raised on the edge of the devil's backbone

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

There had been so much that happened, so much that had torn him apart and put him back together again, a shell of himself from the day or two before. He doesn’t know what day it is, disoriented by the events and LongNight’s ever growing stretch of darkness. He still hasn’t left the house, but the urge to say fuck it and fly the blackened skies on a broken but mostly healing wing as a dragon if only to ward off any enemies is so strongly settled in his head that he finds himself on the upper level of the house, on the balcony, stepped out into the cold with no shirt, wings flared to soak up as much of the chill outside as he can.

He hadn’t wanted to disturb Hotaru before he broke the news, before he broke down, so he’d left a note on the bed to meet him here. And here he had stayed, leaned against the edge of the balcony, arms in front of him, head in his hands, wings flared and drooping from where he stands lost in his head, lost in the nightmares, in Remi’s face and Ronin’s quiet betrayal.

He works at his split lip, enough that it nearly cracks open and draws blood again. So he needs to do something else with his hands, with his mouth, pulling his hands away to pull out a cigarette and lighting it swiftly, dropping the box of matches and the pack of cigarettes next to a worn notebook atop a small metal table.

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

She wakes quickly these days. Some remnant of her time in the wilderness perhaps, or the lingering fear that more time has been lost in the realm of unconsciousness that so resembles the fog of amnesia she'd suffered from. Sitting up in bed, Hotaru sighs and pushes her hands through her hair, propping elbows on folded knees. It takes a few moments of breathing - and the brush of Atlas' consciousness against hers from outside as he recognizes her awakening - for her heart to settle into a natural rhythm. When it does, her gaze lands on a note in the empty side of the bed where Sunjata (and Nate, her heart twinges) should be. Where normally he would be there with his warm, calloused hands to help ground her as she comes to awareness.

Frowning, the lightning girl grabs the paper, furrows between her brows only deepening at the message written on it. Standing, she discards it back onto the bed without further thought or care to change or prepare, legs taking her across the chilled floor and to the balcony door. What little light is cast through the door reveals drooped wings, and Hotaru steps through the door quietly, an inkling of something terrible trickling in her gut. "Jata? What's wrong?" She moves around his wing, hand immediately reaching to touch his elbow, concern apparent on her face.

HOTARU

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

He manages to light the cigarette, drawing in the smoke and letting it settle him, letting it hang from the corner of his lip when he hears the sound of her approaching. He doesn’t turn yet, not until she’s through the door and her hand touches his elbow, when he can turn to her and pull the cigarette from his lips to peer down at her and those worried eyes. It hurts, he realizes, that he’s just going to make that concern worse. It hurts that he’s going to do the same to Nate when he returns.

So he exhaled the plume over the edge of the balcony, turning so he can face her a bit more fully, wings tucking in a fraction with the motion. “You’re going to want to sit.” He manages, moving to reach for her arm even if his fingers still tremble, to sink into a chair beside the one he’s picked as his, fingers moving to slide off the box of smokes and matches to reveal the notebook sat in the middle of it, taking another drag from the cigarette before setting it in an ashtray left on the metal table. “I should have told everyone sooner than now, and that’s my mistake, but things are going to be rough for a while.” Muscles feather in his jaw as his hollow gaze lifts to meet her face. “There is a rumor going around that I brutally attacked Vai.” Evidence of the split lip is clear on his face, the bruising to his jaw from the impact.

They’re not the only wounds he bears, even if they’re the only visible ones.

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

Sitting isn't a good sign. Hotaru lets him guide her into the seat regardless, because how many times has she taken it for granted when being delivered terrible news in the past? The woman steadfastly clears her mind, lest it delightedly create a storm of increasingly horrible scenarios to choke her with before Sunjata can even get a word in edgewise. The seat is cold on her bare legs, but it's a grounding sort of chill that helps distract her as Sunjata conjures his words.

Brutally attacking someone, even if he had done it, is certainly no deal breaker to a woman like Hotaru. At times she feels unworthy of him, trying so mightily to be a better man, when she would not blink an eye to stop someone's beating heart. 'Vai' is a name unknown to her, so it does not inspire any sort of empathy or anger on her behalf to hear of their attack. Her eyes narrow instead on Sunjata's own battered face. "It seems like it's more than a rumor if they've come after you," she says calmly, betrayed only by the slight lifting of her hair as static electricity gathers around her like a cloud. "And I'm assuming by you calling it a rumor you didn't do it. Who is accusing you?" For while he may not do it himself, Hotaru is more than willing to put a stop to this person just as finally as the actual perpetrator for daring to lay a hand on her lover.

HOTARU

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

She sits, thankfully, and his wings ruffle when he sits too. The words come out of his mouth quickly, his gaze drifting away from her face as he feels the electricity rise, the thrum of his dragon shift coming alive with it. He swallows, hard, tampers it down as he focuses on the notebook and the ashtray. He doesn’t want to tell her it wasn’t just Zeph that had come for him, but the rest of his friends, too. And the horror that had come along with them. So he exhaled a slow sigh, managing to tear his gaze away from the items and back to her face.

“They left her at our doorstep. I was trying to figure out what happened, tried to clean her up. She thought I had done it.” He says, quietly. “Zeph arrived shortly after, gave me this,” he gestures weakly to his face, before continuing on, “and mentioned that half of Torchline says they saw me do it. And Zeph had found her in our home.” He reaches to grab the cigarette now, using it to steady him in whatever way he knew how. “I haven’t left since Nate left.” He murmurs quietly, knowing that Hotaru knows this, but he doesn’t know what else to say to it. Instead, he deflates again, those wings drooping and scraping along the floor beneath them.

Exhaling a plume of smoke again, this time through his nose where it curls, he focuses on the cigarette as he taps the ash off. “That’s… Not all.” His voice wavers here and he cuts himself off before he continues.

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

It's agonizing to know she'd been so close, yet so unaware of what had transpired on their doorstep. Useless yet again even after her return. Clasping her hands together to retain some sort of control lest she take the names he has given her and storm out into the darkness, Hotaru forces herself to sit and listen. Let him purge the poison verbally before it kills him.

"Magic and duplicity alike can fool the eye like that. Especially during LongNight. But this sounds like an intentional manipulation to destroy your name." It's no mild musing, because it's something Hotaru would do herself if she intended to raze someone's reputation to the ground. At least she can lend her manipulative mind to helping figure out who may be behind it, if Sunjata wishes to pursue that. It's difficult to see him so torn and degraded, and she lays her hand at his knee, forgoing her own emotional state to see to his. Minimal though it may be, she hopes it lends him the strength to continue on where his voice fails. "You can tell me, love."

HOTARU

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

She puts pieces together in such flawless ways that Sunjata is grateful that she’s here, that she can help him try to piece it together again and again, even when he knows the puzzle pieces already, just not how to find them and keep them within grasp. So he huffs a quiet inhale of breath, one that almost trembles as he nods to her. “It is.” He says quietly, unsure if it had destroyed his name, unsure what would happen if he did venture out into the dark swaths of LongNight to face the people he ruled.

He didn’t know what was smarter. But her hand is on his knee and he glances up to her again, muscles feathering in his jaw as he contemplates how to answer it when it felt all so complicated. “Ronin came by with Remi. I think… I think it was a trial of sorts.” Worse than the one he’d competed in, but at least it was far less blood. “Vai’s been like a mother to me since we met… she has been for Nate, for Remi, so many.” He pauses here, unsure for how long, to keep his tone under wraps. “And the trial was,” his voice shakes, “horrible.”

“I’m sure I know who did it, though. I have no way to prove it.” He frowns, tapping the ash off the cigarette again before taking another drag.

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

His confirmation only tightens the grim line of her lips. Despite all the questions his assurance spawns, Hotaru holds her silence. There is more to come, worse she is sure. And worse it is. These names are still just as unknown to her, but the way he avoids clarifying what happened is proof enough of the intensity of this...trial. "It was no trial, it was an ill-placed hope for revenge enacted by the smallest and most easily swayed of minds," she hisses, serpentine and hateful as her electricity crackles like splintering ice in the night. The relative anonymity of these men does nothing to bank the coals of hatred in her heart. She knows them by title and citizenship alone, and though her might will never match theirs already she knows them only as enemies. Irredeemable.

Sunjata matters more than her grudges, and she squeezes his knee encouragingly. "What did they do to you?" How badly had she failed him, by not being there to vouch for his innocence? For she could have, if these two ignorant fools had spared a single second to rub their sole brain cells against the other's. Instead she is left here, trying to hold Sunjata's pieces together, and all without Nate.

"Proof is a matter of sleight of hand, determination, and asking the right questions. All things I can help you do, if we have to be careful of your public image." For Hotaru is loyal to a fault, it is her greatest weakness, and love - to her - involves the felling of enemies that dare to stand against the object of her affections. "Who is it?"

HOTARU

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

He doesn’t agree with her there. Because Ronin was still his friend, he thinks, even if the thought of embracing his friend again felt like a trap. Remi, on the other hand, he doesn’t know if he could ever look at him again. A shame, because Nate and the Ludo demi were friends too. How long until Nate came home and Sunjata shattered that too? “They were my friends.” He whispers to her, as if afraid of letting his fears out, having no need to keep them tucked in, not around her, but it still remains.

“They… Well. I told Remi I had been here only. He didn’t believe me. Told him the only marks on me were my face, none from an attack. He didn’t… well.” Here he shakes his head, drawing into himself and drawing on the cigarette until it’s gone and he stamps it out in the ashtray, gritting his teeth. “It was a dream but I hadn’t known it at the time. I was killed in the dream.” He nearly whispers, unable to keep his hand from lifting to his throat. Killed, under the idea that magic remained under his skin that he might heal himself. But he doesn’t. Just water. Just lightning. A storm.

He pulls himself out of it when she asks who had done it, and his gaze is just as empty, just as dark, as he casts a fleeting glance to her face before he looks out over the balcony’s edge. “My father.” It was the only thing that made sense to him and even he couldn’t describe it in an unflinchingly proven way.

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

"Then their betrayal is all the worse," she vows, because she is more the type to bring him their heads than console him with gentle words. Not that she is incapable of it, edging to the lip of her chair to press their sides together. Anything to distract from the bloodlust inside her that wars with how her heart breaks, the terror that lies beneath both of them at the idea that he could have been taken from this world so easily and she wouldn't have been there at his side. "You didn't deserve their doubt, or any kind of pseudo-trial lacking any impartiality, logic, or returned faith in you. That is not friendship, it is conditional kindness. And I'm so sorry." She doesn't take his hand how she wants to, knowing he needs to be in control of them and the cigarette he fiddles with, but she longs to. This isn't her area of expertise. When they have these heart to hearts, historically they're usually halfway to drunk, and the hurts are long in the past. Failing him now is not an option though, even if Hotaru has to learn on the spot. And while she has never been a paragon of impartial justice - her brand of justice being far bloodier and more underhanded - she is also more than okay being unreasonable in her expectations where it concerns Sunjata.

At first, his answer stumps her. Automatically she wants to state the fact that his father is - if not dead by now - in another world. Swallows it down like a bitter pill, because these are the types of odds their luck prefers to draw. Her silence expands like the cosmo as she takes it in, recalling everything he'd told her that night by the fire so long ago. All the evils and sins the man had committed. "Then we can't let him get a foothold here," Hotaru murmurs instead. Head already whirling, full of the beginnings of plans and unraveling a long list of things to start on. "We hunker down until Nate returns. You have to avoid traveling alone if you can, not just because of him but because of the rumors." Her exhale warbles a little, reaching up to gently take the hand that had touched his throat. "I won't let him hurt you again. Not without a fight." And Kane has one hell of a fight coming his way if he thinks Hotaru is as unseasoned as a young, defenseless boy. She is not so easily harmed.

HOTARU

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

He remains silent, lips forming a tight line at what Hotaru says. Part of him agrees, because they had assumed he had – had come to ask him, to see what had happened, but it hadn’t been enough. Ronin had stayed, though, had remained through his anxieties and fears, had held him when he’d sobbed in the dream, had pushed back when he’d said that six year old boy with a mouth full of blackberries had deserved everything that came to him. In time, of course, because Sunjata still believes it.

The warmth of her at his side draws him out of it a fraction, that space in his mind he draws to, brought back as she says he can’t get a foothold here, and that’s where Sunjata’s frown deepens, pulling hard at the corner of his lips. “He has already.” He’s made a name for himself, a business partner it seemed, and yet? Well, he hadn’t been honest with her with the broken wing. It’s that wing that droops, that his head turns to when she tells him they need to hunker down, that Shaju won’t appear and hurt him again.

“I didn’t… Tell anyone. I told Melita just before coming up here. It wasn’t my wing getting caught in vines that had broken it.” He peers at the mess, at the apex of the wing with the claw that just recently started to bend the correct way thanks to the binding. “He broke it. He left a body for me to find in the Slagveld, pinned to the wall by his wings.” He tears his gaze away from the broken wing to the notebook back at the center, reaching for it to pull out a few of the pieces of paper. The first is the note that had been left with the body, tinged with red, scrawled in Korofi in handwriting so similar to Sunjata’s own. And following it, the flyers spread around town describing ‘not my governor’.

He slides them to her and waits, staring at the black book he'd carefully kept his notes in.

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

It is fine if he does not agree. Hotaru can hold a grudge all on her own. It is his heart that must remain pure and well-intentioned. Hers is long past saving. His burdens are her own, and she will hate them on his behalf, spare them no mercy and award them no measure of forgiveness. Instead of pushing it, she lets it fall away, sensing the storm inside his head. She won't worsen it, not with what has happened to him already.

A scowl crosses her face before she can tamp down on it. Unfortunate, then, that Sunjata had not confided in her earlier, if only to have halted this before it began. There is still more to the story though, and as he hands her the book she takes it gently, eyes scanning over what he has compiled. It's childish at best, the propaganda piece, but people are fools. Drama is more enticing than truth, and they will eat whatever they are fed if it is appropriately spiced. "Then we have to work on dismantling him in return." Snapping the book shut with a grim look, she strokes the dark cover with idle, contemplative fingers. "We work fast, we use all our possible resources. Friends, gods, magic. This is about more than just you Sunjata. If he has already killed someone just to make a message then taking him out is our duty, not just revenge." Oh, but there will be a mighty helping of that if Hotaru gets her hands on him first. "We don't have to plan it now, not if you aren't ready. But I need to know everything about what happened when he broke your wing, and we need to see if Melita can stay here more permanently for now. He doesn't know about me, which we have to use, but Nate and Melita could be targets." And for all the hatred between Melita and her niece, Hotaru will never let a child come to harm, especially one that is already family by association.

HOTARU

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

He hadn’t known it was real, not officially anyway. And it’s that thought that has him clenching his jaw, grinding his teeth together, letting the frustration bubble within him to spark outwards with the horns that spiral through his hair, with the hands that are suddenly sharp, black claws. He uses her words to ground him, though, letting his hollow gaze lift to her face as she speaks. And he realizes, so quickly, that he’d forgotten she had been a queen once upon a time.

The way she speaks of battle plans and steps to take, he’d never get there in a million years. “I… Can’t see Safrin yet.” Indeed, the starry tattoos on his arms are dim, they have stopped moving, though whether it’s because of LongNight or Nate’s confession of what occurred between the Ascended and the Attuned’s chosen goddess, Sunjata doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to find out.

He’s a coward for it, really, but he isn’t ready to face what awaits him.

“Mel’s sailing with the Ark come Flowerbirth. She won’t be here.” She’ll be safe enough, out adventuring on a boat, far away from here. As for Nate? Well, that’s a torture he’s tried to block from his mind, but he knows that she’s right about. “I had started seeing visions of him in Leafchange. And when I was accidentally drugging myself, it got worse. I didn’t realize it was him at first.” And he’d gotten too close, too shut down to do anything but follow.

He had been lost in the unknown and Shaju had shown him the way back. “He doesn’t look the same, Ru. The only thing that’s the same is his voice.”

SUNJATA

Honey, these arms that once held you are ready to fight

His anger and frustration are palpable, but she never releases his hand, even as the nails form claws. His true natures do not scare her, and instead she holds him tighter. She will see him through this storm, both tonight and the ones that will follow. This is merely the beginning, the first thrum of a war drum echoing into the silence. Sunjata may have forgotten how bloodied her hands are, but it is understandable. He makes her soft, turns her into a better woman simply by loving her, and she has had no reason to lift her blade in his presence. Now, those skills are at his disposal, and even the soft denial he presents is no real hurdle.

"You are not the only person to have made deals with gods, my love." Frey had gifted Hotaru her magical bracers after all, and even The Voice had made her presence known in some small way when Hotaru had prayed at her shrine. Not to mention all the others she knows, those she can call upon for favors, to beg for help in the simpering way she can. At least Melita is safe, out on the ocean far from Shaju's reach. One less soul to worry about sheltering.

"Everybody talks," she comforts, voice soft for all the sharpness that contrasts it in her mind. "Accents like yours stick out. I can be your eyes and ears, if you recall anything of his new form." The wolf in sheep's clothing, the ace card hidden up his sleeve. "But...it means I may not be able to stay." Hotaru's voice softens to a whisper. Though her tone never wavers. She is willing to do this for him, to separate from his side if it means securing her own anonymity, concealing her attachments to him. But so soon after reuniting...

HOTARU