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!
Remi half-awakes to the smell of sweat-soaked sheets and musty air. It's nothing new given that he sleeps with a fox and a baby in a wagon, but this is a decidedly different sort of mixture of smells. It's one he's quite familiar with (mostly, there has never been the tangy whiff of armour or loneliness before), but even this doesn't immediately still his mind into wakefulness. It's a dream. A regular one, or perhaps even a magical one. But either way, Remi isn't ready to wake up.
With an arm buried beneath a pillow that supports the weight of Ronin's head, and the other tossed across his husband's body and tucked neatly into the waistband of his underwear, Remi struggles against the pull of consciousness and instead nuzzles himself closer against Ronin as if he might fit himself into the space between Ronin's jawline and his shoulder.
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
It's a very small cot that Ronin lays upon, as is usually the case in a soldier's barracks. Not the sort of thing he'd dream up for them. The room is exactly what Remi would have come to expect from the previous times the Star has conjured it up for them (should he be bothered to open his eyes); small but not cramped, furnished with a desk and writing implements, a wardrobe and trunk, a washing station and the bed.
Enough about that, though - the point is that for all of the compact order of the room, there's something very much out of place in it, and Ronin loves it more than he can say. He groans in his sleep as his husband tries to snuggle closer, shifting and fumbling to keep the blankets over them as he turns to bury his nose in soft curls, his arms working around the body draped over his.
The combined bodyheat alone is enough to almost have him lulling back off to sleep, though he's unable to shake the feeling that something is off. "I need to dream us a bigger bed," he says in a voice clogged by slumber.
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
'What's stopping you.' Remi grumbles back. The pair of them are mini-furnaces, but the alchemist wouldn't think of peeling himself away from Ronin's side for a moment. So instead he kicks a leg to free their lower halves of the itchy woollen-blanket draped over them.
'And maybe something about the smell.' Remi adds, grinning against his husband's neck. "It makes even me want to shower. And that's saying something." Sure, he'd showered recently. It took Isla to finally make him want to appear a bit more presentable, and while Remi was well-used to all sorts of smells thanks to Mateo and Ianto, the lingering alcohol, sex? armour-cleaning solutions, and gods knew what else, made Remi want to hide under the itchy blanket he'd just tossed off.
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I'm trying, but nothing's happening. You deal with it - must be your dream." None of that makes any sense whatsoever, and Ronin doesn't care. Remi kicks off the itchy blankets and he doesn't even care, more than happy to use his husband as all the covering he needs. Snorting at his next remark and grinning back, he peeps an eye open to gaze down at the Lullaby. "This is bonafide man smell, thank you," he mutters, cuddling Remi all the closer.
Still, as he glances around the room (squints, more like), it's a lot more actually grungy than he usually has it in their dreams. There's even the bit of paper pinned to the wall with a scribbed note from Ronin, to Ronin, telling him to get his shit together. "Uh..." he says slowly, trying to figure this out. It's difficult, with the fog in his brain, and it keeps telling him all the same weird shit. That Remi must be in Stormbreak.
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
"Bonafide, is it." The Lullaby repeats, crinkling his nose at how deliciously pretentious it all sounds. "No it's yours for sure. Unless this is my nightmare, you just need to try harder." The more they snark though the more Remi's mind is pulled from slumber. It gets harder to ignore the aches in his body magnified by the uncomfortable cot. And unlike in their shared dreams, when Ronin's body hair tickles his nose, he can't just choose to ignore it.
So while Ronin is piecing together his own pieces of this, Remi's mind is slowly doing the same. Lazy though Ronin might be, the Star is normally quick to alter his dreams to suit the alchemist's needs, even if it's sassily done. That he hasn't made any improvements is certainly out of character.
But then again, so are the aches and pains in Remi's limbs.
Opening his eyes and trying to blink away the early morning darkness, Remi sits suddenly upright in bed, glancing over his shoulder at Ronin. With a brow raised and his lips pursed in a thoughtful expression, he takes a moment as more and more wrinkles of uncertainty accumulate on his forehead.
"Ronin..."
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Lazy? He'd be offended if it weren't so true (and if he was actually aware of his husband's opinions of him). "Yeah, you heard." Ronin grins through his sass, though like Remi he is just about waking up and realising that it's actually waking up and not just the weird in between of dreams. He aches all over, he's hungover, he doesn't remember most of the evening and there's a very handsome man in his bed.
Blinking at Remi as he lurches to sit up, Ronin itches at the stubble on his chin and furrows his brow. "Me," he agrees, wriggling to sit up as well and rubbing at his eyes - the action puts Remi almost entirely in his lap, given the cramped sleeping space. "And you," he adds slowly. "Here. Me and you are here. What... how...?"
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
Gods but if it isn't cramped and uncomfortable. There aren't even really springs beneath the thin mattress on which they sit, just wooden panels. The room seems uncomfortably small now that they're both sitting up, and Remi manages (barely) to pull his eyes away from Ronin to do a quick sweep of the room before looking back. "So you...finished your quest?" Remi mumbles, his post-dream logic coming together in hazy and ill-formed pieces. "But..then shouldn't this be the wagon?"
The whole point was that Ronin could project.
Reaching out a hand to softly cup the side of the soldier's face with all the tentativeness and hesitation of a first date, Remi swallows hard as he peers into his husband eyes. "Is it really you? Am I really here?" The words are all but whispered, and not just because neither of them have brushed their teeth or because they're sitting so close. Instead it's as if the alchemist is afraid to break some sort of spell or misplaced magic that might send him back across the world and into the Greatwood.
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin shakes his head dumbly, glancing again around the room as if trying to figure out where they really are. Like Remi, his gaze soon snaps back to the other man, drinking him in with his eyes, trying to mark anything new or different or obviously other. And it's all new, he finds - able to shield their worst parts with the dream, all the things they haven't wanted to show each other are now on show with nothing to hide it.
"No, I have one flower left," he mumbles, inhaling sharply at the touch of fingers against his cheek. Ronin leans into the feeling, drowning in it; even such a simple act of affection is enough to stir heat in his belly at this point. Sure, sex has been a way for him to cope - of that there is no doubt - but it's never Remi. It's a high he's always chasing, but now it's here in front of him. "Gods, I hope you are. I don't know what I'll do if this isn't real," he says, though there's still hesitance in his voice.
"If it's not, I think maybe I've finally cracked." His eyes close, so he can better enjoy the sensation of his husband.
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
Ronin's words deepen the lines on the alchemist's forehead, and his head tilts in an unmistakably avian gesture of confusion to hear that this isn't his husband's magic at work. The stubble against the palm of the alchemist's hand is electrifying in its realness. It scratches and itches in a way that the pair normally ignore in their dreams, and Remi finds himself wanting to escape into the bright tactile realness of it.
Releasing a laugh that's as hesitant as it is surprised, Remi indulges his senses as Ronin closes his eyes. His other hand traces lines beneath the Star's eye and cheek, moving into his eyebrow and then hairline. He touches the soldier like he's some dream-bubble that might pop at any instant, leaving Remi torn between taking all he can while the moment lasts, and trying to stretch it out as long as possible.
"Well. If it's all in your mind, tell me what number I'm thinking of right now?"
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Remi's laugh has him smiling - it's a sound that utterly doesn't belong in this place, and he loves it all the more for it. His head tilts into the lingering touches, relishing the callouses he can feel on the other man's fingertips, the warmth of his hand, the way his skin tastes as Ronin presses his lips to the inside of his wrist. The sigh he lets out is fluttering and uncertain, like it wants so badly to believe that Remi is here that he's starting not to care if he's crazy.
"I don't know - bacon and eggs?" he suggests, knowing all too well that it isn't a number at all, but not giving a fuck regardless. He doesn't know the answer, and he's not really thinking about numbers when the heat and weight of his husband in his lap has parts of him waking up more quickly than others.
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
It's like the first date they never had. Not even like the first date they both ruined by being far too comfortable with one another for hesitation and coy blushes. Now though Remi's cheeks are aflame and his stomach aflutter to feel the Star's lips on the inside of his wrist for the first time in weeks.
"All you ever think about is food." Remi grumbles, though the smile on his lips makes its way into his voice, ruining the disappointment he tried to inflect into the words. "I think this ... is real. I don't know how, but..." Shifting slightly, the bed being painfully too small for the pair of them, the way Remi's body stiffens and silently grumbles at him tells him that if this is a dream, it isn't one that the two of them have concocted.
Feeling uncomfortable has never felt so good.
Inhaling sharply, words trembling on his lips as he tries to put them into some sort of order, eventually the alchemist shakes his head softly and lets them all go with a shivery laugh. 'I have missed you more than I thought possible."
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin doesn't know how to take that, only that he's thoroughly overwhelmed by the thought that Remi is here, right now, in this place. And it's not the whirlwind, romantic and charming reunion he had in mind. No, they're together like this, looking utterly like trash (Ronin is, anyway) without any idea how or why or how long it's going to last. "Remi," he says softly, uncertainly, his eyes blinking open to gaze up at his husband.
His blue eyes are glassy, and the smile he directs to the Lullaby is as exuberant as it is desperately sad. "I'm sorry, I'm a mess," he mumbles, reaching out to hook an arm around the other man to drag him closer, that he might scatter further kisses over the Lullaby's neck, his collarbones, the curve of his shoulder. "You'd better not leave. Don't you dare."
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
There are more lines under Ronin's eyes, and he looks like he's been more careless with his shaving than usual. His hair isn't as bedraggled as Remi's is, though likely that's due to being a soldier more than anything. It's disorienting almost, the way that Remi can't just push away the dull and flat morning light, how he can't smooth out the lumpy mattress with moss and wildflowers.
"I'm still not even sure this is my doing." Remi says breathlessly as Ronin's arm winds around him. The words are as joyful as they are apologetic; should he suddenly disappear, it won't be his doing. "Not now. Not if I can help it." The words are shakily said against the dark flop of his husband's head. Immaculately uncomfortable in the Star's lap, the alchemist's hands wander down the tense muscles of his husband's shoulders and back, feeling every new scratch and new bulge of muscle thereupon. Awkwardly in the small bed, the Lullaby tries to anchor himself to the Star's lower half, wrapping his legs around Ronin's waist as if this might tether him to this particular here and now. He has no place being here presumably, but he'll be damned to be pulled away now.
"Are you alright?" Remi asks suddenly, worry and fear ricocheting in tense waves through his body. Wasn't it possible that the only reason he was here, was as some god-given 'final moment's together? "You aren't hurt at all, are you?"
Table by sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
It's cramped and the room is small and dark and smells like sour, stale booze; and yet, if this is what Mort had decided was Ronin's afterlife, he'd have taken it for the man in his lap. His lips press again against the side of Remi's neck as they both get themselves as comfortable as possible. Calloused hands roam over muscled thighs, before fluttering up the Lullaby's back to wind around him properly.
"You know what," he says suddenly, his voice muffled against curls and skin, and the way he inhales is like he's drawing all the strength in the world from Remi's presence. "I don't care. It doesn't matter whose doing it is - this is everything I need right now." Smiling against Remi's neck, it's only as the fear and panic crackle through his husband that Ronin sits back enough to peer into seafoam eyes.
"I am fine," he promises him, the now left unsaid. "Physically, anyway. Not hurt. Just being a sad, stupid man who misses you. Gods, I love you."
don't close your eyes
something beautiful is still alive
