Was it pain or was it circumstance

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

She has been here longer than she had initially expected, but until someone breaks the tremulous peace, she will indulge in a night of socialization she hasn't had since well before the war. Though she has had all of one small drink the energy of the night sings like lightning in her veins. Perhaps Flora had been right, that Ru was hiding in Halo with her students and her magic, working instead of living. Healing, but not thriving. She almost feels like her old self again.

Gracefully extricating herself from the friendlier faces she has found and flitted between throughout the night, Hotaru takes a glass of wine and holds it with both hands, breathing slowly. It's okay to have it, and she can trust herself with it. She can.

Letting her eyes float around the room - failing to lie to herself that she isn't searching for someone - her gaze catches on Sunjata, who she had seen speaking with Ronin earlier and given a wide berth. Tilting her head towards the side door subtly, knowing he will read her intentions as he always has, the Valkyrie excuses herself with a charming smile and sweeps out into the open air. It brushes against her liberally bared skin like a cool kiss. Impressive considering the summer wind is still warm, but the bar was packed to the brim and therefore nearly sweltering. Out here, with the tide and the stars, her heart feels more vulnerable with longing and memories - but at least her head is clearer.

When Sunjata joins her, she hears him coming from behind and turns her head over her shoulder, brows drawing slightly together. The way he had worded his request had concerned her. "Is everything okay?" Too accustomed now to preparing for the worst; hearing out requests, having news broken of lost lives, any number of difficult topics that would warrant a necessity for conversation over a preference.

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

He’s notably drunker, given the light flush to his cheeks and the way his body has grown far warmer than he’d wanted with how busy everything had gotten, especially inside the bar. So much so that he decides now is likely the time to try and seek out Hotaru, before he slinks away into the night. They lock eyes, however, and when she stands alone in the cool night air, Sunjata approaches like a shadow in the night, stepping up beside her and in her space where his arm brushes by her own.

Her question has a soft huff leaving him, a nod as he turns to her. “Yeah, everything’s okay.” And a brief pause as if he’s trying to figure out what to say. He is absolutely doing that. “I just missed you.” His accented voice rumbles, stepping closer to her and reaching for her — no gentle touch to her wrist, instead opening up his arms for her to wrap her in a hug even if he has to bend down enough to press his scarred cheek into her blonde hair.

“How are things?”

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

Normally Hotaru does not give much quarter to those too far gone in their drinks, but she knows Sunjata. Knows his tolerance, his coping mechanisms, even his preferences for glass and the liquors that go in them. And, in a part of her mind she does not want to acknowledge, Ru knows she would take any time he saw fit to give her, inebriated or otherwise.

Relief settles the line of her shoulders into something softer at his reassurances. Only to have that languid state nearly shattered by his easy admission and the way he takes her into his arms.

Her fingers go lax, nearly dropping her glass as she sinks into him before she can string two words together. He smells the same, her heart whines as she shamefully tucks her face into the warm hollow of his throat. Despite the precarious drink in one hand, both arms rise to encircle him in turn, and she hopes he won't feel how the fingers of one hand splay and grip tight at the jacket he wears in the center of his spine. Her nailbeds ache with the desire for her claws to emerge and sink in, to force him to keep her in this sudden tide he has pulled her into. "I missed you too," she whispers, and loathes him for a moment for how easily he brings her into his gravity, wiping free blond-haired suitors and lidded eyes from having any purchase in her attention.

"Better. Remi was able to call Mort so we could see Enzo one last time. It put me where I needed to be." And though she has kept her side of the Attuned bond shut firmly down this entire evening, he will feel the ghost flicker of regret - because he will not be awarded the same closure with the one he'd lost. "But Flora pointed out I've been hiding away in Halo. So now I'm here." Trying, if nothing else. Every day there's more to be shown for it, but Ru can't always see the progress in front of her.

Tilting her head slightly, opening her eyes though she can only see the shadows in his skin, she murmurs back, "What about you?"

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

She tucks her face into the hollow of his neck and he exhales a quiet breath of relief, and he certainly feels the way how one hand tightens against his back, fisting in the shirt that he wears. He’s content to keep her there, drinking in the scent of her that brings back so many memories that he tells himself he’s not going to shy away from this time. He listens and nods, his face still pressed into her hair as he drinks her in, not ready to part just yet. “I’m glad you got to see him.” He pauses, taking note of her regret but not reacting to it.

He’s come to terms with it, he thinks. The fact that he’d never get the chance to say goodbye — and if he did, whether he’d even be able to do it.

“You have been hiding away, but it’s good to see you as always.” He murmurs into her hair, before he withdraws slightly to open up the space between them (almost as if too many people might see). Though, whether he cares at this point is another story, and it’s what keeps his hands around her possessively, subconsciously.

As for his own life after the war, Sunjata hums lightly before he responds. “Just trying to be a good Frey demi these days. I’ve made a brothel.” He pauses, shrugging, though much like his interaction with Ronin, if Hotaru looked at him closely she’d find no marks left behind to suggest he’d indulged in his own business.

“Currently on a quest for it as well.” He pauses, regarding her before glancing around the bonfire briefly, before his attention returns to her wholly, his steel gaze just as open for her as before. “But other than that? I’m.. Surviving.” A small lopsided smile manages to bloom on his face, a mask she’d know all too well.

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

Much can be said for the healing that time can provide, because he is not the only one letting old memories wash through without fighting the pull of them. They’d had far more to grieve than their shared history in the past two years, but somewhere in the middle of it all maybe it had started to scar over too. Holding him now there is no ache of ill-stitched muscle beneath the scabbed over surface; only relief, comfort, lo-

Hotaru is not brave enough for that one though. She shuts it down hard, even if that emotion is what is making her slot her body into the spaces his has always held for her. Even the hurt of Nate and Enzo cannot inspire more than a dull ache she is accustomed to soothing now. What she isn’t prepared for is the sudden spike of denial that pierces through her chest as he makes more space between them - withering back into silence only when his hands remain against her, though it wouldn’t make it look any better to anyone with prying eyes. Because of it his agreement inspires a belated huff of a laugh.

“If you’re telling me that too then I really can’t deny it.” She wishes she knew if he’d been doing the same with the sanctuary, if only so she could drag him under the bus with her. But even humor fades into something softer at his unexpected continuance of emotional honesty. “It’s good to see you too. I’m glad to see you’re looking better - you look good.” Because she simply doesn’t know how to stop caring for him, worrying about him. And while he will always be handsome even when the world has given him hell, she will always admire the inner glow that fills him on better days.

A brow rises alongside the corners of her lips at the mention of another brothel. She’ll have to check it out - though her eyes can’t help but check his skin, as if she has any grounds for jealousy or judgment had she found any. He may yet still be with the lovely woman she’d found him with after all. Assumptions would only hurt her.

Tilting her head, firelight glowing against her golden hair and the curve of her cheek, she readjusts her grip on her wine glass which is still full and against his hip. “What are they having you do if it’s already complete?” Curiosity fades into something a little sad as the familiar wooden smile of his favorite put-together facade emerges from his handsome face. Lifting her empty hand away from his shirt, she touches the corner of his mouth gently with her fingertips, pinky brushing against his cheek. “Jata,” she murmurs, “not with me. Please.” Coming back to herself, she begins to pull her hand back. “It’s okay if you’re still struggling. I am too.”

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

Oh, he certainly has been hiding away, but given the fact that she doesn’t poke fun at it right now leads him to think that she has no idea that he’s been doing the same. But when she takes a better look at him, her face grows softer as she continues to hit him in that emotional honesty – something that would ordinarily be a good thing is a double-edged sword for the Flood. He doesn’t want to look good. He wants to portray exactly how ravaged and painful his heart has become the second that he starts to feel it again.

So in an effort to shrug it off, he shakes his head lightly. “Isla makes sure I eat.” Because that was the majority of the issue he had. He’d stopped eating, wanting to wallow away into nothing until his shifts forced him to go and devour some poor creature in King’s End. But now, he had a purpose, even if he didn’t feel wholly into it, focusing instead on trying to take Frey’s advice so that maybe one day he could look upon his deity again.

Right now, though, he watches as she tilts her head, her golden hair a halo of fire in the reflection of the bonfire. “Adding magic to the building. You can help if you’d like? It’s an easy question, though I find it difficult to find people to ask these days.” He admits, letting that mask cross his face when he speaks next.

What he doesn’t expect, is the way her hand lifts to his cheek, a single finger brushing along the freckled and stubbled skin, and he exhales a sigh that smells of liquor and smoke. She comes back into herself and Sunjata loses himself with the opportunity – because for every single person that remained living here in Caido, he thinks that nobody knows him as well as the Valkyrie does.

His head tilts, one hand lifting to her own to catch it, to keep it against his face as that mask shatters in real time – the smile fading, a short nod offered. “I don’t think I’ll ever not be struggling.” He admits quietly, only for her own ears, letting the attuned bond open just enough for her to feel how much uncertainty lingers in the storm clouds of his heart.

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

From her own side, the whisp of bond that had opened shutters immediately, and though her face never twitches - facade even stronger now after two years of trying to convince people she was not losing to her grief - at Isla’s name. It is a horrible battle to wage; grateful for the woman’s presence in Sunjata’s life and her clear care for him, and a primordial sort of possessiveness that insists this night would be beautiful if she could sweep into the bar and put her clawed hand through the woman’s pretty ivory neck.

Her hands drop away from Sunjata’s waist so that she can dig her nails into her palms in private, letting the pricks of her claws into her lifelines force the animal brain back into place. Perhaps the evening has gone to her head, or maybe the wine. Suddenly she doesn’t feel so inclined to drink it.

Of course, she tries to move past it. Hide it. And it helps that he catches her hand and lays it flat against his face - and she is grateful she hadn’t drawn her own blood, lest he ask. Instead she merely lets her shoulders incrementally relax. He could have refused for so many reasons, but instead he chooses to trust her again. “Maybe you won’t. Maybe we won’t.” Her thumb gently brushes the corner of his mouth, and she looks there instead of into his eyes. “But if our alternative is surrender, then we must struggle on.” Or it wouldn’t have been worth it. Everyone they’d risen past who had tried to kick them down would win.

Gesturing towards the bonfire with her head, Ru gives him a slightly sad smile. “How about we sit, and you ask me your questions?”

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

The second her touch departs him, it feels so shockingly cold that he can only barely contain the shiver that threatens to race up his spine, letting the silence and thought of Isla ensuring he’d eat drift from his mind only to focus on her and the sharp silence that comes from her side of the Attuned bond, and Sunjata can’t help but to remember himself too, even as her hand remains pressed against his face from his own doing.

But she hasn’t tried to pull it away. It’s a small solace he takes. Especially as she offers him some advice in the face of what Sunjata can only seem to think of as pettiness and spite. Something he’s never been good at – too used to brooding and wallowing to actually become cunning like Hotaru had shown him. He doesn’t think it’ll ever change, either, so he resigns to humming a soft sound of agreement, nodding his head enough that her thumb continues to brush along the corner of his mouth, his steel gaze clear for her, if not for the shadows that continued to hide. Shadows that he continues to try and hide despite it.

“Perhaps.” He can only halfway agree. Because to him the root of all of his problems and heartbreak in life were caused by himself. And nothing in that regard had changed. So if he were to surrender, would it be accepting that his father had been right? That he’d been a failure, nothing remotely close to the prodigal son? A mistake?

She gestures toward the bonfire but he can’t quite seem to let her go now that he’s spiraling into the shadows and ghosts of his past. He nods, taking her hand into his as he guides her toward the bonfire where an opening is, far enough away from everyone that nobody would be able to listen in but that they might be able to keep an eye on the party.

A couple of sad people in the corner, despite their entrances.

“It’s nothing big, honestly.” He says as he takes a seat and runs a hand through his hair, letting her hand go finally as the awkwardness of the conversation shifts onto him. He’d thought it might be easy to mention it to her, but given the fact that they’d shared a bed together many times and the events since then, it seems suddenly impossible to find the words. So it takes him a moment to gain his thoughts, before he lets his steel gaze, reflecting the bonfire, focus back on her beautiful dual toned gaze. “They’ve tasked me with finding out where people’s ideal spots to be intimate might be. Then going there and taking into consideration any dangers or… Anything, really.”

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

She knows in her heart he cannot view it the same way she does. At times it has caused her to wonder what does drive him beyond the bitter need to spite his oppressors; in her opinion, it is not a plentiful enough drive to last very long. Perhaps it is because with each new failure, each new bruise and loss, he has someone new to spite? Hotaru cannot pretend to understand, though she wishes she could. Even in the depths of her own self-loathing she had continued valiantly on because defeat was a fate worse than the hell she was living.

All she can ask is that he concedes. And, selfishly, that he keeps trying - she can’t imagine a day where the news comes that he’d simply given up and laid down to die. It makes her skin cold even with the summer night air surrounding them, and her hand clings a tad harder to his when he connects them because of it.

The sand is blissfully soft as she lowers herself down onto it, crossing her legs and planting her still untouched wine glass in the space between. The question isn’t unexpected given Frey and the brothel’s mutual involvement, but it does make her pause for longer than she would have expected of herself. Because as she reflects on the answer, she realizes it is far different from what he may remember of her. Of them.

Tracing the rim of her glass with one finger, watching the fire’s reflection in the dark liquid and crystalline vessel, Ru contemplates how to word it. “I’m happy to tell you, but I admit I’m not sure it’s a place that you could visit. Perhaps I can make my best attempt at it?” Which is a vulnerable admission unto itself - that even if she were to bring someone home, she would not feel at her safest or most comfortable anymore. “A smaller room. I don’t like open spaces anymore.” Her shoulders hunch slightly. “As much sunlight as possible. Big windows. Multiple soft surfaces on the bed; different textures, for variation.” Admittedly her one night stands have been mostly by the fire because she can’t stand intimacy in the dark anymore. It has become less exotic for her now as it once had been. “Just on the right side of too warm in the room. Enough to feel yourself sweat a little.” Another difficulty in Halo, and the only thing she hates about this is all the revelations she must undergo for the sake of sincerity.

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

It doesn’t last long – because Sunjata’s out of options to spite and thrive against. As far as he knew, the majority didn’t care for him, his name wasn’t as known as it had been years ago. Part of that is relieving, he can start anew like his newfound friendship with Sohalia, who didn’t know the dark things he’d done, not that he could tell anyway.

Realistically, if he did some self-searching, he’d realize he’s still just a shell, living because of the purpose and duties Frey had given him. And if it weren’t for the deity, then he thinks he’d have been long gone. A fear he’d held with his own irrationality (notably, one that the last time they’d talked and he’d told her he had to live because of his children, had come to a head when he’d found a safe place for them to grow up in where he visits occasionally, but he didn’t trust himself enough to take care of them while he suffered and starved himself.)

Now he just floats between duties, as it were. Nothing in between but books he hoards and memories in the spiderweb catacombs of his soul, already ravaged from the loss of so many.

They settle in the warm sand, however, and he tucks one leg beneath him, letting the other stretch out as he leans on his lightning scarred arm, watching her as she contemplates it. “Whatever works for you, Ru.” He offers gently, drawing silent again to let her speak, listening – seeing in his mind just how different it was to what he’d known. And suddenly, Sunjata wonders if he’s never known.

He bites back those thoughts, drinking her in as she continues, watching the firelight play along the panes of her face, the way it glows in her grey eye, recalling once upon a time when Nate had sported that manufactured eye that resembled a match for both the Flood and her, and his heart pangs a little too sharply. Sharp enough that he doesn’t filter his thoughts before he speaks it.

“Torchline warm or…?” There was a difference between the warmth of a room and humidity clinging to everything, after all. And if he remembers right, they did share a room not too far from here before the war started – even if nothing happened, she’d still worn his shirt, still made people question it.

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

Maybe they will come to a time and place where he can share that - perhaps not with her, but with someone. Himself most of all. While he no longer looks like a man standing in the shadows of the gallows, he hasn’t seemed to be able to stop wearing the noose around his neck as a reminder.

For Ru, she had lost her child. A loss she can’t imagine being any worse. But at least as a mother it was a loss of being responsible for someone, a guardian and source of guidance. I’m losing Nate, Sunjata had lost his equal - the foundational support he’d built his life upon. She can see how they are both irreversibly damaging, and why they are healing in different ways. If she is optimistic enough to call it healing.

What’s worse is he had known once. But after so many years of touch starvation, loneliness, guilt, and trauma she has more things on her list of disliked things than the reverse. It had begun when she left them and simply never ceased. Even Ru mourns how broken she is in this realm; once it had been a source of freedom and fun. Now, it is a complicated dance to try and spend a night with someone’s arms around her without asking them to leave early.

His question takes her off guard, eyes flickering to the side to look at him before falling firmly back to her glass, jaw feathering as she weathers her shame to provide him her honesty. “Yes. Like Torchline.” Because she still chases those ghost memories of the only days she remembers being loved instead of seen as something to conquer and crow about.

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

He doesn’t mean to make her dwell on everything that had happened in the past – but it’s the dance the two of them constantly tango in. The way that when the Climb Fever had struck, he and Nate had spent weeks chasing the wraith of her through the very hills that lead up to Apopo just on the whim they might find her again. And when they had, when everything was nearly fucking perfect, he’d gone and destroyed it all again.

Sunjata’s never escaped the gallows, despite how he tries. It haunts him, not unlike his father had haunted and ruined his life from these very sands. The lanterns that surround his room back at the House of Midnight are the very same ghosts that appear the second he closes his eyes. These are scars he doesn’t think will fade, doesn’t think will get easier with time, regardless of how many times Frey tries to guide him. The ghosts are still too close to him, still buried in, guiding his movements despite their strings being cut.

And if he’s being honest he’s terrified of trying again. Just like he had when Lusea had died the first time. He’d been terrified and yet opened his heart, shifted his mask, and done the same lockstep that had gotten him into the first disaster.

He realizes he’s staring when she answers, only because it’s as if he can memories her breathing in front of him, proving to himself that she isn’t a ghost, that the flicker of fire that dances across her face is still that little kernel within him that hopelessly loves her despite the nonstop pain they cause for each other. Because her answer of Torchline hits him again, deep, like the knife she’d slashed into his thigh. He wishes Safrin hadn’t rid him of that particular scar.

He wishes Safrin hadn’t done a lot of the things she’d done, but alas.

He finds himself reaching out for her hand again, covering it as she still toys with that wine glass she has yet to drink from, his hand curling around her fingers with the glint of the wedding ring still worn on his hand, one they had a design and everything to include her in as well, a way it would slot perfectly together between his and Nate’s sun and moon. “Thank you.” He breathes softly, his voice more accented, throatier as he goes to clear it shortly after.

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Some people crash two or three times and then learn from their mistakes
We are the ones who don't slow down at all

He may not mean to make her dwell, but as they had both thought to themselves earlier, Ru is done hiding from the painful memories. She has been trying to desensitize herself to them because numbness never lasts and she wants to remember the good and the bad equally. It’s not the memories of them that hurt. Not anymore. Not even the ones of her interrogation, or Sunjata’s revelation about his daughter-to-be. Nothing hurts her worse than the seemingly endless material of every night she’d spent in a too-cold bed in Halo, still waking up disoriented and reaching for bodies beside her only to find empty sheets.

Maybe that’s where they truly differ - Ru’s agony comes from her loneliness, and his from her actions. It’s why she has always seen her own lingering emotions for him as stronger and more of a threat. Something to conceal and repress so as not to cause him more pain. His friendship is all she can hope for, and that at least is still a worthwhile reward.

The callouses on his hand are rough and familiar as his hand lays overtop hers, and she must be deep into her head because it makes her jump to suddenly be touched. She settles immediately, and this time it’s her own mask that slides into place as she gives him a small smile. “Of course. Maybe I can make an example of my room at the inn for you to examine? I can have it ready by tomorrow.” It’s easier to compartmentalize this way; focus on a task, an exchange of goods and services instead of dark and painful things she has shared with no one. Not Tal, not Deimos, not Sah or Alys or - well, those are the only people she has, and she has only just reunited with Sunjata here and now. Perhaps Tal wonders, with how often she quietly asks him to sleep with her when he stays for dinner, but he has always respected her enough not to ask.

And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

HOTARU

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

Sunjata’s a king at pushing people away from getting too close to him. They differ in the way that she’s more of the type to believe in the whole it’s better to love and lose than to never love at all, because from where Sunjata stands in the shadows and broken pieces he’s carefully glued together, he selfishly wishes he’d chosen solitude, if only to keep the pain away.

It would be easier to have no attachments, flitting from bed to bed, body to body, indulging on selfish whims rather than whatever this was.

He reaches for her, though, his hand covering her own and tightening the second he notices he’s taken her by surprise and his brows pinch, a soft little sorry that starts to sprout on his lips when she cuts him off to speak, sliding her own mask into place that he knows all too well, too. “I’d like that.” He agrees in all his usual Korofian formality, before he lets her hand go to move in the sand, to no longer sit across from her, but moving to sidle closer to her, his body heat reverberating as much warmth as the fire from this distance, turning toward her more fully.

He scans her for a moment, before he reaches up again boldly, a tentative touch to run his fingertips along her temple. “If I don’t get to wear mine, you don’t get to wear yours.” It’s a repeat of their earlier conversation, a mirror image of her hand on his face, the chastising of his own familiar mask and he hopes its light enough of a shift to help give her a light to drag herself out of his shadows. And if it isn't, then maybe the following comment will help when he flashes her his traditional roguish, lopsided smile. "Or I'm going to need another drink."

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu