Work Text:
There comes a moment they all have to choose. A single instance where all their fears come true, and before them is laid a choice that will save or ruin them all.
It would be beautiful, the stuff of plays, if she were not forced to make it herself.
On one hand, stay with the girl who offered her a place, the one who smiled so prettily at her and always made her feel welcome despite her titles or lack of — the one who now stood with her ax at the ready and a plan that will vilify her to her death.
On the other hand, go with the Professor who helped them all, stand with the Church that has its flaws but has also offered sanctuary to so many who needed, the friends who fought by her side and who cannot stand to see the killing of innocent for the sake of a future end.
Dorothea wants to scream. Dorothea wants to weep. She wants it all to be a song for her to pour her heart into in front of a stage, a tale for her to bow at the end of and leave the heartbreak in the past, sitting prettily in the memories of a story finished.
Dorothea doesn’t want to choose. She wants someone to pop out with a laugh and tell her it’s all a bad joke.
Does she stay by Edelgard’s side, the place she always wanted to be? Will she be able to forgive the choices she’s making, the cruelty for a lofty goal? Dorothea still admires her goals, admires the dream in her heart — but the war she has started, the methods she is taking…
It sits sickeningly in her stomach.
But does she want to face off against Edelgard? Will she be able to stand on the opposite side of her friend, the girl that’s turning woman and may never turn elderly, and be part of the reason she falls?
Will she be able to look at those pretty eyes, those soft lips, and see a villain where she has always been Dorothea’s north?
She wants so much to hold her hands again, to circle those thin shoulders in her arms, breathe in the smell of decaying flowers that always seem to linger just a little too much on her. Wants to taste her lips, find out how she sounds when she laughs against her mouth, the feeling of her hair between her fingers.
Dorothea wants so badly it hurts. Wants Edelgard and her softness and her warmth and her fierce desires and her beautiful goals and her incredible mind…
But she does not know if she can want her as the tyrant she seems ready to become for the sake of making it come true.
Every single one of them have a choice to make, Dorothea knows — but she stands at the fork in the road and can’t make herself walk forward.