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!
06-09-2020, 06:27 AM (This post was last modified: 06-09-2020, 08:41 AM by Nate.)
did you miss me enough to drink, or did you drink enough to miss me?
"I never lied about my cheating though." Nate points out, his head cocked. Sure, he'd planned on it, but it had never had the chance to happen. "I told Sam when I went back to his house. And I never lied about being in a relationship to anyone." He just hadn't put any effort in to stopping what happened, lingering resentment and in the moment lust spurring him on. There's a smug kind of hands off tone to his words, as if these are matters long settled. Amalia's gesturing towards Pemota does throw him a little off balance, her accusation holding a mirror up to the worries in his own chest.
It takes him a moment to find the words to respond, but he does, his tone gone. "I never asked for this specifically. For her specifically. I wouldn't ask to pull a creature from it's family." Nate begins, hand rising to brush along the starwhal's side. "But I would never have had the chance to have this happen at all if I hadn't been convinced to ascend." It's a clumsy misdirection, especially for him, but he wants the bakers attention away from Pemota, away from the only real guilt she'd gotten close to.
Nate steps right back into his smug, simpering mask as she snaps, his hands rising to try and keep up with the accusations levelled against him. And he has to interject, once he figures out what she's referring to. "Loren came onto me. I went to go speak with him about Maea's care, and he all but begged me to fuck him. I had no idea he was with Sam at the time, and he didn't seem to care." And this gives him a perfect segue into his next point, his own little spark of righteousness creeping into his words, because Gods if he isn't sick of people bringing up Maea as some kind of aha against him, his relationship. "They weren't even together when she died, you know."
The smoke intimidates him more than the fangs, but it doesn't stop him from leaning in himself, lips twisted in a sneer back towards Amalia. "And the closest I ever got to invading their bed when they were together was by invitation." He huffs, and rolls his eyes. "Should I even bother explaining myself though? Or are you just going to sit up on your high horse and talk about things you don't actually know about?"
"Ah, and I suppose that makes it better?" Arms still tightly strung across her chest, the Shield glares at Nate, too indignant to still her tongue, too incensed to be calm or tactful. "Instead of a clean break you, what? Told him what you had done, forcing him to live with the feelings of inadequacy- to absolve you through forgiveness, or punish you through anger? Either way, you forced the weight of your mistakes onto him instead of having the balls to carry them yourself." There's something about his smugness, his stupid smirking face- it pushes her far past the edge of her patience, outside of anxiety and into blind dislike.
He never asked for Pemota- "But did you ask anything? Where she came from, what she wanted?" Eyes narrowed, she shakes her head at the rhetorical question. He's so very good at deflecting and denying, like a well-polished mirror, always reflecting back to others and never able to truly see itself.
And Amalia? Amalia is quicksand, taking every blow and slight and pressing it deep within herself, until she is burdened with far more than she could ever be expected to carry, until she bubbles and bursts and overflows. What a merry pair they make.
He matches her aggressive stance, his ugly sneer met by blazing eyes, by horns curling up from beneath her gold hair and claws pressed into the countertop. "I'm the one on a high-horse, am I?" More smoke curls from her nostrils; flames flicker up behind her ears. "You make excuse after excuse, painting yourself a poor victim of circumstances. I don't have to know about what happened to know that people were hurt, but by all means, I'm sure if you explain it away their pain won't matter anymore."
we drink the poison our mind pours for us and wonder why we feel so sick
did you miss me enough to drink, or did you drink enough to miss me?
A sharp, angry shrug is the only answer the baker receives, at first. ”Sam felt inadequate before me, who else invites a fucking stranger to live with them? And it hasn’t stopped him from moving on, has it?” Nate only barely manages to keep from his eyes, ”It has nothing to do with balls. I didn’t make any mistakes I need to carry, either. Making myself happy is a mistake now?” Why should he deny himself just to spare someone else? He’d lived that life before, and he’d promised himself it would be different here.
”Oh, I suppose you must question your goddess constantly, huh?” A hand rises to curl around Pemota, protecting her from the onslaught of slander that spewed from the woman. ”She’s perfectly happy here, with me.” For once, Pemota is eager for his touch, the both of them united against one thing, defending the Voice however loosely. It helps to feed a little more into his fire, let’s him settle more comfortably away from his doubts and guilt.
”You sit there and you expect me to be ashamed of what I’ve done, because you don’t approve of it.” Nate rises up to his full height, shoulders squared in the face of her fire, indignation and spite holding him up like a steel rod. ”I’m not the only person to have ever hurt someone else, and I won’t be the last. I know that.” Even in the face of fire, he doesn’t back down, though he is prepared to run, to move if she does. He is dragging this down into the more, throwing everything he has, because this is not something he’s going to get the chance to do again.
Perhaps it’s the partial shift, or perhaps it’s just everything else finally clicking together, a dozen scattered descriptions finally tying together into a spotty recognition, but something cruel pops into Nate’s head, into his throat. ”Weren’t you one of the ones on that mission in Halo? The one with the dragon?” A low snap of laughter leaves him, his head shaking. ”Maybe I hurt some people’s feelings, but I never got anyone killed.”
He continues to defend her blows, blocking and parrying and sidestepping so neatly with so much practice that it disgusts her. "She's a child," Amalia counters, aching for Pemota and knowing that the nature of bonds has probably turned any chance of Jyoti finding family into a moot point. Another cause for her anger, though this time with herself. Not that it matters by now. "Sam told me something about you- that you believed Ascending was going to be different. That you regret it. You never should have been put in that situation- but can't you see how for Pemota it's the same? Your really think she can be happy with something where she didn't have a choice to change?"
She might have said more, argued more, but then he reaches in and strikes the rawest nerve within her. Her eyes snap open wide; she nearly recoils physically, stunned agony washing over her features before they morph back into rage. How dare he. How dare he-!
"How dare you," Amalia hisses through fanged teeth and fire. "How dare you?! GET OUT!" She's poised like a leopard, ready to leap over the counter and tear into his face. Ready to do anything to block the guilt that threatens to drown her, the overwhelming remorse for what she has done and how she has failed.
Should he stay she will escort him from the bakery. Should he leave she will sink down where she stands, head falling onto folded knees and her body shakes in sobs.
we drink the poison our mind pours for us and wonder why we feel so sick
did you miss me enough to drink, or did you drink enough to miss me?
The snap in Nate's voice is perhaps the only scrap of victory Amalia will earn from this, a chink in his defence that lets a little too much emotion slip out. Disgust, and guilt, and discomfort. "What happened to Pemota can't be changed now. What happened to me can't be either. All I can do is live with it, and I don't need you telling me I should feel bad for what I'm doing."
Later, if he tells this story to someone (if, and not when) he will say that the little vulnerability is what dipped his tongue in poison. He will say that she simply pushed too far, what was he supposed to do? The reality is, he knows it will shut down anything she has left to say, knows it will end the conversation, stop her criticisms. He knows it will hurt her.
"Fine!" Nate screams it as loud as he can, still trying to drown her out, to get the last word. He's already moving towards the door though, already putting distance between them. The door is slammed open, Pemota drifting out ahead of him, and Nate can't stop himself from turning one last time. "You don't get to sit there and treat me like a monster when there's more blood on your hands than mine."
With the last word absolutely claimed, he turned, letting the door slam behind him, and stormed off into the settlement, planning on stomping into the VlamVloed and being unhelpful around people he likes.
