Work Text:
The dream is the same every time.
Mercedes sits at a table with her mother and her stepfather, Von Bartels, who's squeezing her thigh under the table. Her mother is sitting right next to him, smiling sweetly as if nothing is wrong. “You’re going to make an excellent mother one day,” she says, all too pleasantly, as Von Bartels’s eyes bore into her.
Then, she’s running down a dark tunnel-like hallway that Emile is at the end of. She runs, but no matter how far she goes she doesn’t get any closer, until finally she’s right in front of him.
She goes to embrace him, but as she reaches out he dissolves into a pile of maggots. Quickly, maggots sprout from where Von Bartels’s hand was on her thigh and spread across her entire body, eating her from the inside out. Then everything is consumed by darkness.
—
She wakes up in the church. She’s still not used to it.
It’s the middle of the night. She’s the only one awake, as her mother and the nuns won’t wake until dawn. She quietly tiptoes out of bed and wanders the shadowed halls, checking every corner as if she’ll find her little brother hiding behind one.
It’s lonely, being the sole preteen in an isolated church filled with aging monks. With no one else to talk to, she folds her hands together and chats with the Goddess before heading back to bed. She has to be up bright and early for morning chores and prayers.
—
She jolts awake, almost knocking over her bedside table with her arm. She checks the other bed in the room to see if she disturbed her roommate. Thankfully, Annette sleeps soundly, peacefully inhaling and exhaling one breath after another. It looks like she fell asleep reading textbooks again. Mercedes doubts Annette, young, innocent Annette, ever has nightmares like the ones she has. Sometimes she doubts anyone does.
—
She jolts up, and this time doesn’t have to worry about waking a roommate; Garreg Mach provides each student their own dorm.
She walks around her room, looking at the moon through her window and noticing how the moonlight lands on the papers on her desk. She began writing a letter to her mother, telling her about her class, the scenery, and of course the massive cathedral. She had stopped halfway and left it for the morning because she couldn’t find the right words, couldn’t put the details of life into words on a page.
Also on her desk is a letter from her adopted father, still unopened. You’ll make an excellent mother one day. The words replay in her head as she looks at the envelope. She scoffs and grabs her sweater to walk to the, truly very impressive, cathedral. It's her routine.
—
Instinctively, her hand shoots to her thigh. No maggots. She looks around, wondering if she woke up because the camp was under attack. No enemies either. The camp is silent under the night sky, aside from the sound of crickets chirping.
How foolish to fret about a nightmare, when the country is at war. She sighs, pulling her blankets closer. She remembers that before falling asleep, she saw Dimitri and Shez walking together, discussing what to do about the villainous Ashen Demon. She would bet money they stayed up well into the night strategizing – She would prepare a breakfast in the morning, for the whole team. It was the least she could do.
The chirping of crickets and creaks of the wilderness around them serenaded her back to sleep.
--
Mercedes isn’t sure she’ll ever get used to the plush, lavish pillows she now woke up on.
Sylvain – her husband, there was another thing she might never get used to – must have heard her wake up, because he was turning his head to look at her. He was sitting on the edge of their large bed, looking over some papers that an attendant must have left for him in the night.
Mercedes realized she must have yelped in alarm when she woke up. She put a hand over her fast-beating heart and took a deep breath. Sylvain’s inquisitive face silently asked her if everything was okay.
In some ways, joining Sylvain in a marriage of convenience shortly after the war ended had been a failure, a defeat – She had given in to her adopted father’s demands to marry, and him to his parents’ expectations. Being the wife of the Margrave Gautier was not the life she had wanted for herself at all – albeit the extravagant silk pillows that came with it.
Yet, there were victories in it too. Sylvain was no stranger to nightmares; He knew what it was like to be haunted by ghosts, to have trauma from your family so deep it runs to the core of your being. They had matching wounds.
Even if she didn’t like him the way a wife is meant to like her husband, she could still be grateful to be married to someone she could call a friend.
—
“Mercedes. Wake up. Wake up.”
Hubert’s urgent tone brought her back to the present. They were in his office, a room only a few steps away from the Emperor’s throne room.
That’s right. They had been discussing ideas for how to deal with the Agarthans, now that the war was won. Either she had overworked herself, or Hubert’s war-plans literally put her to sleep. She chose to believe it was the latter.
“Running an Empire for Her Majesty. Tiring work, no?” He smiled slightly, his sharp teeth, pale skin, the bags under his eyes and how he blended into the darkness of the room all making him appear rather vampiric.
“You should know,” she shot back, and yawned. “In fact, you have so much more experience, what do you need me for?” She was teasing; She knew he appreciated her company.
Hubert smiled again. “Well, the Baron Von Bartels is usually kept in the loop of political goings-on.”
The title – her title – still caught her off-guard. “Hm,” she chuckled. “It’s funny. I thought taking his title, becoming the new Baron Von Bartels, changing the system with you and Edelgard… I thought it would conquer him, somehow. Erase the hold he has over me. But, just now, I had the same nightmare about him I’ve had since I was a kid. What do you make of that?”
Hubert took a moment to consider it, then took her hand in his. “Give it time. And, if the issue persists…” He grinned, once again showing his vampiric teeth. “I’ll learn necromancy, bring him back to life, and you can kill the bastard yourself.”
—
As darkness consumed everything, she blinked, and saw the light of dawn.
She woke up next to Byleth, whose light-green hair was spread beautifully across the bed as he slept, looking as beautiful as the day they met, as beautiful as the day they reunited. Looking at him, the last wisps of her nightmare disappeared instantly. The leader of the United Kingdom of Fodlan, who worked tirelessly to rebuild and usher in a new era of peace… seeing him rest deeply was a welcome sight.
Out the window, the sun rose over the mountains, gushing morning light onto Fodlan. Mercedes ever so gently stroked Byleth’s sleeping face, and let herself linger on the happiness of that moment.
—
Shooting awake, Mercedes screams, because this is what small children do after a nightmare.
Across the room, she heard Emile rustle and wake up in his bed, asking her what was going on. Calming herself, Mercedes assured her baby brother that everything was fine, she had just had a nightmare. Then, as if to make sure he was real, the young girl got out of bed and tiptoed to her brother’s bed. She reached out and held his small, grubby hand in hers, then told him to go back to sleep, because if they keep whispering they’ll wake up Mom, and besides, their older siblings, Sylvia, Franz, and Edgar, were visiting the manor and were to arrive tomorrow, and they needed to be light on their feet if they were going to outrun them.
Once her little brother closed his eyes and drifted off, Mercedes quietly crawled back to her own bed, pulled her blankets over herself, whispered a quick prayer to the goddess, and laid her head down, hoping the nightmare wouldn’t return.