[ What she shares about her own parents in return gets a smile from him as he listens. It sounds like a fairy tale in its own way - especially so in Fodlan where arranged marriages that are far less happier are common as he'd observed in the nobility. Almyra wasn't exempt from that either with its own court forever angling to find any way ahead. That not being the case for their parents meant them the lucky ones - and the two of them by extension for getting to have that.
And the truth of that, in what he's both said and hasn't yet, is what makes him all the more certain now after so much uncertainty. Years is the true measurement to be used for that truth he long attempted to bury as if that could somehow ever put it out of mind. As if doing so would help him find the right moment for it to be said, but instead all it did was make him believe he should keep waiting.
The time was those afternoons where they'd skipped class to find sunny spots to nap in or at meals where he'd taken a dessert just to place it quietly on her own meal tray while she was distracted. It was on nights when lost in endless plans and strategies she'd roused him from whatever desk he was hunched over to make sure he'd gotten something resembling rest, and the other nights where he'd scattered kisses across her skin just like tonight. When he'd opened his eyes to find her still there at the side of a hospital bed in Nocwich, and when fear of saying too much might push her away in the wake of their broken hearts kept him silent though now he realizes it risked only breaking them even more.
If waiting taught him any lesson it was this and everything else Claude thinks of now: that there would be no perfect moment to speak them, but that speaking them would make the moment so. ]
I should have told you sooner that I loved you. [ And then but a second later, since he remembers well the trouble past tense caused before when it seemed so clear to him as it was, ] That I love you, Hilda. That when I fell in love with you it never ended, no matter what words I find to say it at any other time. I meant what I told you before, except that let me tell you the complete version of it now. I love you for who you are and that'll never change.
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And the truth of that, in what he's both said and hasn't yet, is what makes him all the more certain now after so much uncertainty. Years is the true measurement to be used for that truth he long attempted to bury as if that could somehow ever put it out of mind. As if doing so would help him find the right moment for it to be said, but instead all it did was make him believe he should keep waiting.
The time was those afternoons where they'd skipped class to find sunny spots to nap in or at meals where he'd taken a dessert just to place it quietly on her own meal tray while she was distracted. It was on nights when lost in endless plans and strategies she'd roused him from whatever desk he was hunched over to make sure he'd gotten something resembling rest, and the other nights where he'd scattered kisses across her skin just like tonight. When he'd opened his eyes to find her still there at the side of a hospital bed in Nocwich, and when fear of saying too much might push her away in the wake of their broken hearts kept him silent though now he realizes it risked only breaking them even more.
If waiting taught him any lesson it was this and everything else Claude thinks of now: that there would be no perfect moment to speak them, but that speaking them would make the moment so. ]
I should have told you sooner that I loved you. [ And then but a second later, since he remembers well the trouble past tense caused before when it seemed so clear to him as it was, ] That I love you, Hilda. That when I fell in love with you it never ended, no matter what words I find to say it at any other time. I meant what I told you before, except that let me tell you the complete version of it now. I love you for who you are and that'll never change.