you come to me, wild and wired

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

Remi had walked by the shrine numerous times. Had seen the faithful and superstitious sailors touch the heel or shoulder of the boy perched atop the rock, offering words of praise for Ludo in hopes that the raggedy spirit would bring their souls back safely. Or at least, not take them before their time.

Safrin's arrival on the beach reinforced nothing else if not this one unassailable fact: you couldn't just be done with the gods. Not if they weren't done with you. To that end, Remi had been ignoring a long-overdue conversation with Ludo about souls and LongNight. Reckless and seemingly untethered from his own life, the alchemist still wasn't an idiot. So he brought with him a board of checkers that he'd made himself. The light tokens were bits of coral, and the dark, volcanic stone. What else do you bring a god that likes to play games, if not a game?

"Ludo." Remi's fingers reached out towards the shrine. Though instead of rubbing at it, magic flowed from his fingers to refinish the stone where so many grubby hands had degraded the colour.

Ludo ”Your go.” Remi would find, all of a sudden, the board of checkers open before him on the ground, with one of the volcanic pieces set in motion. Ludo’s presence, at first, would be palpable around the statue of the aquatic man - did the eye wink? Did the gaze follow? But it was not long before the rags, familiar and forever reaching, enveloped the statue entirely. A porcelain mask covered the statue’s face; Ludo cling to it like a lichen, regarding the alchemist quietly. ”I did not think you would ever come.”

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

Once the presence of the raggedy god would have sent cold terror rushing through Remi's veins. He'd have flinched and made all the predictable faces, had all the predictable thoughts of apprehension and worry. Now though, emptied out as he was, he merely regarded the board with the eyes of a casually clever man before sliding forward a piece of his own.

"Oho, not so. I tried." Remi said, looking up. There were soft dimples beneath the unshaven growth on his cheeks but the light in his eyes was entirely hard. Shirtless in the heat, the alchemist gestured to the claw marks across his throat and the mass of ugly scar tissue in the center of his chest. "Twice." His broad shoulders shrugged. "You must have been busy." The god had tried to lure Remi to his death how many times. 2? 3? If Remi had more vanity than he did, he might have been a little insulted Ludo hadn't been at the festival waiting with open arms rags.

Ludo Something seemed to alter in the deity wrapped about the statue, as if it were seeing Remi properly for the first time in a very long time. The last instance of their meeting the alchemist had been healing, or at least he seemed to be, and now...? The disregard for life or death was staggering. A rag snapped out, prodding first at the scar tissue upon his chest, then the silver that striped his throat, and finally whipped up to thwack him petulantly across the forehead. ”And look - when you do not try, here I am.” It seemed to shrug. ”This is the first time you have visited since death stopped mattering to you. Since Aoife.” One of the checkers made another move.

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

Remi bore the rag's investigation of his scars with all the predatory restraint of one who knows he has no other choice. The flick though had fangs appearing between his suddenly parted lips and claws punctuating his fingers, though he didn't move to strike out at Ludo. Those same fingers curled into a fist, drawing drops of blood from his palm at the mention of Aoife. Hearing her name whispered from the white mask was not unlike a balm that burned to let you know it had begun to heal. "I think that means one or both of us is playing hard to get." He commented with a mirthless smirk.

Rather than magically, Remi moved one of the checkers forward leaving a smear of blood on it.

"Is she with you then? Her soul isn't..." He trailed off, not knowing what the options were. Still skewered by ice? Floating around in the Fields? In the belly of a mud monster? "..trapped, somewhere?"

Ludo ”Given our encounters in the past and your stubborn refusal to die, I would say that you hold that particular claim more than I.” The blood smeared checker flew off into the sea with a ping that suggested Ludo didn’t like that piece any more (and maybe it was cheating a bit, who knew). It regarded Remi’s temper, the claws and the teeth and the blood with little more than a billow of its rags in the warm breeze. ”You are so full of rage,” it said. ”It has tainted all that made you worth while.” Releasing the statue, Ludo drifted about Remi now as if inspecting him, taking in all the details, the tan, the scars, the posture, the changes musculature, everything. ”I led her off to Mort with the Steadman boys, and all the others who died at the festival,” it said. ”She was quite upset to leave you.”

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

"Or perhaps you simply want my death if it comes from your—" He nearly said hands. "—coaxing and not my own. If you like you can forgive me the favour I owe you and I'll come along now." w

Watching as the checker was engulfed by the waves, the alchemist smirked with a flicker of genuine amusement. "Well, I never did think you one for rules." He mumbled, before moving another piece and leaving it clear of blood this time.

"Is that so. What a shame for us all then." Remi's tone was lacklustre as he shrugged. 'All that I was yielded me a dead child. What good the man that I was, when in the end, it didn't change anything?" He had been good and kind and generous. He had tried to follow the path of right and virtue, had tried to avoid causing pain. He had bled and given all that he was, and still Aoife was dead.

Raising a chiselled jawline, Remi exhaled a slow breath as Ludo floated around him, his eyes fixed on the sea. Hearing that indeed she was safe, the alchemist closed his eyes as his shoulders sagged with relief and gratitude. "Thank you." He whispered softly in a voice that threatened to tremble. 'And I her. It was why I tried to follow."

Ludo ”Rules are made for bending and shaping. What good are rules if they cannot be reconsidered from time to time?” Indeed, Ludo gestured as if to invite Remi to flick one of its own pieces into the sea to level the playing field. (Though the consequences should he take up that idea remained to be seen). Pausing before the alchemist at the offer to die made so offhand, Ludo’s mask would seem to ignite with a smile far too wide to be considered human. ”Be careful with your words, sweetling, lest they become writ in stone and blood,” it cautioned, before letting out what damn near counted as a giggle at the alchemist’s words. ”You were good and kind because you wanted to change the world? No wonder you are miserable,” it said, continuing to circle Remi. As he closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged so, he would feel not rags upon them, but hands, warm and traitorously familiar. ”You changed the world for her,” said Isla, gently. ”For every breath she took, the world was better for your being in it.”

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

The alchemist regarded the god with a darkly amused expression, before turning his sea-speckled gaze back towards the board. Rather than throwing away a piece, he waves his hand over them all, changing them into pieces equally white and black. The implication? That together he and Ludo would win and lose with the other? That there could now be no winner? Who knew.

'I've plenty of both to go around." He said offhandedly, trying not to stiffen as Ludo laughed at his remark. "I was good and kind because I thought it was the right way to live." If there was a touch of defensiveness in his voice, it died quickly. " But in the end, what does it matter? Kindness didn't keep her alive."

Hearing Isla's voice made Remi's eyes snap open. Her words are the medic's unmistakable brand of kindness and practicality that he'd always come to expect of her. But rather than tears or smiles, the alchemist simply stares through the pebble-blue eyes to the mask he knows lingers somewhere within. "And now she's gone." He replied flatly. And with her, all his reasons to care.

Ludo If Remi watched closely, as the checkers before them were altered to blacks and whites, so too would the world around them begin to change. To dim and darken, the become the stark greyscale of endless nothing. All but he and Ludo, or Ludo-wearing-Isla, as it happened. ”Being kind didn’t save her. Neither did being strong, or being smart, or being angry. None of it saved her. So why else be kind? Because it’s right?” She gave him a wry smile - as a former Ascended, he should know her better than that. ”Or because it is productive?” She raised her eyebrows. ”You say you don’t care. It echoes along Torchline - I don’t care. But then why are you so very angry, so bitter? I think you care far too much, even after all this.”

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

The where of it didn't matter. The who of it didn't matter, hard as it was to have this conversation with Isla. He regarded her, wanting to be impassive but finding it too much work. Sighing, allowing the illusion to fully wash over him as likely was Ludo's want, and shook his head.

"Because it's easier. Anger is easier than grief. Hating easier than loving. Being strong is easier than being weak, abandoned easier than being found." It was Ludo who had started him down this path all those long months ago. Years now, even.

As for caring too much? She wasn't wrong. "Lies work just as well on ourselves as on others, if we repeat them enough."

Ludo ”And in what world were you born in that made you believe you deserved easy?” Isla’s voice, but Ludo’s words now. ”You didn’t believe it when you were growing up, or when you were in Northaven, or when you came here at first. What ego have you grown that makes you think you deserve it all of a sudden? Nothing is easy.” And it meant that literally. Dropping Isla’s arms, she billowed back into rags and black and white. ”And if you truly do want nothing, I will give it to you. You did as you said - you opened your door at LongNight. You patrolled and you rescued and you saved. And it wasn’t easy. Our debt is settled, Remi Taliesin. So if you want things to be easy, come with me, and that will be the end of it.”

but baby i've been here before; i've seen this room and i've walked this floor

"Oh I wasn't born in that world to be sure. I grovelled and served. I bit my tongue and did as I was told. And then there was this. All of this. A world where I was told to be who I wanted, do what I wanted. But still I was careful and cautious. Thoughtful and kind. And it all turned to dust anyways." He replied with a wave of his hand. "I don't deserve it. I don't deserve anything anymore, not after letting her die." Remi's throat closed around these words, but he forced the air out just the same, blinking away tears that prickled his eyes. "But I have the capacity to take what I want now."

Might makes right and all that. Hedonism seemed the most logical choice after all Remi had gone through.

Staring into the white mask again, Remi's bluff was called. "I take it I won't be allowed to live as a star in the sky, watching down on him if I do." He asked quietly after a moment, the who obvious.

Remi might have forsaken the world, but Ronin existed as a star far above it, even now. Fallen, Dark, it didn't matter.

Leave it to the god of death to show the alchemist perhaps he did still have someone to live for.

Ludo "If you had both died that day, would you have still let her die?" Ludo asked, its tone gently wondering, not particularly expectant of an answer. "Would you carry that guilt with you to Mort, even as you held her and spend the rest of time as her guardian?" It doubted very much, but nothing, of course, was certain. So it continued to wait, gently flowing around the shrine and the ocean beyond, all of which was blank shades of grey now. The mask would seem to smile again in response to Remi's question, tilting curiously to one side. "You know the answer to that question," it said softly. Dead was dead was dead. It let the silence between them grow for one beat, two. "I shall take that as your declining my offer," it said, turning to gaze out at the sea. "Did you know, Remi, that for some the best kindness you can show is death?"