HOTARU
Her wicked smile slips into a simpering, coy twist of her pretty mouth, intentionally hooding her eyes and letting her tongue peek through to wet her lower lip. "A temptress? Me? Those are some bold accusations dear," she practically breathes it, the hum of her voice the only cadence of hinted amusement. Oh, Hotaru knows exactly the kind of woman she is. Would have preyed upon her beautiful best friend in a heartbeat if she had not proven to be such a worthy equal and part of her family. The acting shatters apart with a laugh, nose scrunching up in her joy. "A better way to go out than any of the other options I'd say!" Certainly a better end than the last one they had been through, the disorientation, the destruction of loved ones before them. Hotaru does not let the emotion bleed onto her face, not here, not in the face of all this joy and gratitude. But it is a trauma she will never recover from, a wound that will never heal, having to watch her children walk calmly to their grisly deaths.
Instead she focuses on Rexanna, here. Beside her. Before her. Beneath her palm. The way she bends and molds to her Lady's will, as she had risen to fill the gaps in Hotaru in the past. Trusting in a hand with so much blood on it, knowing it will not harm her, a trust only she can offer in this wretched foreign land. Tears cannot be stopped here, with the weight of her love like the world upon her chest, squeezing all restraint from her ribcage until she is laid prone beneath it. Helpless to its fervent emotion.
When Rexanna leans in, lips pressing cool and soft to her crown, Hotaru's brow pinches with the ferocity of her love. It is the sweetest deliverance, the only brand she would ever wish. "It's in the past," she says in a quiet voice to disguise the roughness that lives there. "We can talk about it later. But there is nothing you could ever do that would tear me from your side forever." And nothing she would ever expect Rexanna to do even in her darkest, most treasonous thoughts.
They are separated by a sudden shout, a profession of love that lights up Rexanna from within in a homely, warm glow. It settles Hotaru's instinctively hiked shoulders at the intrusion. Even from word alone, Hotaru can tell that this man is of a greater breed than the ones Rexanna had put her lot in with last time.
She watches them, a content smile on her mouth as she watches them revolve around one another like planets seeking each other's orbit. They are lovely and in love, and though her own loss aches like a knife, it brings her joy to see Rexanna so settled and confident in her choice. Her hand is clutched by her sister, her introduction already given, but it swells her chest with security that she is not forgotten her in this life Rexanna has built. In the end, the Penumbra still reaches for her.
"I completely understand," she assures in echo of her sister, though her smile takes on a teasing quality and a mirthful glint comes to the eyes. "Though I'm sure your neighbors, if they are too close, may soon have it memorized." Not that she minded. Hotaru believed Rexanna deserved to be told how loved she was at the highest possible volume, and Bastien - as he swiftly and charmingly introduces himself - certainly delivered.
With a little half-bow of her own, newly woolen skirt too stiff to curtsy and too militaristic to want to do it anyway, she lifts her head back up and meets Bastien's eyes with a confident air. "Hotaru Kaito, a pleasure. My apologies for intruding, but you have a lovely home," she compliments, more rote than anything. Though she has Rexanna's welcome, Hotaru is aware this is not merely her sister's home.
it's our nature, we destroy
it's the constant of our kind
no matter the color of blood, man will always fall
