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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
He doesn’t think he’s been without a drink in his hand since the moment he’d locked Dahlia in the Jailhouse, ensuring that there were a dozen guards on watch (and then some) and that every door between her cell and the entrance is triple locked. And even then, the Knight hasn’t gone far; currently he’s having his own little party out in one of the floating parts of the city, leaning against a railing to watch the sun drip and bleed out into the ocean as night falls.
It’s unclear whether he’s celebrating or grieving or something vaguely in between. He’s happy - of course he is - because this is a one hell of a win for them, but like everything, it’s had a cost. And Flora has paid that cost far too many times for him to feel entirely comfortable with what has happened. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees blood on gold; every time it gets too quiet, the wind carries the sound of her screaming.
And so Ronin drinks. He doesn’t plan to stop any time soon, either.
One moment the floating deck holds only the hush of waves and the muted clink of Ronin’s glass against wood. The next, there’s a gust of wind without a source, the air folding in on itself with a quiet pop of displaced pressure—then Remi is there.
No flash of golden light, no dramatic entrance, just a man appearing beside the man he loves, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. His curls are damp, pushed back from his face, and his clothes smell faintly of antiseptic, rust, and Kings End clover. There’s blood at the hem of his shirt, dried now, but neither of them need to ask whose it is.
His gaze slips past the empty glass in Ronin’s hand to the fire bleeding across the ocean, then down to the slant of his husband’s shoulders. It’s the quiet that hurts most. The way the sun is still setting like nothing’s happened. The way Ronin drinks instead of screaming.
“I left her with Hotaru,” Remi says at last, his voice rougher than usual, like he’d spoken too many prayers into the dark and gotten no answer. “She’s sleeping. Or unconscious. I don’t know.” His jaw works. “She was still shaking.”
He leans in then, not to steal the glass from Ronin’s hand or coax him to stop—but to rest his forehead against the other man’s temple, his wings curling inward like a shelter they’ve both forgotten they need. “I know this is a win,” he murmurs, low and uneven, “but gods it feels terrible.”
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin hiccups in a breath as the world beside him parts to welcome his husband into the space, and he nearly chokes on his next gulp of liquor as a result. Swallowing it down alongside the burn, he sets the bottle, wobbling, onto the rail, and is already reaching out for the Bastion as he feels him turn in towards him. The Knight’s feelings are a tangled, whiskey soaked mess of elation and horror, as if anything good that might have come from the past few hours has been drowned in the scarlet tide of Flora’s blood.
”She’s safe now,” he mumbles, the words slurring together and sounding like a mantra he’s had to repeat to himself more than once since arriving back in Torchline. Turning fully now towards Remi, an act that has him slouching into the railing and the bottle toppling away into the open air, his arms wind almost desperately around the other man, needing him apologetically and desperately close.
”I hate this,” he confesses, as if to cement the fact that this does feel fucking terrible. ”I should feel good, right? But I just… I don’t wanna hear her scream like that ever again, Remi.”
Remi nods against the words before they’ve fully left his husband's lips. His body agrees, and so does his head—but his heart, gods, his heart keeps wincing like it doesn’t believe it. “Mmm,” he murmurs lowly, the sound more breath than voice. “Until Pierce comes for her. Or Dorian does.” The names catch like burrs in his throat, and though he grimaces at himself for saying them aloud, he leans sideways and knocks his knuckles sharply against the wooden rail anyway—warding away the things he’s just released into the world.
But Ronin is already turning into him, and the contact makes everything louder.
Remi feels it all. The grief caught beneath Ronin’s sternum like a knife that won’t come out. The thin-threaded guilt wound tight as a tourniquet. The bone-deep need to hold Flora again and the horror of what they had held her through. It pours into Remi like seawater through cracked glass, and in return, Ronin will feel the ache behind his husband's eyes—the unshakable helplessness, the snarling want to tear Dahlia to pieces, the crushing wave of failure despite their win.
“I know,” he whispers, and it’s not a platitude. It’s a confession. He hates it too. Every moment. And because he can’t say anything that wouldn’t feel hollow, he steps forward instead. Lifts his hands and cups Ronin’s flushed cheeks, thumbs grazing the silver at his temples. He tips his husband’s face to his and kisses him—firm, unhurried, aching. His tongue presses forward like it’s trying to shape every unspeakable word he’d buried back in King’s End. He kisses him like it could change the memory, like it might somehow make the screams go silent in both their heads.
He pours it all in. Let me carry some of it. Let me take it from you. Let me hold you through it. There’s nothing else to give but this. So he gives it.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”They won’t.” Ronin almost chokes on the words as they leave his mouth, as if the attempt to knit hope into reality catches in his throat on the way out. ”We’ll bring her here to Haulani as soon as she’s well enough. We have Dahlia. They won’t— they can’t—” His attempt to convince himself, perhaps to convince both of them, is blissfully silenced by the sudden hands against his cheeks, by the way Remi’s unspent violence drips though his veins like molten metal.
Huffing out a shuddering breath, the tears that sting at the corners of Ronin’s eyes are already trying to escape by the time his husband surges forward for a kiss; one that the Knight meets without resistance, leaving only the quiet desperation of wishing that things felt better than they do. His arms wind around the Bastion as both a metaphorical and literal lifeline, Ronin swaying into his husband without meaning to, clutching at him with equal parts love and horror and guilt.
”I love you,” he whispers against his lips, whiskey sweet and breathless and wrapped in sorrow. ”I’m sorry we weren’t fast enough to save her from the worst of it.”
Remi holds him through it. Holds him like a vow, like a shield, like he can keep the world away if he just tightens his arms enough. One hand sinks into Ronin’s hair, the other spreads firm and steady between his shoulder blades, and together they cradle him like a dam, like something forged to keep this grief from cracking wider than it already has.
“I love you too,” he breathes back, voice thick with everything he won’t name. Then, softer, a hush in Ronin’s hair: “You don’t need to be sorry.”
Remi shakes his head slowly, the motion small and sure against the other man’s brow. “It took the three of us just to bring her down—and she didn’t even fight, which…” Hubris had been the Reaper’s downfall more than the demigods had. The bitterness is gentle but undeniable, the memory still fresh and lodged behind his teeth. “If speed was all we needed, she wouldn’t have left marks on Flora at all.”
His hand drifts from Ronin’s back, slides down to wrap around his waist instead, tugging him the final fraction of space into his arms. The kiss he gives this time is quieter—more worship than urgency, more promise than plea. His lips find Ronin’s again and again, brushing away the taste of sorrow and the sting of regret. Chasing the whiskey back to something sweeter. Humming into the touch like it’s prayer. Like it’s all he’s ever believed in.
“But we did do it,” he says finally, forehead pressed to Ronin’s as the air thickens with memory and the salt of unfallen tears. “She’s safe now. Not okay, maybe, but she’s actually safe. That’s more than we had this morning.”
And he means to let go. He really does. But his arms won’t listen, and the longer he holds Ronin pinned between his body and the sea-railed edge of their shared little balcony, the harder it is to believe that letting go could ever be the right thing again.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Remi is right - of course he is, and though Ronin wants nothing more than to believe him, there’s a reason he’s been drinking away these hours, as though he might be able to convince himself of those same truths if he’s drunk enough to blot out everything else. ”I thought we were going to lose her again,” he confesses, and though anyone else might call it an overreaction given the power contained between them, Ronin’s psyche is far more delicate than his body and the divine heights it can reach.
Kissing his husband back as if he might somehow be a balm against that lingering fear and bitterness (and he is, in so, so many ways), Ronin sighs out a shivering breath into the space between them, grasping at the Bastion like he might lose himself without his touch as an anchor. ”Dahlia is at the jailhouse,” he says, almost absently, like he needs to get the words out so he’s not the only one responsible for the information. ”She’s guarded. I told everyone I could that seemed important.”
And gods, it had better be enough. He hesitates to ask what lingers on his lips next, but he can’t stop the words despite knowing how unfair it is to expect Remi to have an answer. ”What now?”
“I did too,” Remi whispers, and the truth of it scrapes out raw from his throat. It isn’t just an echo. It’s the same wound, open in both of them. The same terror, still clinging like ash to his lungs. His arms tighten reflexively around Ronin—not to comfort, not this time. To confirm. That he’s still here. That they both are. That Flora isn’t just a ghost in their arms again, cooling faster than they can save her.
“We’ve brought her back before,” he breathes, voice barely tethered, “and still the thought of losing her again—” He doesn’t finish it. Doesn’t have to. Because his mouth is already on Ronin’s once more, not to soothe this time but to keep the scream behind his teeth from breaking loose into the world.
When he finally draws back, it’s only far enough to rest their brows together again, eyes shut against the question neither of them wants to answer. “I want to tear her apart,” he admits, low and reverent, like a promise made at an altar. “The way she did to Flora. Talon for talon. Rib for rib.” The violence curls through his chest like a second heart. And yet—his hands on Ronin remain gentle. “We get every ounce of information she has. Everything she’s seen, everything she knows. And if she refuses…”
His fingers flex at Ronin’s back. “Then I’ll be happy to see what I can persuade out of her.”
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The thought of losing her again - of losing any more of their children, in fact - is enough to freeze the breath in Ronin's throat, and he seals that fear away against Remi's lips with a quiet moan that's from anything but pleasure. With his fingers tangling gently in the back of the Bastion's curls and their bodies entwined, from the outside they might seem like a tableau of passion, but those who know them well know better. Every strand of love, every snarl of grit and determination; it's all that's holding them together against the tide of grief that threatens to topple them each time something like this happens.
"So do I," Ronin whispers in the fraction of space that opens between them. He's never afraid to air his darker desires in his husband's presence, and especially not when it comes to the fucking Reaper. "You can persuade her if she refuses. And I'll reward her for it when she's outlasted her usefulness." Reward, admittedly, sounds very much like a threat - because it is - and Ronin punctuates it with several soft kisses against Remi's lips. "I'm so tired," he whispers, the admission for his husband's ears only. "I'm always so fucking tired lately."
Remi kisses him like he’s holding the weight of Ronin’s heart in his mouth, and maybe he is. Like if he presses just right—soft and firm, anchored and sure—he can be the balance to all this ache, the steady hand on the other side of the scale. He chuckles low against his husband’s lips, the sound rough and wry and bleeding exhaustion. His nose brushes Ronin’s, his curls falling like a curtain between them, and he exhales a sigh that feels like it comes from somewhere far older than his years.
"I’m tired too," he murmurs, eyes shut, hands unmoving, unwilling to let Ronin slip even a fraction from his grasp. "Tired of sitting through meetings pretending we all want the same thing. Tired of victories that feel like losses. Tired of all this doing that never seems to amount to anything."
The next breath shudders out of him, half laughter, half ache. "Gods, I miss when the likes of Belamy finding out I was gay felt like the worst thing that could happen to me." A pause, lips ghosting against Ronin’s brow. "When the worst attack I'd ever seen was you lightly stabbed in the market on the way to my apartment." His smile, when it comes, is faint and cracked at the edges, because while he wouldn't trade this life for anything, gods but it had come with a cost that they never seemed to stop paying.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Ugh, the meetings," Ronin agrees with a rough, quiet laugh, teasing his finger around one perfect curl he's found in Remi's hair, his other hand gently starbursting out against his husband's lower back. "Not that we've even been part of many of them lately. Even forcing ourselves to sit out of it feels as if it's taken years off me, though." The price they keep paying, evidently, is taken whether or not they're actively having the shit kicked out of them. (And there's been no shortage of that either, honestly.
Leaning into the kiss pressed to his brow, featherlight and suffused with breathless laughter though it may be, Ronin scoffs and nods his agreement. "A light stabbing does sound pretty good around about now," he teases, looking up at last and letting his fingers slip around to cup Remi's cheek. "If I offered to take us back to the houseboat and climb into bed without looking behind us, would you let me?" he asks. "If it's for just an hour, maybe? And if we make sure everyone knows where we are if they need us?"
Remi snorts quietly, his laughter a warm gust against Ronin’s cheek. "Next time there’s a global catastrophe," he hums, "we should just elect someone to be in charge of all of it." But the humour in his eyes dims into something softer as the question settles between them.
He doesn’t hesitate. The smirk melts away into quiet relief, and Remi nods—once, twice, a third time, like the idea is pulling him in like gravity. "Gods, yes. That’s all I’ve wanted." His hands slide down to Ronin’s hips, anchoring him there with a slow, possessive squeeze. Truly, it's where he'd expected to find his husband in the first place. "An hour in our bed," he muses softly, the idea feeling blasphemous on his tongue after everything.
He leans in to nuzzle his husband's temple, voice dipping into a more playful murmur. "We can bring a barrel of whatever you were drinking before I got here. If it keeps the edge off, I’m not above getting a little drunk with you." Remi pauses before grinning faintly against Ronin’s skin. "Though I make no promises about what might happen once we’re horizontal."
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I'd go as far as to add that we should elect someone else to be in charge of all of it. Someone who isn't you or I or the usual suspects. I feel we've earned another bout of semi-retirement and then some." Smiling faintly, as if the idea of not having to fight tooth and nail for Caido every other weekend truly is something out of a fairytale, Ronin's expression grows into something warm and genuine at his husband's ready agreement.
"You have no idea how much I was hoping you'd say that," he admits with a quiet laugh, scattering a few kisses against Remi's cheek and leaning readily into the possessive grip of his hands, as if the feeling alone might carry them to the Northaven and straight to bed. "We don't have to be a little drunk to have concerns about what happens when we're horizontal," he points out, smiling another kiss to the corner of his mouth. "And now you're here, being sober seems a little easier."
Not to mention that even through the course of their conversation Ronin can feel the world is a little steadier, the alcohol already burning off in his blood like nothing. "Come on. I promise I won't even look over my shoulder as we leave."
Remi snickers, the sound low and fond as it curls between them. "I bet just about everyone feels that way," he says dryly, loosening his grip just enough to nudge his forehead against Ronin’s with exaggerated exasperation. "Maybe it’s time we pressure the younger demigods into stepping up. Let them handle the world for a while." Gods knew there were enough of them springing up all over the place.
Still, the suggestion leaves a glimmer of wicked amusement in his eyes as he presses a hand flat against Ronin’s chest, thumb stroking absentmindedly over his sternum. There’s still tension there—grief curled like wire beneath skin—but Ronin’s laughter smooths it, and so does the warmth of his kisses scattered like falling stars across Remi’s cheek. "I always know," Remi murmurs, soft against the curve of Ronin’s mouth. "Even when I pretend I don’t. Especially when it’s something you want." He doesn’t say because I want it too, but it’s written in every touch, every glance, every moment he’s held onto his husband like he might otherwise shatter in place.
Without another word, Remi shifts his arm around Ronin’s waist and begins guiding him from the balcony. His movements remain careful, reverent in their ease. The walk down through the dim pathways is unhurried, silent save for the soft hush of wings and shared footsteps on worn wood. And when they reach the Northaven, Remi opens the door with the same hand that held Ronin’s heart in battle—and closes it behind them like the world can wait.
~FIN
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
