crooked the road

RExANNA

the penumbra

She prowls through the crowd, not unlike Hotaru might have done for her once upon a time. But it’s to be a surprise – because yes, she’d noticed the way her sister had been so stunned at seeing her. And she’d be damned if she let another chance slip away from the time she could spend speaking with her. So, it’s with a hint of mischief that the Penumbra sneaks up behind the Valkyrie, wrapping her arms around her sisters middle and pressing her chin against the soft space just above her shoulder.

“Soooo, you have to tell me all about what you’ve been up to, you know. I saw how snuggled up you and Sunjata were.” And last she knew, that had been a bridge long since burnt. And that was before the entirety of the Devil’s Advocates and Slagveld had occurred. So there’s a lot of history to be shared, and it’s with expectant sapphire eyes that she releases her hug on Hotaru to snag her hands with a gentle squeeze and an easy smile to let her respond.

don't get cut on my edges

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

There's a darkness down inside me
That I know we'll both enjoy

There is little reason to fear in a crowd like this, and even the initial jolt of surprise as arms wrap around her waist fades the moment Rexanna’s chin perches upon her shoulder, scent and sound and the peripheral view of dark hair all so familiar and safe that her body relaxes before her conscious mind can catch up. Her smile is immediate and intense, arms coming to lay over Rex’s and squeeze tight, tilting her temple against the Penumbra’s so their cheeks brush and the other woman’s voice hums through every centimeter of skin Hotaru can spare to press against her with.

“There’s been so much, you know me. I’ll steal you for the remainder of the night if I tell you everything.” Grinning like a fox, she spins readily and finds Rexann’s reaching hands with blind surety. A harmony that death could never silence or distort. Ru allows herself to stare for a moment, committing her sister’s face to memory anew. She could never have truly forgotten but the edges had gone soft and fuzzy in ways that had stretched the hurt of her loss ever more over the years.

She dips in to kiss both of her cheeks, relishing in the warmth and aliveness of her other half. “I’ve missed you Rex,” she whispers, allowing an otherwise far too great level of vulnerability to show, safe in the paradoxical privacy granted by a gathering this large. “We should sit, there’s so many cabanas and too little appreciation for them.” And it will allow her to sit all the closer - which she does the moment she whisks them away to settle on the cushioned bench of an empty cabana. Legs thrown girlishly over Rexanna’s, one hand curling in dark hair and the other anchored to her sister’s.

“We figured ourselves out only recently it feels,” she says of Sunjata after a brief but wincing recounting of the ugly middle. But hasn’t it been a year at least? More? Time has passed funnily after the war, and even more strangely since her reunion with the Flood and the Family’s arrival. “But I’d do anything - change and grow in any way - to make sure we don’t lose each other again. It was so much pain, Rex. So much that could’ve been avoided if I’d just...well, I don’t know if I could have, given what happened. Yet I still wish it hadn’t - even if regrets only hold us back.” Her hand tightens around the Penumbra’s pale, delicate fingers. She’d broached the topic more freely than she ever has with anyone else - the deal struck that had involved a child, the weight of Safrin haunting all three of them, her own late return and feelings of being too little too late - because she knows her sister will understand in ways nobody else could possibly could. Especially regarding Hotaru’s feelings about children. But that makes the rebuilt bridges all the more meaningful given the width of the gap they’d had to cross. Willingly. Together.

“It’s made me more hesitant than I’ve ever been about…proposing anything related to children.” Her heterochromatic eyes peek, uncharacteristically timid, from behind windswept strands of gold. Searching for the support of sisterhood that she has never truly managed to replace since Rexanna’s died.

and it's screaming from within me
to have us set it free

RExANNA

the penumbra

Her arms squeeze her sister’s middle when she feels the jolt of surprise, loosening only when she feels Hotaru relax into her touch, her chin perched on her shoulder in a gentle hug as she listens. “Well luckily for you, I’ve talked to pretty much everyone so far.” So, consider herself stolen for the night. As such, she loosens when she feels her begin to turn, her smile pearlescent as she beams it at the Valkyrie, letting her commit it to memory, to fix the fuzzy lines of her own memory.

A chimed laugh that’s so reminiscent in Kiada’s own laughter, trickles out of her with the press of Hotaru’s lips to her cheeks, settling as she nods to the plan. “I’ve missed you too, Ru. And all the less than savory things we used to get into.” Her brows lift playfully, before she’s conceding her hand into Hotaru’s, to be dragged wherever her sister deems suitable.

Finding the cushioned bench of the empty cabana, she settles into it with her arm resting against the back of it as her sisters legs prop up over hers, dropping her arm to rest against her blonde sister’s shoulders as her other hand squeezes hers and she listens, the faint smile still tugged on her face. “So what I’m hearing is that he finally chose you?” She asks with a bounce of her dark brows, tilting her head to rest against the back of the bench so that she can give her sister all of the attention she deserves.

“I think regrets are just lessons learned. So if you both have those regrets, you know what not to do in the future, right? And it sounds like it’s working out?” She tears her gaze from her to scan the crowd for the scarred, tattooed, and impossibly tall demigod as he speaks and hugs Vai in a way that seems far more mother-son than she’d been anticipating.

So she turns her attention back to her sister, her smile softer now as she squeezes her hand. “You’ll never know if you don’t ask. Maybe he wants them but he’s too worried to ask you about them, given what you’ve gone through.” She hums softly, shrugging a shoulder. “It was kind of similar with Bastien. He’d known.. About Kiada and Kianzo, Rein..” The rest of them that were too tough to name. “So he was worried about asking, but, given that we couldn’t have kids as Ascended if it was something we wanted to happen we had to talk about it.” And the Voice had helped them, with little Azrael.

don't get cut on my edges

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

There's a darkness down inside me
That I know we'll both enjoy

Ru will never stop seeing ghosts when she sees either Rexanna or Kiada - affected as she'd been by being so near at hand to Kiada when she'd died - but each similarity is a callback to beloved memories and cherished family, and even the twinge that at times comes with those can't outshine the love that perseveres.

"Others can call it unsavory, it never was to us," she huffs dramatically, that same grief dissipating like mist in sunlight as Rexanna's existence alone brings Hotaru's smile back to center stage.

It scarcely leaves once it's back on her lips, though it dims through the hardest parts. It heals something deep in her heart when the first words out of her sister's lips validate her, heedless of Hotaru's hand in the mess. A kind of intentionally blind loyalty that Hotaru doubts she'll ever find again. "About time, right?" It's all she can manage to say without making herself cry or some other such embarrassing reaction to Rexanna's support.

Her eyes follow Rexanna's to Sunjata and Vai, always aware of where he is even in a crowd. Ru's smile softens, blatantly lovesick in the privacy of their cabana. "Very much so. More than I could've dreamed." Even in the halcyon days with both Sunjata and Nate at her side. Now, the reality of their shared happiness is shaped by realistic expectations, and it is all the sweeter for the hurt it had taken to get there.

The Valkyrie's hand tightens around the Penumbra's at the names of lost children, the pain a shared song that has always harmonized between them. Maybe that's why the advice lands so much stronger when it comes. Because Rexanna knows. Had lived this tipping point herself, with a man as good as Bastien at her side - just as Sunjata is at Hotaru's.

"So you're telling me to do what has already worked in the past, and actually talk to him? You'd think I could've figured that out on my own," she laughs wryly, amazed by her own stupidity sometimes. But isn't that what sisters are for? Thunking you on the forehead and setting you straight? Hotaru reaches out to curl Rexanna's hair idly around her free fingers, deep in thought. They have more time than she'd ever thought they would, even if it's only a single night. There's no need to rush.

"Maybe it is time to try again. Just like he and I did." She'd been scared then, too. Just as she's scared now. Burned and twisted by the loss of Enzo and Ru'in and others she can't bear to name. But if she'd found the strength to jump, to brave the waters once more for the chance of happiness with Sunjata, then maybe she can do it again with motherhood.

Tugging on Rex's hair, Ru's eyes clear and focus on her sister's blues as she grins. "You've done enough fixing in a single breath, let's talk about something more fun. Can you fuck in Mort's halls? Is it weird if you can?" Hotaru spends the end of these twilight hours they've been given with her sister, cackling and smirking, and by the end even the goodbyes feel a little easier. A piece of her was given back tonight, and she feels more like herself than before Rexanna had stepped through the veil.

She has a fiance to find.

- Fin

and it's screaming from within me
to have us set it free