mama bore a girl with a gun for a mouth, teeth dripping lead and lips bleeding red
She wants to lunge through the flames and get her hands on him so badly the joints in her fingers ache. Even Hotaru isn't sure what she would do if she did. Shake him? Punch him, to wipe that look off his face? Drag him down to her level to kiss him? Despite having hurt him far more unintentionally, somehow the ties between them are so much more convoluted than the ones tying her and Sunjata these days. It leaves her wrong-footed and off-balanced, and Hotaru hates to be so unsure of herself.
"Keeping my mouth shut," she snarks back, though it's nearly too pathetic to warrant such a word. Seems it's the only trick she has left to learn these days. One that will hopefully ensure she doesn't hurt Nate any more than she already has. Any flicker of fire that may have been is extinguished by the soft blankness of his words, the far away quality of his eyes. Hotaru drops her own, staring at the flames in the bowl, too stubborn even at her worst to let her gaze drop any further. Unwilling to move closer, but unable to leave any other way, the Valkyrie works her jaw and self-consciously crosses her arms. It feels too telling, but the jump of nerves in her veins won't allow stillness for any longer.
"Don't...don't ask something so vague from me. I'd change everything if I could," she says just loud enough to be heard, only brave enough to say it because she isn't looking into his eyes. The lack of clarity in his question is too open-ended, too inviting a chance for her to say everything she wishes she could change, when Hotaru knows they are not possible. "The only thing I can change is myself, that's all I'm trying to do. Change how I am around you. Give you the choice." As she'd taken the choice from him so many times before. "Nothing more." No tricks, no lies, nothing but what she is already presenting to him. Aware of how little right she has to expect him to trust that, but incapable of anything else when she is stuck here with no polite way out.
"Keeping my mouth shut," she snarks back, though it's nearly too pathetic to warrant such a word. Seems it's the only trick she has left to learn these days. One that will hopefully ensure she doesn't hurt Nate any more than she already has. Any flicker of fire that may have been is extinguished by the soft blankness of his words, the far away quality of his eyes. Hotaru drops her own, staring at the flames in the bowl, too stubborn even at her worst to let her gaze drop any further. Unwilling to move closer, but unable to leave any other way, the Valkyrie works her jaw and self-consciously crosses her arms. It feels too telling, but the jump of nerves in her veins won't allow stillness for any longer.
"Don't...don't ask something so vague from me. I'd change everything if I could," she says just loud enough to be heard, only brave enough to say it because she isn't looking into his eyes. The lack of clarity in his question is too open-ended, too inviting a chance for her to say everything she wishes she could change, when Hotaru knows they are not possible. "The only thing I can change is myself, that's all I'm trying to do. Change how I am around you. Give you the choice." As she'd taken the choice from him so many times before. "Nothing more." No tricks, no lies, nothing but what she is already presenting to him. Aware of how little right she has to expect him to trust that, but incapable of anything else when she is stuck here with no polite way out.
