Hotaru
My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
He makes it too easy to take advantage of his love. The Flood is a martyr of a man who, even through love and time and change, has never learned how to stop laying himself over the coals so someone might walk over them unscathed. And he would smile that lopsided smile and say fire couldn't hurt him with all the water in his blood while hiding all the burn marks left behind. Hotaru struggles eternally with walking the line between sharing their burdens as lovers should, and fearing that her covetous, self-serving nature will leave her blind someday to the myriad of ways she might crush him down.
But when he looks at her with those stormy steel-blue eyes, always within reach but equally respectful of the space a storm like her needs, it makes it so hard.
Because her avarice is proven in how she can't push him away when he steps into the river and wraps himself around her. A low keening noise escapes her as she curls and withers over the iron band of his arms at her waist. Like she is going to be sick. Like she might take them both down to their knees were he not holding her strong. It makes the sickness swell to know he won't let them fall that way. Not here, not ever - even with his life on the line. And she had let him. Just as she lets him now.
"I can never make either of you feel safe," she moans like it's killing her, tears wetting her palms until they slip away to grasp desperately at his forearms. "I can love you both with everything I am, but I won't be the one you call. Because I can't be. I don't want you to suffer for my inadequacy - and you have, both of you." And she understands how that might give him purpose, a reason to survive and come home - but it strips Hotaru of hers.
She doesn't want to take away the comfort that her assured safety brings him. She doesn't want to seem ungrateful for the sacrifices he has made and will yet make. And, somewhere inside, Ru knows that love alone is worth enough. Sunjata could be stripped of all his might here and now and she would love him just the same. His point of view is not completely foreign to her.
But the Valkyrie has been defined by usefulness and power for so long that she can't fathom the same in return. Thranduil had made that clear year after year, his love always accompanied by disappointment. To own her was to weaken her, and weakness was to be despised. They had shared that mentality once, which is why it poisons her even now - but when he became her exception, she had not become his. So with every year she softened in her own love the more he hated her for it, longing for the mightier woman she'd been before he caught her.
Sunjata is not him. Hotaru could never compare the glowing sun of Sunjata's love to the cruel derision of Thranduil's. Not when he is actively pouring it into her soul. But Sunjata and Flora are her everything. To feel she is failing them both, that both of them cannot rely on her for more than handling their hearts, is a crushing blow that has her nails pressing harder into his arms. "I can't live without you," she counters, unafraid to say it plainly. "Maybe we'll never die, but Flora can. She has. And there are other ways I can lose you." He'll hear the scared whisper of Thranduil's name like a chant in the bond beneath the spill of her words. Ru stands to lose Sunjata in that way, and she stands to lose Flora the way she'd lost Ru'in and Enzo - by not being strong enough. One leads to another, and she doesn't see a way to ever catch up. She is a demigod, but they are titans. If someday her meager power could be what tips the scales, but she is never considered as an option for the field because of her comparative fragility, will she lose them both?
But when he looks at her with those stormy steel-blue eyes, always within reach but equally respectful of the space a storm like her needs, it makes it so hard.
Because her avarice is proven in how she can't push him away when he steps into the river and wraps himself around her. A low keening noise escapes her as she curls and withers over the iron band of his arms at her waist. Like she is going to be sick. Like she might take them both down to their knees were he not holding her strong. It makes the sickness swell to know he won't let them fall that way. Not here, not ever - even with his life on the line. And she had let him. Just as she lets him now.
"I can never make either of you feel safe," she moans like it's killing her, tears wetting her palms until they slip away to grasp desperately at his forearms. "I can love you both with everything I am, but I won't be the one you call. Because I can't be. I don't want you to suffer for my inadequacy - and you have, both of you." And she understands how that might give him purpose, a reason to survive and come home - but it strips Hotaru of hers.
She doesn't want to take away the comfort that her assured safety brings him. She doesn't want to seem ungrateful for the sacrifices he has made and will yet make. And, somewhere inside, Ru knows that love alone is worth enough. Sunjata could be stripped of all his might here and now and she would love him just the same. His point of view is not completely foreign to her.
But the Valkyrie has been defined by usefulness and power for so long that she can't fathom the same in return. Thranduil had made that clear year after year, his love always accompanied by disappointment. To own her was to weaken her, and weakness was to be despised. They had shared that mentality once, which is why it poisons her even now - but when he became her exception, she had not become his. So with every year she softened in her own love the more he hated her for it, longing for the mightier woman she'd been before he caught her.
Sunjata is not him. Hotaru could never compare the glowing sun of Sunjata's love to the cruel derision of Thranduil's. Not when he is actively pouring it into her soul. But Sunjata and Flora are her everything. To feel she is failing them both, that both of them cannot rely on her for more than handling their hearts, is a crushing blow that has her nails pressing harder into his arms. "I can't live without you," she counters, unafraid to say it plainly. "Maybe we'll never die, but Flora can. She has. And there are other ways I can lose you." He'll hear the scared whisper of Thranduil's name like a chant in the bond beneath the spill of her words. Ru stands to lose Sunjata in that way, and she stands to lose Flora the way she'd lost Ru'in and Enzo - by not being strong enough. One leads to another, and she doesn't see a way to ever catch up. She is a demigod, but they are titans. If someday her meager power could be what tips the scales, but she is never considered as an option for the field because of her comparative fragility, will she lose them both?
So I find my spirit in the bottle
