#summer!sylvain my beloved

[priintaniere]

Sand, sunrise & fleur de sel

※ please do not repost my art ※  ➜ commission and ko-fi links in bio

[couldbebetterforsure]

Since you play Fire Emblem Heroes, what are your main teams?

Okay this is the last old ask I have in my inbox it seems!

As for your question, Anon, I have a few main ones!

My number one main team is Alfonse, default Takumi, default male Robin, and default male Corrin. This squad is the very first team I ever invested in for Heroes, they've been there from the start. While they may not be able to keep up with the meta, I'm attached to them and would never disband them. That being said, my Alfonse is basically a monster, the guy can hit harder than people expect and is surprisingly tanky at times!

Next team is my Blueberry Fam! Starring Knight Exalt Chrom, default female Robin, Brave Lucina, and default male Morgan. Of fucking course I'm gonna have a team centered on my beloved Awakening family!

Another one I have that isn't a complete team is Valla Family, which has default female Corrin, default Silas, and default male Kana, with a spot open for whenever Sophie decides to show up. A team based on my true run family for Fates!

I also have my beloved Stahlivia Fam team with default Stahl, Sky High Dancer Olivia, Dancer Inigo, and Soleil. I have said several times that Stahl/Olivia is my second favorite pairing of Awakening and it's a damn shame they aren't more popular. So at least I got to make a team for the fam in Heroes!

I have a Faerghus Four team that is also my Arena Defense team made up of Summer Dimitri, default Felix, Summer Sylvain, and Summer Ingrid. Originally it was Winter Felix in the team for shits and giggles but I switched him out with default Felix for some coverage.

I have another Chrobin family team that has Valentine Chrom/male Robin duo, Valentine female Robin, Valentine Lucina, and Fallen male Morgan. I love the comedy of this team!

And last but not least, my last main team is default male Alear, default female Alear, default Alfred, and default Lumera. I love my sweet babies on this team so much!

[fromthedeskofelizabeththird]

Stolen

Officially dipping my toes into Fire Emblem fics. Dimitri has replaced V as the traumatized sad boy I can project onto lmaooooo. Expect PTSD recovery fics in the nearish future. Yall know I’m weak for those.

Fire Emblem Three Houses | M (for violence, not smut) | Dimileth

~~

Dimitri used to dream of battlefields.

He’s not sure what it says about him that his mind, when left to wander, is most comfortable at war. He is soothed by the monsters in his own imagination and only sleeps comfortably with a knife under his pillow.

During the fall of Garreg Mach, he wonders if he’s dreaming, barely hearing the screams around him and reaching for his lance out of instinct and little else. He is numb to the fire and destruction and does not return to his senses until he’s tossed into a cell.

Only then does he resist it; throwing his body at the bars like an angry tiger. He does not want to be left alone in the silence; cannot stand the idea of being left in the dark. The calm and quiet leaves him thinking of corpses; it fills his nose with the smell of smoke and burning bodies.He does not sleep there unless he can help it. He paces every corner of his cell in the hope that sunlight might burn through the cracks. It’s almost cruel that the chaos of his escape is the closest he has ever felt to home.

It’s winter when he returns to Garreg Mach and the monastery is blanketed in a thick layer of snow. He glances back at his footsteps in the ice, all too aware that he walks alone.

He remembers it as he walks through the empty halls, dodging rubble and bodies on the way. In his imagination the monastery is caught in an eternal summer: Ashe sitting on a tree branch and dropping apples into Mercedes’ basket; Sylvain whispering sweet nothings into a different girl’s ear to the one the day before, only to be yanked away the ear by an increasingly frustrated Ingrid; Felix begrudgingly carrying a pile of books from the library with Annette in tow; Dedue kneeling on the floor of the greenhouse and tending to his Duscur flowers.

Ashe’s tree is gone now; chopped for firewood well over a year ago. Sylvain’s makeshift lover’s corner is nothing more than rubble. The library was swallowed up in flames and its heavy tomes left in tatters where they’ve survived at all. Dedue’s Duscur flowers are overgrown.

He remembers the Professor sleeping in the library, the focussed expression on her face as she fished by sunset. He remembers the way she pored over heavy books, familiarising herself with magic and cavalry techniques so that she might better instruct her students.

It goes without saying that the Professor is not there either, a gaping void in what had once been his home. He doesn’t know where she went and that makes it worse.

Only when he’s standing inside of the ruined goddess tower does he realise he’s been searching for her. If he’s completely honest with himself, he’s been searching for her since the invasion. He craned his neck and peered through the bars of his cell, searching the faces of every other prisoner in the hopes that one of them would be Byleth. He expected her to be there when he escaped the darkness at the cost of Dedue’s life; an echo of the moment she split the sky. He wishes now that he had told her the truth about his feelings  when it mattered. He wishes he hadn’t cracked a joke for fear of rejection.

Not for the first time in his life, he laments his stolen future. It’s easier to think of it as stolen by somebody else than lost through his own neglect.

His demons have always had faces, but now they have claws and he feels them break the skin every time he wanders the ruined halls. They whisper in his ear as he lingers on the cusp of sleep, reminding him of everything he could have done differently.

Three months after his return, he catches a thief red handed. They’re little more than a boy-as young as he was when his father took his last breath- but he cannot see beyond what they represent. They’re only holding a silver plate, but it might as well have been his still beating heart. It’s not even his plate but the idea of losing something else fills him with rage.

He doesn’t feel remorse until later; too focused on the Professor’s sleeping form and Dudue’s Duscur flowers to hold back. He watches the light fade from the thief's eyes as he once did autumn sunsets, cutting into him over and over to silence the crueler voices in his mind.

If he can save this plate, he isn’t worthless.

If he can fix this, it isn’t too late.

The other Blue Lions are stolen and might be returned if he cuts the throats of enough thieves.

They might come back if they know he’s looking for them.

He knows it’s ridiculous. He’s had dark thoughts before but this frightens even him. He can’t escape the smell of blood, can’t stop himself from taking a perverse sort of pleasure in smearing strangers’ blood across the halls. He tells each and every one of them that they’re failures as they drift away; they’re beasts and worthless and deserving of far worse. They stole away his endless summer.

He’s sure he remembers them cutting down Ashe’s apple tree. Weren’t they the ones who burned the library? The Professor is gone now and they’re the ones to blame.

He used to dream of battlefields, but now he dreams of a stolen life- a past, present and future he doesn’t belong in anymore. He no longer recognises himself in the beloved king he wanted so much to be, doesn’t want to tarnish the throne and his birthright.

That Dimitri would be frightened of him, he’s sure and that Byleth would be disgusted.

He’s disappointed every time he wakes up, wanting nothing more than to slip away in his sleep, even though he’s well aware that such a gentle fate is more than he deserves.

It’s strangely fitting when he hears her footsteps across the stone floor only when he is content to die; one last kiss from an angel before his descent into hell.

Byleth looks the same, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. The sky behind her is the perfect shade of peach and leaves a golden halo in her hair and he stares at the hand she extends, taking note of the calluses that litter her palms.

She doesn’t have the delicate hands of a story book maiden, but he’s always believed that to be one of her finer qualities. Even so, he hesitates before giving her his own. Surely she can see the blood stains and broken lives smeared across it. She’s not real, yet the guilt overrides his senses nonetheless.

Right now she is a goddess in all but name and he is not the one she came here to save.

He takes her hand, if nothing else for the fact that it’s so warm in his. For a moment, even temporarily, she’s real and returned to him and it silences his mind.

“I should have known,” he says aloud, his voice an unfamiliar rasp, “that one day you’d haunt me as well.”

[emperorcrest-blog]

❝ you’re all i ever wanted and worth dying for, too. ❞

richard siken quotes / not accepting.

 four years of no war, and you are twenty six and aching. four years of no war, and there’s nothing left for you. four years of peace, and you hurt profoundly and deeply. your bones feel tired, down to your very core. mercenary life suited you well. but there’s just no work anymore. the world is at peace, so utterly still and silent that it feels like there’s nowhere you could possibly exist. you should die, you think. you should fall on your sword here and now. and there would be little stopping you - you are not the fraldarius heir. you are not beloved by the world. you do not belong here.

 and yet -

                 you do not break your promises. 

 there was one, a small, enourmous promise you made at the age of eight years old, little fingers coiled round each other, and the promise of hey, we’ll always be together, won’t we? we’ll die together, right? passed in the dark of the gautier household, your heart beating fast for something so morbid. you do not break your promises. 

 you don’t know how to ask for the things you want. you don’t know how to be anything but alone. you have to leave the door open, and let other people walk in. this is how you’ve operated since you were a child. you had to think and live for yourself, for what kind of warrior relies on others? but you feel so cold, down to your bones, and you’d like to not be alone anymore. 

 parting with your favourite sword feels a little like parting with your own soul, but if you know sylvain  - and you think you do, better than anyone - then you won’t be without it for long. you take yourself back to the one place the two have returned to over and over again over the years. you’ve visited the ruins of garreg mach a lot - not to worship, but just to reminise between jobs. nine years since you were a student there, and it holds such a place in your heart still, if just for all the time you spent there both at peace and at war. the people there say he’s visited too, in bright voices - the flirtatious margrave gautier, all smiles and sunshine. you know. so garreg mach is the ideal halfway point. you want to meet him halfway.

 you wait in the hallway, under the arch, where the ruined altar sits, that neither of you willingly prayed at. it’s nothing special anymore. it’s just some rubble. it’s not holy, and it’s not beautiful. it is rock. 

  “felix.” a voice, so full of emotion that it makes your heart skip, and you turn, and there’s sylvain - less armour than you remember, with a soft smile, and something in you breaks. this is what you’ve been wanting all these years, not the battlefield, not the sword, not war, but him. it’s what you’ve always wanted. you just haven’t known how to admit it. you don’t know how to ask for what you want. 

 you’re hardly too emotional, or you try not to be. but here and now, you turn, twist, trip slightly, and run towards sylvain. you meet each other halfway, crash into each other, and it’s been four years, and he’s as warm as summer and as solid as a tree. “i missed you, felix.” it’s a sigh against your ear, and you shudder. 

 “let’s get out of here.” you tug his hand, pull him away from the rubble that used to be something, something holy, something ugly, something destructive, and out into the sunlight. and then his hands are on your face, on your shoulders, on your hair, like he can’t believe you’re there. and in all honesty, neither can you. it sets your heart racing against your chest like a drum. 

 “give me back my sword.” your words are harsh, but the tone playful, and sylvain laughs back as he presses it back into your hands, and you relish the cold steel on your skin. you missed it, even if it was just a short time apart.

 “i knew you weren’t dead. everyone said you were dead. but i knew you weren’t.” sylvain’s voice is strained, heavy with something, and he takes your hand. you feel something tighten in your chest. 

 “i don’t break promises.” you’re saying something else in those words.

 sylvain smiles sadly. “i know.” he says back, and he’s saying something else as well. you pull him into the sun, just to watch it set his hair alight like flames. it’s heartstopping. sylvain looks at you, really looks for a long moment, eyes like embers. “you’re all i ever wanted and worth dying for, too.” he says, suddenly, and what are you meant to say back?

 you’re twenty six years old, and you don’t know how to say i love you without the words getting stuck in your throat, but you do know how to lean in and catch his face in your hands the way you’ve wanted to since you were eleven years old, and you do know how to push your mouths together like pieces of twin stars.

[thethinkpit]

Temporary Freedom

I can’t quite describe the sound of a car starting. A vroom does not quite cut it. A chug- chug- chug is what happens when the car fails to start, or nearly fails. There is a kind of hitch, and pshh and then a low purring and a rolling of the r’s. There’s no singular sound that I can write that quite describes the sound of that hitch, pshh and purr. hi-pshh-purr. hII-psh-pururur. The sound is familiar to all of us, yet it is not easy to describe. Perhaps because we never really have to.

              For some, hearing that sound can mean freedom. After walking up the long hill from the kitchen, slowly unbuttoning the top buttons near the neck, and yanking the shirt out from under the entrapment of pseudo-belt/apron rigged around through the loops of the pants all I can think is freedom.  Gravel crunching under the soles of the shoes, opening the car door and trapped latent heat pouring out and sitting on the hot seat is freedom. To wrench off tight shoes and peel now-gross socks from my feet is freeing. Slamming the door, rolling the windows down and to pressing my bare feet against the brake and the clutch while turning the key is all to hear the familiar hII-psh-pururur, the sound of my freedom. My red freedom-chariot absconds from the gravel parking lot.    

              Daily, I submit to this torture. I wake up at 4:30, get dressed and prepared to leave by 5 or usually by 5:15. I spend approximately 30 minutes driving to work, and on certain days I take the long way around to pick up my co-worker. Arriving at work by 6:00, I go down to the nearly empty kitchen. Greet the young, sourly judgmental chef named Kyle as he putters around and start the coffee, I admit though, I preferred the days where the French sous-chef Sylvain started with me.

Then I start flipping over cups and putting out the little things: flowers, carefully piped whipped butters, house made jams, salt and pepper shakers. Carefully align the silverware- spoon with a knife facing inward on the right side, forks on the left- expensive, polished glassware -Simon Pierce water glasses positioned off the mat above the knife and spoon- and the mats on which they rest, making sure that the leftmost mat always overlaps the one on the right. Then grab the stack of identically folded napkins and place them in the same identical position on every mat. Thankfully, it is raining, and I don’t have to move these all outside and put up the umbrellas.

As I do this, the housekeeping ladies come in to clean and fill the fireplaces with wood - because only rich people would ask to have a fire in the summer- as well as vacuum the crumbs from dinner last night. After they are done rearranging the chairs to vacuum and prop the hose into the housevac with the chairs, I move them all back and inspect each chair pillow for the correct amount of fluffiness. Then it’s time for the continental. The coffee is freshly brewed just in time for me to empty it into polished silver carafes, and carefully arrange pitchers of cream, milk and almond milk beside carafes of coffee, decaf coffee and hot water. Add a wooden tea box, expensive Farmhouse Pottery mugs and honey as well as napkins and it is almost ready. Finally, stacks of newspapers on the table opposite of the Barn Room with the Times, the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal. Seriously, I don’t know anyone who reads the Wall Street Journal, must be a rich person thing. Also, if these people are here to visit Vermont, they should have a copy of the Herald or the Valley News, right? Incorrect, only one visitor that entire summer asked to have a local paper with his daily morning room service of coffee and pastries.  Still, if I am lucky, and my early morning partner competent, I should have a few moments to read the headlines. I run into the kitchen to grab the breakfast menus and stack them on the table near the door in a perfect pile. Only then is every, single, tiny, detail is similar and perfect all before we open for breakfast at 7:00.

              Driving blind is generally not recommended. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. I can see, but the rushing air flying through the car moves my now loose hair in awkward, un-traceable flows. I could slow, but I do not want to slow my escape. I could tie my hair back again but denying my hair of the same freedoms I pursue seems contradictory. Especially now that I just allowed it to be free. I can see through changing masses of brown curls that infect my vision, just perhaps not completely.

              Quickly I prepare the baskets for room services. Deftly, I check that every basket is filled with whatever the guest could possibly need. Butter and Jam go with every bread like item, half-and-half with every order of coffee as well as a sugar box, and ALWAYS water and water glasses with every room service- but not the Simon Pierce glasses, those stay in the dining room, instead we send the Ridel ones carefully wrapped up in a cloth napkin. Once Kyle or Sylvain had finished the food I would wrap it and put it in the basket before running out the door.

              I didn’t love that it was raining now. Room services were not fun in the rain. At first, I had to use the map to figure out where I was on the property. The cottages were not clearly labelled “Orchard Cottage”, or “Chalet Cottage” and there weren’t signs that pointed toward where you wanted to go. When I had the pattern down though, it was amazing to drive the van around the property. For a few seconds, I had the luxury of having power. It was me versus the guest. I held their beloved coffee and buttermilk pancakes hostage. They may have the wealth and power to book a few nights at a five-star resort, but their demand for caffeine and carbs at 7:30 in the morning was thwarted by some eighteen-year-old college student from the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Of course, I had to give in to their demands, but I could’ve taken the van, ran into the woods and ate the pancakes myself.

When I would set up breakfast for guests, usually they were wearing their fluffy white bathrobes, sometimes they would ask about me to avoid awkward silences or to learn more about my backstory like I was some character in an interactive story they indulged in when they came here. The usual story was that I was working here during the summer to help pay for my college education and they seemed happy with that. The traditional idea of a hard-working girl putting herself through school usually appeased them enough to stop their questions, despite that not being the truth because it was not just me working hard. It was my entire family. My mother overworking herself, and my grandparents for taking me in. I worked fifty hours a week for something that these people could buy easily. That what was the most intimidating about these people, if they were feeling generous they could make my unending struggle go away. A couple thousand dollars was nothing to them, but it was costing me my limited, youthful summer days.

              The Royalton Turnpike was a beautiful DIRT road that wound its way from Royalton to Barnard. As I left ‘the hidden gem’ that was Twin Farms, I could see the descent into ‘my folk’. Suddenly the lawns were not all well-kept, and the further down the turnpike I was the more likely I was to see the junk in people’s yards. The further away I was from Barnard the rougher and bumpier the ride got, washboard rattles were more frequent as were potholes in the road. Driving my car, I was in control. I could slow if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t have go with the curve of the road, but I did. I was alone, and free of anyone’s expectations. I could pump my music as loud as I wanted, I could sing at the top of my lungs in a horrible off-key way and no one would care or correct me. My performance was only for me and no one depended on me.

              The only time I wasn’t running around- but with the esteemed grace and even-pace as if everything was under control- was in the rare case that I wasn’t doing room services and the kitchen wasn’t behind. Then I would stand diligently at the doors to the dining room (leaning was not tolerated). I would check my apron was straight, all the buttons buttoned then stand with my back straight, hands clasped behind me, and smile on my face waiting for guests to arrive. However, as the summer went on they depended on me more and more and that meant no more waiting for guests to arrive but rather I was the one running the show in the kitchen. The Expediter- or Expo- as we called it. I called the shots, told house-keeping whose room to clean, told servers where to take food. I went out and calmly took orders from the guests with a happy go-lucky persona that pleased them. I always never could understand this idea we portrayed: happy to serve and be there. Once a Guest asked me if I would be at dinner later after I had served them both breakfast and lunch. I told them that “unfortunately I had to go home and cook dinner for my grandparents”.  They seem to forget that I am an actual human being with a family and life to go home to at 4:00 pm every day. Perhaps they thought I was just part of the furniture, that I lived here, and was part of the dining room, part of the hotel’s experience.

              The longer I stayed there the less I believe I existed. I became part of the dining room, and part of the quaint Vermont existence. I became the stereotypical poor farm girl, who knew the area and could recommend good spots to go swimming. The more I served the more subordinate I became, and the more I believed in the power of these people. I became powerless. My ideas and beliefs no longer had meaning because I was meaningless in these people’s lives. They forgot me as soon as they saw me, which had never happened to me before in my life. People always remember me until I became a server.

              I need the job to be free, but I need to be free from the job. I live in a world of sacrificed happiness to obtain my eventual freedom. We are taught to value freedom because once I am free I am supposed to be happy. But what happens when our search for freedom becomes the drain of the happiness I desire? We are happy as children despite a complete, utter lack of control and ability to make decisions. Once we are given opportunity to make choices what if that’s when-

              I slam on the brake, and the curls littering my vision fall to the side.  I can see the stop sign, the same red as my freedom-chariot, bright in the afternoon sunlight. The engine sputters and stops.

              I sigh and push the clutch in as well and turn the key. The familiar HII-pshh-PUurur sound enters my mind. The sound of temporary freedom.

[clueless-in-kanagawa]

One year since my exchange ended and the gang is back. Three of my beloved besties from my home in Kanagawa came to visit me for three weeks this summer vacation. It was so indescribably wonderful to see them all and improve my Japanese. Together we went to Canada for four days to visit Sylvain who was my exchange brother during my time in Japan and a mutual friend of all of us. Those who have followed my posts will know him. All of us are slowly headed down the path to becoming adults as we've know all graduated high school and are working towards our dreams. As sad as goodbye is and knowing I may not see them again until I can go on college exchange at least a year from now digs a hole in my gut but I know that they'll always be waiting for me. So for their sake the best I can do is work hard, improve my Japanese, and get back home.