#bernievain

[darsarts]

I think about bernievain a lot,,

[bees-tornado]

i commissioned some little guys from @r26yz a while back for an esim fundraiser and they’re so cute!!!!

pairings are Bernadetta/Sylvain (FE3H), Shulk/Fiora (Xenoblade) Tomoe/Nanami (Kamisama Kiss), and Sylvain/Bernadetta/Yuri (FEW3H), in that order

thank you again, they turned out better than i could’ve imagined!! ❤️

[malsfefanfics]

bernievain please i'm begging on my nees

Let's take something from here.

Bernadetta set her quill down and let out a groan. She'd tried. By Sothis, she'd tried. But nothing fit. Her attempt at a new protagonist for her book just wasn't working. He felt far too plain. Almost perfect. Too perfect. She'd tried everything to make him someone the reader would want to follow. But it just wasn't possible.

At the sound of her frustration, Sylvain looked up from his book. "Still not able to write a leading guy?"

"No," Bernadetta grumbled. "He's just too....shiny. Smooth. Like a piece of glass."

"Well, glass has to go through a lot of heat to get that way."

"I know, but I don't know what kind of flawed, messy human being to write."

Sylvain closed his book and stood up, wandering over to the nearby wall with a hum. Bernadetta watched closely, curious as to what he was up to.

She did not expect him to lift himself into a handstand.

"Um. Sylvain? What are you doing?"

“It’s time to think outside of the box,” he said. "I remember Annette mentioning something about increasing blood flow to the brain by being upside down. So maybe if we do this, we can think of a way to fix your protagonist."

Bernadetta held back a laugh. "That doesn't sound quite right."

Sylvain swayed slightly, using the wall to keep himself steady. "It's worth a shot, isn't it?"

"Aren't you worried about falling over?"

"Nah, I'm fine. As long as I- woah, woah, woah!"

Sylvain's legs swayed, and soon he was tumbling down to the ground. His back hit the floor with a sharp SMACK, and Bernie was sure for a second she'd heard something snap. She quickly ran over to him, carefully helping to sit upright.

Perhaps he was right. Maybe she knew how to fix her story after all.

[flamebearrel]

Book Bindings

[ID: Digital art of Sylvain and Bernadetta sitting on the floor of the library. Bernadetta pulls her legs into herself while Sylvain gently leans in next to her. Both their faces are semi-obscured by a book Sylvain holds in between them. End ID]

My piece for the Fire Emblem Three Houses gift exchange hosted over on Ao3 and Twitter! Gift for @/crowcinthus ^^ I also busted out my very rusty writing abilities and wrote a short fic for some context.

Word Count: 1332

Characters: Bernadetta, Sylvain (brief mentions of other students, Byleth and Cyril)

Ships: Sylvain/Bernadetta

Other Notes: Post-timeskip, ambiguous route

Ao3 Link

~~~

Bernadetta staggers through the library doors after a mad dash, barely stopping even when she almost crashes into Hilda and then a stray boulder not there five years ago. The floorboards creak their discontent. Finding her way along the wall, she takes a shaky, gulping breath, and collapses.

She really thought she was doing better.

Two weeks ago, when everyone materialized in the Garreg Mach ruins, there was a sweeping sense of relief. As if things had finally slid into place with the sight of each others’ faces. Bernie herself had been drawn into the reunion in those first hours, even daring to step away from the exits.

And then the adrenaline wore away, and with that the appeal. A look around the monastery revealed broken buildings, stripped stables. Too much work for so little a group. The faces she stole glances at were so much more hardened than she remembered. Maybe they’d found time in between escapades to take some tea? That was how they could stand to see each other? In any case, Ferdinand and Lorenz stood with their too-long hair, laughing amongst themselves with a tone just too subdued, and the grass under Bernadetta’s feet felt as foreign as on her first day.

She eases off her gloves by the ring finger. Her hands still wear the same ink stains from that calligraphy session the other night… or the ones from two, three years ago, or a decade, she can’t remember. It’s all the same.

The ink covers her fingers, her forearms, and nowhere else; the world has moved on without her.

“They all must be sick of you, that’s it!” She can feel her mouth fluttering on, just as well, without her. “Now Bernie’s done it! The jig is up, they’ve figured out you’re a fraud, they’ll kick you out and send you right back home!” It doesn’t take long for her to slip back into the “useless, worthless, stupid” mantra she knows so well.

So when Sylvain sharps the corner of the library stairs, she doesn’t even notice. 

His footsteps fall harder at the first sight of another, then soften, then pause entirely. Then he rushes down, dropping all the swagger. “Bern, Bernadetta, hey!” Tossing his books to the side, he unhesitatingly slides in. “What’s going on? Can you hear me?”

Her kneejerk reaction is to push him away. Skin-to-armor contact is the chilling result, so she pulls back in. Now there’s nowhere to go. She’s gotten herself cornered. All she can do is stare.

Yet Sylvain doesn’t make a move, except to raise his hands in surrender. The ruffles of his hair fall in a different cadence, she observes, but no more than the wind can tussle them. He still has the same smooth lips, that after a long moment of silence finally open to ask: “...Do you want to talk about it?”

With the clench of her throat holding her back, she can only shake her head.

“I got it. Totally fine.” He carefully takes a seat next to her, beckoning to their surroundings. “Let’s take a minute, alright? What do you see?”

“Uh… books,” she tries, “lots and lots of books. I mean, duh, it’s a library, the dominion of knowledge, that’s never going to change...” Sylvain nods for her to go on. “…It’s quiet for early evening, though. Like the kind of quiet you get when you sneak in after hours - which I totally never did to avoid everybody - but I mean not evening-study-group quiet, not people quiet, not that kind. And there’s rubble over there. And everywhere. That’s unfortunate…” Is she shivering again? “And that sh-shelf’s caved in… my favorite one actually, and now it’s broken, split right in half, and- Oh, I can’t do it!” 

“Yeah, okay, breathe… it’s a lot to take in at once, I understand. Why don’t we try something a bit more manageable?”

With that, he scoops the top book off his pile and flips to a page in one swift motion. “‘The white-haired young man, still groggy, reached out for the hand of the figure in blue. He almost didn’t notice the strange mark on his own hand, a pattern of eyes snaking steadily upward.’ Do you want to continue from here?” 

Bernadetta gingerly grazes the edges, then skips a little further in. “Let’s see… ‘Narrowly dodging a swing from the masked swordsman, Chrom growled, Tell me. Who taught you to fight like that? He received another swing in response.’”

“That’s a pretty interesting one. I haven’t gotten far, but I heard it saved the series.”

“Uh-huh.” She picks up another and reads out a line. “This is one of the old magic textbooks, isn’t it? And so complicated too… What do you need this for?”

“Just, uh, getting a refresher. I overheard the Professor drafting up their Dark Knight plans for me anyway. Gotta be prepared.” He closes that one a little quicker. “Shall we move on?”

They sift through each title, switching back and forth between pages and lines. The minutes, maybe hours, bleed into each other until the duo comes to a purplish book near the center of the stack.

“‘With a huff-’” Bernie huffs to make a point- “‘Laverne released the arrow into the air and watched it weave through the gathering flock above. She narrowed her eyes to… to its target up a-...’ Hang on.”

She recognizes that scratchy handwriting. And the page numbers line up, albeit on yellowing paper, and the characters and their thoughts and their comforting, familiar world.

This one is hers.

Right on time with her thoughts, Sylvain raises an eyebrow and a smirk. “Seem familiar?”

She brings her eyes up to meet his. “Y-you had it bound?”

“Well, ‘chyeah, I figured why not? Warfare back home can get pretty messy; things disappear all the time. The pages probably would’ve gotten lost too. I know how important this story is to you, so I could at least show it some respect by keeping it together.”

At that, she scoffs. “Hah! Important to Bernie? If it wasn’t for you loving it so much, I would have burned this garbage already.” She’d lost count of how many times Sylvain used to swing by to ask for a chapter update or offer a flowery review. By the end of the school year, she was hiding pages in different places for him to pick up. “I’m surprised you kept it at all, not to mention fancied it up so much.”

“All I did was the casing, I swear. You did all the hard work. It looks different, but the heart of it’s the same.”

She turns it around in her hands, idly running her knuckles along the spine. The heart of it’s the same.

“...It’s nice. Pretty, even! Thank you, Sylvain.”

His smile looks a little more genuine and a little less saucy than usual. “No big deal, just something for a fellow patron of the arts. Are you feeling okay enough to get out of here now? I’d invite you to the dining hall to grab some dinner, but I figure that’s the last place we should go.”

“Yep, not really up for a death wish tonight, sorry! I’m more than ready to head back to my personal haven.” She pauses. “Though, i-if you wanted, you could… walk with me there?”

“I hear you. To your room we go, milady-”

“Hey, anyone in here,” calls a voice sharp as a knock, and suddenly Cyril’s passing by. Sylvain waves a casual greeting, to which he curtly nods back. “Figured as such. Wouldja mind stepping out for the night? I’m closing up early to get some cleaning done.”

She stiffens at the figure who used to be so short now looming above her, but Sylvain rests a steadying hand on her back and helps her up. Hey, on her feet the height difference isn’t actually so large. Maybe she got taller too.

“Come on. Let’s go face the world, together this time.”

[malsfefanfics]

If Hubernie is your third favorite Bernie ship, what's #1 and #2?

Okay, so my #2 Bernie ship as of this post is currently Caspar/Bernadetta. Yes, it leans more on the hilarity, but it's also one of the few times Bernadetta actually manages to keep herself relatively calmer than her usual self, and actually be rather vocal about her wants and desires regarding her partner. They have the vibe of a 90's sit-com secondary romance that everyone loves more than the main pairing, and I love that about them.

As for my #1 Bernie ship?

Behold the reason for the "WHY DIDN'T YOU HAVE A PAIRED ENDING?" tier: BERNIEVAIN.

I am forever going to be angry we never got an A-Support and paired ending for these two. This support is one of the ones where Sylvain is at his best, being genuine and excited over something in a way we rarely see ever, and we see another of Bernie's passions being fleshed out. We should have gotten an ending where Bernadetta became a famous author and eventually married her #1 fan.