Hm. This is a new obstacle. Sylvain hadn't been so resistant to believing what was going on the first time around - neither had Claude himself, for that matter. Of course, as far as that went, Claude had showed up during one of the weird weekends where people's true forms and powers from their own worlds are restored. He'd seen bird people, robots, and at one point a man he assumes was Death floating around with a scythe. There really hadn't been a lot of things he was willing to discount as possible after that.
Besides, just the fact that they're in another world, one so unlike and so much more advanced than Fodlan, speaks to mysterious powers at work that can accomplish the unbelievable with ease. He'd been far more fascinated in exploring this new reality than spending any time denying it.
But then again...he supposes that it's more disturbing to think of forgetting a huge span of time, and entire people, than it is to suddenly find oneself in an unfamiliar place. Sylvain's bound to be more reluctant to accept what Claude is saying, if only out of pure discomfort.
But Claude needs Sylvain to accept the truth; the denial will only hurt people, Sylvain not least of all. And in a way, he welcomes the challenge this places in front of him; thinking of how to approach this, how to convince Sylvain, is a distraction from his tangled emotions. It lets him set them aside in favor of putting his brain to work.
"Well, to start with," he says aloud, "I think you're smart enough to know that I've got no reason to tell you something that crazy unless I believed it myself. I mean, what could I stand to gain from convincing you of such a weird thing unless it was true?" He shrugs. "What's more, you're going to hear the exact same thing from the others, sooner or later - it depends on what priority they put on things. I bet Felix and Dimitri are going to be more concerned with getting to you, and then bringing you back here, before they worry about getting you oriented. If you want to make the argument we're suffering some kind of mass delusion, I guess you could, but the fact remains that you're going to have a lot of people who are pretty sure of what they know. And there's a lot of us for all of us to be wrong."
He sits forward slightly, folding his hands under his chin. "But I can tell you this much - the power that brings us here does a lot of weird things. For one thing...it can pluck people not just from other worlds, but at any point in time it likes. And the time that passes here doesn't matter to the passage of time back home, either. Felix has been here for almost a year - I've seen all of it - but you didn't miss him for a single day back home, did you? The relation of time between here and our world isn't one to one. He hasn't been missing from Fodlan...but he's also been here a year. Dimitri's been here even longer.
"And if you really want to blow your mind...the Dimitri that's here is from a point of time before the battle of Gronder Field. He hadn't...recovered himself before showing up here. And he's needed the year he's been here just to become stable, because it had to happen in a different way here than it happened back in Fodlan. But that's the sort of thing I mean - time really doesn't mean anything in regards to whether or not someone has been here. It doesn't even mean those of us who know each other know when we're from." He sighs. "And in Teach's case...well, they were here for a little bit. Unfortunately they got dragged home a little bit ago, but...while they were here, they weren't the Teach who'd chosen the Blue Lions. They remembered choosing my house - the Golden Deer. For the brief time Lysithea was here, she remembered the same thing. A whole alternate timeline, where things were completely different, and they told me a lot about it."
He fixes his gaze on Sylvain. "And honestly, none of that stuff is even the wildest of the things I've seen here. I know how nuts all this sounds, and I can't imagine how uncomfortable hearing that you could have had a bunch of time here you've forgotten about must be, but the fact is that this kind of thing is a fact of life here. And, well...if you can believe the evidence of your own eyes that you've been whisked away to a whole new world, talking to me on a device that lets us look in each other's eyes and hear each other's voices from half a continent away, while a pony that's actively on fire but not being hurt romps around behind you, but the idea of time and memory acting strangely here is a bridge too far...I mean, that's kind of an arbitrary line to draw. It's all crazy, isn't it?"
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Besides, just the fact that they're in another world, one so unlike and so much more advanced than Fodlan, speaks to mysterious powers at work that can accomplish the unbelievable with ease. He'd been far more fascinated in exploring this new reality than spending any time denying it.
But then again...he supposes that it's more disturbing to think of forgetting a huge span of time, and entire people, than it is to suddenly find oneself in an unfamiliar place. Sylvain's bound to be more reluctant to accept what Claude is saying, if only out of pure discomfort.
But Claude needs Sylvain to accept the truth; the denial will only hurt people, Sylvain not least of all. And in a way, he welcomes the challenge this places in front of him; thinking of how to approach this, how to convince Sylvain, is a distraction from his tangled emotions. It lets him set them aside in favor of putting his brain to work.
"Well, to start with," he says aloud, "I think you're smart enough to know that I've got no reason to tell you something that crazy unless I believed it myself. I mean, what could I stand to gain from convincing you of such a weird thing unless it was true?" He shrugs. "What's more, you're going to hear the exact same thing from the others, sooner or later - it depends on what priority they put on things. I bet Felix and Dimitri are going to be more concerned with getting to you, and then bringing you back here, before they worry about getting you oriented. If you want to make the argument we're suffering some kind of mass delusion, I guess you could, but the fact remains that you're going to have a lot of people who are pretty sure of what they know. And there's a lot of us for all of us to be wrong."
He sits forward slightly, folding his hands under his chin. "But I can tell you this much - the power that brings us here does a lot of weird things. For one thing...it can pluck people not just from other worlds, but at any point in time it likes. And the time that passes here doesn't matter to the passage of time back home, either. Felix has been here for almost a year - I've seen all of it - but you didn't miss him for a single day back home, did you? The relation of time between here and our world isn't one to one. He hasn't been missing from Fodlan...but he's also been here a year. Dimitri's been here even longer.
"And if you really want to blow your mind...the Dimitri that's here is from a point of time before the battle of Gronder Field. He hadn't...recovered himself before showing up here. And he's needed the year he's been here just to become stable, because it had to happen in a different way here than it happened back in Fodlan. But that's the sort of thing I mean - time really doesn't mean anything in regards to whether or not someone has been here. It doesn't even mean those of us who know each other know when we're from." He sighs. "And in Teach's case...well, they were here for a little bit. Unfortunately they got dragged home a little bit ago, but...while they were here, they weren't the Teach who'd chosen the Blue Lions. They remembered choosing my house - the Golden Deer. For the brief time Lysithea was here, she remembered the same thing. A whole alternate timeline, where things were completely different, and they told me a lot about it."
He fixes his gaze on Sylvain. "And honestly, none of that stuff is even the wildest of the things I've seen here. I know how nuts all this sounds, and I can't imagine how uncomfortable hearing that you could have had a bunch of time here you've forgotten about must be, but the fact is that this kind of thing is a fact of life here. And, well...if you can believe the evidence of your own eyes that you've been whisked away to a whole new world, talking to me on a device that lets us look in each other's eyes and hear each other's voices from half a continent away, while a pony that's actively on fire but not being hurt romps around behind you, but the idea of time and memory acting strangely here is a bridge too far...I mean, that's kind of an arbitrary line to draw. It's all crazy, isn't it?"