I. Am. Almost. Done. With. Grad. School. AAAAAA.

On another note, I wanna give a super special thanks to A.M.M. on AO3 and E.K. on FF net (you know who you are jaja), The comments you leave on each chapter always make my day, and they seriously inspire me to keep going with the story—even when life gets hectic. Y'all are awesome!

And now, onto the fic!

"Yep. Just breathe, Bernadetta. That's it. Breeeeeeathe."

Bernadetta did her best to listen to Yuri as she gulped in massive breaths of air. Did she sound like a dying fish above water? Possibly. Did she care? Nope!

"And you're certain of this symbol?" Jeanne asked Yuri, even as she kept glancing over at Bernadetta in worry.

"For the third time, yes." Yuri ran his hand up and down Bernadetta's back as she slowly regained her composure, and Bernadetta was aware enough to realize that, unlike her, he wasn't shaking at all. "Unless they've managed to get more on their side since the priest was killed, which is possible, those are the guards within the estate I can confirm have turned on us."

Jeanne's mouth turned into a grim frown, Hilda gasped softly, and Lilian took everything in with a faraway look on her face. What that look meant, Bernadetta didn't know.

"T-That means that there are a-at least f-fourteen!" Bernadetta stuttered out. She'd somewhat gotten her breathing under control, but she still nervously gulped in air as if she'd been starved of it. "Fourteen spies! F-Fourteen traitors! Fourteen people out for Bernie!"

"And fourteen people we have to deal with immediately," Jeanne said sternly.

Yuri sighed. "More than fourteen."

Bernadetta's lung stopped breathing.

"What?!"

Yuri didn't even flinch at Bernadetta's scream, almost as if he'd been expecting it. "I've been going through the list of everyone who's employed at the estate," he said. He'd taken the list from her hands at some point, and he reached over to pull a different list from his stack of papers on the drawing room's table.

But the hand on her back remained steady, still going up and down, coaxing Bernadetta into breathing calmly and deeply.

"When your father was exiled, Yuri continued, "over half of the staff was fired. Most of that staff was rehired by Jeanne and your mother when they moved back to Varley."

"They were good employees who had been unjustly ousted from their posts." Jeanne crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared Yuri down. With her hair pulled back into her tight bun, as well as the piercing stare she leveled at Yuri, it was almost as if she was challenging Yuri to defy her. "Lady Lise wanted familiar faces when we moved back to the territory from Enbarr, so she instructed me to go through the list of staff and take back those who met my standards."

"So you've had a lot of business when dealing with the Varley estate?" Hilda said. Like Jeanne, she and Lilian had stayed off to the side as Yuri did his best to calm Bernadetta down—even though Jeanne was still giving Yuri a disapproving stare. "Especially since Bernie's father was exiled."

"O-Oh!" Bernadetta said, and already she was starting to hyperventilate again. "B-But Jeanne is—Jeanne wouldn't—"

"She isn't a spy," Yuri said.

Bernadetta turned to him with wild eyes, but he just gave her a soft, grounding smile and continued to rub her back. Up, down. Up, down.

"I had my birds look into her the day I arrived in Varley. She had been Lise von Varley's stewardess since the two of them were nineteen, and Lise—"

"Lady Lise," Jeanne corrected.

"Sorry," Yuri said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Lady Lise kept frighteningly impressive records of her notices and timetables. That included a list of Jeanne's duties and movements in the capital and Vallais—all of these are in the public record, by the way."

"Lady Lise insisted on transparent governance," Jeanne said, crossing her arms in front of her chest like she was challenging Yuri.

"I give her my thanks, since that made my investigation go much smoother. I gave this information to my birds so they could double-check your movements and communications. I even contacted an old friend who's in Enbarr to check things there, and she wrote back to me with the same information my birds did. You're clean."

Bernadetta took in a deep, calm, breath and sighed in relief.

"And you started your investigation the day you arrived in Vallais?" Jeanne said in the tone she used to reprimand the servants under her command. "You had them snoop into my personal communications? I bet you even had some of them follow me!"

Bernadetta glanced over at Hilda, and the two of them shared a look that read 'oh no'. They both turned to Lilian, who had lost the faraway look in her eyes, but Yuri's mom was just shaking her head in… amusement?

"I thought you'd understand my concern. Since you're so keen on Bernadetta's safety," Yuri said goadingly, though he still kept rubbing Bernadetta's back. "You even stopped me from entering the estate in the first place, remember? As you were so insistent on keeping me away from her, I figured I may as well make sure that the gatekeeper of the great Varley estate wasn't hiding any ill intentions."

"So I'm the one hiding ill intentions? What about—"

"So Jeanne isn't a spy! Great!" Bernadetta said before the situation could escalate any further. "A-And Yuri did all that stuff to make sure that I'd be safe. And now that we know that Jeanne's in the clear, Yuri can just apologize and say he's sorry for doubting her. Right, Jeanne?"

Jeanne stared down Yuri with a face that made cooks, maids, and even guards scurry off and do what they were told to do. It was a look she had only given Bernadetta once, when she was little and hadn't picked up her room like her mother had told her to do, so Bernie knew that Jeanne was serious about this. She'd even set her hands on her hips! Bernadetta knew that she wouldn't even last a second under Jeanne's terrifying stare.

Yuri held out for almost a minute.

"I'm sorry about digging through your personal communications," he said resignedly, like he was only saying it because he wanted to move on from this as quickly as possible. "As an apology, you get to send me on one errand when—"

"Two errands," Jeanne hissed.

"Two errands," Yuri said with a tight smile, "whenever you wish."

Bernadetta let out a sigh. "So if we can trust Jeanne, that means we can trust the rest of the staff, too!"

Yuri winced. "Not really."

"What do you mean 'not really'?!" Bernadetta cried.

"Remember, your father only fired half of the staff." Yuri pulled his hand away from Bernadetta's back and rested his palms on the drawing room's long table. "The other half remained employed. Now, if I were a count getting exiled from my territory, I'd want to leave behind a few people I trusted to keep an eye on my old estate."

"The guards can't go to areas that they're not ordered to patrol," Bernadetta said, the thoughts in her head slowly falling into place. "Not unless there's an emergency. But cooks, maids, gardeners, and the other servants… Most of them can find a reason to enter other parts of the house without raising suspicion!"

"And turn traitor under my nose," Jeanne said, hints of barely restrained anger coming out in her tone.

"There's a lot going on behind the scenes that we're only scratching the surface of," Yuri said. "If we want to keep Bernadetta safe, we need to make a plan now."

Jeanne and Lilian nodded immediately. Bernadetta absentmindedly rubbed the inside of her palm, her thumb gliding over the abrasion Yuri had healed.

"Speaking of scratching the surface," Hilda said suddenly. "I found something, too."

Everyone turned to Hilda as she walked to the far corner of the drawing room and pulled a couple of papers from underneath her extra set of fabrics.

"I found it hidden in the frame of the St Cichol portrait you guys confiscated," Hilda said. "I had to chop it open with my ax, but I at least managed to save the painting!"

"Thank the goddess," Lilian said as she threaded her fingers together and bowed her head.

Yuri tsked. "Be glad you saved that painting, else my mother would be dragging you to church right now," he said as he took the papers from Hilda. "Why didn't you show me this sooner?"

"You were busy with other stuff," Hilda said innocently. "And either way, it looks like it's written in code. I figured that, since you're the expert on this stuff, I may as well wait for you to come crack it yourself."

Yuri mumbled something under his breath, but after Lilian gave him a sharp look, he sighed and turned to the papers in his hand. He spread them out on the drawing-room table, and Bernadetta could tell by the focused look in his eyes that he was already deciphering the squiggles and scratches that Bernadetta couldn't begin to make sense of.

"Traitors. Under my watch!" Jeanne said. She placed her hands on her hips and paced the length of the drawing room. "And the fact that we have traitorous guards is going to make this even more difficult. If they see us mobilizing, they will realize we've discovered their betrayal."

Bernadetta nodded and pressed her hands into fists, hoping that it could hide how badly her fingers were shaking. She wanted these traitors out. Out of her home and out of her city!

"But if they're involved in this, we can't just leave them in position!" Bernadetta said. Yet as her mind was already thinking about which guards they could round up right away and send off to the Vallais cells, she quickly ran into a glaring problem. "Agh! But we can't arrest anyone right now! There's too many of them, and if we miss one of them, then everyone else will scatter before we can get to them!"

Bernadetta brought her fingertip to her lips as she kept thinking. It was a leftover of her old habit of biting her nails—a habit her father quickly and painfully trained out of her—but one she found herself doing when she was puzzling out a problem.

"We have two weeks before our guest arrives," Bernadetta said. "Even if we can't find all the spies before they arrive, we have to get most of them. If they learn how important our guest really is, they might spring their plan sooner, and then we'll lose the advantage we have! I'm not putting our guest in danger, so that means no one can know who it is until they arrive!"

"Can I know who it is?" Lilian asked hopefully.

"Aaah—Not yet!" Bernadetta cried, still acutely aware of the fact that Yuri wanted to make the event a surprise for his mother. "It's still a secret!"

Lilian let out a light sigh and leaned her weight against the drawing room's table. "At least you know they won't hear anything from me."

"If we're going to do this, we need to do it quickly but quietly," Hilda said, walking over until she was standing next to Bernie. "Only those we can completely trust can know about this, and we have to act like normal."

"Which means no sudden calls or emergency messengers," Yuri said without looking away from the encoded papers he was still decoding in his head. "That's gonna be an issue. If we're planning a large-scale operation, we need to move info."

"And we're gonna need to communicate with other people as quietly as we can," Hilda added, frowning at the floor.

Bernadetta's thoughts went round and round in her head, turning over the possibilities of failure and the resources they had to stop those failures. They had Bernadetta's authority as the count to issue orders, though the fact that they couldn't organize a public operation, and the fact that there were spies lurking in her very house, would limit any unusual movements.

"We can't use Yuri's birds because they still haven't learned the estate," Bernie said, bringing her finger to her lips again. "There's too much stuff they'd have to catch up on, and we need people who can move through the house without raising any alarms. People like…"

Bernadetta gasped. "Jeanne!" she cried.

"I'm at your service, my lady," Jeanne said right away. The stewardess stopped her pacing and straightened her back before turning to face Bernadetta, her posture as prim and perfect as that of a soldier receiving orders.

"R-Right!" Bernadetta said. "We can trust all members of Hedgehog company and Bird company. The other ones might've recruited some guards to their side in the time between now and the day the priest made that list of spies. O-Or at least guards who don't have a posting inside the estate! But we still need people who know the inside of the estate, and that's where I need your help!"

Jeanne nodded. "You need me to find you information within the house."

"Of the staff you personally selected," Lilian asked, her eyes as sharp and alert as Yuri's, "how many of them can be trusted?"

Jeanne grunted. "If you had asked me that yesterday, I would have said all of them. But now…"

Bernadetta bit her lip. "Then… Then who can you definitely trust? Entirely and completely? It doesn't have to be a lot, but maybe one or two—"

"Ten," Jeanne said, clearly and assuredly. 'There's ten I would trust with my life."

Bernadetta nodded, feeling a little strain of her anxiety unravel itself and fade away. "Ok… So we use those ten to find more information about the other servants. Some of them have to know something, and we can send them to look into the others!"

"Find out who else may be a traitor," Lilian said.

"And arrest them with guards we know won't stab us in the back!" Hilda finished with a devious grin.

"That can work," Jeanne said. She crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against her elbow. "There aren't many I fully trust, but the ones I do can get us results. I already send them orders every day, and if we need them to follow someone out of the estate, I can send them out into the city without raising suspicion. I'll just say they're out buying thread for Lady Hilda's tablecloth or something…"

"I'm sensing a 'but'," Lilian said, pushing herself away from the table she had been leaning against.

"The only issue comes from sending messages within the estate itself," Jeanne explained. "A lot of the traitors are guards in the estate, and they'll notice if I send a servant to a side of the estate they typically don't go to. They'll also notice if I start giving them orders at unusual times, which will likely happen sooner rather than later."

"Then use me," Lilian said.

Everyone in the room spun around to face Lilian. Even Yuri, who was still decoding the papers Hilda had found, stopped his work to look up at his mother. His eyes were wide with surprise and worry.

"Use me," Lilian repeated. And despite being shorter and thinner than Bernadetta, she stood as tall and confident as Professor Byleth. "I know when to divert attention to myself and when to be invisible. It's a strange talent, but it's the gift the goddess gave me. And it's one I can use here. Use me to deliver notes to the servants you trust, and I promise you that not one traitorous guard will bat an eye."

"But… Your condition," Jeanne said cautiously. Her tone raised alarm bells in Bernadetta's head, and Bernie once again took note of Lilian's dress. Of how it looked just slightly too large for her, and how its scoop neckline showed off Lilian's too-prominent collarbones.

Having a sick mom… Is hard. That's what Yuri said to Bernie when he arrived in Vallais. He sounded as if he was talking like he knew what it was like, and… and—

Bernadetta gasped into her hands.

"Oh, I'm so dumb," Bernadetta said miserably. "You're… You're sick, aren't you?"

Hilda looked down at the floor, Jeanne sucked in a tight breath, and Yuri bit the inside of his cheek. But Lilian… all she did was give Bernadetta a sad and somber smile.

Hilda must've noticed somehow, and Jeanne must've realized it. Or she must've asked, and Bernadetta had no idea. No idea until now. Yuri's mom was here, in Vallais, sick, and Bernadetta hadn't done anything about it. "I'm so dumb!" Bernadetta said again. "I haven't asked if you needed anything, if you need a healer, or if—"

"I'm still alive," Lilian said. She stepped forward and placed her hands on Bernadetta's arms. "And for now, I'm ok."

Bernadetta's pushed down a sob that was forming in her throat. "You… You are?" she asked. Because Bernadetta could still remember how quickly her own mother's illness had taken hold of her, and how it felt to hold Lise's hand as she died.

"I am," Lilian said, rubbing her thin hands up and down Bernie's arms, comforting and calming her much like Yuri had. "And if I need anything, I'll let you or my son know."

"Are you certain?" Jeanne asked, a tone of affection entering her voice. "We have a deadline to get rid of these traitors, but we're likely going to be busy every single day for the next two weeks. Will you be able to hold out for that long?"

"Yes," Lilian said. Jeanne was a good head taller than Lilian, and Lilian raised her head high to meet Jeanne's gaze firmly. "As long as I don't have to leave the estate, I should have more than enough energy to pass a few notes around. And I'm new here. There's no way that these spies have had time to learn my routine." Lilian chuckled darkly. "It's not even like I stick to a routine, anyway."

"Mom," Yuri said.

Lilian and Bernadetta turned to Yuri. His face was neutral, but Bernadetta could still see the worry in his eyes. "You don't have to do this," Yuri said.

"You saying you don't trust your mother to get a job done?" Lilian smirked at her son. "I learned the entire layout of this place ages ago. What do you think I do all day—just sit around waiting for something exciting to happen?"

"It's not that," Yuri said, and his mouth curled into a grimace. "I'm saying you shouldn't have to. And I don't want you putting yourself in danger."

"Sweetie," Lilian said. She pulled her hands away from Bernadetta's arms and crossed the room to meet Yuri. She raised a hand to her son's face and rubbed his cheek with her thumb. "If these people are in position, then we're already in danger."

Yuri and Lilian shared a long and tender look, and Bernadetta felt like she'd intruded on an extremely private moment. Even Hilda looked away, turning her gaze to the stack of fabrics she'd been embroidering, to give them some privacy. The scene reminded Bernadetta of the times when Lise would take her on a walk through the gardens, of the days when Lise would show her how to properly thread a needle, and of the few nights when Lise had the time to tuck Bernadetta into bed herself. When Lise would gently cradle Bernadetta's bruised wrists in her hands and cry and apologize for not having the power to keep Bernie away from Grégoire. Moments of that long ago past flashed in front of Bernadetta's eyes as Yuri leaned into his mother's hand, and Bernie's heart ached with grief.

Jeanne placed a steady hand on her shoulder, and Bernadetta reached up to grip it. Unlike her mother, Jeanne was sparing with affection. But ever since Lise died, Jeanne had been more outwardly caring with Bernadetta, and Bernie reciprocated it every time. Bernadetta still remembered the look on Jeanne's face after Lise had passed, and it is still the only time she ever remembered seeing Jeanne cry.

"Just be careful, ok?" Yuri said quietly. His tone was softer, and beneath the layers of worry and concern, Bernadetta could hear the hints of sadness in his voice. "I'm not ready to lose you just yet."

With her free hand, Lilian reached up and pushed loose strands of Yuri's hair away from his face. "I'll do my best," she promised earnestly. "But only if you're careful, too. I like seeing my son alive and well, thank you very much."

Yuri laughed. With a sigh, he pulled himself away from his mother's touch. He looked over at Jeanne, and the sadness and worry in his eyes were replaced with a calm determination.

"If anything happens to her…" Yuri said, his voice trailing off at the end.

"I'll die a quiet and unsuspicious death," Jeanne said curtly. "I've heard of your methods." She released her grip on Bernadetta's shoulder and nodded at Lilian. "Come with me."

The two older women quickly gathered up the papers Jeanne had been reading beforehand, stuffing them into a thick satchel and only leaving behind an ink and quill set. As she walked to the doorway, Jeanne bowed to Bernadetta, and Lilian gave Yuri a brief smile before following Jeanne out of the drawing room.

"Jeanne won't let anything happen to her!" Bernadetta said to Yuri the moment the door swung shut. "She's really good with finding information, and she cares about Varley, a-and I trust her with my life!"

"I know you do," Yuri said. He huffed in amusement before tilting his head back down to the table, his eyes resuming their analysis of the coded message. "Do you think I'd leave her alone with my mom if I didn't trust her?"

Bernadetta gasped. It was pretty obvious, even to Bernie, that Jeanne and Yuri didn't get along, so the fact that Yuri said he trusted Jeanne with such surety was almost as surprising as finding out that the professor was carrying the power of the goddess. "But… You investigated her."

"To make sure I can trust her. Besides, I may or may not have done some of the investigating myself. On my own time."

Bernadetta's heart thumped. "You did that… to make sure I was safe?"

"Yeah. What other reason would there be?" Yuri smirked at her, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "Gonna accuse me of being a liar?"

Bernadetta giggled into her hand. "Nope!"

"As adorable as this is," Hilda chimed in. "I wanna know what your plan for me and Baltie is."

Bernadetta jumped. Yuri winced.

"O-Oh!" Bernadetta said. "Right!"

Hilda was looking between the two of them with a sly smile on her face, hiding her hands innocently behind her back. "Neither of us are familiar with Vallais," she said, "and I doubt that Baltie's sneaky enough to pass secret messages."

"Hey, I heard that!" A voice boomed from the other side of the door.

Bernadetta squeaked in surprise. Agh! I forgot that Balthus was guarding the outside!

"I actually have a suggestion for that," Yuri said before Bernadetta could yell and demand that Balthus never scream anything ever again. "You're gonna scout all the outer areas around Vallais and look for potential ambush points."

"A-Ambush points?" Bernadetta said. "Why?"

Yuri brought over the ink and quill set from Jeanne's near-empty desk. With sharp strokes, he drew connections between different letters and phrases that Bernadetta couldn't even begin to distinguish. He kept going until all of the letters had been connected in one way or another, and the strokes were clean enough that even Bernie, with her immense lack of coding-breaking skills, could piece together the hidden message.

"Contact has ambush point," she read. "Location outside city. Unlikely but potential spot for target."

Yuri nodded and lowered the quill onto the table. "You haven't left Vallais since you became count, right?"

"Y-Yeah."

"So any place outside of the city—" Hilda said.

"Could be an unlikely but potential ambush point," Yuri finished.

Bernadetta's chest shook with fear. Someone was waiting for her—right outside her city. They were stalking her, preparing something, getting ready to find Bernie! Thank the goddess she hadn't left Vallais, because who knows what would've happened! Who knows what they could've done to her!

But now I know, Bernadetta realized. Now I know that they're here, waiting for me, inside and outside my city. And that means… I can catch them.

"B-Balthus!" Bernadetta said. "I need you and Hilda to do something for me!"

"Anythin' ya need!" Balthus yelled as he swung the door open and entered the drawing room.

Yuri face-palmed into his gloved hand. "Balthus, you didn't have to come in—"

"Hilda, can you and Balthus scout the areas around Vallais?" Bernadetta said, the bubbling nervousness in her chest barely registering the fact that Yuri was grumbling about Balthus leaving them without a lookout. "If these Slithering people found an ambush point, then that means we might be able to find it, too! I mean, if you don't mind staying—"

"Bernie, there's no place we'd rather be," Hilda said, putting her hands on her hips. "I didn't win a war just to let a friend get cornered in her own home!"

"Hell yeah!" Balthus said. He stood next to Hilda and mirrored her pose, puffing out his muscled chest. "Come on, Bern. Tell me louder! You're the count, so you get to boss us around and tell us what to do."

"I can?" Bernadetta asked.

"You can!" Hilda said.

"Oh! I can!"

"Yes. At the top of your voices," Yuri said tiredly. He was at the doorway, sneakily peeking out into the hallway just beyond. "Am I the only one who remembers we need to keep this on the down low?"

Bernadetta blushed. "Oh! Right," she said, lowering her voice to a covert whisper.

"Ok, here are your orders," Bernadetta said to Balthus and Hilda—both of whom were holding back laughter as they glanced over at Yuri. "Look for any place where a group of enemies could counterattack Varley archers. Or a place where you could abduct someone and stay out of sight of the mountain lookout towers. If people ask what you're doing, say you're surveying the area for a spot for a new rural school. Oh, and you might run into the contractors that we hired to build the rural hospital in the north. They're getting guarded by Ox company, but since we don't know if there are any traitorous guards with them, keep your guard up!"

"Will do, Bernadetta," Hilda said. She looped her arm through Balthus' and gave it a quick tug. "We may as well take a quick look around before the sun sets and plan our route for tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan," Balthus said. The two of them passed Yuri at the doorway, but before retreating out into the hallway, Balthus turned around and nudged Yuri's arm. "We'll talk later, yeah, Boss?"

"Yeah," Yuri said, sounding resigned at the prospect of this future 'talk'. "Watch each other's backs."

Balthus grinned. "We always do," he said, and then he and Hilda were off.

The sounds of Balthus and Hilda's feet faded as they bounded down the hallway, and Bernadetta let out a sigh of exhaustion. First, there were traitor guards in her house, and now there was an ambush point?! At this rate, Bernadetta wouldn't be surprised if someone told her that the Slithering people were hiding out in her bedroom. Now that would be even more terrifying!

"First a new rural hospital, and now a school?" Yuri said as he shut the door, shaking Bernadetta out of her thoughts. "You're pretty busy with your people these days, Bernadetta. Been a while since I've seen a lord or lady divert so many resources to people who weren't rich or noble like them."

"The school plans haven't been finalized yet," Bernadetta said quickly. She looked away and hunched down, hoping that it was enough to hide the blush that'd somehow spread across her cheeks. "The ministers don't wanna start on it until the new hospital is complete. But if Balthus and Hilda spread the rumor that there will be one and the people like the idea, the ministers will likely have to fast-track the plan!"

Yuri barked out a laugh. The kind of laugh he used when he off-handedly mentioned the things he and his gang had done as the Mockingbirds of Fódlan. "You can be pretty crafty when you wanna be, you know that?"

Bernadetta's blush got deeper. "I guess I learned from the best," she said. "Wait, so what are you gonna do?"

"What I do best." Yuri gave her a cat's smile. "Wait until nightfall, stick to the shadows, and find information to deliver to you. I'll start by tailing some of the guards we know have turned on you since that's the likeliest way we'll get a fresh lead. From there, you give out the orders just like you've already done, and we sniff these traitors out like the rats they are."

"Y-You'll really do that? For… me?" Bernadetta asked.

Yuri huffed. "Why wouldn't I? Unless now's the time you wanna come out and say that you're actually just luring me into a trap that ends with my head on a chopping block."

Bernadetta shook her head. Why would I ever want to do that? She thought. Why, when you've been so kind to me? When you've done so much for me? Even with the Slithering people and the traitors and everything, this is the happiest I've been in months. Ever since my mother died. These moments with you have been some of the best of my life!

And it was true. It always has been. Even when they were children and he was her only friend, Yuri had always been the person to put the biggest smiles on her face. And since he'd arrived in Vallais, he was the one who best knew how to calm her down and make her feel happy again. And he was the one who was helping her protect Varley. Because that's what Yuri does, and at that moment, Bernadetta felt so incredibly lucky that Yuri was doing all of this for her.

"Yuri's amazing," Bernadetta thought. "He's amazing! He's really, really amazing!"

Yuri laughed, and Bernadetta squeaked as she realized that she'd said those last thoughts out loud.

"Good to know that's how you see me, Bernadetta," Yuri said as his laughter faded. "You might wanna be careful though. Who knows if I'll fall short of your expectations."

Bernadetta shook her head as she waited for the embarrassment to fade out of her chest. "You won't!" She said, her heart in each word. "You're—You're Yuri! And I know that whatever's going on, you'll… you'll help. Just like you always do."

Yuri took a step toward her. "You've got a good plan, Bernadetta," he said, his voice low and soft. "And I'll give everything I've got to see it through."

Bernadetta's feet shuffled forward until they were only a step or two apart from each other. She felt the familiar urge to grip Yuri's hand again. Her body shuddered at the thought, because what if Yuri didn't want that? What if he couldn't stand the idea of holding her hand anymore?

But then Bernadetta remembered how gently he held her hand as he healed her. How warm his words were, and how safe they made her feel. So before her mind could shut down and force her to bolt from the room, Bernadetta reached out and took Yuri's gloved hand.

"You promise?" She asked quietly. Her fingers shyly gripped the back of his glove, tight enough to hold onto it, but loose enough that Yuri could take his hand back if he wanted to.

There was a moment, just a moment, where Yuri didn't say anything. Bernadetta opened her mouth to apologize, but before she could, Yuri's fingers twisted themselves around hers.

"I promise," Yuri said. And the look in his eyes told Bernadetta that he meant it. "You trust me?"

And without thinking, Bernadetta blurted out, "With my life!"

Yuri's grip on her hand tightened. His throat bobbed as he swallowed something, and Bernadetta caught a flash of pain bloom in his brilliant purple eyes. "You sure about that?" he asked.

Bernadetta knew why he was asking. She knew, but she didn't care. Because right now there were a lot of things Bernadetta didn't know, and even more things that scared her. But there was something that Bernadetta knew with absolute certainty, and she wanted Yuri to know that, too.

"With my life," she repeated. "I trust you with my life."

Yuri gasped.

It wasn't like Bernadetta's gasps, which were so loud everyone in the room could hear them. Yuri's gasp was small, quiet. Just the tiniest bit of breath leaving his lips. If Bernadetta weren't so close to him, she might not have noticed it at all.

Yuri took hold of Bernadetta's other hand. He gently brought them together and cradled them between his large palms, as if he were taking hold of something beautiful and precious.

"You know, Bernadetta," he whispered. "You really are braver than you think you are."

Bernadetta swallowed the bile in her throat. "But I'm not," she said.

Yuri shook his head, and loose purple strands fell around his face. "You are," he repeated. "You really are."