Chapter Text
~1~
“I’m not coming.”
His father paused on the drawbridge. He always crossed it on foot, not with the rest of his personal guard on horseback. It meant Felix could stay rooted to the spot, on the cobblestones, in the city, and he didn’t even have to shout his refusal after a retreating horse.
Father always said taking these final steps to the palace without his horse sent a symbolic message. Felix always thought the ‘message’ was ‘stupid.’
“Felix,” his father began with a weary sigh evident in his voice. In the way he pronounced his son’s name.
The one son’s name.
But Father didn’t continue the sentence, maybe hoping it was meaningful enough on its own. Felix wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Either his father could move along, or explain himself, but if he didn’t do either in the next thirty seconds, he was going to turn around and—
“This is unbecoming of you.”
“Of me?” Felix’s voice took that awful moment to crack, something that had happened less and less the more years past thirteen he survived. “Have you—you’re going to drag me into that animal pen—”
“Felix—”
“—and I’m the one being unbecoming? When I wasn’t…when he was the one who…”
Dimitri’s grinning face glistening red flashed through his mind’s eye, and Felix shut up in favor of shuddering. “I’m not coming,” he repeated, but this time, he turned on his heel and escaped. Back onto the path to Fhirdiad’s main gates. Back into civilization.
Backing away from where the boar prince nested.
No one else in Fhirdiad seemed to have received the missive that Felix Hugo Fraldarius, sole heir to the noble House Fraldarius, was in a terrible mood and wanted to be left alone, not nudged, not looked at. Merchants grumbled when he barreled down the street, refusing to get out of his way. Girls perched on narrow city stairs whispered and giggled. Felix tore off the leather strip keeping his hair in check and let it fall, obscuring his face flushed with anger and embarrassment. Students from the prestigious universities and School of Sorcery tried to thrust pamphlets for events into his unwilling hands.
“Bother someone who cares,” he finally snapped at one, a freckled boy who couldn’t be older than—
Thirteen.
The kid slumped in his blue robes, and Felix refused to feel ashamed.
He stormed off instead, no clear destination in mind beyond away. Some other students nearby had come to console the pushy kid. Murmuring, placating voices floated Felix’s way, and no matter how many twisting corners he rounded of the suddenly-unfamiliar Fhirdiad streets, the condescending consolations followed.
“Well, you point him out if he dares to show his face again!” an energetic, earnest voice said to—the kid, not to Felix, but about Felix. “I’ll…I’ll throw him into the swamp!”
“The…the swamp? What swamp?” It wasn’t the boy, but an amused, breathier voice. Two girls. The palace loomed ahead again, and Felix spun around.
He’d never felt so lost.
“I’ll find a swamp, okay? Or we’ll all get together and magic one up! Feed him to the beasties!”
“You’re adorable.”
A blacksmith’s hammer clanged somewhere to the left, and Felix followed the source of the sound with such intense gratitude it frightened him.
Familiar: anvils and flames. Iron, steel, silver. Pommels for striking, for defense, for a last-resort. Finding the weaknesses in the forging, faking them if necessary, haggling down the cost.
“Guess you could say Faerghus blacksmiths really…make a killing, huh?” Sylvain had put his hands on his hips, a huge, lame smirk on his face, like he was waiting for applause. He got a half-hearted Ingrid-sized punch instead and a whole-hearted Felix-sized scoff. And a hilariously useless—
“I don’t get it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re killing me, Dimitri—”
Felix tested every single pointy-edged weapon the blacksmith had until the woman snapped at him to buy, not try.
~2~
Sprawling Garreg Mach wasn’t big enough to avoid the boar. Especially since someone had thought it wise to give the thing free reign over the entire Faerghus-based Blue Lions House as its leader this year.
There wasn’t a place Felix could go where he knew he’d be free of it. No matter where he trained—the Knights’ Hall, the training grounds, a lonely battlement far from the dorms—the boar was either there first or not far behind, snuffling its way on Felix’s tracks. It seemed to know his mind as well as he did, like when they’d—like when Felix had been a child, and it was so…so repulsive, so…
Unfair.
He’d never tell either of them, but having Ingrid and Sylvain there to act as a buffer made things easier. Sylvain hadn’t admitted it, laughing it off as being “a clueless good-for-nothing,” but he’d waited to enroll in the Officers Academy until the three of them had. And Felix would have to be an even more clueless good-for-nothing not to notice him deftly distracting the boar, Ingrid, or even Felix himself when tensions grew too high.
And the fact his most frequent diversion tactic was to bring women into the conversation somehow—strolling by more often than not with a giggling girl by his side ready to be introduced—pissed Felix off. Sylvain had chosen the two people most unlikely to be swayed by such tactics, and such cheerful interruptions often ended with him on the receiving end of either a loquacious lecture (Dimitri, or Ingrid, if she was present) or a sharp blade (Felix).
It wasn’t really like Felix had come to the Officers Academy with the expectation or desire to make friends. But with half his house too close to him or to the boar, even he recognized the necessity of befriending (almost) everyone else.
Despite Ashe’s insistence he read frilly, idealistic novels. Despite the fact Felix read them for whatever reason.
Despite Mercedes’s coddling and tea parties. Despite the fact Felix kept attending them.
Despite…
Annette was just so energetic.
When they’d met on the first day of school, Annette had started passing out candy to her new classmates. “Who doesn’t like sweets, right?” she’d chirped obliviously when Sylvain had thanked her too earnestly to be genuine.
Sylvain and Ingrid shot him twin dramatic eyerolls.
“Leave off,” Felix glared back at them. “I’m not a festival attraction.”
The tiny girl had gasped like an actress onstage. Felix was prepared to whirl his glare on her, too, waiting for her to repeat something to the effect of, “You don’t like sweets?” or other obvious observations.
But, “I’m so sorry,” she said, and her apology sounded earnest in the way Sylvain never managed to convey. “That was kind of rude of me, huh? Of course everyone has their own likes and dislikes!”
Felix furrowed his brow. “Why would it be rude? You didn’t know.”
Annette just bobbed her head in an emphatic nod. “Exactly! I should know these things. That’s it,” she decided, pointing at him. Felix recoiled from the accusing finger and wished he could tell his childhood friends he could hear them smirking. “I’m going to make sure this doesn’t happen again! I’ll learn everyone’s favorite things.”
Mercedes beamed and squeezed her until they both turned red in the cheeks. “That’s my sweet Annie!”
“Heehee! I wonder who’s savory? Or spicy? Or—”
Now Felix did slap Sylvain on the back of the head. “You’re disgusting.”
“I didn’t even say—”
“Hear that, Felix?” Ingrid whispered while the Chipper Trio of Ashe, Mercedes, and Annette merrily bounced around. “I guess that makes you spicy.”
The only reason Felix didn’t hit Ingrid was because she would definitely hit him back. And maybe because Annette had taken that moment to beam at the three of them, and he did not want her asking why the two of them were trading blows.
He did hit Sylvain again, though. Partially because he had lit up when Ingrid had made what Sylvain had assumed was a dirty joke, and partially because no one would question why Felix’s face was red if he was punching Sylvain at the same time.
~3~
“Going to class when it’s raining can be so dreary,” Mercedes sighed in front of him. “I could hardly pull myself out of bed today.”
“It’s much cozier when you’re all bundled up inside, right?” Annette agreed. “There’s really nothing like curling up by the fireplace with a good book, right?”
Ingrid, on the other side of the room, brightened and called, “Are you reading anything good right now?”
“Hm? Oh! Well, I’ve been studying more than reading lately, but…”
Felix’s eyebrow twitched.
“A little leisure reading’s good once in a while, right?” Ashe had joined the conversation. “I just borrowed the second Horsebow and Crescent book, and I’ve just gotten to the part where—”
“Don’t spoil it! Maybe I’ll read it! I don’t know anything about the—”
Steel glittered in the corner of Felix’s eye, and he leapt out of his seat, fumbling for his sword under the desk. He wasn’t the only one: Dedue had positioned himself in front of the boar prince like the guard dog he was, and Ashe’s hand flew to his belt for a dagger that wasn’t there.
Their new professor stood in the doorway of the classroom, shaking raindrops off his sword with nary a care for the weapon’s proximity to his students’ faces.
“Good morning.”
“Good—good morning, Professor,” Annette stammered, and the rest of them followed suit.
It wasn’t his dry, even voice that made the man seem inhuman.
It was the way his expression didn’t even change when he shook out his hair and said behind the messy, damp locks, “Did I scare you to tears? There’s not a dry eye in the place.”
Confusion smothered the formerly-high energy in the classroom like ashes.
And then the boar laughed.
It echoed against the stones, as familiar a sound to Felix as his memory of Glenn’s last farewell.
“I’m sorry,” it choked out, flushing with embarrassment. It covered its snout with its gloved hands, like that could stopper the laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s just—because we’re all sopping wet, and—”
“We get it, your Highness.”
Somehow, Sylvain always managed to make that title more irreverent than anything Felix had ever called—it. So it shut up, the Professor thanked it for appreciating his sense of humor—‘humor,’ despite that blank expression—and Felix learned how to strike charging pegasus riders from the air with a sword.
~4~
“Oh! Hi, Felix. What are you doing here so late?”
Felix lifted his head from where he was stabbing his quill into paper to see Annette peering at him closer than the late hour necessitated. A lit lamp dangled dangerously between her fingers and a book was nestled in the crook of her arm. A disaster waiting to happen. He averted his eyes.
“I’m studying.”
“Studying?” Annette set the lamp down on the library desk and glanced at the book that had been torturing him for hours. “Oh, this is for your certification test this week, is it?”
She was nearer than she needed to be. “I’m surprised you remember.”
“Of course I do. I told you I was going to learn everyone’s interests!” She smiled brighter than the lamp and pulled a chair next to him, completely uninvited. Maybe it was his exhaustion, but Felix didn’t have the energy to tell her to move.
“Oh? And that means memorizing everyone’s exam schedules?”
For some inexplicable reason, Annette fidgeted and—blushed? “Well, not everyone’s,” she mumbled. “But it’s pretty easy to tell with you! You’re always going on and on about swordplay.”
The comment rankled him, even if it was true.
But no one ever accused Felix of being easy to read.
“What are you doing here?” Changing the subject was easier than dwelling too much on any of that.
Annette hummed thoughtfully. She pillowed her arms on the table and rested her chin on them. “I was trying to take Ashe’s advice and pick a book. Something fun to read.”
Felix snorted and retraced a few squiggles on his parchment. “Take Ashe’s advice with a grain of salt.”
She giggled. “’Salt.’ You’re funny.”
“Funny? What?”
Annette nodded into her arms, small smile still curling the edges of her lips.
Felix glanced away. He was weird, he’d been looking at her lips for no reason, he was fatigued—
“Because, you know. Mercedes. The other day, with the…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. “Oh. Oh, whoops! There was a little incident with the spices the other day is all.”
He snorted again, but it was dangerously close to a laugh. “I see. I don’t do ‘funny,’ anyway.”
“I’m sure you could if you tried.” She shuffled closer, and he tensed. “Are you okay? Your notes are pretty…uh. Squiggly.”
“I’m fine.”
His notes were indeed more squiggle than sense.
“Okay, but if you need, um, help, or—”
“I don’t need help.” Felix heard her quick intake of breath, and he repeated more calmly, “I don’t need help. I know these terms like the back of my hand.”
Annette got up, and he let out a sigh he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. He returned to his book, rereading the same lines on weapon materials. So engrossed was he in being bored out of his skull that he jumped when Annette plopped back down, this time with a second, familiar book.
“Why are you reading my book?”
She huffed and turned to the same page he was on, casting obvious, furtive glances at his book and flipping to catch up. “It’s not your book. It’s the library’s.”
“Yes, yes. That’s not my point,” Felix glared. “None of this is useful to you.”
“You’re so rude!” she jabbed her finger at the same spot his quill lay on and pretended to start reading. “All knowledge is useful! You should give magic a shot sometime.”
“Unlikely.” Felix watched her scan the pages with convincing determination. He sighed and picked up his quill. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Doing? What? I’m not doing anything. I’m learning sword stuff.”
“’Sword stuff,’” he repeated, shaking his head. “You won’t learn how to swing a sword from a book.”
“Then I suppose you’ll have to teach me,” she chirped back. “We can quiz each other when the lamp’s burned down to this line, okay? See who will really be ready for a certification test!”
Competition, however transparent its method, always did motivate him. Felix forced himself back to his books, one eye on the lamp and one on his neater notes. If Annette managed to get more answers right than him when their time was up, he’d never forgive himself.
Felix wasn’t sure how he felt being so transparent, himself. Even if only one person seemed to think so.
~5~
Annette, however…
If Felix was as transparent as the greenhouse glass, she was as opaque as the brass watering can she’d flung at him before running away.
“You’re evil, Felix!”
Well, she wasn’t the first to think so, he reflected gloomily, refilling the watering can. If he couldn’t even compliment a pretty girl on her singing and dancing without messing up his words, well…maybe everyone else was right to find him emotionless and cold.
“I guess I’d better start watering before the flowers start singing at me, too,” he mumbled, hefting the can. “Why am I even talking to—”
Water sloshed onto the tips of his boots, and he yelped an embarrassing little curse. He glanced around, feeling his ears get warm, but nobody had seen him pour the contents of the watering can on his own feet, because he’d realized he’d thought—
Pretty.
A pretty girl.
~6~
“Now, that’s quite the look.”
“Go away, Sylvain.”
Sylvain did not go away. Of course not. No, he only sprawled out further on the freshly-trimmed lawn, dangerously close to where Felix was doing his best to trample the grass with new fencing footwork.
She’d kind of moved like this and then…
“She’s gonna notice you staring, man. And…thrusting your sword at her.”
Felix whipped around, sword included. “What?”
Sylvain’s grin did not appear deterred by the blunted training sword aimed at his face. “You’re kind of…ogling Annette, you know. Is that what your House does, like, the time-honored Fraldarius mating dance—”
Felix’s mind went white. “I’m not—shut—what, no!”
If he were to slash at Sylvain, it would only encourage him, but yelling would attract attention. Annette, jabbering happily with Hilda and Ignatz outside the Golden Deer classroom, would undoubtedly be interested in the commotion, and Felix was in no mood to explain away yet another of Sylvain’s stupid misunderstandings.
“Oh, boy. I’m not misunderstanding anything, I can tell.” That stupid satisfied grin. “You’re like a spooked bunny!”
Felix scowled, and Sylvain, to his surprise, backed off and held up his hands in premature surrender.
Backed off a bit.
“You know, your success rate’s gonna be higher if you talk to the girl.”
Felix threw his sword down and sat across from his friend. Loathe as he was to give even an inch to the taunting concept of feeling…feelings to An—another person, it was worse to ignore the guy. “I don’t need a success rate.”
“Oh-ho! Confidence! Ladies love confidence. More so than your mating dance—”
“Stop it!”
Sylvain did not stop it, because apparently Felix not being firm enough in his dismissal of this stupidity meant he could continue. “What, House Fraldarius is doing great for itself! Each of the Ten Elites, in addition to passing down their Crest, also passed down a—”
“You love to hear yourself talk, don’t you?”
“—beautiful, loving, sensual dance to find their perfect mates, and—oh! House Fraldarius’s was certainly a sight to behold! Now, the Gautier mating dance is a little more refined, but,” a lecherous wink, “but did your dear old dad not show you the moves? Keeping with the family—”
“He must’ve taught it to Glenn and forgotten about me.”
Goddess. Finally Sylvain shut up.
And Felix sure hated that he had to drag a corpse out of its grave to get some peace and quiet.
“You don’t need to pull that shit,” Sylvain muttered. An unfathomable undercurrent to the words sent anger spiking through Felix’s spine.
“I told you to stop.”
It was true. Not that Sylvain looked in a mood to admit it.
“Sorry,” Sylvain said instead. The air between them darkened. He rose, stretched languidly, and ruffled his hair so it went back to roguishly, seductively tousled. Felix hated him hard and sharp for one cold moment. “I’m gonna go find a girl to grab a drink with. You can…”
Felix waited. Dared him.
“…have a good day. You can do that.”
Sylvain was off, cheerfully accosted by a girl pretty much the second he left the lawn, and Felix was left in the grass with a wooden sword. Awfully familiar.
He pushed himself to his feet and redid his hairtie to give his hands something to do. When he parted the long dark locks of his hair, he realized Annette and Ignatz were nowhere to be found, but Hilda had just averted her gaze, like she’d been staring at him, too.
~7~
When Annette knocked on his door to tell her she’d done his chores, Felix had been startled by how quickly his heart had leapt to his throat. But her sugary-sweetness was suspicious in itself, and when the reason for her bribery became apparent, his heart sank back to normal.
Bleeding Saints, what had he even been hoping for?
She’d been so nice to him the last few days. It was little things at first—passing him another inkpot before he’d even realized his was empty mid-seminar; passing around more candies to the class and a piece of spiced jerky for him—but the stables, the cooking, the…offer of dinner—
Sylvain would have killed him for turning down the offer. But Felix was still pretty pissed at him anyway, so he’d return the favor even if he didn’t share that information. Ingrid assumed they were in one of their usual spats—which was true—and didn’t feel the need to intervene—which was appreciated but also isolating. And the boar kept nosing around hopefully, as if Felix would throw a scrap of friendship its way out of sheer, lonely desperation.
Well. Again. No one had ever accused Felix of being nice. He’d tried, and he’d failed, and it turned out he wasn’t even someone people could be genuinely nice to back. It wasn’t worth the effort.
Moping wasn’t what Felix did, however. Annette could claim all she liked he’d obsess over making her miserable, when in truth he was more focused on not feeling miserable, himself. But at least she’d unwittingly helped make that easier, even though her kindness had amounted to nothing.
She had ridiculous bullies stuck in her head. He had her ridiculous songs stuck in his.
~8~
“I hate seeing him like this, too. But you need to lay off.”
Ingrid was the voice of reason, as always, and it wouldn’t have pissed Felix off so much if her eyes didn’t look so big, wide and solemn whenever she lectured him about pestering Sylvain.
Sylvain, who was not moping in the classical definition, but Sylvain-style moping where he pretended everything was fine, normal, stop bothering me, seriously, as if Sylvain hadn’t felt his own awful brother’s blood trickle from his chest down a school-issue lance to stain his uniform not two weeks past.
Felix jerked away from Ingrid’s half-extended arm. “I’m not doing anything. And you know just as well as I do—”
“I know better than you do.” Her voice was firm, uncompromising. “And yes, we all know he’s the least capable of working through emotions out of any of us.”
Probably not true, but the fact that it was difficult to guess didn’t say good things about the four of them.
Ingrid’s features softened. “But the least we can do is just…give him support. In the ways we normally do,” she spoke over him when he started to object. “Sylvain likes pretending everything’s fine. So let’s pretend everything is fine…except we, you know. Go a little easier on him.”
Sylvain wouldn’t want to be coddled. Of that, Felix was sure. But he agreed, because it was easier than convincing Ingrid her strong concepts of virtue, kindness, and righteousness were, perhaps, misguided when it came to their idiot best friend.
No one seemed to have given this memo, however, to the rest of their House. To the people who didn’t know him.
Felix found Annette in the training hall frantically tossing buckets of water onto a flaming practice dummy. She caught sight of him in instants. “Felix! Help me!”
He was already on his way to the closest bucket—it said bad things she’d prepared several already—and between the two of them, the fire was doused not long after.
“That was foolish,” he chided her the second the ashes cooled properly.
She only scowled. “It wasn’t foolish! Look how many buckets I had! We still have two left over, see?”
“Why did you think you needed them at all? Aren’t you supposed to be good at magic?” He toed the closest bucket. “And you were alone.”
The scowl deepened. “I would have had company if Sylvain had shown up! Like he promised! And after all that talk about not holding back. Urgh, he makes me so mad sometimes!”
Felix’s toe froze on the metal bucket. “Sylvain was supposed to train with you?”
Annette nodded miserably. “I thought I’d finally…talked him into it, you know? He’s been smiling so much colder lately, since…you know.”
He did.
“Mercie said I was bothering him.”
Felix huffed a laugh. “Mercedes did not say that.”
“Okay, well…fine, no, she didn’t say bothering. But something way too kind and just—gah!” She folded her arms and glared at the dust, like it was to blame for Sylvain’s broken promises and broken smile. “She wouldn’t tell me anything. I know she talked to him about…you know, it.”
“It’s not her place to spill secrets.”
But even Felix felt a surprising stab of jealousy. What, Sylvain would tell Mercedes all the feelings he was keeping bottled up, but not breathe a word to the people who’d known him longest and best?
Maybe that was why he hadn’t. But it stung all the same.
Annette groaned. “I know that, Felix. But she also won’t tell me what I’m supposed to do, if I’m bothering him, if I…if I can help.”
Help.
And clarity cooled Felix’s annoyance. “You can’t help,” he told her.
Annette reeled back and put a hand to her chest, and for an instant, Felix felt bad. “I can’t…what?”
“You’re not Sylvain’s family. I mean, they won’t help, either,” he scoffed, “but you don’t know what it’s like to lose a brother.”
They couldn’t even bury a whole body. There was hardly a body to burn, much less bury.
“This will finally be over,” Glenn had said, flicking Felix’s forehead with that soft smile he never showed anyone, not even Dima. “One quick trip, and the whole world will change. I’ll be back in a whole different Fódlan! You can wait for history, kid.”
“I’m not a kid! Stop calling me that.”
Glenn came back, and the world was different. And Felix certainly had stopped being a kid.
“I may not have lost a brother, but I’ve lost family, too,” Annette said quietly. She bent her head, wringing her hands, and before Felix could figure out how to school his expression, she continued, “And I know it’s really lonely no matter what.”
Words Felix never had said and never would say again poured from his dry throat. “It is lonely,” he admitted. “But you learn a lot about yourself when you spend time alone.”
Annette nodded. She didn’t pry. And for that alone, Felix—
“Well, we’ll be here when he’s done feeling lonely,” she sighed. “I guess that’s the best we can show, huh?”
Her smile hurt to look at. It was too fake, too sad, and Felix wasn’t sure he recognized her. “I guess, yeah.”
He helped her clean up the buckets and sweep the ashes. They didn’t talk about it again. Sylvain didn’t, either.
~9~
For such an expensive academy, Garreg Mach didn’t offer many options for dressing up. The ball was the rare occasion, and even that dress code was rather strictly limited to monastery-standard formal uniforms. Even the Blue Lions Professor looked sulky in an Officers Academy cloak, buttoned suit, and strange little cap. Felix thought he was drinking a little too much to be befitting of a holy institution and said so to Sylvain to make him laugh. It worked.
What also worked, to his unpleasant surprise, was the monastery-standard formal uniform on Annette.
“Cute, huh?” Sylvain gestured with his own wineglass at her. Somehow, even the uniform didn’t look fantastic on him. It hadn’t stopped him from getting bombarded with shy dance invitations, but Felix admittedly was waiting for some girl or another to pour her drink on it when Sylvain dared ask an ex-lover he hadn’t recognized.
“Can you be less obvious?” he hissed. “Besides, control yourself. She’s not even your type!”
Sylvain howled a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? Women are my type!”
“She’s a girl. She’s too…nice for you.”
He nodded and took a too-long, too-casual sip. “She is, isn’t she? And probably too busy rubbing it out to the Goddess to think about a real man.”
“What—” Felix blushed and hated himself for it. Sylvain raised his brows.
“Really? You’re gonna get prudish on me now? Should I talk about her enormous breasts instead—”
“People are in earshot,” Felix spat, feeling his own ears heat up. But then—“Wait. They’re not…”
“Enormous? Sure they are.”
Felix’s eyes darted back to her, where she was enthusiastically chattering away with Mercedes. “Oh.” He blinked. “Oh, you were talking about Mercedes.”
“Yes, I was talking about Mercedes, who else would I—” Sylvain followed his line of sight and sputtered a laugh. “Oh, hells. You…you thought I was talking about Annette? Goddess, no! Look, they’re like two cute apple halves. I can barely see ‘em in that uniform. Hardly anyone’s working it, huh?”
Felix could not believe he was humoring Sylvain in such a long conversation about…this. But some strange, gentlemanly instinct took hold of him. “She looks nice,” he defended her. Was this that chivalry Ashe and Ingrid were always going on about? Or just common decency?
It was hard to tell when they talked about it.
“She sure does,” Sylvain granted him, but the lascivious tone in his voice earned him a hard elbow jab to the ribs. “Ow! What gives?”
“Stop.”
“Oh, so I can talk about Mercedes rubbing one out all I want, but the second I politely call Annette’s—”
Sylvain cut himself off, for the first time in his life, and Felix was about to sneer something sarcastic when his friend’s eyes widened with a glee he’d learned to despise and dread.
“You’ve got a crush.”
And his blood ran cold.
“I do not,” he said as dismissively as he could. “But I’ll crush you.”
Sylvain cackled and tossed back the rest of his wine. “Hey, no shame in it, man. Two cute kids being cute together…Hell, I won’t stop you. I’ll even back off, give you this one.”
“Give me this—” Felix snarled, reaching for his sword, and—Fuck. It wasn’t there. The stupid belt of this formal attire didn’t even have a place to tie a sheathe. “And ‘back off?’ You weren’t…you weren’t—”
Sylvain’s eyes gleamed with cruel, mocking delight. “Oh, defensive, are we? Thought you had some competition?”
“I don’t—I don’t need to compete because I don’t feel anything. She’s a—”
Friend.
“Got it, I got it. Thanks for the blessing. I’ll keep flirting, then—Felix, what the fuck, I’m done, stop, let go of my wrist!”
Felix would throw a drink on Sylvain’s uniform himself. The spurned girlfriends were taking too damned long.
~10~
There was freshly-baked bread for the entire first week of the new month waiting each day in their classroom. First, a regular farmer’s loaf. Then seeded rye. Then a basket of beautifully-braided soft rolls.
Felix found Annette kneading the dough for the next day’s batch when he stealthily made his way into the kitchens after a late-night training session left him peckish. She jumped when his fingers snaked out to steal a pinch of salt for his also-stolen jerky.
“Felix! Don’t scare me like that!”
“Didn’t mean to.” He tore off a hunk of meat and said through a mouthful, “Were you expecting the Professor to eat this, too? I thought you’d learned you couldn’t help everyone.”
Annette sighed and punched the dough a few more times. A little harder than necessary, maybe, but Felix didn’t know enough about baking to be sure. “Easier said than done, I guess.” She folded the dough over and placed it in an empty bowl. “Can you please hand me that rag?”
Felix handed her the dish towel, which she used to cover the bowl, and he helped her place it on the pantry shelves to let rise.
“Will you sit with me? Just for a little.”
“Sure.”
He’d meant to say ‘no.’ But he found himself sitting on the cold tiles anyway, silently tearing off pieces of jerky. He didn’t offer her any, knowing it wasn’t Annette’s taste, but it felt…odd not doing so anyway.
Annette tucked her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. “I hate feeling so powerless, you know? The Professor’s always so good at taking one look at someone’s face and knowing when they’re feeling a certain way.”
“Strange skill, for a man who never changes his own face.”
Annette cracked a shy smile, and the sight of it sent Felix’s heartbeat into overdrive. He shoved another too-big piece of jerky into his mouth to hide his flush.
Stupid.
“I suppose hiding his face like this,” he said once he swallowed and the heat that was not a blush had receded from his cheeks, “makes it easier for him to mourn. It’s cowardly. Professor Hanneman’s been leading the class for too long, and the man can barely swing a sword without breaking.”
Annette spoke into her hands, muffled enough he couldn’t hear her at first.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, hiding away’s normal, right? When I lost my father, I didn’t want to leave my room for ages.” She sighed, and before Felix could try to eat his words, she added, “I mean, he didn’t die. And I was young. But it makes sense to me.”
What had Felix done when Glenn had died?
He’d sought out Dimitri.
Felix shook himself. Changed the subject. Couldn’t even offer her sympathy. “You’re still young, aren’t you?”
“Felix! Don’t tease me!”
“You still look like a baby.”
“Stop it!” She threw a ball of unused dough from the floor and he ducked, feeling it whizz just past where his forehead had been. He heard it splat behind him, relieved it hadn’t gotten caught in his hair. He was still sweaty from training and needed a bath, but who knew how long it would take to untangle dough from his ponytail?
He grinned at her. In the darkness, it almost looked like her cheeks had colored at the sight, and he didn’t blame her for being mad at his teasing. “You make pretty good bread, though.”
Annette sighed and scooted closer, like she was seeking warmth. And yes, the kitchen tiles were cold, so while Felix didn’t let their knees touch, he also didn’t shift away. “I bake when I’m stressed,” she admitted. “I’m probably helping me more than anyone else.”
~11~
Felix hit the training dummy even harder, and its head popped clean off. He focused more on that, on the straw—like hair, blond like the boar’s—than Annette berating him.
“He wasn’t like this before he knew it was Edelgard, okay? And you’re…you’re being mean, trying to turn all of us against him like this.”
Felix scoffed, tuning back into her ignorant lecture. “Turn you against the boar? I haven’t done anything new besides prove I’m right.”
“That’s exactly what I mean!”
He shook his head, kicked the post of the training dummy, and went to go find another. “If you’re viewing the boar differently after that tantrum down there, then that’s its doing. Not mine.”
“Felix, you’re so mean.” Annette sounded close to tears, eloquence failing her, and Felix couldn’t…couldn’t…
“I am. Never pretended otherwise.”
He didn’t know why it hurt to hear her say it, when she’d called him evil before, when she’d sworn to hate him forever and ever, when she’d said he teased her too much.
But she was right.
And he hated that she’d finally come to understand.
“This isn’t like you,” she said decidedly, and Felix flinched. He whirled on her, ready to prove her wrong, ready to insist no, she was right, he was mean and he was unfeeling and emotionless and everything else everyone said he was despite the fact he was not, but then she said through visible tears, “you’re being a lot like His Highness right now, beating up all those dummies instead of talking to your friends. Friends who care about you and are there for you. But none of them are him. You’re the dummy, Felix!”
And Annette ran away before he could decipher her words, before he could decide if he was going to let them hurt him.
~12~
Felix didn’t pray much, not as a general rule.
He went to services as needed and waited for them to be over. Sometimes, someone good would be in the afternoon chorus, someone like Dorothea or Ferdinand or Hilda or—
Sometimes.
Praying hadn’t protected Glenn, or his friends, or himself, and he didn’t see any reason why going to the cathedral as the Imperial army marched their way would change their fate at all, but…
Annette was praying in a corner by the Holy Mausoleum, like she didn’t want her prayers to disturb anyone. And Felix clasped his hands in the opposite corner, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see hers open, see her stare at him.
And even if he wasn’t sure if it was the Goddess he was praying to, or just himself, some future, braver, stronger version of himself…
Felix prayed they would survive long enough for him to…for him to…
For him to be braver. Stronger. Himself.
Someone capable of helping and being helped.