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There was something wrong with Jeritza.
It wasn’t any of the myriad issues that had plagued his mind for years, no. This was something he hadn’t ever felt before, something new. A tightness in his chest, a haze over his mind, and a desire stronger than even his darker half’s thirst for blood.
And the object of that desire was none other than Byleth.
Byleth, one of the few people in this world Jeritza truly cared for. He’d always been enthralledby him—his strength, his combat prowess, their shared destiny. The fated duel between the Death Knight and Ashen Demon was something Jeritza had been looking forward to since the day he first laid eyes on him. This yearning went deeper than that, however. It had taken his fascination for Byleth and twisted it into something unrecognizable, something he did not understand. It followed him every waking moment, through every action, and when Byleth was near, its perpetual thrum turned to a nigh deafening toll like the bells of Garreg Mach.
This was surely cause for distress. It must have shown on his face, because it took only a few minutes into teatime for Mercedes to acknowledge it.
“You seem troubled. What’s bothering you?”
Jeritza stared at his own visage reflected back at him in the surface of his tea. There was little use in attempting to hide anything from his sister—experience had taught him she would unveil whatever he tried to obscure in due time.
“Byleth,” he said. “We sparred this morning, and he knocked me down. When he reached out to pull me to my feet, he smiled at me, and…”
Jeritza recounted how the sun lit Byleth from behind like a halo and how that thing in his chest threatened to burst right out. He told Mercedes of the strange sensation that overcame him when in Byleth’s presence and of how thoughts of him lingered in Jeritza’s mind even when he was away. Mercedes smiled all the while, and when Jeritza finished, she laughed.
“Oh, Emile. It sounds to me like you’re in love.”
Her words were an arrow through Jeritza’s chest, stunning him momentarily before he came to his senses.
“Ridiculous.”
“What makes you say that?” Mercedes asked with a curious tilt of her head.
“Because I am…” A dozen different words hung unspoken on his tongue. Broken. A husk. A monster. None could fully do justice to all he was, thus, he settled on something that encapsulated them all instead.
“Myself.”
Love. A beautiful thing that evoked such sentimental imagery as delighted laughter, tender embraces, and sugary sweet kisses. Such things were not meant for a man like Jeritza, a man so intimately tied to violence incarnate. The only reason he had not succumbed to the beast within was the grace of the Emperor, who provided him with an outlet to sate the Death Knight’s lust for blood. Without Edelgard, what would have become of the wayward young man who’d slaughtered the entirety of his own house, he wondered. Would he have ended up as naught but a feral beast skulking about the streets of Bartels in the night, attacking any poor soul unfortunate enough to catch his eye? Or would he have been put down like a rabid animal before having the chance to hurt anyone else?
It did not matter. Those were the fates that could have befallen him, and that alone made him certain love was not something he was capable of. All Jeritza knew was violence. He was but a mere tool in Edelgard’s arsenal, a weapon for Byleth to wield on the battlefield. But soon, there would be no more battlefields. Edelgard’s vision for a unified, peaceful Fódlan would come to fruition in due time, and where would that leave Jeritza? He would have served his purpose, exhausted his usefulness, and then would come the time when Byleth put an end to him at last. This was the truth he had been so certain of for years, but now, he found himself wanting more.
Burning desire threatened to engulf him like a raging inferno, but desire for what, exactly? It was not Byleth’s blade he longed for, no. He already knew what that yearning felt like. It was for something deeper than that, he was certain, something more substantial.
Mercedes frowned at his words. “You’re just as capable of love as I or anyone else, and just as deserving.”
“You’re wrong. Such a thing is not meant for beasts like me. What I feel for Byleth must be something else.”
Jeritza took a sip of his tea, bitterness coating his tongue, and wracked his fractured mind for an explanation. Byleth was fated to either slay him or be slain by him, and yet, Jeritza desired him in a way he could not comprehend.
Love. He knew the stories, had heard the poems and the songs alike, but surely his capacity for love had to have died alongside the young man he’d been once upon a time. Loving Byleth had to have been impossible, and yet, try as he might, Jeritza struggled to muster up another explanation. He wanted to hold and to be held, to close his eyes in Byleth’s arms and feel secure, feel wanted.
As if a wretch like him was worthy of such things.
“Whatever these feelings are, they are not meant to be expressed,” he said. “I will simply have to remedy them anyway I can.”
“Remedy them? Emile, there’s nothing to fix.”
“I must. To act on these feelings would be to betray the bond he and I share. Byleth and I, we are partners. Allies in battle.” Jeritza’s gaze fell. “Nothing more.”
Uncertainty flowed through his veins like magma and burned him up from within. Jeritza von Hrym was a man who navigated each day with utmost confidence, but now, the mere thought of what would become of his relationship with Byleth were he to learn of Jeritza’s feelings stoked disquiet in his very being.
He would reject him, that enough was certain. Anyone in their right mind would. After all, who would want a monster for a lover? He would leave Jeritza just as he’d been left as a boy, and just like that, Jeritza would have severed one of the few remaining ties he had left in this world.
“Byleth isn’t that kind of person. Even if he doesn’t feel the same about you, I’m certain he won’t think any less of you for it.”
Jeritza only clenched his jaw.
“He deserves better,” he said in a hushed tone, “than a monster like me.”
“Emile…”
“And I do not deserve him.”
Mercedes reached across the table to gently touch her fingertips to Jeritza’s knuckles, a small frown on her lips. Jeritza found it impossible to ignore the way his chest tightened at that. Mercedes was good. She was kind-hearted, compassionate, generous—all the things Jeritza was not. If anyone deserved to feel the love written about in songs and poems alike, it was Mercedes, not him.
He’d killed to ensure that possibility before, after all.
Mercedes was light. Byleth was light. They brightened up everything around them and bathed those closest to them in their warmth. People wanted to be around them for good reason. Darkness, however, was cold and solitary. Humanity fled from darkness out of fear, and justifiably so. Nothing good dwelled in the dark. That was Death’s domain. That was where Jeritza dwelled.
“I told you, you’re just as deserving of love as anyone else. You think you’re a bad person, but you’re not. Bad people don’t care about who they hurt, but you’re always doing your best to protect the people around you. That’s why you keep everyone at a distance, because you think you’ll only end up hurting them. But you’re here with me, right now, for a reason.”
Jeritza’s face twisted. Whatever the sinking feeling in his stomach was, he wished to rid himself of it at once.
“You agreed to stay with me at Garreg Mach when I asked you to. You said you’d remain by my side. Why?”
An answer hung unspoken on Jeritza’s tongue. He knew what it was, of course, but could not bring himself to speak it aloud. He came up with another instead,
“You do not deserve to suffer because of me.”
“Deserve. You keep saying that, but people rarely get what they deserve.” A wistful look filled her eyes. “You and I both know that. But that isn’t the only reason you stayed, is it? You stayed because you wanted to be with me again.”
Jeritza pressed his lips in a tight line and stared down at his lap. He could not bring himself to look his sister in the eyes.
“You don’t want to be alone. You want to be loved, and there isn’t any reason to deny yourself that. I love you, Emile. Mother loves you. Love is such a beautiful, wonderful thing, and I’d hate to see you reject it because you don’t think you should feel the things it makes you feel. Embrace those feelings.”
Just like that, a warm and unfamiliar feeling spread out from Jeritza’s chest and into his entire being. His shoulders tensed and his hands began to shake. Jeritza von Hrym—the Death Knight, he who felt no fear, who instilled terror in the hearts of his enemies, who was nothing short of a lethal force of a nature on the battlefield—was trembling. All because of one man and the horrifying thought that he may have been more human than he believed.
Jeritza slowly looked up to meet his older sister’s eyes. His next words came out shaky.
“I… I do not know what I should do,” he confessed.
Mercedes smiled back at him. “Asking your big sister for advice, I see. You really are that same sweet little boy I’ve always known.” She continued before he could protest. “All you need to do is speak with him, and don’t be afraid. Ask him if the two of you can spend more time together. Your bond is already strong. I’m positive that so long as you continue to nurture it, it’ll blossom into something more beautiful than you can imagine.”
Was that possible? Was it alright to hope for something more than what he already had? Was it alright to hope for anything at all?
“In fact, I think I sense an opportunity about to present itself.”
Jeritza followed his sister’s gaze just over top the low hedges of Garreg Mach’s garden and his heart stopped at the sight of the very thing that had caused him so much distress. Byleth stopped to converse with an Imperial soldier Jeritza did not recognize, and suddenly his legs were heavy as marble columns.
“Talk to him, Emile,” Mercedes said, eyes full of so much love and so much faith. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
But he was afraid—he had been afraid for so very long. Afraid of bringing harm to those he cared for, afraid of losing himself to the beast within, afraid of being resigned to a life of solitude for the rest of his days. He had been so convinced there was no one in this world who could truly understand him until he met Byleth. Byleth had been named a demon just as Jeritza had named himself a monster, carried a subdued affect similar to Jeritza’s own cold demeanor, and like Jeritza, his hands had been stained in blood.
But Jeritza had watched him change as the days went by, as weeks became months and months became years. Byleth’s smile had once been a rarity, but now it was common as the sunrise. Jeritza had discovered the former mercenary had a playful side to him, how he’d poke fun at Edelgard’s verbose speeches or Hubert’s sinister empty threats made towards his own allies. He had opened up to people and was adored by practically everyone around him. To think that someone the Byleth he had met all those years ago would become the person he knew today. It gave him just the slightest amount of hope that maybe, just maybe, he could change as well, and Byleth would be by his side every step of the way.
Jeritza was afraid, but by the Goddess, he was in love.
His legs moved on their own, carrying him toward the object of his affection unbidden. Byleth didn’t seem to notice him as he approached and dismissed the soldier with whom he had been speaking before turning around and continuing down the path until Jeritza stopped him in his very tracks.
“Byleth,” he called.
Byleth turned around, surprised to hear Jeritza’s voice, and his lips curled into a smile at the mere sight of him. Jeritza’s heart ached.
“Jeritza. I hope you’ve been well since this morning. Do you need something from me?”
Oh, if only he knew what he asked.
“I have. I do. I…” Jeritza paused to find the words before continuing, standing tall with his shoulder back. “I would like it if I was able to spend more time in your company. Would you care to join me in a round of sparring before we retire to bed for the night?”
“Before bed? Hm.” Byleth looked up at the sky for a moment to consider the proposition, and Jeritza briefly wondered if he could hear his heartbeat from where he stood. “I’m not busy after dinner. If you’d like, we can go to the training grounds together afterwards. Does that sound alright?”
Jeritza’s eyes widened. In all his fear, he had not been prepared for Byleth to accept his request so readily. Was this all it took, truly?
“It does, yes.”
Byleth nodded. “Great. I’ll see you at dinner soon, then.”
Jeritza was speechless as Byleth gifted him a small, genial wave before continuing on his way. He knew in his heart of hearts that what had just transpired must have seemed entirely ordinary to Byleth, but to Jeritza, it was everything. He looked back at his sister still sitting at the table, a wide grin on her face and pride in her eyes.
And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Jeritza von Hrym smiled warmly back, content with the knowledge that no matter what the future held in store for him, he would never be alone again.