the bastion
Remi’s eyebrows rise in tired agreement, because why would Flora have any reason to be nervous indeed. Nervousness belonged to the people left standing after the announcement, apparently, to those who knew too much about what came after divine favour and not enough about how to make that knowledge useful without turning it into a weapon.
His hand stretches out across Ronin’s leg, fingers settling there with quiet familiarity as he turns slightly into him, letting the touch to his curls and the warmth of his husband’s body against his own pull him back from the sharpest edges of his thoughts. Even so, he shakes his head again, helplessly. At Ronin’s soft, exhausted curse, Remi laughs under his breath despite himself, the sound low and brief and aching at the edges, because there is something almost absurd about having lived through the world ending more than once and still being undone by a daughter with a pie and a piece of news dropped like a match into dry grass.
"It feels like either she did not take seriously everything that has happened to us over the years," he murmurs, careful to keep his voice beneath the twins’ dreaming, "or worse, that she thinks she can do all of this better." The words leave a sourness in his mouth almost immediately, and he pauses, his thumb brushing once along Ronin’s leg as if to smooth away the shape of what he has just admitted. "I know how that sounds," he adds quietly, glancing up at his husband with an expression gone rueful and uncertain, "but..." He trails off, shaking his head because there is no kinder way to finish it that would still be honest. Flora is brilliant and bold and capable in ways he has never doubted, but Safrin is Safrin, and Remi does not know how to say that he would not bet on anyone, not even Flora, coming away untouched from that kind of devotion. Not when Ronin hadn't managed it, anyway.
His hand stretches out across Ronin’s leg, fingers settling there with quiet familiarity as he turns slightly into him, letting the touch to his curls and the warmth of his husband’s body against his own pull him back from the sharpest edges of his thoughts. Even so, he shakes his head again, helplessly. At Ronin’s soft, exhausted curse, Remi laughs under his breath despite himself, the sound low and brief and aching at the edges, because there is something almost absurd about having lived through the world ending more than once and still being undone by a daughter with a pie and a piece of news dropped like a match into dry grass.
"It feels like either she did not take seriously everything that has happened to us over the years," he murmurs, careful to keep his voice beneath the twins’ dreaming, "or worse, that she thinks she can do all of this better." The words leave a sourness in his mouth almost immediately, and he pauses, his thumb brushing once along Ronin’s leg as if to smooth away the shape of what he has just admitted. "I know how that sounds," he adds quietly, glancing up at his husband with an expression gone rueful and uncertain, "but..." He trails off, shaking his head because there is no kinder way to finish it that would still be honest. Flora is brilliant and bold and capable in ways he has never doubted, but Safrin is Safrin, and Remi does not know how to say that he would not bet on anyone, not even Flora, coming away untouched from that kind of devotion. Not when Ronin hadn't managed it, anyway.
I can't pass the test,
don't wait for me.
don't wait for me.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
