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Sylvain meets Felix mid-afternoon on a Tuesday when the other man throws himself into the open chair across from Sylvain and stares. Sylvain is mid-bite, cookie in one hand and coffee in the other, and he blinks, looks around at the relatively empty coffee shop, and then blinks again.
“I’m Felix,” the other man says, crossing his arms and sitting back.
“I’m confused,” Sylvain says, hastily swallowing his bite and sitting up. “And that’s not easy to do, let me tell you.”
“I know ,” Felix says impatiently, and then he immediately snaps his mouth shut and glares at Sylvain like he’s done something wrong. Which is usually right, but - not this time, Sylvain is pretty sure.
“I’m sorry,” Sylvain says. “Do I know you?”
Felix keeps looking at him, his gaze sharp and assessing. Sylvain wants to look away, close his textbooks and his laptop and get out of there, maybe, but he can’t ; it’s like the whole world has slowed down around them and the center of gravity has suddenly switched to Felix and his ridiculously golden eyes.
"I - " Sylvain starts to say, and then he just shuts himself up because he still has no clue what to say. The sound seems to shake Felix a little, and the intense edge of his look fades a little, and he sits up straighter.
"No,” Felix says, “you don’t know me, not really. We used to go to school together.”
Sylvain feels, deep within his bones, that Felix is somehow both lying and telling the truth. He frowns, pushes his hand through his hair, and is about to say something about that, anything at all, and then Felix’s eyes soften and the corner of his mouth quirks up like he’s just thought of something terribly funny and it does things to Sylvain’s heart he’d never thought possible -
“You could know me now,” Felix says slowly, lazily, and fuck, does Sylvain want that.
.
The thing about Sylvain’s life is that it has always been stunningly, eerily empty. He’s walked around for so long feeling like some part of him was missing, a phantom limb he’s never been able to shake, and he’d wasted his teens and early twenties trying to fill that part with alcohol, and then girls, and then guys, and then just plain old delinquency, and still - nothing worked.
It was like a fucking disease that ate away at his soul, and when he thought about it too much - when he reached for things that weren’t there, or woke up from nightmares that never changed, or looked for people he’d never known - he’d get splitting migraines, as if the universe was screaming at him don’t reach for what isn’t yours to take .
And so he’d learned, and he’d straightened himself out and slammed an apathetic mask over his face as he’d enrolled in university, and he’d learned to accept that he didn’t feel like he’d make it past twenty-five, and then - and then .
Felix walks into Sylvain’s life, and Sylvain feels like he’s surfaced from drowning, gasping for breath.
.
“I don’t understand why I’ve never seen you before,” Sylvain says as he and Felix walk to the gym. Felix shrugs.
“I didn’t want to be seen,” he says.
“Oh my, mysterious,” Sylvain grins and flutters his eyelashes at Felix, who regards him with a scowl. “ Oh ,” Sylvain continues in a falsetto, dramatically throwing his hand across his forehead, “ tall dark and handsome - “
“Shut up ,” Felix says, shoving at Sylvain, but his cheeks are slightly flushed and he won’t meet Sylvain’s gaze. “Unbelievable,” Felix mutters. Sylvain laughs, feeling light and inexplicably happy.
“Seriously,” he tells Felix, “we could have met a long time ago. You keep saying we went to school together. We should have been friends.”
Felix blinks, and looks like he’s at a loss for words. He takes a long sip from his water bottle, and they’re almost to the entrance of the gym when Felix stops and says, slowly, “I don’t think you would have liked me much back then. I was, uh - troubled. Mean.”
Sylvain ruffles Felix’s hair and ducks when Felix swings at him. “I like you like that,” Sylvain says. “I wasn’t the greatest kid either, you know?”
Felix shakes his head. His gaze grows unfocused, like he’s thinking of something from a long, long time ago. “You weren’t,” he says, “but were any of us, really?”
.
Felix comes with a rotating assortment of friends - honestly more than Sylvain expected, given Felix’s weirdly abrasive nature - that all spend a solid half-minute staring at Sylvain like he’s going to crack and confess to murder or something.
The most terrifying of the lot are a broad-shouldered guy in an eye-patch and a strict looking girl with a braid that both cross their arms and stare him down. Sylvain stands at a respectable height, and he’s a regular in the weightlifting club; he’s no slouch. But he feels like he’s failed some kind of test.
“Nothing?” the guy asks, disappointed. His voice is surprisingly soft.
“Nothing,” the girl confirms. “I can’t believe it.”
This is not the first weird interaction Sylvain’s had with Felix’s friends, and he’s learned that with these people the best offense is a good defense; he stays very quiet until they give up on finding what they’re looking for. He doesn’t have to wait long; Ashe, the sweetest person he’s met in the past week, jogs up to them with a mountain of a man walking beside him.
“Ah, Sylvain! You’ve met Ingrid and D - Dimitri?” Ashe stutters over the second name, like he’s unused to saying it. A tiny headache starts forming, right at Sylvain’s temple.
“Yeah,” Sylvain says slowly. “ Met is one way to put it, sure.”
“I was just passing through,” Ashe continues hurriedly, “and I came over to make sure that everyone’s first meetings are going smoothly. Introductions can be weird sometimes.”
“You’re telling me,” Sylvain mutters. Dimitri and Ingrid look slightly ashamed of themselves.
“We were just - “ Ingrid begins to say defensively, and then she suddenly deflates and rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. “Actually, I don’t know. Sorry. Old habits die hard.”
Sylvain blinks. “What - what old habits?”
There’s a prolonged second of silence, where Dimitri and Ingrid look at Ashe and Ashe looks back, and it’s broken by the sound of a throat clearing.
“My name is Dedue,” the man that followed Ashe says, extending his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
Sylvain seizes on the normal interaction and fervently shakes Dedue’s hand. “Dude, the pleasure is truly all mine. How do you know Felix?”
Dedue snorts. “Oh, no. I’m not Felix’s friend.”
“Oh, come on - “ Ashe starts, but Ingrid snorts, and then laughs, and cuts him off and says, “No, no, I like this, I like where this is going.”
“You’re - not?” Sylvain asks, thrown off-balance yet again. “I - alright?”
“Mm. Felix and I don’t share the same views. But he is Ashe’s friend.” Dedue shrugs, and Ashe immediately flushes pink and covers his eyes as he says “Dedue ” even as he intertwines their fingers together. Sylvain watches and feels inexplicably proud of both of them.
“Hey,” Dimitri says, sounding mildly offended, “Felix is my friend as well. Don’t you care what I think?”
“Of course he does,” Ingrid says, “but is saying that going to get Ashe to blush? No.”
Sylvain feels like he’s been inserted into a conversation he doesn’t understand but is expected to. “I’m very - confused.
“That makes two of us,” a familiar voice says from behind him, and Sylvain turns in relief.
“Felix,” he says, smiling as Felix draws nearer, and Felix ducks his head at that and smiles back, birefly, before he glares at the others.
“What do you all think you’re doing?”
“Meeting Sylvain,” Ashe says patiently. “Why, what did you think we were doing?”
Felix crosses his arms, and petulantly says, “Time has really brought out the dry wit in you, Ashe. You used to be scared of me.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” Ashe says, pulling his phone out.
Sylvain leans in and winks at Felix, seeing an opportunity. “I’m still scared of you,” he says in a low voice, and Felix flushes red and punches his shoulder, hard .
“Some things,” Ingrid intones mysteriously, looking like she’s trying hard not to laugh, “never change.”
.
He dreams of a battlefield thick with smoke, magic sparking along it like little crystalline gems that make the fire worse. He’s slumped over against a tree, breathing shallowly as he bleeds out, crimson welling up thick between his fingers as he tries to staunch his wound with nothing but his hand. There are tears streaming down his face.
I am a broken promise, he thinks, and then he wakes up and barely makes it to his bathroom where he throws up from the taste of the smoke, still thick in his throat.
.
It turns out that the graduate instructor for his laboratory class is also Felix’s friend.
“This is not as surprising, actually,” Sylvain says, when Dimitri introduces Byleth to him at lunch.
Byleth blinks at him, looking mildly taken aback, though all that really means for her is that her eyebrows go up ever so slightly. “Why?” she asks in a soft voice.
Felix tilts his head and looks accusingly at Sylvain. “Yeah, why ?” he asks mockingly. “Why does Byleth being my friend make sense? You better make it good, or Dimitri over here will not hesitate in punching you.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Dimitri protests, horrified.
“Felix will punch you,” Annette says, cheerfully knocking her water bottle over and paying no mind as Mercedes rights it. “He cares very much about what you think, Sylvain.”
“Oh?” Sylvain grins. Felix, predictably, nearly growls in frustration and slams a hand on the table, which completely undercuts his gritted statement that he does not , shut up -
“Don’t tease him,” Byleth says reproachfully, and like magic everyone but Dimitri and Felix seem to suddenly be very interested in their food, looking ashamed. “That’s not nice, all things considered.”
There’s a round of muttered apologies, and Felix looks mollified. Sylvain digs into his own lunch, hiding a smile and feeling warm all over. Being here - in the middle of this group - feels right in a way that things rarely do for him. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt more at home.
“But really,” Byleth says into the silence, and now she sounds amused. “Why does it make sense that Felix is my friend?”
Sylvain hastily swallows down a bite of food. “Very scary,” he says, waving his fork around. “You both look like you can and will kill me in an instant.”
“That’s not nice,” Ashe says, shaking his head. “Seriously, some things never change.”
“No, no, it’s nice to know I’ve still got it,” Byleth says, sounding satisfied.
“Got what?” Sylvain asks, and Byleth smiles with her teeth, eyes glinting.
“They used to call me the Ashen Demon,” she says slowly.
Sylvain swears in that moment he sees double - a sword rising up, flames haloing Byleth’s head, her pale green hair turning dark, dark blue, an ornate crown twisting into the strands -
He lurches away from the table and beelines for the trash can, retching over it as a sharp stab of pain shoots through his skull and his nausea skyrockets. He can barely see through the tears that spring to his eyes. There are shouts of concern, and the sounds of people hurrying back and forth and conversing in low tones. Cool hands come to pull his bangs back, and he hears the soothing voice of Felix as he shudders and gasps for breath.
It’s okay, Felix is saying shakily, repeating it like he’ll believe it if he says it long enough, it’s okay, Sylvain, it’s okay .
.
“You should eat more,” Felix says, tossing a carton down on Sylvain’s table in the library. Sylvain raises an eyebrow at it.
“I don’t like this,” he says, and then he does a double take. “Where the hell did you even find pheasant roast?”
Felix makes himself comfortable, settling in with his own books and tossing his bag over the nearby chair. “A store, which is where I’m told you go to buy most things.”
“Felix .”
“Sylvain, ” Felix replies, staring at him unblinkingly. There’s a loose strand of hair escaping from Felix’s bun and slowly falling forward; Sylvain is overwhelmed by the abrupt need to brush his fingers across it and tuck it in more securely. He swallows, throat suddenly dry.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll try it.”
It is, surprisingly, really good. Sylvain eats the whole thing and then falls asleep over his laptop, feeling content and warm, and he only wakes up when fingers gently clasp his shoulder and shake him.
When he peers up at Felix, haloed in the setting afternoon sun streaming in through the library windows, he sees, for just a second, a fur-trimmed blue coat with a high collar caressing the curve of Felix’s neck. He blinks, and the image melts back to Felix as he normally is, staring at Sylvain with a sweatshirt on and a stricken look on his face.
“Sylvain?” Felix asks, half-uncertain. Sylvain blinks, and sits up straighter, stretching out the kinks in his neck.
“Yeah,” Sylvain says, feeling weirdly hollow. “Felix. Hey. Want to go watch a movie?”
Felix looks like he might cry, and Sylvain doesn’t know what to do with that when Felix says, voice thick, no , and stalks away.
.
Sylvain has dreamed this dream a thousand times, and bled out and died in his sleep over and over for as long as he can remember, but suddenly there is something new; suddenly, he hears the thundering sound of hoofbeats, steady and true and aimed right towards him. The fire is still glittering around him, and his skin is cracking in the dry heat, and there are screams clawing their way out of his throat, and yet -
He wakes up, gasping for breath, his heart pounding in time with the horse’s pace. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here -
.
A month after Felix drops into his life, unannounced, Sylvain gets ready to go to the cemetery and is unsurprised when Felix somehow shows up right before he gets in his car.
“You’re very persistent,” Sylvain calls out in lieu of a greeting, and Felix quirks an eyebrow.
“I’m just a good friend,” Felix says. “Where are you going?”
Where Sylvain is going is to pay respects to the dead grave of the one person in his life that would have happily killed him if given the chance, but Sylvain doesn’t know how to put that in words without sounding absolutely insane. His breath catches in his throat and he shrugs, helpless.
Felix - perfect, beautiful, unfamiliarly familiar Felix - tilts his head and says, carefully, “Would you like me to go with you?”
No, Sylvain thinks, I don’t want you to see the real me , but out loud he says yes, because he’s weak and Felix is the best thing that he’s ever going to get in his life. So Felix climbs into Sylvain’s obnoxiously expensive car, and is quiet as Sylvain starts it up and backs out of the student parking lot. He lasts all the way until they get on the freeway before he glances at Sylvain curiously one too many times; Sylvain smiles wryly.
“Just ask,” he says.
Felix drums his fingers against his thigh and says, "Where are we going?"
Sylvan takes a deep breath. "My brother's grave."
"I'm...sorry."
"My brother died in a car accident he caused when he tried to run me over at a red light," Sylvan says tightly. "I'm - not sorry, I think."
He hears it as the drumming stops. Felix is deathly quiet.
"And still," he murmurs, "you go to his grave."
Sylvan grips the steering wheel so hard he's afraid he's going to break it. "I hated him for hating me. He hated me for being named the heir to the company he'd slaved his life away for. Life isn't fair, and I - I won't - I can't forget that."
Felix doesn't say anything else, just nods and quietly accepts it, and they continue on in silence.
But when Sylvain takes out a bouquet of generic drugstore flowers and lays it on the grave of Miklan Anschutz Gautier , Felix inhales sharply and looks murderous. For some wild, inexplicable reason, Sylvain feels the need to explain, “He was a shitty, shitty brother, but he was still - my brother. And I think - it was my fault - that he was the way he was - “
“It’s never your fault,” Felix says, fiercely, and there’s a dark undercurrent to it that sends chills down Sylvain’s spine. “You - fuck, you’ve changed this time. But it’s still not your fault. “
Sylvain barely knows what that means, but he does know that it nearly brings him to tears.
“What do you mean this time ?” Sylvain asks.
Felix shakes his head, looking lost and angry. “I - nothing. I phrased that wrong."
Sylvain swallows, and then sticks his hands in his pockets and looks at Miklan’s grave.
“He was the only one who knew me,” Sylvain says. “When he died - I didn’t have anyone anymore.”
“Fuck,” Felix says, and then he takes a step closer, eyes dark. “You have me now, Sylvain.”
There is a long, long moment of silence as the wind blows, ruffling Felix’s hair into a pretty disarray, and then Felix adds, eyes shining, “I promise.”
.
He barely knows anything about Felix. He doesn’t know his favorite color, or favorite food, or what kind of shows he likes to watch. He doesn’t know if Felix likes summer or winter, tea or coffee, spicy food or sweet food. He doesn’t know what city Felix is from, what his parents do, or what his first car was.
But he knows everything about Felix. He knows that Felix grows out his bangs because he likes to tug on them, and has let Sylvain tug on them playfully more than once. He knows that Felix had an older brother, and that it hurts him to think about it. He knows that Felix hates uptight morals and ideals, but he’d die for anything good in this world.
“Hey. Sylvain,” Felix says, snapping his fingers. “Stop spacing out.”
Sylvain startles and looks around the table. They’re studying in a group today, joined by Felix’s other friends, who are slowly starting to become Sylvain’s friends too. From across the table, Mercedes quietly unwraps a bag of shortbread cookies, glancing back now and then to make sure the terrifying green-haired librarian isn’t around.
“Here,” she says, smiling as she gives one to Sylvain. “You look like you need one.”
“Thanks,” Sylvain says, never one to turn down free food. “Oh hey - these are good! I think I’ve had them before. Where’d you get the recipe from?”
The entire table slowly looks up, and Sylvain self-consciously rubs the back of his neck. Dimitri and Ingrid are the least subtle; Ashe whispers something to Dedue and Annette covers her hand with her mouth. After a second too long, Mercedes shakes her head.
“It’s just the standard one they print on the butter packages,” she says, and Sylvain nods and turns back to his work.
He doesn’t know Felix. He doesn’t know any of them. But he’s not stupid, and he’s beginning to see the edges of a puzzle that’s just out of his reach, like a streetlight flickering faintly from miles away.
His head begins to ache, and Sylvain’s frown grows deeper.
.
In early January, Ingrid - surprisingly - invites them to a party, and to Sylvain’s complete and absolute horror Felix refuses to come with him at first.
“Come on ,” he wheedles, “these are your friends, dude!”
Felix glares. “Don’t,” he says, crossing his arms, “call me dude . And they’re your friends too, you absolute idiot.”
Sylvain decides that he’s not emotionally available enough to unwrap that last sentence, which he wants so badly to be true. He can’t deal with that. He can’t .
“If you don’t come,” Sylvain says, changing tactics, “I’m probably going to get so drunk that I end up in some random person’s apartment by the beach and then I’ll fall off the balcony and die and is that really how - “
Felix slaps a hand over Sylvain’s mouth. “That’s not even a little funny,” he says seriously, “and I’ll come if you shut up. You know it’s for Ingrid’s birthday, right?”
Sylvain licks Felix’s palm, and Felix snatches his hand away like he’s been burned, flushing bright red. It’s so easy to rile him up - and Felix looks so pretty like this, alternating between glaring and looking away, his breath coming quicker. There’s a rush of familiar excitement, a feeling like he would be perfectly within his rights to just - reach out and touch -
“Don’t forget to get her a present,” Felix snaps, and then he stalks away. Sylvain lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and he sighs and turns away, feeling unmoored and shaky.
He gets Ingrid a set of green hair clips that he thinks look nice and a collector’s edition copy of a book of tales about knights. He’s not really sure why he gets her those things, but they seem nice, and Ingrid stares at him for a beat too long and hugs him a bit too hard when he gives it to her - so he figures he did all right.
“There, there,” he says lightly, patting her shoulder and trying to ignore the throbbing beat of the music in the background. He’s not sure who decided that Ingrid’s birthday deserved a house party, but it’s definitely interesting. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Ingrid draws back from him and shakes her head. “You’re so full of shit, as usual,” she says, and then she reaches up and frames his face with her hands. “Listen to me. Thank you .”
“Alright,” Sylvain says gently, puzzled and, despite himself, touched at her sincerity. “You’re welcome.”
Ingrid nods, and then she keeps nodding, and her voice is thick as she says, “You’re not a bad guy, you know, Sylvain?”
“Uh,” Sylvain says, at a loss for her words. The words make his stomach churn. Her hands are still on his face, like brands suddenly.
Dorothea chooses that moment to make a timely entrance, sweeping in and catching Ingrid around the waist and spinning her around. Ingrid, who can deadlift more than Felix at the gym, shrieks and lets herself be manhandled by her taller girlfriend.
“Darling,” Dorothea says, “your guests are calling for a birthday shot. I know you’re a bit tipsy already, so after this one we’re slowing down for an hour, alright?”
Ingrid kisses her in response, quick and chaste, and says, “Whatever you say,” and yeah, her words are slurring together a bit. Sylvain exhales and pushes a hand through his hair, trying not to think about the strange, melancholy look in Ingrid’s gaze.
“Sorry about that,” Dorothea says, sending Ingrid off. She stares critically at Sylvain, and then smiles. “She started a little early. Birthdays aren’t always the source of the best memories.”
Sylvain hasn’t interacted much with Dorothea, despite the past few months of being tangled into Felix’s social sphere, but he does like her. She’s practical, clever, and she seems to ground Ingrid in a way that’s entirely charming to witness. Right now, she seems equally as melancholy as Ingrid under the surface, as if there’s something she’s holding herself back from saying.
He doesn’t want to push, not when he still feels unsettled from Ingrid’s earlier comments. “Yeah, I get that,” he says. “I’m honestly surprised she agreed to this kind of party, with loud music and a lot of drinking - “
“So much drinking,” Dorothea says, her lips twisting up into a wry smile as she glances out of the kitchen they’re standing in and towards the living room, where an extremely drunk Claude is doing a keg stand with alarming dexterity. “But - we all needed a reason to drink, and some of us needed it more than others, so. Her birthday was as good an excuse as any other.”
“Right,” Sylvain says, and he chooses not to examine that statement too critically, because he can already feel the telltale signs of a headache blooming through the base of his skull. “Of course.”
Dorothea huffs out a little laugh. “Don’t think too hard about it,” she advises. “In my experience, the more we think about something, the less it makes sense.”
“I - I don’t get that.”
“I just...recognize that look,” she says, gesturing. “I know you have no reason to, but trust me when I say I’ve been where you are. I know everyone else doesn’t think like this, but you and me Sylvain - we’re very alike.”
Sylvain has officially lost the thread of this conversation. “We are?” he asks weakly.
She turns around so she’s not facing him and gets down another bottle of vodka, gracefully takes a pull straight from the bottle, and offers it to him. He raises an eyebrow, but he downs a healthy amount as well, bracing himself against the aftertaste. Dorothea nods approvingly.
“It’ll come to you,” she says. “One way or another, what you’re looking for will come to you. I promise.”
.
He keeps dreaming of fire, of blood and the rotting stench of war and death. He can’t tell apart the beat of his heart and the beat of a horse’s hooves, but he keeps straining towards it, keeps trying to hold on to the dream for just a second longer, like catching smoke in his fingers, knowing that there’s someone cresting the top of the hill for him, someone just out of reach -
.
In February he feels restless, like he’s forgetting something. Well - he always feels like that, but he feels like he’s forgetting something more easily within reach, something he really should know.
His grades aren’t suffering for it - for any of the weird stuff that’s been happening - which aggravates Annette to no end, he knows, so he agrees to help her when she confronts him about it. She and Ashe pour over their books and he looks over occasionally and absently makes a correction, tweaking an equation or two.
“I gotta say, I thought I would get better at this,” Ashe says, making a face. “Physics should make sense, after all this time.”
“Aren’t you in the hospitality school?” Sylvain asks. “Why the hell are you in physics?”
“I notice that you’re not saying oh no, Ashe, you’re actually good at physics, Ashe ,” Ashe says, pouting. Annette pats Ashe’s hand.
“Friends don’t lie,” she says sweetly, and Ashe grins, shaking his head and turning back to his work.
“I thought I’d try for a minor in something engineering related. For old times sake,” Ashe says wistfully. “I’m really good at archery, so I thought physics would just - also come to me.”
“Archery is just intuitive physics, but theoretical physics can’t rely on intuition only,” Sylvain says absently as he scrolls through his phone. “You need to practice more.”
“And what’s wrong with you ?” Annette asks sharply. Sylvain looks up.
“Huh?”
“You never give actual advice - or stop pretending you don’t know what you’re talking about - unless something’s wrong,” Annette says impatiently. Sylvain needs a moment to process the unfortunately true assessment of himself, but Annette barrels on. “So what is it? Is it Felix?”
“I mean,” Sylvain searches for the right words. “It’s not not Felix? I think?” It’s surprisingly hard to say no to Annette.
“You think?” Ashe asks, and then he brightens. “Oh, is it because you don’t know what to get him?”
Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “Get him . Because - because I’m supposed to get him something?”
Annette and Ashe’s faces both fall in twin looks of disappointment. Annette sighs. “It’s his birthday this month,” she says. “On the twentieth.”
“Oh shit!” Sylvain sits up straighter, feeling alarmed. “That’s less than a week! He’ll kill me if I don’t get him something as good as I got Ingrid.”
“I mean, he’ll - “ Ashe begins, but Annette grabs Ashe’s arm and says, completely unconvincingly, “I need a book from the top shelf, come help me Ashe!” and yanks him away.
Sylvain, who stands more than a head taller than both of them, rolls his eyes, waits a second, and then follows Annette’s clumsily loud whispers until he’s leaning against the books in the aisle next to them.
“...it’s been so long now,” Annette is hissing. “Felix isn’t - dealing well with this.”
“Annette,” Ashe sighs, “we can’t do anything. We have to give him time.”
“Byleth can - “
“That’s dangerous .”
“It worked for me!” Annette says fiercely. “Without Mercedes - I would have - I can’t imagine - can you imagine if you had to wait for Dedue like this?”
There’s a loaded moment of silence, and then Ashe mutters, “It nearly killed you, Annette. We can’t do that again.”
Sylvain feels like he’s going to throw up. He can’t - physically can’t continue to listen, can’t figure out what’s happening, doesn’t want to walk into the unknown of whatever the universe is trying to pull him to. He stumbles away from Ashe and Annette’s whispered conversation, feeling like he’s being torn in two.
Part of him has been missing for as long as he’s been alive. He doesn’t know if he wants that part back - doesn’t know if this missing feeling is true, if he’s actually a better person than he pretends to be - or if it’s all a fever dream, if he reaches for whatever he’s missing and finds out that he wasn’t missing it after all, that this really is just him - alone, and depressed, and a shell of a man.
He doesn’t want to find out. He doesn’t .
.
On Felix’s birthday, Sylvain ends up booked in back-to-back final exams for most of the morning and afternoon, so he leaves the tiny sword earrings he tracked down for him as a wrapped present outside Felix’s dorm room. He looks for Felix in the evening, when he’s done with all his classes, but can’t find him - not in his room, not on campus at any of his usual haunts, not in anyone else’s room - and a tight knot of worry coils in his chest.
“It’s his birthday,” Byleth murmurs when Sylvain goes knocking on Dimitri’s door, asking around if anyone’s seen him. If it were any other time, Sylvain would be teasing Dimitri about it, but it’s almost eleven at night and Sylvain’s worry is starting to morph into flat out terror. “He doesn’t deal well with it, I think. Not without - “
She stops herself, and glances back as Dimitri pulls on his boots. “We’ll drive through town and check some places,” she says. “You might want to try the woods by north campus - his phone wouldn’t have any signal there.”
Sylvain doesn’t question it, and swears to the universe at large that he won’t keep questioning it if he can just find Felix. He doesn’t know why he feels like this, why he’s out of breath and running to the woods, a hazy dream of fire and blood overlaying his senses. All he knows is that it’s Felix’s birthday, and Felix stood with him at Miklan’s grave, and Felix keeps looking at Sylvain like he’s waiting, and Sylvain needs to find Felix right now, and anything else in the world can wait.
Sylvain circles the woods once, and then he catches a glimpse of something moving by the picnic tables and jogs towards it, heart in his throat. There, perched on a table, is Felix, his knees drawn up in front of him and his glare unforgiving.
“What, Sylvain,” Felix says flatly, as if Sylvain hasn’t been running around looking for him for hours, as if it’s perfectly normal to find him like this, eyes red-rimmed.
“Felix,” Sylvain says, sighing in relief. He can feel the tension seep out of his shoulders. “You were supposed to meet me after my classes.”
“Changed my mind,” Felix says, hopping off the bench. “It’s my birthday. Leave me alone.”
Sylvain doesn’t answer; his gaze is caught by the flash of silver near Felix’s ears, and he takes two steps closer, peering at him. There, twinkling like little stars, are the earrings that Sylvain bought for him.
“You got my present,” he breathes out, a possessive thrill racing up his spine. Felix snorts.
“Yeah,” he says mockingly, also taking a step forward until he’s right in front of Sylvain. “Good old, reliable Sylvain, knows exactly what to get me for my birthday, but he doesn’t - fuck . I hate you, do you know that?”
Sylvain flinches back, feeling the ground fall out from under him, hating the sour tang on Felix’s breath. “You’re drunk.”
Felix grimaces, and then he whirls around and slams his fist down hard on the nearby table.
“It just sucks,” he yells at the empty night sky. “Why the fuck - of course it would be him that doesn’t remember - why can’t I fucking have this ?”
“Felix,” Sylvain says helplessly, and Felix shakes his head, near tears as he points at Sylvain.
“You - “ he starts and stops, furious, but his voice breaks as he says Sylvain’s name once, twice, and then he pitches forward and crumples into Sylvain’s chest, his shoulders shaking, and Sylvain holds him and feels helpless.
He thinks of fire, and smoke, and the dream that hangs over his head. He thinks of a horse, coming for him, as he dies. He thinks of Felix in his arms, right now, clutching him as if Sylvain will disappear if he doesn’t hold on long enough, and he listens to Felix’s desperate mumble -
You promised .
.
That night, he dreams of a battlefield drenched in smoke and fire. It feels so real he thinks his cracked, bleeding lips might never heal again. There’s a dangerous urgency to the dream, a sense of clarity -
Let’s be very clear , a high, childish voice sounds. I’m doing this because I’m starting to think this might be the last cycle, and it looks like you’re the anchor for it.
Sylvain shudders, and retches up blood, his hands shakily trying to staunch the flow of blood from the dagger that’s digging deep into his flesh. He - made a promise. He holds on, cresting wave after wave of burning, agonizing pain, until he hears the sound of a horse.
There, coming just into his sight, is a beautiful black horse. Emmeline, his mind supplies. And riding her furiously is a lean figure clothed in blue, black hair in disarray, tumbling off of the horse with a stunning lack of grace.
“You bastard ,” Felix gasps out, unstrapping his gleaming shield and pressing a hand to Sylvain’s wound, white magic flowing out. Sylvain groans at the sudden surge in pain, and then sighs as it tapers off into a burning, muted feeling as the healing takes hold. “You better fucking stay alive, I - you fucking asshole.”
Sylvain looks up at Felix’s face and feels like he’s watching it from very far away. This is the last time, he thinks.
.
The next morning, Sylvain wakes up on the floor of his own room, heart pounding, and he sits up to quickly check and see that yes, Felix is still sound asleep on Sylvain’s bed. Sylvain bites his lip and goes to shower, trying to wash away the feeling of blood. He can’t remember everything about his dream, but he knows - with a chilling certainty - that he’s never going to dream it again.
He’s always moved through life knowing he was missing something, and he feels himself teetering on the edge of a precipice. Everything he knows - everything he is - it could be more. It could be nothing, but he could be more. He could have this, he thinks as he dresses and watches Felix stir awake slowly, he could have this and everyone else for real. He could live past twenty-five, he could build something stable, he could - just live.
“What - “ Felix croaks out, gaze lingering on Sylvain as Sylvain buttons up his shirt. “Where - what happened last night? I was drinking in the woods, and then - what?”
Sylvain smiles briefly. “Nothing. I found you and brought you back,” he says distractedly. Felix, in the morning, with his hair tousled and his eyes slightly swollen, dark circles already forming - why does this feel right? Why is this the thing that quells the sharp hollowness in his chest?
“You’re looking at me like I killed your dog,” Felix says, frowning. Sylvain laughs, opening a drawer and finding a clean towel.
“Go shower,” he says. “You look like a dead rat.”
Felix smiles wryly. “Charming,” he says, but his gaze is curious as he passes Sylvain.
Sylvain sits on the edge of his bed and stares at the Felix-shaped indent on his sheets. He stares, and stares, until he’s awakened out of the strange trance he’s fallen into by Felix yelling at him to bring him his hair tie. Sylvain shakes himself out of it and roots around in his sheets until he finds Felix’s discarded elastic, and goes to the bathroom.
Felix unlocks the door, saying, “In the time it took you to find it, I got dressed and everything, you’re so slow - “
“Bold words coming from the hungover one,” Sylvain says, laughing. Felix’s hair is slightly damp from the shower, and he smells like Sylvain’s soap. It’s - intimate and intoxicating and apparently, everything Sylvain has ever wanted.
He steps closer, waving the hair tie. “Let me tie your hair up.”
Felix looks up at him and stares for a second before shrugging. “If you want.”
Sylvain gently pushes at Felix until Felix is standing in front of the mirror, watching as Sylvain quietly finger-combs Felix’s hair and pulls it back from his face. He gently gathers a loose strand, and then he looks up to meet Felix’s gaze in the mirror. Felix is smiling softly, his eyes alight with amusement, and there’s so much fondness in his gaze that it knocks the breath out of Sylvain -
The memories slam back into him with all the force of a hurricane; Sylvain falls to his knees and screams as he’s assaulted by a lifetime’s worth of death and battle, nameless - and named - faces flashing through his mind like a distorted credit reel. He feels cold and frozen, left alone on a Fhirdiad mountain slope as Miklan treks off to become the favored child, and at the same time he’s burning up from his summer in the south, his freckles coming out for the first time. He’s nine and he’s swinging a lance, crying in pain as he drops it from it’s unexpected weight, and he’s twenty-four and whirling the Lance of Ruin around with ease, driving it’s monstrous head into the chest of another soldier. He’s nineteen, and he’s seeing Felix for the first time in years, only he’s nineteen again and again and he begins to understand that the new professor is somehow, impossibly, meddling with time. He’s nineteen, and he’s seeing Felix for the first time, and his childhood love is still so pretty and sharp-tongued, and he’s twenty-five and he’s trying so hard to get Felix to notice him, and he’s twenty-six and Felix is kissing him in front of everyone - in front of their king, their archbishop, their best friends, some of the fucking living saints -
He’s thirty, then forty, then fifty, and then he’s dying, holding onto his husband with his last breath, and they made a promise they all promised and didn’t they all know by then - you should never make promises with a goddess -
Sylvain screams, and screams, and screams, and he remembers.
.
What feels like a century later, Sylvain sits up with a panicked gasp, struggling to breathe, and Felix gives a yelp of surprise.
“Sylvain - Sylvain !” Felix says, his voice strained. “It’s just me - listen to my voice! It’s me .”
Sylvain slumps forward, his hands braced, white-knuckled, against the tile of his bathroom. Felix is kneeling in front of him, one hand on his shoulder and the other cupping his cheek, his gaze worried. It’s grounding to have Felix there in front of him, real - oh Saints, Sylvain can’t believe he didn’t ever remember Felix .
“Sylvain?” Felix asks again, uncertain.
“Felix,” Sylvain replies, voice hoarse. “Felix Hugo Fraldarius.”
Felix goes rigid, and his grip on Sylvain’s shoulder tightens. This Felix - this Felix that must have been waiting for him for eighteen years of his life, fuck - this Felix has never told him his middle name.
“This - “ Felix tries. “You - “
“I love you,” Sylvain adds. “I’m sorry it took me so long to remember.”
Felix’s face crumples and he whispers, fierce and intimate, “Sylvain,” before he surges up and kisses Sylvain, kisses him the way he knows Sylvain likes it, a little rough and open-mouthed. It’s sweetly familiar, feeling all at once like victory and summer nights, and Sylvain snakes a hand around Felix’s waist and hauls him closer.
This is - this is what he forgot? It’s unbelievable to him, as Felix makes a wounded noise and all but collapses into Sylvain’s arms, kissing him more and more urgently, that he lost this, that he made Felix wait. He feels alive here, under Felix, in a way he hasn’t in so long - like the world has come back into focus, sharp and lovely and centered entirely on the breathy noises Felix is making.
“You remember ,” Felix says, pulling back to whisper it into the little space left between them. His fingers are clenched in Sylvain’s shirt, anchoring them together. There’s an angry little furrow in Felix’s forehead, as if he’s not quite sure that he can believe what’s in front of him, but his eyes are open and hopeful.
“I do,” Sylvain says, and he presses a line of kisses down Felix’s throat as Felix says, sounding dazed, “Ah! Sylvain - I - missed you - “
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Sylvain mumbles the words into Felix’s collarbone, his voice raw with emotion. Felix tugs Sylvain up, smoothing his fingers over Sylvain’s temples, looking impossibly fond as he says, “You’re here now.”
Sylvain laughs waveringly. “I’ll never leave again.”
Felix smiles, light and carefree, and it’s the first time Sylvain - this Sylvain, only twenty years old - has seen him like this.
“I know,” he says.
.
He reunites with everyone else, and there’s a lot of tears all around. Some of them are Sylvain’s, which he can’t bring himself to care about - not when everyone looks like a weight has been lifted off of their shoulders.
“You’re the last one,” Byleth tells him. “We’re all here now.”
“Why?” Sylvain asks, and Annette shrugs from where she’s attached herself to Mercedes’ side.
“The working theory is that you were the first one to figure out Byleth’s powers, so you’re the last one to remember when we come back,” Annette says. “You’re the beginning and end of our little circle.”
Sylvain shakes his head. “That’s - I heard someone say something just like that,” he says, frowning. “In a dream, I think.”
Byleth sighs, looking young and lost. “I made a mistake, many lifetimes ago, when I messed with time too much” she says. “I think you’re all paying for it, in some way. But Sylvain, if you heard her...I think it’s coming to an end. This is the last cycle.”
“There’s been more? We’ve done this before?” Sylvain asks. Dimitri shrugs, looking down at Byleth with undisguised fondness.
"She says we have," he tells Sylvain. "But none of us remember it."
"None of us want to," Ingrid adds. "It’s hard enough remembering the first one."
Sylvain grips Felix's hand tighter. "Well, I guess I should make my second life count, then, and try to do it right this time."
"Idiot," Felix chides gently. "Your first life was good too. That counted."
Sylvan presses a kiss to the top of Felix's head and feels overwhelmed with a stupidly soft kind of love. "I know," he says simply.
.
There’s so much to rediscover, so much to understand. He wonders how he made it twenty years like this, missing half of himself.
“It’s the hardest part,” Byleth says over tea. “Getting everyone together again. It’s the least I can do.”
“You’ve done this a lot,” Sylvain guesses. “You’re used to it.”
Byleth is silent for a while, struggling with something as she opens and closes her mouth several times. Sylvain waits, patiently, marvelling at the antique tea cups that Byleth has kept in pristine condition for literally hundreds of years.
“Sometimes it’s easy,” Byleth finally says. “Sometimes, you know, you and the others - Ingrid, Felix, Dimitri - you’ve all grown up together, and you remember in your childhood, and I don’t have to do anything but find you.”
Sylvain gives her a wry smile. “I’m guessing sometimes - like this time - it’s hard.”
Byleth sips at her tea, looking troubled. “Yes. The worst of it was getting Edelgard, usually, because what she remembers is - different than the rest of you. The only other really bad cycle was when I couldn’t find Ashe, for decades, until he was thirty. We knew he must have remembered, because you remembered, but he just - didn’t want to be found. That cycle - that was hard on Dedue. And the rest of us.”
“But this is the last one?”
“I had a feeling it would be,” Byleth says, twisting her ring around her finger. “You - you’re always the last to remember, without fail, but once everyone else is gathered it’s always just a matter of giving you one or two hints. A birthday, or an old recipe. A pointed comment or two. But this time - this time it was like something was pulling you away from us.”
“I dreamed of all of you,” Sylvain says slowly. “I think, at least. I dreamed of - almost dying, on the field at Gronder.”
Byleth snorts. “Oh, that day. I used Divine Pulse so many times. No wonder you remember.”
“Was that the…?”
“The reason that we all kept coming back?” Byleth asks, looking sad. “No. That’s - that was - different. I can’t apologize enough for it.” Here she looks up, eyes earnest and weighted down with an ancient misery. “That’s why I invited you to tea today. To apologize. I keep - I keep playing cards with all of your lives, basically, and I’m - so sorry that we’re all stuck in this.”
“Hey,” Sylvain laughs, shaking his head. “It’s okay. It worked out, in the end.” Anything is okay now, now that he has his friends and family by his side, now that the whole world feels more vibrant and colorful.
“It’s not okay,” Byleth says firmly, and she puts her tea cup down and reaches out for Sylvain’s hands. “I don’t always make the right choice, alright? This kind of - this blind faith - this is what made Rhea. I don’t want to be Rhea. So I’m sorry.”
Oh fuck , Sylvain thinks, and he can’t say anything to an ancient regret like that, so he just squeezes her hands and lets her hold on for a second longer, both of them pretending they don’t see the wet sheen to her eyes.
.
“I do think you should move in with me,” Felix announces as he lets himself into Sylvain’s room. “It’s not practical for us both to keep living in dorm rooms when we can just skip ahead to a nice apartment.”
Sylvain lazily rolls over in bed and looks at Felix, really looks at him. Those stupidly golden eyes, the sharp jawline, the soft black hair that feels like silk against his fingers, even when it’s tangled. He gets this for life. He gets this for more than life.
Felix looks back at him strangely. “It’s one in the afternoon. Why aren’t you up?”
“Mm,” Sylvain makes grabby hands towards him, and Felix sighs and sits on the side of the bed, letting Sylvain burrow into the warmth of his lap, carding his fingers through the unruly mess of Sylvain’s bed head. “Just thinking.”
Felix snorts. “Well, don’t strain yourself,” he says wryly.
“Oh, you’re real funny,” Sylvain murmurs, peering up at Felix through his lashes. Felix can pretend all he likes that he’s not affected; Sylvain can see that the tips of his ears are bright red. “No, I mean - we had a family.”
Felix’s expression turns nostalgic. He’s more open, in this lifetime, expressions more free than Sylvain ever remembers seeing. But that’s the difference that eighty years makes, he thinks; they’ve grown up, grown old, and now they can simply - be .
“We did,” Felix says wistfully. “A whole lifetime with them.”
“Where - “ Sylvain clears his throat. “Where are our kids?”
Felix shakes his head, and his voice is gentle when he says, “In the past, Sylvain. Where they belong.”
“Where we belong,” Sylvain says roughly.
“Hm,” Felix bends down and presses a kiss to Sylvain’s lips, quick and close-mouthed. “No. We’re here, now. Every lifetime, we leave different people behind.”
So this is the price of being immortal , Sylvain thinks as a wave of sadness washes over him, and he shuts his eyes and tries to breathe through it, tries to quell the sudden longing for days long past. This is what Byleth meant - the regret, the ache, the burning feeling of being out of time.
Felix holds him through it, gently brushing his hands through Sylvain’s hair, still, and Sylvain finally says, in a quiet voice, “Not each other though, right? We won’t leave each other.”
“There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow,” Felix promises, and it echoes with the memory of a promise made long ago, a promise that even time and space can't destroy.
.
That night, Sylvain dreams of a garden overrun with lilies and camellias, and a figure sitting in the middle with black hair down his back, laughter intermingled with the shrieks of tiny voices and the murmurs of a lively party in the background. The sun is setting, casting a golden glow over the scene, and Sylvain shades his eyes against the bright light on the horizon and looks out, past the flowers, past the walls of the castle. There, as far as he can see, stretches a line of similar memories; the two of them, hand-in-hand in every lifetime, surrounded by family and friends and absolute, unconditional love and warmth.
Yeah, Sylvain thinks, we're going to make it.