#this was all over the place because she was all over tghe place HELP LMFAO

[hermidetta]

[ 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬 ] : after being misinformed that the sender has died, receiver is grieving.

* for you i would.

when does a war end? when can i say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?

they already died once.

bernadetta thought she had lost jules forever. but jules turned out to be alive. jules is yuri—yuri is jules. yuri is alive! and wasn't that the most wonderful discovery? yuri, her childhood friend, being alive?

bernadetta doesn't think she has the right to most everything in this world, let alone the right to ask which name of theirs is real. what matters is them. yuri can use whatever name they want as long as they stay alive.

alive. yuri is supposed to stay alive. she's probably begged it of them more times than she could possibly count—arguably sounding silly nine times out of ten, arguably just enough so she doesn't give away that she cares more than she should (she does, she does, she does care more than she should) because she is a repulsive worthless thing that nobody in their right mind would want caring for them—

and because yuri is no longer jules. yuri is no longer jules, and she cannot just wildly lunge and hug his arm like the girl she used to be. she is lucky enough that yuri might still think of her as a friend now. might. she does not dare assume beyond that. she can live with being a ghost or a blemish or nothing at all as long as yuri stays alive.

but whatever the case, yuri is supposed to stay alive.

yuri almost died because of her, already, and bernadetta can only imagine from the glint of their lavender eyes what hells they have clawed through afterwards. one 'almost' should have been more than enough. if not for her, then for them.

but yuri does not return from their mission. that is at least what she has been told. the debriefer shakes bernadetta off his elbow like the pest she is, and before he walks away, the punch of his words slams her into silence.

her first friend is dead. her first heart is dead. her father crushed them once and now they're dead again. immediately, the loudest thoughts come back:

if yuri had just brought down the knife that night like they were supposed to—

if yuri had just been able to take that gold and run without looking back—

later that night, she slinks haggardly into the greenhouse with rot in her steps and a pouch in her grasp.

bernadetta von varley is allowed a corner—a very humble one, secluded, but her own all the same. there she grows her peculiar motley of flowers, from colorful blooms to carnivorous plants. next to a fanged flytrap, there is a space in the dirt from a recent harvest of herbs. into her palm, she turns over the pouch in her possession, and small seeds tumble out.

she usually sings while she does this, but has no heart for it tonight. the seeds get buried in the soil with the care of a casket; her hands pat down the soft mound, then clasp—she doesn't know if it is a gesture of prayer or a mere pantomime of. she just doesn't know. she just doesn't know.

all things considered: she cannot bring herself to pray to the goddess her father claims to regale. the man's wretched face flickers through her mind. acid and ache rise in her throat.

and there, bernadetta cannot pinpoint exactly when the dam breaks—just that it breaks.

it shatters like the porcelain of a teaset she gets punished for dropping. it bursts like the double doors of her old room when the suitors won't buy her. it claps like a palm against the wood of a table and sends her careening over the edge.

so bernadetta, unable to hold back any longer, finally tells yuri.

crying, gasping, she hangs her head to the planted seeds and tells them everything, through the uncontrollable hiccups and sobs, the words streaming from her lips like the tears down her cheeks. she tells them about the wicked count, tells them all the truths she never thought would see the light of day. she explains to yuri that she is just property. she tells them that before the academy, she had forgotten how much it meant to be offered a hand instead of taking the back of it.

she tells them about why she cut her hair, about the fist in it that made her kick and scream so hard that even her mother could no longer stand by—how the woman had bernadetta bagged like garbage and shipped to the monastery without any say. she sobs and apologizes, over and over, for everything that makes sense, and for everything that doesn't.

"and sorry, i'm sorry, i shouldn't be dumping all of this on you—"  because even in death bernadetta gives yuri more humanity than she will ever give herself. more humanity, more grace, and infinitely more kindness.  "but i always really, really wanted to tell you the truth, you know? always. that i wished i could've ran—"

her voice cracks. "—ran away, with you, wherever you went, even if that was selfish of me. or that i wished you could've killed me if it meant one of us could live happy. a-and i know, i'm just bernie, i don't mean much! i know already! bernie's worthless and doesn't have to mean anything to anybody! and i promise that's okay, but for me you're someone who... who...!"

bernadetta swears that her heart has been ripped out from her ribs, flung to the dirt and stomped into paste. she can't take it. she can't take it. not when it's yuri. not when she has spent her life shut in that birdcage, bars just wide enough to have a loved few she can count on a hand—and to lose the one she already mourned most? what kind of sick punishment was it? why was it hers? she loves, and loves, and loses. bernadetta always loses. she weeps into her hands, nails curling crescents into her face.

she doesn't know how long the moon hangs over her head, sneering down at her foolish lament. at some point she balls into herself, head tucked over her knees with clenched fists on the ground. bernadetta cries and mourns until she's out of air, out of strength, out of everything—and somewhere along the way she toes across the line into slumber, limping onto her side with finality in her bones. the last thing she thinks she sees is the watery blur of lavender petals.