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!
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
When Tobi was told that there was a rather handsome blue-eyed man here for an STI screen and full blood workup, her heart simultaneously soared and plummeted. Assuming this was just Milligan's way of saying FiNn Is HeRe, October takes a moment to take inventory of her emotions that she might know what needed to be put aside in order to properly do her job.
Her lungs feel as though they're full of not only air, but wirey and unhappy anticipation as well. Her muscles are bright and boxy with adrenaline, and the balls of her feet itch and make her want to run. With shifts of predator and prey both, the doctor is forced try and temper her instincts as they flash competing signals behind her eyes.
Has she begun to sweat? Gods, she thinks she has.
Do your job first. A voice soothingly tells her. Oh, you mean running a full sex panel on the father of your child? Guess you know where he's been all season. A snarkier voice replies.
Biting her bottom lip and giving herself one—and only one—moment of full panic, Tobi takes a deep breath, and enters the exam room of a handsome man with blue eyes.
The rains had stopped and a hot, golden sun had peeped through, and in a quiet moment in the afternoon on the first day of Longheat, Finn uses his compass and travels home. He appears outside the Tower wrapped in light, airy silks (not blue, thankfully), smelling of fragrant tropical flowers and wine, and with his bag still slung over his shoulder, he walks to the infirmary.
Once upon a time and long, long ago, Finn had walked this walk before. He'd been a lot younger, and a lot more (less?) fragile, and the high walls and intricate sculptures sprawling across the interior of the Tower had seemed intimidating. Not so, now. Now he barely seems to see them at all, and the same goes for anyone he runs into.
He says a quiet hello to Milligan, in fact, as he's checked in and led to an examination room, taking a seat on the bed and waiting for the doctor. She's someone he knows well, but you wouldn't think it with the way his eyes flick up to her face.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
"Good morning." It's cheerfully said, though, for those who know Tobi well, it isn't her brand of cheerful. This is her doctor voice, which only makes sense, given the man seated on the bed.
"This will be just a few vials of blood and a quick visual exam." She explains, though given the way not-Finn is dressed Tobi can't imagine that this is his first time. Indeed, he seems comfortable enough. Flashing him a quick and perfunctory smile as she reaches into a drawer for a pair of gloves, she glances at him over her shoulder. "Any complaints?" She wonders, slipping her hands into the powdered blue latex and stretching it over her long fingers.
Already the adrenaline she'd felt is pooling darkly in her stomach, coiling and churning into a bitter disappointment that she attentively tries to keep from showing on her face.
Everything feels foggy, like he's watching someone else go through it. Someone whose hair has no curls in it, whose eyes are the wrong shade of blue. It's like watching a show at the theatre, and the player in his role is doing a pretty good job at keeping it together. "It is good to see you," he says softly. And it is. He only wishes that he could remember the feel of Tobi's fingertips brushing across his skin, the warmth of her lips, the feel of her body wrapped around his own--
Finn's fingers flinch against his knee, and he hitches in a breath that stifles his response, at first. "N-no." He shakes his head when he can finally get the words out. "No complaints. Do whatever you need to do." Then its to change and to start writing his reports to Cian.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
'Oh?' Tobi feigns a polite smile at that, as her dark eyes rise to glance at her patient's face. "Most don't have quite that reaction when they have to see a doctor." She points out, while thinking that implying it was Finn waiting for her was perhaps one of the meaner linguistical twists Milligan has used.
'We'll take your blood first.' Tobi says kindly, noting the way the man flinches at her touch. Perhaps she wrongly assumed his profession, or perhaps he just doesn't like doctors, no matter what he'd said earlier. 'There is an eye chart across the room, if you need something to distract yourself with while I do this." Reaching for a vial and a needle, Tobi holds out her hands for not-Finn's arm that she might affix a rubber tie around his bicep.
'If at any point you feel lightheaded, let me know. I'll need at least three vials for all the tests we need to run." Finn was old hat when it came to this sort of thing. But the man on the bed? He might have been a fainter, for all Tobi knew.
"Most don't get to see you," Finn points out, and it might be charming for all this other man's face shows expression. For the Spyglass though, it's just a statement of fact. A statement made from very far away, within the lockboxes of his mind. Nodding to Tobi, he surrenders his arm easily enough and stares at the eye chart across the way - it's one he has examined many a time in his life at the Tower. "I know," he mumbles, rubbing at his chest - and feeling, suddenly, the charm still flat against his skin.
"Oh." It's a soft remark; a thorn jabbing into his palm and reminding him that all that has happened quiet, we don't think about it has happened to him. To him. To Finn. Wrapping his fingers about the charm, he loops it over his head and, as if drawing away a sheet from over his head, the man who sits on the bed is suddenly wearing clothes a shade too large. Silver and pink scars peek through the silk where it slips off his shoulder and across his back, and his curls are in need of cutting.
And he looks very, very tired. "I'm sorry. I didn't realise I was still wearing it."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Tobi rolls her eyes at the flattering, not at all charmed by it. Handsome as the man might be, his pretty eyes and casual charisma do very little for her, especially now. 'How very lucky for you, then.' She replies dryly, with a good-natured smile just the same. Only distantly registering not-Finn's familiarity, Tobi just nods and tightens the band until the veins on his arm become prominent.
Just as she's about to press the needle into his arm, not-Finn fidgets, and there's a soothing remark on the doctor's lips that's stunned into silence with the drastic and silent change that occurs before her. Tobi doesn't faint. She doesn't scream, or shake, or do much of anything. Her hands are still on his upper arm, but the tension in her fingers has fallen away as she stares open-mouthed at Finn.
At Finn.
As if a harsh breeze has suddenly roared through the room, Tobi's skin feels clammy and cold as her heart stutters and then races. "Finn?" His name is hardly more than a whisper, just her shocked breath forced out into the shape of his name.
"Hello, Doctor Hart," Finn says again, though his voice is his own this time, his tone low and very polite. He doesn't look at her - suddenly everything feels too close and far away all at the same time. He doesn't dare to even turn his head; there are still chains of bruises along his neck and his chest, fainter marks on his arms and hips beneath the silken wraps, and his lips are numb. He doesn't know if it's from dreamdust or just because of all that's happening.
Is he alright, though? He jerks his head in a motion that isn't a nod, but isn't anything else either. "I am back after my assignment," he explains. "I need to be checked for everything, and given a visual examination. Then I will need to write my report," He gently shifts his arm, which is beginning to lose circulation from the tie around his bicep. "Are... are you alright?"
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
He won't see it, but the smile on Tobi's lips as he offers his customary greeting, while small, is as golden as they come. Her eyes fill instantly with tears she doesn't bother to try and blink away, at least not until clarity returns and she sees the state he's in. Bruises swarm around his neck, and based on the pattern of them, she can only assume they continue on his shoulders and ribs as well. If she were imaginative, she'd expect them more prominently on his waist and hips as well. Soon, she won't have to imagine.
His words make her blink, stunned. It's the same clipped tone she'd come to expect from him, save for the past few weeks. He's polite and perfunctory, to the point, and blunt in a way that makes her knees threaten to give out. Pressing her teeth together, Tobi nods, and then nods some more.
No Finn, I'm pregnant, and it's yours, but in a moment I'm going to need to ask you to lay down, spread your legs, and inspect you for STI symptoms.
"Oh." She says in a small voice. 'Right.' Not bothering to wipe the tears that have fallen onto her cheeks, Tobi nods again. It isn't like Finn is looking anyway. And so, she gets on with it. Inserting a needle into his arm, Tobi removes the rubber band and watches the wave of dark crimson flow into the vial.
He doesn't see her tears and he barely feels the scratch of the needle against his skin as she begins to take his blood. It's nothing - it's as good as happening to someone else, and he swallows hard only when he realises how dry his throat and his mouth have become. "Did you get my letter?" he asks softly, wondering whether she would have known or cared if he was going away.
Of course he knows, secretly, that she would have cared, but those carefully carved steps forward through the previous seasons have been washed away like the tide over wet sand. There is no forward for Finn that he can see. There is only now, existing one moment to another while someone does something with his body that he's aware of only in the sense that he knows it must be taking place.
"Would you like me to lay down now?" he asks, once three vials have been collected.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
"mmm...mmm." Tobi manages, swallowing hard and pressing her lips together to keep the sob caged behind her teeth. "Did..you get mine?" She manages eventually, similarly wondering if he cared. Her eyes sting and the back of her throat begins to ache; if there was a medical reason that trying not to cry should hurt so much, she doesn't know of it.
No Finn. I want you to wrap your arms around me. I want to kiss you. I want to tell you everything that's happened.
I want to see you smile and hear you say my name.
'Please, and—' Her stomach clenches as it might do just before throwing up, only this is done in an effort to keep her voice even. "—if you're wearing anything beneath if you could take it off."
Tobi feels as though she's suddenly inhabiting the memory of herself, from years ago. Here is Finn, distant and painfully compliant as he had been then, and now here she is: inspecting the ways he's been mistreated, seeing the marks on him instead of the man, and trying to make everything as painless for him as she can.
Only she isn't that Tobi anymore, and this isn't a memory.
It's a nightmare.
"No...?" Finn isn't aware that he's got letters. "No one was told where I had gone. How did you send letters?" Because of course he's only been back for a few minutes - he's come to the clinic quite without thinking, in fact, knowing only that this was the protocol he followed when he had first come to the Tower. The more practical thing, probably, would be to go and check in with Cian. Only... well, here he is instead.
He does as he's told, shifting to take off his clothes (Thomas's clothes, rather) and laying back on the bed so Tobi can make her inspections. His eyes fix on the ceiling this time, like shutters drawn down over the storm raging beyond them. "I am sorry, that I wasn't able to tell you where I was going. No one was allowed to know."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
The shivery breath Tobi pulls in speaks to the ridiculousness of the answer she's about to give. "Well...just to your apartment. I didn't have anywhere else to send them, and..." Was it fair, to say what she was about to? "..I really missed you. It felt like..like you weren't so far away, knowing I could still write to you." Her voice grows softer until it's more or less just a whisper at the end. This is both because of what she's saying as much as it's because of the story Finn's bare skin reveals.
Standing at his side and looking down on him, it's hard to imagine that this body was the same one that had been able to make her squirm with ecstasy. The same one she'd felt so safe wrapped up in. "You told me enough that I knew it wasn't your fault." She says with a small shake of her head, as her fingertips softly press against the bones of his hips and pelvis that she might determine if there's any damage to the muscles around his bones. 'But the rest of what you said..." Tobi bites the inside of her cheek; the bruising patterns on Finn's body speak of hands far larger than her own. Far stronger, and less gentle. "I could never forget you, Finn. I could never want to." It's surreal, to say such things while looking at Finn's naked body, more tanned than when she'd last saw it, and splotched with purples and mottled yellows.
"My apartment? Oh, up in the attic," he says, the words sounding utterly foreign on his lips. He remembers the Halenani rather than the Tower, the airy rooms and the smell of fresh sheets, so foreign and yet so similar to Molly's that he's unsure, sometimes whether they weren't simply the same place with a veil thrown over the time. Just like he was the same person with another man's face pulling all the expressions.
"I haven't been up there yet." It sounds like an apology, and he closes his eyes as she leans over him to inspect the state of his body. A few of the bruises are undoubtedly still tender, bringing a twitch around Finn's eyes and lips, but there doesn't seem to be any major injury.
Tobi speaks of the context of his letter and Finn feels his eyes sting even behind closed lids. "It might be better if you did," he almost whispers. "I don't know who I am any more. I don't know if you will ever see that man again."
