold the behemoth, queen over all those who are proud.

So it comes to pass that you cross paths again on the battlefield – must you truly be damned to fight each other to the death over and over again, you of all people, who ought to be kindred spirits?

Yourself and Lysithea share a glance, resolved but exhausted.

But all this time you've been telling yourself that is is her who is making you all do this.

...yet she looks as dismayed as you.

"...Lysithea! How unfortunate that a talented woman like you should throw her life away on a pointless battle!"

You hear very real regret there.

Agressively fighting down whatever she herself must be feeling, the young mage is all the more clear with her intentions: "Do not underestimate me. The fight is far from over, Edelgard!"

Yet she always did have the sense that the one-time imperial princess really did respect her for her talents despite her occasional annoying fretting. She had looked out for her almost like an older sister would, and now they would probably fight to the death….

Only few people could have kept a calm demeanor or even a sense of levity under these circumstances, but Claude would be one of them. You've grown to suspect that he uses the upbeat banter to distance himself from the action.

"We haven't seen each other since Garreg Mach!" he says, as a casually as if this really were just an ordinary class reunion. "You've grown lovelier than ever, Edelgard."

Dimitri would have charged him with his lance by now, but Edelgard is herself hard-boiled enough to just calmly respond in kind:

"You're not so unfortunate yourself. And you have the aid of the professor. Frankly, I'm jealous!"

But then she drops all pretense and looks straight at the three of you:

"Just go! Now's the chance for you and the professor to leave."

You're not her enemy, in other words. The Kingdom army is. She would have let you go without batting an eyelash.

But Claude is no more interested in backing down than Dimitri was back when Claude was the one trying to join up with him: "I'm afraid I must decline. Even if we left, we'd just have to come right back."

He might have turned back in another life, but not now, when he feels that his impossible dream might actually be within his grasp – and he is sure as hell not turning his back on her.

She doesn't ask a second time.

You're doing this for the future of Fodlan -

You're doing this to beat back military rule and replace it with freedom and free thought….

It won't be in vain.

In the end you owe your survival mostly to Lysithea.

At some point during the mayhem your eyes flicker over to Claude to exchange a worried glance just to find that he thought of it first.

Her hands blaze with magic; you didn't think she could produce such a frantic war cry from her slender little body. Once or twice you're tempted to pull her back, except you can't afford to against an opponent like Edelgard, and you're not sure she would have listened even if you told her.

She's desperate, like a person with nothing left to lose en route to meet their fate.

The Emperor is tough as stringy leather, but Claude had a special, tailor-made strategy cooked up for the sole purpose of defeating her, and Lysithea is not just any mage. What seems to drive her today appears to go further than even her typical need to prove herself -

Even once the enemy commander retreats through your concerted efforts, she refuses to fall back, and keeps throwing herself around the battlefield even after she was forced to lean on her staff to catch her breath: "I can do more! I can still be useful! Let me fight!"

You make a mental note to keep an eye on her – people who are fit for battle do not typically need to beg for it. But you can't think about it now.

Edelgard's not the sort of opponent that you can be fighting and also think.

You can only hope that your efforts will be keeping Claude's hands and brains free for the thinking; you also make it your task to look out for Lysithea – You'll have to talk to her sometime later when everything is less urgent.

That's all the tasks you can handle at this moment while also staying alive.

The shadows lengthen, the hours go, and the battle proceeds, somehow.

Are you holding her off, or is she holding off you?

Either way neither of you gets very much of a go at the others' underlings.

Claude's precision strike could not have been more different from Dimitri's blind charge. All in all, you contain Her Majesty much more efficiently than the much larger kingdom army did. What became of it without your guidance, you can't say – the need to react fast at any moment makes every moment feel longer, but you don't think you've seen a single blue uniform in a good while.

Somehow, the smaller Alliance force has come out on top without the Empire's numbers or the kingdom's many elite warriors. Edelgard might be formidable, but she alone can't fight the whole army, and Claude's sharp wit is easily worth legions.

At the very least you have a stalemate that you both have to flee from, but the Imperial forces are on their home territory and any sort of retreat means that they'll be vacating a chunk of their heartland.

It is a very exhausted, teeth-gritting Emperor that at least calls the retreat. You can tell because her movements are actually beginning to resemble those of a typical human person in heavy plate armor. Judging by her grimace, Lysithea sure did some damage.

But both of you know that you would pay a high price for pressing on further now, and so does Claude, so neither army makes an attempt to overtake the other in pursuit, each expecting that the other will take a rout over mutually assured destruction.

There is no repeat of the total massacre that was your first timeline, but neither is there any word of Arundel taking over: For now, it seems that the Emperor has remained quite solid on her throne.

...

You knew not to pursue; Dimitri didn't.

The Kingdom army, it turns out, has been completely dispersed. Whoever didn't run is dead; There might be refugees, but there will be no organized train marching back to Fraldarius territory.

Without even the sparse aid that the church once provided them in letting them cross the bridge of Myrrdin, they were completely defeated without even a figurative accomplishment to speak of.

They had, quite simply, thrown their lives away.

And Dimitri….

The day before, Felix had declared quite confidence that he would separate the Tempest King's head from his shoulders if they were by any chance still attached.

But the King did not die by Felix' sword. They certainly fought, so much is clear, but both men still lived when the former came away from the altercation. Some way or another, Felix did not seem to have struck the death blow. Surely one born with the crest of Blaiddyd would not die so easily, but it seems inconceivable that Felix would not have known this.

There would be no point in discussing this, however, because the King certainly did die one way or another.

He still lived when Felix left him (one might almost be tempted to say, 'Felix left him alive') but that lasted only so long as it took for Hilda to jump out from the bushes, wide-eyed and still visibly shaken in that underlying compassionate nature of hers that had never lain quite so open, because, especially now after these years, you would have taken her for someone who knows about the world, who is not all naive or anything, and she was white as a sheet as she described what she had seen.

If you'd ever wondered what would have become of him or his army if you had not stopped him the night after Rodrigue's death, you do know now.

He told you once that if wasn't for you, he would have gone on to challenge hordes of foes with no regard for his life or the lives of his allies and died a miserable death, but that does not even begin to describe it.

You hear that the tired, terrified imperial soldiers skewered him from all sides with their spears like some wild, rabid thing on the hunt, the whole pack of them piling onto him – did they think he could fly? Did they not think he would bleed out from having all his insides pierced?

He must have struck the primal fear into them for them to respond with that sort of extreme prejudice. He must have howled – You never saw it, but you could picture it right before you, how he must have been reaching out for the receding red fleck of Edelgard's cape until his arm congealed in rigor mortis.

None had heard anything of Dedue, but Gilbert was last seen carrying the late King's mangled body off the battlefield, heartbroken and tenderly enough to make one think it was his own son -

One might almost forget that he had an actual daughter who knew better than to expect his return.

Felix was stiff as marble as she cried into his arms, having attached herself to his person without waiting for his invitation. He mumbled something about avenging Dimitri upon the empire so that he might rest in peace or being unable to face him otherwise; you're rather ungently reminded that he, too, was raised by Rodrigue.

He might have rejected the ways of his homeland, he might even have rejected them, but he had still grown up suffused in its myths and values – he had wanted so badly to be free, but he never knew how to do it; Rejecting everything in sight was but a child's idea of counterdepent rebellion. When he asked to go with you he professed loudly that this was what he wanted, but now you suspect that he might not have been honest with himself on the subject of his former friend.

Sylvain's cynicism turned out to be somewhat more robust. You find him deadened but not surprised. "Yes, it's horrible, but when you really think about it, there's no way that you could have expected anything else to happen."

You ask why he says that.

He has no illusions about it:

"It's because of Dimitri. He really, really hated the Empire, ever since he started to think that they might have been involved in the tragedy of Duscur. Apparently there was some dignitary from the Empire who left Fhirdiad right before it happened… Even back at the academy, he never really had much to do with anyone from the Empire."

This refuses to feel right to you at first – even as a young man, you remember Dimitri as someone who was all about different peoples accepting each other, but he also spoke to you about the unacceptable within himself. He had a rather dim view of mankind, little more than sinners in the hands of an angry, uncaring goddess. You can't say that it would be entirely uncalled for him to think that way after witnessing such barbarity. He was exactly right in suspecting Arundel, and since he ended up as the regent after the unrest following the insurrection concluded, it would not be incorrect to regard him as representative of the imperial government. Still you can't forget that the imperial students of Garreg Mach included the likes of Linhardt and Bernadetta at the time, neither of whom could have hurt a fly back then.

But thinking back, you had certainly seen Dimitri talking with Marianne or Raphael sometimes, but you can't ever recall any situation where you really saw him hang out with any of the imperial students outside of stiff formalities. You wondered sometimes how odd it seemed that Bernadetta and Dedue didn't seem to know each other given that they had pretty much exactly the same hobbies, but you'd chalked it up to her probably being too scared of the vassal's imposing stature to approach him. Now you think that he may have followed his lord's example in this. Still, Dimitri was just keeping his distance, right? He was trying not to give in to those feelings, to be better than them - you don't want to say that that counts for nothing.

It did seem odd that Dimitri jumped immediately from finding out about Edelgard's secret identity to concluding that she must have been directly involved in a crime that took place when she couldn't have been older than twelve, but now you suspect that he'd not so much jumped to conclusions as he had seen that reveal as confirmation for long-held suspicions.

He must have held so much restrained rage tucked away beneath the surface, all the time he was acting normal towards his classmates, Edelgard and even Arundel, who was most definitely one of the real murderers. So much patience… no wonder he ran out of it.

There was no reason to doubt Sylvain – he'd known Dimitri since childhood.

In all this discussion about Dimitri, he never once mentioned that he had personally slain Ingrid that day – only much later would he take place what had transpired that day.

("I'm sorry Ingrid! But I believe more in what the professor is trying to do here than I do in my own country!"

"There comes a time when we must all chose what we're going to do. And I chose to die in service of my lord!")

When you'll ask him why he didn't talk to you right away, he'd say he had no reason to complain since he was not the one being dead. That seems to be one of those cruel convictions that life had impressed upon him: That he never had any right to complain since others had it worse.

But Dimitri's old childhood friends are not the only ones who have something to say about his death.

Marianne reflects on all the times she saw him praying, wondering whatever it was that he used to pray for. You think she might have a suspicion.

And then there's Ferdinand. He's incensed, but not how you would think. He's just about thoroughly disgusted with Dimitri – most of the sadness and anger he feels are for the people who followed him to their doom. A king, he says, should have the greater good in mind, not get swept up in his emotions. You generally think of Ferdinand as a fairly emotional person himself, very sanguine in temperament, but it is true that he might have chided Caspar on this at some point.

No matter his natural disposition, he certainly values responsibility and control. In that sense, he's maybe not so different from Edelgard and Hubert – in another world, maybe they could have worked together quite efficiently. But once you start thinking about other worlds, you can't help but wish that Ferdinand knew Dimitri as you once knew him, as he truly would want to be if he were freed from the shackles of his exaggerated sense of guilt, obligation and black-and-white thinking.

Ferdinand could only shake his head at the Tempest King, but if it was the Savior King instead… you could see him getting on that bandwagon much like Lorenz had done. The combination of preserving the spirit rather than the exact letter of traditions with an emphasis on serving the people would probably have had its appeal to the displaced Adrestian noble.

"King Dimitri, " he reasoned, "was abysmally failed by each and every of his councilors and advisors! How come not a single one of them stood up to him to keep him from such a ruinous path?"

How come? Simple. That would be because you weren't there with him.

...

At least you kept Raphael from being slain this time. By now you don't doubt that Claude most certainly would have kept his promise to take care of Maya and must have taken her with him when he fled the country -

that was before you really knew much about her, that she's an artist, that you ought to have been imagining her not as your go-to cheerful little girl but a distinctive personality much like Lysithea…

You'd never gone thrift-shopping with Raphael and Leonie to see if you could find gifts for her, or helped Hilda with procuring some handmade ones.

You're going to have and visit her after the war ends, when you've brought her brother back home to her in one piece.

…

"Well it was supposed to be Saint Seiros," says Ignatz, somewhat sheepishly.

So far that's not surprising – you know he likes to paint these religious motifs (You've never quite had the heart to disabuse him of his notions of Sothis' great beauty), nor is it too surprising that he'd hide or downplay his work for all that he's grown more confident as of late, but in this particular case, shyness is not why this particular painting ended up on the scrap heap.

"She's known mostly for the motherly way of protecting her followers, but Ingrid thought-"

He pauses a bit at the thought of her – She would most certainly have died at Gronder, following her old childhood friend all the way down to his doom.

"She thought I should try to bring out the aspect of her that is also a warrior. She did defeat the King of Liberation with her own hands, after all… but it didn't really come out right. She looks more like a maniacal demigod than anything…"

This is where his words veer off from the drawing; He gets into pensive musing about how the empire that was once founded by Saint Seiros herself has now turned against her creed so that you are now fighting warriors with the blood of the saints, and an enemy who might be a descendant of the goddess herself, but you lose track of his line of argument, knowing that so much of it is based on false stories.

Your gaze remains transfixed on the painting.

You don't know it yet, but there will come a time when you will conclude that Ignatz had captured the true essence of Seiros right then and there.

For now it pulls at something you've never allowed yourself to express, because you've been reasonable, because you've always gone and tried to be the bigger person even as you were dolled up and presented ripe on the altar.

"You made her look a little bit like Lady Rhea."

"Oh. That's because… uh… I guess it should be alright to tell you, since it's you professor."

What you learn then might have made a more expressive person laugh out loud.

Whilst Claude, Linhardt and Edelgard were all going around scouring the Library for secrets, Ignatz had only needed to ask for Flayn to crack and spill the whole tale to him, the true tale, as you've heard it once from Seteth. You don't think Flayn outright revealed that she was talking about herself, but enough transpired for Ignatz to start picturing the Saints a whole lot like certain church staff who are after all claiming to be relatives.

All Ignatz needed to do was ask nicely… but it makes sense. He's not exactly a particularly threatening fellow – Flayn has no reason to keep anything from him because she has nothing to fear from him. She and Seteth have most certainly told you all they know.

But not Rhea. Claude is right: She keeps too many secrets. Whatever made you think she had told you all?

You think that hot, pounding tension in your temples might be the feeling known as 'resentment'.

You're really not sure what you'll do if you ever see her again.

But you know what? Claude is no longer the only one who would love himself some answers.

You ask to keep the painting, maniacal demigod and all.

Sometimes you look at it to remind yourself.

Next time Claude stops by for tea, he comments in such a way as to suggest that he's onto Seteth and his daughter as well. By now you think that you can trust him enough that there's no need to throw him off their trail. You know he would never target anyone for having different origins – you're not sure that you could say that about Edelgard.

Even if you assume that the bandits were never meant to actually kill Dimitri and Claude, and that killing your father was a spontaneous decision of Kronya's, there's no question that the Death Knight was Edelgard's direct subordinate, not Solon's.

As usual, you can leave it to Claude to ask just the right questions – "weren't there two more saints, though?"

...

You find the answer to that before too long. Claude was hellbent on getting it, and he knows well to get what he wants.

Still, you wouldn't think that you would stumble on one of them while basically trying to get a discount weapon for Leonie. At least, it has stopped her from being jealous over your sword.

Claude was very pleased with you that day; He commends you for realizing that it would be a good idea to nap Linhardt. Still you do feel a little bit guilty – he suggested that you send Seteth and Flayn directly against the beasts to see how they would react. Granted, if he was right, they would not have very much to fear (sure enough Flayn's biggest concern seemed to be to make sure that her 'uncles' wouldn't unwittingly blow her cover), and Claude expected that they might perhaps be won over to the cause – but no such luck.

The Immovable One doesn't have the strength left to be of much help; and the ones they call the Windcaller wants not nothing to do with you – by association, because you bring people with you that carry 'the stink of those detestable Ten Elites…'

But weren't they heroes that helped Seiros bring down Nemesis?

Why would one of the Saints be disgusted with Claude for the 'crime' of being a very distant descendant of him?

And you. The Windcaller said you had 'the Stench of Sothis' about you. Why he would draw a connection between her and you, you can imagine. You could even understand if he sort of started treating you like her the way Rhea did. But why would he disdain you for it? Wouldn't Sothis be his mother like she's Rhea's and Seteth's? You could at least faintly understand his distrust if he sensed your crest, thought you were a descendant of King Nemesis and figured that you might be as untrustworthy as your ancestor, but then why would he say that you smell of Sothis?

…

It used to be that Marianne was your problem child. You were having to make sure that she got enough sleep, took care of herself and left her room once in a while. Things improved somewhat once she made friends with Hilda, and then she returned to you with her skin cleared and her hair correctly tied – it sure can't have hurt when you roughed up that wannabe 'scholar' who had been bothering her. Lately, you've seen more of that quiet wisdom and insight shining through which she always used to have; she'd found the confidence to tell you just how troubled she had really been back then, which in itself signified a lot – before, she would have kept quiet out of some fear that she might have been bothering others.

But if you thought you had to worry about the health and well-being anyone in your current class, you would have thought it would be. Or maybe Ignatz – or even Lorenz. He was more sensitive than he let on and you'd agree with Hilda that he probably should be eating more.

But here's who you wouldn't have worried about: Lysithea. She was always one of your best, most hardworking students. Sure, she could be a little abrasive at times, but apart from certain touchy subjects she was mature enough, if not wholly over that phase where just about every young person would become embarrassed of their less cool-sounding interests.

Sure, you always got the impression that she was somewhat unfit, but that wouldn't be too unusual for a noble lady of the alliance, who, judging by Hilda and Lorenz, would not typically have been accustomed to manual labor. Besides, she was ultimately a mage. She didn't need to lift anything heavier than a wand.

But ever since you were reunited after your involuntary vacation at the bottom of that blasted ravine, you get the impression that she's even more high-strung and impatient than before, if such a thing is possible. When you heard that she yelled at Lorenz for wanting to discuss politics, you didn't think too much of it. You'd think she would be glad to be consulted on such a 'serious' topic, but Lorenz did have a certain tendency to, let's say, overestimate his own charm. But then she started getting into arguments with Marianne and Ignatz of all people! That might almost be considered an achievement.

You figured that she must be under pressure because her family was under pressure from their land's proximity to the Empire, but even as the Alliance's political situation improved and the success of your campaign progressed, her mood seemed to get worse if anything. In the war councils, she was often on the side of quick, drastic actions, and her tendency to overwork herself had certainly gotten worse – and trying to nudge her towards taking breaks only seemed to exacerbate the problem.

Before long both Rafael and Hilda independently showed up at your doorstep to bring up the issue.

Lorenz, bless his heart, got a basket full of miscellaneous health remedies showed back into his arms.

This has been noted on your radar for a while, as something to watch out for and make an effort to counteract until the day you came to look for her in the library to discuss the latest intel with her (a productive habit you had picked up from Claude).

You didn't find her with the books. Instead she was curled up on her side, on one of the easy chairs intended for reading, her latest book put down on a table besides her. She was not so exhausted or incapacitated that she couldn't chase you out of the room when you asked if she needed help, but she looked pained enough for you to suspect that something more serious might be the matter – but whatever it was, so far she seemed hellbent on hiding it.

You would find out soon enough.