Chapter Text
Sylvain never could bring himself to hate Miklan.
Oh, he came close. Very close. But the vitriol Miklan launched at him always held some undeniable grain of truth. It was always there, through all of the senseless torment, no matter how deeply his thug of a brother buried it. And it is difficult, usually, to hate someone with whom you agree.
Fear, though? Fear is easy. For years, even after Miklan was forcibly removed from his life, Sylvain would see his face in shadows, around corners, and in plenty of other places Miklan was no longer able to be. It would always take another moment, an extra blink, to separate his brother’s face from the body of whoever he’d seen in the corner of his eye. No, Sylvain, that isn’t Miklan. It’s your father. Your best friend. A scarecrow.
The next Margrave Gautier shouldn’t fear such things.
But that fear had eventually left. Sylvain was proud, as silly as it might seem, to finally be free from this piece of his brother’s rotten vendetta. Just yesterday, a pretty girl approached him at the monastery, and he had no trouble at all seeing her for what she was: a pretty girl.
Today, though, his traitor mind finds an excuse to bring its old habit back with a vengeance. Today, he and his classmates march drearily back from Conand Tower in a tense silence, and his mind doesn’t even have the decency to graft Miklan’s image onto someone marching alongside him. No, now Miklan stands free, floating gloomily along in the free space to the right of Sylvain’s horse, glaring at him with the foolish fury of someone actually interested in the Gautier inheritance.
What he ever saw in it, Sylvain still doesn’t know.
It hardly matters now, if the only place Miklan still lives is in some dark and cowardly recess of Sylvain’s own brain. But this does pose a more immediate problem. The path back to Garreg Mach is long, team morale is too low for conversation, and Sylvain has nowhere to look.
To his right lies Miklan. To his left, Dimitri’s dead-eyed stare passes glassily through him. Ahead, he can’t ignore the cursed lance in his hands.
It’s a simple problem, that one. He hates this lance. The only thing he respects about it is the foresight of whoever named the damn thing, and he wants nothing more than to leave it buried somewhere in these woods – or maybe not, a quiet disposal somewhere in Ailell might suit it better – but someone has to carry the great Lance of Ruin back to the monastery, and he’s the only one here guaranteed not to be its next beastly victim.
Yet more Crest privileges. It always comes back around.
It’s fine, he supposes. He won’t complain, not so long as he’s able to protect his friends from… whatever it was that happened back at the tower. He just isn’t sure how much more of this he can take.
Luckily, he’s already a master of distraction. He plasters an obnoxious smile onto his face and glances around for a target. Time for some problem-solving.
“Hey, your Highness,” he loudly drawls, and he can already hear the Lions behind him groaning about it, “what say we hit up the town once we get back tonight? Take our minds off things? Find us some pretty girls to talk to?”
Dimitri doesn’t react.
“I wouldn’t mind some pretty boys, either, you know,” he presses. With a wink, he adds, “Whatever you prefer. I won’t judge.”
Nothing.
Farther back in the formation, Sylvain hears Felix and Ingrid grumbling to one another, but neither of them bother to scold him.
With a final, strained smile, Sylvain resigns himself to the failure. At least no one can say he didn’t try. “No worries, your Highness. Let me know if you change your mind, alright?”
Thankfully, Miklan stays behind as Sylvain urges his horse ahead to match the Professor’s pace.
Once he’s settled, they tell him plainly, “You aren’t cruising for dates tonight.”
It isn’t as though they could really stop him, but it isn’t as though he really meant it, either.
“Give me some credit, Professor,” he replies. “You should see the way his face lights up when he gets to talk about propriety.”
The silence at the front of the formation is an easier one. Sylvain takes solace in the fact that the space the Professor stares into isn’t located on the other side of his soul – already a cut above Dimitri, who didn’t even seem to notice him leaving – but something about it catches his attention. Oddly enough, the Professor’s gaze is sharply focused. They aren’t staring into space – they’re staring at space.
It’s an unimportant detail, surely, and a trivial distinction to make. But there’s nothing else to think about besides the withering cry of a great black beast, gnarled claws gleaming like the lance that created them, and his accursed brother’s dying screams, so he rolls the benign observation around in his mind.
Ultimately, Sylvain just sighs. Maybe they’re all a little haunted today.
By the time they bring the lance before Lady Rhea, Dimitri has remembered how to behave like a human being.
Sylvain stands in silence between him and the Professor, holding the weapon out for the Archbishop’s inspection, compelling her with every fiber of his being to step forward and take it already. How much longer does he have to spend shouldering this burden? It would be easy for her, surely. She requested this opportunity herself.
Lady Rhea makes no such move.
He tunes out her words as she gently questions the Professor about the day’s events. It’s almost infuriating, the way she addresses them with the same demure tone as always. The reserved, affectionate smile and comforting shine in her eyes make, unsurprisingly, absolutely no dent in the Professor’s stony demeanour, and every moment she squanders on inane nonsense is another Sylvain has to endure while carrying the curse she had them retrieve.
Seteth, at least, seems to share his concern about Rhea’s priorities, even if Sylvain can’t seem to pinpoint why. Dimitri, meanwhile, shows no signs of impatience – not even the restless tension he never quite learned to suppress. Sylvain doesn’t like the implications there. But he can’t dwell on it, and he knows better than to try, so he scours the audience chamber for anything else to think about. Really, why does only one side of the chamber have an office? Have Fódlani stained glass techniques changed at all since that window was installed? Is the Archbishop the only member of the Church who gets a throne? …Does Rhea ever even sit in it?
—is that Miklan, lurking in its shadow?
He eagerly abandons that train of thought as Rhea finally deigns to speak to him.
“I thank you for retrieving the Relic from those thieves—” She practically spits the word. “—and restoring it to its worthy owners. The Church will take ownership of the lance and its situation from here. If you would…”
Sylvain has to consciously restrain himself from answering on impulse. Yes. Please. Anything you want. I never want to see this monstrosity again.
Instead, he hears himself say, “House Gautier still needs the lance, Lady Rhea.” He clears his throat and continues. “It’s only a matter of time until the next skirmish on the Sreng border.”
Something flares in Rhea’s eyes, but Seteth speaks up before she has the chance to answer. “What the Archbishop means to say is that the Church will be formally returning the lance to House Gautier. We simply see no reason to trouble your class any further with it. Please, follow me.”
Sylvain’s feet are moving before the Professor finishes nodding their approval. It’s a short walk to Seteth’s office – not a large room, but still plenty spacious for the two of them – and Seteth shuts the door behind them.
“The Church will send out a guarded convoy in a few days’ time,” he continues. “The knights will ensure everything goes smoothly. You may rest assured that nothing will happen in the meantime – the Church is well-versed in the storage of important artefacts.” He holds out a hand expectantly. “The lance?”
Sylvain’s arm moves jerkily halfway as his desire to finally be rid of the Relic clashes with the memory of Miklan’s transformation.
Seteth seems to understand, at least. …How much of this has he seen before? “I am in no danger,” he assures. “While only the Crest of Gautier can use the lance to its fullest potential, any Crest can safely wield it.” His voice remains calm and steady, just as businesslike as if he had brought Sylvain here over his usual mischief and misconduct.
It’s odd, feeling this happy to hear Seteth’s scolding voice. Sylvain almost laughs. Oh, if only he were here for a simple reprimand. He holds the lance out – properly, this time – and Seteth hefts it easily, giving it a quick one-handed twirl before letting it hang at his side.
Huh. When he heard Seteth was handy with a lance, he didn’t realize it was quite so—
Hang on.
“You have a Crest?” Sylvain demands, too busy feeling his stomach plummet into his shoes to keep the urgency out of his voice.
“That I do,” Seteth replies evenly.
“Ah. Hah.” Always so foolish, Sylvain. Foolish to have panicked, foolish to feel such relief at something so obvious. Of course Seteth has a Crest. He wouldn’t have said it was safe otherwise. “Right… I guess I should have expected that. Handsome devils like you are always full of secrets, aren—”
“If you so much as finish that sentence, I will see you sent back to Gautier right alongside this lance.”
Sylvain fights to stifle an impulsive flinch away from the weapon. “Heh. Right.” He laughs sheepishly and runs a hand messily through his hair. It’s fine, it’ll be fine, he just needs to play it cool. Seteth probably wasn’t even making a real threat. “Sorry.”
Seteth doesn’t let the hand misdirect his eyes away from Sylvain’s stiffening spine, and Sylvain resolves to revise his opinion of him. No matter how stuffy and uptight he is, if he’s sharp enough to catch something like that, he’s not the sort of man Sylvain wants to underestimate.
Regardless, he’s sure Seteth knows which half of that threat scares him more.
The dining hall is painfully, overwhelmingly normal.
Sylvain prods idly at his vegetables with his fork as the noise bombards his ears. Over at the Black Eagles’ table, Linhardt nods along to Caspar’s enthusiastic ramblings while Edelgard and Hubert eat in prim silence. Dorothea makes a token effort to smile away her seething rage as Ferdinand announces his latest musings on Adrestia’s political landscape, and Bernadetta makes all sorts of frantic excuses in response to Petra’s attempts to discuss her archery technique.
The Golden Deer’s table is much the same, and Sylvain winces at the indignant shriek Claude’s prodding draws out of Lysithea.
He does his best to tune out the chatter. None of it matters, anyway. He’s still exhausted from the mission, and he would already be sleeping in his room if his stomach hadn’t insisted it was hungry. It doesn’t seem quite so hungry now that it’s faced with the prospect of eating actual food, but at this point, one more problem on the list hardly makes any difference.
“Perhaps his Highness has changed his mind about joining us for dinner,” Dedue says, prompting a brief lull in the already subdued noises from the table as the remaining Lions fail to think of anything to say in response. Uncaring, Dedue marches off to the dorms without further delay. Sylvain wonders if he feels his classmates’ eyes on his back as he leaves.
Even without Dedue’s worry adding to the tension, the atmosphere at the Blue Lions’ table is somber. Ashe focuses mainly on his food, but every minute or so, Sylvain catches him casting a concerned glance about the table. Mercedes and Annette try to engage in their usual chit-chat, but every attempt feels flat. Felix and Ingrid are the closest to their normal, but… well, their normal hasn’t ever really been normal at all.
“At least that thug had the decency to show his true colours before we killed him,” grumbles Felix. “Good to see him contribute something worthwhile for once in his life.”
“Felix,” says Ingrid, “a man is dead.”
“Tch. Good Riddance.”
“Felix!”
“And you expect me to defend a monster like him?” Felix growls.
Sylvain is happy to have sidestepped this particular conversation.
“Of course I don’t expect you to defend Miklan,” sighs Ingrid. “Goddess knows I hated him too. But you can still at least try to speak respectfully.”
“Really, Ingrid? Why do him the courtesy?” Felix scoffs. “He’s always been a vile little creature right down to his bones, and we’ve always known it. Now he’s finally gone and proven our point.”
Ingrid’s reply is drowned out by a loud hissing in Sylvain’s ear.
“So I was born a monster.” Miklan’s voice resonates through Sylvain’s skull. “What does that make you, I wonder?”
Sylvain startles violently, knocking his glass of water clean off the table as he whips around in search of the voice’s source.
All he sees is Ashe ducking out of the way of his shoulder, and a lone hand nimbly snatching the glass from the air before it can spill. It takes him a moment to understand why the rest of his classmates do nothing – well, no, most of them do spare him brief, pitying glances – but the realization hits painfully: it seems his paranoid hallucinations of Miklan are worse than ever. Why stop at seeing him when he can hear him, too? Just great!
“Why haven’t you eaten your vegetables.”
The Professor’s words don’t even register as a question in that tone of voice. They nod solemnly in response to the other students’ greetings as they take the seat opposite him, placing his glass gently back by his plate.
Sylvain’s heart warms a little at the gesture, but if he’s honest, his hands are shaking too much to try to drink from it again.
After a few too many moments under the Professor’s scrutiny, he realizes he should probably answer. “Oh, you know how it is, Professor. It’s no big deal or anything, but today was just…” He trails off, fumbling for a decent excuse – preferably one that doesn’t paint him as insane.
They continue to look at him expectantly.
“Today was just. Um. A lot, you know? I don’t feel all that hungry anymore.”
“And the water?”
“Huh?”
“You nearly caused quite a mess.”
“Oh. I guess I’m just clumsy.” He gives the steadiest smile he can manage, even as something about the line of inquiry feels awfully sudden. Why the piercing look? “Seems Annette’s a little contagious.”
The Professor shifts their attention to the empty space beside him, and Sylvain takes the opportunity to look at his hands and gauge how visibly he was rattled.
Too visibly, he concludes.
The concern in Ashe’s eyes confirms it. Somehow, Ashe’s attempt at a comforting smile only makes him feel worse. “I don’t know, Sylvain, I think the Professor might have just snuck up on you.”
Sylvain feels his mood flagging as Ashe’s attempt at a joking tone comes off more tired than lighthearted.
The Professor shakes their head. “No. That wasn’t it.”
A distant corner of Sylvain’s mind marks that level of certainty as odd, but the rest of him decides it’s time to quit while he’s ahead. Or at least before he falls further behind. He can’t just tell the truth – Ashe was scared enough today even without any ghost stories, and the last thing Sylvain needs is for people to start thinking he’s followed his brother off the deep end. Best to just get out.
“I don’t know, guys,” he finds himself saying. “I’m just not feeling great.”
Ashe, if no one else, seems to take that response seriously. “Hmm. You know, now that you mention it, I think you’re right. You don’t look so good. Maybe you should go to bed early – a little extra rest can make a whole world of difference.” He smiles again. “Don’t worry about your dishes, I’ll take care of them this time.”
Sylvain thinks he actually manages to smile back for real as he gets up to leave.
“You’re eating tomorrow’s vegetables,” the Professor declares flatly as he goes.
If he can stomach it? Gladly.