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rhodochrositeeverything precious we've guarded
—
The door is locked from the inside
Don't wait around, I won't arrive
Keep a room somewhere for me
I'll find it on my way back
— Waves, Metric
Winning a war turned out to be a logistical nightmare. Sylvain did not envy Edelgard and her left and right hands the work of reconstructing a functional empire out of the wreck they’d made of the last one. Somewhere in the tumult of returning home—what a stroke of luck that Edelgard had decided that the person best suited to govern Gautier was the one born into it, after all—he’d closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, Felix was gone.
Or not. First Felix had disappeared. Then reports of some mysterious and ruthlessly efficient mercenary had begun to surface. It didn’t exactly take a genius to connect the dots. Sure, Sylvain was no Hubert, but he didn’t do too badly on the intelligence-gathering front, if he did say so himself. It turned out Felix apparently had a business policy of discussing prospective contracts in-person if the quoted payment was over a certain threshold amount. A safeguard against trickery on both sides; it was a surprisingly astute precaution, not something Sylvain thought Felix would have turned his mind towards—had he figured it out the hard way? But of course that was Felix. Absurdly, furiously meticulous about his work. The absurd was in reference to how even something like this still punched barbs into the tender bellied part of Sylvain.
Anyway, it meant that all Sylvain needed to do was concoct a job big enough to lure Felix out into the open, and then—
And then what? He wasn’t sure. He’d figure that part out when he got there. That was his general approach to everything that had happened after the war. He hadn’t exactly planned to outlive it, and now here he was on the other side, back in Gautier like it’d all been reset, older and debatably wiser. Not that he’d intended to die, necessarily; he had a promise tethering him in place, after all. He’d go down fighting. But if it’d been out of his hands—if he’d found himself without someone watching his back, either by his side or wheeling winged overhead—well. Who could say.
Before Ingrid left for Enbarr, she’d said, “He won’t come back.” Her face aglow in the honeyed midmorning light. Sylvain had come to see her off, habitual gesture of physical presence a reminder that here was somebody who was not a stranger, even if their history was the only thing that bound them together anymore, the spun thread of their lives unravelling in divergent directions. How clear Ingrid’s eyes were, now that she’d found her purpose again. Was that how Felix looked, in the shape of his new self?
Sylvain wasn’t sure if it was selfishness that made him want to bring Felix back or if he really thought Felix would be happy to see him. Either way it was in Felix’s hands. It couldn’t hurt to try, except that it almost certainly would, but Sylvain was an old hand at the whole masochism thing anyway.
“Maybe not,” Sylvain said, shrugging. “Who knows with him, though! He might surprise us.”
And Sylvain’s oldest remaining friend smiled, that stubborn childhood faith that had never left her softening the edges of the expression into something a little rueful. “You’d think we’d know each other better than that by now,” she said. Sun in her hair, sun over her hands on the reins; this was what Sylvain had fought a war for. “But we never quite managed that, did we?”
“Be safe,” Sylvain said. Ingrid nodded in acknowledgement, and urged her horse forward, and then Sylvain turned away.
—
In the end Sylvain didn’t even need to invent anything. Fodlan’s subsidence into its new era of peace was a long and uneasy process, and not everyone was interested in expediting it. The threat of civil unrest combined with the process of negotiating Sreng border relations kept him plenty busy. Too busy, in fact, to deal with a recent spate of bandit attacks
that threatened
The report
“Fuck it,” Sylvain said aloud, and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment towards him.
The not-so-mysterious mercenary accepted the job, and Sylvain set up the meeting, at an inn just outside Gautier boundaries. He took care to arrive earlier than he thought Felix was likely to arrive. He was startled, and pleased, when he got to the inn and found that he was alone; he’d guessed correctly.
He didn’t have to wait long. He’d only just gotten seated when a cloaked figure strode in with the unmistakeable tightly-coiled grace of a trained swordsman, and Sylvain would have recognised him anywhere by that alone, even before he pulled the hood down. Sylvain’s breath shrivelled up at the base of his throat and died.
His hair was longer. There were new lines on his face, a leaner, sharper look to him. It seemed the road had not been kind to him. The scowl, though, was entirely unchanged. Dependable as ever, for nearly as long as Sylvain had known him. Sylvain bit down on the absurd urge to laugh.
Sylvain had a scarf wrapped around the bottom two-thirds of his face and a hat jammed over his hair. It was the world’s flimsiest disguise attempt, but no person could escape a friendship with Dorothea and Ferdinand without gaining a renewed appreciation for theatrics. “I’d prefer to remain anonymous for the moment,” Sylvain said gruffly, as Felix took the opposite seat.
“I don’t care,” Felix said. “Where’s the job?”
Sylvain unrolled the map he’d brought with him, which he had helpfully marked up earlier in red ink, circling the bandit-plagued overpass he needed a mercenary’s services to handle. He laid it out flat in front of Felix.
Felix studied the map. His eyes narrowed. “That’s in Gautier territory,” he said.
Sylvain smiled, knowing the expression was hidden by the scarf. “Got a problem with the Margrave?” he asked, unable to resist.
“Add another five hundred gold onto the quote,” Felix said flatly.
“Aww,” Sylvain said. “Is that really any way to treat an old friend?”
A civil war and change, and Felix miraculously still had not learned how to keep his emotions off his face. Probably he had the luxury of simply stabbing any problems it caused. Shock, chased by a stormcloud of predictable black fury, but there was something in the novelty of seeing that sequence play out over Felix’s features again after so long that had Sylvain staring, half in wonder. Then Felix yanked his sword out and tried to separate Sylvain’s head from his neck, which was a move Sylvain probably should have anticipated. Sylvain didn’t take it too personally. He ducked out of the way, kicking his chair aside. Screaming erupted around them, and not the kind of screaming Sylvain typically enjoyed.
“Hey, hey, no need for that, come on, you’re scaring the patrons of this fine establishment,” Sylvain said, hands raised in surrender. In his haste to avoid decapitation, the scarf had slipped off his face and puddled onto the floor. The tip of Felix’s outstretched sword bristled just centimetres away from Sylvain’s bare throat.
“Why?” Felix hissed.
Everything left of Sylvain’s honest heart twanged like a bowstring. Resonance all the way through to his fingertips. He breathed in, watching Felix’s eyes spitting fire at the other end of the sword, and they could have been in the monastery training yard, or a dusty patch of trampled campside grass on the march, or one of the Fraldarius pavilions playing at knights.
In the months leading up to the execution of this plan, Sylvain kept finding himself idly mulling over what he would say to Felix, when the crucial moment came and the charade unmasked itself. Each time he’d decided it was the sort of thing better done on the fly and put it out of his mind. But even now it was difficult to stem the flow of glib phrases, well-worn jokes and brushoffs and comeons, like Felix’s blade had made contact after all and everything stupid he’d wanted to turn and say to Felix over the years they’d spent apart was trying to bleed out of him at the same time.
“Because I missed you,” Sylvain said.
Felix froze. Every line of his body tensed in perfect stillness, not a single tremor to his stance. Counterbalance, an unsteady, acidic feeling partway to vertigo swam up Sylvain’s throat.
“Felix,” Sylvain said. “Come home with me.”
The sword point wavered. Then it fell. Felix looked even more surprised than Sylvain felt at the motion.
“Fine,” Felix said. “I’ll hear you out.” He paused, then added, “Your hat looks stupid,” and finally, finally, Sylvain began to laugh.
—
Sylvain’s tongue came back to him in time to smooth over the ruffled feathers at the inn, sweetening the deal with a hundred gold pressed into the innkeeper’s disapproving but outstretched palm. The journey back to Castle Gautier was conducted in silence
“Yeah, you don’t like sweets, I know,” Sylvain said. “I remember. Thought Lysithea might’ve done a number on you, but I guess not, hey?”
Felix was quiet for a moment.
—
Felix crossed his arms and said, “I don’t appreciate the subterfuge—”
“Subterfuge, aw, seriously, no need to break out the fancy—”
“—and I could change my mind at any moment and finish what I started—”
“Come on, would you have come if I’d told you who I was from the start?”
“Obviously not,” Felix said.
“Exactly,” Sylvain said. “You seem to be forgetting that I actually wanted to see you, which was the point of this whole thing.
“That’s cool and everything,” Sylvain said, “but then—why didn’t you?”
“Don’t lecture me,” Felix grumbled. “You sound just like Ingrid. It’s annoying enough that I have to deal with you.”
“Wow, you really missed me, huh!” Sylvain said.
"Did you hear a single word of what I just said?"
“Sure,” Sylvain said. His heart sang.
Felix said, “I’ll stay a week, to make sure the job’s done. Then I’m leaving.” He glared at Sylvain, as though daring him to protest.
It was already more than Sylvain had thought he would get. Sylvain shrugged. “What’s mine is yours, et cetera,” he said flippantly.
—
“I’ll come with you,” Sylvain said.
“I don’t need your help,” Felix said. “If you could do it yourself why did you hire me?”
“Just like old times, hey?”
“Fine,” Felix said shortly. “Watch my back.”
Sylvain didn’t need to be told, and was almost offended that Felix had done so.
Everything was so perfectly routine they got all the way to Sylvain kneeling down between Felix’s legs before Felix went tense and Sylvain remembered the war was over.
Before the moment could seam back up he grabbed Felix’s hand, lifted it to his mouth, pressed a kiss against the pulse at his wrist. “Hey,” he said. “Let me do this for you.”
Just like old times.
—
The week passed like a dream. Sylvain couldn’t help staring at Felix like he was a mirage liable to dissipate at any moment with a shift of the wind
and Felix would snap, “What?” with increasingly less bite when he caught Sylvain at it, but
His pulse shattering against his eardrums
He was so incandescently happy he thought he might catch alight from the sheer force of his joy
—
“Say, Felix,” Sylvain said, deceptively casual. “Would you have stayed for anyone?”
Sylvain expected a bristle and a brushoff, but Felix only tensed in the circle of Sylvain’s arms. “... Maybe for Annette,” he said. That was right; they had been close at the academy. Sylvain didn’t remember seeing Annette on the battlefield, the copper shine of her hair, the green glow of her magic, those few fleeting details he could still recall of his former classmate. He hadn’t been looking for her, hadn’t known her well enough. He hoped her death had been clean. He could afford the sentiment now, five years out from the end of the war.
But the ability of darkness to elicit unguarded honesty never failed to take Sylvain by surprise. Sylvain got it; it was easier to face up to things when you couldn’t see what it was you were facing. He hummed. “Ingrid?”
Felix snorted. “Ingrid wouldn’t have asked me to stay.”
“You know, I think that’s the first time in our lives you’ve actually gotten her right.”
“Ingrid is Ingrid, what’s there to get wrong.”
There was no point contesting it; Felix and Ingrid would always be a slipped step out of sync and both unwilling to admit to it. Sylvain used to think the history would be enough, but here they were, living proof that it wasn’t. They’d shown that all the way back when they decided to leave Dimitri for the professor, after all.
“What if I’d asked,” Sylvain said.
The silence sharpened, like a whetstone had been swiped along its length. Sylvain had, however, dedicated a lifetime to pushing through with objectively poor decisions, so he waited, deliberately not bracing himself. Neck to the blade. Aim true, strike deep, when had Felix ever not?
“Then ask me,” Felix said.
Again, now that it came time Sylvain couldn’t find the words. Sylvain opened his mouth and blurted out, “Will you stay?” Ungraceful, but something about Felix kept inspiring it from him. That unguardedness of self like an unsheathed knife, carrying the same danger.
Felix took Sylvain's hand by the wrist and rested it over his eyes. Sylvain felt a slight flutter to Felix’s eyelids, the delicate skin beneath the pads of Sylvain’s fingers. It was the only sign they were touching at all; their skin was the same temperature after being in contact for so long. The gesture like he was closing the eyelids of a corpse. A little more pressure and Sylvain could gouge his eyes right out. Obligingly, Sylvain shifted his palm to cover Felix’s eyes properly, understanding the contours of what Felix wanted from him if not the reason for it.
Blindfolded by Sylvain's hand, Felix said, “These past two weeks were the happiest I’ve been since we were children.”
Sylvain’d known all along what Felix’s answer would be but the finality of hearing it articulated, even without words, sent the ache of a congealing wound radiating in fractals through his chest. It was like the aftermath of being struck by lightning called down by black magic, that searing flash that burnt all the heat right out of him and then the slow, reeling ice. “It can be like this for the rest of our lives, Felix,” Sylvain said, a little desperately. “We won the war. We get to be happy, now.”
“You know it can’t,” Felix said.
Felix would have stayed for Annette, but Annette and her sweets and ribbons and songs were lost to some unmarked grave, and Sylvain had a chest full of ghosts, and there was nothing Felix loathed more except perhaps his own. In this light Felix looked unchanged from the way he always was in Sylvain’s memory, caught in a rare instant of softness. It was how Sylvain wanted to remember him, this last moment of shared warmth, the light combing its fingers through Felix’s hair. All of him quiet and still under Sylvain’s fingertips, that raw explosiveness inert.
Sylvain lifted his hand, and Felix’s eyes opened. That hard gemlike quality returning to them, flash of amber like the toffee Felix hated and Ingrid loved. It was a luxury, Sylvain knew, that he was still able to draw the comparison at all. He’d lost so little. His heart contracted all the same.
“Worth a shot,” Sylvain said, smiling. He smoothed out the tremor to the expression, second nature. No point wondering whether Felix had caught it; it wouldn’t change a thing. The terrible dawn hurtling towards them with the inevitability possessed by nothing but time.
—
They met again by the eastern gates, opening up to the path that would take Felix out of Gautier by way of Fhirdiad, conspicuously skirting around Fraldarius territory. Sylvain nodded to the grey mare waiting patiently to the side, her saddlebags already packed with provisions courtesy of Sylvain's stablehands. “She’s hardy but sweet-tempered,” Sylvain said. “Treat her well, will you?”
Felix grunted, because he had no appreciation for the long-lashed beauty of horses. Moments like these Sylvain missed Ingrid so fiercely it was like a hunger pang. They hadn’t talked much, especially towards the end, but sometimes it had been enough to wake up and know she was nearby, their choices adjacent though not identical in shape or motivation.
Tamping down the feeling, Sylvain said, “So where to next?”
“I have another job lined up in Galatea,” Felix said, then frowned. “Ingrid better not be pulling this same bullshit on me.”
“Ingrid’s in Enbarr with the Emperor,” Sylvain said. “You could visit. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
“Not happening,” Felix said.
The same trick wouldn't work twice on Felix, Sylvain knew. He was never going to see Felix again. The understanding pierced through him like an arrow to the flank. He’d taken one once, right through the join between two plates of armour; he’d lifted his lance and his ribs sprouted a wooden stem fletched beautifully with grey feathers, courtesy of Ignatz, before Bernadetta returned the favour, fearless in the eye of the storm in the way she rarely was outside of it. But harm didn’t undo harm. Linhardt was spread too thin to heal the wound entirely, then, and there was no Linhardt now. Only a fissure Felix had his fingers hooked into, digging in all the way down to the bone.
“Well, if you’re ever—” Sylvain cleared his throat to dislodge the heart-sized stone from it. “If you ever need… well, you know where to find me.” He gestured lamely at the castle behind him. Truly incredible, his oration skills. His career prospects were sparkling.
Actually, his vision was also sparkling, but Sylvain wasn’t going to let the last image he’d ever hold of Felix be marred by tears. He’d had plenty of practice suppressing this particular response of his body, after all.
"Sure you don't want to stay? The offer’s still open," Sylvain tried again.
Impatiently, Felix batted the nicety aside. His jaw worked, like he was pulling what he wanted to say through his teeth. Sylvain waited him out, insides shivering like the tremulous aftermath of a struck bell.
"Oh, fuck it,” Felix growled, and crossed the floor to grab Sylvain’s face and tug him down. No finesse to the movement; Sylvain’s nose hit Felix’s cheekbone, but Felix was relentless, crushed their mouths together until it sweetened. It was probably the worst kiss Sylvain had ever had. He didn't want it to end. The impossible tenderness flaring up in his chest, counterpoint to Felix’s teeth scraping across his bottom lip.
Felix wrenched himself away first, gasping, eyes too bright. That was how he’d always been. He'd reach out, baulk at showing too much of his unarmoured throat, then pull back, a vicious sequence of starting and stopping as he wrestled with his glass heart. He looked furious, which might have meant any number of things, given that Felix defaulted to anger as an expression of just about every emotion imaginable. Helpless, hopeless; Sylvain was never going to not be a sucker for it.
“That promise we made as kids,” Sylvain said. “Don’t forget. I’m still holding you to it, alright?”
Felix’s right hand was clenched over the hilt of his sword, like it could anchor him in place, or slice open a future separated by a blade’s edge from Sylvain. They’d made their choices; Sylvain knew that. Now there was nothing left but to see them through.
All Felix said was, “Don’t wait around for me.”
Sylvain had a rule: he always left first. Why make it hard for yourself? Too long and the complacency might set in; he might start wanting to stay. But this time he didn’t move. He’d tried to watch over them all his life, and now Dimitri was cold in the ground, and Ingrid was on the other side of the country, and Felix was leaving for good, the last keystone of Sylvain’s honest heart. So he stayed in place, leaning against the gate as Felix swung himself up into the saddle and urged the horse into forward motion. Just in case Felix needed him. If Felix turned back, Sylvain would be there, steady as he had always been in this and this alone. Even if Felix’s knowledge that Sylvain was watching his back was what allowed him to move forward without hesitation.
He watched the dark smudge that was Felix’s horse and its rider diminish into the distance, swallowed up by the sky. He kept watching, for just a little longer. Sunshimmer at the horizon, a lovely blue rising above and over, to the far reaches of the world, every place Felix might someday be. A flock of birds took flight near the far gatepost, startled flurry of upwards movement, and then everything went still again. Sylvain breathed out. It was going to be a beautiful day. All that inconsolable sunlight. He stuck his hands in his pockets. He turned around. He walked away.
