Chapter Text
When Sylvain thought about life after death, he always imagined it to unbearably hot, flames mercilessly incinerating your rotting body.
He always imagined that you would be enveloped by hellfire, your bones charring and turning to dust as your skin melted away—and afterwards, when nothing of you is left, you could be reborn, rising from your sins and your ashes as a new person completely, like the story of the mythical phoenix he read about as a child.
It was a little morbid, idealistic, and even cheesy, but it was what he always thought growing up.
Yet, it turns out that death is much colder than he thought it would be. And darker too.
He isn’t quite sure where he is, but all he knows is that he’s really cold—even colder than standing outside with no clothes on during the snowstorms of frigid Faerghus winters—and that he probably isn’t alive.
After all, he remembers his death quite vividly.
He and the other Blue Lions had been wrapping up a rough battle against a few stubborn bandits.
As his other classmates charged ahead towards the enemy commander, Sylvain had hung back a little, exhausted and wounded.
His gaze had drifted over to Felix, who seemed to be fighting a few bandits off at once. He watched as Felix’s form started to wilt, his swings becoming sloppier and his footing becoming clumsier. However, Felix managed to defeat to bandits in front of him and was leaning against his sword, the blade stabbed in the ground.
Felix took a moment to get his breath back, his battered body heaving with each breath he took.
Sylvain was riding over to Felix to check on him when an arrow had flown through the air and struck Sylvain in the chest.
He had been knocked off his startled horse, and he started to choke on the blood quickly rising to his mouth from his burning chest. He forced his shaky arms to support his body, sitting upright in the dirt and looking up.
Then, he had spotted an archer taking aim at Felix—most likely the same archer that had shot him.
Sylvain’s eyes went wide, and even though he was literally starting to bleed out from the arrow wound, he staggered to his feet and limped as fast as he could towards Felix, trying not to jostle his wound as he moved.
“Felix!” Sylvain shouted, raising his javelin in the air and taking aim at the archer.
Felix looked over at him, and a look of pure shock had flashed on his face as he took a step towards Sylvain. Sylvain threw the javelin with all his might at the archer and collapsed against the ground with a wheeze.
But it was too late. The archer had fired the arrow.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
The arrow arced through the air as the javelin fell just short of the archer. Felix turned his head to see the archer. The arrow sunk into his skull. Felix staggered and fell back onto the ground.
He went still.
Sylvain had felt a numbness envelop his body, though he couldn’t tell if that was because he was literally dying or because he just watched his best friend—and the love of his life—die before him.
The last thing he had seen was Felix’s still, bloodied body lying in the mud.
The last thing he had said was Felix’s name, a whisper of despair.
The last thing he heard was Ingrid screaming out his and Felix’s names before the world went dark.
And now here he was, sitting in complete darkness and silence.
He wants to shiver from the cold permeating his skin, caressing his bones, but strangely enough, while his body is cold, he feels no need to warm himself. It’s almost as if he recognizes that he’s cold but feels nothing at all.
It’s a chilling thought.
“My, my,” a female voice muses, echoing through the odd ambiance of the darkness.
It isn’t a voice he recognizes. Sylvain looks around, but he doesn’t see anything nor anyone.
"You are very dedicated to keeping your word now, aren’t you?”
A hundred questions race through Sylvain’s mind, ranging from who are you? to where am I? to why is it so damn cold in here?
Yet, none of his thoughts reach his lips, and he simply sits in the darkness, dumbfounded.
“Promising to die together with your best friend when you were children and actually going through with it,” the voice continues, growing louder as if the speaker is coming towards him. “It is almost admirable—poetic, to a degree—to have that much determination.”
So I am dead, Sylvain thinks. Well, he kind of knew that already, but it’s nice to have some sort of official closure.
He doesn’t know what to feel. He’s just a little numb.
“Your deaths were untimely. It is most unfortunate, but it seems that this is the reality of war.” The voice is quieter, but he suddenly feels a presence in front of him—something warm and unfixed, like a floating ball of warmth. Startled, Sylvain tries to scramble backwards.
And it works. He manages to move somehow, and the warmth in front of him diminishes slightly.
“Simmer down. I mean you no harm.” The presence approaches him again, the warmth returning. The voice clicks her tongue. “Honestly now. You would think that the dead would have less fear. What could I possibly do to you? You have already died.”
“Who are you?” Sylvain asks, and once he’s done so, it’s as if he’d opened the floodgates blocking the path from his brain to his mouth. “Where am I? Where’s Felix?” He shudders a little. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“One question at a time, child.”
“Who are you?” he repeats.
“I suppose that you ought to know. After all, I cannot imagine that this darkness brings you any comfort.”
There’s a burst of blinding light, cutting through the darkness. Sylvain instinctively clenches his eyes shut, his arms raised to block the light.
A bit of warmth spreads alongside the light, and when the light subsides into something more bearable, Sylvain finds himself staring at a short, pointy-eared woman with long, green hair and some rather odd clothes, standing barefoot before him.
“I am Sothis,” she tells him calmly. “I am also known as The Beginning.”
‘The Beginning,’ huh? Sylvain cocks his head at her. Sounds really important.
She doesn’t acknowledge his confusion regarding her name. She continues, “It is truly quite unfortunate that you and your friend have fallen. You were so young—like many of the others who have fallen in this thoughtless war.” Her gaze turns sad. “But I am afraid that there is little I can do for you.”
“Where’s Felix? If he’s dead too, shouldn’t he be here?”
“Yes. He is here.”
Sylvain looks around, but when he sees nothing but the odd, new scenery around him and Sothis—the odd stone throne and the stairs leading up to it—he raises an eyebrow.
“He is here,” she repeats, “in a sense. You just cannot see him.”
“Why not?”
Sothis wrinkles her nose. “Well, if all dead souls were taken to the same place, I cannot imagine what kind of chaos would ensue. It would be rather noisy, crowded, and I would hate to have to try and babysit all of you lost souls.” She gives a small huff. “It is hard enough trying to get some sleep around here with all the questions I get.”
Sylvain sighs. “I guess that makes sense.”
A silence fills the space between him and Sothis.
“What’s going to happen to me?” he asks. “And Felix?”
Sothis crosses her arms. “Well, that is where you differ from the others who have come here.” She points at him with one hand, the other resting on her hip. “I have been told not to let you pass through to the afterlife.”
Sylvain frowns. “Me specifically? Did I do something wrong?”
He tries to think back to any time where he could have seriously offended any deity. He supposes that his reckless flirting and heartbreaking isn’t exactly the best thing to have on his record, and he knows that killing people in a war isn’t particularly a good thing either.
“No.” She pauses and gives him a flat look. “Well…” She shakes her head. “No. I have not the time for such pettiness.” Sothis steps towards the stone throne. “I have been told not to let you through,” she says slowly, “because I have received a very desperate request to turn back the hands of time and bring both you and Felix back to the land of the living.”
Sylvain furrows his eyebrows. “What?”
“It is convoluted.” She turns to face him. “Tell me, Sylvain. Would you like to go back in time? You would hold no account of this encounter; nor would you remember that you or Felix have ever died.”
Sylvain actually has to think about it for a second, but when he thinks about his life with his classmates, who never fail to make him smile and feel loved for once in his life, and when he thinks about Felix, who may not recognize that Sylvain holds such feelings for him but still treats him with his own version of kindness and love, he knows the answer immediately.
“Yes. I want to go back.”
“Even if it cost you?”
“What would it cost?”
Sothis sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “In short, while I am able to turn back time regularly—I have done so many times, and you are none the wiser—I find that I am unable to do so now. At least, I cannot do so as I typically would.”
Sylvain feels a sinking feeling in his stomach, like his heart is plummeting to the deepest depths of his body.
"So I can’t go back,” he says quietly.
“No. I am able to send you back. However, it seems that if I do, you will face some unexpected consequences.”
“What are they? Do you know?”
Sothis takes in a small breath, a small inhale and a sigh. “It appears that if I were to send you back, you would not retain any memories of Felix.”
Sylvain goes still.
His first instinct is to refuse.
He doesn’t want to lose his memories of Felix—of them growing up together as friends, of them attending Garreg Mach together as classmates, of them growing closer as allies through the war. Felix has made up such a massive part of his childhood and his life, has helped to shape how he thinks and how he feels.
If he loses his memories of Felix, he would lose his feelings for him too. Sylvain doesn’t think he wants to live in a world where he doesn’t know Felix, doesn’t have him to depend on, doesn’t have him to love. It would be such a bleak and boring world, similar to how his life was with Miklan and his father—before Felix came and gave him things to look forward to.
But it’s likely that Sothis would not just send him back in time.
She would have to send Felix back too, which makes things a lot more difficult. Sylvain wouldn’t want Felix to die in some obscure field to bandits, and he wouldn’t want Felix to have to be trapped in this cold darkness for all of eternity.
If Sylvain has to lose his memories of Felix—all of the happiest and softest memories he’s ever had in his life—just to make sure that Felix doesn’t die and suffer through a painful and pitiful death, wasting away in the afterlife because of Sylvain’s inability to protect him from that damned archer, then Sylvain thinks that the answer is quite obvious.
Sylvain frowns but nods. “I want to go back. I have to bring Felix back. Even if I…” His words get caught up in his throat, but he forces himself to spit them out. “Even if I have to forget him.”
Sothis nods solemnly and holds out her hands. A round, yellow sigil flashes brightly before Sothis, and as the words and symbols of the sigil begin to dance in the air, Sothis locks eyes with Sylvain.
“I cannot turn back the hands of time too far, but I have faith that you and Felix should be able to survive this time around. Even so, I implore you to exercise caution as I will not be able to do this again.”
Then, she sighs. “What a troublesome professor.”
Professor? Sylvain opens his mouth to ask Sothis what she means, but the sigil flashes again and the world around him grows dark once again.