Yeah, a written one. I don't think she likes regular Communion much. What about it?
[Even among commoners, literacy was becoming more common, as many of his classmates at the Officer's Academy proved. It simply hasn't occured to him that Hayame might not have such privileges.]
No. I'm assuming she's illiterate because she's like me.
[A warrior of roughly the same time period (she didn't seem so alien like other Shard-Bearers), and whom didn't seem the type to have gone to an Officer's Academy. In fact, considering what he felt when he told her of the Nabateans...]
Jeralt only taught me the very basics of reading, and the rest I taught myself. Most mercenaries only know the letters to spell their name, or to understand cardinals and numbers. It's thought unusual to find a fully literate mercenary. Normally they're disgraced knights or some such.
[And maybe he is just acting like an ignorant noble. His hunch might be wrong, but he also shouldn't assume, knowing what he does about Hayame's life.]
I'll reach out to her again. It's the least I can do, given everything.
It may be best just to clarify, at the very least. Better to know that she's ignoring you intentionally and not because she's too prideful to ask what your message says.
[Most mercenaries were pretty blasé about being illiterate, but no one would willingly admit a weakness - Hayame seemed like that type, anyways. But, Byleth felt like the point had been made, and whatever happened from this point on depended on Claude and Hayame. He hoped they settled their differences, but at the same time, he knew people were fickle with their hearts, and lifelong friendships could be broken over what appeared to be the smallest of slights from the outside.]
I hope this conversation helped. In truth, I'd wanted to bring this up for a while- ah, not your relationship with Hayame, but your habit of deflecting and hiding things. You already know so much about me from your Byleth... but I'm realising I know so little about you.
[Byleth can practically feel the internal wince over the Communion. He knows Byleth isn't stupid, knows that he must have noticed, but Claude typically gets by on confrontation about his behaviour with... more deflection and obfuscation. At that point, most people give up.
But he won't do that to Byleth. Not after he'd just given him some solid advice, and not after Claude himself had acknowledged that hiding so much for so long was wrong. So he grits his teeth, and quashes down his discomfort.]
[Byleth's surprise was probably clear as day through the Communion before it was swiftly squashed. He'd expected Claude to maybe make a comment and close off the topic - just because his shortcoming had been pointed out didn't mean he'd instantly try to overcome it - so he found himself a bit put on the spot since he didn't actually have a question prepared or anything.]
Well...
[In his sudden groping for a question, he remembered... when he'd first arrived here Claude had mistaken him for his Byleth, showing him his Sunbeam and saying that he could see everyone was doing fine in Fódlan and Almyra. He hadn't questioned it at the time, too bewildered about his circumstances as he was, and it had mostly slipped his mind since then. He had assumed Claude wouldn't elaborate anyways, even if he did ask.
However.
Byleth had met a few Almyrans - as enemies or mercenaries hiding their Almyran heritage - thanks to House Goneril padding holes in their ranks with mercenaries whenever the Almyrans got a bit too ornery. Jeralt considered such jobs relatively easy and a good payout for "little to no work". Despite that, Byleth harboured no malicious or negative feelings about the Almyrans: they were good fighters and had interesting tactics, far more wily than the more rigid minded Fódlans, and fairly distinctive with their dark skin and... hair...
[There's a long pause, as Claude tries to get the measure of the question, detect any trace of hostility or any other intent behind it. This was why it was easier to just avoid the subject; it got his hackles up, and he had no way of predicting if this Byleth's opinion of Almyra lined up with his own world's.
But dodging the question would be like answering the question, just in another way. So, he relents.]
Yeah, I am.
[A loaded pause, then as if to silently ask: what's it to you? before he continues.]
[Byleth exhibited no surprise at the answer, instead giving off the impression of nodding absently (in actuality he was blowing at his nails, having finally finished one hand).]
I see. Thought so.
[Now onto his other hand.]
When I first arrived here, you mentioned Almyra to me when you thought I was 'Teach'. I thought it odd at first, but after a while it made sense. Were you born there? What's it like? I admit, the most I've seen of Almyra is what you can see from Fódlan's Throat, which is just... rocky mountains.
[The barrage of questions takes him aback... but then, slowly, is followed by a ripple of relieved amusement. One question at a time, buddy.]
If you keep going through Fódlan's Throat, the view's pretty breathtaking, actually. I can show you.
[And he does. Directly from his memories, from the back of his white wyvern, her scales gleaming in the sun, now a blazing orb low on the horizon but slowly rising from the east. Flying low, endless prairie spreads out before them, golden grass dancing in the wind. Soon, the mountains bordering Fódlan are left behind until there seems to be nothing out here but sky and flat land, nothing but the sound of wingbeats and the breeze.
Then the memory jumps head to harsh desert, the likes of which Fódlan could only see in the Sreng region, but here made up of towering and sloping dunes. The sun is higher in the sky by now, which is a brilliant, cloudless blue. This desert, like the immense prairie, seems to stretch on forever, like they could fly for hours and never meet another soul save the occasional bird wheeling in the sky.
They stop at an oasis to rest and get some shade under the fronds of palm trees. When they set off again, the destination becomes clear, heading towards the huge yellow stone walls, gleaming domes and towering minarets of the capital. For all that he has mixed feelings about Almyra over the years, there's clear affection and yearning for those memories-- for a home Claude lost and regained, only to lose again.
He pulls gently away from the past, and back to the conversation.]
So... That's Almyra. Some of it, anyway. I was born there, and I spent most of my life there, until a year before I enrolled at the Officer's Academy.
[The memory Claude showed him was unlike anything he'd seen in Fódlan, and he had traversed almost every inch of that continent - up to and including the decimated Duscar, which had only recently began to rebuild since Faerghus had all but razed it. He quickly memorised it, and tucked it away in his vast mental library of memorable sights to refer to on dreary days.]
It's a beautiful land, Claude. I can see why you would miss it.
[It was difficult for Byleth to connect himself to this mysterious 'Teach', someone who shared a dream as fantastical as Claude's and who was an active participant of it - who had the political clout and will to aid in it! He was a simple mercenary, whose worries didn't extend beyond the next paycheck in his world. Not a political power scheming with foreign lords over revolutionising Fódlan society.
Usually, Byleth would shy away from such comparisons. He wasn't interested in being compared to some distant interloper with his face, but...]
That's impressive, considering the bloody history between the two nations. It must've been difficult to achieve...
[His tone was distracted though. He wasn't sure how to ask. After a moment chewing over his words, he decided to bite the bullet and just say something, no matter how clumsy and out of left field it was.]
I thought you didn't like being compared? [But if Byleth is inviting the comparison, he supposes it's fine.]
When I first met you, it was like when I first met Teach, to be honest. He was a wandering mercenary just like you, and for months after he became a professor, he kind of... looked like a fish out of water, like you were here. To be honest, I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him, especially when I learned he had the Crest of Flames, or that Rhea favoured him. The whole thing stank.
But... then I watched him more. [Byleth is offered another memory: of this other Byleth, with a stuffed bear in his arms he'd bought from the market, offering it to a tiny fifteen-year-old Lysithea, who blushes furiously but takes it anyway. Byleth's daily routine of checking in with the ever-cheerful gatekeeper. Byleth's delight at catching a fish in the pond, only to feed it to one of the monastery strays moments later. All the while, he has a small, but noticeable, smile on his face.]
Under that reputation he had as a mercenary, under all the designs the Church had for him, he was just a kind, gentle person. Bit by bit, he learned to smile and express himself, like he was learning as much from his students as they were from his guidance.
...Or maybe I'm giving the Golden Deer too much credit. As former house leader, it's my duty to big them up, after all!
[He laughs. He hasn't quite answered Byleth's question yet, though, so he rounds about to an answer.]
Anyway, I think at heart, you're that same gentle person. You like to eat cake, read romance novels, and you're kind to others. You have the same great insight too, and you know when to be strict when it's called for... I'd say that's all what made the Byleth of my world such a great professor.
[The same? No. Similar, in ways he admires them both for? Definitely.]
[Byleth listened quietly and studied the memories Claude offered him. Physically, Teach looked the same as him, mint-green hair and all. He even wore the same clothes - not even being a professor at Garreg Mach had changed that. But he wore his expressions easier. He looked more approachable, more human, more normal... the person Byleth wished he could be. But he didn't seem alien. He still seemed like a mercenary, and not some political powerhouse changing the trajectory of Fódlan's future.
His feelings were mixed - or, maybe it'd be more accurate to say that he wasn't sure how to feel? When he had first arrived in this world, he'd been repulsed by Teach - by the thought that out there was an idealised version of him that he struggled to match up to, that Claude and Dimitri expected from him, even if subconsciously. It wasn't as if those feelings have gone, but...
...it was a good template to work from, wasn't it? Byleth had moulded himself to be whatever Jeralt had wanted him to be, but that mould wasn't working here. The Root Chamber, how easily he had thrown himself at Sothis's feet, desperate for guidance, for someone to point and say 'this is what we will do'... in retrospect, it made him realise how weak he still was, how he hadn't grown at all since he made that declaration at the masquerade to be better. He had to stop just drifting with the waves and figure out who and what he needed to be, because the Byleth he'd been under Jeralt wasn't feasible here.
If this world was a trap as Sothis suspected, then it wasn't as simple as playing along until he managed to find a way back home to Jeralt. He'd have to be proactive, he'd have to be- he'd need to be someone like Teach, who helped Claude put an end to a multi-generational war between two nations.]
Do you think I should be more like him? If he aided you in crafting peace between Fódlan and Almyra, wouldn't he be more useful here?
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want him here. Me and him, we can accomplish anything together.
[And not because he had the right sword, the blessing of the goddess, and the power of an entire continent behind him. Most of that was irrelevant here. More to the point...]
I was the idea guy, and he was the one who always helped set my plans into motion. We believed in each other.
It might sound trite, but... Many Shardbearers in Kenos? They don't believe in others, or any real common cause. They spend their time fighting desperately with each other, or arguing. I don't think many are thinking clearly about the future yet.
I don't think all of that description fits you, Byleth, but I do get the feeling you're aimless. You know what you want to do, sure, but how are you going to get there?
I don't know. Jeralt usually told me what the objectives were and how to carry them out, so this is... difficult, for me.
[Sure, there was usually some flex if Byleth needed to make split-second decisions on the battlefield, but Jeralt was who made the final decision. Jeralt decided if they advanced, if they retreated, which client they made a contract with, if they'd honour the contract, if they'd find a loophole to wriggle out of the contract, where they'd go, where they'd ride out the lean winters, which side they'd pick when war broke out...
It worked, in Byleth's Fódlan. He had no ambitions beyond Jeralt. He didn't even think he'd take over the company if Jeralt ever retired. He was passive, and there was security in that passiveness, because he knew there was always someone to turn to for guidance: Jeralt, and eventually Sothis. He never had to think about these things for himself... until he did.]
I can't tell you what to do. I'm your friend, not your commander. Even if it takes time, you need to take a long look at what you want. Otherwise, some bearded fellow with a big smile and some equally big promises is going to whisk you away to do his bidding.
[Is he talking about himself, or Cyrus...? Either way, he's sure Byleth will get the point.]
[Hence him asking about Teach for once... but he felt like he wasn't really any closer to an answer. With a template to model himself after, what was he meant to do?]
I'll have to find my own way, somehow.
[He huffed.]
Funny how I find that more daunting than any battlefield I've been on before.
[And he fought Shez! And giant machines! Which... he still didn't know where they had come from or how the dark mages constructed them, but that was still in his Top Five Weirdest Things I've Fought list.]
Just between you and me, I was terrified when I first staked my claim as my grandfather's heir. I had no idea what I was getting into, not really. But I did it anyway, because it was what I felt I needed to do.
I hope it's the same for you. That you'll find a path you'll do anything to walk, no matter how daunting it is. If anyone's capable of that kind of resolve, it's you.
You flatter me. I'm quite lacking in resolve, you know.
[When having to make his own long-term decisions, that is. Sothis always told him he was too cautious, too hesitant, and that he needed to be more decisive like her: "just act!" she would sigh, and get annoyed when Byleth would just shrug at her helplessly.]
It took me too long to confront you about your secretiveness, for example. I was worried I'd offend you and ruin things, so I made excuses and avoided it. In truth, I wasn't acting any better than you.
[Byleth had always been better at bluntly laying out his flaws and failures than directly discussing his emotions, as confusing as they could be, so he just focused on that instead. His flaw was his hesitation, and his failure was letting it dictate his behaviour, therefore he needed to improve his resolve and emotional fortitude... somehow.]
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leicesters) wrote2022-12-06 08:26 pm
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[Even among commoners, literacy was becoming more common, as many of his classmates at the Officer's Academy proved. It simply hasn't occured to him that Hayame might not have such privileges.]
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[but she did literally live in a stable, so... hm]
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[A warrior of roughly the same time period (she didn't seem so alien like other Shard-Bearers), and whom didn't seem the type to have gone to an Officer's Academy. In fact, considering what he felt when he told her of the Nabateans...]
Jeralt only taught me the very basics of reading, and the rest I taught myself. Most mercenaries only know the letters to spell their name, or to understand cardinals and numbers. It's thought unusual to find a fully literate mercenary. Normally they're disgraced knights or some such.
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[And maybe he is just acting like an ignorant noble. His hunch might be wrong, but he also shouldn't assume, knowing what he does about Hayame's life.]
I'll reach out to her again. It's the least I can do, given everything.
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[Most mercenaries were pretty blasé about being illiterate, but no one would willingly admit a weakness - Hayame seemed like that type, anyways. But, Byleth felt like the point had been made, and whatever happened from this point on depended on Claude and Hayame. He hoped they settled their differences, but at the same time, he knew people were fickle with their hearts, and lifelong friendships could be broken over what appeared to be the smallest of slights from the outside.]
I hope this conversation helped. In truth, I'd wanted to bring this up for a while- ah, not your relationship with Hayame, but your habit of deflecting and hiding things. You already know so much about me from your Byleth... but I'm realising I know so little about you.
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But he won't do that to Byleth. Not after he'd just given him some solid advice, and not after Claude himself had acknowledged that hiding so much for so long was wrong. So he grits his teeth, and quashes down his discomfort.]
All right, then. What do you want to know?
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Well...
[In his sudden groping for a question, he remembered... when he'd first arrived here Claude had mistaken him for his Byleth, showing him his Sunbeam and saying that he could see everyone was doing fine in Fódlan and Almyra. He hadn't questioned it at the time, too bewildered about his circumstances as he was, and it had mostly slipped his mind since then. He had assumed Claude wouldn't elaborate anyways, even if he did ask.
However.
Byleth had met a few Almyrans - as enemies or mercenaries hiding their Almyran heritage - thanks to House Goneril padding holes in their ranks with mercenaries whenever the Almyrans got a bit too ornery. Jeralt considered such jobs relatively easy and a good payout for "little to no work". Despite that, Byleth harboured no malicious or negative feelings about the Almyrans: they were good fighters and had interesting tactics, far more wily than the more rigid minded Fódlans, and fairly distinctive with their dark skin and... hair...
...oh.]
Are you Almyran?
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But dodging the question would be like answering the question, just in another way. So, he relents.]
Yeah, I am.
[A loaded pause, then as if to silently ask: what's it to you? before he continues.]
My mother's from Fódlan, and my father's Almyran.
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I see. Thought so.
[Now onto his other hand.]
When I first arrived here, you mentioned Almyra to me when you thought I was 'Teach'. I thought it odd at first, but after a while it made sense. Were you born there? What's it like? I admit, the most I've seen of Almyra is what you can see from Fódlan's Throat, which is just... rocky mountains.
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If you keep going through Fódlan's Throat, the view's pretty breathtaking, actually. I can show you.
[And he does. Directly from his memories, from the back of his white wyvern, her scales gleaming in the sun, now a blazing orb low on the horizon but slowly rising from the east. Flying low, endless prairie spreads out before them, golden grass dancing in the wind. Soon, the mountains bordering Fódlan are left behind until there seems to be nothing out here but sky and flat land, nothing but the sound of wingbeats and the breeze.
Then the memory jumps head to harsh desert, the likes of which Fódlan could only see in the Sreng region, but here made up of towering and sloping dunes. The sun is higher in the sky by now, which is a brilliant, cloudless blue. This desert, like the immense prairie, seems to stretch on forever, like they could fly for hours and never meet another soul save the occasional bird wheeling in the sky.
They stop at an oasis to rest and get some shade under the fronds of palm trees. When they set off again, the destination becomes clear, heading towards the huge yellow stone walls, gleaming domes and towering minarets of the capital. For all that he has mixed feelings about Almyra over the years, there's clear affection and yearning for those memories-- for a home Claude lost and regained, only to lose again.
He pulls gently away from the past, and back to the conversation.]
So... That's Almyra. Some of it, anyway. I was born there, and I spent most of my life there, until a year before I enrolled at the Officer's Academy.
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It's a beautiful land, Claude. I can see why you would miss it.
[...]
...did 'Teach' know this about you?
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[Even if it took longer than he would have liked to reveal the whole truth, particularly with Byleth's five-year disappearance.]
Now, Fódlan's Locket is less... well, locked tight, and more like an open gateway. Fódlan and Almyra are at peace.
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Usually, Byleth would shy away from such comparisons. He wasn't interested in being compared to some distant interloper with his face, but...]
That's impressive, considering the bloody history between the two nations. It must've been difficult to achieve...
[His tone was distracted though. He wasn't sure how to ask. After a moment chewing over his words, he decided to bite the bullet and just say something, no matter how clumsy and out of left field it was.]
Claude, am I... very different to Teach?
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When I first met you, it was like when I first met Teach, to be honest. He was a wandering mercenary just like you, and for months after he became a professor, he kind of... looked like a fish out of water, like you were here. To be honest, I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him, especially when I learned he had the Crest of Flames, or that Rhea favoured him. The whole thing stank.
But... then I watched him more. [Byleth is offered another memory: of this other Byleth, with a stuffed bear in his arms he'd bought from the market, offering it to a tiny fifteen-year-old Lysithea, who blushes furiously but takes it anyway. Byleth's daily routine of checking in with the ever-cheerful gatekeeper. Byleth's delight at catching a fish in the pond, only to feed it to one of the monastery strays moments later. All the while, he has a small, but noticeable, smile on his face.]
Under that reputation he had as a mercenary, under all the designs the Church had for him, he was just a kind, gentle person. Bit by bit, he learned to smile and express himself, like he was learning as much from his students as they were from his guidance.
...Or maybe I'm giving the Golden Deer too much credit. As former house leader, it's my duty to big them up, after all!
[He laughs. He hasn't quite answered Byleth's question yet, though, so he rounds about to an answer.]
Anyway, I think at heart, you're that same gentle person. You like to eat cake, read romance novels, and you're kind to others. You have the same great insight too, and you know when to be strict when it's called for... I'd say that's all what made the Byleth of my world such a great professor.
[The same? No. Similar, in ways he admires them both for? Definitely.]
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His feelings were mixed - or, maybe it'd be more accurate to say that he wasn't sure how to feel? When he had first arrived in this world, he'd been repulsed by Teach - by the thought that out there was an idealised version of him that he struggled to match up to, that Claude and Dimitri expected from him, even if subconsciously. It wasn't as if those feelings have gone, but...
...it was a good template to work from, wasn't it? Byleth had moulded himself to be whatever Jeralt had wanted him to be, but that mould wasn't working here. The Root Chamber, how easily he had thrown himself at Sothis's feet, desperate for guidance, for someone to point and say 'this is what we will do'... in retrospect, it made him realise how weak he still was, how he hadn't grown at all since he made that declaration at the masquerade to be better. He had to stop just drifting with the waves and figure out who and what he needed to be, because the Byleth he'd been under Jeralt wasn't feasible here.
If this world was a trap as Sothis suspected, then it wasn't as simple as playing along until he managed to find a way back home to Jeralt. He'd have to be proactive, he'd have to be- he'd need to be someone like Teach, who helped Claude put an end to a multi-generational war between two nations.]
Do you think I should be more like him? If he aided you in crafting peace between Fódlan and Almyra, wouldn't he be more useful here?
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[And not because he had the right sword, the blessing of the goddess, and the power of an entire continent behind him. Most of that was irrelevant here. More to the point...]
I was the idea guy, and he was the one who always helped set my plans into motion. We believed in each other.
It might sound trite, but... Many Shardbearers in Kenos? They don't believe in others, or any real common cause. They spend their time fighting desperately with each other, or arguing. I don't think many are thinking clearly about the future yet.
I don't think all of that description fits you, Byleth, but I do get the feeling you're aimless. You know what you want to do, sure, but how are you going to get there?
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[Sure, there was usually some flex if Byleth needed to make split-second decisions on the battlefield, but Jeralt was who made the final decision. Jeralt decided if they advanced, if they retreated, which client they made a contract with, if they'd honour the contract, if they'd find a loophole to wriggle out of the contract, where they'd go, where they'd ride out the lean winters, which side they'd pick when war broke out...
It worked, in Byleth's Fódlan. He had no ambitions beyond Jeralt. He didn't even think he'd take over the company if Jeralt ever retired. He was passive, and there was security in that passiveness, because he knew there was always someone to turn to for guidance: Jeralt, and eventually Sothis. He never had to think about these things for himself... until he did.]
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[Is he talking about himself, or Cyrus...? Either way, he's sure Byleth will get the point.]
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[Hence him asking about Teach for once... but he felt like he wasn't really any closer to an answer. With a template to model himself after, what was he meant to do?]
I'll have to find my own way, somehow.
[He huffed.]
Funny how I find that more daunting than any battlefield I've been on before.
[And he fought Shez! And giant machines! Which... he still didn't know where they had come from or how the dark mages constructed them, but that was still in his Top Five Weirdest Things I've Fought list.]
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I hope it's the same for you. That you'll find a path you'll do anything to walk, no matter how daunting it is. If anyone's capable of that kind of resolve, it's you.
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[When having to make his own long-term decisions, that is. Sothis always told him he was too cautious, too hesitant, and that he needed to be more decisive like her: "just act!" she would sigh, and get annoyed when Byleth would just shrug at her helplessly.]
It took me too long to confront you about your secretiveness, for example. I was worried I'd offend you and ruin things, so I made excuses and avoided it. In truth, I wasn't acting any better than you.
[Byleth had always been better at bluntly laying out his flaws and failures than directly discussing his emotions, as confusing as they could be, so he just focused on that instead. His flaw was his hesitation, and his failure was letting it dictate his behaviour, therefore he needed to improve his resolve and emotional fortitude... somehow.]