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Here he is again.
Sitting on the railing of the main bridge between the monastery proper and the cathedral in all it’s resplendent glory with a reckless abandon. It’s a bridge he’s sure has some sort of great and meaningful name but at this moment he doesn’t care .
There’s a stinging red mark on his jaw and the smell of cheap moonshine on his breath.
It’s a situation Sylvain finds himself in regularly. When the night is too quiet and he plays too much. His own personal voices won't be chased out by breaking someone’s heart, be it his own or some girl he won’t remember the name of by the night’s end.
he really is despicable.
Ah, there it is again.
The guilt.
Clearly he’s not drunk enough if he’s still having those kinds of thoughts. Or any thoughts at all really.
Sylvain will take waking up in an unfamiliar bed with a collection of bruises he doesn’t remember getting and a person he doesn’t recognize, over being thrown into his own mind with nothing but a lead weight and the helpful advice of swim, anytime.
A terrible metaphor, really, but Sylvain has never claimed to be a poet.
So here he sits, making terrible prose in his head while looking out over the void extending too far down because for some reason almost one thousand years ago someone decided to build a church on top of a cliff face.
And he knows, he knows that it would do no one any good but still that darkness below calls to him.
A siren song stronger than any other.
What he also knows is that despite all of their lauding of security , they wyvern and pegasus corps do not patrol the great bridge.
Maybe it’s the moon, or the alcohol, or the chill in the air. Maybe it’s the way the friends that he’s known since before any of them knew what it meant to die or what fate they were bound to just by the blood in their veins look at him with thinly veiled (or not) disgust each time he opens his mouth.
With disgust, like he doesn’t want to claw off his own burning rancid skin and present it to them as a gruesome apology, a macabre statement of i’m sorry for existing, for disappointing you and everyone else.
Or maybe it’s Miklan. And the fresh blood staining Sylvain’s hands.
Either way he sits on this bridge once again.
And he thinks about dying once again.
He thinks about going back to his room and writing every word he’s never said and every apology he’s neglected. Of staining the parchment with his sorrows and his secrets. About every promise he wished he’s kept, and that he’s so sorry he’s got to break at least one more.
One final promise, broken, just like that.
He thinks about the small soft hands linking together in a promise that seemed oh so important on the day they made it.
A promise that had been such a comfort in their younger days, that, no matter what, they would always have each other.
Sylvain wonders, what that younger and more innocent Felix would have said to him, if he could see him now. He wonders if he would be disgusted with him just like his older counterpart.
Or if he would see behind the masks Sylvain wears like he was oh so good at doing before the tragedy. Before he stopped looking at people entirely.
He remembers that fateful day three years ago, where his best friend watched his brothers body be turned to ash, and where he quietly stewed in jealousy . Not for Felix, no, never for Felix.
But for Glenn.
Glenn who died for the kingdom’s future, for it’s prince. Glenn who was lauded as a true knight and remembered as honorable, as someone to look up to.
Someone who was remembered…
And isn’t that just the crux of it all. Someone who was remembered. There isn’t a single person in Faerghus that doesn’t know Glenn’s name. The current regent made sure of it. Lauding Glenn’s deeds and the survival of the royal heir through every messenger and bard he could find.
Then, there’s Sylvain. Who, due to his title will be remembered as the crested son of house gautier at best.
Forgotten, as a person.
Sylvain laughs. But the way that his breath catches on the quiet air around him makes it sound more like sobbing.
“I think I gave up on happiness a long time ago,” he mumbles into the night air like it’s not a secret he would die with. Leaning back on his precarious seat and stretching his arms from where they sat clenched against the ancient brick of the bridge railing. He kicks his feet back and forth over the edge and smiles dully at the stars.
All it would take was one step.
But.
The old, rusted shackles on his wrists creak and groan. They remind him of the weight on his shoulders. Something that Sylvain has been intimately familiar with since the moment his fate was decided by a simple test done before he could even talk.
He slowly pulls his feet back, swivels around so his gaze is no longer dwelling on the void below.
Shaking, he stands.
He stands and then he walks away, back to the main monastery campus, back to the dorms he doesn’t stop until he’s back in his room with only half of the memories that he should have of his walk back.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s laying face down on his bed, hugging his pillow so tightly that he might be able to forget that he’s completely alone. Like the glorified bag of fluff and down might stop him from from walking right back to the edge of the bridge and taking that final step.
So he lays there trembling, salt tracks on his cheeks.
And he knows that tomorrow night he’ll do it all again.