Chapter Text
Ethereal Moon
When the professor reenters their lives without much in the way of a flourish, explanation, or even a bit of informative commentary, it puts Hubert on edge. Everyone knows Hubert is on edge because, like rabbits who have made their home at the mouth of the lion’s den, they’ve grown attuned to such things. And Dorothea points it out to Ferdinand. With that starting point established, Ferdinand is able to place Hubert somewhere between awestruck and heart broken. The poor man doesn’t know what to do with the center of Edelgard’s universe, not after they were gone for so long.
That’s exactly the odd sort of thing that happens to a person when you spend their entire childhood telling them to throw themselves on a sword for one specific other child. Ferdinand remarks as much to Caspar and Linhardt one day, while he and Caspar are resting from sparring and Linhardt is lying off in the grass, book over his face as he pretends to sleep.
Ferdinand knows he is pretending because he says, muffled into the pages: “You’re one to accuse another fellow of being odd.”
“I am not odd,” Ferdinand protests, which earns him a dubious sort of look from overtop the book’s cover. He turns to Caspar. “Tell him I am not odd.”
Caspar raises a hand and waggles it back and forth. “Ehn. Little bit there, buddy.”
“Is this the reward I’ve earned for being your faithful training partner?”
“Honesty is important in relationships, or so I hear.” Caspar gives him a bracing pat on the shoulder. “Look, you and Hubert are both just…intense, that’s all. Edelgard too. It’s not a bad thing, other than Lin over here thinks he needs to be enough of a slacker to even things out.”
“Just doing my part to bring balance to the world, as Her Majesty wishes,” Lin says, his voice going sing-song with mockery Ferdinand doesn’t think is directed at him.
Ferdinand frowns. “I do not think I am intense.”
“You are so intense, my man. But don’t worry about it. Unlike Hubert, I can tell you to cool it without worrying that you’re going to eat me.”
“I doubt Hubert has turned to cannibalism, even in these trying times. Come, I am good for one more round.”
“That’s what I like to hear!”
Linhardt grumbles something into his book that Ferdinand doesn’t catch.
It is a consequence of their roles that Ferdinand and Hubert are often in proximity. Oftentimes, Ferdinand finds himself awake at some terrible, inhuman hour, trying to keep his posture straight and war-table-worthy while they stare at the same map they have been staring at for five long years. They have wrought no changes, but still they bull forward. And now there is a fourth, and Byleth lays out strategy with unthinking authority. Of course no one has questioned them before, and of course no one will question them now. Ferdinand admires the steel in them, though from an adult perspective it seems much less…deliberate than it had, five years ago.
And from an adult perspective, there is something about the way Edelgard follows them willingly out of the room before even midnight has struck. It brings a flush to Ferdinand’s cheeks despite himself, though he does not think that they — not at present, at least, but —
Hubert remains. He has the face of a man who has looked upon the goddess and not liked it very much. He also has the face of a man who would willingly devour his enemy’s beating hearts, which Ferdinand thinks is perhaps how Hubert experiences negative emotion in general.
He is compelled to — help?
“Do you think the supply routes will hold for a month longer?” He asks, though this question has been asked and answered several times over in increasingly fretful tones.
“They must,” says Hubert, like that’s that.
Edelgard wants it, and Byleth wills it, so they must.
“And the soldiers?”
Hubert turns that heart-devouring look right now him, trying to make a liar out of Ferdinand’s reassurance to Caspar. “Are you going to sit there all night asking questions you’ve already heard the answers to?”
“I do not know,” says Ferdinand, and then keeps right on saying things: “Are you going to sit there all night sulking?”
He has been spending overmuch time with Linhardt, perhaps.
Hubert possesses a countenance born for glowering, and he brings all its talents to bear. “Someone with sense has to go over these plans, and it’s hardly going to be you. I suggest you leave me to it.”
“The plans are sensible. You have already agreed to that much.”
“You would trust our lives to a single review?”
There is an argument brewing. Ferdinand can taste it in the room like lightning on the wind. And while he does not doubt that he is correct, he does wonder what his victory spoils would be. Hubert, agreeing to have a soothing cup of chamomile tea and tuck himself into bed? Certainly not. Misdirected tempers, more likely.
He pulls one of the more detailed territory maps over to him. Many hands make light work, after all.
Guardian Moon
They are victorious on the bridge. Ferdinand tries to keep a firm hold on this thought, to give it pride of place at the center of his mind. For the first time in five years they are not simply holding, or waiting, or planning. They are doing, and they have done well. He manages it through the journey home, through the small celebratory dinner, all the way back to his room.
And then, as if uncaged by solitude, another thought wriggles to forefront: Ah, he thinks. Ah, I killed Leonie.
She had an arrow nocked and aimed for Bernadetta. He wasn’t thinking of anything but that when he slid his lance between her ribs, up under her leather armor, and threw her screaming from her horse. A maneuver he has trained for and practiced a thousand-thousand times, which he has used to kill a good number of people whose faces he never knew.
He tries to remember something specific about her. It feels cruel that he cannot. He knows only name, face, and house. Somehow, that has privileged her.
There was another student on the bridge with Judith. Ignatz, who he also did not know. He only learns that Ignatz fell to Caspar when Dorothea knocks on his door, one bottle of wine tucked under an arm and the other held out to him when he answers. It’s that kind of night, she says. I thought you could use something, she says.
“Do you need company?” she asks.
The smile he cracks is wan but trying. “Are you really volunteering?”
After all these years, she’s still not very fond of him. She would never let any harm come to him, of course, as he would never let any harm come to her. But loving each other in the ferocious way in which every Black Eagle loves another is quite a long distance from liking one another, or Dorothea thinking he’s a stunning conversationalist.
“Yes,” she says, the set of her shoulders as stubborn as ever. “Or I can send someone over.”
“I’m all right, really.” But he takes the bottle of wine she holds out all the same. “You will be with Caspar, you and Linhardt? I think -- he will taking this more to heart than I am.”
And it is not, he does not add, that I have not taken it to heart. He has no desire to distress her.
“Yeah. We’ve got him. He’s...he did it so that Lin wouldn’t have to. They’re both in a bit of a state.”
“Ah. Are you all right?”
She shrugs. “Somebody’s got to be, so here I am.”
If he asks her if she wants a hug, she will deny it. So he merely opens an arm to her, there in his doorway, and wraps it snugly around her when she slumps into his shoulder and buries her face in his coat. For a handful of minutes she allows herself to breathe and he allows himself to feel useful at something other than throwing people off their saddles to be trampled by panicking horses.
Then she pulls back, and neither of them comments on it.
“Be well,” he says. “All of you.”
“Don’t drink that whole thing by yourself.”
He doesn’t. He shuts the door gently behind her, pours himself an overfull glass, and doesn’t feel any better when he reaches the bottom of it. He feels overheated, mostly, and a bit ill. He shrugs out of his coat and braids his damp hair back from his face; neither helps. He stands, willing his feet to be steady, and corks the treacherous bottle of wine. It is, after all, a solution better come to with company. Sans companions, he will remain sans wine.
He wonders how Edelgard fares. He hates to think she’s made of sterner stuff than he is. He hates to think that she isn’t. Whose duty is it to feel a bit queasy after a rough battle and a glass of wine? Likely no one’s. He has to pull himself together. Fresh air, he decides, will do him wonders, which is how he ends up wandering Garreg Mach. The monastery, if it even qualifies as such any longer, is hushed, as if holding a collective breath after the events of the day.
Every stretch of lawn is occupied by some other wandering resident, and, though there is more than enough room for all, Ferdinand finds himself ardently unwilling to talk, particularly to near-strangers. His search for solitude spirals him right into the library; it’s even stuffier than his rooms, but he cannot bring himself to walk back now, peace undiscovered. Besides, with Linhardt holed up elsewhere, the odds of running into anyone have been severely curtailed.
Ferdinand sits at one of the tables and pretends at good posture for a moment before slumping forward to pillow his head on his folded arms. The library curls around him with its ancient weight. There were thousands here before him and there will be thousands after, each ignorant to the troubles of the other. A comforting thought, in its way. Edelgard will change history. Ferdinand will change it with her, walking always at her right hand, but no one need ever know he sat here tonight, tipsy and melancholy.
“What are you doing here?”
Except that he forgot about the library’s other resident. Ferdinand pushes himself upright in his chair and tries to pretend he isn’t staring Hubert down in his shirtsleeves, hair straggling out of its braid. Hubert, of course, has neither stitch nor strand out of place. The room twists at an odd angle before righting itself. Ferdinand is reminded why he waters down his wine at dinner.
“Contemplating,” he manages, and at least his voice is steady. He has not had so much, after all. “This is a place of quiet, is it not?”
“Largely because you are not in it. I see you still have not mastered your inside voice.”
Ferdinand grimaces. He hadn’t thought he was being loud, and it’s not as if Hubert has lowered his voice, either.
“I was not speaking until you spoke to me.”
“Fair enough.”
Then Hubert does the most awful, astonishing thing: he takes the chair across from Ferdinand and sits there, arms crossed over his chest, just. Staring. Trying to commit Ferdinand’s dishevelment to memory, perhaps, for later amusements or ammunition. Ferdinand bears it as long as he’s able, which he thinks is a good deal longer than could reasonably be expected of anyone.
“If you would like to make a comment —”
“You did well today.”
Ferdinand sputters to an undignified halt, his hands clenching tight around one another. “Pardon me?”
“When it became clear we were fighting old...schoolmates, I assumed that sentimentality would make you hesitate.”
A complicated accusation, given the battlefield. Ferdinand could easily take offense.
On the other hand. “Did you not think that of everyone except yourself?”
Hubert shrugs one shoulder. “More or less. And it nearly cost us our hold on the center of the bridge, with Linhardt’s whole routine. But you did your duty.”
“I did. I would never do anything less for Her Majesty.”
It’s the one thing they can agree on in life, Edelgard the sun around which they both orbit. Ferdinand likes to think he’s more aware of, more honest about that profound gravity.
“And yet you look perturbed.”
Ferdinand can’t help but laugh; it echoes dully around the bookshelves. “Yes, Hubert. My duty is sometimes perturbing. We were not all born on a moonless midnight with ice in our veins.”
“I have faith that you can overcome your terrible handicaps.”
It takes Ferdinand a startled moment to realize Hubert is joking. He smothers his next laugh in a balled fist, feeling as though he has crossed some awful line by finding Hubert funny. Surely such madness is reserved for the darkest of spirits.
“Thank you for that faith, I know yours is a dear commodity.” Ferdinand stands and pushes his chair in, careful not to scrape it against the floor. “And thank you for coming over to check on me.”
Hubert frowns. “Hardly.”
Ferdinand decides it is worth letting him have the last word, just this once. He is tired, and tomorrow there are yet more duties.
It is duty that takes him away from the monastery, chasing down insurrectionists in Empire territory. Unhappy work, but necessary, and he recognizes not a single face. When duty brings him — home, yes, the monastery is home now — brings him home again, he is tired and more bedraggled than one glass of wine and a rough night could ever hope to accomplish. It is good that Manuela accompanied his troops, or he would have lost an arm to that axe wound.
He did lose another good, loyal horse.
What he wants very much is to take a long bath, get his arm out of this damnable sling once and for all, and sleep for as much of twelve hours as he’s allowed. What he does not want is to approach the ruined cathedral, seeking Edelgard to make his report, and be greeted by the sound of furiously raised voices.
Ferdinand does not dictate the universe. This much is obvious. One of the voices is Hubert, and that is Dorothea in response, he is sure of it. He slips through the crack in the great doors and yes, there they are. The common folk and soldiers have cleared out, clever as they are, and it’s only those two shouting and Linhardt, not shouting, poised between them like a deer betwixt wolves.
“I have done more to keep the miserable lot of you alive than anyone ought,” says the presumed deer, calmly, levelly, his fists flexing as if to clench.
Ferdinand reevaluates his metaphor.
“We would not require half so much healing if you didn’t flinch away from blood like an untrained child.” Hubert does not yell, really, so much as pitch his voice louder and louder, perfectly enunciating all the while. “A dead enemy is a harmless enemy. If Caspar had lost his head, you truly would have had something to dither and faint about.”
“Don’t you dare — ” Dorothea begins, and she is going to slap him. Ferdinand can see it clear as day.
Ferdinand does shout. He is particularly good at shouting, when the occasion calls for it. “Soldiers! Stand down!”
Dorothea and Linhardt both turn to face him, and even Hubert’s eyes flick toward him. None of them relax, but neither do they call a thunder spell down upon him, each other, or the already struggling pillars.
“Welcome home,” says Linhardt, as calm and cold as still water. “You’re just in time for Hubert’s constructive criticism.”
“Something I often appreciate, despite his unique turns of phrase.” Ferdinand comes close enough to see the face Dorothea is making at him. “But I think perhaps this is a strategy discussion for a less public venue?”
“I prefer to be in public when Hubie’s in this sort of mood,” says Dorothea.
Ferdinand has learned plenty about his classmates, now fellow officers, in the last five years. He now knows when Dorothea is being purposefully hurtful, particularly because she is rarely hurtful on accident. What he does not know, and may never, is whether any of her barbs ever land on Hubert.
At least Hubert’s quieter when he says, “If I haven’t had you discreetly taken care of by now, I am unlikely to. Unless you keep heaping reasons upon me.”
“Hubert,” Ferdinand tries, though he does not rightly expect it to get him anywhere. “I am exhausted, and furthermore, I am ill equipped to break up a fight between mages. I will speak to Linhardt. Later.”
Linhardt pouts. Ferdinand should have pulled him aside earlier, yes, but it is like negotiating with a brick wall, and the brick wall thinks you’re an idiot.
“Please,” Ferdinand concludes, because he has learned a thing or two about common manners.
“Fine,” says Hubert. “I wash my hands of it. Linhardt, I look forward to your funeral. It is sure to be a remarkable one.”
Linhardt’s reply is an astonishingly rude gesture and an exit that doesn’t even do Hubert the dignity of being brisk. Dorothea stares them down.
“Hubie.”
“I am henceforth considering him your responsibility.”
The very roll of her eyes is operatic. “Find a better way to say you’re worried about people, will you?”
She takes herself off after Linhardt. Perhaps if she gets through to him, Ferdinand won’t be forced to. And if wishes were fishes, they’d walk on the sea and have no concerns about supply lines.
“And just what have you done to yourself?”
Ferdinand realizes too late they have left him the only target for Hubert’s ire. “Nothing Manuela did not put back together quite easily.”
Actually, she swore quite a lot. Ferdinand decides Hubert doesn’t need to know that bit.
“So you’re doing laps to test the integrity of her work?”
Ferdinand shrugs, regrets shrugging, and tries to turn the gesture into something else before Hubert can catch on.
“I must make my report, whatever my arm thinks of the matter.”
Hubert’s aggravated sigh could raise waves to sink ships. “Come then, you will make your report to me. Somewhere you’re less likely to keel over.”
Ferdinand says nothing as he faces the climb to the war room. There is nothing wrong with his legs. Healing magic is a magnificent boon, but without the adrenaline rush of battle it always makes him feel as if he’s being drawn and quartered by the smallest degrees. His shoulder aches and aches. He will not complain.
At some point, Hubert’s hand comes to rest on his good shoulder, propelling him forward and keeping him from tipping backward down the stairs. It steers him into a chair, and for one confused moment he is both here and the library, two identical Huberts staring him down with two expressions of — what? Some concerning manner of deep contemplation.
Ferdinand tries to sit in a way that does not jar his shoulder and closes his eyes, just for a moment, to organize his thoughts.
He wakes with a jolt, fumbling for the sword that is no longer at his belt. The staff member — one of Hubert’s, he thinks — who set the tray down in front of him backs away smoothly with their empty hands displayed. The tea smells like one of the infirmary’s medicinal blends, and there’s a hand pie no doubt scrounged from last night’s dinner.
Hubert is seated across from him, ink uncapped and pen scratching away. He glances up, then dismisses the staff member with a clipped nod.
“Eat first,” he says, as Ferdinand gathers his dignity around himself. “Then report.”