#anyway is it really a sy/vix fic if sylvain isn’t dying and Felix is freaking out about it

[ronsenburg]

it’s gotten to the point where I write 400 words and then have to celebrate because that’s FOUR HUNDRED WORDS and better than nothing:

This is the way it ends—at least, this is the way Sylvain remembers it. 

The bridge is washed in a flood of unnatural red light; the sirens have been wailing in the background for so long now that Sylvain has stopped hearing them all together. He’s on the floor, staring up at a ceiling he doesn’t think he’s ever actually looked at before. There’s not much to see, just seamless panels of smooth, shiny metal arching out of sight, until—out of the corner of his eye, the flash of a combadge, golden shoulders, jet black hair. 

Sylvain turns his head just a fraction of a degree to the left. It hurts. 

He can’t move his right arm. He hadn’t realized until now, in this exact moment, when the only coherent thoughts he can manage rapidly bounce between the aforementioned oh god pain and, even less helpfully, how unfair it is that Felix is still managing to be so goddamn beautiful with sweat and grime plastering his dark hair across his forehead. Sylvain wants so badly to reach up and tuck the one long piece back behind Felix’s ear, maybe wipe away that streak of soot from under his left eye. Something romantic. Instead, his fingers twitch uselessly somewhere near his side. 

And that should make him panic, shouldn’t it? A limb not responding the way his brain asks it to? 

“So it’s that bad, huh?” It comes out clumsy, barely more than a mumble, like someone has shoved a bag of cotton balls under his tongue. And that feels just like the kind of really bad hangover he hasn’t had since he gave up Aldebaran whiskey. Head injury, too. Got it. 

Above him, Felix’s eyes are stretched so wide that he’s looking about five years younger for it. He looks furious, which, for Felix, means scared. Another bad sign. “Don’t try to get up.” 

“Wouldn’t leave you even if I could, sweetheart,” Sylvain laughs—so rough that it sounds more like a cough—and begins wiggling the fingers in his left arm experimentally. “Which I can’t, by the way. Right arm is shot. Maybe if I—“

“Stop moving,” Felix snaps with enough ferocity that Sylvain does just that. The high pitched whine of a medical tricorder rises above the sound of the sirens. Felix has never been one for combat first aid; his frustration shows in the clench of his jaw and the way he slams his hand against the badge on his chest before biting out, “where the fuck is the med team.”

 It’s shock, probably, that keeps Sylvain from grasping the severity of the situation. 

“Small blessings, Felix. If  I die now, they won’t have to court-martial me for killing the captain.” 

“You didn’t—“ Felix starts, frowning even further when he glances up to meet Sylvain’s eyes, “he’s stunned.”

And Sylvain isn’t far gone enough to miss the relief that pours through his veins at those words, like a river’s worth of guilt bursting through the seams of a derelict dam. 

Sylvain hadn't checked, then. There hadn’t been time for even the thought. He remembers Dimitri, eyes narrowed and dark, powering weapons at the tactical station. And Felix, collapsed on the floor beside him, strangled sobs of agony escaping his shaking form as he’d clutched at his head. Ingrid had been shouting something, while the Professor flitted past in his periphery. But Felix, and his pain, had been the only thing Sylvain could focus on. There was no thought, only action. He’d grabbed for the phaser at his hip. He’d fired. 

Back in the present, Sylvan drags his eyes away from Felix in favor of blinking up at the ceiling. There’s a stinging in the corner of his eyes. He releases one long, shaky breath. 

“Don’t think that’ll make much of a dent in a mutiny charge, but. That’s good. I’m glad.”