"I'm not telling you it's going to be fine. I'm telling you there's space in between 'we need you to be perfect' and 'you're of no use at all.'" Felix frowns, trying to figure out how to put this. "It's like...the beams. If the structure is built well, then when one support fails, the weight is redistributed among the others until that one can be repaired. So even though the structure is weaker than usual overall, it doesn't fall."
He hopes that makes sense. He's no architect, but it seems right to him.
But the rest...he falls silent until Claude is finished. Then, quietly, "...oh. You're training." It is a matter of life and death, just as much as it is for Felix on the training grounds. "I know it's not the same, but in our own ways, Dimitri and Sylvain and Ingrid and I have all felt that we weren't what Faerghus wanted us to be, either. But even Dimitri doesn't have to put up with the kind of pressure you describe."
His brow furrows. "But you can't erase how you feel. I know; I've tried. You've seen firsthand how well that's worked. I know you want to do something to help Sylvain and you can't, so you're trying to do something to help us instead. You've been through the same battlefield first aid training as I have--you know that you can't treat someone else's wounds until you stop yourself from bleeding out. All I'm asking you to do is figure out how to stop your own bleeding before you worry about ours, even if it's just for tonight."
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He hopes that makes sense. He's no architect, but it seems right to him.
But the rest...he falls silent until Claude is finished. Then, quietly, "...oh. You're training." It is a matter of life and death, just as much as it is for Felix on the training grounds. "I know it's not the same, but in our own ways, Dimitri and Sylvain and Ingrid and I have all felt that we weren't what Faerghus wanted us to be, either. But even Dimitri doesn't have to put up with the kind of pressure you describe."
His brow furrows. "But you can't erase how you feel. I know; I've tried. You've seen firsthand how well that's worked. I know you want to do something to help Sylvain and you can't, so you're trying to do something to help us instead. You've been through the same battlefield first aid training as I have--you know that you can't treat someone else's wounds until you stop yourself from bleeding out. All I'm asking you to do is figure out how to stop your own bleeding before you worry about ours, even if it's just for tonight."