HOTARU
The space between them echoes hollow and vast, the final steps like an endless void that she can't hope to traverse. Yet her feet draw her forward inexorably, her legs strong and adamant in keeping her upright, skimming over the snow like a wraith of the North. He draws her like a magnet, and in mere moments that nonetheless feel like years, the space that had once gutted her is nonexistent. He is there before her, imposing, grandiose, overwhelming in his physicality. He is there. Warm and alive beneath her hand, erasing all fears of an aberration, a hallucination, a mirage that will shatter and embed its mocking glass deep into her skin. He is the shadow to her light, the bedrock that keeps her flowering fields rooted steady. She could no sooner stop herself from going to him as she could cease her own breaths. His face is so much more expressive in this form, and her heart aches to see the lines at his eyes, the disbelief painted upon his rugged visage. For as long as she has known him, he has been so reluctant to believe that he was worthy of anything, much less anything positive. For all he has given them, sacrificed, forsaken in his loyal years, the Valkyrie believes he deserves the world.
He bends town to her space, the mighty giant crouching to her own pitiful stature, and she lets herself be embraced readily. Her arms fling around his neck, fearless as he pulls her from the earth. Though wings had never given her the gift of flight, it is a sensation that does not inspire fear in her heart. Deimos would never let her fall. She knows this as she knows the sun's cycle and the moon's waxing and waning. It is a fact of life, a heavenly decree, an immovable principle. There are few places safer in the world that encased in his arms, face pressed into the crook of his neck and his powerful shoulder, breathing in his scent and concealing the sharp sting of her tears. They wet her cheeks and subsequently his clothing, and she does not mock him for his own choked words. Not here, not to him. For all Hotaru's habitual teasing, her heart still feels as if it's quaking, rabbiting in her chest so hard she's certain he can feel it through her dress. Pounding out a rhythm, Morse code, telling him with every beat I have missed you, I love you, you mean so very much to me, I will never let you leave me again.
Deimos' apology brings a tremulous smile to her face, and she turns to chastely kiss his cheek, refusing to withdraw further to gaze upon him. It is a distance she can't bear in this moment. "You flatterer," she hiccups, but the joy beneath her teary voice is real, euphoric. The final piece finally at home in the place it deserves. She can feel her little trio of loved ones like shields surrounding her, bolstering her and chasing away the shades and nightmares that haunt and harass no matter how far she runs. "I have missed you so much," she allows herself to say, perhaps a tad too broken to maintain her control but awash in sincerity. Thumps a useless, weak hand against his shoulderblades only to hug him all the tighter. "Don't you ever leave me again," she orders, though her dramatic imperious tone wobbles. A silent plea she is sure he will hear, one that begs him to never leave her alone again. She'd scarcely survived it the first time. "I don't make a habit out of chasing men you know."
It is a lie, and she knows it. He is perhaps the one man she would chase endlessly, traversing the planes of life and death, pursuing his shadow across the infinite realms, if only to stand by his side once more.
you are the sun
you heal and
you burn
