Work Text:
Hubert von Vestra, fourth son of Marquise Vestra, eight-year-old boy, and retainer to the six-year-old Princess Edelgard von Hresvelg, wanted to be a pegasus knight.
“You can’t be a pegasus knight,” said Joachim, one of Edelgard’s older brothers.
“Hubert can be a pegasus knight if he wants to,” Edelgard retorted, her hands planted on her hips.
“No,” said Justine, who was one of Edelgard’s older sisters and seemed to resent having to play with her today, “only girls can be pegasus knights. They don’t let boys ride them.”
“It’s all make-believe,” Edelgard insisted. “Hubert can be a pegasus knight if he wants to,” she repeated.
“We already have a pegasus knight,” said Heidemarie, who was Edelgard’s closest sister in age. “We can’t have two.”
“Why not?”
“It won’t be fun with two,” she said. “Why’s your vassal get to play with us, anyway? Ours don’t.”
Uncomfortable with being the center of attention, Hubert glanced across the courtyard to the table where the other retainers (a few second cousins and siblings) stood silent, waiting, watching, and likely bored to tears. That was where he belonged. “Never mind, Lady Edelgard,” he said, tugging on her sleeve to get her attention. “I’ll just stand back and watch.”
“You’re playing with us,” Edelgard retorted. “Hubert is my friend,” she told her older siblings, “and he gets to play with us, and he gets to be a pegasus knight if he wants to.”
“He’ll have to be a girl if he wants to be a pegasus knight,” Justine said, distaste staining her lips.
“He can be a boy and ride a pegasus if he wants.”
“No, pegasuses don’t let boys ride them!” she insisted.
“Pegasi,” Hubert spoke up, but no one heard him.
They kept arguing. Justine was older, bigger, stronger, and used to getting her way, but Edelgard was fiercer and never gave up.
“You can be the pegasus knight, El,” Joachim offered in the spirit of compromise, as he was one of the middlest children and often found himself in the position of peacemaker between elder and younger, “and Hubert can be… an archer, or a bishop. Or a wyvern rider. That’s practically the same thing.”
Hubert didn’t think so. Wyverns were hideous. Pegasi were pretty.
“But I’m the pegasus knight,” Heidemarie whined.
“You can be the pegasus knight tomorrow.”
“But I don’t want to be the pegasus knight. Hubert wants to be a pegasus knight,” Edelgard said.
“No,” Hubert said, “I’ve changed my mind. I want to be a wyvern rider. That’s practically the same thing.”
They played in the courtyard for the rest of the afternoon. And even though he did not get to be a pegasus knight, and even though Edelgard’s older siblings clearly wanted nothing to do with him, Hubert had fun. That was, until Edelgard tripped and fell and skinned her knee.
That evening, Hubert’s father screamed at him until he’d gone hoarse and sent him to bed without any supper. Hubert learned two important lessons that day. First, he was not Edelgard’s friend. Second, boys could not be pegasus knights.
In Hubert’s book of stories, which he received from Edelgard for his ninth birthday (he tried to refuse the gift, but she insisted and insisted and insisted until he gave in), there was a story about a little boy who wished to be a pegasus knight, so he prayed to the Goddess every night until one morning, he awoke to find that he had become a girl. Hubert didn’t want to be a girl, he told himself, and he had become a little less keen on being a pegasus knight after an incident in the stables had led to a thorough chewing-out from the stablehand and later from his father. And besides, whenever he read that story, he felt a funny sort of fluttering ache in his heart that made him very uncomfortable.
But still, he read it often, so often that the pages became exceptionally worn, and he ripped them out of the book and hid them, scratching out the story’s title in the table of contents to cover his tracks (he was not, to say the least, the consummate spymaster he would grow up to be). And he prayed the boy’s same prayer to the Goddess every night, because Edelgard had told him that the Goddess answered all goodhearted people’s prayers, and she would have wanted him to. And he had a good heart, didn’t he?
And then, one day when Hubert was ten years old, Edelgard and her siblings were scattered to all corners of Fódlan, and all of Hubert’s siblings and first, second, and third cousins who were assigned to them as retainers remained in Enbarr. He worried more than any of the others for his charge’s safety and prayed every night for her safe return, but he also prayed his secret prayer. Years passed by. Hubert prayed every night. He prayed every prayer that Edelgard would want him to pray, for her, for him.
When he next saw Edelgard again, she was twelve and he was fourteen. Her chestnut hair had turned snow-white, her skin pale from lack of sunlight and littered with scars save for her unblemished face, her frame gaunt and frail, her eyes haunted and weary. He later learned that after some time in Faerghus (she barely remembered it anymore, nor did she clearly recall much from before then either), she had been secretly put in the dungeons beneath the imperial palace with the rest of her siblings, all of whom had become terribly ill and had either perished or lost their faculties. In all those years, the Goddess had not once answered her prayers for salvation. In fact, it was as though the Goddess had punished her.
Hubert was ashamed. Part of him wondered if his selfish desires had kept the Goddess from hearing Edelgard’s prayers, or worse, had brought this fate upon her. And besides, if the Goddess was so callous that she could not answer the desperate pleas of the most good-hearted person he knew, then what hope was there for him and his insipid dreams? And what use was there in worshiping such an evil creature?
He burned those pages to ash, pledged himself to Edelgard’s side forevermore, and never again raised his hands in prayer.
He set those childish dreams aside for many years until he came with Edelgard to the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach Monastery.
Hubert had grown up to be tall, dark, and consummately villainous in appearance. He towered over most people his age and the vast majority of his classmates save for Raphael, a cheerful and solidly-built fellow from the Golden Deer house and Dedue, a brick wall of a man from Duscur who served as the retainer to Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. He was not as broadly built as those two by a long shot, though he would have hardly called himself slender. He wore black. His skin was pale, almost sickly so from too little time in the sunlight and too much time skulking around at night. Hair the color of crow’s feathers, slightly wavy and reaching just barely to the nape of his neck, fell over his brow. His face had high, sharply defined cheekbones and a strong jaw. He wore gloves at all times, as Edelgard did to hide her scars, to cover up the splotchy burns on his fingertips from overuse of dark magic. And his voice was a low and sinister rasp, his laugh a wicked cackle that bubbled up from his chest and frightened small children and adults with especially weak constitutions.
He himself had little interest in being a student, especially given that most of his fellow classmates were anywhere from two to five years his junior, and even less interest in surrounding himself with the lies of the Church, but he was Edelgard’s shadow; wherever she went, wherever her path led, he trailed behind. For one year, they would play pretend, like they once had, while Edelgard secretly furthered her plots to reform the world.
Hubert did, on occasion, find himself enjoying his environment. Though he didn’t like the meaningless busywork of studying at the academy and all of its distractions from his chosen path (though he had to admit that Professor Byleth Eisner, though quite a cipher, was somehow a prodigy of pedagogy), he was a model student, and Garreg Mach had quite a large library filled with interesting books of history and politics as long as one could stomach the church propaganda and read between the lines. Some of the other students were worthy opponents in chess and other battles of wits. The market, flooded with merchants from all corners of Fódlan, had coffee beans from Dagda that were almost unheard of outside of Enbarr; the kitchen, on occasion, had some of his favorite meals.
There was one diversion he treasured most of all, though he would not dare allow anyone to know about it. On some afternoons, whenever he was not so occupied with his studies or his duties to Edelgard, he could watch students training to be pegasus knights guide their mounts through the air and weave through the monastery’s spires and steeples, some with more success than others. In his brighter moods, he enjoyed basking in the majesty of those noble winged steeds as the sunbeams fluttered in the slow flaps of their mighty wings. In his fouler moods, he eagerly awaited the sights and sounds of a less-prepared student losing control and falling from her mount to the ground below.
Edelgard’s work sometimes required him to engage in very suspicious behavior; failing would mean death by extremely swift and painful execution, the fate that met all would-be revolutionaries. Fortunately, he’d only ever slipped up when he’d misplaced an ether-soaked handkerchief, and Professor Eisner had simply returned it to him with no questions asked. But for some reason, though, the one time he’d felt most nervous about slipping up and revealing something hadn’t been then, but rather when he had misplaced his straight razor.
He always told himself the straight razor was for quickly and easily slitting an unwitting enemy’s throat, making a light comment about ‘preferring a close shave’ to himself whenever he entertained the idea, but he used it far more often on his own face than anybody’s neck. He would hardly call himself vain, but the sight of a single rebellious black hair sprouting from his chin would revolt him. The last thing he wanted on his face was a beard or a mustache or anything so vaguely resembling sideburns, any of those hideous things the men who had betrayed the office of the emperor—his own father among them—wore on their faces.
It was because he used it so frequently, though not for murder, that he had found himself uniquely anxious when he lost it. Anxious! As though the process of growing out a patch of rough, itchy, thoroughly annoying stubble was akin to letting the Knights of Seiros discover his and Edelgard’s heretical secrets!
But Professor Eisner had simply found it and returned it to him without so much as a raised eyebrow and he had felt more relieved than he by all rights ought to have.
Before then, he hadn’t trusted the professor farther than he could throw her, despite Edelgard’s clear infatuation with her. But somehow, that moment had later on felt like a prelude. When Edelgard had declared her war, Byleth Eisner had stood unequivocally at her side. In the opening volley of the war, Hubert had found himself entertaining the possibility that she had been sent to him and Edelgard by a rival of the Goddess to bring her low.
Professor Byleth had also ended up being the first person besides Edelgard herself whom he would tell about his childish dream of being a pegasus knight.
“I can put you on wyvern rider training,” she had said then. “That’s practically the same thing.”
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” he had replied, choosing his words carefully, “but I am… afraid of heights.”
One of Hubert’s most important jobs at the monastery had been to carefully study and interrogate each of the Black Eagles to assess how loyal they would be to Edelgard when the time came. Professor Byleth Eisner, unfortunately, made that job much, much more difficult, because she kept adding people to the house. At Garreg Mach, it wasn’t unusual for one or two students a term to transfer from one house to another, though the houses generally were divided along geographic lines. But Byleth collected students from the other houses like trinkets. First had been Sylvain from the Blue Lions, a loudmouthed, womanizing lout who deserved far fewer teeth than what he had in his mouth who had signed up for the Black Eagles not even two weeks after Byleth had been made its professor. Eventually, Byleth had collected Lysithea from the Golden Deer, whose stark snow-white hair had mirrored Edelgard’s own, Ashe from the Blue Lions, Ingrid from the Blue Lions (who had ostensibly joined to keep Sylvain on a tighter leash—Hubert had wished her luck in that particular thankless endeavor), and four former students, all dishonorably expelled, who had somehow managed to get themselves re-enrolled after going on an adventure with Byleth, Edelgard, Claude, Dimitri, Ashe, Linhardt, and Hilda which none of them cared much to speak about (Hubert and Dedue had spent well over a week fruitlessly searching together for their respective lords together, an experience neither of them cared much to speak about either).
Hubert interrogated one of those last four students over tea, though he preferred coffee. Tea was always too floral, too delicate, too refreshing. He preferred the bitter taste of black coffee, the wonderful aroma that belied its bite, the sharpness and alertness it bequeathed him as though a spell had been cast on his mind to dispel even the most persistent weariness.
The student’s name was Constance von Nuvelle, and she was an altogether unusual kind of pegasus knight. For starters, her steed Deimos was a rare breed of pegasus bred in Nuvelle with a coat and plumage as dark as a moonless night. Secondly, she dispelled with lances and spears altogether and instead rained magical devastation upon her foes with storms of fire, lightning, and ice. Hubert often couldn’t help but feel bitterly jealous that there was a class of soldier that fit him perfectly, yet was utterly denied to him due to the unfortunate habit pegasi had of trying to crush the ribs of men who came too close to them with their back hooves. Not that Hubert had ever found that out firsthand, fortunately.
“I do hope you do not mind that I cannot share my tea with you,” Constance crowed—she crowed everything she said—“but this is, I am afraid, a very special blend of tea for very special women with special needs. I drink it every Wednesday. If it offends you that I cannot offer you a drink, perhaps we can reschedule.”
“One would have to go to extreme lengths to offend me,” Hubert said.
“I heard that one would need only disrespect Her Highness.”
“Like I said—one would have to go to extreme lengths.”
“Well, I, of course, have no intention of going to such extremes. Lady Edelgard and I have been on a bizarre adventure together and our experience has wedded us to each other like sisters!”
Hubert had heard very nasty rumors that House Nuvelle was exceptionally inbred even among noble bloodlines and wondered if it was because its members kept making malapropisms such as that. “Lady Edelgard has no sisters,” he pointed out coldly.
“Well then,” Constance said with a jaunty twirl of her parasol—she always took her tea in the shade, and her staunch aversion to sunlight made Hubert wonder if she were perhaps some kind of vampire taking human form and hiding her dark nature beneath long curls of golden hair and garish clashes of salmon-pink and aquamarine—“I intend to be the best of friends with her.” She took a sip of her tea.
The interrogation went on long enough that Hubert began to feel it was a waste of time. And then Ferdinand von Aegir butted in, which made it even more of a waste of time.
Ferdinand von Aegir. How Hubert hated Ferdinand von Aegir! He hated his pretty face, his boundless puppy-like enthusiasm, his carrot-red hair. He hated his obsession with challenging Edelgard to her face, with constantly trying to one-up her, his grating manner of introducing himself—“I am Ferdinand von Aegir!” When the Black Eagles were out on their assignments to ‘clean up’ Fódlan on behalf of the church, he even shouted it at common bandits before he cut them down! Most of all, Hubert hated that he was the Prime Minister’s son and did not even know why that made him so detestable.
“Hello there, Lady Constance.” He bowed. “Hubert.” He bowed again. “A pleasure to see the both of you on this fine summer day. Pray tell, what blend of tea are you enjoying? Could you please enjoin me to enjoy it with you?”
Constance looked down at the murky, blood-red tea half-filling her teacup, raised it to her lips, and took a long draught from it. “I do apologize, my dear friend, but it is, alas, far too bitter for your tastes.”
“Ah.” Ferdinand looked to Hubert with a smile that was nearly blinding. “Hubert, do you not prefer bitter tasting beverages yourself? It is awfully rude, Lady Constance, to have tea and not offer your guests any. It sounds as though you may finally find a tea you can stand the taste of, Hubert.”
She laughed. Her laugh could have been heard across the academy grounds. “Ah, Ferdinand! You misunderstand, dear friend. This tea is for medicinal purposes only. It is a special tea for special women such as myself! I must drink it once a week without fail, and Wednesdays are preferable.”
“Oh, I see! Is it, then, something to mitigate your… sunlight problem?”
Constance’s smile vanished. “I think you have bothered us enough, Ferdinand von Aegir,” she said curtly.
“Very well,” he said, retreating. “I shan’t bother you any longer. Do take care.”
She drained the rest of her tea to its dregs. Once the interrogation was finished, Hubert decided that he liked her, or at the very least could stand to tolerate her.
“So,” Edelgard said as she ran a comb through her glossy white hair, “I hear you have been spending quite a lot of time loitering near the stables. Not slacking off, are we?”
“By no means,” Hubert said, shaking his head. “Merely observing the flight patterns of our airborne scouts.”
It was almost a year into Edelgard’s war of conquest. Garreg Mach was now the Adrestian Empire’s forward operating base, a center of command that sat like a jewel in the exact center of Fódlan. Much blood had been shed for territory that would change hands between the Empire and Faerghus one day and Faerghus and the Empire the next. Byleth had been missing, presumed dead, since the opening volley of the war, though Edelgard refused to lose hope. Her former classmates, and even some of the former faculty, now comprised an elite spearhead at the front of her army—the Black Eagle Strike Force.
“Understandable.” Edelgard let a faint smile shine through her composed facade. “They are beautiful things, aren’t they? Just don’t get too close to them, or somebody might make a fuss.”
Hubert nodded. Long ago, cheered on by Edelgard and her very excitable younger brother Pascal, he’d crept into the stables of the imperial palace and dared to lift his hand to a pegasus’ flank. Everyone had always said that pegasi reacted violently to the touch of a man, and many boys had gotten crushed ribs in their attempts to disprove it as silly superstition. He didn’t recall being kicked in the chest when he’d run his fingers across the beast’s coat, which might have put him to bed for weeks at best and killed him at worst, but he did recall waiting for the worst to happen just long enough that some part of him began to wonder if it really had been silly superstition all this time… followed by being urgently dragged away by a stablehand and loudly berated by her on his father’s behalf for daring to do something so stupid and reckless until Edelgard had confessed to having put him up to it. He was shocked Edelgard recalled it at all—she remembered nearly nothing of the time before her abduction.
Edelgard shifted her attention to the ballgown hanging at the side of her dresser. “I do hope I will not be underdressed,” she mused, picking it up off the rack and letting it hang from her upraised hands.
Hubert bowed. “You are Emperor Edelgard, first and last of her name. You will shine brighter than anybody else in the room, regardless of your outfit.”
“Thank you, Hubert.” She considered the dress again. “It is not… plain, is it? I know this is a bad time to ask, but…”
“Plain suits you. You are not some emptyheaded, vacuous noble who requires gaudy excess to substitute for a lack of shining personality.”
“You’re right. I do despise noble excess; and I must lead by example, must I not?”
Hubert bowed. “You must. That said…”
Edelgard sighed. She and Hubert had had this conversation before. In fact, she and Hubert had had this conversation several times before today alone. “Hubert. For the last time. You will have to hang back and observe from the outside. Only women are invited to this soiree. I cannot have you by my side.”
“That is precisely why I smell a trap, Lady Edelgard.”
“I will have a dagger strapped to my thigh, if it worries you,” she said, motioning to the decorative dagger and leather strap resting on her dresser amid scattered makeup tools. Hubert often wondered why Edelgard kept a dagger of Faerghus origin so close to her side, but knew better than to question it.
“I know, Your Majesty.”
“What are you suggesting we do, then? Are you offering to dress in drag?”
“I am offering to do whatever I must to stay by your side.”
Edelgard gave him a bemused look. “Do you honestly think that would work, Hubert?”
“I shall make it work. For your sake.”
“Well, then,” she said, “I trust you. My carriage leaves tomorrow morning. Be ready by then.”
Hubert nodded. “You can depend on me, Lady Edelgard. I shall not fail you.”
He stepped outside into the dormitory hallway, and it was only then, once he was no longer in Edelgard’s presence, that the full weight of what he had just committed himself to came crashing down on him.
And so he rushed down the hall, ran down the stairs, hurried along the stone path to Dorothea’s room, and knocked on the door. Dorothea Arnaut was a commoner who had scrounged up the money to enroll in Garreg Mach from her adolescent career as a diva of the Mittelfrank Opera Company and had came to the academy for the sole reason of finding a wealthy nobleman she could stand the sight of long enough to marry, though she often seemed much happier flirting with fellow women than with men. Now she was here to fight in Edelgard’s war—her, the woman who’d vomited the first time she’d had to cut down a bandit in her second month at the academy.
She answered the door almost immediately. “Hubie? What a… pleasant surprise? I don’t recall asking you on a date,” she said with a teasing smile and gleam in her green eyes, tossing locks of her luxuriously curled and long brown hair over one shoulder, “but if you insist, then…”
“Cease your jests. I am in urgent need of your assistance.” He stepped past her into her room. “Close the door.”
Dorothea eyed him suspiciously. “Excuse me? Hubie, what’s gotten into you?”
He told her what he had told Edelgard.
Her eyes widened. She clasped a hand to her mouth. “…You really agreed to that? I have to say, your dedication to Edie never ceases to amaze me.”
“If mine is a hopeless case, then let me know, and I shall be on my way,” Hubert said, crossing his arms and scowling at her. He was in no mood for games and banter. The more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. Six foot three, broad shoulders, strong cheekbones, and that sinister voice of his—he couldn’t pull this off if he had a year to prepare, let alone an evening.
“Hopeless?” Dorothea laughed. “Wait ‘til I tell you about some of the things we had to do back at the Mittelfrank Opera Co—”
She stopped in mid-sentence.
“Yes?” Hubert asked, tapping his foot impatiently.
“You stay right here,” she said, inching toward the door. “I am going to collect some… resources.”
Hubert found that he didn’t like the way Dorothea had said resources.
Dorothea’s resources turned out to be two massive suitcases full of clothes and makeup and the former Golden Deer house’s teacher and academy physician, Manuela Casagranda, whom Hubert recalled had been Dorothea’s mentor in the opera company.
He was almost relieved; he’d almost expected Dorothea to call the entire Black Eagle Strike Force together to laugh at him. Then again, Linhardt was probably too lazy to care, Bernadetta would be terrified of him either way, and Ferdinand would probably take it as a challenge and vow to be twice the crossdresser Hubert could ever hope to be (Hubert had allowed himself a faint flicker of a smile at the thought of Ferdinand wearing a dress).
Manuela clapped her hands together, a sparkle in her eyes. “Ah, this takes me back! Dorothea, remember when we had to fit that basso into a dress for Love’s Labor Won?”
“I hope you don’t mind me bringing her along,” Dorothea said to Hubert, motioning to him to take a seat. “She has more experience than me with costuming.”
“Only by a hair, darling.”
Wearing a dress wouldn’t be so bad, Hubert tried to convince himself. It surely couldn’t be that different from wearing robes, and as a master of dark magic, his preferred battle garb consisted exclusively of flowing black robes.
“It is not too different from wearing a mage’s robes, is it?” he asked.
Manuela laughed. “Of course it is! Mages’ robes are shapeless, ugly things. Well, at least, the men’s are. They cover up your curves. A good dress accentuates your curves.”
Hubert looked down at himself. He had no curves to speak of. He was, for the most part, a flat line from top to bottom. “I hope you do see the problem here, Professor.”
“Accentuates your curves… or the illusion of curves.” Manuela winked. “Stand up; I think I have a corset here in your size.”
“A corset? I need to be able to breathe—”
“Oh, don’t believe those paternalistic lies men spread about corsets,” Dorothea interjected. “A well-fitted one is fine; you won’t even feel it.”
“You know the fat lady who sings at the end of every opera?” Manuela asked.
“Is she in this room right now?” Hubert asked.
“Hubie, we’re trying to help you,” Dorothea said. “Or we could leave you with all this and let you puzzle it all out yourself…”
“Ah. I see. Comment retracted.”
“As I was saying,” Manuela said, glaring at him, “A good corset can make that fat lady as curvy as an Almyran belly dancer. That, plus some… generous bodice stuffing… you’d be surprised what we can do with that blank canvas you call a body.” She began to rummage through one of the suitcases.
“So, Hubie, what color did you have in mind for your ensemble?” Dorothea asked.
“Black,” he said. “Black as night.”
“You’re going to a fancy soiree attended by the women of the rotten upper crust of the Empire,” she said, “not a funeral.”
“Black as good coffee.”
“We can use some black,” Manuela said. “But please, Hubert, indulge us. Give us at least one color. You need to look festive.”
“Pink?” Dorothea suggested.
Hubert’s mind revolted at the possibility of seeing himself decked out in pink. “Dark… very dark blue or violet,” he said. “Or burgundy. Burgundy.”
“Red and black,” Manuela murmured. “Very patriotic, I see.”
For the Empire, he told himself as the work began. As it turned out, beyond the corset—which, as Dorothea had said, did not impede his breathing anywhere near what he’d been expecting—Manuela had plenty of other items for padding out one’s physique, as sometimes the best singer for a role needed significant help to look the part. Hubert, out of some sense of mortified embarrassment he supposed, found himself too nervous to appraise their work or even acknowledge that it was being done to him, while at the same time he mentally cataloged every bit of it so he could apply it himself.
“You hanging in there, Hubie?” Dorothea asked him. “You’ve got the classic ‘lie back and think of Adrestia’ look a particularly unfortunate girl has on her wedding night.”
“I have never felt better, Dorothea,” he replied, wondering if the smirk lingering on her face was at his expense.
Next came the clothes. Dorothea had, fortunately, found something high-collared that Hubert could only hope would hide the bulge in his throat and anything he might miss while shaving. The dress, the bodice, the petticoats—there was so much to keep track of. Hubert wondered how in the world Manuela had shoes in his size.
And then, of course, the makeup, which he assumed he needed more desperately than the clothes but worried would make him look utterly ridiculous. Manuela spent the whole time explaining everything she did, every tool she used, how it was best to use a foundation with an orange tint on his chin and jaw to counteract the pale gray-blue shadow of even freshly shaved facial hair, how to apply eyeshadow and eyeliner and mascara, where and when to use rouge…
Hubert wondered how in blazes Manuela knew so much about making men look like women. Surely all these subtle details she kept impressing on him were utterly useless for stage work, where the audience was far too far away to see the performer’s face in such detail. But he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He hung onto every word, even though in the corner of his mind he felt he was being given a jester’s facepaint.
At last, with everything else done, Dorothea tied his hair up and went through Manuela’s collection of wigs. “So, Hubie? Care to be a blonde for the ball? Or a redhead? I think I have green or pink in here if that suits your fancy…”
“Black,” he said.
“Whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re one with simple tastes, huh,” she muttered, tossing aside the mane of long blue hair she’d dug out and giving him a long black hairpiece. “And how do you want it styled? Should I put it into cinnamon roll buns, like Edie?”
“I would not mock her hairstyle,” Hubert said. “Can it simply be left straight?”
“We’ll have to do something fancy,” Manuela said. “How about you ask Ferdinand for advice?”
Ferdinand was still a pompous ass who fancied himself a rival to Edelgard but had nonetheless pledged himself to fight for her cause, and it was because of the latter that Hubert had not had him disappeared due to his sheer annoyance. Over the past year his fiery carrot-red hair had grown down to brush his shoulders and threatened to grow even longer, which was by his admission due to not having the time to have it cut. He did, however, have the time to wash it, comb it, and treat it with all the same care and dedication as his prized mare Cymbeline’s mane, so Hubert concluded he was simply vain.
“No,” Hubert said. “Do what you will with it, I suppose.”
Dorothea and Manuela did what they would with it, pleating the long strands of black hair into a curtain of flowing tresses and then placing the wig upon his head as though it were a mockery of Edelgard’s horned crown.
“…And there we are,” Manuela said, putting her hands on her hips and smiling a satisfied smile. “Dorothea, fetch a mirror for the belle of the ball, please.”
Hubert took a deep breath as Dorothea brought a hand mirror to him, feeling as though he had just been made a fool of. Before he could look at himself, two horrifying expectations filled his mind.
First, he feared that he would look into it and see a hideous, comical caricature, a garish clown straight out of a lowbrow pantomime skit. Second, he feared that what he had once been told as a young boy, that men who disguised themselves as women derived some perverted erotic thrill from the experience, would prove itself to be true.
He did not see a clown staring back at him in the mirror. What he saw was a woman’s face. A woman with sharp cheekbones and crow’s-feather hair and a piercing stare with pale yellow-green eyes, but a woman all the same. It was not a face that would launch a thousand ships, but it was a face that would look completely and stunningly average next to most other noblewomen’s.
Completely, stunningly, and wonderfully average.
Nor did he feel any sort of horrible sexual pleasure from the sight of himself, as he angled the hand mirror to observe more than his own face, with all of the trappings of femininity and all that entailed. What he felt was, if anything, a sense of relief. It looked normal. It looked natural.
Looking in a mirror and seeing a woman’s face felt… satisfying. Simply satisfying. Like admiring the fit of a well-tailored suit.
“I don’t think you look half bad, Hubie,” Dorothea said. “If you don’t like it, though, I’m sure we can make you look a bit better with just some more elbow grease.”
“It is more than sufficient, as long as I do not upstage Lady Edelgard,” Hubert answered, and as soon as the words left his mouth the illusion was ruined. “Of all the—How can I pass as a woman with a voice like this?!”
Manuela laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, Hubert. It’s not that big of a problem.”
“You do not think one might suspect a woman with such a deep voice?”
“Oh, please. Your voice isn’t that deep. Besides, it’s more about inflection than pitch. You just need to soften the edges a bit; I’ll teach you a few vocal exercises and you’ll be all set.”
“Or perhaps just try not to talk too much at the ball,” Dorothea said, her brow furrowing in concern at Hubert’s unusual distress.
After a night of coaching, Hubert donned his disguise himself at dawn and was proud to say that he had only needed Manuela’s help with some of the makeup.
He met Edelgard at the carriage that morning. As expected, she was radiant. Her hair shone like fresh snowfall in the light of the morning sun. Her outfit was elegant in its simplicity, its embroidery of gold thread across the crimson silk subtle and understated. No one would suspect, with the gloves running nearly to her shoulders, the high collar to her bodice, and the skirt that fell to her ankles, that her body hid the marks of unimaginable torment.
Edelgard smiled at the sight of him. “I thought you would be here. To whom do I owe the pleasure of your company, Miss…?”
A name came to Hubert’s mind. “Heidrun,” he said, trying to sound at least a little more feminine using the training Manuela had put him through last night. He wasn’t sure where the name came from, but the recognition that flashed across Edelgard’s perfectly composed face made him worry. It hadn’t been the name of one of her lost siblings, had it been? Burkhart, Gerlinde, Justine, Immanuel, Dagmar, Joachim, Heidemarie, Anselm, Pascal, Hedwig… no, it wasn’t one of her siblings. One of his many relatives who had served as retainers to the Hresvelg sibling? No, not one of them either. So where did the name come from and how did she seem to know it?
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Heidrun,” Edelgard said. “I approve of your taste in fashion. By no means do you come across as some emptyheaded, vacuous noble who requires gaudy excess to substitute for a lack of shining personality. Now, if we are ready, let us depart.”
She helped him into the carriage and the two of them settled in for a long ride.
“It’s a lovely name,” she said. “Where did you come up with it?” She studied him, dissecting with her eyes the new identity he had presented before her, her lilac eyes lingering on his face. She didn’t seem to be scrutinizing or searching for fault in his presentation, merely objectively studying it with a fair gaze.
“It simply came to me, Your Majesty.”
Edelgard seemed taken aback for a moment by the way he’d spoken. She was as unused as he himself was to hearing him speak so softly. “Good. You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“It is simply my job,” Hubert said. “You know I would follow you anywhere, no matter what that entails.”
“Oh? Is it? There seems to be more color to your face,” Edelgard said. “More… vitality.”
“That would be the makeup, Your Majesty.”
“Well,” she said with a mysterious smile, “you should know that just because something is your job doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself while doing it. A woman like you wouldn’t look out of place riding a majestic pegasus.”
“If I must endure your gentle mockery to bring a smile to your face, Lady Edelgard, then I will happily endure it.”
Edelgard frowned. “That’s not what I meant at all. If you feel I had belittled you, then I apologize. I meant every word of it.”
“No apologies are necessary.” Hubert glanced at the sky through the window. If this disguise was not pure artifice, he wouldn’t be out of place on a pegasus’ back, he thought, and that thought made him feel oddly comfortable. Surely, though, a pegasus would be able to see right through him.
The soiree, mercifully, was utterly uneventful. In fact, Hubert was pleased to say that it was boring, although at the very least he had done quite a lot of unexpected information-gathering. As it turned out, many of the noblewomen had plenty of slanderous things to say about their husbands, some of which Hubert hadn’t learned for himself yet—which meant he had plenty more blackmail opportunities if any of the counts and barons and lords who typically made trouble for Edelgard tried getting uppity—and he’d drank it all up like water. He’d had quite a few shocking new tidbits about each others’ husbands for them to learn in exchange as well. And while he’d carried on his work in the shadows, Edelgard had made headway with quite a few influential women who might persuade their husbands that Emperor Edelgard might be a better ally than King Dimitri.
“I’ve never seen you smile so much,” Edelgard said to him on the ride back to Garreg Mach.
“The last thing I wanted was to appear threatening. I’m told women are less likely to scowl than men, and most men are less less likely to scowl than me.”
“Consider me fooled, then. You looked quite genuinely happy.”
“It wouldn’t have done for me to look like a sulk.”
“You did enjoy yourself, though, didn’t you, Heidrun? What a gossip you were last night.”
Hubert felt his heart flutter. “There’s… no further need to call me by that name, Your Majesty.”
“It’s quite a nice name, though,” Edelgard said, resting her chin in her hand as she gazed at him with her studious lilac eyes. “I wouldn’t mind saying it for a little longer, if you don’t mind hearing it. Where, again, did you come up with it?”
“I must have picked it up somewhere,” he said.
“A story you’d read, perhaps?”
“I have never had much free time for stories.”
“But there was one once, wasn’t there? The Boy Who Prayed For Wings?”
The name struck Hubert like an arrow. “You… remember that story?”
“I never forgot. Heidrun was the name she chose in the end, wasn’t it?”
“It was… just a story, Lady Edelgard,” he said. His mouth had gone dry; his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. His clothes and makeup, which he’d nearly forgotten he was wearing, felt even more like a costume now than ever—artifice, illusion, deception.
“Was it ever just a story to you, though?”
“Of course. The Goddess doesn’t answer such insipid prayers. Or any, for that matter. You know that well enough, Your Majesty.”
“No. That,” Edelgard said, “is why people must be given the strength to take their fates into their own hands. Be honest with me.” She threaded her fingers together and leaned forward, her stare growing more intense, her brow furrowing. “You enjoy being Heidrun, don’t you?”
Hubert let out a disarmed laugh. “If you are asking me if I enjoy pretending to be a woman, I assure you I do not derive any sort of perverse pleasure—”
“I didn’t ask if you enjoyed pretending to be Heidrun,” Edelgard interjected sharply. “I asked if you enjoyed being her.”
“Well—we must—” Hubert sputtered. He forgot his carefully practiced manner of speaking. “We must be realistic here, Lady Edelgard.”
“And what is unrealistic about it? What stands in your way?”
He found it hard to speak. Why was his heart pounding so violently against his ribs? “I… only care about serving your needs to the best of my ability. My duty is to do whatever it takes to cut a path for you through this treacherous world, to lay bodies at your feet as stepping stones to your dream. Even if it would be something I wanted, I could not do something that interfered with that. I live my life for you, Lady Edelgard. The idea that I would live it for anybody else, even for myself, is…”
“You haven’t been above disobeying me when you feel it is to my benefit,” Edelgard pointed out. “I know you have devoted yourself to my best interests, but that has never stopped you from doing what you feel is right. Don’t you feel this is right?”
“What?”
“Being Heidrun.”
“But—Lady Edelgard, it would get in the way.”
“Of what? Do you think there are certain things you would be… unable to do if you were her?”
“It would be an unnecessary vulnerability.”
“Is that so?”
Hubert realized too late how that had sounded. “I apologize. I mean no offense to you or…”
“Do you worry you would be less intimidating? That you would no longer be taken seriously as my right hand?”
“Few find themselves intimidated by the sight of a man in a dress,” he muttered. Still, though, he was withering under Edelgard’s interrogation. All of his excuses seemed to be crumbling away.
“But by the sight of a woman?”
“Lady Edelgard, in all seriousness—”
“In all seriousness, it would be far from the most difficult task you’d ever taken on. Why do you think Professor Manuela was so enthused to help you? What do you think is in that special tea Constance drinks every week? Do you think you are the only person to ever feel this way?”
Hubert was struck dumb.
“It would be far easier,” Edelgard said, “to become a woman than to wage war against the world, and yet here you are doing the latter at my side. There is no reason why you should not live your life on your own terms and be free to choose your own path beyond the fate you were born to. What am I fighting for if not for that?” She reached out and took his hands in hers. “Who am I fighting for if not for you?”
For the first time since he had been fourteen, Hubert felt a hollow form in his chest and his eyes grow wet. Then something clicked. “You were the one who suggested this,” he said. “You set this all up on purpose.”
Edelgard smiled.
“Your Majesty… how long have you known?”
“Since I was seven,” she said, pulling him toward her and drawing him into an embrace. Her hands had never clutched him so tightly or so warmly. “Of all the secrets you keep from me, Heidrun, this was the one you could never manage to hide, no matter how well you thought you could.”
Heidrun rested her head on Edelgard’s shoulder. “This is improper,” she told her.
“Not to me,” she said. “Not to me, my friend.”
The next time Heidrun dared to approach a pegasus, Edelgard did not have Pascal by her side to encourage her, but she alone was more than enough to make Heidrun at least consider the idea.
She still had doubts, though.
“This is frivolous,” she said to Edelgard.
“It is not the least bit frivolous,” Edelgard replied, crossing her arms.
“There is a war going on.”
“Yes, and if you can fly, then all the better for fighting it. Our professor was always pushing us to try new things and excel in new areas. Why, I had no idea I had any aptitude for magic without her, and that has turned the tide of many battles already, has it not?”
Heidrun suppressed the urge to sigh. Whenever Edelgard invoked Professor Byleth like a saint, there was no turning back. Byleth might as well have been there in spirit, filling in where poor Pascal might have stood if things had turned out happier.
She took another step. “It is going to kick me in the chest and crush my sternum into powder,” she warned Edelgard. “I do hate to contradict you, Your Majesty, but I am only thinking about my usefulness at your side. There is much I will be unable to do when I am bedridden for two weeks.”
“No, it won’t,” Edelgard said.
“I have only been taking that tea for three months now,” Heidrun argued. She had been loath to ask Constance for anything, especially magic-infused herbs that altered one’s body, after one particular incident involving the Nuvelle family’s grimoire, and had only begun the treatment with Manuela’s assurance that it was indeed proper medication. “Manuela said to give it six months.”
“It is going to be completely fine.”
“I have not even… revealed myself to the others yet.” Only Edelgard, Constance, and Manuela called her Heidrun right now, and only ever in private.
“All the more reason to make it a revelation to remember. Besides, the pegasus did not hurt you all those years ago, did it? You hadn’t been drinking the tea at all back then.”
“It was this close to killing me.”
“Oh, Heidrun. It never even flinched. Pascal and I both saw it. It might have even let you on its back if not for that stablehand.”
“Your memory of those days is poor, Lady Edelgard,” she reminded her.
“Heidrun,” Edelgard said sternly. “You are stalling. Shall I fetch Constance? You know as well as I that—”
“That is not necessary, Your Majesty,” Heidrun hurriedly blurted out, fearing that Constance’s boisterous and haughty laughter might attract undue attention. “I shall do as you command.”
She crept closer. The pegasus eyed her warily. A single flick of its tail made her halt in her tracks.
“I will not allow you to back down on this,” Edelgard said. “You are going to forge a path to a new dawn today, Heidrun. I give you my word as your emperor and your friend.”
Heidrun took a deep breath, came closer, and finally laid hands on the pegasus’ flank.
Nothing happened. The beast was calm. It almost seemed to ignore her. Gradually, as reality impressed itself on Heidrun’s worried mind, her pulse slowed and her heart stopped rattling her ribs.
“I knew it,” Edelgard gasped. Heidrun hadn’t seen her smile so broadly in months. And she hadn’t felt herself smile so broadly in… years, a decade at least.
“You… How long do you intend to sleep? Your body is awake. Your eyes must open now, and you must find the strength to stand upon those legs of yours.”
“I’m still sleepy.”
“You are a complete and utter fool! Have you not changed one bit? Get on your feet. Right now! I'll coddle you no more! You are just like a child, always needing me to hold your hand…”
With great effort, Byleth Eisner woke up.
It was night, she thought. The sky was purple enough for it. Though maybe it was very early in the morning. A man dressed in plain clothes was crouched over her, prodding her with a stick. “Hey,” he said. “Are you awake?”
“Where am I?” she asked him.
“We’re in a village at the base of the monastery. What are you doing in a place like this? I honestly didn’t expect to find someone floating away down the river… Garreg Mach is upstream of here, but that place was abandoned.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, sitting up.
“Huh? You don’t know?” He furrowed his brow. “The Church of Seiros isn’t there anymore. Though there have been some folks still living there in the five years since… well, you know.”
Byleth blinked blearily. “…Five years?” she mumbled.
“Um, are you feeling alright? You didn’t hit your head or anything did you? It’s the Ethereal Moon of the year 1185. It’s been nearly five years since the monastery fell. Tomorrow was supposed to be the Millennium Festival, but who’s got time to think about things like that?”
“The Millennium Festival?” She picked herself up off the ground and dusted herself off. She didn’t seem injured. She’d been out of the water long enough for her clothes to dry.
“Uh, yeah, that’s what I said. But with the war and all, I doubt there’s a soul to be found who has enough blessings worth counting—”
She didn’t need to hear anything else. She turned her back on him and headed upstream.
“Hey! Slow down, will ya? Where do you think you’re going?” he called out, hurrying to keep up with her.
“The monastery,” she said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “My students are waiting for me,” she said.
The man slowed down and let himself fall behind. “Students? You really are crazy, aren’t you? There aren’t any kids anywhere near that place anymore.”
“Oh, I didn’t say they were kids,” she said. And with that, she hiked upriver until she reached Garreg Mach.
By the time she arrived, it was dawn. The monastery wasn’t quite so grand looking as it had once been. There were more weeds, more creeping ivy, more dust, and quite a few more obvious signs of wear. Byleth remembered the battle that had pummeled the monastery’s mighty walls like it had been yesterday—which, from her perspective, it had been.
It wasn’t long until she found Edelgard, who thought she was pulling a sick prank on her when she told her she’d been asleep for the past five years, and from there she’d met the rest of her former students. Caspar, Ashe, and Bernadetta had shot up like weeds, or perhaps Bernadetta had just stopped hunching her shoulders so much. Linhardt was still Linhardt, still struggling to keep his eyes open (he wasn’t good with mornings); Constance was still Constance, with a haughty laugh that rattled the windows (but only as long as her parasol hid her from the sun); Hapi was still as cool and aloof as ever; Yuri had somehow only gotten more handsome and Balthus somehow only more muscular; and Sylvain had kept his confident swagger. Dorothea was as beautiful as ever, though there was something dark and sad behind her eyes; Petra looked far more comfortable in Brigid regalia compared to the stiff academy uniform she’d once worn. Ingrid wore her hair short and tied back and somehow looked even sterner than before. Lysithea, who’d been barely sixteen five years ago, had grown up the most, though surprisingly less than Byleth might have expected.
Somehow, Edelgard had turned out the shortest among all of them, dwarfed even by Lysithea. Nothing about her from five years ago had changed, clothes excepted, beside the way she wore her hair and the depth of the weariness behind her eyes.
Byleth’s eyes were instantly drawn to the tall, dark-haired woman who swiftly made her way to Edelgard’s side like a temporarily misplaced shadow. She looked familiar; her face was sharp, with high cheekbones and pale green eyes and pale skin that had been too long starved of sunlight. Her long, wavy hair as dark as raven’s wings was tied back in a messy bun; she wore a long black dress and a high-collared cape with a blood-red lining. Compared to Edelgard’s red battle dress with its red and white cape, she certainly looked the part of the emperor’s shadow. And just as the brightest lights cast the longest and darkest shadows, so too did the woman loom over not only all of the other women, but most of the men as well. Only Balthus was taller.
“Hi,” Byleth said to her, craning her neck skyward to meet her pale green eyes. “I’m Edelgard’s teacher.”
The dark woman chuckled and offered a curt bow. “I know who you are, Professor,” she said in a harsh, wickedly raspy voice that Byleth remembered far too well. “But I must re-introduce myself. I am Lady Edelgard’s retainer and Minister of the Imperial Household, Heidrun von Vestra.”
“Nice name,” Byleth said to her.
“And re-introductions are certainly in order for myself as well!” said a woman with long, flowing locks of carrot-red hair tied back in a ponytail that cascaded down her back. Her smile was as bright as the shining sun on the summer solstice. “I am Fernande von Aegir!” she announced with a flourish of her red coat and the scarlet capelet that hung over her shoulders. Although Heidrun’s voice sounded exactly the same as before, Fernande had obviously put quite a great deal of effort into speaking more femininely.
“Nice to meet you—” Byleth began before Fernande threw her arms around her.
“I figured that if Heidrun could live her truth, then I certainly had no excuse not to! What do you think of the name, Professor? I chose it so that it would be easier for people to adjust to it, as well as so I would need not replace any of my monogrammed belongings. Quite thrifty and efficient, would you not say?”
“It’s good,” Byleth agreed.
Heidrun shook her head exasperatedly. “I cannot believe I ever entertained the thought for even a moment that your prattle would be less insufferable after your transition. Professor, allow me to apologize for Miss Aegir.”
“I am overjoyed to see you again, Professor. We simply have not been the same without you!” Fernande added. “Have you had tea yet? You must! Do not tell me you would prefer coffee with Miss Vestra.”
“I would not say no to that, Professor,” Heidrun said, “but I doubt you would like the taste.”
Byleth raised an eyebrow at her. The last time the two of them had spent any time alone with each other, it had been when she had found Heidrun gauging which assassination methods would be most effective on her. “You’ve mellowed out.”
“By no means,” Heidrun said with a sinister grin that cracked open lips as dark red as black cherries or old blood. “Do you want to know why I chose my name, Professor? It is because of what our enemies do when they find themselves facing me on the battlefield. They hide. They run.” With that, she threw back her head and let out a bone-chillingly wicked laugh. Bernadetta tried to hide behind Petra as she usually did, which didn’t work as well as she’d hoped because of how much taller she’d gotten.
Edelgard laughed. Her cheeks were nearly as red as her outfit. “What Heidrun means to say is, ‘welcome back, Professor. We’ve all missed you.’”
Later that morning, Byleth found Heidrun following Constance to the stables where two jet-black pegasi waited for them. Both of her former students wore matching armor, and their mounts armor to match them; Constance’s in scarlet and pink, Heidrun’s in ash-gray and sable.
“Not afraid of heights anymore?” Byleth asked Heidrun as she grasped the reins of her steed, looking as she sat upon the saddle between the mount’s magnificent black wings as though she finally belonged.
“Oh, Professor. I was never afraid of heights,” she cackled. “Fly, Phobos!” she called out with a lash of her reins, and with a gust of wind and a flurry of feathers she took to the skies, soaring across the face of the rising sun, her winged black silhouette framed against the colors of the dawn.