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!
It's easy to hide, she knows this well- she'd done it for years, after all. Hidden when her grandmother died and again when her mother followed, sequestered herself away from the world in hopes of keeping further hurt at bay. She'd taken to shadows instead of light, and it was only the careful prying of patient fingers that peeled away her shell.
Once there was a girl who didn't know how to stop feeling alone. Then, one day, she met a boy...
"I wish you didn't hide from me." Her voice is soft, a plea beneath the tightness of frustration, the exhaustion brought from these last weeks. A talon claws a line in the table, carving a rivulet against the grain. There are unshed tears beneath the angry slant of her brows. "I wish you trusted me. "
At least he's able to recognize when his words merit anger, making him far more composed and mature than she. The anger remains, mixed with hurt, animal features overlayed upon a woman's face leading to a cacophony of emotion beneath her lilac hair. She turns to him, though, shifts in her chair, really looks at him through red-rimmed eyes. How can he still not understand? "I don't... It isn't about your past. You were right- you're a different person, but sometimes it feels like I still don't know you. What you're thinking, or feeling, or... Or what you need."
One hand raises toward his cheek, hesitating, lingering in the air. Her eyes dart between his, the anger stripped away at last, so only vulnerability remains. "You're always taking care of me, Deimos. Let me take care of you."
There’d been so many instances where he’d purposefully hurt others; carving a niche into their sides, bone-deep lacerations pierced, pressing, punctured into their lungs, into their entities, for those noxious shades of vengeance, for those brutal, callous wakes of rebuttal. But it still surprised him that she thought him distrusting, that there was a residual ache in their devotion to one another; that he’d somehow continued to step in the same errant display. His actions had always been far more than his words, expressions of eloquence in either battle, survival, or affection; emboldened, courageous, or villainous. The rest were tucked into darker alcoves, into shadows, into places where he could retreat, evade, or fissure under his own merits and wills, where the world wouldn’t see shaking hands or clenched fists, where he could drown alone, clustered in his immorality and sins. But this world kept plucking at him, accepting him, tolerating him, and in return the uncertainty weighed more heavily than before, treading foreign waters, gazing into endless skies, paralyzed by the unknown.
And she seemed angry, upset, because he remained the unattainable enigma, despite his motives, his aspirations, his dominion. All the walls he’d thought down were apparently still in her way, and his eyes cast back towards her, a multitude of shame burgeoning on his shoulders, throughout his being. “I am sorry.” He was; sorry he was inept and withdrawn, sorry he wasn’t enough, sorry that no matter what he seemed to do, it wasn’t worth anything. He felt defeated, rusted, languished, in her anger, in the raw bite of rancor, no efforts to rise into the fire again or to wander in the colder depths of his glacial capabilities. He stayed stagnant in the depths, in the fathoms, of frustration at himself, for all the missed occasions and opportunities, for the ways he’d seemingly left her without an anchor, without anything to grasp, to hold onto. “I do trust you, otherwise I would not be here.” Without his guard. Without his makeshift armor. Without anything but the tenacity in his marrow and the sorrow in his soul. He nearly said I will be better again, could feel it coiling across his tongue, desperate to convey that he would try; but he had an inclination she would deny it again. Hate its meaning, its sentiments, its desperation.
Because he was a fool, and she must’ve seen it when she stared at him, when she glanced his way, when his entity orbited around her presence.
What he needed?
The question caused his brows to furrow, the inquiry confusing him. He’d thought it’d obvious – but perhaps nothing ever was with him. His inward machinations not exposed, not unfurled, not unraveled, until it seemed too late. His gaze, red-rimmed too, followed hers, head raised as her hand came closer, daring to lean into it, to touch, to revel, to savor, to breathe. For a man who’d spent lifetimes scraping his machinations into the earth, into kingdoms, into realms, into grasping, avaricious claws, his wants, his yearnings, his desires, had been sculpted, carved, and reshaped. Different oeuvres, different masterpieces, a cold, darkened heart warmed by the sun and the stars. She could have his feelings, his thoughts: the ravages of his emotions spiraled and curled, lacquered in the depths of his love and adoration, never shallow, but deep, fathomless depths, a wealth, a fountain, an unending sea, a cosmos, a galaxy, following after her in waves beyond their bond. “You. I only need you.” Not a whisper, but a solid statement, as if that’d been the only thing all along.
His face on her hand is almost enough to break her, the familiar contours and the brush of his beard a whirlpool that threatens to draw her in entirely. It would be easy to fall into his orbit, to drown out the noise and grief and misunderstanding with kisses and caresses, with passion and fire. They could forget all this happened until the next time, the time after, it it off until it hangs over them and the roof of their house of glass falls in.
She brings her palm down. Her skin feels cold.
"I can't be your everything." Her eyes stay on his; her voice is soft, earnest as she searches his face. "I want to be there for you, but I don't know how if you won't tell me." Biting her lip, Amalia reaches out again, this time for his hand. Attuned though they may be, she cannot read his mind, and she cannot go on just believing that he is fine when he's obviously not. When neither of them are.
Another sigh unfurled through him, a twist and turn of air exhaling through exhausted lungs. The breath stolen upon her retreat, hand gone, and his eyes fell downward, glancing at the table, the floor, the world pressed and gone from another. It seemed to be a constant cycle of misunderstandings, and he wasn’t certain if it was his lack of clarity, she didn’t want to listen (craved more than he could currently give), or if it was a combination of both. His eyes raised back to hers, and then arched a brow, biting back a snort at her presumption. “I am not asking you to be.” Her; he only yearned for her presence in his life, for her love, her compassion, her tenderness, her faults, her flaws, her virtues, and everything in between. She didn’t need to be the only thing he ran to, the only thing causing him to wake up in the morning – the Shield was a blessing he didn’t deserve, but they were separate people, separate entities, separate individuals. She had her family and he had his. She had her roles and he had his. They came together, but were not conjoined. She was a sun, a star, a ray of light, but his world couldn’t revolve solely around her. Where he continued to balk and fail were in ensuring she comprehended: a shake of his head, movement and motion in an otherwise still void. “I just want you. I have had my days of world domination,” a light smile, to indicate some level of jocular pursuits on the latter comment. Those goals were erased, eradicated, and eliminated, when the Reaper took his final breath, sunken into the rain. His ambitions now were not so tarnished or eclipsing, blinding or grating. “I have friends. I have purpose. I have shelter.” Occupations, magic, powers, unwinding, unfurling, some use to his abilities other than grinding adversaries into the ground.
His jaw clenched, brows furrowing, puzzling over how to say something appropriately, accurately; struggling, eternally immersed far too deep in the reaches of his own mind, and not allowing anyone else to see. “I only yearn to be strong enough to protect those I cherish. I have never felt like I was enough.” The latest exploits another weight to his shoulders, when no matter his actions, they couldn’t save Adam or Peter. But there’d been others too along the way, either in this life or the last, that he couldn’t pull out of death’s reign. The level of his stare rendered back to her, piercing and puncturing. “But that is not for you to carry.” It wasn’t her responsibility, but his. The world he’d opted to take on, the fuel, the fire, the conflagration in his heart, in his bones, in his marrow, desperate to not be useless.
But then thereafter, as she reached for him again, he wondered if she would simply pull away once more, if he kept falling into her orbit, if he kept trying and it wasn’t enough – as she scraped along the gravel of his fatigue, as he felt worn down and floundering. The Sword swallowed down the choking noose, the strangling accord, striving to put the pieces into words, scratching at the surface of things he’d lost long, long before, and had difficulty believing he was worthy of still. “I am not used to anyone caring for or loving me.” Because they hadn’t – the Basin’s show of compassion or bonds was in the blood spilled, was in the motives rendered, was in the action, the impulse, of another savage, nefarious situation. He hung his head, even the conversation pervading over his enamel, over his figure, as if he were drained, worn-apart at the fringes. His voice grew quieter, solemn, deep in its veracity. “Before you, the only ones that had perished. In both of my lifetimes.” Loss, loss, and loss, his world either consumed by malice or ghosts. Fireswords, stones, and the rain; everything else fleeting, believing he’d be strong enough to withstand a life without them. “I was a weapon for my kingdom, and for a while, that was all that mattered.”
The beast finally swayed back, fingers coiling back over hers, “I am sorry that I am not what you need me to be. It takes time…” for the walls to come down, he finished along the attuned natures; he’d spent multitudes of machinations building them. “And I am exhausted.”
She waits in silence, her tongue held fast despite her impatience, her desire to step in, to pry and cast light on his darkest places. She waits as he describes loss she cannot possibly fathom, a contentment she has never felt. A loneliness for which she has no comparison. A strength for which she can offer no equal. In those long moments her anxiety boils, clawing at her stomach, her throat, feelings of inadequacy threatening to drown her.
But this moment isn't about her anymore. It's about him.
Her thumb traces gently over interlocked fingers; she adds her other hand to the collection, enveloping him between her digits in a silent promise that she won't let go. Though impatience eats at her, Amalia has to accept that he is right. He has given her so much already today, and while there is more to be said, more walls to come down...
This is a start. And that is enough.
Rising, the baker leans over her lover, hands still clinging tightly to his. In silence she leans forward, eyes closed, tears on her cheeks, and presses a kiss to his forehead. Thank you, Dei. I love you.
Drawing back once again, Amalia's smile is sweet and encouraging, a wealth of unspoken things in her eyes. "Let's go home, then. I can make dinner while you take a bath. We have all the time in the world to talk."
The Sword waited for some inevitable swing; a puncture, a laceration, a bruise to ricochet over his already labored shoulders. The day had gone in a series of cyclical anguish and pain, and he wondered which line he’d crossed now, which tether was too frayed and not good enough. Patiently, stoically, ready to take the onslaught, pondering when and where a final blow would come from, when it no longer ricocheted or bounded, absorbed or collided. Unraveling, unfurling, breaking apart the seams, uncertain where to go or how far to press now, a forgone conclusion that he would lose her too –
Then his hands were enveloped, and he breathed an easier sigh. Not chiseled into damnation then, acceptance and tolerance again for his icy walls, for his damaged ramparts. The relief sunk into his skin and he felt like flickering into nothingness, becoming a part of the floor, no longer held together by his limbs, by his marrow, by his strength. Perhaps the only thing stitching or holding him together were her palms, his eyes lifting to regard her as he was surrounded, pervaded, by love, staring in awe. He didn’t deserve it; but took it anyway, the moments stretched into something more than quiet, more than profound pieces. Love you too he murmured in return, leaning forward, tired, tired, tired.
Going home thereafter – to familiarity, to portions that weren’t so broken, that weren’t so haunted. He raised his head as she drew away, eyes still continuing to spiral against the colors of Adam’s world, the stark reality of it being left behind. Ordinarily he’d cling to the contortions, the promises, of normalcy. But the world had ricocheted and rioted, and she’d come here with other things in mind besides his ruin and redemption. “There is nothing else you wish to do here?”
Then he rose from the seat, body in protest, stretching in accord, before his stare segmented to the bag he’d left by the door. There’d been purpose to its existence here too, to place some designation back into Adam’s sanction, but it’d been forgotten in the warping hours of devastation. Reaching for it, his hands opened the brim, and then plucked out the crimson brooch, offering it in the palm of his hand to her. Better off in her grasp. “Adam gave this to me, though I presume it was a joke. It was likely meant for Peter.” He’d thought to hang onto it, to give it back after their quest, so Adam and Peter might exchange their gifts then and there. But it didn’t happen that way. “Would you like it?”
"I can do it later." Her thumbs graze gently over his fingers, right hand raising to push her hair behind her ear. It will be a long time before the Shield's okay again, before she wants nothing more from this place, but for once Amalia is looking past her own hurt. Deimos is so much more than she has ever deserved; they are broken, but they can heal together. "Right now I just want to go home with you."
He leaves her, though, makes her way to the bag on the floor- and for a moment she is struck with a sharp pang of terror, scared that she's made another mistake. That she pushed too hard, asked for too much, that maybe she isn't what he wants right now. That the insistence they go home - to his home, his space that she has somehow wormed her way into - was horribly misguided, after their fight.
One second, two seconds, three, four. So few, but each one is a thunderous heartbeat, thoughts and insecurities ricocheting violently around her brain. She reaches back for the wood of the table, clinging to the grainy, worn down oak. And then when he finally turns there is something in his hand, crimson and metal glittering in the light. A brooch from Adam...
She nearly laughs in her relief. Instead, she chokes a sob. "I... yes." Reaching out with trembling hands, she wraps her fingers around his and the brooch within. A smile curls at her lips, bewildered and bashful, her cheeks flushed. She doesn't deserve his kindness, not after everything, yet here he is. "Thank you."
Unaware of her misplaced agony, he waited several beats, the brooch in his hand. It held more weight than it had initially, along the Fae grounds, a ridiculous joke uttered by a ridiculous being – now gone, vanquished, ghosts of jocular notions bleeding into the crimson veneer. He eyed it for a moment or two before she took it on a choking sob, only a fragment of what he could give her; the actual figure, the friend she’d crave, frozen solid in a cave. His jaw clicked together, enamel biting down upon one another, a breath he held extinguished, lifted and released slowly from his lungs. She would come back later, likely intending to be alone again in her grief, something he could understand, after lifetimes of doing the same. Hiding in shadows, veiled, brooding, casting aside anything and everything for the sake of miring himself into anchors, tethers, and lines, frayed at both ends, waiting for some other inevitable storm. Stuck and grating, detached, and apathetic.
Except for now, because everything was still raw and blinding.
He relinquished the ornament to her, but not her hands, her fingers, clasping them, refusing to let go. Stubborn and willful, tenacious and persevering: just one more thing they’d somehow heal and mend and stitch together, interlocking patterns of anguish and melancholy. “You are welcome,” he proffered in return, eyes holding hers before sliding back to his bag, maneuvering it back onto his shoulder. Leading, striving, towards the door, back out into warped patches of sunlight, as if the world had moved on while they segmented and broke apart inside. It always did: indifferent, reticent, to the way it exposed and bled its inhabitants.
Then a single word, to cast them out of Adam’s domicile, and back down the road. “Home.” Their home; not a space wholly occupied by him. He’d offered. He’d granted. He’d do it over and over again, for her.
She lets him hold onto her hands for as long as he wants, clings to him like an anchor in the storm. Grief still lingers near the surface of her breast, the fragmented pieces of her heart bleeding ichor and tar, but the scars have begun to form; the healing, once more, begins. When he takes his bag she still clings to him, keeping one great hand captive in hers, her fingers laced among his. The roughness of his calloused palms matches that of her own; their lifelines press against each other, mirrored and intertwined.
It feels almost wrong to leave. A final glance is cast around Adam's home, the colorful chaos such clear reminder of her friend. Each detail burns her retinas, tightens the pressure in her chest. She has to swallow as another wave of pain wracks through her, threatening to tear her apart once again. Part of her doesn't want to leave, would rather stay here forever than risk giving him up, because that's what it feels like: leaving him behind all over again, a ghost left to languish in the empty space.
But Amalia cannot live with ghosts. She is flesh and blood and she has made bonds and ties, has tangled the web of her soul among others- among his, most of all. "Home," she agrees, soft and heavy as a shroud. Home, and life, and moving forward, the things that Adam will never do.
The sunlight slants against her face, lower and later than when they walked within. She blinks against it as they step out, as though surprised to see it still there. Falling into stride with Deimos, her hand still fiercely claiming his, she exhales a long and shuddering sigh. "I went to see Ludo." Eyes on the ground, bare, feline-padded feet picking their way over dirt and brush and kicking a stick away. "To ask about... about them. It says their souls are safe in Mort's realm." A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.
They wouldn’t ever move on, but forward, pieces and portions of acceptance. In the meantime, in the between intervals, there were tumultuous riots and acts of pain. He’d been through it before, over and over and over again, with his infernal rage and succumbing to bouts of gloom, trying to ignore it until it stretched and bound, shoved him back into those feral, quiet moments of darkness and despair. Sometimes the hardest notion to accept was that he’d been left behind, forced to live on without those individuals still in his life.
Except in memories, in greater, better times, gone before he’d even realized that’s what they’d been.
Which was why he always fought so hard now, for those he loved and cherished to remain.
Fingers, palms, and hands clasped, back into the sun, back into the road, gravel and dirt crunching beneath feet as they roamed away from the house. He glanced one last time at Adam’s shelter, sanctum, and sanctuary, wondered what would happen to it now – the same as all the other forlorn places? But the beast didn’t ask, roaming with her, listening to heartbeats intertwined, raising her hand, grazing knuckles to his lips, then lowering as they maneuvered together. His head tilted a fraction, indicating his attention upon her voice, the shuddering sigh, the lingering exhalation, and his following, as she noted she’d gone to see Ludo. He wasn’t surprised – though the notion curled into his membrane, into his skull, of all the other beings he’d lost, and how he’d never asked where their entities had gone. He’d witnessed them perished, deceased. He’d buried their forms into their earth. But thereafter, he’d mourned. The notion that Adam and Peter, companions likewise, were safe, not entirely left to the Arctic wiles and draconic reaches, unveiled another sigh, perhaps of relief, perhaps of acceptance. His mouth leaned down to press against her hairline, along the side of her temple, comfort in the ethers and vestiges of melancholy. “Together?” Because that seemed to matter too – that they’d find one another in the thereafter.
There is almost a level of sacrilege in talking about them here, out in the sun, in the world they no longer belong to- except everything she knows, all she has been told and taught, says that it is the right thing to do. That remembering is the only way to keep them alive, that their names on her lips are hymns to the lost.
Is he watching her, she wonders? Will she see him again?
"Yes." Though she hadn't asked Ludo specifically, she is confident in her response. Of course Peter and Adam are together. If they are in Mort's realm than how could they be otherwise, happy and whole, waiting for the rest of the world to arrive? Her bare feet scratching against the cobbled stone, Amalia tilts her golden head upward, glancing at the behemoth whose hand she still holds. "Together and happy." We'll be that way, too.
Through winding roads and between buildings - it isn't far to get anywhere in the Hollowed Grounds, and they find themselves approaching home quickly. But as the journey continues on, Amalia cannot help a question: "What happened to the people who died in your home? Did... did their souls go somewhere?"
His gaze lifted back to the movements and motions of the earth around them, staring across the landscape of cobblestones, ruins, debris, and makeshift lives coming out of the chaos, the decay. How they persisted, how they endured, how they fortified, how they persevered, how much they’d all seen already, and yet still had more to go. But together and happy sounded better than nothing at all – content while the rest of the world lived on, as they should’ve been. As it kept revolving and evolving, as he strived not to be stuck in the mire and muck of his own making; patterns of grief and anguish, to be a stagnant monster in the multitude, laboring onward in thought but not in mind.
Hand still clasped, marching along avenues, roads, and streets, home looming in the distance, along outskirts, the inquiry presented towards him wasn’t something he’d ever been immersed within. The beast had never been overtly religious; sedition, irreverence, and iniquity had been more of his acclaim and accord, the gods and himself readily ignoring and detached from one another equally. The only times he’d ever addressed one was the God of Time, and because it was customary as the reigning monarch. His attempts at communicating with any of them to save those he cherished had gone eerily silent. So he’d ceased.
“I am not certain,” was the first response, as his brow furrowed in thought. “We had gods, but their jurisdiction was the sun, moon, earth, and time. I think some believed we would either go to heaven, to be amongst the deities, or hell, consigned to oblivion.” Based on their decisions, on their actions. “I assumed I would always go to the latter,” a shrug to his shoulders, as she knew what he’d done. His transgressions had been numerous, purposeful, protective, but licentious and contemptuous a majority of the time. “But I do not remember anything from the moments after I died.” His gaze shifted down to her for a moment or two, before sliding back as their home came into view. So he couldn’t say otherwise; whether he’d been sent to the furthest reaches of the abyss, or nothingness in general. Which only made him mull over other possibilities, of beings he’d long since lost. Would they be able to find their way to Mort’s realm? Or were they trapped in those worlds, destroyed and gone? He didn’t voice it, not yet, attempting to pinpoint exactly how to ask it.
What must it be like, to come from a world where you have no concept of what happens next? Where gods are distant, dismissive figments who conceal their whims and obfuscate? Amalia does not know what she would be without her gods: even in her darkest moments she at least has faith to cling to, the confidence in something greater, her place in a design.
Once (this morning) she would have protested the inevitablity of his eternal damnation; now she simple nods once in acknowledgement, biting on her lip. Vengeance is another characteristic of places other than this, another of the countless darknesses for which she has no reference point. "Abasi told me something similar about his world. Gods who would damn you after death...." She shudders slightly, thinking on how grateful she is for the love of Mort.
Grateful, too, to know that her loved ones are waiting for her somewhere beyond this world. As they pair draws closer to their shared home, Amalia cannot help but glance up at him from behind golden locks. "Does it... Is it hard, to know you won't be with them when you die? Your mother and father and... And the girl in the rain?"
Faith in gods had never been a figment of Helovia or Isilme; too many war-mongering constituents, and very rarely had their triumphs or failures been deigned for the deities. Mirage was the only he could consider holding and sticking to those emblems of fortitude and might, for the moon, for the World’s Edge. For most of them, beliefs and creeds had been in one another, in their own selves, entities, and existences, and even then, sometimes it was a disappointing parallel. Abasi’s efforts, wherever he’d been from, had apparently meant his realms hadn’t been unique – other worlds where damnation was a truth, an eventuality, for those too wicked, too iniquitous, too subversive. He squeezed her hand tighter as she shuddered, as she contemplated the differentials. Whether it was for him or her was left unsaid.
But her next set of inquiries meant he wouldn’t have to ask his own – same, segmented, cut, piercing, down in the feral lines of constant loss. They wouldn’t be amongst them, when his soul departed for the mortal realm again. They were likely stuck and snagged in Isilme’s heavens, or in Helovia’s destroyed ramparts. His eyes went downcast, stuck on the ground as they walked, intaking a harsh breath, meant to fill his lungs with something other than sorrow. “I lost them twice.” A shrug, as if to keep the bitterness, the rancor, the anguish at bay, but it simmered and seethed down his skin. “I am not surprised it would happen again.” An eternity of having them briefly, enough to love, to cherish, and then split him apart when they were gone.
His eyes wandered, lifted, from her and then to their home, Zuriel in the distance – looking ridiculously cross, by the glance she gave him. His voice, his body, felt somewhat numb now, wraiths closing in. “I saw their ghosts when Safrin was making me Attuned,” the screams to fly, when he thought he was sent to his death one more time. A sketch, an outline, of a burdened, saddened smile traced over his mouth, gaze following down to her stare. “I can keep them in my memories.” But that was all he had left.
