It doesn't escape Edelgard that Monica has become very tactile and clingy over the last two years. Monica has always worn her heart on her sleeve, but she was more likely to express it with words rather than touch.
But the night they returned from the fortress and after they'd reported everything to Rhea, Monica asked if she could share Edelgard's bed. She spent the night pressed tightly to Edelgard's side, hand on her arm, face buried in her shoulder as if she were afraid this was somehow all a dream and she was still chained up in that cell.
Edelgard is all too familiar with that fear. Her first night back in the palace, refusing to leave her father's side, constantly checking to see if Hubert was right beside her like always. Almost everyone felt like a stranger, the siblings she'd spent her entire life with gon. How she could have very well joined them if the experiment had failed.
And she remembers her once serious but kind and pious uncle suddenly cold and calculating, feeling like a completely different person. When he unmasked himself as Tales, it troubled her to feel absolutely no surprise.
So whenever Monica asks to share her quarters in the palace, she acquiesces. If Monica reaches for her hand, she takes it. Monica seeks out reasons to lean on her, to put a hand on her shoulder, to touch her arm, and Edelgard lets her.
But there's a hint of apology every time Monica reaches for her.
"I'm not bothering you, am I, Your Majesty?" she asks one morning. "I promised I'd be a pillar of strength for you, but here you are constantly helping me. It's okay if you ever say no."
It's true that Edelgard has a lot on her plate. Her coronation was almost a year ago, and she's implemented less than half of the new policies she's drafted, some with last-minute revisions. Plus there's her next move to think about, and if she's to declare war on the Central Church, everything needs to be in place.
But even if she wanted to view Monica as a liability, she can't. It's not her fault she was abducted and chained in a cell for nearly a year, intended to be carved up and used as one of their tools. Edelgard still wishes Kronya and Solon hadn't escaped so easily; now more than ever, she's relieved to break away from her original plan, and even more to have that darkness purged from her home.
How can you ask me such a thing when saving you is the best thing that could have happened for me, or the Empire?
Edelgard takes Monica's hands in her own, squeezing them, looking into her eyes.
"You are not a bother. You never have been, never will be," she says. Monica smiles tearfully, flinging her arms around Edelgard, and Edelgard returns the embrace. This is the Monica she knows, warm and real, not a stranger wearing her skin.
Monica needs this, and in a way, so does she.