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The scent of bergamot doesn’t help.
Sylvain watches it curl in hair ribbons through the locks of the girl before him, translucent ties tugging back chestnut and pulling on the fake laughter lines at the corner of her pretty mouth, narrowing her eyes in a pleased expression bordering on crudely-concealed calculation. It’s a face Sylvain knows too well, a mask people pass between themselves like trays of mignardises at dinner-balls each time they interact with him, a countenance he’s learnt to decipher through years of careful observation and pretend-naiveté. Her sentences are the color of noise, stale slate, but Sylvain entertains her all the same — smiles and laughs and flirts and when he hands her the jug of fresh milk their fingers brush. She giggles that giggle he’s heard like a too-popular, overrated opera piece, that simulacrum of delight women of lower birth are instructed to practice by their opportunistic fathers. Her cheeks take the shape and stain of ripe peaches. Sylvain wants to puke.
Then again, like every situation he’s ever gotten into along his lazy, spoiled life, Sylvain probably only has himself to blame; tea time today is a mere deflection, sunlight’s refraction in a hand mirror like those that direct the eyes of the Monastery cats away from the fishing pond. He had intended to tell the girl off at first, to go and bother Ingrid at the stables or Felix on the training grounds, but then Annette had walked past and asked him if he wanted to study that damned magic book with her — didn’t I tell you, Annette, he had answered, to go out and have fun for a change?, and he’d taken the girl’s hand and led her to the gazebo like fleeing from a haunting.
The girl is blabbering on and on about Faerghus history as though she has something to prove; she’s Golden Deer, not part of Claude’s inner circle, scion of a lower house from Leicester. Sylvain does not remember her name. He wonders if he should care. Still, on she goes about the exploits of King Loog and his descendants, not looking at him but through him, Sylvain knows, trying to reach through his lungs and tear off the Gautier crest from where it fits snug around his heart like a golden cage, like a wedding ring. She probably only expects him to listen, a self-aggrandizing manoeuvre to make herself shine brighter in his eyes; she probably does not want him to interrupt, to append, to contradict. No one ever does. Sylvain is fine with that, has learnt to be fine with that along the decade spent trying to impress his ever-critical father, always showing off all his erudite ignorances until he realized it was not his mind people sought to get their hands on.
His thoughts drift back to his conversation with Annette the day before — you’re strong and smart without even trying, she had said, like a reproach, like a curse. It was refreshingly strange, to have someone tell him so bluntly his mere existence was not fair, to have someone confirm to his face their dislike of him and all his conceit. It had almost hurt, in that Miklan kind of way Sylvain’s used to, but the defeat in Annette’s blue eyes — blue, not brown, not amber, not gold — had made him swallow back the explanations he was about to expose, had spurred him into retrograde and flirtations. Sylvain knew Annette thought his excuses were half-hearted, had read it in the lines of her combative expression even as he’d told her the truth, that he had just got lucky. Sylvain had long stopped pretending to be smart; why else would he have so easily come to the answer she’d worked so hard to find, when all people had ever asked of him was to be quietly charming?
There’s a glare of red like freshly-autumned leaves at the corner of his vision, and he glances to the side and away from the conversation; Annette stops in her tracks along the paved walkway, hands a library book to Lysithea, who Sylvain has found in Mercedes’ room along with Annette more than once for tea and studying on the days his cheeks flared too red from a slap. She smiles like every good thing Sylvain has ever seen, sinless and sun-full. Annette, Sylvain ponders, is good in a way that does not make others look bad, in a way that makes people peg it as her only personality trait; there’s a commonality to be found in that, somewhere, Sylvain thinks, though he has yet to unearth exactly which.
“That’s the girl from earlier.”
There’s a sigh in Sylvain’s voice that he hopes shuts down that impending conversation. “It is.”
The girl quirks a pretty eyebrow, puffs up pretty cheeks. “I would love to be introduced, next time. Is she your friend?”
Like there’ll be a next time, Sylvain thinks. His smile curls on his face, easy and lazy like a stretching cat. His reputation is one of the three things people know him for, not long after his birth name and the possibly handsome curves of his face. “Depends. What do you think?”
“What? Are you in love with her or something?”
Love? Sylvain’s laughter is an internal thing, a catching of breath in his lungs that bursts into song in his head. For how much he flirts around with Annette, it never once crossed his mind to actually try and court her: first, because her cuteness only finds equal in her youth, and he dares think himself not bad enough to take advantage of a fifteen-year-old girl this way; second, because Sylvain has recently discovered his infatuations lay somewhere else than in the girls that he chases or the women that chase him, never to be fulfilled no matter how hard he tries.
Not that Sylvain has ever needed to try hard in love, as well; his Crest does it all for him.
“You’re right,” Sylvain still says, “I am,” and ignores the girl’s shouts of indignation as he stands up and leaves, bergamot swirls still hot in the afternoon breeze.
As Sylvain pushes the heavy door of the training grounds fifteen minutes later, he expects to find Felix in his usual, chosen loneliness; what he sees instead of a sword in his hand and a training dummy is a tome at his feet and Annette’s silhouette. Her voice rings clear as bells through the emptiness of the courtyard, encouraging and critical when Felix focuses thunder threading along his fingers and arms, crawling over the lightning scars Sylvain knows lie beneath his shirt. Sylvain doesn’t let the door shut behind him — his shoulder digs into the iron framing when he leans against it, a welcome kind of uncomfort that reminds him he’s out of his depth here, an unannounced, uprooted transplant, a blown-out dandelion in a child’s hand. He doesn’t know how they do it, truly, training so hard all the time to an unhealthy extent, doesn’t know what merit is to be found in half-killing oneself for the sake of imaginary wars. Annette probably does not see it that way, probably imagines it is a smart way to get her father to notice her, to hear about her exploits and run to her in admiration and long-held love. That sense of similitude strikes him again, at that, these oxymorons in their characters juxtaposed to the same feeling of yearning and loss. Like Sylvain at her age, she’ll probably come around soon enough. The last time Sylvain had acted in the name of his father’s so-called love, he killed his own brother.
“Are you going to stand here like an idiot the whole goddess-damned time?” Felix’s snappy baritone disturbs some dust off the ground as he gets into stance again, fluid as sparkling water, and Annette turns her gaze to him, surprised and pleased, and he’s reminded of their roles in the theater of life, that where Annette is smart and nice, Sylvain is dumb and an asshole.
“Do you want to join us for training?” Annette says. The noontime sun pigments her gaze in the blue of authentic acumen and childhood summers and hope.
Sylvain eclipses all and himself when he slips away, leaves with a blinding smile, a practiced wink, a Crest-shaped ever-shadow around his neck, cold as a nameless kiss and his brother’s hands.
***
As always, Sylvain lets the girl make the first move.
Annette stands opposite him, her body a mere contraption for the determination that sets fire to the skies of her eyes; the sway of her posture as she slips into stance makes her hair pulse the color of the Lance of Ruin. And so, as always, Sylvain does what he does best opposite the imposing — soothes soap-soft sentences into stark space, pungent with provocation and the threat of destruction.
“Come on, Annette— Annie,” he sneers, “I don’t wanna hit a lady, you know? I don’t wanna fight you.” He means it, in the way he means everything he says: not to the same degree than what people like to imagine. His gaze flickers like starglow from Annette to the Professor — the one who called his name as a potential candidate for the next Magic contest in front of their whole class, as though she saw a spark of brilliance in his deliberately lackluster spells, as though she expected something from him and making him spar against the best mage in the Blue Lions would reveal exactly what that was. His Highness is watching him as well, with that icy, analytical stare that’s so unlike the child he used to know; Sylvain wonders if Dimitri isn’t appraising him as a person, or as a friend, but rather as a future knight of his personal guard, and he remembers it’s easier to have no one know what he’s capable of. Sylvain, like all the other things he hates, has learnt to put up with expectations his whole life — has a bone-deep knowledge of what it is like to be put on a pedestal. He knows from experience that it does nothing but make one lose their balance as it gets higher and higher and further out of reach were one to fall to the ground and smash into smithereens.
Byleth looks at him through mint eyes, hot and cold, thoughtless yet all-knowing. Sylvain wonders if she, too, looks through him to his Crest, she who doesn’t know what it even means and whose own flames never choked her out.
A burst of wind breaks him out of his thoughts — Annette has gone on the offensive, screaming something about taking her seriously. He barely dodges this one, and the next, and the one after, but Annette’s patterns are a dance he’s already learnt the exact steps to as he’s watched over her on the battlefield; he retaliates with a ball of fire he purposely aims a little off-path, makes it graze the edge of Annette’s hair just enough to singe the tip of her unravelling pigtails, the smell of burning like a warning. She doesn’t heed it; Sylvain clicks his tongue as she switches her stance, her wind stronger and sharper as she sends gale after gale right into Sylvain’s face until he has to hide behind a pillar to catch his breath, offense ever the best sort of defense for her.
Ah, Sylvain thinks, so at least she knows she’s full of openings.
The next burst of fire that leaves his fingertips and flies straight to her almost hits her right in the chest, and he’s reminded of the stench of burnt flesh staining his fingers and filling the castle training room as his father made him open his first tome. The flames shine over the hint of a smile on the Professor’s face. He wants to scorch it to ashes.
Instead, he makes his spells weaker, lets Annette blast them away with ease, doesn’t aim at the holes in her posture; there’s a dark kind of stubbornness creeping in vines along his lungs, a certainty that his victory would mean Byleth’s, too, somehow, and so he intends to lose. He’s pretty sure Annette would have got the advantage anyway, if he’s perfectly honest — her hard work shines through in the windstorms that blow her hair loose, and if he’s to try hard at something, it’s better if it’s her own success. He lets one of her spells reach him and cut into his cheek, and the familiar taste of iron on his lips is distraction enough for her to knock him over with one last blow aimed at his ankles.
He expects his classmates to cheer and clap for her, to give her the praise she rightfully deserves.
Expectations hate him.
There are words, and screams, like the numerous slaps dyeing his cheeks crimson after another one-night tryst, like the crack of his bones in other people’s arms, so dissimilar to the comfortable unease of dulled laziness cloaking his shoulders in a sightless shroud. Annette’s hair flies in wild sunrays around her hardened face, the lines of it knife cuts Sylvain doesn’t know how to suture, and the last thing he hears before he gets back up is the heavy door to the training grounds slamming open and close.
There’s something like the shape of bygone sweetness and pretend acridity seemingly taking root at the end of the hallway when he comes back to his room a few hours later, and for a second Sylvain could swear he sees Glenn’s shadow in the distant disgust he spots in Felix’s eyes, ever-effortless in his vitriol-tinged concern. Felix’s arms are crossed in front of his chest, his shoulder digging in the doorframe of Sylvain’s room to prevent any and all exit, his sword brushing against his bare leg like a faithful lover. He’s in his dancer outfit. Sylvain averts his eyes.
“Are you here to scream at me, too?”
“Where were you?”
“The infirmary.”
“Liar.”
The cut on the side of Sylvain’s cheek itches; he’s refused to get it healed, keeps it like one would a badge of honor or a token of shame. Felix’s gaze softens as he glances at it, though Sylvain only notices thanks to years of diligent study. Sylvain wonders if Felix is going to pry. Sylvain wonders if he wants him to.
Felix sighs instead, weary and tired like he’s the one who sparred, not Sylvain. “I don’t blame her. I’d be mad at you, too, if you’d let me win on purpose.” Disdain tea-stains his gaze in bergamot. “Not that you’d ever win against me.”
Sylvain’s laugh echoes empty down the hallway. “What can I say? I’m an idiot.”
“No.” Felix’s eyes bore into his, twin smoked suns and dulled double-edged swords, hued in aggressive ghosts of half-forgotten promises and war-ruined skies. “You’re not.”
Sylvain has often thought Felix and he didn’t have much in common anymore, had no more similarities binding their fragile, fated friendship. He’s glad being liars seems to be one still.
“Felix,” Sylvain starts again, prevents his voice from stuttering, lulls the syllables like he’s taming a stray cat. “Why are you here?”
Sylvain only notices the tome in Felix’s hand when he thrusts it against Sylvain’s chest. “Fix this,” he says, and Sylvain has broken too many things — hearts and vows and bones — to know what he means.
***
It’s Annette who finds him first.
“I didn’t think you’d study it,” she only says. The library is cloaked in the quiet of nighttime and candlelight, the rustle of pages as Sylvain turns them the only noise that fills it up. Sylvain didn’t expect anyone to be up this late, except perhaps Linhardt, who he’d seen sneaking around the monastery on many a night he’d got back to his room in the blue hours of the morning.
“I’m not,” he answers; it’s the whole, unhindered truth, this time. He’s been reading the tome for days.
A scrape of chair legs, an aggravated sigh; Annette enters his field of vision through the seat in front of him, the glare of fire over her eyes a tiny sun in the summer sky, honest in a way he never truly knows how to fake. “Why do you always try and make people think you’re incompetent?”
It stings like the mostly-healed storm-cut on his cheek, that misplaced faith in him, not familiar enough to be imperceptible; it’s only one of the numerous things the crest does in his place, feigning competence, forging skill in the shape of an unforgiving weapon. Still, his smile uncurls bittersweet as he looks her in the eye. “So you think I’m competent? Guess my plan worked, then.”
“Is it because you don’t want to hurt me, or my feelings?” Annette pushes still, like she hasn’t called his whole existence unfair a few days ago. Her elbows slide over the table as she leans in, and Sylvain wonders what she’s reaching for, a crest or a heart or an answer.
Sylvain turns another page. “Not really. You’re not as fragile as people think you are.”
“See? Not a lot of people see that.” As though trying to prove it still, Annette bats his hand away; the tome closes with a heavy thump under her small, small hands. “But you do. And it takes cleverness to see past appearances.”
“I’m your friend,” Sylvain says, and it almost breaks his heart. “And I respect you. It has nothing to do with smarts.”
Annette’s eyes widen to gold-edged sapphire in the dim library light, the hue of realization and forgiveness and all the things Sylvain doesn’t deserve. Her touch is breeze-gentle as she pries Sylvain’s hand away from the book; the leather of the cover scrapes against the wooden table when she draws it towards her to cradle it against the bed of her chest. “For what it’s worth, I think not a lot of people get how sincere you can be, either. Not in your words — but in the way you see the truth in others.” Her steps punctuate her sentence as she leaves the library. “It’d be good if you could one day use some of that sincerity, and apply it to the way you see yourself.”
In the morning, he wakes up with his head in his arms, curled over the library table. He refuses any and all dates that girls offer him that day, pretends he already has other obligations, leaves people guessing as to their nature although he knows perfectly well what they expect. Perhaps it’s because he’s aware of these expectations, that he tells them all the truth; people don’t believe him when he says he has a study session with a friend. Sylvain is fine with that.
A freeing sort of relief washes over him in tides when Annette pushes the door to his bedroom, that night, the kind that comes with the confirmation that she expects nothing from him but a platonic friendship. The blue ink on the tome pages glistens aurelian under the candleflame.