[ There's hardly enough time for him to raise that eyebrow further than it is before the rest of what she says turns his blood to ice.
Holst finding her someone to marry: it's not a future he wants to picture. It's one he's always known was a possibility, of course, because that's how Fodlan's nobility worked. Or used to, though Claude has to remind himself again that restructuring is the present for him and not for Hilda yet, but maybe it makes no difference at all. There was always, always the chance that he could return to Fodlan at some point and find her married to someone else, but that fact does nothing to unravel the knots his insides have turned into over Hilda apparently believing this is also what will happen. It must be, because there's no entertaining of anything else he'd said anywhere in her response.
But is it because she didn't understand what he meant? Or because she did, but in the same vein as choosing something - it's not what she wants?
That's all I can hope for. He's run into more questions he's afraid to ask. ]
Right.
[ Somehow, he's surprised his voice comes out evenly as it always does and as if he's forgotten how much practice he's put into maintaining a strong wall between what he's feeling versus what he's showing when the former isn't what he wants to reveal. It kicks in by instinct now to save him even as he continues to study her and lets his hand fall away from her hair.
For once, nothing else to say comes to mind. There's half-formed thoughts piled up he could reach for but none of them truly fit, the tone and the sentiments now all wrong as her words continue to echo. The silence draws on for a beat too long before he pastes on a teasing smile to draw her attention away from... any of it, he thinks, even if it ends up being a futile attempt at a provocation to change the mood to something else to match her smile. ]
Are you saying you wouldn't get into a fight with a combat instructor if you thought you were right? I find that hard to believe.
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Holst finding her someone to marry: it's not a future he wants to picture. It's one he's always known was a possibility, of course, because that's how Fodlan's nobility worked. Or used to, though Claude has to remind himself again that restructuring is the present for him and not for Hilda yet, but maybe it makes no difference at all. There was always, always the chance that he could return to Fodlan at some point and find her married to someone else, but that fact does nothing to unravel the knots his insides have turned into over Hilda apparently believing this is also what will happen. It must be, because there's no entertaining of anything else he'd said anywhere in her response.
But is it because she didn't understand what he meant? Or because she did, but in the same vein as choosing something - it's not what she wants?
That's all I can hope for. He's run into more questions he's afraid to ask. ]
Right.
[ Somehow, he's surprised his voice comes out evenly as it always does and as if he's forgotten how much practice he's put into maintaining a strong wall between what he's feeling versus what he's showing when the former isn't what he wants to reveal. It kicks in by instinct now to save him even as he continues to study her and lets his hand fall away from her hair.
For once, nothing else to say comes to mind. There's half-formed thoughts piled up he could reach for but none of them truly fit, the tone and the sentiments now all wrong as her words continue to echo. The silence draws on for a beat too long before he pastes on a teasing smile to draw her attention away from... any of it, he thinks, even if it ends up being a futile attempt at a provocation to change the mood to something else to match her smile. ]
Are you saying you wouldn't get into a fight with a combat instructor if you thought you were right? I find that hard to believe.