Just A Bit Longer

When Bernadetta von Varley had become trapped in her room again, she couldn't tell you. 

For months after the war ended, she did good. Even during, she did good. She followed the direction of Claude so well, she made friends, she left her room and felt the sun on her skin and the breeze in her hair and then- 

And then it stopped. 

And then the door that led outside her dorm room was the scariest thing she'd ever seen. And them, her hand burned when she touched the knob. And then, her feet froze to her carpet when she tried to leave bed. 

And she could see the way her progress fell apart. She could see her walls - the ones she'd moved herself to let people in herself - closing in, shutting people out again. 

And yet, she didn't open the door. It burned too badly. It was too scary. 

She didn't remember who knocked on her door first to ask about her, who she first told she was "Just tired," who first left a plate of food outside her door for her, what the first meal she skipped was. 

She remembered that one day, she woke up with a dagger in her hand and blood on her arms. She remembered that one day, she couldn't bring herself to pick up her fork. She remembered one day, living felt harder than it ever had before. 

When Edelgard had been defeated, Bernadetta had felt happy. Finally, the war was over, and she could live her life. And, sure, she had to go fight Those Who Slither In The Dark, but that was soon over, too, and she could live. 

That was nearly seven moons ago now, and Bernadetta still sat in her academy days dorm room, and now she didn't want to live. 

Now, she stared at the ceiling and wondered if it would have been better if she'd died in the war. Now she sat up in bed with her back to the wall, a dagger in her hand, and watched her own blood drip by no one's attack but her own. Now, she slipped open her door just a crack when the moon was high, just to take in the plates people left her and let the food rot in her room, unable to eat.

The first person she remembered noticing something was really wrong was Felix, which admittedly, was quite the shock to her.

"Bernadetta!" He'd yelled, his fist slamming on her door sometime midday, "I'm not going away until you open this door. Enough hiding!" 

When he knocked, Bernadetta had been using a napkin left with last night's (uneaten) dinner to attempt to clean the dried blood off her dagger, her arm still aching and bloody. (She couldn't say when she'd last made the journey to the bath house. She usually just used the water left with her meals to clean dried blood off her arm each morning.) She did really want to leave him there until he left, not deal with it… But maybe ten minutes later, her dagger clean as it seemed to get, he knocked again. 

"Bernadetta! I told you, I'm not leaving!"

She made a whining noise from the back of her throat, but she set her dagger down on her pillow, and stood up. She took her sweet time, and didn't say anything, as she pulled a hoodie - it might have been a gift from Byleth, or perhaps Claude? She couldn't say - and pulled on the first pair of pants she found. Her wardrobe had grown since the war ended, but since locking herself away, she'd existed in a sleep shirt and a pair of underwear constantly - it wasn't as though she saw anyone anyway… 

Just as Felix knocked again, Bernadetta pushed the door open. The sunlight hit her eyes and she wanted to wince away (how long ago had she covered her windows? The sun got too frustrating. She didn't know.) 

"Yeah, Feli-"

Before she finished her inquiry, Felix grabbed her arm (her right, thankfully, not her wounded left) and turned away from her door.