Chapter Text
Being a communist had kind’ve sucked in the Twenty-first century.
It was depressing!
You looked at history, and it was all ‘and then the social democrats massacred everyone’ or ‘and then the anarchists and communists murdered each other instead of making out’. You looked at politics, and the most left wing view you’d find was ‘maybe trans people should have some rights (true, I would like to have rights) but also we’re still going to do a genocide’.
Being a dirty fucking commie in Imperial Year 1167? Significantly worse. By a landslide! That said, it sort’ve fell behind the fact that I was still trans and healthcare was even harder to get.
I was not a happy child. That said, my bitch-ass religious parents did eventually give up on cutting my hair after I threw one tantrum too many. They also tried to have the local priest ‘fix’ me.
Good news, he wasn’t a pedo. Bad news, I ended up with a few scars from the experience, because corporal punishment wasn’t illegal yet.
Friends? Zero, I was an autistic bitch and kind’ve older than these kids mentally (even if I was still a dumb fucking child with a child brain that didn’t work properly and I hated that). Happiness? Quite low, I needed constant stimulation or I would explode, and I currently lived in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Nobody respected your plans when you were a kid, and I did not like having plans disrupted.
Okay, the village had a name. Romsey. It was a stupid fucking name. School was the church, and since I had no friends you could imagine how that went.
Life was, overall, a slog, right up until it wasn’t.
Mercenaries. Bad, yes? Morally speaking, killing people for money is sort of in the same ballpark as being a cop, and we all know what cops are. That said-
_
I first met her on a very ordinary day.
Well.
Ordinary. There were mercenaries in town, apparently. I didn’t have any strong opinions on that.
…Well. Maybe? It’d be nice to have more food on the table, but- I didn’t really care.
Knowing you’d probably never be able to transition did that to a ‘kid’.
Anyway!
I was doing what I usually did- fuck around with rocks on the riverbank. Wooh. Smooth ones? Those were great. Rough ones? Not so great, but you could break them. Well, some of them.
God, I used to listen to
music
twenty-four seven. I missed those times.
Anyway, at some point, I wasn’t alone anymore.
A child. Hiss! Gasp! Flee!
I did not make eye contact, but I could
tell
she was staring at me, and-
She looked odd, somehow. Cool, whatever. Back to rocks.
“Why are you alone?” She asked.
My eyes narrowed. Why? Stranger talking to me. Evil! Not permitted! But it seemed. Well, it seemed like a rude question, but like one I’d consider answering.
I turned a pleasant-feeling stone over in my hand. “I want to play with my rocks.” I said, finally.
She nodded, like this made perfect sense, which made sense, since it did. “What’s your name?”
Hm. “Cecilia.” I said, after a bit of consideration. “But my parents call me Charles.”
“Why?”
“Hm?” No elaboration. “Why what?”
“Why do they call you that if it’s not your name?”
“Because they’re assholes.” I replied, simply. “And they suck.”
“I see.” She said. “Can I play with your rocks?”
"Ah, now you're speaking my language." Me and this girl? We could be friends.
_
“And this one.” I said. “Is probably sedimentary. I think. Those are supposed to be the ones with layers? Look, I’m not a geology nerd.”
“It feels nice.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “It’s rough. It’s a mid rock. The smooth ones are where it’s at, you can clack em together and they go clack, and they feel better. This one’s my favorite, by the way.” I permitted her to behold the prize jewel of my collection- an especially smooth greenish-grey rock, which felt a lot like a marble. She beheld it.
“Oh. I see.”
“What? No you don’t, you’re a sedimentary rock fan. You like your rough rocks. Ew- you do understand I don’t actually care about this, right? The whole- judging you for liking sedimentary rocks thing, I mean. I care about rocks. They’re neat.”
“...If you don’t care, why are you-?”
Oh. Oh wow. This girl. This girl! She understood less than I did! “I.” I declared. “Shall explain banter to you-”
“It’s late.” She said. “I need to go back.”
Oh. “You can just say you don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know. But I need to go back.”
Huh. Reasonable. “Want me to come along and explain banter to you while we’re walking?”
“...Yes.”
_
“I still don’t understand.” She said.
“Why not?”
“How can telling someone you hate them be funny?”
It was probably odd to see me talking to someone. I was, after all, The Weird Kid who would probably get burned at the stake at some point. More importantly, however- ugh, the right words were so much harder to reach for with my dumb spongy brain. “Well. It’s like. You know the other person cares about you, or is just joking, so you can respond with threats or whatever, and it’s funny, because- because violence is funny? Wait, no. Sort of. It’s weird.” Ugh. How was I the more neurotypical one in this conversation-?
“Byleth!” Who? What, whe- wait. The girl! I hadn’t asked her name!
Well, that was awkward. Anyway, she looked at the guy who had just called her. A big guy.
Armored.
Armed.
“...Is this your dad?” I asked.
“Yes.” She replied. Ah. Cool.
“I guess we’re splitting up now?”
“Yes.”
“Cool, have this rock.” I gave her her gross mid-tier lame and boring sedimentary rock. She paused, staring at it.
Didn’t say thanks, of course, which made sense. Sometimes you had to manually hit the ‘do the social interaction’ button, and I had a feeling that Byleth didn’t do that very often. “See you around?” I asked.
She glanced at her father, whose eyebrows were quite high- and I considered whether I really wanted to be talking to a girl whose father could kill me.
Yes, absolutely, fuck you, nobody could stop me. “Maybe.” He said. “There… should be time.”
Byleth nodded, and I allowed myself a small smile.
_
We met a few more times. At some point, I asked Byleth about her interests, and she proceeded to beat the shit out of me as ‘sparring’. At first, in front of a bunch of other mercenaries, and then in a spot a bit distant from their camp, with her dad watching over us, because holy shit performing for a crowd was stressful.
Anyway!
It was great, I loved it. Learning to fight was always something I had wanted to do.
“Well… you’re enthusiastic.” Jeralt admitted. “I’ll give you that. Where are your parents, anyway?”
I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure they’ve given up on-”
“They’re assholes.” Byleth declared, with the confidence of one who had been told this by someone she trusted absolutely.
“...Is that so? Who taught you that word?” Uh oh.
Byleth, sweet innocent Byleth, who lacked a single brain cell, promptly pointed to me. I let out a sigh.
Jeralt frowned. “How do you think they’d feel if they knew you were saying that about them?”
“I don’t care.” I shot back, then promptly backpedaled as Byleth lunged forward with her practice sword. Too late- ow. Pain.
“You should. They’re your family-”
Wow, I hated Byleth’s dad. I glared at him, and promptly got conked on the head by By for my troubles. “Oh, come on.”
“You’re distracted.” She declared.
God, she was a tiny terror. Her dad let out a sigh.
Still, life remained good- “...We’ll be leaving tomorrow.” Jeralt said. “You two should say your goodbyes.”
Oh.
Right. That- made sense. They were mercenaries. They- how had I just assumed Byleth was my friend now? That she’d stick around forever? Good things don’t last- I felt.
Tense. Wrong. Bad. I-
I was going to cry, was’t I? Definitely. Without question. “I’ll…” Jeralt looked away. “Give you two some space.”
And he did. Moved out of earshot. I…
Promptly broke down and started bawling because my brain was
stupid
and I was stupid and how had having
one
friend mattered this fucking much to me I was supposed to be an
adult
and cool and-
“Why are you crying?” She didn’t show any emotion. She never did.
“I- I’ll miss you.” I managed. Part of my brain was screaming this was stupid. Of course Byleth hated me, of course she was upset with me, she was probably happy to be gone. It wasn’t like she was ever happy to see me, or- “A lot.” Shut up, brain, that’s just how she is, it’s-
“...Me too.” And that- it felt. Relieving. Good. Good to know.
“I-” I swallowed. “I hope I’ll see you again.” An errant thought appeared and refused to leave. “...Can I hug you?”
Byleth hesitated. Stood there for a while, but finally… “Okay.”
It was stiff. Still no reaction . But I didn’t mind, because she was still soft and good and my friend and she was trying. “...Bye.”
“Bye.”
_
I next met Byleth five years later.
Life continued. Miserably, of course. It sucked more now that I knew what it felt like to have someone
tolerable
around.
Puberty. Happened. That’s about all I’d like to say about it. I
barely
avoided hurting myself, mostly because I was more apathetic than miserable a lot of the time.
At some point, while doing chores- which consisted of a variety of things ranging from ‘carry this thing there’ to ‘dig this hole’ or ‘cook this food’, I’d heard about the
thing
people had seen in the woods. It sounded like a bunch of nonsense to me, but
someone
must have been taking it seriously, because word went around and someone went off to town to hire people to look into it.
Sure, the village
could
just organize a militia, maybe, but people were way too spooked for that.
That said, it didn’t interrupt the Harvest Festival. I’d wax poetic about it, but I honestly knew fucking nothing about it beyond ‘there were prayers at some point’ and ‘there was food at night’. I refused to ever participate since it involved dancing and noises and loud music. Instead, I was eating in my little corner, far away from the festivities, which was probably what saved my life when a giant lizard-dragon thing barreled right into the middle of them, the firelight barely illuminating its absurd shape.
I watched as the asshole old lady who still made sure I got some extra sweets every week got cut in half, as my parents started screaming, my dad spinning to look for me before-
Crunch.
I.
I had. I had to run.
Again?
No, no, I couldn’t do anything here, I couldn’t- my mom had been near the middle, taking her own food, and- “Charles!” She was screaming. “ Run- ” And then it hit her, and-
I had been able to do something last time, I had been armed, but I’d still fucking failed.
Finally, tiny legs moved into action and
ran.
Maybe it worked
because
I was small. I wasn’t worth chasing when so many better snacks were right there.
I didn’t think about it. Just ran. For the river, of course-
I needed a place to hide. To- the fishing boat? Maybe. There was just one, and it belonged to some old guy who complained constantly if you relaxed too close to it, but- but he was probably dead. Under it? Yes. Yes, that was perfect, it was good, I’d be safe and closed off, and- I shivered.
Mom and dad- their last thoughts, the last thing they’d wanted to do was save
me.
That didn’t earn
forgiveness.
Not for my
name,
for refusing to listen, for-
I wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair. They were
bad people.
Why had they-?
No.
Breathe.
Breathe, you stupid fucking kid- I needed to- to keep it under control. I had been a soldier of the front-
And I’d died real fucking quick, hadn’t I? Along with the rest of the stupid fucking movement. We’d been so stupid. Stupid. Stupid-
I was a soldier of the People’s front. I was a hero. I was protecting the people making the world a better place. And I was crying under a boat, hoping the monsters wouldn’t find me.
_
And they didn’t, of course. I stayed under that boat for what felt like days, but must have been no more than an hour.
Until the screaming stopped.
Until I couldn’t take it anymore, and had to
move,
had to see if I was safe.
And after another stretch of time where I was barely comforted by squeezing a stone I had picked up- as the sun began to rise- I started to head back.
Because what the hell would I do elsewhere? I’d never learned to scavenge. It hadn’t been part of our training in the Front- I had barely learned how to fire a gun when the death squads rolled in. I’d wanted to do so much.
I squeezed my stone tighter. I- I’d need to get my collection.
Later. First, I had to make sure I was safe. It was so quiet.
Was everyone dead? No, they- they couldn’t be. Someone must have survived. Anyone. The old guy who glared at me any time I walked down the street, muttering about the youth. The elder who kept trying to convince me my parents had my best interests at heart. The carpenter I’d-
There was a body.
I was- familiar. I’d seen quite a few, towards the end. Seen the aftermath of…
That girl- she’d tried to bother me, once. Make fun of how quiet I was, until she realized I didn’t care. And now she was dead. I didn’t want to be angry at her. I wasn’t. Kids were stupid, they couldn’t be blamed for- I swallowed.
What happened? What was that-
But she hadn’t been killed by the creature, had she? I had done a first aid course, in my previous life. That wound-
She’d been
stabbed.
Others had tried to run, then. And someone had stopped them.
Why not me? Were they still
here?
I swallowed. No. If they were, I was already dead- I’d approached pretty openly, in broad daylight.
They weren’t here, because if they were, they were dead. Onward, then. To the center of the village-
The worst part was how familiar the sight was.
They say they found me sitting there, quiet, staring, what must have been a day later. But- I didn’t remember.
_
I rubbed my side- still sore from the elbow which had just been lightly driven into it. “What?”
“You were drifting off again.” Byleth said.
I stuck my tongue out. “You’re here, aren’t you? Prick.”
“We’re both supposed to be keeping watch.”
“Got a source for that claim, senator?”
“My father.”
“Boo, that’s not even funny. You’re an awful comedian.”
Was she amused? Was she upset? Nobody knew- “You seemed upset.” She said, simply.
“Ah. Yeah. I… was.” And now she was probably also upset because I was too fucking smarm- wait, no, calm down. The people you love don’t hate you. “Sorry, too much?”
“No.”
“You’re not upset at me, are you?”
“No.”
“Cool. Thanks, By.”
“You’re welcome.”
She was- good. Simple. Always knew where I stood with her. I took a breath, then got back to being on watch.
Kept fidgeting with my stone, of course.
_