victory_road | Arrival; [Video]

Entry tags:

Arrival; [Video]

The gear's feed flickers in to a rather disheveled looking redhead that clearly doesn't want to be doing this. Because goddess and all the saints, he does not want to be doing this. Asking for help is already a task. Asking for help within a brand new world he cannot even begin to comprehend? Nightmare scenario. He's clearly lost and disoriented, and there's music and a fire pony following him around. Really, the only good thing is the fire pony- ponyta- whatever.

"Okay, don't know what this is, where this is going, or who's on the other end, but I can read instructions well enough to get to this point. Hi, Sylvain here, no clue where I am besides a very unhelpful 'New Bark Town' sign a few paces back, and I found a horse on fire. A baby horse, err, or maybe a pony. So... help? Maybe? I'm not even sure what I'm asking here."

And the apparent cause of how much of a mess his red locks are becomes obvious as he sweeps a hand through it again like a nervous tick. Behind him, the camera is panned just enough for a ponyta to be seen running obviously bored laps back and forth. They're pretty clearly at the edge of town, the buildings of New Bark still somewhat visible. Sylvain didn't make it very far...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For the most part, Sylvain has been assailed by the other Lions, which is a fine comfort. So Claude is a face he doesn't immediately expect. However, his smile doesn't wane upon seeing him. There is a distinct fondness in the way Sylvain flashes him a charming grin.

"Hey, not who I expected, but I'm not complaining. I'd say I'm shocked considering I watched you ship off from Derdriu, but I'm starting to get the feeling anything can happen at this point."

Sylvain sobers up some at the mention of the child, and nods. Some things aren't adding up, it's true. Sylvain's had a sinking suspicion there is missing information in the story, but he's been preoccupied with getting his hands on just about anything to parse the absent stuff.

"It's better that I know. Being in the dark doesn't do me any good... I'm listening."

The fondness is...nice. It helps take a lot of the sting Claude had been fearing out of talking to Sylvain again. Of course a Sylvain who doesn't remember their relationship or has any of the same feelings from it won't look at Claude the same way, but...well, this is better than how he and Sylvain had started off last time, when he'd looked at Claude with the bitter wariness of five years of brutal war and no alliance between Faerghus and Leicester at all. And that makes sense, if this Sylvain remembers Claude's departure from Derdriu. (It's a real stroke of luck for him to mention something like that, without Claude's even having to ask; it lets him fix Sylvain in time, know what he knows.) There's less work to do here than there could be, and Claude takes a moment to acknowledge that and be properly grateful for it.

Things could be a lot better...but they could be a lot worse, too.

And just seeing Sylvain's smile again, getting to look into his eyes - Claude might be hurting, but there's some healing to be had there, too. How long has he been missing those things? Nearly half a year by now. No matter what the circumstances, to have the chance to see Sylvain again at all means a lot.

He smiles back at Sylvain, doing his best to school his expression so it's not...well, more than it should be. Not too soft, not too emotional, not too happy. There's a whole lot of questions that could raise, and Sylvain's going to need enough answered already. Those ones can wait. "Trust me, if all it takes to shock you is for me to be here alongside those of you from the Kingdom, you're setting that bar way too low. This place has more surprises than Garreg Mach had strays."

He sighs, sitting back a little. "In fact, that kind of ties in with what I wanted to tell you - well, more like need to tell you. That kid that's talking to you now...their name is Chip. And the reason they're acting like they know you is because, well...they did. You've been here with us before. This place can do funny things to people and their memories...especially if they come here, get sent home again, and then come back. It happened with Dedue awhile back...and it happened with you.

"It's a pretty big piece of news to have to drop on you right after you've showed up in a strange world you've never seen before that's nothing like Fodlan, and you're already having to deal with all that, but - well, you're right. It's better that you know. I'd still try to break it to you more slowly, except, well...with Chip not realizing you've forgotten, you're already running head-first into the confusion this whole situation's going to cause, right? It's only fair you know where that's coming from."

And Garreg Mach had a lot of strays. Sylvain considers that fact, and lets out a resigned sigh. He should have known nothing could ever be so simple. As if being dropped into an alternate world was simple, but still. There's more behind it. He doesn't even need Claude to get to a proper explanation before he fully expects to be solidly confused.

What he doesn't expect is: this isn't the first time.

But that's not right. It's impossible. Sylvain's been in a grueling war for almost six years. There's not a day he can't recall. Sure, not perfectly, not with any startling clarity. But he can look at a calendar, and account for each day or block of considerable time. The two months he had to deal with Sreng raiders testing the weakened Kingdom's borders. Dimitri's 'execution.' Cornelia's demands of the Eastern Lords' surrender. The massacre over the Fraldarius border. The march across the Alliance. Taking the Great Bridge. The reunion. Enbarr. Everything.

He's never been here. He's never been here.

"You're wrong." Sylvain is not usually a stubborn man. He's always followed the flow of things like social winds and currents. But something in him refuses this time. Because the implications of forgetting this. Forgetting people. People he should know, is something that makes his whole body want to curl up and hide from.

"I- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have- ugh, I don't know. I can't believe that though. How could I be here, forget, and somehow not know it? I was fighting a war. I couldn't have just left it, forgotten, and somehow appeared there, then back here again. I would know it."

Sylvain runs a hand through his hair, focusing on feeling of the curls between his fingers to focus on something tangible.

"Look, I obviously don't know much. And you've always been the kind of guy to be a step ahead. But this- I don't know." He hates that the more he thinks about it, the more he starts to doubt himself.

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?"

"It's not that," he starts, as if he's trying to defend himself. It's true though. It isn't the fantastical and awesome nature of the world around them or how they got there. It has nothing to do with beings and timelines, magical creatures or technology. Instead, it has everything to do with something Sylvain has done: he's forgotten people. Left them behind. Abandoned them.

That's what hurts to believe.

"I watched my literal nightmare come to life; I watched the monster I always knew my brother to be crawl out of his corpse and try to murder me again. I've seen the professor cleave open a hole in the fabric of our world with the cut of a blade. I've seen giant mechanical monsters terrorize people in the streets of my homeland. So this? This world? That's not what I can't believe.

"Because through all of that, I never left anyone behind. I just... how am I supposed to accept that about myself? Fine, you're probably right. In fact, I'm sure you are because like you said, you have no reason to lie to me. But that doesn't mean I can just accept it. There has to be a mistake somewhere in this story you're telling me. Something that doesn't add up. I wouldn't abandon my friends, I wouldn't forget them. I just wouldn't. You may know this world, but I know me."

Sylvain grits his teeth, eyes cast to the side. The more he argues this, the more he feels like he's losing. Not that even thinks Claude is trying to win. After all, what's the prize? Humiliating Sylvain? Demonizing him for things he can't even recall? He doesn't think Claude's that kind of person, and Sylvain can very well do all that on his own. No need for assistance. So why? Why?

It's a long moment of nothing but his breathing growing harsh and his heart aches from the way it races. And then he sighs, and lets it go with defeat written plain as day in the downward slope of his shoulders, and the almost lifeless expression of his lips drawn into a thin line.

"I'm sorry, Claude. I really did forget everyone, didn't I? And I can't even recall enough for any apology to seem genuine. But I truly am sorry."

"Hey," Claude says, more gently now, a slight frown on his face, lifting his head off his folded hands. "There's nothing off about the story, but there's plenty off about what you're getting from it. That's the part that isn't adding up - you've made a mistake in the equation."

He sits up a little straighter, fixing the screen with a look both more somber and gentler than Sylvain is probably used to. (It's not often Claude calls upon the sternness of a king, but it's also not often that he's serious enough about something - especially with Sylvain, or at least a Sylvain who isn't familiar with him yet - for his compassion to shine through.)

"You didn't leave anyone behind. You certainly didn't abandon anybody. You were taken away, and you'd never have chosen to be. Everyone who knew you knew that. You might as well say that Glenn abandoned Felix when he died, if we're calling tragic circumstances beyond a person's control abandonment now. And Felix would punch you for it." There's the tiniest flicker of a tug at the corner of one of Claude's lips; even at his most serious, there's a touch of humor.

"You got whisked away without warning, Sylvain. And your memory loss was the same way. I never thought I'd be using a lack of control over those things as a way to comfort somebody, but accepting those things as facts is frankly a lot kinder than what you seem to be thinking - that leaving and forgetting were your fault, things that any of us would resent you for or that you've got to make up for now that you're back. None of that's true. It'd be a lie to say that we weren't upset to lose you, or that we haven't missed you, but those are issues for us to take to the management - not to you. You, we're just happy to have back again. And if you want to help make up for the pain caused by your being gone - whether it's your fault or not - the best thing you can do is to just be the most Sylvain you've ever been, because that's what we've missed."

Claude pauses, then his lips do quirk in a wry grin. "Actually, considering that kicking yourself for something that's not at all your fault and generally beating yourself up for no good reason are very Sylvain things, maybe I shouldn't be telling you to double down on that. I mean it - you've got nothing to make up for, and none of us have blamed you for a minute. Not even Felix, and considering how angry he gets when he's upset, that's saying a lot. So...just focus on being here for people, not apologizing for things that aren't your fault. That's all anybody who's missed you could want - and I know that if there's anything more important to you than punishing yourself, it's that. Taking care of the people who matter most to you."

He's missed a step somewhere. Or maybe the formula is off altogether. Sylvain thinks of it this way, hoping to keep the gloom he feels deep in his heart from tainting the math again. Sometimes it's easier to put things safely into numbers where his feelings can't get their claws hooked in. It's not always his go to, and it's a hard decision to make given he's used to simply accepting blame, but he tries.

So he listens a little more sharply, a little more surely, to Claude this time. It's all the same numbers, but this time, it feels less like an accusation, a verdict of guilt. A different outcome. In the back of his thoughts, Sylvain wonders still, but he pushes it back down. Just for now, he needs to be stronger than mire he usually sinks into. He's been gone long enough to hurt people. What good is he to them if he's lost to his guilt?

He can make up for it. He can be present. Not stuck in his own head about it. That's better. There's purpose there; he's making his friends feel better by not scourging himself. It means more to him than anything he could ever hope to afford to his own wellbeing.

"Fe would punch me, wouldn't he?" Sylvain mumbles, mostly to himself though not outside the realm of hearing through the gear. Then he draws in a deep breath, holds it, and exhales to help steady the thunderous pace of his heart and thoughts.

"I'll try," he mumbles again, but turns his gaze up to finally look at Claude properly again. More firmly, he nods and says, "I'll try."

"Good," Claude replies, with a smile. "And we'll take care of you, since we know from experience that you're kind of terrible at doing that yourself. But so long as we're all looking out for each other, it all balances out in the end anyway, right?"

He rests his chin on one hand. "I don't know exactly what to say now, though. Obviously it'd be best to fill you in, but...it'd be easy for you to get overwhelmed by trying to take in too much too fast, and that's not going to help you or anyone else. Also, maybe it's better if you get filled in on things by the people who made those memories with you, rather than getting them from me secondhand...or, at the very least, it might be better to hear that kind of stuff in person. But that's a whole lot of stuff to set aside, and I don't know what to talk about instead."

The redhead looks as though he's about to protest, then abruptly shuts his mouth. No, Claude's right. He is terrible at taking care of himself, and always has been. He's just in a place of being defensive right now with some much information coming at him. So he lets out an exhausted sigh, and simply nods.

"I think I'm already at my limit for today's quota of: 'life just has to get weirder, doesn't it?'" Sylvain scrubs a hand through his hair, making even more of a mess of it. Seriously, today has been A Lot.

"Don't worry about it. You've been a saint already by giving me a heads up before I stumbled my way into a mess. I probably owe you half dozen favors already and I just got here. So I think maybe I'll just try to process everything for now. Felix will probably be here soon anyway. It'll give me some time to sort stuff out... Thanks, Claude. Seriously."

"There's enough of that here to last a lifetime, and you haven't even been hit with the worst of it yet," Claude says with a chuckle. "Hopefully it'll be awhile before you are. So instead of adding further complexities and complications for you, how about I remove one? When people show up here, they lose any special powers from their world - which is to say, none of our Crests are working, not that you've likely had any opportunity to observe that. Not a big deal for most of us, considering how peaceful this world generally is, although it means a lot to Dimitri. He doesn't really break things by accident anymore."

He smiles a little, but there's something a touch more serious in his eyes. Clearly, Claude knows at least something of Sylvain's feelings about Crests, and is speaking to them now. "In this world, 99% of the time, Crests may as well not exist. The other 1% is that occasionally - every six months or so - a strange weekend happens where people get their powers from home back for a few days. But for the rest of the time...Crests don't matter. And there are people here from worlds that don't have Crests at all - the vast majority of them, actually. If you ever wanted to live a life without a Crest, or without people treating you differently for having one...this is the place to do it."

That said, though, he waves a hand. "In the meantime, as for favors owed...you're kidding me, right? I thought you said you remembered Derdriu, but I know I for one haven't forgotten. Without you and the others, I'd be dead now. Not only is a heads-up about vital information just about the least I can do in light of that, but I don't think it even comes close to paying back my debt. And that's setting aside the fact that we're friends, and friends wouldn't do less than this for each other either, right? No matter how you look at it, this is no more than you deserve from me."

Calling Sylvain a friend comes so easily to his lips. Barely a pang of pain, now that he's warmed to the more distant role he's playing - and, perhaps, just being able to see and talk to Sylvain is healing enough on its own that the ache of what's still lost isn't nearly as sharp. (To say nothing of his own natural resilience to emotional punishment - he's bounced back from a lot of brutal blows to the psyche in his life.) It's something of a relief. He's hitting his stride; he can function like this just fine. More than function, even; if this is how it has to be, he can live with it. Maybe indefinitely.

At least, that's how it feels now. He wonders if he'll feel the same when he sees Felix and Sylvain together again. But that's a problem for future Claude, and Claude's always let that guy look after himself.

"If you ever wanted to live a life without a Crest, or without people treating you differently for having one- Ah, so always. Sylvain does visibly tense for a moment, brows upturned in an expression that isn't quite readable. Not for a lack of emotion, but for too many all once that he's parsing through. A cynical thought strikes him hard with 'too little, too late.' The damage is extensive, a crackling network of shards that embed into his everyday thoughts. Usually with malevolence or self-loathing. Thoughts of how even to his dying breath, Miklan still cursed and spat his name with hatred. All for that damned crest Sylvain never wanted-

But there's always that stronger part of him that wants better for everyone around him. So hearing that Dimitri has taken well to it pulls him from that downward spiral. After a moment, he even smiles fondly. A laugh catches itself in his throat.

"Heh, the big guy must be thrilled. He always looked so sullen every time he'd shatter a teacup or snap a lance in two." Sylvain nods, and takes the news in proper stride. No crests. No expectations. No two-faced pandering from people he'd rather never speak to. That's nice.

"I can't say I'm complaining either. You won't hear any arguments from me on that one." His smile broadens, and he relaxes his shoulders. It's a pretty big comfort amidst the chaos.

"I don't consider Derdiu a debt or a favor. We did what any decent person should do; we helped someone in need. Besides that even, we're knights, it's pretty much our job description to help. Regardless, even if for some reason that wasn't enough, yeah, you're my friend. I'd have done everything to convince Dimitri in the unlikely scenario we hadn't immediately decided to march back to the Alliance. Abandoning you wasn't an option in my book."

Sylvain mirrors the handwave gesture, a more sure smile taking over his expression.

"So I guess what I'm saying is neither of us have a debt of anything. I'm just glad you're back to being my news source again. I did kinda miss that from our Academy days."

"News source, huh?" Claude grins. "That sounds so much more charitable than 'nosy gossip'." Which, admittedly, wasn't too true of Claude back at the academy. Nosy, yes, no one in Fodlan or anywhere else Claude has traveled can beat Claude for curiosity and sticking his nose into places it doesn't belong. But gossip...not so much. For one thing, he'd never been the one to give away something someone else kept secret to others - as a guy with a lot of his own secrets to keep, spreading other people's secrets for them had always felt too nasty for him to do(and too tempting for karma to lash back at him for). Admittedly, there had also been a practical element to that; knowing secrets that others didn't know gave him a huge advantage, was another valuable card in his hand. Giving up strategic advantages for free certainly isn't his style.

What he had done was keep tabs on the rumor mill - and, often, found out the truth behind the rumors, thanks to his constant prying. He'd defused more rumors than he'd ever actually started. And open secrets that other people were already talking about, that Claude personally didn't have any power over...well, discussing those doesn't incur any kind of personal responsibility. Some things are just academy life with teenagers.

"There's a lot of things I miss from our academy days," he says, with a lightness he doesn't actually feel. Sylvain can probably see right through it to the genuine wistfulness and regret, and Claude knows that; the veneer isn't really meant to be fooling him. Rather, it's deliberately leaving a door shut. Sylvain can see the door, and open it if he so chooses, but if not, both of them can walk right by without having to deal with what's in the room beyond.

"Anyway," he says, continuing for the moment, "whether or not there's any actual debt, I'm not going to stop being grateful anytime soon. I wouldn't have asked you guys for help if I didn't think the plan had a decent chance of success, but it was still a gamble I wasn't sure I'd win."

"There's a lot of things I miss from our academy days." Yes, there's a lot to miss when the proceeding events are war and death at every corner, snapping at your heels if you slip up. Mostly, Sylvain misses the peace, no matter how false it was. Other things too, like being further from his father's grasp, like finding friends with new perspectives; friends like Claude. It's hard not to notice when there's a feeling mirrored right back. He doesn't want to be dour about the whole thing though. Going back is impossible, no matter how much he misses it. At least they both got of everything out alive.

"Heh, your words, not mine. I like to think we both knew just enough to get into as much trouble as we could reasonably get out of. It was a good time, or at least, I enjoyed the antics." Mostly. Despite the low point he'd been at then, not everything was at rock bottom.

"Truth be told, I was worried we wouldn't make it in time either. That was probably the hardest march we could have made. I'd say it was a lucky gamble, but you never cared much for luck, did you?"

"I mean, luck never hurts," Claude says with a chuckle. "But I'm a firm believer in making your own luck, by stacking the deck as much in your favor as you can. After all, with the right schemes and preparations, who needs luck?

"But at the same time...there's only so far your own efforts can take you. And after that, well...that's when you're in luck's hands. And I'll admit, I think my gamble at Derdriu had a larger element of luck to it than I'm usually comfortable with. But it was the only play that I could've made that had a chance of victory at that point, so I went with it."

Sylvain thinks stacking things in your favor is a matter of preparation and skill more than anything, but that's semantics. He gets what Claude means. There's only so much one could in such a situation.

"That's true enough, I'd never think to spurn Lady Luck. Regardless, I'm glad for the outcome. Seeing you alive and well is a relief. More than that, really." After so much death, getting to save someone was a welcomed difference.

"More than that, huh?" Claude grins, even as he tries to shove his heart in a box and hold down the lid. Do not read into that, he tells himself firmly. It likely doesn't mean anything, knowing Sylvain - and even if it does, then it likely doesn't mean what Claude wants it to mean. He'd be an idiot to get his hopes up for anything this soon, over something that casual. "Trying to put the moves on me already, Gautier, or was that a rare case of an entirely innocent comment from you?"

"Me? Not innocent?" His lips curl into such a coy grin, voice dipping with faux hurt. "You wound me. I'm the very beacon of it. I'd never."

Except he snorts at how ridiculous he sounds even to himself, and sends a wink Claude's way. The game he thinks they're playing is a shallow one, surface-level teasing at its finest. Not for any lack of attraction- Claude's an incredible catch- but because Sylvain has no idea things once ran deeper. Or that they even could.

"I notice you worded that in a way that could be interpreted as your being a beacon of uninnocence," Claude says with a grin. "Which I don't think was an accident at all."

He folds his arms behind his head - a habit he and Sylvain both share. "That's fine by me, though. Innocence would look weird on you. And I prefer your wicked side. Someone innocent like Ashe could never keep up with me - and even if they could, they wouldn't be half as fun."

He knows this is a bad idea, but he can't stop himself. He's missed exchanges like this. No matter how many people he's dating, there are things he gets from each of them that he can't get anywhere else - and this flirting, this banter, has always come only from Sylvain.

He really needs to rein it in before he gets himself in trouble, though. So he tries to gently deflect. "But c'mon, I can't be your first choice for flirting now that you've ended up here. Or am I flattering myself thinking you haven't already flirted with other people before this, even as freshly arrived as you are?"

Sylvain's grin in unmistakably amused. It's plenty fun to dance around the naïve, make them wonder and blush. But there's a whole other side of fun where he's matched beat for beat.

"I've never worn innocence, and I don't plan to. You got me," he teases. "And hey, you could be. But-" A coy glance off to the side, as if he's debating something, but it's clearly just to play up the act. "It is me we're talking about, so of course I've been properly flirting. Felix and Dimitri as my first recipients." Not victims, he swears. "Oh, and Annie. But only because they were so quick. And easy to ruffle."

Edited 2022-02-22 07:46 (UTC)

"Of course." Claude grins back. "I could hardly expect to beat your fellow Lions to the punch, right? Or in your interests~. Better watch any flirting with Annette, though. Felix might kill you out of jealousy." Out of jealousy over which redhead? Claude deliberately does not specify. Then, just to make sure Sylvain doesn't place too much weight on that comment - what if he doesn't know he and Felix are an item yet? - Claude continues, making it a joke and building in a distraction for good measure. "I've learned in this world that you don't want to mess with avid fans of musicians. Did you know we got mistaken for some musical celebrities once? For a whole month? Their fans chased us around constantly. Felix was fuming."

"I'm always gentle with Annette," he promises. For him, anyway, he is. A few compliments doesn't hurt anybody, right? He also doesn't seem to be worried about apparent jealousy either. Sylvain's been aware of the way Felix seems to be kinder and more patient with Annette. Maybe there's even a little crushing going on. He hasn't ever nettled the exact answer out of Felix, but he has gotten amusing and annoyed retorts to it. Equally entertaining for the redhead.

"Heh, is that so? I'd imagine he was. Did you at least get the adoration of some beautiful girls out of it?"

"I know you are," Claude says with a chuckle. It's not like Claude himself doesn't have a vested interest in Annette, and he'd definitely kept a weather eye on Sylvain around her - but Sylvain had treated her more like a little sister than a romantic interest, even from Claude's limited observations. It had been gratifying to see.

"Adoration, hell." Claude laughs. "They stalked us. Shrieks of delight when they saw us. It was less enjoyable than you'd think, though - a lot of them were about the same ages we were at the academy." He pauses, then grins. "Well, that some of us were at the academy, old man. The point is, they skewed pretty young."

Actually...he's not sure how much age might dissuade Sylvain. He'd been several years older than some of the girls he'd dated at the academy, given that Sylvain had been several years older than most of them at the academy...and, between Claude's tastes never running much towards women of any age, and Faerghus having some pretty strange customs, Claude's really not sure where the line of acceptability is for Sylvain, or for men of Faerghus in general. It hasn't exactly come up much with most of the men of Faerghus he knows.

There's few boundaries Sylvain isn't willing to cross, unfortunately. He doesn't ultimately seem dissuaded by the age comment, but doesn't jump at it either. Considering his own personal experiences, Sylvain has a terrible perspective on the whole thing.

"Can't be helped. If a pretty girl wants you, she wants you." He says it with a flippant sort of half-shrug as if that's merely the day-to-day sort of thing. Which, to be fair, it kind of was for him for awhile.

"Younger me might have actually loved that." 'Loved' being code for despised, and lashing out about it in an emotionally manipulative way. But hey, he didn't say it out loud at least.

"Well, they didn't exactly want us in any case," Claude says, with an enigmatic smile and a shrug of his own. "They wanted the people they kept mistaking us for. And I can't see a Sylvain of any age feeling great about anyone wanting him for anything other than himself."

Ah, he's betraying perhaps too much familiarity with Sylvain's issues here. But then again, not only would it be dishonest to pretend Sylvain is pulling the wool over his eyes with a comment like that, it'd be unflattering. Claude is rarely willing to pretend to be - or be perceived as - less intelligent than he actually is unless it's for an exceptionally good reason. He especially doesn't like the thought of Sylvain thinking Claude is less astute than he actually is. Sylvain's opinion of him matters more than most.

Sylvain feels the tightness in his shoulders just in time to stop himself from freezing up. Ah- hm. That's an interesting thing for someone to say about him. But from Claude, it's telling.

It's not that he's ever had any pretense about fooling somebody like Claude. Or that he's even committed to trying. He simply exists around him as he would, and unlike most people, Claude sees through it. Sylvain's figured it wouldn't be hard to sniff him out if anyone ever bothered to try, but sometimes it still does catch him off-guard when it happens.

There's nothing that hints at anything wrong when he smirks to such a comment. Because there isn't, really. He doesn't think Claude would ever do something malicious with such perception.

"I guess you're not wrong. What I should say instead is younger me would have played it off better. Guess I'm getting rusty in my, as you said, old age." And he winks for good measure.

(no subject)

vrdantwind - 2022-03-24 02:36 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arrival; [Video]

Re: Network, of course it's private, who do you think this is

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)