Hotaru
nothing's fair in love and war
This isn’t the first time they’ve locked proverbial horns. For all the depth of their love, they are different people with entirely different ways of achieving things. She with her shadows and sibilant tones, he with his fire and steel. But they have a lifetime spent at each other’s sides to draw on, a loyalty she has never known outside of him, and even in her frustration she knows with a certainty that this will not break them. It lends her a surety that allows her to keep from pulling back and going along in a way others might when faced with confrontation. “That’s not what I meant,” she corrects, though she says it slowly with an exhale through her nose to keep from snapping. “I’m not trying to seem as if I’m the only one controlling this - but I am the one pregnant, and when I say I can figure it out I mean that I will find a way to still be at your side regardless of the impact this has.” For all that words are her weapons, she is struggling to control them now, riled and pressed by time as she is. Deimos deserves clarity and fairness however and so she endeavors to slow down, to explain.
“I wanted to have a solution before I told you, so that you wouldn’t worry. But I didn’t have enough time.” Consternation twists her pretty face into a catty scowl. This situation is distasteful to say the least. Hotaru despises being rushed. “You were the first person I wanted to tell, but there’s no joy or celebration to be had when all I’ve done is made myself a wrench in our plans.” Viperous hiss aimed at herself this time, poisonous and hateful. Her averted gaze flinches at the corners as he snags and sketches, graphite dark and bold with his emotions. He’d never hurt her, but too many beloved men have before, and the tension in her shoulders is coiled and painful.
Bearing his facetiousness is like trying not to scream when being branded, but she must. He is angry, understandably so. “It’s not arrogance, it’s the surety of having back up plans. More than one. They won’t contain me.” Not for long at least. And they could certainly try. “They haven’t named the witness, which makes their claims even weaker in Morgan’s eyes.” And Hotaru would play them against each other if she had to, always protecting herself. A snake in the grass.
What she isn’t expecting is his last revelation.
Her stomach drops out, leaden and sick, and fire engulfs her veins. Her nails dig into her palm, biting and immediate, until blood bubbles through against her cuticles. ”What?” Fury unlike anything she’s felt since arriving in Caido burns in her breast. All stillness is forgotten as she prowls closer to the table, breath coming short and fast. “Then perhaps that is their witness.” Her voice shakes even as she tries to reign it in. Vengeance must come second to her deceit, to getting out of this interrogation. Her logical mind knows this, but the part of her that still burns with Atlas’ loss howls for blood. Eyeing the paper he is drawing on, she gives a grunt of interest, peering closer even as her teeth grind hard enough to ache through her jaw and into her temple.
