fuck up my nights

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Remi was on his way home from a shrine. To say that the Wagon was in any way on his way would have been a lie, and so the alchemist didn't even bother thinking it. He wanted to see Ianto, needed to see him. It would have been cliche and inappropriate to try and bump into him by happenstance. The fox meant much too much to the alchemist to reduce him to a chance-meeting. Bare arms though he had, his heart would always be on his sleeves, and though Safrin did not answer his calls that night, perhaps the merchant would.

In truth though, Remi deserved a response from neither. But he could hope.

Whistling, not the tune the fox often hummed but something else entirely, something Remi, the alchemist waded with increasingly awkward steps through the twisted trees. Areas he knew well were slowly coming into focus, but the forest, ever changing as it was, would probably always be a mystery.

"I do not know if you can hear me...if the wagon lets you know..or..if it is something else. I.." Remi took a breath and swallowed, the smile on his face faltering in the moonlight. "I think you would probably prefer I was not here, but this is important. I...I did something. Again, to do with Arduinna."

don't be a fool

Of course Remi was not alone in the forest. Even before Ianto had realised that the alchemist was looking for him specifically, he'd been on his trail in his fox fur, keeping his distance but leaving himself enough room to intervene if the blind man got into trouble. And when he began to whistle - and subsequently call his name - Ianto froze for a second, before gathering himself up and trotting forward to meet Remi.

"I wish you'd not not insist on involving yourself with her," he said softly, shifting onto two feet with his fox's tail still flicking at his heels (something he'd recently learned he could do again). "What is it, Remi?"

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

For a moment Remi just wanted to shift. To share every thought and feeling and bristling emotion with the fox. Such was his nature, but after what Remi had done...how he had been asked to leave the last time he was here, he thought perhaps he'd lost the privilege of being so candid with the fox. And so as a man, he was left with softly concerned but adoring eyes, fluttering lashes, and lips that fidgeted with unsaid words.

"I know." Remi agreed, eyes alighting on the fox in the moonlight, making his gaze all the more ghostly and pale for it. "Zariah...she said if I helped her with a few things, that she could kill Arduinna." Raising a hand and not needing the bond to know what the fox was likely going to say, Remi merely frowned. "I know it likely is not possible. But if there was even a chance to free you...how could I say no? A few locks and some ink and whatever else...I would pay almost anything for your freedom." Remi added—admitted—in a low voice.

don't be a fool

It was an undignified sound, but Ianto let out a snort of disbelief at Remi's apparent agreement with Zariah Launceleyn. The fox had not been in Northaven for long, but he was no fool. He knew the important players in the royal game, and the Launceleyns were high on that list. But no matter how high, they were a candle flame to Arduinna's inferno.

"You helped her for free," he said with a simple shrug. "She's never going to be able to hold up her end of the bargain." Shaking his head, Ianto ruffled a hand through his coppery hair and folded his arms across his chest.

"Remi, stop. Please, just stop it. I don't want freedom. I want to do my work and keep my head down, and I want people - you - to stop meddling in things that don't concern you." He looked away. "If I want your help, I'll ask for it. Okay?"

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

"I helped her for you." Remi countered softly. Scrunching his eyes closed with frustration that could only be directed at himself, Remi exhaled a held-breath and ran his fingers like claws over his scalp.

"Is that your way of also saying we are...not even friends, now?" The alchemist asked, trying his best to keep his wounded heart from colouring his words too noticeably. He'd not guilt the fox into giving him the answer he wanted—craved—but of course emotions had never really been a thing he was skilled at hiding.

don't be a fool

"I never asked you to!" Ianto didn't intend for his voice to come out quite so sharply, but here, in Arduinna's woods, Remi was walking as though he hadn't been fucking blinded for less. The fox's chest rose and fell rapidly, and he rubbed at blue eyes that suddenly felt very, very tired.

He shook his head. "I want to be your friend, Remi." Wanted more than that, but less said about it the better. "But we can never be friends so long as you keep disrespecting me. If I say I don't want something, or that you ought to stay out of something that involves me... if you think your opinion matters more than mine and do it anyway, then no. I'm sorry, but we can't be friends."

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Flinching slightly at the abruptness of his friends words, the musicality lost in the coldness, Remi lowered his eyes instinctively. "I only meant...you said it was for nothing. But you are not nothing." He clarified in a low and wounded voice.

"You are right." The alchemist said after a moment, his eyes still fixed somewhere near the fox's feet, inspecting the pine needles and groupings of moss. "I am sorry. It..." won't happen again. He needed to say it, but more importantly, he needed to mean it. Was there a difference between blindingly always wanting to help others, and disrespecting their wishes? Remi raked a hand through his curls again as he frowned with confusion at the earth.

If someone came along tomorrow and guaranteed they could free the fox, wouldn't he jump at the chance?

Wouldn't he always?

don't be a fool

"I might not be nothing, but you're stopping me being anything else right now too. How can I find my way when every time I turn around you're there, hurting yourself to help me in a battle that only you are fighting?" Ianto felt his cheeks begin to flush, rubbing at his forehead and forcing himself to take a long, deep breath in and out again. In that time silence had fallen on the words that Remi wouldn't say.

Ianto frowned as well, burying his hands in his pockets and shrugging off the will-o-wisps that tried to dance and settle in his hair. "You can't do it, can you? You can't leave well enough alone?"

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Looking up sharply, Remi frowned, brows furrowing. "I asked you if it was alright to try and remove the collar. No I did not ask if I could speak with Zariah, but at that point you had not told me not to." He said, his hurt and grief over having lost the fox in whatever capacity it was that he'd once had him, manifesting in a bizarre strand of defensiveness that didn't suit Remi at all.

"Well enough?" Remi repeated, biting the inside of his cheek as feathers ruffled through his hair. Raising his too-pale eyes, he softly shook his head. I cannot leave you alone. He thought towards the other man.

Swallowing and look away, as if his mental voice had somehow been inappropriate, Remi simply shook his head as his eyes drifted back towards the dirt. "How am I supposed to just watch you suffer? To see you bound and not care?"

don't be a fool

"And I let you because it bothered you. If you recall we were sort of more than what we are now at the time." Ianto was looking firmly away from Remi by this point - and perhaps it was a habit picked up from watching the other man, but there were feathers sprouting in his hair now too, deep and crimson among the copper.

"Why not, Remi? What do you owe me? Before that barrier fell I was here, and then it did fall and I was just happy not to have been dropped into this world alone. Whatever choices I made to survive that long were mine, and you have no right to try and fix them, like they were wrong." Yes, he was getting defensive. And yes, he would have done things differently if he had known.

But that was a regrettable fact of life. "I only suffer when those I care about get too close, and get hurt," he said pointedly.

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

"I suppose I was mistaken, then." The alchemist replied through teeth which wanted to grind against each other. He made his face still though, exhaling a mouthful of upset instead. "I thought you wanted your freedom as well." so that you would not be governed. So there would be no barriers between us.

"I...it is not that I owe you." Remi replied, his voice taking on a pleading note as he struggled to find the words to make Ianto understand. It had always come from a place of love, never obligation. Looking up with a sharp inhale, the alchemist noticed then the reddish plumage scattered amidst the copper tufts of hair. "Are you..have you...?" He asked, eyes high now, studying the feathers.

Flinching slightly, Remi ran a hand up his arm and nodded. "I never meant to make you feel like I thought your choices were wrong." He said, finding himself suddenly in an argument with a man who had never made him do anything other than laugh, and desperately wanting to find a path out of it.

don't be a fool

"Have you ever been owned, Remi?" Ianto asked, frowning gently at the alchemist. "I was born owned. Then I was sold to Warren, and then Arduinna came along. I don't have any idea what freedom is. But I don't think it's something that can be achieved just by wanting it hard enough." The fox shook his head.

He shrugged dismissively as Remi noticed the feathers in his hair, Ianto shaking his head to try and dispel them. "A little while ago," he said. And if you're asking if I've flown, the answer is no."

Letting out a long, heavy sigh, Ianto tilted his head back so he could watch the heavens drift by. "And I never meant for you to end up blind, or indebted to Zariah."

if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Now Remi's gaze rose, crushed at the words Ianto was saying but somehow unwavering in the face of them. "And all I have ever known is being a commoner." He shot back. "You have told me repeatedly that this is not Northwind or Northaven. This not the life you have to have."

Fly with me. Right now. Above all of this. The words were right there on his lips, but there was still that shadow over the fox that spoke of distance, and bitterness and all the things that lay broken between them.

"You should. It is fr—" freeing. Remi swallowed hastily. "It is worth doing."

Softly the alchemist shook his head. "You did not do those things. I did."

don't be a fool

"And yet, I bet you still act like a commoner sometimes, don't you?" Ianto arched an eyebrow, the ghost of a smirk on his face. This wasn't Northwind or Northaven, but a lifetime of habits was not so easy to break. And freedom was terrifying, for one who had never possessed it. Like a man who had never seen the sky, frightened of being sucked away into the blue.

Wrinkling his nose, he shrugged his shoulders to Remi on the subject of flying. "I don't know how," he said simply. "And you didn't put me in a cage or make a deal with a Fae. I did. Are we starting to see where the other is coming from?"