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!
Not a terribly light sleeper, the thunder against his ring finger had alerted Remi to the emptiness of his best and it took only a quick feel of the cold sheets to realize that Ronin hadn't simply gotten up to pee. With a sense of foreboding, the Bastion kicked off the blankets and set about making tea. As the water began to boil he opted to pull out a bottle of something amber-dark with two small glasses as well. He never could quite tell these days when conversations with Safrin were best spoken of over tea versus something stronger.
Both Sugar and Oria sleepily groaned their thoughts at the candles lit in the little houseboat before scurrying into the bathroom where darkness still reigned and they could curl up asleep. Their bonded's had survived much more than sleepless nights apart; they were sure they could survive this one on their own.
When Ronin eventually stepped through the portal, it would be to a warmly lit room with the scent of tea filling the small space, and a concerned-looking demigod sketching absently at their little table.
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Expecting darkness and silence, whilst the light isn't necessarily an adjustment, Ronin still finds himself blinking into the space for a few moments, glancing around for his sleeping husband only to find him very much awake. As the portal closes behind him, for a second or two he's left patting at himself, as if to make sure he's still whole and real and alive. And he is, Ronin sucking in a breath that feels light and easy in a way he can't appropriately describe.
And when he sees Remi sketching at the table, the smile that blooms across his face is one of both relief and adoration. "Remi," he murmurs, and already he's lightning up further, but even that feels different; the radiance that shines from is skin is something golden and warm, unlike the cool starlight of just a few moments ago.
"Remi, I..." Not knowing how to describe it, Ronin rushes to the table that he might pour his feelings into his husband instead. Their little kitchen chairs are not build for two demigods, but it won't stop Ronin from trying nonetheless to climb into the other man's lap, fingers slipping into his curls, lips pressing feather light kisses to his cheeks.
"We will never, ever have to see each other on the beaches of Northaven again," he whispers.
Predatory still, even after the changes made by Mort, Remi's attention is immediately caught by the movement near their bed. Dropping his pen and moving to stand with arms already spread to accept Ronin in whatever state he's in—presumably one of being Not Very Good—he pauses midstride as his husband radiates rather than dazzles, so much so that he hardly hears his own name from Ronin's lips or notices the smile that's wrapped around the word.
"Hey—" Soothingly said as if all this sunshine might simply be the moment before the hammer falls, it's with arms wrapped tightly around the Nova that he tugs the man against him that their emotions might say all that which cannot easily be expressed.
Confusion meets joy, and had it not been for the words whispered against his cheek Remi might have been skeptical of the golden aura radiating out from where the pair touched.
But the beaches.
The beaches.
Pulling back slightly, Remi's sea glass stare roves over his husband's body expecting to see some sign of struggle. Surely his heart must have been torn out, his soul detached, his life forfeit somehow.
But he looked fine.
"Say more things." The Bastion implores with a shaky and not-quite believing smile.
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I'm okay," Ronin whispers, instantly wanting to reassure against any darkness he feels starting to shadow his husband's emotions. "I promise, I'm okay." The words are muffled by the kisses he's already trying to cover the Bastion in, and it's with a laugh caught in his throat that he realises that this still doesn't exactly explain anything. "Vanya is with Mort," he continues. "It's done."
Still radiating light enough to illuminate the entirety of their little space, the newly christened Knight is unsure where to properly start. "Safrin called me. She... she was going to..." His brow furrows, remembering suddenly the direction his life had almost taken, before it doesn't matter. Gods, how good does it feel that it doesn't matter.
"Vi came," he explains, preferring to glaze over the previous unpleasantness. "I... I belong to him now, not to Safrin. It's like you with Ludo, I..." Fuck, I think I'm free.
"Yes, but okay is not always—" The words are halted by feverish kisses and despite the worry clawing closed his throat, the Bastion finds himself laughing even as his hands silently search for wounds his eyes might have missed.
"Oh. Ronin, that's.." Good didn't even come close, and so it's with an apologetic shake of his head that Remi swallows back any other adjectives, knowing they'll all fall short.
Feeling suddenly as if they were caught in a riptide, Remi's fingers tighten around the Knight as the story is told and Ronin's emotions sing their accompaniment. "—Vi?—" He interrupts, his breath hitching as his teeth click together.
It's a lot to take in as much as it isn't, if only because Remi had experienced a similar enough situation to immediately understand the gist of it. "So..." He says slowly, reaching out to cup the side of Ronin's face with his palm as if to properly confirm he was alive and well.
"..you copied me."
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
It's true that okay is not always, but on this occasion, gods, it really is. "I know," he whispers, of Vanya and the words that will never do justice to the wrong that has finally been put right. "She's with Aoife now. And Vai." And all the others they've lost, whose memories will seem to shine all that brighter from here on out.
Leaning into the hand that comes up to cup his cheek, Ronin's grin is one of unapologetic joy, his vibrance beaming out of him in ripples of radiant light that he can't even hope to control. "I absolutely did copy you," he whispers, as if it's a decision he had any part in other than saying yes.
Leaning forward for a proper kiss, the Knight wraps his husband up in a tight hug that would crack the ribs of an ordinary man. "How could I not, when I saw how happy it made you?" he continues, the words mumbled against Remi's lips.
The names bring goosebumps across the Bastion's upper arms, and though he shivers, gods he's never felt so warm. Swallowing hard, Remi feels only relief rather than the sort of turmoil one might expect a man like Remi to feel over his husband's former great love being reunited with her real daughter. Tears swipe at the back of his eyes, but the pain is a welcome one.
Unable to help his boyish and entirely shit-eating grin despite the tears, Remi beams right back at the Knight. "I suppose I can forgive you that." He whispers back, too elated by the news to apologize for his terrible joke.
Breathing in the scent of starlight and sky-winds, the Bastion meets his husband's lips with shaky delight. 'Well, you always were a follower." Remi agrees, the lie a silly one, but such was the lightness of the moment despite all that had led up to it.
"Unless you have also become some sort of shield for Vi, because then I might actually take offense."
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I was hoping you would," Ronin murmurs, and though no tears have fallen, even the prospect of them has the Knight cupping his husband's cheeks as if he might kiss away every mark of bittersweetness that escapes. "But if you need convincing, I can always beg your forgiveness." In more ways than one, even if Ronin is too scatterbrained currently for even the idea of sex to keep his focus for more than a few seconds at a time.
Scoffing and drawing the Bastion back against him, Ronin holds him for a long, warm moment. He doesn't say it - I think everything will be alright after all - because men like the Taliesins know better than to tempt fate - but the sentiment is there nonetheless.
"Oh, nothing so important," he whispers, of his role for Vi, smooching a kiss against Remi's cheek for good measure. "I am but a lowly knight. I'll still be looking for you to look after me."
"Well," Remi chuckles. "I suppose I can hear you out." Of course the pair would respond differently to their respective ascensions, but the same flood of optimism is just as tangible now as it had been when the Bastion had returned back with similar news.
'A knight.' Remi repeats with an eyeroll; where Ronin's lips had touched his cheek, a dimple deepened. "Of course you are." Gods, but of course he was. He always had been, no matter if his title had been soldier or commander.
"Does this mean we are going to fight again?" Remi wonders, his grip on the Knight relaxing only just now that he was fairly certain Ronin wouldn't burst apart at the seams. "How much of you has changed?"
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"You are too kind," Ronin murmurs, pressing kiss after kiss against the other man's jaw, his words warped by his smile. "And what is that supposed to mean, exactly?" He's joking, of course - he knows as well as his husband that his desire to help has long overridden pesky things like staying in one piece; a knight is as appropriate now as any other title ever has been.
"I'll fight you if you want me to," he continues, his kisses migrating down the column of Remi's throat, his grin still audible. "I'll do what ever you want." He means it, too, and he might easily have gotten carried away in his affections were it not for the other man's continued questions.
"...It feels..." Brows knitting together, Ronin steps back a fraction to gaze down at himself, before plopping into one of the chairs and seizing the opportunity for tea - and the stronger liquor, but it's for celebration rather than commiseration, now. "Different, but not..." Shaking his head, he nevertheless offers a somewhat sad smile to his husband.
"I think our days of dreaming together are over, though."
"Oh, I think you know very well what it means, baron." Remi kids of course, and if his crooked smile doesn't show it the levity of his emotions certainly will. Letting his eyes slip closed, the Bastion sips in a shivery breath. Careful, Remi warns silently. I might just take you up on that. But he really did want to hear more about Ronin's transition, and so it was with an intentional stiffening that pulled himself out of the reach of his husband's wandering kisses.
Brushing the charcoal and parchment out of the way, Remi gathers the glasses and sets them down before the Knight. "Yeah, I think so too. But then.." Smiling softly, Remi stretches out one of his legs in order to brush his foot against his husband's beneath the table. "...none of that was ever real, anyway." Reality, no matter how mundane or painful, was the only place he could ever truly touch Ronin, and he'd take his husband's hands interlaced with his own over a world of their own creation, any day.
"Sooo..." Reaching for the tea while also trying to engage his husband in some, Remi raises his eyebrows. "I cannot imagine Safrin was too pleased."
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
I hope you do, Ronin says honestly, and if a baron ever poured tea shirtless and in his pajama bottoms, the Knight is doing an immaculate impression of it right now. Perhaps a little later, though. When he feels as though the fizzing in his bones has died down a little, when he doesn't want to laugh and stretch beneath the morning sun at the same time as he wants to retreat beneath the furs and blankets with Remi forever.
Glancing up at the foot that brushes against his own, Ronin finishes adding honey to his cup and lets his free hand brush across Remi's knee beneath the table. "It was fun while it lasted," he agrees. "But it doesn't compare to this." To any of this.
And where once upon a time Ronin would have bitten his tongue against any mention of Safrin, afraid of the line he walked between goddess and husband, if anything, now he scoots his chair closer, stretching an arm across the back of Remi's seat. "She was furious, I think," he half whispers. "Vi interrupted us, and dismissed her in front of me." He's not smiling, he promises.
"She was going to strip me of everything, little by little," he continues, shaking his head. "Under the guise of helping Seren. For every bit stronger she got, I would grow weaker, until..." Until he died, he supposes.
"No." Remi agrees, utterly twitterpated to see his husband's shoulders bare—not just of clothing, but of tension and the weight of fickle vanity.
Delighted for reasons that were largely petty, Remi raises his eyebrows encouragingly while dipping his head, not wanting to miss a single word. "Oh? Dismissed her?" The theatrical drop of his jaw was only ruined by the sudden lines of tension by his eyes. "Right...because if you said no to that, you would be the worst dad ever, is that it?" Though the corners of his lips turned up in a smile, it was one born of pure spite and, now that he felt utterly free to feel it, hatred.
"I know what you and had was once good, and that the rest was complicated, but gods Ronin. I really do think she would have broken you beyond measure if only to keep anyone else from wanting you."
innocence died screaming, honey, ask me i should know
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Dismissed her," Ronin repeats, his fingers wiggling as if to replicate the spray of starlight Safrin had disappeared into. "Literally. Mid-argument." And he can let out a breathless laugh about it now, not because it's funny, but because at the time he really hadn't been equipped to react to the sight of a herald being scolded. "Vi did warn me, though, not to get tangled back up in any of her games." At this stage, he doesn't even feel as though he'd want to risk being in her presence.
Wrinkling his nose - because it doesn't take much for Ronin to feel like the worst dad ever and they both know it - the Knight risks a sip of his own tea and nods, at last, in agreement. "You're right," he murmurs, turning his head to press a kiss to Remi's temple. "I was on borrowed time, and the hourglass was running low. We both knew it." Another kiss, before he holds out the hand not stretched across the back of the Bastion's chair. "But look."
Where once a softly golden spray of constellations had marked the skin of his forearm, the Knight's flesh is free of Safrin's shackles at last.
