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church ch 2 (burn baby blue)
The night air is cool when they drag him back to his cell. There's no gentleness in the way they jab him in, despite his victory or the wounds freshly healed from their human magic.
Dimitri is used to such treatment, honestly. The humans do not trust him to walk obediently in, because of course he wouldn't. Yet they do not dare get any closer to him than they absolutely must, and with his limbs bound. It is how they escort him from their killing grounds - ropes of light forcing his arms behind his back, chains of the very same which force his feet to stay close together, a gag pulled tightly so that his fangs may not reach their deserving throats. When they demand he move, they do so with their long weapons, drawn out from light and ink, jabbing into his spine with blunt ends or whacked viciously into the back of his legs.
So arrogant and cruel when they put themselves into a position where he cannot retaliate against them. So superior.
It's the same position, it's the same movements, that they use when they force him into his cell. Their true weakness reveals itself in how they slam shut the cell door. Their magic, no matter how physical it may be when it hits or binds him, requires a direct line in order to be effective. It cannot go through walls, nor through the pure metal of his bars. At least, it cannot do so in the manner that they use it, where their powers are transmitted through their tattoos.
So they have to act quickly when they put him into his cell. Two of their number are always waiting at the door: one to keep it open and then slam it shut lightning quick, the other to slam down the bar over it. That's the bare minimum they feel they must do before they can quickly attend to the other locks on his door. There's only two. That must be enough, by their estimate.
It is no small source of bitterness to him that they are, in this matter, right.
After that... After that, he is left alone, and Dimitri curls into a corner to duly and dully look over his own body. There's nothing else to do. No human will interrupt him for the rest of the night. He knows that for a fact because that has been fact for years, now.
How many years, he's not certain. Time has lost all meaning to him. He knows that he was a child in this place, once, and then an adolescent, and now he is an adult. He knows that some things always follow a set schedule, which this night too will follow. He knows that the humans never feed him after a killing night, as though they have mistaken their murder as him feasting.
Perhaps they do. Dimitri would not be surprised if he learned this to be the case. After all, they treat him as though he is some beast, and have for many years now. He only need glance over his cell to be reminded of it. While he thinks of it as a cell, as though that will allow him to retain some semblance of being a person, he knows that it is more a cage than anything else.
At least it is a large space. He supposes he should be grateful that he has that much. His cage, his prison, lays within an enormous courtyard of some sort, deep within a nest of buildings that he has come to loathe.
The humans here use the courtyard for a variety of reasons, he's come to find. Some of them use it to meditate, seeking nonsense answers in what they believe to matter, although Dimitri believes it matters very little. Others reliably clean it, of dirt and leaves and snow depending on the seasons, and he thinks this might be considered a punishment. Only youth are sent to clean this area, and many of them glance at him in silent panic as they rush to do their job quickly, as though he can do nothing trapped where he is.
Most of the time, however, they train here, and those are often adults with the occasional adolescent. They do not glance at him anywhere near as often as the children do. Instead they focus on sparring with one another, or practice the forms that go into their martial arts whether with fist or brilliant glowing weapon.
Dimitri watches sometimes, often because it is the only thing he has to do. He may see some of these people, besides, down in the killing ring. Not often, but, occasionally. With that in mind... it never hurts to understand the way they fight.
He wonders if they ever realize the mistake they make, so boldly practicing before his cell, if that terror and understanding strikes their heart right before his claws strike their body.
It doesn't matter in the end, he supposes. The point is that the courtyard is large, in width and length both, and thus so is his cell to some degree. The bars which hold him go across the entire width of the place. A metal ceiling blocks him from a clear view of the sky and any chance of escape.
There is nothing for him, save a chamber pot in one of the only real corners he has, and a pile of ragged blankets that this place has bothered to give him. They can barely be called beds, or warmth, or comfort... although he has to grudgingly admit that they give him thicker ones come the colder months. If not for his fur, he wonders if he would have died months ago. Years ago.
There is more than enough room for him to run in his cell, but he is too tired from all of his fights to want for it. He could go to sleep in his pile of rags, but he has too much energy still burning in his veins for sleep. So Dimitri looks over himself, and tries to ignore his own senses.
It's all he can do, after all. Eventually, he knows he will be forced to pay attention. He'll have to acknowledge the voice tugging at the edges of his hearing, and the figures he can see from the corner of his eyes. Same as it is so many nights. Same as what always happens during nights like this.
Better to occupy his mind how he can, and so he looks over the area where, only a few hours prior, a long jagged cut had gone across his palm. It's gone, now. Completely and utterly. Even some of the fur has grown back, an unexpected part of his body that has regrown just like skin and blood and flesh.
Dimitri turns his hand over, gaze roaming slowly over the curve of his arm. He used to think it was like time being reversed, once upon a time, when he was younger and did not fully understand the magic these people use on him to force him alive. Now, he knows better. It's simply a natural process of sorts, sped up and amplified by the powers of someone else.
Dimitri clenches his claws into a fist, ignoring how they prick. Well. He says 'natural'. Yet how natural is it, really? This is not his body healing in a natural way. It is someone else's magic sinking into his bones and the very meat of him, transforming it. Is this really his body anymore? Can he say it is, when they have interfered with it so much? Will it ever be his body again?
Never. Voices scratch against the insides of his ear, incoherent static that somehow makes all the sense in the world. Dimitri closes his eyes, as though that ever helps him. He's running out of things to distract himself with, and "things" has always meant just his own self. What is he supposed to do here, now?
Succumb, he supposes. It's not as though he can do much else, not besides wait and sharpen his skills. He reminds himself of that as he pushes himself upwards, taking the long trudging walk across his cell to where his blankets are piled up. One day, he'll be fortunate. One day, he'll find his chance, and.... he'll be free.
It's a comforting thought, far more comforting than the blankets he curls up into, his face towards one of the far walls of his cell. There, the rough phantom of his father peers over at him with burning blue eyes that Dimitri can no longer match. The cutting words will start, soon, he's sure of it. That's how they always start. First it is the staring, accompanied by harsh whispers, and then...
Initially, he dismisses the sound - a ghost of a noise, gliding against pavement and dirt. Dimitri knows how his life is, and his life says that no one bothers with him directly after an execution. That's how it is. That is how it will always be. So even though his ears twitch, Dimitri stays locked inside of his own self, not daring to look away from the miserable specter across from him. Soon, the whispers will start in full, a tidal roar crashing down onto him until the force of the wave pulls him under and he falls asleep-
"Hey... Remember me?"
Dimitri blinks slowly at the voice. He has to work to pull himself out from the space he had been journeying into, head moving to the side by centimeters. He only needs to move it that much. When he rests in his prison, it is always with his good eye facing the courtyard. It's safer like that, even if nothing is truly safe here.
So it's easy to move his head just enough... and see the figure there, crouched right outside his cage. A figure with familiar brown skin, and dark hair, and green eyes so bright that they seem to stand out in the darkness.
Familiar parts of an unfamiliar whole, with that hair swept back, and a beard slowly growing along his jaw. With baby fat lost, leaving heavier eyelids and a more defined nose.
Once upon a time, he was ignorant to the true reason of his capture. Once upon a time, he thought that he had ended up in a strange place by accident, and that surely things would become clear in time as these strange humans realized he was not a threat. Everyone was inherently good in the end, weren't they?
That was what his parents used to stress upon him when he was young: every person had a goodness to them, and patience and effort helped bring it out. He had believed that so strongly back then...
And yet, how could he have understood the severity of the situation, the duplicity of it all? The humans had been cold and distant, but not yet cruel. They gave him a place to stay, a bed to sleep on, new clothes to wear - he still does not know what they did with the old ones - and regular meals three times a day. Yet more important than any of that...
There had been Claude.
Claude, the only other child near to his age he had ever seen. Claude with his shining eyes and playful smile and who had reached out to him through the bars. Dimitri had never entirely understood where he came from; the language barrier had been too great for that.
When they'd taught one another the most basic of their disparate tongues, a struggle that had taken ages, he'd gotten a rough idea. Only a rough one. How he had understood it was that... Claude's village had burned down in a fire, and the church had taken him in. Dimitri had tried to take comfort in that, although he couldn't help the ting of guilt that came with it. How could he feel relieved at another person's tragedy?
But it had given him some desperately needed hope. The church had taken in Claude, so it couldn't be a place of bad people, could it? And more importantly... Claude was a part of the church. Claude, who had touched him without fear. Claude, who had clumsily learned his language and grinned when Dimitri tried to mimic his. Claude, who he hadn't seen since he was a child.
Claude, who he had seen only a full moon or so ago.
Dimitri casts a critical eye upon the haunt lingering outside of his cell. Ever since he had been first used for the church sanctioned slaughter, he had started to see Claude outside of his cell. He hadn't thought anything of it, the first time. He hadn't been able to.
His mind had been scattered across itself, frantic and scared and sick and so many other emotions that he couldn't distinguish them all from one another. Besides, Claude had not visited in some time, back then. Back when he was naive enough to believe that Claude was busy, or had perhaps gotten caught, scolded for shirking his duties to visit someone else.
He still doesn't know what happened to Claude... but he does know, now, that Claude ceased to visit him the day he made his first kill. The day he became their "executioner", as the church calls him, when they do not use "demon" instead.
That thought had occurred to him suddenly, after some months, although the suspicions had been a gradual growing thing. After all, as time passed on, the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons, it had become clear to Dimitri that he was still growing.
The Claude on the other side of his bars never changed.
It's quite a difference from the man crouching there now: taller than the child in Dimitri's memories and facial hair tickling along his jaw. Yet so much of him is still the same.. Those brilliant green eyes that remind Dimitri of ribbons of light in the sky. That easygoing smile that put him at ease. The dark of his hair and the warmth in his skin.
Dimitri clenches his jaw and looks away, gaze narrowed. "So my mind has taken to finding new tricks to play upon me," he mutters to himself, Intsehli somehow still so rusty on his tongue despite how much he's talked to himself over the years. It's the only part of himself that he has left. What else can he do? A surge of annoyance suddenly bites at the back of his tongue, knocks into his teeth. Trust his mind to make an illusion that uses his tongue in ways he can't.
Another sign that it is only a trick of his mind - a deception his father might have said of some things with a heavy brow and a harsh twist of his mouth. His Claude had never gotten a true handle on Intsehli in the time they had with one another. Certainly, he had been a quick study, but the two of them had never had the time to become truly adept in each other's languages. This Claude, this whatever it is that sits so close and yet so far from him, that does not truly sit at all... Intsehli is too smooth from his lips, too natural and relaxed in comparison to the stiff way the words form in Dimitri's own mouth.
He speaks them anyway, perhaps because it is all he has, perhaps because of plain and simple spite. "No, I imagine it is most certainly spite," he continues, tail flicking in annoyance across the dirty floor. It's just a soft mutter, a conversation of one.
The thing that is Not Claude chuckles, voice deeper now but still gentle and warm. Fond. It awakens a distant ache in Dimitri, one that he resolves to firmly ignore. "You know, I think I'm missing a little bit of the conversation here," he says lightly.
Dimitri cannot help stare. It was one thing for the apparition to make Intsehli sound natural on his tongue. That was a frustration all unto its own. But this... This has the words to match. These are not words Dimitri can ever recall teaching Claude. He never would have figured out the right way to do some of them, or explain the way the sentence connects.
Dimitri's ears flick back, and his body loosens warily despite his glare. His words, however, are still directed to no one but himself. "Nothing but a trick of the mind... The illusions it casts are getting more clever. I wonder if this is some..." He trails off, too tired to think of the proper words that could describe his state or what sort of nonsense his mind is attempting to pull over his eye.
Not deterred, the Not Claude searches about the ground, and Dimitri watches him dully. Such quick and clever fingers... Claude had quick and clever fingers too. Dimitri could remember them trying to sketch things out, or flit through the air, holding tightly onto his hand-
Something nudges his arm, and Dimitri blinks his way out of his own nostalgia. There's a pebble, bouncing lightly off of the ground and away from his body before it comes to a stop. "Do your hallucinations ever flick pebbles at you?" the Not Claude asks, raising an eyebrow.
Dimitri's glare shifts into a flatter look. "As though you did that," he says dismissively. "I know better than to mistake my own pains for what they are."
Certainly, the church's healers did their job, as much as Dimitri begrudges them for it but that doesn't mean there is no pain at all in the aftermath. He is still always left exhausted whenever the healers do their work... and some times, he can still feel the injuries, although they are gone. He doesn't mean the sensation of blood sliding down his arms, clumping his fur together, leaving him rattling in his own hide. Just... the ache of them. The feeling that something isn't right.
So. It's just that. It has to be that. What it cannot be is Claude. The improbability of that... It would be too good to be true, no matter what else could be the reason for Claude's presence here. Dimitri has learned to temper his expectations, there. It's a learning that has him refuse to so much as entertain the possibility.
So Dimitri does his best to expect nothing, and only adjusts himself in his bedding. It's not like he has anything else he could possibly be doing. "You know, my hallucinations should at least have the good grace to let me sleep in peace," he grumbles, as though he ever planned on going to sleep.
"What kind of hallucinations do you have that actually listen to polite requests?" Not Claude cocks his head to the side, well aware that Dimitri hadn't been polite at all. "But c'mon, I can't just crouch here trying to convince you I'm real all night. So what's it going to take?" He holds out a hand, through the bars. "Will touching me be enough? Or should I tell you something you don't know, something your brain couldn't make up? Give you something of mine? I'm open to suggestions."
Another harsh pang in his heart, one that has nothing to do with old or healed injuries. No one has put their body into his cell like this... Not knowing what he could so easily do to a bit of flesh. It's nostalgic, and he loathes it.
While many illusions - hallucinations, yes, that's the proper word - have invaded his personal space before... It's never been like this before. It's never been an outright invitation like this. Never a real and proper touch. His prior Claude hallucinations have certainly always been outside of his cell, and never inside...
He doesn't accept the invitation offered to him. Against what feels to be his better judgment, however, he does sit up, and turn his head fully to face his apparition. Even before he speaks, that alone seems to bring more of a pep to this Not Claude's posture. "True to form, nothing but lies and empty promises as usual... If you won't let me sleep, food would be better."
Taste is the one sense that hasn't let him down yet, and it feels like the best way to keep.... whatever this is away from him. Hallucinations can't provide food after all, and the church doesn't give what he really wants or needs. This way, he's sure he'll be fine. What he's so scared of, what puts every bit of hair on his body on end is... He doesn't know. Dimitri doesn't want to think about it. Either way, it makes a good line in the sand -
"Hey, good idea!" What, no, not a good idea - Dimitri finds himself unable to do anything but stare as Claude begins to rummage about on a belt he keeps about his waist. Dimly, it occurs to him that this Claude now wears clothing far more attractive and better cared for than what he wore when they were children. He knows nothing of leatherwork, but even a beast like him can look over at the pouch Claude raises inbetween his fingers and understand the quality of it. "I'm guessing they don't exactly overfeed you here anyway..."
They do not. Dimitri's meals are regular but sparse things, with no appeal to them. From what he can tell, they believe there to be a fine line from ensuring he is a healthy slaughter beast, and him somehow breaking from his cell to tear out their throats in his sleep. He wishes it were that easy.
Easy like the way Claude unwinds the opening to his pouch, and carefully begins to pull out various foods. Even from a distance, in the dark of night, Dimitri can tell that they are far more interesting than what the church feeds him regularly. Almost against his will, his nose twitches to take in the scents that he can smell even from where he sits far away from the cages.
There's meat - yes, he can see it now in Claude's hand, dried carefully and somehow mingled with berries. Those, he can't see so easily, but his nose can pick up that sweet and tart scent. A couple of small loaves of bread are also pulled out, with something inside of them that he can't quite identify whether by eye or nose.
Claude places some of the dry meat on the bread, and then once again slides his offered hand through the bars. "They're not exactly delicacies or anything," he explains, "but they make good rations, even if the nuts are kind of hard on the jaw - or, you know what?" He grins, so carefree. The nostalgia, the mixing of past and present, is dizzying. "I don't think you'll have a problem with that. Well, while they might last a while and nourish the body, I still would have brought you something nicer if I was expecting things to turn out this way. I just wasn't sure what kind of reception I'd be getting..."
He trails off, those too bright green eyes watching Dimitri. They watch Dimitri stay right where he is, the slow uncurling of his body, claws tense, haunches prepared to do anything he might need them to. There's a lot of room in his cage that he could use, to pace or stand tall or anything at all, but Dimitri doesn't use it. This feels as though... it's a trap. As though he's going to reach out and -
"Relax, Dimitri." Claude's voice is calm, patient. He waits, no rush apparent in his eyes or in his body. He's still holding out the bread. "Even if I was inclined to bite, you definitely bite harder than I do. Besides, why would I want to mess with you?"
Dimitri convinces his body to continue uncurling from its tense position. He doesn't walk like he normally would, but reaches out towards the ground with the tips of his claws. There's no danger waiting for him with just a single step. He knows that, logically. Yet he can't pull himself out of that paranoia, that tense fear wrapped tight around his heart. So he goes carefully, claw first, footstep after, always prepared for... something.
Something does not come. Dimitri reaches the bars of his cell, and crouches there opposite where Claude does before him. This close... Dimitri has known for a long while that he had grown. He had always known, even before all of this, in a life that does now no longer seem to be his own, that Intseh are generally bigger than most humans. It had just... never been so clear between him and Claude, when they were children. He had been a little taller than his human friend, yes, but not by a huge amount.
...He's so small. Every bit of him, as he nonetheless crouches before Dimitri's much more massive form and continues to hold out his small hand.
There was a question. Dimitri remembers to finally answer it, uncaring of the minutes that have passed by since then. "No one has deigned to give me the answers to questions such as those." He curls his lip over one fang in disgust.
Of course, despite what he shows on his face... In the end, he still ends up reaching forward. Where Claude is small, the food he carries with him is also small, at least in comparison to Dimitri. Or perhaps it's simply this portion... Or maybe he is too concerned with his own size, strength that could so easily smash the food he delicately picks up inbetween his claws.
It's so... strange to have something in his hands again, and Dimitri pauses, just for a moment. He touches himself, the walls and bars of his cage, cheap dishes that feed to him cheap food, and his blankets. Other people falling apart to his grip or his claws or his teeth... They are all a given. But a simple piece of bread...
Dimitri doesn't let himself think much on it for very long. After just that brief second of introspection, he shoves the entire thing - bread and meat and everything in it - into his mouth. With one bite alone, he can feel his fangs crunch through something hard - nuts? Dimitri curls in on himself as he crouches there, chewing and chewing for what is the most flavor he thinks he's had in his mouth in years.
Most of his meals have been bland soups or stews or porridges with equally atrocious white bread. Occasionally, he's been thrown a thick bone from some sort of animal, as though he were some sort of dog. They usually stop for a while when he inevitably chucks it at someone's head during the middle of training.
In contrast, the bread that Claude has given him is... It's so much more flavorful than that. There's a different depth to it, something that reminds him of the pleasant smell which comes after the rain, and he's pleasantly surprised when he chews through something in the bread itself. It's dry, like everything else, but there's a faint bitterness. Greedily, he continues to chew, trying to figure out the various different flavors that seem to burst forth each time. Nuts and berries from the meat, vegetables in the bread -
Before he knows it, he's gone through the meager little offering ,and realizes how he's curled up with his hands at his mouth to greedily ensure no crumbs fell from his mouth. Across from him, Claude still sits with a simple little grin on his face. Dimitri grinds his tongue against his fangs and stares back.
This means... that Claude truly is here, now. The Claude he had known as a child, back when he had no idea of just what kind of fate would await him. They're both different now, however.... and him, especially. Is Claude really not... afraid of him, even a little, with what he has become?
"You can't tell me you think that's a hallucination," Claude says, his voice knocking Dimitri out of his mind. Blinking, he refocuses back to his old friend. Claude is still smiling, even under the renewed attention. "A hallucination would probably have the decency to taste better."
Playful and light... just like when they were children, when he would always look forward to the sight of sunlight illuminating Claude's smile through the bars of his door. The scene is very different now, although bars divide them still. Dimitri doesn't answer immediately, instead slowly looking over Claude with his one good eye.
Now that he knows for a fact that he's actually real, existing and alive and directly in front of his cell, all the little details... seem to matter more. He had always wondered what had happened to Claude, when he had been taken away from his room to be given a cage instead, to become an executioner proper. Whatever happened on Claude's end... he seems to be doing well for himself. He looks healthy. His clothing and equipment are good, although Dimitri does not miss the tell-tale red that is incorporated into much of his outfit.
Well. In the end, he supposes he shouldn't be surprised. There were only really two options, when he thinks about it, and he can only be glad that Claude is not dead. Then again, maybe that would be the kinder route.
"What do you want?" he asks, voice quiet and hoarse - a threat implicit in his words even when he does not consciously intend it. Better safe than sorry, better to always be wary and prepared to go on the offensive. After all, this is still too good to be true, even with Claude alive and not merely a figment of torture brought about by his own mind. And if it's too good to be true... Then there has to be a catch.
For what purpose, he has no idea, but he has had so little idea on why most of his life has happened up until this point. What is one more thing to the long list of miseries that have made up his existence?
"To see my old friend," Claude answers simply, still whispering quietly so that his voice doesn't echo throughout the courtyard. He's still smiling, but it's... different. It is a softer smile, now. Almost.... sad. Dimitri can't entirely understand it, but that is the emotion on Claude's face, hanging from his lips and shining in his eyes. "They really did a number on you after they sent me away, didn't they?"
Such a simple reason. It can't be true. "And that's all?" It's more accusation than question, and Dimitri finally lowers his hands from his face in order to bare his fangs. In the darkness, it's impossible to tell if it's more a manic smile or a pained grimace. Or maybe it's only impossible to tell for himself. "So you're only here of your own volition, to disappear as much of any of my own specters afterwards?" As he speaks, he presses closer to the bars until he's looming over Claude. It's hard to stop himself from bristling. Dimitri doesn't think he wants to. "Why return now?"
Most humans shy away when he does this, when he reminds them of how big he is, how sharp his claws are, how easily he can break bone inbetween his teeth. Claude does not pull away. He stays right where he is, meeting Dimitri's gaze with those shining green eyes of his. "I didn't know where you were any sooner than when I found you here." Still quiet. Somehow, his voice sounds quieter, although Dimitri's ears have not picked up anything of the sort.
Quiet, and patient, and too calm.
While Dimitri tries to reconcile what has happened in the past to what is happening in his present, Claude continues. "When they found out that I was seeing you so much, they sent me away, you know. It's suspicious to them for a kid to spend so much time around an Intseh. Or maybe it would have been suspicious no matter my age, unless I were one of the controllers. After that, there was no way that I could ask about any Intseh - about demons, or executioners, even as I became an adult."
It should be clear, at this point, that Dimitri holds no fondness for humans anymore. When he's more honest with himself, Dimitri concedes that being dead might have been a favor to him instead of this life he claims to lead. It's a desire whose strength ebbs and flows within him, changing from day to day. Despite that desire, however, no matter its strengths, Dimitri doesn't succumb to it. Not just yet. While he may be able to do very little in his current situation, a metaphorical collar wrapped around his throat that chokes him if he strays too far, he is still determined to do something.
One of these days, he's going to bite the hand that feeds, tear it clean off... and he and Claude both know that he is deciding if the human in front of him right now is one of the fingers.
At least, he thinks that Claude knows that. The differences between them are too great, and Dimitri knows his intentions have been made perfectly clear... haven't they? And yet all that happens is that Claude loses that smile of his as he looks upon Dimitri... but not that soft, sad look in his eye. "I'm sorry it took me so long, and that I couldn't help you any. But I don't know what I could have done differently that would have helped you. These days, they've assigned me my own task, too... and, besides, as far as I knew, you could have been dead."
"I'm sure they have," Dimitri growls, a low sounds that rolls up from the twisting of his stomach. Claude's red had given away that detail almost immediately. "Your own task that keeps you busy right as we speak, I'm certain."
It's another accusation, more upfront this time to show that he won't be so easily tricked. Perhaps it is not an elegant accusation, but Dimitri makes it regardless. Because... There has to be a reason for why Claude is here. Why Claude is here after all this time, long after Dimitri has surrendered to his role as executioner for the time being.
Almost more than that, he's surrendered to the fact that there is no help in this city for him. If it is available, then it would never be given to him, and that.... that is a fact of his life, like so many other miserable facts. This race turned its back on him a long time ago, and he knows that they will keep it that way. That is true, he is sure, of this person right before him as well.
It doesn't matter that they were once friends... That, once upon a time, they clumsily exchanged words and childish translations with one another with only a door between them. It had seemed such a temporary and simple obstacle to pass, one day...
But that was so very long ago. What does he know of this man who sits before him with those green eyes from his childhood, but the red clothing that belongs to those who have seen fit to use him as nothing more than a tool for their bloody deeds?
Ugh. Disdain and disgust curl in his stomach - or at least that is what he chooses to believe are the emotions there. Certainly, he makes sure that the right ones drip from his voice as he narrows his eye down at Claude, silent despite Dimitri's accusation. "Yet regardless of your reasons for being here, you cannot help me even now. Leave, so that I may rest for once, before I force you to begone from my presence one way or the other." He can reach through the bars, after all. It is why the humans of this church take such care when even so much as feeding him.
Claude.... does not leave. He does not so much as lean back. Something itches at the back of Dimitri's neck, jerks anxiously in the pit of his stomach. He has to know. He has to be aware of how easily Dimitri could just reach out, grab him, tear him limb from limb even with the limited space Dimitri has. He can't just - this isn't something like trust, he isn't something that -
"I didn't expect you to hate me so much for something I couldn't control," Claude sighs, swinging Dimitri's attention back to him. He raises one hand, fingers running through his hair. It used to be looser, once. Curlier, Dimitri thinks, although he is always wondering about his own memories nowadays. This change is... "But...I guess under the circumstances, with everything they've put you through, you had to blame someone. And I might not have had it easy, but I definitely can't pretend I've had it as bad as you, so I guess some resentment's justified." So he gets it now. So he's going to get up, and leave, and realize this is a lost cause -
Claude smiles. "But really, Dimitri!" He smiles a wide smile, winking and raising a finger to his lips and staying. "They had to drag me away the first time! Do you think I'll abandon you by choice now?" he says, as if he isn't casually just - tossing away every single reason that he should be gone.
He's just ignoring how he should be treating Dimitri, how the church has treated him for years and years now by keeping him caged, collared, muzzled. He is a creature groomed for murder, worse than the ghastly women he has seen lurking around whenever he has acted up in preparation for what he knows will be their execution of him.
Surely the church knows this, deep down. They know they have a created a monster that could turn on them in any second, a creature so much larger and stronger than them held on a thin leash that could snap any day now or not be wrapped around his throat in time. It is why they keep such a distance from him. Why Claude should be keeping a distance from him, should be doing anything but sitting here and smiling at him and laughing quietly under his breath and Dimitri cannot understand why -
"Sure, I might have just been passing through before I knew you were here, but now that I've found you, I'm staying. I don't want to make any promises about how much help I can be before I've even scoped out the situation - not that you'd trust any lip service from me anyway, obviously - but I'll definitely find something I can do for you. Ideally a lot of somethings."
And Claude smiles at him through the bars of his cage.
Dimitri can only stare at him for a moment, and it occurs to him distantly that, at some point, he reached up to wrap his fingers around the bars himself, as though to do.... something. Yet that somehow doesn't seem as important as the man before him. It's... Is this all actually reality? He had thought it to be such when he had accepted that bit of meat and bread from Claude, because his hallucinations have never affected his taste before, but all of this is...
It's stronger than nostalgia. It's a living memory, even with all the details like age and location changed - although maybe the latter hasn't become all that different from when they met as children. If it were simply day instead of night, if the two of them could sit here and be warmed by the gentle rays of the morning sun... They'd be as they were in their youth, chatting away, exchanging words in Intseh and Fodlish. It'd be as if they were in his room again - well, him in his room, Claude on the other side of the door, their words and voices intertwining. It could be...
Roughly shoving himself away from the bars, Dimitri curls in on himself again... although not all the way against the wall as he had been for what feels like only a half hour prior. The familiarity of - everything - is far too much. "I don't know what to think," he growls, although there is not as much force in the sound as he would otherwise like. His claws curl, frustrated and helpless, along his sides. He can't trust this nostalgic apparition from his past, this terrible hopeful promise.
He can't trust anything in this church or this city. He can't trust anyone. He's learned that, and Dimitri won't let such hard earned lessons go to waste.
"I guess that's fair. It's been a long time, right? You're pretty different yourself from how you were when I knew you, so who's to say I'm not?" Claude's next smile is somehow, impossibly, all the brighter and more enticing. Between the bars that separate their bodies, his hand still presses through exactly as when they were children, an offering to fate or misery or pain or whatever may come next. It stays right where it is, palm stretched out before Dimitri, as Claude says, "So I guess I'll just have to show you what you can believe."
Dimitri stares down at that palm, the way those fingers stretch out. When he had first seen it, this fragile little offering that could be torn off in a heart beat, it had seemed so different, somehow. It had been... a mockery, at the very best. That is what he believed it to be, because what else could it be? Now, he knows the answer. Now, he knows that the Claude in front of him truly exists, is truly the boy that he knew once upon a time and so very long ago....
After gods only knows how long, he reaches forward. More than sees, he feels the way that Claude goes absolutely dead still, but Dimitri does not take his hand as he imagines one normally would.
Instead, he reaches with both his own, gently bracketing Claude's hand. He does not touch, not quite. His hands barely brush Claude's skin as he cups that hand which is so much smaller than he is.
"If you come back," he says quietly, staring down at Claude's hand. Softly, more soft than he can remember being with anything else in his life, he ghosts the pads of his thumbs up along the curves of Claude's palm. It takes care, not to prick him with his claws as he glides them up to the gaps inbetween Claude's fingers. "...I suppose we'll see."
And with that, he lets go - or perhaps he never had to let go at all, with how he barely touched Claude at all. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he pulls away, slowly, and shuffles backwards so that there is at least a little more space between them. He doesn't know why he does it. They are as separated as two people can possibly be.
Claude only pulls his hand back when Dimitri has done his, and his fingers flex inwards as he does so. As if he's trying to find the ghost of Dimitri's touch. Even if Dimitri's gaze is away, he can tell Claude is looking at him. His gaze... has a weight to it, somehow.
At long last, however, he rises up, and Dimitri's ears twitch at the sound of his scuffing feet. "Just watch me," he repeats, voice low, and Dimitri raises his head to meet those too-bright green eyes. To meet the way they stare so intently at him, as if he is the only thing in the world.
That moment lasts only a second, their eyes locked, before Claude turns away. He is a dark shape across the pale moonlight that spills over the courtyard, and Dimitri watches him the entire length of it. He watches until he can watch no more, when Claude steps into the shadows of the open halls that connect the buildings and other yards. With that, he's gone, easy as a specter.
And yet... Dimitri's gaze drifts down to where he holds his still cupped hands close before himself. These are hands that he always thought he knew well. He has used these hands to shatter cups and bowls. In his hands, he has choked the life from another person, or dug his claws deeply into their flesh until they were losing every bit of life in them through a gush of blood.
For so long, he has only known them through violence, or through bondage. He has only known most of his body through bondage: the burning light of the humans' magic as it had wrapped tight to force his limbs close to his body, hard gags of metal shoved into his mouth to keep him from biting down on straying fingers or frustrating controllers, the violent sting of glass and blade and metal and -
Bondage. Suffocating like a whip around this throat. Violence. Bones breaking, blood on his tongue.
Claude had just existed between his hands.
He had existed, and he had been warm, and he had been soft.
What to make of it? Dimitri... isn't sure. All he can do is think himself in circles long into one more new dawn, staring down at his palms where Claude's hand had once been.
Through darkened hallways, away from the places he knows are the most guarded, into the room that has temporarily been deemed his - only after all of that does Claude stop, and he stares downwards. He stares down at his hand, fingers slowly uncurling. It's so easy to imagine, in the dark of his room, the softness of Dimitri's hands as they had brushed up against his. It had all been so light. All alone, away from anyone else's eyes, Claude indulges in the shiver he had suppressed when Dimitri had actually touched him.
He had touched him... almost tenderly, and even that much had made Claude's heart ache. It's still aching for him, but not in any sensual way. The ache is one of pain, and regret, and so much anger that he could swear its bitter aftertaste is on the back of his tongue. Yet in that ache, there is a little bit of hope.
That faint and slow touch was so at odds with the rest of Dimitri's behavior, his bitter coarseness and barely restrained violence; it's the only hint he'd seen of the boy he remembers from years ago. It's the barest glimpse of something buried and lost, something so precious that he can only hope it's salvageable. He can only hope he can salvage it.
Slowly, he lets a breath out between his teeth. Stepping to the side, he sinks against the wall and slowly down to the floor. It had been worth bribing one of the guards to let him through, worth it to slip past any others that had been patrolling the church grounds to keep safe its secrets and food and the lives of those they deemed pure enough to protect. It had been worth it to sit directly in front of Dimitri's cell, close as he could get without it be weird. He knows that now, in hindsight, where he's tucked away in a bedroom and removing his boots.
But at the time... Claude breathes in again, out. Dimitri's touch had made a part of him go still - his mind or his soul, Claude isn't sure which or if there's even a difference. Yet his heart is another matter entirely, and it still beats loudly in his chest with adrenaline rushing from it.
Gradually, it's slowed down... but it hasn't forgotten how it had felt to sit there, moonlight shining off the towering metal bars like the shards of a broken sword, and Dimitri's massive form hunched over him even with sturdy obstacles between them.
It had been... intimidating, to say the least, how big Dimitri has grown to be. Oh, Claude used to ponder if he would grow to be big, when he was younger. The thought would occur to him whenever he was put on any sort of animal duty back in the church's orphanage. Back then, he can still remember how excited he would be at the idea of handling the horses... but, usually, they made him tend to goats or chickens, with the occasional cleaning out of stables when the horses had all been taken out already.
A noteworthy event had been when one of the church hounds had gotten pregnant, and given birth to a litter. Claude actually hadn't been a first pick on taking care of the mother and her puppies, actually... That, of course, had gone to one of the children that their caretakers had favored: a smug and self-centered jackass who had always feared their elders, which had been understandable, and took that fear out by harassing other kids until they bowed to him, which was sort of still understandable but nonetheless made him an insufferable little bastard by Claude's standards.
Unfortunately for him, on the day that he was supposed to help with those exact hounds, he'd ended up getting sick from some mysterious thing that definitely wasn't a little bit of something slipped into his food the night before. Poor kid. His bowel movements had been a disaster zone. Claude, to this day, still can't exactly regret his decision back then. How could he, when it had given him the perfect opportunity to help with the mother dog's pregnancy, and eventual litter?
They'd been cute, back then, when they were stumbling over their enormous feet before they were collected by the priests and nuns of the church who would train them to catch mice or go on hunts or guard places.
Dimitri had been cute then, too, when Claude had gone to visit him soon after. Of course he visited him. They'd talked in their cobbled together mishmash of a language, Fodlish and Intsehli mingled together into a patchwork little thing for children. Claude had wanted to know what the word for "dog" was. Dimitri had wanted to show him he knew how to do a handstand now. With Claude having just seen the puppies, and Dimitri's enormous feet wobbling hilariously in the air before he'd fallen and gotten a nosebleed... Of course he had to make that connection.
One boot now undone and pried off of his foot, he sets it gingerly to the side so as to note wake any potential neighbors he may have tonight. Yes, the priests would take the dogs away to make them guards and hunters... and they had taken Dimitri to make their executioner, as if those were the exact same kind of thing. Claude's fingers linger around his boot, fingers grinding into the leather before he forces himself to breathe and let go. Story of his life, honestly. Breathe and let go, in so many cases.
Yet even if he doesn't like the comparison, he does have to admit that Dimitri really did exceed his expectations on just how large he could grow. Yet it's not off-putting to him; that's not why he had been left feeling so on edge while he had smiled up at Dimitri's face. The other boot, now, and Claude sets it down right alongside the first before he rolls his head back to rest against the wall. No, what had got him so intimidated had been how... unstable Dimitri has become in all the years that he hasn't seen his old and beloved friend.
It's not a surprise, not really, knowing where Dimitri has ended up, and what the church had always planned to be his fate. Being treated like an animal, less than, and forced to kill innocent or violent people at the demands of a group that did not help those who needed it and punished them when they...
Claude shakes his head, and pushes himself up onto his feet. His room isn't really his room. Instead, as with many of those who constantly travel from the city (and thus the church) and who are of no particular import, it's just a temporary little living space crammed in against other temporary little living spaces. If not for the sturdy architecture of the city, he suspects he would be able to hear his neighbors' every little movement. As it is, he just hears them talk, occasionally, although there isn't much to talk about in this kind of place.
It's simple, really. Claude doesn't mind that: the plain floors, a small statue by the window of the Saint, a simple closet with an accompanying chest of drawers. If he has a complaint, it's that the bed is like sleeping on rocks. Actually, as a hunter, he's slept on rocks that were more comfortable.
Yet for tonight, it will do, and Claude strips on the way to it. He's not really thinking about his bed, or his room. Instead, his mind is still on the defensive way that Dimitri had curled in on himself as that suspicious gaze had stayed on him. Claude had no weapons, strong metal bars had been between them, Dimitri had such a size difference... and yet he had been so certain that Claude would hurt him.
He breathes out, to remember that he can, and that he's no longer in front of Dimitri's cage holding his breath. It had been tempting to run away, or at least take a step back; the human self preservation instinct can be strong. But he'd thought that would be a bad idea at the time and, now, with his too-flat pillow underneath his head and the events behind him, Claude is pretty sure that it definitely would haven't gone like he would have wanted it to. The entire time, he had wanted to trust Dimitri, and hope that trust wouldn't be betrayed.
Well, that had been a part of it, at least. Claude cares a lot about things, and about people, but he rarely puts sentiment above pragmatism - not when the pragmatic approach is meant to, ideally, work out best for the people he cares about. Ineffectual compassion isn't really a virtue, in his opinion. So holding his ground before Dimitri had been even more a pragmatic decision than it had anything to do with his own emotions. Even when Dimitri had loomed over him. Even when those claws had wrapped around the bars of his cage, showcasing just how easy it would be for him to reach through and do... all sorts of things.
After all, gods know that Dimitri is big enough, vicious enough, broken enough that he has a lot of options even as he sits there in his cage. He could have reached through the bars. Could have tugged Claude close and crushed him right there. Maybe he simply would have tore him apart, all strength and sharp claws. Closing his eyes, Claude banishes those thoughts from his mind... because Dimitri hadn't done any of that.
Yeah. Claude nods to himself, folding his hands behind his head. Not retreating had definitely helped, although he wonders even now what part of it had penetrated. Had Dimitri seen his actions as a political gesture? That Claude trusted him, and how that would hopefully invite trust in return. Or maybe the strategy behind it all that had slipped past Dimitri in favor something else entirely. Claude loathes to think of his friend as an animal, no matter his appearance... but there's no denying the animalistic traits he's developed in all of his years.
Claude is a hunter, the best for miles he's sure, and he knows a thing or two about animalistic instincts. Dimitri has taken on the role of a predator after so long in his violent captivity, and predators are always conscious of how other creatures respond to them. If Claude had stepped away, or if he had run... He would have been 'prey'.
Claude's lips quirk up a little sardonically at the corners as he reflects on how Dimitri would have reacted if he'd presented himself like that. In that aspect, honestly, being maimed would have been the lesser of two options. If he had been seen as 'prey'.... then how on earth would Dimitri have even wanted to put his trust in him?
In the back of his mind, a third reason lingers on why he hadn't stepped away from Dimitri, something that has nothing to do with sentiment and nothing to do with planning. It's an unpleasant little thing, a miserable one that he doesn't want to dwell on...
Or, at least, he doesn't want it to be the last thing he thinks of as he drifts off to sleep. So Claude pushes himself up with a sigh, and leans over the edge of his bed so that he can dig around in the vast amount of empty space beneath it. It's a decent place to store one's packs, or really anything they want, although the dust underneath is plentiful enough to be used as some sort of natural resource.
It's too obvious a hiding place, so Claude doesn't really hide anything under there.... Or, at least, he hides nothing that seems like it would be obvious to hide it. Instead, from his always bulging pack, he draws out a carefully tended to leather journal.
Like all of the rooms in this temporary little space, a desk has been provided for him. There's a candle, too, but using that up means he'd have to ask the nuns for another one. Claude would rather ask the church for nothing, even if it's just something as little as this. Better that they don't know how much he writes, and so he shifts around until he's managed to find a spot where the moonlight is just barely enough.
There is nothing that, at a shallow glance, seems to stand out in his journal. This is helped by Claude genuinely using it as a journal is meant to be used, for all sorts of meaningless and mundane little things.
There are notes on how the forests are doing, what animal migrations he tries to remember and if any of the creatures out there act peculiarly. He keeps various little reminders of things that might need to be replaced, either on his person or the comfortable hunting cabin that lays tucked away in the forests a good few hours away from the city. There are doodles and drippings of ink and charcoal smudges scattered all over.
The idea came to him when they were all being taught poetry, by one of the better caretakers who realized that children need things that are not completely mind numbing if you don't want them to revolt but also don't want to beat or terrify them. It had just been one little thing, him realizing that the first letter in the start of each line break made an entirely different word, something that tied into the rest of the poem, and he'd felt elated at catching it. Quickly, he started to figure out his own codes, just nonsensical scribblings at first before he eventually made it grow into so much more.
He indulges in that code tonight as he writes down all his impressions and thoughts from his meeting with Dimitri, and the things he will have to do to free him. Because he is going to free him, of course. Claude curls his fingers a little harder against the bit of nubby charcoal he holds. Before he'd even thought of how hard the specifics would be, he'd known that he was going to free Dimitri. There's no question about it. He will. He has to.
However, like so many important things, it's not something he can do without so much preparation. Guided by moonlight, Claude begins to patiently write out as many questions as he can think of - how many guards are around Dimitri's cell at any given time? would it be easier to somehow get a key, or break through? where will they go? - and then some possible solutions and answers.
There are so many things he needs to consider, because if he's going to do this, then he's going to do this right. He's going to make sure that Dimitri not only breaks free, but that he's never followed, never found, never chained up again and used as a beast of slaughter - Claude lets loose a breath, placing down the charcoal when he feels his fingers start to cramp.
As he quietly flexes his hand and cracks his knuckles, his other thoughts from before begin to creep to the forefront of his mind. It hadn't just been a sentimental choice to stay before Dimitri even with all the danger. It hadn't been pragmaticism taking up the majority, with sentiment filling in the gaps. It had been... despair.
Or maybe not entirely despair, but certainly a despairing kind of masochism. If Dimitri really did hate him that much... If the situation really were so unsalvageable to the point of impossibility... Even though Claude has told himself that he has so much to live for, so much that he wants to change, in that moment?
Gods, in that moment, the possibility before him had been so depressing that it had sapped him of all energy, of any effort that could go into self preservation. All he could do was bank on the hope that none of that was true, and so there would be no reason to cater to any other possibility.
Slowly, Claude relaxes his fingers, and stares down into his open palm. As that trail of miserable thoughts settles inside of his mind, something else slips through, like hands through cage bars. It's the image of those enormous hands, so strong, so sharp, so dangerous... settling so terribly gently around his own. No hurt. No danger. Just scared and wondering. He closes his eyes, imagines that dark fur with the back of his eyelids as a blank canvas.
There's hope. He reminds himself of that, thinking of how tenderly Dimitri had curved his palms around Claude's hand. There is more hope than he had thought there to be. The road ahead is still tough, and the crick in his neck when he stands up after probably an hour of writing reminds him of such. But there's hope. Exactly as he's done ever since he was a child, ever since he's had to since he was a child, Claude keeps that thought cradled close to his heart as he sinks into the bed and closes his eyes.
He's going to save Dimitri. They're going to be free, together. Dimitri just doesn't know it yet.
Dimitri is used to such treatment, honestly. The humans do not trust him to walk obediently in, because of course he wouldn't. Yet they do not dare get any closer to him than they absolutely must, and with his limbs bound. It is how they escort him from their killing grounds - ropes of light forcing his arms behind his back, chains of the very same which force his feet to stay close together, a gag pulled tightly so that his fangs may not reach their deserving throats. When they demand he move, they do so with their long weapons, drawn out from light and ink, jabbing into his spine with blunt ends or whacked viciously into the back of his legs.
So arrogant and cruel when they put themselves into a position where he cannot retaliate against them. So superior.
It's the same position, it's the same movements, that they use when they force him into his cell. Their true weakness reveals itself in how they slam shut the cell door. Their magic, no matter how physical it may be when it hits or binds him, requires a direct line in order to be effective. It cannot go through walls, nor through the pure metal of his bars. At least, it cannot do so in the manner that they use it, where their powers are transmitted through their tattoos.
So they have to act quickly when they put him into his cell. Two of their number are always waiting at the door: one to keep it open and then slam it shut lightning quick, the other to slam down the bar over it. That's the bare minimum they feel they must do before they can quickly attend to the other locks on his door. There's only two. That must be enough, by their estimate.
It is no small source of bitterness to him that they are, in this matter, right.
After that... After that, he is left alone, and Dimitri curls into a corner to duly and dully look over his own body. There's nothing else to do. No human will interrupt him for the rest of the night. He knows that for a fact because that has been fact for years, now.
How many years, he's not certain. Time has lost all meaning to him. He knows that he was a child in this place, once, and then an adolescent, and now he is an adult. He knows that some things always follow a set schedule, which this night too will follow. He knows that the humans never feed him after a killing night, as though they have mistaken their murder as him feasting.
Perhaps they do. Dimitri would not be surprised if he learned this to be the case. After all, they treat him as though he is some beast, and have for many years now. He only need glance over his cell to be reminded of it. While he thinks of it as a cell, as though that will allow him to retain some semblance of being a person, he knows that it is more a cage than anything else.
At least it is a large space. He supposes he should be grateful that he has that much. His cage, his prison, lays within an enormous courtyard of some sort, deep within a nest of buildings that he has come to loathe.
The humans here use the courtyard for a variety of reasons, he's come to find. Some of them use it to meditate, seeking nonsense answers in what they believe to matter, although Dimitri believes it matters very little. Others reliably clean it, of dirt and leaves and snow depending on the seasons, and he thinks this might be considered a punishment. Only youth are sent to clean this area, and many of them glance at him in silent panic as they rush to do their job quickly, as though he can do nothing trapped where he is.
Most of the time, however, they train here, and those are often adults with the occasional adolescent. They do not glance at him anywhere near as often as the children do. Instead they focus on sparring with one another, or practice the forms that go into their martial arts whether with fist or brilliant glowing weapon.
Dimitri watches sometimes, often because it is the only thing he has to do. He may see some of these people, besides, down in the killing ring. Not often, but, occasionally. With that in mind... it never hurts to understand the way they fight.
He wonders if they ever realize the mistake they make, so boldly practicing before his cell, if that terror and understanding strikes their heart right before his claws strike their body.
It doesn't matter in the end, he supposes. The point is that the courtyard is large, in width and length both, and thus so is his cell to some degree. The bars which hold him go across the entire width of the place. A metal ceiling blocks him from a clear view of the sky and any chance of escape.
There is nothing for him, save a chamber pot in one of the only real corners he has, and a pile of ragged blankets that this place has bothered to give him. They can barely be called beds, or warmth, or comfort... although he has to grudgingly admit that they give him thicker ones come the colder months. If not for his fur, he wonders if he would have died months ago. Years ago.
There is more than enough room for him to run in his cell, but he is too tired from all of his fights to want for it. He could go to sleep in his pile of rags, but he has too much energy still burning in his veins for sleep. So Dimitri looks over himself, and tries to ignore his own senses.
It's all he can do, after all. Eventually, he knows he will be forced to pay attention. He'll have to acknowledge the voice tugging at the edges of his hearing, and the figures he can see from the corner of his eyes. Same as it is so many nights. Same as what always happens during nights like this.
Better to occupy his mind how he can, and so he looks over the area where, only a few hours prior, a long jagged cut had gone across his palm. It's gone, now. Completely and utterly. Even some of the fur has grown back, an unexpected part of his body that has regrown just like skin and blood and flesh.
Dimitri turns his hand over, gaze roaming slowly over the curve of his arm. He used to think it was like time being reversed, once upon a time, when he was younger and did not fully understand the magic these people use on him to force him alive. Now, he knows better. It's simply a natural process of sorts, sped up and amplified by the powers of someone else.
Dimitri clenches his claws into a fist, ignoring how they prick. Well. He says 'natural'. Yet how natural is it, really? This is not his body healing in a natural way. It is someone else's magic sinking into his bones and the very meat of him, transforming it. Is this really his body anymore? Can he say it is, when they have interfered with it so much? Will it ever be his body again?
Never. Voices scratch against the insides of his ear, incoherent static that somehow makes all the sense in the world. Dimitri closes his eyes, as though that ever helps him. He's running out of things to distract himself with, and "things" has always meant just his own self. What is he supposed to do here, now?
Succumb, he supposes. It's not as though he can do much else, not besides wait and sharpen his skills. He reminds himself of that as he pushes himself upwards, taking the long trudging walk across his cell to where his blankets are piled up. One day, he'll be fortunate. One day, he'll find his chance, and.... he'll be free.
It's a comforting thought, far more comforting than the blankets he curls up into, his face towards one of the far walls of his cell. There, the rough phantom of his father peers over at him with burning blue eyes that Dimitri can no longer match. The cutting words will start, soon, he's sure of it. That's how they always start. First it is the staring, accompanied by harsh whispers, and then...
Initially, he dismisses the sound - a ghost of a noise, gliding against pavement and dirt. Dimitri knows how his life is, and his life says that no one bothers with him directly after an execution. That's how it is. That is how it will always be. So even though his ears twitch, Dimitri stays locked inside of his own self, not daring to look away from the miserable specter across from him. Soon, the whispers will start in full, a tidal roar crashing down onto him until the force of the wave pulls him under and he falls asleep-
"Hey... Remember me?"
Dimitri blinks slowly at the voice. He has to work to pull himself out from the space he had been journeying into, head moving to the side by centimeters. He only needs to move it that much. When he rests in his prison, it is always with his good eye facing the courtyard. It's safer like that, even if nothing is truly safe here.
So it's easy to move his head just enough... and see the figure there, crouched right outside his cage. A figure with familiar brown skin, and dark hair, and green eyes so bright that they seem to stand out in the darkness.
Familiar parts of an unfamiliar whole, with that hair swept back, and a beard slowly growing along his jaw. With baby fat lost, leaving heavier eyelids and a more defined nose.
Once upon a time, he was ignorant to the true reason of his capture. Once upon a time, he thought that he had ended up in a strange place by accident, and that surely things would become clear in time as these strange humans realized he was not a threat. Everyone was inherently good in the end, weren't they?
That was what his parents used to stress upon him when he was young: every person had a goodness to them, and patience and effort helped bring it out. He had believed that so strongly back then...
And yet, how could he have understood the severity of the situation, the duplicity of it all? The humans had been cold and distant, but not yet cruel. They gave him a place to stay, a bed to sleep on, new clothes to wear - he still does not know what they did with the old ones - and regular meals three times a day. Yet more important than any of that...
There had been Claude.
Claude, the only other child near to his age he had ever seen. Claude with his shining eyes and playful smile and who had reached out to him through the bars. Dimitri had never entirely understood where he came from; the language barrier had been too great for that.
When they'd taught one another the most basic of their disparate tongues, a struggle that had taken ages, he'd gotten a rough idea. Only a rough one. How he had understood it was that... Claude's village had burned down in a fire, and the church had taken him in. Dimitri had tried to take comfort in that, although he couldn't help the ting of guilt that came with it. How could he feel relieved at another person's tragedy?
But it had given him some desperately needed hope. The church had taken in Claude, so it couldn't be a place of bad people, could it? And more importantly... Claude was a part of the church. Claude, who had touched him without fear. Claude, who had clumsily learned his language and grinned when Dimitri tried to mimic his. Claude, who he hadn't seen since he was a child.
Claude, who he had seen only a full moon or so ago.
Dimitri casts a critical eye upon the haunt lingering outside of his cell. Ever since he had been first used for the church sanctioned slaughter, he had started to see Claude outside of his cell. He hadn't thought anything of it, the first time. He hadn't been able to.
His mind had been scattered across itself, frantic and scared and sick and so many other emotions that he couldn't distinguish them all from one another. Besides, Claude had not visited in some time, back then. Back when he was naive enough to believe that Claude was busy, or had perhaps gotten caught, scolded for shirking his duties to visit someone else.
He still doesn't know what happened to Claude... but he does know, now, that Claude ceased to visit him the day he made his first kill. The day he became their "executioner", as the church calls him, when they do not use "demon" instead.
That thought had occurred to him suddenly, after some months, although the suspicions had been a gradual growing thing. After all, as time passed on, the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons, it had become clear to Dimitri that he was still growing.
The Claude on the other side of his bars never changed.
It's quite a difference from the man crouching there now: taller than the child in Dimitri's memories and facial hair tickling along his jaw. Yet so much of him is still the same.. Those brilliant green eyes that remind Dimitri of ribbons of light in the sky. That easygoing smile that put him at ease. The dark of his hair and the warmth in his skin.
Dimitri clenches his jaw and looks away, gaze narrowed. "So my mind has taken to finding new tricks to play upon me," he mutters to himself, Intsehli somehow still so rusty on his tongue despite how much he's talked to himself over the years. It's the only part of himself that he has left. What else can he do? A surge of annoyance suddenly bites at the back of his tongue, knocks into his teeth. Trust his mind to make an illusion that uses his tongue in ways he can't.
Another sign that it is only a trick of his mind - a deception his father might have said of some things with a heavy brow and a harsh twist of his mouth. His Claude had never gotten a true handle on Intsehli in the time they had with one another. Certainly, he had been a quick study, but the two of them had never had the time to become truly adept in each other's languages. This Claude, this whatever it is that sits so close and yet so far from him, that does not truly sit at all... Intsehli is too smooth from his lips, too natural and relaxed in comparison to the stiff way the words form in Dimitri's own mouth.
He speaks them anyway, perhaps because it is all he has, perhaps because of plain and simple spite. "No, I imagine it is most certainly spite," he continues, tail flicking in annoyance across the dirty floor. It's just a soft mutter, a conversation of one.
The thing that is Not Claude chuckles, voice deeper now but still gentle and warm. Fond. It awakens a distant ache in Dimitri, one that he resolves to firmly ignore. "You know, I think I'm missing a little bit of the conversation here," he says lightly.
Dimitri cannot help stare. It was one thing for the apparition to make Intsehli sound natural on his tongue. That was a frustration all unto its own. But this... This has the words to match. These are not words Dimitri can ever recall teaching Claude. He never would have figured out the right way to do some of them, or explain the way the sentence connects.
Dimitri's ears flick back, and his body loosens warily despite his glare. His words, however, are still directed to no one but himself. "Nothing but a trick of the mind... The illusions it casts are getting more clever. I wonder if this is some..." He trails off, too tired to think of the proper words that could describe his state or what sort of nonsense his mind is attempting to pull over his eye.
Not deterred, the Not Claude searches about the ground, and Dimitri watches him dully. Such quick and clever fingers... Claude had quick and clever fingers too. Dimitri could remember them trying to sketch things out, or flit through the air, holding tightly onto his hand-
Something nudges his arm, and Dimitri blinks his way out of his own nostalgia. There's a pebble, bouncing lightly off of the ground and away from his body before it comes to a stop. "Do your hallucinations ever flick pebbles at you?" the Not Claude asks, raising an eyebrow.
Dimitri's glare shifts into a flatter look. "As though you did that," he says dismissively. "I know better than to mistake my own pains for what they are."
Certainly, the church's healers did their job, as much as Dimitri begrudges them for it but that doesn't mean there is no pain at all in the aftermath. He is still always left exhausted whenever the healers do their work... and some times, he can still feel the injuries, although they are gone. He doesn't mean the sensation of blood sliding down his arms, clumping his fur together, leaving him rattling in his own hide. Just... the ache of them. The feeling that something isn't right.
So. It's just that. It has to be that. What it cannot be is Claude. The improbability of that... It would be too good to be true, no matter what else could be the reason for Claude's presence here. Dimitri has learned to temper his expectations, there. It's a learning that has him refuse to so much as entertain the possibility.
So Dimitri does his best to expect nothing, and only adjusts himself in his bedding. It's not like he has anything else he could possibly be doing. "You know, my hallucinations should at least have the good grace to let me sleep in peace," he grumbles, as though he ever planned on going to sleep.
"What kind of hallucinations do you have that actually listen to polite requests?" Not Claude cocks his head to the side, well aware that Dimitri hadn't been polite at all. "But c'mon, I can't just crouch here trying to convince you I'm real all night. So what's it going to take?" He holds out a hand, through the bars. "Will touching me be enough? Or should I tell you something you don't know, something your brain couldn't make up? Give you something of mine? I'm open to suggestions."
Another harsh pang in his heart, one that has nothing to do with old or healed injuries. No one has put their body into his cell like this... Not knowing what he could so easily do to a bit of flesh. It's nostalgic, and he loathes it.
While many illusions - hallucinations, yes, that's the proper word - have invaded his personal space before... It's never been like this before. It's never been an outright invitation like this. Never a real and proper touch. His prior Claude hallucinations have certainly always been outside of his cell, and never inside...
He doesn't accept the invitation offered to him. Against what feels to be his better judgment, however, he does sit up, and turn his head fully to face his apparition. Even before he speaks, that alone seems to bring more of a pep to this Not Claude's posture. "True to form, nothing but lies and empty promises as usual... If you won't let me sleep, food would be better."
Taste is the one sense that hasn't let him down yet, and it feels like the best way to keep.... whatever this is away from him. Hallucinations can't provide food after all, and the church doesn't give what he really wants or needs. This way, he's sure he'll be fine. What he's so scared of, what puts every bit of hair on his body on end is... He doesn't know. Dimitri doesn't want to think about it. Either way, it makes a good line in the sand -
"Hey, good idea!" What, no, not a good idea - Dimitri finds himself unable to do anything but stare as Claude begins to rummage about on a belt he keeps about his waist. Dimly, it occurs to him that this Claude now wears clothing far more attractive and better cared for than what he wore when they were children. He knows nothing of leatherwork, but even a beast like him can look over at the pouch Claude raises inbetween his fingers and understand the quality of it. "I'm guessing they don't exactly overfeed you here anyway..."
They do not. Dimitri's meals are regular but sparse things, with no appeal to them. From what he can tell, they believe there to be a fine line from ensuring he is a healthy slaughter beast, and him somehow breaking from his cell to tear out their throats in his sleep. He wishes it were that easy.
Easy like the way Claude unwinds the opening to his pouch, and carefully begins to pull out various foods. Even from a distance, in the dark of night, Dimitri can tell that they are far more interesting than what the church feeds him regularly. Almost against his will, his nose twitches to take in the scents that he can smell even from where he sits far away from the cages.
There's meat - yes, he can see it now in Claude's hand, dried carefully and somehow mingled with berries. Those, he can't see so easily, but his nose can pick up that sweet and tart scent. A couple of small loaves of bread are also pulled out, with something inside of them that he can't quite identify whether by eye or nose.
Claude places some of the dry meat on the bread, and then once again slides his offered hand through the bars. "They're not exactly delicacies or anything," he explains, "but they make good rations, even if the nuts are kind of hard on the jaw - or, you know what?" He grins, so carefree. The nostalgia, the mixing of past and present, is dizzying. "I don't think you'll have a problem with that. Well, while they might last a while and nourish the body, I still would have brought you something nicer if I was expecting things to turn out this way. I just wasn't sure what kind of reception I'd be getting..."
He trails off, those too bright green eyes watching Dimitri. They watch Dimitri stay right where he is, the slow uncurling of his body, claws tense, haunches prepared to do anything he might need them to. There's a lot of room in his cage that he could use, to pace or stand tall or anything at all, but Dimitri doesn't use it. This feels as though... it's a trap. As though he's going to reach out and -
"Relax, Dimitri." Claude's voice is calm, patient. He waits, no rush apparent in his eyes or in his body. He's still holding out the bread. "Even if I was inclined to bite, you definitely bite harder than I do. Besides, why would I want to mess with you?"
Dimitri convinces his body to continue uncurling from its tense position. He doesn't walk like he normally would, but reaches out towards the ground with the tips of his claws. There's no danger waiting for him with just a single step. He knows that, logically. Yet he can't pull himself out of that paranoia, that tense fear wrapped tight around his heart. So he goes carefully, claw first, footstep after, always prepared for... something.
Something does not come. Dimitri reaches the bars of his cell, and crouches there opposite where Claude does before him. This close... Dimitri has known for a long while that he had grown. He had always known, even before all of this, in a life that does now no longer seem to be his own, that Intseh are generally bigger than most humans. It had just... never been so clear between him and Claude, when they were children. He had been a little taller than his human friend, yes, but not by a huge amount.
...He's so small. Every bit of him, as he nonetheless crouches before Dimitri's much more massive form and continues to hold out his small hand.
There was a question. Dimitri remembers to finally answer it, uncaring of the minutes that have passed by since then. "No one has deigned to give me the answers to questions such as those." He curls his lip over one fang in disgust.
Of course, despite what he shows on his face... In the end, he still ends up reaching forward. Where Claude is small, the food he carries with him is also small, at least in comparison to Dimitri. Or perhaps it's simply this portion... Or maybe he is too concerned with his own size, strength that could so easily smash the food he delicately picks up inbetween his claws.
It's so... strange to have something in his hands again, and Dimitri pauses, just for a moment. He touches himself, the walls and bars of his cage, cheap dishes that feed to him cheap food, and his blankets. Other people falling apart to his grip or his claws or his teeth... They are all a given. But a simple piece of bread...
Dimitri doesn't let himself think much on it for very long. After just that brief second of introspection, he shoves the entire thing - bread and meat and everything in it - into his mouth. With one bite alone, he can feel his fangs crunch through something hard - nuts? Dimitri curls in on himself as he crouches there, chewing and chewing for what is the most flavor he thinks he's had in his mouth in years.
Most of his meals have been bland soups or stews or porridges with equally atrocious white bread. Occasionally, he's been thrown a thick bone from some sort of animal, as though he were some sort of dog. They usually stop for a while when he inevitably chucks it at someone's head during the middle of training.
In contrast, the bread that Claude has given him is... It's so much more flavorful than that. There's a different depth to it, something that reminds him of the pleasant smell which comes after the rain, and he's pleasantly surprised when he chews through something in the bread itself. It's dry, like everything else, but there's a faint bitterness. Greedily, he continues to chew, trying to figure out the various different flavors that seem to burst forth each time. Nuts and berries from the meat, vegetables in the bread -
Before he knows it, he's gone through the meager little offering ,and realizes how he's curled up with his hands at his mouth to greedily ensure no crumbs fell from his mouth. Across from him, Claude still sits with a simple little grin on his face. Dimitri grinds his tongue against his fangs and stares back.
This means... that Claude truly is here, now. The Claude he had known as a child, back when he had no idea of just what kind of fate would await him. They're both different now, however.... and him, especially. Is Claude really not... afraid of him, even a little, with what he has become?
"You can't tell me you think that's a hallucination," Claude says, his voice knocking Dimitri out of his mind. Blinking, he refocuses back to his old friend. Claude is still smiling, even under the renewed attention. "A hallucination would probably have the decency to taste better."
Playful and light... just like when they were children, when he would always look forward to the sight of sunlight illuminating Claude's smile through the bars of his door. The scene is very different now, although bars divide them still. Dimitri doesn't answer immediately, instead slowly looking over Claude with his one good eye.
Now that he knows for a fact that he's actually real, existing and alive and directly in front of his cell, all the little details... seem to matter more. He had always wondered what had happened to Claude, when he had been taken away from his room to be given a cage instead, to become an executioner proper. Whatever happened on Claude's end... he seems to be doing well for himself. He looks healthy. His clothing and equipment are good, although Dimitri does not miss the tell-tale red that is incorporated into much of his outfit.
Well. In the end, he supposes he shouldn't be surprised. There were only really two options, when he thinks about it, and he can only be glad that Claude is not dead. Then again, maybe that would be the kinder route.
"What do you want?" he asks, voice quiet and hoarse - a threat implicit in his words even when he does not consciously intend it. Better safe than sorry, better to always be wary and prepared to go on the offensive. After all, this is still too good to be true, even with Claude alive and not merely a figment of torture brought about by his own mind. And if it's too good to be true... Then there has to be a catch.
For what purpose, he has no idea, but he has had so little idea on why most of his life has happened up until this point. What is one more thing to the long list of miseries that have made up his existence?
"To see my old friend," Claude answers simply, still whispering quietly so that his voice doesn't echo throughout the courtyard. He's still smiling, but it's... different. It is a softer smile, now. Almost.... sad. Dimitri can't entirely understand it, but that is the emotion on Claude's face, hanging from his lips and shining in his eyes. "They really did a number on you after they sent me away, didn't they?"
Such a simple reason. It can't be true. "And that's all?" It's more accusation than question, and Dimitri finally lowers his hands from his face in order to bare his fangs. In the darkness, it's impossible to tell if it's more a manic smile or a pained grimace. Or maybe it's only impossible to tell for himself. "So you're only here of your own volition, to disappear as much of any of my own specters afterwards?" As he speaks, he presses closer to the bars until he's looming over Claude. It's hard to stop himself from bristling. Dimitri doesn't think he wants to. "Why return now?"
Most humans shy away when he does this, when he reminds them of how big he is, how sharp his claws are, how easily he can break bone inbetween his teeth. Claude does not pull away. He stays right where he is, meeting Dimitri's gaze with those shining green eyes of his. "I didn't know where you were any sooner than when I found you here." Still quiet. Somehow, his voice sounds quieter, although Dimitri's ears have not picked up anything of the sort.
Quiet, and patient, and too calm.
While Dimitri tries to reconcile what has happened in the past to what is happening in his present, Claude continues. "When they found out that I was seeing you so much, they sent me away, you know. It's suspicious to them for a kid to spend so much time around an Intseh. Or maybe it would have been suspicious no matter my age, unless I were one of the controllers. After that, there was no way that I could ask about any Intseh - about demons, or executioners, even as I became an adult."
It should be clear, at this point, that Dimitri holds no fondness for humans anymore. When he's more honest with himself, Dimitri concedes that being dead might have been a favor to him instead of this life he claims to lead. It's a desire whose strength ebbs and flows within him, changing from day to day. Despite that desire, however, no matter its strengths, Dimitri doesn't succumb to it. Not just yet. While he may be able to do very little in his current situation, a metaphorical collar wrapped around his throat that chokes him if he strays too far, he is still determined to do something.
One of these days, he's going to bite the hand that feeds, tear it clean off... and he and Claude both know that he is deciding if the human in front of him right now is one of the fingers.
At least, he thinks that Claude knows that. The differences between them are too great, and Dimitri knows his intentions have been made perfectly clear... haven't they? And yet all that happens is that Claude loses that smile of his as he looks upon Dimitri... but not that soft, sad look in his eye. "I'm sorry it took me so long, and that I couldn't help you any. But I don't know what I could have done differently that would have helped you. These days, they've assigned me my own task, too... and, besides, as far as I knew, you could have been dead."
"I'm sure they have," Dimitri growls, a low sounds that rolls up from the twisting of his stomach. Claude's red had given away that detail almost immediately. "Your own task that keeps you busy right as we speak, I'm certain."
It's another accusation, more upfront this time to show that he won't be so easily tricked. Perhaps it is not an elegant accusation, but Dimitri makes it regardless. Because... There has to be a reason for why Claude is here. Why Claude is here after all this time, long after Dimitri has surrendered to his role as executioner for the time being.
Almost more than that, he's surrendered to the fact that there is no help in this city for him. If it is available, then it would never be given to him, and that.... that is a fact of his life, like so many other miserable facts. This race turned its back on him a long time ago, and he knows that they will keep it that way. That is true, he is sure, of this person right before him as well.
It doesn't matter that they were once friends... That, once upon a time, they clumsily exchanged words and childish translations with one another with only a door between them. It had seemed such a temporary and simple obstacle to pass, one day...
But that was so very long ago. What does he know of this man who sits before him with those green eyes from his childhood, but the red clothing that belongs to those who have seen fit to use him as nothing more than a tool for their bloody deeds?
Ugh. Disdain and disgust curl in his stomach - or at least that is what he chooses to believe are the emotions there. Certainly, he makes sure that the right ones drip from his voice as he narrows his eye down at Claude, silent despite Dimitri's accusation. "Yet regardless of your reasons for being here, you cannot help me even now. Leave, so that I may rest for once, before I force you to begone from my presence one way or the other." He can reach through the bars, after all. It is why the humans of this church take such care when even so much as feeding him.
Claude.... does not leave. He does not so much as lean back. Something itches at the back of Dimitri's neck, jerks anxiously in the pit of his stomach. He has to know. He has to be aware of how easily Dimitri could just reach out, grab him, tear him limb from limb even with the limited space Dimitri has. He can't just - this isn't something like trust, he isn't something that -
"I didn't expect you to hate me so much for something I couldn't control," Claude sighs, swinging Dimitri's attention back to him. He raises one hand, fingers running through his hair. It used to be looser, once. Curlier, Dimitri thinks, although he is always wondering about his own memories nowadays. This change is... "But...I guess under the circumstances, with everything they've put you through, you had to blame someone. And I might not have had it easy, but I definitely can't pretend I've had it as bad as you, so I guess some resentment's justified." So he gets it now. So he's going to get up, and leave, and realize this is a lost cause -
Claude smiles. "But really, Dimitri!" He smiles a wide smile, winking and raising a finger to his lips and staying. "They had to drag me away the first time! Do you think I'll abandon you by choice now?" he says, as if he isn't casually just - tossing away every single reason that he should be gone.
He's just ignoring how he should be treating Dimitri, how the church has treated him for years and years now by keeping him caged, collared, muzzled. He is a creature groomed for murder, worse than the ghastly women he has seen lurking around whenever he has acted up in preparation for what he knows will be their execution of him.
Surely the church knows this, deep down. They know they have a created a monster that could turn on them in any second, a creature so much larger and stronger than them held on a thin leash that could snap any day now or not be wrapped around his throat in time. It is why they keep such a distance from him. Why Claude should be keeping a distance from him, should be doing anything but sitting here and smiling at him and laughing quietly under his breath and Dimitri cannot understand why -
"Sure, I might have just been passing through before I knew you were here, but now that I've found you, I'm staying. I don't want to make any promises about how much help I can be before I've even scoped out the situation - not that you'd trust any lip service from me anyway, obviously - but I'll definitely find something I can do for you. Ideally a lot of somethings."
And Claude smiles at him through the bars of his cage.
Dimitri can only stare at him for a moment, and it occurs to him distantly that, at some point, he reached up to wrap his fingers around the bars himself, as though to do.... something. Yet that somehow doesn't seem as important as the man before him. It's... Is this all actually reality? He had thought it to be such when he had accepted that bit of meat and bread from Claude, because his hallucinations have never affected his taste before, but all of this is...
It's stronger than nostalgia. It's a living memory, even with all the details like age and location changed - although maybe the latter hasn't become all that different from when they met as children. If it were simply day instead of night, if the two of them could sit here and be warmed by the gentle rays of the morning sun... They'd be as they were in their youth, chatting away, exchanging words in Intseh and Fodlish. It'd be as if they were in his room again - well, him in his room, Claude on the other side of the door, their words and voices intertwining. It could be...
Roughly shoving himself away from the bars, Dimitri curls in on himself again... although not all the way against the wall as he had been for what feels like only a half hour prior. The familiarity of - everything - is far too much. "I don't know what to think," he growls, although there is not as much force in the sound as he would otherwise like. His claws curl, frustrated and helpless, along his sides. He can't trust this nostalgic apparition from his past, this terrible hopeful promise.
He can't trust anything in this church or this city. He can't trust anyone. He's learned that, and Dimitri won't let such hard earned lessons go to waste.
"I guess that's fair. It's been a long time, right? You're pretty different yourself from how you were when I knew you, so who's to say I'm not?" Claude's next smile is somehow, impossibly, all the brighter and more enticing. Between the bars that separate their bodies, his hand still presses through exactly as when they were children, an offering to fate or misery or pain or whatever may come next. It stays right where it is, palm stretched out before Dimitri, as Claude says, "So I guess I'll just have to show you what you can believe."
Dimitri stares down at that palm, the way those fingers stretch out. When he had first seen it, this fragile little offering that could be torn off in a heart beat, it had seemed so different, somehow. It had been... a mockery, at the very best. That is what he believed it to be, because what else could it be? Now, he knows the answer. Now, he knows that the Claude in front of him truly exists, is truly the boy that he knew once upon a time and so very long ago....
After gods only knows how long, he reaches forward. More than sees, he feels the way that Claude goes absolutely dead still, but Dimitri does not take his hand as he imagines one normally would.
Instead, he reaches with both his own, gently bracketing Claude's hand. He does not touch, not quite. His hands barely brush Claude's skin as he cups that hand which is so much smaller than he is.
"If you come back," he says quietly, staring down at Claude's hand. Softly, more soft than he can remember being with anything else in his life, he ghosts the pads of his thumbs up along the curves of Claude's palm. It takes care, not to prick him with his claws as he glides them up to the gaps inbetween Claude's fingers. "...I suppose we'll see."
And with that, he lets go - or perhaps he never had to let go at all, with how he barely touched Claude at all. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he pulls away, slowly, and shuffles backwards so that there is at least a little more space between them. He doesn't know why he does it. They are as separated as two people can possibly be.
Claude only pulls his hand back when Dimitri has done his, and his fingers flex inwards as he does so. As if he's trying to find the ghost of Dimitri's touch. Even if Dimitri's gaze is away, he can tell Claude is looking at him. His gaze... has a weight to it, somehow.
At long last, however, he rises up, and Dimitri's ears twitch at the sound of his scuffing feet. "Just watch me," he repeats, voice low, and Dimitri raises his head to meet those too-bright green eyes. To meet the way they stare so intently at him, as if he is the only thing in the world.
That moment lasts only a second, their eyes locked, before Claude turns away. He is a dark shape across the pale moonlight that spills over the courtyard, and Dimitri watches him the entire length of it. He watches until he can watch no more, when Claude steps into the shadows of the open halls that connect the buildings and other yards. With that, he's gone, easy as a specter.
And yet... Dimitri's gaze drifts down to where he holds his still cupped hands close before himself. These are hands that he always thought he knew well. He has used these hands to shatter cups and bowls. In his hands, he has choked the life from another person, or dug his claws deeply into their flesh until they were losing every bit of life in them through a gush of blood.
For so long, he has only known them through violence, or through bondage. He has only known most of his body through bondage: the burning light of the humans' magic as it had wrapped tight to force his limbs close to his body, hard gags of metal shoved into his mouth to keep him from biting down on straying fingers or frustrating controllers, the violent sting of glass and blade and metal and -
Bondage. Suffocating like a whip around this throat. Violence. Bones breaking, blood on his tongue.
Claude had just existed between his hands.
He had existed, and he had been warm, and he had been soft.
What to make of it? Dimitri... isn't sure. All he can do is think himself in circles long into one more new dawn, staring down at his palms where Claude's hand had once been.
Through darkened hallways, away from the places he knows are the most guarded, into the room that has temporarily been deemed his - only after all of that does Claude stop, and he stares downwards. He stares down at his hand, fingers slowly uncurling. It's so easy to imagine, in the dark of his room, the softness of Dimitri's hands as they had brushed up against his. It had all been so light. All alone, away from anyone else's eyes, Claude indulges in the shiver he had suppressed when Dimitri had actually touched him.
He had touched him... almost tenderly, and even that much had made Claude's heart ache. It's still aching for him, but not in any sensual way. The ache is one of pain, and regret, and so much anger that he could swear its bitter aftertaste is on the back of his tongue. Yet in that ache, there is a little bit of hope.
That faint and slow touch was so at odds with the rest of Dimitri's behavior, his bitter coarseness and barely restrained violence; it's the only hint he'd seen of the boy he remembers from years ago. It's the barest glimpse of something buried and lost, something so precious that he can only hope it's salvageable. He can only hope he can salvage it.
Slowly, he lets a breath out between his teeth. Stepping to the side, he sinks against the wall and slowly down to the floor. It had been worth bribing one of the guards to let him through, worth it to slip past any others that had been patrolling the church grounds to keep safe its secrets and food and the lives of those they deemed pure enough to protect. It had been worth it to sit directly in front of Dimitri's cell, close as he could get without it be weird. He knows that now, in hindsight, where he's tucked away in a bedroom and removing his boots.
But at the time... Claude breathes in again, out. Dimitri's touch had made a part of him go still - his mind or his soul, Claude isn't sure which or if there's even a difference. Yet his heart is another matter entirely, and it still beats loudly in his chest with adrenaline rushing from it.
Gradually, it's slowed down... but it hasn't forgotten how it had felt to sit there, moonlight shining off the towering metal bars like the shards of a broken sword, and Dimitri's massive form hunched over him even with sturdy obstacles between them.
It had been... intimidating, to say the least, how big Dimitri has grown to be. Oh, Claude used to ponder if he would grow to be big, when he was younger. The thought would occur to him whenever he was put on any sort of animal duty back in the church's orphanage. Back then, he can still remember how excited he would be at the idea of handling the horses... but, usually, they made him tend to goats or chickens, with the occasional cleaning out of stables when the horses had all been taken out already.
A noteworthy event had been when one of the church hounds had gotten pregnant, and given birth to a litter. Claude actually hadn't been a first pick on taking care of the mother and her puppies, actually... That, of course, had gone to one of the children that their caretakers had favored: a smug and self-centered jackass who had always feared their elders, which had been understandable, and took that fear out by harassing other kids until they bowed to him, which was sort of still understandable but nonetheless made him an insufferable little bastard by Claude's standards.
Unfortunately for him, on the day that he was supposed to help with those exact hounds, he'd ended up getting sick from some mysterious thing that definitely wasn't a little bit of something slipped into his food the night before. Poor kid. His bowel movements had been a disaster zone. Claude, to this day, still can't exactly regret his decision back then. How could he, when it had given him the perfect opportunity to help with the mother dog's pregnancy, and eventual litter?
They'd been cute, back then, when they were stumbling over their enormous feet before they were collected by the priests and nuns of the church who would train them to catch mice or go on hunts or guard places.
Dimitri had been cute then, too, when Claude had gone to visit him soon after. Of course he visited him. They'd talked in their cobbled together mishmash of a language, Fodlish and Intsehli mingled together into a patchwork little thing for children. Claude had wanted to know what the word for "dog" was. Dimitri had wanted to show him he knew how to do a handstand now. With Claude having just seen the puppies, and Dimitri's enormous feet wobbling hilariously in the air before he'd fallen and gotten a nosebleed... Of course he had to make that connection.
One boot now undone and pried off of his foot, he sets it gingerly to the side so as to note wake any potential neighbors he may have tonight. Yes, the priests would take the dogs away to make them guards and hunters... and they had taken Dimitri to make their executioner, as if those were the exact same kind of thing. Claude's fingers linger around his boot, fingers grinding into the leather before he forces himself to breathe and let go. Story of his life, honestly. Breathe and let go, in so many cases.
Yet even if he doesn't like the comparison, he does have to admit that Dimitri really did exceed his expectations on just how large he could grow. Yet it's not off-putting to him; that's not why he had been left feeling so on edge while he had smiled up at Dimitri's face. The other boot, now, and Claude sets it down right alongside the first before he rolls his head back to rest against the wall. No, what had got him so intimidated had been how... unstable Dimitri has become in all the years that he hasn't seen his old and beloved friend.
It's not a surprise, not really, knowing where Dimitri has ended up, and what the church had always planned to be his fate. Being treated like an animal, less than, and forced to kill innocent or violent people at the demands of a group that did not help those who needed it and punished them when they...
Claude shakes his head, and pushes himself up onto his feet. His room isn't really his room. Instead, as with many of those who constantly travel from the city (and thus the church) and who are of no particular import, it's just a temporary little living space crammed in against other temporary little living spaces. If not for the sturdy architecture of the city, he suspects he would be able to hear his neighbors' every little movement. As it is, he just hears them talk, occasionally, although there isn't much to talk about in this kind of place.
It's simple, really. Claude doesn't mind that: the plain floors, a small statue by the window of the Saint, a simple closet with an accompanying chest of drawers. If he has a complaint, it's that the bed is like sleeping on rocks. Actually, as a hunter, he's slept on rocks that were more comfortable.
Yet for tonight, it will do, and Claude strips on the way to it. He's not really thinking about his bed, or his room. Instead, his mind is still on the defensive way that Dimitri had curled in on himself as that suspicious gaze had stayed on him. Claude had no weapons, strong metal bars had been between them, Dimitri had such a size difference... and yet he had been so certain that Claude would hurt him.
He breathes out, to remember that he can, and that he's no longer in front of Dimitri's cage holding his breath. It had been tempting to run away, or at least take a step back; the human self preservation instinct can be strong. But he'd thought that would be a bad idea at the time and, now, with his too-flat pillow underneath his head and the events behind him, Claude is pretty sure that it definitely would haven't gone like he would have wanted it to. The entire time, he had wanted to trust Dimitri, and hope that trust wouldn't be betrayed.
Well, that had been a part of it, at least. Claude cares a lot about things, and about people, but he rarely puts sentiment above pragmatism - not when the pragmatic approach is meant to, ideally, work out best for the people he cares about. Ineffectual compassion isn't really a virtue, in his opinion. So holding his ground before Dimitri had been even more a pragmatic decision than it had anything to do with his own emotions. Even when Dimitri had loomed over him. Even when those claws had wrapped around the bars of his cage, showcasing just how easy it would be for him to reach through and do... all sorts of things.
After all, gods know that Dimitri is big enough, vicious enough, broken enough that he has a lot of options even as he sits there in his cage. He could have reached through the bars. Could have tugged Claude close and crushed him right there. Maybe he simply would have tore him apart, all strength and sharp claws. Closing his eyes, Claude banishes those thoughts from his mind... because Dimitri hadn't done any of that.
Yeah. Claude nods to himself, folding his hands behind his head. Not retreating had definitely helped, although he wonders even now what part of it had penetrated. Had Dimitri seen his actions as a political gesture? That Claude trusted him, and how that would hopefully invite trust in return. Or maybe the strategy behind it all that had slipped past Dimitri in favor something else entirely. Claude loathes to think of his friend as an animal, no matter his appearance... but there's no denying the animalistic traits he's developed in all of his years.
Claude is a hunter, the best for miles he's sure, and he knows a thing or two about animalistic instincts. Dimitri has taken on the role of a predator after so long in his violent captivity, and predators are always conscious of how other creatures respond to them. If Claude had stepped away, or if he had run... He would have been 'prey'.
Claude's lips quirk up a little sardonically at the corners as he reflects on how Dimitri would have reacted if he'd presented himself like that. In that aspect, honestly, being maimed would have been the lesser of two options. If he had been seen as 'prey'.... then how on earth would Dimitri have even wanted to put his trust in him?
In the back of his mind, a third reason lingers on why he hadn't stepped away from Dimitri, something that has nothing to do with sentiment and nothing to do with planning. It's an unpleasant little thing, a miserable one that he doesn't want to dwell on...
Or, at least, he doesn't want it to be the last thing he thinks of as he drifts off to sleep. So Claude pushes himself up with a sigh, and leans over the edge of his bed so that he can dig around in the vast amount of empty space beneath it. It's a decent place to store one's packs, or really anything they want, although the dust underneath is plentiful enough to be used as some sort of natural resource.
It's too obvious a hiding place, so Claude doesn't really hide anything under there.... Or, at least, he hides nothing that seems like it would be obvious to hide it. Instead, from his always bulging pack, he draws out a carefully tended to leather journal.
Like all of the rooms in this temporary little space, a desk has been provided for him. There's a candle, too, but using that up means he'd have to ask the nuns for another one. Claude would rather ask the church for nothing, even if it's just something as little as this. Better that they don't know how much he writes, and so he shifts around until he's managed to find a spot where the moonlight is just barely enough.
There is nothing that, at a shallow glance, seems to stand out in his journal. This is helped by Claude genuinely using it as a journal is meant to be used, for all sorts of meaningless and mundane little things.
There are notes on how the forests are doing, what animal migrations he tries to remember and if any of the creatures out there act peculiarly. He keeps various little reminders of things that might need to be replaced, either on his person or the comfortable hunting cabin that lays tucked away in the forests a good few hours away from the city. There are doodles and drippings of ink and charcoal smudges scattered all over.
The idea came to him when they were all being taught poetry, by one of the better caretakers who realized that children need things that are not completely mind numbing if you don't want them to revolt but also don't want to beat or terrify them. It had just been one little thing, him realizing that the first letter in the start of each line break made an entirely different word, something that tied into the rest of the poem, and he'd felt elated at catching it. Quickly, he started to figure out his own codes, just nonsensical scribblings at first before he eventually made it grow into so much more.
He indulges in that code tonight as he writes down all his impressions and thoughts from his meeting with Dimitri, and the things he will have to do to free him. Because he is going to free him, of course. Claude curls his fingers a little harder against the bit of nubby charcoal he holds. Before he'd even thought of how hard the specifics would be, he'd known that he was going to free Dimitri. There's no question about it. He will. He has to.
However, like so many important things, it's not something he can do without so much preparation. Guided by moonlight, Claude begins to patiently write out as many questions as he can think of - how many guards are around Dimitri's cell at any given time? would it be easier to somehow get a key, or break through? where will they go? - and then some possible solutions and answers.
There are so many things he needs to consider, because if he's going to do this, then he's going to do this right. He's going to make sure that Dimitri not only breaks free, but that he's never followed, never found, never chained up again and used as a beast of slaughter - Claude lets loose a breath, placing down the charcoal when he feels his fingers start to cramp.
As he quietly flexes his hand and cracks his knuckles, his other thoughts from before begin to creep to the forefront of his mind. It hadn't just been a sentimental choice to stay before Dimitri even with all the danger. It hadn't been pragmaticism taking up the majority, with sentiment filling in the gaps. It had been... despair.
Or maybe not entirely despair, but certainly a despairing kind of masochism. If Dimitri really did hate him that much... If the situation really were so unsalvageable to the point of impossibility... Even though Claude has told himself that he has so much to live for, so much that he wants to change, in that moment?
Gods, in that moment, the possibility before him had been so depressing that it had sapped him of all energy, of any effort that could go into self preservation. All he could do was bank on the hope that none of that was true, and so there would be no reason to cater to any other possibility.
Slowly, Claude relaxes his fingers, and stares down into his open palm. As that trail of miserable thoughts settles inside of his mind, something else slips through, like hands through cage bars. It's the image of those enormous hands, so strong, so sharp, so dangerous... settling so terribly gently around his own. No hurt. No danger. Just scared and wondering. He closes his eyes, imagines that dark fur with the back of his eyelids as a blank canvas.
There's hope. He reminds himself of that, thinking of how tenderly Dimitri had curved his palms around Claude's hand. There is more hope than he had thought there to be. The road ahead is still tough, and the crick in his neck when he stands up after probably an hour of writing reminds him of such. But there's hope. Exactly as he's done ever since he was a child, ever since he's had to since he was a child, Claude keeps that thought cradled close to his heart as he sinks into the bed and closes his eyes.
He's going to save Dimitri. They're going to be free, together. Dimitri just doesn't know it yet.