From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
Steadfast and stalwart, even in the rise of her smile, the monolith peeled away another snort – but listened to her plans. She had the makings of her enterprise due to unfold and unfurl, and some of it was amazing, to think lives before all they’d done was plot and scheme, devastate and savage, ruin and beckon for the world to dare and meet them head-on. Now there were discussions of gardens and hazes of steam, waterfalls and bridges, parameters to meet one another, humidity upon an earth known for its isolation and dry air. Aspects of their characters that would’ve have survived, or sufficed, in Helovia. “We are working towards making a greenhouse, with the assistance of Frey.” The nature aspect of the being, of course, but he added it to the list of soon to be noteworthy additions to Halo. “Your plans will likely be appreciated.” If she’d already appealed to the reach of his constituents – the clientele would keep seeking out her services. The Valkyrie would be busy at least – even in the midst of broken, labored hearts. Unfortunately, it was how he coped too – sending all the emotions downward in a primordial expression of nothingness, until it grew too much and choked, suffocated, bound over the nature of his existence.
But that was why he was here – trying, striving, to improve. To be better. To be more than a hollowed out husk of a shell. To be more than a weapon. A vessel for demolition and destruction, no matter how much the realm still seemed to call for it; and how quickly he responded in kind to its siren wails and prominent echoes.
Hotaru could reach, but only so far. Behind the wall of muck, he laughed again, a tease, a taunt, a provocation, a challenge. He wouldn’t put it past her to do exactly as she said, and with a roll of his eyes, he lowered it slightly – though he’d long since escaped her reach, safely some space away. “What next then?” The Sword’s efforts to remain still hadn’t lasted very long, and while he’d sat within its warmth, and stood in its threshold now, the notion of stranding himself for hours in here sounded like eternities to a restless heathen.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
They have come quite far, haven’t they? A wonder that they were capable of change what feels so late in life. Rejoicing and ruminating over creating instead of destroying. She spares a moment of amusement to wonder whether they’re getting old. That is soon overshadowed by her interest in the project he proposes. “A greenhouse? That sounds wonderful. I’d never thought to include Frey, but perhaps I should for the springs at least.” Something more magnificent and eternal than their own hands - even with magic - can create. Though she wouldn’t give up the ice and snow, carving out a green niche is an appealing idea. One that will support the people she already considers her own.
Though Deimos is swiftly at risk of exiting that particular group, his amusement sly but noticeable all the same as he slowly lowers the wall between them to peer at her from behind it. He is treated to her own grin, equally exasperated and fond, mud splattered up her neck and across her cheek. “Now we shower again, more fully. And you’re getting on my massage table until I deem you ready.” Hotaru’s smile takes on a Cheshire quality at the notion, already turning to ascend the stone steps out of the bath, grabbing her towel and wiping her feet on the mats before exiting back to the showers. Confident that this time he will follow - unless he knocks down a wall, there’s no other way out.
Showering is a more thorough affair the second time around, and she hums a tune she’d heard at the Kraai as she goes through the motions. Changing into her normal apparel once her body is dry and mud-free. Exiting, she calls towards the other occupied stall. “Pick a scent for your incense and oil if you have one in mind and I’ll set them up. Stay in the shorts and lay on your chest on whichever table you’d like.” It rattles easily off her tongue, allowing no room for questioning or complaints this time around.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
Maybe they changed because they had no other options. Stuck and struck into a world with little choice in the matter, but given options in their pursuits – different, not chorded off straight into the familiar tethers and lines. Because while he’s been General, a soldier, in many parts and aspects of the lives he’d led, Deimos had also been a reserved, hidden, cloak and dagger figure. His enemies only knew what to make of his power, and how devastating it could be. His allies knew him for his nonchalance, his prowess, and his precision. His friends, few and far between, had been permitted the briefest aspects of layers beneath the armor, beyond the walls. And here, Caido and its constituents had peeled away the broken, worn lacquer, piece by piece, little by little, until some hours where he was splintered, fractured and done, until some moments where he was wild and free, until some days he’d been allowed to love and cherish, until some seasons where he thought he might perish beneath all the grief and despair. Within these junctures, he flourished and dimmed, became liberated and providential, shielding and protective, learning exactly what he required and needed. And it wasn’t the heartache or anguish.
He trusted Hotaru would find that too. Improvements. Peace. Some platitude where she didn’t suffer.
A shrug of his shoulders launched again at the aspects of nature-Frey – only briefly familiar of the deity, and certainly not of their counterpart. Thereafter though, he was only treated to exasperation – rendering a bright Cheshire grin in response, where cheeks dimpled and eyes maintained their juvenile accord.
Only to falter, slightly, at the notions of the next round of relaxing.
Gaze narrowed in notched suspicion, but he gathered his towel from where he’d last placed it, stepping out of the mud pool, and drying off portions mottled and maimed from previous antics. Any remnants were whisked away by incantations, a relative pout ascertaining through his features again as he stomped towards the showers with put-upon indignance.
Another rinse and soak left him at least with the opportunity to rid the muck out of his hair, barely listening to her as he wove the water along, contorting the liquid between his hands and lifting it to his face. Unseen, the Sword blanched slightly at the notions of incense (utterly confused as to what it was) or oil (why?). Snorting once more, upon finishing up, towel draped around him briefly, and some new shorts contorted, created, he crouched before the selection. He didn’t look for very long, the uncertainty and apprehension curling through, before grabbing something like pine or evergreen, and then gliding outwards from the stall with a very pained expression – off to the gallows.
“Here,” he offered both incense and oil in a very curt manner, perhaps giving away some of his trepidation, and stared at the table like any other might side-eye a snare. More than once he lifted his sights towards other escape routes; finding them lackluster and nearly empty. Finally, with really no way out, he gave in, sidling towards the surface, and depositing himself chest down, brows furrowed into a defined scowl.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
Deimos’ pouting and storming is a spectacle defeated by the view she gets of his ass in those shorts as he sweeps away into the shower. Worth it. Damn she loves her job. Grinning to herself as she washes the mud from her own body and dons fresh clothes, she resolves to make this the best massage she’s ever given. A plan she’d already had if only because he deserved nothing but the pinnacle of her talents, but renewed in the face of his reluctance. He deserves to be rewarded for trying out new things against his wishes, for trusting in her enough to be led through what he considers to be a mire.
His trepidation is endearing, though she doesn’t let it show lest he take it as mocking. Each motion is a testament to his trust in her, and it makes a tidal wave of emotion swell in her. It’s healing somehow. If he trusts in her, then surely she must deserve it, and in that she finds a strength of self she has been missing.
Taking the oil and incense from him, she fixes him with an encouraging smile. Wordless but supportive, waiting for him to lay on the bed and find a comfortable position before she continues. A concentrated amount of lightning between her fingertips sets the incense ablaze, snuffing the flame to set it smoking before setting it inside the holder on the table. The oil she drops into her palms to warm it up, and she makes a soft noise of warning before she places her hands upon his skin.
At first she simply coasts her hands up and down the planes of his back, coating the skin in oil to reduce friction and let the scents settle around him. Only after she believes he has gotten used to her touch does she start in at his lower back, using the heels of her palms to dig in with medium pressure and stroke outwards from his spine. Working in quietude for now, aside from a nearly soundless hum that is nothing more than half-dreamed tunes. “Is the pressure okay?” Just checking in, not wanting to disrupt any potential relaxation he is - hopefully - experiencing. There are no knots here yet, uncommon to find in this area, but she’ll do the same when working on releasing them. A certain amount of pain is expected before relief can be won, but each person’s tolerance is different and she doesn’t want to hurt him.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The only reason he was here at all was because he trusted her.
Implicitly; given the multitude of fires, battles, storms, plans, and schemes they’d been through together. The woes and aftermaths, the blunted, serrated, keen edges of victory and the torment of defeat, the bitter anguish revolving through both of their lives. And when one of them cracked, the other was there – perhaps not as a mender (for Deimos could never be known for any healing motions or notions), but friends and comrades and family. They’d been amidst too many tempests to be anything less.
But this was a new one for him. Caring about his own wellbeing hadn’t ever been something forged in his mind. He didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t worthy of it. It was best to use his wiles, his methods, his strength, for everyone else, and let himself wither and decay as he sunk deeper and deeper into the warren of his own existence. It didn’t occur naturally, and his preference for working, for forging on ahead, for diminishing each and every emotion, save for the self-loathing, was a tried and true act.
He slowly lowered himself onto the table, long, muscled arms folded in front of him, chin resting on his forearm, every inch of his being sculpted into a bleak uncertainty. Beneath the surface of brawn and scars were a bundle of nerves and apprehension, and it didn’t help when he heard the crackle of lightning – immediately turning, twisting, expecting some other insistent reaction.
Except it was just the incense, and he side-eyed her quite warily; as maybe a feral, trapped animal might.
He took her warning for what it was worth, and eased a very slow breath through his lungs. His brows furrowed in the slightest of surprise, where she couldn’t see, because the uncertainty had waged far too deep in his bones and this wasn’t what he’d expected. Something else pooled along his flesh, the oil, he presumed, and the pine-needled scent wrapped around him in some inkling, in some haze, of worlds and worlds and worlds before. The pressure from her hands was intriguing too, and he tilted his head vaguely, as if trying to ascertain and study it, rather than give over to it just yet – the muscles around his spine unfurled, untethered, and the rest of him remained perplexed. “Yes,” he nodded, and then fully lowered his cranium once more, slowly, much as he’d done with the muck and mire, beginning to be released from the unnecessary wards and walls of tension. “Where did you learn this?”
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
As a creature of self-indulgence, relaxation is a realm she feels comfortable in opening up for him. Guiding him. A form of healing in itself; no knitting of wounds, but an unwinding of tension, a healing of drained pools of energy, a removal of aches that are carried until they are nearly forgotten - inconsequential compared to more grievous lacerations. This is what she offers him.
Though she cannot see his face, she can read the tense curiosity in the half-there tension of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. But he does not move away, and even goes so far as to affirm the strength she uses on him. Only then does he begin to melt by increments, and she watches the play of muscles uncoiling in pleased fascination. Eager but not impatient to see him fully relaxed. His question isn’t unexpected, though she doesn’t answer for a moment, using her knuckles to begin small rotations in the muscles of his lower back, deepening the pressure and working below the surface as she considers her answer.
“Caido wasn’t the first place I landed after Helovia was destroyed. I fell through many portals. Each land was different, and the time I spent varied. Hours, weeks, years...” Never able to relax, always aware it could be taken away at a moments notice. Never growing close to anyone. Constantly searching for her family, for a single soul that had gone through the original portal with her as Kisamoa destroyed their world. She hadn’t - not until Caido. “I was never much of a healer in the traditional sense. But bodies...well, I knew those well enough. I knew where to aim to hurt, disable, kill; from there, it was easy to learn the opposite.” Slowly her hands traverse to his hips, focusing on the joints - points of collective pain for so many. Hotaru doesn’t venture too far, dipping scantly beneath the hem of his shorts and around his sides only to trace the ligaments there. “Plus...well. It was...nice, to be able to touch people so unreservedly. I was so alone in those years. So lost. I could not afford to let anyone touch me, but at least I could lay my hands on someone else.” Her voice falls softly, vulnerable and open in a way she is scarcely capable of doing with anyone outside of Deimos. Even now, only because she is not subjected to his piercing gaze.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
Deimos’ self-indulgences usually ranged from infantile mischief to some angles of vehemence and violence; neither one likely to be considered something justified in healing or mending himself. It’d been a long road of disaster, mayhem, battle, crusades, and rationales of vengeance and sedition. To have paused, even momentarily, to try and contemplate a time, a place, where he was not drained, exhausted, fatigued, or driven to new Atlas realms, would’ve meant he was worth it, deserving. And moments in between had taught him that he wasn’t. There were others to save. There were others to maul. There were others who required shelter and aid.
Somewhere in between his forehead landed along his arm, and he breathed, slowly, mind puzzling and working its way through the ministrations. But these couldn’t be calculated, and after a while he could only appreciate Ru’s skilled work; back stretching as muscles were released, as tension went away, as he ceased carrying multitudes of efforts, of trials, of tribulations, all at once. Freeing, liberating, in the course of motion across skin and flesh and bone. She might’ve been rewarded with the slightest of grunts, that he turned into a half-laugh, not hollowed, but reverberating against the surface of the table.
And then he was free to only listen – of Ru’s life after Helovia and before Caido, and he tilted his head in earnest, ensuring she was heard. More journeys and more escapes, portal after portal, different and varied. While Deimos had only Helovia and Isilme to his name prior to this land, the Valkyrie had snagged at peaks and valleys of other kinds, other nuances, picking up on trades, values, and means beyond war and heartbreak.
Before he had an opportunity to respond though, her hands coiled at his hips and he snarled involuntarily, a warning, a grumble, as she skimmed along the hem of his shorts; but then she seemed to move on, and the joints and ligaments there could fall under the same regime. So he didn’t turn and twist to look back at her, not when everything fell quiet, not when her voice had softened and the pine scent kept drifting through his senses – reminded of World’s Edges and Basin enclosures. “Then maybe you were not alone. You still had those people.” Even if it wasn’t members of her family. Even if she couldn’t get too close. He blinked, and his eyes closed momentarily, contemplating, reassuring. “And now you are here, and you have us.” Kiada. Himself. Friends and companions that had no associations with Sunjata and his prowess of idiocy.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
Each moment that passes he relaxes further, the lingering tension revealing itself to be sources for her to work on. Every long exhale and incremental dip of his head against his arms is a victory, and though her ministrations did not lack confidence before, Deimos' reactions bolster her regardless. The garbled laugh-grunt combo that she wrings out of him has her own slipping out, hushed from where she tries to swallow it down unsuccessfully. At least he isn't fighting it now. She'll take what she can get.
Not that it stops her from fondly rolling her eyes as he seizes when she dips beneath his waistband, keeping her hands steady instead of yanking them back from his skin. There are no reprimands, no chiding or clucking of her tongue. He is allowed his boundaries, his nerves, and she won't point out or condemn his reaction. At the very least he settles back down when it becomes apparent she's not intending to do anything untoward, allowing Hotaru to continue her work unimpeded.
She hums thoughtfully at his response, taking a moment to move higher up his spine into his midback - back to square one, pushing away from his spine, to be followed by her knuckles the same as his lowerback - and considers her response before giving it freely. "Yes, I did. Shallow as those bonds were, they were not nonexistent." Though their faces and names are already fading, deemed useless in some way by her brain and summarily in the process of being discarded. "Do you think we will try love again, Deimos?" Spoken after a long moment of silence, it is a vulnerable question that is delivered in a hushed tone like a secret shared. Relatively free of any emotions such as hope, dread, or despair. Curious not just for herself, but for him as well; wanting to see him happy as he'd been with Amalia, but in a more eternal way.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
She was unrelenting and he accepted it – the work of her reach and angles, movement and motions, releasing the lifetimes of pressure, friction, and antipathy, and the walls with it. Not that his ramparts and fortifications were felled so easily, but the reality was that he didn’t need them here. So his head leaned against his forearm and he drifted, lulled, eyes flickering shut, blinking rapidly again every so often, incapable of telling her she’d been right all along, but figuring the Valkyrie would sense it all the same.
It wasn’t until she spoke again that his attention wandered back – piercing eyes only peeking out over the brawn of his arm, gazing around the room again, pondering over shallow bonds. Over simple meetings and then nothing more – utilizing others for what they could do, calculating their impacts, and maneuvering on. He’d accomplished those remnants for a long time, and only since Caido had learned to appreciate, delve deeper, find solace in the steadfast units of camaraderie. He’d hoped to concoct similar shelters and sanctuaries in the breadth of his own existence; but apparently had gone too far, setting a path and course for his own self-destruction.
While the monolith had no adequate response for the first, the second, soft and hushed, contorted in a way that hurt. There were several seconds where he would’ve preferred to do nothing more than curl back in on himself, hide and mold and cast all these rendered fibers and sinew right back into a shield. Instead, he flinched, shifting his head so his chin rested along forearms again, half-inclined to clench his jaw, to sink and sink and sink until everything consumed him. But he’d worked tremendously hard at not breaking and bending, and not becoming swallowed, bogged down, by all the heartbreak, all the abandonment, and all the ways he hadn’t been worthy or deserving. “I do not know,” he answered truthfully, tempted to flicker into a low rumble, to tell her to back off and away from the inquiry. “I never searched for it.” But the rain and then the stars had soaked him to the bone, and he’d been lost in both of them. Accepted and cherished for a time, and then left – forsaken, no matter to those he would’ve willingly sacrificed himself for again and again. “If I do not work on myself though, I will probably fall back into the same habits.”
Giving, giving, giving, until there was nothing left.
He didn’t look at her. Didn’t lift or tilt his head any further, only aware of her occurrences and relationships amidst Helovia, and then here. Of her children, and how she’d tried. Of Sunjata and Nate, and how she’d wanted to find a place. Of how it had broken off or away in somehow, someway, each and every time. “You have always persevered.”
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
Admittedly, she regrets the words as soon as they cross her lips, but there's no time or ability to take them back. Only wincing where he can't see as she watches the roll of his muscles, a clearer reaction that tells of his mental state than his face can provide her, so well-trained as it is in concealing how he feels. "Sorry, it was a silly thing to ask," she murmurs, even if it's too little too late. Silly isn't the right word - insensitive, perhaps, would be more fitting - but to use it would imply some sort of pity, and Hotaru never wants him to think she is belittling him.
That he responds at all is a miracle unto itself. Hotaru keeps her tongue firmly clasped between her teeth, though she is already reluctant enough to let her stream of consciousness slip again. "I am immeasurably proud of you," she whispers instead as her hands move up to the bottoms of his shoulderblades. "So few can look inside themselves and strive to fix what they see there, instead of laying it in the hands of someone they hope to love." Hopefully it is a balm over the wound she has unintentionally opened. It will do nothing to staunch the flow of memories Hotaru may have prompted, but at least he will know without a doubt that she supports his efforts entirely, no matter how difficult they may be.
The last notion wrings a pained laugh from her, and she focuses on a troublesome knot in his shoulders to distract from the instinctive retort that comes to her tongue. "At what cost? Perhaps I should take the hint." It is a defeated sound, a hollow retreat echoing in each word. But she has already overstepped. Ruined the mirage of relaxation with her own tumultuous thoughts. So instead the Valkyrie dedicates her attention to his shoulders, expansive and equally tense as they are they present more than sufficient distraction to curb her tongue. "Do you do any stretches aside from your cool downs after training?" Hotaru suspects not, and perhaps she can change that. Arm him with new knowledge that will leave him more limber, will keep him away from her bench for longer - surely that will appeal to him. This, at least, is a change in conversation that can cover up her grievous mistake.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The knots of tension so readily dispersed at her hands were only conjured back by her words, and it took several moments of the apology to cycle through his mind, and long, deep breaths, for him to be rendered to where they’d been beforehand. Control and composure, traits instilled within him from a tender, young age, maintained their prominence over the situation, over the statement spoken, and then he shook his head; all forgiven. He just wasn’t quite ready to face those angles and facets. Not when there were too many other aspects to mend, to heal, and it’d taken him nearly a year to process the moments leading up to the present – at finding footholds again, at not sacrificing himself to benefit others who really didn’t care.
The monolith lowered his brow upon his arm again as she praised him, muffling a snort, some manner of self-deprecation, habitual and instinctual, over the lines and tables, over the pine still sticking to his senses. His shoulders appreciated her efforts, flattened out from her measures, a ghost of a sigh waging through, echoing off the surface. “Thank you.” And he was trying, even if it was painstaking, labored, and somewhat torturous. Even if looking within was immensely sharp and brutal. Even if he had to continually face his own dilemmas and sort out the mishaps, the stupidity, and linger upon thresholds he’d avoided far too often. “It would not be fair to place all of my problems on another.” And he hadn’t tried to with either Hotaru or Amalia; but everything had crashed and burned just the same.
But he could hear the pain in her laugh; hollowed and empty, the way he’d often felt, and hadn’t meant to encourage that measure back upon her. Deimos snorted instead, thinking back on those he’d known – Ashamin (promising, and then in the end quite pathetic), Thranduil (good gods why), Sunjata (again – why), and Nate as part of the package deal of stupidity. There were probably others, but cycling within those ranges left him muffling a laugh, until it was freed over the resin of the table. “Maybe you just have horrible taste.” Expecting a slap, pain, or torment in return, he defused the subject matter with another line. “Remind me to tell you of my recent conversations with both of those fools.”
The inquiry thereafter seemed rendered in more professional aspects, and he permitted his thoughts to linger back on routines, on procedures in his everyday life. “I stretch before as well.” And training often was cyclical, rotational, reeling within different muscle groups, striving to ensure each were impacted, honed, and solidified.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
Self-deprecating tendencies aside, his gratitude is a sign amidst the others as he relaxes back down that she has not ruined the day for him entirely. His appreciation is far from necessary - she is proud of him, impossible to measure and quantify. At times she envies him, wishing to be as strong and sure of herself as he is. But they are an amalgamation of tendencies and traits, filling each other in where the other lacks. Perhaps they are not dated for love in the sense of Aphrodite and Ares, though they are reincarnated figures of such tales, but their love is meaningful all the same. Puzzle pieces that had been fated to connect long before their edges learned to meld together. If they have nothing else in this world, they have each other; to bolster, to back, to comprehend when all others fail to. That is all she could ask for.
“You are always free to share your burdens with me, even if not in their entirety. We disperse them across those we can trust, until the weight is more bearable. Whether that is myself, Safrin, Kiada...together, I hope it will be enough.” So that someday he will be whole enough to feel ready to love again, whoever that may be. Just another thing she believes him to deserve. A grain of what she hopes would bring happiness as a result. At least her own recent loss hasn’t seemed to embitter her - or at least, not entirely, not for others - to the notion of love and romance.
As such she does not chide or counteract his playful statement, instead staring sightlessly down at her own hands where they work his skin, finally tackling the knotted muscles of his shoulders. “If only taste was something I could change,” she agrees with a half-hearted laugh and a derogatory snort. “Perhaps there just aren’t any promising individuals here for me.” Those she has met have been swept away into other entanglements long before vague interest can bud into something else. And those who did hold any long term interest had only ended up hurting her in the end. She narrows her eyes speculatively at the back of Deimos’ head when he reveals he’d spoken to Nate and Sunjata recently. “Gods, I suspect neither did anything impressive.” For all she still loves them, Hotaru doesn’t doubt they’d both put their feet in their mouths the moment Deimos came around. As her hands move across to the man’s right shoulder, she sighs softly. “I...saw Nate as well. Finally. I just didn’t want to tell you and ruin the vacation I made you take in the first place.” Hotaru manages to make her voice playfully pointed, to remind him that they are still in the midst of said vacation and as such it’s not the time to talk about her problems.
“I have some extra stretches I’ll recommend then. They’re more focused on flexibility, so they’ll be something you’re not used to, but it will help prevent you from needing to see me here more frequently than I’ll already hound you into doing.” He wouldn’t escape her ministrations so easily, but she’d certainly give him homework to do, additions to his trainings that she would know if he didn’t perform. The downfall for him being her continued presence in the Barracks, both for her own benefit and to visit him and Aisha more regularly.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
Sharing burdens was one more aspect he’d failed at – an occasional glance into the turmoils and tribulations grinding down across broad shoulders and mantled brawn – but nothing more. Too easy to choke on them, rather than appeal for assistance; for everyone else labored and toiled, for everyone else loved and lost, for everyone else sought refuges and shelter. He offered the latter profusely, constantly, and didn’t expect it from anyone in return. Another cog in the machine of his existence – and it would take some time to render the lacerations mended, stitched, reborn, given into the resurrection title he often forgot.
But he did trust Ru. Kiada. Aisha. Morgan. Noah. Chulane. Scores of others pressed in amongst the worlds. Hordes more that didn’t meet the expectations, that earned his nonchalance and reticence, the silence, the stillness, the vehemence cloaked and mettled underneath. “I can try,” he offered with a weak smile she likely couldn’t see – same words and designations – because he didn’t want to make promises, vows, and assurances he couldn’t keep. “It is another thing I have to learn.” Independence, self-reliance, factions that he’d built ramparts and fortifications from ages before, and pulling the arcane, primordial facets apart was all the more painful, all the more agonizing, than it’d ever been constructing them. A whole new education for the Sword.
The General shifted slightly under her ministrations, relaxed once more under the attention, extended another laugh that pressed into the table’s surface. To be fair, Halo likely had some fools she could find – but that was beyond the point he was trying to make. So he let that one drift, casting it aloft and out, and not intending to sully the relaxing composition of this imposed vacation, he relented on telling the stories – for now. “Correct.” She’d known them well enough, anyway. “I will not ruin it then.” He could only begin to surmise how her conversation with Nate had been held and cobbled together; if his had been anything to go by.
Thereafter, the beast thought to argue her not flexible point, then realized with his bulk and figure, she was probably correct, so he closed his mouth at the outset of the pending quarrel. “I will listen,” he teased, wrinkling his nose slightly, piercing eyes flickering shut once more as he eased, and finally began to truly unwind.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
A promise to try is all she can ask for. She knows he is not the type to say it lightly, to say it in order to get her off his back as others might. Deimos does not mince and manipulate words the way she does; Hotaru can trust that he will try, inso the same way as he would work a muscle. Slow but intentional. As Hotaru’s hands shift to focus on a single arm, she smiles, thumbs smoothing over the rise and fall of muscle beneath her hands. “I have faith in your attempts to try.” How much he wants to hang on that faith is up to him; if it is of any use or encouragement, she hopes it will be help guide him onward in his journey.
His assertion has her groaning softly but dramatically above him, shoulders caving inwards in a slump he is not privy to. Despite having assumed it herself, the confirmation does little to comfort her. With Nate’s bite still fresh and scabbed on her neck, she wonders if she’ll ever really move on from them. If they’ll continue to haunt her until she folds, begs to be taken back even if it means returning to her old anxieties and fears of being held at a lower importance. Had she not done the same thing with Thranduil? Hotaru bites the inside of her cheek, the ache in her stomach sharp and distracting, relying on the rumble of Deimos’ voice to center and refocus away from painful memories and regrets.
“I’ll have to demonstrate them for you when we’re done, just to make sure you’re replicating them right. For now, just relax.” Smile tentatively returning as she finishes up his arm and walks around the bed to the next. He’s almost done, which is a shame; this has been a good day, an enjoyable experience for the both of them (or so she hopes). But it surely will not be the last.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
