Chapter Text
The evening was gorgeous, the coffee and desserts were divine, and Bernadetta was once again having one of the worst nights of her life.
Henrietta von Freytag, ignorant to this internal turmoil, hummed lazily and selected another calling card from the stack on the coffee table.
“It looks like a Lord Ferdinand von Aegir requests our company for riding and pleasant conversation sometime this week, while he’s in town. Maybe something for tomorrow?” she asked, looking over at Bernadetta expectantly.
Bernadetta frowned. She wasn’t terribly enthusiastic on riding, and pleasant conversation was definitely out. All in all, it sounded like a complete nightmare.
“It’s really whatever you want,” she said with a tight smile.
Hernietta gave a small hum again and squinted at the card. “Isn’t he the son of a duke? Not sure I could snag him,” she said cheerfully. “He might be more interested in you – weren’t you almost engaged to a duke’s son, once?”
“Absolutely not,” Bernadetta said quickly. “That would be awful.”
“Well, not all of us can hold out for princes, dear,” Henrietta said with a laugh. “I’ll put it in the maybe pile.”
Bernadetta nodded listlessly and took another sip of her coffee. There had been a time, when she was a student at the Officer’s Academy, when she could have managed an afternoon listening to Ferdinand talk without any fuss at all – with ease, even. But the Officer’s Academy was a long four years ago, and these days she spent most of her time avoiding conversation with nobles when she could help it. Especially nobles as involved in the war effort as Ferdinand.
“Lady Camilla requests our company for – oh, let’s tell her we’re busy,” Henrietta said as she read over another card. “She always smells like barley water, and she so clearly likes you better than me. Not that I blame her!” she added quickly. “But she needn’t be so obvious about it.”
Bernadetta gave a small, sincere smile to her friend. “If you insist, we don’t have to see her,” she agreed readily. “But I think you gravely misjudge her preferences.”
Bernadetta had known Henrietta von Freytag since they were both children. Their mothers had been close friends at finishing school, and remained in contact following their marriages. The Freytag family were part of a fading aristocracy – Henrietta’s father was a Baron, but their fortunes were long spent. They lived on the generosity of others and the meager earnings of their property, their family name no longer particularly regarded or sought after.
That is, until one day in Hernietta’s late teens, when she stormed out of the room after an argument with her mother and wrenched the door clean off its hinges as she yanked it open.
“There hasn’t been a Crest in the family in over four generations, and if it had gone to anyone it should have gone to William,” she had explained to Bernadetta over tea on her first day visiting. “So no one bothered to check with me. What a pity! Can’t you just picture me with an axe?”
Hernietta von Freytag, therefore, went overnight from the second daughter of a poor family to the most eligible noblewoman in Adestrian society. And after two years of limited social calls and arranged teas, her mother finally felt she was ready to enter that society. Which was where Bernadetta came in: a flurry of letters between their mothers soon established that Bernadetta would be the perfect mentor for a young woman newly learning to navigate the social requirements of bearing a Crest. Bernadetta had not been consulted on the matter, but then again, she rarely was. Four years after her return to Adestria from the Officer’s Academy, Bernadetta was packed up and sent across the country to the Freytag’s sprawling, crumbling manor house.
It helped matters, somewhat, that she did like Henrietta quite a bit, even if she had no useful advice to offer. It helped matters even more that in their many, many social obligations, Henrietta generally did most of the talking.
“Well! Let’s put Lord Ferdinand von Aegir off until the end of the week; it’s always fun to make them squirm,” Henrietta said brightly, arranging her stack of calling cards with a satisfied smile. “And maybe tomorrow we can walk into town and see if there’s any new hats. Do you have interest in cards tonight, Bernie dear? I think you’re getting better.”
“I actually think I have a slight headache. I might go to bed early,” Bernadetta lied. In her defense, Henrietta lied first – she was actually probably getting worse at the card games her friend was trying to teach her. And Henrietta was getting better at learning her tells.
Henrietta looked disappointed but not surprised. “Ah, again? I do worry for you – perhaps it’s too much sun? We’ll look for a hat with a wide brim tomorrow.”
Henrietta seemed so cheered by this newfound mission that Bernadetta scarcely felt guilt as she left her sitting alone by the parlor fireplace, surrounded by her many, many invitations for that week’s afternoons.
***
Bernadetta gave an audible sigh of relief when she arrived back in her room. She slumped against the door, a habit she had developed to keep anyone from breaking down the door behind her, and began pulling off her shoes and evening gloves and jewelry, flinging them listlessly to a table by the door to sort out tomorrow.
Bernadetta loved her guest room. To be fair, Bernadetta always loved her room more than any other space, but her guest room at the Freytag manor was particularly lovely. It was a suite, with a large four-poster bed in the main room, a small study with two armchairs and a fireplace, and a private bath. Bernadetta had exclaimed that she couldn’t be possibly important enough to merit such a space, but Henrietta had laughed and waved the footman in with her trunks, barely hearing the protests.
It was enough to make Bernadetta almost regret how quickly she had fled after dinner. Almost.
Her regrets disappeared as she climbed into the bath, sighing deeply as the steam rose up around her and she sunk under the water. Being a noblewoman’s guest was an exhausting occupation – she had attended more afternoon teas in the past three months than she could count, not to mention a handful of actual parties . And she soon realized that there were two armchairs in the study so that Henrietta could visit in the afternoons and chat, when she wasn’t taking Bernadetta on afternoon walks or insisting they walk into town for shopping and gossip. It was, on the whole, a to-do list of things that Bernadetta was exceptionally bad at, and not getting much better at. But at nights, after dinner and cards and music and polite conversation, that was when Bernadetta was happiest. She could tuck herself away in her room and no one would come after her or try to find her. She had hours, absolute hours, just for herself. And that made the daytime almost worth it.
Bernadetta decided to be a bit extravagant tonight, which meant wearing both her favorite nightgown and her favorite dressing gown, a combination that she generally saved for special occasions. She tied the dressing gown firmly in place, purple and silky with giant billowing sleeves, and selected a crocheting project from the second shelf of her bedroom’s wardrobe. She felt suddenly energized, her headache completely gone, and she was determined to make serious progress on the shawl, which would eventually have a pattern of leaves and vines that she’d devised herself.
It took her a couple of tries to get the fire started, but she eventually coaxed the flames to life. Henrietta had been skeptical when she told her she didn’t want a parlormaid to light a fire in the morning and the evening, but Bernadetta couldn’t imagine a worse fate than someone just wandering into your room at all hours of the day. At any rate, the flames soon swayed enticingly in the fireplace, and Bernadetta pulled an overstuffed armchair a little bit closer to the fire before setting in with her crochet hook and yarn, giving a contented sigh.
Time slipped away from her, beyond the candle burning steadily beside her. She lost herself in the gentle motion of her hands, the shimmering glow of the fireplace, the friendly shadows it cast on the wall around her. She hummed a little song to herself as she worked, wondering if maybe she’d just fall asleep in this chair by the fire rather than making the long, arduous trek to her bedroom and curling up with her five oversized pillows before drifting off to sleep. This debate between two pleasant options was so difficult that she barely noticed as the shadows on the walls stretched longer and the candle beside her burned low.
She was jolted out of this reverie by a loud crash of glass from the next room.
Bernadetta froze, clutching her crochet hook like a weapon. A full breath had barely passed when she heard an accompanying thunk of something hitting the floor of her bedroom floor.
Bernadetta dropped her shawl, hook and all, and resisted the urge to scream. She sunk into her chair, wondering if she could stay very still and the thunk would maybe go away.
But that was foolish, of course. Crashing glass and untimely thunks didn’t just pick themselves up and walk back out into the night. Most likely, Bernadetta reasoned, it was an assassin directly sent to kill her. If they didn’t find her in her bed, they would surely come looking for her. And she had dropped her only weapon on the floor moments earlier.
The only thing to do, she decided, was to sneak out. This was made complicated by the fact that the only door into the hallway was through her bedroom. But it was the best plan she could come up with for now, so Bernadetta decided to risk it.
Bernadetta gingerly stood and picked up her crochet hook, and she stared at it glumly. She was fairly sure a trained assassin wouldn’t find it a very threatening weapon. She glanced around the room, looking for inspiration. The fire poker caught her eye, as did an expensive silver candlestick resting on the mantle. But Bernadetta gave a small gasp of victory as her eyes landed on a decorative coat of arms that was tucked away on the far wall, one that Bernadetta had never even noticed before. Two swords lay crossed behind a shield with the family’s insignia. It looked very regal and very dangerous, and Bernadetta ran to it eagerly.
She had to stand on her tip toes to reach the sword, but she figured she wouldn’t have time to draw a chair over to get a better angle. She tugged on the sword and it remained stuck to the wall. Bernadetta frowned, and tugged on it again. It shifted ever so slightly but remained firmly in place.
Bernadetta scowled at the coat of arms for good measure. Then, pushed her billowing sleeves up past her elbows, she grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands and yanked with all her might.
The entire coat of arms came crashing to the ground and broke apart at her feet. The shield clattered, bouncing off the floor, and the remaining sword clanked against it. Bernadetta was left standing clutching the other sword with both hands.
She immediately swung towards her bedroom, the sword out in front of her. But though she waited an agonizing, trembling twenty seconds or so, no shadowy figure appeared in the doorway. Bernadetta took a deep, shuddering breath and edged away from the debris, as if it might somehow crash again if she stepped too close to it.
It did not.
Bernadetta kept the sword up as she crept towards the door connecting the sitting room to her bedroom. It was partially open – she’d had no reason to close it behind her – but there was no light from her room beyond the candle she had lit earlier in the evening and the ambient light from the moon. The assassins were confident and skilled, obviously, to crash into her room without even bothering to bring a torch. That just made them scarier.
Bernadetta listened at the door, waiting to hear a sound of – whatever assassins sounded like. Sharpening knives, or cackling laughter, or something. But beyond the faint ticking of a cuckoo clock that she found quite comforting in other circumstances, the room was quiet.
Maybe she was lucky. Maybe they’d already seen the bed was empty and given up their life’s calling as assassins and moved to northern Fódlan to join the church.
But Bernadetta had never been one for optimism. So instead of banking on this, she braced herself, clutched her sword a bit tighter, and nudged the door open, creeping into her room.
The door remained firmly closed, the bed was undisturbed, and no assassins jumped out from the corner to cut her down the moment she snuck into the room. That was the good news.
The moon shone through the window, brighter than usual, most likely because all the glass had been smashed in. That was the less good news.
Glass littered the ground in front of her window, particularly large shards catching in the moonlight. In the center of the shards, a cloaked figure lay crumpled on the floor, their hood pulled over their head.
Bernadetta froze, swallowing a scream. It seemed like a strange strategy to huddle on her floor and not move, but perhaps the assassin was lulling her into a false sense of security?
Bernadetta glanced at the door leading out of her bedroom. Maybe if she crept towards it extremely slowly, the strange assassin wouldn’t even notice her. Maybe she could get out into the hallway and flee the castle, running into the night until she made it to Enbarr or the Airmid River or –
The figure on the ground groaned softly, a pained and involuntary sound. Bernadetta froze again, suddenly noticing she had made it halfway to the door without realizing it.
Her decision to turn, and move towards the figure, and look down over them, was even more incomprehensible. Maybe it was because, in all her wild imaginings, her hypothetical assassins never sounded in pain. Maybe it was because the sound was hauntingly familiar. At the very least, she reasoned, she had a sword.
The figure didn’t move as Bernadetta approached. They didn’t rise up to strike her as she peered over them, stepping nimbly around the shards of glass in her bedroom slippers. Bernadetta was starting to think that she was dealing with the worst assassin in Fódlan, which would be her luck.
She was too scared to reach down and throw back the hood of the cloak, for fear that it would reveal some otherworldly demon or horribly scarred bandit king. So instead, she gently nudged at the figure with her foot. When nothing happened beyond another, softed groan, she nudged again, a little harder.
The figure flipped over, the hood finally falling as they landed on their back. Bernadetta found herself staring down into the bruised and barely conscious face of Yuri Leclerc. His eyes focused on her for a moment before slipping closed again. Beneath his cloak, which was falling open, the front of his shirt was soaked dark with blood.
“Hey, Bernadetta,” he mumbled.
Bernadetta leapt backwards, throwing her sword out in front of her even as she knew there was no chance he would – or could – raise a hand against her. She raised her own fist to her mouth, biting into it as she stifled a scream.
The sound, strangled and muted though it was, seemed to rouse Yuri. His eyes fluttered open, focusing once more on her.
“Why . . .do you have . . . a sword?” he asked, genuinely confused.
Then he passed out.
***
It was over an hour later when Yuri awoke, his eyes fluttering open slowly as he turned towards Bernadetta with another faint sound of distress. By the, she had managed to drag him across the floor from the bedroom into the small sitting room and to prop him up somewhat in one of the overstuffed armchairs by the fireplace.
He blinked at her a few times. “Evening, Bernadetta,” he finally said, his voice cracking from lack of use. “Glad to see you didn’t stab me.”
“Stop looking at me!” Bernadetta snapped. “You’re practically naked .”
Yuri looked for a moment like he was going to puzzle this logic out, but instead turned his attention to scanning the room, his eyes sharpening as he took in the space. Bernadetta returned her attention to the injury on his side, which she had spent the better part of the hour trying to patch up. She’d left his heavy cloak on the floor of her bedroom, and despite the blood staining through his shirt, once she’d braced herself to tear his shirt off and actually examine his wounds, she’d realized his injuries were relatively minor.
“I see Professor Manuela actually taught you something useful about medicine,” Yuri remarked as Bernadetta wrapped another bandage around his torso. “I don’t suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ll give me my shirt back at some point?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Bernadetta mumbled, largely ignoring him even as she looked up at him with a quizzical frown. “There was so much blood and – and I thought you were going to die for a moment there. But this is a relatively minor injury.”
“Oh, that blood wasn’t mine,” Yuri said with a shrug. Bernadetta turned pale, but he didn’t elaborate. “And I didn’t pass out from blood loss, anyway,” he added, poking at the bandages even as Bernadetta slapped his hands away. “That was probably the poison.”
“Poison!” Bernadetta exclaimed, sitting back on her heels and covering her face in horror. “What have you been doing , Yuri?”
“Getting poisoned, then getting stabbed, mostly,” Yuri said. He tried sitting up, but sank back down into the chair. “Don’t worry, I’m fairly sure it was one I’ve been building an immunity to. It was my fault for drinking the – woah, don’t you go fainting on me now, Bernadetta.”
Bernadetta did feel very faint, although she thought it was rather audacious of Yuri to criticize her for fainting in the privacy of her own bedroom, when he hadn’t even had the decency to knock before doing the same. She clutched his arm for balance and tried to pass it off as further medical examination, although she doubted your hands were supposed to tremble quite so much when you examined a patient for symptoms of poison.
“If you’re poisoned, we need to get you an antidote. What are your symptoms?” she asked, frantically reaching the back of her hand up to his forehead. It felt clammy and warm, unless of course her hand felt clammy and warm, and his forehead felt normal.
Professor Manuela honestly hadn’t taught her much that was useful at the academy, in retrospect.
Yuri leaned away from her, flopping against the other side of the armchair. “I’ll be fine, probably, don’t worry,” he insisted. “It’s just probably going to be a rough night, but if you promise not to kick me out –”
“Fatigue, obviously, and loss of motor control,” Bernadetta said, interrupting him as she stood. “Slight fever, unless I’m making that up. Anything else? What am I missing?”
Yuri looked up at her. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I’m like eighty percent sure I’ll survive this; you’re worrying over –”
“Slowed mental acuity,” Bernadetta added with a frown. She picked up a blanket from a nearby ottoman and threw it at Yuri. “Stay here,” she said, marching toward the door leading out into her bedroom.
Yuri twisted in the chair, flopping over the edge of it to look around it at her. “Where else am I supposed to go? Where are you going?” he asked, but Bernadetta had already clicked the door closed behind her.
She grabbed her own favorite cloak from where it hung in the wardrobe, suppressed a shudder at the memory of Yuri’s blood-stained cloak, and threw open her bedroom door, disappearing into the night.
***
The grounds of the Freytag Manor were sprawling but relatively unkempt, and in general the family stayed close to the main house rather than venturing out into the surrounding woods and fields.. So Bernadetta had been surprised to discover the greenhouse – she hadn’t really thought of the family as being invested in gardening.
“Oh no, Mama loves plants,” Henrietta had explained after Bernadetta blurted out this rather tactless observation. “But proper gardens are so expensive, and the greenhouse has been around forever. I think it was one of the first ones built in Enbarr. Great Great Uncle Althuser was a botanist.”
Bernadetta silently thanked Hernietta’s great great uncle as she snuck into the greenhouse, clutching her candle closer and wishing she’d brought something more substantial. The greenhouse was small, much smaller than the one at Garreg Mach, but Lady Freytag had filled it to the brim with exotic plants from far corners of Fòdlan, and even a few small sections from Brigid and Sreng. Beyond her bedroom, Bernadetta loved it more than anywhere else in the manor.
But she ignored the more esoteric sections of the greenhouse tonight, heading straight towards the herb garden in the back corner of the greenhouse. Bernadetta kneeled by the plot and frowned, considering the task before her. Yuri hadn’t been particularly forthcoming on what poison was flowing through his bloodstream right now – but to be fair, he hadn’t been forthcoming on much. It was impossible to provide an antidote if you didn’t know the exact poison.
Still, the poison hadn’t killed him yet, which was a good sign. The best she could do was treat the symptoms, cover her bases, and hope Yuri wasn’t exaggerating about probably being fine.
Bernadetta selected her herbs carefully, but wasn’t too picky about how many she grabbed – it would be easy to have more than she needed, ultimately. She winced as she reached from some spiky leaves in the back row, wishing she’d thought to bring gardening gloves, or even a basket for the herbs. But there was little time for regret when poison was on the line. Her arms full of herbs, Bernadetta rushed out of the greenhouse.
And nearly slammed directly into Osric, the head of the guards at the Freytag Manor.
“Careful there, Miss Bernadetta, you nearly toppled me over!” he said with a gruff laugh as Bernadetta skittered back from him. Osric was a large and imposing man – Bernadetta guessed he could crush most thieves with his bare hands, but he kept a sword at his side at all times, just for good measure. His eyes were sharp and always on the lookout, and he fixed Bernadetta with a suspicious look she’d seen him leverage against all manner of visitors as they passed through the front gate. “You’re out awfully late this evening, wouldn’t you say?” he asked, no outward accusation in his tone as far as Bernadetta could tell.
“Y-y-y-es! I mean! No! I mean, is it late?” Bernadetta said. She thrust her armful of plants forward. “I was just – I was getting a bouquet from the greenhouse! The one in my room is looking very glum, these days! I think it needs more sunlight.”
Osric frowned down at the pointed, ugly plants in Bernadetta’s arms. “You have odd taste for a bouquet, if you don’t mind my saying so, my lady,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.
“Yes! No! I think they’re gorgeous, don’t you?” Bernadetta said. “I mean, no thorns and they don’t eat anything, but such a nice shade of, um, grey-green.”
Orsic didn’t say anything, but his eyebrows raised higher.
“Anyway! I’d better put these in water before they . . . explode,” Bernadetta concluded. She gave Orsic her biggest smile, which probably made her look like she was going to cry, and fled into the manor, leaving the greenhouse and the guard behind her.
Yuri had not moved from the chair where Bernadetta left him, although he’d shifted the blanket to wrap around his shoulders more comfortably. He tilted his head towards Bernadetta as the door to the sitting room creaked open, and for a moment it looked like he was going to try to stand as she entered the room.
“Stay there; save your strength,” Bernadetta said as she crossed over to the chair, dropping her armful of herbs on the coffee table. She hung her teapot above the low coals in the fireplace, grateful that it hadn’t burnt out while she was gone. With a sigh, she knelt by the table and began sorting through the herbs. “How do you feel?” she asked, looking over at Yuri as she worked.
“Ngh,” Yuri mumbled, struggling to sit up to look at what she was doing.
“Worse, then. Alright! We can . . . I can work with this,” Bernadetta said. “You just keep working on not dying over there, and we’ll be just fine.”
She didn’t have a mortar and pestle, so she improvised, grabbing a candlestick holder off the mantle and grinding the herbs against a book that would surely be ruined. Bernadetta took comfort in the strong, medicinal smell that filled the room as she worked – she could almost pretend she was on the right track or that she knew what she was doing at all.
She scraped the herb paste into a mug she kept on a tray with the teapot, and carefully poured hot water over it. She looked up at Yuri as she stirred. He watched her silently, his eyes blinking slowly.
“If the poison doesn’t kill you, you’ll have to tell me why you’re here,” Bernadetta said, her voice remarkably bright to her own ears. Maybe she was in shock. “Do you normally crash through windows to visit old friends? Or am I just lucky?”
“Ran into some slithering –” Yuri started, but the end of his sentence was lost to a cough. “Knew you could help,” he added, as if that explained everything.
“Well! I have no idea what any of that means,” Bernadetta said, her voice still too bright. “Maybe making small-talk with someone half-dead wasn’t the best idea!”
“S’fine,” Yuri said. “You worry . . .so much.”
Bernadetta half-crawled over to the chair where Yuri was sitting, not bothering to stand up. Pulling herself up to rest on against the arm of the chair, she thrust the herbal concoction forward, directly under his nose.
“Here, drink this,” she said. “I’m not sure if it’ll help, but – well, it probably won’t hurt, at least!”
Yuri’s fingers wrapped around the mug, but as Bernadetta began to let go she realized his grip wasn’t nearly strong enough to hold it on her own. Biting her lip, she did her best to ignore the way his hands brushed up against hers. Carefully, knowing the drink was still warm, Bernadetta helped Yuri bring the mug to his lips. He drank slowly, coughing and spluttering every few seconds, and it was a painful process, but eventually Yuri’s fingers tightened around the mug and he titled it back until it was practically upside down, downing the rest of the concoction in one final swig.
“That. . . tastes terrible,” he said, dropping the mug back into Bernadetta’s hands and shaking his head, a terrible scowl on his face.
“Well I didn’t make it to sell at the local taverns!” Bernadetta said, slamming the mug onto the coffee table. But her heart skipped a bit as she looked back at Yuri. Maybe she was too hopeful, but his eyes already seemed sharper, closer to the expression she was so used to from him.
“Bernadetta . . .” he said, looking at her intently and leaning forward, just a bit.
“Sleep, now, I think. Sleep is the best option,” Bernadetta said, finally standing. “Give the medicine time to work. Or something! I don’t know what I’m doing, Yuri.”
Yuri didn’t answer. He’d slumped back in his chair and was watching the fire, his eyes unfocusing again.
“Can you stand?” Bernadetta asked. “If I help you?”
Yuri frowned at this question. “Maybe,” he finally said after a moment. “I tried following after you, but . . .” He trailed off, frowning at his hands as if they’d betrayed him somehow.
“Well, that was very stupid of you!” Bernadetta said. “I told you to stay put.”
“Since when have you been the patron saint of poison victims?” Yuri mumbled grumpily as Bernadetta leaned over him.
“Since you crashed through my bedroom window, poisoned,” Bernadetta snapped back, still keeping her voice low.
She threw his arm around her shoulder and tugged him to his feet with more force that she might generally use, but it did the trick. Yuri stumbled to his feet and into Bernadetta, and she through her other hand out to steady him. They careened back and forth for a few moments before they finally got their footing, but Yuri eventually managed something like walking, and Bernadetta slowly guided them both towards the bedroom.
Bernadetta tried not to think about how it must look, right now, her dragging Yuri halfway across her bedroom, with his one arm draped over her shoulder and his other hand grasping at her arm for balance. She’d clung to Yuri like this far too many times as a child, barely giving it a thought as she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing over a bee sting or a sharp word from her father or, sometimes, nothing at all. But it didn’t feel the same as she fisted her hand in his shirt, feeling his heart beating faintly under her trembling knuckles. She took no comfort as Yuri’s head lolled against hers, making her own heart beat far too fast.
It was too much adrenaline, she decided. Her bedroom was supposed to be safe and calm . Yuri was extremely rude for ruining both of those things.
Yuri more or less collapsed on the bed when Bernadetta let go of him, as if the short walk across the room had taken the last of his strength. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and blinked at Bernadetta again, his gaze sharpening.
“I’m not taking your – I can sleep on the floor, Bee; it’s more comfortable than most of the places I sleep these days.”
Bernadetta stared back at him, thinking about this offer. Then she reached out and gave his shoulder a light shove, sending him back into the pillows.
“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m not waking up to a dead man sprawled out on my floor,” she said. She walked over to her writing desk and grabbed the chair there, dragging it back over to the bed. “Someone has to make sure you survive the night.”
“I’m not going to . . . this is seriously not even in the top five worst nights I’ve had this year,” Yuri said, struggling up on his elbows.
“Let’s keep it that way,” Bernadetta said, setting the chair next to the bed and frowning at Yuri for a moment. “I’ll get you some water. Take off your boots,” she added. She turned before Yuri could protest.
As Bernadetta grabbed a glass and the water pitcher from her dressing table, she caught a look of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was frizzing, she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week instead of just staying up an hour or two past her bedtime. She wouldn’t trust herself to watch over a particularly hearty plant, let alone a man drifting towards death.
She tore her eyes away from the mirror and focused on pouring water into the glasses. Her hands, she realized, were still trembling, and she couldn’t remember when they had started.
Yuri held onto this glass more easily, to Bernadetta’s relief, although she was unable to say whether he was actually getting stronger or the glass was simply lighter. After a few sips of water, however, he handed the glass back to her, falling back against the pillows and staring up blankly at the canopy above her bed.
“The floor would be fine, you know,” he said. “Really.”
“Don’t,” Bernadetta replied.
The silence stretched between them for a long moment.
“How are you feeling?” Bernadetta finally asked, kicking the leg of her chair nervously with the back of her foot and trying not to stare.
“You know how it is,” Yuri said with something that might’ve been a slight shrug. “The world always gets a bit blurry with poison. I think things are feeling . . . less blurry, though, so I probably have you to thank for that.”
Bernadetta wrinkled her nose, ignoring the compliment. “How many times have you been poisoned?” she asked.
Yuri closed his eyes and sighed, but it was a sleepy sigh, not a frustrated one. “A normal amount,” he said, covering his hand to hide a yawn. He added as an afterthought, “Maybe a bit more.”
Bernadetta frowned and thought about telling Yuri that the normal number of times to be poisoned was, in her opinion, “zero.” But despite his protests and their bickering and the way Bernadetta’s heart wouldn’t slow its frantic beating, she realized Yuri was already beginning to drift off to sleep.
Bernadetta wasn’t really sure what one was supposed to do when sitting up all night next to someone’s bedside. She’d read about it in books, of course, but in practice she felt less like a noble and tender caretaker and more just confused and tired and uncomfortably cold. The wind blew in from her broken, ruined window, and Bernadetta pulled her dressing gown around her a little bit tighter.
The moonlight shone in from the open, broken window, casting the room in an otherwordly glow. Yuri’s hair shone almost silver from this light. Bernadetta stared, and reached to push his bangs out of his face, and caught herself before she leaned too far forward. Yuri turned towards her slightly, perhaps instinctively, and Bernadetta snatched her hand back as if she had burned it on moonlight.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do, to stay up beside Yuri, to keep him safe, but she knew at least that she needed to stay awake. Eventually, she failed at even that. Between the ticking clock and Yuri’s steady breathing and her own long, miserable day, Bernadetta’s eyes grew heavy and the world lost focus and she slipped into a dreamless sleep of her own.
Only the moonlight watched over them, refracted across the edges of broken windowpane.