Chapter Text
She can’t sleep.
It’s the pain.
Well, no, the pain is too imprecise.
Professor Byleth knows her, knows that she’s serious about every aspect of her studies. Knows that to have begged off from weapon drills in the training grounds, her health would have to be more compromised than she’d officially divulged. She’d had to swallow a huge chunk of pride to admit that the strenuous exercise in the yard would only worsen her physical condition.
But Byleth is sometimes called away by the Archbishop during teaching hours, so whichever Knight is available fills her absence. And Catherine is not as understanding as Byleth when it comes to students opting out of weapons training.
So that accounts for her utter physical exhaustion. And for the shooting pains radiating down her spine and through her neck and shoulders – even the wooden practice swords are too much for her at this point.
It also explains her nausea. She’s proud that she held it together long enough to finish class, but as soon as Catherine left them alone she’d ducked behind the nearest corner and voided her breakfast into a shrub. She wouldn’t be able to keep anything down for at least the rest of the day, maybe into the next.
There’s a familiar ache in her knees. Her shin bones scream and a fire burns along the nerves in her legs. These are all standard end of day sensations. Her feet are always left twisted and tense and sharp just from walking around for the day, no matter how much she tries to limit herself. Nothing new there.
Brain fog isn’t new either, but it set in earlier than usual today. It put her behind schedule, both in her assigned readings and her independent studies. She would have to make up for it tomorrow – maybe skip another meal to find the time she’d lost today.
The clearest thing cutting through the fog is the migraine, which can almost certainly be blamed on the now-twenty-four hours she’s gone without food. Even prior to this morning’s lost breakfast, her last meal had been the cookies she’d shared with Hilda rather than anything properly balanced. She wouldn’t apologize for that, though, not even to herself.
But Lysithea knows none of this discomfort is really the reason she can’t sleep.
She decided to get out of bed two hours ago, she guesses. She wouldn’t be able to sleep through this pain even if she wanted to, but mustering the strength to get all the way out of bed on a good night is difficult. Doing it after the day she’s had feels downright impossible. But she doesn’t quit once she’s decided on something.
So now, finally, she pushes herself into a sitting position. She ignores the creaking sound her elbows make. It’s only her body reminding her that their cartilage is worn down and failing. That’s why they hurt so much, why her arms are so stiff. It’s happening to every joint in her body to a greater or lesser extent. To think too long about the feeling is sickening. None of that is news. Her knees are way louder anyway.
She tries to stretch some of the tension out of her torso once she’s sitting up, but anywhere she stretches just starts to burn, and the rest of her body protests the strenuous motions. She’s not sure why she still tries every day. It hasn’t helped in years.
Sighing, Lysithea slides her legs out from under the blanket and they hang over the side of the bed. With a tiny hup noise, she pushes herself out of bed and onto her feet. It doesn’t matter how gently she manages to do it – as soon as she hits the floor her shins screech and needles blossom under her knees. The mattress is higher off the ground than she would prefer. It’s standard across all the dorms (she’s checked), but the beds are tall and Lysithea is not, so it makes it difficult for her to get in and out.
It’s an additional pain point for her – literally – every single day, but she’ll never complain about it. She never complains about anything until she’s forced to. It’s so easy to imagine the look on Manuela’s face if she were to ask for help with this. Understanding. Maybe even sympathy for the poor little girl who can’t even get into her own bed. If she was going to stoop so low she might as well ask to be tucked in while she’s at it.
No. No, Lysithea will manage. She’ll power through it. That’s what she does.
Her room is well-organized and she’s able to shuffle her feet into her slippers by memory and feel alone. No candle necessary. She couldn’t do something so dextrous with her fingers right now anyway. Even though it’s the middle of Red Wolf Moon, she doesn’t wrap a blanket or a shawl or a cardigan around herself. Lysithea is always too hot or too cold and it never feels appropriate for the climate. Even though she knows she should be taking precautions against the midnight chill, she finds it difficult to care in this hazy state of unsleep she finds herself stuck in.
She steps into the corridor. Moonlight filters in through open archways and she sees her breath puff in front of her face in sharp bursts. If her lips hadn’t already been so chapped, this little walk wouldn’t have helped.
Walk to where, though?
She’s nearly at her destination before she even realizes she has one in mind. It’s an almost embarrassing revelation, but it makes sense. She’s been avoiding following up on this conversation, but this is the only room in the entire monastery that might have answers for her. She knocks softly on the door.
It feels like she’s been standing here for a thousand years, but also like the door opens suspiciously quickly. Lysithea has to blink herself back to the present moment - time gets away from her so easily if she loses focus, and it’s easy to lose focus when she’s insomniac.
The gap that’s appeared in the door is only just wide enough for Edelgard’s head to emerge. She’s underlit by a single candle and it casts a ghoulish pall to her features. Lysithea has never noticed how sunken her eyes are before; how little it takes to emphasize the lines of her skull under her skin. She wonders for a second if this is what she looks like too, before her good sense returns to her. She undoubtedly looks worse.
“Lysithea,” Edelgard says. She doesn’t seem surprised by Lysithea’s presence. She looks tired, which makes sense, but not upset, which makes less. Lysithea would be furious if somebody woke her up at this hour. Maybe Edelgard had never gone to sleep. “Do you want to chat?”
Her tone is so neutral, ninety-five percent of the way to the pleasant big-sister affect she’s taken to adopting around Lysithea lately. It all seems even more ridiculous than usual. Here they are, standing in a freezing corridor in their sheer nightgowns, letting the chill into Edelgard’s room, interrupting sleep the princess definitely needs if the hideous bags under her eyes are any indication, and she’s acting like Lysithea’s shown up to return a borrowed book on a Sunday afternoon.
It’s almost enough to make Lysithea laugh. It probably would be if her head didn’t hurt so much.
“Yes. Please,” is what she musters instead.
Edelgard withdraws into the room, enveloped briefly by the shadows inside before the door swings wide to allow Lysithea entrance. Lysithea’s natural curiosity (it’s not nosiness, no matter what Leonie or Lorenz or Claude would say) instructs her to do a sweep of the room with her eyes, but it’s too dark to see anything. The only light comes from Edelgard’s lone, single-wicked candle. Hardly enough to read or write by. If Edelgard were to move in the direction of the desk, Lysithea might be able to puzzle out what she’s been doing tonight, but she doesn’t.
Instead, Edelgard brushes past her, close enough for Lysithea to smell the sweat breaking through the remnants of day-old soap. Seating herself in the same chair she did the last time Lysithea was in this room, she sets the candle on the table and illuminates the edge of Lysithea’s intended place.
She doesn’t ask Lysithea to sit down – the invitation is implied by Lysithea’s presence in this room at this hour. So Lysithea follows and sits, gingerly. Her knees explode when they bend but she hides her wince with a practiced mask. There is something resembling relief when she’s settled. It’s good to be off her feet at least. Her head begins to clear slightly.
“I’m sorry that I don’t have anything sweet to offer you,” Edelgard says. “I could still make tea, if you like.”
Lysithea is pretty sure it’s an empty offer. She’s pretty sure Edelgard is just saying that. She’s pretty sure Edelgard knows she doesn’t want anything to eat or drink anyway. Pretty sure is about as certain as she ever gets when it comes to Edelgard, and that’s infuriating to her. It’s maybe the most annoying thing about Edelgard, even more than how she never gives a straight answer even when whatever lie she’s telling is completely obvious. Or how she continues to use that condescending tone even though she knows Lysithea hates it.
“Lysithea?”
She blinks. Her vision focuses on the candle. Now she’s going to have one of those irritating floating blobs stuck in her vision – stark and squirming in the darkness wherever else she looks.
“Are you well?”
Lysithea’s eyes flick to Edelgard. She’s frowning in that way she does to indicate concern rather than anger. Or, what she imagines Edelgard would look like angry – she realizes in this moment that she’s never seen that before. Concern looks like a set to Edelgard’s mouth and the mildest furrow to her brows, just enough for one line to emerge between them.
“Of course not,” Lysithea says. Not curtly – it’s just true: she’s not. “People who are doing well right now are asleep.”
Edelgard smiles thinly. “Your words also implicate me, you know.”
“Obviously.” Lysithea knows what it looks like when an important person is up late doing real work. She’s spent enough insomniac hours whiling away time in Claude’s room to know Edelgard isn’t doing anything like that tonight. “I’m not stupid, Edelgard.”
“I know you’re not,” Edelgard says softly. “I’ve never thought that.”
Lysithea isn’t sure what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything. She sits and waits for the stupid blueish-purple blob to fade out of her vision while her eyes adjust to the dim flame of Edelgard’s candle.
In this light Edelgard’s hair almost looks like it has a color to it: red or blonde or something in between. Lysithea wonders what it actually used to be. It’s a question she’ll never ask.
“I’m not interested in one of your evasive riddles,” Lysithea begins. “Or debating the semantics of what you do and don’t know about me.”
Edelgard’s expression doesn’t change, but maybe something shifts in her cheeks or around her eyes to indicate amusement. A warmth that wasn’t there before. She doesn’t interrupt, so Lysithea continues.
“So I’m just going to speak under the assumption that you know what I’m talking about.” She sighs deeply, unsure if she feels out of breath because of her condition itself or because she’s preparing to be vulnerable about it with another person. “I can’t sleep.”
“...I see.” Edelgard’s gloved fingers curl slightly in her lap. They look really just so stupid poking out of her nightgown sleeves, but at this point Lysithea’s pretty sure she knows why she wears them. Maybe someday Edelgard will let Lysithea solve one of her mysteries.
Lysithea blinks that thought away. It’s dangerous on several levels.
“I assume you don’t attribute this insomnia to your health.” Edelgard doesn’t phrase it like a question. She’s just giving Lysithea the space to be the one to say what’s happening – Edelgard is keeping up the facade between them, no matter how transparent it’s become over the months. Lysithea doesn’t know why she still clings to it so hard.
She likes Edelgard, but she understands so little about her.
“No. I mean, sure, my pain keeps me up, sometimes it wakes me up, but things have been worse recently. And not…because of that.” Lysithea looks at her own hands. In this near-darkness they almost blend into the pale color of her sleep clothes. She squints, but it makes the distinction fuzzier. Quietly, almost as if she’s pretending Edelgard isn’t there, she says, “I’ve been having dreams.”
“I…see.” Edelgard seems troubled for the first time – the first time Lysithea’s ever seen it happen. Even on the back foot, Edelgard is never caught so visibly uncomfortable.
Questions swirl through her mind. She has a feeling Edelgard might answer one for once, in this tiny little window of vulnerability. Rather than anything she actually wants to know, Lysithea prompts, “You’re not going to ask what they’re about?”
“No.” Edelgard stands and turns around, taking a few steps to rummage around in the drawers under her desk.
She leaves her candle on the table. While its dim light isn’t enough to cast the outline of her form into sharp relief under her thin gown, the fabric clings enough for Lysithea to guess at her figure beneath it. She feels… something stir inside herself.
Jealousy, definitely. Edelgard is short like Lysithea and her hair has lost its pigment like Lysithea’s has, but that’s as far as their physical similarities go. Where Lysithea is knobbly, Edelgard is stout. Where she’s skinny, Edelgard is, at most, lean. Lysithea realized just last week that she can see her ribs at all times now, while Edelgard’s impressive musculature is more evident than ever in this sheer dress.
Edelgard is strong and beautiful and clear-headed and healthy and doesn’t hesitate to sit or stand as often as she pleases. Lysithea has never seen Edelgard beg to ride a horse on a long march. Never seen her skip weapon training. Never seen her make an excuse to not eat a meal. Never even seen her lose her temper.
All of that adds up to jealousy. Hate.
And want.
Hilda told her once that you know you really like a girl if you want to be her as much as you want to be with her. At the time, Lysithea had thought she was repeating something stupid she’d read in a gossip sheet. Because, of course, Hilda was fucking Marianne and she was also fucking Annette, and Lysithea was pretty positive that Hilda didn’t want to be like either of them. But now, Lysithea watches the way Edelgard’s undone hair falls gracelessly over her shoulders, exposing nothing and not looking particularly good, and she feels something jealous flutter below her belly anyway. So she’s coming around to the idea that she might have judged Hilda too harshly.
Not that this feeling matters at all. It’s just one more thing that’s going to remain sequestered in this room when she leaves. Like the conversations they’ve had here, the ones where Edelgard toys with Lysithea and dodges her questions and peppers her with that condescending care she doesn’t show anyone else – Lysithea knows she doesn’t because she’s been paying close attention to Edelgard lately.
The feeling doesn’t matter because Edelgard has made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t see Lysithea as an equal. She reminds Lysithea as much every time she offers to carry her books, or sneak her extra food, or make copies of her notes so Lysithea won’t have to burden her fingers with too much writing throughout the day.
If she doesn’t think Lysithea is capable of basic, daily tasks, how could Edelgard ever want her the way Lysithea wishes she might?
And why does–
A bottle clinks onto the table in front of her and Lysithea snaps out of that train of thought.
“What is this?”
Edelgard is standing close to Lysithea’s chair now. It doesn’t bother Lysithea at all.
“It’s a tonic to help you sleep. Two spoonfuls and you won’t wake up for anything. Take it with you.”
Lysithea frowns up at her. “I didn’t come here so you could be my nurse. I came here to–”
Why did she come here? To talk about her feelings? To get reassurance from the one other person who might understand what she’s going through? Maybe, but she can’t just say something like that, especially not to Edelgard, who as far as Lysithea can tell has never talked about her feelings with anyone, ever.
But Edelgard saves her the trouble. She reaches out and for a second Lysithea thinks she’s going to pat her on the shoulder, but she only places the hand on the table instead. Lysithea’s skin prickles where it anticipated contact. “I know. But I can’t.”
“You can’t?” Lysithea feels her frown deepening and hears the edge creeping into her voice. She doesn’t want to be frustrated with Edelgard, but she’s so exhausted and her back hurts and her legs hurt and her fingers hurt and she’s nauseous and her head is killing her and she’s so, so sick of not being allowed to say what they actually mean even when they’re in this room alone.
Edelgard withdraws her hand and Lysithea knows even that tiny push was too far. “I can’t.” She points to the bottle and Lysithea doesn’t miss that her fingers tremble ever so slightly. “I recommend not taking that until tomorrow. It’s late. You’ll sleep through morning lectures.”
Lysithea knows a dismissal when she hears one, so at the protest of her elbows and then her shins, she heaves herself out of the chair and makes her way to the door, bottle in hand. She pulls the door open – it feels heavier than she knows it’s supposed to. It feels like a needle is being driven between every single joint in each of her fingers. A thought comes to her through the haze that’s rapidly encroaching on her thoughts and she turns around.
“If you have this, don’t you need it?”
Edelgard hasn’t moved from her seat and she doesn’t look to Lysithea in response to the question. She stares into the tiny flame of her candle, face blank. When she speaks, it’s quietly. “Please let me do this one thing for you.”
So Lysithea returns to her room.