How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?
The cry had been for more than just him - for herself, for the dragon around her neck that stirs and tenses like a gargoyle at this most inopportune and delicate of times - but it doesn’t matter who it was meant for because she goes unanswered on every front. He is as quiet and unknown to her as the creature around her throat and it leaves her feeling all the more adrift.
Two parts of her - the parts that love him and were changed by him, and the parts she was born with that never stopped being cruel - grapple each other in violent death throes. She wants to fall on her knees and beg for him to forgive her, to at least look at her, to have mercy when all she had done was stop to rest on a long journey. But she also - in all her swelling hurt and fear of loss - wants to bare her teeth and bite and hurt him back, at least in the ways she’s hurting now. To be cruel for the sake of armor. To feel some sort of control over all of this by exerting power in some way. Hurl accusations, that he would never do this if Nate walked through that door right this second. Or that he should never date anyone grander than a civilian if the frequent dangers and deaths of demigod life - one she had pursued out of love for him - were too much to bear.
But she bites her tongue bloody under sharpened fangs, because all of those bitter, painful accusations really just amount to the reality that Hotaru would wait for him forever. That doesn’t mean it’s fair to expect the same. And not even in a double-edged implied manner of superiority - they have always loved differently than other people, and though she’d expected something different when he handed her his heart, they were still different people at the end of the day.
Through it all she really just…stands there. Feeling and thinking all of these things as blood fills her mouth and is swallowed down in spasmodic jerks of her throat. A survival mechanism seeking to stop her from drowning on dry land more than any concern for appearances.
“Okay,” she finally, meekly says. What else is there to say that will not lose him all the faster? Begging on her knees will do nothing, but trying - even perhaps in vain, as yet to be seen - to do what he asks, no matter how it kills her slowly, is the only chance she has.
Twitching a hand restlessly, the air ripples and splits to reveal her pocket space. Beyond, trees and greenery - the Foothills of her childhood - span where their kitchen should be. She steps inside for but a moment. The door never closes (it’s always open for him) and she tries not to look away for long, even though he isn’t looking back. It’s the safest place in the world for his heart, and removing it hurts her own so thoroughly she can hear the dragon begin to whistle through its nares with each labored breath.
Stepping back out and letting the portal close, Hotaru pauses before selfishly stepping away to set Sunjata’s heart carefully on the kitchen island. Her hands shake violently and nearly refuse to part from it. But she doesn’t want to hold the memory of handing it back to his own hands. It will torture her all the more that way.
“What…can I do, while waiting?” She asks, eyes riveted to the heart on the granite top he’d picked out while building much of the house in secret. Sitting and waiting in silence will ensure she loses him, as gone in life as she was in death-stasis, but if he forbids her from visiting or writing or trying…well, respecting his wishes will be all she can do.
Two parts of her - the parts that love him and were changed by him, and the parts she was born with that never stopped being cruel - grapple each other in violent death throes. She wants to fall on her knees and beg for him to forgive her, to at least look at her, to have mercy when all she had done was stop to rest on a long journey. But she also - in all her swelling hurt and fear of loss - wants to bare her teeth and bite and hurt him back, at least in the ways she’s hurting now. To be cruel for the sake of armor. To feel some sort of control over all of this by exerting power in some way. Hurl accusations, that he would never do this if Nate walked through that door right this second. Or that he should never date anyone grander than a civilian if the frequent dangers and deaths of demigod life - one she had pursued out of love for him - were too much to bear.
But she bites her tongue bloody under sharpened fangs, because all of those bitter, painful accusations really just amount to the reality that Hotaru would wait for him forever. That doesn’t mean it’s fair to expect the same. And not even in a double-edged implied manner of superiority - they have always loved differently than other people, and though she’d expected something different when he handed her his heart, they were still different people at the end of the day.
Through it all she really just…stands there. Feeling and thinking all of these things as blood fills her mouth and is swallowed down in spasmodic jerks of her throat. A survival mechanism seeking to stop her from drowning on dry land more than any concern for appearances.
“Okay,” she finally, meekly says. What else is there to say that will not lose him all the faster? Begging on her knees will do nothing, but trying - even perhaps in vain, as yet to be seen - to do what he asks, no matter how it kills her slowly, is the only chance she has.
Twitching a hand restlessly, the air ripples and splits to reveal her pocket space. Beyond, trees and greenery - the Foothills of her childhood - span where their kitchen should be. She steps inside for but a moment. The door never closes (it’s always open for him) and she tries not to look away for long, even though he isn’t looking back. It’s the safest place in the world for his heart, and removing it hurts her own so thoroughly she can hear the dragon begin to whistle through its nares with each labored breath.
Stepping back out and letting the portal close, Hotaru pauses before selfishly stepping away to set Sunjata’s heart carefully on the kitchen island. Her hands shake violently and nearly refuse to part from it. But she doesn’t want to hold the memory of handing it back to his own hands. It will torture her all the more that way.
“What…can I do, while waiting?” She asks, eyes riveted to the heart on the granite top he’d picked out while building much of the house in secret. Sitting and waiting in silence will ensure she loses him, as gone in life as she was in death-stasis, but if he forbids her from visiting or writing or trying…well, respecting his wishes will be all she can do.
HOTARU
