the monsters turned out to be just trees

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.