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Felix last held a sword four and a half months ago. His hand itches for it. Is it barbaric to be thinking that way when the nanny is depositing his week-old daughter back into his arms?
Ameline had been born healthy, and he should be thankful; however, no thanks to Sylvain and his lineage, she’d also been big. Felix takes this out in little ways on those unfortunate enough to be hovering around his bedside, babying him, but never to Ameline herself. Or to Sylvain, when he’s looking at her like his entire world has narrowed to the three of them here together in this room.
“Look, Felix,” Sylvain says over and over, as if he’s broken, as he delicately traces her tiny features with one trembling fingertip. She looks small and fragile next to her father, her other father, like she hadn’t nearly destroyed Felix on her way out. “Look at her eyes. Her hair. Her face! Just like you. She’s you. She’s perfect.”
It’s as if Sylvain is blind to Ameline’s wide smile and boundless curiosity, or the natural glint in her eye, or the way she’s learned to beam up at the most adoring of the maids, the one who can’t help but coo at her and play. Ameline’s short hair is already thick and untameable, an alien texture in the house of Fraldarius.
She’s for you, he wants to say. She’s a gift; look, here are all the things I love about you. See them for yourself this time, as if through my eyes.
“She’s you, too,” Felix says, as he brushes his hand through his husband’s unruly hair, the true relic of Gautier. “She’s yours. You don’t see it?”
Sylvain winks at him. “I’ve seen the way she charms Greta with that smile of hers.” Ah, so he has noticed. “That part’s me. But I’m glad she gets the rest from you.”
Felix makes a grunt of frustration. He feels misunderstood, and for the first time he thinks he recognizes how Ignatz felt at Garreg-Mach all those years ago when Felix had scoffed at one of his paintings and asked what it was supposed to be. Wasn’t the finished piece supposed to speak for itself?
How was it possible that they were looking at the same child, in whom Sylvain saw only Felix, and Felix saw only Sylvain?
‘I guess she cries less though,” Sylvain says, his tone teasing, and Felix thwaps him with a bit less violence than he’s used to, the only thing he’s able to achieve at this angle with their daughter between them. He’s right, though. Ameline doesn’t cry, much.
What other evidence does Felix need?
It takes almost four years of being told by Sylvain, repeatedly, and every single other person around them that Ameline is Felix’s spitting image before he has to grudgingly admit they may have a point. At least with this.
“I want to play swords with you,” Ameline insists. On her face is a look of steadfast determination that would not have been out of place if seventeen-year-old Felix were looking at himself in the mirror.
A visiting Annette giggles and looks to Felix with interest. Felix feels an amused smile creep across his face. Ameline’s pout deepens.
“I don’t play swords,” he says. He isn’t even trying to be pedantic, just truthful, as he sheaths his blade. “This is a technical demonstration. If you want to watch, then stand back, like we talked about. Maybe you could learn something.”
“Felix,” Annette reproves. “That is a four-year-old child.”
“I have a sword,” Ameline shouts. It’s a polished wooden thing with rounded edges. A toy, not a sword. “I want to spar.”
The use of a word like spar said in Ameline’s chirping little voice must catch on Annette’s ear. The affronted look on her face says everything she’s thinking about Felix’s parenting skills. “I guess I’m really not surprised,” she huffs at last. “She is your daughter, after all.”
They all hear Sylvain well before they see him.
“Ammy,” Sylvain says breathlessly, sweeping her up into his arms and giving her cheek a sloppy, whiskery kiss that makes her howl with disgust. It’s a common display around the Fraldarius manor, and yet Felix can see how it differs from usual, the lines of tension written in Sylvain’s body language. “We agreed you wouldn’t bother Papa in the yard. It could be dangerous.” It’s not quite accusational, but he’s looking directly at Felix when he says it, and Felix freezes in place.
“Don’t be angry, Sylvain,” Annette implores, at the same time that she leans into the one-armed hug and peck on the cheek that Sylvain offers her in greeting. “We were watching her, I promise. And I was the one who asked Felix for a demonstration.”
Generous of her to phrase it that way, since Felix harbors no illusions about why she’d asked him. Felix had known the game, but truth be told, it had pleased him. “I’m not angry, Annie, I promise,” Sylvain sighs, in a voice that betrays only a little annoyance. He leans down to kiss Felix, lips to mouth, as their squirming daughter voices her protest and fights her way out of his arms. “You know how it is. I looked around for my little sugarplum and couldn’t find her. Father’s instincts.” Sylvain has a talent for sounding casual when he’s actually about to vibrate out of his skin. Maybe Annette recognizes it by now, as surely as Felix does.
“Well I wasn’t out here chopping her head off,” Felix snarks, unable to help himself. Sylvain and Annette give him matching appalled looks. Ameline whoops.
“I’ll chop your head off, Papa!” she cries, hitting Felix’s thigh with her ineffectual wooden sword like she’s chopping down a tree (it’s with a touch of pride that Felix notes how it stings, a little), before Sylvain scoops her up again.
“None of that, princess,” he scolds, looping Felix in with his other arm. “I happen to like both your sweet heads very much.”
“Aw,” says Annette.
“And I like yours too, Annie,” Sylvain says, as Ameline giggles.
The next day, they find her struggling with the pommel of a steel sword in her hand. All of the weapons have to be kept under lock and key after that.
There was no point making an enemy of his own body; that was a battle he’d stopped trying to fight years ago. This was the body that had protected the people he loved during the war, that had given the man he loved a living child. He could hardly blame his anatomy for the physical toll it had incurred in doing so. Twenty-seven years Felix had spent, honing his body into a weapon for war, only to turn around and say one day: here. Now make something.
He snarls in quiet frustration, putting the sword away. Ameline, Annette, and Sylvain are all asleep; this sad routine is for him alone. Almost four years of constant training and exercise, and he feels as lean and fit as ever, but there are some changes he’s accepted will never go away. In posture, in stance, in something intangible. When a weapon starts to feel less lethal in your grip, in spite of the number of times you’ve honed its edge, you get a new weapon. That adage doesn’t apply here.
He knows it was worth it. It’s only sometimes that this ugly thing makes itself known. Only sometimes.
He refuses to call it regret. Not even in his worst moments, and especially not in the mornings, when Ameline gleefully jumps onto Sylvain’s chest and wrestles him until their shared laughter interrupts Felix’s dreams. Never then.
“Love you so much, little sugarplum,” Sylvain would say, in a soft and fragile voice Felix might never have heard in his life otherwise. What can he do but treasure it?
He can basically hear Ameline’s face wrinkle from beside them in bed. “Get up, daddy, you stink.”
Felix knows, with conviction, he isn’t a bad parent. He’s well acquainted with bad fathers; in his view, there are fewer things more despicable to be. But he doesn’t mind the feeling so much, that of the two of them he might be the worse parent.
They’d brought Ameline to her first official function during Pegasus Moon, a week after Felix’s birthday, and the old noblewomen had cooed at her, and looked on with affection at the way Sylvain handled his daughter like something precious. About Felix, they’d simply laughed knowingly and launched into fond anecdotes of old Rodrigue, how he’d been content to let the rest of his household handle the day-to-day affairs of the children, and how some men just didn’t have the stomach for it. Sylvain almost looks insulted on his behalf, but Felix finds he isn’t bothered, even though it’s a strange thing to say when he’d been the one to grow her and nourish her with his own body, a viscerally physical act.
“Should I have fought them?” Sylvain murmurs as soon as they’re able to go unheard, a few steps back from where Ashe is kneeling down to Ameline’s level to tell her what looks like a very captivating story. “You know I’m ready to cause a diplomatic incident for you.”
He’s already so close to Felix’s ear, and the temptation to touch him must win out, because he presses a kiss to Felix’s tightly-tied hair. Felix nudges at his side, whether in instinctive irritation or in flirtation, he isn’t even sure. Little of both, perhaps. The devil could take Faerghus’ staunchy old traditions, but the taboo about affectionate displays is still hard to shake after a lifetime absorbing it.
“You want to fight a couple old women for pointing out that you’re the better parent?” Felix asks, a challenging smile playing on his mouth. He’d meant to angle more for flirtation that time. Sylvain just looks affronted.
“That’s not true,” comes back at once, like Sylvain hasn’t even thought about it. “You love Ammy.”
“Of course I do,” Felix agrees, easily. “But I never wanted to be a father. She wasn’t for my sake, she was for you.”
He’d thought it obvious. So obvious that it hadn’t occurred to him that he should censor himself, at least until he sees the startled look on Sylvain’s face.
“Felix-“ Sylvain starts to say, in that tone, and Felix can only think of one way to shut him up before Sylvain’s mind goes into freefall. He kisses him right there, in the middle of a very Faerghus grand reception, staunchy old company present and all. With tongue, because if you were going to shoe a horse you may as well ride it.
It seems to work. Sylvain blinks dumbly back at him, like all other thoughts have emptied from his mind, finally breaking into a little smile after he’s studied Felix’s own face for a couple moments. “We’re going to be the talk of the evening, you know,” he breathes.
Felix only manages a shrug. “So let them talk, then,” he says, in that unconcerned way he knows makes Sylvain crazy. “We’re married. It’s not a secret what we do.”
It’s the first time they’ve seen some of their friends in over a year. As a duke and a margrave, and close hands of the king, they have a responsibility to stay and trade vapid smiles with lesser nobles for a while longer. If any of said nobles notice said duke and margrave entrusting their yawning daughter to a caretaker before hustling off the floor like they’re boys in the academy stealing away for a tryst, who can say?
Felix is halfway through ravaging his husband’s neck when he feels Sylvain suddenly stiffen. And not in the way he was hoping. “I promised Ammy I would read her a story,” he hears just above his ear, apologetic.
“She got her story,” Felix mumbles against the column of Sylvain’s neck, in between nips. “She was talking to Ashe for fifteen minutes.” He’d heard enough snippets of their conversation to glean it was some tale about knights and dragons and the like. Another bite, right above Sylvain’s pulse point, just where he likes it.
It’s not the decisive blow he was hoping for. “I promised,” Sylvain repeats.
Felix leans back on his heels with a sigh. Sylvain is already straightening himself up, giving Felix the briefest kiss on the cheek as he tightens the buttons on his tunic, undoing all of Felix’s hard work. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he smiles, contrite. “Want to join us?”
Felix doesn’t think he can go as seamlessly from ‘raring to fuck his husband’ to ‘sitting through a bedtime story for children’. He shakes his head, despairing his bad luck as Sylvain’s neck, too, disappears behind a cruel button. Felix is still sitting on Sylvain’s thighs, however. He still has some power here.
“We could give her a sibling,” says Felix, all at once.
That certainly gets his attention. Sylvain goggles back at him, his hands stilled over the top of his tunic. “That’s a joke, right?” he asks after a pause, sounding genuinely confused.
Felix’s jaw tightens. Bad time to throw it all out there, but it was there now. “She’d be less lonely,” he says, logically. “Didn’t you say you wanted more kids?”
“I - When did I ever say that?”
A blush spreads across Felix’s face. “Back when we were students,” he mumbles, and after a few moments, disbelieving comprehension blooms on Sylvain’s face.
“-and I know I’ll be hitched off to some girl who only wants me for my crest,” Sylvain had sighed, drunk. They were both drunk. “And anyone who knew me, really knew me, would treat my blood like poison. But you know what the fucked up thing is?” And he’d laughed. “I still want a family anyways. Like, three kids. Maybe more.”
“I was drunk,” Now-Sylvain says defensively. “And we weren’t together.”
“You meant it, didn’t you?”
“Well, sure, I love kids,” Sylvain stammers, overwhelmed, “but you just said tonight you never wanted to be a father in the first place, Felix.”
He should have known there would be consequences for getting comfortable, for speaking the truth in his mind, even to Sylvain. “I never thought I wanted it, but I don’t hate it,” Felix mumbles, quiet. Even he hears it for the pitiful-sounding excuse that it is once it’s out.
Sylvain laughs, short and clipped as he averts his gaze elsewhere. “You hated having one,” Sylvain says, running a hand through his hair. “Before Ammy was here. You were miserable, Felix, it tore me up. I mean, imagine telling you you couldn’t hold a sword. For months.”
Something in that irritates Felix. “But I did it, didn’t I?” he growls back, as Sylvain, suddenly, heedlessly, envelops him in a tight embrace.
“You did. She’s – wonderful, she’s perfect, there’s no way I can know or repay the sacrifice that it was for you,” Sylvain murmurs into his hair. “Felix, Ameline is more than enough. You will always be more than enough. I never could have dreamed of a life as good as this, once. I used to hate myself just for daring to think you could ever look at me the same way I looked at you.”
The fondness in Felix’s heart, always in danger of flooding out, bubbles. “You deserve more,” he mutters.
Sylvain’s face is still buried near Felix’s neck when he turns to kiss his cheek. Felix feels something hot against his face. “If you’re serious about this,” he hears, Sylvain’s voice low and fractured, “then we’ll discuss it more at home, okay?”
He’s still going to Ameline’s room to read her that story. Felix is really losing his edge, marrying Sylvain Jose Gautier, known insatiable, and still being unable to entice his husband to fuck him.
Ashe sends a bundle of homemade sweets and candied jerky back to Fraldarius with them. Ameline eats most of it when the rest of the manor is asleep, and then glares at Felix when the discovery is made, as if daring him to yell. He has no desire to take the bait.
“Charm, verbosity, and a taste for the sweeter things in life,” Sylvain tallies with a playful, but tired sigh when he returns, after Felix leaves him with the duty of verbally disciplining her. “She got all my best qualities, don’t you think so, Felix?”
“Those and more,” Felix agrees, and the way Sylvain laughs makes it seem like he thinks Felix is being mean with him.
Ameline develops an even greater taste for red meat after the incident. Months later, she’s still taking advantage of the cook’s fondness for her as she piles her plate high. “Don’t stuff your face,” Felix chides, but he can admit it’s because he’s envious. The meals he’s stuck eating are way too balanced for his tastes.
Ameline turns five. Sylvain turns thirty-four. After a long and uneventful harvest season, the first real signs of hard winter frost are setting into the earth of the estate. Outside, the air is still, but inside the manor Ameline has run from room to room and broken several vases, too many not to be on purpose, as she evades the frantic maid sent to fetch her. The maid pokes her head into the chaos of the master bedroom to stammer out an explanation but Sylvain couldn’t leave Felix’s side if he tried.
“Breathe, Felix, breathe, okay?” Sylvain’s voice is trying to be even, to be steady, but Felix can hear where it’s exhausted, scared, jagged at the edges.
“I’m sorry,” Felix chokes out between aborted breaths, even as he clenches Sylvain’s hand like he’s trying to break it, even though he knows Sylvain won’t understand why he feels like he has to apologize. “I-“
“Your Grace,” the woman’s voice cuts in from behind the foot of the bed. She’s a midwife from the village, around fifty, broad-shouldered, and she has no qualms about giving orders to a duke, in a tone like they’re back in school again. “We’re going to push on three. Deep breaths. On my word now.”
Basile is born when the sky is dark, the candles all lit. Felix takes bracing breaths as he stares up at the ceiling, covering up the aftershocks of pain by remembering, of all things, battlefield injuries, and the way Mercedes had always been there to patch him up after. Mercie isn’t here now, she’s days away, because Basile is here an entire month early, and Felix feels like he might die, and he knows his son very likely will.
The quiet, urgent voices of Sylvain, the midwife, and several of the attendant servants have faded away into unintelligible noise as Felix closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing. In, out. In, out.
His next stab of awareness comes when he feels Sylvain grabbing at his hand. He can’t tell if it’s been seconds, minutes, hours. “Felix,” Sylvain says, loud enough that Felix’s eyes open. His voice is unnaturally calm, and Felix knows what that means. “There’ll be a faith healer in soon from the village. I’m going to do my best for you until they get here, alright?”
He’s already lowering his hand against Felix’s abdomen, and the pleasant warmth that flows through from his palms makes a wave of drowsiness suddenly go through Felix, in spite of it all. The most painful thing now is the question that sits in his brain like a knife bladed on both ends. “Will he die?” he manages, in barely a whisper, dreading the answer.
He cracks his eyes open to see the surface level of Sylvain’s expression, exhausted more than anything. The only comfort is the knowledge that Sylvain loves him too much to dream of softening the truth for him. “We don’t know yet,” Sylvain admits, quietly, as he works. “Darma is working hard fussing over him, though, so I think she thinks there’s a fighting chance for him.”
The baby is the son of a duke and a margrave, some part of Felix points out; of course a common midwife is going to fuss over him, whether she thinks there’s a chance for him or not. He’s too tired to say it. He’s too tired to even think it.
“He’s breathing, though,” Sylvain continues. He presses a kiss to Felix’s forehead. “He’s so beautiful. So, so beautiful, Fe. I’m going to get him for you.”
Felix doesn’t have space to protest. His eyes flutter heavily open and shut. Before he knows it, Sylvain is gone, and then suddenly he’s reappeared, holding what looks like a pile of blankets.
The pile of blankets is given over to Felix. Felix stares into it, numbly. Basile doesn’t look as small or as strange as he feared, but his eyes are tightly shut. He looks vaguely purple. At the crown of his head, Felix can make out what looks like the very beginnings of thin, wispy black hair. Fraldarius genes again, he thinks with a faraway note of disappointment. As if that’s something worth thinking about when holding a baby he might have to say goodbye to before he can even get out of this bed on his own.
“Take him,” he says, voice rough. Sylvain lifts him away. Felix closes his eyes and sees Basile’s face. Wonders how long it’ll stay in his memories after he’s gone.
In, out. In, out.
He finally hears Ameline’s voice, distressed, contentious, and Sylvain, all love and comfort. He doesn’t try to see them; they’re there in his mind’s eye perfectly. At least he hadn’t failed, with her.
“You know who I’ve been thinking he reminds me of?”
Sylvain grins over at Ingrid. “Are you gonna say Felix?” he asks, and Felix grunts in annoyance.
“You can’t keep denying responsibility for your own children,” he snips, which he’ll readily acknowledge is a hell of a way to ask Why are you always so eager to say they look like copies of me? or perhaps Why can’t you see what I see?
“Hey, I know they’re mine,” Sylvain jokes. “I was there when we made them, remember?”
He probably could’ve gotten a laugh in mixed company, if the others were still here, but it’s three days after the Solstice celebrations, and everyone else has gone. It’s just the five of them and the fireplace, now. “Okay, gross,” Ingrid shudders, shooting a distraught look over at Basile and Ameline, the former too young to have any inkling of what they’re talking about, and the latter way too occupied harrassing the unfortunate cat to care. “Anyway, I was going to say, doesn’t he… look a little like his grandfather?”
The air stills a little bit around Felix. Probably around Sylvain as well. “I meant Rodrigue, of course,” Ingrid clarifies, anxious. She’s combing her hands gently through Basile’s chin-length hair as he hums with bits of sweetroll in his mouth. “His hair. It has so much natural texture, doesn’t it?”
“Probably from Sylvain,” Felix begins to say, at the same moment that Sylvain says “You know what, Ingrid, I see it.”
“His eyes, too,” Ingrid points out. The obvious bit. “That same dark color. The both of you have brown eyes.”
“Mine are brown,” Sylvain clarifies. “Felix’s are more of a… honey, ambery color.”
“They’re brown,” Felix growls.
Ingrid had done this with Ameline, too, though that time she’d had a sad, distant look in her eye. She’s so bold and fearless, she’d said. Doesn’t she remind you of Glenn?
Ameline, picking her moments as well as ever, takes the opportunity to march towards Felix, carrying the cat. “Here, Papa,” she announces, before dumping the agitated feline directly into Felix’s lap. “Pepper can cheer you up.”
To be fair to the cat, she and Felix respond in about the same way to being suddenly forced into each other’s company. Felix has always liked cats, but then Ameline had happened, and neither of them has known a moment’s peace since.
“Woah there,” Sylvain laughs, rising out of his armchair, as Felix winces at the fresh claw imprints on his thighs. “You okay, Fe?”
Sylvain has watched Felix get shot down by arrows, blasted with magic, split at the seams by an axe. And here Felix is nearly ten years later, clawed by his own cat, and Sylvain still stands at the ready. “I’m fine.”
“I hope I didn’t upset you,” Ingrid says cautiously. But it’s more than that. She’s waiting for an explanation. Felix sighs.
“I think they’re both more like Sylvain than like me or my family,” he says at last. “That’s all.”
Ingrid leans further against the divan, giving him such an obnoxiously fond smile. Felix wants to run into a snowbank. “It’s probably natural that you’d think that.”
“It’s true,” Felix huffs, not sure why he’s bothering to assert himself to these two idiots who apparently see only eye and hair color. The words jump to his tongue. “Basile can already read. He’s intelligent and curious, he asks questions. If Sylvain hadn’t been so obsessed with hiding his own mind, he would’ve been known for it, too.”
Ingrid and Sylvain don’t say anything to that, so Felix feels like he has to continue. “Ameline is bright, and loyal,” he says. “She used to stand vigil beside her brother after he was born. Watching him. She didn’t want to let him out of her sight. Sylvain did, too. They were,” He feels himself trailing off, losing steam at the strange expressions on their faces. “They were inseparable,” he tries again. “They understand each other. They feel things – family - the same way.”
Ameline, who had taken a seat on Sylvain’s lap, looks between them all impatiently. “What are you talking about?” she demands, as Sylvain’s arms tighten around her.
“Nothing, sugarplum,” Sylvain says, heavy, and then, “Will you go kiss your Papa for me?”
“No,” Ameline says.
“Please?” Sylvain asks.
Apparently that’s all it takes. Ameline crosses the room and, making a little face, leans over to give Felix a perfunctory kiss on the cheek.
He’s suddenly aware of his hand being squeezed. He looks over to see Ingrid, closer than she was. “This is your family now, Felix,” she says, and it’s impossible to get a read on how she says it.
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
An hour later, Ameline is asleep against his chest, and an equally unconscious Basile is up against Sylvain. Felix watches for a moment longer than he means to as Sylvain drags his fingers rhythmically through his son’s wavy hair, smiling in that unconscious way he does when he’s looking at something precious to him. It’s a familiar tableau. Basile had spent nearly all of his first winter swaddled tightly against one of his parents, attached to their warmth like a literal lifeline. The flow of the conversation has died down around them, and Ingrid stands.
“I’d better get to bed,” she says, tone muted like the children haven’t just slept through half an hour of reminiscences already. “Still hoping to ride out first light tomorrow, if the weather holds.”
“I’ll meet you for breakfast,” Sylvain promises. He holds Basile securely against his chest as he stands, one arm around his body, the other still cradling his head as it nestles against his collarbone. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you.”
“The two of you have got enough to keep up with,” Ingrid smirks.
Felix glances down at Ameline, who stirs and whines with the commotion, but doesn’t make any move to get up. “I’m tired,” she complains against the fabric of Felix’s tunic.
Get up, he’s ready to say, but fondness wins out. It’s been so long since she’s nestled against him like this. “Then I’ll carry you.”
He lifts her easily, against his own worst fears. The weight distribution feels odd and unfamiliar, though – she must have been a lot smaller the last time he’d done this.
Sylvain and Ingrid are still talking and laughing in carefully hushed voices as Felix bids Ingrid goodnight and climbs the stairs with Ameline in his arms, her own small arms wrapped around his neck. The upper floor is quiet and still, cold. The old wood creaks beneath his feet.
It’s a strange sensation. It puts him in mind of a time nine years ago, when Sylvain had been suddenly called away from home on a matter of diplomatic urgency, and Felix had wandered the halls of the manor like a ghost, unable to put a sword in his hand. Ameline was with him always back then, just the two of them together, wherever he went. That week had been the longest of Felix’s life. It was difficult to even sit in a chair. In a shameful moment he’d cried, and cursed Sylvain for leaving him alone with nothing to do but think.
That was then.
Ameline doesn’t open her eyes as Felix sets her down in her bed, just grumbles vaguely as she yanks the blanket over her chin before Felix can do it for her. “Goodnight, Ameline,” Felix murmurs, running a hand over her blanketed shoulder.
“Can I hold a real sword, Papa?” Ameline mumbles into her pillow, cracking one eye open to look at him.
The strange timing of the question quirks the corner of Felix’s mouth into an unwilling smirk. “Why don’t we talk about that in the morning.”
“That means no.”
Caught in his bluff, Felix’s shoulders stiffen. He can’t help a slightly shamefaced chuckle. “Practicing with the wooden weapons is enough for now,” he tells her, decisive. “The same techniques apply.”
“Auntie Ingrid told me you started using a real sword when you were younger than me,” Ameline sounds wide-awake now, and upset. “Am I still not good enough? Is it because you have a crest and I don’t?”
An icy chill climbs all the way up Felix’s spine. He’s suddenly so grateful Sylvain isn’t here. “It has nothing to do with crests or skill level,” he counters at once, way more combative than he means to be.
“Then why can’t I?!”
“Because,” he begins, then fails. In his weaker moments as a parent, he finds himself echoing his own old man, but he doesn’t even have anything like that to draw from right now. Rodrigue had been proud of the moment, at six years old, when the quartermaster had deemed Felix ready to try his hand at real steel. “You know your father would worry,” he says at last, lamely.
“He’s always worrying,” Ameline mumbles, and then, even more quietly, “I’m sorry I’m not good enough.”
Her eyes are shining, and Felix’s world stutters to a stop. Even he’s not so foolish as to think this is still about a weapon.
“What are you talking about?” he demands – no, that isn’t how his voice is supposed to sound. How is he so incompetent at this? “Of course you are. You are good enough, Ameline.”
If he were Sylvain, he would’ve thought of the right words to say by now. Instead, his treacherous mind can think of nothing at all. Ameline turns away from him to lie in the direction of the wall, and Felix runs a thumb over the knuckles of her hand over and over until he thinks she’s asleep, hoping it’s enough to convey everything he can’t put into words.
He must have spent a half hour in Ameline’s room, but he still makes it to the master bedroom a few minutes before Sylvain does. His husband gingerly makes his way over to him on the bed, as if not to wake him, then flops down altogether when Felix turns. “Sorry, me and Ingrid got to talking again.” He presses a kiss to Felix’s ear as he snuggles close. “Then Basile woke up and wanted to try reading out loud to her again. It was so precious. Didn’t know if you were already asleep.”
“I only just got back from Ameline’s room,” Felix says, summoning his own voice. He feels the rumbling of Sylvain’s laugh against him, going through his body like the earth itself is moving. The warmth of Sylvain’s breath ghosts over his face as he slowly shifts beside him.
“Was so sweet watching you carry her, you know. I love to see you in dad-mode,” Sylvain growls into his ear as he leans part of his weight over him, nibbling Felix’s bottom lip between his teeth. “Am I getting old, finding that so sexy?”
Felix hums under his efforts for a few seconds, waiting to see if he can get his own body to respond, but it’s no good. He goes limp against the sheets and waits for Sylvain to ask him what’s wrong.
“Sweetheart?” Sylvain asks a few moments later, with his mouth poised above Felix’s collarbone. “You okay? Tired?”
Felix braces himself. He lets his eyes fall closed as he admits the shameful truth. “Our daughter thinks I don’t love her.”
Sylvain goes still, too. Felix knows a part of him has already left this room, thinking of Ameline down the hall. He taps impatiently at Sylvain’s hand, the one that has stopped petting down his side, until it resumes. “Aw, Fe,” he hears, softly spoken into the dark. “What happened? Do we need to go back in there and talk to her?”
How is he such a failure? He’d used to call their king boar, but did the crown princess lie awake at night worrying over whether she had Dimitri’s unconditional love? The idea was unthinkable. “I do love her,” he blathers, as if that was what Sylvain had asked.
“I know you do,” Sylvain whispers. “Felix, you never have to convince me of that. It’s obvious, to everyone.”
“Not to her. I – don’t know what to say.”
Sylvain doesn’t argue with him. His hand continues stroking Felix’s side, up and down, rythmically.
“Felix, you’re better at this stuff than you give yourself credit for,” Sylvain says at last. His voice has a strange quality, and Felix peers up at his silhouette curiously. “Like tonight, what you said downstairs. Ameline and Basile, they’re perfect, and you know, knowing you look at them and – and see so much of me? You have no idea how that makes me feel.”
“I meant it,” Felix says, with his whole heart. “I can’t stand it when you try and minimize how strongly they reflect you. As if they’re only Fraldariuses.” He turns his chin, feeling the top of Sylvain’s hair brush against it, still so wild and thick after these past years. “They have all your best qualities. The things that I… that I love about you, so much, Sylvain.” A flyaway strand of that auburn hair tickles Felix’s nose, and he fights down the urge to sneeze. “Despite how many hairbrushes our daughter has been through over the years.”
Sylvain alone understands him better than anyone else in Fódlan. Even so, Felix’s feeble attempts at waxing poetic don’t always land on the note he’d intended. He’s worried it might be the case here, too, with every passing second of silence.
“Thank you, Felix,” Sylvain says at last, thick like there’s something in his throat, and Felix finally knows the strange quality in his voice is nothing to be concerned about. “I’m sorry if I ever make you think I’m putting myself down around you. It’s not like that at all. I… I love the husband and father I get to be, now. And I mean that.”
Now Felix submerges his head properly into Sylvain’s curls. “Good,” he says, closer to his ear. “You’ve never failed any of us. You’re always there when we need you. Ameline and Basile, they… couldn’t have asked for a better father.”
“Lucky them, they get to have two of them.”
Lying there in the dark, Felix thinks of the bad fathers he’s known.
His old man, who’d believed death in service of a king was better than a future for his own sons.
Gustave Dominic, who’d neglected Annette and called it the honorable course.
The late Margrave Gautier, who’d viewed his children as tools to be used and disposed of at his own convenience.
Felix had known bringing his children into the world had been an act of love, of selflessness. And yet what does it mean when they don’t know it? Is there really any difference?
Hadn’t he assumed a responsibility, too?
“Sylvain.”
“Yeah sweetheart?”
“I want to be better at this,” Felix breathes. His eyes are adjusting in the dark, and he pulls back from Sylvain until they’re eye-to-eye on the pillow. “For their sake. Please… help me.”
After more than ten years of marriage, he trusts Sylvain to hear it for what it is: an honest plea, not a call for empty reassurances. Sylvain finds his hand and lifts it to his lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles, then to his wedding band. Felix can tell he’s thinking it over, dedicated to giving him exactly what he’d asked for.
“Maybe you could read Ammy a story sometimes,” Sylvain says. “I know she’s almost nine years old and you think it’s our thing anyways, but she’d enjoy it a lot, I think. Basile, too.”
Felix nods. He pictures both of them leaning against either arm. It’s nearly a perfect image. “Would you sit in with us?” he asks. “You wouldn’t have to read.”
Sylvain chuckles, affectionate. “You think I’d pass up a chance to see my sweet husband in dad-mode?”
Felix blinks against the pillow. Neither of them speaks for a moment. “What else?” he prompts.
He feels his hand turning in Sylvain’s own, until his husband can press a kiss to the line running straight to his beating heart. “I think it might help if you were the one to talk to her sometimes, when she misbehaves. Remember that time when Ashe gave us those sweets and jerky a few years ago?”
He does. It’s hard to forget the image of Ameline slumped on the divan all day, groaning theatrically as Sylvain fretted about calling a healer, just in case. “I thought it would be easier for her if it came from you,” Felix says, suddenly unsure, “since you’re her favorite.”
“Me?” Sylvain echoes, with surprise so instantaneous that Felix’s first instinct is to be annoyed at him for playing dumb. “Felix, you’re the one she’s always trying to impress.” Felix doesn’t answer, and Sylvain presses on. “Don’t act like you haven’t noticed her swinging that training sword around all day. Sound like anyone we know?”
“I didn’t want it to feel like an expectation I set for her,” Felix mumbles. “I – Me and Glenn, when it came to learning swordplay, we didn’t get a choice in the matter.”
“Maybe so, but she can tell that you genuinely love it. It’s what you do to feel calm, at ease with yourself. For better or worse, I think it’s become something she wants to share with you.” Sylvain lowers Felix’s hand and laces their fingers together over the pillow. “Makes me feel bad about all the times I freaked out when I saw her following you into the yard.”
Felix makes a vague noise of assent. He squeezes their joined fingers, an unspoken agreement, or a thank you. “I can do those things. And I can… encourage her more, in her training.”
“I know you will.” He’s now able to see enough of Sylvain in the dark that the smile he wears isn’t lost to him. “About seeing me reflected in our kids? You know, it goes both ways. Ammy’s a lot like you, I think. There are things she needs put into words.”
“I don’t need,” Felix begins, an instinctive denial, and stops.
Sylvain chuckles affectionately. By the time he speaks, Felix has already come to the same realization. “You realize you married me, right? The guy who loves to talk?”
“Hrmm. Don’t remind me.” Even if Sylvain, with his worse eyesight, can’t see his own teasing smile in the dark, he still laughs, anyway. Felix nuzzles into their joined hands. “I’ll take her out tomorrow and talk with her after Ingrid leaves. I don’t want to waste any time setting this right. Or at least getting a start on it.”
His husband gives an amused hum, like he’s heard a secret joke. Felix nudges him and demands to know. “Nothing,” Sylvain grins guiltily, then says, quiet and heartrendingly sincere, “Just thinking again about how I don’t deserve you.”
“Don’t start with that again,” Felix snips back gently, in spite of the way the earnest flattery always makes his heart clench. “I’m not interested in who deserves who. After everything we’ve done for each other, this is exactly where we belong. Together. Always.”
Sylvain finds his lips and kisses him. “I suppose you’re right.”
“I can ride a horse,” Ameline complains. “I’m having lessons. Daddy was younger than me when he started.“
Felix angles back an unamused look at her, before remembering this entire outing is supposed to be for her benefit. And besides, she might have a point. She’s going to be nine in the spring, and at a certain point overprotectiveness isn’t going to be doing her any favors. “Fine,” he concedes, noting the way her eyes widen in surprised glee. “Find Hervé and ask him for your pony.”
They set out in the early afternoon, tracing the same tracks as Ingrid’s destrier had left in the snow; this far north, where the air was cold and still, horses fared better than pegasi. It used to be that on every trip to Fhirdiad, Ameline would sit in front of either Sylvain or Felix in the saddle. She hadn’t seemed to mind it, then, but that was the way of children: they grew up.
Felix looks over at his daughter on her pony. She’s focused and concentrated, but her posture looks almost natural. Ameline loves horses. If her thick hair had been red at birth, no one would ever have dreamed of calling her anything but a Gautier.
(He knows he loves his children exactly as they are, but he’d always pictured them with red hair, before they were born.)
“Here,” Felix signals, when they’ve passed the rock Sylvain had dubbed the angry kitty-cat when they were kids. It arches out of the ground like it’s ready to jump out of the earth. Ameline carefully handles her pony. They turn into the brush.
It isn’t exactly a riding path, but it’s been used often enough that it’s easy going for the horses. They amble over a little stream before making it to a familiar clearing. It brings Felix peace, being here. Sylvain still claims this is the one hiding place that had gone unmolested by Miklan.
After they tie up the horses, Ameline immediately draws her sword. It’s a proper training weapon, not one of the toys she’d effectively used as a club in her younger days. “Come on, Papa,” she chides, impatient, as Felix brings one out to match. “We’re going to properly spar this time, right? You promised.”
“We are,” Felix agrees, as he gets into position. “Assume your stance.”
If Ameline is as similar to himself as everyone would have him believe, it’ll be easier to talk to her after they’ve hit things for a while. Felix doesn’t baby her, but he does push her. They go through their forms one by one. Drills, stances, exercises.
Ameline shed her winter cloak a while ago, but after about an hour she’s red and beginning to sweat. Felix knows she’s too stubborn to give in, so it’s going to have to be him. He puts away the wooden sword in its protective holster and sits down on a flat stone nearby. “I’m tired,” he says simply, when she interrogates him.
“No you’re not.”
“Sit down.”
She flops down next to him. Her sword ends up at her feet, forgotten in the dirt.
“Am I getting better?” she asks, after a few minutes of catching her breath.
“Of course you are. You’re making progress every day.” He picks up the fallen wooden sword and places it into her hands. Sheepishly, she puts it away exactly as he’d taught her. “You’ve been ready for real steel for a while, now, but it’s going to handle a little differently. I didn’t want to rush your training.”
“But when you were my age-“
“I know,” Felix says quickly, cutting her off. He needs to say this now. “I’m trying to be different from my own father. From the way things were done when I was young.”
She blinks at him, owlishly. “Why?”
“Because you’re my child, and I want what’s best for you, not for the Kingdom.”
It’s clear she’s still confused, but for once, she doesn’t dog him about it. Her eyes slide over the trees in front of them. She reminds him of Sylvain, in those precious few moments when he couldn’t help but be focused and interested during a lecture.
“When I was little once we were at some party,” Ameline says, “and I heard you say to Daddy that you didn’t want to be a father, and you only did it because he wanted kids.”
Felix has to stop his jaw from hanging loose. His mind calls up the memory in question. “We thought you were listening to one of Ashe’s stories,” he says numbly, just to fill the space.
“I like Uncle Ashe but sometimes his stories are boring in places,” Ameline says, matter-of-fact. “I don’t like when they’re made up.” At that, Felix snorts. Why had he spent so long denying all the things he and his daughter had in common?
He looks into Ameline’s steadfast brown eyes. In some light, they’re Sylvain’s, but in the glow of the evening sun the color matches his own. “You’re right, I did say that,” he agrees, deciding honesty is the best tack. “Growing up, I never imagined myself wanting kids.”
“I don’t want them either when I’m old, Basile cries really loud.”
There had been a time when his son’s tiny lungs had barely been able to inflate on their own. “I don’t mind when he cries,” Felix admits. “It means he’s alive.”
“I remember you and daddy were really scared he was going to die.”
Felix steels himself. Even now, the memory puts a tension in his chest. “It was the most scared I’ve been in my life,” he says at last.
Ameline looks skeptical. “Scarier than fighting the Empire?”
“That was a battle I could carry a sword into. This wasn’t.”
It seems like he’s given her something to chew on. Silence reigns. After a few moments, Ameline leans down to the ground, picks up a stone and throws it. It bounces off an old oak opposite them in the clearing. Her aim, Felix thinks, is impeccable. They should get her back on the bow.
“I was scared too. I like having a little brother.” It sounds like a confession.
“…I know. The two of you get along well. It’s a blessing for your father.” He isn’t sure whether he has to explain further; Ameline knows just a little, of Miklan. She nods. She understands.
“Auntie Ingrid said that I reminded her of your big brother,” she says, slowly. “Is that true?”
Felix hadn’t wanted to hear it at the time. He was steadfast in not wanting his children to live under the shadow of a name. Anything you want, as long as it’s something new, he’d told Sylvain. The combined weight of the houses of Gautier and Fraldarius was heavy enough. The only thing he’d wanted to think about was Sylvain’s smile, and the way it lived on her face. The echo of somebody warm and alive.
When he looks at her now, he feels something different. Ameline couldn’t live beneath a shadow if she tried. She is vibrant, the sum of so many parts.
“Yes,” he says. “You are so much like him. Your uncle… Uncle Glenn, would have loved you as much as I do.” He forces himself to make eye contact as he puts the rest into words. “I may not have ever wanted children, but I don’t regret the decision for a moment.”
Ameline may be used to it from Sylvain, but it’s clear she has no defenses to this. Felix puts his hand on her opposite shoulder and draws her in so that she’s leaning against his chest. She settles against him without protest, turning her face into his tunic like she had just the previous night. “You and Basile are the most important things in this world to me.” Why had it taken him so long to say it?
“What about your sword?” he hears her mumble from where she’s nestled against the fabric. Sylvain would think the question was hilarious.
Felix clicks his tongue. “How else would I protect you, and your father, too?”
I would never want to go back to living in a world without you. They’re the final words he’s unable to say, but for once, he thinks she’s heard enough to understand.
“But why did the knight go home to that crummy castle? Wasn’t it destroyed at the beginning?”
Against expectations, it’s Ameline’s first time interrupting since they started the story. Felix quirks an eyebrow over at her. “I don’t know. It doesn’t say.” Now that he considers it, it’s a fair question. They’ve just followed their protagonist through an ice palace supposedly with ‘beauty beyond compare’, followed by a magical kingdom of fairies whose princess had asked him to stay forever. Ameline had whined in disappointment when the knight had said no.
“Well can’t you make something up?"
Her dismissal of Basile’s choice of reading material just a half hour ago is a thing of the past, now. She’s serious about this, and he can’t help a smile. “I thought you didn’t like when stories were made up.”
Ameline frowns widely, clearly displeased at being caught in a snare of her own making. Basile hasn’t taken his eyes off the open book.
“Keep reading,” he prompts gently. “We’re almost at the end.”
The knight finally makes it home after his long journey. Calling upon every creative muscle he’s ever exercised, Felix explains that the dilapidated castle, brought to ruin by dragonsfire at the beginning of the story, seems like a slightly more tolerable place after it’s been decorated with the spoils of his long travels. And besides, he adds on a sudden whim, the knight had his family waiting for him.
“Oh,” Ameline says, finally satisfied as she settles further against Sylvain’s forearm. “Well you should have said so earlier.”
Sylvain himself has been even quieter than Basile, leaning back against the pillows and watching Felix. For all the jokes about how much he loves to talk, he doesn’t credit himself enough for the quiet way he’s able to exist in the background, listening yet present in every way. When he sees Felix looking, he smiles.
Basile looks all but asleep by the time Felix finally bids him goodnight, not even stirring at the kiss placed to his cheek. Ameline follows suit, clambering into her bed and yanking the blankets up to her chin the way she always does. Like she’s on a schedule and can’t waste a second.
“Goodnight Papa,” she says when Felix turns to leave, and then, almost hesitant, “Do you think you might read something again tomorrow?”
“If not tomorrow,” Felix promises, “then soon.”
When he reaches the door to the master bedroom, Sylvain is leaning against it, angling a lazy smile at him.
“So, Papa, any chance you saved some of that storytime magic for me?” At Felix’s unimpressed look, he adds, sheepish, “Sorry, you were so entrancing in there, I forgot to think of anything sexy to say.”
“Good enough,” Felix growls, and drags him inside.