#cloby

claire: what?

title: keep on running, my love ship: toby x claire [cloby / warstaff]characters: toby, claire [others are mentioned]genre: hurt/comfortword count: 1200 oops notes: do you mind me using your momgana theory? if you do please tell me, i’ll write you something else and delete this. requests for any ship are still open by the way! please go ahead and request, i’ll do them as fast as i can. you can request multiple times too btw. 

summary: toby struggles with the fact that the pale lady is his mother and the way he reacted to it. claire helps.

“I just can’t believe she’s my mother,” Toby says, voice thick with emotion. He shudders as a chilly wind passes them and he pulls his knees closer to his face and wraps his arms around them, partially to keep warm and partially so he had a place to hide his tear-stained face in. Claire quietly sits beside him on the cold sidesteps in front of Toby’s house and places a hand on his shoulder, rubbing comforting circles on his back.  

“I mean,” Toby croaks, but his voice falters mid-way his sentence. Should he even say it? He bites his tongue and can’t bring himself to look at Claire. Is he really about to pour his heart out like rain would pour from the sky on a stormy day? He’s not even strong enough to stop himself anyway. Suddenly, the weight on his shoulders is too much, hell, the weight of his shoulders alone makes him want to collapse.

He tastes blood and continues talking. Everything hurt, for some reason. (Except for the places where Claire touches him, the pain fades there, even if only briefly.) “It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, to be honest. It’s the miracle I’ve been waiting for, that somehow my parent, be it my mother or father- sometimes both, if I was feeling extra lucky, would return. That they’ve been searching for me all along and that they finally found me, and they’d stay with me until the very last breath,” Toby confesses in one long breath.

He squeezes his eyes shut and realizes he’s still crying when Claire wipes his tears from his face. “And you know what?” He sniffs. It’s a lot harder to speak now. Maybe because this is the part he’s most reluctant to admit. It feels like betrayal to his team, to Jim, to Claire. “I loved it, I was so happy that I had finally found my mother and I hugged her and she caressed my cheek, and everything seemed right,” he chokes out, beginning to ramble, “but it wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t!” He exclaims, frustrated at himself. He raises his fists in the air. “I was out there hugging the freaking Pale Lady herself while people were fighting for their lives around me. I… Don’t know why you’re even here with me when I let that happen,” his tone drops to a whisper.

“Because she’s your mother,” Claire answers, and it’s the first thing she’s said after sitting beside him, “and that’s not nothing.”

Toby buries his head in his hands and doesn’t reply. Mother or not, guilt still burns in his stomach. He should’ve reacted differently, he should’ve taken the moment as an advantage to knock her out- maybe even kill her. Anything but hug her like she has done no wrong.

“Congratulations to you. Here’s the good news: she’s your mother. Here’s the bad news: she’s your mother,” Claire says softly after a while. Toby looks up, eyes wide in surprise, to finally meet hers. “I was going to say that,” he remarks.

Claire chuckles and her eyes – dear, they really were that pretty – glimmer with amusement and the cold breeze that passes them by goes unnoticed. For a moment, Toby feels like forgetting everything, he feels warm. It’s like gazing into the sun in the dead of the night. Toby tears his gaze away anyway, not sure why.

He must look depressed again, because Claire’s eyebrows furrow together with worry. “Toby,” she calls, his name on her lips lingering. Toby’s insecurities come rushing back. “I, what if I’m just like her? You know, evil. She’s my mother after all,” he asks desperately. Panic bubbles up but is cut off by Claire’s voice. “You’re not,” Claire replies sharply, “and don’t you ever dare to think that you, Tobias Domzalski will be anything like the pale lady,” she speaks, with such conviction Toby doesn’t even try to argue. “Yeah, she’s your mother, but you are not your mother, and to be quite frank, I’m not going to listen to you, of all people, thinking they’re evil or something.”

Toby just blinks and watches her. Claire playfully punches his shoulder, albeit a bit nervous. “Besides, you’re Toby-PIE, and pie can only be sweet,” she teases.

Toby opens his mouth to say that he’s not in the mood for jokes when he realizes that he is, in fact, in the mood for jokes and if those jokes were made by Claire Nuñez poking fun at his nickname then so be it. “Pie doesn’t necessarily have to be sweet, though,” he reminds her.

“Yes, but you happen to be a sweet pie,” Claire grins. Toby grins back. “Ah, is that a smile I see?” She inquires, sounding self-satisfied. “Don’t push your luck, Claire,” Toby warns. But he feels a lot better, if he’s being honest. He’s glad to realize that he’s stopped crying and wipes his cheeks with his shirt.

“You’re not perfect Toby,” Claire comments gently, taking out a napkin and cleaning his wet cheeks with it, “and that’s okay. You’re human. You’ll have emotional reactions to shocking things and you don’t. You make mistakes and you learn from them. You’ll feel insecure and sometimes you feel as though you’re the best person in the world. And sometimes, you tend to enjoy a moment with your long-lost mother who is in fact an evil sorceress. You’re not a criminal for being happy that you’ve finally found your mother, Toby, really.”

Toby looks at his hands, sighing. He feels better, but still, the idea still weighs heavily on his shoulders. “Yeah, but still, I feel like I got my butt kicked and I barely even fought in today’s battle, since I was too busy hugging the Pale Lady. Which makes me feel kind of guilty.”  

“You did. In your brain. And you can always kick some butt later on,” Claire says as if the solution is that simple. “Alright, Toby-Pie? Nobody blames you for reacting the way you did. And if I recall properly, she hugged you. And I really wouldn’t be that much of a help in a battle either if I had just found my mother and she hugged me.” Claire takes his hand and squeezes in it. “Yeah,” Toby replies, his heart beginning to beat faster and quickly glancing at their intertwined feelings, “I won’t let the Pale Lady being my mom get to me, well, too much. Sometimes your mother is an evil sorceress but, but I’m not that. I’m way better,” Toby declares, he’s not sure he completely believes it yet, but saying it always helps him believe it.

The Pale Lady being his mother will be a problem, but that’s later. For now, he decides that he’s going to distract himself by enjoying his time alongside his friends, and Claire, surprisingly and in particular.

“Good.” Claire leans in and brushes her lips against his cheek. “It’d be a shame if you didn’t have any feelings.”

I totally have feelings for you, Toby thinks, but by the looks of it – Claire laughs brightly, leans in again, kisses him briefly on his mouth, saying, “me too” -, he may or may not have said that out loud.

Does this mean it's official? Is he making a joke? is he insane?