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Chapter Text

Imperial Year 1185 - THE VALLEY OF TORMENT

     Half-molten rocks sizzled against regulation plate metal and leather. A smoke-veiled Lord Gwendal shouted inaudible orders while dividing the army into offensive positions the way a butcher carves a particularly prized slab of meat: piece-by-piece—meticulously.

     Ashe tested his bowstring for perhaps the seventieth time that afternoon. He was, like always, positioned near the rear of the army. It would be a while before Lord Gwendal would address him, if he would at all.

     Across the valley, the enemy’s army prepared. The Crest of Flames banner cut through the haze and heat, and no matter where Ashe looked, it always seemed to be in his line of sight.

     “How long do you think this’ll take?” the banner for House Rowe asked. Ashe blinked. Looked down. A brunette boy who couldn’t have been much older than Lysithea was staring up at him. He held the banner (twice his size) in freckled hands, and when he shuffled, light from the fires around him caused the polished short sword at his hip to glint.

     “I’m not sure,” Ashe replied honestly. “It depends on whether the enemy decides to walk into the ambush or retreat.”

     “They can retreat?” Ashe almost winced at the hope in his voice. This was a child looking for payment, not a soldier; not a knight. “Then we can just go home?”

     “Then we chase them.”

     The boy did not reply.

     “Steel yourself,” he found himself offering. The boy’s body grew rigid– bad tactic. Ashe put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He was careful not to jostle the banner, although the teen’s shaking was doing that well enough. He whispered: “Once you place the banner, keep a tight grip on your sword and focus on protecting yourself. You’ll get through this.”

     The boy’s grip on the banner eased up a little. Ashe smiled at him. After a moment, the boy nodded back. His shaking slowed.

     A wyvern was flying in the distance, and Ashe’s hand went to his arrows. Firing from here would be easier. Ashe wouldn’t have to see the face of who he was killing–he would only have to wonder if he knew them. A bead of sweat ran down the back of his neck as he willed his aim to steady. The wyvern disappeared behind a pillar of smoke and he threw the arrow back into the quiver with a sigh. Not yet.

     The Crest of Flames banner continued to wave.

     “You look sad.”

     Ashe winced. The boy had placed the Rowe banner somewhere and was looking at him.

     “I’m alright. This part of battle is just stressful. The waiting, you know?” he backpedaled, not wanting to dishearten the boy any more than he already had. “Of course, just the waiting is the stuff of poems. In this location, I mean. Flames lend themselves well to–”

     “You’re thinking about poetry? Now?”

     Ashe frowned. Before he could regale this child with the benefits of reading epic poetry– for morale of course– he was interrupted.

     “Please stop.” The boy sounded lost. “I thought you were scared too. That’s why I talked to you– you were making this scared face, but you’re not scared at all. You’re all comfortable now.”

     Ashe swallowed. “I wouldn’t say comfortable.”

     “No, you are. It’s in your eyes– you’re like all the other soldiers here. How many battles have you been on?”

     “A few,” Ashe gently replied, trying to wave off five years of war.

     “I don’t understand at all. Why are you still doing this? Haven’t you made enough by now?”

     Ashe shook his head. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t about the money. Well, it mostly wasn’t about the money.

     “I’m a knight by choice.”

     “Why would you ever want to be a knight?”

     Ashe’s reply was drowned out by a fearsome shout and clopping hooves.

     “Look alive, boys!”

     He was riding a white horse, his silver plate armor reflecting the shining pools of lava like it had been sculpted from liquid flame. Grey hair was glued to the back of his neck with sweat and soot, but he was smiling a carefree, even youthful, smile as he held his lance aloft. Ashe felt himself exhale, exhilarated, before he could stop himself.

     Lona—no. Lord Gwendal. 

     Look! Ashe wanted to shake his companion until his head bobbed up and down like a ragdoll. Look at that! Don’t you see!?

     There was a pressure on Ashe’s arm; the boy had involuntarily grabbed his sleeve. He was staring at Lord Gwendal with a new light in his eyes.

     A victorious grin spread across Ashe’s face. He gave the boy a little nudge. “Lift your sword.”

     “What?”

     “It’s time for the Grey Lion’s famous battle cry.”

     As if to demonstrate, lifted his bow in the air, matching Gwendal’s lance as best he could. Tentatively, the young soldier beside him raised his sword with him.

     “Ready?”

     “All together now,” Gwendal bellowed. “For Rowe!”

     “For Rowe!” Ashe echoed, voice blending cacophonously with the rest of the scattered army. Their voices echoed through the valley, cutting through the volcanic noise as if it were a baby’s rattle.

     The Crest of Flames banner still stood, but Ashe felt, for the moment, that he didn’t have to look at it.

     “Wow,” the boy whispered, after.

     “I know,” Ashe replied. His body felt awake and lighter than it had since he first saw the enemy. “I know.”

     They were losing.

     Claude’s troops were organized, and relentless. It took everything they had to hold the line and prevent them from advancing.

     At this point, breathing simply wasn’t an option. Swords clashed; soot was on everyone’s faces; blood and skin and fire saturated the air. It felt like madness. Ashe’s fingers were past trembling. They bled on his bowstrings.

     The Valley itself wouldn’t allow any humans, regardless of banners, to stay here much longer. Ashe struggled to see through the grime that had built up on his forehead. His boots, probably the most expensive thing he owned, were melting.

     Claude was a yellow terror, his massive wyvern plucking fully-armored Rowe soldiers from where they stood and dropping them into pits of lava like they were pebbles in a lake. They screamed as they fell.

     They needed something to turn this around, or none of them would be going home.

     Then came the wyvern above them: its bulky form covering Ashe and the boy beside him in a shadowy blanket. It wasn’t Claude’s– the color was different. The wings were tilted down. It was looking to land. It would land faster than Ashe could fire. If they were still, maybe they could catch it then.

     “Don’t move,” Ashe whispered, but his companion was already running.

     “We have to run!”

     “No, please listen to me!” He reached for the teen’s arm. A glint of axe metal and the teen was swiftly decapitated. His body fell to the ground in two separate, awful, thuds. Ashe wished he had a name to call out. His heart beat in his ears. Tears pricked at his eyes, but he didn’t have time for them.

     The wyvern rider was exerting herself, pink hair frizzing in a way it never had in Ashe’s memory. The sight was as foreign as she was familiar: Hilda. Ashe had trained with her, but they had never really had much of a conversation. A messed-up part of him was grateful for that, as now she had to die. He pulled his arrow back and prepared to fire as she moved to strike another soldier. Enemy.

     “Not so fast, Ashe!”

     Ally, Ashe’s heart screamed, entirely incorrectly. He fumbled at the familiar voice, letting loose the arrow. Hilda squeaked as it flew past her ear, barely managing to dodge. If Ashe hadn’t been distracted–

     At the telltale crackle in the air that came with magic. Ashe leapt out of the way and felt something in his heart shatter and float around helplessly.

     “Damn, I missed.”

     And Ashe was back at the academy trying to read while Sylvain tried to convince him to flirt with one of the visiting priestesses. Only Sylvain wasn’t in uniform, and Ashe wasn’t holding a book. Ashe had a bow in his hand, and they were going to kill each other.

     “Sylvain,” Ashe said, and didn’t miss the hurt that passed across his former classmate’s eyes.

     His armor was crafted from a black material Ashe knew cost more than he had ever stolen or owned. The shoulders pointed out at strange jagged angles. His fingers were glowing. Ashe never had him pegged as a magic user. He was intelligent, sure, but never wanted to let anyone know. A lot could change in five years.

     “I guess if I get to say your name to throw you off, you get to say mine too. Sorry about the low-blow Ashe. Let’s do this fairly, yeah?”

     Ashe was frozen. Sylvain’s face was relaxed, he was smiling an empty smile that Ashe felt carve into his chest.

     “Look, I don’t want to do this either. It doesn’t have to be like this, you know…”

     Sylvain kept talking, but Ashe couldn’t hear him over his hands. His fingers were still glowing, steadily charging a spell. He had seen him do this to bandits before, distract with pretty words and then strike. It was one of his scariest qualities on the battlefield, and now Ashe was going to be a victim to it.

     “I am a knight in service to Lord Gwendal of House Rowe,” Ashe announced over Sylvain’s insincere speech, not once taking his eyes off the charging spell. He refused to let his voice waver. “Who are you serving, Sylvain?”

     Sylvain fingers twitched, and that hesitation was enough to allow Ashe to draw his bow back and aim not for him, but Hilda.

     The arrow pierced the wyvern’s throat, and Hilda cursed loudly. Soot and lava flew into the air, and Ashe toppled over at the force of the roaring wyvern’s beating wings. Smoke filled his mouth and he choked, landing on top of the corpse of the teen from earlier. Ashe only vaguely registered Hilda and Sylvain’s frantic conversation, Hilda leaping off the rampaging wyvern, tossing Sylvain something long and thin and running in the opposite direction, weaving through what remained of Gwendal’s forces to—what?

     Sylvain’s lance was at his throat before he could retrieve his bow, which had slipped out of his fingers. Ashe’s hands twitched uselessly against his dead friend’s still-warm body.

     “Please don’t move,” Sylvain said. He looked ridiculous, clearly exhausted, covered in soot and wielding the lance of ruin on foot when he was clearly meant to be on a horse, but Ashe was in no position to comment. “You’re unarmed, Ashe. Gwendal’s going not going to make it through this, so just give it up. Surrender.”

     Gwendal? Ashe thought, and a chill spread in his chest. That was where Hilda was headed. The battle would end. Gwendal would die. House Rowe would lose one of its bravest knights; a knight Ashe had sworn an oath of loyalty to. A knight Ashe had dedicated his life to serving—no. No. This couldn’t happen. Ashe wouldn’t let that happen.

     Ashe wrenched the sword from where it was still clutched tight in his dead companion’s hands, and with all the strength he could muster knocked the Lance of Ruin into a nearby lava pit.

     “Shit–!”

     “Sylvain!” Another voice. Ashe winced. Gwendal didn’t have time for this.

     It was like stabbing anyone else, the foreign blade slid inside Sylvain easily enough that Ashe felt empty. Ashe didn’t want to consider if the strike was lethal. He didn’t want to consider anything at all. He had a goal.

     Sylvain sputtered something, but Ashe was already shoving him off, pulling the sword from his side in barely enough time to block a strike aimed straight for his throat.

     Felix’s eyes were murderous, and not to be avoided. His strikes fast and deadly. Ashe was far from a swordsman, every bit of focus he still possessed was put toward holding onto his blade and not being cut to pieces.

     Blood fell from a newly blossoming wound in his chest, and Ashe stumbled backward, refusing to fall. His grip on the stolen sword tightened.

     “Still standing?” Felix asked, but his voice was frigid. “We’ll change that.”

     “Felix wait–” Ashe began.

     “You drew first blood, deal with the consequences.”

     First blood. Ashe’s stomach churned. There was a flash of white magic behind Felix, and Ashe realized that someone was healing Sylvain. He was surprised by the contradictory relief that filled him. He tried to stamp it out. Silence it. He had made an oath. He was a knight.

     “I can’t turn back.” Ashe announced, more to himself than anyone. “I’m sorry.”

     “Enough words.”

     Another strike, this one piercing Ashe’s shoulder. Ashe only felt it after his left hand was hanging limp at his side. It burned. This was terrifying. Felix was terrifying. Ashe had never felt more like a child: frightened and yet awestruck. He knew he wasn’t going to survive this. His vision was blurring. Taking a shallow breath, he spoke–

     “You know—you really are just like the knight in the story.”

     –and Ashe’s sword met flesh. Ashe wasn’t certain which of them looked more surprised. Felix’s eyes were wide, lost, as he looked at the sword piercing through his chest. Ashe felt sick.

     “Felix!” Sylvain. Ashe let go of the sword where it was stuck inside Felix. Numbness spread through his hands all the way to his knees. They both stumbled backward. Felix’s legs gave out, but Sylvain was ready for him. Light from a physic spell, and Sylvain’s own basic healing magic surrounded them both.

     Ashe was not so lucky. He hit the scorched earth hard, immobile left arm screaming at the heat and impact. His hands clumsily caught on the hot coals in a sorry attempt to shield his face; but what was the point, his siblings would never see his body anyway.

     His vision clouded, and abruptly, he stopped feeling pain altogether. This was it. A knight’s end. Focus blurred. His mind drifted. He hoped Lonato would be proud of him. What he stood for, what he did. His mind emptied, until one crystal-clear thought remained. It was desperate, secret:

     I don’t want to die. Ashe thought. I don’t want to…

     …

     Voices. Hazy. Distant.

     “What are you going to do?”

     “I’m going to ask him.”

     “Ask him what? My friend, you can’t just ask an enemy soldier–“

     “I can.”

     “You can’t, but– I’m wasting my breath. You’re just going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

     White light. Ashe cried out at the abrupt return of sensation. He was bleeding. It hurt like hell. Someone was gripping his collar.

     “Ashe, look at me. Now.”

     A woman’s voice. Empty. Forceful. Ashe winced. He knew this voice. His mind sluggishly registered the feeling of something blunt at his throat. Ashe looked into a pair of eyes he had dreamed about more than he was proud to admit.

     “Prof…essor?”

     She was supposed to be dead, but Ashe had heard rumors. Had seen her crest somewhere. He was glad she was okay.

     She shook him, hard. Ashe’s eyes opened, wide. “Guh– why!?”

     Something vague and regretful passed across her face.

     “Sorry, Ashe. Don’t fall asleep. Listen to me. Tell me you’re listening.”

     Ashe tried to nod, but then found he couldn’t move his head. Whatever was pressed against his throat was large enough to lock him in place. His head felt hazy again, but he forced his eyes to stay open, for her. It was really hot, why was it so hot?

     “I‘m listening.”

     “Gwendal is dead. Are you still going to attack us?”

     Gwendal…dead? Who? Only one face came to mind.

     “…Lon…ato…?”

     He felt the Professor’s frustrated exhale, cool against his burning face.

     “This isn’t working. I’m healing him more.”

     “Hang on, now—”

     Another flash of white light, Ashe made a weak sound in the back of his throat as more wounds made themselves apparent. His chest hurt, but with the pain came clarity. Ashe remembered the battle. Remembered his nameless friend. Remembered the feeling of Sylvain and Felix’s blood on his hands, and for what? He had failed. Again. Lord Gwendal. Tears came to Ashe’s eyes. He refused to let them fall. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded.

     “My friend, I really don’t think anything he says like this is going to be reliable…”

     A yellow blur, somewhere behind Byleth’s left shoulder. Claude, Ashe realized. He was holding a basic iron axe to Ashe’s throat. The wood was under his chin, and the blade was pressed against his jugular. A spark of fear ran through Ashe’s body at what that meant.

     “This is a test, isn’t it?” Ashe asked. His voice felt raw.

     “It is,” the Professor confirmed. “We need to know you can be on our side again. You could die here, Ashe. You can join us, and live.”

     “Sylvain and Felix…”

     “Are healed now. They’ll be fine.”

     The professor’s face was starting to blur at the edges. Ashe blinked a few times, trying to clarify. She was covered in sweat and soot too. They all matched, which was kind of nice.

     “That’s good,” Ashe mumbled.

     Claude huffed out a sigh, and Ashe bit his tongue to wake up further. He had to focus.

     “Ashe. You still have to answer my question. Will you join us?”

     There was a correct answer to this question. Ashe knew it.

     “Yes.”

     “That’s good enough for me,” the professor said. “Lower your axe Claude.”

     Ashe could hardly see now. He looked for the professors eyes, but couldn’t find them. His body felt heavy.

     “Your axe Claude. I asked you to lower it.”

     “You’re really sure about this?”

     “Yes.”

     “And you are of course understanding that I completely disagree with you on this, my friend. Fundamentally.”

     “I thought you would, Claude. Give me time.”

     The axe vanished from under Ashe’s throat, and Ashe pitched forward in its absence.

     He fell straight into a yellow cape and waiting arms.

Chapter Text

     “Well, that was horrible,” Sylvain announced, soot-covered face poking through Felix’s tent flap. “Valley of Torment’s appropriately titled, huh?”

      “Get out,” Felix grunted, hunched over his sword. Sylvain felt like he could breathe again.

     Easy as you please, he replaced his head with his much-more-pleasing-to-Felix arm. He held out a bottle of Ithican whiskey he knew Felix still carried a taste for and a silver dagger he swiped off a dead body.

     Romance at its finest; escapism and looting corpses. Sylvain would settle for nothing less.

     A pause. Sylvain tapped his foot, keeping his arm outstretched while Felix deliberated inside the tent.

     He glanced at the campground; the Ohgma Mountains weren’t exactly an ideal camping spot, but they weren’t being attacked, which was nice. Some shelters were better set up than others. Certain nobility like Felix and Sylvain had their own private tents, while the grunt soldiers and those in battalions were stuck huddling together for the night. Then there were the merchant tents: off to the side, all secured together in their usual traveling caravan style.

     Byleth and Claude were chatting outside them. They were being casual about it, but their hands were on their weapons. They wouldn’t sleep tonight. Sylvain knew they were really just watching Ashe, who was currently loosely tied up (at Claude’s insistence) and out cold on one of the portable crafting tables in the armorers.

     Sylvain wasn’t sure if they were standing guard so Ashe didn’t kill them all in their sleep, or so that one of them didn’t try to kill Ashe. Hilda was pacing outside the medical tent where a small army of healers was still trying to fix her wyvern. Sylvain had never seen her look so serious, something he wasn’t ready to deal with, now or ever.

     He smoothed his hair, and felt it stick to his fingers with sweat. The further they got away from Ailell the better.

      “My arm’s getting tired, Felix.”

      “Do what you want,” Felix replied, and that was as good as come in as Sylvain was going to get today.

     He made himself at home on the tarp-covered floor of Felix’s tent. A hidden rock dug into his left ass cheek and he nudged it out of range.

      “How’s your sword?” Sylvain asked.

      “How do you think?”

     Felix was scrunched on his bedroll with it in his lap. He had the grim aura of a healer fighting for a lost cause. Next to him was a small pile of used whetstones and cleaning cloths. None of that was going to help; the blade was bent at an awkward angle from having been exposed to too much heat and armor.

     After a few moments of fervent polishing, Felix seemed to come to the same conclusion. An empty look passed over his face before he tossed the blade onto a pile of scrap in the corner of the tent.

      “Giving up?”

      “There’s no salvaging it. Give me the dagger.”

     Sylvain tossed it to him, and Felix threw it into the empty sheath at his hip without hesitation. Gift delivered: such romance! Sylvain held his tongue. It was enough that Felix liked it. He didn’t need thanks.

     The sword likely could have been reforged, but that would take time and labor they didn’t have. At this point, it would be cheaper to get a new one from the armorers (when they weren’t working on something for Byleth, which was…never) or in some town that didn’t recognize their faces (even less likely).

      “Still, damn,” Sylvain soothed, forcing sympathy into his voice. Felix tended to let himself feel the loss of weapons more than the loss of most people; Sylvain couldn’t remember when that became the case. Probably wasn’t healthy, but who was anymore?

      “We shouldn’t drink in enemy territory,” Felix complained, but he was already reaching for the bottle in Sylvain’s hand to check the label. “You smell.”

      “Thanks, it’s the stab wound,” Sylvain replied. Then added, voice a carefully blended cocktail of concern and fatuousness: “It matches yours.”

     Felix scowled. Sylvain whistled, low and long, filling the silence. Familiar tension coated the air, and Sylvain let it cover the events of the day.

     They both got stabbed, and that was great. By Ashe too, who knew he had it in him? Okay fine, everyone did, but no one wanted to. They all just turned a blind eye to the sweet ones; Ashe, Annette, Ignatz…Ha, fucking Cyril. Their kill count was just as high as anyone else, but who wanted to notice?

     Sylvain noticed anyway. Seeing Ashe, across the battlefield, fingers covered in blood from over-firing his bow, all handsome and grown but deeply wrong. Sylvain couldn’t help but think: We did this. And what the fuck were they still doing?

     Tied up in the armory. Yikes. Ashe’s back was gonna hurt in the morning.

     Sylvain was thinking too hard about this. He swiped the bottle back from Felix and took a long swig. When he opened his eyes, Felix wasn’t glaring at him. There was a question in his eyes, the same one Sylvain almost asked him earlier: Are you okay?

     Ha. Sylvain tipped his head back further, drank deeper, and abruptly Felix’s hands were on his own.

      “Save some for me,” he groused. It wasn’t what either of them wanted to hear, but it kept Sylvain’s lips from the bottle long enough for Felix to pry it from his fingers and take a sip of his own.

      “You didn’t wipe it off first, that was an indirect kiss,” Sylvain drawled, feeling warmth course through his body. He wasn’t drunk, not yet—it wouldn’t hit him like that— but Felix was lazily leaning on his shoulder, and that made him feel something, so he might as well have been.

      “Are you five?”

      “Please, Felix, I didn’t care about indirect kisses until I was seven at least.”

      “Disgusting.”

      “I lost the Lance of Ruin.”

     It just slipped out. Casual. Impulsive. Sylvain caught the bottle as it tipped from Felix’s hands.

      “Hey I’ll need that—”

      “—You what?”

     Sylvain tipped the bottle back, and promptly choked as Felix shoved him, hard. A good amount of liquid splashed to the floor and Sylvain coughed, throat and eyes burning, whiskey dribbling down his chin. Boy, this sure was a moment.

      “What the hell happened?” Felix shouted. “How the fuck did you lose something so important? Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

     All at once, fire spread through Sylvain. It tore through his chest— the kind of fire that never stops smelling, that sticks to clothes and concerns neighbors. He wanted to laugh, wanted to slam the bottle against the ground and watch it shatter to pieces.

     He did neither. He kept his voice level, knowing it would only piss Felix off more. Felix’s anger was predictable—Sylvain’d be fucked if he didn’t want it on him, over him, in him.

      “Someone wouldn’t let me in their tent. And besides, what is there to say? Ashe kicked it into a lava pool. What, should I have jumped in after it?”

     The question was meant to be antagonize, but it came out sincere. Sylvain bit his tongue, ready to play it off, ready to bolt, when Felix’s hand overlapped his own, forcing the bottle back upright.

      “You’re spilling it,” he accused, without any of the anger Sylvain needed. The whiskey had sloshed all over the tarp and both of their legs.

      “Can’t keep my grip today, damn,” Sylvain mumbled, trying to pull away.

     Felix didn’t release his hand, his hold was rough and tight, and it made mopping up near impossible. Sylvain stopped struggling. He clamped his mouth shut, and let Felix lower the bottle to the ground. He hung his head, allowing it to fall where it wanted– onto Felix’s shoulder. It was heavy, he was tired. Why the fuck not?

      “What are we doing, Felix? Getting beaten by Ashe.”

     Felix didn’t reply, Sylvain wanted to pull the words from him. He turned his face, clutched Felix’s boney wrist and twisted it playfully— like he was flirting, like he was fine.

      “Oh,” Sylvain chuckled. “You know, I tried to fuck with Ashe’s head and make him miss? Karma was instant— he fucked with mine instead. Can you believe it? Ashe, with his books and his gardening, found a hole in my mental armor and managed to really fuck with my head.”

       “Did he say you reminded him of a character in a book too?” Felix asked, voice dripping with a new kind of exhaustion. Sylvain snorted, realizing that’s what led to Felix’s injury. Fitting.

      “Nope. He asked me what the hell I was fighting for, and you know what?”

      “You couldn’t answer,” Felix replied, pushing Sylvain’s face away long enough to take a long sip from the forgotten bottle.

      “You know me so well,” Sylvain simpered. It was the scariest thing he’d admitted all night— to be known, like this, right here. Goddess, could things get any worse? “I couldn’t answer. You know that’s crazy, right? We’ve been at this for five years. Dimitri and Dedue are gone, Ingrid’s gone. We’re barely fighting for king and country anymore— hell, we’re all just clawing and killing for our right to the goddamn ground.”

      “So what?” Felix said, finally, voice firm enough to feel like a slap. Sylvain wished it was. He felt his shoulders sink, and pulled away, wiping his mouth with his arm.

      “So what?” Sylvain repeated. “What’s it for, Felix?”

     A hand tangled in his hair, just a little too rough. Perfect. Sylvain shut his eyes and let Felix drag him back onto his shoulder, fully sinking into the odd, mean embrace.

      “You’re drunk. Lay down,” Felix ordered. He was barely talking. Felix always got quiet when he drank. He hated to slur, hated to look sloppy, show weakness.

     Sylvain nodded, leaning further, waiting to be shoved away. Felix didn’t. He held him tighter as they sank down to the bedroll.

      “Nice,” Sylvain mumbled into his throat, forgetting wherever his thoughts were going.

     The hand stayed in his hair, and Sylvain wanted to hammer it in place like a blacksmith adding a gem to a decorative blade. He’d keep it there, and then when everyone looked at him, they’d see Felix too. Maybe then he’d be able to face his father.

     A crest without a relic. What a laugh.

      “You’re so loud,” Felix complained, yanking Sylvain’s face out of his shoulder to look at him. Had Sylvain been talking? Fuck. “Who gives a shit about that now?”

     Sylvain nodded, dumbly. Right. Felix was here, and his skin was flushed drunk. He was touching him. He was so unbearably hot— how could Sylvain give a shit about anything else?

      “To hell with it,” Sylvain thought, or maybe said— it didn’t matter because his lips were crashing into Felix’s, and Felix was kissing him back.

     Felix kissed with his teeth and nails, fist curling between their chests, clutched at the front of Sylvain’s shirt as they groaned into each other. He had absolutely zero game—all elbows and edges— more often than not Sylvain felt like he was making out with a pretty, pointy rock. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

     It wasn’t the first time this had happened, drunk in Felix’s tent, but since they hadn’t slapped a label on it, and they never talked about it afterward, it still felt kind of shiny and new.

     The way Sylvain saw it, if you never acknowledged the seconds or thirds or fourths— life was packed full of firsts.

     He and Felix? They’d had many, many, firsts, and tonight Sylvain was just drunk enough to indulge in one more. He rolled, pulling Felix over him and hiked his legs over his hips.

     Fuck it, he thought. What more did they have to lose?