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!
It's been a few days since the whole Cian's head in the square incident, and things have neither gotten better nor worse if you ask Finn. (It's worse if you ask anyone else to look at the Spyglass, but that's not what we're talking about here). The world has kept turning, the Order has kept Ordering and Cian's still dead. It's that last point, though, that requires some sort of action.
There's no one around to tell him not to, and as (arguably) the most appropriate member of the Order, it falls to Finn to try and go through the Eye's office for anything that might be useful for future research endeavours. But the only thing is that he can't seem to make himself walk inside.
He's been lingering outside the office door for a while now, his hands resting in his pockets, staring a hole into the doorknob. Lack of sleep has made him spacey, or maybe it's the glasses perched back on his nose. Either way, suddenly the pattern on the doorknob is very interesting. If he reaches out to open the door, will it just... slither away?
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Having assumed Finn might lack a snack while he works (read: she needs to keep an eye on his caloric intake given how poorly he's taking care of himself), as Tobi ascended the stairs, she certainly doesn't expect to see Finn standing on the wrong side of Cian's door.
Staring at it.
Taking the last few stairs loudly that he might be alerted to her presence, Tobi fixes a smile onto her lips. "Hey." She calls brightly, both taking notice of his appearance, the way his muscles look locked up, and his fixated stare, while also pretending not to notice. "I brought some snacks. Something wrong with the knob?"
The sound of footsteps on the stairs is enough to stir Finn from his reverie, the Spyglass swallowing hard and glancing up with soft surprise on his face, as if wondering when Tobi had appeared. "Hello," he says softly, offering a polite smile and turning his attention back to the door.
"I am not hungry, thank you. And there is nothing wrong with it, I suppose. I just... I have never been in this office without Cian being..." Around isn't quite right, because he has snuck into the Eye's office whilst he's been otherwise occupied. Alive, though. That's probably a better word for it.
"I don't know what will be in here," he continues, tilting his head and reaching out, at last, to rest his hand on the doorknob. "I don't know if I want to know... Would you go inside with me?"
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Softly, with love and understanding, Tobi nods. "Inside, there will be all of his high bookshelves, his drink cart, and his desk. It will feel like an invasion, but it isn't. This was never Cian's office, it was the Eye's, and without one, it's just a room used to store things." That the fireplace would be flickering, low and ominous once they entered was not something Tobi might have foreseen. It doesn't occur to the doctor to think that some parts of the room might be trapped or otherwise made to ensure that no one tampered with them. It doesn't occur to her, as it might to someone like Sera, that there are secret rooms, levers, or drawers.
"Of course I will go in with you. I'll even help sort through things." Tobi adds chipperly, but as she comes to stand beside Finn, she lets the Spyglass take all the time he needs before opening the door.
A room used to store things. Tobi is right and were Finn even a few more hours of sleep into this conversation, he'd likely believe her too. As it stands, though, he feels like Cian's fingers might reach out of the walls at any moment once he steps into the office, or that his head will be perched on the desk, smoking a cigarette and bleeding ink all over the flagstones. Tasting copper on his tongue, Finn swallows hard and nods, giving it a few more moments as Tobi steps up beside him before finally turning the doorknob.
The fire is flickering, because of course it is, but the office appears otherwise innocuous. It still smells like Cian, Finn thinks, the Spyglass walking inside and glancing around as if the Eye might be standing behind the door waiting for them. "I arranged for his remains to be buried in the Sleeping Steps," he murmurs off-handedly. "I don't know who will attend, though."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
Smiling at the back of Finn's head as he enters the office, feeling overwhelming proud of him in a way she couldn't quite articulate, Tobi steps over the threshold without any of the trepidation her counterpart is experiencing. "He's with his wife now. There is that, at least." That Cian was married was a bit of forgotten trivia given the face he presented to the rest of the Order, but Tobi was not so young that she'd forgotten.
Going to one of the bookshelves, Tobi runs her fingers along the thick spines, noticing that no dust had accumulated yet. Perhaps it was something about the room itself; self-cleaning, fire-warmed, and always ominous. No one would put it past Cian, surely. "Are we here for anything in particular?" She wonders, setting down her canvas bag of sandwiches before giving the fireplace a cursory glance to make sure the grate was closed and that none of the embers were going to fly out.
"Mm, I suppose there is that," Finn agrees with a gentle nod, having moved towards the desk once realising that the office wasn't going to reach out and bite him at random. He doesn't look to the fire (what if it looks at him back?) or at the other places Cian's ghost might be lurking, instead examining the files and notebooks and other artifacts on the desk. "I came to see if there was anything Cian had begun that he hadn't finished," he admits, flicking through papers and straightening up.
"Any work that would need to be inherited. Anything that..." He huffs out a breath. "Anything that might help us going forward, you know?" Shrugging, he glances back at Tobi. "I think I was expecting much more than I got here."
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
"Given how suddenly everything happened, I'm sure there is." Tobi says with a shrug. Even a man like Cian who could almost predict the future clearly hadn't seen his own death coming. (Or had he?) Frowning, Tobi turns, leaning against the bookshelf while holding faded purple book to her chest.
"Finn...Have you given any more thought to...to what it means to be the Spyglass now?" Without anyone holding him and directing his gaze towards all the horrors of the world. Without anyone pulling his strings and raising the bar over which he had to jump time and time again. "You mentioned inherited work, but...if you are not going to be the Eye...if no one is, there is no one to inherit it."
As for what he was expecting versus what was in the room, Tobi can only shrug a touch overwhelmed. Cian's office was filled, but filled with what the doctor couldn't say.
Humming a non-committal sound in the back of his throat, Finn flicks through a few notebooks in Cian's neat hand, finding nothing of immediate interest. He stacks those exactly as he found them, moving on to the rest of the desk and resisting the urge to sit down to get a better look. Sitting was a bit too close to being, and as Tobi rightly says, he's not the Eye.
His fingers still against the desk drawers as he hears her out, Finn raising his tired, stormy gaze to the woman he loves with a sad and distant smile. "Well, the Order decided to act as a council moving forward. I promised to walk the perimeters to watch for any Ascended intruders. I suppose I thought the work would go out to whoever could deal with it best..."
But the more he lets himself think about the truth in her words, the more untethered he feels. "What do you think I ought to do?" he asks nearly automatically, seeking that direction, sinking into the obedience.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
"I think that some of this work...all of it maybe, should be done by an Eye. And if no one is willing to take that role..." Then perhaps all of Cian's tasks and unfinished business should die with him.
Smiling with immediate love and warmth, Tobi pushes herself away from the bookshelf, placing down the purple volume onto the desk as she comes to place herself before Finn. Reaching for his cheeks and smoothing a curl away from his face, she beams with unfettered adoration and patient understanding as she gazes into his stormy stare. "I think you should decide." Tobi says in a soft, but strong voice. "I think this is the first time in..maybe as long as you can remember where there hasn't been an Eye watching you." She thinks it must be a bit like when she was able to perform her first surgery and had to go on without anyone calling the shots or affirming her decisions. Only for Finn, this was likely a thousand times worse. "I could give you reasons for and against becoming the Eye, for and against staying in this room, for and against running away in the Wilds and never looking back." Tilting her head slightly to the side, her dark eyes sparkling with laughter as if this weren't the weighty conversation that it was, Tobi drops one hand to place it on Finn's chest.
"But I think this choice needs to be yours." She whispers, aware of how scandalous this suggestion would likely sound to someone like Finn.
"People would more likely take the role on if the Knowt Book were available," Finn points out, letting a finger run along the woodgrain in the desk. Perhaps even he would be more likely to consider it - after all, it wasn't really him calling the shots, if the information was coming from elsewhere. Right? Not at all, but whatever helps you sleep, Finn. "I just don't want any threads to stagnate. I could take up the research, Falke could work with any contacts..." And so on and so on...
Before he realises it, Tobi is before him and Finn is startled by the warmth in her gaze and the press of her hand against his chest. He hiccups in a breath, having anticipated this but hating it al the same, and if she weren't who she was, he'd have broken eye contact to stare at her shoes. "I was afraid you would say that," he mumbles, letting his hand cover her own. His fingers are cold - maybe the rest of him is, too.
"There is a war on the way. Eye or no Eye, I cannot simply... drop my responsibilities." Can he?
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
"Do you think so?" Tobi wonders with a crooked sort of smile. "Even with the book, who would do it? Only you or Ronin seem qualified, but for very different reasons. Perhaps together, but...neither of you seems like you would jump at the chance."
Smiling knowingly, Tobi nods. "I know." She says consolingly, able to both be sympathetic while not giving him false hope. Such was her strength as a doctor, after all. Splaying her fingers to try and encourage his between them, Tobi considers. "What are your responsibilities? Ronin is calling the demigods, Sera is working on defences, Gideon is calling on the gods...you have already searched for information about the relics. War is on the way, but what more can you do?" Finn's was a seeing role, and though Tobi didn't want to dull his contributions, what more was there for him to see?
"I wish he would," Finn admits under his breath, regarding Ronin jumping at the chance. It would absolutely solve all of his problems, to have a demigod in charge, to have someone to tell him what to do, to have his life take back on the niche sort of routine that he's been clinging to for years. At the same time, though, if he isn't keen to shoulder that responsibility, he supposes he can't blame anyone else for not wanting it.
His fingers slip between Tobi's so he can give her hand a gentle squeeze, Finn closing his eyes as he tries to sift through the options available to him. "I'm more of a surveillance tool, now," he admits. By virtue of the glasses perched on his nose, he can check if any Ascended have intruded into Stormbreak. But that's it, he supposes.
"Cian always indicated that were I to stop being the Spyglass, I would be returned to the Silk Houses," he admits. "...And I do not want to be a whore again, Tobi." He doesn't think he can do it again, not after everything.
when the night falls on you & you don't know what to do
'You could ask him, if you really think it's best.' The doctor says. It would likely bring Remi to Stormbreak, but after her meeting with him in the Greatwood, she was fairly confident he'd keep his distance from Finn. And it would mean Ever would be home more often.
Tobi's jaw does not feather; her movements are not as obvious as that, but the skin around her eyes does tighten for a moment. "That will never happen, Finn." Though her words are softly said they are laced with certainty and grounded with the sort of reckless determination to keep those she loves safe. 'You are not the man you were when the old Eye found you. Not the one who Cian inherited. You are a different man entirely, and whatever promises and threats bound you to Cian were broken—" Nearly she says when his neck was, but decides against it. "—when he died."
Pulling away Finn's hand from his chest, she kisses his fingertips. "You are yours now. And everytime you feel afraid or unsure because there is no one telling you what to do, it is just a reminder that you are free."
