lionheart.

The fizzling silhouette of his father, riding up out of the foggy nothing to banish his and his mother's grief, was a sight first birthed out of a young and ignorant mind drowning deep in grief's haze. It was far too fragile a thing to survive the years as a real possibility, and was long since buried as a dream that was as fleeting as it was frequent.

But in a place like this, where the dead were neighbors and staff that waved to Ares in the halls, so too was that dream now suddenly alive again. A tempered mind had kept it from overtaking his thoughts in absence of any further signs, yet he couldn't stop it from beating at his stomach every time he cast his gaze out of a window or over the horizon. In such moments, he was again a boy, peering out from the grand windows of his grandparents' Leonster estate and rehearsing what things he would tell him.

Now, in the very moment that dream finally crossed the threshold of his thoughts to stand before him, he struggled to get a single word past his lips.

"So you truly are...!"

Even the mumblings sat as rocks in his thickened throat, and it was all he could do just to keep his breath, but at the Knight's -- his father's -- question, his mouth began to move on its own.

"It --" A small step forward was cut to a slight shift of his boots, the excitement instead finding its way into how his arms and back stiffened. "It has ever been the name you and Mother gave me: Ares, your son."

The thought of adding his mercenary title, the same that hadn't been given to anyone but their Crusader ancestor himself, had slipped his mind, and while he would later be kicking himself to ensure he not make that mistake again, there was no such frustration to be found on his face right now.

Eldigan is realistically hopefully. He wants more than anything for this to be Ares. But what if he's wrong? That thought scares him more than anything, more than the cold shadow of death that seems to linger close by. Ares remained in his thoughts as he died and as he was birthed anew in this world. It was his evermost wish to see him again.

How had he changed? What kind of life had he led? What expressions does he make nowadays?

But surely, surely, Ares must detest his father. A father who abandoned him so young. Eldigan's mind draws blood red when he tries to think of the fate of his family. A son such as that would likely never want anything to do with him or the name of Nordion.

But the youth responds, fumbling over his words, his face lighting up with emotion. Eldigan finds himself approaching already. The possibility that this is his son makes his heart race, his chest tight. He must confirm it for himself.

"It has ever been the name you and Mother gave me: Ares, your son."

Merely those words were enough joy to last for the remainder of Eldigan's life. That his son did not detest him but was so pure in direction.  Even a measured knight like Eldigan would have trouble containing his expression. "Allow me to get a better look at you," the words are fast, hurried. Before he knows it, Eldigan dismounts and nearly rushes forward toward Ares. 

But his steps are slow and careful. A father's remorse. Is he allowed to look upon this face? Finally reaching his son, he is astonished. They really do look alike.  "You have grown so much..." Eldigan continues. He feels it in his bones. This could be no one else. "Back then I could pick you up and carry you around." 

Would he be allowed to show affection to a long-lost son? Reaching up to pet Ares' golden locks, he realizes he's being silly. When will he gain another chance like this? It is Ares after all, not a mere stranger.

Eldigan pulls Ares in close, arms wrapping around his back. At least let him have this moment. "Ares, I am... so sorry. As a father. As a man. I failed you and your mother." His voice falters slightly. Even a knight can feel regret.  "I cannot imagine what you have been through to get here today. Ares, I am proud of you. Perhaps I am not allowed to be but I am."

"Never forget. I will always be your father."

Which the Lionheart did not take. Indeed, though he spoke his big words of challenge, his expression was soft, and distant, as though he were only nominally present in that moment, but his mind was elsewhere, faraway and long ago – and perhaps he was. Perhaps he was back in Agustria, when last they had seen each other; or even further back, when Sigurd had attended Eldigan's wedding to his lovely bride, and they'd shared a bottle of wine with Quan, and they three had been together and happy. 

Or perhaps even further back, when they were lads themselves, competing in a tourney not unlike this one for the favor of the young ladies of Belhalla, for the attention of nobles that might take them for squire. 

Sigurd laughed, and waved his hand before his friend's dreamy expression, slung his arm about the man's neck and tugged him close once before releasing, and, shifting his grip on the lance, lobbed it into the air. He scant flinched when it barely grazed the edge of the target, and grabbed another and launched immediately, it embedding itself a few inches inward. 

Usually, he is comfortable with putting up a wall. Very few and far in between ever see emotion crackle on the stone surface of his face. They only know the words of justice and the sword. That is how Eldigan likes it - to be in control. Never would he suggest otherwise, would he want anyone to see him being weak.

And that is why it becomes so comforting to have a friend who knows him. He and Sigurd and Quan - good friends who go all the way back - promising their lives against each other. Yes, their vow to help each other if the other were in trouble. That was one of the few things Eldigan could trust eyes closed. 

But Sigurd's laugh rouses him from his dreams of the past. They were intended to be in competition, after all. Even if Eldigan was happy, he had to stay on goal. He watches the lance fly and land with little expression.

Reaching for another lance, Eldigan smirks. "I was only holding back on your accord, Sigurd. Let us resume the match. Pay no heed to anything else." With a strong arm, he sends the spear soaring. 

When it was stated that Eldigan fell, it was before the time that the public opinion on Thracia had begun to change. Even now, there were few if any Thracians here in Fódlan. And yet this ghost must have found some reason to change.

“ Death alone isnt enough to change someone. I know that. ”  Leif's eyes sharpen to match his tongue. Eldigan spouts his own doses of wisdom, but that is not to say Leif lacks his own experiences either.  “ If it was, then history would not repeat its mistakes. We would have changed before now. But also, the way this monastery treats the wyverns would have also changed. ”

But it doesn't. It finds itself stuck in a loop for as long as Leif has been here, doomed to repeat itself over and over.

Yes, Eldigan could never forgive himself. When awakening again in Fodlan, he had only then come to realize what was taken from him. From whence before he was so eager to go to the slaughter, it was now that he understood what it was to hold something precious to oneself. To do everything in his absolute power to hold on. Eyes open again and fasten onto the young Leif. 

His tongue is not so dull, is it? The boy must have his own worldliness to offer if is not content with a few words. And so he will treat him like a peer, no less. But he cannot control how his eyes soften as he gazes downwards. Suddenly, he wishes to know. What has the young man gone through? What has his son gone through? The next generation was left to clean up the last. It is a burden too heavy to bear. One that is partly his fault. 

"You are correct, Leif," he responds. "But after arriving here, in this place called Fodlan, I suddenly became aware of the things that were truly precious to me. The things and people I genuinely wished to protect no matter what." Eldigan opens and closes his fist as if he is figuratively holding onto this very object. "Perhaps this is not an answer to your liking....but, my own death gave me the ability to have perspective."

That is not to say that everything was good and changed. Eldigan knew his time was over. His Agustria was gone. 

His reminiscence is broken with the approach of lionheart, the man who had demanded answers, then justice. A man so contrary to him, that he felt shackled merely standing besides him. He doesn’t turn to face him, but does not move away, taking just one more moment to think of his snowy homeland. 

Maybe it was the air of the peak doing this to him. Usually, he moved without hesitance. With precision and grace. But with the Silessian, he became a jumbled mess. At his wit's end and doing the unexpected. 

Yes, that was the sort of man Lewyn was. Someone who made you do the unanticipated. One who evoked these types of feelings, even if they were ones Eldigan wished he could forget in a heartbeat. Eyes close and his head turns away. But no. Somehow, despite all this, he would not want to forget the feeling of Lewyn's lips. The sound of his voice and the peculiar light that shone in his viridian eyes. None of it. Eldigan could forgo none of it. 

His expression softens from the usual stone of a man. It is a smile reserved for very few. But then again, he cannot help but hate himself for what he has done. A subtle color of blush comes to his face as Lewyn draws closer. Says his name.

"Lewyn," Eldigan begins, and his name is but an offering of peace. Of prayer and forgiveness. Of sanctity and hope. 

"You know what I wish to discuss," he says. "Please, I beg you not to play with me." 

His grip remains strong on the prince but a thought drops into his mind, a splatter of a raindrop. Would he not be the same as that evil and vile man if he allowed his anger to consume him? If he succumbed to the disasters of wrath, perhaps there was no turning back. He'd become a new man, a changed man. One who was only motivated by vengeance and madness.

But is that who Eldigan strived to be? Slowly, his grip loosened. Thinking back, this chance on a new life had changed his perspective somewhat. Yes, justice must always be served, but was that line of thinking exactly what got him killed?

He had to learn to cherish the few and times in between when he could be with the ones he loved. It was a difficult line to walk, and one that he still struggled with, but....  He could see it. Lewyn's words could ring true. It was not necessarily turning a blind eye but Eldigan understood, in a way, that his time was over. It was the next generation's turn. 

The idea of letting Duke Arvis run free mortified him though. It petrified him in the coldest of ways. Was he not a knight of Agustira? 

The two ideas conflicted. They could not flow together - identities battling in spirit. 

"Tell me, Lewyn..." Eldigan responds, his voice beginning to lower with fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the lack of control and belief. "How do you live like this? Knowing and yet doing nothing?" His grip lets go but he is frozen, belonging to another time and existing in borrowed space.

"I will not bother you," he continues, "but please, tell me," exasperation breaks into Eldigan's voice as it trembles ever so slightly. "Do you not think of your family? Of your countrymen? How do you live in peace, as you say?"

The last words come out more bitter than he intended. He will not keep Lewyn his prisoner, but he will not make any promises either. 

He remains silent for a long while, reminiscing on nothing at all, caught in the grips of someone who treats responsibility like a crown. Something endlessly heavy, but precious for reasons created only by those who see it. 

“I am dead, Eldigan. Lewyn has lived his life. The soul that left his body has been given another chance to claim his name.” The bard knows he is speaking riddles, but his voice sounds hollow to his own ears, and so endlessly tired. “And I’ll do anything I can to keep it.”

Normally, his words would be accompanied by a lilting near-question, as if he were asking if it was allowed for him to enjoy such a freedom. But instead, he speaks it as if swearing, as if he held the same strong convictions as the man before him- despite such emotion long having been burned away. “...I think of my family every day. I think of my countrymen, and of the past. But I don’t know how to get back to them, or if I am even allowed to.”

He tears himself from Eldigan’s grasp at last. “I can’t do anything about what has already happened, but I can pretend. And one day, I can only hope that I won’t be reminded of them anymore. It’s all I’m good at, running away.”

One final breath, the vulnerability of a young man torn from his life in full view of the lionheart. Then, as easily as one might speak, the mask returns. Lewyn? slaps both of cheeks, and gives Eldigan a smile. 

Gesturing to the fading backs of the other guests, he offers the knight a hand. “So, shall we?”

If he turns a blind eye to wrongs, does that make him responsible? The tome by his side indicated as such, binding him to a duty he does not have the tools to fulfill. A responsibility he had to bear, else no one else will, but he isn’t the correct person to entrust it to. He knows it is futile to argue with someone set upon burning the world with their own funeral pyre- he has seen the desperation of his own killer. Thus, slowly, as if in pain, he puts his hand to the other man’s wrist, unable to remove it, as with anything else that binds him.

“I cannot stop you,” he repeats, each word weighing heavier than he would like. The admittance of helplessness, of watching cycles repeat by those who believed their own cause was just. It wasn’t the point, he could claim, but he found he didn’t have the energy to. “But I warn you- if you pursue this path, you will find the result lacking. It will not bring anyone back, nor correct past wrongs. There is no greater justice in a crusade after death.”

The anger drains from him- the fear and emotion. He did not want to talk about this after such a debacle, a show of his true death, for everyone in that room to see. His voice is quiet again, almost pleading.

His grip remains strong on the prince but a thought drops into his mind, a splatter of a raindrop. Would he not be the same as that evil and vile man if he allowed his anger to consume him? If he succumbed to the disasters of wrath, perhaps there was no turning back. He'd become a new man, a changed man. One who was only motivated by vengeance and madness.

But is that who Eldigan strived to be? Slowly, his grip loosened. Thinking back, this chance on a new life had changed his perspective somewhat. Yes, justice must always be served, but was that line of thinking exactly what got him killed?

He had to learn to cherish the few and times in between when he could be with the ones he loved. It was a difficult line to walk, and one that he still struggled with, but....  He could see it. Lewyn's words could ring true. It was not necessarily turning a blind eye but Eldigan understood, in a way, that his time was over. It was the next generation's turn. 

The idea of letting Duke Arvis run free mortified him though. It petrified him in the coldest of ways. Was he not a knight of Agustira? 

The two ideas conflicted. They could not flow together - identities battling in spirit. 

"Tell me, Lewyn..." Eldigan responds, his voice beginning to lower with fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the lack of control and belief. "How do you live like this? Knowing and yet doing nothing?" His grip lets go but he is frozen, belonging to another time and existing in borrowed space.

"I will not bother you," he continues, "but please, tell me," exasperation breaks into Eldigan's voice as it trembles ever so slightly. "Do you not think of your family? Of your countrymen? How do you live in peace, as you say?"

The last words come out more bitter than he intended. He will not keep Lewyn his prisoner, but he will not make any promises either. 

Eldigan had decided to take some time out of his week to visit the local towns. After all, it was the only proper thing to do to understand the locals, the economy, the food, and the people who breathed them. As much as the monastery was a wonderful and well-oiled machine, it did not suit him to stay there all cramped up the whole time. He had to see the world around it and how the people fit into it. Fodlan sure was an interesting land, as far as he could see.

Today, he had received leave to go to a local establishment which he had received raving reviews about. Well, Eldigan was not as interested in the food but in understanding the local political climate. Rumors of heating escalations had led to the monastery and he intended to find out, regardless of whether the monastery cared. Being a knight of Seiros was one thing, but Eldigan was a knight of heart, and he always carried the duties of the people in his chest. 

Upon arriving at the scene, it seemed rather pleasant. Handfuls of people sat around awaiting their food while some played instruments or chatted excitedly. It was then that the lionheart noticed, in the far corner, Byleth was also there. Perhaps they had been enticed to come for the same idea? He certainly would like to say hello, especially after the arena. 

A waitress came out and handed a platter of food to a group sitting beside Byleth. Something seemed amiss. Frowns and growls resounded on their faces as they began shouting at the poor waitress, and then Byleth, who had already received their food. 

It happened as quick as lightning. Fists were pulled out, and fighting began. Eldigan was confident Byleth could handle themselves, but nevertheless, the protective instinct came on and he dashed over as soon as physically could. Catching a fist intended for Byleth's face, Eldigan punched one of the ruffians in the face. Tch. He hardly liked to brawl by hand. How unrefined.

"Are you alright, Byleth?" he asked. "How did this happen?"