void

I swear I still believe but I don't know

"Does it matter, when she didn't question you? You were hers, all hers, and I stepped back into her life as a stranger. She didn't want me." And it feels sour to say such things, when none of it was intended as malice. None of it was her fault. He reaches out to touch a hand to Remi's shoulder, if nothing else than to anchor him to the beach and maybe to Ronin as well, the hunter politely gazing away from both husband and daughter, as though this is something he can just pretend isn't there.

"You tried to kill them?" Ronin wants to let his grief take this and shake it between its teeth, to throw it all back at Remi, but there's really no need. And besides, she's still dead after it's all said and done. "I wish I had stayed. I didn't think you were alive. I didn't know."

the dark star

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

'Hah." The sound was more bark, than laugh. "Only because you came back with a smile, and..I do not know when last she saw one. She was not used to happiness, before you returned." The world had been dark then. Not so dark as now he realized, but dark enough.

Like through cold water, Remi's fingers fumble for those on his shoulder, not really feeling anything at all for a moment. "Mmm." He agrees guiltlessly. "I did not want to live, not after seeing her. I hated them for not giving me the option. I still do I think. If I could not protect her, I had to be with her, I..." But dead is dead, as they say.

Shrugging at this admission, the alchemist shakes his head. "Would it have changed anything?" Remi is probably meant to say that had Ronin been there, he wouldn't have wanted to die. It would have made it better. But honestly, he didn't think that was true.

Looking at the blanket in earnest now, imagining the shape of her beneath the folds, Remi can feel the air lodge itself in his throat as a sob rises and falls. His chest tenses with grief, and without really thinking about it, he pivots on his knees. With both hands he reaches out at the beach (careful not to disrupt Aoife of course), and hurls a chunk of it into the sea. Earth and telekinesis and pure madness combine powerfully as the sand is unceremoniously rehomed into the waves, with Remi's inhuman wails following in its wake.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

”Neither were you,” Ronin murmurs; nonetheless he had come back, and things had changed, and they had lost and found so much together and now...

It is Ronin’s turn to scoff out a laugh. ”Neither did I. Not with both of you gone. I didn’t intend to come out of that Temple...” Would it have changed anything, though? That’s where they disagree.

”It would have, for me.” His fingers flex beneath Remi’s. ”I have done grief with you, after Vanya. I can do anything, as long as there is you. Even if I’m an ungrateful reborn prick who didn’t see what he had until it...” Until it was swaddled in blankets a few feet away down the beach.

Ronin shifts back as Remi spins on his knees, able to do little more than watch the land meet the sea in a display that would not have been out of place in the Temple, just a short time ago. It’s the noise that spurs him to do something, the cry of grief like his own hurt made material, and he feels his breath catch around a sob that wants to come out.

Even that morning it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have Remi close, to touch and caress and comfort, but now they stand on burning bridges, and Aoife is forever stuck upon the far side. But Ronin had been serious, even after their fight and their vitriol - he can do anything, as long as there is Remi.

So he tries to reach for the alchemist, to draw him against his chest, fingers and hands all too aware of the extensive scarring that is new. That wasn’t there this morning.

the dark star

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

Remi considers this for a moment, before nodding in agreement. No; there had been no light before the fallen star had appeared back in his life. He and Aoife had been all it was for Remi then. And now? Clenching his teeth and swallowing he can feel the madness rising again despite the words Ronin is saying.

Throwing around his magic and the sand does little to assuage anything, his outburst making him feel all the more hollow. Were it not for Ronin's hands upon him, the cries of leave th' beach where it is y'fuckin wack job might have provoked a similar response in their direction. Instead, Remi collapses beneath the light pressure, dropping to his knees and meaning to pull Ronin down with him.

Reaching for the hunter's hands, Remi stares dully down at the fourth finger of his left hand. "I am not the man you came back to.." He says in a voice that to his own ears, sounds miles away. A blood-covered thumb—Ronin's blood in all likelihood—caresses the hunter's knuckle. "..nor the one who asked you to marry him, nor the one you did marry. I do not think I ever will be him again." The words were flat, honest, and freeing...in the way that jumping from a cliff is freeing, if only for a time.

'After all I have done...I will understand if this is the death that parts us." His heart should have been in his throat, but it wasn't. How could it be, when it lay wrapped up in cloths on the beach?

I swear I still believe but I don't know

The cry from across the beach has Ronin’s head snapping up, but then Remi is around him and pulling him down to the sands, and the hunter is powerless against it. He doesn’t want to stop it, as if sitting on the beach with his hands in Remi’s is the most human he has felt since the festival. A shuddering breath fills his lungs, the world swimming before him with tears he cannot be bothered to stop or hide, and he squeezes Remi’s hands.

”And I am not the man who died, nor the man who fell. I don’t know who I am any more - only that I want to be that person with you. Only with you.” Was this the death that would part them? Or rather, was this the death that bonded them so firmly that there was no going back?

”I would never force you to stay, but I want nothing else. You’re it for me.”

the dark star

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

Looking into eyes that only moments ago he'd wanted to snuff the life from, Remi feels a dark sort of affection affixing itself to that gaze. It isn't the same love that was there before; similar, but not quite the same. "Only you." He whispers back. Without Aoife, those words have never been truer. Only you, because there is no one else. Remi won't let there be ever again.

"And you for me." And then the words he hadn't said the first time around: "I will only ever love you." A promise and a curse. Too much had been taken from the alchemist to ever let love in again. There would be Ronin and there would be no one else.

Cruelly, the sun began to cast brilliant patterns across the sky, and the waves lapped with a relaxing cadence against the beach. They'd all but erased Remi's tantrum.

"I can't.." He needn't say what it was he couldn't do, for it was the thing that neither of them could. The thing with eyes that may or may not still be flecked with starlight.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

It is a finality that rings true in the both of them, then. Too many times knocked down, too many tears shed. Through death, blindness, blight and battle, at last they are worn to the bone. At last there is nothing left but each other. It’s sick, when Ronin thinks about it, but as his eyes meet Remi’s there’s a fierce warmth there as well, a dangerous sort of love. One no longer shackled by gods or by the whims and rules of others.

Ronin squints against the suddenly gorgeous light, and it steals his attention for a second, until Remi speaks again. At last there is a well of strength to draw upon; because where Remi can’t, it is Ronin’s purpose to be able to. ”Me neither. But I will,” he whispers, bloodied hand reaching up to cup Remi’s cheek.

”Can you make a pyre?” Already Ronin is moving, before he can change his mind, before his eyes blur too much to see. He’s up and he’s approaching the fragile little bundle that held the last pieces of their past and the best bits of their hearts.

He doesn’t dare to lift the blankets and look at her, instead scooping them up and into his arms. It is a familiar weight that brings a sob fracturing from his chest, because it’s real now, and it’s not going away.

the dark star

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

Remi doesn't think about it. All he knows is that he's shackled now to this man before him, and his eyes like blue fire. Shackled yes, but not trapped. These irons are not of his own making true, but he's cuffed them himself and thrown away the key. It will be his salvation as much as his downfall probably, but Remi could give a fuck about the future just now.

Gods they're both a mess but Ronin has never looked better, sick as it is to say. He lets his husband go with a sigh, not looking but straining to hear. Remi swears he can hear clear as day the way Ronin's rings brush against the sand as they scoop up Aoife. Hear the way the cloth whispers and sighs around her. He doesn't hear the sob though; his madness is fickle, that way.

Wood that resembles driftwood appear beneath his hands, and without thinking, he begins to build that which will erase their daughter completely.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

He remembers holding her like this just a couple of nights past, when she had fallen asleep downstairs in Remi’s shop. Only she was warm then, her breath hot against his chest and her curls nestled beneath his chin. Nothing like this; a bundle of not-Aoife, a weight with all the magic sucked out.

Ronin holds her for a while, silent tears streaking his cheeks, and the urge to rock her is unfathomable; whether he is trying to wake her up or send her to sleep is beyond him. Finally he leans in, pressing a kiss to the blankets covering her head, as if to say goodnight. Then he turns, a broken man made by a goddess and found wanting, and approaches the pyre Remi has made.

”Send her to Vanya,” he mutters. ”Let her play in the stars.”

the dark star

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

That word. The alchemist flinches, turning hard and furious eyes towards Ronin, though his hatred is not directed at the hunter any longer. "The stars." He repeats flatly, and then adds: "Safrin."

Images of sinking their not-daughter to the bottom of the sea, to let her body be twisted and fed upon by some ungodly monster suddenly seems all the more appealing. Remi's fingers tense, breaking the bits of kindling held within his palms.

"Do you think she can hear us right now? Safrin? Because I would have her hear this very clearly." With teeth made jagged by the beasts within him vying to get out, Remi turns his eyes up to the sky. "If you touch her...if you even think her name, I will make it my business to turn everyone against you." His words are dangerously calm. Much as he'd like the threat to be one of the death, his madness still holds an ounce of rationality. But from Ronin's tales of her, Remi thinks perhaps her vanity is more fragile than her mortality.

Jaw clenched, he glances sidelong at Ronin, nodding silently. Flint and steel flash in his fingers as the broken kindling sparks to life.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

Even with Remi’s reaction - so violent, understandably so - Ronin can’t take it back. His very nature has been a cloth partially sewn by Safrin, since his return from the skies, and whilst he would rather the lady of stars wink out entirely, he cannot deny that Aoife’s mother resides up where they cannot follow. And he cannot and will not deny her the opportunity to see Aoife again. Not that their daughter will ever be a star - he is not so naive.

There is no need for Ronin to add anything; Remi has the right of it, and Ronin’s silence is testament to his support. Reaching out, he settles their daughter upon the pyre, feeling utterly naked and raw as he steps back. Around him a starbolt burns to life, curiously small and gentle compared to that which he threw at the Temple, ready to help the flames catch. ”Do it.”

the dark star

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

There is almost no kindness left in the alchemist. The cockles of his heart have cooled now like so much volcanic stone; porous but hard. And yet as his trembling fingers reach out to wrap the cloth more snugly around Aoife, magic sparks from his fingers, transmuting the cloth around her to one that bears their family's odd insignia of stars and dragons.

He reaches for words but finds them utterly lacking. Perhaps though, her fathers' silence is the most appropriate eulogy that they could give.

Do it.

Lips curling in a snarl, Remi places the kindling into the fire, pulling his hand back only when the flames have caught and the hair on his wrist begins to singe.

I swear I still believe but I don't know

Ronin wants to step away, look away, but he will not let their little girl step alone into the dark. Part of him tries for a smile as Remi transmutes the cloth, but it’s a feeble thing that doesn’t last. All of him is hollowed out, it feels, and darkness has filled him all the way up. Well, darkness and the one, lingering thing he does have left. And the core of him that loves Remi is as dark and sharp as the rest now, but it burns no less hot.

The flames begin to catch and Ronin lets his bolt loose; it finds its way between the driftwood and ignites, setting the pyre ablaze from another angle with wild and celestial light. What is there to do now but watch? The future is on fire before them, the past in ruin behind, and there’s just Remi in this endless present, this madness of now.

”She loved you so much,” he finds himself mumbling, as though that will do anything.

the dark star

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

He should look away, if only because the white-blinding glare of Ronin's magic threatens to leave spots in his vision. But what of it? What is there to see? Not Ronin, who he knows now with a bloody intimacy he had never thought possible. But then, he'd never known the sort of love that is born from mutual pain and destruction.

"All the good it did her." He whispers numbly, not having noticed that fingers punctuated with claws have come up to his throat, touching the scarred flesh there. Realizing what those fingers intended to do, Remi drops his hand hoping to catch his husband's therein as he watches their daughter burn.