On the Wings of Icarus
Loki's Arrow

The day had been cold. It was to be expected, still not even spring yet. So far, he'd been happy. On top of his world. Renne became used to doing his shift at the docks, then going to check if Captain Kidd had a need for him and then going on home. He always looked forward to going home.

The cold got to him.

It wasn't the weather that had started turning the blue-skinned creature into a meticulously jaded, almost faithless husk. It was another kind of cold that tore his world asunder.
Harold -- No -- *Sir*. Gone.
Not coming back.

Never coming back.
Don't say it. Don't you dare say it.
Never coming back.
Not true.
Never coming back.
Never...

It took Archie's voice and the sound of his distancing footsteps in the snow to freeze Renne in his place.
It took two little words to slay reality.
He'd faced death before many times. In wars, he'd faced death. In sickness, he'd faced death. This one was different, even if he could hear the voices of Archie Kennedy and Kyra Blackstone overlapping one another.
He's dead.
He's gone.

For more than an hour out in the snow, the imp doesn't move nor make a sound. Silverstorm had been killed. Pendrell had been ill. Syrus had simply vanished without a trace even if it was with a smile last remembered.
Somehow, this was different.
Pendrell and Renne had been Bonded as T'hy'la. It was no surprise that Pendrell's death hurt as it did all those years ago.
Still, this one was different.

Eventually, moving like a stiff automaton, the imp crawls into the Maritime as if the place were both home and hell all at once. He crawls aimlessly about the main room until he ends up crawling it ten times over.
He crawls onto the bar and along it, pacing along the smooth and well-loved top.
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house...
Renne hops down and crawls into the kitchen, taking it like he took the main room.
The smells of countless meals he'd made still linger to him. The sounds of laughter, tears, quiet whispers and shouts still reverberate off the walls. The potbelly stove is still warm and cheery with fire-glow.

For once, he even dares to go into the back room.

This room, he remembers well. It was once a special place where two humans could go and just be. It was safe for them, their piece of tranquility.
After the fire and thunder of years ago, that room had changed. It became a kind of forbidden place filled with black, charred wood. It was the face of wounds left unhealed.
It was the face of hatchets never buried and always lurking to rise up again.
Now, it is different. Again, the back room changes. The hatchets are buried. The thunder no longer roars and the flames no longer lick at aged wood trying to bear it down.
Now the blackened walls are a wound again.
Now the room is cold and empty with no heartbeat.

Get out of there. Get out of there now.

Back into the main room. Up the stairs.
The second floor.
Even now, he refuses to go into each room up here. He still remembers which one belonged to whom.
This one, Ranyor's.
This one, Sirin's/Lilith's.
This one, Archie's.
This one, Harry's.
At that door, he stops. He woke up in that room once, didn't he? Yes, he did, four years ago.

Keep going. Don't stop.
Too late.

Harry. *Sir*.

Renne crawls numbly up to the third floor. He'd taken to sleeping up here since down below, rooms were already taken. He'd come to like it up here actually.
It became his spot to let his thoughts out. It became part of Home. Sanctuary.
Renne had crawled this floor countless times already but he does so again just like the other two floors.
He'd written his first journal entry up here. He'd basked in fond memories up here. He'd analysed his every move, every error up here and he'd come to terms with it all.
He'd learned up here.

Gone. Not coming back.

After the tenth lap around this room, Renne stops.

You're no powder monkey.

Back to his corner. Out come all of his possessions.

You're not expendable.

Laid out on the floor around him, the imp sits at the center of a meticulously laid spread of everything that had come from here.
Everything that had come from Harry.
The future has yet to penetrate his mind.
Right now, the imp remains in a silent, sentry-like position.
Right now, Archie said watch over Home.
And right now, he'll do it.

On the Wings of Icarus
Playing Chicken with Eagles

He stayed in the back room for hours. Don't ask him how long, for time in his mind has become interminable. Finally though, the imp crawls back out of that charred room.
Wrapping himself tightly in that duty he'd found he could do and refusing as yet to think of anything else -- not the pain, not the perhaps foolish thread of hope, not the tears -- his head leans downward to find Archie's scent.

It never enters his mind, the potential anger this might arouse.

Finding the scent, the blue-skinned but pale-of-face creature begins to track it like a bloodhound. Like he'd tracked Harry down. From the day he'd come into the Maritime, Renne had felt the emotional presence of a bond between the two mariners.
I cannot salvage nor save it on my own, but I can at least watch over 'Chee.

The cold hits him like an icy blast once he's out the door but the imp doesn't let it stop him. He'd not gotten new furs yet and his oversized peacoat at least takes the edge off.
Oh, Renne flinches. Visibly flinches at this infernal cold.
It's not to stop him.
Crawling slowly with his nose half-buried in the cold ground to keep up with Archie Kennedy's scent, the imp follows it diligently.

The scent may go far and wide.
So may he just to keep up with the freshest of the smells.
It's been his duty to be there whenever any of the Maritime's people might have need of him.
It's now his duty to keep up whatever the cost.

I pay a great cost to stay with Home and its people.
But I pay it with a glad heart.