Chapter Text
Most all of the teachings and structure of the Church of Seiros was mystery to Byleth. Just why the archbishop had chosen an uninitiated mercenary to teach at the monastery central to this religious order was, quite frankly, beyond her. It was an immense relief that the Archbishop’s Advisor questioned Rhea’s unfathomable decision, because that meant at least someone in that church had common sense. Unfortunately for her, he did not care that she agreed with him; he made it abundantly clear that he did not trust nor like her. He did not need to like her nor did he have much cause to trust her, she understood this, but it did make it difficult to approach him with any request he had to sign off on, and she learnt early on not to go to him for advice lest she want to be sneered at outright. His open dislike and mistrust for her was only made worse when she inexplicably found herself the wielder of the Sword of the Creator.
His wariness of her had initially comforted her, especially in the light of Rhea’s concerning lack of it where she was involved. Rhea’s pale, piercing gaze that never seemed to see her but something else had made Byleth’s skin itch with prickling discomfort, a discomfort that permeated through her and into the petulant girl sharing a tenancy of her mind. She did not like the unearned affection, and she did not like not knowing what Rhea saw when she looked at her.
By degrees, the nature of the church’s poison roots revealed itself to her. She had only been there for two cycles of the moon when the truth of Rhea’s draconian rule was presented. Lord Lonato’s body, brutalised by the jagged, searing cleft of Thunderstrike Cassandra’s crackling blade, was etched into her memory, and presented itself to her when she closed her eyes. Worse still was the order to kill the civilians who had rallied around their lord. Byleth herself was no stranger to killing, but her students were; commanding them to kill civilians was untenable to her. She would not have them kill in someone else’s name. Not in the name of a goddess she did not know and certainly not in the name of an institution she did not yet understand.
From the first moment she spoke to him, Ashe had spoken fondly of Lonato: the softness of his voice as he told her of the kindness he extended him and his sister had endeared the weathered man to her before she had met him on the battlefield. She had no umbrage with the man; she found that she was grateful to him and the depth of his heart; that he had given Ashe and his family a home and a love they had not known since the loss of their parents. Even beyond her new fondness of the man, she did not think either that what he was doing was worthy of execution. But she was a weapon who had been passed hand-to-hand to cut a path to the futures they wished to see, and this one aimed to wield her indiscriminately.
Although used to being a hired weapon, Byleth was of two minds, and neither of them were at peace with the hands that sought to use them. Rhea had told her she was fighting an army. She neglected to mention that this ‘army’ included a handful of civilians wielding pitchforks, sickles, and other farming equipment that could double as weapons. She had pulled on a loose thread of time after the first civilian body fell, Ignatz’s scream of anguish drowning the thunk of his arrow that he had notched into the man’s unarmoured chest.
Coming back to time before Ignatz had even knocked his arrow, Byleth’s instruction to disarm and incapacitate their targets was heard and met by her students with confused but whole-hearted trust. When they at last saw, as she had seen, the nature of their targets through the fog, they found their trust in their impassive professor compounded. Catherine and her men, however, operated under a different banner: the word of the archbishop. A banner un-swayed by changes in the wind or changes in opponent. Together, they attempted to cut a path through civilian and mage alike whilst Byleth did all she could to prevent civilian casualty, even if it meant earning the anger of the archbishop’s faithful thunderbrand.
She couldn’t save Lonato from Catherine’s blade. The girl in her mind was asleep; her power exhausted over the course of the battle as they worked to save the townspeople from the blades of the church. Catherine had gloated before she brought her sword down on him. He was killed, it was over, Byleth had thought, the tense line of her shoulders relaxing minutely. But Catherine’s blade did not still and Lonato’s punishment did not seem to cease in death. She hauled her blade over her head, the grip twisting in her hands as she prepared to bring it back down on him. Claude had yelled out in horrified outrage, and Marianne had burst into tears, Hilda’s arms thrown tight around her shoulders. The rest of her students' horrified voices had also filled the air in terrible mass of clamorous sound, but Byleth, silent, was already moving.
“Wha-?!” Catherine’s exclamation was punched out of her as Byleth’s hand wrapped around her wrist and killed the momentum of her blade still held half aloft.
“That’s enough.” Byleth had said, her still voice not betraying the bile in her throat and the blood rushing in her ears. Catherine’s wrist was heavy in her hand. She raised her head, her steady violet gaze met the vicious glare on Catherine’s rage-filled face. “Lonato is dead. It is over.”
“An example needs to be made, Professor.” Catherine had all but spat, her anger twisting her otherwise handsome features in an ugly way.
“His death at your hands is example enough.” Byleth gestured around her with her other hand, the people of Gaspard were postured in despair, all spirit of war vacated from their devastated bodies. “These people are done. They will not rise without their Lord; his death has seen to that. It is over, Thunderbrand.”
Wrenching her arm from Byleth’s hold, she sheathed the blade at her hip and scoffed, “I thought the infamous Ashen Demon was going to be impressive. But you’re a yellow-belly coward, aren’t you?”
“If you say so,” Byleth shrugged, an irreverent, one-shouldered thing that only seemed to incense Catherine further. Catherine had opened her mouth to say something, but Byleth was already turned around and marching towards her gathered students. They were streaked in mud, and the grey sky above washed them of any colour they might have had. They were as defeated as the people around them. They all looked up at her when she reached them, the light in their eyes dull, and their faces aghast. Only Claude had appeared in better spirits, although it was clear to Byleth that he was just as affected as his classmates. Silence stretched outwards in tense and bated waves as they all waited for the professor to address them.
Byleth had made sure to look at each of them in turn as she began to speak. “This was a horrible fight. You conducted yourselves very well; I am proud of each and every one of you. You could not have done better in the circumstances.”
Somehow, those words had brightened some of the pallor of their faces.
Raphael had barked a booming laugh and clapped Ignatz on the back, sending the slight boy stumbling forwards. “Hear that?” Raphael grinned, gauntleted hands proud on his hips. “The professor says we couldn’t have done a better job!”
Ignatz had straightened up and adjusted his glasses before they slipped off his nose. “I suppose there is no use dwelling on what we cannot change. Right, professor? We saved as many people as we could… that counts for something… doesn’t it?”
Byleth had nodded resolutely and Claude had bolstered her affirmation with a firm but soft, “Of course it does, Ignatz.”
“That mage had powerful magic,” Lysithea had added, her chin held between her thumb and forefinger as she considered her words. “How odd that they had such a powerful magic user when they could not even afford any weapons…”
Byleth had also pondered on this, and she could not say that she enjoyed the implications of that information.
“Professor,” Marianne had said, her voice tremorous and plaintive, but she was looking Byleth full in her face. “Our order was to kill them… the civilians.”
“Surely the Archbishop did not know what we were dealing with when she issued that command.” Lorenz had said imperiously, although his trembling hands betrayed the noble airs that he asserted himself with. Doubt was a pernicious thing, Byleth knew, and these children had now been shown the first crack in the wall.
“But Catherine and her men kept trying to kill them,” Hilda had bluntly pointed out whilst she rubbed a soothing hand across Marianne’s shoulder.
“I will raise this in my debriefing with Rhea and Seteth—” Claude had turned his head and coughed surreptitiously into his sleeve. Byleth straightened her shoulders and corrected her mistake “—the Archbishop and her Senior Advisor. Do not worry, Marianne, you will not be in trouble for doing the right thing. If the Archbishop is displeased with our conduct here today, that will be on my shoulders, not any of yours.” Byleth nodded her head. “Let’s return to the monastery. Gather yourselves and your things, and we’ll head back out of this cold and wet. I’ll have the cooks prepare us a warm meal, and we can talk this day through.”
Claude had hung back from the rest of the class and begun to parse out the implications and power of the Holy Relics when a harried Catherine had rushed over, chest heaving and eyes wide, to inform them of a preposterous plot to assassinate the Archbishop which was written on a piece of parchment and tucked into the robe of one of the mages.
Thence, everything began to go to shit.