Work Text:
Felix had lost sight of Sylvain somewhere behind a cluster of jagged rocks.
That’s not specific, he knows. But everything in Ailell looks the damn same. Usually, he’d be able to just look for Sylvain’s horse, but he’d left her back at camp.
“She won’t do well in this heat,” he’d said. “I don’t want to do that to her.”
Felix hates Sylvain and his fucking martyr complex.
The battle’s over. Mostly. Gwendal’s dead, but that doesn’t stop a few stragglers from still trying to fight back, the news of the battle’s end slow to reach the ends of a place like this.
He should head out. He’s supposed to— the others are limping back together, regrouping to nurse their wounds before they return to camp. He spots Mercedes in a clump of injured warriors, doing her best to heal all of them; Ingrid tending to a singe on her pegasus’ wing; the professor surveying them all with an impassive stare. The boar lingers at their side, eye dark. Felix’s father is there.
All these people, and no Sylvain.
Felix’s legs feel like lead. His body aches. His sword arm stings. But he rests his hand on the grip of his sword and forces himself back out into the smoke, one step at a time.
The ground’s blanketed in the dead. Gwendal’s body stands out like a beacon, the banner of House Rowe planted next to his chest where the professor had run him through. Sylvain was that way, Felix thinks. He doesn’t remember.
“Sylvain, we’re gonna leave without you if you don’t hurry back,” he yells.
Rocks and obsidian shards crunch under his boots. There’s going to be grit stuck in his soles for ages.
Sylvain’ll have to help me clean them when he gets back, Felix thinks. He takes two more steps before he feels suddenly— dizzyingly— sick.
When he gets back.
Felix has never not known where Sylvain was during a battle. They tend to stick together. Someone has to keep an eye on the idiot, after all. Even if they do get separated, Sylvain's always nearby, galloping up to Felix’s side on his horse’s back with a shit-eating grin and bloodstained armor.
“Don’t worry, handsome. None of it is mine,”
“I’d be more inclined to believe you if you actually spent any time training. Get off your horse before you collapse from exhaustion.”
Now here he is; the end of the battle, no horse, and no Sylvain.
“Sylvain,” he croaks. His voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again; “Sylvain!”
No answer. No fucking answer. His legs freeze up despite the heat. Refuse to move when Felix tells them to. He stands there, numb, listening to the echo of his voice become swallowed by the haze.
He can’t find him. He can’t find Sylvain. How is he supposed to find anything in this place? Felix can’t bring himself to look down at the dead for fear he’ll find what he’s looking for there.
A faint glow catches his eye.
Sylvain hates crests. He’s said so on more than one occasion; Felix agrees, more on principle than anything, because he doesn’t really have any opinions on his. It’s just a tool. In this moment, though, he could fall to his knees before the goddess and praise her for the blessings of crests and mean every word. Put him in a church and he’d sing a hymn. The fucking Lance of Ruin (of all damn things) lies abandoned in the ash, pulsing and twitching like an arrhythmic heartbeat. Felix’s own heart beats in a similar rhythm.
Suddenly, he can’t move fast enough. He nearly trips over the damn lance on his way to Sylvain’s side— Sylvain, eyes half-closed, head pillowed on the corpse of a soldier Felix doesn’t recognize, hand draped lazily over his waist like he’s just resting.
“Sylvain,” he hisses.
The bastard in question blinks his eyes open. His lips twitch up into a grin that Felix hates. He’s so damn relieved to see it.
“Hey, Fe,” he rasps. His hand twitches. “Is it hot in here, or is it just you?”
Everything Felix wants— wanted— to say to him (this is why you should train more, why the hell did you leave your horse behind, how did you get taken down so easily, why did you leave me alone) dies in his throat. He feels like he’s forgotten anything but Sylvain’s name as he stares down at his oldest friend, smiling like there’s nothing wrong in the world, with a piece of rock the size of a heart embedded firmly in his side.
“Sylvain,” he says, again.
“Help me off this guy?” Sylvain asks. “I feel bad lying on top of him, even if he might’ve been an enemy. I’d do it myself, but—” he tries to shrug. It comes out more of a twitch. Felix’s stomach flips— “I’m a little out of it.”
“How did this happen?” Felix demands. He drops to his knees, cradles Sylvain’s head in his hand and shifts him into his arms. Sylvain groans, hand falling from his side to land limply in the dirt. “Who— how—”
“Mage,” Sylvain grits out. “Bolganone. Blew up some of the ground— you see where it ended up.” His head lolls to the side. “Saints, you’re gorgeous.”
“Sylvain.”
“Felix,” Sylvain mimics. “Did we… win? Your dad make it out alright?”
“Shut the fuck up. We’re leaving now. If you don’t get up we’re leaving you behind.”
“We don’t have enough room in the wagon for a corpse,” Sylvain says.
“Shut up, Sylvain.”
“Felix. Fe.” Sylvain blinks up at him. “‘S not a good wound, is it? I’m not feeling too hot.” A dry chuckle. “Aside from the obvious.”
“Stop talking. Save your energy.” Felix shoulders his arm, tries to block out the way Sylvain whimpers when he’s jostled. He can worry about pain later. He needs to keep Sylvain alive now. “Work with me Sylvain, please. Mercedes is just over there.”
“I can’t move,” Sylvain says, honestly.
Felix’s grip tightens. “I’ll carry you.”
“I’m a head taller.”
“I’ll fucking drag you, then. If that’s what it takes.”
Sylvain doesn’t say anything.
“Damn it, Sylvain— now’s not the time for your self-sacrificial nonsense,” Felix hisses. He yanks his cape off, bunches it up and presses it to Sylvain’s side. “Hold this. I’m getting you back to camp, you hear me?”
He staggers to his feet, Sylvain a dead weight on his back. What feels like an endless expanse of Ailell stretches out ahead of him. Silently, he curses Sylvain for collapsing so far away. Then (under his breath), he does it aloud.
“Sorry,” Sylvain mutters.
“This’ll teach you not to go running off without backup,” Felix says, instead of please don’t leave without me.
Sylvain’s feet drag across the rocks. Felix keeps one arm around his waist, the cape pinned between the two of them— oh, Saints, he can feel the rock through the fabric, that’s inside Sylvain— like a bandage. The best bandage he can manage right now. It only needs to hold long enough to get them back to Mercedes.
“I have a ring,” Sylvain rasps, out of nowhere, and Felix nearly sends them both toppling into the lava.
“Sylvain,” he says, then stops, because what is he supposed to say?
“I think it’s your size. I guessed.” Sylvain huffs out a laugh. “Who’da thought jewelers could be so hard to come by during a war? The more you know, I guess.”
“Sylvain.”
“I was gonna propose to you. Properly,” he continues, as if he hadn’t heard the break in Felix’s voice. “Nothing too dramatic. I thought you’d hate that. Just something, you know… nice.”
He has the audacity to sound… calm. Amused, even, like he’s not giving Felix a deathbed confession. A deathbed proposal, no less. “Thought I’d at least ask before the war was over. Y’know— in case we didn’t get another chance to.”
“Sylvain.” Felix finds his voice again. “Sylvain, stop.”
“It’ll probably sell well, if you don’t want it. Maybe buy some good food for the soldiers— a new blade for you, even. Something more practical. I—”
“Sylvain!”
He stops talking. Finally.
“Stop talking like you’re not gonna get a chance to do— any of that,” Felix grits out. He hauls Sylvain closer. Tighter. He doesn’t want to drop him. “You’re going to make it out of this alive, you hear me? Stop babbling and save your energy.”
“I’ve got it on me,” Sylvain rasps. He paws at his glove and manages to tug it loose. There, glinting on his finger, is a gold ring, a simple rectangular ruby set in its center. It looks far too pretty in the Ailell firelight. Sylvain thumbs at it and gets it to slip off. “‘S yours. It’s yours, Felix.”
“Stop that,” Felix snaps. “Keep it. Give it to me properly, like you said. I’m not taking it like—” his voice breaks— “like this.”
“I don’t want to lose it. Please. Watch it for me.”
Felix, against his better judgment, allows Sylvain to press it into his palm. He curls his fingers around it, fist digging into Sylvain’s side and his heart thundering in his throat.
“You can’t go making new promises if you’re about to break our old one,” Felix says.
“Wanted you to have it,” Sylvain slurs. His weight seems to double. “Didn’t want someone to find it and… get the wrong idea.”
“Get up. Sylvain, you idiot— draining your energy talking like that, saints, it’s a miracle you’ve lived this long—”
Sylvain’s head drops against his shoulder. “Mm.”
Felix can see familiar figures in the distance— the professor’s bright green hair, the familiar glow of Mercedes’ healing magic— and his pace quickens. He hikes Sylvain’s arm more firmly around his shoulder.
“Healer!” he yells. He clears his throat and tries again— “HEALER! I NEED A HEALER, PLEASE—”
The professor gets there first. They shift the bulk of Sylvain’s weight across their shoulders, and Felix bites back the urge to snap and tell them to get back. He has this irrational, crawling feeling, skittering under his skin like a spider, that if he lets Sylvain go he’ll never get him back. Never see him again. The ring— Sylvain’s ring, his ring— digs into his palm so hard Felix thinks it’ll bruise.
He lets the professor take Sylvain and his legs to give out. His cape lands in a heap on the ground, the blue fabric stained to purple with blood, but all he can focus on is the way Sylvain’s chest heaves for air and his eyes stare blankly at nothing until the professor sweeps him away to Mercedes’ side.
The worst part is waiting.
He’s numb the entire march back to camp, numb all throughout dinner (he tastes nothing), numb while he sits by the dying fire. His joints creak when he loosens his grip on the ring; sure enough, there’s a purple indent of it left in his palm.
It glints innocuously up at him.
Waiting is hard. Out on the battlefield, you know they’re dead. It hurts, but at least you know. Having someone die even when you’ve done everything you can to save them—
Mercedes hadn’t even said anything close to a reassurance. She’d simply pulled Annette to her side and they rushed into the medical tent. Where they’d been since they got back.
The ring, despite everything, feels cold in his palm.
They have to march back to the monastery the next day, despite the boar’s protests that they capture the Imperial capital. The professor insists they need time to recover and plan for their next attack. Felix helps tear tents down to keep his mind off of Sylvain. It doesn’t work.
The injured are carried in one of their wagons. Felix catches a glimpse of Sylvain’s cot as he’s carried out, covered in white like a shroud. He knows they’re just bandages, but his heart still skips a beat.
He grabs Mercedes’ arm on her way out of the tent. He barely gets a chance to open his mouth before she fixes him with a weary smile.
“I don’t know,” she says. “He’ll have a better chance if we get him back to the monastery.”
He gets tasked with guiding Sylvain’s horse back, because he’s still too injured to ride.
Felix is embarrassed to admit he finds comfort in steadying himself against Lady’s side. She huffs softly and nudges at his shoulder as if to say, what are you doing here?
“Time to head out,” Felix says, even though Lady’s a horse and can’t respond. He keeps the ring in his grip the whole march back, clenched tightly enough to hurt. It’s all he can focus on.
The first night back at the monastery, he can’t sleep.
Sylvain had meant to propose to him.
Sylvain had a ring. In the middle of a war.
He’d— he’d gotten it custom-made, specifically for Felix, in the middle of a war. When did he have the time to do that? How? Felix rolls over in bed and stares at the offending piece of jewelry on his nightstand, barely visible in the dark but there nonetheless.
Like a man possessed, he reaches for it.
It fits perfectly.
Felix thumbs over the jewel, feeling more than seeing how it sits on his finger. The sensation is unfamiliar. Something he’ll have to get used to. For a moment, he allows himself to imagine what a lifetime after the war could look like. A lifetime with Sylvain, if he wants it. He does.
Sylvain, in the infirmary. Sylvain, with a rock in his side; Sylvain, dead weight across Felix’s back. I don’t know. He’ll have a better chance if we get him back to the monastery.
He yanks the ring off, but can’t bring himself to do anything more than set it gently on his nightstand.
A knock at his door wakes him up in the middle of the night.
“He’s awake,” Mercedes says, bags under her eyes and a soft smile on her face. Felix is halfway down the hall before she can say anything else.
Sylvain is indeed awake. He’s chatting to Annette, who’s sitting on the end of his bed and knocking her heels against the frame. They both look up when he enters— Annette mutters something quietly and slips out to Mercedes’ side. Felix isn’t really paying attention.
“Hey, Fe.”
Sylvain looks— he looks like he’s back from the dead, that’s what he looks like. He’s got bandages all around his torso and a brace on his hip to keep his leg straight. Even though he’s been out for the past few days, he looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. Felix has never wanted to kiss him so badly.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Felix says. “I have a ring. Really, Sylvain? A deathbed proposal?”
“You know I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic,” Sylvain says. He tries for a smile and gets about halfway there.
“You almost died.” All he’s wanted to do since Sylvain was dragged away in the professor’s arms was get him back, hold him, but now that he’s here Felix can’t bring himself to step any closer to the bed. “You would’ve, if I hadn’t found you. What were you thinking?”
“I was hoping a handsome warrior would come sweep me off to safety,” Sylvain quips. “How lucky I am that you went looking for me, hm? Missed my insufferable face that much?”
“Shut up.” Felix does step forward then; grabs Sylvain by the shoulders and— well, he doesn’t shake him, because Sylvain’s injured, but he wants to. “Sylvain, stop fucking joking. Does your life really mean that little to you?”
Sylvain’s smile freezes on his face. He stares up at Felix wordlessly for one, two, three long seconds before he swallows and looks away.
“When the mage hit me, I just… I dunno. Went down.” He lets his head roll to the side. “I wasn’t looking for it, but when it happened, I was thinking; well, best if it’s me, y’know?”
“No,” Felix snaps. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be best if it was you. Not to me.”
Sylvain flinches.
“Are you going to follow through with your fucking proposal or what?” he demands. “You were so vocal about it when you were bleeding out. Sounded like you’d been planning it for a while, too. Too much of a coward to actually follow through?”
“I didn’t know what you’d think.” Sylvain sounds… small. Fragile, like glass. Worse than he did when he was dying. “Didn’t wanna burden you with something else when you already had your hands full dealing with the war and your father and Dimitri and all that.”
“Oh, so all that about wanting to propose before the war was over was all just talk? Or did you seriously decide that the Ailell battlefield was really your best choice?”
“Felix—”
“I listened to you pour your fucking heart out a few days ago because you thought you were dying.” Felix’s voice snaps in two. “You thought you were about to— to die in my arms, and the worst part is that you seemed like you’d come to terms with it. Did you seriously think that’s what I wanted? You to drop all that on me and die so you didn’t have to deal with it?”
Sylvain’s staring at him.
“You said you would’ve proposed properly.” He digs the ring out of his pocket. He didn’t even know when it had gotten in there. “Considering how you almost broke our other promise to each other, you’d better not fall through on this one, too.”
“You… want this?” Sylvain sounds disbelieving. Like he’s cupping a bubble and doesn’t know when it’ll burst. “Want me?”
“Would I have kept the ring if I didn’t?”
“I don’t know. I thought—” Sylvain scrubs his palm over his eyes. “I don’t— I don’t know what I thought.”
Felix is still holding the ring out between the two of them. “Are you going to take this back and propose to me properly or do I have to do it myself?”
That startles a laugh out of Sylvain. “I don’t think you can propose to me with my own ring.”
“Then I’ll get my own, or something.” A sapphire to Sylvain’s ruby. Matching. Felix doesn’t know— he’ll find something, even if it’s a placeholder. He can always replace it after the war.
“I’m not letting you get the best of me,” Sylvain replies. “I had a ring first.”
“A ring you’re not using.”
Sylvain doesn’t take the ring back. He closes his hands around it instead, pushing it back towards Felix. His face softens. “Felix Hugo Fraldarius,” he says, with a tenderness that kicks Felix’s pulse into overdrive, “I meant what I said when I called this ring yours. It is.” A pause— “...will you marry me?”
“You’re a fool, Sylvain,” Felix says, but kisses him anyway. It’s as much of a yes as anything. “And you’re not going to die. Not without me.”
“Is that a promise?”
“You know it is.” He shoves the ring onto his finger— he’s not taking it off again— and smashes their lips back together. “If you’re going to be stubborn about breaking it, consider this a renewal. Now you’re really and truly bound to not dying without me.”
Sylvain laughs breathlessly. “Wasn’t planning on it, sweetheart,” he says, despite the healing hole in his side and the bags under his eyes. Felix doesn’t believe him, but he’s here now and that has to count for something.
Sylvain doesn’t die. Felix makes sure of it— Sylvain does spend a week in the infirmary, but he heals well enough.
(“Barely even a scar,” Sylvain brags, later, when they’re tangled up in Felix’s bed together. Felix runs his hand over the rough patch of skin where the rock had been embedded and says nothing.)
Sylvain doesn’t die, but Rodrigue does.
He dies defending the boar, no less. Felix turns from across the field to see him die in Dimitri’s arms without so much as a goodbye.
Died like a true knight. Defending his king. Felix feels sick.
There’s no time for a proper burial. They dig a grave just outside of the monastery and bury Rodrigue there. Dimitri himself wields the shovel. The grave’s marked by a simple stone, no time for any proper honors. He’s buried in a shroud of his own cloak.
Felix’s father’s death, if nothing else, snaps Dimitri back to his senses.
They’re getting somewhere, finally. Felix should be happy he’s no longer following in the trail of a beast. He finds himself in the training grounds instead, cleaving training dummies in two and dulling his blade in the process.
“Felix.”
Felix jams his sword in a dummy’s chest and whirls around. Sylvain’s there, standing in the deep shadows of the columns, hair gleaming like sunfire.
“He’s dead,” Felix snaps, instead of hello Sylvain or what are you doing here?. “He threw his life away without a second thought. For Dimitri.”
Sylvain, to his credit, doesn’t try to placate them. He stands there and listens, bearing the brunt of Felix’s emotions even though nobody had asked him to. He listens silently, still bandaged from battle, his hands limp at his sides.
“He left.” Felix shoves his hands into his hair. “He— I don’t—”
What is he supposed to say?
“Felix.” Sylvain tugs his hands free and winds their fingers together. He brushes his thumb over his ring, Felix’s ring, their ring, and twists it back in place. “Let’s go to bed.”
It’s not a proposition. Felix knows full well what those sound like. He wants to snap back, wants to say what do you know about what I need, but he swallows down his pride and follows Sylvain back to his room.
He buries his face in Sylvain’s shoulder as soon as they’re in the bed. Hiding from the world has never solved anyone’s problems. Felix won’t allow himself that delusion. But— for just a moment— he lets everything narrow down to how it feels to be tangled up with Sylvain in the evening light, an arm over his waist and a hand in his hair.
“You can cry if you need to.”
“I don’t think I can,” Felix answers, his voice muffled by Sylvain’s shirt.
Sylvain doesn’t push it. He keeps Felix close, even though his arm must definitely be losing circulation by now, and Felix lets his steady breathing rock them both to sleep.
Some years later, he wakes up in those same arms— softened by retirement— under an early morning sun and a feeling of contentment that is no longer foreign in his chest.
Sylvain sleeps late. He always does— he’s earned that luxury. Felix doesn’t wake him. Instead, he indulges in a few more moments of quiet warmth, admiring how the sapphire ring on Sylvain’s finger catches the light.
“Morning, sweetheart,” Sylvain says
His husband shifts and blinks himself awake, gazing at Felix with bleary eyes and a tender smile. Felix stares back, giving himself all of three more seconds of luxury before he pushes Sylvain’s face away.
“I’m not letting you trap me in this bed again all day,” he gripes. “I have things to do.”
“Things that are more important than doing your beautiful husband?” Sylvain asks.
Felix shoves his head into the pillow. “Yes, you insufferable fool. Much more important.”
“I’m heartbroken. Crushed, Fe, really.” Sylvain throws an arm over his eyes. “I’ll die of unrequited love any moment now.”
“How tragic,” Felix deadpans, but his resolve crumbles as he tugs Sylvain’s arm aside and kisses him anyway.