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I miss the parts of Web 2.0 that didn't completely suck
Askbox fic on Tumblr was great.
Anyway Fire Emblem: Three Houses is currently eating my life, somehow (Scott is how, every time "somehow" ends a sentence about a fandom it's Scott) and there are TOO MANY GOOD SHIPS AND CHARACTER DYNAMICS TO JUST WRITE PROPER FIC FOR EVERYTHING leave me comment prompts and you might get words. Leave as many comment prompts as you want; it will increase your odds that at least one will hit.
("kate last time you did a prompt post--" I know I know but I made a sincere effort and that's what counts in life.)
Anyway Fire Emblem: Three Houses is currently eating my life, somehow (Scott is how, every time "somehow" ends a sentence about a fandom it's Scott) and there are TOO MANY GOOD SHIPS AND CHARACTER DYNAMICS TO JUST WRITE PROPER FIC FOR EVERYTHING leave me comment prompts and you might get words. Leave as many comment prompts as you want; it will increase your odds that at least one will hit.
("kate last time you did a prompt post--" I know I know but I made a sincere effort and that's what counts in life.)
- "hours turned to years (three gardens)" | yuri leclerc/bernadetta von varley | worksafe | before, during, after Garreg Mach [and yes I completely screwed up the timeline] | now on the AO3 (with the timeline corrected)
- "dear forgiveness," | dimitri blaiddyd & edelgard von hresvelg | worksafe | tag to "something other than the desperation" | now on the AO3
- "been inclined to believe they never would" | dimitri blaiddyd/byleth eisner ust, blue lions ensemble | worksafe | dimitri has A Situation. actually he has two situations and one of them is tragic. | now on the AO3
- "but you lack the conviction to look at me straight and say yes" [1 of X] | felix fraldarius/sylvain gautier | NSFWish | sometimes you propose a friends-with-benefits arrangement purely to save your friend from himself, yeah, that's it
hours turned to years (three gardens)
contains, y’know, yuri backstory, count varley existing, kissing someone while thinking about how you’re supposed to be killing them]
“You’ve got—“ Yuri says, laughing. One of Bernadetta’s careful braids has come unpinned and tumbles past her shoulders, a twig caught in it next to her cheek. It’s…it’s good, to see her running, to hear her laughter answer his. It doesn’t feel quite the same as the usual satisfaction of fooling a mark. He likes it.
He doesn’t like that he likes it, but here she is in front of him, pale cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling, and he does like it. There isn’t any point in pretending otherwise. It would be a dangerous mistake to; he needs to understand himself better than that.
She fumbles with her braid and only tangles the twig in deeper. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t—I don’t know how—”
“Here,” Yuri says, before he can think better of it. “Let me.”
Bernadetta turns her face up to his trustingly. He steadies her with a hand at her jaw, and if he’d had a blade between his fingers— But all he can think about, rather than the missed opportunity to get the mission done and go home, is the smooth warmth of her skin. Her pulse races under his fingertips. She looks at him with dark eyes and parted lips, and he almost breaks the twig like he’d never picked a lock in his life.
They’re surrounded by greenery. Sunset paints everything with honey-gold and lengthening shadow. If there is anyplace hidden, separate, safe at Count Varley’s home, this feels like it. Yuri has to swallow before he can speak. “Better be careful,” he says, hand still in her hair. “You’re looking at me like you want me to kiss you. Some people might get the wrong idea.”
She’s still Count Varley’s daughter, after all. She’s a meek little thing, a sweet colorless shadow. He’s the gardener’s assistant, a kid with rough hands and dirt ground in around his nails so deep that he can’t scrub it off—and that’s just the dirt she can see.
Bernadetta’s breath hitches and her pulse goes even wilder, but she doesn’t move.
Step back, Yuri thinks. He’s not even sure which of them he means it to. He came here to kill Bernadetta von Varley, not to—
“M-maybe,” Bernadetta says, voice tiny and as ragged as her heartbeat, “it’s the right idea?” And then she does step back, horrified and much too late, hands coming up to cover her face. “Oh no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—I know you don’t actually want to kiss me, I’ve ruined everything, so stupid, Bernie—”
Her voice cracks in despair. Yuri grabs her by the arm before she can run. “Hey,” he says to the top of her head. “I do.”
She lowers her hands just a little and peeks at him over her fingers. It’s cute. Yuri…Yuri is in so much trouble that for a minute he feels like he’s drowning in it. “Really?” she asks, voice muffled.
“Really,” he says. “But I shouldn’t.”
She lets her hands fall. “Why not?”
Because I’m here to kill you, and if I fail then I’ll have made a powerful man angry and he’ll probably hire someone else, who won’t make you smile first. Because if you knew where I’d been you’d want to scrub your face completely off after. “Because you’re a count’s daughter.”
Bernadetta tries to square her shoulders. Even the effort makes something warm and fluttering unfold in Yuri’s chest. “That’s all right,” she says. She’s trying to make it imperious, but her voice trembles. “I don’t mind.”
She’s breathlessly scared and she’s asking anyway, and Goddess forgive him Yuri can’t bring himself to tell her no. He tips her chin up again and thinks, You’re so brave. He kisses her, gently, and thinks, I’m sorry as her eyes drift closed.
He makes himself stop kissing her and still holds her for a moment—for long enough that she won’t feel rejected—and thinks, I have to do it tonight.
The first time Yuri sees Bernadetta at Garreg Mach, his own stupid heart almost stops.
He knows better. He’s always known better. He’d prepared himself this time, not tracing the Bernadetta von Varley written on the roster with anything other than his eyes and not allowing his eyes to linger. “A few acquaintances,” he’d said dismissively, when Balthus asked, and changed the subject to the Gonerils.
He’d thought he might run into Bernadetta in a classroom, or the dining hall, or something like that. Get the first shock over with. He’d only come to the greenhouse at breakfast time, when everyone else awake was most likely eating, to see what kind of more exotic plants they were growing up here in the monastery itself. Old habits—unlike most old victims—died hard.
Instead she’s here, humming softly as she rummages through a drawer. Plants riot behind her, lush and exuberant, and isn’t that a familiar sight. The air is hazy with humidity and dawn pours thick and golden through the windows, not so much outlining her in light as flooding her with it. She’s cut her hair, but there’s a fucking leaf in it again anyway.
Yuri doesn’t think he’s moved, or made a sound, but she looks up anyway. There’s a few beats of silence as her eyes get wider and wider. Blood rushes to her face then drains away again, and then she screams. The drawer slides out of the worktable with a huge clash of wood and metal, and Bernadetta takes off while tools are still clattering onto the floor. She’s a blur, and then she’s gone.
Yuri picks up every single damn one of the clippers and wires and whatever else was in that drawer and puts every single damn one of them away. Guess that answers the question of whether she still remembers him.
Guess it also answers the question of whether she regrets it.
The peace talks have been going on for days.
“I’ve written Claude a letter,” Lorenz says, as the former lords of the former Imperial Duchy of Faerghus start bickering with each other in what Yuri can only conclude is supposed to be an attempt to impress either Dimitri or Edelgard, and which mostly seems to be irritating both of the monarchs, infuriating most of their closest advisors, and displeasing Hubert. “I have to admit he has a gift for setting people at their ease.”
Hilda doesn’t look up from braiding tiny gemstones into her hair. “I wrote Claude a letter two weeks ago.”
“How did you—”
Yuri slips out a side door. The hallway is mercifully quiet. It must have been rough on Claude’s allies to lose him so abruptly—even Yuri himself hadn’t quite expected it—but with Hilda distracted they’re about to have to call a recess anyway so everyone can calm down. It’s close to midday anyway. Lunch should help.
Yuri isn’t consciously thinking about where he’s going, but he finds himself wandering toward a balcony overlooking a courtyard.
A few people aren’t at the peace talks at all—the Varley seat has been empty every day, though he knows he’s caught the flash of Bernadetta’s hair in the background a few times. If she’s here, accessible in case there’s something House Varley needs to weigh in on but out of range of the arguing, she wouldn’t be hiding in a strange room in an unfamiliar building.
Yuri is not actually surprised at himself when he looks down past the balcony railing and sees her tucked into the corner of a hedge with a book. He considers it, briefly, and decides why not: he swings over the rail, twists in midair, and lands on his feet with only a light crunch of gravel. A little out of practice, but not bad.
“Is…is someone there?” Bernadetta asks.
“Just me,” he says. Flipping over the hedge would be a bad idea—showing off, with not enough reward for the risk. He’s not dressed for it, either. He goes the long way around instead, working his way through a gap just barely wide enough for him. “Nice den you have here.”
Her shoulders droop. “Do they need me?”
“Nah.” Yuri drops onto the grass at her side. He thinks about leaning back on his hands, but there’s nonchalant and then there’s reckless. “I got tired of the shouting and left.”
“…Shouting?”
“This is a good idea of yours,” Yuri says. Those short trousers are also a good idea of hers, but he isn’t going to say anything about her legs when it took years to get her to stop running away whenever she saw him. “Peaceful.” Sunlight, greenery. He’s got to stop running into her in gardens.
“I have good ideas sometimes!” Bernadetta says defensively. She closes her book with a snap.
He hides his smile. “Like what?”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. He turns around, afraid he’s pushed her past mad enough to spark and into genuinely hurt, and sees her frowning at the hedge, hand held out in front of her.
“Bernadetta?”
She breaks a stem off—the littlest twig, it still cracks as loud as a lance shattering—and jams it awkwardly into her hair. “Well,” she says, blushing, and stops. “I don’t—I don’t know! I, um, left a boring meeting!”
Yuri is smooth, and sophisticated, and almost never surprised when he’s dealing with almost anyone else at all. He still feels like he’s taken a hard blow to the head. “You’ve got…” He watches his hand gesture at the twig in her hair.
She blushes darker, not meeting his eyes at all. He thinks she’s staring at his shoulder, thinks he feels it like passing too near a fire when she flicks a look up to his jaw and then back down.
“You can just ask,” he says, still a little dazed.
Bernadetta mumbles something that might be, “I really can’t.”
The twig is already sliding out of her hair. The new style is sleek, incredibly flattering. It’s not designed to hold any part of a garden in it. “Do you want me to kiss you again?”
“You’re not going to try to kill me again if you do, are you?” she asks, sounding surprisingly calm about it. Her gaze catches his and holds. She might almost be…teasing?
“Really…really wasn’t planning on it,” Yuri says. “I should have just grabbed you and run, back then.” He hadn’t been thinking at all. Her skin had been the color of pearls in the moonlight, one bare arm flung over the sheet. Count Varley had thought he was defending his daughter’s virtue, not her life, until Yuri fumbled his knife trying to get it back into its sheath. Of course, that slip had been what turned the count’s intention from murder to just the worst beating of Yuri’s life, so it’d been a lucky one for him. And another reason to regret that he’d frozen.
Bernadetta says, “Oh.”
Would she even have liked Abyss?
“Well,” she says, “if...you’re not going to have to kill me like it’s some kind of curse, then, um. Maybe?”
“Yes or no, Bernadetta,” Yuri says, mostly because it matters and only a little bit to give her a hard time.
She gulps air. “Fine! Yes!”
It’s been years too long, but her skin is still sun-warm under his hand, and her mouth is still soft, and it’s been a long damn war. This time when she pulls him closer he doesn’t have to pull away.
There are grass stains on his knees and the backs of his shoulders when he makes it back to the peace talks after lunch. Sylvain is definitely laughing at him. Yuri makes a rude gesture toward the Faerghus bank of seats and settles back in his chair with a smile.
Behind him, the door opens, and Bernadetta steps in.