Life as a singer seemed like it would have come with endless perks, but Dorothea found the whole thing rather lonely and isolating. Her social circle, which at one point had boasted many members of royalty, high-ranking government officials, and just casual nobility, had dwindled down to just a handful of close friends she would be nothing without. One of her closest friends, the ever-working Leonie, had become such a friend after working as hired security at one of her shows and never quite leaving her side after the curtains closed; another close friend was her ex-girlfriend Ingrid, because their relationship had only fallen apart when they accepted that they were doing nothing but keeping the other from their fated soulmate, as in the years they were together, their etched signs in their skin never wavered from their original black color.
Outside of those two, it was few and far between when it came to friends she knew had her back and would work with her and her crazy schedule, to the point that she often only considered herself as having two friends. But those friends had other friends, and try as they might, they attempted time and time again to integrate Dorothea into their other social groups, to no avail. "Nobody wants to make time for a songstress who can't commit to any one day of the week," she explained to Ingrid after yet another plan with her friends fell through. "It's just a fact of life."
"Well, it's a dumb one, because you're a lovely woman and you deserve to get to hang out with people who aren't me or Leonie sometimes," Ingrid replied with a huff, blowing an errant bang out of her face as she spoke. "We'll have to find you a good friend that understands your life, but it's not like people just fall out of the sky, you know?"
They laughed over that seemingly obvious fact, but the next time that Dorothea saw Leonie, after a week away doing concerts every night before returning back to their home base, located in the church town of Garreg Mach, she had with her someone unfamiliar. When asked about it, Leonie looked at the small, rather muscular woman that was standing beside her, head tilted in thought, before nodding excitedly. "I met her working a guard job for some foreign dignitaries, she said she came here with them but needed some time away from her home so I said she could stay with me. Fast friends, am I right?"
"And what's her name? You don't seem to even know it, yet you're saying you're friends." It seemed just reasonable enough to think that Leonie could sway a foreigner to be her friend, with her hard-working and independent personality, but Dorothea was doubtful that it was truly the case. The woman was definitely shorter than herself and Leonie, and would be someone to make Ingrid feel tall as well, but her fighting stance and the way that she had defined muscles on her arms without flexing gave Dorothea the impression that she was at least there of her own volition, but why, if not at an actual invitation? "Go on, someone tell me her name before I find someone to check a missing person's registry."
"My name," the woman said, voice a lot softer than her appearance would let on but with a sharp, serious edge, "is Kjelle, and I'm here for the exact reason Leonie told you. We met when I was working as a guard for some…royalty coming from the Halidom of Ylisse, who came to Fódlan to meet with the archbishop of your church. I've been looking for a way out of their fold for a while, and when Leonie mentioned a need for better guards around here, I took her up on the offer." When she finished speaking, she flipped the long, front edge of her dark blue hair with the back of her hand, which was marked with a blackened design that showed her status as unmatched with a soulmate. "I take it you're Dorothea?"
"You mentioned me already?" Dorothea asked, looking at Leonie, who shrugged and gave a rapid-fire explanation of what had happened, which was promptly ignored. "Yes, I am Dorothea, and it's a pleasure to meet you, Kjelle. You'll fit in right alongside Leonie, you both seem like you're working toward the same goal in life."
"A-actually, Kjelle's here because she just wants a break from her surroundings back home, she's not here to show off her potential as a guard for the royals. She does have a way with a lance, though, we did have a quick spar once we got here." Leonie chuckled, her eyes breezing past where Kjelle was still standing to look at the lances leaning against the wall, weapons that were rarely used by anyone beyond armed guards employed for escort missions. "She'd even give Ingrid a run for her money, and Ingrid would only take her on while on horseback. I at least kept it to foot-only."
Taking a moment to think about how true that statement was, Dorothea couldn't pry her eyes off of Kjelle during that time. How strange that she talk with Ingrid about how friends didn't just fall from the sky, only for one to do just that for Leonie. While she was sizing the newcomer up, it could be said that Kjelle was doing the same to her. "You don't look like you're into the fighting and the guard work that the other two are into. What brings you into their group?"
"I…beg your pardon?" Dorothea replied, putting a hand over her heart in surprise at the sudden question Kjelle had lobbed at her. While she could understand where she got that read from—after all, she was dressed in a more casual dress with a lacy bust, while Leonie was wearing her underclothes from being armored at some point—it still threw her for a loop to hear it. "You're not expecting me to give you a full rundown of my relationship with Leonie and Ingrid, are you?"
After pausing for a second to consider what Dorothea had said, Kjelle shrugged. "Perhaps I am, but I understand if you're not interested in doing such a thing. I am a foreign stranger in your life, after all."
"At least she knows her place already." With a small smirk upon her lips, Dorothea glanced to Leonie, who couldn't help but laugh at the comment. "Once we know each other better, perhaps you'll be told all about why someone famous and talented such as myself would spend time around rough-around-the-edges ladies like the others, but for now, just know that I do have my reasons for it. You seem smart enough, you could probably figure out a thing or two on your own without my elaborations, though."
"I'm on vacation from working, that also means I'm taking a break from too much in the way of hard thinking." At least she was honest about things, and that honesty was a breath of fresh air to Dorothea. Perhaps she would find herself getting along quite well with Kjelle once they got to know each other better. But she would hold her tongue on voicing that idea, in case it came off wrong and caused more trouble than it was worth.
For someone as flirty and fun as Dorothea, even mundane interactions ran the risk of being life-changing ones, and it all came back to those blackened marks on their skin. Hers was located on her inner thigh, somewhere she couldn't exactly check out in public, but she knew that someday, a conversation with someone that turned the slightest bit flirtatious could cause it to fill in with a wave of color, or perhaps a dulling of the dark lines already etched into her leg. The last thing she wanted was to watch someone else's mark fill in with the vibrant shade of her eyes because of something she said, and so even the friendly comment of wanting to get to become better acquainted with someone had to be kept under wraps for the time being.
Leonie's mark was at the nape of her neck, covered by her hair when let loose and partially visible when it was pulled into a low ponytail; Ingrid's was on her arm, just below the shoulder and easily hidden by a decent length of sleeve. Dorothea had found herself lucky that her mark was almost always covered when around others, unless she was in the middle of changing before or after a performance, so to see Kjelle's mark so prominently visible on the back of her hand, it made her feel slight pity for the newcomer. How many times had she needed to pull out of a conversation after flirts were exchanged and no change in color was found? How many moments were ruined by the obvious fact that who she was speaking to was never meant to be her soulmate?
"Hey, Dorothea, we're going to go out for drinks with a couple friends, are you interested in joining us?" Leonie asked, to break Dorothea from her thoughts. She politely shook her head to decline the offer, which Leonie seemed to have expected. "Yeah, figured as much. You don't want to get caught doing things frowned upon by the men who cut your checks, huh?"
"Going out for casual drinking isn't very becoming of a woman of my position, true, but I have my own reasons for not wanting to go out." More than anything, Dorothea wanted to get to talk to Ingrid about the curious turn of events before she spent any time in a more public setting with this Ylissean woman. That wasn't the only thing stopping her, of course, but it was a major factor. "You two can go and have your fun, I'll be here when you return."
"Three ladies living together under one roof for no apparent reason, what a concept," Kjelle quipped, her face making her amusement at the idea very obvious, and even when Leonie tried to quickly explain the setup she didn't seem to find it anything less than funny. "Just saying, if I tried doing that sort of thing back home, I'd be laughed out of everyone's lives for how bizarre of an idea it is."
It really wasn't that bizarre, even if Dorothea wasn't going to jump in and try to defend things. The home was hers, she'd purchased in it Garreg Mach as a home base of sorts for when she wasn't traveling across Fódlan for her concerts, and to keep her in the city she'd allowed Ingrid to live there, rather than needing to find shelter of her own. Leonie's addition to the bunch came with her insistence on being the one to protect Dorothea whenever she didn't have other armed guards doing the job, the only pay she required being the bed she slept on and the occasional meal. Perhaps it was the fact that Kjelle hadn't been told about the working arrangement and the former relationship that made it seem so bizarre to her, or perhaps it was just a skewed sense of understanding what was happening on the parts of the participants, but it was a much nicer arrangement than them all living separately would be.
Exactly as expected, not long after the pair of ladies left was when Ingrid came back home, swinging over her shoulder a bag of groceries she'd picked up in the market while she was out. "Oh, they're already gone?" Ingrid asked when she saw that it was Dorothea, and only Dorothea, still at the house when she entered. "Damn, here I was really thinking that they'd at least wait for me before they went anywhere."
"They can't have gotten far, if you hadn't stopped for some shopping you would have made it here in time to meet up with them before they left." Unsure of why she was saying that and making it clear that the conversation that was about to unfold could have been missed, Dorothea shook her head and watched Ingrid as she pulled an apple from her bag and ate part of it, looking blissful as she did. "Anyway, glad to see you're here, I've heard that you've already broken in the new girl with some sparring?"
"I have, that's true." Another bite of her apple down, Ingrid offered some to Dorothea but was politely turned down. "I happen to like her, she seems to own up to the story she told Leonie for how she ended up here in Fódlan pretty well. Never would've guessed that we'd find someone from Ylisse living with us, it's always seemed like such a foreign place to me."
Dorothea shook her head again, this time at the admission of what Ylisse seemed to be. "Ingrid, I don't know how to break this to you, but it's only a week by ship to get there. I've been before, not for leisure or personal travels but for work, so it seems only plausible that someone could be here for work as well. But abandoning her post as a guard to stay behind? That part is what strikes me as odd. Should we be supporting someone like that?"
"From what I heard, she made sure that her post was well-kept before she left, kind of like she'd been planning to head off on a grand adventure when she got here from the start. I think she's making the best of what was given to her." Quickly finishing the apple off to its core, Ingrid skillfully tossed it toward the garbage can, making it cleanly inside and silently cheering for herself when she did. While she did that, Dorothea fell back and continued trying to come up with ways to make it clear that she wasn't fully sold on Kjelle and her staying there in their shared home. If Ingrid was already smitten with her as a new person in their lives, and clearly so was Leonie, then there was little she would be able to do to convince them otherwise.
She ended up conceding that she had to give their visitor more of a chance, because she was probably just jumping to conclusions and making her seem much worse than she actually was. There was most likely nothing harmful meant with her actions, and she really was just someone visiting Fódlan when work had brought them to the continent. "Do you think she'll be staying long? That week of travel back isn't something that one should do for a quick trip, after all."
Ingrid considered the options before shrugging, setting her bag down in the same fluid motion. "I don't know, I wasn't asking her about her life story or when she thinks she'll be going home when I was testing her lance skills. Did you know that she's just as good as Leonie and I are at the lance? It was insane, seeing her meet me blow-for-blow while on foot, even with me on the horse! I'll have to challenge her again when I can get a pegasus to take her down on, there's no way she'd beat me then."
"Good luck with that, I'll politely sit your fighting contests out," Dorothea hurriedly replied, not wanting any part of the fighting when there was the risk of her getting injured and stopped from being able to perform and therefore make money. "You three can do as you please with those, but I'll be on the sidelines cheering my friends on."
"You really don't like her, do you?"
"Hm? Where would you get such an idea?" She had no clue how it could be so obvious with her attitude clearly pointing in that direction, but Dorothea was not going to immediately own up to her cold reaction. "I'm merely being realistic and cautious. I don't have any personal feelings about her one way or the other."
"I've heard you say the same about people I know you despise, though, and you've barely met her. Is it because she's Leonie's friend first, someone else that you're having to meet and know through her?" That was correct, and Ingrid knew that she'd called Dorothea out properly, but there was going to be little in the way of a victory there. Instead of admitting it to be true, Dorothea shut the conversation down, retiring to her room while there was still natural light in the Garreg Mach sky to be enjoyed.
She didn't like to be so difficult and choosy, but she felt like she was simply incapable of making friends of her own without someone else holding her hand through the first meeting with them. The last person she'd met of her own volition and became friends with was Ingrid herself, but they'd met to date and only became friends to salvage a relationship with each other after admitting defeat to the call of soulmates. Everyone else had been drawn to her by someone or something that had not been herself, and she was tired of it. "I'd like it if, say, my soulmate could fall from the sky and not be dropped on someone else's front step before they get to me," she said, her hands clasped in prayer as she sat by her window, looking toward the towering monastery building where she knew the archbishop of the church resided. She usually didn't make such specific and pointed prayers, but this felt like a special occasion that called for it.
As nighttime descended on the town, Dorothea went through the motions of lighting her candles that she had around her room—while there was working electricity in every room of the house that she could have used, she'd picked the room that didn't have built-in lights and hung candles to feel more in-tune with the great halls that she would occasionally perform in. There was just something about being surrounded with giant burning tapers that brought her soul much peace, and it saved them a fair amount on their electricity bill every month because she wasn't tapping into it to light her room.
With her window open providing a light breeze to disturb the stillness in the air, as well as a gateway to the sounds on the street down below, she rather enjoyed spending time in her bedroom whenever she could. That time was often interrupted by the others living there, and that night was no different; not long after darkness fell did Ingrid bang on the door, with the intention of inviting Dorothea out with her for the night. As she'd previously gotten the invitation from Leonie, she knew that she couldn't say yes without offending someone, so she turned it down on the spot, acting apologetic as she did. "I mean, I was hoping you'd say yes so I had a friend to watch my back, but I get it! Vocal cords come first!"
"Wait, why would you need me when you'd have Leonie?" Dorothea asked, quite taken aback by the turn of events. "She's better at protection than I am, anyway."
"I'm not going out with them, I'm planning on meeting Sylvain and Felix if I can find them out tonight, but otherwise I'm just going by myself." That changed everything, and after explaining herself and why she'd been so quick to say no, Dorothea requested a couple of minutes to get ready before they headed out. "Somehow I knew saying the two of them would maybe be there would get you in gear. You really do love flirting with them, huh?"
"Felix I can do without, but Sylvain? There's something about getting under his skin and getting him excited despite him knowing I'm far from his soulmate that brings me joy." It was potentially going to be another night of watching soulmates shacking up while she sat at a bar talking to Ingrid until last call, but if the guys were there then they'd at least have two other lonely souls to keep them company.
Her choice in attire for the evening was a less-frilly version of one of her performance dresses, tassels exchanged for a sleek design that gave her body a curvy silhouette, especially in darkened bars, and the heels that she put on made her tower even more over Ingrid and her dress-pants wearing self. "Things like this make me wish we'd been able to work out as soulmates," Ingrid admitted as they headed out, arm-in-arm to show their solidarity. "Whoever gets to be with you forever is one lucky person, that's all I'm going to say. Lucky to wake up every day knowing they have this gorgeous woman in their life."
"Hopefully they're someone as down-to-earth as you are," Dorothea replied, before stifling a laugh behind her lipstick-laden lips. "I mean that as a personality trait thing, not a comment on your height. I have no qualms with being with someone shorter than me, of course, but if I had a say I'd request at least on my level, if not taller."
"Then I hope you get someone shorter than me, just to spite you." Playful banter as always, there never seemed to be a genuinely heated moment between the two of them, something else that made Dorothea sad they hadn't been soulmates. It would have been beyond fortuitous if it had happened, but it would have brought them both a lifetime of fully enjoying the company of the person they were fated to be with, rather than all of these years of going out to bars looking for who was meant for them.
Like most nights in Garreg Mach, the crowds at every place along the main roads were teeming with single individuals looking for their chance with someone. They had been at this game for so long that most of those people were familiar faces to them both, and they weren't stopped even once by a flirter as they made their way to their usual spot near the bar at one of the places on the busiest street in town. Once things died down, they'd go up to the bar itself and spend the rest of the night there, but while it was still so busy it was smartest and safest to keep their distance a bit. Ingrid spent her time looking around for her friends, while Dorothea's job was to make sure that they were both left alone and not tampered with by ill-meaning individuals, and any time she saw someone she didn't recognize, her hair on her arms bristled while she instinctively pat down her leg, knowing that they could be an enemy or a soulmate, if only they'd talk to her and get right to the awkward flirting.
"I wonder if they're even going to show up," Ingrid said under her breath, sipping on her glass of water she'd ordered just to have something there at the table with them while they waited. "Wouldn't be the first time that they decide to do something else and forget to tell me about it."
"Did you actually make plans with them for tonight, or are you just assuming they'll show up somewhere?" Dorothea teasingly asked, knowing that on several occasions, plans had not been made at all and the guys had never known they were expected to show up anywhere.
The look on Ingrid's face was much like a deer in lights, as she tried to recall if she had asked them, before nodding. "Yeah, I saw Sylvain out at the market earlier, he was just walking through but was making eyes at every person that passed, so you can bet he had quite a look on his face when he saw me there! After picking on him a bit for trying to flirt with me, I told him to meet me here tonight and now…here we are, and here they aren't."
"Rather typical, but I'm sure they have some good reason for why they aren't showing up on time." Her eyes once again scanning the room for anyone of note, Dorothea had a thought cross her mind that she hadn't considered until then: what if Leonie and Kjelle happened to walk in and saw her out with Ingrid rather than them? The chances of that were lower than the chances of either of them meeting their soulmate that night—absolutely impossible—but it was still something that had to be thought about, just in case. "Maybe they got the location mixed up and ran into other friends instead, we do know that there's at least one other person they know out tonight."
"Very true, but I don't know, Sylvain seemed excited to be out with me tonight so I'm sure it's nothing on his part." When Ingrid started sounding like she was upset about something, that was when Dorothea knew it was serious, and already the tone of hurt feelings was beginning to take hold in Ingrid's voice. "It's probably dumb, grumpy-as-always Felix being a huge thorn in everyone's side and choosing to be difficult. I'm almost positive that's what it is, actually."
"We'll have to find out next time we see them, if they don't show up." As she kept scouting, Dorothea became convinced that they were going to be taking the night just the two of them, and that was what ultimately ended up happening. In fact, they were two of the last people left at the bar when it closed, neither of them having had more than a single shot of specialty liquor while they sat there waiting. The bartender had been cordial and kept bringing them waters to pass the time while they talked, and when they were shooed out of the place for the doors to be locked, they'd forgotten all about being stood up and were just enjoying each other's company.
Just like they did when they'd been dating.
To say that Dorothea was livid that she was bound to someone she didn't know when someone so perfect for her was living under her roof would have been an understatement. She hated knowing that Ingrid was her best match but because of the black marks etched into their skin that had yet to take color into their lines, she wasn't meant to be her soulmate, and she knew that whoever the real person meant for her was would not live up to her expectations already set by Ingrid's existence. "We should spend more nights together like this, like the old days," Ingrid said as they walked back to their place, through darkened streets that had been bustling with drunken activity just an hour before. "Just because we're not soulmates doesn't mean we can't act like we are until we find the right person."
"That's a lovely idea, but it would be a huge deterrent to whoever our soulmates are. They'd see us together and never think to try talking to us, you know?" It was an idea that Dorothea had considered so many times, but she'd always shot it down for the exact reason she'd said; she didn't want to actively sabotage her chance at finding who the goddess thought she was meant to be with. But rather than dwell on that failure of the system, she moved on to something else she'd been thinking about. "How much do you want to bet we're going to get home to see that Leonie and her new friend are more than friends?"
"That'd be a sight, but I don't think it'll happen. The universe can't be so cruel as to set soulmates in different countries from each other and expect them to somehow meet." Even with Ingrid's input, it was still something that Dorothea secretly hoped would happen anyway, but those dreams were dashed when they opened their front door to see Leonie standing just inside, having just gotten home for herself, her hair tousled but her mark on the back of her neck still dark black against her tanned skin.
"I thought you weren't going out tonight," she said when she realized that it wasn't just Ingrid coming in the door. "Or maybe you just didn't want to come with us, which I totally get. You wouldn't have enjoyed the kind of fun we were out having."
Dorothea gave a soft, breathy laugh, one that sent a bit of air whistling through her nose. "You're right, I'm not one for the fun that involves losing your foreign friend and forgetting to bring her home."
"O-oh, I didn't lose Kjelle, I ran into some other friends and she went with them because they had an extra bed and we don't. Didn't want her sharing with any of us, and she wasn't down to sleep on the floor tonight." Grinning, as if she'd come up with the greatest of master plans on that one, Leonie looked between Dorothea and Ingrid and after seeing that they were both wholly sober, broke her demeanor just a bit to get serious. "Okay, but there's something about her that I can't place my finger on. I feel like I've seen her somewhere, but I can't for my life figure out where that somewhere is. She's from Ylisse, it's not like I've run into her at random somewhere before."
Her eyes narrowing as she thought about it, Ingrid took a moment to consider where it could be before shrugging it off, and since she couldn't come up with anywhere either, Dorothea merely walked past the holdup at the front door to go down to her room. "Come on, the two of you can't think that I'm just being ridiculous with this, can you? I'm not, I'm being serious, but I just…can't think of where she's from!"
"Ylisse, you already said that."
"I mean where I've seen her before, come on, Ingrid!" With a flip of her bangs to keep them out of her face, Leonie made a disgusted expression in Ingrid's direction before jumping to follow Dorothea down to her room, only for the door to be shut firmly in her face before she had so much as a chance to enter. "Hey, let me in! I want to know your opinion here!"
"Ask me some other time," Dorothea replied, feigning a yawn to make it seem like she was exhausted and therefore unable to partake in the conversation she had nothing to actually say in. "I'm going to bed. Good night, Leonie."
If there was some response to that, it must have been visual-only, because it fell silent directly outside the door (although Dorothea could hear Leonie going back to the main room to continue the debate with Ingrid), and she was able to undress and wind down to go to sleep for real. Except, sleeping never was the real plan, but sitting in her candlelit room with a notebook on her lap as she jotted down every person she could remember seeing that night was. Chronicling her failures at finding her soulmate was something that Dorothea did as a way to know who not to waste further time with, and she didn't want her friends knowing she was doing it as she was certain they'd consider it also a waste of time. There were so many people in the world, and only one of them would be her soulmate—it would be like pulling a needle out of a gigantic haystack, and yet there she was, labeling every piece of hay she'd collected as a dud.
Someday, Dorothea would find her soulmate, whether she wanted to or not. She just hoped that they'd be worth all the work and struggle she'd put in to finding them.
As a career, Dorothea was an opera singer, and a fantastic one at that, but during her off times she had no other trade to fall back on, relying on her saved money and the incomes of her friends to help her get by until her shows started back up. Thankfully, they were all aware of her work schedule moons in advance of when the shows would or would not be taking place, so when the season for foreign performers came upon them and she wasn't singing for crowds larger than the group of friends she'd been adopted into, they were prepared for the lack of cashflow.
But when factoring in a visitor from another country and all of the things they'd want to do with her, it was hard to keep a steady budget and not dip too far into the money that was never supposed to be touched except for an emergency. Leonie, who had quite the list of financial troubles of her own despite her well-paying job doing security work, had ideas of grand treks across Fódlan to show Kjelle the sights, and Ingrid, whose family had more or less stopped coming to her for money once she'd gotten of age and hadn't found her soulmate, wanted to be in on the adventures. "While it does sound like it would be quite the fun trip, I don't think we can afford to all go," Dorothea pointed out when the discussion turned to if she wanted to join them. "I don't have another show for another moon, I won't be paid until after I'm on that stage, how are we going to afford board and food while we're gallivanting across Fódlan together?"
"Uh, from your massive amounts of savings?" Leonie suggested, as if she'd had that comeback saved in the back of her mind for that very moment. "I know that you make a lot more money than you spend, you can't say that you don't have what we'd need to make this happen. You just can't."
"Oh, but I can," she confidently replied, and hearing the gasp Leonie gave made Dorothea realize that she was actively sucking the soul from her friend's chest with this denial. "We have to play financially smart, and I'm not going to tap into the money I've worked hard to save just to have a bit of fun. Sorry, ladies, but if you want to do this trip, I'll be sitting out."
As Leonie was sputtering, trying to come up with another rebuttal to argue for her point, Kjelle coughed to clear her throat and get everyone's attention. "I don't know where it's gotten into her head that I want to go on some grand tour of Fódlan, but I can promise you that I'm fine without it. I've toured all over Ylisse in my line of work, I don't exactly find doing the same in a different country very relaxing."
"Why didn't you say something about that sooner, then?" Now that Leonie's attention was taken away from Dorothea turning her down and focused on Kjelle doing the same instead, that gave Dorothea the opportunity to slip out of the conversation in the main part of the house and go back to her bedroom. With it being early in the day, there was no need for the burning candles, which took away a lot of the room's comforts, but she would still rather have been spending time in there than out where an argument was potentially brewing.
Closing the door with one of her feet, Dorothea grabbed a pair of thigh-high stockings and sat on the edge of her bed to put them on. When she lifted her dress to securely fasten the stockings in place, the soulmate mark on her inner thigh stared back at her, black as the streets outside her window. "Someday I'll color you in," she muttered, pulling the elastic of her stocking up over half of the mark. "When, who knows, but it certainly wouldn't happen if we were out traveling across Fódlan like a bunch of roaming mercenaries."
With those words out in the air, she realized that it made perfect sense for Leonie to want to travel like she was trying to push for. The man she'd idolized had once held the position of roaming mercenary, and she aspired to be like him in many ways; too bad for her that the people she associated herself with had no interest in doing the same! Amused, Dorothea hopped off her bed and went to her closet, looking for something to wear for the day. Like always, she went with something slightly formal and upper-class, but comfortable enough that she wouldn't feel out of place walking through the markets in Garreg Mach. Her choice of dress was low-cut, fur-lined, and had a slit that went from the floor up to her knee, giving her the expensive appearance that an opera singer was expected to have while also giving her quick access to her thigh if she happened to find herself getting flirtatious.
After adjusting her hair and throwing a splash of color onto her eyelids, she left her room to see that Leonie and Kjelle were still in the middle of conversation, but the heat of the topic had seemed to have evaporated into thin air. "Hold on, where are you going?" she heard Ingrid call, and that was when she turned to see the speaker herself, coming out of her own room wearing clothes fit for exercising. "I didn't know it was 'dress up fancy' day, I thought we were planning on doing some working out!"
"I never agreed to that," Dorothea said, without thinking if she actually had or not. It was always a good plan to work out, but she was content with herself as she was and she didn't dare injure herself by doing something strenuous. "I'm going to spend some time looking for work to cover me while I'm not booked for big shows. That way, when Leonie abandons us to explore Fódlan on her own, we're not as strapped for money."
"Leonie's planning on abandoning us?" Having clearly missed a crucial part of the conversation, Ingrid fully entered the room and gave Leonie a confused look. "You really bring someone new into our life and decide to leave her here for us to watch? Is that what's going on here?"
Now there was an entirely different problem brewing, and even though she was responsible for starting it, Dorothea had no interest in sticking around to watch it solve itself. Right as the defenses started being thrown around she slipped a pair of her shoes on and headed out the front door, going as far as getting out of the building before— "Excuse me, I don't recall saying I wanted someone coming with me today, go ahead and go back inside."
"Figured I'd try and get to know you better because what's going on in there? Not really something I'm interested in." At least she was honest with her intentions, but the point still stood that Kjelle had not been invited out and yet there she was, walking in Dorothea's shadow. "You seem more like the kind of people I'm used to hanging around, anyway."
"A royal guard such as yourself, hanging out with people like me?" On one hand, that was easily something that Dorothea could take as a compliment, but on the other she was sure that it wasn't meant as such. "Don't make me laugh. You're used to hanging around kings and queens, not singers."
"It's not just royalty I spend time with. Some of my closest and dearest friends are musicians and performers, so you'd fit right in with them." Brushing a stray bang out of her face, Kjelle stood strong in her position that she could go with Dorothea and not be out of place. "Besides, looking like you do, having someone who could make anyone back down to defend you might be in your best interest. Don't want someone ripping your dress, do you?"
"I…" Dorothea didn't know how she wanted to respond to that. She really did not want Kjelle there with her, she didn't want to get to know the woman any better than she'd been forced to so far, but she raised a good point. Replacing such a beautiful dress would be difficult at the moment, and she could use the free protection. "I suppose you can stay with me after all. Just don't take this as us being friends."
Kjelle nodded, coming to stand beside Dorothea rather than behind her. "Noted. You just do whatever you were planning on doing and I'll be here along for the ride. No worrying about your safety, and no worrying about me getting in your way."
Looking at her and how just standing there, she seemed so physically intimidating despite her small stature, Dorothea knew that she'd made a good choice in letting her come along but at the cost of having to spend time with her. But while she was looking, she noticed that along Kjelle's collarbone on her right side was what looked like a colorful marking, mostly hidden by the collar of her shirt. Kjelle noticed the eyes on her and reached up to cover the exact spot Dorothea was staring at, reminding her that there was also a black mark on the back of her hand that fit the bill of the soulmate branding. "Sorry, didn't mean to stare," Dorothea apologized, her mind jumping to conclusions that she didn't have any interest in finding answers for.
So what if this woman had been granted two soulmates? That wasn't any of her business. Maybe that was the way it worked in Ylisse, or maybe that was just some special offering bestowed upon her by whatever god or gods she worshipped; the hard, cold truth was that Dorothea did not care that she'd just realized Kjelle had two soulmates and had apparently met one of them, given how she had a colored-in mark on her as well as the dark one. "Okay, well, I'd like you to prove that you didn't mean to stare and get a move on," Kjelle told her, waving at her to hurry up with her unmarked hand. "I doubt your plans for today involve just standing here doing nothing."
A smart remark lingering on her tongue, Dorothea swallowed it down and began moving, knowing that at the end of the day, she really did want to do things that weren't stare at an anomaly in the soulmate-searching world. "Right, let's go before you change your mind about helping me out."
"Or you change your mind about letting me come with you." After adjusting her collar so that the mark was sufficiently hidden, Kjelle fell back to once again walking in Dorothea's shadow, which meant that the facial expressions of the woman leading her into the heart of Garreg Mach's market district were completely unknown to her. That was for the best, because Dorothea was speaking novels with the twitches of her lips and the occasional glance back without turning her head to make it too obvious that she was emoting as she was.
Perhaps it was bothering Dorothea a bit too much, but she wasn't going to admit to the fact that she was actually caring at all about this sort of thing. Under her breath, Dorothea was muttering and grumbling about how she wished that she'd find her soulmate so that she wouldn't be lesser than someone as…well, she didn't know how to finish that thought and categorize Kjelle in the first place, but she wasn't going to let it be positive. She was getting so wrapped up in the thoughts of bitterness and jealousy that she nearly stepped out into a street with carts rumbling by, and she was only saved by a hand grabbing her by the back of her dress and keeping her on the sidewalk.
"Huh, maybe it's for the best you didn't tell me to go back after all," Kjelle wryly said after letting go of Dorothea, watching her turn around and muster a faint laugh at the situation. "If I wasn't here, you would've been run over. Can't say left for dead, but at least on the ground for a minute."
"Love that perspective of things," Dorothea replied, adjusting her dress to fix it from the sudden tugging on it. "Why, if I didn't know better, I'd say that you only saved me because I wouldn't have been left for dead in the first place!"
Her jaw dropping at the heavy accusation being thrown at her, Kjelle was clearly thinking of how to react to that appropriately for some time before rolling her eyes. "Oh, definitely, because I'm the kind of person to wish death on someone who's been letting me crash at her place sometimes. That's definitely the way I operate. Got me figured out completely."
It was clear that Dorothea had struck a nerve within Kjelle, but she didn't know why that was so problematic when it had seemed from the start that there was some sort of disconnect between the two of them. "I'm just saying, you would prefer it more if I wasn't going to get back up from being hit by someone's carriage, that's all."
"No, if I preferred that, I wouldn't have offered to come with you. What kind of…" Trailing off as she realized that there was no point in continuing arguing, Kjelle huffed, reached to her head and pushed her bangs back over the top of her head, the dark blue hair cascading right back down. "I've met nothing but nice people here in Fódlan, and then there's you. What did I even do to you in the first place? Not bow and grovel at your opera singer feet?"
That raised a good point: what had Kjelle done in the first place? Dorothea couldn't exactly tell her that the truth was selfish and stupid, that she held a grudge against her because she'd come into Leonie's life first and she was yet another borrowed acquaintance that had been thrown into her life. "You just never seemed interested in making a connection with me, that's all. Nothing to it."
"And the same could be said right back to you."
"Then, what's the problem? You have no interest in knowing me, I have no interest in knowing you, that's the end of it, we go our separate ways and—" Dorothea found herself being cut off by a shrill whistle coming from the other side of the street, and even though the most important thing going on in her world right then was in front of her, she turned to see who was standing there trying to get her attention. That was a mistake, as the moment she turned her back on Kjelle, revenge was enacted and she was pushed out into the street, where thankfully no carts or carriages were on their way at the moment. She stumbled and fell, slicing her leg on the uneven stones while Kjelle watched in almost horror, despite being the reason for the fall in the first place.
"Holy shit, what happened between you two?" Dorothea heard Sylvain asking, meaning that he had to have been the one trying to get her attention, and as she picked herself and her bloodied leg up off the ground she found him standing there, offering her a helpful hand. She took his hand and together they got her to the other side of the street, where he pulled a napkin from his pocket and gave it to her to mop up some of the blood. "I didn't think that she was exactly a great person or anything, but she just attacked you out of nowhere right now, didn't she?"
"It wasn't out of nowhere," Kjelle asserted, still staying on the other side of the street as she spoke. "If you'd heard what she was saying to me, you'd understand why I did it."
Sylvain gave Dorothea a look that he was usually shooting towards Ingrid when they'd all be out together at a bar and she'd be speaking nonsense after downing a couple of drinks, and at once Dorothea understood why it was so effective in getting her to stop what she was doing and think clearly. "I might've said a couple stupid things, but it wasn't worthy of being left for dead in the street." Calling back to Kjelle's own words seemed fitting, but when Sylvain looked to get the other side of the story, she knew that she wasn't going to be seen as in the right in the end.
Sure enough, the moment that Kjelle started talking about how Dorothea had been more than willing to use her as a guard but had never once been kind to her, it seemed that Sylvain was swayed into thinking that she was justified in the attack. He was listening to her recounting of what had happened with a thoughtful expression, nodding and murmuring things as he listened over the expanse of street between them. "I think that you weren't wrong to push her, but come on! Girls hurting girls for stupid stuff like this? What kind of world do we live in?"
"Yeah, I know it wasn't the smartest thing to do," Kjelle replied, hanging her head for a second before standing back up to full height, checking the crossing, and making her way across the street to join them. "Let my anger get the best of me for a moment. Sorry about that, Dorothea. Forgive me?"
"Uh, yeah, I'll forgive you this time." There was a tone to Dorothea's voice that let anyone who truly knew her know that she wasn't being fully honest—something that Kjelle didn't pick up on, but that Sylvain noticed immediately. He shook his head, told Kjelle to go back to wherever she was staying at the time and that he'd hang out with Dorothea from there, and waited until she was gone to ask Dorothea if she knew she wasn't telling the full truth. "Of course I know that, I was hoping you wouldn't."
"Ingrid's told me enough about how you treat others for me to need to be stupid to miss that one. What's your problem with her?" It wasn't typical for Sylvain to be playing detective like he currently was, but he'd been the one to witness things and honestly, if what happened didn't go any further than him, it'd be for the best. "You can't get out of telling me about this, just so you know. Want me to walk with you back to your place and get the others to get the truth out of you?"
Her mouth wobbled, every piece of her telling her to do something else to get out of addressing her jealousy and her less-than-reasonable reason for why she held a grudge against the girl from Ylisse. "I'll tell you, as long as we're not out here on the street," she finally spat out, and Sylvain accepted the offer. Soon enough, they were in a nearby café, sitting at a table by the window looking out on the marketplace, and while he was ordering them some drinks she was cleaning up her leg. The gash only looked bad while it was bleeding, as it didn't seem deep or too much that some simple bandages wouldn't help heal, and she was thankful for that.
When Sylvain came back with two ice waters in his hands, he sat down across from Dorothea, sliding her a cup while setting his own down in front of him. "Now you're going to tell me what your problem is, or this is going to be a much bigger deal than it already is."
"Sounds like you're using your tactics for dealing with Felix on me."
"That'd be because I am," he immediately replied, giving her a knowing wink. "I've spent so much of my life having to get through his thick skull and grumpy exterior to get to the root of his problems that it's second nature when it comes to dealing with others. Now are you going to tell me, or is Ingrid going to have to get involved?"
That cemented it as the Felix tactics, and even though Dorothea was amused by how shameless he was in repurposing them on her, she knew that she was in deep trouble with everyone if it did get to that point. "I'll tell you, but promise you're not going to listen and laugh at me for it. It's…kind of petty, really."
The look Sylvain gave her expressed a single emotion, lovingly called "I have to put up with Felix and his reasons for being angry, you can't surprise me" and she took that not as a threat, but as a challenge. Over the next couple minutes, between sips of their waters and the occasional check for any people listening in to their talk, she divulged all of her problems to his listening ears, the expression he wore never wavering until the end. That was when she'd dropped the mostly-unrelated bombshell about noticing that the girl had two marks, one of which was colored, and that news had Sylvain instinctively reaching for his own mark, knowing full well that it was still its normal self. "Geez, I guess it makes sense that you'd be a little jealous of her, but that doesn't explain why she'd push you into the road like that," he decided after giving it some thought and letting Dorothea's explanation run its course. "Sounds like you'd be the one doing the pushing, you know?"
"Well clearly I'm not some uncivilized animal like she is, I know how to handle my emotions on a physical level." If it weren't for the gashes she'd sustained, Dorothea would have been all for pushing past the ordeal and pretending it hadn't happened, but she was going to have to answer to the marks eventually. "I'll act like I'm not jealous of her for being so blessed by the goddess that she gets two soulmates, and she can learn some class. Sound good?"
"Uh, can't say that it does, but I'll see what Ingrid thinks when I tell her about this." Cue Dorothea getting rather upset that after everything, Sylvain was still going to drag her in. His intentions were good, but she knew that getting Ingrid in the mix was only going to make life worse for at least one of them, and it was most likely not going to be their guest.
Sylvain's plan was thwarted before he had a chance to act on it, though, as he found out after walking Dorothea back to her home and coming up into it with her, finding no sign of Kjelle or even Leonie, but Ingrid was there in her usual spot, her sleeve rolled up and her hand actively tracing over where her mark was located. "Hey, got a minute?" he started, spooking Ingrid from whatever trance she'd been in and causing her to pull her sleeve back down.
"I—you—what are you doing here, Sylvain?" she stammered, jumping to her feet and pointing an accusatory finger in his direction, while Dorothea looked at her with eyes narrowing. This wasn't normal behavior for Ingrid, but she couldn't quite place what the reason for her skittishness might be.
"Just came to talk to you about something that's been going on right under your nose, but it looks like you've got bigger fish frying right now. What's eating at you?" Sylvain hopped into the empty seat next to the one Ingrid had been in previously, leaning closer to her as she sat back down, her hand never leaving her upper arm. "Come on, you know you can trust me with whatever you've got going on, seems like a much bigger deal than what I came in here for, anyway."
If that meant that Sylvain wasn't going to bring up what he'd witnessed, then Dorothea was all for it. "You can trust both of us with whatever you need to talk about," she corrected, leaning over behind Sylvain so that she had a higher perspective on the scene. "Now go on, talk about what you've got going on."
"It's nothing, really," Ingrid asserted, but her faked and awkward laugh was a dead giveaway that she was merely bluffing. "I was out earlier and ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in ages, and we got to talking and it was…nice. Yeah. Nice is the word for it."
Unconvinced, Sylvain motioned for her to continue with one hand, waving it in a circle while Dorothea watched from behind him, amused at what she was seeing. "Go on, who's the lucky friend who got to spend time with you and get you all flustered like this? Definitely not like you."
"Goddess, is it that obvious I'm flustered?" This time, when Ingrid laughed, her whole face lit up, her skin taking on a bright red hue. "I'm not—you're really—it's going to be so difficult for you to believe me on this one, but this 'friend' I met ended up, you know, being a bit more than a friend."
"That's not answering the question I asked. Who was it?" While Sylvain was asserting his stance on wanting to know names, a sinking feeling was beginning to take hold in Dorothea's stomach, as she began to realize why Ingrid was playing so coy with them. The placement of her hand on her arm, the way she was stammering and blushing like a child in love, these weren't things that she would be doing for any reason other than having met a special someone. A special someone that Dorothea had wished would've been her.
"I'm not telling you his name," Ingrid said after losing herself in a fit of laughter, "because you're really not going to believe me on this one. It's just such a coincidence that we'd known each other long ago but never…" Her fingers began fumbling with her sleeve, and before the two pairs of watchful eyes she slowly lifted her sleeve, revealing her soulmate mark a small bit at a time, both of them quick to notice how it had become alight with a mossy green color that hadn't been there before. "Never like this."
His jaw dropping, Sylvain looked at Dorothea, who instinctively reached for her leg, albeit the top of her thigh rather than where her own mark, still blackened and lonely, was etched into her skin. "Well that's definitely interesting," he eked out, clearly trying not to come off as too hurt by the revelation; it wasn't that he was interested in Ingrid romantically, but rather that she was one of his closest friends and he'd sworn to be there when she met her other half. "So now are you going to tell me who the guy is, or am I going to have to go around all of Garreg Mach to find him myself?"
"Sylvain! Stop acting like this is a bad thing, you know we've all been waiting for one of us to find our soulmate and I guess I got to be first." Already pulling her sleeve back down, Ingrid let out a long sigh as she sank back into her seat, her eyes fluttering closed. "I never realized how much of a relief I'd feel when I saw someone else's mark fill with color while I was talking to them, but it was a feeling that I wouldn't trade for anything."
"You could see his mark change in front of you?" Dorothea repeated, her mind jumping to all of the men they'd met over time that could fit the bill. "That's probably a clue to who he is, there's not a whole bunch of people with overly noticeable marks that hang out around here. Want to go on a manhunt, Sylvain?"
She was joking with the suggestion, but the way he rose to his feet and started for the door showed how serious Sylvain was about doing it. "If we're lucky, we'll find the guy before dark and tell him all about how he's got to treat Ingrid with respect, or else he'll have both of us on his sorry ass." But his seriousness broke when he got to the door and saw how neither woman was reacting to what he'd said, and he had to walk back his statement. "Oh, come on, I'm just playing around. Whoever he is, he's probably already aware of how much maintenance Ingrid needs, he doesn't need me jumping down his throat too."
"I'm sure if you told him exactly that, it'd calm him down a bit. When I say he was shaking like a leaf when I showed him my mark, I mean it." Her hand was still glued to her arm, but Ingrid wasn't looking at either of the people she was there with. "I felt kind of bad when it happened, he'd been out shopping with a couple other friends and I just happened to be there, we playfully flirted because Annette told us to, you know, just to be silly since we'd known each other years ago, and the change happened and…it was amazing."
Doing a double-take at the name she'd dropped, Sylvain was running back over to his seat, nearly knocking over a table covered in some of Leonie's mail in the process. "You saw Annette while you were out? Which means that she had to be there with Mercedes, but what guy would be comfortable enough hanging around them here?"
"Don't they usually spend time back in Faerghus, hanging around the guards of the king?" Dorothea asked, trying to help solve the mystery, while Ingrid remained silent on the matter, clearly feeling as if she'd already said too much. Her words were noticed by Sylvain, who nodded slowly, before leaning closer to Ingrid, a fist curled up underneath his chin as he pondered what to say next. "I mean, you've got a pretty good shot at guessing who it is if that's the case, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, but which one of them would be most likely to be here without warning me or Felix about it?" Sylvain had started having fun with the sleuthing, even if Ingrid wasn't actively helping matters, but when he leaned a bit too close to her she kicked out at him, hitting him mid-chest with her foot and sending him back into his seat, stunned at the power of her hit. "Hey, what was that for? You think I'm going to start tickling you or something like that?"
"N-no, but I'd rather you not be so close right now, thanks."
He took that in stride, looking up at Dorothea (who was trying her best to not laugh at what she'd just watched). "I'm starting to think Ingrid colored the mark in herself and is just playing the world's cruelest prank on us. But joke's on her, we'll actually find our soulmates before her, so she's doing nothing but hurting herself here."
"Please, I'm not that desperate to find love, unlike certain others in this room." After staring at Sylvain with a very unimpressed look for a moment, Ingrid got up and headed down to her bedroom, leaving the other two to question what in the world had just happened. It was so unlike her to not be loud and open about things going on, so knowing if she was telling the truth about finding her soulmate was difficult, but Sylvain was convinced she was joking with them, going so far as to state that assertion once again.
"That's great," Dorothea sarcastically told him, wishing that she too could head to her room to get away from everything that had gone down already that day, "but do you remember why you came in here in the first place? To tell her about my little problem?"
"…Damn, let it slip my mind the moment I saw her babbling like a lovesick dog. You can tell her yourself, can't you?" Of course she'd say she would tell Ingrid what had happened, but she wouldn't mean it, and Sylvain knew that was the case. "Likely story, saying you'll do it now, but next time I see Ingrid I'll be asking her about it and she'll either know what I'm talking about or you'll have to own up with her being the one looking for answers."
Dorothea, unbothered by the idea of Ingrid trying to get information out of her, shrugged off the entire problem as if it hadn't mattered, as if her bloodied leg and jealous heart weren't factors to consider. It was very obvious that she was hurting, and Sylvain could hear it in her voice when she spoke. "She'll understand why I didn't tell her when it happened, her finding the man she's always needed was more important today, and I'll probably forget that this ever happened by the time she's ready to talk."
"Something tells me that you're not going to forget things so easily," he said, standing up and brushing off his shirt from where Ingrid's foot had hit him. "Forgive, maybe, but forget? Not a chance."
"Saying it like that makes me sound vengeful or something. Which, just so you know, I'm not. I'm planning on letting this all just disappear and pretending like none of it ever went down, and nothing you say right now can get me to change my mind." To further her point, rather than let him try and herd her down toward Ingrid's room, she turned the tables and began ushering him toward the front door, citing that he'd only been allowed inside to have that conversation, and since it hadn't happened, his permission to be inside was revoked.
Despite any and all protests Sylvain gave, he went without much of an actual fight, and the moment the door was locked with him on the outside, Dorothea was running down to Ingrid's room to try talking to her anyway. She was beyond curious about who her lucky soulmate was and without Sylvain there, she felt she had a better chance of finding out in a straight answer. Allowed inside the bedroom with just a small knock, Ingrid was sitting on her bed, eyes turned to the ceiling in apparent prayer. "I was hoping it was just you trying to come in," she said, looking at Dorothea with a smile. "You're welcome in here, but you're the only one I want knowing this right now."
"I'd assume that's because of our romantic history, isn't it?" Dorothea asked, and when Ingrid nodded she felt a bit at peace with that decision. "Makes perfect sense, letting me know before anyone else. Who'd you find out is your soulmate today?"
"See, I'm fine with you knowing because I don't actually know if you know him." With a smile on her face, Ingrid pulled up her sleeve again, showing her mark in all of its colored glory to Dorothea's waiting eyes. "His name's Ashe, he works as a part-time knight in Faerghus but makes it a point to travel whenever he can looking for…me, I guess?"
While the name rang a bell to Dorothea, it could have easily been because she'd met so many people in her time giving performances that she was thinking of a completely wrong person. "I can't say I know him, so your secret's safe with me. He's got a nice eye color, too."
"Thanks, I'm pretty lucky to have something bright stuck on my body forever." They shared a laugh, such a trivial matter when it came to the overall concept of soulmates, but seeing that Ingrid had randomly found a piece of herself she'd been searching for made Dorothea wish that her journey was going to end that easily. She was beginning to be surrounded by people much luckier in love than she was, and if too many more of her close companions found their soulmates before she did, she could very easily lose her mind.
"How much you want to bet Leonie's going to come home today also having found her soulmate?" she ended up blurting out as a question, her thoughts becoming words without her wanting them to. Ingrid seemed a bit confused at the suddenness of it being asked, but she shrugged, not sure what to say. "Sorry, I was just thinking, between you and…a certain other person we know, that's two soulmate discoveries today. Why not make it a third?"
Ingrid's face contorted slightly in her further confusion. "Who else found theirs?"
Realizing that she shouldn't have said anything at all, Dorothea had no choice but to play it off however she possibly could. "If you don't want others knowing about yours, I'm not going to stand here running my mouth about someone else's. Point is, it'd just be the icing on the cake if Leonie found hers today as well."
The good news was that Leonie did not, in fact, find anything close to her soulmate. The bad news was that she had run into Kjelle while out and the two of them had then run into some of Leonie's other friends, who'd provided them with quite the idea of something to do. "Hilda says there's a music festival being held in Derdriu next week, and she's got enough tickets for us to all go if we wanted to travel out there," Leonie proudly announced, one of her favorite things in the world being free things. "I told her that we'd go, obviously, but that I'd talk to you ladies to see if you wanted to go too."
Dorothea, already spending so much of her life at music festivals and concerts and the like, looked at Leonie with a fair bit of annoyance expressed in her eyes. But, as she stared at her friend and looked for the words to reply to her with, a thought crossed her mind that made the idea seem much more appealing: what if the festival and trip allowed her an easy way to show everyone the kind of menace their tagalong was? "I suppose I'm down for that, if it's not costing us anything out of our already tight budget," she said, keeping her eyes firmly planted on Leonie so a certain someone else's reactions wouldn't potentially sway hers. "It's been a long time since I was last listening to other people perform without the expectation that I sing as well."
"Okay, awesome! What do you think Ingrid'll say when I ask her if she wants to go?" Poor Leonie, completely unaware of the life-changing event that had taken place in Ingrid's life that day. While Dorothea was sure that Ingrid would want to do, she knew that it wasn't exactly the appropriate time to bring it up with her, but she wasn't sure how to tell that to Leonie without unraveling everything else.
"I think she'll be excited and willing to join us, but maybe you can ask her once you have everything else settled? There isn't much difference in arranging plans for three than there is for four, after all." Sure, when it came to dining set-up, but traveling to a different part of Fódlan for a festival? However foolish it was, Leonie ate up that suggestion and went down to her own bedroom to start crafting solid plans, Kjelle following her but not before giving Dorothea a very unamused look, almost as if she was blaming her for what had happened earlier in the day.
That woman was continuing to be a thorn in her side, but Dorothea had no idea how deep she was going to embed herself in the story of her life.
A/N: written for the soulmate AU big bang on twitter! there's three more chapters of this coming soon!
