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
of all the battles I've won
