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cassandra’s shorter but the knee in his gut is a cheat. it’s a marvel, really, that she’d bother to hike her leg the extra inch or so to absolutely nail him in the solar plexus with it when she could just as easily go for the low hanging fruit, quite literally. it’s a testament to their friendship… or whatever you’d call this. not like they know. not like christophe knows the difference anymore between these three boxes in his brain, the people he loves, the people he hates, the people he needs around—blended to shit.
“you’re not going anywhere,” she growls, guttural, sounding for christophe more hurt than she’s ever been. there’s a thick embarrassment shared between them, burning with the sheer acknowledgement that yeah, christophe’s hurt her now. “if you walk out those doors, you’ll leave me no choice, christophe.”
her kneecap sinks through christophe’s gut, pins itself against christophe’s spine and he’s got his elbows lifted in a shoddy show of faux surrender, knowing he’s got no intention of doing anything she wants him to. it’s a pitiful, sympathetic defiance in his chartreuse eyes that cassie oughta knock off his face, but he can tell that she’s not got the nerve quite yet.
that’s a shame, because he’s got more than enough for the blood of a heretic. he’s turning one cheek to her as she leans onto her toes, onto the balls of her feet to find her face just centimeters from his.
“look at me! don’t fuckin’… act like i’m inconveniencing you here. you will die and for what!? this is insane, chris.”
eyes shutting in some devil may care show of arrogance, narcissistic detachment, christophe splays his palms at her and says, “i don’t expect you to follow me on this road, we’re going in different directions.”
she lowers her leg and replaces it with a swift punch. christophe spits those words up and cassandra’s got a grip on his fur hood sat in a puddle cushioning his shoulders. with a wrench, he’s at eye level with her, and christophe gets his first good look at her in months, really looks at her. they’re both in their early twenties but for some reason he can swear to seiros that she’s got a few more wrinkles in her forehead, a few beneath her eyes, at the corners of them—
“i want to follow you anywhere you go, christophe, but you’re almost… purposely picking a place i can’t go.”
“purposely?” he mouths more than he says, irises bouncing across cassandra’s face in puzzlement before… “because you’ve sworn yourself to that woman?”
“she’s the archbishop, christophe!”
“that witch?”
another thud. another measure of abuse against christophe’s person. his head cracks back against the stone. the light filtering into the knights barracks flickers behind christophe’s closed eyes and he almost forgets where he is when he’s going slack and clumsy against the wall, hand rising to nurse the newly blooming bruise on his cheekbone.
cassandra puffs angrily.
“you’re brainwashed!”
christophe spits blood.
“thanks, for that,” he seethes. “you don’t know what i’ve seen,” says christophe, pithy and terse.
“you know what i’ve seen, christophe? my friend turn into someone else right in front of me. this is…”
his eyes are closed. he can’t see her but he imagines in the break between those words and the next, she’s heard a creak in the floor or in the rafters outside, she’s giving paranoid glances over her shoulder before whispering into his chin: “this is treason of the highest caliber.”
“it’s the path i’ve chosen,” he maintains, the knot at the back of his head throbbing enough to make him wince pathetically.
“you won’t even succeed,” she says into his mouth now and christophe can’t know why, can’t know a single thing except that this isn’t the bastion that will save him.
it’s in her kiss that he feels only confusion. it’s in her kiss that he reassures himself of his principles, that he leaves her with the kind of iron taste that she can never hope to ever wash out. it’s messy and it makes no sense, especially not when she pulls back to say, “you’ll die, christophe. you’ll die.”
because she can’t change his mind but she can scare him. she can threaten him. she can impart the truth to him but much like leading a horse to water…
…
—a word then, for the time spent and the love wasted: regret.
in another world, catherine hates him enough to kill him there before they can split his head from his neck. in another world, catherine loves him enough to chain him to those doors. in another world, she picks a side. in another world, she is not too soft as to let him leave, too hardened as to rat him out. in another world, catherine breaks his knees, drags him back to her room before he can be dragged out before the masses, a screaming and broken mess for all of faerghus to see. in another world, he does not meet the grave accused of regicide, judged a dissident and a radical. in another world, she holds his head above the water.
in another world, she keeps him alive.
in another world, christophe loves her enough to let her just keep him alive.