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!
Poking his head in through one of the windows, the Bastion seemed a little bit like what Willy might have seemed like in his younger days; scruffy, sun-freckled, and suddenly obsessed with fishing.
The sound of shattering glass had scared away the fish that Remi had been trying to lure towards Oria with a piece of cheese. Whether or not this was good bate hardly mattered, because the game being played between demigod and companion was not one of capturing, but rather one of gifting. You see, Oria had made several small fish-treats with Sugar's help, and the spriggan was trying desperately to get the fish to accept her frozen offerings.
"Everything okay?" Not wanting to assume too, the hitch in the normally steady-pulse on his ring-finger alongside the blackened silence he could feel through their bond very much suggested the answer would be no.
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Fine," Ronin replies automatically, his back to the Bastion as he sweeps up the last fragments of glass and deposits them into the trash. Only once that's done and he retrieves a second glass from the cupboard to pour himself what a demigod would consider a healthy amount of liquor does he reconsider who he's speaking to, knocking the drink back smoothly and turning to face his husband.
"Not fine," he corrects himself with a wan smile, running his fingers back through his hair. "Safrin got in touch. Seren is coming back again." The shrug of his shoulders tells that he very much has no idea what to think about this, Ronin rubbing at the back of his neck where the muscles permanently seem tight these days, slouching back against the counter.
"We didn't talk about anything else," he adds, as if to clarify that no, he hadn't decided to lose his temper at a literal goddess. This time, anyway.
With his lips pursed and eyebrows raised comically high, Remi watches his husband down a healthy enough dose of liquor such that the Nova's correction was hardly necessary. It would have been an amusing sight if not for the prickles of frustration and distrust needling out from Ronin's mind that suggested this was about more than just a dropped glass. Backing away from the window, the Bastion hurries toward the door that they might not have to have this conversation across their kitchen.
"Fuck sake." Remi says with a heavy sigh. Reaching for Ronin's upper arm and giving it a reassuring squeeze, the Bastion's lips twist with the urge to grumble other expletives. "Is...there some reason Seren is coming back?" Knowing Safrin there probably was, if only to try and keep Ronin under heel in new ways.
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I didn't ask. She didn't say." Ronin can't help the apologetic tone to his voice, as if he's somehow failed by not asking for more information, especially when it comes to his own daughter. Setting down the glass and offering another smile that doesn't reach his eyes, he reaches out to rest his hand over Remi's, before stepping forward to slip his arms around his husband.
"Gods, I'm so tired," he admits, closing his eyes. "I don't know how you even put up with it." It's true that as Remi's circumstances seem to have improved, Ronin's have only gotten worse. Between Vanya, his goddess, and being unable to do much to fight against the threat at their doorstep, he's started to feel thoroughly redundant.
"Mmm." Shaking his head—it didn't matter, Safrin would have lied anyway, he was sure—Remi pulls the Nova tightly against him in a hug which would have threatened to break ribs in a normal man.
"I think the weight of things when it comes to family is different." He points out softly, his words whispered softly into his husband's hair. Likely Mort had already dealt with Vanya, but Remi wasn't sure that would help the sting of what had been done. Or rather, what hadn't.
"Are you...happy to see Seren again?" Closing his eyes as his fingers traced out erratic shapes against his husband's back, Remi tried to recall how long it had been since she'd been around. Had Flora and Enzo been born? He didn't think so.
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Nodding silently, even if he's not sure if knowing makes it feel any better, Ronin relaxes into the crushing embrace as if it wouldn't crack ribs or puncture lungs on a regular man. "I'm not unhappy," he whispers, as if that might say all the things he's trying to tangle through. Inhaling deeply and forcing the breath out again, he clasps Remi close as if he might be able to close the door on the rest of the world just by standing with the Bastion.
"I can't help but feel like Safrin encouraged it," he admits. "Right when things are so dangerous seems... reckless. And I... I don't know. It's just another reminder of what a bad father I've been." Not something the Nova would have ever attributed to himself if he hadn't seen it happen over the years.
"Okay." Remi agreed, understanding his husband's answer to be more of a I have no fucking clue what I'm supposed to feel, than any sort of accurate description of his feelings. Perhaps the Bastion had been foolish to even ask in the first place.
"I would not be surprised, that seems ver—"
tap tap tap
Lifting his head slighting from where he'd been leaning his lips against the side of his husband's neck, Remi glanced vaguely toward the window where a large raven was flapping its wings. There was a letter in its beak, the sort that looked frustratingly official (or at the very least, not from either of their children. Mateo's letters came scented and Flora's came covered in glitter or lipgloss). "Can I interest you in distracting yourself with whatever fresh nonsense has arrived?"
Pressing a kiss against the Nova's ear, Remi spun out of his arms in a twirl that would allow him to snag the letter through the window while also grasping Ronin's hand. Tugging himself back in, Remi waggled the note. "From Noah. To both of us." He said, raising his eyebrows dramatically.
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Still feeling guilt burning in his throat like acid, at the tapping at the window and Remi's attending to it, Ronin has no choice but to swallow the emotions down in lieu of whatever craziness has been delivered to their little boat. "You are the only person who can interest me in anything these days," he says with an indulgent smile, allowing himself to be the anchor for Remi to twirl himself out to snag the note.
Clucking at the raven to tell it to scram - if they let it stay he knows it will be expecting a reply to take immediately, and he's in no mood for that - Ronin slips his arms around Remi from behind so he might rest his chin on his husband's shoulder and scan the letter. "Not fanmail? Disappointing," he mumbles, furrowing his brow as he reads the Forsaken's note.
"Is there a polite way of saying absolutely nothing?" He winces, because that's the truth of it. No further information about Starfall, no further updates about Dahlia, and Ronin hasn't bothered to even check the whole void creature situation in Torchline.
"Sadly, not. Although..." Raising his eyebrows, Remi glances mischievously over his shoulder. "Who knows. You have been in Safrin and Vi's favour longer than he has. Maybe he is asking for tips." Chuckling as he looked back, the amusement fell away from the Bastion's expression the more he read, such that his lip was crumpled upwards by the end of the note.
Clearing his throat, Remi tilts his head against his husband's, frowning. "Not that I am against someone else leading the charge in this, but...I mean.." Quite how Noah had managed to sound condescending and superior in just a few sentences left even Remi wincing. "...I know my communication skills have gotten a little rusty lately, but hit me if I ever sound like that."
It went without saying that Remi would leave the reply up to Ronin. 'In my defense, killing is no longer really my thing." He says with a shrug.
"Speaking of...I did have a thought about Starfall..." Twisting in his husband's arms and pressing a kiss against Ronin's lips knowing full well the Nova would disapprove, Remi explained. "With Flora's invisibility ring I could go without being noticed and teleport back to you without either of us needing to be asleep."
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I am the last person who ought to be offering tips to anyone when it comes to Safrin," Ronin points out with a scrunch of his nose, preferring to skip over that entire subject if his husband is so kind. Luckily, there's enough in the letter to distract them, and he huffs out a soft laugh against the side of his husband's neck, pressing a kiss there before considering his response.
"I would never hit you," he informs him, first and foremost. "Does this mean you want to be the one to compose our response? Or is that pleasure all mine?" Tightening his arms around the other man - there are no words to describe the delight in knowing that his husband is no longer a literal harbinger of death - it doesn't make their progress with the Starfall any less meager.
Straightening up and accepting the kiss directed to his lips, Ronin's hands smooth gentle lines down Remi's shoulder blades and back as he hears him out. "Mm," he agrees, pressing another gentle kiss to the corner of the other man's mouth, "you could. But you're not going to. " It isn't often - if ever - that Ronin says something so final so casually, and he reaches up to run his fingers through the Bastion's curls.
"If anyone is going to that place again, it's going to be as a group with a plan and a way out already considered. I love you," he adds, the furrow of his brow betraying his concern, "and I won't let you go there alone again. Not after last time."
"No, no. That pleasure is all yours." Remi replies with a laugh, also scrunching his nose. Ronin was ever the more tactful of the two and though his recent conversation with Mort and Ludo had lightened the load he'd carried significantly, he couldn't trust himself not be more blunt than the situation required.
'Wh—' Frowning, though not enough to stop him from snagging another kiss from his husband's mouth, the Bastion raised an eyebrow. Blinking like some wild animal that has been subdued without its realizing, Remi's confusion ties his tongue leaving him silent for a moment. "But...I do have a plan and a way out." He protests. "I have an item from Hadama to see through illusions, I will be invisible, and I can teleport immediately if anything happens."
The pair were normally so N*SYNC in sync when it came to making decisions that Remi wasn't even sure how to navigate arguing? convincing? begging? Ronin to come on side. "Who else would come? Noah?" Eyebrows raised, Remi's look tried to express the guy that wrote that letter and whose abilities don't work against these things? "Sunjata maybe, but...well." They weren't on bad terms anymore, but Remi wasn't sure if they were on hey want to come on a deathly mission terms, either. "That just leaves Deimos and you, and neither of you can teleport."
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
03-31-2024, 12:35 PM (This post was last modified: 03-31-2024, 12:35 PM by Ronin.)
RONIN
the supernova
light is easy to love.
"I feel privileged," Ronin drawls through a sigh, before his attention is thoroughly stolen by the suicide mission his husband is proposing. Leaning into the gentle kiss and continuing to let his fingers tease through soft curls, the Nova backs up to lean against their kitchen counter so Remi might drape against him and continue to share their warmth. "I don't care." He smiles sadly, as if the list of precautions Remi has for his journey is nothing compared to the state of him when he'd returned last time. When he had been an instrument of death, and arguably much more dangerous.
"All of us," he continues. "All of us would go. I might be next to useless against those things with whatever magic I have from Safrin, but they can't be infallible. We need to find out what hurts them and how to hit them hard and fast before we go on any spy missions out there." Sighing again, the weight of the work ahead already bringing tension to his shoulders, Ronin rubs a hand across his forehead.
"Don't make me sit another thing out," he adds, unable not to make it sound like a plea. "I can't take it."
Listening, all the arguments on Remi's tongue die instantly at his husband's final request. Melting against the Nova, the Bastion curls forward to press his forehead against one of Ronin's shoulders. "Okay." Remi concedes softly. "Whatever you need." Where they touched, Ronin would feel how succinctly Remi meant it; the world could burn down around them, but so long as their hands remained clasped and they stayed together, the Bastion would let it. His place was now to protect, and gods if he wouldn't give all that he was to keep his husband safe.
"Although...I do think it is worth pointing out that given what Mort has asked me to be, there is every reason to think I am going to come back battered and bruised more often than not." Cupping one of Ronin's cheeks against his palm, the corners of Remi's eyes crinkle with amusement as his dimples deepen. "But I will always come home to you."
we'll float away
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Thank you," Ronin whispers, his throat growing tight around the words, both body and mind singing with relief and gratitude to feel his husband melt around him and for their points of view to slip seamlessly back into alignment. "I love you." Quietly said, Ronin glances up to meet Remi's eyes as the Bastion continues, and his smile has the audacity to even be a little crooked, a little more like himself, to hear the words.
"Yes, you will," he agrees, pressing his lips to the other man's forehead. "Because I'll be the one carrying you home every time, if I have anything to say about it. If your job now is to protect, the least I can do is to kill the thing you're protecting people against so it doesn't have a chance to take too much of a chunk out of you."
Even though I swear you're into that shit, he adds through the bond, chuckling.
About to suggest some actual responses to the letter they've received, Ronin will find himself unceremoniously interrupted - for the second time today - by a sudden and unnerving voice in his head. His entire body tenses around Remi; this isn't the first 'broadcast' they've received, but this one is no less ominous.
"What the fuck," he hisses. "The Greatwood is lost?"
