[SE] Shallow earth over brittle bones

maybe who we were then is shattered, but who we are in the end is what matters

She makes a temporary camp of sorts near the Mathair while awaiting Sunjata. There is nobody to hide the trip from aside from her children, who have no reason to be suspicious, and even less reason to have feelings about the choice one way or another. Noah is the only one who might, truly. She doesn’t have many friends left these days, off on farther adventures if alive at all. It feels a bit hollow and sad to have nobody to turn to and ask if she should, what she should do, or wear, or how early to arrive, how hopeful to be. Or maybe that’s just girlish nonsense unbefitting a woman her age.

Andraste curls around her neck beneath her hair, hiding from the occasional distance scream of rain and keeping warm and half-concealed under the wet blonde strands. Blood runs down Hotaru’s forearm as she lays her brutal offering at Mathair’s roots and the carnivorous plants that surround them. A simple, clean, fresh kill. No frills or missing pieces.

Bowing her head in brief prayer, the Valkyrie flicks blood off her fingers as she stands, turning her head slightly when she picks up human noise. Turning to face Sunjata, she folds her fingers carefully into her palms, trying not to make the move appear combative when really it’s to restrain herself from reaching for him. Her nails whisper pressure against her lifelines, a promise of controlled pain if she needs it. “Hello,” she says simply, voice soft. Neither of them need loud tones when they often half-shift. Not that she has faith she can lift her voice much louder either.

SUNJATA

i found hope in a hopeless home
found my father but i lost my soul

They both look like mirrors of each other, Sunjata realizes. Only Hotaru had well and truly died and come back while Sunjata had suffered a metaphorical death. The physicality of his heart is well and truly gone, though, and for that the Heartless understands why he feels next to nothing when he sees her. He knows he should, but the spaces of his heart where love had sat is an empty void of cobwebs and ash from all the cigarettes he’d told her he’d quit, picking up the habit the second something gets hard again.

“Hey.” He says quietly, the distance between them vast and large but not enough that he can’t spot the blood on her hands, the claws there – mirroring her yet again in the way he approaches with the background of scream rain and horns and wings on display, tucked in and trying to not let more of his emotions be seen. He keeps the attuned bond quiet, just in case, his own offering in his hands that he has yet to deposit.

It isn’t much, but he forces himself to step up until they’re within talking distance, but he holds off on speaking yet. Instead, he drops to a knee at the base of the Mathair, setting an array of fruits and plants that he thinks will help to nourish her roots. Less carnal, more leaning towards the fertility aspect of their shared deity. And only when he’s sure it’s spread precisely how he wants it to be, he straightens up and turns to her – his jaw set tight.

Bags sit below his eyes, too, an exhaustion that’s somehow far past bone deep creeping in. “Thanks for meeting me.. after everything.” He says quietly and unhelpfully, forcing himself to try and start the words he’d mulled over every second of every wingbeat and step it took him to get here. “I think I owe you an explanation. More than what I gave you before.”

i tried to trace it, i aimed to scope
been tryna kill it, but it's all i know

maybe who we were then is shattered, but who we are in the end is what matters

It's like a warped mirror, but she doesn't need the silence of his side of the bond to know that what they're feeling on the inside couldn't be more different. Whether out of self-defense or respect, Hotaru keeps her own side of the Attuned bond equally shuttered. It had been their saving grace once; Sunjata able to share emotions more readily than words. A bridge that had helped them rebuild and find new ways to understand each other after the first explosive end, where Hotaru hadn't had the ability to feel his emotions until it was much too late. She can't help but wonder if they relied on it too heavily. Had they learned and grown enough while leaning on the bond like a crutch? Or had they excused away the necessity because they'd found a solution they had both believed to be permanent?

Perhaps now is when she finds out.

She turns aside to allow him to make his own offering, though she doesn't step away given he'd been the one to decide how close to get. Putting the power in his hands again and again in a desperate bid to prove her devotion is greater than her desire for equality. Even if more than one person has expressed gentle disapproval of that approach even in the short time they've been apart.

Looking at him - even just looking - is so painful it makes her throat seize. At least it allows him to speak while she tries to silence the cracking noises radiating up her chest and into her ears. "I told you I would wait," she replies simply, voice subdued. He'd given her no idea on how else to fix things; until he makes a decision about the two of them, it's all she can do. 'Owe' is a word she has forcefully kept herself from using, but she doesn't fully disagree despite how she has tried to purge herself of any negativity that might push him further away. So she simply tilts her chin down in a half-nod of agreement. Silent and receptive of whatever he has to say.

More waiting. At least it's something she's capable of doing, no matter how long it takes.

SUNJATA

i found hope in a hopeless home
found my father but i lost my soul

He doesn’t share the emotions just yet, held tightly behind the wall of his attuned bond. He needs to work on his words, to explain, because he thinks that if he showed her the destruction that was wrought within him, it’d do her more harm than good. So he’s cautious with it as he places his offerings, drawing up to take her in.

She looks about as good as he does – it’s taking a toll on them both and Sunjata finds himself back on the pinnacle of being the bad guy. ’I told you I would wait.’ It’s a simple, subdued answer, and one that shows him that she’s just as cautious of not overstepping some unseen line in the ground between them that he’d placed there when she’d come back home – when things should have gotten better, but the hole in his chest had only grown more turbulent.

“I..” He pauses, jaw working, looking away from her because even with all the work they’ve done he still can’t look at someone when the conversation gets hard. He doesn’t want to see the disappointment, the hurt, the way his words land when he knows he doesn’t get them just right. “When I read your note, I thought it would be one of those quick trips like you usually do. And then it became months, seasons, even.” He takes a steadying breath, forcing himself to break through the usual tactics of his own self-protection to look back at her, staring at her throat rather than her dual toned eyes.

His brows pinch, clear that he’s struggling with explaining this but willing to try anyway. “I was so fucking worried, but I was also empty? Like.. Like everything there was just slowly fading away and that’s why I asked for the heart. I wanted to know what happened.” Because he’d had no control over it, she’d kept it with her where they both thought it would be safe. And because he feels the need to have something to do with his hands, he swings the bag of holding into view to retrieve the box in question.

“This held all my romantic love for you. It also held it for Nate. And Lusea. And without it I.. I physically can’t love anyone. I can’t love you anymore.” He stares down at the box stubbornly, feathers flitting suddenly around his collar when he lifts his dark storm cloud of a gaze. “I didn’t get a choice in it, and I know that’s unfair because you died and that’s also what makes this so fucking hard, Ru.” A break in the attuned bond opens, not by intention, but revealing the gale of emptiness that sits within him so sharp and stark that it almost mirrors the very depths his body had sunk to in the numbness after Nate died and the war was over and they’d met. Back when she was empty, too, after losing Enzo.

But at least she’d gotten him back, in the end. She had her children and that meant she was never truly alone at the end of the day.

As for him? All he has is himself, these days. No children and hardly anyone that knows the true depths of the things he’s gone through. Hotaru knows, but she stands before him like a stranger that he knows he should love but physically can’t, hurt because of the very same reasons that he’d sworn off ever doing this again. She stands there like a ghost and Sunjata isn’t entirely sure she isn’t one.

How can he honestly trust himself anymore?

"I don't have much of myself left anymore. And I know I said I couldn't do it again after Nate and I really, really wanted to try again and it was good for a while Ru. It was really good. But I think it's better that I piece myself back together by myself. I can't and won't use you as a crutch for it. I can't use anyone this time." Not like how he'd used Isla before her, how he'd used Nate before that, how he'd used Hotaru time and time again. "I have to do it alone and you shouldn't wait for me to figure it out. I'm sorry."

i tried to trace it, i aimed to scope
been tryna kill it, but it's all i know

maybe who we were then is shattered, but who we are in the end is what matters

Even if he were capable of meeting her eyes, he wouldn't see much. Even with how well he can read her, Ru's walls are so high, her control so tight, that there wouldn't be much to interpret. Part of it is hurt, bitterness. The other part is protective and deferential; devoted to the goal of civility and understanding no matter how hard it might become.

So she listens. Even when the first thorn pricks at the rubble of her heart to realize he'd asked for his heart back without knowing its fate. When he pulls out the box she can't bear to look at it. Even looking at his face, as hard as it is, is a kinder fate than being presented with the sight of cherished gift that he'd taken back.

"I can't love you anymore."

Even with the provided context, it cleaves through her chest like an axe through dry kindling, splintering her apart. Understanding doesn't soften the blow of hearing what would otherwise mean a total, final end of a relationship. She isn't so sure that's not what this is anyway. The wounded, animal noise that tries to escape through the crack in her breastbone is caught and held only by the trembling clench of her teeth as she tries to stand strong through the deliverance of such a world-shattering truth.

Though she had tried to remain physically open and available, Hotaru can't help the compulsion to cross her arms to hold herself together and in some additional, laughable attempt to ward away the pain he brings. Shrinking further away from the slip in the bond that permeates a hollow cavern where feeling once lived. At least she can be darkly, uselessly, bitterly appreciative of his acknowledgement of her own stance, the blamelessness of her death and the unfair position it puts them both into.

Around her neck, Andraste tightens, wings descending to cover more of Hotaru's chest and back like it will somehow shield her. It makes Ru's heart ache with conflicted appreciation. That, at least, distracts her in some small way from Sunjata's final words. It feels like a decision has already been made no matter what he says. Even more cruel is the knowledge that she can't accept it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

It takes a moment to swallow and remember to breathe before she can break her silence.

"If you don't want me to wait, then you want it to be over. Is that what you're saying?" Against her ribs, her fingers tremble and claws restlessly form and retreat, pricking her skin. "Anything else - repairing your heart, your self-exploration, us being together - is a maybe? Something only time will tell?" It is half clarification and half challenge. Pretty words won't comfort a heart as broken as hers is right now. Potentialities and ambiguity will keep her waiting, hoping, no matter how he tries to release her by saying she shouldn't wait around for him to figure himself out.

"If you don't want me to wait, you have to tell me - plainly - what that means." Her voice, which had been impressively even so far, holds out only through the end of this sentence. It warbles on the next, composure wavering. "Being free to move on romantically, not just my life? And when will we ever know if it's the right time to try again, if that door is still open, if we don't have some sort of transparent agreement on how that would happen?" It's a miracle she is managing to keep her emotions from breaking through into the bond. That she isn't yelling, or crying, or shutting down. It takes every ounce of strength in her soul to make it happen - but she does. She won't comment on his plans, or his maturity in making them. That's not her place anymore, it seems. All she can do is contend with the parts that are relevant to her place in his life. Something that will inevitably define her own life from this moment forward.

SUNJATA

i found hope in a hopeless home
found my father but i lost my soul

Even without seeing it, her mask held up in the highest of parameters to prevent him from seeing underneath – he knows it has to be tearing her up inside. It’s only a fair assumption, given how much it tears him up too. It isn’t in the way of the heart – the very one that she refuses to look at held in his hand like a memento of a time that had been good once upon a time.

But there’s only so much past goodwill that can keep him bolstered these days. She would understand that out of everyone, he thinks, but it’s hard to look at something impartial when the motions of the heart are still there.

She still loves him. And he can’t love her. So it’s empty in the space that had once been so full for her, where each action had been about her. It’s almost like an echo, where he knows that it should be there, but no amount of digging around in the murky pit of his chest comes up with anything.

Her claws form and retreat against her skin on her sides, arms crossed like a shield she can wield so well. Her explanation feels like it’s missing half of what he means, so he steadies himself and focuses on her, giving her all of his attention even if the idea of it roars in his head with distaste. Jaw working slightly, temples flaring, he steadies himself with a breath.

“It has to be over.” He says, clamping his jaw shut immediately lest he confuse it with adding in all the extra shit he wants to say. She wanted clarity, the least he can give her is that, even if it means keeping the explanation buried in his chest. Maybe in the hollow of where his heart had been he can fill it with all the sentences that he’s sure will get left unsaid.

Though, this is what they had been good at. What he’d worked on so much over the years of their relationship. Communicating better, being more understanding, not letting his temper get the best of him when his words get jumbled and come out wrong. “I don’t want you to wait for me. I want you to live your life and be there for Flora and Enzo. And I hope that maybe one day you find someone better than me.” Someone that’s easier to swallow for her friends and family. Someone that doesn’t have all of the previous problems that he has that he thought he’d been better about, only to end up in the same place.

He fidgets for a moment, spinning the ring on his finger – his wedding ring – before the hand lifts to rake through his hair and suck in a steadying breath before it drops back to the box cradled between them. “I have too much baggage and.. I know we both have our faults, but I don't want to keep pretending that everything is fine and like I didn't hurt you numerous times before now. So I.. I want to end it here. I want to figure out the next steps on my own. I have to.” He doesn’t know if it makes sense to her, the way he’s trying to reinvent himself for his foundation, whether it be as the Heartless or not. “I’m sorry.” He says again, unsure if it’ll help the sting she probably feels, but one that doesn’t hit Sunjata quite the same without the heartbreak. Instead, without his heart, it’s a sea of anesthesia.

i tried to trace it, i aimed to scope
been tryna kill it, but it's all i know

maybe who we were then is shattered, but who we are in the end is what matters

His certainty breaks something final inside her. It's what she had asked him to do, to say, but a part of her - admittedly small, optimistic and desperate - had hoped for a different answer. It's not the first time he's shattered her heart; this time it's easier to stay standing, to hurt herself instead of him the way she once had. Isn't it her fault this time anyway? Her nails pierce deeper into her sides, but if blood is drawn she doesn't notice, and the rainsoaked darkness of her clothes don't display it. It still hurts less. Of course it does.

Fanciful words and his hopes for her mean nothing. Certainly less than nothing given he cannot feel any affection for her anymore. It's lip-service from a man with a mortal flaw of empathy and self-degradation; what is that worth to her when it's treatment any acquaintance would receive?

"So even if you do all this work, fix your heart, limp along rebuilding things alone - which definitely worked for you after the war, mind - we won't be trying again." Sardonic delivery cloaks the sting of vitriol, softening it as much as she can manage as her defenses crumble and crash inward, crushing her beneath them in the process. Sunjata is using every learned communication tactic - the least Hotaru can do is return the favor by abstaining from reactive, defensive violence. Retribution won't change any of this. It won't even hurt him given the dead void in his chest where she once lived.

The Valkyrie lifts her chin so that it has no chance to wobble. Not in front of him. Not anymore. If he looks at her with apathy now, then he is no better than a stranger, and she will not let him see her weakness. "I will respect your decision then, as it's not mine to make." Her nails dig deeper, enough that she will need to heal herself when they part, but it gives her an outlet for the storm inside her chest and the helplessness that fuels it.

She has to root her tongue to the roof of her mouth to stop herself from lashing out even so. Her throat spasms where it's hidden behind Andraste's wing, her bonded's childish, conflicted emotions only worsening her weak resolve. She wants to forbid him from seeing Flora, from playing at paternal relations he does not deserve anymore. Forbid him from ever channeling her, speaking to her, anything to feel like she has control over this situation.

But she doesn't. So she remains silent until the urge passes and she can breathe again.

"Good luck with your heart - whatever you decide to do with it." Maybe he'll never choose to heal it, keep himself safe from this in a way Hotaru can't. Just one more unfair element she can't control. "I will see you if Frey dictates a need for us both." Stiffly, she turns away and kneels at Mathair's shrine once more, adamant that he be the one to walk away. Hotaru won't let it be said that she was ever the one who did it. Not after the first time, long ago. She had learned her lesson - for all the good it's worth here and now.

SUNJATA

i found hope in a hopeless home
found my father but i lost my soul

He shouldn’t be surprised when her voice paints the air between them, and still, he is. And while her mask is in place to prevent him from seeing much of what goes on internally, it reminds him to build back up his wall so that she can’t feel the attuned bond and the swirl of unease that settles within him. It isn’t because of his lack of love, it’s because of the way he knows he should act, he knows what this is doing to her, and still Sunjata can’t force himself to make it easier.

She wanted him honest. To tell him what he expected and what he wanted, and he has. He should expect to have some barbs shot back, and still when the sarcasm hits, it baffles him. He isn’t the same as he was then. He’s worked so hard over the past few years since the war, and with his heart being dead that slices out half of the horrible feeling. Instead, it leaves a sticky trail behind of grief in its own right. Grief that his heart is nothing but ash, that even if he wanted to love her he couldn’t.

He’s still reeling from it before his lips part, expecting knives to bloom in her words just as they had before when they’d argued in the past, and he nearly shields himself from it with the way he looks down and nods. “Thank you.” He manages on an exhale that feels shakier than even he’d anticipated. It’s the difference between knowing how he should feel and how he actually does, and that hurts in its own separate way. Like he’s failing. Like he never really had it in him from the start.

The silence picks up and he’s staring at the breeze that brushes the bits of grasses and foliage at her feet, unable to look at her and her companion in the silence, until her voice breaks through it again and he looks up at her, the Heartless because of what he’d entrusted her with had failed. So he shuffles the box back into the bag of holding, slinging it over his shoulder as his jaw sits tight. “Yeah.. Okay.” It’s so formal. It almost makes him balk at her.

But there’s nothing else to do from here except for them both to go and lick their wounds, jaw working as he ducks his head and exhales a soft sigh, unable to say much else other than “good luck, Ru.” Meaning every ounce of it, whether she believed it or not. He does want her happy, but he realizes that maybe it shouldn’t be him that makes her that way, not with the state of where he’s at.

So he does take his leave - giving her that respite in him walking away from her, shoulders tense and head ducked, at least until he breaks from the overhead of the trees and he shifts out of his human form to the bat, taking to the skies in the frantic movements bats often were known for until his form is completely hidden, descending further into the Greatwood.

- FIN

i tried to trace it, i aimed to scope
been tryna kill it, but it's all i know