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It was foolish, Claude knew, breaths coming in just a touch too shallow as he snuck down the corridor of the dorms. Still, he could hardly keep himself to his bed after the day he’d had.
Teach is back. Teach is here.
He repeated it to himself like a mantra, like just by saying it over and over in his mind he might make it so. They’d reunited in the Goddess Tower, the early dawn light illuminating her dirty but completely unchanged features. The other Deer had joined them at the monastery, rejoicing over their beloved Professor’s return. Teach was going to change things, help him end the war and lead Fodlan into a new dawn.
Teach is back. Teach is here.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t shake it, the fear that all of this had been a dream. He’d had countless in the years she’d been missing with enough storylines to make one’s head spin, but they always ended the same; with him waking up and finding himself back in a world where he didn’t know where Teach was. Where she hadn’t actually returned. Where he was still alone in grappling with the chaos Edelgard had plunged Fodlan into.
Teach is back. Teach is here.
His frenzied thoughts led him directly to her doorway, yet he hesitated upon the threshold. More than anything he wished to see her, to know that this was in fact real, yet he could not help the worry that clawed in his throat. What if she wasn’t there? What if this was yet another dream and he was about to wake up?
“Claude?”
He turned around so quickly he might have fallen had Teach not been there to steady him. She was standing on the stairs just behind him, dressed in one of Hilda’s flowy nightgowns because all of her things had been trashed during the fall of the monastery. He’d nearly forgotten how silently she was capable of moving, too quiet for even one as hyperaware as he normally was.
But more importantly, she was here.
“Teach! Y-You’re—” Gods, why was his voice cracking like that? He wasn’t an awkward boy any longer. (An awkward man, perhaps…)
She tilted her head. “Is something wrong?”
Claude swiped his hands down the front of his sleepshirt, suddenly rather embarrassed at the state of him. Surely this had been what he desired only a second ago? Yet still he found himself incapable of thinking up an excuse for him standing in front of her door in the middle of the night when all of their comrades and friends had already retired for the evening.
“Not at all! I simply wasn’t expecting to find you out here, my friend,” he instead said, patting at the silk scarf he wore around his hair at night, suddenly wondering whether he should take it off or not. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Shouldn’t you?” she evenly countered, stepping past him to open her door. “I’d think you need it more than myself.”
The edge in her voice as she’d said it cast away Claude’s earlier nerves and replaced them with worry as he lingered in the doorway, watching Teach hover uncertainly at the center of her room. He couldn’t see her face like this, but the slump of her shoulders was enough to tell him something was wrong. Judging by the topic of conversation, it didn’t seem like too big a leap to guess she was anxious about the five-year nap she’d supposedly just woken up from.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, his mind simply struggled to understand it. He could only imagine she might feel the same.
“Can I tell you something?” The words left his mouth unbidden, something that hardly ever happened unless it was regarding her, but they earned Teach’s attention. She turned to face him, one brow arching just higher than the other. Crossing his arms behind his head he said with a note of teasing to his voice, “Promise not to think less of me, Teach?”
She huffed a little breath through her nose and a crooked grin wormed its way onto his face. He’d missed her little not-quite-a-laugh.
“Would you like to sit as you tell me?” she asked, sitting upon the edge of her bed herself and patting the space beside her. “Or is lingering in the doorway more comfortable?”
He was acting strangely and Teach, perceptive as ever, had noticed. Back during the Academy days he wouldn’t have hesitated to enter her room the moment she’d opened the door. He’d probably already be talking her ear off about something or other, trying to keep her attention, to make her laugh, to learn her secrets. None of that stubborn kid’s energy existed within him now, only the tired Duke Riegan who wanted nothing more than to kneel at her feet and spill five years of stresses and woes to her. To seek solace in her steady presence the way he’d failed to appreciate all those years ago. To say all the things he'd wished to say in those years he’d longed to see her again.
But he wouldn’t do that. Not now.
Closing the door behind him, Claude padded further into the room and plopped down onto the bed beside her with a weary exhale. Their shoulders brushed, but rather than move away as he’d expected her to, she pressed her arm to his, like a quiet reassurance.
“What did you wish to tell me?” she prodded, staring down at her hands in her lap.
With a sigh he admitted, “I can’t help but worry this is all a dream.” He heard more than saw her turn to peer at him, his gaze plastered to the far wall instead. Somehow he knew that if he were staring into her eyes he would say too much, feel too vulnerable. “I’ve had a lot of those over the years, dreams where you’d come back. But I always woke up. Today feels a little too good to be true.”
There was silence for several breaths as Claude continued staring at Teach’s old bulletin board, failing to truly see the long-since faded notes she’d written five years ago. Were they battle plans for defending Garreg Mach? One of her many to-do lists? Then, a warmth pressed atop his hand where it rested on the bed.
“I’m here,” was all she said, voice soft and low.
His shoulders sank with a sigh as some of the tension left his body. Perhaps she noticed, because she squeezed his hand reassuringly.
“I’m afraid,” she said, the words ringing with an aching vulnerability, like a confession. “To sleep. Or… I suppose what I’m truly afraid of is that I won’t wake up. I’ve already missed so much. All of you… you’ve changed.”
Turning his hand over so their palms were pressed together, he assured her, “Not really. Not in the ways that truly matter.”
Their eyes met then, and he lightly squeezed her hand in return.
“It’s so strange, seeing you like this,” she whispered. He wasn’t certain why she felt the need to speak so quietly, but perhaps it had something to do with the way the air around them seemed to be charged with a sort of energy he’d never experienced before. Tentatively raising her free hand, she brushed the backs of her fingers over the hair that now decorated his jaw. “You look so much older now.”
Despite the fact that his heart was just about ready to beat out of his chest, he couldn’t help but wink and tease, “Not just a boy anymore, huh Teach?”
A smile flickered about the edges of her mouth. “No. Not just a boy.” With one last brush of her fingers she returned her hand to her lap. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there, these last five years.”
“Teach that’s—”
She squeezed his hand, silencing him.
“But I’m really proud of you, of all you’ve managed to do.”
Emotion welled in his throat unexpectedly, and he attempted to clear it before replying, “I didn’t do much. Not really. Just pulling my usual schemes.”
She hummed in a way that conveyed she didn’t believe him at all in the slightest before raising her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. For all that she was concerned about sleeping, it seemed as though she was still tired.
“Perhaps there is a way to solve both of our problems,” she suggested, turning her body to face him.
He arched a questioning brow. “Oh?”
“Stay here tonight.”
His cheeks warmed, though he hoped the low light of the room might prevent her from being able to tell. “Propositioning the Duke, Teach? Now what would Seteth say?”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to if you do not wish to. It was only a suggestion.” Toeing off her shoes, she kicked them toward the foot of the bed before swinging her legs up to lay down, leaving him to fluster in stunned silence. “Have you always slept in that?”
“In what?” he asked, turning to glance at her. She lifted a hand to fiddle with her hair and his own instantly went to the scarf that helped to keep his hair manageable. “This? Just the last few years.”
“Is it… comfortable?”
He laughed lightly, charmed by the perplexed look on her face. “It helps make my hair not so curly. Makes me look more… well… like a Duke, I suppose.” It had been his grandfather’s attendant who’d demanded that he do something about it after taking over at the Roundtable. The gel necessary to keep his hair slicked back was easier to manage if his hair was kept flat overnight, so the scarf it was.
Her mouth pinched thoughtfully as she examined him. “Is a duke not allowed to have curly hair?”
“Not like mine.” He hadn’t meant for his answer to ring with the bitterness it did, but if she noticed, she was kind enough not to prod further.
Kicking him lightly in the thigh, she said, “Well, Your Grace?”
“Oh, don’t call me that,” he groaned, unlacing his boots and placing them beside Teach’s. He then moved to lay his body beside hers, carefully leaving distance between them. It would do nothing for the rumors that would spread amongst their comrades if he were caught leaving her room in the morning, but he was under no impression that she’d given her invitation of staying the night in any manner other than platonic. He couldn’t even dream of it.
“Shall I call you the Master Tactician, then?” she quietly teased. “Or perhaps Your Dukeliness?”
He snorted in a way that was very unbecoming but somehow managed to stretch Teach’s cheeks with a smile. “Since when do you tease?” he all but whined, lifting an arm to cover his burning face. “I thought that was my thing?”
Poking his cheek, she replied, “I likely developed the habit around the time I noticed you’ve developed that wrinkle in your brow.”
How she could shift so easily from teasing to leaving him a vulnerable mess he wasn’t certain. The next breath he drew in wavered before leaving him slowly.
A careful pressure settled over his torso and he cracked an eye to find it was her arm, wrapping around him. “Is this alright?” she whispered, laying her head upon his shoulder the moment he’d nodded. She was solid in his arms as he held her, the weight of her real and reassuring. He’d longed to draw her into his arms like this when he’d first seen her in the Goddess Tower, but he’d been too afraid to do so. Holding her now, it was more than he ever thought it could be.
Voice wavering, he whispered, “I’ve missed you so much, my friend.”
“It will be alright,” she answered, such simple words yet he truly seemed to believe her. “I’m here now.”