her early leaf's a flower

[backstreetbard]

[ The Blue Lions have a different kind of energy, as a class, than Dorothea had grown accustomed to in the Black Eagles. While her former classmates had carried the air of coworkers being (sometimes very begrudgingly) forced to spend time together outside of business hours, the Lions are like a family in many ways, albeit a dysfunctional one. She’s made a little progress with some of her classmates: Ashe and Annette are both sweet as ripe peaches; Mercedes, too, seems kind, but pragmatic as well. It’s the others that Dorothea has had the most difficulty with.

Ingrid... Dorothea sighs to think of Ingrid. She’d misstepped there, and she knows it—been too familiar too fast and driven her away in a conversation that ended with a resounding and very final-sounding back off. She hadn’t meant to alienate the girl, and she wonders if it's even possible to repair that relationship.

Sylvain is at the opposite end of the spectrum; they’d flirted occasionally with practiced ease, taking the measure of one another until she realized he derived no real enjoyment from it. He's an actor, and a good one, but Dorothea can see beneath the mask. If he hates women in general, she wondered how much he must have hated her in particular, appearing to be the embodiment of every kind of feminine wickedness that he resents.

Felix, of course, was his own animal entirely. He’s coarse for a nobleman, but not in the seedy, perverse ways she’d been exposed to back in Ebnarr. She’s seen him speaking sweetly to Annette. The reception she received was far less welcoming; Felix had treated her like an annoying stray cat, shushing her and calling her a nuisance to her face.

Dimitri and his hulking retainer are practically a single unit, by her estimation, one rarely seen without the other. Dimitri himself is friendly and polite almost to a fault, charming in the way large puppies are when they grow into their strength so quickly that they don't recognize it; and while Dedue is a bit harder to read (in large part thanks to the distance he purposely keeps from others), he seems kind and loyal.

She found it nearly impossible to spend time with them, though, mostly because Dimitri's friends seem to be running an interference campaign to keep her away from their prince for reasons she understands all too well. Dorothea had never made it a secret that her primary motive for coming to Garreg Mach was to find herself a spouse--someone to love and care for her in her old age, to prevent her from finding herself in the same destitute condition she'd spent so much of her life enduring. She knows what the other students think of her, how they call her a gold-digger when they think she's out of ear-shot.

Sometimes it's easier, then, to spend time on her own, seated primly on a flight of stairs at the far end of the monastery in the company of a small host of cats. The one in her lap purrs as she scratches under its chin. ]


You know, Spoonie, I think you don't realize how lucky you are. People feed you all the time just because you're cute and soft. You don't have to work or go off to fight in awful battles--you can lie in the sun all day and not worry one jot about what's going on in the world outside these walls. I'm a little bit jealous of you.

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[cutthrough]

( The kiss to his fingers is met with a soft, find smile, and he twists his hands to hold her hand properly.

He's prepared to ask what she means but the words catch on his tongue, cheeks coloring faintly and something fluttering excitedly in his chest.

It takes everything he has not to surge forward quickly to take her into his arms. Instead, just barely, he manages to slowly lean in, pressing their lips softly together as his heart hammers against his chest in delight. ) I want to be with you forever.

[backstreetbard]

[ Her smile is almost sheepish, still amazed that a man like this would actually want to pursue her. ]

All the nobles in Faerghus just felt an unnatural chill right now, I'm sure. They aren't going to like this, but... I want to be with you, no matter what obstacles we'll face. Now, come and let me rest my head on your shoulder?