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!
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
Remi's might not be the most far-reaching teleportation or the most useful to get somewhere specific. But he can always, always find those he's looking for. But as he wakes up in Ronin's cramped soldier's cot, he's up and out of the bed immediately, caring not at all that he's naked or that the moon is still casting silhouettes of the Star's basic furniture across the floor. He does so as softly as he can, but no doubt it will be enough to stir his husband from sleep.
There are fresh scars on his body—from Isla and from the destruction of the shrine—and had the Lullaby chosen to speak with the Star in a dream, he could have hid them that they might not become the topic of conversation too soon. But such abilities of his were precisely the problem these days. Too long had the pair lived in worlds of their own making, ignoring how reality was crashing down around them.
Now, lingering in the shadows, half-enveloped by them, Remi isn't entirely sure who the man in the soldier's bed is anymore, or what his relationship to him is. Only that the love he at least feels is not something he can dampen or ignore.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The man in the soldier's bed is showered and has recently tamed his bedraggled beard into its usual scruff, so even if everything else has changed, Ronin still looks the same. If his sleep is deep enough to dream, deep enough for Remi to slip through and appear, then although he stirs at the weight in his bed, it takes a little longer before he comes around. He rolls over in the cot, but when his eyes blink open it doesn't take much for him to lurch up into a sitting position.
It's like his body seeks it out, when the darkness is more than darkness. When the air smells like the woods, like salt and copper and spice, and it's enough for him to start looking around. And when his eyes find Remi, even half shrouded in shadow, the starlight that cracks out of Ronin is unlike anything his dazzle has ever achieved previously. It's a fractured, broken sort of light that heaves out of him, fading and intensifying by degrees without ever going out.
"Mateo is with Vai," he says through a voice that suddenly wants to close around the words. "I don't have him with me right now, sorry." Because that's the only reason Remi could be here, surely.
03-06-2021, 11:56 PM (This post was last modified: 03-06-2021, 11:56 PM by Remi.)
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
Where Ronin's light touches him, Remi is forced to appear. Burning away the shadows to reveal the Lullaby and his exhausted green eyes. It hurts to look at Ronin, and not just because of the sudden brightness in the tiny room. It hurts because of the emotion the light betrays, and had Remi a similar ability, he would have shone just as brightly as his husband. It's a painful reminder of the love between them, and just how badly astray they've gone.
"I should have said I was coming.." Remi begins, before shaking his head. The words weren't quite right. He couldn't have told Ronin when he was coming, because he didn't know if he was. If he could.
Running a hand up the side of his face and then over his eyes, Remi lets it fall back to his side with a sigh. "I came to talk to you, about..." Already there are tears clawing at the back of his eyes and Remi has to look up at the ceiling boards with a frown to keep his composure. "..us." He manages at last, the word more closely resembling a croak than anything intelligible.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
God it's hard to look at this man. Ronin rubs at his eyes and pinches at the bridge of his nose, first and foremost, taking a few deep breaths as if that and the pain and pressure from his fingers might calm down the light that keeps splintering out of him. Once he thinks he has it under control enough to look at Remi, he's pushed over the edge again by the other man's words. Ronin shakes his head, chewing at the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper, if only so that his voice might remain steady when he does speak.
"You already did," he half whispers, his tone gruff and his voice lower than it ought to be in his attempt to keep composure. Remi had been clear, in his letters. He couldn't do this. Ronin wasn't in his corner, wasn't on his side.
I want to find you, the Star had said. Please don't do this. A door that Ronin had tried to keep open to reach his husband; one that slammed hard enough back at him to break his fingers. Fumbling, Ronin reaches for a lantern to light, at least providing some consistency to the illumination in the room.
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
Gods but the line between love and hate is thin. Remi doesn't hate Ronin, likely doesn't have it in him to do so, but the Star's low tone and reference to their previous correspondence has Remi's teeth grating together. "Yeah, and you made it clear you were only willing to be contrite for all of thirty seconds. So if we're going by things said in the past, we're—" Snapping his teeth around the words, the alchemist makes a fist that he presses between his eyes.
"This isn't about what happened with Sunjata. Or at least, not just about what happened." Remi says, swallowing hard and wondering if he dared open his eyes, would the face looking back at him look quite as punchable as it had done moments before?
"I think we've been acting like wearing wedding rings and having sex makes this a marriage." The alchemist says on the exhale of a shaky breath.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Remi snaps and Ronin raises his eyebrows, shoulders and neck stiffening a touch, as if to tell him to go ahead. To lose it and rage, to deliver the physical blows now that the emotional ones had been given a second to heal. Indeed, his blue eyes are like shards of flint as he watches the other man master his temper, and he almost wants him not to bother. He almost wants the fight. Maybe this is where it was always leading. Maybe dying by Remi's hand would be almost nice.
But they settle on not looking at each other, Ronin gazing out at the moon and shifting to sit against the pillows on the bed, trying to bring himself around from the remnants of sleep. "It used to be more than that," he murmurs. "A lot more than that. But you're right... I think that's what we have been doing. There hasn't been time for..." Anything else. Any of the important conversations they should be having. "Every time I've seen you I've just wanted to... make it alright, I suppose."
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
The words are like papercuts over flayed skin, and Remi's throat entirely closes to hear them. His jaw tenses and whether or not he actually nods or if it's a trick of the light and the shadows that try to capture him is anyone's guess. It had been a lot more than that. It had been as perfect a love as Remi could have ever dreamed up. One of love and understanding, laughter and passion. Now all that love amounted to was unhealed words and lives lived with other people.
"There has been time." Remi interrupts. Because if they weren't honest now, there would never be another chance. "But we spent it with other people. Or we spent it pretending things were fine." Which is roughly what Ronin ended up saying anyways, leaving the alchemist just nodding apologetically for his interjection.
'But you can't, Ronin. Not when you.." Huffing out a wavery sigh and staring into a dark corner of the ceiling, Remi shakes his head miserably. "I do love you. But at a certain point, when we're thrown across the world and you're off fucking gods know who and you can't even be bothered to mention it to me, while telling me that it's going to be okay, how does that make it alright? How does wrapping your arm around me after I've done something you apparently can't abide and then telling me the next day how monstrous I am, make it alright?" The tears in his eyes feel like a mockery to his pain, and he wipes them away roughly with the back of his hand.
"Charming as your smiles are Ronin, they don't fix anything. Every since the blight its just been..." Tossing his hands up, knowing what he was about to say was reaching and ridiculous, but knowing he was going to say it anyways, Remi exhales. "..pretending."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin's lips part to interject right back, but Remi is already wordlessly apologising, and it's not needed. He's right - there has been time. He listens, as the other man speaks, ruffling a hand through his hair and tilting his head back to look at the ceiling as well. If honesty is the course they're readjusting to, right now, then he figures he'd better gear up for a conversation that feels like sunburn. Honestly, Ronin still isn't certain where the conversation is going - because Remi has already ended it, as far as he remembers - but at least they're talking.
"You never said." He doesn't mean for it to come out like an accusation, and he holds up a hand to retract the words. "We never discussed the details. It was just... go ahead. Go and fuck whoever you want. I didn't know if you'd want to know, if you cared... I never know if you care, these days," he confesses. "It's just darkness and violence, dream worlds and looking like you're fine while you go feral in the woods." He swipes at his cheeks.
Ever since the blight? That stings, and it shows in the Star's face that, whether or not Remi intends to wound with his words, they strike home. "It didn't feel like pretending to me," he whispers.
03-07-2021, 12:59 AM (This post was last modified: 03-07-2021, 01:15 AM by Odd.)
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
'Really Ronin.' Remi asks flatly. 'You didn't think maybe you should ask me. Maybe seeing as I can feel what you feel when you're near me, that maybe I'd like to hear about who you've fucked before they show up in the Greatwoods with a fucking smile? Or, you know what was really fun? This little shrine adventure with Gideon, Amalia, and Sera." Raking his hands through his hair as well and forcing his breath out through his nose, Remi shakes his head. "I don't care when you sleep with someone else, or even just fool around. I care when it makes me seem like I'm the idiot who doesn't know." Running a hand over his eyes, Remi runs his tongue over his teeth debating something. "But while we're on the subject of it...I slept with Isla. After.." He looks at Ronin. After our thing. "..during LongNight."
Swallowing hard, Remi curls a lip and glares at Ronin. "Don't you dare." And now the pain in his tears is raw and ragged, his anger replaced by an unhappy bitterness. "While I'm feral in the woods? Living alone and raising our son? While you at least have a life in Stormbreak surrounded by new and old friends, but oh no, Remi has grown a beard and has let himself get rough around the edges so that he doesn't overstep and look too long at the only other fucking person around who can string together full sentences." It had been hard on them both, but right or wrong, Remi was quite sure he'd been given the shorter end of the stick.
That it doesn't feel like pretending to Ronin just has Remi shrugging with disbelief. "Then what would you call it, if not pretending? We don't laugh like we used to. We don't tell each other things. We plan and plot for this war, sure. But everything I am now...you just judge me for. Monstrous. Darkness and violence and dreamworlds?" Remi repeats the things his husband had said as a tear streaks down his cheek.
"That's what I am now. And I have been for a long time. But it feels like you've been pretending to see someone else."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin is all riled up to be outraged when it hits him. That Remi is completely and absolutely right. That it's been a privilege to fuck away his problems, to engage with a world like Stormbreak and all that it has to offer. He sits up a little more, shifting to the edge of the bed to gaze at his husband, but as he's about to speak Remi slips in the little tidbit about Isla.
"Huh? Oh. Okay," he says, and there's a simple and sweet acceptance in the words that might have been funny if it weren't for the dire straits they find themselves in. Because it is okay, and just like that... if that's all it takes, Ronin really has no excuse. And so, ashamed of himself and rubbing at his eyes as the other man continues, at last he feels like he has something to speak up about.
"I haven't been pretending to see someone else," he says, his tone softly imploring. "I know that's what you are. But it's not all you are. I look at you and I see the man with ink and charcoal on his sleeves. The man who likes to make things, who dunks his sandwiches in wine - which is still fundamentally wrong, by the way - and throws rocks at Hels when he thinks one has stolen his wedding ring."
Sniffing and wiping at his eyes, Ronin shrugs. "I've just been seeing him less and less lately. And I know why, and I know it's not your fault. I just fucking miss you, okay?"
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
Still standing there, naked and half-disappeared in shadow, Remi moves to sit against the bed. He doesn't feel quite right sitting on if, it only because that might all too easily lead them down a path of intimacy, or at the very least, other band-aid type physical contact. And so he slumps down, his knees against his chest that he might rest his forearms against them.
Remi stares blankly at the shadows on the floor as they swallow up his toes, feeling the tug of the sob building in his throat like the current back in Torchline. He keeps quiet, though, until Ronin is finished speaking. With shoulders tense, the alchemist shakes his head of curls. "You're seeing a ghost, Ronin." Remi replies sadly. "The ghost of a man killed by a world that grew too complex and needed him to be more. My hands are more often covered in blood than charcoal. I end lives now instead of creating things.." Gods it hurts to hear such fond and sunny memories, sitting in the dark with his back to his husband. All the more, for it.
"I'm right here, Ronin. And I have been the whole time, you just.."
The realization of it is the worst. The slow and gradual steps Remi has taken to get himself here. To finally realizing what it was he had been accusing Ronin of this whole time, but could never quite find the words for it. Only now that he had them, he felt the last pieces of his heart break, finally making the hollow thing inside his chest unrecognizable. "..I don't think you love all of me, anymore. You miss the parts of me that you do love, and tolerate the rest."
The monstrous side. The feral side. The violence and madness. The Lullaby of it all. It was all to be endured so that the Star might catch a glimpse of his true love.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Horseshit." Ronin doesn't mean for it to come out as bluntly and roughly as that, but the tears that try to close his throat make it impossible. He fumbles for something in a drawer beside his cot, tossing it down beside Remi where it lands with a thump. A leather-bound sketchbook, since his other is left somewhere in the Greatwood. And within? Memories, mostly, of their days in Torchline, but there are some recent experiences too. Remi reflected in firelight from that first 'date' they'd had; footprints in the sand; the look on Remi's face while he's examining the underside of the skyboat; water running from sleek feathers; their hands clasped around mulled cider.
"If that's just a ghost, then you're a better liar than I'll ever be, and there really is nowhere to go from here," he manages, his elbows braced against his knees at the edge of the bed, a shoulder coming up to wipe again at his cheeks. "I think I was wrong to ever make such a big statement like that," he admits. "I love all of you... it just gave you an excuse not to make boundaries for yourself."
Sniffing, Ronin sits up now. "Because you've been many things in your life, Remi, but you've never been a cruel man. And what I saw when we were locked in that dream with Sunjata? That was cruel. You are meant to bring peace before death, to let people die without suffering. And you made him suffer. That's not Ludo's influence on you, that's all your own making."
The Star lets out a shuddering breath. "So maybe a better way of saying it now is that I love you. Because I do - so, so much. But I haven't been fair to you, not bringing up the things that I think cross lines. You don't love my carelessness or my lack of communication with you. I don't love your cruelty."
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
It makes no sense, with the opening of the drawer and the sound of something very large hitting the floor, but Remi's mind immediately imagines that Ronin has taken off his ring. Or, that it was already off, and is now being cast beside him. Perhaps that's why when he eventually turns a wary gaze over his shoulder, he's surprised to see the leather-bound sketchbook that so resembles the one tucked away in the back of one of
Ianto's cupboards.
None of the pages contain Remin looking particularly monstrous, but then no one hangs hard time's on the wall. Of course Ronin chooses to memorialize the good times and not the bad.
Tilting his head further over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Ronin's slumped shape, Remi returns his stare to the floorboards between his knees, his forehead resting on his open palms. "It doesn't feel like it." He says finally; softly. It isn't an argument or a criticism. And he knows, gods he knows he is hard to love. He wouldn't fault Ronin at all for one day finally breaking and saying that no, he didn't love the monstrous side of the Lullaby.
Lifting his head that he might look at his palms, half expecting to see blood there, the Lullaby can only shake his head with a weary sort of admittance. "I had to know." Remi murmurs softly. Not a defence, just an explanation. "And in order to know, he had to believe it. He had to think he was in danger. And right before...he had to think he really was going to die." Swallowing hard and rubbing at a spot of nothing in the middle of his hand, Remi begins to turn his chin over his shoulder to look at Ronin, but then thinks better of it. "I didn't know that he was as..." Weak wasn't the right word, and it takes Remi a moment to find something that will work in its place. "..broken. You never told me any of it. I thought he'd face up to death the way you or I would." Cruel? Remi wasn't sure he agreed. But then that hardly mattered, if it was how Ronin saw him.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
It doesn't feel like it, Remi says, and again Ronin can only think on the words, question them rather than trying to argue with them. Because in the end if that's how Remi feels, then something has gone wrong along the way. No number of sweet moments and feigned first dates and whispers in the dark will change that. "Well," he says softly, quietly, and for the first time there's a whisper of something that sounds hopeful in his voice. "I want you to feel like it. If there's something you're not getting from me, I want to know, so I can change it."
Ronin can only close his eyes to hear about Sunjata. Hearing that explanation from the other man, of course he can understand the need for it to seem so real. "I suppose I just assumed... that you enjoyed it," he mutters. "But I never asked you. It makes sense, if you didn't, why you would want me to make sure you were alright." Rubbing at his eyes with the back of his palm, Ronin feels suddenly exhausted. "I didn't think it was my story to tell." It's a pitiful explanation, but it's all he's got. "There's so much that hasn't been said, though. And it's destroying us."
