[SE] Spin out, lose control

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

All rivers run to the sea in time, and the Boondocks - crumbling away as some of the edges will always appear - are no exception. Where there are rivers there will always be life. Life that never should have been altered the way the void and the Family had managed to do. Though Hotaru hasn't avowed herself to Nature Frey, it disgusts her all the same to see how perverted Caido's flora has become - and not in the fun way.

Maybe it's just the reflections of how it had felt to be a Friend to them once. To still see the shadows around those who had also been poisoned. Maybe that's why she can't stand to see these creatures exist no matter how spineless and unassuming. River stars that had once been relatively harmless now twisted into dark spots of despair - as if she needs more of that.

For all the magic she has at her disposal there is a necessary catharsis to using her body to mercilessly destroy the river stars with the plain harpoon in her hands. Her hair is askew, escaping the haphazard bun she'd thrown it into, and the glow of her skin in the autumn sun highlights the light sheen of sweat she's built up. Impressive considering her stamina but it speaks to how long she's been at this; legs slightly blue where she stands barefoot in shorts up to her knees in the river, jacket discarded on the bank, sun already sliding away from its zenith.

There's just been so much. Sunjata has stepped up everywhere she cannot - as a demigod, as a parent, as a partner - and though resolution is a fragile hope on the horizon, it brings her no comfort. Only further frustration. She snarls, face twisted and dark as she spears another river star with all her might. The tip cuts through the creature and down into the sand - then further, and further, until it catches hard when she tries to jerk it back out for how unintentionally deep she has sent it with her inhuman strength. With a strangled exclamation of frustration the Valkyrie rips it free, creature still speared on the end, spraying water and wetting her already damp clothes.

Ripping the creature off with her bare hand - its insidious pull can't hurt her now that it's dead - she tosses it into the pile on the riverbank and tries to steady her breathing so she doesn't fully lose it. She's already broken two harpoons; not only is this her last one, but she isn't ready to go home in this state. Yet, she equally isn't sure there are enough void river stars in all of King's End to fix how she's feeling.

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

“Is it helping?”

He’d not wanted to bother her as he watched her tear apart the river stars. Even if he has every right to be able to swan on in and distract her. He knows her, he loves her enough to know that she needs this. And so it’s the least Sunjata can do, to sit on the sidelines and watch, whether she’s aware of him or not.

She typically is, but her frustration and anger of everything might be clouding her ability to focus, so he’s careful and casual in his approach. He’s felt her claws before. He doesn’t intend on snatching them this time — unless, of course, it meant that she might feel better for the interim, and he can heal himself after.

But sometimes all one needed to do was wage war on whatever inanimate or voidy beast came their way and scream to feel a bit better, and who is Sunjata to deny her that? He’d wanted to do the same for weeks, but he’s had his outs. He’s had his ability to demolish void creatures where they continued to infiltrate.

But the Family was gone and with it, the purpose he’d had. Now it meant that finishing this quest for Frey would be relatively useless (unless they came back for some Frey forsaken reason), but it meant he’d need to start getting a head start on everything else King’s End is lacking.

A problem for later him, though, because right now he feels like she needs him, whether or not she does. Whether or not she’d verbalize it. So he pushes off the tree, arms still folded across his chest as he floods his portion of the bond with nothing but love and adoration for her, for being his guiding compass even if she’d had so much on her plate. A poke and a prod of let me help you loosen the burden intermixed with i love you, you can tell me to fuck off if that’s what you want and I will.

Yet, he finds his way close to her, arms dropping from his chest as he lets his steel gaze take her in - all the beauty, in spite of the shades left behind by the Family - and reminds himself that while the Family had taken so much, he wasn’t going to let them take her from him either.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

She hadn't sensed him, not truly, and her shoulders twitch in an aborted jolt at his voice. Perhaps she hadn't sensed him because he is so thoroughly deemed a part of her own body and soul, impossible to distinguish at times from the whole. In that way she always needs him - if the impression of his doubt had been any clearer to the Valkyrie she would have told him so.

"No," she croaks, ashamed. As Sunjata straightens with an easy push of his broad shoulders the dappled light from the half-present leaves overhead shifts across his skin and strikes any further words dead in her throat. He is handsome and preternatural and somehow still hers for all she doesn't deserve it lately.

His arms drop as he nears. She could touch him now if she only reached. Her hands ache from hours of hunting with overly clenched fingers - and from something restless and persistent that yearns to worsen that ache in search of true release. Hotaru can't trust reaching for his open chest with those hands. Can't bear hurting him even in passing - especially now.

Don't let me heap this on you too, comes the riotous swell that spills despair in the face of his all-encompassing, misguided devotion.

"How can you keep coming home to me knowing I can't stand properly at your side?" The words bite their way free so fast they nearly slice through her mouth but pain hasn't stopped Hotaru before. "Why do you take it all away when I can't do the same? What use am I?!" She abruptly slams the spear back into the riverbank, burying it nearly a third of the way up the shaft which protests by splintering down the handle in an ugly scar.

Spinning to look up river so she doesn't have to look in his eyes (terror and shame; please don't lie to me, don't pretend -) she still doesn't turn fully away. Something in her will never allow even the implication of turning her back on him.

Lightning dances up her fingers which flicker with scales that harden and fade in restless waves. "I thought it was enough. It wasn't! It - the bar just keeps moving, and all I can do is play housewife while you - while our daughter - make the sacrifice plays." It's a slip of the tongue to call Flora theirs, but it's how it has felt for a while now so it doesn't make her pause. Hotaru lifts her aching hands to shove the heels of her palms into her eyes, teeth bared and gritted in ugly display of her futility and shame. "All I can do is be the fucking clean-up crew." And no mountain of dead void stars will ever make up for the scale of her recent failures.

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

”No.” She says, and he gets it. He also selfishly appreciates her honesty in this moment, in not placating him with the very obvious masks of I’m fine. Because he knows that whether she tried to or not, the undercurrent of the bond they share would tell him otherwise.

But gods, she’s a tempest, beautiful in her storm as he approaches, even if she’s upset and angry. They are two sides of the same coin. The same god, the same brilliance to their souls.

The same damage.

There’s the shock, too, one he’s incapable of hiding despite how much he wants to with the flicker of mirrored lightning in his scars that strike through him, the shock to the core of the attuned bond that she probably would feel. He doesn’t mean to take it personally, but he can’t help it with how she denounces herself so quickly.

Like she hadn’t saved him from himself over and over again. “You’re everything to me, Ru.” He tries to keep it from coming out so shocked and broken, a whisper in the roaring storm she exudes, like his voice carries any weight here in the face of her fury.

But he doesn’t push her away, either. When she blots out her vision with the palms of her sore hands, he steps in, wrapping his arms around her and tucking her in against his chest. “You know that I’d rather you be here than out there.” After he’d let Nate go off to war and he remained blissfully unaware, only to shatter weeks after he’d passed. “And if you weren’t here, you wouldn’t have been able to help Flora when she needed you.” He murmurs into her muted sunlit crown. “It took three of us, and Dahlia still did that damage. But you were there to help her when Remi and I brought her in.” It’s small reassurances, trying to let his mental shields produce all of the love and adoration for her that he harbors and none of the sheer overwhelming panic at the thought of her diving into danger.

“I can’t do this without you.” Comes his more honest admission. Because they both know he’s only held together by toothpicks and aluminum foil, so fragile despite the masks and faces he puts on.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

He makes it too easy to take advantage of his love. The Flood is a martyr of a man who, even through love and time and change, has never learned how to stop laying himself over the coals so someone might walk over them unscathed. And he would smile that lopsided smile and say fire couldn't hurt him with all the water in his blood while hiding all the burn marks left behind. Hotaru struggles eternally with walking the line between sharing their burdens as lovers should, and fearing that her covetous, self-serving nature will leave her blind someday to the myriad of ways she might crush him down.

But when he looks at her with those stormy steel-blue eyes, always within reach but equally respectful of the space a storm like her needs, it makes it so hard.

Because her avarice is proven in how she can't push him away when he steps into the river and wraps himself around her. A low keening noise escapes her as she curls and withers over the iron band of his arms at her waist. Like she is going to be sick. Like she might take them both down to their knees were he not holding her strong. It makes the sickness swell to know he won't let them fall that way. Not here, not ever - even with his life on the line. And she had let him. Just as she lets him now.

"I can never make either of you feel safe," she moans like it's killing her, tears wetting her palms until they slip away to grasp desperately at his forearms. "I can love you both with everything I am, but I won't be the one you call. Because I can't be. I don't want you to suffer for my inadequacy - and you have, both of you." And she understands how that might give him purpose, a reason to survive and come home - but it strips Hotaru of hers.

She doesn't want to take away the comfort that her assured safety brings him. She doesn't want to seem ungrateful for the sacrifices he has made and will yet make. And, somewhere inside, Ru knows that love alone is worth enough. Sunjata could be stripped of all his might here and now and she would love him just the same. His point of view is not completely foreign to her.

But the Valkyrie has been defined by usefulness and power for so long that she can't fathom the same in return. Thranduil had made that clear year after year, his love always accompanied by disappointment. To own her was to weaken her, and weakness was to be despised. They had shared that mentality once, which is why it poisons her even now - but when he became her exception, she had not become his. So with every year she softened in her own love the more he hated her for it, longing for the mightier woman she'd been before he caught her.

Sunjata is not him. Hotaru could never compare the glowing sun of Sunjata's love to the cruel derision of Thranduil's. Not when he is actively pouring it into her soul. But Sunjata and Flora are her everything. To feel she is failing them both, that both of them cannot rely on her for more than handling their hearts, is a crushing blow that has her nails pressing harder into his arms. "I can't live without you," she counters, unafraid to say it plainly. "Maybe we'll never die, but Flora can. She has. And there are other ways I can lose you." He'll hear the scared whisper of Thranduil's name like a chant in the bond beneath the spill of her words. Ru stands to lose Sunjata in that way, and she stands to lose Flora the way she'd lost Ru'in and Enzo - by not being strong enough. One leads to another, and she doesn't see a way to ever catch up. She is a demigod, but they are titans. If someday her meager power could be what tips the scales, but she is never considered as an option for the field because of her comparative fragility, will she lose them both?

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

It’s always been his fault. To take away the burden from everyone else, because he’s unconsciously internalized everything to be his fault. The Family got so far into the very breaths they shared because of him. Because he’d tried his best to prove himself to the rest of Caido that this wasn’t a repeat of the New Gods war that he’d walked right into the execution chambers, spoke with Dahlia while she’d danced that guillotine blade across his throat. And while he was Hotaru’s in all the sense of his love, his mind and body had become Dahlia’s.

He is how Pierce knew that Ronin had Wilde’s Rapier.

And Pierce had killed her with it.

He’s had a long time to learn that his best intentions would often blow up, but still he tries, because he has to. And here, with her, with the coals and fire and brands that litter his skin in stories of heroics he shouldn’t have lived through, he still stands. He holds her through the tears, the anger, the fear, the way they both still struggle with sharing their emotions and talking through their impulsivities even though they’ve come such a long way.

“You do make me feel safe.” He counters immediately, confidence bleeding through him. She might not make him feel safe through a purely physical means (which he’s sure is what brands her skin so badly), but emotionally? He’s the safest he’s been. He doesn’t have to question it when he comes home that she’d be there, that she’s safe.

So when she tells him she can’t be there physically to be the one to call when they need her, it sinks low in his gut to hear the rawness of which she says it. It silences him, so that the only sound heard is the water that ripples around their legs, the way the silence of the birdsong becomes loud for the absence of it with her fury.

Her admission is akin to his own; that he can’t go through the rest of his life if she wasn’t there. That he can’t continue to have his soul cut in half over and over and over again because he’s quickly approaching having nothing left. But before he can respond, he hears the chant of the bastard that still haunts her, Thranduil, Thranduil, Thranduil, like a terrible omen that’s finally come for payment.

“The Family is gone. Maybe… Maybe we take this time to rebuild and get stronger for if anything else comes.” Sunjata suggests, his arms loose around her in a way that allows her to slip out if she wants to, because he cannot and will not be her prison. “I know it hurts, liefde, but maybe you don’t have to be the hero. Maybe you can just be her mom she can go to when things are hard. And that’s okay.”

It’s what his mother did, before she was murdered. She guided him, protected him from his father where she could.

She had taught him love. She had taught him loss. She had made him protective and selfless and that unfortunate bridge so that those he loved never had to fear getting wet if he had a choice.

She’d named him after the lion of the sun, because she only ever spent time in the shadows. But that didn’t mean she meant nothing.

She was everything to him. And then she, too, was gone. And he can’t stand the fact that now, Hotaru stands here feeling just as helpless in situations that neither of them know or knew how to navigate.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

It’s a partial comfort at best, but his emotional state is as precious to her as his physical safety. It isn’t the same and the inability to achieve both will never cease to gnaw at her, but the fight drains out of her all the same. Her outburst is more despair than fury and thus harder to keep alive at its current intensity. When his arms loosen she clings to them harder - he has never been a prison to her, not even when they’d once sat within one physically, and she doesn’t need his distance. Isn’t sure she can withstand it at all right now.

Turning in his arms while keeping as constant of a hold as she can on his forearms, Hotaru stares unseeing somewhere around Sunjata’s chest. She doesn’t need to see his eyes to gauge his emotions anyway. “Do you think…that’s really enough?” There’s a fragile thread of hope strung through her tone. It lasts all of a moment before her face contorts and her eyes drop to the grip she has on his arms, sliding it down to reach for his hands. “I don’t think it is. How can it be? Anyone can love her - any of her parents can love her. It’s not the same as…everything else.” Too much to name, if she even had the heart to say it now that the energy she’d held is dissipating beneath his touch.

“And if it is…I don’t know how to see it as meaningful enough. My mother was brilliant, she was unstoppable and practically perfect. But she wasn’t - I don’t know, she wasn’t soft with me the way I am with Flora.” And maybe that’s a good thing, but what if it isn’t? The Valkyrie can’t fathom the idea of her daughter loving her but not being able to rely on her in certain ways. “Why can’t I do all of it for her?”

Her cheeks go uncharacteristically pink and she drops her forehead to Sunjata’s sternum. “Oh…I heard it that time.” The curse of desiring perfection, the vanity and jealousy, the petulant fury over falling short compared to the men standing in the few coveted designations of parenthood alongside her.

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

“Yes.” Sunjata says with enough fervor and honesty it almost hurts. A blade held limply along the balancing act that was wishing to be everything all at once when none of them were capable. But he lets her work it out, even as her grip grows tighter and she wars with the feelings. His arms unfold from around her in order for her to take his hands, his thumbs stroking along her own as he scans her face.

He doesn’t interrupt her, if anything Sunjata lets her work it out vocally, choosing tow air until she’s finished before he offers his two cents — part of what they’d been working on over these years. Listening before acting. And gods, he was trying so hard to do it and do it well.

Ah, but then she sees it there — the perfectionism she’s striving for when none of them would ever reach that point. He loosens one hand from hers to tangle in her blonde, muted sunlight hair as he keeps her pressed against his sternum with a gentle touch. “No one’s perfect, liefde.” He starts off by saying, pulsing through the attuned bond the hope that despite it being the case, it was still worth striving for.

“The way you love her and the way she loves you is different from how she loves Remi or Ronin or even me. You’re her mom, Ru. And while we know my dad was shitty, it was my mother that was soft and gentle and everything my father wasn’t. She taught me to strive for more, to want to change things. And I did.” Even if it caused more pain and destruction in the long run. The only one who cared for him enough to take the stand was his mother.

“She didn’t save me from when he’d beat me. She didn’t save me when Shaju threw me into the water for my swim test and I nearly drowned. And even though we had all these rules and everything about not loving your kid ’til they passed their tests so you didn’t get attached, she loved me every second I can remember. Even until her last breath. She made me who I am, without a blade in her hand to protect me.” He leans down a touch to press a kiss to her crown, dragging his fingers through her hair to the nape of her neck. “So no. You won’t be perfect. But you’re her mom. And you’re soft and protective and you love her and she can come to you for advice that no one else can give her. And that can be enough.” And that should be enough.

It was enough for him.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

It’s true that nobody is perfect, but should she not expect herself to be if she’s a demigod now? Hotaru’s expectations for herself don’t have - never had - an upper limit and that’s most certainly the problem. Even when she does not impose those expectations realistically upon anyone else. Sunjata can probably tell from the way she struggles to keep eye contact that she is refraining from saying the words themselves, as if the sentiment isn’t already clear; but I’m different and I [u]should[u/] be perfect.

Her heart pulls with grief as it always does to hear how much he’d suffered as a child. Suffering that had never truly abated in the years that followed. Being pressed gently to his chest alleviates the sorrow just as it reminds her that he is here, he made it through somehow. Being reminded of his mother’s efforts drives his point home in many ways, but in others her frustration over imperfection only pulls harder in the other direction; why hadn’t his mother risked everything to try and save Sunjata from that fate?

Maybe that defies the point of softness he’s making, but this - all of this - isn’t the sort of revelation Ru can neatly complete in a single day.

Her breath leaves her sharply when he kisses her crown, arms coming to cling around his waist as his hands card gently through her hair. It melts the stress out of her body without her conscious decision as it always does. “None of you can replace me in the mom category, that’s true,” she murmurs, dredging up what remains of her humor to try and make his point stick in her own brain. “It’s still so strange to me. Being more of a mother than…anything else, really. A queen, a thief, a spy, a soldier. Power - specifically personal power - was the only currency of my world. Motherhood was never something to celebrate, just a biological function. And sometimes you were good at it, but it didn’t matter if you weren’t.” Reproduction was merely a machine meant to increase alliances or the ranks of an empire and being good at it only mattered in the smallest, most useless, and most private of ways. Hotaru’s arms tighten around him, bond reflecting the tentative yearning that she has always struggled to voice.

“But it was all I ever wanted to be.” Not that she’d ever stopped wanting to climb, but in a perfect world maybe a perfect balance between them would arise. “And now that I’m allowed to focus on that alone, I still can’t let go of this idea that I’m failing her by not being as strong as her other parents. Even when I won’t stop chasing that, it feels like the impossibility means more than what I currently can do for her.” It’s hard for her to word properly out loud, which is saying a lot considering Sunjata has usually been the one relying on the bond to make sense of what’s in his head to her. It’s hard to know I’m capable of protecting her, but not anymore than you. But…I guess being a last resort doesn’t change the fact I could, if the need arose.

Lifting her face from his chest, she looks up into his eyes with damp lashes and soft frown. “Nobody told me this kind of identity crisis would come after your kid’s already grown up.” Frankly she’d like a refund because this wasn’t the contract she signed.

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

“Exactly.” Sunjata hums as she allows some of her humor to come to the surface. He knows it won’t last. He knows it’s just a feeling to feel for the moment that isn’t her despair. And so as she explains how it’s weird for her, Sunjata can’t help but to nod, exhaling a soft sigh of agreement - because that was how Korofi was, too. One son and one daughter. Procreate for the bloodline, marry them off, die with your riches. Women did what the men said and anything else was treason.

Her arms tighten around him and he listens more, looping his own back around her as he curls into her, offering all of his love and adoration through to her when she shifts to talking through the bond. He nods, his nose brushing against her golden hair before he withdraws so that her soft frown and dual toned eyes, swimming with the dampness of her tears can meet his own steel gaze. Surprisingly soft, storm cloud-less, as he peers back at her.

“So maybe we focus on what you can do for her, rather than everything you can’t. Because it’s always gonna outweigh the things you can.” Because he’d seen it first hand. He’s seen it in himself. The entirety of his battles on Starfall were proof enough. He wasn’t extra strong against the void. His water magic did nothing special. And to top it all off, he took more damage from the void.

But still, he tried, because the things he could do were better to him than doing nothing or striving for more when he wasn’t capable of it in the first place.

But at her complaint, he slants a smile her way - crooked and gentle as some of the light returns to her. “Hey, at least you’re having your identity crisis.” He teases with a soft accented chuckle that breaks into a sigh. “That’s proof you’re doing as good of a job as you can, yeah?” He asks, tilting his head slightly as his fingers drum against her lower back.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

It’s a miracle either of them made it here, so different from the lands and lives they started from. Hotaru may still struggle with the feeling of needing power and influence to be the things that define her and her life, but at least she has the luxury of struggling. She never could have dreamed of a life so different from the one she’d known before Caido. Before Sunjata. Her love spills into the river of his own until she can’t tell up from down with her eyes closed, can’t tell whose love it is she’s feeling but for the slight difference in shape and sense. She would always rather he feel this from here instead of her darker moments - but she also knows he will never stop asking to bear them, just as she does.

His clear blue eyes and the surety of his expression only strengthens the pour of her love through the bond. How could she ever doubt him when he holds her like this? When she can feel how much he loves her like it’s sunlight moving through every atom of her body?

“Since when were you the wise one? I thought being good with words was my job,” she chides playfully, smile finally emerging in tentative shapes. His matching smile does her in immediately, and she rises on her toes to cup one hand over his cheek in order to draw him the rest of the way down to kiss him. Slow, lingering. Like he is the breath of air she needs to finish clearing her head and only drawing it straight from his lungs will suffice.

When her heels touch sand again she is reminded of where they stand in the river for all of a moment. There are no regrets for killing the void stars in swathes, but she spares a moment to be glad she’d hurt nothing else before he’d found her. “I’m not sure where to start, but maybe I’ll figure it out if I see her alone.” When she’s not at threat of dying, or being infected, or some other horror that draws people inward like magnets to her daughter’s side. “Thank you, hart koning.” Her hand falls from his cheek to lay over his chest, directly over his heart. Such is what he is to her. Appreciation colors the outpouring of love from her side of the bond, and when she smiles a second time up at him, it’s nearly up to par with her normal expression of happiness.

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

“Guess I’ve picked up a thing or two.” Sunjata hums with a fair amount of confidence, before his smile slants playfully and he squeezes her gently against him. He pauses before speaking again, because she’s leaning up and he’s meeting her halfway as she cups his cheek over the scar tissue. The kiss is slow and much needed for him as well, and he presses into it with all the echos of love and adoration through the attuned bond that he can without it feeling entirely overwhelming. “Or maybe you’ve just figured me out.” He tacks on a touch breathlessly, reaching up with a hand to tuck her golden hair back behind her ear.

HIs steel grey gaze softens as he sees the way she relaxes, with the plan in place rather than this overwhelming sense of spiraling out of control. It warms him, having the ability to help her when he can, that for once her spiraling frustrations weren’t oriented around his fuck ups, because he’s been so excruciatingly careful as of late.

Her hand falls back to his chest and he nods, dragging his knuckles gently along her jawbone. “You’re welcome, liefde.” Straightening up a little as a rustle in the trees along the shore start to grow louder, he looks over her shoulder with a hint of amusement as the water wraps around their legs under his control. “Looks like the work’s not over yet, though. We got some more river stars coming our way.” Bouncing his scarred brows at her playfully, he releases her to step over to where two river starts trundle out of the trees toward them, all purple vines for arms and eyes blinking wildly as they make their clumsy approach.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //

Hotaru

My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows

It's storybook, the way they make each other's knees weak through the slowest and tenderest of kisses instead of labored breaths and wanton hands. They're normally far too risque for a storybook audience, but times like these when she can feel his love in her bones, she thinks maybe somebody should write about them. But words could never capture this; the spark that skitters down the curve of her ear as he tucks her hair behind it, the shiver it inspires that is warmed away only by the sight of his steel-grey eyes. "Even if I have, I'll gladly spend a few more lifetimes learning any changes you decide to go through." It's a vow befitting a ceremony they haven't had yet, but she'll find even better words for that day, she's sure of it. Ones that will pay back the way he steadies and soothes her, reaching through the storm and debris to find her at the center.

When his eyes slide past her she turns over her shoulder to follow them, huffing petulantly, fingers flexing slightly against Sunjata's shirt to see the void river stars. She'd lured as many to her in the water as possible with initial plans of lighting up the entire river with electricity, but she'd maturely decided all the other life within it didn't deserve such a fate and had instead turned to manual pest control. At least this is her opportunity to leave the water - her toes are starting to go numb.

"They can't even manage to be more graceful than their predecessors? So much for evolution." Disdain drips imperiously from her lips, pulling away from the Flood to pursue until she feels the unnatural twist of water around her calves. Raising a curious brow at her fiance, she pauses. "Do you want to do the honors?"

So I find my spirit in the bottle

// i came from a broken home, so look at all my broken bones
count me in, but count me out, i know what this is about //

He loves her, and he hopes that it’s obvious in each and every fleeting, gentle touch he can offer her. It’s the least he can do after everything, just as her own love for him and adoration are the least she can do for him. So he steadies her and soothes what terrible things had wormed their way into her mind. He can try to alleviate them wherever he can, and gods he hopes that it works.

He presses a kiss to her cheek before they’re parting, a soft and slow murmur of how he’d make it up to her later, before he’s withdrawing to focus on the void river stars. Her quip of disdain sparks an accented chuckle from him as he draws some of the water from the river out, forming them into shards of jagged ice spikes. “I’d be happy to.” He says idly, aiming before launching the spikes toward the center of one of the river stars. It hits its target, black and purple ooze immediately erupting from it with the shriek of pain and upset. “And I think their evolution was just rage.” He turns back toward her with a raise of his scarred brow and that crooked, roguish smirk, before he’s focusing back on the second river star, prepping another couple of ice shards. “Wanna do this one together?”

If she says yes, he'll hold off on launching his ice spikes until she launches her own barrage.

the flood

// i'm the next, so get in line
just let me have my fucking time //