#RemerauxWrites

[vermilionwinds]

1. Foster

If Remeraux had to lie there for one more minute, she was going to lose her mind.

It wasn’t like she had much of a choice right now. The hard plaster around her collarbone made it so her entire world was essentially the ceiling of the captain’s quarters; raw and unadorned wood. Turning her head much farther to either side would upgrade the dull throbbing and skin-deep itchiness that had settled into her shoulders into full on daggers of pain, and so she’d given up on looking at the mounted helmets or sun-bleached portraits or any of the other interesting things hanging on the wall. She’d already counted all of the planks she could see (47), and then all of the knots in the planks (238), and at the moment the door creaked open she was pretending that the knots were stars and sullenly inventing new constellations for them (This was Xavier, the Stuffy; that one Ganzaya, Giver of Icky Medicines).

“Oh, Tygrysku. How are you holding up?” The voice was rough like sandpaper, yet musical like the wind in the reeds. She didn’t need to be able to see her mother to recognize her; only to hear her voice and the deep thumps of each booted footfall.

“How long do I have to lie here again?” Remeraux whined, her violet eyes darting over to Danifa as soon as her sea-worn face entered her field of view.

“Oh, weeks, Tygrysku.” Her mother’s smirk always twisted strangely around the two thick lines of scar tissue carved into her mother’s sandy maw; it looked on one side devious, the other side manic- all yellowed fangs. “If you had simply broken your arm, you would have been on your feet by morning. But, you had to go and break your collar.”

Remeraux puffed up her cheeks. “I don’ need another lecture.” She huffed, pointedly looking away from the Hrothgar woman and back up to her invented night sky.

“And I’m not here to give one. Your bones will be a better teacher than I, and much more insistent.” She felt the point of one of her mother’s claws teasingly jab her on the forearm, earning another huff. “No, I’m here to tell you a story.”

Remeraux’s eyes lit up. “Really? Which one? Derumir at the Mountaintop? Pyotr and the Brush of Colors?” She rattled them off, speaking a mile a minute, only to earn a deep laughter from her mother, that Remeraux could feel the bass of in her stomach.

“No, Tygrysku. This one is a new one.” The woman took the time to smooth the deep brown furs draped over Remeraux, the weight and warmth of her hands soothing (even if they did make her feel smaller than she felt already). “This is the story of Wieslaw, the Brave.”

Remeraux let her eyes settle on her mother, soaking in the way the candlelight danced in her sandstone eyes, how it illuminated red tattoos of curved geometric shapes, like the words to a song she couldn’t read the language of.

“Once upon a time, on the shores of Gangos, up on the rocks that stretched to tickle the bottom of twisting vines, lived a family of alermuc—eagles, Tygrysku. Every year, when the sun rose so high in the day that it’d disappear past the top of the rocky cove, the fledglings would line up to see if that year was the time that they would finally spread their wings and fly. One of these little alermuc was named Wieslaw, and Wieslaw had lined up every year. The very first thing she had done when she was born was to line up, pink and featherless, right behind all of the rest.”

“Really? Even as a baby?” Remeraux inquired, as she idly ran her tongue along the gap between her front teeth.

“Are you going to interrupt me throughout the whole story, Tygrysku?” Her mother cocked her head to one side. “Because I could just stop right here.”

Remeraux shook her head negative, as much as she could manage, and her mother cleared her throat.

“You see, Wieslaw knew that the hunters who came to the shore prized their feathers. It was important that the alermuc fly fast, to avoid the hunters’ arrows. Wieslaw wanted to fly the fastest out of all of them, so fast she could snatch the arrows right out of the sky, before they could find their mark. And so, every year she stretched her little wings, and marched right up to the back of the line. And every year, her mama had to pick her up with her beak, and place her right back in the nest. But when the sun disappeared back up past the top of the cove, there she’d be all over again.”

“One year, she saw them coming in. Feathers of brown, sturdy ones to replace her fluffy white ones. Wieslaw was convinced that this was her year. She practiced her flapping, until she could leave the ground higher and higher. And then, in the middle of the night, she decided she needed to try. After all, how could she convince her mama to let her try when she had never so far? And so, she stood at the edge of the rocks, stretched her wings out as far as they could go...”

“And? And did she fly?!”

“Of course not!” Her mother chuckled. “She tripped and fell on the rocks. And oh, did she cry Tygrysku! ‘Why can’t I do this one thing, no matter how hard I try?!’ She sobbed, until her mama woke up and scooped her back up, and placed her back in the nest like she had every time before. And she cooed, and nuzzled her feathers with her beak, and told her that no flower bloomed, no rock was worn to sand because it wanted to badly enough. But also, the seed would not be a seed forever. With time, you will soar as far and as fast as you could ever dream, and you will look back on the days you spent on the rock as a silly little memory.” Her mother tucked her in, poking blankets under either side of her, and Remeraux let out a contented, cozy sigh.

“And did she fly, mama?” She asked, eyelids already heavy from sleep.

“Of course she did, Tygrysku. Because of her, even now you’ll find the shafts of arrows amongst the twigs of birds’ nests.” She gently booped Remeraux on the nose with one padded fingertip. “Now get some rest, my love. You’ll have a lot of staring at the ceiling to do tomorrow.”

“...Can you sing me a lullaby...?” Remeraux mumbled, and her mother gently stroked her brow.

“Of course, Tygrysku.”

As Remeraux closed her eyes, she drifted off into the rolling of the ship and the soft thunder of her mother’s voice and was asleep before she’d reached the chorus.

[vermilionwinds]

10. Heady

The tension in the air around the well-worn card table was thick.

Almost as thick as the unknowable contents of the pitcher that stood in the dead center of the table like a monolith, a grim monument to the indescribable hooch it contained.

The mysterious booze, known only to the world as Shroud Serum, was a swirling mix of greens that seemed to twist and shimmer iridescently in the warm light of the dive bar, as if of its own volition. It stood, a living testament to the evening’s reverie, half-drained by this point— the rest of its contents was currently burning through the guts and sobriety both of the six figures gathered around it in a loose circle, on mismatched wooden stools. As the turn order progressed, every eye settled at once on Addifore, looking ever so slightly ruffled off of his proper poise by the churn of the liquor. (Well, except for the eyes of Pim and Remeraux, whose swimming visions were currently focused on ‘discerning how exactly Pim’s long, dextrous tail got wound so tightly around their stool’ and ‘focusing in drunken panic on their floor based vantage point’, respectively.)

With one fluid movement, the Duskwight man swiped a card from the haphazard pile strewn chaotically around the pitcher, and laid it flat on top of the table with a slap. Martin’s Shroud-green eyes lit up as the two of spades stared up at the party. Addifore just winced. “Oh.” “Mystery tonic, eh…?” A lazy, devilish smirk stretched across Remeraux’s face. With Pim rescued from their stool prison, she stumbled back to her own seat and let gravity drop her into it with a thump. Tilting her head, she set her sights on the particularly pink Miqo’te perched cozily in Renaux’s lap, with a conspiratorial wink. “Righ’, Martin. Whatcha got on tap?”

Their small brown hands excitedly sign out [I’ve been working on fizzy whiskey! Now you have to try it,] before giddily clapping, while the color drained from Addifore’s face.

Renaux chuckled, shooting his partner a look while he blanches. (Remeraux Melret, Renaux Mercier. That was a fun duo of names to have around the card table as more and more alcohol was imbibed.) “Didn’t he say whiskey makes him an arse, though…?”

His reward, for that comment, was a withering look from a man who looked quite accustomed to giving them.

[He’d be an arse regardless,] Martin signs, his expression making it read as if it was a rote statement of fact instead of a dig at their two-drawing friend, [but this is bubbling! It’s meant to make you giggly ‘cause it tickles.] They hop to their feet from Renaux’s lap and mosey across the room to go rummaging behind the unfathomably well-stocked bar of the Still and Strings. They retrieve from it a bottle of amber liquid, unlabeled except for a marker scrawl that says Fizzy Whiskey 2.5. They uncap it with a pop! sound that reverberates through the room, and a haze of vapor begins to swirl from the bottle’s mouth along with a veritable surge of carbonation. Everyone regarded it, from their respective perches around the table, as it was placed down into the center, right by the veritable tombstone that was the Shroud Serum pitcher. Into its mysterious confines were poured looks of confusion. Suspicion. Anticipation. Four of those eyes, however, lit up with devious interest— two violets, two citrines.

“Oh… I wan’ t’ try tha’.” Sif drawled in that road-warmed tone of hers, looking at the bottle fuming like a volcanic spring as one would regard a plunge from the high rocks down into a swimming hole. Well, the way one would if they weren’t chicken, anyways.

“Aye, come on! I’ll take one wif ya too, Addi.” Remeraux chimed in after, Brume accent thickening from syrup to quicksand under the weight of all that liquor. She was never one to be outdone. If there was a mystery drink anywhere, she had to pound it down. That was just the kind of gal she was. No matter how many shots of the foul punch were already squirming around her insides, or how vision swam like she was still out at sea. Martin, despite the card's demands that only the card drawer suffer the penalty, ended up pouring everyone a round of the ominously fizzing whiskey. Every one of those hands went to examine its contents, as the liquid even still managed to gurgle and churn, sending the rock of ice in the center of each squat glass dancing and clinking to and fro.

Addifore regarded it as one would a venomous snake. More specifically, as a venomous snake you’ve been ordered to kiss on the lips. “Really don’t want to…” He muttered, his words muffled and reverberated into the glass as it sat reluctantly against his lips. Relenting, finally, Addifore let the tiniest trickle of it through that sullen gateway. He turned green the second it touched his tongue. “Righ’ then, bottoms up!” Remeraux’s voice is the next to cut in, as she gripped the glass in one gloved hand and slugged the whole thing down in one go. Just as quickly, she started coughing and wheezing, as the carbonated alcohol bubbled and burned when a little of it diverted down into her lungs instead of sliding down her throat.

Martin looks dismayed at the reactions beginning to percolate from around the table. [Is it okay…?] they sign with fingers unsure, hesitant.

“It’s… S’good, Martin! Jus’... Jus’ went down the wrong pipe.”

The pure, high pitched squeak of Remeraux's voice as it left her throat left everyone at the table dumbfounded.

Sif blinked. Once. Twice. And then she howled with laughter. “Yer VOICE. It’s⁠— Oh, Twelve.” Sif, too, sounded like she was trying to imitate a squirrel.

There was a moment where both of them just stared blankly at each other, silent as the grave. Then, Remeraux’s lips wiggled, and before she knew it she erupted into laughter, high pitched and giggling and absolutely punctuated with a snort or two. “ Your v-voice, Sif!!” She started slapping her knee, as the two travelers descended completely into a horrible giggling echo chamber. Addifore looked on at the two of them in terror.

“I gotta try this!” Pim knocked back their own drink, their voluminous pink hair bouncing back from the gesture, and immediately went for the highest note they could muster. It was one positively soared right through the stratosphere. It was a refrain that Renaux was all too eager to join in as he chugged his own fizzy whiskey down, and let his gravelly bass fly on wings of whiskey up to an operatic soprano.

Martin sipped. Addifore sipped. A high pitched eep! escaped mouths that were quickly clamped down, and that reaction alone sent the two women at the table, who were finally beginning to push through the end of their giggling fits, right back down into an inescapable hell of laughter.

Remeraux’s head was spinning, swimming, swirling from the laughter, the liquor, the lack of oxygen. But the helium in their drinks was not the only thing that night making her feel lighter than a feather. And when Sif said she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed that hard, Remeraux regarded the friendly faces around the table, and wiping tears of laughter from the corners of her eye, couldn’t help but agree.

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OOC: This was based on an incredible moment from a group RP. All the characters besides Rem belong to their respective authors.

[vermilionwinds]

6. Avatar

She was always looking for a shape.

Not literal (although, in her girlhood she did dream wistfully of the sumptuous curves that age never did deign to deliver her), but something she could be. Something solid. Real. Unassailable.

Brume rat wasn’t something to be. It was something you were. (The gap between those two things is a yawning chasm.) A something that told the world you were nothing, and deserved the nothing it put into you. The absence of bread. The absence of ease. So many other absences. They filled you up with nothing, hoping a piece of it would stick, fester, grow until the insides matched the outsides.

She didn’t know much, but she knew enough to know that the nothing wasn’t her. Not when there were so many somethings to be. (Her mother told her of somethings, once. Not that she herself was much of anything now; just an absence that smells of lavender.) To be a knight, a traveler, a magician, a hero. Those were shapes. Something that held their contours, stuck in the minds of men. Their walls were solid enough you could pour things into; daring, clever, witty, bold, handsome, beautiful, and they would hold those things inside of them. They were the people that even nothings knew the tales of.

And so, wanting shapes of her own, she pretended.

Her, and her sister both. She cut out shapes for them, and they stepped inside them, and gave everything around them shapes too. Rubble took the shape of castles. Sticks, the shapes of swords. And in their kingdom of craft paper she imagined what it was like to have a shape, and the rush of it made her bold. Daring. So confident was she in her shape that she ran headlong into a something more defined than she was. (The shape, a count.) The collision sent her outline exploding outwards from the impact. And her father saw it happen, and knew all too well how dangerous wanting a shape was, for people like them. And so he dragged her back home, to feed her his own nothing until enough of it stuck. Until she remembered what she was. But she was always looking for a shape, and she would not be denied it.

And so she ran away.

[vermilionwinds]

5. Residence

On the first day, she figures out her favorite spots in the apartment.

It doesn’t take long. As far as cozy spots go she’s spoiled for choice.

When pressed, she says it's the armchair on the second floor that’s large enough for her to curl all of her six-odd fulms into, with a bookshelf just behind her and an orchestrion within reaching distance. She always tells herself that it’d be a great place to have coffee in the morning, but when five bells finds her as it usually did, dead-eyed from fitful rest, she sighs and resigns herself to draping herself across the living room couch while she waits for her kettle to sing. She drums her fingers across the porcelain of her mug as she watches the mobile of bluebirds twirl just overhead. She thinks about the identical ones her friend has in her office, and chuckles at the thought of her fondness for the pudgy little things. It was so very much like her.

The couch becomes home to plenty of slumping, of various kinds. Slumping with a book in her hands, every so often nodding off and dropping it on the bridge of her nose. Slumping with a bottle of wine, drained quietly alone, when there were memories that needed to be drowned. Slumping in agony, every muscle screaming after squeezing blood into gil, wondering how much more punishment she could take. Wondering what there even would be left for her, after she finally reached that limit.

But even then, it was a home for those things. And that wasn’t lost on her.

On the second day, she buys groceries. It’s a little ambitious of her. She’s bad at it, is easily swindled at the marketplace, and over half a job’s take goes to food she’ll either burn or forget about or leave to mold, but when she puts the fruit down on the fruit rack and the produce in the ice box, she feels a quiet kind of pride. She tries to tell herself that it was worth it, even when she returns to Momodi days before she meant to and pleads hat in hand for more work. And the next evening after finds her with a black eye and a seam of stitches through her side, hunched over a bowl of Hannish takeout as she gives up on her plans to make soup that evening.

But even then, it was a home for those things. And that wasn’t lost on her.

On the fifth day, she doesn’t leave the apartment. She barely leaves the loft bed; only long enough to drag a bottle and some leftovers with her into her nest of blankets. She keeps the light pink curtains drawn, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the fish tank just beyond it. She tries and fails not to think, bell after bell, over and over and over again. The liquor helps. Until it doesn’t. And as she clumsily lowers herself into the blue claw-footed tub, water near scalding, she tries not to look down at her body. She brings the bottle back to her lips, and curses herself for wasting her day off like this.

But even then, it was a home for those things. And that wasn’t lost on her.

On the eighth day, she has a friend over.

She’s never had a friend over before, and she has no idea how it’s done. She spends the whole day before cleaning and scrubbing and, arms deep in sudsy water, she wonders how in the seven hells she could have left so many mugs all over the place. But it has to look right, even if she knew her guest didn’t care. She’d learned a long time ago, under oaken trees, small hands sticky with sap, that the way you showed your gratitude was by taking care of what you were given. She watches, as they walk together under the Ul'dahn sun, how the woman breezes through the marketplace. A few of the merchants insist that Saint Savage will not be paying today (What a title, she thinks every time it comes up), and yet she always does. She watches the smile on her face in every interaction. She’s seen that smile in dingy bars and packed clubs and late summer nights, and it’s a smile she hopes she always has cause to come back around to.

She helps her carry their ingredients back up the apartment stairs, and she doesn’t notice that she can take them without looking now. She pours two glasses of wine, she sharpens a kitchen knife with her well-loved whetstone, and she renders produce into cubes with surgical precision. She curls her fingers in towards her palm as she’d been taught, and in her mind's eye she can see the big, leathery hands that had once modeled the technique for her. She’s put in charge of seasoning, and the color nearly drains from her face. She shrugs, she gives in, and she sends clouds, cascades, torrents of pungent spices down into the mixing bowl. She talks. She reminisces. She laughs. She watches her friend pull a wooden spoon through a cast iron skillet, framed by the setting sun pouring through the kitchen window, and something about the sight almost makes her cry.

She’s handed her portion, and as they eat she quickly realizes, too late, how much spice was too much. And how far past too much she had gone. As they begin to tear up, sinuses going completely rampant, they can’t help but look at each other and laugh, loud and hard and long even as they cough and sputter and stumble over each other, trying to find something to put out the fire they’d lit in their mouths. Collapsed into a giggling pile on the floor, she rests her head on her friend’s shoulder, taking her hand in hers while they passed a bottle of rolanberry juice between them. She wishes that some moments would stretch on forever.

--------

On the ninth day, she cleans up dishes they’d forgotten to take care of the night before. She tries her best to buff out a deep red juice stain on the wall she begins to worry just isn’t coming out. And as she pours salt into the bottom of the cast iron skillet and begins to scrub at it with a rag, she wonders what the place was like when her friend first arrived, long before the two of them had met. What spoke to her about each book as she filled out her shelves. What kinds of songs she played on the white piano in the back. What dishes she cooked with the bundles of dried spices, hung just above the windowsill. Why she had stocked the bar so full for a single-person apartment. And what she saw in the mobile of bluebirds when she slumped across the couch and watched them lazily spin.

Because she had built a home out of those things. And that wasn't lost on her.

[vermilionwinds]

14. Commend

"I was just about ta ask on both counts. Seemed a sensible enough place ta store me axe. Ta be honest, the thing is probably worth ten o' me, so I'm a little protective."

“No selling yourself short. I’m sure it’s a nice axe. But you’re a really nice you, too.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remeraux runs into a tall leg on a warm night in Ishgard, while she was pretending she was a dragon running away from the gallant Ser Rosamonde. The leg kicks her aside, and she yelps as she’s knocked into the cobblestone. “Watch where you’re going, you brat!” She hears a rough voice bark, and she rubs her eyes and watches the man adjust his cravat. “Tch. Of course a whore’s daughter would want for manners.”

As her mom rushed out to look at her skinned knee, she asks her mom what the man’s words mean.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She struggles and she kicks and she tries to bite, but the Temple Knights on either side of her wrench her arms backwards and drag her through the crowds of the Jeweled Crozier, and force her to her knees in front of a man dressed in blue velvet. Her father throws himself on his knees of his own volition. “Please, milord, have mercy… She’s just a child, she don’t know no better… It won’ happen again, I’ll make sure of it, so please.” He was begging. He was begging. The man above them all huffed, and smoothed his red mustache. “You better watch that wretch of yours, or before you know it she’ll be taking a long walk off the Witchdrop.” Her father starts to blubber, and kisses the man’s boots. Remeraux knows just enough to be disgusted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remeraux can feel the knife pressed against her cheek begin to saw against her skin from the rock of the waves. It didn’t help that the pale hand holding it was trembling. “You will grant me safe passage, or I swear I will send this wretch to your Twelve.” The man sneers the words and punctuates the word Twelve by pulling his blade across, opening her flesh like an envelope. As Remeraux bites down hard on her tongue as blood begins to pour down her face, a shot rings out in the captain’s quarters. The hand at her face drops the knife, and the man crumples over. Xavier Folchambres blows the smoke from the barrel of his pistol, and turns his ice cold stare on Remeraux as she clutches her face and howls. “What were you thinking, you damn fool girl?!” He growls, and Remeraux can’t find an answer worth telling.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remeraux couldn’t explain why her hands went slack and let go of the rope. The wind pulled hard rope burns into her palms as the storm wrenched the mast away, and her fellow Sirens groaned in frustration. They didn’t sting as bad as the sight of Rhoswen Leach storming towards her, eyes like fire. “That’s the bleedin’ fifth time you’ve fucked up big on my ship!” The woman barked, and despite Remeraux nearly seven malms of height she felt so small. “An’ you said you were Squallbreaker… I’ve got no time for girls who can’t pull their weight. If we can even make it back to port, you’re gonna fuckin’ stay there.” The captain spat on the deck. “Girls! Say yer bleedin’ goodbyes to miss Rem, here.” As Captain Leach stormed off, Remeraux was just thankful it was raining.

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“Please, Tadi.” Remeraux is tapping her foot as she swallows her own tongue before the lalafellin man sat across from her. “Ya gotta have some kinda job I can do.”

“And why should I. To supply you with more drinking money, hm? Do you need a new blouse?” The man balked, and if Remeraux wasn’t truly desperate she would have clocked him right in those gold teeth.

“Nald teaches not to spend above your means. Or above your station. And yet you come to me again like a beggar, for the second time this moon.” “I ain’ too proud ta work…” Remeraux bows her head before him, clenching her gloved fists, swallowing down those last dregs of pride. “I’ll do anyfin honest….”

“I don’t work with wash-ups or burn-outs, dear. Let your growling stomach remind you how to manage your coin.”

Remeraux watches him go, and hates that it’s a debate in her head on whether to spend her last bent gil on food or drink that night.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “No selling yourself short. I’m sure it’s a nice axe. But you’re a really nice you, too.”

With a last perky grin Severine gives a little wave and turns to let herself out of the office. “Meet you out there!”

As she closes the door behind her, Remeraux just stands there in silence for a second, processing those words. They make her so giddy that she doesn’t find it in herself just then to argue.

[vermilionwinds]

9. Friable

Remeraux’s eyelids felt heavy.

As she dragged them open, groaning incoherently, she realized how fucking heavy everything else felt. Leaden. As if someone had replaced her bones with weights while she’d been out. Her eyes were rewarded, for their considerable effort, with a world that was far too bright, and as she blinked through squinted eyes, she willed the haze of blurred, sharp chaos into what could pass for focus.

The midday sun.

The top of a large, mottled green tent.

Two IV bags, dripping steadily down in the direction of her wrist.

One clear, one deep red.

The sight of it helped her become aware of a dull ache, pressing through her body. She knew enough about her nerves at this point to know that it was probably being kept at a thrum by a cocktail of painkillers. She dragged her tongue, swollen and sticky, across lips dry and cracked, for even the slightest bit of relief. Her throat felt like it had been opened up, buried in the Gangos sands, then put back into her neck without the courtesy of dusting it off. Dry and raw and painful. It almost made her not want to breathe.

“Oh, thank the Twelve. You’re awake.” Remeraux, her head swimming, turned her head to see a Seeker woman, tall for her folk with a buzz of lavender hair, clad in a medic’s uniform-- white arm-band and all-- walk over her way. Her only thought was how surprising it was, to see a complete stranger seem so relieved to see her come to consciousness. “...’ll take worse than that…” Remeraux stretched those cracked lips into a lazy smile, surprised a little by how hoarse she sounded, “...ta put me down…” She coughed, dry and hacking, one that she found herself unable to stop once it had started. The other woman scurried to her side, and gently held a handkerchief to her mouth. She seemed to know before Remeraux did, that eventually she’d end up coughing a smear of red and yellow into the off-white fabric. The sight of it made Remeraux’s heart sink a little. The medic’s next words made it sink further. “Take your time to come to. But when you’re ready… We need to talk about what happened to you out there.” She felt cold panic try to spread through the edges of her mind, but the worst of it was held at bay by the narcotics. Remeraux sat there in silence for a second, processing the words. It felt like they were moving through quicksand. She wasn’t sure how long she just squinted at the Miqo’te woman, as if she had more than the two heads provided by her swimming vision already, but eventually she just nodded. She wasn’t ready to try speaking again, just yet.

The woman spoke with the kind of detached sympathy common with wartime medics. The kind that you developed after having to break too much bad news for a lifetime. “Let’s start with the positives. You are still alive, and you are expected to make a full physical recovery--” “Physical…?” Remeraux croaked, from her position in the threadbare medical cot.

The woman slowly nodded in confirmation. “Yes. However… you were exposed to some kind of gas, out on the field. A chemical weapon.” Everything in her brain was hazy, a fog of chemicals and raw nerves, but she remembered brief flashes. The patter of bullets. An enemy routed after a long struggle; a pile of scrap metal where there’d once been Magitek. And then, like a ghostly tide, a white fog that rolled through the trenches. Heavy, it spilled and poured into the veins carved into the mud. She couldn’t outrun it, couldn’t hold her breath forever as it clawed at every inch of her, and when her body forced her hand in taking a sharp gulp of air it seared like she was swallowing molten metal. It was the last thing she remembered before the canvas tent above her.

“We were able to retrieve a sample of it, and our scholars are currently trying to find more answers on what it was. But, even without that knowledge, we’ve been able to discern that it’s significantly affected your body’s aether.” Remeraux rasped a chuckle of confusion, disbelief, and it turned into another rattling cough that shook the thick bandages that held her chest in. Up came the handkerchief again, patiently, soothingly, for as long as as Remeraux had need of it. “Jus’... tell it to me straight.” She wheezed as she let her head sink straight back into the pillow.

The woman opened her mouth, as if to say something she thought better of, and she closed it just as fast. “Right. It seemed that the gas has a paralyzing effect on the body’s aether. Of course, the body’s flow of aether is a prerequisite for life… to freeze it entirely is to stop functions like metabolism, the flow of oxygen into the bloodstream, and so on. While you seem to have avoided the worst of its effects… There are some complications.” She sighs. “You are a spellcaster, are you not? I’ve read your profile.” Remeraux deduces where the woman is going with this before she arrives at her conclusions, but the faintest of hopes beyond hope leaves her hanging on every word. She nods in the affirmative. “We don’t know the long term effects just yet of the gas, and we’ll be monitoring you here for a while as you recover. But, for the time being… you might not be able to manipulate aether as well, anymore. Perhaps not at all.” Remeraux didn’t have it in her to react. Not visually, at least. Not yet. She just blinked, from where she lay, sucking in slow, ragged breaths. But internally… her mind turned to an image of her, decked in crimson silks and gold embroidery. A rapier in her hand, a devil-may-care smirk upon her rouged lips. And watched it, and herself, crumble to dust on the wind.

Another shape lost.

[vermilionwinds]

Day 3: Scale

"Damn it all... It ain't stoppin'...."

The night air was upsettingly warm, even up in the crow’s nest of the Squallbreaker. Remeraux gulped it down in short, unsteady breaths as she slouched back in the basket of her lookout point, gripping her dull brass spyglass so hard her knuckles were white from the exertion. She was all nervous energy, molars grinding, boot tap-tap-tapping against the thick wood planks that held her aloft. She wanted desperately to be doing anything else but this, freed from the purgatory of sitting and watching and waiting.

On most nights, she’d be up there scanning the horizon for ships, or with her sextant to help chart the evening’s course with Miss Glass. For the past week, she nor anyone else on the ship could focus on anything else in the sky but one thing, nervously stealing glances when they knew they needed to be working.

The lesser moon, Dalamud, as it grew larger and larger in the sky.

It had been throwing off the seas for days now, making them rough and roiling. None of them had an explanation for what was going on, and they’d tried their best to come up with one. She’d sat alongside the rest of the Captain’s Council, her arms crossed, listening as Xavier gave his best shot in the dark. He’d always been the most scholarly of the bunch of them. An unexplained celestial phenomenon was about the long and the short of what Remeraux was able to pick up, but she knew as well as anyone that the moons made the tides, and too much tide spelled doom for any ship. It didn’t take a Sharlayan academic to tell them what they needed to do: make it out of the open seas as fast as they could, and find somewhere to lay low while whatever malady plagued the heavens ran its course. But as the night wore on… Remeraux was afraid they weren’t going to make it in time. The moon, it seemed, was racing them to shore.

Wham!

Remeraux swore under her breath and braced herself, planting her feet hard against the wall as the ship lurched sharply once again. A hail of shouts from the sailors below rang up to her ears as the Squallbreaker was buffeted once again by the angry tide. Her concentration on the horizon was broken as she looked down to survey the damage, seeing her family soaked like rats, sputtering and cursing but otherwise all accounted for, scrambling about their business. Ankaswys’s voice carried the loudest like always, and Remeraux could make out snippets of phrases like “Heave! Pull on those ropes like the whoresons owe you money!” and “If I don’t see that tied off in ten seconds I’ll toss you overboard myself!” Remeraux would normally think that typical of Anka, but even she could hear the raw edge of fear under her usual bravado just barely concealed. Remeraux scowled. She was usually so damn good about concealing it, heard tell that she’d once seen Leviathan face-to-face and spat in his eye. For her to be frightened... Remeraux shook her head vigorously as if she could dislodge the thoughts by action alone. She snapped herself back to focus, and raised her spyglass back up.

All she could see was red, subsuming her field of view, a lattice of spiderweb cracks snaking across her view. It took her a second to realize what she was seeing… and a second longer for her to realize that she didn’t need the spyglass anymore.

Mouth completely dry, skin crawling, she shakily lowered her hands, and just watched as the moon grew larger and larger on the horizon. It had started like a dinner plate, spent the day a boulder, but now?

It now looked, finally, exactly like what it was: a celestial body, tumbling down from the heavens.

No metaphor could contain the scale of that reality.

And, unblinking, heart hammering in her chest… she watched the cracks begin to widen.

“Everyone, hold on to somethi—!”

A wave of heat and force shoved the shouted words back down Remeraux’s throat, slamming her back hard against the lip of the nest. She wrapped her arms around the mast and held on for dear life as the world had turned around her into a blacksmith’s furnace. Through squinted eyes, all she could see was red and noise before she had to slam them shut again, feeling them beginning to dry and bake under the onslaught. She could feel her skin begin to blister, hear the sizzle and hiss of all of that wet wood drying, and smell steam begin to turn to woodsmoke. And through it all, a horrible scream, inhuman in its depths of anger. Inhuman in its depths of anguish.

She didn’t know how long it raged against them, but for one brief moment there was calm. Eerie calm. The roar of thunder rumbling after lightning. But before she could dare to squeeze one eye open, she felt everything begin to tilt, sliding her further and further back into the wall she’d been leaning against. And when she did, for that one delirious moment before between hot and cold, all she could do was chuckle in disbelief. She was staring up—not down, but up— at a wall of water, curving towards them like the headsman’s blade. Like they were a toy boat that had been washed out to sea.

Remeraux didn’t even have time to brace herself before the wave came crashing down upon them.

The mast she’d been grasping onto exploded into splinters in her hands, and a white hot lance of pain through her side tore a jagged scream out of her, muffled into the water that all too greedily rushed into the opening provided as she was dragged further and further into the churning waters.

[vermilionwinds]

2. Abberrant

It was wrong.

Every fiber of her being was screaming at her to get up, out of the sucking mud that held her elbows in, out from the pile of had-been-soldiers, had-been-men, but she just stared, frozen in place as if the only thing that could save her was understanding what it was she was looking at, even as answers slid off of her mind like the cold rain that pummeled the Bozjan soil like a judge’s gavel.

If it was man, beast, or machine, that was something she could comprehend. After all, how many of them had she crumpled in her time, puzzles solved by the cutting of knots? The something before her was a creature of flesh and bone, but its relationship to flesh was that of smoke to fire, and likewise it curled in dark, unknowable shapes.

It was too long in parts.

Too short in others.

At the end of blackened arms that stretched out like stalks of wheat were fingers like scythes, and in those talons it was still holding once-were-people. Memories of faces reddened with wine and song from the night before turned now in Remeraux’s mind to this, of eyes unblinking and glassy, tongues lolling from mouths unclosable, their relationship to flesh that of cloth to ribbons.

It was coming closer. It walked with its hands. It had not stopped holding them. It stared with holes filled with void, as if void was something besides absence, something like tar, like viscous density, like weight and age and time distilled. Its head, all jagged crown, scanned back and forth across the wreckage of the fifth division, and she could swear that she could hear it sniffing, over the din of mortar fire and whirring metal and death rattles like the parting chorus of those off to meet the Twelve. It stepped closer. Down went the bodies into the mud and back up again, it had not

stopped

holding

them.

Remeraux didn’t realize she wasn’t breathing until the beast was past her, and even then she didn’t dare try.

[vermilionwinds]

7. Speculate

It wasn’t a surprise that Remeraux had immediately found the nearest bar.

The Forgotten Knight, it was called. Stuck in some corner of a frozen city. Teetering on stilts just above home. It was warm and it was loud, but none of those facts registered as she tried and failed not to salt her tankard with tears. She’d just spoken with her sister, you see. And her sister had had precious few words to share with her; the last fourteen of them rang endlessly in Remeraux's ears.

“I spent seventeen turns assuming you were dead. I can continue to operate thus.”

And so, while she felt her heart break piece by piece, she tallied up all of the questions she was left in the cold with:

Why was Coerthas frozen in the summertime?

How long had their parents been dead?

Was there nothing left from home but rubble?

No wooden horses, no mum’s necklace, no pa’s axe, no chains of acorns?

Why did her sister flinch at her touch?

How did she end up at Manor Durendaire, of all places?

Of all families?

How long did her parents wait for her to come home, before giving up?

What happened to Rosie’s leg?

How did her eyes get so cold?

Weren’t they supposed to be a team?

Why did Remeraux ever leave her?

How could her sister’s voice become so alien, so unrecognizable?

How did she even survive?

What made Remeraux think she could ever show her face in Ishgard again in the first place?

Why did Remeraux think she deserved anything better than this?

[vermilionwinds]

30. Abstracted

She’s a mosaic person,

Made from bits and bobs found across the star,

Fragments of gothic masonry that have not yet known the frost,

Polished seaglass carried by the tides and buffed in the sands of a forgotten shore,

Amethyst from the hills that cradle a kaleidoscope city,

Chunks of raw ceruleum still blackened from the churn of engines,

Scraps of parchment inscribed with tales of daring,

Quartz-like fractals of auracite that hold generations of hopes in an unbroken chain,

Chips of the cliffs of Gangos where the eagles fletch their nests with arrows,

A ruby teardrop with the memories of a gentleman-scoundrel,

Caps of Coerthan acorns unstrung from their chain,

A well-worn whetstone that still sees use,

Splinters of bullets recovered from her own flesh,

And the biggest mistake she’s ever made,

That she continues to make again and again,

Is that even though she took these pieces

From every road that’s ever rose to meet her feet

And glued them together piece by piece

After carrying them in her pockets for long enough,

Turning them over in her nimble fingers,

She still thinks of herself as these stolen fragments

And she can’t see what she really is,

The glue,

The hands,

And the eyes and heart,

That found meaning enough in these things

To pick them up in the first place.

[vermilionwinds]

13. Oneirophrenia

[CW: Body horror, gore]

She can’t move.

She is locked inside of her own body, and so she stares.

She is small, and the world is too big. Her mother is a shade that drifts in and out, but she is mostly alone as she feels her bones throb and itch. She wants her real mother, and so she appears. She’s there, but her face is gone. She runs a blank hand down her face, and down her arm and to her side and she can feel her nails dig into flesh and she deserves this and—

The ceiling explodes into sunlight. It burns her eyes. But she is locked inside of her own body, and she stares. That hand is inside of her still. It is warm and it is wet.

She can barely make out what’s being said around her.

“...Damnit, we can’t just leave it in her…”

“Don’t rush me. We don’t know what it punctured.”

“...Bite down on this, tygrysku. Hold my hand.”

She opens her mouth. She takes the stick. She takes the hand.

That hand pulls something out of her and her world explodes into red.

She’s lying in the shade. It’s sticky. Everything is sticky. Her insides feel sticky, the insides of her lungs feel sticky. She’s sure she’s going to die. She’s locked in her body and still she stares, and every time she blinks a new face is staring down at her like she’s in her grave. They’re mourning her already. Some of the faces are already dead. Their bloated faces and milky eyes turn on her in recognition.

The last face is her own, and she spits in her stupid, staring face. She deserves this.

She blinks and the stickiness has moved from her insides to her outsides. It’s too warm. It’s too cold. She realizes she’s covered in blood. She realizes it’s not her own. Something dark stands over her, a shadow blocking a storm grey sky. The grey bleeds down onto it, giving it grey eyes, grey hair, grey skin, grey lips. It pulls in close and kisses her and the kiss burns her lungs. She’s choking on it. She wants to pull away but she is locked inside her own body, and so she stares as it pushes its claws through the pile of bodies, through cold flesh into warm flesh and she deserves to lose what it pulls out of her.

It shows her what it is. It’s crystalline, it’s jagged and as red as the tube that’s feeding into her veins and—

Remeraux screams as she bolts upright, pouring sweat despite the cold Thanalan night. If her blankets weren’t being gripped in her nails they might have gone straight into her palms. When her heart is hammering a bit less, and when she stops gasping for air, she pulls herself out of bed and begins to do pull-ups on a bar she has set up in the door frame.

She doesn’t care that the chronometer reads two in the morning, because right now Remeraux just needs to move.

[vermilionwinds]

12. Dregs

TW: PTSD, depression, brief sexual mention

Don't know how much more I have left in me.

Xav told me about a ship, once upon a time. (How appropriate. Har Har. Very fucking funny.)

The ship’d get damaged in a storm. Those pieces that would break would be replaced. Ship’d continue on, good as new. Ship lives long enough, eventually every piece gets replaced.

Once the last of the original boards are gone, he asked, is it even the same ship anymore?

Scratch that. I wish I was that godsdamned lucky.

Every time a board breaks here, we just glue the splinters back together. Piece it back together with spit and tape. Always less than what I started with.

(And frankly, I didn’t have much to start with, so isn’t that just my luck.)

Can barely stand to look at myself anymore, to tell the truth.

Remember the first real bad one I got. Scar, that is. The moon fucking falls from the sky and what almost kills me is a splinter. Thought the wound was gonna rot my guts away until there was nothing left but pus and filth, but it still looks damn ugly. Like someone glued a prune to my side.

Still hurts like a bitch if I even think about open water anymore. Like someone is sticking me with pins. It helps a little to massage the pain out. But I see the look on folk’s faces when they catch me doing it, like I have two heads. Or I’m a bird with a broken wing.

I fucking hate that look.

Chirugeons call that pain 'psychosomatic', or some shite like that. I don’t even know. Guess even the mind can scar.

But, scars build character, right? They’re just a tally of things that weren’t good enough to kill you. Any sailor has them. Any soldier has them. I think that’s true of the first one you get. Maybe even the third.

But after enough of them,

You won't remember the last night you slept more than three bells at once,

You'll stare in the mirror and wonder what new concealer could even begin to hide those dark circles, those sunken cheeks,

You'll lose track of the the amount of empty bottles piling up in the bin,

You'll wonder if you should give up on midriffs forever,

You'll start getting real fucking afraid of your own thoughts,

You'll start losing feeling in more and more fingers,

You'll fear that anyone who tries to fuck you is going to take your top off and just freeze,

You won't be able to hear fireworks without wanting to rip your godsdamn skin off.

Go figure. Something like a life feels like it’s finally going to start, and it catches me now that I’m like this. Don’t know who the fuck I am trying to pass around a bottle that’s almost empty.

They’re just gonna take one sip and find there’s only dregs left.

[vermilionwinds]

8. Adroit

Remeraux had always been good with her hands.

Her fingers were long, nimble things; usually fidgeting with some kind of energy as if they were tools that would rust over if they weren’t always in use. Piano fingers, one might call them, if the girl even belonged in the same universe as something as fine as a piano. And they were clever. Perhaps more clever than the girl they belonged to.

The first real test of her skill was in the galley of the Squallbreaker. Her, a grimy-looking twelve-year old, staring intensely up at Green Orchard in front of the cast-iron stove that sat below deck. He explained that the blade that looked a toothpick between his two massive fingers was a parring knife, and demonstrated how to peel a popoto without knicking your fingers. Slow strokes at first, quick once you got the knack for it. Before the end of the day, Remeraux was gliding the knife through the rough brown skin of the root, taking peels off in a single, beautiful spiral. Green Orchard asked her why she was being so fussy, and Remeraux beamed up with her gap-tooth smile and told him she liked it when they looked pretty.

It would’ve been poor form to dampen her enthusiasm, he thought, and it sure did make it easier to clean once they were done.

Next, Remeraux was taught rigging. Knotwork. M’khari Tia brought a length of rope, and scooped Remeraux right on into his lap. And with a voice as warm as the Gyr Abanian sun, showed her the basics. Butterfly loops, running bends, surgeon’s knots. Loops over and under and through, course brown rope under coarse brown hands. Remeraux was mesmerized by how they danced. And before long she was making grabby hands, shouting “Me next! Me next!”, and took that rope in her clever little hands and parroted the movements. Loops over and under and through. Whenever she went swinging from the rigging,  giggling like a loon in the midday heat, her foot was held in a loop of her own making, and the loop always held. Even on the rare times when it was the only thing that did.

A few years on, she got her hands on a pistol. A flintlock. A dangerous thing to give a girl, but Xavier Folchambres always believed that Remeraux’s education should be thorough. When aiding the quartermaster in the armory, Remeraux was given a small little tool set, and taught how to maintain the weaponry there. To keep them clean, oiled, held together. At the end of her task she shoved a pistol and her tools into her pants (already much too big for her), and while the rest of the crew drunk and cavorted on deck, Remeraux fiddled with her quarry until she could take it apart and put it right back together again, tiny screws and tiny springs and all. Even if she didn’t learn why it all worked, she could parse how it all fit together.

Maxim bought a new violin one day, on shore leave in Limsa. (He’d always been complaining about his old one, Abigail.) He looked down his spectacles at the scrawny looking girl with violet eyes as large as dinner plates, sighed, and asked her if she’d get rid of the darn thing for him. She watches him bow, how his pale hands danced across frets and down strings, and tried her best to match. Maxim grumbled at first, but when a note cut clean through the air, he grinned. He had never tried taking on a protégé, before.

Athilda Glass teaches her coin tricks. Ankaswys, knife tricks. It never takes more than two demonstrations for Remeraux to mimic them within a degree of precision. And those hands absorbed the lessons like sponges, and when folks slapped her wrist for fidgeting, they went straight into her pockets, to roll a pebble around between her fingertips.

Eventually, Remeraux becomes a woman. It took much longer than she had hoped. And as she danced underneath the Hannish moon, in a plaza of colors near blinding to the eye in air spiced with music, she felt alive in novel, dizzying ways. In a well-worn bar, she’s bought her first drink. She talks and laughs with a woman, and was looked at for the first time in a way she’d quietly longed for since she started to read books she was far too young to be reading. And when she is taken upstairs, the woman shows her something quite new to do with those nimble fingers of hers. She looks down the valley of her torso and watches her work with those violet eyes. It doesn’t take more than one demonstration for her to parrot it to perfection.

[vermilionwinds]

4. Baleful

“Four broken bones… three of your fellow soldiers out of service for a week.” Bajsaljen exhaled sharply through his nose, the only escape vent of his frustration. “I trust, Private Melret, you will explain your conduct today.”

Remeraux shot him a withering look through her one eye that wasn’t swollen shut, from where she sat across the long wooden table that stood between them. She spat blood down onto the Gangos sands. “Fuckers deserved it. Plain an’ simple.

“And why is that, exactly?”

She set her foot to tapping. “Oh, don’ give me that crap, Baj—”

“That is Commander Ulgasch, Private Melret. If you will not respect your comrades in arms you will at least respect the chain of command.” He put his palms down flat on the table. Remeraux hated how calmly he was speaking, even now. She wanted something, anything, to match how damn pissed off she was about all of this.

“Fine. Commander.” Remeraux sneered the words, all teeth. “Reckon you know all about the way some o’ yer boys talk about their fellows, don’tcha? Do the words ‘lowborn filth’ ring any bells?”

Bajsaljen’s hard line of a brow softened slightly. Remeraux figured that was about all a man like him could deflate, propped up with steel armature. “So that’s what all of this is about.”

“Yer damn right it is.” Remeraux stood up, pacing back and forth across the command tent. Bajsaljen didn’t move to stop her, which was good— if she had to just sit there any longer she was going to explode. “When were you gonna tell me things was like this? When was anyone!?”

“It was not some kind of secret, Private Melret. Bozja’s system of governance before the Empire’s occupation is a matter of historical record.”

Remeraux wanted to throttle him for the way he said those words, but she restrained herself to just slamming her palms down hard on the table. “Well, it’s damn news to me!” She gave a short bark of laughter, one with the texture of broken glass— a spiteful, incredulous thing. “What are we here for, then? Fightin’ fer the boot ye’re gonna put righ’ back on your kinsmen’s throat?!”

“If this comes as such a shock to you, then why, Private Melret, are you here fighting a war for a country you know nothing about?!”

Remeraux stopped in her tracks, anger swapped briefly for surprise. Damn. That was the most emotion she’d seen the man display. For his part, he cleared his throat, as if to swallow back that bile he’d just vented. “Take a seat.” He growled, back to business. Remeraux obliged him, even if it was a messy slouch, arms crossed.

“Tell me somefin. Know much about Ishgard, commander?” Remeraux cocked an otherwise furrowed eyebrow.

Bajsaljen blinked. “Only the basics. Formerly a theocracy, located to the north of Aldenard. Recently ended a thousand year conflict with the dragons of Dravania.”

Remeraux nodded grimly. “Aye, that’s the basics. What ya left out though, is the neat little social pyramid they got righ’ underneath. Ya got yer nobles, yer highborn, and the rest. Lowborn.” She swung her hand out at the last word, a curt little gesture, before letting it fall back into the crook of her elbow. “Ya can probably guess where I’m goin’ with this, can’t you.”

Bajsaljen nodded, grimly. “That I can.”

“Listen.” Remeraux seethed, clenching her fists tight in her gloves. “ I ain’t out here, riskin’ my damn neck, climbing over a mountain o’ fucking corpses to prop up this kind o’ system!” She leveled her eyes and set them to bore straight into Bajsaljen’s own, violets to aquamarines, staring as if she could burn her next words into his retinas through the intensity of her gaze alone. “I put that shit behind me, and I ain’t about ta stand here and watch it happen again!”

“Then you have my every assurance, Private Melret, that the Bozja we intend to build will have no room for the sins of our forebears.” There was a tired conviction in those words. If Remeraux was a more poetic sort, the phrase burdened by the weight of history might have sprung to her mind. “The soldiers you accosted will also be answering to me, the same as you are. And they will be punished, like you will be. Two weeks of guard duty, every night, Private Melret. And you will be court-martialed if you lay a hand on your fellow soldiers again. Do you hear me?”

Remeraux just gave a tch, eyes shooting off to the right, feeling like a chastised dog. “Fine. But ya better keep a damn good eye on yer men, Commander.” She stood up, and shot Bajsaljen one last baleful look. “This kinda talk can get away from ya righ’ quick. An’ who knows which one o’ us will be left standin’ when the music stops, ta decide what kind of Bozja gets built.”

And with that, she turned around and stormed out into the bright Gangos sun.

[vermilionwinds]

15. Thunderous

[CW: PTSD, Brief sexual mention. Continuation of On the Clock.]

While Remeraux let the inn room’s bathtub fill, she took a few precautions.

First, she made sure that every window was closed, and that the shutters were thrown shut. Second, she took a bath towel and rolled it into a tight tube, and wedged it along the crack at the bottom of the door.

Third, she rummaged for the ear plugs she’d bought at the Shaded Bower, and slotted them into her pointed ears. That was about all she could do, and she hoped it was enough. She measured out a spoonful of fizzing salts into the steaming water, found herself a bottle opener and a wine glass, and downed a generous pour of the Realm Reborn Red before she bothered herself with undressing. It was slow going. She was still bruised to shit, and cursed her vanity for this hellish armor, with its thousand buckles and latches and laces. She’d put it on half-asleep on so many mornings that she was honestly unsure how in the seven hells she got the damn thing on.

But, eventually, she’d made a lazy pile of armor and fabric on the side of the bed, and as she walked across the room with her wine glass and bottle, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full length mirror hanging on the back of the door.

Yep, still look like shite. Thanks fer checking in.

She didn’t dwell on it too much as she finally climbed into the nearly scalding water (just how she liked it), and let the colorful film from the salts obscure herself from her own view, and let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She took another long sip of wine, savoring that jammy dryness on her tongue, and leaned her head back against the rim of the tub and closed her eyes. Gods, what a fucking day. And thank Llymlaen’s heaving brown tits for some self care.

Dissolving into the warmth of the water and wine, a hand crept idly down into the water, coming to rest between her two long legs, and--

BOOM!

Remeraux is running, her heart hammering in her chest as she tries to keep her boots from sinking into the mud. The enemy’s using fucking mortars so they have to take this hill and-- BOOM!

Remeraux is showered in dirt and a warmth she’d rather not think about as an explosion takes a bite out of the ground beside her. The force of it makes her bones vibrate and her ears ring and even though her vision doubles she can’t stop running, to stop would be to die so she grips her axe handle tight and screams and--

“Fuck!”

A sharp pain in her hand snapped her back to reality as the wine glass shattered in her grip. Her system still flush with anger and adrenaline, she took her now good hand from the depths of the tub and brought it down as a fist against the side of the porcelain tub in frustration.

She picked up the neck of the wine bottle and angrily chugged some of it down, not caring that some dribbled down the side of her chin into the bathtub. This didn’t used to be so hard, godsdamnit.

Whatever. Honoring the day the moon exploded with fireworks was a shite idea to begin with, anyways.

[vermilionwinds]

11. Preaching to the Choir

A continuation of 4. Baleful

The Southern Front was quiet that night, save for the chirp of insects and the far off rumble of engines.

The air was like breathing in hot syrup, though. Remeraux could feel it sticking to her skin, turning the inside of her armor into a swamp. Perspiration collected on her shoulders in rivulets, to trickle clear down the small of her back and right between her asscheeks. Unpleasant. She squinted her one good eye (her swollen eye came pre-squinted, and it smarted something fierce when the rubber eyepiece bumped against it) through her binoculars as she made another sweep of the battlefield. Leaning her elbows lazily against the burlap sandbags that made up their post, she drummed her fingers against the binoculars with one hand while the other went to fiddle with the focus. Her gaze settled on a squat little warmachina, creeping over a muddy ridge on its four flat discs of feet. Remeraux always thought those ones looked a little like ducks, at least in the face. A glowing blue lens made for an eye on either side of its 'head', and a perforated dark metal barrel for a beak. It was scurrying a little too close to camp for her liking.

“Nimrod. Eleven bells. Roundabouts… two malms out, I reckon.”

Remeraux’s voice was the first sound to break the silence.

“On it.”

The second sound, another voice, in reply.

The crack of a rifle, ringing a little in Remeraux’s pointed ear, was the third.

Through her binoculars, Remeraux watched the bullet find her target. Right through that shiny blue lens, exploding that glass into powder. It sputtered sparks and blue flame from the jagged impact crater, and like a puppet separated from its strings it ceased to move. The coast looked clear enough, after that. Remeraux kept her vigil for just long enough to check for any moves of reprisal. It was a relief to find that their enemy was fine to let them take a pawn of their own, for the time being. She lowered her binoculars and withdrew for the moment, sliding down the wall back down into their foxhole.

Remeraux fiddled in the pocket of her thick, armored coat for something as she watched the woman next to her take her knee off its perch on the edge of the sack wall, exiting her perfect rifleman's stance. Joining her within the confines of their cozy little pit, she lowered the butt of the rifle, rich woods and dull metals, to the ground at her side. Remeraux found herself having to crane her neck up ever so slightly to look at her, despite how similar they were in height. It was probably because, unlike her, Misija wasn’t leaning against the wall.

Now that she thought about it, Remeraux wasn't sure that she’d ever seen the woman so much as slouch.

“Chocolate?” Remeraux asked, as she produced a foil-wrapped square from her pocket. She put the fingertip of her padded gauntlet between her teeth and yanked the whole thing off. She wasn't fussy enough to not just open her mouth when she'd pulled her hand free and let the gauntlet just drop right to the floor (just a series of planks pressed into the wet earth). Freshly dexterous, Remeraux unwrapped the foil with grimy fingers. She broke off a messy square of the pitch-black bar with a snap, and held it out to the pale Roegadyn, who just gave a nod in the affirmative and took it first into her hand, and then her mouth. The corners of those equally pale lips turned up, just a hair. Remeraux nodded, smiling in return. She didn’t manage to get many of those from Misija, although to tell the truth they'd only started spending time together recently. But, she had taken plenty of opportunities to glance at her: from across the sands of Gangos, from the other side of Utya's Aegis when she was busy with the Ironworks staff and Remeraux should have really been focusing on taking inventory.

Something about the quiet intensity she radiated, steel eyes like searchlights, gave her the feeling smiling wasn’t something she did often. The few times Misija's own gaze settled on her, though, always made her stomach tie itself in knots. It was definitely doing so now. She distracted herself from the sensation by breaking off her own hunk and shoving it in her mouth. It was shitty chocolate, bitter as sin, but it was better than anything they’d had to eat in a while.

“How’s your eye?” Misija inquired, crossing one arm over her other. Remeraux waved her off nonchalantly with her free hand, as her jaws worked through the dense matter. She swallowed.

“Better than his, I reckon. Fer a soldier, bastard couldn’t throw a punch ta save his life.”

The two women shared a chuckle, briefly flashing teeth smudged with dark chocolate. It was funny, Remeraux thought in the moment before the expression faded from Misija’s face like a snowflake that just touched ground. Usually teeth were the only thing that shone white in faces turned to a sea of brown grime, out there on the Front. For Misija, it was the opposite. Grey hair on grey skin on grey eyes on grey lips. The chocolate on her teeth was the only splash of color present on her face.

“You really didn’t need to get involved, though.” Misija exhaled through her nose, those searchlights of hers scanning Remeraux’s face as if they'd find their answers by scouring them from her skin. “My honor is not a thing that needs defending.”

Remeraux rolled her shoulders. She can’t help but inevitably brush against her ears with her shoulderpads with the gesture, they were just that big. The ears, kind of, but mostly the shoulderpads. “Ain’ just fer you. Don’t stand fer that kinda talk around me. Learned ta punch ta get it to stop a looong time ago.” She chuckled, just a few sharp exhales out of her nose, and popped another square between her lips. She extended another to Misija, who broke off one of her own.

“...The Star may have its depths of cruelties, but few of them are novel, it seems.” Misija mused, her eyes appraising the chocolate as she tilted it side to side between two fingers, before putting it into her mouth.

“Ye’re tellin’ me….” Remeraux just sat in the evening's silence, for just a moment. “Ta find it true o’ Bozja though... that was a bit of a shock, I gotta say.”

The corners of those pale lips dropped back down to a line. “Well. Consider yourself informed.” It was a level response, matter-of-fact and cold. More silence. More chewing. Remeraux couldn’t stand the quality the silence had taken on forever, and was the first one to break it.

“...I know, I know. A mite naive, I s'pose” She shrugged, apologetically. She ran her tongue across the front of her teeth, picking up stray bits of sugar. “Jus’... grew up on folk tales, about it. Bozja, that is. From me mum. An’ she was the child o’ refugees, so I guess the truth got a bit stretched in the tellins." Remeraux scratched the back of her head awkwardly, dragging her nails through short-cropped hair drenched in sweat. "But a kingdom under the sun an’ sand… A goodly queen, loved by her people… An’ a 'fine republic' af’er that.” She sighed, looking around at the wasteland of a countryside. What few structures remained, south of the old ruined capital, still half-melted into crystal at their tips, blasted back and frozen in a photograph of the devastation. ”Even if it was over before my time, it was a nice thing ta hear tell about.”

Misija just took the words in, providing nothing in the quality of her expression to act as commentary. “A nation’s truth is never the stories that it tells about itself." She said pointedly, before turning her eyes back on Remeraux. "Judging by the way you responded to those soldiers, I wouldn’t guess you exactly believe in Ishgard, the good King Thordan and his knights twelve, and the mandate of the Archbishop, blessed first among Halone’s Children…”

Remeraux cocked an eyebrow. Misija just shrugged.

“Unless my intuition is mistaken.”

“Is there somefin’ about my face that just screams Ishgard?” Remeraux gave Misija a playful punch on the shoulder, and got another smile, however slight, out of the woman. "Izzit the ears? The teeth?"

“Mostly just your name. Although I’ll freely admit to having no firsthand knowledge of the place. Imperial education may be broad, but it was rudimentary in some areas.”

Another pause for chewing.

“...Imperial education?” Remeraux asked, as neutrally as she could make the words sound.

Misija gave those silvery eyes a roll, and held out her hand for another break of the bar. Remeraux obliged.

“Don’t look so surprised. Basjalsen himself was a Legion field medic for years. You’ll find that many members of the resistance first lived under the Imperial yoke before turning against their masters.”

Remeraux just shoved the last bit of the chocolate bar in her mouth. The bitterness of it made her salivate something fierce. It was welcome relief from how quickly her throat dried out nowadays, in the moon since... since the gassing.

And it was a better thing to put into her mouth than her own foot.

“...What was it like?" Remeraux mumbled the words from around a cheek full of the candy. "Imperial schoolin', I mean."

“It was… a lifeline.” The way Misija looked at her when she said that… it was as if she left no room for argument. As if it was fact that Remeraux had no choice but to accept. “The fortunate children of Bozja enjoy claiming their homeland of old was a bastion of equality… but, tell that to those not born to the privileged few, eh? You were either born high…”

“Or low.” Remeraux finished the sentence. She spat onto the ground. The chocolate in her spittle made it blend nicely with the mud. “Don’t I know it, sis.”

Misija nodded.

“When the IVth legion took control of the country, they implemented a policy of universal education. I was fed, clothed, taught a trade. I can’t imagine I would have survived, otherwise…" Remeraux recognized that look on her face, suddenly less impossible to read. It was a face she'd seen in herself in mirrors. "...It is hard to not be grateful even. For the occupation.” She exhaled through her nose, and scowled. “The Bozja I knew as a girl deserved what it got, in the end.”

Remeraux mulled the woman’s words over. “...Honestly? I wouldn't hold that against ya.” She gave a sigh as weary as she felt, and rubbed her hands together. One bare, one gloved, crumpling the now empty foil into a ball that she continued to roll between her palms as she spoke. “The Brume, they called it in Ishgard. The ‘wrong’ part o’ town, anyways. Cute little name, ain' it?" Remeraux sneered, choking on the faux saccharinity. "An' a righ' brume it was... stuck us wif all the fog and smog an’ run-off from a city that’s far too vertical. Spent me childhood suckin’ up smoke an’ fumes, as our folks barely could afford us bread on th’ table…” She tossed the ball underhand, caring not where in the foxhole it landed. “Knew I’d go mad if I kept livin’ like that, if I didn’t jus’ starve one day. I jus’... I dunno.”

She could feel those words creep up onto her tongue. They were words that were always rattling around the inside of her chest, until they had to try and climb out of her throat. They tasted acrid, caustic, and had grown in her like bile since the day she returned home for the first time, to a life frozen solid. The day she’d seen what had become of her sister. And every day it seemed, at some point or another, she had to swallow them down hard, and they scratched the inside of her throat as they travelled back down.

Remeraux looked at Misija, and something about the way she returned that gaze, as if appraising her anew, made the core of her being flare hotter than the air around them. Not for the first time, the thought of pressing her lips against Misija's own came unbidden to her mind. She could almost imagine what it would be like for the woman to explore her mouth. How small she would feel in the light of the woman's intensity. But now... she bet she’d taste those same words on Misija's tongue as she took it between her lips. And with that thought... for once, she let them spill.

“Ishgard deserved a hell of a lot worse.”

The corner of those pale lips turned up. Just one of them, enough to show a flash of teeth. Like a lion reminding you of the quality of its jaws. Something about the sight sent a new thrill through Remeraux. It was a dizzying thing, to let lose with words she'd nearly choked on and still be met with approval. A hungry approval. And for once, it was Misija to push through the space between them. She put a hand on her shoulder. It was a simple thing. A simple touch. Even through her armor, her palm seared into Remeraux’s skin.

“...We should get back to our posts, no?”

"...Righ'."

Remeraux swallowed, her mouth dry all over again, and clambered back up with her binoculars.

“...’Nother nimrod. Two bells. Jus’ over the ridge.”

“On it.”

Another crack of Misija’s rifle, as her bullet found its mark.