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Below the sewers and the imperial crypts lay an eerie and uncanny complex. In a tight winding corridor beneath Enbarr a listening post belonging to Those Who Slither in the Dark had been discovered, and personally orchestrating a raid on the outpost were the Emperor's two finest instruments. Hubert and Byleth had taken a string of hand picked soldiers into the labyrinthian tunnels and were meeting tough resistance.
This was their first serious operation since the war’s end. Since the bout of weakness that had so suddenly struck Byleth brought upon by the expelling of the divine parasite subsided. Since they were married.
During the war Hubert had only ever cared for the safety of one woman in battle. His heart broke whenever he had to watch his Emperor and best friend wade into the frey personally, and he had expected that watching his wife fight would hurt just the same. That while it would hurt, it would be a hurt he was used to.
Yet watching her unsheathe her pristine new sword broke his heart open anew. His love for both of them was so deep and yet completely dissimilar. He nervously thumbed his wedding ring through two layers of white glove as she danced back and forth with two slender assassins.
He tried his best to focus on his own duel with a bird masked mage, but his eyes always snapped back to her. He knew his performance was suboptimal and he quietly chided himself for it, but he couldn’t stop staring at her with worry.
She fought the same way she always did, a little too reckless for his liking but always seeming to make the right decisions when it mattered to stave off mortal injury. Except now she was taking more and more hits than she ever did before, and it wasn’t for a slowing on her part or representative of the particular skill of their opponents either, though they were certainly deadly.
Her blade came up to meet that of the assassins, and she pranced backward with absolute expertise. Still a blade caught her shoulder as she thrust forward, skewering one of them through the chest. She shrugged it off but the thrust left her wide open for a strike from the second assassin.
It was a rookie mistake. Hubert had little training in swordfaire, but he still knew that the maneuver she used left her completely vulnerable in the most vital places. It was like she didn’t even care about getting hit. The assassin took no time in taking advantage and tried to pay back Byleth in kind for his comrade. She took the hit head on, almost as though she didn’t mind. There was a moment where she lowered her blade and then a look of confusion and panic spread across her face.
Hubert realized he was distracted as he took a blast of searing hot miasma to the sternum. He dropped his guard and took a few more for his trouble in order to finish the fight quickly. His flesh burned and sizzled and would certainly scar but he had felt worse pain and would gladly feel worse still for her.
He turned his attention back to Byleth who was bleeding profusely and even further on the back foot than before. Hubert wasted no time in turning the man into a dark magic pin cushion.
The fight around them pressed forward and she fell into his arms as he got to her. He lowered her to the ground, mindful of how unaccustomed to tenderness he still was. He was too busy suppressing his terror to worry about how cold he could be while manhandling his wife. He took a look at her wound, and let out a small sigh when he realized how shallow it was. It would still need lots of attention, but at the very least it wasn’t immediately mortal.
He started to apply some of the white magic Lindhart had tutored him in. It was clumsy, but it was a start.
“I used to be able to turn back time…” she said, sputtering out a laugh that turned into a cough. He still wasn’t used to just how emotive she’d become since the war ended. It never didn’t make him feel funny inside to hear her bubbly giggles, so very unlike her only months ago.
“You what?” he said incredulous as he rubbed his glowing hands over her chest.
“Turn back time. Like… undo mistakes.”
“Huh.” That was certainly a surprise. She was always full of new little secrets, it was one of the things that he found so fascinating about his wife.
“It’s so funny,” she said smiling while gritting her teeth, wincing in the pain of her wound, “I just… forgot I couldn’t anymore.”
“We will need to get you out of here,” he said, changing the subject. The interrogation on the matter would have to wait. “I can stabilize the wound, but it still needs urgent attention.”
“They’ll know the listening post is compromised, all the intelligence…” she said, suddenly becoming as serious as ever, face falling into a scowl. She tried to rise, but he pressed a flat palm on her shoulder and held her firmly in place, if only to keep her still while he finished the magical suture. “They’ll surely skuttle the facility. All that valuable information will be purged.”
“We will still win without it,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster. “It is of no consequence.”
“I can see in your eyes that you don’t mean that,” she replied, a smile returning, albeit far more wry. “I never knew you to give up so easily. Could it be Hubert really has found one thing he wouldn’t sacrifice in the name of the Emperor?”
“Is that truly so hard to believe?”
He told one of his nearest officers to signal their withdrawal and he carried her up and out of the darkness. Back home.
This power. It may have been the deciding factor in victory time and time again throughout the war, Hubert would never know for sure.
The parasite was a tool on which she had grown over reliant on. In a lot of ways they both had needed it to win the war, and while he would never scorn the use of any advantage, now they were both paying the price for its absence.
But in the parasite's absence now she was beautiful and real, perfectly imperfectly human. She could smile and laugh and cry in ways she could only pretend to before. For her to be her, and not lost in the goddess’ ego, he would give anything he had, just not her life.
And she was wrong. He did mean it when he said they would still win without the information in that dark place. They would win, he would make sure of it, so that he might hear her giggles for years and years to come.