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!
Tobi frowns, turning toward Finn as they reach her door. "But..you hate staying in other places." Her office might be the exception, or at least, it had been. But she's seen how Finn fidgets and mentally exhausts himself when he's put into unfamiliar situations. Offering him a slanted grin, Tobi rolls her eyes as she unlocks and pushes her door open. "Oh so now we're listening to Dr. realnames advice?"
Her amusement falls away as she turns, her brows pushing together beneath her thick bangs. "You can't be alone." Tobi murmurs, very much having misunderstood. "You need to be monitored. Coming off of snapdragon and dreamdust...Finn, you're going to need help."
I hate being in my apartment too, these days, is what he wants to say but doesn't, and he ends up shuffling his feet awkwardly, chewing over honesty that wants to spill between his lips. And it wins, in the end; so mentally battered and dosed and stressed is the Spyglass, he doesn't have much other choice.
"I don't want to be alone," he admits. "But I don't want to be your burden either, Tobi. It's a long way up to the attic, and you are already very tired. So I can find somewhere to stay closer to where you live, for the time being." The logical answer, of course, is for Finn to stay with her, but would never presume such a thing.
"...Also, I never said his advice wasn't sound. It was his attitude I found problematic," he says, the smallest hint of a smirk on his face.
Tobi's apartment exudes cheerfulness, what with her bright yellow walls and adorably mismatched furniture patterns. Everything is orderly and tidy enough—probably not for Finn's standards, but such is a bar the doctor will never reach. It is a place that screams of the woman October was before she was pregnant: chipper, sunny, practical. Now were she to decorate, everything would be covered in a layer of soft fur and there would always be food within reach no matter where you were in the apartment.
Slipping off her shoes with a drawn-out moan of approval, Tobi bites at the inside of her cheek before her hand moves out toward him slightly. "You aren't my burden, Finn." She says softly, wanting to push him onto the couch, shift, and curl up against his chest and nap for a few years. "And you aren't a burden, either."
Tobi's smile warbles with her uncertainty before she pulls in a breath. "Stay with me? It will make everything so much simpler for the both of us, and...well, my bed is larger than yours." So we won't have to touch, she wants to offer to comfort him, but selfish hope keeps her lips together.
He doesn't expect his eyes to sting, as she reaches out a hand for him, as she tells him things that he simply can't believe right now. It doesn't mean that they don't help, to hear them - they do, more than she will ever know - and it's with a quiet nod that he steps forward to slip his arms around her suddenly, holding her as close as possible given the circumstances. "Thank you," he mumbles, before releasing her as if realising he's encroached into her space.
"I... as long as you don't mind, I don't want to intrude," he says, the words tumbling out before he can do a thing to stop them. So he bites his tongue deliberately, and then tries again. "I would really appreciate it, Tobi." He nods. "Where is your kitchen? I can take a look at what ingredients are there. You can call to me from the sofa, if you like."
He pauses just long enough for her to begin to read into things, so when Finn steps forward, it's with lips pulled into an O of surprise that Tobi receives him with open arms. Her belly prevents the closeness she craves, and just as she's considering spinning in his arms, he's mumbling into her neck and pulling away.
Laughing, Tobi tries to catch one of his hands as they move from around her. "Finn, I'm very pregnant with the child of a man I only slept with once. I feel like a whale, and though I very much do still like you, I don't have it in me to lie to you to make you feel better." Not that she ever really did, but certainly now it was the farther thing from her mind. "So when I say you can stay, I mean it." If she's managed to catch his hand, her fingers will pulse around his. "I want you to." It's easily said. Like so much of their strange relationship, what might have been some romcom moment with cheesy music is instead just two awkward souls navigating waters they've no place being in. But it's genuine and heartfelt and if Tobi didn't need to suddenly pee and if there wasn't a beach ball of skin between them, she might have tried to kiss him.
'That way.' Tobi says with a nod, indicating the hallway behind Finn. 'And I'll be in the bathroom. Just to soak my feet." She adds this latter part quickly, with a crooked smile. She might be a doctor and comfortable with all sorts of things, but they're certainly not at the peeing-with-the-door-open stage yet.
He allows the capture of his hand, fingers gently squeezing against Tobi's as he hears her out. Finn's lips part as if to apologise for the part he's played in putting her into this situation, but he's promptly silenced by the news that she wants him to stay. That brings an unexpected warmth to his chest that shines out of him in a bashful smile, and he nods, sealing the deal. He would stay, then. "Alright," he murmurs, following her gaze towards the kitchen.
Luckily for Tobi, Finn's social awkwardness means that it doesn't even cross his mind that she might be doing anything other than soaking her feet, the Spyglass slipping into Tobi's kitchen and finding a scrap of paper and a pencil to begin writing two separate and detailed lists. One holds the things currently in the doctor's cupboards, the other (much longer) is everything they might need for the next... ten days or so, probably.
Only when he's finished and staring down at the paper does the reality hit him, about what he's about to do and why. Finn frowns, but there's something quietly determined in the set of his shoulders, and he nods gently to himself.
While Finn writes (and probably silently judges), Tobi has stripped herself of her clothing without thought. It's her house and she's basically a whale, and gods she just wants to be comfortable. Tugging on a fuzzy yellow bathrobe with ducks embroidered on it, she plops herself onto the side of the tub and turns the water on.
With a contented moan as the cool water begins to lap against her feet, Tobi closes her eyes and leans back against the ornate ceramic tiles that line her bathroom. 'Did you know that in some Outlander cultures, they believe babies are brought to their parents by large birds called storks?" The doctor calls out cheerfully. "And in some places they have to physically cut the baby out of the mother. They call it a sea-section." Such things didn't happen in Stormbreak obviously, not with the medical advancements being what they were.
Blinking himself out of his thoughts as Tobi's voice rings out to him, Finn folds the list and places it in his back pocket, giving the kitchen a thorough glance around as if he might be able to memorise it just from looking. "Is that so? Where do they believe the storks get the babies from?" he wonders, leaving the kitchen so he might be able to hear her more clearly. Already he can feel the snapdragon in his veins start to ebb a little; it's nothing more than a niggle for now, but it's a rot that will fester and grow with time.
"A sea-section? That's an odd name for it," he murmurs; he doesn't imagine it has anything to do with the sea. Or if it does, that makes even less sense. "I've made a list of everything to get. Is there anything you'd like that isn't food?" he asks, already glancing around at the bookshelves and the other knick-knacks in the room.
"A...cabbage patch, I think." She doesn't sound certain about this, and were Finn in the bathroom to see, he'd find her face comically scrunched up. "Or maybe that's a different story. I'm not sure." Tobi shrugs, placing a hand on her belly and trying to peer over herself into the water below to spy her feet. She absolutely can't, and so she's forced to splash them in the water just to make sure.
"About a thousand things, but if you go and get them all, I will have chewed up the baseboards out of hunger by the time you're back." Given her canine shift, this isn't actually out of the realm of possibility.
'Don't forget to get things for you too. You're going to need lots of fluids with electrolytes." It's said far too casually, but such is now their strange living situation: Finn getting things for Tobi's cravings, and Tobi reminding him to prep for the shock of withdrawal.
"A cabbage patch?" Finn repeats, gazing up from where he'd been looking at her books again, his brows just as furrowed. It makes even less sense than the stork. But this is the most natural things have felt between them since... honestly, since before he'd left for Torchline, and the small smile on the Spyglass's face is a dead giveaway to his quiet enjoyment.
He nods, even if she can't see it, and heads towards the door. "That isn't good for you or the baby." Our son. "So I had better head out now. I won't forget what you mentioned." He's already writing them down as he calls out his goodbye, ambling out of the apartment and clicking the door shut behind him.
Finn is practical and logical even on a bad day, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that he wastes no time when out on a shopping trip. Granted, he's had to juggle more bags than he thought would be necessary on the way back (forethought has evaded him, evidently), and Tobi will only here a soft thump as his request to come back in. When she opens the door, it will be to almost half a dozen shopping bags masquerading as the Spyglass.
"Finn. I'm going to nickname you echo if you keep doing that." Tobi calls playfully from the bathroom, before chuckling to herself. "It's good for my teeth. How do you think they stay so white?" It's because she brushes them after every meal, actually, a fact Finn will soon learn firsthand.
'Mmm, okay by—" But the door has already clicked shut, leaving Tobi to contemplate how strange it is that in a matter of hours Finn has become her...roommate?..and is out getting them both dinner.
Unable to get the plug out of the drain (Finn, heeeelp), Tobi has left the water in the tub and has been attempting to clean up her apartment. It isn't untidy, but there are certain things that perhaps Finn doesn't need to see. Such things are hidden away in drawers and at the back of closets.
Opening the door, still wearing her bathrobe that, because of how large her stomach is, ends in the middle of her thighs, it's hard to say which of them looks more ridiculous. "I couldn't unplug the drain and I dropped a ball under the piano that I can't reach and I can't tell if I've left a candle burning somewhere or if I'm just smelling phantom things." Tobi says with a bright smile.
Two stormy eyes peek out from amongst the bags that Finn holds, and though there isn't much of his face on display, it does flush a bright pink to see Tobi in an ill-fitting bathrobe. "Uh," he says, helpfully, and ambles as best he can into the apartment. Only when he's able to set the bags down does he give her his full attention, though he's taken out a bag of chewy toffees to offer to her at the same time. (She'd said she wanted to melt them, but this might work for now?)
The word home has anything he wanted to say withering on his tongue; all he's able to offer the doctor is a small, relieved sort of smile. "Thank you," he murmurs to the floor, crossing the room to fetch the ball from under the piano - and blowing out a candle on a small end-table along the way.
"I think I was able to get enough to cover us for the next few days. I couldn't get you any goat cheese, though - did you know that is meant to be bad for you?" Finn says it with an air of genuine confusion, but (obviously) he'd read and questioned every ingredient he'd purchased.
You'd think Tobi was some starving house-bound monster given how her fingers immediately flew toward the bag of toffee. Had there been any resistance at all on the bag or the wrapper of the candy she plucked from within, she would have probably just put the whole thing into her mouth. Paper had fibre, right? "mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm." She moans, chewing so hard and fast that she gives herself a cramp in her jaw, which her fingers immediately sought out to soothe. "nn!"
"Oh." Tobi murmurs, her mouth full of toffee and her eyes falling on the very obviously placed candle that she'd utterly missed. Holding out her hand for the ball—her eyes lighting up despite the fact that the last thing she wanted to do was run around—Tobi frowns at the mention of goat cheese. "But..." She begins to protest, but yes, he is absolutely right. "I did eat an entire plate of sushi the day that you left, so I probably shouldn't push my luck." Sighing as if having just been told her life's dreams have been put on hold, she reaches out for a bag that she might help Finn begin to unload.
The ball is returned to her waiting hands, Finn hiding a smile (and failing) at her antics with the toffees as he moves to gather the bags again and move them into the kitchen. He passes her one which is light - on purpose - while he lugs the others along with him. "I will deal with the bathtub after soup," he promises her, beginning to take out all the things both requested and needed, not that basil leaves with just honey on them would taste all that great.
As Tobi might be able to guess, Finn automatically unloads the groceries with a precision and categorisation that is almost military - it's a wonder he hasn't colour coded the vegtables, honestly. "It won't be long before you are able to eat cheese and see your feet again," he remarks, searching around for a pot large enough to cook in. "How are you feeling?"
