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They’ve been occupying the monastery for a few months now, but this is the first night Hilda’s visited the cathedral since school. Right when you walk in, there are a couple features indicating that the past five years have not been kind to the old church: The doors are wide open despite the fact that it’s past midnight, the pews have been carved up with signatures and profanities, the pillars have grown large cracks, and— oh, look at that! There’s a huge hole in the ceiling.
An odd sense of awe fills her as she walks forward through the nave and starts to take in how forsaken and gorgeous it all looks, how the moonlight lets in through the roof and how each star shines slight through the stained glass. The moon bathes the pillars and arches in bellflower-blue-white light, revealing the ruined church in all its glory, heavenly in its ruin. As carefully as she tries to tread, the big clunky fur boots she’d worn make each clop of her footsteps boom and echo on the dusty marble floor like hooves. Anyone spying would think her another tactless thief. She should’ve worn her nice new sheepskin slippers; she’d contemplated it on her way out but ultimately decided against getting them dirty. A thick quilt she’d brought from home keeps her warm from her neck to her knees, bundled around her like a cloak. Stupidly, she’s only wearing her cheap pink laundry-day nightgown underneath, so she has to keep herself bundled up at all costs. Inside it, her hands clutch a small rectangular cedar box with the House Goneril sigil carved into it.
She starts to rebuild what it was like way back then in her mind as she nears the massive pile of rubble where the chancel used to be. Choir director went there… A couple extra candelabras went there… ah, her and Dorothea would sneak away from training to sit in the tiny hidden pulpit off to the right to share sweets and gossip. It was so lovely to sit all giddily pushed against each other in the darkness, making crude jokes denouncing nobility together, the songs of the choir echoing holily through the cathedral. Dorothea Arnault… Hilda hasn’t thought about her in forever. Each morning she worked a gorgeously fragrant orange-blossom neroli oil through her lovely chestnut locks... Oh, it was so dark in there, and they'd get pressed so close. Her lips always tasted like the raspberry jam they’d spread over scones split in half... Dorothea...
Dorothea. She knows that all her old friends from the Black Eagles have pledged their lives to that traitor emperor. And she knows for a fact that Dorothea loves Edelgard most of all, singing her praises almost every time they spoke. She’s always been so loyal to her. Meaning that if she and Hilda meet on the battlefield, there isn’t a chance in hell she’d betray Edelgard by sparing her life. Hilda knows that she needs to do everything she can for the sake of the Alliance, so she’d be betraying Claude by refusing to chop up all their former classmates. She knows she could never betray him, but...
Shit, Hilda doesn’t wanna think about all that right now; in fact, she doesn’t wanna be able to think at all. Time to keep the tradition going, to go do what she’d done almost every night back in ‘80.
Now directly in front of the big pile of collapsed Church, she sets the cedar case down by the right pillar, sigil-side up, and opens it to pick out a flint rock and a small chip of a steel axe she'd shattered last week trying to break down a stone barricade. Next she gets up and turns to the nearby candelabra; there’s an echoing fizzle as she flicks a spark onto one of the candles. Then, she removes said candle from its little brass pedestal and uses it to light all the other ones on the level, going up on her toes to light the higher ones. In the end her labors result in a hearty two-tiered orange ring that stands out in contrast to the blue-white moonbeams pouring in from the broken windows and the ceiling-hole. She suddenly realizes how drafty it is in here. There’s enough natural light right now that there was really no need to light the whole thing; back when the roof was intact it was pitch-dark and terrifying at this time of night, practically impossible to relax in without a lamp or torch or something.
Hilda sighs, sits and leans back against the familiar pillar with its huge new crack in the adjacent side, tucking part of the quilt underneath her to keep her bare legs from making contact with the freezing marble, attempting to entirely bundle herself up while still keeping her hands free. Carefully she tips the candle over the rubble and let the excess wax drip off. Then she sets it down to open up the cedar box again, removing the scraps of cloth she’d folded in to keep the contents from rattling or breaking or getting everywhere. Finally, she takes out a long, elegant mahogany pipe with an ivory mouthpiece at one end and a blackened terracotta bowl at the other.
She'd already stuffed it full of ground-up cannabis flower in her dorm, so all she has to do is hold the candle to the bowl until it lights, suck in through the ivory end, pull away and inhale. She lets the smoke out of her mouth with a sigh of relief, watching the orange embers fade. Her head buzzes as she tries to remember when she’d last done this. A moon or so before the Empire declared war, probably. Once or twice a week she’d tiptoe from her dorm, have the one guard with a crush on her raise the gate— Kenneth, was it? Keith, maybe?— and let herself in through the right side entry to light a ton of candles and sit against this pillar to smoke, to relish in the peace and quiet. No one to disappoint that late at night. No one to scold her or judge her, no one to let down. Seiros doesn’t really exist, in her opinion, so she doesn’t really worry about Divine Judgement or anything silly like that. People are allowed to have their little habits.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep, young lady?” calls a voice from behind the pile of stone.
Hilda shrieks and impulsively chucks the candle hard in the direction of the sound. Before the flame flickers out midair, it illuminates the intruder up by the tall window for a split second, giving her a glimpse of a wide figure with a handsome false smile before hitting the floor and splitting in twain.
“Claude!” Hilda hisses, setting the pipe down and clutching her chest, her heart beating wildly from the false alarm as he snickers and makes his way toward her. No wonder she hadn’t spotted him— with the window behind him, he’s a perfect black silhouette. “Rat-bastard!”
“Sorry— didn’t mean to scare you,” Claude snickers; he comes into full view as he nears the candelabra. His footsteps make almost no noise at all. “... Nah, I totally meant to scare you. That was priceless. You sounded like a kitten.” Hilda manages to chuckle once the adrenaline dies down a bit. She’s already a little bit paranoid from smoking so it takes longer than it should to convince herself that she’s not about to get brutally murdered in a place of worship.
It’s nice to see him without all the fancy decorations and shawls and crests and ruffles on for once, just a simple flowy white dress shirt tucked into form-fitting black trousers tucked into his usual riding boots. It’s a universally flattering look that makes his shoulders look wider and his waist look narrower, especially with such a wide, tightly-fit black leather belt on. His hair’s messier than normal, and he's still wearing that cute little earring. Maybe he's the type of person who just never takes their jewelry off.
“What’re you doing here?” she asks, suddenly beaming. His presence, as always, instantly improves her mood tenfold.
“I could ask you the same.” Classic Claude to gloss over important details under the guise of pleasant banter.
“I’m taking a break.” She shifts, unfolding the quilt once to double its size before finding a new place to sit on it. She pushes the pipe and cedar box back against the pillar, covering herself with one end and holding the blanket out with her right arm, providing enough extra blanket for a mid-size duke to wrap himself up comfortably. “Care to join me?”
Claude’s smile turns genuine for a moment. He only shows his real smile to his closest friends. “I’d be honored,” he says with a little mock bow; she returns it by dipping her head forward as he makes his way over. “So long as I’m not intruding.”
“Technically we’re both intruding.” When he’s standing right in front of her, she says, “Oh, wait, grab a candle before you sit down.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause I’m nice and warm down here and I don’t wanna have to get up.”
“Yup, that’s my girl,” he says nonchalantly as he obliges, and Hilda’s stupid heart jumps at being jokingly called his girl. He plucks a candlestick out of the lower layer and twirls it deftly between his fingers how he does with arrows. The flame stays lit and the wax doesn’t drip at all. He frequently does impossible little tricks like that in his successful attempts to impress her.
When he settles down right next to her, she realizes just how cold he is, how the night chill seeps through his thin shirt into his skin. She immediately clings to his arm, hoping both to get his attention and transfer some body heat. She realizes how soft the hair covering his forearms is and holds him comfortably. He shivers, but there’s no reaction further than that, staring at the candle in his hand. “Why didn’t you wear a coat or something?” she asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re freakishly cold.”
“I’m fine,” he insists, giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “You’re just… freakishly warm.” His hand hesitates there. Claude stares at the flame some more with that faraway look in his eyes. Then he snaps out of it and hands it to her. “What’d you want this for?”
“Like I said,” she says, securing her end of the quilt between her knees as her other hand snakes back to bring out her pipe, “I’m taking a break.”
Claude’s brow furrows, and he lets out a confused bark of a laugh as she lights it again and takes another puff. “Oh, wow, I was not expecting that,” he says, genuinely surprised, somewhat intrigued by her technique. “That’s what that smell was?”
“I haven’t been able to relax in a while,” she shrugs, blowing out smoke from her nostrils like how dragons do in storybooks. “Desperate times call for desperate measures."
“Why not just stay in your dorm? It’s not like you’ll get in trouble or anything.”
“This is where I used to do it in school, so.” She takes another hit. “For old time’s sake.”
“You smoked in school?”
“Yeah, constantly.” His reaction makes Hilda grin; it’s quite an accomplishment to have secrets that even Claude can’t sniff out. “I just never talked about it.”
“How did I not know this?” Claude chides himself, recounting: “Hell, you were always sitting around all day, constantly taking naps, trying to find snacks, dousing yourself in perfume… you’ve got a doting family to rebel against… you certainly have the funds for a habit like this…”
“You’re not the only one hiding stuff from your friends.” His smile falters, so she follows up with, "Seriously, what're you doing out here?”
He seems embarrassed, scratching at the back of his neck. "Praying," he admits, which she thinks is a joke at first. "I don't know if anybody listened, but. I guess I just figured it was worth a shot. Like I might as well, just in case."
"Well, shit," she says incredulously, “if times are so tough that you're praying..." With that, she offers him the pipe, which makes his expression go comically shocked. Though he’s all broad and masculine nowadays, it’s still hard to think of him as a Grown Adult Leader Man when he lets his guard down like that. After all this time, he still has the same sweet nature as that slinky grinning genius with the tacky little braid from her homeroom class. She guesses he’ll probably seem this way his whole life, a spark of youth forever lighting his pine-green eyes. Evergreen eyes, goes Hilda’s brain. It makes her feel quite clever.
“I, uh…” his hand twitches on her shoulder. “I probably shouldn’t. Big day tomorrow and all.”
Oh, fuck, tomorrow. She’s already high enough to have forgotten about the battle. Of course— that's what he must've been praying over. Oh, fuck, their chances of winning tomorrow are so damn slim that Claude has turned to religion! The Alliance must be screwed! “You’ll sleep it off,” she assures him, trying her damndest not to think about what awaits them at sunrise. “I won’t force you, though. Don’t sweat it.”
He stares silently for a moment. Hilda subtly notes the way the candlelight catches the kind features of his face, defines his strong jaw, shimmers in his tired eyes. She’s sure it’s unintentional, but his messy hair and slightly-unbuttoned top with the sleeves rolled up are practically textbook seductive, subtly suggesting vulnerability and down-to-earthness. Claude puts effort into a lot of things; dressing to impress isn’t one of them. He just wears whatever he feels will suit him, and by pure coincidence he’s usually the handsomest most stylish man on the continent. “I’ve never tried it,” he says. “I’ve heard it turns you impotent and drives you to insanity.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Yeah, I figured as much. In Brigid it’s practically the same as drinking. All the stigma around it in Fódlan smacks of blatant fear towards foreign cultures.”
“Uh-huh.” It never ceases to impress her how knowledgeable he is when it comes to politics. She knows he’s smart, of course— she honestly thinks him one of the greatest minds of their time— but she forgets how well-versed he is in areas other than battle strategy. “I like it better than drinking... Drinking ruins my skin."
He nods understandingly, looking around a bit. His eyes catch on the hole in the roof, on the moon, and he exhales shakily. “... Can I be honest with you?”
Finally. “Of course.”
“There’s… there’s a really good chance I’ll get killed tomorrow.”
The statement echoes through the arches, hangs in the air. After a moment, he follows up with, “I just. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it, y’know? We know for a fact that we’ll be… we’ll be up against Garreg Mach alumni. I mean—” he sighs and puts his face in his palm. “Edelgard has to be stopped, but… if I see anyone else, I’ll know they’re just believing in what they’ve been taught— that’s not their fault. But that’s what they’re willing to kill for, to die for. I don’t think I’ll be able to. If I see somebody come at me, like, somebody like Bernadetta or something… I feel like I’ll freeze up. Like I just won't have it in me to fight back.”
Bernadetta! Hilda had forgotten all about sweet Bernie! They’d lend each other romance novels once every moon or so and discuss them over tea… Shit, now they’re both just sitting there stewing in dread. Deep down she'd known Claude has felt like this all along, that he only feigns nonchalance over bloodshed to keep up morale. The tension is unbearable. “... Well, we already killed Ferdinand,” Hilda offers lightheartedly in an attempt to break it.
As soon as it leaves her mouth she realizes how horrible of a joke it was. Her chest sinks with guilt. Why would she say that? What had possessed her? Ignatz has been a wreck ever since he'd stuck that lance into Ferdie’s ribcage on the bridge; she’s pretty sure he hasn’t been able to sleep since. Ferdie’s body stood out as they left because of his silky orange halo of hair spread out on the stone. His noble blood wept pathetically through a gap in his armor.
“Sorry,” she blurts out as her eyes suddenly well with tears at the mental image, “I’m sorry, that was a really shitty thing to say.” She pointedly sets the pipe and candle down between them and rubs her eyes with her palms. “I’m sorry. Fuck."
“No, it’s true,” Claude says tiredly. “No point in acting like we didn't.”
“It was just shitty of me to joke about it. It’s not funny.” She sniffs and wipes away a tear with the quilt.
The two of them have an unspoken understanding; since they can each see through the other’s bullshit, they know that they don’t have to put up fronts when they don’t feel like it. He’s perfect to talk to when they’re both as exhausted as they are now. With this in mind, she breathes out, “I think I might freeze up too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I don’t even… I don’t know if I want to come out of it alive. Like, I'd know their blood's on our hands.” It feels weird to say aloud, but it’s the truth. “I think I’d rather die than live with that weight.”
Claude snickers. “Everybody talks that way till the arrows start flying.”
“I know, I know, but—"
“I get it. Don’t worry.” To her surprise, he leans over and embraces her. His arms are strong and his back is very wide when she gets her hands around him. She notices how clean his shirt is when she buries her face in his chest, which honestly could give her own a run for its money. Right then, she notices the subtle scent of his skin. It makes her reminisce on how she’d spend Sundays at the monastery picking blooms in the greenhouse for Claude to distill into perfumes. Each week he’d produce two tiny vials of the most lovely floral fragrance she’d ever known in her life. He’d use the oil to style his hair, just like Dorothea did. He refused to tell her how to brew it herself, another one of his many secrets.
She snaps out of it when he starts to stroke her hair, tied in the long low ponytail she always wears to bed. He looks down at her curiously; at first she thinks he might be stealing a glance at her cleavage. This pink satin nightgown may be old and shitty, but she’ll be damned if the low neckline doesn’t make her tits look fantastic.
But then he moves his grip from her back to gently span her waist, his hands so wide that they nearly encircle it. “Good gods, you’re tiny,” he marvels, unabashedly staring. He’d never touched her like that before! The sensation of his hands on her body shoots through her like lightning, miles better than how she’d imagined it. He’s suddenly holding her so tightly that, had they been standing, he probably would’ve been able to lift her off the ground like that. She starts giggling at the thought.
“Not where it counts,” she says all girlish and stupid, putting her hand on her left breast to get him to look: “The heart.” She also uses the joke as an excuse to stare at the window of chest visible in his half-unbuttoned shirt, at the very noticeable trail of black hair leading down his sternum, then down further, probably as soft as it is on his forearms. Just to see where his boundaries lie, Hilda places a hand on his left pectoral and squeezes very gently. The gesture is stupid enough to be considered a joke. It’s quite firm and quite satisfying to do so.
Instead of objecting, he lets out a genuine laugh, which is always a wonderful sound. She’s disappointed when his hands suddenly leave her waist, but her spirits pick right back up when he swiftly collects her pipe from the floor. “Now, if we’re dying tomorrow, there’s no reason not to get fucked up, right?”
“That’s the spirit!” She cheers, clasping her hands together. He never talks like this in front of anyone, not even Byleth. Cynicism is something only he and Hilda can indulge in together, just the two of them.
“Alright, so…” He holds the pipe up closer to the candelabra and inspects it like it’s an ancient relic. “How do we.. uh..” He turns it around in his hands a few times, looking at it from all angles, no doubt trying to reverse-engineer it in his mind. Then a sheepish, “Can you show me?”
She snickers at how nervous he is, picking the candle back up. Claude isn’t naive, not by a longshot, but he knows little of the fine art of sinning. He’s always had to try far too hard not to raise anyone’s suspicions toward his character; his looks have made many a bigoted idiot distrust him the minute they meet.
“Here— put your mouth on this end,” she tells him. “When I light it, start inhaling.” When he exhales deeply and holds the pipe to his lips, she clarifies, “Oh, wait, no— just suck in with your cheeks. Don’t actually breathe in at first.” She’d done it wrong for several moons when she’d gotten to the monastery thinking that coughing up a lung was just part of the experience. This is actually the first time she’d ever smoked with anyone. Dorothea understandably declined her offer, opting to keep her lungs in pristine opera-singing condition.
Claude does as she tells him when she tips the candle to the bowl, the embers lighting up orange again when he sucks in. Once his face scrunches up, she takes the pipe from his mouth and says, “ Now inhale. Give it a second before you breathe out.”
He calmly takes the smoke into his lungs, holds it for a moment, then blows it out a second later with a stunned look on his face. Again, he just sits there, staring at nothing. He extends his legs in front of himself and leans back against the pillar. In time, he puts his wide hand back where it was on her shoulder. “... Huh,” his voice cracks when he finally speaks, and Hilda cracks up. He laughs dazedly in response, clearing his throat and following up with, “That’s… huh.”
“Yep.”
“Why the cathedral?”
“Huh?”
“Why did you pick the cathedral for this back in high school? Wouldn’t it be smarter to do it outside?” He looks at her intently as he takes back the pipe and lights it up again, drawing in like he’s known how all his life. He’s always been a very fast learner.
“It’s cold and wet and muddy outside,” she explains. “Plus we had guards posted everywhere. In here, it’s warm, it’s empty, it’s pretty, and the smell always got covered up with incense during the morning service.”
“Hm,” he hums, blowing smoke out of his nostrils exactly how he’d seen her do it earlier. He’s a natural. “Weren’t you ever worried about getting excommunicated?”
“What?”
“Use of illicit medicine directly before the Goddess in Her holiest place of worship. This is literally the most sacred site in all of Fodlan. That's grounds for immediate excommunication.”
“No way.”
“Yeah way. This is, like, one of the most disrespectful things you could possibly do in here." He says this right before using the pipe again.
Hilda chokes on a laugh. All that time, she’d been risking expulsion from the academy and the decimation of her entire family name just for the sake of a stupid habit. "Are there seriously rules like that? Specific rules?"
"Not specific. Just strict bans on any use of mind-altering substances within set radii of holy sites." He breathes in deeply, then lets the smoke slowly escape his mouth with each word as he speaks: "People mostly think it's to ward off drunkards, which is a common misconception. It's actually because our grandparents used to take hallucinogens and opium in here so that they could 'hear Her voice clearer'." He snorts at the idea, the tendrils of smoke distinct in the moonlight.
"No shit," Hilda says, stunned.
"Not our grandparents specifically, I mean. I have no authority on whether or not our folks got high in church. It was just a popular thing to do back in their day. I've read a ton of stuff on it. The rules have always been in place for, like, honor's sake or whatever,” he cocks his head to look at her, “but they only started enforcing it once sermons started turning into orgies.”
"You're fucking with me," Hilda calls, and Claude looks at her, gives her a flat smile and shrugs. He smugly places his lips on the carved ivory, tips the candle and sucks in yet another mouthful of smoke. "You're fucking with me!" she repeats, and Claude places everything back on the floor.
Then he guffaws out all the smoke at once. “You were so close to buying it—" They burst into idiotic laughter, the noise bouncing through the wide and empty hall, over the rubble and out through the ceiling-hole. Claude starts going into a huge coughing fit halfway through, wheezing between laughs, making it even funnier. They're probably making a huge racket, but with Rhea gone, who's left to excommunicate them?
"Oh, oh, oh, there's another reason why I liked this place," she adds as soon as the echoes remind her. Claude looks at her intently as he desperately tries to hold in a cough. "I loved to sing. The one place I could sing without worrying that anyone was there to hear it. And the acoustics here made it sound so lovely."
For some reason, it makes Claude laugh. "Here, lemme guess what song:" he clears his throat before he starts to sing with a voice full of false bravado: "All our men of faith and honor’ll—"
"Pledge their lives to our House Gonerillllll," she heartily joins him, holding out the last "L" for far too long like she always does when her family makes her sing that stupid traditional jingle. He hollers and claps when she manages to hold it out for a solid fifteen seconds. "Yep, that's it, the best song all time."
"Right up there with the Ballad of Blue and Black."
"Yeah," Hilda agrees instinctively before realizing that she has no idea what he's talking about. "Wait, no, how does that one go?”
Claude scoffs. "You don't remember?”
“No?”
"It was the song I wrote specifically to sing to Edelgard and Dimitri during mock fights to throw them off their game. You seriously don't remember?” When she shakes her head, he sighs and starts to sing, "There once was a— ”
Hilda gasps when she remembers. "Was that the one where you just graphically described a lion trying to fuck an eagle for, like, twelve verses?"
“Yeah, that's the one!”
"Oh, that was a masterpiece."
"And it totally worked! They were both so mad at me they couldn't think straight. Of all the stuff I've cooked up, that was probably my magnum opus," he chuckles, gazing up through the ceiling again. He hesitates, then asks, “Think it’ll work on her tomorrow?”
"... Ughhh," goes Hilda as she remembers what tomorrow is, the dread of it washing over her yet again. She goes limp in protest and throws herself down across his lap, stretching out like a cat. With their combined body heat and a little help from some good old-fashioned drug abuse, she's warm enough to lay the quilt flat underneath her, hoping he doesn't pay mind to how cheap her nightgown looks. "Stop reminding me..."
"Sorry, sorry. I wasn't thinking." He strokes her ponytail again, hand lingering each time he gets to the end. Maybe she needs a trim. “Shouldn’t’ve brought it up.”
“I’m gonna die a virgin,” she says the moment she realizes it, perking back up to look at him. “Shit. If I die tomorrow I legitimately die a virgin.”
In response, Claude furrows his brow and gives her an odd look. “... I’m sorry,” he offers sorrily, clearly unsure how to respond. He puts a warm, strong arm around her, which suffices for the time being.
"Of all the Golden Deer, I'm gonna be the one to die a virgin," Hilda repeats, now unable to think of anything else. "I always… y'know, out of all of us, I always thought it'd—"
"Hey, leave Lorenz out of this," Claude sternly cuts her off before she can say anything. Making her smile seemed to be his goal, as he returns hers in full, chuckling and stretching his legs out a little more. At this point he's stopped using the quilt too, sitting atop it with her; now they look less like freezing orphans and more like an odd couple having the world's oddest picnic. "He's a good guy! It's not his fault he's like that."
“Oh, man… that giant flower he’d stick in his uniform… his haircut! ” She can’t stop laughing at the mere image of that awful angle of those awful purple bangs. “Lorenz—” then she cracks up just from saying his name— “Fuck, did the Gloucesters think that that’s the way you’re supposed to spell ‘Lawrence’? Fucking.... Lorenzz?” she draws out the Z, which makes him laugh just as hard.
“You wanna know my theory? On why he grew his hair out like he did?” She nods eagerly. “I think he regrets that haircut so much that he’s just… stopped cutting his hair altogether, just to be safe… I-I think the man's been given a genuine fear of barbers..!” They each laugh until their stomachs hurt as they cling onto each other, keeping them rooted to the present in this sweet singular moment.
The laughter dies down, eventually. Tomorrow begins to haunt her again. Hilda absentmindedly picks the pipe and candle up and chars the rest of its contents, holding the smoke in her lungs for as long as she can until her head goes light and her vision falters. She feels better when she lets herself breathe out, slouching back against the pillar, but her fuzzy mind's still swimming with regret, with disappointment.
For some reason, Hilda can’t stop herself from confessing to him: "... I know I keep repeating myself, but, like… I always prided myself on not losing it. Like it was this huge accomplishment just to be able to say 'no' whenever any greasy highborn dipshit would ask. I… I kind of thought of it like a bartering chip." Claude squints at her, so she explains, "Like, if I ever really needed something— a treaty or a really rich husband or if I ever got thrown in jail or whatever— I could just, bam, trade my virginity in for it like a token." She sets the pipe behind them to her left with its box. "When I'm dead, it's worthless."
Claude now has this disgusted look on his face. Hilda groans; "Judge me all you want, but you and I both know that the only real power a woman has in this world—”
"Hilda, that's a terrible way to think," he says in a grave tone. "You're talking about yourself like you're a commodity or something. You're a human being — don't you respect yourself at all?”
She rolls her eyes. "If I get lectured about self-respect one more time, I swear—”
"No, no, look, I'm not judging you," he clarifies, "You can do whatever you want, everybody's entitled to that. The problem is that you're disregarding what you want in favor of what you think you should want, or what others want from you. You have so much greater worth to offer this world." Hilda blinks, and Claude goes on. "And yeah, the whole world is totally biased towards men, which is obviously shitty, but do you seriously think sexuality is the only power a woman can wield? That's insane! You've literally killed people with an axe!”
He sounds reverential on that last note. Hilda's head is spinning. She suddenly feels quite hot in the ears, feels quite stupid for boiling down her self-worth to whether she’s been fucked or not. She has no idea what to say.
"... Will you be dying a virgin tomorrow, too?” she asks, which is probably the dumbest question she could've possibly asked. He’s probably gonna start telling her about his beautiful escapades over the past five years with some beautiful strangers a million times better than her in every way, and she’ll have to sit there listening intently as if her heart wasn’t splintering to bits at the thought of him with someone else.
Luckily, the question's dumb enough to get him to breathe a laugh through his nose. "Unless fate has something strange in store for me in the next six hours, yeah." Hilda's eyes go wide, a victorious fanfare of trumpets suddenly sounding in her mind. But how? How is he a virgin? How is this— this perfect man, this intelligent, considerate, brawny, dignified man— "I don't really care as much, though. There were more important things I wanted to do." He stares down at his own feet, then squints at Hilda’s. Before she can get insecure at the thought of him noticing her ugly, clunky boots, she realizes for the first time just how tiny Claude’s shoes are. In a concerned tone he goes, “Wait, Hilda, do you have bigger feet than me?”
"Y— don’t change the subject! You don't care?”
"Well, sure I care. The fact that I've never had the chance to experience that sort of closeness with anyone frankly makes me feel like I've been ripped off. In the end, though, I always just thought that there were more pressing matters than sticking my cock somewhere."
Her ears get hot. She's never heard him be so blunt in any context besides epic ballads about unsuccessful interspecies relationships. "... Somewhere?" she snickers.
His eyes widen; he fixes his messy hair. "That was crass, I'm sorry. I think I may be high."
"Claude, how are you a virgin?" she asks, to which he has no reaction at all. “You're a super handsome, crest-bearing, smooth-talking, well-off eligible bachelor…" He then starts to bunch the quilt up in his hands, and she notices in the candlelight that he’s quite red in the face. It gives her an odd sense of satisfaction to be the one to overwhelm the flippant Leader of the Alliance like this. "Huh," she notes when she finally puts the pieces together in her head and realizes, "I don't think I've ever seen you actually flirt with someone before. You only do it as a joke."
He's quick to confess, "That's my greatest weakness. Can't talk to women for the life of me. Never could. I just, I always get all stupid and blathery and weird."
Hilda chuckles. "I dunno if you know this, but it seems like you're talking with a woman right now,” which makes his hands bunch up even more. "What, do you see me as one of the boys or something?”
"No, no way," he clarifies out of fear that she's actually offended. "Not women, per say, just… anyone who’s ever been... outwardly… interested in me.” Does he not know how interested she is? "Plus, you're— Hilda, I trust you with my life. Of course I can talk with you. You're one of the only people alive who… who doesn't think I'm something I'm not." There are unusually long pauses between each thought. He must be as gone as she is. “You look at me and you don’t see a madman, or an outsider, or some glorious hero or something. I don't— let me tell you something."
"Go ahead."
"I don't like Byleth."
Hilda snorts. "Go on."
"I'm serious. I don't. I pretend I like and trust them because it's useful to act like we're friends. I didn't like them as a professor and I don't like them now. They freak me out. They've got the eyes of a corpse.”
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I'm saying it 'cause they're the only person who thinks they really know me. But they don't. It's you. Only you do." Her heart flutters and double-jumps. "Hilda, when you look at me… it feels like you really see me. Like, the actual me. I don’t let anyone see that except you.”
With those lovely words as the final straw, the most moronic idea of all dawns on Hilda. If she manages to pull it off… Well, it’d solve all their problems in one fell swoop, wouldn’t it? Time to put years of study to the ultimate test.
She takes her ponytail and pulls it over her shoulder to look down at it sweetly, running her hands through the soft pinkness to calm her nerves. She’d just bathed and washed her hair earlier this evening, so the timing couldn’t be better. "... You've heard the phrase, 'fake it till you make it,' right?”
"Hillie, I invented 'fake it till you make it.'" He's never called her that before.
"That’s your ticket in,” she claims. “If you’re only good at fake-flirting, then just keep at it.”
“Until I make it… where, exactly?”
“Into the bed of your future wife,” she says with a goofy smile, which makes him go even redder as he holds in laughter and gives her a look that clearly signifies that she’s insane. “Charm her into oblivion. Say stuff like,” she clears her throat, places a hand on his thigh and goes into her best baritone: “Hey, baby. Ever ridden a wyvern before?”
Claude is obviously trying his damndest not to laugh out loud. “Yeah?” he manages, his voice so strained and high-pitched that Hilda has to try not to lose her shit alongside him. “You think that’s the way to go?”
“Totally, totally. Here, pretend I’m a girl.”
He chokes on a laugh, biting his knuckle for a moment. ”Sure, I'll pretend. ”
“You dumbass, I just mean— look,” she takes his hand from his mouth and guides it to her own thigh. The situation’s been escalated, but it can still get played off like a joke if things go awry. “Try the line on me.”
“... What do I say after?”
“Just, like… try to start a conversation?”
“How in hell do I start a conversation from that?” He’s obviously making this hard for her on purpose, still a giddy spark in his eye even when he’s so clearly about to lose his mind.
“Stop being difficult! Just, like, give compliments or something! Aren't you supposed to be good at thinking on your feet?”
“Okay, okay, okay— lemme get into character.” With his free hand he combs his hair back again, a few strands disobeying and falling back into his face. Then, like an actor, he pinches his fingers together and lowers them while blowing out a breath. All of the sudden, he puts on a smouldering expression that takes the air out of her lungs. “Hey, baby,” he says all low and slow and breathy, his eyes intense like a roguish-yet-sensitive knight in a romance novel. His hand nears her knee, then slightly, slightly brushes back up her thigh. She shivers. “You ever, uh…” he sharply raises an eyebrow as he flashes a perfectly charming smile and asks, “ridden a wyvern before?”
Hilda can suddenly feel her own pulse in her eardrums. No one, no one has ever used such a shitty line that well. Is he even acting? She can’t tell for shit anymore, her brain’s too scrambled. Fuck, she must be staring at him like an idiot right now. Fuck! “Why, yes, I have,” she replies with a nervous giggle, because she has, in fact, ridden a wyvern.
And just like that, any trace of confidence leaves Claude’s face. This is when Hilda realizes that seduction is another one of the very few places where his wit truly does fail him; without any prewritten lines to recite, he’s a fish out of water. It makes her heart ache with endearment, with longing. His fingertips start idly drumming on her thigh in a very non-sensual way. “... Cool,” he replies just as nervous, and then they’re just looking at each other for a long moment. He kisses his teeth and inhales through them with a hissing noise, his lips then pursing shut into that flat smile he'd done earlier. “I... like your eyes," he decides to say.
“Thanks. They’re pink.”
“Yyyup.” Then his eyes flit down to her lips, her neck, her collarbone, lower, lower still. Then to her thigh, where his hand goes still. "I like your dress, too," he notes, swallowing; she intently watches the lump in his throat bob as he does. “It’s, ah. Also pink.”
"Are you even slightly aware of how gorgeous you are?" she asks softly, genuinely curious. Right as she asks it, she leans in a bit closer to hold his chin, to run her thumb back and forth against the coarse black hair there. Judging from the way he flinches and pulls his hand off her leg as if her skin had burned him, going crimson, parting his lips wordlessly, she thinks she's found her answer. "Because you are," she tells him very quietly, close enough to feel his shaky breath puff out against her. "You’re gorgeous."
With that, she puts her palm flat on the cold pillar behind him and leans in even closer to kiss beneath his ear. His breath hitches— his hands clasp tightly around her waist like before, making sure she stays as near to him as she is. When she throws a leg over his lap to straddle him, he lets out a noise unlike any she's never heard from him, startled and very vulnerable as his hands slide ever-so-slightly down to her hips, where he grabs onto like he’ll die if he doesn’t. She bites his earring gently, sliding her tongue through the hoop for a split second, to which he exhales all shaky and starts to pull down on her hips, grip tightening, shivering with relief. He kisses her collarbone softly, passionately, then does the same to her neck. Then he rolls his hips up sharp and breathes out something cute like, "Hildhhhhh.. ."
As she scrapes her teeth against his ear and makes him wheeze, she rubs his jaw with her thumb some more, a very gentle and affectionate gesture. "Should we?” she makes sure to ask to ensure his full willingness, though she can already feel his obvious hard-on beneath her, his body giving him away completely. She knows he wants to fuck her. Claude wants to fuck her! That’s one of the only things she’s ever wanted! She has to swallow hard when she thinks about what might happen if he answers either way. She's salivating, a bit taken aback by how turned on she is. Claude's always driven her mad like this, slender and handsome as a kid, broad and sexy as all hell now that he’s matured— why the hell has it taken her all this time to ask him for this?
Claude, thank the heavens, nods very enthusiastically with a raspy, "Yeah, yes," before ravenously pressing his face to her chest and kissing her there— to her surprise, his hands leave her hips to eagerly tug both straps of her nightgown down each respective shoulder, exposing her bare breasts. He gasps at the sight as if he wasn't expecting that to happen; maybe his mind is as fuzzy as hers is and he's genuinely surprised. "You are," he looks her in the eyes, the sweat on his brow glints in the candlelight, and he says, "Hilda, you're utterly magnificent," he caresses her breasts with his warm calloused hands, staring at her like he’s trying to commit all it all to memory— he presses his mouth to her nipple, pert from the cold; he kisses her, licks and sucks and bites at her like he’d been holding himself back from doing so this whole time, his breath hotter than it'd felt on her neck. "Inside and out," he adds breathlessly, "all the way through."
"So I've been told,” she replies, amazed at her ability to play it cool despite how hot this is all getting her, how exciting it is to be fondled like this by a man as handsome and masculine as him. His hands feel huge. Her nimble fingers move to quickly unbutton his shirt, and she finally kisses his lips as she untucks each side of it from his waistband and pulls it open wide, finally getting to properly run her hands over that big barrel-chest of his, groping his firm pectorals, running her fingertips in circles through the surprisingly fine hair he has there, darker and much softer than his coarse beard. He responds by throwing his arms around her and clumsily reciprocating the kiss, holding her tight in an embrace again. His lips are warm and plush and his tongue slips against hers with insistence, with desperation. She can easily tell he hasn't kissed anyone in a long time— months, maybe even years. He obviously wasn't kidding about having better things to do. Her chest seems to suffocate him when she shifts forward and sits up too high, but he seems to enjoy it, relish in it, even, which turns her on like crazy. His hips buck up all rhythmic and needy, sending a sharp and familiar spark through her core, through her entire body.
That spark is all she needs to grip his shoulders and start rutting herself against him, kissing him once more as the friction takes over and she finally, finally starts to get some relief. Claude breaks it when he stutters out a harsh, "Ohh fuck—” and raises his hand to bite down hard on his knuckle and cut himself off as soon as he hears how the curse echoes back to him through the cathedral. His hand lowers from his mouth to her hip after, running up and down a small range between her waist and her ass. "H-how have you never done this?” he asks, closely studying the way she moves atop him, quite obviously impressed.
Hilda chews her lip and swivels her hips back and forth as she thinks of what to tell him. "All I… All I said was that I'm technically a virgin. Everybody's fooled around a bit, right?” For an instant she thinks of the brief fling between her and Raphael; 'fling' is a very appropriate word because he would always forget how light she was and accidentally launch her into the air when he tried to pick her up. He only dropped her once, though, apologizing profusely afterwards.
Claude gives her an odd look, though he doesn't stop grinding against her for a second. "Not everybody,” he huffs, clearly embarrassed, to which the only response she can think of is to shift back in his lap so she can unbuckle his belt and give him what no one else ever has. The thought alone of being each others' firsts makes her heart pound all frantic, churning the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy. For some reason it shocks him when she takes his belt off, makes his breath catch and his legs stiffen up, like it's somehow so different from doing anything through fabric. Maybe it's just the principle of the thing. By the time she's unbuttoning his pants he’s got a hand trailing up the outside of her bare thigh, slowly pulling up her nightgown. The other starts to fidget with the tied ribbon keeping her ponytail in place until it comes undone, letting her hair fall down soft around her shoulders. "... Hild…" he trails off, staring down, shutting his mouth and watching her hand intently as it wraps around his cock. That’s when his eyes shut. “... dahh, gods… ”
It's big. It’s all hot and fat and perfectly big. He's as long as the distance between the very base of her palm and the very tip of her middle finger. He's nearly as thick as her wrist. "Oh, wow..." she mutters at how weighty it feels in her palm, stroking gently and trying to guess whether it'll hurt to fit or not; she shudders all excited at the thought. Claude's thick black lashes flutter, clasping a hand over his mouth, breathing out a shaky sigh. She's too classy to spit on her hand and too lazy to use her mouth on him, so she decides to let go, shift closer to him and press her bare sex against him instead, drawing a startled groan from his throat as his hand latches harder on his face. It's incredibly endearing.
"Aw, c'mon, don't be coy,” she says sweetly as she takes his hand from his jaw and holds it gently in her own when it goes limp; when she starts to rock her hips against him, he interlocks their fingers and kisses her roughly, passionately. "That's it," she whispers as she leans her head back and puts her whole body into the back-and-forth motion, entranced by just how good it feels when she rubs herself against his thick cock like that, how wet she is, how slickly they move against one another. He bites her collarbone and licks her neck, now emboldened enough to slide a hand up her dress, knead her thigh, then grab a handful of her ass and start guiding her pace, sighing at its softness. Her chest presses hotly into his. "That's it, there y'go..." His hands are so hot, so sturdy and calloused from archery, so different from her own… It’s all too much. Hilda can’t take it any longer.
That’s when she loses her patience and decides to stop. Claude's in the middle of huffing her name like a prayer when she suddenly picks herself up, takes him in her hand again and drops down till he's fully, completely inside her. She's so impossibly turned on that it happens with practically no effort, no pain, just plain gravity followed by a very new stretched-out sensation that makes her gasp a sudden, "Oh!! ”
Claude full-on moans, eyes wide as saucers, frantically pulling up her nightgown to see where they join, his hand leaving hers to hold her stomach, to claw at her sides. “Hilda, Hilda, holy f— oh, Hilda, good gods…!" his voice cracks high like earlier for an instant, chest heaving, toned stomach shifting. When she shifts, the slick, obscene noise echoes through the hallowed halls of the church just as much as his desperate voice, and her face feels hot enough to cook on. She briefly wonders if there's anything stronger than excommunication.
It's not exactly what she'd expected; the pressure and fullness is odd and sort of cumbersome, especially uncomfortable when she takes all of him at once. However, when she starts to move her hips back and forth like before, his hot skin rubs against her clit in an extremely satisfying way, prompting her to swivel back and forth again and again on top of him. She huffs, puts her hands on his biceps for leverage— oh, hot damn, his loose clothes have never done him justice, he’s ripped! — and starts to pick herself up and lower herself back down how the heroines do in the books she hides under her bed.
This is when Claude fully unravels, breathing out all harsh and shocked, grabbing her ass with both hands and guiding her into the motion again and again until she's used to it enough to pick up speed. "Yes," he whispers, "Please— ahh just like that, just like that, just like that…" he repeats himself until his words devolve into nonsense and shallow breaths and hisses, kissing her again and again until he grows clumsy and clacks their teeth together and tongues the corner of her lip, the side of her cheek. At some point when she breaks a sweat and her hair starts falling into her face, it sounds like he's whispering another language, breathing her name between familiar sounds. It's here that she understands that the combination of intimacy and power is the real appeal of it, how it seems like he's adoring her and worshiping her at the same time.
Hold on— is he speaking Almyran? No, no way, he couldn't be. That wouldn't make any sense. They're both high. She’s simply making him feel so good that he’s going insane, and Hilda's drugged-up brain is tricking her into recognizing his sweet nonsense as the few frivolous Almyran phrases she knows, words Holst taught her like perfect and love and dearest… Oh, his voice is so gorgeous that none of it matters. She abandons the thought. All Hilda wants in this moment is to make him feel better than anything else ever has.
But it only takes a couple minutes before she's completely exhausted— out of nowhere she finds she’s disgusting and sweaty and her hair keeps getting in their mouths when they kiss. "D'you," Claude huffs a laugh after spitting out another pink lock, briefly moving his hand up to cup her breast, "Sorry, do you wanna put your hair back up? I… think the string's…” There's no way he can remember, his mind far too occupied.
Hilda puts her foot down, pulling herself up, all the way off him to lay down on the quilt in front of him. She shudders at the sudden emptiness and breathes, “I wanna lay down,” turning onto her stomach and pulling her nightgown up to her midriff to give him a good look at her pretty pink cunt, near dripping with arousal. Then she folds her arms in front of her, props her knees up and sets her head down comfortably on its side to see his slackjawed expression. "You do the work."
He takes a second just to catch his breath and stare, his wet cock jutting out of his pants in a very undignified manner. He shrugs his unbuttoned shirt off, then manages a low, "Ah, sure, no problem," like he always does when she asks for a favor, shakily pushing himself upright on his knees, getting behind her to stare some more. Curiously, he presses a wide finger in and out of her a few times, which feels… better, for some reason. No one's ever touched her from behind like that.
"Can I, um." Claude shakily asks, "Can I put my mouth…?"
When she realizes what he's asking, Hilda snorts. How chivalrous. "Sure, but I won't let you kiss me after."
"Ah," he sounds disappointed, deciding that it's too poor of a trade-off. Then he leans over her, embraces her and pulls her up like she weighs nothing so that his torso's flush against her back, enveloped by the heat of his skin, impressed by how much more body mass he has than her. She's now on her hands and knees, which is still sufficiently comfortable. He takes his cock in his hand and presses the tip against her for just a second before shoving in with his hips and holy mother of hell.
Hilda lets out the stupidest groan as he picks right up to the fast pace they had before, probably something like, "Gahuhhh," but she forgets to be embarrassed because shit it feels so much better like this— it's at this delightful angle where something gets stirred up in her that she's barely ever been able to reach with her own fingers, something that makes her knees go weak and her hands clutch at the quilt like before. "Oh, Claude—" he kisses her neck and bites it, sucking hard, probably leaving a bruise she'll have to cover with makeup— then he gets a hand on her hipbone and fucks her, really fucks her, thrusting in and out with more effort than she'd ever put into anything in her life, gasping his hot breath against the shell of her ear— "Oh, Claude! Claude!”
They both forget to be embarrassed by the awful way the acoustics pick up how their skin hits together, lost in an utterly insane amount of mutual pleasure. Hilda pounds the marble floor with her fist; Claude gropes at her wildly, fondling all over her body until it feels like his strong hands are everywhere at once. She jerkily pushes her hips back against him in time with his movements, and he practically sobs these little sounds into her skin, profanity, prayers, gibberish, her name. Then, impossibly, his breath hitches and he speeds up, intensifying the sensation to euphoria, getting her closer to belief in a higher power than she'd ever been before, her toes curling, her thighs going tense and rigid and she spreads her legs wider behind her. When his teeth sink into her neck again, she can't help herself from hissing out, "You’re fantastic!” desperate to praise and encourage him, "it's so good— you're so good—"
"Hilda, Hilda, oh, Hilda, fuck, ohh gods I, I can't—" he's choking, sputtering, clinging onto her, "I can't—!”
Then he groans lowly, his voice strained. He pushes into her hard, slow, deliberate, his body draped over hers. She feels him tremble against her back, holding her so hard it takes her breath away, makes her feel like he'll crack her ribcage in a good way. The sensation of him flooding her, filling her better than she could've dreamed— it's so satisfying and right that she feels like she's caught flame. He whimpers after, a vulnerable little noise that makes her heart ache. He has her crane her neck to kiss him deeply; none of her hair gets in the way this time. Then he pulls out and hits the marble floor next to her like a ton of bricks, gasping for breath.
Hilda lays like that for a second trying to process the flood of emotions she's just experienced. Then she feels the experience threaten to drip out of her, and she embarrassedly flips over onto her back and pulls her nightgown back into order. They both just lie there staring at the moon through— you guessed it— the giant ceiling-hole.
"That was…" Hilda breathes, "nice." She didn't get off, but she got damn close, her body simultaneously buzzing with excitement and sluggish with exhaustion.
"Mm-hm," Claude hums, clearly only half-conscious, chest rising and falling harshly as his eyes shut and his lashes flutter. She stares at how his perfect form glimmers with sweat in the orange light, thinks about how she'd given him pleasure that intense; she makes a mental note to touch herself to the memory as soon as she gets back to her dorm. He lazily shoves himself back into his pants, buttoning the fly wrong.
Then he opens his eyes and looks back at the night sky, patting around behind him for his shirt. "I'm, like… fully in love with you at this point." He tells it to her like it's a terminal disease.
She isn't offended; Claude's a weird guy when it comes to feelings. "Isn't that a good thing?"
"Well," he sighs, "since you love me too, it just makes things complicated." His bluntness is nearly comical. She's glad he knows and won't make her say it. "Like… if one of us dies tomorrow, and the other doesn't…" he blows out another breath. "That’d be… rough, I think."
"Hey, I won't die if you won't die," she says, finally looking him in the eyes; his are all shiny and vulnerable and scared, which she's never seen. Like deer eyes. How perfect. When he snickers skeptically, she holds out her pinky. "I promise."
"Whatever you say," he replies warmly as he interlinks his to hers. He holds her hand after, and they cuddle together like that for a few silent moments in the ruined cathedral.
Them he breaks it when he asks, "Hey, Hilda?”
"Yeah?”
"What'd you mean when you said you're technically a virgin?”
She turns to look at him. It looks like he's sincerely asking. "Huh?”
"Like, you said you've fooled around before," he elaborates. Somehow, he's still slightly out of breath. "Define 'fooling around'."
Well, alright. "Y'know,” she coughs, suddenly feeling awkward. "Making out, heavy petting… hand stuff, mouth stuff…"
"Ohhh, okay," he nods understandingly as if he'd been worrying about it all this time. Hilda stifles a laugh and squints at him.
"Y— what did you think it meant?”
"... Can I be honest?”
"Of course."
"You ever hear of Saint Cethleann's Loophole?”
When she realizes he's serious, Hilda loses her shit laughing. "Oh, fuck no! I'd never do that! Shit, Claude, you actually thought—”
"I dunno, I dunno, I was overthinking it! I'm sorry!” he laughs, embracing her again and giving her a sweet kiss on her sweaty forehead. "I have fooled around before, then, by your definition."
"Oh, really?” She combs his messy hair back through her fingers, and it still ends up just as messy.
"Yeah. I…" he cranes his neck up to point at the pulpit near the front door to the right. "Me and Dorothea always used to make out over there during lectures."
The moment he says it, Hilda wheezes so hard that she feels the presence of a higher power for the first time in her twenty-three years. She’s not sure what it is, but it certainly isn't Seiros.