Contingency
Feb. 12th, 2023 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Characters: Edelgard, Hubert
Word count: ~800
Warnings: Major character death and general bad vibes!
Notes: Stumbled across![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
feflashfriday recently, saw the prompt "Came Back Wrong," was immediately possessed to hack this out. In the spirit of the thing, I stopped futzing with it when I hit two hours, so it's less polished than is my ideal, hah.
WHILE I was writing this I was also baking approximately 50 cookies, which was a fun juxtaposition. Cutting shapes out of dough and thinking about the undead.
She said, "You can call me El, you know. We'll be seeing a lot of each other."
Hubert bowed. "Lady El."
She wrinkled her nose. It wasn't a very regal expression, but being sixth in line, she had a certain amount of leeway. "That's even worse. Never mind."
*
Found among the personal effects of Hubert von Vestra, shortly after his death in battle with the Agarthans:
Your Majesty,
Should you need me again, return to Shambhala. I have made certain provisions - bring as much of my body as remains intact. Linhardt should accompany you.
I will have no regrets if I can aid you one last time.
To sign off as "Your most humble and obedient servant" would be to state no more than the truth. Instead, he closes with a simple
Yours,
Hubert
and four pages of dense magical diagrams. He has helpfully totaled up how much blood will be required.
*
Was Hubert mourned? Did any weep at his funeral? The sense, in Enbarr, was less that a human being had died and more that a game piece had been knocked off the board. He was valuable; he was gone; little logistical problems arose, that the Minister of the Imperial Household had once invisibly resolved, with either logic or precisely metered violence. The Emperor moved sometimes as if she were missing a limb. But she had given his eulogy in a strong and clear voice, on a theme of continuing the work.
And the work continued. Agarthan tunnels were discovered to extend into Sreng.
*
There was, for a long time, no reason to bring him back.
He was my oldest friend, she would think. My truest support. She would think, I miss talking to him.
Feeble, inadequate justifications. She would not squander this power on sentiment. He would not have been so loyal to the kind of person who could.
*
Somehow it wasn't enough, merely bringing Fódlan to heel. The wider world was not, perhaps, corrupted by Crest worship - not perhaps bound to the worship of a decaying and malevolent god - and yet it was still filled with the enemies of reason and progress. The Emperor promised an enlightened future, self-determination for all humans - but those outside saw only a religious war, Adrestia knocking over the Church in favor of a new flavor of fanaticism, no less threatening for being secular. There were still isolated Agarthan enclaves. There were still followers of Seiros, making their misguided protests, burning the Emperor in effigy. And she was running out of time to deal with it all.
Hubert would be little more than bones now - but he had been hardly more when he lived.
*
The ritual takes hours. It braids together dark magic, the power of the city, and the healing magic of the deprecated Sothis faith - Hubert's notes stressed that without Linhardt's Crest of Cethleann it was unlikely to be possible. In its way it is satisfying, using the tools of all her enemies for her own ends.
The body, at last, stirs. The air crackles with magical potential realized. Several of the Hevring sorcerers faint. Emperor Edelgard watches the altar.
The body doesn't move like it did in life. The connective tissues have all shrunk and cracked, and the magic is not concerned with compensating. By turns too jerky and too liquid, it rises up.
She forgot how tall he was. She forgot his eyes were green. A little of her blood runs down from his mouth; a little more is running down from the cut in her arm, pooling in the fingers of her glove.
The corpse gives her a nasty, sardonic smile. She hasn't seen that look in years.
Then it says, "El," and her face freezes. This is not Hubert. This will never be Hubert again.
But it has Hubert's magical strength, and then some. She tells herself, Of course he never promised to come back. He was only handing you a weapon.
She mounts the steps to the altar. She puts a hand up to this Hubert-thing's gaunt cheekbone, and it leans into the touch, like Hubert never would have done. A patch of skin flakes off under her thumb.
He's still dead. The work must continue. "You will kill for me," she says.
"Still," it says. "Always." And it's his voice, but it's not him. Too intimate to be true.
She will not be deceived. She cannot be weakened now. It was foolish even to hope. "And you will die for me." All over again. If he could not come back whole, it was what he would have wanted.
Whatever is inside the shell of Hubert von Vestra descends from the altar, and turns its horrible regard on her retinue.
Characters: Edelgard, Hubert
Word count: ~800
Warnings: Major character death and general bad vibes!
Notes: Stumbled across
feflashfriday recently, saw the prompt "Came Back Wrong," was immediately possessed to hack this out. In the spirit of the thing, I stopped futzing with it when I hit two hours, so it's less polished than is my ideal, hah.WHILE I was writing this I was also baking approximately 50 cookies, which was a fun juxtaposition. Cutting shapes out of dough and thinking about the undead.
She said, "You can call me El, you know. We'll be seeing a lot of each other."
Hubert bowed. "Lady El."
She wrinkled her nose. It wasn't a very regal expression, but being sixth in line, she had a certain amount of leeway. "That's even worse. Never mind."
*
Found among the personal effects of Hubert von Vestra, shortly after his death in battle with the Agarthans:
Your Majesty,
Should you need me again, return to Shambhala. I have made certain provisions - bring as much of my body as remains intact. Linhardt should accompany you.
I will have no regrets if I can aid you one last time.
To sign off as "Your most humble and obedient servant" would be to state no more than the truth. Instead, he closes with a simple
Yours,
Hubert
and four pages of dense magical diagrams. He has helpfully totaled up how much blood will be required.
*
Was Hubert mourned? Did any weep at his funeral? The sense, in Enbarr, was less that a human being had died and more that a game piece had been knocked off the board. He was valuable; he was gone; little logistical problems arose, that the Minister of the Imperial Household had once invisibly resolved, with either logic or precisely metered violence. The Emperor moved sometimes as if she were missing a limb. But she had given his eulogy in a strong and clear voice, on a theme of continuing the work.
And the work continued. Agarthan tunnels were discovered to extend into Sreng.
*
There was, for a long time, no reason to bring him back.
He was my oldest friend, she would think. My truest support. She would think, I miss talking to him.
Feeble, inadequate justifications. She would not squander this power on sentiment. He would not have been so loyal to the kind of person who could.
*
Somehow it wasn't enough, merely bringing Fódlan to heel. The wider world was not, perhaps, corrupted by Crest worship - not perhaps bound to the worship of a decaying and malevolent god - and yet it was still filled with the enemies of reason and progress. The Emperor promised an enlightened future, self-determination for all humans - but those outside saw only a religious war, Adrestia knocking over the Church in favor of a new flavor of fanaticism, no less threatening for being secular. There were still isolated Agarthan enclaves. There were still followers of Seiros, making their misguided protests, burning the Emperor in effigy. And she was running out of time to deal with it all.
Hubert would be little more than bones now - but he had been hardly more when he lived.
*
The ritual takes hours. It braids together dark magic, the power of the city, and the healing magic of the deprecated Sothis faith - Hubert's notes stressed that without Linhardt's Crest of Cethleann it was unlikely to be possible. In its way it is satisfying, using the tools of all her enemies for her own ends.
The body, at last, stirs. The air crackles with magical potential realized. Several of the Hevring sorcerers faint. Emperor Edelgard watches the altar.
The body doesn't move like it did in life. The connective tissues have all shrunk and cracked, and the magic is not concerned with compensating. By turns too jerky and too liquid, it rises up.
She forgot how tall he was. She forgot his eyes were green. A little of her blood runs down from his mouth; a little more is running down from the cut in her arm, pooling in the fingers of her glove.
The corpse gives her a nasty, sardonic smile. She hasn't seen that look in years.
Then it says, "El," and her face freezes. This is not Hubert. This will never be Hubert again.
But it has Hubert's magical strength, and then some. She tells herself, Of course he never promised to come back. He was only handing you a weapon.
She mounts the steps to the altar. She puts a hand up to this Hubert-thing's gaunt cheekbone, and it leans into the touch, like Hubert never would have done. A patch of skin flakes off under her thumb.
He's still dead. The work must continue. "You will kill for me," she says.
"Still," it says. "Always." And it's his voice, but it's not him. Too intimate to be true.
She will not be deceived. She cannot be weakened now. It was foolish even to hope. "And you will die for me." All over again. If he could not come back whole, it was what he would have wanted.
Whatever is inside the shell of Hubert von Vestra descends from the altar, and turns its horrible regard on her retinue.
