From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
03-26-2021, 11:29 PM (This post was last modified: 03-30-2021, 01:45 AM by Hotaru.)
HOTARU
The Climb is a leviathan for her to slay, and so she has spent hours of her day traversing the scalding hot climate to do so. This is where she lost Kiada, and though the girl is - in some twisted way - alive, those memories do not stop tormenting her so easily. Exposure is the best therapy however, and what she finds in the sprawling lands of the Climb is enough to assure her that there is more to this area than the lava pits that had stolen her niece from her.
Atlas is along for the journey, having ignored all her attempts to keep him in Halo out of worry for how the temperatures would affect him. He'd been adamant that if she were to need healing anywhere, it would be in the unexplored sections of the Climb, and with his magical ability to heal he would not part from her side. As such they are both relatively well coated in sweat, Atlas' dark sections of coat gleaming. Hotaru's hair has long since been pinned to the top of her crown, and though her heavier winter clothing for Halo is in the thinnest leather saddlebags she'd been able to make for Atlas, she is wearing relatively little in comparison to combat the heat. A linen dress and shorts, leather bracer attached as always to her forearm and dagger at her side.
It's Atlas that points them to this new area, sensitive ears tracking the sound of water before Hotaru can hope to. As they come upon it, Hotaru allows herself to stare in awe at the waterfall. It's quite massive and no less majestic for it. As they reach the edge of the pool Atlas begins to wade in, amusement flowing across their bond as Hotaru squawks and lunges to remove the saddlebags. Rolling her eyes at her companion, she divests herself of her clothes to pile against the bags, leaving only her undergarments. Frankly uncaring if anyone sees her should they be in these parts. Hotaru is more than confident in her body, and last time she did this she'd had some wonderful sex with Wessex, and then again with Loren, so truly she has a good streak going here.
Releasing her tied up hair, Hotaru takes a running leap off the rock, diving into the water after her companion. She lingers a moment beneath the water as the bubbles run up her legs and tickle against her cheek, letting the pool cool her skin before she surfaces. "Don't go too deep, I don't think I can haul your ass out if you get caught," she calls to Atlas cheekily as she watches him swim in slow circles. Dark eyes pin her with a frankly unimpressed stare that communicates itself more than sufficiently even without being able to feel his emotions through the bond, and Hotaru's laughter echoes across the water to be swallowed up by the sound of cascading water.
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The Climb would be an odd destination for him at any point, but right now, especially, it feels like a mistake. Like it would be all too easy to make a mistake, to trip on his doubts into a molten pool. What a sad way that would be to go, after everything else he's survived. Pemota is there to keep an eye on him as well, the starwhal not giving him a chance to stray away from the safest path.
There's no real goal in mind. Nate chooses a direction that seems vaguely like the way to Halo. Last time he'd been here, he'd been out of his mind with Climb Fever, but there's bits and pieces that are familiar. If he really tries, he can make his way out to the frozen Tundra, and somewhere else from there. It's just portal hopping, until he can figure out how to get his head on straight again.
The roar of water catches his attention, the path of his feet shifting to carry him towards them. He and Sunjata had come by here, hadn't they? And the water had been awful, painful, but... for some reason it draws him.
And then it all becomes obvious, a familiar halo of golden hair tugging at his heart, pulling him closer without a thought. He's utterly silent, standing there watching Hotaru strip, and jump into the water. A distant smile plays at his lips, his arms crossing as he wanders a half step closer. It isn't until she speaks, until she laughs, that he clears his throat stepping to the edge of the water.
Now that he's revealed, Pemota darts past him, making a beeline for Atlas and clacking their matching horns together. "I could uh, help you. If you have any issues with him."
03-29-2021, 05:41 AM (This post was last modified: 03-29-2021, 05:46 AM by Hotaru.)
HOTARU
It’s a temporary distraction. Laughter, exploration, indulgence. The memories of losing Kiada at least overshadow the ones that remind her of losing Sunjata. In some ways, the older pain is easier, a tangled bit of twine that she can actually unravel in comparison to the hopeless knot that is her ended relationship. The fact that one end of that rope still trails outward is not something she has forgotten either. Simply another thing to try and forget.
Hotaru should know by now however that Caido does not allow her inhabitants to hide away from painful things. In fact it seems to actively encourage anything that drives the knife deeper. So when a throat is cleared Hotaru shouldn’t be surprised to turn her head and see Nate stepping closer to the water’s edge, Pemota sailing overhead towards Atlas who clacks his horn cheerily against hers, clearly content to immediately disengage from the two (well, one) humans in their midst. A clear sign that he will not help Hotaru in this particular endeavor. Bastard.
It’s not that her heart doesn’t leap instinctively when she sees him. The air in her lungs still escapes on a soft exhale as Hotaru gazes upon his face. She still has the immediate sensation of warmth that floods her veins, the desire to be near him, to touch and center herself in his field of gravity. He still has a sway over her that she can’t ignore, much less pretend doesn’t exist.
It’s not that she doesn’t love him. It’s that she knows what’s coming, and she can’t afford to indulge in that love for him, lest she end up sharpening the blade that she knows is going to pierce her heart.
Still, just as she had laid her lips upon Sunjata’s one last time after burning the bridge between them, Hotaru is a weak woman when it comes to her heart. As such she swims closer all the same. Lets her lips curl in a smile, expression warm and tender in a way only he is privy to now. “A handsome man coming to my rescue,” she calls back over the distant roar of the water at the far end of the basin. Coming closer until she is standing in the shallows, hot air hitting her bared skin and drying her quickly, Hotaru hesitates before moving any further. Already she is gone from the house in Torchline. Her visits to Halo now flipping to become visits to Torchline instead as she wraps up her affairs. There’s no way he hasn’t noticed her dwindling time spent there. Hotaru wonders if Sunjata had even bothered to tell Nate what she had done. Part of her - bitter and jaded - assumes he hadn’t, because the impact would be close to nothing. The other part - desperately hopeful in the face of all other evidence - quietly prays that Nate has come for her now specifically because he found out.
That perhaps, impossibly, he has chosen her.
It would probably be the first time in her life that that ever happened. As such, the strength of history alone has her hands crushing that particular notion into glass fragments. They cut and burn going down, but she swallows them all the same. Hope is the elixir of fools and chosen ones. Hotaru will not let herself be the former, and she is certainly not the latter.
“Care to come in?” Perhaps for a moment she can immerse herself in the illusion of his love. Pretend they have nothing to talk about. Maybe then Hotaru can fool herself into thinking she won’t have to tear out the roots of her heart that remain from where she’d razed the rest to the ground with Sunjata. But if he denies her, she knows she won’t let the disappointment show. Even with them, she is too well-defended to let them see her pain.
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
Of all the people he could stumble across in this most remote of places, it has to be Hotaru. He’s trying to get away from pain, trying to get his head on straight again, not send it hurtling through the labyrinthine passages of his heart. Fate, or Caido, or whatever other force it is that controls these things has other plans for him, and who is he to deny them, to keep himself quiet?
Nate doesn’t smile back, or if he does, it’s gone from his face before she can catch a glimpse of it. Shaking his head and drawing back into himself the closer she comes, Nate let’s a shrug roll over his shoulders, this uncertainty something he still trusts her with. He can be vulnerable, can be emotional, to a point. ”You don’t need to be rescued.” He replies smoothly, brows pulling together. ”You can take care of yourself.” The words are half sorrow and half pride. No matter how it hurts him, Nate has to respect how Hotaru has taken charge of her story, how she’s known when to try and heal, and when to amputate. It’s a skill he should be better at, but he isn’t.
”I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Even as he says it, Nate kicks out of boots, pants, pulls his jacket off and his shirt over his head. ”Last time I was near this water, it burned me.” But that had been when he was sick, when he’d been trying to heal. Testing the water with a hesitant toe, the ascended tries to keep his gaze focused on the haze of steam, instead of drifting towards the abandoned. Maybe the warm water can soothe the wounds on his heart, before it has him boiling over. Or maybe this will turn out to be an especially slow kind of suicide. Nate can’t quite decide while eventuality he would prefer.
He’s waist deep in the water by the time he looks up, closer than he expects. Close enough that he could maybe reach out, could touch her, though he doesn’t dare. There’s something sky lingering in his gaze, overshadowed by something mortally wounded, and bleeding out. ”Thought you were...” Actually, he doesn’t, doesn’t know what he thought, doesn’t know where she’s been spending her time. He can assume Halo, knows she has friends, family, a life there. The words die off without an end, Nate’s single eye falling to the steamy water again.
Her own face slowly shutters at his lack of a positive response, permafrost already inching around the torn edges of her heart to prepare against any further damage. For all his words may be a compliment to any other, to her it is a piercing arrow. All the same she forces her chin higher. Habit and self-preservation more than natural haughtiness. "I can," she agrees softly, only loud enough to be heard. "Someone has to." His sorrow only makes her dig deeper into herself, the parting words the equivalent of a cornered wounded animal growling from its den. She doesn't mean the various implications - not against him at least - but it hurts to be reminded that she has to bandage her own wounds all over again.
Her eyes never leave him as he strips though. Some sort of self-inflicted misery, or a last ditch attempt to commit the entirety of his body to memory. There's a spark of alarm that flickers across her face at his admission that it had hurt him, but Nate is already moving forward into the water. Watching with bated breath, she only exhales when he continues onward with no sign of pain or injury to be seen even with her keenly searching gaze glued to his face. After that, well...she still doesn't look away. Can't bring herself to so much as blink as the space between them is whittled away to nearly nothing. Hotaru would love to be optimistic. To hope. But just as hope doesn't feed hungry mouths, it's incapable of stitching up wounds; inflicts them more often than not. Nate has never let her fall, has always had his hands there to catch and stabilize her when she stumbles. But now, those hands do not reach for her. So Hotaru does what she must, and does not let herself step off that edge. She won't survive the freefall.
Trailing notions bring a tired, clumsy smile to her lips. "Had some demons I needed to face here." Ones he is all too familiar with considering he'd been there when Wessex carried her into their home, practically catatonic with grief. Looking down at the water, she skims her fingers against the surface, unwilling to stare into his face. "I've been staying with Deimos otherwise." So he's not far off the mark. Perhaps that makes her predictable, but she has so few friends as it is, and has never tried to hide how deep her connection is with the Sword. Forcing her eyes back up, Hotaru tries to give a smile only for it to fall flat. "I guess I never was a beach kind of girl." It rings hollow, with far too many unspoken similarities written between the lines.
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
Someone has to. The words come so quietly, so gently, that even Nate is surprised by his compulsion to scream back. I could, it should be me! Sorrow curdles in his chest, too much too soon making him hard, when it's the last thing he should be. In some former life he'd done this once a week, shattered things beyond repair so he could chase after whatever shiny new thing had caught his eye, but he'd never been in love in some former life. He'd never been on this side of it in some former life.
Nate can all but feel her eyes on him while he strips down, while he steps into the water. It has his limbs lagging, made heavier under the weight of a mismatched gaze. It feels like a century has passed between leaving the shore and standing before Hotaru, and still that time doesn't ease the words leaving him. Doesn't stop the stumble, though she understands. "Are they any gentler?" Not easier, he understands well enough to know that no circumstances can make that pain easier. "Since she's back now?"
The hollowness that lurks in her voice splashes clear across his face, his smile souring until not a scrap of it remains. "Guess you weren't really my kind of girl either." He thinks that he deserves this, deserves to be bitter and selfish, not that he needs the justification. His voice would still rise just fine without it, his face would still shudder and twist, his brows pinching and his gaze on Hotaru's face. "I know Sunjata fucked up, but I didn't think that meant I wasn't even worth a letter." A knife in his front and back now, and he isn't sure if it's better or worse to have seen one coming.
There are magnitudes left unspoken, unsaid, but she feels the pressure of the words all the same. Pressing into her skin, against the inside of her throat. Seeking to answer a call she can't even understand for all she may hear it. Hotaru is not often left speechless in her life - words the finely crafted tools and weapons she'd learned to wield early on - but Nate's presence alone has struck her dumb and motionless. Until they are nothing but two frozen figures in the water, close enough to touch but incapable of doing so. Her fingers twitch all the same. Covetous.
"No," she says softly instead when he asks, and it hurts how he cares so much for her still. "Not when I'm afraid I'll lose her all over again." Now that she's Ascended. Like Nate. Nate who she still stands to lose, whose loss may be hastened by Sunjata's actions. She had begged Wessex to look out for him, but will that matter? Will any of it hold weight if he doesn't decide to leave on his own? Even if not to her. She can't be selfish enough to think that.
His next words are wounding, and though she flinches her eyes never harden. Soft and accepting. "I deserve that," she murmurs, fingertips idly touching the surface of the water. Hotaru is not enough of a coward to look away though. Tilts her chin up only enough to communicate her defenses. "I had nothing to offer you at first. No escape, no temporary shelter, much less a home. I didn't just leave to get away, I left so I could...so I..." her bravery stalls, terror swelling in her throat, and she blinks swiftly to clear the sharpness behind her eyes. It's a level of vulnerability that she hasn't allowed herself, even with Nate and Sunjata. Her gaze drops. "I wanted to have something more to offer. In case you decided to choose me." Heart rabbiting in her breast, Hotaru is grateful for the general hot climate around them which conceals the sweat that runs cold at the base of her spine and forces shivers over her skin that she must push down fiercely.
"I asked Wessex to keep watch over you if she could. I knew leaving would hurt you, but I couldn't ask anything of you so soon." Before he'd made up his own mind about the child, about Sunjata, and the Gods that overlooked them all. But when she goes to make her apology, Hotaru forces her mismatched gaze back up, because he deserves her sincerity. Her focus. "I'm sorry, Nate." Because she is too sorry now to ask for anything, much less something of the magnitude she'd previously tentatively dreamed.
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
”You won’t lose her again.” How can his voice be so steady, when it’s so uncertain? When he can’t make that promise in any way that matters? But Nate knows in some way that he won’t let anything happen to Kiada, won’t let anything happen to any of the ascended as much as he can help it. It’s why he’d agreed to become a Demi-god, isn’t it? To help to safeguard their Family?
Nate listens. He offers that where he hadn’t even been given the chance to plead his case, though his lips are purses in an unhappy twist the entire time, and his one eye is glassy and blank. It’s only the motion of his jaw, the barely there nods that show he’s even listening at all. Swallowing as Hotaru stumbles, Nate opens his mouth, moves to fill the silence, when he catches sight of the glassiness that lingers in mismatched eyes (eyes that his own had matched, not too long ago) and he has to let his gaze drop as quickly as hers does. The ascended isn’t made for things like this, doesn’t have the tact it requires, doesn’t have the balls to say that he’s gutted.
”I’m getting really tired of other people making decisions like that for me.” Nate had thought of anyone, Hotaru would understand that, would understand the need to have some kind of agency in such a large choice. A wet hand comes up to rub at his face, Nate half considering slipping under the water and not coming up again. ”I didn’t need anything offered. I needed you, and you left, again.” Maybe of this was the first time, if it didn’t come so soon after other betrayals, he could forgive it. But he’s angry, hurt.
Something bitter bubbles out of him when she says she’d asked Wessex, of all people, to keep an eye on him. Like he was some kind of child who needed watching, or a pet that couldn’t be trusted alone. It does nothing to help him, nothing to stop the burning cold in his chest where a heart once sat. He looks up just in time to meet her gaze, fluid shimmering in his one blue eye, though it’s blank behind the bushes tears. ”I’m getting really sick of people apologizing to me too.”
“You can’t promise that,” she says gently, knowing his heart is in the right place. His optimism is a beacon of light, but one she can only watch from afar, unable to bathe herself within it in turn. Staring down at her distorted reflection in the water, Hotaru remembers those last moments in Helovia as hundreds blinked out of existence and more were lost to the portals. The Voice reminds her too keenly of Kisamoa, the false god that had perpetrated it. And is history not a wheel? Doomed to cycle and repeat? Loss is a gaping hole that is as much a part of her as her soul. It may not be now, it may not even be Kiada, but it’s an inevitability all the same.
It might even be him.
It might even be now.
His vitriol is not unwarranted, but she weathers it gracefully. Accepting blame where it is due, anger where it is fairly rooted. “You needed me, but I needed to be away. I couldn’t stay the way you did the moment I saw her face.” She can’t even bear to say the child’s name. She’d taken one look through the window upon her arrival and slipped over the balcony with her few possessions. A runaway, a thief, slipping out the back and away from what had never had the chance to become home. Lifting her watery gaze, Hotaru is proud that her lips don’t tremble, her voice doesn’t break. This she won’t ask forgiveness for. “I am sorry I hurt you. But I’m not sorry I left. For me, it would have shattered what little of me there was left. I don’t begrudge you your ability to remain there, to meet her, to try -” even if she longs to. Gods, she wants to hate him for it. For not being able to feel the agony she feels over that intimate betrayal. But he is no woman, no mother, and certainly not a mother who has lost every child she has reared. Hotaru can’t hold it against him that he can’t empathize with her pain. “- but I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t.” Any notions of reconciliation - and she’d had them, damn her for her weakness and devotion to Sunjata - had evaporated the second she’d seen Kamaria’s face. Her unexpected age.
His anger at her apology spurs a wry, tired smile. “Then don’t accept it. I am not owed your forgiveness, my love. Neither is Sunjata. And I won’t ask for what you aren’t willing to give.” As much as she would like it, she’s not so naive as to pretend it is a guarantee. “I can bear your anger, it’s a burden I’m not unwilling to carry. So stop forgiving.” Hotaru would rather see him spared the pain, even if it means he doesn’t forgive her either. His boundaries are worth defending.
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
"Well I am!" He snaps back, if only to grab hold of some kind of control, something outside of them that maybe he can actually affect. Maybe he can actually hold onto it this time, can actually make a fucking difference, instead of coming in second last, like he always does. Never fast enough, never strong enough, never enough. This is a cycle he's walked more than once, one that ends with him even lower than where he's started every time, every time, but still there is that voice inside of him that screams this will be different, I will make this time different. Maybe this time it'll be true.
How does she have the power to make him feel selfish, when he needs this. When he's right? Why is it so hard to simply disconnect, to stew in his anger, to blame her entirely? It could be easy, he could make this fucking easy, if not for his traitorous heart.
Just as Hotaru's gaze lifts, Nate's crashes into the water, his throat bobbing as he tries to swallow, and chokes on the dryness of it. If only it could actually affect him, if only he could feel it. He understands, in the most superficial way, the pain she'd felt. The loss, the betrayal, different than what he'd suffered, but no less wounding. "You... shouldn't hurt just for me." He concedes after a long moment of silence, anger breaking away, something he can't actually maintain right now. Something he doesn't really want to maintain right now. "I don't want to be angry at you." The admission is quiet and choked, but it has Nate's eye lifting again, his brows pinched tightly above it, his lips a tight, unhappy line.
"I just," his voice cracks, and shame and terror spill out over his face, a clenched fist rising to his lips. Like he's going to gag himself. Like he's going to hit himself. Either would be preferable to breaking, to showing this weakness. He takes a moment, takes a few deep breaths, biting back the shining in his eyes with sheer force of will, and tries again. "I just wanted things to be okay. For a season, for a fucking week." Gods, he can't stop it, and he hates himself for it, more than anything and anyone else in the world right now. More than he hates Sunjata and Hotaru. Fluid leaks from tightly closed eyes, just as words leaked from his tightly clenched jaw. "I just got you back."
He is a log cracking beneath the eroding might of fire, sending up a spray of rebellious embers as he breaks. A futile display of emotion that will soon be reduced to ash. She can smell it on him, the whittling away, and it burns her throat with empathy. “Okay,” she whispers softly instead, accepting his desire to wrap healing hands around an unfair world and wrestle it into submission. Whether he can doesn’t diminish the fact that he will try. She will not be the one to do so. Instead, with one word, she gives him the smallest bit of trust she can in this scenario. That he will try, if nothing else.
Crack. Another break. Another wound gouged out by flames as he wilts before her. Even knowing how it will burn her, her hands move without conscious direction, rising to cup his downturns face gently in her palms. She can’t bear to not touch him a moment longer. If these are to be the last hours when she is afforded his skin so intimately, she won’t waste them.
Her thumb caresses his tensed jaw, trying to ease the strain there as she wades closer, just enough to banish the distance between them. It hurts, to see him like this. The tears do not come only because Hotaru will not let this become centered around her own feelings. “Oh, my love. You have never really lost me. I have loved you regardless of where my mind was or where my feet took me. My love is not so ephemeral as to disappear when I’m not near.” She cradles his face and tries to resist the urge to rise onto her toes, to kiss away the anguish on his face, to lighten the shadows in eyes that once matched hers. “You can be angry at me. You can even leave me. Both here and forever. You can withhold your forgiveness until our dying days. But I will love you all the same.” If now is to be their final moments, she will say all that has not been given room on her tongue, buried away in her heart where she had felt it was safer.
“I know you love Sunjata. More than I can ever compare. I couldn’t ask you to choose between us before I left, when your mind was still so far from made. You would never want to hurt me by having to say it to my face.” So she had taken the choice from his hands. Put a target on her own back, inspired anger instead of guilt and regret. Turned herself from victim to villain. All for him. Everything for him. “But even if you return to him and leave me, you will not forfeit my love. I may not warm your bed or wear your ring, but parting ways would never kill what I feel for you. Just as I told Sunjata - if ever you need me, I will always come when you call.” Finally, against her will, her own tears bubble and gather at her lashes, distorting her view of him. “I cannot change the way this world hurts us. But I can promise that you will never truly lose me. Not in the way that matters.”
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
As soon as hands touch him the tension all bleeds away into a tremble, a wounded sound dying in Nate’s throat as he crumbles fully and collapses into Hotaru, his head pressing in against hers. She comes closer, the distance between them shrinking slowly, and Nate reaches out to wrap arms around her, trying to not squeeze her too tightly, but needing to hold her and never let go. Does that make him selfish? Does he even care if it does?
”I’m not... I’m not angry.” He lies weakly, the truth too complicated to put words to. It’s not Hotaru, just as much as it is her. Just as much as it’s everyone, though not nearly as much as it’s him. ”Not at you. I... o get it. I understand. I just... I fucking hate it. I hate it all so much.”
He can’t argue with what she says. No matter how he might want to deny it, every word that drops from her lips is true. His sullen blue eyed gaze focuses on her chin, not daring to move up higher while guilt still clouds his face. ”I don’t want to hurt you.” The words are quiet, earnest, almost managing to mask the apologies dripping off every syllable. Nate leans in close again, this time to press their cheeks together, if only so she can’t see the tears growing in his own eyes. ”I love you Ru.” He murmurs against the beat of her heart, his brows pinched. It might make him a coward, might make him a bad person, but even now he can’t bring himself to actually say ’I’m sorry’, even if it’s obvious in the way his face is twisted against her skin, in the desperate squeeze of his fingers.
”Can I...” The words start and stop in a breath, lips brushing against the ghosts of scars he’s left on her. ”I want to kiss you.” Nate shifts back, brushing his nose across Hotaru’s cheek until he rests against hers, too close to really see if one or the other is crying. The choice is left entirely up to her, Nate not sure where the lines between them are drawn anymore, if they even exist at all.
04-13-2021, 07:40 AM (This post was last modified: 04-15-2021, 06:57 AM by Hotaru.)
HOTARU
He melts into her touch, and she is there with cupped hands to hold what overflows, cradling every drop so that nothing is forgotten. There is no real need for gentleness with a man who cannot feel the sensitivity with which she touches him, but it is there all the same. In contrast he holds her like a drowning man to a life ring, and Hotaru does nothing but move closer into his gravity to allow him to wrap himself around her. It's a moment of selfish greed. Even she can see that in herself. It doesn't stop her from laying her hands to his skin and letting the world around them fall away.
"It's not fair," she agrees softly, and though the base of her throat burns and aches, her words do not tremble the way they ought to. Shielding him even from this. Constructing a barrier between him and the rest of the world, and intentionally placing herself on the outside where her own emotions cannot touch him. For a moment, as his eyes fall somewhere short of her lips and his voice strains, tears cling to her lashes and her resolve nearly breaks. It's a near thing. An aching like the creak of wood before it snaps, leaving her gutted and hollow. Tinder all the same to keep him warm.
"You will hurt me," she confesses into his skin, her own tears warm where they streak down her cheeks, and she has never been so grateful that he cannot feel them on his own. "But I will forgive you for doing it all the same. Because I love you." Her voice breaks, shattering somewhere in those last few words, and she casts her gaze heavenwards in some last bid for strength. The strength to let him pull her into his embrace with the knowledge that letting go will be all the harder.
But she will do it for him, because she must. Because it's what he needs, what he asks of her in his shaking voice that she cannot hope to ever deny. Because she loves him, simply and truly.
"Kiss me then," she whispers, leaning close so he does not have to bear witness to how he breaks her. She focuses instead on the touch of his lips, the lukewarm coolness of his cheek beneath her hand, and the salt that only she can taste as her tears paint the spaces where they touch. It is a raw and painful communion, something beautiful but sharp like stained glass raining down on them. She kisses him like it is the first and last time. Like it's just another lingering moment stolen somewhere in their kitchen. Like it's the kiss she never got to have on their wedding day. A world of moments, lived and stolen, written into the press of her mouth against his.
She knows it still won't be enough to make him stay.
Pull you in, but don't you get too close Love you now, but not tomorrow
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
"I don't deserve you Ru." A pitiful moan, as Nate presses in against the abandoned and holds her tightly, trying to keep the both of them from shattering. Maybe if he says it out loud, one of them will believe it, will actually heed it, and it will make this pain all the more bearable. Somehow though, Nate doubts that. What he deserves and what he wants have never been the same thing, and just getting what he deserves has never been enough. "I... I do love you." The hesitation says everything he can't, confirms all her fears and worries.
His one blue eye stays closed because he is a coward, because he knows that the dampness against him is not solely from the hot springs, and Nate has no idea how to face the guilt it will bring. No idea how to deal with the pang of loss in his chest. All the times he's has to do it, and he still doesn't know how to fucking mourn something.
Nate presses their lips together with all the passion and hesitation of that first night they'd met, with all the easy tenderness of a dozen moments they wouldn't have. He kisses Hotaru with a bitter apology on his lips, with pain and regret and all the things he's afraid of losing. Even when he pulls back, long after the point that he knows she'll need to breathe, Nate doesn't go far, lips dragging a path along her cheek, towards a spot low on her jaw, damp from tears. They can both pretend it's the steam though, can't they?
Another kiss presses against her skin, Nate pausing against Hotaru like they can stretch this moment into an eternity.
