writes more bullshit, louder

[warmskies]

 Going to Almyra requires a lot of work. It's work that, on the most technical base level, Felix doesn't need to do. Dimitri is facilitating most of it, and it might even be proper for Felix to stay behind in Fodlan while their king handles it all. But Felix wouldn't feel right doing nothing. But, even without any deeper motivation, why would he?

The first time Felix had made the suggestion, that there be a tournament for Almyran and Fodlan warriors to go up against one another, he'd only partially been joking. None of his friends would be surprised to know that he was somehwat serious; Felix is certain most of them had assumed he was. Sure, he might have said it in frustration at hearing the way Claude was treated in his childhood.. But he'd also liked the idea as it was.

For one thing, it's a good way to get out aggression between their two countries. A tournament is moderated, controlled, directed. This way, they can fight upfront, in a way that one could at least pretend is "friendly". From what little Felix admittedly still only knows of Almyra, it had seemed to fit their M.O. perfectly. Funnily enough, it matches the land that used to be Faerghus as well.

If there are other reasons he's interested in the idea of a tournament, well, that's mostly his business.

Claude had laughed, delighted, and said that Felix's brand of diplomacy was perfectly suited for Almyra, and wouldn't that be a good way for the warriors of both countries to find respect between each other?

So they've all been liaising with Almyra here on the Fodlan side, and Felix in particular has had to busy himself with all sorts of travel arrangements. That primarily means making sure that Fraldarius lands will keep from catching on fire while he's gone. Sure, in the last while he's been in Fhirdiad to help with the reconstruction of the country, but that's different from going to an entirely new country, one that used to be an enemy. Then there's putting together his retinue, making the choice of who can be trusted to not make an ass of themselves on either a Fodlan or Almyran front....

But the packing is what Felix has been most looking forward to. Not just the packing of his clothes, or the basic necessities for the long journey, or whatever else. Rather, he's been enjoying looking over the most important part of this journey, the thing that most contributes to the whole purpose.

So here he is in the Fraldarius armory, carefully looking over the vast amount of swords, armor, and other weapons that are available to him. For a tournament with skilled opponents, he has no doubt that he'll need at least a couple of swords, for back up if nothing else.

Felix has made sure to ask Cyril and Shamir in particular everything he possibly could about Almyran weapons and fighting styles. With Almyra and the lands which used to be Faerghus having such similar values on one's ability to fight, he has no doubt that he might go through a sword.... In fact, Felix is fairly certain that's a guarantee, so he'll do well to choose more than one. If he's lucky, he might even need multiple replacements.

It's an exciting idea, made all the more exciting that this is simply a tournament. It's not war, it's no campaign, it's nothing in defense of anything else besides one's pride as a warrior.

That's the place his father finds him, where Felix is thoughtfully weighing an armorslaying sword in his hands before he returns it to its place. "I take it that isn't up to his standards?" he asks, coming to stand besides him.

A scoff leaves Felix. "Not for a tournament in which I'll be up against Almyran swordsmen," he says. "They won't be weighed down by heavy armor, like what we often use here in Faerghus, or anywhere in Fodlan. It's obvious, when you consider the climate, and things such as Claude's wyvern." With a critical eye, he picks up a brave sword- the only of its kind here in the Fraldarius armory. Thoughtfully, he runs his fingers along the design that makes up the middle of the blade. "Wyverns have their own armor they have to carry around while in flight, so that means their riders have to pack light in comparison if they want to get in the air at all. Pegasi riders are similar in that regards, or so Ingrid has told me. I would say even moreso, with how frail pegasi are."

Rodrigue nods, and doesn't seem too surprised when Felix puts the brave sword to the side. It's heavy as well, and the blade has clearly seen more than its fair share of use. Yet it's a fine weapon, one that Felix has always felt confident in when it's come to pushing the offensive, daring to slide in one more attack, or two, so that he can claw out an advantage. All it needs is a little polishing up, some fine attention from a talented blacksmith, and Felix is assured he can get that done before he leaves.

"Almyra is also said to be a country of quite some heat, isn't it?" Rodrigue asks, nodding his head to a couple of wo daos that have a place of pride in their armory. Felix gets the unspoken message, picking one of them up to inspect and consider. "Heavier armors such as plate would be ill-fitted to the weather and terrain. Our swords here in Fodlan are often made with those in mind, more focus placed towards the point so that they can slide inbetween gaps or pierce through."

"Exactly." Felix can't help but feel a little pleased at his father's observations. Whatever differences they've had, whatever arguments they've weathered through.... He is the man Felix learned so much about weaponry from, for a not insignificant part of his life. Tutors were hired for him, of course... But, as a child, he can remember preferring to listen to his father and brother more than anything. "Shamir sketched out what the swords there look like. They have more of a focus towards the blade's curve, which can be fairly severe." A smile actually flickers across his face, brief and genuine. "I'm looking forward to seeing them in action."

A chuckle rolls out of Rodrigue, partially at his eagerness, and partially at the expression he no doubt caught sight of. Felix feels only faintly annoyed but not much; his father has seen him make stupider expressions. That's the thing about parents, after all. His father has seen him with snot on his face and skinned knees. They're always there to see every little embarrassing thing most of the time.

Always there, at least, until they aren't.

So there's no real reason to hide this brief flickering happiness, although Felix knows there was a period in his life where he would have fought against it, tooth and nail. All he does now is roll his eyes at his father's reaction, and his father just keeps smiling.

Felix nods, thoughtful, and puts the wo dao to the side, regardless. "Curved blades will also be harder to parry..." The wo dao doesn't have a curve nearly sharp enough to match, he thinks, but that will be something he'll need to test out on his own time. Maybe he can talk to Shamir, ask about her connection and see if she can't get him a blade similar to those they use in Almyra. He doesn't need an actual Almyran blade, just a sword type with a similar tendency towards curves.

The more he thinks about it, the more of a challenge it could be. The more excited Felix gets. A victory, a prize, is made all the better thanks to the struggle it takes to reach it.

Maybe his father gets that, on some level, because he watches Felix go through their array of blades for a while longer before he speaks up. "Is the chance to fight Almyran warriors and experience new ways of battle, weaponry, the only reason you're excited to take part in this tournament?"

Ah. Rubbing his thumb along the pommel of his treasured Zoltan sword, Felix eyes his father. "Why don't you ask your question outright, instead of dancing around the issue?" Felix challenges, obstinate as always, even though he knows he could do very well the same in terms of his answer. It would certainly make things easier, he knows... but for something so close to his heart, he just can't do it. He needs the path laid out for him first... as embarrassing as it is to admit. Probably why he's never done so.

His father doesn't call him out on it, not this time. He just folds his hands before himself, a soldier at rest, and considers Felix in turn. "I've simply observed that, when King Khalid of Almyra comes to visit, you spend quite a bit of time with him."

When he was younger, at his most rebellious, his most bitter and upset, Felix knows he would have phrased his answer in perhaps the most crass way. Just something to get under his father's skin, something that tossed away all the careful formal learning he'd been required to memorize in regards to etiquette. A part of Felix still sort of wants to say it, now, honestly... But he's grown past that.

And maybe he wants something more valuable for Claude, something precious and good to wrap him in instead of the abrasiveness Felix so often shows and that never quite seems to let his softer moments stick. At least, not in his own eyes.

But just because he's not being crass means he avoids being blunt, so Felix jerks his chin up proudly and takes a deep breath before he says, "Well, I would spend time with him, considering he's my lover."

His father doesn't seem particularly surprised, save perhaps for his bluntness, and lets loose a weary sigh. "You have responsibilities here, to Fraldarius, to the kingdom," he says, which Felix also isn't surprised to hear. "Marrying foreign royalty would be one thing, and for it to be a man... What of our crest?"

"My duties are handled," is what he says, short and to the point. "Obviously I made sure to consult with my king, in regards to my duty, and with the archbishop, since it concerns my marriage. On all fronts, I am quite soundly handled." He punctuates the words with a glare, the Zoltan blade now firmly held in his hand as he faces his father. "As for crests-" The word is spit from his mouth, a foul thing. "Then I plan to be the last who holds it. How long will these things really last us? They're already harder and harder to come by, these days. The Fraldarius name under me won't be so weak to cling desperately to its crest."

This is where they would get into an argument that would either last five seconds, or five hours. Instead, Rodrigue turns up his own hands- a rare sign of surrender when they butt heads so hard, so often, that it's a miracle neither of them is soundly scarred from the occasions. It's enough to make Felix hesitate, his blade staying down at his side. "With it being your generation's hands which has wrought victory from terrible odds, perhaps there is something to consider in such a view," he murmurs, and the words for some reason make the hair on the back of Felix's neck prickle upwards. Rodrigue continues, voice clearer. "If you have consulted with both lord and church, then I cannot say you haven't set upon this path with anything less than the proper etiquette and routine. This should be happy occasion, instead of another of our arguments."

Felix grinds his fingers against his sword. "Then make it one," he challenges. 

While he's always hissed and spat at his father for his constrictive ideals, misplaced priorities- it can't really be said that Rodrigue is completely ignorant of Felix's personality. He pauses at the challenge before his gaze drifts back to their weapons, and he takes a silver sword in hand. "It's been some time since we've had the opportunity to spar, hasn't it?" Rodrigue asks, testing the blade in his hand. It sounds like a non sequitur, up until he adds, "And you can tell me what it is about Almyra's king and the Leicester Alliance's former leader that has drawn you away from our ancestral home."

Well. Felix will never back down from a challenge. He smirks, sharp as his blade. "Don't regret choosing a sword over the lances I know you favor."

Despite his words, honestly.... He's glad for this. It's easier for him to speak when he has a blade in his hand, and his feet are going through the motions. It's, ironically, easier to bare the soft ache of his heart when he's at his most violent. So he and his father take positions in the training yard right besides the armory, sunlight shining off silver. They fight. They talk.

Felix talks of Claude's skill with a bow, the way he can notch and let loose arrows all with deadly precision even when he's had to flip out of the way of an attack. He talks proudly of Claude's skill with tactics, a man who fights to preserve life more than anything, who thinks of the people who will have to clean up the aftermath. He talks of Claude's intellect, his ability to deal with people, how he can pinpoint something and drive straight through, true as his shots, in a way that Felix can't in a hundred years begin to understand.

Best he can, Felix tries not to talk about how brilliantly green Claude's eyes glow when he's truly happy, or the differences in his many smiles, or how nice it is to run his fingers through his hair or wake up to his weight in the bed they often try to share... but a little bit of it slips out anyway. No the part detailing their times in bed together, hells, no. Just, some of the other things.

By the end of it, both of them have stripped out of all the fancy nonsense they often wear, the needless layers, and are instead down to the bare basics of an undershirt, pants, and boots. Felix feels breathless and... satisfied, on more than a few levels. He and his father have often clashed, usually even more than they've agreed. Yet it's in this manner of clashing, blade to blade, skill against skill, that he feels most at ease with him. It doesn't matter that his father had occasionally gotten one up on him during this match. Both of them had simply stood again, and continued.

It feels as though they reach real understanding, this way.

Across the training grounds, Rodrigue is smiling, and Felix is only a little surprised to find that he is, too. Not so wide, not so obviously happy, but... it's there. "You know," Rodrigue says, "there was always quite some talk of von Riegan here, back when that was all we knew him to be. Yet I cannot say that any other person that I spoke to about him has described his talents and virtues with quite as much fervor as you have, my son."

His flush of exertion becomes a little too intense to be only that, at the realization that he's, perhaps... gushed about Claude. That it's his own lover, that he's perfectly permitted to do that, encouraged to do that- it doesn't matter. It's more than Felix had meant to ever show, and that's what matters.

Rodrigue doesn't give him a chance to stew in his own embarrassment. Instead, he keeps talking. "For such a virtuous and talented man, I could even be convinced that he may be the proper choice of someone who can look over you."

That's enough to draw Felix's mind back to the conversation proper, all narrowed eyes and thinned lips. "I don't need anyone to look over me," he says sharply. "I don't need to be wed to some fussy wife, or husband. Besides, Goddess knows you do that enough already. I don't need more of you. Only the one." 

Something about his father's smile is... It doesn't hang as light on his face as it had a few minutes before, in the midst of their fight. "I'm not thinking of that, I can assure you," he says, before chuckling like he used to when Felix was a child regifting him an interesting bug from Ingrid. "I know well enough, now, that you only associate with those you care to... and you fight against too much care, unlike when you were a child."

Felix's scowl is furiously red and drawn tight over his face. "I'm not a child."

"No." Rodrigue looks to him again, still holding that heavy smile on his face. "You're a man, now. A man who's fallen in love, and deserves to have a partner that will support him. Understand him. I can only hope... that the man you aim to win over as your fiance is a far better pillar of such things than I ended up being."

Something about that phrasing... sits with Felix wrong. Or perhaps he's just unused to his father pulling back like this. Felix stares at him, scowl easing up into something more like confusion. "The way you're talking..." He can't quite verbalize it, not at first. He doesn't want to verbalize it.

But he does.

"You act like you're already gone."

The words have barely left his tongue before the terrible weight of them bears down on Felix completely, and he's suddenly rooted to the spot, a stone in his chest where his heart should be. Everything is suddenly rolling over him- memories, feelings, knowledge.

It really isn't just that he's going to Almyra for the tournament. He really is going because of his relationship to Claude, but it's not only that. It's not only that. Marriage in Faerghus has always meant going to your intended's parents, asking their permission, their blessing, and the higher rank of a king is the one who should take initiative there. So why is it Felix who's going? Felix who's taking up the Almyran tradition of sparring for their partner's hand, the right to marriage?

Why isn't Claude talking to Rodrigue, instead of Felix taking up a sword for him?

He knows what this all means. Now that he's spoken it, now that he's reliving loss all over again, Felix can't possibly ignore it. Yet what can he do? What is he to do? He has no idea, and it traps him there...

But his father has no such issues.

Rodrigue sheathes his sword and walks over to him, still smiling, still heavy, but a little fond, too. Felix can't remember the last time they smiled so genuinely at each other. "You've grown up so well," Rodrigue says quietly, and claps his hand to Felix's shoulder. "You did not even need my help on where to go, on what the right thing was, for so much of it. So for our lands, our people, the kingdom we have dedicated ourselves to... I'll trust you to carry on the Fraldarius name in the way it should be. And I will trust your choice of lover to make you happy."

Everything around them is becoming blurry, washed away, nothing. Felix might be crying. The dream might be falling away. "Father-" He doesn't know what to say. He wants to rage. He wants to cry. He wants to not be the last person in all of Fodlan, in all the world, still carrying the Fraldarius name.

His father's fingers dig into his shoulder slightly, steadying him when everything else is the very opposite.

"Continue to live, Felix. Live well."





Felix jerks awake and, for a brief and painfully hopeful second, he still feels Faerghus' cold clinging to his skin. As though he were still standing in the training yard of his home. But he's not.

He's laying down, in a warmer land already leaching the chill away from his body, and it's Claude's even warmer body that's curled up in the blankets besides him. Neither of them should be sharing a bed in Claude's own royal palace before Felix has so much as officially proposed, but, well, it's not as if either of them have really cared about those kinds of rules. Underneath the thin sheets, Felix's hand finds Claude's wrist, and his fingers wrap around for a brief squeeze. At least he's still here. Still solid, and real.

Then again, the dream had felt real too.

There's no way Felix can sleep like this, not with something tugging behind his eyes, the ache lying within his chest. Felix slips out from the bed, and goes to Claude's window to stare out. Before him lies a warm expanse of land, so similar but different to the place he grew up in. The mix of like and not eases a knot somewhere in him, somehow, just familiar enough to soothe.

Funny, how some things still ache. Felix isn't a stranger to old scars still throbbing. He has more than his fair share of them littered across his body, a result of his tendency to fight off on his own, of challenging himself. Yet he thought he'd... Well. Maybe it doesn't matter what he'd thought.

Instead, Felix thinks on the present. He thinks of his dream, refusing to take it as an omen- even if that would be like his father, butting into his business, falling into that easy conversation of swords and weapons and how other people fight. He thinks of that conversation, the things he'll have to keep in mind for tomorrow when the tournament starts proper. He thinks of how his father had fought, veering away from his usual style to instead take advantage of the wide open space of the Fraldarius training grounds that Felix knows by heart.

He tries not think about how much that same heart aches, a little bit.

After a little while of him just staring into the night sky, the same that he would look up to in Faerghus, he hears some shifting in the bed he's abandoned, and he's not surprised when Claude's weight settles against him. "Nervous for the tournament tomorrow?" he asks, teasing just a little bit, because Claude doesn't seem to know how to be anything else sometimes.

It really says something about how warped Felix's taste has become that he doesn't mind it, even if he can't always reciprocate. He only scoffs, and leans back. "Do I look nervous?" he asks, wondering in the back of his head if his heartache is obvious on his face at all. "I don't plan on losing. Not with what I'm aiming to win."

Claude's hand in marriage. The ability to be publicly recognized.

His love, well, he apparently won that ages ago, somehow.

Such confidence earns a fond chuckle from Claude, and Felix allows him to pull both of them back to bed. It's still too damn hot for layers of blankets, but the sheets are just thin and cool enough to soothe both of them as they settle back in again. While they do, Felix looks over Claude's face, the way his brilliant green eyes close comfortably and his smile stays soft on his lips.

This world is for the living, he reminds himself. He's not going to get hung up on the hypothetical dreams or advice from the dead. This is his romance, his relationship, his battle to win.

...But perhaps he can keep in mind the advice he imagines his father would have given him, if things had been only a little different.

There was never any doubt he would live well, after all. And he'll live all the better once he wins the right to be at Claude's side.