While the two just down the hall began to unravel feelings and desires they'd been bottling up with each other, the group in the royal suite had a pretty solid idea of where just about everyone else was after a few minutes of piecing everything together. Once they knew that no one was in horrible danger and there wasn't anything super fishy going on beyond a shock power outage, the mood in the suite began to change to a less intense one, to the point that everyone aside from the king and queen ended up sitting on the floor for a gossip-like session. "Talking about Fódlan politics gets so old after a while," Mercedes said with a toss of her hair over her shoulder, her having let it loose from its pinned-up style as soon as no one could see her do it. "I think we should talk about places outside of our borders for a change."
"But where, exactly, do you think we hear things about often enough to have opinions on them?" Hilda asked, annoyed at the suggestion. "I'll tell you that outside of Fódlan, the only place I hear about constantly is Almyra, and do you really think I want to waste my breath talking about that place? It's got nothing going on!"
Sylvain snorted, him leaning forward and reaching toward a kneecap he could just barely make out in the incredibly dim light they had there in the darkened room, listening as Hilda screamed for him to not touch her like that. "Sorry, sorry, couldn't control myself when it came to getting you to shut your trap. Did you forget that we're currently locked in a room with real royalty who probably hear all the news from overseas every day? Wouldn't you like to hear some of the wild stories they can tell?"
"Oh, we're just as clueless as all of you when it comes to social affairs outside of Fódlan's borders," Byleth assured him, from where she sat up on the bed above their group. "Most of what we know relates back to the political, sorry to say."
"But do you know any things about corrupt politicians, or perhaps dashing royals of other lands who live fairytale lives?" If they had been able to see Annette, it would have been obvious that she was enthralled with those possibilities with her hands laced in front of her face and her eyes wide with excitement. "That's the kind of stuff I want to hear about!"
Byleth gave a soft hmm as she thought about how to answer, before saying, "I suppose I know some things about both of those. Have you all heard about the royal family of the kingdom of Nohr? Despite their whole existence being inside a walled-off palace in a city surrounded by guards, news about their royal family is shared by means of border-crossers who enter the neighboring country of Hoshido looking for safety."
"I can't say that sounds familiar at all," Marianne mumbled, a sentiment shared by everyone else who dared to say anything. When she heard all the agreement, Marianne gasped, before whispering something under her breath that no one was able to catch.
Undeterred by the lack of knowledge, Byleth kept on going. "It's a faraway country, Nohr is, and somewhere that I can't say I have any interest in ever visiting, but their culture and royal family are so intriguing. The lives the princes and princesses must lead behind those walls, it's interesting to think about."
"It's a political minefield trying to act diplomatic with them," Dimitri grumbled, speaking up from his spot right next to his wife. "Worse than dealing with Edelgard here in Adrestia, tenfold at the minimum. They capture anyone who dares look at their king with the wrong expression, it's common for political prisoners to die long before salvation would come searching for them."
"That doesn't sound like the kind of place any of us want to go, with how bad this place already is." Defeat in her voice, Annette seemed slightly despondent at how her inquiry had gone somewhere dark, but she returned upbeat moments later. "What else do you have to tell us, I want to learn about all sorts of cool places!"
Once again Byleth made audible sounds to show her pondering the request. "I'm not overly familiar with too many places outside of Fódlan's borders, but I know of many lands that I would love to visit for diplomatic reasons, Nohr and Hoshido not being two of them. Say, Dimitri, how do you think we would fare in the land of…Plegia?"
He barked out a single laugh before shutting that idea down immediately. "No chance, I would never enter a country with such a corrupt and murderous man leading it. Ylisse and Ferox have both seemed to have come into good leadership, but their neighbors make them both sound as unappealing as your previous example."
"All of these foreign countries, and yet the furthest I've strayed from home is right here," Marianne said, her voice low so that no one would agree with her again. When she was met with silence, due to her speaking so softly, she tensed up and loudly followed with, "What about countries that you would visit for scenery, not politics? Surely there are natural areas that you would be interested in going to."
"As king, do you think I have the time to think about where would look good to visit, as opposed to where would give my kingdom more recognition in the world?" Dimitri seemed to turn his nose up at the idea, making Marianne feel very small for asking what she had, but he was quickly stopped from going any further by Byleth, who jumped in to assure her that they did think about beauty sometimes, but it wasn't something that came up often in diplomatic discussions.
Somewhere along the way in their conversation, talks turned from other countries and what they had to offer to things closer to home, gossiping like hens about the people they held dearest to their hearts. That was where Hilda found herself shining, wanting to drop everything she knew about Claude in the conversation because she knew she couldn't be held accountable for what she said. Why would they punish her and her alone when everyone was getting into the dirty details about others?
"He's probably so jealous of us all being in here together, given how lonely his life is," she said with a gleeful smile. "His only real friend is Lorenz, and even then, can you really be happy about that sort of thing? He's totally wishing that he had someone, anyone, to keep his lonely heart company tonight."
Little did she know that just down the hall, he was having quite the bonding moment with someone else whose lonely heart had kept her away from others for so long, but that wasn't something Hilda was meant to know. "You know who else could use some company?" Sylvain suggested, waggling his eyebrows as he spoke. "That's right, you're all blessed to be in my presence tonight, and I plan to make good use of it. Why, don't sound so shocked, I know that you're all—"
"And that's why Sylvain will be sleeping in the bathtub tonight," Byleth interrupted, causing Sylvain to gape like a fish out of water at the comment. "Have to make sure that he's as far away from you lovely ladies as we can, don't need his mitts getting all over you."
"I'll have you know, I take a lot of offense to that." A pause, before: "I don't have mitts, I have rugged and handsome hands."
"Because there's so much of a difference between the two," Mercedes dryly said, covering her mouth to stifle her laughter. "If it's any help, though, I can sleep in the same general area as him, to make sure he doesn't try anything with anyone. We can't exactly bar everyone from getting into the bathroom tonight, after all."
"How honorable, deciding to take one for the team in such a way." Dimitri gave a rather loud yawn, before audibly standing up. "I'm fine with whatever you decide, but for now I feel it's best that I turn in. We have quite the day ahead of us, provided that we actually have our meeting with the emperor as agreed on."
Those words hung in the air, as no one was certain if that meeting would be happening or not, especially with the suddenness in the power outage and the mystery surrounding it. "I'll be right behind you," Byleth told him before standing up for herself while her husband headed back into the other bedroom of the suite. "All of you, please use your logical brains when deciding what to do tonight, I'm not being held responsible for any poor choices you choose to make. That goes doubly for you two from Leicester, if anything happens to you because of our people I know there'll be trouble."
"Hearing you loud and clear on that one," Hilda announced, while Marianne buried her face in her hands, knowing they'd survived one night trapped with Sylvain so a second with others around wasn't going to be hard at all. "Now go on to bed, I'm sure you lovebirds have all sorts of plans to get up to while the lights are out."
"That's not…really something you should be saying to a queen," Annette said meekly, almost in shock at what she'd heard Hilda just say, but there didn't seem to be a reaction so nothing further was brought up.
Without royal guidance in the conversation, things got straight to the dirty gossip about everyone they knew, but no matter how raunchy things got within their group, no one had any idea how heated things were getting elsewhere. In fact, the one thing they were all insistent on was that neither Ingrid nor Claude were up to anything outside of where they were supposed to be that night—never once suspecting that perhaps they were together when they shouldn't have been.
Morning came with the problem of power having been restored to the hotel at some point overnight, meaning that doors were able to be unlocked and people could go on with their business as if nothing had happened the night before. That made convening at the central meeting spot easy for some of them, such as those staying at other hotels or the ones who'd been locked in their own rooms. The group in the royal suite, who'd ended up all piling in the extra bed (minus Sylvain on the floor with just a pillow and sheet to make himself comfortable with), headed down together and got to socialize with the others they'd been separated from overnight. Lysithea was, once again, rolling up to the hotel as soon as curfew lifted and was seen going up to her room with exhaustion written all over her face, not wanting to field any questions whatsoever.
It seemed that, after a while, the only people missing were Claude and Ingrid, both unusual suspects to be late to the meeting. That was how Leonie was sent up to Claude's room to retrieve him, while the Faerghus bunch decided to call Ingrid's phone to see if they could figure out why she was running late. That was also how the unfortunate situation of Leonie banging on the door right as a phone that shouldn't have been in the room started ringing, leaving the just-awoken pair to realize the gravity of the situation they'd put themselves in.
"I have to take that," Ingrid said in time with Claude's reaction of, "I need to see who's here," and they both looked at each other in surprise at hearing what they'd just heard. He got up first, promptly realized he was missing something rather important for answering the door and scrambled to locate his pants, while she grabbed her phone and pulled herself under the covers, answering the phone in a whispered voice.
Once he'd slid his pants on and didn't look like he'd just gotten up from having the night of his life, Claude went to the door and opened it, finding Leonie on the other side. "We're all downstairs waiting for you," she told him, without any hesitation or waiting for him to greet her. "Come on, lazybones, being fashionably late isn't fashionable right now, they really seem to be waiting for you."
"Who's 'they'?" he asked, almost dreading hearing the answer. "Don't tell me that—"
"The royal couple have something they want to speak to you about," she replied before he'd made that very guess. "I don't know what it is, but Dimitri came down in a bad mood and you not being there has only made it worse."
"Tell them I'll be down in twenty, I just woke up and need to shower before I show my face around there." He flashed a smile at Leonie and she laughed, taking that excuse as legitimate and going on her way. The second he'd closed the door he could hear Ingrid scream from under the covers and he realized that he'd have to deal with that particular part of the situation right away, before he could shower.
Perhaps he should've told Leonie he needed a bit more time than he had. "I can't believe I let you sleep with me," Ingrid lamented under the sheets, completely covered so that Claude could only see a person-shaped outline, rather than any identifying features. "What was I thinking? I shouldn't have let you get anywhere near as far as I did, but I went and did it!"
"If it's any consolation, the chances of this happening again are slim to none, it's just a one-and-done sort of thing and we can keep it that way." Trying to juggle a secret romance with everything else in his life would have been too much; letting Ingrid stay as a one-night stand sort of deal just felt right in his mind at the moment. "Plus, the chances of this having any lasting consequences are just about zero so you don't need to worry your pretty little head about any of that."
"I'm worried about what everyone's going to think when they learn we did this," she stated matter-of-factly, almost like she expected that to be the obvious problem Claude would have noticed. "It's not exactly going to be easy for me to get out of this room and down with everyone else without someone realizing I didn't come from the shuttle stop."
"No one's going to care, you're taking it way too seriously. What's a little white lying going to do to your reputation?" Claude waited for her to give an answer, and when she didn't he decided that he was finished with the conversation. "I'm showering, getting dressed, and going down there, maybe us going separately will save you a little of that shame you think you're going to be getting from this."
That was exactly what he did, made easier by the fact that Ingrid didn't seem to want to move from under the covers while he was still in the room. Even while he was showering he didn't hear her moving around and so when he came out in just a towel to retrieve his clean clothes for the day he saw the same person-shaped lump in the bed, the only sign that she was awake under there being the sound of tapping on her phone. He did consider trying to talk to her to convince her everything would be fine but he felt the words he would have to offer had already been said, and so he finished getting ready and headed out for his day.
The boardroom was buzzing with activity when he got down to it, everyone thankful to see him enter in such pristine condition. "Now that you're here, we can get these discussions started," Dimitri said in a commanding manner, to catch everyone's attention no matter what they were doing. "Today's plans seem to have not changed, and that means that we will be leaving here soon to meet with Edelgard and whoever she chooses to bring with her, which is…where things grow complicated, I'm afraid." He closed his one eye, taking in a deep breath and exhaling it slowly as he reached pointedly for Byleth's hand, her offering it without any hesitance. "We approached this whole trip with the idea that we would meet diplomatically, to try and mend wounds between Adrestia and Faerghus, but rumor has it that she has other plans."
"Sounds about right, can't ever trust a rat," Sylvain muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear him saying something, several people gasping at the comment. "Look, I'm willing to lay down my life for you, Dimitri, and I'm sure others here are too, but—"
"I most certainly am not going to walk blindly into a trap of her choosing for this boar," Felix interrupted, cutting his friend off first by slamming his hand down on the table in front of them. "I will guard him to the point of death, but I refuse to die for him when none of this was ever necessary in the first place."
"—no one said I was talking about you." Looking around the room for the person he was indeed talking about, Sylvain seemed a bit disheartened when he didn't see them. "I'm just saying, we can handle this if it becomes a bloodbath."
Dimitri's eye reopened and he looked at Sylvain with a nod. "I appreciate your concern and your willingness to die for your country and your king, but that wasn't exactly what I was referring to there. It seems that she intends on bringing an unexpected guest of her own to try and promote her own agenda, and we need to have a weapon of similar importance in our own arsenal if that does happen."
Without needing to be told what that meant, Claude could feel the weight of Dimitri's words hanging on his shoulders, knowing that he'd be asked to be that weapon if it was truly needed. "So what are you planning on doing, just in case that's true?" Leonie asked, cracking her knuckles in front of her face before resting her chin on them. "I'm totally down for playing backup to your men for this if you need me to."
"We have a plan drafted," Byleth answered, giving Dimitri a kind look to let him know she had that handled. "Your offer will be kept in mind in case the people we've planned for decide that they're not willing to fill the roles, though, and we truly appreciate it."
The next few minutes were spent with people calling out their own offers of support and assistance and Byleth having to calmly react to them in the same way every single time, all while Claude stood by the door wishing he could slip out before anything was said about him. He found reprieve when Ingrid finally came in, looking like she'd had a rough night but fully dressed and seemingly ready for the day. "What did I miss?" she called out, hoping someone would give her a quick rundown of the events.
What she got instead was Sylvain giving her a thumbs-up and a nod toward Byleth, while the queen herself locked eyes on Ingrid without missing a beat. "Just who I have been hoping to see, I hope you slept well because we have quite the task for you today." Words that Ingrid had resigned herself to never getting to hear, but she'd always imagined that it would be Dimitri telling them to her, not Byleth.
"W-what is it?" she asked, feeling almost out of breath at the prospect of being given a role she'd so desperately craved for so long. "What can I do to help?"
"We need to clear the room first." Clearing her throat, Byleth called out that everyone needed to leave for the upper floor—everyone except Sylvain, Felix, Claude, and Ingrid. While that was still what Ingrid had dreamed of getting to experience, it was the exact opposite sort of feeling for Claude, as he knew why he was being asked to stay and didn't want to have to put up with it. Once everyone else was gone, the queen sat herself down and allowed for Dimitri to take the floor.
He looked at the four still there and saw that two of them had sour faces, one of which was understandable based on previous comments and the other was out of sheer disdain for what he knew was going to be asked of him. "Felix, if you don't want to handle the role of protecting my life, then so be it," he said sharply, pointing a dismissive finger toward the door. "You are welcome to leave, but do know that this could very well be the end of our professional relationship."
"I'll stay," Felix spat, "but if it looks like we're going to die, I'm not letting myself end up being a casualty in a new version of this dumb, never-ending war."
"If Edelgard knows what's good for her, she won't escalate this to blows, but she has decided that she would be allowed to invite royalty to join her." To one person in the room, this came as no surprise, but to the rest it was rather shocking. "Princess Petra of Brigid is here in Enbarr at the same time as us, presumably to be invited to the diplomacy talks despite Faerghus having little to do with her country's situation."
"So what are you going to do about that? It's not like you've got bonus royalty here with you," Sylvain remarked, unaware that what he'd said was far from the truth. "You going to dress Ingrid up as a secret sister of yours and bring her along?"
"Hey, I should be allowed to come of my own merits!" Ingrid insisted, huffing at how that was Sylvain's method for getting her involved. "I'm a perfectly competent and experienced guard, I can hold my own when the situation is tough."
"No, Ingrid will be coming along as my personal guard for this meeting, just in case we need more hands-on guarding to happen than what I expect Mercedes and Annette to provide for me." Byleth gave Ingrid a small smile, one that calmed the woman down immediately and gave her something to be thankful for. "I couldn't imagine asking anyone else to do this, honestly. It just seems right."
"I'll accept this opportunity and take it as seriously as I can."
Claude visibly grimaced as he watched Ingrid's spirits soaring next to him, knowing that was was inevitably about to happen would send her crashing right back down to the ground. "And I assume you want me over either of these knuckleheads you usually use?" he asked Dimitri hesitantly, not wanting to be responsible for causing the answer he dreaded hearing, but also not wanting to wait any longer to hear it. "I promise you, as the leader of my own security group, I do have my fair share of skills in my arsenal to rely on."
"As if I would demand such a thing from you. Sylvain will be my personal guard inside the room, and you shall be stationed outside with Felix, ready to—"
"I'm either in the room, or I'm not going. Take it or leave it." Delaying the inevitable just a bit longer, Felix sounded serious in his demand and he was met with a stern stare followed by another motion toward the door. "Then you're choosing to leave it, I see how it is. You have fun finding someone else who'll sit around idly with this guy while the rest of you get to face certain death, I'm not the one for the job."
"—I'll handle him another time," Dimitri continued as Felix finally stormed out of the room, clear annoyance painted across his face. "What I was saying was that you two would be outside, ready to enter as another party in the diplomatic discussion, but now you'll need to find someone to be your guard for the occasion."
Blinking in confusion as she'd just watched one of her close friends leave without little reason to do so, Ingrid slowly turned to look at Claude, gears in her mind starting to turn. "What does he mean by that?" she asked, in a soft voice only he could hear. "Why is he acting like you have a place in the conversation they'll be having?"
"Surely you can use someone else as your backup," Claude said, speaking right over Ingrid as if he was trying to ignore what she was asking him. "I told you the day I got here, I left all…those things behind when I came to Fódlan, it just isn't who I am. You can't use who I used to be to your advantage here."
"But she'll have a princess on her side."
"And you'll have your queen. You're on an even playing field here."
Grabbing Claude's arm, Ingrid gave it a solid pair of tugs, looking for him to stop his back-and-forth with Dimitri to get the answers she was looking for. "What are you two going on about?" she begged. "Please, Claude, tell me what's going on!"
"Wait, why are you so interested in hearing it from him?" Sylvain remarked, having noticed how hands-on his friend was getting with the only person in the room that hadn't come from Faerghus to start the trip. "The two of you haven't ever spent time together, why is it suddenly him you need answers from?"
"Stay out of it, Sylvain." With a sharp voice, Byleth silenced him and got him to step back, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "Something tells me that the answer you seek isn't going to be a pretty one, no matter what it is."
Within the next few moments, everything that had been building between everyone in the room began to spill out into a giant mess that hadn't been anticipated. "I'm not going back on my stance on this," Claude resumed, acting as if he didn't have Ingrid pulling on him. "I get that you think I'd make an excellent ace up your sleeve, but that isn't my life. That's not who I am. You throw me into a diplomatic conversation as a participating party and I'm not going to know what to do."
"You'd be perfectly capable at holding your own," Dimitri shot back, standing firm in his position on the matter. "In fact, I would assume that a prince—"
"A prince?"
"—such as yourself would know a thing or two about diplomatic discussions, whether you'd participated in them or not." Completely ignoring how Ingrid had yelled out at the big revelation, the king looked at Claude with the most serious grimace he could muster in the moment, reflecting how the interruption had shaken him. "I would not expect you to be in the room unless Edelgard brings the princess of Brigid."
"He's a prince?" Ingrid repeated, a bit more forcefully this time as she threw her hands off of Claude and took a large step away from him to give many wide gestures in his direction. "How many of you knew this, and for how long? Who was going to tell me that I was…that I was…" She trailed off as her whole body deflated, her noticing that Claude was giving her a pleading look to not finish her statement.
Sylvain raised his hand. "I didn't know he was a prince, but now that I think about it, there had to be some reason that ol' Dimitri here wanted this guy and his team here for the week."
"That's real helpful here, Sylvain!" Ingrid's gestures turned to her friend for a moment as she gave him some expressive hand motions that showcased how much she didn't find him helpful at all, before she was back shaking her hands at Claude. "When were you going to drop this on me, huh? After another night spent together? Would it take four nights to get you to crack?"
"You've been sharing a room with Claude?" Eyebrows raising, Byleth slowly glanced at Dimitri, who seemed unfazed by what had just been said. "That's interesting, if not slightly concerning. We had one or both of you accounted for every night, how was that happening right under our noses?"
"Ignore her, she's just trying to get me to flinch," Claude quickly said, through gritted teeth that hid behind grimacing lips. "Point is, I may have been a prince at one point but that life's long since been pushed away, I hold no title, no power, and no place as a bargaining chip in your diplomatic world. I'm not going with you."
As Dimitri slowly nodded, he finally took a look at how red in the face Ingrid had grown with her frustration on the matter and raised his hand to dismiss her from the room. But before he said anything, he was spoken over by his dear wife. "I think that you should still come with us, Claude, even if you aren't playing the role of prince that Dimitri wants you to be in. We could still use a duo for backup, just in case." She grabbed Dimitri's arm and lowered it for him, giving him a knowing, if not slightly teasing, look as she did. "I'll take Ingrid with me and you take Sylvain, and then we'll have Claude and one fellow guard of his choosing waiting in the wings in case things get out of hand."
"I suppose that's as logical of a plan as we can find right now," Dimitri answered, taking no time at all to think through her words. "However, I do think it would rattle Edelgard best if she knew we had a prince with us."
Byleth started leading Dimitri toward the door, speaking to him in quiet whispers that he would respond to in grunts. Before they left the room, she told the others to meet them in the lobby in ten minutes, which seemed reasonable enough, if it weren't for Ingrid just about tackling Claude the moment it was just them and Sylvain left in the room. "When were you going to tell me?" she shrieked, as if finding out about his princehood had been a deal-breaker for their relationship, whatever it may have been. "That's something I should have heard from your mouth, you know that, don't you?"
"Ingrid, listen to me when I say that's not something I want to talk about, I don't get why your king has a hard-on for bringing it up as much as he can but that's not the person I've been for a long time." Claude shot pleading eyes toward Sylvain, who initially took them as a call for help on removing Ingrid before he actually elaborated. "Can you go and find Leonie, let her know she's got a few minutes to get down to the lobby for a special job? Wouldn't ask anyone but her to join me on this one."
"Does she know you're a prince?" Ingrid asked, not even waiting for Sylvain to leave the room to spit the words out. "I bet she does, being one of your coworkers and all. She's probably going to be overjoyed that she gets to be side-by-side with you doing this, while I have to live with the fact that I slept with a prince without knowing it!"
"You might want to keep that one a bit quieter," Sylvain suggested as he headed out the door, pretending to seal his lips as he went. Just the fact that she'd outed her own behavior and choices as a direct response to Claude being outed as a prince made Ingrid feel even more conflict and shame within her soul, and she glared into the eyes of the man she'd fallen hard and fast for, before following her friend out the door.
Sighing as he sat down at one of the chairs around the table, Claude folded his arms in front of him and lay his head down in the basket he made, wishing that he'd never decided to take things as far as he had the night before. Now Ingrid was going to hold something he resented against him, because he hadn't had a say in it becoming public knowledge, and he was losing a second potential girlfriend over that damn title he'd never asked for. He'd need to talk to Leonie if they got the chance, if things didn't go as poorly in the meeting as the royal couple suspected they might, to see what she would do in the completely hypothetical situation that she was romantically interested in a man who was actually a prince.
The meeting was set to take place at the home of the emperor, a grand building that seemed out of place in the section of Enbarr it was located in. While the architecture around it was old-fashioned and dated, the home was clearly new and made of materials that didn't match anything it neighbored, making it very obvious to the uninformed that it belonged to someone with considerable power and money. As the convoy of the royal couple of Faerghus and their guards pulled into the grand driveway, fear began to take hold in the hearts of the guests, no one knowing what was going to await them when they went inside the front doors to the plant-filled foyer of the home.
Standing inside was a man dressed in all black, with greasy hair that matched his suit jacket to the shade. "Are you aware of where you are?" he asked the four who were entering, Claude and Leonie still outside and waiting for the cue to go in as well. "This is the home of the Emperor of Adrestia, Lady Edelgard, and as far as I have been made aware…" He came closer to them as he brought steepled fingers up under his chin. "There are not any guests scheduled to be here today."
After exchanging looks between their group, Dimitri stepped forward to speak to the man without hiding behind or beside anyone else, although Sylvain was right behind him. "I do apologize, but that would be incorrect information that you've been given. We have been planning this meeting since before our arrival in Enbarr, and today was the first time it hadn't been cancelled on us or rescheduled."
"What a shame you weren't given the update on the matter," the man replied, the corners of his mouth ticking upward into a sly grin. "As established by the courts of the land, any trespassers in the emperor's home are subject to death, no matter their reason they have for being there. I was not informed that the meeting was still on, and so I feel it would only be appropriate to let you either back down or face death."
"I don't think this man is joking around here," Byleth whispered through a barely-opened mouth, just loud enough that Ingrid could hear her and move to stand as a body shield for the queen. She raised her voice when she said, "We understand that you are merely upholding the law, but we are here in the name of diplomatic relations. Doesn't that matter at all to you?"
"I'm afraid not," was the man's reply, just as sly as everything else he'd said, "and I already informed you that your misguided reason is not an excuse for survival. Stand down or die."
Unaware of the tense turn things inside had taken so quickly, Claude stood with his back to the door, arms crossed over his chest as he looked at Leonie, head to toes and back again. "I have something I need to talk to you about," he finally managed to say, catching her tilting her head to the side to get a better ear for it. "It's about something that I'm sure you'd never have to actually deal with, but that's the fun in hypotheticals."
"Oh yeah? Go for it, I'm listening." Now cupping her ear to make sure she could hear what she was asked, Leonie seemed eager for what was coming. If only Claude wasn't going to ask her something he felt disgusted needing to talk about.
"Let's say that you fall in love with a guy. Then, after hitting it off with him and realizing that you really are in love with him, it comes out that he's got a title and some noble blood. What would you do then? Turn tail and run? Stick it out?" He watched as her face darkened as she thought over her answer, before returning to its normally sunny if not determined expression. "You came to an answer quickly."
She shrugged, her hand moving from her ear to brushing back her loose strands of hair out of her face. "That'd be because you're asking about if I fell in love with someone like you, which…you know I'm not going to do that. Not you, anyway. Maybe another prince, though, I'm not going to be picky about a guy having a title."
Claude jerked backward a tad, his eyes widening at the answer he hadn't been expecting. "Since when did you know I was a prince?"
"I don't know exactly when, it's been a long time though. Maybe since when Hilda found out? We're all completely aware of it, we just don't mention it to you because we know you don't like it." At least Leonie was being honest, and while Claude didn't like knowing that she knew his secret (like so many others, apparently), he did appreciate how she hadn't made a big deal out of it.
There was meant to be a follow-up question, but the sound of glass shattering from inside the house's front door took their attention away from their aside and back to the job they were there to do, both maneuvering to see what was going on just inside the doors. "Are you mad?" Dimitri bellowed as he jumped back from the chandelier that had just fallen mere inches from where he'd been standing before, eye focused on the man who'd just caused it to drop. "In what world is this appropriate?"
"A world in which Lady Edelgard has no interest in diplomacy with those who keep her Fódlan from being whole." Raising his arms out to his sides, the man gave a cackle that showed he meant no good with what he was doing. "You see, her game of cat-and-mouse with you all has been a test of your resilience, and your insistence on meeting with her has only irritated her further and further with your country. Now, she'll have you dead and the Kingdom of Faerghus back under the Adrestian banner in—"
"Hubert, what in the goddess' name are you doing?" Her voice wasn't nearly as commanding as it usually was, and she spoke with hesitance in every word, but Edelgard was there, arriving fashionably late as she descended down her grand staircase into the lower foyer. "I don't recall telling you to be here, and causing all this mess? What has gotten into you?"
Dropping his arms immediately, Hubert bowed his head in apology as he gave his emperor a deep bow. "My apologies, Lady Edelgard. I thought that you were still feeling a bit under the weather and wanted to take care of the riffraff that came calling on my own."
"Ignore him," she said to the others, not casting any further looks in Hubert's direction. "Ignore whatever it is that he's said and follow me up here, I have a meeting room set up for the occasion but you'll have to excuse me if I seem slightly distant today."
There was no further elaboration, just Edelgard turning around and going back up the stairs, leaving the four from Faerghus to once again look between each other before deciding to go up after her—Sylvain at the head, Ingrid at the back, and the royals side by side in the middle. When they reached the top of the stairs, they saw Edelgard in a doorway not far ahead of them, waiting for them to follow her inside. "Should one of us tell the others that we're up here?" Ingrid asked, this time speaking just quietly enough that she was only heard by Byleth, who shook her head. Rather than being deflated at getting her idea rejected, she seemed content with the answer. "Good, I'd rather not waste my time on liars anyway."
"You're taking things far too seriously with that," Byleth told her, knowing that they weren't going to be able to discuss things further as they got into the meeting room that was cold and bare, not even remotely "set up" as Edelgard had said it would be. There were no chairs, no tables, no refreshments, and most distressing of all, nowhere to hide if things started to sour.
After exchanging some terse greetings between emperor and king, the meeting began with little in the way of fanfare. "I had originally envisioned this going a completely different way," Edelgard said, reaching up to rub at her eyes, "but plans changed. A…lot of plans changed, from the day your convoy arrived in Enbarr."
As if he was trying to be stealthy, Hubert slipped into the room and stood against the wall, keeping watch over his emperor as she kept talking. "My original plan would have ended in bloodshed and violence, with the birth of the reformed Adrestian Empire taking over all of Fódlan. But…" Trailing off, Edelgard looked over at Hubert, giving him a smirk before returning her attention to the guests. "After I came to my senses about it, the whole plan seemed a bit too tailored to an ex-boyfriend of mine for me to act on it."
Scoffing, Hubert dryly replied, "That would be because it was my plan originally, was it not?"
"Things like this are why I wish we didn't have to maintain a professional relationship." With that one sentence, Edelgard dealt a crippling blow to Hubert's entire attitude, causing him to reel back and sputter. "Look, I don't want to be here today. Being at this meeting, even if it's going to be all 'yay, diplomacy!' isn't something I want to do. I want to go back to bed and sleep for several hours, if we're being honest."
That seemed reasonable, given how haggard she looked upon closer inspection. Her white hair, tied back in a messy ponytail, seemed unwashed and like she'd pulled it back out of convenience, not style. There were obvious rings around her eyes, and the clothes she wore look like they'd been freshly slept in, no way that an emperor should have looked in such a situation. Despite the verbal takedown he'd just received, it was Hubert who made the first comment on the matter. "You were in that goddess-damned liquor closet you built under the library, weren't you?" he asked, tilting his head back to hold his nose high in a condescending fashion. "All you and that pitiful man you call your boyfriend do anymore is go down there and entertain others."
"And that entertainment saved these people's lives, so everyone better be thankful for it!" Her voice raising on the last few words, Edelgard made her point clear to her so-called guard and gestured for him to leave the room he'd never been invited into to begin with, and despite sulking the whole way he did. "Sorry, ever since our relationship deteriorated and I had to break things off with him, he's been nothing short of a nightmare to deal with in any situation. I do hope he didn't cause you all too much harm with his mannerisms."
"Can't say there was really any harm at all beyond the shock of our mortality," Dimitri replied, eyeing the emperor warily just in case she dropped the façade and showed her true colors in front of them. "I do apologize that we had to have this meeting under these circumstances, with you feeling under the weather and whatnot.
"Oh, I'm not exactly feeling under the weather. Hungover would be a better way to put it. Hubert, he wasn't lying when he mentioned the liquor closet, although a secret cellar is more of how we refer to it…. But that's irrelevant, don't you think? You and your people, you've come to talk diplomacy, about a united Fódlan that still stands separate in its regions." Edelgard gave a firm nod, as if affirming to herself as well as the others that she spoke the truth. "My initial idea for this was to deny anything you wanted, but let's just say I'm feeling mighty kind to the people of Fódlan's other regions right now."
"What is the reason for that change of heart?" Byleth asked, despite not being the one in charge of making the political decisions and moves for her country. "That isn't something that just randomly comes about, you had to have something or someone motivate you to make that change."
Edelgard's eyes narrowed for a second, before widening back to normal without so much as a motion otherwise. "A pair of the 'guards' you brought to Enbarr with you made nightly visits to me here, and getting to talk to the one of them I didn't previously know made me realize that perhaps, just perhaps, the people of Faerghus aren't as bad as we like to pretend."
At first the words didn't register in anyone's mind, almost as if it sounded too bizarre to be true; after a few moments Sylvain nudged Dimitri, whose brow had tightened as he thought about who that might have been she spoke of. "What were their names, by chance?" he asked, understanding why he'd been nudged but not wanting to jump to the same conclusion at least one other person already had. "Would you mind telling me?"
"As long as this isn't means for them being fired from their positions. I would hate to be the downfall for new friends in their careers."
"I can assure you that if their actions directly led to you choosing kindness over bloodshed, relieving them of their positions would be the thing furthest from my mind." Dimitri sounded honest, and as far as everyone could tell he was indeed speaking the truth, but the hesitance in how Edelgard wobbled and wavered on giving her response made it clear she wasn't under the same impression.
Finally, she broke and told them exactly who. "Their names are Lysithea and Felix, one of whom I'd known for a while and the other being a new acquaintance I'd gotten to know over the drinks my boyfriend concocts." At mention of Felix, Ingrid looked at Byleth, who was gaping in Dimitri's direction, while the king himself stayed stone-faced at hearing the truth about where one of his closest guards had been spending his time.
"He thought we were going to be led to our deaths today," she mumbled to herself, toeing the ground at her feet, "but somehow he'd actually prevented that exact thing from happening. Good job, Felix, we're proud of you."
Moving past that was difficult, because there were plenty of questions that felt necessary to ask and not a lot of time in which to ask them, but Dimitri was able to get into the next aspect of the day's meeting without too much hassle. "I heard word that you intended on having an extra party joining you for this diplomatic conversation," he said, watching as Edelgard stiffened before shaking her head. "Oh? Where would that rumor have come from, then? It seemed rather credible."
"While it is true that Petra, the princess of Brigid, is here in my home while we speak, she was never envisioned as being a guest for our talk, due to the whole 'you were going to be killed here' thing. I could certainly invite her if you'd like, but she and I had quite the time sampling new flavors last night and while she holds her liquor spectacularly, I can only assume she's in as poor of a condition as I am right now." With a small shrug, Edelgard added, "It wouldn't have been fair had I invited a second person of regional power without you having an additional person on your side. After all, why would you have been prepared for that sort of thing?"
Outside of the house, Claude sneezed, seemingly out of nowhere. "Something tickling your nose out here?" Leonie asked, almost like she was joking. "Might've been a plant or a feather or a bug, there's a lot to take in about this place we haven't seen anywhere else in Enbarr."
"No, nothing touched me, I'm not sure why that happened." Looking up at the clouded sky from where he'd taken a seat to wait for any sort of indication they were needed, Claude imagined what kind of chaos was unfolding in the meeting, visualizing big fights and verbal smackdowns, completely unaware that what was actually happening was a conversation between a wary king and a hungover emperor, neither of which really wanted to be doing what they were doing.
In the end, it was foolish to think that the wounds caused by a long war would have been able to be completely erased over the course of a single meeting between the opposing sides, but there were many positive things to take away from it all. The biggest and most influential piece of the puzzle involved people who weren't even in attendance at the meeting, who had shaped and changed Edelgard's mind to keep her from making bloody choices when faced with the royal couple of Faerghus, but that wouldn't have made the news in any part of Fódlan. What became open knowledge from the meeting was that, for the time being, the two countries could live at relative peace with the other, and that further, more public discussions would need to be held in the future.
The last thing discussed before they went their separate ways was the curfew that Enbarr had been thrown into for the past several days, something that Edelgard didn't seem to have an answer for. "I would assume a minister or someone of considerable power beneath me put that into effect, but for all I know they addressed Hubert and he decided to play dirty. If I had known how much of a hassle it would become, I wouldn't have ever allowed them to do it. Guess we learned that for next time, hm?"
Seeing as the curfew had changed so many people's lives, in so many ways, no one wanted to say that they hated having to contend with it, but knowing that it wouldn't happen again in the future brought a sense of peace to them all. "Thank you for making time for this to properly happen, conflicts and all," Dimitri said as they started heading out to the grand staircase to leave. "I know that being peaceful and kind isn't what you wanted in the end, but approaching it that way is best for us all."
Rubbing at her eyes, Edelgard replied, "You can thank the reckless choices I've been making this week for that change of heart. Now that I'm done with this nonsense, I'll be working to make our illegal liquor cellar a bit less illegal, so that I don't have to continue being Lin's test dummy for his drinks."
"Never would've taken the emperor of the Adrestian Empire to refer to her boyfriend with a petname," Sylvain quipped as they made their way down the stairs, him at the helm once more. "She definitely came off a lot less intimidating today than she has in the past in pictures and on TV, I'll give her that."
"That's the power of making dumb choices," Ingrid followed, thankful that she wasn't the only one who'd been doing stupid things during their time in Enbarr. "I just can't wrap my head around the fact that if it weren't for Felix, we'd be dead right now. Can you believe that he was doing that behind our backs?"
"A lot of things were done on this trip behind the backs of others, let's not pretend that Felix is the only one to make those mistakes." Sounding as serious as always, Dimitri at least waited until they were back on flat ground in the foyer before turning around to look at Ingrid and see her shirking away from him. "I can't say that I know the details of what you were doing, Ingrid, but I do know that you weren't doing as you were instructed, and your behavior didn't lead to everyone living. What do we do with you?"
Before she had a chance to say anything, Byleth swooped in as her savior in the moment. "I think that's a discussion best saved for somewhere private, even if what Ingrid did didn't hurt anyone or anything."
"Very well, it shall be discussed later." Turning back forward, Dimitri filed right back into line behind Sylvain and they made their way out the door, meeting with Claude and Leonie, both of whom seemed surprised to see the whole group outside already. "The diplomatic meeting went better than expected, we're free to return to our hotel and prepare for our flights home."
"That's all? No 'this is what we learned', no 'this is who was there', not even a 'this happened and you missed it'?" Claude asked, raising an eyebrow. "You really built this whole thing up as being some life-or-death matter, and it's falling kind of flat. Disappointing, I must say."
"Trust me when I say it very well could have been one of those matters," Dimitri replied without so much as a flinch. "Thanks to one of your men and one of ours, the entire situation here today was turned into a bit of a farce, but something that we can grow from as leaders of our separate countries."
"Plus one of the emperor's men intended on having us dead," Sylvain chimed in, much to Dimitri's displeasure and to the amusement of the two who'd missed out on the meeting. "It easily could've been a bloodbath in there if the emperor herself wasn't, you know, suffering from her drinking habits."
"Habits that she's been acting on because of the presence of two of our men, might I remind you. It all comes back to them breaking curfew and coming to see her here without our consent." Shaking his head slowly to drive home his feelings on the matter, Dimitri added, "But they cannot be punished for what they've done, it ultimately changed the course of history and brought extended peace to Adrestia and Faerghus, if only until the next time we attempt a meeting for diplomatic purposes."
Knowing what he did about why he was there in the first place, and how his former role in life would haunt him wherever he went, Claude looked straight at the king and everyone surrounding him, imagining what it would have been like had he not agreed to the job. From the sounds of it, they would have all been dead, each and every one of them, and there was no guarantee that the others they'd left behind wouldn't have been slaughtered as well. So him being a former prince had ultimately had the domino effect of saving the lives of an entire group of people, but at the cost of…what, really? Losing a chance with someone he'd felt he hit it off with after some fortunate breaks in his favor?
"If—no, when—there's a next time, invite us to come along, will you?" he said, his gaze narrowing in on Ingrid's face as she deflected the attention by shifting her eyes downward. "At worst, we'll just be unnecessary baggage for your people, but at best? We'll save lives a second time."
"Or we can just invite the one who did the life-saving, whether she realized it or not," Dimitri mused, knowing that the fact that everyone else had really gotten a free vacation on his dime was completely true. "She may prove useful again if the need arises, and besides, why should we call on you if you want nothing to do with what makes you most useful to our cause?"
"That's a good point," he conceded, taking his eyes off of Ingrid after realizing how useless trying to stare her down was. "Didn't think of it that way."
"Uh, hello? Claude's great at being a fun guy to be around, him being a prince shouldn't have to matter to get him included," Leonie said, putting her foot down to support her friend and leader. "If you're going to refuse to let him guard you in the future because he won't play a role he hates, then why should anyone be willing to guard you?"
"Leonie, you don't have to do this…"
She looked at Claude, narrowing her eyes to imply she meant business. "Sure I don't have to, but I want to. You've always gone to bat for the rest of us, why not let someone do the same for you and mean it?"
"The amount of 'guarding' he has done on this trip is trivial, and could have been done with others in his place," Dimitri pointed out, "and I have little interest in debating this with anyone, especially someone too blinded by her loyalty to see the truth."
"Then debate it with me." Eyes still focused down toward her feet, hands curling into fists at her sides, Ingrid spoke with a fury that had all heads turning to look at her. "He doesn't want to be a prince, he doesn't want to be seen as a prince, I never would've known he wasn't a prince if it wasn't for someone obsessed with that fact telling me. He does his job and he does it damn well, telling him he can't work as your guard again in the future is a disservice to him as well as everyone else you expect to have guarding you."
Dimitri had to take a moment to let Ingrid's words sink in, and when he'd pulled apart her point mentally, he gave a loud huff with his shoulders puffing up as he began to walk away toward the vehicle waiting for them. "I have little interest in debating this with you either, Ingrid," he grumbled, not even dignifying her with so much as a glance. "You speak like you have power and yet, time and time again, you prove why you'll never be given it."
"Ignore him, he's irritated by what happened inside," Byleth said with a low voice to Ingrid, before following in her husband's steps. Sylvain went with them as well, as did Leonie after a second of hesitation, but the only person to hang back and comfort Ingrid was the single person she didn't want there doing it.
Claude's arms wrapped around her tightly without either of them realizing he was doing it until it was done, and despite not wanting him to be on her she didn't fight it. "You deserve better than what he's giving you, that's all I want to tell you," he whispered as he rested his head against hers. "I can't say I'd be the one to give you that, but…you deserve better."
"Thank you," she murmured in reply, feeling a sense of ease begin to wash over her now that she was back in the arms she'd grown rather fond of over the past few days. "Thank you so much, for everything you've done for me."
"And everything I'll keep doing, how about that?"
"That sounds…nice."
The group from Faerghus headed back home that evening, after arranging for some late-night airline tickets in exchange for what they'd already had. No one was too pleased about the trip being cut short, but even those who were most bitter about it had every reason to keep their mouths shut. Dimitri's irritation at what had happened had not faded even slightly, to the point that everyone except Byleth was in danger of being chewed out if they said anything wrong within earshot of him, so the goodbyes were quick and the parting messages between the two parties mostly consisted of the queen doing the speaking. The only bright spot in it all was that she insisted they would still cover the charges for the rest of the Leicester group's stay in Enbarr, because their tickets to Derdriu weren't as easily exchanged as ones back to Fhirdiad were.
While everyone had at least one person they were sad to say goodbye to, the act of actually saying it came without tears for the most part. Lysithea, still unaware that she'd saved the day thanks to her unlikely friendship with Edelgard, made a promise to Felix, who was also still unaware of his role in keeping everyone alive, that she'd come visit him sometime and he could take her to all sorts of places. "I'll consider it, if you actually show up," he said, before allowing her to give him a quick hug so that he could head to the security checkpoint without any further distractions.
The group of Raphael, Ignatz, and Lorenz, who'd formed a rather unlikely trio with their distance from the majority of the trip's chaotic moments, made a similar promise to Ashe, who had become their fourth musketeer of sorts over the course of the trip. They didn't make any specific or concrete plans, but reuniting in the future was in the cards and Ashe made sure they all could contact him to keep him in the loop about things. Something similar happened with Hilda and Marianne saying goodbye to Annette and Mercedes, the four of them having found kinship in their similar-enough roles in what they did. Their form of ensuring future contact was to add each other on every social media site they could, then give phone numbers to never stop being able to just keep talking.
The others, however, weren't as easy of goodbyes. Bolstered by the time they'd spent together in transport between the hotel and the emperor's home, Leonie decided that, despite having heard the warnings about Sylvain, she had to give him a shot, but when she asked him if she could have his number in case she was ever in his area, he turned her down on the spot. "Sorry, you're probably super nice, but here's the thing. I don't really like redheads," he told her with a wink, before turning and following the others into the security area, leaving Leonie a bit stunned in his wake.
Pinching a bit of her hair, which was similar in color to his own, she lamented, "Somehow I should have suspected he'd say something like that."
"Don't worry, he wasn't even worth it," Hilda promised her, having already dried her tears from saying goodbye from her new friends. "You totally dodged a bullet in getting him interested in you, now you can focus on people actually worth your time and energy."
As she said that, her eyes scanned the area for wherever Claude had gotten off to, and upon not seeing him at all she quickly asked the others if they knew where he was. No one seemed to have an answer, which she wasn't thrilled with but she knew that if anyone had any idea of how to sneak away in a crowded airport, it would be Claude.
He wasn't too far away at all, having flashed a door guard a glimpse of his credentials to leave Fódlan (with his Almyran name on them) to get himself and Ingrid alone in a lounge meant for frequent fliers. "I thought you made it clear you have no interest in being a prince," she commented once they'd gotten inside. "Seems a lot like you use it for personal gain."
"Nowhere on there does it say I'm a prince, just that I can go into Almyra and that my name happens to be exactly what the lost prince's is." Seeing nothing wrong with what he'd done, Claude sat down in one of the reclining chairs the lounge had to offer and gestured for Ingrid to sit in the seat next to him; she chose to sit across instead, which wasn't too much of a problem. "So, uh, you're leaving. Going back home. How about that."
"Yep, going home to most likely get relieved of my job working for the royal family because I decided to stick up for you, kind of bittersweet. At least they've got enough people around to keep them safe for the long-term, the guy that usually guards Dimitri can do the work of three men on his own." Ingrid hung her head, her hands playing with the sides of her hair as she couldn't find it in herself to look at Claude yet again. "I'm sure I can find a job doing guard work somewhere else, maybe somewhere that will appreciate me a bit more."
Claude tapped one of his feet on the ground as he thought about that remark. "You know, we can always use more solid workers under the banner of the Leicester Alliance Security Company, if you're willing to uproot your life and move out to my neck of the woods. Pay's probably comparable to what you're getting with the royals, since we're the best of the best where we come from."
"Thanks, but I'll pass on that, leaving Faerghus on a permanent basis seems a bit sudden and might cause more problems than it's worth." That didn't stop Ingrid from quickly adding, "But I will totally come visit you guys, if that offer's on the table. Maybe seeing you working at home will change my mind."
"You'd only come visit if it meant watching us work?" Claude asked, feeling a sting in his chest at the perceived rejection. "What a shame, I was really hoping you'd come visit for other reasons too."
Lifting her head, it was clear that Ingrid was conflicted in the conversation, based on how her lower lip was beginning to wobble. "I don't know how to break this to you, but I think we've moved through everything way too fast. You're a great guy, Claude, but we need to slow down and do some backtracking before we take things too far."
The sting was not subsiding, the idea of backtracking when they'd already gotten so vulnerable with one another unappealing to Claude. "Then what do you think we should leave here as, acquaintances? Friends? Maybe lovers?"
"Friends, for now, but I don't plan on cutting contact with you and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to elevate things to a higher level over time." Ingrid, with her whole face trembling as she spoke, did her best to look Claude in the eyes as she said, "I think that if we can manage to do that, then when I do come visit your company at home, maybe we'll be able to reconnect as something a lot more than friends."
It wasn't a promise, it wasn't even a guarantee, but something about the possibility of getting to pick things back up with Ingrid where they'd left them off made Claude hopeful for the future. They left the lounge not long after that so that she could catch her flight and he could find the rest of his team, and even though no one addressed where he'd been or who he was with, it was understood that he'd needed the time to tie off loose ends. That wasn't to say that he didn't spend the rest of their time in Enbarr wishing that Ingrid was still there with him, or wondering if anyone was ever going to ask him about her, but at least he had a solid direction for where things could possibly go for them.
Ingrid did keep her word and she did visit Derdriu about a year later, on the morning following the new year celebrations in the city. She was dressed for much colder weather, buried in jackets and scarves that the members of the company were more than happy to help her remove, given that their local weather was a lot nicer than usual. "Thanks for having me here," she said to the group awaiting her in the airport, holding signs adorned with her name and even a rather detailed drawing courtesy of Ignatz. "It's nice to get away from everything going on at home."
"You never told us how things ended for you when you got back," Leonie called, having been one of the few who knew the details about her getting her job threatened in her face. "Did they fire you or…?"
"The king certainly wanted to, but he was talked out of it by just about everyone else. I ended up getting put on queen guarding duty, which was going great until…" She trailed off, scanning the group for their leader. "Where's Claude?"
"In the van, waiting for all of us to get there," Hilda replied with a roll of her eyes. "Now continue talking, it was going great until what, exactly?"
Pursing her lips together and pretending to zip them, Ingrid made it clear she didn't want to say until she had everyone listening, so to the van they went after making all necessary stops. Claude looked half-asleep at the wheel until he saw Ingrid in the window, then his entire mentality changed and he was wide awake and ready to go. "Flight go over well?" he asked as she got into the back seats of the van, alongside everyone else minus Raphael, who was too broad across to fit anywhere but up front. "You seem to have made it in one piece."
"Oh, can't complain about the flight, although it would've been so much nicer had I not been taken to the airport by Sylvain. He almost got us kicked out for trying to flirt with someone waiting for their husband to land, who called security on us!" Ingrid huffed a little, before remembering that she'd been in the middle of a story already. "Right, let me catch Claude up on what I was saying before I get on with things."
The entire story of what had happened with her job took as long as it did for them to get to the company office, and as everyone got out of the van they were commenting on how much of a bullet she was dodging by being there for that week. "But how did you manage to not have them cancel your trip on you, seeing as they want you there for everything?" Marianne asked quietly, trying not to make a big deal if her question went unanswered.
"Oh, my birthday's in just a couple days, they couldn't get me to cancel something I paid for with my own money even if they threatened my job again over it." Sounding like what she'd left behind wasn't going to bother her, Ingrid tried to focus on what she was there to do and see. "I'd love to keep chatting about the big news you guys got to hear before the people of Faerghus even do, but don't you have things to show me here?"
Everyone was quick to want to take her on a tour of the building, so Claude let them be and headed for his own cozy office, which had remained exactly the same as it always was, nothing out of place minus the location of his snow globe. As he sat down, he picked it up and began tossing it up into the air, carefully catching it every time it came back down. There was always the fear that someone would choose then to throw something at him to earn his attention, but he had enough faith in his team and their desire to entertain that he felt safe in what he was doing.
"So this is where you send me all those emails from." It was Ingrid's voice, catching Claude by surprise and causing him to miss catching the globe entirely. As it shattered on the ground next to him and he muttered a curse or two, she came inside and leaned against his desk, looking apologetic. "Sorry about that, want me to pay for a new one?"
"It was from Almyra, so replacing it's going to be a hair difficult," he replied, "but no worries. Some things are better left in pieces, my past being one of them."
"As long as you're not going to blame me for it breaking and deciding you aren't willing to give us a shot, then I suppose that's no big deal."
A/N: the end! I'm satisfied with how this turned out, hope all of you that read it feel the same!