Work Text:
Raindrops tapped rhythmically against the window, the quiet of Hubert's office broken up by the deluge outside. The sky was dark, the candles inside bright, a perfect balance of silence and white noise for Hubert to sketch out a battle formation for their next campaign. He couldn't ask for better working circumstances.
Hubert couldn't focus.
Every tap of the rain, the scratch of his quill on paper. The creak of his old chair. The sound of his very breathing. All tied by the empty quiet stretching around him.
It was most unusual for him to get so antsy like this, but it wasn't like Hubert didn't know the reason. It was the same reason the entire Black Eagle Strike Force had been frantic this entire week. All of them, except for the one currently lying on a bed in the imperial palace's infirmary.
The army's previous campaign, flipping the allegiance of some strongholds on the border of Adrestia and Faerghus, was a success on all accounts. The worrying part came after; most of the army marched back to Enbarr, but a few members of the Strike Force took an alternate route with smaller battalions, due to news of a Slitherer spotted in the area.
The good news was that they found them. The bad news was it was not without a cost.
During the fight, one of those cursed Slitherers, sensing they were going to lose, geared up for one last large spell; within the blink of an eye, Ferdinand had been struck with a beam of violet light. The rest of his flock could do nothing but watch as Ferdinand, wide eyed from surprise, stumbled forward, and then collapsed.
The rest of the fight was a blur.
Hubert didn't think he'd breathed until Linhardt confirmed that Ferdinand had a pulse, and was suffering no injuries. It wasn't a spell invoking death; Ferdinand had been hit with some sort of sleeping curse, leaving him in what would likely be a perpetual coma. He wasn't sure how long it would last, or how the curse could be broken.
Since their return to Enbarr, the rest of the Eagles had been frantically trying to find a solution. Hubert had scanned every book he owned and all the notes he had on curses, but they were very few; Slitherer magic was still largely unfamiliar to him, and couldn't identify this specific curse and how to free Ferdinand from its confines. At that, Edelgard had taken to sending out for Adrestia's finest doctors and scholars of dark magic, but so far the few who were able to come in such short notice hadn't a clue how to free him.
Although a general was down, the war stopped for no one, and as the Strike Force's interim strategist, with the Professor gone, Hubert still needed to craft battle plans. And so while the rest of their class spent large chunks of the day with Ferdinand trying to come up with ways to break the curse, Hubert spent his past few days as he always did; poring over maps of Fodlan and sifting through reports on the state of the army from other generals.
Frankly, Hubert should have been able to get even more than usual done. Usually there was someone there to drag Hubert to help them with some menial task such as counting the food stores or training with someone as a sparring partner, or even war meetings that required his presence. With this state of emergency, there was absolutely no diversions during his day, and he could spend every waking moment on these schematics.
Additionally, no Ferdinand meant no noise from Ferdinand. Rather than choosing offices in the palace geared toward personal taste, the Strike Force, as well as many other top generals in the army, had decided to condense the space between their rooms as much as they could, to make protecting each other and sharing updates on the war as easy as possible. This, of course, meant that somehow, Hubert's small office—it had probably been a servant's quarters at one point, or a storage room; it had a window and space for a large desk and a few chairs, but beyond that there was not much else—had ended up directly next to Ferdinand's own. The walls were thin. And of course, Ferdinand liked to sing while he worked.
It infuriated Hubert. He would try to focus in the lovely silence of his own office, and then hear Ferdinand's insufferable voice as if it were right next to his ear, either singing an aria from an opera, or talking to himself as he did whatever he was doing. Hubert's peace broken, he would eventually reach the point where he would bang his fist on their shared wall—"Some of us are trying to work," he would hiss—and thus begin their argument of the day.
So, now that Hubert had what he wanted—a quiet schedule and an even quieter workspace—why couldn't he focus?
Ferdinand, his mind replied, the simple answer which Hubert was trying to ignore.
Because of course, somewhere along the three bloody years of this war, he and Ferdinand had begun to tolerate each other. They still got on each other's nerves, as was evident, and they still had vicious arguments, on matters of varying importance. Nowadays though, no matter how heated their arguments got, they would settle their arguments and calm down with shared beverages, and they had begun to work closer together, maybe even beginning to trust each other. It was an odd transitional period, building something new over an older, fragile foundation. Every encounter they had was a whirlwind of disdain, curiosity, amicable conversations, fiery disagreements. And at some point Hubert had found himself enjoying his time with the Aegir heir a little more than he should.
Letting someone get themselves lodged this firmly in his chest was bad; just seeing his work ethic from the past few days confirmed his trepidation against forming bonds with others, and unfortunately it seemed to have no cure. Just like the curse on Ferdinand, said a voice in his head. The quill in Hubert's hand snapped.
He wasn't sure what the breaking point was, only that Hubert found himself striding through the halls toward the infirmary despite not remembering leaving his desk. Typically, when Ferdinand was distracting him, after Hubert's knock on the wall and the hissed argument which followed, Hubert gained the ability to focus again, having gotten his frustration out of his system. Perhaps a moment near the cavalier would fix his state, as if seeing him prone and defeated could mimic the satisfaction of defeating him in an argument. He hoped this would be the case.
This was, unfortunately, not the case. Standing beside Ferdinand's infirmary cot, the man slumbering peacefully tucked under the thin sheets of the cot with his hair—beginning to reach shoulder length—splayed out around him like vines, Hubert felt no satisfaction at seeing his nuisance-turned-rival-turned-comrade-turned-friend seem so defeated. Standing in Ferdinand's presence without his usual display of vitality was strange. His voice, which so often carried through the halls of the palace, was nowhere to be found. His laughs were mute, his cries were stolen. In the thin bars of light through the partly-closed windows, a stripe of Ferdinand's face was illuminated in view; shut eyes, slow breathing, no sign of movement beyond the hint of the rise and fall of his chest. The silvery light of the moon dimming his usual obnoxious colors and emphasizing the pallor of his skin, a Ferdinand who had been trapped indoors in an infirmary for a week.
If anything, this only made Hubert feel worse.
But he leaned into this feeling of wrongness, of awfulness, and decided that he could use this as motivation to continue working. That his strategies needed to be in perfect shape to avoid any more blunders with unfamiliar curses such as this.
He slipped from the room, content that he wouldn't need to visit Ferdinand again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
He only lasted a day.
By the time the next evening had come, Ferdinand was no closer to waking, and the schematic in front of him was no closer to finished. He found that the strange affliction had taken root again, this strange sort of anxiety that stemmed from his friend's absence.
He didn't understand the power Ferdinand seemed to hold over him. Prior to the incident, Hubert would only spare thought to Ferdinand when Ferdinand presented himself; never before had thoughts of him run rampant in his head until he had no choice but to take some action to snuff them out.
Once again, late in the night, Hubert traveled back to the infirmary, and sat down at the chair beside Ferdinand's cot. This time, none of the windows were open, nor were there any lamps lit; Hubert summoned a small flame to light the candles on his bedside table.
"Why," Hubert muttered, scowling at the form before him, "do you vex me so?"
Naturally, Ferdinand, in a curse-induced coma, had no answer. And yet the prolonged emptiness of the silence only served to stoke his anger.
In the flickering candlelight, Ferdinand's hair shone like spun gold, his lashes upon his cheeks like dying embers. He still looked smaller and pale, from his body doing nothing but laying limp since being hit with the curse, but even so you could still see the vibrant life in him. Even in a horrible curse-induced slumber, Ferdinand seemed as an ethereal being, energy gathering under his skin, glowing with his own golden light.
Hubert got up from his chair and leaned over Ferdinand, his arms bracing himself on the edges of the headboard, their faces in line now. What was this curse? What could possibly be powerful enough to do what Hubert had never been able to do, silence Ferdinand von Aegir? There had to be a cure. There had to be a way to revert their days back to normal, when Hubert could just think of Ferdinand as the annoying man who sang as he worked and pouted as he argued. Or, even further back, when Hubert didn't have to think of Ferdinand at all. He didn't know what was happening to him and he wanted it gone. Was there a spell out there, that could free him? Or a potion, some sort of concoction to open his eyes? These kinds of curses, those that lingered until a specific criteria were met, were much rarer to come upon than typical battle curses that inflicted a quick pain on the unfortunate soul and then were over with. This curse that had hold of Ferdinand was more akin to something you would find in a storybook, rather than reality; something ridiculous such as a maiden whose slumber could only be broken by a kiss, rather than a counter-curse.
At this thought, Hubert's eyes slipped down, noticing Ferdinand's lips slightly parted.
Their faces were awfully close, now that he thought about it.
He wondered if Ferdinand's lips were as soft as they looked.
Hubert threw himself back into his chair, his eyes wide and heartbeat frantic. That wasn't a thought he'd had before, and he didn't like how natural it had come to him. What had Ferdinand done to him?!
The deafening sound of his racing pulse in his ears, he once again hurried out of the infirmary. He couldn't come back here again; he didn't think he could stay sane in the presence of Ferdinand, beautiful and golden and tragic, rendered mute.
This would never happen again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
And yet, night after night, he kept coming back.