#s5/6 claudia redemption arc stans where u at

[raayllum]

but i knew you, playing hide and seek

a/n: i got claudia and ezran feels when rewatching the back half of s2, so here. title is from “cardigan” by taylor swift

The next time Claudia sees Ezran, he is a proud king of sixteen years old. She almost doesn't recognize him at first, because he's tall and with a remodelled crown and on a horse aside her brother on his right. But not everything has changed. Traces of boyhood still cling to his face and they're still on opposite sides of a war, even if she's crouching in the shadows on a mountain pass in Xadia. The king and his guard travel underfoot and Claudia eyes the carriage they're towing along. Goodwill beneficiaries for the nearby Earthblood lords.

She knows somewhere deep down that she should follow Aaravos' orders and attack him. Knows that if it was his ambassador brother and sister in law that she wouldn't hesitate. But Soren and Ezran have always felt different, somehow. She'd sat with both brothers in the aftermath of their father, Callum crying but closed off, stumbling away from the comfort she'd weakly tried to offer. Ezran had curled into her arms and shaken with sobs. Neither boy is like a little brother, per se, firmly friends despite the age differences between them all but...

Claudia's seen Callum since then, married and magical, and his elven bride, features smoothed over by peace. They don't know it's going to crumble around them soon enough and there's a bite of satisfaction in it.

She doesn't have the same teeth when it comes to Ezran and Soren. Perhaps because she has too much love for her brother, damned and daft as he is. Perhaps because she remembers what it is like to be Ezran's age, even if he seems more well adjusted to this new world than she will ever be.

(Sometimes, her father and Aaravos will discuss how they can use the young king's kindness to their own advantage, and it's the only time she doesn't smile.)

###

The first time Claudia looks at Ezran and he sees her back, it is two years later when he is eighteen and she is twenty-four, but both feel so much older. Plumes of smoke rise up over the flat, barren battlefield, and Ezran stares at her through the smog. He holds a sword tightly in his hand, his brow smeared with dirt, blue eyes narrowed.

But despite, he still doesn't seem angry as he takes her in, her hair almost all white except for a few dark streaks flowing behind her, her old stolen Sunstaff in hand. His eyes demand an answer. Aren't you better than this? they seem to ask, like he already believes the answer is yes.

She thinks that's the most frustrating part of it all.

She can't remember when he was born, almost seven years old and too consumed by her parents' infighting and that Soren wouldn't play dress up anymore. She doesn't remember him at age two, because Viren started training her in Dark Magic and that took up time and years wore on quickly. She'd always been so much older and so much closer with Callum and Soren.

And if so, why have they given up on her, but Ezran won't?

(It's after she tries to kill Callum in front of him and she sees the hurt in his eyes, and it seems like he has, that the full horror of she’s down sends her spinning and she hits rock bottom.)

###

Often times, Claudia will look up from her work of pressing plants into pages and smile at Ezran writing at his desk, and he will smile back. Which is to say, Claudia works as Ezran's High Mage after the war.

It isn't planned, per se. She'd been his enemy if not a threat at least for most of it. For all intents and purposes, she should be locked away in the castle dungeons for good. But Ezran has always been forgiving, and she'd helped him and the rest take down Aaravos, and the castle has always been a comforting place. Claudia had wandered everywhere in her travels under Aaravos' tutelage, lost in more ways than one. There's a satisfaction and safety in coming back home again—and being able to stay close to Soren, who is the only family she has left.

Callum and Rayla have finally embarked for the Silvergrove and Xadia full time, content to do some mage training and ambassador work. It is somehow both a simple and unsimple life, but it seems to suit them just fine, or so Ezran says from their letters. He doesn't read them to her the way he does with Soren, nor does she exchange letters with the pair the way the boys do, but that suits her just fine. It strikes her sometimes, how much they've all grown up.

Her brother is here and she has fulfilling work. She's a healer, now, using her knowledge of ingredients and plants to brew potions, a hobby turned necessity for her own ailing health (at first). Dark magic takes it toll on the body. She uses it to help other people, which is nice. A piece of atonement day by day for all the harm she'd caused.

In her free time, she gardens, and Ezran will sit beside her when he can in the flowerbeds. He helps her pluck out weeds and when field mice gnaw at her tomatoes he gives them a gentle scolding before the mouse or two nuzzle up against his palm. It'd been his idea for her to start a garden in the first place.

"It can be nice to grow things," he'd said simply, "rather than destroy them."

Claudia learns how to exhale.

She thinks she could grow here beside him.

[raayllum]

Claudia dyes her hair.

She goes strand by strand, her fingers stained black as she lets the dye set, a basin of warm water on the vanity as she reapplies. Fresh water is still an anomaly to her, after years out the outskirts, scavenging through Xadia, flocking to her father’s side, but—

Claudia looses a breath (there’s no synonym for cinnamon) and focuses on the next strand. The white is so pervasive there’s hardly a hair on her head that doesn’t need the dye, now, only a few natural black streaks remaining. Desperate, it hadn’t taken much for Viren to convince her to give away the rest, in the months, years, following his fall. Until she’d learned to stand without him. 

Soren had helped her up. Held her up when her legs turned weak upon her return to the castle. Ezran had looked at her with forgiveness in his eyes, and she hadn’t deserved it. Callum had been understandably curt and she couldn’t hold it against him. She’d been fine, relatively, with it all, until she’d seen the elf’s—Rayla’s, she corrects, catching herself—white hair, adorned with moonlight and Callum’s kisses, and grown far too self conscious of her own, but hers was the sign of all her sins.

She doesn’t want the judgement, doesn’t want the weight, even when Soren’s eyes remained steady and kind. I’m your brother, as you know, and I’m always there for you, for whatever you need.

He’d silently brought her the tiny pot of dye and left it in her room.

Part of her wonders if it’s wrong to cover her past up and pretend it didn’t happen. But no, she thinks, she’s not covering it. She’s... moving on. Going back to who she used to be, before. Going forward as someone better. Taking herself back. Strand by strand.

Soren smiles when he comes to her in the day, her hair finished and dried—more or less permanent—and they sip on cups of hot brown morning potion. Wraps his arm around her shoulders. “It’s good to have you back, Clauds.” 

[raayllum]

did this for a friend upon request, thought you guys might also enjoy seeing the thought process / mini arc that went into making my claudia playlist on spotify