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The smell of blood is stronger than the rain. It clings to the grass, to Byleth’s gloves, to the heavy air that refuses to move. Garreg Mach burns somewhere in the distance—he can hear the faint crackle even over the cries of the wounded. The war is over, they said. They were wrong.
He kneels in the mud beside a motionless figure, hair matted, crown shattered. His breath catches when he sees blue—those same impossible eyes, glazed and far away now. For a second, he forgets how to breathe.
Dimitri never looked so human.
Until those beautiful eyes close.
Byleth reaches out, slow, almost too scared to touch him. Dimitri’s armor is cold, slick with mud and blood washing away under the rain. His hand hovers above Dimitri’s chest for too long before he presses down, searching for something—heartbeat, warmth, anything that means this isn’t the end.
Nothing. Or maybe he’s just too late to feel it.
“Dimitri,” Byleth says, voice hoarse, breaking the way the sky breaks when lightning hits too close. He tries again, softer. “Please.”
Still no response. Still nothing. No matter how gently his fingers brush against the fallen prince’s face, no matter how close Byleth leans in, there is no sign of life. He shakes his head slowly. This isn’t the end, he tells himself, repeating it over and over like a prayer he doesn’t believe in.
The rain keeps falling, heavy and endless, and Byleth can’t tell where the water ends and the blood begins. His hands won’t stop shaking; it feels wrong to be alive when everything around him isn’t. His chest tightens even with the lack of a heartbeat—he tries again, brushing a strand of Dimitri’s mangled blond hair from his face.
Nothing. Stillness.
The raindrops flow down Dimitri’s face in a quiet cascade of tears.
Byleth can’t tell where the water ends and the blood begins. His hands won’t stop shaking; it feels wrong to be alive when everything around him isn’t. He leans closer to Dimitri’s still form, brushing a strand of mangy blond hair from his face, and for a moment he closes his eyes against the storm.
He lifts his gaze to the gray, weeping sky, letting the rain wash across his face, and a thought claws its way from the depths of his chest:
“Why am I so afraid to lose you, when you aren’t even mine?”
The words linger in the air between heaven and earth, carried by the endless cascade of rain. They taste like fear and grief and something dangerously close to hope. For the first time since the battle, Byleth feels the raw weight of all he might never have.
Then, his gaze shifts to Dimitri’s fallen form. A twitch of a finger. A tremble that lasts a millisecond. Byleth’s breath hitches as he leans closer. “Dima,” he chokes out a sob, hands scrambling to hold the fallen prince’s. “Dima… Dima, it’s over. It’s me.”
A soft exhale leaves the prince’s mouth, lips slightly parted. Then Byleth catches a glimpse of a blue eye fluttering awake. He says nothing, just stares into Byleth’s own teal greens.
“Professor…” Dimitri’s free hand shakes, blood oozing from the palm as he weakly presses it to Byleth’s cheek, leaving a bloody stain which the rain does a poor job rinsing. A weak smile curls on his lips, “Byleth.”
Byleth doesn’t realize he’s crying until the rain carries the tears away. He grips Dimitri’s hand tighter, terrified that if he lets go, this fragile sliver of life will slip back into silence. Dimitri’s breath trembles, shallow and uneven, each exhale a battle. The blood on his palm smears across Byleth’s face like a blessing or a curse—he can’t tell which.
“Don’t talk,” Byleth whispers, voice breaking apart in the downpour. “Save your strength.”
Dimitri’s eyes flicker, the faintest ghost of a smile still haunting his lips. “Byleth” he murmurs again, rain mixing with blood as it pools beneath them. “You were my… strength.”
Byleth shakes his head, the motion desperate, angry. “No. Not ‘were’. Don’t you dare.”
But the world around him feels like it’s dying again—fire fading to smoke, thunder rolling like a dirge, and between it all, two souls clinging to what’s left beneath a bleeding, open sky.
Byleth presses his forehead against Dimitri’s, the rain cold against their skin. He can feel the faintest breath, shallow and trembling, and it’s enough to make his chest ache. Dimitri’s hand twitches once, then stills, his fingers slipping from Byleth’s grasp like water through broken glass.
“No,” Byleth whispers, the word catching somewhere between his throat and the thunder. He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, only listens to the sound of rain hitting armor and ash. There’s no heartbeat left to find. The sky keeps crying for him.
Dimitri’s eye flutters again, before it closes, his hand dropping with gravity’s pull. Byleth trembles, whether from the cold or the loss, he isn’t so sure. Five years ago, in this very same forest, he lost his father. The first time I’ve ever cried, Byleth thinks to himself, his own tears falling onto Dimitri’s cold, lifeless face, was for him those years ago.
History repeats itself as the eden bleeds.