#trans hubert

Once she’s ascertained that her looming presence hasn’t spooked the pegasus, Helena takes a few slow, quiet steps into the stables and toward the pen. The pegasus lifts its head; its dark eyes look like they’re searching for something. Helena forces herself to maintain eye contact.

After a long, long moment that feels like it’s frozen in time, the pegasus snorts and turns away, the equestrian equivalent of a shrug.

Helena takes a step closer.

“Are you nervous?”

Ferdinand’s voice nearly makes her flinch. It’s not loud—in fact, by Ferdinand standards, it’s practically a whisper—but in the still and sacred silence of the moment, it feels like he’s broken something. Helena never lets her guard down, and yet…

“My apologies,” Ferdinand says, strolling into the stables. “Perhaps I should not have disturbed you.”

The pegasus doesn’t seem particularly bothered by his presence, probably since he’s in here all the time, so Helena shakes her head and says, “No, no. It may actually be better if you are here as well.”

Ferdinand glances over at the pegasus. “This one is new,” he says. “She has yet to bond with any particular person. I had a feeling you would be drawn to her.”

Helena says nothing. She can remember another time, many years ago, when she fell into a trance at the sight of a pegasus, and it haunts her to this day.

The pegasus wanders over to them, its hooves clip-clopping softly against the hay-covered floor of the pen, until its head pokes out from over the door, only inches from Helena. When it snorts, she can feel the breath shooting out of its nostrils, and despite herself, she chuckles.

“Here,” Ferdinand says and takes her lightly by the wrist. Helena opens her mouth to ask him what he’s doing, but then he slowly places her gloved hand against the pegasus’s neck. The warmth and life pulses beneath her palm. Ferdinand retracts his hand.

For a long moment, it’s just Helena and the pegasus, eyes locked as they silently parse whether or not they can trust each other. Helena remembers what her father told her years ago and wonders how the creature views her. Am I still a man to you? Or can you see me for what I am?

Finally, the pegasus sighs and closes its eyes. Helena makes sure not to let her relief show.

—

When she was a child, Helena watched from the ground as the majestic Adrestian pegasus knights trained in the clouds, wielding lances and magic with ease and grace as their faithful steeds swooped and glided across the sky. At night, she would stare out her bedroom window and dream of the day that she could feel just a little bit closer to them.

“Father,” she said one day during breakfast, “what if I were to become a pegasus knight?”

Marquis Vestra nearly choked on his coffee. Helena was undeterred.

“It would be useful to Lady Edelgard,” she continued, “if I could fly into the sky and search for enemies from afar. I could strike them down before they ever neared her. And,” she added quietly, “I think I would enjoy it.”

Her father shook his head. “I’m afraid that is most likely not possible, my son.”

Even back then, Helena flinched at the word “son,” though she couldn’t understand why it made her skin crawl.

“Why not?” she demanded, trying her best not to let the indignation seep into her voice.

“Because, Hubert,” her father said, “you are a boy, and pegasi tend to bond almost exclusively with women. Have you never wondered why all our pegasus riders are female?”

Helena had never noticed. All she knew was that when she looked at the pegasus knights, she felt as though she belonged with them, in more ways than one. More than anything, she wanted to be one of them. Her father’s words stung for reasons she couldn’t properly explain.

“Then I’ll search for a pegasus that will bond with a boy,” she declared, folding her arms over her chest.

Her father said nothing to that, but she could feel his pity. It was one of the first times she felt like a broken child, a failure of a boy, for wanting something that other boys knew not to long for. She went to her room and sulked until Edelgard knocked on her door, and Helena remembered that she had a job to do, so she forced thoughts of flying and freedom out of her mind and resumed the role of the obedient son.

—

Helena names the black pegasus Morgana, a name that suggests something dark and beautiful and deadly: the sort of thing Helena loves, the sort of thing she strives every day to be.

Petra and Constance, the Strike Force’s resident fliers, graciously take some time out of their schedules to meet with Helena in the courtyard and teach her how to fly. With the clouds completely covering the sun, Constance stands out in the open with confidence.

“It is not much different from riding,” Petra says placatingly, “just that it is in the sky.”

Of course Helena knows that, but it doesn’t stop her from remembering a certain dizzying moment, the moment she realized that she, too, had a weakness: heights.

“We can start at a low altitude,” Constance says. “It is clear already that the lovely Morgana has become quite comfortable around you. She shouldn’t cause you any problems while you’re up there.”

That’s true enough, at least. Over the past few days, she’s joined Ferdinand on stable duty, paying particular attention to Morgana, building a sense of trust between them. Still, as Helena hops onto the pegasus and takes hold of the reins, she can’t help but wonder if it’s even worth it to try, or if it will end in failure, embarrassment, weakness.

Then again, she thought that about a certain other decision too, and now she’s glad she took the risk.

Morgana senses her nervousness, so when Helena commands the pegasus to take her into the sky, she spreads her wings slowly, trotting across the grass before gently lifting off. Helena’s heart leaps out of her body as she feels the solid, reliable ground fall away beneath them.

Once they reach about the height of Garreg Mach’s second story, Morgana makes a wide turn so that they can once again face Constance and Petra. Constance claps, and Petra gives Helena a thumbs-up.

As she floats in midair, Helena takes a long, deep breath, gradually dislodging the lump in her throat. This’ll take some work, for sure, but it helps that she’s not alone, that she has people supporting her—not that she’d ever admit it.

—

Edelgard spotted it first: a beautiful white pegasus left unattended in the courtyard where they played.

“Look!” she said, grabbing Helena’s hand and pointing toward it.

At the sight of it, Helena’s chest felt like it might burst with a deadly concoction of fear and longing. It was everything she wanted, and it was so close, but something kept her rooted in place.

It was Edelgard who shoved her toward it. “Now’s your chance!” she whispered. It’s almost unimaginable now, to think of the serious, determined, refined empress as having once been so mischievous.

At first, the pegasus barely acknowledged her; it seemed to be waiting for something, its owner, most likely. Helena took this as permission to step closer, reaching her hand out slowly and resting it against its neck.

The pegasus snorted and clopped its hoof on the ground. Helena, normally so astute, paid no heed to whatever was happening around her, focused only on running her small fingers through the creature’s mane.

“Psst!” Edelgard hissed, momentarily breaking her from her trance. “Get on it!”

Helena doesn’t blame her for what happened next. She never has.

Heart pounding in her chest, Helena reached up and grabbed the horn of the saddle. At the same time, she put one foot in the stirrup. She’d been trained to ride horses, after all; this, she rationalized, shouldn’t be much different.

She was only halfway through hoisting herself up when the pegasus whinnied loudly and bolted.

Helena gripped the horn with one hand and snatched the reins with the other. Unable to swing her other leg over, she found herself hanging limply from the horse’s side as the creature took off into the clouds.

As the distance between herself and the ground grew rapidly, Helena clung to the pegasus for dear life. She could see everyone below her shrinking; soon, the buildings looked more like dollhouses. Her heart hammered in her ears, and her knuckles turned almost as white as the pegasus with the strength and desperation of her grip. She wanted to scream, but her entire body was paralyzed with terror.

This was nothing like she had imagined.

Edelgard must have run to get help, or someone else must have noticed the spooked pegasus and the child in the sky, because a few harrowing moments later, the pegasus’s owner ran outside and whistled for it.

At that, the pegasus turned and swooped back down, carrying a profoundly shaken Helena with it. As soon as it hit the ground, Helena jumped off the beast’s back and crouched down in the grass, her whole body shaking. She could faintly hear her father yelling and Edelgard’s frantic apologies, but the words jumbled together in her mind. All she could do was sit there, motionless, with Edelgard’s arms around her, until the fog of panic lifted.

Even back then, she hated admitting when her father was right, but she could see she’d been a fool. She could never become a pegasus knight. It was pointless to even entertain the thought.

—

It seems so far away now, that hopelessness, that fear. Helena once thought she’d feel stuck forever, longing for something she can’t have and someone she can’t be. She’d even resigned herself to that fate, a fate of pretending, of bottling up her desires and shoving them into a dark, cobwebbed corner of her mind, never to see the light of day again.

Yet here she is, in the year 1186, flying.

She’s developed a habit of starting her day with a morning ride, letting the rising sun warm her face and the wind clear her head. The height doesn’t send her into a panic anymore; she knows what she’s doing, and she knows Morgana would never let her fall. Instead, she peers down at the ground far below her and feels strangely at ease. Up here, she can be free. Up here, she can be herself.

She finds comfort and even glee in the fact that her father was wrong, so wrong, in more ways than one. He told her she could never be a pegasus knight because she was a boy. Well, she’s soaring high through the sky now, and she is not a boy. It doesn’t matter to her what he would think, but she’ll admit, she takes a sort of morbid pleasure in imagining him rolling in his grave at what she’s become. Who she’s become.