#fe3h selfship

KEY. — all names in bold are my main f/os. names in caps are f/os i’m not willing to romantically share.

"Happy Birthday, Claude. How does it feel to finally be old enough to drink?"

"Like an eternity," Nader can imagine the cork flying off the bottle. "Because man, have I needed one these past few years." There is laughter on both ends, then silence. "What? No warning about my image?"

"You had me talk to Margrave Edmund last week."

Claude has made many jokes about us getting married. They stopped being jokes.

Then it became a game. How many times can he slip in a fantasy about married life before he gets scolded for joking around too much? During the early days of the war after I return to Derdriu, the record stood at 2 times a week, with a cool down period of three days minimum between jokes. After the professor wakes up, he surprisingly cut down on it himself. Before, it would be things like:

"You know, for someone so serious, you look like some shopkeeper doing her bookkeeping. It's almost cute."

"Claude."

"I am serious. Unless you want me to call you Sovereign Duchess of the Leicester Alliance, talented in housework."

"Gods, that sounds worse. Count Gloucester would literally combust." Not like either of them actually care 😂

Or:

"Do you think your parents will be able to survive on what you're sending them every month?"

"There's been no complaints from the courier. I think they may even want to meet my oh so generous benefactor when the war is over."

"What? Really?"

"You think they're going to ignore the person I left home for, especially to fight in a war? Their weak and cowardly daughter? To them, you are a gift from the divine."

"Not sure how they'll feel about me when they actually meet me, but I'm glad to know for now they love me."

Claude relies on nonverbal and physical touch to flirt- winks, furtive glances in a crowded room and smiles an imp could only dream of making or even smiles bright enough to make an angel jealous. You rarely see him touching other people during the war, even in his close friend group so if you feel his hands on the small of your back or he just so happens to fix a loose strand of hair, he may be totally interested in you.

"Claude, I-" The new Duke was hugging someone. Hugging Mehra. They were hugging. No, the tenderness of this embrace deserved to be treated with reverence.

He stands in front of the still opened door, transfixed at the now ruined intimate scene before him. He had never seen Claude nor Mehra hug people for very long, much less hold each other. Claude isn't wearing the outermost layers of his usual ensemble, and Mehra isn't wearing her glasses. And they both stare at him as if they were caught messing with one of his tea boxes.

"O-Oh, my apologies. It seems I was intruding on a rather private moment."

"Lorenz, it's not-" Lorenz can't help the wide smile that grows on his face. While he did not particularly like Claude, he was a man of romance and passion. And even Claude deserved someone who he could share a moment of solace with behind closed doors. There were so many ideas at once, so many questions to be asked, but that could wait. As he takes his leave, he doesn't hear either of their panicked calls of his name.

Meet Maera (Her real name is Mehra but there was a spelling mistake in the admission process that she was too lazy and tired to correct once she got to the monastery.)

Born in the Imperial Year 1162 on the 5th day of the Great Tree Moon (4/5), Mehra was born and raised in the western regions of Almyra, where a lot of the Almyran-Alliance conflicts take place.

From a very young age, despite bouts of absent-mindedness, Mehra had to be vigilant from dangers in and out of the home, which gave way to an accidentally standoffish personality. Once you warm up to her, she is much more lighthearted and whimsical than she comes off as.

As she got older, she became more and more interested in the Officer's Academy in Fodlan for a formal education and as a way to get her family out of poverty. To better assimilate, she took on odd jobs working for visiting nobility, sequestering herself away from family and friends for two years to learn the language well enough to hold a conservation.