Archive of Our Own

“Oh, my dearest.”  

There is no reply. Bernadetta’s gloved hand brushes the pale cheek, delighting in the way the ghastly cold reaches her through the velvet. Hubert did always have a penchant for surprising her. She wishes she could tell him he did, right until the end. She wishes she could reciprocate, but there isn’t much of a way, at the moment.  

Her hand dips in the folds of her skirts to produce a white blossom, and tuck it in the pocket of his vest. The pattern of the smooth rose petals clashes horribly with the purple damask. Bernadetta almost laughs, but instead she bends over the coffin, and lays a kiss upon his icy lips.  

“I stole it from the church gardens.” She tells him.  

She almost hears his laugh in reply, because Hubert would’ve laughed, to hear just how brave she became. How similar to him. But a different sound fills the small room. The people are starting to whisper, accursed ghosts of a life that’s long gone – relatives, friends, faces that blend together into nothingness. Rotten ones, in their golden rings and monkshood bouquets.  

They never knew him. They never knew her.  

“I believe it was a peaceful passing,” someone says behind her. Bernadetta slowly rises, letting the veil fall back over her mouth.  

“It was,” she replies, voice trembling. They pass her a handkerchief, that she uses to cover her mouth. It’s hard to restrain her laughter, when they found his body reversed in the riverbank, his torso decorated by a myriad of stabbing wounds and claw marks.  

It had to have happened several hours earlier, the surgeon said, bewildered by the sight of everything unnatural about the wounds, but in the murky dawn Hubert’s blood flowed still, against all odds, coloring the canal red. It was the kind of gory spectacle he would have enjoyed. She had to enjoy it alone, this time.  

Alone she had the surgeon carry him back inside her home, and alone she watched the morgue wash the body, and side by side to Hubert she prepared the needle, and sewed the wounds back together.  

Bernadetta can suppose that if not a peaceful passing, he did at least have a peaceful first day as a corpse. Now, she can assure he has a peaceful rest. She kisses his lips a second time, and then a third, her fingers brushing down his dark hair down to his neck and to the rose pinned over his heart. How soon it would wilt.  

“Do we proceed?” the priest asks, looking out the window towards the church, on the other side of the river.  

Bernadetta steps back, and nods.  

◇  

“Let us proceed,” Hubert says.  

He steps away from the chancel and down the aisle, to take his seat next to hers on the last pew – instead of the first, where a good son ought to be.  

There’s a lazy smile in his eyes as the deacons lower the lid over the coffin. She’s never seen anybody look so amused at a funeral. Her gloved hand brushes against his, lilac velvet over white silk, but in a smooth move he picks it up, and brings it to his lips.  

“I trust you’ll tell me if this ceremony bores you too much.” He says, pale eyes fixed on hers.  

Bernadetta shakes her head. “It… it was your father. I’ll stay for as long as you want me to.”  

He’s disappointed by her words, she can tell in the way he so easily drops her hand and folds his own on his lap, and turns his head toward the coffin. She doesn’t know what she should say.  

“Are you hurting?” she tries.  

Hubert glances at her, an eyebrow rising, but there is no reply. Bernadetta watches in silence as someone she doesn’t recognize climbs the pulpit, and starts reciting a stiff elegy.  

After a long moment, he asks her, “do you find death repulsive?”  

She thinks about flowers and plants and growing things, blooming and rotting in the same day, and growing and blooming again, and the answer comes easy to her lips.  

“No.”  

“And life?” He asks then. “Do you not fear it?”  

She turns to look at him, in an attempt to glean anything from his body that doesn’t transpire from his even voice. Somewhere between the marble walls, the elegy continues, and Hubert dutifully pretends to listen.  

“It can be frightful... but we can’t escape it.” Bernadetta replies, eyes not leaving his unreadable face.  

Even so, she doesn’t expect it when without taking his eyes off the coffin, he picks up her hand, and presses a second kiss to her fingers, then a third.  

“How brave.” He says, setting her hand back down with the gentleness one might spare for a wounded bird. “What about the things in between?”  

Something of unsurprisingly poor taste to bring up at a funeral, but Bernadetta knows legends of creatures of the night that sleep beneath the sinews of Enbarr, and it isn’t those legends that have kept her up at night, paralyzed with fear. She straightens her gloves.  

“They have never hurt me.”  

Hubert turns to look at her now. He’s smiling.  

◇  

The sun shines bright. It hurts her eyes a bit, to see it after two days spent inside, mourning, but the shadow of the coffin carried by her side helps shield her from the strongest rays. In truth, it’s like nothing changed at all: they stroll across the bridge together, the parasol of black lace Hubert gifted her resting upon her right shoulder, her left hand laid on his forearm, only separated by an inch of red mahogany.  

He would have liked the dress. She didn’t let him see it, of course —it felt like it would’ve been bad luck— but Bernadetta thought about him when she gave the tailor the designs for her gown, her bonnet, her veil.  

He gave her specific instructions for this particular occurrence, such as what flowers he preferred and who needed to carry them, what graveyard would be ideal, and finally to spare no expense with preparations for herself, and so she didn’t: she ordered a fair amount of jet to craft the jewelry, and requested the dress be made in the darkest dull crepe available.  

“Widow’s silk,” the tailor asked, an accusatory glance at her naked finger.  

“The finest you have,” Bernadetta replied.  

Hubert was very pleased when she returned home to tell him. She’s sure he’d be pleased now. Hearing his dark laughter would certainly improve her mood, during this pitiful march under the scorching sun.  

People get close to her, as they head toward the churchyard. A hand on her shoulder, an arm looped on her own, a touch on her glove, a bouquet she refuses.  

“You’re a strong young woman,” they tell her, “the pain will pass,” and she smiles, “our doors will always be open for you,” and she almost laughs because she knows they want nothing for her but to slight the mourning as soon as possible, and find herself a betrothed.  

It isn’t time for that. The sun is still high in the sky, and Hubert is yet by her side, slowly carried to one last lonely trip. Bernadetta closes her eyes, as her heels find the soft terrain of the churchyard.  

◇  

It is raining. The drops plunge violently against the top of the glass house, the rumble echoing through the almost empty halls, as the visitors rapidly head out of the Enbarr Gardens. Back home, her governess must be staring at the clock and wondering how long the trip back is going to take, but Bernadetta has already decided that her carriage is currently stuck in the muddied streets.  

She takes her time dipping her brush in the red paint, as the rain above gets louder. She doesn’t mind it. It’s better for everyone, if she stays here. It’s much easier to paint without anybody around, and just as the rain saved the old woman from the trouble of looking after her for an evening, it swept away all the wealthy souls from the gardens, leaving Bernadetta alone in the glass house. Her and... that one.  

He arrived together with the rain, drenched to the bone, when the other visitors started leaving, and he leaned against a wall, and stood there as she painted, still as a statue but perpetual at the corner of her eye, with his dark hair and dark coat and ethereal skin.  

The physician’s son. Hubert.  

She saw him once before, at her uncle’s funeral. He stood in a corner, in silence, as his father shook the hand of Bernadetta’s, and she cried and cowered in a different corner. He offered her a white handkerchief, that she held tight in her black gloves. It was several months ago, to the point she’s almost shed the black, but she never gave the handkerchief back.  

…She forces herself to think about the paint. The leaf pads are particularly hard to color, with the shiny little tentacles that sprout from them, curving onto a prey. The red she’s using doesn’t seem bright enough, the details still won’t stand out, and...  

“Pygmy Drosera?” mumbles a steady voice, suddenly too close to her ear. “As someone without an eye for art, I would advise to use more white.”  

Bernadetta almost falls from her stool. She whips around to see Hubert leaning down close to her canvas, droplets flowing down his aquiline nose onto the floor. He’s completely still, save for a little curl swinging in front of his eye, and Bernadetta manages to breathe deeply, and calm down.  

“Y... yes. Thank you,” she says, looking for her white paint. “I didn’t expect you to recognize it.”  

He gestures to the planters beside of the canvas. “The name is on the exhibit label.”  

“O-oh.”  

Bernadetta clenches the brush hard enough that her nails turn pale, and she considers asking the Goddess to open the ground below and swallow her into the depths of the earth, when he adds, “but, I found it accurate enough, compared to most manuals. You have a good hand.”  

Well, it isn’t as bad as it could be. Hubert steps aside, clearly not offended, to take off his coat and shake the rain off of it, before moving to observe the specimen in the planter, and Bernadetta blinks, a hand reaching to smooth out the creases of her dark gown. “You... don’t look like someone with an interest in botany... Things like that.”  

“You do.” He replies. “The carnivores in particular.”  

She can’t help a little laugh. “Nobody ever told me I look like a carnivore type.”  

“Strange.” He says, turning back to her. “They’re fascinating beings. Bernadetta, was it? The Varleys’ niece.”  

He offers her his naked hand, and she reaches to shake it. His skin on hers is cold, but Bernadetta still feels her cheeks fire up. She nods. “You… you’re Hubert von Vestra.”  

“That I am.”  

Then, after a pause, when his hand leaves hers, it feels right to confess, “I have to give you back your handkerchief.”

Hubert laughs, an unexpected sound that makes her blood chill as much as it amuses her. “That cheap white thing? I ought to give you a better one, next time.” He says, his eyes scanning her mourning dress, before settling in hers. “Black becomes you.”  

It’s the strangest way in which she’s ever been flattered. Bernadetta decides she doesn’t mind it.  

◇  

Her feet are restless. She can barely stay still as she touches the coffin one last time, burying her hands in the wreath of flowers—poppies and harebells, the color of blood and poison that Hubert would press between book pages and behind her ear, and a single pale blossom of monkshood. If she had time to linger, she’d think about what a pity it is to throw such beauty back to the fangs of the earth, but she doesn’t.  

One kiss against the smooth mahogany, then two more, and Bernadetta lets her gloved hand slip from the coffin.  

Then they put him in the ground.  

She walks away. The prayers continue behind her, but she walks away, even when she hears his relatives whisper, even when her own start calling her name. The air in her lungs is fresher with every step she takes through the path, away from the high society of Enbarr and away from the dead and their bundles of pale flowers.  

Rotten, Hubert told her once, rotten to the bone. And rotten things are marked by the hand of death, whether they know it or not.  

She isn’t, and she won’t be.  

Her feet lead her out on a large street, and few people turn to stare, but she doesn’t let that stop her like it would have months ago. She keeps walking, and walking and walking and remembering Hubert, the way he looked at her the day before it happened, the way he kissed her hand one time, then two more.  

“The night is safe,” he reminded her, twirling a blossom of monkshood between his fingers. “Until then, fare well.”  

Bernadetta had something to tell him, but she didn’t do it.  

She wonders when her next chance will be. She wonders and wonders and walks until the sky above her changed its skin into a rich copper, and her feet have led her to the city fair.  

The sound of laugher and joyful music reaches her ears, and Bernadetta decides to get closer. People of all kinds are crowding the platform, to the point that despite her attire, she goes unnoticed as she climbs up the stairs, and leans against the railing to observe the dances.  

But watching isn’t quite enough. Time marches on too slowly without him, and her feet are restless again. Then the band strikes up a familiar song, and Bernadetta finds herself a way out. She turns to a boy in the middle of the crowd, offers him her gloved hand.  

And they dance.  

◇  

“You look restless.”  

Bernadetta let the bright lights of the fair distract her for a second, and she turns around to see Hubert staring at her. She nods.  

Then suddenly, a small spray of purple sprout up from under her nose, his white-clad hand holding up the tiny flowers.  

Viscaria. She didn’t think he’d be the type.  

He looks at her expectantly.  

“Yes.” She replies, accepting the flowers and his hand.  

They dance cheek to cheek, one song, and then two more, her palm warm as it presses against his cold one. They dance until she finally feels tired, and the church bells toll the midnight.  

Hubert smiles as he helps her down the steps, and he smiles as they climb back into the carriage. He doesn’t when they watch the fair lights disappear, as they head back to his house.  

“One day, this will be the only part of this city that I’ll miss.” He says. “Souls of all kinds.”  

“You plan on leaving Enbarr?” Bernadetta asks.  

“It isn’t the right place to live anymore.” He replies simply. “The dead don’t respect life, and these streets reek like the dead, nowadays. Nothing but an open, festering wound...”  

His words aren’t clear, they seldom are, but Bernadetta knows enough to recognize the shade of disgust that colors his pale eyes. The same he wears when she mentions people like her father.  

“Someone should clean it up, then.” She says, leaning her head on his shoulder. “The living or dead or… I don’t know. Whoever is there to listen.”  

Hubert seems surprised. “Of course.” He says. “Someone should.”  

They reach the house soon, and he helps her out of the carriage, and like he always does, he tells her it’s safer to spend the night than to wait for a ride back to her mother’s house. As always, she thanks him, lets herself inside, and offers to prepare some hot cocoa to make it up for him.  

Then they’re sitting at his kitchen table, the two mugs cooling down between them. Her velvet glove brushes against his silk one.  

“And… where will you go, Hubert?”  

He’s silent for a long time, slowly wrapping his fingers around her hand.  

“I don’t know yet.” He says then. “Somewhere that doesn’t smell rotten. Perhaps somewhere you’d like.”  

Bernadetta blinks. “You would let me come?”  

“If you were willing, why wouldn’t I?” He replies, letting go of her hand to take his mug.  

She decides to fight the urge to ask him more, because she knows there’s things Hubert can’t share even with her, so she reaches for the other mug, and turns her attention back to the cocoa.  

“Would you not prefer wine? I’m certain we might procure some.”  

“I’m afraid my body does not handle it well. This shall suffice.” He turns the mug in his hands, studying the drink as one would a trapped, exotic insect.  

Bernadetta peeks back up to his eyes, and she almost opens her mouth to tell him something she’s wanted to tell him for a while, when Hubert lifts the mug in the air.  

“To Life.” He says.  

Bernadetta smiles. She lifts her own mug, and replies, “to Death.”  

Hubert smiles back at her. “And to everything in between.” 

They toast.  

◇  

They dance.  

One song, and then another. She leaves him before the third.  

Finding another partner is easy, as is dancing twice more.  

She keeps an eye on the sun. Then another partner, two more dances.  

She doesn’t feel tired. Her feet hurt a bit, but her heart far less. Two more dances.  

The sun has set. The band starts playing an old ballad, about a groom mourning the death of his young love.  

Then the bells toll the midnight.  

The boy in front of her offers her his hand, and they’ve only danced once so far, and he’s beautiful beyond words, but suddenly this feels like the wrong place to be.  

The night is safe, Bernadetta remembers. She shouldn’t be wasting it away like this.  

She hikes up her black skirts, and climbs off the platform, leaving him alone on the dance floor.  

The night air feels heavy as she walks out of the fair back into the silent streets. No noise reaches her, no movement catches her eye, and Bernadetta wonders if for once, the creatures of the night are the ones sleeping, while she feels so awake that it almost hurts.  

But she knows she’s safe. The streets may be empty, and the sky may look bigger, redder than before, but the single, unblinking eye of the moon follows her path back home, up until she opens the front door and closes it behind her. 

Then there’s no more busybodies. Bernadetta takes off her coat and steps into the house. 

A single candle is already lit, and it sheds enough light on the drawing room for her to recognize the shape leaning on the wall. Dark, but still bright enough for her to recognize the red that pools on the pavement and drips from every sharp angle of it, save for those impeccable white gloves.  

“Hubert.” She whispers. Right where he should be.  

He looks up, and some blood drips down the curve of his nose. She passes him her handkerchief.  

“Thank you,” Hubert says, wiping off his face and smiling down at her, “the last day at work is always the hardest. So much to clean up.”  

“I can see that,” Bernadetta replies. Now that she can see that the blood pooling at his feet doesn’t belong to him, she finds it in her to smile back. “You look handsome still.”  

He laughs, passing the now bloodied handkerchief over his hair. “Like I just crawled out of a grave, perhaps.”  

Then he turns to her, squares her up and down.  

Bernadetta smooths out her skirt. “How... how is it?”  

Hubert’s eyes flutter for a second more, pale and twinkling in the warm candlelight, before settling on her own.  

“Perfect.” He says. “I couldn’t have wished for anything better.”  

Her breath hitches in her throat.  

“Hubert,” she starts, her mind filling with the words she should’ve told him ages ago, “I...”  

He lifts off her veil, and his gloved thumb goes to brush against her lip. The other one goes to dip in his vest, to produce a small pink bud.  

Spider flower. Oh, how he likes to surprise her.  

She stands on her tiptoes, and presses her mouth against his.  

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Hubert mutters, before taking her hand in his own, pulling off her glove and slipping a ring on her finger.  

“Yes,” she says, “yes.”  

Then she kisses him twice more.  

That night, two souls disappear from a bloodied city to unknown lands, clasping each other’s hands. 

Nobody gives chase.