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The world has gone quiet. What few sounds still permeate the air of Gronder Field are muted: the dying fire still valiantly crackles away; the wind croons its sordid lament. Or maybe there’s still a lot of noise, and Sylvain has just been deafened from the din of battle: the clanging metal of weapons meeting, the roar of wyverns and the terrified whinnying of horses and pegasi, the ragged voices of people yelling themselves hoarse or screaming in their death throes. His own voice had been a part of that for a while, too.
But now he, too, is quiet, the only noise coming from him the wet, rattling wheezes that push and pull from him with the rise and fall of his chest. He can barely hear it. He can barely see anything, either.
It's getting dark, he realizes. The sun is lowering in the sky, and right above him the bright blue of it has shifted closer to a navy-grey. Or maybe that's just the smoke. It's still light enough to make some colours out, but the world is cast in shadow, the people and the animals that had fought on the field splayed out and nearly blending in with the earth.
Heh. Maybe that's where he's headed, too.
The ground is soft at his back, muddy and damp with his blood. Maybe he'll just… sink back into it. Stay there, forever. Become food for the worms and the beetles, the carrion feeders and the next generation of the crops that they've trampled here today. It sounds nice. Nice to go back to nothing. Nice to mean something, to have given something back. No more taking. No more…
Anything.
A shuddering breath – one of his last, he's sure – escapes him. It hurts – it hurts so much, shifting his broken ribs and searing through his torn-raw larynx, and he can feel something wet trickle down his mud-and-blood-caked face. Not rain; the only clouds in the sky are smoke. Tears, then. But not tears from the pain.
He takes another breath in, stuttering, through his plugged nose. Sylvain’s teeth dig into the dry and cracked surface of his lip, and he tastes dirt. It's not – no, it's beautiful, he thinks, that he can comprehend the taste of the earth now, and that he likes it, when the last time he had tasted soil he had been ten years old and he'd had his face shoved into a garden bed full of rose bushes. It had made him want to die, then. He hadn’t thought he'd ever stopped wanting it, but…
A shadow passes overhead, blotting out the sun. Wings, spread wide, cut through the air above him. He can't tell what colour they are, not for certain, but he thinks they might be white. An angel of death, he muses in his delirious, anemic mind. The goddess wearing wyvern wings, come to collect him in all Her mercy.
Sylvain laughs, a wet and pathetic cough of a sound. His head lolls to the side, the tears on his cheeks sinking into the dirt to mingle with his sweat and his blood. She's not coming for him. The goddess has never had mercy for Sylvain Jose Gautier.
It’s a real wyvern, then. It must be. It takes all the effort he has, but Sylvain rolls his eyes up to watch the creature in the sky. Beautiful beasts, he thinks, remembering what stable duty was like at Garreg Mach, how it felt to feel their scales beneath his hand. How their breath reeked, but tickled when they huffed out through their noses, because they didn't know they shouldn't be happy when they saw him. He remembers, on the cold ground of the empty Gronder Field, how he'd always wanted to ride one.
And now he never would.
He wonders if this wyvern has a rider. He'd seen too many men and women fall off their mounts in this battle, had seen horses run wild and injured pegasi fly off without their masters. There were wyverns on one end of the field – where the Alliance had been, he thinks. He hopes whoever owned this one survived, and this was them flying home. But maybe it's a stray. Maybe it will see him, and come feed on his body after he dies.
“Heh.” It hurts to laugh. The sound is a gurgle in his throat. The wyvern passes overhead, ignorant of the sound, not knowing that a tasty meal was just below it, begging to be found. More tears flood Sylvain’s vision, and he hiccoughs.
With the last of his strength, he lifts his arm up, reaching for the beast.
“Wait… Don't…”
The wyvern begins its descent. Sylvain can't see where it's going. He hopes it's okay, and that it's dipped down for a rest, and not because it's injured. He doesn’t think he can stand the thought of both of them dying for nothing.
He closes his eyes. Opens them again. Thinks of the sunset he can barely see, and almost smiles at the irony of it all. Night is coming, in more ways than one.
Another shadow passes over him, this one in the shape of a person. Maybe it really is the goddess, this time. Or maybe he's seeing the reaper at last. Sylvain doesn’t know. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter, because either way, this will be the final thing he sees.
A wet cough escapes him. It's too dark to see anything, now. So Sylvain closes his eyes, and the last of his tears push out from beneath his eyelids.
When Sylvain wakes up, he doesn't know where he is. His first thought is Hell? but he quickly dismisses that, as there are no Flames, no ever-ending screams of torture surrounding him. Above him there's… beige. A blur of beige. Canvas, it looks like, if he squints.
He squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath, and – oh. There's the pain. A full-body thrum of pain beneath his skin, deep, piercing aches in his bones and sharp, searing agony, like liquid electricity shooting through him on his exhale. He tenses up, recoiling against the pain, and that hurts, too – enough that he can't stop himself from letting out an excruciating, drawn out grunt. The sound tears his stripped-raw throat even as he clenches his jaw tightly enough to crack a tooth. He decides to reassess: maybe he is in hell after all, and everyone was just wrong about the fire-and-brimstone part.
Something shifts nearby. There’s a rustle of fabric. It's then that sound starts to really flood back to Sylvain over the deafening drum of his own quickening heartbeat, and he tries to focus on that – the shuffle of clothing, or… or sheets, maybe; on small, murmured conversations nearby that he can't make out; on voices further away; on wind against makeshift fabric walls. The pieces are starting to fall into place, but if he could just open his eyes to see what's surrounding him…
He manages, finally, willing the pain in his body away just long enough that he doesn't have to brace himself against it. One eye cracks open – Steady breath in – and then the other, and he breathes out. Okay. It's not so bad, now that the shock has worn off. It still hurts like hell, but at least he can see now. And what he can see is…
There's a flash of blue in the corner of his vision. The shape of it hasn't quite taken form yet – he still can't quite get his eyes to focus – but he thinks it might be hair, because there's the vague shape of a body with pale skin and darker blue clothes. Blue hair…
“Oh, you're awake.”
The voice is soft, sweet. A girl's voice. Sylvain recognizes it, even if the tone is a little different now. Five years ago, he had told the owner of that voice to smile more. Now he thinks he can imagine her smiling on her own.
“Ma… Ma…ri…”
He can hardly speak. He tries to clear his throat, but it just hurts. Marianne as come closer now, and he can see her pretty brown eyes looking down at him with concern – not fear, not dread.
Heh. Would you look at that.
“Don't speak,” Marianne says, laying a hand on Sylvain’s arm. For the first time, Sylvain looks down at himself, and sees that he's covered in bandages. There's a sling around one of his shoulders that he hadn't noticed, and bruises crawling up from under some of the gauze wrapped around his chest. He looks back up at Marianne, and wants to ask her how bad it all is, but he thinks he's got a pretty good idea just from how much everything hurts. Especially his side, now that he's thinking about it. His ribs. His chest. That's right; he'd been hit by a javelin and fallen off his horse, hadn't he?
Marianne stands. He wants to ask her not to leave, but he can't. He can barely lift one feeble arm up to signal that he wants her to stay. And that hurts, too, in a different way: when was the last time he'd wanted someone to sit with him? When was the last time he'd sought comfort in a woman?
Tears well up in his eyes outside of his control. He tries to will them away, to roll his eyes up and force them back in, but they just won't go. He has to blink, and one slips out. It trickles past the corner of his eye, sliding down the side of his face to soak into the pillow beneath, and he remembers a similar sensation from before he had fallen asleep. Passed out. Almost died.
It's pathetic, he thinks, that he's so grateful to feel that now.
A moment passes. There's another voice nearby suddenly, talking to Marianne. Sylvain doesn't recognize it; it's too quiet, and he can't even turn his head to look and see where they are. He thinks they might be somewhere to his left, but it's hard to tell over everything else he's feeling, hearing, thinking.
Soon enough, though, Marianne returns. She's got a glass of water in her hands, held carefully in both, one palm under the base and fingers of the other hand curled protectively around it. It's then that Sylvain realizes how thirsty he is, and against his better judgement, he tries to sit up to receive the glass.
“Oh, please don't move,” Marianne says, worried but calm – so unlike the frenetic tones he could remember in her voice all those years ago. “Here, I'll help you.”
She sits down at his bedside, and slides one hand under Sylvain's hair. He can feel that some of it is stiff – maybe they didn't get all the blood out. He feels clean otherwise, though, if a little sweaty. Marianne doesn't seem to mind. She just gently lifts his head (it doesn't hurt much, which is nice), and tilts the glass of water to his lips. Sylvain drinks gratefully, desperately; the only thing stopping him from downing the whole glass in one go is Marianne's careful control over how much he can get. It's probably for the best that she’s forcing him to go slow, even if it does feel a little cruel in the moment.
But he finishes the glass, and Marianne sets it down on the floor. “You… must have questions,” she says.
Sylvain nods. “Y… yeah.” He licks his lips. It's easier to speak now that he's had something to drink, even if it's not enough. “What happened?” he croaks out. “How did… I get here?”
“Umm…” Oh. There it is. There's the nervousness he remembers, even if Marianne is still carrying herself differently than she did at school – straighter posture, hands flat to her lap. “I don't know all the details… and it's probably better you don't hear them from me, anyway. I can tell you about your wounds, but…”
Sylvain shakes his head. That doesn't hurt much, either, except to exacerbate the headache that he's just realized has started to form. “Maybe later,” he tells her. “I… think knowing how I’m… h-hurt might… just make it all worse.”
“Mm.” Marianne nods.
“Can you… tell me… anything?”
It takes a moment for Marianne to think, but she seems to come to a conclusion soon enough. “Um, well… All I really know is that Claude found you, and brought you to our camp. You were unconscious when he found you, and barely alive when…”
She trails off, looking to the side. Her hands are shaking, a little bit, and Sylvain wonders if she had been worried about him.
And then he wonders why she would be worried about him.
“He's here, if you want to talk to him,” Marriane continues, cutting off Sylvain's thoughts before he can get too self-deprecating with them. “C-Claude, I mean.”
Sylvian blinks. “Can I…?” he asks, because he genuinely doesn’t know. Claude is the leader of the Alliance. Not only that, he's the top commander of the Alliance army. Or maybe Professor Byleth is (can he still call them professor? All he knows is that they had been a terror on the battlefield at Gronder, just as they had always been). Either way, surely Claude is too busy to speak with him.
But Marianne nods again, ignorant of Sylvain’s confusion and contradicting him without realizing. “Yes,” she says. “I think he wants to speak to you, too.”
Well, that's a surprise, Sylvain thinks. He chooses not say anything, though, instead opting to look down at his body again. His body that, despite being battered, broken, and beaten, is still going.
“Yeah,” he mutters, unsure what question he's answering, or if he’s even answering anything at all. Marriane seems to take it as assent to fetching Claude, and she stands up, picking up the empty water glass.
“I'll get you some more water,” she says. “Claude will be here soon.”
Sylvain smiles at her. “Thank you, Marianne,” he says, and he means it.
She smiles and leaves. This time, Sylvain doesn't try to reach for her. There's no need; he knows she'll be back, and there will be someone else coming to check on him, too, and hopefully offer an explanation for things. Funny how it took him almost dying to get so much attention, and how it's nearly perfect strangers who are giving him what he wants.
The last few years, he realizes now – now that he can stop to think, and the constant threat of an upcoming battle isn't weighing on his mind (it tries to, but he pushes it away deliberately; he doesn't know if he'll even be able to fight again after this, let alone go home) – had been hard. Hard on him. Hard on his friends. None of them were the same as they had been going into this war – heck, none of them were the same as they had been even starting their year at Garreg Mach. They hadn't had time to check on each other or steal moments to take stock of the situation in all its brutal, bloody horror: they'd been forced to make choices, day after day, to fight with their families and friends, for King and for country – or to abandon everything they loved and live in shame and guilt. How could any of them not have changed?
He knows he has. Even as he flexes his fingers and hisses at the pain the motion causes, Sylvain relishes in it.
He's changed. He can feel it.
“Hey.”
The voice pulls him from his thoughts. It’s deeper, this time – a man’s voice.
Claude.
Sylvain tilts his head to the side. Dark hair and green, green eyes come into focus after a moment of the world spinning, and Sylvain's heart nearly stops. Lost in thought, he hadn't seen Claude approach. But now here he is, bags under his eyes and a healing burn on his cheek, smiling as if he were meeting Sylvain in the monastery garden for an afternoon game of chess.
“H-hey,” Sylvain says back, caught off-guard. A beat passes, and then, after taking another moment to observe Claude’s appearance:
“You look terrible.”
Despite how rude the statement is, Claude takes it in stride. He laughs, genuine, head tilting back slightly with the force of it. “You've seen better days, yourself,” he chimes back, playing along. But his smile fades an instant later, and his expression becomes more solemn. “That's what fighting a war like this will do to you, I suppose.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Sylvain tries to shrug, but he just ends up wincing in pain. Marrianne tuts as she approaches, setting a pitcher of water and a glass by Sylvain’s bedside. She fills the glass and helps him drink again, and when that’s done, she leaves him to it.
Leaves him alone with Claude.
Claude gives him a rueful, sympathetic smile. “Speaking of looking terrible,” he says, eyes moving down to Sylvain's body – or at least the injuries visible above his bedsheets – “you're lucky to be alive right now.”
His voice is solemn, devoid of its usual playful candor. Sylvain averts his gaze, unsure of how to feel about that. He’s never really seen Claude this serious before.
“Don't I know it,” he mutters. Then, raising his voice and letting his words fall out on a sigh: “I'm kind of surprised by it all, actually.”
Claude’s head tilts. “Oh?” he asks. “In what way?”
Again, Sylvain tries to shrug, but this time he does it just with the shoulder that's not in a sling. It hurts less, but it pulls at some kind of injury, stitches or a scab or something, in his side.
“I dunno,” he admits. “I guess I'd just… you know, given up on the whole thing. Living, I mean.”
For a moment, Claude is silent. Sylvain can't bring himself to look at him, so he just… waits. Waits, and lets his mind wander. Back to that field, back to that sunset…
“I don't think that's true,” Claude mumbles, softly. Now Sylvain looks back at him, meeting his downcast green eyes.
“What do you mean?”
Claude’s gaze lifts. He and Sylvain lock eyes, and there's something intense in the lines of his eyelids and the set of the brows above them – but there's something sad there, too. Or maybe even upset.
“You reached out,” Claude says.
And there it is. Breath catches in Sylvain's throat, cold and sharp and painful. He feels his eyes go wide as something in his mind clicks into place, all of a sudden.
White wings, a wyvern, a shadow-person standing above him.
Not the goddess, and not the reaper.
Claude was the one who saved him.
Tears spring to Sylvain's eyes before he can even stop them. He's shaking, he can feel it, but he can't find the will to stop. Can't find the words to say anything. Because he had reached out – at the very end, he had reached out. He had wanted the wyvern to come back.
He had wanted the wyvern to see him.
He had wanted the rider to save him.
He had wanted to—
He had wanted to live.
The tears flow freely from his eyes, then, once he tries to blink himself back to reality. He can't stop them, he knows he can’t, so he doesn't even bother to try. But he doesn't sob, either: he just breathes, and weeps, silently letting the relief of being alive pour out of him all at once.
Claude remains silent, too. He waits, and he watches, but he says nothing. At one point, he reaches out for Sylvain's arm, and lays his hand atop it. Sylvain nearly flinches away, unused to such a comforting touch – but the moment he realizes Claude's intent, he moves back, clenching his fist and sliding his arm closer, to let Claude know it's okay.
Claude places his hand over Sylvain's, and curls his fingers around his fist.
A minute passes, then two – then three, four, five. Sylvain loses track of the time, but eventually he feels his breath start to even out, and feels his tears begin to dry.
He swallows and takes one more breath. There’s no rattle in his lungs this time – no tears, no blood, no firesmoke or ash. Just a clean, smooth in-and-out.
“Was I the only one?” he asks, after what feels like an eternity of silence.
But there’s no answer. Not right away – not out loud, anyway. More silence fills the seemingly endless gap between himself and Claude, and Claude looks down at their hands, still joined despite it. His face is partially hidden, but the anguish in his furrowed brows is clear.
“Claude…” Sylvain starts, but Claude cuts him off with a slow shake of his head.
“You were the only one I could find,” he whispers. Tortured.
Cold resignation flows over Sylvain. It was what he thought, but…
He swallows, and nods, and feels fresh tears burn behind his eyelids, but he keeps his voice steady when he speaks.
“Dimitri?”
“Dead.”
Claude lifts his gaze. Sylvain lets out a trembling breath. More tears fall, a wave of grief washing over him and spreading all throughout him, threatening to drown him – but somehow, he keeps his head above those waters. He'll have time to mourn later. And he will, he knows. He may mourn for the rest of his life. But right now, sickeningly – guiltily – his relief is stronger than his remorse.
How horrible is that? he wonders. How awful a person can one man be? But at least now he knows.
At least now, the demons and the ghosts that haunted Dimitri, and drove him – drove them all – to fight, to toil in this endless, bloody war…
They're gone.
Dimitri can finally rest.
Another breath falls out of Sylvain, steadier now, but still a little shaky. Claude looks up at him and squeezes his hand. “I'm sorry,” he says, and Sylvain is certain that he means it.
“Don't be.” Sylvain gives him a weak, haggard-feeling smile. “These things happen. It’s war, after all. And maybe… maybe now he can finally find peace.”
“I hope so.”
The smile on Claude’s face, as small and mournful as it is, feels real too.
The two of them sit without speaking for another moment, Sylvain trying to process everything that has happened and everything he's learned, but the stillness and silence don’t last long. Sylvain has never been guilty of possessing an idle mind, and he remembers Claude’s reputation for being the same; there’s an energy radiating off of him now that seems to seek to prove that, and for all the world, Claude seems… nervous. Like he can't decide if he wants to speak or keep quiet about something.
Sylvain glances at him, and he glances back; but in the end, it's Sylvain who asks the question.
“And Edelgard…?”
A rueful smile twists Claude's lips. “Alive,” he says. “And…”
He sighs, shaking his head. “I was going to wait for you to recover,” he mumbles, looking away, “but I guess now is as good a time as any to ask.”
Sylvain frowns. “Ask what?”
Claude's wry smile dries further. He looks up at Sylvain with steady, determined eyes. “What do you plan to do, Sylvain?”
“Do…?”
If he could move his arm properly, he’d reach up to scratch his head. As it is, he can’t, but his confusion must read in his face anyway, because Claude takes mercy on him and explains. “When you've healed,” he clarifies. “And you will heal. As rough shape as you were in, once Marianne and the others got you patched up and under some white magic, it was pretty clear there would be no lasting damage. Physically, anyway.”
A beat passes. Claude watches Sylvain, level; Sylvain's lips curl in a dry, grimacing smile. “Why bother asking? I’m your prisoner, aren't I?”
No point beating around the bush. But Claude doesn't seem particularly affected; he just shrugs one shoulder, tilting his head slightly to meet it.
“In the most technical sense, sure. I did ‘capture’ you and bring you back here, behind enemy lines. And you are confined to this one room – or tent, really – for the time being, even if it is a medical tent, and your confinement is only on the grounds that you probably have at least one broken leg.” One of Claude's hands rises, and he taps the side of his head. “So yeah, if you look at it a certain way, I did take you prisoner. But that doesn't mean I intend to keep you prisoner.”
It takes a moment for the words to sink in. His head really hurts, and the tears hadn’t helped. With every passing second, the world seems further and further away – the ambient noise of the medical tent and the bustle outside it fade away to nothing, registering as less even than white noise in Sylvain's mind, because all that matters is… Is this. This room, this tent, this medical cot. Claude’s words.
He's not a prisoner. He's not – he's not dead, and he's not a prisoner, and he's not being used for leverage. Claude is giving him a choice, here. A choice to…
A choice to go home.
Before he can even think to form any words, a lump forms in Sylvain's throat. He’s being given a chance to go home – but to what home? His king is dead. His friends are most likely dead, too. And his father…
He swallows the lump in his throat. His father, at least, is alive. What would he say if Sylvain showed up back at Castle Gautier's doorstep, alive and well after having allowed his king to perish? His father would call him a disgrace, and he wouldn’t be wrong. Sylvain would be a disgrace. No, he is a disgrace.
“I…”
But before he can give voice to those thoughts, he's cut off, silenced by Claude reaching out to him and laying his hand back on Sylvain's arm. “You don't have to decide now,” he says. “But I want you to know that you have the option to stay here. To fight against the empire – to fight with the Alliance. To fight with us.”
He looks into Sylvain's eyes. Sylvain looks back – and something stirs inside him. He thinks it might be fear, but it doesn’t completely feel like fear. Claude's eyes are so green, like the meadows of central Faerghus when the last of the snow has melted, when spring begins its journey into summer. It scares him, to think that he may never have seen that colour again if it weren’t for Claude. That there's still the possibility he can, if he just…
He pulls his arm away, out from under Claude's touch.
“How do you know I won't just kill you?” Sylvain asks, his voice a cool, detached monotone. “You know, avenge Dimitri's death or whatever.”
Claude hums. He leans back in the bedside seat, folding his arms over his chest. “Well, first of all, you just said ‘or whatever,’ which tells me you're probably not that serious about killing me. Unless, of course, you're a much better actor than my estimation.”
Sylvain shrugs.
“Didn't think so. Second,” Claude continues, and there's a certain weight to his voice now, a gravitas in his eyes that wasn't there before. “You and I both know that I wasn't the one who killed Dimitri.”
He inclines his head, leveling Sylvain with a pointed, serious look. A chill shoots down Sylvain's throat, landing hard and dreadful in his stomach.
He says nothing.
“And finally…” Slowly, the seriousness of Claude's tone evaporates, and a small smile creeps back into the corner of his lips – something he can't hide no matter how clear his attempt to keep his expression neutral is. “Wouldn't you say that the best way to avenge your friends’ deaths is to end this war?”
The chill in Sylvain's gut spreads. Breath catches in his throat – no, he's pretty sure he's forgotten how to breathe at all. All he knows is that he can't look away from Claude, now, his own eyes wide and intense to contrast the capricious glint in Claude's.
“There's a why behind this war,” Claude says, so softly Sylvain can barely hear him. He leans forward, intent. “And I want to know what it is. Don't you want to, too? Don't you want to know what it was that led to your friends dying? To us all trying to kill each other?”
He waits, patient and unblinking. It takes what feels like an eon for Sylvain to answer, but finally, after swallowing down the lump in his throat and remembering how to force air into his lungs, he does. “It was Edelgard,” he says. Then, because the question had been on his mind all along – for months, years, as long as he can remember – he dares himself to finally ask it. “...Wasn't it?”
Claude nods.
“That's part of it, yes. Edelgard was the catalyst – the one who chose to start this war. But choices aren't made in a vacuum, Sylvain. Think.” He taps his temple again. “Edelgard didn't declare war on Fódlan. She declared war on the church.”
Sylvain frowns. It's not hard to see where Claude is going with this, but he decides to play dumb a little bit – or at least play along. “Aren't they one and the same?”
“And that was exactly Edelgard's point.” Claude leans back, arms folding again. “I don't disagree with her, either, to be honest. The whole continent – sans the Leicester Alliance, thanks to yours truly – got swallowed up in a fight that was supposed to be against a single institution. But then we have to ask the question, ‘why the church?’ What have they done? What are they hiding?”
Sylvain hums. “You think there's something she wants. Outside the control of all of Fódlan, I mean.”
“I think there's something suspicious about how Faerghus joined the war, and how single-minded Dimitri was in pursuing Edelgard specifically.”
Their eyes meet. Claude's are set, determined – whatever he's thinking, there will be no changing his mind. Sylvain isn't sure he wants to, though; and if he's being honest with himself, he doesn't think he can. Not without some major hypocrisy, anyway: he had wondered, even as he'd fought on Dimitri's behalf, led soldiers onto endless battlefields, and killed in the name of a country he knew was falling to ruins, what it had all been for.
For his home, he'd thought. For his friends. But seeing the way Dimitri had fallen
“For what it's worth,” Claude begins again, softly, drawing Sylvain out of his thoughts as if offering him a hand from the bank of a river, “I want you here.”
Sylvain clicks his tongue, involuntary. Before he can stop himself, he thinks, You might be the only one. Thankfully, he manages to keep himself saying it out loud.
Claude continues: “But I'm not going to force you to stay. If you decide you want to go back home to Faerghus… to Gautier,” he corrects, “then I'll provide you with a horse and an escort to make sure you get there safely. I'll even hand-pick them, if you like. The escort, I mean. It's probably best that you choose your own horse.”
He can’t be serious. He – he isn’t. Is he? For a moment, all Sylvain can do is stare at Claude in disbelief, and wonder if maybe, when he’d fallen off his horse, he hadn’t just cracked a couple ribs or broken an arm or a leg. Maybe he’d hit his head when he fell off his horse, too. Or maybe Claude had fallen off his wyvern.
“Seriously?” he asks, gaping. “You'd let your enemy go, just like that?”
Claude shrugs. “Are we enemies?”
Sylvain shakes his head, in part to answer Claude, and in part to reorient himself physically in this conversation. All this time, he'd thought…
“No,” Sylvain concedes. “I… I guess not.”
“Then I don't see the problem.”
Again, Sylvain shakes his head, his good hand coming up (with some difficulty) to press to his forehead. He doesn't understand. Why is Claude being so… nice?
He decides to ask. “You'd… really do that for me?”
And perhaps he shouldn't be surprised at this point, but his own shock doesn't seem to affect Claude at all. All Claude does in response is shrug again, a casual thing. “Sure,” he says. “You've never wronged me personally, and I know you were fighting that battle out of loyalty, not hatred – at least against us. It was stupid loyalty, maybe, but that's just how things are here in Fódlan. You don't strike me as the kind of guy who'd go out and fight and maim and kill just for the hell of it, so I don't see the harm in letting you go home safe. One more life spared, right?” And because it's Claude – the same easygoing, devil-may-care kid from Garreg Mach that he had always been – he winks, almost playful. “And hey, who knows? Maybe you'll even repay the favour one day.”
Sylvain laughs. “There it is,” he jokes, as if he'd been expecting there to be a catch, or strings attached to letting him go free. To his own surprise, though, he hadn't been expecting that at all – and he doesn't really think Claude is offering him a safe journey home just to get a favour in return, anyway. He'd seen the way Claude and his deer had stayed back on the battlefield, how the side of Gronder where the Alliance had taken up position had held rank, observing the fight and only getting involved when they needed to defend themselves. For the most part, anyway.
Sylvain smiles. “You're something else; you know that?”
“Mm. You know, I get that a lot,” Claude says. By the way he's grinning, Sylvain doesn't doubt it – it almost seems like a point of pride. “But…”
He stands, raising his arms up and stretching them high over his head. Claude yawns, and then he drops his arms, letting them swing by his sides before he focuses his tired smile back on Sylvain. “I've given you a lot to think about,” he says, “and I've told you all I know for now about what happened at Gronder. It's only been a day, though, and more news comes in every hour.”
Sylvain's smile turns wry. “Keep me posted if you hear anything about my friends, will you?”
“Of course,” Claude says. “And you keep me posted if you make a decision.”
“Will do, Duke Riegan.” Sylvain’s arm comes up (again, with some difficulty) to flash him a lazy salute. Claude smiles, bowing his head, and then retreats, leaving Sylvain alone with his thoughts – and Sylvain watches him go, his own smile remaining on his lips long after he closes his eyes and slips back down in his bed.
He'll take the time Claude has given him to think, but he knows already that he won't need it. He's made his decision, and it came to him as easily and as thoughtlessly as it had been for him to reach out to that wyvern.
He has his whole life ahead of him now, after all.