The Bright Star [Fire Emblem: Three Houses AU]

To Die By the Blade (Yuri)

A/N: Oh my goodness a three week hiatus on this... Yes big apologies for that! I took this week off for vacation and the previous two weeks were used to wrap up this school year, so I should now be back to writing this on a consistent basis like I was before. Sorry for the hiatus, and back to writing!

Abyss had always been a real life puzzle for him, yet it was always solved with such ease once he got used to it.

Yuri Leclerc was born in the Kingdom to a prostitute who was working for money to provide for herself. Barely getting back on her feet, there was no way she could support a child with her spare savings. But she knew that she had to keep her son in her care once she saw that he bore a Crest at birth.

His life was just simply complicated. Yuri spent his childhood days watching his mother leave to attend events so she could get paid for showing up to, and he never really found out the details of what she did exactly there. The Kingdom really seemed to like it when Rosemary was able to put on a performance, but Yuri preferred to learn to read and write with the elderly man Rosemary took in to care for.

Yuri remembered Evander like he just saw him yesterday. He could see his elderly age through his body, with wrinkles scattered all across his arms and face. Evander was most likely an average man, never serving in the Kingdom army as he tended to his own life, as he never had any battle scars. His hair and beard were gray from age, and his eyes were a soft amber. He carried a dagger in his small, black scabbard, though that dagger, just like him, showed signs of age with all the scratches and rust that could be easily seen within the dagger.

Yuri held a dagger in his hand as he paraded around Abyss, that dagger being given to him by Evander. In Faerghus, a child could hold a weapon before they could read or write, and it was just a survival skill in the harsh weather. Yuri barely held on to any weapons, but once Evander gave him a dagger of his own, he kept it with him and wasn't afraid to use it. Unlike the iconic dagger that Evander had, Yuri's dagger didn't have obvious rust or scratches on it. In fact, it was more or less preserved by him, only being used to kill a few times before he focused on using magic and more advanced swords when he came to Abyss.

Evander not only helped him get on his feet in the real world, but saved his life when the deadly plague of Faerghus came around. Evander and his mother were unaffected, but Yuri was. But on the verge of death, Yuri still received care from the man that he trusted all his life, being kept as a core memory until Evander eventually died in his sleep from his old age. From then, it wasn't long until his mother died. Or at least he thought she died when she never came back to him and ended up having to wander around to Rowe in order to survive, where Count Rowe took him in as his adoptive son and gave him the name Yuri.

Yuri never learned of his biological father, but it wasn't like he cared to know him anyway. He considered Count Rowe to be the father figure that he never truly had. Rosemary showed no sign of having a Crest herself, so he assumed that he got the Crest from his father.

His life of crime began when a thief infiltrated upon his life as the count's son, threatening to kill him unless if Yuri were to complete his duties for him. Yuri accepted and took on the job: to kill Count Grégoire's daughter, Bernadetta.

At first he accepted the job, meaning that as long as he got the work done, he could live his life freely. He took on another fake name as he served as House Varley's assistant gardener, and befriended Bernadetta. But the friendship came to a point where he couldn't bring himself to kill her, tried to and hesitated, and got beat up in retaliation. He never learned what happened to Bernadetta afterwards, but he barely felt alive afterwards, so he assumed that Count Grégoire thought he was dead afterwards and so did Bernadetta.

Though he failed, the thief took him in as part of his gang, and like his natural instincts he obtained growing up as a poor boy in western Faerghus, he became more and more violent over time.

His behavior didn't cease when Count Rowe enrolled him at the Officers Academy as a member of the Blue Lions as the Class of 1178. Constantly involved in scandals around the monastery, he was a piece of work for the Church officials, Rhea herself getting involved. The last straw was when his class was assigned a mission to kill gang members with the Knights of Seiros, where he recognized the gang members he was supposed to kill as members of the gang he joined. Yuri killed the Knights that accompanied the class on their mission and was set to be executed by Church officials. But Aelfric practically saved his life, allowing him to come to Abyss to live instead, and Rhea agreed. However, she told him that while he was free to live in Abyss, that he had to keep an eye on Aelfric because his behavior was seemingly odd.

In truth, Aelfric was... quite odd as he expected when Rhea ordered him to watch out for him. He always felt a pressure when fighting to keep himself alive, knowing that Aelfric wouldn't be happy when he died, and it wouldn't be because his death was tragic, but he held a great power within his Crest, and his death would just let it go to waste.

Now he and the other Ashen Wolves, Constance, Hapi, and Balthus, lived in Abyss to escape the horrors of the outside world.

Yuri came up to a vendor on Burrow Street, giving the man a pouch full of gold. "I need a couple iron swords," Yuri said. "This should be enough gold for two."

"You got it," the vendor said, giving Yuri two swords. "I can give you a scabbard for each for a couple extra gold."

"No thank you, I have enough." Yuri took the swords and put them in one of his larger scabbards that could fit a few.

Constance found him in the street when Yuri was walking down more, approaching him from behind. "Yuri, what are you doing with those swords?" she asked him, shocked to see what he had bought from the vendor. "We haven't been assigned any missions or tasks from Lady Rhea or Aelfric recently. Or have we?"

"Oh no, we haven't. I would've known already if we were assigned one."

"Then what are the swords for?"

"They're clean swords that will be able to take the lives of two Church officials, ending their lives that were once free of sin. I only live down here to serve Lady Rhea, who wants me to notify her of Aelfric's odd behavior she noticed. But Lady Rhea has also exhibited the same behavior that I've seen in Aelfric, so this must be something of a hypocritical situation. She doesn't want Aelfric to do whatever the hell she thinks is odd for him to do, yet I feel like she's doing the exact same things as well and is using the lower ranks to cover up her true intentions."

"Don't you think that's a bit extreme?" Constance asked nervously.

"Oh, it may be, but if they take things to the extreme and take advantage of others to cover them up, then why do I have the right to not defy them? Perhaps it'll take me, a commoner to noble to slave of the Church, to teach them that their hypocrisy won't get them anywhere in this cruel world that they make even crueler than it was the previous day."