Hotaru
Tonight, you look so lovely
It's your eyes that define me
Delighted surprise twists between them through the subtle golden aura hugging the two of them, though she ensures she turns her head to show her smile readily. Sunjata often - had? Gods she doesn’t know what tenses to use anymore - relied more on the bond than words, especially after they committed to trying again. Hotaru had tried to learn to do the same, while also vowing to control her tongue into more sincere shapes and preemptive vulnerability than she was naturally familiar with. It has made her different. She hopes in a good way, but she isn’t sure lately. It's your eyes that define me
“That’s an incredible gift. I was delighted to be a hybrid through Frey. I hope he is happy with the change.” Perhaps she will reach out to spend time with him. Try to make amends for her absence. The quiet understanding in Noah’s soul is a low, musical note that soothes the guilt and fear of being misunderstood, easing them out of her body and out into the rain.
She can’t let go of the rest as easily. His support and validation of her feelings is a sweet and noble thing, but it feels too much of both of those things for someone like her. But she listens through the immediacy of her denial, because Noah does understand. Down to so many details, he has shared this burden. His separation from Cordelia had been different - final - but he’s no stranger to the entangled intricacies of the rest. Ru hadn’t really thought of that before. Though, to be fair, she wasn’t in a place where she could think much at all when he found her. Now, it’s a companionable comfort that has her brushing their elbows together when she steps a little closer.
“Since when were you so wise?” The teasing is half-hearted in her own musing tone. A weak deflection as his words settle deep and stir the sediment in her chest. The shrine grows as if from the ground, and Hotaru exhales slowly through her nose as she tries to find an answer that isn’t lip service.
“Being angry, or betrayed…I don’t feel I can allow myself to be those things. Not without implying - ugh,” a graceless noise of frustration escapes her, sharp and unnatural, unbefitting. Yet it’s all she can manage, with how twisted her stomach is over the impossibility of wording what she has to say in a way that isn’t shameful when spoken aloud. Hotaru can’t look at him when she spits it out. “If I feel that, if I make any of it about me, introduce any other hurdles or demand reparations of my own - he might be angrier. He might not come back.” It’s little more than a whisper by the end. A childish confession of guilt uttered while standing in a parent’s looming shadow. But Noah does not loom, not in that sort of way, even when he suddenly stops, bringing her with him by proxy.
“Despite that, I don’t know if I want to wait, either. I have been thinking that my life, at least, will not. Simply because I once had to say ‘cannot’, and that shames me.” It hasn’t shamed her when they’d been together, ecstatic to be domestic and aimless, but alone? Alone, she is rife with embarrassment. “To not wait for him - romantically - would make me a hypocrite, wouldn’t it? Though I suppose there’s no mystery or uncertainty to our break up now, compared to my death.” But she feels bound, compelled to crawl over coals and wait in the mire of uncertainty until he makes his own decision. And because of that, she cannot allow herself to feel or to be angry.
