Claude

He had just had to pick axes to cross-train with. Claude grunted as Edelgard's training weapon slammed into his wooden shield with enough force to rattle his teeth. His entire combat style depended on being too far away for the enemy to hit, and being forced into close quarters took adjustment. Edelgard was as relentless a sparring partner as she had been an enemy. Her blade never stopped, forcing him into increasingly wild dodges and parries to avoid defeat. He spotted half a dozen gaps in her defense where he could have ended the match with a single arrow, but Edelgard's relentless advance gave him no time to translate that knowledge to victory.

"Time." Byleth called. "You're improving, Claude. Watch your footwork. You're still too tense in melee."

"Try to relax while I've got a whirling dervish of death coming at me. Got it."

Byleth smiled a little. When she had come to the Academy, Claude had taken her blank expression as a challenge. He would make her smile just like he made everyone else smile and for the same reason: people who liked you were easier to manipulate. Somewhere along the way though, manipulation had fallen by the wayside and he made her smile simply because she did it so rarely. They could all use more reasons to smile these days.

She turned to Edelgard. "You did well, but you need to work on your defense. In a real battle, leaving yourself open like that is just asking for the other fighter's ally to kill you."

"I'm aware. I'll strive to improve." She cocked her head to one side. "Do you have any specific drills you want me to do before we set out?"

"Do you know the one from D'Aubry's Combat Arts? He..." Claude only half listened as they launched into a discussion of axe technique too advanced for him to follow. He settled for watching them instead. He had wanted to find some way to spare Edelgard when they hadinvaded Enbarr but he was still having some trouble wrapping his head around the fact that that she was going to be fighting with them and practically joined to Byleth's hip while they liberated the country that she had subjugated in the first place.

"So you want to make the circles as tight as you can." Byleth held her arms out and rotated them as she her shoulders, looking a bit like a demented bird. Edelgard's gaze was intent on her. Clearly, he had missed a great deal of combat potential in focusing on the bow. "You want as little wasted motion as possible so you don't tire yourself out. Or leave yourself open. Your swing is so wide that it's easy for me to hit a vital organ if your attack doesn't connect."

Edelgard's face darkened, lost in thought. "So that's how I lost. I always wondered."

Byleth's face was expressionless. "That's how you lost."

"Thank you for telling me." Her voice was soft, earnest. Not the way it had been when she was making a speech to her troops, but more like it had been in the Academy on those rare days when she was something other than the princess who had to prove how superior she was to everyone. "Manuela tried her best, but it wasn't her forte and I was...too occupied with other things to be a good student."

Time to intervene before this turned into a recollection of all the times they tried to kill each other. "That's us. A regular second chance brigade. And when we win this thing, we'll show you how good we are at parties."

"And we will win this thing." Byleth inclined her head towards Edelgard. "I wasn't joking when I called you my sword. Claude and most of the rest of the Alliance will be focusing on the western Kingdom but you and I will be heading for the central and eastern provinces before linking up at Tailtean. We will be depending on Gaspard knights and what's left of the Galatea aerial cavalry. If you have any grudges against the Kingdom, now's the time to deal with them."

"Worry about their grudge against me."

"Ashe and Ingrid have assured me that their troops will behave." Her lips twitched but her eyes darkened until they were like the finest emeralds. "I had Ferdinand look up the law. An attack on a servant of the emperor is an attack on the emperor herself. Treason punishable by death. Is that not right?"

The air grew heavy. "Your Majesty is too kind. I still don't know why you guard my life more jealously than I do, now that you know all that I've done. Will you tell me why?"

Her hand traced the outline of Edelgard's side and her breathing was slow and labored. Edelgard's skin, usually so deathly pale, flushed pink. Someone should broken the tension, but any jibes Claude might have made died in his throat. Everyone in the Golden Deer had known about their stoic professor's incredibly obvious crush on the leader of the "enemy" house and many side bets had been lost over the year as to whether she would ever do anything about it. Then Edelgard had turned out to be the actual enemy, and Byleth had been as capable and dedicated a general as Claude could ask for. Now her guilt and her desire were all mixed together.

Edelgard's lips parted ever so slightly and she leaned into Byleth's hand. No wonder she had been so cooperative. If he were a kinder man, he would have teased them and told them to kiss. The war had destroyed his kindness. He was now the sort of man who would threaten a woman with reliving her imprisonment if it kept her pliant. His threats contained the the carrot as well as the stick, but he would do what he had to just as much as Edelgard. An attracted former emperor was that much more likely to keep her oath of loyalty. Maybe it would give Byleth something to think about beyond memories of a past that she couldn't change.

Byleth made a fist and dropped her hand to her side, and the tension evaporated. "Suffice to say that I find you useful. After all, we both want Cornelia and Thales dead."

"That we do," Edelgard said, her breath shaky. She stepped back. "I am ready to serve beside the rest of the All Fódlan Mixed Force."

Claude blinked. So did Byleth. "The what?"

"Your combined army. No one told me what you were naming it, so I took the liberty." She grinned. Actually grinned. "I'm rather proud of it."

"I was just going to call it the Flame Corps."

Claude gripped the closest desk to help him stifle a laugh. These two deserved each other with their terrible names. "Really? That's the best you can do?"

They rounded on him. "Let's see you do better," Byleth said.

Claude opened his mouth and then closed it. "I will. You just have to give me time."

Both of them still glared at him, but there was no real malice behind their gazes. This was how Fódlan and the rest of the world should be. The two emperors who had once stood on opposite sides of a brutal war working for a common cause. There would be no outsiders in that world because there would be no Us or Them. There would be less focus on revenging old wrongs and more on learning from each other to create a culture that contained the best parts of all people and broke this stasis that had held for as long as anyone could remember.

In that world, Claude could once more be kind.

Ingrid

"You're a filthy traitor." Raoul had never felt shy about getting in her face when he felt the need, and he was so close that his spittle landed on her furred collar. "Your father would be ashamed of you."

Pain like an old wound twinged in her chest. Her father was probably already ashamed of her. She had spent the five years of the war shoring up Galatea territory and keeping it away from the Dukedom instead of joining Rodrigue and the others in a war they had no chance of winning. She had come back to the monastery because she was a Golden Deer and they had promised to reunite. Then she had discovered that the professor was alive and Claude had an actual plan to free her and her countrymen.

She had come face-to-face with those countrymen on the field of Gronder. Dimitri, the rightful king all true knights of Faerghus had sworn to protect, was alive. And he was mad, striking down friend and foe alike in his need to slay Edelgard. "If you are not with me, you are my enemy," he had growled at her as he threw his lance at her pegasus. He, Felix, Sylvain...all of them had died that day. If she had stayed, it would have been her duty to die as well, just as it had been her duty to marry a wealthy man and save their family.

Yes, any true citizen of Faerghus would be deeply ashamed. "You'll have to be more specific."

"That monster of an Emperor! She killed our king, conquered our lands, oppressed our people. And not only is she still alive, you expect us to serve beside her?" His face was red and he spoke so quickly that his breath came in short gasps. "Honor demands she die!"

More than honor. Her heart demanded some recompense. Galatea lands had been too poor and distant for Cornelia to truly bother with them, but her taxes had been brutal and her soldiers killed or maimed anyone on suspicion of the slightest crimes. There were rumors of children being brought to the Royal Palace and never been seen again. All with the tacit approval of Edelgard von Hresvelg.

"We swore to serve Byleth. Byleth commands us to serve beside her." She had never had any of her friends' charisma, but she knew how to make her voice low and dangerous to force people to listen. "Dimitri's is dead. Byleth is our liege. If that's not enough for you, she's also the only hope of freeing our home. So don't speak to me of honor. If you can't do your duty, leave."

He roared and turned away. "You're right. Dimitri is dead. He would turn over in his grave to see you now."

Ingrid wandered through the monastery. She hadn't cried properly since hearing of Glenn's death, but the sense of emptiness grew stronger with each passing day. When she was a child, being a knight had seemed so simple, even if it meant going against what her father wanted. She would serve the king, and wise and kind Dimitri would fix everything that had gone wrong. She could be absolutely loyal to him because he would never give a cruel order. Felix's paranoia was born of exaggeration. If only she had the strength to break away from her father, she could be a new Kyphon.

Her feet carried her to the library, seemingly of their own accord. It was late, and only a few monks even bothered to come here now that there was no academy attached. Well, the monks and Ashe. He sat at the table furthest from the entrance, reading by a candle that had burned almost to a nub. There had been eight of them in the Blue Lions' advanced class. She and Ashe were the ones who had most wanted to uphold the ideals of chivalry that were the lifeblood of Faerghus. They alone had survived.

She cleared her throat and slid into the chair opposite. "Don't tell me you're rereading Loog and the Maiden of Wind?"

He looked up at her. His hair was neater, but he still had the same freckles that made him look far too young to be an officer and an easy smile that made her want to tell him her troubles. A fixed point in these chaotic times. "I'm trying to make sense of this treatise on government. All this talk of economic policy and legal precedent makes my head spin. Lorenz and Ferdinand tried to help, but they just made my headache worse. Can you help?"

"Alas, I'm barely more knowledgeable than you. Our lands are so poor that we would be a bad model for you."

"By—I mean Her Majesty tells me that there's nobody else to take over Gaspard lands. I have to know this stuff if I'm going to be a lord." He ran his hands through his hair. "It still doesn't feel real. That we're going back to the Kingdom."

"I know what you mean. I thought I had cut ties with everything in my old life when I returned to the monastery." Ingrid wished her mind and heart would settle. She wasn't normally given to excessive self-reflection, and being trapped in this morass of memory and regret was exhausting. She wondered how Ashe managed. They had never spoken of the battle in the Valley of Torment, but perhaps that was a mistake. He knew what it was for loyalties to conflict and for conscience to pull him in two directions. To abandon his vows.

"If I may ask, do you ever regret serving House Rowe? Or coming here?"

His head snapped up. "What?"

"I don't mean it as a criticism." She took a deep breath. "Gaspard is a vassal to Rowe, but Rowe served the usurper. Your duty as a knight is ambiguous at best. Just as my own duty is ambiguous. I should kill Edelgard to avenge Dimitri and Faerghus, but she may be useful in freeing the Kingdom and Byleth ordered me to protect her. So far I have, but it feels terrible."

He was silent for a long time. "I don't think that I was ever meant to be a knight," he said at last.

"But you're one of the kindest and most honest people I've ever met."

He blushed. "I don't feel very kind or honest anymore, but that wasn't what I meant. "He gestured to the books on the shelves. "The stories I've loved so much were about being brave and loyal to your king no matter what and doing great feats of arms. But me? I've always been happiest just handing gold to the poor and helping people get back on their feet."

"That's part of being a knight."

"Maybe so, but it should be a bigger part of the stories. I don't want to punish the guilty. I want to heal people and give second chances, like Lonato did. Like Byleth did for me. I should be hanged as a thief or a traitor, but I'm alive today because of their mercy." He trembled slightly and his voice rose enough to earn a glare from one of the monks. "So, yes, I regret serving Rowe. Not because I broke my oath to the Kingdom, but because I saw suffering and I did nothing about it."

"I see." It seemed like a passage out of one of their stories, but he was right. The tales always ended with the villain dying a richly-deserved death and all their evil works erased off-page. "And Edelgard? You've certainly been eager to protect her, even though she's responsible for that suffering." She buried her face in her hands. "Please, tell me how you stand being near her."

"Because she needs protecting. It's not my job to decide what she deserves. Maybe she'll do something and Byleth will decide she has to die. But as long as she lives, there is a chance she might be better. Just like I was better."

Ingrid couldn't help herself. "The Flame Emperor is going to have a change of heart?"

"I don't think it's likely, but a dirty little thief standing here wasn't likely either. I'll do everything I can to make sure she has the kind of chance that I had. And that makes me a bad knight."

She didn't have it in her to feel such compassion. She had spent too long been the one who kept her friends in line. She closed her eyes and saw Gronder, wet with their blood. Satisfying her vengeance wouldn't remove one drop of it. And that, she supposed, was her answer. She was a soldier who punished the wicked, but only to save others. She hoped Edelgard would face justice, but it was no longer her duty to see it done.

Mercy, she thought, was supposed to feel better.

Rhea

Time healed all wounds. The proverb was so old that it had been a cliché when Rhea had walked Fódlan as Seiros. It was a lie. She had been only a child, still learning her shapes and colors, when her mother had gone to sleep. She remembered poking at her comatose form pleading for her to wake up until Cichol had led her away by the hand. She remembered screaming when she saw what was left of her corpse, watching helplessly as Zanado was bathed in the blood of her siblings.

She came to the farthest corner of the tomb and took Thunderbrand from its scabbard. Salisse had been closest to her in age and had delighted in telling Rhea what to do, but had also been the one to chase away the monsters under her bed with a sharp stick. And Charon had had the gall to use her body as a weapon. She threw back the lid to one of the coffins to reveal emptiness. She placed the sword in the coffin as Salisse had once tucked her beneath the covers. "Rest now, sweet sister."

Her work was only half done. The plain iron axe was all that remained of Cyril. He'd been so awed and frightened by everything when he had first come to the monastery. He'd been half-starved. She had cooked for him herself and watched in delight and amazement as he had scarfed down her meager efforts. He had been so eager to do anything she asked, no matter how often she had told him that he owed her nothing. Her position was an impregnable wall between them, but she had loved him as the son she would never have. Now he was dead.

Macuil and Indech had abandoned humanity in disgust, but Rhea couldn't help but love them. They were like children, needing a loving but firm hand to check their base impulses. Some had been magnificent. Like Wilhelm.

She was going to die here, surrounded by the bodies of her family. Blood coated her clothes. Everything hurt. She should have been stronger. Why hadn't she been stronger?

She became aware of the sound of mailed boots, trading carefully among the carnage. A man in a black cloak and armor, his eyes the color of lilacs. He was one of Nemesis' men, though not one of the ones that had spilled blood today. "What have we done?" he whispered. "They were supposed to make us kings, not monsters."

He was so lost in thought that he almost tripped over her. Rhea fumbled for the knife at her belt. She had no hope of victory, but at least she could die fighting. She slashed feebly at him. He turned and caught her wrist in a single motion. His eyes widened in shock as he took in her hair and ears. "You aren't dead?"

"No. You have failed." Her voice was a croak. "For the moment."

"I didn't know what they were going to do. You have my word." He took a flask from his hip and offered it to her. She turned her face away. "You have to recover your strength," he said. "You have to make them pay."

Yes, she did. She would make Nemesis pay for this atrocity, stab him and watch as his eyes widened in terror knowing that he was as helpless as she had been. "Help me sit."

He had nursed her back to health. It had taken her a week to be able to walk on her own and far, far longer than that to believe that this bandit didn't plan to murder her for her blood and bone. He wanted to be a king, he had said. But Nemesis, with the power he had stolen was busy forcing towns to pay fealty to him and burning those that didn't. The Sword of the Creator made him unstoppable. They would need more than an army. They would need a Goddess.

There were so many sick and wounded. Dozens of people who even the most skilled healers had abandoned to death. She stopped at the nearest one, a child no older than she had been when her mother went to sleep, covered in sores. She knelt down and summoned healing power. She had seen her mother do such things many times, and she closed her eyes to summon the memory. Heat spread through and out of her. The sores vanished. She watched as the child was slipped into her mother's arms and grief stabbed her heart. "I am Seiros," she said. "A servant of the Goddess who once walked this land. I can save you, if you listen."

They knelt before her, promising the kind of obedience they had once promised Nemesis. She found Wilhelm afterwords. "I gave them a miracle. They'll follow you now."

"No," he said with a smile. "They'll follow us."

And they had. The little fishing village where she worked most of her miracles became the great city of Enbarr. Thousands flocked to their banner, soldiers but also merchants, artisans and more ordinary people than she could count. Churches sprang up. Immaculate One, they called her. The Goddess had returned to her home in the sky, but if they were virtuous and did as they were told, she would return. It wasn't even a lie, really. If her mother wasn't a goddess, there was no such thing, and she would come back. Once Felt King Nemesis was dead. But something would have to replace his bandit kingdom.

It felt as if the entire population of Enbarr had crowded into the church. Wilhelm paced back and forth in the private chamber adjacent to the nave, the white robes he wore for the occasion swishing behind him. "Stop it," she said. "You're making me nervous. This is what you wanted. You'll be so much greater than a king. This will be an empire to last a thousand years."

"You think so?"

"I know so." She took his hand. It was far larger than hers and calloused with a hundred battles, but it was warm and strong. "Now, come, Emperor. Your subjects await."

Even so, building an empire while deposing a tyrant was the work of decades. They constructed fortresses and liberated dozens of settlements, but Nemesis, his Elites, and their accursed weapons were always there to stem the tide of victory. The ravages of time had no effect on her, but every year Wilhelm grew a little slower and his beard a little grayer. Until one day, the blasphemers ambushed him while she was on another front and his strength failed him.

She rushed into the Imperial tent as fast as her legs would carry her. Wilhelm lay on his bed, stripped to the waist, eyes glazed over and his skin already the color of a corpse. He craned his head as she entered. "Have you come to tell me goodbye, old friend?"

No. No. She had lost too much already. She came to him. "You won't die. I've performed a hundred miracles. One more is nothing."

"I'm afraid that this is beyond anything your power. You must defeat Nemesis without me."

"Oh, to the flames with Nemesis." She took his hand with all the strength she could muster. Her savior, her ally. They had shared a vision for the world together and in him she had found a reason to live for more than vengeance. "I forbid you to die, Wilhelm. I forbid it!" There was a word for what he was to her, and she hadn't realized it until just that moment. Tears fell freely down her face. She had thought that such soft feelings had been destroyed at the Red Canyon, but they hadn't. "I love you."

His laughter turned into a coughing fit. "You have impeccable timing, as always. But I think that I love you too."

Well, then. She must save him. There was a way. Nemesis and his men were immune to time or so it seemed. Even a small amount of Nabatean blood could grant someone great power or bring them back from the edge of death. And that blood did not have to be stolen. She took the surgeon's knife and a bowl from the table.

"Seiros, what are you doing?"

"What I must." She drew the knife across her skin. The pain was sharp, but nothing to the reward. She collected the blood in the bowl and when she had enough, she offered it to him. "Drink, my love," and live."

And for another tweny-five years, they had been happy, deliriously happy. Her siblings and niece had found those that they too trusted enough to grant Crests and the tide of war turned in their favor. She and Wilhelm crafted a nation and a church by day and shared a bed by night. Even the necessities of diplomatic marriage and heirs did nothing to dull their joy. When he had fallen from his horse and died unexpectedly, she wasn't able to eat for three days.

But Lyceus and all those who came after him had needed guidance. Nemesis had at last fell on the Tailtean Plains, and her mother was avenged. Fódlan was united. Seiros died, and Rhea assumed the first of many identities and did all she could to ensure that the hard-won peace would survive until she could restore her mother. Six years ago, that goal had seemed tantalizingly close. Chance had allowed her to create the perfect vessel for her mother and chance had brought the vessel back. A Hresvelg had come to the Officer's Academy for the first time in a generation.

And then that Hresvelg had marched into the Holy Tomb, intent on desecration and sacrilege, and Rhea's world had collapsed. She'd had nothing to do but wallow in her thoughts for the five years of torture. Every mistake she had made in a thousand years replayed in her mind. The church she had created was a shell of itself, the myth she had created to maintain order had led to men and women being bred like livestock. Her mother had dwelt within the vessel, but instead of remembering she was and returning to a world that had needed her more than ever, she had granted her power to that vessel and vanished. And the vessel was in love with Edelgard, no matter how much she denied it.

Rhea ought to have killed the heretic. She was still not what she should have been and she would never recover her full strength without a healing coma, but Ede was only one girl. Some of the Knights still followed her commands unreservedly and would gladly do the deed. And yet, Rhea stayed her hand. Because she mattered to the vessel. To Byleth. Byleth had no soul of her own but she aped life the way a pet aped its master. Things could not continue like this forever. Mortals were not meant to channel divine power. Someday either the Crest Stone would break or what remained of of her mother would overtake Byleth's facsimile of a soul. Until that day, Rhea would tolerate even Edelgard because Jeralt's stillborn babe deserved far more than Rhea could give.

She spared a last look at the caskets. It would have been easier if she hated humans, it there had been no Wilhelm or Catherine or Cyril or any of them. Love left chinks in her armor and made her realize what she missed now that they were gone. She lacked even the work of Archbishop to fill her days and was once more the frightened girl of Zanado who had nothing but vengeance.

When that vengeance was complete, she would return here and sleep as her mother had done. She doubted she would wake.