the house that built me

'Nothing, I suppose.' Remi replied, perhaps not understanding the question, or mayhap understanding it too well. Continuing to trace the pattern on the table, not looking up, the alchemist squinted for a moment but seemed not at all to see the movements of his finger, but something else entirely. "When Safrin placed Ronin and I here, we nearly killed each other in our grief. At least I, him. I felt nothing, only emptiness and rage. I would have killed Sam if not stopped, watched Loren slit his throat right in front of me without so much as a wince. A few days ago..." The alchemist swallowed. Hard. "I threw my wedding ring into the sea." The presence on his finger now, would indicate that condolences probably weren't required. "I don't know what I am anymore. Not a father...not even an alchemist now. Not a good one, at least. I've only just started not to be quite so shit as a husband to Ronin, but passed that, I can't say that I'm much of anything, anymore. And it has been pointed out to me that if I continue like this. I'll soon have nothing left." Glancing up, looking so much older for his uncertainty, Remi shrugged. "So if, like you said, there needn't be some grand plan in all of this..then why not. Why not let Ludo give my life purpose that I might...have some reason to live." Shaking his head, the alchemist indicated he didn't know. "We all probably live on in Mort's memory. But in the world of the living, memory certainly seems the only way they continue on." remi Too long till I drown in your hands

Strange, to think of the once-gentle young man as a killer... but perhaps not so strange, for him to be a compassionate one. Jigano tilted his head, eyes widening a little at hearing how Remi had almost killed his husband, and had thrown away his wedding ring, however temporarily. Sam had pushed him, and Loren... well, the bard had seen Loren's lashing out first hand. But Ronin... after all they had been through together, he would never have suspected how close they'd come to ending in violence, even driven mad by grief for their lost daughter.

The ring was back, though, and Remi was building memorials in the waves as Jigano had once built one by the Bone Bridge. Something had changed, either due to Ludo or some other factor, and the bard listened quietly to the list of things that the alchemist - ah, the grieving man - wasn't anymore. "Why not, indeed," he agreed softly, a small smile of wry agreement lightening his features briefly. "We've that in common now, too. Though... it sounds like a very difficult duty that you've been given. I would think the desire to try and save some of those you'll be sent to hasten along to Mort's halls will be very strong sometimes." It was not a task he envied the other man, and he wondered if he would have been strong enough to shoulder it had it been offered to him.

Souls for the dead and memories for the living made sense, the bard nodding thoughtfully at the explanation. "I'm glad," he said, expression still soft, "that in spite of all you have been through, you haven't lost your empathy. Not all of it, at least. That you wanted to make the memorial for others to use, even if you don't need it yourself. But aside from Ronin and Ludo are there really no other reasons to live? I thought you were close with Phoebe... and Amalia. Or were, once. Or would you rather cut all your previous bonds away and start anew?"

Pursing his lips in a bitter and dark smile, Remi raised a brow as he shook his head. "It wasn't. Not at all. A bit of illusion magic to make them all think I was there to save them. They didn't even see the claws or poison that ended them." The alchemist's voice was matter of fact, which made it all the more chilling. "I didn't feel anything, for having done it. Not sorrow, not regret, not better or worse." Glancing up at the Sage, the alchemist shrugged his shoulders far too calmly. "Ronin would be the only name." He said with easy defiance. Everyone else? That was for Ludo to decide. There was only one soul now that he'd forsake everything for. "Friendship...is so strange. How can you tell when it is something more than just self-serving? When it isn't just mutual using? Never have I had such friends before my magic. The bonds that tie me to others are inexorably linked to what I can offer them. I go on quests and adventures because I'm useful, and so my friendships grow if only because we do the same things. But it's simple utility that starts it all. You said it yourself, being kind and good makes you feel good. Were you suddenly not useful or cruel, would those friendships of yours remain?" Remi's finger tapped softly against the table. "Friendships now, Ronin aside, have done little to ease any of this. They didn't prevent Aoife's death and just now, I see very little point in them." He replied honestly. remi Too long till I drown in your hands

That very matter of factness drove home to Jigano that he truly was sitting across from a stranger. The gentle young man with the boyish smile and stubborn optimism might share the same hair and bone structure, but this Remi had little in common with that one beyond the skin-deep. The bard heard that Remi felt nothing for the deaths...

And he felt a trickle of fear down his spine, nodding slowly in acknowledgment but hearing from the surety in the other man's voice that there was no argument that could be made against what he'd said.

Ronin's name needed no defiance. Not towards him, at least. He and Ludo's new disciple had never been close enough for his own feelings to be hurt by the casual casting away of the past, though he did tilt his head curiously. It was an interesting question that Remi posed. "If I were to change my personality, you mean? Many would not, no, if I became cruel." He thought of how he and Amalia had fallen apart, the rift that had divided he and Sam. How quickly things had turned sour between he and Sunjata when he wouldn't give Maea her way. "But in their defense, I would likely not want to remain friends with me, either, if that were the case. Were I simply not useful, though, I think they would remain. Most of them, at least."

He winced at hearing the once-loving alchemist toss his friendships aside as if they were dust to the wind. But after seeing how Loren had been acting, he appreciated the straightforwardness and lack of theatrics. "You know better than I, I think, how much work friendships require. After all that's happened to you, if you don't have the energy to spare for others besides Ronin right now..." He shrugged a little helplessly. "No one can change that. If you don't want to deal with that right now, that's the way it will be." He hesitated, then sighed, glancing down to Remi's tapping finger, listening to the rhythm with an idle ear for any beat that might be set to music.

"It won't stop people from seeking you out, though. For favors, as you said. For help, wanting to make use of your strength, or your magic. Would you avoid them all, if you could? Tell humanity as a whole to go to hell? Or do you still have a use for people right now?"

Remi snorted a touch at that, if only because cruelty is one of the charges the alchemist had accused the Sage of so many months ago when life was infinitely simpler for them both. "I suppose I think now that...if all that binds me to these friendships I purportedly hold is not being allowed to change in certain ways..then what is the point? If it's all conditional, I think I'd rather just be on my own." There was no rhythm in the alchemist's tapping, at least not one easily observed. It wasn't the beat of his heart, not the slow thrum of blood in his ears. It was the tap tap tap of thoughts in his mind better left locked away. Their insistent knocking on doors now forever closed. "The ones from my old life, yes. Those who would tell me that they know best what I should do, who demand I go back to the man I was." He thought of Sam and Loren in this. "Here is a fresh start, those who accept me as the man I am now, even if they don't like it, they aren't looking to fit me back into a mould they found easier to accept. " remi Too long till I drown in your hands

He nodded slowly as Remi twisted his words into something that was just as true, when looked at from a different angle. "People have the right to protect themselves from abuse," he said softly, thinking of those he had wronged through his own arrogance and obliviousness to the harm he had caused. "If they chose not to remain friends with one who treats them poorly, cruelly - if you choose that - I would say that you are right to cut those ties." He hesitated, then shrugged, a wry smile full of pain quirking his lips. "But I don't know what weight my words hold with anyone else." A few of his Loreseekers might take them too much to heart, but anyone else? His reputation was far from the shining paragon he had once dreamed of becoming.

And... maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

Remi's answer to his question wasn't the one he had expected, but it was a better one than he had hoped for, in truth. "As long as the portals are open I don't think you can avoid them," he admitted."Or... us, rather, I suppose. Though I'm trying to be less demanding of others these days. Old habits die hard." He tilted his head, that vulpine behavior that carried through no matter his shape. "I'm glad you've found a place where you're able to breathe a bit more, now, though." Where you can grieve, he meant, but though there was a great deal of anger and ennui in the former-alchemist, the bard had seen little in the way of grief yet. Perhaps that was something Remi now kept more private; he no longer seemed the type to share his vulnerabilities with any but Ronin, if Jigano had to guess.

"When you spoke to Ludo..." he hesitated, then reached into a pocket to pull out the Guardian Sphere, holding it low from the others in the bar so only he and Remi could see it. "Did it say... what you - any of us, really - are to do about these?" How quickly the four so-called Guardians had shattered, each in their own way, from the events of Fiat Lux, until they couldn't even protect themselves much less the portals they couldn't even find until it was too late.

"They do, of course. But I imagine some of my so-called friends, and yours too, might just leave when things get hard, cruelty aside." Memories of the vote and how things had gone down when once Jigano wore the crown of the Hollowed Grounds particularly came to mind. Snorting softly at this bit of self-deprecating humour, the alchemist merely grinned. "I find death helps cut those ties to bad habits." He offered with a dark smile. "Having them die off slowly might not be so bad, given the alternative." Remi supposed only Rory's death would have the potency to set the Sage off, but then, what did he know? The alchemist had lost track of what relationships and friendships everyone else had. His world view had become far too narrow to invest that sort of time in others. Glancing at the spear, Remi's expression crumpled slightly, not unlike a child who is being shown a bit of homework they were meant to do, that they instead threw into the trash. "I didn't ask, and it didn't come up." He said flatly, his frustration directed at the sphere rather than the Sage. 'I've tried breaking mine, you know. I've tossed it into the sea. I've tried to trade it away." With a grimace and a flare of his nostrils, the alchemist shook his head. "Didn't work." remi Too long till I drown in your hands

Jigano shrugged slightly at Remi's observation. "True enough," he agreed soberly, remembering that time as well. "'A friend in need' is a saying for a reason. Fair-weather friends who leave at a little trouble..." He sighed. "Well. We've both had our share." Not so many as all that, though. He'd mended most of the bridges that could be mended since. Not that there weren't still those who would use him for his position, or his perceived strength, or some other aspect that they thought could gain them an advantage.

He was glad to see a grin, however dark compared to Remi's former sunny smiles. The humor was of the gallows variety, but the bard could well appreciate it. "There is that. They're practically family at this point. I'm not sure who I'd be if I lost them all at once." Someone new, perhaps. Someone better? Probably. Still, he wasn't eager to try Remi's solution of a quick dip in the death pool to test it out.

The expression on his companion's face was curious, though Jigano suspected Phoebe's would be its mirror. Perhaps Amalia's, too? It was as much burden as accolade, to be recognized by the gods but given a task they barely had the first idea of how to undertake. He wasn't surprised to hear that the younger man had tried to escape his charge. Remi had been the least invested of all of them when the dream had drawn them together. "I didn't know, but I'm not surprised," he acknowledged. "Especially after what happened at the festival. What happened when you tried tossing it in the sea or trading it?" He could imagine the spheres simply resisting any attempt to break them, but he was curious about the attempts to simply be rid of them.

To this, the alchemist gave only a light shrug. The Sage's second comment received nearly the same treatment. If Remi was going to say something, it was halted by the loud arrival of someone entering the bar in an attempt to flee the storm. "It appears next to wherever I fall asleep, every time. " The alchemist grumbled unhappily. His fingernail dug into a wine-soft circle on the table. "The merchant I traded it to thought it a neat trick...I played it off as intentional. Conveniently he bought the idea and was happy to receive a fire sword or some such that I said I'd always had planned to give him." remi Too long till I drown in your hands

Jigano blinked, the answer so elegantly simple it made a certain kind of divine sense. Remi's ruse in tricking the merchant earned a wry smile of appreciation, though. "Quick thinking. Good thing he fell for it, even if you had to lose the sword for it to work." He paused, then tilted his head curiously at Remi. "Actually, I'd been meaning to ask about magic. Mine has been acting... strange, lately. Unstable." He frowned down at his hands thoughtfully as he created a small wooden coin to walk over the backs of his fingers, a replica of one of his metal ones that had been mostly melted down by now. "Have you noticed anything different about yours?"

He looked up as a beer was ordered, wry smile returning. "I'd offer to buy you a drink, but I don't know what they use for currency here yet," he admitted ruefully.

'By strangely, do you mean..not at all sometimes?" The alchemist replied, a brow raised as he looked at the wooden disk moving nimbly across Jigano's knuckles. A similar wooden disk appeared in Remi's hand, before rising and spinning slowly above his palm. "I cannot make things magical anymore." The alchemist said faintly, trying not to sound disappointed in this fact. He'd had so very very little for so much of his life, that he felt like an arrogant and entitled child for feeling so deeply the loss of his abilities. Still, he couldn't say that it hadn't affected him. 'They trade mostly in promises and favours to be called in when convenient." The alchemist said with a shrug. "But don't worry. Where one magic has failed, another has...grown, I suppose." So saying, Remi snagged a few glasses from behind the bar with a bit of magic. Holding a finger above each, wine of all things began to pour from his fingertip. remi Too long till I drown in your hands

Jigano nodded, a flicker of wry amusement in the Attuned bond, flavored with a quiet frustration at his powers no longer heeding his beck as they once had - or as he'd once seen them do for others. Hearing that Remi had also lost the ability to make magical items brought a sagging of his expression, the faint hope that he was the only one affected, perhaps as a side effect of his powers blooming in the wake of Safrin's displeasure? dashed at the former-alchemist's revelation. "I managed it once," he admitted with a sigh. "A magic quill pen, around the time I first discovered that I could create things. But since then... I haven't been able to replicate much of what I'd seen you and Deimos do with it. I'd found a document last year, a journal talking about the different kinds of magic and their levels. It sounded as though the primary domains of magic had been stable for a very long time... until just recently. I wonder why it's changed?" Not entirely a rhetorical question; Remi had more familiarity than almost any other Outlander when it came to Caido magic, and Jigano respected his insights into it.

He watched the other man's floating nickel until a snap of deft fingers turned his attention to the bar and the sight of glasses waltzing through the air. He blinked for a moment, then chuckled in spite of the seriousness of the conversation and the weather. "That is a neat trick," he agreed with a wry grin. "Handy for not having to come into town for supplies, too, I'd think, if you didn't want to. Have you been able to make any Hollowed Grounds 'specialties' here? Like potatoes?" Another limit he'd run into in Halo, of having to make fruits and vegetables before he passed through the portal into the cold land.

Remi shook his head, unable to offer any such insights. "I know my magic has...changed, over the time I've had it. Once I turned a ring of Ronin's into a lobster." This he probably had told Jigano once, and it made him chuckle slightly to think of just how much time had passed between the two of them now, that they might begin to repeat old stories. "But I've never managed anything like that since." He said with a shrug. "Whatever the...the spark that made things magical was, it feels incomplete now." I feel incomplete now, though this went unsaid, a small amount would trickle through the bond. Raising a brow as he pulled his glass of wine towards himself, the alchemist considered. "I can't say that I've tried. Ronin and I are usually paid in food, so it hasn't really come up." That, and the food here was much better than the Grounds, in his opinion. "Then again, I wasn't normally in the habit of making food, so I can't say whether I ever could, really." remi Too long till I drown in your hands

He did, indeed, remember the story of the lobster named Echo, and tilted his head in wry amusement. It was strange to think of the history they had sometimes, but at least they were both still around to reminisce.

Not all of their friends or family had been so lucky.

"Well, at least you'll have fewer people seeking you out for magic-item-themed favors?" he suggested, trying to find the silver lining in the pang of loss. He remembered their conversation on a distant hill in the Fields, about power and the assumptions it brought from others. "Last season I gave an open lesson in the Atheneum on the flora and fauna of the Hollowed Grounds... perhaps for Leafchange I'll hold one on magic," he mused, reaching for his own wine glass and swirling it to admire the play of the light through the liquid. "Make a point of bringing up how it's changing, too, and that creation magic no longer does what it used to do. Hopefully that will cut down on those hoping to bother you for some glowing trinket?"

Or maybe that was too subtle. Though this new and harder Remi seemed perfectly capable of chasing off anyone who came wheedling for favors, trying to trade on old friendships. "Thanks," he murmured, taking a drink and pondering the other man's information. "Hmm. Good point. And good wine. With the farm I've become more used to making fruits and vegetables to round out what we're growing in the garden and fields," he admitted, though there was a sense of pleasure to his words, pride at being able to help his mate around the homestead. "How is Ronin doing?" he asked more carefully, watching Remi to see if he was striking a nerve by checking in on the demigod he had last seen destroying the Temple.