my held breath fills the room with blood
hurting in ways I can't describe
His acceptance is a balm on skin already too torn to appreciate the effort. Stitches can’t save what’s already dead. But if there is energy left in her heart - what remains of it - it coils into some approximation of gratitude for him to feel and hear in the dark cavern of what might have once been her side of the Attuned bond. Her face merely nods faintly against his skin, where rain and sweat and tears are only distinguishable by taste and temperature for how they mingle.
The bird settles on Sah’s outstretched limb and does not linger. Perhaps it senses the lightning brewing in the man’s body and does not want to take its chances. Hotaru ignores it all. Ignoring, really, is an insufficient and all too active description for an otherwise hollow and internalized passivity that consumes her.
Until Remi’s name. It stirs something - her marionette frame at the very least - that is too twisted by void to comfortably call itself hope. Her hands are water-shriveled and numb as she reaches for the note, unfolding it to read with tired eyes. There’s no energy left for relief, thrill, or godly gratitude. There’s nothing but an exhale that sounds like a death rattle, and a hiccuping inhale that catches rough on her teeth. The letter crumples in her hand and she reels unsteadily away from Sah; just enough to catch his eyes with her own, now manic and bloodshot. “Take me now. Please. Please, Sah - take me to my daughter.” And by the Thunder Bringer’s might alone it will be done, and for that she will owe him endlessly more - the silent figure in the background that always steps forward to catch her in the last second of free-fall. Thunder and lightning - no matter how far, he’ll be there in the end.
- Fin
The bird settles on Sah’s outstretched limb and does not linger. Perhaps it senses the lightning brewing in the man’s body and does not want to take its chances. Hotaru ignores it all. Ignoring, really, is an insufficient and all too active description for an otherwise hollow and internalized passivity that consumes her.
Until Remi’s name. It stirs something - her marionette frame at the very least - that is too twisted by void to comfortably call itself hope. Her hands are water-shriveled and numb as she reaches for the note, unfolding it to read with tired eyes. There’s no energy left for relief, thrill, or godly gratitude. There’s nothing but an exhale that sounds like a death rattle, and a hiccuping inhale that catches rough on her teeth. The letter crumples in her hand and she reels unsteadily away from Sah; just enough to catch his eyes with her own, now manic and bloodshot. “Take me now. Please. Please, Sah - take me to my daughter.” And by the Thunder Bringer’s might alone it will be done, and for that she will owe him endlessly more - the silent figure in the background that always steps forward to catch her in the last second of free-fall. Thunder and lightning - no matter how far, he’ll be there in the end.
- Fin
my heart bends and breaks
so many, many times
HOTARU
