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“I’ll go review our plans with Teach,” Claude offers, ignoring the knowing look Hilda gives him.
It’s not the time.
There’s a war creeping up around them, close enough he can feel the blades drawing up around his neck. Battle plans and safeguards rattle in his head like snakes, growing louder each time someone in his house looks to him for an answer.
Every time he closes his eyes a map pops up, blue and yellow against a tidal wave of red.
Victory is a stranger, the fairest maiden at the ball, dancing far beyond their reach. Survival is the general consensus in the monastery, no matter how much Rhea rallies the knights and monks. Looking at the faces of the students, there’s only trepidation and Claude agrees.
There’s too many variables to account for. Too many how’s and why’s left unanswered. Edelgard’s had a massive headstart and they’ve only just now entered the race, flailing around in her dust, half blind and trying desperately to catch up.
He finds Byleth exactly where he’d expected her to be.
In front of Jeralt’s grave.
She’s coughing fitfully into a handkerchief - Lorenz’s birthday present for her just a few months ago. When times were peaceful. It feels wrong to think of it as a fond memory already.
“Got a bit of a cold, huh?” Claude asks.
“Yes,” more terse than usual.
Byleth frowns down at the cloth. Folds it away.
“What do you have for me?”
“Couple of schemes, nothing big,” he says, waving the map in his hands.
She nods at him as if waiting for him to continue. As if she intends to have a war council in front of gravestones. He realizes, with startling clarity, that within the next few months this might become a familiar scene. There might even be times where the graves have yet to rise.
He chuckles and it tastes bitter in his mouth, “We’re really going to war, huh?”
“Yes.”
Her face is a smooth mask. Eleven months ago and he would have thought she felt nothing for the fight moving towards them. Here and now he can see the tension in her jaw and the barest crease between her brows that speak of her worry. And her fear.
“Don’t fall,” she says, when he stares a moment too long. She’d been surprised when he’d correctly read her the first time. Now, she shapes her thoughts into words for him whenever she sees him trying to pick the emotion from her face, “We’ve spent months fighting together. I know what you’re capable of. All of you.”
Byleth steps towards him and he thinks she means to grab the map but Byleth takes his hand instead, holding tight. She grips with the steady strength of someone who could hold the world together. Her gaze bores into him, so full of concern he wants to soothe it away.
“For you, Teach?” Claude puts his other hand over hers, squeezing as he smiles back at her, “Anything.”
He might have been a little too truthful.
Her eyes widen. He can just barely hear her sharp inhale. He’s never seen her so … dumbfounded. But as quickly as it’d come, it vanishes. Her expression tenses, a woman ready to walk a battlefield.
“Let’s review then,” she says, her command like iron, and then quieter as she reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, “I won’t let any of you die.”
A promise molded from dedication. Claude leans into the strong armed protection of a legend, ignoring the unsteady trip of his heartbeat. It’s what he’s always wanted after all. Someone powerful standing by his side. Ready to strike down the world for him.
He stares at her face under the guise of listening, memorizing her as well as any map. Following the stray locks of her new hair downwards to her eyes, feeling his heartbeat pick up at the fierce determination in them. He traces the clean cut of her jaw. Aches to gentle the line of tension there.
Claude drops his eyes just as she looks up at him, “Got a surprise for you, Teach, once we get through this. Think of it as a graduation present.”
He’s always been too greedy for his own good.
He has nothing for her after all. Only failure.
Seteth gathers them up and sends them home with quick efficiency as Claude stands to the sides, for once without schemes.
He can’t turn himself away from the cliff just yet. Keeps replaying the moment she’d run away from them all. Into the thick of warfare. Byleth was always rushing to throw herself in first, as if she needed to bear the weight of an enemy’s blade so that no one else will. Running forward and forward until –
He can recall the glimmer of her hair as she fell. Can feel her shout reverberate in his skull.
Something burns in his chest. As if someone’s coated his arrow in poison and run him through, so bright and painful he feels there should be something solid to go along.
“Go home,” Hilda tells him, shoving the reins of a wyvern in his hands. Her eyes are red but she’s refusing to let the tears fall, “Now. Professor said not to fall. So we won’t. Not here.”
Claude laughs and Hilda politely does not tell him it sounds hideously broken, “Well, look at you being reliable.”
A cough hits him from nowhere, so sudden he barely has time to cover his mouth. It’s wet and ragged, as if he can cough up the pain in his chest.
He waves off Hilda’s look of concern.
“Think Teach passed her cold to me,” he says.
“That’s a terrible graduation present.”
They both laugh as if she’d said something particularly funny. He doesn’t notice the petals stuck to his glove until much later.
He starts finding petals on his bed. On his pillows at first. Just a handful. And then more on his sheets, spilling onto the floor. They start invading the corners of his rooms and the folds of his books. He doesn’t make the link until he sends his first search party for Byleth, hacking up a mass of chrysanthemum petals as the group leaves.
She’s gone though, he tries to tell himself. But he can’t make himself believe. He coughs up another round of them that night, caught in the thick of his grief. The petals spill between his fingers, fall just out of his reach as she had done.
War is both hatefully slow and wickedly fast.
It takes time to gather an army. Time to settle alliances. The Empire turns to Kingdom first but the threat hangs over them all like a creaking guillotine. Armies are slow to build. Soldiers are difficult to find. Recruits fall under the Leicester Alliance as slowly as sand through an hour glass.
Claude falls in step besides a grandfather he’s never really known. Learns to speak with him. Guides both of their words across the roundtable and make them heard. He coaxes and promises, teases out allegiances and wins them men. He maps out supply lines, escape routes, battle maps before others can think to. With Byleth gone, he needs to be the one to run ahead.
He breathes warfare and it turns to daggers in his chest. Time sprawls on as he waits for plans to fall into place. Each passing moment claws at him, urgency like a rabid animal seeking to break its cage.
Then Duke Rufus dies.
Dimitri dies.
Cornelia rises in the Kingdom.
His grandfather dies.
The guillotine swings, no longer trapped in place. And Edelgard moves into Gloucester territory, slipping into the space Count Gloucester willingly makes for her. Lorenz is tightlipped at the roundtable meeting after that, nails digging into his pant leg as his father speaks for both of them. Alliance territory is carved open, shattering into pieces like glass.
War knocks on their door and they answer.
Hilda falls to his side, swinging an axe twice her side. Marianne appears on the battlefields, cloaked in Faith magic and blood. Raphael and Leonie appear in the army ranks with only half of their usual cheer. And all throughout more and more bodies are thrown on either side.
Claude counts the years, holding tight to a promise made in jest. Takes the petals as proof. Surely there must be someone on the other side at least for the disease to declare him unrequited.
He brushes petals from his maps at night. Smothers half buds into handkerchiefs during meetings. And then, as the war slows to its year long stalemate, vomits up a full blossom as he’d stares out towards Garreg Mach, gagging and shaking in his room. His mouth tastes like bile, dirt, and stems. The blossom is bloody and bruised, easily crushed as he breaks into another fit.
“Come back to me, Teach,” he gasps out in between, knowing full well that would only solve a portion of his problems.
He misses her like a limb. Aches for her guidance. Thinks that if he closes his eyes he can simply lean back into the comfort of her, can fall under the protective sweep of her sword again. Can see and marvel at the reach as she moved the world.
He flies to Garreg Mach in the dead of night, saying nothing to any of the Golden Deer. They’ll come. If not for him then for Byleth. But he wants to see her first. Wants to be the first to either see a dream realized or have his heartbroken.
He nearly weeps when she steps up behind him.
“You overslept, Teach,” he tells her, proud of the way he keeps his voice steady.
Byleth blinks at him for a moment and her expression crumbles as if she had read the years on his face. She crosses the room, eating up space and time between them and folding it into nothing. Her hands shake as they curve around him, warm and gentle. Her fingers settle behind his jawline and he nearly shudders. She doesn’t linger for too long; her hands scratch at his beard, drawing goosebumps as she goes. His skin goes aflame under her explorations and he closes his eyes as her hands slip into his hair.
“Your braid,” she utters, voice cracking on the word and then he interrupts her with a miserable cough he barely has time to hide in his shirt.
He vaguely registers her shouting his name but can’t look at her as he hacks up another flower. It’s bloody and painful, feels as it was torn from the walls of his lungs. He hacks for a full minute as Byleth pats his back. He can sense her fluttering. Knows she hates feeling helpless.
He lets the chrysanthemum slip inside his shirt, sticky and warm against his stomach and makes himself grin at Byleth.
“Gave me your cold,” he tells her.
A smile crosses her lips. It’s cracked and frayed around the edges but it’s a smile nonetheless.
“Claude? Everyone was worried when you left so suddenly.”
No, they weren’t.
Byleth had caught his eye as he’d turned and fled from the war room and he’d seen her rise smoothly to take his place. She’d taken the leadership from him and made it her own, creaking her chair to draw everyone’s attention and then had slid behind the map, her voice soft but firm as she’d ensnared the attention of others in the room. Had ensured their focus narrowed in on her presence alone.
Byleth’s voice had rung in his ears as he bent over his desk, hacking and coughing until a sodden mess of crushed blossoms fell from his lips. There’s so many more of them now. Fully bloomed and brilliant as if they were soaking up her return like sunlight.
“You alright?” her words are slow. Carefully restrained. As if she is remembering how to hold herself upright. He remembers she’d only just lost her father mere months ago.
“Fine,” he lies, careful not to let his words waver, crushing the flowers in his fist.
He keeps an eye on her shadow, willing her not to enter, well aware of the picture he presents. Practically shaking out of his skin as he tries to gather himself.
“Please,” he says, heart pounding when he sees her shift, “Can you confer with Hilda? We need to strengthen our base here at the monastery. Especially if the Imperial army is coming soon.”
Her silence weighs heavy on his shoulders.
“Okay,” she says.
“We’re not done here,” goes unspoken. He hears the words in the heavy hesitant thud of her footsteps as she walks away.
A sigh of relief turns into a shudder and he presses his fist tight to his lips, trying to smother the next fit. Even thinking of another cough hurt him. Each breath felt like a battle, his lungs refusing to expand. Felt as if they were fighting against him. As if roots had sunken in them and held them tight.
“It’s not going away,” Byleth says after the battle of the monastery. She physically blocks the door to his room. She has a cut on her cheek, still bleeding sluggishly and a few more bruises but she looks as if she’s ready for yet another battle.
“It’s just the tail end of it. No need to worry about me. Now, about the route to the Great Bridge…”
Her eyes narrow at him, wickedly sharp. Her jaw sets.
“Did you used to hold so many secrets from me?”
It’s said low, between clenched teeth, strikes deep in his chest.
“That’s cruel, my friend.”
“Don’t do that,” she snaps back, her lips curling. It’s not a look she’d ever turned on him before, “You can’t call me that while you continue to –“
Claude slaps a hand over his mouth, twisting away to gag. There’s stem this time. He can taste and feel the edges against the back of his throat as it makes its way up. The sensation makes him want to sink nails into himself, makes him want to reach inside and claw it out. The flower chokes him, tearing his voice to shreds in some twisted punishment for the words he cannot speak. He drops to his knees with the force of the cough, entire body shuddering as the flower spills from his mouth.
Strong arms grab for him, snatches his hand away.
The chrysanthemum drifts to the floor between them. An open confessional that makes his heart pound. When he dares looks up her expression is stiff. The face she’d worn for her first few lectures, unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
“Who?” she asks quietly.
“No one,” Claude says. Too quick. Too sharp, “It doesn’t matter.”
He feels Byleth’s retreat like a physical ache. Her lips press together. Her fists clench.
“I didn’t teach you to embrace death,” she says.
A laugh escapes him. Nearly hysterical, “Not loving them would be worse.”
Her expression cracks wide. Stunned. Then torn, broken apart by a tangible sorrow. More emotive than she’s ever been. He can see her struggling to hold it back. To move towards something familiar again but unable.
He takes the opportunity to flee.
Byleth watches him a lot more after that. Saying nothing. As if settling in as a witness. He knows her well enough to know that’s not really true.
He feels her gaze on his back everywhere. From the war rooms to battle to simply walking through the monastery grounds.
“You won’t figure out who it is,” he says to the map one day when they’re at last alone together.
She doesn’t reply, only continues to sharpen her blade as if he’d never spoken.
“You won’t,” he reiterates. It sounds like a prayer for himself the second time around and he tries to ignore the way his fingers shake as he unfurls a new map.
“You’re getting paler. Cyril said he’s finding blood on all your clothes.”
He thinks to argue at first, already gearing up for a dig but he sees the tension in her body. Open defiance in her eyes.
“We’re in a war, my friend. It’s an unfortunate truth,” he says instead.
“They’re all around the collar. More on the clothes you wear to the roundtables.”
Claude packs up his new arrows, walking away under her frown.
“Lysithea said the disease still runs its course if the person on the other side is dead.”
“They’re not.”
Not anymore.
Byleth stares at him as if she’d heard that thought and Claude near vibrates out of his own skin under the weight of her appraisal. Thankfully, it’s her that walks away this time.
“It’s not Marianne,” said under her breath one day when they happen to catch Marianne and Hilda sharing a moment to themselves under the gazebo. It catches him off guard. Byleth’s expression is no longer soft and content, pleased for her friends; she’s looking at him now. Shrewd. Calculating.
“Or Hilda.”
“It’s not Lysithea,” after they catch Cyril and Lysithea together, heads bowed and shoulders pressed tight over a shared book.
“Hilda said you first started coughing five years ago.”
Claude refuses acknowledge that last one. Takes off on his wyvern straight into the battlefield before she can say more.
Of course, as luck would have it, Byleth has to tear him off the same wyvern. He lands in a crumpled heap, convulsing as he throws up.
Metal on metal clashes so hard it sparks, the sound ringing in his ears, well above his choked gasps. Dimly, he is aware of Byleth between him and blades, scarcely registering her weight against him, shielding him from the world. There’s a hideous mess of blossoms on the field when he’s done and several more bodies.
There’s blood on her face when she turns to him, her expression terrible and damning.
“Get off the field,” she says. She’s practically vibrating with things unsaid, but her eyes are clear. Her next sentence is a probe, digs deep as any of her daggers in the crevices of his armor, “Get off the field before you take me down with you.”
He obeys, ducks away from her, unable to look after she's bared his secret so easily.
There’s no avoiding Byleth. Had never been able to do it as a teen smuggling poisons into Lorenz’s tea. Can’t do it now as a grown man leading a war effort.
She allows Claude to walk away from her when Marianne clears him of battle injuries. Says nothing when he is the first to leave the post-battle debriefing. Doesn’t even try to approach him during dinner, when Hilda and Lorenz ensnare him into sharing a meal.
Only appears when his guard is down. He stumbles upon her waiting outside his room. Her arms are crossed and she’s pressed against the wall, hidden in the shadows until she kicks her leg up to block his path. And then when he tries to turn tail and flee again, she shoves him against the wall, her hands fisted in his collar. She glances at the blood on the inside of his shirt and her expression settles into something hard.
“I thought it was someone else at first…” Byleth says. She looks at him. It’s a face he’d seen when she’d first put herself in a training match against the students. Stern but cautious. Eager for the battle but also afraid of shattering them, “But you don’t spend enough time with anyone else.”
“You’re my general,” he says, aiming at flippant, “Judith and Lorenz are around just as much.”
“You don’t constantly seek them out. Don’t look to them every time you waver,” she says, so plainly, as if the simple words weren’t rending him open. As if she were reading facts from paper or the numbers of last month’s supply run, “Did you know you find me first wherever you go? Whenever you enter the room, you seek me out and you stand a little straighter.”
He had not known that.
“Guess old habits die hard,” Claude laughs and it sounds hollow and empty. He tries to twist out of her arms but she grabs for his hands, effectively caging him in. He tries to temper the thick curl of arousal and is, for once, thankful for the fitful cough tearing through his chest at her proximity. He barely manages to wheeze out, “We all sought out your approval, Teach. Were kinda obvious about it too.”
Byleth doesn’t say anything, watching the flowers fall from his lips. She lets go of one hand to cradle his face, her thumb catching on his bottom lip and he hysterically recalls dreams that have started just this way. He’s already parting his lips to allow her space to push in if she wanted.
“No … I think, you stopped thinking me of that a long time ago didn’t you? I knew you loved me that day I –“ she pauses, swallowing as she searches for the words, “I didn’t think you’ve loved me since … ”
“My friend,” nearly begging now.
“But, there’s something I can’t figure out,” she continues as if she hadn’t heard him. He doesn’t know who it was that told him mercenaries were fickle beings, prone to wavering allegiances. They’ve never met Byleth, who approached a mission ruthlessly and singlemindedly, “I thought you were denying yourself out of propriety. But you don’t care about such things. So maybe it was because you didn’t think I was really back. You thought someone else walked out of that grave–”
“No,” he doesn’t like that thought and the denial flies from him before he can think. She was here. Solid. Warm. By his side, “Stop that - you’re alive.”
Byleth nods, satisfied for a fleeting moment before she frowns again, “So, what do you need for it to stop? A confession? A promise?”
That’s cruel. He didn’t think she had it in her to be that cruel. It was exactly why he didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want to win her affection that way. He shoves at her shoulders, cheeks on fire as heartbreak digs into his chest like a solid blade.
“Oh. I see.”
She takes a breath, her expression determined, as if –
She’s kissing him.
Claude utters a whimper into her mouth, parting his lips beneath her tongue without a second thought. Lorenz must be rubbing off on him. He can feels his knees go weak and has to cling to her to stay upright.
“Idiot,” she snarls against his mouth when she pulls back, “You had me worried because … because you’re an absolute idiot.”
“What?” his mind is slow to catch up.
“What was that title they gave you? Master Tactician?”
She makes a low derisive noise and kisses him again. Rough. Hungry. She twists one of his arms around his back, slides one leg between his and he tastes her growl when he bucks into her.
“ - enough…”
“Huh?”
Byleth takes a breath and he feels her shudder, “I thought it was because I didn’t love you enough.”
Something inside him shifts. A vast space opening inside him, making room for something else.
“Oh. Tea – Byleth. No… I,” he huffs a sigh at his loss of words, borrowing hers as he presses into her space, wanting her closer, “I’m an idiot.”
“Cough,” she orders, dodging his attempt to draw her back to his mouth.
He does. And when nothing comes out, Byleth grants him his desired kiss. He could grow accustomed to that reward system for his obedience.
“Ahem!”
Byleth only holds him tighter, her shoulders stiffening as she turns to see who’s interrupted them. She curves over him, tilting her face as if intent on protecting his modesty.
“Sorry,” she says, not meaning it at all.
A moment of silence.
“Professor - this is most –“
“Oh, shut it Lorenz,” Hilda chirps, “Sorry, we interrupted, Professor. You guys enjoy yourself–“
“Hilda!”
“Enough,” Byleth says, “It’s late. We should go to bed. All of us.”
Claude snickers into her shoulder, losing it in a whoop as she lifts him up.
“Good night,” she says and he laughs as she carries him off into his room.
He savors Lorenz’s red-faced open mouthed stare, cackling as he gives Hilda a thumbs up she returns enthusiastically.
“Wait,” he says afterwards, head jolting up from the pillow.
Byleth cracks an eye at him.
“You were coughing into a handkerchief that day – I did catch your cold!”
“Yeah? And I was cured within five minutes,” she yawns, “Cause I’m not an idiot.”
“Oh come on,” he whines, “You’re not that easy to read.”
He tugs lightly at her hair when she turns her back on him, “Byleth. Darling. Dearest. Honeysuckle - you have to show me. C’mon, smother me in your affection. I’m deprived. I’m a delicate soul and I need proof of your love – whoa!”
He wiggles his hips as she rolls over on him, grinning into her mouth as she bends over him.
“Proof, huh? How much do you need?”
“Enough to last a lifetime.”
Byleth smiles, her teeth grazing his throat, “I can do that.”
Claude tilts his head to the skies as he laughs, clear and unfiltered, feeling weightless.