Chapter Text
To the reckless fool who would gamble a worthy life for the promise of selfish glory,
What on earth were you thinking?! Is the acute danger of war not sharp enough to pierce through that dull, uninspired insecurity of yours?!
No, no of course not. Your ego must always shine center stage, no matter the risk to your battalion, to your comrades, to your allies, and emperor, and your own health.
Nobody cares. Discard that pathetic notion of yours that recognition will only come at the cost of a risk too great, all in the hope that one day you will be remembered as “the man who bested Emperor Edelgard at whatever inane skill he found himself inferior in that day”.
It is not a matter of a cavalier being faster than a heavy armored foot soldier, it is not a matter of your individual capability and prowess. We are an army, we move as one together to where need and reason dictate.
Or are you nothing more than a fool who considers a gravestone a trophy of well-found glory? Would you spit on the future we are fighting for to have your name lost in history as one of the thousands of lives paid as toll for the struggle to see it come into being?
Another reckless casualty of hubris, of impulsive ego-driven action over considered thought?
I know thought on certain topics has never been your strong suit, but please for once in your goddess forsaken life, humor me:
When you sprung forth, claiming to be swifter than Edelgard, and the axe that would have missed her by an inch sent you flying to the ground, did you also consider the scenario where that axe swiped clean through your neck, rather than the blunt end of it hitting you square in the chest as it did?
No, you did not, for in the heat of battle we rarely have more than a split second to think.
Then why is your precious second, the only gift of survival we have, expended on that old wound, the need to prove yourself a woman’s better who not once has insinuated that you are in any way beneath her?
Is this the hill you would choose to die on, Ferdinand? Stupid where you think yourself brave, dead when there is so much of your life left to live?
Think man, would you!?
Do you not understand that I would rather have Ferdinand von Aegir alive for who he is, than dead for the man he foolishly thought others wanted him to become?
You are more than enough, you ridiculous, garish, brazen, well-intentioned sod!
What will it take for you to understand!?
If only you could for one day look at your life through my eyes, feel the years of exasperation I have endured at your hand, as witness to the never ending circus of your insecurity.
Is it not enough that you have always kept fighting for what you believe in? That you have grown tall beyond your years, not in height but in achievement, heralding ideals other than those you were blindly raised with, a testament to your humility and capacity for growth? Is it not enough to hear comrades now call your name in acclaim, when a younger version of you would have done anything to ensure those he encountered remembered it?
Please Ferdinand, I beg of you. Do not let yourself become a memory.
Not before—saints.
Not before the feel of your hair has graced my fingertips, to remember the years of burden during which it grew down to your waist. Not before your smile was just once directed at me, so that I could know the warmth of the sun hidden in its grace.
Ferdinand, I could not take it.
So please, please be the braver of us both. Let me be your lance of reason, so that you could one day, perhaps…
Be the spell of honest bravery that carries words of love from my lips.
Yours, though you do not know it, though survival must first paint a future that allows it,
A more terrified that you know, more hurt than you think, perhaps also a little in love,
Hubert von Vestra