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“You look tired, Professor.”
It’s like Dimitri is speaking through water, Byleth thinks idly to themself, staring unseeing at the letter in their hands. A supply requisition of some kind, for some general, for some fortress, threatened by the Empire. It needs to be signed, approved–they can’t remember where this town is. Its syllables are unfamiliar, nonsensical.
“Teach? You there?”
Someone has been requisitioning supplies for a town that was lost in a border skirmish months ago. This new relationship with the Alliance is tentative, fresh, vulnerable, and agents of the Empire have been doing their best to capitalize on the distrust between the Blaiddyd and Riegen households. Two heirs, each trying to reforge their countries into something whole, something strong enough to survive the immense weight the Crimson Imperials are bearing upon Fodlan.
Something touches their shoulder.
A lightning strike of movement. Blyeth stands, flinging their chair backwards at the intruder, snatching the blade they always keep within easy reach. Within a single heartbeat they are poised to–
And then, they freeze.
Claude holds the chair they tossed, having barely saved it from shattering against the wall. Dimitri holds their arms in a firm but gentle grip, his immense strength tempered with a slow grace that he has taught himself over many years.
“Goddess, you are tired,” he says, a single ice-blue eye sweeping their face, brow creasing deeper with worry.
Byleth attempts to say several words at once, but the ones that make it through the thick fog in their brain are, “I’m going to the training field, some exercise will help clear my head.”
Surprisingly coherent, they think to themself, and attempt to take a step away, but Dimitri is still holding on to their arm.
Which is a good thing, because it is at this point that Professor Byleth, Inheritor of the Progenitor Goddess, Chosen of Sothis–it is at this point that their legs give out from under them.
Dimitri catches them like they are made of paper, and Claude drops the chair he’s holding to rush to their side.
“No, I don’t think you’re going to the training field,” Claude says with the ghost of a smile on his lips. He gently takes the sword from Byleth’s hand, laying it on the table with their work. “When’s the last time you got some shut-eye?”
Byleth looks directly at him, defiant, and opens their mouth to retaliate, but after a moment of silence, their gaze slides away, trying to remember the last time they slept.
The professors’ quarters feel so empty to them, the voice of their constant companion gone. The death of Jeralt, five years past for most, is only a few months fresh for them. The empty student dormitories are a reminder of deep betrayal, and a reminder of whom they fight against.
How could they sleep, when the ghosts of students fallen under their blade lay restless just beyond their door?
Dimitri lifts them, slowly, cautiously, and even though there is no need for him to share the burden, he allows Claude to slip Byleth’s other arm over his shoulder, and they step together out of the library. Claude’s easy warmth is not something Dimitri could ever hope to achieve, even if they both know it’s an affectation.
And so, while Dimitri brings his raw power, Claude brings a different kind of strength to their team.
“You don’t have to speak of it,” Dimitri murmurs. He recognizes that look, recognizes one plagued by the voices of the dead. Byleth nods mutely, pale eyes cast down at the stone floor.
“We’ve got your back,” Claude adds, briefly meeting Dimitri’s eyes before returning his attention to the frail body he supports.
The Professor, known across Fodlan for their heroism, for their might in battle. The Ashen Demon, ascended to deity. Claude remembers their blank face, their thousand-yard stare, their dull eyes, from those first few Academy days. He remembers seeing them smile for the first time, after leading the Blue Lions to victory at the Battle of Eagle and Lion. He remembers watching them, examining, seeing them eat and smile and come to life for what looked to be the first time.
He’d never truly believed in the Ashen Demon, not until the Battle at Gronder’s field. Not until watching them lash out with the Sword of the Creator, eyes as blank as the day they met. This was the nightmare of the mercenary tales, the stories that were whispered among students out of earshot. This was the faceless killer, they without emotion, without human connection, without humanity itself.
But the myth of the Ashen Demon had shattered when he’d watched Lysithea, brave Lysithea, fierce, adamant, stupid Lysithea, strike out at their former professor, and face a single strike in retaliation. Claude had seen Byleth’s face collapse when a single strike was all it took.
Sometimes, he wished he hadn’t seen it.
Goddess, none of them wanted to be fighting this war. None of them. So why were they here? Sothis, why were any of them here?
He’d wanted to be angry at their forced truce, at the spaces they now shared, and he was–until he’d seen Byleth weeping on the floor of what used to be Lysithea’s room, laying flowers on what used to be her bed.
He’d wanted to stay angry, but he couldn’t. It would have been easier if he could.
Dimitri lays Byleth gently down in his bed, and watches as this embodiment of divinity, the Ashen Demon themself, simply curls up and shakes, shivering like a child in the snow. He had once told them they were the same, and he thinks now that those were the cruelest words he has ever spoken. How could he, someone driven by revenge from the very beginning, someone drawn to the kill, to the slaughter, how could he dream that he and Byleth were anything remotely the same? When all they had done was reach out to him, stay with him, and offer him their hand, waiting patiently for when he was ready to take it?
They saw him, and they saw something, someone, worth saving. He didn’t think he agreed, but perhaps it was their desire to save him that made his life worthy of salvation.
He doesn’t want to disappoint.
When he and Claude lower them into the bed, their fingers grasp onto the edge of his cloak, and with one terrified, pleading look, he understands. He follows their pull, resting in front of them even as they turn their face to Claude.
Claude, whose heart is suddenly in his throat, choking him. He understands their wide-eyed panic, he understands it because he himself has felt it, he knows the terror of being abandoned on the battlefield, with nobody watching your back. He understands it and he has felt it and he has hidden it, he has refused to show any weakness to foe and friend alike.
To see it in his professor? To know the height of their strength, measured against the depth of their grief, and to then still witness this?
His heart splinters, like swallowing glass, and he is drawn in like gravity, like fate, to rest his body against theirs, chest to back, steady against their trembling.
It is here, with warmth on both sides, that Byleth finds enough peace to close their eyes. Claude and Dimitri both count the seconds between their breaths, relaxing as they determine their professor has finally succumbed to sleep. They leave their agreement unspoken.
No matter how unusual it is, it is far preferable to being alone.