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Edelgard knew better than to let her guard down around Claude von Riegan.
And yet, it was precisely her preoccupation with him that allowed her to be so easily compromised.
One moment she’d again crossed paths with Claude, necessarily resuming their fraught debate over supply lines and the distribution of their forces as their voices steadily grew in irritation, and in the next Edelgard opened her mouth to find no sound at all forthcoming.
Before her, Claude also gaped, his mouth hanging open uselessly.
Quite audibly, Lorenz cleared his throat from across the common area. As one, they both turned upon him as he stood with a pair of spectators that invariably also drew their notice: Lysithea with a traitorous inkling of an enthralled smile and—more curiously—Yuri Leclerc.
“Please, be neither alarmed nor offended,” Lorenz began gravely. “No harm has actually befallen you. It is merely a Silence spell that I have had Yuri perform at my most urgent behest.”
“For a handsome price, of course,” Yuri clarified and it was clear from his tone that he therefore considered himself entirely absolved from the matter.
“I understand,” Lorenz continued as if he had not been interrupted, “that this is an unconventional, perhaps unseemly, way to handle affairs between our nations. One might go so far as to say that I have taken an action both gauche and unbefitting of a noble of my standing.”
“Okay, you didn’t pay me for this part,” Yuri drawled and just as easily sauntered off.
Lorenz remained willfully undeterred. “But it is precisely because I cannot let our relations reach a breaking point that I must intervene and call for a momentary pause to proceedings. Surely, there is a more diplomatic and productive course that we can entertain than to continually volley such uncouth barbs at one another.”
Edelgard and Claude met each other’s gaze.
“In this moment of shared quietude I suggest we begin by reflecting on the good that has come of your political union so far and all we still stand to gain.” His own silence lasted for but a moment. “Of course I can speak at length as to the advantages for Gloucester territory. But so long as this opportunity has arisen it is only right that I, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, next to assume leadership in Leicester, should also put forth my own greater list of concerns. If you'd only make yourself comfortable, I can call for some tea as I begin with—”
Without conferral, Edelgard and Claude unanimously left him to the sound of his own vexed sputtering.
Outside, they did not go far before they came to a standstill, hapless in their search for Yuri who of course knew better than to leave any trace of himself behind.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Edelgard considered their range of options. To be held hostage by Lorenz and his rhapsodizing or… Who knew Silence and what was their availability to handle this mortifying incident discreetly?
Claude seemed to know what she was thinking, miming sleepiness and a startling impression of Linhardt from just the slackness of his facial features. It only raised the question of when Claude could have made such a study of him.
No, she shook her head, and moreover, Linhardt was unlikely to even be awake.
Claude brought his hands together, fingertips touching and smiling becomingly with a tilt of his head. Something about seeing Claude in such a similar vein to Dorothea made her breath still for a moment in a way she decidedly did not want to examine.
Again, she shook her head.
Claude took more delight than was necessary in scowling, mimicking a cackle as he snapped his fingers. Edelgard’s eyes narrowed. Now he was just deliberating provoking her. And likely Hubert, too, when word of this surely got back to him.
She cut her hand through the air as if to say, Don’t you know the Black Eagles at all when they’re working with you?
Almost smug, he raised his brows. You mean your entire class is useless? the gesture seemed to say.
Wonderful. Now she was imagining entire conversations between them. As if his own actual words weren’t enough to haunt her waking consciousness and even keep her from sleep.
In further ridiculous pantomime she still pointed at him, eyes wide as she swept her hand at the camp meaningfully.
To his apparent credit he took the hint and turned on his heel, gesturing for her to follow. Without hesitation, he made for the camp’s stables where, of course, Marianne was easy to find.
But when Edelgard made to march over to her, Claude rather lightly grasped her by the elbow. Edelgard jolted at the sudden touch, all the more jarring for the sensitivity she felt at that particular point of contact.
It was his turn to shake his head.
She frowned impatiently.
He gestured his head towards Marianne with a feeling she clocked somewhere between sly and fond; more discerningly, Edelgard looked Marianne’s way again.
Warmly, if shyly, Marianne smiled as she stood shoulder to shoulder with Leonie, hands touching unnecessarily as they worked a gentle lather into a bay stallion's coat with a care that was both sensible and entirely indulgent.
By all accounts, the interaction could be nothing else than the obvious prelude to some overtly amorous connection.
Edelgard was not immune to the scene, nor was she villain enough to awkwardly interrupt it, but that did not solve her and Claude's predicament.
Then who, she eyed Claude dryly.
For a moment he stood in place, looking off into the indeterminate distance. Then he sighed inaudibly and walked off.
She might have not followed him. Unconsciously, she still did, past the camp's official boundary where nature began to unfold more freely, unencumbered and unmarred by the tides of her war in a way that called to her with certain rebuke and wistfulness.
Suddenly, Claude tapped his lips and gestured to himself as if waiting for her to catch up in more than just her stride.
You? she wondered doubtfully. Her intel of him did not account for any proclivity for Faith magic.
Though, of course, when did Claude ever fail to surprise in some impossible way?
He turned woefully aggrieved. Yes, me.
Raising her hand to her face, she touched her thumb to her fingertips then soundlessly opened her mouth and hand at once, the better to illustrate her point. Even if he were capable of casting the spell, how was he to reverse its effects when he’d already been Silenced himself?
He only allowed her the satisfaction of one quick, rueful look and roll of his shoulders before he walked on again. Quickening her steps to actually draw level with him, she glared.
His arms splayed wide, carelessly sweeping at the sun’s lowering position. It’ll wear off soon enough, seemed to be his message now. Let’s just outwait it.
Edelgard should not have been so easily appeased. But the breeze was serene beyond the camp and they were still not alone—a passing merchant calling out to them and trying to flag them down—and Edelgard did not need further incentive to escape with him.
With the almost amusing illusion of freedom they wandered between copses, a silence greater than both of them falling. One Edelgard would be loath to break, even if she were capable of speech.
They walked until the camp was only just visible in the distance—the smoke of the forge curling into its own script, the wyverns circling. And then as if pulled taut on a string or leash, they stopped.
Unable to roam further, Edelgard kneeled among the blood red flowers underfoot, trying not to crush them.
Somewhere along their path she and Claude had diverged, giving themselves a wide berth to themselves, but it was still a simple thing for Claude to cross their distance, looking down at her in utter stillness. Almost idly, she watched a butterfly skim the tide of blooms, then rise.
For one perfect moment, it landed on his cheek, and Claude smiled.
It was then that she realized she had not seen that smile of his as of late. Perhaps had not really seen it since their brief time together at the monastery when he’d seemed so jocular. The person he’d been then not the same as the person she now met across a war table.
But war changed everyone, just as it changed everything. In some way, then, she’d changed them all.
And he would say it was for the worse.
Perhaps she needed that reminder to remember herself at all.
Slowly, Claude lowered himself into the grass as well. When she eyed him again, his lips moved in clear but inaudible speech.
Aren’t you tired of all this, Edelgard? she both discerned and imagined, unable to tell if she was only reading him according to her own thoughts.
She gestured at him to repeat himself, but he waved her off in a weary dismissal that grated as much as it disappointed.
So she tried, Every day.
He nodded as if he understood, shaping his words more slowly for her now. And yet we can never just agree on things, can we? she gathered.
No, she said minutely, knowing that at least that singular word could reach him still.
Somehow it was not the one she would have liked to choose.
In lieu of the words they'd sooner say, dissembling or cutting or even heartfelt, they had only to look upon each other.
Just as he was, he knelt. And still she did not know exactly who that was.
The moment could not last. At his lips she stared, waiting for him to say something more. His own eyes slipped to her mouth, perhaps waiting on the same, and Edelgard felt the vestiges of her composure slip through her fingers. Her heart hammered in her chest as the sun began to set, the sky turned to fire.
Claude pulled away first to stand and face it, his look considering, his posture taut. Then at last he raised his arms—his hands cupping around his mouth as he shouted silently at the horizon. His lips moving in a series of words she could never hope to follow or discern and ones he’d never willingly share.
A moment of impulsivity saw Edelgard to her feet as well. Dimly, she registered his surprise and momentary pause, his expression guarded until she shouted with him as if this was some new battle between them. One neither could control she wagered as different strains of emotion roiled through her, from delirious to haunted. As if they could finally cast off those demons or burdens that went unvoiced, always.
Too invested, Edelgard shouted until her body shook—inarticulate and inaudible but somehow freeing from its potency. Shouted until she felt a dampness on her lashes that she fastidiously blinked away.
Until her throat burned tellingly, ready to burst with real sound, something unstoppered within her.
Quickly and without thought, she swallowed it down, fearful of what they’d both hear.
But if the spell had worn off of her, surely it had worn off him as well…
Marginally, she glanced towards him. In the golden light Claude’s head had fallen forward, his braid slipped loose from behind his ear. His eyes gleamed too brightly, his mouth set in a fine line. Claude still saying nothing as the sun all but set.
Edelgard shivered with the foreboding chill of night.
It would soon be an inconvenient walk back, the moon nowhere in sight to illuminate the way, and so they inevitably both turned back towards the camp.
Slow, however—even reluctant—they set their pace, doing themselves the courtesy of at least pretending their silence had not yet ended and to keep this tentative peace between them.
Ahead, Edelgard watched their lengthened shadows move in a parallel that never quite converged. She thought of reaching her hand out, touching his own at least in shadow, then dismissed it as foolish sentimentality.
Of this moment, she knew they would not speak.