Chapter Text
The monastery stood out from the peaks like tangled, broken tree limbs—the once pristine church had fallen into disarray in the five years since it had fallen.
Within, injured but victorious battalion members patched their wounds as the ragtag resistance set up camp within the collapsed walls of hallowed ground. There was only one healer—Mercedes—who had long since used up the charges of her healing magic on the important officers and she now flitted from patient to patient cauterizing wounds and wrapping cuts in linen. Standing behind her, their de-facto leader shook her head worriedly. Sylvain stood a few paces away, taking a break from helping disinfect wounds so that he could stretch his cramped legs.
“Mercedes, are you sure there isn’t another mage here who can use healing magic?”
“Professor, you know that Annette is hopeless with white magic… There’s no other way.” Mercedes pursed her lips in a tight line. Only yesterday, she had been forced to choose between the lives of a mercenary from Sreng and one from Gautier. She’d only been able to decide based on the Gautier soldier probably needing an amputation which would only further put a strain on their medicinal resources. Though she hadn’t said anything to anyone, she had wept bitter tears into her pillow that night, wishing that there was another way.
“We’ve only been here two weeks and we’ve already had too many casualties; we can spare the coin to bring in another healer, we don’t have another choice…” Byleth chewed on the end of her thumbnail.
“We’re short on linens now too,” Sylvain chirped “We really need to replace them before the expedition next month.”
Byleth threw up her arms and massaged the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “Sylvain do you mind going into the lower village to get some?” I fear that we can’t really spare anyway here right now.” He nodded pensively. He’d been putting off going into the village for a long time. In his youth, that would have been his first stop but with everything that had happened to them, to the world, it almost felt wrong.
The village looked run down and quite frankly, poor. Sylvain worried that they might not even have any linens to spare. He meandered around, trying to find an open shopfront to no avail. Everyone he stopped to ask simply looked away and chose not to respond to him, even the women!
Finally, he came upon a child sitting by the edge of the road— “Little guy? Could you point me in the dir—” Sylvain stopped short, seeing that the child was bleeding terribly from a head wound. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a monogrammed napkin, apply it with pressure to the wound. “Do you have any family who can patch you up?”
The little boy nodded slowly, pointing in the direction that Sylvain had come from. Sylvain hoisted the little boy onto his back, walking in the direction the boy pointed until he came upon a small but tidy shack—he could see smoke rising from the roof.
He knocked on the door to no avail but on the second knock, the boy called out to the occupants.
“Merry! I’m hurt!” Immediately the door flung open and a blue haired woman came out and practically engulfed the boy in a hug.
“Don’t even scare me like that again, Jan! When you didn’t come home last night we were worried for the worst.” She held the young boy’s face away from her own for a moment, inspecting him, when she caught sight of his head wound her lips parts worriedly. Her hands briefly glowed with a restoration spell and the wound receded into a dark bruise on the little boy’s head.
She gestured for the two to come inside the shack and she immediately gestured for Jan to sit at a small table in the room while she bustled around boiling water. A couple more kids emerged from the woodwork; all less than ten years old. They looked upon him curiously, one brave little girl came to press her bare hands to his armor.
“Who are you?” Sylvain asked curiously, he hadn’t seen any young women in the lower town during his expedition so far. From what he had heard, the majority had fled when the initial attack took place. She looked up from the pot she was filling with water and surveyed him warily.
“My name is Meredith—I don’t want any trouble. I appreciate you bringing Jan back here, thank you so much.” She tipped her head forward in gratitude, and glared at the boy, making him pipe up in thanks as well. Her voice was very quiet, if not a bit scratchy as if she were recover from illness.
“I’m Sylvain, I’m one of the Faerghus knights that’ve taken up residence up at Garreg Mach.” Immediately her eyes widened and she drew the nearest child away from him. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say… “I’m no trouble, I swear. I can leave if that makes you more comfortable. I’m honestly just here to buy linens.”
She let out a breath she’d been holding and nodded, loosening her grip on the children behind her. “You can get them from the general store, the password to shop there is ‘Goddess Messenger’. The word ‘Goddess’ fell oddly from her mouth, as if she were unused to saying it or scared to voice it aloud. The more Sylvain looked at her the more familiar she looked to him—had she been one of his dalliances back when he was a student? He thought he’d remember eyes as brilliantly verdant as her’s. All in all, she was beautiful but on the too thin side—how had she been feeding all of the children? They all looked well fed and energetic.
“What happened here?” Sylvain almost bit his tongue as he felt the words leave his mouth. The town used to be vibrant with merchants in every corner and familiar milling about. Now, it resembled the refugee camps he’d seen in Duscar.
“The Empire did… they…” She pressed a hand to her lips, clearly unwilling to speak more.
“Hey, hey it’s alright, you don’t have to push yourself.” Sylvain placed a hand on her shoulder in a comforting way but as soon as his skin met hers, she flung his hand off and fell backwards onto her bottom, screaming raspily.
The children pulled him away from her. “Get away from Merry!” He was confused and saw that she had scooted backwards into a corner, as far away as she could get from him. Her hands covered her face but even through the tears and choked voice she croaked out:
“Get out.”