Archive of Our Own

Sylvain is ten, almost eleven, when he goes down the well. When Miklan pushes him. He’d been naive really, thinking or wishing that his brother really did just want to take him for a ride around the Gautier estate. Miklan never wanted to do anything nice with Sylvain, never acted like other big brothers Sylvain knows, or the ones in the stories he, Felix, Dimitri and Ingrid love. Before they knew how, Glenn used to be the one to read those books to them.

Glenn is a good older brother, Sylvain thinks in the icy water, to keep himself from going dark. He’d never push Felix into a well. He’d never break his arm against the stone bottom of a too-empty cistern, which Miklan has almost definitely done based on the pain Sylvain feels there. It’s almost as bad as the hurt in his throat, raw and increasingly ineffectual as he howls for attention. At first he’d tried phrases, coherent and intentional to catch the ear of anyone listening. Now his noises could be anything — animal, whetstone on steel. A boy in a well.

Miklan had leaned over the edge, as if he wanted to make sure Sylvain had fallen all the way, that there was no way for him to escape. “You’re stupider than I thought,” he’d said, laughter in his voice, not even bothering to meet Sylvain’s eyes where they welled up with tears, as if he wasn’t even worth it. And then he was gone. Like he didn’t even care whether Sylvain lived or died, like his whole goal was just this suspended state of limbo.

It hurts Sylvain to think about it, his brother’s face over him like the dark side of the moon, too angry and detached for a fourteen year old. But that’s how it’s always been with Miklan, awful, relentless, Sylvain and his Crest made into enemies by forces outside either of their control. Another strangled, wordless noise out of him, and his brain supplies another distracting thought to pull attention from his rubbed throat. He’s probably ruining Felix’s birthday.

Glenn had brought Felix to Gautier for the week, stopping on his way to Fhirdiad to drop him off, laughing as he told Sylvain that the only thing Felix had wanted for his birthday was to see him. Sylvain had thought at the time that he probably wanted to see Dimitri more, but the prince was busier than ever these days even at eight, and that suspicion persists stronger in the cold of the well with nothing but his shaking and the pain in his throat and arm to keep it away.

Back in the keep, Felix is probably calling for him in that sweet babyish voice he has. Sylvain! Sylvain! He might even be crying. Sylvain hopes not, but with Felix his emotions are on a hair trigger.

Sylvain! He can almost hear it, echoing down into the well and bouncing around his mind. Sylvain! He yells again, scrape of sandpaper, to drown it out.

“Sylvain!” And this time he hears footsteps, running, scrambling, and then Felix’s face is over the edge of the well, eyes wide and frantic. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in there but it’s light enough to see the panic stretching Felix’s mouth, so Sylvain assumes it’s daytime. It had been grey morning when Miklan had dropped him down.

“Fe,” he rasps, not enough energy to get the full name out.

“Sylvain, what happened?” he calls. Then he rethinks it, disappearing behind the lip again, and as he vanishes, finally, Sylvain feels panic rising in him.

“Don’t leave!” he tries to yell but it’s mostly a cough through his chattering teeth, and it’s all he has time to say before Felix appears again, this time with a coiled rope over his shoulder. Sylvain had seen it on the ground next to the well before he’d been pushed in, had stared up fruitlessly at the knot where one end is tied around the crossbar over the cistern, mocking him with its proximity. “I’m here, Sylvain. Catch this and try to tie it around you.”

He tosses the rope down and Sylvain ties it around his waist, clumsy with one frigid hand as he holds his sore arm stiff. Taking the slack of the cord in his good hand, he braces his feet against the wall and feels Felix’s tug on the other end, unusually reassuring considering how small he looks up there. Sylvain knows he can trust his young strength, thanking Glenn wordlessly for the endless and annoying training regimen he’s imprinted on Felix as he walks himself slowly up the side of the cistern.

He’s exhausted when he makes it to the top, collapsing sideways out onto the arm that doesn’t feel broken, and Felix kneels back on his heels next to him, hands to his face, warm.

“You’re really cold,” he says, brushing at his clothes, feeling how wet they are. Sylvain can’t speak but he nods, trying to smile like he usually does at Felix but instead he thinks he’s crying, tears painfully hot on his cheeks. Or maybe they’re Felix’s tears, falling on him where he leans over. “We—” Sniffle. “—we have to get you back. Come on,” he says, tugging on Sylvain’s arm, and he yells in pain, one last stab to his rotten throat. Felix jerks back like from a hot stove. “Sorry, sorry,” he chokes through his tears, instead reaching to untie the rope from Sylvain’s waist. His arms are shaking from the effort of yanking him out of the well. Sylvain may be freezing, maybe even to death in the thin Faerghus sun, but his heart still manages to squeeze in guilt. His arm is throbbing.

“No,” he whispers, half breath, and with an effort that takes almost everything he has he pushes himself up to half-sit so Felix can unloop the rope from under his body. “I’m sorry… your birthday…”

Felix looks at Sylvain like he’s grown a second head. “Stop,” he says, sliding an arm under the side that doesn’t hurt as much and lifting Sylvain, careful not to come close to his broken bone. Not that he knows it’s broken, not that either of them do. Half-dragging him, Felix guides Sylvain back to the Gautier home, met at a surprising distance from the front gate by a guard with very good eyesight. He takes Sylvain in his stronger adult arms, ignoring Sylvain’s weak whine of pain at the compression of his arm just as stoically as he disregards Felix’s calls to wait, further and further away as his exhausted legs lose distance and Sylvain’s vision goes black around the edges, until he can’t see or hear anything anymore.

When he comes to his arm is stiff but not painful. He’s warm, under a blanket and maybe near a fire based on the crackling noise he hears. Overall he doesn’t feel like he’s going to die anymore, or maybe he’s already dead and hell is a sore arm and the memory of your brother trying to end your life. He opens his eyes.

By the side of the bed is one of the Gautier healers, the one his parents usually have stationed at the keep for emergencies or consultations. She smiles at Sylvain in her prim way. “He’s awake,” she says, and who she’s talking to is a mystery for a moment until a flash of movement in the corner of his eye makes Sylvain roll his head to the left. A couple things stand out: he is on a bed, his by the look of the room around him as it slowly comes into focus, and Felix is there, in a chair looking very tired and very scared.

“Hi,” Sylvain says, and this time he does manage to smile. Felix smiles back and already his eyes are starting to shine with tears he’s sure he’ll shed as soon as they get rid of the pesky healer.

“How are you feeling?” she asks Sylvain, and he turns back to face her on his right. The mask drops on.

“I’m all right,” he says. Instinct kicks in, as usual, to lie, lie, lie. “I can’t believe how clumsy it was of me to fall down like that. My arm feels a little stiff.” Glancing down, he sees it’s in a sling of sorts.

“Keep it still,” she commands, and he nods, miming a salute with the arm still working normally. “Are you hungry?” He nods, seeing a chance, and she rises. “I’ll bring the both of you something.”

Sylvain can feel waves of energy rolling off of Felix almost physically as she walks out, and the moment the door shuts Felix is out of his chair and on the bed, wrapping his arms around Sylvain and worming his way against his chest, avoiding his hurt arm. “Sylvain,” he whines, and just like Sylvain had expected this is when he starts to cry. He pats Felix’s back with the stiff arm, and it only hurts a little, wrapping the other one around Felix’s shoulders.

“Hey, I’m okay,” he says, grinning in case Felix looks up at him, but he doesn’t. “I’m okay.”

“What happened?” he says into Sylvain’s shirt, and it’s barely a question. It’s a demand, an order to say what he couldn’t or wouldn’t to the healer. To tell him the truth, and Sylvain can never deny Felix, not his tears, not his pouting, not his enthusiastic requests for a spar, and not now.

“Miklan pushed me into the well,” he says, voice small against the top of Felix’s head. His body, smaller than Sylvain’s but stronger through sheer force of will, goes still against him. “I don’t know what I did wrong or why he was mad at me.” Or why he maybe didn’t even care enough to be mad, but Sylvain isn’t ready to face that possibility yet.

At that Felix’s head snaps up, catching Sylvain’s chin and clacking his teeth together. His brown eyes are fierce, molten metal in the light of the fire and the darkness outside the window. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice is firm with a certainty he has no right to. “It doesn’t matter what else happened. Miklan shouldn’t have done that. I hate him.”

Felix hates Miklan with an intensity that Sylvain can’t access, a heat that could only come from the experience of something different, an older brother that’s as he should be. Sylvain mostly pities Miklan. It’s not his fault for being born without a Crest, definitely not his fault that their parents care so much about it. If Sylvain could trade him he would.

“It’s okay, Felix. I’m not gonna be that stupid again.” He rubs his chin where Felix smashed into it, which means letting go of his friend, then rubs the top of his head where he’s sure his chin had left an equally painful impression.

“I thought you might be dead,” Felix murmurs, ducking away from Sylvain’s hand and gaze. “I thought…”

“I thought I might be dead down there too,” Sylvain admits. “I was really alone.”

There’s a moment of quiet. “I have an idea,” Felix says then, as though he’s been struck by genius. “Let’s always stick together. So we can be sure we won’t be alone.”

Only a ten year old could nod as fervently as Sylvain does, mean it as much as he does when he says, “Yeah, let’s do it. And let’s say neither of us will die without the other one. So we won’t be by ourselves when it happens.” Something inside Sylvain is burning, alive and alight with the thought that Felix wants to do this with him, make him this promise. No Dimitri in sight. Like Sylvain could be for Felix what Miklan never has been for him — his protector, his friend, his companion.

“Okay. I promise,” Felix says, and his voice is solemn. And he keeps his promise for the rest of his visit, caterwauling until Margrave Gautier agrees to have the servants make up a cot for him to sleep on in Sylvain’s room. And it’s good when he’s there, Sylvain finds once he’s gone, because it’s evidently the only thing keeping the nightmares about the cold and impersonal well at bay.

Sylvain is sixteen when he attends his first funeral that matters. Felix’s eyes are behind shutters where he stands at his brother’s grave — empty, he’d flatly told Sylvain earlier in the day when he’d arrived. They’d only managed to salvage his armor.

“The only thing we have left is the bullshit that made him a knight,” Felix had spat. There’s something about him today that makes Sylvain want to respect his distance. He stands with Ingrid instead by the grave, holding her up with an arm around her shoulders when she looks like she might shake apart. The coffin with nothing but metal and memories inside goes into the dirt. It’s over.

Miklan is at the funeral too, dragged with the Gautiers to avoid an affront to the Fraldarius family. Sylvain wishes he hadn’t come, forced to listen on the long journey down to a litany of anger at Felix’s brother. Sylvain never asks and never wants to, but if he has to guess he’d say some part of Miklan hates himself for having to see in Glenn all the things he’s failed to be himself. But hey, Sylvain could say the same — Glenn was strong, focused, driven, well-liked, able to live up to expectations. Anyone Ingrid admires has to be a paragon. But he was a person too, sarcastic and beveled at the edges. Sylvain misses him already, looking down at the pile of earth between him and the brother that threw into sharp relief everything that Sylvain would never have. But he never resented Glenn for it, loved and admired him instead like everyone else.

After the ceremony he takes Ingrid back to the castle, companionably silent, letting her and wanting her to lean against him. He’s strong enough for both of them, steeled, bright-eyed. She stops them before they break the tree line.

“I don’t want Rodrigue to see me crying,” she sniffles. “How ridiculous.”

“It’s not,” he says, arms around her, tears wet on his shirt. “It’s not.”

A twig snaps, and Ingrid doesn’t hear it muffled in his hold but Sylvain does. It’s Felix, somehow separated from the other mourners, moving with purpose toward home. Sylvain levels his gaze, willing Felix to hear them or see them, and as if the goddess is looking down in mercy for the first time ever he pauses and looks toward Sylvain. Their eyes meet, Felix’s hot with pain, Sylvain’s, he hopes, wide and empathetic.

Old Felix would be in tears, inconsolable, the Ingrid sobbing in his arms. The Felix that stood by Glenn’s symbolic resting place would probably have never looked his way. Sylvain tips his head back slightly, beckoning him over, rubbing circles into Ingrid’s back. And this Felix, the new Felix, steps toward them, threading through the trees until he’s at Sylvain’s side, not touching him.

Ingrid does look up at that. “Felix!” She half calls out his name, startled and embarrassed and warm, considering that it’s Ingrid. She reaches out from under Sylvain’s arm to pull him to her, and he looks stiff but not unwilling. Sylvain unwinds one hand from Ingrid to wrap around Felix, the three of them together just like they always have been, and he feels Felix is holding himself still. His arms hang at his sides. Ingrid cries a little longer. Felix does nothing in their embrace.

When she finally lifts her head, smiling a little, appreciative, at Sylvain, she insists on going on ahead. “I need to see Dimitri by myself,” she says, and although Sylvain isn’t exactly sure why he thinks some part of him understands. He waves to her as she walks off, as if he won’t see her as he follows at a little distance, Felix silent but next to him, in step. They let Ingrid fade out of view.

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Felix says suddenly, voice like ice and steel.

Sylvain turns to look at him, surprised and not sure if it’s because he spoke at all or because of what he said. “What?”

“Last night she told me she was proud of how Glenn died. Her and my father both.” He can hear Felix’s teeth grit against the words. “His son. Her… betrothed.” The last syllables spat out. “Reduced to some idiot morality tale, some knightly example.”

“Felix,” Sylvain breathes. He doesn’t know what to say. New Felix might not want him to say anything at all. They walk slowly, barely walking at all. Sylvain can’t help but dread reuniting with Miklan, and it throws into relief how little Felix deserves this, how less Glenn does. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t kill him,” he says. His voice is a little bit tight.

“I mean about Ingrid. And your dad.” And Glenn too, but Felix knows that and Sylvain’s sure he’s heard that enough times today to last a lifetime. “They’re wrong. Death isn’t something to run after.”

Felix looks at him. They’re taking their time back to the Fraldarius castle, neither of them eager to face what home means right now, so it’s easy enough to still altogether. “Exactly,” he says. His throat still sounds choked but he betrays no emotion — maybe it’s the contrast between what Sylvain expects from Felix and what he’s getting. “Glenn’s gone. He wouldn’t have wanted that, right? He wouldn’t have wanted…”

“To leave?” Sylvain fills the silence, as usual. “No, I don’t think he wanted that. I don’t think any of them wanted that.”

Felix looks like he’s going to say something, looks like he might strangle on it, but then he stops himself, pushing it down. Instead he says something else. “Thank you, Sylvain.” It’s oddly stiff and formal considering their history but he knows him well enough to suss out the truth of it — old Felix is still in there, not yet to heel under the new regime, ready to flow out through any crack he can find. “You… you always liked Glenn for the right reasons.”

He really doesn’t know what to say to that. “I’m here if you need anything, Felix. I’m not going anywhere.” If you need me, he thinks but doesn’t say. They make the rest of their way to the castle in silence, and as they pass through the gate, red hair greets them, leaving the door to the house.

“There you are, brat.” Miklan. Sylvain takes a breath, steadies himself. At his side he feels Felix stiffen, like he had with Ingrid, like he doesn’t yet with Sylvain. “Father sent me to find you.”

“Here I am,” he says neutrally. “Sorry to be any trouble.”

“You’re always trouble.” Under the covertly attentive eyes of the guards and Felix’s not at all subtle gaze, aimed and hardened, Miklan can’t do any of the usual obvious things he does to hurt Sylvain. Instead he reaches for his arm and grips it, cruel, painfully, the same spot he’d broken all those years ago although now it’s healed. Sylvain tries not to wince, not to give Miklan the satisfaction, but he feels his eyes twitch because, as he has to know, he picked a spot to press on where he’d left a mark just yesterday. “Come on, in—”

He doesn’t finish because suddenly Felix has his fingers grabbed where they’re digging into Sylvain’s arm, and then he’s wrenching them backwards with the strength he’s had the chance and the will to hone where Miklan hasn’t. He yelps, trying to jerk his hand away, but Felix has it trapped in his grip. The guards suddenly seem less interested in what’s going on between the three of them. Sylvain stares, bewildered, at Felix, rubbing his arm where there will surely be another bruise.

“That’s enough.” Felix’s voice is measured and impartial, like a statement of fact. Then he snaps Miklan’s fingers, enough to hurt but not to break, drawing another choked noise of pain before dropping his hand at last. “Sylvain, come on.”

And he does, looking for a moment at Miklan’s face where pain and rage are painted in equal measure, and then he follows the new Felix the way the old one might have followed him. “You didn’t have to do that,” Sylvain says, meaning thank you for doing that. “He might start… getting mad at you now.”

“Let him.” His words are a bite. “While I’m around he’s not hurting you anymore.” And something about the intensity with which Felix whirls around to glare at Sylvain as he says it has him fully believing it. He stays with Felix, hand warm and heavy and steadying on his shoulder, as he faces the rest of the day and the rest of the world. He has an entire afternoon free of Miklan.

Felix is not around when Sylvain is seventeen and shaken out of bed, where he’d fallen asleep early after the previous night had been occupied with some merchant’s daughter, whatever her name is. A distraction to keep his mind off the fact that his life is slowly falling apart, another smiling face ready to ignore all the damage old and new his skin betrays as they expose it together, attentive only to one thing — not even visible but known about Sylvain more than anything else.

“Get up.” It’s Miklan. The sound of his voice, half poisonous half laughing, scares him awake immediately. “Come on, Sylvain, get out of bed, you lazy piece of shit.” The way Miklan says his name with a vicious, mocking drawl, hurts more than the insult, more than the lance slice Miklan had given him earlier under the guise of a brotherly spar. His arm still burns, secreted away in a spot the healers can’t see without having to divulge more. He scrambles to obey without thinking, years of resistance rewarded with pain dulling his self-preservation. “We’re going for a walk. I want to show you something, one last time.”

The wording is ominous but it doesn’t stop Sylvain from sliding into his boots, not bothering to change out of his sleeping clothes; they’re heavy enough under the cloak he grabs to keep him warm for any length a walk at this time of night could be. He follows Miklan, half blind with sleep, interrupted dream of someone who was not the merchant’s daughter fading quickly. They leave through the back of the keep, a route that most of the Gautier family and staff leave alone. Sylvain had led Felix, Dimitri and Ingrid down this way dozens of times to sneak away from their parents during boring parties or to stay out of sight as they smuggled food from the kitchen or books from the library.

It feels different walking this path with Miklan. He’s ahead of Sylvain, dragging him by the arm, in a rush for reasons Sylvain cannot divine. They make it outside, into the dark, passing through the side gate without being detected. It’s cold but Sylvain has never really minded that about their territory. He minds much more the sound that rumbles through him where Miklan has him grasped, a noise that if he didn’t know better would sound like chuckling.

They’re several minutes into the forest outside the keep, dark and dangerous with the uneven ground, when Sylvain finally speaks. “Where are we going?”

His brother laughs then, long and frighteningly loud in the darkness of the woods. “You are,” Miklan begins, then stops to laugh again. He’s still yanking Sylvain along at breakneck pace for someone who woke up, probably, less than an hour ago although it’s hard to tell. “You are a fucking idiot. They want you? Fine. They’ll have to live with that choice, won’t they, Sylvain?”

Sylvain is beginning to feel really scared, but he only has time to start feeling that way. Miklan rounds on him, it’s dark so he doesn’t see the details but he feels his movement, the same height as Sylvain but broader, harder. And then his hand is off his arm, which normally might make Sylvain less afraid but instead it terrifies him because he can’t see it as it reaches with its twin to clutch his throat, he doesn’t have time to cry out or struggle besides for purchase against his brother’s furred arms as his consciousness fades.

He wakes to the wind, wind that means he’s no longer in the forest, the last thing he remembers, reminded by the knives that shred his throat as he gasps himself to life. He’s sitting against something hard, maybe a rock, and if Miklan had left him to die he’d at least left him in his cloak and shoes. Maybe to claim it was an accident later on. Sylvain struggles to his feet, joints stiff and aching with cold, but working which he takes as a good sign. And as he gets his bearings he realizes another thing that’s strange if Miklan has intended to kill him — he knows where he is. Not exactly, not fully, but he recognizes the terrain of the mountainside near the Gautier estate. He’s climbed parts of it with Glenn, Felix, Dimitri, Ingrid, loads of times. Miklan must have carried or dragged him for hours to bring him up here, and indeed although the sky is grey over his head it’s light, like it’s daytime. He hopes it’s just the day after he left home, no longer. Based on how hungry he is it’s hard to be sure.

He stamps his feet against the cold and his frozen joints. Nowhere to go but down. He’s not up high enough to have a view including his family’s home, but although the mountain is not huge he can’t imagine still that Miklan had the time to deposit him all the way around to the opposite side of the peak.

He walks for what feels like hours, and probably is, cloak pulled tightly around him to ward off the biting wind that pierces the clothing he hadn’t expected to be out in for more than a few minutes. He almost chuckles at the thought that what Miklan had wanted to show him was his own deathbed. Almost. His throat hurts too much where he’d been choked.

Walking down the mountain, passing rock after tree after patch of snow not melted in the recent but not lasting enough sun, Sylvain wonders if Miklan had said anything to him before he left, whether he had a message for his younger brother who’d ruined his life simply by being born with a Crest. Crests keep order in Fodlan, Sylvain and Faerghus know this better than anyone, but he’d give his up in a heartbeat, and all the admirers and flirtations and privileges that come with it, for his brother, his parents, to… He can’t think anymore about it. He has to survive before he can access the luxury of introspection. For the first time in a while, as the sky darkens over him, he thinks of being in that well, looking up at his brother’s disdainful face and wondering if he would die.

Back then he hadn’t had much seriousness about staying alive. He’d been a child, barely able to understand what death meant beyond going away, the way his parents sometimes did on business or political trips, into Fhirdiad or Sreng, but instead never coming back. Now the thought of death is weighted with the memory of Glenn, on his mind, unreachable.

There’s also his promise. The thought warms him a little and he turns to it as he slowly picks his way through the dark and stony terrain, trying not to breathe too heavily as the cold air scratches at his throat like nails at a scab. When Miklan had pushed him into the well he and Felix hadn’t promised yet to stick together, to stay alive together, and though it may have been a stupid vow to make — Felix surely thinks so now, all hard eyes and downturned lips — Sylvain still remembers it sometimes. He remembers it now as his foot comes down painfully on a rock sharper than he’s expecting, and he groans but he has to keep going.

He looks up from a fruitless glance down at his twisted ankle, invisible in the gathering darkness, and miracle of miracles there’s a light through the trees. He’d barely noticed the ground had grown level but now it seems painfully obvious, in more ways than one, that he’s been trudging along without the incline to push him forward. From the looks of it there might be a few hundred feet between him and the faint glow, and he sincerely hopes he guessed correctly about which side of the mountain Miklan had left him on.

He had. Stumbling a little on his wrenched foot, he makes his way to the front gate, familiar guardsman shouting to him as he grins and waves, perfect to hide the tension of pain tugging at his mouth. He doesn’t hear what the guard says as he opens the portcullis for him, too exhausted to concentrate on much besides a hot bath and bed.

Bed. He takes another mechanical step forward, feels himself pulled equally strongly backwards suddenly by a sick stab of fear in his gut. He’d been thinking of the Gautier keep as home, safety after his ordeal, but the entire reason he’d had to go through it at all is still somewhere inside, likely holding on to anger that would only grow stronger seeing that his plan has failed. For one wild, upsetting moment Sylvain wonders if it would have been better for him to have died up on the mountain.

He opens the front door. Whether for good or ill, he has survived and now he has to face the consequences.

He makes it to the main room without much incident, ankle twinging each time he puts weight on it, and his father looks up at him with surprise, which Sylvain somewhat expected not knowing how long he’d been gone, and something like disgust, which he hadn’t really imagined but shouldn’t be a complete surprise considering how he probably smells and how the Margrave is just like that.

“You look terrible,” his father says. “I hope whatever girl you were with fared better.”

No lie needed this time to cover for Miklan. The falling expectations those around Sylvain have for him would do the work instead. He grins again, folding his arms behind his head. “Aww, is that all you have to say to me, dad? You didn’t miss me even a little?”

“You sound terrible.” No response to that, as usual. “You should show a little more dignity in your carousing. You are the heir of Gautier.”

He rolls his eyes, tries to make his voice sound less like it had been choked out of him hours ago, stamping down the pain that tears through his throat with every word he says. “Miklan’s the actual heir, I just have this stupid Crest. But just for you, dad, I’ll still behave.”

His father’s brows knit a little. “As of last night, you are the heir to House Gautier, Sylvain, like it or not.” He pauses, but Sylvain doesn’t even know where to begin, what questions to ask. “Your brother attempted to steal the Lance of Ruin. He could no longer be trusted to take over our title, or to remain on our lands.”

“What are you saying?”

“Miklan is gone.” It’s curt and uncaring, as if his own son was a problem that had been resolved. “Now please, go and make sure you’ll be presentable enough to be seen tomorrow. It’s about time you start to learn about what inheriting this title will mean.”

Sylvain is willing enough to walk away from his father, limping slightly, making his way mindlessly to where he hopes the Gautier healer is with his head spinning. Miklan is gone. He is gone. Knowing his father, the guards probably all understand to send him on his way should he return, likely with violence. A spike of guilt rams through his stomach at the relief spreading inside him, but the thought of a house without his ferocious presence is appealing. That pull mixed with the surprising pain at the thought of Miklan alone somewhere, in the Faerghus cold they way he had been just hours ago, wipes all of the ache from his ankle until he arrives at the informally designated infirmary.

“Just like that arm I fixed up for you all those years ago, hmm?” the healer says as she examines Sylvain’s ankle. Her voice is a little too perceptive for him so he deflects, waving his hand as if to bat away her fears.

He doesn’t reply verbally, doesn’t want to betray his voice while his cloak hides the visual evidence of their brotherly confrontation, and she hums discordantly but casts her magic, and Sylvain’s trip to the bath is much swifter without the whine of strained tendons.

A week passes before Felix appears, harsh and ready for a fight in the doorway of Sylvain’s room. According to the Margarave, who’s accompanied him upstairs, he’s looking for Sylvain, has left his escort rudely alone in the entryway. Sylvain waves as his father leaves, in his way the way Felix is in his. “Hey, Felix. Good to see you.”

“You’re… all right.”

Sylvain frowns. “Well, yeah. Lately I’ve been mostly figuring out how to run the territory so not a lot of chance to get in trouble.”

Felix frowns back. Sylvain doesn’t like that. “Fraldarius received word that Miklan had been disinherited. I figured… I guess I assumed… he had done something to you. Seeing you well is…”

“I’m fine, Felix,” Sylvain says. He smiles, and it’s easier, the truth complicated as always. “Miklan tried to take the Lance of Ruin, that’s why he’s out of here.”

Felix looks strangely angry where he’s perched at the foot of Sylvain’s bed, across from Sylvain himself in his desk chair. “You’re telling me,” he starts, and his voice is almost frightening in intensity, would be scary certainly if it were turned on Sylvain but he senses it’s not, “that your father disinherited the son that treated you like shit for years, tried to kill you once that I know of, for trying to take a fucking lance?”

Sylvain’s heart squeezes in his chest, watching Felix’s hands where they’re clenched into fists of rage at his sides. He stands from the chair, crossing the room to sit on the bed across from Felix, just looking at him for a moment. Things have changed between them since Glenn’s death, Felix has changed. It isn’t as easy to understand him as it had been, when he would come to Sylvain whenever he was upset or hurting. But all that means now is that Sylvain has to work a little harder to get at the truth. Under that shell is still the Felix that feels so much it hurts, that cares more for the reality of Sylvain than his own family does. It takes that second of silence for the vise grip of emotion to loosen inside him. “It doesn’t matter now, Felix. You know my dad, Miklan is never coming back. All that stuff doesn’t matter anymore.”

“That stuff?” His voice around the words is a coiled snake, far from Sylvain’s attempt at smoothing everything over. “Sylvain…”

“Really.” Something like firmness in his voice, the potency of deflection, and he sees Felix relent in the face of it.

“So… how did it happen?” he asks, as if to change the subject, but it’s this question that impresses on Sylvain that he’s not changing it at all, that all paths will inevitably lead to telling Felix the truth.

“I wasn’t actually here when it happened,” he admits, strangely sheepish. “I have to guess it wasn’t pretty, although my dad looked fine when I got back.”

“Back from where?” He sounds suspicious, probably assuming some sort of carousing but generously not speaking it aloud.

Sylvain could lie, lean into that ever-present assumption and just let Felix think that he’s a womanizer, not a victim. But just like he can see through Felix, Felix can see through him. It’s how it’s always been, half-welcome after so much time spent trying to be other people to everyone else. “I was up on the mountain,” he admits, pointing in the direction of the peak they’d hiked over so many times.

Something comes over Felix’s face like a cloud, like a clap of thunder made visible. “The mountain?”

He nods. “Miklan brought me up there. Well, more like dragged me or something. I definitely didn’t walk there myself, heh.” Felix doesn’t say anything, maybe can’t say anything. “I don’t know, Felix. It must have been right after my father disowned him, or maybe right before. He came to wake me up in the middle of the night, told me he wanted to show me something, and then choked me until I blacked out. When I woke up I was on the side of the mountain and it took a while to figure out how to get back here by myself.” He pauses. Felix still isn’t saying anything, looking at the middle distance around Sylvain’s throat as though he could burn a hole in it. “I know it was stupid of me to go, I just… if you’d heard him, I was scared… he was laughing…” Sylvain trails off, a little too vulnerable in the face of Felix’s ongoing silence. “Sorry. I was an idiot.”

Because he’s looking away, Sylvain doesn’t see Felix’s hand dart out until it’s already fastened around his wrist, gripping hard, shaking it. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare.” His fingers tighten like a noose, painful, as if they’ll pass right through his skin to grasp his bones. “You’re an idiot, yes, but not for that.”

And at that Sylvain can’t help but laugh a little. “Thanks, Felix. You really have a way with words.”

He draws his hand back, face serious even as Sylvain chuckles. “Sylvain,” he murmurs, “if I ever see Miklan again I’m going to kill him.”

It doesn’t sound like a threat. It sounds like a promise, sending a chill down Sylvain’s spine, and because he still can’t say no to his friend, even now, even for this, he just nods. “You won’t have to,” he says, with all the certainty he doesn’t have the right to. “We’ll never see him again.”

But of course they do. Of course they both do, they all do, when Sylvain is twenty and in the tower.

The Blue Lions move through Conand in a continuous line, paired up, wary of ambushes as they come from Miklan’s group of bandits, weighed down by the knowledge of what waits for them at the center. Annette and her father, distant as he usually is, hang back to catch the reinforcements pouring up from the lower levels while the rest advance, Ashe and Mercedes picking units off where they can when they approach the walls the group skirts on their way to the middle of the death spiral they’re caught in. Sylvain is side by side with Ingrid, grateful for her presence as their lances whirl in the torchlight. Dependable, capable Ingrid, his opposite in many ways, Ingrid who has always despised Miklan for his unchivalrous ways without knowing that there are other reasons to hate him, who takes life after life with eyes like sea ice. Ahead of them Felix and the professor, Dedue and Ashe, with Dimitri and Mercedes behind. The next set of reinforcements appears at the right, but Dedue is ready and takes the first one on, with Ashe sniping another with a lucky shot in the near-dark. Sylvain bridges the gap between Dimitri and Felix, not wanting to lose sight of either of them or Ingrid, somehow feeling weak as they get closer to what’s waiting for them. He can’t face Miklan without the other three, he’s sure of it.

And then they’re at the doorway at the top of the tower. Felix turns back to him, catching his eye for a moment in his amber gaze, heated and angry and something else in the low light that Sylvain can’t make out. Ingrid presses her fingers to his ribs for a moment, a sign that she’s there, and at his other side Dimitri’s breathing steadies him. He hears Mercedes, Ashe and Dedue clearing up behind them. And then Byleth yells for them to move.

Felix cuts through bandit after bandit, the others finishing off what he doesn’t, making quick work of the ones Miklan had chosen to keep close to him, the ones left after Ashe’s and Mercedes’ and Annette’s distance work. How easily they fall hurts a little, Miklan’s allies, the group he’d selected, leaving him alone in the end in the face of Faerghus. And there, on a glowing tile, Miklan himself.

Sylvain stops for a second, time slowing down, to take in his brother. His heart clenches, automatically, years of fear rising inside him before he can right himself. He’s not alone. This is different from the years under Miklan’s thumb in the Gautier estate. And Miklan too is different, long-haired and wilder, broad with a scar across his face that looks frightening. Sylvain wonders how he got it, knowing he’ll never find out. He remembers Felix’s words, his face, the night he’d seen him after Miklan left, and he knows that one of them won’t survive this night. One Gautier or the other.

The five of them approach in a loose arc. Miklan seems to know not to move lightly from the tile he’s on, infused with magic, keeping the lance glowing in his hands from damaging him worse than it may have already. A Relic without a Crest is a slow-acting poison, every noble knows this.

“Give it up, Miklan,” Sylvain says, voice just loud enough to be heard. There is no more clamor of battle, it’s calm enough that he can hear Dedue, Ashe and Mercedes closing in behind them, maybe even the more distant sounds of Gilbert and Annette circling up the tower. “It’s only going to keep hurting you.”

“You think you deserve it, you Crest-bearing fool?” Miklan laughs. To Sylvain’s left Ingrid steps forward angrily, a little in front of Sylvain instinctually as if to protect him, but he catches her lance arm and tugs her back. To his right the professor has Felix under their watchful eye, rooting him to the spot, tangible waves of fury rolling off of him. Dimitri is in place on Ingrid’s other side, ready but not too ready.

“You can’t possibly think you can beat all of us, Miklan. Just give up.” I don’t wanna hurt you, he bites back. He doesn’t, somehow, enough pain already between them, but no one else needs to know that, least of all Miklan himself. And it doesn’t matter what he wants anymore. Miklan with that lance is dangerous, not just to himself but to everyone.

“I don’t need to defeat all of you,” he snarls, and then suddenly he’s moving and Sylvain is lifting his lance with one hand and pushing Ingrid back where he still has her arm grasped with the other because he’s coming right for Sylvain, and he looks ready to cut down anyone who gets in the way.

But then he doesn’t. Instead, pain splashing across his face, he stops and hurls the Lance of Ruin, using all the momentum in him. It flies in slow motion, Sylvain can almost see it splitting the atoms in the air, sparking them as it passes, and he grunts and ducks out of the way of death but not enough that it might hit someone else, and the jutting pieces catch his shoulder but it could have been worse, and he can grit his teeth and hold on to his weapon. By the time he rises, the others are already moving, and Mercedes is behind him demanding to look at his shoulder, but he can’t stop because Miklan is far from defenseless even without the Relic. He’s loosing a dagger at Ingrid, who dodges it easily, gracefully, but Miklan too dodges the arrow that sails over Sylvain’s head from Ashe’s bow, and then the others are too close for him to shoot safely. Miklan splits the gap between Ingrid and Sylvain to move behind them and picks up the Lance of Ruin again, letting loose an ugly cry.

But Felix gets there first. Felix dips mercilessly below the swing of the Relic, cruelly, as if he’s mocking the estranged Gautier by not even having to try. And then, just as coldly, without a sound, his sword swings up and as Felix always does he hits his mark. Blood pours from the gash he leaves in Miklan’s neck, and Sylvain sees his eyes go wide as he falls to his knees, unwilling, unintentional. And then he’s not looking at Miklan, for a minute. He’s looking at Felix, and Felix is looking at him, and his shoulders are rising and falling quickly as he steps toward Sylvain, and he’s not sure what might happen next. His eyes look so intense in the torchlight. Distantly, Sylvain feels Mercedes’ hand on his wound and winces, though the pain fades with her healing magic.

Whatever might have gone on between them shatters with Miklan’s scream. Sylvain whirls back to face his brother, his ghost shaking in his own blood on the floor, body jerking painfully as the Lance… well, it absorbs him. The professor reaches for Sylvain and drags him back, back to where the other Lions are all grouped up now, a distance away from what Miklan is turning into. Black tendrils spiral out from the shaft of the Lance of Ruin, forming clawed limbs, long teeth, sickening red eyes around what was left of his brother. When it’s done, a huge beast faces them, unrecognizable except for the Gautier Crest burnt into the stone at his chest, finally part of Miklan the way he’d always wanted.

Sylvain grips his own lance harder, looking to the professor, clearly calculating their next move behind surprisingly determined eyes, usually a little vacant although he knows they hide surprising insight. “Take the left flank with Felix and Annette. Ashe, Dedue, Gilbert, take the right. Mercedes with me at the front, Dimitri and Ingrid try to circle around the back — if you can’t make it, stick wherever you land. Take turns drawing his attention and focus on breaking the shield.” The use of the human pronoun doesn’t go unnoticed, and Sylvain’s eyes are grateful as they leave the professor’s face.

Annette sticks by Felix, behind him slinging spells at the beast while he hacks uselessly at it with his sword, eventually sheathing it for the chip damage and lighter weight of unarmed combat the professor had made him learn. Sylvain moves more slowly with his lance, able to reach the relatively under-shielded belly of what had been Miklan. His roars and swipes are loud and dangerous, catching Dedue with one claw and sending him stumbling back. A Physic from Mercedes, responsive as always, puts him back on his feet although he doesn’t look at one hundred percent from what Sylvain can see. Another roar, and Sylvain sees Dimitri and Gilbert stagger back, Ashe dodging out of the way and loosing another arrow, and the professor sends Mercedes to focus her energy where it’s needed. Sylvain finds himself wishing for their battalions, left behind knowing the cramped quarters they would be fighting in.

They have to kill him, end it before Miklan ends them. He catches Felix’s eye and tries to pour that sentiment into a wordless look, and somehow he nods, jerking his head back toward Miklan’s back left leg, which Annette has weakened significantly. Sylvain moves that way, steeling his exhausted arm for what is hopefully one last strike. Miklan howls, his front leg buckling under Ashe and Ingrid’s repeated assaults, and Gilbert steps in front of them to easily turn away the claw that swipes at them in retaliation, and Sylvain sees his chance, getting close and driving the lance deep into Miklan’s limb. The sound from his mouth is more akin to a scream this time, and Sylvain feels for an instant as though he’s the one that’s been lanced. He pulls back, tugging out his weapon to speed up the bleeding and avoid leaving himself defenseless, and Annette yanks him further from Miklan, far enough to see at the front where Felix and the professor are twin swords once again, raised to strike. The professor’s moves in an arc, slashing at Miklan’s neck, while Felix’s drills in with precision, with the accuracy he’s trained for his whole life, to stab into his eye. There’s another gurgling scream, and the body of the beast collapses, anticlimactic, Felix reeling his weapon back to avoid going down with him. And then the body of the beast vanishes, leaving just Miklan and the Lance he gave his life for.

Sylvain realizes he’s panting for breath when Annette rubs his shoulder, on tiptoes to do it, look and words of concern turning on him. He nods, mask dropping appropriately into place, not too flippant but also not hurt enough to draw more attention. They take the Lance and leave the body, his father’s mess to clean up.

That night they’re too exhausted to start the march back to Garreg Mach, a couple days’ worth of travel anyway that won’t be helped much by a night start, so their professor leads them to an inn near Conand, patronized often by visiting merchants, no exception this night even with Miklan’s terrorizing the area. Five empty rooms, and the professor sighs, shooting a preemptively disappointed glance at Sylvain, who, though feeling less like his skirt-chasing self than ever in the aftermath of what they’ve done, plays the part, waggling his brows at Ingrid a little. She in turn doesn’t even look disappointed in him, just pitying as she shakes her head wearily.

“Dimitri and Dedue,” the professor commands, dividing them up. “Mercedes and Ingrid, Gilbert and Annette if that’s all right.” Both nod, Annette looking apprehensive but willing. “Ashe with me. Felix and Sylvain.”

Sylvain glances over to Felix, expecting something barbed, preparing a quip in response, but he stays silent and tired and so does Sylvain.

He makes the professor take the Lance of Ruin to their room, handing over his jacket to keep it covered so Ashe isn’t scared, and they agree. “It will be yours eventually,” they say, and Sylvain nods.

“I feel like you’ll know when I’m ready for it.”

They all retire quickly to their rooms, eager to sleep off the night, and Sylvain is thankful to find running water to swipe off the worst of the grime and blood. Aside from the hit from the Lance of Ruin he hadn’t been hurt, but he was a little too coated in the black bile Miklan had spewed to be comfortable. Felix follows his lead, washing himself carefully, and they each sit on one of the small cots, exhausted but not ready to sleep yet. Sylvain can still feel some adrenaline hitting him, and he’s sure Felix is the same; he loves nothing more than a difficult battle.

“When I was killing him,” Felix says suddenly, surprising Sylvain who usually plays icebreaker between them, “all I could think about was your face in that well.”

“I was lucky you came along that day.” And he was. It had taken years to fully accept and understand that without Felix’s intervention he would likely have died that day. He owed his friend his life. “And today too. And every day, Felix. It’s good to know we have each other’s backs.”

Felix nods. “Does it feel to you like something is about to happen? So many strange things have happened already this year.” Sylvain agrees with a hum. “We’re going to keep sticking together.” So like Felix, it’s a command in structure but there’s an unspoken question in it, seeking agreement, a renewal of vows.

“We will,” Sylvain says. Then he’s thinking about the well again, remembering the nightmares that had struck him nightly for weeks, still coming occasionally though thankfully less frequently. Everything that happened in Conand Tower will surely combine with all of that in new and terrifying and, in the face of sharing space with Felix, embarrassing ways. “Um, just a heads up. I’m hoping I won’t tonight, but I sometimes get these… nightmares. It’s no big deal but I wanted to warn you ahead of time, just in case. I’ll switch rooms with Dedue or something if you want.”

“What would you warn me about?” Felix asks, cutting off what is sure to be a rambling and embarrassing speech.

“In case I’m… loud. Or move around a lot. You know, since we’re roommates for the night.”

Felix sits, just looking at him — or, more accurately, looking almost at him. Felix hates eye contact, but staring just to the left of his neck is as good as locking gazes for Sylvain. The moment stretches in a way that, combining with Felix’s obvious stiffness under the clothes he’ll sleep in, tells Sylvain that he’s trying to deliver something difficult, which probably means something vulnerable. “After everything that you’ve gone through,” he says finally, and his throat sounds tight, like he’s forcing the words out around an obstacle, “being loud is the least you deserve. Being heard.” He pauses again, getting up to extinguish the candles that have provided the light for their conversation. Sylvain feels his eyes get hot suddenly under the presence of the only person who insists on seeing him, really seeing him. He hears but doesn’t see Felix sit down again. “If you even think of switching rooms I will never forgive you.”

Sylvain laughs, a little weakly. Felix doesn’t and he stills quickly. “Okay. Yeah, you’re right.”

Another pause. Sylvain is starting to wind down from his adrenaline high, eyelids growing weighty in the dark where he can’t see Felix anymore. Just when he thinks it might be time to say goodnight, Felix maybe already succumbed to sleep despite his usual higher-strung tension, he speaks again. “Can I… help?”

“Huh?” He shakes himself into wakefulness, momentarily anyway. “Help?”

“You remember, how you used to… you know, help me sometimes if I had a nightmare when we were kids.” His voice is tough like jerky, like a cord circling Sylvain’s ribs and pulling tight. “I could do that.”

“You’d do that?” Sylvain’s usual desire to split into a joke, an easy grin, a wink, is gone from him in the face of Felix’s openness, such as it is. He knows it means more from someone who has less to start with. “You don’t seem like someone who likes to share a bed these days.”

“I don’t. But I would.”

“Then… yeah, okay. If you don’t mind.”

“I do,” Felix says, but Sylvain can hear him standing in the dark, feet padding a few steps across the floor, and one of the hands he has held out to keep from crashing into anything brushes against Sylvain’s knee, all the guidance he needs to deftly set himself on the bed. Sylvain isn’t lying down yet so Felix doesn’t either. “We’ll be warmer this way too,” he offers, as if to justify his choice to himself. Sylvain finds he needs no rationale, no reasoning, just not to be alone.

“I’m gonna lie down now, sorry if I kick you.”

“You are sort of stupidly tall,” Felix says, almost like a joke in the shadows without the sight of his surely serious face. Sylvain stretches out carefully, closest to the wall. Felix follows him, sets his hand accidentally on Sylvain’s arm and pulls away quickly like he’s been burned. Close enough, Sylvain admits, feeling his energy and the weight of his body a few inches away helps.

“G’night, Felix. Thanks for killing my brother for me.” He gets a laugh out, but it strangles a bit in his throat.

“You’d have done the same if it were me,” Felix says, and, Sylvain thinks, he would have. The thought of some version of Miklan terrorizing Felix instead of him fills him with such rage and fear and tenderness, overwhelming, that he reaches out and pulls Felix to him, pressing them together for an indulgent and necessary moment that only lengthens as Felix turns, uncertain, toward Sylvain instead of away.

Sylvain is still twenty the next time he’s in contact with his father, and like before it’s because of Miklan. From beyond the grave his fingers stretch, creeping and cold, wrapped around Sylvain’s wrists, slithering over his shoulders, tugging at his ankles to pull them down together. It’s harder to shake him now than when he was alive. Miklan haunts his steps, wailing in Sylvain’s sleep, appearing behind his eyes when he blinks sometimes, wretched and burning and roiling in the half-monstrous state Sylvain can’t seem to forget.

“Sylvain.” The professor’s voice breaks his reverie, at the tail end of the road to the village where intelligence from Gautier had last placed the remainder of his brother’s band. Byleth is looking at him, as expectantly as they ever look which is to say not very, and Sylvain shakes his head as though that might chase away Miklan’s specter. He doesn’t bother trying for an easy grin — the few conversations he’s had with their strange teacher so far have made it clear that they can see right through him, that they don’t care enough, or care too much, to pretend to be fooled. It’s a little refreshing, if equally unsettling. It reminds him of Felix.

“Right,” he says hastily, “we should be there soon. My father made it sound like there were a good number of his squad left looting, so we should be careful when we move in.”

The professor nods. “Miklan was a strong leader,” they say, toneless. “They’ll likely be well-organized in addition to having numbers. Any thoughts on the best approach?”

Sylvain pulls up short, almost enough to stop his horse in its tracks, but she walks on smoothly in disregard of his surprise. “You want my opinion?” he asks, stupidly, and the professor only nods. No explanation, no justification. “Um,” Sylvain says, to buy himself time. Byleth was right, Miklan had orchestrated his group well considering his circumstances, and to attack a noble house and steal a Relic he must have inspired strong loyalty and confidence. The thought makes Sylvain sick to his stomach, and he swallows down bile before it can rise. “You’re right. But without their leader they may be haphazard, without a real goal. They may just be looking to steal. I think if we can split them into groups, cut them off before they can get away, we may be able to win.”

They consider this for a moment, where they’re keeping pace with Sylvain on his mount, moving slowly to account for the infantry, people like Ashe and Mercedes, Dedue and Felix. Ingrid scouts ahead on her pegasus, unable to be still, circling back to report anything of interest when she’s looking for human connection. Dimitri long ago allowed himself to be suckered into letting Annette sit in front of him in the saddle, complaints of tired feet quickly dissipating as she fills the silence with happy chattering. Marianne, who had quietly joined their house and mainly kept to herself ever since, walks alongside Dimitri’s horse, looking marginally less shy than usual where she pets the animal’s nose. “Good thinking, Sylvain,” the professor says. “We’ll divide and conquer.”

They reach the camp before they reach the town, thankfully, keeping the fighting away from the civilians. The thieves are spread throughout a clearing in the woods Faerghus is so thickly covered with, loosely grouped by specialization which makes it easy for the professor to split their own group: Annette, Mercedes, and Dedue to the heavies; Ashe and Marianne to pick off some of the faster units, with Byleth to clean up and, Sylvain privately thinks, boost the shy girl’s confidence in the fight; Ingrid and then Dimitri behind to sweep the stronger and slower; Sylvain and Felix to—

“Get in close and handle the archers,” Byleth concludes their plan, voice low and gestures restrained to direct the group, nodding around them. “Let’s move, quietly, and cut them off from escape.”

Sylvain hesitates to mention the reward his father had offered him for each head in the thieves’ party. The rest of his classmates aren’t as money-motivated as the Gautiers, but he ends up spilling his oddly nervous guts anyway since part of the goal is to recover the already-stolen goods. He thinks he sees Ashe wince, but they’re all fading into the trees to take their positions so he can’t be sure.

The professor’s decisions make perfect sense, and the group adapts and supports each other more and more naturally the more they fight together, even when they’re separated the way they are, spread out across all four corners and buried in the center of the thieve’s encampment. Over the sound of landing arrows and the whirling of Felix’s blade and the squelch of viscera against the point of his own lance, Sylvain can hear in the distance the sounds of disparate magic — the whistle of Annette’s, the sharp sheen of Mercedes’, a new and cold undercurrent that he expects he’ll start to recognize as Marianne’s.

The whistle of Annette’s, or rather not quite. It’s closer now, close to his ear, close to his eye, close enough to —

“Sylvain!” It’s angry and worried and aggravated and then someone is bumping his shield up higher, to his face from where it was at relative rest over the core of him, and there’s a ping that sends a shockwave of nausea through Sylvain’s stomach. Felix is beside him, elbow pressed against his arm where he raised his buckler to block the arrow where it would have left him maimed, eyes wide and glare made even more piercing by the fear shot through it. Sylvain lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, shaky and grateful, and that’s all the time he has before they’re both off again, death’s twin scythes.

“You’re the boss’ little brother!” calls a thief from the dirt near the center of the camp, and his voice is weak with blood where it pulses up from Ashe’s arrow in his throat. He’s on his back, keeping the bolt from ramming in farther. Sylvain lodges his lance in another archer’s diaphragm, pushing up and through with detached force, pulling out when their eyes roll back, watching the body fall like a puppet made of meat. The thief’s eyes are bloodshot from the strain of dying slowly as they fix on him.

“Unfortunately,” Sylvain replies. The sounds of battle are farther away as his friends chase down the stragglers, those who might have tried to flee. “I’m sorry he did this to you.” Sorry that Miklan was like this in life, dragging everyone around him into his grim black hole, sucking everything out of them like marrow from a bone before spitting them out and grinding them under his boot.

His laugh is a cough as Sylvain crouches next to him, butt of his lance planted on the ground to support his balance, and then it’s a choke as more thick blood pulses from him. “Your brother did more for us than you and your little noble friends. You think I had any choice in the kind of life I lead?” Another gagging cough, hot and sickening. Sylvain can feel his legs shaking under him. “At least have the guts to kill me quickly, you br—”

If there’s one thing Sylvain can do, it’s kill something quickly.

He doesn’t mount as they start back toward the monastery, leading his horse on foot by the reins instead until Mercedes asks, sweetly and softly, whether she and Annette might ride it and like he does with anything she asks he agrees. She promises to bring his steed back later, to swap on and off, but something in Sylvain wants to move slowly anyway. Felix walks next to him, silent and steady.

The march is long, if not especially grueling. Sylvain can listen to Dedue, Dimitri and the professor talking in low voices about the battle, about other strategies they might try in the future should they encounter a similar situation, about how the others are adjusting to fighting. Ashe and Marianne are with Ingrid, hanging back now they way they all do after a skirmish, staying close to the others, asking her questions about her pegasus.

The words claw their way out of Sylvain’s throat before he can stop them, before he even consciously knows he’s been thinking them, over and over, probably since that ping that’s been ringing like a bell in his ears. “My father wanted me to come alone.”

Sylvain can feel Felix’s attention on him like a physical weight. “What?”

He nods. “He asked me to come alone. I think he was trying to avoid more embarrassment or something, as if the church or any of the other noble families care about Miklan now that he’s dead. He could have just said he needed a hand putting down some bandits. Whatever.” Sylvain pauses, throat clutching around something huge and heavy. “If I had been alone… if you hadn’t been there… that arrow…”

“That’s enough, Sylvain,” Felix cuts him off. “The fact is I was there. No point in thinking about what might have happened.”

“Right as ever,” Sylvain replies, trying for cheerful and mostly hitting the mark. “Sorry, Felix.” They take a few more steps, unusually in sync considering the difference in their heights. “You know,” he continues, riskily, “you were there.”

“Right,” Felix confirms, brow furrowing a little, trying to anticipate what Sylvain might be getting at. “Like I said.”

“It’s just,” Sylvain says, “you were there. You’re always there.”

“Well,” Felix starts, a little gruffly and — this is interesting — a little pink spreads across the tops of his ears, the shelves of his cheekbones. “We did make that promise. I’m not going down just yet, especially not because of you.”

It’s almost enough to stop him in his tracks, to bring Annette and Mercedes riding up behind him and crashing into his back, trampling him under his own horse’s hooves, the thought that Felix somewhere beneath the layers of chitin he’d cultivated after Glenn still holds on to their childhood vow, the same portentous words that keep Sylvain jumping in front of axes and scanning battlefields for a blur of dark hair and seeking out any pain he can find that won’t kill him, that might cure him. This distills and crystallizes into something far too serious for this conversation, for this moment in time, and instead Sylvain asks, “Good thing the professor keeps us grouped up in battle then, huh?”

Felix looks at him, full in the face, levels his gaze up to meet Sylvain’s eyes above him but somehow he still feels small. His stare is as serious as his voice. “I’d still find you.”

The year Sylvain is twenty is one unusually full of interactions with the fathers of Faerghus — not only the Margrave, not only the doomed Lord Lonato, but later as the moon wanes over them and the numbering of the month reduces to solitude their class has the distinct honor of assisting Duke Fraldarius in putting down bandits in his territory.

On the ride there, Sylvain takes a significant and sickening pleasure in the thought that the faces of their foes are no longer ones he might recognize. Miklan’s group is gone. Miklan himself is gone, except in Sylvain’s dreams and behind his eyelids and under his skin like a pinworm.

The enemy that remains, however, is one that is more difficult to face in some ways, he can feel it from Felix where he walks once again beside Sylvain’s horse, his performative and routine griping about the unfairness of his mounting out of the way to allow for their companionship to bloom in the shade it provides. The real battle is with their ally and his ever-tenuous relationship to his remaining son. Ingrid, Sylvain understands instinctively, without being told, has already been insensitive about it. Knowing her, Sylvain can imagine, the conversation probably began with her explaining what a great opportunity Felix has to see his father after such a long time at the monastery, maybe chiding him again for avoiding Rodrigue when he had stopped by Garreg Mach to address the…

Well, his presence hadn’t been required in the long run, had it?

“Ingrid really gets on my nerves sometimes.” As though Felix has been looking through a window into Sylvain’s mind, where his thoughts have been scrolling past as clearly as words on paper, he interjects directly.

Sylvain chuckles, because he loves Ingrid and he loves Felix but, more almost than either of those things, he loves them together, at each others’ throats, completely opposed in so many ways, unwilling to let go of each other no matter how deeply the teeth sink in. They’re not the happiest bunch in Fodlan, especially when you add Dimitri into the mix, but they’re his and Sylvain wouldn’t have it any other way. Or at least, he can’t imagine them any other way, which is maybe the same thing. “I’ll say,” he replies.

“She’s always lecturing me,” Felix continues, as if this introduces any new information to the conversation. It does not, but Sylvain is willing to take it.

“Join the club,” he says, sympathetically, like he doesn’t know that Ingrid’s upbraidings have salvaged him one way or another a dozen times over so far, and probably have at least another dozen saves left in them. “What was it about this time?”

“The mission.” This is forthcoming for Felix in general, but not especially open in the context of the easy chemistry between them that they both have spent a painstaking lifetime preserving, desperate in the face of loss upon inconceivable loss. But Sylvain can be patient for one person only, and so he waits. “She just… seems to think I should be happy to see my father. Like it’s a family reunion instead of a favor to a pathetic old man who can’t even keep his own territory safe.”

Sylvain allows himself a millisecond of smug self-congratulation at how right his guess had been. Dear, predictable Ingrid. He can hear her, in fact, on their left and ahead talking with the professor about something he can’t discern — probably the last meal they had before they left the monastery, or some kind of Fraldarius local specialty she’s recommending them when they arrive. He schools himself, hums thoughtfully to buy another second. “That’s Ingrid for you,” he says at last. It’s not a particularly enlightening sentence but it seems to satisfy.

“I suppose it is,” Felix says, nodding sagely. “I appreciate having you around at times like these. You don’t try to make me feel one way or another. I can be however I want to be.”

Sylvain tries, for the second time in living long-march-north memory, to stop himself from freezing to be pulverized under horses’ hooves and the inexorable sands of time. He does an okay job. His steed keeps her pace, the earth keeps turning, but he thinks his eyes go a bit wide. Felix’s brows knit together, just slightly, frown beginning to pull the corners of his mouth down and this can’t continue so he clarifies, quickly, “That was an awfully nice thing to say, Felix.”

The sullenness fades from Felix’s face, wiping away like fuzz batted from the tuft of a dying dandelion, and is replaced by a sort of terrible acceptance. It’s terrible because he looks slightly hurt as he says, “I suppose it’s not unexpected you’d be surprised. I’m not known for being nice.”

“Maybe not,” Sylvain agrees to cover the pang of sadness twisting in him at that. “And you may not be nice, but that’s all right. I’m nice enough for both of us. And, anyway, you’re kind under all that outside stuff, which is better in the long run.”

Felix huffs. “Sounds like blathering to me.” His arms are crossed, which can’t be comfortable as he walks. “You always have so much to say.”

“At least I don’t have anything to say about your father,” Sylvain offers, steering them back toward the part of the conversation he’s most interested in, the part that has to do with Felix and what he needs and nothing to do with why it is that Sylvain would do anything to get to the heart of that need, any time, anywhere. “Except I’m sorry we have to see him.”

“Me too,” Felix agrees. He crosses his arms, which can’t be comfortable while he’s marching. “It’s always more of the same with him.”

“Meaning…?” Sylvain asks, when clarification is not forthcoming.

Felix tosses his head, like a horse, in what Sylvain thinks is an excuse to look in the other direction, to keep his fossil eyes out of view, as if it matters, as if Sylvain can’t picture them perfectly, as he says, “It’s nothing. Just… seeing him reminds me.”

“Of Glenn?” Sylvain hates bringing Glenn up, everyone else does it all the time, rubbing it in that he’s gone and that Felix is what’s left, as if Felix isn’t a person in his own right, but if he’s bringing it up himself — which Sylvain thinks he is — then Felix will need more prompting to cough up the lump of coal in his throat that is any vulnerability.

His two-word semi-question is enough of a pat on the back, apparently, because Felix answers. “In a way, yes. But I don’t even know anymore if he reminds me of Glenn — I barely remember what he looked like now.” The tone of Felix’s voice is matter-of-fact, firm enough to shape into a fist, grabbing Sylvain by the insides and squeezing. But still, he continues. “It’s more that every time I see my father I remember that it’s never going to be enough. The studying, the training, surviving all these stupid battles. Glenn did it first, then when he died the boar did it better.”

It’s a lot, even between them. Sylvain is silent for a moment, respectful, reverent, and then when he thinks he’ll go mad if he doesn’t reach over and touch him he says, “Hey.” Not like a greeting, like a way to get someone’s attention, and Felix finally snaps his head back to face him, to see Sylvain’s hand outstretched from up on his horse’s back, and his eyes go a little wide instead of narrowing and Sylvain feels like he’s looking out on the vast expanse of a field, isolated and flat, nothing but horizon around him. “Climb up here, I’m getting lonely.”

“You’re insatiable,” Felix grumbles, but he lets Sylvain pull him up into his long-suffering steed’s saddle, lets him adjust his position with light fingers at his waist, and even though he doesn’t know he’s doing it, Felix lets Sylvain hold himself close enough, almost, to brush his cheek against the hair behind his ear, time rushing past like water in his head, before he drops contact to take the reins again, keeping his elbows akimbo to avoid crowding Felix’s space.

“What a pair of old men we have,” Sylvain says, lightly. The problems with his father, whatever they are, seem far away and self-inflicted under the white hot knife of Felix’s pain, the unending competition he can never win. “Let’s run away from home.”

“Isn’t that what coming to the Academy was?” Felix asks, and he doesn’t mean it to be, or maybe he does, but it’s incisive and Sylvain winces with the blow. When he speaks again, though, Sylvain realizes Felix’s intention had been suicide, not homicide. “That’s how I felt, anyway, but it ended up following me here.”

Like the weight of that thought is too much to bear, and Sylvain certainly feels ready to crack under it, Felix leans back, head to hips, until he’s pressed against Sylvain, still fully facing forward, arms still crossed, and since he’s wearing armor the only heartbeat Sylvain can feel between them is his own, harder and more pressing than he’d like. It lasts a fleeting moment, before Felix is upright and steely-spined again, but Sylvain can feel his body like an impression in clay where it’s drying in the sun, hardening into something permanent.

The battle itself is uneventful, straightforward. They are growing more adept by the day, Marianne and Mercedes are more than capable of cleaning up the vast majority of injuries, the professor always knows the optimal move, always has a preternatural sense for what might happen next. The villagers are saved, one life for another give or take. There are only two things of note to Sylvain associated with the entire expedition, aside from the conversation with  Felix on the journey north.

The first thing he can recall is watching from a distance as the professor speaks to Lord Rodrigue. Sylvain is cleaning the point of his lance mechanically, absent-mindedly, trying to read lips and body language he can barely make out, not listening at all to Annette’s soft humming near him as she packs up some of the inevitable mess they would otherwise leave behind. Rodrigue is gesturing, looking vaguely friendly from afar, when Felix appears, when the visual tone of the conversation shifts. Sylvain can’t hear a word, couldn’t even if he tried, and Annette’s humming has gone subaudible as she, too, concentrates on the scene unfolding before them. Sylvain knows Felix better than he knows his father, better than he knows their professor, and so he can recognize even from between the trees that frame the scene that Felix is angry, upset, arms folded, brows — maybe — knitted. It’s not a drawn out exchange. Within a moment Sylvain and Annette realize, simultaneously, that Felix is moving away from the other two, towards the redheads where they’re barely pretending to do anything but eavesdrop anymore, and with a nervous glance at each other they get back to it, Sylvain whistling, Annette humming, discordantly.

“Let’s go,” Felix says when he reaches them. It’s a command, and with one more knowing, despairing look between them, Annette and Sylvain follow his retreating back, toward Marianne and Dimitri where he’s explaining likely some sliver-thin piece of the shattered backdrop of today’s mission, toward Mercedes and Dedue and Ashe where they’re planning a meal for later when they stop along the road, toward Ingrid whose glare prepared for Felix is quickly turning into a look of concern, reacting to whatever is writ large across his own face.

The second thing worth remembering comes later that night, when Sylvain is alone in the tent he pitches next to Dedue’s, because he’s the quietest when he wakes up and therefore the least likely to stir Sylvain when he gets up for second watch — which was, by Sylvain’s estimation where he’s still lying alert in his bedroll, twenty or so minutes ago. Sylvain is awake when Dedue rises for his turn sitting by the memory of their fire because he is thinking, something he tends to do to a fault, until things turn over in his head and become incomprehensible, howling problems and then he’s waking with a start to the memory of a dream’s claws ripping out his heart.

On this night he’s thinking of, or rather he’s remembering, the imprint of Felix’s body where it pressed against his for that liminal moment.

They’ve touched before — they touch often, even, because Sylvain is warm where his home was cold and for every lost moment of affection as a child he has to chase it thrice over in adulthood, sending an arm over Dimitri’s or Dedue’s shoulders, dropping a kiss on Ingrid’s cheek where it’s flush with irritation, resting his chin on Ashe’s head when he has the audacity to be just the right height for it in front of him, one hand each on Annette’s and Mercedes’ waists as they playfully drag him to the dreaded Reason seminars the professor makes them attend. Felix is no different, maybe the most common recipient because he’s the easiest and most fun to rile up, which is why Sylvain is thinking about why he’s still thinking about that deceptively simple interaction.

Since hearing the flap of Dedue’s tent open and shut again, Sylvain has hit the core of what makes this time different: Felix was the one to initiate, the way he almost never is — never in Sylvain’s memory since they were children. It’s clearly special, clearly divergent, but that still doesn’t quite explain why he can’t get it out of his head, why even here against the root of a very firm tree pressing into his back Sylvain can still feel like he’s physically present Felix’s weight against his chest, his stomach, the press of Felix’s head against his throat. He visualizes himself floating in a lake, a cold one like he swam in growing up, staring at a sky where the tangling threads of his thoughts float by like clouds, following the string until he arrives at the knot.

Like most of the knots in Sylvain’s head, it’s feelings. He has feelings for Felix. This in itself is not totally surprising. Things between them have been a pleasant mix of new and old since coming to the Academy, they naturally come together to aggravate Ingrid, to shit-talk other students (usually Ferdinand or Lorenz, occasionally Hilda), to indulge in the kind of communal repression of misery that the students from the Alliance, and even the Adrestians, can’t comprehend without a thorough backgrounding in the grinding oppression of Faerghus culture. All that to say that it’s not exactly a bomb dropping to realize that Sylvain might want Felix in a more than friendly way, although if he had the choice of where and when to figure that out this wouldn’t have been his first pick. Felix is handsome, even beautiful when he wants to be — or rather distinctly does not want to be, and he cares for his friends, and he always tells Sylvain what he needs to hear instead of what he wants to hear, and he’s honest, and he works hard, and…

And here is the true center of the tangle, the real reason Sylvain is lying here uncomfortable and awake instead of blindly unconscious to the root that seems to stretch like a bone beneath the skin of the dirt under the entire square footage of his tent. Felix has been unachievable, so out of Sylvain’s league that it might have lead to him so completely suppressing any budding desire that it was here with him, shocking him in the middle of the night in a strange forest in Faerghus. He’s not draconian about it, Felix is too straightforward for cruelty, and he probably isn’t even intentionally putting himself out of Sylvain’s reach because, if Sylvain has to guess, he’s probably never thought about it. But today Felix was the one to connect. And that flips the whole thing on its head, pulls at both ends of the thread between them to tighten the ligature.

I could tell him. It’s an easy thought, too easy, too hopeful, but Sylvain has it anyway, drifting over him among the cirrus waves of the branch in his back and the memory of Felix against him. He could. It could go wrong but it could go very, very right. And, Sylvain thinks, the worst thing that happens would be what he deserves anyway for daring to push his limited luck like this. The professor had told them at the beginning of the moon that their mission would be something in the Sacred Tomb or whatever they had said. He could tell Felix after that was complete, after they were over the difficulty spike and heading towards graduation, to whatever their post-school lives might be. The idea is bold enough to fill Sylvain with exhaustion, so heavy that it weighs down his eyelids through Dedue’s return from second watch and beyond without interruption.

As it turns out, this is the last normal month they have for a long time. Sylvain forgets his plan, even if he still can’t quite forget the moment of extension on the back of his horse.

It’s not as though Sylvain doesn’t see Felix and what’s left of his family after that, between twenty and twenty-four. Five years after the night in the tent in Fraldarius territory is a lot of time scrabbling against the empire, the most powerful and loyal houses in Faerghus locked in a hopeless struggle with Cornelia and Edelgard in equal measure, and yet as they leave the Valley of Ailell Sylvain feels as though he’s beside Felix for the first time in a long time.

Seeing any of the Fraldarius clan, really anyone in the fighting force of Faerghus — Annette, Ashe, Ingrid when she can slip unnoticed out from under her father’s carefully maintained neutrality — isn’t so strange. Sylvain’s father has been desperate the past five years to maintain their social positioning, keeping Gautier visibly loyal to the king the Margrave didn’t hesitate to mention to Sylvain he thought was dead. So why oppose Cornelia, Sylvain had asked, the last time out of dozens of times, because five years wears out new topics of conversation, and his father had smiled in that sickening way he has still even after all this time and said So she will know what strong allies we could be. It hadn’t been long after that that Sylvain had found his footing and set off for Garreg Mach, for Fraldarius, for Galatea — there had to be something out there his father couldn’t see.

Marching beside Felix feels strangely like walking home, and although Garreg Mach has been a shelter for him past and present this goes deeper, a bone-familiar comfort as he swelters in the armor Ingrid had threatened to bury him in if he risked his safety by removing it for the return journey. She hadn’t listened to reason — how is death by Ingrid any different than death by a lucky archer? had netted him a cuff on the shoulder that he barely felt because, well, armor — and so Sylvain groans for what must be the hundredth time.

Felix is unusually patient with his repetitive complaining, or perhaps he’s just too absorbed in his own misery to be angry about anything else. As if the sun beating down punishingly isn’t enough, Felix’s father is still in view, riding ahead, talking with their professor and Gilbert while Dimitri stalks silently beside them. It’s a triptych of agony from different angles, and while it isn’t Sylvain’s pain to bear he can feel it rolling off of Felix like the bead of sweat he can also sense dripping down the back of his own neck. Any more and his armor could rust — no thanks to Ingrid. “It is miserable, isn’t it?” Felix asks, and Sylvain actually isn’t sure if he is or is not talking about the weather.

He nods either way. “Never has a place so lived up to its name,” Sylvain says. “Like remember when we went to the Red Canyon in school? It wasn’t even red. Just grey and rocky.”

“I remember,” Felix agrees. He swipes the back of his hand across his forehead, catching his bangs on his fingers carelessly, and the flash of his eyes feels like a bolt of lightning, searing in the already hot air. Sylvain looks away. “That’s still the most beasts I’ve seen in one place. Apart from dinners at your father’s, of course.”

That shocks a laugh out of Sylvain, hard and unvarnished. “Either the heat’s going to my head or Felix Fraldarius just made a joke,” he says, still chuckling, hardly able to stop it even as a drop of sweat falls into his eye and stings. He levers his lid shut, one less window out onto the tableau of Faerghus’ legacy, thank the goddess.

“Both could be true,” Felix replies. They’re silent for a moment before he speaks again. “He looks happy, doesn’t he? My father.”

Sylvain nods. It’s impossible to deny. Felix doesn’t take kindly to untruthful platitudes anyway, he wouldn’t even dream of trying. “Yeah.” It’s not a lot but they understand each other, and Sylvain tries to stuff the word as full of sympathy and commiseration as he can. “It’s hard to believe he’s marching back from a battle under the hottest sun known to man.”

“It shouldn’t even be this hot,” Felix snaps, anger directed at the only safe target — a star so far out of reach he could never hope to lose an argument against it. “We’re halfway back to Garreg Mach. It’s not like we’re still in the damn Valley of Torment.”

“Not physically,” Sylvain says before he can stop himself. In front of them, he can see Rodrigue’s head cock just a touch to the side, his eyes moving from the professor’s face to just shy of it, and this is not an interaction Sylvain is ready for so he changes tack quickly. “The second we’re back at the monastery I’m jumping in that river behind the pond.”

“I’ll jump with you,” Felix agrees, looking him in the eyes, and an entire exchange passes wordlessly between them, across the disparate chasm of their heights amplified by Sylvain’s steed, cut only when someone, Sylvain thinks it’s Annette, calls his name. “We’ll talk then.”

The remainder of the journey back to the monastery is mercifully uneventful. It is Annette who calls Sylvain, to gossip about some of the soldiers in Rodrigue’s company, and to complain about the heat, and to ask him with painfully eager eyes if she thought her father had seen her decimate that fortress knight from Count Rowe’s forces with Wind — Just Wind, Sylvain, can you believe it? — and Sylvain lies to her with all the energy he hadn’t put into trying to do the same for Felix, tells her he’s sure he saw her, I mean who couldn’t see you shining out there like a star, and she beams, beautiful and bright. Ashe swoops in on Felix after one or two meaningful looks from Sylvain, chatty enough to distract him, not quite enough to bother him, and eventually the grey-haired fox manages to coax or trick or otherwise get Felix to the back of the line, far from his father and Gilbert and all that feels wrong with the world.

Sylvain loses track of Felix after that, caught up with Mercedes and Marianne and Annette all chattering around him, a shocking amount of noise from the girl he mostly remembered as shy from their school days, but when they cross into the town outside Garreg Mach there’s a tap at Sylvain’s knee where it hangs against his horse’s flank and Felix is beside him again. “The river?” he asks, tossing his head toward it, a touching note of hope in his voice that drops right into Sylvain’s throat and traps his affirmation there, leaving him nothing but a nod and a wave to his coterie of mages. Marianne offers to take the horse to the stable but there is no way in hell he’s putting his armor back on after he’s gotten it off and it’s a pain to lug around without help, so Sylvain thanks her but declines and then they’re disappearing into a copse of trees, watching the rest of the company make their way up the town’s main thoroughfare, if it can be called that.

Sylvain dismounts quickly, already unbuckling his rerebraces. Ingrid had been merciful enough to let him leave the gauntlets off. “Give me a hand when we get there,” he orders, not that Felix can really be ordered but he nods anyway as they pick their way among the roots that surge through the ground around them. The sound of the water is deliciously, tantalizingly close, and maybe it’s wishful anticipation but Sylvain could swear the breeze is cooler as they move deeper into the shade.

When they break through the trees both of them sigh at the same time, relief and exhaustion and all other means of expelling negativity into the ether to evaporate. Sylvain ties his horse to a tree, several jangling metal plates already secure in the saddlebag, and before he can turn around fully a pair of hands is at his side, unbuckling his breastplate. Felix’s fingers are deft, strong, and hugely distracting, which Sylvain hates because he had been hoping that five years might wash away whatever had swept him up in the tent after the battle in Fraldarius but inexorably, inevitably, things have only gotten worse there. Feelings might actually be too vague, too general, a word to describe what’s going on inside Sylvain now, as Felix’s hands sweep over his chest and back, embarrassingly damp with the sweat of a day’s ride, lifting his breastplate up and over his head. When the metal clears his eyes, Felix is looking up at him, a strange expression on his face.

“You could help too,” he says, handing the piece to Sylvain, and he slings it over the saddle with a bit less care than his poor horse deserves.

“Yeah, okay,” Sylvain replies, and even though he’s half-certain that Felix meant he could help take off his own armor he reaches for the strap of Felix’s pauldron. It’s strange and heady and unspoken under the waning light of the sun but they strip each other down to their smalls, clothes neatly folded over the horse’s back at Sylvain’s insistence, and then they’re tumbling one after the other into the cold, clear water of the river.

It feels like Faerghus in the summer, but better because it isn’t, and Sylvain resurfaces with a smile on his face. Felix already looks grouchy, brows drawn slightly together and mouth turned down at the corners, and Sylvain palms more water over his head just to make it worse. Felix only glares at him, no other retaliation, and Sylvain realizes he’s more ready to talk than he’d anticipated.

“So,” Sylvain starts when they’re treading water, comfortably separate but close enough to touch if something goes wrong, water rushing around them loudly enough to muffle their voices to the outside world, “at least we’re not sweating anymore.”

“Not yet,” Felix replies. “I’ll give you the spar of your life when we get back to the monastery.”

“Hey, what did I do to deserve that?” Sylvain asks, hands up in a defensive gesture. “I did fine in Ailell, Ashe had no problem digging that arrow out of my arm. Marianne’s getting good too, you know. I don’t feel a thing.”

“It’s because you were actually trying for once that I want to fight you,” Felix replies.

“I can’t win,” Sylvain groans, rolling his eyes melodramatically. “If I don’t try hard enough for you, you want to drag me to the training grounds and beat me within an inch of my life. If I do actually meet your expectations, you want to drag me to the training grounds and beat me within an inch of my life.”

“I don’t have standards for you to live up to,” Felix says, and his voice is a little too low to equal Sylvain where he tries for light-hearted. It’s all right though; Sylvain wipes the grin off his face with a wet hand, swiping the water out of his eyes and away from his mouth. Felix is low in the river, weak current lapping almost at his chin. “I’ve spent too long under the weight of expectations to put them on anyone else.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sylvain asks, even though he knows, drifts a little closer to Felix as naturally as a push from the stream itself. If Felix notices, which Sylvain is sure he does since those eyes miss nothing even in more disorienting scenarios, he doesn’t react.

“You know,” Felix confirms, but he continues anyway. “It’s just… First it was Glenn. And when he was alive that was all right — I liked having competition, someone to look up to, I suppose. But then he was gone and without him to actually compare with my father had this… impossible idea for me. Then the boar became that impossible idea, a prince willing to die to be a good king, as beholden to the dead as my old man.” He shoots Sylvain a look from under his damp bangs. “You’re still so good at that.”

“At what?” Sylvain asks, to give Felix some breathing room from all of… that.

“Getting me to talk.” His cheeks are dusted a little pink, like when they were younger. Felix is so easy to fluster, emotion simmering so close to the surface, skin like steel stretched thin over an ocean underneath. “It’s aggravating.”

“Sorry,” Sylvain says, not really meaning it. He roves back again, away from Felix, to sit half in the water and half out of it on the shallow bank of the river, careless of the sediment around him. Felix watches for a moment before he does the same, surprisingly close to Sylvain, close enough for their shoulders to brush if their breathing is timed right, and after a few moments each inhale brings their skin wet and flushed together. “You know, Fe,” Sylvain starts, when he thinks he can trust his voice again, “I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but you’re just Felix to me. Always have been, always will be.”

There’s another silence. Felix has his chin pressed into his arms, crossed atop of his bent knees, and Sylvain can see gooseflesh standing the fine hairs along his skin on end which means this conversation needs to wrap up or scene change quickly. When he speaks again it’s quiet enough that Sylvain has to hold his breath to hear him. “Who even is Felix?”

It’s gut-wrenching, really, when Sylvain thinks about it for a moment, that the person who has arguably defined his entire life can’t even see himself through the relentless swirl of ghosts around his head. He buries one hand in the silty bank to lever himself onto his feet, stretches the other one out to Felix. “You look cold,” he says, and Felix grunts and takes his hand with a pruning one that isn’t trembling yet but is clammy to the touch. “That’s one thing Felix is. He’s cold almost all the time. You literally have to take him to the Valley of Torment to get him un-bundled up.” Felix glares a little, but not a lot. They stand on the back, shaking their limbs aimlessly as if they could will the water to drip from them faster. The slowly fading rays of sunlight help, at least a little. “I’ll tell you the rest on the way back to the monastery.”

They gradually dry, at least enough to dress without soaking their clothes through, and Sylvain takes the reins to start walking them back to Garreg Mach and hopefully hot food, ideally from Ashe although Mercedes would be an acceptable option, and bed — hopefully the talk of a spar had been just that, talk. Sylvain can’t even find it in himself to want to find company for the night, not that that’s so appealing anymore but it’s usually better than nothing. But it’s not better than walking next to Felix, who as much as he tries to hide it Sylvain can sense clear as day is waiting, waiting for the conversation to continue.

“He’s reserved, but he’s not quiet,” Sylvain says, after he’s had enough time to think it through. “People who don’t know Felix might think he’s the strong and silent type, especially with the resting glare, but he’s not. He says what he thinks. He’s straightforward.”

“Hmmph,” Felix says. He crosses his arms, which rolls his hips distractingly as he walks. Sylvain looks away, up toward where he can just make out the monastery through the trees. It’s close, from his experience, surprisingly close

“He’s blunt, I’ll tell you that,” Sylvain continues. “Don’t ask his opinion if you’re not ready to hear it. But he’s only that way because he cares about the people around him enough to be honest, to tell them what he thinks will help them become stronger, better.” Felix is flushing now, hot and pink, chasing away the chill of the river, but he doesn’t look angry. He just looks away. “He definitely doesn’t like people saying anything even remotely nice about him, definitely does not have one of the biggest egos in Fodlan, that’s for sure.”

“All right,” Felix snaps, but the corners of his mouth are turned up a little, which almost makes up for the sharp jab to the ribs Sylvain gets from his elbow. “Any other prattle you’d like to share?”

“Just a little more,” Sylvain assures him. Garreg Mach breaks the cover of the trees fully, roaring straight up in front of them, and he waves to the gatekeeper as they pass him on their way to the stable. It’s empty, as apparently they’ve been in the river long enough for the rest of their party to finish putting their animals up. Sylvain leads his horse to her usual spot, brushes through her mane a few times, feeling the rumble of her nicker in his palms and the weight of Felix’s attention on the back of his neck where he’s followed him. It only takes a moment before he’s shutting the gate of the stall and turning to face Felix, summoning his courage. “There’s one other thing I know about who Felix is, by the way.” Maybe Sylvain had summoned too much courage, but it’s too late to pull back now as he lifts a hand, hesitantly, to bring his fingers to Felix’s cheek. His skin is warm from his flush against the whorls of his prints, and he neither leans into nor pulls away from Sylvain’s hand, which is as encouraging as anything else, so he continues. “He’s not like anyone else. And I wouldn’t change anything about him. He’s not perfect, but he’s Felix, and…” He has to catch his breath for a second, shocked by his own boldness. “…and that’s more than enough for me.”

A silence falls between them, weighty and frightening, and Sylvain wonders for an infinite moment of looking into Felix’s widening eyes whether he’s just made a significant mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time that trying for sincerity had hurt him in the end, he can understand most people’s aversion to the unfortunate reality of him as a person, but before he can sink too deeply into the death spiral of self-loathing he’s always teetering just on the edge of, Felix speaks, voice low and warming, and he tilts his head like Sylvain is under cross-examination but he doesn’t miss that the movement sends his cheek pressing against his palm more fully where Sylvain still has his fingers ghosted over the skin there. “There’s nothing you would change?”

He pretends to consider it, turning his eyes toward the roof of the stable in mock thought. “Well, now that you mention it,” he says, “maybe I would ask you to at least try to eat food that isn’t—”

So spicy that you can’t even taste it is pushed right out of his mouth with the hard press of Felix’s lips on his, a kiss like the staunching of a wound, and with the words Sylvain can feel the warm air of the stable sweep down into his lungs in one gasp. It lasts a second, maybe two, but it feels like the entire orientation of the earth changes in that minuscule span of time, and when they separate Sylvain’s eyes flash open to find Felix’s so fast it’s dizzying.

Fuck, Felix breathes at the same time that all Sylvain can say is Felix, and this time when they come together it’s open-mouthed and unguarded, the running start to leap a fence, the push upwards and outwards from a dock into the lake below, and Sylvain’s palms aren’t shy at all where they hook under Felix’s arms to slide up his back, fistfuls of thin cotton clutched between his fingers, Felix’s hands hot as branding irons framing his jaw, pulling him down with inexorable force. This kiss is longer than one second, longer than two, long enough to set Sylvain’s head spinning and send his lips when they finally break for air feverishly chasing Felix, buttoning their way from the corner of his mouth to his ear under his jaw to his chin down his throat over his Adam’s apple to the delicious dip between his collarbones to—

Between the boar and the professor and the reunion with Gilbert, Felix’s father apparently can’t spare the time to see the only son he has left alive, which Sylvain realizes with a twinge when he wakes in the dawning light of morning still entangled with Felix under the inadequately-sized sheets of his old dorm bed.

Sylvain is nearly twenty-five when Rodrigue dies for Dimitri, but it feels like a lifetime has gone by, an entire lifetime’s worth of killing and scrambling and strategizing, so different from the kind he used to enjoy talking about with Claude and the professor. Claude had been there, on Gronder Field, driven back after a bloodbath of their former classmates, their friends from the Alliance. Their time at school, marred as it is by tragedy and chaos, looks halcyon from where he sits astride his horse, panting, watching Rodrigue die in his lord’s arms while his son watches from his knees across the field. Sylvain can see Felix’s shoulders heaving up and down, deep breathing or sobs he doesn’t know but could hazard a guess. He guides his mount toward Felix, slowly, watching Gilbert and Dedue and their professor descend to Dimitri, to lift him and lift Rodrigue and goddess won’t anyone go to Felix?

Annette beats Sylvain to it as usual, kneeling next to him, tiny and powerful hand on his shoulder, scarred from Excaliburs and Abraxases that she never should have needed to cast, lips moving over a tune that’s equal parts thoughtless and thoughtful. Sylvain catches a bit of it on the wind that sweeps the battlefield, a more pleasant passenger to focus on than the smell of blood or the haze of smoke from the ballista where Bernadetta burned. Annette looks over Felix’s shoulder, resting her chin there, catches sight of Sylvain, smiles at him expectantly, wearily. Sylvain is close enough to hear her as she murmurs Sylvain is here, Felix, close enough to see Felix’s eyes are dry as they look for him, catch his just for a moment.

“We have to go,” Annette continues. Sylvain tugs the reins, stopping against the flow of time, in defiance of it. “Ride with him.”

It’s a sign of either Felix’s resignation or his practicality that he nods and rises. Gilbert and the professor flank Dimitri, the strength of a boar more than enough to carry what used to be Felix’s father away from the body, left prone and bleeding slowly in the dust, of his murderer. No one on this field gets what they want. Sylvain stretches a hand to Felix, pulls him up onto his horse’s strong back, behind Sylvain so he can still guide them.

Time has been unkind to them, intensely so of late, enough that when Sylvain feels the weight of Felix’s forehead press against his armor just below the nape of his neck he has to hold himself back from twitching in surprise. It’s a near thing, but he is still. His horse whinnies under him, but there’s some discussion happening out of earshot and no one is moving yet, and regardless the most important movement has already happened behind Sylvain’s back. He catches Annette’s eye and she waves, tears in her eyes now that Felix isn’t the one looking at her.

Felix is the one to break the silence. It’s after they’ve already turned the army around from the death march to Adrestia, back towards the monastery to follow the change of heart their prince has apparently had, and Sylvain tags it to follow up on later, once the immediate grief is in hand, the first of many immediate griefs he has a feeling. “He’s taken everything from me,” is what Felix says, breath fogging against the metal of Sylvain’s backplate. “My mother died giving birth to a son with a Crest — just in case, to fit into the system he’ll take over. My brother died protecting the only person who could fill the shoes he left behind. My father died to bring that person back from the dead.” Sylvain is silent for once in his life, one hand on the reins, the other reaching behind him to find one of Felix’s, to bring it back around and hold it at his waist. There’s a moment where Felix is stiff, the way that used to scare Sylvain before he really understood what it meant, and then his other arm loops under Sylvain’s elbow to pull himself tight against Sylvain’s back, three hands stacked on top of each other. Meters of road pass underneath them, the army creating noise around them, before Felix speaks again. “Don’t fucking die on me.”

“Hmm?” Sylvain asks, enormously, instinctively selfish, just to hear him say it again, just to understand. He lets his better nature win out, though, and continues, “Of course I’m not going to.”

“I mean it,” Felix insists. It’s hard to tell with the armor but Sylvain thinks he can feel his arms tighten around his waist, and he would ask but Felix would never admit it. “You’re not the only one left, but…”

“But?” Sylvain asks, and this time his voice shakes imperceptibly with the strength of his want, his need to hear the rest of the sentence. Things have been unclear between them for two moons, since Ailell and the night after, Sylvain sinking deeper and deeper into a pit he never thought he’d never fall into, all the while knowing that things can’t change between them while a war is on, while Rodrigue and the prince and everything else rages around them. But it’s inevitable that their patterns shift. In a way it’s as natural as breathing, the way things always have been between them, Felix still snipes at him over the tactics board, Sylvain still hangs off of Felix when they walk to the marketplace for weapons or on an errand for the professor, they both lovingly tease Ingrid from across the table in the dining hall for getting sauce on her shirt for the third time that week. And maybe they’re doing well hiding that anything is different. If anyone notices that Felix brushes Sylvain off less, lets his hand linger at the nape of his neck while they joke around with Ashe, if anyone sees Sylvain slipping into Felix’s room the night Dedue comes back to them, too happy to sleep alone, if anyone catches them the time Sylvain thrashes Felix in the training grounds and gets backed up against the wall least visible from the door for his trouble, Felix pressed against every inch of him until he thinks they might be able to fade into each other, they say nothing. And neither does Sylvain, and neither does Felix, not until now, on the back of Sylvain’s horse, the corpse of his father somewhere in the convoy before or behind them.

“But you’re the most important,” Felix says, and the effort Sylvain knows it had to take for him to admit it aloud stirs him down to his core, sweeps his trembling away to replace it with something softer and more powerful and more frightening. “If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll…”

“I know, Fe,” Sylvain says, cutting him off gently. “I’m not going to tell anyone. It’s enough that I know it.”

“It’s not that I’m ashamed of you, you know,” Felix says after a moment, like Sylvain’s thoughts are falling from his ears to land, visible and naked, on the road they’re riding over, and Sylvain actually feels a flush creep over him at the sheer vulnerability the sentence tugs over him. “I’m not. Especially not now that you’re done making a move on anything with a pulse.”

“Just one thing with a pulse,” Sylvain laughs, weakly. “Felix—”

“That has to be enough for now,” he says, surprisingly gentle, and Sylvain realizes yet again that he’s being selfish, almost unforgivably so, and he lapses into silence. Felix’s arms don’t leave his waist, his head doesn’t lift from his back where it’s pressed against metal.

They make camp for a night between Gronder and Garreg Mach, the home base they have to return to for supplies and strategizing, and for burial. With everyone’s battalions along for the march, thankfully without significant loss, it’s a lot of shuffling for space in the clearing they’ve claimed, and there’s lots of mouths to feed but Dedue and Ashe and Mercedes together are more than up for the job. Sylvain gets his horse settled under the watchful eyes of some squires who have been appointed makeshift stablehands, then seeks Felix out again. It doesn’t take long to find him — it almost seems like he’s waiting to be found, perched on a felled log next to Annette. Sylvain waves to her, a little melancholy in each of their faces as she returns the gesture, and flops down onto the wood on the other side of her.

“I was just telling Felix,” Annette says, “that I think Mercie has a flask of something or other if you’re looking for that type of thing. She says Ashe gave it to her, that he lifted it off one of the infantrymen in Dedue’s battalion.”

“Classic Ashe,” Sylvain replies, instead of I’ll pass, and Annette smiles at him, small and quiet. Felix on the other side of her is watching the bustle of dinner with tension in his frame. “Unless it’s enough to knock me out I don’t think I’ll partake, but the moment we get back to the town I’m taking you out, Annette, and we’re going to drink so much the innkeepers are going to commission a tapestry of us to hang in their hall.”

Annette giggles a little at that, mouth behind her hand, sweet like bubbles on a stream, and when she rises from the log it’s with a bit too strong an air of handing off a responsibility from one person to another. “Well, even if neither of you are interested I’m going to take Mercie up on it. I think I need a stronger drink than water after today.” She puts a hand on Felix’s shoulder and waves to Sylvain again before disappearing into the crowd around them. And there is a crowd around them, but suddenly it feels to Sylvain like he and Felix might be the only people on earth.

“We’ll all be on tapestries someday,” Felix says suddenly. His voice is gloomy.

“I know,” Sylvain replies. And it’s true, he does. After the fight at Myrddin, lying alone thinking about Dimitri crushing Acheron’s skull with his bare hand, about Mercedes bringing Ashe back from the brink of death, holding off heavy armor units all the while, about Felix working his physical magic no matter who he went up against, he had the strange thought that they were becoming a part of history. It hadn’t been entirely pleasant, an idea that went against all of Sylvain’s effort to fade into the background, to mitigate the weight of expectations over the years, but then he’d thought about the way an artist might depict Dedue, running in from the western side of the bridge, how they might paint or draw or write or sew or weave the shock and surprise and most of all the joy in the middle of a battle writ large across their faces spread over Myrddin, and that was when he had slipped out of his bed and into Felix’s. But yes, he does know.

“I hope at least some of them are you and Annette,” Felix says. “That’s much more pleasant than some of the other options.”

“We are both pretty cute,” Sylvain says, winking a little, knowing without asking that Felix is set on the path of his thoughts and whatever Sylvain has to offer won’t deter him. It’s okay. Weight and counterweight.

Felix actually does nod at that, turning a little pink. Soldiers pass back and forth around them, adding a strange sort of grounding to their conversation. “Maybe there will be one of Dimitri and my father,” he says then, the homing beam of his contemplation. On one hand Sylvain wishes for Annette back, for her sunny grin and indefatigable disposition that help keep Felix at his version of smiling, but on the other hand the fact that he’s willing to be upset, to expose the soft-rotten core of himself a little where he still loves his father under years of neglect and unfavorable comparison, is an open wound that Sylvain wouldn’t have anyone else tend at any cost.

“Maybe there will be,” Sylvain agrees. “He’d like that, wouldn’t he? Almost as much as his highness is gonna hate it.” Felix nods again. It’s undeniable. “You know what else they’ll probably make art of?” he asks, waiting until Felix turns his head to the side, to face Sylvain a little more, before he continues. “Remember at Garreg Mach, after we took out those thieves together, when it looked like Mercedes and Annette were going to pop they were hugging so tight? That would make a great painting. And remember when Ashe picked up the last piece of rubble in the greenhouse, and yeah he needed Marianne’s help to carry it out to the wagons but the kid was crying even if he didn’t want anyone to know he was? Someday someone will have a statue of that commissioned for their town in Gaspard territory or the Edmund margraviate. And remember any of the one hundred thousand times Ingrid has swooped in and saved any of us in any given situation, battle or no? Ingrid is going to be the most well-known face in Fodlan in twenty or so years with all the etchings and engravings she’s going to inspire. And, goddess I can’t get over it, remember Dedue coming back in Myrddin… I mean, wow. If no one else is looking to commission that one I’ll be the first in line when the war is over.” The corners of Felix’s lips are twitching a little, sometimes up, sometimes down, the impossible struggle of the poles they drift between in the wars, highs of incredible height, lows of unimaginable depth. “There are good things happening too, Fe. We just have to work a little to keep them front and center.”

Another pause. The lines for rations are depleted, but soldiers of all stripes — mages, mercenaries, cavalry, infantry — still settle around them, eating or maintaining their gear or, like Felix and Sylvain, talking to each other. Ashe and Dedue are visible, silhouetted at another campfire, close the way Ashe has insisted on since Dedue returned to them, willing even to tolerate proximity to Dimitri. The prince himself is out of sight, but already the atmosphere in the camp feels different now that they’re heading back to the Kingdom. They’re past camaraderie with each other by now, the professor and their students, a bond powerful enough to bring them back from the ends of the earth, back from death and worse, to rise against their fates.

“Maybe…” Felix begins, then stops, swallowing more of those little movements around his mouth. Sylvain rests one hand on his shoulder, heavy enough to mean something without meaning too much. “You’ve left out yourself, and me. Where are we going to show up in history?”

Sylvain thinks that one over. Back in the Academy days, before half of the Faerghus nobility had been killed and Fodlan had been raked over the coals, he might have envisioned himself and Felix immortalized in commissioned family portraits. Sylvain with a wife he might have tried a little but not enough to make happy, children enough to produce a Crest and maybe one or two more after that because he’s only a man. Felix unhappy in his dukedom, maybe unmarried, maybe with a partner Sylvain could never predict — at school, he’d thought maybe Leonie from the Alliance had caught his attention, but Bernadetta had killed Leonie at Gronder. He shakes his head. Now those formal moments, frozen in time and fake throughout, seem impossibly out of reach. Most of the time when he talks with his classmates, his allies, his friends, about what they’re doing after the war it boils down to this: whatever they want. There are goals and duties, yes, most of them have at least some of that baggage, but the days of miserable arranged marriages and following in their parents’ footsteps solely because of obligation are behind them. After their sacrifices, their pain, after everything that’s been taken from them individually and as a group, Sylvain can only see one future for himself now, one thing that painters and sculptors and weavers may want to replicate on and on into the future.

“Together,” Sylvain says, distilling his thoughts down into the one word. “Watching each other’s backs, next to each other at the front lines or in the rear, trying to convince the rest of the hooligans in our army that our ideas are better when we’re planning for the next battle, sparring together any of the hundreds of times you—”

“And after?” Felix interrupts, and suddenly Sylvain wonders if this conversation was actually about the words they’ve been saying. “Are we just going to fucking die in this war, two more corpses on the pile to be drawn young and heroic and pretty later on by people who didn’t know the first thing about us?”

He can hear the unspoken undercurrent of Felix’s words. Ignatz’s paintings, Bernadetta’s illustrations for her stories, Hilda’s handmade jewelry — maybe never to be the same again after Ashe had shot her in the arm on Gronder to eliminate a threat, to force her to retreat. Claude had pulled her back in time but Sylvain didn’t think she’d be making any cameos of him and Felix any time soon. He slides the hand he has on Felix’s shoulder around his back, to drape his arm over him, to dangle his fingers over his heart, the biggest and hottest-burning heart in Faerghus, like a supernova, and Felix doesn’t resist, doesn’t bat him away. “We’re not going to die,” he says, like a promise he’s far too smart to know he can’t keep but far too stupid to keep from making anyway. “When we were kids we said we’d stick together. I’m not going anywhere. Not now…” He has to take a breath before the next part, to let it settle, but he continues. “…and not after the war either. We’re going to live, Felix. Together.”

Felix doesn’t look at him, which Sylvain thinks might be a good thing because he thinks making eye contact with Felix right now might be like staring directly into the sun. Instead, he keeps his gaze locked on the fire in front of them, eyes not shining, not quite, but soft instead and full of a thousand things, and he nods then, firm and fervent, and he rests his head on Sylvain’s shoulder, and it’s enough and then some.

Sylvain is thirty-five when his father dies and he has to think, one last time, about what the word family even means to him.

It’s a bit of an unusual situation that he’s in. He has a bit more time after the war to transition into his new role than, say, Felix or Ashe, who are thrust into noble responsibility the instant they are freed up from battle, forced into vacancies carved by death’s scythe. The Margrave Gautier lasts a bit longer, though of course Sylvain shares his duties and shoulders as much of the situation at the border with Sreng as possible to keep things from getting any worse, but by the time Sylvain is twenty-nine he’s Margrave in all but title. The role looks different under his steering, lots of cooperation with other regions of Fodlan and beyond instead of the stolid individuality pioneered by his father’s generation, and it feels less like an intergenerational onus than an opportunity to make the life he dreams of a reality. But on the sidelines, retired in a less-than-modest summer home on the shores of Lake Teutates, Sylvain’s father has remained, a reminder of the past he’s spent his life first running from, then destroying.

So. Family.

Family is the letter he receives from Mercedes, working in the church at Garreg Mach, when the news inevitably spreads across the Kingdom that Sylvain will be the new Margrave. It starts with sympathy and ends with solidarity, the perfect balance of sorrow at the complicated emotions Sylvain might be feeling at his father’s passing and subdued happiness at what that might mean going forward. He doesn’t tear up when he reads her words, in her neat and looping handwriting, but it’s a near thing. She says Byleth too is semi-sorry for his loss, that the two of them will pray for his father’s soul, and it’s a thousand times more intercession than the old man deserves but he’s grateful to them all the same.

Family is the offer from Ashe of an escort of Gaspard knights to bring the Margrave’s body back to Gautier territory. They see each other in Fhirdiad on Sylvain’s way southwest, to prepare to receive what remains of his father, and Ashe looks grown and happy and fulfilled. After the business is out of the way he talks incessantly, pleasantly, about his brother and sister, one at the school of sorcery in the city, one at the Officer’s Academy, making it even without Crests. Ashe says that last part with emphasis and a smile, and Sylvain meets him there. The sting of losing the Margrave, muted as it already is, fades quickly in the face of that soft light.

Family is Dimitri and Marianne, an old friend and a new one, arms interlaced and faces drawn in sympathy. Marianne doesn’t know much about Sylvain’s life before the Academy, and Dimitri knows too much, and together they combine into a warm embrace in the palace, oddly comforting considering Sylvain doesn’t feel he has much hurt to soothe away. There is almost no leisure in the lives of a king and queen but they spare it to offer their connections throughout the Kingdom, along the route from Teutates to Gautier, and Sylvain doesn’t have the heart to tell them, like he told Ashe, that he won’t need any of them.

Family is Annette’s hand in his when he stops by the school of sorcery, invigorated by her tutelage. Long gone are the days when he could look into a book and explain something to her, because unlike Sylvain she has kept up with studying and learning in the decade since the war ended, but that feeling he gets when they look at each other, smiles big and real across both faces, is the same — like the sister he never had, a sibling that cares about him and wants him to be the best he can be. Annette is the star professor at the institution she came up in, which instills a kind of pride in Sylvain he never felt before he came to the Officer’s Academy, magnified by the fact that the top of her head is still at prime ruffling height even all these years later.

Family is Dedue’s soft smile at the beard Sylvain is growing, slowly and surely, his arms weighty around Sylvain. With Sylvain’s mother long gone, killed in the plague that brought Cornelia to Faerghus, he thinks he might understand one sliver of the pain Dedue has been under for as long as Sylvain has known him. As if Dedue knows he needs to hear it, he tells Sylvain stories about his mother, his sister, Duscur, gone but not forgotten — and, if they are not forgotten, are they really gone? — and Sylvain listens with rapt attention. Dedue does not ask about Sylvain’s history, what his father and mother and brother have wrought to do their parts to make him the way he is, and Sylvain thanks the goddess for that. Dedue is strong enough to be soft, strong enough to see Sylvain for who he is and not shy away.

Family is the detour on the way to Lake Teutates that Sylvain takes to see Ingrid, bright and beaming like the sun, throwing her arms around him at the news that his father is gone. Ingrid, of all their friends, is the most like Sylvain in terms of awful family members; Mercedes may have them both beat in terms of terrible bloodlines, but she’s more at peace about it, more able to crawl out from under that crushing weight. It’s at the gates of Galatea, in Ingrid’s strong embrace, that Sylvain finally chokes out one single sob, and she too is crying in his ear, and they’re both whispering, then yelling, he’s dead, he’s fucking dead, and anyone in earshot is looking at them with wide eyes but it couldn’t possibly matter less. Ingrid is there in Galatea to see her own ailing father, helping the Crest-less successor among her siblings to prepare to be a Count while she lives her dream of being a knight in House Blaiddyd, far from her own noble shackles, ideals of chivalry willingly shouldered, and Sylvain can’t help the smile that stays on his face after their laughter is over, because it’s not the path he would have chosen but it’s the one that brings joy to Ingrid’s eyes again, the kind that he sees sometimes before a good meal, like there’s always something better in front of her.

And more than ever, rounding the last turn in the road that leads to the house where his father died, Sylvain knows family is Felix. Felix, waving for a moment from the stretch of grass where Gautier property meets the lake’s edge, face guarded and indistinct where it competes with the swimming in Sylvain’s eyes, finally, at the end of the long journey across the half a continent he’d felt necessary to separate himself and his father.

When he reaches him, Sylvain bumps their ring fingers together, a stupid and significant tradition they had started the month after combining their lands when it looked like a revolt in Sreng might be inevitable. “Don’t lose this,” Felix had said, knocking his ring against Sylvain’s, like losing it wasn’t synonymous with losing his own life, and Sylvain had nodded, and then he had helped to identify the roots of rebellion, and then he had come home safe and missed and wanted to Felix in Gautier territory, too impatient to wait in farther-away Fraldarius. It’s a small gesture but it weighs a ton, pressing down on his heart and his grief in equal measure to inflame one and eradicate the other. Felix is looking at him, soft eyes and grey hairs at his temples, and it’s incredible that he has managed to make it here first, that he has known all along that Sylvain would need him to be here when he comes to get his father’s body, to bring it back to Gautier.

Or will he?

“Who’s going to miss him?” Sylvain asks. It’s not the first question he asks Felix, but it’s the first one he asks with force, with fire, seizing his hands between his palms, metal band rubbing a delicious promise into his skin. “Can you imagine anyone stopping to lay flowers at his grave?”

“You,” Felix says, which is a sign to Sylvain that he’s already won, which brings a new smile to his face and new, strange emotion to his eyes. It’s not that he’s sorry to lose his father, not exactly, not ever, but there is something strange about the man whose expectations you’ve chased for your entire life just vanishing from the plane of reality you’re moving on. “Not that it would be the worst thing to have an excuse to visit this place every so often.”

Felix is right, as he usually is, as they stand on the edge of a seemingly infinite lake, bordered by definition but out of sight of mortal eyes. During the war they’d subdued any number of enemies along the shoreline of this lake but now somehow Sylvain can’t think of it as anything but peaceful. It wouldn’t be the worst place to rest and, in fact, may be far too good for the body they’re discussing. It’s laid out inside, in a side room that normally goes unused, with a sheet draped over it to shield the younger and jumpier house staff from the grimaced visage frozen by death. Just the thought of it fills Sylvain with something like bliss.

“So, let’s leave him here,” Sylvain says. “Dimitri will insist on some big state funeral for him if we move him back up north. If I just… dig a hole here and put him in it we can leave him behind for good.” He drops Felix’s hands, turning to survey the stretch of open land, every inch a potential burial ground. “I want Gautier to feel more like…”

“Like home,” Felix finishes. After ten years, it’s uncommon that they need to finish a sentence without the other already knowing where it’s going. Give and take. “All right, then. I’ll scrounge up some shovels.”

Sylvain splutters a little at that, turning back to his husband, one eyebrow raised. “You want to do this now?” he asks, like he isn’t shaking at the seams to have his last ghost interred, maybe even before dawn breaks over a new day. “I mean, not that I’m complaining, but it’s really my job, isn’t it?”

The Margrave hadn’t been invited to the ceremony between him and Felix. It had been a relatively modest affair considering that the king and queen of Fodlan, and the new leader of the Church of Seiros, were in attendance. Sylvain’s father had sent a note of congratulations with a strong implication that while Felix’s Crest might have been desirable his inability to produce heirs was decidedly not. The memory alone turns Sylvain’s eyes in the present toward less scenic plots of land, out of view of Teutates, closer in range to the smokehouse and other less-than-beautiful buildings.

“It’s not just yours,” Felix replies. “Not anymore.” He disappears through the door of the house, and Sylvain is alone for the first time since he got the news of his father’s death. He looks out at the lake again, watching the waves crest on the shoreline, visible as white and wavy lines against the surface of the deep water. It’s peaceful, rhythmic, and his breathing slows and evens to match it. The sky is clear and growing dim over his head. Behind him, the door opens and closes again.