Hotaru
i'm still here but all is lost
Empathetic is not a word many would use for the Valkyrie, but her eyes close beneath a wellspring of grief as her hand squeezes firmly upon his sun-warmed skin. She knows how it feels, to lose everyone and everything and to be spit out in an entirely different world, in different skin, unsure if you even wanted to keep going much less how to.As Sah’s head drops to her shoulder her other arm comes to wrap around his waist, cradling him close like a mother would. For all her petite stature, she is strong enough to carry his burdens.
Only as his voice cracks and his words trail does she speak, the hand at his neck rising to gently comb through his hair with her fingers. “Even time can never truly heal this pain,” she whispers as she stares past his shoulder into the sky, hateful and burning at the injustice. “We have lived such similar lives, and I wish we hadn’t. That you didn’t have to feel this all so young.” With his face against her shoulder it is all too easy to envision him as Enzo, as Rui’n or Casca or Galadriel, the sons she had never seen grow up and the one she prays she will.
“I don’t know if this will be a comfort to you. Sometimes, not knowing is so much harder. Always wondering.” And then finally being given an answer, and knowing you were just barely too late. But no, this isn’t her story this time. “I watched my eldest twins die as my world burned. They were killed by a false god, and our own gods died trying to stabilize a portal we were all forced into if we didn’t fight.” Gods how she had fought though. We’re it not for her lover, she would have followed her twins into the beyond, but instead she had been forced to live for her remaining children. Only to lose them all regardless. “Unlike the other children who I lost by not ending up on the same side of the portal, I know they were dead.” Her voice cracks and her eyes squeeze shut, forcing tears to at last overflow across her cheeks silently. “Except…except one of them made it here somehow.” Her voice shakes, tears welling in her eyes as the hand that strokes his head begins to tremble.
“So they may yet live. Without you, which is cruel and unfair, but I would rather my children live without me than not at all.” And if he loves them as he says he does, Ru knows he will feel the same. Except her story? Her second chance? It has no happy ending.
