[SE] the feel of coldness only water brings

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

Pressing soft, warm kisses to his husband's shoulder and into the crook of his neck, Ronin can't help but scoff, the flare of his emotions suddenly bright with amusement before settling once more into their complicated depths. "If I were able to get it out of my system by now, I daresay we wouldn't still be talking about it," he points out, punctuating the remark with another kiss to Remi's jaw.

Closing his eyes and feeling his jaw want to clench all over again, instead the Knight clasps his husband closer, as if to remind himself that for all the words spilling from the Bastion's lips, he still holds nothing but love for him. Nothing but love for Flora as well, and gods if that might be the thing that eventually twists his arm to go through with this.

"With respect," he says nonetheless, his tone dryer than Hak Etme, "given that I was arguably the injured party in all that happened, the only thing she should have been doing for me was what I asked." And he'd asked for distance, not to potentially run into two small children anywhere and everywhere in the Greatwood.

Still, huffing out a long sigh, he forces himself to let those threads go. They aren't for him to discuss with Remi, after all. "You're right," he says. "Until or unless I can sort this, there's no way Sunjata and I can be friends. So... I guess I better get out my hammer and nails and start trying to build a bridge, mm?"

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"You say that as if we have ever talked about it." Ronin hums in response. For all of their no using sex as a bandaid, quite when they'd simply just decided to ignore certain wounds and not even bother with a bandaid, he didn't know. Looking back, the pair had just accepted that Hotaru's name was to be said in hushed tones, that places she would be Ronin would not, that a certain distance just needed to be maintained between the two.

Finding that his tongue was suddenly twisting with arguments he likely shouldn't make, Remi pressed his nose and mouth against Ronin's shoulder as if he might somehow suffocate the sudden flare of anger he felt. A fire couldn't burn without an oxygen source, and gods he didn't want to take the things his husband was saying as personally as he was. Squeezing his eyes closed and trying to let the Knight's warmth trickle down and heat the parts of the Bastion which suddenly felt stiff and cold, Remi made himself focus on the pulse of Ronin's heartbeat on his finger.

Exhaling softly, his hands still ferrying water up the Knight's back and letting it trickle down, Remi nodded against his husband's shoulder. "It's whatever you want. Whatever you need." He said, pulling back enough to sigh out the air he'd been holding. "In the meantime, I'll just go and see Sunjata myself."

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"Sorry," Ronin mumbles softly, frowning down at the water that ripples and shimmers over Remi's shoulder. It doesn't matter if his husband hasn't said anything to merit the apology; his silence is enough for him to know he's done or said something he shouldn't have. Distantly he wonders if this is why they'd just decided to let this one sleeping dog lie - whenever it's awake it seems to turn and bite them both, and Ronin isn't sure how to navigate the situation without leaving new injuries.

Clearing his throat and absently swatting for the net as if he has any intention of continuing to clean up the surrounding waters (he does not), Ronin rubs at the back of his neck. "I would like to come with you," he hazards gently. "Unless you don't want me there."

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

Are you? Releasing Ronin if only so that the Knight might not feel the way the tide of the Bastion's emotions was suddenly growing cold and indigo with hurt, Remi let his gaze fall heavily to the space he was placing between them as he sighed. "I don't like that there are things we can't talk about." He mumbled, his unhappiness tempered only by his desire not to fight with his husband, and yet...it already felt as though a yawning cavern had opened up between them. Or perhaps, it had just been concealed all these years by clever wordplay and signs of warning that they only ever acknowledged out of the corners of their eyes in order not to get too close.

Wading his way towards the shore, Remi sat heavily down upon the sands and drew his knees toward his chest in order to rest his forearms upon them. Ronin would feel Remi's heartbeat as an unsteady scattershot on his finger, as feathers slowly appeared in his wet curls. Linking his hands together to keep his fingers from fidgeting too much, as he lifted his eyes to the Knight once more, they were already growing red with tears. "I...think there is something I want to say to you." He said slowly, his eyes dropping somewhere around Ronin's waist.

"Something that will likely continue this conversation, so if you'd rather not, then.." Releasing one of his hands in order to roll his wrist, he shrugged.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

Technically we are talking about them, Ronin almost finds himself saying, but then Remi is creating distance between them in the water and for all that the Knight has just said he would never put them back in this position, fuck but if it doesn't feel like his husband is a million miles away already. Swallowing hard as the Bastion wades back out of the shallows towards the shore, Ronin at least grabs up the nets with the debris they've managed to collect, slinging them back onto the deck of the Northaven before following.

Of course, by the time he gets back within talking distance of his husband, Ronin can already see the tears that threaten in Remi's eyes, and his chest seizes with a clench of pain he doubts even Safrin could have rivalled on her worst days of wanting to punish him. "Say it," he urges, following the other man dutifully to the shoreline and sinking down to kneel before him - a position that puts him more in the lapping waves than the sand, true, but it hardly matters to the Knight.

"I'm listening, I swear."

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

Releasing one of his hands in order to itch at his brow, as Remi's fingertips find one of the feathers in his hair, he frowns as he plucks it out, seemingly confused by its presence. Swallowing, he tosses it carelessly to the side as he forces his gaze to seek out Ronin's.

"Maybe I've not said it because I'm a coward, but...all these years...it felt as if you've hated her as a way of not hating me." The words come slowly, and though Remi hasn't ever pieced them together in quite this way before, the way they seem to fit into place has breath growing a touch ragged.

Holding up his fingers as if to stave off the disagreement he knows the Knight is likely to make, Remi continues. "I brought Hotaru to the Greatwood. After everything happening in Halo and what Sunjata and Nate had done to her, there was nowhere else for her to be." This, at least, Remi had said more than once before. "But every time you blame her for staying, gods, you.." The tears flow painfully down, disappearing against skin already met wet by the sea. "Ronin, those were my children." Wringing his fingers until the whine from his joints warned him against it, the Bastion sighed and wiped one of his cheeks against his shoulder.

"And you wanted to send them away." He continues, his voice now trembling more than it wasn't.

"And back then...I thought you were still working through the shock of it. The what the fuck of it all. You nearly killed me in the desert you were so angry, but...some of that was at least justified." Or maybe it wasn't, but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary for the Taliesins, even back then.

"But to know you still feel that way now? That you'd go to her all these years later demanding answers of her for something that I did?"

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

It's true that Ronin's lips are already parting to disagree, the breath catching in his throat at Remi's gentle halting of it, and the Knight sits back on his knees to listen. Feathers fluff through the Bastion's hair, and whether in response to that or to the words that drip venom into the space between them, pale and draconic scales are already beginning to glitter across the Knight's shoulders and up the length of his throat, and though he hasn't (yet) bitten his tongue, he swears he can already taste the iron of it.

"That's the point, Remi," he whispers eventually, almost amazed by the way the old hurt still scratches the back of his throat raw. "They were your children. Not ours. Not mine." To say that the past and present colliding like this is uncomfortable is an understatement, because of course time and hard work and endless water beneath endless bridges has made Flora into as much Ronin's daughter as Aoife or Seren, but back then? Gods.

"And you knew that I... that I wanted..." That Ronin has always desired a large family is no secret, but between war and death, between feeling like a terrible father to the children he'd not been able to save or finds scattered to the constellations, and yes, between the unexpected twins roaming woods that felt empty to the Knight... there had never been time for that conversation either, not unless it was to logically put it back in its box where it belonged.

"I don't hate you, Remi," Ronin whispers with a gentle shake of his head, swiping at his eyes and staring down at the lapping water between them. "Gods, I don't even think I hate Hotaru. She just reminds me of how much I hate myself. Flora and Enzo were a part of you, and that should have been enough. It always should have."

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"I did." Remi agrees with an understanding shrug. It was why he'd endured then all of the hurtful things his husband had said to him, the way he'd let himself be torn into with talons and teeth that had nearly stripped the life from his bones. Because he did know, and he did understand, and gods though he could never hate his children, he could still wish for their paternity to be different.

It occurs to Remi then, that Ronin hating himself rather than either he or Hotaru, might simply be what the Knight wanted to believe. It was the more noble route to be sure but after all these years now of pinning it on Hotaru, gods but the Bastion wasn't so sure he believed it.

"I suppose I just wanted to set the record straight. " For once. "Hotaru and I are equally at fault for not having used protection, but aside from that..." Agreeing to help her with her quest before knowing what it entailed, rescuing her from Sunjata and Nate, going to her when she'd only just escaped Halo and bringing her to the Greatwood, keeping her in the Greatwood after she'd given birth, those had all been because of the Bastion. "..none of it was her fault."

Wanting to press the heels of his hands against his eyes to stop his tears but being unable to because of the salt water and sand that coated them, Remi could do little else than offer his husband a rather pleading and miserable look.

"I thought after all these years the initial sting of it would have faded." And really, it had, given the relationship that had bloomed between the Knight and the Doubletake. "But whatever is left—" And clearly some was. "—you can't keep hating her for the things that I chose."

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"You sound as though you want me to hate you," Ronin points out quietly, raising his eyebrows and glancing, albeit fleetingly, at his husband's face. Because whether it's a noble lie or not, hating himself is still more easily done than feeling that emotion towards Remi - and it's one he thought the other man would have preferred as well, honestly. Besides which, it isn't as though they are still in the Greatwood - not as though they could be there even if they wanted to.

"Will it be enough if I were ambivalent towards her?" he wonders with a furrowed brow, tilting his head. "Or will I have to force myself to like her before this can be put to bed?" He's being spiteful now and he knows it, Ronin clenching and unclenching his hands before raking them back through his dark hair. "Sorry," he mumbles. "That was uncalled for."

Letting his shoulders slump, Ronin shrugs at last. "The decisions you made were the correct ones," he says softly. "For you. For your children. But they hurt me - deeply - and they turned me into somebody I never thought I would be. And I'm still not okay, when I think back on it." Whether or not it's what Remi wants to hear, at least it's honest.

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"I only want you to put your feelings where they belong." Remi says with a shake of his head before the ghost of a smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. "It's far too easy for you to hate yourself in secret. At least if you hate me it isn't the sort of thing that would go on for years." It's both true and cheeky at the same time, and the prickle of amusement Remi feels is enough to have his tears flowing anew.

Not commenting on Ronin's jab, the Bastion sits quietly, rolling a few grains of sand between his fingertips before nodding ambivalently.

"Do you think you would have felt any better had it gone your way?" Remi wonders quietly, not in an effort to argue, but to genuinely tease out the truth that they'd both so long ignored. "If I had sent her away, imagining for a moment there was somewhere safe for her to have gone, what then? Should I have given up my leadership of the Greatwood owing to how often I'd have to be away? Or just...ignored them altogether for a while?" Though Remi was fairly certain his husband did in fact want the first suggestion, would having Remi sneak away to spend time with his children and their mother for days at a time really have made the Knight feel better, aside from the initial burst of satisfaction it might have offered?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"My feelings belong with you, and they always will," Ronin fires back with a soft hint of a smile on his own face; he doesn't trust himself to reach for the Bastion just yet, but he's at least able to splash a bit of water at the other man's knee. "I just didn't realise they would be anything other than loving you to death or wanting to pull your clothes off." Also not exactly true, because this is far from the first argument the Taliesins have had and it's unlikely to be the last in the long term, but it's been a fair while in Ronin's defence.

If he's putting his feelings where they belong, though, now that Remi is finally asking, it's as though a dam has been broken and Ronin barely pauses before letting the words spill out. "Yes," he says, his voice low and honest. "Yes, I absolutely would have." He frowns at the sand, apologetic, and takes a soft breath before continuing.

"I wouldn't have expected you to ignore them, even if it's selfishly what I wanted. And I don't think it would have lasted forever, you needing to go away for days to see them. It would have just been a lot easier... to feel as though I had some sort of control over something that, let's be honest, I had zero say in, from the moment it happened to the moment they were running through the woods as kids." He rubs at the back of his neck.

"The Greatwood was our home, and it didn't feel like it any more. It belonged to you and Hotaru and your family, and I just had to live with it." It shouldn't feel so cathartic to say things that are arguably hurtful, but given the amount of time it has taken to unearth these particular truths, Ronin does feel some of the weight lifting from his shoulders.

"If they'd been elsewhere - and I know it's easy to say it now - but I think it would have been possible for me to meet them, in the end. I could have heard about them from you, made connections to them through you, instead of just wondering if I'd bump into them out in the Wildwood without any warning."

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

Though Remi's lips are still pulled down in a frown, there's still something smile like about it, and as Ronin splashes him, the Bastion flicks a bit of sand toward the Knight in retaliation. "We have been together for a long time, husband. I think this is just the price we pay for so much happiness." Remi says with a lopsided shrug.

Having expected the chivalrous answer from his husband's mouth, despite his request for honesty, Remi has to clamp down hard on his own tongue to keep a disbelieving hiss from leaving his lips. His tears are from the pain as much as Ronin's admission, but gods if this wound was ever going to heal, perhaps they really did need to scrub the skin raw in order to start fresh. Leaning his forehead against his forearms if only so that whatever expressions drifted across his face Ronin would have to see, the Bastion pressed taloned fingertips into his palms before forcing his fingers to relax. Plucking a feather from the inside of his wrist, Remi instead twirled it between his fingers as an outlet for his restlessness so that his mind might properly listen to what his husband was trying to say.

"I'll never fault you for feeling that way." Remi says, his voice sounding dull to his ears. The jealousy, the anger, gods knew Remi had felt those same things about Ronin before and whether they were justified or not, neither man had ever been able to help the way they felt.

"You said the decisions I made were the correct ones, but were they?" Lifting his head, the green of his eyes made all the more stark by the way the skin around them was growing redder by the minute, Remi opened his mouth to say something more before helplessly shaking his head. "In the end, Enzo died...Hotaru and I rarely speak, and Flora...gods." Looking up to the sky, he laughed bitterly, the sound warbling into sob before he tried to claw back. "..growing up that way has probably already changed her for the worse. So if I'd just done it your way..." Both twins had blamed he and Ronin already for the situations of their upbringing, and though Hotaru's wrath was certainly not the sort of thing to willingly invite, wasn't it preferable to further breaking his husband's heart?

Gods but even now, he didn't know. He was a terrible father either way, but he'd opted for the choice that made him a terrible husband as well.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

Crinkling his nose at the sand flicked in his direction but clearly not minding it, Ronin frowns softly down at the space between them, where the waves still lap against the sandy shore. "I suppose that is true. It's a price we ought to bear gracefully, in that case." Not that saying it will make it any less messy, but gods, at least they can be cognizant of all they have as well as all that they've lost or gotten wrong.

"They were," he insists, of Remi's decisions being the correct ones. "For you, at that time, they were." He shrugs. There was no good decision that would make everyone happy or keep everyone at peace, and so the Bastion could hardly be blamed for doing his best with what he had at the time - his own feelings included. As the other man continues, though, Ronin can't not reach for him, especially as Flora's name spills from his lips.

Clasping his husband's hands and squeezing them, at least this way Remi will be able to feel the love and pride that pours from Ronin when he thinks about the Doubletake, of all she's fought through and overcome to get where she is today. "I can't speak for how things would have gone for Enzo or Hotaru, but Flora is a strong, beautiful woman who has managed to become Queen of Torchline. She's a good leader and she works hard, and I hope you're as proud of her as I am."

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

The Knight will feel his love crashing against dark columns of hurt and confusion as he wraps his hands around Remi's, and though the Bastion's emotions are dusk-lit and tumultuous, still he returns the gesture even if his fingers feel numb.

Exhaling through parted lips if only because his nose was annoyingly clogged thanks to his tears, Remi gives his head a slow shake. "I can understand what you wanted me to do back then." He says softly. "With the weight of all that had happened and the twins coming early.." Not to mention that they were twins, and not just a single baby as they'd all expected. "To say that I did the right thing for me, to say you're proud of Flora? but to still say you wish I'd done something different."

Sighing, his gaze on the thin cord of red around his wrist, all Remi can do is close his eyes and take a breath. "But I suppose there's no point in talking in circles. If it's how you feel, it's how you feel." Devastating as it was, such was the price of honesty and though the world felt darker than it should have following the return of the sun, at least the pair still had that.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!