#dorkling2

12. Following their family traditions that they enjoy. 

“Lady Judith!!”

She stopped, touching her rapier as she turned toward the sound of running steps…and relaxed, folding her arms over her chest as seven mismatched fighters came stumbling to a halt before her.  She recognized them, of course: it would be hard not to, given that they were all generals in the Alliance army now, not to mention Claude’s old housemates from his days at Garreg Mach.  “Should I be worried?” she asked.

“Did you know Claude’s Almyran!?” Raphael asked excitedly.

Some aunt she’d be, if she didn’t.  But she only quirked a brow politely and nodded.  “I did.”

“Why did you never make mention of that!?” Lorenz demanded.

It was hard to keep her hand off her sword.  “What does it matter where he came from, boy?” she shot back.

“It matters a lot!!” Leonie insisted, hands fisted at her sides.

“He’s been here in the Alliance for, what, six years?” Hilda ventured, counting off on her fingers.  Seven, in truth, though Judith made no effort to correct her.  “And this whole time he’s never had any way to see his family!  I’d be a wreck if I couldn’t go home once in a while to visit my father and brother.”

“He must have been so lonely, all this time,” Marianne murmured, folding her hands, “being so far from home, with nothing to remember it by…”

…well this had certainly taken a different turn than she expected.  “What are you saying, exactly?”

“Claude’s been working so hard, trying to keep us ahead of the Empire, making sure the Alliance has what it needs to survive and win – the least we can do is show we appreciate it,” Lysithea huffed.

“And, well, what better way than trying to make him feel at home?” Ignatz added, adjusting his glasses.  “Only…none of know all that much about Almyra.  I heard from Cyril once that it has vast open plains, but…I doubt I could capture a likeness without having seen it myself.”

“My brother collects battle standards from skirmishes at the Locket, but that’s not much to go on where fashion and decoration are concerned, either,” Hilda sighed.

“We were hoping you might know more,” Leonie said.  “I mean, if you knew Claude’s Almyran, maybe you know what it’s like there.  What kind of food they have, that sort of thing.”

“With the Empire so close, we know he can’t go home, but…maybe if we could bring a little bit of home to him…” Mariane ventured.

“So will you help us out, Lady Judith?” Raphael asked.  “Please?”

Judith smiled, running a hand back through her hair.  Lucky Claude, having friends like these at his back.  “Well, I can’t claim to know much,” she cautioned, “but I’ll gladly tell you everything I can.”

///

Claude sighed, rubbing his eyes as the ink started to blur on the page.  It was getting hard to stay focused, which usually meant it was time to get up and go do something else…but things had been weird lately.  Tense, in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  His old housemates from the Golden Deer had been acting extra flighty, giving him a wide berth every time they happened to cross paths and making excuses whenever he tried to talk with them before beating a hasty retreat.  Even Hilda, who usually loved shirking her chores to take breaks with him, had waved him off twice, saying she was in the middle of something (despite all evidence to the contrary).

It hadn’t been this way before Fort Merceus.  But then, nobody had known about his Almyran heritage, either.

Raking his hands through his hair, he leaned back so far that his seat threatened to tip over.  He’d been so certain that if anyone could bridge the divide between Fodlan and Almyra, it was his old house…and it hurt to realize that his secrecy at the academy had been justified.  

Admittedly, none of this was what he’d wanted to focus on while he stepped back from his Enbarr siege tactics.

A knock came at the door, and he tipped his chair forward, sprawling across the map.  “Come in,” he mumbled.

He wasn’t actually sure if he’d been loud enough to hear.  But the door opened anyway, and Judith came striding in, grinning ear to ear.  “You busy?”

“Kind of,” he grumbled.

“Too bad,” she replied.  “Even Master Tacticians need breaks, and you look like you could use one.”

“Please don’t call me that,” he groaned.

“Would you rather I call you ‘boy’?”

“Like you do to Lorenz?  No, thank you,” he scoffed, shoving himself more or less upright and trying to ignore the chorus of pops that accompanied his stretch; if his own regret at sitting too long weren’t bad enough, her glare only compounded it.

“You definitely need a break,” she declared.  Any stronger and it would have been an order.

“Alright, alright,” he sighed.  “I need to check on the wyverns anyway.”

“That sounds like more work,” she warned.

“At least I won’t be hunched over a desk, though, right?”

“That’s not the point.”

“You didn’t say what kind of break I needed.”

“Smart-ass,” she snorted, hooking his arm in hers and dragging him out the door, away from the stairs leading up to the roof where the wyverns had taken roost and toward the gate leading out of the fort they’d occupied on the march toward Enbarr.  The rain that had forced their stop had long-since passed, but the dry ground and the clear skies above promised that they’d be free to resume the march with the sunrise.  It would be a perfect night for stargazing, if he could escape Judith–

The aroma of wild garlic and roast fish almost knocked him off his feet.  As it was, only Judith’s hold on his arm kept him stumbling in the right direction.  There was a bright blaze visible through the trees, too big to be a campfire…and as they broke through the undergrowth, he realized it was a bonfire – a small one, filling the clearing with the sweet scent of cedar smoke.  “What is this?” he asked.

“What’s it look like?” Judith grinned.

“It looks like I’m dreaming,” he replied, rubbing his eyes with the heel of one hand.

“Well, I can assure you that it’s real,” she laughed.  “Now you’d better hurry up if you want to eat, I don’t know how long they can hold Raphael off.”

As if on cue, Hilda appeared at his side, grabbing hold of his other arm.  “Thanks, Lady Judith!” she giggled, dragging him toward the fire.  “We were starting to worry you’d never show up!”

“…did I miss something?” he asked.

She didn’t answer with anything but a smile.  But as the firelight drove the darkness back, he realized that she was wearing a sash not so different from his own, complete with bright patterns and dangling ornaments.  As the rest of the Golden Deer gathered around, he realized they all had them, the traditional green and gold accented with different colors for each of them.  And they were all looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

He couldn’t find words for a minute.  He just stared at them, every one of them smiling (even Lorenz!) and bearing familiar traces of his homeland.  “What is this?” he asked again.

“It’s a party!” Raphael laughed.

“A celebration,” Lysithea corrected.

“Lady Judith told us about an Almyran fire festival,” Ignatz added, adjusting his glasses.  “We couldn’t find everything she mentioned, but we tried to get as close as we could.”

“I got the food together,” Leonie beamed.  “Spent most of today fishing and foraging and cooking, and I think it all turned out pretty great.”

“Sure did,” Raph agreed.  “I got to taste test after I got the fire going!”

“I didn’t have enough time to make whole outfits,” Hilda sighed, “but I at least managed to make sashes for everybody.  I tried to base it off yours, but I’ve never seen you take yours off, so I had to do a little guess-work.”

“But…but what is it for?” Claude asked, still hopelessly confused.

“It’s for you,” Marianne replied, playing with her sash.  “You’ve been working so hard lately, preparing for Enbarr…we wanted to thank you.”

“And what better way than by giving you something from home?” Lysithea asked.

Claude couldn’t stop the smile from creeping across his own face.  “…did Judith happen to mention that the Festival of Fire is part of the New Year celebration?”

They all stopped and looked nervously at one another.  “I…can’t seem to recall,” Lorenz replied awkwardly. 

“I’ve gotta say, you couldn’t have picked a better celebration,” Claude beamed.  “The Festival of Fire always precedes the New Year festivities.  It’s about burning away problems and bad luck so that we can go into the New Year without worries to drag us down.  Andwe’re working our way toward a new dawn, aren’t we?  One free from Imperial rule.  This’ll make sure we come at the battle free of any burdens.”

Their anxiety melted away as he spoke, and by the time he finished their smiles were brighter than the bonfire.  “Will you tell us more about it?” Ignatz asked eagerly.  “The festival, and the New Year?”

“Of course I will – I’ll even teach you how to jump the bonfire without setting yourself on fire,” he winked.  “Thank you all.  This is…amazing.”

“We’re glad you like it,” Hilda giggled.  “It’s the least we could do for you.”

If this was their least, he couldn’t help but wonder what else they might have done.  This was already more than he’d expected.  More than he’d ever thought to ask for.  And as Leonie led the way around the fire to the blankets laid out with a feast fit for an Almyran table, he felt the warmth of their company burn away all his old fears.

Edelgard saw Claude marching toward her, his expression set in an uncharacteristic scowl, and knew exactly what he intended to say.  Hubert moved to intercept him, but the Leicester heir seemed unusually determined, ducking past her attendant without breaking his stride and continuing forward.  Resigned, she turned toward him, lifting her hands in a placating gesture.  “Now, before you say ‘I to–’”

“I told you this would happen!” 

Her ears rang from the force of his shout.  “I warned you not to go confronting Rhea directly!  We agreed we weren’t going to do anything rash, that we were going to play it safe and keep an eye on things before making a call on how to act–”

“We were out of time,” she protested.  “The revelation was set for tomorrow, if we hadn’t acted who knows what would have happened to the professor–”

“For all you know, nothing might have happened!  But no, you just had to make the decision for everyone, without even bothering to tell us in advance what you were doing – it’s bad enough that you completely disregard our opinions, but then throwing us into that situation without warning?”

His words were punctuated with sharp gestures, and she saw their teacher’s brows go up in surprise.  Was Claude signing?  If so, she couldn’t parse it (which boded rather ill).  “I’m sorry,” she sighed–

“For.  What.”

A puzzled frown knit her brow.  “That you’re upset–”

“That’s not an apology.”

She stopped short.  “Come again?”

“You’re sorry that I’m upset – not for acting on your own without consulting us, not for putting our lives in danger, but because of how I’m reacting to it.  You don’t feel the least bit guilty, do you?”

“Should I?” she shot back.  “I did what I had to in order to protect the professor–”

“No,” he interrupted, “you did what you wanted to based on no one’s input but your own.  All four of us sat down and had a discussion earlier this month, and when we voted it was three to one in favor of waiting.  You were the only one opposed.  But you don’t care about what anyone else thinks, do you?  You really believe that nobody knows the right answer or the right path but you, that it’s all on you to get everyone going in the ‘right’ direction, and you don’t care who gets hurt so long as they follow the path you choose.”

“That’s not true,” she snapped. 

“Then what was that with the Archbishop?” he demanded. 

She opened her mouth to reply…

…and found she had no answer. 

“That’s what I thought.”  He shook his head, raking a hand through his hair as he turned away.  “That’s it.  I’m done.”

“I said I was sorry–”

He whirled on her, his expression nothing short of livid.  “An apology isn’t some magic phrase that makes all your mistakes better, Edelgard!  It’s an admission that you did something you regret.  And you’re not even doing that!  But guess what: nobody is obligated to accept your apology – and after what you did, putting all our lives at risk, you’d have to be insane to think we’d just forgive you and keep going like it never happened.  I don’t accept your apology, and I’m done trying to get you to see what the problem is.  I have more important things to do.”

“Claude…”

He did not hear her.  Or if he did, he did not show it, turning instead and marching off toward the students huddled in the dark woods beyond the monastery walls.  She looked to Dimitri and the professor for support…only to find their expressions similarly stony.  The prince turned and followed the Leicester heir after no more than a moment’s pause; and her teacher – the person she wanted at her side above all others – simply shook their head in disappointment, moving toward the rest of the students without so much as a parting gesture.

So as interesting as I find Edelgard as a character, and as much as I really want to see her change, become better, and look for better paths toward her ultimate goal, I don’t believe it’s going to be easy for her to change.  Because let’s face it: change is hard.  Even if we want more than anything to do it, we’re fighting against ingrained beliefs and habits all the while, trying to establish new routines and very likely slipping up along the way – and for Edelgard, many of her traumas have left her with difficulty truly trusting others.  We see it over and over in her route: beyond never telling Byleth outright that she’s the Flame Emperor, despite the fact that she supposedly trusts the professor, there’s the debacle that is Arianrhod and how she blames the Church for its destruction despite knowing that Those Who Slither are the true culprits.  And those are just the big ones that come to mind.

One of the things I really want to show in the story is the slow, uncomfortable, even painful journey toward change Edelgard undertakes under Byleth’s mentorship.  And the thing of it is, it’s not a straightforward path from Point A to Point B.  She balks at what her professor asks of her sometimes, needs to be pushed or even coerced into it (as is the case with her initial alliance with Claude, where Byleth lured her to a tea party with the leader of the Golden Deer House and mediated an awkward but ultimately fruitful discussion).  And sometimes she slips, and feels the need to take matters into her own hands without thinking through the potential consequences of those actions.  That’s where Claude excels: he’s a tactician, and choosing the best possible outcome is part and parcel of that.  And as much patience as he has, he doesn’t appreciate other people risking his life like that (though the fact that he’s been under a lot of stress doesn’t help when it comes to his outburst – to his credit, he’s been holding their alliance together single-handedly for the better part of two months by the point of this segment).