bonehymn.
“ if you had wanted to run … you could have. ”
there’s no sense of judgement in byleth’s slow raising brows, disappearing beneath their shaggy bangs. ( dad hasn’t been around to cut them like usual, so they’ve made do. ) it’s a blank sort of openness, a mirror that reflects back only what dorothea wants to see.
“ i won’t ever ask you to stay, when you would rather leave. ”
/ @ariamour
There is so much she has to confront in this moment... too much raw emotion and conflict in her heart to easily piece together into a response. It feels like she has lot her sensibility, trying to confront the truth. She loathes fighting. She loathes it, but she longs for the crackle of magic on her skin, the raw power that can radiate from her in a cast. She is a mess of a woman, she’s always known that, but she has never been weak. There is a pull to the battlefield, to Byleth’s side. She could say no, she could run and hide, but she hasn’t. Swallowing the pill that Byleth is right is not easy, yet she knows she must.
“Then tell me why it hurts to stay. Tell me why I refuse to run, yet feel such awful loathing that I stay, because I am tired of trying to sort that out for myself.” She is loathe to be this open, but she knows she can carve out a future for herself without this bloodshed. She could have stayed with the opera, found a suitable spouse, and led a quiet secluded life. Yet it is the fight she is drawn to, for better or for worse.
There’s this sparkle of pain in her eyes, mixing and melding with her confusion, her conflict. Why is it that Byleth is allowed to see this? And yet she almost doesn’t mind. There’s a part of her allowing it, there’s a part of her that wants to be this open-- at the very least that she might find some answer, that she might be stripped of some of this hurting.
