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On some nondescript rainy morning, Yuri dies.
They’ve both been expecting this for a few days, now—or longer, really, Byleth can hardly tell the time anymore, with how the months and years all blurred into an incomprehensible haze like the tracks the rain leaves down the windowpane of their bedroom. “Look, love,” Yuri says, sitting up on the edge of the bed for the first time in weeks. “You won’t have to water the flowers today.”
Byleth almost falls forward scrambling to get to his husband’s side. “You shouldn’t—You’re supposed to be lying down.” Gently, with more care than he used to think himself capable of, he helps Yuri lay back down on the bed, resting his head on the worn pillow. “Are you feeling… better today?”
“No. I’ve never felt worse, actually,” Yuri says, as if they’re still talking about the weather. “I’ve been counting the days. I think it’s time.”
Byleth stares at him. “What?”
Yuri opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by a bout of harsh, choked coughing that has Byleth nearly pouring the entire contents of a pitcher of water down Yuri’s throat. “Time,” Yuri eventually croaks out, “for me to go.”
For a moment, Byleth remains silent. Then he sets the water down on the dresser drawer and sits beside Yuri. “I see,” he says, small and soft.
“You’re taking this well,” Yuri observes.
Byleth stands up again, walks the length of the room, and uncovers the Sword of the Creator from where it’s been hidden by some cloth and resting against the wall. “Because it will be fine,” he says, too numb to feel anything but resignment in his chest. “I will be with you.”
Yuri blinks at him slowly, and only speaks again when Byleth returns to his side. “What exactly are you going on about?”
“The world has no need of me now.” Byleth has spent years working in coordination with Dimitri to ensure the best possible future for Fodlan, even after their time—frankly Byleth sees no use for a new Archbishop, but Seteth had advised him to find a successor anyway, so that was settled as well. Byleth and Yuri had retreated from the public eye years ago, and only their oldest friends have any idea of what they’re up to and where they even live. “So… I was thinking—”
Yuri’s gripping his arm before Byleth even gets the rest of his words out. “Don’t you dare,” Yuri hisses. “Don’t even say it, Byleth.”
The Sword of the Creator thrums with energy in his hand; Byleth hasn’t used it in years, and it must be aching for combat again. He swallows, but refuses to look away from Yuri’s gaze. “I can’t,” he murmurs, almost too soft for even himself to hear. “If I don’t have you, I…”
Yuri’s grip on him tightens. He used to be able to hold on to Byleth hard enough to bruise, but now it’s barely more than a faint pressure around his elbow, and more than anything else it’s that thought that makes Byleth want to cry. “If there’s one thing I learned from the streets,” Yuri says, still glaring at him, “and later in the Abyss, and even later during the war—it’s that life is something you can’t throw away for anything. Not for money, not for love, not even for yourself.”
“Don’t make me live without you.” Is such a thing even possible? Byleth can’t remember the days he’d lived before he met Yuri, countless years ago now. “What am I going to do? I…”
“You live, my love.” Yuri’s eyes soften, and he tugs on Byleth’s sleeve to pull him closer and press a light, chaste kiss against his cheek. “The world is young still, and so are you. Maybe there will be a time you’ll have to pick up arms again, or maybe humanity will set their weapons down once and for all… no matter what happens, can you promise me one thing?”
Byleth runs a hand through soft locks, once-lavender now faded to white. “Anything.”
“Remember me. Wait for me.” Yuri closes his eyes, the quietest of sighs escaping his lips. “And someday… maybe…”
He falls silent. Surely he means to say more, though? Byleth sits there, stroking his hair, and waits and waits until the rain grew loud enough to drown out his sobs.
When he was younger—before Sothis had become one with him—Byleth had noted the need for improvement on the bow and arrow. They worked fine when in combat against weaker enemies, or more fragile mages, but it was difficult for them to break through armor and inflict any real damage on their opponents. He explained all this to Jeralt, and after he was done, his father had given him a tired look and said, “Well, why don’t you do something about it yourself?”
Byleth, unfortunately, had no concrete ideas on how to work on these problems. Aiming for chinks and small gaps in the armor would be too challenging on an actual, fast-paced battlefield. And aside from lighting the arrows aflame, which burned through their stock too quick to be practical, Byleth could find no affordable arrows that dealt magical damage with a system similar to the Levin Sword they occasionally found in markets. So he had given the endeavor up, and when he begun teaching in the Officers Academy, he focused on making sure the archers knew exactly what they were best at: picking off injured and weakened enemies, or sniping from afar to distract and immobilize opponents.
He thinks about that now as he looks down at the object resting in his hands, black and cold and all too heavy for his tastes. “This is it?”
The blacksmith—no, the gunsmith—nods, crossing his arms. “Some of the best we got, and easiest to use too. Hey, but keep this place on the down low, would ya? Can’t risk getting my business out to the wrong people, if you get what I’m sayin’.”
Byleth nods, testing the gun’s weight—holding it, gripping it, throwing it across the cramped room to see if it could serve as a decent projectile as a last resort. It bounces off the opposite wall with a satisfying enough sound. “Alright,” he says, nodding at the gunsmith, who seems too shocked to respond. “Thank you.”
Really, he isn’t too interested in the wars that have been breaking out all over the country—Byleth is more than willing to let the humans fight it out amongst themselves, because he’s had enough of violence and bloodshed to last a literal lifetime. But he’d received a job request to take out soldiers hiding in a safe house near where he lives, and considering the economic collapse during wartime, it’s been hard for Byleth to find himself a stable source of income.
As he tucks the gun in his coat pocket, familiarizing himself with how it fits in his hand, Byleth silently offers an apology for the blood that will fall across his hands once more.
At midnight, Byleth slips soundlessly into a back entrance of the safe house—it’s sparsely guarded, with only a handful of injured soldiers inside, all of whom are easy enough for Byleth to kill even without the gun. In the dark, he can hardly tell any of them apart—they all wear the same bloodied uniforms and are all of near-similar build, and Byleth doesn’t need to close his eyes to shy away from the guilt when he snaps their neck or slices their throat open.
This is blood money, Seteth had said, when Byleth had privately confided in him about what he’s taken to doing throughout this war. Will you be able to live with it?
What makes this any different from the people we killed two centuries ago? Byleth returned, and Seteth was silent. He must have forgotten Byleth was a mercenary before he was a professor or a war general or the Archbishop, too.
By the time Byleth has killed the nurse secretly treating all the soldiers in the area—her long blonde hair reminds Byleth too much of someone else—it’s approaching early morning. He could still get a few hours of sleep before he has to get back to day work. He straightens from the nurse’s fallen body, absently flicking the blood off his knife; he hasn’t found any real need for the gun just yet…
He stills. Someone is here.
A floorboard creaks, and Byleth whirls around towards where the sound had come from, just in time to catch the vague outline of a man taking off down the hallway outside the room Byleth is in. He runs out to give chase, not bothering to silence his steps, and curls one hand around the gun in his pocket—the man is fast, but without anyone else still alive in the building, the loud crack of a gunshot would hardly alert others to Byleth’s presence.
The recoil is shocking, but easy enough to ignore; it feels just like firing a Thoron spell without steeling himself beforehand. Though Byleth had never been particularly excellent at archery, his aim is still spot-on—the bullet buries itself directly between the man’s shoulder blades, and he topples to the floor. Byleth slows down, looking ahead at where the man had been going—the hall leads to a dead end, with only some innocuous bookshelf in one corner.
Too obvious, Byleth thinks vaguely, just before he sidesteps the man sloppily swinging his knife at Byleth’s ankle. In French, the man snarls, “Don’t… take another step… English scum.”
Byleth freezes. That voice—
The bookshelf suddenly moves, wood groaning against wood as someone pushes it from the inside of the secret entrance it was obviously blocking. “No!” the man shouts, scrabbling forward to pull himself closer to the shelf. “Stop it! Stay inside! Leave through the underground exit, please!”
“Yuri?” Byleth breathes. His gun clatters noisily onto the floor, the sound ringing out in the silence.
The man angles his head to look up at him, and when the moonlight streams in through the nearby window, Byleth almost crumples to the ground—how had he not recognized him as soon as he had heard Yuri, had seen his back? He had listened to his footsteps for years, had watched that back move throughout their house for decades. The long lavender hair, the pale skin, the slanting eyes—this couldn’t be anyone but Yuri.
But there is no recognition on Yuri’s beautiful face, only hatred and disgust twisting his lips down into a scowl. “Fuck off!” he shouts, hand shooting out to grab for the gun Byleth had dropped—reflexes let Byleth move fast enough to kick the gun out of reach, though, and Yuri hisses out another curse when he tries to move further. Blood is beginning to pool beneath him, dripping from the bullet hole in his back.
The bullet hole Byleth had made.
“No,” he whispers, “no, no, no—” He drops to his knees, fumbling to rip some cloth off Yuri’s ragged shirt and press against the wound—but Yuri only shoves him off with measly strength that takes Byleth off-guard more than anything. “Yuri, stop, let me help—”
“Shut up!” Instead of going for the gun, Yuri stands right in front of the bookshelf, holding his knife before him with shaking arms. “How could you kill them all!?” he screams, legs wobbling dangerously. “Honest men! Honest men with families! And Mercedes—she was only—”
Byleth’s stomach drops. Mercedes? That really was her? He thinks of the long blonde hair that spilled across the floor in waves, dipped in the blood Byleth let spill from the gash in her throat, and feels sickness churning in his gut. “I’m sorry,” Byleth pleads, finally having enough sense to switch to French. Yuri’s eyes visibly widen. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t know—Yuri, I—”
“I said shut up, ” Yuri spits. “How do you know my name? How do you speak French? Don’t tell me you were a spy for the English!”
“I’m not,” Byleth manages, despite how his throat is tightening more and more with each word Yuri speaks. Even when they had first fought down in Abyss, Yuri had never spoken with such loathing towards Byleth, and it makes his chest feel ready to twist in on itself in pain. “I’m sorry. Please, please let me help you, I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“Bullshit!” Then Yuri’s swinging at him, the knife cutting through the air with the same speed and finesse Byleth still vividly remembers—he moves back, and Yuri only manages to tear through the front of his clothes, but that gets him enough time to shove the bookshelf out of the way and disappear down the hidden passageway.
Byleth grabs his gun off the floor and follows—if Yuri escapes, there’s no way Byleth is going to get lucky enough to see him again, especially on opposite sides of a war. When had he been reincarnated? He looks the same age as when they’d first met an entire lifetime ago. Can Byleth explain himself? His French is intermediate at best, but if he tries, if he can just make Yuri understand—
He skids to a stop when he hears high, panicked voices around a corner—Byleth presses against the wall and strains his ears. Yuri’s speaking almost too fast to follow. “Move, move and don’t look back, alright? Get as far away as you can. You know where Sister Marianne stays, yes? Go look for her, tell her everything that happened and that you have to keep running—”
“But, Yuri!” a shrill voice cries, followed by a number of different others shushing whoever had spoken. “You’re bleeding! You’re hurt!”
“You have to come with us!”
“Sister Marianne will help you!”
Byleth peers around the corner—Yuri is crouched in the middle of a small, circular room, surrounded by over half a dozen children who can’t be older than twelve at most. “I’ll be fine, mes chéris. Don’t worry about me. After I’m done here, I’ll be on my way as well. Perhaps I might even get to Sister Marianne before you all do?”
The children are quiet, and one tugs persistently on Yuri’s sleeve. “It’ll be a race, okay?” they say, voice trembling. “You don’t wanna lose to us, okay?”
Byleth doesn’t have to see Yuri’s face to know the smile he’s putting on—brave and kind, the sort of smile he once gave the children in the Abyss when they had been preparing for the Battle of Garreg Mach and they’d needed to evacuate the civilians. “Of course.”
He waits until Yuri’s ushered all the children out of the room and presumably out the house before Byleth steps into the corridor. Immediately Yuri’s expression twists into hostility once more. “You took your time.”
“Yuri.” Byleth takes another step forward, slow and deliberate, to keep from surprising Yuri with any sudden movements. “Please, just listen to me. I can explain.”
“I don’t care about what you have to say.” Yuri withdraws his knife. “Well? Hurry it up.”
Byleth shakes his head. “I won’t fight you. You’re already injured. Just sit down and I’ll—”
Yuri doesn’t even grace him with an answer this time, just lunges forward with speed unexpected of someone who is still bleeding from his back—Byleth dodges, but he’s fooled by Yuri’s feint and gets slammed to the ground instead. Moving mostly on instincts now, Byleth flips their positions to hover over Yuri instead, keeping his arms pinned to the floor. “Don’t make me do this,” Byleth pleads, keeping just barely enough pressure on Yuri’s wrists to keep him from moving.
“Who the hell even are you?” Yuri snaps. “Whatever you have to say doesn’t matter to me, unless you’re letting me go!”
“You were my life,” Byleth blurts out. He’s not sure how literally that translates into French, but Yuri’s eyes widen again anyway. “You are my life. I can explain, but please, just let me—”
Too late he realizes it was to stall for time—Yuri’s hand has slipped into his coat pocket and retrieved the gun, aiming it right at his face. He doesn’t say anything when he shoots, and Byleth just barely manages to throw himself out of the way in time—the bullet crashes into the ceiling above them. Yuri pushes himself back onto his feet, surging forward and firing again before Byleth can even open his mouth—this time the bullet finds home in his arm, though with how Yuri had been surprisingly good at archery in his past life, Byleth’s fairly certain he only misses because of how hard his arms are shaking.
“You’re delusional.” Yuri steadies his grip, points the gun right at Byleth’s face. His arm hurts, but he feels the Crest of Flames flare briefly to life to numb the pain. “I was your ‘life?’ We’ve never met.”
For a moment, the world slows—Byleth sees Yuri’s finger twitch over the trigger, and he dives forward to push Yuri down again. But Yuri moves faster than he expected, redirecting his aim—Byleth shoves his arm away—the gunshot cracks through the air—
Blood sprays across the walls. For the second time this evening, the gun drops to the floor.
“Yuri?” Byleth whispers. He knows what he’s seeing, he knows what just happened, and yet he calls his name again—“Yuri—” and again—“Yuri! Yuri!”
Byleth had since forgotten the ability to use the Divine Pulse—without any particular need for it after the war, he had stored it in the back of his head like how he set the Sword of the Creator aside. If he focuses, he can probably do it again, to turn back time and set things right, keep any of the soldiers from getting killed, be at the right place at the right time. Get a second chance.
And yet—he doubts turning back time would change anything. In this life, they’re on opposing sides of a hundred-year war. In this life, Yuri doesn’t remember him. In this life, Byleth pushed his arm at just the right angle for the bullet to cleave straight through Yuri’s chin.
Byleth does not use a gun again.
During the quieter moments of the war, Petra would teach Byleth some words from her language—hello, goodbye, thank you, sorry. They hadn’t stuck at first until Byleth started practicing actual conversation with her, and he’d improved at great rates because seeing her smile so brilliantly whenever he got a sentence right made him want to learn even more.
After the war, the two of them had needed to meet up frequently to work on friendly relations between Brigid and Fodlan. It was difficult, considering everything that had happened, but things were sorted out after much of Petra’s determination and dedication—and Byleth couldn’t deny he’d had fun going around the country with Yuri and Petra, although the natives always laughed at him every time he slipped up in his conjugations.
By the time Brigid is no longer Brigid and is instead the Philippine archipelago, the language has been so changed by Spain that Byleth almost needs to start from the beginning to learn it all over again—but by himself, alone, this time.
He thinks about that now as he walks the streets of the Walled City of Manila, wrapping his cloak tighter around himself and tugging the hood further down his bright green hair. The people of Brigid—no, the Philippines—may no longer remember him as the Archbishop of Fodlan, with nearly 800 years having passed since he last visited the country, but he had promised Petra the continued independence of her land when she lay on her deathbed. He owes her this, at least.
Byleth ducks out of sight when he hears the clop of horse hooves on cobblestone, a sound so familiar he only ever barely remembers to treat it as something dangerous rather than just more white noise—only when the Spanish officials pass out of sight does Byleth slip back out again, hurrying towards the quaint storefront just a few more yards away. He squeezes in the tight back entrance and eventually emerges into the dimly-lit storage room, piled high with boxes of shop products and weapons alike. There are already a handful of rebels gathered inside, the room so tiny that they have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder to fit.
“Oh, you’re here,” someone speaks, in the hard syllables of Tagalog—Byleth turns, and has to keep himself from looking away when he meets dark blue eyes. “Any news?”
“I can’t find Annette. She might have been taken.”
Linhardt sighs, the sound almost drowned out by the pained grunt the rebel soldier he’s stitching up lets out. “Oi, quiet down. We can’t afford to be heard.” Then, to Byleth: “There was no one else in the safe house?”
“No.”
Another sigh, this time much heavier. “That’s unsurprising. Hopefully she’s in hiding somewhere, but I doubt that.”
Byleth takes a tentative seat atop one of the box stacks, where he has a clear view of everyone in the room—all the soldiers are worse for wear, and the only words they exchange are in low, hushed whispers. Linhardt falls silent after that, finishing up his treatment on the rebel slouching beside him and nudging him with a glass of water. As far as Byleth knows, Linhardt has Chinese blood in him in this life, so he isn’t quite sure why he’s helping the Filipino rebels, but Byleth isn’t going to question him. After all, Byleth’s hardly one of the native people himself—he should be glad they aren’t questioning him.
“You know,” Linhardt speaks up, just loud enough for only Byleth to hear, “I… don’t like the sight of blood. It makes me sick.”
In this life, too? “Then why do you help?”
Linhardt is silent for a few seconds before responding. “The Spaniards killed my best friend.”
Before Byleth can respond, or even think of a response, someone drags themselves into the entrance—their left leg is a mangled mess, riddled with bullet holes and barely any unmarred flesh left visible, and too much blood runs down their face for Byleth to identify any distinct features. Linhardt jumps to his feet before the person even speaks, despite how his already-pale skin pales even further. “Don’t move,” he snaps, authority he hadn’t had in his past life lacing his voice. “I’m a doctor. Let me help.”
“Soldiers,” the person rasps—but despite the use of Tagalog, their accent is unmistakably Spanish. Every rebel in the room make a grab for their bolo knives and revolvers. “No! No—I defected,” they gasp, raising their hands in surrender. One hand has two fingers cut clean off. “But soldiers—the guardia civil, they’re near, they’re on the way—”
Linhardt shoots Byleth a desperate look, and Byleth doesn’t hesitate to hurry back out of the room. The cool night air is refreshing for only a second—he can hear the heavy thud-thud-thud of rapid footfalls in the distance, only growing louder by the second. Even from this far away, Byleth can tell there are at least over ten people, while the rebels inside the room can be counted on one hand.
He screws his eyes shut. The Warp spell is itching to be used. If there was only a way to pretend to be some sort of divine being in this world’s new religion—
“Search the area!” a voice in Spanish rings out. There’s a resounding agreement, and then more footsteps, louder and louder and nearer. Even if Byleth helped all the rebels out now…
Cursing, he ducks back into the room. “They’re here,” he confirms—fear flashes across the faces of the occupants like storm clouds. “I can distract them for a while, get their attention to focus on me, but everyone has to leave as soon and as fast as they can. Split up at first, then meet back up somewhere easy to find.” He glances at the injured man slumped across Linhardt’s lap. His leg is a lost cause. “You…”
“Leave me,” the man groans. Byleth frowns—this voice… familiar, but too laden down by pain for him to identify. Is it another reincarnated Crest-bearer? His hair is tied and covered beneath the hat of the civil guard uniform, and Byleth hasn’t been able to get a good look at his face under all the blood. “I’m but seconds from death. I just needed… I only wanted…”
“Stop talking,” Linhardt hisses, his hands shaking just slightly as he fishes medical supplies out of his first-aid kit. “I refuse to leave anyone behind. Even if you say you’re dying, you’re still alive now. That’s what matters.”
Byleth freezes momentarily—the footsteps are near enough that he can hear them from inside now. “Go when they won’t see you,” he reminds them, to a series of nods from the rebels. They’ve long learned not to argue with him, it seems.
But Linhardt looks up at him. “Don’t—Byleth, don’t go.”
It’s always strange to hear his name spoken in the Filipino accent—it ends up sounding like there’s no H at the end. “Zhilu,” Byleth sighs, murmuring Linhardt’s Chinese name, “focus on the others here. I’ll be fine. I’ve been doing this far longer than you think.”
He doesn’t wait for a response before heading back outside, clutching onto his own knife tucked in his coat.
Barely a few meters away are two of the civil guard—Byleth’s movement is what draws their eyes towards him, and he lunges forward to cut their throats open before they can scream. One of the guards manages a choked gurgle that gets the attention of another nearby soldier, who has enough time to shout, “Here, the rebels are here!” before Byleth slices into his neck.
Too soon the rest of the civil guard are already beginning to surround him, which won’t do—Byleth tries to take down as many as he can in as short a time as possible, but there are even more than he expected, and he barely avoids a bullet to the shoulder when he forgets to look over his back for anyone. From the corner of his eye he can see some of the rebels starting to slip out of the store back entrance, and Byleth moves faster, flashier, anything to keep the civil guard’s attention on him alone.
Unfortunately, they aren’t that stupid. “There!” one of them shouts, pointing at a rebel limping out of the entrance. “It’s a safe house! Take them all!”
There are too many for Byleth to hold back by himself with only a measly knife—desperate, he conjures a Fire spell behind his back and flings it out towards the civil guard as if he’d set some wood on fire. It collides against one of the guards, and its magical properties keep it from being put out—Byleth leaves the man to burn to death, already turning towards his next kill, but he’s too late. Two or three of the remaining guards had ran past him to get to the store entrance.
“Stop!” he shouts, trying to sound as convincingly Spanish as he can—one of the guards falter, turning to look at him in confusion, and Byleth grabs the opportunity to bury his knife in his chest. Pushing the slumping body off of him, Byleth barrels down the short passage to the storage room—be empty, be empty, please please please—
The gunshot rings out, loud and clear, in the tiny room. Byleth skids to a stop, his grip on his knife slackening.
The injured man, the defected Spaniard, wobbles on his feet—he’d been standing in front of Linhardt, as if to protect him, but what Byleth zeroes in on is the lavender hair spilling down his shoulders and draping across his face. The uniform hat falls on the floor seconds before its owner follows after.
Byleth’s mouth forms Yuri’s name, but no sound comes out. He starts forward—
Only for another gunshot to cut through the air, and for sudden stabbing pain to spread through Byleth’s stomach. He chokes, slumping to his knees—one of two civil guards stands before him, his revolver smoking.
“So you’re the medic,” the other guard says, grabbing Linhardt and pulling him up by the collar. Linhardt grunts, hands clawing weakly at the guard’s wrist—Byleth belatedly notices blood is spreading around a bullet hole somewhere on his torso. “Chinese too. What are you doing, consorting with the rebels like this?”
Linhardt sets his mouth in a thin line and says nothing.
The guard shakes him violently, jabbing his elbow in Linhardt’s wound—Linhardt coughs, blood dripping down his chin. “Answer! Where did the rest of them go? Tell us and we’ll fix you up.”
No response. The other guard, the one with the gun, steps forward with a dark chuckle. “Look, we’re serious. Just give us information, and we’ll bring you back to our hospital to get that wound looked at. Otherwise… you don’t want to know what happens, do you?”
Byleth swallows. “Lie,” he manages, speaking in broken Chinese. Linhardt’s eyes widen, flicking down to where he’s on the ground, immobile from pain. “Please. Say something. Anything. Or they’ll—they’ll—”
A swift kick to his side, directly against the bullet wound, sends him sprawling. Stars explode in Byleth’s vision. “Shut up!” a guard snaps. To Linhardt, he growls, “Well? Any answers?”
Still silence—Byleth looks blearily up to see Linhardt glare up at the guards before he spits in the face of the one holding him.
Byleth doesn’t register what happens after that, only that he fades in and out of consciousness—he hears the words Guam, Marianas Islands, and does his best to file that in memory. It feels like he lays there in the darkness for days and days, until finally the Crest of Flames has numbed the pain in his stomach enough for him to open his eyes all the way again.
Glassy lavender eyes stare back at him. It takes Byleth a long moment to realize who he’s staring at, who he hasn’t seen in half a century, who died before him again. When he looks down, he sees a dried pool of blood between both of their bodies—the red must have mixed together in the time Byleth had been unconscious.
With great effort, he pushes himself up to crawl towards Yuri. He smells of rot and decay, and there are flies buzzing around them, settling in Yuri’s opened wounds. But Byleth can’t bring himself to care—he closes his eyes, cards a hand through Yuri’s hair matted with blood.
Why had it taken them so long to meet again? How many lives had Yuri lived across the world while Byleth lived through war upon war upon needless war, hoping to find him on the same side again? Over and over Byleth had scoured the world, dug deep into every war he could find, showered himself in gunpowder and blood and murder because it was the only thing he knew how to do, and still he hadn’t been able to save Yuri—still he had died, and Byleth was the reason why.
“Yuri,” he murmurs. He has not said this name in 500 years. “Yuri, Yuri, Yuri…”
Logically, Byleth knows he has to follow the lead the guards had given away—Guam, the Marianas Islands. It might be where they had taken Linhardt, and it might be where Annette is, too. Logically, Byleth knows he has to get up, to leave, to move, to do something other than sit here and stare down at Yuri’s dirtied, bloodied, unseeing face.
But he closes his eyes and sits there a little longer, stroking Yuri’s hair, pretending Yuri leans into his touch like always.
“Nnh… a-ah, hah…”
Byleth would probably be thinking about something in the past right now, but he can barely form coherent thoughts when he’s looking at Yuri from above, his hair spread out across the pillow, a dark blush coloring his cheeks, his mouth open to let out soft, sweet sounds that Byleth drinks up. “Byleth,” Yuri gasps, but in this life it sounds like Bereto. “Byleth…”
Byleth lowers himself slightly to kiss Yuri again, their lips sliding across each other—then he snaps his hips forward, and he swallows up the moan Yuri lets out. He moves slowly, letting Yuri adjust to his cock inside him, then starts to speed up when Yuri’s nails press against his back in a clear command. “Oh,” Yuri’s saying, breath hot against Byleth’s ear, “like that, please—”
Yuri feels hot and good and sinfully tight—Byleth’s helpless to do anything else but thrust in and out, looking down just enough to get a glance of Yuri’s hole swallowing up his cock before he has to look away, lest he finish too early. Pausing in his movements, he pulls back a little to position his head above Yuri’s chest instead, then bends down to flick his tongue out against a nipple—Yuri whimpers, hands moving from atop Byleth’s back to scrabbling for purchase against the thin sheets. “Yeah, there,” Yuri pants. “I-I like it—”
“I know,” Byleth says, even though he shouldn’t, and wraps his lips around the stiff nub before sucking lightly. Yuri’s legs kick in the air before they come back down for his heels to dig into the small of Byleth’s back, clearly impatient, but Byleth is more focused on what he’s doing now. He swirls his tongue around Yuri’s nipple until the beads of pre-come on Yuri’s cock drip down onto his stomach, then switches to the other one to give it attention too.
“Byleth,” Yuri whines, half in complaint and half in breathy pleasure. His voice is enough to make Byleth’s dick throb with need, and he vaguely wonders if Yuri felt that inside him. Having teased the both of them enough, Byleth begins moving in earnest again, muffling his moan in Yuri’s shoulder when he thrusts in deep, Yuri clenching around his cock. He can feel Yuri’s nails leaving dark red lines where he scratches down Byleth’s back, but Byleth can hardly care—he jerks his hips harder and harder and harder, chasing the burning need in his gut he had left neglected for so long.
Without thinking, Byleth tangles one hand in Yuri’s hair—it becomes a little harder to balance like this, but he needs to feel the soft locks in his hands, needs to grab it and pull when Yuri cries, “More, more,” his leaking erection bobbing between wet thighs. Heady little ah-ah-ahs fall from his mouth with every thrust, and he’s bucking his hips in time with Byleth’s movements to match his pace.
“Yuri,” Byleth murmurs, kissing his forehead—he wants to tell him he loves him, wants to tell Yuri what he hadn’t been able to say for decades that stacked upon decades until it almost formed a century.
“Plea—hah—please, ahhhh,” Yuri moans, so loudly that Byleth is certain the whole inn hears them. He’s tightening up around Byleth, his whole body trembling with need. “Tou—Touch me, please,” he begs, trying to fuck himself on Byleth’s cock when Byleth stills in surprise. “I want to… come…”
Byleth is hardly one to deny him. He reaches down and wraps his hand around Yuri’s dick, practically drenched in his pre-come, and starts pumping him just the way he likes it. Yuri is crying out and coming before Byleth even realizes it, spilling messily all over his stomach, and he clenches so hard around Byleth’s cock that he groans and comes as well, burying himself as deep as he can inside Yuri’s hole. Yuri whimpers, nails digging half-moon marks on Byleth’s arms as they ride out their orgasms together.
Yuri is silent when Byleth pulls out, though he winces at the feeling of come dripping wetly down his ass. Byleth’s equally quiet, wobbling over to the tissue and diligently cleaning the both of them up—the sheets aren’t too dirtied, and as soon as he’s finished Yuri curls up in a ball on the bed, burying his face in Byleth’s chest when Byleth lies back down.
“Thank you,” Yuri mutters, not looking at him. “You always know what to do, huh? Haha.”
The laugh is obviously forced, and Byleth thinks he knows why. For a while he says nothing, just reaches up and runs a hand through Yuri’s disheveled hair to smooth out the knots. Then, when Yuri’s breathing begins to deepen, Byleth presses his lips to the crown of his head, his breath ruffling stray strands of purple hair.
The Battle of Okinawa mere weeks ago, just a few days shy of a month, had left over 200,000 Japanese dead. Byleth had arrived too late to help—he scrounged around in the aftermath instead, searching for any sign of Edelgard or Ferdinand, but either they were taken as prisoners of war or their remains were buried too far down the wreckage for Byleth to find. He cloaked himself in invisibility magic and sat in the center of the ruined field for hours, staring down into a dead soldier’s eyes.
Then from the distance he’d heard the uneven shuffle of footsteps—Byleth had hidden away at first, only to freeze in place behind the debris when he saw a shock of lavender hair, covered in dust and dirt, and its owner wobble in place before collapsing.
No human medicine or treatment could have saved Yuri. Bullets littered his body, the blade of a bayonet was embedded in his shoulder, and his right foot seemed to have been blown clean off by a grenade. Byleth was torn between leaving as fast as possible to save himself the pain and staying.
He had barely thought about it. Byleth Warped the both of them to a secluded area and cast the longest, strongest Recover spell over the entirety of Yuri’s body for hours that blurred into days. Yuri was only conscious five times throughout the process, but Byleth ensured he used those times to get some food and water in Yuri’s body, and his heartbeat grew stronger and steadier over the week. Byleth almost passed out growing Yuri’s foot back, little by little.
When Yuri awoke on the sixth day, looking around himself in bewilderment, the first thing Byleth did was drop down beside him and shove some rations in his face. “Eat,” he all but ordered.
“Who—”
“Eat,” Byleth said again, even though his heart jumped to his throat at the sound of Yuri’s voice again.
It was the first new life where the two of them were on the same side in a war. Yuri volunteered little information about himself, only that he was a soldier in the Japanese army, which Byleth had figured out for himself. “Thank you for saving me, but I have to get going,” Yuri would say, again and again.
And always, Byleth grabbed his wrist and dragged him to sit back down before Yuri could go anywhere. “Rest a little longer,” he pleaded, and after a while Yuri stopped hesitating. After a while, Yuri stopped trying to leave at all.
Yuri shifts slightly in his sleep, snapping Byleth out of his thoughts. “Byleth?” Bereto? “Are you awake?”
“Mm.”
Silence again. Then Yuri exhales shakily, hands fisting in the fabric of the thin shirt Byleth had thrown on. “I have to leave tomorrow. For real, this time.”
“I know.”
“You won’t tell me to rest a little longer? I almost wish you would.” Yuri tugs at his arm. “Say it? Please?”
Byleth swallows, but the words are clogged up in his throat and refuse to leave. Instead he nuzzles the top of Yuri’s head, sighing gently against his soft, soft hair. “I don’t want you to go,” he eventually says, but it isn’t the same, and he knows they both know.
“I don’t want to go either,” Yuri murmurs. But he’s stayed away from the military, his military, for far too long now—his return is imminent, lest they believe he deserted his country. It’s why tonight had been more desperate, more frenetic, because somehow they both knew it would be the last time they’d ever touch each other like this again.
(Byleth would say make love—but the last time they had done that had been three lifetimes ago, almost four.)
“Hiroshima is the nearest from here,” Yuri continues. “It’ll be a good place to rejoin the troops.”
“Do you want me to—”
“Don’t come with me,” Yuri interrupts, not unkindly. He laughs under his breath, but he sounds more miserable than anything. “Or else I might just not be able to leave at all.”
Another few minutes and he dozes off again, but Byleth doesn’t sleep. He strokes Yuri’s hair through the night, listening to his even breathing, pretending it will always be this way.
On August 6, 1945, the 6th of the Verdant Rain Moon, the United States army drops an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima.
In this life, Byleth had told himself, if Yuri will never remember me, then we could just start anew. So he hadn’t told Yuri about the war, or the one before that, or the one before that, and when his fingers brushed over the bare skin of Yuri’s thigh while trying to treat a stray wound, Yuri had cupped his face in his hands and kissed him breathless. It wasn’t love—Byleth wasn’t naive enough to believe that. But it was something, a fragment of the connection they’d once had, and it was more than Byleth had with him in Yuri’s past two lives combined.
In this life, Byleth shoves his way past barricades warning of nuclear radiation and combs through the ruins of the city for days and days until he curls in on himself in the center of the wreckage once more, cradling the head of the corpse in his lap. Yuri’s skin is burnt down to the bone, but his face is just unharmed enough for Byleth to recognize him. The firestorm had melted his eyeballs—Byleth doesn’t even get to close his eyes.
In this life, Byleth’s left with only a body again, a burnt black husk that his tears do nothing to revive.
Technology in the 21st century advances far too quickly for Byleth to catch up with. Flayn takes to it like a fish to water, but Seteth is exactly the same as Byleth—completely clueless and only knowing as much knowledge needed to use a cellphone.
Still, peacetime has finally settled over a decent chunk of the world. Byleth grabs the opportunity to work at a coffee shop when he spots a job opening near his apartment with Seteth and Flayn; if nothing, it certainly smells nice inside the place. With it being near a university, students dropped by daily, and Byleth recognized Sylvain, Felix, and Ingrid on his third day.
The pay is cheap, but the work is honest, if frustrating. Byleth likes his coworkers. Byleth likes working like this, in general. If a position for a professor opens up in the nearby university, he might just go for it—he’ll worry about the credentials later.
It’s when Byleth is just getting the hang of latte art that he hears the bells above the door jingle—whoever is working at the register greets a sunny hello, in contrast to the stormy weather outside. Rain is falling in buckets, leading to the coffee shop being more crowded than usual. Byleth takes the orders given to him and gets to work without even needing to think about it now, operating the different machines having become instinct and reflex the same way swordsmanship had always been natural to him.
Then he calls a name, looks up, and meets the brightest of lavender eyes shining at him from across the counter. “Yuri,” Byleth blurts out, forgetting, for a moment, that the name given to him was Constance.
As expected, Yuri’s brow furrows in confusion. “Do I know you?”
“O-Oh, um…” Byleth can’t help but stare—in his past three lives, he’d been from three different countries, and he’d looked different each time as well. In England, 1300s, his nose had been sharp and aquiline, his skin olive, his French too fast for Byleth to follow well; in the Philippines, 1870s, his eyes were almond-shaped, the lightest of freckles dusting his cheeks, the Filipino tongue foreign in his voice; and in Japan, 1945, Byleth had left kisses along the side of his angular jaw and atop the high bridge of his nose, had fallen asleep to his voice softly singing some Japanese folk song.
In this life, New York, 2019, eyeshadow dances across his eyelids, and dark polish glitters on his fingernails. English has never quite sounded this beautiful. There is no war, only the low chatter of people in the coffee shop and the speakers cycling through the Hot 100 Chart on Billboard or whatever it was called.
It takes Byleth a second to realize Yuri’s expecting an answer. “You… look like someone I used to know. I guess. Um, your order.” He slides the tray across the counter, immediately pinpointing the honey-blend one as Yuri’s.
Yuri still looks a little confused, but the corner of his lips quirks upward in a smile. “Bit of an old pick-up line there, buddy. Try again in a little while.” He reaches forward and takes the tray—
For the briefest of moments, their fingers brush. Byleth pulls back so quickly it’s as if he burned himself—Yuri suddenly halts in place, nearly dropping the tray and all four coffee orders with it. His gaze flickers down at his hands, and then up into Byleth’s eyes. “You…”
“Are you alright?” Byleth asks, gently taking the tray again to keep it out of Yuri’s shaking hands. “Is something wro—”
“Byleth?” Yuri whispers.
It’s Byleth’s turn to almost drop the tray. Yuri’s hands shoot out to catch it, with the same speed he’d once used to dodge enemy attacks and slip through the cracks of the Imperial army and deliver the finishing blow. The world spins to a slow, slow stop.
“A thousand years,” Byleth breathes. He sets his palms flat on the table, eyes wide and already watery. “It took a thousand years.” Countless wars. Countless deaths. How many more in the future? How much longer before another one breaks out, tears Yuri out of his arms once more?
Yuri is still trembling, and starting to hold up the line of other customers now, but Byleth can’t bring himself to care. “You kept your promise,” he says, disbelief coloring his voice. “You waited for me.”
“Always.”
“Always,” Yuri echoes, before he grabs Byleth by the collar and presses their mouths together in the hardest kiss Byleth’s ever been given. Byleth thinks he hears the entire coffee shop gasp in unison, but that’s the least of his concerns right now. “Always,” Yuri breathes against his lips, a smile spreading across his face.
On some nondescript rainy afternoon, Yuri remembers.