The ring of steel on steel peals across the battlefield, a mockery of bells ringing discordant unholy cadence of a hymn to some religion that Hubert lives and breathes and worships. The smell of blood and freshly churned earth and unmistakeable death are all around, even as he lurks in the little copse of trees on his corner of the battlefield, waiting for the enemy’s advance. This is war, glorious war fought in Lady Edelgard’s name, and it sings like the heavy pulse of magic within Hubert’s veins, grounds him and gives him purpose, his path through the dark days that have stretched endlessly from his childhood through today.

The charge, when it comes, makes him hesitate. It is a knight, in gleaming armor atop a dappled grey charger, and while the smears of mud and blood across the horse and its rider can dull the steel, nothing can cover or distract from the tumble of long ginger hair spilling across the rider’s shoulders, and Hubert watches the rest of the ambush, steps ahead of him in the trees, spill out to confront the paladin. It is Ferdinand, it had to be Ferdinand, charging ahead desperate to prove something and protect everyone, like always. Hubert tries desperately to summon the disgust and hatred that had seemed to simmer always shallowly beneath his skin for the red haired knight when he was younger, but he finds it out of reach, his mind grasping blindly in the depths of what passed for his heart these days. As he watches Ferdinand startle only for a moment before he is reoriented, he and his mount nimbly dodging and swinging his great lance, powerful and competent, Hubert realizes that hatred is gone, has sunken into the depths over the past five years—maybe more, if he is willing to admit to himself. Maybe, if he had met Ferdinand on the battlefield in the days right after that great betrayal (because as much as he always sniped at the man, it was a betrayal, he’d let himself think they might stand on either side of Edelgard at the end, Hubert her knife in the darkness and Ferdinand her gleaming diplomatic jewel), when the wound was raw and fresh and Hubert’s mind was clear and confident, filled with the certainty of Lady Edelgard’s path, he would have had the strength to step forward out of the trees and, while Ferdinand was busy with the swordsmen attacking him from all sides, snuff him out in one twist of his hands and surge of the darkness inside of him. Now though—he watches Ferdinand take a hit to the side and grimace in pain before his mount is pulling them out of the swordsman’s reach so that Ferdinand can, with a grunt of effort against the pain, throw a javelin with such strength that it crumples the imperial soldier’s breastplate and leaves him laying unmoving on the ground. He takes a half-step forward in the forest, fighting the tremor that wracks his body—another side effect of the darkest magics, he tells himself, and not a tremor of unnamed unexamined emotion at seeing the man who would have been the prime minister by his side spear another imperial fighter.

Hubert allows himself to shut his eyes against the sight of Ferdinand’s long hair blowing in the wind, the color of the sky over Enbarr at sunset, but all that does is let his mind wander freely over the memories of long nights at Garreg Mach, mornings spent training and nights spent working together in the library that turned into long debates about the future of Adrestia and the best way to serve Edelgard and the people, the smell of Ferdinand’s tea mixing with the familiar scent of his own coffee, and Hubert feels his hand clench into a fist reflexively.  He shakes himself—it won’t do to dwell on useless sentimentality, on futures that could have been—and opens his eyes just in time to watch Ferdinand take a blow to his side as he’s twisted around to slice through the second to last member of the ambush team. For a moment he thinks the sword has struck true and deep, but it must have just been glancing, because Ferdinand barely hesitates before he swivels around and strikes the last man down.

He is turned away from where Hubert stands in the trees, head hanging down and lance slumping downward as he seems to pause to catch his breath. The sounds of his comrades are still far off, and Hubert steps out of the trees at last, for the moment that will be his inevitable triumph, because Ferdinand is still trying to regain his composure, weakened and distracted, and all it will take is one spell. He’s imagined it before, this, the moment of confrontation—more than he’d imagined it with any of the others, Dorothea or Caspar, even the false king Dimitri  or that useless schemer Claude, even more than their professor, faithless in the end (faithful, in the end, a traitorous voice mutters in the back of his mind, to the father whose death your shortcuts and compromises caused)—confronting Ferdinand, the one he’d thought loved Adrestia more than anyone else, but had turned against it in the end. Which is all to say, he has imagined this dramatic speech playing out a thousand and one ways.

“Noble to the end, von Aegir,” he says, stepping into the light from the shadows dappled through the forest, “but I’m afraid that this is, in fact, the end.”

Ferdinand does not move, back still turned, shoulders still slumped. His mount twitches one ear towards him, but Ferdinand himself is still. Hubert wonders if the man even heard him—maybe he’s gone deaf with the ringing of clashing metal. Maybe he’s just too tired to care. Neither will do for what Hubert has in mind—for the end of their erstwhile rivalry, his shining counterpart, killing him with his back turned seems… dull. He wants the moment to gloat, to revel in the triumph of his own ideology against Ferdinand’s faithless optimism, to reassure himself that this is, in fact, a triumph.

This is why he tells himself he stays his hand, steps closer and tries again. “Can’t even bear to turn and face me at the end, von Aegir?”

Nothing.

Ferdinand’s mount shifts uneasily, restlessly, and the lance slides lower, nearly touching the ground now.

“Von Aegir? … Ferdinand?”

The horse takes another nervous sidestep and Hubert finally notices that, with the motion, Ferdinand lists slightly in the saddle. His heart is hammering in his chest in a way that has nothing to do with the thrill of battle and everything to do with what suddenly feels like a pit of aching dread that has opened in his chest. He takes a step closer, tries to soothe the horse with a gentle shushing tone, and when he finally manages to inch close enough to grab the horse by the bridle and spin her around, he realizes with a sudden zip of emotion that feels uncomfortably close to fear, an emotion he thought he’d long stamped out of his heart, that his earlier observation had been true. That last blow had struck true, between the gap in the plates exposed when Ferdinand was turned, and the armor is now stained red, Ferdinand’s breeches are stained red, the coat of the horse beneath him turned dark and sticky—all of it blood, blood, so much blood.

“Ferdinand?” Hubert knows his voice is high now, nervous, for reasons he can’t quite say, but—there’s so much blood. He’s no stranger to death, it has come at his hands more times than he could count if he had a lifetime to try to remember, but he favors poison, magic, death swift and from a distance, as if he is an avenging angel carrying out Lady Edelgard’s divine will. He is woefully unprepared for the sight of Ferdinand’s hands slowly losing their grip on his lance, his aristocratic face, so familiar and delicate and strong, going slack and pale, for the slight tilt in his saddle that leads Hubert to inexplicably lean closer and keep him from falling, for the raspy breath that shudders through Ferdinand and makes Hubert understand with vivid clarity the phrase death rattle.

Hubert feels a heat behind his eyes and realizes that he is fighting back tears. The rush of shame that fills him only makes the sting of tears burn hotter, makes them well up faster no matter how hard and fast he blinks them away. This is not how it was supposed to be, not any of it, a voice roars desperately through his chest. They were supposed to unveil a glorious future together, all of them, and the seed that was planted the moment he’d watched the professor, head shaking in disbelief, whisper no, you… it was… you…. killed my father…., and seen them, one by one, Linhardt and Caspar and scared little Bernadetta and sweet Dorothea and proud Petra and then, the last stab that had clawed whatever light was left in him out of his chest with jagged claws, Ferdinand, fear and disappointment in his eyes as he looked at Hubert, all of them go to the professor—that seed of doubt suddenly bears heavy fruit, sickly sweet with the taste of shame. He looks down at Ferdinand’s blood on his hands—his hands, the hands that have shaped an empire, that have conquered half of Fodlan, filled with a magic that has served him well, and realizes that they are the hands of the man he has always told himself to be, a faithful servant, a blade in the dark, a serpent in the grass, viper and vicious—and for all the power and magic that curls within his veins that man has never learned a single goddess-damned healing spell. He looks at Ferdinand, sagging in his arms, eyes fluttering, and thinks about all of the times his professor tried to convince him to sit through a lecture on faith, the useless riding activities she’d forced him to complete with Ferdinand, and wonders what kind of a man the professor would have let him shape himself into.

A single hot tear finally escapes to slide down his face.

Before he lets himself think about everything he is doing, he pushes Ferdinand up and manages to hoist himself onto the charger’s back, hissing at the mare to stay steady as he dislodges Ferdinand’s feet from the stirrups to slide his own in, wraps an arm around the shorter man’s waist to hold him and spurs the mount forward into a recklessly fast gallop back into the fray of the main battle, where the bulk of the resistance forces—the enemy forces—must lie. A soldier—Hubert can’t tell where the soldier is from, Empire or Kingdom or church—steps into their path, axe raised, and Hubert snuffs his life out with a flash of magic that makes him grit his teeth with effort. The horse startles slightly at the rush of it, the hint of sulfur that hangs in the air, and even Ferdinand in front of him groans slightly before Hubert feels a shudder wrack Ferdinand’s body and hears another of those gasping kind of breaths.

“Do not die on me right now, you useless fool. As you are so fond of reminding me, you are Ferdinand von Aegir, and this is not how you are meant to die,” Hubert hisses into Ferdinand’s ear, hoping the familiar venom hides the creeping panic and desperation in his voice as he spurs the horse on ever faster, dangerously fast across this terrain, but he can see the clash of the main forces now, mostly to his left, and further back, near the safety of a small forest, the flash of healing magic. More importantly, he can feel the familiar rustle of Linhardt’s magic that direction, like a cool stream or a brush of silk or the warmth of the sun’s first rays at dawn, remembered from long ago and so different to the feel of his own magic.

He’s almost to them when someone else makes to step into their path, a lean figure with swords criss-crossing his back, and, more importantly for Hubert’s urgent purposes, lightning crackling at his fingertips.

“Come to play, Vestra?” snarls the familiar voice of the Fraldarius heir, and Hubert curses that that useless goddess just can’t let him have this one.

“Healer—” he yells, slowing the horse as much as he dares into a quick canter, trying to raise the hand that isn’t keeping Ferdinand upright and breathing shallowly against his neck in a show of surrender.

“We’re not falling for your tricks, snake,” Fraldarius says again, and he’s drawn a jagged-looking sword and energy is gathering, stronger now, ready to lash out towards Hubert and Ferdinand.

“For goddess’—I’m trying to—you will not stand in my way,” he roars now, and he knows he sounds unhinged, all trace of the ever smooth, ever unruffled hand of the emperor gone now in the crack of his voice, but there’s another rush of hot blood over the hand wrapped around Ferdinand, and he can hear a pained whimper and Hubert is letting his emotion fuel a rush of magic, anger and doubt and fear, gaping aching fear that Ferdinand will die in his arms steps away from a healer because Hubert has made himself into the kind of man no one can trust for even half a second, and he is seconds from letting that magic swallow Fraldarius in darkness when he feels a soft whisper of another magic against him, slipping around and then tightening—and he twists his hand and nothing happens.

He looks up and sees, a few paces behind Fraldarius, the soft blue hair of the von Edmund girl, head actually held high for the first time he can remember, face serene and confident and not haunted by dark circles. Her voice is still soft, but it rings clear enough that Hubert can hear it across the battlefield as she calls to Fraldarius, “it’s okay, Felix, I’ve bound his magic.”

He’s upon them in an instant and dismounting, and von Edmund is calling for others, eyes widening as her hands already begin working over Ferdinand’s wounds. As soon as he can feel the soothing lightness of healing magic prickling nearby, Hubert sags into the rough grip that Fraldarius has on his arms, twisted behind his back as if the man doesn’t quite believe in the binding magic.

“You’ll be our prisoner. I’ll take you to the professor,” Fraldarius tells him, voice rough. But for all of that, he doesn’t make Hubert begin to walk away, across the battlefield where the last of the imperial forces are being routed, until Linhardt has looked up and told them that Ferdinand will live, and Hubert stores that small kindness in the place inside of him where once he thinks he might have had a heart.

⁂

Death, Ferdinand thinks, should be less painful than this.

He’d always expected to float softly into an afterlife, into the goddess’ warm embrace. As it is, he exists in darkness and pain, flickering between the dark swallow of unconsciousness and a burning that engulfs the entire left side of his torso.

Sometimes he dreams that someone is touching him—a hesitant brush of fingers that seem oddly scarred against his own hand, his forearm, once against his cheek. He knows he must have died, because once he thinks he smells coffee—a scent he’d thought he’d long ago forgotten but that must have been waiting in the deepest recesses of his memory to return, to torment him with memories of late nights shoulder to shoulder with fastidious handwriting and sharp smiles and green eyes he’d fooled himself into thinking he saw an ounce of kindness in, with imagined futures where that kindness was real and they’d been able to sit together and plan a new world, one that was actually kinder and better and not just needlessly forged in blood.

The fact that he realizes this can only be imagined is what convinces him he’s alive—if he were dead, the memory of a future he could never have wouldn’t hurt quite so badly.

After what feels like wading through a never-ending swamp of pain and confusion, he gives an almighty heave of effort—and blinks at the late afternoon sunlight filtering into the familiar infirmary at the monastery. He groans slightly, and his eyes focus enough to see Marianne, sitting in a chair in the corner, giving him a bright, reassuring smile.

“Marianne,” he croaks. It takes two tries, and his voice is rough like sandpaper from what must be long disuse. “What happened? I… I thought…”

“We can talk about it all later,” she says in a soft voice, leaning forward to pat his arm reassuringly, and Ferdinand ignores the pang of disappointment that it must have been Marianne touching him all along, “but you were hurt very badly. There was an ambush, and you would have died if it hadn’t been for—”

He is startled by the sound of the door opening, and then the shattering of what sounds like ceramic against the floor. His nostrils flare as he smells coffee.

“Marianne,” he whispers, “I think I have a head injury.”

Turning over to look in the direction of the doorway feels like a monumental effort, a thousand times worse than opening his eyes or speaking, and certainly not worth the pain of turning just to see that his senses are deceiving him and he will find only Manuela or Annette in the doorway, not worth the useless pang of disappointment even after all of these years. He thought he’d shoved that hope deep down inside of him and let it die long ago; the fact that, faced with near-death, this is what his brain has chosen to bring to the surface almost offends him.

“… Ferdinand?”

The voice is unmistakeable, even if he has never quite heard it sound so hesitant, so disbelieving, so far from the cold certainty that had marked their school days.

Ferdinand whips his head around so quickly it sends a deep pulse of nausea through him, forcing his eyes shut as he fights back a groan. Barely moments later, there are hands at his arm, gentle and hesitant.

When he forces his eyes open again, the sight makes him draw in a sharp breath. Hubert is kneeling at the side of his bed. His hair has the tousled look of having had hands run through it repeatedly, he is even paler than Ferdinand remembers, and the bags under his eyes are so deep and dark they look like bruises, but it is unmistakably him.

“What... how?” Ferdinand whispers. Hubert shifts slightly and Ferdinand looks down to realize that there are chains on Hubert’s wrists. He doesn’t know if he’s more surprised at their existence, or at how little they seem to bother Hubert in this moment.