and I don't wanna let them down

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

Prying her fingers off the mug, she slipped her hand into Remi's as it was offered. Considering the question, Maea thought about everything that had happened. What she had seen, how she had acted, how others had acted towards her in turn. The only thing that was clear in all of it, was that she was not without blame. Without a doubt her actions and words had turned this uglier than it perhaps needed to be... but beyond the tangled and maybe broken mess that had become of her and Asta's relation still lay the overarching question on whether she was wrong or not. Whether she had any right to question what went on in her home. Whether, after all of this, it even was her home at all. Was this a fight she should be choosing? Was it her place to worry about and defend the entirety of this race from a persecution that may not come? No one had asked her to. It may even be against the wishes of the goddess they leaned on as justification of their actions. And yet... she might. Because the alternative was awful, too.

"I would like your opinion," she replied, squeezing his fingers gently. "You were oppressed in your old world... if anyone can tell me if what I'm feeling is wrong, it would be you. And... if what's going on is putting those of us who has already been through one war is placing us at risk all over again. And... and whether I am the one who needs to change. I... already realize that it's my inability to deal with my fears that's made this so bad, and I need to find a way to change that. So that's on me. And I need to make amends for the mess I made with this person's breakdown. I don't know how, but... I want to, if I can." 

Raising her gaze to look at Remi, she quieted to hear what his thoughts on the matter was. At a point where she didn't really care if it turned out that she was the one in the wrong, she just wanted a voice to tip the balance, somehow. So that she could escape this limbo of confusion and upset that had no place to go.

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

Letting his fingers fit around hers, Remi smoothed his thumb softly over her knuckles. He could feel the violet tide of her emotions as it shifted and sloshed unsteadily in her mind; a sea which had grown swollen from a sense of justice and duty, and now sought any cracks through which to escape. And if it found none? It would make them. He could feel the shaky curtains of her faith and resolve, once columns that now crumbled and swayed like silk over an already bloodied battlefield.

Maea's specific phrasing had Remi laughing humourlessly under his breath as he smiled warmly at her. Just the day before he'd told Ronin that he couldn't fault him for the things the Knight felt, however much they'd hurt the Bastion and however much he wished they weren't so. If he couldn't do it for his husband, sadly perhaps, he certainly wouldn't be able to do it for Maea.

"Well, let me first say that I think how you are feeling isn't the sort of thing that deserves to be called right or wrong. And, for what it's worth, I don't think the actions of one man—or even two—are enough to cause a race war." Even if the Grounds declared themselves cannibal town, the conflict which might inevitably follow would not be racially motivated. Indeed, if Danta wasn't a leader it probably wouldn't be anything at all.

Softly, his own emotions a watercolour blend of sea glass green and shining gold, Remi squeezed Maea's hand. "I have known you for some years now. We haven't always talked the way we do now, but I remember you all those years ago, gardening on your family's home." Warmth filled the Bastion's eyes and his emotions then as his smile grew. "You were a delicate thing then. Not weak, but certainly compared to the strength you have now, the change is considerable. I mention this, because..." Shades of navy swirl through Remi's touch; guilt-stricken greys and ugly browns. "..sometimes, when we are strong, we use that strength to make people accept our help. Accept our ideas. Accept our justice."

Feathering his jaw slightly, using his freehand Remi ruffles a hand through his curls and sighs. "Did you ever hear about the time that I killed Sunjata?"

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

His emotions felt like sunlight and green leaves, babbling brooks and clear ocean waves sighing against her weatherbeaten rocks. The tension in her began to loosen in response, lulled by the calm tone as much as the memories he evoked. Smiling back, Maea nodded. "I remember," she said dreamily. "You had Aoife in a sling on your chest, and I was trying to keep the weeds from taking over the garden." She had lost her family, he had lost Ronin, and they were both just trying to keep going. That he had thought of her as delicate, perhaps even fragile, turned her mouth sideways in a complicated expression. No doubt he was right. Though part of her wondered if she hadn't been steadier back then, at least mentally. These days it felt like her body was the only thing that grew and developed, while her thoughts remained stuck and unable to move.

Refocusing back on Remi, she kept his hand but exchanged her mug for a cracker. Before she could take a bite however, his question dropped and she sat up a bit, stunned. "... No. I haven't. Sunjata and I, we haven't... really talked since before I died. What happened?"
Tasting his guilt like it was her own, not even the bitter tea or the sweet cracker quite managed to chase it off. Wondering where this was going, she waited, breathing against uneasy flips of her gut - she could sit with them later.

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

Clearing his throat softly, Remi closed his eyes before exhaling steadily. "There's a lot that goes into what happened, but in the end, all that really matters is this: Sunjata, I thought, beat someone I thought of like a mother, and was lying to me about it. You and I have never dreamt together the way I could when I was the Lullaby, but trust me when I say the worlds I made were nearly indistinguishable from reality. I threatened to kill Sunjata if he didn't tell me the truth, and...he didn't know it, but I placed us into a dream and I killed him. " Beneath the blanket Remi's calf muscle flexes hard enough to cramp and twitch causing his breath to hitch somewhat.

Looking younger, perhaps, for the guilty flush that paints his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, Remi offers Maea a quiet look. "I thought because I was the stronger of us I wasn't wrong to force him to do things my way because I had justice on my side." Wearily, the Bastion looks into his lap. "That was the end of Sunjata and Ronin's years-long friendship and was the closest Ronin and I have ever come to actually leaving one another." He says, and even now, all these years later with the seams of that wound mostly closed, it hurts more than he cares to admit.

Swallowing and lifting his gaze to Maea, Remi smiles sadly. "I mention this only because..." Images of the physical fight between the ancient and her unnamed counterpart in the Grounds flash behind his eyes, and while gods he can understand what it must have been like to think she was doing the right thing in trying to outlast the fight she felt in the other ancient, personal experience had taught the Bastion that it was never the right way forward. "It will never go well, when you make someone listen to what you have to say. No one has ever been convinced of the truth of something with their hands pinned behind their backs or their faces shoved into the dirt." He continues softly.

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

The more he spoke, the deeper a sensation of cold settled into her being. Cutting like Halo ice, it mirrored the stricken expression on Maea's face, mirrored her actions against his in ways that were nearly identical, perhaps with the exception that she'd been acting in an attempt to help rather than hurt. That didn't matter, because the result was the same; they had forced their perception onto someone else, and done serious damage along the way.

Gently taking back her hand, she buried her face in both palms. The full impact of what she had done was settling in, and it erased such lofty and abstract things as whether cannibalism was right or wrong, or whether she could live with that tendency in people she knew.
"... I see. I went too far. Even though I only wanted to help him calm down and regain his senses... I failed to notice that he didn't want my help." Drawing a deep breath, she looked up over her fingertips with a haunted expression. "So even if I wasn't wrong to feel what I did... I was wrong to express it the way I did. Right?" Glancing over to ensure that she was coming to the right conclusion, her pale features had taken on a greenish tint.

"Remi... have you ever get scared of yourself? The things you could do, if you just... let yourself go and stopped caring?" Raking her nails hard across the scalp and pushing long hair out of her face, Maea braced her hands against the wide arcing horns while staring at the carpet. "I figured it was only when I was doing bad things that people were put at risk around me, but now... it's like I'm ruining everything I touch." It was a painful thought. An idea supported by too many incidents built up over time, that she really wasn't good for anything but destroying things that others had built.

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

Letting Maea withdraw her hand, Remi can only leave the ancient to weather her violet seas herself. "That can be only of the hardest things to endure." He says softly. "Wanting to help someone and having to just..not. Especially when you think they'd be better for it." What was more dangerous still, as Maea was learning, was what happened when that perfect storm was ignited by the sheer ability to make them.

"I think.." Meeting her pale eyes between her fingers, like spots of sky caged behind wintery bars, Remi considered for a moment before exhaling and nodding. "I think so, yes." He agreed gently.

Though her next question certainly wasn't a funny one, Remi couldn't help the dark laugh that escaped his lips before he could properly school his expression. Biting at the inside of his lip, his cheeks growing an angry scarlet, the Bastion could do little more than nod. "More than anyone has ever known." He admits in a voice barely above a whisper even as he tried for a small smile that felt as horrible as it likely looked; all false edges and hidden sadness.

"When I received my first properly predatory shift—a lion—I attacked a complete stranger. My friends had to throw me into a pit for several days until I calmed down." At that had been only the start. "At my worst, just before the war, I could lock anyone that I wanted into a sleep that they could never wake up from, just with a single touch. I could make that world a hellscape if I wanted, and what could anyone do about it? I even went to Vi for council, because I wouldn't even listen to Ronin."

Reaching out to place a hand on Maea's shoulder—perhaps not the best idea given the magic he'd just described—and softly squeezed. "What things do you think you might do, Maea?" The Bastion wondered, his voice pitched low as if they were sharing a secret. "If you let yourself go and stopped caring?"

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

Yes.

Yes. Alright. Okay. A quiet settled over her. Not quite relief, but perhaps something adjacent. Doing wrong was better than being wrong, she supposed. It was far easier to change her actions than her way of thinking. Quite what that change would look like she didn't know yet - that might be up to Asta, more than her - but now... at least she knew. It felt awful, and gut wrenching, and echoes of 'but I just wanted to - ' bounced around her brain like crazed flies against a window pane, but that was fine. Those were as natural as the tendency to hide chocolate stained fingers behind the back after swiping a cookie that wasn't yours. What mattered was what came after.

More difficult by far was the call of the void, that whisper in her ears that said she might as well embrace the chaos, if that's all she was capable of creating. Snatching a pillow to hug it tightly, Remi's hand felt big and warm against her shoulder - and though she flinched at the touch, at the question, she didn't pull away. Maea was far more afraid of the images conjured by her own mind than anything he might or once had done.

"I would stop seeing people as individuals," she admitted, with a faraway expression. A little cold, a bit numb, in a way that was all too familiar. The way she had been as Ascended, disconnected from everything - including herself. "Reduce them to pawns on a chess board, of no importance unless they could make themselves useful. I think I could sacrifice a lot to reach any goal I might have. Not too long ago I suggested setting fire to the Greatwood to erase the void taint, not really minding all the good things that would be destroyed at the same time. I... sometimes when I use magic... it's like I get drunk on the feeling. Power - I've never had this much power before. It wasn't even a fight, when I faced that ancient, but when I realized he couldn't actually defeat me, it was... not satisfying, exactly, but I don't like being able to feel the way that felt, either."

Leaning into the touch, a faint shudder went through her. "What I'm most afraid of... is that I'll find that I enjoy being cruel. Because... I really can be. The things I can say to people, the way I seem to find ways to cut them where it hurts - I'm really good at that. The way I can twist what I say to sound like something other than what I mean... I don't even have to lie. And there are times when the truth I tell is even worse than lying." Mouth drooping, just speaking of these things made her feel sullied. Tainted, like even imagining it equaled doing it. And hadn't she? Selfishly pushing for her own rights and needs even as Asta showed signs of discomfort, pressing on even after he made clear they didn't think the same way.

And even as he was down, barely able to move, she still pressed for more, for help, squeezing every bit of use out of him for her own benefit. Because it was all about her, and her fears, and her comfort, (and sure, it was, because none of this would have happened if she had dealt with her traumas and fears instead of pushing them onto others to unravel).

"I am so... fucking selfish."

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

"Mhmmm." Humming his understanding—gods knew one only needed to be a resident of the Greatwood when Remi had run it to know what a tyrant he'd been—Remi nodded stiffly. "It's a difficult thing, when you're stronger. It becomes a type of weakness all on its own." Something to always be aware of, to have to account for. "So you'd set fire to the Greatwood." He chuckles softly, aiming to inject at least a little levity back into Maea's features. "As far as villains go, that'd hardly make the list."

Ensuring his fingertips didn't brush against her neck as he swirled softly reassuring patterns against her shoulder, the Bastion cocked his head skeptically to the side as Maea began to speak of cruelty. "Being good at a thing and using it as a weapon is not always the same as enjoying it." He reasons with a frown before his voice took on a tone that was a touch more paternal than it had been before. "The things you said to the ancient...they sounded misguided to me, rather than you enjoying the pain you were causing, I mean. You said you cared about them, and what I heard, at least, was that in your panic you threw out everything that you had—cruel words and hurtful comparisons and even violence—just to try and keep the conversation going. As if maybe you could walk it all back if you just had long enough." Perhaps he'd misunderstood what he'd heard and no doubt Maea would correct him if so, but certainly it seemed to him like someone clutching desperately at the rungs of a ladder, not necessarily caring where it led so long as they didn't fall.

Quietly, his sea glass stare on a frayed bit of blanket covering Maea's lap, Remi softly tugged the conversation back to something they hadn't yet touched on. "Maea...has anyone ever asked you to kill them, before? Whether in the heat of the moment, or earnestly?"

Letting his fingers continue to softly rove across the blanket to provide whatever meagre comfort he was able, the Bastion let his eyes lower for a moment. "Lately, it sounds like it." Remi agrees, his tone apologetic for not mincing his words. "Everyone is from time to time. Though...I think, just based on how you've wanted to handle things so far, that the consequences of this might not be the easiest for you." Space and time, perhaps forever. Lessons could be learned and people could change, but not every situation could be fixed.

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

His take was perhaps not entirely accurate to what her intentions had been. And as he suspected, she was not hesitant about correcting him, for no benefit other than to ensure that the picture was accurately portrayed.
"In a way, I think? But it was just as much to give him a chance to tell me what he wanted from me. And to be honest with him when I realized what I had been doing. Because everything I'd done up until that moment when we lay on the ground, I really thought I acted and spoke with good intentions. To find a compromise we could both live with, and mend the friendship... Only afterward did I begin to see how much I had been projecting my own fears onto him."

Coughing out a painful sounding laugh, Maea straightened up and reclined against the backrest of the couch, careful not to trap Remi's hand if he wanted to keep it free. "No? That's a relief... can always save arson for later." Not that she had to, it was already scratched off her bucket list. Perhaps she ought to confess about that while she was still at it, but by the time she had gathered the courage, Remi had already moved on.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she thought back. Didn't have to look far, actually; some memories didn't fade.
"Loren did, once," she sighed. "Not in so many words, but... he slit his wrists in front of my eyes, then healed himself up right away. And after I'd become Ascended... I ran into Harper. And I practically offered him my neck, when he seemed wishy washy about killing an enemy he used to know. That was not a pretty conversation." Nor had her encounter with Nephele been, some time later. "A fae... tried to kill me outright," she added, swallowing thickly. "She wouldn't give up, and I... I didn't want to die. So I killed her." Closing her eyes she could practically feel the weight of the blood on her hands. The awful feeling of being unwanted, unneeded, unworthy of both life and death. "Why do you ask?" 

She could only nod wearily at the rest. Consequences... there would be plenty. From Asta, from Danta... gods, but she wouldn't be surprised if she was exiled from the Grounds altogether. Perhaps that was exactly what she deserved. Being uprooted once again, removed from the companionship of a clan, a home, a place to belong... Or perhaps that was hoping for the easy way out, when staying and suffering whatever punishment the wicked Ancients might think up for her would be far more torturous.

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

Ruffling a hand through his curls before conjuring a feather from his wrist and twirling it between his fingers, Remi bites at the inside of his cheek as he stares down at the fluttering bit of his own pale plumage. "I meant after. Once the ancient had left and you followed." Remi clarified with an apologetic smile for not having been clearer.

"The conversation before that...regardless of the morality of the issue, it sounded like you were asking for more than they thought you were entitled to." A compromise perhaps is what actual friends would have strived to achieve, but by all accounts, only one of them considered themselves to be that. No amount of logic or yelling could beat down walls that had no reason to lower. "After, though. When the ancient had left and you followed? What were you thinking?" It's the only part of the story she'd left out, her actual intentions, and if it wasn't a desperate grab to stay afloat Remi couldn't think what it had been.

Pulling back his hand, the Bastion smirked softly before letting his expression grow more appropriately serious. "Treating people as a means to an end, distancing yourself from your emotions...it's a slippery slope to be sure, but real villains rarely try so hard to fix a situation, misguided though their efforts might be. Nor do they call up old friends for tea to talk about it." He points out with a raise of his eyebrow.

In an instant, the Bastion's eyes darken as his lip tugs up in an unconscious snarl to hear the summoner's name. "He did the same to me." Remi growls, thinking of the pathetic manipulation Loren had tried to use to get the Bastion to acquiesce to another of his games. Gods, it made him furious to think of it even now. Forcing his mind back to their actual conversation with an audible click of his teeth, it's with an almost naive look of disappointment that he gently nods his head. "Then you do know how manipulative it can be, to demand that of someone. How long it stays with them." He says evenly, sighing, thinking that perhaps Maea might not have known the ramifications of her words at the time.

"After what happened with Sunjata, we didn't speak for years." Twisting the steam of the pale feather in his hands, he watched it until it was a blur of motion. "I let him kill me up in a dream, once, to try and even the odds, and he still broke my nose at the recent Tournament I threw." At this, the Bastion grins a touch crookedly, as if boyishly amused of the fact that after so many years it had still come to blows. "Even now Ronin and I fought about whether or not we should go and see him." He adds, if only to show just how long Sky's characters grudges could be held.

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

That was a good question. Dragging her hand over the face, she put herself back in the moment.
"I was... worried," she recalled. "I've never seen him run like that, and I remember being both shocked and alarmed. The way he ran too - I didn't want him to get hurt. So I followed, at a distance. Just to make sure he didn't run into trouble, or off a cliff. And when he spotted me... he seemed so utterly out of his mind. I thought... maybe if he could have a way to take all that panic out on something, it might help him come back to his senses. So when he lauched himself at me, I let it happen." Misguided, but well intentioned. That was a good way to summarize every decision she had made that day. Isolated and singularly each had been understandable and perhaps not that horrendous, but when put together the result was a complete disaster.

Sinking in on herself at the disappointment in Remi's eyes, she found that far worse than any telling off. For the first time since walking through the door, Maea hesitated a long time before explaining that bit of reasoning... But ultimately, the realized there was no point in holding it back. She'd said too much already for that.
"... I didn't say it to manipulate," she replied weakly. "It was... a seriously meant offer." Holding the pillow so tightly that the fabric wrinkled, she tried in vain to smooth it again. "Even in my best days, I keep wondering... whether I really should be here at all. Since I was plucked from Mort's halls by the Voice, I've felt like what I really ought to do to right that wrong is return... " And if she could make amends by giving that end to someone the had wronged, that wouldn't be a bad way to go.

Except, Asta hadn't accepted the offer. That look of disgust as he walked away... It had burned its way into her memory, no doubt to linger just like so many other ones in the past. Reaffirming her failures on matters of kindness, compassion, understanding, honor and grace – all the things she admired and desired yet didn't possess.

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

"This...this Butcher of Whitebrim?" Remi raises an eyebrow. "This ancient who had survived being tortured in the Climb and now worked as security for the Dusklight..." That's who she was worried about? Someone who ostensibly had already survived a lifetime of pain and torture and come out on the other side of it? He frowned, his head shaking ever so slightly, not believing her. Oh, he believed that she thought it was because she was concerned for him, but beneath all of it, he thought it had much more to do with her than it did with him. "You let him launch himself at you once, yes. But then you kept him down. Again and again, as you said." Pressing his teeth together hard enough to have his jaw feathering, the Bastion lifted his eyes. "Tell me that now, at least, you see that was wrong? That it was an abuse of your own strength?"

Staring down at the feather, its speed now a blur as the Bastion worried it constantly between his fingers, Remi could do little more than press his eyes closed. "It's always a manipulation." He interrupts softly, his voice tight. "Asking someone to kill you at the best of times, and take it from someone whose responsibility it was to do just that for years, is not an easy task. But after you have just beaten them? After you've called them names and given them no option but to listen?" Exhaling forcefully with the mental reminder that everyone made mistakes and that at least Maea was here trying to account and atone for hers. Gods, it wasn't as if Remi wasn't guilty of everything she'd done tenfold.

It wasn't the focus of their conversation, but Remi was helpless not to add: "If you ever don't want to be here anymore, you come to me. Don't ask it of anyone else." Remi might not be the Lullaby anymore, but certainly in all of Caido there wasn't anyone better suited to swiftly taking a life and being able to stomach the consequences of it having been a friend.

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //

Flinching at the sound of the moniker, Maea felt like the bottom of her gut was dropping away. For all her efforts to keep Asta's identity out of the retelling, it seemed she had failed that too. Add breaker of confidences to her list of wrongs, and whatever small claim to honor she'd had left was crumbling into dust.
Especially as Remi went on to condemn her actions. She had asked for his opinion, and now it was coming. Her head bent under the weight of it, innards hollowing with sick loathing of herself; how she had been able to do exactly the kind of thing that she'd accused Asta of.
"Yes," she got out, past the choking sensation in her throat. "I realize that now." It didn't really matter how much she had wished to help, or how concerned she had been, when her way of expressing it turned out that... cruel. Yes, that was the only word for it.

And behold, how in her effort to avoid a thing, she became that very same thing. But it wasn't as some queen of the damned she sat on her throne of bones, but as something far more wretched. Bent and defeated on the couch of a friend who was both appalled and disappointed, swallowing down self pity and regret in equal measure because she didn't think she deserved to cry anymore.

And then Remi offered to kill her. And perhaps that was the moment where the full impact of what she had really done finally sunk all the way in. Because if the thought of asking a friend to do something like that could hurt so badly, then being asked... or even offered to...

The rush of breath as Maea slowly exhaled whispered into the silence. Forcing her back to straighten out, she turned her head towards the ceiling, tracing the edge around two corners. Her burden... Her responsibility to mend what she had broken. If she could. If they would let her try. And at the very least, not the kind of pain or weight she would ask Remi to comfort.

"I hear... I hear you." Her voice was so thick, she had to clear it bedore getting the words out. Reaching for the teacup with mechanically precise motions, she drained the cold liquid down to the dregs. The bitterness left on her tongue once again felt very fitting, more deserving than the sweetness she normally might crave.

"Is there any way to make amends for something like this?" Somewhere she didn't think so. Some hurts couldn't be forgiven. And yet,  like the selfish fool she was, she still craved the companionship she'd caught a glimpse of. Surrounded by peers, working towards a common goal, laughing and bantering...

Why was it that she only ever realized what she had after it had broken?

Maea

// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //

the bastion

Sipping in a small breath, though Maea wouldn't see it based on how her head had started to hang, the Bastion's shoulders relaxed away from his ears to hear her say so. "Okay." He breaths a small sigh of relief. "As long as you know." Remi says softly, not needing to berate her any more than she was likely doing in her own mind. Had Remi been privy to Maea's thoughts he might have supplied controlling as another word for what her actions had been, alas. Perhaps in the ancient's mind they amounted to much the same, anyway.

Watching her as she reached out for the tea, her movements sharp and seemingly without emotion—not unlike the ascended she'd once been—had the Bastion frowning, though he kept himself from saying anything. Just as he'd told her earlier, he wouldn't ever fault her for the way she felt, and while he might not understand the things going on inside of her mind, he'd not shy away either. Silently his gaze followed the angle of her jaw as she inspected the houseboat's wooden ceilings, wondering if the answers she sought might be found in the whorls and knots that made up the floorboards of his bedroom up above.

"Probably." Remi replied, perhaps surprisingly. "Given enough time, but...is that really what you want?" Setting the feather he'd been spinning down, the Bastion tried to mentally tug Maea's gaze from the ceiling as if simply by imagining the periwinkle of her eyes strongly enough, he could just make it happen. "You seem to abhore everything this ancient has chosen to be. That he tortures others, eats them...you'd compromise the things you believe in to be his friend? Why?" Knowing nothing more than what she'd told him, Remi could only speculate that love perhaps had something to do with it.

I got a feeling inside that I can't domesticate
It doesn't wanna live in a cage,
A feeling that I can't housebreak

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!