may catch-all!

[feintofhart]

Who: Claude & Various
Where: Around Aldrip!
What: Claude and his encounters around town... again!!
Warnings: None anticipated! If you'd like to hop in on a log, however, please feel free to PM/DM me or hit me up on plurk (here!), and I'd be happy to whip up a starter for you, or you can just wildcard me in here! I've got my plotting comment here for the month if you want to take a peek -- Claude will the usual man about town, working at his apothecary, training, hunting, etc. etc., but with the twist that his sentencing honesty curse is taking hold.

Comments

[feintofhart]

[ 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.

[baldrshand]

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.]

[feintofhart]

[ 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. ]

[baldrshand]

[...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.]

[feintofhart]

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.

[baldrshand]

[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.]

[feintofhart]

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.

[baldrshand]

[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.

[feintofhart]

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.