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Your throat rips raw with a plea for a life.
Red, goes your vision, goes your clothes, goes the ground — the sky, shredded, gashes of crimson between the clouds. It parts for ghastly silver wings which leave nothing but carnage behind.
You scream again, and it’s muffled, the ringing in your ears at work with the tingling in your limbs. It hurts, it hurts. You hurt.
You yell out her name this time — you hold it dear, yet you’ve never called her by it.
Hubert’s hand on your shoulder brings you out of the carmine abstraction for but a moment to gather your thoughts, to shake it off, and with a heave — drag towards the accursed pile of rubble set before you. You don’t pay mind to Petra clutching her distorted leg, to Bernadetta fighting for breath, or to Linhardt, ghost-white at the sight of blood. It’s despicable, really, as if you forget who they are. As if they’re not nearly as important as her.
Your hands dig and scrape, they bleed, sting, ache, and you inhale, and you exhale, and you keep going, and you know she’s under here, and she’s alive, and she’s waiting to see your face again. Hubert leaves you be, stoic, stagnant as ever. Unchanging on the surface, but he aches, too. Caspar gazes at the scene, succumbed to exhaustion, a morose cloud set upon his usually radiant visage. Dorothea is crying.
You don’t care.
The depths of your mind run once more. It’s rage, it’s grief, it’s trauma, despair, guilt, hatred. It’s red. Savagely so. Red, deeper than that of your finely pressed cape, of the roses you know sit snugly upon your polished cedar desk. Red. One infatuating shade that impels its way straight to your heart and encapsulates it. You’ve felt it before. Yet never was it so full of wrath, so ravaging; threatening to erupt and sunder your time-woven seams. It’s one loss too many that you refuse to believe happened. And it compromises you, invigorates in a way that’s primal, feral.
The moon climbs in the sky, and it’s blanketed by a thick quilt of grey. It begins to rain. The drops litter the ground as if the sky is cleansing the battlefield. As if it can wash away the memories of the one who was lost. It stings in your wounds like acid, gets in your eyes, drenches your once meticulously cared-for hair, and only then does Hubert speak up.
“Lady Edelgard, please.” His voice is soft. “It’s about time you let Linhardt care for your injuries.”
You stop clawing at the crumbled hope to process his words. Your brow furrows further, your lips contort, but you resume digging. His gentle hand setting upon your shoulder triggers something within you, and you pour scalding water of rage over his rare benevolence, trying to mentally snap your wild talons around and grasp back your ability to find her — and you give Hubert a tooth-bared snarl and shove off his grip. Your usually pristine white gloves are stained with the guilt of costing your teacher her life and smear scarlet over his knuckles. He grimaces, but persists, locks eye contact, and speaks again. You don’t hear it. You don’t care about it. You care about the heap of tragedy before you that you know holds her body, her being, your anchor. So you turn back, your sodden hair whipping his face, and you try to redirect the redness you feel. Redirect it to your nerves, your muscles. You want to will strength into yourself and turn every stone that fell to entomb your light. But it doesn’t go. It won’t leave you alone, and your vision swells, and—
“Edie!”
Dorothea’s in front of you, crouched between yourself and your target. You want to be rid of her presence. She’s interfering. She grabs your shoulders, her fingers pressing and prodding, and you jolt. You tremble, again, and her palms flash. It’s enough to dull the red to a maroon, and your face softens from fury to desolace. She looks upset, you notice; but you have no will to give any further fucks about it. She’s upset, but not torn, not mangled, you think, like you are. Dorothea didn’t lose her purpose. Her love. Of course, she didn’t care as much, or she would dig with you. She—
“Edelgard!” Your full name rarely leaves her lips. “Stop! Get healed! You can’t possibly think you can find her in this state!” She’s angry now, and tears threaten to drip from her lashes again. “And what do you— What do you think we should do now? You... You lead this attack. You have to tell us how to move forward.”
And with insurmountable regret, you do.