#(Implied only though- hubert dosen't actually show up in this fic)

[asha-mage]

edelgard and dimitri (platonic/siblings), reincarnation

[Send me a character (or ship) and a one word prompt and I will write you a small ficlet or drabble based on it!]

Edelgard glared at the papers spread out before her- trying to will the various reports, correspondences, and ledgers into some form she liked better. She felt old today- old and gray and worn out. There had been more days like that recently. Too many. They didn’t yet outnumber the days where she felt strong and able, passionate and fierce, but they were not negligible anymore either.

It was the price for what had been done to her she knew, when the Agarthans had forged her into a living weapon. That strength did not define her any longer- what defined her was what always had: her will, her determination, her refusal to surrender onto uncertain fate. But the price still had to be paid.

Sighing Edelgard pulled the next stack to her- trade reports out of Gronder Field. There was a problem with the sugar crop- some blight on the cane stalks that would need to be dealt with if she wanted to keep sugar prices from skyrocketing- and she would need to review the wheat taxes again if she wanted to keep Fodlan grain competitive with Almyran. But before she could do more then begin examining the top sheet there was a knock at her study door.

Edelgard looked up and smiled at who she saw standing there. As always something about August, about the tilt of his eyes maybe, or the shy corner of his smile, made Edelgard’s throat catch a little bit. It wasn’t the joy of a parent seeing themselves in their child- Edelgard knew that feeling well with August and knew this emotion to be something else. This was something sharper, something edged in glass as it rattled around her ribcage.

“Good morning Augie.” Edelgard said, setting down the sheet on the pile. “What can I do for you?”

August chewed at his lip for a moment before coming fully into her study. He was almost twelve now, and his mop of black curls had grown enough to hang down almost over his eyes. He had unfortunately inherited his father’s complexion on top of it and some of his reserved manner, creating an effect that most the court regarded as cringing and shy. But Edelgard knew better. She knew that if she pushed back his unruly bangs and reminded him to stand straighter, he would. At age ten there was already there was already a fierce light in this lavender eyes, and when he forgot himself enough to find confidence, a air of command and strength that would serve him well one day.

Of all the miracles that had come from forging a real peace in Fodlan, August had been the most unexpected, and the most beloved.

But at this moment he was more unsure than she had ever seen him before. He plucked at the hem of his coat as if hot, and he refused to meet her eyes as he settled in the chair before her desk. Edelgard felt her guard rise and she sat back in her chair, squaring her shoulders more out of old habit then real thought their might be need.

“Augie.” Edelgard tried again, letting the lightness slip from her voice in favor of seirouness. “What is wrong?”

“I don’t know how too….” August began then cut off. For a moment he seemed unable to go on, words failing him, but then all in a rush he said, to fast for her to understand, one word spilling into the next. “Whatwasuncledimitrilike?”

Before she could begin to sort through it he began to breath heavily, one hand going to his chest and Edelgard felt panic flare in her. Their had been so much worry during his infancy and childhood- what the experiments done to Edelgard might mean for a child. Their had been some doubt he would even last a year, and though he was heart and hale now, some fears never left a mother’s mind once allowed in.

He began to speak again, gesturing wildly, but it was to fast for her to understand, and she thought their was a wildness in whatever he was trying to communicate.

“Augie! Slow down! Breathe.” Edelgard said, cutting across him and trying to hide how bewildered she was. She stood and moved to the small drink cart she kept in her office for entertaining dignitaries and officials, pouring out a glass of water and handing it to Augie. “I need you to breath.”

August took the water with shaking hands and gulped it down in a single great swallow that made Edelgard’s eyebrows rise higher. For a moment she considered summoning Hubert, but decided against it the next second. Hubert loved his son, but Edelgard did not think he could help much in this situation.

When August had managed a few steadying breaths Edelgard rested a hand on his shoulder and moved to sit beside him in one of the plush chairs arrayed before her desk. It was a small thing, but maybe it would help him see her as a mother, a source of comfort, rather than the all powerful Emperor in this moment. “Augie.” She said firm but not unkind. “Please, try again.”

August turned his gaze to the bottom of the glass and when he spoke it was in little more than a whisper, but Edelgard’s ears were sharp enough to catch each word on their own this time. But understanding the words shed no clarity on anything.

“What was Uncle Dimitri like?”

For a long moment Edelgard stared down at August trying to understand, to wrap her head around where this had come from, and how it connected to this fear, raw as an open nerve. But in the end all she could do was answer the question.

“He was kind.” Edelgard said simply. It was the truth- or as much of the truth as mattered to her. She chose to remember Dimitri as the sweet boy with the idealistic naivety, who had stumbled trying to learn to dance. Not as the Maelstrom King, the cold blooded tyrant Rhea had forged him into. “Gentle hearted. Fair minded He never paid any mind to station or birth or blood.” She smiled, and if there was a note of bitterness to it, it was only for the circumstances that had drawn them into conflict. She shook free and turned her gaze back to August, trying not to frown. “Why do you ask?”

August looked up from his glass, but instead of looking at her or answering her question, his eyes had found their way to her desk. He was gazing at the various things on it: a collection of ivory miniatures, one for each of the Black Eagle Strikeforce, a few lacquered boxes containing writing instruments and keepsakes. The hateful stacks of paper of course. Other Knick Knacks that had been gifted to her by various important officials and diplomats and that property demanded she display as a gesture of good will. Nothing to account for his interest- just a way to avoid meeting her gaze.

“Why did he oppose you then?” August asked quietly. “If he was so eagletarian? If he didn’t believe in class and wanted to treat everyone fairly?”

Edelgard blew out a breath. “Many reasons. Duty to begin with.” Duty to the ghosts and atrocities of the past, for which she could never blame him, even if she didn’t understand. “Loyalty to the Church.” That time there was no doubting the bitterness that slipped into her voice. There was much Edelgard could never forgive Rhea for, but maybe most of all what she had done with Dimitri’s kind heart and loyal soul. “But mostly…I think it was the belief that he had no other choice. That the future that we were fighting for was an idealistic fairy tale- and that his kingdom would not survive its coming.”

Again August fell into silence, staring at her desk. His eyes had locked onto one of the keepsake boxes, plain dark wood carved with flames. “….But you still call him brother. You still raised me to call him Uncle, and memorialized him in Faerghus.” August said quietly. “Even though he opposed you.”

Edelgard sighed. “I loved him, August. He was my brother. If I could have brought him over to our side, found a way to free Fodlan and keep him alive, I would have.”

August stood and moved forward. She didn’t call him down for the rudeness- not here and now. Something was strange about this, something delicate held within these words that she didn’t yet understand. He moved to her desk and laid a hand on the keepsake box. It held gifts from her former teachers. A fishing lure from Byleth, a painted fan from Mannuela, and an invention of Hannerman’s- all given to her in thanks for the funding she had provided for rebuilding the Officer’s Academy.

“But you did what you had to.” August said, his voice quiet and more afraid than Edelgard had ever heard it. “To protect the realm.”

Edelgard nodded. “I always will. That is the core of me. I…” It was her turn to look away. A hot burning had filled her throat, acid and sour. “I had to make a more just, more kind world in August.”

For the sake of the girl who had died in a cell beneath this very palace. Died screaming after watching all her siblings face the same fate. But unlike her siblings, that girl had been reborn, remade into something more- something fanged and cold and vicious. And for her suffering to have meaning, that girl’s pain to matter, she had to destroy the world that had made it possible. To free humankind from all those that would chain it. Nothing else would honor her.

August’s hand rested on the lid of the keepsake box and he took a deep shaking breath. “Mother I….” And again words seemed to fail him, his teeth biting into his lip hard enough to leave red marks in the flesh. Edelgard stood, to reassure him, to comfort him- to tell him those days were over and the world was free, and nothing would ever threaten him. But before she could her son spoke. “I’ve been having dreams.”

Edelgard blinked. “Dreams?” She repeated.

August nodded. “I...I've been dreaming of a field.” He said, his voice quiet and harsh. “Soaked in the rain. Long grassy hills made muddy and slippery by a downpour.” He turned his gaze down to his hand. “When I dream...there are three armies on that field.”

Alarm shot through Edelgard like a wildfire. But now that August had begun it seemed he had no idea how to stop. The words were falling from him in wave after wave.

“I’m marching across that field holding a spear of bone.” He lifted one hand and flexed his fingers as if able to feel its heft, its weight there. “And all around me are friends, allies, followers, subjects and ...and they're turning into monsters. Their flesh is warping before my eyes. Their screaming and snarling and becoming...beasts. Huge four legged lizards and twisted up masked brutes and…” He inhaled and his whole body shook. “And then their getting cut down, by….”

Edelgard didn’t need him to continue. She was there herself all over again. On the field where so many had died caked in mud and splattered with gore- their own and their enemy’s alike.

Rain is running down her face and her ax is flashing in her hands as she chops through the Umbral Beasts that stand between her and the Kingdom’s center line. All around her the Black Eagle Strikeforce is arrayed. The Church’s army is already retreating northwards, being harried by wyvern riders led by Petra, to keep them from circling back. The Empire need only break the Kingdom’s line to win the day and clear the path to Fhirdiad.

She is cold. Focused. Razor sharp, the way she always is in battle. If they do this, they're going to win. She will pull down the false Goddess, and she will burn out Those Who Sslither in the Dark and the world will be free. She will make it so with her own two hands, and with the aid of those who had stood by her, she would-

And then she sees him, coming towards her, Areadbhar twirling his hands as he slices through Imperial soldiers left and right, his blonde hair splattered back from his head by the rain, his blue eyes burning with fire, and with the glow of the Crest of Blaiddyd. Something inside of her aches at the sight of him, her brother, but she steals her heart. Hardens it to stone. She knows what must be done.

Their eyes meet and the hatred burning in him is alien and twisted. The innocent boy who had tried to give her a dagger was nothing but ashes. Only the Maelstrom King remained.

He bares his lance at her, point first, and she raises her ax and-

Edelgard was drawn out of her memory by the sound of the box opening. Her son had reached inside to pull out Hannerman’s invention- a miniature version of the instrument he had developed to detect Crests. Instead of a bulky array of metal and crystal, it’s no bigger then a compass: a simple glass orb held in metal circles. He had developed even smaller ones in the time since, Edelgard understood. It’s a novelty really, a token of his early research.

“August-“ Edelgard said, shaking herself. He flinched at the use of his full name but she pressed on ahead. “It doesn't mean anything. It’s just dreams. You’ve just been listening to too many history-“

But August shook his head. “I….I know things mother. That no history ever talks about. You hit him on the shoulder first, didn’t you? Here.” With his free hand he touches his shoulder, right above the joint, where it connects his body to his neck. Edelgard had- the first blow would have taken his head, if not cleaved him in half, had he not managed to dodge at just the right moment. She had managed only to draw blood instead. “He countered by spinning, then three quick stabs and-“

Edelgard shook her head. It was true, all of it, but that didn’t mean- “August. You're dreaming of the past then that’s all. This is some magic at work. Some part of…” Of being born of the Argathan’s Hegemon. Their new Nemesis. That was all. Lindhardt or Lystheia would be able to find an explanation, maybe a cure.

“I thought so too. I…I hoped so. But then I, this morning I-” He took a final deep breath and then switched on the device. She waited for the symbol of the Crest of Flames to appear, as it would have for Edelgard or Byleth. Or even the Crest of Seiros, that strange shield lighting up the darkness. Instead it glowed a soft, gentle blue as the strange fissured crystal of the Crest of Blaiddyd appeared on the metal orb instead.

For a while they both just stared at it, even as the light began to fade, the crystal orb blinking out to clear again. They both seemed to hold their breath. Waiting for what came next.

Edelgard looked at her son. Dark haired and pale but with her lavender eyes, and sharp jaw and courtly demeanor. And again that feeling, that glass edged thing rattling around her rib cage, made itself known. Only now she could put a name to it. Draw the line between the crinkle of his eyes, and the gentle swell of his laugh, and the shy tilt of his smile, and the boy she had once taught to dance in the gardens of the Royal Palace at Fhirdiad.

A thousand questions ran through her mind, a thousand fears and doubts- A mother’s fear for something unknown and possibly dangerous clawing at her child. A girl’s fear of long buried pain being exhumed into the light of day, with all its rank unfair decay. And yes, an Emperor’s fear, for what this might mean for the realm, for the future, for the peace she had labored so hard to make. It was a part of her, and there was no use in denying it. 

But it was not the only part of her, and here and now, in this place, it was not the strongest.

She stood and August flinched back as if expecting an attack, but Edelgard instead gently took him into her arms, folding her son into the circle of her strength. She thought of Dimitri in that moment, of all the ways she wished she could have protected him, shielded him, seen him flourish as she knew he could.

If only we were born in a time of peace, you might have lived a joyful life, as a benevolent ruler.

How often had she thought of those words, when long nights and exhaustion had dragged her back to that field, that battle, that moment? She had meant them. She still did.

“Ssshhhh.” Edelgard murmured as her son’s arms tightened around her middle and his tears started to fall. How long had this burden been weighing on him? A slowly steadily growing weight in his mind, that had finally become too heavy to bear? It didn’t matter. HE had come to her- maybe believing the worst, maybe hoping for it. But he would find none of that. They lived in a time of peace, a world set free from the sorrows that had destroyed him before. She didn’t know how or why this had happened. And she did not care. “I’m right here Augie. I’m right here.”

You are not alone this time Dima. This time, I am strong enough to protect us both.        

And she would, no matter what.