Noah felt her arms come around him, felt the shift in her as she quietly and deliberately chose to lean into something, into him, instead of bracing against it. It settled in his chest like a slow, steady fire. Not the wild blaze Hotaru carried in her bones, but something enduring like banked up coals. He tightened his hold around her to answer in kind. The storm raged around them like a living thing, screaming and lashing, but within the circle of his arms there was solid safety. Not peace, not truly, but there was something more honest. Like standing in the eye of it and knowing the winds would come again, but they wouldn't always knock you down.
He released a sharp-edged breath from his lungs. He blinked away rain from his lashes. While he had remained a gentle waypoitn for her, a strong tower unmoved by the winds and unyielding to the raging, churning waters, something softened within the bond. There wasn’t a moment. His thumb moved against her back again, a slow, absent motion, like tracing a map he had walked too many times. It was more like learning to walk again after something broke. He continued, the words deliberate, shaped with care. Every step felt wrong at first, like I was wearing someone else’s life instead of my own. But he trusted Vi through it, and knew the mercy in the god's actions, and held onto that with both hands.
Lightning split the sky again, bright enough to turn the rain into falling glass around them. “But it didn’t stay like that forever. It changed slowly. So slowly I didn’t notice it at first. The pain didn’t vanish...it just settled." Lost its teeth. Stopped snarling. "I fathered. I hunted, I worked on regional quests, I built a shrine for Safrin and Vi..." He tried to pull back a curtain for her, to give her a glimpse of all she could do.
He shifted slightly, though she remained tucked against him. “You don’t stop waiting all at once,” he added, honesty threading through his tone like a scar that never quite faded, "you just start living in the spaces between it. And those spaces get bigger, little by little, until one day you realize you’re not holding your breath anymore.” His hand stilled against her back, grounding, certain. “It’s not good news, but it’s not hopeless either.” Even through pain, even on the hard days (which Noah had plenty of, where his feet didn't even want to touch the floorboards of the lodge), there was hope. Noah would be her lighthouse when she needed reminding, when her ship crashed against the waves and the lightning struck and she was sure she was going to hit the rocks and sink, sink, sink -- he would be there.
"Have you talked to Deimos?"
