it is ironic that something about their newfound quiet is more sobering than bernadetta knows what to do with. here, with lady edelgard, the very classroom she has been avoiding reminds her that life is not a fairy tale. the clock will strike midnight and bernadetta’s freedom is for whom its bells will toll, thrusting her back to reality with a wreath of funeral flowers. she will return to rags, unmarriageable and all, slinking back behind the curtain until the day she is displaced again by nobility’s whims.
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.
“it wasn’t ferdinand’s fault,” she sobs, finally wilting, burying her face in trembling palms, “but why couldn’t he have just kept his big fat mouth shut just once? why’d he have to keep telling me how i couldn’t abandon my duty?” so the curtain draws open. crimson, heavy. a body shivers in the open, suddenly smaller than it has ever been in lady edelgard’s presence. (falling, falling, all over again. bernadetta is falling. will her friend still catch her?) “i don’t want to go home and have to get married to some old man, lady edelgard! please don’t make me, i’m begging you! please!”
titsay
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
dededos
2087
andulkaphoto
