...Wait. That's a joke, apparently. But he'd still rather make sure the situation is clear.]
Okay, I get you're joking, but to make sure we're all clear: No, Chip is not a werewolf, it is just me. And, yes, that's why my teeth don't fit in my mouth right.
You are not at all wrong. It feels a little silly to tell someone in a position like yours about how much scrutiny I've gotten used to being put under, but, I'm sure you can imagine. Kind of changes even things like childhood scuffles when the other kid's parents' first thought is to demand to know if you might have BITTEN their kid and given them an incurable disease. So, I just try to avoid conflicts where I can.
The key point is that most curses don't self-modify. Nobody has made any intentional changes to the structure of lycanthropy in centuries as far as I know, but its effects have continued to drift; some have suggested that the fact that it's become complex enough to mutate on its own means that it's closer to a magic-based virus than to any other known curse. I'll grant that there's some merit to that line of thought, but, even if it's drifting, it's still structured like a curse.
Besides which, I could personally do without that particular shift in public perception. You're right that "curse" is a more loaded word in a lot of ways, but calling it a disease just means the people who would be avoiding us, or MAYBE trying to break that curse, will instead pretend to be sympathetic while insisting on trying to "cure" us. The only change that classification has brought about so far is a thin veneer of good intentions.
[Felix isn't sure why his face is faintly coloring over something so small.] I'll do the job regardless, I don't need buttering up.
[Wait a second, is Claude...? No, it's just the lighting or something. Right?] I can't tell whether you're mocking me or not. But yes. You and Dimitri both have the same ludicrously idealistic goals and the kinds of personalities that might just get you there. When the war ends, I suppose the two of you will split Adrestia between our two nations, or something of the sort?
A riddle? I admit I didn't think of it like that - but I do enjoy a good riddle. What disappears as soon as you say its name?
[The rest of the text takes a moment to arrive. It's hard to get a read from Claude sometimes - Jaskier is realizing how the guy plans his every word, knows exactly how much to say and how much not to, the court life of a duke obvious in every aspect of this pseudo-political play. And through text? It's worse. No facial expression to guide him.
He does believe Claude is a good guy, and he does believe in his dream. The picture he's presenting of his childhood, however, is unclear at best. Jaskier isn't sure he's in the mood to try to figure it out now, though, being in the middle of shopping as he is - which is an excuse not to admit how jealous he is of the loved him well enough and I respect them parts. So rolling with it for now it is, he can reread it and overanalyze it later.]
I'm glad to hear you found love in your parents while your childhood suffered from the bigotry problems we've discussed - they sound like honorable people I'd love to meet. I'm also happy to hear you got to be a wild kid even while in the middle of said problems! That's the only type of kid to be.
Is this where we compare anecdotes? I once put gold ink in my bath water because I wanted to look like my namesake.
Wait, Mr. and Ms. Huggles? Mr. Huggles hasn't made an honest pokémon out of Ms. Huggles yet? The scandal!
Or I guess they could be siblings, but scandal's more fun.
Radio segments, huh? I'd actually love to hear them. You've just got hidden depths all over, huh? A fight club, human and pokémon employees, radio recordings, Rocket activity chronicler, boyfriend...it's amazing there's enough hours in the day for you!
I'm glad you found someone, though. Especially at a good time to help you get over the last someone.
Honestly, as someone so relatively new, it's wild whenever I realize just how long other non-natives have been here. People with entire businesses and love lives, things that may have played out over the span of years...it's hard to fathom just being whisked away so suddenly from home and then being transplanted here for so long. It's not entirely unwelcome - especially since apparently I don't have to worry about my absence being noticed back home - but it's still a little jarring to think of this place becoming a new home in its own right. Of making a life here. Right now it still feels like a journey that's going to be finite in length, even if there's no end in sight. It feels transitional still, not permanent.
Okay, we're clear on that! Honestly, I would have wanted to ask if you didn't specify, although I didn't necessarily suspect Chip of it. It's just, you know, they're your kid! And you did say it can be passed down.
[This would be a logical time to mention Chip's adopted, certainly. Claude, as someone of mixed race born to rather visually distinct parents, certainly isn't going to make any assumptions based on Chip's looks compared to Grant's.]
Also, I wanted to clarify about the teeth - they definitely don't bother me. In fact, I think they look good on you. But they are pretty noticeable, and sharp, in a way that definitely clicked once you mentioned some of the symptoms of lycanthropy.
I at least never had to deal with anyone treating me as though I might be catching. I'd imagine that's extra rough. I've been an object of disdain before, but an object of suspicion...well, I've been that too, but not for things I had no control over. Usually just for being a schemer, which is kind of the risk you run! But for people to be wary and distrustful over something you've got no control over...it sounds miserable. I'm sorry you've had to deal with that.
Listen, tell me off if this is accidentally offensive, but - are you saying werewolves wouldn't want to be cured if there was a cure? It doesn't sound like there's a lot of upsides to your condition, unless I'm misunderstanding it. Obviously people should treat werewolves decently, so the point of a cure shouldn't be "make the monsters normal again and THEN we'll treat them like people", but...I'd think that regardless of how society treats you, you might want to be free of the curse. Is it that you don't want a cure, or that the people most invested in finding one are going after it for all the wrong reasons?
hey i can take care of myself usually ... most of the time.
look i'm getting better. way better than i was back at the academy! and just so we're clear, you have your problems too. i haven't figured them out yet, but they exist!
I wasn't saying those things to butter you up - they're just true.
Likewise, I'm not teasing you; I really mean it. It's sweet that you believe in me - all the more so because I know you're pretty discerning about believing in anyone or anything. You know, just because I'm sometimes manipulative or teasing doesn't mean I'm jerking you around nearly as often as you think I am when we talk. Sometimes I say something just because that's what I think.
As for how Fodlan will end up after the war...that's actually already been decided, by my point in time. [He looks up at the sky.] It's one of the things I'll talk to you guys about once Dimitri's in a good enough place for the conversation to happen.
Sylvain. Sir. You had to be fetched out of the woods by a half-feral man leading a rat army, because he was at the moment doing better than you were. Maybe sometimes you can take care of yourself, but I think it needs to be acknowledged that when you can't, you really can't.
Ah, Sylvain...I may seem perfect to you now, but unbeknownst to you, beneath this perfect veneer...simply lies more perfection. Sorry, it's flawlessness all the way down.
[Oh yeah there is that detail. Honestly, he definitely can't blame anyone for not concluding the truth on their own; more than anything, it just doesn't tend to occur to him to mention it until it comes up.]
Oh, right - yeah, if I did have any biological children there'd be a pretty high risk of them picking it up. But Chip is adopted, so, no lycanthropy there.
Ha, I'm glad you think so. Honestly, between you and Sylvain, it's kind of odd hearing (or reading) people complimenting my teeth without it being just an incredibly loaded comment.
The cure thing is kind of complicated, honestly; I won't deny that it's a sensitive subject, but I can see why you'd ask. I can't really blame other werewolves who do want it removed from their systems, and a lot about it is pretty unpleasant. Being here and having my symptoms reduced so much has sort of put some things in perspective, actually - I mean, the one weekend where reality got all weird, my symptoms came back, and let me tell you: I did not enjoy having my sense of hearing back in full. Turns out everything is incredibly loud, all the time, and I'd just gotten used to it over the last 32 years. And that's without even going into full moons. But, on the other hand: Even if I don't enjoy stuff like my hearing being stronger than the average person's, having all that just be gone is VERY strange. It's been a part of my entire life, you know? This place has sort of blocked off a piece of myself, and even if it's one that's caused me a lot of problems, I can still tell it's missing.
And to be clear, from a practical standpoint, there are upsides too; we're usually stronger than the average human, so some werewolves can use that and their stronger senses for work, depending on their jobs. Like, my cousin has lycanthropy too and she's a bouncer, so it's really useful for her to be able to just kind of pick up a guy twice her weight if she has to. Personally, the most use I get out of that is usually moving boxes around.
That said, I absolutely think that finding ways to reduce the severity of the symptoms or weaken the curse on an individual basis should be something to aim for; after all, monthly transformations and the like can be outright dangerous for some, and they deserve to have the medical support to counter that.
However, for one thing, I have no doubt that the second a cure was made available, every werewolf on the planet would suddenly be under immense pressure to take it, regardless of their individual circumstances - because, for another, no, I don't trust most of the people invested in curing lycanthropy as far as THEY could throw ME. It's been made clear time and time again that for every hundred people making noise about "saving" us from this curse, ninety just don't want us to exist but think this is the respectable way to go about erasing us. Most of these same people suddenly can't comprehend shit if we try to talk to them about establishing symptom-based support for those who need it, about ensuring we have housing that will keep us safe on full moons, because they don't WANT us to be comfortable as we are, they want us scared and desperate so that we'll put up with whatever they do to us in the name of "helping" us.
Silence, of course. What's so fragile that it breaks when it's not held?
Gold ink? Talk about gilding the lily.
Okay, my best friend back home reacted weirdly to this story, so I'll preface it with the fact that I was totally fine and there's a trick to it that makes it not as bad as it sounds! Also, my mother thought it was a scream. Anyway, that said: my dad tied me to a horse once to help toughen me up.
[GEE, CLAUDE, I WONDER WHY HILDA WAS KIND OF HORRIFIED BY THAT STORY. The preface doesn't help!]
Huh, really? Just goes to show what a great family you two are, then, that I couldn't even tell. And I'm a pretty observant guy.
But yeah, no ulterior motives here. It just looks kind of cool - something that's unique about you, you know?
I've heard those weird weekends are when people get their forms and powers from home back, if they lost any on coming here. I've also heard they're a semi-regular occurrence, so maybe it's a good thing you're sharing this werewolf news with people now. It might be relevant in the future - or at least people noticing it might be unavoidable. So better for you to explain it by choice when you've got the chance than having it forced out of you because one of the weird weekends happened unexpectedly.
But yeah, I think I understand what you mean. Even if something's not ideal, when it's affected you as a person and your entire life so deeply, it's weird to think about just excising it. And even if you got rid of it, it's not like the effects it's had on you living with it for so long would go away, either. And if not all of it's bad...then I can get why managing the bad symptoms without necessarily wanting to get rid of the curse wholesale would make a lot more sense.
But yeah - even knowing nothing about your world, I could guess people like that existed. I hadn't even considered the pressure on werewolves to cure themselves whether they want to or not if a cure got made, though. It just goes to show, an outsider's perspective on something like this is always going to miss vital details unless someone who's lived it fills them in.
Then again, I've also found that even an insider's perspective can be lacking, if they don't look around enough. If you don't talk to people who've lived the same things you have, but in a totally different way, you can be blind to things right under your nose. You sound like you know a lot about this, though, and that you're considering a lot more points of view than just your own. That's pretty admirable, you know.
[Felix just sort of grunts in response. Claude is right, those things are true, and Felix has every intention of doing the best job he can regardless of how much he hates playing the game. He just...didn't expect Claude to say so.]
Hmph. It's not sweet. Just...an extrapolation of what I already know you're capable of, that's all. And I have no idea how to tell the difference between what you think and everything else.
[He glances over to Claude, nodding thoughtfully.] Hm. Makes sense, you and Dimitri must have discussed strategies for proceeding to Enbarr.
Yeah, I'm... admittedly not looking forward to another of those coming around. I don't know how many people I'm going to be comfortable telling by then - we're up to three now, not including myself or Chip.
Actually, two, if we don't count the guy who called me on it when I was first trying to figure out what to do on the full moon, before finding out that nothing would happen. So it's just you and Dimitri that I've actually said it to.
Oh, thanks - I guess I hadn't really thought of it that way? I just got really interested in the way lycanthropy actually works as a teenager, and that led into a lot of research on the community as well. Admittedly, I was so twitchy about the idea of trying to cure it at the time, I remember getting sort of upset when other werewolves were just talking about looking for ways to treat the individual symptoms - fortunately I don't remember ever starting a fight over it, though. I just sort of fumed in silence until it sunk in that not everyone had the same experiences as me.
[The riddle and the compliment go unnoticed - Jaskier is too busy rereading that last bit over and over, as if doing so could make it change into something a bit less horrifying. He can't even feel smug about his guess of Claude's childhood being more than it looked being right, this goes beyond strict noble parents. Not even Jaskier's own parents would allow something like it, and these are the people that allowed his tutors to educate him with a cane.
What really gets him, though, is Claude's attitude about the whole deal. Asshole parents he's heard about before, but Claude tells the story as if he was telling Jaskier about some silly prank he pulled on the servants. What the fuck is going on?]
Claude, I beg you - please tell me I'm misreading the tone of your message and you don't actually think this is a funny story to share so carefreely.
Damn. I hoped your world might be closer to my homeland's culture than Fodlan's, but I guess not!
But really, it is just a cultural difference thing. That's not unusual where I'm from. I'm what's unusual where I'm from. It might've been a little on the extreme side, but only because being half-Fodlan was going to mean double the challenges for me. Not every warrior back home has to be ready and able to take on any and every warrior of our people, because not every one of those warriors is going to hate him and be personally after him. I kind of did need to be ready for that sort of thing, though. And let's just say that the people who hated me back home weren't necessarily interested in playing fair, either. Like, you know, waiting for a kid to grow up before you try to kill him.
If tying a kid to a horse helps toughen him up in case a full-grown man decides to suddenly come at him with a blade the next week, it makes more sense to go to those kinds of extremes.
Although...I won't deny it might also have been to wear me out so I couldn't get in any more mischief for the day. Wouldn't be unlike my parents to kill two birds with one stone. And I was wild. Maybe I've been understating just how much.
Well, I know Lorenz used to cope by sputtering a lot. Personally, I find your tactic of acknowledging my glory in rapturous despair to be way more appealing.
Felix, did you know that saying "I'm not complimenting you by saying I have faith in you, I just know from experience that you're capable and smart and I genuinely believe you can pull this off because of what I know about you" is still, in fact, sweet? Maybe more so because I know you wouldn't say it if you didn't believe it? [Claude chuckles.] Hell, you're even comparing me to Dimitri - your own king, who we both know has some real greatness in him, however much it's been buried for the past while. A guy you're deeply devoted to. That's a ridiculously high level of compliment.
[He nudges Felix.] And no speculating. I'm not going to tell you anything ahead of time. It's all three of you at once, and I'm not saying anything on the subject until then.
Well, I know Felix is prickly, and I don't know how well you know Sylvain, so I can get being more nervous to talk to them about it...but since you know that people from our world don't even know what lycanthropy is, much less have any prejudices about it, are you really risking anything by telling them? You certainly won't get negative reactions from them. And I know it might be nerve-wracking entrusting people you don't know too well with a secret, but regardless of how they feel about you - Dimitri is their best friend, and king. If he wants them to keep your secrets on your behalf - which he absolutely would - your secrets are as good as taken to the grave with them.
Granted, I know that keeping secrets for your own protection isn't all just logic and risk calculation. Some part of it is always going to be paranoia. So I don't know how much me telling you facts is going to make you comfortable with the idea, necessarily.
So you've done a 180 on your feelings about your condition, huh? It's interesting how that happens sometimes. You start out believing one thing, and then your perspective shifts and you end up on the exact opposite side of a debate from where you were.
...huh. This is an incredibly stupid and minor thing that my brain's been fixating on, but I'd been thinking about how it must suck not being able to bite anyone in shall we say intimate situations, and it just occurred to me that you probably can now. As long as it's not one of the weird weekends, anyway. Granted, after a lifetime of being paranoid about biting people, maybe you wouldn't even be able to bring yourself to even when you know it's safe...sorry, dumb random tangent and probably the shallowest possible consideration in regards to your condition, I know. It was just something I was thinking about in the back of my head.
[Specifically, Claude had seen it as the biggest personal drawback of Grant's condition. (Which is to say, not counting any societally based prejudices.) Turning into a dog creature one night a month? Not so bad, can definitely be worked around. Having heightened senses and physical abilities? Technically a benefit! Unusual physical features? Claude's already observed he thinks the ones Grant has work in his favor. Mood swings? Grant seems to have himself well under control. But not being able to bite people, even in situations where biting people might be encouraged...that sounds annoyingly non-negotiable. Except here, it is!
Then Claude remembers the person Grant is most likely to bite is Dimitri, and the sick feelings come rushing back. Still no concern over Grant's being a werewolf - it's all about Grant being the one Dimitri wants, when Claude had half hoped maybe Dimitri wanted him. Which is stupid and selfish, since he knows he can't have Dimitri anyway, so what would he have gained even if that were true? But fear isn't the only thing that makes the heart illogical.]
On the one hand, I'd like to say "I wouldn't go that far", but on the other hand Hubert never switched sides on Edelgard, so...I can't really argue!
Honestly, I'd thought I was making some real progress on broadening his narrow mind from all the self-serving nonsense Count Gloucester spoon-fed him, too. But I guess I couldn't compete in the end.
[It's not clear which thing Claude says gets Felix's face redder--the idea that Claude still thinks a normal, basic compliment from him is sweet, or the idea that Felix really did just compare Claude to Dimitri, or the fact that Claude just said--out loud! with his own mouth!--that Felix was 'deeply devoted' to Dimitri and he can't even argue with it. It all just sort of snowballs into tomato territory, and he turns away, shifting his gaze to the opposite side of the road to hide his face.]
Hmph. Think what you want.
[He startles a bit at the nudge. A rebuke comes to the tip of his tongue automatically, but he swallows it because...this doesn't actually trip his kneejerk dislike of being touched like he figured it would. Maybe it's because after you shove a man up against a wall and kiss him as the first time you ever touched him at all, casual touching is practically nothing. ...but anyway. He rolls his eyes.]
I'm not trying to solve your precious mystery early. I figured planning the rest of the war as allies was obvious.
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