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When Claude was a little kid, he had an older sister. Falastin. She was kind to him. Claude can remember her sky-blue hijab fluttering as she took him by the hand and ran with him through their father’s desert garden, laughing, something in her smile that made Claude feel like he was coming alive for the very first time. He was in awe of her, of her sincere joy, her untamable spirit and the fearless way she tossed her cares aside.
Claude wanted to be just like her when he grew up. He wanted to give joy to others the way that Falastin taught him to, because he can think of no better gift.
Falastin died when he was seven. She was the daughter of a general his kingly father had bedded after a bitterly bought victory, and the other girls never let her forget that she was as common as the dirt beneath their feet.
Claude never saw it, but he heard it from his mother, who came running and held him safely in the circle of her warm-strong arms and told him in a hushed whisper that his half-sister had killed herself. Claude remembered feeling the earth drop away from him, that sinking feeling that made him wonder what made his sister go before he could get to her, if he would ever get the chance to hold her hand and tell her how much she meant to him. How much she means to him, even now.
Claude was a lot older now, and he could see things more clearly than he ever did as a child. Too clearly, sometimes.
He understood that the reason why Falastin played with him was because she had no one else but the too-pale son of a foreign wife, that the reason why she was so arduous in her joy, casting aside her shackles for the moment, was because it was only with him that she felt superior, that she had found someone who was lower on the totem pole than her. With him, she didn’t have to mind her words, look at her feet, pretend she was one with the wind and that harsh words found no purchase within her heart.
The kind, sweet Falastin disappeared with the evening breeze as Claude grew older, colder, and saw things for what they were, not what he’d wanted them to be. He still held the secret joy Falastin had gifted him, learned from it just as much as he learned to step swiftly around court drama. Even if it had been a lie, it had been a good lie, and Claude still wanted to give to others what Falastin had given to him: the hope of something better.
Claude became strong, thinking about saving others from a hell they would not put a name to, what it would be like to set all free from both sides of the border, casting aside old ideas in exchange for the new, paving the way for a brighter future, one where the people lived as one, supporting each other in an endless cycle that looped back around itself, eternity caught in its coils.
The sad fact was that, after, Claude’s already-keen sense of the people around sharpened. There’s nothing like looking around at the people around and pressing down on that never-healed bruise in your mind, feeling things out like a spider delicately climbing across its web, feeling the earth shake beneath your feet, weighing the reactions of others and noticing when something’s off. Something said that rings hollow, a laughter seemed too bright to be true, what it felt like to watch the people around you and wonder who’s next, who’s lying to you this time.
Claude didn’t want to care about Sylvain. Sylvain had trouble stamped across his face in big bold letters, blurring his face into anonymity, and there’s plenty Sylvain’s said and done in Claude’s presence since he joined the Golden Deer that pinged off Claude’s radar as wrong, but then there’s that sense, the one he’d developed in the aftermath of Falastin dying, that’s practically screaming at him every time Sylvain so much as draws breath.
There’s a wan cast to his face. It’s the way Sylvain in the right light looked too gaunt, his skin too grey and lacking the light Claude saw in Hilda and even Marianne’s eyes. Something slumbering beneath Claude’s skin prickled with heat and alarm in equal measure whenever he saw Sylvain smiling, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. Like a drop of blood-red dye dropped in a pool of water, Claude could see what the others were blind to, that squirming thing trapped beneath his weak and meagre flesh yearning to break free and wrap Sylvain in its tentacles and never let go.
Claude’s holding his breath whenever Sylvain left the room, because it’s not the same as it was with Falastin. Claude’s older now. Stronger. It won’t break him in two, the way it did when his older sister decided it was easier to jump off the towering walls outlining their favorite desert gardens than it was to keep living, to keep enduring the hits Claude didn’t know she was taking.
But it’s too similar for Claude to rest easy, too.
The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end when Claude saw Sylvain smile smile smile like it wasn’t a goddamn fucking lie, and there’s fear, too, trapped in Claude’s gut like a poison. He wanted Sylvain where he could see him, he wanted to reach out and trap him in his arms, he wanted to never let go, and he wanted to fucking crack Sylvain open with a silver lance and see what secrets Sylvain let lay fallow, what secrets were poison in his veins.
Claude has spent too much time thinking about what he would’ve done for Falastin if he’d been older, wiser, when she needed the most, before the irrevocable had happened, to abide by Sylvain’s telling silences any longer.