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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"When she does, I doubt she will be calling me sir, I can tell you that much." Remi agreed with a chuckle. He did wonder, as he was wont to do, just what the girl thought. Whether he was doing enough for her, how interrupted her life would be given the trials and tribulations she'd been through in less than a year. Most children did not experience their parents dying, one coming back to life, and a murder, after all.

Remi flashed the fox a pointed look before wryly shaking his head. "They certainly do. Monsters do not rest just because Ronin is." He grumbled. "But they come for me too. To have something made, enchanted, changed.." His shoulders shrugged against the stone.

"Here?" Looking around, the alchemist gave it a moment's consideration before shrugging. "There are plenty of rooms down here...but I do quite like the fire." Rubbing a hand across his eyes, Remi drank a bit of his tea as he sighed. "I have not been sleeping much as it is."

THE

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"You don't know that," Ianto said with a smirk, shaking his head to Remi. "Who knows? In her head right now, she might be calling you some blindingly awful names. And you'd kill to be called sir." He chuckled, sipping at his tea and looking impressed as it touched to his lips. Lifting the cup to 'cheers' Remi, he took another sip and set it down beside him.

Wrinkling his nose, he thought he understood where Remi was coming from. "You should start charging for your services," he said with all of a merchant's cunning, grinning across at the other man. "...You know, though, that he would want you to take care of yourself. And it might be monstrous but he isn't a monster. This is only temporary, Remi. Arduinna is an enigma to me, even now, but I trust her when she says that the flowers will work."

IANTO

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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"Well, that is my point exactly." Remi quipped back with a grin. "If she has inherited anything at all from Ronin, I imagine she will have quite the colourful vocabulary."

Rolling his eyes, Remi merely shook his head as he looked down into his cup. "I do not think I ever could...I did nothing to earn these abilities. What right have I to make others pay for something I did not? Besides.." Running a finger atop the circumference of his cup, Remi smiled and shrugged. "It is not like currency does much here." What could others trade him, that he could not simply make himself?

Fixing the fox with a look, Remi pulled in a breath. "Already animals and plants have been overtaken by the blight. What reason have we to think that Vi's roses have come in time to save everyone?"

THE

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"We must always do our best to teach our children all we know," Ianto said brightly, unable and unwilling to hide his smile. The idea of little Aoife tromping around, cussing people out with a soldier's vocabulary... it was amusing to say the least. Snorting softly, he shook his head to the other man. While he agreed that currency was useless, he was a merchant, after all. "You might not feel you earned the abilities, but they are still paying for your time," he reminded him. "And some people are skilled in ways that you are not - strange as that might be for you to believe." He winked.

Pulling his knees to his chest and hugging them, the fox gave the hawk a soft and sunny smile. It did not seem possible for anyone to seem serene in the situation Deepfrost had given to them, but Ianto managed it. "Sometimes all we have is faith," he said. "And sometimes that has to be enough. Doubt is a killer - I think you know that just living here with Ronin gone."

IANTO

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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"Oh must we?" Remi chirped, tilting his head with a challenging grin. "How have you become so wise in the ways of children, Ianto?" The alchemist asked, more than curious to hear the answer. He might have forgotten much about the fox's history, but he was fairly certain there was no child-raising.

"Ahh my time. So valuable, clearly." The alchemist said dryly, looking about the unkempt house as evidence. Unable to help raising a brow and then immediately regretting it as all sorts of creative skills the fox had that Remi did not sparked in his mind, Remi tried to hide his blush behind his mug of tea, merely humming a flustered note of agreement.

Raising his gaze to Ianto's startlingly blue stare, Remi nodded thoughtfully. "You are not wrong." He said, his foot tapping out an anxious rhythm on the floor. "Ronin already had his second change though. It feels a bit more like madness, rather than faith, to be waiting on a third."

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"Well, that is easy. Unlike many adults, I never allowed my inner child to fall victim to the drudgery of life. Therefore, I know full well what it is like, and my wisdom has only continued to grow from there," Ianto informed Remi with a grin, the fox brushing a lock of coppery hair out of his face and wiggling his toes in his boots now that he could feel them again from coming in out of the snow. He scoffed as Remi responded, clearly unbelieving of his sentiments, and shrugged his shoulders.

"I can't make you believe your time is valuable. But I know that your daughter believes it, and your husband believes it, and they need you as much as you need a break." Frowning into the flames, the fox sighed heavily. "The difference, though, is that this is not just about Ronin. There are so many families at risk, so many minds trapped behind the blight. And now the gods have had enough. What good is doubt, when a solution has been planted outside your house?"

IANTO

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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"Well no of course you have not, especially given that your life has been anything but dull." Remi chuckled, reaching a foot over to kick at one of Ianto's boots. Oh the places the fox had gone. It actually was a wonder he managed to smile at all. "Your feet will heat up faster out of your boots, you know." The alchemist informed his friend with a smirk. "Though such a wise man surely knows that." He added cheekily.

Again the alchemist could only reiterate his earlier question. "Then why flowers. Why not...why not just cure them? Why not tell us what it is, so that we might prevent it? Why, with this apparent solution in hand, is my husband still gorging himself on raw meet and sleeping in the woods?"

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"Aye, that's true enough. Though I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish it were dull some of the time," Ianto murmured with a smile, trying to nudge Remi back as his boot was kicked. "Oi - I'll have you know that a wise man waits until it is clear that he is a guest before making himself overly comfortable." Now that Remi had said something, however, of course Ianto unlaced his boots to warm his toes better.

Remi's questions were all very, very good, and Ianto had only conjecture for answers. "Maybe it cannot be done all at once, without harming the woods and the blighted," he ventured. "Maybe it needs to be done in such a way that the Voice will not be able to combat it. Maybe the energy it would take would leave the gods open to an attack." He frowned. "I don't know, Remi. I'm sorry."

IANTO

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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"You say that, and yet I think the moment your life become even close to boring, you would find a way to immediately spice things up." Remi's foot became a pawl, his claws seeking to latch onto the leather of Ianto's boot. It was useless of course, none of his shifts had that sort of hind-limb dexterity, but of course he hadn't actually been trying to do anything than be a bit of a shit. "A guest huh. And what were you before? Just the hired help? And not even that, really. You invited yourself."

"I knew you carried quite a few things as a merchant, but that was more maybes than any one man should have." Remi said with soft skepticism. Sighing and waving away the fox's apology, the hawk raised his cup of tea to his lips and simply held it there for a moment, enjoying the warmth on his face.

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"I mean I don't think it would be on purpose, but... y'know, you're probably right." Ianto laughed, rubbing at the back of his head. After all, he'd bankrupted the Wumpus Wagon empire, fallen back into Warren's lap, then tumbled through a portal and got himself a Fae godmother. In Ianto's head these things simply happened to him, but Remi's remarks were probably a little closer to the truth if he was honest.

Swatting a hand at the paw that grabbed for his boot, Ianto scoffed and shrugged his shoulders. "Self-inviting help - you lucked out, I think," he said haughtily, smirking across at the alchemist. "Either way, the upgrade to guest is mightily appreciated."

A shame that the conversation couldn't stay so light, but Ianto stood by his maybes and followed suit, sipping at his tea. "I suppose we need to just... keep planting our roses. Then we can know for sure if there will be any changes."

IANTO

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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"Oh is luck what you call it?" Remi shot back with a skeptical grin, though he supposed there was an element of truth to it. Perhaps it was luck that brought the fox into town just when the alchemist needed a friend the most. And though Ianto's friendship was still tainted with memories of desire and the nearest thing to love Remi had experienced other than Ronin (that he remembered anyways), still the fox offered a genuineness that no one else in the alchemist's life was really capable of.

"When you say it like that, we sound as though we are living out some strange fable." Remi noted, sipping at his tea as well. "And though all they loved were dying, still the hawk and the fox planted their roses. It had a sort of bleak romanticism about it. If only Remi knew whether it was a fable meant to reinforce hope and faith, or to point out just how stupid people could be in the face of death.

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"Is there another word for it?" Ianto wanted to know with a smirk, taking another sip of his tea and setting the cup down for a moment. Between the drink and the fire he was starting to warm through, the fox happily wiggling his toes. Remi's poetic explanation of things brought a golden smile to the merchant's face, Ianto raising an eyebrow and tilting his head at the other man.

"Well, when we finally know what the ending of this tale will be, maybe I can write this out and sell our story to the masses." Ever the practical one (or the greedy one, in this case). "Until then, though... you're not entirely alone, Remi. Remember that, okay?"

IANTO

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all this time i was finding myself & i didn't know? i was lost

"I expect so, but I will leave that to the word smiths. I invent things, not words after all." The alchemist countered with a smirk of his own, not trusting his heart or his wit to appropriately answer the fox's question.

With a snort, Remi shook his head before leaning it back against the warmed stones. "Oh you are a writer too are you? Arborist, novelist, merchant.." The alchemist tsked softly under his breath with a raised brow and crooked smirk. "Well, I hope there are plenty of pictures." He said with a cheeky wink. "The pictures are my favourite."

Looking into his cup rather than the arresting blue eyes staring at him, Remi did his best not to sigh unhappily and immediately disagree. "Mmmm. Assuming no gods take my memories away, I will try." He said with a latent chuckle.

THE

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"Mm, and what things you invent. No dick fireworks though, as far as I recall." Then again, perhaps Remi just hadn't turned his hand to making phallic celebratory devices yet. Either way, Ianto was very curious (and maybe a tiny bit impatient) to find out what the other man would be supplying his wagon with in exchange for the fireworks.

Snorting and waving Remi off, Ianto leant back on his hands to bask in the heat and the light of the flames, closing his eyes. "The pictures are harder than the words," he protested. "Tell a good story and people will make up the pictures in their own heads. Are you an illustrator? Maybe you can help me out." He grinned, cracking an eye back open to look at Remi.

"Fingers crossed the gods keep their noses out of your business from here on out," he agreed heartily.

IANTO

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