home to your arms

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

The cold greets her like a familiar friend, biting color into her cheeks as snow flurries catch in her long golden hair. Even Atlas seems at home here, this place where he was found, where their souls were irrevocably bound. With all that has transpired since her consciousness returned to her it is akin to submerging fully beneath warm waters. Tranquil, welcoming, muting the rest of the world and delivering a sense of stability. Most don't feel that way about such inhospitable environs, but the Valkyrie has never been average.

With the home-that-isn't in half-charred shambles in Torchline, with Nate and Sunjata broken and wounded and her own anxieties about their relationship as a trio hounding her every step, Hotaru takes a moment to (selfishly, guiltily) embrace the feeling of home that Halo gives her.

Even covered in ice and snow in the aftermath of Deepfrost, Hotaru knows these roads and sprawling lands. Had explored them immediately upon discovering Halo herself. There's no need for adventure today however - she knows exactly where she's going.

The Barracks are as formidable as ever as she and Atlas pass through the stone archway and into the training area. Already her heterochromic eyes begin scanning the various gathered faces that wander past her as she moves deeper in. Any parties interested in convening with her dissuaded by the intensely focused slant to her eyes, the purposeful strides that carry her. She feels like a balloon whose tether has finally been caught and held, reeling back to earth with each pull, each step. Nothing matters but finding him. And when she does - broad, towering shoulders, dark locks flying loose against furs and leathers, as familiar to her as her own face - all composure is lost. Footsteps falter and hurry into a jog, heartbeat quickening as her hood falls back and she reaches- reaches- needing to find and stay in the gravity he has always been for her-

"Deimos!"

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

A reunion; steel singing against steel, lacquered, varnished metal swinging into another. The blast, beats, of war echoing, drumming, in his ears. The crescendo of might bombarding into strength and regard, into flesh and bone. He’d had it all along and not at the same time – portions quartered off in his Warden duties that were no longer. The mantle lifted, the crown handed back, the fortress of his making returned in present distinction, in the sweep and slide of his blade against a guard’s, in the quaking laughter resounding through stone marks, in the columns of survival. For one, small, infinitesimal moment, the world was calm and bright and comforting.

There were perennial, rapier vows, but still there nonetheless, until the next crisis towered along the horizon. These were breaths, small but impactful, clear and distinct, a balm to the soul. These were minute but influential; tides in which they were allowed to surface. To swim, rather than drown. To live, rather than succumb and perish.

Another swing of his sword and the triumph bounded, leapt, in rounds of laughter and fallen guards. Hands offered, forms picked up off the stone floor, and weapons tucked back away onto belts, while they shifted or adjourned, while the ranks took file and remembered what it was like to not be locked away. Warrior armaments flickered in the promise of future drinks at the bar, and the beast shook his head; other times, other days, and his movements, beneath furs and leather and armor, eluded to placing effigies and targets away.

Then there was a turning of heads, a shifting of brows, and he followed the change in the guards’ movements, a glance over his shoulder to a hooded figure rampaging towards him, a reach –

And he knew those hands. The small stature, not to be overcome, not to be outdone. The golden hair. The hood falling back. Lives interrupted and brazen and gone. Deimos might have laughed again, shook his head, if given enough time, enough moments to stare and realize and understand. Instead, he was merely open arms, an instinctive turn towards Valkyries and friends, allies in each and every storm, no matter how far apart.

There was no collision. He picked her up, easily fitting her into the muscles and brawn, into the crooks of shoulders, into the pull of hearts and souls. “Ru,” he grumbled, rumbled, the single syllable a skirmish in his chest. No questions asked. No explanations needed. Not now.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

Publicity has never swayed the Valkyrie before, and it will not start now. The resounding clang of metal against metal, the beleaguered grunts and gasps, shuffling of feet and din of murmuring fighters giving pointers is nothing more than background sound. Familiar white noise that Torchline cannot replicate with her sunny beaches and furtive denizens. Embarrassment is a notion far beyond her as the swollen, tender bubble inside her bursts with a gustlike sigh of relief the moment Deimos' stalwart motions spark recognition. Tension she didn't know she had melts away into springwater, leaving each step lighter as she rushes across the arena. He turns, and she could weep with joy in that moment as his face is bared to her, rugged and handsome and alight with recognition.

Deimos' arms open wide. I am home, her heart cries in jubilation. Here there is no hesitance, no uncertainty about where they stand, and that bedrock fills the void of stability that has left her so off-center since her return. She throws herself into his embrace with a level of faith that even the most pious would envy; as surely as the sun moves through the sky, he will be there to catch her. Swept off her feet and against his chest, she feels more than hears the rumble of her name, and her arms cling to his shoulders and squeeze as she presses her shining face into the warm valley of his throat. "I have missed you beyond words," manages to eek out in murmured tones past the lump in her throat, some concoction of relief, overwhelm, and ebullience.

Hotaru withdraws only enough to press their temples together, lips brushing gentle and swift over the crest of his cheekbone. It is a reunion made all the more potent than their first by the fact that she had known, this time, what she stood to lose. Their first had been too miraculous, too impossibly coincidental. Now there is relief, gratitude. A sense not of circumstantially finding what had long been thought lost, but of fighting through a dragging current to return to a most beloved piece of your heart. "Are you well? Longnight - you were safe?" Words seem impossible, so they falter as they cross her tongue, finding only the most important to impart. Is he okay? In her absence, has he fallen to harm? She must know, if only to fix it as swiftly as she can.

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

Missed and missed; and perhaps she was the only one to do so. He could feel the walls crumbling, concaving, and even if Hotaru didn’t mind the spectacle, the monolith did. This was his fortress. This was his keep. He’d taken so long to perfect the art of pretense, of all those bestial machinations, of all those imperial, indifferent cliffs, and to have them rampaged and brought down so easily, all over again, scratched and gnawed. Not here, not before the world dispersed and it was theirs again.

But she was airs of home and realms of shared expanses, heads bowed before toppling towers and scathing fathoms, of kingdoms like this one but not the same, never, and he held her tightly, tucked away in the folds of his arms and in the hints of his sorrow. “Me too,” he whispered in between rounds of heartbeats and relief; glad she was whole and well and safe and sound. Glad that she was here. Glad, that even amidst the rounds of normalcy, of trying to painstakingly put his life back together again, there were those achingly familiar embraces where everything and nothing needed to be said.

They still were – but maybe only because of time.

The monolith shifted, snorted, as temples pressed and embraces were shared, shook only slightly with the hints of mirth. The questions began, and he reached out a hand to pull her out of the training grounds, waving off a round of soldiers, waiting to hear the glide of steel again. “We can talk elsewhere,” and then he extended his way down the hall, into the open parlor, with the might and glow of the hearth, where Zuriel knelt before the fireplace, lifting her head in recognition.

Something parted in his heart, and he could feel the calamity, the distortion, already peeling away. The Sword fought desperately to keep it together, and merely released her to grab hold of two chairs, crowd the unicorn by the flames. Then maybe he could begin. Or she could. It didn’t really matter anymore. “I was here during LongNight.” Safe; tucked away behind portals, but restless and unwinding, yearning to be conniving and unrelenting. “The temporary Warden.” He choked down a sneer, then let it pierce off, away into the midst, piercing eyes lingering on her; a brief examination and scrutiny. “What about you?”

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

Two simple words, and yet they hold depths and magnitudes that she can read as easily as flowing script from an ink pen. The timbre of his voice resonates like the snowfalls that devastate their desired pathways down towering mountains, and she is swept away in the cascade of it, all the happier for how it envelopes her in such intrinsic memories. Reluctant though she is to part from him, there are better places than here to depart from their vambraces, to bare their flesh. Such a multitude of unworthy, distrusted eyes, and none she would want gazing upon such intimate decomposition.

But he does not truly leave her, his hand enveloping her own to steer her forth into the depths of the barracks, callouses brushing rough and familiar against her own scarred fingers. A firm squeeze is the only distraction she allows herself as she trails behind him, quickening her pace to account for the vast differences in their height. Atlas follows behind at a more sedate pace, and though he is still young his frame already is imposing, and he must duck his proudly lofted head to fit through the doorway Deimos leads them to. Zuriel is a familiar figure, though Atlas merely gives an inquisitive huff of his nares as he beds down a respectable distance away.

Hotaru descends into her given chair swiftly, crowding it closer like a moth seeking firelight, but it is not the flames in the hearth that draw her. Here in the privacy of this secluded room, she allows herself to examine him, heterochromic stare flickering over the dark smudges of his eyes, the more pronounced lines in his skin that speak of stress and burden. All the same his gruff admission of being Warden inspires a slightly teasing lilt of her lips, shared amusement and despair over returning to such titles unspoken. When he turns the question against her she pauses, swallowing down the enormity of her feelings that cling to such a concise answer. "Torchline, for LongNight. The sickness...I don't recall anything but wandering off. I woke in the Wilds, and Atlas carried me home, only a day before the darkness came." Her own features crumple slightly, far more vulnerable with him than even her beloveds. "Nate left to fight the monsters in the Grounds. Sunjata was attacked, his father returned and kidnapped Nate, and then Sunjata fought him to the death in return for Nate." It spills out so easily, no fluff or further unraveling required, and yet the burden is visible on her shoulders with how they cave inward.

All the same, his ghosts are not hidden from her own eye, and though he will surely have more questions about her explanation Hotaru will not let him hide behind his own fortress walls. "I've missed so much. What's happened?" How are you? It remains unsaid, though she lays a gentle hand upon his forearm, both to prompt and encourage, but also to settle the itch under her skin that cries out for the physicality she has been robbed of for so long.

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

They were both scarred; nature of the world they’d ruled and reigned over, nature of their essences, of their beings. And perhaps they were worn in the same way, some with semblances of pride, others with inward grief, with shackles and tethers and lines drawn around the etched surfaces. In defense, in assault, in protection, in sanctities, in temporary shelters and sanctums for others, and when the tempests ceased, when the burdens broke, they were bleeding and reeling. Everyone else safe, secure.

And who saved them?

How many times had they been towers for others? Battering rams? Swords? Living, breathing weapons? How many times had they bled for another? When did it end and when did it cease and when did anything desist?

He could feel her eyes on him and he looked away, into the fire, into the flames, into the seething maelstrom tucking and gathering itself behind his teeth, behind all those carefully kept ramparts. His attention deviated, head tilted slightly, at the notions of Torchline, safe and sound, for LongNight’s devastation. An explanation for her disappearance, a sickness he’d known well, driven into the parallels and juxtapositions. At the hellhole. At the consuming, swallowing maelstroms. “I asked Ludo if you were in Mort’s realm,” an admittance – and that when he’d known of her survival, that she’d somehow be fine, just as she’d always been, had given him some semblance of relief in the cluster of bedlam and chaos.

Then more – Nate fighting with the rest of the Ascended. Sunjata somehow managing to make his never-ending dramatic life even more so, and so Deimos shook his head once more. Perhaps it was proof to Hotaru’s perseverance, to be able to endure the Flood’s constant catastrophes.

And when it turned back upon him, he heaved another sigh, leaning forward, elbows on legs, palms rubbing at his eyes. Her arm was on his, and it was a balm, but the onslaught of barrages, of revisiting the hells he’d been immersed, drowning, drowning, drowning within. “Kiada died,” which she was aware of; she’d been there, but it set the timeline of domino effects, the trickle of demolition and havoc, the way everything had spun so wildly out of his grasp. “Amalia left me.” And his head hung lower, lower, lower, so that his chin was nearly touching his chest, and if he could’ve escaped somewhere, he would’ve. “I got sick.” Waited to die was left unsaid. Thought about perishing in the snow.

About making everything stop.

“Ended up here. Fought a leviathan.” He was probably forgetting something in between. It was enough anyway.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

It's a grand measure of her worth, that he would ask Ludo of her soul's whereabouts. He who so removes himself from the light of their celestial grace, striving for peace and lack of involvement that this world will never afford him. Either of them. They are drawn to the helpless inexorably, incapable of remaining static when others are in need. She gives a small squeeze of his arm, her small grateful smile the silent gratitude for his love and concern. At least he had known she was not gone. That is a burden she had not unwittingly placed on his shoulders, for all it would have bowed them further. A small bit of relief for her own guilt.

It has been a long time since she has seen him so downtrodden. Panic strikes in her heart, sharp and seismic, as it draws to mind that awful time before she had lost him to the veil. His words are as purposeful and vague as her own, but hold weight so much more intimate than hers. These things which hurt him deeply, intentionally, instead of occurring around him. Amalia's cutting of ties in particular pinches her face into something ugly, countenance souring with a seething rage that aches to act on his behalf. The whys and explanations matter not to the Valkyrie, who judges on a black and white scale that has firmly tipped to a blackened state for the sole, damning fact that Amalia has hurt him.

Her hand rises to his shoulder this time, moving closer as if to physically draw him from the rubble. "None of which was your fault," she vows, knowing it in her heart to be true. Deimos' love for Amalia was something she had envied and desired in equal portions. There is no doubt in her mind that their separation had not been his idea. "You have carried so much for so long, Deimos. But you cannot do everything. I can't stand to lose you to it once more." Heat tickles behind her eyes at the mere memory, of how hollow the world had felt in his absence. "Kiada and I are back, and safe. Amalia is a fool to let you go. And you shall not head into battle again without me by your side." They seem like petty, hollow comforts, given far too late, but it is all she can offer him. Something proactive instead of consoling. "Everything is going to be okay. But you need rest." Perhaps she can't promise it, but she will work to make it so. Half-standing from her chair she envelops him in her arms, inviting him to break apart in the privacy of her embrace if that is what he needs. She will be his pillar, tonight and for eternity.

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

He hadn’t carefully tended to these wounds. Simple stitches, then pretending as if they weren’t there, out of sight, out of mind. Until something else chafed and abraded, until something else came along that called to his ghosts, and he could feel them fraying, unraveling again. Easy for him to love, and to not, in equal, bewildering measures – to give and give and give until he was empty and withdrawn and the rest of the sovereign was sated. It coiled back and forth over him now, reminded him of surfaces threatening to drown, threatening to choke, of wraiths and figments portrayed in deepening sickness, in the throes of his agonized mind. Movement, onward and onward, trying to leave everything painful and devastating behind –

But it never worked.

And the torment was beyond surface level, down in the crags of once-rotted and decayed, blackened and Stygian heart, and he’d tried, so desperately, desperately hard, to keep the vessels and chambers together. The Sword extended his selflessness into worlds and expected nothing in return, and that was nearly exactly what he received.

The words were hollowed out echoes and vestiges of his experiences. They said naught of the agony, of the way they cut and slashed, ripped and tore, left brutal scars across his ribs and lungs and soul. He could feel her closing in though, and there was a portion of him that wanted to veer away. That didn’t want to be a burden. That didn’t want to put one more thing on her shoulders too, even if that was just his worn and tired head. “But it still hurts,” he whispered in response. No control, no supremacy, no dominance; almost like an onlooker, watching as the wakes he’d so carefully built, he’d cherished and stoked, fell apart around him. Not stone, but salt or sand, crumbling the moment the air or earth stirred.

“I know.” And he still did it – still placed everything there on his spine and waiting for the erosion, while everyone else maneuvered away. Even in his anger, in his rage, he’d still taken on the Warden position so Morgan could go fight in the Grounds. Even in his deluded sickness, he’d crawled his way towards the Climb, searching for a cure. The Sword said nothing of how close she’d come to truly losing him again – perishing out in the snow. Of how that might’ve been a comfort, after everything.

He choked back a multitude of things, his eyes narrowing, then closing, as he took hold of another breath with a chisel, with an ax, with a blade. Then suddenly, his head was in the crook of her shoulder, and the expanse of comfort he hadn’t had in so long was immense too. The monolith could feel the cracks coming in, could feel the entanglements, the promises, he’d try to hold onto but presume would never take place.

Wasn’t that something this world had taught him? That vows were merely meant to be broken?

“If I rest, it all comes back,” he muffled into furs and hoods. Why he wandered forward, why he kept walking so he didn’t topple to the ground, why he evaded the snares for as long as possible. And then he shook his head, arms still trapped down by his side, because if he reached for her again he might completely fall apart at the seams and she didn’t need this agonizing, disheartening wake. “But this world has made me realize I do not matter.”

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

Pain is not something she is unfamiliar with seeing in the subtle crevices of the sheer stone that creates his facade. Physical more often perhaps, but she has grown adept at reading him in their many years together, and such anguish has not reached these levels in some time. It remains all too soon. Hotaru hates to see him crumble so, not because he is undeserving of the motion itself, but because she wishes he would never have need of it in the first place. His pain is her own, and yet it is a burden she has never been more willing to ease from his aching bones and onto her own.

She holds him all the tighter for his murmured words, defeat and despair so rare to hear and so much more impactful for it. "I know it hurts. I'm so sorry," she whispers in return, wishing the healing she has been gifted with through Frey and Atlas alike could remove this particular wound. "You deserve so much more. If I could take it all away I would, but it's okay to hurt. We have to feel it in order to heal." Something neither of them is proficient at. They are the types to ignore, divert, pretend that they are invulnerable and indomitable instead of acknowledging what has brought them low.

He cracks a little at last, head falling to her shoulder, and he will find it strong and unyielding - capable of cradling even him; the mountain, the sword. Her body may yet be small, but the strength in her arms will carry him through the tide that threatens to swallow him, and her steps will never falter. He is safe here, cocooned in golden hair and warm arms that press him close, hands that comb through his dark hair and a heart that loves him beating steady against his cheek as a reminder that she is alive and has not abandoned him. Her shelter is large enough even for the likes of him, he the magnificent shield that has arched over every soul seeking respite from the onslaughts of this world. But even he is not infinite in his reach, impregnable in his iron-clad depths. They build themselves into weapons, but even the most tempered steel can break.

Shuffling to prop her hip on the side of his chair to better hold him, she continues to comb her fingers through his hair, gentle against his scalp in soothing motions. He does not need to reach for her in order to find her - she will be there, hand already outstretched, whenever he needs her. "The world may not care for you, but the world is not what would mourn your loss. The world is not what holds you dear. We are." At her angle, she presses a kiss to his crown, emotion choking her for a moment into silence. But these are words she has never felt so sure of, so confident in, and she must say them for his benefit alone. "You matter to me. Your happiness, your successes, your losses. The world can burn, it will continue to move on with or without us. But there will never be another you. We must cut out our own sanctuaries where we can, and you have suffered too long without one my love." If she had been here, if she had returned earlier, maybe..."You have given everything, and I will never stop you from continuing to give. But soon there will be nothing left, and you will hurt all the more for not being able to do so." Hotaru knows he would, knows he would despair over being unable to help, protect, defend, even at his most broken. She is willing to use that against him, to encourage him to take care of himself for once. "Trust me, my heart. Let it go, just for now. I have your back, always." In war and solitude alike.

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

And maybe, truly, he didn’t know how to heal. Physical means were so much easier – lacerations stitched closed, flesh and tissue mended, no lingering aches or pains, scars left as reminders, sketches, and outlines of battles forged and fought. But the emotional ones, the ties and nooses around his heart and soul, choked and suffocated, intermingled and wove themselves so tightly that everyday became a drowning expanse. He let them fester and decay, then breathe again with so much as a glimmer of a memory, an image brought back to life in the corners of his mind. “How?” He whispered – because he couldn’t be like this forever, for eternities, for another life. He couldn’t keep alternating between fortress and sand, between unattainable, unreachable, and bitterly, rancorously fallen. Every time he stepped away, every time he thought he’d escaped, it returned with a cool, cruel, damning vengeance. The beast could raise his head and refuse to bow down to the treacheries of the world, but they all knew it was a farce, a lie, a stone eventually given to crumbling, eroding.

His lives had been full of losses, despite every angle of striving to overcome them. And he was more, had to be more, than those pinnacles of depletion and demise.

Even now, the monolith hated that he was falling apart, that portions were unraveling and heartache was so prevalent, when he should’ve been strong and enduring, persevering and indifferent, taking great strides over corpses and carcasses and not giving. Not caring. Not splintering. Not fracturing. There were a few moments where he took a breath and wondered if he could simply pile it all back together and leave her alone, lift his head and not have her bear every god damned nuance of his mess, for it wasn’t hers to carry either.

But the safety was encompassing and empowering, and he couldn’t remember a recent time where he’d had a shelter of his own. He presided and provided sanctuaries and sanctums for all of those in his reach, in his keep, and then didn’t bother with any for himself. Time and time again Deimos had reminded his soul, his entity, that he couldn’t repeat the ways of the Reaper, and yet, still they haunted. Not so gone. Not so misplaced. One and the same, no matter what he did.

The world didn’t care, but people did, and he choked back something – it might’ve been a laugh, it might’ve been a snort, it might’ve been a sob, inelegant and muffled. Held dearly now, but hadn’t been for a long time, and he’d considered himself unworthy of the cause. Undeserving. Time had taught him that again and again. So had individuals. So had those he loved and cherished and protected, until they saw him as not enough. “Sorry,” he murmured, uncertain what for. For a lot of things.

He accepted it for now, the advice, the understanding, the nuances, but gods he didn’t know where to go from here. “What am I supposed to do?”

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

"By doing exactly this," she comforts, fingers curling lightly through his hair, tucking stray strands behind his ear and letting her thumb caress gently over his temple on the way. "By opening up, and talking to me, and letting the emotion out. Crying, yelling, shouting with joy." A lesson she had been forced to learn herself. One she imparts now with far more gentleness than she'd been given. For all Ashamin had loved her, he was prone to throwing her off cliffs to force her to fly instead of gently leading her by the hand into the realizations she needed to have. Hotaru won't do that to Deimos, is afraid those wings would not lift to catch him in this moment even if she did. He deserves kindness and a gentle touch more than any others she knows, and her hands may be bloodied and scarred, but they are no less soft when they hold him.

A strangled sound leaves him, and a soft crooning sound thrums in her throat in answering rise of chorus. Assuring he knows he is heard, that she is attuned to his every cresting emotion, regardless of her inability to reach across the metaphysical bond his race has. His apology has her eyes closing, squeezing, an ache taking hold that has her clinging just that small bit tighter to him. "You have nothing to apologize for, Deimos. Nothing. Okay?" She presses their heads together, blocking out all but the most stubborn of firelight between her own golden hair and the dark furs that surround the both of them. "You are a good man. The best I have ever known." How she had come to deserve having him in her life is unknown to her, but she won't draw the attention of the Fates, lest they try and take him away as well. "You have done nothing but your best. Your heart has never strayed. You owe no apologies, to anyone or anything. Least of all me." There is nothing he has done or will ever do that he will need to seek penance for from her.

His beseeching question is nearly as hard to answer as Nate's, but this time Hotaru has some vague notion of a plan. "You stay with me. A few days, lest you break out in hives when the vacation becomes too much. We go to my spa, and you make use of everything I've put in place for now." That will be enough of a fight, she's sure, but his grumbling and balking has never stopped her in the past. He will capitulate. "We spar, and lounge, and walk the tundras and talk of better times. Nobody but those we wish will come to visit. Consider it like...hibernation." Vacation is a word she can't use more than once, or he really will start breaking out. Retreating just enough to give him an encouraging smile, she cups his bristled jaw with one small hand. "And when we awake and leave our cave, we will be rested. Ready for spring." Perhaps not fully healed, but on their way to it. Together.

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

He didn’t want to let the emotion out. He didn’t want the tides to rule him, to piece together his entire being. He didn’t want to be defined by the pain, by the onslaughts; but they still curved and carved there, deep in the recesses. They occupied far more now than those figments of happiness had – so fleeting, so swift, so tender, and then gone; obliterated in the semblance of abandonment, in the untying of vows. So he shook his head in her hands, a stubborn denial. “But then I get hurt again.” The monolith had done this before – opened as much as he could, peering between the cracks, permitting others over the fortress walls, thinking, believing, trusting. It was as much fighting himself into the vestiges, as the others seeking to peer their way in.

And then he still wasn’t enough.

Deimos could think of hundreds of things to apologize for. But her denial was swift and keen, and he was too tired, too mentally done-in, to argue the point. If he’d done nothing but his best, why did so many leave? Why did he not matter? What made him less then so many others? Strong and stalwart and determined on days where he wasn’t bent and broken and eroding – persevering, tenacious, and steel-forged, aiming, intending, to protect and to shield.

Before he could even begin to muster an answer, the next came rolling in, at which he only grimaced, as if the words were a blasphemy. “A vacation?” The last one he’d taken, or tried to, had been his honeymoon. Where the world had still caught up with them – getting information about the Order, Amalia nearly drowning, Amalia shutting him out, fighting a damned sea panther, coming home to discover Kiada had died. Maybe he should’ve seen the signs then. Maybe he should’ve known they were breaking, and he’d been the only one trying to stitch them back together, not seeing, not knowing, where the strands were unfurling.

The responsibility, the duty, he’d instilled here immediately nagged and sank into his shoulders. Maybe he would get hives at the thought of taking any time off at all – because it was a difficult notion to fathom, to swallow down, to contemplate. His brows furrowed, not wanting to immediately deny, but she’d know, in the subtle hints that he yearned to retreat, and tighten his spine. Work was a way to escape the stretch of where he was now. A way of avoidance. A way of veering off from the things that maimed the most.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright

She retreats enough to let a hand cup his jaw, tilting gently to try and encourage those sad blues to find her own eyes. "When you first learned to wield a sword, true metal and not wood, did you stop because you cut yourself? Because your partner bruised you, or knocked you down?" Her thumb caresses the line between cold-weathered skin and the coarse nature of his beard, tracing the lines of his cheekbone and enjoying - between words and lessons - the simplistic joy of being able to touch him anew. "Did you stop midway through battle because you were tired? Retreat because too much had been taken by your opponent?" Hotaru knows the answers to all these questions, has known him far too long and too well to not know exactly what he needs to hear. "Your heart is no different, Deimos. It will be hurt, again and again. But that does not mean you stop trying, or build defenses around it, to shelter it away where it cannot grow stronger and smarter. You must try again each time. Just as you hefted your sword whenever it was knocked from your hand, you must strive to work past the hurt." A lesson she'd had to learn far too young herself. But if he had nobody else in the world to show him it was worth it to love, he had her. And she would become the singular proof he needed. "And you will grow wiser, just as your training made you, until you can see when it is time to withdraw. When you have no more left to give, and must care for yourself. You will learn when it is okay to abandon someone who hurts and takes too much, and to tell them apart from those who may have flaws but wish to return what you give them."

Leaning close she presses a gentle, feather-light kiss to his brow, to the wrinkles that converge there and speak of all manner of pain and weighted suffering. "Your heart is a muscle like any other, my love. If you do not tend to it, it will grow weak. The pain is merely proof that you are growing stronger." And though he immediately shirks away from her suggestion of a vacation to her spa, Hotaru smiles, already sure of her impending victory. "And you know what we do with sore muscles? We treat them with hot baths, massages, and rest." All things she can offer him aplenty at her spa. With guaranteed privacy at that.

"Just a few days, at first. If something goes horribly wrong in Halo, I will be here to return with you if nothing else. But I will do my best to convince you to stay longer." Hopefully she wouldn't have to fight him on it too hard, so long as nothing came down on their heads by way of fate, but he can be just as ornery as her when it comes to things like relaxation. She's at least prepared for the rough road.

HOTARU

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

Jaw lifted, his gaze was pulled into hers, and a sullen sort of sigh filtered out of him. Listening, truly attending to the words measured in difficulty, because he knew she was right. It was acting upon them that made it all the more harsher and harder to bear. “No,” he grumbled and pouted, half a frown mottling and molded through his mouth. But battle had been so much easier to understand than the ranges of other human complexities: fight, fight, fight, spit out blood and get up again, wield a weapon until one’s opponent fell to pieces, and somehow the rest remained. He’d fallen time and time again, cut and slashed and torn apart, joining the ranks as not the best and not the worst, striving to overcome whomever he faced. Attempting to salvage and save crumbling comrades. Ignoring exhaustion, in favor of moving forward, onward, into whatever needed to be completed.

But it’d never been about him. None of those things. The monolith didn’t have to look inside himself during a skirmish. The Sword knew exactly who he was in those moments – living, breathing armaments, intending to decimate and destroy, shield, preserve, and preside.

Physical pain was comprehensible. Emotional bore deeper than all the lacerations on the surface of his flesh. They wore into the bones and carved like hot knives through his soul. Slashed and torn without the lesions to show for it – only when he permitted them to open, only when the gates and guards were lifted.

So his brows furrowed, and he nodded, and fought off the argument threatening to mar. Tilted his head, to snag, to grasp, to take in all these words and assurances, and make them something. Not brittle. Not delicate. Not infirm. But another stronghold, just as he’d done with his own figure.

He snorted at the press between his brows, as if she was seeking to mend something there. But the only one who could tend and mend it was himself, and even those notions had their limitations. But she was wearing him down, bit by bit, and the beast had to wonder what in gods’ name rest even entailed anymore. A snarl, teasing and gentle rather than raised hackles, bound along, and then a very juvenile wrinkle to his nose. “I can try.” A pause, and the misgivings, responsibilities, and duties were already joining and melding in the rigidity of his shoulders and brawn. “But not for too long. We are supposed to be deciding our next improvements for Halo.”

Raising his hands to fold over both of hers, he sighed again, the features sinking back into a faint smile. “And what about you?” He’d had enough of bearing his own wounds – and Hotaru had been through enough damned turmoil too.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same