xenologue 2 | can you see our brand new start underneath the devil’s heart? [closed]

[hegemonwings]

🧙 WHO: Byleth Eisner and Edelgard von Hresvelg
⚔️️ WHAT: A heart to heart at the ritual and in its aftermath.
🕒 WHEN: The solstice
🗺️ WHERE: Celliwig
⚠️ WARNINGS: Fear, anxiety, mortality, magical self-harm.



It had been an easy enough decision to participate in the ritual alongside Edelgard. This was an unfamiliar place, and after the unpleasantness of the trials she found it difficult to trust the fae. So, they'd do this together. Byleth stares into the lava as they stand beneath the fountain, half-listening to the words of the Celliwig leader. She's seen molten rock before, of course—she's conjured it from beneath the earth—but something so formalized seems strange. She wonders what stone the circle might be made of to resist the heat, or what enchantments are at play here, but...

Right. The offering. She takes a breath, before looking to her partner and managing a small, wry smile as she moves a thick lock of blue hair behind one ear. "Blood or hair seems too impersonal, doesn't it?"

Comments

[flame_emperor]

"True." Edelgard agrees, her voiced hush to listen to the words being spoken by the fae. She's seen magic; Adrestia is famous for the quality of its mages, and even the Emperor knows her way around a few spells. But this is something different; older and more primal. It feels almost uncomfortably close to the Immaculate One and her ilk, the real Children of the Goddess and not the sacraments of the church they'd built to hide behind.

But the presence of the woman next to her makes it easier to bear, and for the sake of Camelot, and Fódlan—all their Fódlans—she would bear it. "But I think I have something suitable." Looking around surreptitiously, Edelgard pulls up her sleeve, revealing old battle scars and signs of older, deeper cuts from cruel men in masks with long knives, long ago. She then draws the blue-handled dagger from the sheath on her back, holding it over her arm. A small cut, and then her magic can take over. She looks towards Byleth, to make sure the other woman is prepared to make her offering as well.

"Shall we?"

[hegemonwings]

It's not the first time that Byleth has seen the scars Edelgard hides away, but there's a twinge of protective fury in her chest all the same. She nods at the question, opening her palms and letting a single white lily emerge, roots grasping at nothing even as the petals bloom. It's the same as the flowers that the Archbishop had habitually worn in her hair, that Byleth had once liked but eventually came to loathe for the association. Yet another thing that the old beast had tainted.

"Yes." She reaches out with her free hand, taking Edelgard's. "Who should go first?"

[flame_emperor]

As Byleth creates her flower, Edelgard quickly nicks her arm with the knife, letting the blood trickle from the cut. After a moment's concentration, she calls upon her blood magic to draw the trickle into the air forming it into a small, rough sphere. The manipulation is...tricky but the amorphous ball of blood begins to shift and change, eventually taking the form of a small heart. Closing her fist, the heart hardens into a dark-red stone, which she plucks from the air. As for the cut, a glance towards it and some muttered words and the blood clots, preventing further bleeding. A small spell she'd cooked up in her early experimentations with blood magic; being able to stop bleeding seemed like it would come in handy.

Pulling the sleeve back down for now, covering her arm, Edelgard holds the heart stone of her own blood up to Byleth's flower. "I shall." She says, her expression softening, as she readies the speech she had been preparing in her mind.

"Byleth, since that day in the Holy Tomb, a thought has grown in my mind. Since Fhirdiad...since coming here, I know it now to be true beyond any shadow of a doubt. This stone represents my heart, which I now know continues to beat only because of you. Had you chosen a different path in life...I would not be alive today. A hardened heart cannot beat for long, and you saved me from that fate, by showing me the world was not as cruel or hard a place as I believed. Every beat my heart takes now, for the rest of my life, is a gift from you. The greatest gift I've ever been given." She offers the stone to the older woman. "So, as my true heart is yours, take this representation as my offering, confession...and as a symbol of my devotion for you, my teacher, my general, my friend...my love."

[hegemonwings]

Byleth has seen Edelgard walk off much worse injuries than this scratch, but it still unnerves her to see her do that to herself. She listens as her partner makes her confession, reminding herself that answering the sentiment directly isn't what they're here for. They can address these things once they're away from the ritual, and back in their lodgings.

"Thank you." Byleth's voice comes more gently than she expects, as she touches her forehead to Edelgard's, taking the stone. She may be trying to learn to express herself in more ornate and beautiful ways, but she has no such words ready. This isn't a conversation she expected to have tonight. So she's quiet for a moment, standing there with an arm looped around the younger woman's back.

"... I know what I was," she begins, "and I'm afraid for what I might have been, if you and I hadn't crossed paths. For... what I might still be." Her voice is low as she speaks, for Edelgard's ears alone. "There was never room for me to grow. Even when my father tried to keep me away from her, I was still the project Seiros had cultivated. An empty vessel, a... doll without a heartbeat, dreaming my way through life. I couldn't see past the next moment. And for so long, I was just..." Byleth closes her eyes, briefly, taking a breath before pulling back very slightly to look at Edelgard.

"I have fears and questions about what she did. And I want so badly to believe I'm not the thing she tried to make, that I haven't been marked by that bloody soil, that... that I can finally bloom. Together, with you. So... I offer you this lily, just as she might have worn it. When it burns, let it burn her shadow too."

[flame_emperor]

Edelgard returns the head bump, taking a moment to clasp Byleth's hand in her own for a moment before she takes the stone. She nestles closer when she feels Byleth slip her arm around her back, and then listens to her confession.

"Byleth..." She whispers as her love unfolds her fears to her. Byleth's connection to Seiros isn't something they've really discussed since just before Fhirdiad, when Edelgard explained what she knew of it, and what effects her death might have on her. It's true that the woman who holds her now is far different from the one who'd begun teaching at Garreg Mach years ago, but the Immaculate One cast such a shadow over her life, and one that Byleth didn't see for so long...but when you're raised in the shadow of another, all you can see is darkness. Edelgard had been the same way once, like Byleth, a tool built by another for a specific purpose, to be discarded when that purpose was fulfilled. And as Byleth had pulled her out of Thales' shadow, so too and Edelgard done the same for her with Seiros...at least, in part. But even in death there were still lingering tendrils, just as Thales' influence had yet to be completely erased from Fódlan...from her.

There's more that needs to be said, but that's not for now. When Byleth pulls away Edelgard touches her hand to her cheek, and smiles at her in equal parts love and empathy. "Let Seiros burn in the fires of her own making, and leave her there. The future waits for us both."

With the tokens exchanged, when the time comes Edelgard holds the flower out over the lava, but her eyes, and other hand, remain on Byleth. She lets the flower drop into the inferno below, leaving the Immaculate One behind. One day Thales will join her and be forgotten, and they will both be free to be who they choose to be, to live the lives that others sought to deny them.

After that, all that remains is for the ceremony to finish, and head home. It's a lovely night for a walk.

[hegemonwings]

Not for the first time, Byleth wonders what she's done to deserve this patience, this tenderness. She briefly lets her eyes slip closed, leaning into the touch when Edelgard's hand goes to her cheek. When the moment comes, she drops her own token readily. Maybe by doing this, she might somehow banish the hardened hearts that both of them have left behind.

The remainder of the ceremony passes in a blur. Still, it's a nice night in Celliwig, and she's curious to see what might be open at this time of night. Or to simply see the city from another perspective. "Why don't we take the long way?" Byleth suggests, lips quirking into a slight smile. "It's a beautiful night."

[flame_emperor]

"A fine idea. I'm in no hurry to return." Edelgard replies, entwining her arm around Byleth's, leaning into her so they can walk together. Anyone seeing the two of them like this would have no doubts as to what they were to each other, but Edelgard is past the point of caring about that.

She's content to walk like this, and wait for Byleth to speak, knowing that her wife—for that's what she is, Edelgard needs no ceremony or officiant to make official what she already knows in her heart to be true, and the ring on her finger is proof enough—often needs time to chew things over and find the right way to approach what is preying on her mind. She's still so new to these little things called emotions and human feelings. Byleth will set the pace, and Edelgard is happy as always to walk with her in the cool night air. For now, she lets their closeness be the support Byleth needs.

[hegemonwings]

Byleth breathes out a soft laugh as Edelgard leans into her, leaning over in return to place a kiss to the top of her wife's head. It may not be official, but she has no illusions about what they are to each other or their intents for the future. In a place like this, their own desires have strong precedence over ceremony, anyway. She stays close in that position for a few seconds as she walks, before just tilting her head slightly against Edelgard.

"We both... chose to be human. Together." she begins, pulling her a bit closer. "I just wish I knew what that means for us. The Ashen Demon is gone... so are the Enlightened One, and the Professor. I just... after those roles took, and took..." Byleth hesitates, glancing forward. Her voice is quieter when she continues, more uncertain. "I don't know what's left, El. Or how much was ever here at all."

[flame_emperor]

"More than you realize." Edelgard replies, nuzzling into Byleth as she's pulled closer. "I see it, Byleth. I've always seen it, even when no one else could. And every day it becomes easier."

She's silent for a moment, assembling her thoughts and picking the words she wants to say. "The...wonderful, frightening thing about humanity is that there is no single definition of what it means. It's something we define for ourselves, one day at a time, through the choices we make, and the lives we touch. So when you say you don't know what it means to be human...well, you're describing the human condition itself. But if you ever need something to anchor you, a place to start, then..." She stops, and turns towards Byleth, taking the older woman's hand in her own and guiding it slowly, to her upper chest, where beneath the fabric of Edelgard's top, the beating of her heart can be felt. "Remember that you chose this. The first choice you ever made for yourself that wasn't dictated to you by another. And we'll go from there, together, on the path we chose together."

[hegemonwings]

Byleth's content to walk in silence with Edelgard while she collects her thoughts, glancing up to the streetlamps on the quiet path they've found themselves on. That ever-present curiosity buzzes. She wonders what powers them, whether the fae use different methods than Camelot, whether it's magic or technology or both. Still, when Edelgard speaks again, she listens, feeling as her face slowly warms.

When her wife finally turns to face her, and places her hand over her heart... she's almost sure that she feels her own beat erratically in response. Byleth stands there, stunned and lovestruck, before finally turning her hand over to twine her fingers with Edelgard's. "We will. Always," she agrees at last, leaning down to press her lips to the Emperor's. It's not the chaste and quick sort of kiss they might normally share when at risk of being seen, but they're only two people among a strange world here. Byleth feels fine about pushing this if Edelgard does.