the monsters turned out to be just trees

The white sheep of the family

Whatever Loren had been expecting Remi to say in response to the Launceleyn’s declaration that his loneliness was solely his fault, was, well, definitely not what the summoner got. His jaw dropped when the alchemist explained that Edy told everyone that Loren had run off with someone. ”What? No. Of course not. I would’ve…” He hesitated, because he had been about to say that if he was going to run away with anyone it would have been with the alchemist, and the Launceleyn knew how poorly that would have gone over. ”I...I was alone. Why… why would she say that?” Completely, totally, absolutely on his own, left with nothing but dark thoughts and cold and lonely nights. He still was, in many ways, though he guessed it didn’t matter what Edy had or had not done. She was dead, and he’d failed her and everyone else.

So much for pit breakthroughs.

However, if he’d thought that was bad, well, he was swiftly forced to reevaluate his definition of what bad was at the other man’s next statement. Loren’s jaw dropped again and he looked even more flabbergasted than before. ”A sex cave?! She said that? Seriously? No, I wasn’t in a fucking sex cave.” Perhaps the curse was ill-placed but he couldn’t stop himself. This was completely and totally ridiculous.

Then, however, the full implication of what Remi was saying sank in and Loren looked at the other man with dawning horror. ”Wait. Did you...did you think…” The Launceleyn couldn’t finish the thought: ‘Did you think I ran off with someone else this whole time?’

No wonder everyone hated Loren. He would, if he’d thought that’s what happened. What he’d done. It would’ve been completely callous and heartless of him. But he absolutely couldn’t believe the people who’d known him would believe such a preposterous rumor.

Unless they’d never really known or cared about him at all.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

As Loren began speaking, Remi only tilted his head slightly to the side as he listened. He didn't know whether Loren was a liar—he didn't think so, not in the blatent lie-telling way anyhow—and yet the beginning of the sentence had every bit the making of a falsehood or excuse. Crinkling his nose further against the prickles of a sneeze forming from looking at the sun, his expression blanked as Loren admitted (or lied) saying he'd been alone.

Looking sharply to the side, sun-blinded and only able to see two disarming blue eyes floating in a sea of white, Remi's lips dropped open slightly as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. Tried to reconcile it with what he knew. Running a palm over each eye, Remi swallowed hard as he tried to see and think and importantly, not feel all the things he was. To ignore how his heart hammered out a rhythm to forgotten memories and new truths.

Had Remi movable ears in the animal sense at that moment, they would have pinned back sheepishly at Loren's outrage and surprise. As it was feathers merely rippled through his curls and down his spine forcing him to sit up straighter.

And then..

Slowly able to see now, as good as he could see normally anyways, Remi blinked once—his heart thumping unsteadily—twice—so there was no one else then..he'd been abandoned, not replaced. That wasn't better, was it?—..and nodded. His mouth, suddenly far too dry to speak with, made him gulp slightly as he forced himself to swallow and take a breath, licking his lips before speaking. "I..I mean..we.." Clenching his jaw, eyes searching Loren's for some spark that would just make him remember, Remi sighed with near desperation as his brows knit together. "..In Northaven we...I told you I loved you..said I would give up what I needed to.embrace what I needed to to be with you. And then we were here and..." It was hard retelling a story where the main characters were himself and Loren, and yet he remembered none of it. It was hard speaking about a past he lived, but that he heard about from others. "..and you were gone for a time but you came back and...I...it seemed.." Fine? Like it was going to work? Like they could make a fresh start? Remi didn't know, because he'd never told anyone those details before. The pain had been too raw, too overwhelming. "..so when you left I looked for you everywhere. At least until Edy said.." Swallowing, he shrugged slightly against Loren. The summoner now knew what it was Edy had said.

"I suppose I thought being with someone else made the most sense." He said at last in a near-whisper, eyes trailing lower down Loren's face as he frowned sadly. "..and when you came back without much of an explanation.." Again Remi shrugged slightly, biting the inside of his lip as his eyes focused unsteadily on some of the blondish stubble on Loren's cheek.

The white sheep of the family

The whole story came crashing down, and took what little self-control and semblance of coherent thought Loren had with it. Remi had thought, all this time, that the summoner had abandoned the alchemist. Well that much was true. But it hadn’t necessarily been by choice and it certainly hadn’t been for someone else. Loren was careless, and cold, and unthinking, but not cruel. Never cruel.

Both of his hands came up to clutch at his hair, as if to drag the thoughts and emotions from his mind by force. He moaned, a terrible, broken sound, and swayed where he stood before slumping against the wall, barely able to stand. ”Remi, I-I would never…” The Launceleyn’s voice was frantic, and his hands now fell to his side, before twitching forward, almost of their own volition, heading towards the other man’s shoulders. However, they stopped just before they made contact and hovered there, since the summoner didn’t know what he would do, what Remi would do, if they touched.

”I loved you. I...I love you, even. How could I not? I would never...I can’t...I wouldn’t...do that. Not that. Never that.” Loren knew this was unfair to lay on the alchemist, but the Launceleyn couldn’t bear the thought that this was what Remi had been thinking the whole time and the Launceleyn couldn't seem to stop the words once they started pouring out of him in this unstable rush. ”I don’t…I don’t know how to explain what happened to me. I went mad. Crazy. Psychotic. I...I went to that dark place in my mind, the one I retreat to when the world gets too much and I need to shut it out and I can’t, can’t, can’t deal with it anymore, except this time, I, I, I didn’t come out. It...it went t-too well and I was in this, in this fog in my mind I couldn't find my way out of. Until...until...until the leaves started changing again and forced me to see how long I’d been...lost. But by then it was...it was too late.” It was all coming out wrong, the same as it had with Ronin, and Loren let his hands and his body fall, sinking to the ground with a sob.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

As Loren's hands come to clutch at his hair the alchemist instinctively reached out to make him stop. Not for the first time the Launceleyn's behaviour reminded Remi of Sam, and his subtle edging towards self-harm as a means of dealing with conflict or difficult emotions. The alchemist would try and untangle the summoner's fingers if he could. If not he'd let Loren be, but not before gently trying to pull his hands back to his sides (which, he was about to do of his own accord anyways).

Glancing unsteadily down as Loren's hands came up again to hover in the space between them, whatever reaction the alchemist might have had—whatever musings of their meaning his brain might have wanted to consider—was immediately swamped by the words next spoken.

I loved you.

I...I love you, even.

Time stopped. Slowed. Whirled by. Everything became unfocused and somewhere very far away the pounding of Remi's heart in his ears faded away to the roar of the sea; waves crashing on a beach in another world. Though he tried to breathe his lungs would hold no air, leaving his chest simply rising and then flinching with every non-breath. The remainder of what the Launceleyn had to say seemed so inconsequential in the wake of his proceeding words. Madness, darkness, sure, sure. Why didn't you tell me? I would have helped you. And other words and questions he might have said, if not for the bright repetition of I...I love you, even in his mind.

Finally able to pull in a proper, if not shaky breath, Remi's lashes fluttered over and over as if the complex swell of emotions he was feeling could be blinked away like a piece of sand. Feathers nearly overtook his curls in number, streaking down his back and arms as wings, unbidden, appeared on his back. It had been...more than a year since the urge to fly away had come over him, and while he couldn't fight the physical symptoms of it, he could refuse to give in.

Still. Remi felt as though he was drowning, and the only thing in sight to grasp onto was Loren. A man he most certainly could not hold.

As Loren drifted to the ground, the sob tugged at Remi's mind snapping him out of his daze if only slightly. Instinctively his hands reached out again before he stopped them. He wanted...he wanted to t—Before the thought could finish the alchemist's wings furled around his body like a feathery shield. Kneeling down shakily (he had no way of balancing really with his wings so snugly around him as they were), he tried to look at Loren but found himself entirely unable. Heat and colour flashed across his face as he looked somewhere around Loren's collar, before giving up and slumping against the wall at the summoner's side. He curled his wings around himself like a blanket, staring forlornly at the ground.

"I..I would have found you if I had thought...If I had known.." He tried to say, his voice as soft as the golden feathers cradling around him. But the words, as his thoughts, were disconnected."I thought...you wanted to be..that there was..." It was so hard to know what he was meant to feel. Relief? Anger? "Why." He asked finally, turning his head ever so slightly towards Loren, looking wounded and unsure. "Why...did you not tell me when I...when we..." Remi's face crumpled, his boyish openness and brightness gone leaving only coral-smudged cheeks, watery too-pale green eyes, and lips trembling as they held in a sob.

The white sheep of the family

Great racking sobs tore through Loren, though even now they were silent: after all, if anyone heard his weakness, they’d probably hurt him. As Remi was, by pulling this last truth out of the summoner. He’d warned the alchemist that they were walking a dangerous path, more than once, and the other man had kept walking blindly and naively down it. And the Launceleyn had let it happen, vainly hoping that it would work out in the end. But he should’ve known better. It never did, as he was toxic to everyone around him despite his every effort to the contrary. He knew that, even if Remi didn’t. Loren should’ve been stronger for both of them, shut Remi out, as the Launceleyn had known instinctively from their reunion. As he’d tried. He’d tried.

Because now there didn’t seem to be any way forward. The scars had been wiped from his skin, but those had been trivial in comparison to the ones that lurked just beneath the surface that he so carefully presented to the world. ”I-I did. Or...I th-thought I had…” Surely he had. But honestly in that moment, he couldn't remember any more than the other man could. The Launceleyn's mind was so shattered that he couldn’t remember if he’d ever actually said the words, or if he’d been this scared sniveling thing quivering on the floor of the pit that just thought about his emotions but had never been brave or reckless or selfless enough to tell the other man how Loren felt. To express what was in his heart of hearts, what little of it there had been left, which even now felt completely gone.

This was definitely not a case where late was better than never, if the broken pieces of his soul and the way Remi’s wings curled around the alchemist were any indication. Loren closed his eyes and sought that dark and cool place in his mind where he’d retreated for so long. It felt infinitely preferable to living with this agony for another instant. And if he left again maybe he could spare the other man any more pain. That would be best for everyone.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

"Not once." Remi whispered, his breath hitching as he tried to form trembling lips around the words. It was one of the few retellings of his history with the Launceleyn he knew for an absolute fact. He hadn't given in the summoner's needs quickly enough, and when he did? When he promised him everything that he was, sealing it with a proclamation of love (the first the alchemist had ever made)? It...had devolved into a pleasure that went unfilled. And the next time? There were claw marks on the wall of the alchemy shop that bore deep scars from claws embedded in the wood during a similarly unfilled moment of sexual gratification. But still, never had the Launceleyn said the words Remi needed to hear most.

Wanting to fly away, instead the alchemist turned towards the summoner, a wing softly pressing outwards against Loren's shoulder. "Don't.." He whispered, words so soft they'd hardly melt a snowflake. "Don't do that. Don't go away again. I can see you doing it...please don't.."

Because that was the thing about unconditional love. It wasn't even conditional on memories.

The white sheep of the family

Remi was right, and it was that fact that finally broke Loren completely. He’d said nothing. He hadn't learned how to express his feelings in time, and when he finally had learned it had turned out to be the worst possible time. But it was over now, at least. The other man could finally move on.

Loren didn't much care what happened to himself past this point.

His tears dried up, to be replaced by an empty dull ache in his chest where his heart used to be. ”I’m sorry.” It wasn’t enough to convey just how sorry he truly was. He should’ve said something, anything, before now, before today, before this very moment. But he hadn’t. And now he had to live with that fact for the rest of his life, if what came next could truly be called living.

As the alchemist’s wing came around the summoner's shoulder, he didn't move, just stared blankly ahead. ”I have to.” For himself. For the other man. Loren hadn’t been strong enough before and it had destroyed them. Now, though, he could do this much for Remi. If cutting the alchemist out of the summoner’s life was the only way to protect the other man from the Launceleyn, then he would gladly do what Remi couldn’t. All the summoner could hope, ever again, was that the alchemist wouldn’t make this harder than he needed to. Loren knew it wouldn't be that easy, but he let himself live in that ignorance for a few moments longer because he couldn't yet muster up the energy to do what he must.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

"No." Remi disagreed in that same soft, but sure voice. "For you at least, nothing has changed. You wiped away your scars. Let this be one as well." The alchemist's wing pressure increased. He'd slide it behind and around Loren if he could, though his feathers were delicate and wouldn't endure being forced between bone and rock, so he'd not force it. "Telling me does not make it any different for you." For me it does. It does worlds over and over again. "So stay. Please." If he thought he could get away with saying Don't leave again without it sounding like an accusation, he would have. Instead he continued to simply try and flex his wing around Loren, tears still brimming in his eyes though the summoner's had dried up.

The white sheep of the family

They’d been foolish to ever think they could wipe away the scars of their pasts, at least the ones that mattered. Well. Love had made fools of many before them and it would no doubt afflict many after them as well.

Nothing has changed. Does not make it any different for you. That’s where Remi was completely and totally wrong, wrong, wrong, because this final remaining little secret part of Loren—the part he’d been desperately trying to protect the alchemist from—had been ripped out of the summoner and there wasn’t anything else left inside. He didn’t resist when the other man’s wing slipped around the Launceleyn, just made space for it. ”It’s too late.” Too late to change anything, too late to take any of it back, too late for Loren’s declaration and Remi’s concern.

This was a twisted mockery of everything they’d dreamed of together and it had killed that last lingering spark of life, of light, of hope in Loren. The alchemist could protect the summoner from everything and everyone but himself.

And as always he’d orchestrated his own downfall.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

Maybe it was because there was already too much on his plate, maybe it was because his heart and nerves were frayed and cut to the quick. Maybe it was because even without memories, hearing that someone love(d)(s) him only to be followed by this simply required more goodness than the alchemist had in him.

"Loren, look at me right now." A long flight feather curled around the summoner's opposite shoulder, nudging him towards the alchemist. If that wasn't enough Loren would find Remi turning towards him, hands on his shoulders or cheeks if necessary to force him to meet his gaze. "How can you say that. How dare you say that. What does that even mean, too late? What did you think would happen? Were I not with Ronin, this...it..." It wasn't feathers now that indicated Remi's faltering mental state, but plants. Moss and clover raced out from beneath them, growing upwards from the inhospitable and compact earth with ease. Behind them ivy wove its way up the walls even as the alchemist searched Loren's gaze (or if not, tried to find it at least) for something he could understand.

"I never left you, Loren. Not for one second." Remi's cheeks were hot splashes of colour now, betrayal, an innocent sort of indignation, the rising crescendo of having been told he was loved by the man he always thought didn't only to fall careening off the other end into whatever this was. "And I will not let you do it again. Not...not because the timing was wrong. Not because I do not remember."

The white sheep of the family

Remi’s feather and then his hands turned a nearly limp Loren to face the alchemist. Indeed, the summoner even met the other man’s gaze. Physically at least: mentally, emotionally, the Launceleyn had nothing left to give. So even as Remi’s words washed over the summoner he chose not to listen. Not to feel. Not to care. At least not to care about anything other than preventing himself from ever hurting Remi this badly ever again. Loren hadn’t wanted this to happen. Hadn’t wanted anything to come from this. Hadn’t ever wanted it to come to this. And yet here they were.

It was almost funny. Loren’s family had always wanted him to be merciless, to be cruel. But it turned out their love hadn’t been the love to make him into a monster in the end. No. That would’ve been too simple, too easy for him. It had been the love he’d felt for someone else that finally did the trick. Well. At long last he’d learned.

As life exploded out of the other man all the summoner could think about was how his insides were a dark mirror of the display, dead and rotted to the core.

Cruelty came easier to him than kindness. So be it. If he had to be cruel to be kind, so much the better, because letting the other man in had just caused them both no end of strife. Loren would endure. But Remi shouldn’t have to, not after everything the other man had already been through. Time to end the cycle. ”But I left you.” There was nothing behind the words but a dull sort of weight. If Remi wouldn’t leave, well, then Loren would just have to do it again. That, at least, was one thing he’d proven good at: abandoning those he loved. ”You should go.”

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

Perhaps there was enough in the alchemist for this. Perhaps, in matters of the heart, there always would be; that font seeming never to run dry. "You did." he agreed softly. "All the more reason not to do it again." Cruelty might have come easier to the summoner now, but it didnt need to. It didnt need to be something the alchemist enabled, even if he couldn't change it.

Remi could see Loren receding more and more into himself and so it seemed even more necessary to hold onto whatever parts of the summoner that he could. "I really do not think I should. Nor should you." Though fairness hardly mattered in moments such as these, the alchemist was determined not to be forced to pick up the pieces of his shattered behind that Loren had left behind, alone, once again.

"That is not how love works." he added, fingers tightening and moving on Loren's cheek bones as he tried to draw the summoner to him. In other worlds people described love as being patient and kind, but it could be stubborn and laden with mistakes too. Though only a few hours ago Remi had bristled at the hug the other man had given him, now that this seemed decidedly more about Loren than anything between them (as it almost always did except during those rare moments of clarity when the Launceleyns eyes were made up of more than bottom less seas of blue), the alchemist felt as though he could handle it.

If Loren would allow, and really even if not, Remi would pull the man tightly against him. Wings around the summoner's shoulders as the greenery around them continued to thicken, the alchemist would place his forehead against Lorens shoulder and simple wait, as long as it took. It wasnt like they didnt have the time, afterall. "I am not your family and neither are you. Change takes work, but...do not just fall back into old patterns Loren. You cannot change what had happened, and destroying then future does not help either." Exhaling softly against the summoners skin, Remis fingers continued to pull him close. "Be here with me. Even if it hurts. Even if it is hard. "

The white sheep of the family

Loren still did nothing as Remi’s hands cupped the Launceleyn’s cheeks. He remained unmoving as the alchemist held the summoner close, wings and plants enfolding them both. Love. Maybe Remi did know how it worked, what it was, although his earlier statements had indicated otherwise. But Loren didn’t. And that was okay, he decided. What was not okay was forcing the other man to stay in this pit, when there was a whole world waiting for him outside it; here there was only regrets and wasted time and unwanted and forgotten memories.

Staying with Remi was easy, actually. That’s what the other man didn’t understand. All Loren wanted (to the extent that he could really want anything at this point) was to accept the comfort the other man was offering. Accept the way out the alchemist was even now selflessly providing. But it would just cause more pain down the line. And the Launceleyn was done being selfish and hurting people he cared about. Not that forcing Remi to stay away wouldn’t hurt the other man. It would. However, better that pain than whatever unique agony the summoner managed to conjure up next.

”There are people who need you back home.” That was definitely true. ”And there’s nothing more you can do here.” And so was that: Loren would break Remi’s heart to save him.

Loren’s heart was already gone.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

"I want to be here." Remi objected simply and easily. As for back home? He'd made arrangements for Aoife, and Ronin was in jail. Anyone else could most definitely wait. "And I think I will try, just the same." Naive ignorance or simple boyish optimism or some other double-edged character trait; whatever it was, Remi was going no where.

Nuzzling against the summoner's neck to move the layers of his jacket, the alchemist rested his forehead against the skin of Loren's neck, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. "I am not leaving you Loren. And..you do not get to say that you love me only to demand I leave you right after." He added in a voice that was more vibrations against skin and cloth than anything else.