Archive of Our Own

This was the last time Felix would be in Fraldarius when it was his to call his own. 

After this week, he was leaving. Going to Almyra with Claude, be a Faerghus advisor to him and help restore relations between the two nations with Byleth on point in Faerghus. It was the best option, really, because despite all the memories in Fraldarius, despite the fact that perhaps Felix should be more attached to the last place with remnants of his father and his brother, this place hasn’t felt like a home in some time. And Felix was adamant he would not have obligations to the dead. 

Claude decided to come with him. They were tasked to catalogue the estate, and the servants were asked to clear the manor to give them the space they needed. Claude was very diplomatic and assuring at first, overly soothing as though Felix was tangled up in emotions, but on the road he had gotten annoying. Wanted to “feel the frosty weather that made his lover into the cold and prickly man he was today”. 

Idiot. But when Felix did give a little, he admitted he was glad to not do this alone. 

Byleth initially had wanted to give them a month to catalogue and check out the estate. Felix had wanted a day. They compromised on a week. His last week in Fraldarius. 

It was proving more difficult than he anticipated. 

The portraits of his father, and the king, and his brother and mother and all of them together, they were everywhere. Draped with blue curtains, the deep royal blue that Felix would not see in a long time when swimming in the oranges and purples and golds of Almyra. Claude was also allowing curiosity to sweep him from the job at hand, cataloguing, instead asking for histories and stories that Felix did not feel like dredging up. 

But the worst of it came swifter than he’d hoped. 

Felix should have known that Claude’s curiosity would get the best of him. He did not think it would take less than a day, but he should have figured.

A closed door with dust on the handle, an important insignia painted upon the wood, carved notches into the stone door frame in dashes ascending over the years until they abruptly stopped at the date his mother died. There was no mistaking what room this was. What this room meant.

Glenn’s bedroom. 

At the open door, there was an urge to be enraged. To berate Claude for the invasion of privacy. But whose? Glenn was dead, wasn’t invading his privacy. Rodrigue was dead, he was the one who insisted upon the closed door in the first place, not even Felix allowed inside. They needed to clear up the Fraldarius estate for whoever Byleth chose as the new Duke, and at that point, Felix would have zero ownership. This room couldn’t be protected forever. 

The anger simmered down, but another emotion clawed to take its place. One he didn’t want to name for it might give it purchase. He clenched his jaw and locked it tight, ignoring whatever tugged at his heart attempting to bring Felix to anchor. 

Claude regarded Felix, at first calm and unaffected, but then he grimaced. Opening his mouth before he actually had something to say, because navigating emotions for Claude is almost as difficult as it is for Felix. 

If this hadn’t been Glenn’s bedroom, Felix might have laughed. Claude’s expression was a sneak peak to him as a little boy, daring and reckless and inquisitive, sticking his hand into jars and pressing his nose into notes that he had no business with. 

The anger had died, but the smile never showed, either. 

“I should have —” 

“It’s fine.” 

Felix stood at the doorway, obviously more apprehensive than his partner had been, Claude comfortably in the center of the room. Felix wanted to chide himself over his hesitation. He had more ownership to it than Claude did, yet Claude probably ducked in, only mildly fretful because he was nervous to spy on Felix specifically. 

It was just that this door had been closed for so long. 

Claude stopped what he was doing, which hadn’t been much, as most of the furniture coverings had been draped in sheets that were covered in cobwebs and dust and creatures. There were probably a half a dozen spider families that spawned and died, with a longer lineage than Felix’s own, because they’d never bothered to open up the room and clear it out. The window was shut, curtains tied over it, never letting light in. The room was stuffy, smelled musty and dried the nose as he breathed. Felix knew Claude was perfectly capable of ignoring all discomforts of a room — he’d spent how many hours in a dusty fortress of books he himself created back at Garreg Mach? — but this was ridiculous. This was a bedroom. It was supposed to be breathable. 

The whole point of this task was to take inventory of the rooms and make it into a working space for someone new. This bedroom was included. No matter who slept in it before. 

Taking a deep breath and clenching his fists, Felix marched inside. He stepped across the withering, fraying dusty-navy rug that covered the hard stone floor, past Claude who stepped back to avoid getting smashed against, to the window. Felix ripped open the curtains and let light flood the room, tying them off tight at the sides. The wind whistled through the gaps in the window, but they couldn’t feel the cold. In fact, the sun felt warm on his face, sunk into his skin. Without feeling the blasting gusts of Fraldarius winter winds trying to frost over the autumn season, the outdoors looked almost inviting. Glenn always did have a nice view. The ancient trees turning into colors of fire over the valley, and when the leaves fell to the ground they could see the ocean. Felix had fallen asleep staring out this window many times as a child. 

Felix stopped. The sun heating him reminded him of his heart that was trying to overtake him, pounding against his chest and roaring in his ears. His gaze was trained on the window. The glass panels were shut tight, just like the door. Dust and cobwebs over the window latches, time cementing them into their locked position. 

“Felix?” Claude said. Reaching with his voice. Perhaps wondering if Felix had gone mad. Felix ignored him. 

Jerking the latch free, it snapped open with a rustic creak that grated the ears. Moving onto the knob on the window, Felix pushed, but it didn’t budge. Perhaps there was a bar or some sort of gate across the window that Felix didn’t remember, but that seemed unlikely. 

He unlocked the other side of the pane, this one giving only after a tough pull, and Felix pushed on the window again. 

It didn’t open, either. 

“It’s been shut for so long that it’s warped together. It’ll take a bit of work to get it open,” Claude supplied. “We can —” 

Climbing up on the large stone sill, Felix inspected the metal clamps around the corners, the bolts in place to get the door to swing. They were rusted over, copper in color, almost a moss keeping them stuffed shut. But they were in tact. It did not look like the window would just fall apart. 

“Careful, there.” 

Felix could feel Claude’s eyes on his back. Claude wouldn’t stop him, but he always watched Felix like a hawk. Claude had a gaze one could feel. And Felix had been the object of his attention enough times that the feeling was no longer one that made him shiver, but made him warm. 

Yet, he still ignored Claude. 

Reaching up to the curtain rod, Felix wondered if it would fall off at the touch of his hand or if it was solidified into the framework of Glenn’s bedroom. Glenn used to do pull-ups on this bar, Felix recalled. He used to do them on his doorframe to be a show-off until he became a knight and showing off was no longer an appropriate pasttime. Times that Ingrid seemed to forget when dreaming him up with all the honorable and dutiful glory of a fantasy knight and not the arrogance and irritating qualities of an older brother. 

After he became a knight, however, Felix only caught Glenn doing pull ups on this curtain rod after that, usually when he ran in blubbering like an infant because something had upset him. Then Glenn would stop his knightly duties to help Felix right himself, whether that required a comfort or a distraction. He’d never made Felix wait, not truly, to soothe him back into a state of calm. 

All this thought concluded was that Felix probably could get away with pulling himself up now without severely injuring himself. And besides, what was the point of having Claude there with him if he wouldn’t stop Felix from bleeding out of his skull if he did manage to fall on his head? 

Leaping up onto the bar, he pulled himself up. He was fairly sure he was taller than Glenn had been, but he was leaner, more agile muscles than his brother who had been upon a horse with a lance and armor similar to Sylvain’s back during the war. If it didn’t give under Glenn over a decade ago, hopefully it wouldn’t fall apart under Felix now. 

It did shift a little, which Felix heard Claude step back in anticipation to leap. To catch him. 

Briefly, Felix let himself be grateful he was not alone. 

Pulling his knees up to his chest, he pressed his feet against the stone arch of the window and propelled himself back, up. When nothing gave and he was able to find stable footing, Felix pushed off, swung himself forward, and kicked open the window. 

One side burst open upon its hinge and slammed against the stone wall. Still in tact, if not a little cracked, which was fine. 

The other, however made sharp crackling sound as all the glass burst, the frame ripped off its hinges, and the whole thing sailed off the ledge and plunged four stories down. 

Felix grimaced and dropped to his feet, peeking his head outside to watch as the pane and glass shards fell, scampering across the stone until it crashed to the ground below. 

Claude’s arm slung over Felix’s back, and his head poked out of the window. 

“Oops.”

Claude snickered. “I’ll mark down that she’ll need a new window!” 

Felix turned toward him, watching Claude look down at the broken pieces with an amused grin on his face. 

Felix smiled too. 

True to his word, under Claude’s other hand was a paper and pencil, chicken-scratch notes about various equipment that needed to be replaced, mechanisms that needed to be checked, and other chores that they could not get done during their run-through of the keep. 

Felix flicked it and glared at Claude. “Because that was your intent when you walked in here. Cataloguing.” 

“You know me,” Claude pulled the paper close to his chest. “Dutiful servant.” 

The arm around Felix’s back tightened its grip and Felix was pulled off of the ledge and back into the room. Felix nodded in thanks, steadying himself. Claude didn’t let go. 

“That’s better,” Felix said, gaze accosting the window, but he noticed Claude’s shivers. There was no denying that there was a breeze coming in now, bracing wind filling the room and getting rid of the swell of dust and dry heat. Felix pressed up against him, trying to warm him up. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Yes, I’m sure my bones will be very content when I’m frozen to death.” 

“You’re not going to freeze to death.” Felix pushed him off, all ounce of care for his temperature gone. “Quit whining.” 

The breeze caught the skirted ends of the sheets over Glenn’s old furniture, picking them up and flaunting the potential memories that laid underneath. Part of Felix wanted to tie them down, never think about them again. 

But they needed to prepare the room for a new owner. They needed to know what was underneath. 

Reaching for one of the sheets, Felix pulled it off with a sharp tug. Wrapping the sheet around his arms and bundling it into a ball, before casting it by the door. 

A spider crawled up his arm that he was about to swat away, when Claude plucked it off and set it on the now very open window. Felix huffed. 

He’d uncovered Glenn’s bed. It looked smaller than Felix remembered, but the rest of it was the same. The patchwork quilt on the bed with all the missing stitches from Sylvain pulling them out in a nervous tick when Miklan was on a tear. The pillow, always firm and hard as a rock, because Glenn preferred rock hard slabs than the feathered plushy pillows. A glutton for punishment, Sylvain had called him. 

How fucking right he’d been. 

Felix then pulled a sheet off of the basket for clothes; the clothes had been removed, nothing allowed to rot or smell in this place other than whatever festered and found its way into the room after the fact. 

Felix turned back toward Claude to find his hands fisted in the sheet draped over what Felix was sure would be Glenn’s bookcase, the sheet raised in question. Felix nodded, and Claude pulled it off, a swarm of dust filling the air and gritting over their skin. Dust-motes took to the air as Claude caught the ends of the sheet in his arms, wrapping them up in jerky movements. 

The gray clouded Claude’s yellow clothes, as if he was also being marred by time just by standing in there. Suddenly he didn’t look like he stood out in the room, but belonged in it. Another object covered by a sheet, crawling with spiders and cobwebs.  

Felix overreacted a little. He rushed over and began brushing the worst of it off of Claude’s shoulders, and running his hands through Claude’s hair to get rid of the dust clumps that managed their way into his curls. 

Claude stared, unhelpful, eyebrows raised as Felix fussed. 

“You’re going to be disgusting if you keep that up,” Felix said. His voice was shaky, his reasoning not all that convincing. He brushed Claude’s bangs out of his eyes, sweeping touches over his forehead, brushing the clumps of fuzzy dust out of his thick eyebrows. “It’ll get in your eyes, you’ll go blind, and then you’ll have a hard time being king.” 

Claude gave him an incredulous look. He didn’t believe Felix for a second. Felix didn’t believe himself for a second. But Claude sacrificed the bait anyway, simply giving a small chuckle and a smile. “I could be a blind king.”

“You’re already a blind king,” Felix said, flicking his forehead. “No use making it literal.”

Claude laughed, then brushed off some of the dust on Felix’s shoulders. “Fine. You watch out too, then. A blind swordsmen only sounds fun in fairytales.”

“Wasn’t aware that it even sounded fun, then.”

Claude grinned. “You’d make it work, but,” he passed a hand through Felix’s ponytail, removing some of the dust bunnies that clung to the end, “how would you fare if you didn’t get to see my face every day? I don’t think you’d survive, so better not test it.”

Felix pushed Claude away, who laughed as though the shove punched it out of him. Claude grabbed the end of the sheet, dragging it to be placed among the pile of dusty cloths. 

Felix was left to stare at Glenn’s books. 

Glenn’s bookcase was funny in a strange way, because Felix didn’t recall him reading very much, yet the bookcase was full. Many of the books were strategic outlines and battlefield tactics, he figured, all stalwart and black covered and generally dull looking. 

Toward the bottom shelf, however, the covers got more colorful, and the books significantly thinner. 

A lump formed in Felix’s throat. He recognized those. They were childhood fables and stories. The book that Ashe had shown Felix back at Garreg Mach was tucked into the shelf as well. He hadn’t known that they had all been here this whole time. 

Many of these books were ones that he’d wanted after Glenn first died, stories that Glenn had read to him as a small child. Felix had thought his father had gotten rid of them or that they’d somehow gotten lost with Glenn’s body after Duscur, or that the servants around the keep had gotten rid of them in a premature mission to swipe the keep of Felix’s memory of Glenn as anything else but a dutiful knight for his king. 

Instead they were here. Locked in this room along with everything else. Kept away from him in what was supposed to be his own home. Another reason why this place never really felt like one, after Glenn had died. 

This wasn’t supposed to get emotional. Glenn died years ago. These books no longer mattered. 

Felix was pulled, then, by Claude’s arm hooking around him and tucking him close. The part of his brain that was not compromised told Felix to shove him off and to keep clearing the room, but he remained still. Even as Claude pressed a kiss onto Felix’s forehead before knocking his head against his. 

Exhaling a short breath, Felix let go of what he should be doing. Just let Claude do what he felt he needed to do, Felix trying to detach from all of it. Claude must know there was something particularly sentimental here. Claude was annoying in the way that he always seemed to know. Felix was even more annoyed that he always seemed to have a tell. 

Claude began rubbing up and down his arm, as though he was the one that needed to be warmed up, and that was when Felix bristled. 

“It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t — don’t coddle me, I’m fine.”

“I’m not coddling you.”

If Felix wasn’t otherwise compromised, he’d have snapped at Claude in some way to make him stop, but as it was he made no further remarks. Claude brushed his arm a few more times, soothing in a way that riled Felix up, and then had the wherewithal to stop. 

Part of Felix gravitated toward the books at the bottom shelf, but he forced himself to reach for the next sheet. He didn’t have the time to go through childish stories, and most of them capitalized upon ideals that Felix now despised anyway. 

The next sheet was not going to be a mystery as to what he’d find: it’d be a chair, exactly the same shape that the sheet draped in, with a bent back and curled arms. It would be the same one he used to ball himself up in when Glenn read him those very stories on the bottom shelf, and then Glenn would either carry him to his Felix’s bed or sometimes, when Felix was particularly fussy, he’d let Felix sleep in Glenn’s own. Yet when he pulled the sheet off of the chair and saw that stark blue velvet he’d remembered as a child had faded into a steel gray matted mess, he found himself thrown off kilter. 

Was it always that color? Had his childhood mind painted it a vibrant blue because Glenn’s room always felt so much more colorful, more interesting, so much better than his own? Or had time really robbed him of something as menial as this? Perhaps this was merely another reminder that no matter how much protection they’d instilled upon it, time was a greedy feeder that gorged itself on anything it could get its jaws unhinged around.

Claude had made his way to the next item as well, charitable in protecting Felix’s own vulnerabilities that seemed to be cropping up swifter than he could knock them down. He was at Glenn’s desk. It sat low and flat, allowing for a lot of dust to collect on the sheet, especially in the places where it hooked and curved across the desk chair. 

Felix tried to remember it, but all he really remembered was Glenn sitting at it. That and the chair being incredibly uncomfortable. The feeling that the desk gave off, harsh, important, testy, but that was because whenever Glenn was sitting in it that was how he acted. 

Glenn had tended to write good letters in Felix’s room, not business related, often to Ingrid or some other friend he’d made, because he always needed to remind Felix to write letters. Just like he did now, Felix always had a tendency to not see the point in keeping touch, or simply just forgetting to do so because of a more worthwhile endeavor. 

The desk itself, however, was like a blur in Felix’s mind. 

Claude tugged off the sheet. 

There were no papers on it, which of course there weren’t, even if there had always been papers on it when Felix recalled its blurry image in his mind. 

Felix glanced over at Claude. He was already reaching for a drawer. 

Felix gave him a flat look. 

“Sorry, sorry. I wouldn’t have actually opened it…”

Felix scoffed. “No, it would have somehow fallen open, then you’d have gone through the contents as a happy coincidence.” Claude faltered, but the expression was wiped off when Felix reached for the same drawer. If the wood suffered the same fate as the window, it would be a hard pull to open. “I’m curious too.” 

Claude gave him a small smile. “Okay, only if you’re sure.” Felix nodded. “On three.” He braced his foot against the base. “One, t-”

Felix just pulled it with a tug, and it gave far easier than he was expecting. Claude pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“You’re an idiot.” 

The drawer was deep, and had several leather bound books filling its basin. The top, however, was a drawing from Ingrid’s sister, made years ago. A portrait of Rodrigue, Glenn, then Felix, when she was trying to learn how to draw. She never got very good. 

Claude plucked it from the shelf before Felix could protest, a wicked grin on his face. “What’s this?” He inspected it in the sunlight. “No doubt you’re all from the same family,” Claude said. Then, because Claude was always irritatingly strategic, he elaborated: “My siblings and I look like we were all pulled off the streets in different countries. We look nothing alike.”

Claude damn near never talked about his family. This was intentional. Giving a vulnerability as though to allow Felix’s vulnerability, even if he wouldn’t allow it himself. An opening that Felix wanted to shut, but didn’t know how. 

“It was drawn by one of Ingrid’s sisters.” Felix shrugged. “It’s not accurate.” Felix tugged the corner of the portrait to look down it. 

First of all, all three of them had their hair down in the portrait. Glenn almost never had his hair down, always in some ponytail high up on his head and then fell down his shoulders his hair was so long. Felix’s hair was also rarely down then too, the servants — and sometimes his parents or Glenn — plaited the living crap out of it so that it essentially stuck to his head as a child, because otherwise Felix was a complete mess at the end of the day or he cried about it getting tangled and having to comb out the snarls. The artist also gave Felix’s hair curl, much like Glenn and his father’s hair, but Felix’s hair never actually had that same texture. 

“We do look alike, but there are too many similarities here. Up close, I didn’t really look like Glenn. Not really.” 

No, Glenn had his father’s eyes and hair, which Felix didn’t have, but more of his mother’s face, which Felix also didn’t have: A bird-beak nose that bowed outwards and then pointed down sharply, thicker eyebrows, his jaw flatter. It gave him a very severe expression, which he schooled with his terse personality. Also unlike Felix, Glenn’s happiness was more apparent when he did feel as such, his father’s open expression something Glenn could have when he wanted, whereas Felix struggled to express himself even now. 

At least, that was what Felix remembered. It’d been too long to be sure. 

Felix didn’t like thinking about this. The whole experience was putting him on edge, but unlike a battle he wasn’t about to beat anything away. Instead his emotions were starting to run away from him, emotions he didn’t know what to do with, with more time to analyze them than he wanted. 

They should just clean this place out and leave. 

Claude was scrutinizing Felix, holding the portrait and comparing. He clearly didn’t trust Felix’s assessment, but he had no right to say so because he had never met Glenn, so he couldn’t outright contest it. 

He’d probably ask Sylvain about it later, which would make Felix want to slap the both of them. 

Then Claude shook it off, holding the portrait up one more time, gaining a playful demeanor. “The lines aren’t very straight, it’s obviously an amateur. You could probably send this to Ignatz for corrections if you wanted to keep it.” 

“It’s not important.” 

“Just a thought,” Claude said, giving the portrait back to him. Felix set it on the desk. 

Claude plucked one of the leather bound books that had been underneath the portrait. Likely notes and battle tactics, things of that like. Felix moved toward the next drawer, but before he could, he heard Claude snap the book shut. 

In his periphery, Claude was extending the book to him.

“This is a journal.” 

“A journal?” He took it. Felix hadn’t been aware that Glenn had kept journals. Glenn hadn’t seemed the type to keep a journal. Perhaps something to catalogue his goals or training, but not an actual journal. Felix opened it. 

Ethereal Moon. Imperial Year 1174

The King is offering my assistance to Gautier in the border skirmishes along Sreng that Miklan has exacerbated. They should be… 

Felix stopped reading quickly and refused to read more, but Claude was right. They truly were journals. A quick glance and Felix could see that each entry started off the same, with a goal or description of a mission, task oriented, ever the dutiful knight Glenn portrayed, but scanning even a little bit into the paragraphs and Felix could see these journals were also filled with his thoughts. His feelings, his impressions. 

Perhaps Felix should want to read this. To feel closer, to understand Glen like he always wished he could. Instead Felix shut it and grabbed Claude’s hand, pushing the journal back into his palm.

“Would you read them?” 

Claude’s eyebrows tethered together. “What?”

Felix re-postured, trying to think how to phrase this properly. The fact of the matter was that Felix had no real desire to read them, but wanted to know the contents. Reading them would be dwelling in the past, which he didn’t want. He also wasn’t sure he could garner anything other than emotional weight from the journals, and he hated the part of him that was still so emotional. Reading them would just fuel that fire that he was stubbornly trying to stamp out. 

Claude, however… Claude could use these. This was his wheelhouse: a voracious appetite for unconventional learning and fucking nosier than Rhea at times, this would be the kind of content that he would swallow whole. He had used Jeralt’s diary to his advantage, had learned from those entries, had helped their Professor maintain a connection to her late father while simultaneously using Jeralt’s wisdom as a way to sidestep the church’s desires without angering it and win the war for them both. 

Glenn didn’t grow old and wise, but he hadn’t been stupid. As the Prince’s liege Glenn might have gained some insight on ruling or what it is like for those who are on the sidelines of the ruler, information that Claude desired as he was about to become a young king himself. Claude might be able to utilize this just as creatively for his advantage. 

“These may prove useful to you. Would you read them?”

Even more, this could be the key to Felix that Claude wanted that Felix wasn’t sure how to give himself. 

“They’re your brother’s. Don’t you want them?” 

“No.” 

If Claude was surprised by Felix’s answer, it didn’t show. Claude took it from him and turned over the journal in his hands, shifting his weight on his feet and placing a hand on his chin. Thinking. 

Felix wanted him to want them, but he ignored that desire best he could. If Claude decided that they would not be worth his time, which was growing more limited by the day, Felix would understand and put them back in the drawer to never be seen again. Let Byleth chuck the desk out the window, if she so wished. 

But he knew Claude better than that. This was a type of research, a research very unique and personal to Felix himself. A strange opportunity. This was the kind of activity Claude loved. 

Felix realized this was probably why Claude was debating saying yes. Likely assuming that Felix had not thought this through as much as he had, which was possible, and that this may be far more personal than Felix actually was willing to give. If that was the case, the hesitancy was appreciated but unnecessary. Felix was going to fucking Almyra to help Claude be king. Their lives, theoretically, intertwined for their foreseeable duration. He wasn’t exactly keen on having these gaping vulnerabilities, but he was no longer the child who pretended not to have them. He did, and being with Claude they were going to show up eventually. Might as well hand them over himself. 

“Why me?” Claude asked. “Why not Ingrid or Sylvain?”

Felix shook his head. There were a lot of reasons not to give them to Ingrid or Sylvain. Ingrid had this idealized picture of Glenn set in her mind that these may destroy, which didn’t seem right despite Felix wishing she’d ditch that persona of him on her own. Sylvain would read them out of respect for Felix and to honor an old friend but it would also just burden him with more emotional garbage than he deserved. 

Claude hadn’t known Glenn. There was nothing to shake up with these journals. Claude would be able to organize this information into its various uses, and then, he could file it away forever. There was no obligation, other than Felix, who would not pressure him to do anything with them. Except maybe read them. 

But there was a main reason, one that Claude needed to hear. Felix folded his hands over Claude’s, and made himself look him in the eye.

“I trust you.” 

The words, as expected, surprised Claude, which was why he needed to hear them explicitly. He stiffened, his fingers tightening their grip on the journal, and for once it was him who looked away from Felix’s gaze. 

Claude wasn’t used to being trusted. It was partly Claude’s own fault — reasons legitimate and honorable and every other justification under the sun besides, he had been secretive and cunning and willing to lie when he was young, and perceptions of him took a hit for those choices — but those sentiments were also entangled into unfair biases against his background, which were stupid, and were what propelled Claude’s need to deceive in the first place. Claude hadn’t learned how to lie in a vacuum: every tool he utilized was used against him first, and Felix knew that. 

And Felix trusted him entirely.

“You sure?” Claude asked. 

“Of course. Don’t be foolish.”

Claude was a man worthy of being trusted; who was trusted by him, Byleth, Hilda, Lorenz, all of the former Golden Deer and more, but he didn’t hear it much. And he believed it even less. Felix wanted to make clear that he trusted Claude more than anyone. More than Sylvain. More than himself, sometimes. Most of the time, maybe. 

There was a tilt to Claude’s smile, unsure but pleased, and he held the book in his two hands. “I’ll take good care of it.”

“I know.” That’s why I trust you. 

“Gotta say though, I don’t know if I want this to become a habit,” Claude said. 

Felix raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you don’t want to be the library for everyone’s dead relative’s journals?” 

Claude laughed. “Something like that.”

Gesturing to the Glenn’s journal, Felix shrugged. “Well, this time you won’t have to read too much,” Felix said. “He didn’t live that long.”

Felix didn’t finish that sentence the way he started it. The words slipped meaning, going from lighthearted and just continuing Claude’s humored concern, to his heart plummeting like the window and crashing into the base of his chest before he could correct his course of thoughts. 

It was so fucking quick. Felix had just started to feel like he was finally starting to get his feet underneath him, and now the floor was gone. The tears burned his eyes, the pressure on his skull was mounting, and his hands began to quiver. 

“Sorry,” Felix said gruffly. “I — I’m sorry.”

It was stupid of him to say something. Claude didn’t care, and he opened some sort of floodgates, the tears had spilled and he began to cry. 

Claude grabbed him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his waist, and almost danced him backwards to the graying blue conch chair where Glenn would tell him stories. Then he crouched to meet Felix’s eyes, but Felix looked away. It wasn’t that Claude’s look was pitying, instead a mutual sadness that Felix could handle without rage. But his gaze was so intense, and Felix — Felix was having a hard time just reigning himself in without the extra weight of Claude’s undivided attention. 

More infantile, disgusting behaviors threatened to burst from him: his sinuses burned snotty and vile, his throat raw-scraped from the ragged breaths. Felix managed to ward most of it off, but he couldn’t stop his stomach from feeling as though a dagger had been cut through him. 

Felix had always been internally unsteady in Fraldarius. Combatant, even. He’d always thought it was because he was stepping into a role that Glenn had been raised for. Now he realized that Glenn had probably been just as unsteady in his own place. All this time, Felix had been looking up at him with the same sickening perspective as Ingrid: seeing him as so mature, so confident, so much more than Felix could ever be. But Glenn never even made it this far. Now, looking at Glenn meant looking back, and Felix didn’t know what to make of that. 

Fuck, shit, fuck, he needed to breathe. He shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to stop himself from sobbing. His breaths felt hot against his lips, and wet, and disgusting like he was ill. Crying made him feel ill. 

Glenn had never demanded a damn thing from Felix. Unlike everyone else, who expected Felix take the reigns without question even though he was so obviously not the first choice to do it, Glenn had never expressed such a desire. The rational, smart part of Felix that was fading out of existence, told him the unhelpful obvious: because he fucking died before he could ask anything of you. Yet, it wasn’t even an argument used on other people’s tongues. Felix was never told “Glenn would want this”. 

Maybe just like Felix, no one had ever asked Glenn what he had wanted. 

His hair fell around his shoulders, Claude must have pulled out his ponytail. He tipped forward into Claude’s wandering hands, pulling the strands. Finally, Claude pried Felix’s hands from his eyes and laced one of them with his own, rubbing the back of his knuckles. Felix hiccuped and gripped Claude’s hand hard. 

It was a terrible thing, to be nearly crying like a child but have the mind of an adult, because he was thoroughly embarrassed from his tears and yet he couldn’t stop thinking in increasingly complex and depressing ways which brought him to want to cry even more. A cycle vicious, especially to Felix, who preferred to deny emotions existed. 

How fitting that this would happen once again in Glenn’s room. 

He was vaguely aware that Claude was also rubbing circles into the back of his neck. “Let’s get out of here, huh?” he asked. “Shouldn’t have dragged you in here in the first place.”

“It’s just a bedroom,” Felix said. “We needed to open it at some point.”

“Maybe so…” Felix glared at Claude, willing him to please just drop this. Drop all of it, which was both impossible and necessary. Claude smiled, sad and somber, but better than anticipated. 

“Well, I suppose you needed to break the window,” Claude said. Felix snorted, which Claude clearly took as a small accomplishment with the way he shook himself up a little. “And we needed to disturb all the families of spiders. Now that we’ve checked off those tasks, I think we can probably consider this room inventoried.”

Felix nodded. Claude placed a hand on his jaw, which just accented how fucking wet it was from Felix’s stupid tears. Claude stroked under his eye, and his other hand combed through Felix’s hair. “Are you alright?” he asked, soft, barely over the wind in the room. 

Felix took a deep breath, his throat snotty and swollen and stifling. 

“Your hand is fucking freezing.”

Claude knocked his forehead against Felix’s, then reached both hands to cup his face. Felix shivered at the icy touch. “This room is fucking freezing. Someone broke the window and now the wind is howling in here.”

“You’re such a squealing infant,” Felix mumbled. 

He let himself fall forward into Claude’s shoulder, tired and trusting and not quite willing to leave yet but also not wanting to be aware of where he was opting to stay. Claude moved to wrap his arms around him, and though Felix desperately wished Claude had never seen any of this, there was a small part of him that didn’t know what he would have done if he’d been alone. 

He was starting a new life. A new life with this man, who was going to be king. But in this room, all that seemed separate. Instead, Claude was warm and comforting and knew Felix as he was now instead of who he had been, which was more soothing than anything else. None of the weight of when he was a child, none of the weight of Glenn and his legacy. Claude was there for him. Holding onto him and tugging at his hair and whispering something into his ear. 

And Felix would let him. That had to be the biggest surprise of all. 

This was just a bedroom. It was supposed to be just a bedroom. But instead it was full of far more memories than Felix had been expecting. As though a part of him had been blocked. As the details of this room had faded from Felix’s memory, so had the details of his time spent with Glenn, until Glenn himself had grown fuzzy. This was like picking up a magnifying glass and discovering all the nuances again, until even Glenn was a clearer picture in Felix’s mind. 

And it hurt. But the pain of remembering stung less than the pain of bereavement. And that would have to be enough.