i don't want to live in a world without you

Chapter 1

This story is an ongoing commission, updated whenever the client gets new chapters. Obviously, it's an incest thing, so don't like, don't read. Includes a fair bit of smut and spoilers, serves as a fix-it where Byleth saves Jeralt, and takes place in the Crimson Flower route.

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Byleth stays right by his side through the night, waiting for him to wake up again. Manuela has promised her that he will wake up again, and even told her that she does not have to stay with him, but she does appreciate Byleth's willingness to watch over Jeralt while she gets some sleep. It's been a busy day for her, and she has completely exhausted herself trying to make sure that he does not slip away from them.

He could have died today. Or, he did, for a second there, or Byleth thinks he would have, but she used what power she had to try and reset things, to try and prevent it. It was not enough to save him completely , but it was enough to save him, and her father managed to make it out with a near-fatal wound. Today's villains escaped, but right now, all that matters to Byleth is that her father is alright, that he's breathing and that he's going to wake up.

Manuela has managed to heal him as much as her magic will allow, and completely exhausted herself in the process. He is still looking at quite the recovery time, but that beats what he would be looking at without her help. Perhaps he would not be looking at anything at all, but Byleth was able to stop the bleeding on her own, once "Monica" had been driven off.

And now she has to wait for him to wake up, so that she can see for herself that he's okay. She isn't as gifted a healer as Manuela, or even some of her students, but she is going to stay right by his side and do anything and everything in her power to make sure that he wakes up and that he's okay. Byleth absolutely refuses to lose him, because he is all that she has in the world.

Realistically, she knows that that is not true. She has her job here and she has her students. If Jeralt had died today, she would be taken care of by the church. Though she is not sure about Rhea, and becomes less sure about her every day, she has a feeling that, if she had been orphaned today, she could have counted on the church to always look after her. Jeralt isn't everything that she has in the world, but Byleth knows that without him, life would hardly feel worth living.

She loves her father far too much; she's known that for a few years now, but things did not start to escalate until recently. When they came here and everything in her life began to change, when she realized that he, her only constant, had begun drifting away from her with work, she couldn't help herself. And she's changed a lot since their time on the road, her childhood that she hardly remembers and her young adult years, standing at his side as an emotionless mercenary.

She's changed a lot, and those changes allowed her to act on her feelings, something that she had never done before. That night, she'd allowed herself to kiss him and then, just like that, she brought him back to her. Except, just like that, everything had changed again, but this time, it was a change that she welcomed. Her father became more than just her father to her, and if he had died today, she would not have just lost her family, but her love as well. Her other half.

Of course, she knows that it's unusual. She may have grown up isolated, but she understands how family is supposed to work, and she understands that familial love and romantic love are supposed to be two very separate things. She also understands that lust should not factor into familial love at all, but sometimes, when she trais with him, she wonders how she is supposed to feel anything but lust.

Now that their relationship has turned physical, it becomes at once easier and more difficult to communicate with him. When she struggles to express herself verbally, she takes him to bed, sneaking off with him to hopefully show him with her body but, at the same time, he can use her weakness for him against her, which she knows is hardly fair, but in the moment, it is hard to realize that's what's happening and to tell him off for it.