003 » i wrote a song about being weak

[bladehand]

fanart by Living201882687.
for dimitri at animehamlet.

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[bladehand]

[ The pots and pans must have been among the first things to go. Wartime prices for metal being what they are, Byleth figures, they were probably stolen and melted down to make weapons years prior. Perhaps not even stolen; perhaps only taken by the monastery's own kitchen staff in the immediate weeks after the siege, once they realized that Rhea was missing and no one would be able to shepherd the flock as it was in times past. Perhaps because they wanted to sell the metal; perhaps only because they knew they would need the tools of their trade to find employment elsewhere.

In any case, Byleth knows how to make do with nothing, but he still manages to locate some clay cookware in the back shelf of a cabinet that no one looted in all the years that have passed. Probably too heavy for bandits to even bother stealing, considering the pittance one would fetch for it. Cooking with clayware is a little finicky after getting used to the luxury of cast iron, but it's still better than what Byleth is accustomed to, grilling cheap meats with fire and stone out in the wilds, sometimes with his father and sometimes without.

Now he will always have to be without his father. It's just the way of things.

He thought that they might starve if he didn't do something about the food situation immediately, but to his great surprise, finding food to eat is still easier than he'd braced himself for. Merchants do not visit the monastery as they did in years past, no, but Byleth opens the greenhouse doors to find that the plants within have not all shriveled and withered away but instead have grown into a wild tangle untamed by human hands. The more delicate flowers and fruits have all disappeared, but Byleth doesn't have to try particularly hard to find hardy crops worth eating. An all-vegan diet will not suit him and Dimitri in the long run, but so long as it seems that Dimitri has subsisted off of wild herbs and muck in the years since the monastery fell, starting him off on gentler foods and simple vegetable stews seems less likely to shock his stomach. Later, Byleth figures, when he has some downtime, he can try his hand at fishing again; he's noticed that there are still silvery shadows in the monastery pond, which makes sense — one of the monks told him once that the pond was fed by an internal water source beneath the monastery itself, and was effectively self-maintaining. Still later, if he can get Dimitri to see sense, perhaps he can talk the prince into a hunting expedition of sorts; the surrounding forests must still be home to rabbits and deer that could serve as sustenance for them both.

The monastery is still full of treasures. The most likely things — the pots, the pans, candelabras, fine clothing, jewelry — these things have all been taken, but some other things went puzzlingly untouched by thieving hands. Byleth's own personal quarters went completely unlooted, either by the grace of the Goddess or because the bandits found nothing there worth stealing, not even the fine leather notebook in which he had been recording each day's events.

It will be very, very cold soon. It will already be cold tonight. He has no idea what day it is, and neither does Dimitri, but from the scent of the air and the direction of the breeze, he thinks they must be between the Red Wolf Moon or the Ethereal Moon, and the winds are blowing cold air down from Faerghus, chilling Garreg Mach with a Faerghan winter. It might be Dimitri's birthday soon, if it hasn't already passed. Thinking about that makes Byleth's heart ache, so he says nothing of it; Dimitri probably doesn't want to speak of it anyway.

From his own quarters by the commoners' rooms, he retrieves a cheap woolen blanket; then, thinking through his chances, he goes up to the monastery's second floor to locate the aristocratic student dormitories.

Again: Byleth finds baffling behavior, from the point of view of someone currently also guilty of searching the monastery for valuables, but bandits are not known to be systemic. Some rooms, like Ferdinand's and Lorenz's, were absolutely ransacked. Edelgard's one vanity, her fine haircare products, disappeared long ago. Yet Dimitri's room was neglected, perhaps because bandits saw how barren it was and assumed it was unused; somehow, a whetstone that Byleth once gifted him is still the only object sitting on his desk, untouched. Felix's room is similarly barren. Sylvain's room is the one that Byleth was searching for — Gautier territory is farther north than any of the others, and the redhead kept under his bed a fine, thick wool blanket, likely never touched because he found the monastery too warm, still wrapped in a length of red ribbon he was known to favor.

Thinking about Sylvain's little luxuries — the only one of his Faerghan students to enjoy any sort of luxury at all, and even then, what he enjoyed was plain and practical! — makes Byleth smile, even now. He will have to thank Sylvain for this later, if ever he is lucky enough to see the young man again. He thinks that Sylvain will probably laugh, say that he forgot about that blanket, or hated it anyway, but who knows. Maybe Sylvain will surprise him, and say that the professor owes him one now, and give him a roguish wink, and a debt which he will never collect on.

All of this is to say —

— that Byleth returns from his day's events — the attempts to clean whatever he can clean under the circumstances, the gathering of vegetables from the garden, a vague attempt to locate bait for fishing, and the meticulous slow effort to make the monastery a home again which Dimitri has sneered at and hated for weeks — having ignored Dimitri's exhortations for revenge once again, bearing two wool blankets which will not be enough under the circumstances, back to the cardinal's room with the shattered window (that Byleth repaired with a clumsy wooden solution) where they have been staying these past few weeks. ]

I'll need you to sleep with me tonight.

[ His tone leaves no room for argument, but he expects one, given Dimitri's... obvious unwellness, to say the least. ]

It'll be cold.