"Felix!"
Sylvain had found him at last, his head reeling with relief. Amongst the piles of bodies, heaps of rubble stacked up with human lives trapped eternally beneath them, Sylvain finally spotted the form of the heir of Fraldarius.
"Felix!" he shouted once again as he ran, his boots kicking up rocks, slipping on the slick, blood-soaked grass beneath him in his haste to reach the other man. He hopped over dismembered limbs, darted around shattered armour, the smell of death filling his nose and threatening to make him dizzy. At long last, he reached him.
Felix sat upon the floor, shoulders hunched as he held a torn piece of crimson fabric in one bare hand. He crumpled it, and began to wipe it across his blood-soaked blade. Sylvain would recognise the bold colour anywhere: a flag of the Empire. Felix's hair was loose, cascading down his back in a midnight sheet. While his clothes were bloodstained, torn here and there from where weapons had nicked at him, he was intact. He was alive.
Felix turned at his approach, a streak of red splatted across his face; his eyes were still wild - still charged with the craze of battle, his pupils like pinpricks in amber irises. "What?" he spat, sounding as indignant as usual. "I heard you the first time."
His words snapped Sylvain to his senses, making a sort of relieved laugh leave his throat in a breath. He kicked aside some broken brickwork and knelt down, the ground beneath him squelching and oozing blood that had drenched it from the battle. He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Felix's shoulders.
"Watch it!" The man hissed, tossing his sword aside. "You could've impaled yourself!"
But, Sylvain could muster no other thoughts. "You're alive…"
Felix paused for a moment, his breath catching audibly in his chest. He sat still, almost awkwardly, before his arms slowly pressed against Sylvain's back, holding the man in one of the most tender moments he'd ever experienced.
A chilling atmosphere embraced the two men. Death hung in the air, stale and cold, as lifeless bodies littered the ground around them. Dying groans could be heard from somewhere in the distance, from soldiers too wounded to ever hope to recover, some of them grasping out feebly for help, or muttering their final prayers. Half of them were from the Empire, the other half had been Sylvain and Felix's allies, but all of them had been slain in some form of another.
Sylvain's mind flashed back to a few mere minutes ago.
When the dragon had risen and razed the opposing forces to the ground, he had sensed hope. Until, one by one, more soldiers had swarmed him. He'd watched his battalion fall, watched blood gush from the wounds of his allies; he'd witnessed Mercedes be forced to retreat, and the professor cutting through the battlefield in pursuit of the dragon. Sylvain had spotted her - Edelgard - locking axes with a pegasus knight, and had felt the most primal fear swirl inside his chest. This battle was the most brutal, frightening fight he'd ever been a part of. He'd turned his horse and had galloped away through the crowds in fear.
What felt like an hour later, he'd watched, helpless, breathless, hopeless, as the Army had retreated. Nobody had won. There had been a stalemate. Ashe had stumbled past him as the conflict had come to a close, eyes frightened. Sylvain had heard Dimitri bellowing orders in a hoarse, empty voice, and had slipped down from his horse, hearing the animal trot away back to the monastery, still rattled.
Sylvain had recalled seeing each member of the Blue Lions clutch at their wounds as they returned to Garreg Mach - watched the pain in all of their eyes. Ingrid was being carried on a stretcher, Dedue holding her hand and talking her through the pain. Sylvain had counted each of his friends, seeing each of them still alive. Everybody except Felix.
The pale, dark-haired man - the student most assured in battle, most capable of achieving victory - had been nowhere in sight. His disdainful stares and disgusted grunts, his cutting remarks and rare, fleeting smiles. They'd flashed beneath Sylvain's eyelids - sounded deep in his mind. And Sylvain had panicked.
Where was he?
The idea of Felix slain had sent panic coursing throughout him, sent him to running through the battlefield screaming his name, looking desperately for his silhouette against the dull, overcast sky. He hadn't looked at the bodies beneath his feet, too terrified he'd see the sightless golden eyes staring moribund back at him.
And he had realised. The emotion that Sylvain felt towards Felix was love. Not the petty, false confessions of adoration he'd given to the girls around the monastery - not the winks and smirks and compliments he'd shared to fill the void of familial love that had bored into his chest since childhood. No. What Sylvain felt for Felix was real: desperate, unabating love.
Now, Sylvain pulled away from Felix's embrace. He'd found him again - he was okay, and Sylvain could breathe. Managing to pull away from those amber eyes, Sylvain looked out around him at the devastation the battle had left. In the distance, the remaining troops had begun to head back to Garreg Mach, while others re-entered the battlefield to collect the injured.
Felix looked back at him with a hard jaw. "What was that about?" he asked in a low voice.
Sylvain could not resist a chuckle. "Have you never heard of a hug?"
"Did you think I was dead?" The question was almost a scoff; despite the most charged, terrifying battle of their life being mere minutes from over, Felix still clung to his repulsive scorn.
"I didn't think it was possible," Sylvain lied through a smile. "And that's why I came looking."
A soft hmph left the other man's nose, and Felix turned away until his back was to Sylvain. He slipped his hand around the hilt of his sword once more. Its blade was now clean, reflecting the white light of the sun that tried desperately to break through the grey of the clouds, and he stood, Sylvain joining him. Holding the sword out at arm's length, Felix pointed its tip up towards the sky.
"It's as if it never touched blood," Felix's voice was airy as he admired the weapon, so light that Sylvain had never heard anything like it.
Yet, as the metal was tilted slightly from side to side, a black shape was reflected back into Sylvain's vision. A darkness mottling the dark steel - a reflection upon the blade.
Sylvain's heart skipped a beat; the sword was acting as a mirror. Something was behind them. Something big, and dark, and growing closer-
"Felix!" Sylvain screamed, and he dove onto the other man. His palms hit the centre of Felix's back, and their weights combined brought them crashing to the ground as-
A snarl, laboured breathing, and an otherworldly roar hit the ears of both men as another mass collapsed on top of them. Sharpness burst around Sylvain's back - a feeling of a hundred daggers tearing through his shirt and making him cry out.
He rolled, flailing, feeling the weight fall off of him as he tried to crawl away from Felix's body. He heard teeth clatter together mere inches away from his head as hot breath heated his face. A scent like rotten, festering meat hit Sylvain's nostrils and sent his stomach to heaving as he opened his eyes to see a maw - a set of yellow knives jutting out from the mouth of a creature. He barely had time to widen his eyes before the jaws came at him again, opening, saliva dripping from the grey tongue as the beast rose to its feet.
The beast: a Demonic Beast. The size of a wyvern, with thick rippling muscles beneath a hide of jet and scales the size of shields. It let out another deafening roar, and came at him.
Sylvain scrabbled frantically, trying desperately to grasp at the lance that sat in its carrier as he stumbled to his feet.
"Move!" The scream of Felix rattled his eardrums and Sylvain obeyed; he darted aside as fast as his legs could take him, slipping upon the blood-soaked grass. The beast charged through the gap Sylvain had just made, jaws snapping and tail lashing as it realised it had missed its target, fighting to slow itself upon the slick battlefield.
Felix was right behind it, legs working powerfully as he ran in its direction. Sylvain had not seen him rise, nor draw his weapon, but still the man raised his sword above his head as he ran, silent as a shadow.
The beast grunted, turned, and let out a screech as Felix leapt into the air before its face. Both hands came together upon the hilt of his sword, and he plunged the weapon down, breaking through scale and bone and brain as the blade entered the beast's forehead. The sound tore through Sylvain's ears - the sound of squelching innards and gushing blood, and the piercing shriek of the monster as it reared its mutilated head.
Felix's feet pushed off of the beast and he landed almost daintily on the floor before it, blood drenching his boots. His sword dripped with the black ooze, and Felix threw it to the ground with a disgusted curl to his lip. Behind him, the Demonic Beast fell to the floor, its form shattering and scales catching on the breeze to be replaced with the limp body of an Adrestian soldier. Felix walked away from it, towards the shaken Sylvain.
"You just…" the redhead panted, disbelieving. "… saved my life."
Felix's chest rose and fell heavily, and he wiped a splatter of gore from his chin with the back of one hand. "Right back at you."
Sylvain barked an incredulous laugh. "How!? All I did was stand there like an idiot!"
"It would have killed us both from behind if you hadn't spotted it." The voice in response was somewhat dismissive.
Sylvain approached Felix, towering inches above him, and the two stood face-to-face, taking one another in. Felix's hair still looked perfect - hardly disturbed from the conflicts - and smudges of blood upon his skin brought a streak of colour to the pallor of his face.
"We work better as a team," Sylvain said. He'd never been more certain of anything in his life.
To his surprise, Felix nodded. He said no words, but the intensity of his gaze told Sylvain he agreed.
A spark rose between the two. The air seemed to heat around them as each man came to a realisation. All the pent-up bickering, teasing, and childish disputes over the years fused together in that one moment, and with a small gasp from Felix, they each realised…
The love Sylvain felt was not unrequited. As one, the two men leaned into each other and embraced once more, Sylvain's hands gripping onto Felix's hair as his collar was grasped tightly in the grip of his lover. Their lips connected, and they shared a kiss, filled with the passion and ardour that had been buried deep inside them. Despite the setting, and despite what they'd both been through, the men both realised that they were all the other needed. They were stronger together, as one.