There is no room for Glenn here.
The world is for the living. Not the dead.
Each cycle of the moon, each passing season, had shaken the ghosts from the land. Pushed them aside to where they rightfully belonged.
He does not exist on Fraldarius grounds.
Not on the training grounds. His dummies - those are too big for you, Felix - have long since been shredded to bits. Felix had grown into them. Then out of them.
Not in the stables. Glenn's horse died with him. Decapitated and then set aflame. Left to rot and freeze.
Not in his room.
Felix breathes in clean sheets and flora. Neither choices Glenn would have made for himself. There had been no fat flower with a head too big on his table instead of books. No smell of freshly laundered sheets instead of polish and leather. There are no ghosts to be found here.
Felix pulls the last sword off Glenn's wall feeling nothing. The dead have no use for fine weapons and rare shields. Incapable of swinging any blade let alone one as fine as this. A good replacement for the Zoltan blade Felix had broken some time ago. He pushes lightning through the Levin sword, turning it this way and that, pleased when it comes to life, crackling obediently.
"He would have been pleased you've chosen that one," Rodrigue says. Felix does not recall giving his worthless father permission to approach him. Rodrigue looks around the room, a familiar sadness in his face, only a fraction of what should actually be felt. Felix grinds his teeth at the little touch of wistfulness in Rodrigue's voice, "He thought you'd have a penchant for magic. Said a Levin sword would be a good bridge."
"The dead don't feel pleasure," Felix spits, giving his father a wide berth as he passes him in the doorway. The mere thought of touching Rodrigue was repulsive. As if ideals were a plague to be caught. Felix doesn't look his father in the face. Finds he cannot without something cloying burning the back of his throat, threatening nausea, "Have you spoken to Gautier yet? I didn't come to throw information at dung piles, left to be pushed under and drowned by your worthless loyalty to the dead."
"Felix …"
Felix's grip tightens on the sword handle as he walks away, fingers twitching with the urge to use it. At this range, he could manage a strike. Knows he only has to swing up and parallel to his shoulder. Elbows down, wrist angled –
"Good, remember that form now Felix. And do it a hundred times. Lest you forget it in battle," Glenn instructs, holding Felix's wrist steady. A little smile on his face. Encouraging and pleased.
Knows the Levin sword's distance and range, can practically see the burn of white magic behind his eyelids.
As if sensing the movement, Rodrigue says nothing more. Only heaves a heavy sigh as he enters the room. Says something else as if greeting a Glenn who still sat at his table with his feet on the wood. A delirious old man chasing after ghosts.
Felix grits his teeth as he moves down the halls, refusing to look back. Refusing to indulge ghosts and lost fools.
Glenn did not exist here any longer.
In the empty halls, his footsteps pick up, lifting around him and splintering apart in an echo. A second pair following Felix's through the Fraldarius halls.
The Fraldarius estate is wide and empty. As if loneliness was a feature of the land. An ancient law worn into the ground, growing like ivy vines into whatever building dare stand over it. Sinking into the humans, burning into their personalities. Given Felix's tendencies to keep to himself, perhaps that was the truth.
For the moment, Bylead can only be grateful.
He presses his back against a wall without the gaze of a guard, eyes shuttering closed as he touches a hand to his temples, digging his thumb in hard. A desperate attempt to allay the tension pulsing beneath skin. There is a low pain, grinding into his pulse, like the slow turn of a millstone. A constant from within his body that made his fingers itch, aching to dig beneath skin and skull to tear the affliction from himself like an unfamiliar growth.
"Apologies. I should have known better than to try and pour so much of my powers through you," Sothis says, her voice sounding distant and faint despite how closely she hovered.
She wears guilt and concern in equal parts, her eyes going downcast when he stubbornly refuses her apology. Neither of them had known the gift would drain out of his body after the tenth attempt so abruptly. As if he were a bucket punched with holes, made into a sieve incapable of drawing from the stream of time. Power had left him in a great swoop, leaving behind weariness and pain like rock and debris too large to be sieved out.
He hangs his head, fingers tapping a slow rhythm against his temple as if he could override the pulse of pain with a beat of his own. Fingers tapping harder and harder when it does nothing to ease the tension. Sothis touches him, a ghost touch that should be cool against his forehead. Like a mother's hand. Seeking to draw pain from him. As Byleth had done for him so many times as children.
"Father!"
The shout is loud enough it startles some of the courtyard birds. Carrying over the winds, strident and urgent. Strums at the pain in Bylead's head like a tightly strung lute, shaking loose a rush of discordant agony that makes him dizzy. With a slow heavy breath, he stretches his hand out for the wall, pulling himself forward just as Annette and Gilbert run past him.
Annette's chasing the older knight and though Gilbert does not run, there is a quickness to his step that leaves the impression he is fleeing.
"Father! Why do you pretend not to recognize me?!" Annette shouts and like Rodrigue and Felix, it is a statement holding too much weight and too much history for Bylead to intrude upon.
Bylead's head throbs, feeling agony in his periphery, loud and insistent like a feral dog on a leash. Sothis snatches at the Pulse at his fingertips, her mouth drawing down in deep disapproval as she holds it out of his reach, leaving his finger to grasp at empty air.
"Shhh," she says when his mouth parts in a protest, pointing to Annette and Gilbert.
"Father!" Annette has to physically stop him for a reply.
Wind erupts from her fingertips, scoring a deep line right in front of Gilbert's foot, a remarkably speedy cast with deadly accuracy. Hanneman would be pleased the extra lessons and lent books on Reason had produced such a drastic improvement.
"Annette … I –" Gilbert turns only long enough to glimpse her face before guilt splinters over his face. Something panged and full of understanding.
He turns hurriedly away, his hands clenched into fists at his side. Losing the statue straight stance of a knight for a moment.
"I've been looking everywhere for you," Annette says, her voice quieter but not enough that Bylead would have to strain to hear. She reaches out to touch and as if she were pointing a poisoned dagger, Gilbert yanks his sleeve out of her range.
He flinches, shaking a little as he loosens his grip on himself, but does not turn back. Only starts walking again, his pace brisk. Someone desperate to escape.
"Father - stop this. Please stop treating me like a stranger. I – how long will you keep avoiding me like this?! I've seen you at Garreg Mach. I know you live there under a different name. I know you are avoiding me. I-I'm clumsy and a little dense but I'm not a fool! All these months … I know you flee from the training grounds whenever I approach. I see how you take your meals in your quarters; how you flee from the dining halls with your tray like a thief in the night. You even stop your morning prayers and hurry away when Mercie and I go for choir practice… Father - father, can you not face me?! I – I cannot bear this!"
Gilbert's jaw tightens, working slowly over his words, and when he lets them loose, they are gravely spoken and forcibly distant, "I have lost the right to face you or your mother."
"This is nothing to do with rights!" Annette shouts at him, her words biting on the heels of his protest, "We're family. I'm your daughter."
"Indeed," he chances another glance and Bylead sees something flick over him. A deep care twisted up and tangled, folding in over itself until it was unrecognizable and distant.
"But I am no father. I am only a fool who abandoned his family."
"You think it was foolish to abandon us?" the question lifts on a little measured plume of hope.
"I do."
"Then the least you can do is apologize. Not to me – I'm fine – "
Sothis huffs a little disagreement and Bylead agrees.
"But mother deserves as much. She's waited for you all this time. Living under uncle's roof."
"Annette … I'm sorry –"
"No! I've already told you. I don't want that from you. Apologize to mother. Let her see your face. Let her know you –"
"No. That I cannot do. I –" Gilbert tenses, bits of his shoulder armor grinding together as he straightens, "I must go to deliver his Highness' findings to Margrave Gautier. With his Majesty gone and these patterns in banditry, there is something –"
"Mother still believes you will return to her. 'When his duty is finished'," Annette utters a harsh laugh, the sound like the shrill bite of an errant chalk stroke on blackboard, "'I love a man who sees beyond himself and all others. King and country first … I love him still.'"
Gilbert turns so sharply Bylead wonders if he'd sprained himself. The knight's expression slack with surprise, the deep grooves of his brows and jaw smoothing out for only a moment. His eyes glimmer with something wretched and pained, something unspoken hanging on his lips. It is another long moment before he can compose himself again but he manages, agony outlining his face in sharp lines.
"I know you do not understand, Annette. But it is the way of things."
"You're right," Annette says and this time she is the one to step away, her hands folded behind her back, nails digging into her delicate wrist. Magic flickers at her fingertips, green curling over her knuckles, a whisper away, reacting on her pain, "I do not understand."
Silence spins out between them. Regret and anger like a dead weight over their heads.
"If you say the word, I will disappear from your sight," Gilbert says as if it is a gift he is granting her. Does not seem to understand the way her expression twists and her entire body withdraws, "For now … I must return to my duties."
His steps are heavy and measured. As if he did not mean his words. As if he wanted to stay.
But he does not glance back once, only walks away from his daughter with the same forced stoicism Rodrigue wears each time Felix bristles and snarls.
Bylead feels his heart lurch, something dropping like a heavy fist. Feels Sothis stiffen beside him, a memory from her side skittering over them both.
Of Zanado and a border of mountains ridges, their sharp tips grazing the full underbelly of a thick blue sky, as if they had clawed the white clouds into the blue. An old anxiety sticks in their chest, the feel like tar, as they look to the horizon.
It is a bright day. An optimistic sky. One meant for new beginnings. But she knows that is not to be. She can taste battle on her tongue as one can feel rain in their joints. Can feel something humming in the distance building to a crescendo –
"Mother, is everything alright?"
"Of course," she lies as parents do, with a gentle smile and an easy air.
Bylead grunts when Annette barrels into him, stumbling a little out of surprise. His hands come up to her shoulders, sympathy sweeping away all else when he realizes her eyes are red.
"Oof – Professor," she scrambles away from him, wiping furiously at her eyes as she does. Her cheeks are blotchy, the angry flush reaching up to her hairline, "I…I didn't see you."
Her voice trembles on her lips as if the words had been unwilling to leave her. Shaking her head, she forces a smile that is stretched too thin.
"I heard there are more bandits," Annette says, trying to force a lightness to her tone, "Lord Rodrigue's dispatched his knights to Gautier asking for more support. Do you think we'll wind up going there too?"
"Annette … I'm sorry - I saw what happened. Are you–?"
"No," she says, defensive and brittle around the edges. Like the shattered edges of a broken glass bottle.
Her smile dims as she takes a deliberate step back. She draws in on herself, curling her arms under her waist, her body tense.
"… Okay then," Bylead says after a long moment, "I imagine we will be going to Gau–"
"You're so lucky Professor," the words break between them, startling them both as if it were the first snap of ice on a frozen lake.
The first crack preceding disaster.
Annette's lashes flicker, startled and surprised, stunned by her own words but only for a moment. Her teeth find her bottom lip, sinking in hard, fresh tears springing to her eyes as she fixes Bylead with a gaze so angry it burns.
"You're so lucky," she says again and it's sharper this time, honed like a blade, striking for a target. Her eyes flash with something cruel and unlike her, stirring from something long-simmering and angry, desperate for release, "I bet you've never felt this way, Professor."
Bylead cannot summon a reply, too surprised by the accusation to find the words. As if she has taken his silence as agreement, Annette husks a sharp laugh.
"I knew it," she says with hateful bitterness, "You. Professor Byleth. Sir Jeralt. You're all so close. You would have no idea how I feel. To spend years waiting for someone who would never look at you properly."
"Annette …"
"No," she tears away from him, her words picking up speed, spellwork tripping over her clenched knuckles, swirling into the palm of her hand. She seems to take no notice. Her attention is fixed on Bylead, unwavering, as if holding him accountable for wrongdoing, "You never – you were never told 'your father loves you, he just doesn't know to show it' or 'we must have patience and faith. We must await his return. He wi- he will surely –"
She cuts herself off, an angry sob ripping from her throat. The air around them twists, moving to match the dance of green over her fingers, "Having faith based on nothing. Throwing all your love at someone that'll never reciprocate. Being told to just be silent and wait – you never had to put full faith in something based on nothing. A happy little family. Mercenaries without a home with more than one I'll ever have. It – it's a mockery. The group of you in my face. So tightly bonded – I - I hate yo–"
Boom!
Wind erupts in front of them. The appearance of it so sudden it rips a sound from the air.
Annette utters a startled cry, the break in concentration shattering her spell to pieces and it whips into the pillars and empty boxes around them, scores the ground between them, and claws into Bylead's shoulder as it snaps apart.
"Professor!" she makes an aborted move towards him when he stumbles back against the spell, her eyes wide and troubled, her entire body shaking.
She blinks and it is as if she is seeing him again, her mouth falling open in an 'O' of surprise. Shock. Then guilt. Then self-loathing. Fear.
The color bleeds from her face, sapping the fight in her as it goes.
"I – Prof – I," more accusations or an apology, Bylead never gets to hear, only hears his own voice calling after her as she flees from him.
The pounding in his head picks up, a pain like drumbeats. Building for a crescendo.
"Ha - so the bastard's gone and done it," Sylvain is the first to break the silence, his voice like a crackling fire, spitting embers at anyone who came to close, "Miklan always swore he'd be back for the Lance of Ruin. Guess older siblings deserve some praise for sheer stubbornness if nothing else."
The last piece is aimed at Bylead. Slung like a trebuchet. Sylvain winks and smiles at Bylead but it's disingenuous, full of the same sharp bitterness Annette had revealed to Bylead weeks ago.
"She still cannot meet your eye," Sothis notes.
As if Bylead had not noticed himself. He wasn't the only one. Annette had pulled away from everyone. Mercedes included. The two of them on opposite ends of the table, their eyes cast in opposite directions in blatant avoidance.
Annette turns her face away from Bylead when he looks at her, bowing to look down at the papers, fingers tracing absently over Gilbert's signature.
Bylead does the same, flipping halfheartedly through details of how Miklan had successfully built himself a group of bandits and spread them expertly across the Northern lands like a military tactician.
"It was an extraordinary move," Dimitri says hesitantly, as if afraid to speak well of Miklan in Sylvain's presence, "Miklan always did know how to bring others around to his cause."
"Good for nothing but his mouth," Sylvain says, waving his hands, "As father said."
"I … Father said nothing when he came to Galatea lands. That was his kindness I suppose …," Ingrid says, "And Miklan did not stay long. Only a fortnight before he disappeared. I remember father sent word to Margrave Gautier … perhaps he'd feared Miklan would have made an attempt then."
Bylead wonders what it would have felt like. To know there were home and family so far away but to know he would never able to reach them. He taps his fingers in thought, not liking the little bloom of discomfort in the pit of his stomach.
"I never imagined he would turn to banditry," Rodrigue says. His expression is grim as he picks over the words over Bylead's shoulder and he heaves a heavy sigh, brow furrowing, "Gautier's eldest was always … prideful. Banditry seemed beneath him,"
Sylvain snorts, "Pride? What pride did he have left after he was disowned? He had no title. No lands. Only the clothes on his back."
There's a lightness to his words that Annette had not been able to manage, an expertly managed trick as if nothing that came out of his mouth meant anything to him. A man with no connections to keep him tethered and no desire to be tied. Someone who felt nothing for the brother who'd been cast aside.
"He should have swallowed his miserable pride and found a family," Sylvain says, crossing the room to pick up his lance from where it leaned against the doorframe. He toys with the weight for a moment, turning it over, "Well. I'd always expected this sooner. Miklan always was a good for nothing but it's apparently not enough to keep that knowledge within the family."
He grins and it's smooth and easy as water.
"Now that he's gone and screamed it to the world, we can't let this pass," he chuckles, "Hey, Felix what's that word you're always slinging around?"
No answer from the swordsman but Sylvain continues as if he'd received a reply. His glib act fraying at the edges, enough that Ingrid flashes Felix a look of concern.
"Oh, yes – pathetic with a capital 'P'. Worthless in life and determined to die a worthless death," Sylvain hums, one hand running through his hair in thought, his gaze going distant, turning away from them all. Another little laugh rumbles in his throat, "Call me when we depart, Professor."
And he leaves them with an unpleasant aftertaste. Fill of bitterness. The final dregs of herbal medication.
Ingrid flashes Bylead a pleading look as does Dimitri.
"I … I will defer to you for our approach," Dimitri says.
"That hesitance is unbecoming a king," Sothis says, curling over Bylead, her arms around his neck. As if attempting to comfort. But the sigh she utters when Bylead stands and dislodges her reveal different intentions. She hovers behind him, tugging at the back of his shirt with a grasp he barely feels as he goes after Sylvain, "Really. These students of yours…"
"You know my brother first tried to kill me when I was five?" Sylvain asks when Bylead finds him at the horse stables.
He flashes Bylead a smile, something baiting and full of teeth and it feels as if Bylead has stepped into a predator's den. His fingers tap the edge of his wrist dagger as he steps closer, putting himself well in range of Sylvain's lance - if he had it on him.
Sylvain only wields clinch cutters and he has his hands occupied. His shirt is off and there is a thin sheen of sweat over his shoulders. His back is pressed against the body of his horse and he has one horse leg tucked between his own. The muscles of his arms bunch and twist as he works on the shoe.
"Took me up to the mountains saying he'd teach me to ride. Said the old man taught him that way. Stood him on a horse and then slapped the rear. 'The kids down in Derdriu learn to swim like that. Thrown in headfirst. They pick it up or they don't. Drown if they don't. Don't be such a whiner, Sylvain. You have to buck up now that you're the next heir.'"
Sylvain chuckles, throwing the horseshoe at the ground in front of Bylead's feet, the smile growing. Full of loathing whether turned inwards or out to his brother, it's impossible to tell.
"Should've heard the way he said, 'heir'. Like it was choking him to admit. He gave me a look when he was strapping me to the horse. Might've been guilt," Sylvain says and he must have seen something on Bylead's face because he snorts a laugh, "Yeah guilt. And about a thousand feet above that, delight. It's the first time I'd seen him that happy. Hell - it was the first time I'd seen him smile around me. You know how ecstatic I was to see it? Here I was, five years old getting to spend time around my big brother. Thinking oh, maybe he doesn't hate me so much. Maybe we could actually be friends. Maybe he was just faking the whole time."
Sylvain's eyes gleam like the point of a dagger, "Know how that feels, Professor?"
Bylead shakes his head as he passes Sylvain a hoof knife and in response, Sylvain's smile grows. A wicked thing that draws ice in Bylead's veins, something gnawing and terrible. A chill crawling up his spine sinking deep into the very core of him, turning bits of his blood jagged and piercing.
"Yeah... yeah, I bet," Sylvain says, as he works at the dirt on the hoof bottom. Crumbing a particularly large piece between his fingers so it slips through his hands, "He dumped me on the old man's horse. Big ol' stallion. Meant for war. Bred to be bullheaded, no patience for the inexperienced."
Bylead can feel something vibrating outwards. Anger. Hatred. Grief. It sticks in his throat, a thick bramble prodding at the sensitive skin, tearing him apart. Danger coil sickly in his gut.
"He tied my fingers with the mane hairs, just enough to keep me clinging. Even better if I yanked and pissed off the old thing. Nothing obvious. No lasting ties that weren't meant to come off. In case he was caught I guess. Strapped down my legs to the stirrups with loose knots and then slapped the old thing with a little whoop. Heard him laughing when the thing took off. First time I heard him laugh too and for a minute I wasn't so scared. Just happy to hear it. Glad that I made him do that."
Sothis makes a noise like a moan, a little hiccup of terror at the cruelty as she presses closer to Bylead's back. Her concern stirring Bylead's own. A sick discomfort twisting at him from inside out.
"Didn't last for long."
Sylvain says nothing else as he picks through the dirt, working with the sharp efficiency of a man who knew what he was doing. He accepts a rasp from Bylead with a wink. The low sounds of the rasp sparking the air between them as Sylvain works.
"The second time he shoved me down a well. Said as heir we should know the lands so he took me to the village. Bought me a little toy lance that day and something about that made him laugh. It had a point to it and I guess he must have thought it would've been fitting if I'd fallen on it on my way down."
"Let's see," Sylvain eyes the hoof, turning it this way and that, picking at the hoof walls with a thumbnail before deeming it satisfactory and letting go of the leg, "Third time he left me in the mountains. Hide and seek y'know? So gotta be quiet Sylvain. Woke up with him putting a pillow over my head in the infirmary. Fifth time was –"
"That's horrible," Bylead says, the word too soft. Insufficient for what was being said. Spoken only so Sylvain stops. Something like anxiety rasps against Bylead's chest, something horrible and full of pain.
Sylvain leers. Taunting.
"Even as a little kid, I understood why he was like that. My mere existence stole everything from him. I have no right to complain about anything when I have everything he could not have," Sylvain straightens, the muscles of his back tensing, a little twist as his form shifts into something Bylead recognizes from Jeralt. A cavalier's stance before he goes for his lance. Too inexperienced and openly telegraphed for Bylead to miss. Sothis hisses a little, her fingers digging into Bylead's arms but he doesn't take a step back, only peers up at Sylvain, reading bitter hatred in brown eyes.
"You know, Professor," Sylvain says, his voice like honeyed poison. Shoving pass Bylead to retrieve a hammer and new horseshoe, "I'm a bit jealous. You were born correctly. Secondborn and Crestless. Free and unbound. Nobody pretended to like you. No one resented you. And Professor Byleth … well, I imagine if anyone so much as pointed malice at you she'd tear their throat out with her teeth."
He drops the horseshoe and it makes a sharp empty sound that he doesn't seem to notice. His knuckles white over the edge of the hammer.
"I kind of hate you for that … a spoiled brat without a Crest. Wallowing in the safety of people who gave a shit about you just for you. How lucky. You should have to pay for that. Hell of a heavy price, enough for a kingdom… Maybe I should be the one to collect the debt," he says and Bylead feels for the Pulse under his fingers, twisting around his knuckles, feeling the edges of the world start to blur.
"Ha!" Sylvain says with a bright exaggerated whoop, "Gotcha! Wow, you shoulda seen the look on your face just then. don't mind me, Professor. After all, ladies love a dark and brooding noble."
Sothis tugs at the Pulse between Bylead's fingers but he grips it tighter. Refuses her interference. The blur burns away from the edges. Time ticking slow and steady, the feel of it like a silk ribbon beneath Bylead's hands.
He feels her tug again and yanks it far out of her reach, something angry and full of teeth rising in his own chest. Something old and long-held stirred from slumber, a little beast shaking off sleep from deep within the core of him. Something he'd never registered. Had refused to see. A little petulant thing full of unjust hatred. Shaped in misplaced anger fueled by impotence.
Bylead coils the thready Pulse around his hands, holding it tight, far away from Sothis as he bends to retrieve the horseshoe from the floor. Defiance in his blood like a serpent as he shows his back to Sylvain. Refusing to acknowledge the little shift of Sylvain's foot as if he intended to swing the hammer down.
"Maybe," Bylead says when he comes back up, holding Sylvain's eyes as he presses the horseshoe into the cavalier's hand, "Maybe."