Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ok, shh, he’s almost here!”

Claude dashed back to his seat near the front of the class, sitting himself down with his hands folded and the most innocent expression he could muster on his face.

“I’m not sure about this,” frowned Lysithea. “I mean, it’s so silly…”

From the next desk across, Hilda flapped a hand at her. “Shhhh! It’ll be fun.”

Footsteps sounded from the hallway. Everyone sat perfectly still, breath held, eyes peeled. The door handle turned, clicked, the hinges groaned as they swung open. Ten students shouted in unison.

“GOOD MORNING Y’ALL!”

Halfway through the doorway, Byleth, tired-eyed and tight-lipped, dropped the textbook held under his arm, turned, and left.

--

6 months. That’s how long Byleth had been a teacher at Garreg Mach High, his very first job after graduating. It hadn’t exactly been his first pick of careers, but with his father being a former professor of history and having close ties to the high school’s principal, it was certainly the easiest.

Half a year in, however, he was starting to have regrets.

“Hey, teach!”

For a second, Byleth considered ignoring the call and just continuing on down the corridor, but he didn’t fancy another lecture from Seteth about his ‘professionalism’. He turned around to see Sylvain jogging towards him.

“Glad I caught you! How’s it going?”

Byleth blinked. “What do you want, Sylvain? Class is about to start.”

“Oh, yeah!” Sylvain grinned. “That big test, right? So, about that…”

“Oh boy…”

It might have been the severe lack of sleep, but Byleth thought he saw Sylvain’s grin widen.

“I’ve been a bit busy lately – I’m on the school’s track team, y’know – so I haven’t really had all that much time to study. I bet you know how it is, being a busy man yourself, huh?” He was even bold enough to throw in a wink. “So, reckon you can, I don’t know, take it easy on me?”

The glimmer of hope in his eyes was undeniable. Turning him down would have been like kicking a puppy. Byleth wasn’t a puppy-kicker. He was, however, overworked, underpaid, and now running late, again.

“No.”

Sylvain’s hope shrivelled in an instant.

“Oh…”

“Also, you’re now late.”

“Shoot!” He bolted past Byleth and down the corridor fast enough that Byleth wondered if he really was on the track team. “Can’t be late if I’m there before the teacher!”

Byleth shook his head and followed his tardy student at a much less enthusiastic pace.

When he arrived at the classroom, two minutes after the class was meant to start, Sylvain was already in his seat near the back of the room and apparently in the middle of a stern talking-to from Ingrid. Most of the students turned forward and sat themselves upright as he walked in, the exceptions being Linhardt (asleep) and Bernadetta (trying to hide under her book).

“Alright class, test time.” He dropped the stack of test papers onto the closest desk to him, Ignatz’s. “Pass those around. Once everyone has one, you can start. No talking, no cheating, the usual. Good luck.”

Perfect. Now he could settle down at his desk and enjoy an entire one-hour class of peace and –

“OW.”

Seiros damn it.

Byleth looked up to see Caspar rubbing his head and glaring at Hubert. At least the commotion had woken Linhardt, who looked like he’d forgotten what plane of existence he was on.

“What was that for?” Caspar was yelling.

Hubert was perfectly calm. “What was what for?”

“You hit me with a stack of test papers!”

“No, I passed them to you.”

Before the argument could go too far, Byleth rapped a marker on his desk loud enough to catch their attention. “Save it for later, you two. Please.” Didn’t they know he had reports to write? Tests from other classes to grade? Fellow faculty members to stalk on Instagram? Speaking of… Byleth cast one final look across the students, now all settled with their papers, and pulled out his phone.

No sooner had he opened the app when he heard a rustle.

“Hilda, no cheating.”

A very quiet “dammit!” Byleth tapped open the search section and paused. What was the name again? He set the phone down and switched to his laptop, opening up his work emails and scrolling down a few. Aha!

In the middle of the room, Leonie leaned over to Marianne. “When was Fhaergus founded again?”

“Quiet!”

A few rows behind them, in a cluster, sat four of the Blue Lions: Felix, Ingrid, Dimitri, and Sylvain. Of the four of them, Sylvain was the only one not with his head down and focusing. Instead, he was trying to stealthily lean over towards Felix next to him.

“Psst… Felix…”

“I said quiet, Sylvain!”

He flinched back to his seat, his three fellow Lions shooting him looks of disapproval. Ingrid’s, in particular, caught his attention, and he returned it with a grin and a wink.

“Sylvain!”

Surrendering, Sylvain dejectedly returned to his test paper, ignoring a snicker from Felix. After that the class was still enough that, at last, Byleth could focus on whatever he was doing up at his desk. He was so focused, in fact, that he didn’t notice when Annette, who sat closer to the front with Mercedes and some students from the other houses, picked up her paper and walked up to him. She stood there awkwardly for a second, but Byleth was squinting down at his phone too intently to notice. Tentatively, Annette leaned forward, probably to try and catch his attention, when she paused.

“Is that… Why are you looking at photos of my dad?!”

The whole classroom, Byleth included, froze. A long, painful minute of silence passed as Annette stared at Byleth, Byleth stared at his desk, every other student stared at Annette. Then, from Claude:

“Yeah, teach! You go get it! Whoo!”

Another moment of silence. A bang.

“Claude von Riegan!” Edelgard was practically screaming, her palms flat on the table. “How dare you say something like that to our teacher!”

Not to be outdone, Ferdinand stood up. “I agree! It’s absolutely disgusting!”

Now Hilda was yelling. “Oh, can it, Fergie!”

Chaos erupted. Sylvain used the madness to copy Felix’s answers while Felix was distracted. Bernadetta hid under a table and covered her ears. Raphael snuck a packet of chips from his pocket. Linhardt had fallen asleep again. Dorothea was filming everything on her phone. Edelgard was berating Claude, who was trying desperately not to laugh as Hilda yelled at Lorenz for not helping. Dimitri looked around the room and buried his face in his hands.

Finally, Byleth stood up, and everyone went quiet again, breaths held as they waited to see how their teacher would squirm out of the predicament. As for Byleth, the combined pressures of a long week, his wide-eyed students, and Annette’s barely-concealed fury… he was struggling. Of course, he’d checked a few of his fellow teachers purely out of curiosity. It just so happened that he’d clicked on Gilbert’s profile just as Annette had needed to ask him a question. He knew it looked bad.

How on earth was he meant to get himself out of this?

“You all pass,” he managed, a croak to his voice, “if you swear to never, ever mention this again. Free study session. If you need anything, I’ll be outside…. crying.”

24 students watched him snatch up his phone and scurry outside. As soon as the door was closed, he turned to the nearest locker and banged his head against it.

Chapter Text

Play

Sylvain’s cheery face is grinning into a phone camera.

“Hey guys! We’re gonna have some fun pulling some pranks on our teach and classmates. It’s gonna be great!”

The camera pulls back a little, revealing Felix sitting at his desk in the background. Felix looks up, his expression unamused.

“You’re gonna get suspended again, you know.”

Sylvain’s grin widens, apparently not having heard him. “Yeah!”

The camera switches to an enormous black shape in Sylvain’s hand – a fake spider. He carries it over to Byleth’s desk at the front of the room and carefully places it between a pile of textbooks and a clutter of pens and pencils. Sylvain’s voice speaks from behind the camera.

“Trap: set!”

Annette’s voice, nearby. “What are you doing this time?”

There’s a flurry of blurred shapes as Sylvain hurries back to his seat and fixes the camera on the front of the classroom. Annette and Ashe, sitting in the row in front of him, looking both confused and a little concerned. The classroom door opens and Byleth walks in, holding a textbook in his hands and looking as exhausted as ever.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, “I had to catch the bus to school after the whole Mr. Fluffy incident… could everyone please open to page WHAT THE-”

His eyes fall to the desk in front of him and widen. Without hesitation he raises the textbook in both hands and slams it onto the table with enough force to scatter pens, pencils, and a few ungraded papers onto the floor. Sylvain, unable to contain himself, starts to giggle as Byleth lifts the textbook to inspect his victim and frowns. The frown deepens.

“Sylvain!”

The giggling stops. “Oh shit.”

--

On a typical school day, one can usually find the Golden Deer senior class spending their lunch hour on the school’s sports grounds. There’s plenty of gym equipment around as well as a few trees to provide shade, so Claude will usually have his friends gathered around him while Raphael and Leonie try to outdo each other on the equipment.

Claude, Lorenz, and Hilda were in the middle of debating which teacher is most likely to have a secret facebook account when one of the younger students walks past.

“Hey, Claude! Can you do the thing?”

There’s a mixed expression on Claude’s face. “Aw, really? I don’t know, sometimes it messes my hair up…”

“Your hair, seriously?” Leonie gave him a shoulder pat that was intended to be friendly but nearly launched Claude off the bench he was sitting on. “The kid asked you to do it, so do it!”

Raphael’s booming voice joined in. “Yeah, come on! It’s been ages since the last time!”

“It really hasn’t…” mumbled Claude, rubbing his shoulder. The kid who’d called out to them was starting to look disappointed, however, and Claude did hate to let his friends down… “But I guess I could.”

He nearly yelped when Lorenz slapped his other shoulder. “You can’t just do whatever some random plebeian tells you to! Have some class! Some dignity! You should be better than that!”

“Did you just say ‘plebeian’?” Leonie folded her arms across her chest; she was quite a bit shorter than Lorenz, but the look on her face was enough to have him worried.

Sensing an argument about to break out, Claude stood up, trying to ignore the ache in one shoulder and the sting of the other. “Alright, alright, I’ll do it. Just this once, though, ok?”

The kid, who had been about to walk away, suddenly whirled around, an excited look on his face. “Sweet! Guys, he’s gonna do it!”

To a mix of cheers and frowns, Claude stepped across to the high bars normally used for chin ups, took a few deep breaths, and shook out his arms. “Here goes!”

With surprising agility and ease, he reached up, grabbed the bar, and swung his legs up to wrap around it. He then let go with his hands, hanging upside down by his knees and facing his friends, his hands on his hips and his shirt slipping down a little.

“You? Me? The Golden Deer? We could be great together!”

A woman’s voice boomed out across the grounds.

“CLAUDE VON RIEGAN.”

Claude looked over to see an upside-down Manuela marching towards them. The sight of her, and knowing how much trouble he was going to be in, broke his concentration, and one of his legs slipped loose of the bar.

In front of his friends, a cluster of junior students, and one of his teachers, Claude dropped from the two-metre high bar and face-planted into the dirt.

--

The school corridor is crowded with the morning rush. Sylvain and Felix are standing outside their lockers, talking, when Dimitri hurries past, a few books clutched in his hands.

“Hey guys!” he manages, “Sorry, I’m late for class. I’ll see you later!”

He’s halfway down the corridor already when Sylvain reaches into his locker and shoots Felix a devilish grin. “Watch this. Hey, Dimitri!”

Dimitri pauses and turns as Sylvain draws a can of soda from his locker and hurls it in Dimitri’s direction. Thinking fast, Dimitri drops his books, reaches up, and catches the can with both hands and enough force to crush it, spraying the drink all over him, his books, and any student unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.

“DAMMIT SYLVAIN.”

--

“You think it’s broken?” Hilda asked, reaching out a finger towards his face.

Claude bats it away. “It’s fine,” he tried to say, but with an icepack taped to his nose his voice sounded funny. “Barely even hurts.”

“You’d better hope it’s not broken,” smirked Lorenz. “What do you have without your good looks after all?”

Used to Lorenz’s teasing, Claude just winked at him. “I’ve still got my irresistible charm, don’t I? And my cunning wit. Speaking of…” He pulled out his phone and got to work on his latest plan. A few taps here and there and then a ping from the desk at the front of the room, where Byleth was desperately trying to get an overhead projector to display a map of the Red Canyon without success. It had taken ten minutes to turn the thing on and now he couldn’t find the link he needed; when he heard the ping, he looked up with a suspicious frown.

Claude waved a hand. “Maybe the link is in your emails? Just click on it and it should work.”

The suspicion faded and Byleth blinked. “Oh, good idea.”

Hilda shot Claude a look. “What did you just do?”

“You’ll see.”

After a moment of fiddling through his laptop, Byleth gave a quiet “aha!” and clicked something. The wall behind him was immediately covered from ceiling to floor with a pepe-fied image of none other than the principal, Ms. Rhea. Byleth’s satisfied expression immediately turned to horror when he turned around and saw what he’d just done. Laughter erupted across the classroom. Claude laughed so hard he snorted, which made his hopefully-not-broken-nose ache worse than ever.

Just to amplify the perfection of the moment, the classroom door opened and Seteth, the vice principal, walked in.

“There’s quite a bit of noise coming from your room, Mr. Byleth. What is…” His eyes widened when he saw Rhea’s hair, crown, and robe hastily photoshopped onto a lewdly-posed green frog. Surprise turned to shock, shock to rage. His eyes moved to Byleth, who looked like he was ready to just sink to his knees and disappear into the floor.

Claude turned to Lorenz and Hilda. “See?” His voice was still weirdly muffled. “Nothing can stop a schemer!”

He looked back to see Seteth’s enraged glare fixed on him. Oh sh-

Chapter Text

It was 8am. Byleth was tired. The staff meeting room was crowded and reeked of the expensive perfume Manuela always wore. The entire staff cohort was here, pretending to listen as Seteth, standing at the head of the table, drawled on about something school-related or other.

“We have a busy month ahead for Garreg Mach High School, as I’m sure you all know. Most importantly, we have our annual school production in two months’ time. Hopefully you all have your year level’s performance well underway…”

Byleth let his eyes slip shut for a moment, thinking about how much he was looking forward to getting back home again that afternoon, when Manuela’s knee, not for the first time, very deliberately pressed against his, making him jerk. He opened his eyes and was about to shoot her a look when something caught his eye. Behind Seteth was a window, and through that window Byleth could see a few of his Black Eagle students.

Specifically, he recognised Caspar, Linhardt, Bernadetta, and Ferdinand trying to carrying two very large boxes of props. Linhardt had given up trying to carry his end of one of the boxes, leaving Caspar to try and shove the thing across the courtyard; Bernadetta and Ferdinand had made it three steps from the storage room before Bernadetta had dissolved into what appeared to be a full-blown meltdown.

“Each of you are also encouraged to make an appearance during your students’ part of the performance, but please, remember that this performance is for the students, and not for the teachers, Manuela.”

Byleth was still watching out the window. Linhardt had sat down on one of the boxes and appeared to be reading a book, while Bernadetta was out of sight. Ferdinand and Caspar seemed to be having a heated exchange… Byleth rose out of his seat.

“Excuse me, Byleth, is something wrong?”

Caspar was trying to take a swing at Ferdinand, who was holding him literally at arm’s length and out of reach.

“Yeah, um, I, uh… I’m…”

Changing tactics, Caspar shoved Linhardt off the prop box, managed to pick it halfway up off the ground, and was trying to throw it at Ferdinand.

“I’llberightbackbye!”

--

The high school’s very old, very large, and very creepy cathedral had been temporarily transformed into an oversized theatre. Byleth’s 24 senior students were rushing around the stage and the makeshift backstage area, testing outfits and props, running soundchecks, or practicing lines, and Byleth had the unnecessarily difficult task of trying to coordinate the whole thing. And by ‘coordinate’, he meant grading his papers in the corner while Ferdinand and Edelgard got into a fight over who was the show’s director and who was the assistant director.

“I’m the house captain, it’s only natural that I should be the director,” Edelgard calmly explained to her self-proclaimed rival.

Ferdinand shook his head. “That may be so, dear Edelgard, but you see! I fear you lack the theatrical flair needed to truly let our senior class level shine in this year’s performance!”

“…Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what? Fair maiden, pray tell this handsome prince what it is you mean? Do you desire to vent your heart’s deepest – hey, Edelgard, wait, come back! Don’t walk away!”

“Um, Mr. Byleth?”

Byleth looked up from trying to decipher Leonie’s haphazard handwriting to see Ashe standing nervously in front of him.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to trouble you, it’s just… well, could you, maybe, have a word with Sylvain?”

“Why?” Byleth looked past Ashe’s shoulder to see Sylvain attempting to flirt with an incredibly uncomfortable Marianne. Not far from him, Dimitri and Felix had gotten into an argument over something about their scripts, and Dedue was trying to calm them both down.

“We’re doing a run-through soon and…”

“I’ll talk to him, Ashe. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Of course!” He dashed off, leaving Byleth to set aside his papers and actually do something.

He clapped his hands together. “Alright, team, let’s make sure we have at least something to show everyone… Who’s our main cast?”

Dimitri raised his hand. “I believe I’ve been cast as the prince, though I’m not sure I’m quite cut out for it… and I think Sylvain and Felix are my knights?”

“Which, by the way, is a terrible idea!” snapped Felix. “Why can’t Ingrid be the knight instead?”

“Because Ingrid is one of my knights,” Edelgard told him, waving the script in his direction. “I’m the dragon queen, Hubert is my dragon, and Dorothea, Ingrid, and Leonie are my knights.”

From where the backstage crew were standing, Byleth heard Raphael loudly whisper, “How is Hubert meant to be a dragon?”

“Ok so,” Byleth ran his eyes over the students. “We’ve got a prince, a dragon queen, a bunch of knights… so who’s playing the princess?”

“Heya, teach!”

Claude stood front-and-centre on the stage, flanked by Hilda and Lorenz, all in matching outfits that consisted of lots of flowing ribbon, fake jewellery and not enough clothing for a school performance. Particularly Claude, who was definitely channelling his inner Turkish bellydancer.

“Guess who’s playing the princess? Hilda picked the outfit!”

--

“So what’s your role in the performance, hm?”

Startled out of his trademark open-eyed nap, Byleth blinked and looked over at Alois. He was the gym teacher but had taken a special interest in the different class levels’ performance pieces, so much so that he’d thankfully taken on the role of coaching Byleth’s students. Whether that was actually a good thing or not, Byleth wasn’t sure, but at least no one was looking at him for acting advice.

“Huh?” Byleth asked, having already forgotten the question.

“Your role! What’s your part in the play? The teacher has to put in at least a brief appearance, you know.”

Crap.

“Uh, well…”

A thunderous crash echoed through the cathedral; Byleth, used to the madness of his students, didn’t even flinch, but Alois nearly jumped out of his skin.

“What in Seiros’s good name was that?!”

Hopefully something significant enough that the performance would be cancelled but he wouldn’t have to fill out Health & Safety forms…

Surprisingly, the stage itself was still in-tact. Crumpled in a heap on top of it, however, was a massive pile of cardboard and wood planks that had previously been a makeshift dragon even bigger than the stage itself. Byleth’s ungraded papers scattered to the floor and his mouth dropped open.

“What on earth is THAT?!”

Ignatz stepped out from around the rubble, furious. “It was a week’s worth of hard work, and now it’s ruined! Bernadetta and Mercedes spent hours trying to stitch that together and now you’ve ruined it!”

There was a rustle and a scrape, and suddenly Caspar emerged from under a sheet of painted green ‘scales’.

“How was I meant to know it was that fragile? And besides, as if I wasn’t going to fight the giant prop dragon!”

“Because it’s a prop!”

Another thud rang through the cathedral, and Byleth was about to prepare himself for the entire building crumbling down on top of them when he heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Seteth, Manuela, and Hanneman charging in. They stopped at the sight of the stage. It took all of three seconds for them to take in the destroyed dragon, the students in varying stages of either confusion or amusement, and look over at Byleth. Seteth’s face said it all.

He might be a teacher, but Byleth felt very suddenly like he was about to be given detention.

--

They had somehow made it to the night of the performance alive and, aside from the dragon prop – whose remains had been confiscated by Principal Rhea – in one piece. Byleth had managed to charm Seteth into letting him keep his job after that incident and had started taking the performance more seriously, to the point that he felt a surprising sense of pride watching his students. As the senior level, their part of the performance was last and expected to finish the night with a bang, and so far, his students were delivering.

Dorothea opened with a song so beautiful that even Manuela was crying. Bernadetta and Mercedes had personally put everyone’s outfits together and they looked incredible. Felix managed to not get into any fights on stage and Caspar didn’t break anything. Linhardt managed to deliver his line without falling asleep. They remembered their lines, hit their cues, and everything looked outstanding; Byleth wished they put as much effort into their studies as they had into this.

From the top of the two-storey awning that held the curtains and lighting for the stage, he looked down onto the stage as Dimitri the awkward prince faced the imposing Dragon Queen Edelgard, only to be saved instead by the dashing princess Claude. There was an embrace between the ‘prince’ and ‘princess’ that definitely wasn’t in the script, but the crowd whooped and applauded. Then Edelgard stepped forward and pushed in-between them.

Up on the awning, Marianne waved to him.

“Alright, Mr. Byleth, that’s your cue!”

Byleth nodded and checked the harness strapped around his torso. He made sure he was clipped on the rope and looked over at Raphael, who was manning the pulley system.

“Break a leg out there, Teach! Not really, though, y’know…”

Below them, on the stage, Edelgard called out: “Face the flames of my mighty dragon! Come to me, fell beast, and cast the inferno upon them!”

Shrugging off his pre-performance nerves, Byleth stepped off the edge of the awning, letting the pulley support his full weight. From the seats, a crowd of thousands including students, faculty, friends and family saw Byleth, wearing a dragon-like mask, a pair of fake dragon wings, and a tail was gingerly lowered down to hover above the stage. The three house captains looked up at him, Dimiti attempting to act terrified, Claude trying not to giggle, and Edelgard looking far from amused. For a second the whole scene was so strange that Byleth nearly forgot to deliver his lines. He opened his mouth, ready to give his best impression of a dragon’s roar, when a snap echoed through the cathedral.

There was a second of weightlessness, a bunch of students shouting, and the stage was suddenly hurtling towards him. A bang, an overwhelming burst of pain, and as he blacked-out, three panicked voices crying out: “Teacher!”

Chapter Text

A couple of weeks had passed since the infamous school performance, and though Byleth was finally cast-free and able to get from point A to point B without aching all over, he still continued to hide his face in public in case anyone recognised him. Unfortunately, there was no escaping his students. The Blue Lions, at least, had endeavoured to act as normally as possible around him, but the Golden Deers were relentless, even going so far as to write the number of views the viral video of his fall had received on the whiteboard before the start of class.

These were responses Byleth had expected. What he hadn’t expected, however, was the reactions of his Black Eagle students. Every single day they had gone above and beyond to make sure he was alright, offering to carry his books or get his lunch for him or even help him run his classes. Even Bernadetta and Linhardt had offered to help, though they had acted strangely about it, as though someone was watching them. It was weird, but Byleth had appreciated the help and decided not to question the behaviour in case it stopped. Why wouldn’t his students want to make sure he was alright?

As he arrived at his desk on his first cast-less Monday morning, he found a bouquet of red flowers and a box of his favourite chocolate waiting for him along with a note that simply read:

Good morning from the Black Eagles!

Unnoticed by Byleth, two pairs of eyes peeked over the nearby windowsill, watching him through the glass – one pair lilac blue, the other yellow-green. Ducking back down below the windowsill outside Byleth’s office, Edelgard turned to Hubert.

“Excellent work. If we keep this up, we’re sure to be Mr. Byleth’s favourite class! Let’s move onto phase 2.”

--

“Psst, Mari.”

Marianne looked up at Leonie, checked to see if Byleth was paying attention – he was busy trying to pick a chocolate from the giant box he’d brought into class with him – and back to Leonie.

“Did I do something wrong…?”

“What?” Leonie frowned. “No, I was gonna ask if you noticed something weird about our class lately.”

Marianne tilted her head to one side. “You mean how Hilda got out of that test by ranting about equality?”

“No.”

“How Dimiti accidently broke a chair in half when he tried to pick it up and then cried?”

“No, not that either.”

“How you fainted the other day at gym when Ingrid –”

“No! No, I meant with the Black Eagles.”

“What do you mean?”

Leonie cast a conspiratorial glance around the room. “They’ve been acting strangely. Yesterday I saw Dorothea clean the whiteboard without anyone asking her to, and this morning Linhardt held the door open for Mr. Byleth. Linhardt! The same guy who laughed when I fell over on the front steps!”

Lysithea had picked up her chair and glided across to them as Leonie had been speaking. “That was pretty funny. But I know what you mean. They’re up to something, if you ask me.”

“Exactly!” Leonie leaned in and lowered her voice. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to investigate.”

At the front of the classroom, where Bernadetta was helping Byleth write something on the board, Edelgard turned back in her seat to face the front and folded her hands in front of her. Hubert watched her.

“Well, Edelgard?”

“It’s time.” Her eyes darkened. “Phase 2: Operation Eliminate the Enemy begins.”

--

The day couldn’t be going any better for Byleth. His students had behaved, Edelgard had brought him a cake baked by the class that was surprisingly edible, and he hadn’t had to do any extra work at all. It was the final class of the day and Edelgard herself was helping him carry his books.

“Thanks for cake, Edelgard,” he was saying as they walked. “You really didn’t have to, though.”

“Of course we had to!” she replied with a smile. “After that terrible accident you had, it’s the least we can do to make sure you’re recovering well.”

Byleth shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. And really, I’m feeling much better now. Though it would help if Claude didn’t keep reminding me…”

A shadow fell across Edelgard’s face. “That Claude… He and his class have shown a disrespect that cannot be tolerated.” She suddenly brightened, catching Byleth off guard. “I’m certain he will come to see the error of his ways soon.”

Before he could ask her what she meant by that, they had reached the classroom and Edelgard held the door open him. Thanking her, Byleth stepped through the doorway and stopped.

There was no number count on the whiteboard, no one shouting anything as he entered, silence instead of a poor mimic of some meme or another. In fact, his classroom was almost empty; just seven students sat at their desks.

“Is everything alright, Mr. Byleth?” Edelgard asked him as she placed his books down on the front desk. “You look worried about something.”

It dawned on him that the only students currently present where all Black Eagles students. He felt the colour leave his face.

“…Where are the other students…?”

Hubert offered him a strange smile. “Why, I’ve no idea. Perhaps they all decided to skip class? Right, everyone?”

A series of non-committal nods from the other students. Byleth gave each of them a look over: Linhardt was half-asleep, Ferdinand was grinning brightly, Bernadetta was hiding, all normal enough. Petra, Dorothea, and Caspar, however, looked oddly uncomfortable, and Caspar wouldn’t meet Byleth’s gaze. Before he could start an interrogation, Edelgard stepped in front of him, her smile one of perfect innocence.

“Class is about to start, Mr. Byleth. I’m sure the others will arrive soon.”

“Uh… Right.” He moved back to his desk and began to absently sift through his books, trying not to think too much about the fate that may have befallen his students. Maybe Edelgard was right and they were just late…

The classroom door burst open and Seteth stormed in.

“MR. BYLETH.”

This was gonna be bad.

“Are you, by any chance, aware of the chaos your students are currently wreaking across the school?!”

“It’s not Mr. Byleth’s fault!” Edelgard stood up. “I’ve been with him the whole time, he had nothing to do with… whatever is going on.”

The look on Seteth’s face was one of pure outrage. “So, you’re telling me you had absolutely no idea about the mass flash mob that Claude started on the school’s oval that disrupted half the school’s students? Or the fact that Dimitri and Felix started a brawl outside the school entrance, and that Sylvain went around taking bets on who would win?! OR that almost all of your students were found to be in possession of and affected by illicit substances?!” He’d almost run out of breath and his face was red; with his green hair, he reminded Byleth of a tomato. “Are you saying you had no idea about any of this??”

Byleth swallowed.

“Not a clue.”

Seteth said nothing. Instead, as the eight Black Eagles students and Byleth watched, he crossed to the window and opened it. The heavy beat of electronic music pulsed into the classroom, accompanied by a chorus of yelling and cheering. Byleth crossed to the window, readied himself for the hell awaiting him, and looked outside.

Half of the courtyard was occupied by the world’s sloppiest flash mob with Claude himself in the middle. He seemed to be coming up with dance moves on the spot while the other Golden Deer students tried to copy him, save for Lorenz, who was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands. The other half of the courtyard was comprised of the Blue Lions, who were half-heartedly trying to pry apart Felix and Dimitri. Sylvain was taking selfies as the two attempted to pull the other’s hair. Byleth turned away from the window.

“A number of students admitted to consuming cakes laden with, Seiros forgive me, drugs,” Seteth went on. “At this stage, two thirds of your entire class could be suspended. Well? Anything to say for yourself?”

Byleth looked at Edelgard. The expression on her face was unreadable.

“Mr. Seteth.” She spoke in her most formal tone. “Our teacher is innocent of all responsibility. Today’s events show how utterly undeserving the other houses are of our teacher’s attention. I hereby request that only Black Eagles students be granted the honour of being taught by Mr. Byleth.”

The mentioned Mr. Byleth, with two-thirds of his class high on questionable brownies and the other third ruled by an evil genius, suddenly wondered how difficult it would be to just run away and live the rest of his life in hiding in Almyra.