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Claude had always been a light sleeper. It was something that sort of came with the territory of being born with such a big target on the back of his head. When the things that went bump in the night were real, and the monsters that hid inside the closet or under the bed could very well be dangerous to more than just his dreams, it paid to sleep with one eye open. Even here at the Academy, so far away from his homeland where plenty of people were aiming to pick off the ‘half-breed’ in line for the throne, Claude did not consider himself safe. He slept at odd hours most of the time, usually spending his nights holed up in the library or in some random nook where no one would think to look for him before morning or catching naps here and there during the day in crowded places where anyone who wanted to take a strike at him would certainly be caught. If anyone asked him about his unusual sleeping habits, he just laughed and waved his hand and told them that he’d slept just fine. “A full forty minutes!” he’d say, and his peers would laugh along with him and just mark this down as one more thing on the list of what made Claude just a little bit odd.
However, there was still the rare occasion when he found himself settling in to sleep in his dorm. When that happened, Claude pulled out all the stops. Locking the door and window was only the first step on a long list of precautions that the House Leader took. He tied bells on the handle of his door so that if anyone opened it, he would wake up immediately. He left a line of talc on his windowsill so he would know in the morning if anyone had jimmied the lock, crept into his room, and laid a trap for him. The final trap was a bit more inelegant, but Claude thought that the handful of marbles lying just under the window was a nice touch. Just watch someone try and sneak in, get past the lock and the powder, only to end up flat on their ass when they hopped down onto an uneven surface that slipped and rolled right out from under their feet. Claude would have a nice laugh about that while reaching for the dagger that he kept under his pillow. Of course he kept a dagger under his pillow; that was Self-Defense 101. And it wasn’t paranoia if people really were out to get you.
It was only after laying his traps for the night that Claude felt settled enough to sleep. It was already pretty late – the bell up in the cathedral had sounded eleven about twenty minutes ago. Claude had been working on an essay due later in the week when his vision started to get blurry and he began to yawn, which were both signs that his body felt it was owed some rest. He would have had no trouble powering through if he had something pressing to do, but that essay was basically writing itself and he had a few more days to get it done, not to mention that he had an early morning patrol at sunrise. Future Claude would probably thank Present Claude very much if he got some shuteye before that. He could sleep in his cozy bed every once in a while, just as a treat. And after warding his room against any sort of intruder that might creep in on him in the middle of the night, Claude flopped onto the soft mattress with a contented little sigh. He was asleep only three seconds after his head hit the pillow.
He had quite the rude awakening. Claude’s ears were trained to roust him at the slightest disturbance; the slide of a lock or the creak of a floorboard were all it normally took to coax his eyes open. Something like a shattering window had him practically leaping out of bed. His heart jumped into his throat and raced there, choking his initial attempt at gasping or screaming. Broken glass lay strewn across the wooden floorboards, sharpening the moonlight into knife-like shards that pierced the tranquility of the night. From outside, he could hear shouting.
“You bastard!” someone was screaming up towards his window. There was another crash and more of his window was busted in by a rock sailing through, and Claude threw up his arms to block any stray debris from getting into his face. “Utter scum of the earth, that’s what you are! You have no place here! Get out! Come out here so I can see your face and give you what you have coming to you!” the voice shrieked at him again, and a chorus of voices chimed in from down below, yelling things like ‘bastard!’ and ‘filth!’ and ‘come out here, we want to see you!’ and Claude froze. His heart blocked his airways and his entire body quaked. Every alarm bell inside his head began to ring and his body went into survival mode. He was under attack. There was an angry mob outside, pelting his room with stones, and he fully expected that if he went over to the window he would be confronted with the sight of pitchforks and torches. He was under attack by an angry mob.
This was not the first time he had been in this scenario. He had been very little when it happened, on a trip to the marketplace in a rare excursion outside the palace with Nader. Prince Khalid had always been a somewhat sheltered child for obvious reasons, always kept under guard by only people his parents trusted. Of course, accidents still happened, like when he had been bitten by a cobra while playing out in the gardens as a toddler. It was only when he was older that he found out the snake was not supposed to be there and that he had survived his first assassination attempt at only three years old. He had survived his second at four, when someone broke into his room and tried to smother him with his pillow but Khalid had stabbed them with his knife and that had gotten the would-be assassin to recoil enough that he got a breath and was able to scream for help. He had been doing this since he was very little, he knew how to handle himself against an attacker or two.
But a mob of people… that was a different story. He remembered being in the market when someone had spotted his green eyes and recognized him as the Prince. He remembered how the crowd had gathered and the rocks and their words, both hailing down onto his head with equal force. He remembered Nader scooping him up into his arms and running away with him while blood ran down Khalid’s face from a cut on his temple caused by a flung stone. He had definitely not cried, or if he had, it was only because there was blood in his eyes. Even to this day, he could remember the words shouted after them as they made their retreat.
“Bastard!”
“Filthy half-breed!”
“You don’t belong here! Get out! Get out!”
Those voices from his memories joined the cacophony of noise from outside his window and Claude could feel himself starting to shake. One or two of the common rabble? He could handle that. He could even fight off a well-trained assassin on his own if he had to. But between the noise outside his window and inside his head he had no idea what the enemy’s numbers were. He had no intention of stepping over all that broken glass and into the line of fire to find out, either. He only had one course of action in mind, now, and it was to act on the advice given to him by Nader all those years ago. Nader had held his hand while a nurse stitched up his forehead and told him what to do if he ever found himself in a situation like this again.
“Just hide, kiddo. Run away and hide yourself somewhere safe until someone you know comes to find you and protect you. There’s no shame in making a tactical retreat when you are outnumbered and have your back against the wall.”
Claude didn’t exactly have anywhere he could run. He couldn’t go outside where the mob was waiting for him, couldn’t retreat to one of those hiding places he had scoped out over the course of his first few months at the Academy. All he had to keep himself safe was the locked door and the fact that he was on the second floor. Hopefully the mob wouldn’t bust into his room or scale the walls to get to him. But if they did, he had nowhere to run.
All he could do was hide.
And so that was exactly what Claude did, throwing himself out of his bed and onto the ground. He rolled up under the space between the floor and his mattress as heavy, panting breaths left his lips. Panic suffused into his skin and despite being tucked away under something he still didn’t feel safe enough. He was too exposed; he reached out from his hiding place just so he could drag down all the pillows and blankets he had within reach. He stuffed them around himself and packed every inch that he could so there was as much a boundary between his shaking body and the outside world as he could build in those few fleeting moments before someone came to attack him. If he couldn’t run, the least he could do was make sure that he was difficult to grab when someone did come in here and try to haul him out, kicking and screaming. And when that happened, he was going to yell. There was something to be said about stealth and subtlety in combat but when Claude was being attacked, he knew to scream. Screaming and shouting drew attention, which would summon help. When someone came knocking his door down, Claude was going to shriek his head off until a Knight or a Professor or someone came to his aid. The noise the rabble outside was making had to have awakened his dorm mates by now, right? Someone would come, they had to!
Those stretching seconds that Claude spent under his bed, drenched in a cold sweat and fearful for his safety, felt like a small eternity. His palms had gone clammy and he was shaking with adrenaline. The rocks pelting against the walls and crashing into his room sounded as loud as explosions; every hateful word rang in his ears. All of Claude's senses were on high alert as his body switched into fight-or-flight mode. His need to survive heightened every aspect of awareness, and so he was acutely conscious of how raspy and short his breathing sounded and how his blood raced under his skin. He could feel his pulse pounding in his fingertips as he gripped the scratchy wool and linen blankets he’d formed his barricade with. The fibers poking into his palms and face as he pressed his head against the comforter provided a focal point outside of the realm of terrifying reality that was spiraling around him and so Claude clung to it, gripping the blankets like a lifeline as he heard footsteps thundering down the hallway.
As his door burst open with the snap of the lock and the clanging of bells, Claude screamed. He recoiled, his back pressing against the wall, but he did not close his eyes. They needed to stay open and alert so he could see what was coming for him and brace himself. He peeked over his blanket just enough to see booted feet stalling in the doorway, but they only hesitated for a moment before advancing into the room.
“Hey!” yelled the owner of those boots as he raced towards the window, voice deep and commanding. “Hey! What do you all think you’re doing? It’s two in the morning, get out of here, leave him alo-”
There was another crash, this one much heavier than the rocks that had been raining in through the window and Claude flinched as he heard the intruder’s head smack off the ground and marbles roll across the floor. Claude got up the courage to peep out once again and saw a shock of blond hair atop a face he recognized. A face that was contorted into an expression of pain as Prince Dimitri groaned and pushed himself upright. Despite the fact that Claude could see he was still wearing his gloves and gauntlets, Dimitri was exceptionally careful where he placed down his hands, avoiding the glass and marbles as he got back up to his feet and finally made it to the window to stick his head outside. A fall like that would have knocked all the wind right out of Claude’s lungs, but the Prince sounded just as fierce and commanding as he had upon his first shout.
“Leave him alone!” Dimitri roared, and Claude’s breath hiccupped in his throat as he saw Dimitri take a hit across his brow, the stone which had struck him landing at his feet with a splatter of red to accompany it. That was the last rock that came flying in, though. The barrage finally ceased as Dimitri shouted out the window at the crowd below, and there was a murmured stirring from the group as they ceased their attack. Claude didn’t know if the mob outside recognized the Prince or if the fact that an enraged someone that wasn’t their target deterred the group from retaliating, but at any rate Claude heard them start to disperse. They shouted words like ‘he deserves it!’ and ‘screw you!’ as they departed, leaving Claude rattling both mentally and physically despite how their voices got quieter and quieter as they got further and further away. Soon, the only sound in the room was Claude’s ragged breaths. At least, that was all Dimitri would hear. Claude’s mind was still crowded with the sound of his racing heart and ringing ears and all that hate as panic kept him in its hold. The crunch of glass under Dimitri’s boots as he walked away from the window was as piercing and horrible in Claude’s ears as snapping bone.
Dimitri’s boots stopped at his bedside. Claude shrank up into a little ball, still consumed with the need to hide himself, but Dimitri knew exactly where he was. It was probably pretty obvious, what with how it was really the only hiding spot in the room. Take into consideration the fact that Claude was hyperventilating and none too quiet as he tried to catch his breath and Dimitri had no trouble finding him at all.
“Claude?” Dimitri called, his voice so much more gentle now than when he had been yelling at the assailants. “It’s safe now, Claude. You can come out…”
Claude, though, couldn’t move. His body was coiled as tight as a spring and the trembling wouldn’t stop. In this moment he wasn’t ‘Claude’ at all. He wasn’t composed enough to be ‘Claude.’ The attack, so similar to one he had experienced as a child, made Claude feel like that little child again. He wasn’t ‘Claude, House Leader of the Golden Deer’ right now. He was Khalid, the scared little Prince who was hated by the entire world. He couldn’t come out from under the bed. The world was an unsafe, scary place where people were so quick to cast their stones and all he had to hold it back was a few feet of fabric and two pillows. He didn’t have any armor or weapons, just a flimsy shield to hide behind and it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough, he couldn’t come out, he wasn’t brave enough. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t fight. All he could do was hide and shake and wait for help to arrive.
That help came in the form of a hand gently reaching towards him. Claude let out an uneasy, distressed little noise as Dimitri’s fingers encroached on his space, trespassing inside and pushing past the thin wall of safety that Claude had hastily thrown up. He was so vulnerable right now; he knew that if Dimitri pushed past his defenses then they wouldn’t hold up. And yet Claude did not bat Dimitri’s hand away. He was frozen, but even he wasn’t sure if it was in fear or acceptance. He just knew that when Dimitri’s hand made it to his cheek and his thumb began petting over his face, things didn’t feel so scary.
“They’re gone, Claude. They’re gone. Won’t you come out? If you’ve been hurt, you need to go to the infirmary-”
Claude shook his head, though not enough to dislodge Dimitri’s hand from where it was resting now against his temple. He wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t going to move. He wasn’t ready to leave his safe space yet. Worried blue eyes searched his face but eventually Dimitri came to accept this, releasing a sigh as he nodded.
“Very well, if you are unharmed, I won’t make you leave,” Dimitri whispered. “Stay right there, then. This is quite the mess; I’ll sweep it up for you. Goddess knows we don’t need anyone else falling on… where did those marbles come from, anyway?” If Claude weren’t still so rattled, he might have laughed. He hadn’t set that trap for Dimitri, of course, and he felt a bit guilty that the Prince had fallen for it, especially when he had only blundered into it in his haste to defend Claude. And yet, that spark of amusement died as Dimitri tried to retract his hand. Without his consent, Claude’s fingers shifted from gripping the blanket to gripping Dimitri’s wrist, holding onto him for comfort and support. Dimitri’s eyes widened and he halted immediately, peeking back under the bed at Claude. Claude had no idea what his face looked like right now, but he guessed it must be pretty pathetic. He felt pathetic and small, after all, and Dimitri had wedged his way past Claude’s defenses. Claude was pretty decidedly Khalid right now, vulnerable and frightened and honest with tears in his eyes and panic clutching his heart. Dimitri’s hand settled on his cheek again and Claude let out a shaky sigh.
Still, Dimitri persisted. “Even if you aren’t hurt right now, Claude, I don’t want you scratching yourself up when you come out of there. Give me two minutes so I can at least clear the area around the bed?” he entreated. “Then I’ll come right back, if you still want me. I’m not going far,” he promised. Claude made a mournful little sound but forced himself to release Dimitri’s wrist. He felt like a piece of his soul left his body as Dimitri drew away, but if Dimitri was conscious of how his pulling back dropped the corner of Claude’s safety net then he did not show it. The Prince just thanked him and scrounged around until he found a small broom and dustpan stuck in the corner. At least he was hurrying, Claude thought. Dimitri used the brush to swiftly sweep up the glass around the bed while he moved the stones by hand. There was a cold breeze blowing in from the window that made Claude shiver, and he shook a bit harder when Dimitri picked up one of the rocks. There was a piece of paper tied to it, held in place by a strand of twine. Claude couldn’t see Dimitri’s face from this angle but he did hear it when the Prince growled, and he could see his hands as the Prince broke the string with a little tug of one finger and unfolded the note.
“Oh, goddess,” he exhaled a moment after reading it, an emotion in his voice that Claude couldn’t decipher. Was it… amusement? But why would the Prince be amused?
He got his answer when Dimitri came back over, offering him the note. Claude wasn’t sure that he wanted to read all the hateful words his attackers had prepared for him on the first stone they had thrown into the room, but Dimitri wouldn’t have shown it to him if it was anything too horrible, right? Dimitri had proved himself to be protective. He wouldn’t contribute to Claude’s stress and hurt.
So Claude’s hand emerged from his blanket fortress and accepted the note, pulling it close to his face so he could read the words scrawled on the page. When he deciphered them, suddenly everything made so much more sense.
Shove this up your ass, Gautier.
Claude had wondered what he could have possibly done to bring a mob to his window. He thought he had guarded all of his secrets well, and that no one had any reason to suspect him or hate him. Now that he was learning the mob hadn’t even been for him, a large portion of his fear abated. No one had found him out. The mob – which, upon recollection, had distinctly female voices – had not been for him. They had gotten the wrong room.
A noise between a laugh and a sob left Claude’s lips as relief released the valve in his chest. He crumpled the note in his hand and let his head thunk back onto the floor as his body shook. There was no one coming for him. In fact, there never had been. This had all just been one grand case of mistaken identity.
And yet, his heart was still racing so fast.
“Are you all right, Claude?” Dimitri asked him, and Claude finally gathered himself enough to speak.
“Y-Yes.” He cleared his throat and took a second try at that, trying to banish the wobble from his voice. “Yes, I’m all r-right…” So much for that effort. Perhaps it was that little stammer, though, that brought Dimitri’s hand back to his cheek, where it petted gently over his skin until his fingers found their way into his hair and gave him a little scratch. Dimitri was treating him like a spooked kitten, but Claude had no complaints for the moment. He had done exactly what Nader told him to, and Nader had been right. Someone had come rushing to his aid and that person was Prince Dimitri. He hadn’t just stopped with making sure that Claude was unhurt, either; he was sticking around to provide him all the comfort he needed. When Claude reached out to paw at him, the Prince even gave him a soft smile and came sliding up under the bed to hide with him. Claude didn’t think about it too much before he nuzzled his way against Dimitri’s chest. His heart raced as he settled there. It raced faster as Dimitri’s arm settled around him in turn.
“You’re all right,” Dimitri echoed, and Claude hummed and nodded and shifted to look up into Dimitri’s face-
There was blood running down the side of it, and all the peace that Claude had begun to feel was banished as adrenaline came rushing back. But he wasn’t scared for himself, anymore. His hands flew up to cup Dimitri’s cheek and turn his head so that he could see the cut. “Dimitri! You’re bleeding!” he exhaled in a rush. The Prince looked surprised – had he not even noticed? He reached up with his gloved hand to touch around the wound, but the blood wasn’t visible on his black glove as he pulled his fingers back to look. He could see the blood on Claude’s fingers, however, and so he knew that the injury was there. Still, the Prince didn’t move.
“It does not pain me, Claude, it’s just a little scratch. Head wounds tend to bleed a lot, the blood vessels are all close to the surface. I can assure you it isn’t as bad as it looks-”
“Dimitri, last time I got hit in the head with a rock, I had to get stitches! This could be serious, let me see,” Claude insisted, pushing at Dimitri’s chest until the pair of them had backed out from under the bed and were in better lighting. Claude ignored the destroyed mess that was his room, fear forgotten now that he had something else to focus on. He grabbed a candle and struck a match and was soon back with a light to check Dimitri over with. Pushing back the Prince’s hair, Claude could see that the cut was small, only hair thin. Blood was dripping from the wound but not gushing. Dimitri was, as he’d said, all right. A little plaster and he’d be good as new, so Claude began rummaging around in his closet until he found his first aid kit. A bit of medical tape and a cotton ball had Dimitri’s wound doctored, and once he wiped the blood off of his face it was as though nothing had happened at all.
The Prince allowed Claude to tend the injury he had gotten while placing himself in the line of fire for the archer’s sake, but Claude was aware that he was being scrutinized with those sharp blue eyes every moment that he worked. It wasn’t until he pulled away the damp cloth he had used to wash the blood from Dimitri’s face that he was told why, though.
“I don’t see a scar,” Dimitri remarked, and Claude’s brow furrowed a bit. Dimitri reached out and took hold of his chin, turning Claude’s face this way and that. Claude understood.
“I don’t get scars,” he responded. When Dimitri’s head tilted, Claude explained by holding up his hand and manifesting his Crest over his palm. The Crest of Riegan was a healing Crest. It had ensured that his past traumas had never left a mark on him. Very convenient, in a way. There were no scars he had to explain, no incriminating marks that spoke of just how many close shaves he’d had with death. His body was the same as the background he had written for himself when he came to Fodlan: blank and untraceable. Scars told a person’s history. Claude didn’t have one.
And yet, he had revealed a bit too much in his frantic worry, peeled back the corner on that hidden past while he had doctored to Dimitri, and Dimitri questioned it now. “…who has been throwing stones at you?” he asked, and his voice was so soft and so full of compassion and concern that Claude felt his heart quake. He wasn’t able to meet the eyes that held so much compassion and so he stared at his toes instead. His toes were surely much less intimidating than Dimitri’s face.
“It was a long time ago,” was all he conceded to say, and Dimitri didn’t pry. Instead, the Prince just reached out, settling his hand on Claude’s cheek once more.
“You don’t deserve it,” he said. He jerked his head towards the broken window. “We both know their message wasn’t for you. But… people can say truly terrible things,” he murmured. “Whatever has been told to you before, whatever happened to you before,” because now the Prince knew that there had been a before, “You didn’t deserve it. I promise you that.”
The empathy that Claude was being offered was almost overwhelming, so he responded in the only way he knew how. He deflected. “Oh, don’t worry too much. You know what they say, about sticks and stones and words,” he said, but Dimitri shook his head.
“It isn’t true,” he said quietly. “They may not draw blood, but words can cut just as deeply as knives… but you know that, don’t you?” Dimitri asked. When the Prince caught his gaze, Claude felt like those blue eyes were looking into his soul. Dimitri had crept past Claude’s defenses and right now he was looking at Khalid, wasn’t he? The scared child who had endured far more fear and abuse from the world than anyone his age deserved. Khalid hadn’t really been allowed a childhood. He had no friends; trust had been too valuable to just give away. Four year olds shouldn’t have to check their food for poison before they ate. Ten year olds shouldn’t have to kill people because they would have killed him first if they were given the chance. Seventeen year olds shouldn’t have to fill their room with traps just so they could sleep at night.
But he had to. Khalid had to.
His scars might not have been visible, but they still existed. They lived on as ghosts inside Claude’s head. Ghosts that got very loud when danger came near. Ghosts that screamed whenever he dropped his guard. Maybe they were only in his mind.
That didn’t make them less real.
It took one suffering soul to know another. Dimitri usually kept himself covered with that high collar and those gloves, but Claude had spotted him in the sauna before. Dimitri’s body was a roadmap of scars, a visible history of trauma for anyone to see. Dimitri knew what it was like to fear for his life. He knew, too, how even just a careless word could dig up the pain of those wounds. He knew, and Claude could see the understanding in his eyes. Claude’s expression was honest in return. He said nothing, but Dimitri gathered him in his arms without a word.
It had been a frightening night. Sleep was the farthest thing from Claude’s mind, now. He and Dimitri were both wide awake. And yet, neither of them moved. Claude settled once more against the Prince’s chest and he didn’t wonder for even a second if Dimitri had somewhere else he’d rather be or something better to be doing. The way Dimitri’s arms wrapped around him assured Claude that he had no intention of leaving Claude alone with a broken window and his defenses shattered.
“Do you mind if I stay?” Dimitri asked, and Claude wondered if he had asked just so Claude wouldn’t have to ask it first. A weak little laugh left Claude’s lips.
“No,” he answered, honest. “Please. Please stay with me.”