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!
Before she does anything else, Wessex needs to see them. The bodies.
She needs to say goodbye.
Through the raging bonfire of anger there’s still some room for sorrow and pain, for guilt, for grief from losing two she’d come to love - even if she had heavily criticized the Queen in her head lately. That only makes her guilt drive itself deeper into her gut.
Rexanna and Bastien are first, someone directing her to where he keeps watch over a body that won't decay. Later, she might think of the upgrades she will take - but not now. Now, she stands in the doorway to the room and knocks on the wall, past disagreements forgotten. Bastien’s seen her love for Rex firsthand- perhaps that will be enough to mend the fence between them right now.
“Hi,” she says softly, taking a step in and allowing the sorrow to dampen her rage. For now.
There had been a few people coming and going; Bastien didn't stop them, but he didn't encourage the visitors either. As much as he wanted to lay the only claim to his wife, pretend that only he felt the grief; he knew she had been a well-admire Queen and good friend to many and he was not selfish enough to lock her away from all. Besides, he did appreciate the chance to reminiscence, as long as he had time to recover after.
With all that said, he couldn't help the slight flair of annoyed oh, not now in his chest as Wessex appeared through the door. Since she had disparaged their child at the meeting Bastien had found himself not wanting to see her much at all. Still, he was well aware she had been close to Rexanna. Hugging Azrael close to his chest, he leaned back in his chair next to Rex's bed.
"Hello." He said flatly, meeting her eyes: he didn't say anything more. There was little to say; Rexanna was dead and they both knew that much. Wordlessly he gestured at the body, an invitation for her to come closer and look, though he still left a protective hand on Rexanna's cold shoulder.
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
Unfortunately for Bastien, he doesn’t have a monopoly on Rex or her body. She was by no means expecting a warm greeting, and she can excuse many things as grief and emotional exhaustion. Like that greeting. Her gaze drifts from him to the baby to Rex’s body and her body seems to sigh without any exhalation. “Stupid question, but how are you holding up?”
She doesn’t yet approach Rex’s body, instead waiting for an answer from Bastien. There’s some need to reconcile things here, to try and reach and repair the family bond before moving on to saying goodbye. After all, she isn’t the enemy. Baby fight or not, they’re family. And they’ll have to seriously pull together after this week.
Bastien looked up flatly to Wessex as she asked her (as she admitted, stupid) question, his hand not moving from Rexanna's shoulder. "I'm not. The light is gone and I don't know what I will do after she is truly away from my sight. She..." He took a breath, his voice dangerously close to breaking, and look to his wife's sleeping face. "She would want me to stay and care for Azrael, so I will, but half of my heart has disappeared today."
The words were clunky and too much, Bastien's usual tendency to wax poetic fighting against his great exhaustion and crushing grief. "You can come to her to say goodbye." He offered, noticing Wessex's hesitation, though his hand stayed firm.
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
What can Wessex do but try and do one of the few things she just isn’t good at? There’s no way to mitigate Bastien’s pain, so the older woman simply nods and tries to look like she understands - which she does, wholeheartedly, but words of comfort simply sound hollow in her head.
“You don’t have to go it alone,” she finally says, feeling like its apt for both situations he mentions - grieving and raising the child. It’s what a family is for. “We can help.” There’s no poetry from the Wraith, but then there rarely is, simple truths an actions are preferable. And while she wasn’t waiting for his permission to say goodbye or even felt like she needed it, her focus shifts more to the body and her head falls closer to her chest.
It isn’t self-pity, exactly, which floods her but a sense of failure at the way she’d died. If it had been monsters, it might be easier to swallow. But that she’d died at the hands of Safrin sends the matriarch into a guilt spiral because that’s exactly the kind of thing she’s supposed to protect against. “I warned her, you know,” she says sadly as she approaches the bed. “I thought the door wasn’t all it appeared and if I’d been here, I could have teleported -”
Saved them both. But pride and anger got in the way. And now - this.
While Bastien knew what Wessex had to say was true, he felt absolutely and completely alone in the moment. Azrael, while he loved them dearly and would protect them with his life, was not the same as having a companion like a wife; someone he could be vulnerable with, someone who he could trust to always be on his team. Sadly, he didn't think he could say that for any of his Ascended family, either.
Perhaps in the months to come, he'd have to lean into them more. It was more of a connection than he had anywhere else.
He watched Wessex carefully as she got closer, finding himself oddly anxious about anyone getting too close to Rex, a protectiveness he'd never really known himself to have in her life flaring up in him. It was selfish and he knew that so he said nothing, just kept his eyes firmly on his wife's still form. "..That door...Deimos and Samuel. Deimos, well. His wife is one of the biggest devotees to Safrin I know, so I cannot be entirely surprised -- but Samuel? He is one of our family. Why would he provide the fluid for the death trap? To...to keep us in the pen like animals with a barbed fence."
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
Lowering herself to kneel by the bed’s side, Wessex reaches for her sister’s hand, cupping her fingers in her palm and running her thumb tenderly over Rex’s knuckles. Bastien’s question about Sam only makes it worse, so she brings her other hand up on the edge of the mattress and props her weary head up. Almost as if she and Rex and Bastien were having a normal conversation.
“Sam doesn’t think,” she begins. “He’s so desperate for approval from certain people that he just does whatever they ask and he doesn’t stop to think about the consequences. Especially if it’s presented in a way that makes sense to him.” She shrugs. “Don’t know what he was thinking. Giving anything of ours to a follower of the Old Gods is asking for trouble.”
Wessex truly believes there’s no telling how they’ll use it. “I’m going to tell the family soon. Do you want to pass anything on?”
Bastien watched Wessex hold Rex's hand with a flat, unreadable expression. His own hand on Rex's arm, thumb gently stroking the skin, he wondered what she'd think of everyone coming in just to look at or touch her one last time. If she were alive, they'd probably make a joke of it; some kind of game where they attributed points to different acts of admiration from visitors.
"I do not know if I will be able to stop myself from showing him just what I think of it all when I see him next." He murmured, clear anger in his voice: it was one of the few emotions he could really access at the moment; he only lowered his tone and volume because the comfortable baby in his arm. "Would you stop me?"
He stared at her as she announced she was going to tell 'the family', wondering how she was going to do it from here: Bastien was not yet familiar with all of Wessex's powers. That, and... "...Who? Nate and Samuel, are those the only Ascended away from us right now? I suppose Neron...it feels as if our numbers are dwindling."
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
“No, of course not,” she snorts, as if she’d ever consider stopping him. As far as Wessex is concerned, their former brother is fair game, despite what The Voice said.
Really, the only question would be who gets to Sam first.
“But you might find him in a shitty state. He’s decided he wants to live without the Voice. So she removed all aspects of Her from his life. And as I understand it, he won’t be able to be himself much longer than a season without drinking from Her. So.” Shrugging, the Wraith leaves it at that. Killing him would be far quicker than letting him become a shell. She has her own punishment in mind if she can find him, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment because this isn’t about Sam. Or it isn’t supposed to be.
But perhaps he’s a bit addled with exhaustion and grief, and she turns her face to him, wondering how he could have forgotten all the voices at the last meeting. “Yes, Neron... and Amun. Letha, Osozo. There are twin girls in the temple who recently Ascended - Mabel and Evelyn.” Then there’s the newest, whom she hasn’t met yet and doesn’t know about, but he has. “They should know and be vigilant for anything else.”
Shaking her head, Wessex’s hand begins to travel over Rex’s clothes. “She always looked so damn good, didn’t she?” A particular skill this Natural had never developed or needed, but secretly admired.
"Good." Bastien said simply. He was not a man for long revenge quests, could hardly hold a grudge; hell, he'd forgiven or at least pushed aside his rage at Deimos within moments. Still, something in him felt comforted by the idea that he'd get to have some kind of comeuppance with Samuel, who even before Rexanna's death had glibly thrown her in danger several times.
The news about the man certainly would have been an interesting aside at any other time, but there were indeed far more pressing issues. Deciding that was something to deal with (and distract himself with) once he'd crawled out of the pit he was in, he moved on.
Turned out there were more Ascended than he knew of, even some 'twins' that had completely escaped his notice; nodding and shrugging his misgiving away, he wondered if he was going to have to shield mourning visits from every one of them in the next couple of days: he wasn't sure he could take that. ...Especially not if they touched Rexanna as Wessex was doing now, touching clothes in way he wasn't sure his wife would have let someone in her life.
"Please," He asked, gently and quietly. "Only her hands. I do not wish to chide, but I find myself feeling very protective of her at the moment. It pains me to let anyone else look at her, let alone..." With a choked up sob threatening to rise in his throat he blinked and looked away, shaking his head. It was odd, where grief chose to hit.
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
No. He would not dictate this. “She has never needed protection from me,” Wessex says quietly, remembering the time the two of them had gone into battle together, fighting Fae and tree spirits - when Bastien had never even bothered to show up. Bastien is like Sam, but selfish instead of cowardly. She doesn’t move her hands away from the edges of the Rex’s clothing, quite sure that a living Rex would have been happy to offer her sister comfort in whatever what she could.
None of them have, except for Sam. She is there for them, she does everything for them, and she’ll be damned if Bastien tries to limit her mourning.
“I’d like a private moment with her. To say some things.” Though her body seems to be more or less in control, voice steady, but her hands begin to tremble a bit when she glances over at Bastien, her eyes are flooded with fluid - the reality that this is the end hitting now, as opposed to when she'd heard the news.
Oh, Wessex was wrong; Rexanna had often needed protection just as he had from the world around them: so strange, so different from their respective homes. The fights between Ascended, Attuned, Abandoned, Accepted...it was overwhelming and disorientating in a way a Natural would never be able to understand. Bastien and Rexanna had carved out a niche in the sanctuary, in their little comfortable flat - a place to be their truest selves, away from any expectations of family.
They had bonded themselves to each other publically and openly and their love had been the most intense force he had ever known; Wessex had not had that with his wife, no matter how she wanted to pretend. Ascended bonds could not replace it.
His eyes narrowed, clear tired anger in the way he took in a heavy breath.
"Let me say it again clearer for you. There is nothing you need to say to Rexanna you cannot say with me present. Get your hands off her clothes and say what you need to." Bastien's voice was snipped and confident and there was a fight in his expression and body language that was rarely there: the only reason he did not move to stop Wessex from touching Rexanna was the baby in his arms. If it really came to it, Deimos was outside the door: he could call for assistance if needed. The Queen was well cared for in death.
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
06-23-2020, 09:25 PM (This post was last modified: 06-23-2020, 09:29 PM by Wessex.)
WESSEX
the wraith
No, she wasn’t wrong. Rexanna hadn’t needed protection from Wessex. Even in their final disagreement, she had held back from saying everything she truly felt about the matter.
And so she would in this - not for Bastien, but for Rex. He’d have to make her step away, but she might as do what she's come to do. She turns back to her sister’s body and takes the shadows of herself, Bastien and Azrael and creates a sort of shield around her outer edge, hopefully able to stop him from physically interfering in what would be a gentle goodbye.
“I’m sorry, Rex. For disagreeing about the baby - I had my reasons - I hope you understand that it wasn’t because I didn’t want you to have one. I have to think of the whole picture.” And what she feared about the future seemed to be well on its way to happening. With one eye on Bastien, she leans forward, trying to keep her shield between herself and his body part. Should he try to physically stop her, he’d likely find a great deal of resistance. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I would have, you know - I’d have fought the monsters for you.”
“Rest well. Give Clem the biggest hugs.” She’ll see them both again soon. Wessex attempts to lay a quick peck on Rex’s cheek and then teleports out of the room - to somewhere else within the Temple.
Bastien was angry and he was protective, but he wasn't stupid: he knew that Wessex was massively powerful in comparison to him and that causing a fight with her over nothing was a bad idea. He watched very carefully, as best as he could through the shadows, to see what she was doing: he didn't know what he was afraid of, but the whole time a rolling, sickening sense of being dismissed ran through him.
No one had ever thought he was good enough for Rexanna and he wasn't even allowed to be her number one in death.
When all that was done was a kiss on the cheek before Wessex disappeared he relaxed, though he went to smooth out Rexanna's clothing and blankets were they had been moved. Shaking his head and gritting his teeth as he tried to work through the frustration, he went back to staring at the wall and waiting for Longnight to pass so he could take Rexanna to her true resting place.
{FIN}
You standing beside me
I'm going to push back, push back, push back
With every word and every breath
