Chapter Text
1186
Professor Byleth has a head cold.
Sylvain isn’t sure what the significance of that is, not yet, but that piece of information is going to rattle around in his brain whenever he thinks about this moment in the years to come.
Otherwise, it’s a typical morning. They aren’t marching towards some new battlefield, which means they’re at home in Garreg Mach, which means Felix is at the training grounds, because where else would he be? He’s in the middle of a spar with the professor and Sylvain is in the middle of watching them fight, getting ready to try and pester him into taking a break for breakfast. Standard fare, really.
Until suddenly everything goes very, very wrong.
A few things happen all at once: Felix lunges, the professor sneezes, and then their corner of the training grounds erupts in white, blinding light. At some point during all this, Sylvain shouts, “Holy shit!”
When the light disperses, quickly as it came, Byleth is blinking in confusion and Felix is prone on the floor.
As usual, when it comes to Felix, Sylvain is moving before he even has a chance to think.
He crosses the training grounds in half a breath, as quick as he’d run through a warzone. Sylvain falls to his knees at Felix’s side, gathering him up into his arms and pushing his hair out of his face.
“Felix,” Sylvain starts, voice soft but tight, gentleness undercut by sheer panic, “Felix, buddy, are you with me?”
Felix blinks up at him groggily, like he’s just woken up from a nap. “Sylvain? Where are we?”
Something is… strange. There’s a wrongness here—other than, you know, the unidentified and unexplained fucking flash of magic light—but Sylvain’s heart is racing too fast for him to try to figure out what it is.
“Garreg Mach. We’re in the training grounds.”
“Did you shave?” Felix reaches up and pats Sylvain’s cheeks, squinting in confusion. “Is this a dream?”
Felix’s hands are cool on his face—that’s the first thing Sylvain notices that tells him something’s really off. Not that it’s out of the ordinary for Felix to have cold hands (the man is a walking icicle) but that Sylvain can feel them at all. Felix was wearing gloves during his spar with Byleth, and now for some reason he isn’t.
Everything else fills in quickly after that, like a Spot the Difference puzzle. Felix’s hair is longer, fanned against the floor in a higher ponytail than the one he wears now. His clothes are still that same Fraldarius teal, but the style is more mature, less suited for battle. His face, too, is more mature—marked gently by the suggestion of fine lines.
It's funny, Sylvain was so worried about whether or not Felix was okay that he missed what’s right in front of him.
This isn’t his Felix at all.
“Felix, you look,” Sylvain starts haltingly, “different.”
Something shifts in Felix’s expression—like he’s just remembered something. With a groan, he closes his eyes and leans his head back against the ground.
“Ugh. I told you, you should have put this on the calendar.”
__________
Explaining Future Felix to everyone is, shockingly enough, much easier than expected.
A little too easy, if you ask Sylvain. Then again, if five years of war have proven anything, it’s that magic is strange and often terrible, so perhaps it’s not a shock if everybody’s a bit passed being surprised about its capabilities. Like, Sylvain has watched Lysithea turn a man inside out before—at this point, time travel doesn’t feel all that far-fetched.
(Honestly, if anyone was going to kick up a fuss about the whole thing, it probably would have been Felix. Goddess help whoever he’s with right now in the future.)
Once Byleth has gathered everyone in the war room and safely confirmed that they are, in fact, dealing with an actual older Felix and not some kind of evil magic spy, the questions start raining in.
Questions that Felix stalwartly refuses to answer.
“How do we win the war?” Dimitri asks, for the third time in the past hour. It’s like he thinks if he keeps asking in different intonations, Felix will finally tell him.
But for the third time, Felix responds (rather mildly, by Felix standards), “Fuck off.”
Sylvain coughs to muffle a laugh.
As usual, Dimitri doesn’t even seem angry with him, just baffled. “Felix, please. If you’d just share some information with us, you could potentially save lives—”
“Or completely destroy the timeline and ruin everything.” Felix sighs deeply, shaking his head. “Look, I’m not being purposefully difficult.”
That earns a collective eyebrow raise from everyone in the room. Being purposefully difficult is one of Felix’s specialties.
“I’m trying to protect the future we’ve made for ourselves. You all figure this out, without my future self’s guidance.”
That’s a nice thought, isn’t it? Against all odds, they somehow manage to ‘figure this out.’
Sylvain leans back in his chair and looks at this strange new Felix, trying to make sense of him.
(Well, Sylvain is always looking at Felix, but at least now he has a better excuse for it.)
He can tell it’s throwing everybody off, how similar Felix looks while also being so distinctly different. Special mention must go to Annette, who started off trying to greet him normally and then literally shrieked in surprise when she got closer and realized the change.
He’s still Felix all the way through, but there’s this ease to the way he carries himself that Sylvain just can’t get over. Hell, Felix hasn’t looked this comfortable in his own skin since they were kids. Maybe it all just comes down to the fact that he no longer looks like a man at war.
“What if we get attacked while Felix is still gone?” Ingrid asks, then frowns. “Normal Felix,” she amends.
“You won’t,” Felix huffs, a little bored. “But even if you did, I would handle it. You think I’d let myself lose my edge just because we’re at peace?”
The threatening bite to his voice is so familiar that Sylvain has to hold back another laugh. Without a doubt, he really is still Felix all the way through.
“How do we get Normal Felix back?” Annette pipes up from Sylvain’s left. “Not that it isn’t fun to meet—um, Not Normal Felix. But is Normal Felix okay?”
“We’re both Normal Felix,” he protests. “But yes, he’s fine. He’s just in 1196.”
Sylvain already knew that. He knew because that’s the first question he asked, half-frantic, once the dust settled and he and Byleth figured out what they were looking at. Still, he doubts the nervous knot in his stomach will untie itself until he sees his Felix back in his proper time again.
“Byleth,” Felix starts, and the whole room sucks in a sharp breath, because she might not be their teacher anymore but it still kind of feels like they’ll get detention if they call her by her first name. The woman herself, however, just looks pleasantly surprised. “You know how to fix this, correct?”
“Probably,” Byleth says after a long, sniffle punctuated pause. “I’ll have to do a bit of research first.”
She turns to survey the group gathered in the war room, squinting thoughtfully for a moment, before her mouth twitches up into some approximation of a smile.
“Annette, Lysithea, Linhardt,” she calls. “You guys want to learn about time travel?”
Lysithea leaps up from her chair so quickly she nearly knocks it over. Linhardt follows her with considerably less excitement.
For a moment, Annette looks deeply torn between following the professor to learn something new and staying behind to pepper Not Normal Felix with questions. Ultimately though, her love of learning wins out—that, or it’s the eager gleam in Lysithea’s eyes as she tugs insistently at Annette’s arm.
(Oh, that’s cute. Sylvain makes a mental note to tease Annette about it later.)
With the professor—and their nerds—missing, the group left behind falls into a bewildered silence, unsure of how to proceed.
“Well,” Felix says suddenly. If Sylvain didn’t know any better, he’d think their familiar visitor found this whole thing kind of funny. “Who wants to spar?”
__________
After the fifth time he gets knocked on his ass, Sylvain can pretty safely confirm that Felix wasn’t exaggerating when he said he hasn’t lost his edge.
Not that Sylvain ever really had any doubts about that. It’d take a whole lot more than peacetime to get Felix Fraldarius to put down his sword for good.
Though Sylvain mostly agreed to spar with him in hopes of learning more about this Future Felix, the longer they spend together the more questions he has.
Trying to get information out of him is like—well, it’s like trying to get information out of Felix when he doesn’t want to tell you something, which is to say, fucking hard, but Sylvain is usually better at it than most people.
Most times Sylvain can coax Felix into talking, but occasionally he needs to annoy him into it. For that, his strategy is simple: chase different lines of conversation until he inevitably falls into a spikey pit trap. (Lots of Felix’s truths are hidden at the bottom of spikey pit traps.)
But this older Felix is practically patient. Sylvain has been giving him all kinds of bait, and he hasn’t risen to any of it! It’s almost unnerving.
Still, he keeps trying.
“So you haven’t gotten married yet, have you?” Sylvain asks, dusting himself off and getting back into a fighting stance.
For some reason, that makes Felix pause. “What gives you that impression?”
Sylvain holds up a hand and wiggles his fingers. “No ring.”
Wordlessly, Felix uses his free hand to tug open the top button of his collar, before reaching into his shirt and pulling out—a chain. A chain with a ring on it. It’s simple and gold and unmistakably a wedding band. Sylvain would like to get a better look at it, but all Felix offers is a mere glimpse before he drops it back under his shirt, to rest above his heart.
“Who?” Sylvain asks, voice strangled.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Sylvain really would like to know, is the thing. At the same time, the thought of knowing kind of makes him feel like he’s being kicked in the chest by a horse. Or maybe multiple horses. A stampede, actually.
Felix is married. To…someone. Wait, fuck, is that who his Felix is with right now in the future? Getting a taste of his happy life with whoever they are, falling in love with them if he hasn’t fallen for them already?
On second thought, it’s probably better that Sylvain doesn’t know who Felix’s future spouse is. There’s a billion ugly, self-destructive things he could do with that information, and goddess knows Sylvain doesn’t need any more help in that department.
He’s about to swallow the pit in his stomach and force himself into saying something flippant when Felix unceremoniously knocks him off his feet again.
“Not fair,” Sylvain whines from his new home on the floor. “I was zoned out.”
“You think you can ‘zone out’ on the battlefield? Your enemies won’t be fair," Felix tuts, unsportsmanlike as ever. He turns with a huff and goes to hang up his practice sword. “That’s enough for today. No use fighting you while you’re distracted.”
At some point while they were sparring, Felix’s hair came loose from its ponytail, and now it’s falling freely around his shoulders. Come to think of it, that’s probably a big factor as to why Sylvain’s been getting his ass kicked so badly—between the hair and the marriage revelation, he’s very distracted.
(Most of it was the hair, though. He can’t help it. It’s just that Felix’s hair is so much longer now, and Sylvain is only a man.)
Felix fishes a little leather band for his hair out of one of his pockets, but when he reaches back to tie it up again he stops short, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth.
“Sylvain—help me with my hair. My wrist is acting up.”
Okay, that’s. Hm. What?
Felix would rather chew his own arm off than let anyone do his hair for him. Even when they were kids, he’d fuss and kick if anyone other than Glenn tried to style it. But here he is, asking (no, demanding ) Sylvain fix his hair, like that’s his job or something.
The request is so baffling that there’s nothing Sylvain can do but comply, obediently taking the offered hair tie and getting to work.
Sylvain isn’t sure he could manage to recreate the neat ponytail Felix had been sporting before, but he knows how to do a decent braid. Ingrid taught him years ago, and the movements of it are easy enough. Felix would look nice with a braid.
He runs his fingers through inky black hair, smoothing out the tangles and getting it ready to part into sections. His hands are only trembling a little bit, which is good. Probably not even noticeable.
Then Felix makes a sound, a pleased little hum that rumbles low in his throat—and okay, yeah, now the trembling is probably noticeable.
“Does your wrist act up a lot?” he asks, a bit too loud, partly because he wants to know, but also because if he hears Felix make any more noises he is going to die on the spot.
“No.” Felix shakes his head minutely, careful not to disrupt Sylvain’s hands. “Just sometimes.”
Sylvain’s brows furrow in concern. “What happened?”
Felix scoffs. “I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll try to stop it from happening.”
Sylvain’s hands go still mid-braid. It shouldn’t take him off-guard anymore but somehow it still does—the way that Felix can cut through all his bullshit with a sentence.
“Would that be so bad?” Sylvain asks quietly. He doesn’t even bother trying to hide his concern behind a joke, not when he’s already been figured out.
Felix sighs. “Maybe. Everything that happened, happened, and there’s not very much I want to change. I’d prefer for the future to stay as it is. And,” his voice goes soft, softer than Sylvain’s heard him talk in years, “I don’t want you to get hurt trying to protect me.”
That’s—Sylvain knows that, of course he knows, but to hear Felix speak it so plainly, without covering it up with anger or annoyance, it’s—
Felix clears his throat. “Are you done yet?”
With a jolt, Sylvain quickly ties up the braid, securing it in place. “Yeah, sorry. I hope it looks alright. I—uh, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
Felix reaches back with his good wrist, gingerly touching the interwoven strands. When he turns around, a faint smile tugs at his lips.
“It’s fine,” he says. High praise, coming from Felix. “You’ll get better.”
__________
Dinner with Future Felix is a rowdy affair, largely because everyone universally decides to make a game out of attempting to bamboozle some information out of him.
So far, they haven’t had any luck with it, though Mercedes and her cheerful needling came pretty close. It seemed like she was about to get him to reveal something about future Fodlan currency (of all fucking things) before he remembered himself and evaded the question.
Felix groans and clicks his tongue at all their attempts, but the fact that he hasn’t stormed away from the table yet speaks volumes. He’s having fun.
In the middle of all the chaos, Ingrid gets out of her usual seat and plops herself down next to Sylvain—partially to whisper conspiratorially, but mostly to try and steal his extra bread.
“He’s almost pleasant,” she says, in the same scandalized tone most people would reserve for gossip. “What happened?”
Sylvain dutifully hands her a hunk of his roll. “He got married,” he says, and even he’s not sure if he means it as an explanation or another observation.
He doesn’t know what kind of look he has on his face, but whatever it is, it makes Ingrid frown and go quiet. She tears off a piece of the bread he just gave her (a small piece, but a piece nonetheless) and hands it back to him like a consolation.
“What do you think we’re like in the future?” she asks, after a moment of quiet chewing.
Sylvain gives her a wry smirk. “He won’t tell you.”
“I know. Stubborn as a mule, that hasn’t changed.” Ingrid rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling again. “Still, aren’t you curious?”
Not really, no.
Sylvain hasn’t even bothered trying to ask about himself—doesn’t see the point. For better or for worse, he’s sure Future Sylvain is much the same as he is right now. Felix always tells him he never changes, anyway.
But he plays along, batting his eyes at her. “Think somebody’s made an honest man out of me?”
Ingrid laughs, lightly swatting him on the arm. “You, honest? That would take a miracle.” She looks back across the table towards Felix, who’s now in the middle of getting interrogated by Dorothea. Her expression softens. “Then again, who knows. Looks like anything’s possible.”
Sylvain nods, but says nothing. He wants to believe her. He wants to believe that the future can be wide open spaces, a vast field where anything can grow if you plant the seed and care for it. To a degree, he does believe her, at least for everyone else.
Sylvain’s not so sure about himself.
__________
After dinner, he walks with Felix back to the dorms. He takes the long route just to get a few extra minutes with him, but if Felix notices, he doesn’t make any complaints.
“Do you remember where your room is?” Sylvain asks, once they finally reach the stairs.
Felix shoots him a flat look. At least that hasn’t changed—he still glares the same.
“Sylvain, it’s only been ten years. I’m thirty-three, I’m not senile.”
“I know! I know. This is just—” Sylvain stops walking for a moment, shaking his head. “This is so weird. I can’t get over how weird this is.”
“What? Time travel?”
“Well, yeah , but it’s also… you. Seeing you like this.”
“Like what?”
“You’re so,” Sylvain pauses for a moment, searching for the right word. Beautiful pops into his head, but that’s nothing new. Happy, maybe. In the end, he settles for, “Relaxed. Who the hell taught you how to relax? I’ve been trying for years and I couldn’t manage it.”
Felix snorts. Felix Hugo Fraldarius fucking snorts. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Like that!” Sylvain throws up his hands in disbelief. “See, my Felix would never—”
“Your Felix?” he asks, one eyebrow arching dangerously like the drawing of a bow, a teasing half-smile on his lips.
“The Felix from my time. My time’s Felix. Not,” Sylvain coughs, “my Felix.”
He scratches the back of his neck, his face suddenly feeling uncomfortably warm. That’s new. Of the two of them, he’s far more used to being the flusterer than he is being flustered.
Felix seems content to watch him flounder, eyes bright with the joy of catching Sylvain make an ass of himself. Gradually, though, the amusement fades into something gentler, quietly fond in a way Felix rarely allows himself to be seen looking at anything but well made swords and the occasional cat. He’s never been good with eye contact but he just keeps watching Sylvain, almost like he’s trying to memorize him.
Sylvain can’t think of a single reason why Felix would look at him that way. Unless—
“I’m not,” he starts, then stops abruptly. Goddess, how does Sylvain put this delicately? “I’m not dead in your time, am I?”
That lovely half-smile falls from Felix’s face, replaced by a mixture of concern and confusion. “No. Why would you think that?”
Ah. So that’s confirmed, at least.
Sylvain tries to wrap his head around it—that he’ll not only survive the war, but live to see at least ten years of the peace that comes after. Seems like a hell of a long time to be alive. He can’t quite tell if it’s a relief or a burden or just… unexpected.
Honestly, Sylvain’s never had great expectations for how long he’d live. Growing up with Miklan in the house, every birthday felt more like a miracle—or a cruel twist of fate, depending on how Sylvain was feeling from day to day. When his brother was gone, Sylvain picked up the slack for him: taking risks, flirting with danger like he flirted with every girl who stepped into his path. Since the war started, he hasn’t had much time or energy (or desire, really) to fall back into his old vices, but he finds new ways to self-destruct. He’s got the battle scars to prove it.
It’s not that Sylvain is trying to die, usually. It’s more like he wouldn’t be shocked if it happened.
But apparently, he makes it out of this thing in one piece. Guess he really does have to clean up his act, if he’s got something to look forward to.
Sylvain forces out an awkward little laugh, like he hasn’t just been contemplating his own mortality. “No reason, really. You’ve just been kind of—looking at me? A lot?” He shrugs. “Guess I was wondering if you’d been missing my handsome face.”
Felix makes a thoughtful noise. “It’s strange for me too, seeing you like this. I forgot how young we all were.”
Sylvain nudges Felix’s elbow with his own, grinning. “How do I look in the future, anyway? Have I aged well? Do I have, like, a sexy distinguished thing going on?”
If looks could kill, Sylvain would not be making it ten years into the future. “You’re decrepit.”
“Felix! You’re joking! Are you joking? Please tell me you’re joking.”
Felix laughs. He actually laughs, joyful and unrestrained, not even bothering to try to hide it in any way. Sylvain’s heart squeezes painfully, like Felix has reached straight into his chest and clenched it in his fist.
How does Future Sylvain survive a Felix who’s learned to wear his happiness on his sleeve like this? How does he hear Felix laugh and not try to swallow the sound with his own mouth?
Felix nudges Sylvain back, shoulders still shaking with mirth. “Someone has to keep you humble.”
__________
A breakthrough finally comes in the middle of breakfast the next morning, with Byleth’s team of magic scholars bursting into the dining hall each wearing different levels of exhaustion.
Annette’s explanation of their big discovery is a bit hard to follow—she’s jittery and over-caffeinated, a sure sign that she must have kept herself up all night with tea and some of Mercedes’ sweets—but the long and short of it is that they’ve figured out some kind of ritual that can swap the Felixs back to their proper times. And quickly, it seems. (Though that might have just been the vibe Sylvain got from how fast Annette was talking.)
“Is it safe?” Dimitri asks, as if reading Sylvain’s mind.
Lysithea gives a decisive nod. “It’s all very experimental, but should be safe enough.”
“The worst thing that could happen is he’d maybe lose a limb,” Linhardt adds, as though this is a fun little fact and not a potential life-threatening injury.
“A limb?” Sylvain doesn’t think this fact is fun at all.
Felix scoffs. “I’m not going to lose a limb.”
Annette gasps. “Knock on wood, Felix! Knock!” She doesn’t stop glaring at him until he finally does.
Dimitri turns to the professor. “When can you do it?”
“We could do it right now, if Felix wants to.” Byleth cocks her head at him. “Do you want to go home now?”
Felix glances around the room, catching Sylvain’s eyes briefly before giving Byleth a short shrug. “Might as well.”
__________
Before he leaves, Future Felix says his goodbyes.
Or rather, he lets everyone say goodbye to him, begrudgingly allowing hugs and well wishes with only minor grumbling. That may not sound like much, but the fact that Felix is bothering to say goodbye at all signals another big shift—Felix hates goodbyes, always has, so usually he tries to avoid them by leaving without a word.
His longest farewell is with Dimitri, who he pulls aside to speak to in a low voice, reaching up and resting his hand on one large shoulder. Their exchange is very brief and Sylvain can’t tell for the life of him what they’re saying, but he has the sneaking suspicion there’s an apology in there somewhere.
Sylvain doesn’t get a goodbye, not yet. He’s going with the professor and Felix to the training grounds for the ritual, partly because Byleth said something about “recreating the conditions of the original switch,” but mostly because he can’t bear to lose Future Felix just yet.
The three of them don’t speak much as they eventually make their way over to the other side of the monastery. Sylvain knows he’s being unusually quiet, but he can't bring himself to care. He’s trying to commit Future Felix to memory—the elegant angles of his face, the way his hair shines in the late morning light, a few sparse grays mixed in with deep black.
It doesn’t seem fair that their time together has been so brief.
Then again, Sylvain’s never been fair about Felix. He wants him too much, every version of him that he’s ever been. Always too greedy for Felix’s time and attention, even though it’s the last thing he deserves.
“What are you moping about?” Felix asks when they finally reach the training grounds, lightly bumping Sylvain’s shoulder. Sylvain frowns in spite of himself; he didn’t think he was moping so obviously. “You’ll see me again soon enough.”
He will, that’s true. And goddess knows he wants his Felix home safe and within arm’s reach.
But.
Sylvain wants to see Felix this happy again. Fuck, he wants to be the person that makes Felix this happy. And he knows that’s selfish and stupid and too much to ask, but he wants it just the same.
“Ten years is a long time,” Sylvain says, bumping him back. He isn’t quite able to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“Well, you’ll see your Felix soon enough.”
This again? “He isn’t—” Sylvain shakes his head helplessly, face heating. “He’s not mine.”
For a moment, Felix seems like he wants to laugh at that, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he looks at Sylvain very seriously, raises an eyebrow and says, “Isn’t he?” before cracking a smirk that hits Sylvain like a blow to the head.
There’s something Sylvain wants to say to that—something like ‘HUH??? ’ or ‘what???? ’ or some other bemused, stumbling gibberish—but Felix is already off, marching over to the spot where it all began, ready for Byleth to send him back to his own time.
“Goodbye, Sylvain,” he calls over his shoulder, and even though his back is turned, Sylvain can tell that he’s smiling.