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Ingrid has a recurring dream.
She’s running barefoot through a field of white flowers, the full moon hanging high over her head. It’s dark, but before her, she can still make out the figure of a girl with long white hair billowing after her. The girl, dressed in the same uniform Ingrid once wore quite a few years ago in her youth, is only taking slow strides forward, but no matter how hard Ingrid pushes herself to follow after her, the distance between them only seems to widen with time. Then, without fail, Ingrid stumbles, plummeting forward into a sea of black as the meadow around her warps and the foliage folds in to swallow her whole. She’s left gasping for breath when she awakens, still dazed by how vivid the scene was.
It’s not every day that she relives this experience, but perhaps more of a biweekly or monthly occurrence. It always seems to come right as she starts getting preoccupied with other things in her life, as if she’s reached the end of her emotional lead chain. Right as she stops thinking about it– there it is, again.
She hasn’t spoken about the dream to many people, really. It’d raise more than a few brows if she mentioned it to anyone other than her closest friends, because in this country, everyone knows that a young person with a head full of white hair is almost a sure sign of vampirism.
Dimitri is a man with too many troubles on his plate, that Ingrid can’t bear to draw time away from that. Mercedes is a good listener, but perhaps too good of a listener, that Ingrid leaves the conversation feeling like she simply got consoled instead of any answers. She knows Felix would simply think it was nothing or some bad mushrooms. Sylvain is often a man of dubious moral character, but he’s tight-lipped when he wants to be. She confides in him.
Sylvain scratches his head. “That dream again? You’d think between us I’d be the one dreaming of chasing girls,” and Ingrid pinches his cheek for it. “Alright, alright, I get it! Honestly, I’ve been thinking it over and doing a bit of research in my spare time. And some things are adding up a scary amount. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a byproduct of a memory spell.”
Ingrid squints at him. “A memory spell.”
He nods. “You say they’re really vivid ones. Of course, you can have vivid dreams. But getting the same one over and over again is a pretty common symptom of memory repression.”
Ingrid frowns. “There aren’t any gaps in my memory, though. I can pretty clearly recall everything from our teenage years, which is when I’m guessing this hypothetically took place, considering our school uniforms and my long hair.”
He shrugs. “It’s a really rare spell, since only a few really powerful mages can cast something like that. It’s even a trade secret on how they do so. There’s not a lot of victim records on this. And, I might be postulating completely wrong here. It’s just some food for thought. Think about it, okay?”
“Ugh, fine. Thanks for looking out for me, though. I appreciate it.”
Sylvain winks. “Thanking your best friend who works so hard for your sake for once? Good girl. You should do it more.”
“Don’t call me a good girl,” Ingrid snaps back. “You, you’re so infuriating. Right when I sincerely want to praise you for anything–”
He laughs. “You admit it, right? You don’t want to be a good girl, sometimes. Try listening to your own heart sometime.”
She starts fuming. “Sylvain!”
He runs.
Ingrid has never seen the girl’s face in her dreams. Every single time, she’s only ever seen the girl’s back, a small frame made so deceptively broad by how she held herself so upright and noble and proud.
Then, how is it that she immediately knew? That the face before her was most certainly that of the girl who haunted her sleepless nights.
Gustave’s aging voice breaks her out of her stunned revelation. “Your next mission, Commander Galatea. Bring her alive if you can, but her head will suffice.” He nudges the file forward and tried to give her an encouraging smile. “It’s a very important mission. You’ve grown a lot these past few years. If you need more men, you can make a request to our quartermaster. I truly believe you’re capable of doing this.”
Ingrid automatically nods, her gaze still fixated on the file photo before her. A white haired woman around her age, with stunning lilac eyes and an evaluating gaze. Her hair is tied up ina side tail, instead of down loose, but she knows. She’s seen those eyes before. She has no recollection of such, but they were too familiar, as if it was something she’d once drowned herself in.
“You’re staring. Any issues with the file?” Gustave asked.
“No,” Ingrid swallows. “I’m just feeling a bit nervous thinking about the mission at hand, but thanks for the pep talk.”
Gustave seems satisfied with that answer.
Good soldiers don’t ask questions. She hears Sylvain’s infuriating voice in the back of her mind. Filial, responsible, hard-working: those are words she can accept and aspired for. Being a good girl, though– it makes her feel sick to her stomach.
The headmaster and bishop of the academy was a kindly but overbearing woman. Rhea, she told everyone to call her. She had a beautiful smile and a motherly touch. Ingrid neither could bring herself to like nor dislike her, but dutifully held her in utmost respect.
Rhea was different from other bishops, at least, back then. She smiled as she preached compassion and understanding. “In some jurisdictions, other races are reviled and feared. We should not be so quick to spurn them, though. Each individual’s goodness should be weighed by their own actions. What if a vampire wanted to live peacefully among us humans? What if a werewolf regretted the damage they caused when they lost control of themselves? We shouldn’t call these people monsters, because of how they were born.”
Ingrid remembers a young Dimitri’s grim expression as he raised his hand. “And the ones who want to do harm? The ones we were taught to watch out for?”
Rhea’s gaze hardens. “Then they leave us with no choice, of course. We are merciful, but not weak or soft. That is the standard that St. Garegg Mach strives for, and I hope you all one day understand my words today.”
It was by this creed that Ingrid and every other bounty hunter completed every assignment given to them. That the condemned have committed some grave sin, and must be struck down.
Ingrid thinks about the white-haired girl’s intelligent and ambitious gaze, and wonders what sort of crime she must have committed.
Ingrid approaches the location she was given, a manor hidden deep away in the woods. As the trees start to thin out, a large structure starts to peek through the foliage. When she finally creeps forward far enough to reach the clearing, there stood a manor so stereotypically gothic that she had to mentally suppress an irony laden chuckle. Gustave had recommended she take a healthy number of troops with her for an assault, but Ingrid had made the executive decision to make this a discreet one-man mission. She consulted nobody about this, of course, as they’d all tell her she would be stupid or suicidal for doing so.
In and out, she told herself. In and–
From the corner of her eye, a glowing white flower catches her attention. It looked exactly like those in her dream, and before she knew what she was doing, she was already meandering her way over to it, as if there was some magnetic pull to it. When she reaches out for the flower–
Her vision blurs.
The white haired girl is staring back at her. Though, to be exact, her hair is not white. It is brown. This is not the exact same white haired girl from the photo, but a younger one, dressed sharply in a formal black dress. Her hair is down, just like in Ingrid’s dreams, with lilac ribbons weaved into her hair, but most importantly, brown.
They are close, much too close. It is then that Ingrid realises she is extending her hand out, and the other girl is cautiously putting her hand in her own. As if her body is not her own, Ingrid suddenly takes a step, and the world seems to spin around her. Ingrid recognises this room. It is the Garreg Mach ballroom. Dancing. They are dancing, her own steps clumsy and the other girl’s quite rigid, and Ingrid feels her mouth droop into a frown.
“I’m no good at this,” Ingrid says despondently, completely out of her will.
“Perhaps not, but you make better company than the rest. Do continue.” The girl flashes Ingrid a calm but confident smile.
“How long do we have to do this?”
“Until Hubert ‘accidentally’ spills juice on Friar Seteth’s smock and during the commotion we can slip out unseen.”
“ Edelgard !” Ingrid hisses indignantly.
Suddenly, Ingrid snaps back to reality. She moves her fingers around, and they all listen to her. Now, though, the flower she had thoughtlessly plucked has wilted before her, the brilliant glow of light gone completely. Its translucent petals flutter slightly with a stiff breeze, but they look nothing like they did before.
Ingrid frowns.
Was that… a memory? There was no other explanation for the out of body experience she just seemed to have. Would finding more of these flowers give her more of her memory back? It feels incredibly bizarre, but the more Ingrid thinks about this, the more she realises this memory seems to fit perfectly into her head. She does remember the ball. She does remember this, and only this happening, as if she had always known the girl all this time even though this is the first and only instance she had ever appeared in her memories. Her hair is brown. Something was going on here.
Now, though, assuming that was a real memory, she knows the girl’s name. Edelgard. It feels familiar, even though it’s the first she’s heard of it.
Ingrid steels herself. She will get to the bottom of this– who Edelgard is, why she presumably took every memory Ingrid had of her, and why Rhea has ordered her bounty.
It is surprisingly yet suspiciously easy to get into the perimeter of the manor. There’s no guards, and not a single sound of life present. This is quite unnatural, considering the laundry list of enemies to watch out for, like a great orange werewolf, or the teleportation wards that were meant to confuse and eject intruders that have been spotted in the forest that have been conspicuously absent that night, and Ingrid feels unsettled. Something is wrong. She feels like she’s being led somewhere, even. Is she being toyed with?
Then, she spots it– another glowing flower, tucked into a vase sitting at a decrepit tea table in a shoddy looking gazebo. Once she ascertains the coast is clear, she touches it, and–
As expected, another memory. It seems to have taken place before the previous one, so these aren’t necessarily in chronological order, Ingrid notes. They don’t feel as familiar.
Her hair is brown again. They are sitting by the pond, and Ingrid is watching Edelgard skip a stone across the water.
“Filial. Is that what you want to be?”
Ingrid stares into the pool. “I really do. I owe my dad and brothers a lot, especially for letting me get an education like this so I really want to make it up to them. But marrying rich, is…”
Edelgard frowns. “It’s your life. She picks up another stone and chucks it. Ingrid is honestly impressed by how far it goes. It feels like there’s nothing this girl can’t do. “I have a friend who’s pushing herself to do the same. I can’t see her ever being happy like that, though. If it was up to me, I’d…”
She doesn’t continue any further, but her fist curls into a ball.
Ingrid feels a little awkward. “Thank you for worrying about me, and your friend too. For me though, it’s no big deal. I… I think I have a good eye for people. I know when someone scummy shows up and I’m strong enough to say no when I really have to.”
“Do you really, now.”
“What does that mean?” Ingrid makes a face. “Still, I don’t have any time to waste. I’d like to get everything I can get done now, while I can. If I can get enough money another way, then I can marry who I want, right? Or even better, not marry at all.”
Edelgard is silent for a moment. “Bounty hunting is profitable. It’s dangerous, but.”
Ingrid laughs. “I did consider it, to be honest. And the idea of keeping people safe sounds pretty great. I don’t know if my family would ever let me because it’s dangerous, though.”
Edelgard hums. “You have or can get the skills, I’m sure of it. Though, you’ll need more conviction than keeping people safe.”
Ingrid is confused. “How so?”
“What if you’re asked to kill something you don’t agree with?”
“Then I wouldn’t.”
Edelgard raises an eyebrow. “It’s easy to say that now. Not so much when you’re faced with the dilemma.”
“I can compromise my own happiness, but I won’t compromise my judgment. Especially when it comes to another person’s life.”
Edelgard looks away again, and throws another stone. It doesn’t go as far, perhaps because Ingrid broke her concentration. “Do well to remember those words one day, would you.”
Ingrid’s head is spinning. Edelgard is the one who suggested becoming a bounty hunter? Did she know it would have come to this? She doesn’t know what the changed memory was like, but she recalls fighting her brothers tooth and claw and beating them all when she finally settled on becoming one. To think she could trace something she was so proud of herself for back to this strange girl–
She snaps herself out of it. Don’t lose to her mind games, Ingrid.
Now, she has to figure out how to get into the manor. Noisily breaking down the front door is one way. The conveniently opened window on the second story is another way. She is definitely being led somewhere. Not one to turn down such a boldfaced challenge, Ingrid takes out her grappling hook and starts her climb.
Her reward is another pristine flower, this time laid gently on a dresser. She looks around the room; it looks like an unused but still maintained guest room, contrary to the dreary outer appearance of the manor itself. The furnishings are spare, but the books not as much; the shelves are filled to the brim with grimoires of some sort. Ingrid cannot help herself from reaching for the flower, first though.
Edelgard’s hair this time is white. The scene is familiar, of course; Ingrid has seen it many a night.
Ingrid, still in her nightwear, a baggy shirt and trousers, chasing after Edelgard’s retreating figure in the dark. There is screaming in the distance behind her, but Ingrid couldn’t bring herself at the moment to care. Like her dream, she tumbles forward, but this time the faceful of grass she gets on contact feels incredibly real, and she groans in pain.
“Are you alright?”
Ingrid looks upwards. There Edelgard is, crouched over and extending a hand towards her. The Ingrid at this moment, though, has a torrent of conflicting emotions around her, and smacks the hand away, clambering to get up herself.
“Are you alright, I should be asking. Are you insane? Where are you going? And what’s with your hair?”
Edelgard draws her hand back and looks at her impassively. “The simplest answer is often the correct one. Tell me, Ingrid. You’re a smart person. Why do you think my hair is white?”
She clenches her teeth. “You’ve been hiding it this whole time. But–why? You didn’t need to. Lady Rhea–”
Edelgard sneers, and it’s the first time Ingrid has seen such an unpleasant expression from the other girl directed towards her. It makes her skin crawl. “And what do you know about Rhea? She requested it of me. Quite forcefully, I might add.”
Ingrid stares at her bleakly.
“I’m not the only one. She fancies herself a saviour, but is nothing more than our captor.”
Ingrid’s head spins. “Our?”
Edelgard closes her eyes. “Soak your hair in this solution, every single day. Not a single root can show. Ferdinand, file your teeth and claws down, or you can’t have supper with the rest. Byleth, your skin is ice cold, and you have no heartbeat. Under no conditions may you get close to anyone. Bernadetta is too emotionally volatile to control her shapeshifting; she can’t leave her room, and now she’s too scared to. Have you ever seen Linhardt near water? No, because his legs will turn into a fish tail on contact.”
This is too much information to take in. Ingrid is stunned into silence.
“The rest of our families were hunted off. Rhea picked us because we were young and she pitied us, and believed we could be trained into harmless little things. She made us live among you all. Not a cruel choice in itself, but she so feared for our ‘safety’ that it’s suffocated us so to suppress who we are. Why should we conform to what she thinks is okay? That if we aren’t perfect imitations of people, that we’re dangers and have to be culled? I can’t wait another ten, twenty, thirty years waiting for fickle human opinions to be changed before we can walk out in the open.”
Ingrid knits her brows together. “I can’t claim to understand how you all feel, but–”
“But what?” Edelgard stares at her. “But she meant well? That we should be grateful to her? We are not like you. We can’t all be filial daughters. Ingrid Galatea. At one point, I wondered if you could have sympathised with me, but I suppose…this is goodbye.” She gets up and makes to leave again.
“Wait. Wait! Edelgard!!” Ingrid screams, reaching out, before black suddenly encroaches on her vision.
Ingrid drops to her knees in shock. How could she have forgotten this? How did everyone forget this? The day the monastery got set on fire, when monsters ran loose all over the campus? And apparently those monsters were students whose names and existences have been entirely erased from their memories? How is there such a big hole in everyone’s memory?
There has to be more on this. Something else, another flower, somewhere, anywhere– and there she finally finds one, after stumbling into what seems like the attic. She lunges for it–
“Don’t touch–”
Too late. Her vision goes out again.
The first thing she notices is that her hands are tangled into hair. The second thing she notices, because her eyes are squeezed shut, that there is what feels like a hand on her face and something brushing against her lips. Something soft, like maybe another pair of lips, and–
Ingrid hits the ground with a thud. Her eyes snap open, and she realises she’s fallen into a pit trap of some sort. Not far enough to kill, and something on the ground had softened the blow, but enough to disorient her horribly and send a throbbing pain throughout all her joints.
Before she can start thinking about what kind of unbelievable memory she had just stumbled upon, a figure appears overhead.
Of course, it’s Edelgard.
“I tried to warn you.”
Ingrid freezes. She has a crossbow– is it even feasible to take it out in time for self defense? But before she can make a decision, Edelgard has already used some sort of magic to levitate it out of her reach.
“I’ll be taking that. But, as a courtesy, I suppose I can exchange something for it. A rope, perhaps. You’ll quite like my suggestion, I think.” She does, indeed, throw down a knotted rope.
Ingrid stares at it with suspicion. “...What do you want from me.”
“I want you to climb out of this trap and go home. I’m being quite generous by not letting you languish down here for the rest of your life. I’m a very busy person.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Edelgard. You led me here.”
Edelgard’s expression shifts slightly, but not to anything particularly emotive. “Only half-true. I didn’t think you’d barge into the attic like this.”
“I’m not moving an inch until you answer my questions.”
“Do you really think you’re in the position to be demanding anything from me?”
Ingrid’s gaze hardens. “Just tell me the truth. That’s all I want to know. What kind of strange memories are you trying to implant into my head? I’ve thought it over, and there’s no way you did the same to every other person at Garreg Mach as well, to cover a big incident like that.”
Edelgard raised an eyebrow. I only took yours. Any further tampering was not on me. You really don’t know what kind of person Rhea is, after all, do you? For all she preaches, she’s not human either. She’s a dragon, playing at human, or playing at god. I can’t tell, sometimes. It’s absolutely within her power to cast a blanket memory alteration spell like that.”
Ingrid frowns. “It’s your word against hers, to me. How can I believe you?”
“If you can believe that this rope I handed down is real, then you can believe I have no reason to lie to you at this point, can you?”
Ingrid stares hard at the rope. Then, she musters all the energy she can to pull herself upright. The rope doesn’t suddenly slip or break, no matter how much weight she tries to test it with. She squints upwards, but Edelgard’s expression is as unimpressed as ever.
“If she’s that powerful, then making an enemy of her must have been the biggest mistake of your life. You don’t look like you regret it a single bit, though.”
“My biggest mistake, you say? That’s laughable, truly. You’re right. I didn’t regret a single thing I did for the sake of claiming my freedom.” Edelgard’s eyes are colder than steel. “You said you wanted the truth. You were my biggest mistake. I should have taken you with me by force, if I knew you were going to throw away your life like this, barging into a vampire’s lair all alone. Forgive me for presuming incorrectly that in letting you go, you might have wanted to live happily for yourself for once.”
“I am! Living! For myself!” Ingrid wheezes out, as she pulls herself up the rope.
“You’re doing as you’re told, still. Your superiors told you to kill me. You hesitated.”
“I can think for myself. Thank. You!” She winces as she finally hauls herself out of the pit, and her bruised sides feel sore. Edelgard looks down at her impassively still. It makes Ingrid’s ears heat up. “I smelled something fishy about this. I want the whole story before I do anything. If it wasn’t me, someone else would have come and tried to kill you for real. Is that so damn wrong?”
“So you don’t want to kill me, and yet you came.”
Ingrid feels her blood pressure rising. “Do you only listen to the parts of conversations you want to hear?”
Edelgard does not answer, but instead extends her hand. Ingrid looks at it as if she’s suddenly grown 3 more fingers. “...Are you so self-righteous that you don’t want to touch a filthy vampire’s hand?”
Ingrid gathers the strength to grab it purely out of spite, she tells herself, and hauls herself upright. Edelgard’s grip is strong, much stronger than Ingrid expected from someone of her stature. “You… don’t act like you know how I feel.”
“Then tell me. How do you feel?” For the first time, there’s something approaching anguish in Edelgard’s voice. It stings her heart to hear, and still, Ingrid feels like she’s won something. “How are you still here arguing with me, instead of letting me leave peacefully or finishing the job you were sent here to do? I don’t understand you, Galatea. I did my best to do right by you. You won’t take my hand, but you’re flushed with anger because I took mine back. What am I supposed to make of this?”
That’s right. Ingrid had been brimming with questions, each and every one meant to try to dissect what was going on through Edelgard’s head. So preoccupied with what Edelgard was thinking, what Edelgard had gone through, that she hadn’t stopped for a single moment to evaluate her own emotions. What is she feeling right now? Betrayed, by the lie Edelgard carried alone all these years? Indignation, that the decision was made for her? Just pure relief, that Edelgard is alive after all this time? Ingrid couldn’t make any sense of her own thoughts.
Ingrid squeezes her eyes shut to hold back the stinging in her eyes. “I– I don’t know! You never gave me a chance to think about it! You just– you just chose what you thought was best for me. Like everyone else.” She opens them again to glare at Edelgard. “How is that any different from the things you told me I should break away from? How hypocritical was that of you?”
Edelgard is silent. Then, a sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if– wait, sorry !?” Ingrid isn’t sure if she’s hearing right.
It’s Edelgard’s turn to glare. “I did indeed say that. Are you going to demand that I repeat myself?”
“I thought you were going to double down,” Ingrid says. “You always did,” she adds, even though she feels like she doesn’t have any solid memory of this. It’s just a fact that floated to mind.
Edelgard gives her a hard look. “I did used to.” She looks away from Ingrid. “But I didn’t lie. I perhaps regretted more than a few things, only when it came to you. I resigned myself to knowing I’d never meet you on good terms again, and still, I liked to think about how our reunion might go. They… none of them were close to what it really came down to,” she laughs drily, almost a little bitterly.
It squeezes at Ingrid’s heart. Damn that sullen honesty of hers. Why was she so weak to it?
“You said I couldn’t cleanly cut ties, but look at yourself.”
“Perhaps I am a hypocrite, but that doesn’t lessen the truth.”
Ingrid doesn’t flinch. “You knew I was here the moment I picked up that first flower. You could have chased me off earlier. Why didn’t you?”
Edelgard’s eyebrows knit together, but she stays silent. Ingrid takes this as a good sign to press on. “Why did you hide? Did you want me to find all of them? Pretend you and your friends were conveniently out of town, laugh as I confused myself with the influx of all these memories of a friendship that wasn’t supposed to be, watch from the shadows as I grapple with self-doubt? Was that just fun and games to you? Tell me. Now.”
“Humans and vampires aren’t so different,” Edelgard snaps. “Biologically, not that much. Emotionally– I once thought myself above it all. I was wrong.”
Ingrid grimaces. “Explain yourself with clear words. I don’t care about your sophistry. I think you owe me that much, at least.”
Edelgard gives her a hard, hard glare. “You don’t get it yet, I see. All those years, I just wanted you to choose me. My emotions got the better of my reason again, tonight. I wanted to see if you would choose me, if I posed the same question for you as I did a second time.”
Ingrid’s mouth feels dry. She tries to say something, but nothing is coming to mind. Choose? She wanted Ingrid to choose her?
Edelgard’s face is suddenly much closer than Ingrid is prepared for, and she presses her hand to her chest. “Well then, what is your answer? Galatea, you have the facts before you. Do you choose me, the unfilial runaway vampire orphan, or do you choose the good saint Rhea and her church? Can her good intentions right her wrongs? Does my right to my own life right my own?”
“You’re doing it again,” Ingrid feels her face heat up, from indignation or embarrassment, she can’t really tell. “Why are you always putting words in my mouth? Why do you always think you know my struggles? Why do you think choosing you is a moral quandary for me?”
Ingrid doesn’t have all her memories back, but the flood of feelings she did were unmistakable, even without the context. She liked being around Edelgard. She admired the girl, she thought there was nobody else like her, she truly wished the world was more like the one that she had dreamed of. Even now, as difficult as Edelgard was being, there it was– a desire to learn more about her.
“If you had asked– for all your cleverness, you didn’t even think to ask me directly. You just dropped hints hoping I’d catch on, and what was a clumsy and naive teenager supposed to do? If you’d just been upfront and asked me if I would have followed you anywhere, I would have said yes!”
Edelgard’s face falls. She looks apologetic, even. “I did? You really felt that way? That’s all I had to do?”
Ingrid is incensed. “Yes! You think you gave me a choice, but I never got the memo that I even had to pick. What kind of awful communication skills do you have?”
“I didn’t have much friends growing up, other than Hubert.”
…
Now Ingrid feels bad for asking.
Edelgard continues, though. “I did a brief moment of self reflection. I too, was a teenage girl. Hard to believe, I know.” Ingrid doesn’t laugh. “I don’t think I wanted to get rejected to my face.”
The silence was deafening.
“Rejected. You thought I’d say no,” Ingrid repeats.
“It was a 50-50, maybe, but I’m risk averse when necessary.”
“You’ll stage a grand coup, but you can’t ask someone else if she likes you.”
Edelgard actually smiles. “Isn’t that very human of me?”
It is. It’s very human to stumble over what to say to your crush, isn’t it?
Before she can say anything though, Edelgard cuts in again. “You meant it, though? The part about choosing me? Even now?”
“I do. I made up my mind to know more about you. I can’t do that if I let the church harm you in any way. Directly going against them, though…“ Her family and friends are still back with the church. It’s not like she can just abandon everything, just like that. Ingrid’s resolution is firm, though. She closes her eyes. “It’s a really big step. I want to work on a plan to make things right again, before any more violence unfolds. If it does come down to it– on my honor, I’ll defend you with my life.”
Not quite the answer Edelgard was looking for probably, but her brows seem to relax noticeably. “Do not defend me with your life. I spared you for a reason.” She then leans in and whispers. “It’s a good thing you said that though, or I can’t promise Hubert would spare the same courtesy.”
Ingrid looks incredulously at her and sighs. “I’ll let bygones be bygones. Just… I want the rest of my memories back, before I truly know how I feel about this. You’ll help me find them, right?”
Edelgard suddenly starts looking uncomfortable, the most uncomfortable she’s looked all night. “Finding them… right.”
Ingrid squints at her suspiciously. “You do know where they are, right?”
"Does it matter that much? I'd personally much rather just make new ones."
Ingrid glares. "Nice try, but I've been around Sylvain my whole life. Lines like that just don't work on me."
Edelgard closes her eyes. “Perhaps someone else does. I couldn’t trust myself with all of them, so I ordered them sequestered away. I only kept my favourites around.”
The confession hits Ingrid several times with both pleasant and unpleasant surprises, like those suspiciously packaged little chocolates from advent calenders that Dimitri tried to share with her in the past. “Someone else” most likely meaning Hubert , the admission that Edelgard thought of her enough that it became a genuine problem, the realisation that this meant the memory she found in the attic was one of Edelgard’s favourites–
Ingrid feels faint.
Edelgard rubs her back. “It’s alright. we'll find them all in time. No one else can access any of these memories, even if they stumbled across them, except, me, you, and the spellcaster.”
“...Please don’t say the spellcaster is…”
“Unfortunately, it is.”