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Sylvain hates the cold.
When Ingrid had volunteered him earlier to go with Felix to collect firewood as retribution for some slight he can’t even remember, the look he’d sent her had been melodramatic and theatrical but the sting of betrayal deep in the hollows of his chest had been entirely real. Because she knew, she had to know how much he hated winter, hated the cold, hated the mountains. But her face had been utterly impassive as she stared back and something ugly twisted in his chest when he thought maybe she’d done it on purpose.
But the Professor didn’t know, and when he’d turned to fix Sylvain with that blank look of his and cocked his head in a silent question, Sylvain knew that nothing short of unloading a decade’s worth of trauma was going to get him out of it. So he’d sighed dramatically and thrown his arm around Felix’s shoulders and used the elbow to the ribs he got for his trouble as a cover for the unease settling in his belly.
And thus Sylvain finds himself hiking a snowy mountain behind his grumpiest and oldest friend as the cold winter air seeps into his overcoat and chills his skin.
And Sylvain hates the cold.
“Hurry up, Sylvain,” Felix calls gruffly from yards away, Sylvain having slowed while caught up in how very much he didn’t want to do this, “A storm is coming and I will leave you behind.”
Oh, Sylvain thinks. Cruel. He knows it’s an empty threat, that Felix is apparently conspiring with Ingrid to poke at Sylvain’s sore spots as punishment for something, but it doesn’t stop the terror from lancing through his chest. His stomach turns, scalp tingling as his skin crawls, and when he calls, “I’m coming wait up,” back, his voice wavers a little more than he’d like.
Felix doesn’t wait. He trudges on, dragging the sled over one shoulder and, frankly, how Sylvain got so lost in his head that he was walking slower than Felix’s steady, weighed down pace, he doesn’t know. He considers, briefly, falling into step beside Felix, but he’s feeling stretched thin and even Felix’s blustering rejection of his company would be too much. Instead, he walks behind the sled, letting it carve a path for him that won’t require him to bury his feet shin-deep in the snow.
They walk in silence, Felix never one for conversation and Sylvain finding his tongue thick and heavy in his mouth, bogged down by his circling thoughts and the fog slowly creeping over his mind. The higher they climb, the colder it gets. The wind picks up, sweeping icy air straight through Sylvain’s coat and over his skin. His stomach turns. There’s a phantom ache growing in his right knee, the injury long healed but endlessly paining him.
He doesn't realize the sun has been enveloped by the clouds until he notices the shadows of the trees no longer stripe their path. He peers upwards and the clouds are thick and a dark, stormy grey the likes of which he's never seen even on Garrech Mach's stormiest days, thick enough that the sun isn't only enveloped but almost smothered entirely. The forest has turned evening grey even though it can't possibly be long past midday.
In the muted tones of an oncoming storm, the trees around him looks uncomfortably like the forests of the Gautier territory, and the thought is so distracting Sylvain doesn't realize Felix has stopped until it's too late.
His shin cracks against the edge of the sled and he swears, dragged bodily from his own mind and back into the present. His head snaps up and for the briefest, blinding moment, the short, sturdy figure of his best friend has been replaced by someone taller, broader, a peek of red hair bursting from the confines of his hood and- no, no, no-
Sylvain stumbles backwards, into the snow, panicked, but the voice that shouts his name isn't the gravelly snarl of his brother, and the face that appears over him isn't torn through with a jagged scar.
“What is wrong with you?” Felix yells, anger layered thickly over concern. His eyes are wide as he grabs at Sylvain’s shirt and wrenches him off the ground, “Are you trying to freeze to death?”
Sylvain can't speak, voice caught in his throat as he stares. He thinks about all the ways Felix isn’t Miklan--Felix is shorter, stockier, his coarse, blistering anger always belied by the fact that he cares so deeply--until something eases in his chest.
“Sorry,” He says, voice uncharacteristically meek even to his own ears. His fingers are so cold. His knee hurts, but he tries for a smile anyway, “Wasn’t paying attention.”
Felix’s eyes narrow at his tone, scrutinizing him for a long moment. Sylvain wonders what he sees.
Whatever it is, it satisfies him, and he releases Sylvain’s coat with a dismissive noise, “Obviously. We’re here. Let’s finish so we can go back.”
Sylvain nods, still misty, but when Felix shoves an ax into his hand the purpose of having a task is a welcome reprieve from the cage of his own thoughts. The trees are thinner here, easier to cut down and more wieldly as firewood than the thicker trees nearer the monastery, but it’s still hard work. It warms him, distracts him from the wind and his thoughts and the creeping chill.
He works with a singlemindedness he can only ever achieve when he’s avoiding thinking about something. His hands ache but it’s a welcome hurt, distracting him from the way his knee is throbbing now. Between him and Felix, it doesn’t take long to have a decent pile of wood on the sled, but it’s long enough that the wind has picked up and small flurries of snow are beginning to fall. Sylvain’s mind is slipping from him, but he smiles when Felix finishes tying the cover over the sled and asks if he’s ready to head back.
“More than,” Sylvain agrees, taking the reins when Felix offers them. Felix stares a moment too long with narrowed eyes but turns without saying anything to begin the long trek down the mountain.
It’s colder now, edging closer to the winters in northern Faerghus, and halfway down the mountain the snow is falling harder. The wind howls through the trees, and Sylvain keeps his eyes fixed on Felix’s back, refusing to lose sight. His knee hurts enough that he’s limping. He hates the cold.
A shadow in the trees catches Sylvain’s eye. His head whips to the right, heart seizing, but he's met only with the shifting darkness between the trees. There’s nothing there, there's nothing there but the terror prickles under his skin anyway. He thinks- wonders- the wind rips past him, howling like a demon. Like a beast.
Miklan is dead, he thinks.
“Miklan is dead,” He says aloud, and the sound of his own voice startles him back into awareness. He turns back to the path to see if Felix had heard him and Felix is-
Felix is gone.
Sylvain stops or- had he already stopped? He looks down and Felix’s tracks are faded, disappearing under sheets of snow. When had it started snowing so hard? His hands are so cold when he tries to grip the reins that he finds his fingers won’t close all the way. It’d only been a moment. Not even a second.
“Felix?” Sylvain shouts into the wind. His voice trembles, “Felix?”
He wouldn’t have left him behind, right? No matter how angry Felix had been over the years he’d never actually hurt Sylvain. Even Ingrid, so quick to swat at his arms and shoulders when he acted out, had been mortified the one time she’d swung too hard and left Sylvain with a small, dark bruise on his temple. Even if they were pissed, even if Sylvain had done something to deserve insensitive jabs at open wounds, Felix wouldn’t have actually left him here, right?
Panic is bleeding into his chest. It feels like there’s a knife wedged under his kneecap, his hands are numb, his breaths are coming rapid and short. This isn’t happening. This is a nightmare. This isn’t happening again.
He's slipping, past and present bleeding into each other, mingling in the same trees, the same snow, the same wind.
“Miklan!” he shouts. His throat is raw. The name feels- wrong- but he can’t think past the panic, past the cold, past the heavy fog over his mind. Something is soaking through the back of his coat, down the back of his pants, and, oh, he’s fallen. He’s laying in the snow. He can’t breathe.
The wind is bitter and harsh, screaming now, burning on his cheeks and lips. He’s going to die out here. Will his father send someone to find him? No. Will the professor? Miklan is probably already back at the estate, saying Sylvain wandered off and it was too dangerous for him to stay out and search. The professor is probably ushering Felix in from the cold, saying tomorrow, tomorrow, once the storm passes.
No one is coming for him.
--
There are hands on him, pulling him up, a voice shouting in his ear over the shrieking wind. Warm fabric is laid over his head, blocking the wind from his aching face. His knee hurts so badly.
“Miklan,” he slurs. It’s wrong. “You came back.”
He thinks he’s being lifted in the air. He sleeps.
--
When he wakes, he wishes that he hadn’t.
If he thought he’d hurt before it’s nothing compared to what he’s feeling now. His fingers and toes are stiff and sore, practically immovable. Every muscle protests sharply when he moves, the kind of pain that seizes him, leaves him tense and breathing hard till it passes. He groans and finds his lips chapped and split--when he runs his tongue along them, he tastes iron. There’s a distinct heat under his skin that betrays a fever, but it must be mild because his mind is painfully clear.
“Fuck,” He croaks, blinking his eyes open and finding himself in the low lit infirmary of Garreg Mach. It’s empty save himself and a hunched pile of blankets to his right, one Sylvain suspects is the one who dragged him half dead down a mountain and is almost certainly not his years-dead older brother.
“That’s my line,” the bundle of cloth says grumpily, shifting upwards till the blankets slide down to reveal Felix’s messy hair and tired eyes. “You’re awake.” He says flatly, but there’s a distinct sag in his shoulders that betrays his worry.
Sylvain snorts, and that hurts. “Unfortunately,” he says around a wince, “Feel like I shouldn’t be.”
Felix stares for a long time, then makes an acknowledging noise and looks away.
The silence that settles over them isn’t- it’s not awkward, but it is loaded. Felix looks uncomfortable, brows knit and lips thinned, and Sylvain wishes, not for the first time, that Felix was easier to read. Is he angry at Sylvain for getting lost? Worried over his health? Guilty that he’d left him? Sylvain doesn’t know and it’s making his stomach tie itself in knots.
Felix doesn’t seem inclined to speak, so Sylvain does.
“I’m sorry,” He says. It’s not what he means to say, but it’s there now, hanging between them, and Felix’s eyes are back on him in an instant.
“You- for what?”
Sylvain shrugs, and regrets it immediately because his shoulder screams with the movement, “Whatever I did to piss you and Ingrid off.”
Felix stares again. Sylvain shifts his gaze away.
“We’re not angry?” It comes out like a question, Felix’s confusion bleeding into his anger, “Why would you think-”
“You left me on a mountain,” Sylvain says. He’s still not looking Felix- he thinks he’s angry at him actually, something he rarely indulges in if he can help it, “Why wouldn’t I think that?”
Felix makes a strange noise, strange enough that Sylvain is tempted to look but he doesn’t because he’s so, so weak to Felix and he so, so wants to be angry right now. His fingers try to knot into the sheets but they’re still like stone and he only succeeds in dragging them limply across the fabric.
“You think I did that on purpose?” He’s getting louder, and Sylvain is thankful the infirmary is far from where anyone would be sleeping, “Sylvain! You think I meant to lose you out there?”
He doesn’t, not really. But it’s an old hurt, a deep hurt and they’d dredged it up like it was nothing. Even if they hadn’t meant for it to end up like this, sending him out there when they knew-
Sylvain is silent, jaw clenched.
“I didn’t,” Felix says, something desperate in his tone, “Sylvain, look at me.”
He won’t. He won’t. His hands are shaking.
Behind him, the blankets shift and a chair scrapes across the infirmary floor. Sylvain thinks Felix must be leaving, but his footsteps round the bed the wrong way, and Sylvain’s too sore and slow to react before Felix is planting himself firmly in his line of sight. His eyes are wet, and Sylvain is weak--he doesn’t turn away again.
“I would never,” Felix says, voice thick and fierce and hurt. Guilt sits heavy in Sylvain’s stomach.
He breaks, crumbles, the anger flooding out of him as quickly as it had come, “I know,” he says, because he does.
Felix searches his face, like he thinks he’s lying, but eventually something eases in his posture. He sags, just a little, and sinks onto the bed by Sylvain’s legs. The silence stretches again, more comfortable. Sylvain is content to leave it at that, but Felix, for once, has to push.
“Last night,” He says, “You called me Miklan.”
Sylvain flinches- his memories are hazy but that seems painfully likely, “I- yeah, sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Felix snaps, and it’s comfortably lacking in heat, “Just- why?”
Sylvain snorts. “You know why.”
Felix is quiet for a moment. And then another. Sylvain catches his gaze and finds his brows furrowed again.
“Felix,” Sylvain says, “You know why.”
Felix bristles, “Obviously I don’t.”
And that’s- that can’t be possible. That incident had practically defined Sylvain’s teenage years. Months of recovery, years shaking a blinding fear of snowfall, piles and piles of well wishes from nobles he’d never met, all of which had to be read and replied to when Sylvain was barely able to grip a quill. He’s sure it had been a visiting Fraldarius knight that had found Sylvain days after he’d been abandoned, and he knows for a fact Felix had written to him during those long, misery filled months of aching limbs and bedrest.
Felix had to know.
But Felix is looking at him like he’s grown a second head and for all he’s good at masking his feelings with fury and steel he’s never been good at faking them.
“Miklan left me on a mountain,” Sylvain says, realizing only once the words left his mouth that he’d never actually said them aloud. Not to anyone, not even his parents, “In a blizzard. I was out there for days. I almost died.”
Whatever Sylvain had thought before about Felix being unreadable, he was wrong. He watches Felix’s face as he processes everything, watches his expression shift from confusion to anger to a slowly dawning horror.
“Sylvain,” he says, “Sylvain we didn’t know.”
An ugly part of Sylvain wants to think that he’s lying, that Felix and Ingrid had gone too far and he’s trying to cover it up. But more than anything, Sylvain knows Felix. Felix was crass and blunt and utterly lacking in tact. He could be cruel, but he didn't lie about it, and the long years he'd spent with his classmates, with the professor, had dulled his sharp tongue considerably. He wasn't lying, couldn't be.
“I would have- Sylvain.”
Later, Sylvain will feel bad for laughing, but he can’t help it. It's bubbling out of him before he can stop it, relief and exhaustion and a lingering terror a volatile mix within him. They didn’t know. Goddess, he’s an idiot.
“You- I thought-” The words are choked out through gasping breaths, “I thought you-”
Felix looks lost and maybe a little annoyed. Sylvain, gasping, clumsily reaches for him, and after a moments hesitation, Felix takes his hand. They’re both shaking. Sylvain pulls, hard as he can when his muscles burn with the slightest movement, and then pulls again when Felix doesn’t move.
“Come here,” he insists, still breathless, still laughing, probably bordering on hysteria.
Felix goes. He slides up the bed and leans in so Sylvain can press his face into his shoulder, feel the way they’re both trembling against each other. Felix gets an arm around his back, not quite as gentle as he should be but Sylvain cant find it in him to protest.
“I’m sorry,” Felix says, soft and mumbled into Sylvain’s skin.
Sylvain nods once, tries to say It’s fine, but it comes out a mangled sob.
Felix holds him through it, tight and painful and so, so warm.