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The night had long since fallen on the monastery, and an uneasy aura of sleep had embraced every building, each tower and each garden silent save for the satisfied whispers of the stray cats. So silent, in fact, that Felix feared each of his footsteps could shake the eerie peace so violently that the Goddess herself would come down to scold him.
He didn’t know how he could be expected to sleep after all they had seen that day underground, but he didn’t blame the others for trying to find rest. After all, if they woke up tomorrow from a long sleep, maybe today would feel like a memory. But he couldn’t seem to close his eyes long enough to sleep without seeing Miklan, lying dead on the tile, surrounded by shards of armor and the flesh of an unholy beast, his brother holding a bloody lance, both their bodies still.
So he walked, without aim, silently praying that nobody discover him and think him up to no good. He could do without another confrontation from Seteth, and had little energy to deal with Manuela, especially at this hour of the night after she had likely already began drinking. He figured walking around the dormitories was the best course of action, as he could explain to any interrogator that he was heading back to his room. With all the conflict recently, he assumed it best to stay away from the cathedral and the offices.
Felix tried to concentrate on nothing as he walked, trying to drown out the noise in his head by listening to his boots each time they hit the ground. And yet, each time he walked by a door, knowing each room held one of his classmates, sleeping, studying, or possibly just as plagued with thoughts as he was, a chill ran down his spine.
Felix, this is ridiculous, came from the back of his mind. You’re making yourself insane. Go to sleep. You’ll have to eventually.
Sighing, Felix resigned himself to the fact that, no matter how he might try, he had little control over what happened to him as long as he attended school here. All he could do was control who knew him, and to prove himself a worthy enough fighter to one day regain control of his fate. But for tonight, he had to stop his protests and obey his heavy eyelids.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor, Felix paused, questioning whether the loud, sorrowful noise he was hearing was real, and whether it was coming from outside or within the walls of the dormitory. As he approached his room, the sound grew louder and more violent, and became clear as he neared the wall at the end of the hallway.
He quickly realized he was standing outside Sylvain’s room, the sound now clearly coming from Sylvain. His heart, despite the walls he had carefully constructed around it over the years, despite his hesitance to admit that it even existed, ached for his friend. Sylvain had always been the one he went to when he really needed a confidante, as rare as that was, and he hated to think he was too cowardly to return the favor.
Felix hesitantly knocked on the bedroom door and held his breath for the few moments that hung between him and Sylvain, who opened the door, his eyes wide and terrified, reflecting more light than ever, his face red and swollen with the afterglow of tears.
“Hey, Felix,” he said, almost a question, his voice small and shaky.
“Sorry, um, I heard you crying and it bothered me.” Felix had apparently lost his ability to talk like a human being as he looked at Sylvain, crying in his pajamas, the room behind him disheveled and dark save for the moonlight creeping in through the windows.
“Sorry, I’ll keep it down,” Sylvain said, dismissive, beginning to turn away and close the door behind him, but Felix stopped him. Felix , why do you have to be such an asshole?
“No that’s- I didn’t mean that. I meant I wanted to… to help.”
“Oh. Really?” Sylvain’s face said it all- this was unexpected. Felix wished it didn’t have to be.
“Yeah, can I come in?”
Sylvain wordlessly stepped backwards into his bedroom and held the door open, Felix closing it behind himself. The sheets and covers on the bed were in disarray, as if Sylvain had been trying to sleep but found himself tossing and turning in restless thought, just like Felix.
“What is it, Felix?” A cold, almost accusatory tone, sounded wrong coming from someone defined by his being constantly warm and always imposing, like the sun suddenly covering Fódlan in a freezing mist.
“I know that you must be thinking about a lot. I feel-”
“I killed my brother today, Felix.” Sylvain’s eyes met only the floor.
“You had to-”
“I killed my brother. It doesn’t matter if I had to or if he was a monster, I killed him and for the rest of my life he will be dead and I will know I killed him.” Suddenly, Sylvain was at the edge of his bed, one leg bouncing violently, his hands gripping the sheets so hard his knuckles turned pale. Tears threatened his voice, but his head was bowed so that Felix could not see whether he was beginning to cry.
“He was going to kill you. And all of us. Not fighting back would have been suicide.”
“Why should I have to choose between killing and death? Why can’t these things ever end with everyone walking away?”
Felix felt a pang of guilt as Sylvain’s words landed on him; he was always so quick to brandish his sword, to threaten, to fight. It was his only purpose- he knew nothing besides his blade.
Except for Sylvain. He knew Sylvain. He sat down beside him at the edge of the bed, carefully so as not to break Sylvain in half.
“I know. I felt the same way when Glenn died, though I was a child then.”
“You didn’t kill Glenn.” The cold only grew colder as it crept out of Sylvain’s throat.
“I didn’t. The world killed Glenn. And Miklan. And we’re part of it, and it will kill us someday too.” An unending cycle of violence. They were all killing each other. Fódlan was a violent land, even in times of relative peace.
“If I woke up tomorrow and found out my Crest had somehow disappeared, I would feel nothing but relief.” Sylvain turned his head to face Felix, showing that he was no longer crying; not for an absence of feeling, but of energy- Felix had never seen Sylvain look so exhausted in all their years together, even after the nights they would stay up all night to talk or play when they were small and carefree. “All it has done is take from me. My whole life has been decided for me, and the one choice I’ve gotten to make in twenty years was to kill my brother, who went crazy because of me. Because I was born better than him, somehow. I’m living an empty life.”
“Your life isn’t empty.”
“What do I have left, Felix? The entire world is always one hundred miles away. I can’t touch anything.”
You have me. I’m right here. You can touch me.
“You have me.” The rest would come naturally.
“What?” Sylvain’s face hardened, but his eyes grew softer, looking down at Felix with a breathless intimacy.
“I don’t care about your Crest, or your future, or your past, Sylvain. I know the real you.”
“I don’t even know the real me, Felix. My whole life has been a performance.” The pain in his voice resounded with every syllable, flooding into Felix through his pores. He felt his eyes grow hot and clouded, an unfamiliar sensation; he hadn’t cried in who knows how long. But if Sylvain couldn’t cry, if he had no tears left, Felix would take on the responsibility.
“Then let’s figure it out, together,” he said, taking Sylvain’s hand in his own without thinking, without knowing if Sylvain wanted this. To Felix, it sounded like Sylvain had never been allowed to know what he wanted himself.
Sylvain looked down at their linked hands, almost in disbelief, as if he’d never been touched by another person before. He whispered Felix’s name, so quietly and noncommittally that Felix wasn’t sure if it was really Sylvain or the mice in the walls.
“I mean it.”
The two of them sat in silence for a few precious, earth-shattering moments, connected by their hands through which Felix could feel Sylvain’s steady heartbeat.
“Would you believe that this is the first time I’ve ever held someone’s hand since I was a child?” Sylvain asked with sobering clarity.
“No,” Felix replied with a restrained laugh. “I wouldn’t. But the same is true for me.”
Another moment of silence, Sylvain’s hand beginning to shift in Felix’s palm, his thumb nervously skirting over the contours of Felix’s hand.
Felix shifted at the edge of the bed, inching closer to Sylvain until they were shoulder-to-shoulder. “Sylvain, I’m sorry I’ve never told you that I love you. But I do. Even if you don’t believe me.”
Sylvain turned to Felix, their faces just whispers of space apart. “I… Felix,” he breathed, closing his eyes and looking at their barely-touching shoulders. Felix swallowed, knowing Sylvain was in a fragile sense and maybe shouldn’t be hearing this. “I love you. More than anyone. More than you know.”
Felix drank in Sylvain’s warmth as they held each other’s glances for seconds that felt like eons, time moving the same way Felix had only ever felt it move in the moments before he pierced an enemy’s throat. “We can leave it at that,” he said, not wanting to overwhelm Sylvain with even more to think about than the day’s events already had. He himself was starting to feel dizzy, though maybe that was from the look in Sylvain’s eyes. “It’s okay if-”
But before he could finish his thought, Sylvain had taken the offense and their lips were pressed together, Sylvain’s hands now placed on Felix’s jaw, a little too firmly, but reassuring. Much more like Sylvain than the loose grip he’d had on Felix’s hand. Felix was too shocked to react properly, leaving his eyes open even as he leaned into the kiss, even as he put his hands on Sylvain’s shoulders, and he watched the determination etch itself back into the folds of Sylvain’s forehead as his eyebrows furrowed.
Much too quickly, it was over, and Sylvain’s face once again appeared to be held together by fear and disbelief. “I’m sorry, Felix, I don’t know what came over me.”
Instead of trying to reassure him with words that would always sound insincere when heard by someone so clearly unsure of every action, Felix responded by kissing Sylvain again, but softer this time, less impulsive and more purposeful, taking the time to make sure his every action conveyed that this was what he wanted, what he’d always wanted, embroidering the words into the way his hands moved from Sylvain’s shoulders to his neck and the pressure of his tongue.
“This is a choice you can make, Sylvain,” Felix whispered as they separated. “Nobody else can decide what we are.”
“Can we just be each other’s?”
“We always have been.”