your blood's as good an ink as any

you swallowed my heart and fled, but I want it back now, baby

If anything, the writhing storm of fury contained in his arms grounds him more, gives him something to cling to. Pressure bites down on his arm, so hard that even he can feel it, really feel it, and Nate tries to focus on that. Tries to steel himself against the dull waves of pain washing through him.

Nate might be stranded in a dark and stormy sea when it comes to talk of babies, a conversation that he hadn’t been around for, but he finds it difficult to disagree with anything Hotaru says. This isn’t how he’d thought this would happen, isn’t how he’d wanted it happen. ”She’d rather I left you than anything else. She’d rather kill me herself than help. What...” His voice breaks, and Nate has to clench his teeth, has to pull Hotaru that much closer. ”Whatever comes out of your mouth next needs to make this make sense.” He just needs something, some scrap of sense he can cling to, that he can understand. Because he doesn’t understand any of this so far.

At least Sunjata listens to his words, moves to take care of himself where the ascendeds Demi-god’s hands will not reach out for him. And that simple action, somehow, makes everything worse. So much worse.

”Sunny. Sunjata. Darling.” Finally, the hollowness breaks, replaced by a sharp bitter sneer. ”What is that.” It’s not a question. He knows. He knows exactly what it is. Nate half considers releasing Ru again, leaving her to run wild and rampant and spew her rage enough for the both of them. ”What the fuck is that?” His lips curl in an automatic snarl, his teeth bared at the very sight of the constellation spanned over Sunjata’s chest. Over his heart. Hotaru will feel it before Sunjata sees it, the shudder that runs through him, the way he starts to crumble inwardly, even as rage floods to fill in the cracks.

NATE

The tattoo on his chest swirls as if the stars are suddenly being viewed from a different angle. They pour down his body with swift urgency to congregate around the wound made by Hotaru. And then they softly pulse once, and the wound is healed. Back up to his chest they float, where they shimmer as if in faint orbit.

SUNJATA

i heard you telling lies
i heard you say you weren't born of our blood

He doesn’t visibly flinch when she begins her vocal assault, instead he simply sits there, on the floor, trying his best to get the bleeding to stop, tying the shirt around his leg in an attempt to curb the flow before he begins to press a hand to the wound again, coating his fingers in blood, his horned head tilting back against the counter as he pants and tries to ignore the stinging pain. He doesn’t flinch, not as she continues. “I know.” It’s weak, it’s quiet, and then…

Well, then he does flinch. He flinches when she compares him to his father, his head tilting back her way with narrowed steel. “Don’t you compare me to him.” This is said with the most effort he can, a low growl, a sharp hiss. Regardless of how this child was conceived, how it would come about, Sunjata would protect them, would love them. And that was leagues better than his father ever could get.

As for Nate being fixed? His lips part, fruitlessly trying to work around the dryness of his mouth, the tinge of iron in the air, the wound to his leg that he keeps the pressure on. “I never said fix him.” He snaps, teeth clicking shut when Nate’s words turn into a sneer, the anger dissipating and shifting to pain. He fails to find the words for it.

She’d already marked him once… Twice? The tattoos on his arms that swirl with the stars. She had finished those tattoos. This one, though, this one was different. Similar enough to Ronin’s – ones Sunjata hadn’t noticed before, given their likeness to the Star’s skin – Sunjata’s are… Sunjata’s are moving. The air slips from his lungs, watching the tattoo slink down like a river, shifting and moving, stars adjusting.

And then relief.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The wound is healed and his bloodied hand pulls away, revealing freshly healed skin. And he realizes in that instant that he needs to distance himself from her, from Nate. He shifts immediately into something else, pulling into himself until he’s his macaw, darting away a few more feet to gain some space, and when he shifts back he’s standing. “I did it for us.” He says weakly. “I did it because I love you and if it all goes wrong and the Voice is destroyed, where do you go, Nate? Where do you go?” He needs the Voice more than the rest of them do, although judging by the work that tattoo just did, it seems they’re quite opposite now.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t…” He trails off, fruitlessly trying to wipe the blood away from his hand onto his thigh. “I’m terrified.” And they all know what he does when that happens. His survival instinct kicks in. “But I will not be like my father. This child will be protected at all costs.” Even if it means from them. Even if it means from the world. And to Sunjata, that makes the biggest difference. “And they will be loved.” Even if he has to do it alone. He will. Even if Nate and Hotaru don’t stay, he will still carry on. It’s all he can do.

And at this point, he’ll do anything for his child.

i know we're the crooked kind
but you're crooked too, boy, and it shows

I could take all that you love, I could be death from above

They cling to each other painfully tight, and Hotaru doesn't care about the way his arms hold tight around her like iron bands. It doesn't feel like a trap. Instead, it's like a reminder that they still have one person on their side here, that they have each other even if they've somehow lost Sunjata to Safrin. Hotaru is no stranger to manipulative Goddesses, they're her chosen types normally, and frankly she doesn't blame Safrin. Far be it from her to try and understand the mentality of an immortal deity. But she blames Sunjata. Which makes it all the easier to bare her teeth back at him when he seems to find his balls somewhere down by his heels and pull them pitifully back up to try and rebuke. "You brought a child into this world as a blood debt for someone who didn't consent. You used an unborn child as a bargaining chip. If you don't see how callous and how far from a loving father that is, then you're even farther gone under her than I thought." She spits it right back. Hotaru had been the one to assure him he was nothing like his father, but clearly she had been wrong - at least with this.

His pitiful sneer has her hands clutching at Nate all the harder, seething. "What, so you think she'd just let him stay an Ascended if the Voice was defeated? You're an idiot, of course she'd try to fucking change him! That's fixing if I've ever heard it." Changing him because his base state was unwanted, wrong, imperfect. He can defend the literal words all he wants, the implication is impossible to avoid.

Nate's words draw her eye from Sunjata's face finally to his chest, and her own feels hollowed out at the stars that swirl there. His devotion to Safrin had never bothered her; faith is not something she's unfamiliar with, nor devotion. The mark would not have been an issue before, if it did not immediately swirl and navigate down his skin to heal the wound she had left in his leg. A protection that Hotaru and Nate would never be offered. A line in the sand, and Sunjata is not only firmly on the other side, but he has sworn himself there and is kept there by the soon-to-be existence of a child.

She does not answer for Nate, because she can't. It's not fair to do that, to steal those words from him, but when her time comes she has her own two cents to add. "Protected like you protected Nate from the Fae? From your father? That child already has a target on their back, and you put it there. Love is more than an emotion, it's making the right decisions to keep them safe, and you brought them into being in the exact opposite way." Her breaths still heave at her chest, heart rabbiting hard, but she clings to Nate's arm and tries to weather the storm. Hotaru doesn't see a way out, but all things must end, she just needs to make it there before she can breathe again.

HOTARU

you swallowed my heart and fled, but I want it back now, baby

A single blue eye watches in mute rage as the starry tattoo drifts along Sunjata’s skin, as easily as the nebulas along his arms. But this is no mere art, no, this mark heals the damage Hotaru had done.

It seems to click for all of them at once what exactly this means, a wordless growl ripping from Nate’s throat while the attuned tries to open space between them. Tries to flee. The shift in Nate comes without thought, but it’s not surprising either, some part of him knowing what to do as easily as the Voice’s plans had come into his head. While his physical arms stay wrapped around Hotaru, as much a buoy as a binding, a softly glowing pair flicker to life near his shoulder, stretching before reaching out for Sunjata. Staticky hands move to hold his jaw, none to gently, though the second they actually make contact with the attuned’s skin Nate hisses, and they shift to grab handfuls of his tattered shirt instead.

”If the Voice is destroyed, I die.” Theres a note of hysterical finality in Nate’s voice, which grows louder and louder the longer the speaks. ”That hasn’t changed! Safrin lied to you, because she’s a bitch!” Spectral arms shake Sunjata roughly, like it will bring sense to him. Like it will undo this.

Though, this is where Nate’s opinion differs from Hotaru’s, just the slightest. The doctor is more than happy to lay the lions share of the blame at the Heralds feet, to absolve Sunjata of everything but incredibly shitty decision making. He knows enough about Safrin, how manipulative and two faced she is, and enough about Sunjata, and how easily led along he can be. It’s not enough to drain him of rage, but it’s something.

”All you did,” Nate’s voice is hoarse somehow, thick with emotion that he desperately tries to swallow back, ”All you did was guarantee that we’ll be on opposite sides of this.” Hiding hadn’t been an option before, but Sunjata at least could have kept his head down, could have stayed away from the worst of it.

NATE

SUNJATA

i heard you telling lies
i heard you say you weren't born of our blood

He keeps his space, he remains distant, tries to wipe away the blood on his hands. Hotaru’s words hit and they always hit hard, and all it does is spur on more of that deep rooted frustration – the realization that he’d absolutely fucked up, but there wasn’t anything that could be done now, could there? “Stop putting words in my mouth, Hotaru.” He grits out, letting his shadowed steel gaze focus on her briefly. Sure, he supposes it would be fixing, but… Up until recently, hadn’t that been something Nate wanted?

Had he been wrong this entire time?

And Nate’s different, he’s changed, he’s a demigod now – evident in all the ways that have extra arms sprouting, darting for him and reaching him easily. And of course he flinches away from the touch at his jaw, eyes shutting and inhaling deeply, when it doesn’t quite work. It’s brief, short, and Nate hisses and grabs onto his shirt instead – what little left of it there is.

And he’s shaken, a different kind from when Remi had jostled his soul – but still powerful all the same. And it jostles him enough to hear Nate’s hoarse words, Hotaru’s angered rampage of how horrible he’d been at protecting Nate. Silver gleams in his gaze as he tries to shrug out of Nate’s grip, that armored plating of his dragon shift flickering along his shoulders and neck again. “I know.” It breaks him, truly, his heart shattering where he stands – wings flaring from his spine and horns appearing from his dragon shift instead of the nyala, and he tries to subconsciously blend into the shadow of the home from the morning light.

He doesn’t know what to say to Hotaru. The things that come to mind is that drawing comparisons between his protection of Nate and his protection of an innocent child would be different. But it would come out wrong, and its with that, that his arms begin to blend into claws and scales too. “You did too, Nate.”  He finally manages, gaze shuddering, a tear falling that he stubbornly wipes away at. “I can’t hide from her. We knew that. We all knew that.” He tries to protest. They did, whether or not they admitted it to one another. But that conversation hadn’t come up yet. “And you’re a demi-god now.” Sunjata may be the father of a child of Safrin’s, but no demi-god did he make.

He was no Nate. He was no Remi. No Ronin. No Amalia. No Wessex.

No, just an easily manipulated Governor of a land that only half even wanted him here.

“Lines were going to be drawn and there was never a situation where we got the choice to avoid it. And all… All I wanted to do was to protect you.” Perhaps Remi should have killed him when given the chance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have hoped to survive the fall of the cliff. Perhaps the shell of Hotaru and Nate was better than this inevitability. It’s enough that it makes him want to leave, makes him want to go somewhere else. But this is his home and he has nowhere else to go. And so the scales keep traveling, closing himself off. Muscles feather in his face as the plates travel up along his jaw. "I don't want to do this." He admits weakly. He doesn't want to fight in a war, faced up against Nate. He doesn't want to lose everything again.

i know we're the crooked kind
but you're crooked too, boy, and it shows

I could take all that you love, I could be death from above

"Then find better ones to say for yourself," she spits, low and sibilant and completely free of any kind of remorse for the way she takes his words and twists them into barbs to better stick into his flesh. It doesn't seem to matter, not when he has nothing more to say to her, nothing to defend himself with. She's disappointed but not surprised. Watching him try to put more distance between them hurts regardless of what she has done, but she stifles that reaction both to avoid the hypocritical nature of it and to pretend like she doesn't still care. Instead she watches, weirdly disconnected and still, as extra arms extend from Nate's body to grab at Sunjata and hold him in place. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because everything is shattering in front of her, and all she has right now is Nate wrapped around her, and even that isn't enough as they talk over her head.

"You didn't have to hide, but you didn't have to make that deal either." It comes out low and monotone, staring down at where her hands wrap around Nate's forearm, examining the differences in color lest she simply walk away and not stop until the sands turn and she can pretend that she never had a heart to give away in the first place. It doesn't feel like there's one left in her chest anyhow.

The last futile admission has her giving a strangled laugh, still unable to look at the man she calls - called? - her husband. "You didn't even talk to us about protecting us. Again. And now it doesn't matter what you want. You've given your vow." And created an entirely new person alongside it. Hotaru's head tilts back listlessly against Nate's clavicle, stares at the slightly soot-stained ceiling and tries not to lose herself to the crackling under her skin that begs to end this in the most violent way she knows if only to escape while the dust is still in the air. Breaking and running is easier, but of course she can't even suffer this heartbreak with any sort of ease.

HOTARU

you swallowed my heart and fled, but I want it back now, baby

Nates rage can’t sustain itself for long, choking out into an ashy, sputtering cloud in his throat, making his voice raspier and his eyes watery. Some part of him, some stubborn pride, or holdover from childhood keeps him from shedding those tears right now though, no matter how he needs them.

”I never had a choice. I have to be involved. You saw what happened without the Voice for a week, what happens if she’s gone entirely?” The hunger is a terrifying memory. One that haunts him even now, if he lets his thoughts turn to it. Nate would do anything to not go through it again.

”I could have protected you.” Like this especially, even if his shaking voice doesn’t inspire confidence. ”I could have kept you safe, I could have kept you from choosing.” Arms that could have been used to hold Sunjata drop away, fading into nothing before they touch the ground. ”What am I supposed to do now?” What options does he even have anymore? Throw himself into the Voice, make things worse for when meet on an even more unwilling battleground than their kitchen.

Nate pulls Hotaru close, an arm sweeping up her side to cup her head gently. It takes him a moment to decide he doesn’t actually want to stand anymore, and a moment longer to decide how to pull Ru down with him, but when he moves it’s a smooth drop to the floor.

NATE

SUNJATA

i heard you telling lies
i heard you say you weren't born of our blood

He can’t find better words to put in his mouth. He fails and flounders again and again. And anything he does say simply will get turned back around on him. Just like before. Just like Korofi. And perhaps that’s what he needs to do to try and keep the barbs from spinning, from striking deep within him – perhaps that’s what the dragon shift within him shows as it passes over his tattooed skin. “You’re right. I didn’t have to.” But then what? They faced each other and regardless of how many times they’ve told themselves and their gods they wouldn’t hurt one another…

They would. Somehow. Someway. Safrin’s words of the Voice turning Nate against him burns against that spot within his ribcage, that spot where Safrin had left her mark. Were they to simply become drones at the end of it? “That… That’s why. That’s why I did it.” He manages to tell Nate at the mention of the new demi-god not having a choice, swallowing hard and trying to gain control over his emotions, trying to pull himself together and pick himself up by those proverbial bootstraps and shakes his head as the arms drop away, as Nate holds Hotaru close, as her words burn and spin and Nate’s break and tear.

“I know, but it was the only option I had.” He tells Hotaru, regaining some semblance of himself, shaking his horned head as if he’s trying to push the self wallowing aside – that can come later. That always comes later. “And I know I didn’t talk to either of you. But you couldn’t have protected me, Nate.” Gods it hurts, it kills him inside to say it. “Neither could you Hotaru.” His gaze dances between them as Nate drops to sit on the floor and brings Hotaru with him.

Sunjata’s left standing, left keeping his distance, left half becoming man and half becoming dragon. “We were always going to have to choose. All of us. And I couldn’t… She wouldn’t have let me stay neutral or choose the Voice. She attuned me, she could take it all away, she could take me away.” And she hadn’t, though Sunjata doesn’t dare consider even bringing it up to his goddess of the stars. "I never meant for this to happen." His mask begins to fracture again. “I’m so, so sorry.” He says again, eyes falling to the floor, unsure whether he should stay or he should go, unsure whether he should take to the skies and come back when things had settled, or to an empty home.

But the wedding ring still stands on Nate’s hand and Sunjata doesn’t dare take his off until Nate says it’s over.

It was done out of love. He’d only ever considered it because of love. And as always, it crushes him again and again. Only this time they live and it’s only the hurt he’s caused them to face. Though they all know it’s nothing he could ever atone for.

He decides to stay, for the moment, backing up until his wings and back hit the wall of their stone living room, drawing his wings in tight around him so he can take that mask off, alone, closing himself off, pressing the heels of his palm to his eyes until he regains some semblance of himself. The wings withdraw a fraction, their pointed tips aimed toward the sky. "Should I go?" He asks through a voice that's hoarse, tight with emotion, aimed at Hotaru and Nate - unsure which answer would be worse.

i know we're the crooked kind
but you're crooked too, boy, and it shows

I could take all that you love, I could be death from above

Hotaru falls silent, and though the rage still prickles like hot coals under her skin, the embers do nothing more than burn her tongue as she bites down upon it. This isn't her war. These aren't her patrons. This particular betrayal is one that only hurts because of how much she loves Nate. A pain by association. But just as she had forbidden Deimos from taking a pound of flesh from Sunjata when he'd married Phoebe, she knows this is a wound she can't take vengeance for on his behalf. "You didn't even give us a chance to try," she says quietly. Just as he'd done when he'd asked her to go to Halo while he dealt with his father, and see how well that had worked out. "You didn't talk to us. Trust us." Simply made decisions, called it love, and didn't care about the havoc it wreaked.

Nate's hand comes to cradle her, and she turns into it, burying her face in his neck and squeezing her eyes shut as if that can somehow bring her clarity. The tears that don't fall cling to her lashes and smear against his skin. Hotaru clings to her anger, because she can already feel the hollowness closing in, and with that comes an apathy that she can't afford. When that happens, she historically makes decisions that only hurt all the more.

She moves easily with Nate as he pulls them to the ground, legs pulling in and curling up into his embrace. They can sling their own words for a moment. Here, she curls around her stomach, the emptiness there that aches and reminds her that it could have been her child. In more than name, without having to compete with a literal goddess for the title of mother. That dream had been so close, and just as she'd brushed it with her fingertips it had turned to ash. She'd been devoted to keeping them safe this time, protecting them from the war by using her own middle ground between her husbands' sides to try and divert attention away. That has all been stolen. Sunjata's quiet question pulls at her attention, and Hotaru genuinely doesn't know how to respond. Forgiveness is not in her nature, and she has already forgiven him so much. But if she asks him to leave, and Nate wants him to stay, what then?

Instead of answering she shrinks in Nate's arms, arm wrapping around his torso to bring him closer. "I can't make that decision," she tells him in a whisper against his skin, ignoring Sunjata for a moment. "I don't...I'm not a good person, I don't forgive the way you do." She isn't saying this is irreparably broken, can't do that when her mental state is so shaken up, but it's clear in the unspoken words between that it will have to be Nate's call. That she is here for him. Won't abandon him to the hard conversation if he decides he wants to try, but will support him if he asks Sunjata to go. Because Hotaru has always been too loyal to those few who love her for all her flaws, and though she'd sooner demand Sunjata leave for her own sake, she will forsake that potential easing of her pain for Nate.

HOTARU

you swallowed my heart and fled, but I want it back now, baby

”You don’t know that Sunjata!” The outburst overlaps with Hotaru’s soft accusation. Because they hadn’t had the chance to try. They never would now, and Nate has absolutely no idea how things will go. Anything that he could even pretend to call control has been ripped from his hands and thrown to stars, scattered among those cold and shining fields.

”So what happens if the old gods lose this? What do you do then?” For a single crazed second, Nate’s head whips around, looking for the blood ring that he’d left on the counter, so he can ask what he really means silently. What do you want to happen? He doesn’t dare with that hateful constellation still spread over Sunjata’s chest,

Nate leans into the brush of words against his skin, his fluid rimmed eye focused on the inky black shape of Sunjata across the room. He considers quietly, leaning in to press his lips against Hotaru’s golden crown, his arms pulling around her more protectively. ”No.” The word drops with all the grace of a brick through ice, his tone rough, rumbling with anger. ”You don’t get to come home, drop... all of this on us, and then leave. You have to stay, and you have to be part of fixing it.” This time, Nate fights to keep his lip from curling, to keep his voice steady, though it’s very clear none of this comes from a place of forgiveness. He’s not going to be the spark that fans them all into a conflagration again. ”That’s love, Sunjata.”

A holographic hand appears again, just over Nate’s shoulder, it’s finger outstretched to stop any response that might come from the attuned. His focus turns away, just for a moment, so he can lean into Hotaru, words that are only just barely loud enough for her to catch dropping from his lips. ”Will you be okay, sweetheart?” With the decision he’s made, with all of this?

When he turns to look back up at Sunjata, there is more sorrow than anger in his gaze, though his face is stubbornly stony, his brows pulled tightly together and his mouth set i to a hard line. ”Don’t say a word. Just nod, okay?” Simple, short instructions. ”I still love you. You’re not leaving, we’re not leaving. You don’t get to ask us to forgive you. Ever.” There more, he's sure, demands and boundaries and other things he’s forgetting, but Nate is honeslty just proud of himself for staying together as much as he has.

NATE

SUNJATA

i heard you telling lies
i heard you say you weren't born of our blood

Hotaru’s soft words overlap with Nate’s outburst and he’s flinching slightly. He didn’t trust them. He doesn’t trust easily. He doesn’t trust because it always comes to bite him in the ass later. And it seems this has too. So he’s at a loss, closing in on himself in a weird chimera type of partial shift that has wings and scales, claws and lightning trying to swallow him up. He takes a steadying breath, the buzz of alcohol hitting him so suddenly in that moment he thinks he’s nauseous. But he tries to focus on Nate’s words.

He wants to protest and say he won’t die, but, even he isn’t so sure now. Not with the ichor of Safrin on his tongue, in his veins, in his very bones marked on skin and inside along his rib cage. No, he doesn’t know what will happen. So he closes off until he asks what to do, because he doesn’t know how to make it better, doesn’t know if he can. But he doesn’t want to stay if it causes a multitude of pain. He doesn’t want to leave if it does the same.

And so he asks, back against the wall and wings opened just enough to see them together, to think how much they deserved to have him leave if all he was going to do was cause them pain.

Hotaru doesn’t answer. It’s Nate’s voice, cutting through the thick of it. Cutting through him as he’s told what to do. And he will, entirely do that. He loves them enough that he’d do anything to try and fix what he’s done. Part of him considers it a major mistake, but the other half could never look at his soon to be child and think it. And so he says nothing, he just swallows hard, his wings droop and his legs give out and he, too, slides to the floor.

He watches that hand again, staticky and bright — so much like the Voice’s own that he clenched his jaw, tears his red rimmed eyes from it to look at Nate’s cold face.

It cuts through him again with Nate’s confirmation, that he still loves him. That Sunjata isn’t leaving and that they aren’t leaving. And it takes a second to hit him where it really matters. No forgiveness. He doesn’t deserve it anyway.

The Flood nods, just the once, before he’s letting that shuddering breath leave him as he draws his legs in against a freshly inked chest, as his blood stained hand rises to cover his eyes again, to rub at his face, his wings dropped and sullen and spread along the floor.

i know we're the crooked kind
but you're crooked too, boy, and it shows

I could take all that you love, I could be death from above

In the absence of her rage, Nate's rises to take its place, and this time she is the rock to keep him grounded as she curls inside his arms. Sunjata's silence is an echoing damnation. Hotaru had known his lack of trust would lead to problems eventually when they'd had their own fight on the balcony during LongNight, but she hadn't known it would be a problem this enormous. If there had been time, if he hadn't run right off to Safrin immediately after they both returned home, maybe she would have brought it up to Nate. There's no way of knowing now.

Needles run down her spine at the resounding silence when Nate asks what Sunjata would do if the Old Gods lost. Does he have nothing to say? Is his faith in Safrin so strong he can't even fathom it? Or is there a far more sinister mindset laying beneath, a prejudice that persists even with Nate so deeply embedded in his heart? Not knowing why he doesn't answer does nothing but aggravate all the questions in her head, spiking pain in the base of her skull where a tension headache begins to build. Hotaru doesn't want to think him capable of that. In the wake of this disaster, she nevertheless can't help the doubt.

The kiss to her hair distracts her from that spiral, and she can't help but agree with Nate's declaration even if it means suffering through this for potentially hours more. Maybe she can bear it if he keeps her in his arms. A rock as much as a restraint. Hotaru feels all the more selfish for it and can only hope that somehow she is returning the favor, letting him know with her presence alone that though there has been a line drawn in the sand, he is not alone on his side of it. Hotaru nods her consent against his throat. "Just don't let go," she whispers. Terrified that if he does, that rage will return, and Safrin herself will have to intervene to stop her from making Sunjata feel the pain he has forced upon them.

Turning red eyes over her shoulder, she stares at Sunjata where he sits crumpled on the floor. The twinge of pity - and it is pity, she is incapable of feeling true sympathy - is an unwelcome addition to her heart, but her love for him cannot evaporate so easily. So instead, she takes up where Nate leaves off, with the necessary breaking down of the situation if they ever have hope of gathering the rubble together. "You stole any chance I had of being their mother. I can't forgive you that." It's an emotionally strained declaration. Just to emphasize her agreement that forgiveness is certainly not in the cards. Whether she will have the strength to still be a mother to the child - whether this relationship will even still exist in the same way for her to be there in an active enough role to try - is something that is implied. But she is not so cruel as to leave it there. "Nate can't change back any more than this child can't be born from her hands. So where does that leave us? If the deal is voided by Nate being a demigod, then you raise the child regardless; that relinquishes her from her side." Not that it leaves them much better off. "But now you're stuck as a soldier on her side. We need to know exactly how active of a role she has made you promise to play before we can even figure out where...where we fall." Her voice cracks there, but she soldiers on valiantly, emotions locked down tight so that there is only the chill of her tone and the implacable motionless of her features for him to take note of.

HOTARU

you swallowed my heart and fled, but I want it back now, baby

Nate feels absolutely ancient. Exhausted still from his becoming, and dragged down with the weight of all this drama, all this stress that he hadn’t been prepared for. He should have been. He knows that this is just how their lives are. Even if they did ever get a moment to breathe, it’s not like he would know how to use it.

Focusing instead on things he knows, things he can feel and hold, Nate hums, feeling Hotaru nod against him and letting himself settle a little with it. This isn’t the time or the place for one of them to be taking the reins and running, not when that’s the very issue they’re trying to fix. ”I’m not going anywhere.” It’s a solemn promise, loud enough to reach across the room for Sunjata’s ears as well. His own brand of selfishness, as if anyone but him would call it selfish to try and hold onto the one good thing he still had.

When he speaks next, Nate hardly recognizes the voice that leaves him, the steadiness of it. He doesn’t know how he manages to keep up the facade, though it probably has something to with the way his gaze slips away from Sunjata again, and with the weight of Hotaru in his arms.

Once it’s out of him though, Nate feels himself deflate, leaning in to Ru to hide his face away, to let her take the wheel for a little while. He can feel a telltale prick at his eyes, and tears are something he wants to avoid at all costs. Still, the retreat doesn’t stop him from voicing his irritation at the whole situation. ”Its all a run around. Safrin gets exactly what she wants, and then she gets to say there’s nothing she can do about me.” The house always wins, doesn’t it? His arms tighten around Hotaru again, shifting the pair of them so they sit more comfortably, so Nate can hide more completely behind her sharp tongue.

NATE