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There are a few things Felix still remembers about Glenn. The strong green tea he liked, the way he was so particular about his room and his things being in order, the way he’d comb his hair back. The way he acted around the stable girl he liked.
In specific, he remembers being young, young enough that Glenn didn’t like to leave him with a real sword alone, and watching Glenn sigh all big and dramatic as they walked home. When he asked why his brother was acting so strange, Glenn told him this: “You’ll get it when you’re older, little guy. Sometimes… Sometimes, some people just-- it’s like, when they talk, you see flowers bloom, and bells ring, and you feel like you aren’t even walking on the ground anymore. Like you’re in the clouds.”
Felix had scrunched up his small, pointed nose, and made a face, and said, “That sounds ridiculous.”
Then he enrolled in the Officers Academy, and met Ashe.
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Sylvain and Ingrid have to tell him the other student’s names a few times before they stick. It’s not Felix’s fault - he’s got a brain that organizes things automatically, is all. Things that aren’t important, or not deemed so, don’t get sorted into the ‘remember me’ box. He goes a full two months of living on the same floor as Ignatz and not knowing his name literally at all, and is grateful Byleth answers to simple ‘professor’ because it takes a while for that name to stick, too.
He remembers when classes are, and where his things are, and at what time the dining hall closes - so, the important stuff. And he remembers Ashe’s name, even though Ashe rarely talks to him, though he forgets more than once what the kid even fights with. But he does forget that the library closes early, and he forgets that Ashe spends a lot of time in there with Ingrid, sometimes - until he’s face to face with the silver-haired boy barely half an hour before curfew.
He’d come in looking for Ingrid, truthfully. He’d bested her in their training rounds today, and had come to remind her that bright and early tomorrow she’d be the one dragging Sylvain off to the stables for their group chore that week. Instead, he found an empty library, and a lone book sitting on the center table.
Felix finds himself picking it up before he can stop himself. It’s a plain, easy-to-read story, and though this isn’t the same copy he’d had in his childhood home, he can still remember Glenn pulling the book out, reading with all different voices, jumping around Felix’s room as he narrated the fights and feats. He’s almost completely lost in thought, in memory, in chasing down his brother’s ghost one more time, when he hears it.
“Hmm, I must’ve left it in the library.”
Ashe finds him in the library, and it goes downhill from there.
First, he tells Felix he can borrow the damned story. And Felix, who’d already let nostalgia settle around him like a warm winter coat, had snapped that he didn’t want the book, and that it was stupid. He barks this out with a bite to his words in an attempt to drop the whole subject, and still, Ashe insists. He tells Ashe he hates this story, and others like it, and still, Ashe insists. He tells Ashe that the whole idea of chivalrous knights and their gallivanting adventures, always just beating the odds, are delusional, evil, even, and-- Ashe goes a step further and compares Felix to the knight in his stupid story.
“Be more moderate in your passions,” goes Felix, even though, quietly, he’s thinking, why do I feel so strongly about this? Why am I taking this out on Ashe? Do I truly feel this way? And Ashe only looks at him.
He thinks, maybe, he’s made his point. Ashe blinks at him with his owlish, forest-green eyes, and for the first time since they’ve met, Felix truly looks at him. He stands a little shorter than Felix, with a shorter torso but slightly longer legs. His nose is small and upturned, and the dusting of freckles across his dainty, pale complexion make him stand out more than Felix would’ve thought. He’s easy to read, his heart on his sleeve, his eyes speaking only of a want to understand, an urge to help, a desire to be kind.
It makes Felix sick. He thinks Ashe has given him a stomach ache with all his do-goodery, when Ashe says, “You know something Felix? You’re just like the knight in the story!” and Felix feels as if the kid has kicked his feet out from under him.
“On the surface, he's sarcastic and intimidating.” Says Ashe, and his eyes, like a forest floor dappled in sunlight, glitter. “But underneath, he's kind and cares for his friends. In the end, they become heroes together and conquer all obstacles!”
“Disgusting,” spits Felix, as his stomach does an impressive flip. Ashe’s heroic ramblings are so sugar-coated they’ve made him physically ill, it seems. He almost takes a step back from Ashe, as if he could be frightened by the boy who more resembles a small forest creature than soldier, or, heaven forbid, knight, as Ashe balls his hands into fists, holding them up to his chest like he simply can’t contain his excitement and may need those hands to grab hold of Felix-- and that idea just makes him weaker. “Stop looking at me like that!”
Ashe only smiles wider, a soft chuckle falling out of his lips. “See, right there! That’s just what I mean, you sound exactly like him!”
Felix nearly goes cross-eyed. He sees flowers bloom, hears bells ring. The floor, underneath him, feels miles away. He’s levitating, somehow. In the clouds.
He doesn’t know how long he looks at Ashe, half like he’s just been presented with the world’s greatest mystery, and half like he’s just met a dragon without a sword to fend it off with. It’s long enough that eventually, Ashe pushes the book into Felix’s hands, and doesn’t falter when the motion nearly causes Felix to jump out of his skin.
“I’m going to lend you this book,” he says, and Felix opens his mouth to protest, but not in time. “Really, I insist! Just give it a read, alright? Trust me. And you can tell me what you think when you’re done.”
Like a fool, Felix just stares, prey caught by it’s hunter, his mouth a wonderful fly-trap in the way it falls down stupidly. Ashe must take pity on his horrendous, idiotic form, because he pats Felix’s hands, which burn after the touch, and leaves him be, a spring in his step as he disappears down the hall.
There is breath caught in Felix’s throat, like he’s choking on food he’d thought he’d swallowed. He looks down at the knight’s tale, and furrows his brow. With Ashe gone, he sees clearer, but the boys… effects remain. He closes his eyes, and brings the book up to his brow to groan, “Why is this happening…”