IC Inbox

[vrdantwind]

"Hey, this is Claude! Pretty sure I'm doing this correctly. You can leave me a message here, and I'll get to it as soon as I can. Talk to you soon~."

Comments

[vrdantwind]

"Adorable, fluffy kittens also have the needliest claws," Claude points out with a chuckle. "It's impossible to know, but maybe he was always going to grow into the ones he has now, one way or another. But a beloved older brother he admires as much as you...of course you'd have always seen the softest, happiest side of him. And I think a lot of those hard edges were only developed after your death...maybe as a direct result of it, even. So we really are talking about two totally different Felixes."

He smiles a little, gazing out at the ocean. "That said...I actually have met the Felix you've seen. This weird weekend has done some playing around with people's ages...or maybe it's brought separate, younger versions of them in. I haven't seen a younger and older version of a person in the same room together, so I'm not sure which it is. All I know is that I got to talk to a younger Felix, one who hadn't lost his big brother yet...and he was absolutely adorable. Anyone - especially a big brother - would be crazy about him. He even decided he liked and trusted me, just from hearing that he and I become friends when he's older."

At the questioning about Sylvain, he glances at Glenn. "It sounds like you might already know some things about his home situation," he says, a touch carefully. "Which isn't really my business to tell any more than yours. But what I will say, because it's public knowledge in my time and I don't know when it happened in your lifetime, that Sylvain's brother Miklan eventually got kicked out on top of being disinherited - I think he'd finally begun causing too much trouble. And in the year we were all at Garreg Mach together, he broke into the Gautier estate and stole the Lance of Ruin. The Blue Lions - which is to say, Dimitri and Felix and Sylvain and Ingrid, and some other students besides - were dispatched by the church to deal with the theft, and Miklan's gang of bandits. And in the process, Miklan was killed. I don't know who struck him down, and there's limits to even my curiosity; I never asked. But Sylvain...wasn't unaffected by that, I know that much. That's probably part of what's changed.

"The other part is just...the war. Toward the end of the year we had at the Officer's Academy, the Adrestian Empire launched an attack on the church, and declared war on it. And, by proxy, both the Kingdom and the Alliance. It's still raging back home, as of when we all came here - and it's been going on for almost six years. Sylvain - and Felix, and pretty much everyone else - have been doing a lot of fighting, being soldiers. The war hit the Kingdom especially hard - Cornelia turned out to have been an Imperial asset, almost certainly planted on purpose. Almost as soon as the war started, she tried to have Dimitri executed, out of sight, under trumped-up charges of having murdered his uncle - which of course there was no proof for. Dimitri escaped, but he spent most of the war in hiding, and...well, mentally, in the roughest place imaginable. He was so betrayed and enraged and traumatized, he was barely sane. Not that Cornelia stopped there - she tried to drag the whole Kingdom and all its nobles over to the Imperial cause, and the whole country's been a hornet's nest of war since. Gautier and Fraldarius have been leading the resistance against her, so...you can imagine Felix and Sylvain have been in the thick of it all that time. And Felix loves fighting, but Sylvain..." He shakes his head. He doesn't really need to elaborate there.

"According to Sylvain, he's seen the end of the war, and a Kingdom victory. Which is good to know, but...well, a lot of the changes you see in him definitely come down to the wringer he's been wrung through over the years."

He looks back out at the ocean. "As for how I know all this...I could say that Felix and I are friends, and leave it at that. But I've been honest with you so far, and I haven't regretted it yet, so...I'll stick with that for now. The fact is that...a lot of us developed feelings for each other. Or maybe always had them. Simultaneously. And we all decided we were fine with exploring those feelings simultaneously." He glances at Glenn again. "So I'm dating your brother. And Sylvain. And Dimitri. And they're all dating each other, too...well, except Sylvain and Felix, who've gone all the way to being married already. You already seem to be aware that Felix was infatuated with more than one person growing up, so maybe hearing he's with more than one person isn't too much of a shock to you. I'm the only big surprise as a relative newcomer, compared to the little knot of Faerghans who've been in love with each other since childhood." He grins. "But I'm told I'm charming."

[blackironspur]

"You've got a point." He shakes his head. "Dammit, Felix...I keep telling him he's got to learn to be more independent. Accept that nothing lasts forever. He knows how dangerous the world is, and he knows that I've pledged to protect the royal family at any cost. Still, from what I've seen here, he's managed to make quite a few friends who think highly of him, so he can't be too far gone."

His brows lift, and then he smirks. "Won him over, did you? That's impressive, you must really have made an impression. Usually he's wary of strangers, although once he decides he likes you, good luck ever getting rid of him."

He sobers again as he listens to Claude talk about Sylvain. He makes a quiet, disgusted noise at the recounting of the events at Conand Tower. "Miklan, that bastard. He's always been a disaster waiting to happen. I'd love to have run him through myself if I'd had the chance. But Sylvain...poor kid."

He looks more and more disbelieving the more Claude says about the war. "The Empire declared war on the church?" He waves a hand. "You know what, I don't need to know the details of why. But Cornelia? Tried to have the crown prince executed? Goddess, Dimitri...it's just one thing after another. I should have been there for him. I met him at about 17, yesterday, that's how I learned about Duscur. And even then he already didn't seem like he was altogether there. How could so much have gone so wrong?"

It seems like more of a rhetorical question than a real one, though, as he thinks over the rest. "At least we were able to mount a resistance. But no, Sylvain has never been nearly so fond of battle as the rest of us, despite his clear talent for it."

When Claude starts talking about more personal things, Glenn eyes him with that same wariness as before, particularly at the comment about how Claude would stick to being honest 'for now.' The rest of it has him staring as he just...processes that for a minute, before he turns fully to look at Claude.

"I see. No, it's not a shock that Felix could end up with more than one person, although I didn't think people did that sort of thing. But Felix is my baby brother and the other two are practically the same, so I think you know what I'm going to say, Claude. Give me a reason to trust you with their feelings. I need to know that all three of them are in good hands. And do make sure that you continue to stick with being honest."

He doesn't seem angry, nor threatening, per se. But he is quite serious.

[vrdantwind]

"I don't know what reason I could give in the course of an evening that'd be so compelling that it'd induce you to trust a relative stranger with the hearts of three men you've known since childhood and love as brothers," Claude says with a slight shrug. "Especially not while being honest. There's things I haven't even said yet that would make you trust me even less than you already do.

"As for things to say in my own defense...well, I don't know if it counts, but I do know that if Felix were here to hear you doubting his own good judgment, thinking he needs you to vet his choice of partners for him, he'd probably challenge you on the spot. Not that he needs much excuse to challenge people to duels, so maybe that's not saying much." He looks up at the sky. "I could say that I helped, to some degree, your brother and your father come to more of an understanding than they've had in awhile today. I could say I helped Dimitri, to some degree, out of the pit his trauma had him in. I could say I helped Sylvain and Felix pick out their wedding rings for each other, and that I helped them get together in the first place. I could say a lot of things about how much I care about all of them, and how much I've done to try to help them be healthy and happy. And I guess, technically, now I have said all of that."

He sighs. "But what I actually want to say is that this is the second time just this weekend that a family member of one of my boyfriends has demanded I prove myself worthy of a man I'm dating to their satisfaction, and that's really only been the start of the things I've had to field this weekend. I guess anyone being pleased that I'm dating someone they care about is too much to ask."

He shrugs. "Not that I don't understand or sympathize with your concern for Felix. Of course you want to look out for your little brother, especially when - to put it mildly - you can't exactly be around full-time to do it. And I can't begin to blame you for that brotherly concern. But...it's coming at my expense. I guess I wish someone cared about that, even a fraction as much as my boyfriends' families care about protecting them from me. Instead, my humiliation is an acceptable price to pay for the peace of mind of my boyfriends' families...because being assumed to be bad for them, and having to prove I'm deserving of them, is humiliating."

He fixes Glenn with a long, level look. "I may as well tell you now that I'm Almyran. Does that make my burden of proof even higher?"

[blackironspur]

Huh.

Glenn watches Claude mostly impassively throughout all of this, though he's clearly listening, not zoning out or just waiting for Claude to finish. It's not until the question is posed that his expression really changes - his brows lift, his gaze becomes a little more knowing.

"No, not at all. Though I know why you ask. Most of Faerghus would say yes."

He shakes his head. "You were the one who told me you'd decided to be honest 'for now.' That didn't fill me with confidence, though I didn't assume you'd be bad for them any more than I assumed you'd be good for them."

He shifts position in the sand to turn and face Claude more directly. "But you've made several good points. Among them that I ought to trust Felix's judgment, and that I ought to be pleased that he's found someone else he wants to be with. Like I said, the Felix I know is slow to warm up to people, and it sure doesn't sound like that much has changed. So if you've gotten close enough to him since coming here that he wanted to court you, you must be doing something right."

He offers Claude a hand for shaking. "So I hope you'll accept my apology for grilling you. And my thanks, for making my brother and the others happy and looking after them. Since, as you pointed out, I can't."

[vrdantwind]

"Honesty is a luxury not everyone can afford," Claude says dryly. "For instance, your brother and the others didn't learn I was Almyran until we ended up here, because you can imagine what the people of Fodlan - it's hardly just Faerghus - would have thought of a half-Almyran Duke Riegan. But my grandfather was desperate for someone to step in for him, and he didn't have a wealth of options...and control of the Alliance probably would have gone to Count Gloucester otherwise. And given that he became an Imperial sympathizer in the war, who wanted to hand the Alliance over to the Empire in exchange for power and favors, which would've definitely meant crushing the Kingdom...well, let's just say that my grandfather had good instincts. And that people who say 'honesty is the best policy' have never actually been at a serious disadvantage before."

He gazes out at the ocean. "Honesty is easy. You don't have to think about it, or try to keep a story straight. When honesty genuinely is the best policy, that's what I stick to. But plenty of people give me reasons not to trust them with the truth. They say the truth hurts, but usually the people who say that mean that they're going to hurt someone else with what they say. In my experience, the truth hurts the person saying it a lot more often than it hurts anyone listening. The truth can be a weapon in the wrong hands, and I don't go out of my way to arm people I don't trust."

He glances at Glenn. "When I said I'd stick to honesty for now, I meant you hadn't yet given me any reason to regret telling you what I know. The fact that my acknowledging I have the option to lie to you making you distrust me more, though...that's kind of hilarious, isn't it? If I was going to try to lie to you, you'd think I wouldn't bring that up.

"And let's face it, I can't believe you needed me to bring up the idea of me being able to lie to consider whether or not you can trust what I'm saying. You have to have been asking yourself that all along, right? And you didn't think I was lying before. What I've been saying matches up with what you already know, and it hangs together logically. I don't have any particular reason to lie to a dead man. I'm sure you thought all that out and settled yourself that you can trust me awhile ago. But I say that my honesty isn't necessarily unconditional or indefinite, and that makes you doubt me? I genuinely have to ask - why?"

Still, he shakes the offered hand of Glenn's. "But apology accepted. Honestly - " Claude's going to get sick of that word soon. " - I just don't know how these talks are supposed to go when people have them with me. I build a relationship with a guy for months, slowly show him sides of myself I don't just trust anyone with, and then a family member of theirs walks up to me and essentially goes 'I don't know you, but summarize for me what he sees in you and make me trust you the way he's come to over the course of actually getting to know you. Oh, yeah, and can you compress it into about fifteen minutes, max?' It's not just humiliating - it's impossible. It feels like a task people set for me to fail. How do I give them enough to judge me on? And why do they think that over the course of one acutely stilted conversation, I'll be able to give them enough evidence to make a better call than the guy I'm dating did? What's the game plan if someone does decide I'm not good enough for their family? Were you going to go tell Felix he should dump me, based on the one conversation you'd had with me?" He shakes his head. "I don't think you would have...but that just means those conversations aren't actually meant to protect the people I'm dating. They're meant to sweat me."

Glenn's apology has been accepted, but that doesn't mean Claude necessarily feels any better. The grilling is over, but the messages sent can't be unsent. And the weekend...it's worn him too thin. He'd been pleased to finally have the chance to meet Glenn, knowing how much so many important men in his life think of him, and Glenn does indeed seem to be all that he's heard of him...but this looks to be what will be Claude's defining experience with him. Glenn using Claude as a source of information about the people he actually cares about, then getting suspicious of how Claude has all that information, and then asking Claude why he should trust him with those people who actually matter.

Claude meant what he said - he can't blame Glenn for any of this. Glenn's got a lot to catch up on, and who knows how much time. The man knows he's dead; developing new relationships isn't exactly going to be a priority for him. He doesn't know Claude, and even if he cared to get to know him, odds are he won't have time for that. Glenn's being practical, not thoughtless.

But even without blame, there's hurt. The lines between the people who matter and the people who don't - the differences in how Glenn thinks and speaks of them - are too stark to ignore. Sylvain is lucky to have married Felix; Claude is lucky Glenn has deferred judgment of him to Felix, and that Glenn trusted evidence he'd demanded Claude provide.

Claude scoops up a handful of sand, letting it run through his gloved fingers. "But in any case...thanks aren't necessary. They're all good men I'd want to help, no matter what, and that inclination didn't start with our dating. I should be thanking you - for being so good to them while you could. I mean, Dimitri wouldn't even be here today if not for you. And it's clear that you passed on a number of your good qualities to Felix. All their lives were better for having you in them. And if there's some way you can stick around here, then I know they'll be better now, too."

He gets to his feet, brushing himself off. "In any case, I think that's most of the news I can offer, so..."