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Sylvain is cold.
The grass he lies on is wet and he can feel the blood that was splattered everywhere on the ground beginning to soak through his armor and onto his skin. What a bitch it would be to have the others wash it off of him after this is over. What a hell of a fight he has put up for no reason.
The sun is up, though. The sky is tinted pale blue with just the right amount of clouds to not make the sunlight shine so uncomfortably hot against him. The wind is nice, forming a light breeze that blows past his face. It’s good to take a breather sometimes, he remembers the professor saying. Good to remember that the soldiers clambering above him as they fight to the death mean little to what the whole world is. They’re mere ants in this maze, dying for a cause he has long lost hope for. He closes his eyes, remembering only what he wants to.
“Sylvain.”
For some reason, Felix’s voice is the first thing he thinks of. He repeats it again, the sound getting clearer.
“Sylvain!”
It feels more urgent, almost tinged with a sense of desperation and fear. He needs to not remember this and go back to the previous one.
“Sylvain!”
That’s interesting. For some reason, Dedue is the next voice that he remembers. Certainly not the one he wanted. He suddenly feels light, almost as if he’s being lifted up into the air. Maybe there is a Goddess, afterall.
“Gautier, you bastard, open your eyes. I know you’re alive!”
His eyes flutter open when he feels a slap across his face, cheek burning along with every other inch of his body. It’s only then he realizes he’s being carried like a burlap sack on Dedue’s shoulder, Felix tagging right along. Ashe follows suit, eyes wide as he stumbles.
“Thank the Goddess, you’re okay! We’re retreating right now and getting you to Mercedes. Please stay awake, Sylvain.” Ashe tries to explain. Sylvain barely can process anything, and his eyes fall shut again.
The last thing he hears is Felix shouting, “If you die here, I swear I will kill you!”
Sylvain is hot.
He awakes in a hospital bed with a raging headache and a dry mouth. Gagging, he begins heaving and tries to get out of bed to find the nearest bucket. As he throws up, squatting in the corner of the room, he can’t help but realize that he’s sweating profusely, already soaking his gown, hair pressed matte against his forehead.
“Ah, Sylvain, you’re awake.” A voice makes him jump as he turns his head to suddenly face Dimitri, who has been quietly sitting next to the bed, arms folded across his chest.
“Your highness?! How long have you been sitting there; you scared the life out of me!”
“My apologies. I couldn’t find the right time to approach you seeing as you were feeling ill.”
Sylvain runs his hands through his hair, feeling embarrassed the prince has to see him in such an awful state and how he can feel the grease and sweat of his body all on his palms. He pulls down the collar of his gown just enough to notice the new stitches right across his chest. It begins throbbing, making him feel weak in his knees as he tries to stand up. Dimitri runs to support him and helps aid him back to bed.
“The wound had barely missed your heart. The Professor and Mercedes spent all night healing you.”
“Please send them my thanks.” Sylvain says. Dimitri throws the comforter over him once again and frowns.
“You’re shivering.” He notes as he throws the fur cape he wears over him. Sylvain only grimaces, feeling as if he had lit a match and threw it on top of him.
“Funny, I’m burning up.”
“Nonsense, it is winter. If I remove any of these you will surely suffer from the cold.”
Sylvain only grumbles, body heavy, unsure if it’s from his injuries or from the fact Dimitri’s cape feels as if it’s the weight of 40 bricks.
“I shall tell the others to fix some supper for you. Would you prefer meat or vegetables?”
“I cannot fathom the fact of eating right now, so I shall decline for now. Thank you for everything, your highness.”
Dimitri smiles, placing his hand on his arm to provide a reassuring pat. He exits the room with a last goodbye, leaving Sylvain alone to himself in the room again. He drifts in and out of sleep, waking up occasionally to all his friends coming in to check up on him.
Ingrid comes in with spare sheets to replace the sweat soaked bed, Annette and Ashe come in to tell him stories of mishaps that have happened in the monastery while he’s recovering, Dedue comes in to inform him of the latest war meetings, and both the Professor and Mercedes come in to measure his temperature and feed him more medicine to help his fever. Although grateful, Sylvain can’t bring himself to smile, merely feeling guilty as he sees them acting as if they weren’t this close to losing their lives in an attempt to save him. As Mercedes tends to his wound, cleaning the stitches, he lets out a choked sob.
“Now, now Sylvain, why are you sad? If you feel bothered by the pain, please tell me.” Mercedes frowns, stopping her actions.
“It’s anything but that, Mercedes. I’m eternally grateful. I’m just in shock at how utterly thoughtful all of you guys are.”
“Why of course! Who would not care for their friends?”
Sylvain cries again, and Mercedes takes another cloth to wipe away his tears.
“This war… has taken a toll on all of us. But it is you and everyone else who keeps me alive. It is only a fact we must return the favors to each other.” She says, smiling sweetly as Sylvain continues to weep, trying his best to utter out his sentence.
“Please, tell everyone else once again how thankful I am for all of you.”
“I shall at once. But I find it best for you to thank them personally after you feel all better. Especially Felix, since he hasn’t slept a wink since the incident.”
“How has he been?”
“Not well. But in comparison to you, I would say he’s doing fine. Just in a more sour mood, that’s all.”
He falls asleep after Mercedes helps him to bathe, waking up to a plate of skewered meat and his clothes washed. A note is scribbled and placed on top of the things, words written sharply across.
Feel better. Is all that is on the paper, and Sylvain lets out a snort. Felix was always bad at this.
Sylvain is tired.
After his stitches had healed, forming a brand new scar across his chest, the Professor had wasted no time in bringing him back to the war council and pushing him to do training. As he spars against Ingrid with the wooden lance, he could tell he wasn’t at his top form, often dropping his weapon. After he loses five times, he gives up, leaving Ingrid disappointed and ready to lecture him. Laying on the dirt floor, Sylvain pants while letting Ingrid’s nagging go in one ear and out the other, suddenly spotting Felix in the corner. Felix eyes him and walks away briskly, pulling his coat up. He shouldn’t let it get to him, as this is typical Felix behavior, but it does. Hell, Felix hasn’t talked to him ever since the accident and it hurts.
He gets up and exits the training grounds, with Ingrid shouting, “You better do your stretches before tomorrow” from behind.
Felix is nowhere to be seen around Garreg Mach. He’s asked numerous people who all replied with a shrug. Not in the marketplace, not in the library, not even in his dorm. Sylvain returns with a heavy heart and a million questions, like why it particularly bothers him that Felix only wrote him a note and wherever Sylvain was, Felix was on the opposite side, making sure to keep his distance. It also bothered him how whenever he asked Dimitri or Ingrid about it, they would merely freeze and give each other some sort of glance before changing the topic.
“Felix is merely busy studying the numerous routes we can take when we march forward to the Empire; that involves a lot of scouting. Please don’t play with your food.” Ingrid explains at the dining hall. Sylvain grumbles and stabs his fork into his food.
“Do you like the fish sandwich? I find the fish sandwich quite appetizing.” Dimitri gives little to offer in these times.
“I just want to know how he’s doing, you know? He’s been on the edge ever since this stupid war started. I would hate for him to lose it because I almost died.” Sylvain completely ignores them both.
“Maybe you need to give it more time. After all, you did take that axe blade through your body for him. His guilt must be tremendous right now.” Ingrid suggests.
Sylvain stares at the table. It’s only what friends do, he wants to say, only what he would do for the ones he loves. But it may seem too righteous, holding little to no meaning as even the soldiers who are mere strangers to him would do the same thing he does. The scar stings, and Sylvain gets up without finishing his food.
The rest of the day goes by without much progress. Dedue takes him out to clear the rubble that is scattered all over the monastery and he also helps Ashe clean out the stables. It’s to promote team bonding or something like that, but truth be told, Sylvain doesn’t really see the point of it. He complained about it one time only to be scolded, and he’s never done it again. His hair is caked in sweat and mud, which makes Sylvain feel like scratching his skin off to shed the grime of all these mundane chores.
He trudges to his room, ready to rinse away the exhaustion of today, groaning at the thought of having to do everything again tomorrow. Before he can open the door, he hears someone clear his throat from behind. He turns to see Felix, whose ears were tinged bright pink as he held multiple items in his arms.
“Thought you would need this.” Felix mumbles, handing him new bandages, shoes, and even new toiletries. Sylvain blinks once. Twice. Three times.
“Well? Are you going to take it or stand there like an idiot, Sylvain?”
“Oh. Yes, thank you so much.” Sylvain quickly grabs them, going through them one by one. He even had bought the lavender scented soap that he has always particularly enjoyed. Felix doesn’t make eye contact and thrusts another basket into Sylvain’s arms, the basket containing many fruits and tea leaves.
“For you, and if you want to bring a lady over to brag about your new battle scar.”
And for the first time in a while, Sylvain grins, a wide happy smile that makes him drop everything he’s holding to pull Felix into a big bear hug. He can feel Felix trying to break free, yelling, “Sylvain!” as he brings him in tighter.
“Sylvain! Put me down! You smell like a barnyard!” Felix huffs, but finally relents, letting Sylvain lift him up in the air to spin him around one more time.
“Thank the goddess, I thought you were mad at me this whole time!” Sylvain laughs, and Felix scrunches his nose.
“Why would I be?”
“Well, I can list off every reason, like how you’ve been actively avoiding me, not sparing with me, not even joining me in dinner, not-”
“Fine, I see where you are coming from. I was just trying to look for all these things outside in the village. It was hard getting everything, you know.”
He can’t keep the grin off his face, and Felix only frowns harder as if he’s not used to Sylvain being a goofball around him.
“You took that axe for me, Sylvain. And you shouldn’t have. You could’ve died for nothing.” He scolds, and Sylvain pretends to be hurt by putting his hand across his chest and letting out a scoff.
“Nothing? I find dying for my friend to hold a lot of meaning towards it.”
“But you would’ve broken that promise…” Felix trails off, “Nevermind that. Please take a shower, you’re stinking up that hallway.”
“Promise? Felix Hugo Fraldarius, after all these years, you still remember that promise we made when we were kids?” Sylvain chuckles as he begins to bend down to pick up all the contents he had dropped. Felix follows, putting everything into the basket.
“Of course. Don’t get all sentimental with me. Don’t.”
“Alright, alright! Just didn’t realize that you of all people would really take that promise seriously.”
“Do you not?”
“I do. That’s why I didn’t die.” Sylvain winks, only to be punched square in the shoulder by Felix.
“Maybe you should’ve broken our promise. I’m tired of getting a heart attack every time we make it to the battlefield because of you.”
When they both get up, Sylvain and Felix can only stare at each other, with Felix breaking the eye contact first, starting to find the ground more interesting than his friend. A warmth blooms in Sylvain’s chest, a sense of relief, as if a torch lit up in his mind.
“Hey Felix, want to have some of the tea you got for me later? After I bathe, of course.”
Felix snorts, “Only if you make it.”
Sylvain is warm.
He wakes up in his bed, smelling of lavender and the bergamot tea he had boiled the night before. He lies there, staring up at the ceiling to shake the drowsiness out of him. When he turns his head, he finds Felix in the chair by his desk, already awake. He’s reading a manual, and when Sylvain squints hard enough, he can see that it’s a healing spell used to fade scars away quicker.
“Don’t, I think the scar looks quite good on me.” Sylvain says, making Felix jump. He quickly returns to his normal angry demeanor and scowls.
“Say that again when you’re 50. Then I’ll believe you.”
Sylvain laughs, and Felix gives him a small smile before returning back to the papers.
He’ll stay in today, just for a little bit.