Deeper Now Than Before

my held breath fills the room with blood

hurting in ways I can't describe

She doesn’t get the return letter from Sah. She is already gone. If her wings hadn’t given out halfway around the mountain range, perhaps she would have already been in Torchline by now. Just another failure. 

Her head is a mix of currents, but chief among them is the dark, yawning pull of blackness that promises depths she’d prayed never to see again. The rhythmic hush of waves as she waits for the next skyboat - or regular vessel, she doesn’t truly care - is the only thing that keeps her breathing, as if the crawl of foam across sand is pushing air into her lungs against her will. Hotaru wouldn’t be surprised if it was; this isn’t the first time she’s been disappointed by the blind dedication to survival that human bodies insist upon even when the organ devoted to its existence is withering and cracking into nothing. To inflict such pain but still demand life is a cruelty she longs to exact revenge for. 

But who is there to blame but herself? She should have intervened, shown Flora the error of her ways long before now. Not been so swept up in the ring on her finger and the euphoria of access to her son. Flora was wrong - but now she is dead. So Hotaru sits on the beach like a stray piece of sea glass, overlooked by milling travelers waiting for the same boat, her former prismatic shine muted and dulled to nothing by the endless pressure of the ocean’s disregard.

my heart bends and breaks

so many, many times

HOTARU

Sah

The lack of a return letter had only increased Sah's worry. Through teleportation and wings, the hybrid had pushed himself to the limit, trying to intercept Hotaru on her way to what could only be Torchline. He'd been scanning the coasts and watching the passing skyboats with a critical eye. But he hadn't seen Ru.

Yet, as he circles the beach along the edge of the Brizo Sea, he finally sees her. With a caw, Sah dives down on black wings. Shifting at the last minute, the Wild Thunder lands on his feet, breathless with the exertion of his nonstop search. "Ru." He hasn't seen her in far too long. The hybrid hasn't even had the chance to tell her about his change or hear about her engagement.
Sah takes in her appearance, and his heart cracks wide open. It bleeds for her loss and the icy terror left behind as he considers her state of mind. He was there for her when Enzo died. He's here now for Flora's death. Gods above, please let him be enough to keep Ru safe. He loves her. He needs her. Ru is family in ways Sah can't even put words to.

Within a few heartbeats of shifting, he's at her side. Falling to his knees in the sand, the Wild Thunder holds out an arm, hoping that Ru will take his offer and let him hug her.

I think therefore I am,
But what if all I do is bleed?

my held breath fills the room with blood

hurting in ways I can't describe

Normally, she would not be surprised by such an entrance. If the bond were not shuttered, if Sunjata was at her side to be her eyes and protection, if she still had Atlas, if if if…but she is surprised. Yet she doesn’t react with more energy than a twitch of her shoulders. Draconic deaths from above have always been a terrifying enough prospect to make such reactions second nature for any who lived in Halo, but Hotaru doesn’t have much self-preservation to spare. 

If she tries to speak his name it doesn’t show, face porcelain; perfectly painted with a magical golden veneer, but utterly frozen. Maybe the click of a tongue that tries to form a syllable, and the echo of Attunement whispering Sah. Unaware he can hear it now, though it is a gesture not unlike the instinctive rise of a hand toward a life ring. 

Her eyes track him more than her head. It’s energy she doesn’t have after her endless flight - so alike the one she’d taken the horrible night she’d fled to the Greatwood and gave birth to the twins she has now lost. As he extends his arms she creaks and topples slowly sideways. There is no dramatic crash of sound as she falls into Sah’s embrace; does a Valkyrie make any noise when it dies, like a tree felled without audience? No. They are meant to shepherd the dead, never to join them. It’s a cruel enough that her lips finally crack, and the sound of her laughter is a groan of cracking wood that the ocean and Sah’s chest hold private. As if she has any dignity left that matters to her.

my heart bends and breaks

so many, many times

HOTARU

Sah

Ru falls into his arms and Sah's other arms lops around her waist to pull her close. As her grief and pain manifest through laughter, all he can do is hold her. There's no relief that she accepts his comfort, only another stab of pain for her loss. The arm that he doesn't have around her waist reaches up and gently cups the back of her head, cradling her against the crook of his neck. Sah's eyes squeeze shut as he presses a kiss to her temple, "I know, Ru. Gods, I know. I'm so sorry." She doesn't deserve this. Not again. No parent does, but especially not one as loving as Hotaru.

When Sah had first come to Caido after his death, after Soleil and Luka's deaths, he thought they had been lost forever. Having to adjust to a new world had helped him shove his emotions down when others were around. But when all was silent in his strange, new home, the Outlander had often found himself curled up against the wall, trying not to wake his neighbors with his screams. The memories of those weeks would never leave him, as much as Sah wished. Not even the return of his pups had stopped the nightmares; it only made them rare.

Running his hand through Ru's hair, the hybrid finds words failing him. Instead, he simply lets a quiet rumble build in his chest, just as he does for his pups on their darkest days. He has no idea if it would work, but no number of empty reassurances will make things okay. It'd be disrespectful to Ru's loss and Flora's death to even attempt to do so.

I think therefore I am,
But what if all I do is bleed?

my held breath fills the room with blood

hurting in ways I can't describe

The rumble of the ocean harmonizes with the sound that rolls in Sah's chest, vibrating against her like it might somehow heal her of ills the way a cat might do for its kittens. Ironic considering the different beast it originates from, but it touches the feline soul inside her all the same. For Hotaru there has never been screaming and wailing, breaking down and building back up. There is only silence. Only cold.

She is a greedy thing with spindle fingers and grasping, wanton palms, and she swallows up all light within reach as if it might somehow chase the darkness away within herself. It never does; the world is simply left darker for her avarice. She'd held these little flames so gently this time, she'd sworn it - sheltered them in her wicker fingers, made her claws into the closest approximation a monster could make of a nest. Tried to nurture it, because it was a miracle unto itself for a woman like her to have had a hand in the creation of something so bright.

Now they are extinguished again, and there is no light to show her the way forward. Only a ring on her hand and a displaced heart beating softly beneath her bed to remind her that she cannot chase the darkness instead. Love is a noose and she hangs in it, choking and blue, incapable of reaching the relief that would have come if the world had fallen away from her feet just a little bit faster. If she hadn't tripped and slowed her descent by daring to have connections in this world. Connections like the arms around her, stubbornly holding her to the earth.

"I just need to make it there," she murmurs into his chest, vacant and hollow like an elderly woman who has forgotten where she came from or where she was going. Still there lingers the sense of knowing that that place isn't here. "I need to see - I need to be near her." Above, a dark crow circles the tangled pair, eyes beady and intelligent. A letter clasped in its claws that holds salvation if she has the mind to open it. Remi's strength and import carrying where she falters, a spark where she is rain that douses and drowns. The Flood's bride indeed.

my heart bends and breaks

so many, many times

HOTARU

Sah

Sah gently squeezes Ru closer, "Okay. We'll go." There's no chance in hell that he's letting her out of his sight. Not unless he's directly handing her into the arms of Sunjata or someone else who loves her as deeply as the Food seems to. The hybrid may have only seen them interacting a handful of times, but the depth of their bond is obvious. Otherwise, if Ru needs to go to Flora, then Sah will bring her to Flora.

Spotting the crow, the hybrid almost snarls and sends out a bolt of lightning to scare it away. The letter is its saving grace and instead, Sah gestures for the bird to land and complete its delivery. Surely nothing could be as important as the women in his arms right now, but it'd be cruel to the bird to leave it in limbo.

As the crow deposits the letter in Sah's outstretched hand, his brow furrows as he reads the name. "It's for you, Ru." He's only seen this handwriting a handful of times, but he recognizes it after a moment. "I think it's from Remi." Flora's father, his mind supplies.

I think therefore I am,
But what if all I do is bleed?

my held breath fills the room with blood

hurting in ways I can't describe

His acceptance is a balm on skin already too torn to appreciate the effort. Stitches can’t save what’s already dead. But if there is energy left in her heart - what remains of it - it coils into some approximation of gratitude for him to feel and hear in the dark cavern of what might have once been her side of the Attuned bond. Her face merely nods faintly against his skin, where rain and sweat and tears are only distinguishable by taste and temperature for how they mingle.

The bird settles on Sah’s outstretched limb and does not linger. Perhaps it senses the lightning brewing in the man’s body and does not want to take its chances. Hotaru ignores it all. Ignoring, really, is an insufficient and all too active description for an otherwise hollow and internalized passivity that consumes her.

Until Remi’s name. It stirs something - her marionette frame at the very least - that is too twisted by void to comfortably call itself hope. Her hands are water-shriveled and numb as she reaches for the note, unfolding it to read with tired eyes. There’s no energy left for relief, thrill, or godly gratitude. There’s nothing but an exhale that sounds like a death rattle, and a hiccuping inhale that catches rough on her teeth. The letter crumples in her hand and she reels unsteadily away from Sah; just enough to catch his eyes with her own, now manic and bloodshot. “Take me now. Please. Please, Sah - take me to my daughter.” And by the Thunder Bringer’s might alone it will be done, and for that she will owe him endlessly more - the silent figure in the background that always steps forward to catch her in the last second of free-fall. Thunder and lightning - no matter how far, he’ll be there in the end.

- Fin

my heart bends and breaks

so many, many times

HOTARU