Chapter Text
There’s this memory that Ingrid has. It’s not a particularly long one. It is not some continuous, old, sepia-toned sequence of events that add up to what she, for reasons not entirely known, sometimes imagines playing through an old-school, hand-cranked film projector that rolls out a somehow seamless perfect movie reel onto a pull-down projector screen that you’d have to jump to catch and tug three times away from the wall so that it stays. It doesn’t play a film that makes sense in her head. It is more like a moment. A snapshot clip with sound. If Ingrid closes her eyes, sometimes there’s color too.
It goes like this:
Bare heels slamming against pavement, shedding the dirt between her toes with every quick-paced step. Her as a little girl in a flowy, green, flower dress, waist height of her mother who is caught in a half-crouch.
Her mother's hands are wrapped in those grey, too-big, near torn, garden gloves, pushing against the denim clothed knees of the overalls she always used to wear. She's stuck permanently in that half-turn, her face turned towards Ingrid and away from the plywood shelves dad built for her flowers. The light catches her golden crown just right enough to burn a lens flare forever into Ingrid’s memory instead of a smile.
She can’t remember the exact print of the dress she wore but she often paints them as wisterias on a canvas of white because her mother likes them best. She thinks that she did not mind the way she felt in it, even though she dislikes dresses now. She’d been more concerned, at that age, with flaking off the drying mud caked on her forearms up to her elbows and on the wild, growing grass on the front tiny lawn of a modest green house and holding a croaking toad up to shout, “look Mom!”
She might have wrestled Felix or maybe Dimitri into the ground. There’s a laugh from somewhere by many different people that Ingrid’s cast over the years. It’s each one of her brothers, even the ones not born yet. Sometimes, it’s her father’s booming low laugh that follows, but Ingrid knows it couldn’t have been, not when he worked so often. It makes the most sense when it’s her mother’s suppressed giggle, trying not to sound so amused. But, when Ingrid’s feeling particularly heartbroken and wistful, it’s Glenn’s. Nowadays though, it’s usually Sylvain’s, followed by some muffled quip that she can never make out.
It’s a memory that creeps in on occasion without any real rhyme or reason. She does not know why it comes. She just knows that when it does, what follows is a dull ache of something long forgotten but also a warmth that she does not want to shake.
It comes more often these days.
Ingrid’s cell phone rattles on the desk in front of her as the afternoon sun streaking in from her open window reflects the glare off the screen. This is not another call from her father that she needs to return nor is it any one of the millions of alerts and notifications that push endlessly through.
No, it’s simply the subwoofer in room 408. Again.
At least she doesn’t share a wall with them.
There always seems to be at least one kid on the floor that just has to bring in their ridiculous speaker system and disregard all of their neighbors. Usually, it’s someone who had grown up with no siblings because you would think that anyone who’s had to share a wall would be a little more courteous.
You would think.
But these kids, well they’re still kids, aren’t they? When Ingrid actually takes the time to remember and count up the number of months the first years have been away from home, it’s something like four or five at most. They’re barely legal adults.
She’s also entirely certain that there’s at least one person on the floor who isn’t even that. Someone with a late birthday who got into school a term before they should have. Someone who is still seventeen, and on their own.
Personally, Ingrid hedges her bet on the girl that she’s never seen leave her room. Bernadetta-? Maybe? Something like that. All she knows is that the purple-haired girl has a single and that she should have definitely taken a gap year to acclimate instead of getting thrown into the absolute zoo that is a first-year dormitory.
The music hits with a loud thud. The only thing that drops further than the bass is the corners of Ingrid’s lips while her frown deepens as she glares red into the yellow and green highlights of her scrawled class notes.
They’re a mess. She’s been staring at them for so long that most of the little pen scribbles blur together, committing only half of the words into her cloudy memory.
She thinks she’s supposed to be memorizing a formula or something. There's no way to be sure anymore.
There is so much to do. Her shoulders tense as the thought creeps back into her through the mountain of heavy textbooks crammed into the corner of her desk. What she’s working on now barely puts a dent into all the things she’s been assigned—another thought to further sour her already bad mood.
She groans a bit as she stretches. Then she waits for the music to ease away and change songs before craning her neck back down to her lap where the textbook she most currently needs lays because her desk is too covered in reminders of things she still has to do.
She knows she shouldn’t complain. That she should be grateful for a desk at all and the free housing provided by her role as an RA but it would be nice to fit more than a single sheet of paper on the school-provided surface.
All this scrunching over at her lap and peering up at her notebook wears on her body. It's to the point where she’s sure that it’s worse than anything that Catherine had used to make her do on a lacrosse field. That, at least, had the added benefit of getting stronger.
Here, the words just blur and blur, confusing her more with every line she swears she’s on the cusp of understanding.
She hates physics.
She’s not five minutes in before she groans and stretches again, losing her pen to the middle of the tome in order to massage her wrist.
The bass booms again.
There are still a few more hours until quiet hour rules kick in and the sound is mostly muffled through the walls so there are technically no real infractions she can warn against, but it’s still horribly annoying and incredibly inconsiderate. The year before, Subwoofer Kid had been a huge fan of Hip-Hop. This year, it sounds like they are more partial to Dubstep.
Ingrid hates Dubstep.
Normally she doesn’t mind too much. Ingrid is used to loud noises. Growing up with three brothers meant growing up with noise, and that’s not even mentioning the way her best friends had bickered. No, her brothers were nothing compared to the fuss Dimitri, Felix, and Sylvain kicked up. Not even close.
Usually, whenever she needs a moment to herself amidst the ruckus, she would just plug her own headphones in. Unfortunately though, she had broken them last week when they had fallen into her coffee cup.
Ingrid supposes she could go to the library but that would involve packing up all of her things and lugging them across campus. An act made especially annoying because she has a habit of bouncing around whenever she gets too tired of one subject to move onto another and the thought of carrying both her organic chemistry and physics books makes her groan.
She sighs again and cracks her knuckles but before she can return to staring at the page in hopes of absorbing more information, a familiar voice at her open door saves her.
“Hey. Came to see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat.”
Dorothea stands in the doorway, shoeless in her black tights with her heels dangling off two fingers. She looks just as exhausted as Ingrid feels.
“You’re a godsend,” Ingrid declares, snapping her textbook shut with a satisfying amount of force, nearly breaking the pen caught in the crease by accident. Were it not for the obnoxious Subwoofer Kid in 408, Dorothea would have heard the snap from the door.
Dorothea smiles a little. “If you were so hungry, you should have just gone by yourself.”
“It’s not that I’m hungry,” Ingrid says, although the moment she says it, her stomach begins to grumble. “I just needed the extra motivation.”
“Is that all I am to you?” Dorothea laughs as Ingrid shoves the textbook back onto the shelf above her desk. “Extra motivation?”
“How about ‘dear friend who is about to keep me company while I try to fight off an oncoming headache?’”
Dorothea tilts her head and tucks a hand under her chin while she pretends to consider it. “Is that your best offer?”
Ingrid rolls her eyes and grabs the lanyard with her student ID that hangs on the (non-damaging) hook she’s stuck to the wall. “Come on,” she says, spinning Dorothea around and pushing her out of the room. “Let’s head to the cafeteria.”
They’re about halfway through the hall when Dorothea stops them, “Hold on a sec-“ she says but before Ingrid can ask why, Dorothea is at 408’s door, rapping on it twice.
A giant figure manifests from the other side, eyes wide when they see Dorothea. “Keep it down would you?” Dorothea requests kindly.
The figure nods. “Sorry!” they say, and then the annoying boom from yet another remix of “Turn Down For What” subsides.
“Thanks.” She grins as the door closes, quickly returning to Ingrid’s side and linking her arm around Ingrid’s own.
“It’s not quiet hours yet,” Ingrid can’t help but point out.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask,” Dorothea shrugs, “and besides, what are they supposed to do about it? Complain that their music isn’t loud enough?”
Dorothea’s right. Most of the residents just want to keep out of trouble. If an RA comes knocking, they’ll often just do what is asked. “I think this might be an abuse of power.” Ingrid jokes.
Dorothea grins, patting Ingrid on the arm twice. “So write me up.”
The cafeteria is mostly empty at this time in the late afternoon, at least by Garreg Mach standards. The only students that linger are usually those who never bothered to move after a late lunch, tapping furiously away at sticker-covered laptops or staring at badly-penciled notes. Every so often, someone will make the short trek to refill their wasteful paper cups of terribly mediocre cafeteria coffee from one of the three giant tankards by the baked goods station.
There are different labels for each of them: two kinds of roasts and a decaf option, but Ingrid thinks they all taste exactly the same, which is to say, incredibly watered-down and only tolerable because there are no other options besides the Nabatean Grounds located three blocks off campus and up a hill that doesn’t take meal credit.
Okay, technically, there is a little student cafe downstairs in the basement of the student center but the hours are odd and the lines are far too long.
Thankfully, Ingrid mostly prefers tea.
All the good food stations are closed, which Ingrid had expected. She knows that Dorothea had too. This little trek is mostly an excuse for them to get out of the dorms and out of their own heads to decompress after a long day.
It has become a near-daily occurrence.
The only open station worth noting is the little Anna’s Corner that sells prepackaged salads, sandwiches, snacks, and drinks where a lone, bored-looking student employee sits on a stool by the register, scrolling through Crestagram.
Dorothea fans herself with her hand as she sinks into one of the high rise booths in the cafeteria. She’s chosen a place directly underneath the slightly obnoxiously big flags of the three countries on the continent: Adrestria, The Leicester Alliance, and Ingrid’s own native Faerghus.
“I’m exhausted,” Dorothea sighs, grimacing at the rectangular-shaped plastic bottle in her hand. It’s a pinkish, generic, overpriced smoothie of some sort with a probably catchy name Ingrid can’t read from her angle. “They really overcharge these things.”
Ingrid shrugs. This is not the first time they’ve had this conversation. This isn’t even the twentieth time. “Meal plan though,” she says as she tears the packaging off of her scone and rips a piece off.
Dorothea’s expression stays the same as she cracks the green seal of the cap and knocks a little of it back.
“I desperately need sleep,” Dorothea says, leaning her chin on her hand, elbow propped up on the table. “If the fire alarm goes off tonight, I cannot be liable for what may happen to a certain resident of ours.”
“That was one time Dorothea and he didn’t know any better.”
“It was one time in the middle of the night,” Dorothea corrects. “He set it off again last week while you were in class and I was taking a nap because he tried to bake a potato in the microwave.”
Ingrid’s eyebrows knit together. “That shouldn’t-“
“He wrapped it in aluminum foil.”
Ingrid sighs. “Better than the time you and I walked into the bathroom and-”
Dorothea’s face scrunches up in complete and utter distaste. “I do not want to talk about that.”
“Fair enough.” It’s not like she really wants to talk about what the first years do in their free time when they think no one will catch them. They really ought to learn some discretion.
Dorothea sighs dramatically into the palm of her hand. “Oh Ingrid, why couldn’t you and I have rented an apartment off-campus like everyone else in our year?”
Money, Ingrid doesn’t say.
“Hey, this was your idea,” she says instead.
“And it seemed like such a good one at the time,” Dorothea bemoans. “Do you think Annette can handle our wing tonight too?”
“You can’t do that to poor Annette. She’s a double major.”
“I have no idea how she does it. She might be superhuman.”
Ingrid frowns a little. “Annette works really hard.”
“Oh I’m not trying to dismiss her hard work,” Dorothea explains with a wave of her hand, straightening up in her seat. “I’m just saying that not everyone can do what she does. She starts fieldwork next year too, doesn’t she?”
Honestly, Ingrid has no idea how the education track works but that sounds familiar. “Something like that?” she says. “Although I don’t think she’ll be an RA next year because of the time commitment.”
“Will you?”
Ingrid hums. “Probably. You?”
“Unfortunately.”
Ingrid tries for a supportive smile. “At least we’re in it together.”
Dorothea’s melodramatic sigh tells her that her valiant effort is not valiant enough.
Her friendship with Dorothea goes back to their second semester at Garreg Mach when they happened to share the same rhetoric class. It seems so long ago, although it only really has been two years since Dorothea slid into the chair next to Ingrid, asking her if the seat was taken while they waited for their professor to show up.
Ingrid had never really been all that close with other girls growing up. She had a few friends, sure, and teammates she liked once she started playing sports competitively, but she was often more comfortable roughhousing and dragging mud around into the living room with the boys she grew up with, much to her poor mother’s everlasting chagrin.
She’s not really sure how she and Dorothea ended up so close. It’s not as if she and Dorothea have a lot in common. Quite the opposite, in fact. Dorothea is incredibly feminine and has interests that Ingrid does not share but, even so, Ingrid gets along better with her than with anyone she's ever shared a locker room with.
Well, most of the time.
“Oh, enough of that,” Dorothea says with a quick wave as if it could dissipate the despondent atmosphere of the shared silence that comes with lamenting yet another year of dormitory living, “How’s FQ?”
Ingrid blinks and tilts her head. “Who?”
“The redhead.”
“Sylvain?”
Dorothea seems unphased by Ingrid’s incredulity, “Yeah,” she shrugs, “FQ.”
“Dorothea,” Ingrid groans, “you know Sylvain. You’re friends. You guys made out at the St. Macuil’s Day party a few weeks ago.”
“Your point?”
Ingrid sighs. Dorothea has all these strange nicknames that she uses for people. Ingrid distinctly recalls her calling Ferdinand a bee and no one understanding why, least of all Ferdinand.
“Ingrid,” Dorothea says, propping her elbow on the table between them and resting her chin on her palm. The long manicured fingernails on her other hand tap audibly on the surface of the table. “You have to admit, he’s a bit of an FQ. Always in those suits around campus.”
It takes her a moment to make the association. FQ as in Fódlan Quarterly, the fashion magazines she sees in the student center waiting rooms lined with very attractive, suit-wearing men in the exact same poses.
Ingrid raises an eyebrow pointedly, side-eying Dorothea’s own very smart looking blazer thrown over a tucked-in blouse and pencil skirt. It’s a strong contrast to Ingrid’s grey sweatpants and worn-out hoodie with cracked blue letters on the back that are supposed to spell out “LIONS”.
“I’m a business student,” Dorothea dismisses.
“So is he!”
“Okay, but none of my suits are designer and I hem them myself, or I get Hilda to do it.”
Ingrid is about to say something, about to defend her childhood friend when her phone buzzes, vibrating face-down on the table.
“Speaking of FQ,” Dorothea says.
Sure enough, when Ingrid flips her phone over, Sylvain’s goofy contact photo stares back up at her. His bangs are clipped up from his forehead with a barrette, his glasses sit crookedly on his nose ridge, and his face is scrunched up in an exaggerated pout. He had sent it to her while pulling an all-nighter last semester during finals week and it had been too good not to keep. He had jokingly called her out on it. She had told him it was an incentive for him to study. It is definitely not FQ-worthy.
It’s not worse than the one she has for Felix though.
He’s video-calling her for some reason. She does a quick cursory glance around before looking back at Dorothea, silently asking for permission, which her friend gives with a quick wave before pulling out her own phone from the bag she set aside.
Ingrid answers the call. Sylvain’s bright-eyed, beaming face greets her. It looks like he’s in the backseat of a car.
“Hey Ing!” His voice is loud on the speaker and Ingrid fumbles with her phone as she tries to turn him down, acutely aware that Dorothea will still be able to hear every word despite it. “I’m on my way back to campus to drop something off and was wondering if you wanted to grab something to eat later.”
Ingrid frowns and points the camera around a bit to show off her background. “I’m in the dining hall, Sylvain.”
“Yeah but it’s like four o’clock and we both know that you’ll be hungry later.”
She chews on her bottom lip, trying not to frown. “Hey…” she starts but then stops when she can’t find an argument that’ll work.
He has the audacity to raise an eyebrow at her.
”I was probably going to get something with Dorothea,” she tells him. Sylvain will want to go out, likely unwilling to settle for mediocre caf food. “Oh, she’s here by the way.”
She taps the little icon that flips her camera around, Dorothea gives a quick wave and greeting to Sylvain before addressing her. “You should go if you want,” Dorothea says. “I have choir practice anyway.”
Ingrid resists the urge to bite her lip again.
The cafeteria food is not amazing. It’s not the worst food in the world but it is best described as adequate on most days so a part of her wants to. The problem is that Ingrid still has a lot of meal credits left on her card and if she doesn’t use them all, the money her parents put into it will disappear into some random budget spreadsheet in the black hole that is GMU’s financial office, never to be seen again.
It seems like such a waste to shell out money just to eat out and it's not like the surrounding town of Garreg Mach is the cheapest place in the world.
She doesn’t have to say anything, doesn’t have to bite her lip, because Sylvain knows when she hesitates even for the briefest of moments. He pipes up before she can decline, almost begging. “Please, Ingrid? I haven’t seen you all week.”
He’s exaggerating. She saw him two days ago, although, to be fair, that had been a quick passing encounter before he had to run across town to make it to his internship in time. But they text all the time, or, well, he texts the group chat all the time.
“Sylvain-“ she starts.
“My treat. Anything you want.”
He throws her his halfway-desperate, pleading look. One that makes him look younger and almost a little childish. It shouldn’t work as well as it does.
Honestly, she could use a little break from campus. It’s really easy to get stuck here, especially without a car and with the nightmare that’s the city’s excuse for a public transportation system. There are just too many people in Garreg Mach. It makes her miss Fhirdiad.
“Fine,” she relents with a small smile. “But no complaining.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” He grins. “Meet you in front of your dorm at six?”
She agrees and hangs up. Dorothea does a passable job pretending not to be interested.
“How’d you know it was Sylvain?” Ingrid dares to ask as Dorothea sits up straighter, no longer bent over the table looking at her phone.
Dorothea gives Ingrid a look that she doesn’t bother interpreting and makes her regret asking. “Oh, honey, please.”
Ingrid doesn’t like the implication.
“We’re just friends.”
The look doesn’t go away but Dorothea says nothing more about it as if sensing that she shouldn’t push, something that Ingrid is grateful for. In the early days of their friendship, it was not so, and it wasn’t until a serious aside that Dorothea began to let up a bit after a sincere apology.
Still, Ingrid bristles. Dorothea might not be saying anything but her knowing, if not slightly judgemental, gaze is only marginally better than her words.
They don’t talk about Sylvain anymore. The subject steers towards something much more benign. Benign to the point that Ingrid forgets the conversation later but is sure that it is yet another one of those conversations they’ve had before.
Transcription Beta:
“Hey honey, I know you’re busy but your dad says you haven’t been answering his calls and you know how he gets. You should give him a call when you find some time. Oh and remember, we’re proud of you!”
Was this transcription useful or not useful?
Sylvain’s shirt is tucked in and his suit jacket is draped over his forearm as he waits outside of her dorm building for her. If he had worn a tie today, it is nowhere to be seen and likely in desperate need of ironing after being stuffed into the leather briefcase bag hanging on one shoulder.
This business professional look on him is something she’s still not quite used to. It contrasts heavily with the stupid casual selfies he keeps sending her.
It’s not uncommon for people to be in suits on campus. GMU is huge, with three different schools under a single banner, which can make for an eclectic mix of people among the crowds.
There’s a joke about this actually. A recurring campus one that gets passed and passed around, never to die, like a particularly resilient playground fable. Ingrid doesn’t remember how it goes exactly but the premise is more or less this: you can always tell who everyone is based on their attire. The business and management students are in suits, the nursing school in scrubs, and the humanities students in pajamas.
The math and science students? Well, you can’t find them anywhere. Because they’re dead, crushed under the weight of parental expectations.
The joke doesn’t seem so funny anymore, three years in.
Sylvain looks relaxed, slipping his phone into his pocket as her own buzzes twice in her hand. She watches as a few of the first years give him a wide berth, either intimidated by the tall upperclassman hanging out in front of the dorm, or suspicious of him. It almost makes her snicker when a few of the girls she recognizes from her floor frown at him. Someone must have taught them to be wary of men they don’t recognize hanging around the dormitory. That someone was probably Dorothea.
Ingrid half-jogs up to him, waving to catch his attention. Sylvain’s little smile grows into a full-blown grin and she can’t help the way her lips stretch out to smile back.
“Hey,” she greets.
Sylvain shifts a bit, tossing his jacket over his shoulder. “Hey, ready?”
She glances around. There are several clusters of people loitering in front of her beige-walled, eight-story dormitory but no one she knows. “Just us again?”
“Yeah, Dimitri’s got this huge project that’s apparently worth twenty percent of his grade and a partner that’s insanely busy and Felix says he’s at the gym.”
Ingrid’s eyebrow furrows. “Again? I saw him there this morning.”
Sylvain shrugs. “That’s what he says. I didn’t actually verify.”
“Maybe you should,” she says as Sylvain begins to walk. She falls into step beside him, which is easy given his slow, lazy strides. “Because working out twice a day almost every day is a little excessive don’t you think? Even for Felix.”
Sylvain seems unconcerned. “It’s not really any different than when we had morning and afternoon practice in high school.”
“That’s only because Shamir worked you guys to the bone. Catherine was much nicer about it.”
Not that she hasn’t had her fair share of double practices but when that happened, it wasn’t usually so damn brutal. Felix doesn’t really have an off switch. She knows that if he’s in the gym again, he’s giving it his all. She wonders how it’s possible for him to look so well-rested.
“It was mostly to make sure that we kept the field booked,” Sylvain says, “or at least, I think so. I need some justification for all the pain and suffering. And, anyway, I’m sure Felix will be fine. If anyone knows about overtraining, it should be him, given his field of study.”
Ingrid snorts. “Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘do as I say, not as I do’?”
“I’m more partial to ‘do the stupid thing I’m about to do with me.’”
The memory that emerges automatically is a fond one. Ingrid must have been fifteen at the time. Sylvain had somehow managed to convince Dimitri to climb into a shopping cart that he raced around in while she and Felix and Glenn watched, all utterly exasperated but also secretly entertained.
“Trust me,” Ingrid huffs. “I’m aware.”
She wouldn’t trade that memory for the world.
Lately, their little group of four has become a little more splintered with the way their schedules and programs have diverged. It’s not as if they don’t see each other. Ingrid still spends the bulk of her non-class time with them individually. While she and Dimitri may not be in the same program, they do share the same peak productivity hours, so they often make the time to study alongside each other. She sees Felix nearly every morning at the gym and they often end up grabbing breakfast together because of it.
Her time with Sylvain is a little less routine since he’s rarely on campus anymore but she’s pretty sure he makes a point of dragging her off-campus once or twice a week.
But, it’s different. It’s rare that they’re all in the same place at the same time. She misses watching Felix roll his eyes at Sylvain, shoving him when he says something stupid. She misses Sylvain teasing Dimitri into stammers, ears flushed red from implication—misses desperately the ruckus that comes from befriending three very different boys and growing up with them.
“Where are we going anyway?” Ingrid asks. They’ve only walked a few blocks off campus but Ingrid doesn’t mind wandering farther.
She never really gets a chance to leave. Ingrid spends all her time on campus but she’s hardly the only one who does. Her entire life is at school. She lives there, has her classes there, works there... leaving seems like a lot of effort when she doesn’t have a reason to. Still, it’s a little sad how little she knows of the city considering she’s been here for three years. She’d always meant to familiarize herself with it more but being a student feels like a full-time job she can’t clock out of.
Sylvain shoots her a grin. “Just a little farther.”
The further they get from the campus, the easier breathing gets. She had not realized how wound up she had been until he had stolen her away, each step easing her back into a comfortable rhythm of control.
The stress of school does not go away fully. Every time Ingrid looks back, the large bell tower on the church’s Goddess Tower still shines against the skyline, but it feels manageable again and she is no longer exhausted by the reminder that she still has schoolwork to do after dinner.
She wonders, briefly, if one could see the tower from downtown.
Perhaps Sylvain knows.
They pass through a few quiet blocks of residential houses, rented out at exorbitant prices to students, walking past the tiny driveways that come with land ownership in a large city where lazy cats eye them from windows and large dogs bark happily behind the fences.
This path reminds her very much of the walk to her house back from high school. Dimitri and Felix used to insist on walking her home after practice against the waning backdrop of a setting sun, dragging tired feet behind her, not entirely because they were protective, although she is sure that that was a factor, but because it breathed dying life into a very old routine.
When they were younger, much younger, there would be a whole gaggle of them. They would trail after Glenn, tugging their little hands at his long sleeves. After Sylvain who would press forward, full of loud boyish laughter. After her eldest brother, Samson, who jumped at every low hanging tree branch to swing with his knees tucked high into his chest right before he leaped.
Samson would often be singing, his low baritone tuned to the beat of the slamming from her and Felix's light-up sneakers against the ground as they jumped between the cracks of broken sidewalks where the old thick roots of ancient trees broke through concrete and out into the sun, all while Glenn whistled along with a soft, beautiful, forgotten song.
Walking with Sylvain feels a little like capturing a bit of that. Sylvain would never sing but his laughter would carry them all the way home. He always felt a little bit like a bridge between them all. He is the right age for it, just a little older than Dimitri, Felix, and herself, and just a little younger than Glenn while Samson pulled further and further ahead.
They never seemed far away from her with him around. Because even as the space between Samson and Glenn and the rest of them grew, Sylvain was always right there, no matter the distance.
He feels like Fhirdiad. As if this few block walk could lead her all the miles and miles back home. As if he could lead her all the way to the front crooked path of the faded green, two-story house where her little brothers would argue about setting dinner plates over the old TV that was always blaring some bad soap or gameshow her mother liked to listen to but never actually watch.
The quiet, easy walk reminds her of a time without the now-familiar tension in her shoulders. It feels easy to walk beside a quietly humming Sylvain with a new lightness in his steps. It makes her want to mirror him even though she has never been that graceful.
“What song is that?” Ingrid asks.
Sylvain’s hands are shoved in his pockets, his back straight and head high, as if he is looking more towards the sky than the hand on the street signal in front of him. His head turns to her slowly, curiously, almost like he’s surprised she said anything at all.
“Huh?” he goes. “Oh, I’m not sure. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”
They round a corner into a large parking lot turned food truck paradise. The entrance of the lot where cars usually come through is blocked by several orange traffic cones and a sign that reads “Fodlan Eats”, the collective that the six visible food trucks belong to.
There are quite a few people here. She recognizes a few from campus who are mingling in small clusters around the lot. Some of them sit on the colorful plastic pastel stools by the trucks and others on the little concrete ridges that signal the end of a parking spot. Many more line up at the different food trucks by where music plays from a large heavy speaker.
Ingrid’s stomach rumbles the second the wafting smell of food hits her nose. It’s divine and she very much wants to eat everything.
Sylvain quickly scans the trucks before grinning at her. She’s already contemplating what she would order from each truck if given the chance and she knows he knows it.
“Thought you might like it,” he teases with a gentle nudge.
She says nothing but does give him a playful push back as she brushes past him.
“How’s your internship?” Ingrid asks later. There are no more stools left for them so they’ve settled on the third step of a nearby, largely-unused staircase that overlooks the lot.
“It’s okay I guess,” he says, reaching over to her plate to steal a bite. She ended up settling on a truck run by a very nice group of youngish but burly-looking entrepreneurs calling themselves the “Faerghan Flavor Ravers.” It’s mostly because she misses home but she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been charmed by the bright, baby blue graffiti script on the side of the very pink truck.
It must be some kind of advertising trick. Sylvain might be able to tell her more about it but she’s not curious enough to ask.
“Kind of boring. I mostly just sit at a desk and look pretty.”
“That really doesn’t sound so bad,” she says. For some reason, her mind chooses this moment to buzz about the genetics module due at the end of the week that she hasn’t started yet. “At least you aren’t too busy.”
“Yeah, it’s nothing to complain about but, I don’t know, it kind of feels like I’m cheating?”
“Wow,” she teases, poking him in the shoulder. “What happened to that lazy boy in high school that did everything he could to get out of work?”
“He’s still there,” he admits, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. “But, maybe he just wants to stick it to his dad by proving a point.”
“What point is that?”
“That I can actually do things myself.”
Ingrid finishes her plate and places it next to her on the step so she can shift and face Sylvain. He looks calm—sleeves rolled up, top button open, his (probably very expensive) suit jacket laid out underneath her to sit on even though all she’s wearing are some old sweat pants she’s had for years—and he has a light smile on his face. It contrasts with everything she knows about him and his relationship with his father.
“You want to talk about it?” she asks.
He never does. The way his face screws up a bit in distaste tells her he still doesn’t.
“Not really,” he admits, but the light smile is still there and unlike all the other times he’s thrown it at her when trying to dodge this topic, she actually believes it. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t dismiss her with a light joke or maybe it’s his tone. Ingrid’s not sure.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Something about the way Sylvain relaxes next to her feels comfortable and easy. It feels like she doesn’t get a lot of that anymore.
She decides not to push him.
It’s the right call.
“Things are better,” Sylvain tells her on his own after a moment. “But that’s mostly because I avoid the hell out of him. Is it bad that my relationship with my father gets better the further from him I get?”
Ingrid tilts her head. “I’m not sure if I’m really the right person to ask about that.”
“You and your dad get along,” he says, bumping her shoulder a bit. “Not like I can ask Felix or Dimitri.”
Ingrid sighs, heavy-hearted at the thought of Dimitri’s parents and the number it did on him to lose them. “Yeah, we do,” she says, ignoring the nagging guilt of her voicemail box, “but that doesn’t mean I can tell you what to do about your dad.”
Sylvain grins teasingly. “That’s never stopped you before.”
“You were stupid before,” she says, pushing him away with two fingers as he leans towards her. “You’re better now. Somehow. I credit that to myself, of course.”
“Of course.”
The settled smile on his face, the one that tells her that Sylvain is okay now, soothes the part of her that never stops worrying.
“How about you?” he asks, stretching his long legs out and leaning his hands flat on the steps behind him.
She tucks her hand underneath her chin, propped up on her knees, and hums, allowing the change in subject. “What about me?”
“Anything new with you?”
Her mood turns sour. She can’t help her frown. “I’m a student in university with a set weekly schedule, what do you think?”
“Hey, someone’s grumpy,” he teases.
Ingrid feels herself flush. “Sorry.” She sighs, brushing her hair out of her face. “Guess I’m just a bit stressed.”
“When aren’t you stressed, Ingrid?”
“Not everyone can sit around and look pretty.”
“Aww, Ing, I’m flattered. You think I’m pretty?”
She does but she’s not going to tell him that. She shoves him instead with a smile. “Shut up.”
He holds his palms up, surrendering with a laugh. “Hope things let up though,” he says.
It won’t, but she doesn’t tell him that. He’s just trying to be nice. There doesn’t really seem to be a point in complaining about things she can’t control. The semester is only going to ramp up from here and the first four of her exam weeks tick ever closer.
“Thanks. Me too.”
Sylvain lets it go. He doesn’t say more. Most people would do the same because there’s really not much to say. There’s nothing he can do to help.
Well, except drag her off-campus and out of her own head on occasion, maybe.
The light cropping of dust on Sylvain’s suit jacket and the wrinkles she creases into it while sitting doesn’t seem to phase Sylvain in the least. It’s a strong contrast to the way that Dorothea barks whenever someone messes with one of her blazers.
She half expects Sylvain to tie the sleeves around his waist as he walks her back to campus but he’s too fashion-conscious to do that with anything other than that checkered red and black flannel he likes to wear whenever he’s feeling nostalgic about his grunge phase.
He tries to get her to stay out longer, to go for a nice walk after eating, but she can’t. She might not be on shift today—Dorothea is the one stuck with what she refers to as the Rugrats—but that module isn’t going to do itself.
“Anyone ever tell you, you study too much?” Sylvain says as the fading light of the sun dips behind the Goddess Tower they’re walking towards. His steps are slower than usual. It's as if he’s trying to delay her as much as he can.
“Anyone ever tell you that you don’t study enough?”
“Yeah,” he smirks, hands in his pockets. “You, all the time.”
Ingrid breathes a heavy sigh. “And yet you never listen.”
“Well, in my defense, most of my classes are project-based at this point.”
“I prefer the exams. Group projects are kind of a nightmare.”
And, with the exams, the only person she can blame is herself. They are also less subject to the whims of wishy-washy professors and flakey project partners.
“They’re only a nightmare because you don’t delegate,” he tells her. “Then you try to do everything yourself.”
Ingrid bristles. “How would you know? We’ve never had a class together.”
“I can tell,” Sylvain says calmly. “Ingrid, you’re kind of...very type A.”
“Well, you’re the kid who never does anything,” she shoots back. “I weep for your project partners.”
“Maybe back in high school-“
“Definitely back in high school.”
“-but I really shaped up. How do you think I got this internship?”
She refrains from saying something horribly mean but doesn’t stop herself from throwing him a skeptical look.
“Okay,” Sylvain says with a casual shrug, pulling the strap of his leather bag back into place. “So it was mostly nepotism and my winning smile but I swear it’s like one percent skill. Maybe five on a good day.”
“You seem to be having a lot of good days lately.”
Her voice is quieter than she means it to be. It comes out honest and warm and it’s because she means it as a compliment. She’s thankful that Sylvain takes it that way, judging by the way his grin stretches across his face. For a moment, she’s afraid he’s going to hold it over her somehow, tease her again. Although, for what, she’s not entirely sure. The feeling passes quickly.
His tone shifts too into something more genuine, something more real, just like hers. “I guess I’ve got to grow up sometime huh?”
She glances over at him. “You do graduate soon.”
“Not soon enough,” he sighs. “You’re coming right?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course, I’m coming, I wouldn’t miss it.”
Sylvain visibly relaxes next to her but it only makes her frown deepen. He didn’t seriously think she’d miss his university graduation, did he? “Hey,” she says, grabbing onto his sleeve and tugging him to a stop.
He turns to her curiously and somehow ends up a lot closer than she expected. Ingrid takes a step back so that he can properly see the entirety of her sincerity. “I know this might be weird since you’re older than me and you might not want to hear this, but, you know I’m proud of you, right?”
Sylvain blinks but then his expression softens and his eyes shine alongside the way his mouth curls into a fond, familiar smile. His voice is low, almost lost to the car that passes them on the street. “I know. Thanks, Ingrid.”
Satisfied, Ingrid drops his arm and walks forward. It only takes him a second to rematch her stride.
Transcription Beta:
“Hey Ingrid, Mom again. Sorry I missed your call back earlier but I had to take your brother to practice and then time just got away from me. Speaking of time, if you have any, why don’t you give us a call later? Your dad keeps going on and on about his ‘darling girl’ to anyone who’ll listen. He’d love to hear from you.”
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