Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
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She’d known hardships – who hadn’t – but the weight of everything flickered and tore as she nestled her way into the gardens. A brush of a tear here and there, as she fed animals and gathered water, as she strived desperately to convey every single necessity, to force away every damned notion beginning to build over her shoulders.
But they always came back; between rows of Celestine lights or edges of obsidian crows nearby. She waved them off and they scattered for a while, void incantations bleeding away for another opportunity. Sohalia disappearing. Dahlia rising to power, and no one seeming to care. Unanswered letters and eerie broadcasts. And then their failure in the swamps, where the infection spread into the sea.
She picked at the weeds and forced away all the edges until she was nothing more than a brink, a canyon, a rivulet; tossing away the ends and saving them for the beasts in her threshold. She grabbed at the herbs needed for healing, collecting their flowers and stems in her lap, and for no other reason, save the lot of them, subsequently burst into tears.
Mittens ghosted over, a hovering thing on her shoulder. “I’m okay,” she whispered, either to herself or the companion, as if that would heal and stitch things back together.
Harper visits Stormbreak out of concern more than a need to visit Molly's. After the voice in his head had decreed Dahlia the new Queen, he'd tried to visit Sohalia's apartment and had only found it locked and silent. He knows there's little hope he'll find her by wandering the city, but the concern only mounts, inspiring him to begin truly hunting. Questioning people lightheartedly, standing on the outskirts of gossip about Dahlia, gaining as much information as he can.
He visits the Celestine in the hopes of finding Lena, recalling she'd been on Sohalia's council. He doesn't expect to find her like this.
Concern shoves his heart into his throat in one harsh jump, and Harper runs the short distance it takes to get to her side, falling heavy on his knees without a care for the ache as his hands reach for her; one to her hand, and one to the fringe of her hair to try and sweep it aside to check her for injuries before any words can even make it past his lips. "Lena? Lena, are you okay? Are you hurt?" His chest shakes with trepidation. Had he waited too long? Dahlia's fearsomeness had been spread far and wide on the notice boards. He can only imagine what she might have already suffered, and his stomach clenches with fear.
Mittens alerted her, and it still wasn’t enough as the pulse of another wandered beneath her fingers – her head swung upwards and her hands retreated, back into her lap, for the safety and confines of the herbs. There she could twiddle and tease the leaves and fronds, rather than lay out the foundations of her terror – and it continued to take moments more before she realized she was staring at a friend. “Harper? What are you doing here?” She blinked, dashing away some more tears and pretending they were something else, wondering how far she’d have to go to tell a lie.
Her companion screeched, and she unfurled a long, shaky breath. “I’m not hurt,” she managed to quibble, placing a sad smile along her features in lieu of anything else. “Just a lot going on right now,” which was the truth, and she tried to dart away from the subject, almost a bird in human skin, threatening to flutter and alter and reshape just to forge elsewhere. “How have you been?”
She pulls away, and rightly so given how swiftly he approaches. Harper would normally respect it, but he knows he hovers far too close until the moment he can ascertain there are no evident wounds or injuries. Only then does he settle back on his heels, shins pressed into the earth of the enclosure as her eyes find his. Mittens' screech has him pausing, and he's glad for it given the rest that spills forth. She isn't the best actor, but Harper pauses all the same as he considers how much he should push. They're friends, but only just. How much is too much? And how much can he safely admit to her, if she might still be on Dahlia's council?
"A lot going on myself," he admits quietly, trying for a bittersweet smile that might offer kinship if nothing else. "I..." he fails immediately, and he exhales slowly. This may not be wartime, but it stinks of it, and trust is harder now. But he has to. Lena has given him no reason not to trust her. "Sohalia is like a daughter to me. I'm here trying to investigate her absence, before Stormbreak becomes impassable." Something he fears greatly. It could be by Dragoon presence, re-instituting the anti-Abandoned defenses, anything. He feels as if there's a timer ticking down somewhere, and he is just one man these days. Regionless, unsupported, unknown. What can he possibly do?
But he can't afford not to try. Not with Sohalia on the line.
Grateful he stayed close but not entirely so near, she breathed a little easier. Mittens seemed to feed off her restlessness and hovered and hung around her shoulder, alternating between levitating and glaring, and her fingers twined around the thread of stems once again.
It was easier to hear his portions than to lean or stare at her own, so her head tilted slightly, a swift study, before flickering back down into the soil and gardens. She hadn’t realized the depths of his connection with Sohalia, and all of it tasted bitter in her mouth, a shaky breath shuddering from her lungs, because she had nothing to offer him in all those worries and sentiments. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I tried to find out, but Dahlia -,” she choked down a response, eyes gaze meandering around, wondering how much the woman could hear and if anywhere was safe. Gods, she was shocked she was still permitted to wander around after resigning from the council. “Said Sohalia found the pressure of leadership too much to maintain, and stepped down. And as far as I know, no one has seen her.” And how did one search for an individual who didn’t want to be found?
Who’d been just as lost, if not more so, than the rest of them?
Mittens has had a sour disposition since the day Harper met him - it? - and it's easy to ignore the companion's grumping when Lena's cheeks are still wet, her hands trembling around the blooms in her lap. Harper's heart twists painfully. They've all been worrying about Dahlia and this omnipresent voice everyone is hearing, but what about the people of Stormbreak? The people who can't leave everything behind even for fear? He can't help but make it personal given he knows so many people in Stormbreak, but the whole of Caido is failing them, and it's difficult to swallow.
Harper's frown is severe, and clearly paranoid. "She was having romantic trouble, but she loved Stormbreak more than anything. I just...can't believe that. Not when nobody can get in touch with her." In fact he refuses to believe it at all until Sohalia tells him directly. After how hurt she'd been when Jude hadn't written her in his absence, and her knowledge of Phoebe and Maeve's own disappearances, Harper knows she wouldn't leave without a letter. Even if it was only to him. His grim certainty is apparent in the bond, the boulder in the core of his stomach that keeps him hunting.
But right now, Lena's anxiety is all he can actively help with. "You were around her? I know you were on Sohalia's council, but I don't think you should stay on it. I don't want you to get hurt," he confesses, blue eyes guileless and expression tense with worry.
Mittens’ disposition hadn’t grown any better, but with Lena upset it was difficult to parse through the reasonings. She drifted a hand upwards to comfort the little beast too, wondering if it would be enough for both of them, because the conversation hadn’t. She blinked and batted away the remains of her tears, trying to keep all of it at bay, swallowed and smothered down just as the rest of the fledgling emotions bubbled and burst.
Sohalia and romantic trouble tracked with what Anju had been concerned about, but there hadn’t been enough time thereafter to do anything about it – advice, sanctity, a shelter in the storm of tempestuous and teenage emotions. “I had heard, but we didn’t get to her in time - ,” and now it seemed like that was another thing that could be laid amongst the fault lines. Mittens hissed and Lena steadied, steeled, tried to find an edge to grab hold of. “But I don’t know where we’d find her.” Her head tilted, eyes flickering back to his. “Would you?” Maybe there was a place amongst this bright world that Sohalia called all her own; private but wonderful, secure but comforting.
As for Dahlia, her teeth bit down together. “I was – she called us all to meet as a council. I resigned – I couldn’t stay on, not after all those notices and what she’s capable of.” She half-wondered if that made her a coward, or something else altogether. “I didn’t want to give her anymore power.”
Harper's heartbreak is clear on his face. He had been one of the last people to see her. Giving her shelter and guidance should have been his duty, long before her council members. And how had he spent it? Inebriated and useless at her side. He has loathed himself for many things since leaving the crown behind, but for the first time he hates himself for having chosen to be selfish at all. What was the worth of it if it meant he lost his daughter?
His jaw is tense and twitching as he shakes his head mutely, trying to find words without choking on his own grief. "I have a key to her home, but there were no signs of anyone being there in quite some time." The accumulation of dust and rotting food had made the length of her absence clear to him, and he'd never been so grateful to have been trained as a detective in his life before Caido. "I checked her normal favorite spots, but none of them could have sustained her longterm." And though that means little to an Attuned, it's worth considering, especially given how Sohalia is justifiably accustomed to the normal comforts of modern society.
His hands fist in his lap, knuckles white and slightly trembling. Only the distraction of Lena's confession - and the sudden terror it inspires - has Harper looking up from them. "What? Lena that's so incredibly brave, but you can't stay here after that!" He knows this is her home, her birthland, but the urgency is swift and all-consuming.
Keys to a home, favored spots, nothing but dust and debris to hold the sanction. “I fear I’m at a loss then,” unless there were other choices made in the interim. Had Sohalia been embarrassed, fretful, that she couldn’t withstand the pressure? Had all of it made her turn tail and leave, without telling a soul? “Do you have any other ideas?” They might as well churn something else up – it might keep her mind off of Dahlia and the rest of the hellish threshold they were damned and doomed to face.
Harper telling her she was brave was unexpected, and her eyes widened for a moment, before she placed her head back down, contemplating weeds and soil, the world at large. “I can’t abandon the Celestine.” And she wouldn’t – not the thing she cherished, not the animals residing and recuperating within, not the ties Frey had given and granted her. The thought had never even crossed her mind, which explained why it was so easy to dismiss. “I’ll just stay here.” She didn’t have any great or grand powers, she wasn’t very strong, but gods she could endure and hide with the best of them – why would Dahlia bother with her?
He'd known it before she said it, but hearing it is still painful. "I don't think she went willingly with all I've gathered," he admits on a murmur as if it's his turn to believe the walls have ears. The Celestine may be free of void influence for now, but for how long? How long until all of the flora and fauna is contaminated? Were they as connected to the Family as the omnipresent voices in their heads? Capable of spying and reporting back? "Which means any of my ideas are meaningless if someone other than Sohalia is in charge of her location." He can make extremely well-educated guesses on Sohalia's patterns and preferences, but a stranger? A magical, godlike enemy with unclear goals? He's lost at sea.
Maybe that's why he reaches a hand out, palm open to her and eyes desperate. "Lena, please. Just consider it for a moment? You rejected her. We don't know how fickle she is, whether she'll risk someone with any small amount of knowledge to walk around free." Certainly not to stay in Stormbreak, with eyes and ears to pair with a confirmed lack of support. Harper fought in wars long before coming to Caido, and the hardest powers to topple were always the ones who viciously stamped out any snakes or spies.
“Are you implying someone took her?” Her eyes rounded and widened again – even after surviving war and bloodshed and ruin, witnessing her sister die, watching the world fall apart from tower to tower, she found it difficult to fathom someone would spirit the Heart away. “I wonder if there would be a way to track her. Find her.” Or if the gods could know – capable of discovering, with their infinite sagacity and omniscience.
She didn’t understand his desperation though, not when her whole being has been so firmly committed to the world around them. The gardens were her peace, and the animals her charge, and she’d never willingly flee their quarters and confines. Her gaze went to his hand but her palms didn’t take it, instead squeezing the herbs in her lap, easing a breath from her lungs. “I have no other knowledge. Everyone knows she’s taken over Stormbreak.” There’d been no grand revelation in the meeting – apart from Everest’s strange compliance and Anju’s natural and habitual need to coincide with the land’s protection. “I would rather protect this,” and she gestured vaguely to the enclosures, the flowers, the lights surrounding and pervading, “than simply let it succumb too. Frey appointed me here, and I will see it through.”
Harper's expression is grave. "I would rather be paranoid and wrong than ignore the possibility," he rumbles, privately relieved that she doesn't dismiss it out of hand. "Anything more public or violent would have caused Sohalia's friends in high places to respond. You don't think the timing is convenient when Dahlia is a confirmed threat?" And maybe it's just because she's his daughter that Harper believes the story of pressure and romance less, or maybe it's his war-roughened paranoia, but what was there to lose in considering every possibility?
When she doesn't take his hand, he turns it palm down and lets his fingertips just barely graze her knee as he sets it on the grass beneath them. "You have hands to write and ears to hear. I've seen people killed for less in war." It's a heavy word to use so soon after the war with The Voice, but Harper already considers this to be a war. What else can the void creatures be but an invasion? "Would you die for it? For a role?" For a god? It resonates devastatingly in Harper's chest, because he had answered very differently when he held the title of King. It doesn't surprise him that Lena is a better person than him, but selfishly - "I don't want to lose you. I've lost so many friends. I'm just - I'm scared for you." In her gentle hands and eyes he sees Ray, in her devotion he sees Weaver, and he isn't sure how many more friends he can lose. Though he can't claim to be a very good or constant friend, the idea of losing one of the few people he can seek out unburdened these days makes his chest threaten to cave in. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Isn't that what he'd been seeking to teach himself in the past seasons? So why does he regret it so much now?
“Oh, I believe the timing is terribly convenient,” she admitted, eyes back on the balance of lavender nearby. But she wouldn’t be the one to publicly incriminate someone; nor a being like Dahlia, without proof and evidence. “And if that’s the case, then there are probably plenty of places she could be.” Hidden and tucked away – as some had done before and during the war; rooms upon rooms in the temple and chapels alone, once coincided with mauling Ascended, and now potentially another station of violence and vehemence. “But I think Dahlia would notice if anyone went snooping around.” Lena wasn’t certain of any ‘henchmen’ or guards under the leader’s wake and wrath; didn’t know anything at all.
Which was why it was so easy to counter and argue Harper’s points about her own safety. She’d already written letters that no one had responded to – the world was aware of what had happened and could only do so much. Maybe it was in Stormbreak’s hands, and that was all. “You know I would,” she uttered, a solemn promise never taken too lightly. “And if anything were to happen to me, you would know where to place the blame.” A sad little smile followed, before the shake of her head.
His admittance made her brow furrow, and then a long, deep sigh followed suit. “I’m not doing this to hurt you or scare you. Gods, I’m terrified of that woman. But I can’t just run away. They need me here,” and she gestured to the animals, the gardens, the wake. “They are my responsibility.”
