Chapter Text
She lives up to her name. The Flame Emperor marches on Derdriu, and as the Aquatic Capital crumbles, Claude von Riegan falls to ashes.
Yet, Edelgard chooses to spare Khalid Shihab. He stares into the conqueror of Fódlan’s lavender eyes and wonders how she can simply not care who she is letting loose. It could be that she does not know who he is—what he will be? But he has learned to trust what he sees first, and what he sees is simply… disinterest. Edelgard only cares about toppling and then, somehow, reconstructing Fódlan . For perhaps the first time in his life, Khalid chooses not to call out such short-sightedness.
Because, really, he does hope that she will make the world better.
But he can’t leave with nothing in his hands but hope. He needs to get out of Fódlan. Faerghus will fall, then Garreg Mach, and regardless of what comes after the war, the fighting won’t stop, and a half-breed disgraced duke will be an easy target.
Easier than even a half-breed prince returning empty-handed.
He knows the fastest route to Almyra and has the resources to secure a swift carriage ride to the Throat. He steals into the smoke silently. He has enough supplies to administer field care to Judith—she is smart enough to realize that the only way to return home now is to flee it—then he will rendevous with Hilda, and-
He steps on a long strand of pink hair. He freezes, following the hair to its roots.
Hilda Valentine Gonreil, the woman who laughed at the idea of wasting one’s life by dying for someone else, lay bleeding out at the front lines, her legs slashed into mounds of crimson, one arm outstretched, her axe a finger’s length away.
“Why…” he murmurs into the stagnant air, utterly disinterested in the weight of his accent. “Why didn’t you retreat?” I counted on you retreating! Swallowing down his mounting panic, he dashes to Judith’s station.
Some part of him wishes she were dead, but she lays shivering in a wet sprawl. Her glassy eyes widen at his arrival.
Some part of him rejoices at her consciousness—that boosts her survival rate—but the rest of him is pulled down by the weight of too-few medical supplies. “Claude,” she says, and her steel-blue eyes take so long in blinking, and there is no time to explain as she demands, “Choose her.”
He knows what she sees: She knows . And he is not going to disrespect her by denying it. Nor is he going to deny his name any longer. He tells her it, and Judith snorts like she is watching someone deliver a joke from the sidelines. With that, she closes her eyes to die.
Hilda’s eyes are already closed , his razor-sharp mind snaps, turning on him, but his legs remain loyal as they run to her, and his hands stay steadfast as they plunge into her flesh and squeeze .
He tells himself that it is not that she is light from drained blood but that her weight is lifted by his adrenaline. The courier is willing to excuse the blood in their carriage for a weightless sum of gold. He has applied the tourniquets—such is part of basic first aid training in Almyra. Yet the next step is always, “Wait for a medical professional to take over.”
The gap in his training is now a ravine. He squeezes Hilda’s hand fruitlessly, trying to bring color to it. She is as pale as the white camel. Except she won’t survive. Because he failed her.
He stares out the back of the carriage listlessly. He notices idly that the ground has stopped moving. A border guard? No, they’re not close enough.
“Heya! Need a bodyguard?” The voice is deep but amiable.
The courier is as terse with them as they were with him, and a second voice mumbles an apology.
It is not until he hears the two of them together that he registers either one. And as he recognizes them both, a new plan snaps together, congealing from ashes and dust. “Raphael! Marianne!” he shouts. They turn, and Raphael’s face splits into the same grin from the Academy years, and Marianne’s face cracks into a new sort of smile.