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!
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
Laughing, taking full advantage of having an adult conversation with someone other than her boyfriend, Tobi settles back into her chair cradling her wine against her chest. "Honestly. I thought I was going pretty well as a person until Ever started asking me things about goals and purpose." She agrees on the heels of a sigh.
"I just might. What with Finn and his past and all..." She shrugs, never liking to speak about Finn behind his back but wanting to provide at least a little context for her concerns. "I really never can tell with those two. They seem so attentive and agreeable when we talk to them about anything, and then they're just...suddenly off into their own world, making their own plans." Glancing down into her wine, Tobi gives it an experimental swirl. "They're growing up so fast, you know? I wish I could slow it down sometimes as selfish as that is."
"And I thought I was doing alright until Mateo imposed a curfew on the apartment. On my apartment." Ronin scoffs, running his finger around the rim of his wine glass and sighing hard enough that it fluffs up the flop of dark hair against his forehead. "Mm...? Oh - oh, shit, of course." Cringing, he hides his discomfort by WINE gazing up at the ceiling and taking a sip of his drink.
"Well, just in case, I will tell Mateo that you would like your place to be a drug-free household. He rarely takes things personally, but he also rarely thinks about them beforehand either," he murmurs, only to smile back at her as she opens up about Ever and Mateo. Humming in agreement, he sets his glass back down.
"And this is such a weird age, haven't you found? Sometimes Mateo is like he was when he was tiny, just wanting comfort and to be close to us and for us to tell him what to do. And other times I feel like we're his lodgers rather than his parents."
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
Gaping, Tobi covers her mouth before realizing that there was absolutely no need to. Dropping her hand, she laughs openly and brightly at Ronin's ridiculous misfortune. 'I mean...no, that really is just hilarious.' She says, before shaking off the awkwardness of having an addict for a romantic partner.
'Just so long as you are prepared to define what drug means, because I am sure Everest will ask Mateo to clarify if he brings it up." Maybe she should be the one to provide such a description given her line of work, but gods she wishes the boys were at the age where they could read between the lines.
"It really is." Taking another sip followed by a deep breath, Tobi curls one leg comfortably beneath her. "Sometimes they walk around like little men as if we hadn't just taught them how to use spoons or open child-proof lids for them." She adds. "And I know how much I hated the because I said so answer when I was younger and I promised I would never say it to my children, but gods. Sometimes they just aren't old enough to under the whys, you know?"
"Oh, it's absolutely side-splitting until you're five minutes late," Ronin agrees. "Commander of Stormbreak can't get into his apartment to go to bed because his teenage son wants to teach him time management." He scoffs. "I've started sneaking in through the upstairs window, and even then he's awake sometimes." It's as hilarious as it is embarrassing, Ronin's laughter joining Tobi's as he finishes off his second glass - and obviously offers her a third.
"Exactly," he says, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of it. "I know they give you all these books to read for when they're infants, but there should be a teenager manual, I swear." He does smile, though, because honestly, it could absolutely be worse. "I suppose I should be thankful that he's not like I was, though. Yet, anyway - there's still time."
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
"Safrin's demigod made to sleep in the doghouse for missing curfew. Incredible." Of course Tobi quickly finishes off her wine so that Ronin might refill her glass. Her cheeks are slowly becoming the colour of what they're drinking, and gods if she can't remember a time she felt more relaxed. 'I wonder what your soldiers would think if they knew how easily managed you were by a 13-year-old." She asks in jest.
"Everything I've read so far just says to treat them like adults as they strive towards their own independence, or whatever. What I really want to know is what I'm supposed to do when that freedom gets them into trouble. Are they meant to be punished for finding themselves on the wrong side of a line we've all been on?"
Grinning, Tobi tilts her head and bobs her eyebrows at Ronin. Her eyebrow game might not be as strong as his, but it isn't half bad. "Go on then, tell me your absolute worst."
"I think my soldiers would take one look at Mateo and decide that it wasn't worth finding out," Ronin says, tittering to himself. With both of their glasses refilled with an ever so generous amount of wine, the Huntsman slurps at his drink so he can safely lift it up to his lips without spilling. "And if it were a doghouse that would be one thing, but we don't even have one of those. I have to go sleep in my office."
He winces at her explanation, because he's trying to figure that out as well, and to avoid the inevitable I dunno, Tobi, Ronin takes yet another drink. It feels like a very smart idea. As for his worst? "Well," he slurs says. "when I was a silly teenage recruit, I ended up betting all my belongings - clothes included - away at a tavern, and I was too drunk when I got back to the barracks and accidentally peed in a closet. My closet. It was not good."
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
Snorting inelegantly and yet somehow charmingly into the rim of her wineglass, Tobi takes a sip only to realize that there's very little wine actually left. How did that happen?
"Gasp." She remarks, blinking rapidly and wondering if there really were two Ronin's seated across from her (he did have that ability you know). "Better than in your bed." Tobi says with a shrug. As a dog, peeing inside didn't strike her as the worst thing one could do. "Had I known you when you got married, that would have been a really excellent story to tell at your reception." Pausing thoughtfully, Tobi's wine-soaked thoughts of course turned to Finn. "What was your wedding like..? Who proposed to who? How...how is it all going?" She asks a touch dreamily.
Ronin has been doing the talking, so of course it makes sense that Tobi's glass is empty, and he reaches out to work on refilling it for her again while he slurps at his own drink. "Gasp," he echoes, both because it's fun to say and because gods, it would have been a good story for his wedding reception. Not that he'd have remembered it, with the amount he and Remi had managed to drink that night.
There's already a dopy smile on his face at the memory, and with pink cheeks, Ronin happily recalls it for her. "It was amazing. There were fireworks shaped like dicks, we had to jump over a fire, our daughter Aoife was there..." He sighs, slouching back. "Remi proposed to me. I think he had been planning it for a while, trying to figure out how to make it perfect. But I got into some trouble and hit my head bad. He proposed while I was concussed." He giggles. "I still give him shit for it now."
As for how it's going? Ronin's blush deepens. "I recently asked him to marry me again, if that gives you any indication," he says with no small hint of boyish romance.
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
Despite not really understanding, (firework dicks? jumping over fire?), Tobi rests her chin in her hand, drinking in all the lovey-dovey details as she'd recently drank her wine. Letting her jaw drop comically, the doctor winces and frowns. "A concussion? Oh no, are you okay?" Things were getting a bit hazy, but to Tobi's mind, it absolutely made sense to ask if Ronin was alright upon hearing he had a concussion. Never mind that it was several years ago now; you could take the drunk out of the doctor, but you couldn't take the doctor out of the drunk as the saying went.
"Gasp." Tobi says again, sweetly this time as she releases her chin (causing her head to bob slightly) so that she might reach out for one of Ronin's hands. "I am so happy for you." This is said with the sort of egregious sincerity that comes from being wonderfully intoxicated. "Will there be dick fireworks this time too?"
"I think so," Ronin chimes with a smile in response, naturally picking up Tobi's question as if it were current, just the same as she had asked it. "I've had worse head injuries, anyways. And still wanted to marry him even after I felt better, so there's that." He punctuates this apparently sweet sentiment by glugging back the rest of his wine, gasping softly into the empty glass just so he can join in with Tobi.
The next couple of glasses are the last of it (booooo!) but as he tops them off, Ronin finds his free hand suddenly captured by the doctor. He smiles at her drunkenly charmingly and sets down the empty bottle to pat her hand. "Thanks," he murmurs, his voice warm enough that it feels like it's heating up his whole chest. "I know Remi's not the easiest person. But he's my person, y'know? He my favourite person."
The smile turns sweet if not just as drunk then, and he slumps back against the sofa. "What about you and Finn? Are you guys okay?"
07-31-2022, 06:34 PM (This post was last modified: 07-31-2022, 07:00 PM by Odd.)
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
"Aww well if you ever need to be checked out, you let me know." Tobi murmurs this as if she's saying something suggestive, but it comes out rather silly instead given all their gasping and the way her thoughts keep turning to Finn. Still, it somehow seemed appropriate to make such a joke to a man like Ronin.
'Ohh!' Tobi adds her other hand atop Ronin's as if this is some sort of game. "I love that for you." She gushes, nodding far too enthusiastically about how difficult Remi was, before suddenly stopping so that the ceiling and the floor wouldn't switch places.
"We're...perfectly splendid." She answers in exactly the voice you read it in. "Everything is always fine even when it isn't." Because that was the thing about Finn—it all had to stay fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine,—"fine, wine." Tobi mumbles to herself and giggles. "Finn is Finn and Finn is fine." This makes her giggle again even as crocodile tears threaten to trickle down her face.
"I think you have checked me out enough times since I've been in Stormbreak," Ronin retorts with an exaggerated waggle of his brows (which, let's be real, he doesn't have to try all too hard). Just the same as Tobi, it tries for suggestive but comes out ridiculous, and he's chuckling into his wine and squeezing Tobi's hand(s?) as she ends up trapping his between her own.
"I love that for me too. And for Remi. We are all splendid," he says, also agreeing with her choice of descriptor, as it happens. Only as she rambles and it sort of makes sense but doesn't because her eyes are wet, Ronin hiccups in a breath that's half wine. Choking briefly and setting down his mostly empty glass, when he speaks it sounds husky and strangled, but nonetheless sincere.
This is your heart undone, Take all the time you want
"Oh you dooo, do youuu." The doctor sings in response. There had been a brief time when Ronin's marriage was still open and Finn was just a patient that maybe something could have happened. Now though, it just seems a fun thing to joke about. Even more so with their hands making an awkward pile.
Drunk enough to be in the crying phase, Tobi draws her knees to her chest and huffs out a very dog-like sigh. "Yeah I am, I shouldn't even be complaining because I love Finn so much and who cares if life isn't perfect and if you can't hug your partner from behind or how almost anything can be a trigger and how you always have to be the grown up, and—" Her words have come faster and faster until it's all just a hysterical girlish mush of sound.
"...is the wine all gone?" She asks timidly after a moment, pouting at her empty glass.
Ronin, not realising this was going to become quite such a thing, and with his higher senses very much muted by alcohol, does nothing but make quite a good impression of a goldfish at first.
"That sounds tough," he burbles eventually, shuffling to sit with her properly on the sofa and wrap his arms around her in a somewhat sloppy hug. "You should tell'im," he decides, partially eating her dark hair where his head is lolling against hers.
"Or like... book a vacation for yourself. Or for him. A babysitter. A Finnsitter." Nodding sagely, this all sounds very, very logical to Ronin. "Mmm? I think it's all gone, yeah." When did that happen? Oops.
