[Open] Just another product of today

[bloodypath]

Who: Hubert and many others
When: 4/13
Where: Mirror Dreamland
What: Event memory sharing
Warnings: Patricide; others added as needed


Within the dream-like hall of mirrors, one particular mirror frame was carved from ebony; anyone that's even seen or knew Hubert's name would be able to see the double-headed eagle of the Adrestian Empire on it. Those who were acquainted would notice the dozen cloaked figures bearing daggers up and down the frame. Only his Bonded and Byleth would see that all of its set on a backdrop like a rising sun, the distant forms of soaring birds along the top of the mirror.

The mirror's owner, however, was seemingly absent. Whether by curiosity or compulsion, touch the rippling glass and be pulled inside.

A. Patricide
"'Contemptible' is just the right word for the wretch."

The doors don't slam open in the majestic, red-draped hallway, but there's nothing subtle about the about the dozen people marching through them at a fast clip. Most of them are hooded and masked in the robes of mages, and a couple are armored and carry lances; at their head is Hubert, wearing a dust-covered riding cloak and looking like he's hardly even stopped to sleep in his hurry.

Hubert's almost always wearing some sort of intense expression, but there was something particularly forceful about the look in his eye; almost like a stalking predator toeing the line between patience and frenzy.

"My lord," one of the masked figures mumbles, keeping pace half a step behind, "should we not be more caut—"

"He knows we're here. He's known the moment we set foot in Enbarr." Dream-Hubert's voice is knifelike. His eyes narrow, and for a second, a smile twitches onto his lips—it's an utterly malicious expression, halfway between excitement and hatred—before it smooths out to something almost pleasant. "He knows why. I daresay my father's expecting us. Now..."

Dream-Hubert holds out his hand. The masked mage places a small flask in his palm. "Let us give him his rightful dues."

He doesn't open the next set of doors at the end of the hallway forcefully, either, but there's still something about it like a shark smelling blood.

B. Runaway
"Of course, I was only ten. I never would have reached Fhirdiad..."

It's dark—even those normally unhindered find themselves in darkness again. The waxing moon, while bright, only does so much to illuminate the woods, reducing everything to dark shapes of trees and gnarled roots and rocks lit only by the occasional splash of silver light. An unpleasant—but survivable—chill hangs in the air promising the coming of winter. As still as the woods are, they're not silent; there's indistinct shouting in the distance and the the muffle clanking of armored individuals moving en masse, and the faint barking of a dog.

"This way!" One shout rises above the others, just on the edge of hearing. "Fan out! I want squads watching the river!"

In the gloom, a dark figure darts through the woods—and stumbles over a root when he looks over his shoulder back towards the noise. The child's barely manages to keep his footing, breathing hard; he crouches in the shadow of a tree to catch his breath. There's a training bow in his hand and a pack slung across his back; even in the dimly lit memory, it's easy to tell he and his clothes are covered in dirt and scrapes.

"Have you ever watched the world end?" Hubert's—the man's—low voice rumbles from behind. The dream-world doesn't acknowledge it. "Have you ever lost faith? It's the same thing."

[Hubert will be along in prompt A after the first tag unless requested otherwise. I am absolutely willing to do other memories! Let me know what kind of thing you'd like, or something else if you're canon familiar.]

Comments

lucky you, I read it first twenty minutes after I woke up, so I have no idea where the mistakes were

[foundfamilies]

Leslie looks up at Hubert, but with him not looking at her, she returns to watching the young boy.

She wonders how much of that bloodthirst in the memory -- the later memory -- was because of what his father did to him and how much was because of what his father did to Lady Edelgard and her family. She doesn't know anything about the former, but she's starting to learn of the latter. She may be something of a novice at reading people, but she can tell that Hubert isn't as calm as he sounds.

"You didn't have any other options, though, did you? There wasn't anyone you trusted who could help you."

Leslie's own efforts to fight back against what the adults had decided would happen were very self-centred compared to Hubert trying to rescue Edelgard, she thinks, but she feels she can somewhat understand where he'd been on that day when he was not yet an adult, either.

"You did everything you could to help her, even back then."

[bloodypath]

Hubert doesn't respond immediately, pondering it for a brief moment. Child-Hubert clearly didn't learn from the last time he glanced over his shoulder; this time, he slips across gravel, and the misstep sends the boy spilling down a steep hill.

"In hindsight, there are perhaps two or three that might have." He shakes his head. The pursuing soldiers arrive in front of them, peering over the short ledge. The tracking hound barks eagerly, straining against its lead. "But after that day? I didn't have it in my heart to trust anyone, no matter how trustworthy they were."

How could he have? His world had been utterly shattered, every truth and virtue he'd been taught broken over the knee of the Insurrection. In the wake of that, he'd thought the loyalty, the friendship of House Vestra's staff to be lies as well.

"I've been Her Majesty's vassal since I was six. Over and over, it was pressed into me to protect her with my life—that it was the purpose I was born for. I still believed that, at the time."

At the bottom of the hill, the child's trying to push himself up; it isn't going well. He's made it to his knees, but the bow's broken, and he's holding his left arm against his chest. There's a creek glimmering in the moonlight not too far away; another group of soldiers are racing along the banks.

[foundfamilies]

Leslie watches the soldiers and hounds uncomfortably. She really wishes she could do something for the child in front of her even though she knows this is an unchangeable part of the man beside her's past.

"Going to the wrong person can be worse than not going to anyone at all. It would be hard to find someone after so much had changed."

Little would be certain at that point, especially if he might have been certain of the loyalty of even one of the conspirators. (Leslie doesn't assume that would necessarily include his father. Particularly after the first memory.)

"Do you not still believe that?" Leslie might have trouble reading Hubert a lot of the time, but she felt pretty sure that Hubert's first priority in everything was Edelgard's safety.

She turns from the first soldiers to the new group of soldiers and then to the battered Hubert of the memory. From the real Hubert's earlier comments disparaging his thoughts that he could reach Faerghus, she knows how this is going to end, but she still can't help silently mouthing encouragements at the struggling child. Don't give up. Watch out: soldiers by the water. She feels a little silly for doing it, though that doesn't stop her from doing it.

[bloodypath]

The boy manages to find his feet, barely, but by then he's been surrounded. The soldiers approach cautiously—except one, who's yanked back by another.

"I'm sick of this. Let's just grab the brat and be done!"

"If you hurt him, you answer to the Marquis!" His fellow hisses.

Hubert watches the scene unfold impassively. It's almost embarrassing how badly he'd fared through all of this. "Not the drivel about our legacy, no, laudable as our legacy of service is." He shakes his head slightly, even if Leslie isn't looking. "My devotion is no longer to a Hresvelg as a Vestra; I serve Lady Edelgard, and only as myself. This is a path I have chosen to walk—a dedication I uphold because she is worthy of it, not duty out of duty's sake."

Perhaps that didn't make much of a difference to most people. It made a world's difference to Hubert.

A third soldier, his ranking insignia just barely visible between the torch and moonlight, creeps forward as if the boy were a snarling dog—perhaps not deadly, but no one wanted to bitten.

"Please, milord. You're hurt. Let's return home."

[foundfamilies]

It feels a little to Leslie like the sort of thing she might find in one of her philosophy books. She does look at him, in part because this seems important to him and in another part because the scene in front of them is only getting worse.

She relates to the idea, though it’s under a misinterpretation. She still thinks that the family adopting her back home is doing so because of a mutually beneficial contract rather than out of familial love. The two are also a world of difference, though at the moment, she will take what she can get.

“You love her for who she is, not because you have to.” Leslie doesn’t mean anything by using the word love. She only knows one definition of it and doesn’t know the difference between familial and platonic and romantic love yet. “I think that’s how something like this should be. It means a lot more to know it’s your real feelings.”

She looks back at the tableau in front of her, watching the approaching soldier. “It didn’t feel like home anymore, did it?”

[bloodypath]

The distinctions didn't feel particularly relevant in that moment; perhaps it was more accurate to sum up the broader sentiment that way, something simple but complex, something both greater and less than those distinctions, as if too much would be lost in the translation to specificity. Dorothea's bewilderment came to mind, the time he'd tried to explain the differences between his dedication and love as she knew it.

"To put it simply, yes."

Perhaps it was better not to explain it; maybe Hubert didn't need to. Maybe Leslie has struck closer to the simple truth in her child's understanding than anyone else has with their expanded definitions.

The boy at the bottom of the hill reaches for something as the older soldier draws near, his attempt at subtlety that's a far cry from his grown self's mastery. He pulls the dagger with a desperate, angry scream and charges the man.

Even at the young age, it's clear the child's trying to swing for joints and armor gaps, but in his current state—exhausted, cold, battered and cradling a broken arm to his chest—and against the soldier's experience, not a single stab lands. The other soldiers rush forward to grab him; the agitated one tries to draw his weapon, and is restrained by his comrades.

"How could it? There was no truth left in that place other than the coldest revelations of reality: men will always squabble for power; the Goddess will not answer, nor strike down the wicked; chivalry is a fairy-tale's lie; good intentions are insufficient; the corrupt often prevail."

Hubert shakes his head, still watching the scene at the bottom of the hill.

"What home is there to be found in that? That den of the degenerate, that turn on their country for their own gain and spirit children away for political machinations?"

[foundfamilies]

This has not exactly been a lighthearted time, though hearing Hubert describe his devotion to Lady Edelgard was a little more heartening than the rest of the contents of the mirror and their conversation.

But even in contrast to the rest of the time, her expression is very visibly upset as she listens to him describe these revelations and watches his younger self be restrained. She still thinks her experience in the world is too narrow to confidently speak to the nature of the world. She thinks of Sir Bethrion and his knights, who saved her life, when he speaks of the inadequacies of chivalry. He paints a picture of the world she doesn't want to believe after meeting so many wonderful people since she escaped the Sperados.

Even so, nothing that he says comes as a surprise. She thinks of the Sperados, who fought and lied to reclaim her after she escaped them. She thinks about the fae on the shore where she met both Hubert and Edelgard, and the conversations they had of Fódlan there. She thinks about the by-now familiar view of the slums outside of the Bright Wall near the Haven. She thinks about the boats sending aged witches to be sacrificed in the underground river. She thinks about the trial of the Rathmores and the way that story makes her only barely feel safe enough to leave the Haven alone even now, so long as she tells someone where she's going.

A world so full of Marquess Sperados that even good people must resort to subterfuge and poison to set the world right must be like that, mustn't it?

"How long did you have to stay in that den?"

After a night spent at the Salvatore mansion, a few days in the place she spent the first twelve years of her life felt unbearable. The thought of a month felt like an eternity. And these days, she doesn't know if she'd survive being forced to return there even if the Sperados didn't try to kill her. It must have felt similar for Hubert back then.

[bloodypath]

The struggle does not resolve quickly. The agitated soldier keeps the unit's attention split, and the desperate boy jerks his knife-arm free in the chaos, just enough to be dangerous. Other lights and shouts begin to close in from other directions. In return, Hubert chuckles darkly, somehow both bitter and genuine.

"I never left."

That was the truth, wasn't it? He'd tried, in this old memory of tragedy, an idiotic notion born of good intentions and naivety. His capture here had been a terribly blessing in disguise; Hubert would've surely died, if not before reaching Adrestia's border then surely in Faerghus' coming winter.

"Ten more years I lived amidst that den. I studied its scum; I learned them. The way they corrupted what was beneath their fingertips, and discovered the rot in their wake. The cretins that slither through the dark play a very different game than the lawful and noble-hearted—one without rules, leveraging convictions against their holders and extorting virtue. They found security in being predators in the dark, unseen and unpreyed upon."

The agitated soldier shakes off his fellows, stepping forward with a sword in hand.

"Don't you dar—" The ranking officer's voice starts, but the scene abruptly goes back as the man swings the pommel down at the boy's head. Suddenly, Hubert and Leslie were left before the mirror again.

"I learned their game, and cut them out from within." Hubert chuckles again, shaking his head and crossing his arms. "Now, I have no reason to leave, not when their domain is now mine, and they the prey."

[foundfamilies]

Leslie stares into the mirror at both herself and Hubert next to her quietly. She knows she couldn't have stayed in the Sperado mansion like that. They would have killed her before she grew a year older. But even if they didn't try to kill her, she doesn't know if her heart would have survived ten more years among them.

She replies after a few moments of silence. "You're very strong, Marquis Vestra." A hesitation, and then she adds: "You did well to make it through that."

[bloodypath]

Had his heart truly survived that?

A question Hubert might ask himself if he were a better man. He did not look back. He might regret what had to be done, but he did not regret for an instant ever doing it.

Edelgard once asked what sort of life he might have lead had he not been in her service. He'd given back a very mundane scenario, if one no less distasteful for it. Truthfully, it was a thought Hubert never cared to dwell on—the more likely reality he'd kept to himself, an unpleasant one not unlike standing on the precipice of some dark abyss. An abyss he'd perhaps gazed into for too long before Edelgard returned, changed.

Hubert shakes his head lightly.

"Strength, is it? Whatever strength you might perceive is only borrowed from Lady Edelgard. Nothing more."

She laments over how hard he works, the lengths he goes to in order to fulfill her ambitions. But no, the hope that Edelgard had offered him in dreaming for something better, an outlet to direct his festering anger and grief... that had saved him.

[foundfamilies]

This answer brings Leslie up short at first, because in her great admiration for Edelgard she thinks that could very well be close enough to true as to make it impossible to argue against. She doesn’t believe that Hubert could have made it in such a trusted position below Edelgard without some strength of his own to make use of that which she gave him, but she keeps that to herself.

Instead, she asks a question. “Does it matter to you if that strength is your own or if it is borrowed?”

She doesn’t ask the question rhetorically, as if she believed it to have one unavoidable answer. It’s a question that she would struggle to answer herself. Both in her world and in Æfenglōm, she has needed to rely on the strength of a powerful aristocratic woman and her family, even if one of those families is a group of very good friends* instead of a nuclear family.

Is it okay to receive praise or feel good about herself when she accomplishes something with that borrowed power? Is it even right to use that borrowed power in the first place?

Philosophy is one of Leslie’s favourite subjects, but it can be difficult to see the answer when she’s too close to the situation.

(* Leslie might truly be a great blessing to someone who likes to keep personal affairs private. She does not dig for information on people she trusts and she knows too little of romance identify it outside of very traditional structures.)

[bloodypath]

And philosophy, in turn, was not one of Hubert's favorites. He didn't deny that many useful things have come from it, but excessive fixation on hypotheticals tended to get in the way of actually doing something.

Still, he was silent for a time, considering it.

"What matters to me is what is done with that strength."

House Vestra's power, after all, has been intrinsically symbiotic with House Hresvelg's since the dawn of the Empire, a millennium ago. It merely took a different form now, quietly renegotiated in purpose. Borrowed strength or not, the end result has only ever mattered to history.

[foundfamilies]

Leslie nods thoughtfully. The answer sounds very Hubert to her: he seems eminently practical in all things.

"Then...would it be okay if I said that you chose how to use the strength at your disposal well, instead?"

She does want to praise him for his survival and for removing at least some of the corruption in the empire's nobility.

It's true that Leslie doesn't know exactly what Hubert did with his strength, borrowed or not. Some of them are things that he did not even tell Edelgard, at least at the time. But he's also never been reticent about the kind of work it was, even in Aefenglom where so many people take this time for a breath of air between work. Their first conversation even talked about how poison may be applied to achieve an end. Leslie may still not be comfortable with subterfuge, but even after watching that disturbing moment where the previous marquis gasped and thrashed in his death throes, she thinks the cause justified it, from what bits and pieces she's heard from both Hubert and Edelgard about the rooting out of noble corruption and moving towards a meritocracy.