danger to myself

SuNJATA

the flood

At least he knew how to find her, and while for the most part he’d been doing fine – blowing things up with Deimos on his better days, hiding himself away with the alcohol on his worse days, today had been… One of those worse worse days. And instead of doing like he did before, when he’d met Jigano for the first time, contemplating the Bone Bridge, he abandons it for someone with a far more level head than he does to deal with it.

To place the burden that is himself on someone else, someone he trusts well enough to handle it.

He makes it to her door, bags beneath his eyes, cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, steel eyes focusing on the door knob of the door as he debates if it’s a good enough reason to come and bother her or if he should just wait out the night with another bottle alone at the bar. But no, no. He’d made it this far, and he inhales deeply, exhaling a puff of smoke before discarding the cigarette and knocking on her door.

At least based off of his appearance at the open Forum, she might find that his appearance is par for the course. At least she could learn the reason why – why he’d almost forgotten if it hadn’t been for her.

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

Evening descends slower now that spring is here, giving her increasing daylight hours to work. But it does come eventually, sky darkening as she closes up shop. Hotaru is a little surprised by how much she enjoys this little shop of hers, but it gives her purpose and creativity she has never had before. Cassandra is out for the night, and though she will always worry when she isn't in eyesight she knows her daughter will be home and passed out sideways in her bed by early morning. She's contemplating heading there herself when the knock comes.

It's certainly no customer, which means it's someone who knows her. Comforted by this notion, she pulls on her cardigan from where it was resting draped over her shoulders while she read, and stands to venture towards the door. Opening it she's greeted with Sunjata, with darkened eyes and the smell of cigarette smoke lingering despite him snubbing it out. It feels like their roles have reversed, though something tells her this is no business meeting. Or pleasure, for that matter. "Sunjata," she says softly, concealing her slight surprise. Hotaru had known he was going downhill, knew for sure when she'd dragged him out of bed for the forum. But she is surprised that he has sought her out of all people. Moving aside immediately she gestures for him to enter. "What brings you here?" Closing the door she guides him back towards the living area of the shop, the one she had built herself. There's a small fireplace in the sitting room that is directly attached to the shop, and she settles back in her seat once more. Leaving him free to choose to sit beside her or across from her in the chair that remains empty. She wants to tease, to say he looks terrible, but she knows the darkness that haunts his gaze. Knows it's not something he needs to hear, that he's aware of how far he has fallen. And yet still. He has come to her. And she's secretly glad that he has.

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}

SuNJATA

the flood

Perhaps there’s a part of him that wishes she doesn’t answer, to not place this burden onto her, of the news and knowledge he has of why he’s slid so far down a slope he’d carefully crafted up over years and years, to have it ripped from him again. But there’s that other part, that finds relief as soon as he can hear the door click, hear it slide open, to let his shadowed silver eyes scan over her shorter form as she greets him. “Hotaru.”  He replies back, flatly, a quiet nod given. No teases, no tricks, no humor beneath the words. Just flat.

She moves aside and beckons him to enter, and he does, running off of autopilot at this point – though his steel gaze does drift around the room she guides him into, waiting to respond to her inquiry until the words can accurately form on his tongue. He’s said it so much it seems like, and yet not enough. Not enough for people close to him to get the picture. Phoebe knows, Loren knows, Melita doesn’t yet and he’s not sure how to break the news to the small fiery haired girl. He’s not sure how to break the news to himself again and again either, but it remains on his mind.

She sits, and he takes the seat opposite of her, shedding his jacket and settling in, elbows resting on his knees as he reaches up with a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t bother you, I’m sorry.” He says at first, getting it out of the way as he still has the strength to do it. As the words still form on his tongue, while he’s bold enough to be able to say it without his deep voice cracking over the statement.

“She’s gone.” He says at first, realizing again it’s not quite enough information, like when he’d told Loren. Everyone knew she was gone, she was missing, but this was different. “Lusea's dead. Again.” Perhaps the again won’t make much sense, he can’t remember with the fog of his mind, if he’d told her of his lover resurrected from the dead, only to be taken so swift, so quickly once more.

His eyes lift to focus on her, his hand dropping to the space between his legs, wringing his wrists. He doesn’t know what else to say, what else he can say before his voice grows far throatier, heavier, deeper with the emotions roiling through him. How it should have been him so she could live a second life.

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

Waiting him out is easy. If there's one thing Hotaru seems to have a knack for, it's bringing stoic men into her life. Not that her kids were any better, reticent and reluctant to come to her for help as they had been. But it makes it easier to patiently wait for his response, though it doesn't come until they're both seated. She hums softly and waves away his apology, sensing the cracks that are widening in him. "It's not a bother, you're always welcome here." Perhaps a bit bold of her to say, but it's the truth. She's fond of him, in a weird way. He is welcome in her home, whether it be to discuss business or to lean on her shoulder.

It seems tonight is the latter. The words are dragged out of him painfully, and at first she's confused - the name is unfamiliar, she had never learned it - but Hotaru is a bright woman and it clicks soon enough. His flame. Sputtered out and removed from this world. Hotaru leans forward from where she sits, rests a gentle hand on top of his to stop him from wringing his wrists. Her eyes are soft and understanding. "Would a drink help you talk about this? Or would you prefer to stay sober?" She doesn't say she's sorry, because it wouldn't matter. It doesn't help the agony of the wound, and she knows it firsthand. What she can do is offer him a new question, a choice, let him regain some control of his life in baby steps. Surely he has thought about this matter enough, but giving him time while she fetches the alcohol is the least she can do.

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}

SuNJATA

the flood

There’s an edge in the back of his mind that seems to say ’for now’ as she tells him he’s always welcome. Welcome for now, until he becomes too much, too overbearing, a flood to be snuffed out before it’s too late for those around him, close to him. But he nods anyway, passing it by as he announces his news, the information, why he looked like shit and had forgotten the Forum.

His eyes remain on her as she reaches her hand out, covering his as his gaze drops to her hand on his, small and pale in comparison to the calloused large hands he has. And when he looks back up at her, he can see a shadowed reflection of what he’s going through, his he clenching ever so slightly at her question. He’s basically been perpetually drunk the last few weeks, and when he wasn’t, things were rough, hard, terrible.

He doesn’t want to be that way, not with her, Peter’s words slinking in the back of his mind that it’s okay to let the sharpened mask fall, the edges of thorns. And so he does, giving her a nod and her hand a brief squeeze. “A drink if you want to get anything out of me.” He responds, the ghost of a smile for his flat terrible humor in the face of it.

It’s easier when he’s buzzed, when he’s drunk, to talk about it and not feel it so deeply. It’s easier when he doesn’t have to remember the first time she’d died and he’d done the same thing in a new land, a new place where nobody knew his name if he didn’t tell them his last name. Where nobody knew the Senzaok that had gotten the Flame of Korofi killed. Twice.

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

She nods to his request. She isn't his doctor, his kin, and she will not tell him what he can and cannot do with his own body from a pedestal that doesn't exist. Whether she agrees with it or not, it is his choice in the end, even if it's a habit she knows endangers him. But she also knows what grief can do to a person, what it has done to her. A drinking problem is the least of your worries in that moment.

She rises quietly to grab a glass and one of her bottles, kept away from Cassandra's eyes and fumbling hands. Returning, she sets it on the table and kneels on the other side instead of returning to her seat. Feeling she will need the closeness. And when the drink has been poured, she speaks. "Tell me about her. Your flame." Drawing the poison from the wound, a painful but necessary act.

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}

SuNJATA

the flood

She leaves to get the glasses and the bottle, and he mulls over the thoughts that race through his head. He doesn’t know where to start when it comes to her question, when it comes to Lusea, to talk about her, and he grabs the glass and takes a deep sip, gritting his teeth against the burn that slides down his throat. He contemplates further, sighing quietly, before his head tilts toward hers, eyes shadowed further as he recounts it.

“She was the daughter of the rebellion in Korofi.” He rumbles at first. “Fierce and fiery, a healer too. I met her after I started boxing and I got knocked out. She stitched up the wound on my side, still have the scar from it.” A nostalgic smile crosses his face at that as he contemplates drinking more.

“First thing she told me was that she didn’t trust me.”

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

Though manners would dictate she pour him another glass, she leaves him to his devices, to determine how much he needs and when. She doesn't partake herself - something in her resonates on a level she has never questioned, telling her she'll need her sobriety for this. That it won't just be him sharing tonight. Alcohol has never been her crutch of choice.

Leaning her elbows on the table, chin propped on one palm, she listens intently as he tells her about Lusea. Its stilted, partial information, but it's a start. Painting the outline of a girl whose complete picture she will only fully view from the lens of Sunjata's mind. It's truly a tragedy, and she regrets not having met her sooner, thinks perhaps they could have been good friends in another life. A wry smile pulls at her lips as his voice fades. "Already I can tell she was a great woman if that was her judgment of you." It's not necessarily a tease. More of a straightforward compliment to Lusea wherever she is. "What did she look like?" Together they will honor her memory, informal and imperfect but sincere on both sides. Theu will draw out the good things, the beautiful, raw things. Not just the unfairness of her untimely death. Lusea was more than her demise. Hotaru intends to remind Sunjata of this in this moment where he's too mired in her death to see beyond it yet.

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}

SuNJATA

the flood

Talking about her, it helps. It makes him miss her in ways he can’t accurately describe, but he doesn’t need to. Instead, he can focus on what she was like, the shit they’d gone through together, the life they had lived when she was around. And it was beautiful, really, in the end. Just too bad they couldn’t finish what they’d started. And telling Hotaru was easier still, because she didn’t really know anything about him, anything about Korofi or the rebellion, didn’t know Lusea or what she looked like, the sound to her voice, the strength she had.

And he can tell her that, at least.

He sips from the glass, trying to take it slow and finding it easier as she rests her elbows on the table, steel eyes drifting over her as she remarks to Lusea’s first words, and his smile grows a bit broader – still sorrowful, still sad, but something akin to nostalgia and amusement that still manages to break through the cracks. “Well, I wasn’t exactly like this when I met her.” He says, gesturing to himself.

But the question of what she looked like catches him a bit off guard, not knowing he’d have to explain that, not knowing if he had enough words to describe how he had viewed her. But he could try, if for nothing else, but for her. To keep the imagery going, to give the faceless woman a face for the bi-colored one he’s shared a bed with. “She was taller than you.” He begins, smile edging toward a smirk. “Beautiful bronze skin, dark eyes like flint. I’d always tell her that her eyes were the ones to spark the fires.” He pauses, head tilting up to look along the flames of the fire, as if he could see her there. “Long dark hair. A rather soft face unless you were on the receiving end of her bite, which I tried not to be, most of the time.” A soft snort before he looks back to Hotaru and drinks the rest of the glass, pausing before pouring half of another one. “It was hard to get her to trust anything, but her father was the leader of the rebellion my father was trying to snuff. I don’t blame her for not trusting me, not with the name and lineage I have. I had to prove myself to her, to all of them, to prove I wasn’t a spy despite the best attempts my father had at making me appear like one.” Not what she looked like, per say, but you could see it in the way she held herself high. A posture that only came from such a thought process, that he's sure Hotaru can understand.

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

His smile may still have shadows of grief lingering in the corners, but seeing it alone is a quiet indication that she is doing the right thing. Hotaru's gift is in knowing people - the necessary base to be able to manipulate them later. But grief is a tricky thing, with wires and strings and pitfalls that are never the same from person to person. All she can do is keep him company, give him her sincerest attention, and try to help him weather the storm at his side. So that perhaps he won't feel so alone facing the storm at the helm.

"I'm sure you were enough the same," she states with a wry grin. And then silence once more, listening to the profoundly poetic way he speaks of a woman who has passed beyond his reach. Helping to remind him of an image that unfortunately, over time and with age and recollection failing, may become muddled and vague. Even she can only recall certain features of her two beloveds. It is an unfair loss, but the grief is similarly blurred and faded with time, and so it's an equivalent exchange.

When his words find a pause she lifts her voice once more, guiding and leading, more of a passive partner to his memories than an active participant in this conversation. Something she intends and does not begrudge him for. "Did she let you join the rebellion eventually?" More out of curiosity than anything. Wondering about the impact she'd had on his life, how deep the wound of her loss now runs. "How long did you know her before you came here?"

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}

SuNJATA

the flood

The first time she’d died, he’d become closed off to the thought of her, the idea of her. Closed off to the things he did in Korofi, especially upon entering Caido. But things were different now – there were people here that knew her, knew he was with her, in a way that he couldn’t escape from like before. And when they asked, well, he couldn’t just pretend it was a secret, because at the end of the day he’d want the truth of who she was out there. She could be brash, stubborn, fiery, and sometimes it didn’t quite mesh with others. He’d rather have that lovely side of her shown, the one that could’ve conquered the world.

Still, he snorts when she gives him a wry grin, mentioning that he was enough the same, and he shakes his head slightly with it as well. He wasn’t, though. He had been similar in some ways, sure, but she had changed so much about him – the rebellion, the makeshift family, the atonement for his sins of being born on the wrong side of the line, with a name that struck anger and fear in so many. And he had become a product of it, needing to prove himself otherwise, and it had taken time.

Time of which, Hotaru asks next. He gives her a small nod, eyes drifting back toward the glass in his hand as he recalls the events that lead up to it. “It took me a few months to win her over, and it wasn’t until her father gave me a shot that she started to pay attention.” A subtle way of her trust in her father, that if he thought that Sunjata was okay, that he probably was. “The Senzaok house had strict rules for their families, most of all being the only marks on your body should be the scars of your battle. Never tattoos, never anything else, no piercings, nothing. And first thing I did after getting the option of helping with the resistance under Lusea’s father’s watch, I went and got the wing tattoos. I think that's when she realized.” A slight nostalgic memory, but it doesn’t bring a smile to his face. It inflicts a small amount more sorrow.

“The compasses were added later, those specifically for Lusea. But the wings were, are, mine.” The freedom of being away from his tyrant of a father. “I think I started getting close to her when I was twenty, took about five months after joining the resistance before it all happened. And we were together until I was twenty three, when we were captured and she was killed the first time.” He feels like he’s rambling, but… It felt good to explain it all, to not expect to be coddled, but understood. “Then I spent about three years in self-exile from Korofi, in the neighboring country called Dorobo.” Another brief pause, taking a deep drink from the glass before he focuses on her again. “And then I ended up here last… Longheat I think it was. Lusea came back early Deepfrost.” It had been too short of a time, honestly.

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

Automatically her eyes flicker to the ink that is barely visible to her between the shadows of the firelight and the concealment of his collar. An interesting rule, though she can understand the controlling force of it even if it's frankly ridiculous to her. That he had rejected such notions and come out better - rebellious, triumphant in his found happiness - fits with the strong personality she knows him to currently have. Things may change swiftly and unfairly, but from her side of the table, much has remained the same.

Silence settles comfortably once more, and she lets it linger a little longer this time as she soaks in every nuanced word. "People I've found here, people who are like family to me, I have watched die in previous world's as well." In no way does she intends to make it about her, or to reveal Deimos' secret. But it's important to her point. "I can't say if rebirth will be a pattern for her, if she'll be reformed and given a third chance away from here. And nothing I say can do anything to take away that pain of not knowing and not being by her side if she does, and I won't try. It will ebb and flow as time goes on." Fingertips trace the grain of the table, circling whorls and lines as she gazes at him. "Anyone who tells you otherwise is frankly an idiot. Time heals all things, but the pace will differ for each person. And you carry her physically in your tattoos, and in your love and your memories." Spoken with a frank honesty that smooths over the normal romantic notions some of the phrases may have once had.

"She sounds like an amazing woman. And amazing things are not easily forgotten or relinquished." Her eyes tighten, mouth thinning with the grief she carries herself. "So if the bottle helps, or talking helps...I can't say I know everything or that I will be the perfect comfort for you. I have lost my beloved, my children, and the pain gets easier but it never goes away. But we can share in that misery when you need." Heterochromic eyes lift to find the steel across the table. Gives a wry grin that speaks of many years of loss, and of finding a way forward no matter the count. "But I'll also be here to kick your ass when it's called for. As she would have wanted." Tough love that Lusea probably would have been even tougher about. But he is more than her friend, if that were not reason enough to force him to get his shit together after moments of weakness. He's her partner of sorts in the Advocates, and the silver bracelet still hangs on her wrist.

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}

SuNJATA

the flood

There’s so much more of his history to be said, but he’s terrible at explaining it and it’s a wonder he’s fully made it this far. But she was easy to talk to, simply just let him talk, offering small motivators, small acknowledgements that she understood, that she listened, that she wanted him to feel his feelings deeply, and to not try to just get over it. It was a small mercy, one he didn’t know he needed. But he lets the silence drift on, waiting until she speaks again, and he listens to the comforting lilt of her voice.

It manages to spark a small smile at her first set of words. “I didn’t think it was possible.” He offers quietly, though it was likely she hadn’t thought so either when it occurred. And my, how things had changed since then. Still, he focuses on the glass in front of him, taking a slightly deeper drink before setting it along the table as he leans forward with his arms braced on his thighs, steel eyes finding the floor when she speaks next, before they lift to meet her bi-toned eyes. “It’s.. Worse I think this time. That I wasn’t there. At least the first time I had tried to do something to save her.” Absentmindedly, he reaches up to run a hand along the scar on his neck, the one that Hotaru had pressed against so many nights ago to roll him over.

But she’s right – everyone takes a different amount of time, that it shifts and changes depending. And where he had been successful before, it had reopened, and there wasn’t a way of healing it perfectly the same. The scars were still there, building up again and again. Perhaps that’s why it hurt so deeply this time as opposed to the last. There wasn’t anything to take his rage out on. There wasn’t his father holding the bloody knife, laughing as he rushed to her. There weren’t the guards that held him back, granting that scar. There weren’t the healers nearby to heal the wound so he, too, didn’t bleed out beside her as much as he had wanted to.

“That they are not.” He rumbles in agreement, a half ghost of a smile crossing his lips. It fades as soon as she responds, telling him she’d lost her own loved ones, children too, something of which he’d never wanted because of his tyrant of a father, but he imagines the pain is just as strong. He recalls the surprise and subsequent sadness he’d felt when Phoebe had told him they’d almost had a child – but to have it happen then versus a grown, breathing child? It had to have been worse. Much worse.

He spies her wry grin, though it’s not reciprocated on his face until she comments that she’ll kick his ass. “I believe it.” He acknowledges, reaching for the glass again and shakes his head slightly. “Do you want to tell me about them?” He asks her, of her beloved, her children, her reign. “I also heard about your Queenhood.” He rumbles with a conspirator glint to his eye.

love will save you, but it won't save me

BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3

HOTARU

A small shrug of her shoulder is all she can offer him. "It's comforting, in a way. To know there are so many worlds out there, so many chances given. I lost someone, and he was dead for years, only for me to run into him here. Maybe there's a period of rest, I don't know." Lusea potentially among them someday. Deimos had been gone and mourned for many seasons before the fall of Helovia, and yet he had appeared in Caido early on in The Voice's reign. Was it a restful pause in life? Deimos for all his worries and weights upon his mighty shoulders seemed so much brighter and happier to her now. Maybe that will be Lusea's fate. Nevertheless, it's one that Sunjata cannot control. "It may feel worse to not have been there, to fight alongside her or protect her. But you have to think that she probably didn't want you to see it either, to hurt you so much deeper with her loss by having to witness it a second time." An assumption of Lusea's character, but one she thinks is accurate enough to forgive such a slight on her memory. If there was love between them, then Hotaru knows there is always the desire to not cause harm or distress to your beloved. The idea of Thranduil or Ashamin having to watch her life slip away is unbearable, and would only make her own last moments so much worse. To pass peacefully of old age, comforted by loving words and soft touches, is not at all the same as struggling to stay in the realm of the living if only to stop the agony of a soulmate.

The quiet settles around the pair of them like a thick wool blanket, broken only by the crackling of the logs in the fireplace and the soft sound of Hotaru's fingertips against the table. When he speaks, when he asks, she pauses. Every movement stilled, only the pulse in her neck quickening any sign of life as her breathing stutters. A thousand memories all pushing for attention in her mind's eye, grasping for control of her eternally grieving heart at the mere notion of opening up. Exhaling softly, she stares at the fire in the hearth. Had Sunjata not done the same? Opened up more than she had even really asked, bared his scars and let her examine them for the sake of healing? A weak laugh is all she can summon in the moment after, focusing temporarily on his teasing. "A riveting tale that glorifies my reign, I hope." Sitting back on her hip she leans her back against the couch, hands falling to her lap beneath the table where he can't see her white knuckles and trembling hands. When was the last time she spoke of her family? Her lost loves? She had only spoken of Ru'in, after learning of his death. Only to Kiada and Deimos, who had known him as well. But she has not told anyone else in all her travels, and maybe it's time.

"I only ever loved two people in my life. Ashamin was the first. A quiet, introspective man, who...treated me with a softness I'd never felt, scarcely deserved." Her eyes soften, almost sorrowful, still believing that she does not deserve it even now. Less so, actually, with all she has done that he would have disapproved of. For all he'd hurt her, their parting - their relationship - had been the sweetest. Even now she recalls him fondly beyond the bitterness of his betrayal. "He had loved women before, had children with them - including someone like a sister to me - but he never stayed. I should have known he would only do the same to me. But he saw something beautiful in me past the harshness of being a ruler, of simply being me. I was weak to his words, to his tenderness. I had never been loved, never spoken to with such sincerity, and I craved it so desperately. And he was willing to give it, for a while. In time, we had twins - Ru'in and Romina." Her voice breaks painfully on the names, and she lifts a hand to cover her mouth, to conceal the tremble of her lips even as her face fights to remain impassive. Unaffected. He can judge her however he likes for the uncharacteristic weakness, she has heard it all before. But he asked for her story, and she will deliver it, no matter the snags and falters. "They were not my first. I bore a lovely daughter from a chance meeting, a fling of sorts, by the name of Arya. She bled out in my arms, only to realize she was cursed with immortality. It was difficult for her, and she disappeared to adventure long before the twins came along. And once they did, were barely walking on their own, Ashamin simply...left. It hurt, I can't deny that. He did not even tell me he was leaving, one day I woke up and he was simply gone." It had taken time for her to realize that he was gone, that she was not simply missing him in the grand expanse of the Aurora Basin's sprawling lands. The realization had been a dagger to her heart, left her bleeding out slow and continuous over many days and nights. "But I moved on. I loved our children, and even in his absence they were the greatest gifts he could have given me. For all my manipulative ways, all my victories and the cruelty of the downfalls I orchestrated...they were the good. They were my outlet to pour all my love into. I would have moved mountains for them, given up everything I achieved in my years if it meant they knew that nobody else in the world would ever love them as much as I did." A warm smile draws across her face, staring sightlessly upon faces that Sunjata cannot see. Ones that had nestled close at her side in the evenings, that had beamed up at her in early morning light and that followed her less-than-subtly wherever she explored. Ru'in and his pensive, straight-faced expression, his hulking frame that she and Romina would lean into at night. Her eldest son, who she had always known would someday grown to be a magnificent man. If only he had been given the chance.

She can't bring herself to speak of their deaths yet. So instead she refocuses. "The second was Thranduil. A thorn in my side from the very start, far too much like me. At first we were bitter rivals, enemies keeping each other closer than friends, more than willing to fuck the other over for our own gain. Over time and after I became Queen, things changed, though they remained imperfect. I was deeply in love, and he was...less so. Reluctant to ever say the words due to past trauma, and tearing me down for being too vulnerable or daring to allude that I loved him at all." At the time she had taken it as a challenge, forcing herself to toughen up, to remind herself that Thranduil was not Ashamin. That she could not count on soft words and tender compliments. Perhaps she had tried so hard to get away from memories of Ashamin that she had swung to the entirely opposite side of the spectrum into lust-fueled cruelty that only draped itself deceivingly in the guise of love. "But I was blind, and eager for the equal he saw in me. He saved me from being tortured, mocked me for my weakness, and yet he freed me. In the end we left together, lef the land entirely. I decided to forsake my crown and start a family with him, and we had two more twins - Cassandra and Galahad." And at last she comes to the pinnacle, the loss of everything she has ever held dear, the spiral she fell into before she was finally spat out here like some sort of consolation prize for her madness.

"I returned to birth them where all my other children had been born. Looking back now, I almost wish I hadn't. In our land, a God from another realm had appeared, slowly infecting our land and destabilizing our regions. And in one moment, one day, everything went to hell. He killed our patron Gods, and those who rose up against him, he simply...slaughtered. No more than a thought, and they were gone. Torn to pieces." Her voice goes frighteningly dead, because if she lets the emotion run free she will not be able to make it through this story. "Many fell in the first wave, in the confusion, as they tried to stop him. And...and one of them was my son. Ru'in." Dropping her head into her hands, she runs her fingers over her face and then through her hair to console herself. Eyes the bottle on the table longingly, wishes for the numbness she could temporarily earn if she simply reaches out. Her hands remain still. "He and his twin had always been inseparable. And even knowing her fate, she simply walked straight into her own death, to join him. Nothing I did could stop her, could bring them back, and I had to watch them both be murdered right in front of me." Does he understand now? That she knows that Lusea would not have wanted him to witness that? When she had been in that place, in those shoes, and nearly broke completely because of it?

"I tried to go to them. I tried to fight, to die with them, to avenge them as their mother. As a mother should. Thranduil refused to let me, forced me through the portal the foreign God had opened with Cassandra and Galahad. And I knew I needed to be there for them, to be the mother they needed, but in that moment...in that moment I couldn't bear the idea of a life without all of them there." A sorrowful, regretful admission. Something she is ashamed of, that she had considered placing her head upon the butcher's block if only to reunite with her children in the afterlife. "But when we went through the portal...I didn't make it with them to the other side." Oh, and hearing Cassandra say that, even in the vaguest terms, had shattered what remained of her heart. That Cassandra had thought for even a moment that Hotaru had ripped away at the last moment in favor of death, or that she had abandoned them when Cassandra was barely old enough to say more than 'mama'. "I don't know how it happened, what caused it. But I traveled unwillingly through multiple realms, worlds, whatever you want to call them. I was mad for a while, and I admit to doing terrible, terrible things in that haze of grief. But over time I had to realize there was nowhere to go but forward, and hope that in another world I'd find them again." Hotaru isn't ashamed of being a killer, but it feels wrong to admit it to Sunjata, who had so resisted his father's ways.

"I was more than blessed to arrive here. To find Rexanna, Kiada, and Deimos. And, recently...my youngest daughter. Cassandra." Love practically pours from her, not erasing the grief of the memories but blanketing it with a purity of emotion that is nearly blinding. Only to wobble, break on a sigh, and she lifts her gaze to Sunjata's steel gaze at last. "But I learned that Ru'in had arrived here before me. That he died during LongNight, because nobody would let him in. Because his speech was too different, too foreign...and I wasn't here for him. I wasn't here to protect him either, to say my goodbyes, or even to reunite with him. So when you tell me about Lusea, and how you wished to be with her..." she trails off, a kinship lighting in her eyes, flinty and stolid. Surviving despite all of it. "You don't know how much I understand that feeling."

I am a breathtaking mosaic
of all the battles I've won

_{Table Code by Sky!}