drag your shadow down the street

the bastion

i don't want the world to see me,
because I don't think they'd understand

Remi’s wings have grown heavier with every mile, blood oozing sluggishly from gashes in his arms and across his torso. A brilliant burn scorches the side of his neck where Hotaru’s lightning has kissed him, the acrid scent of singed feathers still clinging in the cold air. Every muscle feels frayed, his vision doubling at the edges, but not once does he loosen his hold around the Valkyrie. She’s quiet now, though whether it’s from pain or the final collapse of her strength he cannot say. The sky bruises around them in the purple half-light of dawn as the ruins of the Fangs come into view—jagged edges worn away by time and turmoil, open caverns hollowed out by melting ice and collapsed stone.

He spots the curl of steam wafting toward them like an offering from the gods. Gripping Hotaru more securely, he banks low, angling his descent until at last they plummet in a ragged spiral. His landing is hardly graceful; he staggers on impact, knees buckling, feet sliding on the slick ground where remnants of snow melt at the spring’s edge. But there is no time to compose himself. Remi kicks off again in a stumble, wings and arms coiled tight around Hotaru, and plunges into the steaming waters. The moment they’re submerged, a hush seems to envelop them—an almost sacred stillness in which only the muffled roar of his pulse remains.

The water is warm and shockingly soothing against every wound, every place she bit and clawed at him in her desperate attempt to remain infected. Sinking deeper, Remi shifts Hotaru in his arms until she’s pressed against his chest—an intimacy they’ve barely shared since that single, fated afternoon years ago. It isn’t lust that moves him now, merely a tender ache for all they’ve lost and gained in the tangle of years. Despite everything, she is the mother of his children, and in this fractured moment, that bond is enough to still the trembling in his chest as he silently prays that this will work; that neither she nor Flora will hate him too much for the choices he had made.

That Ronin won't either.

when everything's meant to be broken,
i just want you to know who I am

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

The Sword had been waiting – for messages, for signs, for anything to indicate something had happened with Ru. He knew Remi and Ronin well enough to know they wouldn’t have sat idly by; just as they’d all done the moment they’d found out about Sunjata. But it was the silence, likely as action was brewing, that had him searching skies and side-eyeing couriers.

So he stayed out in the open instead of holding himself within the barracks, tending to the rest of his citizens as the world marched on. Had he not seen an outline overhead, head springing upwards, expecting to see the usual, habitual entities of white dragons, he might have simply shrugged and continued. But then there were clear signs that this was Remi with Ru tucked within, and he made quick, swift apologies to those nearby, scrawled out a note and placed it in a messenger’s hands, before hastening off on his own wings, heading towards the Fangs.

The route was easy and known, taking him no time at all. But he still missed the initial plunge, and everything else leading them to this point. “Hey,” he rumbled in an echo off the walls of the open caves, to alert both Bastion and Valkyrie, eyes flickering down to the pair in the healing pool. A long, long sigh flickered through him – arguably relief as well as tension – but he stood over them, a guard as the mending process flowed around. His careful gaze didn’t miss Ru’s incapacitated state, but rounded back to the Bastion instead. “How did it go?” Poorly was a broad presumption.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Hotaru

i'm still here but all is lost

There is a tenuous grasp of consciousness, like colorful smoke between her fingers, that she can do little more than stir with faint twitches of energy far past spent by the time they land. Every nerve cries in agonized harmony as Remi stumbles and jerks around her, a cage of man and flesh. Something rises into her throat as he lurches toward the pool - bile, objections, her heart perhaps - but it never makes it past her tongue, and then.

And then there is water. Everything goes quiet, the waters rushing through and around her, blocking out everything. Pristine, utter silence. Not even the air that otherwise would have been circling in her lungs can distract her now. 

Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

Only her own heartbeat. 

The energy seems out of reach, but she has to see - she has to. Slowly her eyes open, the swirl of bubbles a haze that clears the longer she remains cradled motionless beneath the surface. Gold spills out beyond. Gold, gold, gold. It fills her vision like ink in the water, illuminated by the shine of her own soul that will never dim even through exhaustion. Everything shines in this moment; her heart a singular companion of sound, her golden hair and unyielding luminescence a cocoon instead of a cage. A place to be reborn from. A moment in time, suspended alongside the slow burn of her lungs, where she is finally herself. Defined by nothing and nobody else. Hotaru Kaito the Valkyrie - singular.

Ba-ba-ump-bump. B—bump.

Remi’s heart. 

Ru closes her eyes and slowly straightens in his arms, head rising from the pool. It goes no further than what is required to reach his chest. Her cheek falls somewhere over his heart to hear it beating in counterpoint to her own. Never meant to be a vessel whose rhythm matches her own, but one that fills some of the empty spaces between - a harmony that supports instead of mirrors. Lifting an arm is an impossible task, but has he not just achieved the same impossible task by carrying her all this way? Her limp fingers come to splay somewhere between his jaw and the edges of his damp hair curling near his nape. Is it from sweat, steam, or snow?

I see, her heart whispers when her tired lips cannot. Just as you promised I would. The guilt doesn’t come - not yet - but she can feel it stirring somewhere beneath the rattle of her slow breaths. I see you. Her tears slip lax and silent, strangely cool upon her spring-warmed cheeks, like they aren’t really her own tears. The strained but unbroken foundation of their connection hums like plucked chords in her chest. Threads that had looked like string revealed instead to be woven steel when tested against a blade. I see you. Spoken even as her eyes close again, exhausted. Sight isn’t what she means. 

His arms are no longer a cage. Now they feel like the weight of his wing across her hip with Flora cradled between them, or the callouses of his fingers when they had wrapped around her own kneeling in front of Frey’s shrine. There is no impurity to the amorphous symphony of her emotions as they sing faint and fuzzy through the areas their bare skin comes to meet. Yet it is not the same arrangement of sounds and sentiments that arise when Deimos’ voice - as unmistakable as her own, a voice that has harkened to her across time, space, and realities - breaks the silence. No, that is something purely familial. What then does that make the two of them, to feel so similar and yet be so different?

Her head can do little more than shift, energy so depleted that the healing benefits of the waters are slow to rejuvenate her. Eyelids shift and attempt to open but cannot find the Sword, only catching hazy glimpses of Remi’s skin and the jagged edges upon it where her lightning had kissed him. She searches nevertheless - he’s always been her guiding star.

Dei, she calls, voice cast like a line into the dark, uncertain and small. Young. But there is no lilt to the end that would imply questioning. She would know her brother anywhere, even here, blind and bled dry. 

And then, sweet like the smoke of burning nightingale flowers and hemlock blooms, Hotaru’s voice rises from her lips properly to encompass all of them. Or perhaps to announce a declaration to a world that is listening - always listening. 

“I am going to kill them all.” 

Suffice to say her mind is her own again.

the bastion

i don't want the world to see me,
because I don't think they'd understand

Remi’s lungs tighten with relief and exhaustion in equal measure as he feels the hot spring’s waters sink through his torn clothes and into his scorched flesh. Each ragged breath tugs at the gashes where her claws and lightning found him, but pain is no longer his chief concern. He’s too focused on the Valkyrie, held securely against his chest. The steady pulse of her heart against him—where once he felt only frantic beats and venom—tells him she’s with him again. Entirely herself, at last.

He barely hears the shuffle of footsteps on stone until Deimos’s voice echoes through the quiet, a presence as unmistakable as his own. Drawing in a deeper breath, Remi forces himself to lift his head and meet the Sword’s gaze. The question, simple as it is, feels immense in its breadth. “We made it.” The Bastion’s throat moves in a stiff swallow, a wry and weary smile flickering across his lips. “She’s here,” he manages, voice hoarse, “She’s safe.” It’s all he can offer for now; it’s both everything and not nearly enough.

Hotaru’s quiet stirring presses her cheek more firmly to his chest, and Remi’s muscles tense in anticipation of another struggle. But no, she only breathes his name—or perhaps only breathes—and then calls out for Deimos with the fragility of a child and the strength of a queen. Her final words, however, ring out like a dagger thrown into silence.

Remi bows his head, allowing the healing waters to ease a fresh rush of pain from his muscles before he speaks. “We’ll figure it out,” he murmurs, uncertain if he’s addressing her, Deimos, or perhaps some part of himself that fears what comes next. “Just...rest.” And with a quiet exhale, he adjusts his grip around her, as if to assure them both she’s still anchored here—still alive, still Hotaru, but free to do as she likes now that the violet chains of the Family have been lifted.

when everything's meant to be broken,
i just want you to know who I am

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

It starts as fluffy, falling flakes. Slowly the wind picks up around you, the promise of more snow to come. As you lift your hood and think about heading for home, the tundra becomes bright white. The snowflakes shift and harden as the temperature plummets suddenly, the wind howling harshly. There is little time to prepare. The ice storm comes in with all of the fury the Eirachi has placed upon this land.

An ice storm has hit! For the next 3 posts of each participant in the thread, this ice storm will rage.

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

His demeanor intended to invoke a wave of calm, a press of the attuned bond in composed elements, he didn’t completely feel himself. And maybe it took more than a few moments, for Ru to awaken, for Remi to acknowledge, for some parts of safety, shelter, and sanctuary to finally take root and hold. Then he crouched, still a sentinel, but closer to the pool, shaking his head and permitting the smallest, earnest traces of a smile. Entirely unaware of the circumstances prior to these fractures and figments, and simply glad to hear some portions woven and soothed, his deep rumble persisted. Welcome back he offered to both, and at the finality of the Valkyrie’s words, the steely resolve, the figments of things they still didn’t quite know how to overcome, the Sword merely nodded. “Right.” In agreement and accord – something to be figured out, to be solved –

Though, he had to snort as the fury of Eirachi, or Halo overall, glimpsed into the world. Were the Fangs their old selves, enclosed, they might not have felt the rush of the incoming storm. But given all the alterations, there they were, suddenly in the midst.

But he raised up a shield of earth to enclose and surround them, along embankments and within the springs itself, to at least hold some shelter in the howling of the wind and the sudden onslaught of snowflakes. “Do you need anything else?” Besides time; as it always seemed to be.

And they'd have more of that, or less, in the coming days.

[FIN]

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same