when you wake

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

"An accident. Just like when you dream about someone you don't want to. Only when I do it..." Remi's wrist rolls still to indicate that the situation around them is precisely what happens. "Like I said, Ronin and I were in the Silk Houses...a textile shop. I saw a bolt of blue silk, and..." Where's Finn's mouth is likely slick with bile, Remi's is dry and ashy-tasting. "I really didn't mean to."

Raising a brow out of concern and curiosity as Finn begins to stir, the alchemist smirks before he can stop it, quickly wiping away the amusement on his face. "Honestly, I don't know. I don't even know where I am right now." Stormbreak somewhere, he assumes. But he knows nothing about where Finn lives.

A joke forms on the alchemist's tongue before he has the good sense to swallow it down. Instead Remi just nods. "Do you need anything else, before I go? I can't heal like the others but...I can make you sleep." Then, holding up his hands with a small smile he adds, "Me-free, as I'm now quite awake."

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

A bolt of blue silk has Finn nearly grey with the memories it brings to the surface; the feel of the silk on his skin, hand shaped bruises and the sour tang of cheap wine breathed across his face. Clearing his throat, he nods his understanding regardless, taking another sip of water and getting to his feet properly. The glass goes onto his bedside table, and he swipes a hand across his forehead to wipe away the sheen of sweat there.

"You are in the Tower," he explains, glancing around again as if to make sure they really are in his apartments and not back at Mother Molly's somehow. "These are my rooms, in the attic space. If you are trying to get to Ronin, he... you'll need to head out of the Tower, and towards the Dragon's Nest. Those are the barracks." Telling him this is easier than holding a real conversation, easier than realising this man has crept into his sanctum while he's been asleep, albeit accidentally.

"Oh gods, no," he blurts before he can help it when Remi offers to put him back to sleep, Finn shaking his head. He gestures to the ladder, trying to stifle the fresh horror that comes along with Remi walking through his space. "If you head down, I will get dressed and show you the way."

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

Remi watches all of this, unsurprised, but filled with remorse and guilt just the same. Always have the pair wounded each other in the name of honesty, but unlike times previous to this, Remi feels bad for the impact his words have on the Spyglass.

"I wasn't trying to get anywhere." Remi explains or perhaps clarifies. "I was in the Greatwood, asleep in a wagon." Running a hand up the side of his cheek and then through his curls, Remi looks toward the door and closes his eyes. He knows Ronin will understand of course, but certainly explaining how he came to be in Stormbreak which didn't involve waking up at the Star's side will be required.

Again Remi is inclined to make some sort of joke to fill the awkwardness, but he refrains. He also refrains from the inevitable back and forth which will come from telling Finn he needn't bother. I'm up anyways, or You need an escort, or whatever the Spyglass will say, and so the alchemist merely nods appreciatively.

So Remi will slip out of the door and start making his way down the stairs. They seem endless, which gives him far too much time to think.

About Finn. About where his hands had been. How he'd said nothing happened. Pushing open the clinic doors to reveal ruddy sunlight, the alchemist shivers slightly. Wearing only a t-shirt he's woefully underdressed, but it hardly matters.

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

"Oh," Finn says, utterly unhelpful in his response. If Remi is trying to get back to the Greatwood, then falling asleep is absolutely the best way to go about it, and yet he cannot think of anything worse at the moment. "I will see you at the front of the Tower," he murmurs instead, letting out a shuddering breath and watching Remi down the ladder and out of the door of his apartments.

Only when he is gone does the Spyglass give himself an opportunity to break down. Those few moments are for Finn and Finn alone, to choke out the panic of his flashback, to try and rub another person's touch off his skin, or at least to replace it with the familiarity of his own hands. He cleans up, he washes his face, he gets dressed. He does not look at the bed. He does not think about sleep.

He doesn't know, either, how long he's kept Remi waiting in the cold, only that when he emerges, wrapped in a coat and scarf, Finn feels the thorns of guilt prick deep into him. "I am so sorry," he says, unlooping the scarf from his neck and offering it to Remi, as if it will make some sort of difference. "Follow me - I will take you to the barracks."

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

"That's alright." Remi says, shaking his head. "I'd rather not ruin anything else of yours." Because while the alchemist in many ways doesn't know much about Finn, what he intuits is loud and clear. If the alchemist touches the scarf, it'll likely sit in the corner of Finn's apartment forever: unable to be discarded but never to be worn again. The fact that its even been offered to Remi is likely enough to ruin it forever for the Spyglass.

'I never intended to speak to you again, after ..." ..last time. This goes unsaid of course, but the alchemist's awkward cough and hunched shoulders are probably enough of a reference. But then, how do you bring up something as traumatic as Finn as a prostitute offering dream-child-Remi food? How do you reference Finn murdering the alchemist's father and then screaming at him to go away?

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

Normally politeness and social convention would dictate that Finn insist, at least once, that Remi accept the scarf from him, given the temperature. But on this occasion he quietly loops the garment back around his neck, his nose and mouth covered away as they walk across the icy cobbles. "After the waterfall?" Finn glances across at Remi, remembering that next dream that the Lullaby had unintentionally slipped into, when Ronin had been forced to rescue him from himself.

Finn, of course, doesn't actually recall very much about that, having been overdosing at the time, but he knows Remi was there. He knows that they flew out of the waterfall, away from some great horror. "Or before then?" His cheeks colour as he gazes back at the ground; he does remember that other dream, his shoulders hunching a bit. "I am sorry for the things I did."

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

'The time before.' Remi corrects, ignoring the waterfall if only because Finn hadn't even been himself. At least in the room in Molly's Finn had known who Remi was. It was the alchemist and not some drug-induced phantom Finn had told to leave him alone.

No you aren't. Remi's strain in his skull to see the man at his side without actually turning his head, without actually looking. Finn is all woven fabrics and messy curls; without his glasses they might as well be the same person. Remi intentionally staggers his strides so that they never walk in perfect syncopation. "It was all in dreams. You never actually did anything." The alchemist replies as if that mattered, his voice soft and harbouring some weighty emotion. Or maybe it did. Dreams both could and couldn't be what he wanted them to be, Remi was realizing. The more control he had over them, the less he should shrug off the things that happened in them.

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

"That is not how it feels," Finn murmurs, the Spyglass trying not to look out of the corner of his eye towards Remi precisely because they look so similar, because bundled up as Finn is and stripped down as the alchemist is, they very well could be the same person strolling along together. "It is not... I have never dreamed like that, before. And never again since," he says, like that might make a difference. Like it might make it make sense.

But nothing makes sense, not the whirl of violence and terror that dogged his dreams with Remi, not the residual feelings that Finn cannot seem to come to terms with. Not the way he simultaneously needs to distance himself from Remi, but he also can't help but drift closer. "They say they found us together, at Apopo. Back in LongHeat. Do you remember...?"

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

"It might not. But there's also no reason to apologize for killing someone who doesn't even exist in this world." Remi says, tonelessly, if only because the emotions he feels are not ones he dares coat his words.

"Not that you remember." The alchemist suggests, perhaps unhelpfully. " I find...something about my magic makes people remember their dreams more often than they otherwise would." This is said with an air of apology as Remi shoves his hands into his pockets.

Finn mentions Apopo, and as Remi staggers with the memory he unconsciously falls into step with the Spyglass. It's a moment in time he hadn't let himself think about. It was beautiful and brutal and so fragile that even looking upon it in his minds-eye was enough to shatter it. "I remember." Remi whispers, digging his nails into his palm lest his fingers reach out to take Finn's. "I remember things that didn't happen." They'd been so close then, on the verge of being saved: from each other, from the world, from everything they'd done and were destined to do.

Remi's cheeks flush brilliantly, but poorly dressed as he was, it would be easy for an onlooker to think it was from the cold. "Do..you remember?" He wonders, fearfully giving voice to a worry that his relationship with Finn was woefully one-sided.

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

Finn's lips part as if to respond to that - to say that it should matter, that killing anyone should matter, but he doesn't know if he believes it any more. There are a lot of things he does not know if he believes, these days. Letting out a sigh rather than offering anything concrete, at first, in response to Remi's quip about the clarity of his dreams, he can only shake his head. "That isn't what I mean. I just... I very rarely have dreams that aren't nightmares. And I don't know what those dreams were."

Fever hallucinations? Lucid nightmares? He isn't sure he even wants to know, swallowing hard and regretting saying anything at all.

Even more so as Remi continues, as they turn the corner onto a large bridge, heading out towards the city walls, towards the Dragon's Nest. They drop into step, suddenly, and Finn can see the edge of the volcano yawning away before him. He lifts a hand from his pocket to gaze into it, like he can see the feather that had been pressed against him, bloody and matted. "Yes," he says, not unkindly. "Yes, I remember it. It was madness."

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

"Nightmares." Remi says in a dull voice. "I've seen the way you look at me. Of course they're nightmares." He was the Lullaby after all. He killed. He took lives even when there seemed to be more left to live. And despite his own strange feelings about the Spyglass, he wasn't ignorant of the disgust, the panic, the near-hate he saw reflected in his blue eyes.

Ice and fear grip the alchemist as Finn pulls out his hand, his mind instinctively thinking the Spyglass meant to reach out for him, just as he'd been considering doing. But of course he wasn't, and the snarling disappointment in Remi's belly forces the alchemist to take a hasty sip of air.

'I never wanted to save you.' The Lullaby admits then, in a genuine but soft voice. "But I would have helped you fly." Their steps are no louder than before, despite being in sync now. But in moments like this they've almost always been one person anyway. "I just wanted to be near you. With you, whatever you did. I wanted.."

Remi doesn't know. He doesn't even know the things he doesn't know.
But some motifs are too obvious to ignore, and the alchemist had danced around the subject with such ferocity that he'd done actual harm to Finn.

"..you."

It should feel like a weight lifted, but it didn't.

"I can find my way from here."

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

"Do not give yourself so much credit. Almost all of my dreams are nightmares," Finn mutters; it wouldn't matter if Remi had been a friend or foe - the odds were good that Finn's mind would warp his waking moments into something monstrous and prickly, when the Spyglass eventually did manage to sleep. He doesn't, however, deny the way he looks at Remi. But then he hasn't seen him for seasons, and this first time was hardly a polite reunion.

He's still watching the ground as they walk, able to see the yawning void of Apopo, able to see the knife, the feathers, the blood. "And I never wanted to kill you. But I would have cut you very deeply," he echoes, and the world around him seems to slow and fade, as it had done once when they were both fevered and climbing the side of the mountain.

Then Remi comes out with it, and the words are enough to send a fresh wave of nausea through the Spyglass. "What a shame that I no longer wear blue silks," he mutters, having stopped in the middle of the street; he might well have done the same thing whether or not the Lullaby knew the way from here.

"What stopped you?" he wonders. "Ordinarily you take what you want."

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

"Well, there you go." Remi says with a shrug, accepting both Finn's commentary of his own mental state and the lack of rebuttal regarding how he looked at the Lullaby, in stride.

"I would have let you." Remi says with soft acceptance. What Finn doesn't know, is that despite the alchemist's godly strength and fortitude, such a cut from the Spyglass had the potency to kill him in ways unmatched by nearly everyone else. "I wouldn't have minded." He adds with a whisper of a smile.

Finn's reply is harsh in its casual cruelty, but not unexpected. Not uncalled for, and it hurts every bit as much as it was likely intended to. The alchemist can sense that Finn has stopped as much as see and hear that he has. Pausing as well, turning slightly that he might see Finn easily over his shoulder; he doesn't deserve to say the things he did if he can't make himself look at the man, after all. "Some things cannot be taken." Remi murmurs, and then, more sadly: "I am not that sort of man."

The Lullaby

awareness is the enemy of sanity

I would have let you. I wouldn't have minded. Finn doesn't know how to take that, only knowing that his mouth is suddenly dry, that he doesn't know how to respond to the man standing such a short distance away. But he can feel Remi's eyes on him, and despite the pain it causes, Finn does glance up to meet his gaze. "Why?" he wonders, confused by the response. Because this is not the first time someone has said as much to the Spyglass, only the last one had not shared Remi's reticence. He had been that sort of man.

Finn hears the soft pluck of strings in the back of his mind, echoing down the scales of his memory. "I have nothing you want," he assures him, absently burrowing a little further into the scarf wrapped about his face. "I am just trying to get by." Just trying to survive.

for once you hear the screaming

it never stops

FINN