Chapter Text
Sylvain Jose Gautier is a pile of secrets in the shape of a man.
Here is one secret: Sylvain does not believe in true love.
Oh, but to hear him talk, you’d never believe it. He can spout a pretty word, wax poetic when he must. The word “love” is no stranger to his tongue. It’s likely there’s not a girl in Fódlan he wouldn’t confess to. But make no mistake—love is a four-letter word, and nothing more. It’s the single-syllable ticket to waking up in a stranger’s bed, the winning number in the lottery for someone’s heart. So what if every heart he wins is lost in the end? He knows true love doesn’t exist.
Not for him, anyway.
It’s a fact of life, one he’s known since he first heard the word “Crest” fall from his father’s lips. It’s the punctuation mark that lived at the end of every one of Miklan's glares. He has a Crest, and that means his life has already been written for him. Grow up, marry whatever woman his father arranges for him, and have kids until he gets one with a Crest. Oh, and wield the Lance of Ruin to keep the rats from Sreng out of Gautier territory. Not much room for love in that equation.
So he latches onto the vagueness in “grow up,” because that’s the one step in the plan that he has any control over whatsoever. It’s the only part of his life that not only permits, but also implies, messiness. So by the goddess, he’s going to be the messiest damn kid who ever lived, so that when he does get shoved into those boxes of Margrave, husband, father, he can look back on these days and laugh.
Here is another secret: he’s not laughing.
Some days the despair almost overwhelms him. He despises how everyone looks at him, like he’s so lucky to have a Crest. Can’t they see it’s his damnation? It’s a shackle around his ankle, always reminding him of the life he’ll have to face one of these days. His time is running out. He has one year until he graduates from the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach, one year till he’ll get the archbishop’s stamp of approval on his death sentence: All Grown Up.
Behold, a man!
In his desperation, he ups the ante. Anything to prove to his father that he’s still too immature. He dates two sisters at the same time. Openly flirts with the kitchen staff, the nuns, even Seteth’s sister. Leaves the Blue Lions because the new professor has nice tits. Every defiant act is a message to his father: Does this look like a man with good decision-making skills? Does this look like the man you want to inherit your title? Aren’t you ashamed? Disappointed?
And to the girls who look at him like he’s a trophy, the fattest lamb to sacrifice for social superiority, he thinks: Haven’t you heard about my reputation? Are you wearing blinders, so you only see my Crest? Take them off, sweetheart, and face the reality: I’m not worth it. Go on, there’s still time to back out. You deserve so much better than a cheater like me.
But still the girls keep coming, doe-eyed and smiling, and his father says nothing, no reprimands, no punishments. There’s only silence on the other end. Sylvain realizes that there’s nothing he can do to stop this. His father’s still holding the leash, and one day soon he’ll drag Sylvain home like a disobedient hound to be collared and chained to the doghouse.
Because that’s all it is, his Crest: not some glorious divine gift, but cold steel clamped tight around his neck.
The more time he spends at Garreg Mach, the more he realizes that not everyone sees their Crests this way. Sure, most people are inconvenienced by their Crests or a lack thereof, but that’s all. It shouldn’t be such a shock to learn that not everyone had a brother who shoved them in a well or left them on a mountainside in the middle of winter. But it is. Somehow he got wrapped up in his own belief that Crests equal suffering; and it stings to realize that that’s not necessarily true. Heck, for some people, their Crest never caused them to suffer at all! That’s what he can’t abide: the utter unfairness of it all. Like the goddess really did mean Crests to be blessings, not curses. Like it’s just his own damn fault he’s suffering like this.
Here is another secret: if he could have traded places with his brother, he would have done so in a heartbeat.
Even if it meant dying alone in a ruined tower.
Yeah, even then.
Isn’t that horrible? Of course it is. But by the goddess, he knows he’d trade a cushy life of luxury for a few months of freedom, even if that freedom is spent as a bandit. It’d just be fitting, he thinks. He’s always been a good-for-nothing, so why not live like one?
Or—and this is almost worse—he wonders what it would have been like if Miklan had actually killed him back then, in the well or on the mountain. And what if no one found him? What if they didn’t realize where he was till the water started tasting funny or the hounds led the search party to a snowdrift littered with vulture feathers? Because at least then they’d have seen him for what he really is. Nothing. No, less than nothing. Filth. A stain on the world. Garbage to be buried and forgotten. On lonely nights when he’s feeling particularly awful, he savors these images. Thinks that, however horrible it is to want, he wishes he were dead.
At least then he’d be free.
Of course, these are just fantasies, and he has to get up the next morning, alive, and let people pretend he’s worth something.
That’s part of why he left the Blue Lions. Because he had friends there. People who knew him for years and thought that meant they understood him. People whose perceptions of him were clouded by nostalgia. People who’d care if they noticed what he was doing to himself.
It’s better for them, he thinks. Better for everyone.
It’s not running away if you’re doing it to protect them.
Right?
So he puts up the same old front—Sylvain Jose Gautier, playboy, skirt-chaser, smug son-of-a-bitch. Everything’s a joke to him, and the punchline is himself. Sylvain’s patented recipe for success: don’t let anyone take you seriously, so that when you do disappoint them, it’s not a surprise; and keep it up until they stop expecting anything other than disappointment.
It’s the perfect armor.
Or it would have been, if it weren’t for her.