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The air was crisp that autumn night, the breeze sliding its ghostly fingers through cracks in Garreg Mach’s stone walls and dipped in to find any stray skin exposed to its soft breath. It was the perfect night for ghosts.
Wait no no no no Bernie don’t psych yourself out even if it is super dark and spooky with all these shadows to hide in that anyone could pop out of and grab you
“Eep!” Bernadetta von Varley let out a squeak as she collapsed in on herself, curling into a tight little ball. Maybe if she tries hard enough to stop moving, she’ll disappear! then poor Bernie won’t have to descend into any forgotten catacombs (right underneath her room!) with the rest of the class to fight scary bad guys and she almost died if it wasn’t for…
Her shadow. The one she knew was stalking her. The one she wished she couldn’t count on to turn up as soon as she left her-.
“Bernadetta” Bernie shot into the air at the sound of the voice. The voice that followed her class leader everywhere with piercing gold eyes and a breathy raspy tone that sent shivers up her spine.
“D-don’t kill me! I swear I was just going to get some food. I couldn’t leave my room for dinner because that big boy in the Deer passed by as I opened the door and our eyes met and I knew deep in my heart I was going to die right there-”
“Enough, Bernadetta. I’m not here to kill you.” The gangly shadow spoke, as it stepped forwards into the dim light of Bernadetta’s sneaking lantern revealing itself as the Edelgard’s right hand woman of darkness herself, Huberta. “I am simply carrying a missive for My Lady and chanced upon you curled up in the dirt. It would do no service to Our Lady if you were incapacitated or ill, so I thought to check upon you.” Huberta’s pointed jaw lowered slightly as she tilted her head, long black hair covering one yellow eye.
“I see my worrying was unappreciated, I will go.” She made to swish her long dark cloak and make a dramatic exit, if not for the small hand gripping the edge of it. Huberta’s visible eye widened slightly.
“W-wait, oh god Bernie why did you stop her now she’s going to murder you in your sleep. Okay here we go.” Bernadetta visibly psyched herself, pumping her arms in place. “Thank you for saving me, H-Huberta.” Her grey eyes locked upon the hand that held her specter’s coat. “Earlier, in the tombs. I thought Bernie was done for when that scary sword guy got past Casper. Bernie’s life flashed before her eyes.” She let out a tiny huff of laughter “That hurt more than the cut Bernie got.”
Huberta lifted her arm, reaching towards Bernadetta’s shoulder, but stopped as the mousey girl flinched away. She let her arm fall, deadweight.
“Bernadetta. It pains me that you have so little regard for your own life. Your end will not be at some miscreant’s hand, Lady Edelgard has much more use for you alive.” A dusting of pink coloured the pale woman’s high cheekbones. “I would hate for you to face such an end as well.” The tall woman brushed themselves off, abashed. “You sell yourself short. Your skills with a bow and riding Ynet are an integral part of our class. As well as… your skill with a needle is quite envious. I can only wish I could dispatch foes with the skill you wield your sewing needles.”
“B-Berta!” Bernadetta gasped at her sudden outburst, clapping her hands over her mouth and squeezing her eyes tight. Both women stood in statuesque silence for a full minute before a soft sound could be heard. Huberta’s sharp eyes could barely make out the movement of the shy girl’s shoulders shaking. She desperately hoped she hadn’t somehow made the girl cry.
“Heh. Heh-heh heh heh-heh-heh.” Finally a ghost of a sound could be heard. The girl was… laughing? Bernadetta was laughing at her? “You’re kind of silly Huberta.” The girl squeaked out, before clasping her arms around her abdomen and forcing out a quiet bark. “Fighting with knitting needles? Bernie wishes! Things would be so much easier if Bernie could sew her problems away.”
Bernadetta looked up at Huberta’s face, and for the first time since coming to the monastery, their eyes met. “Berta is a lot less scary when you come talk to Bernie. You should stop skulking around me and come say hi more often.” Bernadetta gathered herself without a word and disappeared into the night before the lanky woman could even open her mouth. Huberta stood for a few more minutes, opening and closing her mouth in silence before finally turning and stalking back into the night.
“I wasn’t following you…”
The next morning Bernadetta felt like leaving her room. It was a strange feeling, the chains binding her to her bedroom were still there. But they were light. So light Bernie almost felt like dancing. Not that she would.
Bernie decided to skip breakfast in the hall with all the other students (it’s a work in progress after all) and started down the steps towards the monastery’s greenhouse. Bernadetta loved all of the foreign flowers and plants that had sprung up with this year’s students. From the Brigidan vine creepers to the Dagdan orchids that the professor would buy from travelling merchants. Her absolute favourite were of course the carnivorous plants. They weren’t kept in the main greenhouse but sometimes the professor would gift them to Bernie to put in her room. They even kept the bugs away!
Bernie skipped her way up to the greenhouse doors, but paused at the portal. She heard voices inside.
“But my favourite are the red carnations.”
“I can see that, red really is your colour, Edelgard.”
“My teacher…”
Bernie could barely contain her screech. The professor! And Lady Edelgard! And they were flirting! This is exactly how Bernie would write it, too! Bernie squirmed in delight as she sidled closer to the door, for professional purposes only, of course.
A familiar feeling shadow fell over her. Bernadetta whipped around and pulled the metal knitting needle she thoughtlessly took that morning.
“I’mnoteavesdroppingIwasjustcheckingtomakesuretheplantsweren’tsuffocatinginthere.” Words spilled out of Bernie’s mouth as she shook around the needle she held. It was ramrod straight and still. An exasperated Huberta loomed over the shorter girl, a palm on her pale face.
“Bernadetta, if you could accompany me over to the pier where we can give some privacy to Lady Edelgard and her…” Huberta shivered at the word, dripping contempt, “Date.”
The taller woman took Bernadetta by the crook of one elbow and guided the mousey girl towards the dock over the pond.
“Lady Edelgard will be grateful if you forgot about that particular… interaction.” Hubert glowered towards the greenhouse, emanating hostility. “She perhaps loses herself around the professor.”
Bernie’s ears perked up at the sullen tone of her companion.
“Berta, are you” She paused to grapple with the enormity of her revelation “Jealous?”
Huberta scoffed at the accusation.
“Please, I am simply embarrassed to have to see my Lady reduced to the level of a common mercenary. No matter how powerful or graceful or intriguing she is.” The last sentence was muttered with scorn. Bernadetta was huffing into her sleeve. Little laughs that made the quiet anger suffusing Huberta melt away into something else. Something warm.
“Berta, you're worried your Lady will be taken away from you! Bernie would think that’s cute if you weren’t so scary. Owwahhh like that.” She was silenced with a quick glare. “Don’t kill Bernie!”
“No Bernadetta I will not kill you, I will do worse!” Huberta drew herself up to her full height, towering over the purple haired girl. “I’ll find all those sordid tales you’ve been writing about our classmates and give them to Lady Edelgard! Ouahahahahahaha” His spine shivering laughter echoed across the pond as Bernadetta shrieked and covered her head.
“Huberta. Stop terrorizing our classmates. We have work to do.” The imperius voice of her Lady rang out from behind her. Huberta instantly gathered herself and let the calm mask fall over her handsome features once more.
“Of course, my Lady. I was simply reminding our classmates of their Imperial duty.” Hubert turned and strode off to aid her Lady once more, but not before noticing the soft smile that Bernadetta was hiding underneath her cowering arms. Edelgard gave her retainer an odd look, and bringing her hand up to her face Huberta felt the warmth of a late autumn sun on her face.
It’d been a week. An entire week that her duties to her Imperial Lady had kept her busy. Huberta hadn’t seen a single purple hair of the von Varley heir. Not in the classroom, not in the dining hall. Not even a single stray hair caught in the girl’s dorm room door. She would know, she checked.
It frazzled Huberta in a way she didn’t know possible. Even while washing the blood from under her nails she was thinking of the shy girl. Hair unkempt and messy from her constant running her hands through it. Damn it, she shouldn’t have touched her head before finishing with her hands.
Gliding through the shadows of night was a simple thing in the monastery, and thankfully the bathhouse hot all night long. Huberta slowed as she heard a voice creeping out the building along with the heady steam.
“Stupid Bernie. Of course she isn’t interested in you. Everything she’s done was out of obligation. No one would like you, you useless thing. Ugly fugly Bernie bear, all the kids stop and stare! Weirdo witchy Bernie bean, not meant to be heard or seen.”
The strange song echoed from the wooden walls of the steam room as Huberta undressed and made her way in.
“Bernadetta? Is that you?” Huberta tried to ask in her softest voice, but it still came out scratchy and rough. A loud shriek shot from the closed door that separated the changing room from the baths, before quiet quickly took over.
“Nope. No Bernie, sorry.”
“I- I did not mean to interrupt Bernadetta, I needed to use the bathing facilities as well.” Silence from the door continued. Huberta cracked it open. A quiet sob broke its way out from the room inside.
“Go -way Berta.” Another sob, this one hacking its way forth “No one is here. Just the mice. No, the lice! That’s right, it's just Bernie bug.” Huberta opened the door the rest of the way revealing the purple haired girl curled in the corner of the sauna. Face flushed red with tears and heat.
“Oh Bernadetta.” Huberta paused as she scurried to find something to comfort the girl. “I’m happy to see you.” She finally admitted. Bernadetta perked up somewhat.
“Really? Berta isn’t lying to Bernie?”
“Yes, I wanted to see you all week. I-” Huberta’s hands were shaking. “I wanted to drop everything and find you. But I couldn’t. I am Lady Edelgard’s right hand, not some lovestruck villager who may flirt with whoever they will, or touch their paramour’s faces or brush back their messy hair.” Huberta was full on vibrating with anxiety now. “I’m not a person anymore Bernadetta. I’m Lady Edelgard’s will. But I wanted to see you, so bad that it hurt. And I’ve been hurting you too haven’t I?”
Bernadetta’s tears had stopped and she half rose in worry for the girl in front of her. Arms stretched out, almost beckoning the taller woman to herself. Almost.
“I wanted to see you too.” Bernie whispered. “And I thought you were ignoring me, I’m sorry.” She wrung her hands. “Silly Bernie.” She rose and touched the upper arm of the taller girl infront of her. Taller, yes. Scary, of course. But also just a girl. One who was lost.
“Berta. It’s okay to have feelings. You’re your own person, I know it. I’ve seen the secret smiles you give to the cats in the monastery, the fact that you hate onions. I’ve seen all the little things that build up Huberta.” Bernie moved a half step closer. “And I want to see more. I want to see you for who you are to Lady Edelgard as well. For who’s blood this is.” She quickly wiped the blood that had dripped onto her hand from the long black locks. “Seriously who’s blood is this Bernie is getting scared.”
Huberta huffed a sad chuckle. “I cannot tell you. There are too many things I cannot tell you. I can’t be Huberta for you and be Lady Edelgard’s right hand at the same time.”
Bernadetta scrunched her face up, thinking for a few minutes, before raising her eyes to meet the golden pair across from her. “That’s okay.”
“W-what?”
“I’m willing to share. You can be Lady Edelgard’s Huberta when you need to be. But when you come back you can be my Berta for awhile.”
“I-”
“I-If that’s what you want! Ooooooo stupid Bernie putting words in her Berta’s mouth um you don’t have to be Bernie’s! You can be anyone’s or your own! B-Bernie just wanted um.”
A single beat, and then another.
“Bernie wanted you.”
Huberta laughed. She laughed long and low and smooth, none of the scratchy roughness from before.
“I wanted to be yours too, Bernie bear.”
OMAKE:
Huberta noticed something as the two held hands.
“Who did this to you?” She was staring at the scars of old rope burns on the naked wrists of her girlfriend.
“Oh. Haha. Right. My father.”
“I’ll kill him for you, whenever you want.”
“H-haha you’re s-silly Berta….”