From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
Vervain had left well enough alone, but it had been too long even for her. She had heard - oh, of course she had heard, and then some - but she'd never expected to be in the sort of situation where she was consoling her former son-in-law over her daughter. Her absent daughter.
She knew Ashetta would be in the woods. Call it a mother's instinct or a hunter's instinct - she simply knew. The Rathskeller wouldn't be opening for a few more hours, Remi (thank the gods) seemed to be getting back on his feet and Devrum was wild as the wind, which was as she preferred him. So Vai turned her attention to her errant daughter.
Leaves crunched underfoot as she walked, dressed in her leathers and furs with her bow in her hand and an arrow already prepped. For all intents and purposes she had made it look as though she absolutely wasn't there to find Ashe, instead prowling the woods to find game to kill and serve at the tavern.
She wasn't waiting long. The arrow sailed through the air, hitting its mark with ease, and the pheasant ceased its flapping as the huntress took its life. Perfect. Vai approached the creature, reaching down to retrieve her arrow to use again.
It had been easy to lose track of the days and let them all bleed together when she maintained a steady sense of numbness, summoning a jump start of electricity whenever she needed it. Sleep wasn’t exactly her friend, and avoidance of it was as natural as breathing now. She’d had to fill her wakeful hours somehow, had to fill the crushing, smothering silence that swept through her, silence only broken by vicious truths. The words kept clanging in her head with no one to hear them: ”You’re free.”
She hated it. She hated those words and she hated herself. Drowning herself with a slow and steady intake of stolen liquid fire aided her in ignoring the harsh and bitter self-reminders. She was tired, gods, just so fucking tired of this, of herself. You did this, you did this, you did this.
Now her bottles were bone dry, and she couldn’t stop moving. The black wolf had downed herself a rabbit that morning - a feeble bite to eat, but something to fill the clawing void in her belly, but she was unfocused on the hunt. She had torn it apart and moved on quickly, bounding here and trotting there, never quite stopping. Her pelt seemed to be permanently bristled, and no matter how far she ran, there was no easing the tightness in her chest. Her paws ached and her head was pounding by now, she she was starting to consider visiting the domiciles again and helping herself to some stranger’s personal stash when a smell hit her. Leaves crunched softly as her paws halted abruptly, her head picking up as she stilled entirely. Nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply and filled her lungs with the scent - wind and valleys, forests and wine, another wilder smell that was familiar and complexly intertwined with it. It was close - close enough that she realized it was almost upon her. How had she missed it?
The scent of blood hit her next, gamey and thin. She’s hunting. The wolf flicked her ear, her eyes staring into the brush for a long moment. Run. That was her first instinct. If she ran enough, surely they would give up looking for her. Why would they want to see her anyways? She was sure they all knew, sure they saw what she had so stupidly done. ”You ever hurt him, I’ll kill you myself.” The words Dev had said to her the very night they met. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t face any of them. Better to try and leave them be. Better to lose herself until she could understand what to do with the twisted and broken thing that was her soul.
She found herself moving forward in spite of herself. The wolf’s heart pounded, but she carefully shook her pelt and adjusted the crude harness bags she’d fashioned some week before. The scent grew clear quite rapidly, and she was able to seperate it from pheasant and the rest of the woodlands. She didn’t bother to quiet her steps - it was a skill she still wasn’t great at with four paws and a heavier body - and she soon lowered her head to step through a thin thicket of bushes. Ashe halted and stilled once more when golden eyes fell upon the huntress, and there was a very unexpected and powerful constriction in her throat as she silently stared at her mother.
Vervain had just plucked her arrow from the pheasant, cleaned it off and checked it for wear and tear, and was just returning it to her quiver when she heard the soft pad of footsteps. Well... paw steps, she supposed they were. Her blue eyes flicked to the bushes just as the jet black wolf moved out into the open, as wary and wild as any beast of the woodlands.
This was no beast, though - this was her little girl. Her little girl who had been lost, and found, and missed and loved. And who had made some very foolish decisions, as of late. Decisions which were not without consequence. Vervain sighed, raking a hand through her unruly curls and nodding to Ashetta.
"Come, now," she said gently. "I'm your mother, my sweet girl. Would you at least let me look at your face?"
A shudder rippled through the wolf's pelt, and she cast her eyes away. It seemed to be at random that it struck her: My mother is alive. The way the huntress spoke was so much like the way she told Ashetta stories when she was little. One ear folded back, but the other remained on Vervain as she slowly turned her eyes back. She was no daughter worthy of any mother.
The wolf sat back on her haunches and then in a brief moment.. A raven haired, small woman sat on the ground, smudged with dirt and hair unruly, her arms wrapped around her knees. Eyes the same blue of her mother’s looked upwards as a hand reached inwards to adjust the cross straps of the bag she’d fashioned, and she turned her eyes away from Vervain to the forest floor. She wanted to wonder why her mother was there, why bother looking for her? Ashe hadn’t made herself hard to find, but hells, wasn’t it clear that she shouldn’t be found? So many of her reasons for staying in the woods were selfish reasons. Pathetic ones. Cowardly ones. And… she had done something terrible. Isolation was better. If she could just slowly fade from everyone’s hearts, their minds, wouldn’t that just be better?
Ashe still hadn’t spoken. She hugged her knees tighter to herself, fighting her impulse to shed this skin she hated, this body she hated so much and just keep running. If she could find a way out of this place, if she could find a bigger world to get lost in, then it’d be better. With a fingernail picking at a hole in her pants, the assassin swallowed and looked up at her mother again. ”I fucked up,” she said hoarsely.
Vai felt something within her relax as her daughter finally made an appearance in earnest, the huntress looking Ashe over critically in the way that only a mother could. Checking if she was alright, if she was hurt in any way, if she was in need of food or water or warmth. It could quite easily have been all of the above, for all she could tell. Ashe looked broken with grief and self-hatred, and the worst part was knowing exactly why and knowing she had done it to herself.
"Yeah," she agreed gently, leaving her kill so she could walk slowly over to the assassin. "Yeah, Ashe. You fucked up. I'm still here though. I've still got you." There was no way she'd be anywhere else, after all. After so long looking for Ashe, if her daughter thought something like a breakdown in her marriage was going to stop Vai from wanting to know her, she would be sorely mistaken.
Slowly and carefully, as if she were dealing with the wolf instead of the woman, Vai slipped her arm around Ashe and drew her close into her warmth. "What happened?"
Ashe didn’t move, but her eyes watched her mother approach carefully. ”I’m still here though. I’ve still got you.” Scarred hands gripped tighter to herself at that, and she flickered her gaze back down to the ground. Why? she wanted to bitterly ask. Why, why, why did anyone want anything to do with her? She just.. Didn’t want to exist anymore. Didn’t want to be herself, didn’t want to be anything. Wouldn’t everything just be better if she vanished? She wondered if Vervain would still look for her daughter if she grasped the extent of the terrible thing Ashe was.
Vai sat beside Ashe now, her arm carefully drawing around the assassin’s shoulders. At first she tensed, her breath stalling as she was drawn into the warmth of her mother. It seemed her weeks of isolation did her no favors in the progress she’d made. After a moment, though, Ashe let herself lean into her mother, allowed her head to rest against her. She shouldn’t have. She should have drawn away, shifted again, dashed into the woods.
What happened? She happened. The small woman’s arms wrapped tighter around sharp knees - a sign of further progress lost. The wolf seemed to need a whole lot more protein than the original did, and in addition to being sick most nights and not bothering to hunt much… she let out a long breath and stared out into the trees. What had happened? Her husband left her, but her mother knew that. Did she know why Alistair handed Ashe’s soul back to her, told her he was a fool for believing she could be saved? She knew he was right - if she couldn’t save herself, no one could. And gods knew that trying to save herself was impossible.
”I can’t just be,” Ashe finally murmured. ”I never will. And I couldn’t… I should have never…”Never allowed anything to bloom between them, should have let him pine for her from a distance until he found a real woman to love, should have put him first. She took a deep breath and straightened, though she didn’t move out from under her mother’s arm. Still selfish.
”I run,” she started again, her voice quiet and near rasping. ”I wake up, and I can’t breathe, and I throw up, and then I shift and just… run. I have to run. Every night, mom, I ran. I never woke him. Never told him where I was going.” He didn’t understand what she was running from. He’d said it himself, that he could not fathom why she could not be at peace. At least when Master had been terrorizing her, she’d had an excuse. Now? Now it was just her, this twisted thing that had no concept of how to function in a world where terror was not a daily part of life. ”I can’t… couldn’t wake him. I was training with someone, I was exploring, I was… not there.”
She fell silent, biting the inside of her lip harshly. Alistair said he wanted her there, that was all he had wanted. He wanted the girl that had laughed until she snorted on the floor of the kitchen. The girl that loved to paint, the girl that grinned at him, hunted with him… He had shown her a love that was more pure and clean and soft than anything she’d ever known. It felt innocent in the shadow of her life. She had tasted it, touched it, and she had poisoned it. ”He was right to leave.” Her voice cracked unexpectedly, her chest caving in as she had to fight against a sob that nearly came out of nowhere with the tears springing to her eyes. She managed to contain it, to shove it down with vicious force. Everyone would be right to leave. There was no coming back from what she was.
Her daughter leant into her and Vai let out a long sigh, tilting her head to let it rest against Ashe's. She felt as though she was made of glass - some brittle thing, all sharp and untouchable edges. But Vervain didn't care if she was cut, she held Ashe close all the same, kissing her hair and breathing her in. She could barely tell her daughter from the forest currently, but luckily enough the former huntress knew the forest very well indeed. "Never... always... those words are so final. Nothing is final until you no longer have breath to draw, Ashe..." She spoke softly, her free hand reaching out to rest on one of Ashe's knees.
"Maybe he was right to leave... but not for the reason you think." She frowned, trying to find the words for it. "He needs to focus on himself for once... and you need to focus on yourself too, instead of running from it." Neither could be at peace while that remained an obstacle between them. Not what Ashe was or what she had done, but the guilt and horror which held her prisoner even from her own happiness. "But even if he left... even if they all leave... I won't. I crossed worlds to find you, and it took me years I can't ever get back. But I'm here. I won't leave you now."
Ashetta’s throat constricted with the way Vai held her. Unfamiliar and so deeply known and wanted all at once, and she had to swallow hard against the swelling emotion. Nothing is final until you no longer have breath to draw. It was hard to believe that. There were nothing but absolutes her whole life, one or the other and always in extremes. She blinked rapidly against the burning in her eyes and stared hard at the ground with a heavy breath.
Her mother was right, she knew she was. Alistair was right to leave and right to find a better life for himself. Gods, more than anything, she wanted him to move on. To be happy. Her lip trembled, and she hugged her knees closer to herself. Did she want to be happy too? She’d had it. Touched it, had seen it. And she hadn’t known what to do with it. She didn’t know how to hold peace in her hands when they had been clenched with violence and blood since she was just a child. How was she supposed to live a life that had been as distant as a fairytale her whole life? One she’d never been taught about, one she’d never even been allowed to think about?
She glanced up at Vervain with round eyes, hands clenching over her arms. Her mother wouldn’t leave her. Ashe stared at her in silence, as if she couldn’t quite process that concept: unconditional love. I won’t leave you now. She should. It would be better for her, wouldn’t it? She looked back down and bite the inside of her lip. Her voice a quiet, shaking sound when she finally spoke. ”I’m a really bad person, Mom.”
Vervain was quiet to give Ashe the time to absorb her words, to turn things over her in her mind as she knew her daughter was wont to do. And when she finally turned round, electric eyes up towards her, the former huntress cupped a pale cheek in one hand and smiled to her. "No," she corrected in a soft voice, "You were moulded into a weapon, Ashe. You were put on a path you did not choose, and raised in the shadows when you should have been walking in the sun." She sighed, her chest tightening uncertainly. So much time lost. So many years.
"You have a bad history, and you have done bad things. But that doesn't make you a bad person. You're my daughter - you're not a bad person unless you choose to be one. You can always choose better." Leaning in, she kissed the assassin's forehead, her thumb brushing across her cheek.
Ashe didn’t flinch away when her mother’s hand brushed her cheek, holding her there. A shiver rippled through her small frame and her heart raced at those words. You can always choose better. Ashe pressed her trembling lips together and shut her eyes with the kiss to her forehead, and she had a powerful urge to tear herself away, to dash into the trees. Her fingers twitched, but the assassin breathed in Vervain and reminded herself that this was her mom. It was a love she never could fathom having before, had been so sure that had been a chance lost to her so long before she ever took her turn into a dark and bloody side of the world.
”I don’t think there’s anything better in me to choose,” she said quietly. Ashe tilted her head down as her brows knit together, and she shook her head. She looked away and stared at the pheasant on the ground, her eyes hard. Everything she’d done… gods, maybe she could live with that, but what she became to do those things? Everything she allowed to happen to her… She felt her eyes prickling, and she glared at that pheasant as if it were the culprit. She throttled down the swelling in her chest and took a heaving breath. ”I’m a pathetic fucking coward.”
Every sacrifice she made in blood to keep her and her father off the streets, then to pay off her debts, and then… she had made her rank among the senior assassins, and there would be no leaving the Guild after that - the risk of any of Master’s elite being free of his control was too high. And the things she endured, being broken over and over again. Every time her fire flared, it was thoroughly smothered and crushed. The cellar, the pit, the whip, those leather gloves… And what she became to endure. The bloodlust. The shame.
And then she had finally run, gotten to Northaven… She thought finally facing her Master would be enough, but she’d been too late, hadn’t she? He’d shattered her, and she’d been too late in destroying him to stop it. Now she was left with all these broken and jagged pieces, and she’d cut apart everyone around her too many times. ”I choose wrong. Every choice I’ve ever made, everything I’ve ever done has been wrong. I’ve hurt people that were never meant to be hurt, wouldn’t have been if they didn’t know me.”
She looked back at Vai, and for a moment, she wondered what life would have been if she’d had her mother growing up. If they’d stayed on that horse farm tucked into the roots of the mountains, the sea crashing against the coast so near to them. She wondered what life would have been if her father had never brought her to the guild, frozen and in death’s icy hands. Would she have survived without her Master having her healed? Maybe.. Maybe it would have been better, if she had frozen solid in that snowdrift.
”I can’t keep hurting everyone,” she said. ”And I don’t know how to be anything else other than this twisted thing that I am that only knows how to hurt people. It’s better when I’m not there.”
"Don't you ever say that." Vervain's voice came out more heated than she intended, her arm tightening around Ashetta as if she could draw her close enough to shield her even from the battering of her own thoughts. "Listen to me," she said, her voice softening, becoming almost sad. "I have lived a life without you there. I have done it, I've been there, and it's not better, Ashe. Okay?" Tilting her head to rest it against her daughter's raven locks, Vai breathed in deep and let it out again in a long sigh.
"I understand that you might feel overwhelmed," she said. "But you are not alone, and you deserve love. Even if you can never accept it in a romantic sense, you deserve a mother's love and you'll have it until I draw my last breath. You hear?" Ashe could have been as terrible as her Master and Vai would have loved her all the same.
She shook her head and sat up to gaze down at the smaller woman. "Then learn," she said simply. "The things you've done... not giving up, even when it seems like the world is nothing but blackness and shadow. You wouldn't be beaten. You learned to be bad, so learn to be better. All you have to do is want it."
Ashe allowed her eyes to fall shut when her mother held her tighter, and her breath left her smoothly with the security. She hadn’t thought when she said what she did, and Vai reminded her of the fact that they had been without each other for a long, long time. And she had fought to bring them back together, to find her daughter again. The assassin let herself lean into her mother, to breathe her in. Finally she nodded, something in her knowing very well that the raven-haired woman that held her was not going to allow for anything less. Her mom. She could accept this, couldn’t she?
The wolf took a deep breath and met eyes so much the same as her own, blinking with round eyes as she worried at her bottom lip. You learned to be bad, so learn to be better. All you have to do is want it. All she had to do was want it. Her brows knit together, and she glanced down again before she lay her head over Vai’s shoulder. She thought that maybe such simple gestures like resting her head against her own mom might start to be less shocking to her system if she allowed it more. ”Am I allowed to want what I don’t deserve?” Ashe asked quietly. Her teeth bit into her lower lip again as she tried to work through her thoughts with her eyes on the pheasant.
”It’s over, mom,” she finally said after a lapse of silence from her. ”My Master is dead, we’re in a new world entirely, no one is targeting us anymore because of me and - ” She broke off for a moment for a sharp breath, and she drew her knees closer into herself. ”It’s all over, and I still can’t stop. The fight is over and I’ve just been left with… whatever it is I am…. and I don’t know what to do with it. Nothing more than keep myself away.”Because I am a terrible, twisted thing that has more than earned the punishment of isolation.
Whether she could accept it or not was irrelevant, at least to Vervain - as her mother she would give it all the same, wholly and without expectation of anything in return. Still as Ashe leant into her she felt herself relax ever so slightly, pressing a kiss to her daughter's dark hair as her head came to lean against her shoulder. Absently she brushed her fingers over the assassin's weathered clothes, clothes that seemed to hang off her more than Vai remembered. Fussing over her daughter came so naturally, even after all this time. She just wished she could do more.
"Well... I don't know if I can answer that because I think you do deserve it. But... I'd say you're allowed to want whatever you like." She sighed, happy in their silence but listening closely the moment Ashe began to speak. A small frown flickered across her face, Vai working her fingers gently through her daughter's hair, the warmth between them warding off the autumnal chill. "You could keep yourself away I suppose... or you could find something else to do with that fight. If you can't let it go, at least use it to make your life better. To make other people's lives better. Light a fire under your ass, Ashe. This isn't you."
Ashe frowned then, but she left her head where it was against Vai’s shoulder as she ran her fingers into her hair. She breathed in crisp air and the familiar smell of her mother with a heavy sigh. It was just her voice she listened to, her voice and the echo of birds in the trees, the rustle of dried leaves in the breeze that swept through. ”How do I use it?” Ashe asked. Maybe there was the glimmer of an idea somewhere in the back of her mind.. But she shook it, as she did every time it surfaced. Idiot girl.”Bloodlust and fear aren’t exactly good things.”
Ashe shifted uncomfortably as her mother pointed out just how unlike herself she was being. The assassin glanced downwards and frowned, chewing over her thoughts as her hold around her knees loosened. She sighed and seemed to release something with it as she curled against her mother’s side. She was warm - it was a warmth Ashe realized she hadn’t felt in some time. She hadn’t been touched, hadn’t been seen or spoken to… Maybe it was time to stop exclusively staying in the woods.
She glanced up at Vai with brows drawn together, her eyes unsure. ”I don’t know what I want,” Ashe said quietly. She bit the inside of her cheek with another sigh, a sudden exhaustion weighing down deeply in her chest. ”I don’t even know where to start.”
