the bastion
Remi exhales his answer more than he gives it, the sound leaving him in a low, helpless breath as he shakes his head, because there is no shape he can make out of this that does not cut someone. Flora’s absence sits in the room like something still sparking, bright enough to hurt if he looks at it directly, and though Carlo and Calan remain asleep in the bassinet, their small bundled bodies seem to make the silence around them more fragile rather than less.
He glances back at Ronin over one shoulder, eyebrows lifting briefly as if some reasonable explanation might have surfaced in the moment between one thought and the next, but none does. I do not know, he admits. I would have thought that as our children got older, we would be able to have more frank conversations with them about things, but... The thought trails away, not because there is nothing else to say, but because the rest of it opens too wide beneath him. Ronin will feel the pit of it through the bond, that gnawing hollow in Remi’s stomach, vast and cold as the Maw, where all the old failures collect with the patience of deep water. Every year missed, every wound misunderstood, every moment where love had arrived late or clumsily dressed as warning, all of it shifts somewhere below the ribs until Remi’s jaw tightens and his gaze drops back to the bassinet.
But maybe that is exactly why, he adds after a moment, quieter even in thought, because guilt does not need volume to be loud. Maybe we were not there in the way she needed when she was younger, and now anything that is not approval feels like that same sort of absence.
A quiet groan slips from him as he leans back, one hand dragging over his mouth before falling uselessly to his lap. He nods at Ronin’s memory of how casually Flora had dropped it between bites of pie, the sheer brightness of her delivery making the thing itself feel sharper in retrospect. "And it is not as if she has not seen what being demigods has cost our family over the years," he murmurs at last, voice low enough for the twins and rough enough for Ronin, his eyes lingering on the door before returning to his husband.
He glances back at Ronin over one shoulder, eyebrows lifting briefly as if some reasonable explanation might have surfaced in the moment between one thought and the next, but none does. I do not know, he admits. I would have thought that as our children got older, we would be able to have more frank conversations with them about things, but... The thought trails away, not because there is nothing else to say, but because the rest of it opens too wide beneath him. Ronin will feel the pit of it through the bond, that gnawing hollow in Remi’s stomach, vast and cold as the Maw, where all the old failures collect with the patience of deep water. Every year missed, every wound misunderstood, every moment where love had arrived late or clumsily dressed as warning, all of it shifts somewhere below the ribs until Remi’s jaw tightens and his gaze drops back to the bassinet.
But maybe that is exactly why, he adds after a moment, quieter even in thought, because guilt does not need volume to be loud. Maybe we were not there in the way she needed when she was younger, and now anything that is not approval feels like that same sort of absence.
A quiet groan slips from him as he leans back, one hand dragging over his mouth before falling uselessly to his lap. He nods at Ronin’s memory of how casually Flora had dropped it between bites of pie, the sheer brightness of her delivery making the thing itself feel sharper in retrospect. "And it is not as if she has not seen what being demigods has cost our family over the years," he murmurs at last, voice low enough for the twins and rough enough for Ronin, his eyes lingering on the door before returning to his husband.
I can't pass the test,
don't wait for me.
don't wait for me.
