#Rodrigue and Jeralt BroTP

[msbluebell]

In the captured!AU, let‘s pretend for a moment that Jeralt didn’t die. He wouldn’t just be protective-dad, he‘d be livid-almost blind with fury-dad. Then upon being reunited with his kid he would be nothing short of a supportive father helping his child through a horrible trauma.

Ooooooooooooooooooh ho ho. You. You keep talking Anon, because this prompt is as delicious as Mac and Cheese.

Jeralt has always been silently protective of Byleth. He once set a building on fire, faked his death, and ran off for twenty years just to protect Byleth from Rhea. Byleth is his ONLY child, one of the last things he has of his wife, and many people in game remark how openly proud of his child he is and how much he very obviously loves them. Jeralt may not be the most emotional parent, but he’s a loving, reasonably protective, good father.

So if he survived Monica’s assassination attempt (which I’m going to say still happened, but he survived because Monica’s aim went off when Byleth tried to interfere and she only wounded him) and made it to the war he’d be...destroyed for lack of a better term. 

I find it funny that English doesn’t have a word for parents that outlive their children. We have one for a child that outlives their parent, and a spouse that outlives their spouse, but we don’t have one for a parent that outlives their child. I think we need one, because I can’t imagine something so painful. You can move on from a spouse, but moving on from your child’s death? That’s the kind of bitter, stinging, empty pain that I think would be so difficult that for some it would be impossible. Yeah, we should have a word for that. The Germans have a word, Verwaiste Eltern,because of course they do, they have a word for everything. I once saw a Duke article that argued we should use the word Vilomah, because we use the term widow, which is Sanskirt.

Either way, I think the pain of a parent losing their child is so devastating that it deserves it’s own word. Or...maybe...the reasons we don’t have a word is because, for a loving parent, the pain is so great that they can’t even bare to imagine a word for it.

Jeralt is probably one of those parents that never even considered outliving his child.

In the game he repeatedly mentions his own death, and makes plans and takes steps for if HE dies. But he never once brings up Byleth’s possible death. I think, in his mind, while he OBJECTIVELY knows it’s a possibility, he never once registered it as something that could legitimately happen. For him, Byleth’s death is a far off thing that’s going to happen LONG after he’s gone. He’s taking steps to ensure Byleth has a long and happy life. He’s giving them his wife’s wedding ring, the only other memento he has of her, so they can start finding their own happiness and setting up their own life. These aren’t the actions of a man ready to lose his child at all.

So when the war happens, and Byleth is lost, he’s devastated. 

He’s probably not worried at first, because it’s a battle and Byleth is strong and they’ve probably just been delayed in their escape. They’ll be here soon. The safe spot is good for days.

Then a week passes.

Then two.

It’s not safe to stay in this spot anymore, and Byleth still isn’t here, and there’s a pit forming in his stomach, and his men are starting to think it’s maybe time to tell their bass that there MIGHT be a possibility that maybe, if it’s been this long, their kid ain’t coming back. But no one wants to outright SAY it because, well, how do you tell a man his only child might have been killed?

They’re forced to flee, after a while, because with Imperials marching everywhere and looking for enemies it’s just not safe to stay in one spot for too long. So they run.

As time goes by, Jeralt is starting to think his kid may not be coming back.

Jeralt isn’t an emotional man. He’s always had trouble expressing his feelings. He’s not the type to burst into tears, or plan a wedding the moment someone he knows starts liking someone else. Jeralt is made of quite things, quite moments. He’s the warm hand on your head, the cup of morning coffee that gets you through the day, the small and proud smile when you win, and the shoulder to cry on when you lose. He’s a quite parent that’s quietly supportive and honest when you need him to be.

But when he realizes Byleth isn’t coming back, he cries. It’s not loud sobbing, but a stream of quite, steady, tears that roll down his face. He doesn’t do it in front of his men, he waits until he’s alone, sitting on a rock and facing away from their direction, and he whips them away before he goes back to them. 

(He didn’t need to. His eyes are red. They know. But they’re gracious enough not to comment)

He goes back to try and find the body, when it’s safe, but he never does. And it’s that just cruel? First life takes his kid and now he can’t even bury them. He at least got to bury his wife.

Jeralt decides that, if he can’t even bury the body, than he might as well try to do something Byleth would want him to do, since they’re not here anymore. He’s lived twenty years protecting Byleth, he can spend the rest of his years fighting for the life they’d have lived. The only thing he can think of is protecting those students of theirs, so he heads towards Faerghus.

What he finds is a damn mess.

The King Regent has been assassinated, and now Cornelia is in charge, and Dimitri was supposedly killed. Half the country is sworn to the Empire and the other half is putting up a resistance. Jeralt sighs heavily and points his men toward the resistance, where he thinks Byleth’s students would be set up. He’s pretty sure the two lords in charge of it are parents of her students.

He’s welcomed by Rodrigue with a sad smile. Rodrigue knows what it’s like to lose a child (and, oh, what pain that causes. It swallows you whole. And nothing makes it better. You can tell yourself they died for something good, that they died right, but that only makes your other child hate you), and he’s very sympathetic. He wouldn’t have said no to the extra forces even if Jeralt wasn’t there, but his heart is soft for another parent that’s known such loss.

Jeralt serves as both a tactical adviser and a captain for his forces. He also helps Rodrigue and Gustav try to track Dimitri (Byelth had really liked that kid, he remembers. Byleth had mentioned him a few times, anyway, which was a lot for them, so Jeralt figures there must have been a lot of fondness there. He doesn’t have the whole story, and now he kinda wishes he did so he’d have something to say, but he’ll have to contend with trying to find the kid), but the kid is slippery as and eel and good at staying hidden. Jeralt is honestly impressed that the kid is so good at surviving when the entire Empire is hunting him down. Even HE can’t find the kid and he’s good at his job.

He tries to take care of the other students in the meantime. He tries to visit them when he can, check up on them, make sure they’re healthy. It’s what Byleth would want. And, to be honest, he’s growing quite fond of them himself. Annette is a sweet girl, and so is Mercedes. And Ashe is a good kid that he can see going far. Felix is intense, but Jeralt knows deep down he cares a lot, maybe too much, and he’s just guarding his heart. Sylvain he keeps out of trouble too, because he seems to find it a lot. And, really, they don’t fill the hole Byleth left behind, but they numb it for a bit and that’s the best he can ask for.

He never gets over Byleth’s death, and the lack of funeral, but he’s able to at least live a meaningful life for them. That’s not enough, but it’s something.

Then, one day, Rodrigue comes to him with a letter from the Alliance.

Byleth is alive.

Byleth is ALIVE.

His child is alive.

Claude wrote out all the details from his “reliable source I have in Enbarr”. Byleth was captured in the battle five years ago after falling off a cliff and being knocked unconscious. They’ve been held in solitary confinement in the top of a tower in Enbarr for the last five years. The reasons no announcement from the Empire has been made is because Edelgard is keeping them as her personal prisoner and not a political one, and the reason his spies haven’t found out about this sooner is because Byleth is confined to that single room with no access to the outside world, no windows to spy through, and no one but the most trusted staff allowed within a tower full of traps and mazes. Apparently, according to Claude, only Edelgard’s inner circle are even allowed to deliver meals.

Jeralt is...livid to say the least.

Rodrigue is barely a third of the way through the letter, reading it to a horrified council, when Jeralt slams his hands on the table and throws himself up, knocking back his chair. He’s marching out the room in moments. When Rodrigue asks where he’s going he just gruffly and furiously spits out, “Enbarr.”

It takes all of Rodrigues power to stop him, furiously chasing after the enraged man and trying to talk reasons and sense into him. Telling him that he can’t go alone or he’ll die, and that they need to increase their army, and that Gustav found another lead on Dimitri so give them time to get him, and the Alliance and they could combine forces, and they’ve gotten into contact with Seteth recently so they could gather the remaining Knights of Seiros. The’ll rescue Byleth, that will be a top priority, but they need TIME and FORCES.

Jeralt is not having it. He argues back. That’s his KID in there, trapped like some sort of...of...of PET. They’ve been stuck there for YEARS while he’s been wasting time. And you wouldn’t be so calm if that were GLENN.

A silence falls over them, and Jeralt realizes he’s made a terrible mistake.

He sighs, rubbing his forehead. He knows that was uncalled for. That was massively uncalled for. He says that, and he apologies. But Rodrigue shakes his head, saying he’s right, if that were Glenn he’d be acting like this too, and there’s no need to apologize, and he’s heard worse from Felix anyway (and Jeralt should really get those two to actually sit down and TALK sometime before it’s too late). Jeralt says that there is, because Rodrigue is right, he can’t get Byleth out on his own. It’s just...that’s his KID. That’s his kid and he thought they were DEAD and now they’re ALIVE and they’re being kept as a PET away from them and he can’t stand it.

Rodrigue puts his hands on Jeralt’s shoulders and promises that they’re going to get Byleth back. That it will be one of the first things they do. He swears his life on it.

Jeralt nods and says the same about Dimitri.

Turns out, Rodrigue was right to stop him, because a few weeks later they’re at Garreg Mach, and both Byleth AND Dimitri are there, showing up together like ghosts returning from the dead.

And, shit, both kids have had a rough time of it. Dimitri is half mad and feral from being hunted in the woods for five years, and some clearly unresolved issues have only made him worse than ever. And he’s glad that Rodrigue is still holding up the front in Faerghus because he doesn’t want him to see his kid like this.

Byleth isn’t much better. They’re not half mad like Dimitri, but captivity wasn’t a good look on them. They’re wearing Empire Red silks and they’re pale as a ghost. They can’t stand outside too long without turning pink as a big, but they can’t stand to stay inside either. They won’t even sleep in their room anymore, taking up a spot in the chapel. And Dimitri is always standing by them too, half mad but ready to skewer people at a moment’s notice if Byleth asks it. 

It’s...hard for him to see his kid like that.

He can’t huge his kid for too long anymore, because they don’t like feeling trapped. So even though he wants to hold them tight and never let go, he has to let go quickly or they’ll start to panic, and that will set Dimitri off, and he’s like a guard dog as it is.

Most nights Jeralt sleeps in the chapel with Dimitri and Byleth (though he has yet to see Dimitri actually sleep. It’s more like he just stands there, looming over everything. It’s unnerving, downright disturbing, and Jeralt is legitimately worried that Dimitri may have trained himself to sleep standing up or something. Or worse, not sleep at all. It explains why he’s gone mad for damn sure, and he makes a not to try and pump Chamomile in that kid and try to get him a nap because maybe that’ll help calm him down. It helps Byleth get to sleep these days. Lavender and Chamomile. And him being there). Byleth doesn’t really wake up screaming from nightmares, but when they do wake up they always end up panicking for a moment before looking around, making sure there’s sunlight and a place to escape. It breaks his damn heart.

He has to help Byelth get used to sunlight again. They need limited time, even though all they seem to want to do most days is lay in the grass. He has to herd them back in though, before they’re burned. But every day they get a little more time. It’s slow going, but he thinks it helps. 

Still, he can’t help but hate Edelgard. He has his kid back, but Goddess above, look at them. Dimitri and Byleth are both a wreck at best, and he and the others have to take care of them and get them back on their feet for the battles ahead (which is hard, because Dimitri only listens to Byleth, and sometimes even that isn’t reliable if he gets too lost on the battlefield. Still, it looks like for the most part Byleth has got Dimitri’s recovery in their hands, and Jeralt has Byleth’s so it’s FINE).

When the day comes, he’ll kill that Edelgard woman himself if she even looks at Byleth wrong. He’s going to destroy that tower and scatter it’s stone across the seas. 

He’s going to help these kids get better, and rub it in the world’s face. He’ll look every god in the eye and spit in their face before he lets anything bad happen to them ever again.