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!
Brushing off a bit of wood from his plaid sleeves, Remi watches Ronin stroll charmingly across the lake. In the distance a heron gives a sleepy call and though his feet aren't in the water, a rather bold fish makes a jump for one of Ronin's toes just the same.
The bold and bright affection that the alchemist feels from the Star steals his breath entirely; fortunately, he's no need to breath here. Time slows and swirls to a stop as Remi luxuriates in the feeling of Ronin's presence, though still his stomach does an awkward flip. "You don't think it's too much?" Remi wonders as curls an arm about Ronin's waist. From the hand-painted clouds to the surface of the water which is a near-perfect match for the blend of their eyes, even the logs that make up the charming cabin behind them have been etched with love.
This world is a testament to the Lullaby's love for the Star, and the longer Ronin stays the more he will find that the world has been perfectly crafted to either pay homage to the bond between the two men, to playfully serve as a reminder of happier times, or as in the case of certain rooms within the cabin, wishes hardly dared to be dreamed
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Never too much,” Ronin murmurs softly against Remi’s lips, the Star wrapping his fingers into the front of the other man’s shirt so he might draw him closer, letting his fingers wind about his waist. ”Look at this place. How would it ever be too much?” Smiling, he leans his head against his husband’s, watching the play of ripples on the lake, the way the grains of the wood in the porch seem to match the lines on their palms.
The danger, of course, is that he might live here forever. A warning Safrin gave to him when he was first bestowed the ability to dream like this. But for now, Ronin doesn’t care a stitch. ”Would you give me a tour?” he asks, nosing against Remi’s curls and grinning. ”I feel as though you have been busy.”
Remi gasps a breath against Ronin's lips, as ever impossibly undone by the mere presence of his husband (and gods if he hasn't specifically chosen an outfit to make the alchemist weak-kneed). There will never come a day where the alchemist's inclination isn't just to strip Ronin of all his clothing that he might have access to every inch of him, but even in a dream where time isn't real, he forces himself to show restraint. "Oh, you've only seen a bit of it still." Remi chuckles bashfully, his cheeks flushing with colour as lowers his chin with a smile.
Indeed, such is the danger. Already Remi is finding that this world is a place he's happy to visit, the pouring himself and the contents of his soul into his creation is a welcome respite. That Ronin is here now to share it with him makes the real world seem laughably irrelevant.
"Well..." Remi chuckles, linking his finger into Ronin's waistband to drag the Star forward. "This is the porch..." And indeed the Star's keen eye will have picked up on the particular grooves in the wood. The scars that line their bodies are dragged across the boards in places as well. Every freckle, every blemish, it's all there, writ into the foundation of the home Remi's mind and heart has constructed. "And this—" Reaching for the doorknob—it is a lion's head, with the door knocker the rack of a luxere—"—is the inside." And oh, is it ever.
Not unlike the guildhouse the men had first lived in together, there is a grand foyer with an upper-level balcony which can be accessed by a rather imposing and unnecessarily large staircase. Ronin will likely notice that there shouldn't be room for any of this based on the outer dimensions of the house, but nevermind. The kitchen is dusty with pancake batter and Aoife's drawings line the walls as do Ronin's paintings. Bowls and plates boast images of a raccoon riding on a luxere, of an octopus with its many tentacles on the leg of a man trying to draw, of a lion snarling out of a pit and a man falling from the sky. The great room is littered with rose petals on the ground from when the pair slept together for the first time, with a couch and chairs that at one moment look like an appropriate sized, but at the next appear large enough to comfortably sit on.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Yes, I had a feeling that might be the case. Your tastes do border on the extravagant at times.” Ronin grins; he might spend a lifetime admiring the exterior of the house and the dreaming paradise he’s found himself in, but Remi is tugging him forward and his hips are heedless to say no. ”Is it the porch? I wasn’t sure,” he says, slanting a crooked smile in his husband’s direction and watching the play of emotions on his face as he shows off the front door.
Laughing, Ronin reaches out to rap at the knocker as Remi leads them inside, bouncing his eyebrows at the Lullaby. ”Now that is a rack,” he remarks, about to fire off another quip or five about lions biting his hands off, when he suddenly sees it all. The smile drops away from his face, replaced with raw and honest wonder, and his breath catches in his throat.
It isn’t necessarily the reminiscence of the guildhall, or the size of the interior compared to the rest. It’s the little touches of them everywhere, the tiny details writ into every cup and every floorboard; that’s what has Ronin reaching for his husband with eyes suddenly prickling, needing to have him close enough to express something that words simply can’t.
Ronin presses a soft and careful kiss to Remi’s lips, his affection slow and almost reverent. When he speaks, it’s barely a whisper, and the Star isn’t sure whether or not he wants to laugh or sob. ”It’s a little big for just the two of us, isn’t it?”
"Racks are starting to grow on me." The Lullaby chuckles back, despite it not being true. There was and would only be one rack that could ever catch the alchemist's eye, and it was still currently growing. A fact Remi didn't feel the need to mention just now.
"It's...all a bit one-sided right now." Remi remarks as if needing to somehow find fault in what he'd created. It was true though: the moments displayed on blankets and in the grooves of baseboards were all from Remi's memories. His first meeting with Ronin, a bottle of wine they'd casually shared over lunch the day the soldier had been stabbed while they'd been taking a walk, some colourful markers Ronin had used during his training exercises when he'd commissioned the alchemist to make him explosives. Pieces of their lives, but only ever as seen through green eyes.
Humming a note of indulgent desire into the kiss, Remi's fingers softly cup the huntsman's jaw. "Only you." He whispers just as reverently, eyes flitting open as his smile grows impossibly one-sided and crooked.
'Well...it isn't..just the two of us." Now there is true apprehension in Remi's eyes, as down the hall there is the distinct sound of feet running barefoot on the wood. "Daddy, daddy!" Comes Aoife's unmistakable trill as she gallops into Ronin, her arms tightly wrapped around his knee. Biting the inside of his lip hard, and with eyes-wide, the alchemist gives his husband a searching looking, silently pleading that he'll understand. I've missed her so much.. He manages after a moment, the words silent as Aoife gazes up with remarkably blue eyes.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Yes, well... we can change that.” Ronin smiles into the kiss, nodding above the threshold to their dream home where someone has roughly carved R + R in an obnoxious heart shape all of a sudden. Who could have done such a thing? It will forever be a mystery. It’s only a start, but long enough in this cabin of infinites, and things seen through a lens of blue will naturally start to appear.
At least, it appears that way until Remi speaks again and trepidation starts to creep in. Ronin is just starting to shake his head no when a voice - her voice - cuts him more deeply than he thought possible. His eyes remain locked on Remi’s even as part of him begs to look at her, to reach for the little arms encircling his knee, to hold her again.
But instead he lets his husband go to hug himself, the Star beginning to tremble, breaking Remi’s stare so he can look determinedly out through the door and into the lake. His stomach clenches uncomfortably and Ronin is quite sure he’s about to be sick, and the wetness on his cheeks has appeared quite without his notice. ”I understand,” he mumbles, lips numb, voice suddenly very far away. ”But I won’t... I can’t Remi.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. ”Please get rid of her.” He’s let her go once, and she’s come back to torment him ever since LongNight.
Remi's heart flutters and the smile that spreads across his face is far too boyish and adoring to be real. And in a way it isn't, this being a dream and all, but it's an expression that Ronin will be familiar with.
Ice has rooted him in place, or at least it feels as though it has. He gasps for breath but his lungs have turned to glaciers and his stomach has dropped into his feet. Gods he'd been wrong. Though Remi had been in his own brand of hell with Aoife, it hadn't been the one Ronin had experienced and for a bright and horrifying moment, the alchemist feels nothing but anger towards his husband. That he didn't love their daughter enough to get past the shadows who wore her face. That Ronin was so perfectly comfortable in his role as a father that he didn't need to keep remembering her. Somewhere deep down Remi worries that if he lets her go he'll give up any right he had to call her his own.
Remi says nothing, merely standing at a distance that feels like miles from his husband's side, arms shaking as his fingers ball into fists. Aoife disappears the second Ronin requests it, and with her, all the laughter and vibrancy in the house also seems to diminish slightly. Daring not to breathe, Remi stares at a point in the floor where a wine stain has coloured the wood a beautiful garnet, his eyes filled with silent tears. He says nothing because he's not sure what to say. Remi isn't sorry for having Aoife here (sorry for the distress she's clearly caused Ronin), but not for holding tightly to her memory.
"I need some air." So saying Remi is suddenly on the porch, his fingers gripping the railing as he stares out at the water.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin isn’t sorry either, and it feels like more than a wine stain has infected this home that was so bright only a moment before. He jerks his head in a nod as Remi goes out for some air, the Star backing up a clumsy few steps to slouch down onto the bottom stair. His throat has closed around any words he wants to say, and even as he lets himself break down, to sob into his hands, he’s terrified that little hands will come to tug at his shirt, that little arms will throw themselves around his neck for a piggyback.
The dream is so real, Aoife is so real here that he wants to recoil from it, and he’s helpless to do anything for Remi in the moment. He wants to go after him, wants to wrap him up and tell him it’s okay, but it isn’t. Nothing about it is okay. ”I should go,” he manages eventually, his voice small and clogged with misery. ”This is yours. I don’t want to ruin this for you.”
Suddenly the stairs border the porch, and Remi can hear Ronin's voice clearly as he speaks from where he's slouched down. Glaring through tears that make the lake seem more glassy than it originally was, the alchemist bites back a sob of his own, tilting his head up slightly as if he might swallow it back down.
'I made it for us.' Remi says, the words both an explanation, a defence, and an apology. Fidgeting unhappily with the railing and unable to bring himself to turn around and see the anguish on Ronin's face, Remi just bites harder at the inside of his lip as everything he might want to say comes up impossible short. "She isn't a nightmare here.." He tries again, immediately clenching his teeth together for how incomplete the thought was.
"I can't let her go." Remi mumbles at last, the words shattering with emotion as he turns around to face his husband. Shaking his head, his cheeks blotchy and wet with tears, he stares hopelessly somewhere near Ronin's feet. I don't know what to do. He admits silently, his lips far too unsteady with emotion to speak.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin does not look as impeccable as when he first arrived at the dream lake; his clothes are rumpled, hair tousled back into its usual mess by his fingers raking through it, eyes red rimmed. ”She isn’t anything here,” he objects, his voice threatening to crack around the words. ”Just a memory. Just the same memories playing back over and over again.” And in times where they haven’t just been memories, they’ve been monsters etched so deeply into Ronin’s mind that there’s no going back.
Wiping at his face only for fresh tears to replace them, the Star rubs at his calf where the small, warm press of her body had been hugging him not a moment before. He desperately wants to reach for Remi in that moment, but Ronin is seized by the horror that he might call back their dead daughter again. ”You can’t keep her either,” he replies with a miserable shake of his head. It’s with a hopeless shrug that he has to admit that he doesn’t know what to do either. After the sickness, after the Climb, after Sam, he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel just to keep it all together.
Remi opens his mouth to argue, to say that if that's the case then why do they bother to dream together at all, when it's just memories? But he doesn't, because he knows what Ronin means even if he wants to fight against it with every fibre of his being.
Feeling as though he might throw up again, Remi raises his eyes to the top of the stairs where there is now one less room...and yet one more still than Ronin might expect. "If..if you aren't going to come back, you might as well see..." But his voice trails off, suddenly unsure. "It's nothing to do with her." He adds, uncertainly, before shaking his head again as if deciding that perhaps it isn't a good idea.
Because if Ronin rejects this, if Remi has read the whole thing so wrong that the room at the top of the stairs is not one the Star wants to see, he'd rather not know.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
There’s nothing that Ronin won’t do for his husband, even now when it feels like this house is somehow a hostile presence, that the dream is a nightmare and that sleep will never be restful again. So at Remi’s words, the Star wipes again at his eyes and sniffs, dragging himself up from the stairs so he can motion for his husband to lead the way. It’s a rare thing for him to look as though he carries the weight of the world upon his shoulders, but in this current iteration, in this dream, he’s almost buckling under it.
”Okay,” he manages, softly and apologetically, holding a hand out for Remi if he wants to take it. His sorry is there on his lips, ready - not because he regrets feeling the way he does. But he does regret not being what Remi needs him to be.
Resentment is not an emotion that the alchemist often feels, and even now he isn't so sure that's what's coiling in his belly. But the thought of Ronin doing this...just to say he did, or just on Remi's behalf or out of some misguided effort to do what was right or expect...it makes Remi want to shove him from this place of serenity and love he'd created. To tell him nevermind, then, in the sulkiest way possible.
But he doesn't, mostly because of the offered hand and the genuine strain of emotion he hears coming from his husband's lips. This isn't easy for either of them, and strong as they are, Remi can't fault Ronin for this. The Lullaby is meant to be his soft place to land, after all. And so it is that as they turn back inside the house has changed in subtle but unmistakable ways, all whispers of their daughter gone. Moving up the stairs, now suddenly covered in moss and autumn leaves (not unlike those Remi used to change Ronin's clothes into), he softly pulls Ronin to the top of the stairs.
"I don't....know what you'll think." Remi says when they reach the top, the alchemist turning his shoulders toward a door painted a muted blue. The handle is not of a lion or a stag, but a pencil and paintbrush wrapped around each other into a circle. "You don't have to open it, if it's too much." The alchemist advises softly, not having the strength nor the cruelty to force Ronin into it.
Should the Star choose to however, he'll find a room lovingly decorated, though looking nothing like any room they've ever been in. Here there are no memories, only dreams. A mobile, presumably of Vai's making, hangs above a crib, which also boasts a small perch as if for a dragon who might want to keep watch on the occupant. There are books from this world as well as Northaven, things no good for a child to read and yet precisely of the sort that Ronin and Remi might read to theirs. Painting supplies, alchemical tools which are probably too dangerous, and of course, a large rocking chair for long nights spent soothing teething toddlers back to sleep. There are no stars here, but ocean-like shapes, murals of Ronin battling monsters from his place on a cloud, and lights that cast shapes like fairytale trees onto the walls.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
10-05-2020, 11:12 PM (This post was last modified: 10-05-2020, 11:12 PM by Ronin.)
arms give away your need
Ronin’s fingers are cold, and he squeezes them around Remi’s hand as hard as he dares without hurting him, following after him into the house. It hurts as much to see all traces of Aoife gone as it did when she was there, but the Star roots himself to the sight of his husband heading up the stairs, to the muted creak of floorboards blanketed in moss and ombré leaves. But then they’re pausing, halting before a door he’s never seen before, and the huntsman furrows his brow.
Not knowing what to expect behind the door, Ronin doesn’t know if it’ll be too much until he opens it. And so glancing to his husband with as much love and trust as he can conjure, the Star reaches out and turns the handle, pushing it to reveal the mystery room inside. His lips part to say something - what or oh or I don’t understand. But he does understand, sort of, and it becomes more clear the more he looks.
Stepping hesitantly inside, he brushes his fingertips over the books, over the paintbrushes and tools. Ronin breathes in the room for what it is; something fresh and soothing in its newness. The crib is still a puzzle, though, and he moves up to stand over it, hands brushing across it and reaching up to set the mobile to turning.
”Remi, it’s empty,” he finds himself saying, turning back to look at the other man.
