"Dimitri, no." Claude is cupping Dimitri's face almost before he even realizes it himself. "You didn't do anything wrong, okay? I was part of an army you weren't allied with, on a battlefield. I came to you, trying to strike up an alliance, but you...weren't in your right mind. How could you have been? Surrounded by blood and battle, Edelgard standing across the field, the need for vengeance against her pounding in your head and the voices of the dead in your ears?
"But I didn't know that. I didn't know what kind of state you were in, so I came to you when I didn't have to and pushed you for something you probably couldn't even make sense of at the time. It wasn't really my fault, because I couldn't have really known how bad it was without seeing it for myself, and honestly I'd probably have tried regardless even if I had...but it wasn't your fault, either. Nothing that put you in that place was anything you asked for, or even had any real control over. How could I or anyone hold what you were doing against you, when you barely knew what you were doing at all?"
He rests his forehead against Dimitri's. "And you didn't kill me. I think you could have, if you'd wanted to. But you didn't. All you wanted me to do was get out of your way; maybe if I hadn't been pestering you, you'd never have touched me at all. It was just something unfortunate that happened on the battlefield, Dimitri. That's all. I never blamed you. I knew it wasn't you. You, now, who's horrified even thinking about it - this is you. You're not the man who scarred me. You're the man who saved me."
no subject
"But I didn't know that. I didn't know what kind of state you were in, so I came to you when I didn't have to and pushed you for something you probably couldn't even make sense of at the time. It wasn't really my fault, because I couldn't have really known how bad it was without seeing it for myself, and honestly I'd probably have tried regardless even if I had...but it wasn't your fault, either. Nothing that put you in that place was anything you asked for, or even had any real control over. How could I or anyone hold what you were doing against you, when you barely knew what you were doing at all?"
He rests his forehead against Dimitri's. "And you didn't kill me. I think you could have, if you'd wanted to. But you didn't. All you wanted me to do was get out of your way; maybe if I hadn't been pestering you, you'd never have touched me at all. It was just something unfortunate that happened on the battlefield, Dimitri. That's all. I never blamed you. I knew it wasn't you. You, now, who's horrified even thinking about it - this is you. You're not the man who scarred me. You're the man who saved me."