And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness
They were standard lessons. Lead this way. Step that way. Count the time. Bow to your partner. Hold her hand like so. And they followed their instructor’s words in the clumsy, stiff way children do when they don’t fully grasp the nuance of the skill. Hand on shoulder. Left. Right. Turn. Left. Right. Turn. The piano plinked out an unexciting three-beat melody. It was all make-believe now anyway. They looked no farther to the future than next week. Diplomacy? Etiquette? Courtship? Just words when the real world awaited them a whole lifetime away.
Even so, it was here that Hubert first was captivated by lavender eyes. By silken chestnut hair. By innocent smile. By the delicate hand that rested in his palm - the hand that would be torn from his grasp before he could find a word for the lightness that grew in his chest before every lesson. A lightness that was soon snuffed out by the darkness as well.
Shadows crept into the ballroom with the dust that settled over the piano. Only motes danced in the sunlight that broke in through the windows after that.
- - - -
“Your lessons, Hubert. You will be attending a ball next moon.”
“Yes, Father.”
He was twelve then. Lanky and thin and uncoordinated. Bow to your partner (what partner). Hold her hand like so (whose hand is this). Hand on shoulder. Left. Rig— no, left again. Right. Righ— no, Left. Turn. Their shoulders bumped together.
“Hubert.” His father’s voice.
He flinched, but nothing happened. Again, commanded the instructor. Hand on shoulder. Left. Left. Right. Righ— (stop staring) no, Left. Left. Right. (Stop staring). Turn. Left. Right— no— (stop staring)
“The ball is in two weeks,” came his father’s voice again. Do not disappoint me, he said. And left.
- - - -
The event came and went. Hubert watched it unfold from the comfort of shadows. No one approached him for a dance. He didn’t blame them. It was his father who had tarnished their family’s name. It was his father who sent him to clean up relations with a mask of amiability. To be a good noble in the public eye. But every glance had been a knife thrown his way.
“Hubert.” His father stood at the doorway to his room. “Your lessons.”
Hubert rose from his desk. Wordlessly he approached the silhouette that blocked out the candlelight of the hallway outside and stopped. Then he bent at the waist, his arms pressed against his sides.
“No, Father,” he said, and waited in the heavy silence.
“... Very well.” The man’s expression was unreadable as he turned away from his son. The voice that spoke next scarcely seemed to belong to him, as soft as it was. “... You must stop holding onto her.”
Disarmed, Hubert could only gape at the doorway now empty. He set his jaw. His hands curled into fists. And then he sunk to his knees.
- - - -
It was no act of the Goddess when at last she returned. Those eyes that had so captivated him were haunted by memories she could not speak. Chestnut had blanched to white. Innocence had shattered where a smile could no longer form. And on her hands were a dozen scars newly closed. They never again danced as they had in that ballroom, now locked and forgotten. Their eyes had turned toward the future, but not to diplomacy and courtship. They sought liberation. Revolution. Vengeance. He devoted himself entirely to her will, erasing his own in defiance of his father.
It was the academy that had awakened those old memories of the light again. What life had been like before the darkness. What friendship felt like. What it was like to be carefree. Though his father’s judgment still haunted him, he began to practice his dancing again. The Eagles belonged - not to the Emperor or to the Marquis - but to Edelgard. This was her house. Their house. And he would not dishonor it.
Left. Right. Turn. Left. Right. Turn. Only the moon accompanied him these nights. He was not worthy of any other partner, and the thorns of ballroom’s past drove him away from even making a request. Left. Right. Turn. He was not the prince charming anyone dreamt of, after all. Left. Right. Turn. A glimpse of his reflection in the mirror at the corner of the room caught him grimacing. Left. Rig— His arms lowered from their imaginary partner’s shoulders.
What was he doing this for, anyway.
- - - -
The request came out of the blue. An attempt to assuage Bernadetta’s worry with a dry comment turned all of her flustered energy upon him instead.
“Would you? Please?”
His answer came before the shock allowed him to register it. Her eyes had lit up then with a smile, and he felt something flutter back to life within his chest.
The moon was full that night. And he practiced with his hands on the imagined shoulder of someone new.
