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“Y’know, in my family it’s considered a rite of passage to ride a wyvern.”
The fact that he said the words so easily shocks him more than the fact that he’s said them at all.
It has been another day - or night, in this case - of trying to talk to Dimitri. During this hellscape of a war it was nothing short of a miracle that the once-believed executed prince of Faerghus stood before him now, an ink blot in the moonlight that somehow avoids staining the holy rubble of the cathedral. But Dimitri’s… certainly different, from how Claude remembered him being in the academy. Aloof, curt, laconic, single mindedly focused on vengeance - in a word, he’s become quite lax in conversational prowess.
But for reasons upon reasons Claude wasn’t - and isn’t - about to let that stop him. Leicester is in need of allies, and with Dimitri alive he’s the only means Faerghus has in being able to help itself and others. As leader of Leicester, establishing such bonds for the betterment of his people is something Claude knows he can’t afford to let slip past his fingers, despite how much his deer have warned against it.
…There’s also a tug in Claude’s chest. The sight of Dimitri - once someone so caring becoming so… destitute… It can’t help but clash with his memories of the fellow leader. The spars Dimitri would rope Claude into doing, leaving his heaving for breath as Dimitri lends him a canteen of cold water. Late nights spent in comfortable silence, as they coexisted in their own research. They were only a few moments, but he remembered them nonetheless; enough to miss the comfort they’d bring, enough to want some semblance of them back…
Enough to realize that he doesn’t really know Dimitri.
A nice acquaintance. Cordial strangers. Someone to wave at when their eyes meet across the way. But not someone close. Not anyone… lasting.
Maybe now, hearing his own words echo in his ears and thoughts, hearing something he’d normally keep so close to his chest as to have it beat in time with his heart said as casually as a good morning - maybe it’s now, that Claude realizes how much he wants to close the space between them. In the middle of the night, in the middle of a rundown cathedral, sitting on a pew and ignoring how out-of-place it feels to be in this place, the only other company besides Dimitri being the stars and moon in the sky.
Someone has to take the first step.
He sees Dimitri’s head turn, just slightly, in his direction; it’s more than Claude’s ever gotten in the past few weeks.
Before Claude can think to stop he keeps going.
“Preferably it’s the one you’ve been given to raise; y’know, you know their mannerisms and they know yours, they’re already accustomed to human handling, they know your scent. The trust’s already there so it makes the transition to riding way easier.”
He gets comfortable; he hangs an arm around the back of the pew, crosses his ankle over his knee, settles himself into the wood. Anything to make his body ignore the buzzing skittering in the inside of his chest, the pounding of his heart against his ribs.
“Plus, you wouldn’t wanna miss your first flight with your buddy anyway, so it works out fine enough.”
Little Khalid was a strange case, in that his childish heart opened itself to both Sarbi and Jamshid - it was hell to have to choose which of them to go through the First Flight with. For their safety Sarbi was picked; Jamshid just stood out too much for Almyra to handle her. As of then, that is.
“And once you show that you’ve got the ropes of it down, you get to celebrate with a huge feast! To usher in the blooming into adulthood;” he waves a hand in the air, “it’s just an excuse to eat a lot, but, hey! Can’t say no to a good get-together, right?”
It was one of the rare, rare times where everything was… safe. Even with Khalid as hated as he was, no one would dare try to soil the sanctity of one’s Feast of a First Flight with poisoned food or barbed words. For once, compliments were genuine, if given with a begrudging side-eye. Having so much family around wasn’t a test of his observation - to see through lies, to catch the glint of hidden daggers, to see if they’re really swallowing the wine in their cups. Everything was just… okay. It wasn’t until the day ended that he truly noticed that; years, until he processed it.
It went back to normal the next day; in some ways Khalid preferred the familiarity. In other ways he knew he couldn’t take much more-
“And this…”
Claude held back the flinch.
His mind refocuses. Back on the rubble; to the stars and the moon; to the man standing before him, facing him, his one blue eye staring into him.
“...is a Riegan tradition?”
“Nope! It’s from my father’s side; my mother adopted it.”
The words are almost scripted.
Dimitri would never say that he knew Claude well; they had rarely spoken at the best of times, and what words were said had never been enough for either of them to see what lay beneath their surfaces. But here, he listens to Claude speak - listens to the gradual shift of his voice as he speaks of this tradition, from a stilted, repressed nervousness to the soft tones of reminiscence. He looks upon Claude, and sees the gentle smile gracing his face, his eyes half-lidded and looking into a past long gone yet fondly remembered.
It was real, the words Claude spoke to him. A truth held in them that revealed more than Dimitri could have ever thought Claude would allow others to witness. It was wasted, on a man so akin to a beast - a creature so inept to handle such truths he would falter the moment he responds to them. Hearing the words spoken to him in this moment, after what was said before… he does not believe them to be lies. But they are not the truth; not in a way that matters, are they the truth.
He sees Claude - his jaw ever so slightly clenched, his smile thinner, his posture straighter.
“We are taught horseback riding.”
The fact that he said the words so easily shocks him more than the fact that he’s said them at all.
How… how many years has it been? Since he had last recalled such memories with his father? So much has been lost to the scarring burns of flame, the stench and stain of blood and death - there was once a boy with his father, his small hands holding the reins of a trusted steed.
“We… the Blaiddyd line… we are taught to learn how to control our strength.” He takes a breath in, and then lets it out. “Though we breed horses that are better able to withstand our force in the heat of battle… we are taught how to not snap the reins, and to gauge the strength of our legs.”
He remembers how he bawled and sobbed at the sight of the bruises on his horse, from him squeezing too hard trying to guide her with his legs like he’d seen the adults do - the pats on the head his father would give him, his soothing voice telling him that the healer was going to fix her right away, that she was going to be fine.
…He remembers seeing that horse, healthy as she’d ever been, at the academy. A gift from Rodrigue. Could she still…?
He closes his eye. Breathes in. Out.
He opens his eye. He sees Claude.
He sees him leaned forward, eyes shining with the same glint as Dimitri had seen in the library, during the many times a book had enraptured Claude’s attention. There is no smile, but no frown either; too much focus is put on listening to care for his expression. There’s a slight bounce to his leg, his heel’s tap a quiet rhythm steadily playing between the two of them.
“...I was taken on a gallop with my father, when I finally succeeded.”
It had been so much faster than he’d ever dared to ride a horse by himself. He remembers how tightly he clung onto his father’s cloak, soft in his fingers, as the wind rushed through his hair, the cold burning his eyes and causing them to tear up. He remembers how the wind couldn’t stop him from laughing, nor deafen his ears to his father’s own hearty howls. The way the horse’s gait was rough enough to nearly bound him off the saddle; the blur of trees and leaves and snow; how unmoving his father was, as he led the rushing steed across the land.
…He hasn’t ridden since everything came to ruin, he realizes. Even in the academy.
“Was it fun?”
He nearly starts.
His mind comes back to the present; he sees Claude. At some point he’d stopped leaning, though his eyes were no less bright as they stare into him.
“...Yes. It was.”
Dimitri’s answer is soft - all of what he’s been saying has been like that. His voice, and the look in his eye, how it saw past the walls of the cathedral and into some place Claude couldn’t see. Usually that kind of look would warrant Teach or Dedue or Felix to reach out and pull him back into the land of the living, but… it was distinctly different, this time. Distinctly familiar.
“Sounds like it would’ve been,” Claude says.
He taps the space next to him on the pew.
“Neither of us are gonna get any sleep tonight, seems like. Mind telling me more what it’s like up there in the chilly north as such big strong boys?”
He looks at Claude - the cheeky wink, the sly smile. Such roguish features almost distract from the relaxed jaw, the small smile creasing the corners of his eyes, how deeply he sits on the pew.
…One night.
He will allow himself the one night of reprieve. Of remembering times burnt away, their details smeared by ash. Of experiencing the man that is Claude past the surface he permitted others to look on, not through.
He moves; his footsteps echo across the space around them, few as they are before he reaches the pew. Looks down to Claude, who stares back, green eyes reflecting the moon and stars.
“I will hear more of your father’s traditions as well.”
Shock passes through Claude’s features for a brief moment, before he gives a short chuckle and a mock half-bow. “Oh, of course Your Highness, since you asked ever so kindly!"
But despite the tease there was a way his demeanor shifted - his smile widening that hair’s width more, how his chuckle lasted just the perfect length - that gave Dimitri a glimpse at something deeper than what a mere joke could possibly convey. A want for connection; a relief at receiving it.
It confounds him, how a man such as Claude could ever want to bond with one capable of the depths Dimitri has sunk into.
But he sits on the pew nonetheless.