HOTARU
As Kiada pulls away, their eyes meet. There is a raw, endless agony shared between their gazes. Broken glass from the same stained window. A connection, an understanding, that Hotaru had never wanted to share with her niece. Especially not so deep of one, so harrowing a loss. But while her own loss is an agony that will never fade - a mother's love so much deeper in some ways than a partner's - she is much older than Kiada. Perhaps not physically any longer, but Hotaru remembers the years she has lived as if they were lived in this skin. She had lost so much more than Kiada, and she knows how to cope, how to live even when the appeal of joining all those she has lost in death is nearly too much to bear. "The world is cruel in its unfairness," she says instead, voice worn and ragged. They had lost him twice and were expected to move on each time as if their entire world had not been shifted. Displaced. Broken. The only thing that matters now to the Valkyrie is helping her niece through this agony as much as she can. She's not so foolish as to expect her presence or her words to do anything miraculous, but as the old adage says, misery loves company. Grief is easier to bear when there are multiple shoulders at hand to lift it, and Hotaru will take as much of that weight as she can to lighten the load for Kiada.
There is nothing for her to say as Kiada chokes out her own love confession, one that should not have been uttered to Hotaru's ears. It should have been for Ru'in to hear, to rejoice in, and not the mother he left behind. Instead, she tightens her grip on Kiada, grief overflowing. "I wish you didn't have to know this pain," she whispers, voice choked. Hotaru had lost her lovers thrice over, it was a pain she knew well. But it never stopped hurting. The loss was just as grievous as every time before. Their lineages were cursed with the fatal flaw of love and loss. Rexanna and Hotaru both should never have become mothers if only to spare their daughters the fate of walking in the steps of their bearers.
"I have asked myself that every day that I've lived and they didn't," she admits, breath quickening with the desire to cry but tamping down on the tears that sting like fire in the backs of her eyes. She can still see Romina walking steadfast and fearless to her death, unable to live in a world without her twin. See Ru'in being destroyed without a single thought, barely more than a flex of power from the false god that had taken her entire world away. "But it's a question that will haunt you forever if you let it. The truth is that it wasn't us. And we have to live a life that would make them proud, make them happy." It was all that kept her going some days. Knowing her children, her parents, her lovers, would want to see her fight and win and find happiness again. She lived for them more than herself these days.
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
