I cast on your heartstrings a spell

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

Eternally grateful for the necromancer who had let him sleep on his couch for a night, the Flood makes the next pit stop — post festival, post seeing Everest and his nightmarish state. He’s managed to land his draconic shift amongst the docks of Jack Tar Landing — it’s the last stop before he comes up with the courage to go home, to try and find his fiancee. To try and face her with the hopes that maybe she wouldn’t appear like Everest had to him.

Is he prolonging it out? Maybe.

Does anyone need to know that? No.

He hasn’t seen her since before he’d gone to Halo to take the swim. And he should have — he should’ve gone to see her, should have been in Torchline helping her find Flora even after he’d heard that she was alive. But he wasn’t.

Instead, she’d left and he’d gone to Torchline for a temporary moment, choosing to ‘help’ Ronin rather than Hotaru.

And if that doesn’t beat him up internally alongside the nagging dread of just how the void looked now. At least, here surrounded by a variety of people hauling crates onto skyships and working amongst their shops, the void seems at bay. And he tries to relax, even if he still looks pale, like he’s haunting Jack Tar Landing rather than visiting.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

She has been animal more often than woman the past two days, tracking by scent and instinct where magic and mortality fail her. It's something that must be remedied in the future, that she is certain of - this inability to reach the people she loves most when the time of need is at its greatest. But she is unfaltering in her pursuit, dogged in her hounding of his steps. There is no need greater than her own right now. She needs to see him, hold and be held by him, to sink too-sharp nails into his skin and ground him to her in some tangible way that will remind herself that at least he is immortal. At least he cannot be taken from her. And maybe then she can break. Maybe then she can rest.

His draconic figure shrinks until it must surely have returned to human form, but the size of his shift alone is a beacon that will lead her at last to his side. Hart koning, she calls, golden feathers trembling with fatigue as a mournful cry echoes alongside it through avian vocals. Wait, stay, let me come to you, it begs.

She lands graceless and hurried, shifting back before her feet can fully touch the ground. Unaware and vulnerable for it she approaches with expression cracked and wanting, hand outstretched to try and close the space between them as the bond rumbles with waves of ill-concealed depths of emotion. It takes the last bit of control she has to keep it hushed, lest it drown him alongside her. "Beloved," she croaks, a sentence of its own. Hotaru isn't sure she has the capability to form words beyond these endearments right now regardless. Certainly none that would convey the same depth of devotion and need.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

Hart Koning.

His heart drops, his stomach flares, his stalling and slow trek back to King’s End, all for naught with the beautiful hum of her voice, the anchor — was an anchor — to the point where he knows she needs him.

He knows.

Because despite her attempts to not drown him, the Flood drowns. Her emotions flood him, the weight of it all crashing like hurricane waves against the lighthouse he should be for her. The lighthouse he wants to be. And yet, all Sunjata can do is still, to bite down his side of the bond, an awkward silence as he stills for her. Because he can do it, he has to.

He turns toward her, gaze to the ground, heartbeat thundering in his ears and against his throat. His arm opens for her and he swallows down his trepidation as he distinctly doesn’t look at her. It’s easier, right, he can comfort her with his eyes closed. He can do this first, then get distance enough to take her in, to check. But for now he can’t. Won’t. “Ru,” comes his accented voice, a whispered hum as he draws her in— eyes shut tight. “I didn’t catch you before you left.” Before I left. Before I took a swim and now I can’t even consistently look at my own reflection. “I’m sorry.”

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

There's a flicker, like a shaken buoy on the stormy seas of her riotous heart, that rises amidst the drone to whisper uncertainty in her ear. He doesn't look at her. But he reaches for her, and in the moment it's enough. Perhaps it's simply greed - a selfishness Hotaru knows she's known for - but she takes what he can give and doesn't think about the rest. She can't yet. Just a moment more is all she needs and then maybe she can face something more convoluted than the straightforward grief and reversal that she is contending with.

She presses her face into his throat where his scent and warmth are strongest so that it might blot out the rest of the world. Her name on his tongue slows the rabbiting of her heart in a moment's time, ragged breaths smoothing even when they do not slow. "It's okay," she urges before he is properly finished. "It's okay. It doesn't matter. You're here - I'm - Flora," she warbles, relief and gratitude a croon of pain at odds with the sentiment. For a moment it's all she can do to breathe, harsh and animal, before she shakes her head against his collarbone. "It doesn't matter how it went, it's okay now." But I'm not. She goes to pull back just slightly, instinctively desiring to look into his eyes as she murmurs, "I should have stopped her sooner." Where once the refrain would have been I wasn't there again, again, again.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

Thankfully, he doesn’t feel anything different. Not with the way she buries her face into his neck, against tattoos and a scent for her that’s only ever been his own, and Sunjata thinks perhaps Dahlia could have been wrong. That he’s acting like this out of fear and worry that’s unfounded, a whole long spiel that only serves to ruin more of his life as if he wasn’t good at doing that on his own already.

Her scent is normal. Her face feels normal as it presses against his neck. And maybe, just maybe, she would look as beautiful as she always had when he looks at her. “I know, I know.” He hums, his accent soft as it warps around the words and his arms wind around her, listening to her voice and clinging to her warm breath as she speaks against his skin. And when she goes to pull away, it’s perhaps the first time Sunjata does not let her.

“How could you have stopped her sooner, liefde?” He asks, soft and gentle, probing perhaps as if she knew the answer to the question he hadn’t asked or been made aware of.

He finally loosens his tight embrace, silently steeling himself when he lets her pull back, eyes opening only partially to view her because he does owe her that — and once again maybe Dahlia is wrong.

Only, she isn’t.

He doesn’t glimpse much of her face, but the amount he does has the scars on his face lighting up in a strobing storm cloud of lightning strikes, a flinch and a twitch that has him drawing her in despite wanting nothing more than to gain distance. His heart thunders and he’s never wanted a cigarette and far too much alcohol more than right this second.

Her face, beautiful and pristine, dual colored eyes — warped into a horrible hollow shell of too sharp teeth extending from a cheekbone; eyes sunk in and twisted to become vertical and slit rather than horizontal — and he hadn’t managed to see much else other than that before he tries to bury it. Closer and closer and eyes shut tight while his body strobes and feathers spiral out from his neck and hair into his clothes, focusing on her scent because at least that’s the same, pretending like he isn’t living a walking, terrible nightmare.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

His arms are steel, but they have never caged her without reason she has learned. So she subsides against all odds, trusting and complicit. Maybe it's the way she sees the world now, Dahlia's kiss and the peace it brought, but the question is a simple one to answer. Simpler still to revel in the way her manufactured certainty equally protects her from the agony of a reality where intervention could have been an option at all. There is no pain to be felt if there is nowhere she could have failed in those dire moments, the last Flora had. 

"I should have convinced her to stop trying to fight the spread earlier. Shown her it's not dangerous, and that it's meaningless." It will happen regardless, whether Flora and her compatriots fight it or not. Her brow wrinkles with distress, mouth parting to say more - that there's still time to do so, that she hopes to try so that Flora might win her way back to the Family's good graces where she will also have more power and leverage - only it's then that Sunjata pulls away enough for her to glimpse his eyes. The shock of his tattoos flaring and exploding is like a bolt through her, heart ratcheting back into panicked rates. "Sunny?!" But it's a muffled interjection with how he crushes her back to his chest. Hotaru's hands grip at his shirt, mind racing to make connections with so little context. He hadn't looked at her earlier - why? Her stomach sinks, skin cold.

"What happened? Who - who?" Who is hurt? Why can't you face me to tell me? "I'm here, it's okay," she rushes to comfort even as her throat thickens with fear. His silence a wraith that haunts her, a prelude to misery and heartbreak that she can't break the mental connection of even with all they've done to repair those wounds. It is a scar she can't remove, even if the hurt has bled away.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

Is this how he sounded? When he told everyone it wasn’t a big deal and it didn’t matter? Did he sound as insane as she does now, to him, having seen the true faces for what they were? The corruption that was spreading?

“I’m okay.” He assures her, desperately trying to keep his shaky breath believable. He keeps her tight against him, clinging to the portions that are familiar to him rather than the new additions, wondering if it would ever go back to normal.

Gods, but then to subject her to this living nightmare upon getting her healed.

A shivery inhale floods his lungs and his lightning scarred hand finds her hair, threading through the muted hues. “No one’s hurt. I just..” Fuck, he doesn’t want to lie to her, but he has to. For her sake. “It’s Nate’s birthday. It’s.. hard this year.” Does it warrant his surprise? No, not really. But it is the Grounds, and so much had happened there to the both of them. “I know— I know it’s shitty of me... But I— I just need some space? Maybe you can go and see Deimos and Erebos for a bit?” His heart tears, shattering open old scars, wounds he didn’t know have healed, but at least the blood feels familiar.

“I’m sorry. I love you and I’m sorry I’m not better for you right now.” Please forgive me. It’s for both our sakes.

And no, he keeps her pressed against him, away from looking at her, as if he can’t bear it.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

She waits, though it feels like a pain she's felt before - this frozen drip of time before the cut; like standing barefoot on glass, like hearing Flora's scream in the Citadel but not yet seeing what's caused it, like the hum of a taut wire just before it snapped and took Atlas' soul and part of hers with it. The unknown is the hardest part - because she doesn't believe him that it's okay.

Maybe Nate is somewhere in Mort's realm laying hands on both of them tonight, their memory so full of divinity and so utterly sacred that it is the only lie that can intervene without shattering them both. Her own heart stutters so hard she fears its rhythm won't recover, world shifting so suddenly beneath her feet that she's left blinking stupidly into Sunjata's clammy skin. "I - I didn't know," she utters, tongue thick and graceless. Her heart shudders under the weight of self-recrimination; her hands loosen from their death grip on Sunjata's shirt. Old, leviathan doubts creep up her skin like clinging lichen. Had Nate ever told her the date? Had she simply forgotten?

The weight of those insidious questions hold her tongue down, incapable of shaping words to voice doubts or contest the spontaneous confession. And because she loves him more than she's ever loved herself, she slaps a hand to the bleeding artery in her chest to hide it from sight as she offers comfort with the other; clearly his love for Nate, and therefore his hurt, is greater. She's never thought otherwise. She was only foolish to think they could grieve Nate together. "It's okay. I understand - of course I understand." Hotaru squeezes him with the waning strength left in her arms. "You don't need to be better right now. I'm - things are going to be okay." She can't let the lie off her lips that she's okay. She can't expect him to hold her weight when he can't hold his own. She can bear her own a while longer if it means sparing him that. And like the sound of the ocean dimming as one walks further away, she muffles her side of the Attuned bond bit by bit to make good on that sentiment here and now.

Pulling away enough to wipe her eyes (when did they begin to water?) she inhales a sharp breath and holds it, like it might somehow build in her lungs and buoy her a moment longer. "I'll grab a few things from home and - well, you don't need to rush, okay? Just...write me?" It comes out fragile and quiet, a scared hand reaching blindly through the dark. Her eyes try to find his, seeking reassurance as she musters a tremulous smile. "If you need to be alone, that's okay to choose it. But you aren't alone. Don't linger so long in it that you forget that." Don't linger so long you forget me.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

They had always kind of celebrated it together; despite Sunjata’s falling toward the beginning of the season and Nate’s about the middle. So while it’s a lie, it’s close enough to the truth to be believable. To leave him the pale, gaunt ghost he is while she embraces him and he can’t look at her for fear of seeing too many holes and eyes blinking up at him, teeth growing from panes of her face where teeth most certainly shouldn’t be.

And gods is he so relieved when she believes it. “It’s okay.” He reiterates through a too hoarse voice; fight or flight at war within him that he placates by simply holding, pretending like he can be strong and stable for the both of them. Pretending like it doesn’t gut him to use Nate in such a way that’s so flagrantly not what this is.

She believes it. And he feels oily and muddy because of it.

She pushes aside her hurt of having lost (and thankfully gotten back) another child, and comforts him.

He thinks he might be sick.

Were it not for the fact that looking at her also sparks such horrifying dread, Sunjata would hurt more thinking that she expects his hurt to weigh more, when he hadn’t lost something so close to him as a child.

He’d lost a soul mate. He’s done that before. He’d survived, barely, but he’d gotten better and opened up again and tried again—

—And…

…And she believes him when he tells her he can’t be her support for her daughter dying and coming back because he has managed to make it all about himself again.

And to leave, well, it brings relief in the fact he would be able to return home eventually… but something in him fractures. It breaks. It burns and rampages against his shredded soul and he can’t even talk to the one person he wants to about it.

“Will you go to Halo?” He pleads in a broken tone, ignoring the latter of her words for the interim— the urgency as he keeps his eyes shut tight even as she starts to withdraw, fighting through the nausea and stress and anxiety to force his forehead against hers. “Please–” And even though he’s the one to try and push her away, the running thought through his mind is one that mirrors her own.

Don’t go anywhere I can’t find you. I can’t lose you too.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

They're a shattered pair, the two of them. They've managed to find ways to collage the pieces together and make something beautiful lately. But the only way this works - the only way she leaves this moment still unaware - is to invoke a presence so beloved it stifles all objections. His eyes won't meet hers when she steps back, but the twisted knot of his brow makes her stomach do the same. To her, this isn't selfishness. She can't see him in such a cruel way. To go from the Festival of Lights to this...it's the perfect context for his lie. Sometimes the grief returns unexpectedly. Sometimes Hotaru wakes up with Ru'in's name on her lips and she doesn't know why, and all she can do is curl up motionless in bed until the next day comes. Sunjata has always given her that time and space. Hotaru can do the same.

She can. She must. Flora is alive, so the pain will surely fade. To comfort her now would be comforting the afterimages of what-ifs. His pain is actively burning inside his chest - so how can she say hers is more important?

Her hands gently touch his face so as to reduce how it might startle him, pulling him lower so she can press a kiss to his forehead. "Don't worry about me. I'll be with Flora." And she will tell him what that entails later, when the hurt isn't so fresh he can't even look at her. Her thumbs brush over both cheeks in a parting kiss of their own before she steps back and out of reach. The warmth of his skin lingers in her palms for far too brief a moment. "I'm here whenever you're ready. No matter where I am. I love you." Always, and nothing will change that.

She shifts then, and the rustle of feathers as she takes flight is all she leaves behind.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

She doesn’t say yes.

She doesn’t say where she will go.

Just that she’d be with Flora, which, if he didn’t know her as well as he does, he could take it at face value.

Ah, but he does.

And that means that he has no way to know where she will be. “Wait—” But her lips and hands have already offered her parting kiss. She withdraws, and he can’t bring himself to open his eyes and see so many of her eyes staring back at him in pity.

“Wait, Hotaru!” He calls after her, pushing himself, forcing himself to open his steel gaze; and all he sees is a bird flying off in the distance. His bird, infected and in danger, flying to who knows where.

He doesn’t even know how to reach her, or if any letter he sends would even find her.

It’s sorrow and rage that mix into the man that becomes dragon now that he’s lost her, that avoids the rest of the Grounds until he’s landed in the inner quarter, everything else be damned. Letters on his mind that need to be sent that he goes over again and again and again as his only company.

— FIN

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for