Chapter Text
In the calamitous aftermath of the day that the Professor loses her father, a murderer is dragged back to the monastery and imprisoned, and you see yourself in her eyes.
The Ingrid you see in her eyes is no longer the Ingrid you see in the mirror, of course – even with just two short months since you joined Edelgard and her Eagles, you have come to realize many new things about yourself and the world in that time, and the look in your own eyes betrays these revelations despite your best efforts. No, the Ingrid in Monica’s eyes is one far more familiar to you; it is the look of an Ingrid who lived only to fight and die for a king you no longer think you know, an Ingrid who loved only because it was all she had ever known and all she had been permitted to know since birth, an Ingrid who you have spent almost all of your life living as and yet never truly felt was you. When you arrived at the monastery, you were a weapon, both of war and of influence, only fit to be wielded by others, and the look in your eyes then was “that of a girl who knew neither hope nor hopelessness, but rather only the dull gray of duty” – Dorothea’s words; you have apparently somehow “landed a leading role in Edie’s opera,” whatever that means. All that is to say some dark part of you recognizes the expression of terror-flecked determination on Monica’s face as the Professor drags her into the dungeons of Garreg Mach, and the image sticks in your mind during the strange days that follow, as Professor Hanneman gives hastily prepared tactics lectures to a worried Black Eagle cohort and Edelgard stalks the halls of the monastery in a silent fury.
●●●
When the Professor – Byleth, as she insists you call her – first arrived, your instinctive response was discomfort, followed by envy. After overcoming her off-putting first impression, you realized she was perhaps the perfect knight – she did her duty to the church without question, and seemed unfettered by that which whirled within you, those desires which no one had ever even acknowledged you might have and which you tried your hardest to shut out and forget. If only you were a woman like that, you would not even have pride to swallow before you shut up and did your due as a good daughter and married to ensure the safety and prosperity of Galatea, you remember thinking bitterly. But as was being driven home during this somber week, nothing could have been farther from the truth.
The first cracks in the perfectly sculpted knight you had built out of Byleth began to show in the Verdant Rain Moon. You, Felix, and Sylvain assisted the Black Eagles on their assignment that month. At the summit of Conand Tower, when Miklan spat his venomous words at Sylvain, Byleth’s hands trembled with fury and her jaw clenched tight enough that you feared for her teeth. The emergence of the Black Beast from the hatred that Sylvain had secretly hoped might still be a brother to him seemed to calm her somehow, but in the aftermath, she had seemed more human again, gently seeing to Bernadetta where some rubble had grazed her temple and standing next to Sylvain with a comforting hand on his shoulder as he clutched the cloth-wrapped Lance of Ruin, the two of them staring out into the rain over the edge of Conand Tower in silence. To your surprise, out of the three Blue Lions present, Felix had seemed to be the most affected by the whole ordeal, and he initiated his transfer to the Black Eagles before your bedraggled party had even returned to Garreg Mach. Less surprising was Sylvain’s transfer a week later, but the look of intense contemplation on his face as he did so was not one you’d seen him wear often.
The Horsebow Moon was where the façade fully crumbled. Precious Flayn, who treated Byleth almost like a big sister, disappeared halfway through the month, and a sense of dread began to worm its way into the air of Garreg Mach. Even you, who barely saw Byleth outside of any incidental overlapping meals in the dining hall, could tell how heavily the disappearance weighed on her. Only Seteth was more upset, and it became an all-too-common occurrence to encounter the two of them searching every corner of the monastery even late at night. To your shame, you spent much of this month away from the monastery – Edelgard and the rest of the Eagles conspired to fabricate an excuse to assist you and Dorothea with a matter of great personal embarrassment regarding a would-be husband towards the end of the month. As a result, you and the Eagles returned from that catastrophe only a few hours before Byleth found Manuela half-dead on the floor of Jeritza’s room. You were on your way back from the sauna when a frantic Edelgard, Manuela cradled in her arms, nearly collided with you in her haste to reach the infirmary. Fatigued as you were, you grabbed Lúin and met Edelgard in the infirmary, and from there the two of you rushed down the secret passage and joined the rest of the exhausted Eagles in their battle against the avatar of death itself. Your exhaustion nearly proved your undoing, as the great scythe of the Death Knight would have taken your head from your shoulders but for the combined efforts of Edelgard and Byleth, who threw themselves in front of you in all of their bloodied glory and battered his defenses with unrelenting fury. He could not withstand their combined assault and Warped away, and your cohort was left with two unconscious girls to ferry out from those foul catacombs and back into the light. One of the two, of course, was Flayn, who was greeted with much joy and relief at her relative safety. The other was a girl named Monica.
●●●
The girl who claimed the face and identity of Monica von Ochs unsettled many, including yourself, but none were more obviously affected than Edelgard, whose side the strange girl attached herself to immediately upon her release from the infirmary. Where before you had rarely ever seen Edelgard without the shadow of Hubert at a respectful distance from her side, Monica now hung off Edelgard’s arm, taking up residence in the Imperial Princess’ personal space like no one else dared to do. She played up their familiarity to a degree that would have made Dorothea jealous, constantly laughing that shrill, mocking laugh that made your spine crawl almost as much as Dimitri’s darkest moments did. Later on, you would look back and find a grim amusement in how accurate your first impression of this behavior had been: she reminded you of a cuckoo forcing its way into the Eagles’ nest and monopolizing the attention of their mother. Yet this strange new addition to the Eagles did not preclude your deepening bonds with many of their number. Ferdinand made several well-meaning if overbearing attempts to discuss farming techniques he had researched after hearing of how the barren lands of Galatea drove you to consider such suitors as the one you had chased away together, you formed a strange understanding with Leonie over your mutual admiration of Byleth’s prowess in battle, and – in what was perhaps the strangest conversation of your life – Hubert alluded that some terrible fate might befall any similar suitors of ill repute who pursued you should he or his lady become aware of them. Your loyalty to Dimitri could only hold out for so long in the face of these new connections. Following a disastrous loss to the Eagles in the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, you found yourself in the company of Lysithea and Mercedes outside Byleth’s office, requesting to join her class.
Joining the Eagles was a strange shift in environment, trading the sullen atmosphere that blanketed itself over the Blue Lions in the wake of Felix and Sylvain’s departures for a semi-controlled chaos that only Byleth seemed able to rein in. The facade that was Monica became even more incoherent up close, oscillating between outright maliciously tormenting Edelgard when she thought you were not within earshot to the sickly sweet fabrication of inseparability whenever another person was around the pair, but you got the sense that both personas were equally false as part of some greater game of identity that Monica alone seemed to be playing. The culmination of all these new social stimuli coming together took the form of a gradual revelation that had been a long time coming: at some point you had stopped being the Ingrid Brandl Galatea (Crest of Daphnel first, betrothed of Glenn Govan Fraldarius second, person with aspirations and dreams of her own last) that your old friends and family had thought they knew. You were steadily becoming someone more similar to the valiant knight that Dorothea waxed poetic about from time to time, or to the brave woman you saw reflected in Edelgard’s eyes on the rare occasion that you could speak with your house leader without the cloying presence of Monica von Ochs.
●●●
You had only a short stretch of stolen time to revel in the newfound camaraderie with the Eagles, as the Red Wolf Moon brought with it worried whispers of some strange occurrences in Remire, the village where Byleth and her father had been discovered by the three scions of Fódlan’s nations just moons before. As with any disruptions to the safety of the peoples of Fódlan, your class was dispatched to see to these rumors, but you arrived at the scene of a slaughter.
Ash, screams, and a scent too sweet for blood but too foul to be anything but death filled the air as you scouted ahead of the main body of the Eagles, accompanied by Petra. Though mostly obscured by billowing black smoke, you could make out crowds of villagers clashing in the town square as the buildings around them burned. The feelings of shock and fear that shot through you were clearly mirrored on Petra’s face, and the two of you returned immediately to Edelgard and Byleth to report your findings. Byleth’s concerned expression hardened into resolve as you relayed your findings, and she immediately set to dividing up your class. She assigned you to hunt down whoever or whatever was causing the mass madness alongside Felix, Lysithea, Hubert, and Monica. While she split the rest of the class in half to perform rescue and triage, you and your unit charged off into the flames.
As you approached the carnage, you realized that your initial scouting had failed to truly capture the extent of the calamity. The crowds you had seen earlier were not simply clashing. Some villagers savaged others, ripping and tearing at flesh with whatever mauling power they could muster from their bare hands. Others clawed at their own skin, like animals with parasites that knew only that something was inside and needed to be out . All of the people you ran past (if there was even anything left that could still be called people ), wore the same crazed expression: a mixture of fear and hatred, with glazed over eyes and foam on their teeth.
The rest of your memories of that fell day are fragmented and shattered: flashes of bloodied steel and thick miasma, the smell of burning flesh, the feeling of clutching Lúin in both hands and the flare of your Crest, the taste of ash mixing with your own blood in your mouth, the sound it made when you had to cut down a villager to save a little girl you found hiding under an overturned wagon. Throughout it all, Felix remained strong, but you could see a look in his eyes that suggested his mind was elsewhere even as his body carried out the motions of war. (You spoke to him in the aftermath, lying next to him in the infirmary, and he said only “Promise me you’ll never be like him, Ingrid.” You were unsure who he meant, and he declined to elaborate.) Hubert seemed predictably desensitized to the horrors unfolding around you, as did Lysithea, until your group reached the square, and beheld the perpetrators of the atrocity: a host of black-cloaked mages like the ones you had slain when rescuing Flayn and Monica. Behind the mages hovered a wizened figure with a bulbous, misshapen head, who had skin like bleached bone. The appearance of the mages evoked some hidden disgust in Hubert and Lysithea, and the pair unleashed fury in the form of dark magic upon them in response. The twisted figure simply deflected the assault with the wave of a hand, and in the same breath proclaimed himself to be ‘Solon, the savior of all’, before returning the salvo twofold. You and Felix ducked into cover, while Hubert Warped himself and Lysithea away from the site of the attack, but the barrage clipped Monica and sent her sprawling. Despite your dislike of her, your legs moved before your mind did, and you dove out of cover, dragging her behind a smoldering pile of thatch just as miasma draped over where she had fallen. You braced for a reprimand – based on her interactions with Edelgard, it would not have been too far from expectation for her to bite the hand you grabbed her with – but she just looked shocked and confused, which at the time you attributed to the chaos around you. You had more pressing things to worry about in the moment; your selflessness had not gone unpunished. In saving her, you had taken the brunt of the attack meant for her. You struggled to breathe through the burning chemical smoke filling your lungs, and your vision went dark as you toppled to the ground.
You did not fully regain awareness for almost two full days after Remire. From what Manuela told you as you lay in the infirmary cot, Caspar had seen you fall and pushed forward in a wild charge to cover Linhardt, who Warped you away to relative safety. After recovering you, the Eagles and Captain Jeralt had pushed forward and routed the mages but failed to capture or kill Solon before he Warped away. The mysterious Flame Emperor had apparently also been present, but only appeared during the cleanup to disavow any connection to the atrocities committed. You were inclined to believe them – the Flame Emperor seemed to have a flair for more theatrical demonstrations rather than senseless slaughter, given the incident during the Goddess’ Rite of Rebirth. In a moment of delirious humor brought on by the pain medication Manuela had fed you earlier, you wondered if Dorothea could be the Flame Emperor, and even voiced this suspicion to Manuela, before collapsing in giggles at her perplexed concern.
●●●
A week passed before Manuela cleared you to return to classes. The Eagles greeted you with a cheer and crowded around you, chattering about the events of the last week and expressing their relief at your good health. Caspar regaled you with the tale of his heroic battle with the Death Knight, Mercedes reassured you that your efforts had saved many innocent lives, and Edelgard surprised you by giving you a hug, which up until that moment you had thought to be a gesture unknown to her. Even Felix was glad to see you, although he did his best not to show it.
In the wake of Remire, Monica seemed determined to avoid your presence, and so you were able to get to know Edelgard more. The two of you shared tea once a week, and she would talk at length about her plans once she became emperor. During the first week of your teatimes, the two of you got onto the topic of the ill-fated proposal you had received months prior. With a fire in her eyes, she told you that she would forge a world free from the tyranny of Crests: a world where women would not need to marry to secure their future, a world where the life of a commoner would not be worth less than that of a noble, a world where children would not be caged and abused by the whims of the powerful. You must have seemed taken aback at this forceful proclamation, as she looked embarrassed until you assured her that you too believed a world like that could come to pass. Her fervor had reached into your heart, and the next time you shared tea you offered to pledge your service to her and her cause. To your surprise, her face fell. In the gentlest voice you had ever heard her use, she told you that she could not accept.
“I aim to build a world for you and those like you, Ingrid,” Edelgard said, a hint of melancholy breaking through her practiced performance. “And I would prefer that you are around to see that world, rather than dragged down into the depths of history at my side.”
“But what am I to be, if not a knight in service of a cause? Yours is a dream worth dying for, Edelgard, and it would be no finer honor than to die for the world of which you speak,” you said, confused. You knew now that no matter how friendly Dimitri seemed whenever the two of you crossed paths you could never return to the empty oaths of cold Faerghus, not in the wake of Edelgard and her grand proclamations. But in spite of how you had changed over the past moons, those oaths still had their mark upon the heart that beat inside your chest.
“Cut your own path, Ingrid. You deserve a cause worth living for. With all that is to come, I fear that at the end of my story you would no longer recognize in me the emperor you swore to serve, and I know your honor would not permit you to break such an oath no matter the protestations of your heart.” She paused, smiling sadly, before shaking her head again. “Now, let us speak of a topic of less gloom. Our teach- no, our professor has asked me to help her select a representative for the White Heron Cup, and I confess I am at a loss. Might you know of any interested or able classmates of ours?”
You sagged back into your chair, stunned by her rebuttal and thrown off-balance by the sudden shift of topic. Feeling lost, you continued along more frivolous lines of conversation until a thought struck you suddenly; with the uncharacteristic absence of Monica, this would be the perfect time to glean some insight into the girl’s strange behavior!
“Edelgard,” you said, your mind whirling through dozens of possible explanations, “You spend much time with Monica, but she seems to speak to you in a most unpleasant manner. Why do you tolerate such behavior?”
Edelgard grimaced. “I am afraid I am not at liberty to share the more granular details of the situation with Monica. Suffice it to say that the Empire and I allowed a great wrong to be done upon House Ochs in the past, and her attendance at the Officer’s Academy is part of my efforts to atone for that,” she said carefully. “If she is bothering you, I will speak to her at once.”
You shook your head, lost in thought as you pondered what Edelgard could possibly mean. Your contemplation was interrupted by the arrival of Annette, Mercedes, and the rest of the Black Eagle girls (minus Bernadetta, of course). They had come to rope you into preparations for the White Heron Ball, and Edelgard stifled a giggle as you were helplessly swept away with them.
●●●
The ball itself turned out to be far less stressful than the preparation had led you to believe. Dancing was one of the few stereotypically ‘noble’ activities you actually enjoyed, and you were able to talk Annette and Mercedes out of dressing you in the more extravagant outfits they had procured, leaving you relatively unimpeded by the Adrestian officer’s formal uniform that you ended up wearing. Dorothea had procured the outfit from Manuela, claiming that it would be the perfect way to “show Edie what she’s missing” after you related your teatime woes in her bedroom. Clad in red, gold, and black, you spent many a pleasant moment dancing with many of your schoolmates and each of your housemates – except Monica. She was present at the event, but sulked in the corner under the watchful glare of Hubert until the main hall began to quiet down and Ferdinand came over to talk to him, at which point she slipped through the main door of the cathedral. Curious, you excused yourself from your dance with Marianne and followed her outside. You stepped out into the gelid winter night just in time to see crimson hair disappear around the corner, towards the Goddess Tower. Rounding the corner, you made your way past the scattered few couples clustered around the base. Monica ducked under the chain that blocked the door, and you followed her in and further up the Tower.
You found Monica sitting with her feet dangling off the edge at the top of the Tower. She tensed up at the sound of your boots scraping the weathered stone floor, but slumped and rolled her eyes when she saw you. “Don’t you have some helpless damsel in distress to save?” she said sarcastically.
It seemed like she was trying to start a fight, so you ignored her. You walked up to stand beside her, looking out over the couples surrounding the base of the Tower. “You looked uncomfortable at the ball,” you said, a cautious tone to your voice. “Was Hubert bothering you? He was certainly giving you a foul look.”
“Yeah, I think Edel gave the order to make sure I couldn’t have any fun tonight.” She rolled her eyes again. “But that meant Cleo Minor had to spend the whole time watching me instead of indulging in that disgusting flirt arguing routine that Fancy Boy likes to do, so who really wins in the end?”
“Well, I, um…” Despite her cutting words, she sounded subdued, especially compared to her normal vicious demeanor. You decided to change topics, partly in an effort to distract her, but also in no small part because you had absolutely no clue to whom she was referring. “It’s a wonderfully clear sky tonight, isn’t it? Do you happen to have a favorite constellation, Monica?”
She shrugged. “Nah. We couldn’t see any stars from where I grew up.”
“Oh? Did you grow up in Enbarr then? Professor Hanneman said that the lights in the city make it hard to see the stars like we can out here.”
“Uh, sure, yeah.”
“Well, my favorite constellation is the Pegasus,” you said. In truth, there was no such constellation, but after actually talking with Monica, you could tell that the girl concealed some deep loneliness, and so you figured you might cheer her up at your own expense. Sure enough, she let out a cackle, the only genuine noise you had ever heard from her.
“You really are the most boring beast in this whole stupid monastery, aren’t you?” she said, still giggling. She seemed to have forgotten her earlier melancholy, so you tried not to take her commentary too personally.
“Beast?” you said. “I was unaware you were spending so much time with Felix.” She looked at you blankly.
“Who?”
“Felix? Our classmate? Dark blue hair, always training, always grumpy?”
“Oh, him . Nah, he just scowls at me every time I get close, so I couldn’t talk to him even if I wanted to.”
“I see,” you said, as you looked out over the few remaining people scattered below. You decided that you were clearly feeling very fatigued from the ball if you were seeing Edelgard speaking earnestly with Archbishop Rhea of all people. You looked closer – perhaps at a distance you had mistaken Flayn for the Archbishop? – but were jolted back to the conversation when Monica spoke again.
“What’s your problem, anyway?” she said, unsure. “You took a miasma for me during that shitshow with Solon, and now you’re following me and asking all these weird personal questions. Did Hubert put you onto this or something?”
“Any friend of Lady-”
“Yeesh, you beasts are so stuffy .” She cleared her throat and began to speak in an uncannily accurate impression of Hubert’s voice. “Lady Edelgard, might I remove this pitiful wench from your sight at once? Anything for you, Lady Edelgard!” She hacked up a glob of saliva and spit it off the edge of the tower, then continued in her normal voice. “I came out here because I was bored to death having to play fancy noble lady for all the beasts in there, and because the only reason any of you ever come to this part of the castle is because of that sickening love story Doro keeps yammering on about, so I thought I could finally have some peace and quiet, and then you show up because you hadn’t already ruined my life enough by making me owe you, so I can’t even hate you like with the rest of the beasts!” She seemed quite spent after all that, so the two of you sat in silence for a brief moment before you decided to try speaking again.
“You know, I didn’t save you just so you would owe me,” you said slowly, careful to avoid triggering another outburst. “You were in danger, and the kind of knight I aspire to be is one who doesn’t hesitate to put herself in danger to shield others from it.” There was a long pause.
“Huh,” Monica said. “Well, that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. If you’re throwing yourself into danger for some girl who you hate, who the hell is looking out for you?”
You let out a rueful laugh. “Edelgard told me something similar, actually. And ‘some girl who I hate’? I may find you abrasive at times but calling that hate would be quite a stretch.” Monica made an unpleasant face.
“Ugh. Even with your weird obsession with your false rules it still doesn’t make sense to do the dumb self-sacrifice act. You can’t help other people if you’re dead. And while you’re still a beast, you’re less disgusting than the rest of them, and you’d make a really ugly corpse.” You hummed thoughtfully.
“I- You are rather more insightful than you lead others to believe, La- sorry, Monica.” She preened at that, and you could not hold back a snort of laughter that morphed into a yawn. “Well, I think that is as good a sign as any that I should retire for the night. Good night, Monica,” you said. She swung her legs back over the tower and hopped down from her perch.
“’Night!” she said with a cackle, swiftly flung her arms around you, then skipped away down the stairs.
You stayed there, frozen in shock, for quite a while.