Flowing over sorrow days

Hotaru

I know they'll be coming to find me soon
But I fear I'm getting used to being held by you

It’s by the grace of timing alone that her letter precedes her, if only because she had needed to tell Sunjata and unearth her warmer clothes before departing. She flies through the journey with hardly any time spent to rest, empowered by Frey’s strength.

It’s been a long time since she’s seen Noah. Longer still since visiting his homestead, but there’s no inch of Halo she hasn’t carved into her bones. No potential for losing her way. She is accompanied the entire flight with the restless wondering of why he needs her, what could have possibly happened for him to also need her and not someone else. The Valkyrie isn’t exactly known for being comforting, though Noah would be one of the few privy to it.

She lands on the walkway already half-shifted so the weight of her boots striking snow will alert Noah in the spare few seconds it takes for her to advance upon the door and try the handle. Knocking is a pleasantry unfit for situations that end in letters that only say ‘I need you’. Whether it is unlocked or not doesn’t matter, her voice is already rising to call for him at the same time. “Noah?”

I used to sing about being free
Oh, baby, look what you've done to me

your scars shine like dark stars
your wounds are where the light shines through

Despite time and separation, there is little that the Forsaken would not share and give to the Valkyrie. From the time they met to the time they led and even fled there had been a connection between them that was undeniable. Some puzzle pieces with hardened edges that despite all of their differences and all of their histories somehow just fit together with no effort. 

His whole world had shifted, and she needed to know. There was a grief in his heart that he knew she understood, and he couldn’t write it in a letter and she couldn’t know secondhand. 

Already ready with a hot kettle when she arrived, her sudden slip into the attuned bond made him lift his eyes from the counter before he heard her feet hit the permafrost. The door opened with ease and Noah felt the air leave his lungs as she stepped through the doorway, his name leaving her voice in the same tones it did the first time they reunited after their dethroning. ”Hotaru—“ He moved around the counter as his glacier eyes lifted to hers, the sorrow apparent and strong ”—she’s gone.”

And there are no other words that need to explain the meaning of the sentence as the raw, unadulterated roar of loss and pain surge over the bond.

the forsaken

let's go there, to that place where
we sing these broken prayers, where the light shines through

Hotaru

I know they'll be coming to find me soon
But I fear I'm getting used to being held by you

His presence in the bond is a cloaked thing, but it’s enough to know he’s where she’d hoped to find him. There’s nowhere she wouldn’t scour to find him, but the lodge assures her that whatever awaits within, it isn’t a battle to be won or an injury to mend. At least not the physical sort. But that leaves so much worse to fill the imagination, and it carries her hard and fast through his doorway.

Whatever she was thinking disappears from her head as their eyes meet and she takes in his haggard and crumpled expression. She doesn’t bother to take off her coat and boots as she normally would, hardly remembering to close the door and doing so with a thoughtless kick of her heel. The slam of it is a whisper compared to the volume in which she hears her name off his tongue.

His soul rises to meet hers, and his grief is so familiar it tastes like her own as her heart rises painfully into the back of her throat. It’s a crushing, overwhelming force that has old wounds flaring into fresh hurt sympathetically. But she doesn’t throttle the connection or close it off, not even for self-preservation. She pushes through it as surely as she crosses the distance between them, uncertain if her boots even touch the floor.

“Noah.” A guttural repetition that feels more meaningful than the empty platitudes he will hear from everyone from today and evermore. She’d grown sick of them, hated to hear apologies and sympathies from people who could never understand. She won’t subject him to such inadequacies, not from her.

Her arms come to wrap around him in an embrace that cradles in a configuration their normal hugs don’t take. She holds tight enough to crush - or maybe just hard enough to keep the pieces together. There had been no love lost between Cordelia and Hotaru, but she’s here for Noah. This life-altering loss is one she knows well and it is entirely at his disposal. Empathy, companionship, and exactly zero expectations. She can’t take the hurt from him, but she can sit beside him and weather it at his side.

I used to sing about being free
Oh, baby, look what you've done to me

your scars shine like dark stars
your wounds are where the light shines through

Noah stood frozen for a moment, his eyes tracing the delicate curve of her outstretched arms as they reached toward him. The space between them felt vast, like the stillness of the world before a storm, until she crashed into him with all of the force of the love - as unique as it was - shared betweenn them. 

He had not realized how much he needed her until she was there, the weight of her presence filling the room, grounding him in a way nothing else could. Now, in this fragile moment, her offer of comfort felt like a lifeline, something he wasn’t sure he could grasp until it was already in his hands.

Her warmth reached him before her body did, and his breath caught in his chest as she neared, the bond between them pulling tight as it had so many times before, that invisible thread that had always kept them tethered, even when miles or years stretched between them. This time, it felt different—he didn’t just need her proximity; he needed her to fill the space left behind by a loss so vast it threatened to swallow him whole.

This was deeper than their fingers lacing together as they raced through the streets of Snowcloak with a dragon attacking the palace and ascended descending on them.

Only his name passed between them as she closed the distance, and it nearly brought him to his knees. In the rawness of the moment, there was nothing left to say. His hands hung limp at his sides for a moment before they moved, tingling as the numbness warmed, to meet her embrace. Her arms folding around him held the weight of so many years of understanding of all the things they could never say aloud.

Her touch was a balm, soothing the jagged edges of the grief that had settled deep in his bones. It was the kind of comfort he had never sought, never even allowed himself to consider. The fragility of it was almost more than he could bear. His chest tightened, and for the first time in what felt like ages, he let go. He allowed himself to sink into her, to feel the steady rhythm of her heartbeat against his own. The attuned bond between them flared — gratitude for her presence as he stood before her, drowning, that he couldn’t to vocalize — that she had no need to question.

A long, shuddering breath escaped his lips, and he spoke. His voice was a rasp, broken with the weight of unshed tears. ”Thank you." For coming. For casting away your own opinion. For everything.

the forsaken

let's go there, to that place where
we sing these broken prayers, where the light shines through

Hotaru

I know they'll be coming to find me soon
But I fear I'm getting used to being held by you

Though she is a woman of slight build, if he needs her to fill this aching void he will find the might of her soul more than enough. She can’t carry his burdens on her shoulders or in her arms, but her heart is more than valiant enough to buoy it from his own for a time. Even if she can’t fix a wound like this with magic, sympathies, or might, she can give him this respite which will someday weave its way into the tapestry of time which will be the only thing to truly mend this pain.

It’s a miracle either of them remains on their feet. The snow falls silent outside his window pane; she watches it with lined eyes and a somber expression, the glint of his golden hair a faint blur in the corner of her vision where she holds him. His voice when it comes is muffled against her, but they’re words he never need say. One of her hands comes to hold tight at the back of his neck, squeezing firmly.

“Always,” she murmurs. He does not call upon her lightly, and she would never ignore it for that very reason. Still motionless aside from the painful grip with which they hold one another, the Valkyrie inhales slowly and blinks the sting of his grief from her own eyes. She can’t let herself fall too deep into the familiar echoes of his loss or she’ll never be able to lead him out of it. “Have you eaten?” This she can do, and he will come to realize its importance in time, once he has reason to care for himself and his body again. Until then she will see it done while she is here, for both Noah and his children. Tend to their bodies while they are consumed with tending to their hurting souls.

I used to sing about being free
Oh, baby, look what you've done to me

your scars shine like dark stars
your wounds are where the light shines through

Noah didn’t move at first. Her presence filled the room like the slow rise of dawn—quiet, steady, impossible to ignore. He hadn’t realized how hollow the silence had become until Hotaru stepped into it, and suddenly the ache inside him had shape.

She didn’t try to fix it. She never did. That was what he trusted most about her. But she was here to care for him in the ways that only she was able to — not Sah, not Deimos — no one else but her. Because even through all the pain that Caido put others through, there had always been some connection between the Forsaken and the Valkyrie and Noah knew it from their first meeting and felt it sink deep into his chest when their fingers laced together as they ran through the streets of Snowcloak and he commanded her to flee.

The space between them felt thinner than breath, but he couldn’t stay there. She asked if he had eaten, and he admitted, ”No, I can’t remember when I did last.” He finally took a step back and moved to sit at the counter that faced the makeshift kitchen, because he knew that was his place. He did not dare take away the action behind Hotaru’s question, didn’t dare brush off her offer. Didn’t dare do anything but sit in the vulnerability of why he had called her here.

The grief lived in him like a second spine—unbending, sharp-edged—Cordelia’s name still lingered behind every thought, every heartbeat, every unfinished sentence he couldn’t speak aloud, yet it bashed and hammered across the attuned bond. Despite having no love for the fallen One-Shot, Hotaru stood there anyway. It was more than enough.

His breath hitched as the weight of everything he carried pressed against the steady, grounding comfort of her presence. She didn’t ask for answers. Didn’t demand he be okay. And in that stillness, the thread that had always tethered them pulled taut—familiar, enduring, unspoken.

“I don’t know how to keep going,” he murmured.

But he had to, and Hotaru helped. They talked for hours, through the night and well into the afternoon, trying to piece together what his life would look like now.

FIN

the forsaken

let's go there, to that place where
we sing these broken prayers, where the light shines through