#also please remember

bfdjkdf sometimes i forget people don’t know this

Anon I hope you realize the immense pain this has caused me (@stag-of-almyra knows all too well...mostly because I screamed about this ask at them right after I got it hOW DARE YOU) ughhh I don't even know where to BEGIN

Welll....how about at the beginning then?

Back at the academy, Hubert and Claude ended up becoming very close. Enough that, when Hubert left with Edelgard after the Holy Tomb, Claude was genuinely hurt by this betrayal. Five years end up passing, neither seeing each other at all...until the battle at Derdriu.

Hubert watches as Claude is downed, at the professor's and Lady Edelgard's mercy. Even if it has been five years...Hubert finds that his feelings for Claude have not vanished at all. They're enough that Hubert even attempts to convince Lady Edelgard to spare him.

Unfortunately, his words go unheard. And as Claude dies, the final thing he sees is the stricken look on Hubert's face. As if he couldn't handle the idea of Claude dying.

As it turns out, he can't.

Hubert isolates himself afterwards. All he can wonder is if he could have somehow done something, changed something. If he spoke up sooner, protested more fiercely, maybe stopped Lady Edelgard-

His thoughts begin bordering on treason, and he forces himself to stop. Lady Edelgard was intent on killed Claude, so he couldn't have stopped her (except Claude hadn't expected, hadn't wanted to die either, Claude's pleas for the professor and Lady Edelgard to spare him have been ringing in his ears since Claude's execution).

Hubert's thoughts turn to what would've happened if he chose to stay at Claude's side, if he had chosen the man he loved (and still does, no matter how hard he tries to bury those thoughts) over the lady he had sworn to serve.

Then, at the edges of his visions, he hears it.

"You could have, you know?"

Hubert whirls around from his desk, ready to attack whoever had managed to sneak into his office without a word, before his eyes widen and he feels himself freeze.

It's Claude. Except, it can't be, Claude's dead. The Claude he knew always had an easy smile on his face, had a laugh and a wink at the ready, eyes sparkling with mischief and life (those eyes that will never light up again when he laughs because Claude is dead, gone because Hubert hadn't spoken up sooner-).

This Claude is not smiling. This Claude's eyes are cold and dead. This Claude is drenched in blood from the wound on his neck.

This Claude's voice is harsh, holding none of the warmth that the Claude Hubert knew did. Not that Hubert deserves it.

"W-Wha..." Hubert tries to choke out, trying to ask why Claude was in front of him now, but finding that the words are stuck in his throat.

"Why am I here? You should know why." Claude smiles, a cruel mockery of the smiles he once gave Hubert at the academy all those years ago. Then it fades, his eyes somehow hardening even more than before.

"I'm here to deliver justice. You could have saved me, Hubert. You could have convinced Edelgard to let me love. But you didn't. You didn't even try."

And even if Hubert knows that's a lie, knows that he did try....he stays silent. Because who is he to try and disagree with Claude, who died because he hadn't tried hard enough.

So he stares at the ground, unable to meet Claude's cold gaze as the ghost berates him, angry that Hubert let him die.

(And as this happens, Claude watches sadly as Hubert allows whatever twisted version of himself that Hubert's mind had conjured to torment him, day after day after day. Claude wishes he could tell him to stop, to tell him that he tried and that's all Claude could have asked for, it was his own fault for reading the situation wrong.

James Coburn and Lee Marvin

Raymond Burr and Orson Welles

Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino