two || claudio lucius markham [resub cb]

Round, and around, and around.

Orla’s little hands scrabble for purchase against Garrison’s arms as he spins her, feet shuffling against the ground in a repetitive drive, and an unsteady sway settles into Claudio’s bones just from watching them from where he’s tucked up with a book about surviving cold-weather climates. The dizziness is not an uncommon feeling.

Some days, Claudio stumbles between home and school and training as if it was he who was being swept up and around in Garrison’s arms like he used to before he outpaced his brother’s growth. Dizzy just from existence, he struggles to meet the demand of training and the expectations levered at him that he never quite manages to grasp. He’s not bad at training; he’s just not Helena, and Claudio is completely fine with that. Physical combat, the drive to beat his opponents into the ground and then a just a little farther still, had never been his thing like it had been his sister’s.

Sadist, he thinks fondly, glancing away from his sibling’s antics to watch as Helena trains with their mother across the room.

No, Claudio has never really wanted to fight, though he doesn’t mind learning it. He likes the learning itself far more than the idea of practically applying it. Instead, as his siblings train around him, he sits back from the action with his book and studies the area to take it all in, every little detail that might ever come in useful.

How the light has shifted and dimmed to announce the oncoming storm.

How Helena favors her left side as her mother tries to draw her into a headlock.

How each step Phyllida takes to sneak up behind a newly-still Garrison doesn’t go unnoticed by a smirking Orla.

With a smile, Claudio turns back to his book and flips the page, reading the neat penmanship by his mother’s hand in the margins, soaking in all of the information he can as he hears his mother’s commanding voice admonish his sisters’ technique for tackling their older brother to the ground. Once she’s done with Helena, she’ll be on to him. He hasn’t got much longer to prepare.

Claudio still feels dizzy when his time is up.