Work Text:
Claude didn’t get the flower crowns, if he was being honest. He didn’t get the whole damn concept of cutting flowers for someone you loved, taking something alive and growing and then cutting it down, all to make it a fraction more convenient to watch as it slowly died away. People in Fódlan were strange, like that. They killed without thinking.
So he didn’t care much for the flower crowns, or any other of the bizarre traditions at Garland Moon. But he had to admit, he relished the drama. And he relished it even more now that he was surrounded by his most powerful peers in the continent, none of whom had the emotional stability to be in charge of a flower crown, much less a country. Claude had little intention of wearing a flower crown that year; he didn’t like to make such a semi-permanent statement of affection. But he had every intention of finding out who was making one for whom.
Annette was the easiest to figure out; it was almost unfair. Even if Felix hadn’t been twitching like a nervous cat every time someone leaned in too close to talk to her, the song she sang to herself while she sat on the greenhouse bench weaving the crown had lyrics about a grumpy, handsome swordsman. And she never noticed when someone was listening in. Claude crossed her off his list, almost disappointed by the lack of a challenge.
Hilda had been slightly more challenging. She certainly ran a new idea by him every thirty seconds for who she could make a flower crown for, evaluating which students were the most eligible, or the most handsome, or the least likely to care that she gave up halfway through the crown and there were giant gaps along the back. All of her options seemed equally bland to Claude, which made it hard to narrow down. Once he picked up the pattern of her immediately turning away from him and towards Marianne, and asking Marianne what she thought of the pattern, what she thought of the flowers, if she wouldn’t mind modeling it just for a moment so Hilda could get the shape right – once he solved that, the rest of the pieces fell in place. Whether the rest of the flowers would fall in place remained to be seen, but if anyone could convince Hilda to finish a project, it would be Marianne steadfastly saying nothing at all.
Mercedes had been the most difficult. She was uniformly polite and kind to everyone who talked to her, except Lorenz, which Claude approved of. So it was difficult to tell, by watching Mercedes, who she might be weaving roses for. It took him most of the month to put it together – and it wasn't by watching Mercedes flirt, but instead by watching Sylvain not flirt, that Claude finally drew his conclusions. The heir of Gautier should have lined up half a dozen crowns and twice as many broken hearts, but he remained pointedly unattached the entire month. Claude didn’t have confirmation yet, and Sylvain’s gamble might have been in vain, but Claude very much doubted the guy would risk three weeks of flower chastity without some sort of hope that Mercedes had her eyes on him. Claude didn’t trust his character, but he trusted his judgment.
All in all, it was a frivolous, amusing way to pass the month, and if he could learn a thing or two about the character of his classmates from the idle gossip and meaningless scandal of the month, he would still credit his interest to wicked curiosity, not tactical strategy.
By the last free weekend he’d pretty much figured out the entire school’s complicated nexus of broken hearts and hopeful promises via flower crowns, except Bernadetta, who didn’t seem to leave her room, and Edelgard, who didn’t seem to like having fun. Still, he set up a stakeout near the greenhouse that afternoon, surrounding himself with enough friends that it didn’t look like he cared about the greenhouse. At the very least, he could confirm his theories, and if he got lucky, maybe there would be a fight or something equally exciting; it had thus far been a pretty boring afternoon.
“Maybe I could do Linhardt; he doesn’t seem to have much fashion sense,” Hilda said thoughtfully, holding up her own in-progress flower crown, which was an absolute travesty thus far. “Lysithea, do you know if Marianne knows anything about Linhardt’s favorite flowers? I forgot to get roses so it needs to be someone who’s fine with dandelions.”
Lysithea looked up from her book. She had deemed flower crowns “childish,” which Claude interpreted as her knowing that Cyril would never wear one, and she had steadfastly refused to make one the entire month. “Why would I know that, Hilda?” she asked, speaking slowly and carefully, as if Hilda were a child. “Why would I know any of that?”
Claude was distracted from whatever blithe justification Hilda threw back by motion at the greenhouse door. Ingrid Galatea was leaving the greenhouse, clutching a bouquet of roses and looking over her shoulder guiltily, as if she had committed some sort of crime. That would have been a more exciting story, but it was Ingrid, and she often acted like having nice things at all was a crime in and of itself, so Claude didn’t think she’d actually robbed the greenhouse. She’d probably asked politely, and paid the gardener fairly; she was remarkably boring that way.
The sight did remind Claude that he’d left one Garreg Mach student off his list, however, and he was suddenly very interested in finding out why Ingrid had those flowers.
“The greenhouse still had lilies last time I checked, Hilda, and Marianne likes those,” Claude said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll catch you two later.”
If Hilda protested that that wasn’t what she’d asked , Claude didn’t hear her. He picked a pace far enough from Ingrid that he would get lost in the crowd behind her, and followed her past the fish pond, through the market, and beyond the gates of Garreg Mach.
It was more difficult to stay out of sight once they left, with no crowds to hide in and nothing but open air and sprawling fields on either side. Still, Ingrid seemed unusually unperceptive as she marched down the road leading further and further away from Garreg Mach; if she saw him, she didn’t comment on him being there, and that frankly just didn’t seem like Ingrid. It was a beautiful late spring day, however, and Claude figured if he happened to be going on an afternoon walk in the same direction as a classmate, no one could fault him for that.
He was vaguely disappointed when she came to a river about 2 miles away and stopped her hike. No one else was there, beyond some bossy birds and chattering squirrels in the surrounding trees. Claude wasn’t sure he could draw much of a conclusion simply from watching Ingrid make a crown, unless the flower themselves were significant. He realized she might be waiting for someone, however, and he had the afternoon off. Claude found a tree a good ways away and settled against it. Even if nothing came of this outing, he could always catch a nap after Ingrid left. A shady nap on a sunny day was almost as good as gossip about your campus’s most self-righteous and tiring classmate.
It was a small and unimpressive river, practically a stream, but the water flowed steadily along, a steady rush of noise in an otherwise quiet clearing. Ingrid stood by the water and stared into it, clutching the roses against her chest. Claude wondered for a moment if she didn’t know how to weave them into a flower crown. From what he’d been told, it was a traditional skill for Fódlan women, but he could easily see Ingrid rejecting tradition on principle. He felt almost bad for her for a moment, and he wondered if he should go offer to help her try weaving the stems together, two strangers to the custom figuring it out together.
Ingrid picked the first flower from the bunch and, violently and assuredly, threw it into the river.
Claude sat up so fast he nearly bumped his head against the tree behind him. He was fairly sure this was not the first step of the crown-making process, but that didn’t stop Ingrid. She threw another flower into the river, and then another, stray petals swirling around her and gathering at her feet as her paced increased. She started grabbing them two or three at a time, grasping the stems with no regard for thorns and flinging them with a kind of reckless abandon that Claude had never seen from her. The roses bobbed in the stream, floating past Claude and out of sight around a bend in the river. Ingrid tossed the last flower with vicious strength, watching it float away, turning to follow its trajectory.
That’s when she saw Claude.
He could’ve come up with an excuse, probably, or outrun her with a bit of a head start, and if she’d looked even a bit angrier he probably would have tried either of those. But Ingrid didn’t look angry, she just looked defeated – by the flowers or by Garland Moon or by Claude’s presence, he couldn’t tell. So Claude got to his feet, instead, and walked over to Ingrid, and stood and watched the final flowers float away from them and out of sight.
“Garland Moon traditions?” he asked finally. “I don’t think I know this one.”
“Don’t you have anywhere better to be right now?” Ingrid snapped, and there was bite in her question but not enough to actually hurt. Which, strangely, hurt more. “I’m busy,” she added softly, looking down at the river.
“As it happens, I don’t have anything better to do on a Saturday afternoon,” Claude said. But his own sarcastic bite didn’t land the way it usually did, and he added, almost to himself, “So if you wanted to talk about – all this.” He trailed off and they stood in silence for a moment, the river and the squirrels and the birds competing to be heard.
Finally Ingrid spoke, scarcely louder than the water. “Do you know what’s special about this river? Of all the ones surrounding Garreg Mach?” she asked.
“I’d love to hear it, Ingrid,” Claude said.
“It’s the only one that flows north,” Ingrid explained, pointing northwards as the river moved away from them. “We’re so close to the Airmid River that most of our surrounding streams are offshoots; this is the only one I’ve found that travels towards the northern seas.”
“You’re sending flowers back home, then?” Claude clarified. He didn’t think Ingrid was one for geographical trivia, not unless it had a point.
She took a long time to answer.
“I had a fiancé once, did you know that?” Ingrid asked him. She was picking at a cut on her finger; Claude wondered if she’d scratched it on a thorn. She would no doubt make it worse.
Of course he knew that. Everyone knew that, and Claude knew everything. He didn’t say this. He nodded instead. “An alliance with House Fraldarius; I’d heard of it,” he said simply. Details seemed cruel as well as irrelevant at the moment.
Ingrid nodded. She finally looked at Claude, and if he’d expected to see tears in her eyes, he clearly didn’t know her as well as he’d thought. “I made him three, maybe four flower crowns over the years. It is tradition, you know. I saw him wear one once; the others were sent by courier,” she explained. She sighed. “At this point I’ve left more flowers on his grave during Garland Moon. And now I can’t even do that.”
“The river goes all the way to northern Faerghus, I take it?” Claude asked.
Ingrid shook her head. “I don’t actually know,” she said. “Does it matter?”
“Not at all,” Claude replied.
“Honestly, I can’t stand Garland Moon,” Ingrid said. He wasn’t sure she’d even heard him. “What’s the point of taking all those flowers for something that lasts a day or two? And don’t tell me they’re beautiful while they’re here; I hate that; they still die, don’t they?”
“They still die,” Claude agreed. “Too fast and too soon.” Ingrid looked over at him, surprised. She was perhaps disappointed that she didn’t get the argument she was craving; Claude so often supplied them for her.
“It’s a very human tradition, in that way,” she said quietly. She sounded less angry, now, as if all her anger had burned out of her.
There was a flower on the ground by Ingrid’s feet, one that must have fallen in her more frenzied attempts to cast them away. Claude leaned down and picked it up. “One last one, if you’d like,” he said, holding it out to her, but she was already turning away.
“You can keep it if you want, Claude,” she said, starting her walk back to the monastery, alone. “I like to imagine they travel to him together.”
Claude stared after her, then looked at the flower. The stem was long, the thorns were sharp, and the petals had already begun to wilt around the edges. It wasn’t long for this world, although Ingrid had just picked it that afternoon. Putting it in his pocket would crush it, he was certain. And while he normally would have gladly placed it behind his ear and started his own wave of meaningless scandal when he returned to the monastery, it seemed a line too far to cross today. The flower seemed sacred, somehow. Or at the very least, it didn’t seem like it truly belonged to him.
He carried it gently as he followed Ingrid home.