{se} feels like I'm sleepwalking when you're gone

Hotaru

Somewhere my lifeline still hums and sings
In the mess of all I have thrown away

Impossibly, she feels relieved that he chose to share this with her first. Or so she assumes. Hotaru may not have always been the one to temper him, but she has always wanted to keep him safe, to protect him from his own self-destructive hair-trigger decisions. Maybe she can help, this time. Do something more than offer an ear.

She goes willingly into his arms, tucked easily against his chest where his skin is warm with exertion and life. "If it will bring you the peace you think you need right now, you should do it. Just don't forget a failsafe, okay?" she murmurs against the fabric of his tanktop. "Just as with working in the House. Don't let it be just another way to hurt yourself, or to feel things only temporarily." Staring out past his arm to the quiet fields beyond, Hotaru quirks a tiny, rueful smile. "Trust me when I say it doesn't work. Not this late in the game." Maybe when they were younger and heartbreak was so new, so shallow, it might have dulled the pain a little. Now? Now it only digs nails into the wound, prying it open and leaving it bleeding anew.

Wrapping an arm around him, she holds him tighter to her, heedless of the way he encompasses her as he always has, and tilts her head up towards him slightly. She can't see his face this way, but it doesn't matter. The bond says it all for her; quiet pride, and faith in Sunjata so deep it's a good thing Frey isn't the jealous sort. "It has been. But you're doing it already. A little bit every day." Her hand plays across the small of his back, so small in comparison but strong and sure in defiance of it. "You can't see the horizon yet, but that's okay. I see it for you." And she will do what she can to guide him there, to see him remember what it feels like to breathe again.

Hungry now,
I am gathering new seeds to throw wide