epilogue (open)

remi The higher I climb the farther I fall when I do Once, holding back his emotions was as natural for Remi as flying (and had manifested at roughly the same time in his youth). Restraint was easily enough done and though he didn't remember it, he'd practiced it for months with Loren with relative success. Now though, in a world where he'd been told he didn't have to hide who he was, that he could make his own choices, he found the once formidable walls of his self-control reduced to rubble. He wanted to go after Loren, to apologize and explain. To tell him how he felt as he had done with Phoebe. Not to distance himself as the midwife had counciled and as the alchemist had promised. But was that what Remi was now? A breaker of hearts and his word? Hastily reaching down to recover the book (having broken its spine during the fall), the alchemist bristled at the sound of the golem depositing what it was carrying on the table, before watching Loren bundle himself to depart. If he was ready to talk, he would have stayed, Remi tried to remind himself. And while he knew that to be true, that wasn't what made his feathers spread. Loren didn't look hurt or wounded, the way Remi did, and while the two men obviously had very different coping mechanisms, this icy reaction from the Launceleyn made the alchemist wonder if he'd ever be ready to talk. If there would ever again be a time he stayed.