took a fall from a windy height

it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

"And what is my point of view?" Remi wonders, shivering slightly with heat, more than any sort of chill, to feel the puff of the Star's breath that accompanies his lips. The story Ronin tells is absolutely not one that Remi had ever considered before, but he can certainly understand how it might prompt a man like Cian to take it more seriously. "What if you say all of that, and I stand menacingly in the corner?" It's said as if it might be a joke, but honestly, if left to Remi, he might end up killing Cian should he find himself too tongue-tied.

The stairs are uncomfortable to climb, wet as he is everywhere, and no sooner have they entered their room than Remi is stripping himself naked. With his shirt pulled partially over his head, Ronin's question has the alchemist abruptly stopping. There's a sudden silence through the attuned bond, not because Remi is blocking anything out, but because his mind has suddenly been stripped blank. The only emotion present is one akin to sinful regret, and it's with fingers that threaten to shake that he finally removes his shirt.

"Did it." Remi mumbles, balling up his shirt and tossing it onto the ground. "It..it translates most closely to fuck, I suppose." He replies in a low voice, his tone sounding surprisingly like guilt. For all the world Remi looks like he might be back in Northaven, with Baron-Ronin having found out he was gay, such was his sudden shift in demeanour.

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

"Correct me if I'm way out, but I thought your point of view was that they can make you go to war, but they can't make you go to war with your loved ones," Ronin says, and though he's grinning after his husband, it's with an equal amount of discomfort that he climbs the spiral staircase up to their apartment. Remi starts to strip naked instantly and Ronin drops into the bathroom along the way to collect a couple of towels. The curtains aren't drawn yet, so whoever looks up will be greeted to the glorious sight of whatever they're up to naked, but that's their problem in Ronin's opinion.

"I will happily be your voice, if you'd just like to stand menacingly. You're very good at that," Ronin says while shrugging out of his shirt. Which is about the time that his husband completely pulls the proverbial rug out from beneath him; the Star furrows his brow, trying to make sense of the sudden and thorny tangle of emotions that prickle out of Remi. "I see," he murmurs, wiggling out of the rest of his clothes, dropping the rope to the ground and wrapping a towel around his waist.

Padding forward, he holds out the other towel for Remi. "You seem upset," he prompts, his tone gentle.

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it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

"No, that's the long and short of it. I just didn't know if you had a more elegant way of putting it." Then again, that really was rather elegant, and

It's very like Ronin to think of open windows and towels; Remi is content to fall clammy and wet into bed, had his thoughts not been so unceremoniously shoved down into one of the deepest and darkest holes his mind had ever dug.

Wordlessly accepting the towel but doing nothing with it, the alchemist swallows. He can hear the bones of his jaw subtly shift with the movement and is suddenly acutely aware of the chill against his skin. Half-blinking several times, his lashes fluttering, eventually Remi just sags onto the bed, the towel draped carelessly across his lap.

"There is a reason I do not speak like that." He replies, pale eyes trained on the floor and his accent thickening. Nibbling the inside of his cheek with relentless zeal, he pulls in a breath that seems to expand his entire body before he releases it in a slow stream. Rather than explain, Remi chooses instead to close his eyes. Around them their bedroom is replaced by a different one: shabby and dingy and small, it's poorly lit, smelling of stale air and alochol. There is a woman laying beneath a patchwork quilt that is threadbare and has been repaired so many times likely there is nothing left of the original. She is gaunt and dying, but singing with the most beautiful voice, in a language Ronin has recently heard Remi speak.

"It was the language my mother spoke." Remi explains, his words blowing away the illusion as one might blow out a candle.

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

It's been a long time since I heard you speak like that, as well, is what Ronin wants to say, hearing the subtle shift in his husband's voice as clear as if they'd just stepped back onto the streets of Northaven. He doesn't say it, of course, not often knowing when to hold his tongue, but having learned to do it with Remi. Instead, Ronin sinks down onto the bed beside the Lullaby, reaching out as if to take his hand when, all at once, the room is not their bedroom any more.

The memory, so heartbreakingly clear after all this time that the Star knows it has to be one that has stuck with Remi, has him simultaneously trying to take it all in but also wanting to focus on the only real thing in all of this - his husband. "It was...?" He's chewing the inside of his cheek as well, wanting to linger here and look at it a little more (maybe selfishly so) when it's just all... gone.

"I know she meant a lot to you... but you don't really talk about her." It's both an invitation and an understanding in one; based on the frailty of the woman in the bed, he's not all that surprised about it.

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it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

Remi's smile is faltering and quick on his lips. In his lap his fingers have knotted themselves together, and it's into his palms that the alchemist directs his attention. "Even now, I cannot think of the good memories, without the bad ones trying to crush them. So...sometimes it feels better not to think of them at all." Exhaling, his thumb tracing a line on his skin, Remi is both animated and not, all at the same time. His foot taps, but only once. He shifts, but it isn't anything that provides him comfort. He breathes in, but only because he has to.

"It is a language more often associated with commoners than not." He begins slowly. "If you can believe that commoners were stupid enough to have a hierarchy among themselves, that language indicated a very low standing, indeed. One my father was above." Coldly said, the thumb on Remi's palm has grown a claw that presses with utmost control against his skin. "He hated hearing anyone speak it. Mostly because it was used to talk about him when he was standing right there." Remi adds with a hollow laugh. "And because he was too stupid to learn it." Unlike Remi, who had taken to it like a fish to water.

"When she died...he forbid it. It only took a few whippings for me to forget I had ever learned it." Said with a hatred almost as old as Remi was, the alchemist just looks over his shoulder at the Star with dull eyes. "Ma mi sono ricordato." He whispers, the words flowing off his tongue as easy as anything, sounding all the more disconsolate for their intrinsic musicality.

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

There's nothing that Ronin can really say to that - difficult as his upbringing sometimes could be, his life was positively luxurious compared to the sick mother, abusive father and life in a wagon that Remi came through to get here. So he doesn't try to offer anything with words, merely sitting a touch closer to the Lullaby, reaching up to let gentle fingers trace along his bare shoulders and down his spine.

"I never knew," he says softly. Even though Ronin had been comparatively roguish in the Storm Guard, knocking knees with commoners and nobles alike, he had clearly never delved quite that deeply into Northwind's underbelly. Not enough to hear such a language.

And he's surprised at the music in it, particularly when it comes in his husband's timbre. For all of the quiet hate and cold anger rolling out of Remi, the smile on Ronin's face is warm and utterly enthralled. His free hand moves to try to tease the claw away from accidentally (or on purpose) puncturing into the alchemist's palm, and he leans in to drop a kiss against Remi's shoulder.

"It sounds beautiful," he says. "And your mother had a beautiful voice, too. I always forget... how much you've been through."

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it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

"You wouldn't have." Remi says with a shake of his head, wanting to release Ronin from whatever guilt he might have been feeling. "It was spoken most often on the road, in Northwind. And of course, anyone who moved around enough to have learned it obviously couldn't have been too well-bred, or settled." He adds as if the explanation might help soothe away whatever part of the Star that felt as if he should have known.

Drawing attention to his hands does indeed have the effect Ronin intends, leaving the alchemist entirely man once more. On the outside, at least. "Everything about her was." Then, with a small smile, adds, "Bellissima". It wouldn't take a linguist to work out what that translated to.

'It's fine.' Remi replies, his head leaning softly back so that it can rest against Ronin's. "It isn't anything more than anyone else." He adds, uncomfortable with having his past made to seem novel in comparison to anyone else's even if perhaps it was. "I suppose it isn't surprising that it was Vai leaving that made me remember."

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

"Ah." It does soothe his guilt somewhat, but not entirely - mainly it's guilt because he's so keen to know more about this suddenly brand new part of Remi. And that isn't entirely fair of Ronin, because perhaps the alchemist wanted to just tuck this back away in his memories. It's what stops him from asking too many questions unprompted, the Star taking Remi's lead with anything he wants to talk about. And the other man leans back, he brushes his lips across Remi's cheek and reaches back for one of the blankets on the unmade bed, dragging it around them both.

"Bellissima," he tries for himself, quietly, and with the sort of reverence that speaks of a fear of getting it wrong. Clearing his throat, Ronin glances back at Remi with a sad smile. "Tell me about her?" he asks. "What did she do, out on the road?" The other man is free, of course, to absolutely tell him to fuck off - and should he do so, Ronin will drop the subject with no questions asked.

Letting out a long sigh, he nods his agreement(ish) about it being fine. They both know it isn't, but he can appreciate not wanting to parade it all out in the light of day. "It's still yours, though," he points out with another gentle kiss. "And... yeah. I can see why that would bring it up for you. I think you should go and see her soon, maybe."

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it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

This certainly a wound, for which I'd like a bandaid. Remi cautions the Star as he draws nearer, not that the alchemist sinks away from his husband's touch at all.

Smiling despite himself to hear the word tugged out in an accent that while musical, doesn't possess the same rolling syllables as his has. The question has Remi tensing, eyes blinking away ( or encouraging?) the imagery that suddenly appears behind his eyes. "She was a herbalist, at first." He manages at last, his voice scratchy and congested sounding. "I'm sure she saw more of the world than anyone else I had ever met. She learned from wise-women everywhere she travelled about what herbs in their lands did what...and she would gather them, and bring them back to the city to sell, or trade."

Closing his eyes and sinking into the feeling of Ronin's kiss, Remi exhales slowly. "I remember once...my father demanding to know why, if she was such a skilled herbalist, couldn't she cure herself." Boyish and sad, Remi's voice is hardly a whisper now. "At the time I always thought it was his way of saying he did not want her to die. But now? Now I think he was mocking her."

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

A bandaid doesn't have to be sex. And some wounds need bandaids. Ronin draws the blanket more securely around the two of them, so he can slip his arms around his husband and warm the chill from his skin. He gives Remi all the time he needs to answer or not, busying himself by drawing absent patterns along the alchemist's back and twirling one of his curls around his fingers. "A herbalist," he repeats with a soft smile. "That makes a lot of sense."

If only the memory could remain so lighthearted, and Ronin's expression grows a shade darker to hear yet another wonderful snippet of information about Remi's father. "It was probably the only shot he could take at her by that point," he mumbles. "How old were you, when you lost her...?" Why have they never had these conversations? How had it never seemed like something worth talking about?

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it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

No, but I want it to be. Remi replies, not at all attempting to hide the flush on his cheeks. Ronin would have to be the strong one, just now. Remi hadn't the heart for willpower and drudging up long left memories, not with Ronin's fingertips whispering across his skin and his warmth sinking down into his bones.

"Oh no. He could still do that." The alchemist replies in a voice suddenly devoid of emotion. "Even on days when she couldn't lift her head much less walk, he berated her for not doing the washing."

Birthdays were not a thing celebrated by the Abruzzo's and so recalling a specific age was slightly difficult. "Six or seven, I think. Eight at the most." Chewing the inside of his cheek and peering hard into the cobwebs of his memory, he nods. "I never wanted to talk about it." Remi remarks, feeling the slow sway of Ronin's emotions. "There never seemed to be any point in bringing it up."

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

Yes, I probably would too, with wounds like yours. Ronin takes a slow breath and hums it out again, steeling himself to keep his nerve and dredge up his willpower to stop them from dealing with things in such unhealthy ways. And so, catching the pink that flushes across Remi's cheeks, Ronin keeps him close but stills his fingers from further teasing. They can get warm and keep close without it getting sexual, right? Right.

Further talk about the alchemist's father is enough to throw cold water over his libido, and the Star swallows past a lump in his throat. "What happened to her?" he wonders. A herbalist with connections, it seems impossible to think that a mere flu could have snatched Remi's mother away from him. It doesn't matter, he realises, and he shakes his head as if to tell the other man he doesn't have to answer.

"I don't blame you for not wanting to talk about it. But I'm glad I'm hearing about it now," he says slowly, glancing across at his husband. "Suddenly it makes a lot of sense. You, I mean. How you could be so gentle, for so long... but you still carried all this darkness in you." Downy feathers and a scorpion's sting, that's what Remi Taliesin is made of.

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it was me who wrote onto the wooden door your name

Right...

"There are different words for it, but it always ends the same." Cancer, in more contemporary terminology. "Malattia ossea." Remi offers. "Sickness of the bones."

Raising a brow and looking softly surprised, Remi looks over his shoulder, pale eyes scanning Ronin's face wonderingly. "I would say I was meek, rather than gentle." Leaning back into Ronin's touch, Remi swallows hard. "I would like to think I carry none of him in me, but...I suppose that is not wrong. When we first came here, Ludo lured me out into the Woods. It showed me images of my mother, and then images of my father drowning her." Exhaling a puff of air that sounded like it wanted to be a laugh, Remi shakes his head. "We had been here for...just a few days and he was the farthest thing from my mind. And even then Ludo plucked it from my memories almost instantly."

it'll last there longer than in this body i can stay

I will fight the end

"Ah." Ronin recognises the term, at least, even if not in Remi's mother tongue (literally, in this case), and he offers a sad smile of understanding. "My grandfather suffered the same. Malignancy, it was called among the bluebloods." A vague enough term, but it was the same end regardless of the class. Leaning in, Ronin kisses the alchemist's forehead and closes his eyes. "Regardless... I'm sorry that you had to lose her so young."

Oh, but there's more. Ronin winces, even thinking about those early days, the things that the gods had done to his (at the time) friend. "Call it what you like," he murmurs. "There was a sweetness in you that exists even now, and it's the most wonderfully attractive thing." Smiling, Ronin draws back enough to stop himself from swooping in and kissing the alchemist properly.

"We're more than just our parents. You might carry both of them with you, but it doesn't make you who you are."

'til the end is here

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