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03-09-2024, 06:58 PM (This post was last modified: 03-10-2024, 12:33 PM by Ronin.)
RONIN
It's true that Ronin has not come to see his goddess since the eve of the Starfall's arrival. One might think him negligent for it, or fearful, or any other such adjective. In truth, though, the Nova has waited until now just in case. Just in case Safrin is still in dire need of energy, just in case he needs to provide a second time, just in case he ends up skirting the line between life and death once more.
When he arrives at the shrine atop the lighthouse, however, it's (to those who look at him, at least) without a care in the world. He lights candles, dozens of them, placing stained glass enclosures around them so the lighthouse interior dazzles and blazes with colour. He hangs a robe of black silk on one of the adornments of a candelabra, and warms bowls of scented oils with fiery, feathered fingertips.
"Safrin," he breathes, on his knees, eyes closed. "Please forgive my absence until now. I am here, if you would see me. I don't want for anything other than your presence." No quest, no information, no reassurance. Safrin is enough.
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
She is there as the last word leaves Ronin's lips.
Silhouetted against the window with firelight throwing golden calligraphy against her gown, the goddess regards the Supernova with a look that's remarkably mortal: dejection made bitter by distance and time.
"Hello Ronin." Resplendence still contours her every movement and yet there is a hollowness to it for those who know where to look; the depths of her galactic stare do not penetrate as far, the lines of laughter around her lips and eyes are shallow, and the tangibility of her body makes her seem all too mortal. "How are you feeling?" She wonders, not bothering to move away from the window, asking after his own wellbeing as if it had been the Nova who had been forced to battle alone in the vastness of space.
Blue eyes open as the goddess's presence fills the room; Safrin doesn't need to speak for Ronin to know she's there, but he gazes up as if expecting her before him, only to see her at a distance. Beautifully silhouetted against the moonlit night outside, her decision, however subtle, nonetheless screams itself through his mind. "Hello, Safrin," he murmurs, remaining on his knees but sitting up enough to speak with her properly.
"Recovered," he responds, his voice soft and careful, reading well the lines of upset that mar her delicate features.
"Thank you," Ronin continues, reaching behind him where a few carefully folded towels have been stacked. "For all the time you spent out there. For trying as hard as you did, for as long as you did, to keep this calamity away." Unfolding one of the towels, he sets it out before him on the ground. "And for warning us what was to come." He hadn't been able to say it at the time given the circumstances, but the sincerity in his voice is no less genuine.
"If I could form galaxies into bouquets of flowers for you, I would." Ronin's smile is a little wry. "Alas, I only have my own two mortal hands. Can I tempt you to sit...?"
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
One of Safrin's delicate shoulders rises and falls in acknowledgement of his thanks, and though she doesn't move away from him, the distance between the two will feel magnified for her stillness.
"But you can't, can you." She wonders, scrutinizing the man kneeling before her with starbright eyes that found him wanting. He could no more offer her galaxies than he could turn back time, and so it was that she regarded his offered mortal hands with a dissatisfied stare.
"No." She said with a shake of her head. "I haven't long. I expect a call from Hadama shortly." Safrin explains, her tone cold and reasonable. "I have seen much of him since I have returned, and I think it is time he is rewarded for his selfless devotion."
"No," Ronin says softly, his brow furrowing, "I can't."
Rising slowly to his feet, his goddess declining his offer would have stung all by itself, but mention of Hadama's name seizes something in his blood made fiery by the season, put there by Safrin's own hands. The Nova offers little more than a brief feathering of his jaw, dancing on a tightrope of control, but the starlight that fractures out from him says everything that words do not.
"Of course," he murmurs, bowing his head. "I wished only to see you, to show you gratitude for everything you did for Caido. For me. And to offer myself again, if you still needed it." But perhaps HaDaMa has more to offer than Ronin does, and the prickly envy in his thoughts is plain for Safrin to read.
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
If Safrin is pleased at all by the reactions her words and inaction have caused, her face does not show it. Instead, she watches him rise, looking almost bored as his glow pulses brighter than the candles he'd so painstakingly lit.
"I suppose it took you a full season to find all these things, then?" Looking around the Nova at the delicate glass placed around the candles and the cloth on the ground, she shifts her stare back to Ronin and raises an eyebrow. In a blink, the room is alight with candles that float in the air, orbited by small stars of coloured glass. The stone beneath their feet is been covered by textiles so luxurious as to feel nearly fluffy despite their strength.
"There is nothing you can bring that I cannot make for myself. " Safrin says through slightly clenched teeth. So saying, the glass stars fall all at once just as the floor returns to stone, ensuring they would all smash. "Nothing except for your presence, and yet.." A trickle of emotion briefly warped Safrin's features, revealing a portrait of a grieving heartbroken woman beneath a veneer of hostility and pride.
"But I suppose you've been busy." Working on his houseboat. Training. Running errands for Torchline.
Wonder turns to hurt which swiftly becomes a wince as Safrin melds and shapes the world to her liking, only for it to - literally - come smashing down around their feet. Raising a hand automatically to shield his face and eyes from any wayward specks of glass, Ronin is left blinking and dazzled in the goddess's presence. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he says, even knowing the words will do nothing to fix this.
"If all I can give you is my presence, then you have it now, for as long as you want it." And further words dance on his tongue, supplications, the demure but if you want to go to Hadama instead almost breaching the prison of his lips. Almost.
But Ronin shakes it away, the set of his jaw and his shoulders giving away his true feelings. "And I want you to stay," he says. "I have missed you, and I'm sorry."
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
"I am too." Safrin agreed softly. Perhaps over the course of their relationship, the scales had fallen away from both of their eyes: Safrin was not the shimmering wonder Ronin had believed her to be, but nor was Ronin the hero the goddess had pined after.
"Have I become so forgettable to you Ronin, that you only miss me when you're in my presence, with no other distractions?" She wonders, leaving it up to the Nova to decide if her question was rhetorical or not. Taking a step forward, Safrin loses somewhat of her tangibility, or at least, it would appear that to touch her now would not feel like touching a woman at all, but a statue carved from marble.
"Perhaps I should extend the offer I made to you before. Perhaps it might suit you better to walk the path Deimos does. It seems every time we meet there is an apology on your lips for being away for so long and a promise to do better, but this time—" Where once she might have reached for him, her palm against his cheek or her lips against his ear, now she merely looks at him as a stranger might.
"—this time forgiveness is not so easily bought with candles and pretty words."
And thus Ronin finds himself yet again in the push-me-pull-you game of being in Safrin's presence, and the tempest within the Nova riles between resentment and longing. He straightens and stiffens as she steps from the window, and yet feels further away than ever before.
"I gave myself to you the last time we saw one another," he says, bullied on the defensive. And whether he came out of the encounter with his life thanks to Safrin's self-control or because of sheer dumb luck is no longer something certain in his mind.
"How many more times will you offer that path to me?" he wonders. "My answer will always be no, but if you don't want me anymore--" He hesitates here, as if afraid that is the crux of the situation, "--well, that would be different."
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
"I brought you back to life. I have given you immortality and power enough to protect yourself and those you love. I have been with you since first you stumbled upon me in the glade, answering prayers and providing guidance. Or do you think your actions when last we met have made us even?" Safrin demands.
As Ronin calls her might-be-bluff, the goddess's eyes flash amethyst as she straightens. Now it is the goddess's turn to regard the tightrope upon which they walk with slightly more respect. "You used to look at me with love, Ronin." Though more softly said, still the goddess nearly tremours with pride and injury. "Now you treat our relationship like an obligation you don like a suit of armor. You define yourself by your fealty yet it has been years since I felt as though you truly loved me."
A smile touches her lips, though her eyes regard him unflinchingly. "That is why I offer you the path yet again and will continue to do so each time you treat me as though I am some duty to be fulfilled."
"And yet we both know that power does nothing against the threat that lurks out there in the dark," Ronin snaps before he can stop himself, almost able to feel the violet burn of the Starfall beyond Torchline's shores. His eyes prickle with something - with the sad truth of her words, perhaps, with regret and nostalgia for simpler times, or perhaps merely with the weight of a new war to fight. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, gaze downcast. "Truly. That was uncalled for."
Rubbing a hand across his eyes and back through his dark hair, the Nova takes a shuddering breath and finds the courage to look his goddess in the eyes again. "You are not a duty," he whispers, "but a privilege." He sighs. "And you are right. I have fallen short of the standards I hold myself to, especially when it comes to you. For all you have made me, I am still only human, but I haven't acted that way towards you."
With little else to offer - as Safrin has rightly pointed out - all Ronin can do is hold out his hand for her. "Will you let me try to make up for it?"
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
Rather than exploding into a violet rage, instead Safrin looks at Ronin with tears stinging in her eyes, her chin willfully turned up. "And how do you think that makes me feel?" She whispers, jaw set against the tremble on her lips. Turning away, Safrin looks out across the ocean, where, shining like an oil spill alight with fire, is Starfall.
"Standards." She scoffs, glancing at Ronin over her shoulder. "Is that how you speak to Remi in times of difficulty? That you have fallen short of some standard?" She whispers, voice tight. A disobedient tear streaks down her cheek, and though she is quick to wipe it away, the damage has been done. A realization has come to her, one she has been loathe to keep away, only now, as with Starfall, she has failed.
"There is nothing to make up. A teacup when broken can only be repaired so many times before one must simply use another." For all of her vanity and resplendence, it is Safrin who is the broken thing in this analogy, not Ronin. "For so long I have craved the man you were. Unfairly, I see that now."
Glancing at his hand, Safrin turns and extends her own. As her fingers slide against his, it's in a handshake. There is no intimacy in her touch, no familiarity. Instead, her skin pulses with starlight as soothing strength flows from her to him; a gesture of appreciation that she would show to any of her followers. "Go with strength, Ronin."
Remi would never act this way, not in all the time we've been apart. And therein the line is drawn, there the moonlight grows cold and unfeeling, and he and Safrin stand on their opposing sides. Still the Nova swallows back the tightness in his throat as his goddess reaches out to shake his hand - and gods, he almost wishes she had slapped him instead.
"I hope you find what you are looking for in Hadama," he says, trying and failing to hide the seething envy in his words.
Stepping back from Safrin, Ronin extinguishes each of the candles he had lit with the same painstaking care he'd taken when setting them up. He packs away his plans and gestures, folds the towels and the silk robe, empties the small bowls of fragrant oil.
And then he goes.
~FIN
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
