Chapter Text
Sylvain was spending his afternoon the same way he seemed to spend every afternoon since arriving in Castle Blaiddyd— lounging in Felix’s chair and spinning the ring that started living on his finger only three months ago. The Fraldarius suite had existed in the castle for longer than its internal plumbing system had, and it showed no signs of falling out of use anytime soon. Normally, Sylvain would set himself up in one of the many guest apartments, but recent circumstances made it so that he would be sharing space with Felix in ways that neither man had ever expected to.
And, in some cases, ways that Sylvain wasn’t prepared to.
Felix had never been one to sit and wait for things to happen to him. Whenever he wanted something, he would set out to make it happen no matter what. It was a trait that terrified Sylvain sometimes, one that he feared would push him and his best friend apart when Felix would inevitably decide to follow his ambitions somewhere that Sylvain couldn’t go. He’d always been stronger, faster than the Gautier heir could dream of being— whatever he wanted, he would get. It simply never crossed his mind that Felix might want to make the promise they’d made as children more… concrete. A pinkie promise, turned into a binding contract. Sylvain didn’t think he had it in him, but as always, it was a fool’s error to underestimate a Fraldarius.
“Just marry me then, if it’ll make you stop complaining.”
“I- what!? Felix, you can’t just say that.”
And he shrugged, like the words on his tongue meant nothing at all. “Whatever. The offer’s open if you want it. It’s not like I have a line of suitors begging for my hand.”
That was all it took. No rings, no flowers, no picturesque sunset to reminisce on. Hell, he wasn’t even nice— how do you propose marriage while insulting someone? Leave it to Felix to promise himself to someone for all eternity and still keep scowling. Sylvain didn’t mind it, though. He never minded Felix’s unique ways of expressing his feelings, of which there had always been so many. He had his own ways of being sweet, and Sylvain savored every one.
His quiet reminiscing was soon interrupted by Felix himself, who he noticed before he came in. While Sylvain’s talent for recognizing footsteps was all but useless in times of relative peace, he still found it nice that he could tell when his fiance was coming down the hall. Only, the light taps of his heels were further apart than usual. Felix was never one to meander— was he injured?
Sylvain got up from his chair, ignoring the way his lower back protested at the movement as he crossed the suite and opened the heavy wooden door (reinforced to withstand Blaiddyd strength), peering into the hall warily.
“Fe? You alright over there? Don’t tell me you pulled something.” He called before he stepped out into the hallway. Sure enough, Felix was there, but he was carrying something—someone? On his back. The man looked to be unconscious, but there were far more pressing questions about his appearance that came to Sylvain’s mind first.
“Felix- Felix, who is that!?” Sylvain jogged to his fiance’s side, but the closer proximity to the man on his back spurred even more questions. From the door, all he could see was pale skin and long dark hair, but up close he noticed things like the curve of his brows, the slope of his nose, his long eyelashes… oh fuck.
Felix provided no answers, just a glare as he jostled his strange passenger in Sylvain’s direction. “Who does it look like?! Stop asking questions and help me get him to a bed!”
“Who does it look like!? Are you serious!? Felix—oof!” He was cut off as the man was hoisted onto his own back, as if it needed more strain.
For all of Sylvain’s racing thoughts and grumbling about his poor spine, the walk to the guest apartments wasn’t very long, considering Felix made a point of shooting down any of the staff’s concern with those sharp eyes of his. Once the suspiciously Fraldarius-looking person was tucked into the guest bedroom at the very end of the wing (both men would rather die than explain the situation to Ingrid at that moment), Sylvain took a deep breath like how Mercedes had taught him, and turned to Felix with the intention of not making a scene over this.
“Felix. Felix. Felix Hugo Fraldarius. Please, please tell me why someone who looks exactly like your older brother is in a bed in front of me right now.” Sylvain couldn’t hide the way his voice shook while asking the question, and he knew that Felix wouldn’t miss something like that. Unfortunately for him, Felix was far less keen on being calm about things.
“You think I know!? He just— just warped right in front of me! I don’t know why!”
Sylvain’s voice dropped into something lower, more careful, the way he’d talk to his horse when she spooked. “Felix, you… you know that’s not him, right? That can’t be him. There’s no way.”
“It’s him. I know it’s him.”
“You can’t know that—”
“I just do, okay!? It’s him—”
The door opened. Goddess be damned.
“What is going on in he— who is that!?” Ingrid rushed into the room, forgetting all of the knightly decorum she conducted herself with the rest of the time. Her eyes darted between the sleeping man and Felix, as if asking a question she couldn’t find the words for yet.
“It’s Glenn.” Felix responded in the most infuriating matter-of-fact tone possibly ever. As if his words held no weight to the other two people present. Sylvain tried to salvage the explanation, to no avail.
“It’s not, you know it’s not—”
“Don’t tell me what I know!” Felix went straight back to shouting. “It’s Glenn. It has to be Glenn. I don’t know why or how but that is Glenn!” His voice cracked at the end of the sentence, like it did when he was a kid trying not to cry. It was something that Sylvain caught onto immediately, and judging by the way her face softened into that quiet, infuriating expression of concern, Ingrid heard it too.
“Felix…” She started, choosing her words carefully like a true diplomat “I want it to be Glenn too, more than anything. But you know that this is what our enemies do. You could be putting everyone in the castle in danger because you let an imposter in.”
“Just what kind of an idiot do you take me for? You think I can’t tell my own brother apart from a cheap knockoff?!” Felix could be civil when he wanted to. Over the years, he’d gotten far better at holding his tongue in political settings, or around his extended family. But when it came to Glenn, he’d always refused to filter his speech.
“If it’s not him, I’ll take care of it. But I know my brother.” He finally allowed his volume to reduce as he lowered himself down into the chair in the corner of the room. “I’ll keep watch in here. If… this person has to die, I’d rather be the one do it.” Felix mumbled the last sentence, his eyes not on his friends but on the sleeping figure.
Sylvain was the one to break the silence that followed Felix’s decision, his voice equally quiet but carrying a hesitance that was unusual for him. “If… if you’re sure about it. Just call for us if you need help, alright?” He walked towards the door, with Ingrid following soon after.
Once he was alone with Glenn, Felix looked him over properly. There were scars on his face that he didn’t have in the time that they knew each other, and while he was wearing long sleeves under his tunic, Felix assumed the rest of his body was in a similar state of damage. His hair was a mess, so bad that the only explanation the Duke could think of was that there was no way for him to take care of himself wherever he’d been. Glenn’s long, luscious curls were something he took immense pride in, even refusing to cut them when other knights would laugh about how feminine his waist-length braid was. The Fraldariuses were known for being pretty, and even in his current state, Glenn was no exception.
However, more than scars and matted hair, the most prominent trait that this man exhibited was his smell. Ever since that strange portal opened and spit him out, Felix had not been able to get the smell out of his mind. It wasn’t a nostalgic scent like Ingrid’s, and it wasn’t a signature cologne like the one Sylvain wore. Glenn reeked, smelling of wet dirt, ashes, and a note of decay that Felix really didn’t want to think too hard about. It was a similar aroma to the one Dimitri had when he arrived in Castle Fraldarius all those Horsebow Moons ago, when his father brought him in half-conscious because he’d deemed the castle an unsafe place for him until things died down. Felix didn’t question it at the time, and just held his friend close that night after his father insisted that they share his bed. He asked nothing when the prince would wake up crying, begging for his father or his stepmother or for Glenn. He didn’t question it, barely said much of anything, and every day since then Felix found himself wondering if he should’ve.
He’d almost forgotten the smell of The Tragedy, until this man reappeared and brought it back to the forefront of Felix’s memory. It had to be Glenn, there was no other explanation.
After a few hours of sitting and simmering and waiting, Felix saw the man’s eyes fluttering back open, revealing that shade of afternoon sky that still felt dizzying to look at. Immediately, the Duke shot up from his seat and stood over him, watching him blink back into some type of awareness and mumble under his breath.
“…where… where’s Mitya…?”
Ah, right. He would be worried about that. Felix choked back a feeling he couldn’t identify, but that he knew he didn’t like, before he cleared his throat and attempted to phrase his next sentence in a somewhat decent way.
“He’s, uh, he’s… you did your job, he’s fine.” The words tumbled out of his mouth in a clumsier way than he’d hoped. Over the years, Felix had come to learn that “fine” was quite a deceptive word, and that Dimitri was anything but fine when he was initially brought back from Duscur. But Glenn didn’t need to know that at the moment, especially since Felix’s half-hearted answer to the question made him let out a heavy sigh that the younger sibling had never heard from him before.
“O-okay… fuck, Dad!” Here was where Rodrigue would scold Glenn for his language, but the exclamation just made Felix freeze up all over again. “I don’t— don’t even know where I was or- or what happened—”
“I’m not—!” Felix cut him off, louder than he wanted to and before he had decided what he wanted to say. “I’m not Dad. I’m, uh, I’m Flick.” He softened his voice. That seemed to sober Glenn up more than anything, as any remaining haziness left his face and replaced itself with a hard, sharp stare that Felix only remembered a few people receiving. He sat up— thank the Goddess he could sit up— and looked Felix directly in the eyes. He wondered if his brother would’ve remembered how much he hated that after so many years.
“You’re who?” Glenn’s voice lifted at the end, like he was responding to a joke, but his face was still solid. Felix couldn’t hold eye contact anymore and settled on looking towards the wall, right above his brother.
“I’m… I’m Flick. I was Felicity. I don’t, um. I don’t use that name anymore, though.” Fuck, this whole thing was harder than he’d imagined it would be. When Felix first told his father that he wanted to live his life as a man, Rodrigue had taken up the responsibility of explaining the change to everyone who needed to know. By now, everyone in his life knew him as Felix, regardless of whether or not he was Felicity when he met them. This was never a responsibility that he imagined he would have, and it was even worse that it was happening with his brother.
“It’s Felix now. It’s been, uh… a little over a decade since I’ve last seen you. It’s 1187.”
Glenn blinked once, then twice, then opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he was waiting for words to come out. They did eventually.
“I've been gone a decade?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re my sister?”
“Yeah— well, no.”
“You’re a man?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re what, twenty-four now?”
“Yeah. Twenty-five next week.”
Glenn’s eyes got wide. Felix felt like he was in trouble.
“Shit. I left you alone for a while.”
His throat tightened. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
Felix didn’t know how to respond to that. It wasn’t like Glenn to be apologetic— in fact, he was one of the most brash, unapologetic people he’d ever known. Glenn did exactly what he wanted when he wanted, his father and the opinions of others be damned. It was one of the things he most adored about his big brother.
“It, uh—”
Just as the Duke started to wrack his brain for something, anything to say, a quiet knock sounded from behind the door, followed by a voice that was familiar to both Fraldarius brothers.
“Felix? Is, uh… is everything okay in there?” Ingrid’s voice was quiet, cautious in a way that would annoy Felix in any other circumstances.
“Yes. It’s him.”
She groaned, the sound clearer as she opened the door. “Felix, come on! You can’t be—”
Ingrid stepped into the room, and promptly froze in her tracks as she started to stare at Glenn, who tilted his head to the side as he looked her up and down, as if trying to figure out where he knew her from. Something about seeing him awake, seeing his face move and the way he emoted, must have sparked a brief bit of recognition in Ingrid, even if her instincts told her to shove it away.
Glenn turned to Felix, with an almost incredulous expression. “This is Gigi?” He gestured in Ingrid’s direction, earning a nod in response. He raised an eyebrow, and something like a chuckle came from his throat. “We were supposed to be married by now, huh?”
Neither of the nobles spoke for a few seconds, but they'd find that they didn’t need to. As if he could sense the pair’s need for his presence (at that point, who’s to say that he couldn’t?), Sylvain let himself into the guest room with no announcement of his presence, a type of entrance that the redhead himself would hate being the recipient of.
“I heard talking. I thought you two were dealing with the situation?”
Ingrid was the one to speak up this time. “Felix was right, it is him!”
Sylvain raised a brow. “And… you know this how, exactly?” He turned towards the man in the bed, his expression staying firm. “Tell us something that only Glenn Fraldarius would know.”
Glenn just laughed. “Shit, Sylvie, since when were you so uptight?”
“Answer the question!”
The knight (was he still a knight?) rolled his eyes, as he was known to do, before pointing straight at Felix.
“You told me you hated me for going to Duscur without you,” His finger moved to Ingrid, “You asked me to help you become a knight after we married,” Then to Sylvain, “And I found you at the bottom of a well while on a trip with my father. Is that good enough?”
The room was quiet for a beat— Felix was staring at the ground, Ingrid looked like she had been struck, and Sylvain immediately shoved back whatever feelings Glenn’s admission had evoked in order to change the subject.
“How are you here?”
Glenn chuckled again, “I’d love it if I knew.”
“You died in Duscur.”
“I thought so too.”
“Then how—”
“Sylvain!” Ingrid raised a hand, which quieted Sylvain instantly. “Obviously none of us know how this happened. I don’t think pestering Glenn will get us any answers.” The authoritative tone that Sylvain was intimately familiar with started returning to her voice, and ever since they were children it was hard for him to defy Ingrid when she spoke like that. Sylvain sighed, accepting defeat.
“Fine.” He mumbled through gritted teeth. “Fine, fine, we’ll figure this out later… maybe the professor’ll know something?”
“Maybe they will.” Ingrid agreed. “But let’s worry about it when they return.” She glanced over to Glenn, who looked about as exhausted as she felt. “I think we could all use some time to, uh… deal with this.”
Sylvain only nodded in response, and soon the two of them filed out of the room, leaving Felix alone with his brother. The Duke knew it was probably the best idea to leave, but it was hard for him to tear his eyes away from Glenn. The ideal of strength that he’d been chasing for years on end, now laid in front of him and looking far weaker than he’d ever known him to be.
“Hey, Felix?” Glenn all but yanked his brother out of whatever trance he seemed to be in. It was a weird sensation, hearing his brother call him by that name. It might’ve made a younger Felix cry, but all that it provoked from this Felix was a quiet “Hm?” in response.
“Can you get the hell out? I want to sleep.” Glenn spoke with no abrasion in his voice despite the harshness of his words. It was how he’d always spoken to Felix, and it was strangely comforting to the younger Fraldarius to hear his swearing again after all these years.
“Uh— yeah, alright. Goodnight.” Was all that he could muster before scrambling out of the room and closing the door behind him.