The rain falls in heavy sheets, shadowing the plains in dark droplets. It turns the ground beneath my feet to slush but I press forward, navigating the perilous battlefield. I barely stop to think as my sword flashes in front of me; to hesitate is to die. Soldier after soldier comes, waves of red and blue crashing together and I run on the opposite side. Another man of Faerghus dies on my blade. And another. And another. I can't stop to think. My sword cuts a pegasus knight out of the sky. I don't see the arrow that kills her but I hear the unnatural gurgling scream abruptly cut short. More soldiers sweep past me, red glinting under Empire banners. I join them.

The battle rages. This will be the last... Or close to it. It's been...goddess it's been near six years, slowly clawing our way towards a more peaceful Fodlan. It's sickeningly ironic, how much blood must stain this path to peace. But I put that out of my mind; all that exists for me is the current moment and the blade in my hand.

We march forward and I know what's happening even before I see the troops around me start to waver. I grit my teeth, my fingers tightening around my blade. I deployed on the opposite side of the field, kept my head down, worked on routing the Knights of Seiros instead. And I successfully avoided meeting Dimitri's gaze. But it seems he was stationed to guard this flank. Of all the boar king's generals it had to be him. I grip my sword tighter. You knew it would come to this.

I am ready when the Empire soldiers part and I see Sylvain sitting atop his horse, lance stained dark in the relentless rain. He pauses for just a second when he sees me, before smiling a dead smile.

"Hey there, Felix," he says, as if he were greeting me on the training grounds. But he's not, and we both know it. He looks older but remarkably unchanged. His hair is a bit longer, his eyes a bit darker, his smile a bit more strained. I see him look me over, and I wonder what he sees. I am certainly not who I was, either. I shift my sword, steeling myself for what is coming.

There should be words, I think, something to say to the man who has been by my side almost my entire life. Something to say to your best friend when you find yourself staring down the wrong end of his lance and not intending to move. This is—wrong, this is wrong. He should be by my side, not defending the boar king and the system that destroys us all; I should be by his side not brutally slaughtering my kinsmen and raising a weapon to my nation. This is wrong, I am not meant to stand against him like this, never like this... But we are. There should be words, I think, but I don't find any of them to say. I see his eyes dim, his cavalier smile flicker. Damn fool, I think. He had been hopeful. I try to deny that I had been, too.

In a moment the great war horse lunges at me, Sylvain's lance sweeping at my head. I duck and spin to the side. He wheels around—left, he always goes left—rushing at me. My sword pivots to strike him, but he turns quick enough so it just glances off his pauldron. We separate for a moment, and I look up, expecting a stupid, light-hearted taunt to come from him.

But of course, the rain is seeping down my back and the mud squelches under my boots, and he really means to kill me this time.

Others are fighting around us, but they've made a small bubble of space around me and Sylvain. I watch, wary, as the horse and its rider turn to face me again.

"You know-" he starts, and I lunge while he's distracted. But he's ready for me anyway and it's not long before I am dancing out of his range again. Impressive, I think instinctually. I have to kill the thought quickly, lest my sword become too heavy to swing.

His brows scrunch down, his face set in grim concentration, a look he does not often bear. His eyes are shadowed, and I again keenly feel the great gulf spread between us. That I made. That he made. That this war made. He tests forward, but it's just a feint and I easily dodge. He's too silent; that was never his way. Sparring with Sylvain was always as much a test of patience as it was of skill, as he never shut up his stream of mindless prattling. I remember wishing he'd keep quiet just for once all those years ago. He's too quiet now. I dart in but he anticipates me, and deflects the blow. I narrowly avoid his counter strike and we're circling each other again. He's an enemy general, I know that. But I would lie if I said feeling his lance come for me with genuine death didn't send a chill down my spine.

His horse rears its head and he charges me. I get one split-second to prepare, and dodge to the side. The clattering hooves force me to roll, but I know where he's going next. Still the ground slides beneath me and I'm too slow. His lance flashes in front of my eyes, diving towards my heart. I twist and it bites into my shoulder instead. The pain hits, but it feels far away. I waste no time, grabbing his lance even as it strikes me and, throwing my own wellbeing to the wind, I pull.

I hear him cry out as he's suddenly tumbling through the air. It's familiar, it's primal, it's instinct.

Sylvain! I turn to help him—

The enemy general find his feet quickly, anger burning more evidently in his eyes as his horse gallops away. Sylvain picks up a sword from a dead soldier's hand, holding it up to me. The rain pings off of his armor, and his eyes are hot enough to match my frozen chill.

I'm holding his lance, wet with my own blood, but I quickly throw it away, picking up my sword again. My shoulder throbs and feels hot enough to turn the rain falling on me into steam, but I grit my teeth and push the pain away. It wasn't my sword arm, and I am still locked in battle for my life. We face each other, like we have a million times before.

Sylvain relaxes his stance for a moment. One chance. I mirror him, my blade pointing toward the ground. His eyes are angry, my eyes are angry. Come with me, his say, as clearly as if he'd spoken them aloud. He can read my plea in my eyes, too. I can't. He can't. We both know.

The red head lowers. One second. One second of grief. I close my eyes.

When I open them his sword is stabbing towards my throat, but I'm already moving. Our swords clash with the familiar ring of steel and we exchange rapid fire blows. I swipe at him and he takes the chance to disengage. My whole arm begins to go numb, but I've trained for this. I will not back down. He comes for me again and I quickly pick up the rhythm of his blows. Sylvain is good, but I was always the swordsman.

When Sylvain, and Ingrid—we left her body in Arianrhod, next to my father's—and Dmitri—he is here, is he still alive?—took up lances, I coveted the sword. I think I relished being individual, even then, being set apart from my friends. I've always been too proud for my own good, but then again we all were. I watch Sylvain now, holding his sword more like an axe—and that is new, I should count myself lucky he was using his lance which I know, rather than an axe—and swinging his blade towards me. He's gotten better in the five years, five long bloody years, I have not seen him. But so have I.

I match him blow for blow, absorbing his technique. He is powerful, his strikes rattling my one handed grip, but he is off balance, more used to fighting atop a war horse, more used to having an extra two feet to his weapon. I am faster, I am more practiced, I am more agile than him in his heavy armor. I press forward before he can find his equilibrium with his sword.

The rain falls in heavy sheets, dying Sylvain's hair a dull rust color. He sees me coming, I know he does. I watch his body start to twist away. But he is a second too slow and I am already there. I knock his sword to the side, forcing his chest open towards me. It's quick, precise, over in a flash. My blade finds the gap I know is there in his dark grey plate armor, and my hands push it in. And keep pushing, deeper, deeper, until I can feel my blade break through his armor on the other side. All I hear is his sharp gasp as I drive the metal shard into his body.

Sylvain drops his sword, sinking to his knees. He takes me with him, because my hands are frozen around the sword hilt, protruding from Sylvain's chest.

His breaths rattle up through lungs that are quickly shutting down. He coughs and blood drips from his lips. I stare at my hands, gripping the sword, and try to breathe.

"I...I—" Sylvain says, choking on his own blood. My eyes snap up to his face, meeting his brown eyes which have the audacity to smile at me. "G-guess w-we...broke—our..p-rom...our promise...eh, F-felix?"

I don't say anything. I don't have—words- I think I hear someone screaming, far off in the distance.

My name is the last thing Sylvain says. Staring into his too familiar brown eyes I witness the exact moment Sylvain Jose Gautier ceases to be. My breath comes in heaving gasps and I recoil sharply, finally releasing my grip. The sword falls with the corpse, crashing to the mud.

The rain falls in heavy sheets over the corpse which is no longer Sylvain, with my sword sticking out of its chest. For a moment there is nothing. It lasts a second, or a minute, or a year, but the world slows to a standstill around me and all I can do is stare. This is—wrong, this is wrong. My path is set and I cannot regret choosing the Empire or the professor, but this, this is wrong. Because Sylvain is gone, and it's my sword buried in that corpse. Sylvain...Ingrid...Father...My limbs feel heavy, I feel numb all over. I know the wound in my shoulder should hurt more, I know the rain should feel colder on my skin, I should-should be screaming, crying, something. But there's...nothing. For a second, or a minute, or a year, but whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

But the world is not feeling charitable today. I fear it never does.

The spell exploding by my ear makes me stand, instincts drilled relentlessly into my muscles save me from the arrow that thuds into the ground where I was before. Angry men are running at me, men in blue and gray plate. Sylvain's men. They are only now rushing at me, but it has been an eternity since Sylvain fell, hasn't it?

My body wakes up, pumping adrenaline through my veins. My teeth grit against the pain, and my legs move to get me away from the slashing swords, but I feel wrong. I still feel numb.

"Felix!" The professor's shout catches my attention, and I duck just in time to avoid the fireball that goes whizzing over my head. She reaches me, her contingent of soldiers close behind, and I fall in line. I pick up a sword—not mine, no I shall never touch that again—and obediently march forward. I can't see the corpse anymore. We engage the men Sylvain has left behind, and I fall into step beside the professor. Someone—Linhardt I think it is, looking almost as sick as I feel—approaches to heal my shoulder. The professor covers me, and then we return to the advance. Together our swords claim more lives. I fight well but...somehow I only feel colder.

It lasts a long time, the fighting. Dimitri is dead. Dedue is dead. I hear of it as the Knights of Seiros scramble to retreat. What will become of my homeland now? It will become more equal under Edelgard, I think. Less corrupt, less discriminatory. I believe that. But it doesn't stop the dull ache when I see Dimitri's body lying among a field of the dead. I once hated him, body and soul, for creating such a field as this. I don't think I would be able to hate him for it now, not when I have had a hand in creating another. Not like it matters; Dmitri is buried too deep to care.

We go on to more battles. Edelgard and her ideals and conviction and propulsive force for change make it out of them. Annette and Ashe and Mercedes do not. And just like that...I am the only one left. Months later, when the professor and Edelgard and Hubert have started settling the suddenly reunified Fodlan, the sun rises on a more peaceful world.

It does not for me. I settle my sword on my hip, with only it and a small sack with a change of clothes and a day's worth provisions to my name. The sun rises behind the trees, washing the sky in pale hues, and igniting the clouds pink and orange. The world will be peaceful, the people will be free, free from class and Crests and a corrupt and falsified church. I am proud of the change that's begun. I hate the hands that wrought it. I start walking, somewhere, anywhere, I don't know and I can't bring myself to care. Seeking... Nothing and everything, I don't know. Death? That can't be right. Sylvain, my friend, I think, as my steps push me further and further from my past. You had it wrong. We didn't break our promise. Because surely, as sure as I've known anything, as sure as if the goddess decreed it so—though perhaps I am no longer meant to believe in the goddess?—surely as the sun rises, our promise was kept intact. Because when you died that day...I died, too.

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A/N Felix's Crimson Flower endings are gut-punches to be sure. His and Sylvain's is on brand, but also kinda depressing, but the real meat of the matter is if you pair him with wholesome girls (Mercedes, Lysithea, Flayn(GD/SS but still), Dorothea(implied)) wherein he becomes a mercenary "as if he had a death wish" and basically becomes post-TS Dimitri. His CF chapter 13 dialogue hurts, and ofc his unique dialogue with Ingrid, Dmitri, Rodrigue and most of all Sylvain. CF Felix was a sucker punch to the feels overall, and this is what resulted