Chapter Text
The world became glimpses and fleeting moments.
Flowers, the scent of flowers clogging Hubert’s nose and vision, mingling with a tang of sweet sweat and sturdy arms holding him up.
Shouting, sobbing, slipping on blood.
The snap of a banner caught on the breeze and the thudding of hooves beneath him.
A hand squeezed around his own, refusing to let go.
An endless stream of whispers, shaped into a prayer to a goddess who no longer exists: Please, please, please.
Then there is only a hot light in his chest and a gnawing cold that drags him down, drags him under, and all is silent and dark.
When Hubert opens his eyes, it’s with a panicked gasp, a million urgent thoughts clashing together at once.
Lady Edelgard. Marching into a trap. The count, the mercenaries, the Alliance—all of them ready to leverage each other against her.
No—Count Gloucester dead, his blood smearing Hubert’s face—Hubert reaches up to claw at his skin, try to scrub it away—
Ferdinand. Ferdinand. The mercenaries were holding him, they were going to gamble with him—
“Can you not relax for one second? Honestly, Hubert. You’re going to tear your stitches if you don’t stop.”
Hubert blinks away the cloud of sleep, and turns to find Her Majesty, Emperor Edelgard sitting at his bedside. “My lady.” He struggles to sit up. “My lady, I have to warn you. They know you are coming—the mercenaries, they’re waiting to ensnare—”
“Shhh. Yes, I know. You sent Dorothea to warn me. Remember?” She smiles, and smooths his bangs back from his forehead. “Thank you for that. Saved us from quite a disastrous battle. I don’t even want to think what kind of casualties we might have incurred, or even less, what might have happened to you and Ferdinand . . .”
Hubert bites his lower lip. There are so many more important things to ask her, and yet—“Is he all right . . . ?”
“Ferdinand? Goodness, yes. He’s fine. Everyone is, thanks to you. Well. Everyone but Count Gloucester and the mercenaries he bought out from under us.” Her brow creases, stormy. “But we owe you—and Ferdinand, and Dorothea, and even von Riegan, for that matter—a huge debt from saving us from a big catastrophe.”
“It was only my duty to you.” He closes his eyes, very exhausted now that his initial surge of panic has subsided. “But what . . . What happened?”
Edelgard smiles at him, that sisterly, teasing grin he knows so well. “You got a nasty stab wound from the count, it would seem. Fortunately Ferdinand brought you back to our camp, and Linhardt was able to patch you up. Then Claude and his lieutenants called for a meeting to discuss terms.”
So Ferdinand is all right. He’s all right . . . His hand brushes over the thick gauze wrappings fixed tight around his chest. “Terms? Of the Alliance’s surrender, I trust?”
Edelgard glances away from him, her face glowing in the trickle of sunlight that’s seeped into their tent. A tent, canvas sides rippling in the breeze. They must still be on the hillsides beyond Derdriu, where the Adrestian encampment had lain in wait to launch their attack on the capital of the Alliance. “No, not exactly.”
Hubert struggles again to sit up. “Your Majesty. What are you saying?” He grunts, pain sending icy needles up his chest and down his limbs. “My lady, surely you don’t mean to surrender—”
“I’m not surrendering anything. I just think we need to reexamine our priorities, is all.” She presses her lips together. “The point of this war is to rid the land of the plague of the crest system, isn’t it? Of the tyranny of the Church of Seiros. That’s all I truly want. I want their power erased, people to be freed . . .”
“What are you saying, my lady?”
She stands up, brushing out her skirts. “Only that there is more than one path to success, Hubert. Really, I should be thanking you for reminding me of that.” She gives him a tiny smile, something secretive. “I need to prepare for our discussions. But I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.”
“My lady, wait. Please, you must let me assist you. I don’t want you walking into another trap in these so-called—negotiations—”
“Not everything is a trap, Hubert.” She pauses at the entrance to the tent and turns to look at him. “Well. At least, not always in the way you think.”
He stares at her for a moment. What is she trying to tell him? He thinks back to the beginning of the month, the last time he really saw her—That dreadful meeting with her and the professor and Ferdinand, revealing their insidious plan that hinged on him and Ferdinand portraying that dreadful affair. “Is there something you need to tell me, my lady?”
She makes a show of buttoning up her lips. “Get your rest, Hubert. I’ll have plenty of work for you once you’re healed.”
And then she slips off, leaving him to stew in his thoughts.
Hubert spends the next few days bored to tears.
Linhardt appears every few hours, patting away a yawn, to check his wound dressings and shove another spoonful of sedative down his throat, until he stubbornly crosses his arms and refuses to be doped up any longer. “Suit yourself,” he yawns, and vanishes for much longer this next time. Dorothea drops by with a stack of books for him to read, mostly his usual array of historical treatises and governance notes, but also a few romance novels she must have unearthed from void only knows where. When he tries to argue against them, she gives him a filthy look that shuts up even his most virulent protests and all but throws one at him as she storms off. “Just read the damn thing. It can’t make you any worse at this than you already are.”
He sticks his tongue out at her as she leaves, then gives a miserable groan. His wit and logic must be atrophying something fierce in this accursed sickbed.
Finally, one evening, their old professor appears in the tent, wide eyes assessing his state with a tiny frown. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I could chew my own arm off to escape.”
No laughter; just a slight twitch of her mouth toward a smile. “We decided it’s for the best if you aren’t a part of the negotiations tomorrow, for . . . what I hope are obvious reasons.”
Hubert sighs and turns his head from her. Does she mean the part where he tried to orchestrate an attack on the Alliance, or the one where he killed a high-ranking member of it? A little of everything, perhaps.
“However, Her Majesty has agreed that you should accompany us to them, at the least. A chance for you to show that you mean no ill will toward them.”
“Don’t I?” he mumbles. He thinks of Ferdinand in the moonlight, pleading with him to stop being himself for a damned minute. It’s his nature, his person, to be underhanded, scheming, tactical. To do otherwise surely would only disappoint, in the end.
Byleth shake her head. “I think you’ll do whatever you need to, to support Her Majesty. If what she wants is an armistice, then you’ll stop at nothing to get it for her.”
“But we rejected such a possibility long ago,” Hubert says, dipping his hands into the fog of his memories from before this cursed month. How can he even remember anything from before the first day of Great Tree Moon? It’s only been twenty-nine days and he feels as if his very skin has been stripped away and turned inside out. This much, though, he’s certain of. The whole reason they began their march on Derdriu in the first place. The whole reason he was forced into this mad scheme.
Byleth shrugs, that enigmatic smile still holding. “I think General von Aegir can be very persuasive.”
Of course Ferdinand is the one pushing for a truce. Of course he still believes in all the things he saw while they were on their mission. These alleged signs that Claude and the rest would be happy to serve as their allies, and reject the very things that have bound them to Fódlan. So trusting, after all this time.
“And it gives you an excuse to leave the medical tent.”
Hubert glowers at the canvas walls, the romance novels from Dorothea (he’ll never forgive the brooding heir for rejecting the affections of the idealistic stableboy for the vengeful knight he could burn the world down with; he will track down this Lady who wrote it and have some words). “. . . If I must.”
It is the last day of Great Tree Moon and they are gathering at the front of camp to ride to Derdriu when he realizes it’s the first he’s seen of Ferdinand since the attack.
Ferdinand’s gaze immediately skips over him, and he shrinks into his saddle, long-faced with guilt. It’s like fingers wrapping around Hubert’s heart for a sharp squeeze. The last time they truly spoke, Ferdinand was berating him for his refusal to even consider working with the Leicester Alliance, after all, and now they’re preparing to do just that.
No, the last time he saw him—Oh. The last time he saw him, he told him he was right. That, however fleetingly, working with the Alliance had been the right course after all.
Hubert supposes it’s too late to go back on his word now.
“Good morning, von Aegir,” he says stiffly. “Nice to see you again.”
Ferdinand watches him with his lower lip in his teeth as Hubert climbs onto Avané. “Is it?”
Only now does it occur to Hubert to feel wounded that Ferdinand never visited him at the medical tent. At the time, it had been an immense relief; every guest that appeared at the entrance flooded him with dread and the sudden awareness that he had no idea what words could possibly suffice. Does he need to apologize for the ass he made of himself, repeatedly and persistently, throughout their time in Derdriu? Is he the one deserving an apology for Ferdinand’s cruel slight? Should they pretend everything that passed between them had never been, or acknowledge it for a mistake? What did Hubert even want from him? What did he need?
“Well, seeing as how you never bothered to visit me during my convalescence,” Hubert growls, “it’s good to see that you are alive after all.”
As soon as the words leave him, Hubert is fairly certain that the correct thing to say was Not That.
Ferdinand scrunches his eyes shut and sighs. “Ahh. There’s the Hubert I missed.”
Stop being you, Ferdinand’s voice echoes around him. “There’s me, indeed.”
“I did visit you,” Ferdinand says. “You were sleeping both times, though. I thought maybe it was—better that way.”
The words scoop a hollow out of Hubert. “Probably so.”
Ferdinand turns his head, orange eyes catching a gleam of sunrise. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I meant for this to go at all. I just thought . . .”
And the fierce tug of want knocks Hubert’s breath away with its urgency. The thought that somehow, despite all he’s done, despite all he is, Ferdinand could still want anything to do with him. That there could even be a sliver of a chance that what they had in Derdriu was real, or could have been, if they’d only tried.
Probably for the best, then, that Hubert keeps fucking it up.
“General?” Her Majesty calls. “Minister? We really ought to head out.”
Hubert looks back toward Ferdinand, and wishes he hadn’t. Then he wouldn’t have seen the pained look on his face, the one for a moment he mistakes as a mirror of the longing he’s currently feeling, too. He shakes his head and quickly faces forward, nudging Avané toward the path.
“Of course, my lady,” he says swiftly, and onward they ride.
Once they’re safely inside the (largely undamaged) Duke’s Palace on its island in the harbor, Claude guides them all to a large assembly room Hubert hasn’t seen before. Several long tables are arranged in a square with open space at the center, and chairs are pushed back against the walls for observers like Hubert to sit and watch the discussions. Her Majesty and Ferdinand, of course, will be occupying seats at the tables, as will Claude and Lorenz. The latter rushes toward Ferdinand, a bundle of flowers in his arms that he shoves right at Ferdinand. “Happy birthday, dear,” he coos, and they laugh and lapse into easy chatter amongst themselves while Edelgard and Claude conduct cautious greetings.
Birthday. Ferdinand’s birthday. The last day of Great Tree Moon.
With everything else, it’s completely slipped Hubert’s mind. Yet another failing on his part.
Dorothea drags Hubert over to the chairs, and seats herself between Hubert and Leonie against the wall, striking up easy chatter with the Alliance woman while Hubert does his best not to stare at Ferdinand and Her Majesty as they settle in at their tables. Even Dorothea is smiling easily enough, prompting Leonie to smile as well, and Hubert turns to the side to try to give them some privacy to chatter away. His mind, though, is roiling. With his conversation—argument—whatever it was—with Ferdinand. With the past few days he squandered being cross with him, convinced he’d abandoned him without a word. With that unsettling realization that had struck him during their frantic battle through Derdriu, as he’d been forced to cooperate with Claude and the rest, if only for Ferdinand’s—and Her Majesty’s—sake.
Ferdinand had been right, of course. There was another way. And now both the Leicester Alliance and the Adrestian Empire meant to formalize just how right he was. If they could agree to terms Her Majesty would accept . . .
“The truth, gentlefolk of the Alliance and the Empire, is that far more unites us than divides us. And one of those things is our common foe.” Ferdinand paces the opening in between the long tables, hands tucked behind his back. “It is not the Churh of Seiros, precisely, but rather everything it embodies in its current form. The cruelty of the system of crests. The stifling oppression of nations unable to govern themselves free of the Church’s will. We face these struggles in our own ways in Adrestia, but I have now seen first-hand how they affect the Alliance, as well, with its assortment of peoples from Almyra, Morfis, and more, whose ways of life have always existed without the Church’s strictures, and who cannot thrive under them while remaining themselves. In fact, none of us can thrive under the Church’s thumb, and the systems it enforces. That is why Her Majesty wages this war, and it is why I propose today that we unite in ending it. Because for all our differences, we each carry our own strengths, and to surrender those strengths is to lose the very thing we fight for in the first place.”
Hubert scowls and turns his head away. He’d always thought his strength lay in subterfuge, deceit, machination. They’ve served him well enough this far. But they cannot do everything. Ferdinand wouldn’t possibly suggest he is better off sticking by his old tactics, not after everything they’ve faced now. It makes for a nice speech, but it isn’t one he can really mean, not on the battlefield of daily life.
“I propose we form, not only a treaty, but a pact. One that unites us toward the common cause of rooting out tyranny no matter what form it takes. We each retain our sovereignty, from each other and from the Church alike. But where such heinous oppression threatens, we stand together to oppose it. Other nations are free to join us. Should they not reject such appalling forces, however, we will be resolute in preventing their tainted treachery to spread. In this, both our nations retain our autonomy whilst using our common ground to grant us strength that is greater than the sum of its parts.”
It sounds . . . fragile. Intangible. And yet the fervor in Ferdinand’s tone has even Hubert leaning forward, pulled by his very words.
“There is no need to change who we fundamentally are. Only find a way that these diametric forces can unite, and become stronger for it.”
Ferdinand’s gaze catches his as he returns to his seat, and Hubert hates that even now, his heart does a little flip. How can it not understand, after everything, how intensely Ferdinand must despise him?
When Her Majesty speaks, she lays out the structure to support Ferdinand’s ideas: the council, the rules and bylines, the scaffolding to make Ferdinand’s idea into something they can actually act on, something binding, something good. Preethi, in a chair at the far wall, nods along with a faint smile. Of course Ferdinand and Her Majesty managed to persuade her, too. They could move just about anyone to reason.
Hubert doesn’t really want to know where that leaves him.
Claude speaks last, summing up first his grievances with Edelgard—settling an uncomfortable fog around the room. The grievances, after all, are more to do with Hubert’s deeds than her own. The spies he’s ran within the Alliance, his and Ferdinand’s attempts at deception, and finally, the hiring of mercenaries to siege the city. “It’s not a great base for us to build on, I gotta admit. Doesn’t fill one with a whole lotta confidence.”
Edelgard’s jaw shifts as she listens; Ferdinand glances toward Hubert, and then quickly away.
“But it also came from a place of misunderstanding. We didn’t see what Adrestia really sought from this war; Adrestia didn’t believe we could ever find common ground. With men like Count Gloucester at the helm, they might even have been right. Just goes to prove, I think, how much we need this framework—not just for Adrestia-Alliance relations, but for all such discussions throughout Fódlan and beyond. Sometimes it takes a little deception to force us to see the truth, I guess. About each other, and ourselves.”
Hilda huffs, and glowers at Hubert from across the room, but she’s all smiles for her boss.
In the end, they sign the treaty, and all attention is on the leaders. The figures for whom the path of light will always shine the brightest. And for Hubert—no one notices at all as he slips away to the upper terrace to grab some fresh air. No matter what platitudes they offer, the shadow will always be his home.
Ferdinand finds him on the terrace as he watches the sun start to nestle amidst the western hills of Derdriu, on terra cotta tiled rooftops and Almyran prayer towers and cypress trees thrust like spears into the spreading eventide. Gold limns him as he approaches, backlit, holding two glasses of champagne, and Hubert is reminded all too painfully of a similar terrace meeting in Garreg Mach. How could it have been less than a month since then? Surely it belonged to another life. Another era.
“You’ve been awful quiet about all of this,” Ferdinand says, holding one glass out to him.
Hubert takes it, staring at the bubbles. “What’s there for me to say? My services are not required. Claude made that abundantly clear, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think that was his point at all.”
“What you and Her Majesty are crafting . . . it takes people like you. Someone like me, I only taint it with my darkness, my shadowy affairs. You were right, as always; there needed to be another way than the path we initially embarked upon for all this. There is no use in—” He bites the inside of his cheek and welcomes the salty tang of blood. “Well. In me being me.”
Ferdinand stares at him with soft amber eyes, liquid and golden in the sunset. “If that’s what you took away from that, then you weren’t listening at all.”
Hubert gives a harsh laugh and turns toward the railing, unable to see the fire in that gaze a moment longer. It reminds him too much of how bright it burns in the cool shadows of the bedroom they shared; of the way Ferdinand’s mere touch could sear his skin and brand his heart, forever altering it. He was never meant to have what they shared, however fleetingly, on their mission together. But now it’s tainted him, infected him, and he can never let it go.
“The Alliance is not the Empire, and we will never do things the same way. What’s important is that we do them for the same reasons, toward the same end. That’s how we preserve this treaty, and make real change within our respective lands. But if we can’t do that without honoring what makes us separate, then there’s hardly a point to it, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the politician,” Hubert snaps.
Ferdinand makes some disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and, flames, how Hubert hates that even that noise is charming coming from him. “No, but you understand human nature quite well. It’s part of your work. You understand all too perfectly what I am like, what you are like—so much that you know just what sort of deeds, if you permit them into your heart, will infect it and take root.” Ferdinand’s voice softens, a fragile yolk stripped of its shell. “It’s why you pushed me away, before, is it not?”
There are things I want more, Hubert told him once. Seized with fear, glimpsing into a terrifying future in which his duty for Lady Edelgard was compromised with unyielding, unshakable love for someone else. And yet that emotion came for him all the same; led him into its trap nonetheless. If he’d only allowed himself, gone willingly, then at least he might have something to show for it.
“I thought I could wall myself off.” His voice breaks. “I thought I could keep myself from yielding to you, becoming the sort of man who compromised his duty and lost himself in love, when there was, in truth, no escape.”
“And I thought I could hate you. Could blame you for being that way. As if it was a choice you easily made, and not a means you chose to torture yourself.” Ferdinand moves closer to him, a shadow crossing over Hubert’s shoulder, a warmth itching between his shoulderblades. “It was, I think, a kind of torture for us both.”
Hubert swallows; when he speaks, it’s a delicate whisper. “It was and is.”
“Hubert, please.” Ferdinand sighs. “Look at me.”
Hubert turns, and his chest yearns to burst as he takes in those glowing locks, that face both soft and sharp.
“We could not have done this without you and your way of things. We could not have sussed out Count Gloucester and stopped him; we could not have shown the Alliance the value of joining with us and the protection we can offer thus. And if it were not for you, I . . . well, I might have never known that exquisite torture, too.”
Exquisite. He can’t help but laugh. “I’ve been trained in the art of torture for the better part of my life, and I’ve never heard it called such.”
“But that is what you are. And I should not seek to change that. You poke and prod and tease and anger and jab your little needles at all my tender parts, and somehow, in doing so, you provoke just the reaction I need. You force me to consider that which I’d never have grasped on my own. To admit feelings I could not have tolerated under any other circumstance. You . . . challenge me. In all the best and most vexing ways.”
Ferdinand’s lower lip trembles, and he brings one hand to cup Hubert’s cheek with strong, warm fingers. Hubert wants to squeeze his eyes shut and shrink away from the intimacy of it, but he also can’t bear to miss a moment.
“I . . . I love you, Hubert. Because you are difficult. Not in spite of it. And because you are underhanded, and determined, and clever, and courageous, and loyal, and gorgeous, and because you bring out the best in me and challenge me to be more. Whether to prove you wrong, or prove you right.”
Hubert can’t help the soft sob that escapes his lips. Because when has he ever heard anyone say such things to him? Far less the one person he craves to hear them from most. Has craved. For more years than he cares to admit.
“I love you, Ferdinand.” Now he has to shut his eyes; he can’t bear whatever way Ferdinand might be looking as he says it. “You make me want to be better—but—a better me.”
Ferdinand shakes with a soft laugh. “Then what on earth are we fighting it for?”
“Nothing,” Hubert, says, and leans forward to claim his lips.
Ferdinand tastes sweeter than the champagne, and brighter than that burning sunset, though he carries every color and hue and more besides. Better than Hubert remembered. Which was better than even before that. Always better, always more, like something that will never sate him, but he’s more than happy to try and try.
Their mouths slot together so perfectly, and even if it’s a touch of a struggle, a slight back and forth—when has it never been, with them? If he must spend his life fighting Ferdinand von Aegir, better it be like this. Fighting for each other, together, striving, making something from it rather than destroying. Arms around each other’s waists and tongues embraced and soft sighs mingling together into a single breath.
“ Can we . . . ? Can we try this?” Ferdinand asks, forehead resting up against Hubert’s, eyes somehow glowing in the shadows. “No tricks, no masks this time. No deception.”
Hubert blinks back the surge of tears that sting the corners of his eyes; the roar of fire in his chest that is both hungering and yet perfectly satisfied. “There is nothing I want more.”
When they return to the great hall where the rest of the reception is taking place, it’s arm in arm, champagne glasses empty, Ferdinand’s lips rosy and raw the way Hubert’s also feel. Edelgard lifts an eyebrow as she gives Hubert a little smile, and he starts to duck his head, but she laughs, and all too quickly turns her attention back to Byleth and whatever private conversation they’re sharing in one corner of the hall. Claude and Lorenz are dancing together as an Almyran ensemble spins an unusual melody that tugs hard at Hubert’s heart with a memory of the coffeehouse and Ferdinand’s warmth at his side. Hilda glances toward them and immediately rolls her eyes, while Marianne gives them both a tiny wave. Ignatz and Raphael are laughing by the bar, and suddenly Raphael hoists Ignatz up into an embrace. Cyril drags Lysithea out on the dance floor, and her protests quickly die out once he spins her around with practiced steps. And Leonie is giving Dorothea what appears to be an impromptu archery lesson (sans weaponry), hands lingering a moment too long as she adjusts Dorothea’s hips.
It might not always be so effortless as an evening like this. But they have a plan, they know their course now, they know what compromises they can make. And with Ferdinand at his side, Hubert is certain—whatever challenge he faces, however much they challenge each other—he can bring it back to this. Arm in arm, no masks, no lies. Just the truth of their feelings, burning brighter every day.
It is all worth it for that genuine smile of Ferdinand’s face.