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.
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
