Hotaru
My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
It’s a partial comfort at best, but his emotional state is as precious to her as his physical safety. It isn’t the same and the inability to achieve both will never cease to gnaw at her, but the fight drains out of her all the same. Her outburst is more despair than fury and thus harder to keep alive at its current intensity. When his arms loosen she clings to them harder - he has never been a prison to her, not even when they’d once sat within one physically, and she doesn’t need his distance. Isn’t sure she can withstand it at all right now.
Turning in his arms while keeping as constant of a hold as she can on his forearms, Hotaru stares unseeing somewhere around Sunjata’s chest. She doesn’t need to see his eyes to gauge his emotions anyway. “Do you think…that’s really enough?” There’s a fragile thread of hope strung through her tone. It lasts all of a moment before her face contorts and her eyes drop to the grip she has on his arms, sliding it down to reach for his hands. “I don’t think it is. How can it be? Anyone can love her - any of her parents can love her. It’s not the same as…everything else.” Too much to name, if she even had the heart to say it now that the energy she’d held is dissipating beneath his touch.
“And if it is…I don’t know how to see it as meaningful enough. My mother was brilliant, she was unstoppable and practically perfect. But she wasn’t - I don’t know, she wasn’t soft with me the way I am with Flora.” And maybe that’s a good thing, but what if it isn’t? The Valkyrie can’t fathom the idea of her daughter loving her but not being able to rely on her in certain ways. “Why can’t I do all of it for her?”
Her cheeks go uncharacteristically pink and she drops her forehead to Sunjata’s sternum. “Oh…I heard it that time.” The curse of desiring perfection, the vanity and jealousy, the petulant fury over falling short compared to the men standing in the few coveted designations of parenthood alongside her.
Turning in his arms while keeping as constant of a hold as she can on his forearms, Hotaru stares unseeing somewhere around Sunjata’s chest. She doesn’t need to see his eyes to gauge his emotions anyway. “Do you think…that’s really enough?” There’s a fragile thread of hope strung through her tone. It lasts all of a moment before her face contorts and her eyes drop to the grip she has on his arms, sliding it down to reach for his hands. “I don’t think it is. How can it be? Anyone can love her - any of her parents can love her. It’s not the same as…everything else.” Too much to name, if she even had the heart to say it now that the energy she’d held is dissipating beneath his touch.
“And if it is…I don’t know how to see it as meaningful enough. My mother was brilliant, she was unstoppable and practically perfect. But she wasn’t - I don’t know, she wasn’t soft with me the way I am with Flora.” And maybe that’s a good thing, but what if it isn’t? The Valkyrie can’t fathom the idea of her daughter loving her but not being able to rely on her in certain ways. “Why can’t I do all of it for her?”
Her cheeks go uncharacteristically pink and she drops her forehead to Sunjata’s sternum. “Oh…I heard it that time.” The curse of desiring perfection, the vanity and jealousy, the petulant fury over falling short compared to the men standing in the few coveted designations of parenthood alongside her.
So I find my spirit in the bottle
