Archive of Our Own ^beta

His perspective on life realigns suddenly, on the battlefield, with the sound of a spell meeting flesh and a pegasus’s scream.

“Byleth!” He hears Claude shout from nearby, and Sylvain almost wrenches his neck with how quickly he seeks her out.

Her pegasus, Acarian, is plummeting, ethereal wings fluttering uselessly in the air. Byleth is upside down, cutting at the ties connecting her to the saddle, and Gautier of all people is racing towards her, Lamine drawing another complex sigil, arm stretched to aim at the falling animal.

Claude and Ingrid, always on the same page, joined at the hip off the battlefield and on, both race towards her, the power of their mounts’ wings splashing caustic swamp water onto their boots.

But Sylvain is frozen.

He told her, for so long, that he was fighting in this war to die. That he had nothing to live for, and she had always slightly frowned, but never pushed. She had helped him find something to live for, subtly and without him realizing.

He had asked her to dinner, cheekily, before they left the monastery. He wasn’t sure if she understood that for once in his life he was serious, but her lips had quirked up, and she nodded. Watching her fall, he knows if she dies here, he will too.

Byleth has freed her legs from their ties, and is frantically yelling something to Ingrid, whose pegasus veers off to handle Lamine. Gautier slashes his Lance of Ruin, but it is diverted off course by Claude’s arrow. Sylvain feels sick, seeing a grotesque, horrid version of the lance he holds at that moment, aimed at her. He stares at it, thinking of when Byleth had handed it to him.

She had called him in for tea, and had left him to lead the conversation, nodding along at times. But when he alluded to the chill of the Gautier manor, even though he was the preferred, Crested son, she had set her cup down with a quiet “hm.” He had stared at her in question, waiting for an elaboration, those blue eyes locked on him. When he said “Sometimes I feel like you see right through me.” She had chuckled, finished her tea, and left a board game on the table with his name on it, and walked off without another word.

Acarian manages to right himself just a moment before crashing to the ground, slowing down just enough for Byleth to unsteadily leap from his back and block Gautier’s next strike. She and her pegasus are both bloodied, Acarian lying still with a broken wing, Byleth bleeding from the head and falling to her knees as Claude’s battalion surrounds her.

She can fight just as well on the ground, he knows that, but he has lost sight of her. The phantom grip on his heart and lungs loosens only slightly when he sees the flare of white magic over where she landed. He rides a destrier, he can’t force his Duchess across the swamp without harming her, he just needs one glimpse that Byleth wasn’t killed by his namesake, by his own lance, and he’ll be okay.

“What the hell are you doing? Pay attention!” Lysithea yells at him from nearby, snapping him out of his head. He looks around to see he had been still, war raging around him, advancing the frontlines and leaving him behind. Lysithea had just caught up, safely positioned in the backline. Her hand catches his horse’s flank, and they are warping.

He ends up with Odesse, trading dark magic blows while Raphael fights up close, and a miasma hits him in the chest, shredding his armor and much of the skin beneath. He slumps in the saddle, seeing stars.

It was the night of the ball, over 5 years ago, he had followed her to the Goddess Tower and led with a corny line. “Lovely night, isn’t it? Just look at those stars, but none as beautiful as you, Professor.” She had looked at him, rather than the stars, but he couldn’t bring himself to look back. For all his dalliances, Byleth was different even then. “The Goddess Tower is where lovers meet. Didn't anybody tell you? They say that if you exchange vows here, they always come true. It's a sacred place for lovers.”

She continued to stare, blue eyes cutting through him. “Then why are you here alone, Sylvain?” And as always with her, his quick wit and rakish charm fails him.

“Well, Professor, we’re the only two people here. I mean it makes sense, my Crest and yours! What do you think?” He glances over just long enough to see one of her eyebrows arch before he looks back to the stars. “Okay, okay, I know that sounded like another one of my games, but I didn’t mean it like that. You can trust me, Professor. I’ll make sure of it.”

Another moment of silence, of her staring. “Enjoy your stars, Sylvain,” she says quietly, leaving him alone in the cold.

One of Ignatz’s arrows catches Odesse in the throat, and their contingent moves on to Fraldarius. She is swift and deft, dodging their attacks with expertise. Her pegasus whinnies in the same pitch as Acarian, and Sylvain has to stop himself from whipping around to search for him, from his lungs seizing as another pegasus crashes to the ground, this time with the rider crashing with them, limp in her ties.

She assigns him to Sky Watch not long after the ball, at night of all times, and she assigns him a pegasus, as if things weren’t bad enough. He wasn’t used to flying, but the flanks of the dark pegasus felt just like his own warhorse between his legs. The balance was off, though, and he was struggling to adjust his posture while Claude and his wyvern looped lazily around him.

“I don’t know why the Professor decided I was a good flight match with you.” Sylvain complains, face green with the unfamiliar beating of wings.

Claude laughed, stopping his wyvern directly in front of Sylvain’s pegasus. “Seriously, Sylvain, you don’t get it?”

“I’m cavalry, Claude! I’ll brush a pegasus, but flying one is a whole different story.” He shoots back, finally comfortable enough to sit up straight and not hunch over the beast’s neck. He has to admit, there is a certain impressive skill to the added layer of balance. He could see himself being good at this, if she asked him to be. “And if she plans to reclass me, I’ve got to get a lot better with arrows.”

Claude flips an arrow around his finger, the show-off. “If she reclasses you I’ll help you out. They say I’m a good shot. Look, I don’t have the whole story, but Teach suggested a night patrol. She said ‘he’d enjoy being among the stars’ and she told me to come along.”

Sylvain had considered himself a good friend of Claude’s, but he knew he was closer to the Professor, and he knew the Professor had a bit of an ironic streak. Hopefully Claude didn’t know the full extent that Byleth was poking fun at him for the Goddess Tower, making him do this patrol. “Well Claude, you are a good shot. You hit me a little close to home with that one.”

Both sides of the battlefield coalesce on either side of Nemesis, and he still doesn’t see her. Hilda, Constance, and Claude are flying forward, slinging spells and arrows now that his shields are down. Lysithea, Ignatz, and Raphael on his side, but no Byleth. They’ve seen white magic fail before, and all he can picture is her broken body, left behind with a fallen pegasus.

Sylvain can feel his chest wound sluggishly bleeding, but it’s nothing compared to the knot in his stomach.

He takes a moment to lean over Duchess’s side and vomit.

“There’s a dragon out there!” A soldier shouts, and Sylvain, from his place on his steed, can’t see. But he can hear the screams, of men being burnt alive and beasts being thrown like nothing. The dragon’s lone roar rattles the stones of Garreg Mach, and they gear up for more. The fighting ends surprisingly quickly after that, with the Imperial Army receding of their own accord.

Claude tells them, grimly, that the Professor is missing and Rhea has been captured. They were still in their armor, dirty and bloodied from the fight before. He vows to search until all hope is lost.

Weeks later, Sylvain returns to Gautier, and feels emptier than he ever has before.

He is coherent enough to sling a Ragnarok at Nemesis, his vision blurring around the edges. He is not coherent enough, it turns out, to dodge the Dark Creator Sword as it connects with his thigh and rips him from the saddle. Duchess, well-trained and loyal to her core, barely steps back as the sword retracts from his leg, instead snuffling at his hand where he lays face down in the bloody grass.

He coughs, listening to the sound of battle raging around him, ignoring the wetness trickling from behind his teeth. The fall must’ve worsened his chest wound. He reaches up his hand to stroke his mare’s nose.

“It’s okay, Duch. B’s waiting for me…We have a dinner to get to.” He murmurs softly, smiling, as the world fades to black around him.

–-

Byleth stands shakily, bones in her leg shifting as Claude’s battalion comes to her aid. She can hear Gautier, a yell of frustration piercing the air, but not as loudly as Acarian’s heaving breaths behind her. The Bolting had hit him square in his left wing, shattering it and rendering him flightless. Her own leg had broken on the dismount, or perhaps when she wrenched it from her ties, but it changed nothing.

“Marianne, I need him!” She directs their approaching healer to the fallen pegasus, and only moves forward when she hears the familiar, reassuring high pitched whine of healing magic.

Seeing the Crest of Gautier flare, the dark, pulsing Lance of Ruin in his hand, she can’t help but be reminded of training Sylvain. He had insisted he was a good pick for Great Knight, donning heavy armor at the training grounds before she had helped him with his latent talent for magic. He could barely keep his head up straight, clanging around in an ill-fitting suit of armor and making joking innuendos about his well-polished sword.

The Gautier in front of her was significantly less charming. And significantly more reliant on his Crest’s power. She shakes her head, pushing thoughts of clever hands and honeyed words from her mind. She squares her unsteady legs, takes a deep breath, and whips the Sword of the Creator to the Agarthan.

Between her and Claude, Gautier falls, and it’s hard not to imagine soft brown eyes behind the slit in his helmet. Ingrid fells Lamine in short order as well, and swoops up to where Byleth is swaying.

“Professor, need a ride?” She calls, and Byleth grits her teeth in a facsimile of a bloody smile. She watches as black miasma meets red flame in a burst above their southern contingent, and the water in the swamp that had burned through their boots evaporates instantly, the spell broken. She can vaguely see the dark destrier, keeping pace with Ignatz’s lighter courser distantly across the plain, and she shakes her head.

“I’ll only slow you down! Go on, I’ll catch up.” Ingrid narrows her eyes, but whistles to the other fliers and takes off towards Nemesis. Stragglers to Gautier’s men try to catch them, but the fliers lift higher, and the soldiers turn their attention to Byleth. She takes them out as best she can, protecting the healer and their steeds until she feels Acarian’s nose bump between her shoulder blades.

She swings heavily back to his ruined saddle, but not before Marianne catches her arm. The gash on her forehead knits shut, and she feels the bone in her leg stabilize. She feels like she’s been in a fistfight, instead of a ruthless battle against thousand-year old evil.

Her pegasus flexes his mostly mended wing. “One last, Ace.” Byleth whispers, patting his silvery neck, before they take off to rejoin the fight.

They fly, battered, into chaos. Fliers are swarming from the north and fanning around Nemesis, dodging the seemingly endless Dark Creator Sword, while the mounted and grounded units try to keep a distance from the carnage. It’s taking all her concentration, and her mount’s, to not crash into another unit and also avoid Nemesis’s blows. She sees one sweep of the weapon take out a third of Lysithea’s mages.

With her ties cut previously, a particularly nasty snap of the sword causes Acarian to veer too sharply, tossing Byleth in the saddle. She whistles to Claude, knowing the fight can’t continue like this. The two unmount, and face Nemesis head on. Looking not only at their past, but their future if they’re able to keep it.

Byleth takes one breath to picture it: returning to a simple life, perhaps a two-stall stable and a red-haired man unburdened by society before she opens them and lashes her matching sword.

She is heaving breaths at the end of it, but no worse for wear. Until she hears Claude gasp “Teach!” from behind her.

Byleth turns, sees Raphael holding Duchess’s reins, the horse uncharacteristically antsy, a few feet away from a kneeled crowd. Dark armor, stretched flat, bright red blood in a pool and splattered across a serene face. A familiar face.

She drops the Sword of the Creator, sprinting to his side, almost bowling Claude over as she gets to him. Her small, quiet daydream of a future lights on fire, crumbling to ash as she stares at Sylvain’s still body beneath her.

“Marian-get her! Marianne!” She shouts, frantically placing her hands over his ruined chest. There’s too much blood to stop, at this rate, but her sense has left her entirely. Claude’s hand comes to rest on her shoulder. Ignatz is pouring a vulnerary down Sylvain’s throat, and the worst of the miasma recedes, some of his skin stitching itself together. She sees Lysithea, overtaxed, clearly but still leaning in to provide some additional white magic. She leans forward, resting her head on her hands, comforted by the beating of his heart. She sighs shakily, the flames in her mind receding.

Sylvain is stretchered off the field, arm hanging limp off the side, bouncing with every step of the mages. Claude is by her side when he assigns Ingrid to take Duchess safely home. He’s there for the flight back to Garreg Mach, for the meetings after.

He drops a crown on her head.

The flames start again. The world is spinning around her, but this is Claude. This is who she created Fodlan’s future with, not for. Surely he understood that. But he tells her he’s leaving, and he’s taking Ingrid with him. Her two closest confidantes, gone. Sylvain, clinging to life under a healers’ hands.

But she takes it, because she always does. She ignores the memory of Raphael saying that Claude uses her - that she lets herself be used. She turns on her heel and leaves the cabinet room, seeking comfort, and finds herself in the stables.

The Golden Deer hold the prestigious stables closest to the dining halls, a nontraditional mix of horses, pegasi, and wyverns, and all but one of the stalls is taken, following Lorenz’s death early in the war. They had returned his prize horse to Gloucester, and had never moved Marianne’s Dorte closer to the door.

She stares at the empty spot next to Acarian. Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand, hoping any piece of that simple future could come to pass. She is a strategist, not a queen, and Sylvain is not a king, even if he would want to be.

Would he want to be? She knows he wants her, surely. But would he want her for more than a few days? Would she let herself be used if he didn’t?

She acts without thinking anything more about it, striding confidently to the end of the stables to lay out new hay in the empty stall. Acarian, always in tune with her, barely lifts his head to see what she’s doing, curled tightly to sleep with his broken wing stretched out. When it’s done, she opens the door that blocks that massive black destrier, and moves Duchess to her new stall.

Byleth’s heart cracks a little, looking at the poor replica of her dream. She leaves the two stall doors open, and watches the steeds settle and sleep.

It is hours later that Ingrid finds her.

“Sylvain will be okay, you know.” She says, lingering by her own pegasus’s door. “And Claude…he doesn’t always time things well. He’s sorry he picked now. He’ll tell you himself, eventually.”

Byleth is silent for a moment. “Do you trust his vision? Is that why you’re going to Almyra?”

“I’ve been stuck between my dream and my duty as a noble my whole life, Professor. I wanted to be a knight, not a prize wife, and once Claude is king, he can make that happen there. Fódlan is my home, but we both know he can't lead it. So yes, I believe in his vision, but I believe you’re the person to execute it.” Ingrid moves closer and sits across from her, her back pressed against the wall between the stalls. She reaches out a hand in comfort, squeezing Byleth's leg.

“I’m going to Almyra because we’re on the same page. He drives me crazy and he doesn’t take anything seriously, but at the end of the day, I believe in him and I love him.” Ingrid says. “It’s easier than you think, once you let him love you back.”

“I’m not entirely sure what you mean.” Byleth says. She’s never laid a name to the feeling in her chest when she sees Sylvain, for the fondness that grows. It’s never been so simple, so attainable, but she is looking at evidence of how close it is, those black and silver beats sleeping in front of her.

Ingrid chuckles. “Marianne and Lysithea have healed him well, but he’ll be asleep for a while. Claude and I are taking shifts, if you want to get some rest yourself, Byleth.”

With that, Ingrid stands and helps Byleth to her feet. She retreats to the front of the stables, allowing time for Byleth to wistfully stare at the stalls for another moment. “Thank you, both of you.” She says. Duchess’s eyes crack open, and Acarian nickers softly as she leaves.

–
Sylvain Jose Gautier has always been a lovesick fool. He was a fool in the Officers’ Academy, wooing every girl he laid his eyes on but keeping his mother’s ring around his neck, as if he didn’t resent them for how weak-kneed they were. He was a fool in his youth, pulling girls’ pigtails to notice their attention. He was a fool after the war began, thinking he could keep his people safe after Dimitri was supposedly executed. And he is a fool for following Ingrid back to Garreg Mach, wasting his new warhorse’s speed and strength with a useless journey.

He knows she and Claude were close, but Sylvain knows he’s not coming along to “stretch Duchess’s legs” like she had suggested. He’s a fool, and he’s spent five years surviving on foolish hope.

He thinks he’s in a dream when he sees the Sword of the Creator snap above a fallen building. He hears Ingrid, on her pegasus, gasp above him, and he hears Leonie proudly shout “Professor!” from across the field.

When he finally sees her, those mint green eyes lock on him immediately. She has the gall to smile, like she hadn’t been gone for years. He can’t help but smile back, his heart soaring in his chest. He can’t believe she actually came back.

He remembers leaning in, confessing his deepest secret to her. "I'm the heir of House Gautier, and I'm fighting alongside a bunch of Alliance people? I can just imagine my father's face contorted in anger and the delightful words he must have used to describe me. Sorry, Professor. I don't regret my decisions. But I'm hoping I haven't made a big mistake." And he remembers her reassuring whisper: “You are not bound to him.” It was more freeing than anything he’d ever been told.

He remembers his most lost, laughing caustically as he said “Striking down the Empire is my final offer to Dim-to his Highness…What am I saying? I left the Kingdom.” He mostly remembers Byleth wrapping him in her arms after that, and letting him sob.

He remembers every time that he looked at Byleth, his heart racing and his face feeling warm. But Sylvain Jose Gautier has always been a lovesick fool, so he never examined why before he saw her fall.

To his surprise, he wakes up. Groggily, and slowly, but he’s awake nonetheless, feeling honestly very good despite the way he went down. He cracks his eyes open to see Claude of all people, shuffling papers next to him and spinning a quill in his hands. After a few minutes, he glances over, and does a double take when he sees Sylvain looking back.

“Well good morning, my friend. Feeling rested?” He jokes.

“Not…not especially. Did you get him?” Sylvain is shocked to hear his voice sounding strong. He was pretty sure the miasma damaged his throat. Coughing up blood hadn’t helped.

“Yeah, we did. You sure missed a show, too. You’re lucky that horse of yours is so loyal, because I would’ve flown right over you in the rush if Lysithea hadn’t spotted her there. You know they always say good help is hard to find, but I think you’ve found the best.” Claude is still smiling, still jovial. Sylvain has the distinct feeling he’s missing something.

He watched Byleth fall from the sky and not get up. Why is Claude smiling? Why does the hole in Sylvain’s chest feel healed, when he knows it never will be?

“Claude, stop toying with him.” Ingrid says sharply as she enters the infirmary.

And Claude, ever loyal Sylvain’s childhood friend, sighs, and fills Sylvain in, with Ingrid cutting in to correct him whenever he goes off topic.

Sylvain learns he was as good as dead, had Lysithea not been blown backwards by a spell and noticed Duchess standing still on the field a second time, riderless. He learns Byleth was alive, had stayed in the back, picking off footsoldiers while Marianne painstakingly healed both her and Acarian. He learns that she killed Nemesis, looking every part the goddess she is going toe to toe with a demon.

He learns she is the Queen of a United Fódlan, and he learns that she had shoved Claude out of the way to fall to his side after he was found wounded.

“We just got her to rest. She’s been working nonstop since the battle - she even stayed up last night to swap stable orders. Duchess and Acarian are right next to each other now. Something about ‘trustworthy enough to carry two fools,’ she said.” Claude jests.

“Thank Marianne for me.” He says, and stands up, suddenly restless. He leaves the infirmary in a rush, and thinks he hears Ingrid say, “were we ever that hopeless?” He knows he hears Claude’s laugh, at a minimum.

Byleth had put their mounts next to each other. She had never cared about his Crest, or even hers, really. She had poked fun at him, in a way she rarely did for anyone else. She sought him out for tea, and stayed longer than she did with even Claude or Ingrid. He feels more hope in his heart than he has since she woke up from her five year slumber. She had agreed to one dinner, sure, but all this pointed to more.

It feels foolish to go back to his dorm, waiting for Byleth to wake up. She needs the rest, he’s done nothing but. He’s waited for her to wake up before, he can do it again.

He goes to find an old keepsake he’d long forgotten. He left it here before the war, but he finds that ring on a chain in its old spot under his mattress, and he smiles to himself.

It is the early hours of the morning, so he goes to the stables, his heart lifting when he sees their steeds in adjoining stalls. He could get used to the sight. Duchess is sleeping, unharmed, and that beloved pegasus looks no worse for wear, one wing bandaged lightly.

He brings Acarian out, meticulously brushing his coat and preening his feathers, careful around the mostly-healed break, occasionally stopping to take in the stars. “Thank you for always looking out for her, my friend.” The pegasus simply bumps his nose on Sylvain’s chest, gently nickering.

He hears her approach close to sunrise, because he could recognize those steps anywhere.

“Professor. I’ve been waiting for you a while. I was just watching the sky get lighter.” He says, stroking Acarian’s neck. Byleth is looking at the both of them fondly.

“Sorry, I had to rest. Not all of us shirk our duties in the middle of a battle.” She jokes.

He laughs it off. “I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep, not after that. Besides, it’s nice to spend a morning like this sometimes.” He frowns, turning his eyes towards her pegasus. “It’s really starting to hit me. For the past five years, we’ve been fighting and fighting. But now, thanks to you, the war is over. It’s…it’s time for a new way of life.”

He does what he could never do as a younger man, and locks eyes with her, keeping them there. “So, I’ve decided I want to take control of my own fate.”

She’s smiling at him, coyly. He’s seen that smile every time she’s caught onto one of his games. He’s seen it when she watches Claude pull off one of his schemes, and he saw it when she had assigned them both Sky Watch Duty as a joke. She knows what he means, and his heart soars.

“I don’t want to marry a girl who only wants me for my Crest, or who someone else chose for me. I want to marry someone I really care about. And I know…I know what people say about me. But I’d like the chance, Byleth.” Sylvain says, voice cracking a bit at the end.

“Marry me, Byleth. I’d do anything for you. If..If you told me you didn’t want me to look at another woman, I’d go blind for you. I’m tired of lying to myself.” He says, and she is still staring at him, one eyebrow arched.

“Sylvain.” She says, cutting off any other attempts at flowery language. “That’s taking it a bit far, don’t you think? I mean, I already love you back, so there’s no choice but to marry you.” She steps closer, taking Acarian’s reins from his hands.

His smile is so large he almost misses that she’s leaning in for a kiss, and when their lips meet, stars dance across his vision.

When they finally break apart, he holds her close. “Watching you fall was the most scared I’ve ever been, Byleth.” He whispers.

“Imagine how upset I was when they found you. Claude told me I almost cried.” She shot back, still smiling.

He laughs, despite his recent brush with death, he can’t help but look fondly on it. “My last thought was that I had to make our dinner. You agreed, after all, and I couldn’t pass up on a date because of some silly injury. I won’t do it again, I promise. I’ll spend the rest of our lives together trying to make it up to you.”

He wraps his arms around her, watching the sun rise on their new life.