PSL; [AWAY, I CAN SEE THE LIGHT]

[bodeful]

and now you do what they told ya.

[Hubert remembers the bite of a lance tearing through his middle, ripping flesh and muscle and the wound gouting red. He remembers the expression of Faerghus’ heir, wielding that weapon with such a ferocity that it twisted Dimitri's features into a defensive rage. And at the time, he took a petty pleasure from it, knowing that if he would fade from this world, at least he would have left a mark across the heart of a man who struggled to regain all that he had lost.

As he crumpled to the ground, he remembers trying to laugh, but his throat had begun to fill with blood, and he could not manage it. Energy draining from every limb, crimson soaking the ground a dirty red, darkness overcame him, and then there was nothing.

He remembers waking up.

Days later, disoriented and dehydrated, surrounded by healers and knights donned in the colors of the Kingdom. They stood around him in a wary circle as consciousness poured back into Hubert, and one of the bolder (more foolish) of the procession informed him of the war’s end, the Kingdom’s victory, the death of the Adrestian Emperor. And Hubert… did not remember much beyond that moment, only that he was overtaken by rage, dark magic leaping at his fingertips, and set to attack all those around him. He must not have succeeded; the world went dark a second time.

Months have passed since that day. In the beginning, he had been shuffled from prison cell to prison cell, and a part of him awaited a swift and punctual execution. But the days began to stack upon each other for so long; even Hubert started to question his fate. When the answer finally came — that after intense interrogation, he would be placed under house arrest within the confines of the kingdom and monitored for the foreseeable future — he finally found that laugh he had been denied when Dimitri struck him with Areadbhar. It felt like glass in his throat.

They may as well have left him to rot in his jail cell. What was the difference between that and being restricted to some old, unused manor just beyond the limits of the city proper, under the pretense of keeping him comfortable? Of one day releasing him back into the wild, like he were some caged animal with its fangs filed down? The Fódlan as it was now, as it was becoming, was not suited for him — as the days cemented into weeks, and weeks into months, he could see that clearly. The lands uniting under Faerghus rule, the stagnant state of the Empire, and the reshuffling of its power to filter into the seat of the Kingdom. The Church’s continued prominence and its new Archbishop. A world where Lady Edelgard no longer lived and breathed, and with her death, her dreams were buried with her.

It was a joke. A cruel and terrible joke, and he found none of it amusing. So much in him rebelled at the very idea of this new reality, the same way a body seizes with allergic reaction; Hubert felt suffocated by these walls and high ceiling, the magic-debilitating conduit around his neck in the shape of a collar (a bound beast, indeed), the wards drawn along the perimeter of the estate’s grounds, the revolving posting of guards at the front entrance and back exit. Unsatisfied, it did not take him long to lash out; forcing his own magic to willfully overload his tiresome collar under the pressure of being restricted (it had hurt so much to do so, but it had been very worth it), his escape would have been successful had he not miscalculated how quickly the guards around the back would move. If he had been quieter, or quicker, he might have crossed the perimeter where those wards lie, and his magic would have flooded back and they could not have stopped him, no, no matter how hard they tried they could not have, he would have tore through them with angry dark magic— But he was not so fortunate, and they arrested him with their knees digging into his back and his face in the ground, yelling into his ear and trying to wrangle him into submission. He snapped back. It was all he could do.

It has been a few days since then. Hubert still feels the swell of a bruise in-between his shoulder blades and the aura of a stronger magic imbued in his new collar. The guards have been warier now, more prone to keeping to themselves, and they only mutter one or two words to him at most. Today, he notes, they keep their eyes down a little path just over a grassy hill. If one followed it further, it would lead into the heart of Fhirdiad, but of course, he's never thought to go that far; even with an escort, he may not be allowed to after the stunt he pulled.

He wonders, passing the window and pausing just enough to glance out of it, just what — or who — they wait for.]

Comments

[nomercie]

[ Dimitri had wanted no more lives lost on his account. Not just lives that served a better purpose, but lives belonging to the enemy, those who would (or could) fight no longer. None of those who fought for the Kingdom truly believed that Hubert, brought back from the precipice of death, would ever be willing to provide counsel, insight, and information in order to make subduing the Adrestian Empire less of an arduous task. Not even Mercedes, who so often chose to believe and appeal in the good she thought existed in a person's heart.

Hubert's heart, she felt, had belonged solely to his Emperor. Just as her brother's heart had belonged to his love of battle, that faint need in the end to see his sister again. The only thing she can do for their irate prisoner is to provide company. Regardless of whether he wants it or not, and it's her who comes down the path, stride sedate and hands clasped calmly in front of her.

She nods politely to the guards stationed at the front entrance, before drawing one hand up to knock. ]

Hubert? Might I have a word?

[ Yes, she knows she can stroll right in. Yes, she knows he will likely deny her entrance-- verbally, at least. But still, he must feel as though he was deprived of any choice at all, and such is not the case. ]

[bodeful]

[Stirrings of activity just beyond these manor’s walls are of interest to a prisoner kept within them. Hubert is expected to remain languid and pliant, accepting of his new role in lockdown, but he is like a tiger kept in an iron-barred cage — prowling uselessly within, treading in circles, head bowed low and eyes ever outwards, leveled on his captors.

So of course he watches her approach from the pane of a shut window, and the recognition is immediate, his mind trained to know key figures present in the Kingdom’s army when the war was still burning across Fódlan. An old classmate of sorts is even harder to forget, though that was but a laughable age ago. Better still, one present in the last battle he partook in, before a lance greeted his middle to end it.

And with this same flare of recognition comes the paired indignation that it would be one of them — her, Faerghus’ most prevalent healer — waltzing up to “his” door. Rapping knuckles against it like he had much of a choice whether or not he could bar her entry. A part of him wishes to let her remain out there, to count the seconds until her faux propriety gives way to the reality of the situation, but deep agitation has his hand gripping the knob and swinging the door open.

He looks— Well. He looks better than he did on the edge of death itself, and even better than the days spent in some dank and shadowed dungeon cell. A part of Hubert will always carry himself with a straight back and angled shoulders, but an ineffable facet of him has equally been snuffed out to keen eyes; he is very tired, restless, behind his own.

His words, however, have not lost even a degree of their sharpness.]

It is not enough that I’m kept here, but now I’m paid a visit by one of Faerghus’ favored? Are we certain this place is fashioned for my comfort, rather than my torture?