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!
After the Order meeting, Finn takes himself away. It's as if the physical distance between what has happened might offer some sanctuary from the mental cage he's trapped himself within. This is a tragic lie, of course, but it's not something the Spyglass will discover for some time. The sound of his guitar has been echoing down through the Tower from his old room in the attic for hours now; the sun has long set and the world is tucking itself to bed on a sweet Longheat breeze.
Finn keeps playing, though. His door is unlocked (by chance, not by choice), and though the room is bare now - he's moved the majority of his belongings down into Tobi's apartment - the floor is a good enough stage for his music. Coaxed out by Safrin's strings, the air seems to warble and change, to cool and brighten with the songs he plays. All seems serene, all seems peaceful - all but the musician.
His fingers started bleeding an hour before, but that hasn't stopped Finn. A couple of bandaids quickly solved the problem, and even though his knuckles are red and cracked from the beat he's drumming out on the instrument, he barely notices. All that matters is he doesn't stop.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Her first order of duty (both lowercase and upper case), is to tend to Gideon's wounds. She is a doctor before she is Finn's, and though the sight of him stiffly exiting the meeting room had nearly made her call after him, the threat of infection had kept her by Gideon's side. Only when he was finally stitched, bandaged, and appropriately drugged did Tobi hurry to her office to grab her medical bag. She'd seen that distant and haunted look in Finn's eyes before far too many times to pretend she didn't know what she might find when she returned to him.
Naively she checked their apartment first, her heart plummeting like an icy stone to find him gone. Had there not been the eerie hum of the guitar sifting down through the various heating vents Tobi might have wasted hours outside, searching around for him. As it was, it took only a few moments of partial shifting to pick up his trail, and when it led to the winding staircase that would lead to the top of the Tower, did Tobi know precisely where Finn would be.
Pushing open the door, her bag held unobtrusively at her side, Tobi performs a quick triage on Finn before she does anything else. "Hey there." She sings softly in tune with his playing. It's a greeting as much as it is a diagnostic tool, to find out just how deep down one of his fissures he'd fallen.
The beam of light from the door falls across Finn, making him squint - he's lit no lamps, letting the natural light darken to shadow as the sun sets and trusting his fingers to keep making music even when he can't see the strings. Blinking a couple of times even as he keeps the beat against his guitar with a sore knuckle, he offers Tobi a jerky nod, stormy eyes tired and distant behind his glasses.
"Hello," he greets back as his fingers thoughtfully pick out a tune again; this time nothing too comprehensive, but enough to keep pulling the thread of a melody that anchors him to the here and now. The only reason Tobi even receives this much is because of their closeness, and because through the lenses of his spectacles she's a vibrant firework that's worth all the attention he can give her.
"How is Gideon?" he asks, despite not really caring.
01-18-2022, 03:38 PM (This post was last modified: 01-18-2022, 05:08 PM by October.)
October
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Gideon is perfectly fine, of course. "Oh, I couldn't save his arm. We'll give him a robotic one, though." Tobi adds, wondering if this will spark a look of suspicion from the Spyglass given the obviousness of the lie. Regardless, she sets her bag down and pretends to peer inside of it. Strangely divorced from thinking of Finn as the man she's come to love and the father of her son, Tobi settles into her role of doctor with an ease that lets her breathe and remain calm.
'Do you think you can help me with something? I need an extra pair of hands.' She asks, hoping to redirect Finn's attention rather than simply telling him to stop, stop, oh my god Finn stop.
"He will not enjoy that, given his suspicion around the Ascended," Finn remarks, his fingers dancing across the strings as if the blood makes it easier for them to move. It might have been a joke if it weren't for the fact that he's entirely serious about it, his gaze only lifting back up towards the doctor as she leans down beside him with her medical bag. In the back of his mind Finn knows this is strange, knows he isn't reacting well, but he's stuck in this routine of caging himself in his own mind.
Still, his hands falter again, ever so slightly, at Tobi's question, his need to repeat conflicting with social expectations. "I... I am not sure I have hands to spare," he admits under his breath, though he does try. His fingers still on the guitar, the melody ringing out a hollow final note, but he can't seem to put the instrument down. "What do you need?"
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Finn's remark is both as expected as it is unhelpful in diagnosing his state of mind, so Tobi merely hums in vague agreement. "It will only take you a moment." She says reassuringly. "I'm sorry to ask it of you and interrupt your playing, but it requires four hands, and it's very important." Pulling out what seems to just be a long loop of string, Tobi tries to dangle it before the Spyglass the way one might do in front of a cat, to catch it's attention.
"It's very simple." So saying, Tobi loops the string around her fingers, catches it with her middle fingers and pulls, thus setting up a game of cats cradle. "Do you see the places the string intersects? Making two x's? All you need to do is pinch those places and then bring your hands beneath and pull gently." Tobi explains breezily, before holding out her hands enticingly towards Finn.
Tobi has never led him wrong before, and so even though the shadows feel as though they're yawning behind his eyes and filling all the silence left in the wake of the music, Finn gently puts down his guitar. His fingers throb in time with his heartbeat and his hands are freezing, though neither of these are things he notices all that much. Shifting to sit up, he watches the string and the way Tobi ties it, only to give her a flat look behind his glasses.
"You'd like me to play cat's cradle," he says dryly, but considering he's come this far, he may as well continue. With a sigh, he reaches out to pinch the cross sections, drawing his hands beneath the cradle and tugging. "I learned this when I was a kid," he explains. "It was a popular game on the street."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
To say she's surprised that Finn knows a game as innocuous and whimsical as cat's cradle is an understatement, but Tobi just smiles and nods. "Yes, it's what I need help with. Like I said, it takes four hands." She adds softly. It's a gamble to think that a bit of string might bind the Spyglass, but then, Finn might just be the sort of man for whom dropping out of the game might seem intolerable. It's what she hopes for, at least.
'And now I do this...' Though he's never seen her do this before, as Tobi lowers her head to inspect the x's formed by his hands, horn pushes through the curtain of her bangs. Only once its within Finn's field of vision does she pause momentarily, lest he flinch and stab himself. If he doesn't, as she reaches for the intersecting bits of string, she'll touch the jut of her horn against his fingers to gently heal the bloody ribbons his guitar strings have wounded. It's the least of Finn's injuries to be sure, but perhaps the easiest to fix.
"Now you." Tobi says, holding the string out towards him and ignoring how his blood is already soaking into the white material.
"I knew a girl who could play it solo," Finn objects, though he doesn't begrudge Tobi her need for four hands. Indeed, he remains quiet and obedient as her head lowers to inspect his formation, only to freeze as what looks like a knife cuts a path out from her forehead. He's holding his breath right up until he realises it's a unicorn's horn, healing away the marks of effort from his fingertips. Finn doesn't know if he likes it.
Now you, though, and Finn transfers the string to his own hands and into the next formation. "Soldier's bed," he remarks, before holding it back out for her. "...I am sorry I didn't go back to the apartment. I just... I can't..." His hands start to tremble, Finn inhaling a shaky breath. "I had a lot on my mind."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
"It doesn't look very comfortable, does it?" Tobi asks, looking down at the large X they've made and forcing herself to laugh casually. Picking and pulling the strings, she shrugs. "Oh don't be sorry about that." Said effortlessly, Tobi picks her next words carefully. Where she to say I appreciate you not bringing this darkness to our home, Finn might think the apartment was somehow not a safe space for such things. Instead she says simply, "I understand why you came here." As she holds out her fingers. "I always thought this one looked more like a mirror than candles." She says of the next formation.
"I imagine finding Cian like that was incredibly complicated." Wanting to look at Finn, wanting to wash his hands clean of blood and kiss the tips of his fingers and press her lips softly against his, instead Tobi just stares at the string between them. "I'm feeling a little tired." She lies sweetly. "Would you lay with me while I nap?"
"I suppose that depends how tired you are," Finn remarks of the soldier's bed, the Spyglass waiting patiently for Tobi to rearrange her fingers before carefully dropping his own to let her create candles. "It seemed like the most logical place to go," he mumbles. Is it because this is where he's had all of his breakdowns since coming to the Order, save for his going cold turkey in Tobi's bed? Perhaps.
He's doing well, trying to transition from candles into the manger, until Cian's name hits the air and Finn tangles the string by accident, leaving them tied up together in a mess. "It was a severed head in the centre of the Pacifist Plaza. I am not sure it would have mattered who it was," he says softly, bile already burning in the back of his throat. Finn is not like the demigods and soldiers and hardened warriors that roam Caido. This carves deep gouges into his psyche, and even now he can feel the melodies of the past few hours start to bleed into the shape of Cian's decapitated expression and unseeing eyes.
"You don't have to trick me to bed," he says, defeatedly lowering his hands. "I'll go with you." He just won't sleep.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Finn's fingers tangle and Tobi takes the opportunity to softly try and insert her own against his. "I think it would have." She says softly. 'You've had a long and complicated relationship with Cian. Surely that would affect you differently than if it was a complete stranger or some sort of child-murderer." Tobi adds. For someone like Finn finding a head would always be terrible, yes, but this had an added weight to it that the Spyglass was forced to bear. As much as she didn't want Finn to fixate, she thought it was important that he did let himself acknowledge just how terrible a thing it was, to find Cian's head the way he had. Understanding would lead to healing, or so she hoped.
'I'm not trying to trick you, but I was hoping you would say yes. We could even lay down right here. I brought a blanket with me.' And copious amounts of drugs, but she wouldn't mention that just now.
Tobi doesn't have to try very hard - of all the unsafe places in the world and in Finn's mind, the doctor is not one of them. She's become the opposite, in fact, and he lets her fingers glide and twine against his own without a fight. His eyes drop to their linked hands, watching their auras melt and overlap as if it is somehow much more important than the conversation at hand. "I suppose," he says softly, almost whispering the words and swallowing hard.
"I feel... untethered, by it all," Finn admits, closing his eyes at last. "It was like he had a leash around my neck. Even though it hurt sometimes, it was still a direction." It's not coherent as an explanation, but it's the best he can do right now.
Shaking his head, he glances to the door as if to advise her to lead the way. "Could we go home, please?" he asks. The blanket won't be nearly as comfortable as the bed. The drugs, though? They'll probably be just as necessary.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Vaguely does Tobi understand. Someone like Falke would have better psychology terms for it, and while Stockholm syndrome wasn't precisely the right diagnosis she didn't think, it was in the right ballpark. "It's okay that you are not okay with this, Finn." Tobi urges sweetly, giving his fingers a soft squeeze. "And it's okay to take time to heal."
Inwardly smiling that Finn was proving to be more resilient now than he had once been, Tobi nods. With their hands together or not, she'll stand and offer Finn a smile that's meant to reassure him that she's happy to take charge. She'll lead him home. She'll wash his bloody fingers. She'll help him sleep.
"Let's go home." On their way down, should anyone try and stop the pair or otherwise engage them, they will be abruptly cut off by the doctor who will vaguely indicate that she's some medical emergency to take care of. It's not not a lie, but just now Tobi finds she doesn't care.
