the monsters turned out to be just trees

The white sheep of the family

Well, that backfired spectacularly on Loren. Sighing, he gave Remi an apologetic look. ”Of course you matter. You matter even more because you’re a good person.” Maybe the Launceleyn should stop trying to protect the alchemist and just accept that the other man was going to stubbornly remain a part of the summoner’s life, whether he liked it or not. But after so long being denied such simple kindness and affection, he found it nearly impossible to accept. Hugging himself, he found tears springing to his own eyes. ”It’s not what I want. But the only love I’ve ever known has been conditional, Remi.” Remi didn’t remember the summoner and he constantly forgot exactly what that entailed.

Well, it was past time to rectify that. He'd been hoping that somehow he could avoid revealing this part of himself. But lies of omissions were still lies, and he'd promised to be honest. Closing his eyes, Loren took a deep shuddering breath, before rolling up his sleeves, heedless of the cold, exposing scars that he wasn’t sure the other man could see. At least the summoner had gotten several practice runs at this explanation.

Not that it would make it any easier.

”My family tortured me growing up. From when I was five, the day I first displayed magic. Because I wasn’t strong enough. Because I wasn’t obedient enough. Because I wasn’t good enough. The people who were supposed to love me unconditionally didn’t. Instead they used their magic to hurt me, again, and again, and again. Locked me in a cell far less comfortable than this to teach me to obey orders and not complain or show weakness, put me out in the wilderness and the cold and the heat to teach me to take care of myself, to stand alone, to be a soldier. I was never supposed to be anything more than a weapon for the crown and never supposed to do anything more than fight and produce more Launceleyns. And yes, they professed to love me. But it was a twisted, dark, and evil love.” Surprisingly, the tears didn’t fall, and his tone came out hollow instead of sad. ”So yes, Remi. I think there needs to be something good in me for others to care. Because I don’t know anything else. Because I was never enough.” Even the brief moments of happiness the Launceleyn had known—most of them with Remi—had been fraught, hard fought, with some complication or another getting in the way.

And he was so tired of fighting everything and everyone. Better to stay in this pit than keep getting his hopes up.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

Soon, the pit the summoner was in wouldn't hold a candle to the one Loren was digging for himself. Cheeks flushing brilliantly the alchemist nearly doubled over at the shock of the words. The air felt knocked from his lungs and the small sutures of kindness Loren had shown him were torn out leaving Remi's heart once again raw and bleeding.

All the love had been conditional.

All of it?

Even Remi's? Because as far as the alchemist was aware, he didn't know how to love any way but unconditionally. It was one thing to be told his care and concern didn't matter for he gave it too easily. But his love? Oh no. That was truly a rare thing. Instead of turning on his heel and leaving as he desperately wanted to do, instead Remi placed his arms around Astra, not wanting to leave her. Wings extended from his shoulder blades and he glided (unsteadily) down to Loren. Eyes crisp with tears, the alchemist set the fawn down before striding towards the Launceleyn. To say Remi wore his heart on his sleeves was obvious, but never before had it been so lamentably and completely bruised and broken. "How can you say that?" He asked, the words no more than near-sobs formed around the words as Remi's tear-stained gaze searched Loren's; his tense jaw a striking contrast to the wounded look in his eyes. Softly Remi tilted his head as if meaning to cut off whatever it was Loren might say. Oh I didn't mean it like that, oh I didn't think of you. He didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to hear Loren tell him how he felt or what he should feel. Not anymore.

Heedless of the fact that Loren would probably recoil and object, Remi reached forward to grab both of the summoner's wrists. With tears staining his cheeks enough for the both of them, his thumbs softly smoothed over the lower down scars. "We all have demons and ghosts." He all but whispered. "This is not Northaven. There is no crown, there is not even a Zariah anymore. Stop hiding this." Looking down and softly flexing his fingers around the Launceleyn's cool skin, Remi looked up again. "Heal them.  I know you can. Heal them and be a different man. It does not matter if you do not know how, none of us do. But did you really come back, to keep living in the past?"

The white sheep of the family

Loren’s eyes remained closed, so he didn’t see Remi and Astra fly down to him. However, when he felt the luxere’s fur under his hand, and heard the other man’s voice, the summoner opened them, revealing just how dead they looked. It was how he felt inside, so that wasn't surprising. ”Because it’s true, Remi. Even yours wasn’t unconditional. I know you don’t remember, and have no reason to trust me, but...back in Northaven you refused to be with me. You said it was wrong, because that’s what society taught you.” There was no blame or sorrow in the Launceleyn’s voice; if anything, it came out kindly. ”It wasn’t your fault. And in Caido, we might’ve had a chance. But I went crazy and left before we could find out.” That wasn’t even getting into how the gods had jerked the alchemist around, torn out his heart and his mind and left him incomplete.

At this point the Launceleyn was too tired and helpless to do anything when Remi reached out and took Loren’s wrists. As the other man spoke, the summoner didn’t move, didn’t say anything, didn’t give any indication what he was thinking or feeling. He couldn’t. Because the prison, which had felt so large before, was suddenly too small to contain the two men. It was certainly too small to contain the choice that Remi had just presented, the command the alchemist had just given, the future that the other man offered.

A long moment passed, Loren hesitating on the precipice. Who would have thought that after flying and after being tossed into the pit, this was where he’d truly feel like he was falling. All it would take was a leap of faith. And he'd never been particularly faithful to anyone or anything.

Then a soft sky blue glow started in the summoner’s hands. But it didn’t stop there. It spread across his skin like wildfire, scrubbing clean the marks of his past. But even then it didn’t stop: it spread to Remi, too, seeking out the alchemist’s injuries and scars as well, both inside and out. Whether Loren had lost control of his magic, or if some small secret part of him wanted to give the alchemist a tiny portion of the precious gift that the other man had selflessly handed over to the Launceleyn, who certainly didn’t deserve such kindness, he couldn't say. Of course it couldn’t heal the deepest wounds—Remi’s eyes, his missing memories, his fractured love for his husband—but it did what it could to soothe the alchemist’s mind and body.

And for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, Loren’s mind cleared of the darkness, letting him glimpse the light he’d been denying himself. It was beautiful. And he felt silly for not basking in it sooner. Perhaps it was inappropriate, but he smiled, even in the face of the other man's tears, one of those rare, secret smiles that made Loren into a different person entirely. This time, though, it actually felt right on his lips. ”Thank you.” It came out in a breath, and was too little and too short to carry the gratitude he was feeling towards Remi. But it would have to do.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

"Love does not mean being together. Not always. And based on what I was told, I did overcome that." There was an edge to the alchemist's voice now. Though Remi didn't remember things first hand, he'd not let Loren re-write his first and most influential-love. "For you." Swallowing hard, Remi tried not to recoil much as he might have liked at the deadness in Loren's eyes. That was perhaps the most hurtful of all. Perhaps, but what a thing to stand before someone and declare that your love had been unconditional, only to be told that no, you were wrong. Remi couldn't remember a time he'd felt so low, perhaps ever. At least with Ronin's verbal and physical attacks Remi could defend against the worst of it by telling himself it wasn't really Ronin.

But this? This might indeed be who Loren was.

Watching as blue overtook the pale skin beneath his fingers, broken and desolate as he felt, the alchemist couldn't help but smile. It made his tears come all the faster for it, something like relief and a mixture of pride and happiness for Loren pressing outwards from his chest and expanding in the back of his throat. However as the light began to seep up onto him, Remi gasped and pulled sharply away. "No...I.." The alchemist bit his lower lip hard, his breathing suddenly coming in short pants. "Some scars I.." Loren had shown Remi his, perhaps the same was only fair. Turning slightly to the side, Remi pulled up the many layers of pelts and fabrics, tugging them as high as they would go. Up the side of his ribs were a nasty assortment of deep scars, the tissue of which was still pink rather than a quieted silver.

"I...nearly killed a man." It had been almost a year ago, exactly. "I cannot let myself forget that." He whispered, unable to meet Loren's gaze too heavy was his shame.

The white sheep of the family

Remi spoke about love like he knew exactly what it was. But it meant different things to different people, and it seemed that for the two of them their conceptions were separated by an uncrossable chasm, even with Loren’s magic and the alchemist’s wings to bridge it. The summoner had already conceded that the other man had overcome his issues around being with another man. Around being with Loren. But it had been too late for them even then. Instead of rehashing that and just wounding Remi further, the Launceleyn decided to let the subject go. ”What is it, then?” Maybe if the alchemist explained what love was, beyond wanting to be with the other person no matter what the cost was, the summoner could understand how it all went so wrong.

When the other man pulled away, however, the lightness that had begun to blossom in Loren winked out in an instant, because he feared that he’d once again made a mistake, one of his countless many. When Remi pulled at his clothes, exposing a nasty set of scars, however, Loren hissed in sympathy and his fingers twitched, magic still swirling close to the surface. Maybe this wasn't about him after all. He was finally willing to entertain the possibility that not everything was.

The alchemist’s words gave the summoner pause. Still, the Launceleyn wasn’t going to let Remi continue to feel the guilt over his supposed crime. Not knowing the details—and having made too many missteps already by assuming Loren could fill them in—the summoner wasn’t going to reassure the other man that all was well. But that didn’t mean the Launceleyn couldn’t offer some comfort. He had to, to help repay the impossible debt he now owed Remi, now and forever and before. ”You won’t. Any more than I won’t forget what happened to me just because I wiped away the marks of it.” Loren’s hand came up, still brimming with magic, and hovered over the scars. ”But if I’m going to be living in the present, in the future, if you're asking me to do that, take that chance, I want you to come with me.” He couldn’t force the other man to come. But the Launceleyn could ask. And maybe the love remaining between them, even if Loren had done his best to reject it because he thought he was unworthy and Remi had forgotten it because of the cruelty of the gods, maybe it would be enough.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

Had Loren articulated some of his tangential thoughts, perhaps the alchemist might have answered more satisfactorily. He and Ronin weren't together at the moment, for various reasons. Love wasn't always successful, after all. Love couldn't prevent death, couldn't triumph over gods. He might too, have said that love doesn't make you clever enough to stop making mistakes, that it doesn't simply give you a path to follow. "I am not sure I know what it is, but I know what it makes me do. That you do not really know what it is, until you have felt it." Have you ever been in love, Loren? But no, that was the question Remi still couldn't ask.

Goosebumps raced up Remi's side as he shuddered out a breath, squeezing his eyes closed and sending yet more droplets down his cheeks. "You have all of your memories, Loren." The alchemist replied in a cracked whisper. "I do not. I owe Ludo a favour to be used at any time it likes. It could one day well ask for my memories again just for its own amusement." Remi shivered as Loren's hand ghosted over his skin, his muscles clenching at the not-contact.

Looking over at Loren, Remi tried to find in his Launceleyn-blue stare something. Anything. Anything that was real and wasn't as ephemeral as everything else seemed to be. Something that would persist through the summoner's mood swings and fits of self-pity. A lodestone when Loren's eyes turned dull and flat and dead. "You have to promise me then. If I ever lose my memories...promise you will remind me of this. Of what I did. " Remi's lips could hardly form the words much as they trembled, and locked deep within his shattered sea-green stare was a seed of doubt and worry. That if the day ever came, Loren would think he was doing Remi a favour by keeping his darkest secrets hidden. "Promise me."

The white sheep of the family

Loren's voice was the barest whisper. ”I’ve felt it.” Or at least Loren had thought he’d felt it. For Remi. For Ronin. For his family, screwed up as they were. But the things it had made the summoner do were not clear, and certainly not easy. He’d mostly driven people away, afraid that his fundamental wrongness would drag them down with him when he finally fell from his precarious perch on sanity and goodness.

At Remi’s obvious fear that more of his memories, his mind, his self might be stolen away by a vengeful and unforgiving god, the Launceleyn felt his resolve to find some way to restore what had been unfairly taken from the alchemist redouble. It seemed that the summoner would have to seek out Ludo. That was one god he hadn’t encountered yet, except in a brief glimpse; this time, Loren would find out everything he could before praying. Fool him once and all that.

That could wait. For now, though, the Launceleyn would promise the other man the sun, the moon, and the stars if he’d asked. A promise to give a reminder that probably wouldn’t be necessary was easy. ”I promise.” Even now, though, Loren didn’t think his promise was worth much. But there were other ways of remembering the past. He’d been a librarian once upon a time, so he knew them all.

What could only be described as a tablet appeared in the summoner’s hand, the one not hovering over Remi’s scar. It had a simple message carved into it in a blocky text: ‘Loren healed the scar Remi received when he almost killed a man.’ It was probably overkill, but the Launcelyn held his healing in one hand and the tangible memory in the other, looking at the alchemist with hope in Loren’s eyes.

This too, would have to be enough.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

Silently the tears came in full force. Perhaps the alchemist was naive to think that there existed some idealized notion of love after which every instantiation made its appeals. But he did. And so it was that as Loren said he had felt love before, it meant one of two things: either he hadn't felt it for Remi, or..well no. That could only be it. For if Loren had felt it for Remi, he would have still. Wouldn't have left him. Wouldn't have made his return as he did. Clenching his teeth together hard enough he thought they might crack in an effort to keep from crying out, Remi merely turned his face away, nose scrunched against the onslaught of tears and inability to breath. "Well then." The alchemist managed. Or at least he thought he did.

Pulling in more air than he lungs could take, the alchemist's lips performed one of those strange frown-smiles that seemed to overtake his feature in a wave. Sobbing inwardly, his throat pulsating with the effort to keep from gasping, he tried to swallow. Wiping the drops from his nose (snot or tears, who knew), he tried to pull in enough of a breath to speak. "Z.." He said, though his tears only came harder. Closing his eyes and letting the sob out, Remi snuffled in another breath to finish the word. The name. "Zekle." He managed at last. "His name...was Zekle."

How they'd gone from an awkward hug to this Remi didn't rightly know. But with eyes closed and the name of the man he had not murdered, but had instead let die, on his lips, the alchemist settled enough to be healed, leaning into Loren's outstretched fingers.

The white sheep of the family

As...something came over Remi and caused him to turn away, Loren blinked. ”Remi? Are...are you okay?” If the emotions hadn’t been so raw and this situation hadn’t felt so delicate that any wrong move could send them toppling back into the darkness they were slowly emerging from, he would have risked touching the other man. As it stood, all the Launceleyn had were his words. ”Talk to me?”

When the alchemist told Loren the man’s name, the one Remi had supposedly almost killed the summoner nodded gravely. The alchemist was the one with earth magic, but the Launceleyn tucked the tablet under one arm and produced another, with a single change: ‘‘Loren healed the scar Remi received when he almost killed Zekle.’ And only then did Loren lay his hands on Remi’s scar and let the healing magic pour into the other man.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

Instead of talking, Remi..laughed. It was a broken and painful sound, hollow and without mirth, but a laugh none the less. Turning towards Loren, Remi looked at the man with red-rimmed and tear stained cheeks. Oh the nights I cried over you, he thought. The things I built, the dreams I dreamed. Biting the inside of his cheek, Remi let the watery smile pull at his lips as he softly shook his head. The question he had never dared to ask, Loren had just answered. It was a relief, as crushing as it was. Though Remi had already been devastated by Loren's lack of love once; without his memories, he simply now felt the fool everyone always told him he had been.

At the shock of the healing, more emotional than physical, Remi gasped. Instinctively reaching out to grasp Loren's shoulder, the alchemist pulled in a breath as he felt his knotted and gnarled flesh knit back together with itchy precision. No doubt the magic would cover the rest of his scars as well, those from the Spire Demon, from the banshee, from the deranged bear that had nearly killed him, but it was only the marks from Zero that Remi thought he could truly feel.

The white sheep of the family

Laughter wasn’t exactly words. And it told Loren nothing except that Remi clearly didn’t want to talk about whatever was on the other man’s mind. ”Please talk to me? Honesty, remember.” It would be hypocritical of the alchemist to demand complete openness from the summoner without providing the same in turn. Then again, it wasn’t really like Loren was in any position to be making demands, or even requests.

He was, apparently, going to be allowed to heal Remi however. It would be a small blessing, and the Launceleyn kept his spell going until he was sure he’d chased away every lingering wound, every scar, every blemish and mark that he could. If the summoner couldn’t be what the other man needed, what he wanted, what he’d always dreamed Loren could be, at least he could still heal in this small way.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

Remi could only look wordlessly at Loren, both egregiously hurt and insulted that he didn't put it together (though the pair were constantly talking past each other when it came to this point), and also hollowly amused. "It is nothing." He said, feeling a strange sort of release of something or other. It wasn't relief, but perhaps it was a sort of freedom. It might hurt, especially later to know that he hadn't actually been loved by the Launceleyn, but at least he needn't worry about it any longer now that he knew the answer.

Shivering, for though the pit blocked the wind it was still cold, Remi waited for Loren's hand to part from his new smooth skin. Rather than letting the pelts fall back down, Remi looked down and over much as he could though his body was obscured by the various pelts he'd pulled up. Trailing a hand down his rib to feel the skin entirely without blemish or mark, he pulled in a surprised gasp as his mouth dropped open slightly. He didn't know whether to smile, laugh, or frown, and so succeeded in doing them all rather awkwardly at the same time.

"..thank..you.." Remi managed after a moment, releasing Loren's shoulder perhaps a beat or two too late.

The white sheep of the family

It obviously wasn’t nothing, as evidenced by Remi’s reaction. Now it was Loren’s turn to look hurt. The alchemist wasn't one to hide his thoughts and emotions, even now, after all the crap he'd been through. ”Then it shouldn’t be hard to tell me.” Although the Launceleleyn tried to keep the unease and worry from his voice, he wasn’t sure how successful he was; the other man was normally an open book, and to see and hear him act in such a manner was unusual enough that the summoner was concerned, especially given how prone to screwups he’d proven. It was entirely possible he'd once again done something to fuck this all up.

As Remi inspected his new scar-free body, Loren slumped against the wall, drained from all the healing. Still holding out the stone with the corrected message, the Launceleyn shrugged. ”No need to thank me. You’re welcome, though. Seemed the least I could do after...well. You know. Everything you’ve always done for me.” That was hardly an adequate explanation for how Loren was feeling in that moment, but he didn’t know that the words even existed.

Will blood tell

Coding base by Sky!

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

Looking at Loren in earnest now, Remi simply pushed his lips together slightly as he gave his head a single shake. "But that is the thing, Loren." He said softly. The alchemist was certainly not one for games, but this truly was one of those if you don't know, I can't tell you moments. Remi wasn't even working will a full deck like Loren was. If anyone should understand the implications of all of this, it was the summoner. "And I never have been good with words." If only the summoner was an attuned it might have been a different conversation (literally).

Letting his shirt and jacket flop back down, Remi followed Loren to where he slumped, leaning before him again. For the second time in as many days, the alchemist knelt before the summoner, wings softly outspread. "I know it does not erase the past." He said, meaning the healing of Loren's scars. "But just as they served as a reminder of what happened, perhaps not seeing them any longer will remind you of what you are now. A blank slate, so to speak."