it's casting shadows and lies

i wish i could say that i am a light that never goes out

Clean.

If Sunjata had done what he'd been accused of, there would be marks on his fists. Remi knew well from experience that being strong didn't protect you from the damage of your evils.

But what about the rest of Sunjata? Who was to say it was his hands that had done it? Why not hooves, scaled limbs, or even a tail?

Taking another step back and letting his wings drop, the alchemist folds his arms tightly across his chest. "Strip. It's not only your fists you can do damage with." Never did the alchemist think he would be the one trying to get Sunjata naked (well, there had been that one time..) or that his husband would be there to watch, but here we are.

Remi loved his husband enough to give his best friend every opportunity to prove himself. Or if not every opportunity, at least this one.

but I  f l i c k e r

from time to time

REMI

Table and Gif sniping by SKY who is eternally the best forever

// the edge is getting closer, it's a long spiral down. it's so fun to fly 'til you hit the ground
i think i'm getting too close, i think i'm getting too close //

Nothing occurs after it, Remi’s wings dropping away and though Ronin is visible, Sunjata doesn’t look. He simply waits, waits for some judgement to come through when instead he gets another demand. And so, he does. The shirt comes off, tossed into a heap to the side, followed by the rest. He remains where he stands, however, close to the wall if only to keep his distance between Remi and Ronin, and he struggles to withdraw the shifts that cover his skin.

He manages it after a few heartbeats, the feathers tucking back in, the fur slipping away as well, until it’s only him, scarred aplenty but nothing new, nothing fresh aside from his face. The tattoos spread along his shoulders and arms, the heart arrow over his heart remains, and the feathers spiral down his spine along his shoulder blades to catch back up, but nothing new.

He works his jaw as he awaits this new judgement, refusing to look at Ronin, staring straight at the wall of his home closest to Remi.

it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

SUNJATA

i wish i could say that i am a light that never goes out

Clean, again. But still the alchemist wasn't convinced.

There was only one thing left that Remi could think of. It was something none of the others would likely be grasping for to convict the Flood, and certainly not the sort of thing any of the others would do. But that's why it was Remi here, and not Ronin, not Zephyr, not Vai.

But Remi. The one who did the killing.

'You could have healed yourself. Who's to say you haven't gained that ability. Or a shift with it.' Remi observes in a low voice. Ronin is the only one in the room no longer able to feel the sway of Remi's emotions without touching him, but Jata might sense what was to come. Lucky Remi is faster and stronger. And unluckily, Ronin can no longer heal.

If she's a witch, she'll float! If she's not, she'll drown and we'll know for sure.

Fast as he ever has been, Remi lashes out with both his tail and his claws. Sweeping his fingers across Jata's throat to slice the chords and vessels there as he'd been fantasizing about doing earlier, he simultaneously aims the stinger of his tail into the muscles above Jata's heart. It all happens in a blur and the alchemist would be a liar to say he didn't fully enjoy the butter-soft sensation of his most deadly parts entering Sunjata.

Would the Flood bleed out first, or die from the poison? Or, if he wasn't innocent of his crimes, would he heal himself? Die and prove himself innocent? Or heal himself, and be guilty?

but I  f l i c k e r

from time to time

REMI

Table and Gif sniping by SKY who is eternally the best forever

// the edge is getting closer, it's a long spiral down. it's so fun to fly 'til you hit the ground
i think i'm getting too close, i think i'm getting too close //

“I have lightning and water.” He says quietly, not like it matters. Not like any of it matters anymore. Anything he says isn’t believed and in a world where literal dreams and nightmares can come true? It means nothing. Nothing at all. Despite him knowing he’s done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time – a sudden realization of how many times back in Korofi when he was enforcing, how he had sentenced so many of the same – brings a wave of nausea up so high that he doesn’t see Remi’s quick movements.

He doesn’t see how fast the Lullaby is until it’s too late, of course. Until claws tear out his throat and he’s falling and falling, reaching to clutch at his throat, pain so sharp that he doesn’t know if it’ll ever end. But it does, somehow, because the pain above his chest, above that tattoo he’d gotten for Lusea when she’d come back to life, nullifies it all with pain of a different sort.

He collapses, of course. He can’t heal himself. He can’t get up. He can’t do anything but let the blood pour out, the sounds that leave him are choked and pained. He thinks of Nate, off in LongNight to come home to an empty house. To a promise that’s unfulfilled and perhaps it’s the shame of that that makes this so much worse. So, so, so, so much worse. Most of all, he's sorry. Sorry that he didn't get to live those plans made with Melita, with Hotaru, with all of them in that makeshift family he'd put together because his own had been so terrible.

He's innocent. Of course. But that doesn’t matter now. Does it? Perhaps his father had won in the end, destroyed everything and taken everything, only to end him with those that he considered to be friends.

He doesn’t know whether his vision blackens before the blood coats it. All he knows is that everything is black and dark, fitting perhaps for all the things he’s done.

it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

SUNJATA

I swear I still believe but I don't know

"Remi, enough!"

If you die in your dreams, do you die in real life as well? It's a question that few can answer. But the answer, of course, is no - and Sunjata is now a member of those hallowed halls. How proud must he be?

How proud is Ronin, for the part he's played in all of this?

The Star has been rooted to the spot throughout the confrontation, as he had promised himself he would be. The alternative was worse - he tells himself this over and over again, but as Remi pushes, and pushes again, and blood drenches the floor as Jata falls, naked and still, Ronin has finally torn himself from his place by the door.

"It wasn't him," he grates, his boots making bloody prints on the ground as he plants himself between the Flood and the Lullaby. And where Ronin walks, grass grows.

The Aumakua house, so perfectly replicated, becomes a sudden and blazing field of wildflowers. The walls open into a sky that's blue and cloudless, and the ground drinks up the blood. A blanket appears in Ronin's hands, which he uses to cover Sunjata's bare frame. "Are you satisfied now?" he asks Remi, his hands clasping his friend's shoulders.

Possibly not a friend any longer. Not after what Ronin has done. And it's a lead weight he'll carry with him forever. Sunjata will have nightmares about this nightmare, of that he has no doubt.

"Take a breath, Jata. You're alive. You're alright."

the dark star

i wish i could say that i am a light that never goes out

This is their dichotomy. This is all the ways in which their beautiful motif of light and dark, dearth and life, is hideous and polarizing. The ground is bathed in blood no matter Ronin's flowers, where Remi stands. This is his dream after all, and so it is that the alchemist remains covered in the Flood's blood. It's fitting. Dreams, the way Remi controls them, are no less real than anything else. And they still have consequences.

Remi snarls as Ronin passes, flinching as the Star covers Jata with a blanket as if his husband has done something wrong. With a glare that pierces through Ronin's blue eyes as if his stare is targeting something else, Remi merely flares his nostrils in response as he pulls in a long breath.

He watches as Ronin tries to coax life that hasn't been taken from Sunjata, feeling vindictive and cheated. Anger and jealousy broil brightly in his stomach as well, and though many of his emotions are misplaced, not all of them are. Riled by the scent of blood and the un-death he'd caused, the alchemist can do little else but stand sentinel for a moment, before his gaze sharpens.

"No." Remi says, at long last. He isn't satisfied. "Whoever did this is still out there."

There is the sound of wings, and then Remi is gone, leaving Ronin and Sunjata to sleep off what happened, together.

but I  f l i c k e r

from time to time

REMI

Table and Gif sniping by SKY who is eternally the best forever

// the edge is getting closer, it's a long spiral down. it's so fun to fly 'til you hit the ground
i think i'm getting too close, i think i'm getting too close //

It’s pain and then nothingness, darkness that encroaches, until it doesn’t.

And he’s suddenly aware of a brightness that glimmers in the backs of his eyelids, the red hue of something bright. he hears Ronin’s voice, confusion pulling him out of… Whatever this was, groggy enough that he can feel the softness of a blanket. His chest heaves. He’s breathing, and despite the calming words Ronin tries to offer, he jolts upright – hands immediately moving to his throat, finding it intact somehow. But there’s still blood, and it brings back memories that he’d long tried to forget, the blanket pooling in his lap, hands withdrawing to look at hands covered in blood with a bright sunny day above them.

He has to be dead. It’s LongNight. The sun won’t be up until the end of the week. He blinks up at the clouds drifting through the sky, a shuddering breath leaving him, hands trembling, refusing to look at Ronin as his gaze drops back to his hands and he swallows around a painful throat – but why, he can’t recall. “No.” He begins through a hoarse voice, choked previously with blood and claws. “I’m not.”

It’s unclear if he means that he’s not alive, or that he’s not alright.

it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

SUNJATA

I swear I still believe but I don't know

In any other moment Ronin would be following after his husband to try to make things right, to try to pull the beast back before it accidentally catches someone else in its wake. But the damage has already been done to one man - one innocent man, and Ronin can't even let himself feel relieved about that with all that's passed between them in the last few minutes. Sunjata jolts up and the Star's hands come out instinctively to steady him, though it feels wrong to try to offer that much when he knows he's stood by and done nothing when it mattered.

But when the alternative was this very situation, but in reality? He'll take the Flood's rage. "No, I suppose not," he murmurs, guessing at the context of Jata's words and conjuring up a sweater and a pair of pants that he holds out for him. "I'm so sorry," he mutters. "This was..." He shakes his head. It was inexcusable. He knows it, and he's willing to take that backlash, if and when it comes.

the dark star

// the edge is getting closer, it's a long spiral down. it's so fun to fly 'til you hit the ground
i think i'm getting too close, i think i'm getting too close //

It takes everything within him to figure out what happened, to compartmentalize it in the only way he knows how, to realize he’s alive despite not feeling it, that the hands covered in blood unearth a long forgotten horror that only snuck up on him at the worst times. This is one of those times. Ronin’s apology goes unacknowledged, if only because Sunjata doesn’t know what to do. He stares at his hands and then the clothes that Ronin makes appear, and when he looks back to his hands, they’re clean. And he thinks more on it, the strangeness of it all, Ronin being here and Remi ripping out his throat, poisoning him over his chest—

“Why is it bright? It’s LongNight.” He asks, trying to grasp at some form of understanding. If he wasn’t dead, why wasn’t he home? Why wasn’t he still trying to write that letter to Melita to explain? Shadowed eyes lift to Ronin after he’s managed to sling the clothes on, taking a sharp breath that almost feels painful to do. “I want to go home, Ronin.” Where he can start to piece together everything that’s happened, where he can try to pick somewhere to start getting his mind back in order to process everything. If he could of course.

it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

SUNJATA

I swear I still believe but I don't know

"Yes, it's Longnight," Ronin agrees. "We're dreaming, so... it doesn't really matter what time of year it is." It's not an easy explanation to give, and it doesn't even start to cover all that's happened over the last few minutes, but it's all the Star has. And when Sunjata says he wants to go home it almost breaks his fucking heart, Ronin letting out a shuddering sigh and shaking his head. "I haven't got..." He hasn't got the power to take them out of this, right now.

But he can still dream, so... he does all he knows to do in the moment. And around them the grassy field and sunny skies fade, growing rustic cabin walls and a crackling fire in a hearth. All moody blues and the rich crash of the sea and the storm outside, Ronin has conjured the place Sunjata once said he wishes he'd had, back when they'd last dreamed together. "Will this be alright, for now...?"

the dark star

// the edge is getting closer, it's a long spiral down. it's so fun to fly 'til you hit the ground
i think i'm getting too close, i think i'm getting too close //

“We’re dreaming.” Had it been a dream within a dream? That his… Supposed dream death had woken him to a bright day with swaying grasses? What would he find when he fully woke? The idea of more blood has his jaw clenching, fingers tightening into a fist at his side as he tells Ronin he wanted to go home. He doesn’t understand how the Star trails off, why he doesn’t have whatever it is. Nor does he care, really, not as he pauses when the world begins to shift again and he’s absentmindedly reaching for his neck again, to feel the thundering heartbeat there.

He knows this place. He’s dreamed of this place. He dreamt of it long before meeting Ronin and arriving in Caido’s terrible embrace. But it was the only place that had drawn him comfort for so many years, when he hopped house to house, slept on a cot in the cool, moist underground of the resistance, when he imagined he’d build a place just like it for his sister and he, where his father could never find them again. His hand drops and he huffs out a shuddering breath, stepping toward the table to sink down in a chair, shoulders slumping and hands rising to cradle his hands. “Yes.” He pauses, unsure of how to continue, his breathing a bit jagged as he tries to piece together what happened. “So we wait until we wake?” It goes against his mind, against what he wants, unable to look at Ronin even as his hands leave his face to thread together in his lap, staring at the wood grain of the table.

it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

SUNJATA

I swear I still believe but I don't know

Ronin can't help the way relief washes through him to hear that this place would do for now. To know that he hasn't ruined his friendship with Sunjata even more than it feels as though he already has. And as the Flood moves away to slump into the chair, Ronin moves into the one adjacent, unsure what to do or where to go from here. And so eventually he does what the Star always does - he dives in feet first. "Yeah, we... wait." He nods.

Then he reaches out, attempting to clasp a hand against his friend's shoulder. "Jata... How did this happen? What's been going on in Torchline?" He doesn't mean the Vai thing, necessarily - how, he means, did it get to a point where anyone might believe him capable of doing something like this? Where Zeph would instinctively send a note like that to Remi on a hair trigger?

the dark star

// the edge is getting closer, it's a long spiral down. it's so fun to fly 'til you hit the ground
i think i'm getting too close, i think i'm getting too close //

He watches the lines of wood grain until he thinks he might be able to picture them perfectly when he closes his eyes. But instead, torn out of it with a hand on his shoulder and he flinches. He swallows the panic that swells within him, bites the inside of his cheek hard enough that it schools his face into something aloof, distant. “I was… Sick for a bit. Kept seeing visions of my father during Leafchange, thought it would change when Deepfrost happened. It didn’t.” He pauses, mulling over how the fuck to say it that made sense.

“I got sleeping meds from Vai but, something happened. It wasn’t sleeping meds. The hallucinations got worse and I was drugging myself for nearly half a season.” He still doesn’t know if he hallucinated his father the first time they’d crossed officially, but he takes a shuddering breath and pushes away from the table a fraction, bracing his hands on both sides, his anger palpable in an icy cold rage that spreads along his tattooed shoulders. “And then I found him. My bastard of a father. He doesn’t look like himself, the only thing that remained was his voice.” His rage washes out with the words, the anger, the frustration, the realization that if he had tried to explain that to Remi that it wouldn’t have made sense either.

“He broke my wing. I didn’t tell Nate. I… I didn’t tell anyone.” The rage is gone in a breath, replaced by cold wrought fear. “He killed a man I banished from Torchline and left him in the Slagveld for me to find.” Pinned by his wings. A mockery.

it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

SUNJATA

I swear I still believe but I don't know

He flinches and that's enough to hurt Ronin, enough for the whole cabin to warble with it very briefly, but the Star doesn't move his hand. There will be time for his own feelings later - and let's not even get to the Remi parts of those feelings, given that he couldn't follow after his husband even if he had wanted to (and he had wanted to). Now is for listening, for doing what they ought to have done before Sunjata had been... well. Fucking killed, put simply.

And so Ronin gives his friend the space to muddle through it, to feel whatever he needs to. And even though it sounds wild, even though it sounds as though it can't possibly be true... he won't let his friend down a second time. Squeezing his shoulder gently, Ronin nods his head. "I didn't believe you when I should have," he says softly. "But I believe you now, Jata. I don't know how it's happened - how your father got here. But... if he is here, then I've got your back. As much as I can, anyway."

the dark star