HOTARU
The expressiveness of Deimos' companion is almost laughable. Of course they were a perfect pair: the mountainous stoneman and the tempestuous unicorn. She was probably the most forthright reflection of the man's innermost thoughts, and even then her independence made her an unreliable source. It shouldn't be so deeply amusing to Hotaru, but she couldn't help but indulge in it, letting the emotion buoy her above the raging sea of convoluted emotions as she leads the unicorn around the house. She wouldn't call it a mission, what she's on. There are so few words within her grasp, just a senseless white noise of sensation, emotion, memories that haunt and strangle her. He is the beacon of light contrasting his personality, the one that guides her to harbor as she searches desperately for familiar land. He is the shore she seeks to wash herself upon, the steadiness of gravity and the cycle of the earth. For so long before his death, he had been godlike to her, even as she stood at his side as an equal. Untouchable, immovable, as eternal as the bedrock beneath her feet or the sky above her.And then she had lost him, adrift on that same sea, with no lighthouse to guide her back home. Perhaps that had been the start, the fall. The denouement of her story. Losing the only soul she could ever see herself leading with. No other had ever compared, always falling short in her esteem. For who could best the Reaper? He was as magnificent in death as he had been in life.
The sight of his broad shoulders, a form unfamiliar to her but a soul like a long lost friend, brings a noise from her throat that she can't describe. Strangled, relieved, some variation of a sob all rolled into one. She wants so badly to be strong, because he makes her feel strong. He always has. Simply being accepted at his shoulder made her feel as if the world was at her feet, where it belonged. But she is also frail from too many days of emotional reunions, and as his head rises at the sound of her voice, face turning to finally gaze upon her, she can't help the sting of her eyes even as a wobbly smile lifts to her lips.
And finally, there, harkening to her ears across the snow and space between them, his voice rolls like thunder singing out the syllables of her name. Recognition. Remembrance. Reunion. It is a familiar sound to her, a voice she has heard more than any other, perhaps more than her own family with how they had aged together side by side even when all others fell away. With a wet laugh she lets her arms drop, striding across the snow with a certainty she hasn't been able to feel since that rainy day when she had lost him. He is Icarus returned to her, and she the fervent engineer that will never again let him leave the ground without her.
Though she wants nothing more than to forcefully throw her arms around his neck, he is much too tall, and half as accepting of physicality. Instead, in her boldness and her surety of how he has always sighed and entertained her nonsense, she reaches for him with her pink-tinged fingers. Seeking anywhere to land, his shoulder, his forearm, a scruffy cheek. And though her eyes are wet, her smile is sharp, wicked, powerful. He is here, and the world is right. He is here, and they have never been more powerful than together. And that power sustains her, keeps her back straight and her knees locked.
"I found you," she declares on a misted breath, eyes bright. It is more than an explanation for her presence on his doorstep. She has found him, across death's doorstep, across realms, across lifetimes. But even still she can't help her teasing smirk, a familiar teasing rising in her breast to chase away the riot of emotion that still lives there. Relief. Joy. Loss. Security. Gratitude. "You just had to go and be just as tall and handsome here, huh? You're making me look bad Reaper," Hotaru purrs, a little wink tossed his way even as her hands refuse to leave wherever she can touch. She will drag him down to her height in time, force him into her embrace, but for now she just...stands there. Revels. Feeling the axis of her world righting itself with Deimos there before her. Lord and Lady, displaced, but reunited.
you are the sun
you heal and
you burn
