Chapter Text
Inspired by Hanahaki Claude by @smallestbrown!
There are flower petals on his sheets when he wakes up the morning after the disastrous ceremony in the Holy Tomb.
Claude is confused by them: he likes flowers well enough but he doesn’t keep any in his quarters. He always forgets to water them and anyway, he likes them better when they’re growing and not stuck in some vase. So he stares at the few petals that are resting on his pillow and wonders where they came from—and then the cathedral’s bells ring and he scrambles out of bed to get dressed. They’re soon forgotten as he joins the Golden Deer house in preparing Garreg Mach for battle.
The day is long and frustrating, and he isn’t feeling quite himself, but he chalks that up to the sudden stress they’re all under. Besides, he can’t afford to get sick now; Teach needs him, and so do the rest of the Deer. There’s a tide of panic rising all throughout the monastery, and the only thing that keeps it at bay is firm, decisive leadership. Claude can help provide that, it’s a particular strength of his.
But when he at last retires to bed, he’s so exhausted that the room is spinning. He nests himself among the books he never gets around to putting away and curls under his blankets. He closes his eyes and hopes whatever this weakness is, a night’s rest will dispel it. Coughing a little, he falls asleep.
There are more petals in the morning. Maybe there’s a pressed flower in the pages of one of these books. But that doesn’t make sense—the petals on his pillow are fresh.
I don’t have time for mysteries like this, he thinks as he brushes them to the floor. Not so long ago, he might have been utterly fascinated by the random appearance of fresh flower petals, but there’s not enough time to prepare Garreg Mach for siege as it is.
Still…he plucks one up off of the ground and slips it into his pocket. It can’t hurt to find out what type of flower it is, after all.
It takes him longer than such a simply inquiry should take, but almost all of his waking hours have been spent with Teach preparing the Deer for the Empire’s pending assault. So it’s more than a week later that he finally finds the correct bloom in a thick tome detailing Fódlan’s flora. He’s sure it’s the right flower almost instantly, as now he’s got quite a large sample size to work with. A week has left him with a good-size handful of the petals. He ought to have recognized them easily, but they don’t have them in Almyra and the mountains around Garreg Mach are too cold for them. Plus, he’s only seen them in vibrant yellow, and the ones he’s been finding (and, more confusingly, coughing up) are different. These are more of an orange color. Still, even he can’t mistake them for anything else now.
They’re sunflower petals.
Sunflowers are typically given as symbols of long life, he reads in their entry in the botany book. Other terms jump out at him too: loyalty, passion, strength. And another word, one that had been pestering him for a few days now, scratching at the edges of his consciousness.
Love.
He coughs again and catches another couple of petals in his hand. And suddenly, he isn’t just confused anymore. He’s afraid. People don’t just cough up flower petals. And even though they apparently mean long life, this can’t be a good sign for his health.
He snaps the botany book closed and buries his hands in his hair. First Rhea’s baffling behavior in the Holy Tomb, then Edelgard’s betrayal and now the looming siege…it’s already starting to feel like the cards are being stacked against him. But this? He really doesn’t need this.
He hears footsteps from the direction of the doorway and looks up, absently sweeping the flower petals out of sight while at the same time he plasters a confident smile on his face. His shoulders relax a little when he sees it’s Teach. Of course she’d come looking for him. She knows he’s been distracted, and he knows she’s noticed that he’s been a little under the weather.
“Claude?” she asks, coming closer. Her voice is low and calm, but he can hear the concern underneath. It warms him a bit, eases some of the tightness in his chest.
“Hey, Teach,” he replies.
“It’s late. You should be getting some rest.” She settles into the chair next to his and her eyes roam his face. A little frown is pulling at the corners of her lips, and that makes him feel absurdly guilty. He shouldn’t cause her unnecessary worry, not when there are plenty of necessary ones flying around.
He jumps a little when she reaches up, but all she does is lay the back of her hand, cool and soft, against his forehead. Her frown deepens slightly.
“I think you’ve got a fever. Not a bad one, but…you should see Professor Manuela tomorrow. And I’m going to personally escort you to your quarters so you don’t get distracted and wander off.”
He waggles his eyebrows at her even as he gets to his feet. “Why Teach, how delightfully forward and shockingly inappropriate of you.”
She rolls her eyes and gestures for him to walk ahead of her. “I’m ordering you to get some sleep, von Riegan. I need you and your schemes.”
He coughs again. More petals in his hand. He shoves them into his pocket and heads for the door before she can see.
“I suppose if it’s a direct order from you, I don’t really have a choice,” he says, but his brain keeps replaying the way she said I need you. And when he does finally enter his quarters and climb into bed, those words follow him into his dreams. So do the sunflowers.
“Oh,” Manuela says as she consults one of her medical journals. “Oh dear.”
Claude is on one of the beds in her infirmary. At her dismayed tone, he folds his hands under his head and stares up at the ceiling. He’d guessed it the first time he coughed up a flower petal. He’s dying, and Manuela is about to confirm it.
“Give it to me straight, doc.” His smile is bitter.
“It’s…well, it’s a disease known as hanahaki. It’s rare.” She comes over to his bedside and checks his temperature again, then examines his lymph nodes and peers into his throat. “White magic can’t help you, and medicine has proven ineffective.”
“So how long do I have?” Claude asks. “Before I drown in flower petals, I mean.”
“That’s…well, that’s precisely what will happen, should the disease progress to its final stages.”
“Oh?” He perks up a bit. “So you’re saying there’s a way to prevent that from happening.”
“Yes.” Manuela’s lips curl a little as some of her concern is replaced with curiosity. “Claude, this disease is caused by unrequited love. Not a crush, mind you, but real, passionate love. There are several options: you may fall out of love, which would resolve the problem. Or the person you love may come to love you in return and cure you, though obviously there’s a deadline on that because your symptoms will worsen with the passage of time. Or, if it gets bad enough, there’s surgery. We can remove the flowers…but your love will disappear too.”
“Disappear? How is that even possible?” he asks. And who the hell am I in love with?
Manuela shrugs. “I’m afraid your condition is rare enough that we don’t fully understand how it works yet. And the surgery is dangerous, which is why I wouldn’t recommend it until hope seems lost. We just haven’t been preforming them long enough to—the survival rate of any surgery is low and—well. I digress. But tell me…who’s your lucky lover?”
Claude blinks at her. “You just handed me a potential death sentence and you want to talk about my love life?”
Manuela waves a hand. “You’re young. Chances are that in a few months time, your love will fade and the condition will clear up. On the other hand, if you know who it is you love, you may be able to get them to fall in love with you. It’s all part of your treatment.”
He opens his mouth to tell her that he doesn’t know—and then the door slams open. It’s Hanneman.
“Manuela, Claude—we’re under attack. If you can, get to your stations and prepare for battle. The Imperial army is here.”
Later, the fact that he was in the infirmary when Edelgard’s troops began the assault will haunt him.
If he had gone to Manuela when she’d told him to, he might have been with Byleth when the fighting began in earnest. Maybe she never would have gone over the edge of the cliff. He rejects any notion that he might have gone over with her. No, if there’s one thing he’s certain of, it’s this: if they had been together during the fight, he never would have lost her.
The coughing gets worse and brings up more and more petals as the months stretch on. After destroying Garreg Mach, Edelgard rips through the weakened Kingdom and intimidates a few of the Alliance lords into turning a blind eye to her aggression. Through it all, Claude helps his grandfather with round table conferences that grow increasingly frantic. A year disappears while he works in Derdriu, trying to keep the Alliance together though he has no real power yet.
He coughs up his first full sunflower in the second year. His grandfather is fading fast. The stress of the war is killing him faster than the healers anticipated. Now Claude does have power, but it isn’t enough to keep Count Gloucester from going his own way.
Edelgard is making a fool out of you, he thinks as the count leaves the round table in a huff. Then again, she’s made fools of them all.
He wishes for Byleth. He knows now she is the person he’s in love with. The knowledge came almost a year too late. And now another year is passing in fear and blood.
When the entire flower comes up later that evening, it’s painful enough to leave him shuddering uncontrollably in his quarters. He stares at it and tries to tell himself that Byleth is dead, that there’s no point in being in love with someone who has passed beyond his reach. He all but begs himself to forget about her, or to seriously consider the surgery. The problem is, he doesn’t believe she’s dead. He is not a deeply spiritual or religious man, but he truly thinks he would somehow have known if she’d died that day—that he would have been able to feel their bond being severed forever.
Instead it seems as though she’s just on the other side of a door he can’t open. That’s maddening enough, but whenever he examines this feeling too deeply, it also gets physically uncomfortable: he coughs and hacks as petals tumble out of his mouth.
As the trembling stops and his body calms down, soothed by the regular intake of oxygen, he cleans up any signs of his floral disorder. Then he sits down and forces himself to think about politics. After all, his grandfather is dying. The Imperial border is quiet, but only because Alliance nobles like Gloucester have rolled over and shown Edelgard their bellies. Only two major Houses—Goneril and Daphnel—seem solidly of the anti-Imperial faction. And it’s up to him to somehow keep minor lords like Acheron from outright betrayal.
He can do this. He must do this, or give up on ever seeing his dreams come true. He just wishes he wasn’t so alone.
His grandfather dies the following year, carried off presumably by pneumonia, though Claude can’t help but feel that stress has played a fatal role as well. Now there is no one else to defer to, no one to be the figurehead while he pulls the strings of Alliance government. It’s all up to him, and every lord and lady in every territory knows it.
How long before Edelgard tests his mettle as a leader? She has her hands full with the front lines in the Kingdom, but now would be an ideal time to start encroaching on Alliance territory as well. Lorenz’s father certainly wouldn’t hinder her if she rushed up from the Airmid River to the south.
His study in the Derdriu palace is a whirlwind of parchment and books. There’s a corner dedicated to his experimentation with toxins and his engineering of clever little devices of all sorts: anything from models of siege machinery to every day items with hidden compartments or special tools for decoding cyphers. There’s less and less time for such hobbies, however, as the endless administration work piles up around him.
Teach would say I need to find a trusted advisor to help with all this, he thinks as he reviews Acheron’s request for more lands to feed his army. She’d be right, but who can I trust?
Before he can give the question any serious consideration, a page knocks.
“Your Grace, Lady Hilda and Lady Marianne have arrived.”
“They have?” He scrambles away from his desk—the action makes him cough, and he isn’t sure if he’s fast enough to block the accompanying tumble of flower petals from sight. If the page notices, he says nothing. “They could have at least written.”
“We did write, oh Great and Powerful Duke Riegan,” Hilda’s voice replies. He walks to the doorway just in time to see her sink into an exaggerated curtsey, “but clearly you were too busy to respond to a couple of old friends.”
In spite of himself, Claude laughs. It’s been too long since he’s seen any of his fellow Golden Deer, and Hilda isn’t one to let him wallow. Beside her, Marianne smiles at him a little shyly.
“What Hilda means to say is, it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, Marianne. Come on, let’s head to a more comfortable room and I’ll order some tea.”
Ten minutes later they’re all settled around a table with a pot of steaming tea waiting to be poured. Claude does the honors himself, trying to ignore the way Hilda’s eyes seemed to be trying to penetrate his skull. To stall the flood of questions he knows will soon be coming his way, he starts with one of his own.
“What brings you two to Derdriu?”
“Well, I’ve never been and so we thought—” Marianne starts, but Hilda cuts her off.
“We were worried about you. Holst says you haven’t been yourself.” Hilda’s look is shrewd and uncharacteristically serious, and Claude has to make an effort not to shift away from the concerned curiosity in her gaze.
“I know what week it is,” she adds. “The anniversary is coming up, and—”
He shakes his head. “You’ve got it wrong, Hilda,” he says as patiently as he can manage. He doesn’t want to talk about the fall of Garreg Mach. He knows what she’s going to say. But her little fist comes down on the table with surprising force, and her eyebrows draw together.
“Stop it, Claude. Stop avoiding it. I don’t want to think she’s gone either, but it’s been years. No one has found her. And yes, I know about your search parties. Marianne and I…we wept, okay? We mourned. Sometimes we still weep. When I think of—“” Hilda chokes off, tears springing to her eyes, and Marianne reacts with quick reflexes honed on the battlefield. She scoots closer to Hilda and takes the girl’s hands in her own, murmuring softly.
Hilda holds her hands tight but her eyes are locked into Claude when she continues. “We all miss her, Claude. But we’ve all had to face the truth. If she hadn’t died, she would have come back to us by now. I know you know that, deep inside. It’s time to let her go.”
A pain is building up in his chest and the urge to cough is so strong that his hands are trembling with the effort of repressing it. The accompanying rage that comes with that pain isn’t new, but he is tired of pretending that he understands Hilda’s line of thinking. What is so terrible about having hope? About believing in a woman who absorbed the power of a dead goddess and carved the sky in two? Why is he the only one that has never given up?
Because you’re the only one that’s in love with her, a voice inside him says.
“No, it isn’t ‘time to let her go,’ not for me,” he snaps at Hilda. “And if that’s all you came here to tell me, you wasted a trip because I won’t give up on her.”
“Claude,” Marianne says. “If it’s affecting your health, and you’re ability to lead the Alliance...”
He stands up, his chair clattering back as he straightens to his full height.
“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten an important meeting,” he says, colder than he means to, but he’s about to be sick and is desperate to escape. “Enjoy the tea. I’ll find you again later.”
“Wow.” Hilda is glaring at him, trying to mask her hurt with anger. “You’ve really surprised me, Claude. And not in a good way.”
He ignores this barb—he’s heard so much worse in his life—and flees. Somehow he makes it to a water closet before his knees give out. He crashes to them on a hard stone floor, the pain from that almost insignificant next to the agony of the hacking, choking waves of sunflowers and blood that spill from his mouth and nose.
By the time he’s done retching, he’s curled up into a ball on the floor. His body feels hollow and shaky, and for a moment or two he’s too miserable even to think. He just feels: feels the ache in his lungs and the deeper, sharper pain in his heart.
She’s alive. You’d know if she wasn’t. You just need to hold on.
It’s a mantra he’s been chanting for months. For years. Sometimes it’s all that gets him to his feet every day. He holds onto it, and onto her, and somehow drags himself back into the world to fight again.
Graciously, Hilda and Marianne appear to have decided to chalk up his bad temper and worse manners to the strain of running the Alliance. But while he’s always known Hilda is more perceptive than she likes to let on, it’s Marianne who surprises him this time. The night before the pair of them are due to leave, she knocks on the door to his study.
He lets her in with a smile that he hopes is charming, but feels rather flat even to him. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she wanders deeper into the room, stepping lightly to avoid piles of books.
“You’re ill,” she states without preamble. “Very ill, I think, or you will be very ill soon.”
“Marianne, it’s sweet of you to be concerned but…it’s under control,” he says, though the effort it took for him to widen his smile probably made it ghastly to behold.
“Will you die?”
“Not for a while yet. I promise.”
Marianne’s expression fills with an understanding so poignant that Claude feels his own eyes sting.
“Soon, then.”
He gives up the ghost and drops his casual façade, his shoulders drooping as he does so. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Have you spoken with a doctor or a healer?”
“Just Professor Manuela.”
Marianne’s lips part on a gasp. “You haven’t seen her in years.”
“She was very clear about the prognosis. Just not as clear about the timeline. I get the feeling it varies depending on the patient.”
“And what was the prognosis?”
This time Claude’s smile is wry, and he shakes his head at her. “Ah, I’m afraid that’s a secret I’m not ready to share.”
Again, if Marianne is offended, she doesn’t show it. She reaches out and touches Claude’s hand instead. “At least…is there a cure? Something to be done?”
“There are…options,” he replies carefully. “None that are exactly feasible right this moment.”
She nods. “If I can help at all…”
“I appreciate it. Truly.”
Before either of them can figure out how to continue the conversation, a servant knocks. “Your Grace, there has been an incident with a trader from the Sreng region, and the magistrate is requesting your presence in the audience chamber.”
Claude’s gaze meets Marianne’s. “Duty calls,” he says with a shrug, sounding almost like the cocksure student he’d once been. She gives him a small smile.
“Take care of yourself, Claude,” she murmurs before seeing herself out. Something heavy settles onto his shoulders when she leaves, but there’s work to be done and no one else can do it. Indulging in another bout of loneliness will have to wait. He stands and makes ready to face an angry audience.
His days become a blur of responsibilities, sunflowers and blood. None of his contacts, both in Fódlan and far beyond its borders, ever find a hint of Byleth. His disease rages on, weakening him and making his thoughts blurry when he most needs them to be sharp.
He’s careful to keep his condition from the other Alliance nobles. The situation in his region is precarious enough. Should the less trustworthy lords get wind of his flagging health, a full-fledged rebellion would flare up.
But that leaves him rushing out of conferences or staggering into the nearest empty room all in order to hide his affliction all too often, and he knows It isn’t helping his reputation as a leader that just shrugs off the concerns of his territory. His hands shake as he cups them over his mouth and nose, catching the bloody flowers as he reflects on the unfairness of that sentiment. How much more could one man do? In this situation, without something to rally around, how is he supposed to do anything but hold the line?
And he’s so sick. Perhaps they’d cut him some slack if they knew. He’ll never tell them, of course. He hasn’t even told his fellow Deer, so he doubts he’ll ever bring it up with say, Count Gloucester. But sometimes he wishes that they’d see how tired and ravaged he is all of the time and give him the benefit of the doubt.
That’s weakness talking, his father’s voice chides. You know better than to make such frail excuses.
His fist clenches around red-stained sunflower petals.
“Alright,” he croaks out loud to the empty solar, his voice hoarse from his latest attack. “But no more talk of weakness when I keel over dead. I think that’s only fair.”
Great. Now he’s talking to himself. He really needs a break.
Only a few days remain before the appointed date of the reunion. Claude’s attacks still come with alarming frequency, and there’s more blood amongst the petals than there had been in previous months, but he feels much more like himself the closer the millennium festival gets. He hardly ever even brings up whole blooms anymore, which is nice, though the fits never truly cease.
His wyvern is already packed as the sun climbs out of Fódlan’s Throat. He’s aware that his plan to return to Garreg Mach is not a popular one. Frankly, he doesn’t care. None of his plans have been particularly popular, and he’s tired of worrying about it. He made a promise and he’s going to keep that promise. That’s all there is to it.
Okay, maybe it isn’t as simple as that…but he won’t change his mind. Byleth’s shadowy presence on the other side of that invisible door feels closer than ever.
Hold on, my friend. I’ll see you soon.
He double checks his saddle bags, ensuring there’s enough food to share, and then he climbs onto his borrowed wyvern. He chokes on a few more petals and wipes away the blood. Even one of his fits can’t seem to drag his mood down. A light touch of his heels sends the wyvern soaring into the cool morning sky, and he leaves Derdriu behind with no regrets. Nader and Judith can hold the Alliance together for a few days. And when he brings Teach back, they’ll understand why this little field trip is so important.
He lets the petals trail out of his fingers as they gain altitude. The blood is harder to get rid of, but he barely even notices. She’s closer than she was before, and that knowledge spreads through him like the sweetest melody.
Five years he’s survived. Five long years with his illness making it harder and harder for him to do his duties, five years where the criticisms of his leadership have grown louder and louder. No one knows what it’s cost him, but he’s made it. Against all odds, he’s made it.