( bear brave )

luckily—or unluckily, depending on who you ask—there are matters far more pressing than whatever titles have been bestowed upon them by the people of askr. bernadetta is here, they are told every time they ask. bernadetta, yes, always too young or too oddly festive to be the one they know when they turn the corner to find her and have to quickly back away. he is here too, baby-faced and painfully young. their younger self would bristle at the very idea, but this yuri is older, more tired—and they know with great certainty that there is much more yet for him to face in the future.

when that yuri returns to fódlan and arrives at his own crossroads, what path will he take to the future? paved in crimson, lit by an azure moon, swept away on verdant winds? they were once him; he is not them. is the present he knows and the past they remember even one and the same?

“you might try seeing the new one if you haven’t yet,” says a kind-faced woman they stumble upon in their search. she points them down the hall with a gentle smile and a nod to be on their way. “i hope you find who you’re looking for.”

yuri hopes so too. but, really, what are the odds of it?

there is a bernadetta when they turn the corner, though, sunk to the floor with her face in her knees. their steps slow as they approach, still entirely unperturbed by the way she groans for them to leave. she is, at a glance, different from all the rest in her familiarity. taller, older, her hair much longer than it had been at the academy. yuri merely slumps to the floor by her side and exhales.

“bernadetta,” they say. bernadetta. but is she the one they know?

yuri remembers. once, so very long ago now, memories had flooded their mind in the depths of tagzig. lifetimes they never lived, entire worlds they never could have imagined in their wildest dreams. there hadn’t been time to think about them in the moment, but they thought often of those worlds in the days, months, years that followed, wondering if they could possibly be real.

then war came to fódlan. and they didn’t have to wonder anymore.

“once, when we were all still students, the monastery sent me on a mission.” they shake their head. no, rather, “well, they didn’t, really. there was this strange man who took us along to an underground city. he said there was a machine there, one that could connect to other worlds.” a bitter laugh slips past their lips as their head tilts back to knock against the wall. “it sounds insane, doesn’t it? but it was true. i saw them.” other worlds. in some, they fought on the same side of the war. in others, yuri found themself across from her on the battlefield.

but in the world they remember...

"...yuri?" she tries not to sound too hopeful. but how can she not? older she may be, braver she may be, but inside there is still a girl who is homesick for her friend. there always has been. she knew that she could never say the same for them, but she thought it wouldn't matter. not with their new future in their hands, stained madder red, but alive in the end and worth everything ahead. because they hadn't needed to run away after all.

then they mention other worlds. they don't give her anything else. she falters where she had just started to lift her face from her knees. and bernadetta is paralyzed by the treacherous thought—what if it isn't them? what if she's lost them again, and for good this time? how cruel could it be to have fought for a better world just to lose hers after all was said and done? here is the truth: this bernadetta is very tired, too.

because this yuri even asks who. and the realization that cements into her bones weighs heavier than any ballista. it is far worse than anything else she thought she could have found in this land. she coils even tighter into herself.

"...if i say lady edelgard," she breathes, curling her fists while still hugging her knees, "and if you really did stop being friends with me after the war started... i-if you went somewhere else... then that means i... no. no-no-no, i won't want to see you. i don't care if we're both heroes. i'll have to tell all my mini-mes that i was wrong and stupid."

she would hole up in the room they had so generously provided her. or she would turn the castle upside down to scour for more of those orbs. she'd go through every single one, and probably fail, because they would never come back to her. nobody ever came back for her. (and just for a moment, the space around her feels dark. dark, damp, the creak of floorboards instead of carpet beneath her, a creak that even all of her younger selves still remember best.)

"i hate this. they called me 'brave' here, but i can't even face you. i-if i think about losing you... a-about a yuri who did wake up and stop caring about me..." a yuri that might have moved on from a knife to a sword at her neck. a hundred other yuris from a hundred other possible worlds that choose to do the same thing. a million other possible worlds out there, and her in just this one all alone. bernadetta's palms move up to her head, bunching fistfuls of hair with the hands she inherited. "i know you might not even know or care, but can't you imagine that'd be too much? after everything we—m-me and them, i mean—what we might have went through?"

( or, did the absence of his siblings mean Father was gone, too? was there any meaning to being his successor now? . . .he didn't want to think about that. )

"Mm," little Rafal nodded his head in readiness, a kingly—if he might say so himself—motion of assent for the girl made pack mule. An attempted, larger-than-life regal way of comportment at odds with his pin-straight arms, his childish expectation to be carried, and the faintly nervous chew of his lip. Nervous; because he'd wanted Bernadetta to say yes, but a tiny part of him hadn't expected Bernadeta to say yes. There was a difference! And now that it was happening—

The world pitched as he was obeyed, arranged like a passenger across her knobby back. Obeyed! He didn't say a word, but his chest hummed with butterflies of excitement. He found her to be kinda bony beneath him; she wasn't a very comfortable human-carriage; she could do with more meat on her bones, some more cushioning for future piggyback rides. But, all the same, it was. . . nice.

"I am a godly Fell Dragon!" he agreed pompously, flowering, glowing, chest puffing, then wilting. Just a little bit. He shook his head, white strands tickling between her shoulder blades. "But, surviving is easier when you're strong. I don't have any talents that would make me strong, so my siblings can hurt me—they can take whatever they want like my life. So, I have to work hard. To be strong."

Being strong seemed so faraway, it planted an equally faraway look in the child's eye. Kept him to a short-lived moodiness that faded once he looked at the back of Bernadetta's messy, purpley, tangly head.

Perhaps this Bernadetta could be his first servant. Or, his first 'knight'. More importantly: his. Fell Dragons usually didn't have people that were theirs; they had worshipers, eyes that lowered for them, bodies that bled for them, and mouths that praised them for the fact of existing. They didn't have knights. There had been only one sibling he knew who possessed a knight, and he'd thought it strange - envied it secretly like nothing else. Hadn't Veyle been her name?

That name could be Rafal, maybe.

bernadetta opens her mouth, about to protest that he surely has more talents than he thinks. what sort of cruelty would have touched a child enough to make him say something like that? what violence, what hands in his hair?

but his little ones that are suddenly in hers, they demand an answer. she squawks at the tugging, and if her grip on him were any less diligent, she might have accidentally dropped him altogether. bernadetta von varley does not need to offend any more gods than she already has with her beliefs, or rotten lack thereof—

and then. his words freeze her in place, just for a moment.

“...hehe—” she cannot contain her odd delight, a grin spreading across her face. she should not have children of her own. it is perhaps the first time someone has ever told her as much, insult tied to it or not, and how amusing that it feels like this child has just shown her more respect than her family ever could. bernadetta finds herself so pleased by it that his confusion nearly escapes her.

“h-hey, wait, i didn’t mean it like that! you're plenty strong, i believe you!” she exclaims, nudging open the kitchen’s door with one of her shoulders. “and talented, and capable. it's just a lot of people can have—oh, never mind. i’ll take that as a no.”

This he remarks without much thought, knowing full well his childhood could not be changed. Even in the very meals he complains about, there's a nostalgic twinge to them, a gratitude even, for the fact he could have them at all even if he might complain about it now in a lighthearted fashion.

The complaints in his earliest days were real, bratty and indignant, but in time, they had quieted as he learned his job to be grateful for what little he could get. It is what made the better meals he could get, when he could claim them again after a meager adolescence, all the tastier for one can only appreciate the cream of the crop when they have tasted the dregs.

It is in tasting and appreciating Bernadetta's incomplete dish and relishing it now that he's reminded once more what peace he has finally managed to grasp onto.

(Albeit, there was still some trouble in Varley territory, else he wouldn't exactly be here, now would he...)

Leif takes the small mallet and tenderizes the meat out of the two options he'd been given. It's hardly rhythmic, but he makes quick work of it, to which he calls Bernadetta over to ask:

(if leif had grown up with her, would she have had to end up mourning him, too?)

but his voice comes back into her ears, and bernadetta blinks herself back into the present. she tilts her head, following the direction of leif’s gaze. “h-huh? this?”

the newly-prepared vegetables are set aside in favor of scooping up the rinds. better to pace the cleanup between small steps than build up a mess that waited for them at the very end. moving them along to the waste, she answers, “you just give a little twirl to what you’re cutting, and let the knife do the rest of the work. it’s all in the wrist. i’ve just done it a lot, so i’m a little faster these days.”

it’s hard to keep herself from preening just a smidge at leif’s awe. if she closes her eyes and really stretches out her imagination, she can believe it sounds enough like praise for a job well done. (maybe that had been little bernie’s unseasoned meat and ash pies.)

“oh!” but she remembers again that she can’t get too ahead of herself. that would never do. so, a bit belatedly, she glances at leif’s own work. “that’s perfect, though. thank you.”

they’ll have themselves a hearty stew before they know it. maybe most of it would be going to varley’s people this time around, but if their future countess steals another glance at leif and tucks a little note in the back of her mind... that’s neither here nor there.

“we’ll toss these in, and then it’ll only be about another twenty minutes,” she assesses, moving to peer into the pot. “heh-heh… oh, leif…” wait, why’s she suddenly smiling again?

#WINNINGSUN || Ethereal Ball 2026

Without thinking, Ronan tosses the other mask he'd picked up back into the box with the rest the moment the girl tumbled out of the crate. The room had been nothing short of a whirlwind of motion the moment she'd asked her question - a question Ronan failed to see a problem with; at least not one for such a reaction - which had been just after Dorothea's revelation about the music so Ronan hadn't the time to consider what that meant or what Claude meant about the lower floor being on fire.

He was already standing over her, hands waving helplessly by the time Bernadetta finally stilled under the weight of a stone carving. It was probably the only thing in the entire room that could stop whatever panic she'd riled herself up into.

"Are you alright?!" Ronan grabs one edge of the severed wing with both hands and hauls it back, nearly toppling onto his backside himself. It wasn't as heavy as he thought it was, and he'd put his all into trying to move it. It hits the ground heavily enough to rattle the contents still in the other crates though, and Ronan staggers to catch his footing.

"Did it hurt you?" He offers his hand to help her back up to her feet.

Speaking of tragedies: maybe Bernadetta was aiming to make her own up here.

Ronan looks from wing to statue, sizing up what it might take to hoist the thing up there and then the kind of materials they'd need to hold it in place - materials he doesn't think this tower has.

"So... a burned tree... a wingless monster in a burned room... and a tragic opera?" Ronan frowns, concentration etching a deep line between his brows. For a moment, it looks like he might even solve their riddle, but still with that look of deep thought, he echoes what everyone else must be thinking instead:

"... What in the gods' name does that mean?"

she's suffered far worse than being flattened, and it might have really taken the wind being knocked out of bernadetta for her to shut up and absorb their scattered findings more thoroughly—not that she might be able to make much out of it yet, either. do gargoyles breathe fire? 

“uh… ma-maybe it went through something really tragic,” she says, if she’s having to string together a loose plot, “and then it got upset enough to burn everything around it?” 

but where do the four saints come in? bernadetta knows she carries the blood of one, flayn another.  “there wasn’t some secret fifth saint or anything, was there? b-but if it’s just a story someone made up, i guess anything could happen…”

and most stories make a point. the readable ones, at least.

…she doesn’t want to start assuming too much, though, about what or who this story could possibly be pointing at.

bernadetta doesn't want to break it to them, especially when—mixed in with their bustling interrogation of this bernie—they're already in distress...about being avoided, apparently, by some ‘new’ yuri who's just arrived. she knows how they feel. how could she not? if they were anything like her (they are her) she knew his wellbeing might as well have been their entire world. it's a different kind of hurt, real as can be, but they are still so blissfully ignorant to what more lies ahead.

— w-was it even possible for us to grow that tall?!   — we wear makeup?!   — wait, father finally got arrested! yes! — (a lot of scandalized staring at the windows of skin in her older self's tighter clothes. bernadetta very gently closes this one's hanging jaw before any flies can buzz in.)

yet this last bernie, tucked in the center of the other three, finally musters the courage to say something. her gaze stays trained to the ground, limbs hunching into herself like she's sorry just for existing, and bernadetta thinks this is the smallest she's ever seen someone be. this bernie murmurs, silencing the others: “...d-did he finally realize that he doesn't want to be friends anymore? is that why?”

...and bernadetta's shoulders sag. but it only takes her a beat to square them again and answer, chin high: “that's not it at all!”

it isn't. she knows it can't be, conviction eclipsing her very confusion of it in that moment. she doesn't know why it comes so strongly, but all that matters right now is stopping a band of little bernies from spiraling where they're standing. “okay, if you can't take my word for it, how about this? i just saw one yuri go that way. um, they looked like they were going to the beach... like you,” she turns to bernie number four. “all of you are great at running. if you hurry right now and catch up with them, just tell them how you feel and i bet they'll say what i did. they've always been a sweet, gentle boy. you just need to stay honest... and trust that they care about you.”

there's a bit of shared murmuring and hesitation, but that seems to placate the other bernies well enough. before long bernadetta has them scurrying off in the designated direction, sending them off with a wave. (“and don't look down so much! no, seriously. because we won't be able to stop laughing at their shoes, and then they really might get mad.”)

alone again. the stone castle's hallways grow quiet, and bernadetta sinks to the carpet.

She hopes that her friend's words will match her own when she stands atop that throne and makes the greatest declaration one could ever imagine— When Edelgard hears the words of yesterday become today. The stream will be a flood. Who, she dares to ask, is ready for the storm?

If this dream Edelgard gets to walk a life with dream Bernadetta as her friend and ally, she can picture no greater reward. The more she learns of her, the further she feels this true. She does not tear her sights away from her. "Even if our paths diverged, I would happily declare you as my friend. Write me letters. Send me your stories, too. I'd like to read them. We could even garden together, if you'd like. How does that sound?" The awkward smile she wears feels that much closer to a real person.

As the two remain close, she does not pull away. Not this time. The princess keeps her chin lifted and moves her free hand to graze the cold air. How many people have walked in these rooms with disillusionment and ignorance? How many will force marriage in the hearts of those who need a path less walked? How many secrets have these walls heard? ".. I'm almost jealous of these dream versions of ourselves," she says with a light squeeze. "—Perhaps not today, or even tomorrow.. But if it does happen, we'd only be that much greater. I think that would make for a very compelling story."

“oh! i'd love to garden together,” she's quick to agree. if any one thing had been put on display for the world tonight, it was that bernadetta von varley had two left feet and two green thumbs. for edelgard she had showed even more, a glance behind the curtain for lilac eyes alone. (lilac, again. it all returns to lilac.)

“i'd really love... a-all of that, actually...” she trails off, another faraway hint in her voice. a story of the road to something better, the divergence of paths uncertain but hearts as one above all else. could it ever rise from the pages? it is here, in this classroom with edelgard, that bernadetta feels the closest thing to believing. and if she should someday be right there when edelgard stands on that throne...

or even before then. perhaps bernadetta will also find some cord to draw back and see, too.

“i should be thanking you, though. for asking. i haven't really talked to anybody about this, so...” a hermit, unused to a world outside of themself. it's easy to bottle the feelings alone. she nearly finds herself confessing that sometimes it gets lonelier than she realizes—but recognizing that comes with the daunting revelation that she's been spoiled by company. like edelgard's, now.

“i feel a little better. it's hard for me to stop living in fear, but i know that i just have to keep trying.”  she mumbles, sheepishness shifting her weight between her heels. “and, um... i still can't promise i'll be a good student, or say it's what i want to do with my life, but i can at least promise not to let my personal problems with others make anything hard for you. i'll figure it out. e-even if i'm not around as much...”

she will sort it out. she must. bernadetta's eyes blink wider, and her hands almost swing edelgard's in their anticipation. “i-i'll start writing to you right now, actually! i already have another friend here who i like sending letters to.” this, she's better at. she's preferred the pen for as long as she can remember. “that way you'll know i'm okay, even if you can't find me, and i can also practice talking to hubert because there's no way he isn't finding these first and judging me."

“but you’ll be there with me, right?” now, too, that same boy grins. he squeezes her hand back, braces his weight on the other as he leans back to look at her, and laughs again just because he can. “in that case, i think the view will be worth it, wherever it is.”

the truth is that regulus has not belonged to him for a very long time. they buried him away under the guise of protecting him and can barely even remember the last time they ever heard his name spoken aloud. what might it sound like in someone else’s voice? will he get to hear it again—not just in reference to the star, but to that boy, too?

maybe. his treacherous heart hopes: maybe.

so she speaks about catching regulus but here’s the thing: she caught him a long time ago. his first heartbreak had been in that haunting manor, that dark room. he’d cut his own chest open first with that knife before anyone else had the chance to beat his ribs in, bared his beating heart to her the moment he failed to put that blade through her throat. and it might’ve shattered, then, alongside his bones. there might be pieces of itself still left behind on the floor of her room.

bernadetta asked if it was cheating to copy; yuri leclerc is a liar and a cheat anyway, though. “well, i’ll wish for kinder things for you too.” that her flowers will all grow. that she will never again feel unlovable or alone. that she’ll continue to have reasons to smile, each and every day. “and then we can count those stars together.”

they ease their weight off their arm, leaning forward to turn and face her again. “...bernadetta,” yuri says before she can make her next wish. tonight, they can pretend. but tomorrow? “how long are you planning to stay in abyss?”

in the end, it was not nearly as strange as they wondered they might find it, having her down in the underground city. nothing really changed. they still spent most days on their feet until their body threatened to collapse from exhaustion and vanished for days at a time with barely a word of warning only to return as though they had never left at all. (and, very rarely, they would return with a deep weariness carved into their every bone and a shadow cast over their expression and no one but bernadetta would even know that they were back until days later when they returned to their usual self.)

clearing their throat, “you can stay as long as you want to. i’m not asking you to go.” in fact, it’s quite the opposite. for one who would never allow any to witness them at anything but their perfect impenetrable facade, to return to someone at anything less is unthinkable. the people of abyss need never see one of their stalwart protectors at anything but their very best, after all.

these days, though, they return. not to abyss but to bernadetta, who has seen them at their very best and absolute worst and never turned away. they do not ask her to hold the weight of every sin they bear, nor somehow unshackle the chain that rests heavy around their neck—indeed, as always, all they ask of her is that she simply stays.

but yuri was always the first one to. wretched as she was, they did. they saw her and still did. did it truly come as surprise to them that her arms would open, a perch, a home, a heart, no matter how much of their best or worst they brought back? if it did, would they mind if she stayed to keep reminding them why through it all? would they mind if she chose to spend whatever she had of her life with them?

anything. they had told her earlier, but she wants to tell them: anything, they could ask of her. her next wish might be that yuri would let themself ask, not only let her choose them. she is greedy enough to want both.

like flowers turn to light, bernadetta turns to yuri. she easily gravitates to them as they face her, her body slanting forward to return their attention in full. the question gives her pause.

“...oh. um. i-i do feel bad about stealing your bed,”  she mumbles, shying, but not in self-persecution. no, she shies on account of remembering its warmth. that when she closed her eyes beneath its covers, she felt safer than ever. that when sleep eluded her, and yuri had the misfortune of being back during it, she could roll out to poke their arm and say something absurd just to hear the sound of their voice, and maybe even their laughter if she were lucky enough.

(and while she could never ask them to lie beside her, no matter how cold or lonely she grew, no matter how much her heart ached to simply hold for all of the times she had never been held in her life without violence—it was the closest comfort to two children dozing off beneath a blanket in a garden, a girl who curled against her dearest friend before she did her armored bear stuffy because her heart beat for him even back then. more than ever, now.)

bernadetta blinks, refocusing with a clear of her throat.  “and—you know with, um, th-the inn and all, i feel bad for...”  a vague wave of her arm, letting the rest of that tangent speak for itself.  “anyway, i didn't have any plans, but i'm a little less worried about being bothered by the people i'm avoiding. if something happens, i can handle it on my own. i still do want to disappear for good before anyone forces me to go back to that manor. but if i ever want to do that early, well... i-i know i can ask you... if that's still okay.”

there is more speculation she leaves unsaid about her future, still so uncertain in all factors but one: she wants to be with them. so when yuri talks about her being there with them, when they've come to say such things like that to her first—oh, how her heart hopes. do they hear how it hopes? that they might not push her away, or grow tired of her. that they might even ask her—

“do you want me to stay?”  she ends up voicing, quiet, to her own surprise. gentler, tender in a way befitting to the softer starlight that cuts across her expression with the new angle. her hand linked with theirs squeezes again, this time on purpose. she is almost afraid to hear the answer. she almost tears away her gaze just like she had at the beginning of the night.

but she feels the warmth of their hand around hers, the closer warmth of them right before her, and bernadetta lifts the same hands to her cheek, the space suddenly feeling much smaller between them.

“you said anything.”  the brief twitch of guilt in her lower lip ought to cue them in to her own perceived selfishness, but her other hand lifts to help cradle theirs against her warming face.  “that goes for you, too.”  ask bernadetta for anything. she lets herself lean into their hand. she lets herself feel held just a little bit, just once. and she lets herself look, hopeful, for their answer.

#WINNINGSUN || Ethereal Ball 2026

Those don't feel like something that would be made for the purposes of worship towards the Four Saints. The opposite, if anything - sarcasm and mockery is what comes to mind instead. Which, if that would be the case, why are those in the monastery at all, let alone in the Goddess Tower of all places? At best Claude would expect something like this to be hidden in one of the many dark corners of the Abyss, not what is supposed to be one of Garreg Mach's most sacred spots.

He shelves the thought for now as Flayn addresses him. "Uh…" Did he actually feel anything aside from instant panic and What The Hell? Actually… maybe he did?

"When there was the beat, I think something flashed before my eyes," he says with a frown, trying to remember. "For a brief moment, it felt like the tree on the lower floor flashed with fire. But I moved away from the wall instantly, and it disappeared, just like that." He strokes his chin in thought. "I could be wrong, but I don't recall any mention of the Goddess Tower catching fire in its history, so why would such a memory exist here?"

Boy does he wish he could ask Rhea about this place. But after the last round of "heretic" executions, ensuring no one ever found out they came here might be their second highest priority ever. First being getting out of here.

"What about the other crates?" He asks, approaching one. Similarly to the one Ronan opened, the lid gives way immediately. Claude reaches in; his hand comes back up with a pile of papers.

once again, she chooses not to comment on it. there's no use stirring up more frenzy—but goodness, does she let out a great and forceful exhale.

"that's strange. mind if i take a better look?" dorothea reaches for the stack of papers in claude's hand. she stills at first, lowering her torch to illuminate what's written, though gradually finds herself drifting from his side to pace as she reads. soft humming accompanies her footfalls, eyes narrowing studiously.

. . . ♪ ♬ ♪ , ♬ ♪ ♪ . . .

"...not a hymn," she finally announces. "those are written to be simple enough for even an untrained congregation to sing. we're talking simple melodies, repeated notes, a comfortable range for all... so on and so forth. this, however—"

she raises the sheet music over her head, giving it a light shake to catch everyone's attention. "—is a completed piece, titled 'my bane to be.' a terribly melancholic one, considering all the modal shifts. were this an opera, it would usually signify a character descending into tragedy—like betrayal or loss. things of that nature."

then dorothea's rustling snags her attention. tragedy and betrayal, she announces, unlike what ought to occur down here. (maybe a few moons ago, for bernadetta.)

or so they can only hope. without realizing she shifts closer again to flayn, unwilling to accept an apology that her downturned gaze does not owe anyone. instead bernadetta's mouth starts running, as it is wont to do when her body knows it will be marginally kinder to her than thinking.

“um, would you guys say the church is a fool? for, you know, that fool's mistake. ah!”  she jolts beside flayn, gray eyes shot wide despite the sincerity of her question. and then, with some light patting to her own cheek, punitive in spirit:  “s-sorry! i'm sorry! i didn't mean to say that!”

rather than digging herself any deeper, a spike of escape-fueled adrenaline compels her to scamper right past claude and toward the remaining crate. with a little grunt, she shoves aside the lid with her running start and dives halfway in as it's clattering to the ground.

“i-it's definitely got to be fine!”  bernadetta's voice carries a faint echo while her legs kick in the air behind her.  “no fools here, even though we just found some theater-fools' masks, nope. just like there's no getting smote for accidental blasphemy. hey, so about those wings!”

she found them, she thinks. at least one, which comes toppling with bernadetta's body after she wriggles out from the crate, hoisting the stone appendage with her underperforming might.

“ACK—” she lands on her back with a thud, and the heavy wing sandwiches her flat into the ground. one of the boys would do better in taking it off of her figurative hands, and more literal body.

“...mm-mmph. ronnmn? clauhnm?”  ronan? claude? she even almost thinks to mumble saint cichol? but remembers what she'd just said about blasphemy. then, above even that: flayn's sweeter company.

"Bernadetta," she says with as much volume as her usual cadence. "Bernadetta. Listen to me," she repeats again with softer colors. In a world so bitter— so unassuming— Edelgard extends it out once more. How can she not? If there is one thing she has learned throughout the moons, it is that reaching out to others is a sentiment never forgotten. The lack thereof is what makes this land so cruel. Anger fuels her soul with every word and thought she strings together the further she listens. Stray white locks stick to the sides of her face. With one hand resting on her knees, the other remains extended. Her hands hope to be warm.

"Do you remember what I said before? I meant it." She remains still. "Your decisions will be honored. I won't make you marry anyone you don't want to."

The classroom looks larger from this angle. "Marriage is not your duty." Keeping her hand forward, Edelgard focuses solely on Bernadetta. Void of eye contact, she speaks as if it is there. Her voice rises in fractions. "You know.. What if we had no need for that? — If our next Dukes and Counts were not bound by surrendering your own happiness, but instead led by people who rose and fell by their own merits." She forces a smile. "Then, your duty becomes the path you want it to be."

but softer colors bleed into the cold around her.

don't you think? asks lady edelgard, enveloping her friend in a gentleness unique to her. and bernadetta tries. at last year's ball she recalls being met with the same idea—that persecution had no right staking her heart and there was no more she could have done. that she had been raised on a slew of vile lies about herself.

but falsehood cannot quit her so easily when ten years of it outnumber the two and counting that might have started to shed truth on her life. among the ghosts that haunt her, there is one that terrorizes her before sleep: that if she had been kidnapped just to find herself bound for garreg mach monastery, there was nothing to say she wouldn’t find herself twice snatched, stuffed in another carriage just to wake up bound for life at the highest bidder’s house. and if the noblest person she thought she had ever come to know would not respect her decisions, how would the world? the world—...

the world i will lead, edelgard's voice suddenly resurfaces, punctuating this direction of thought before it can keep spiraling. blearily, she blinks away more tears. a world. not an empire? vaguely, something restless stirs in bernadetta's mind. matters she knows are far beyond her understanding, and would gladly remain so if the future emperor would truly permit the future countess varley to withdraw from the royal court. she cannot put a name to this feeling yet, but for some reason, it is not so unwelcome.

edelgard's hand is not so unwelcome.

sniffling, bernadetta gradually lets both of hers fall limp. what can she say? the best thing, she had figured, would be to persevere. to survive long enough so that the scales gradually tipped—the years of lies no longer outnumbering what could be far kinder. it included the furtive kindness that dignified the visage of her princess the same way resolve did. forced smile or otherwise, edelgard is better at kindness than she may believe.

“u-uh...”  an arm rubs at her eyes. “i'm so sorry. ugh, i'm such a mess... b-but, i...” after that, bernadetta breathes. in, out. feet on the floorboards. then she allows her hands to reach out and feebly meet edelgard's one. it is warm after all.

“...it'd be nice,”  she agrees, voice soft. almost faraway.  “if i could stop thinking it was my fault. if people like dorothea, who work harder than everyone, could find what they wanted... marry who they wanted... while people like bernie didn't have to get married at all.”  her grasp on edelgard's hand unintentionally squeezes with a slow intake of breath.  “i-it'd be nice... to just leave with my plants, and go look for new ones. i could just go somewhere quiet and keep writing my stupid stories. maybe people would even read them.”

first wish off the top of your head, they told her. but now that they’ve already wished for theirs, what comes after?

(just for tonight, they can pretend. but what comes after tonight?)

i wish... but what do they wish? with too many to name and the easiest out of the way, which one will make it past their lips? i wish this world was kinder. i wish the better one i dream of didn’t seem so far away. i wish the goddess really did grant wishes from kids like me.

“i hope the stars stay out until the night’s over,” is what they settle on. on a night intended for festivities, it seems the easiest to voice.

regulus continues to shine like a beacon in the dark. it shines even when their own light is dim, shines through every dark cloud that threatens to snuff out its light. unlike the boy a mother named after it, the white star the goddess herself made into a disciple cannot be dimmed by anyone or thing. “everyone says plenty of things about the goddess tower, but the view when the sky is clearest is the best part.”

a hand raises to the sky, their free hand splayed out before the stars before they pinch their thumb and index together like they might catch one between them. “when i couldn’t sleep as a kid, my mom taught me to count stars instead of sheep. we had the best view of them out our window. but i think it only kept me awake longer. i’d sit on the windowsill and pretend i could catch them, one by one.”

she has nothing kind to share of her own parents. there is even less she has to share of the world they live in, too. even the uncle who she once ran to whenever he visited, uncle who swept up her tiny frame in his arms to toss her into the sky like father never did, uncle who told corny jokes with deep, hearty laughter and first gave her the name ‘bernie’, he is no longer in the waking world while his wicked brother remains. bernadetta wishes she could call for him one last time if only to ask: how can i be braver for the person i care about? how can someone like me possibly bring him the brightest star in the sky?

but all she has to ask is herself. she just hopes that her heart leads her to something right enough.

“...th-then my next wish is that a lot of kinder things will happen to you. enough so that you'll let yourself stop feeling bad for things you shouldn't.”  that we'll both learn how to be a little nicer to ourselves, is what's tucked into her voice, even if sometimes it feels like the world is doing all it can to oppose them.

but there is also goodness in their world and the people she loves are the proof. it is a goodness that will persist even after tonight, no pretending about it. they, too, are what vibrance and beauty that bernadetta sees through her colorless eyes. she lets her knees fall back down and swing gently, righting her seated posture to turn her face forward and mirror yuri's gesture—free hand reaching to the stars, save that she does not pinch any of them. instead, gloved thumb and forefinger form a circle around the brightest one. (they did teach her how to find it, after all.)

“that one day”—she peers through this circle like she might a telescope, gazing affectionately at regulus that shines in its center—“you'll sit somewhere to look at the sky, counting again, and you'll let yourself catch regulus, too.”

they already know how she feels. ask her over and over, and she will say the same: her dearest friend in the world, the brightest star in her sky, he is someone good, who deserves everything good. he deserves good things, and all she can hope to do is keep trying to be one.

Edelgard shifts her weight on the floorboards and hears the slightest creak against her heel. It is she who should be extending the regard, having been the one to bring her friend here in the first place. She could have just as easily rejected her, but she didn't. She wouldn't have been mad if she did. It is through this conversation and time that she begins to draw the curtain open in hopes of understanding Bernadetta that much better.

When she finally releases her hands from her friend's, she does not completely distance herself. She remains close. The house leader stands with her back to the chalkboard, partly littered with formulas it stands to be. "I thought it best to speak my question here without any potential eavesdropping. Pleasurable an evening I'm having, even I find it exhausting." There is humor to her words, visible or not.

but lady edelgard tugs at the cord before she can. edelgard asks for permission before forgiveness, because somehow she saw bernadetta and chose to call her friend, too. all of the black eagles did. it is no longer uncertain that she has found her wings with them, with edelgard at the helm.

yet when she thinks too much about him, who she had called their anchor, who she had called the spirit of their entire class, who she could never envision this classroom without—now, instead of nest, she only returns to old ghosts of seasons past. when she recalls his kindness, his spirit, his noblesse oblige, his heart so large and loud that it might burst from his ribs, it all turns around just to make hers bleed again. her gaze falls.

“w-well, uh…”  bernadetta hesitates. it is no fault of lady edelgard’s. no—edelgard, who asks her first, who catches her, who leads her with purpose—edelgard has earned her place in bernadetta’s heart.

it’s just that despite everything, he still has one there, too.

“d-do i have to?”  she mumbles, shrinking again.  “it’s just… i might be avoiding him, but i don’t want to make him seem awful or anything.”  but lady edelgard mentions rumors again. rumors. she thinks of all of the rapport she had presumed to share with those who did take stock in them, and bernadetta hears another creak in her ears that doesn’t come from the floorboards. for a moment, her body freezes on instinct. on unspoken command.

“i mean, we were just kids. it’s not like he knew. b-but he…”  gloved hands wring in front of her.  “…that’s just it. he didn’t know. i never even met him. but he thought i was a creepy shut-in who made little dolls to curse people, cried to his parents about it, a-and father was just so furious that when he tried to drag me out of my room, i—”  without realizing, each new piece she affords edelgard gives way to another, all while her voice unravels and loses more and more of what little dignity she has left in front of her imperial princess.

she held her own during their waltz, but something fractures in front of edelgard anyway, teasing at the wretch behind the recluse. the monster in her tower that terrified all the little boys. a decade’s worth of lament that finally comes to collect. and bernadetta does not realize she has begun weeping until it is too late, until her breath is catching and stuttering for air between each cry.

★ "Alear! Don't you look stunning! Our Bern's outdone herself, hasn't she? At this rate, she ought to dress everyone for next year's ball!"

☆ "Right? You're a lifesaver, Bernadetta, not to mention talented... if I need advice on next year's outfit, I'm coming straight to you!" / @aliberation

★ “Y-you guys are really flattering me here! I just patched it up a little, but I'm glad it all worked out.” / @hermidetta

but bernadetta is right here, yes. she may just be the only certain thing in their life too. come hell or high water, on the handle-end of a pair of gardening shears or the blade-end of a knife, and even when faced with the ugliest truths they can hold, the ones even yuri hates to face within themself—she persists, she remains. they learn to let her.

stay, they asked of her the first time. tell me the truth, they asked of her the second. both selfish wishes, so maybe that is why they holds onto the third. they want it to mean something. they always want it to mean something, with her. the problem is just that yuri isn’t always sure how.

they’re trying to learn that too. it takes a little longer.

“my three wishes from my magic ‘detta have done more for me than the goddess ever has,” they say with a snort. “but i’m saving that last one, so the goddess will have to do for now.”

so, where to start indeed? the stars have no answers for them, but as her hold on their arm loosens, their eyes are drawn back to her. yuri’s eyebrows raise but her gaze is already turned skyward. are there any answers to be found there, really? it doesn’t seem so either.

yuri pulls themself free from her grip, but only to step forward again then fall to their knees, swinging their legs to dangle off the edge as they make themself comfortable there. the starlight slants across the top of their head, a soft and gentle glow to illuminate the side of their face as they turn back to her, holding out a hand in invitation to sit. “won’t let you fall, i promise,” they say with a grin. “if i do, you can take me with you though.”

from up here, the world seems to shrink. a pair of students is trying to slink through the shadows toward the tower too, only to be intercepted by a professor and what they can only assume is a harsh scolding. yuri can’t help but laugh a little at the sight, turning back to bernadetta again.

it’s hard. she has to keep trying harder.

she already misses their warmth when they do withdraw, but then yuri’s reaching back out to her before it can show too much on her face. 

their magic ‘detta, stealing yuri leclerc’s praise from the goddess herself, and now bernadetta is stealing even more of their time. she meets their starlit grin with wide eyes, pink cheeks, and she has almost never felt more beautiful in her life.

(her hand takes theirs, of course. and if she is waiting for yuri to let go first, once she settles beside them on the edge, centimeters apart, she does not breathe a word about it. they want it to mean something with bernadetta without realizing that they are, without even trying, already everything.)

other pairs of students don't seem as lucky as bernadetta, who’s got them all beat in both stealth and in company. she’s covering her mouth with her other hand to suppress a likeminded giggle when yuri prompts her for a wish, any wish. any is easier than picking just one. 

“wait, but yours already sounds perfect! i can’t cheat and copy it, can i?”  no, but bernadetta concedes all on her own. first thing on her mind, huh?  “let’s see… i guess i’d wish for all of my plants to grow once i take these flowers back with me. i can get brand new ones to sprout from the stems if i’m lucky. and that way, well…”