#shinyivyleaves

I gotchu.  This wasn’t as centered on the prompt as I expected, but I kind of liked it like this.  I hope you do, too.

This takes place in a Crimson Flower AU where the Childhood Friend Squad stayed loyal to Dimitri but somehow survived the battle at Gronder.

Also here on AO3.

Warnings: mentions of canonical character death, minor injury, very brief suicidal ideation

bounty on their head + felix & sylvain & ingrid

There was fog.  Heavy and lifeless, shifting around them like a river as they walked, the currents of mist seemed to wear away color and life like sediment.  Whatever cheer or glory may once have adorned Gronder Field was long washed out, replaced with the kind of ennui that was so beloved in ghost stories.

Felix kicked himself for thinking it, boots squishing against the dead earth.  Him, considering that there might be tortured faces in the fog?  The thought was so saccharine and twisted that he could choke on it.

The worst part was, in a place like this where every breath was consumed by the fog, Felix wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself.

Something coiled its way around his wrist, and Felix reflexively drew his sword.  A corrosive, whining screech sliced the air as a shower of sparks erupted from somewhere near his waist.  The combination of star-like lights in his eyes and the ringing in his ears jerked Felix back to reality.  He hadn’t realized he was floating away from it, really.  Mostly because there wasn’t much difference.  It was just that only his chest felt heavy, now, instead of all his limbs.

Ingrid’s green eyes swam into focus before him.  Her jaw was almost as sharp as the blade Felix had drawn—

He looked down.  His sword was still locked against the back of her gauntlet between them.

Scowling, Felix pushed his weapon back into its sheath, barely resisting the urge to wince as he felt the grip of the leather unravel even further.  “What are you doing?” he hissed.  You know not to startle me.  I could’ve…

“You went somewhere else,” she said.  The words were soft, but flat, all traces of warmth lost to this place.

Felix’s hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, and he said nothing.  She was right.  But there wasn’t anything to do about it.

“C’mon, guys.  We’re almost there.”  Both Felix and Ingrid snapped their attention towards the voice, spotting Sylvain almost swallowed by the fog up in front of them.  As much as Felix thought that it should have helped them focus because it was Sylvain, the truth was…his voice hurt.  It was bright and cheery, but against the backdrop of this dead place, the sound was like nails on slate. 

Felix winced, but it did, strangely, help.  Walking forward again, he released his sword and rolled his wrist gingerly, fingers curling and uncurling until something like feeling returned to them.

“Can you see it?” Ingrid asked at a stage whisper.

Sylvain waved a hand to one side as they caught up.  “No, but listen—you hear the river, right?”

Felix did.  The sound of water crawling through a glorified ditch was almost white noise, but it was there.  They weren’t far off, then.

“There!”

The voice was a man’s, but it was nothing like Sylvain’s, and that was enough for Felix to reach for his sword again.  A thwip sounded from nearby, and Felix looked behind them to see smoke rising from the shaft of a once-burning arrow now buried in the dirt.  “The Chancellor was right!  Don’t let them get away!”

“Shit,” Sylvain growled, drawing his lance.  It was the most genuine feeling Felix had heard from him in months.

Ingrid, too, grabbed her weapon, falling in with the two of them until her back was shielded by theirs, and vice versa.  “Byleth knew we’d come,” she muttered, but despite the steadiness of her stance at Felix’s back, he thought she sounded dazed.  Like despite all they had suffered at Byleth-and-Edelgard’s hands, Ingrid had somehow held out hope that this wouldn’t happen.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” he said.  But you came anyway, gurgled his mind.  You were hoping, too.

A volley of arrows whistled towards them from the fog.  Only two even came close to hitting them—the archers were shooting as blindly as they were defending—and Ingrid avoided one as Felix cut down the one on course for Sylvain’s shoulder. 

Sylvain nodded in thanks, but just said, “We can argue later, but we need to run.  Away from the grave!”  Felix felt the shaft of Sylvain’s lance nudge him in the side.  To the west, he thought, but there was no sun visible to confirm it.

“Can’t you call Aegis?” Felix asked Ingrid, but he was already moving, trusting that Sylvain and Ingrid would keep an eye on his blind spots.

“There are too many archers,” Ingrid said, voice as quiet as it could be over the sound of their footsteps.  “We need to get farther away fir–Sylvain!”

“Ngah…!” Ingrid’s arm was already around Sylvain’s waist by the time Felix turned around.  The wound wasn’t nearly as bad as he was expecting, but it didn’t make the sight of blood running down Sylvain’s side any easier to see.  “It’s a graze,” he said through clenched teeth, already pushing Ingrid’s arm off.  “Keep going!”

Felix stepped back past them, putting his offhand on Sylvain’s arm and pushing him off at an angle.  “Change direction,” he hissed, raising an arm to draw the sigils for Thoron in the air.

“Got it,” Ingrid said, pushing Sylvain with her.

The spell was discharged before they had even taken a few steps.  Lightning surged from Felix’s fingers towards their enemies with the ferocity he wished he could use personally.  But the enemy’s numbers, the fog, this whole day and Felix’s damned feelings about it were all against them.  He let the aftershocks power a second burst of the spell before he, too, swerved off course and after his friends.

It felt like hours before Ingrid finally pulled them to a stop and whistled for her Pegasus, but the truth was that they couldn’t tell.  The sun was still hidden behind the tree canopy and shadowed by the low storm clouds, and none of them was willing to take their eyes off their surroundings to track the passage of time.  Sylvain leaned heavily against one of the trees nearby, still clutching his lance.

There was no sound left except their breathing.  And though it tore free from their lungs and through their throats, it could not cut through the profound, immovable fog.

“So, we didn’t make it,” Ingrid said.

Felix scoffed, only just resisting the urge to slam a fist into the tree nearest him.  Fucking obviously, he wanted to spit, but the words wouldn’t come.

“We can try again,” Sylvain said.  “Just, you know…another time.  He’ll rest in peace ‘till we can.”  The words were as fragile as a dew lattice.  Pretty, but ephemeral at best and more likely a fantasy.

Um, so.  This one kind of turned into an ongoing project?  Oops.  I just couldn’t pick one person for Claude to be defending, so my mind went (with some encouragement), “What if it was ALL of the Deer?”

Here you are, at last!  Part 2 of your ask.  This got even more out of hand than the Golden Deer one... oops?  I hope that’s a good thing.

Sylvix + hiding-your-face-hug

This whole arrangement had to end.  Sylvain should have known from the fucking start that it was a terrible idea, but at the time?  He hadn’t been thinking straight—in more ways than one.

He and Felix had been friends for so long, and they were both so stressed, alone, even among their old classmates, that the first time they’d fallen into each other’s bedrolls to relieve the tension of it, it was nothing short of simple.  Obvious. Necessary, even.

Comforting, warm, right, hissed a treacherous part of Sylvain’s brain.  But he’d been ignoring that voice for almost three months, now, reminding himself that nothing had changed; they were just friends, and this was just business.

Except it wasn’t.  Not to Sylvain, not anymore.  That whisper in his head had grown too loud, resonating in every cavity of his body including, unfortunately, his heart.  And it ached, just like any muscle he could have overworked.

The ache flared as he felt Felix sigh in his arms, disappointed as usual, and start to slip out of Sylvain’s bed.  His movements were cautious so as not to wake Sylvain (if he’d been asleep), but it was undeniable that Felix was moving quickly, rushing to get back to his own room.  It felt like being punched in the collarbone.

He’d asked Felix to stay, this time, just to see if he would, and when Felix had let Sylvain tug him into the bed at his side, wrapped up in each other, he’d thought—  For a second, he’d thought—

11. Fandom you enjoyed writing for the most this yearThis is a really tough one, and I honestly can’t decide between Pillars (because of all of my friends in that fandom and how much fun I have bouncing questions and stories between our OCs) and D&D (because I think all of my best pieces have been D&D related, and also I just love Dungeons & Dragons).

12. Favorite character to write about this yearLila, from Pillars of Eternity.  It’s been so fun trying to figure out her story and motivations, and it’s honestly really cathartic to just...write someone who doesn’t care sometimes.

14. A fic you didn’t expect to write Literally everyone who sent me this ask asked this, so I’ll go for a third one lol.  This time, I’ll choose “The Art of Getting Up,” which I wrote on impulse after a D&D session.

Smutn’t

I’m so sorry that this took forever!  I was trying to make sure I actually wrote the Deer kids correctly, and I hope I did okay.  I almost made myself cry with this one tbh but they were happy tears.  The Sylvix one will be in another post because this accidentally got wayyyy longer than I meant it to.  Oops.

Golden Deer + group hug

“On that note,” Claude was saying, “let’s move this reunion party somewhere else.”

Byleth wasn’t paying attention.  Not really.  The images of the students’ faces stood in stark contrast to the grey, cold ruins around them, highlighted by the fresh daylight, and that was the image that had captured Byleth’s attention.  Hilda’s scarlet gloves, the feather affixed to Ignatz’s cloak, Leonie’s new pauldron that gleamed like onyx, Raphael’s hair that had somehow become even more of a mess, Marianne’s braids that had become less of one, Lysithea’s golden ornaments, Lorenz’s Goddess-damned rose, Claude’s eyes, glittering like cut glass, sharp even in the softness of dawn—

The Golden Deer were bright, colorful, and so very much alive amidst a place trodden to ashes by death.  It was surreal.  Like a dream.

And as they began to turn their backs, one by one, a memory struck.  How many times had Byleth seen this?  Five years (apparently) of dreams, and how many of them had ended with their students vanishing into the depths of some fog that could never be reached?

“Wait,” Byleth heard someone say, only realizing it had been their own voice when the receding footsteps fell silent.

Something tugged at Byleth’s arm, and they looked down to see their own hand wrapped around Claude’s wrist.  “Huh?” he asked, just as confused as Byleth, looking up into their face.  “What is it, Teach?”

“You’re all here,” Byleth breathed, stepping closer.

Everyone had stopped, now, but Hilda, who rolled her eyes and moved up to Claude’s side.  “Well, yeah,” she said.  “We made a promise, didn’t we?”

“I know—” said Byleth, but the words caught in their throat and they swallowed hard before trying again.  “I dreamt of this day, I think, when I fell.  It always felt so real, right until—”

—until you vanished.  Is it real, this time?  Byleth squeezed Claude’s wrist once, hoping it would be enough when their words were failing.  Am I really here?

“Aw, Professor…!” Raphael sniffed, closing the gap between them in one long stride.  Byleth barely had a chance to breathe before Raphael had caught them, Hilda, and Claude in an embrace.  The three of them were squished chest-to-side-to-chest against the front of Raphael’s tunic.

Hilda squirmed almost immediately.  “Ack—Raphael, warn a girl—”  Byleth thought, surely, she was going to break the embrace, but instead, she merely freed an arm and reached behind her to snatch Marianne’s cloak.  “You, too, losers; get in here,” she huffed.

Leonie was already on it, slinging an arm around Byleth’s neck as she muttered, “I’m glad we didn’t lose you, too.”

A flash of green to their right told Byleth that Ignatz had wormed his way between them and Raphael, and though he couldn’t move his arms, his forehead was warm against their shoulder.  Behind them, two small hands twisted into their cloak as Lysithea settled against their back.  The only one missing was—

Lorenz locked eyes with Byleth the moment they opened theirs, only to quickly look away before stepping forward.  Sighing in a manner that Byleth could only describe as put-upon (yet betrayed by the flush in his cheeks), Lorenz put his arms up around the outside of the hug—one across Leonie’s back, and the other across Claude’s.  “Not a word, Riegan,” he muttered.

“It’s a special case,” Claude agreed lightly before turning back to Byleth again.  One of his hands was still trapped in Byleth’s grip between their bodies, and Byleth could feel a tingling numbness setting in.  

Still, as they watched even Marianne relax into Hilda’s back with a soft smile, Byleth couldn’t help feeling like never moving again was a perfectly reasonable course of action.  “It’s a miracle,” she said.

“I was so scared I’d never see you again,” Lysithea breathed.  Byleth suddenly found it difficult to do so, remembering abruptly that any one of these children (no more children now than you, whispered her mind) could have died before they ever woke up. Lysithea especially.

“What matters is that you made it,” Ignatz said.  Byleth felt his arm shift to touch Lysithea’s shoulder.

“We all did,” said Raphael, and finally, Byleth’s breath came easy again.  No matter how many times they had dreamed otherwise, they’d all kept their promise.  

As though sealing it, Claude pushed his and Byleth’s still-connected hands against the center of Byleth’s chest.  The tap of their knuckles together felt almost like a heartbeat. Byleth looked away from their hands to Claude’s face, breathing in until their lungs were full to bursting. Claude winked with all his usual teasing charm, but the smile on his lips was the most sincere Byleth had ever seen.

“Welcome home, my friend,” he said.

Byleth smiled.  This is real.  “I’m back.”

Thank you so much for including a ship with this one.  Also I really like Zelink and am super excited to talk more about them.

10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws?Link tends to pose while Zelda draws, though sometimes he doesn’t know he’s doing it.  She’ll just sketch him while he’s doing something monotonous or sitting around and when he finds out, he’s both flattered and embarrassed because he tends to rest in weird positions.

15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside?Zelda screams about spiders and Link brings them outside.  This is true in most iterations, including BotW, in which case Zelda is screaming in excitement and Link is bringing the spider outside carefully so she can continue to study it without chancing the spider getting into their food or some such nonsense.

25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering?Both?  Honestly?  They are each other’s biggest fan.  Link has a bit more of a competitive streak, so it’s more common for him to be the one competing while Zelda cheers enthusiastically, but if Zelda competes in anything at all, Link is there with like three signs and his sword to fight anyone who thinks she can’t do the thing.

26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder?Zelda takes pictures of Link.  Those moments where Link lets himself really relax are rare and so she always wants to capture them.  However, he tends to wake up if she moves too quickly, so she’s become a master of graceful shoulder movements to pick up the camera.

27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked?I think Zelda would happily give Link a makeover if he asked her to.  Makeup is one of the few things that Link has little understanding of and little desire to be involved in (because it would just get so fucked up whenever he goes out to fight or train or what have you), so Zelda would jump at the opportunity to try it out on him.  Also, I feel like she’s already responsible for Link’s clothing aesthetic in so many games that if he ever needs new clothes, he just walks into the room with a certain Look on his face and she just.  Knows.

Sorry this took so long!  But I didn’t forget you, I promise.  Also, with regard to the first prompt, I know Yasha’s not an object but it kind of just worked better narratively… whoops :p  Also these got a bit long so I’m sliding them under a cut.