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!
The shadows that rose and swallowed the sun have wormed their way beneath his eyelids now, flooding his thoughts black. Stitches in his skin are fraying, and as they pop and burst the blood in his veins comes creeping out, groping for the light.
Finn drowns in it. He screams. Sometimes he calls for his mother, but she never comes.
How can she, when she is naught but a broken rag at the bottom of the Falling, flayed flesh never recovered, bones licked clean by the tides.
All of this he might have told Tobi. None of this he remembers.
When he next comes to (and how many times does that make it now?) his sheets are soaked with sweat. There's a tremor in his spine that feels so violent he's afraid he might vomit up his skeleton if he isn't careful, and with bloodshot and stormy eyes, he seeks out something familiar. "I can't do this," he tells no one, his throat raw. "Please - I don't want to do this any more."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Though Finn asked October to be his friend rather than his doctor, right now the state of him forces her to be the latter. Golden light stretches out across the room, moving predictably with the hours, bathing Finn in its sweet warmth as he rots from the inside out.
Tobi has had the forethought to line her mattress with plastic which makes changing the sheets quite easy. It isn't comfortable, but then, neither of them are sleeping no matter how long they might spend with their eyes closed. "But you are doing it." Tobi replies in a sing-song voice, her hands cradling his head that she might keep him from thrashing too violently.
Pressing a cool cloth to Finn's forehead, the doctor reaches onto her nightstand where a bowl of ice sits mostly melted. She doesn't mind this of course: the liquid can be used to cool the Spyglass's forehead and cheeks in the hours to come. Not unlike a hunter, there is no part of October's preparation that is not thought-out in meticulous detail, and which will not be used in its entirety. "Here." She coos softly, running a small fragment of ice over Finn's lips.
The water and ice burn, and Finn winces away from it at first. But the angel whose voice keeps urging him on has never let him shy back from it yet, so it's with a groan (he's too dehydrated to sob anymore) that he lets the cold pierce into him. His hand trembles terribly as he reaches up to try and capture her wrist, though whether it's to pull her fingers away from his lips or to press them closer is beyond either of their comprehension.
Like Icarus, it's on shredded wings that Finn tumbles into himself, and he shudders out a breath. "Doctor Hart." He whispers her name like a prayer, as if noticing her presence for the first time in a very long while. Clarity only brings further misery, though, and he squeezes his eyes shut. "How long has it been, please?"
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
In the state he's in, sapped of everything though he might be, Tobi knows he has the strength to truly wound her if the demons that use his eyelids as blankets have anything to say about it. And so she keeps her shifts close to the surface. Tracing gentle lines back and forth across Finn's split and chapped lips, Tobi tries to force a few drops of water into his mouth before her warmth reduces the shard of ice to nothing.
"Hello Finn." Gazing down at him with a sunny smile and dark eyes that are confident in his ability to see this through, Tobi reminds herself that Finn is only this way because of his want for clarity when their baby is born. She might love him, for that. "About halfway." Tobi replies, answering Finn with a metric his mind might understand, rather than simply the number of days or hours which will likely make little sense. Four days, is the real answer. Four days of eating crackers and crunching ice cubes for the both of them. Four days of rushing to the bathroom to pee only to race back to Finn's bed to keep him from biting down on his own tongue. Four days of reading him Outlander stories loudly enough to make her voice hoarse in an effort to drown out his pleas for death and life and release.
About halfway. Finn doesn't know whether to be relieved or to be horrified by the turn of events, and his lips part to speak, only for the ice to drip cool water against his lips and tongue. "Perhaps we can go to the Celestine after this is done?" he suggests, his voice little more than a rasp in the warm room. "Like we planned to?" Before this. Before he'd been called to Torchline to scoop out his brains and his free will and set them on his bedside table.
It's likely his first moment of lucidity in these past four days, between screaming hallucinations and full body aches, between tremors and sweating and sickness and begging for something to take the edge off, if only for a few minutes. Blinking up at Tobi, his fingers slip away from hers, and he swallows hard. "How are you?"
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
'I would really like that.' And she would; it being unrealistic didn't need to be mentioned. While Finn fought monsters and demons that wore his own face, Tobi would think of snowy walks and the sound of hooves crunching in the snow.
"Well I've been able to catch up on a lot of my reading." Tobi replies in a bright voice, nodding toward the stack of books now littered carelessly on the floor. (This is half her doing, and half thanks to Finn's flailing legs). She knows that isn't what he's asking, but she also cares for him far too much to ruin what few moments of clarity he has with the truth: her bones ache, her skin is stretched thin, she's exhausted, and their son as if reading Tobi's thoughts, has been practicing making snow-angels inside of her belly.
'Do you want to try and sit up? We could walk around the couch, or you could try and take a shower?'
"Me too," Finn says softly, a wobbly smile flickering across his lips. He peeks up and around the room as she mentions her reading, even though the small movement makes his head pound; Tobi is lucky that he's unable to see the obvious, to realise how haggard they both are. Humming out a note of pure bliss at the thought of a shower, Finn risks a nod. It doesn't make him sick, so that's a plus.
"Yes, please. I think I could really use a wash." He daren't ask Tobi if that's true - he is not an egotistical man, but even he has the decency to feel a little embarrassment at the terrible state of himself. "Do you think I am through the worst of it?" Finn has a horrible feeling that her answer will be no, because he isn't that lucky.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
'You absolutely could.' Tobi agrees without hesitation, but all things considered, she probably doesn't all that nice either. They're both sweaty, though at least Finn doesn't have cracker crumbs in his cleavage. Unable to lie to Finn as his friend or doctor, Tobi gives her head a single, solemn shake. "Almost. There will likely be one more bought like this. Your body has nearly flushed all the toxins out. You've done this once already this time, and you've done it before too. You can do it again." She offers, shifting away from him to try and roll herself off the other side of the bed.
Swallowing down a groan, Tobi instead stretches her arms over her head to try and remind her body that unlike Finn, it is more than capable of movement. It strongly disagrees.
Moving across the room without bothering to step over her books, Tobi holds an arm out for Finn. At some point she's changed out of her bathrobe (having spilled too many things on it), and now she just wears a faded grey shirt that might once have had some sort of emblem on it, but is now characteristic of the sort of thing that lives beneath beds and balled-up in closets.
Sighing, Finn clenches his fists and gives a stiff nod to Tobi. Another bout like this one, then. Hopefully he will be unconscious or unaware for most of it. As the doctor leaves the bed, he turns his focus on his own situation, trying to cajole his limbs into organising themselves. Like Tobi, they are able but not willing, and it's without an ounce of grace that he slumps off the edge of the bed.
Groaning and seizing whatever bit of the wall he can get hold of to stay up, Finn presses his eyes shut until the world kindly stops spinning. "Alright. To the bathroom." He shivers, starting a very wobbly route across the room and flashing a smile to Tobi, however weak it might be. "I should be alright. You should take care of yourself for a little bit."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
In other contexts hearing Finn all but collapse out of bed should have had her running to his side. But as he hasn't moved in days and given that Tobi is in no position to help him up, and, as he doesn't sound as though he's broken anything, all Tobi can do is make her way slowly toward him. "To the bathroom." She echoes as if it's the beginning of some sort of quest.
The smile Finn offers her makes her laugh softly and girlishly, her face painting a picture of youthful joy that her body in no way matches. "I am a paragon of health, how dare you." But she nods just the same because, despite her weary sass, he absolutely isn't wrong.
"Do you think you can eat anything if I make food?" Right now for Tobi, 'making food' entailed grabbing random things from the kitchen and sandwiching them together.
05-23-2021, 06:47 PM (This post was last modified: 05-23-2021, 06:47 PM by Finn.)
i lived better when i was ignorant of the sun,
If it were a quest then they would be terribly ill equipped to go on it, with Finn feeling as if his legs are going to give way at any moment. Still, he does his best to shuffle along the wall to the doorway, creeping out into the rest of the apartment which has the audacity to look completely normal compared to the state of the bed he's just left. "Oh, I do apologise. I didn't mean to imply anything but," he mumurs, deciding to be super adventurous and let go of the wall to get to the bathroom.
He wavers a bit but manages to hold his own, even if Tobi's question makes him look a little green. "I can try," he murmurs. He'll likely see it again in the next hour regardless of how hungry he is, but after four days he needs to force something down. "I will be back in a few minutes."
And to Finn's credit, he is. He has nothing to wear, of course - the thought of putting his sweat soaked clothes back on turns his stomach - and he'd had a moment of horrific tremors and nausea in the shower, but he still looks all the better for it. So, with a towel wrapped around his waist and seeming more exhausted and rakish than ever, he pads back out of the bathroom to look for Tobi.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Tobi nods as Finn wanders off to complete his part of the quest. She thinks to offer him her help, but decides against it. Not for reasons of modesty, gods they're horrifically far past that now, but because she thinks it'll do him some god to claw back some autonomy.
While Finn showers, Tobi strips the bed and haphazardly puts clean sheets on. Her belly prevents her from tucking in the corners, but given the aerobatics, the Spyglass is prone to going through, even dragoon-approved corners would make little difference in keeping the sheets where they're meant to be.
Finn will find Tobi in the kitchen, leaning against the icebox which she's left open. The day is hot and humid and though Tobi has thrown on a new shirt (this one seems to have been made by a child if the drawings are anything to go by, and likely one of Tobi's former patients given the "THANK U DR. <3"), this one already is stuck to her body thanks to sweat. 'Mmmmm?' She offers, holding out a cup of yoghurt and using a chip as a spoon. "Or there's cheese I wrapped in lettuce."
Finn is glad to see Tobi eating, honestly, but when she turns and offers her yoghurt-chip combo, it all but flips his stomach upside down. "Oh gods no," he blurts without meaning to, glancing instead at the cheese wrapped lettuce. The blandness of the lettuce seems much more palatable - and will probably get rid of that horrible watery feeling in his mouth, so he shuffles to lean against the counter and select one of those instead.
"How have things been?" he asks her after a few moments of chewing, deciding whether he'll be able to stomach the food. "I haven't... I mean... I'm sorry if I have been difficult. That is the last thing I want to do for either of us." It isn't as though he has very much of a choice, though.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
The scene looks laughably domestic to anyone not looking too closely: Character 1, Finn, scruffily attractive with a towel around his waist and his curls drying. Character 2, Tobi, pregnant but still radiant. She'll make a joke, he'll laugh, and it will all be perfectly splendid.
Except it isn't. Not at all.
"You're going to be sore." Tobi replies. Having eaten the last of the chips she's now forced to stick her finger into the container to scoop out what's left. "I'd be surprised if you haven't pulled a muscle yet. But you aren't too dehydrated and luckily your nails are short." She shrugs at that, letting him draw whatever conclusions he has the energy for. "You don't need to apologize, Finn." Tobi adds in a softer voice. "None of this was your decision. You did what you had to in Torchline, and now...you're still doing what you have to."
