Great Tree Moon, 1193

The letter arrived right as the world around Hilda's home began to thaw out from a particularly long cold snap that had chilled her deep to her core, keeping her inside of the warm walls of her home and away from just about everyone on the outside. Aside from Holst, and those she'd kept in contact with over the mail, the only person she'd seen in that time was Lysithea, who'd quite literally stumbled in one snowy evening thankful for the place to stay and the company to keep. She'd seemingly grown up a lot in the years since the war's end, and as she told Hilda the tales of what she'd been doing in that time, Hilda felt pangs of guilt that perhaps she could have done better to be more adventurous as well.

When Lysithea left after a few days of sticking around to warm up before traveling elsewhere, Hilda had asked her where she was planning on going next. "The intention is to get into Almyra and then come back once I've gotten to see their king, but we'll see how that works out for me," she'd replied, an indescribable sadness in her voice that made Hilda's heart slow down when she heard it. "Point is, if I can't make it across the border then I've got backup plans."

"Provided the weather cooperates with you, I think you'll be able to make it just fine," Hilda told her, making the mental note to tell Holst to fight tooth and nail for safe passage on Lysithea's behalf. "Just trust me on that."

Seeing as she didn't hear from Lysithea again that winter, she could only assume that passage had been granted and she'd been able to get into Almyra like she wanted. Hilda almost hoped that her name was brought up in conversation when she got to meet Claude and catch up with him, as a reminder to him that she existed and deserved some of his time, even though she knew his letters were being held in some sort of purgatory between him sending them and her receiving them.

What arrived when the weather grew warmer was a letter from Fhirdiad, penned by Marianne herself, telling Hilda that she needed to come visit as soon as she felt it was safe enough to do so. No explanation for the request was given, but after doing a quick count on her fingers Hilda was able to deduce that, while it could have been, it most likely wasn't anything to do with her needing to be present for another child's birth. But on that note, there wasn't any mention of how any of the little ones were doing, so it could have been just to get her to see them while they were still growing up. She quickly penned her response, telling Marianne she'd wait to see how the weather was over the next week before setting off, and took that letter to get delivered, finding already opened letters addressed to her waiting for her to pick them up. Naturally they were from Claude, which was to be expected, but what was strange about them beyond their wax seals being tampered with, was the fact that one of them seemed to have been singed by magic at some point.

Since Claude was not any sort of mage, and it logically didn't make sense for anyone else to be doing the tampering, Hilda knew that Lorenz was responsible and thought for a moment to write him as well to tell him to back off. Her reason for choosing not to do so was that giving him a letter would be an invitation for him to come back around, and she was doing so well at not having him in her life; deep down she was aware that talking to Lorenz would ultimately end up in her sleeping with him again, and her days of needing his physical presence were very much over.

That next week had lovely weather, which meant that Hilda was going to leave for Fhirdiad and hope that the weather on her way there was just as nice, but as fate would have it, as she was grabbing the horse from the stables she heard someone who wasn't her brother calling for her from their house. In her confusion, or perhaps her fearful recognition of the voice, she turned to see who it was, and at the mere glimpse of the long, purple hair of the man approaching her, she jumped right onto the back of the horse and began her trip a bit faster than she'd initially intended to.

"What in the world is Lorenz doing here?" she asked herself as she rode, checking over her shoulder a few times to make sure that he wasn't in pursuit. When she realized she wasn't being chased and it seemed no one was ever going to be following her, she brought the horse from a mad dash to a more leisurely pace and continued on her way as if nothing was wrong. It was impossible for her to convince herself that nothing really was wrong, however, because his mere presence had her shaken to her core and getting away from home was the only realistic option to dealing with him being there. For most of the journey, she'd convinced herself she'd done the right thing, but it was as she was making her way deeper into Faerghus that it dawned on her that she'd just left Lorenz back home with Holst.

Holst, who had no idea about the scandalous relationship the current Count Gloucester had been in with his younger sister. Holst, who would bend over backward to stay in the good graces of the most powerful man in the former Alliance territories. Holst, who'd give up his position at the head of House Goneril just to keep his sister's name pure in the mouths of the people who adored her. The power of Lorenz's position and what he had on her made Hilda scream in frustration, because she'd effectively screwed herself over for life back home if he was being malicious. All she could do was hope that he'd been there to make amends for his behavior and that he was going to be asking to put everything they'd had behind them, because any other reason for him being there was going to be horrible for her to have to deal with when she got back.

At least she'd be safe in Fhirdiad, until news of whatever malicious thing he was intending on doing made it that far, and if it did then she'd beg Marianne to ignore it, because if anything she was certain she could convince her best friend that he was a liar, looking for attention to get her to give him her hand in marriage. That seemed like just the depraved sort of thing Lorenz would do, after all, and Marianne would have to have known that from their years together as classmates and allies.

Never once did it occur to Hilda that perhaps she was playing right into Lorenz's plan by leaving home in the first place, until she got into the castle in record time, not stopping for any unnecessary socializing on the way. The guard out front wasn't someone she was familiar with, but they let her in without her having to introduce herself, even telling her where the queen would be found. Everything seemed to be pointing her right in the direction of getting to see her best friend for the first time in almost a year, and she was not one to argue with fate's kind gestures.

Marianne was sitting in the playroom with all three children, rocking back and forth slowly in a chair with the twins on her lap, while Lambert was running around with some of his toys looking like he was having the time of his life. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," Hilda said upon entry, smiling at her friend, only to be met with silence from her. "I'll take that as a yes, but you can't really blame me for how long it takes to get here! I had to travel all this way as soon as possible, that's gotta count for something."

"Oh, of course it counts for something," Marianne muttered in reply, her rocking picking up speed as she was pushing off the floor with her feet, the children in her lap both fast asleep. "Of all the times for you to come in, though, it had to be right after I got them to take a nap together. You'll have to excuse me asking this, but can you run and grab something for me?"

Looking around as if she was expecting a maid or even Dedue to have come in behind her, Hilda shrugged when she saw that it was indeed her Marianne was speaking to. "I guess I can do that, what is it you need?" She was expecting to be told that she needed to get a toy from somewhere else, or maybe a blanket, and so her mental preparations were for that possibility.

The real answer surprised her, to the point of having her stumble back a bit as she began to speculate what the purpose of doing that would be. "I need you to go into my study and grab the letter from the desk, I just finished writing my response but I wanted to bring it up with you before I send it on my way." Marianne wasn't lying, that much was clear with her tone, but Hilda could immediately tell that there was more to what she was doing than the words were saying. "Please do not read it for yourself, this is a private conversation but I would like the letter on hand."

"Sure thing, I'll be right back," Hilda said with a nod, leaving the room and asking the first maid she saw for directions to where the study was. It was a quiet room, tucked off of the main hallway and made to be as comfortable as possible for Marianne when she had the time for working on personal letters. Just seeing where all of their friendly correspondences had been written brought a smile to Hilda's face, but that was quickly wiped away when she noticed the handwriting on the letter that she had been asked to grab.

All of the things she'd done in regards to her personal life flashed violently before Hilda's eyes as her fingers brushed against the paper of Lorenz's letter, knowing that this single document could have the power to wreck her life. His cunning and disgusting behavior could strike down her friendship with Marianne, if he'd made the choice to divulge things that should have stayed private, yet as curious as she was to know what had been said, Hilda stayed true to what she'd said and didn't look at the letter beyond its pretentious addressing on the front and the carefully-lifted seal marked with the Gloucester insignia still hanging on its flap.

When she got back into the playroom, Lambert was standing at the door waiting excitedly for Hilda's return, but beyond giving his hair a quick ruffle she couldn't devote any energy to the boy. She felt almost lifeless as she passed the letter into Marianne's waiting hand, over the nearly-identical heads of the other children. "I can tell you didn't look at it for yourself," Marianne pointed out, unfolding the paper with the one hand while the other still held the children tightly. "But now that you have it here with me, I'd like you to read it out loud. For both of us."

"Is…is that a good idea with these impressionable ears in the room?" Hilda stammered, looking first at the sleeping twins before turning her eyes onto the boy more likely to understand what he may hear. "I don't know if you'd want Lambie hearing whatever it is Lorenz could've written to you."

"He isn't paying attention, first of all," Marianne pointed out, her voice quickly growing cold with each word, "and secondly, your attitude tells me that perhaps you're already aware of what it is that dear Lorenz has written me about. But you didn't read the letter, I know this much, so if you know then you—"

"Are you kidding me?" Cutting Marianne off and snatching the letter back, Hilda flinched at seeing the now-open paper and the length of what Lorenz had written, her eyes immediately locating the first spot where her name was mentioned, then again and again until she was at the end with his overly flourished signature. She looked back at Marianne over the paper, her friend staring at her with pursed lips and the most displeased expression she could ever recall seeing her wearing, then took in a deep breath and shakily, wanting to make this as much worth their time as it had to be.

Dearest Marianne, Queen of Faerghus,

I can say, with absolute certainty, that any letter about the joyous news involving your family never arrived at my residence. I would most definitely recall a letter telling me not just about your dual blessings that you were graced with but about the invitation to your castle when the weather turns warm again, and as I cannot say I knew of either of these developments I do believe that my point should be made quite believable. However, you mentioning that you tasked Hilda with the job of getting my letter to me does jog my memory of some things she would rather you not catch wind of.

I understand that in admitting to these behaviors I damage my reputation just as much as I damage hers, but it only feels appropriate to bring these incidents to light now that I know she is sabotaging my friendship with you, sweet Marianne. You deserve to know the truth of the scandalous relationship that Hilda and I shared for quite some time, and how she has most likely lied to you about its existence to save her perceived purity.

There was a period of several years where, on frequent meetings, she and I would engage in physical activities that would make even the slightly devout followers of the church turn violent shades of red. It was never done out of romantic intentions, at least on my end and I can assume hers as well, but out of a loneliness that seeing our friends go off and get married or abandon us completely had allowed to grow in our souls. Any chance we had, we would be at each other's tender points, partaking in positions and encounters that we should not have been in together, given our respective roles in society and our lofty titles.

I do hate to admit this, but our ravenous and carnal desires were unable to be left to hunger when we were together for other reasons. This does, naturally, mean that when we came to visit you and the King after the birth of your son, we were embarking on our sexual journey once more behind locked doors in the walls of your castle. Should we have done this? No, and for that I deeply apologize. I cannot even begin to explain what sort of monster, hungering beast within my body, had told me that engaging in such activities at such a time would ever be considered appropriate.

I'm certain that Hilda will try to deny this to her dying breath but you know me, you know my reliance on my title and position as a crutch, you know that I would not fling baseless lies that would impact my standing among my people. This is the deepest stain on my conscience, and I hope that by coming clean, I can work towards rebuilding trust with you and be welcomed into your life once more.

Your devoted friend, Lorenz, Count Gloucester

Hilda felt unclean having read the account of her own behavior out loud, all of those words hitting her deeper than she'd thought thinking back on her time sleeping with Lorenz was capable of. She looked up from the letter to see Marianne's completely unamused face, her friend genuinely upset at what she'd just heard. "Look, Marianne, I can explain," she started, but she was prevented from saying anything further by Marianne shushing her.

"Anything you explain to me won't matter, not after I read that letter and knew he couldn't possibly be lying to me about anything that went on between you." Her voice was so cold, so stern, so unlike Marianne ever was, and Hilda knew that she had cut her deeply with the whole situation. "You told me that there was nothing going on between you two."

"I didn't want—"

"Don't interrupt me!" Marianne raising her voice woke up one of the twins, who she hushed by stroking their back (Hilda couldn't see which one it was) until they'd fallen back asleep. "I remember it clearly, on multiple occasions you telling me that you had nothing but a failing friendship with Lorenz. You told me that—"

Against her better judgment, Hilda ripped the letter in half and threw it on the ground, stomping her feet on the two pieces. "You don't understand!" she shot back, seeing Marianne's anger only growing at having been interrupted again. "I had to lie to you about it, Lorenz would've killed me if I was the one to ruin how he looks to all the Alliance people, but if he does it? If you do it? Oops, no big deal, it's so chivalrous for a man to admit he was meeting a woman to—"

"—you finish that sentence here in this room, with my children, and I'll have you removed from this castle permanently." Her breathing had grown heavy, heated with how angered she was, but it was clear that Marianne was not playing around. "I believed your every word about what was going on between you and Lorenz, only to find out from him that you were lying to me the whole time, and you're going to make this totally about you?"

"Kind of already is about me, don't you think?" Hilda asked, digging the letter into the ground a bit more with her toes. "I mean, I'm the one who was sneaking around to meet Lorenz behind everyone's backs, that basically means this is about me."

"Okay, sure, and so it's also about how you lied to me when you said you'd send him his letter and note? And if that's the case, then it's also about how you knew you'd been lying to me, and you could stand there with a smile as I asked you if I could name my child after you, even though you knew that I wouldn't be happy when I found out the truth." That was a valid point, but it wasn't like Hilda had been thinking about potential consequences of her actions when she'd initially lied about her relationship (or lack thereof) with Lorenz that first time. "Now what do I do? I've branded my daughter with the name of a liar!"

"Shut up, our friendship should be able to survive this one little mistake."

Her eyes narrowing sharply at that callous statement, Marianne actually got up carefully, setting the babies down in the chair where they went right back to sleep as if she hadn't moved them at all. Once she was on her feet, she was right in Hilda's face, her breathing even heavier than it had been before as she was biting her lip to try and calm herself down. "Where's the one little mistake then, Hilda? Because all I see is one giant one standing right in front of me."

Given their height difference, Hilda was having to tilt her head back just a little to look at Marianne, meeting her glare with eyes that had widened the moment she realized this was beginning to get more intense than she'd expected. "Fine, what I did was morally wrong and I shouldn't have lied to you about it in the first place. Forgive me?"

There was a moment where Marianne seemed to soften back to her normal self, her breathing slowing down and her face brightening back up, only to darken more intensely than it had before. "No! I'm not going to just let you be immediately forgiven for this! You could have prevented everything from happening if you'd just kept your clothes on around him, but you didn't and you let it get worse and worse until…"

She trailed off as she saw Hilda shrinking back, making herself look smaller than she already did. "I know, it's my fault we got to this point, if I'd just told you from the start I was casually sleeping with him you wouldn't have had to find out this way." There was genuine sorrow in Hilda's voice, her wanting to make it very clear that she felt horrible about Marianne having learned her deep, dark secret in this manner. "I should've just been honest about it from the start, now will you forgive me?"

"Hilda, I trusted you not only to not be lying when you told me that you and Lorenz weren't getting along, but that you would also follow through with what I asked you to do the last time you were here. Honestly, finding out that you were lying about being in a sexual relationship with him isn't the big problem here." Marianne shook her head, letting loose an almost deranged laugh—and it hit Hilda at once that her friend had been taking lessons in handling these darker emotions from Dimitri, who'd never quite gotten back to normal from his descent into insanity regarding his betrayals. "You didn't just lie to me about sleeping with him, you lied to me about getting personal information to him."

"He still found out what happened, didn't it?" she asked, glancing towards the door just in case she needed to make a break for it. No wonder Marianne wasn't concerned with the children being present for this conversation, she was only acting just like their father most certainly did. "No harm, no foul, right?"

"If it was only with Lorenz that you'd failed me, I might be inclined to agree." Marianne closed her eyes, and when she reopened them several tense moments later, there were tears pooling at the corners, dripping down her cheeks when she blinked. "But you used our letter announcing the births of our children as a means to try and hook up with Claude, and I can't forgive you for that as easily as I can forgive you for wanting to leave Lorenz out."

"W-what? Where did this come from?" Nowhere in that letter she'd been forced to read had it mentioned a thing about what she'd done to the message meant for Claude, which meant that someone else had been telling Marianne things. "Come on, you can't berate me for one thing and then drop something else on me!"

Exhaling long and slow, Marianne turned her head so that she wasn't looking straight at Hilda anymore, before pulling something out from a pocket sewn into her dress, another letter that had been kept hidden for this moment. "He went off on Lorenz about it for whatever reason, and Lorenz came straight to me when he realized my involvement was completely unconsented to," she said, speaking gently like she usually would, as she handed off the second letter. "You don't have to read this one out loud, but I would like you to see what was said in their exchange."

It was for the best that she didn't have to read that out loud, because for every bit of embarrassing detail that Lorenz had included in his letter, it was child's play compared to what Claude had said to him about his…thoughts and feelings on a certain other person. Just knowing that she was reading his private words about her that were sent as a means to have someone else stop meddling in his life made Hilda deeply uncomfortable, but she'd at least been able to get her message to Claude in her roundabout way, which was a victory in her mind. "Okay, so Claude went off on him for him intentionally blocking messages to me for years, what's the problem here? He wouldn't have suspected it was Lorenz if—"

"If you hadn't hijacked my letter to him and put your nasty thoughts into it, when it should have only been about my babies!" There was the anger and emotion showing through Marianne's voice again, which Hilda couldn't say she fully understood. She'd done something out of desperation, it wasn't like she meant to overshadow some rather impressive news in the first place. "How could you do something so wrong in that moment, when I trusted you to just get a simple letter in the mail?"

"Oh, gee, I don't know, because I had damn Count Gloucester after me, trying to keep me from being able to talk to the guy I've loved since I first met him!" Hilda's jaw dropped at what she'd just admitted to, and even Marianne's glare returning in full force wasn't enough to break her from the surprise admission. "I had no other choice, Marianne. My hands were tied and I couldn't do anything else."

"You could have sent your own letter at the same time, unrelated to mine, and hoped for the best. You had no reason to drag my news into this." There didn't seem to be any way that Hilda was going to be able to talk Marianne down from this cliff she'd walked out onto, so she swallowed down any further words and gave an agreeing shrug, dismissive yet saying that she understood. "Now what, he's going to forever equate my children with your lust, and is that fair to me? To them?"

It was such a trick question—Hilda knew she needed to say no—but the opening was right there and she was trying to bring humor to the situation so answering it in a non-serious manner felt right. "I mean, strictly speaking, he's always going to anyway. You named one of them after me, remember? Branded her a liar?"

The twitch that Marianne's eye developed at those words was an immediate clue that trying to make a joke was far from appropriate. "And that's why, in the eyes of the public and anyone who knows her, she will forever be known as Vali, to…to…" Sucking in a forceful breath, Marianne spat her next words in a tone Hilda almost couldn't believe came from her soft-spoken friend. "To erase your touch on her life."

"It's not that serious! You've gone completely off the deep end here!" Throwing her hands into the air and discarding the second letter in the process, Hilda truly could not understand why it was this aspect that had Marianne so upset, and she knew she wasn't ever going to understand. "You're going to damage our friendship over this?"

"You already caused the damage, Hilda, I'm just letting you know my thoughts on it." For a moment, it seemed that Marianne had cooled down again, but when she said one last thing to Hilda it forever cemented her stance on the whole ordeal: "Leave this castle at once and do not expect an invitation back. I'm through with you."

Much like a child who wasn't getting her way, Hilda tried to retort and give a handful of rebuttals, but each time she got a syllable out Marianne would repeat her demand, and eventually Hilda relented and left the room. For a moment, she considered trying to find someone there to try and help her talk sense into her friend (or former friend, at that point), but she began crying before she got too far from the door and chose to leave like she'd been told to do.

Several minutes later, unaware of anything that had happened, Dimitri came into the playroom to see Marianne holding the twins while Lambert played on his own, exactly as it had been before. "I thought Hilda was to be arriving soon?" he asked, looking at how it seemed a visitor was far from his wife's mind. "Did something happen?"

"Oh, yes, in fact something did happen, Dima," she replied, softly and steadily, speaking like she'd just been woken from a short nap. "She did arrive, but alongside her came a courier with an urgent message from Holst, calling her back home as soon as she saw the message. A waste of a journey, but I hope everything ends well for her."

Her vision blinded by the searing tears falling from the corners of her eyes, Hilda had barely made it out of the castle when she realized she didn't know where to go. She'd just come all this way to Fhirdiad, only to be told to leave, and she hadn't arranged anything with anyone else to make the time worth it. There was going to be no meals with her friends like she'd been hoping, no time spent with the young princes and princess, no getting to share ciders with Ashe at the tavern…

As she passed by the tavern itself, her thought was to stop in and see if her friend's favorite tavern-maid was there as usual, but in her distraught state she didn't want to be making small talk with someone who was a relative stranger, all things considered. But, thinking about Dita in regards to how she would fawn over Ashe reminded her that there was someone else she was certain was doing some fawning over him, and that was how Hilda ended up outside a relatively run-down building on the other side of Fhirdiad. At that point she was in full-blown sob mode, her body shaking and tremoring with every shallow breath she gave between her cries, and she was barely able to knock at the door without almost falling into it.

The door slowly opened and Mercedes looked out at the distraught mess on the front step, her eyes immediately looking up to the sky for a bit of guidance from the goddess before she let Hilda inside. "You don't need to inform me of all of the details of why you are in such a state," she told Hilda once she'd gotten her seated on a soft chair in the otherwise hard and cold waiting area at the orphanage. "I've had the…pleasure of offering support through our queen dealing with it herself, so the details are familiar with me."

"Oh, is that so?" Hilda asked between two strong sobs. "That's great, so you already knew that she called me all the way out here just to tell me our friendship's over, and over a guy she never had any interest in!" There was a tone of insanity in Hilda's voice, her clearly taking this whole situation incredibly hard, and all Mercedes could give her in that moment was a gentle pat on her leg. "It's stupid, really. I did what I needed to do and she doesn't understand it. Lorenz was after me and I needed to get my message out there without him finding it!"

"I'm confused, I'm afraid." Lifting her hand as she looked worriedly at Hilda, Mercedes continued, "I thought this whole problem was about your illicit romance with Lorenz, so why would him coming after you be more of a problem?"

For a split second, Hilda felt like laughing in the most rowdy and raucous way she could, but that urge was replaced with a loud, long wail that had her grabbing her long ponytail and tugging on it as hard as she could. "Because the problem she had with me was never about Lorenz, it was about my feelings for Claude and how I…how she thought I should've approached them."

"I see," Mercedes said, not seeing it at all. "Well, color me surprised on that part of things, she'd only ever told me about the letter she received from Lorenz about your, ahem, relationship." Hanging her head, she got up from the chair and told Hilda to stay put, leaving the room to only come back a few minutes later with tea, while Hilda had spent that alone time crying her eyes out, causing bruises around her sockets with how hard she was sobbing. "Here, have some tea, and we can discuss everything so I can understand why Marianne would have made the decision she did."

Now, Hilda was in no way in the right mindset to have to rehash everything that had just happened to her up at the castle, and it became very clear to Mercedes that this was the case when she started getting louder and more aggressive in her choice of words. She had to be shushed to bring her volume down several times, particularly when she would get on the path of talking about how Marianne had called her a liar and then that hadn't even been the big issue that had fractured their friendship beyond repair. "It's just so funny to me," she spat, "that I can drop everything to be here for her over and over, but she never once wanted to be there for me and when she finally found out what was going on in my life? That's a perfect reason to get rid of me! What a fake friend she's been."

"I understand that her choice does feel rather harsh, but she is the queen of Fódlan, which did come out of the war rather torn apart. She and Dimitri both have a lot they need to be focused on, and your friendship may have been something she let slip a bit through the cracks." Keeping her voice steady and kind, Mercedes had already replaced the tea in Hilda's cup twice because it had been spilled, and she was watching how the upset woman was about to spill it a third time. "Please try to see things more through her eyes, finding all of this out about her former friends from the Alliance must have been a huge weight she needed to stack onto everything else."

"Yeah, sure, let me think about how she'd see it." Pursing her lips together, Hilda gave a loud hum that was meant to simulate her thinking, but it only came off as her being rather disruptive. "That's right, I can't see it how she would because she only berated me and told me I'm a liar and a horrible person and—"

"Hilda, stop." Clapping her hands together, Mercedes was over seeing the tea sloshing and grabbed the cup from Hilda's tremoring hand, trying to get her to calm down further. "I know being called a liar hurt you deeply, but let's look at it together. Did you, or did you not, tell her that nothing was going on between you and Lorenz?"

Sighing, Hilda replied, "I did tell her nothing was happening."

"And did you then have to admit to her that something was going on, and a rather big something, at that?"

"Don't remind me, but yes, I did have to do that." Seeing the point that Mercedes was trying to make, Hilda was beginning to mentally prepare herself for having to answer the question about why she did that, but the direction of the conversation changed sharply in the next sentence that was spoken.

"So, you were a liar about things. That's how it is, and Marianne is allowed to be hurt by you lying to her about this whole situation." Once again looking up, Mercedes mouthed a small prayer before turning her attention back to Hilda, who was giving her a confused look. "Imagine if your roles were switched and you were the one with countless worries and responsibilities, only to find out your closest friend had been lying to you. Wouldn't you feel hurt by that, too?"

Hilda's response was muffled and not coherent, mostly a yes but not a fully-committed one. That was fine by Mercedes, though, as she kept talking. "But, as Marianne told me about this whole thing and broke down in front of me over it, I noticed something quite strange about it all. Hilda, were you coping with your mistakes by assuming everyone around you was making the same choices?"

"I—what? I would never!" Except she would, and she had, and Mercedes had correctly called her out on that aspect. Lying wasn't the way to get out of things, though, and she knew she couldn't just leave it at that. "Okay, maybe I would, because…I don't know, I figured that it would be just as easy for everyone else to do it too."

Mercedes nodded, accepting that answer as Hilda telling her actual truth and not sugarcoating it to try and justify her actions. "So, do you realize how much you hurt me the last time we spoke, when you accused me of being unfaithful in my relationship?"

"I hadn't known you were in one, so I didn't know it would hurt you like it did." That was true, and even though Hilda had suspected it was the case she'd never been told for certain. Plus, with how often Ashe talked about her, it had only made sense to her that they were having something going on between them. "I shouldn't have said it, though, and it was wrong that I did."

"The only way it could have been more upsetting would have been if he or Dedue were present for it, you could have destroyed their friendship in that one blow, as well as wrecked my, well…." Mercedes reached up to her neck and pulled out a necklace from underneath the top of her dress, revealing a silver heart pendant on it that she held as she took the entire necklace off and handed it over to Hilda. "Instead of anything like a traditional marriage, we chose to commit to each other secondarily, because his first love is serving Dimitri and my first love has been opening this orphanage. Someday we'll be able to make each other our primary commitment and move on in the world, but for now…"

"Honestly, I knew the two of you had something going on between you, but I never would've guessed it was something real. That's the problem when the only real love you've seen happening since the war is the person who just cut you out of her life and her king." It was bitterness doing the talking right then, but Hilda was genuinely impressed at the etchings of initials in the pendant Mercedes had handed her. "I hope someday soon the two of you are able to do what you aim to with your lives, but I get it, the kingdom being ran correctly comes first."

As she was handed her necklace back and returned it to its rightful place around her neck, Mercedes couldn't help but beam a bit in Hilda's direction, at the warm wishes she'd just delivered. "Thank you, we'll have to see what the goddess has in store for us in these coming years. However, we're not going to ignore that you were saying things out of a dark place in your heart and mind. You fully believed that just because you were doing something, everyone else around you had to be doing it too, only for the truth to be that you were the only one doing it at any point."

"And that was a mistake on my part, I know that now." Hilda hadn't ever thought about her actions as being unique to her situation, and now that she knew they always had been, she felt regret towards every thought she'd had about others getting wild with people they weren't necessarily seeing. "Guess it's good on my part that you're the only one I voiced those accusations towards, huh?"

"I suppose that would be good, in a sense," Mercedes agreed. "The fact that you had others involved in them when you voiced them does create quite the problem, however. Did you ever stop to ask Ashe about what's going on in his life, rather than making the assumption that him staying here on his visits to Fhirdiad meant he was visiting me in specific?"

That was a question that Hilda knew would be coming eventually, but she hadn't thought of how she'd answer it until she was put on the spot. "No, I can't say I ever did ask him about anything," she said after thinking back through every letter and conversation she'd had with Ashe ever since their first meeting that snowy evening. "I just kind of assumed that if there was something going on that wasn't meant to be kept secret, he'd tell me about it, and he never did."

"Has…has he told you details about what he has been doing in Gaspard territory?" Mercedes asked, tilting her head slightly to the side as she looked at Hilda. "That's such a large part of who Ashe is nowadays, I would be surprised if you didn't know all the details."

"He's mentioned it before to me, but hell if I remember anything." Shrugging, Hilda tried to pull back memories of every time Ashe had brought up what he was doing with his life, and while she couldn't remember much due to her emotionally frazzled state, there was one thing that hit her hard, and her eyes locked right onto Mercedes' face when it struck. "He works with orphans. Which would explain why he stays with you when he's here."

"No illicit romance on either of our parts needed to justify his decision." The corners of her mouth faltering slightly, Mercedes kept her smile on her face as much as she could as she continued with, "It's just a shame he hasn't talked more to you about the rest of what he's been doing, but I suppose there's some reason he's kept it tight-lipped with you. Perhaps he knew deep down that you were keeping big secrets, so he did the same back to you?"

She flashed back to that snowy night they'd first met in Fhirdiad, him being a warm welcome on an otherwise dreary evening, and how she'd been so receptive to him but Lorenz had shot their conversation down every chance he could. "I think I know how he'd have figured it out, actually," she announced, lightly smacking both of her thighs in frustration, "and I think that as long as I wasn't telling him the truth about why I was letting Lorenz treat me the way he was, he wasn't telling me the truth about anything."

"Oh, I'm sure Ashe hasn't lied to you about a bit of it, he's most likely kept things under wraps. And those things, they're quite the story to hear him tell." It was clear that Mercedes wasn't going to be doing the telling herself, and Hilda honestly wouldn't have wanted to hear it from her. Going forward, she wanted nothing but the truth and from the people it involved, and she'd give nothing but the truth to anyone who asked for it.

She stayed with Mercedes overnight, getting to see the inner workings of the orphanage and how the few children who were there were faring with someone so lovely overseeing their care. Dinner that night was just the two of them, Mercedes apologizing that she was having to do the cooking—"Usually when I have a guest over, I have Dedue by to cook on my behalf, but with this being such short notice I couldn't exactly arrange that," she'd explained—but Hilda wasn't bothered by it at all. The food still looked and smelled lovely, even if it wasn't prepared by the man the royal family trusted to cook their meals.

After they'd finished eating they talked some more until it was time to turn in for the night, mostly discussing how to proceed with the situation going forward. Mercedes cautioned her about trying to reach out to Marianne anytime soon, saying that she would let her know when the time seemed appropriate based on her own observations, and that killed Hilda inside. She'd spent so much of her time caring about Marianne, and now she was thrown out like dirty bathwater with zero idea of when she'd be allowed back. "Can't I send just one letter?" she asked, putting on puppy dog-like eyes as she spoke, but Mercedes was firm in her assertion that it wasn't the best idea to attempt conversation.

"It will take a lot of time for her to get over this betrayal," Mercedes pointed out, "and you forcing her to respond to you will only make it take longer. Let her heal, let her see why you did what you did and why your choices were what they were, and someday she will accept you back into her life. Wait until I tell you the time is right, between myself and Dedue I think we'll have quite the insider perspective on how she feels."

Agreeing to that felt like she was cutting out part of her heart, but in the end Hilda knew that Mercedes was getting her to do what was best for the fractured friendship, and she was able to head home the next day with that resting on her soul.

Upon her return to Goneril lands, Hilda began mentally readying herself for the conversation she'd inevitably be having with her brother over why she'd come back as soon as she had. Holst wasn't the most overbearing and nosy of brothers, but when his sister left for the capital of the reborn Fódlan and came back almost immediately after getting there, he was certainly going to have some answers. In her attempts to put together a brief explanation of what happened, she nearly ran into another horseback rider, and the only reason she knew that was because she heard the other rider's voice clearly call out her name.

Her head rapidly going around as she looked for who was talking to her, she heard the sound of another horse skidding to a stop behind her and then galloping to join her in her current journey. "What a sight for sore eyes!" Leonie yelled from on the back of her own horse, which seemed to be bored now keeping pace with Hilda's chosen steed. "I'd literally just heard you weren't going to be back for some time. What happened?" This was what she'd been rehearsing answering, but having Leonie be the one to pose the question resulted in her not knowing what to say. "Doesn't really matter, I guess," Leonie continued, "because you coming home now is honestly the best possible turn of events!"

"What could you possibly mean by that?" Hilda asked, realizing far too late that Leonie had been coming down the path from where she lived. Her head turned to look at her friend, eyes wide with the horror of what she could mean. "Please, don't tell me…"

"Oh, uh, yeah, I know about it. If that's what you're worried about." Just based on how Leonie wasn't sounding angry or aggressive, it didn't seem like this was going to turn into a similar situation as to what had happened with Marianne, and for that Hilda was incredibly thankful. They were riding alongside each other now, the horses matching each other step for step, so having this conversation was feasible without stopping. "I mean, I was a bit confused when I first heard about it, because I could've sworn I was told that there was nothing going on, but that confusion was gone the moment it hit me that I shouldn't have been hearing about it the way I did." Leonie shook her head, her low ponytail flipping from over her shoulder to hanging down her back. "So I did what any reasonable and logical friend would do."

"And what's that? Run and tell my brother?"

Chuckling, Leonie said, "Of course not, Hilda! I went right to Lorenz and told him my thoughts on what he was doing!" She sounded proud of herself, and although Hilda knew that Leonie was quite formidable, Lorenz clearly had zero limits of what kind of torture he'd put her through so she wasn't sure how well this would work in the end. "He wasn't too happy about me being in his home, since I guess being classmates and war allies didn't matter to him when I'm still just a commoner living a common life, but that's not what's important here, now is it?"

"How'd you manage to get in his house?" Hilda honestly found that part hard to believe, but she knew that Leonie would gladly answer her doubts soon enough. "And wait, why are you doing this in the first place?"

"Because it's not right for Lorenz to be telling everyone things that are meant to make you look bad. He's going around, telling people that you were using and manipulating him into doing things and I knew from the moment I heard word of it that he wasn't being honest. So, naturally, I left the boys to handle things without me and went to teach Lorenz a lesson." Leonie paused, sighing as she looked wistfully into the distance. "I miss their banter already, I was supposed to be home for a while and now I'm out here being the vigilante I suppose I knew I'd become someday."

"Must suck, dropping what you wanted to do to fight for someone else's honor, but I know that Raphael and Ignatz have your back at home and will both be waiting for you to get back to them." Their three-man friendship was something that Hilda had always kind of thought was silly, but it certainly was stronger than she'd have ever suspected it to be. "Now can you please tell me how you got into Lorenz's house?"

"Through the front door," Leonie answered matter-of-factly, to which Hilda couldn't help but giggle. "Seriously, I just went right in and was like, Lorenz, you have to stop this behavior right now or you're going to wake up less of a man than you already are. He…didn't believe my threat, so I told him if I heard that he was talking badly about such a beautiful woman again, he'd get my lance down his throat."

Ignoring the compliment to further the story she was being told, Hilda prodded with, "And how did he take that? Well, I assume?"

"Oh geez, he told me that he'd never stop until you'd fallen out of everyone's good graces. So I might've lost my cool and stabbed him." Shrugging like it was no big deal, Leonie didn't seem to quite get why Hilda was so taken aback by that end of the story. "He wasn't seriously hurt, don't worry, but now he knows that messing with you means messing with me, and he's not too keen on messing with me anymore."

"That's…honestly amazing, thank you so much, Leonie." After all of the relatively horrible things that had happened regarding this situation back in Fhirdiad, hearing that she should no longer be troubled by the other involved party brought a bit of peace to Hilda's soul. That peace was immediately ripped away by her realizing she hadn't gotten why she'd caught Leonie so close to her house. "Now are you going to tell me why you're around here?"

"Right, still need to do that." Laughing, Leonie looked right at Hilda and gave her an almost sneaky smile. "So I was on my way to come tell you what had happened, because I didn't know you were gone, and you'll never guess who I ran into right outside your home."

She was right, Hilda wasn't going to be able to guess who it was, because as she was thinking about all possibilities she was drawing nothing but blanks on logical ones. "You've got to give me a hint," she said. "Just a small one, please?"

"I think this is one you'd need to see to believe, trust me on that."

Hilda stared blankly at her for a moment, before resigning herself to the fact that she wasn't going to have a choice on the matter. "I guess I'll see soon, then," she muttered as she leaned closer into her horse's mane, ready to pick up the pace to get home faster; she was pretty confused when Leonie stayed in stride with her, despite still heading towards her house. "What, are you planning on following me back, too?"

"Of course! I'm not going to miss this for anything. Besides, I wasn't going to be doing anything but riding towards Faerghus in hopes of running into you, so I've got the time to kill before I head back to the guys." It was a solid explanation and seemed perfectly genuine given the situation. Hilda liked Leonie enough to not take up a problem with it, especially since she'd been doing the dirty work of fighting for her honor.

They arrived at the Goneril home around sunset, the horses both tired as Hilda led them back to the stable (she'd offered Leonie a place for the night, an offer she'd graciously accepted). As they were on their way inside, Leonie was keeping her lips sealed on what was waiting inside for Hilda, which only made her grow suspicious of what would be there. She didn't have any idea of what to expect, other than that she'd like it, and given her tastes in most things that could very easily be anything.

When she went to open the front door, she found it opening from the inside right underneath her hand, so she pulled back to see who she thought was going to be Holst opening the door. Instead, standing before her and Leonie was a person much closer in height to Leonie than Hilda, wearing capes and robes of a golden color that stood out against his deeply tanned skin and his long, brown hair that was littered with braids. It absolutely took no time at all for Hilda to realize who she was looking at, and it seemed the same happened to him with looking at her. "I'd just heard you were away in Fhirdiad," Claude said, his eyes meeting Hilda's with a smile on his face, barely noticeable underneath the wild beard he'd grown in the time since she'd last seen him. "Holst, he was telling me that—"

"Does it matter where I was or what my brother was saying about me?" she interrupted, every sour feeling she'd experienced over the past weeks melting away at being able to stare into Claude's light eyes and feel their warmth again. "I had no idea you'd be around, otherwise I'd have put my trip there off for a while. What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Looking for you, actually." He beckoned for her to come closer with a wave of his hand, and Hilda broke out of her locked stare to look over her shoulder at Leonie, who was nodding eagerly at her. "Come on, Hilda, we've got a lot to catch up about and not a lot of time to do it before I've got to get home. You can see Leonie again later, right now, just come with me."

"Well, I…" Trailing off, Hilda's eyes went back to Claude's and she came towards him, taking his hand in her own and letting him pull her closer to him. "I suppose I can do what you ask, if you came here for me and all. It really has been a while since we last got to talk."

They went inside together, Leonie following behind several steps, only to be accosted by Holst right in the entryway. "Don't follow them," he told her, to which she assured him she had no plans to. "Pretty sure their 'catching up' is going to go places neither of us need to know about. Can't really complain about it, I'd rather my sister be sleeping with the King of Almyra than Count Gloucester, anyway."

"If I had a choice, I'd pick Claude over Lorenz any day too, but something tells me that Claude's off the table now," Leonie agreed, ribbing Holst with her elbow. "Glad to know that we've got your sister's best interests in mind."

Up in the higher reaches of the home, Claude and Hilda's hands had gone from being clasped together to being intertwined, him having pulled her in under some of his robes so that she was as close to him as he could get her. "The moment I found out our mail was being tampered with, I knew that the only way to get to talk to you without fear of being sabotaged would be to come see you," he explained, her nodding as she understood that decision completely. "You'd never guess how hard it is to get to slip away for personal, not political reasons, but here I am and here you are too."

"I can't believe I've got an actual king here with me," she replied with a wistful sigh, taking in the scent of the man holding her and realizing how much she'd missed it. "After everything I've been through lately, with Lorenz and how he was blackmailing me, it's nice to know that something is able to go my way again."

"Yeah, what was up with that?" Claude's question didn't seem accusatory, merely curious, but hearing him questioning about those behaviors made Hilda feel a bit sick to her stomach, knowing that the truth would undoubtedly be a bit disappointing for him to hear. "All I know is that he really wanted you for himself, and apparently I was a problem in the way of getting that."

"You know, I can't actually tell you what was up with it because I don't know myself." She snuggled herself in closer to Claude, as he led her to one of the rooms in the home that had a couple small bags stored in it—the room he was clearly staying in for his quick trip. "Hey, wait a second, I thought you were just about to leave here when we met at the door…"

"Nah, I'll be here overnight, it's getting dark out and I'm not steering the wyvern home in the nighttime." Making sure the door to the room was closed behind them, Claude let go of Hilda's hand and began taking off some of his regal attire, her sitting down on the edge of the bed to watch him. "H-hey now, I know I'm a piece of eye candy but can you get to telling me about what you were doing sharing a bed with Lorenz? I'm deathly curious."

She nodded, swallowing down her intended comment about how she didn't want to look away from him as he went from fully clothed to wearing nothing but a pair of pants right before her eyes. "Okay, so basically I thought you were too busy being king to remember me, and I got a bit…lonely, I guess. Lorenz was lonely too, and so we decided that we'd keep each other company to pass the time while we waited for true love to waltz into our lives, and that turned into a giant mess that I wanted out of forever and—damn it Claude, why are you doing this to me?" Her eyes were fixated on his bare chest, on the muscles he'd built in the time since they'd last been together, on how when looking at him she could catch just the bottom of the scruff on his chin, and she felt like she was about to dissolve into nothing sitting there with this view all to herself. "I don't want to be talking about him when I could be talking about you."

"Then we'll play verbal catch-up another time," he replied, sticking his thumbs under the waist of his pants and watching her squirm at the mere motion. "Go on, you can start telling me all the things you've missed about me while you get undressed. Unless you don't want to, that is, then we can keep discussing that other stuff."

Her jaw dropping slightly as she watched him lower one side of his pants, exposing the deep cut of muscle at his hip, Hilda didn't know what to do or say in that moment. She was awe-struck, completely blown away by this happening to her; she'd resigned herself to never getting Claude in her life but now she had him, and she didn't know what to do with him. "We can talk more later," she decided, sliding off her skirt to reveal the riding shorts she'd had underneath it (to keep her legs from getting chafed from the horse's back). "Right now, I've got you right where I want you and I'm not losing this opportunity."

He laughed, and soon they were both in each other's arms, stripped down and taking in every bit of the other's presence. For the first time ever, getting someone in bed with her didn't come hand-in-hand with crippling guilt and regret, and that made the way everything turned out for her feel all the sweeter.

Ethereal Moon, 1193

I hope this letter finds you well, Hilda. Word reached Gaspard recently of you having a bit of a situation arise between yourself and the Queen, and while I'm not one to pick sides on matters I'm not fully aware of, I did want to hear what you felt was the truth. It has been quite some time since we last saw each other, and a lot has happened here that I would love to update you on if you are interested. Mercie was telling me, when she came to visit, about how she told you that she'd pass a message along when the time was right for you to try contacting the Queen, but she hasn't had the chance to make that judgment. Now that I know about what's happened, I can keep an eye out as well, but my visits to Fhirdiad have slowed considerably due to some personal matters.

Please, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to be able to discuss what happened with you. I have no issues with you regarding what it is, but I would like to know how long this was going on—if it was happening when I met you both in the tavern, I could have helped free you from his grasp! I feel like I have failed you if that were the case.

Write back soon, it feels like ages since we properly spoke.

- Ashe

Pegasus Moon, 1194

Hilda! Your brother wrote to me after my last letter to inform me of your possibly temporary residence change, which would've been nice to hear about when I saw you in person last moon but I get it. Sudden changes happen. I'm not even mad about it, I'm more amused that you've gone from all that scandal to moving up in the world. When you get this, please tell me all about your new life there in Almyra, I'm going to miss seeing you as much as I did, but Holst assured me that this isn't supposed to be permanent yet. I guess you both got tired of crossing the border all the time to see each other? Wouldn't blame you.

I actually got a letter from Marianne not long ago asking me to visit her in Fhirdiad when the weather gets nicer, and I'm torn on if I should go or not. I know that you and her probably still aren't seeing things the same way, so me asking you might just give me the predictable answer, but she told me all about Lambie and Vali and Lexy and I want to get to see them for myself, she's such a gusher when it comes to talking about her children. If I go, I'll definitely give them some extra love for you if that's what you want.

I also got word from Lorenz recently, which I know is your absolute favorite topic. It wasn't a letter—he showed up right here at the inn without warning any of us that he was coming! Raph kicked him out after letting me have my way with him, which I know was probably a little scary for any visitors we had that night but I was beyond angry about it. He was begging me to forgive him, because apparently my threats about what he'll get if he kept making you look bad were making HIM look bad, and did I care about that? Not even a little! I told him he deserved what he got, and if losing standing with all the other high-ranking nobles around here is what he got, then it's what he deserved, but he couldn't come chasing me down where I live and bullying me about it. Felt nice to put him in his place again, and watching Raph scare him off, hopefully permanently, was even better. We're too old to be playing these child-like games, after all.

That reminds me, I just wanted to write this to you for your birthday! Hopefully you get the royal treatment for the occasion, I doubt that Claude would give you anything less, though! Can't wait to hear back from you!

L. Pinelli

Horsebow Moon, 1195

Bet this comes as quite the surprise to you, getting a letter from me of all people. Blame Ashe for this one, I brought the idea up with him and he told me it sounded fantastic, but I had to be the one to write to you. He also told me that your letters don't seem to be getting to you, because his last couple went without replies, but I'll be the judge of that. You reply to this with if you're coming or not and then I'll know if it's all letters or just ones from him.

Anyway, we're (that is, myself and Ingrid) are having quite the gathering here at our home next year. 1st of the Harpstring Moon. Nothing fancy, you don't need to wear your nicest clothes for the occasion, but you're welcome to bring a friend if you'd like. Maybe a guy friend? I don't know what your love life's like, but I know you're not exactly a young woman anymore and…

Whoops, sorry, probably shouldn't have written that, but paper's not cheap so it stays right where it is. Don't let Ingrid know I said that when you see her next, she'll make some remark about how we're all about the same age and I'd rather not have to get into that debate with her. Point is, you're invited to what we're putting on, but you're not allowed to know what it is until you're here. Let me know if we should expect to see you.

Looking forward to your response.

Margrave Gautier

Like almost every letter she'd received before it, Hilda almost didn't think to respond to it, but when she'd read it over again, almost a moon after its arrival to her Fódlan home, she looked to her brother for guidance on what to do. "Respond to it, if I'd known it was time sensitive I would've sent it your way," he replied with a shrug. "You can even tell this Margrave that you've got a—"

"Might be best to keep that surprise for when you go," Claude interrupted, playing the role of the devil on Hilda's other shoulder. "He wants to keep the reason for going a secret, you can keep something secret of your own."

"You both make good points, and I think I'll listen to you both. This time." Setting the letter down on the table, Hilda tapped a finger to her lips as she thought about what to do. "But taking a friend? Taking you won't make any sense at all, Claude, so I think I'll have to reach out to someone else for this occasion…"

A/N: heh so originally the ending of this chapter was a bit different, but I decided giving that taste of hopefulness there at the end would be fitting. c: