#in a merry band of stone cold mercenaries that fight for money

[ahkaraii]

Make your own numbers (Jeralt & Byleth centric, 4660 words)

cw: autistic-spectrum/neurodivergent mc, afab!nb!byleth, ableist language, child abuse, alcohol abuse

and spoilers for jeralt’s background, i guess :v it’s written in his pov

---

"Jeralt. What is probability?"

"Uh." The sorts of questions that came from the mouth of babes! "It's like flipping a coin."

"Like flipping a coin."

"Right." Jeralt alcohol-addled fingers searched his pockets and produced one. "If I throw this in the air, what's the chance it'll land on the head of Seiros?"

Byleth stared at the coin intently.

"It's fifty," Jeralt answered. "Fifty percent."

"Fifty percent," Byleth echoed.

One of Jeralt's men laughed. "Does the kid even know math?"

"Yeah, she's like what? Five?"

"Uh. Maybe?" Jeralt wasn't very good at keeping track of the passage of time. "Whatever. Do you know what a percent is, Byleth?"

The kid looked up at him solemnly. Some would say emptily, but Jeralt knew there was substance between Byleth's ears, even if their eyes were mostly dull.

"If two souls in a squad of ten men got injured in a fight, what percent of the whole got injured?"

Contemplative silence.

"You can count with your fingers, if you like," Jeralt offered. He raised two of his ten fingers. "How much is this?"

"Two," Byleth said.

"Right." Jeralt's fingers wiggled. "Two fingers out of ten. How much percent is that?"

"Two," Byleth said again.

"Nope," Jeralt shook his head. "Try again."

"Saints' sake, it's twenty!" interrupted one of his archers. "It's twenty percent."

"Hey!" Jeralt barked. "You! Shut up. Let the child figure it out."

A small crease developed between Byleth's eyes. "Twenty," the kid echoed.

Jeralt nodded. "Okay. Let's make it easier. Say the whole squad got wiped out. Total slaughter. All ten of them died. How much of a percentage is that?"

Byleth frowned, and said nothing.

Saints, maybe the guys were right. Had he taught the kid math yet? Shit. When had Jeralt learned about numbers when he was young? It had been so long ago. Hadn't he learned it just by existing long enough to pick it up?

"It's a hundred percent," Jeralt said with a sigh, when the silence stretched into something more awkward.

"A hundred percent," Byleth repeated monotonously.

Jeralt raised his tankard and drank. Maybe Byleth really was dumb. Jeralt may be old, but he wasn't deaf. He could hear his men talking about Byleth just fine. The kid that wouldn't laugh. The kid that wouldn't cry, even if you tried to scare them. Jeralt was no stranger to dumb humans. You get hit in the head enough over the years, and even the smartest man got slow. He just hadn't ever expected his own kid to be slow from the outset.

"Hey, kid," a spearman said. "Don't feel bad. Boss is one hell of a tactician, but he's no good at talking to babies. Think of it this way: everything is made of a hundred parts. Even coin sides." He produced a coin, and flashed the crest of Fodlan. "Tails, fifty," turned it around, "Heads, fifty."

"You're gonna confuse her even more," cackled a swordsman.

Byleth outstretched a hand, accepting the coin. It engulfed nearly their whole palm. "Tails, fifty," Byleth echoed, and turned it. "Heads, fifty."

"Right!" the spearman clapped Byleth's shoulder companionably. "Good girl."

Byleth's little hands flashed -- "Motherfucker!" the spearman yelped, clutching his hand, index finger bent at a very odd angle.

"Ten percent broken," Byleth said.

Jeralt howled with laughter. Even if he had to crack the spearman's skull open moments after because he'd attacked Byleth for the injury, it was still worth it just to know Byleth had inherited his wife's shitty sense of humour.

--

Jeralt noticed Byleth flipping the coin a lot, afterward. Their fingers were clumsy with it, but every throw got a little smoother. They'd try it while walking, while eating, and Jeralt even spotted Byleth doing it while squatting over the shithole. It was an innocuous hobby, if a little annoying with its repetitiveness, so Jeralt didn't think much of it. Byleth had a habit of repeating new words or phrases for a while after learning them, so it stood to reason they'd practice with this now, too.

"Hey, kid," a staff-wielder approached Byleth at one point. "You sure like that coin, huh?"

Byleth wasn't very good at meeting people's eyes, but Jeralt could tell they were paying attention by the way they drew the coin a little closer to their chest.

"I ain't gonna take it from you," the mage said. "Yet. Wanna bet for it?"

"Bet for it?"

"Yeah, with dice." The mage produced a pair from his sleeves. "I roll an even number, it's mine. An odd number, you can keep it. Got it?"

"An odd number," Byleth muttered. "Six. Twelve...Fifty."

"What? No, those are even numbers. Odds are stuff like one, and three, and five. You can count, can't ya?"

Byleth stared at the dice. "Six," they insisted. "Fifty."

"Saints, you are a retard." The man jiggled the dice in his hand, and Byleth's eyes followed them attentively. "Look, if you like evens so much, then if this die lands on evens, it's yours. Yeah?"

Byleth paused, and then nodded.

Jeralt wasn't a very attentive parent, if he were to be frankly honest. He lost track of Byleth sometimes like he lost track of time, a victim to an old man's attention span. Jeralt's own da hadn't given a whit to his upbringing, and it was both sheer happenstance and Seiros' blood that had kept Jeralt alive till today. His moral compass was a little more skewed for the same reasons. Still, all that didn't mean he didn't care about Byleth. Jeralt was just more of the school of thought that living in this world would teach you how to survive in it.

(The problem was you'd die if you were too dumb to understand the lessons it was trying to beat into your head.)

A single die glimmered in midair. Byleth's eyes followed it, entranced. It rolled momentarily, and stopped on, "Three! What are the odds, eh?" The mage's smile was oily.

"Fifty," Byleth said, and dutifully handed the coin over. They didn't look melancholy, exactly, but their posture was a little more stiff than usual.

"Hey, man," Jeralt ambled on over. "You gambling with my child?"

"Boss!" the man paled. "Uh, no sirre. Nope." He shoved the coin at Byleth, who stared up at him dully and did not accept it.

"Nah, don't fret. It'll be a teaching moment," Jeralt said amicably. "Byleth likes numbers, and what better way to learn 'em than betting for gold?" He nodded at the die on the ground. "You still got another left, right? I bet the next'll roll an odd number, too."

The mage looked very sour, but complied immediately. Predictably, the die rolled a five.

"How about that," Jeralt said, smiling with all his teeth. "Seems like lady luck was on my side."

The mage scooped up his loaded dice and left in a hurry with a tail between his legs. Jeralt flipped the coin once with a practiced toss, and handed Serios' profile to Byleth.

"Here you go, kid," Jeralt said. "Justly regained, for a given meanin' of the word."

The crease made a reappearance between Byleth's eyes. Were they calculating the odds without all the facts? It was cute, is what it was. Jeralt took pity on them.

"His dice were loaded. Do you know what that means?"

Byleth's blank face said it all.

"It means they've got weight on one side, so it always falls same-face up. Guy rigged it so he'd always roll the same number."

"Rigged it," Byleth echoed.

"Mmhmm. One die was set to three, the other to five. Jackass can bet odd if he rolls a single die, or even if he rolls both. No matter what, he'll always win." Jeralt rubbed Byleth's head affectionately. "You had no chance."

"No chance," Byleth murmured. They stared at the coin. "Fifty-fifty."

Jeralt hummed. "Not quite. Even a fair coin's not fair, in the right hands," he said.

Byleth surprised him by nodding. "Three hundred and two heads," they said. "Three hundred and four tails." They flipped it. "Three hundred and five tails."

"Is that what you've been doing?" Jeralt laughed. "Naw, kid, that's still pretty close to fifty-fifty. What I'm talking about is this -- may I have it, for a moment?" He took the coin, and tossed it. It landed, neatly, Seiros-side up. "See?" Again, Seiros-side up.

Byleth frowned. "Again."

Jeralt did so easily. Heads. Heads. Heads.

Byleth's little fingers clutched at the coin. Tails. Heads. Tails. Tails.

"Again," Byleth repeated, shoving it back into Jeralt's hands. Jeralt laughed, and produced, infallibly: Heads, Heads, Heads.

And heads again, for good measure.

"Why," Byleth said.

"Does it bother you?" Jeralt smiled. "Nice to know you can get bothered."

"Why," Byleth repeated.

"Seiros is on my side," Jeralt joked.

Byleth took the coin, and started flipping it obsessively. Their expression was very slightly pinched. Heads, Tails, Tails, Heads, Tails, Heads, Heads.

"Calm down, calm down!" Jeralt laughed. "I was cheating, too."

Byleth was staring at him now. "Rigged it."

"Kinda. See, you toss a coin with the exact same force, under the exact same circumstances, and odds are higher you'll get the same face over and over." Jeralt absently flipped the coin, Seiros-side up. "'Course, your chances are affected by variables like wind speed and air density. Even I can't reproduce this in a storm. But, like I said, under the right circumstances, even a fair coin's unfair in the right hands."

"In the right hands," Byleth echoed quietly.

--

The coin thing didn't go away for a while. It drove even Jeralt to place a firm and heavy hand over Byleth's, during a particularly headache-inducing planning session. A couple of mercenaries kicked Byleth out of annoyance afterward and then his plan had to be modified to account for two less men, 'cause Jeralt had kicked them right back and cracked five of their ribs in the process.

It did make Byleth a little more discrete about doing it so often, thank the Saints. On the other hand, it drove Byleth to start hanging around the gambling table a lot more, learning to count cards and mastering sleight of hand techniques, which earned Byleth a fair amount of kicks and punches from pissed off men when the pint-sized kid got increasingly better at winning their hard earned money from right under their noses.

Jeralt was a mercenary through and through, though, and eventually stopped stepping in to save his kid from their own bull-headedness. Sure, Jeralt had done a stint as a Knight of Seiros for some years prior to Byleth's birth, and yeah, he'd literally been one of Seiros' original knights way back, as lawful and pious as he'd ever be, but the vast majority of his years on this goddess-forsaken earth had been spent among rowdy assholes, jeering and hooting right alongside them, surviving by skill and grit alone. Byleth would either learn to read a room, or they'd simply have to get really good at dodging blows.

--

"You've got to learn to read a room, kid," Jeralt sighed.

Byleth noisily spat out a glob of blood.

"Hey, look at me. Kid. Byleth." Jeralt pulled Byleth's swollen face towards him. "When someone's talkin' to you, it's polite to look at them, yeah?" He passed a wet cloth over Byleth's dirty face. "Man, you don't do things by halves, do you?"

"Fifty percent," Byleth muttered, looking at Jeralt's face obediently out of one eye.

"I didn't mean that literally. It's a form of expression." Jeralt poured more liquor onto the cloth, and firmly kept Byleth from shying away when he pressed it into their face. "You're real smart, sometimes, but a real dumbass the rest. A little like your mother, in that sense."

Byleth stilled. "Mother?"

"Mmhmm." Jeralt gentled his hands, now that Byleth wasn't struggling so hard. "She had an incredible memory. Could remember pretty much anythin' she'd ever heard, word for word." He bandaged Byleth's head slowly. "My own memory's for shit, so I admired that about her. She taught me to write down stuff, so I wouldn't forget." Jeralt laughed softly. "But boy, she was a total klutz. I ain't ever seen a lady so ill suited to any manner of physical activity." It dwindled back into a sigh. "Her mind was sharp, but her body was real weak."

Byleth stared emptily up at him.

"What I'm saying is: your brain's sharp but your heart’s real weak,” Jeralt said bluntly.

"My heart," Byleth echoed, and touched their chest.

"Not literally," Jeralt sighed, and then squinted. "Then again, in your case..." He placed his hand over Byleth's. It wasn't a normal thump-thump. It was more a ba-shhh. Ba-shhh. "Even your heart's literally weak," Jeralt said quietly.

"Literally," Byleth said.

"Well, it don't keep you from getting into fights, so I'm sure it'll stay strong enough to keep you going till you're older than your old man." Jeralt rubbed Byleth's head, careful with the bandage. "Do you know why people hit you, Byleth?"

"Speed," Byleth said, easily. "Mine's less."

Jeralt had to laugh at that cocksure response. "Well, yeah, sure. Learnin' to dodge is all well and good. But, think a little about action and consequence. Why d'you think they try in the first place?"

No response. Byleth's mind was probably straining like a pulley trying to haul up a heavy pail of water. Except the water was poison. Jeralt took pity on his kid.

"You lack social awareness. When someone's getting mad, you don't realize. And then you fully piss off people 'cause you ignore the signs."

"The signs?"

"Mmhmm. If a wolf's hair stands straight up, and it's hunches are higher than its head, what d'you think is happening?"

"Attack," Byleth said.

"Yep, it's getting ready to maul you 'cause it's pissed the fuck off. Humans aren't always so obvious, but their posture changes, too. Muscles get tighter. Sometimes they grit their teeth, like this." Jeralt clenched his teeth, and lowered his brow. "This is someone gettin' frustrated. Angry."

Byleth looked at his mouth attentively. "Angry."

"Right. You gotta learn to recognize patterns. Every action has consequence."

"Every action has consequence," Byleth repeated. They lowered their brow, and comically clenched their teeth. Even missing a tooth, it hardly looked menacing. "Angry."

Saints, they looked more constipated than pissed. Jeralt couldn't help but laugh.

"Happy," Byleth said.

"Yeah," Jeralt grinned. "That's my happy face."

Byleth fiddled with their coin. Flipped it, Seiros-side up. "Happy." Flip, heads. "Happy." Flip, heads. "Happy." Flip.

"All right, all right. That's enough," Jeralt said.

Byleth looked at him instead, and flipped. A glance down: it had landed on tails. "Angry."

"That's the kind of behaviour I'm talking about," Jeralt said, exasperated. "Look, I ain't saying they're right to hit you for it, but you can be downright annoying."

Byleth was quiet. They flipped a couple more times, in the silence. Heads. Heads. Heads. Tails.

"I know you do that 'cause you like it, and your brain's fulla numbers," Jeralt said. "But doing the same thing a hundred thousand times and expecting a different outcome ain't smart, it's stupid."

Byleth flipped the coin one more time before Jeralt snagged it out of the air.

"Do the math in your head, quiet-like," Jeralt said.

"In the right hands, even a fair coin's unfair," Byleth said lowly. "Practice makes perfect."

"Now you're just echoing bullshit I've said, which, like I said, is annoying."

Byleth looked down and mouthed, annoying. Annoying. Goddess, but his kid got on every last nerve.

"Byleth," Jeralt said.

The kid's body tensed, lowered, and their keen eyes stared up at him. What? Did they think Jeralt would hit them?

"Learn to read a room," Byleth echoed quietly, eyes tracking Jeralt's hands, which were only going up to be put on his waist, okay? Jeralt had yet to hit his kid outside of a mock battle and only sometimes when he was well into his liquor, and even then the worst of it was a cuff to the head. He wasn't his dickwad da, may he be less than rot these hundred years since.

"You do that," Jeralt sighed. He looked to the heavens. Oh, Beloved, grant him patience. "Okay. You like numbers, yeah? Quantify your actions. That means keep count of them. How many times d'you have to do a certain thing before you get a negative reaction? Is there a certain action that gets you a positive reaction, instead?"

"Actions have consequence," Byleth murmured sub-vocally, and stared with immense focus on Jeralt's hands.

Saints, he needed a drink.

--

Byleth got better about the coin thing, after that. Jeralt still saw it, out the corner of his eye, but Byleth didn't flip it anymore. They fiddled with it, danced it around their knuckles like a regular ol' rogue, but otherwise it was out of sight, out of mind. The guys got less rowdy with the kid, too, or maybe that's just 'cause the whole crew got busier. War was on the horizon, and that always meant business.

--

Jeralt had never been very good about keeping track of world history, even before he'd been condemned to live through it. His life had always been a series of battles, over and over and over again. The players changed, sure, and the terrain might morph the stage, but the gist of it was unerringly the same: take your lance and put the pointy end in all the enemies you can, until no one is left standing.

Now, Jeralt was known in modern times as a pretty reliable tactician. Few left alive knew that this was not something that came naturally to him; aye, for his first several dozen or so years he'd been a rather hard headed paladin, brute forcing his way through any conflict with strength in his arms and stubborn faith in his breast. It was only through literal years spent fighting that he'd begun using more than his limbs to get an edge in battle.

You go through enough of them, and even a thick headed brute like Jeralt developed some sense of strategy.

Still, while functionally immortal, he wasn't anywhere near infallible.

Jeralt and his mercenaries soon found themselves on the losing side of the conflict between House Hrym and the Adrestian Empire.

--

"Retreat!" Jeralt hollered into the rain. "Fall back!"

The field was absolute chaos. Previously stable terrain had become a mud caked nightmare. Jeralt's horse broke a leg in the disarray, and he'd had to abandon it without having the chance to put it out of its misery. This whole battle was a disaster. First of all, the contract had stated it would be House Hrym against a couple of Eastern Church fogies, not the entire fucking Royal Army. Talk about shitty intel. An amateur's mistake, Jeralt berated himself. You gotta screen your fucking contracts before you accept them. Gold-blind bastard. Goddess-forsaken imbecile.

"Byleth!" Jeralt stumbled into the forested area where he'd ordered his kid's squad to stay, an hour back. "Byleth!"

There were bodies strewn here and there, evidence of a skirmish. Most of the corpses bore his mercenary symbol on their armor. Damn, damn.

"Byleth!"

A noise from above had him immediately hefting his lance, preparing to throw it.

"Don't shoot," his stupid, wonderful kid said, four meters up in a birch tree.

"Byleth! Oh, praise the Goddess!" For a second, Jeralt wanted to climb up the tree like a monkey, heavy armour be damned. He wanted to hold Byleth and never let go.

Then reality hit him when he heard shouting in the distance. The enemy was fast approaching.

Shit.

"Byleth," Jeralt said, hurriedly. "Don't fight if you get caught. If someone asks you, I am not your father. You're a war orphan. They will not harm you if you say that. Do you understand? Don't fight."

Byleth's eyes were difficult to see, so far up, dark as it was.

"I love you, kid," Jeralt said, and then turned around and ran towards the voices.

--

Jeralt had been kept alive by Seiros' cursed blood for ages, long past his ability to remember. Though he could fall ill to disease, and he'd suffered wounds like any other man of flesh and blood, desperation could and had driven him to feats of nigh monstrous strength on more than one occasion.

He had no stake in this war, not with his client's House destroyed and the client himself dead in the water. But his kid was shivering in the trees, and his wife was buried in the ground, far west of this goddess-forsaken land. He would not die here. He could not.

Jeralt's face twisted into a bestial snarl, and readied his lance.

--

They called him the Blade Breaker, afterward. To his consternation, the only reason such a name came to pass into common knowledge was because he'd left enough men alive to repeat it.

--

It took him two soul-destroying weeks to find Byleth again. He'd tracked the kid's muddy footprints halfway to Airmid before the trail had gone cold in the river. He'd nearly eaten a sword there and then, were it not for his shame of meeting his wife again empty handed. What remained of his mercenary band slowly caught up to him as he ducked in and out of towns, desperately searching for his dark-haired child, and it was only thanks to one of their number that he heard word of a small Eastern Church monastery swelling up with newly orphaned kids from as far away as Ordelia.

"That's my child," Jeralt insisted, fighting to keep his temper.

The nun looked both scared and skeptic. "Is that your father, Beleth?"

'Beleth' was wearing a skirt and someone had plaited their wild hair into sensible braids. Their eyes were as dull as ever. Jeralt could forget the names and faces of all his comrades, hell, even his wife's features got foggy thanks to his swiss cheese memory, but even he could never forget his own kid's dumbfuck face.

"No," Byleth said cooly. "He's a stranger."

"Byleth," Jeralt's face twisted. He'd already lost half of his crew to this profitless season, and another quarter had abandoned the battalion when he'd force-marched them to this shitty orphanage through enemy territory instead of straight back home. He didn't have time to dawdle with the goddess-damned Holy Army at his heels, killing stragglers.

"Please, sir, leave us," the nun said, shakily. She bravely stood in between him and Byleth, as if her fat ass would ever be enough to keep him from his child.

Jeralt sighed. "This isn't funny, Byleth. I am not leaving you here." His face became stony. "If I have to, I will raze this place to the ground to bring you home."

"Goddess protect us," the nun whispered faintly.

"Boss," one of his own mages said, uncomfortable.

From some hidden pocket in those ridiculous skirts, Byleth produced a coin. "Tails, I stay," they said. "Heads, I go."

Jeralt stared. "Excuse me?"

"Fifty-fifty," Byleth said. "Odds are even."

What the fuck? Jeralt’s heart hurt. What the hell was Byleth playing at? "Fine," Jeralt snarled. "Fine! If that's really how you want to play it. You tell me, kid. Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?"

Byleth had never looked nervous in their entire life. They wouldn't start now, not even if it hurt Jeralt's soul to see Byleth so thoroughly disown him with their eyes.

Byleth flipped the coin.

--

(Seiros was still with him, it seemed, even if Jeralt had long since abandoned her.)

--

If he knocked Byleth's head around for the scare and then drank himself to a near stupor afterward, then it was his own damn business. Eastern Fodlan could go rot, for all he cared to return there.

--

Byleth became surprisingly more sociable, after that debacle. Either that thrice damned orphanage had done them some good, or Jeralt's fists had knocked something lose.

"Jeralt," Byleth said. Goddess, their hair had gotten really long, Jeralt mused. "How do I make someone like me?"

Wait, what? "Huh?" Jeralt responded, stupidly. "Who?" Byleth surely wasn't old enough to be getting crushes, right? How old had Jeralt been the first time someone had turned his head? He'd definitely been way taller than Byleth. "Who're we talking about?"

"Anyone." The coin flashed between their fingers for a brief second, and then disappeared into their sleeves. "You."

Jeralt rubbed his blood-shot eyes. He shouldn't have binge drank that lovely bottle of ricewine last night. "Me? Saints, kid, I already like you." He gestured helplessly. "D'you think I'd burn down a Seiros-blessed church for any brat but you?"

Byleth stared at him emptily, like sheep grazing in a field. "Oh," they said. "Okay." A discrete flip. Tails.

"Gifts," Jeralt barked. "Flowers. Thoughtful shit like that makes people like you."

"Okay," Byleth said.

"Food's always nice," Jeralt said. "Talk to 'em, obviously. Listen to them. People love nothing less than being listened to by someone that's actually paying attention to their bullshit."

"Okay," Byleth said. They stared down at their coin, and then, very deliberately, held it out. "Here."

Jeralt blinked down at the coin, Seiros' serene profile facing him. Byleth looked, abruptly, a lot like her.

"It's for you, Jeralt." Byleth said. "I don't need it anymore."

"O-okay." Jeralt accepted it. It was colder than he expected it to be, considering how often Byleth held it close. "The hell's this mean?"

"I make my own numbers, now," Byleth explained. "In my head. But you need more practice."

A wheezing laugh escaped him. "Excuse me?" Was this little shit really his child? What an attitude Byleth was gaining!

"Yes," Byleth said solemnly. "Practice makes perfect."

--

That wasn't the last 'gift' Byleth gave him. From truly useless junk like weeds -- "These aren't exactly flowers, kid" -- to remarkably thoughtful (or luckily guessed) presents -- "Shield polish, huh? I was looking for this!" -- Byleth slowly plied him with trinkets. It wasn't just him, either. Byleth presented dazed frogs -- "For target practice" -- and charred squirrels -- "For eating" -- to the few remaining men in Delta squad, who'd survived the forest skirmish. Like Jeralt, they accepted it with bemused grace. Who was this considerable kid, and what had happened to the quiet, soulless child that had graced their midst for years?

Not that Jeralt was complaining. It was nice not to have to walk into Byleth getting the shit kicked out of them for being weird. Nah, now he got to walk in on Byleth getting the shit kicked out of them for a fee. 'Cause Byleth had started giving the mercenaries money to teach them swordsmanship, money they swindled back during gambling 'cause that kid's fingers had only gotten more nimble with age.

Jeralt had to admit, he was charmed. Seems like his kid would grow up to be a damn good mercenary, if they kept it up.

And kept it up Byleth did. Until it all, unerringly, swung right back around to annoying.

"Byleth, I don't need that," Jeralt refused, eyeing the third sword offered that week.

"Byleth, that ain't mine," Jeralt said, looking at the stuffed pillowcase.

"Okay, that's enough." Jeralt put his hand over Byleth's own. "I'm flattered you've become obsessed with gift-givin' but even this has gotten ridiculous. Stop."

Byleth's doll like eyes looked up at him guilelessly. "Two," they said, underneath their breath.

"What're you mumbling about?"

Byleth cleared their throat. "Two gifts in a week is good," they said solemnly, exactly like a researcher that had carefully gathered data and drawn a sensible conclusion. "Four is too much."

"What the fuck, kid?"

"It's my numbers," Byleth said.

Jeralt's sigh turned into a half-hearted laugh. "Your numbers, huh?"

"Yes," Byleth said.

"That sure is something," Jeralt said. He reached out, and ruffled Byleth's hair. "Weird kid. But you're my kid. You got that?"

"I got that," Byleth said.

And that was enough.