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tothelightEdited and reposted from Plurk, where this was originally wordflooded into. So the language may be more chatlog-like and fragmented than a coherent essay warrants.
Also it turns out I wrote over 3000 words of FEELINGS, because it seems I have never essayed on this in full glory before.
-----
Right, so!
...if we talk about when Claude realized he was possibly in more-than-friendly-like with Feathers, it was at that point, just about, after King's zombiedance Game, when he'd worked up the momentum to actually hug Feathers, way back when.
If we talk about when it unconsciously started, maybe... pretty much since the beginning. When he'd hauled a bleeding Sunny back to his team and met the new Pavo girl who thanked him for the help, and:
"...even if we're from different teams, if we all help each other when we can, somehow, we'll go a lot farther than any of us will alone."
...was what she said, and it was pretty much something he'd been feeling ever since his first day, so it struck a chord.
That was Day 43.
Those feelings kind of... cemented more and more over time, gradual and slow and full of flailing denial and an almost deliberate denial, because there was a mystery girl!! in his memories!! and there were ????-Feelings in a couple of those memories!1
And it's... one thing to remember fragmented pieces about someone. Another to fully walk and talk beside them day by day. Pages torn from a book versus being able to read the book itself. In that sense, at times, he couldn't help thinking Syaoran (and Feathers herself) were lucky in the sense of having their Person-From-Memory there.
...followed v. rapidly by huge guilt over thinking that kind of thing. Since. Murdercave. Why would you think anyone being there was lucky.
But just in that sense! of really... having a chance to learn fully about them again. Being there for them, being there with them, knowing the place you came from was their place, too, like a validation of memory as more than a pure fiction (something he used to feel a little bothered about, when he had too much time to think... though that's a tad off-track.)
So, wrestling with potential ???-feelings girl of memory, versus very real ???-feelings with girl right there. And learning, over time, that the latter had someone incredibly important to them, too. Someone she was meant to be closer to more than "friends, family, lovers", and even with patchy memories... attached to, pretty much.
And he was okay with that.
Okay with thinking, "there's these feelings, kinda strange, but more importantly I want to support her however I can, even if it's in a small way." Mostly too caught up in being that support to her to really pay too much (active) mind to his own wants and feelings. (Insert poetic metaphor about feathers in wings here, and old OOC comments about 'tuner's tuners'.)
And he was okay with that.
So he quashed and denied what he could of any hint of anything related to those feelings that people brought up (albeit failingly. ....very failingly.)
Timeskipping, timeskipping, and over the course of weeks and months... eventually Claude became aware of just how important he'd become to her, more than he'd expected would be the case.
With teammates and other friends leaving either physically or emotionally in a sense, walls going up, one by one... somehow bumping up to that place of importance almost by sheer virtue of being the last man standing, as it were. The one person who'd been there the longest, the most constantly, and (as he'd tried to be for others, like Red) the most unchanging.
...and he was okay with that.
If anything, more than ever, it made keeping things the way they were all the more important. Gotta give her that ONE THING that she can always count on to be what it is.
...there was admittedly some very tentative pushing and testing of boundaries even then. Though the whole vampirism feeding thing did kind of make more perfect an excuse than he'd be willing to admit for body comfort things. And Feathers being Feathers, there was essentially a lot of cuddling and he could still count on it likely coming across to her as super platonic.
Likely. (Always that tinge of doubt there.)
Suffice to say he became super devoted to her in a way different from even Red-- not necessarily /more/ or less, but just... different. And at the same time, in a way of... trying to respect what she wanted to the utmost, more than what he wanted for her. Like basically if it were Red vs. Feathers dangling off a cliff, save one only, he'd pick Red because Feathers would never forgive him if he didn't. Even if it would kill him inside to do it :')
(I'm kind of sad he never got to a Trickster killjar-type game with that choice to be made :()
Anyway, was okay, happy with what they had, wanted to keep it that way, avoid complicating things for her. Red encouraged him to try and think of her more platonically! Like a sister! ...didn't really work too well but okay. (There was the drunk kissing thing too after one particular Soldier tattoo game. That was awkward when he remembered it weeks later. But still, y'know, quashable as Terrible Things That Happen When You Are Drunk. ...and the hope that she would never actually remember it herself, and anyway if she did, she probably wouldn't mention it and it was fine.)
But Claude-- man. For all that he's somehow come across as incredibly altruistic in Sabra, it's actually not his defining trait so much as "wanting to mean something to others".
In canon with a less high-pressure morbid environment to deal with, he had the room to develop a level of selfish pettiness that broke out, at times, against his father, his friends, and Rena in particular, triggered by jealousy and the like. In Sabra he hasn't had that luxury or the conditioning, but it hasn't removed the potential for just that little bit of selfishness either, being only human and all.
Claude may be honest and open and sincere in his feelings, but he does manage to hide a few things in his heart that get unread. And one of them was that selfish hope/desire that maybe, just maybe, Feathers might think of him as more than a best friend, despite every other tie she already had.
That little bit that prodded him to test those boundaries, here and there, now and again, with indirect questions and actions... but it never really went anywhere more than that, since time and again all he really got was reconfirmation of their Friend(?)Zone-ness and more about Ikki's significance to her, which all added to Let's Not Say Anything Ever. And he was about 99% sure that she was oblivious enough to his not-so-occasional slip-ups to read nothing of That Sort into them.
...........and then the oldSabra things happened.
And. Well.
That was a thing.
If nothing else, a "Look Claude Kenni! Here's what it COULD'VE been like and COULD be if you and her were more than friends!!1 What with your host of similarities and all! And if she wasn't Ikki's link tuner!!" ...thing.
It's really... 'if they weren't bound by past lives and past ties'. And it's ironic that another 'past life' showed him that. For all that they arrive "unburdened by their pasts", they're not things they really set aside for good, or should, necessarily, or want to. That aspect of Old Sabra was an almost painful what could have been, and compounded by Claude's insight to the things Chrysos never really said out loud to Spirea--- things like, "if there were ever such a thing as reincarnation, no matter how many times or wherever we're reborn, as long as I met you, I don't think I'd be able to help falling in love all over again. But then, there's few who wouldn't, for someone like you."
[Claude] (and incidentally you can all stop cringing now at that bit of HORRIBLE CHEESE god that sure was a thing I wrote :'D )
[Kururu] (there was a reason these were the things Chrys was too embarrassed to say)
[Claude] (he'd never live it down ever)
[Claude] (and you /know/ Red'd get wind of it somehow)
Chrys drew the lucky straw that lifetime, and he knew it, and Claude knows it. This time, in Sabracave, with these people... it's a different lot that's been cast. Different time, different life, one past and lived, one present. And Claude was...
...mostly okay with that.
Just. A little bit less okay. Like the ache of waking up from a dream of something you know could never happen.
And there was that tiny new crack in his resolve, right there. Being pretty much absolutely sure that he loved her, now, name of the disease declared and all. And the accompanying selfish aspect of that love that wants, even in the smallest way, some sign of return, and no amount of his denial and vowing and willing could completely shut it out.
But still he clung fast to the idea that "if I say anything, it'll disappear, or change forever", it being the State of Things between them. All the more uncertainty added by not knowing how much /she/ remembered of that life, and what she thought of it, or might've learned from it. Hence that period of AVOID AVOID AVOID after the South Block move, full of unsure and aaaah and unsure... though that period was also partly due to a lot of other things happening in-team and all, noodlesplosions etc.
And then Red beat him around a bit with words and CLAUDE THERE WAS SAD GIRLING and then he finally had a chance to talk a while with her after she'd gotten Mirrorfish'd. A conversation that like many oscillated between awkward and serious and sad and hilariflail and... well. Basically he got a Hint that maybe she DID maybe have Those Kinds of Feelings. At least the kind of feeling that would apparently make things like kissing possibly maybe not so bad a thing.
[Claude] .......a-all the ambiguity this relationship had, man
[Claude] IT WAS LIKE
[Claude] BEING IN A NICE WARM FOG
[Claude] AND MAYBE THERE WAS SOMETHING REALLY NICE OUT THERE BUT MORE LIKELY IT WOULD BE COLDER AND DARKER
[Claude] AND IRREVERSIBLY SOLID
[Claude] SO IT WAS BETTER TO JUST STAY IN THE FOG FOREVER
[Claude] except no things from the outside kept touching him here and there or whispering ideas and ~possibilities~
So they kind of reached a mutual unspoken Let's Not Talk About What It Means Or What We Might Have Learned thing after that conversation and carried on like usual. And Claude even got away with doing matching combined emblem tatts while he was tanked.
......and then Ichiru.
Basically. Suckerpunched him in the unspoken feelings and it all just came out. It was the first time anyone'd ever really been outright cruel to him about it, instead of the teasing and jabbing he got from teammates, and he was soooo pissed it just spilled out and then he couldn't take it back anymore or pretend it wasn't there to be said 8(
...and Yayoi heard the whole thing too. And then she went on to encourage him to FIGHT FOR HIS LOVE and. Basically told him he was being selfish for not letting Feathers decide what to do about their relationship and making all the decisions himself and he should TELL HER 8U or ask her etc. And sort of threatened that she would go ask if he didn't.
And he seriously freaked out at that-- not just flustered, but panicked. So full of NO THIS WILL RUIN EVERYTHING BUT WHAT IF NOT BUT NO BUT...
And it suddenly felt like it was only a matter of time before something would change. Whether because Ichiru might bring up to Feathers what Claude'd admitted to sometime, or Yayoi would give something away, and compounded with general stress after the Beast attack and needing/wanting to explore and check on people he went out the same day and...
...ran into Feathers with her honesty flower still on her.
So there sure was a really long conversation at the riverside which kept oscillating between dangerously close to Danger Zone and back to safe usual derp/serious talking.
Ichiru came up as a topic, and he very nearly said something, but didn't (and brilliantly made the side realization that when Ichiru'd said "you think you're the only one" he'd probably meant Zero, too.) But he evaded that point of doom!
Only to fall into another worse pit trap. Or more like get pulled right into one. Kind of a downhill rolling in the face of her sincere honest responses where there would normally be more vague non-commital... things. The endgame starting around here.
And then he just half-blurted out a thing, and she seemed to already know what he meant, and... then he fully confessed another and there was no surprise or shock of any kind from her-- just--
She'd... really already known.
Not only that.
She actually... /did/ have Those Kinds of Feelings too.
And it was like getting punched in the heart from both ends of an emotional spectrum. The all-too-expected pain of There'll Never Be A Chance Now versus the stubborn elation of She Does Love You Back That Way.
MIXED FEELINGS. ALL THE FEELINGS.
Including the guilt of making her feel like she was the one hurting 'the one waiting for him', when it was really his fault, if anything.
And despite feeling like the world's biggest cheating douche, and like the end had come for what they'd always had, and so on, he kissed her. Like he'll probably never get to again. Taking advantage of her conflict and that existence of those feelings for him, even. (Like a douuuuche.)
And for that long, long moment, just... feeling what it was like to just be in love with her, and know it, and feel it returned-- it was more than he'd ever hoped to get.
[Claude] ........again I apologize to everyone for being the cheesiest playin'-it-straight romanceRPer in existence
[Claude] or whatever the word is
[Claude] I TAKE MY ROMANCES FULL OF FEELINGS AND PROSE AND SERIOUS EMOTIONS
[Claude] a-anyway
The box being opened, there was pretty much.... little use for restraint, any longer. Time to tell her what he'd always wanted to say, kiss her like he'd always wanted to do, try... try for whatever he could get, now that there was no going back.
So he tried to ask if he'd let him love her just as long as they were still there. Already knowing, as he had for ages, she loved Ikki first and foremost, no matter what, no matter if it was returned. (Though it didn't hurt any less hearing it said aloud.) It was something he (thought he) would be willing to accept.
...almost forgetting, for a time there, that he wasn't the only one this would hurt. And being reminded of that, as they talked-- and painfully accepting the responsibility for that, even so--
"Everything's changed." and "It's a little like finally losing Claude, somehow."
Right then and there, it felt like something permanently crumbled.
And the black reality of it hit him, for all the gray elation that that selfish part of him had been trying to cast over the situation, that there was some good to be found in this--
...the reality was that he'd just destroyed the last One Thing She Could Always Count On. Having believed for so long that nothing better could come of doing that, ever, and yet in one moment of shaken resolve-- it was gone.
He'd failed himself and her and he was now just another burden she would carry in her heart. And she would, because... she's Feathers.
There was that instant of panicked denial-- she hadn't lost him, he was still here (this wasn't different from what he'd always--couldn't they try to go back---?) ...a question that, even as it came to mind, he already had the answer to anyway. As she'd said.
And then Claude Kenni cried a little in his soul :')
Followed by another gutpunch as she inadvertently reminded him that he still had someone like Red, while she... didn't.
...and then the conversation derailed into hilarity for a while (thanks Mirror) and it was slightly... for a while, there, like the kind of banter and thing they used to have, which helped him feel like maybe not everything was lost. But even then... that she was expecting he'd avoid her was another other minor gutpunch.
It'd... be a while. And this current thing would be one thing he couldn't do anything to help her with, because it was about him.
SO ANYWAY, I GUESS WE'RE FINALLY AT STATE OF THE UNION. After something like230 plurks 2730 words of text.
STATE OF THE UNION: ...pretty much too distracted by much more horrible murdercave things to really have a lot of time to dwell on what happened. He spent most of the rest of 245 and 246 doing the hunting/gathering for crippled Lizardking and salvaging bridgepieces down at the lake. And then there was nightmaregames and darkness and Allens having terrible lives and Cepheuses staying out after curfew, so that was something to focus on, too.
....and then IC time kinda flew, but he's been mostly relying on that good ol' pal repression. Also generally being unable to focus on too many things at a time, keeping busy helps :|a
And then Yayoi's heartgame and seeing the board just... well. Apart from the by now almost habitual hngrk reaction. ...for a while, mixed feelings, sad feelings, wondering if he should do anything about it...
He didn't touch item #13 in the end. Whatever she wanted to do, and what she'd done, she'd meant well. Even if she'd... probably feel bad if she learned the outcome.
But apart from that, when things are quiet and he's in his room or taking a break from working in the field or dorms (he hasn't gone back to the forge since, even though he knows Feathers won't be there)... the quiet times are times when he can think about it a little.
Not that... there's any real answers coming on what to do. Or how to fix that deep ache in his chest that hits at these times-- worse than all the others before, because back then, it wasn't because of anything he'd gained and lost.
And he just doesn't know what to do, now. Except toss and turn and wait for exhaustion to carry him to sleep.
It doesn't help that it feels like something he shouldn't be troubling bros with, what with.... everything else ever. (Syaoranhearting, Redclampings, Konsplosions...
SO ANYWAY IN SUM: A MILLION FEELINGS. AND HE LOVES HER. AND
she's in love with Ikki. But he loves her anyway.
And there is sad things and new broken things in his heartspace. But he is holding up well enough since there are other More Important Things than that heartspace to deal with.
[Claude] ITP Ryuuen reveals TRUE COLORS as irredeemable writer of things full of excessive feelings
POSTSCRIPT:
[Kururu] I kind of love contrasting Claude and Feathers with like ... Allen
[Kururu] who is somehow less a mess with like 10x the dramatic problems
[Claude] that's because Allen's life is a mess
[Claude] what's one more
[Kururu] This is very true yes
Also it turns out I wrote over 3000 words of FEELINGS, because it seems I have never essayed on this in full glory before.
-----
Right, so!
...if we talk about when Claude realized he was possibly in more-than-friendly-like with Feathers, it was at that point, just about, after King's zombiedance Game, when he'd worked up the momentum to actually hug Feathers, way back when.
If we talk about when it unconsciously started, maybe... pretty much since the beginning. When he'd hauled a bleeding Sunny back to his team and met the new Pavo girl who thanked him for the help, and:
"...even if we're from different teams, if we all help each other when we can, somehow, we'll go a lot farther than any of us will alone."
...was what she said, and it was pretty much something he'd been feeling ever since his first day, so it struck a chord.
That was Day 43.
Those feelings kind of... cemented more and more over time, gradual and slow and full of flailing denial and an almost deliberate denial, because there was a mystery girl!! in his memories!! and there were ????-Feelings in a couple of those memories!1
And it's... one thing to remember fragmented pieces about someone. Another to fully walk and talk beside them day by day. Pages torn from a book versus being able to read the book itself. In that sense, at times, he couldn't help thinking Syaoran (and Feathers herself) were lucky in the sense of having their Person-From-Memory there.
...followed v. rapidly by huge guilt over thinking that kind of thing. Since. Murdercave. Why would you think anyone being there was lucky.
But just in that sense! of really... having a chance to learn fully about them again. Being there for them, being there with them, knowing the place you came from was their place, too, like a validation of memory as more than a pure fiction (something he used to feel a little bothered about, when he had too much time to think... though that's a tad off-track.)
So, wrestling with potential ???-feelings girl of memory, versus very real ???-feelings with girl right there. And learning, over time, that the latter had someone incredibly important to them, too. Someone she was meant to be closer to more than "friends, family, lovers", and even with patchy memories... attached to, pretty much.
And he was okay with that.
Okay with thinking, "there's these feelings, kinda strange, but more importantly I want to support her however I can, even if it's in a small way." Mostly too caught up in being that support to her to really pay too much (active) mind to his own wants and feelings. (Insert poetic metaphor about feathers in wings here, and old OOC comments about 'tuner's tuners'.)
And he was okay with that.
So he quashed and denied what he could of any hint of anything related to those feelings that people brought up (albeit failingly. ....very failingly.)
Timeskipping, timeskipping, and over the course of weeks and months... eventually Claude became aware of just how important he'd become to her, more than he'd expected would be the case.
With teammates and other friends leaving either physically or emotionally in a sense, walls going up, one by one... somehow bumping up to that place of importance almost by sheer virtue of being the last man standing, as it were. The one person who'd been there the longest, the most constantly, and (as he'd tried to be for others, like Red) the most unchanging.
...and he was okay with that.
If anything, more than ever, it made keeping things the way they were all the more important. Gotta give her that ONE THING that she can always count on to be what it is.
...there was admittedly some very tentative pushing and testing of boundaries even then. Though the whole vampirism feeding thing did kind of make more perfect an excuse than he'd be willing to admit for body comfort things. And Feathers being Feathers, there was essentially a lot of cuddling and he could still count on it likely coming across to her as super platonic.
Likely. (Always that tinge of doubt there.)
Suffice to say he became super devoted to her in a way different from even Red-- not necessarily /more/ or less, but just... different. And at the same time, in a way of... trying to respect what she wanted to the utmost, more than what he wanted for her. Like basically if it were Red vs. Feathers dangling off a cliff, save one only, he'd pick Red because Feathers would never forgive him if he didn't. Even if it would kill him inside to do it :')
(I'm kind of sad he never got to a Trickster killjar-type game with that choice to be made :()
Anyway, was okay, happy with what they had, wanted to keep it that way, avoid complicating things for her. Red encouraged him to try and think of her more platonically! Like a sister! ...didn't really work too well but okay. (There was the drunk kissing thing too after one particular Soldier tattoo game. That was awkward when he remembered it weeks later. But still, y'know, quashable as Terrible Things That Happen When You Are Drunk. ...and the hope that she would never actually remember it herself, and anyway if she did, she probably wouldn't mention it and it was fine.)
But Claude-- man. For all that he's somehow come across as incredibly altruistic in Sabra, it's actually not his defining trait so much as "wanting to mean something to others".
In canon with a less high-pressure morbid environment to deal with, he had the room to develop a level of selfish pettiness that broke out, at times, against his father, his friends, and Rena in particular, triggered by jealousy and the like. In Sabra he hasn't had that luxury or the conditioning, but it hasn't removed the potential for just that little bit of selfishness either, being only human and all.
Claude may be honest and open and sincere in his feelings, but he does manage to hide a few things in his heart that get unread. And one of them was that selfish hope/desire that maybe, just maybe, Feathers might think of him as more than a best friend, despite every other tie she already had.
That little bit that prodded him to test those boundaries, here and there, now and again, with indirect questions and actions... but it never really went anywhere more than that, since time and again all he really got was reconfirmation of their Friend(?)Zone-ness and more about Ikki's significance to her, which all added to Let's Not Say Anything Ever. And he was about 99% sure that she was oblivious enough to his not-so-occasional slip-ups to read nothing of That Sort into them.
...........and then the oldSabra things happened.
And. Well.
That was a thing.
If nothing else, a "Look Claude Kenni! Here's what it COULD'VE been like and COULD be if you and her were more than friends!!1 What with your host of similarities and all! And if she wasn't Ikki's link tuner!!" ...thing.
It's really... 'if they weren't bound by past lives and past ties'. And it's ironic that another 'past life' showed him that. For all that they arrive "unburdened by their pasts", they're not things they really set aside for good, or should, necessarily, or want to. That aspect of Old Sabra was an almost painful what could have been, and compounded by Claude's insight to the things Chrysos never really said out loud to Spirea--- things like, "if there were ever such a thing as reincarnation, no matter how many times or wherever we're reborn, as long as I met you, I don't think I'd be able to help falling in love all over again. But then, there's few who wouldn't, for someone like you."
[Claude] (and incidentally you can all stop cringing now at that bit of HORRIBLE CHEESE god that sure was a thing I wrote :'D )
[Kururu] (there was a reason these were the things Chrys was too embarrassed to say)
[Claude] (he'd never live it down ever)
[Claude] (and you /know/ Red'd get wind of it somehow)
Chrys drew the lucky straw that lifetime, and he knew it, and Claude knows it. This time, in Sabracave, with these people... it's a different lot that's been cast. Different time, different life, one past and lived, one present. And Claude was...
...mostly okay with that.
Just. A little bit less okay. Like the ache of waking up from a dream of something you know could never happen.
And there was that tiny new crack in his resolve, right there. Being pretty much absolutely sure that he loved her, now, name of the disease declared and all. And the accompanying selfish aspect of that love that wants, even in the smallest way, some sign of return, and no amount of his denial and vowing and willing could completely shut it out.
But still he clung fast to the idea that "if I say anything, it'll disappear, or change forever", it being the State of Things between them. All the more uncertainty added by not knowing how much /she/ remembered of that life, and what she thought of it, or might've learned from it. Hence that period of AVOID AVOID AVOID after the South Block move, full of unsure and aaaah and unsure... though that period was also partly due to a lot of other things happening in-team and all, noodlesplosions etc.
And then Red beat him around a bit with words and CLAUDE THERE WAS SAD GIRLING and then he finally had a chance to talk a while with her after she'd gotten Mirrorfish'd. A conversation that like many oscillated between awkward and serious and sad and hilariflail and... well. Basically he got a Hint that maybe she DID maybe have Those Kinds of Feelings. At least the kind of feeling that would apparently make things like kissing possibly maybe not so bad a thing.
[Claude] .......a-all the ambiguity this relationship had, man
[Claude] IT WAS LIKE
[Claude] BEING IN A NICE WARM FOG
[Claude] AND MAYBE THERE WAS SOMETHING REALLY NICE OUT THERE BUT MORE LIKELY IT WOULD BE COLDER AND DARKER
[Claude] AND IRREVERSIBLY SOLID
[Claude] SO IT WAS BETTER TO JUST STAY IN THE FOG FOREVER
[Claude] except no things from the outside kept touching him here and there or whispering ideas and ~possibilities~
So they kind of reached a mutual unspoken Let's Not Talk About What It Means Or What We Might Have Learned thing after that conversation and carried on like usual. And Claude even got away with doing matching combined emblem tatts while he was tanked.
......and then Ichiru.
Basically. Suckerpunched him in the unspoken feelings and it all just came out. It was the first time anyone'd ever really been outright cruel to him about it, instead of the teasing and jabbing he got from teammates, and he was soooo pissed it just spilled out and then he couldn't take it back anymore or pretend it wasn't there to be said 8(
...and Yayoi heard the whole thing too. And then she went on to encourage him to FIGHT FOR HIS LOVE and. Basically told him he was being selfish for not letting Feathers decide what to do about their relationship and making all the decisions himself and he should TELL HER 8U or ask her etc. And sort of threatened that she would go ask if he didn't.
And he seriously freaked out at that-- not just flustered, but panicked. So full of NO THIS WILL RUIN EVERYTHING BUT WHAT IF NOT BUT NO BUT...
And it suddenly felt like it was only a matter of time before something would change. Whether because Ichiru might bring up to Feathers what Claude'd admitted to sometime, or Yayoi would give something away, and compounded with general stress after the Beast attack and needing/wanting to explore and check on people he went out the same day and...
...ran into Feathers with her honesty flower still on her.
So there sure was a really long conversation at the riverside which kept oscillating between dangerously close to Danger Zone and back to safe usual derp/serious talking.
Ichiru came up as a topic, and he very nearly said something, but didn't (and brilliantly made the side realization that when Ichiru'd said "you think you're the only one" he'd probably meant Zero, too.) But he evaded that point of doom!
Only to fall into another worse pit trap. Or more like get pulled right into one. Kind of a downhill rolling in the face of her sincere honest responses where there would normally be more vague non-commital... things. The endgame starting around here.
And then he just half-blurted out a thing, and she seemed to already know what he meant, and... then he fully confessed another and there was no surprise or shock of any kind from her-- just--
She'd... really already known.
Not only that.
She actually... /did/ have Those Kinds of Feelings too.
And it was like getting punched in the heart from both ends of an emotional spectrum. The all-too-expected pain of There'll Never Be A Chance Now versus the stubborn elation of She Does Love You Back That Way.
MIXED FEELINGS. ALL THE FEELINGS.
Including the guilt of making her feel like she was the one hurting 'the one waiting for him', when it was really his fault, if anything.
And despite feeling like the world's biggest cheating douche, and like the end had come for what they'd always had, and so on, he kissed her. Like he'll probably never get to again. Taking advantage of her conflict and that existence of those feelings for him, even. (Like a douuuuche.)
And for that long, long moment, just... feeling what it was like to just be in love with her, and know it, and feel it returned-- it was more than he'd ever hoped to get.
[Claude] ........again I apologize to everyone for being the cheesiest playin'-it-straight romanceRPer in existence
[Claude] or whatever the word is
[Claude] I TAKE MY ROMANCES FULL OF FEELINGS AND PROSE AND SERIOUS EMOTIONS
[Claude] a-anyway
The box being opened, there was pretty much.... little use for restraint, any longer. Time to tell her what he'd always wanted to say, kiss her like he'd always wanted to do, try... try for whatever he could get, now that there was no going back.
So he tried to ask if he'd let him love her just as long as they were still there. Already knowing, as he had for ages, she loved Ikki first and foremost, no matter what, no matter if it was returned. (Though it didn't hurt any less hearing it said aloud.) It was something he (thought he) would be willing to accept.
...almost forgetting, for a time there, that he wasn't the only one this would hurt. And being reminded of that, as they talked-- and painfully accepting the responsibility for that, even so--
"Everything's changed." and "It's a little like finally losing Claude, somehow."
Right then and there, it felt like something permanently crumbled.
And the black reality of it hit him, for all the gray elation that that selfish part of him had been trying to cast over the situation, that there was some good to be found in this--
...the reality was that he'd just destroyed the last One Thing She Could Always Count On. Having believed for so long that nothing better could come of doing that, ever, and yet in one moment of shaken resolve-- it was gone.
He'd failed himself and her and he was now just another burden she would carry in her heart. And she would, because... she's Feathers.
There was that instant of panicked denial-- she hadn't lost him, he was still here (this wasn't different from what he'd always--couldn't they try to go back---?) ...a question that, even as it came to mind, he already had the answer to anyway. As she'd said.
And then Claude Kenni cried a little in his soul :')
Followed by another gutpunch as she inadvertently reminded him that he still had someone like Red, while she... didn't.
...and then the conversation derailed into hilarity for a while (thanks Mirror) and it was slightly... for a while, there, like the kind of banter and thing they used to have, which helped him feel like maybe not everything was lost. But even then... that she was expecting he'd avoid her was another other minor gutpunch.
It'd... be a while. And this current thing would be one thing he couldn't do anything to help her with, because it was about him.
SO ANYWAY, I GUESS WE'RE FINALLY AT STATE OF THE UNION. After something like
STATE OF THE UNION: ...pretty much too distracted by much more horrible murdercave things to really have a lot of time to dwell on what happened. He spent most of the rest of 245 and 246 doing the hunting/gathering for crippled Lizardking and salvaging bridgepieces down at the lake. And then there was nightmaregames and darkness and Allens having terrible lives and Cepheuses staying out after curfew, so that was something to focus on, too.
....and then IC time kinda flew, but he's been mostly relying on that good ol' pal repression. Also generally being unable to focus on too many things at a time, keeping busy helps :|a
And then Yayoi's heartgame and seeing the board just... well. Apart from the by now almost habitual hngrk reaction. ...for a while, mixed feelings, sad feelings, wondering if he should do anything about it...
He didn't touch item #13 in the end. Whatever she wanted to do, and what she'd done, she'd meant well. Even if she'd... probably feel bad if she learned the outcome.
But apart from that, when things are quiet and he's in his room or taking a break from working in the field or dorms (he hasn't gone back to the forge since, even though he knows Feathers won't be there)... the quiet times are times when he can think about it a little.
Not that... there's any real answers coming on what to do. Or how to fix that deep ache in his chest that hits at these times-- worse than all the others before, because back then, it wasn't because of anything he'd gained and lost.
And he just doesn't know what to do, now. Except toss and turn and wait for exhaustion to carry him to sleep.
It doesn't help that it feels like something he shouldn't be troubling bros with, what with.... everything else ever. (Syaoranhearting, Redclampings, Konsplosions...
SO ANYWAY IN SUM: A MILLION FEELINGS. AND HE LOVES HER. AND
she's in love with Ikki. But he loves her anyway.
And there is sad things and new broken things in his heartspace. But he is holding up well enough since there are other More Important Things than that heartspace to deal with.
[Claude] ITP Ryuuen reveals TRUE COLORS as irredeemable writer of things full of excessive feelings
POSTSCRIPT:
[Kururu] I kind of love contrasting Claude and Feathers with like ... Allen
[Kururu] who is somehow less a mess with like 10x the dramatic problems
[Claude] that's because Allen's life is a mess
[Claude] what's one more
[Kururu] This is very true yes
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-14 08:59 am (UTC)That is all.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-14 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 06:02 am (UTC)FOREVER
no subject
Date: 2011-07-14 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 01:32 am (UTC)I would just like to point out that like half of my persons-from-memory are now judgenapped and I will probably never see them again.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 06:06 am (UTC)That's why I'm not sayin' anything to any bro bro. Least of all you.
:(