Chapter Text
For the faithless, the cathedral at Garreg Mach Monastery has precious little to offer, and so Hubert does not often find himself standing in its forbidding hall. Tonight, however, is one of those rare instances. Sometimes, usually after he has had one too many cups of coffee, sleep proves elusive and he chases it by roaming the monastery, hoping to find it before the sun’s first rays find him.
Hubert leans against a pillar, casting a withering look at the statue of the goddess as he does.
This place is only just bearable at night, desolate, pews empty, candles unlit, more crypt than place of worship and throne to Fódlan’s great beast. It’ll be a pretty sight when Imperial forces march on the monastery and ensure it stays that way, but for now he will have to settle for smaller acts of sacrilege.
The murmur of two voices drifts in from the outer wall.
Interest piqued, Hubert moves to get a closer look, his fingers gliding over polished stone as he creeps along the walls towards the voices. He is always keeping an ear out for anything that could serve his lady’s cause, and a late night rendezvous is never a bad lead, especially if it involves anyone from the Church.
Taken as Edelgard is -and, loath as he is to admit it, himself to some tiny degree- with the professor, mysterious Holy Relic-wielding mercenaries do not a successful war make. There is no telling where her loyalties lie, what hold Rhea has over her. She presents far too many uncertain variables to plan around. Trust at this stage would simply mean whatever knife found its way into his back later on was entirely deserved.
Peering round the the arched entryway on the left side of the cathedral, Hubert squints through the darkness to identify whoever it is meeting at this late hour. He finds not Rhea, nor Seteth, nor even any of the knights. Instead, it is the Galatea girl and the Gautier boy from the princeling’s class standing at the edge of the outer walls. The half moon hanging over the goddess tower in the distance bathes the pair in a cold glow.
At this distance, Hubert can make out the contents of their conversation easily– voices carry easily in this dead hour.
“Look, I appreciate your concern Sylvain, it’s just-” Ingrid lets out a sigh, “It’s more gold than we’ve ever been offered in the past. I think… I think I might seriously consider this offer.” Her fingers are clenched tightly around a scrap of parchment in her right hand.
Although their classmates are actors waiting in the wings for a stage not yet set, there is sometimes intrigue to be gleaned from them, even if it is woven in with hugs and kisses in letters sent from mummy and daddy back home. Troop movements, internal politics, perhaps even future allies for when the Empire plays their hand; all these things go into the plans that will see his lady’s war through. As far as politically useful information goes, this conversation offers nothing new. House Galatea’s finances are obvious to anyone with an eye on the Kingdom, and he has hundreds.
Sylvain makes a frustrated sound.
“You’re not some trophy for the highest bidder.”
“It’s not like that!” She snaps back at him. “You know it’s Church law, this offer just happens to be more generous than the rest.”
Hubert knows the law she references well, having spent a number of spare hours pouring over Church decrees, marking out those which desperately require reform and taking note of others that can be salvaged. Marriage proposals to Crest-bearers are to be sealed with gifts of gold. It is a simple enough law. It is also one of the Church’s less disagreeable practices, at least in principle, since the intent is to ensure commoners with Crests and their families are not sold short. In practice, it has merely produced exactly the sort of distasteful system the redhead described.
Just another sign of how deep this rot runs, as far as Hubert is concerned. He is almost ready to move on and leave this inane Faerghean melodrama behind, when Sylvain mutters beneath his breath, almost too quiet to hear at all.
“To Ailell with the Church, anyway."
An understandable sentiment, of course, but hearing such barefaced irreverence from Sylvain of all people freezes Hubert in place.
“Don’t say things like that! What if someone heard you?” Eyes wide as she glances around for would-be blackmailers, Ingrid shushes Sylvain with a hand to his mouth.
“What, you think Seiros herself is gonna step out of her dusty coffin? Fine by me, I’ll show her a good time.” His nose wrinkles. “She might be a little crusty though.”
“You’re impossible, you know that?”
“I’m just looking out for a friend!”
Their voices rise, high and wild, echoing off the stone walls.
“You could ‘look out for me’ by supporting my choices! We’re one bad harvest away from another revolt, I’m the only one with a Crest and it’s my duty to save my house.”
“What about being a knight? Being your own person? Don’t your dreams matter too? What if this man just keeps you inside forever to pop out his Crest babies-”
“–Forget it, you wouldn’t understand!”
Ingrid turns on her heels at that, wrenching her wrist free of Sylvain's grip when he makes an attempt to stop her. Fortunately, she storms down the outer stairs instead of through the cathedral’s inner hall where she might notice Hubert eavesdropping.
“You know what? You’re right! I wouldn’t!” Sylvain calls after her, intent on having the last word even if Ingrid refuses to stick around for it. Quietly, he adds to the night sky above, “I wouldn’t understand why our parents play these stupid games.”
The air stills into a near peaceful silence, interrupted only by Ingrid's footsteps which grow increasingly faint in the distance. Sylvain stands alone and stares up at the stars searching for answers that are not forthcoming, before he swears and gives chase to his friend. Hubert remains pressed against the wall until long after the sounds of both Ingrid and Sylvain running back to the dorms have completely receded into the distance. As he takes a slow walk back to his own room, his mind wanders elsewhere, considering the exchange he has just witnessed.
One thing is clear; it is music to his ears to hear Margrave Gautier’s heir say such delightfully blasphemous things.
As far as secrets and hidden depths go in the monastery, Hubert believes he is fairly on top of them.
He has read the reports on the princeling’s little rampage two years ago. Claude might be the biggest mystery after their professor but at least that has never been anything other than obvious, and Hubert has heard the whispers about an Alliance noblewoman long counted amongst the dead dwelling far to the east. Lysithea’s recent transfer to their class has confirmed what he and Edelgard suspected– the briefest flash of a second Crest in their last battle when the white-haired mage thought she was alone. The Knights had their fair share of skeletons in closets; ‘Catherine’ had always been a clumsy choice for a pseudonym. And who could forget the Church itself, that nest of half-truths and neatly edited histories?
House Vestra’s intelligence network is second to none, but it has to be, to live up to its reputation as the eyes and ears of the Imperial throne.
Hubert undoes the usual enchantment around the lock on his desk drawer, the parts of the familiar spell sliding into place. In this last hour before dawn, his candle has melted into a stump and its light flickers around the room, casting shadows over the faint outlines of monastery furniture.
He removes a notebook from the drawer, the one with an entry in his neat script for every notable student at the Officers Academy and the Knights of Seiros. Given that he was gathering intelligence for a war and not the sordid romance novels which lined the shelves of just about every third-rate bookstore in Enbarr, the Blue Lions’ resident skirt-chasing playboy had hitherto only needed one miserably short paragraph to his name.
Sylvain Jose Gautier. Heir to House Gautier, bears a minor Crest of Gautier.
Territory in the northernmost reaches of the Kingdom, bordering Sreng. Childhood companion of Dimitri. No apparent connection to the Duscur incident, or the Agarthans. Unremarkable grades. Generally preoccupied with some dalliance or other. There is nothing to suggest he is likely to risk his comfortable inheritance, and the sooner we are rid of his nightly indiscretions the better for my sleep.
Picking up the dark pegasus quill lying on his desk, a gift from his lady, Hubert makes the necessary amendments to his profile on the Kingdom noble.
There is nothing to suggest he is likely to risk his comfortable inheritance , and the sooner we are rid of his nightly indiscretions the better for my sleep.
He seems to hold some resentment towards the Crest system and the Church. Bears closer observation.
Hubert considers scratching out the second half of the offending sentence but thinks better of it. He returns the notebook to its safe place and recasts the locking spell.
Whatever the case, Sylvain is not an enigma the way their professor or Claude are, unknown quantities suddenly dropped into the middle of an otherwise stable web of nobility and religion the rest of them had been born into. Nor is he a monster wearing the skin of a Fódlan noble. In the moons before Edelgard and he left Enbarr for the Academy, Hubert had taken extra care to screen every one of their classmates for suspicious disappearances and inexplicable changes in disposition over their lives. He had to know who to keep at arms length, and who, if he knew the Agarthans would not suspect his hand in it, to plan for a most unfortunate ‘training accident’ to be written into their near futures. There were a few individuals Hubert had his doubts about, but Sylvain had never registered on that list.
Until now, he had simply been the unremarkable heir of House Gautier, if a mildly annoying one at that.
As it happens, their mission for the month is to put a stop to the budding career of banditry of a certain disinherited son from House Gautier.
As it also happens, Sylvain finds his way to a third row seat in the Black Eagles classroom on the first day of the month with a wink and a smile, Seteth following behind him.
“Sylvain will be joining you on your mission at the end of the month.” Seteth informs them sternly as the rest of the Eagles eye the redhead with curiosity. “His father was quite insistent on it.”
“Well, I planned to sit this one out, but then a letter from home arrived, so here I am for the,” he clears his throat to do a stuffy impersonation of the Margrave, “honour of House Gautier.”
Dorothea snorts, and in the corner of his eye, Hubert spies Edelgard hiding a smile behind a white glove.
Sylvain is an agreeable classmate, all things considered.
Predictably, he flirts with every girl in class within the first day and even tries it once with Edelgard before Hubert very swiftly puts an end to those delusions. Still, he and Dorothea build a friendship of sorts on their insincere flirtatious repartee, and there are a few doomed but genuine overtures to convince Lysithea to study with him. Sylvain proves to be one of the few people with enough stamina to keep up with Caspar's boundless energy during sparring sessions; Hubert has a hunch that a certain blue-haired swordsman is to thank. He happily swaps tips on grooming horses with Ferdinand, who is only too delighted to meet a kindred soul. Most surprisingly, Sylvain's relationship with Bernadetta seems to revolve around providing incredibly detailed commentary on a half-written novel most people have only been lucky enough to catch glimpses of before it is hastily hidden from sight, along with its author.
In general, he is not the nuisance Hubert anticipated- pleasant, even.
Besides, Sylvain's integration into the Black Eagles' daily routine makes observing the redhead that much easier to see through. At least, it should have.
As the days go by, there is nothing to indicate a would-be revolutionary sympathetic to the ideals of their cause. Sylvain's easy going nature is much the same as it was in the Blue Lions. He attends choir practice and other religious activities with a begrudging dutifulness common to most students at the monastery, and while he may not be -as Ferdinand puts it with his vain piety- 'a paragon of faith for the masses', the only sin Sylvain seems likely to commit is tempting a nun to abrogate her vows to the goddess. If not for the cold shoulder Hubert catches Ingrid giving Sylvain in the dining hall, he would write off the encounter in the cathedral to an overactive mind and a particularly sleepless week.
Eventually, Hubert decides to take a direct approach, but even this proves tricky. Becoming classmates has done little to alter the fact that they are mere strangers who have exchanged no more than the usual pleasantries. When the professor assigns them both to weeding duty for the week, for once Hubert is grateful for the rather pointless chore.
Neither of them are much for small talk, so Hubert sees no point in pretending when they are crouched among wildflowers and overgrown grass.
“Why is it you delight in making the people around you think the space between your ears is stuffed with cotton?” Hubert ventures as he rips one clump of green from the soil.
Sylvain looks up at him, his lips quirked in a little smile.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Hubie.”
Hubert ignores the regrettable deployment of Dorothea’s pet name, and pushes on.
“I’ve seen your notes from the past few classes on black magic. I took some liberties while you were bothering the professor. Your solutions were… surprisingly adept-”
“-Hey, that’s an invasion of privacy-”
“-Elegant, even. I’d expect work of that calibre from Linhardt or Lysithea, albeit on one of their off days. Yet you always give the professor the most frivolous responses if called upon in class. ”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to compliment me, or insult me.”
I am trying to understand what you gain by acting like such a fool, Hubert thinks, but to push any further is to risk raising unnecessary suspicion.
“Just see to it that you don’t sully the reputation of the Black Eagles, even if you are only here for a month.”
Sylvain only laughs breezily at that and they finish the rest of the chore in silence.
But as the month’s mission draws closer, the cracks begin to show.
Sylvain breaks a wooden lance or two while training after hours, and Seteth is displeased. He charges alone into enemy ranks during a skirmish with bandits in the Tailtean plains, and Byleth’s impassive expression slips for once, a tight frown on her face and the barest hint of concern in the stern talking-to Sylvain receives after the battle. Perhaps the most telling incident occurs the night before the battle. For once, the second floor dorm inhabitants have their sleep interrupted by cries of anguish rather than the usual objectionable sort of noises that tend to come from the Kingdom end of the corridor. Hubert sees Ingrid and Dimitri exchange a troubled look as they stand outside Sylvain’s bedroom, and hears a muffled apology through the door.
The day of the mission Sylvain is all sunshine and wisecracks. The nightmare is consigned to the previous night, and no one comments on the barely-there bags beneath Sylvain’s eyes.
It goes terribly.
The Black Eagles return from the mission in relatively good shape, while Byleth rushes Sylvain, hair matted with blood and barely conscious, to Manuela’s care. Hubert stares after the professor’s retreating form and the shock of red in her arms. A rider had been sent ahead to warn the physician; it was the best they could do, Linhardt having deemed it too risky to move Sylvain at a pace faster than his horse's gentle trot.
“You seem deep in thought.” Suddenly at his side is Edelgard's voice, calm, despite the circumstances.
“Lady Edelgard- My apologies, I was merely considering some things.”
Typically there is a debrief, but the unease that hangs in the air speaks volumes in their professor’s absence. Ferdinand leads Sylvain’s steed away towards the stables while the rest of their class slowly disperses, exchanging hushed whispers among themselves.
Sylvain took a blow for Edelgard. He took one each for Caspar, Petra, and Ferdinand before that too, and when it seemed the Black Beast would charge Linhardt, who had gotten a little too close to the action, Sylvain was there with his horse and lance. It was the blow for Edelgard though, a final desperate move by the beast, that sent him flying like a ragdoll from that horse.
She hums. “Are you thinking about what you saw in the cathedral earlier this month?”
“The exchange with his brother was telling.”
At the top of Conand Tower, they had come face to face with the very antithesis of Sylvain, the Crestless black sheep of House Gautier, an ugly wretch of a man. Miklan’s leery taunts and ranting about Crests had been expected. Sylvain’s back had been turned to them the whole time he faced his brother’s denigrating tirade.
But he can recall the words Sylvain had spoken clear as day. The calm malice in his voice had struck him then as it does now in his memory.
“It’s about time I shut you up for good, brother.”
Sylvain had gone in for the first strike. Miklan had parried and knocked him off his mount before charging at the younger Gautier and slamming his full armoured weight into him, pinning his brother to the ground. It took only moments for Sylvain to twist his fist free of Miklan’s grip before swinging a punch into his nose, sending Miklan recoiling away with a yell and allowing Sylvain to flip himself upright. The pair continued wrestling on the floor, pulling at hair and scratching and biting and cursing; two brothers locked in a writhing ball of mutual enmity, while thieves and students alike could do little in the way of support without risking hitting the wrong Gautier.
It had seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Miklan’s brute force had come out on top in the end, knocking Sylvain away, but just in reach of his spear. The last blow Sylvain dealt his brother before the Lance of Ruin consumed him was dealt with the weight of a Crest behind it.
Edelgard sighs with rueful indignation. “All else aside, that man was a talented commander. What a waste.” She shakes her head and turns to him. “I have to let Dimitri know what occurred, and the professor wanted to discuss the mission with me afterwards. Would you visit the infirmary in my stead?”
“Of course. Please excuse me, Lady Edelgard. I will see to our wounded classmate.”
“Thank you, Hubert.”
It is a while before Manuela is satisfied with the work she has done in stitching Sylvain back together. Hubert lurks on the corridor near the infirmary, listening in on the sounds of Sylvain’s friends from the Blue Lions surrounding him and positively drowning the boy in concern and well wishes. Most other days, he wouldn’t squander his time just waiting like this, but even he feels the strain of that last battle. He closes his eyes and indulges in the brief respite the cool corridor affords. Eventually, Manuela shoos all the Lions away, before she leaves to replenish medical supplies from the marketplace.
By the time Hubert gets to enter the infirmary, the sun is just dipping beneath the horizon.
Sylvain gives him a little wave with the arm he can move as Hubert pulls up a chair. The other sits in a sling across his chest.
“I would like to express my gratitude for the aid you rendered Lady Edelgard in that battle. But she would not want you to risk your safety like that.”
“Aw, was she worried about me? Don’t worry, the ladies love a few scars.”
“Unnecessary scars, those.” The bandages on Sylvain’s forehead are fresh, and the blood has been washed out of his hair. Even Manuela has her limits though, and there was little she could do for the purple bruises blooming across his skin other than a much weakened blizzard spell to reduce the swelling and strict orders for bedrest. At least those would disappear with time. The gash on Sylvain’s bare chest, flaps of skin only held together on the ride back to the monastery by desperate prayers from Linhardt, would not.
“Rest assured, if her highness were truly in danger, I would be there to intervene. But otherwise, she is more than capable of fighting her own battles.”
“Okay, I get it, you want to be her knight in… not so shining dark robes.”
Trying to wrangle a serious conversation from the fool in bed before him is proving far more vexing than Hubert had anticipated.
“I fail to see how you can be so cavalier about your near-death at the hands of that thing your brother turned into.”
That, finally, gets a halfway appropriate reaction out of Sylvain, who looks up sharply. His lips curl into something just shy of a smile and he glances away.
“..s’nothing new, anyway.”
Nothing in Sylvain’s expression is sincere, but there is a rare unguardedness about it all the same.
“Care to elaborate?”
For a brief moment it seems like Sylvain might do that. But then he lets out an exaggerated yawn.
“Hey Hubie, I’m tired and it’s a long story, mind if I tell you some other time?" Sylvain stretches his one arm that isn't wrapped up in bandages, wincing slightly as he does. "Gotta get my beauty sleep and all. Thanks for coming to check in on me though.”
Hubert knows he has run up against a wall in this conversation, one he is not likely to push past today.
“Think nothing of it.”
Before he leaves, Hubert casts a final glance back at the sight of Sylvain still sitting up in bed and staring out of the window at the setting crimson sun.
It is the second time he can say with any confidence that he is actually looking at Sylvain. Hubert realises then, the similarities between them. Where he has cloaked himself in the malice people expect from his ghoulish appearance, Sylvain has wrapped himself up in the easy smiles and jest of a lackadaisical flirt.
The lonely image of Sylvain stays with him the entire walk back to the dorms.
A lot happens after that, and for a while Sylvain is the furthest thing from his mind.
Not because he returns to the Blue Lions– in fact, once his wounds are healed the Kingdom boy joins their class proper, to near everyone’s surprise. Margrave Gautier, apparently too busy with Sreng border skirmishes to make the journey to Garreg Mach himself, had demanded the Relic be returned to one of their own instead of the Church. In turn Rhea had imposed her own condition that a student with a Relic was to be supervised by a professor with a Relic.
As for whether Sylvain had a say in the matter, Hubert can only guess.
But Hubert is drawn back into his war in the shadows, and Sylvain blends into the mundanity of school life that Hubert has no time to indulge in.
There is the tiresome business with Jeritza and Flayn, and the somehow exponentially more tiresome business with the Agarthans that goes on around the kidnapping. They wish to plant ‘another’ agent in the monastery, and he overhears one of their mages mentioning an experiment they will soon set in motion. How long before they outlive their usefulness to the Agarthans, before they turn their dark devices on the Empire once more? It feels like he is playing chess blindfolded, listening to the clack of his opponent’s pieces to judge where they land on the board, and moving his own to what he can only hope is the right spot.
Hubert catches a glimpse of Sylvain in the midst of the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, going head to head with his former classmates just south of the central hill. But in the mess of fighting he just as quickly disappears, and he is nowhere to be seen for most of the victory feast, no doubt off cavorting with some girl or other. In any case, Hubert’s hardly one to preach, for he spends most of the night on important business Count Bergliez had raised in their earlier meeting just after the battle. It seems they are both creatures of habit.
Kronya proves to be the worst trial the Agarthans have set his patience yet, constantly whittling away at Edelgard with her inane chatter while giving them absolutely no hints at all about her role here at the monastery. After Remire, when Edelgard had barely returned to her dorm room and stripped herself of her armour before throwing up the morning’s meal, Hubert makes it his business to keep the pest well clear of his lady.
And then in an annoying reversal of the victory feast Sylvain is everywhere at once during the ball, swapping dance partners with dizzying speed. His natural air and graceful movements are almost well-practiced enough to completely disguise the intense ballroom training most nobles receive from a young age.
As for Hubert, he would never have had time for such frivolities. Even if he had been interested, his days in the Vestra manor had consisted of classes on hand-to-hand combat and committing page after page of sigils and incantations to memory, on top of the regular tutoring noble children received.
“The only way a child of House Vestra should be spending their time is learning to blend in with the shadows behind the Imperial throne.”
His own father had told him as much the only time he had ever asked the man for something- pegasi-riding lessons- all those years ago. Of course, at an event like the ball, there are no shadows to conceal the fact that Hubert sticks out like a thistle amongst roses. Other students afford him a wide berth from where he stands against the wall, watching.
The only person who dares to approach him that evening is a rather red-faced Dorothea, whose friendship with Manuela apparently includes the perk of procuring alcohol at otherwise proper school events. She sneaks up on him just as Sylvain spins a tall raven-haired girl from the year below.
“Ooh, Hubie, that’s a nasty scowl on your face. You know if someone’s dancing with Edie, you could always just challenge them to a duel? Don’t come crying to me when you ruin her chances for a little post-ball fling and she gets mad at you though!”
“Dorothea,” he returns sweetly, “perhaps you’d like me to let Professor Byleth know about your glass of what is decidedly not grape juice? Clearly it has loosened your tongue to the point of impudence.”
She giggles. “I was just teasing. Although… huh, looks like Edie isn’t dancing with anyone right now. Wait, then who were you-”
But while her back is turned, Hubert elects to slip off into the mass of students. The answer to that question is not one he is willing to consider tonight, or ever.
It is inconsequential, anyway.
Then Jeralt dies, and everything seems to rush to a halt in the monastery.
His attentions return completely to Edelgard, whose compassion for the professor is tempered by a whirlwind of anguish towards the Agarthans, the professor, and most of all herself.
The Agarthans for so devastatingly crushing their hopes of ever getting the professor on their side when their alliance with her father’s killers comes to light; the professor for failing to see the writing on the wall; and herself for all of it. Because of course she blames herself for not yet having the power to wrestle with all the darkness that slumbers in Fódlan.
He weathers the storm by his lady's side in those first sleepless nights of the Guardian Moon, where old ghosts come visiting from Enbarr and fill the space between them.
A lesser person would buckle under the weight of it all.
But Edelgard finds her way to the eye of the storm by her own strength, and reaches her hand out to the professor once more.
It is a frigid winter night when Hubert finds Sylvain alone in the cathedral.
He is in almost the exact same spot he had first stumbled upon the other's argument with Ingrid all those moons ago. Garreg Mach's mountainous location elevates them miles above the rest of the world, but nowhere in the monastery is this clearer than in the cathedral, where tall walls give way to a landscape of clouds and deep rocky valleys all around them. Sylvain, now sitting by the very edge of the walls atop the raised stone ledge, stares past the battlement. Fixated on the yawning chasm that stretches out beneath them, he doesn't seem to notice Hubert's approach. There is something long in his hands, one end cutting a red glow through the winter darkness, but the object is far too large to be a torch, and it is lit with a fire that doesn't flicker but pulsates irregularly–
–the Lance of Ruin, Hubert realises, as Sylvain begins to lift it over the edge.
“I daresay Rhea wouldn’t be best pleased if you did that.”
Sylvain whips around at the sound of his voice, swinging the Lance back over the walls. Like all Relics, it twitches intermittently, the way a corpse might moments after death. Unsettling, if Hubert had not already seen such a sight a number of times. Sylvain, meanwhile, sits stiffly, meeting Hubert's gaze yet making no move to respond.
“But then again, I suppose someone who freely damns the Church in its most hallowed place of worship wouldn’t have much of an issue with that.”
This throws Sylvain off somewhat, and he blinks a moment. When he realises what Hubert is alluding to, his tension seems to ease as he relaxes back against the walls.
“You’ve been sitting on that one for a while, Hubie. Well go on then, what can I do for you? Money, gossip, dating tips?” He waves the Lance of Ruin at him. “Creepy stick that might eat you? I’ve been told it’s quite the steal.”
“Blackmail is not my intention. I’m more interested in that story you promised me in the infirmary some time ago.”
“Man, you really do like to bring things up from moons ago.” Sylvain sighs with an air of disaffection, “Nothing for it, I guess. Well, once upon a time, a boy was born to a noble house, and he had a crest when his older brother didn’t. That brother was cast aside for the newborn child. He took it pretty personally, so he made sure his younger brother knew all about that. It’s a common enough tale, sorry to bore you.”
“Common enough in structure, certainly, though it seems to me Miklan’s jealousy was rather taken to extremes.”
The redhead’s grip tightens around the Lance.
“Most siblings would probably consider murder to be a bit much. But Miklan, well, he lived for that. He thought he had nothing else to live for. Once, he even threw me down a well. He left me on a mountain near the border in the middle of winter a few times too, said he hoped bandits from Sreng picked me up for dinner.” Sylvain laughs, staring at some far off place. “All because my blood glowed with some dead man’s mark and his didn’t. What a world, huh?”
A memory comes unbidden to Hubert. It is something he has not thought of in quite some time, not least for its unpleasantness. Perhaps standing so close to the walls of the cathedral has something to do with it; for in the corner of his eyes, from within the dark void in the valley, vertigo beckons.
“When I was a child, my father used to leave me on the edge of a ravine if my training for the day proved… unsatisfactory. Told me to find my own way home.”
Sylvain stares at him, eyes wide. Is he more surprised by the tale, or by the fact he is hearing it at all? Hubert is a little shocked to hear the words on his own tongue too, but some stubborn flicker of emotion within him keeps him talking. It is nothing so banal as seeking sympathy from or even pitying the other. But the bitterness in Sylvain's voice – what a world, indeed - is something Hubert is well-acquainted with, a feeling that has coursed through his own blood; even if or rather, precisely because, a Crest does not. He is sharing no secrets of his lady’s or of their shared cause, anyway. Just that which belongs to him and only him. And in the end, those are secrets which cannot hurt the things he holds dear, nor hurt him in a way that matters in the end.
“He said that without a Crest, I was weak. That I would need to become strong, to protect the Imperial household.”
To protect her.
And he had become strong, or strong as a ten year old marching halfway across Fódlan could ever be.
It had not been enough.
Failure had found him all the same and the duty he could not live up to became a millstone slung around his neck. In the torturous months that followed, one question prevailed. Could he have protected her with the power of a Crest on his side? Even after all these years absolution evades him, the prospect of ever obtaining it having bled away with the pigment in her hair and the siblings who will never grow old with her.
Now, he will make himself be enough. Crests be damned. Because there is no alternative, not even death. If atonement exists, it exists only in the dawn of the world they dream of.
Hubert finds his way back to the present, where Sylvain has stayed quiet all this while.
“You can’t choose your family, or to be born with or without a Crest. I certainly don’t regret my station at least, it has given me the only purpose my life has ever held.”
His eyes flick over to Sylvain's.
“But I would like to think you can make some choices about this world. It is the way it is because of nothing more and nothing less than the combined wills of the people who inhabit it. It only takes a person with a strong enough will to go about changing it.”
Silence, then, but only for a moment.
“Is the Flame Emperor someone like that?”
Sylvain asks the question like he is asking about the weather. Hubert keeps his expression carefully neutral.
“Is Prince Dimitri? And more importantly, are you, Sylvain?”
As he swaps Sylvain's question for more questions, the words Hubert utters float lightly into the air between them and yet feel heavy as steel upon his tongue.
“These days, that’s a difficult thing to answer if you’re particularly fond of keeping your head attached to your neck.”
“As I said before, my intention tonight was never blackmail."
"What is it then Hubie?"
Were he an honest man, Hubert would make an honest offer; but he is a Vestra, through and through.
"Oh, just idle curiosity," he lies. "Should this Crest-filled world, so favoured by the Church, fall apart tomorrow... well, I simply wondered where you would stand.”
It is as close as Hubert dares to bring himself out of the shadows, to let the question he means to ask emerge implicitly. He will not risk the war, so soon at hand, to see one heir of Gautier end up on his side of history. This can be a conversation about distant politics if Sylvain wishes, a conversation about recent developments that both of them are implicated in only insofar as anyone in Fódlan should be. There is the correct answer, there is the right answer, and there is the coward's choice of silence; whichever Sylvain picks, Hubert will accept the line he has drawn.
His caution is, happily, for naught.
Sylvain leans close and whispers sweet sacrilege into Hubert’s ear.
“Why, I'd simply say to Ailell with the Church- but then, you already knew that, didn't you?"
If some faint elation thrums within Hubert at this, he tells himself it is for the victory he has won in his lady's name, a capable would-be general, and nothing else, certainly, nothing else that matters.