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Church Source 19
Claude listens to his rapidly fading footfalls, then looks back at Dimitri. "Well, that went over well," he says brightly.
--
Dimitri's horns nudge out from underneath where his hood has fallen over his head, followed shortly by his ears, and then the rest of him. He seems tired, but that's also nothing really new. A bit of remorse is soon added to the expression. "I apologize, Claude. He didn't answer your question."
--
"I'm not the one you should apologize to." Claude rests his elbow on his leg, and his head on his hand. "I know you're under an unbelievable amount of strain, Dimitri, and that the kid isn't exactly making himself easy to deal with on top of that. But mocking him like that...that was pretty harsh." He cocks an eyebrow. "I mean, it's one thing if you don't want to take my advice, but I didn't actually think you'd go that far in the complete opposite direction of what I recommended."
--
"I don't want to fight." He settles back into his cloak, although not entirely retreating. "And I do not want to fight him." A low shaky breath leaves him, and there's a slight twitch around his eyes that shows he's looking elsewhere. "I will be fine if my words are harsh. He will be fine, eventually. The same couldn't be said of a fight." His ears practically squish themselves into the fur of his cloak.
"...I'm not going to finish the job that the church wanted me to."
--
"Dimitri," Claude says quietly. "That fight and his pride are probably the only things that have been keeping him going, and you just kicked both of them out from under him."
--
"They shouldn't be." It's a low snarl, angry and miserable. "Why can't he find something different? He can. There are lands beyond the church, people beyond, he has so much! He isn't me. Why can't he just-" He falls into low growls again, curling up tighter underneath his cloak.
--
Claude taps his fingers against his face. "You don't have to like the similarities between the two of you," he says idly, "but denying them isn't going to make them go away. And you can't dictate to him what it is he should want."
--
"And all I can do is go along with what he wants of me?" Dimitri snaps.
-
"No, Dimitri." Claude sighs. "Were you not listening to me earlier?"
He'd moved over to the bed not long after Dimitri pinned Katsuki; now he moves back over to Dimitri, sitting down in front of him. "My advice was to not decide forever based on right now. You don't want to fight him now, and you probably won't want to fight him tomorrow. But a month from now? A year? Five years? Do you have any idea where you'll be then, or how you'll feel then? No one does, I think, but you've got even more room for uncertainty there than most do. So why tell him never? Why not just say 'if I do want to fight you someday, I will'?"
Claude combs fingers through Dimitri's hair. "He's actually trying to work with you more than you're working with him. As badly as he wants that fight - as important as it is to him, as badly as he wants something to feel good about himself for - he's not pushing it on you. Did you notice? He agreed to later when he obviously wants now. And even after you insulted him, made him feel even more humiliated...he ran away instead of just going after you while you were curled up there." Claude pauses. "Granted, that could've also been because there'd be no pride in kicking someone who's not even fighting back, but still.
"He's not trying to fight you when you don't want to fight. He wants you to want the fight, too. And it seems like he's willing to wait for when - or if - that happens. So what's the problem?"
--
Apparently, this whole conversation subject is putting all of Dimitri on edge. For once, touch feels like just a little too much, and he pulls back further slightly into his cloak as Claude runs his fingers along his hair. He almost doesn't know what he wants to do, or even what he wants in general. Everything is just... too much, in this place. Not for the first time, likely not for the last, he wishes he could be back in the forest.
"If I agree," he hisses, "then I'll have to do it someday. It is a commitment, then. It's a promise." Reaching up, he digs his claws into the fur of his hood. "And he'll always be there, waiting for it- I don't want it." It's a clear struggle to get the words out, to explain his thought process. It's more than slightly flawed, as far as processes go, but... it is what it is.
--
Claude sighs in exasperation, sitting back on his heels. "You know, there's also the possibility that he may not keep wanting it forever, too. Especially if he sticks with us and starts to like you, and understand you. Granted, that might have been easier before you deliberately humiliated him, but there's still no guarantee about how he's going to feel in a month or a year or five years from now, any more than there is with you.
"And, even setting all of that aside...leaving a possibility open is a pretty different from making a promise. And I'll tell you one thing, Dimitri - no talk of your wanting to take responsibility for him is going to entice that kid to come with us. This may be time for you to learn the art of diplomacy, which is basically getting people to do what you want through the art of flexible truths. You could say that's possible you'll fight him someday not because you want to, or even intend to, but because it'll mean he'll come with us. Which is what you want to happen, right?"
--
"I.... thought it was what I wanted." He grimaces, lips curling over his fangs. "But something I want isn't.... That means nothing. It doesn't mean it was a good idea. A good thing." Frankly, he's not sure a lot of what he thinks is good, for varying definitions of the word. All he knows is what he wants. Claude has already had to talk him down from a lot of those as it is already, hasn't he?
Dimitri tugs the hood a little more over his ears, horns still poking out of them. "....What is the difference between a flexible truth and a lie, then?"
--
"Depends on how flexible the truth is. It can be just a fancy word for lie, certainly." Claude grins. "In this case, though, it'd just be...let's say potentially untrue. Your mind could change, after all, so if you tell Katsuki 'I'll fight you if the day comes when I want to fight you' and that day never comes, then it'll still have been true. You never said whether or not it was likely to happen. But you also don't know it won't happen, so you're not lying by telling him it could."
--
"....This feels like semantics again..." And not in the playful teasing way in which Dimitri had first used the word. For a moment, he burrows back into his cloak. It's the best control he has over his present surroundings, and it gives him something that covers the whole of him... especially when he's curled up like this.
"...There's too much, Claude. All of this is too much."
--
"Sometimes semantics are necessary. Hell, sometimes lies are necessary." Claude settles himself so he's sitting cross-legged. "But there's no language in which 'maybe', or 'we'll see', means the exact same thing as either 'yes' or 'no'. You say that the kid has so much, but...he's really in the same place you are, Dimitri. I know you can see that. The church stripped him of his family, his friends, his life - he can't go back to them. He's certainly able to start a new life, but...well, so are you, now. Is that the same as not having lost anything? And do you think that loss hasn't affected both of you?
"You needed to cling to the possibility of being able to kill some church official to get yourself through what the church did to you. And, well...for better or worse, what he seems to have fixated on is you, and this fight. Why? Who knows. I bet Katsuki himself couldn't tell us; the reasons he thinks he has might not even be the real reasons. Maybe sneaking in and freeing you was enough of a complex long-term goal -verging on the impossible - that it was a good distraction from being suddenly homeless and alone. Maybe he's grateful to you but isn't good at showing it - aggressive people have very weird ways of showing affection - or maybe he's been aching to have someone who cares about whether he lives or dies in his life again. Either way, he could be using the goal of beating you as an excuse to hang around you. Maybe it is just resentment at being denied the chance to overcome the insane challenge he really thinks he stands a chance at. Maybe his pride's just that important to him - which wouldn't surprise me too much, because sometimes it's the people who have the least who cling to what little they've got the fiercest. It could be any of those things. Or many of them. Or all of them! But I doubt anyone knows, Katsuki included."
Claude runs a hand through his own hair. "But, that list aside...all I can think is, well. I wonder how I'd have gotten through those days at the church as a kid, alone, if someone had told me I couldn't make them pay for what they'd done. Or how you would have managed, if someone had said you'd never get the chance to kill a church official. I mean, we were never guaranteed what we were hoping for, any of us, but...to be told we'd never even get a chance. To be told 'no, it will never happen. Just give up.'" He sighs. "With a side of 'you're not good enough', too. I know I'm probably identifying with the kid too much, his situation's too much like both of ours, but...I can't pretend it didn't kind of hurt to watch. Because I definitely see your side of things, and I'm the first one to say that you don't owe the kid anything, much less a fight, after everything you've been through...but I can see his side, too. Enough that I can't just shrug it off and say 'he'll be fine' after that, the way you want to. I don't know if he will be, because I don't know if we would have been."
He exhales, slowly. "This is all way more than I wanted you to have to deal with on your first day in the city, honestly. It was always going to be rough at first, but Katsuki is definitely an extra unexpected complication. But no matter how much I might like to, I can't make things much easier than I'm already doing. We don't have the luxury of taking years to get to the Intseh - not if we want to prevent another kidnapping, and not if you want to give those remains their long-overdue burial in any kind of timely fashion. There's going to be at least some amount of needing to throw you in at the deep end, and this is one of those times."
He's silent for a moment. "All I can tell you is that, if you wanted, I can find you somewhere to stay. Somewhere out in the country. You could take it easy and get used to freedom at your own pace, instead of this accelerated one, and I could take the remains to the Intseh myself. They'd still get the treatment they deserve, and you wouldn't have to practically break yourself to do it. The ones who came before you...they wouldn't want to force any more suffering on you that you've done nothing to deserve."
Claude smiles faintly. "All I can do is tell you that option exists, because honestly? I don't think you're going to take it. But it's the only other option that doesn't involve giving up on burying the former executioners, and preventing any future ones. So...I know this is new, and tough, and you're going to hate it at first. But I think when you appreciate what the alternatives are...you're not going to accept them anyway."
--
There's something to be said about listening to Claude speak. Even when Dimitri sometimes doesn't agree with him, or his rattled mind can't focus on exactly what's being said or understand what's being said..... There's still something. Maybe it's merely the sound of listening to Intsehli from the only other source besides himself who's fluent in it. Maybe it's just Claude's voice, more familiarity, as he listens to that sound go on and on- Dimitri has never had Claude go on for extended times in Common to him to say if that's it. Or maybe... Who knows. The only thing that really matters, he supposes, is that it helps soothe him as he stays curled up there on the floor, listening. At some point, he slides his eye shut, blocking out another sense so that it's only darkness, the feel of the cloak wrapped tight around him, and Claude's voice.
When Claude finally finishes, Dimitri stays silent for a few moments. Part of it is just needing.... some quiet to himself, as much as he can when he can hear the sounds of the town right outside their room, but a part of it is also digesting everything. Eventually, he opens his eye again. The anger is gone, for the most part. Now.... He's just back to being tired.
"....You're right." Of course Claude is right. "I wouldn't.... want to accept those alternatives." Slowly, Dimitri pushes himself up- still sort of curled up in a way with his knees to his chest, but at least not laying down on the floor anymore. It's a minor improvement.
"....I hate myself. What I've become." This isn't really news, he suspects. Not after all the conversations he's had with Claude, both behind a cage and in the cabin. "Even if the church is what is responsible.... I still hate me. I don't.... want there to be another me. And he is so much, Claude. On his own, and.... of what I know. What I am. I hate it. When I was able to lose the fight in the arena.... I knew he would survive, that he was good and deserved to survive, but..."
His tail flicks out from underneath the cloak, curling around to rest on top of his feet. "....I knew I wouldn't see him again. Not- in the life I was living. I couldn't think of a future for him, either. But he was just... alive. That would have to be something. And I.... stopped thinking about him. It wouldn't do my any good, so why do it?" Reaching upwards, he curls his claws into his hood again.
"....But he's here. Neither of us still truly have futures. And yet all he can think of is still going back there, to that time. It feels..." He shakes his head slowly. "...We're still not free. And I hate.... that he reminds me of that, too."
He looks up at Claude properly, ears lowered now in that common weariness. "....What's a Common word for 'scared'?"
--
Claude gives it, watching Dimitri quietly. After a moment, he smiles a little. "Have you considered, Dimitri," he says, "that maybe the good you see in him is something you have, too? The similarities aren't just in the bad things. I doubt I can simply talk you out of hating yourself - whether or not you accept your reaction to what the church did to you as part of 'you' or not, which I know I've brought up before - but I see a lot of good that you're missing."
He taps a finger to his cheek. "That said...I don't think he's regressing so much to that miserable time as you think he is. Sure, he wants to redo your fight...but not at all in the same way. He wants a different ending to it, obviously...but he also wants it on his terms. And yours. He wants the two of you to have a non-lethal match, by choice, as opposed to the church trying to force the two of you into a kill-or-be-killed match. He's not trying to relive the past; he's trying to rewrite it. And I think there's some value to that. To reclaim something on your own terms that the church dictated to the two of you before.
"I don't think it was just being given a pity win by you that upset him about your fight - I think not having any control over that situation at all was probably traumatizing in its own right. Remember, he didn't have a history of getting run roughshod over by the church before that, the way you did. And by choosing to fight, he may at least feel like he's gotten a little bit of that control, and his dignity, back."
--
"Rewrite it...." It feels like a peculiar phrase, somehow.... or is it only peculiar because he's so fixated on it? On the idea that something can just be.... rewritten, somehow. Changed on what feels like such a fundamental level. Dimitri grinds his thumb along his hood, lost in thought, before he snaps out of it enough to slowly push himself to his feet.
"....The good I see in him, I think I see from you, honestly." He starts to shuffle towards the door, still wearing exhaustion almost as much as he's wearing his cloak. "Like being smart."
--
Claude laughs. "And you and I are alike, too. All three of us are. Those similarities between myself and Katsuki are shared with you, too."
He gets to his feet, moving over to Dimitri and touching his arm. "Where are you going?"
--
"To find him." Dimitri blinks down at Claude, still wrapping his cloak tight around him. "If he hasn't gone far, at least...."
--
"And how are you planning to entice him back?" Claude raises an eyebrow. "Especially without me as translator?"
--
"I don't think I am nearly that skilled enough in either language to entice anyone." Dimitri shakes his head. "All I can do is... apologize. As you said."
--
Claude - hesitates. "Do you want him to stay with us?"
--
"At this point, I have not the faintest idea if I want to be conscious," Dimitri informs him bluntly. "But you already bought a room with a third bed. I already asked him to journey with us. Even without either of those as considerations, I would need to apologize regardless."
He shifts in place, sighing. "....It's as you told me before. I just... need to focus on one step. On the horizon in front of me. So I need to apologize, before anything else."
--
Claude sighs, then nods. "I should listen to my own advice more often, I guess." Then he smiles a little. "Do you want me to come with you, or do you want to handle it on your own? I know which I'd prefer, and which is the infinitely smarter option, but...it's your choice."
--
"If he starts to use crude language at me, it would be nice to know what it is," Dimitri says, reaching up to gently lay his hand across where Claude's is on his arm. "So.... Please."
--
Claude squeezes his arm reassuringly. "I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll be with you as much and as long as you want me." His smile is nonetheless a bit troubled. "I don't think he'll be easy to find, though. Based on what he said when he left, I think you may have successfully dissuaded him from bothering you anymore, which means he probably won't have stopped anywhere nearby. He might even have left town, if he's got nothing keeping him here."
--
The ear barometer only goes lower, but Dimitri gives a slow nod. "There is only one way to find out." And that means taking a step outside of their room, waiting for Claude to secure their room before he continues onwards. Being outside of it, even if it's only the halls of the inn, is.... nervewracking. But Dimitri keeps Claude close as they go back down the stairs.
He really doubts that the boy will even be in the same building, especially with what Claude said, but he lingers at the bottom regardless with a wary eye on the owner before turning away with a slight 'tch' of derision. "He likely would have as useful information as his personality."
--
"I could always bribe him to give us intentionally incorrect information, if we ever develop a crippling allergy to having money," Claude says airily, even as he gives the innkeep a charming smile. "Otherwise, though, we'd be better off asking on the streets."
--
"I was going to ask myself and see if he developed better manners and far better sense in the face of a lot of teeth. It wouldn't be explicit threatening," Dimitri tries, although he's.... kind of joking. Sort of. It's a combination of trying to talk to people as he very much knows he's going to need to, but knowing he'd not do stunningly well at, which would likely lead to making the inn owner uncomfortable anyway. Well, it's all a moot point anyway. As Dimitri stated: that man is useless.
But that leads.... to the outside. Dimitri hesitates within the inn, gripping Claude's hand tighter. Frankly, he's hardly had enough time to recover from just the brief amount of time he'd had to deal with before... and that was stressful all on its own. Yet he has to push through, he knows that. So, with a deep breath to try and calm the adrenaline already jittering throughout his veins, Dimitri finally steps out and keeps close to Claude.
--
Dimitri's horns nudge out from underneath where his hood has fallen over his head, followed shortly by his ears, and then the rest of him. He seems tired, but that's also nothing really new. A bit of remorse is soon added to the expression. "I apologize, Claude. He didn't answer your question."
--
"I'm not the one you should apologize to." Claude rests his elbow on his leg, and his head on his hand. "I know you're under an unbelievable amount of strain, Dimitri, and that the kid isn't exactly making himself easy to deal with on top of that. But mocking him like that...that was pretty harsh." He cocks an eyebrow. "I mean, it's one thing if you don't want to take my advice, but I didn't actually think you'd go that far in the complete opposite direction of what I recommended."
--
"I don't want to fight." He settles back into his cloak, although not entirely retreating. "And I do not want to fight him." A low shaky breath leaves him, and there's a slight twitch around his eyes that shows he's looking elsewhere. "I will be fine if my words are harsh. He will be fine, eventually. The same couldn't be said of a fight." His ears practically squish themselves into the fur of his cloak.
"...I'm not going to finish the job that the church wanted me to."
--
"Dimitri," Claude says quietly. "That fight and his pride are probably the only things that have been keeping him going, and you just kicked both of them out from under him."
--
"They shouldn't be." It's a low snarl, angry and miserable. "Why can't he find something different? He can. There are lands beyond the church, people beyond, he has so much! He isn't me. Why can't he just-" He falls into low growls again, curling up tighter underneath his cloak.
--
Claude taps his fingers against his face. "You don't have to like the similarities between the two of you," he says idly, "but denying them isn't going to make them go away. And you can't dictate to him what it is he should want."
--
"And all I can do is go along with what he wants of me?" Dimitri snaps.
-
"No, Dimitri." Claude sighs. "Were you not listening to me earlier?"
He'd moved over to the bed not long after Dimitri pinned Katsuki; now he moves back over to Dimitri, sitting down in front of him. "My advice was to not decide forever based on right now. You don't want to fight him now, and you probably won't want to fight him tomorrow. But a month from now? A year? Five years? Do you have any idea where you'll be then, or how you'll feel then? No one does, I think, but you've got even more room for uncertainty there than most do. So why tell him never? Why not just say 'if I do want to fight you someday, I will'?"
Claude combs fingers through Dimitri's hair. "He's actually trying to work with you more than you're working with him. As badly as he wants that fight - as important as it is to him, as badly as he wants something to feel good about himself for - he's not pushing it on you. Did you notice? He agreed to later when he obviously wants now. And even after you insulted him, made him feel even more humiliated...he ran away instead of just going after you while you were curled up there." Claude pauses. "Granted, that could've also been because there'd be no pride in kicking someone who's not even fighting back, but still.
"He's not trying to fight you when you don't want to fight. He wants you to want the fight, too. And it seems like he's willing to wait for when - or if - that happens. So what's the problem?"
--
Apparently, this whole conversation subject is putting all of Dimitri on edge. For once, touch feels like just a little too much, and he pulls back further slightly into his cloak as Claude runs his fingers along his hair. He almost doesn't know what he wants to do, or even what he wants in general. Everything is just... too much, in this place. Not for the first time, likely not for the last, he wishes he could be back in the forest.
"If I agree," he hisses, "then I'll have to do it someday. It is a commitment, then. It's a promise." Reaching up, he digs his claws into the fur of his hood. "And he'll always be there, waiting for it- I don't want it." It's a clear struggle to get the words out, to explain his thought process. It's more than slightly flawed, as far as processes go, but... it is what it is.
--
Claude sighs in exasperation, sitting back on his heels. "You know, there's also the possibility that he may not keep wanting it forever, too. Especially if he sticks with us and starts to like you, and understand you. Granted, that might have been easier before you deliberately humiliated him, but there's still no guarantee about how he's going to feel in a month or a year or five years from now, any more than there is with you.
"And, even setting all of that aside...leaving a possibility open is a pretty different from making a promise. And I'll tell you one thing, Dimitri - no talk of your wanting to take responsibility for him is going to entice that kid to come with us. This may be time for you to learn the art of diplomacy, which is basically getting people to do what you want through the art of flexible truths. You could say that's possible you'll fight him someday not because you want to, or even intend to, but because it'll mean he'll come with us. Which is what you want to happen, right?"
--
"I.... thought it was what I wanted." He grimaces, lips curling over his fangs. "But something I want isn't.... That means nothing. It doesn't mean it was a good idea. A good thing." Frankly, he's not sure a lot of what he thinks is good, for varying definitions of the word. All he knows is what he wants. Claude has already had to talk him down from a lot of those as it is already, hasn't he?
Dimitri tugs the hood a little more over his ears, horns still poking out of them. "....What is the difference between a flexible truth and a lie, then?"
--
"Depends on how flexible the truth is. It can be just a fancy word for lie, certainly." Claude grins. "In this case, though, it'd just be...let's say potentially untrue. Your mind could change, after all, so if you tell Katsuki 'I'll fight you if the day comes when I want to fight you' and that day never comes, then it'll still have been true. You never said whether or not it was likely to happen. But you also don't know it won't happen, so you're not lying by telling him it could."
--
"....This feels like semantics again..." And not in the playful teasing way in which Dimitri had first used the word. For a moment, he burrows back into his cloak. It's the best control he has over his present surroundings, and it gives him something that covers the whole of him... especially when he's curled up like this.
"...There's too much, Claude. All of this is too much."
--
"Sometimes semantics are necessary. Hell, sometimes lies are necessary." Claude settles himself so he's sitting cross-legged. "But there's no language in which 'maybe', or 'we'll see', means the exact same thing as either 'yes' or 'no'. You say that the kid has so much, but...he's really in the same place you are, Dimitri. I know you can see that. The church stripped him of his family, his friends, his life - he can't go back to them. He's certainly able to start a new life, but...well, so are you, now. Is that the same as not having lost anything? And do you think that loss hasn't affected both of you?
"You needed to cling to the possibility of being able to kill some church official to get yourself through what the church did to you. And, well...for better or worse, what he seems to have fixated on is you, and this fight. Why? Who knows. I bet Katsuki himself couldn't tell us; the reasons he thinks he has might not even be the real reasons. Maybe sneaking in and freeing you was enough of a complex long-term goal -verging on the impossible - that it was a good distraction from being suddenly homeless and alone. Maybe he's grateful to you but isn't good at showing it - aggressive people have very weird ways of showing affection - or maybe he's been aching to have someone who cares about whether he lives or dies in his life again. Either way, he could be using the goal of beating you as an excuse to hang around you. Maybe it is just resentment at being denied the chance to overcome the insane challenge he really thinks he stands a chance at. Maybe his pride's just that important to him - which wouldn't surprise me too much, because sometimes it's the people who have the least who cling to what little they've got the fiercest. It could be any of those things. Or many of them. Or all of them! But I doubt anyone knows, Katsuki included."
Claude runs a hand through his own hair. "But, that list aside...all I can think is, well. I wonder how I'd have gotten through those days at the church as a kid, alone, if someone had told me I couldn't make them pay for what they'd done. Or how you would have managed, if someone had said you'd never get the chance to kill a church official. I mean, we were never guaranteed what we were hoping for, any of us, but...to be told we'd never even get a chance. To be told 'no, it will never happen. Just give up.'" He sighs. "With a side of 'you're not good enough', too. I know I'm probably identifying with the kid too much, his situation's too much like both of ours, but...I can't pretend it didn't kind of hurt to watch. Because I definitely see your side of things, and I'm the first one to say that you don't owe the kid anything, much less a fight, after everything you've been through...but I can see his side, too. Enough that I can't just shrug it off and say 'he'll be fine' after that, the way you want to. I don't know if he will be, because I don't know if we would have been."
He exhales, slowly. "This is all way more than I wanted you to have to deal with on your first day in the city, honestly. It was always going to be rough at first, but Katsuki is definitely an extra unexpected complication. But no matter how much I might like to, I can't make things much easier than I'm already doing. We don't have the luxury of taking years to get to the Intseh - not if we want to prevent another kidnapping, and not if you want to give those remains their long-overdue burial in any kind of timely fashion. There's going to be at least some amount of needing to throw you in at the deep end, and this is one of those times."
He's silent for a moment. "All I can tell you is that, if you wanted, I can find you somewhere to stay. Somewhere out in the country. You could take it easy and get used to freedom at your own pace, instead of this accelerated one, and I could take the remains to the Intseh myself. They'd still get the treatment they deserve, and you wouldn't have to practically break yourself to do it. The ones who came before you...they wouldn't want to force any more suffering on you that you've done nothing to deserve."
Claude smiles faintly. "All I can do is tell you that option exists, because honestly? I don't think you're going to take it. But it's the only other option that doesn't involve giving up on burying the former executioners, and preventing any future ones. So...I know this is new, and tough, and you're going to hate it at first. But I think when you appreciate what the alternatives are...you're not going to accept them anyway."
--
There's something to be said about listening to Claude speak. Even when Dimitri sometimes doesn't agree with him, or his rattled mind can't focus on exactly what's being said or understand what's being said..... There's still something. Maybe it's merely the sound of listening to Intsehli from the only other source besides himself who's fluent in it. Maybe it's just Claude's voice, more familiarity, as he listens to that sound go on and on- Dimitri has never had Claude go on for extended times in Common to him to say if that's it. Or maybe... Who knows. The only thing that really matters, he supposes, is that it helps soothe him as he stays curled up there on the floor, listening. At some point, he slides his eye shut, blocking out another sense so that it's only darkness, the feel of the cloak wrapped tight around him, and Claude's voice.
When Claude finally finishes, Dimitri stays silent for a few moments. Part of it is just needing.... some quiet to himself, as much as he can when he can hear the sounds of the town right outside their room, but a part of it is also digesting everything. Eventually, he opens his eye again. The anger is gone, for the most part. Now.... He's just back to being tired.
"....You're right." Of course Claude is right. "I wouldn't.... want to accept those alternatives." Slowly, Dimitri pushes himself up- still sort of curled up in a way with his knees to his chest, but at least not laying down on the floor anymore. It's a minor improvement.
"....I hate myself. What I've become." This isn't really news, he suspects. Not after all the conversations he's had with Claude, both behind a cage and in the cabin. "Even if the church is what is responsible.... I still hate me. I don't.... want there to be another me. And he is so much, Claude. On his own, and.... of what I know. What I am. I hate it. When I was able to lose the fight in the arena.... I knew he would survive, that he was good and deserved to survive, but..."
His tail flicks out from underneath the cloak, curling around to rest on top of his feet. "....I knew I wouldn't see him again. Not- in the life I was living. I couldn't think of a future for him, either. But he was just... alive. That would have to be something. And I.... stopped thinking about him. It wouldn't do my any good, so why do it?" Reaching upwards, he curls his claws into his hood again.
"....But he's here. Neither of us still truly have futures. And yet all he can think of is still going back there, to that time. It feels..." He shakes his head slowly. "...We're still not free. And I hate.... that he reminds me of that, too."
He looks up at Claude properly, ears lowered now in that common weariness. "....What's a Common word for 'scared'?"
--
Claude gives it, watching Dimitri quietly. After a moment, he smiles a little. "Have you considered, Dimitri," he says, "that maybe the good you see in him is something you have, too? The similarities aren't just in the bad things. I doubt I can simply talk you out of hating yourself - whether or not you accept your reaction to what the church did to you as part of 'you' or not, which I know I've brought up before - but I see a lot of good that you're missing."
He taps a finger to his cheek. "That said...I don't think he's regressing so much to that miserable time as you think he is. Sure, he wants to redo your fight...but not at all in the same way. He wants a different ending to it, obviously...but he also wants it on his terms. And yours. He wants the two of you to have a non-lethal match, by choice, as opposed to the church trying to force the two of you into a kill-or-be-killed match. He's not trying to relive the past; he's trying to rewrite it. And I think there's some value to that. To reclaim something on your own terms that the church dictated to the two of you before.
"I don't think it was just being given a pity win by you that upset him about your fight - I think not having any control over that situation at all was probably traumatizing in its own right. Remember, he didn't have a history of getting run roughshod over by the church before that, the way you did. And by choosing to fight, he may at least feel like he's gotten a little bit of that control, and his dignity, back."
--
"Rewrite it...." It feels like a peculiar phrase, somehow.... or is it only peculiar because he's so fixated on it? On the idea that something can just be.... rewritten, somehow. Changed on what feels like such a fundamental level. Dimitri grinds his thumb along his hood, lost in thought, before he snaps out of it enough to slowly push himself to his feet.
"....The good I see in him, I think I see from you, honestly." He starts to shuffle towards the door, still wearing exhaustion almost as much as he's wearing his cloak. "Like being smart."
--
Claude laughs. "And you and I are alike, too. All three of us are. Those similarities between myself and Katsuki are shared with you, too."
He gets to his feet, moving over to Dimitri and touching his arm. "Where are you going?"
--
"To find him." Dimitri blinks down at Claude, still wrapping his cloak tight around him. "If he hasn't gone far, at least...."
--
"And how are you planning to entice him back?" Claude raises an eyebrow. "Especially without me as translator?"
--
"I don't think I am nearly that skilled enough in either language to entice anyone." Dimitri shakes his head. "All I can do is... apologize. As you said."
--
Claude - hesitates. "Do you want him to stay with us?"
--
"At this point, I have not the faintest idea if I want to be conscious," Dimitri informs him bluntly. "But you already bought a room with a third bed. I already asked him to journey with us. Even without either of those as considerations, I would need to apologize regardless."
He shifts in place, sighing. "....It's as you told me before. I just... need to focus on one step. On the horizon in front of me. So I need to apologize, before anything else."
--
Claude sighs, then nods. "I should listen to my own advice more often, I guess." Then he smiles a little. "Do you want me to come with you, or do you want to handle it on your own? I know which I'd prefer, and which is the infinitely smarter option, but...it's your choice."
--
"If he starts to use crude language at me, it would be nice to know what it is," Dimitri says, reaching up to gently lay his hand across where Claude's is on his arm. "So.... Please."
--
Claude squeezes his arm reassuringly. "I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll be with you as much and as long as you want me." His smile is nonetheless a bit troubled. "I don't think he'll be easy to find, though. Based on what he said when he left, I think you may have successfully dissuaded him from bothering you anymore, which means he probably won't have stopped anywhere nearby. He might even have left town, if he's got nothing keeping him here."
--
The ear barometer only goes lower, but Dimitri gives a slow nod. "There is only one way to find out." And that means taking a step outside of their room, waiting for Claude to secure their room before he continues onwards. Being outside of it, even if it's only the halls of the inn, is.... nervewracking. But Dimitri keeps Claude close as they go back down the stairs.
He really doubts that the boy will even be in the same building, especially with what Claude said, but he lingers at the bottom regardless with a wary eye on the owner before turning away with a slight 'tch' of derision. "He likely would have as useful information as his personality."
--
"I could always bribe him to give us intentionally incorrect information, if we ever develop a crippling allergy to having money," Claude says airily, even as he gives the innkeep a charming smile. "Otherwise, though, we'd be better off asking on the streets."
--
"I was going to ask myself and see if he developed better manners and far better sense in the face of a lot of teeth. It wouldn't be explicit threatening," Dimitri tries, although he's.... kind of joking. Sort of. It's a combination of trying to talk to people as he very much knows he's going to need to, but knowing he'd not do stunningly well at, which would likely lead to making the inn owner uncomfortable anyway. Well, it's all a moot point anyway. As Dimitri stated: that man is useless.
But that leads.... to the outside. Dimitri hesitates within the inn, gripping Claude's hand tighter. Frankly, he's hardly had enough time to recover from just the brief amount of time he'd had to deal with before... and that was stressful all on its own. Yet he has to push through, he knows that. So, with a deep breath to try and calm the adrenaline already jittering throughout his veins, Dimitri finally steps out and keeps close to Claude.