delivery unto the pyre

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

The Valkyrie wakes up in the Draig holding a dragon on her chest, blinking stupidly at sun that shines through thick leaves which appear to be cradling the unexpected pair on all sides. Something sick and uncertain tightens in her chest, and she rips through the odd bud around her with nails that sharpen without conscious thought - at least that hasn't changed too. Yet, despite her urgency, she carries the dragon in one arm as she emerges. Not quite ready to admit that she knows why she can't leave it behind.

Frey is a welcome face on the other side - as much of a face as Frey can have, though to Hotaru it has been just the one for many years now - but the heat of summer is not. Hotaru remembers standing on this cliffside in the cold of darker and quieter seasons, remembers the dragon in her arms and pain and blood and dark. Not afternoon heat and sun-baked stone. There are many questions to ask, but only one that matters enough to emerge first: how long?

Nearly two seasons now, Frey tells her. It's what sticks - more than the explanation, or the confirmation of the importance of the dragon slumbering heavy in her arms. Dread settles in Hotaru's stomach and does not budge. Not for the entire journey back to King's End. Death had never been something she shied away from even before Frey granted her immortality. Perhaps naively, she had assumed it would never pose a threat in her life again after reaching that goal.

She was wrong. And things tend to burn to the ground when Hotaru is wrong.

- - -

There is no pull to go anywhere but home. There's no promise that Sunjata will be there, but it's the first place that makes sense to try and find him, and finding him is all that matters. The dragon (she cannot yet bear to call it hers) had awoken over the too-long journey down from the Draig, but even after countless hours it has not gone far. It now curls around her shoulders, silent and watchful. Quiet and concealed even in the ways Hotaru is privy to, perhaps in deference to the Valkyrie's riotous mental state. She doesn't want to think about the creature, or the reason she can feel it at all. Doesn't want it to be anything other than an it yet. At least not until she has found Sunjata.

"Sunjata? Sunny?" It's a strained, desperate call as she throws open the front door, Attuned bond stretching like a wide net in the vain hopes of snagging against his so that she might know he's near. The door is left flung open as she runs through the first floor, disheveled and still bearing the extremely dark, old stains of blood down the front of her blouse. The dragon's first hello to her, despite the way its snout lingers near that same golden throat, tempered now and incapable of that same sort of harm.

HOTARU

// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself
but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //

It’s been far too long. At first, the voice sounds like a ghost. A memory. Something that isn’t real and something he doesn’t trust crashing through the underbrush of his soul. It’s heart wrenching enough that he ignores it at first, until he hears the clattering of objects in the home — their home, that proves it isn’t just a memory coming back to haunt him.

He’s disheveled, already on edge in the form of the dragon scales that blot out the majority of his scars that coat his shoulders. It’s hot, too hot, and yet he wears this shift’s scales like armor that cover his chest all the way up to cover his neck. And the dark wings with the taloned fork on top move with the slight ruffling of his wings when he emerges from their room — a space he’s had to make decidedly his in the recent months lest he lose himself completely.

“Ru?” He calls out, stilling immediately when he sees her and the dragon clinging to her throat, the blood. Even Petronella realizes something’s wrong with the way she remains in the bed in the corner of the room Sunjata’s just come from.

There’s so many questions that flash through his mind, the apprehension, the uncertainty, the hurt and anger that bloom a fraction of a second before he puts up his mental walls, trying to hide the worst of it. The questions continue to flash through in the silence and the increase of his heartbeat — where were you? Why didn’t you tell me? What took so long? What the fuck is that? — and in the end settles for the immediate reserved attempt to keep his hurt at bay though it’s very clear in the storm of his eyes. “What happened?” He settles on instead, jaw set until he can feel his teeth creak, the muscles feathering in his temple.

// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury
and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //

SUNJATA

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

The sharpness of his soul is the sweetest pain she could possibly know, and though his walls are high she can hardly make herself do the same. Stem the tide, perhaps, but nothing so ironclad as what the Flood manages. The Valkyrie has never been able to hide from him entirely even when she wants to - and right now, she'd rather he be able to glean what he wants from her with the barest effort, to know with certainty that she has nothing to hide.

Though her hands ache to touch and her arms scream to embrace, Hotaru manages to stumble to a graceless stop in their living room, feeling small and out of place. Explanations had been enough the first time, even when life had moved on without her as she had expected it to. She isn't sure if there's fault to be had here, but her heart in her throat tells her who are you kidding, it's always yours.

"It -" her hand gestures to the dragon watching the Flood unblinking, too large to be newly hatched but still young enough to have time to grow further, and she immediately fumbles. Her, is insisted across her mind, and she shivers in full-body discomfort over the sensation of another consciousness being tied to hers once more after all this time. "She...I found her nest on accident." Undisturbed bones of a dead mate, cherished even in death, and no sign of eggs. "I was just stopping at the edge of the Draig to rest from flying. We scared each other. We -" Unbidden, her hand rises to her throat and bumps against the dragon's nose, remembering the teeth that had been there. Is there a scar? Had Frey wiped that away in the healing process? Hotaru hasn't even seen herself since waking up.

"I killed her. She killed me. But I can't die, not really." Sunjata knows that to be true, the same gift-and-curse that he bears. "Frey...they put something up around me for while I was healing, I guess. And tied our souls together in the process." Her hand moves away from the dragon once reminded it's there, discomfort burning up her throat. Or perhaps those are the tears which sting at her eyes now, sharp teeth stabbing into the inside of her cheek to try and stop them from falling. She's not trying to guilt her beloved into begrudging acceptance, no matter how she desperately prays for it. "I'm sorry. Beloved, I'm sorry. Frey said it's been - and I know last time was longer, but I didn't want there to be another time and -" please just come closer, yesterday I kissed you goodbye and now I don't know who you are.

HOTARU

// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself
but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //

He’s tried so hard to be understanding and patient, tried so hard to search for her with zero sign of anything to point to her. He’s been caught up in running the region, Alys stepping down, the mud and LongNight all alone, and it burns something deep in his chest as he peers over at her and spies the dragonling staring back at him – a protectiveness that flares in his chest that meshes uncomfortably with the dragon currently on display and settled deep in his soul.

He can’t help it.

His jaw remains shut tight, working as she starts to explain – the understanding dawning on him, that she’d been lost in the Draig amongst the snowcapped mountains, a place he’s never been, a place he wouldn’t assume she would have gone to if he hadn’t. And then the bomb drops - I killed her. She killed me. Each scar possibly visible lightens with the strike of lightning, glowing shortly before they fade into nothingness, a horned head shaking as he tears his gaze away from her and feels the sharp sting of hurt burn into something that feels almost helpless. Like he had when Nate had gone to the Draig and died. Like he had when Lusea met her fate with the Frost Giants of Halo.

“I told you.. I couldn’t handle another time.” He manages to grit out, stubbornly staring away from her as his eyes burn with the threat of tears he’s too afraid to let fall. “What the fuck, Ru?” He asks on a hoarse whisper, one that hurts and burns in all the ways he hoped so severely wouldn’t happen again. “I can’t. I can’t keep doing this.” He rushes out, looking back over toward her but not to her face, not letting the siren song call of her reach him in the depths of his anger and sorrow. Instead, the glare is aimed at the dragon.

"You were gone before LongNight happened and I had to handle things here alone for that. I couldn't even stay here, I stayed at the House. And I thought maybe a couple of weeks made sense, that you'd gotten stuck on a project or a plan like you usually do. But then it became months. I looked for you. Deimos and Flora even looked for you." It comes out despite the tension in his jaw, the word vomit he doesn't try to fix or fluff up to make it make more sense. It's raw. It hurts. And it's the shield he keeps in place that he'd never thought he'd have to keep up against her. Not again.

// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury
and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //

SUNJATA

A flash of colour draws the eye upward to a nearby tree, where a Dream Bird perches among the branches. Its feathers shimmer softly, hues shifting with each small movement.

The bird tilts its head, releasing a gentle trill that seems to linger longer than sound should, echoing faintly in the mind rather than the air. It ruffles its feathers contentedly, clearly at ease.

For now, it remains where it is, watching the world below with bright curiosity, perfectly content to perch and sing.

---

Dream Bird Areas Found: Hollowed Grounds, King's End, Stormbreak — Uncommon The dream bird is a small bird with 6 pairs of wings and is coloured an array of bright blues, yellows, reds, pinks and purples. It has a red beak with sharp teeth and pure white eyes; truly a horror to behold. A dream bird typically builds its nest high up in a tree on the outskirts of a city where it can hide from the townsfolk but still mess with their dreams. If you can find a nest and leave out food for the bird living there, they might take a liking to you and give you nice dreams. Should you try and chase them away, you can expect nightmares. Challenge Rating: Easy P: 88 | To Hit: +30 | Dmg: 10 Movement: Fly 50 ft.; Perch/Climb 20 ft. SPECIAL SKILLS Dreamweave: subtly influences nearby sleepers, gifting pleasant dreams or sowing nightmares; Favour Trade: if fed at its nest, may choose to bless the feeder with restful, happy dreams; Spiteful Reprisal: when harassed or driven off, targets offenders with recurring nightmares; Silent Drift: near-soundless wingbeats make it difficult to detect overhead

TRAITS Multi-Winged Flight: twelve wings grant agile, hovering manoeuvres and sudden bursts; Nest-Edge Sentinel: prefers high nests on city outskirts, observing without being seen; Predatory Beak: sharp, tooth-lined beak despite small size; Nocturnal Meddler: most active at night, slipping between windows and dreams ACTIONS Lullaby Trill: a soft, rippling song that coaxes uneasy minds toward calm sleep; Night Terror Screech: a jagged cry that sparks anxiety and nightmare visions in light sleepers; Feather Flurry: a sudden buffet of wings to startle and blind a pursuer; Swoop Peck: darts in with its sharp beak to deter threats before wheeling away

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

The glow of lightning makes hope twist painfully in her heart, across a gulley that widens as her emotions grow quieter and quieter to his ears. The ensuing shake of his head and flex of his jaw is not unlike a knife in how it cleaves through her. She strives to keep her lips from trembling overmuch, or her brows from creasing and pinching down in agonized lines, but half-measures are only that when he has the key to every expression she’s capable of making.

Injustice bubbles like a defense mechanism, the sides of her mouth twisting in what becomes an aborted snarl as she turns her head sharply away instead. They’d promised honesty long ago, and even though she burns with the feeling that she has done nothing wrong, she can’t tell him he’s any less in the right either. Her hands fist and twitch uselessly at her sides as she tries to do anything more than keep breathing. At her throat, the dragon undulates slowly, rising from its stony, watchful state. The scrape of scales under Ru’s chin makes her flinch, but at least jostles words free.

“I didn’t do any of this on purpose, it was a normal day, a regular -” she breaks off with the closure of her throat, tears like daggers that she can’t see past but equally can’t let fall. “Did any of you ask Frey?” Spoke in a whisper that betrays a thread of doubt not unlike the kind that had plagued her after Frey had claimed the Family was no threat when Sunjata had asked. Ever the only man to make her, even as a demigod, question the deity that remade her very atoms. “They were there - they would’ve known, right? It wouldn’t have been like before.” When she was a nobody, a simple Abandoned unaccounted for during the sickness that had gripped Caido.

Ru lifts both hands to press the heels of her palms into her eyes to force the sting down with brute strength. “No, I’m - I’m not trying to say you didn’t do enough, that’s not what I meant. To me, it’s been a few days. And I know that doesn’t change that to you it was so much more, that it was awful, but…”

But what? He holds the cards here, and she has nothing but confusion, regret, and a dragon around her neck that she bitterly thinks wasn’t worth the exchange.

HOTARU

// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself
but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //

He knows her well enough to see the confusion and the flare of upset that leaks through her – and there’s a selfish part of himself that thinks good, that maybe the shock of all of this might hurt as much as her departure hurt him. He’d only expected it to be a few days, too, and here they were – weeks, months later. It’s a pain that resonates, that glimmers in the pit of his stomach like a churning mess.

”Did any of you ask Frey?” She asks and he straightens up, those mental walls hardening as he keeps the bitterness from seeping out. Her asking him a question in regards to it has him even more confused. He, too, was Frey’s chosen. Why wouldn’t he have asked Frey? “We did. They said you were fine. And Flora tried to channel you but it didn't work.” Which makes sense now in hindsight – but before that it was just as confusing as hearing she was fine and still being unable to see her.

It felt like a sharp slap to the face, the kind that hurts in ways that Sunjata isn’t sure how to express – his lack of verbal skills far more evident when he’s emotional – and gods, is he emotional right now. It’s precisely why he glares at the dragon and why Petronella hasn’t slipped over to say hello – choosing the corner of the home for comfort rather than pain.

“But?!” Sunjata cuts in, having sworn he wouldn’t do it anymore but finding himself unable to stop it. He steps back, reaching up to rub at his face and try to get his thoughts in order. “I get it. And I’m sorry that it happened and that it was just a few days. I--” He pauses, hands falling from his face as he glances out the window to see the dreambird perched on a branch of a tree by the window. It’s almost like it’s the distraction he needs to get the words out. “I meant it.” He says quietly, jaw working as he tries to fight over the words that he never thought would leave his lips. “I can’t do this. I… Where’s my Heart?” He asks, like it’s clear he doesn’t have him in it right now to argue it out. That he wanted the space, needed the space, because there was a difference in truly knowing you were alone versus harboring the false hope that Sunjata had the majority of his life that they'd come home.

It's clear, now, that he's a curse. That those that get close to him do perish one way or another, immortality be damned.

// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury
and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //

SUNJATA

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

The flex of his jaw is precisely why she had tried to clarify, but as his walls build higher she’s left with no way to reach him, despite how her own are as pitiful as glass. Transparent and fragile. So there is no hiding the entangled despair and confusion over Frey’s mild response. Her heart cries in agonized confusion, wanting a target to point all this painful emotion toward and finding…nothing.

His outburst makes her flinch. In surprise, if nothing else. Heterochromatic eyes wide and unblinking as the creature around her neck stiffens into stone. Don’t, Hotaru begs, shuddering at the rawness of a bond that makes her cringe to feel again, but desperate not to make this worse. To fix it somehow. She’s not very good at that, but they’d managed it together hadn’t they? She’s learned so much and -

The tense question pulls her out of the spiral of her thoughts, crushing them as simply as one might clench their hand around a brittle autumn leaf. Horror and denial rise in her throat like acid, clenched hands rising to press against her sternum. The urge to beg is so intense it nearly sweeps her over. Or perhaps to her knees, which feel so weak she can neither move closer nor back away. But when did begging ever make him stay? Change his mind, listen?

Swallowing tastes like glass, or maybe the blood is just the byproduct of her own teeth cutting into the soft tissue inside her mouth to strangle down the initial fireworks of different feelings that try to explode free. Those sparks had burned them down once before and she has tried ever since to douse and bury them.

“Do you want it back for now, or forever?” It’s a strained, darkened tone that ekes free after an uncomfortably long silence. The clenched hands at her chest ache, the weight of the ring on her finger like an anvil but as light as a feather compared to the weight of the heart he has asked for her to return. The heart in her own chest.

HOTARU

// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself
but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //

He can hear the attuned bond question – the beg, the one that has him crumbling a bit internally. He has to be strong, though, for himself and his bruised heart, the heaviness of which that has him breaking a little. The walls crumble a touch, something he’d tried to hide from her leaking through that the pain and hurt are endless and he can’t numb himself the way he used to. He couldn’t during her absence no matter how much he’d tried to.

The loneliness of LongNight, of the panic and worry that he didn’t know where she was combined with last year’s trauma of the merfolk that had washed up in the Refuge. All the shit he’d dealt with when it came to the Family trying to do his best intentions. And while the Family wasn’t here anymore and he no longer harbored the echoes that had painted her skin and everyone else’s that had been infected, the memory of what he’d done during those times had continued to rear up. Alys stepping down from being his Seer in King’s End to focus on her family – something he supported, but perhaps was a touch jealous of when Hotaru still hadn’t come home.

Knowing the reason why is both a boon and a curse. Hurt and relief that she was okay, hurt that she’d gone into the Draig without him. How he might have been able to prevent it if he’d been there. How he’d never had the chance to – even after promising that this time things would be different.

“I don’t know yet.” He admits, his voice dropping to a weak tone, looking away from her because he can’t let her see the way he cracks and burns with the answer. “I need time, Ru.” Which is only fair, isn’t it? She and Nate had needed time after Sunjata had made the deal for Kamaria. This time, though, there’s far less physical blades to puncture true flesh.

// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury
and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //

SUNJATA

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

The cry had been for more than just him - for herself, for the dragon around her neck that stirs and tenses like a gargoyle at this most inopportune and delicate of times - but it doesn’t matter who it was meant for because she goes unanswered on every front. He is as quiet and unknown to her as the creature around her throat and it leaves her feeling all the more adrift.

Two parts of her - the parts that love him and were changed by him, and the parts she was born with that never stopped being cruel - grapple each other in violent death throes. She wants to fall on her knees and beg for him to forgive her, to at least look at her, to have mercy when all she had done was stop to rest on a long journey. But she also - in all her swelling hurt and fear of loss - wants to bare her teeth and bite and hurt him back, at least in the ways she’s hurting now. To be cruel for the sake of armor. To feel some sort of control over all of this by exerting power in some way. Hurl accusations, that he would never do this if Nate walked through that door right this second. Or that he should never date anyone grander than a civilian if the frequent dangers and deaths of demigod life - one she had pursued out of love for him - were too much to bear.

But she bites her tongue bloody under sharpened fangs, because all of those bitter, painful accusations really just amount to the reality that Hotaru would wait for him forever. That doesn’t mean it’s fair to expect the same. And not even in a double-edged implied manner of superiority - they have always loved differently than other people, and though she’d expected something different when he handed her his heart, they were still different people at the end of the day.

Through it all she really just…stands there. Feeling and thinking all of these things as blood fills her mouth and is swallowed down in spasmodic jerks of her throat. A survival mechanism seeking to stop her from drowning on dry land more than any concern for appearances.

“Okay,” she finally, meekly says. What else is there to say that will not lose him all the faster? Begging on her knees will do nothing, but trying - even perhaps in vain, as yet to be seen - to do what he asks, no matter how it kills her slowly, is the only chance she has.

Twitching a hand restlessly, the air ripples and splits to reveal her pocket space. Beyond, trees and greenery - the Foothills of her childhood - span where their kitchen should be. She steps inside for but a moment. The door never closes (it’s always open for him) and she tries not to look away for long, even though he isn’t looking back. It’s the safest place in the world for his heart, and removing it hurts her own so thoroughly she can hear the dragon begin to whistle through its nares with each labored breath.

Stepping back out and letting the portal close, Hotaru pauses before selfishly stepping away to set Sunjata’s heart carefully on the kitchen island. Her hands shake violently and nearly refuse to part from it. But she doesn’t want to hold the memory of handing it back to his own hands. It will torture her all the more that way.

“What…can I do, while waiting?” She asks, eyes riveted to the heart on the granite top he’d picked out while building much of the house in secret. Sitting and waiting in silence will ensure she loses him, as gone in life as she was in death-stasis, but if he forbids her from visiting or writing or trying…well, respecting his wishes will be all she can do.

HOTARU

// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself
but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //

He knows her enough to know that she wars with herself. That it’s a war between understanding and wanting to be cruel and he severely hopes she doesn’t go down the cruel route. This was already cruel enough, and gods knew their history was one wrought with more than just barbed words. He doesn’t want it to go like that, and there is some small part of relief when she doesn’t go there either.

It hurts, obviously it hurts, but Sunjata needs his space and his time to come to terms with everything. To decide if this is something he can continue to do. It isn’t like he’s actively looking for someone else to spend time with, he just needs to live with the understanding for a while that it’s his choice this time.

Because it very rarely was his choice before, wasn’t it? And for a man who seemed like he had control over everything, he very rarely did.

Her okay is an answer enough and as the pocket dimension opens, Sunjata waits, his muscles tense and nerves getting the better of him. He wants to back off, to crumble like he knows he probably should, but the darker part of his aching and breaking mentality feels void, hears and roars with the reminder of his father’s voice.

Weak child.

It burns, and it’s the only time he takes to exhale his shaky breaths are when she’s gone, sucking in a breath deep enough to put the masks back into place when the heart is retrieved. She doesn’t hand it to him, instead placing it on the marble countertop he’d built for their home that felt more like a museum of her memories these days.

He doesn’t go for it immediately, just stares at it the way Hotaru does. But something feels off about it.

Actually, he feels nothing.

And that, perhaps, is the scariest part as he hears her question but doesn’t absorb it. Not as he walks over to the heart, flips open the box he’d placed it in for her, and stares at the heart within that doesn’t beat anymore. Decayed, limp, lifeless. It explains a lot, he imagines, the way that he knows how he should feel, how odd it might seem to Hotaru, how it doesn’t add up to how he actually does.

His heart is dead, laying in the box like a forgotten bouquet, dried out and staring back at him like a mockery. He takes a slow inhale, exhales it out even slower and closes the lid of the box and picks it up, tucking it under his arm.

He doesn’t look at her as he steps away. Doesn’t tell her what was in the box. “Keep the house. Make it your own, I guess.” Muscles feather in his jaw. “’Nella, come on.” He calls out to his companion, the sea panther toddling out quietly and with her ears lowered, and he heads to the door. Most of his things were at the House of Midnight anyway, unable to sit in his home with all the memories alone.

// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury
and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //

SUNJATA

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

Her head is dizzy on withheld emotions, on confusion that hasn’t had time to settle from the moment she awoke to her headlong rush to King’s End. She isn’t really sure if she’s even breathing - certainly not adequately. To her, it has been a few nightmarish days, and the only reason she doesn’t resort to older and crueler tendencies is because she loves Sunjata so painfully much. Context, fairness, expectations…they don’t matter in the end. All that does is his decision.

She backs away at the same pace that he moves closer, ensuring distance remains for both of their sakes. Her arms wrap around her midsection, hiding where her nails dig painfully into her sides. Literally holding herself together as she stares unblinking at his heart as it’s boxed away.

His words are cruel in their dismissiveness, and her heart leaps with panic at the lack of options he gives her to try and do anything. Perhaps not remedy it, but not even to assert her continued devotion while she waits? “Wait just - no, I don’t want -” the house if you’re not in it. It’s just walls and floors if he’s not here with here. Would rejecting the offer make him angrier? She knows she won’t be able to stay the moment he walks out that door. It would be torture she’d never withstand. So instead of senselessly pleading she tries to make sense of the crumbling going on inside her chest to make use of what will clearly be the last few moments she has with him…for however long. “Can I…write? Sunjata please I don’t…I don’t want you to think I’m still gone,” she rushes through teeth that threaten to chatter. Holding onto her strength of will by her fingernails. His full name feels wrong and ashen in her mouth. “I’ll stay away. I’ll wait. I’ll do anything, just…please. Give me something so that I can try.” Tears burn in her eyes with enough force to know she won’t be able to hold them back this time, so she refuses to blink even as Sunjata and Petronella become blurred, vague shapes. An accusatory tone in a different man’s voice tells her, you only cry to manipulate, Ru. So she can’t let herself, just in case he was always right.

HOTARU

// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself
but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //

He knows his dismissal is sharp, like a knife that’s just waiting to be buried deeper and deeper the longer he stands there. Ultimately, he’s glad that she’s made it and she’s back, but there’s a part of him internally that shakes with cobwebs and hurt of something that was there that feels like it’s been stabbed of its own right.

He’s halfway out the door with Petronella, pausing long enough for her to climb up his pant leg and shirt to climb onto his shoulder when he hears her comment. He finds deep down that he also doesn’t want the house they built, imagining that if she doesn’t want it either that it’ll just come to a ruin eventually.

Just like his heart. Just like his suddenly fragile mental state.

Unlike Nate, she’s still breathing. Still there. A reminder of how much he’d loved her and how much it had hurt when she’d vanished. How much more it hurt to realize that she’d succumbed to a death in the Draig and he’d been completely unaware. It felt like a betrayal, regardless of whether or not she meant to or not. It’s a mental hurt, one that sharpens the silver tongue of his father’s whispers, one that tells him maybe he is better off alone after all.

“If you want to.” He says to her question of whether she could write. He can’t promise he’ll write back. He can’t promise he’ll open them the second he sees them on his desk.

He looks over his shoulder toward her, hidden mostly by the black puff of fur that Petronella makes as she curls into his neck with. “I can’t tell you what to do, Hotaru. You’ve got to figure out what to do for yourself.” Saying her full name feels just as wrong as it did to hear her say his full name, but it feels just as pertinent to let it slip from his lips. He doesn't have anything else to say, and he starts to move again, stepping down the steps of their wind around porch onto the warm grasses of Meadowreach to slip away in the night.

// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury
and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //

SUNJATA

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

It’s crueler to be refused a way forward, she thinks as she watches him walk away, out the door she’d left hanging open in her frantic entry. He tells her he’s hurt, but won’t tell her where, won’t hand her sutures. He tells her he needs space, but doesn’t say how far. He tells her he needs time, but not how much. And he tells her to figure it out for herself - but she doesn’t need to, she’s here, willing to do any and everything. What is there to figure out on her own? She knows what she wants, how she feels, where her heart lies. It’s a mockery to be told to solve a puzzle he won’t even hand over.

But she can’t hurt him further by being angry. No matter how justified it may or may not be. She would rather strip herself of her own due share of expressed emotion if it would mean a few granules of ground gained or deference shown.

So she bites into her mouth until the blood overflows enough to ensure she must keep her silence. She holds herself, frozen in place as if the shattering of her heart might overlook her if she stands still enough. The empty house he leaves her in is surely as awful as it had been to him while she was missing, and Ru knows it, but staying feels more unfair than some gesture of walking in his shoes. No matter how they both feel she had done nothing but make the wrong choice in where to rest her wings. The irony of that statement is a bitter whisper in her own voice that mocks her - see? Nobody stays, even when they promise. Because of you. A lifetime of the same ending and you’d think she’d have learned that by now.

He’s long gone when the strings finally sever, sending her crumpled to the floor, the death rattle of her cries muffled only by the wings of the creature that caused all of this - the one she can now never be rid of, never truly hate, because their souls are intertwined evermore. The dragon coos an attempt at comfort. The sound is lost under Hotaru’s crying. The only thing that can fix her doesn’t want her, so all that’s left is the bleed-out.

- Fin

HOTARU