Work Text:
There is a question that Claudia thinks about from time to time during her recent treks in Xadia, now that Viren is back.
Why isn’t her father like how he used to be?
Claudia is a naturally loving person.
And she took that part of her and locked it in a box because there was no other way to do what needed to be done.
Even after her father came back, she keeps her heart locked away; because to open it again is to open a Pandora’s box of guilt and sorrow, and there’s no other way to keep doing what needs to be done.
She wonders, sometimes, why Terry stays around for someone like her. She wonders why he looks after her, why he’s there to prop her up on the nights she’s spent too long hunting, why he looks at her as if she means the world to him.
She is so, so tempted to open the box again, so she can just embrace him with everything that she is.
That she was.
But there’s no other way than to keep doing what needs to be done.
There’s no other way forwards.
They’re all depending on her now. Her sweet, vulnerable Terry. Her father, all at once familiar yet also strange. Of all the people who could understand doing what needs to be done, she thought at least he would.
But now he doesn’t. She’s the only one who understands now.
It doesn’t matter. What needs to be done is more important that the wants of a sad, pathetic heart in a box.