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Church Source 3
Then, as it turns out, he gets more than a day.
It should be a simple matter to go back into the same routine, even after he's devoured the leftover food he'd kept from Claude's visit. It's all he's known for years, now. It's well practiced routine for lack of anything else to practice, pacing and sleeping and eating. Yet the seconds seem to drag on throughout the day now that he's experienced something else, and the nights seem utterly endless without someone to slip out to meet him. Whatever his feelings, whatever conflict burned in the pit of his stomach, Dimitri has to admit the simple truth of the matter is that Claude had... changed things. Taken his mind away from the miserable void of sleep or his own delusions given temporary form. It had only been two nights, but two nights lacking is...
By the time Claude finally manages to find time to slip back to Dimitri's cage, he'll find the Intseh in an even more worked up state than before. The second visit had found him just a little restless, the pacing agitated but nothing too special. Now he's a whirlwind in a small cage, practically running from one end to the other on all floors, a low quiet growl vibrating through him. He's been trying to sleep through the emptiness of his existence, but there's only so much he can do of that before his body has too much energy for that to be even a remote possibility. So worked up, he doesn't even notice Claude right now.
--
A blind man would be able to read Dimitri's agitation right now, and Claude has some considerable advantages over one in that regard. His quick pace across the courtyard slows as he draws near to the cage, not so much worried as measuring. He's never seen Dimitri so worked up before, and he doesn't know what's caused it; he's not quite so arrogant that he immediately chalks it up to a lack of him.
(Admittedly, it's a lack of stimulation in general and Claude's just been the first to provide any in awhile, so it's not so much Claude specifically, but that's a minor detail.)
"Dimitri?" he calls softly, once he's at the bars. "You okay?"
--
Even just those quiet words manage to cut through the frantic pace Dimitri has set up for himself, although this takes place by him coming to a hard pause with his hands crashing against the bars of one end of his cage. Claude is lucky in some ways. Dimitri's mental state isn't good in any definition of the word, but that it's all expressed occasionally noisily certainly means no one blinks twice if they hear something starting up near the "demon cage". Slowly, eye wide, he looks over his shoulder at Claude.
No answer. One isn't necessarily needed if one knows to read the way his gaze skims across Claude, then returns for a slower once over.
--
Claude smiles with an easy confidence he does not remotely feel, moving closer to the cage bars. He's increasingly aware of Dimitri's instability, and it's been a couple days of no contact; he's not even sure Dimitri is mentally in a place where he's capable of recognizing Claude right now, and something about the way he's looking at Claude right now doesn't exactly inspire trust. There's nothing remotely normal going on here, even for the given value of normal Claude's come to accept from Dimitri.
He's wondering if he missed something significant while he was gone. Something upsetting that's really messed with Dimitri's head, in a way he can only hope isn't permanent. And, as was his original conclusion...all he can do is act based on his hopes, because if his fears are going to come true then he'll find out soon enough, and he can't bear to entertain those possibilities before he's forced to.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I brought you some more food." He holds out another parcel through the bars, wrapped in wax paper. "Actually traded for this time! They sent me to the next town over." Which is why he wasn't able to be here the past few nights.
--
For all that Claude has far more to worry about in the case of Dimitri snapping- every bit of him a threat- it's Dimitri who moves with a slow caution as he turns around to make his way towards the other man. Every step is measured, head tilted down warily, and he glances towards the package as if it might bite him.
It all rushes out of him when he finally reaches up to take the package, light at first as if testing and then more sturdily to match the way he suddenly lets out a deep breath. All- well, most of the tension drops out of him, his anxiously stiff tail dropping down to swish along the ground easily. He glances back up at Claude again, but at least this time it's not so.... sharp.
Still nothing said, even as he settles down onto the floor once more.
--
Claude relaxes significantly when Dimitri does; seeing the way the tension snaps when Dimitri confirms he's really there (that's why he had to touch the package first, right? To confirm via touch?) makes him wonder if it actually was Dimitri missing him that had him so worked up. He doesn't ask, though. Why make Dimitri dwell on the unpleasant?
Instead, he sits down just outside the bars, all smiles. "I was able to get you some really nice things this time, since I had the freedom to go shopping somewhere without anyone asking why I needed it," he says cheerfully. "Smoked cheese, dried mushrooms, a whole beef sausage, some herb bread, roasted pumpkin seeds, some pickles...oh, and a little surprise for dessert." He winks. "And I've got some more laid aside for tomorrow, too! I miiiight have gone a little overboard."
A sudden thought prompts Claude, and he reaches to his side and grabs his own canteen, handing it over. "Oh, yeah - I don't know how often they give you water, but since I brought you so much food, you should at least have a drink to wash it down with. I can always get a refill."
--
Even if Claude hadn't listed out everything, Dimitri would be able to tell there's a lot of variety in the package just from the strange shape of it in his hand. His brow furrows as he goes for a round 2 with wax paper, trying to use more the pads of his fingers then the tips this time. It's not something he's used to, clearly, but he's doing his best.
He's still in the process of awkwardly unwrapping it when Claude reaches for his canteen, and belatedly looks up only when the other man speaks. The answer to that question is that he's brought water with his food, and when they bother to remember. Contact with water happens more when they're forcing him clean after an execution. He doesn't say any of that, however. Instead, he only pauses for a moment before reaching over to accept the canteen. "Thank... you." The two words aren't in Intsehli this time, however. They don't feel right in his mouth, don't come out right. Some things, after all, aren't in the Intsehli language... and he hasn't had cause to say them for a very long time.
--
Claude blinks, then smiles warmly at him. "You're welcome," he says, also in the human tongue. This...feels right. It feels closer to what he remembers their friendship being like as a child than anything with Dimitri thus far. And he's actually getting to do concrete things for Dimitri now, on top of just their friendship. It's a great feeling.
--
It's certainly a nostalgic feeling, one that's almost dizzying in some way. Dimitri doesn't know how to deal with it, instead focusing back down to his reoccuring battles against wax paper. This time, it's not quite as clumsily shredded and punctured, although the battle damage is still existent to some degree. In contrast to the wildness and roughness, especially that which he displayed just moment ago as he paced in his cage, he's a lot more delicate as he separates the food to get a good look at it all. The other wrapped thing gets a curious glance, but Dimitri assumes that must be the 'dessert' Claude mentioned and leaves it alone for now.
Instead, he pauses, glancing up again at Claude from beneath his fur. He points towards a random bit of food. "What... is?" He's still awkwardly trying in the human tongue, not explicitly saying he's taking up on those language lessons from a few nights before..... but it should be more than obvious enough.
--
Claude is so pleased that he's glad he doesn't have a tail of his own, or he knows he'd be completely giving himself away in embarrassing fashion. Instead, he just smiles. "Mushrooms," he says. Then he switches to Intsehli to clarify. "That's just the name for them normally; it doesn't specify that they're dried. For that, you'd say..." And, switching back: "Dried mushrooms."
--
The name of a food is much easier to work out than basic thanks, funnily enough, and Dimitri quietly works through the list of foods that lay before him in both taste and word. Some come easier than others on Dimitri's tongue, which should be no surprise based on what Claude knows of Intsehli and the lack of certain sounds in it.
Eventually, however, they've run through them all, and Dimitri begins to eat properly, if quietly. Small talk is still something he's not used to, but he's starting to realize just listening to Claude is good enough sometimes. At least for himself, with such a general lack of it all. The thought eventually prompts him to speak up, in Intsehli for casual conversation. "Hunting again?"
--
"Some," Claude agrees easily. "It was actually more of a trade run for the church - taking things they made here, then trading them for things from other villages over there. The hunting I did on the way was for my personal trading use rather than the church's - so I could get stuff like that." He nods to Dimitri's meal, winking. "I'm a good hunter - I'd even say great - and I'm a decent forager as well, but your meals would be pretty limited if it was just stuff I was able to gather myself. It's way more convenient to get whatever you can, in whatever amounts you can, and then trade those things to the people who need them for whatever you might specifically want or need yourself."
--
So it was trade this time... "You seem to have made yourself valuable..." Or maybe he's just easy to toss out of their hair this way, if Claude is still as clever and infuriatingly curious as always. Crunching his way through the seeds, Dimitri thinks on all of that. It feels distantly familiar, in the same way a dream is. He knows he was familiar with such things, when he was younger, before he became an executioner for the church. Yet it doesn't feel like it was his life anymore.
---
"Of course." Claude smirks. "Making yourself too valuable to be easily gotten rid of is the first step in having the freedom to get away with things, you know. It's the kind of philosophy a lot of the higher-ups in the church take." He folds his arms behind his head. "Of course, my reasons for doing that are rather different...plus I started at something of a disadvantage, being an outsider."
--
"Not a disadvantage for long..." Carefully breaking off a piece of the cheese to put to the side, Dimitri starts actually mixing foods together to try them combined instead of separate. "Not with how you apparently charm others." He still remembers how Claude explained finding him.
--
"What can I say? I couldn't afford not to get good at that." Claude chuckles. "Honor and honesty are wonderful, virtuous qualities...but they're not so amazing when they don't work for you. When you're disliked and distrusted by default, using charm and guile to get by is pretty much your only option. I'd rather live ignobly than die honorably."
--
"If they existed, perhaps we wouldn't be as we are." Using the tips of his claws, Dimitri begins to experiment with slicing through the sausage, faint memories and ideas coming together the more they meet and talk. "As it is... That guile of yours only makes chains of other people." His executioner's brand catches moonlight as he moves his hand along the different foods. "But maybe that's an honesty, a truth, as well."
Deal with enough Intseh, and their tendency towards politics, if one pays attention, becomes rather apparent. For a race that certainly has the physical advantage over their human counterparts, they seem more inclined to get preoccupied over more... metaphorical matters, sometimes even in common arguments among their kind. Whether it's Claude himself or simply the direction he inadvertently pointed this conversation in, it's seemed to awaken some vague memories of those times in Dimitri himself.
Of course, he's also had a lot of time to himself to think on his circumstances and what he's seen in his miserable time here, amidst all the bloodshed and trauma. Perhaps it only needed an outlet as well.
--
"Chains?" Claude frowns slightly. "What do you mean?"
--
"All of this-" Dimitri makes a dismissive gesture with his chin towards the rest of the church outside his cage. "-is held up by that same philosophy of yours. Of guile and deception. What city has it crafted? I've never once seen it." A pierce of claw through a mushroom. "But I know the result. It is me, and hordes of your own lining up to see a monster slaughter one of their own. Do the reasons matter when the result is what it is?"
--
"Wow." Claude laughs, in a slightly strained sort of way. "That's...sure a comparison to make, I guess. Not a particularly flattering one on my side of it, either. That said...not sure it's as accurate as you think." He looks down at the dust of the courtyard, just outside Dimitri's cage, folding his hands under his chin. "For one thing...I'd say that tricking people to overcome the unfair disadvantages they've put you at, or to achieve good ends - or both - is a little different from tricking people into believing things that help you hoard power and punish the people you hate. To say the least."
He looks up at Dimitri. "But if we're asking pointed and somewhat painful questions, I guess it's fair game to level one at you. I remember how polite and well-behaved you were as a kid. Upstanding and well-mannered - definitely not anything like me. You wanted them to see you as a person, right? How far did that get you?"
He shrugs. "Like you said - the result is what it is. And if the result is what's important, then what's better: a good result achieved by dishonorable means, or an honest failure? Are you telling me that you wouldn't have lied or tricked anyone if it meant you could have escaped ending up here, if you'd realized that being good wasn't going to do you any good?"
He smiles, rather mirthlessly. "When you lose, you lose. And if the stakes are high enough, then it's not going to matter how you lost - only that you did. The only way to have any control at all in how things go is to win."
--
"Good as dead." Unlike Claude, Dimitri doesn't make any effort to pretend this is a conversation he's even remotely enjoying... but it's apparently not one he's particularly suffering with, either. He's accepted a long time ago his fate, and how his only satisfaction is going to be a bit of bloody revenge before the end. He snaps his teeth onto the mushroom, speaking with it tucked into his cheek between bites. His manners really did go sometime over the years. "But is there any other result in a world where the only option is your brand of trickery, or to suffer?"
Resuming his chewing, he takes a moment to organize some of his food. "It seems to me as though there is no success in either direction. After all, you still are collared by the church, no matter how well you have managed for yourself. If our only 'wins' are to still be alive, that does not seem worth half the effort."
Dimitri pauses in his rampant pessimism about people and life in general to appreciate the tiny sandwich he's constructed.
--
"On the contrary - I'm still setting up for my win." Claude smiles. "That's part of what you get to decide, as a winner - not just how you're going to win, but what prize you're playing for. And the prize I'm aiming for...well, I always knew it'd take a long time to get the pieces arranged to my satisfaction. But I am going to win. But when you start off at the bottom of the pecking order, like we have..." He spreads his hands. "Well, you have to play it slow and careful."
He leans forward, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his chin on them as he watches Dimitri. It's strangely reminiscent of his younger self - strangely, because Dimitri was never so tall that he could have seen Claude sitting like this through the window on his door. But seeing Claude sitting like this as an adult somehow makes it clear how he must have looked, doing it as a child. "That said...I don't think your way of doing things is doomed to failure, either. I admire those kinds of things in a person, you know. I definitely liked it in you. But...I guess there's a time and a place for that kind of thing, and it's only when other people are willing to play by the same rules. And no one here was ever going to do that. But I bet back where you came from, with other Intseh? With people who actually recognized you as having worth as a person? You could have grown up to be as honorable as you wanted, and been respected for it."
--
Slow and careful... Dimitri supposes he can understand that, even if he can understand nothing else about Claude's point of view. Not enough to really care for it at any rate. After all, what is he doing if not waiting for the perfect moment for his revenge, when his claws can reach someone whose blood will be worth spilling?
Still holding the sandwich delicately between his fingers, he actually looks up at the unexpected compliment only to feel as though he's physically knocked back slightly at the peculiar wave of nostalgia that overtakes him. They've never been in this situation before- not in conversation, not in view like this, not with the weights attached to them after the lives they've lived. Yet it somehow feels like something that could have been.
...Just like how he could have had an entirely different life if he'd never been taken.
Dimitri's jaw tightens a little bit, and he looks back down to the food still left before him. "What would the true worth in that be...." With what he's experienced, that life seems so worthless to him- as good and useful as the hallucinations he regularly has still.
--
"I think it'd be worth just about anything," Claude says, with uncharacteristic - and complete - seriousness. "Anything and everything."
Which is why that's precisely what he's going to risk to - however belatedly - make it happen. He can't undo the injustices of the past, but maybe he can pave the way for a better future.
--
If he looks up at the seriousness in that voice, if he lets himself be drawn in by curiosity to see what look is on Claude's face... Dimitri can't help but suspect that a part of him might believe it. Foolish. That part of him should have been killed a long time ago. This change to his routine is throwing him off more than he wants. So he keeps quiet, and keeps his head down, instead finishing off the meal Claude has brought for him.
Well, for the most part. There's still that chunk of cheese he's clearly saving, and also the small wrapped food. Finally getting to it, Dimitri works on undoing that as well. He's not really thinking too hard on it, beyond the concentration required to make sure he doesn't puncture through the wax paper again. Needless to say... He's not expecting honeycomb, which means he's not expecting to unwrap it and immediately get some on the fur of his fingers. Claude will get the amusement of nearly seeing the bristle go from toe to tear tip as Dimitri jerks his hand back, shaking it helplessly. His ears immediately flick so flat, the movement is hilarious in its own right.
--
Claude bursts out laughing, having to clap a hand over his mouth to muffle it. "It's just honey," he manages between his fingers, serious mood instantly dispelled.
---
"It- doesn't- feel good on my fingers!" he hisses, the sound on the verge of a snarl. Rather, it doesn't feel good on his fur, but semantics. Dimitri is so bunched up from the sensation that it nearly seems as if he might try to move away from his own hand, fruitless an endeavor as that may be.
--
"Lick it off," Claude advises, still stifling laughter. "It'll taste good. That's what humans do."
--
"I know how honey works!" As dubious as the claim may seem right now. Eventually, Dimitri pulls his hand close to his mouth with clear distaste. "Humans can't understand this...." He's suffering. More than usual.
--
"And here I thought it'd be a pleasant surprise." Claude is still failing at keeping a straight face. "Guess next time I'd better warn you, huh?"
--
Dimitri's stare says he doesn't believe him in the slightest. It's hard to after that much laughter. "I doubt you will."
--
"I will, promise." Claude laughs again. "Just eat it, okay? I don't have all night to find out if you like it or not."
--
"You have all night to laugh at me." Still, now with a lot more care and awareness of just what he's handling, Dimitri carefully begins to start nibbling into the honeycomb. Even without the despair of honey on his fingers, it's still a slightly messy affair just being of Intseh build, and he has to pause constantly to swipe his tongue along his lips and clean at his teeth.
--
Claude watches this fondly. For him, this is just a moment to enjoy his friend getting a rare (if, evidently, ill-suited for Intseh) treat; but there is something in the back of his mind that is very aware that this would be fetish fuel for somebody. Not him, apparently, but somebody. Having a sneaky, dirty mind is a dangerous thing even when his own thoughts are innocent.
"Did you forget you have cheese, too?" he eventually asks. "Or do you not like that kind?"
--
Dimitri is still working on getting some honeycomb out from between his fangs- he hates the sensation, just on principle from what he does in the execution ring- when that question makes him pause. "...I'm saving it." It won't last long, but he is saving it. Dimitri glances down at the little chunk. "...Why."
--
Claude chuckles. "Well, for one thing, you eat the stuff I bring you but you haven't told me what you liked or disliked about any of it, so I don't know what kinds of things to get you in the future. So I wasn't sure if you were saving that or you just didn't want it..." He shrugs, smiling. "Also, you were combining a lot of your foods today, and honeycomb and cheese supposedly go well together."
--
Communication probably is something he should work on... Something Dimitri mentally acknowledges and then promptly ignores, because something else Claude has said is much more relevant to him. Carefully keeping hold of the honeycomb, he works on a very uneven chunk-slice of cheese to put it together. There's a wary glance back towards Claude, because that laughter still hasn't been forgotten, before he takes an experimental bite.
it doesn't take long at all for his tail to smack so violently from one side to the other that it would probably hurt for anyone else. Dimitri has to pause for the mix of flavors.
--
Claude smiles broadly. "Is that a winner?" he says, green eyes sparkling, as though the tail isn't a good indicator.
--
That seems to be enough to get Dimitri to snap out of it, and he hunches his shoulders up slightly. Now he's certainly aware of how his tail has been acting, although the force of it is almost as responsible as much as Claude is. "It's... good."
--
"I thought you might like it." Claude seems deeply content by this, resting his arm on one upraised knee. "I still remember when we were little, and I brought you a honey candy I took off a kid who tried to beat me up...you really liked it, so I figured I'd see if you'd like the real thing."
Claude...may not have told Dimitri the details of how he procured that candy, when they were little. Assuming Dimitri remembers the moment at all.
--
Through trauma and time, a lot of Dimitri's memories from his childhood are rather faded.... some more than others. It's a testament to how much such a small moment had meant to him, when he was younger and oblivious to his fate. The language barrier had kept him isolated even further than the Church locking him away in a room out of sight, and he'd been well aware of his his physical appearance was so different that it added another barrier. That it had never seemed to matter to Claude, that he'd continue to visit him so regularly....
It had meant a lot, in such little gestures.
Maybe it's those old memories, old feelings from a part of himself he'd long thought died, that make him pause. His claws knead into air, wanting to do- something. He's not sure what. "...Is that what happened."
--
"Did I not mention it before?" Claude chuckles. He'd never bothered complaining much as a child - he'd learned quickly how little it did - and, with Dimitri, he'd always been more focused on his pleasure and fascination with the other boy than on his own, not particularly pleasant life. If he'd occasionally been dirty and bruised when Dimitri saw him, he'd never spoken of it; he'd never acted anything but excited and happy. And if he'd talked about their being outsiders together, he'd never actually explained what that meant on his end. Logical enough, really; he'd always been interested in learning things he didn't know, so why talk about the things he did know?
Dimitri never got to see much of, or to hear about, Claude's own struggles with being an undesirable within the church.
"Yeah, some kid tried to start a fight with me like usual, but I pretended I saw the deacon coming and knocked him over when he turned to look. I got in a couple hits before he ran off, but he dropped his pouch of candy." Claude's smile is downright nostalgic; the memory's too far off to be painful. Besides, getting the better of that particular bully had been almost as sweet as the candy, at the time. "So we got a treat out of it, anyway. I got punished later, of course, but that wasn't exactly new."
--
"...No. You didn't." It occurs to Dimitri how little he knows about Claude, now. Their conversations were always brief bastions of respite from their own lives- his enforced isolation, Claude's own apparent loneliness. The exchange of language, the clumsy attempts to get to know one another... Perhaps it's little wonder that he can't make sense of the other man, doesn't know how to trust him.
Even now, he still searches him out... Not looking up, Dimitri rubs his thumb along the crinkles in the wax paper. Claude is apparently well liked, if he can truly take the other man at his word. He can charm his superiors enough for them to invite him to outings, for all those outings are public executions. The church trusts him enough to send him outside regularly, do trade with other towns. What is he getting out of these visits? What worth could he himself possibly have?
...Unless even less has changed, for all that they have.
"....And now?" Finally stirring into movement again, he reaches for another piece of cheese.
--
"And now what?" Claude gives him a questioning look, head slightly cocked.
-
"And now is that no longer new, or not?"
--
Claude laughs. "These days, it's not so easy to get me in trouble. I'm too valuable...ironically, because I'm so worthless to them. I'm competent, fluent in multiple languages, and there's nowhere I won't go...but I'm a foreigner, so sending me into dangerous places doesn't bother them too much and no one in the church will kick up a fuss over how I should be given better treatment than I am. I have a lot of contacts and friends, and people who owe me favors. I'm too inconvenient to dispose of without a good reason, while being juuust expendable enough that they won't ever have one of their own do my jobs. So no, no one throws me under the bus too much anymore...and what trouble they do throw me into, it doesn't come from them. And so long as I know how to take care of myself - which I do, by the way - I can manage just fine."
--
Well. Color him surprised. Dimitri finishes off his food, almost disappointed at the now complete lack. Usually he can finish off food and not particularly want for more immediately, but the cheese.... Patiently, he begins to clean at his fingers for any remnants of honey. "So you have friends. I was beginning to wonder, with how you seem to be making it a habit to see a monster."
--
"A few," Claude agrees, amiably. "Not what I'd call close friends, mind. But they're people I like, and people I'd help out for free if it didn't set me or my plans back any. But close friends...those are people you'd help out no matter what personal risks you'd run. And then, the tier above that...people you'd help without even stopping to make the calculations. Loyalty down to the bone, deeper than thought itself."
--
There is, in the very very very back of Dimitri's head, a thought that this is important somehow. That this means something, or is meant to mean something.
Unfortunately, he's always been a bit slow in certain areas, and even moreso when regular conversation is a thing he's still figuring out. The connection between Claude's description of close friendship and what he's been actively doing for the last week or so- minus the days he's just missed- completely goes over Dimitri's head as he shifts to the side to curl up again.
"You speak as if you know it exists."
--
"Of course I do." Claude chuckles. "You know it, too, even if you're so bitter you're pretending you don't. Family ties, parents with their children, sworn friends - you know of those things, whether or not you've ever benefited from them personally. You can't be so jaded that you're going to pretend to not know what I'm talking about even from observation."
Claude's deliberately not claiming it with Dimitri. He doesn't feel there's a point, yet.
--
Distant as the stars he can barely see from his cage, memories shift in Dimitri's memories. Of his family. Of old friends he hasn't seen in many years, and can't even say if they're alive or not. They almost sting, and the reminder sends a quiet bristle through him.
"...It's the extent more than the base existence I'm doubting."
--
Claude sighs at that, turning his back to Dimitri to lean against the bars of his cage, looking up at the stars.
"I have to say...even with all the ways I imagined us meeting up again, I never pictured it going like this."
--
Against the bars again... Dimitri shifts quietly closer, looking over the helpless exposed curve of Claude's back, his neck.
"...I never pictured it at all." He pushes himself up, taking care to avoid his claws clicking against stone. "You weren't even looking when you found me."
--
"Never?" There's something almost sad in Claude's voice. "Not even when we were kids? After they first sent me away?"
--
"Does that count...." There's a pause, memories aching like scars. He'd always been waiting, in that room. So much waiting. Now, he moves closer, care in every step so that he can get right to the bars.
--
"Of course. A lot of the times I imagined finding you again were back then, too. It's not like you're the only one who got jaded growing up." Claude closes his eyes.
--
For a moment, Dimitri waits, watching Claude silently. It's hard to see his face from this angle; being taller doesn't guarantee a perfect view of everything all the time. But it's enough to grant him the go ahead to move, and he slips his hand through the bars. His whole palm is much larger than those of most humans, and could wrap around Claude's throat easily. Yet it's only the very tips of his claws that touch- thumb balanced along the curve of Claude's jaw, fingers along the side os his neck, his pinky curled slightly so that its claw presses towards the hollow just above the collarbone.
"How did you think it would go, then?"
--
Claude startles slightly at the touch, a tiny physical tremor that indicates that he really, genuinely wasn't watching Dimitri - wasn't paying attention to his movements, wasn't suspicious or wary of what he'd do at all. That, or Claude's an incomparable actor. Either way, Claude doesn't try to move away, although there's a touch of tension to him that wasn't there before.
"Well..." He swallows, closes his eyes from where they'd snapped open. "In terms of the most basic difference...I always thought you'd be happy to see me." There's still that slightly wistful, melancholy quality to his words.
--
In contrast, Dimitri almost feels himself easing up. The veil between reality and his hallucinations feels so thin sometimes... And it feels as though nothing he does, nothing he is, has gotten through on some level to Claude. Even with the touch, even with the food he's physically eaten, his mind has still doubted it all.
But if he reacts, he's real. He's not the same lying spectre from his early days.
...Well. he could still be lying. But Dimitri feels better about his chances, there, at least right now.
"Disappointed, then."
--
"Which of us are you referring to?" Claude asks, with bleak humor.
--
"You.... I would think." There's a faint quiet shift of a noise, alongside the weight pressing in against Claude from the other side of the bars as Dimitri leans against them himself. "That... I'm not going to be as I ever was. You're just coming here for a corpse...." His claws twitch, but Dimitri is well aware of his own worrying strength. He keeps them away from digging in so much that it would be a problem... just that they can still be felt.
--
"I didn't expect you to be totally unchanged. Not even in my earliest daydreams." Claude leans his head back against the bars. "I just...thought you'd still like me."
--
With their positions being what they are now, Dimitri's breath goes right into Claude's hair- deep and quiet, from the pit of his lungs, disrupting the already messy head of curls. He stays like that for a few moments, doing nothing but simply being there with his claws at the delicate skin of the other man's throat.
"...I... don't even know." Finally, his hand drops away from its position, limply catching the front of his clothes where it falls. "You're still here..."
--
"Yeah," Claude agrees. There's nothing particularly complicated in his answer. "I didn't think I'd be starting back at square one, but if I have to, I will. I might not be happy about you not liking me anymore, but - it was never a prerequisite. I'll earn it back. It takes a lot more than a little thing like not being liked to stop Claude von Riegan, I'll have you know. Otherwise I would've curled up and died years ago."
He seems to be bouncing back up from whatever downswing his mood took.
--
At least one of them can bounce back like that. Dimitri stays where he is, too tired for even frustration or suspicion right now. "This is beyond merely square one," he corrects, slumped against the bars. "This time... I could kill you. Even without meaning to." His fingers twitch against Claude's clothing.
--
"You could. And if you do, then you do. I won't be around to complain about it, obviously." Claude shrugs. How can he be so easygoing about it?
--
That's a question Dimitri would really like the answer to himself, and he sinks his own eye shut. "So your own life means that little."
--
"Honestly, the person I'd leave behind who was closest to me is you. So it wouldn't be that huge of a loss to anyone who cared, right?"
--
Not a huge loss.... Dimitri thinks of the past few days he's experienced, the frantic anxious energy and inability to focus, the lack of anything to focus on. That had been with the knowledge that Claude would- maybe- come back, that he had warned of having to leave like he did for a short while. He tries to think on what his future would be like with Claude gone permanently, knowing exactly why the other man wouldn't be coming back because the blood would be on his hands...
It's a weird twist of feelings that he's not expecting, that he doesn't know how to deal with, and his claws quietly knead and grind against Claude's shirt. Hopefully it wasn't a favorite one.
"Will you think the same when I die?" Because it's still a matter of 'when', in Dimitri's eyes.
--
"No," Claude says immediately. "But you mean a lot to me. You always have."
Claude's implication seems to be that Dimitri's death would matter very deeply to at least one person, whereas he doesn't think the same of his own.
--
"....You meant much to him as well." Dimitri pries his fingers out from any threads they might have caught, and pulls his hand back. "Go away, Claude von Riegan. Stop coming here." He goes back to his usual place in his cage, curling up with tail coming around to wrap before his legs and arms.
--
"No can do." Claude turns his head slightly, glancing at Dimitri over his shoulder. "I've got a friend to win back."
--
Just because he was expecting such a stupid and stubborn answer doesn't mean he's any happier to actually hear it. Face partially tucked into his arms, his stare still manages to carry a heavy dose of misery and exasperation as he looks over at Claude. "....You asked... if I had never imagined meeting you again."
--
"Yeah?" Claude shifts so that he's leaning his side against the bars instead of his back, allowing himself to look at Dimitri more easily. After a moment, he belatedly adds something he probably should have before: "By the way, I'm not talking about hallucinations you're tricked into thinking are real. I'm talking about just...thinking about it. Imagining it, while knowing you're imagining it."
--
"I know. I have experienced both." It may seem like a miracle, but he does know when he's voluntarily doing something as opposed to.... otherwise. "When younger, I had imagined.... other things. Ways to thank you, for what generosity you had shown." Generosity, Dimitri has to grudgingly admit, that he's still showing, whatever other motives there may be beneath the surface.
"There is nothing that person from back then can give you now..." As far as Dimitri is concerned, he's no longer his younger self to the extent that he might as well be dead. "So this is all I can do. Go away, for your own good, before either one of us dies." Before he kills Claude in his own unstable state, or until Claude watches him inevitably die from his own suicide rush, or simply as a natural effect of the execution ring.
It's the best he can give him. Dimitri can't think of anything else.
--
"I appreciate the misguided consideration, Dimitri," Claude replies, with a slight smile. "But I'm not gonna accept that that's the only way this story can end. And if I do lose you again...well, it's not going to be because I walked away. It'll have to be the same way it happened last time - some external force is gonna have to drag us apart. Because I'm not leaving by choice."
--
"Then you're a fool." There's nothing more for it, and Dimitri turns his head away, blind side to Claude. "You've seen how easily I can end your life, and won't pursue better for yourself. Perhaps you would be better as a specter."
--
"Probably, for unrelated reasons," Claude agrees, amiably. "But in this case, I think we just have different opinions about what the worst outcome for me would be. And not losing you again is worth a lot of risk." He shrugs and smiles. "Hell, I run risks for the church and I don't even like them. Don't you think I'd be willing to go a lot further for someone actually important to me?"
--
"Inform me then of when you find them," Dimitri mutters pointedly. Maybe if he keeps trying to push back, Claude will stop. He suspects it won't do much good, but there's little else available to him besides the very worst option. "How long do you have for tonight?"
--
"Do you really think I'm that easy to dissuade?" Claude asks, amused and also evidently telepathic. Really, though, Dimitri just isn't that slick - and Claude isn't shy about letting him know that, because it's his very next sentence. "Or that you're being even remotely subtle at this point?"
At the question, Claude looks up at the moon, then down at the faint shadows on the ground, measuring the length of them with his eyes. "Mm...another twenty minutes, I think."
--
"Neither bluntness nor subtlety seem to work with you." So, no, on both fronts. His tail flicks about in obvious aggravation before he shifts one leg so that he can pin it with his foot. Still, it seems he's stuck with his company a while longer. The knowledge stirs mixed feelings, all the more after having been alone with no focus for a good few days. Unable to resist for long, Dimitri looks back over to him.
"...You said you're not accepting how this all will end."
--
"Nope." Claude smiles up at the sky. "Maybe there aren't any better options at the moment...but since none of the existing ones appeal, I'm going to do my best to write my own ending for this story." He stretches his arms over his head. "But that's one of those things I won't ask you to believe until you see it for yourself."
--
"Such effort for a lost cause seems to be a waste of energy." Or, maybe it's not just that, but... Dimitri huffs out quietly, ears lowering. "...Will you take responsibility, then, if I do begin to believe?" He won't, but there are holes he wants to prod into all of this. If he succeeds or not is up in the air.
--
"Of course. I mean, I was already kind of promising to, wasn't I?" Claude turns his head to smile sidelong at Dimitri. "Saying I don't expect you to believe anything I don't show you that you can put your faith in is basically saying that I'm going to give you good reason to have faith in me, right? Because the faith and its reward will go hand in hand."
--
"Unless the faith comes first." Pinned underneath his foot, his tail just gives an annoyed twitch. "What will you do then, when that only brings ruin with it? Your idea of faith is hardly a perfect hing, or even wanted."
--
Claude laughs out loud, though not actually loudly. "Dimitri," he says, with a glitter of amusement in his eyes, "I'm not exactly worried that that's a likely scenario. I don't think you even remember how to have faith in anything."
--
"I don't." He's not going to lie about that or anything, especially not when it's an obvious fact between them. "Yet it is still a chance you would have to risk, is it not?" His eye narrows. "And you have already ruined things with your presence as it is."
--
"I know; I'm very naughty that way." Claude sounds deeply amused and more than a little irreverent, folding his arms behind his head. "I really don't know why you'd think I'd have a plan in place for a total impossibility happening, though, Your Prickliness."
He grins up at the sky. "But when it happens, I'll have already made the impossible a reality, so at that point I'll be able to accomplish anything I care to."
--
"I'm fairly certain that sort of arrogance isn't befitting any religion." Not that he really knows more than perhaps two. Dimitri still feels confident in the assertion, or at least as confident about anything else.
"For someone who cares little for his own life, you seem to have many plans."
--
"Plans are just dreams you believe you can make real," Claude replies. "Anyone can dream, and anyone can believe in something - whether or not it makes any logical sense to believe it. Whether you can create a feasible plan and carry it out, and actually turn dreams into reality...well, that's what separates the truly great from the idle dreamers." He closes his eyes. "I do have a lot of plans, yes. Whether any of them will bear fruit...time will tell, won't it?"
--
"I imagine this is why the church cares little for your personality." Dreams and plans are things the institution is designed to strangle in the cradle, as far as Dimitri can tell. He's the most egregious example, true, but there can be nothing right with how many murderers come to his claws, and how many turn up to watch the spectacle.
If the church truly rules all....
"So then does that mean there exist no plans without dreams, for you?"
--
"Hah!" Claude laughs in a way that's not precisely humorous. "The church doesn't care much for any part of an outsider. My personality's just the icing on the cake, really."
The question gives Claude a moment's pause as he thinks it over. "I guess you could put it like that, yeah. Why do you ask?"
--
"....I wonder, then, if such an existence would be empty to you."
--
"What kind of existence do you mean?" Claude raises an eyebrow.
--
"Was I not clear?" asks the person who has not had to practice making himself clear for a good chunk of his life now.
--
"One.... going through the motions, I suppose." Not looking at Claude, he slowly shifts his foot enough to let his tail move freely again. The swishes are mostly to get rid of any aches from being still, but the way he warily watches it makes it seem as if Dimitri can't trust his own tail. Which he can't.
"If one has no dream, then they make no plan. That is the logic you are offering to me."
--
"Oh, you can have dreams without plans." Claude shrugs. "Probably everyone's dreamed of flying, for instance, but nobody sits down and tries to come up with a plan to grow wings. You can dream of doing things that are impossible, or things you wouldn't actually want to try, or even just dream for fun. Dreams don't have to lead to plans., and plenty of them never do."
He hooks his hands around a propped knee, lacing his fingers together. "And I guess you could say that you can have plans without dreams, too, if you consider some things too mundane or undesirable to be called dreams. You could make a plan to go to the market, or the dentist, and while technically you could say those are dreams that become plans - in the sense that you take a thought in your head and take steps to make it a reality - those aren't the kinds of things people tend to dream about, either. So you could say they follow the letter of my statement, if not the spirit."
He laughs a little. "But I'm probably way overthinking what you mean. So shall we just come out and acknowledge that you're coming as close as possible asking me what I would've done in your place without actually asking me? How I would've managed, or turned out? If I could still talk like this if I was the one on your side of the bars?" He folds his arms on his knee, resting his chin on them. "Or maybe you're asking me what I think you should do or feel about the stuff I'm saying. Honestly, I have to say that I don't know the answer to either of those questions...and it probably wouldn't be too respectful to you for me to speculate on them, either."
---
"...I do not like how you can read me so easily."
This is perhaps something Dimitri supposes he shouldn't be surprised about. Even when he was young, he knows he was more honest than not, and any instances of 'not' were because of his inclination towards being polite, when manners meant anything at all. In this present, in the now, he now merely lacks the experience of conversation or how to hold back his emotions, never having had reason for any of them. Who would he speak to that would not lash out at him, or punish him for such an attempt despite no ill will? (Well. Previously no ill will. Dimitri finds no reason not to bite off any of their arms, if not for his own waiting.)
That doesn't make it any less annoying, and his soft huff is telling.
Still, if it's out there, now free of his awkward attempts at subtlety or any interest towards more abstract philosophy, then so be it. "So you never bothered, then, to think that your dreams are more cruel than the alternative?"
--
"I wouldn't say that I've never bothered to think of what it's like for you," Claude counters mildly. He finally shifts enough to turn around and face Dimitri again, sitting indian style once more. "It's more like...I could try to imagine what it's like to be caged up and forced to kill people, but even if I did...would I even get close to understanding? Could I understand how it feels to go through that, not just vicariously in my head for a few minutes, but to be forced to live that reality for years? I don't think I can know what you've been through, Dimitri. Not without living it. So I'm not going to tell you what you should do, or how you should think, or what you should believe. I'm not going to tell you how to feel about it, or pretend I understand what it's like to be you. I don't, and that's that. All I really know is what it's like to be me."
He looks up at the sky. "And being me...which is something you can't know any better, by the way, just as a side note...I don't think I could have survived without dreams. Some of them were just dreams, but some of them became plans over time. Some of them needed time to become plans." He shakes his head slightly. "But my village being wiped out, being forced into the church that branded my people savages and heretics and had that whole campaign against them started in the first place, punished for speaking my own language or holding onto any of my culture, looked down on by everyone around me, mocked and blamed for everything...how would I have even been able to get up every morning without dreaming that I could make today better than yesterday? That someday I'd make things be different? Without dreaming of freedom, or revenge? Both, preferably."
Claude finally lowers his eyes from the sky to Dimitri, his gaze calm and - not quite chilling, there's nothing menacing or even bothered about it, but it's so serious and straightforward a look that it's somehow unsettling anyway. Claude without any humor, without any masks, without any agenda, is just that unfamiliar. "That's what I had to do to survive. But I'm a different person than you, and I was in a different situation. You don't have to take my talking about my dreams as some kind of encouragement for you to do what I did...especially if you don't want to."
He cocks an eyebrow. "But really, you sound like you might be starting to have dreams you don't want to with me around. I guess you could blame me for those if you want, but I really don't see how that's any different, or any worse, than the hallucinations you were having before I ever got here."
--
When they were younger, Claude was a bright spot in his life. The caretakers of the church were always, at their very best, stone faced, professional, giving him what he needed to grow up healthy and strong for the role they would force onto him, and they were gone from him almost more than they spent any time in his presence. But Claude? He saw Claude so much, saw that smile so much. It was such a stark contrast to the bland walls of his room, to the emptiness of the Church, the barely decent taste of his food. Dimitri thinks he had survived on some part because of their meetings, had managed to have as much hope as he did that things would turn out alright. After all, if someone like Claude was there, surely things would be fine in the end, wouldn't they?
Now, that hope, that brightness, is too... frightening. It had hurt so much to make that fall the first time, to think that he would be alright to the absolute lowest, a pit Dimitri knows he will never be able to claw his way out of. That kind of pain, that foolish idea to believe- he's not sure what will happen to him if he goes through it a second time. He's already so broken as it is. Will there be anything left for a next time? Can he somehow be buried lower?
Yet there's something to be said about darkness in balance to overwhelming light. As Claude looks back down to him, the movement almost seems to bring some of the night sky down with it. It's.... quiet. Calm and heavy, would be worrying if Dimitri's worries weren't so very different from the average person's. Somehow, that's what seems to lure him from his curled position, ears slowly shifting further in Claude's direction and Dimitri raising his head in soft but intense interest. Somehow, in moments like this... Claude seems reachable, not a fever dream or a spot of light so sharp it hurts. He seems more real than ever, even more than a few minutes ago when Dimitri's claws were along his skin. Always, when he's not smiling, he seems real... and such a feeling only seems to reinforce the smiles he shows to Dimitri every other moment. That, too, is frightening in its own way...
But in the moments when they happen, they're almost strangely alluring, and Dimitri begins to uncurl slowly. Claude like this is a softer light, the kind of moonlight that doesn't blind or hurt or so much, and Dimitri can't help but follow the pull and push much in the same way the ocean can't. Approaching the bars of his cage slowly, on all fours as to stay closer to that look, he reaches through the bars once more- both to still see what happens when he reaches out, and simply to press his fingers to the sides of Claude's face as if he can investigate that look better here.
"You are no hallucination," he says quietly.
--
Claude smiles slightly at that, but that look doesn't leave his eyes; the moment doesn't break. He leans into the touch of Dimitri's fingers.
"I'd like to think you're saying that as a good thing."
--
Much like the first time Dimitri had touched him, had reached out towards Claude's hand, there's a carefulness in his fingers. No claws this time, only the slow brush of his fingers against delicate skin.
"Is it?" Dimitri leans forward, forehead against bars and disrupting the limp mane of hair he has. "Before... Everything was the same. I could accept that I was nothing, and so nothing hurt. The hallucinations... would never change anything. They could never truly touch me." Just the faintest graze of a claw along Claude's jaw, and Dimitri shifts his hand in correction. "But... you are here now. Everything is different... whether I believe or not. Everything aches anew now, when you are gone, and I can do nothing."
--
"That sounds a bit like a philosophical question, and most Intsehli I've met love those." There's no tension in Claude as Dimitri touches him this time; it's obvious that Claude recognizes he's safe right now, and may have been conscious of not being entirely safe with Dimitri earlier. So his fondness for - and trust of - Dimitri isn't a blind one, then, but an active, informed choice. This is interesting information for Dimitri to glean, if he cares to. "Is it better to live a life that's a flat, unchanging plane, or to live a life with a series of highs and lows? Does the height of the peaks make up for the lowness of the valleys? Is a state of equilibrium in between, where you never experience either extreme, better?" Claude smiles and shrugs. "Like a lot of philosophy questions, there's no objective answer. All you can decide is which you prefer."
--
With how much attention he's focused towards Claude, it's hard for him to miss the way the other man looks, how comfortable he is this way despite such a minor detail being that to change. Something about it is- Dimitri doesn't know. There's only a faint twist somewhere in his chest, and he brushes his thumb up along near Claude's eye. "I don't know," he admits quietly. "Such a life is not what I had ever desired, and yet it is that which I was given. If I were to relive such pain, again and again, would that not be merely a process of breaking something repeatedly? Just once.... That is more than enough. Is there any goodness that would justify that, any happiness, when it would go to waste on something too low to bring back once more?"
--
"Why are you asking me?" Claude cocks an eyebrow at Dimitri. He's still relaxed, even with those claws near his eye. "You're the only one who can decide whether the payoff is worth the risk."
After a moment, he closes his eyes and forces himself to say the last thing he wants to say. But this is important - more important than him and what he wants. "And if you decide that I'm really hurting you more than I'm helping you, and you want me to leave you alone...I'll leave. If you ask me to. Some pain might be inevitable, but if it outweighs any good I'm doing then I don't want that for you." He opens his eyes again. "Although I hope you don't make that call before you've even given me a fair chance."
--
Dimitri's answer is simple and to the point. "Because you are the only person I have to ask."
He has no one else. He has nothing else. Claude is the only difference in his life, the only one that comes to him in this cell where he's left to stagnate and suffer... and he is the one who matters the most because he is the one bringing this change with him.
His hand presses closer, palm to skin now, fingers shifting to brush across Claude's brow and into his hair. Hearing the offer is... strange. All this time, he's been pushing for it, hasn't he? Yet now that it's there for him, free to take, all he can feel is tired. He really doesn't know what he wants, and if this good is preferable even when it aggravates him so much. In the end... He doesn't even address it.
"...You used to have a braid."
--
"I did. The church didn't like it, not that they like anything about me." Claude tilts his head. "You miss it?"
--
"So you stopped for that reason." No answer on the personal preference bit.
--
"Well, I don't intend for it to be permanent. I happened to like it. But while I'm still going along with the church..." Claude shrugs.
--
"...I see." Finally, Dimitri withdraws his hand back into the cage and quietly looks down at it. If his expression is a little difficult to make out, it's likely because even he himself isn't entirely sure what to do with his emotions. If nothing else, he's certainly transfixed on how it had felt to touch Claude again. No wary assurances of reality, no warning threats, just a touch.
...He might be like this for a while if Claude doesn't snap him out of it. It's easy for Dimitri to get lost within his own head, these days.
--
Claude lets it ride, for the moment. If the spell lasts longer than three minutes, he's going to have to break into it - if only to tell Dimitri he needs to leave - but he'd prefer not to interrupt. He feels like something important is happening here; not just in the tenderness of the last few minutes, but in Dimitri's head. Part of him is afraid to rush it. So he just sits quietly, watching his friend, feeling the lingering ghost of those fingers on his cheek and the warmth tingling through him still from it.
--
The bad news is that it does last past the point of any other conversation able to happen. The good news is that, even when Claude interrupts his thoughts to let him know he has to leave, Dimitri doesn't seem too out of rhythm. He only gives a quiet nod and, if he looks back, Claude will find him looking back down to his hand again.
It should be a simple matter to go back into the same routine, even after he's devoured the leftover food he'd kept from Claude's visit. It's all he's known for years, now. It's well practiced routine for lack of anything else to practice, pacing and sleeping and eating. Yet the seconds seem to drag on throughout the day now that he's experienced something else, and the nights seem utterly endless without someone to slip out to meet him. Whatever his feelings, whatever conflict burned in the pit of his stomach, Dimitri has to admit the simple truth of the matter is that Claude had... changed things. Taken his mind away from the miserable void of sleep or his own delusions given temporary form. It had only been two nights, but two nights lacking is...
By the time Claude finally manages to find time to slip back to Dimitri's cage, he'll find the Intseh in an even more worked up state than before. The second visit had found him just a little restless, the pacing agitated but nothing too special. Now he's a whirlwind in a small cage, practically running from one end to the other on all floors, a low quiet growl vibrating through him. He's been trying to sleep through the emptiness of his existence, but there's only so much he can do of that before his body has too much energy for that to be even a remote possibility. So worked up, he doesn't even notice Claude right now.
--
A blind man would be able to read Dimitri's agitation right now, and Claude has some considerable advantages over one in that regard. His quick pace across the courtyard slows as he draws near to the cage, not so much worried as measuring. He's never seen Dimitri so worked up before, and he doesn't know what's caused it; he's not quite so arrogant that he immediately chalks it up to a lack of him.
(Admittedly, it's a lack of stimulation in general and Claude's just been the first to provide any in awhile, so it's not so much Claude specifically, but that's a minor detail.)
"Dimitri?" he calls softly, once he's at the bars. "You okay?"
--
Even just those quiet words manage to cut through the frantic pace Dimitri has set up for himself, although this takes place by him coming to a hard pause with his hands crashing against the bars of one end of his cage. Claude is lucky in some ways. Dimitri's mental state isn't good in any definition of the word, but that it's all expressed occasionally noisily certainly means no one blinks twice if they hear something starting up near the "demon cage". Slowly, eye wide, he looks over his shoulder at Claude.
No answer. One isn't necessarily needed if one knows to read the way his gaze skims across Claude, then returns for a slower once over.
--
Claude smiles with an easy confidence he does not remotely feel, moving closer to the cage bars. He's increasingly aware of Dimitri's instability, and it's been a couple days of no contact; he's not even sure Dimitri is mentally in a place where he's capable of recognizing Claude right now, and something about the way he's looking at Claude right now doesn't exactly inspire trust. There's nothing remotely normal going on here, even for the given value of normal Claude's come to accept from Dimitri.
He's wondering if he missed something significant while he was gone. Something upsetting that's really messed with Dimitri's head, in a way he can only hope isn't permanent. And, as was his original conclusion...all he can do is act based on his hopes, because if his fears are going to come true then he'll find out soon enough, and he can't bear to entertain those possibilities before he's forced to.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I brought you some more food." He holds out another parcel through the bars, wrapped in wax paper. "Actually traded for this time! They sent me to the next town over." Which is why he wasn't able to be here the past few nights.
--
For all that Claude has far more to worry about in the case of Dimitri snapping- every bit of him a threat- it's Dimitri who moves with a slow caution as he turns around to make his way towards the other man. Every step is measured, head tilted down warily, and he glances towards the package as if it might bite him.
It all rushes out of him when he finally reaches up to take the package, light at first as if testing and then more sturdily to match the way he suddenly lets out a deep breath. All- well, most of the tension drops out of him, his anxiously stiff tail dropping down to swish along the ground easily. He glances back up at Claude again, but at least this time it's not so.... sharp.
Still nothing said, even as he settles down onto the floor once more.
--
Claude relaxes significantly when Dimitri does; seeing the way the tension snaps when Dimitri confirms he's really there (that's why he had to touch the package first, right? To confirm via touch?) makes him wonder if it actually was Dimitri missing him that had him so worked up. He doesn't ask, though. Why make Dimitri dwell on the unpleasant?
Instead, he sits down just outside the bars, all smiles. "I was able to get you some really nice things this time, since I had the freedom to go shopping somewhere without anyone asking why I needed it," he says cheerfully. "Smoked cheese, dried mushrooms, a whole beef sausage, some herb bread, roasted pumpkin seeds, some pickles...oh, and a little surprise for dessert." He winks. "And I've got some more laid aside for tomorrow, too! I miiiight have gone a little overboard."
A sudden thought prompts Claude, and he reaches to his side and grabs his own canteen, handing it over. "Oh, yeah - I don't know how often they give you water, but since I brought you so much food, you should at least have a drink to wash it down with. I can always get a refill."
--
Even if Claude hadn't listed out everything, Dimitri would be able to tell there's a lot of variety in the package just from the strange shape of it in his hand. His brow furrows as he goes for a round 2 with wax paper, trying to use more the pads of his fingers then the tips this time. It's not something he's used to, clearly, but he's doing his best.
He's still in the process of awkwardly unwrapping it when Claude reaches for his canteen, and belatedly looks up only when the other man speaks. The answer to that question is that he's brought water with his food, and when they bother to remember. Contact with water happens more when they're forcing him clean after an execution. He doesn't say any of that, however. Instead, he only pauses for a moment before reaching over to accept the canteen. "Thank... you." The two words aren't in Intsehli this time, however. They don't feel right in his mouth, don't come out right. Some things, after all, aren't in the Intsehli language... and he hasn't had cause to say them for a very long time.
--
Claude blinks, then smiles warmly at him. "You're welcome," he says, also in the human tongue. This...feels right. It feels closer to what he remembers their friendship being like as a child than anything with Dimitri thus far. And he's actually getting to do concrete things for Dimitri now, on top of just their friendship. It's a great feeling.
--
It's certainly a nostalgic feeling, one that's almost dizzying in some way. Dimitri doesn't know how to deal with it, instead focusing back down to his reoccuring battles against wax paper. This time, it's not quite as clumsily shredded and punctured, although the battle damage is still existent to some degree. In contrast to the wildness and roughness, especially that which he displayed just moment ago as he paced in his cage, he's a lot more delicate as he separates the food to get a good look at it all. The other wrapped thing gets a curious glance, but Dimitri assumes that must be the 'dessert' Claude mentioned and leaves it alone for now.
Instead, he pauses, glancing up again at Claude from beneath his fur. He points towards a random bit of food. "What... is?" He's still awkwardly trying in the human tongue, not explicitly saying he's taking up on those language lessons from a few nights before..... but it should be more than obvious enough.
--
Claude is so pleased that he's glad he doesn't have a tail of his own, or he knows he'd be completely giving himself away in embarrassing fashion. Instead, he just smiles. "Mushrooms," he says. Then he switches to Intsehli to clarify. "That's just the name for them normally; it doesn't specify that they're dried. For that, you'd say..." And, switching back: "Dried mushrooms."
--
The name of a food is much easier to work out than basic thanks, funnily enough, and Dimitri quietly works through the list of foods that lay before him in both taste and word. Some come easier than others on Dimitri's tongue, which should be no surprise based on what Claude knows of Intsehli and the lack of certain sounds in it.
Eventually, however, they've run through them all, and Dimitri begins to eat properly, if quietly. Small talk is still something he's not used to, but he's starting to realize just listening to Claude is good enough sometimes. At least for himself, with such a general lack of it all. The thought eventually prompts him to speak up, in Intsehli for casual conversation. "Hunting again?"
--
"Some," Claude agrees easily. "It was actually more of a trade run for the church - taking things they made here, then trading them for things from other villages over there. The hunting I did on the way was for my personal trading use rather than the church's - so I could get stuff like that." He nods to Dimitri's meal, winking. "I'm a good hunter - I'd even say great - and I'm a decent forager as well, but your meals would be pretty limited if it was just stuff I was able to gather myself. It's way more convenient to get whatever you can, in whatever amounts you can, and then trade those things to the people who need them for whatever you might specifically want or need yourself."
--
So it was trade this time... "You seem to have made yourself valuable..." Or maybe he's just easy to toss out of their hair this way, if Claude is still as clever and infuriatingly curious as always. Crunching his way through the seeds, Dimitri thinks on all of that. It feels distantly familiar, in the same way a dream is. He knows he was familiar with such things, when he was younger, before he became an executioner for the church. Yet it doesn't feel like it was his life anymore.
---
"Of course." Claude smirks. "Making yourself too valuable to be easily gotten rid of is the first step in having the freedom to get away with things, you know. It's the kind of philosophy a lot of the higher-ups in the church take." He folds his arms behind his head. "Of course, my reasons for doing that are rather different...plus I started at something of a disadvantage, being an outsider."
--
"Not a disadvantage for long..." Carefully breaking off a piece of the cheese to put to the side, Dimitri starts actually mixing foods together to try them combined instead of separate. "Not with how you apparently charm others." He still remembers how Claude explained finding him.
--
"What can I say? I couldn't afford not to get good at that." Claude chuckles. "Honor and honesty are wonderful, virtuous qualities...but they're not so amazing when they don't work for you. When you're disliked and distrusted by default, using charm and guile to get by is pretty much your only option. I'd rather live ignobly than die honorably."
--
"If they existed, perhaps we wouldn't be as we are." Using the tips of his claws, Dimitri begins to experiment with slicing through the sausage, faint memories and ideas coming together the more they meet and talk. "As it is... That guile of yours only makes chains of other people." His executioner's brand catches moonlight as he moves his hand along the different foods. "But maybe that's an honesty, a truth, as well."
Deal with enough Intseh, and their tendency towards politics, if one pays attention, becomes rather apparent. For a race that certainly has the physical advantage over their human counterparts, they seem more inclined to get preoccupied over more... metaphorical matters, sometimes even in common arguments among their kind. Whether it's Claude himself or simply the direction he inadvertently pointed this conversation in, it's seemed to awaken some vague memories of those times in Dimitri himself.
Of course, he's also had a lot of time to himself to think on his circumstances and what he's seen in his miserable time here, amidst all the bloodshed and trauma. Perhaps it only needed an outlet as well.
--
"Chains?" Claude frowns slightly. "What do you mean?"
--
"All of this-" Dimitri makes a dismissive gesture with his chin towards the rest of the church outside his cage. "-is held up by that same philosophy of yours. Of guile and deception. What city has it crafted? I've never once seen it." A pierce of claw through a mushroom. "But I know the result. It is me, and hordes of your own lining up to see a monster slaughter one of their own. Do the reasons matter when the result is what it is?"
--
"Wow." Claude laughs, in a slightly strained sort of way. "That's...sure a comparison to make, I guess. Not a particularly flattering one on my side of it, either. That said...not sure it's as accurate as you think." He looks down at the dust of the courtyard, just outside Dimitri's cage, folding his hands under his chin. "For one thing...I'd say that tricking people to overcome the unfair disadvantages they've put you at, or to achieve good ends - or both - is a little different from tricking people into believing things that help you hoard power and punish the people you hate. To say the least."
He looks up at Dimitri. "But if we're asking pointed and somewhat painful questions, I guess it's fair game to level one at you. I remember how polite and well-behaved you were as a kid. Upstanding and well-mannered - definitely not anything like me. You wanted them to see you as a person, right? How far did that get you?"
He shrugs. "Like you said - the result is what it is. And if the result is what's important, then what's better: a good result achieved by dishonorable means, or an honest failure? Are you telling me that you wouldn't have lied or tricked anyone if it meant you could have escaped ending up here, if you'd realized that being good wasn't going to do you any good?"
He smiles, rather mirthlessly. "When you lose, you lose. And if the stakes are high enough, then it's not going to matter how you lost - only that you did. The only way to have any control at all in how things go is to win."
--
"Good as dead." Unlike Claude, Dimitri doesn't make any effort to pretend this is a conversation he's even remotely enjoying... but it's apparently not one he's particularly suffering with, either. He's accepted a long time ago his fate, and how his only satisfaction is going to be a bit of bloody revenge before the end. He snaps his teeth onto the mushroom, speaking with it tucked into his cheek between bites. His manners really did go sometime over the years. "But is there any other result in a world where the only option is your brand of trickery, or to suffer?"
Resuming his chewing, he takes a moment to organize some of his food. "It seems to me as though there is no success in either direction. After all, you still are collared by the church, no matter how well you have managed for yourself. If our only 'wins' are to still be alive, that does not seem worth half the effort."
Dimitri pauses in his rampant pessimism about people and life in general to appreciate the tiny sandwich he's constructed.
--
"On the contrary - I'm still setting up for my win." Claude smiles. "That's part of what you get to decide, as a winner - not just how you're going to win, but what prize you're playing for. And the prize I'm aiming for...well, I always knew it'd take a long time to get the pieces arranged to my satisfaction. But I am going to win. But when you start off at the bottom of the pecking order, like we have..." He spreads his hands. "Well, you have to play it slow and careful."
He leans forward, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his chin on them as he watches Dimitri. It's strangely reminiscent of his younger self - strangely, because Dimitri was never so tall that he could have seen Claude sitting like this through the window on his door. But seeing Claude sitting like this as an adult somehow makes it clear how he must have looked, doing it as a child. "That said...I don't think your way of doing things is doomed to failure, either. I admire those kinds of things in a person, you know. I definitely liked it in you. But...I guess there's a time and a place for that kind of thing, and it's only when other people are willing to play by the same rules. And no one here was ever going to do that. But I bet back where you came from, with other Intseh? With people who actually recognized you as having worth as a person? You could have grown up to be as honorable as you wanted, and been respected for it."
--
Slow and careful... Dimitri supposes he can understand that, even if he can understand nothing else about Claude's point of view. Not enough to really care for it at any rate. After all, what is he doing if not waiting for the perfect moment for his revenge, when his claws can reach someone whose blood will be worth spilling?
Still holding the sandwich delicately between his fingers, he actually looks up at the unexpected compliment only to feel as though he's physically knocked back slightly at the peculiar wave of nostalgia that overtakes him. They've never been in this situation before- not in conversation, not in view like this, not with the weights attached to them after the lives they've lived. Yet it somehow feels like something that could have been.
...Just like how he could have had an entirely different life if he'd never been taken.
Dimitri's jaw tightens a little bit, and he looks back down to the food still left before him. "What would the true worth in that be...." With what he's experienced, that life seems so worthless to him- as good and useful as the hallucinations he regularly has still.
--
"I think it'd be worth just about anything," Claude says, with uncharacteristic - and complete - seriousness. "Anything and everything."
Which is why that's precisely what he's going to risk to - however belatedly - make it happen. He can't undo the injustices of the past, but maybe he can pave the way for a better future.
--
If he looks up at the seriousness in that voice, if he lets himself be drawn in by curiosity to see what look is on Claude's face... Dimitri can't help but suspect that a part of him might believe it. Foolish. That part of him should have been killed a long time ago. This change to his routine is throwing him off more than he wants. So he keeps quiet, and keeps his head down, instead finishing off the meal Claude has brought for him.
Well, for the most part. There's still that chunk of cheese he's clearly saving, and also the small wrapped food. Finally getting to it, Dimitri works on undoing that as well. He's not really thinking too hard on it, beyond the concentration required to make sure he doesn't puncture through the wax paper again. Needless to say... He's not expecting honeycomb, which means he's not expecting to unwrap it and immediately get some on the fur of his fingers. Claude will get the amusement of nearly seeing the bristle go from toe to tear tip as Dimitri jerks his hand back, shaking it helplessly. His ears immediately flick so flat, the movement is hilarious in its own right.
--
Claude bursts out laughing, having to clap a hand over his mouth to muffle it. "It's just honey," he manages between his fingers, serious mood instantly dispelled.
---
"It- doesn't- feel good on my fingers!" he hisses, the sound on the verge of a snarl. Rather, it doesn't feel good on his fur, but semantics. Dimitri is so bunched up from the sensation that it nearly seems as if he might try to move away from his own hand, fruitless an endeavor as that may be.
--
"Lick it off," Claude advises, still stifling laughter. "It'll taste good. That's what humans do."
--
"I know how honey works!" As dubious as the claim may seem right now. Eventually, Dimitri pulls his hand close to his mouth with clear distaste. "Humans can't understand this...." He's suffering. More than usual.
--
"And here I thought it'd be a pleasant surprise." Claude is still failing at keeping a straight face. "Guess next time I'd better warn you, huh?"
--
Dimitri's stare says he doesn't believe him in the slightest. It's hard to after that much laughter. "I doubt you will."
--
"I will, promise." Claude laughs again. "Just eat it, okay? I don't have all night to find out if you like it or not."
--
"You have all night to laugh at me." Still, now with a lot more care and awareness of just what he's handling, Dimitri carefully begins to start nibbling into the honeycomb. Even without the despair of honey on his fingers, it's still a slightly messy affair just being of Intseh build, and he has to pause constantly to swipe his tongue along his lips and clean at his teeth.
--
Claude watches this fondly. For him, this is just a moment to enjoy his friend getting a rare (if, evidently, ill-suited for Intseh) treat; but there is something in the back of his mind that is very aware that this would be fetish fuel for somebody. Not him, apparently, but somebody. Having a sneaky, dirty mind is a dangerous thing even when his own thoughts are innocent.
"Did you forget you have cheese, too?" he eventually asks. "Or do you not like that kind?"
--
Dimitri is still working on getting some honeycomb out from between his fangs- he hates the sensation, just on principle from what he does in the execution ring- when that question makes him pause. "...I'm saving it." It won't last long, but he is saving it. Dimitri glances down at the little chunk. "...Why."
--
Claude chuckles. "Well, for one thing, you eat the stuff I bring you but you haven't told me what you liked or disliked about any of it, so I don't know what kinds of things to get you in the future. So I wasn't sure if you were saving that or you just didn't want it..." He shrugs, smiling. "Also, you were combining a lot of your foods today, and honeycomb and cheese supposedly go well together."
--
Communication probably is something he should work on... Something Dimitri mentally acknowledges and then promptly ignores, because something else Claude has said is much more relevant to him. Carefully keeping hold of the honeycomb, he works on a very uneven chunk-slice of cheese to put it together. There's a wary glance back towards Claude, because that laughter still hasn't been forgotten, before he takes an experimental bite.
it doesn't take long at all for his tail to smack so violently from one side to the other that it would probably hurt for anyone else. Dimitri has to pause for the mix of flavors.
--
Claude smiles broadly. "Is that a winner?" he says, green eyes sparkling, as though the tail isn't a good indicator.
--
That seems to be enough to get Dimitri to snap out of it, and he hunches his shoulders up slightly. Now he's certainly aware of how his tail has been acting, although the force of it is almost as responsible as much as Claude is. "It's... good."
--
"I thought you might like it." Claude seems deeply content by this, resting his arm on one upraised knee. "I still remember when we were little, and I brought you a honey candy I took off a kid who tried to beat me up...you really liked it, so I figured I'd see if you'd like the real thing."
Claude...may not have told Dimitri the details of how he procured that candy, when they were little. Assuming Dimitri remembers the moment at all.
--
Through trauma and time, a lot of Dimitri's memories from his childhood are rather faded.... some more than others. It's a testament to how much such a small moment had meant to him, when he was younger and oblivious to his fate. The language barrier had kept him isolated even further than the Church locking him away in a room out of sight, and he'd been well aware of his his physical appearance was so different that it added another barrier. That it had never seemed to matter to Claude, that he'd continue to visit him so regularly....
It had meant a lot, in such little gestures.
Maybe it's those old memories, old feelings from a part of himself he'd long thought died, that make him pause. His claws knead into air, wanting to do- something. He's not sure what. "...Is that what happened."
--
"Did I not mention it before?" Claude chuckles. He'd never bothered complaining much as a child - he'd learned quickly how little it did - and, with Dimitri, he'd always been more focused on his pleasure and fascination with the other boy than on his own, not particularly pleasant life. If he'd occasionally been dirty and bruised when Dimitri saw him, he'd never spoken of it; he'd never acted anything but excited and happy. And if he'd talked about their being outsiders together, he'd never actually explained what that meant on his end. Logical enough, really; he'd always been interested in learning things he didn't know, so why talk about the things he did know?
Dimitri never got to see much of, or to hear about, Claude's own struggles with being an undesirable within the church.
"Yeah, some kid tried to start a fight with me like usual, but I pretended I saw the deacon coming and knocked him over when he turned to look. I got in a couple hits before he ran off, but he dropped his pouch of candy." Claude's smile is downright nostalgic; the memory's too far off to be painful. Besides, getting the better of that particular bully had been almost as sweet as the candy, at the time. "So we got a treat out of it, anyway. I got punished later, of course, but that wasn't exactly new."
--
"...No. You didn't." It occurs to Dimitri how little he knows about Claude, now. Their conversations were always brief bastions of respite from their own lives- his enforced isolation, Claude's own apparent loneliness. The exchange of language, the clumsy attempts to get to know one another... Perhaps it's little wonder that he can't make sense of the other man, doesn't know how to trust him.
Even now, he still searches him out... Not looking up, Dimitri rubs his thumb along the crinkles in the wax paper. Claude is apparently well liked, if he can truly take the other man at his word. He can charm his superiors enough for them to invite him to outings, for all those outings are public executions. The church trusts him enough to send him outside regularly, do trade with other towns. What is he getting out of these visits? What worth could he himself possibly have?
...Unless even less has changed, for all that they have.
"....And now?" Finally stirring into movement again, he reaches for another piece of cheese.
--
"And now what?" Claude gives him a questioning look, head slightly cocked.
-
"And now is that no longer new, or not?"
--
Claude laughs. "These days, it's not so easy to get me in trouble. I'm too valuable...ironically, because I'm so worthless to them. I'm competent, fluent in multiple languages, and there's nowhere I won't go...but I'm a foreigner, so sending me into dangerous places doesn't bother them too much and no one in the church will kick up a fuss over how I should be given better treatment than I am. I have a lot of contacts and friends, and people who owe me favors. I'm too inconvenient to dispose of without a good reason, while being juuust expendable enough that they won't ever have one of their own do my jobs. So no, no one throws me under the bus too much anymore...and what trouble they do throw me into, it doesn't come from them. And so long as I know how to take care of myself - which I do, by the way - I can manage just fine."
--
Well. Color him surprised. Dimitri finishes off his food, almost disappointed at the now complete lack. Usually he can finish off food and not particularly want for more immediately, but the cheese.... Patiently, he begins to clean at his fingers for any remnants of honey. "So you have friends. I was beginning to wonder, with how you seem to be making it a habit to see a monster."
--
"A few," Claude agrees, amiably. "Not what I'd call close friends, mind. But they're people I like, and people I'd help out for free if it didn't set me or my plans back any. But close friends...those are people you'd help out no matter what personal risks you'd run. And then, the tier above that...people you'd help without even stopping to make the calculations. Loyalty down to the bone, deeper than thought itself."
--
There is, in the very very very back of Dimitri's head, a thought that this is important somehow. That this means something, or is meant to mean something.
Unfortunately, he's always been a bit slow in certain areas, and even moreso when regular conversation is a thing he's still figuring out. The connection between Claude's description of close friendship and what he's been actively doing for the last week or so- minus the days he's just missed- completely goes over Dimitri's head as he shifts to the side to curl up again.
"You speak as if you know it exists."
--
"Of course I do." Claude chuckles. "You know it, too, even if you're so bitter you're pretending you don't. Family ties, parents with their children, sworn friends - you know of those things, whether or not you've ever benefited from them personally. You can't be so jaded that you're going to pretend to not know what I'm talking about even from observation."
Claude's deliberately not claiming it with Dimitri. He doesn't feel there's a point, yet.
--
Distant as the stars he can barely see from his cage, memories shift in Dimitri's memories. Of his family. Of old friends he hasn't seen in many years, and can't even say if they're alive or not. They almost sting, and the reminder sends a quiet bristle through him.
"...It's the extent more than the base existence I'm doubting."
--
Claude sighs at that, turning his back to Dimitri to lean against the bars of his cage, looking up at the stars.
"I have to say...even with all the ways I imagined us meeting up again, I never pictured it going like this."
--
Against the bars again... Dimitri shifts quietly closer, looking over the helpless exposed curve of Claude's back, his neck.
"...I never pictured it at all." He pushes himself up, taking care to avoid his claws clicking against stone. "You weren't even looking when you found me."
--
"Never?" There's something almost sad in Claude's voice. "Not even when we were kids? After they first sent me away?"
--
"Does that count...." There's a pause, memories aching like scars. He'd always been waiting, in that room. So much waiting. Now, he moves closer, care in every step so that he can get right to the bars.
--
"Of course. A lot of the times I imagined finding you again were back then, too. It's not like you're the only one who got jaded growing up." Claude closes his eyes.
--
For a moment, Dimitri waits, watching Claude silently. It's hard to see his face from this angle; being taller doesn't guarantee a perfect view of everything all the time. But it's enough to grant him the go ahead to move, and he slips his hand through the bars. His whole palm is much larger than those of most humans, and could wrap around Claude's throat easily. Yet it's only the very tips of his claws that touch- thumb balanced along the curve of Claude's jaw, fingers along the side os his neck, his pinky curled slightly so that its claw presses towards the hollow just above the collarbone.
"How did you think it would go, then?"
--
Claude startles slightly at the touch, a tiny physical tremor that indicates that he really, genuinely wasn't watching Dimitri - wasn't paying attention to his movements, wasn't suspicious or wary of what he'd do at all. That, or Claude's an incomparable actor. Either way, Claude doesn't try to move away, although there's a touch of tension to him that wasn't there before.
"Well..." He swallows, closes his eyes from where they'd snapped open. "In terms of the most basic difference...I always thought you'd be happy to see me." There's still that slightly wistful, melancholy quality to his words.
--
In contrast, Dimitri almost feels himself easing up. The veil between reality and his hallucinations feels so thin sometimes... And it feels as though nothing he does, nothing he is, has gotten through on some level to Claude. Even with the touch, even with the food he's physically eaten, his mind has still doubted it all.
But if he reacts, he's real. He's not the same lying spectre from his early days.
...Well. he could still be lying. But Dimitri feels better about his chances, there, at least right now.
"Disappointed, then."
--
"Which of us are you referring to?" Claude asks, with bleak humor.
--
"You.... I would think." There's a faint quiet shift of a noise, alongside the weight pressing in against Claude from the other side of the bars as Dimitri leans against them himself. "That... I'm not going to be as I ever was. You're just coming here for a corpse...." His claws twitch, but Dimitri is well aware of his own worrying strength. He keeps them away from digging in so much that it would be a problem... just that they can still be felt.
--
"I didn't expect you to be totally unchanged. Not even in my earliest daydreams." Claude leans his head back against the bars. "I just...thought you'd still like me."
--
With their positions being what they are now, Dimitri's breath goes right into Claude's hair- deep and quiet, from the pit of his lungs, disrupting the already messy head of curls. He stays like that for a few moments, doing nothing but simply being there with his claws at the delicate skin of the other man's throat.
"...I... don't even know." Finally, his hand drops away from its position, limply catching the front of his clothes where it falls. "You're still here..."
--
"Yeah," Claude agrees. There's nothing particularly complicated in his answer. "I didn't think I'd be starting back at square one, but if I have to, I will. I might not be happy about you not liking me anymore, but - it was never a prerequisite. I'll earn it back. It takes a lot more than a little thing like not being liked to stop Claude von Riegan, I'll have you know. Otherwise I would've curled up and died years ago."
He seems to be bouncing back up from whatever downswing his mood took.
--
At least one of them can bounce back like that. Dimitri stays where he is, too tired for even frustration or suspicion right now. "This is beyond merely square one," he corrects, slumped against the bars. "This time... I could kill you. Even without meaning to." His fingers twitch against Claude's clothing.
--
"You could. And if you do, then you do. I won't be around to complain about it, obviously." Claude shrugs. How can he be so easygoing about it?
--
That's a question Dimitri would really like the answer to himself, and he sinks his own eye shut. "So your own life means that little."
--
"Honestly, the person I'd leave behind who was closest to me is you. So it wouldn't be that huge of a loss to anyone who cared, right?"
--
Not a huge loss.... Dimitri thinks of the past few days he's experienced, the frantic anxious energy and inability to focus, the lack of anything to focus on. That had been with the knowledge that Claude would- maybe- come back, that he had warned of having to leave like he did for a short while. He tries to think on what his future would be like with Claude gone permanently, knowing exactly why the other man wouldn't be coming back because the blood would be on his hands...
It's a weird twist of feelings that he's not expecting, that he doesn't know how to deal with, and his claws quietly knead and grind against Claude's shirt. Hopefully it wasn't a favorite one.
"Will you think the same when I die?" Because it's still a matter of 'when', in Dimitri's eyes.
--
"No," Claude says immediately. "But you mean a lot to me. You always have."
Claude's implication seems to be that Dimitri's death would matter very deeply to at least one person, whereas he doesn't think the same of his own.
--
"....You meant much to him as well." Dimitri pries his fingers out from any threads they might have caught, and pulls his hand back. "Go away, Claude von Riegan. Stop coming here." He goes back to his usual place in his cage, curling up with tail coming around to wrap before his legs and arms.
--
"No can do." Claude turns his head slightly, glancing at Dimitri over his shoulder. "I've got a friend to win back."
--
Just because he was expecting such a stupid and stubborn answer doesn't mean he's any happier to actually hear it. Face partially tucked into his arms, his stare still manages to carry a heavy dose of misery and exasperation as he looks over at Claude. "....You asked... if I had never imagined meeting you again."
--
"Yeah?" Claude shifts so that he's leaning his side against the bars instead of his back, allowing himself to look at Dimitri more easily. After a moment, he belatedly adds something he probably should have before: "By the way, I'm not talking about hallucinations you're tricked into thinking are real. I'm talking about just...thinking about it. Imagining it, while knowing you're imagining it."
--
"I know. I have experienced both." It may seem like a miracle, but he does know when he's voluntarily doing something as opposed to.... otherwise. "When younger, I had imagined.... other things. Ways to thank you, for what generosity you had shown." Generosity, Dimitri has to grudgingly admit, that he's still showing, whatever other motives there may be beneath the surface.
"There is nothing that person from back then can give you now..." As far as Dimitri is concerned, he's no longer his younger self to the extent that he might as well be dead. "So this is all I can do. Go away, for your own good, before either one of us dies." Before he kills Claude in his own unstable state, or until Claude watches him inevitably die from his own suicide rush, or simply as a natural effect of the execution ring.
It's the best he can give him. Dimitri can't think of anything else.
--
"I appreciate the misguided consideration, Dimitri," Claude replies, with a slight smile. "But I'm not gonna accept that that's the only way this story can end. And if I do lose you again...well, it's not going to be because I walked away. It'll have to be the same way it happened last time - some external force is gonna have to drag us apart. Because I'm not leaving by choice."
--
"Then you're a fool." There's nothing more for it, and Dimitri turns his head away, blind side to Claude. "You've seen how easily I can end your life, and won't pursue better for yourself. Perhaps you would be better as a specter."
--
"Probably, for unrelated reasons," Claude agrees, amiably. "But in this case, I think we just have different opinions about what the worst outcome for me would be. And not losing you again is worth a lot of risk." He shrugs and smiles. "Hell, I run risks for the church and I don't even like them. Don't you think I'd be willing to go a lot further for someone actually important to me?"
--
"Inform me then of when you find them," Dimitri mutters pointedly. Maybe if he keeps trying to push back, Claude will stop. He suspects it won't do much good, but there's little else available to him besides the very worst option. "How long do you have for tonight?"
--
"Do you really think I'm that easy to dissuade?" Claude asks, amused and also evidently telepathic. Really, though, Dimitri just isn't that slick - and Claude isn't shy about letting him know that, because it's his very next sentence. "Or that you're being even remotely subtle at this point?"
At the question, Claude looks up at the moon, then down at the faint shadows on the ground, measuring the length of them with his eyes. "Mm...another twenty minutes, I think."
--
"Neither bluntness nor subtlety seem to work with you." So, no, on both fronts. His tail flicks about in obvious aggravation before he shifts one leg so that he can pin it with his foot. Still, it seems he's stuck with his company a while longer. The knowledge stirs mixed feelings, all the more after having been alone with no focus for a good few days. Unable to resist for long, Dimitri looks back over to him.
"...You said you're not accepting how this all will end."
--
"Nope." Claude smiles up at the sky. "Maybe there aren't any better options at the moment...but since none of the existing ones appeal, I'm going to do my best to write my own ending for this story." He stretches his arms over his head. "But that's one of those things I won't ask you to believe until you see it for yourself."
--
"Such effort for a lost cause seems to be a waste of energy." Or, maybe it's not just that, but... Dimitri huffs out quietly, ears lowering. "...Will you take responsibility, then, if I do begin to believe?" He won't, but there are holes he wants to prod into all of this. If he succeeds or not is up in the air.
--
"Of course. I mean, I was already kind of promising to, wasn't I?" Claude turns his head to smile sidelong at Dimitri. "Saying I don't expect you to believe anything I don't show you that you can put your faith in is basically saying that I'm going to give you good reason to have faith in me, right? Because the faith and its reward will go hand in hand."
--
"Unless the faith comes first." Pinned underneath his foot, his tail just gives an annoyed twitch. "What will you do then, when that only brings ruin with it? Your idea of faith is hardly a perfect hing, or even wanted."
--
Claude laughs out loud, though not actually loudly. "Dimitri," he says, with a glitter of amusement in his eyes, "I'm not exactly worried that that's a likely scenario. I don't think you even remember how to have faith in anything."
--
"I don't." He's not going to lie about that or anything, especially not when it's an obvious fact between them. "Yet it is still a chance you would have to risk, is it not?" His eye narrows. "And you have already ruined things with your presence as it is."
--
"I know; I'm very naughty that way." Claude sounds deeply amused and more than a little irreverent, folding his arms behind his head. "I really don't know why you'd think I'd have a plan in place for a total impossibility happening, though, Your Prickliness."
He grins up at the sky. "But when it happens, I'll have already made the impossible a reality, so at that point I'll be able to accomplish anything I care to."
--
"I'm fairly certain that sort of arrogance isn't befitting any religion." Not that he really knows more than perhaps two. Dimitri still feels confident in the assertion, or at least as confident about anything else.
"For someone who cares little for his own life, you seem to have many plans."
--
"Plans are just dreams you believe you can make real," Claude replies. "Anyone can dream, and anyone can believe in something - whether or not it makes any logical sense to believe it. Whether you can create a feasible plan and carry it out, and actually turn dreams into reality...well, that's what separates the truly great from the idle dreamers." He closes his eyes. "I do have a lot of plans, yes. Whether any of them will bear fruit...time will tell, won't it?"
--
"I imagine this is why the church cares little for your personality." Dreams and plans are things the institution is designed to strangle in the cradle, as far as Dimitri can tell. He's the most egregious example, true, but there can be nothing right with how many murderers come to his claws, and how many turn up to watch the spectacle.
If the church truly rules all....
"So then does that mean there exist no plans without dreams, for you?"
--
"Hah!" Claude laughs in a way that's not precisely humorous. "The church doesn't care much for any part of an outsider. My personality's just the icing on the cake, really."
The question gives Claude a moment's pause as he thinks it over. "I guess you could put it like that, yeah. Why do you ask?"
--
"....I wonder, then, if such an existence would be empty to you."
--
"What kind of existence do you mean?" Claude raises an eyebrow.
--
"Was I not clear?" asks the person who has not had to practice making himself clear for a good chunk of his life now.
--
"One.... going through the motions, I suppose." Not looking at Claude, he slowly shifts his foot enough to let his tail move freely again. The swishes are mostly to get rid of any aches from being still, but the way he warily watches it makes it seem as if Dimitri can't trust his own tail. Which he can't.
"If one has no dream, then they make no plan. That is the logic you are offering to me."
--
"Oh, you can have dreams without plans." Claude shrugs. "Probably everyone's dreamed of flying, for instance, but nobody sits down and tries to come up with a plan to grow wings. You can dream of doing things that are impossible, or things you wouldn't actually want to try, or even just dream for fun. Dreams don't have to lead to plans., and plenty of them never do."
He hooks his hands around a propped knee, lacing his fingers together. "And I guess you could say that you can have plans without dreams, too, if you consider some things too mundane or undesirable to be called dreams. You could make a plan to go to the market, or the dentist, and while technically you could say those are dreams that become plans - in the sense that you take a thought in your head and take steps to make it a reality - those aren't the kinds of things people tend to dream about, either. So you could say they follow the letter of my statement, if not the spirit."
He laughs a little. "But I'm probably way overthinking what you mean. So shall we just come out and acknowledge that you're coming as close as possible asking me what I would've done in your place without actually asking me? How I would've managed, or turned out? If I could still talk like this if I was the one on your side of the bars?" He folds his arms on his knee, resting his chin on them. "Or maybe you're asking me what I think you should do or feel about the stuff I'm saying. Honestly, I have to say that I don't know the answer to either of those questions...and it probably wouldn't be too respectful to you for me to speculate on them, either."
---
"...I do not like how you can read me so easily."
This is perhaps something Dimitri supposes he shouldn't be surprised about. Even when he was young, he knows he was more honest than not, and any instances of 'not' were because of his inclination towards being polite, when manners meant anything at all. In this present, in the now, he now merely lacks the experience of conversation or how to hold back his emotions, never having had reason for any of them. Who would he speak to that would not lash out at him, or punish him for such an attempt despite no ill will? (Well. Previously no ill will. Dimitri finds no reason not to bite off any of their arms, if not for his own waiting.)
That doesn't make it any less annoying, and his soft huff is telling.
Still, if it's out there, now free of his awkward attempts at subtlety or any interest towards more abstract philosophy, then so be it. "So you never bothered, then, to think that your dreams are more cruel than the alternative?"
--
"I wouldn't say that I've never bothered to think of what it's like for you," Claude counters mildly. He finally shifts enough to turn around and face Dimitri again, sitting indian style once more. "It's more like...I could try to imagine what it's like to be caged up and forced to kill people, but even if I did...would I even get close to understanding? Could I understand how it feels to go through that, not just vicariously in my head for a few minutes, but to be forced to live that reality for years? I don't think I can know what you've been through, Dimitri. Not without living it. So I'm not going to tell you what you should do, or how you should think, or what you should believe. I'm not going to tell you how to feel about it, or pretend I understand what it's like to be you. I don't, and that's that. All I really know is what it's like to be me."
He looks up at the sky. "And being me...which is something you can't know any better, by the way, just as a side note...I don't think I could have survived without dreams. Some of them were just dreams, but some of them became plans over time. Some of them needed time to become plans." He shakes his head slightly. "But my village being wiped out, being forced into the church that branded my people savages and heretics and had that whole campaign against them started in the first place, punished for speaking my own language or holding onto any of my culture, looked down on by everyone around me, mocked and blamed for everything...how would I have even been able to get up every morning without dreaming that I could make today better than yesterday? That someday I'd make things be different? Without dreaming of freedom, or revenge? Both, preferably."
Claude finally lowers his eyes from the sky to Dimitri, his gaze calm and - not quite chilling, there's nothing menacing or even bothered about it, but it's so serious and straightforward a look that it's somehow unsettling anyway. Claude without any humor, without any masks, without any agenda, is just that unfamiliar. "That's what I had to do to survive. But I'm a different person than you, and I was in a different situation. You don't have to take my talking about my dreams as some kind of encouragement for you to do what I did...especially if you don't want to."
He cocks an eyebrow. "But really, you sound like you might be starting to have dreams you don't want to with me around. I guess you could blame me for those if you want, but I really don't see how that's any different, or any worse, than the hallucinations you were having before I ever got here."
--
When they were younger, Claude was a bright spot in his life. The caretakers of the church were always, at their very best, stone faced, professional, giving him what he needed to grow up healthy and strong for the role they would force onto him, and they were gone from him almost more than they spent any time in his presence. But Claude? He saw Claude so much, saw that smile so much. It was such a stark contrast to the bland walls of his room, to the emptiness of the Church, the barely decent taste of his food. Dimitri thinks he had survived on some part because of their meetings, had managed to have as much hope as he did that things would turn out alright. After all, if someone like Claude was there, surely things would be fine in the end, wouldn't they?
Now, that hope, that brightness, is too... frightening. It had hurt so much to make that fall the first time, to think that he would be alright to the absolute lowest, a pit Dimitri knows he will never be able to claw his way out of. That kind of pain, that foolish idea to believe- he's not sure what will happen to him if he goes through it a second time. He's already so broken as it is. Will there be anything left for a next time? Can he somehow be buried lower?
Yet there's something to be said about darkness in balance to overwhelming light. As Claude looks back down to him, the movement almost seems to bring some of the night sky down with it. It's.... quiet. Calm and heavy, would be worrying if Dimitri's worries weren't so very different from the average person's. Somehow, that's what seems to lure him from his curled position, ears slowly shifting further in Claude's direction and Dimitri raising his head in soft but intense interest. Somehow, in moments like this... Claude seems reachable, not a fever dream or a spot of light so sharp it hurts. He seems more real than ever, even more than a few minutes ago when Dimitri's claws were along his skin. Always, when he's not smiling, he seems real... and such a feeling only seems to reinforce the smiles he shows to Dimitri every other moment. That, too, is frightening in its own way...
But in the moments when they happen, they're almost strangely alluring, and Dimitri begins to uncurl slowly. Claude like this is a softer light, the kind of moonlight that doesn't blind or hurt or so much, and Dimitri can't help but follow the pull and push much in the same way the ocean can't. Approaching the bars of his cage slowly, on all fours as to stay closer to that look, he reaches through the bars once more- both to still see what happens when he reaches out, and simply to press his fingers to the sides of Claude's face as if he can investigate that look better here.
"You are no hallucination," he says quietly.
--
Claude smiles slightly at that, but that look doesn't leave his eyes; the moment doesn't break. He leans into the touch of Dimitri's fingers.
"I'd like to think you're saying that as a good thing."
--
Much like the first time Dimitri had touched him, had reached out towards Claude's hand, there's a carefulness in his fingers. No claws this time, only the slow brush of his fingers against delicate skin.
"Is it?" Dimitri leans forward, forehead against bars and disrupting the limp mane of hair he has. "Before... Everything was the same. I could accept that I was nothing, and so nothing hurt. The hallucinations... would never change anything. They could never truly touch me." Just the faintest graze of a claw along Claude's jaw, and Dimitri shifts his hand in correction. "But... you are here now. Everything is different... whether I believe or not. Everything aches anew now, when you are gone, and I can do nothing."
--
"That sounds a bit like a philosophical question, and most Intsehli I've met love those." There's no tension in Claude as Dimitri touches him this time; it's obvious that Claude recognizes he's safe right now, and may have been conscious of not being entirely safe with Dimitri earlier. So his fondness for - and trust of - Dimitri isn't a blind one, then, but an active, informed choice. This is interesting information for Dimitri to glean, if he cares to. "Is it better to live a life that's a flat, unchanging plane, or to live a life with a series of highs and lows? Does the height of the peaks make up for the lowness of the valleys? Is a state of equilibrium in between, where you never experience either extreme, better?" Claude smiles and shrugs. "Like a lot of philosophy questions, there's no objective answer. All you can decide is which you prefer."
--
With how much attention he's focused towards Claude, it's hard for him to miss the way the other man looks, how comfortable he is this way despite such a minor detail being that to change. Something about it is- Dimitri doesn't know. There's only a faint twist somewhere in his chest, and he brushes his thumb up along near Claude's eye. "I don't know," he admits quietly. "Such a life is not what I had ever desired, and yet it is that which I was given. If I were to relive such pain, again and again, would that not be merely a process of breaking something repeatedly? Just once.... That is more than enough. Is there any goodness that would justify that, any happiness, when it would go to waste on something too low to bring back once more?"
--
"Why are you asking me?" Claude cocks an eyebrow at Dimitri. He's still relaxed, even with those claws near his eye. "You're the only one who can decide whether the payoff is worth the risk."
After a moment, he closes his eyes and forces himself to say the last thing he wants to say. But this is important - more important than him and what he wants. "And if you decide that I'm really hurting you more than I'm helping you, and you want me to leave you alone...I'll leave. If you ask me to. Some pain might be inevitable, but if it outweighs any good I'm doing then I don't want that for you." He opens his eyes again. "Although I hope you don't make that call before you've even given me a fair chance."
--
Dimitri's answer is simple and to the point. "Because you are the only person I have to ask."
He has no one else. He has nothing else. Claude is the only difference in his life, the only one that comes to him in this cell where he's left to stagnate and suffer... and he is the one who matters the most because he is the one bringing this change with him.
His hand presses closer, palm to skin now, fingers shifting to brush across Claude's brow and into his hair. Hearing the offer is... strange. All this time, he's been pushing for it, hasn't he? Yet now that it's there for him, free to take, all he can feel is tired. He really doesn't know what he wants, and if this good is preferable even when it aggravates him so much. In the end... He doesn't even address it.
"...You used to have a braid."
--
"I did. The church didn't like it, not that they like anything about me." Claude tilts his head. "You miss it?"
--
"So you stopped for that reason." No answer on the personal preference bit.
--
"Well, I don't intend for it to be permanent. I happened to like it. But while I'm still going along with the church..." Claude shrugs.
--
"...I see." Finally, Dimitri withdraws his hand back into the cage and quietly looks down at it. If his expression is a little difficult to make out, it's likely because even he himself isn't entirely sure what to do with his emotions. If nothing else, he's certainly transfixed on how it had felt to touch Claude again. No wary assurances of reality, no warning threats, just a touch.
...He might be like this for a while if Claude doesn't snap him out of it. It's easy for Dimitri to get lost within his own head, these days.
--
Claude lets it ride, for the moment. If the spell lasts longer than three minutes, he's going to have to break into it - if only to tell Dimitri he needs to leave - but he'd prefer not to interrupt. He feels like something important is happening here; not just in the tenderness of the last few minutes, but in Dimitri's head. Part of him is afraid to rush it. So he just sits quietly, watching his friend, feeling the lingering ghost of those fingers on his cheek and the warmth tingling through him still from it.
--
The bad news is that it does last past the point of any other conversation able to happen. The good news is that, even when Claude interrupts his thoughts to let him know he has to leave, Dimitri doesn't seem too out of rhythm. He only gives a quiet nod and, if he looks back, Claude will find him looking back down to his hand again.