what's the difference between broken love and prison?

SUNJATA

The bar is still in relative disarray, but at the very least it’s functional now. Seats have been brought in to replace that which had been destroyed, same with the tables. But it had been slow, a sort of… Slow opening because people still definitely need a place to stay, and who is he to deny that despite trying to clean up the shattered glass that’s literally everywhere. It drives him insane, the amount of damage that Phoebe’s done, and yet he’s still finding more and more and more.

A huff of a sigh leaves him, standing on a small step stool, lifting himself a bit higher to brush away glass along the top that he’s certain Pim had a hand in. The gashes and electricity marks within the table top of the bar and along the sides are proof enough. It’s destruction, but it’s manageable. He can make it work, the place hadn’t burned down, things were okay. And that was good enough for him. He’d been able to remain close to the Guild, staying in it every night with the other man that’d caused the end of the marriage in the first place.

As for proof of it, well, bites litter along his wrists and along his neck – not worth hiding them at this point. The bar is slow enough as is, and he frankly just doesn’t care anymore. He’s too focused on repairing what he can, fixing what he can like the Temple, and moving on.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

Slowly, as each positive experience steadies her heartbeat when crossing the threshold, Hotaru becomes used to entering the VlamVloed without feeling sick. No matter her reluctance to run into Sunjata she will not let his mere presence run her out of an entire establishment. It is a personal decision more than anything. What does it say about her to be hiding, cowardly and trembling at the mere idea of coming face to face with him? So she slides through the door, not letting it open too wide lest she blind whatever patrons may be collected inside. The sun is still fierce and unrelenting and yet again she is here to hide away from them.

Progress is slow. In the time since her...questionable meeting with Sunjata, she had taken to exploring more. Resettling herself in her skin, remembering her power and poise, making new acquaintances and collecting secrets as she always has. Finding a support system that will hold her in her crumbling states, refusing to rely on a handful of people any longer. Though the time may come for her to turn the blade against their spines, for the moment they are friends. People to go to, speak with, give her platonic love to. Since Sunjata, it seems to be overflowing. Desperately searching for someone to return the sentiment, to give her more than the barest crumbs of lustfulness in return before shattering her entirely.

She has not found that person yet. A part of her suspects she never will.

Her pace slows dramatically as she slips from her thoughts back to the present, eyes catching on destruction and debris that was certainly not normally there. Behind the bar is the man she has been avoiding, and the dagger at her hip - wrapped in the finest tanned leather hilt she could make - burns like a hot coal of self-betrayal. But she knows that Sunjata would never do this to the bar, and she steps delicately to the bar, reluctant to touch anything just yet. "What the hell happened?" For the word choice it's spoken relatively softly, brow rising in surprise the more she looks around.

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

SUNJATA

He’s gotten used to the questions of what happened – the half answers he can give them, the understanding that it’ll take time but things would go back into their normal rhythm eventually. But what he doesn’t expect, as he’s brushing the glass away into a bin, is to hear her voice. He’d departed her on the bone bridge, after giving her a gift – a dagger, that at the time he’d so desperately hoped she’d plunge into his heart, end his suffering. And now? Now he doesn’t know where that leaves them.

He looks down into the bin he holds in his hand, doesn’t turn to look at her just yet, not as he grabs the brush he’d used and tosses it into the bin with the rest of it, stepping down from the step stool he’d perched on and slips his gloves off to toss it onto the side of the bin. But he does turn to her, to let tired yet lighter steel eyes seek out her bi-toned. “She wrecked it.” He offers quietly, a small shrug as he splays his hands along the ruined top of the bar.

“Bit by an Ascended for a checkup, feeling rebounded between the rings, and she and Pim came and destroyed the place.” A tilt of his head, the sleeveless shirt sticking to him with the heat, but it hides nothing and none of the rest of the Ascended bites that litter his flesh. She’ll know what he’s been up to. She knows his coping. He knows that it should come as no surprise should she look down to see the hands splayed along the table, ringless and just as they’d once been.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

The bar is empty, and the meeting feels so much more poignant with the absence of life. Oppressive walls no matter how empty the space between them. Feeling as if her entire world is narrowing yet again to nothing but Sunjata. Watching him pause, watching every ripple of muscle and tendon in the back of his neck as he gazes down into the bucket he's holding, the cut of the shirt that she analyzes in some distant part of her mind not taken in by his mere presence. Though tempting she doesn't reach up to slap her own cheeks. Time away has made his presence less intoxicating, a dull ebb of regret and stifled care instead.

Their eyes meet, and she doesn't react until he is done speaking, methodically pulling off his gloves and leans against his hands on the bar. She can't help the desire to step forward and swing herself onto the bar, to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss each set of bite marks on display as if they will somehow make them hers. It makes her take a soft, shaky breath. Pathetic. As if any comfort remains in those arms. Wanting them wrapped around her will not fix anything in her life, even if it happened.

Sniffing, she tilts her head away from him, staring down the length of the bar. "I'm surprised she expected any other outcome. Even a marriage of pettiness couldn't stop her delusions I suppose." Because Hotaru is frankly a bitch with a sharp tongue, and she doesn't care about Phoebe's feelings. Pretends she doesn't care about Sunjata's either. "Did she call it quits?" The prime question after all. What had happened after? Though her gaze flicks down to one of the bites on display. "Seems your health checkup turned into more of a body checkup though. Are you at least feeling better?" There is no energy in her to be jealous or envious. He had moved on from her once already, what was one more time?

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

SUNJATA

He can feel her eyes on him as though they’re dragging claws deeper and deeper in, but he can’t find it in him to give her the reaction he has before. He knows he’s fucked up, he knows that even if he wanted to go back to her, he can’t. He’d missed his chance, tossed it away as though it hadn’t ever mattered, regardless if it had meant the world to him once upon a time. He’d squandered and broken it up, chewed her up and spat her back out by not listening to her, by thinking he needed to help.

He was done with it. And so he remains impassive, watching her as she looks around the bar, a hum of a chuckle leaving his throat at it. “No. But rumor has it I apparently broke her. So, I got that on my record.” His voice is rough, but there’s some sort of amusement within it, none of the guilt or caring after this. He’s too content, smug with the outcome. And it brings him out of his thoughts enough to grab a glass (one of the few) and pour her a glass of whiskey he’d stashed away in the reserves.

“Actually, I did. After she bitched and moaned about how terrible I was to her when she was doing everything for me. How I tried to get her to take it out on me but she took it out here instead because it was ‘the only thing I cared about’.” A rise and fall of tattooed shoulders, lips curling in a small smirk to that. But it fades as he hasn’t expected her to ask how he’s feeling, and he looks around the bar with some hint of nostalgia. “I’m alright. Spent some time in Torchline with Ronin and Remi, been training with Maea, staying at the Advocates.” He’s been doing too much, but he won’t admit it here. “Doctor got kicked out of his house for what we did though so I get more frequent checkups.” He offers as though it’s nonchalant, even though it was far more eye opening than he’d expected it to be.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

The apathy in his face grates, but not in the way she expected. It doesn't matter to her as much anymore how he reacts to her. She just wants him to react at all. Because despite all of this, damn her to hell, she still cares. Wants him to rebuild from the earth he has salted and razed to nothing. Still believes he deserves more than he'll ever ask for himself. Her companion is no longer there, a bond left half-tethered with snapped threads cast into the wind, but she can hear Alice's voice nonetheless. Soft heart not bad. Den mother can still protect. Her hellhound had always known the right thing to say. Here and now she wishes Alice was still alive, so she could lean on that simplistic wisdom and know the right thing to say. Something more powerful and meaningful than the words that haven't gotten through to Sunjata after all these tries.

"I'd wager to say she deserves to be broken for all she's done," she concedes cruelly, finally moving forward to sit in one of the chairs at the bar off to his side. Not ready to face him directly, to be close enough to...well, anything. It's like staring down a whirlpool, knowing you can only get so close before it sucks you down, but morbidly wanting to see the epicenter all the same.

Most of the names mean nothing to her. Maea she knows, but she has never met Remi or Ronin. His Doctor is similarly unnamed. She longs for that jealousy that she still can't feel, because then at least she'd feel something. Not this numbness, this acceptance. And she knows in her heart she'd foolishly give him another chance if only he would try. But isn't that exactly what Phoebe had asked for? Hotaru can't stand any comparison between the two of them. Can't bear to be the one that hurts him this time. "You seem lighter," she says softly, acquiescing. Traces her fingers along the bar and, with a bit of her magic a small cloth spins into existence. She uses it to clear the dust of moved debris away, if only to give herself something to do with her hands. "In the end you proved Phoebe wrong. Do you regret it, what it took to get there?" Morbid curiosity really. Would he do it again for the reward of having broken her? Would he choose to forsake Hotaru again for a chance at revenge?

Can he even tell what she's really asking? Or has she built up this idea of him in her head, someone who knows her beyond her facade but is just as easily fooled?

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

SUNJATA

Hotaru’s concession is met with a deep rumble of a chuckle to that. “Mmm, I could certainly drink to that.” An honest answer. He doesn’t care anymore. Any of it, she’d wrought it upon herself. He’s over it now, done and done. It’s the end of it all, end of putting himself out there for those that aren’t worth it, that don’t care. And now all he wants to do is explore, to not settle down and focus his time in Torchline, in opening more of the lands around them they can’t otherwise get to.

A subtle way of moving on.

His gaze finally meets her face once more as he continues to lean against the bar and she nears. He doesn’t want to do the whole second chance with her. Because he knows what he’s done, there’s no way to repay it. Fun for a night maybe, but nothing more. He can’t ask her for her forgiveness when there’s too much to forgive. He’s made his amends, destroyed a bit of it in the process, fixed what was wrong… And yet, it wasn’t enough. It’d never be enough in the end.

She tells him that he seems lighter, and he nods his head to her with a softer hint of a smile crossing his face. “Best I’ve felt in months.” He rumbles, lifting a hand to wave it in some sort of gesture of ‘before all of this’. But his eyes find hers as she cleans up a bit of dust from the bar. But the question she poises to him causes a smirk to cross along his face. “Mmm had I known, I would’ve done it sooner.” A shrug to that. “But it wasn’t my intention to get you in the crosshairs.” A bit more of an honest answer.

“So. If I had the chance to redo any of it, I wouldn’t have started it in the first place. Different roads can lead to the same destination, after all.” He lifts his chin somewhat to look for her bi-toned gaze for her response to that. He can’t fix the past, can’t move on from it, can’t do anything other than perhaps slowly earn her trust back one small piece at a time.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

Hotaru drops her gaze after they meet and hold, spinning the cloth beneath her fingers as she tries to reign in her reaction. Because this is a goodbye, a parting of ways, and at last she recognizes that. Wonders if maybe she's just late to that realization, if he'd been trying to tell her that when he'd gifted her the dagger. A consolation prize for all he has put her through, a way of buying her out of continuing to be present in his life.

His response is just further confirmation, and instead of responding she merely gives a soft hum of acknowledgement. They've had this fight already, there's...there's nothing more to say.

He lifts his gaze to find hers, but he won't. She continues to stare down at the top of the bar, idly fiddling with the cloth. It doesn't necessarily hurt, but there's an emptiness that aches. A white flag, a realization that there's no use in fighting further. When they had last met she had thought maybe...

But she was wrong.

Standing, she fixes a random crease in her skirt and lifts her gaze at last to Sunjata as she stares at him quietly for a moment. Memorizing, perhaps. "Then that's it, I suppose. Lesson learned, and baggage dropped." A twitch of her shoulders in pale imitation of a shrug. Hotaru is just tired. He feels so far away now, despite being within arm's reach. Moving on not just from the hell he'd been in, but from her as well. As if she had ever earned the right to remain by his side, as a friend or anything more. She delicately folds the cloth out of lack of something to do with her hands, and leaves it on the bar. Perhaps he will use it to polish after the cleaning is done, considering the quality. It's easier to focus on that than what's really happening inside her head.

Hotaru straightens regally, remembering better days and tilting her chin higher. She can almost feel her mother's hands helping her do it, whispering in her ear that she can't keep chasing what doesn't want to be caught. "I sincerely hope you find what makes you happy. You deserve that, at least. Even after everything." Something she will stand by ever since the night she said it, curled in his arms and praying he would hear her. Hoping he would value himself for once in his life. But whatever was between them, she can't keep clinging to. Even if she wants to so badly that her nails reflexively dig into her palms hard enough to draw blood, to stop herself from reaching out and touching him one last time. Unsure if she'd have the strength to step away if she gave in. There's a million things she can say now; goodbye, be well, find me if you need me. I love you. None of them settle right on her tongue, so she mutely nods her head and turns away from the wreckage. Unsure if she means the bar or the man behind it.

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

SUNJATA

She doesn’t meet his gaze, and instead he lets his own drop to the hand that fiddles with the cloth she’d created – hands that held the spark of electricity within them, that held him in them once too. And she stands, his gaze lifting to meet hers once more as she studies him. The look she gives him is one he takes as disinterest – but that can’t be true, can it? She’s here after all. She hasn’t left yet, hasn’t used the dagger to try and destroy him in the end, has she?

He lifts his chin somewhat, looking to her with a quiet nod to her initial response – watching as she straightens and it feels as it had before. Opponents on a line, prepared to fight or claw their way around. But it doesn’t have to be this way, doesn’t have to end this way. And when she speaks next, all he can hear is an end and it grinds on him because there’s so much he wants to say. It almost feels like there’s bitten back pieces of her words, things hidden beneath the lining.

He wouldn’t put it past her to do it.

“Hotaru, wait.” He says, because for him it seems like she’s disappearing again, saying her goodbyes. “I would have done it again, but differently.” A pause, stormy gaze searching for hers. “Because you were right, and… It took me awhile to realize it.” His head tilts as he considers her. “I want to be happy, but I don’t know what would at this point. Everyone and everything feels like it’s a noose, tying me down. But I never had that with you.” An exhale, letting the conversation settle a small amount before he paves on.

“And before on the Bone Bridge, I wanted to tell you all of that. But you were so hurt because of what I did, and I didn’t want to add to that with a confession of something I was too stupid and weak to fix at the time.” There’s honesty sparking through his silver stormy gaze – akin to the lightning at her fingertips. “There’s nothing I can do that will ever be deserving enough or fix what I’ve done to you. I fucked up, and I’m living with those mistakes. But please don’t leave thinking that I don’t care. Because we both know I do.”

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

Admittedly, she doesn't expect him to stop her. To call her back.

What reason does he have for it after all? In her mind, this is over. Nothing but ashes and dust, settled on the bar floor and waiting to be spread to the ether by the passing of other people. People he may actually care for. Or not. Is it even her business anymore?

When he does, she hesitates. Part of her stubbornly wants to continue leaving, to let him try out his little speech on the slam of the bar door. What more is there to be said? She doesn't turn around as he begins to speak, listening and contemplating whether or not it's worth it before she finally spins around to face him. The implication that he will let her leave now that he has said what he wanted is enough to mollify the immediate desire to tear into him, but it leaves her empty-handed in terms of response.

It comes eventually because of course it does. When has Hotaru ever truly been speechless? Never for very long, and certainly not over the likes of what he has just said. "You're the one who determines what is and is not a noose. You may care, fine. But what does that amount to Sunjata?" Instead of being biting it's a genuine question. She folds her arms below her breasts and stares at him, still standing behind the bar and with a safer distance between them. Far less temptation to grab him, to either kiss or punch him. "If you want a friend or even a friend with benefits, fine. Find me whenever your plentiful crowd isn't available to get on their knees for you. Find me when you want to talk about things you won't tell them." Things she already knows. Things she doubts he will ever tell anyone for quite some time considering his multitude of issues. It's astounding he'd told her at all, though perhaps he'd been pressured into it by her revealing her own past. Hotaru wouldn't put it past him with how easily manipulated he has proven to be in the past.

"I'll fuck whoever I want as plentifully as I desire. If that's what you want, that's where it ends. Because you and I? We view love - actual love - very differently. You know my history. Can you look me in my face and tell me that you won't be just like them? Offering more to appease me and never delivering?" The crack of her voice is like a whip, anger wavering under her tone like a roiling sea, but her composure is a thick wall of ice above it. Keeping it contained for now. Giving herself this one last chance to say it all because she doubts after this he will want her to stay. If she'll want to stay in the first place. "Commitment is a dagger to your neck. And you can offer me as much sex and friendship as your body could handle, but you could never love me. And I certainly won't twist your damn arm to get some fake version of it like your monstrous ex-wife, because I will not hang my own worth on what crumbs of care you will give me." She throws the word back in his face. He can care all he wants, but so long as he remains indecisive, Hotaru will not give it any worth or weight. "You confuse care with platonic affection, and if that's what you want then tell me straight. But don't try and lie to my face like you do all the other insipid creatures that profess their love to you, don't lead me on and think I won't realize what game you're playing." Her eyes are twin fires that threaten violence if he doesn't consider what he'll say in response. Because Hotaru cares for him, far more deeply than she ever expected or wanted to fall. Isn't that how all her other loves started? He knows all about them, she can't hide her history from him in this moment. But she won't be crippled with the same killing blow, not when she has had so many previous injuries to learn from.

"This?" She releases her arms to gesture between them. "This is not love. This is potential, and nothing more. So tell me your terms so that I can move the fuck on." It will take time. It will hurt. She doesn't want to admit how badly she wants him to pick her, to be different from the others he has fucked around with. Hotaru is no fool though, and knows that such things will never happen. Not with him.

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

SUNJATA

“Am I?” He begins to say as she tells him that he’s the one that determines his fate. Because as it stands right now, everyone’s had a hand in it, everyone’s forced him one way or another. And the only time he never felt as though he had choices and decisions to make that went against himself was when he was with her. However open or hidden it had been, it had always been free, as though she helped preen the wings that helped him soar, the wings that were his first tattoos, the wings that had become real with the help of the herald to the god of life.

And here he is, causing more problems than it originally could be. Never the right time, never the right moment – too complicated or too confused on destroying what bit of a round two of his life he’d gotten. But he listens to her, watches the stance of her arms folding across her chest as though she’s shutting him out. Her words are barbs, daggers that he can feel sink into him with every breath he takes, pointed tips shooting and piercing deeper until he’s unsure if he can breathe anymore.

Especially when she compares him to Them. Thranduil. Ashamin. His lip feathers slightly as he shakes his head. “I would like to think that you know me better than that.” Accent thick, he lets his steel meet her duo toned gaze, muscle clenching in his jaw. “I would never do to you what Thranduil did, what Ashamin did. I’d always find my way back, never blame it on you.” He tries to explain, feeling as though it might fall on deaf ears. “But there’s never been a game with you. It was decided when it started, when the possibility that Lusea could walk through that door – that things would change. And she didn’t, and I clung to you Hotaru, because you know me. You helped me. You’ve done so much for me that I don’t deserve. That’s what I’m trying to get at.” He shakes his head once more, backing up somewhat away from the bar to put some distance between them.

But his gaze tries to seek out her own, tries to find that common ground of nights sitting by the fire, drinking whiskey among quiet conversations, her in his lap and his arms wrapped tightly around hers until he can’t stay awake anymore. Of the electricity she could course through his veins in both a confirmation and acceptance of him and not what he could be or become. A shiver runs down his spine.

And all the words he wants to say crash upon him like a wave, breaking and soaking him through when he notices that he’s fucking scared. He doesn’t think he’s been this scared since Lusea had disappeared again. Not since she’d died the first time. Not since he’d watched those he cares about perish in such terrible ways, so many times once before. “Move on, Ru. You deserve so much more than someone like me.” He finally says, voice rough and hoarse and shuddering, gaze flickering.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

There is so much in the space between them. Words, memories, experiences that will not die even if she walks away now. And though she demands of him an answer, a set of terms, she already knows the answer. Isn't that how she got into this in the first place? Knowing him far too well. Seeing beyond his playboy grin and sharp wit that is so similar to her own it had been like looking in a mirror from the moment they'd met.

"I do know you," she admits with a softness that is as much apology as he'll get. But he knows her as well, surely must know her own fears that lead her to comparing him to Ashamin and Thranduil in the first place. As much as it hurts to hear, she is listening. "You already know how I feel about what you do and don't deserve." There's no point in rehashing that entire argument, not when he can't see her point of view. "We all have issues we need to work on. I'm not expecting you to be perfect, I never will. But right now..." Hotaru isn't even sure how to finish that sentence. Right now they simply cannot make each other happy in the way they both deserve.

As he searches for her gaze he will find it, fire tempered into a smolder of certainty that helps keep her afloat as she senses where this is taking them. His final words are the death knell, and she respects him enough to hold his gaze even when his flickers away beneath a weight she knows all too keenly. Sighing softly she lowers her arms and walks back towards him, leaning across the bar and pressing her palm against his jaw to hold him in place and press a gentle kiss to his cheek. A farewell akin to the one she'd given him before his sham of a wedding, but cutting away the intimacy the previous one had held. "I won't wait for you to figure out that love is not something that always hurts. But if the time ever comes...I think I'll be the judge of what I do and don't deserve. Especially who." She taps her hand against his cheek, just as she has done so many times in the past. And with a smile she turns and walks away. Not a goodbye, but an 'until next time'.

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

SUNJATA

A soft apology, he receives, in the form of her admission. And he shivers beneath it to hear it, a sharp exhale leaving his lips. “I know.” A quiet admission, an end to that conversation. Because she could parade it around, shout it from the rooftops, and Sunjata would shrink into nothing, disappear into the air in embodied navy feathers to simply pretend that nobody thinks he does. He’s not worth it, not worth any of it.

Still, he can’t help but to focus on her as she trails off, unable to finish the sentence. Issues, absolutely, they both have them – his being his commitment, his fear of giving in and getting taken advantage of yet again. Because he’d done it too many times, gotten burned too many times, and for a man born and raised in the heat with the water beneath his palms, at the edge of his boots, drowning and drowning and drowning – perhaps all he wants to do is fly, avoid the heat and the suffocation that’s brought on from being below the surface, to rise.

Maybe he’d be a better man.

He searches her gaze and he finds her approaching, and he doesn’t stop her – doesn’t move away, doesn’t lean into the touch that she places to his jaw despite the amount his body wants to cry out and give into her. He’s stronger than that, he thinks at least, to refuse to continue their shot they had despite how difficult she makes it when she touches him that way, when her lips meet his cheek. He closes his eyes to that – far more intimate in a different way than the stunt at the wedding had been.

This one hurt far more.

There’s a weak smile granted Hotaru’s way at her comment, nodding despite the absence of her hand at his cheek, the tap given. He doesn't know if there ever will be a time, a point where he might deserve it or deserve the Valkyrie. But he does know that the door is still somewhat open, perhaps if he ever finds it in him to change... To learn to fear less and dive in regardless of the risk of getting burned. “Goodbye Hotaru.”

- FIN

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea