'Help!' Bernadetta cried, thrashing in the water.
'Bernadetta!' Edelgard shouted.
'Grab my hand,' Dorothea said, leaning over the side of the bank.
'Help!' Bernadetta cried again, seemingly oblivious to her. She thrashed in the water, as if in competition with the nearby waterfall. She whacked Dorothea's hand away and somehow managed to move herself further away from the bank and further away from safety. Petra jumped into the water and reached for her, but Bernadetta's flailing arms kept her away.
'Bernadetta!' Petra shouted. 'Allow me to'-
'Help!' Bernadetta shouted again. She kicked and thrashed and moved herself further out. She was still in line with the edge of the pier, but it was too far away for her to swim to. Petra pushed forward and dove down, emerging behind the girl and putting her arms under her shoulders.
'Bernade-tta l-let me help y'-
Petra tried to swim with Bernadetta but the girl kept shaking and fighting her.
'I-I can't get into the water,' Edelgard said. 'Hubert, jum'-
Byleth moved past the Black Eagles and slid into the water, kicking off the bank and out towards the two girls. At that moment, Bernadetta hadn't seemed to have noticed him. She thrashed from side to side, seemingly just as panicked about Petra grabbing her as she was stuck in the water. She jerked one way and then the next; splashing furiously in all directions. Petra grip on her slipped and her head vanished under the water. Byleth tore towards her and drove his arms downward. He caught her under her arms and forced her upward. She gasped and… and that's when she saw him and screamed.
'No! You're going to infect me!'
'Bernie, it's ok!' Dorothea called.
'Bernadetta!' Edelgard called. 'Stay cal'-
Bernadetta's cries drowned out their voices. She thrashed in his arms, spraying him with droplets of water. Byleth hooked an arm under shoulder and pulled her slowly towards the pond's ladder at the bank. He cursed himself.
Fishing was a mistake.
Bernadetta began to cry as he neared the ladder. He steered her towards it, and she lashed her hands out and gripped the rails tightly, pulling herself close and hugging them.
'Climb up, Bern,' Dorothea said.
Bernadetta didn't. She lowered her head and continued to cry, trembling in the water. Byleth moved away from her, hoping that would help, but it didn't. Petra swam to the side of her and put a hand on her shoulder, but the girl still wouldn't move.
'Hey, uh, are you okay?'
Byleth looked up and saw Dudley the gatekeeper standing on the edge of the bank with the other Black Eagles. He lowered his hand out to Bernadetta, but she ignored him as well and started to mewl words under her breath.
'Please, Bernadetta,' Edelgard said. 'Climb the steps.'
The water wasn't cold and so Byleth knew that hypothermia wasn't an immediate danger, but in a way, that made it even worse that the girl was still refusing to move. Something had pushed her over the edge: the fish, falling into the water, him "infecting" her, or a combination of all those things, almost certainly built upon a mountain of stress and fear that she'd built up inside her. Her trembling and mewling, which was louder and somehow sadder than any time before, seemed to suggest he was right.
'All is okay,' Petra said.
'Bernadetta, you need to be brave,' Ferdinand said.
'It's okay, Bern,' Dorothea said. 'Just'-
'Useless… worthless, unmarriageable…'-
Byleth heard Bernadetta mewl those three words and froze. She repeated them and his head started to thump.
'Useless… worthless, unmarriageable…'-
Bernadetta said those three words again and her voice seemed to echo. She repeated them again, except he heard something else.
"I don't want your gold you little freak. How about you fuck off and join that tramp on the stage over there? The crowd would love it. You're a freak as well. You'd be called the "Walking Corpse Act."
"He's not normal, he'll never make friends or fall in love"-
"For all we know, his lack of a heartbeat might mean he dies sooner than the rest of us."
"My point is that you worry about his feelings and emotions, but I don't think he has much of either.'-
"… you're grasping for things in him that aren't there, you want him to be normal but he never will be."
"He's an empty shell…lifeless."
'Useless… worthless, unmarriageable…'-
Byleth stared at her, transfixed. He looked at her hunched shoulders, and heard her strangled, disjointed gasps for air. It reminded him of something that made his chest tighten.
It reminded him of how he'd felt when he'd first reached the top of the stone steps.