#i am chronically unable to be concise with my thoughts but apparently that's even more true when it comes to ranclaire

[tea-of-destiny]

I can be trusted with words. absolutely. it's late for me but I re-read the post again and the sheer amount of "right person wrong time" going on. augh. and just like...thinking about it, if Randall weren't already committed to Angela, it would have been Claire, wouldn't it? and it's not as though there had never been any love between them. but now he has to wonder why he chose the path he did. and lament the fact that he can't go back to when it was easier (to the bliss of childhood; to the ignorance of forgetting).

Oh yeah absolutely. Ranclaire spends almost 40 years at "the wrong time" in this AU.

As a teen, Randall was far too fixated on Being Somebody, and on taking the most effective path to make his name known. Like, yeah, absolutely, Randall genuinely cared for both Angela and Claire well before any concept of romantic commitment got involved. But he wasn't even really thinking in terms of reciprocation once it was involved--only in terms of personal risk and reward.

Claire was no one as a teen. She didn't have old money or a prestigious name to pave her way through life; she was just an ordinary person from an ordinary family. True, Randall became so deeply competitive with Claire because she Got Him in a way no one else ever had, or ever would. Their rivalry was an expression of his admiration for their shared intellect and ambition. But Randall never saw a way forward with Claire that would also help him achieve the recognition and wealth he craved. It was more risk but less reward to stay by her.

Angela's case was surely helped by the fact that it was she who asked him out first (Claire never made any such overtures). Beyond that, though, Angela and her family were also of a higher status than him, and her parents didn't approve of him as he was. It feels awful to say, but... that made earning Angela's hand in marriage a challenge to Randall, more than it was ever a sincere desire. He felt he had to do something drastic to show that Being Somebody was a certainty for his future.

If Randall wasn't with Angela, I don't think he would have come up with the idea to solve the mystery of the Akbadain ruins, because he wouldn't have had anyone he needed to impress to that extent. Never mind that Angela didn't want him to do all this insane stuff to impress her. Never mind that her trauma around archaeology meant she and Randall would never come to a mutual understanding about it, and that marrying Angela meant committing himself to a lifetime with a partner who didn't fully support him. This option was high risk and high reward--as long as his expedition to the ruins succeeded, he could make some sacrifices for the promise of glory.

For a brief, eternal moment, as he dangled over the ravine and stared up at Claire's terrified expression, Randall was enlightened to the stupidity of this whole greatness complex he had built around himself. If it wasn't Angela, maybe it would have been Claire. Maybe it should have been Claire this whole time.

And then he fell, and he forgot this and himself and all the things he cared about for 18 years.

All the while, Claire did exactly what he had always dreamed--she Became Somebody. She had acquired a small following among physics scholars even during the writing of her doctoral thesis (on time travel), but by the time of the Golden Garden case, there wasn't a soul in London who didn't know the name Professor Layton.

And she Became Somebody on the belief that Randall would never come back. She went through almost 10 years of college education, changed career paths and research interests, gained and lost a husband and decided to secretly adopt a teenager in the space of a year and a half... She made a name for herself because Randall couldn't, and she took on Hershel's name to do so because he couldn't, either.

So when Randall finally remembers the truth again, Claire can't just let him waltz back into her life. It's not even that he wasn't there for all of these things to happen to her and wouldn't understand her anymore--because, naturally, her life wouldn't have turned out like this if he had been there. It's more that Randall being alive unravels the certainty of her own choices, too.

If marrying Angela wouldn't have made Randall happy, why did he organize his whole life around the idea? Maybe he didn't die in Akbadain, but why did he push himself toward a goal that took away everything else that mattered to him? Couldn't he have seen that there's more than one way to be somebody important?

And if Randall didn't die in the ruins, why did Claire leave Stansbury at all? Why did she ever go into time travel if there wasn't anyone she needed to return to the past to save? Did Hershel have to lose his life for that purpose? (Is there any possibility that Hershel could come back, too?)

There are no easy answers for either of them. But while Randall wishes they could figure it all out together, Claire can't bring herself to face him while he's still confusing her so much.