middaeg | [Closed] To sleep: perchance to dream

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.]

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[Yet another tragedy on Fódlan's grand stage.]

[For that brief instant as Sylvain covered his eyes, the world did flicker dizzyingly—which made sense, if that was all he remembered of that moment. Hubert watches impassively, on hand tucked under his chin and the other arm folded over his chest. There was no need for alarm, if he were inclined to it; the brothers lived, obviously.]

[But that look. That burning, festering fury in Miklan's eyes. He's seen it before, in the Miklan Hubert had encountered. In the eyes of others. In the mirror.]

[He shakes his head. When Hubert speaks, his voice was neutral, devoid of the taunting antagonism that usually came with it.]

It continually surprises me that you despise our cause. There are very few who have more reason to support it than you.

[If anything is alarming here, it's Hubert's tone. It's neutral. Frank. Not what Sylvain is used to hearing from him, so it only follows as a matter of course that he offers him the same.]

Perhaps.

["Miklan, come on... pull me out... this isn't funny!"

Another, smaller splash as he dips under again, more scratching at stone, more coughing.]

It's the method I despise more than anything, Hubert. I'd rather change things from the inside than wage a senseless war or betray my friends.

["Please-!"

More than anything, Sylvain's pauses in speech - timed specifically to when his younger self tries to shout out, when he coughs, when he makes yet another attempt to scrabble at the walls of the well to keep his head above water if not make a futile attempt to climb out - show just how often he's revisited this experience in dreams. He knows it uncomfortably well, and doesn't intend to compete with the sounds of his younger self's struggling on one of the few occasions he is speaking frankly with Hubert.

They'll never see eye to eye, but maybe they'll end up with something of an understanding.]

Forget royalty and succession for a second. I don't know if it's the same in your memory, but your Empress had Dimitri arrested shortly after her assault on the monastery. We thought he was dead for five years, and when he returned, he'd fallen into madness. I don't know if you have friends, Hubert, but pretend you do, and imagine someone with a cause you would support on paper did the same to them, and then had the gall to be amazed you don't support them. I know you're more loyal than that.

[He might well be saying too much, but if that's the case - so be it. The idea that he should support a war just because he agrees with some - not all - tenets of their cause had worked its way under his skin from the moment Edelgard had told him she remembered him as being on their side, and the idea that he'd betray both his friends and his people for a fleeting dream and the flames of war felt insulting at best.

And as is the way with dreams, time seems to warp. The sun sets much more quickly than it should have, darkness falls, the air grows ever colder, and the younger Sylvain's struggling grows quieter, as exhaustion and hypothermia and crushing despair all take their toll.]

I've lost track of how many times she left her own citizens - civilians - to die as we gained traction pushing back against the Empire. I watched Bernadetta burn on her orders at Gronder, and killed Lorenz and Ferdinand myself on Myrddin. I watched her refuse an offering of peace. Even now, just before I was brought here, we're at the gates of Enbarr, waiting, so she has a chance to order the citizens to evacuate. She's refusing to do even that. I might be able to support the spirit of your cause, but I can never support her, after everything I've seen.

[Imagine? No. He didn't need to. It was that very thing that set him on this path to begin with, or something similar enough. But that wasn't Hubert's secret to share.]

[He's patient, listening quietly and still watching the desolate well. Hubert tabs every location Sylvain mentions in his memory, trying to reconstruct this alternate version of the war from the little bits he's collected.]

Each of you speaks of changing the status quo from the inside. [Hubert shakes his head, regardless if Sylvain could see it or not.] Do you truly think we did not desire the same? The monsters within the Church carved this system into Fódlan's very bones, and ruthlessly culls anyone that does not feed the infection. That infection has festered—anything less than cutting out every bit of it will lead to a bloodier conflict, a bitter powerstruggle spanning decades—perhaps centuries—as the nobility bites back, refusing to relinquish its parasitic deathgrip.

These people have always been dying, Sylvain. In the streets, of starvation. In the dark, at the hands of capricious nobles. In the fields, worked to the bone. In conspiracies and lies under the Archbishop's inhuman heel—only now, they die screaming where you can hear them, instead of out of sight in silent terror. You might look away, but I will not. The madness our society has embraced will not continue.

I do.

[His answer is clipped, simple, after listening to Hubert say his piece. The insight is... interesting, at the very least, and he can see the lines of logic that brought them to where they were, even if they felt terribly... Imperial.

New perspective or no, it doesn't change his mind.]

So kill the Archbishop. Kill those who would continue to enact her style of rule. Start a war in the Empire and root out the rotten nobility who refuse to lick the boots of your Empress. Don't bring your war to Faerghus. Don't pretend we're all the same as you, or that your changes will stop the suffering of the common people at the hands of the corrupt. There will always be corrupt nobility, Hubert, and I didn't think you were the sort to believe that that would change.

They were never out of sight, Hubert. Not up here. Maybe in your sprawling cities down south they were, but you don't know how life is here any more than I know how it is in Enbarr. The difference between us is I wouldn't start a war to force my way of life on your people.

[There's shouting, coming from the manor, as darkness deepens, as servants begin to wonder where Sylvain might have disappeared to. Eventually, torches are lit, and distant, bobbing flames slowly but steadily grow closer.]

I'm not as stupid as I project. I know there's corruption everywhere. I know the people have always been dying. War only spreads the suffering further, and if you think your nobility wouldn't wring all it could out of Faerghus, out of the Alliance, once your conquest ended, then you're more naive than you think.

Kill the Archbishop is exactly what we did—in Fhirdiad, after your King sheltered her within his own castle's walls, head filled with her lies. And Seiros abandoned him to die in the mud of Tailtean for his misguided loyalty.

[Hubert wished he could be relieved, as the lights bounce in the darkness their their bearer's haste. It'd been far too long as it is, in his opinion. The absence being noticed eventually was not terribly much better than never.]

[He shakes his head, eyes still on the well.]

I am aware of the suffering. I am aware of the blood that soaks my path. I care not what history thinks of me for it—and frankly, neither does Her Majesty. All that matters to us is bringing about a world where daughters are not sold for their Crests, where sons are not discarded for their lack of them. Where sisters and mothers are not abused for the results of their offspring. Where children are not mutilated for power and knowledge.

You sincerely believe you can change matters with politics. I sincerely believe you cannot. When the next child is pushed into a well for his Crest, we will not tell him, "someone will come for you when it is convenient. That time is not now." No, we are making now that time. Lady Edelgard and I cannot abide this society any longer.

But that is our impasse, is it not?

[Closed] To sleep: perchance to dream

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sorry it took a while to get this tag right

600 years later..............

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