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!
No one stopped him. Or at least, Vervain didn't. Her blue eyes blazed with cold fire as she watched Kalt out of the door, reminding herself to spread the word to her bartenders that he was no longer welcome in the establishment. When - and only when - she knew he was gone did she glance back to her daughter, though her expression remained the same for a moment or so. "I'm only going to say this once, Ashe, because I need you to understand that I am serious," she murmured. "I do not give a single fuck about what Kalt has been through. If his life was as bad as yours, or better, or worse - I don't care." Her tone was soft, quiet, like they were discussing the mundane.
"You are the only thing I care about when it comes to this ridiculous situation. He's helping you? Up here?" She tapped the side of her own head. "And instead of coming to the people who love you, who have helped you before - instead of letting your family know the situation straight away - he sequesters you away so you can have his brand of care instead? His help? After not seeing you for years?" Vai raised her eyebrows, skeptical.
"Are you telling me you don't see how that is fucked up? You're living with him - you're defending him - and he's done nothing but enable your isolation. Unless it comes to him, of course." Vai sighed, sinking down onto one of the bar stools and scritching at Chunk's ear as he padded over.
01-20-2019, 10:02 PM (This post was last modified: 01-20-2019, 10:05 PM by Ashetta.)
Kalt got a quiet scoff and an eyeroll, and she considered heading home drunk just to spite him. Her eyes followed him as he left, and even as he disappeared up the stairs, her eyes remained where he had been. It wasn't until her mother spoke to her that her eyes flicked back to her, her own gaze guarded. Her face was carefully blank as her mother spoke, studiously ignoring the burning in her chest. She remained entirely silent.
Her hand seemed to hover over Soot as she touched her fingers over his back at the sight of that cat, and she glanced down at the spider that was most definitely eyeing the wine racks. Ashe remained silent still after her mother finished, moving to lean against the bar with her eyes set on the counter.
She took a deep breath without looking up. "Let me make one thing very clear," she said quietly. "It was my choice to stay away. No one sequestered me away, and just what do you think he was doing, coming here to you?" She looked up at her mother then, something unreadable in her expression. "Yes, I have been with him instead of here, but that was not his choice to make. I know now that I should have been coming to you, to Ronin, to see anyone. I'm starting to come back and Kalt..." She sighed through her nose and glanced down at the table again, her jaw feathering. "Seems he decided to speed up the process."
She fell silent again for a moment. 'Please just fucking talk to your mother about what needs to be talked about.' What could she talk about? Why did she need to, why did anyone need to know all the ways she was broken and sharp and jagged? What would it do other than to hurt the people that cared about her, what would do other than make them look at her and see something so much worse than what they saw now? She pursed her lips briefly before she looked up at Vervain again, taking a long breath.
"I was wrong to stay away," she went on. "But Kalt has helped me. I would have -" she broke off, remembering standing at the mouth of the underground, prepared to waltz down there and never resurface. She wasn't sure how well anyone caught on to her deep fear of being beneath the earth, but it didn't matter now. She sighed and bit the inside of her lip before she went on. "I wouldn't be here, coming to anyone, if he hadn't been there."
Ashe had to pause again, to keep her breath steady, to keep her tone steady. Impulse and frustration railed against her control, urging her tongue lash out, but she held herself. Her mother loved her. Vai wasn't trying to hurt her, she reminded herself. "I get that you all want me to trust you, to go to you, but how in the five hells am I supposed to just talk about this shit?" She tapped her finger against her head again, and her facade of nutrality fell into something perhaps a little more desperate. A little more broken. "Kalt was there. I don't.. I don't have to explain to him how I survived it because he just.. knows. So yes, there is a certain kind of understanding that no one else can give me." Shared trauma was something altogether different than what most people could grasp when it came to living with what they were. "I know that doesn't mean I should have cut you off. I fucking know that, but he didn't do that. I stayed away from Dev because he promised to kill me if I ever hurt Alistair. I stayed away from you, from Ronin, from Remi, because I am not.. good for anyone. For a while I thought the only thing in me was this twisted, sorry excuse for a soul that I didn't want anyone else to see again. I killed Master and I was just left with my worthless fucking life. I thought that I would be able to finally be free when he was dead, but I wasn't. I'm not, not yet." Alistair hadn't been able to grasp that, hadn't been able to fathom why she couldn't just settle into peace and normalcy, as if anyone could do it. If Devrum could do it, then why couldn't she, right? She may have been wrong in the way she stopped opening up to Alistair... but he had condemned her for the parts of her that he had looked right through.
She straightened in her seat then, taking a moment to watch her mother. "I get that you're pissed off, I get that you don't like him," she said. Hells, her mother probably hated him, a painful thought she would deal with later. "But I need you to understand that no matter who doesn't like him, he's not going anywhere." Not on anyone's life. Vervain was her mother, yes, and while they all saw only the wide-eyed child that grew up without any parenting.. Ashe was fucking more than that. She would not be ordered like a child. Still, her gaze softened after a moment, and she looked up at her mother as she bit at the inside of her lip.
"I'm sorry I disappeared again, mom," she said quietly, and she meant it.
"By the sound of it, he was telling me just how necessary he was to your existence and that this was something I couldn't possibly understand." Vai didn't look up at her daughter, the chafing from her interaction with Kalt still too fresh for her to even contemplate looking at it through a different lens. At Ashe's confession - that she wouldn't be here if not for the know-it-all little gobshite - Vai clenched her fists and let Chunk pad away to oversee the tavern as was his feline right.
She blinked quickly, inhaling a shaky breath and letting it out again. "I don't know how," she said slowly, "but you do have to talk about it, Ashe. You can't just choose someone who has shared trauma so you don't have to talk about it. That's unhealthy for both of you. The fact that you don't need to explain yourself to him, something that would help you heal and move past it, is exactly why it's toxic." Shaking her head, she straightened up from the bar and turned away again, pretending to arrange bottles to keep her hands busy.
"Ashe, you come here telling me how worthless your life is and how you're no good for anyone and you really expect me to see this guy you're living with as a good influence?" Her laughter was humourless, and she let her hands rest flat on the counter. "He can continue to not go anywhere a million miles away from where I am, then," she said simply. "I'm sorry you disappeared again too, Ashe. And I'll be sorry the next time, and the time after that. Just... go home, please. Wherever that is for you."
