expiationlogs | may catch-all!

Marianne knows. I told her, a few months ago. She took it well.

[ Because she's a kind and forgiving soul, that Marianne. Claude knows how lucky he'd gotten with her. If it had been anyone but her, he knows the reaction would be different, but Marianne has no space for cruelty, no space for judgment in her heart, and he's the lucky beneficiary of that.

But that's not pertinent to the question Ethlyn's asking him now, is it? He sighs, frustrated, running his hand through unruly locks. ]

That's the problem, Ethlyn. I don't think I am hiding anything. Aside from a couple big secrets, what you see is what you get, you know?

[ He's being earnest. He doesn't think he's hiding anything. Not really. But he's been this for so long, he doesn't know how else to be; without his knowledge, the mask had set in so deep that he doesn't know where it ends, and he begins. ]

Ah... I'm glad to hear that.

[Both that she took it well and that he told her after all. She knew that he had been seriously concerned, that the beliefs Marianne grew up with would be too strong for her sense of kindness to overcome. It's a relief to hear that Marianne accepted the truth.

But if he's told his secret to the person who it would really mean something to, what else is left? Ethlyn taps her fingers against the counter, looking around the shop as though inspiration will suddenly strike from bundles of dried herbs and bottles of distilled tinctures.]

I'm at a loss, but it must be something... unless you were lying to me about not testing poisons on yourself?

[It's a jest, meant to lighten the mood.]

Edited 2024-05-22 23:50 (UTC)

Oh, I was lying about that.

[ Claude's eyes widen in utter shock, and he claps one hand over his mouth, his thick brows shooting up with alarming speed. She's going to kill him. She's going to kill him, and then bring him back so that she can kill him again, he just knows it. ]

Ah. [ He sees. He cannot tell a lie. ]

All right, I'm going to go lock myself in my chambers until this is over.

Claude!

[The shock of hearing him admit it so baldly makes her strike the counter with her arm in shock, and she has to scramble to grab a bottle before it topples over. It was a joke. It was supposed to be so ridiculous that of course it wouldn't be the real answer.]

What on earth would possess you to do such a thing?!

[That he is in distress by his sentencing and struggling to unravel it has taken a sudden and very deep back seat.]

You're not allowed to yell at me right now! I'm cursed! It's not a fair fight! [ Claude wails right back at her, hiding his face behind his hands as though that will protect him from his friend's ire. It's just unfair! He can't hide the truth even a little bit!

The curse isn't making him whiny, admittedly. That's all him. ]

It's fine. I control the dosages carefully! I can't very well use something on anyone else if I haven't tested it out on someone first. I've gotten quite the immunity built up over the years. Really, it's a victimless crime.

All right, all right!

[Ethlyn pushes her hands back through her hair, but she doesn't hid her face in her hands like Claude is doing. His explanation does not help. Is he actually planning to go out and poison people? Has she befriended a murderer? The kind and cheerful man who's become a confidante here... what if she as as mistaken in him as she and her brother were mistaken about...

She takes a deep breath in and out, trying to calm herself. One day she'd like it not to be her job to be calm, but that's not today, and it won't be any other day either.]

Please just... tell me you aren't actually plotting to murder anyone.

[Yes, it's unfair. No, she doesn't believe it. But she has to know.]

[ Claude peeks out from behind his hand, looking incredulously at Ethlyn. Does she really have to ask him that question? There's something unfamiliar in the twist of his mouth, the furrow of his brow, expression a little stormy in his inability to adequately cloak his true feelings anymore. ]

We're soldiers, Ethlyn. I've killed people by the dozen before, and so have you.

[ There's no need to be precious about it. On the battlefield or off of it, death is death. ]

Can you really tell me that if you discovered who was behind all of this, that felling them could return the innocent people here from back where they came, you wouldn't welcome their death, be it by blade or bane? [ His shoulders sag. ] But no, I'm not plotting to murder anyone. And no poisonings I've been behind in my life have been fatal. Just uncomfortable enough to remove them from the equation, should they need to be removed.

[ They get absolutely horrifying diarrhea. It's not pretty. ]

[There is something different in confronting an enemy soldier on a battlefield when you both have swords drawn and know the other's intent, and slipping poison into the glass of an unsuspecting victim.]

I... don't know. [She looks off to a sheaf of hanging dried herbs. She would want to know what would happen to her... herself and the other people for whom this world is a second chance at life. For herself only, that would be selfish, but she knows that she isn't the only one.

But that isn't what Claude means. If Travant showed up, she doesn't think she'd even have time to contemplate the options... she would just stab him.] But I understand what you mean.

It isn't that I don't trust you. But I know that my family wasn't mistrustful enough. We knew our enemies but not what they were capable of. [She smiles, a little.] So it's a relief to know that you would send your enemies to me and not a grave.

[She can guess what the poison would cause; MOST POISONS MAKE THINGS HAPPEN AT ONE END OR THE OTHER.]

Edited 2024-06-06 14:40 (UTC)

[ Claude rubs at his forehead. He's not too good to poison people to death. He truly isn't. Not if he felt that was the correct course of action. It is more circumstance than ethics that drive him to poison people to the latrines instead of to an early grave. If he had the ability to poison Edelgard and end the war that way, he would. In a heartbeat.

He likes to think that Ethlyn would understand that, as one noble to another, as one leader to another, as one soldier to another. Why is it that to kill someone at the end of your sword is noble, but to kill someone with a sip of wine is ignoble? He knows there's no good answer for that anyone can tell him beyond it's how things are done. ]

I have no enemies here, [ he says instead. ] None that I wish such harm on, anyhow. But it's important to learn about such things to develop antidotes, too, or to recognize the symptoms when they come. So I prefer to broaden my understanding.

[ He drums his fingers against the counter. ]

I've spent most of my life with people attempting to poison me, you know -- I'm not about to let a silly little thing like an entirely new ecosystem stop me from maintaining some poison resistance.

[ Nobody here is going to try to assassinate him. But it makes him feel better all the same. ]

But I'm skilled at what I do, and I can assure you I'm in no danger, and I'm not in the habit of endangering others, so let that put some of your fears to rest.

All right. [She leans back and sighs.] In fairness to your curse of truth, I have to admit that as a healer, I'm never going to be completely reassured when someone tells me that it's okay for him to poison himself because he's had practice.

[She's sure he believes truly he's in no danger because he can't even tell a white lie right now. But you know what? Accidents happen. Accidents happen with food, never mind poison. Those fears aren't going to be at rest!]

You have done a remarkable job at keeping anyone from even guessing that you've lived the kind of life where you are constantly looking over your shoulder and peering for the wrong herbs in your dinner. Your life sounds more fraught than mine ever was.

[Which she knows is a strange thing to say when hers ended in violence and failure, but at home, she knew she could trust the people there. Now she's coming to understand that Claude may not have had that luxury.]

[ Ethlyn is, he thinks, far more worried about this than the healers back home ever were. Or his parents, for that matter. It's not as though he advertised his activities, but he'd made himself grievously sick enough times that he knew that what he was doing wasn't a secret to those who had to deal with him. If anything, his father had simply given him a long, appraising look and nodded his head at him. Not in blatant approval (rarely in blatant approval; he would have preferred that Claude done away with his enemies by force rather than shore up his own defenses), but in acceptance, in understanding.

More than that, though, he's surprised by what Ethlyn says next. ]

Is it really? [ His brows furrow in surprise. ] I'd considered it something of an -- occupational hazard, for most of us blessed with noble birth. Didn't you have political enemies that wanted to do away with you? Even within your own court, there must have been enough dissent and bids for power for the occasional assassination attempt.

We had enemies, but they weren't in the house with us. Not in Chalphy, anyway... I can't speak for other households. [Certainly when her father had befriended Prince Kurth, trouble had followed. But from the people with them everyday? The servants, the soldiers, young cousin Oifey, they were all trusted implicity. And none of them had ever transgressed in anything more than a normal way that sometimes happens in a big household.] When I married and moved to Leonster, I had to learn to be more careful. With a dangerous enemy on the southern border, we had to have more guards, inside and outside... and take more care with food and drink.

[It had been a bit of a learning curve. And while cloak-and-dagger was not usually the Thracian way, the resentful and desperate citizens there sometimes compromised their principles. Sometimes lords on the southern border did get attacked in the marketplace, sometimes the new maid with the southerly accent slipped something into the wine or made away with the family jewels.]

[ He can't wrap his head around it. In Fodlan and Almyra alike, he had kept his enemies closer than he had his friends, as precious few of them as he'd had. That others would disagree, would rebel, would do everything in their power to foil your plans so they can instead slide into power just seemed like the natural way of being, from the assassination attempts on his own life in Almyra to the mysterious way his late uncle had perished on the road to the quiet resentment of the Alliance, each noble vying for their own interests and scoffing at the young upstart that now led them all... ]

You really trusted them implicitly? [ His brow furrows. Is that how she lived her life? Is that why she can believe so heartily in nobility and dignity the way she can? Because she's been afforded the opportunity? ] That sounds... peaceful. Up until it wasn't, I suppose.

[ For the first time in his life, the thought occurs to Claude: had my parents failed me? Was there another way? A better way? ]

Our households were more -- cutthroat, I suppose. [ He casts his gaze downwards, thumb tracing the grain of the wood. ] Attempts on my life began when I was quite young. I was taught the only way around it was self-sufficiency, that the only person I could truly trust was myself. Which wasn't ultimately wrong, I'm sorry to say, but I did think that this must have been universal among nobles.

[ He'd let his guard down at the Academy. And then what happened? War. War, from the place he'd least expected it, from a classmate that he had a cheerfully antagonistic relationship with, but nothing beyond the merry yanking of pigtails. His grandfather, dead. King Dimitri, executed. The rest of his classmates scattered to the wind, leaving him alone to endlessly debate their sour fathers.

Trust only yourself, his mother had said, pressing a dagger into his hands. And damn her, she'd been right. ]

[...Well. This explains some things. Claude's fascination with poisons and herblore, of course, but other things about him as well. How hard it was to get close to him. Why the first time she ever learned anything of substance about him was when it had been forced into view by the labyrinth.

There has never been a time in his life when he has not been on his guard against something... someone. Enemies he has yet to meet.]

...Which is why you always have your shields up. [Deception...] Always smiling, no matter how you feel? Not the specific thing you kept from your close friends, but the fact that to keep your secrets is so natural to you.

[She'd had a similar conversation with Toph recently--on the subject of vulnuerabilities, and how and why we hide them. That had been in the context of being thirteen. But Claude has had other, far more grave reasons to make that not only a way to cope with becoming an adult, but an absolute way of life.]

I...

[ He hadn't thought of it in that way. To him, the crime of deception had more to do with the big secrets he was keeping. The secret of his birth, his heritage, his true position, his true ambitions, goals, dreams. To watch Ethlyn connect the dots from his larger deceptions to smaller ones feels -- strange. Uncomfortable. He doesn't think he likes it, the thought that his deception is reflexive, unnecessary, obfuscating.

He is himself much of the time, isn't he? He's not hiding things just for the hell of it. But underneath a truth spell as he is, he cannot in good faith claim that he is himself. Not truly. Not even around himself. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, frowning down at the counter between them, pretending as though he doesn't feel a dull ache in the base of his chest just thinking about it. ]

I suppose so. It's just not safe. [ Here he is, in a place where nobody knows him, where nobody knows Fodlan or Almyra or any of the other storied places of his world and still, still, he cannot be himself. There is no reason why he should feel unsafe sharing himself here of all places, but he can't fight that horrible feeling that any given person he meets will be quick to stab him in the back. After an entire year, he can count the people he trusts around here on one hand, while everyone else finds comrades, housemates, confidantes, lovers, mere weeks after their arrival. ]

Where I'm from, [ he says slowly, ] spies are everywhere. You learn that quickly in the courts of Almyra, and you learn it the hard way. You can't even trust your own kin. It's them who send the lion's share of assassins after me. [ He's able to smile at her a little now, humourless, dejected. ] Some even followed me all the way to Fodlan.

[Ethlyn grimaces. She's had her fights with Sigurd, but she couldn't imagine ever hating him enough to want him dead.

But she thinks of Lex, laid-back and light with his words, and eschewing any talk of his relationship with his father and brother. Tailtiu, so glibly professing disinterest in the political machinations that ruled her household, yet remaining with Sigurd when someone truly flippant would have run back to her father's rule for safety.

She can't think that they would have abandoned Sigurd when he pushed back into Grannvale. They might well have been forced to confront their own kin in battle.]

All the way to Fodlan? You would have thought that once you were gone, they wouldn't have considered you a threat anymore. They could just slander you in peace until it was poisonous enough for you to stay away.

[Not that that had worked for Sigurd. He hadn't returned simply to clear his name--his mere presence was a threat to the men who had pinned their own crimes on his family.]

Edited 2024-07-05 18:29 (UTC)

Not at all. As long as I'm alive, I'm a threat to the throne. And they're not wrong to think so, either. I fully intend to prove my worth and lead as the next successor. But it's not as though I'm sending assassins after them, [ Claude says with a roll of his eyes, as though discussing the sort of sibling squabbles that end with ruined clothing and one of them kicked mercilessly in the shins. ]

Either they want to eliminate all threats, or they know me well enough that they realize that no matter how long I stay away, I will always come back.

[ Fodlan is... fine. It's a home. But it's not his home. He will always return. If he falls in battle, he hopes word will come back to Nader, at least, and his bones will be laid where they belong. He smiles. ]

I am my father's favourite. It's smart to take me out while they can.

[What a grim life he leads. Ethlyn has never realized it before. It's a testament to just how good his mask has been for all this time. Even when the labyrinth revealed some of his secrets by force, it had only scratched the surface of his troubles.]

Well. I, for one, am glad that they haven't succeeded, and I sincerely hope that they never do. [She doesn't need a curse of honesty on her to say that.] It's very decent of you not to show them the same treatment as they've been giving you.

[She's teasing his dismissive tone a little, but she also means it. It's a testament to his character.]

They could just try falling in line behind you and making everyone's life easier, but jealous men never seem to do that.

They want conquest, and I want peace. It's really as simple as that. They believe that I only wish for peace with Fodlan because of my heritage, and -- well, they're probably right about that, but I see no reason for senseless bloodshed, no matter who we're up against.

[ In defiance of all Almyran traditions. They are conquerors by nature. It's how they've grown as large and as powerful as they are. Up until his father, that is, who seems to keep up the skirmishes at Fodlan's border as sport rather than true war. He wonders, sometimes, if the people of Leicester realize how few of their men they have sent to the border, how catastrophic it would be for everyone if it were to end in a full-out assault.

It's what would happen underneath Shahid's command. He won't allow it. ]

They'll fall in line eventually. When I'm King, they'll have no choice in the matter, [ he says firmly, and truth spell or no, his belief in himself remains infuriatingly steadfast. ] And don't you worry, Ethlyn -- if they couldn't succeed when I was the size of eight oranges stacked on top of each other, they certainly won't succeed now.

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