[se] maybe you'll soar

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

Crisp morning air settled on his fur as he stalked the foundations of the land. Massive paws pressed into the snow, leaving their predacious tracks behind, indicators of his presence to any other creatures wandering in the midst. Today should’ve been for contemplation, for the way the earth shifted and maneuvered again and again, tossing and turning him, and so many others, about. He’d prefer it to yield to hunting, where he might snag at a hare, a roosting grouse, or a deer fallen behind its herd.

Companions left at his shelter, he was alone in the mystique, in the potential for annihilation. He lifted his hound nose to the sky, ears twisting towards any sounds – when he heard it.

A bell.

Narrowing his eyes in confusion, for there was naught seemingly around for quite a ways along the ivory hills, he tilted his skull a fraction, before following it, muzzle to the snow, as if he might pick up on an elusive scent.

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

After happening upon Wessex, she had retreated back to the solitary stretches of King’s End, tawny fur dark against the ivory snow. Everything is easier when compartmentalized in the mind of a predator. It has been a hellish few seasons, and she simply does not want to remember the events that brought her here.

Her nose is far shared in this form, her padded feet whisper soft even on the crunch of ice that forms in patches over the snow. As such, the presence of another is more readily betrayed than if she were a woman. Long tail twitches at the end as green eyes sweep the horizon and its dotted intricacies. It is a canine scent, though how she parses that is beyond her. Only, as she draws closer, as curious as the children’s tale that mentions her kind, it becomes readily obvious that she knows exactly who is out in the drift.

She hesitates.

She never has before, and the unfairness of it all makes her bones shudder with the urge to transmutate into a woman anew, the humanness of her grief expanding beyond feline boundaries. She’d gone to him for help, and then everything went to shit again. He is right there in front of her and yet he feels impossibly far away. So she must bridge the gap. She has to try.

Whatever has caught his attention comes secondary to her own as she approaches. Deimos, she calls, voice reaching out across metaphysical bonds and tethers. Then her slitted eyes fall upon the bell. Is it yours? As if she had anything better to say.

HOTARU

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

The otherwise stillness made the noise easy to track. A few more jingles, a crisp sound floating like a melody across ivory and pale outsets, instigated and incited his movements. Curiosity vastly instilled, plain to see in the archaic, predacious sway of his motions, nose to the ground, and then upwards, as he pressed over the crest of a smaller knoll, beyond barrows and mounds, to where there was a flurry, a small chorus, of the bells.

Insects rose from the ground, with their adornments and attachments, and he might’ve laughed at the sight of it, at the arc and lilt of their songs. Instead, he sat in the snow and watched them begin to drift and float, mighty little unknowns surviving on the brink of so many other things. A tilt of his head, and the images still didn’t fade; no mirages, no hallucinations, no bizarre, interlocking dreams. Just moments scattered about that didn’t hurt or ache.

His ear flicked at the press of another’s movement, and his piercing eyes landed on her before the voice circumvented through his mind. That solemn gaze widened for an instant, and then returned to its normal stature, the waves of uncertainty piercing through.

Deimos didn’t even know what to say to her. A hound’s jaw clenched, and his stare settled back upon the bugs. No. I have not seen them before. No creation of his. All Frey and Rae and whatever other means and measures the deities had instilled.

The Sword remained very still thereafter, yearning to retreat into himself, and knowing full well that it wouldn’t solve anything. Except this wasn’t a problem he’d orchestrated or conducted – only been surrounded by, in foolish attempts to gain footholds back. Are you feeling better?

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

The singing, bell-like creatures are a beautiful distraction to be sure, but even their jubilant music cannot divert her attention from Deimos’ blackened form for long. She feels as if she needs to apologize - but unsure as to what exactly. His uncertainty only feeding into her own, though her emotions are tinged with a different shade of tentativeness.

His denial at least is cause for brief curiosity, feline head turning anew to the noisemakers to see them in a different light. Not magical then, but natural? I wonder how they survive, making noise as they do. Eternally alerting predators to their presence.

Of course the matter cannot be ignored, and though she doesn’t want it to be, for a moment she wishes it could have been postponed a moment longer. Anything is better than how I felt then, she admits, vulnerable in way only he is safe to do so with. Though she doesn’t edge any closer, doesn’t force her presence upon him for fear it is now unwelcome. Sitting cautiously, tail flicking against the snow, she tries to keep her emotions from bleeding into the hollow space between their minds and only partially succeeds. Phantom sensations of what she’d experienced then - the fog of numbness, the certainty that they would all be better off…well. It makes her sick to remember even now, and her furred hide shudders with revulsion and the last lingering vestiges of terror. I asked for Phoebe Steadman’s help. She had magic that - well, honestly I’m not sure what it did, but she said it could heal the mind. I stayed for a few days to let her observe me, and then I went back to the twins. And seen Sunjata and Maeve and Wessex between. This season was shaping up to be another hellish storm of emotion, and she wants nothing to do with it.

Remorse, profound and sharp, follows on the heels of that exhaustion. I’m sorry you were involved. I didn’t know who else to go to, to confide in, and when I got your letter I wasn’t thinking clearly. Apologizing is far from her normal behavior, but Deimos of all people is worth it. Pride would never get in the way of her sincerity with him. I feel I’ve missed so much. The last few seasons have been a prolonged nightmare. And she just wants to wake up.

HOTARU

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

His piercing eyes watched as the creatures came closer; perhaps curious and intrigued, or foolish and haphazard. He could’ve made a caustic remark about them, based on Ru’s observations, but instead he merely nodded his head – reveling in the bizarre sight, instead of pinpointing into how any of them had managed to survive lately. No matter who: insect, monster, cretin, or innocent. The belled bugs floated in their illustrious little haze, seemingly unbothered by their traipsing nearby, by the obvious predators lingering against the stark ivory. Sharp contrasts, and pockets of peace.

But the rest wasn’t. He still lent his inquiring mind and his calm disposition, but the rest remained so brutally unknown, unsettled, and unresolved; it stuck to the back of his teeth and wound its way in there, like a deeper laceration. Like an inward scar he didn’t want to carry, to hold, or to nettle its way into other thorned aspects. Deimos couldn’t understand her plight, her thoughts, her feelings, not when he’d never had his own children, nor thought about extinguishing a youth’s life. He’d safeguarded Kiada for as long as he could, when she permitted and allowed it, and even now that seemed to filter off into anguish.

So the sensations smarted, and he backed away from them – an inward crawl, an avoidance, like smothering himself against a wall and pretending it wasn’t there. Perhaps it didn’t make anything better, but he didn’t want the confusion, the torment, the agony. He had enough of his own. And while they’d always shared those aspects, those feelings, he didn’t know what to do with this. Didn’t know how to respond. Didn’t know how to assist, just as lost and confused as before.

At least Phoebe had helped, assisted, in healing, mending ways he’d never been capable of. He nodded at her explanation, gaze remaining on the whirl of wind, on the bugs that tried not to scatter under its command. How are they doing?

The remorse sent back to him was overwhelming too, and he blinked, looking downward. I still do not understand what I am supposed to do or how to help you. Another failure, and he could eternally admit them – as much as they stung and emblazoned. I feel like I was dragged into a mess that had nothing to do with me. A series of them, truly, but he’d been willing with fires. No association with the twins – save for when Hotaru had been pregnant, and he’d warned her against so many actions; and she’d ignored them all. I tried to explain it to Remi, but that did not go well either. A sigh flickered through, and he lifted his hound head again, at war with too many sentiments and emotions. You missed a meeting before winter settled in. Otherwise, we have been biding our time.

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

She is not so easily distracted - though it’s not the right sentiment, aware he is hiding from her in the ways he knows how. He has the upper hand here, if they are to compare each other at all, and she is wrong-footed and lost without him.

He doesn’t visibly shrink, and yet she can feel it somehow, like when Remi had shown her how he could mute his own side of the bond the first time she’d shifted. Shrinking, dwindling, until her paws ache with the desire to become human hands with which to reach for him. It’s ironic then that he hasn’t moved an inch. The snow between them feels vast and filled with mockery of days of olde twisted and cast in blackened shadows.

They’re well. As if nothing ever happened. Which is a relief unto itself. Hotaru would spare them that formative memory if she could. Though she laughs bitterly at his next words, heart aching with love for this foolish, self-sacrificing man. The feline drops down into her belly on the snow, chin cradled on large paws. Sinking into earth and ice. It is not your job to fix me. To fix this. It was a wound neither of us had ever encountered anyway. You cannot keep giving. Even for me. And there is nothing to fix. Only more to bear.

Remi I have already talked. Your place in the twins’ lives is not in question - whatever happened when you spoke, he seems willing to let it go so long as they remain safe. Just as I feel with Ronin. Not that she and Deimos at all mirror the relationship between those two. Or perhaps they do, romantic inclinations aside. Hotaru tries hard to keep her emotions from spilling over - to become a void on the other end of the tether. It’s hard when this shape and manner of speech is still so new to her, but she doesn’t want to make anything worse for the man. Noah and the others - they’re okay? She still hasn’t seen them with her own eyes.

Nobody had come to look for her aside from Deimos. It’s a thought that has been keeping her up at night, and she isn’t willing to let Deimos feel how it breaks her heart.

HOTARU

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

Another gust of the cold wind blew, and the insects scattered amidst their ambiguous saunter – one heading straight for his fur. In another time he could’ve laughed for the ridiculousness of it all, but instead he bent his head and permitted the bug to land amongst the top of his Stygian crown, clinging onto the sable fibers, otherwise unmoving and still. Listening all the while, in the habit of fiends who found themselves eternally at a loss.

He could hear her moving, the pulse of everything else reverberating through the snow. Something ran behind his mind and stuck there, nettled and brambled – perhaps frustration, vexation, exasperation for how she’d pinpointed herself or marred him in the aftermath. I did not say fix. I said help. A grind of his jaw, painfully human failings, while the insect ran a few more tunes from its bell. You are not broken, Ru. And where he couldn’t mend or soothe or assuage or heal like so many others, he could only lend his strength, his shielding tactics.

The Sword ignored the quip about giving. He hadn’t relinquished much of anything lately – save for Noah’s quiver. He had very few left to even offer his hands, fortitude, or might towards now. Maybe that hurt more.

Deimos didn’t understand the multitudes behind Remi either – considering how he’d tried to find some way to talk to the other man without thorns. Or that he even had a place in the twins’ lives. I would not threaten your children. She must’ve known that. Perhaps she meant it more as a sentiment passing through. Otherwise, he truly didn’t know where they stood.

As for the others, with their little makeshift band of refugees, they seemed all right. Frustrated, wanting to return home, but waiting out portions and pieces of life. Cordelia and Noah are fine. Though he was called away to Stormbreak for some reason. We are going to meet up with him in Torchline.

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

Small, jubilant form is drawn to his fur, and though her interest in the creature makes her gaze lift to it, Hotaru doesn’t encroach on Deimos’ space to further inspect it. It’s beautiful in its strangeness. And easier for her to bear looking at.

His correction takes her aback, genuinely surprised by how her own self-loathing had changed the way she’d interpreted his help. It’s not shame she feels, though perhaps it’s simply too close to vulnerability or embarrassment to parse. It feels as if they’re one and the the same these days. Because she feels broken. Not in the way where you rage or sob your anguish out. The kind that makes you numb and complacent. Empty and directionless. Hollowed out from giving too much. At least Deimos gave himself in honorable ways as he chipped away at his own boundaries and restraints. Hotaru was not so noble or admirable. Maybe not broken. But useless. Purposeless. Stuck. Motherhood did not dull her sharpness in the past, and she would never blame her children for how she’s currently feeling. Except it feels easier now to slip into the facade of being a mom and nothing else. To use it as an excuse, a shield, to hide from the fact that she feels worn and broken down, like a once-prized sword left in the corner after being found too rusted to repair.

I know you never would. Never. He just needed to feel that, to know it from me, before he could feel at ease. Or to offer a chance, as he’d worded it. Hotaru hadn’t paid the wording itself much mind, too firmly faithful that the time would never come where Deimos would somehow impossibly prove Remi right.

It’s a relief to know they are well if nothing else. And what of Sah and Aino? The ones who had stayed, who were now so far from reach. Nothing terrible had happened or she would surely have heard from Remi or Juniper, but they wouldn’t know of individual lives.

HOTARU

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

While the insect crawled in between his hound ears, the Sword listened, breathed, fought to understand. Maybe because he’d spent so long wallowing in his grief, in his anguish, time and time again, only to realize it did nothing, he wouldn’t allow his soul to slip into its confines. Wouldn’t tread the black, abysmal water, the searing surface of choking, clawing vestiges. Wouldn’t fall into its eerie, familiar distinction; not when there were so many other things to do and accomplish. Not when he had promises to fulfill, and kingdoms to snag, regimes to fall and falter once more.

Finally, his eyes moved towards her wake, from the corners of canine depths and wolf perimeters, from the hallows and hollows of worlds lost amongst their storms. This was another they’d have to navigate, and while he was willing to steer and guide, she’d have to find the purpose. So what do you want to do? Join them in the toppling of towers? Reach out and bear arms? Claw her way to pinnacles, to stretch the talons, to burst into flight? Or sink – revel in the melancholy, in the despair, in the bizarre nuances of what had led them all here?

Because he was done with the latter – and he wasn’t going to bow his head any god damned longer.

There were no more words or thoughts about Remi. Instead, it was of Sah and Aino, individuals sorely missed while they were stuck outside of the mountains. Both in Halo. Sah was offered a council position. Beneficial in more ways than one; but Deimos waited for the machinations in her own mind to begin working.

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

What, indeed?

He has had his time in the trenches, wallowing in the silt and weighed beneath the stones that press now into her own chest. Hotaru doesn't know how close she is to the end of her own journey. Only that she is still traversing those depths - though the void seems lighter with each passing day, light streaking through depths previously untouched by things like hope and purpose.

I don't know, she says honestly, but there's a soft wondering tone that even Hotaru hadn't anticipated when formulating the words. I suppose until the twins visit Frey at the end of the season, there's little to do in the first place. After that...well, anything. Deciding is the hardest part. It doesn't feel so much like reinventing herself as it does narrowing down what means anything to her now.

Is that still Halo? She isn't sure, but she finds herself invested in the information he gives even as her eyes stray back to the jingling bug. He deserves it, regardless of who reigns. Though it does have favorable implications. Already Ru catches herself using words like favorable, ones that speak more of her outlook than she expected. By time spring comes, I can be of more use. However it is you need me. Though Wessex's words haunt her, Deimos would have her assistance even in times like these where her own heart was complicated by confusion and indecision.

HOTARU

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

The world could be murky, even out in the stretch of ivory – with snow and bells pervading the essence. It had been already in so many other instances, where decisions were made and pressed into the void, where paths were drawn and taken, rather than circled around. Hotaru had taken another approach, a distant one he hadn’t seen coming when they’d begun orchestrating, but didn’t begrudge her for it. It had been the timing, then the dramatics, then everything else colliding together to intertwine into a knotted, gnarled mess. Yet, he couldn’t remember ever leaving her behind – a hand always outstretched.

You have time he declared, head finally inclining upwards, to stare up at the horizon, the insect drifting amongst fur still; a few more jingles adding to the nuances. Twins visiting shrines, newborns and infants no longer, and then decisions. He wouldn’t dig into where she thought she needed to settle – waiting, biding, remaining, either statuesque or poised in the realm of options; towards Halo, towards digging in, towards reaching, reaching, reaching for those mountains again.

There would’ve been a brief smile on his face, had he not been in hound form, given the notions of Sah and what the youth deserved. I agree; towards the favorable inclinations, towards the once-flying wolf, learning and navigating what it meant to be in Caido.

The other response pooled in the corners of his machinations, and he wasn’t certain in what predilection, what role, that would be. Not with so many things up in the air, chasing after bits and pieces of information, of Noah’s unknown status, of what Cordelia would want to do. I think we will try to meet up with Sah again, once portals opened up and set the former free. And then we can go from there, with what information we have. A pause, promises and convictions blending and bleeding amongst the channels. No more coups though. It needs to be up to the people.

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

I do, she agrees softly, and there is a small warmth budding in her chest as the moment between them unspools longer and longer. Nerves settling and hackles smoothing with each second that he does not deny her as her worst anxieties had imagined. Hotaru has come face to face with so many people she hadn’t sought out in the past few days, and it has wrung her out emotionally and mentally. Knowing she hasn’t ruined this, even with certain actions out of her control, it’s solid ground she has desperately needed.

Emboldened, she wriggles lazily across the snow and leans in to swipe a rough tongue against his ear, a purr vibrating in her chest. It startled the bug, which jingles as it flies in a short hop to land on Deimos’ back instead. Hotaru snorts a laugh internally. I agree. Tell me when you intend to seek him out - the twins will be older by then, and I will accompany you. She misses the young man and would be inclined to see him even if they did not have work to do.

HOTARU

I carried my own ashes to the mountains

He hadn’t expected the childish endeavors; not now – and didn’t play into the foil so readily, so aptly, within the moment. Instead there was a brief snarl, a hackle raised, as he maneuvered away, as the bug drifted further down his back and seemed to continue to nestle in the fur’s midst. It didn’t cease his thoughts, though the Sword dashed a short span, indifferent to the insect and if it remained planted after the threshold of swiftness. Likely within the next season. In time, in measures, in pieces and proportions where they might have more.

And if Sah agreed to it – incapable of reaching Halo for the span of the season by letter.

His laughter didn’t fill the void; still pressed in between the notches of his ribcage and the cords of regret, confusion, and turmoil, preferring stillness in the quiet panes of the cold wilderness. Who knows what has been going on there. In Halo - with any manner of machinations.

DEIMOS

How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?

She recoils and goes still and quiet at his blatant rejection. But he says nothing of it, and she will not bring it up in reflection of that. Clamping tight to the bond so that her devastation need not burden him any more than she already has. Pretending that if she holds still enough, she can simply disappear into the snow.

Very well, she replies cordially, for lack of any other defense against someone who knows her so well. Rising, she rolls golden shoulders and casts her gaze to the side, to the horizon beyond and the home-that-isn’t-home beyond the trees. We will know in time. Shaking her fur free of any lingering snow she rises, and without further ceremony begins to depart. Until then, she imparts across the bond, and the shift from feline to falcon is easy and swift, rising from the ground so that she may put more distance between them as fast as possible. Escaping this third heartbreak riding on the coattails of those that have already cracked her too wide open.

- FIN

HOTARU