[ It's been a strange few days. An understatement so vast Claude thinks it might have several others compounded within it, but there's nothing to do but get through... whatever this is. The dream had started everything when he'd picked up that mirror, and now he avoids his own reflection which shows him every last thing he feared becoming in the war. Things have been different ever since.
There's the unsettling feeling which has been crawling through his skin as if he's being called to do something he doesn't understand. The more he's ignored it, the stronger and more insistent it becomes. Claude's currently trying to relegate it to some corner of his mind as he unlocks the door to the apartment. Maybe one of the books he'd borrowed has something about omens in it. It's quiet inside; Petra and Sylvain must be out somewhere. With a sigh he shuts the door, then realizes he isn't alone after all when he glances into the sitting area where someone stands with their back towards him looking out the window.
As he registers long white hair first, Claude stops in his tracks. There's a moment where he both hopes it is and isn't Lysithea because that would mean she's here, and it'd break his hard-working coping mechanism that at least no one else he knows to that level is in Abraxas. As if this is some burden to shoulder all on his own, is just something he needs to get through like everything else he'd carried throughout the war.
But then the person turns, and violet eyes look back at him, and Claude visibly flinches. It's not Lysithea at all. It's someone more shocking than seeing Petra and Sylvain again had been. More viscerally jarring, because this is someone whose burial he stood by and watched. ]
What are you doing here, Edelgard?
[ His tone is cool, even. Sometimes having such a tight grip on one's emotions comes in handy because that detachment doesn't match the ones roiling inside him to where even Claude can't tell what he feels right now. ]
— petra
There's the unsettling feeling which has been crawling through his skin as if he's being called to do something he doesn't understand. The more he's ignored it, the stronger and more insistent it becomes. Claude's currently trying to relegate it to some corner of his mind as he unlocks the door to the apartment. Maybe one of the books he'd borrowed has something about omens in it. It's quiet inside; Petra and Sylvain must be out somewhere. With a sigh he shuts the door, then realizes he isn't alone after all when he glances into the sitting area where someone stands with their back towards him looking out the window.
As he registers long white hair first, Claude stops in his tracks. There's a moment where he both hopes it is and isn't Lysithea because that would mean she's here, and it'd break his hard-working coping mechanism that at least no one else he knows to that level is in Abraxas. As if this is some burden to shoulder all on his own, is just something he needs to get through like everything else he'd carried throughout the war.
But then the person turns, and violet eyes look back at him, and Claude visibly flinches. It's not Lysithea at all. It's someone more shocking than seeing Petra and Sylvain again had been. More viscerally jarring, because this is someone whose burial he stood by and watched. ]
What are you doing here, Edelgard?
[ His tone is cool, even. Sometimes having such a tight grip on one's emotions comes in handy because that detachment doesn't match the ones roiling inside him to where even Claude can't tell what he feels right now. ]