void

Unceremoniously deposited on the beach, Ronin and Remi—and the bundle of blankets that is Aoife—are deposited on the coastline. Completely healed of all their physical wounds.

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

Ronin had been singing in the kitchen while Aoife painted portraits on the wall in jam...and then he'd been in the fields while those around him screamed, some even saying his name...he'd clawed out his own throat to get back to his husband and daughter. It was the right thing to do after all; Aoife had died, but she needn't be alone. Ronin would understand.

Ronin would..

..heat and light and the feeling of water on his feet brought a gasp from deep in his chest. There was no pain (why wasn't there pain? Remi wanted the pain. Deserved it. Needed it.); instinctively his hands came up to his throat that should have still been torn open, only it wasn't. There were scars there from his own claws, but it was healed.

His hands shot to his stomach, moments ago torn open and bleeding away the last of his life, and that too was healed. And if that was healed..if he was healed then..

..cruel adrenaline and hope surged through him as he flailed to a sitting position, eyes ignoring the foreign landscape, looking only for...needing to see only...

The blanket was still. He knew what was inside, for it was no longer a who.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

Ronin had asked for it. Screaming at Safrin, goading her, attacking her... he had asked for it, and he yet here he is. Wherever here is. The hunter stumbles as they are thrown into strange and blinding light, and the ground gives way beneath his feet, sending him to his hands and knees on... sand.

Sand...

His head shoots up, wild eyes drinking in the stretch of ocean, the soft hush of waves, the warm shoreline on his back and shoulders. He blinks quickly.

"Vanya..."

This is home - like home in the stars - but there's no world swirling beyond the edge of the water. His loved ones are not down there for him to look upon fondly. So Ronin gazes up instead, and there's a bundle of blankets that he recognises even having only seen it for a fraction of a second.

And then there's Remi.

"You're dead," he remarks.

the dark star

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

The world is just white noise. Remi doesn't even notice that they aren't alone on the beach, doesn't notice those fishing and frolicking on the shore. All he knows is the bundle of rags before him and how he can't make his shaking hands unfold the carefully folded cloth.

Ronin speaks and the alchemist shoots him a glare as he never has before, lip snarling upwards before turning his attention back to Aoife the body. "Then why isn't she..she..." Regardless of who was alive and who wasn't, if Remi was able to walk around despite being dead, then Aoife should as well.

Turning furious sea-shattered eyes towards the hunter, Remi glared right through his husband for a moment, before focusing and seeing him. "What did you do."

I swear I still believe but I don't know

The people on the beach do not matter. In this moment very little does, and Ronin feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes even as Remi turns a glare on him that he's never seen before. "You were both... the monster killed you both," he says, and the warm tranquility of the shoreline is utterly deafening.

He gazes at the blankets, raises a hand, then inhales and lets it drop again. "This is a nightmare and I can't seem to wake up," he mumbles, swallowing hard, shuffling back on the sand as if he might run from whatever is happening.

"I destroyed the Temple."

the dark star

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

Remi's fingers curl into a fist as Ronin raises his hand, assuming his husband means to reach for Aoife. "A nightmare." He repeats, the words like papercuts on his tongue as he struggles to understand. "A nightmare." Trembling fingers remain over the small bundle as fury and tears blur the colourful blankets.

Rising swiftly and dexterously, Remi pivots on the sand towards Ronin, stretching out a suddenly-clawed hand to grab the hunter's collar. "She is dead, and you destroyed a temple?!" If he could, he'd shove Ronin back and continue to advance across the sands. "Not a dream, Ronin. Not a nightmare. You let me watch the both of you die, and all you have to say for yourself is that you destroyed a gods-damn temple?" Anger such as the alchemist had never known swept over him like a tide, and oh how he welcomed those frosty waters.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

It's sickening, how close to the surface the rage still is, and Ronin rises to Remi's thorny tone, provoked rather than culled or shamed. Suddenly he's on his feet, teeth clenched tightly, and Remi's claws prick into his skin where the alchemist has grabbed him by the collar. "Oh I'm so sorry, was I meant to act rationally, Remi?" His voice is rising and he doesn't care, stumbling back across the sand perhaps a step or two before his heels dig in.

"And what do you have to say for yourself?" he demanded, starlight crackling out of him in uncontrolled bursts. "You went there with her and now we're here and she is dead and you..." You're alive. You're alive and she is not.

"It was better when I thought both of you were gone," he half snarls.

the dark star

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

"No you are right. Rational and you have not gone together since you came back." Remi spits, unsure if he actually means the words but far too consumed by the satisfying way that they snarl from his lips to actually care.

"That is right. We were together. Explains why we are still together." (Only it didn't. It absolutely didn't, because Remi was alive and Aoife wasn't, and oh gods Ronin's face had never looked more tantalizing and infuriating to him). " But you? Where were you in all of this?" Stopped dead by the hunter's question, Remi's eyes flickered with madness. "That would be easier for you, wouldn't it?"

I swear I still believe but I don't know

"Oho, this coming from the man who literally cannot help but try to kill himself on a regular basis! Let's not play the rationality game, Remi - I'm not sure you've a leg to stand on." Ronin's smile feels unpleasant, but the way the anger burns through him is so much better than the yawning emptiness at the bundle of broken blankets just behind the two of them.

But words aren't enough, and at the alchemist's question it's Ronin's turn to reach out and shove at the other man, mindless of the attention they are drawing. "You know where I fucking was - I was sorting out your wagon! You didn't seem to do any good by yourself though, so maybe I should have been there."

A laugh escapes him, quietly unhinged. "It would be easier if I had never come back," he mutters.

the dark star

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

"Ahh well, that's just me trying to get myself killed so that I can come back and judge for myself whether all your ungrateful whining has been justified." The words are hateful, but as for Ronin, they are worlds better than dealing with what remained still swaddled and dead on the sands.

Shoved but not deterred, Remi leans into the pressure, aiming a punch for Ronin's shoulder. "You should have done. Then you might have added failed monster hunter to the long list of roles you've taken and then subsequently fucked up. Seems the only monsters you are capable of killing are humans. Vanya? Emmett? Roana, yourself, Skylar? And now the two of us." Oh how the words were flowing now and Remi was helpless to stop them, caught in a riptide he wouldn't even try and fight.

"But you did. And then you married me and you said everything would be fucking fine, and—" Tears stung at the back of Remi's eyes, clawing mercilessly in a way that made the alchemist want to replicate the feeling with his claws on Ronin's face. "—but it has never been. You made me a father and then a husband and then a murderer. You!"

I swear I still believe but I don't know

"Would that you could come back - then you could start from scratch and not have to bear the burden of being more powerful and capable than anyone else, and still you manage to fuck it up! Please, Remi, come back weak and feeble and do us all a fucking favour, then you won't be lying to yourself anymore!" The punch connects with Ronin's shoulder, and shattered starlight flares and beams out of him.

In a battle of wits, Remi inevitably wins. The second the names begin to pass the alchemist's lips, Ronin is lost quite literally to his own rage and grief. "I didn't make you anything, you ungrateful prick! At least I took you on, so no one else had to put up with you!"

The sand does not provide the best resistance, but Ronin still lurches forward to try and shove Remi back with both hands, before he does the inevitable and swings a punch for the alchemist's face.

the dark star

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

"There it is! You might bleed red Ronin but your blood is still just as blue. A lowly commoner stronger than you? Even when you are the one BleSseD by ThE gOds? How infuriating that must be to your oh so fragile ego." He yells, cheeks full of colour now.

"Me ungrateful? I suppose everything I have ever done for you means nothing? Helping establish your ridiculous guildhouse, and caring for your daughter when you died? For helping you hide the fucking body after you murdered a man? If I am ungrateful Ronin, what the fuck does that make you?" Tilting back his head to laugh, Remi swept forward in a deep bow that would have suited Ronin as a baron or a king, he rose with a sneer on his face. "Gods and how will I ever repay you for that? And not just me, everyone allegedly. You're a gods-damn hero, you truly a—"

Remi wants to be hit, wants sense or unconsciousness knocked into him so that he won't have to feel any of this anymore. He staggers, grinning fiendishly as Ronin's fist (and the rings thereon) knocks against his jaw. Blood freckles the air as Remi reaches up to touch the soon-to-be-purple skin. "Tell me Ronin." Remi asks, spitting a ball of spit and blood into the sand. "How many of those rings below to the dead?" There was Roana's for one. "Two at least, if you count me."

And then he tried to punch Ronin back.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

"It makes me gods-damned monster, Remi." There, it's out. It's said and its done and Ronin isn't jeering or mocking or laughing any more. He stands, a broken man with his back straight and his jaw clenched, blue eyes ablaze with something he can't understand and doesn't want to. "Everything you have ever done for me means nothing. Everything that has ever happened to us means nothing. Nothing is the same - nothing has a point - because she's still dead."

He wants to look at the little swaddled body - wants to, but can't. Because maybe she's really okay - maybe (and it's a sickening thought) they'll unwrap it and it'll be another child, a not-Aoife. And Ronin's guts wrench at the thought of eventually approaching the body, so he tries hard to banish the thought.

Easy, when he's being punched. Ronin staggers with the force of it, because like it or not Remi is strong now, and the taste of copper explodes in his mouth. "Shame Aoife didn't live long enough to get a ring from her," he snarls. "But then I suppose I have you to thank for it. It's your fault she's dead."

the dark star

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

The truth isn't nearly as satisfying to hear, and Remi swallows down what feels like a wad of cotton. Monsters aside, dead daughters are the ultimate trump card but hearing Ronin say it out loud makes Remi realize that even if this is hell and they're dead, there's still no coming back from this.

Roaring, Remi's throat suddenly more leonine than man, he throws his full weight against Ronin hoping to force him onto his back into the sands. "No," He growls through tears and spit, fists curled and aiming to strike another blow against Ronin's cheek. "It's yours. Yours for leaving her to me. Yours for coming back and marrying me. Yours for knowing who I am and entrusting her to me still." He'd aim another punch if he could, trying to pin the hunter beneath him and hold him down with his knees.