[Closed] To sleep: perchance to dream

[crestfallenfor]

Who: Sylvain and Those planned with (contact me if you'd like a memory!)
When: During the April dream event
Where: The Hall of Mirrors, various memories
What: Memshare memshare memshare
Warnings: Depictions of child abuse and attempted child murder, self-loathing, suicidal ideation, trauma related to the events of war, and allusions to csa. More warnings will be added if necessary, but please mind the warnings on thread toplevels!

[Tonight, the hall of mirrors looks uncharacteristically... alive. Gone are the dusty, simple frames, gone are the clouded glass surfaces, most now appearing bright, shining, alluring, perhaps.

And perhaps one mirror in particular draws your attention. The frame is black lacquer, with the occasional detail in bright, striking red. Unfamiliar individuals will see a banner, emblazoned with a peculiar crest, hanging from the protruding spikes of a pair of crossed lances on the top of the mirror. More familiar individuals will notice that the lances are held in the jaws of a lion and a beast (top), which are also holding the sides of the mirror itself in their claws. Those especially close to him - friends and bonded alike - will notice that the frame has a pattern like rough-hewn stone, with the odd streak of red, resembling a hand dragging blood downwards, and the base of the mirror is a couple, laid out mid-coitus. The male figure looks bored and uninterested at best.

To anyone, the mirror itself looks to be clouded, but in the way that a window will cloud with frost on a particularly cold day, and should it be touched, it will feel as cold - or colder - than it looks.

Perhaps notably - the owner of the mirror is not present to guard it from touch.]

Comments

>> Allura [cw: war, loss, grief, suicidal ideation]

[crestfallenfor]

[As Allura steps through Sylvain's mirror, all the light from the hall blinks out instantly. She'll find herself in a tiny encampment in a dark forest, with dim light only coming from two tents. Clearly, the inhabitants of this little camp are trying to stay hidden and secretive, and the two lit tents will surely put out the light as soon as their work is through.

Moments later, a horse and its rider, both in heavy, spiked, black armor - the rider carrying a familiar, glowing, twitching lance, thunder into camp, and the rider - Sylvain, though he looks more stressed, more tired, more gaunt than usual - is dismounting before the horse has come to a complete stop, handing off the reins to a waiting soldier as he strides quickly into one of the lit camps. By the light of both the lance and the tent, it's revealed his armor and the lance itself are both covered in blood, indicating wherever he'd just come from had been a mess of a battlefield.

He doesn't even seem phased by it.

If anything, it just prompts him to remove his armor quickly once he's in the tent, so it can be cleaned and maintained by a waiting page while he sits at a field desk, another soldier standing by and waiting to speak.

"Michel, report."

"Rémy's battalion hasn't returned yet, sir, and it's not looking like they will. Galatea has capitulated in exchange for the safety of their citizens. Duke Fraldarius is still searching for His Majesty, and the Margrave has successfully pushed back the rising insurrection in Sreng, for now."

Sylvain - the one Allura knows, standing to himself and watching from the back of the tent, finally speaks up as the past-him they're watching begins to write a series of letters.]

This is... part of a dwindling front-line force against the Empire's invasion. Galatea is the territory one of my closest friends hails from, and Duke Fraldarius is Felix's father. He never gave up on the idea that Dimitri was still alive, even when everyone else was beginning to... or had, already.

The Margrave is my father. Gautier is a border territory, that fights off and on with invasions from the Northern border. They took advantage of the Empire's advance to strike harder, and more often.

[He figures it's better to explain now, up front, when there's little to see, little to listen in on, because leaving her in the dark... feels as though it would be worse. Cruel, even.]

[quintessent]

[It’s funny, how the intricacies of war looked the same, no matter what world, what universe. The inside of that dimmed tent was nothing like any of her father’s war rooms on their massive castleship, but standing there, listening to the grim briefing made her feel like she was a youth again, standing off to the side while some solder gave her father grim news from the battlefront. Feeling the quiet sense of dread and despair and duty that bled from all of the people in the room, even though they were just visions.

The real Sylvain explains, and she sucks in a breath, placing faces to names – and a title to Dimitri, though she wonders why he didn’t introduce himself as such when they first met. It was odd seeing Sylvain like this. Grim, as opposed to the bright personality she’d come to know. Even on the night that they’d met, it wasn’t like this. But I know what it’s like to retreat until your back is against a wall too he’d told her then.]

Who are you writing to?

[There was a lot still to unpack here, but the question comes out, concerned for a timeline she knew nothing about.]

[crestfallenfor]

[War is war - awful, gory, full of terrible realities and so, so much death. Sylvain didn't miss this little tent one bit, how it always smelled like candle smoke and mildew and blood. But that's just the nature of things when one had to pack up and move quickly on a moment's notice. Nothing ever dries after rain, nothing is ever entirely clean, no one can ever get a full night's rest.

At least with the cold creeping in, the Empire's forces will be at a disadvantage, their Southern constitutions unable to handle it as well as the Northern forces. He was left to hope that would help at the time - the Empire still had the numbers to wipe them out, if they got a foothold. It was just a matter of ensuring they didn't.]

I'm writing to my father. We're short on supplies and soldiers, and with the current battle at the border won, he was able to send enough to keep us going for another couple months. I also sent him letters to pass on to Ingrid, if anyone ever got through into Galatea, and to Felix, since his contact with Fraldarius territory was easier to maintain than mine, since he was based out of our home, and Rodrigue - Duke Fraldarius - was based out of his own. I didn't hear back from them for months.

[It's about then that the Sylvain of a few years ago finishes his letters, folds them, presses his seal to them, steps to the doorflap of the tent to look out and get someone's - anyone's - attention.

"Hey - make sure our fastest pegasus... yes, Sigrun... is fed and watered. I need Yvette to take these letters to the Margrave as soon as she wakes up for her watch. I'll take her shift personally. Tell her I'll grant her a week of leave if she makes it there by noon tomorrow."

After that... well, it's clear he needs rest. It's clear he knows he needs rest, but all the same, he's back to his desk and studying maps in the dim light, making updates here and there in the margins and on the lands themselves in regard to troop position, numbers, even the makeup of battalions, where mages and archers are stationed, when he knows it. It doesn't look good, with how much of the map is covered in bright, red notes, lines, how their numbers are easily three or more times higher than those written in black.]

I used red ink for the Empire, if you're curious.

[quintessent]

[There were some privileges and costs that came with an intergalactically waged war, Allura realizes looking around. Death was widespread and yet much further away at the same time. When her planet was destroyed there was no blood-soaked weapons and her castle was not filled with the scent of death. They were just gone.

Or maybe that was just her own privilege. Always protected. Not even given the chance to fight back, in some instances.]

So much is lost...

[She watches the tired Sylvain pour over a map, and again it’s something familiar and she remembered her own despair at star charts that were overwhelmingly tipped in the Galra’s favor. Entire sections gone from their unchecked destruction and expansion, including her own solar system.]

How long did it go on? From then until now?

[He’d mentioned still being in the thick of the war when he arrived, but if it’s months before he heard word back – stars, she can’t imagine living in these conditions for so long.]

[crestfallenfor]

[Even now, after having lived through all this, Sylvain isn't sure he'd trade this ordeal for Allura's. They paralleled each other closely enough that it barely matters - an empire sweeping across the lands, conquering everything in its path - but the distance of an intergalactic war would have been... strange. In some ways, the closeness, the intimacy with death kept him grounded, reminded him on a daily basis what they were fighting for.

Kept him going, when he felt like it would be so much easier to give up, throw himself on the sword of an enemy.]

The war's been going on for six years, more or less, for me. Our professor and Dimitri both returned to us after five, and the tides didn't start turning in our favor until then.

[But that only partially answers her question. So while it's upsetting looking back, she deserves to hear the reality of the situation, if she wants to know.]

Where we are, right now, is only a few months into it. They gathered a force capable of sweeping the continent without anyone knowing, so... we had our backs pushed to the wall almost immediately.

[But it isn't... all... bad... at least not anymore. Hopefully.]

If all goes according to plan, whenever I'm sent home, we'll be a few days off from putting an end to it. There'll still be uprisings, I'm sure, but... we're at the gates of the empire's capital.

[quintessent]

Six years... [She repeats. By comparison, Zarkon's reign of terror has spanned nearly two thousand times that, but it didn't feel like that to Allura. She'd been in stasis for most of it. Now that she was awake and fighting, she wondered how long it would take to defeat him. Six? Another 10,000? They didn't have that long.

It's a small comfort, to hear that things turned around, but here, standing in the tent that stank of blood, she could almost feel the six long years ahead of the Sylvain that was pouring over the map.

She stared at the younger Sylvain,]

Why did they invade? For resources? Territory? Revenge?

[It was always like that. Small leaders willing to spend so many lives to sort their problems.]