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Sylvain dropped his lance and resisted the urge to scream.
He gave up on the lance and muttered the incantation for fire, throwing it at the nearest training dummy and watching as it burned up, feeling the heat coming from it and resisting the urge to reach out and touch it. It didn’t burn hot enough, anyway; the fire died down before the dummy was completely destroyed, and Sylvain hated it.
Useless. That’s what he was, that’s all he was, that’s all he’s ever been. It wasn’t fair to anyone that he was the heir to Gautier just because of his crest. Not to him, not to Miklan, and most certainly not to his people. He wasn’t good at any of it.
He gave up, whirling around and punching a column of the training grounds, putting all the force he could into it. If he were Dimitri, the column would have come crashing down. All Sylvain managed to accomplish was hurting himself.
Gods above, how was he so stupid?
He shouldn’t care about Miklan. He shouldn’t care. He lost track of the number of times Miklan tried to kill him long before the battle at Conand Tower. Miklan had hated him from the moment he was born with a Crest. So why–
Why–
He needed to sleep. He needed to be better. He needed–
He didn’t know what he needed. He threw his head back and stared up at the sky and tried to get answers from it, tried to demand why his life was like this, why he was always destined to be a stupid, sappy person whose mind chased itself around what if’s instead of focusing on what was actually happening. Flayn was missing, for the goddess’ sake; there were bigger things he should be dealing with than his stupid feelings on killing his traitorous, evil brother. Because that’s what he was.
Miklan was evil. He hated him. He had stopped being his brother long before his father finally had enough and kicked him out, disowning him entirely. And yet his stupid, traitorous heart wondered why he couldn’t just… have been better. Perhaps if he was smarter, if he was kinder, if he was stronger, maybe then Miklan wouldn’t have ended up the way he did. Maybe his final moments wouldn’t have been struggling against a mystery sludge that turned him into the biggest goddess-damned demonic beast on this side of the afterlife. Maybe he wouldn’t have tried to kill him in every way, shape, and form available to a vengeful, unhappy teenager. Maybe if Sylvain was more understanding, if he was less entitled, if he hadn’t flipped from people pleasing to angering others to hurt himself, then maybe, just maybe, they could have been brothers, just like Ingrid was with her siblings.
Just like Felix and Glenn were.
Maybe they could have teamed up and helped prove that Sylvain having a Crest didn’t mean jack. Maybe Sylvain could have given Miklan the title of Margrave and Sylvain could have been a knight, taking on the true position of a second son. But no, his brother was torn of everything he should have had the moment Sylvain was born, and instead of sticking it to the system, he stuck it to Sylvain.
Sylvain scoffed. It wasn’t as though he could say he wouldn’t have been the same.
He felt his lip curl against his will and he struggled to his feet. He had disappeared into the training grounds even before Felix, and everyone else had long since filtered out. Maybe someone had called out to him, tried to get his attention, but he had ignored them if that was the case. He felt weak with exhaustion and hunger and whatever emotions were circling incessantly behind his sternum, but he picked his lance back up and went through forms he had mastered years ago. He was too weak to move on to the more powerful ones. He was too slow. Ashe was catching up and he didn’t have any prior lance experience. Annette’s proficiency with the sword and the axe made him wonder if she was really cut out to be a mage.
He scoffed. How could he think he could handle a secondary weapon when he could barely even manage his first?
He stopped doing the easier forms. He let his anger course him and did the harder ones, over and over and over again. He was more aggressive with them than he was meant to be; he could feel the strain of his muscles, could feel the way he would be sore in the morning (if he even bothered to sleep). It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
None of it mattered.
He was raised to be the margrave. To be a leader. To be fearless and emotionless and a fighter unrivaled. He thought of the Lance of Ruin, up against a wall in his dorm room, and scoffed; what would his ancestors think of him? Of his gracelessness being the one which received the most holy of their inheritance?
He was not a good man. There were a million excuses he could spout, but he spared himself the breath and everyone else the time. His actions had consequences; he had taken it not as a threat, nor as a challenge, but instead as a promise. The Goddess knew why, but he wanted it. He wanted the screaming and the crying and the weight of the guilt that strained against his shoulders. He didn’t understand why Ingrid had stayed with him, or why Felix hadn’t pushed him away like he had with Dimitri upon seeing the darkness which lay beneath the surface. “Be grateful,” his father would say, but there was nothing to be grateful for. It wasn’t as though he wanted them to stay. It wasn’t as though he wanted to stay.
Guilt. There was nothing else to it. He laughed and threw the practice lance he’d been using as it reached the apex of a form; it shot across the training ground like an arrow, imbedding itself in the far wall for a moment before falling to the ground. Sylvain stared blankly at it for a moment, not moving to pick it up even as his surprise faded.
Weak.
The voice sounded like his brother. He laughed mirthlessly before glaring up at the sky, ignoring the tears which pooled in his eyes despite himself.
Funny how you call me weak, he thought, when you are the one dead, today, instead of me.