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Dorothea Arnault
12th of the Wyvern Moon 1192
To my beloved Thea,
I am sure that this letter will not come as a surprise to you given my affinity of, as you say, never being able to shut up. That is fine though, I know that you have always enjoyed my company and our talks even if I realize now that the man I used to be was someone that did not deserve even a second of your time. Though now that I have given many nights to that topic, there were many things now that I think that I did not deserve, things that to this day I do not deserve.
I have never been one to shy away from my faults, I know that I have never been a great lover nor have I ever been someone that can be depended on. I am many things Dorothea, a cheater, a heartbreaker, a bastard. But above all I am a knight and that, I find, to be the worst thing I could have ever been. Born in a life where I was given everything I could have ever wanted but still be expected to serve, to fight. A life where all I did was take and take and never give anything in return under the righteous belief of justice.
Dorothea I killed my own brother, my own friends. I did this out of a sense of loyalty, because as a knight being loyal to your cause is, as my father once told me, our whole reason for living. But is it not horrible that despite being deemed loyal, I killed those who once meant the world to me? Who I had grown up with? Loyalty is such a fickle thing don’t you think? And yet, that is all knights know how to be: Loyal.
I have been disloyal in every account except for when it came to following Edelgard and even then, both you and I know that there had been more than a handful of moments where the thought of running away tasted too sweet on the tongue to ignore. I killed my family and friends, how can i ever claim to be loyal when I did that? How can I claim chivalry when I killed my own king? I know that you did not grow up being told the same things I was, that the empire's view of chivalry was so much more different than what the kingdom once preached, but the more I think about the things that I have done, that I have stolen, the less chivalrous I come to sound.
I do not think that this was what my father and my ancestors had hoped I would become when I set out on the path of becoming a knight.
You might think me being overly dramatic right now, you might even think that this is unlike me, after all, I was the one person that you knew from Faerghus that never talked about chivalry or what it meant to be a knight. But that did not mean that I never thought about it or that I did not spend every night breaking down at the responsibilities that were hoisted on me. I did not daydream about being a knight nor did I hate the idea of it, but I cannot help but realize that I was still enslaved to that ideology no matter the actions that I took.
This is of course all a convoluted way to say that last moon I received a gift.
You might try to guess from who but I will spare you that trouble and come right out and tell you that the gift was from Felix. I know, I was as surprised as you were to find the gift on my doorsteps. After all it was you that had come to try and convince me to forget about him, though I must be completely real with you Dorothea, I never did forget about him. I love him, but you know this all too well. You held me when he left and you stayed by my side when I was given reports that he had given up his land and his title, never to be seen again.
I think, like myself, that Felix struggled with the idea of knighthood in the new world we have built. He had already had such a twisted view on it before, I know that the actions we took only served to worsen that thought process. I killed my brother but he killed his father. Even as we kept marching forward, I know that his hand still shook over having been forced to do that. Forced. I’m sure that sounds like a terrible thing given that we were fighting for a better world but that was exactly what was done wasn’t it? There was no reason for the professor to position Felix where he was during the beginning of that battle, no reason for him to have made the final blow. Just like there had been no reason for me to have been recruited just in time so that I was the one to kill my own brother.
I know the professor is not cruel and that had we spoken up about it, she would have spared us that trauma. But the trauma was still done and that blood would never again be washed off our hands. I killed my brother, Felix killed his father, and it was us two that helped clear the way to kill our best friend.
I am not loyal, and Felix was never chivalrous, but I hate to realize that we still became the knights that we were sculpted to be our whole lives.
You might be wondering what gift Felix left by my door, I will also spare you the time of trying to figure that out since even I would have never guessed that this was the one thing he would give to me. When both him and I ran away from our homes and to the empire at the beginning of the war he was not able to go back to Fraldarius to get his things. At that time he could not risk getting back to his father given the position we were in so that left him with just the small amount of things that he had during our time in the academy and that was it. As a gift and a final fuck you to my father, I used all of his money to buy him a Levin sword, a sword that stayed by Felix’s hip all throughout the war.
That sword was on my doorstep last moon Dorothea.
I have tried my best to look at this as anything but what it means. Tried my best to rationalize why that sword would be returned to me after years of not hearing from the man... But I think we both know what this means.
I’ve told you before, have I not? Of the promise both he and I made when we were children? I cannot help but think of that now.
A knight is born of honor and loyalty, and Dorothea both you and I know that I am neither. I fought for this war, for a world that Edelgard and the professor are building and do not regret what I have done, I still hold honor to the actions that I took. The world that we live in now is as beautiful as I dreamed it to be, even more so than i could have ever imagined. Even still Dorothea, a knight is above all things loyal and we both know that my loyalty has always and will always be towards Felix.
I wish that I had been a better man Dorothea. That I would have been the kind of man that was strong enough to tell you all of this in person but I figured a letter of explanation would be better than the report you will surely get in a couple of days. I have already sent my own letter to Edelgard, a letter that will explain how all of my belongings and money will be given to you as a final sorry for the things that I put you through. I am sure Edelgard will know what to do with my land and that the professor will keep their promise on destroying my relic though it is as good as useless without me now.
Please know that I loved you, that I love you and everyone else that I stood next to for this war. That I do not regret anything that I have done and that I think of you all even now. But my heart as you know it, has always been weak and I think now more than ever, is time for me to finally be a knight and stay loyal to the promise I made so many years ago. I’m late of course, because I can never do things on time, but Felix always knows that I am someone that comes to him no matter how long he waits.
I am sorry my friend.
Yours always,
Sylvain Jose Gautier.
~ ♡ ~
The leaves crunched underneath their boots as she made her way up the hill, by her side was Bernadetta, the smaller girl having not spoken for weeks since the news had hit them all. There was guilt and sadness that the two had yet to be able to even process the realization that their friend was gone forever now. That their friend had gone out of his own choice and had never reached out to them.
Dorothea laughed quietly as a tear rolled down her cheek. The white marbled grave stood right on the edge of the hill, where she had been told Sylvain had first kissed Felix. The plaque on the stone held both their names and above them was both the Levin sword and Lance of Ruin, both forever molded into the tombstone despite how much Dorothea had fought with Edelgard to not have both of those weapons there. Even in death, Dorothea could not help but see how little everyone had cared about the two men’s real thoughts and that alone had caused her to grow even more bitter as the days had passed by.
Bernadetta quietly placed down the purple flowers they had gathered, silent tears still streaming down her cheeks as Dorothea sighed, “at least you two are together. I hope now at least, the two of you can finally be happy together.”