Chapter Text
/blak ˈhəʊl/
noun
a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape.
▬▬▬
IT STARTS LIKE THIS.
Wind howls over the Oghma Mountains, the dark, wreathed clouds laden with a storm that sends lashes of white spasming across the horizon line, cuts their shape out of the starless sky.
At the heart of the mountains, there is a building: a school, standing tall and grand since time immemorial. Rain hammers against its window panes. The headmaster gazes out from his office on the first floor, and prays it isn’t a bad omen.
Inside the school, there is a boy. Tripping over himself down the stairs in a self-inflicted race against time, an overdue science paper clutched in his clammy palm. He reaches the science professor’s office moments before midnight, and only manages to yank himself centimetres short of obliterating the door in his frenzied warpath.
She is in conversation with a student. But she spies him outside the door anyway, and smiles that tight-lipped smile of hers. The other girl drops silent, watches him with unsettling violet eyes, like the deer that sometimes scurry across the mountain.
He drops the assignment in the tray, and backtracks out of the room. The conversation resumes behind the closed door. His sense of triumph at meeting his deadline fades, displaced by unease that increases with every step he takes away from the science office.
Something is wrong. Something is—
His shadow strikes the ground in front of him, slashed from the wood in a sudden blaze of light. Spinning on his heel, he bolts in the direction he came from.
He wrenches the door open, nearly flays it from its hinges in his haste.
Assignments litter the chequered floor, his among them. Twisted, marked with half of a shoe-print, like someone slipped on it in a mad dash for escape. He scrapes it from the ground with a tremoring hand, his heart pounding in his chest. The rest of the pages are scattered across the floor—with wide eyes, he realises some of them cut through it, slicing into the vinyl like butter.
He rises to his feet, the individual parts of his assignment bundled into a messy pile in his arms as he surveys the rest of the room.
Inexplicably—yet completely—empty.
▬▬▬
The morning is fresh, flushed clear by the night's rain, when Felix drags his suitcase out of the back of his father’s car. It lands with a smack on the tarmac path, kicking up a storm of wet gravel.
Late summer slants across the dingy brick walls of Garreg Mach Preparatory, washing across them in a palette of thin golds and greens. Felix has only ever been here once before, a lifetime ago, when he saw Glenn off the first time. It’s not that different now than it was then: high, arched windows, ivied walls, and the sheer size of it, large and imposing, with Rapunzel-style towers jutting out into the shimmering clouds
The entrance is quiet, but that, Felix supposes, is because it is nine AM on a Sunday morning. If there’s anyone about, they’re probably in—well, one of the many facilities the campus has to offer (he doesn’t remember, he didn’t read the brochure). Leaving the courtyard barren save for the two of them. Good, he thinks. No one else needs to witness this.
His father leans over to the passenger side and props a jean-clad arm on the rolled-down window. He's pretty sure his dad's had that denim jacket since the seventies.
“Remember to call.”
Felix rolls his eyes. “What? Do you need me to update you daily on how much I’m going to hate it here? Or would you prefer if I told you how much I love it compared to being anywhere near you?”
"Felix." Rodrigue's own gaze dims, pain dipping across his eyes like an evening shadow, dark layering upon dark. "I know you don't—I know how much you want to carve your own path for yourself. I do. But, this was Glenn's school…and mine. Perhaps you'll feel closer to him."
"What is there to get close to?" Felix yanks his other bag from the boot, a backpack he's had since primary school. It's tattered enough to play the part too, and his father's done many a repair over the years, but. Whenever Glenn and his older, cooler friends (Felix still maintains that they were morons, but, whatever) went to the comic book store without him, and later, when he got a job there, he brought home a patch. There are so many, hardly any of the original fabric is visible underneath. Felix prefers it that way. "He's dead. Ashes. You don't even—"
"Enough, Felix," his father snaps, stricken. His fingers tighten reflexively around the car's outer handle, white at the knuckles. Felix glances down at his father's shaking hand, then back up to his face. It would be easier if he just gave in and hit him already. "I'll come up to get you when the holiday starts. Call me if you need me before then."
Felix feels his expression sour. "There won’t be any need."
"Felix—"
"What?"
Rodrigue sighs, and beckons Felix closer. Sighs again when he steps back in defiance. "I'm not abandoning you. I love you. And I want you to call often so I can know that you're okay." He nods to the suitcase propped up against Felix's thigh. "And are you sure you don't need a hand getting your bags to your room?"
"I hardly brought anything, old man, I'll be fine," he retorts. Mainly clothes, books, and a few of Glenn's things he couldn't bear to part with. Most notably, his Swiss Army knife, though neither his father nor the school would be too impressed with him bringing it onto campus. He taps his foot against the ground. "And, I already agreed to call."
His father withdraws back into the car, which is good. Felix doesn't know what he'd do if his father tried to hug him goodbye, or anything else needlessly sentimental, but he has a feeling it wouldn't land him a very good impression.
"Goodbye, Felix." The engine trickles to life. His father wraps his hands around the wheel, firmly at ten and two, like he rigorously instructed Glenn when they all still thought he'd live long enough to get his licence. He only got part way through his lessons before he—
Felix gives a sharp shake of his head, detaching the memory. "Bye."
He doesn't watch the car leave, mainly because with his ink-dark hair tied back from his neck and terrible sense of fashion, his father looks so much like Glenn.
Instead, he slips on his headphones, hits play on his MP3 player, and follows the signs to the main entrance of Garreg Mach Academy.
▬▬▬
After a brief meeting with Headmaster Cichol that practically ticks off a checklist in how formulaic it is—welcome, Felix, I knew your brother, I’m sorry about your loss, you can talk to me anytime, here’s your room key, I hope you have a good time here—Felix starts the trek around the school building, his suitcase trundling a rhythm behind him.
Everything about the building screams old and grand, from the high ceilings, to the intricate engraving of the bannisters; even the way the autumn sunlight slips in through the windows and casts pale gold rectangles across the dark wood flooring. He’s only been here once, when Glenn first enrolled a lifetime ago.
He ventures further, into the academic wing. As expected of a Sunday, it’s gaping and empty and resonant with silence. If Felix focuses, he can imagine his brother here: taking furious notes in front of the blackboard, poring over textbooks, giving presentations straight out of those science books he liked to read in his spare time, slotted in around comic releases and his favourite shows.
They always used to fight over the TV at seven PM on a Thursday night, when Glenn wanted to watch Doctor Who, but Felix wanted to watch one of the many shows he and Ingrid were both following, just so they could phone each other about it afterwards. Glenn won more than his fair share of times. But now, when Felix has all the turns he could want, the TV stays off. It all seems so unimportant.
Felix’s pace quickens. The wheels of his suitcase scrape noisily behind him. He rounds the corner into the science block, where he is greeted by voices that float down the otherwise empty hallway. All the doors are shut bar one.
He lifts his luggage and sets it down softly a few steps short of the open door, silencing his arrival. He doesn’t know why, except maybe he doesn’t want to be caught dead around the kind of people who hang out at school on a weekend.
Holding his breath, he peeks in through the gap in the door. An assortment of boys and girls sit in a semicircle around a table in the front of the lab, talking animatedly amongst themselves. Their backs are to him, their gazes pinned on someone else—a student? A professor?—in a blazer far too dark for academic wear, drawing what looks like a funnel on the blackboard.
Felix uses the scratch of the chalk to muffle the sound of his footfalls as he enters the room. One of the boys, perched on the table with his feet on a nearby stool, gesticulates wildly as he speaks.
“—know what I saw. I swear. One minute, they were in there, I turn my back, and then, poof! Gone. I’m telling you. Wait, let me show you—” He reaches an arm into the backpack next to his hip.
Felix blinks, a slow smirk coming to rest on his lips as the boy fishes out a messy wad of papers. From here, Felix can even make out the dark smudge in the shape of a footprint. He's as far-fetched as ever. Felix didn't realise he missed it.
“—here. Look. Doesn’t it look like, I don’t know, someone was trying to run?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” one of the girls interrupts. Ginger, with a clear, disbelieving voice. “But, isn’t that jumping to conclusions? I don’t know if you can say that…I mean, how do you make a person disappear?”
You can’t, Felix hears Glenn answer, in the back of his mind. Not in practice. But, there’s this thing called molecular deconstruction. In theory—
“In theory,” Felix speaks without quite meaning to, finally announcing his presence in the room. “You can molecularly deconstruct anything. Plants, chewing gum, even something less complex. Like Sylvain.”
Sylvain finishes shoving the papers back in his bag—the same as it was the last time they saw each other, down to the death pact patch on his left strap—and shoots him a toothy grin. “Hey, Fe.”
Felix runs a thumb over his own patch, this time on the right. “Hi.”
“Molecular deconstruction?” the girl from earlier pipes up. She swivels inquisitive blue eyes on him, bottom lip chewed up in thought. “Not vanishing, exactly, but breaking something down so that it can’t be seen.”
"That's an interesting theory," the man at the front says softly, tilting to address Felix as well as the rest of the group. Standing closer now, it's obvious he's older than them—not so much from his face, or the shaggy cut of his mint hair—but in the way he's dressed, and how he carries himself. Besides that, the pin on his blazer lapel reads Professor Byleth Eisner. "Which brings me onto my own. What if, what you saw, Sylvain, was—" He gestures to the drawing of the funnel on the blackboard, then scratches in two words next to it: black hole.
"You have to be kidding," Felix says.
The head of blonde hair finally turns. Ingrid, because, of course it is. She leans on her elbow to glare at him. "You don't even know what's going on."
Still angry then. Felix's jaw sets. Ingrid was at Glenn's funeral in the summer, she and Sylvain both, in fact. Not that Felix saw either of them. Sylvain has probably forgiven him for that. Ingrid evidently hasn't.
He glowers at the blackboard. "Enlighten me, then, if you—"
“—You three know each other?” The third girl pipes up, cutting through the growing tension with a voice so sweet and light Felix feels queasy. She folds her hands over her lap, the faintest glimmer of a knowing smile on her lips. "Oh, forgive me. My name is Mercedes, are you new here?"
"Yeah, Felix, Inky and I are old buds," Sylvain tells her, hopping off the table to throw an arm over Felix's shoulders. Felix shoves him off. "Completely slipped my mind that he was meant to be arriving today."
Yeah. Because Felix never told him.
"Really, Sylvain?" The first girl huffs, swivelling fully in her chair to face Felix head on. She flashes him a bright smile, hand poised in a wave. "Hi! My name's Annette."
"Yeah, hi." He dips his chin at her, then at Mercedes.
"You can sit here." A boy with silver-grey hair and a face full of freckles pats one of the empty stools in his vicinity. The smile on his lips is welcoming, if strained. "If you want. Honestly…we need a fresh perspective. I'm Ashe, by the way. Nice to meet you!"
"Felix." Felix takes the stool as offered, chucks his backpack down at his feet. His suitcase is still outside, but he doubts it's in any danger. Anyone lame enough to be milling around school on a Sunday is in this room, and apparently, he's one of them. "Fine, then. Let's hear about black holes."
Professor Eisner nods, satisfied, and turns to draw two stick figures on top of the funnel. "As you said, in theory—"
He cuts himself off, just short of drawing the second figure's other leg. The chalk grinds into the surface of the blackboard.
Ingrid, the only person in the semicircle with a clear view of the windows, yanks Felix's arm. "Felix, watch out!"
He ducks his head as the glass door to his left shatters, spraying glass across the empty lab. A football sails in a high arc above his head, before rebounding off the wall on the other side. It rolls along the floor, lightly knocking against the legs of his stool. He picks it up, lifting his head in time to watch a boy jog in through the broken door, distraught etched into his flushed face. He sweeps sweat-damp blond hair out of his eyes. "Sorry, Professor," he says, with the familiar tone of someone who isn't apologising for the first time. "I kicked too hard. I can't seem to get a handle on my own strength."
"It's alright." The professor shakes his head, fondness evident in his every gesture. "You should give that back to him."
"Here." Felix offers the ball, swallowing hard.
The boy's hands barely graze its surface before dropping back to his sides. "Felix?"
"Yeah." Felix pushes the football more insistently in his direction. Not quite meeting his eyes. He looks different than Felix remembers. Puberty suits him well; he’s taller, wider in the shoulders, wears his hair slightly messy—though that’s nothing new—and cropped around his ears. An upgrade from little girl to choir boy. It’s only to be expected though, Felix supposes. He hasn’t seen Dimitri since he moved away three years ago. Of all the places for him to turn up… Even when he was still talking to Sylvain and Ingrid, they didn't even mention him. "It's me. Take the ball."
"Of course," he replies, smile tight, even as tilts himself to survey the room at large. "Sorry for distracting you all… Again. I—" His gaze snags on the blackboard, his hushed voice taking on a peculiar high note. "Black hole?"
"Yeah. We were about to discuss how they could make a person disappear," Felix says. Ingrid pinches his arm, hard.
Dimitri's uneasy smile drops, replaced by ghost-white terror. "Disappear?" he echoes.
"Yeah."
"Felix," Annette hisses. "I know you just arrived, but—"
"—the person we were talking about is Edelgard," Ashe murmurs, not looking at Felix. Instead, he's carefully gauging Dimitri's expression.
"Edelgard?"
"She and Professor Seiros haven't been seen since early Friday morning." Sylvain offers him one of his most curated smiles: wry, and guarded in a way that usually spells trouble. "She's Dimitri's step-sister."