Darling please, just give us some time, and I swear we'll be alright
She should have known it wasn't a dream. Sunjata does not look so haggard and scarred in her dreams these nights, if they deign to be dreams instead of nightmares. His voice, though...that is something even her dreams cannot get perfectly right, and it is all the proof she needs that he has returned home to them. There's no point in getting up, not when he folds so easily down into her embrace, meeting somewhere in the middle as they grasp at one another like liferings in a turbulent ocean. Moments spared only to catalogue wounds, to ensure that she will cause no further damage, and by then he has taken matters into his own hands and pulled her into his lap. It's an amusingly common action for both him and Nate, which makes it all the easier to relax into the embrace, habit that it has now become.
"A shorter time than my own absence," she comforts softly, brain finally coming fully alive with his warmth surrounding her. "What matters is that you came home. We would have waited as long as it took." Any number of seasons. It didn't matter, she would have stayed in this half-scorched home for an eternity if it meant she was there to welcome him home when he finally found his way back.
Tucking her face against his throat in turn, she lets her face crumple where he can't see it. Finally releasing her iron grip around her own emotions. They'd been locked up tight since he'd fallen over the cliff. She had needed to be there for Nate, to be the hope they both needed to keep going. There had been no time for her own grief, and she had been okay with that. Nate needed her, and that meant more to Hotaru than her own emotions at the time. But now, her shoulders quake just a little, and the sting of her eyes blossoms into quiet tears. "Just...just don't do it again." Take me with you next time.
"A shorter time than my own absence," she comforts softly, brain finally coming fully alive with his warmth surrounding her. "What matters is that you came home. We would have waited as long as it took." Any number of seasons. It didn't matter, she would have stayed in this half-scorched home for an eternity if it meant she was there to welcome him home when he finally found his way back.
Tucking her face against his throat in turn, she lets her face crumple where he can't see it. Finally releasing her iron grip around her own emotions. They'd been locked up tight since he'd fallen over the cliff. She had needed to be there for Nate, to be the hope they both needed to keep going. There had been no time for her own grief, and she had been okay with that. Nate needed her, and that meant more to Hotaru than her own emotions at the time. But now, her shoulders quake just a little, and the sting of her eyes blossoms into quiet tears. "Just...just don't do it again." Take me with you next time.
HOTARU
