Chapter Text
The loud, brutal waves of the rocky coast below were all that welcomed Hubert near the entrance of the cave.
Hubert had convinced himself before setting out here, before even beginning research into Agarthan hideouts and strongholds remaining after the war, that he didn’t have expectations. Whatever he found today, he would accept it. In all honestly, after so long, the search was hardly about finding Aegir alive. It was about finding something to lay to rest for the Empire, giving closure to its leader and the rest of the Force. It was about finding relief from dreams which refused to give up the smallest possibility.
He stepped inside the narrow, obscured entrance silently, believing as the sun rose opposite the coast that he’d long cast out both hope and fear from his heart. When he discovered the location of this place, encoded in the marginalia of forgotten messages picked up in Ailell, he felt no thrill. He merely shared his findings, about which Dorothea was much more emotive, shaking his shoulders in delight and blinking back tears. Only because she’d been his closest ally in the long, dismal effort, did he let her get away with it. “You terrible man, this could be it!” she said. “I know this is it. Hubie, I love you!”
“I may only return with a body.”
“Oh, you’re going to go yourself?”
It was well known Hubert hadn’t attended a search and rescue expedition for General Aegir since the fourth attempt last year. “Alone. There is a possibility the hideout is still operational given its remoteness to civilization and proximity to natural resources, and so I want the element of surprise.”
Indeed, he plunged deeper into the cave’s damp darkness utterly fearless of whatever outcome lay before him.
But hope—
He came upon lanterns, still lit, and then discarded shoes, recently worn, and finally a plain encampment with two dirty Agarthan-hired thugs at its table, which Hubert dispatched without hesitation and little effort. Perhaps the men were unaware the war ended or simply afraid to reenter a world in which it had. It didn’t matter.
Too late, Hubert remembered to ask if they had a prisoner. That didn’t matter either. There was a key on the table, and the cells did not take long to find.
The barred iron doors came no higher than Hubert’s knees. Neither did the cell walls. He still wasn’t afraid, but hope now burned at his insides, his throat. Each cell was empty. Except for the last.
Hubert pulled out Ferdinand’s emaciated, barely clothed body. As he did, Ferdinand mumbled a few words before falling unconscious. His pulse was weak. With unsteady fingers, Hubert cast a basic healing spell. Two. Three. Then he sat back on his heels and panted, reflecting on how he had lied. To Dorothea and himself.
He had come alone to lay his friend to rest. He had come with expectations, none of them of life. In his pack were food and water for one.
He sat by Ferdinand’s body for a long time.
Ferdinand couldn’t walk, let alone warp. After a day and night of letting him acclimate to being outside, Hubert warped as quick as he could to the nearest village and returned on horseback with extra provisions. It took an effort to get Ferdinand on, but once he was on, he seemed stable, if shaken by his brief abandonment. Hubert led the horse from the ground. The horse liked Ferdinand much more than him.
The way back was slow. Grim. Ferdinand was nonverbal, unclean, eyes rarely focused. He ignored attempts at conversation, or maybe just didn’t register them. Often, he muttered to himself inaudibly and incomprehensibly. Hubert got the sense Ferdinand assumed this was all a hallucination. No less than four times on the weeklong trek back to the Palace, Ferdinand had strange fits. He would tremble in silence for minutes in silence, as if panicked by something internal, unresponsive to Hubert completely, hanging onto the saddle as if for dear life.
The carriage ride from city gates to the Palace was worst of all. Halfway through, Hubert took out a knife from his vest to clean, and his dead eyed companion attacked. All biting and clawing, since Ferdinand had no muscle to use, and Hubert felt obliged to fight back hand to hand, wary of what magic might do. It was a brief fight that ended when Ferdinand was too tired to move. Hubert felt frustrated and despondent the rest of the way. It had been a week—how had food, water, fresh clothing, and safe company done so little to improve Ferdinand’s state of mind?
Hubert was relieved, almost horribly glad, to hand him off to Dorothea and Palace staff to make him clean and presentable. He disclosed only at the last moment that he might resist cooperation. Later that night, Hubert sleepless and working, Dorothea came into his office without knocking, pulled up a chair next to him, and wept.
He’d fought the staff the whole way, balked the sight of water, and lashed out when it touched his skin. But Dorothea had insisted they continue at first, determined to be of help, even when Ferdinand broke into miserable tears like a child. When he was finally clean and fainted from exhaustion, she had him put to bed and assigned two burly men to stand by his door.
Ferdinand had not seemed to recognize her during any of it. She asked Hubert, “Did he recognize you?”
Help me, Ferdinand said as Hubert pulled him from the cell. It was the only time the whole trip Ferdinand made eye contact. Hubert, help me.
“I don’t know.”
The next day, Ferdinand was brought to the throne room. Hubert stood at a distance. Edelgard, as expected, comported herself as a true Emperor, facing the situation without irresolution. “General Ferdinand von Aegir,” she said. “Welcome back. We are grateful for your faith and fortitude these past years, and we are deeply honored to have you with us again. Do not rush convalescence, but when you are ready, there is work for you.”
Ferdinand did not seem to recognize her either, at first. When he fell to his knees, it seemed to be an accident. Yet Edelgard held up a hand to stop the guards from helping him.
Graceless and unsteady, Ferdinand prostrated before his sovereign.
—
Physical improvement was slower than predicted by the city’s foremost healers. The city’s foremost healers were, on the whole, quite useless. They didn’t understand why Ferdinand would refuse to eat more hearty foods if he wasn’t sick; they didn’t understand why he kept trying to escape his room at night or why he slept in the corner instead of the bed.
When Dorothea complained about how they had begun more or less treating Ferdinand like an animal to be prodded, Hubert addressed the situation as calmly as he could, dismissing them from any further service within the walls of the Palace for the rest of Emperor Hresvelg’s lineage.
The next day, Edelgard had given him a tired look and ordered their reinstatement. She also ordered Linhardt von Hevring be called back to Enbarr without delay. Finally, she ordered Hubert to visit Ferdinand more often, if he was so concerned. Hubert ignored only the last order, though he could not have articulated why.
Linhardt asked to talk with Ferdinand alone. He told Dorothea, who told Hubert, “I learned methods in Morfis that may help. They’ll take a while, though. I expect to be paid for each session.” Dorothea promised Hubert the last bit was just a jest. He scowled her out of his office anyway.
His opinion of Linhardt quickly changed, however, when not three weeks later, someone knocked on his office door. Hubert opened it to find Ferdinand. He was clean shaven, hair freshly cut to just above his shoulders. Neatly dressed and so well put together that Ferdinand’s scars and burns, premature gray hairs and stubbornly twitchy eye stood out more than ever. Nevertheless, he had a small grin on his face, almost like a nervous boy’s, facing someone he hoped to impress. He made eye contact for only a moment, then fixed his gaze on Hubert’s collar or hair as he spoke. No dead eyes. He kept his hands tightly clasped, knuckles pale.
Linhardt stood a few paces behind, watching with a vastly more successful mask of indifference than Hubert’s.
“Good morning, Hubert. I wanted to apologize for scaring you off. I have been through a difficult time. Would you like…” All at once, the careful recitation trailed off as something seemed to drain the courage out of him. Linhardt told him, in an uncharacteristically gentle tone, to go on. Ferdinand barely whispered, “…to have tea.”
Hubert had meetings all day, two that simply couldn’t be missed. He looked at Linhardt, who stared back icily, as if daring him to say no. As if Hubert might actually say no. Hubert briefly detested him, until he remembered the last time he’d even checked in on Ferdinand was last month, and Ferdinand had been sleeping. “I would like that.”
Tea took at least three times as long as it should, because Ferdinand was slow in walking, in deciding where to sit in the gardens, and in pouring tea. Conversation was more halting than Hubert thought possible, but he didn’t really mind. It wasn’t that there was little to say; Ferdinand was just slow in remembering all he wanted to say, which was no less than before he was taken. Ferdinand did excuse himself and disappeared for twenty minutes about halfway through, but Hubert waited patiently—as Linhardt had advised him to do, under his breath—and Ferdinand did come back, red eyed but smiling like nothing happened. For about five minutes. Then Ferdinand’s composure cracked, and the conversation ended, and he put a trembling palm up on the table and asked, “Can I—? Linhardt said I could ask if—” He pulled it back a moment later. “No, that’s—never mind. I’m sorry.”
Hubert waited again, unsure, but Ferdinand didn’t say anything else, or even look up, and Hubert couldn’t bear to see him so disheartened.
Hubert tentatively offered his hand on the table. Ferdinand met his eye, then took the offering. He closed his eyes, tears slipping out. They sat in silence for a long time, hands clasped. Hubert’s firm and still, Ferdinand’s sweaty and twitching.
—
Too soon, Linhardt left again, leaving Hubert with a small, compact journal full of his advice for how to proceed with recovery. A local healer he’d trained, Lydia Choi, would come twice a week for more “counseling” sessions, but outside of those, Ferdinand would benefit from the help of friends and family, not strangers.
“Family?” Hubert scoffed.
“Yes. It doesn’t have to be you, but he still shies away from everyone else.”
Hubert swallowed. “Is that because I was the one to rescue him? Shouldn’t he want to avoid me, since I might make him remember?”
Linhardt blinked, expression deadpan. “He’s always remembering. I guess it could be that you’re like a steady bridge, between two unbearable realities.”
—
“How is he?” At the much-anticipated Palace Gardens Fete that winter, Dorothea sat beside him on a secluded bench. She pulled her shawl tight around herself. Her eyes were wet. “You know, I hate you a little, Hubie.”
Hubert inhaled. Exhaled a gust of white. He shouldn’t respond, but he was getting sick of these little passive aggressive jabs, at how much time he spent with Ferdinand, at least compared to her. He should let it go, let her pout.
But he’d just spent half an hour trying to talk the man in question out of a storage room he’d locked himself inside. It had been a long, exhausting two weeks of preparation for this event, which was meant to be a successful example for similar ones each year. General Aegir was supposed to show his face, now that the whole country knew by now he was rescued. Two minutes, just two as Her Majesty gave a speech about his suffering and bravery. It was supposed to be the inspiring, heart-wrenching bridge to the Emperor’s thrilling, uplifting news of her engagement.
He wanted it all to be just the way Edelgard hoped, and so he’d had half a mind to burn down the storage room door when Ferdinand delayed the timeline.
But then Bernadetta had materialized behind him. Her gaze cool, voice tight. “Edelgard agreed to tell everyone he’s ill. She says to come downstairs for an announcement.” She pulled herself up with determination. “Demanding makes it worse. Always.”
Hubert felt almost drunk on anger and shame as he clapped along with the crowd of hundreds. After memorizing the happiness on Edelgard’s face, publicly holding the hand of her fiance, he stalked away to the gardens to cool off. Where now, Dorothea had come to bother him and dare air her jealousy of how much quality time he spent with their dear, vulnerable Ferdinand. How unfair that Ferdinand found comfort in a dour workaholic instead of her, who had time and empathy to spare, who could give him unreserved compassion and earnest comfort instead of an hour or two squeezed into a busy day.
Dorothea didn’t even have to make the rest of her complaints explicit. She was an open book: How unfair that Edelgard had Byleth, and Ferdinand had Hubert—as if those relationships were remotely the same. How unfair she had no one.
Hubert wanted to tell her to be glad. To feel relieved she’ll never know the stress and pain of standing right in front of someone who has gone off somewhere else. “I don’t dictate who he sees,” he said. “If you want his attention, by all means.” He chuckled, clenching a fist. “Though I wonder. Maybe he hates you a little, too.”
Her pink cheeks paled. She leaned away. “Excuse me?”
Hubert reveled in hitting his mark. His anger eased a little. “Why do you think he avoids you, so very sweet as you’ve tried to be? How fake it must seem to him, to have your affection only now that he’s experienced sufficient pain and misery.”
Her face contorted with offense. “How dare you. How dare you! You think you’re an authority on all his relationships, do you? I was still a girl when I despised him for treating me like all the other noble scum. I was justified, but that was all years ago, in the past, and he knows that. He should know I love him.”
“Yet he can barely stand to be around you,” Hubert chuckled. “If not because he hates you, then because he remembers how you harbored so much hate for him.” He looked away, satisfaction fading, because these days Ferdinand often worried the whole Palace hated him, for being the way he was, or even being here at all. He added, “He’s been remembering things even I forgot.”
Dorothea’s tears were audible in the wobble of her voice. “So I’m frozen in his mind as an angry girl just pretending to care about him?” She huffed in disbelief, white breath swirling around her. “Why the hells are you different then? Back at the monastery, you were a thousand times worse!”
“That was mutual,” Hubert snapped back. “He didn’t want to be friends any more than I did, but he wanted to be friends with you.” He looked away from her. “I’m not talking about the monastery anyhow. You resented him well into the war. He was doing everything to prove you wrong, but you still clung to past hurts while I decided to accept him as he was.”
“You…” Dorothea stuttered, “you worked with him a lot more, had a chance to—”
Hubert waved a hand at the Palace walls, high where the ivy hadn’t yet reached. “He’s up cowering in the art storage if you want to go simper for forgiveness.” He knew how mean he was being, but he just couldn’t stop. He couldn’t bear not to express his aggravation any longer. Dorothea could handle it, Ferdinand could not. He glared at her. “How about you take over his recovery, too? I hope it validates your sense of being a good person when you have to drag him out of bed and force him to eat on the days he decides to be comatose.”
“I—”
“Be careful not to look at him the wrong way, when he’s worrying he might be dreaming again, but be sure to always be there to wake him up when he is dreaming, without letting the screaming get to you. Do enjoy all the times staff, or even guests, approach you at inconvenient times asking for ‘some assistance’ with General Aegir, because they can’t handle a bit of crying, or a bit of aggression, or a broken window. Good luck trying to say with any semblance of respect, ‘I have an empire to run. If you treat him like a human being, instead of a rabid pegasus, you might solve the issue on your own, and he might not spend the rest of the day miserable and guilty because I was called against his will to come and intervene.’”
Hubert willed away any more emotion, hanging his head. The grass was tipped in frost, from the intermittent ice and snow that afternoon. The weather, paired with the decorations, should have made the Palace feel like a wonderland. Hubert was only cold and depleted.
In his periphery, Dorothea didn’t move or speak. Sighing, Hubert reached into his cloak pocket for the journal and tossed it beside him on the bench. “Give it your best effort.”
She picked it up. He didn’t watch her flip through it. “These are Lin’s notes?” A pause. “And yours…?”
There was a lot to take in on each page. Cramped words in the margins, things crossed out. A sense of helplessness pervaded the paper, in the sheer minute detail of each observation of what helped and what didn’t, what made him relax and what triggered a panic.
As Dorothea read rapturously, Hubert finally felt regret for tearing her down. He supposed the truth was that he envied her freedom. Opera rehearsals, nights out, trips to see friends. Not that Hubert wanted any of those things specifically, but…a trip for maybe, full of screaming and crying and whimpering that gave him pleasure instead of sleepless nights. Or just a few nights without any of those things at all. That sounded nice.
“There’s a lot he’s forgotten too,” he said, forming something of an apology. “Sometimes I mention certain people, battles, conversations we’ve had, and he looks at me like I’m speaking another language. I could be wrong. It is perfectly possible he’s just forgotten how close you two were in the months…before. Regardless.” He made himself meet her shining eyes. “I am sorry he hasn’t been receptive to you.”
She sat next to him, journal open limply in her hands. “Do you stay in his room at night?”
“There’s really no choice.” He quickly added, “I keep a cot there. He attacks anyone else who tries to wake him up, and I fear he’ll hurt himself. Sometimes he still attacks me.” Those were the worst nights, because the moment Ferdinand became aware, he would stare in horror, then double up in speechless despair. Once, he became obsessed with his chances of killing Hubert accidentally. He seemed as petrified as if killing Hubert might undo everything, warping him back to his cell to die alone.
“I have to die someday,” he’d been fool enough to say, when nothing else helped. His excuse was being shaken and upset himself by Ferdinand’s self-inflicted torture. “It would make me happy if I died here of all places.”
True, but foolish to say. Foolish, foolish. Ferdinand had stayed up by choice the rest of the night, arms crossed tight, pressing bruises into his own arms.
“That’s kind of you,” Dorothea said. “He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
Hubert didn’t clarify that the cot had been used only once, and then never again. If she found out, though, he had his piece ready, as it was ready for any maid who gave him a funny look: It’s an arrangement. I told him if he sleeps in the bed and not on the floor, he doesn’t have to sleep alone.
Dorothea rubbed her hands together and blew into them. “You know, I think I will go up to see him.” When Hubert remained stonily silent, she stood. “You’re definitely wrong about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He did want to be your friend, at the monastery.”
Hubert gave her a flat look, but she stood her ground.
“You two may have had your nasty verbal wars, but he always sat at your table in the library, and he always tagged along behind you and Edie after class, and he always chomped at the bit to give you his pointers when it was your turn to train with weapons.” She paced a little, beginning to enjoy her reminiscing. “Goddess, at the ball? He was so handsome, I almost wanted him to ask me to dance, but then I realized that he hardly paid his partners any mind for all he kept glancing at you skulking around in formalwear. Petra thought he wanted to dance with Edie, but I knew better. Men look at women they want with a certain look, and Ferdinand’s was something else. More like, doing the calculations in his head of how horrified his father would be if he asked a man to dance. Before things all fell apart at the Academy, I was convinced he’d developed a tragic, unrequited crush. I was…projecting, of course.”
Hubert was doing his best to muster an expression that would adequately convey his opinion of her theory. “Dorothea, I fear you are losing grasp of reality. We really don’t need more of that here.”
She put a hand on her hip. “Oh, you’re so shocked and appalled, are you? Did you really never wonder why he was always trying to show Edie up? Not Dimitri, not Felix, not Raphael. I tried to rile Ferdinand up to spar with all of those monsters—well, Raphael was rather sweet, actually. I was hoping to get some of his desperation to impress out of his system for Edie’s sake, but he just…” Dorothea made a hopeless gesture. “He wasn’t interested. I didn’t understand it back then, but now that I think of it? He didn’t care because you wouldn’t care. You would shrug and keep saying Your Lady was superior.”
Hubert shook his head, lips turned in a smile, or maybe a grimace. “I think I would have cared if a fellow Eagle beat Dimitri Blaiddyd in a fight.” He stood as well. He would check in on Her Majesty and retire from the party early. In an impressive joint effort, Dorothea and Ferdinand had taken everything out of him. “His desire to surpass her was always about his ego. His immature, insecure need to feel superior to her once in his maladapted life. You’re up the wrong tree.”
Hubert bracing himself against a chilling breeze as he looked up at the Palace.
He saw himself in an hour’s time, climbing into bed with the very person they were debating. Who Hubert kept telling himself meant nothing by his slow encroachment into Hubert’s personal space, practically sharing the pillow along with the bed these days. Before the candlelight was snuffed out, Ferdinand would probably earnestly apologize about his lock-in stunt earlier, eyes wide and so very near, and Hubert would cope by closing his own and telling him to forget it.
“Probably,” he muttered. On second thought, he was going to get a drink. “If you go up there, tell him I’m not bringing him dinner.”
“Then I’ll bring him dinner,” Dorothea called, as Hubert walked away, “You better watch out, Hubie. I’ll be his favorite in no time.”
—
Though Dorothea should have demanded an apology from him for being such an ass, she apparently took Hubert’s words to heart. Not only did Ferdinand come to bed especially late that night in good spirits from the time he spent with her, the next morning he announced he and Dorothea would be going to the Mittelfrank. He was going to help her rehearse.
They were sitting at the small table by Ferdinand’s window. Ferdinand eating breakfast, Hubert drinking coffee. Almost aborting a sip, Hubert did a poor job of appearing unperturbed at this news. The wrong words reached the tip of his tongue. Are you sure that’s a good idea?
Ferdinand hadn’t left palace grounds yet, since he’d arrived. The opera house wasn’t all that far, but Hubert was too busy to drop everything and go with him. Not that Ferdinand was inviting him.
Ferdinand’s excitement faded at Hubert’s silence. “I promise I won’t…cause anything.”
As if Ferdinand could control what prompted him to panic. “That’s not what I was thinking,” Hubert said. It was, but a scene itself wasn’t what he cared about.
Regardless, Ferdinand’s hopeful face was too difficult to refuse early in the day. “I’m pleased you’re going to help her. She needs the company.”
“What do you mean?”
Hubert took a long sip. The memory of Dorothea’s wet eyes approaching the bench, her comment about projecting, echoed in the back of his mind. He’d known for a long time. “Her Majesty’s announcement yesterday was as much a surprise to her as everyone else. I’m sure she’s nervous about being her maid of honor, not to mention performing at the wedding.”
“That’s impossible. She told me last night she was thrilled about both.”
He was sure she did. “In any case, she’ll miss our Emperor’s companionship while wedding preparations begin in earnest. She needs more friends.”
Ferdinand cocked his head. “I’m sure she has more friends than I could possibly count.”
Hubert licked his lips and came up with some nonsense. “Friendships Dorothea has with the opera now may not endure, if she gets any more big roles. She will need someone who will stay by her side as her talent wreaks havoc on the hopes, dreams, and egos of those around her.”
Ferdinand nodded once. “I see. Of course. Yes, you’re right.”
Hubert ignored the twist in his gut as Ferdinand later emerged from his adjoining room dressed up nicer than usual, hair tied into an unassuming black ribbon at the base of his neck. Besides the marks on his face and neck and his stubborn skinniness, he could have been declared good as new. It would come as no surprise if Ferdinand left the opera house with a smitten woman on his arm.
Hubert knew perfectly well he should pay him a compliment. There was every justification, every reason. Instead he said, “Don’t skip lunch.”
Ferdinand grinned. Hubert didn’t understand why he was so eager and unconcerned today. Just last week he’d missed tea with Lorenz because he couldn’t leave bed. Just yesterday he’d holed up in a storage room for hours.
Hubert suddenly found himself acting on his worry, even blocking the door as Ferdinand moved to leave. “If you start to get distracted, just focus on her voice.”
An unproven tactic, but the evidence was there. In his notes: 10/15 - Said that my ‘long-winded’ reprimand to his Faerghan tea companion yesterday helped release him from the panic state. 11/3 - After nightmare, requested I ‘just talk.’ Symptoms diminished within half the usual time. 12/22 - Found listening on the balcony to boys choir in streets, eyes closed in peace, not pain
Ferdinand’s expression changed to something uninterpretable. Concern? Realization? Then his features softened. He took half a step and pressed his lips to Hubert’s. He pulled away before Hubert could hope to react. “Thank you. I think I’ll be fine.”
Ferdinand left quickly, but not enough to hide his blush.
Hubert watched him go.
The outing went well at first, Dorothea explained in the carriage back that night. Ferdinand had seemed happy watching her practice during the day, giving his thoughts and compliments and ideas. He enjoyed the evening rehearsal, too, even struck up conversation with some of the ensemble. Then Manuela suggested Dorothea show him around backstage before they left, and so Dorothea did, and that’s when Ferdinand seemed to lose his steam, and then she showed him the props room.
Something he saw in there, she didn’t know what…Ferdinand “went away without leaving,” giving her nonsensical answers to questions and walking off, strangely vigilant, like he was searching for something important or threatening. He ended up opening a door to a dark room and stared into it like he’d been paralyzed, and when Dorothea touched him, he just…crumpled into himself and…
Hubert didn’t listen as closely to the rest of the recounting. He’d seen it all himself plenty of times before. Instead, he concentrated on swaying along with the jostling with the carriage, so that Ferdinand didn’t wake up against his shoulder. He chafed at how Dorothea kept glancing at Ferdinand’s hands, both holding on to one of Hubert’s like a thing to protect even in sleep.
This incident wouldn’t be good for Ferdinand’s progress. He might use it as a reason not to go out again, or worse, he might push himself to try again too soon and have an even worse panic somewhere. A letter to Linhardt was probably in order. Hubert frowned at that. Should he mention the kiss? Was that a symptom of anything?
A timidly asked question broke through Hubert’s rumination.
“You aren’t mad at me, are you?”
Hubert blinked at her. “No.” With the carriage curtains closed and his distracted thoughts, he couldn’t tell where they were exactly. He estimated two streets away from the Palace gates.
“You blame me, don’t you?” Dorothea said. “You don’t think I’m trying to sabotage the two of you, are you?”
Hubert met her gaze. “Pardon me?”
“Ignore me. I’m being stupid.”
But her flippant expression fractured a moment later, and she huffed as she teared up, lip trembling, annoyed with herself. “Constance said something at the party, about it being a relief I hadn’t brought my skills off the stage when Edie proposed.” Hubert looked blankly at her, and she scowled. “That’s right, you never come to my shows. The whole point of my current character is that she wickedly seduces the prince right as he begins proposing to the woman he’s been courting. My character isn’t framed as evil, per se, but she’s so desperately in love she can’t stop herself from sabotaging the relationship at the last minute.”
The carriage jerked over a displaced stone. Hubert didn’t say anything, so the two of them sat in silence for a few moments. Dorothea pinched her nose and bowed her head.
Hubert let her be until she resurfaced, frowning and teary and peeking out the window. “Her Majesty is not so weak as that, and you are hardly wicked,” he said, trying to add a bit of levity to the cramped space. “But when it comes to me and this prince here, sabotage away. He’s getting too attached as it is.”
It was a jest, and it wasn’t. He knew that when all this was over, when Ferdinand was fully recovered and the journal could be burned, when the mantle of Prime Minister was picked up and Hubert could return to his usual duties, Ferdinand wouldn’t want much to do with a man who had seen him at his most vulnerable. A constant reminder of the worst time of his life.
At the very least, things wouldn’t be the same. His strong yet…distant bond with Edelgard was example enough.
To his surprise, Dorothea’s stage whisper was chastising. “Hubert. That’s not funny. You mean way too much to him for that to be funny.”
Hubert set his jaw. “You’re quite right. None of this is funny. If I had taken any of this seriously, I would have known this morning he was losing the thread.”
“How? He was completely normal this morning.”
Hubert glanced to his left to check Ferdinand is still asleep. Then, in lieu of telling Hevring, he murmured, “He kissed me.”
Dorothea peered at him for a long moment, like she hadn’t quite heard him. “Okay? Then what?”
“Then nothing. He left. But it was out of the ordinary. He wasn’t completely normal.”
“Sounds normal to me. Are you saying he…hasn’t before?”
Hubert let out a slightly choked out. “What? We shouldn’t have let him come. I’m saying he’s been unstable, but we didn’t see it, and now look what’s happened.”
Dorothea made a face. “So kissing is a sign of instability now? Wait, so are you two not—?”
“He’s unwell, ” Hubert hissed, before she could finish that question. “That’s hardly the direction he needs.”
“I’m lost.”
That makes three of us.
Luckily, the carriage finally slowed and they could hear the Palace gates open. Hubert gently woke Ferdinand up. Dorothea made basic conversation with him as the carriage moved again and came to a stop in front of the Palace’s closest entrance to their quarters. She kept shooting glances at Hubert, all of which he pretended not to see.
His stomach soured at the blank look in Ferdinand’s eyes, which persisted all the way up to his rooms.
“I’d like to be alone, I think.”
Hubert inhaled. Foolish. He was such a fool. “After tonight?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It will be,” Ferdinand answered without hesitation. “I should get used to it sooner rather than later.”
Hubert shook his head. “And what if—”
“If I have a nightmare, let me be.” Ferdinand’s expression remained blank. His eyes wouldn’t meet his. “I’ll live. They aren’t so bad anymore. If you post guards, tell them not to help or disturb anyone else to get help. Please.”
Hubert’s heart beat harder. He opened his mouth, but words failed him. He was a fool.
“I apologize about this evening. I guess I was wrong, but I’ll do better. Goodnight.” Ferdinand slipped behind his door, shutting and locking it.
—
The guards returned early with a report, as ordered. No screaming. No muffled cries. No noise at all.
To Hubert this only meant Ferdinand hadn’t slept. It made him angry. Refusing to sleep wasn’t just childish, it wasn’t conducive to recovery, and Hubert would be damned if Ferdinand von Aegir did not recover fully.
He made his way to Ferdinand’s rooms ready for a talk, maybe a fight, but as he approached the door, he saw that it was already open, two servants carrying out a thin mattress while two more followed with a bed frame. His cot.
As he had for many years, Hubert wished for a spell to turn back time. “Where is General Aegir?”
“He’s with the songstress, I think,” said one. Another asked, “Should we not be doing this, my lord? You told us to do as he asks, but…”
“Proceed.”
Hubert turned on his heel and started for the salon on the first floor, where he knew Dorothea spent many a day before evening rehearsal. His mind stormed with ire and unformed thoughts.
What it came down to was sleep. Ferdinand needed sleep. They both needed it.
Hubert had worked through the night for the first time in a year, and hells if he didn’t feel it, in his limbs, his chest, his head. He reached the parlor doors.