Hotaru
nothing's fair in love and war
Maea’s gaze, even it deigns to meet hers, is arresting. It had been the first time, and time has not dulled it since. Even death could not, it seems. They are a pair, the two of them, with their strange eyes and strange hearts that leave them utter anomalies in this world that has no space meant for them. Ru holds it for a long moment before the warm blood on her hands distracts her, and she utilizes the deer further - as a distraction this time, a reason to keep her eyes averted and her expression partially concealed by long blonde hair that has grown too long with lack of proper trims. Why indeed?
There had only been a sparse handful of words on that piece of parchment. Transcribed by a different hand. There should have been no sentiment to keep it lingering in her possession, and yet it had endured. So why?
Ru had foolishly assumed she’d never have to examine the reasoning. Maea was dead after all, and would never know or think to ask. But a combination of Caido’s cruel humor and her own loose tongue has suddenly forced her to come to terms with things best left buried.
“I don’t know,” she admits softly, knife carving easily through sinew and muscle, well-honed and familiar. “Perhaps I saw you as a foretelling of my own ending with Sunjata and saw a kinship there. Maybe it was sentiment, grief. I couldn’t tell you properly.” And she’s trying. Oh how she always tries. Yet doomed to eternally fall short. “But that day in the bar…my interest in you was genuine. You said maybe in another life…” trailing off, unsure if Maea even remembers her own words - the veritable footnote Hotaru is sure she was compared to others - Ru purses her lips slightly. The jerk of her blade on the next slice is far from graceful, and she frowns down at her own hands as if blaming them for acting alone.
“‘If you ever want company, I'd be happy to come along.’ Thafs what you told me then. And I found I wished you had, so that I may have spared you your fate somehow.” But that was nothing more than girlish dreaming, a distant fondness for a girl she’d once tried to woo without success, and then had replaced in equal measure - only to be broken in the same way by the same man.
