abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] the river's overrun

[He nods and lifts his eyebrows — a you know how it is sort of look — conceding "the general calamity" as Claude puts it. There's always something happening to keep them awake at night. But around it, they keep moving as best they can.

While he listens, he keeps petting the wyvern, as she's clearly soaking up the attention. His eyes stay on her too, though he lets Claude know that he's listening with a thoughtful hum.]

I've been...busy.

[Which is his default answer lately. Their little excursion into the future had left him with a lot to think about, a mixed bag of bad and good. The hardest blow, more devastating to him than the coup or the attack on the castle, was losing Kelson when they all woke up from that dream. But he doesn't want to get into any of that, so instead he explains:]

I've got my courier route, and I'm trying to get more business in Borrel now that we're allowed to go there whenever we want. I got a tattoo last Nocwich weekend too, see?

[So that he doesn't have to remove his hands from the very happy wyvern, he flaps his elbow up to give Claude a better view of his bicep. Though, his shirt sleeve hides part of the design inked there.]

[ Busy is a good way of putting it - even before recent events that was the case even if Claude specifically chose to keep himself so with this or that. Partially to keep himself moving in the face of so many changes and something he's heard from a few Summoned after their time as gods. He offers a nod in response to Wilhelm's initial answer, though the following gives him a little bit more information.

Not least of all the outline of the tattoo spotted, and he leans over with a grin to get a better look when the sleeve's flapped out of the way. ]

Hey, very nice! This one, [ with a pause to roll up his right sleeve to his elbow to reveal the tattoo along his inner forearm, ] was my first one since I found it too hard to pass up the glowing ink after seeing some examples of the work there. Strange to think that was a couple years ago now which means I'm probably overdue for another one.

[ Something that's been on his mind every so often, anyway, though he nods to Wilhelm's tattoo again since of course curiosity comes with it. ]

Something you've wanted for a while, if it's not too personal to ask?

[It's like treading water — you have to keep kicking your legs, or you'll sink. The first week back from the crater, back from that shared dream of godhood, had been hard. Wilhelm drifted through the days in a daze. He forgot his old routines, feeling the new holes punched through his heart. Little by little, he got back into the rhythm of his day to day life, and the momentum made it easier to keep going. Even through the abrupt changes that tore through Thorne.

He rolls his sleeve up — sorry, Adelheid — to give Claude a better view when he leans closer. At the question, he shakes his head.]

I just got the idea last month. I realized I'd been here for two years, and...I wanted to celebrate it somehow.

[The permanence of a tattoo appealed to him. He's not particularly religious, but it feels like a prayer to the universe, an entreaty to let him follow through on his decision to make a life in this world. His own life. Wilhelm nods at Claude's tattoo.]

Yours is cool. You like archery?

A good reason. With so much going on around here at any time, or so it feels, being here for this long is worth noting. Especially as you and I both head into our third year here.

[ The last part is said almost as a joke, but there's an undercurrent of tiredness to it, too. Unlike when he'd first arrived and wanted any reason to return home to pick up what he'd been pulled away from, here has slowly crept into being home in a way he couldn't have anticipated then with people who have become dear to him both in Cadens and around Abraxas. Wilhelm included, of course. They'd both had to deal with what the ritual leveled on them and the Pit brought both before and after though he'd prefer to leave that in the past.

Better then to shift his gaze from Wilhelm's tattoo to his own as he runs a thumb over the arrow in thought. ]

You could say that. I had a combat instructor who taught me all sorts of things when I was a kid, but archery's always been something I've been rather good at. Served me well in the war, too. [ A smile crosses his face fleetingly, but it's entirely humorless and without any mirth. It's true, but it's also not the memory he'd had in mind when sitting down with the tattoo artist. ] More than that, archers were on the emblem of the court I grew up in so this was a small nod to home I could have in plain sight.

[Here has become home for him too, more so than the austere palace he'd grown up in, with its portraits of long-dead ancestors staring down at him. When he first arrived, Wilhelm felt more sharply than ever that he didn't belong. Everyone else was more competent, more experienced, more put together than him. And he was just...some dumb kid. He used to worry that Ambrose had gotten it wrong when he summoned him, and he would somehow get in trouble for it.

But he'd found people who cared about him, who saw something in him that he couldn't. He'd found, after so much struggle and strife, a place for himself.

Claude says the war, and Wilhelm thumbs through everything he knows about the man. Had he mentioned a war before? Suddenly, he recalls watching this very monastery burn down here in the Horizon. The stroke of his hand down the wyvern's neck turns thoughtful.]

Would you ever want to go back? I mean...if you had a choice.

[Between here or there.]

I don't know. And that's an honest answer rather than avoiding it, but I'm not sure it's so simple.

[ For all his love of deflections, this isn't one. At one point it'd seemed so clear he would need to return home for what was left behind, and then over time it'd shifted to needing to stay. To keep everyone close, to have what wasn't possible at home due to twists in time - and then the one had happened here, too.

And that in particular has been occupying his thoughts ever since they'd returned as he looks up at Adelheid right before she leans down to huff a pleased breath onto them both. ]

I'd like to see my parents again since it's been almost a decade since I left home and I'd like to see home again, certainly. But what we've got here is important to me and more than I could've ever guessed it'd been after arriving in Cadens and even knowing there'd been Summoned here for far longer, and I'd miss that, dearly. If staying here means we'll really be here for centuries, though. That part I'm not so sure about. [ With a smile Claude reaches up to scratch under Adelheid's chin since she's been waiting expectantly rather than straightening back up. ] What about you, would you stay or go back?

If it were up to me, I'd never go back.

[While Claude's voice wandered contemplatively, Wilhelm's cuts definitively. He'd arrived last year at the conclusion that, even after everything he's been through here, he wanted to stay. His eyes stay fixed on the wyvern, and his hands stay busy too, as he continues:]

I just don't have that much to go back to. [A dead brother. Disappointed parents. Towering expectations. Fake friends. No choices.] I...didn't really like anything about my life.

[His lips thin, and he swallows.]

Maybe I'd go back for a day, as long as I could come back to Thorne afterward. Just to explain things to my parents, and apologize to them.

[Wilhelm doesn't feel guilty anymore for rejecting the role that had been heaved onto his shoulders. He never wanted to be Crown Prince — it wasn't meant for him, or he wasn't meant for it. Even so, he feels that, if nothing else, he owes his mother sorry.

Some part of him, which was always crushed by her disapproval, still hopes that she might be proud of him for the person he's grown into over the course of his time here. Even if it's not what she expected. Even if he's not Erik.]

Edited 2024-08-11 21:20 (UTC)

[ That decisiveness about staying - it's something he's only heard from a few other Summoned when he's had this conversation before. It's enough to get him to pause, not in looking away from Adelheid or outright stopping though the chin scratching slows a bit as he contemplates that.

With more to follow, as it turns out; now Claude does turn just his head to contemplate Wilhelm while the teen presses his lips together. This tells more of a story even if the larger details are beyond his understanding without further explanation. And while there's a few things Wilhelm has told him in more detail in the past, even that's not enough to put a full view of it all together.

He nods contemplatively and lets his hand fall away then to not distract Adelheid any longer. Though there's a huff of air which could equally be a thanks for the attention or gentle rebuke for revoking it, but she instead leans down slowly and gently leans her head on top of Wilhelm's. Now it's Claude's turn to press his lips together to suppress amusement, especially because the last thing he wants is for it to read into the words he's about to say. ]

Apologize for coming back here?

[ Or something else? It feels important to ask that first before any other response. There's a multitude of reasons one might want to leave their home - but not without an apology first. ]

[He nods. His hands have fallen still against the wyvern's scales, and he rests his forehead against her neck.]

For not being able to stay there.

[In Wilhelm's mind, it goes beyond being unwilling to return to his old life — he is incapable of it. To say that it's a matter of survival may sound illogical, when in this world he's struggled so much and brushed against death at least once, but his life has widened around him in his time here too. He can't go back to the claustrophobic confines of royal life, of his mother's expectations. He can't go back to hiding his true self.

There's a pause, because he's never admitted these things out loud, before he quietly adds:]

And for not being the son they wanted.

[Because the perfect son would have stayed to keep playing the charade.]

[ It's the quiet admission which seems to echo loudly in a refrain to what he's lived and what others have told him. How being here is better than what they'd left behind - a chance for something else they might not have had otherwise. He nods slightly whether Wilhelm can see it or not. This time the words to say aren't difficult to find. ]

I won't pretend this isn't easier said than done, but no one should apologize for wanting something besides what they were raised for.

[ It borders on a platitude to leave it there, Claude knows, or simply as though it's reducing it to something so simple rather than something which can be a source of pain which never quite fades. And while he'd uprooted his own in determination and refusal to not let it decide his path, there are many others he knows who grappled with the same and chose something else. Or thought they did since even now there's some unraveling of it also in the space provided here where they couldn't otherwise, and he thinks about that while watching Adelheid shift to tuck herself in more around Wilhelm now that the teen's leaning on her in return. ]

I've told you before, I think, that I left home when I was younger. Saying I was treated unkindly simply for who I am when I was growing up would be an understatement. I suffered, and none of it was anything I deserved. I left my home and traveled to where my mother's from to look for something else. I haven't been home in the better part of a decade, but being away helped even if it had its own difficulties.

I won't pretend that our situations are the same. But what I mean to say is that if here is a place you've made your own, you have nothing to be sorry for about that.

[The wyvern curls around him, and it's nice, like a hug. He resumes stroking her scales, half to return the favor and half to occupy his hands while he sorts through his thoughts. It's easier to say these things to Claude, knowing that he has lived through similar experiences.]

I'm not sorry for wanting a different life than the one I got, and I'm not sorry for trying to make a life I actually like either. But your parents are still your parents, and I'm their only son.

[He has mentioned his brother plenty of times, of course, but until now has never so directly confirmed that he had died. That it was his death that dumped so many more expectations on Wilhelm's shoulders.]

I don't like having to disappoint them. I just...have to choose myself, for once. So I guess I'm sorry that they can't be proud of me. small>[He lets go of a sigh.] But I know that's out of my control.

[ Those words are illuminating. They would be in any context but more so when he thinks of Wilhelm talking about his brother before and knowing this now. The weight of expectations is something he's shouldered himself, but it's also been ones put there by himself. They'd been a constant drive to keep moving forward, to keep reaching for what he wanted as motivation rather than a hindrance.

The latter being what so many of his friends encountered in their own paths as he'd observed. Ignatz and his wish to be a painter while his parents insisted on knighthood, Marianne believing she was a burden for so long - even Lorenz with his staunch desire to uphold nobility as it was when it was all he'd ever known. None of which quite match what Wilhelm tells him, he's sure, though he hums in response while thinking about them and who's standing here in front of him. ]

I can't imagine that makes it something any easier to carry even if they're so far away from us here when distance can make it even more complicated. You weren't so close then, it sounds like?

[ If Wilhelm wants to talk about this any further, that is, and Claude's careful in asking it so as to not be careless. The loss of a sibling isn't one he's experienced - not outside of there never being a relationship in the first place - and what that means is always different for those who have, and further complicated with what Wilhelm's mentioned about his own brother who he held in high esteem from the sound of it. ]

[He turns his face toward Claude, while staying in the curve of the wyvern's neck where he's still comfortable.]

With my parents? No, not really... I know I should be grateful for everything they did for me. I mean, they gave me food and clothes, and a safe home to live in. Anything I wanted, as long as it could be bought. But...

[There are things that cannot be bought, even with unlimited money. All he really wanted was for his parents to listen to him, to see him as more than just a duty to be fulfilled, a vessel for their own ambitions. He grew up understanding love as a cool, distant thing tied up in obligation, but he craved something warm and full and unbound.]

You understand, right? You left home because you thought there should be more.

[ That unfinished sentence gets a brief wry smile of understanding from him. There's what can be provided, what should be provided, and then there's what might be needed beyond that as Wilhelm's pointed out. The same sentiment in other words that'd set his mind about leaving, and Claude nods slowly in response to the rest. ]

I do, and I did. I thought there had to be somewhere that'd have what I was looking for that I didn't find at home. Fodlan wasn't it either as it turned out since it was the same as what I left behind and from the start I didn't plan to stay after what I hoped to accomplish. But if history had to repeat itself and I knew what I know now before going, I'd still choose to go.

[ For all the disappointment of finding what Fodlan and Almyra shared in common, for all the stress of dealing with nobles, and for everything else - it was worth it, in its own way. A bit of distance provided by Abraxas made that clearer to see than when he'd been finishing preparations to leave.

The smile he offers Wilhelm next is softer now thanks to that shared sentiment of wanting something more than what they'd had. ]

All the more reason I'd tell anyone else to do the same. Everyone deserves a chance to find out what it is they want for themselves outside of anything else.

[ OPEN ] the river's overrun

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so sorry for the delay!!