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Soren heaves a sigh at the sight of the crowded market below him. The weather is perfect, the sun is shining, and the wind is winding, and he’s out here on guard duty when he could be doing more adventurous things. The list for him is long, but he’ll do his duty as any responsible knight would even if he’d rather be in the crowd and not above it.
The sun is battering down on his armor, and Soren rolls his shoulders. There is literally no one to talk to on the castle walls, and that silence haunts him because silence is remembering, and he doesn’t really want to think about much right now.
“Soren?” Corvus calls out his name and Soren feels a bit better. Corvus is making his way towards him and Soren can feel his face stretch into a grin.
“Corvus,” he says, and raises his hand for a fist bump that Corvus returns with an energy that Soren swears brings up his own. Immediately, he can feel the change in his mood and life is amazing. That’s all it took, and the world is already a few notches brighter than it was before. He throws his arm around Corvus’ shoulders. “Did you come up here because you missed me? I missed you, too, just so you know.”
Corvus just rolls his eyes and glances at him, but Soren catches the tilt of his mouth before it's gone. “Actually, I came to make sure you were doing your job and not off on your own somewhere. I heard the news.”
“Oh,” Soren says, and he feels his mood damper a tiny bit. So maybe Corvus shouldn’t have come to see him right now. “I’m doing okay, just so you know. I doubt Claudia would come here, and…” he sighs, “Actually, I haven’t given it much thought.”
Corvus’ eyebrows raise a bit, but he doesn’t question him. They make their way to the stairwell, and Soren drops his arm to walk behind Corvus in a usually-comfortable-but-not-now silence.
It’s true. He’s been avoiding thoughts of Claudia and the impending doom to befall the world soon, and who can blame him? The recent sighting (supposed, he notes) of Claudia near the kingdom’s borders have been reported and have left a buzz in the air, a tension. He felt it when Callum was rushing around putting defenses of magic on the castle walls, when Rayla was discussing potential plans with Ezran and him, and right now when Corvus has come to check on him but doesn’t really want to say anything.
It annoys Soren to no end. He wants it all to be over, but he knows Claudia as well as he knows his own self – he tells himself that anyway, because maybe he doesn’t know her anymore and she has changed, and maybe he’ll be the one to bring her down.
Soren’s not sure he could do that, honestly.
The doors at the end of the stairwell are closed, and Soren bumps right into Corvus’ back as the man turns around and looks at him with a furrow in his brow. Soren doesn’t like the tense look, and the tension he’s 99 percent sure is going to come from this conservation and not the castle.
“Soren,” Corvus takes a breath. “You can talk to me about this, you know that right?” Soren nods because duh. “You don’t need to feel responsible for Claudia and the decisions she makes– it’s been years, Soren, and you don’t know where she’s been or what she’s done, and none of us know what she’s capable of.”
Soren bites his tongue. No, he wants to say, I know her and you don’t. She’s a part of me – I know her. I would recognize her in a crowd because she can’t change that much. But he doesn’t say that because somewhere in his heart– his heart that’s apparently too weak for this– knows that this isn’t true. He doesn’t really know what Claudia has been up to, or if she likes cute creatures anymore, or if she even remembers that he’s her family too.
Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore anyway because Soren’s family has grown over the years. Maybe she’s not family now.
Corvus is silent as Soren ponders this, and the quiet unnerves Corvus for many reasons, but mostly because a quiet Soren is a sad Soren– a sad Soren is a Soren that needs to be pulled away from the pit he could land in. Corvus reaches a hand out and places it on Soren’s shoulder, and the latter raises his head and blinks harshly. Corvus can see the silver lining his eyes, and he feels the need to reassure him.
“You have me,” is what he says, because of course he does. “Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together because we’re a team. I’m on your side, and I’ve got your back just like you always have mine.” Soren still looks like he might cry, so Corvus shakes his shoulder a bit and says, “It’s me and you against everything that comes our way, okay? To the end of this and beyond it, alright?”
Soren chokes out a laugh. “Thanks for that, man, but I already knew that. Don’t worry about me– we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and even more fish to eat in the market.”
And Corvus can tell that the smile is a bit forced, and Soren is only talking about the types of fish he wants to eat today to distract him and himself, but he decides not to comment. Soren needs this, and he can give him that.
Soren chooses to focus on the fish, and not Claudia. She might have changed– he doesn’t know how much or if it matters– but he has changed too, and that says something. He won’t be like Viren, and he won’t aid in the darkness of this world. He’ll mourn who she was today and for the rest of his life, and she’ll have to mourn who she knew him as– the brother that loved her, that cared about her, and would reassure her.
He knows he could maybe live with that, and he decides right now to focus on the fish in the market and Corvus laughing along with him.