The skies are black with lead-filled rain
a morbid painting on display
a morbid painting on display
Looking at her daughter as she struggles to put to words the weight of her disagreement, Hotaru’s face softens into something sorrowful and understanding. “Oh, love. You are so much like me,” she murmurs, hands gentle as they squeeze around the soft inner skin of Flora’s elbows where she holds on for dear life. “I would have done the same. But this was his choice to make, not mine.” Which means her heart, her love, and the ways it shows itself - and also Flora’s love - is not wrong. But sometimes that’s just not enough. Love is a two way street; he had chosen to divert from the path they’d shared, leaving her to figure out how to separate the parts of her from what had once been ‘them’.
Sunjata’s vitriolic defensiveness becomes a bitterer and bitterer memory with each piece of context that joins her greater understanding of events. She had doubted Frey before the Flood; yet more devotion that now feels hollow and misplaced. Had he considered his presence at Flora’s side to be involvement? Proactive investigation to claim for himself? Or had his heart already withered by then, rendering him incapable of pursuing answers that love would have driven him to do? And if so, how little time apart had been necessary for his heart to die, feeble in its belief in her as it seems to have been?
Those questions snip the final string that held her together long enough to make it this far, just as far as her daughter’s arms. Those arms wrap around her with fierce, insistent acceptance instead of shrinking away from the naked sight of her breakdown.
Ru clutches her back just as hard, though her strength is not half as noble and admirable as Flora’s in this moment. Flora’s beautiful top turns sheer under the onslaught of her tears, the familiarity of her scent and the notes of her favorite perfume quickly muddled by the tang of salt. Tainting everything she touches as she always does. And yet, somehow, never Flora. She’d come close, once, under the Family’s control, but Flora has never broken or bent from the curse Ru labors beneath.
Her daughter is everything Hotaru could have hoped for her to be; stronger, smarter, and greater than her mother in every way. If she has done only one thing right in this life, it was bringing the twins into the world.
Flora has never said something she doesn’t mean. Perhaps interpreting that in this context is self-serving, but it’s not an unfamiliar part of Hotaru’s many flaws. So she decides to trust it at face value; lean her weight on her daughter literally and metaphorically. “It’s over and I know it. All of it - trying again, trying to be better…Gods, I only ever really loved him you know? I couldn’t move on even during the war, even after having you and Enzo. I thought this time was for good…and now I’m this.” Immortal. Untouchable. Ostracized amongst her fellow demigods. Discarded twice over by a man with greater connections and sympathy than her. “Less than a year and his heart died. But he didn’t even ask Frey? Ask Remi himself?” The pained grit of her teeth presses her jaw into Flora’s collarbone, roots of her molars aching as they try to withstand the force of her hurt. “He gets to walk away without feeling the hurt, because it’s conveniently gone, and be blameless in everyone’s eyes. I get the hurt, the grieving, the shitty fucking end of the stick. A dead heart can’t feel? Well, a living one can. And gods forbid I get a-angry -” her momentum cracks the vitriol in half, bleeding out agony instead, “- because I died. But it was temporary, hardly traumatic if you know you’re immortal right? But his heart died and somehow it’s my fault? And the loss is more important than the ‘how’ or the ‘why’.” Not just to him but to every judgy bastard that will come along and pity the ever-cursed bad luck of the Flood. The bitter reality of that sobers her enough for the tears to slow, hands slipping from Flora’s back where they’d been holding on for dear life to settle limply in the small of her back.
“Some girls never grow out of being desperate not to be single, just so you know. Or they never learn to see when they’re in the wrong place,” grates painfully against Flora’s collarbone, dark humor and self-loathing like gargled glass as it tumbles past her tongue. There had been Nate, once. Wessex, though it had never been spoken, never came to fruition. In all other ways, Ru has been a normal Frey worshiper, content to share bodies and not hearts; Sunjata had held it for so long, even when they weren’t together, that pursuing anything else wouldn’t have mattered. Now there’s no place for her as a woman; only as a demigod. “Don’t be like me in that way.”
Devotion is their shared blessed burden. The desperate desire to be loved is one she hopes Flora will never feel, and if she already has, that she’ll never do so again because of finding Kaisel.
Sunjata’s vitriolic defensiveness becomes a bitterer and bitterer memory with each piece of context that joins her greater understanding of events. She had doubted Frey before the Flood; yet more devotion that now feels hollow and misplaced. Had he considered his presence at Flora’s side to be involvement? Proactive investigation to claim for himself? Or had his heart already withered by then, rendering him incapable of pursuing answers that love would have driven him to do? And if so, how little time apart had been necessary for his heart to die, feeble in its belief in her as it seems to have been?
Those questions snip the final string that held her together long enough to make it this far, just as far as her daughter’s arms. Those arms wrap around her with fierce, insistent acceptance instead of shrinking away from the naked sight of her breakdown.
Ru clutches her back just as hard, though her strength is not half as noble and admirable as Flora’s in this moment. Flora’s beautiful top turns sheer under the onslaught of her tears, the familiarity of her scent and the notes of her favorite perfume quickly muddled by the tang of salt. Tainting everything she touches as she always does. And yet, somehow, never Flora. She’d come close, once, under the Family’s control, but Flora has never broken or bent from the curse Ru labors beneath.
Her daughter is everything Hotaru could have hoped for her to be; stronger, smarter, and greater than her mother in every way. If she has done only one thing right in this life, it was bringing the twins into the world.
Flora has never said something she doesn’t mean. Perhaps interpreting that in this context is self-serving, but it’s not an unfamiliar part of Hotaru’s many flaws. So she decides to trust it at face value; lean her weight on her daughter literally and metaphorically. “It’s over and I know it. All of it - trying again, trying to be better…Gods, I only ever really loved him you know? I couldn’t move on even during the war, even after having you and Enzo. I thought this time was for good…and now I’m this.” Immortal. Untouchable. Ostracized amongst her fellow demigods. Discarded twice over by a man with greater connections and sympathy than her. “Less than a year and his heart died. But he didn’t even ask Frey? Ask Remi himself?” The pained grit of her teeth presses her jaw into Flora’s collarbone, roots of her molars aching as they try to withstand the force of her hurt. “He gets to walk away without feeling the hurt, because it’s conveniently gone, and be blameless in everyone’s eyes. I get the hurt, the grieving, the shitty fucking end of the stick. A dead heart can’t feel? Well, a living one can. And gods forbid I get a-angry -” her momentum cracks the vitriol in half, bleeding out agony instead, “- because I died. But it was temporary, hardly traumatic if you know you’re immortal right? But his heart died and somehow it’s my fault? And the loss is more important than the ‘how’ or the ‘why’.” Not just to him but to every judgy bastard that will come along and pity the ever-cursed bad luck of the Flood. The bitter reality of that sobers her enough for the tears to slow, hands slipping from Flora’s back where they’d been holding on for dear life to settle limply in the small of her back.
“Some girls never grow out of being desperate not to be single, just so you know. Or they never learn to see when they’re in the wrong place,” grates painfully against Flora’s collarbone, dark humor and self-loathing like gargled glass as it tumbles past her tongue. There had been Nate, once. Wessex, though it had never been spoken, never came to fruition. In all other ways, Ru has been a normal Frey worshiper, content to share bodies and not hearts; Sunjata had held it for so long, even when they weren’t together, that pursuing anything else wouldn’t have mattered. Now there’s no place for her as a woman; only as a demigod. “Don’t be like me in that way.”
Devotion is their shared blessed burden. The desperate desire to be loved is one she hopes Flora will never feel, and if she already has, that she’ll never do so again because of finding Kaisel.
This is the night that young love died
Buried at each others sides
Buried at each others sides
