sweet child o’ mine

everything has its wonders

Ronin climbed the rocky expanse of beach up to the lighthouse at dawn. He had left a message for Remi (he did not find himself falling blindly drunk into sleep quite so often since his conversation with Safrin), telling him where he had gone and inviting him to join him if and when he was ready. The if was important, because Ronin had already clarified his reasons for going to the lighthouse. Ludo had been correct, and he did think it important to mark their daughter’s short but wonderful life.

His feet bare and his shirt open, Ronin knelt before a small plinth of stone, one that naturally jutted out of the ground alongside the lighthouse. It was this that he had dedicated his attention towards; this he had chosen as a marker for Aoife. The stone had been carefully worn and sculpted so that it was smooth, bleached by the light and shaped to a point, like a teardrop. Upon it was carved a single letter, the A of his star child’s initial seeming impossibly small and meaningless.

There was nothing left of Aoife, nothing belonging to her, so Ronin was improvising as best he could. He had dug a small hole before the marker, and in his hands he held a battered feather, one that looked as though it had been through a lot in its time. The only thing he had been able to salvage from the guild fire had been this, and while it barely reminded him of Vanya anymore, she was still always there in the back of his mind.

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

He'd done it wrong, and so Ronin had gone to make it right. Alone, with just a note offering that Remi might follow if he wanted. It made him feel...small, in hard to articulate ways. He'd known that he'd been letting Ronin down—had articulated as much—but still to be faced with such clear evidence of it had him staring at the note for long minutes. Perhaps he'd go walk into the sea and not come back. He could live underwater, could simply drift as he was doing now.

He wouldn't of course, though his hawk-eyes did linger on the sea nearly the entire flight towards the lighthouse.

Ahead the alchemist could see Ronin knelt over something and he felt the familiar and unwavering pull of love for the hunter. Banking softly and silently to land on a boulder nearby, Remi regarded Ronin silently until the hunter glanced up. Bashfully perhaps the hawk ruffled its tawny feathers, adjusting its stance before speaking. I had no real family growing up, save for my parents. My mother was once close to hers, but my father pulled her away from them, and so...it was the three of us. When she died, there was no grave. No ceremony or words said. My father took her into a room to say his last goodbyes—and only much later did I realize the implications of that—before tossing her body into a swamp. Ronin wasn't an attuned and so wouldn't feel the dark swell of emotions, but even birds have understandable body language if you look. It was only in Northaven and then Northwind that I realized that wasn't the normal way of things, though perhaps I should have assumed...

Silently for a moment, Remi moulded back into his own body, sitting pensively on the stone. "I'm sorry, Ronin."

everything has its wonders

Oblivious to his husband’s take on something Ronin had done as an act of love, the hunter was concentrating too hard on his task at hand to notice the hawk’s silhouette in the sky until a familiar voice rang out. Glancing up, he turned his head to spot Remi on the boulder nearby, unable not to smile at the ball of ruffled feathers - the animal shape he had known longest and best. That same smile faded as Remi explained; about his mother, about his father’s attitude and sins, about those implications after she had died...

He lowered his eyes back to the little grave, rubbing at his forehead. ”You don’t have anything to apologise for,” he said softly, twirling the battered feather in his hands. ”I thought this place would work. It’s open but it can’t get swept away by the sea, but still close to the water. I...” Ronin shook his head.

”I know there’s nothing left of her, so I wanted to leave pieces of us instead...” It had seemed easy to articulate in his head, but it sounded silly out loud. ”I’ve got this for Vanya, and for me...” Ronin slid the light ring from his finger, where it was already emitting a soft glow. The first ring on his finger, back in Northaven, when things had been so very different. When they had been different. ”What about you...?” Would he even want to? Ronin didn’t know at this point.

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

"It feels like I have." Remi replied with a soft shrug, pressing his thumb into his palm and kneading the muscle there distractedly. 'Near Safrin's shrine?" He asked wonderingly, though the way his eyes darted back to sea suggested maybe he didn't want this confirmed. Ronin might have made his peace (or accepted his place) with Safrin, but Remi had not.

Listening to what Ronin had to say, something horrible bubbled in Remi's gut. Something like jealousy, but meaner, crueller. Swallowing hard, Remi watched the feather and the ring. For some reason it felt like a barrier. Vanya was the bird here, so how could he add a feather to the pile? Everything he once had had been destroyed; what use a glowing star when there was a ring of real light already there?

"I..don't...I don't know what I would put.." What am I, compared to the two of you?

And then, the insidious thought he couldn't help any longer; Her real parents.

everything has its wonders

"Remi." Ronin's tone was stern, but there was no anger in it. Should his husband look up it would be to find the hunter locking eyes with him, a mixture of sadness adn determination on his face. He could practically see it these days - could see the alchemist circling the drain, just about not falling in. And sometimes it was easier just to let himself be tugged along as well. But other times - like today - it wasn't about them, and there was only so much darkness he could take.

"Yes you do. You know what you would put. You were her father, and this is the last time you get to get to play that role for her." Silently, he placed the feather and the ring in the hole he had dug, where they sat, softly illuminated, waiting for the last piece.

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

Remi did look up, returning the stare with a strange sort of defiance. "This isn't playing that role for her. It's for you, isn't it." Not a question.

Aoife was gone. Gone, and suddenly Remi felt enraged that they might pretend she was anything else. Raking his fingers through his curls with far more force than was necessary, Remi seethed out a breath through clenched teeth as he glared at the rocks below.

"Tell me Ronin, since I am unfamiliar with graves. Tell me the point of this. What does it matter to her?" He tried to keep his voice level, but it did waiver slightly with emotions the alchemist would rather not feel.

everything has its wonders

"It doesn't. None of it helps her, because she is dead." Ronin spoke quietly and frankly in a voice tight with sadness, particularly in the face of his husband's callous words and barbed tone. "You know that this is for me. You knew that when Ludo told you about it, and when you dug a hole on the beach to be washed away by the tide." So what if it was? So what if he wanted a single, solitary marker in the world that said she was here - she existed? What of it?

"You were as much her parent as anyone else was. I wanted you to be a part of this - for me, if I ever lose you to whatever it is that is happening to you. That way I can come up here and remember all three of the people I loved and lost. Is that okay with you?" he asked.

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

"Then don't say I'm playing the role for her." Remi said, his voice an entirely discordant mixture of anger and kindness. This was the problem, being on two different pages in two different books. They were constantly reading past one another and it showed.

Worse, it hurt.

Remi's fingers balled into a fist, kneading against the upper portion of his palm as he looked at Ronin as if he could somehow see into his husband the truth of all of this. "I can't." Suddenly Remi's throat and lips were quite dry. "I can't be part of your preparation plan." Standing, the alchemist swayed unsteadily, backlit by the sun and eyes entirely darkened. "I won't be a place that you go, a feather you tote around."

Perhaps encouraged by Ronin's own steel, Remi didn't hold back the words he probably should have. "You said you kept her memory in your heart. This..." He glanced towards the shrine. "Seems like a way of burying that until it's convenient. If you have a place to go to remember us, that only means you're free of us when you're not here. And as the only one of us with a voice left to say it, I would prefer not to be forced to haunt this lighthouse for your convenience."

everything has its wonders

It had been wrong to throw that mantle at Remi, to make him play a role he wanted no part in anymore. And yet here they were, getting it so wrong again, at the top of a cliff in the middle of nowhere, knowing nothing about what was about to come next. Letting out a shaky breath he hadn't realised he was holding, he held Remi's gaze with none of the darkness and discord that simmered in his husband's. No, Ronin was all sad acceptance of a life that no longer existed.

"Believe whatever you like. I'm sorry that I'd like to have somewhere to go on bad days, where I can sit and think without just carrying it around with me." He shook his head. "What is the difference? You haunt me everywhere we go anyway."

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

"And you're telling me that this would really help you? Feathers from Vanya and I growing dirty in the sands, the light from a ring that will never brighten anything more than these rocks?" He didn't believe it, but then, Ronin was still clambering towards healing in a way that Remi had long given up.

"Do I." Again, not a question. Remi didn't even look wounded. If anything, in a sick and twisted way he looked somehow validated. Pleased. "Then you don't need me for this."

everything has its wonders

"Is it so important for you to be able to justify it to support it?" Ronin asked, hurt and prickling under the scrutiny of something he hadn't known he had wanted until he'd started to make it with his own two hands. But Remi's vitriol was starting to work its sharp fingers beneath the surface now, and however many meetings with Safrin he might have had, however far along the path to healing he might be - he was still very much entrenched in the madness of grief, just like Remi.

"No, I suppose I don't," he said quietly, his eyes never leaving Remi's. "In fact, I have something from you with me already." He slid the heartbeat from his finger, dropping the ring into the pit with the other tokens. His own pulse hammered in his chest like a wild thing, as if realising belatedly the magnitude of what he might have done and hoping, begging for an understanding that might no longer exist.

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

Remi stiffened at that, seeing only his own hurt and not his partner's. "And here I thought you supported me in not just blindly doing what others tell me to do." He countered bitterly. Never was he one who needed to win arguments, but now for the first time, he felt the cravings of it gnawing deep inside of his bones: the need to be right, over the need to understand.

With eyes widening a fraction at this act, not knowing at all what it meant or indicated or threatened to be (and not wanting to), Remi held his breath and perhaps wisely, his tongue as well. He stared into the hole for a long while before smirking sourly and removing his own ring as well. "No matter. Neither ghosts nor stars have heartbeats anyways." Hurt and perhaps truly feeling spite for the first time, Remi didn't toss his ring into the hole, but hurled it towards the sea. Where it would land he intentionally didn't look, instead fixing Ronin with a cold smile. "Might as well get rid of the other as well. Then it'll just be me haunting your eyes and ears, and not your thoughts as well."

everything has its wonders

"In what realm of existence would I ask you to blindly support me?" Ronin wanted to know. "What part of this was asked of you without giving you a say, without giving you options? You began this, not me." He hadn't arrived back from the Grounds to dig a grave - that had already been done when he'd arrived. Thanks Ludo, you ragged little prick.

If Remi wanted to win the argument Ronin would let him. As the reality of what he had done -as Remi's pulse disappeared from around his finger, causing him to feel strangely lost, naked almost, the hunter wanted to cringe back from their anger. It hadn't been intended to indicate anything, to threaten anything. Merely to wound - petty and grieving, spiteful and stubborn.

"That was a stupid thing of me to do," he said, his voice suddenly flat and tired, his gaze dropping to the hole in the ground.

even darkness and silence

Coding base by Sky!

i've got a river for a soul

'In this one, where asking you what all of this is supposed to mean counts as me being some sort of asshole." Remi's jaw feathered as he recoiled slightly, his upper lip threatening to snarl. "I'm sorry Ronin, what were my options? I remember only being told that this was my last chance to act as a father to Aoife. That you wanted this. Did you think to ask what I might want? How those requests would make me feel? Or," And now he indicated towards the ring in the ground, "Did you just decide for yourself?"

Remi puffed a breath of smug and hostile air through his nose nodding in agreement. "But this is what you wanted wasn't it?" The alchemist asked with sarcastic sweetness; the words might have been I told you so. "Since you'll be out of rings soon, here." Feathers appeared on Remi's shoulder as the limb partially became a wing. Reaching to tear them out, a wince snarling across his features as bright starpoints of pain danced before his eyes, he tossed the tawny plumage down at Ronin.

'You know. In case you feel the need to bury me anywhere else."