10 - NIGHTMARE AT DAWN
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Sylvain
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"What are you doing?" Felix asks as I pull on my clothes and boots and grab my lance.
"Learning to be a morning person," I grumble.
He looks so delighted as I follow him to the training hall that dragging myself out of bed at this ungodly hour starts to feel worth it.
"Did you get any sleep?" I ask him.
"Enough," he says.
Felix got an exceptionally early start today - the result of insomnia, I expect. But he seems steady enough on his feet and I set my worries aside.
No one else is awake and there is barely any light in the sky yet. As we trudge across the courtyard, I rub the sleep from my eyes and remind myself to make coffee first next time. When we reach the door of the training hall, I am mid-yawn, rubbing my eyes, my brain feeling fuzzy. But Felix's sharp gasp makes me jump and open my eyes.
"No," I whisper. "How?"
"Fuck," he says, looking ill. "Fuck!"
Nailed to the door of the training hall is the naked body of a girl. Her throat is cut, blood spilt down across her body to pool on the cobblestones below. Over her head, traced in her blood on the door, is a crest. But this time it isn't the shield dragon. It's the fissure dragon crest of House Gautier.
"He's dead," Felix says hysterically. "I killed him! They burned his body!"
"We need to get her down from there," I say.
"No! Don't touch her. I don't want to carry another dead body back to Agust. Let him handle it. I'll go send for him and have my guards sweep the area. You stay here and look for any signs of a break in."
Felix dashes off and I am left standing beside the corpse, struggling against the urge to gag. This is the least disturbing body we have found yet, but the implications of it sicken me, as does the presence of my own cursed crest.
Was the man we encountered in the clearing not the murderer? Or worse yet, is someone copying him?
After a minute, a couple guards come running, swearing at the sight of the body.
"Don't touch her," I tell them. "Inspector Agust will need to examine the scene."
We don't have to wait long for Agust to come running with Felix, accompanied by a group of police officers.
"What the devil," Agust says.
I hang back with Felix as the inspector looks over the body and the mark on the door, then takes down the girl and covers her up with a coat. Stealing glances at Felix, I watch in fear as he fights more and more to keep his composure. But even if his face is calm and grave, his eyes have a wild, desperate look in them that scares me.
Agust fires questions at him and he responds automatically. Whenever he struggles for words, I answer for him. But no matter how many questions we answer, Agust's furious expression and the suspicion in his tone does not ease.
I keep thinking of what Felix said to him. "Maybe he thought he had gotten enough bloodshed during the war. But he grew bored."
I can tell those same words are in Agust's mind too.
Maybe the cutthroat warrior who came home to rule a dukedom grew bored. Maybe he missed his days in the war. He grew up with an obsession to fight and the kind of pragmatic personality that adapted well to violence. Maybe idleness drove him mad. He wouldn't be the first soldier to witness the atrocities of battle and have no way to process them but to commit his own.
I only wonder what he imagines my role in these events to be. It can't possibly be a coincidence that they started the day I arrived. Me singing Felix's praises and defending his honor won't mean a damn thing now that the crest left behind is mine. Agust has to assume I am part of this now.
It feels like a year has passed by the time the officers are done with the crime scene and have taken away the body of the girl. Patrols of soldiers are sent out to scour the forest and police officers head out to search the manor house and town.
"Stay here for now," Agust tells us. "I will send reports on our progress. Don't go anywhere. You hear me? Stay put."
As we retreat into the house, I notice a group of soldiers and a few officers gather outside the doors. I doubt they are for our protection.
I take Felix's hand and pull him back to his room. He yanks away from me and sits down on the bed, hanging his head in his hands and clutching the roots of his hair, swearing under his breath.
Sitting down beside him, I reach out to touch him then think better of it and withdraw my hand. I should say something, but my thoughts and emotions are in as much tumult as his.
"Why is he doing this?" Felix murmurs.
"I don't know. I don't fucking know!" I flinch as my voice comes out sharp with frustration and fear. But I can't control the emotions inside me, built up over a lifetime and now dragged excruciatingly to the forefront of my mind. "That crest is a curse! It dies with me! I only wish there was a way to kill it off sooner."
Tears sting in my eyes and I swear, trying to wipe them away. But they just keep coming, unable to be contained behind the cool and calm mask I am normally so good at wearing.
I hide my face in my hands, silently cursing myself for choosing now of all times to break down. Felix is on the edge of losing it too. I should be the one keeping a clear head.
If it had been any other symbol painted on that door I would be fine. But the cursed sight of that crest has the power to unravel me like nothing else, tied as it is to all of the deepest angers and traumas within me.
I feel Felix's arms around me and I withdraw deeper into myself, ashamed that he is seeing me like this.
"Sylvain," he murmurs, putting his hand behind my head and pulling it down to rest on his shoulder.
Burying my face in his neck, I wrestle to get my emotions under control and put that brave mask back on.
Felix strokes my hair and kisses the top of my head.
Despite his tough manner, he is the one who expresses his emotions in private far easier than me. I have been the one holding him as he cries countless times over the years, from when we were kids to even in our adulthood.
But me… I've only ever broken down on him a few times and only in the darkest of circumstances. Each time I do, I expect him to tell me to stop and suck it up. And yet each time he just comforts me with surprising gentleness.
Felix will never be the kind of person to whom loving words come easily. But in moments like this, he speaks them through his actions so clearly it reassures me more than a hundred words could.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I don't know what's wrong with me."
"I do," he says. "Don't apologize. We all have our demons."
Wrapping my arms around his waist, I hold onto him tightly until I regain my composure. As I pull away, he takes my face in his hands and kisses my forehead.
"We're in this together," he says. "We will figure this out before anyone else gets killed."
I nod. "What do we do now? What's the first step?"
"Figure out how to get out of this goddamn house arrest," he replies.
"To do what?"
"I want to see Asmer's house. We read the report but we never went there. There wasn't really a reason to with the police combing every inch of it. But now I want to see it for myself. Maybe they missed something."
"Riding back into those woods isn't going to look good, especially if we find another body in them."
"It doesn't matter. Agust already thinks it's us. The only way we can disprove him is finding the real killer. Again."
Oliver knocks on the door, saying, "Breakfast, sir?"
As I scrub the tears off my face and take a deep breath, Felix gets up and opens the door, taking the tray from him and thanking him.
"You hungry?" he asks me.
"Not even a little."
He shoves a plate of eggs and bacon in my face and says, "Eat anyways. You need energy. Neither of us are getting sleep tonight."
"Why?" I ask, forcing myself to take a bite of one of the strips of bacon.
"We need to wait for dark to do anything. Once the street lamps are out, we are going back to the woods. We'll have to go on foot, but I know we can get around the guards. I know those trails much better than they do."
"Promise me you won't tie me up and leave me behind this time."
"I promise. It didn't do much good anyways. I should have figured you have experience breaking out of handcuffs."
Once I finish eating as much as I can stand, I set the plate aside and lie down on the bed, closing my eyes. "We need to think."
"I'm too angry to think," Felix says. "I just want to hunt this bastard down and strangle him with my bare hands."
"We already did that and it didn't work. All the evidence pointed to Asmer being the killer and I think he was. But that means that there is something larger going on. It's more than just one psychopath preying on people."
Felix comes over and lies down beside me silently. I roll onto my side and study his expression. He might be calmer than me right now on the outside, but he is falling apart. He looks like he did when I first arrived - exhausted, haunted, dead-eyed.
"I need your help. We need to think this through," I say.
He nods, still staring with unfocused eyes over my shoulder.
Instead of pressuring him, I pull him into my arms and rest my forehead against his. For a while we stay like that without speaking and I feel the tension in his panicked body begin to ease. Then all of a sudden, Felix grabs my face and kisses me frantically.
Craving the comfort of intimacy, I kiss him back, putting my hand on his leg and lifting it to rest on my hip so my body is pressed as close to his as possible.
But after a minute, I can feel his shoulders shaking and his breathing growing ragged. I stop kissing him and he puts his hand over his mouth, closing his eyes. His panic doesn't take the form of tears like mine did, but I can tell it is unraveling him all the same.
Rubbing his back, I whisper, "What is it?"
But he doesn't answer. He hides his face against my chest and I feel his anxious breaths racing against my skin.
"Fee?"
"He wants you dead," he says, pulling himself together and looking up at me. "It wasn't me he is after. It's you. I think he's making that clear now."
"I know," I say quietly, struggling even more to keep my emotions under control.
Felix gives a bitter, breathless sort of laugh and says, "Fate has a cruel sense of humor. Some bastard comes out of nowhere to kill you, right as I finally have you back."
"He's not going to succeed, not as long as you're here."
"He very nearly did already. It wasn't me who saved you. It was a lucky healing spell. You'd have died that day otherwise and there would have been nothing I could have done to save you."
"Felix, listen to me," I say. He doesn't meet my eyes and I tip his chin up to look at me. "The weight of all this is not on your shoulders. Once in a while, I can save myself. And once in a while, I might even save you. So right now, don't worry about me. I trust you and I trust myself. Let's keep our focus on how we're going to find this bastard."
"I love you," he says so quietly I can barely hear him. "I swear to you, if anyone tries to hurt you or take you from me, they will die. I'll do anything to keep you safe."
The pain in his eyes makes my heart ache and I brush my thumb across his lips, looking at him earnestly. "I love you too, more than you can ever know. Nothing can take you from me, nor me from you."
My words seem to reassure him a little and the vulnerable look leaves his eyes. He moves out of my arms and sits up.
"Alright," he says. "Let's stop wasting time and start thinking."
I exhale a long breath, forcing myself to calm down and clear my head. I sit up and wrap a blanket around our shoulders as we lean back against the headboard.
"What are you looking for at Asmer's house?" I ask.
"Signs of someone communicating with him. I think he was hired."
"Why?"
"The bodies they dug up in the clearing weren't killed by poison and they didn't have any symbols on them. He just killed them because he wanted to. He had to get the drug from somewhere; there were no signs of him making it in his house. His methods changed when he chose to target me."
"That makes sense," I reply. "So once he failed, whoever hired him hired someone else or took matters into his own hands. If it only took a week for him to find out Asmer failed and make other plans, then he must be close by. He'd have to live at least within a fifty mile radius or so. That means it's not someone from the empire."
"It's someone in Faerghus," Felix agrees. "But fifty or sixty miles doesn't narrow it down much. Even Fhirdiad is within fifty miles."
"You know what bothers me, though? If they want you dead, why not just kill you? Asmer could have killed you at any point during either of our trips to the clearing. Why didn't he? And why did the person who hired him not just kill you once he found out Asmer's game was over."
"I guess he doesn't want me dead."
I think for a minute then say, "It made sense to leave the bodies in the woods because it got us to go off on our own to the clearing where we were vulnerable. If he wanted to draw us out of the city to kill us, he would leave more bodies in the woods. Leaving a body here in your house means he isn't trying to draw you out. He's trying to bring all this closer to you."
"He doesn't just want to kill me. He wants to drive me crazy," Felix says. "Or maybe he is trying to discredit me to get my lands and title?"
"I don't think it's someone who wants your power. Greed doesn't make people do things this dark. I think we need to stick with our original theory." I glance at him sadly and say, "You and I both know how revenge can make someone go to such lengths out of grief and hatred."
He nods. "But this is something even the rabid boar would not have done."
"Only because he was never cruel to begin with. If someone had a natural bent to cruelty and was driven mad with anger the same way he was, they would be worse than him. It was only ever his underlying goodness that kept him from being truly evil."
"Let's not talk of him," Felix says. "I promised myself I would forget those dark days."
"I know. But it helps me figure out who this man is to consider the differences. What kept Dimitri from becoming like that was the people who loved him - Byleth, Dedue, Rodrigue, all of us. Let's assume this person is seeking revenge the same way Dimitri did. He has to be cruel and cunning, but more than that, I reckon he is alone."
"Where's that list?" Felix asks.
I get up and dig through the papers on his desk until I find it and bring it back along with a pen. Felix looks it over with a frown.
"So he's in Faerghus. We killed someone who was important enough to drive him to revenge, but he doesn't have family left. He's a loner. And he has enough money to hire killers."
As Felix crosses off names, he sighs in frustration and says, "This still doesn't make any sense! The last time we killed people was in the war! That was two years ago. Why would he wait until now?"
"Something was in his way until now?" I suggest.
"What? Money?" Felix says. "No, someone this determined wouldn't let money stand in the way."
"Maybe he was out of the country?"
Felix studies the list for several long minutes then says, "I know it has to be someone from the war, but it still doesn't make sense for it to be anyone on this list."
"Like you said, we haven't killed anyone since. And we didn't kill anyone before."
With a growl, Felix throws the paper and pen to the side. "We're not going to get anywhere talking ourselves in circles! He's probably off murdering people as we speak!" He gets up and grabs his sword sheath, buckling it to his belt. "Fuck this. We're getting out of here."
"Wait!" I protest, jumping out of bed and running over to grab his arm. "You'll play right into his hand if you rush out there and get us arrested for real! He doesn't just want me dead, he wants you to be framed as a killer! He wants your reputation!"
Felix stops and stares at me like he had been slapped.
"What?" I ask.
"My reputation…" He sets down his sword and says, "As much as I try to forget Dimitri's days as a rabid beast, I still remember some of the things he said. During one of his rants, he said once that whoever was behind Duscur, he would only kill them after he had killed their brothers and fathers because he wanted them to lose what they took from him. I remember it because as much as I despised him for being so out of control and obsessed, I couldn't help but feel…"
"That you wanted the same?"
He nods and says, "The point of revenge isn't to mete out justice on someone you think deserves to die. It's to take from them what you lost. If they killed someone you love, you kill someone they love. If they took your lands, you take theirs."
"And if you destroy their reputation, you destroy theirs," I say, understanding what he is getting at.
Felix nods. "Time to make a new list."
