[ The walk is an easy one when it comes to filling that silence. It's the sort of thing Claude's used to doing with varying levels of deftness - yet another politician's skill he's put to use in any number of situations where it's called for rather than letting silence do the talking. This, at least, also comes with someone who he again considers far, far closer to a friend than those adversaries in Fodlan.
Perhaps it's fitting that's on his mind when Geralt finally voices something which snaps that earlier partial conversation into focus. A smile flickers over Claude's face, there and gone in an instant as he gestures for Geralt to walk through those doors first before he falls back into step at his side again. ]
You could certainly say that. And if you wanted to add that the storms I prefer to be caught in are the ones I've either created or can steer to be something better, you wouldn't be wrong.
[ Perhaps it illuminates something, or perhaps it offers nothing at all in that it sounds so close to platitudes regarding war. But war certainly isn't something Claude wishes to repeat when there are other ways to reach for first, and it's certainly not the first place he learned to hone all those tactics that'd made him an opponent not to be underestimated when it'd come to Fodlan's strife. In his own time, at least, and with enough to secure what he'd wanted in those other timelines from the sound of it.
But - it's something beyond just that Geralt's also more than earned the right to know before they touch upon anything here in the present. ]
Where I grew up - I was thought of as an outsider of sorts, and I learned to fight my own battles. But that alone wasn't enough to do what I wanted to change things, and so I left in search of a way to make that happen. Fodlan's war wasn't exactly what I had in mind for it since I would've preferred to work towards what became the same outcome in the end through other methods even if they would've been far slower.
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Perhaps it's fitting that's on his mind when Geralt finally voices something which snaps that earlier partial conversation into focus. A smile flickers over Claude's face, there and gone in an instant as he gestures for Geralt to walk through those doors first before he falls back into step at his side again. ]
You could certainly say that. And if you wanted to add that the storms I prefer to be caught in are the ones I've either created or can steer to be something better, you wouldn't be wrong.
[ Perhaps it illuminates something, or perhaps it offers nothing at all in that it sounds so close to platitudes regarding war. But war certainly isn't something Claude wishes to repeat when there are other ways to reach for first, and it's certainly not the first place he learned to hone all those tactics that'd made him an opponent not to be underestimated when it'd come to Fodlan's strife. In his own time, at least, and with enough to secure what he'd wanted in those other timelines from the sound of it.
But - it's something beyond just that Geralt's also more than earned the right to know before they touch upon anything here in the present. ]
Where I grew up - I was thought of as an outsider of sorts, and I learned to fight my own battles. But that alone wasn't enough to do what I wanted to change things, and so I left in search of a way to make that happen. Fodlan's war wasn't exactly what I had in mind for it since I would've preferred to work towards what became the same outcome in the end through other methods even if they would've been far slower.