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There are a lot of things Cyril hates about Fódlan. The weather is cold, the cities are cramped, the food tastes bland, and everyone on the continent despises him for merely existing. Of course, the exception to that is Lady Rhea. Lady Rhea and her generosity is the only reason he can tolerate his life in Fódlan. She was the one who rescued him from House Goneril and gave him a second chance at the monastery. He doesn’t mind waking up at the crack of dawn to start another day of back-breaking labor until long after the sun sets if it’s for her.
And at Garreg Mach, Cyril wants for little. He gets one whole meal a day – two if the professor invites him for a bite on their day off – and he even has a place to sleep that’s out of the cold, rain, and wind. Or rather, he usually has a place to sleep. According to Lady Rhea, the evil guy Cyril had fought alongside the Golden Deer in Remire Village was Tomas in disguise. As a result, the library has been closed by Seteth pending investigation. Cyril will have to find somewhere else to crash for now.
Lady Rhea is so nice that she would probably give him a temporary place to sleep until the library opened back up, but he wouldn’t want to be even more in her debt. She has already given him so much that he could never repay her. Asking her for something as simple as a coat to stave off the winter chill would be selfish when so many other kids have it so much worse than he does.
Fetching some fresh lilies for Lady Rhea’s crown is the first thing Cyril does every morning, so it wouldn’t be a hassle to collect them if he were to sleep in the greenhouse. He just reached the greenhouse’s door when it occurred to him that Professor Byleth had mentioned that Lysithea also liked lilies. Maybe he should gather a couple extra flowers and give them to her as thanks for reading lists for him?
“Cyril?” A shaky voice calls out from behind him. “I-is that you?”
The Almyran boy looks over his shoulder to see the academy’s youngest student clutching two lanterns as she cowers behind the nearby bushes he had just trimmed earlier that day.
“Heya, Lysithea. Are ya cold?” Cyril waves to her with a friendly smile.
“I am, actually!” Lysithea’s teeth chatter as she steps out from behind the bushes with a huff. Cyril figures the bulky winter coat and fuzzy white hat she’s wearing should have been enough to keep her warm despite the biting wind. “I’m not afraid of the dark or anything – that would be childish! It’s frigid out here! It’s perfectly normal to shiver when it’s cold out. I’m going back to my room before I catch my death. Good night.”
She sharply turns on her heel with a huff. She has just begun marching back to her room when she stops suddenly and turns to face him again with a quizzical expression.
“Come to think of it, what are you doing out so late, Cyril? Don’t tell me you were planning on doing some midnight gardening.” She jokes with a small smile.
Cyril’s tanned skin is often more trouble than it’s worth but, for once, he’s glad it’s dark enough to hide his blush as he diverts his eyes away from Lysithea. His face always gets hot when he sees even a glimpse of Lysithea’s smile. Lady Rhea’s smile is beautiful too, but there’s something special about Lysithea. Asking Shamir about why that is only earned him one of her rare laughs. “Nah, I was gonna sleep. I got lots to do tomorrow.”
Lysithea’s radiant smile disappears as her eyebrows furrow. “Sleep? Why not go to bed in your own room?”
“Don’t got one.” Cyril replies with a shrug.
“What do you mean you don’t have a room?” Lysithea’s voice sharply raises in pitch as she stomps back towards him. “Where have you been sleeping for the past two years?”
He couldn’t figure out why she was getting so worked up about this. It isn’t that big of a deal. “Usually the library.”
“THE LIBRARY!?” Lysithea shrieks as her body quakes. “You mean to tell me that you’ve been slaving away for years, and no one bothered to get you a bed!?”
“It’s not always the library. I sleep in the stables if it’s warm enough.”
“That’s not any better!”
“It’s a lot better than I ever got in Goneril or Almyra!” Cyril shoots back, starting to get irritated himself. He didn’t like the insinuation that Lady Rhea didn’t care about his well-being. She’s the only one who ever did care.
She closes her eyes and deeply exhales before speaking again. Seeing her frustration flood out from her so quickly helps relieve his own anger. “Cyril… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. This whole situation gets under my skin. The fact that you don’t have a place to sleep utterly baffles me."
“I don’t really see why you should care. Ya got bigger things to worry about than someone like me. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve slept in the greenhouse either.” Cyril replies matter-of-factly. Cyril didn’t understand the science behind why the greenhouse stayed warm in the winter, but he would be a fool to not take advantage of it if the library wasn’t available. Especially since no one ever gave him funny looks or harassed him for taking a nap. He couldn’t stand it when someone thought he was being lazy.
Lysithea clenches her jaw as she holds back a nasty reply. Instead, she shifts both lanterns into one hand. With her newly freed hand, she then shoots her hand out to grab Cyril’s.
“Whatcha doin’?” Cyril nearly drops his keys when the young mage yanks him in the direction of the student dormitories with a surprising amount of force.
“I’m taking you to my room. What does it look like?” The two quickly cross the courtyard and bound up the flight of stairs to reach Lysithea’s dorm. She swings the door open and ushers him inside despite his complaints. “I’m not going to leave you out in the cold to freeze to death without even a coat or blanket!”
Up until now, Cyril has never been in most of the dorm rooms. Much like Dedue, Cyril is constantly under scrutiny from the less tolerant students and staff. Almyrans are largely viewed as inherently untrustworthy and, to prevent an incident, Cyril had been ordered to never enter the dorm rooms. It irks him that there are places in the monastery he can't clean, but at least he doesn’t have to pick up more garbage left by careless nobles. Whilst cleaning the dormitory’s second-floor hallway, he had once seen Marianne’s wreck of a bedroom. He never thought he would find someone even worse at cleaning than Manuela. Lysithea’s room, at first glance, is an absolute mess. Books and loose papers are strewn across her desk and shelves - even the floor when she ran out of space.
On closer inspection, she seems to have order to her domain. He can't read the titles on the spines of the books, but the ones on the shelves were lumped together so that each one that started with the same letter were in groups. The papers lying across the room are almost all weighed down by items such as books that look to be relevant to the papers they're paired with. She isn’t hopeless like Manuela, but she also isn’t obsessively organized like Seteth. The state of her room reminds him of Hanneman, who had once yelled at the boy for “organizing his chaos”. He hasn’t cleaned Hanneman’s office since.
Lysithea has just gotten through the doorway when her breath catches in her throat. She leaps over a pile of books to her bed. Cyril just manages catch a glimpse of a stuffed bear in a suit of armor before she hides it behind her back. She clears her throat as she carefully places the stuffed animal on a table next to a plate harboring a half-eaten cookie. “The Professor gave it to me. I thought it would be rude to not take it. It’s not like I’m a little girl who plays with stuffed animals or anything.”
“What’s his name?” Cyril used to have a toy soldier named Khalid when he was still living in Almyra. He found he didn’t like playing with toy soldiers much after becoming a soldier himself.
“Never mind that!” She stomps her foot for the second time this evening. “Honestly! I’m trying to be nice right now!”
“I’m sorry, it’s just easy to tease ya. You’re so smart and mature that I forget you’re less than a year older than me.” The girl’s pale cheeks flare up into a deep scarlet as she hides her face with her hand. That’s weird, it’s warmer in here than it is outside, but he didn’t think it was hot enough to make her skin flush. “Maybe you should take your coat off. Your face is getting red.”
“Ugh, the nerve you have.” She mutters under her breath, taking off her coat and hat. She’s still in uniform, so he surmises that she must have been out late studying or training. “Whatever, just get your shoes off. It’s time for bed.”
Oh, right, she was adamant to not let him sleep out in the greenhouse. He had gotten so caught up teasing Lysithea that he had already forgotten why he was in her room to begin with.
“I dunno about this, Lysithea…” Cyril says, rubbing his hand against the back of his head. “I can take a blanket with me if ya want.”
“So you can go sleep in the greenhouse again? That’s not going to happen.” She says, unlacing her boots and placing them at the foot of her bed. She sits down on the mattress and pats the spot next to her. “Come on, the bed is big enough for the both of us.”
Cyril stands resolutely with his hands at his sides. He has never been trained in proper etiquette, but he is confident that it is wholly inappropriate for an orphan like him to sleep in the same bed as the heir to a noble house.
“Wouldn’t your parents get mad if they found out we were sleepin’ together?”
“Phrasing! We won’t be doing anything like that!” Lysithea sputters, clutching a fistful of her blanket to her face.
“How about I just sleep on the floor? That way I’m not in the cold, and I don’t cause too much trouble for ya.” Cyril indifferently shrugs, not understanding what’s so embarrassing about it. He’s not a master of the Fódlani language, but he’s pretty sure that the appropriate term for two people sharing a bed would be ‘sleeping together’. He’s heard Seteth use the term plenty of times when complaining about Sylvain’s antics.
Her eyes narrow at his suggestion, embarrassment quickly replaced by annoyance. “Are you uncomfortable with sleeping in the same bed as me, or is this more self-esteem nonsense?”
“I mean, ya are a noble and I’m not. We live in different worlds, remember?”
“Fine. I have a compromise.” The girl’s stockinged feet make a light thud against the yellow carpet as she hops off the mattress. Collecting her numerous pillows and blankets into her arms, she turns around to promptly drop them on the only spot on the ground not covered in books or papers. “There! Now we can both sleep on the floor – like equals.”
The idea of being Lysithea's equal is pleasing in a strange way he can't describe. However, he still has one primary concern.
“I don’t like the idea of ya sleepin’ on the floor much better. I don’t wanna be treatin’ ya like you’re delicate or anything, but,” Cyril pauses. Why does the picture of her not sleeping in a comfy bed rub him the wrong way? Why does his heart always flutter when their eyes meet?
“But?” Lysithea asks, eagerly anticipating an answer.
“You’re special to me.” Cyril says, not sure how else to phrase it.
“You’re special to me, too.” The embarrassed mage replies quietly, her lovely eyes dropping beneath the white veil of her bangs. The fact he could barely hear her reply doesn’t stop his stomach from doing a somersault. “That’s why I want to be with you as an equal; not some princess.”
Cyril runs a hand through his messy hair and lets out a groan. That time in the woods when she wanted to help him chop firewood was the last time he would ever win an argument against her, isn’t it? “Fine, we’ll have it your way.” He relents with a sigh.
“Great!” He tries not to let his eyes linger on her beaming smile. Instead, he kneels to arrange the blankets and pillows into something resembling a bed. He makes sure to leave a couple extra pillows on Lysithea’s side, but she plucks them out of his hand. “Nope! We’re equals, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He takes the pillows from her to begrudgingly add them to his side of the bed. He’ll just have to settle with fluffing her pillows for her. “I just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable. Ya don’t sleep on the ground much.”
“Sleeping on the ground every night for years is worse.” Lysithea counters, extinguishing the two lanterns she had left on the mantle when they first entered. Cyril tries to maintain a respectable distance from her as they slip under the blankets.
“Why is it ya had two lanterns when you were out tonight?” The boy asks, trying to spark up a conversation to distract him from the hammering of his heart in his chest.
He worries he had somehow offended her when she doesn’t answer for almost a minute. She introduces a wholly separate topic when she finally does speak. “Are you aware of how valuable you are?”
“Like as Lady Rhea’s servant?” Cyril didn’t understand the question. He doesn’t have much inherent value, and he is only marginally useful as a servant. That’s why he had to work so hard to make up for his shortcomings.
“As a person.” She clarifies, propping her head up on her elbow. “You’re diligent, caring, selfless, and smarter than you give yourself credit for. You have truly limitless potential. You matter, Cyril - to me, and so many others. Your life is just as precious as anyone else's. Whether it be a coat, a bed, or genuine love and affection – there’s nothing in this world you’re ‘unworthy’ of having. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Now it is Cyril’s turn to sit in a contemplative silence as he stares up at the dark corners of the ceiling. Limitless potential, huh? It has a nice ring to it, but he isn’t sure it's true. For the past two years, he’s been nothing more than Lady Rhea’s servant. He has bent over backwards more times than he can count to fulfill every task she assigned to him. He would do anything for her, but he has only ever allowed himself to do that much. Anything that was simply ‘for him’ was out of the question.
Then, there were the multitudes of people who judged him without even getting to know him. In their eyes, he’s nothing more than a foreigner who doesn’t even have the right to exist. Back in Almyra, he was just an orphan who would only serve as a meatshield in a pointless battle. And, to an extent, he believed them. The only one who had ever validated his existence was Lady Rhea. But now, Lysithea is insisting that all those people were wrong – and she is never wrong about anything.
“Thanks, Lysithea. That means a lot. I’ll keep it in mind.” A small smile cracks out across his face. It felt good to have someone care about him – especially when that person was the all-powerful mage that he found himself thinking about more and more often over the past few months.
“Please do.” A stifled yawn penetrates the darkness. “But for now, we need to sleep. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow. I’m taking you to see Seteth about getting you a coat first thing in the morning.”
He’s about to argue that he doesn’t need a coat when he remembers her insistence about not selling himself short. It couldn’t hurt to ask, right?
“Alright,” His own yawn interrupts him. “We’ll do that then.”
The last thing that Cyril hears before blissful sleep washes over him is Lysithea’s content hum.
The blinding sunlight filtering in the window forces Cyril to open his eyes. Why can’t the sun just leave him alone? Last night was the best sleep of his life. How long has it been since he had been able to sleep the full night without interruption or an aching back in the morning? It must be well into the morning if the sun has already risen… Cyril shoots up when this dawns on him. He's completely overslept! He is about to throw the covers off and sprint for the door when the feeling of a weight anchors him in place.
His heart skips a beat when he looks down to see Lysithea’s arms stubbornly wrapped around his own. The morning sun illuminates Lysithea’s hair into an ethereal glow that resembles the halos depicted in paintings of the Saints and Apostles. Her face is buried into his shoulder and her legs tangled around his. He would never admit it to another living soul, but he's confident that the girl drooling into his sleeve is more beautiful than even Lady Rhea.
His panic about missing his morning chores melts away as he delicately tucks a couple strands of Lysithea’s white hair behind her ear. He expects her hair to be silken and smooth, but the texture feels coarse and dead - how strange. He’s about to rub his fingers between a larger sample to investigate when her captivating eyes flutter open.
They both blankly stare at each other until realization washes over her a couple seconds later. She lurches away from him and wipes her lips with her uniform’s sleeve. “Just forget about that, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Cyril looks away from her as she untangles her legs from his. He can feel his face burning as he mentally curses himself for waking the slumbering princess.
He is forced to look back over to her when she clears her throat to get his attention. “Anyways, I think it’s time we got something to eat, don’t you?” Lysithea asks, desperate to redirect their attention to something less humiliating.
“Didn’t ya want to talk to Seteth?” Uncharacteristically, Cyril would rather continue lounging under the blankets with Lysithea. How he would prefer to continue lying in bed instead of getting to work astounds him.
“We will.” Lysithea answers, throwing off the covers. She steps around both him and the piles of textbooks around the room to reach for a brush sitting on the counter. The way her brush flicks through her hair reminds him of an agitated Ordelian cat. “However, I know you have only been eating one meal a day. You’re not eating nearly enough food for your age and active lifestyle. From now on, you’re going to be eating at least two hearty meals a day. We can have breakfast every morning so I can make sure you’re not skipping meals.”
“I don’t need-” Cyril begins before Lysithea’s glare kills his argument. “You’re right; I have as much of a right to meals as anyone else.” He can tell he’ll be reciting similar lines like a mantra for a while yet.
She smiles victoriously, donning her fuzzy white hat and coat as he joins her at the door. At least the coat will hide her wrinkled uniform until she can change in privacy.
He is about to reach for the door when Lysithea snatches his hand. He shoots her a confused look and she returns a shy smile. “I just want to hold your hand, okay?”
“Don’t ya care what your noble friends might think?” A noble holding hands with a commoner – especially an Almyran – is just asking for trouble.
“Like Lorenz?” She asks with a snort. “If anyone has a problem with it, then I don’t care what they think, and neither should you.”
“Alright, don't say I didn't warn ya.” Cyril pulls open the door and leads her down the steps to the dining hall.
“I can handle myself. Let me know if anyone gives you a hard time and I’ll knock some sense into them too!” She states confidently, ignoring the occasional disgusted stare or excited whisper from other students.
Upon entering the dining hall, the two are just about to order their breakfasts when Lady Rhea’s right hand-man walks in through the opposite entrance. Seeing her chance, Lysithea breaks away from Cyril. “Go ahead and order, I’m going to give Seteth a piece of my mind.”
Cyril knows there’s no point in trying to stop her, so he instead turns to the scowling cook. “Can I get a couple pheasant roasts with berry sauce? One of 'em needs to be extra sweet.”
The staff member growls. He puts a pitifully small serving of roast on one plate and another respectably sized portion on the other. “The bigger one is for the girl, red-eyes. Don't get 'em mixed up.”
Cyril takes a seat not far from where Lysithea is practically shouting at Seteth. He originally tried to quell her concerns but, like Cyril, he eventually relents to her demands. Cyril is already almost finished devouring the larger pheasant roast by the time a more satisfied Lysithea returns to him. He figures she would have insisted he take the larger potion anyways; It’s not like the cook would have let him get seconds.
“Hey, Lysithea,” Cyril says, wiping his mouth clean of the delicious berry juice with a napkin.
“Yes?”
“I think we should sleep together again sometime!” All conversation in the dining hall suddenly stops as Cyril’s voice carries around the room. He scoops up the remaining scraps of food from his plate before bounding from his seat. The calorie-dense food has rejuvenated him, and he is pumped for another day of work.
Lysithea's fork drops onto her plate as her jaw hangs open. Her wide, round eyes follow Cyril as he jumps out of his chair.
“See ya, Lysithea!” Completely oblivious to the scene he had caused, Cyril waves to her with a smile as he deposits his plate with the rest of the dirty dishes and jogs out the door to his first job of the day.
A few seconds later, Cyril’s abandoned seat is occupied by a pink-haired girl sporting a predatory grin. “Details. Now.”
Lysithea groans into her palms, hiding her wildly blushing face from Hilda. Why did she have to go and fall for a moron like him?