leave me blind but play the reel

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

"What light and life need have no impact on Ludo." The Alchemist says, his tone prophetic and dismissive in the same breath. "But if it is true, that if opposites need one another, then why think I'd feel any discontent at all? Killing and offering assistance to you...if it all balances out, one would think I should be fairly stable."

Remi smiled darkly at this, his eyes boring into Finn's. They both knew how untrue a thing that was.

"But you can let your mind rest anyways. I don't.." Remi looked out towards the sea as well, where once there were sailors drowning. Sailors he might have saved, but instead killed more swiftly than he could have ever imagined. "..think about it, much."

awareness is the enemy of sanity

”And yet without them, what purpose does Ludo serve?” Finn replies, feeling Remi’s eyes upon him, turning his head to drown in sea green blighted by flame and lightning. “It is precisely because opposites need each other that they cannot be too close. Isn’t it funny, that gods do not have to worry about balance? They are what they are - that conviction is absolute. But you are expected to hold all of their contradictions in one body, one mind.” He huffs out a laugh. ”I wouldn’t call that stable at all.”

Remi looks away and Finn closes his eyes, hand closing once more around the stone. Both it and his glasses are tucked safely inside his coat. He feels far away from everything, like he might wake up from this and be unsurprised to find that the conversation hasn’t happened. ”If it were so easy, to let my mind rest, I would be a different man,” he points out.

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

"Darkness would be everywhere, without the light. Souls would still exist, without life. Mort's realm certainly isn't empty." Remi counters. He can't tell if he's convincing Finn of this or establishing them as adversaries in this. Most perplexingly, he can't tell why he cares. "Without duties to take up its time, I am quite sure Ludo would find ways of entertaining itself." Its fellow gods would be more available to harass, the halls of Mort's realm filled with souls to toy and play with.

"I don't find it to be a contradiction, not anymore, anyway. The man I was before...he was a contradiction. His goodness made him into a weapon for others to use. He was more powerful than most but both the love of his life and his daughter died within arms-reach of him." Remi turned back to Finn, his eyes steady like hands around the curve of the Spyglass's jaw. "But you can give me back the stone if you're that worried about my internal struggle." Remi remarks offhandedly before turning his eyes back to the sea, but his every thought attuned to Finn and what he'll decide to do.

"Be careful what you wish for." The Alchemist whispers as lightning flares overhead like a beacon. If there are lost souls on the ocean tonight, they will fight their battles without Remi's help.

awareness is the enemy of sanity

The atmosphere has turned menacing, and Finn realises it like a man who has waded out too deep into the ocean and only recognises that he’s drowning when it’s already too late. His eyes open and he’s caught by Remi, a frail and unstable thing standing in the jaws of something far greater and far darker than anything he’s faced before. ”You would know,” he says of Ludo and its proclivities, and it’s true. Remi would know, far better than Finn, or most others for that matter.

Only when the Alchemist breaks his stare does Finn find it in himself to move, his feet numb as he stands up, his coat and pants heavy with sand. The star shaped stone is placed, very carefully beside Remi, before Finn steps out of the bubble and into the raging downpour. ”I am,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at the other man. ”I am that worried about your internal struggle.”

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

i've seen fire & i've seen rain.
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end

"Don't worry about mine, as a way of ignoring your own." Remi says in a voice like steel, though whether it is lost to the waves and the storm isn't for him to know. Instead, without looking, he feels for the stone he knows has been placed so gently at his side, that hardly any sand will have been displaced by it.

Without a second thought, he picks it up and hurls it out to sea. It doesn't skip on the waves, but sinks immediately. Perhaps it will be found by a child like Seren, it's purpose never realized.

Remi's expression is hidden by darkness, his back to where Finn retreats; the storm an appropriate backdrop for them both.

~FIN(n)