Chapter Text
The next day, Claude bikes home to shower and change quickly before hurrying to the library, only barely remembering to grab a bite to eat on his way out. He's got a voicemail from Hilda asking when he plans to give her that further explanation he promised--he turned off his ringer at the castle, not wanting to startle Dimitri if it rang while he was asleep or something--and he texts her to let her know he's off to see Berith but afterward, he swears! The librarian at the front desk gives him a nod, and he has to fight not to run on his way to the special collections room in the back. He pauses only long enough to poke his head in and make sure Berith is there before he strides in and plants his hands firmly on the desk, leaning forward. "Teach! You've been holding out on me all this time." He reaches into his sweatshirt pocket to pull out the crystal and plunks it down on the desk between them. "Tell me about this."
He almost startles Berith with how suddenly he appears in front of their desk; they don't jump, per se, but their eyes flicker quickly from his face to the odd crystal, and then back again. They lift their hands to sign: 'What about it?' Then they take the crystal into their fingers, ever carefully, and lift it slowly from the desk to inspect it under the light.
"I found it in a cave deep underground underneath an abandoned castle, behind a magic door." Claude straightens up and folds his arms, as though Berith couldn't see the barely contained excitement in his eyes. "And I bet you know the name Blaiddyd, don't you?"
Berith blinks. 'I'm a historian. I know.' They don't seem intent on making too many concessions... but they also don't hide the interest they've taken in this crystal, either, even if the brunt of Claude's explanation seems to have slipped right past them. '... an abandoned castle. The Royal Faerghan castle then?'
"That's the one. But it's not as abandoned as I thought." Claude manages to hold his mysterious facade for a few seconds longer before he sighs and hops up to sit on Berith's desk. "Teach, there's a ghost living there. Uh...well, not...living, I guess. Technically. But he's real! A real ghost. Just...hanging out there for the last thousand years."
Berith doesn't respond for a while, merely sets the crystal down gingerly on their desk, and slowly folds their hands behind it. They study his expression, though their own stays ever blank. Their fingers untangle to sign again: 'You don't believe in ghosts, Claude.'
"I didn't believe in ghosts last week." He shrugs, a bit sheepish. "It's a little harder not to believe in them when there's one sitting right in front of you making a table float, though. To be honest, I surprised myself with how easily I believed him, but...he has this way of being so painfully earnest that it's impossible not to. Plus my hand went right through him." By contrast, he isn't sheepish at all about having apparently stuck his hand through a dead person. "Have you ever heard of a Prince Dimitri Blaiddyd?"
'Like I said. I'm a historian.' But the librarian seems to be going back over his words now. After some few moments in silence, they lean back in their chair, and eye him carefully. 'Tell me about it.'
Claude does exactly that, leaving nothing out (other than his little slip-up when he accidentally, sort of on purpose, called Dimitri beautiful...). He tells Berith about the magic door, and about how the prince offered to teach him magical theory - another thing Claude didn’t believe in last week. And although he doesn’t outright say he plans to go back later today, he doesn't hide that it's obviously his intent, either.
Berith is patient in listening, and they don't utter a word until after his story tapers off for good. There's a great deal they want to know yet, but Berith can see clear as day that Claude is a little more overwhelmed than he would willingly show. They stand, sparing the boy a glance before moving to an unmarked door behind their desk. Even after it's unlocked, Berith doesn't close it behind them once they walk inside.
Claude's brows lift - he’s always wondered what was behind that door, but every time he asked, Berith just shrugged like it was nothing important. He follows them eagerly, getting his phone ready to take pictures for Dimitri even though he has no idea what Berith might be showing him here. The thought briefly enters his mind that if this were anyone else, he might suspect them of bringing him to their hidden murder closet and taking him out for knowing too much or something...but this is Teach, right? Right. He’s...mostly confident that wouldn’t happen.
It is not, in fact, a hidden murder closet from the looks of things—though it's just as dark inside, until the room bursts into view at the lighting of candles, dozens if not hundreds of them all at once. They're scattered about the room, on shelves and tables, and in holders fastened to the walls. Claude's eyes widen even as he blinks in the sudden light. The books and shelves outside are dusty and untouched, but not a thing in this room possesses even a single mote of it, despite the general organized chaos of it all. The room is lined floor to ceiling with a series of shelves and cabinets brimming with all sorts of things, old tomes and odd, fanciful... disturbing objects of all sorts.
Claude takes a slow walk around the room to peer at everything before returning to Berith's side as they stride past a large desk covered in layer after layer of documents, to the far wall; on it is mounted a huge spear of some kind, kept in immaculate condition, though made not of metal. An array of pale bones protrudes from the shaft of the weapon, not particularly sharp in appearance and yet all the more foreboding for it. Claude pauses in front of the spear...there's something deeply unsettling about it, and at the same time something incredibly impressive. He can't help feeling like he really wants to take it down from the wall and hold it...maybe use it, although he's never even held a spear in his life.
The librarian takes pause beneath it, where a stand supports a set of armor, dark as midnight and draped in a thick, fur mantle. They glance to Claude, then, yet still without a word. Claude comes to stand before the armor with an eerie feeling of deja vu. He looks it over with a sharp eye in silence. It's about the same size as the one Dimitri showed him and has the same general style, down to the blue cape, even if this one seems a bit less fancy. But this suit is punctured in multiple places--too many places for anyone to survive the blows that made them. Dimitri did say that he'd insisted on wearing his own armor toward the end of his life rather than his father's, and that he didn't know what had happened to it... Claude reaches out to touch the dark steel. "This is his, isn't it?"
Berith nods. Their eyes flicker back to the armor and a hand lifts, drifting over its planes, lingering on the holes and deep scratches that mar it. 'This is the armor his body was found in. We've been preserving it.' They pause before their attention moves elsewhere, to the mantle and cape behind the suit itself. The cape shines a brilliant blue even under the candlelight, faded not even minutely by time, and the crest of Blaiddyd is emblazoned in stark black thread across it. 'Same as everything else.'
Claude abruptly feels a little colder, though the temperature in the room hasn't changed. This is the armor Dimitri's body was found in--the armor he died in. His mind's eye imagines it unbidden--Dimitri, wearing this, a little older than he appears in death and desperately fighting to protect his people... Watching Berith sign, Claude shifts his hand to the cape, running his fingers over the sigil just as before. "When you say 'we,' you mean your family, right? Preserved how?" He turns to look around the room. This is all Dimitri's, then. "And that means his people survived, right? What happened to them?"
They hesitate, but Berith does, eventually, shake their head. 'We preserve it because they didn't.' There's something... not quite stern in their gaze, but heavy. Serious in a way that Berith often isn't; somehow, this isn't the librarian that usually dozes off at their desk in special collections. 'Or, the people did. A few of them. Faerghus didn't. Faerghans didn't.'
Oh, no. Claude's face falls, remembering how excited the prince was to hear that those he died to defend might have lived. "Did they at least survive that battle, when Dimitri stayed behind at the castle to protect them? When your great-great-whatever was leading them to safety?"
'I can't say.' It's nearly imperceptible, but their eyebrows twitch, almost drawing together. 'From my understanding... from the writings, they were all separated after they fled. To hide them. Help them assimilate. I don't know what happened to any of them after that.'
Claude's quiet for a moment. "There has to be a way to find out, right?" He glances up then, from the cape to Berith's eyes, looking sad but also strangely determined. "He died trying to save them. If he failed...well, I can't tell him that."
'That was a thousand years ago, Claude.' Berith moves away now, back toward the desk, and leans their weight against it. 'The whole point was for them to be hidden. So that they wouldn't be targeted after the crown fell. If there's anything that exists saying otherwise, I don't have it.'
”I know.” Claude sighs. It doesn’t feel like it was a thousand years ago to him, learning about it all right now. “I just wanted some good news to bring him, I guess.” Then he brightens. “But I do have good news - all of this, and you!” He lifts his phone and begins to take pictures of everything in the room, starting with the armor and the spear. Then he points the camera at Berith and pauses. “Can I show him a picture of you? It sounded like he was good friends with your ancestor, I bet he’d appreciate it.” They don't say yes, but they don't say no, so Claude just...presses the button. “What else is here? Tell me about everything. He’ll want to know. And maybe I can take some of it back to him. He likes it when he can remember more details about his life.” He says this totally casually, like all of this is completely normal.
Berith pushes themselves from the desk and crosses the room again. Claude watches with interest as a little fiddling frees the cape with its mantle from the stand, and Berith turns back to Claude with the whole thing folded over their arms, bundling it with ease. It's set on the desk, and soon joined by something else—a dagger fetched from a glass case nearby. Berith slips them both into a black fabric bag, utterly nondescript, and offers it to Claude. 'Give these. Tell me what happens.'
“Okay...I’d ask what you mean by ‘what happens’ but you wouldn’t tell me anyway. Man, I hate it when you out-mysterious me!” Claude takes the bag and tucks it under one arm. “You don’t think I should bring back his spear? That seems like a big deal, right?”
They shake their head, though their reasoning isn't as ultra-mysterious as Claude is likely hoping. 'Broad daylight.'
”Oh. Right. Next time I’ll be sure to come at the witching hour.” Claude winks, then takes one more look around the room. “He gave me permission to take some of his father’s letters and things to read, would you want to see any of them? Who’s Rodrigue?”
It takes a few seconds for Berith's response to come. 'No. That's okay. He was the protector. Shielded the family.' They settle their hands on Claude's shoulders and steer him back toward the door, with purpose. 'Go. Keep him from fading.' Claude's eyes widen at the instruction. So he was right. It is possible. Hope surges through him as he watches Berith rifle through a drawer and draw out what appears to be a pendant of some sort, a thin chain holding a clear stone. The librarian brings it to their lips and mutters something under their breath. As the crystal on the necklace fills with a soft, purple light, they take one of Claude's hands and thrust the pendant into his palm. 'Leave in moonlight at night. For him.'
Claude stares at it with curiosity and a bit of wonder. "Oh...yeah, he did say the crystals under the castle soak up moonlight or something." It's not until they get back out into the library proper that Claude remembers--he turns with one more urgent question. "Wait, wait--he's trapped in the castle, because he died there, but there's a way to fix that, right?"
Their response takes a few seconds to come. 'Possible.'
Claude makes a face--of course, Berith isn't going to tell him how--but he can do his own research later. For now, he has a delivery to make. "Thanks, Teach. I'll let you know how it goes." He stuffs the bundle into his camping backpack along with everything else he brought from home to take to the castle. Then, forgetting entirely that he told Hilda he would meet up with her after his trip to the library, he gets on his bike and races back out of town as fast as he can pedal.
When Claude arrives at the hillside ruin, he's catching his breath as he knocks on the door. It opens once again to reveal Dimitri on the other side, looking more solid now with the late afternoon sun ducking behind the clouds. "You and I ought to stop meeting in this way, Claude," he says with a twinkle in his eye, and beckons for the boy to enter. Claude blinks. Did--did Dimitri just-- He laughs, taken off-guard, as he comes inside and hurries to the parlor.
"You seem as if you were in quite a rush again," Dimitri says as the door closes on its own behind them. "Did... something happen?"
Claude plops his backpack down on the couch. "Yeah--but don't worry, it's nothing bad! I went to see Teach, and it turns out they did know all about you and your family. Not only that, they've got a whole room of your things that the Eisners have preserved all this time! Well, Blaiddyd things, at least. And your armor--uh...the other one, the one you were wearing when...when you died. And a huge spear made out of bones or something. And, look at this!" He opens up the pack and pulls out the bundle, first unwrapping it to lay the dagger on the table and then following it with the folded cape and its mantle. He unfolds it carefully and holds it up; he has to lift it above his head to stop it from trailing on the floor. "Oh, tell me if you need me to describe anything to you. The dagger has inscriptions and stuff."
Dimitri doesn't seem to know what to do with this information, though he's snapped quickly from his stupor at the sight of Claude brandishing not only his cape, but... The prince steps forward, reaches a hand toward the dagger out of habit, though he knows it to be for naught. Seeing it look this way, practically... identical, really, to how it looked during his life so long ago, he doesn't know what to think. "That will not be necessary," he says, a little hoarsely. "I... I recall what the inscriptions say. I-- this is...."
Claude sits down on the couch and carefully folds the cape again to rest it in his lap, looking up at the prince. "What is it?" he asks softly.
"I-I apologize, it's merely... it's a little overwhelming." Dimitri moves to follow suit, though it takes him more than one try to 'seat' himself. He must truly be shaken. "I hadn't... seeing this, so well preserved... I hadn't been expecting it, that is all. This was my father's mantle, and..."
Claude places the mantle on the cushions between them as a way of 'handing' it to Dimitri. Clearly, 'that is all' isn't entirely true. Claude picks up the dagger, now, holding it gingerly in both hands and looking at it more closely. He can't read the inscriptions, written in a language he doesn't recognize, but he runs his thumb over them and finds the same sigil as the one on the cape engraved on the hilt. "And what?" he coaxes. This must be what Berith meant by 'see what happens.'
Dimitri's fingers drift through the mantle when he lowers his hand and lets it linger close enough to test such a thing... not that he seems surprised. There's something else behind that melancholy look in his eye. "This was my father's, and seeing it like this... I have missed him always, but it has been so long since I've recalled him as vividly as I do now."
Claude smiles, watching him. "That's a good thing, right? Remembering vividly?" Teach told him to keep the prince from fading, which means Claude was right about the sorts of things that could help stop it from happening. If he can anchor the ghost to the world by bringing him things from Berith's stash, he'll empty that room of everything down to its last speck of dust if he has to. "What about this?" He places the dagger down on top of the folded mantle.
Dimitri breathes deeply. "The dagger was mine. You may be able to think of it as a coming of age gift, of sorts. A symbol to express that my people recognized me as their crown prince. The inscription is a poem written in the Old Tongue... by tradition, the king himself would write it for his heir." He smiles, and brushes a ghostly fingertip over the words, hovering. "It was meant to symbolize... the ability to cut my own path. To lead my people with bravery... and to defend them, with all that I possess."
Claude's a progressive sort of guy. He believes in democracy and a voice for everyone, in equality and tolerance, in fairness and an end to divisions between people. He's never in his life considered monarchy a good thing. He doesn't even believe in gods, let alone any kind of divine right to rule. But as he pulls his feet up onto the couch and wraps his arms around his knees, resting his head on them to watch the prince in this moment, he thinks for once he can understand the draw. If every king were like Dimitri, having one might not be so bad. "It sounds to me like you did exactly that. ...Teach says that while you were holding the enemy back, Byleth scattered your people so they could hide and avoid getting targeted."
A grin blooms slowly on Dimitri's face. "For Byleth to have survived and the Eisners to have lived on... I already had faith that they were successful, and this only reaffirms it, in my mind." How long has it been since he last felt this warm? He rubs his hands over his face, a quick gesture he doesn't bother explaining. "I must thank you, Claude, and... this 'teach' of yours."
"Hey, look at that. You're smiling!"
"Are you so surprised?" But Dimitri thinks he knows what Claude means.
"Not surprised--just glad. It seems like you haven't had too many reasons to really smile for a long time, so you're past due!"
"This means a great deal to me," Dimitri says, "so much so that I would think myself indebted to you."
Claude shakes his head. "No way. If anything, I'm paying you back for cleaning up the castle for me and showing me everything--but I prefer to think of it as just something friends do for each other."
Dimitri struggles against the urge to insist that what the other boy has done for him far outweighs anything a mere friend would do, and then a thought occurs to him. "You truly think of us as friends?"
Claude lifts his head up from his knees in surprise. "Of course I do. Don't you? We've been hanging out together and everything."
"Well... you will have to pardon my disbelief that anyone would wish to be friends with a dead person." Dimitri seems happier for having heard it, though, beaming with a smile he can't contain. "N-not that I would begrudge you for such a decision! I merely... I haven't had a friend since... you know."
Look at that smile...wow. Claude opens his mouth intending to say something flippant, but instead what comes out is, "Lots of people don't want to be friends with me, either, just because of who I am. So I know how that feels, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I don't see any reason why you being dead should matter. I like you for who you are."
"Why?" Dimitri doesn't mean to ask it so brusquely, or perhaps even at all, but it's the first thing out of his mouth. "I mean--why wouldn't they want to? You've... been nothing but incredibly considerate, and so very nice. You're good at listening—and at talking. I'm glad to call you my friend."
A faint dusting of pink colors Claude's cheeks. "Ha, well, 'good at talking' is definitely something people say about me. They don't mean it as a compliment." He lays his head back down to look at nothing. "I don't know what it was like when you lived here, but my dad is from another country and I lived there for a long time, before I came here. And everyone here hates me for it. Par for the course. Plus everyone thinks I'm 'strange,' whatever that's supposed to mean. I always thought the fact that everyone's so different was a good thing, but..." He shrugs.
Dimitri considers his words carefully, and even goes so far as to mimic Claude's pose somewhat, drawing his legs up to 'rest' his feet on the couch. Horribly improper for a living prince, less so for a dead one. "Well, I certainly do mean it as a compliment. All of it. The thought of you having come from elsewhere is a thing to be intrigued about, not something to hate you for... but I suppose that I can't be surprised. Such prejudices were not uncommon in my lifetime, either."
"Ah, I was afraid you were going to say that. But anyway," Claude says as he turns back to Dimitri again, "thanks. If you were able to pick up a water bottle, I'd propose a toast: to embracing differences. Heh." Then he remembers-- "Oh! Teach said it could be possible to let you leave the castle. So I was doing some googling--uh...research--and some stories say that a ghost is anchored to the place they haunt, but others say it's not the place but something important that's in the place." He stands, with a sudden burst of energy. "So what's the most important personal thing to you in the castle?"
If Dimitri's hesitation is any indication, that's quite the difficult question to answer. "I... that is... hm." Remembrance lights up his face, briefly. "Have you by chance seen any rings lying around the castle in the days that you've been here? There was... a signet ring, bearing the crest of Blaiddyd, that I inherited from my father... I know not what happened to it."
"Nope, haven't seen one. But I'll go find it!" Claude grabs a bottle of water, his flashlight for after the sun goes down, his phone, and a few protein bars. "And I'll be on the lookout for your poem. Anything else you want me to look for?"
"Ah... please, you're already doing so much for me as it is." It's something Dimitri seems earnest in his distress over. It isn't as if he's free to do something for Claude in return, not really. "But, as I said earlier... my point still stands that if something should pique your interest, you are more than welcome to it."
"Nah, I'm doing this for me--so I can hang out with you more often without having to bike back and forth so much." It's only a partial truth, but who's counting?
The search takes hours, partially because Claude's looking for something tiny in a giant castle, and partially because he occasionally has to stop to pick the locks on doors or drawers, but also because he keeps getting caught up in looking at other things he finds along the way. Things are even slower going once it gets dark outside. By the time he finds the remains of a leather pouch tucked away in a corner of what was probably the room adjacent to stables that once stood here, judging by the rusted equestrian gear, the sun's been down for a while. But among those remains are several interesting things, including a ring that seems to fit Dimitri's description, a sealed parchment envelope, and some gold coins with unfamiliar markings. He brings those back with him to the parlor, along with another sheet of parchment he found folded inside the cover of a book and an ornate frame containing a half-rotted canvas whose painting is long-faded in many places and chewed on by vermin in others.
Upon returning, Claude lays his findings out on the table in triumph. "Ah, I love a good scavenger hunt, don't you?"
Dimitri is quick to get a fire going as soon as the other boy comes back. "You truly weren't holding back," comes his amazed response. He takes a good look at this spread of items... and pauses with a soft 'ah' on the old painting.
"I brought that because the frame has your name on it, but the painting itself is mostly ruined. Do you remember what it looked like?"
"Yes... yes, this was the portrait made of me just before I was to ascend the throne—not very long before my death." Dimitri is deep in thought now, leaning in close, and lips pursed.
Claude scoots closer on the couch to peer at the canvas, too. "Wish I could have seen it. All dressed up like a king, you must have looked so dashing and regal!" He grins.
"Ah...h-hardly." Best to move on to something else, Dimitri thinks, lest he discover he can still somehow blush as a ghost. "Er, what else did you find...?"
Wow, for a king, he sure is shy. And modest. I bet people used to walk all over him. Because that's what people do. Claude shakes himself out of that line of thinking to focus on the rest of his findings. "This--" He indicates the single sheet of parchment-- "Looks like your poem, or at least a poem. Pretty handwriting. And this stuff is all from where I think there used to be stables?" He gestures toward the little pile. "It's a bunch of coins and a sealed envelope... and a signet ring! Ta-daaaa."
Not that it all hasn't caught the prince's attention, but the mention of the ring is particularly striking. Dimitri perks up. "Yes... yes, that's the ring. I suppose that if I were to have tethered myself to anything in this place, it... well, the ring is the one thing of value to me that has been here this entire time. Your research... what else has it borne? What are we... supposed to do, now that the ring is found?"
"Well...I didn't have time to find much more than that, so far. So I don't know! It doesn't feel any different to you than anything else here, does it?"
"Feel? No, I... nothing that I can discern, not really. Am I supposed to, do you think?"
Claude shrugs. "I've never been a ghost before, so I have no idea." He eyes the ring thoughtfully. "What if I just...took it outside to see what happens?"
This kind of talk inspires a sudden nervousness in Dimitri, but... does he really have a reason to object? So the prince sort of... shrugs. "I... see no reason not to try, I suppose."
Claude brightens immediately. "Okay! Here we go." He picks up the ring and holds it carefully in his open palm as he heads toward the front door. "Just stick with me, okay? And if you start to feel like...uh...whatever you feel like when you try to leave the castle, let me know and I'll stop."
Dimitri does as he's told, in spite of the bout of anxiety that overtakes him... though when he follows Claude over the threshold, there's no sudden dizziness, no losing his footing as there was the few times in the past he attempted to leave. He stays close to Claude, enough that their arms would brush if they were able. The prince waits for that nausea to overcome him, but it never does. He looks to Claude, baffled, as he stands a meter from the door. "This is... farther than I've ever gone."
Claude's grin is broad and gleeful, as he laughs. "Yes! That means it worked! Probably. Want to go a little farther to make sure?"
"S-sure." Nervous or no, Dimitri's... excited.
Claude fights down a weird urge to try to grab Dimitri's hand--it wouldn't work anyway, and also, why?--and instead just keeps walking slowly, farther and farther away from the door, until they reach the spot where Claude left his bike lying on the grass. He turns to look at the prince, evaluating. "Still with me? Everything still okay? What does usually happen when you try to leave, anyway?"
Dimitri is, in fact, still with Claude, though that isn't to say he's not glancing around like a deer in headlights. "Back before I had given up trying... it would make me incredibly dizzy. Do you know how it feels when you get lightheaded, and your vision starts to blur? It was... something akin to that." He glances down at Claude's bike with a note of disbelief in the sound that leaves him. "It... must be the ring, then."
"Yeah!" Claude's grin turns a bit impish, as he slides his foot under the bike and levers it up into his hand, pulling it upright. "Want to go for a ride?"
"I am hardly in a state to... ride anything, Claude." But Dimitri gets the gist. He casts an uncertain glance around. "Where... where would we be going?"
Claude tells himself Dimitri probably didn't mean that the way it sounded. Probably. "Nowhere in particular, unless you want to go all the way into town. But I thought we could just ride around here a little bit, that way we wouldn't run into anybody. Plus, you'd never even seen a bicycle before I got here, let alone ridden one. It's fun!" He does pause to give the prince another look, though. "You can keep up with me while you pretend to sit on the bike, right?"
Dimitri considers it for a minute, debating internally, before shaking his head. "Likely not. I will merely have to follow behind." Just like that, Dimitri vanishes, without a warning or so much as a trace left behind.
"Whoa--" Claude turns around fully twice in searching for Dimitri, looking almost comical in his half-panic.
But soon the prince speaks again, despite his apparent absence. "Go where you would like."
Claude sighs with relief. "Don't scare me like that! I thought you...you know. Disappeared. I mean, for real." He slides the ring onto his middle finger--the only one big enough for it not to slip off easily--so he can take the handlebars in both hands and mount up. "So...how exactly are you doing that? Should I go slow to make sure I don't leave you behind?"
"No, you can go as quickly as you like. I don't have to feign moving as if I'm alive. Walking or running, you know." How odd it is, hearing him as if he were all around and simultaneously far enough that only the wind carries his voice back.
Well, Claude thinks, that confirms his earlier suspicions about Dimitri intentionally acting like he was alive even when it wasn't necessary. He suppresses the urge to look around again as the prince's voice drifts to him from nowhere, instead pushing off and starting to pedal, gradually picking up speed.
After a moment, Dimitri's voice comes again: "...I'm sorry. I hadn't meant to scare you."
"Hey, it's fine. I just didn't want to lose you out here." Wait... "--uh, I mean, I didn't want you to be gone." Very smooth. What the hell?
Somehow, the ghost's smile is audible. "You will not lose me, Claude, I swear it."
That...sure is a response, isn't it? Coming from someone else, Claude would have assumed it was faux drama, for laughs--he and Hilda do that kind of thing all the time. But from Dimitri it sounds real, like he's actually making some kind of solemn vow. Despite that sounding hilariously old-fashioned to Claude, it actually is weirdly comforting.
When next Dimitri speaks, his voice sinks slightly lower, as if he's suddenly only now aware of what they're doing. "It's so odd... to see it all like this. I hadn't... I didn't think that it all could have changed so much..."
Claude looks around at the moon shining brightly on overgrown fields and power lines, with a dark treeline marking a patch of woods not too far away. Farther in the distance he can see a farmhouse or two, a water tower, a slowly blinking cell tower, and the highway with the occasional passing car. He wonders if Dimitri can see the headlights from here. "What was it like when you lived here?"
Silence reigns briefly, but it isn't very long before Dimitri's voice interrupts the breeze. "All of this... all of this was a town. Our castle town. You could only see the edge of it from the castle itself, from the very top..." After so long, it isn't longing in his voice, more... nostalgia, perhaps. "It was always lively, even after the sun went down. There were immense squares, lit up by bonfires—when you sat down for your supper, it wasn't only your own family you ate with. You broke bread with your friends, your neighbors... oftentimes we would invite the people into the castle so that we too could take our meals with them. It was... it was something to behold."
Claude tries to imagine it, thinking back to pictures he's seen in books, drawings of medieval towns. It's disheartening to think that there was a whole town here once and now there's no trace of it at all. The concept isn't new, obviously--he's been to plenty of ruins and museums, studied plenty of places that no longer exist. But hearing about it straight from someone who once lived there is different. "That sounds...really nice. I live in the city, things aren't really like that there. Although it has its own charms, and I do sometimes have dinner or coffee with my neighbors in the apartment building." He picks up speed again, letting the cold wind pick up too, whipping his hair around wildly as he grins into it. "So what do you think? Better than riding a horse?"
"Seeing as I am not actually riding it, I would think I couldn't speak on such a thing... though I doubt that anything could be better than riding a horse."
”You’re only saying that because you’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”
Claude's words clearly have the prince thinking, because for a short while, the boy's only company is the wind's soft howl. Claude lets his mind wander in the quiet, thinking about what Dimitri’s town might have been like, and his father, and the war...
"Did you want to go home, Claude? It sounds... overwhelming. But I-I would like to see it."
“Really? Well, it’s not much—definitely nothing like a castle—but I’d love to show it to you. You should probably stay hidden until we get inside, though, we’ll probably run into people.”
"Ah. Yes, of course..." Just how many people there might be has Dimitri wondering, though he'll only end up making himself worry more and more if he keeps on like this. "Still, I'm looking forward to it. My only frame of reference for how the world has changed thus far has been the things that you tell me, and what little I could glean whenever someone should enter the castle in the past."
"Well, buckle up, because I think the city's really gonna wow you." Claude grins, soon turning onto the path that leads, in due time, to his apartment. And in all this time, he never does remember that he was supposed to see Hilda today.