Work Text:
It had never been a game, but they still played it like chess. They played with the knights and pawns of the monastery, with the careful words and hard stares of veteran schemers.
They played for years, but Claude had never found all of Yuri’s secrets. He wanted to. He wanted to know them all, collect them in the palm of his hand and watch them shimmer like Yuri’s eyes.
He wanted the truth, as he always did.
But Yuri was elusive as a ghost, and twice as deadly. So they played this dance like chess, and Claude was lost to it.
It had never been just a game.
⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰
The Opening.
The first move was a simple introduction, and it cost Claude the upper hand. The first move was on Yuri’s turf, and that made it deadly.
Yuri’s eyes were clever and dancing, in the darkness of Abyss. They were lovely too, with the arresting beauty of roses after a new dawn. Claude lingered on them for a heartbeat too long, guard lowered for the smallest breath.
Yuri noticed. Yuri noticed everything, with those sharp eyes. Claude’s smile was quick to recover, and laughter followed fast as a flashing arrow.
It was enough to fool the others, but it wasn’t enough to trick the trickster.
“It doesn’t take a fancy title to have a hidden agenda, does it Yuri?”
The words echoed between them long after Teach had stepped away to walk with Dimitri and the Blue Lions, and long after the Abyss crackled with new knowledge and betrayal.
The words echoed into the darkness like a promise. Every time Yuri smiled Claude saw a thousand secrets lingering out of reach. Every time they stood beside each other, he heard a wry voice whisper into his ear.
Claude had never had the advantage, but he lost it the first time Yuri truly spoke to him.
“Cheeky. And wrong. How do you cope with being quite so wrong?”
Claude laughed, and it cost him three breaths he didn’t have to give away. Abyss devoured them into the shadows, but it was too late. It cost him so much, when Yuri’s eyes glittered like the gold Claude wore as a mask.
That was the first move. That was their first meeting, when they saw a chessboard between them and a game stretching into the future.
That was the first move, and in it Claude saw danger. He saw opportunity too, for the gossamer silk of his dream.
He knew what to do.
For a few weeks, the man with the bright eyes and clever smirk faded from his mind. There was a war brewing on the horizon, and Claude searched for a thousand ways to stop it. He was planning for the first battle too, and setting careful preparations in place.
He had to protect Fódlan and keep it whole. There would be no world to change, otherwise. Claude had to protect this place, as he had to protect the friends that walked beside him and the nobles that owed him allegiance.
Claude would stretch wyvern wings out if he must, to catch every arrow. But with his plans it shouldn’t come to that.
It would be easier, if he had spies to help. He’d spread a dozen eyes across the world to report to him, and for now they were enough. But he couldn’t rule a country and a spy network at once. This delicate balance wouldn’t last, and he needed help.
A god walked among men now, and the world was changing too quickly for one schemer alone.
Those thoughts haunted him, as he walked the lonely halls. They kept him up and wandering the library and monastery, the knowledge at his fingertips never quite enough. They kept him awake to watch Yuri walk from the corners of Abyss one night, and out the broad gate.
What was the man up to now, he wondered. Curiosity ate at his skin like a desert sun, but danger bit into his bones with real teeth.
Nothing could have stopped him from following the man through those gates. The road was quiet with the still of night, but Yuri was quieter still, walking like a ghost.
It took only a blink, for Claude to lose him. The shadows had always been Yuri’s friend, and Claude cursed himself a thousand times for forgetting that.
The man was gone, and the road stretched out before him, empty and echoing with the wind that always caught the monastery.
Claude had lost him, and the secrets the man walked with.
“Damn,” he muttered, quiet under the clouds of midnight. It was too dark to see well beyond the road, and he had always been a man of the bright sun. He belonged under the burning light of a desert sky, and and the shimmer of its moon.
He didn’t do well in this cloudy darkness. That was doubly true, with blade at his neck.
It took only a blink, for a sword to slip against his throat. The steel was cold with the wind, and colder still with threat.
Claude didn’t breathe, but his hands were steady. His heart raced against the breeze, but his mind ran faster, dancing through a hundred possibilities and plans.
He couldn’t die here, on an empty road with only the wind for company. He couldn’t die before his dream glimmered before him, bright and beautiful.
And he wouldn’t, because the sword at his throat could only belong to one man.
Oh, it could have been a thousand enemies, an assassin in the night or a thief under the moonlight. He was heir to the alliance and bastard prince of Almyra, and that came with more danger than even a demonic beast could hold.
But the blade shifted against his throat, and Claude knew who held it steady.
“Calm down Yuri, and be careful with that sword.”
The edge was pressing a gentle kiss against his skin, but Claude was more worried about the body warming his back.
Yuri was nearly as deadly as Teach, and Claude’s skill lay in distance and planning, in careful schemes and arrows from high above. He couldn’t take this man on here, and not from so close.
The warmth didn’t help his concentration either.
“Oh, it’s you,” Yuri said, and Claude couldn’t help the relief that threaded through his bones. The words were sharp as the sword to his throat, and they ghosted across his ear like the wind caught his clothes.
Claude tried not to shiver, from those words.
“What are you doing out here, hmm? What’s your deal, little noble? Your pretty bed too comfortable for you to sleep in?” The sword loosened a shade, enough for Claude to respond without cutting new lines into his skin.
But it didn’t fall away, and Claude didn’t relax. Yuri held the cards here, and the man’s words were sharp.
“Just out for a walk, is all. Can you put the sword away, since, you know, I’m not an enemy and all?”
His voice was steady, as his breath was steady, as his heart beat was steady. Claude had always been so good at painting a mask on his skin.
“Oh, you think so, little noble? I find men are more honest with a sword to the throat, and I’d dearly love some answers. Like why you were following me, for instance. Care to share?”
The next words were quicker, and the breath across his neck lighter. Yuri was laughing, silent and dark as the shadows around them. It made Claude shiver. It made him feel a thrill too, pressed in by the hint of danger at his throat.
Yuri was on guard, as he should be. Claude would do his best to soothe that away, just as soon as the blade left his throat.
But it was a good sign. The tension in Yuri’s voice meant Claude had found a secret, and secrets were to be treasured. Secrets helped him plan for war and revolution.
He just had to answer the question well.
“I want to know more about you,” he said, and the words were too honest. They were a careful attack too, and they echoed into the wind around them and were swallowed.
Yuri laughed, at that answer. Then he stepped away, the sword was gone as quickly as it came. The warmth of Yuri at his back vanished with it.
Claude tried to tell himself he didn’t miss it, but he’d never been good at lying to himself.
“Don’t tell me you’re here for my well-being. I’ve dealt with men like you before, Claude. You want to know my secrets, don’t you?”
It was easy to laugh, before the stare of sharp eyes. Claude smiled, and pretended he didn’t feel the phantom touch of a sword to his throat.
He pretended the wind didn’t chill his back to loneliness.
“You’ve caught me Yuri. Of course I want to know your secrets. But since I’m here you might as well use my bow.”
The words were reasonable, and he knew Yuri would find there meaning. He knew Yuri would agree, if only because Claude would have agreed in his place.
He knew a trickster when he saw one.
Yuri let out a quiet breath in response, dark like shadows around them. Bright eyes were fixed on Claude, and they seemed to peel his masks to pieces with each heartbeat.
He smiled before that look, and it was too honest.
“Fine, if you want to tag along you can.” Yuri said at last, sword sliding into its sheath with a metallic hiss. “But don’t think I’m not watching you, little noble.”
Claude laughed, and it echoed louder than it should have.
“No matter how hard you stare, you won’t see what I’m scheming Yuri.”
Bright eyes raked over him, at that. Claude could feel the tracks they left on his skin, and each one was sharper than the last. The moonlight was too cloudy, for eyes to shine so bright.
“I’ll stare as much as I want then, yeah?”
⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰
That began a dance between them, made of quips and careful plans. The next week, Yuri caught Claude in the depths of Abyss’s library, reading texts banned for a thousand reasons. Claude had never seen a smile so sharp, or heard a laugh as bright, as when the man took a censored book from his fingers.
“Cute of you to start with the safer things, but the information you want isn’t in this book. Don’t get lost, little noble.”
Yuri’s eyes glittered in the shadows, shaking the darkness around them and burning Claude’s skin. They glittered as they guided Claude to a different area, with a book far more detailed and far more dangerous.
The blasphemy in this book would have spelled the author’s execution, at the least.
What would the church say, if they knew the heir to the alliance read their forbidden texts? What would Teach say, if the woman knew the knowledge that Claude collected on her origins?
For once, Claude didn’t want to find out.
Rhea couldn’t know. It had to be a secret, kept between Claude and Yuri. It had to be kept quiet, and that meant Yuri had leverage.
Claude should have known better than to let the man with the quicksilver tongue have this. But Yuri only collected that secret, as Claude collected his knowledge. The man looked at home in Abyss, shoulders loose and walk darkly confident. Claude wasn’t a jealous man, but that walk stabbed longing into his gut faster than a sword.
He had always wanted a place to belong.
He walked out of the library with two new secrets, and one new weakness. He went back the next day, in the dead of night when only dark laughter followed him.
Secrets were worth this price.
The week after, Yuri walked into his rooms with a request made into a demand. The man’s eyes glittered sharp as daggers, and Claude couldn’t look away.
He didn’t want to.
“Come on now, little noble. I need an archer, you know? Thought you might be interested, since you follow me so closely.”
The words were teasing, delicate as the light that flooded the monastery. It was near midnight, and the moonshine cast a hundred shadows on every stone.
Claude didn’t see them, for all their beauty.
Yuri was asking for help to keep his men safe. Yuri was asking for Claude to fight beside people he trusted, in a way that was painfully clear. Was this the price, for keeping the library visits a secret? Or was this a sign of trust between careful schemers, a mark of something more?
Did Yuri think their secrets weighed equally?
Claude smiled, gentle as the moonlight above them. It felt honest.
“Can you blame me, Yuri? You’re such a mystery.” The words echoed between them for a heartbeat too long, and a breath too deep. Yuri’s eyes flashed wicked and bright, and the smirk flashed brighter. It looked like a knife come to greet him in the night, and Claude had never felt his heart beat faster.
Was this trust, between schemers? Was this what an equal felt like, standing on a playing field outside the walls of society?
Did Yuri understand him?
“Interesting, aren’t I? Well I’m not above using your interest to get what I want, little noble. Are you going to come or not?”
Oh, Claude would come alright. There were secrets lingering in Yuri’s clever eyes, and this was the path to find them.
Maybe it was the path to a new ally too.
“Lead the way, Yuri.”
⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰
Weeks passed like arrows flying from a bow; quick and ruthlessly bright. Yuri asked for his help twice more, and each time Claude walked a little closer to the trickster. Each time, Yuri’s gang of thieves smiled brighter at his entrance. They were a good bunch, for all that they tried to rob him every time. They followed Yuri’s every command like it was a royal decree, loyalty clear in every movement.
Little noble, they called him, just like Yuri did. The title got warmer every night, until it didn’t feel mocking but teasing.
When had Yuri’s words gone so soft? When had Claude anticipated sly smirks at midnight, and a sharp sword catching blows for him in battle?
When had Yuri slipped so deeply into his life?
Claude didn’t know. In the short years of his sharp life, he had sought out every secret to collect, every scrap of knowledge to hoard.
And here he stood, ignorant.
It was time to find out more about Yuri, he decided. It was time for a new battle of wits, where Claude didn’t sink into Yuri’s world but explore the cracks of its edges. He almost stopped smiling, in the warm light of an afternoon sun.
Even in Yuri’s world, he was an outsider.
“Yuri, great timing. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
It was a lie, said with a bright smile and quick tongue. Claude had done the research, and scouted the careful paths to Abyss with the eye of an outsider.
He knew when Yuri would walk this road, and he had planned this well. He planned everything well, from the first steps he had walked into the monastery to the first moment he’d smiled like a noble.
Claude had the art of charm honed into a blade faster than an arrow, and he’d use it well.
“Just for me? Careful Claude, or I might think you’re asking me on a date. Who knows what might happen then?”
Clever eyes fluttered shut as the man spoke, a delicate gesture made of the perfect artifice. They looked softer, for a terrible heartbeat. They looked like they held no secrets but invitations, and Claude wanted to drown in them.
It took him too long to pull back from that trap. It took him a moment longer, for his smile to grow warm again.
“You flatter me, Yuri, but I have something much more interesting in mind than flirting.”
The words echoed between them, and Claude spoke them true. They were a mask and the truth, wrapped into bright words and quick laughter.
They were the second move in the game between them, and they were forged in the sun of his childhood and the knives in his belt.
They were quick.
“Well, isn’t that cute. What do you have in mind, friend?”
Friend, Yuri called him, and Claude wondered if that was true. They had walked the paths of Abyss together. They had fought together too, and Claude had seen Yuri’s skill and sword. He wanted to understand it, and win this man’s skills. He wanted to use him, as he used so many people who called him friend.
He’d do what it took, for his dream. He had to. But Yuri called him friend, and Claude’s heart beat too quick.
“I was thinking we could play a game of chess,” he said, and the edges of his smile were sharp.
He needed to know the secrets that lingered here.
But Yuri only smiled wider, slow as poison. Delicate eyes glimmered in the light, like gems left out to catch the sun. Claude thought the shadows suited the man better. In the shadows, Yuri’s eyes shone with danger.
They were captivating, in the shadows.
“Oh? You think you have the skill to beat me? Adorable.”
Claude laughed, soft as the fine silk he wore but didn’t belong in. It was soft as the bed he slept in too, soft as the world that cradled Fódlan gently in its hands but pressed rough bruises into his skin.
It was too soft for an outsider, but it was just right for a noble.
“Oh Yuri, you wound me! I would never take your skills so lightly.”
He turned to walk away, body loose with a casual ease. It was practiced, as everything he did was. It took only a minute, for Yuri to catch up. It took a moment longer, for that smirk to go quiet and thoughtful. It was still just as beautiful as the first day Claude had seen it, in the shadows of Abyss.
It looked like it held a thousand secrets, and he wanted to know them all.
“That’s a shame, yeah? I would have loved an easy win.”
Claude’s smile grew honest for a heartbeat, a light bubbling up his throat.
“Somehow, I doubt that Yuri.”
They met across a chessboard weekly after that, and each time Yuri’s smirk grew a little sharper. Each time, Claude’s smile was a shade more truthful, and all the more dangerous.
He found none of Yuri’s secrets. The man was elusive as a dancer, teasing hints of answers but offering only quick wit and quicker flirting.
Only Teach had offered such a challenge, and even then Claude wasn’t taunted with each conversation.
He liked it too much. He liked Yuri too much, from fierce smirk to fiercer loyalty. There was no fixing that, for as much as Claude wanted to.
Yuri, with bright eyes and clever hands, had charmed a path into his heart.
But Claude knew better than anyone how long good things lasted. War was on the horizon, and with each breath he could see the tension grow.
He wondered what side Yuri would stand on, when the pieces fell. He wondered if his plan would work to win the man over.
He wondered if all his clever plots would be enough to save his dream.
⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰
The fall of Garreg Mach came quickly, under the bright sun of afternoon. It came with the emperor’s troops storming over the fields below, with the roar of a dragon where there had been no beast.
It came with death, and Claude didn’t want to watch its wings. He did anyway, the need to know burning beneath his skin.
How many could make it out before the armies arrived?
The people of his house were quick to escape, and quicker to leap on horses and flee. The civilians were harder to save, but the tatters of the Blue Lions helped, and they made it out alive.
Claude was mounting a horse all his own, bow shimmering on his back, when he remembered Abyss.
Yuri, he thought, with a desperation that surprised him.
The sun overhead was being gilded with blood, and Claude had forgotten him. The horse was forgotten. The cries of his people, also forgotten.
“Hilda, get them to safety,” he managed, as a thousand strands of action unraveling in his head. He had to get to Abyss quicker than the soldiers could find it.
But Edelgard knew of Abyss too, and had walked its paths.
This would be tricky.
“I will accompany you,” Lorenz said, lance covered with blood and hands shaking. The fine purple armor on his shoulders was decorated with mud and scrapes, tarnished from the long battle.
He looked so far from a dignified and perfumed noble that Claude wanted to laugh. It was not a pleasant sound, and it matched the bloody clouds lingering overhead. Lorenz could lead the nobles in his stead, if all went wrong. Lorenz wouldn’t build the world in Claude’s dream, but he would keep their people safe.
Lorenz should stay. But there was no one left to take his place, and Claude didn’t have time to argue.
An arrow fit into his bow quick as lightning, and he walked quicker still, eyes scanning the area around them for breaches. It scanned them for memories too, but Claude didn’t have the luxury of remembering.
Teach had fallen, and the walls would fall soon too. There was no time.
“Fine, but we have to move quick. Abyss is in danger,” he said, and darted to the nearest entrance.
It didn’t take long to hear the sounds of fighting. And where there was fighting, there was Yuri. The man’s sword moved quick as a serpent through the air, and enemies fell like chess pieces under his fingers.
But those eyes, the eyes that had always been so bright and clever and teasing— they were cold as a winter night in the desert.
They were cold, until they saw Claude.
They didn’t see the archer behind him, bow raised and ready to shoot. But that was fine, because Claude’s hands were moving quick as lightning, and his arrow was faster.
He was always faster.
“Not too shabby,” Yuri said, glancing over his shoulder at the body behind him. It was a warm look, made from the warmth of a hundred nights and three dozen chess matches.
It was made from trust, and Claude didn’t know when he’d earned that. He didn’t know when he’d given it either, but there would be time for that later.
If Yuri chose his side, there would be time for a lot of things.
“We have to evacuate Abyss, now. Edelgard knows how to get in here, and these soldiers say she’s not going to leave you people alone.”
Bright eyes went cold, even as Yuri flicked the blood off his sword. It splattered on old stone, marking it dark and conquered.
But this place was about to be destroyed, and even Yuri’s skill couldn’t stop that.
“And what would you have us do, hmm? You may have sway, little noble, but the people here are the unwanted of society. Your precious Fódlan doesn’t want us to walk above ground. This is the only place for us, and we will defend it.”
A rush of noise echoed across the valley and into the tunnels of Abyss, loud and endless as a storm. It was the sound of war, and it was unstoppable. Claude stared at the home he knew, and watched it crumble. He didn’t let himself mourn. He didn’t let the soldiers around him fall, or Lorenz’s lance shatter.
There were more important things to do, then remember the dead.
He looked at Yuri’s clever eyes and smiled. It was honest, in the glittering darkness of the tunnels.
“You know, I bet the alliance would be a good home for the people of Abyss. I bet they’d do well there! Holst would love to see Balthus again, and I’m sure we can find work for the rest of you.”
Yuri paused for a moment, sword dipping to scrape the air above cold stone. He looked surprised, a wary energy lingering in the cracks of that polished charm. Claude had wanted to surprise this man for months, but it was only now that he’d managed it.
Fitting, that it would be over the drums of war.
“I’m surprised at you, little noble. You’d invite the outcasts of society into your country?”
“I know what it’s like to be an outsider,” Claude said, and each word cost him truth. Each word was a secret, given freely.
Yuri would understand that. Bright eyes glimmered between them, in the darkness.
They were beautiful.
“If anything happens to them, I will destroy you. You know I can.”
It was not a question, and there was no teasing in the man’s eyes. But Claude didn’t feel threat between them, but promise.
“Please, Yuri. You think I didn’t know that already? Let me help you.”
To that, the man smiled, and it was soft as the first dawn on golden sands. It was deadly too, because it was true.
“When you ask so sweetly, little noble, how can I refuse?”