just say when

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

Her words do still him, it makes him think back to her admission over her previous partners – how he’d promised to never become one of them, not another Thranduil or Ashamin to her, and yet here he was. Here they were. Still harboring the same feelings but a void between them that he’s not sure how to cross, not sure if he wants to cross. Not sure what terrible things might come of a moment of weakness.

So he’s silent to her scoff, unsure what he could say, and instead he focuses on the rest of her words. There’s a deep frown that crosses his face, one that tugs and pulls at lines drawn into his sunkissed skin from how much he’s done exactly this in his short life. “She’s been lonely since Locke left.” He admits quietly, working his jaw as the memory of before he’d left Torchline, when he’d stepped down, how she’d tried to keep him at her door, to keep him there to warm her bed.

But he’d had his own bed to warm, his own husband to return to, a family to go home to. Something that he imagines Maeve was jealous of for a time. Something that Hotaru also shared, given one of their earlier conversations. But he passes by it as she orders another drink and his brow raises curiously, uncertain. He’s never seen her get like this, not in a public space like this, and he knows that something is off.

The arm around her shoulder grows a fraction more protective – an inch of that dragon shift of his coming out in the way he squeezes her a bit closer to his chest. “It is what’s best for me.” He agrees with a quiet sigh, before he lifts his new glass to his lips and downs half of it, sighing against the burn to his throat. “There’s also a part of me that wants to make sure that Safrin keeps up her end of the deal with the shields for Monsoon season. That’s really why I’m here.” He tilts his head toward her, a hint of amusement pulsing down the bond toward her, trying to lighten the mood.

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

It's a good thing she doesn't know or isn't in her right mind to sense how he stills, because she doesn't want to think about the promises they once made to each other. Promises broken on both sides, over and over, until they'd been too hurt to find their way across the shards littering the space between them. A hoarse laugh leaves her at what she hears as an excuse, blinking back bitter tears. "I was lonely without you and Nate, and ended up with Remi when I saw you in Frey's face at his side. I still owned up to what I did to Ronin. Loneliness is no excuse for hurting people." The words spill freely without her meaning to release them. She had even spoken with Ronin after the fact, though that was admittedly before she'd known she was pregnant. Refusing to be a coward and hide from the reality of what had happened, how it had undoubtedly impacted the Taliesin's relationship. Maeve could have had the same courtesy.

Hotaru doesn't notice consciously how he pulls her closer. Her body readjusts naturally after so long readily falling into his hold; legs curling closer and higher upon the bench, tucking her shoulder under his bicep to be more fully ensconced in his warmth. Her drink stubbornly comes with her, sliding across the table with the hand still wrapped around it, which quickly ushers it back to her mouth in due time. The Valkyrie isn't much of a drinker, never has been. She can appreciate high quality spirits, knows her way around cocktails and shots alike, but a woman as obsessed with control as she is doesn't like to loosen the hands fisted so tightly around those reigns. But there's always a first for everything, even if the last time she'd gotten even close to this tipsy she'd, well, sort of become an arsonist.

"I have a new appreciation for her, but the worry - and doubt - is warranted," she snorts a laugh, blinking quickly and frowning at how it makes her head spin. It's quickly erased into a small quirk of a smile at the amusement she can feel from the bond, emotions loose and liquid, easy to mold. "Was the Halenani ever rebuilt?" She knows the Society wasn't. Had walked past it on the way to the Hanged Man, touched her fingers to the scorched wood, spoke quiet words to a man that would never want to hear them now.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

He doesn’t recall hearing about how Hotaru had seen him in Frey’s face. And for a moment he’s silent as he considers the words, knowing what she means by them and yet still stuck and trapped on the one side of things that he isn’t sure he’s glad to hear, but ones that soothe something jagged within him regardless. So instead, he nods, agreeing in what little way he can, a scent of whiskey and smoke and sandalwood drifting from him as she readjusts herself when he tucks her in closer. “You did.” He agrees quietly, leaning against the back of the booth as he reaches for his glass. “Owned up the fires at the Slagveld to me, eventually too.” It’s quieter, a hint more tender of a subject. “It fucked me up, Ru.” And it’s purely the alcohol speaking, but, given the everything he’d gone through with his father, the mind torture he’d gone through, to have Hotaru and everyone else believe and tell him she hadn’t done it had done a number on him.

It's why he harbored the illusion stone as well.

“I never wanted to hurt you.” It’s a quieter whisper, one wrapped around the edge of the glass before he drowns them with the liquor, the glass sat on the table a bit heavier this time when he leans back to rest his head against the back of the booth, letting her next words reach him with understanding. That’s all Sunjata could do now, too, second guess everyone’s motives. Did they like him for him or yet again what he could give to them?

He's quiet when he responds to her inquiry on the Halenani. “It was. I helped rebuild it.” He says gently. “It’s two separate buildings now. Nate helped a little before we left to ensure that it was properly stocked with medical supplies and training.”

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

Belatedly she realizes what she'd said, and shrinks into herself with embarrassment and something like shame. It hadn't just been him - some ever-changing shift of his features and Nate's - but the admission itself is like baring a raw and open wound to him, one that makes her wince when it's touched by his words. It shouldn't feel like a comfort then for him to agree that she'd been honest eventually, like some sort of ill-earned compliment. Ru blinks quickly at the following admission, but this time it's not enough to keep the moisture from budding, and she hides it by ducking her head to take another long pull off her glass.

"I never would have lied if I hadn't been pregnant," she whispers like it even matters anymore. It feels like it amounts to little more than an excuse. "I never wanted to hurt you either. Neither of you. Not really. I thought destroying something physical, just wood and stone, would make the pain go away." It didn't, goes unsaid. In fact it had only made things so, so much worse. Losing Atlas. Sunjata and Nate in a far more permanent way. Losing Torchline. What could have been some sort of sisterhood with Aurelia. Ever since she'd stepped away from Sunjata that day, ending things, every following event had done nothing but hurt her worse as if determined to drive home what an idiot she'd been. All because she wasn't able to bear her own empty womb when faced with a child borne of betrayal.

Turning, she presses her face to the flat of his shoulder, forehead against his jaw. It's the closest she'll allow herself to get to an embrace. "I know you didn't," Hotaru whispers. She knows, and she's trying so hard to let go. To forgive fully. They're both struggling, but they're both trying. Gods, how they try. When it would be so much easier to give up.

Nodding against his shoulder as the rumble of his words vibrates through her chin, she pulls away and turns back to her drink. The glass wobbles as she brings it to her lips, but Ru is determined to ignore it. Clearly people drink for a reason, and tonight she's going to follow in their footsteps and figure out what's so great about forgetting things this way. "Maybe I should just work there instead," tumbles free, wryly humorous. "Don't know what else to do with myself but raise the twins. Whatever I thought I'd find here, it's not. Here, that is." Groaning slightly she drops her glass, still refusing to move her hand from his knee, and presses her knuckles to her forehead. "Fuck, words. How the hell do you do this so often?" A hysterical giggle bubbles up, impressed despite herself.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

“That’s worse, somehow.” He admits quietly, mind racing toward the fact that she didn’t want to lie to him if she hadn’t been pregnant, as if he were some kind of monster who would have taken it out on two innocent children. It was an event that made him feel the closest to his father that he ever had, that stone faced Korofian lingering beneath him, raging to rise to the surface when given the opportunity, one that Sunjata tried to refrain from. Often. “You could have talked to me.” He suggests – though it does no use. They’re talking now, the past was in the past, and there’s far more holes in his heart than there had been this time last year.

After all, it’d been a year, hadn’t it? A year since he’d come home during the storms to meet Hotaru and Nate, to tell them what he’d done. A year since Nate had become a demigod. A year of hell that seemed to follow after.

She turns in his embrace, her face to his shoulder, forehead against his stubbled and scarred jaw, and he swallows hard before he tilts his head into her own, breathing her in while he can, his arm tightening around her. The other hand twists, moving to interlace with her own, brazened by the alcohol and the way she tries to change the subject.

“I don’t know what to do with myself, either.” He admits quietly. “Though something tells me nobody would appreciate me working at the Halenani, hm?” The tease is gentle, something that tries to lighten the mood as well even if internally he’s sour and bitter and distrustful. Her giggle arises and his head lifts, the bar spinning as he does so, incapable of shaking his head. “Honestly? Helps me sleep, that's about it.” Especially when Nate’s not there. If nothing else, he’s too drunk to toss and turn and wake up from the nightmares every night.

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

She growls against his neck, frustrated by her own lack of eloquence. Clearly this was why she didn't drink. Dropping her glass, she reaches across her own body to fist her hands in his shirt, giving it an impotent little shake as if she could ever hope to move him. "No," she snarls, half-feline, and wishes she could open the bond on her side as a human the way he can. Blinking heavily she tries to focus on his face, pulling back enough to force him to look at her. "Even then, I trusted you. I told Deimos and - and Morgan both. I knew you'd never hurt me, or the babies. I knew," she stresses, dismay pulling at her face, color high in her cheeks. She wants so badly to make him understand, but she can't at every turn, and it never gets any easier to accept. "If I hadn't trusted you, I never would have come. You never would have found me if I didn't want to be. I don't," know how else to say it. Sighing, she thunks her head back down to his shoulder, inhaling his sandalwood scent, muted by the rain still dampening their clothes. Her own ozone scent melting into his like they'd never parted. Things made enhanced now with her Attunement that she'd missed before.

Sunjata's hand turns and she interlaces their fingers almost desperately, gripping tight to him. The same fit she remembers, if a few extra scars and callouses. Inside and out. It turns her laugh strangled as it escapes, butting her forehead against his chin like an unruly pup. "Shut it, you. You've bedded half the most powerful people in Caido, you'd have bookings into the next year." There's only fondness to the accusation and it feels freeing to not have that bitterness invading her chest at the idea. Lifting her own head as he does, she spies her glass and makes a noise, having forgotten it was even there. Ru snags it with her left hand, freeing it from his shirt where she'd forgotten it had remained (there's a lot of forgetting happening here, and she doesn't mind it) to drain it in two gulps. "That's gonna hit hard," she comments almost cheerfully, the glass rocking in a circle when she sets it down too far on its edge.

"Sleep is for the weak," she scoffs belatedly, refusing to acknowledge her own nightmares that he'd once soothed. Or Nate, if he'd been too deep in his own slumber. The last good night of sleep she'd had was when Remi had given her the Foothills back, and she had spent hours roaming the construct of her own childhood memories. It plunges her straight back into grief, and Ru's hand tightens spasmodically around Sunjata's, chest aching. Her bed had been warm for a matter of weeks before the twins had aged, and now it is cold and empty anew as they have their own to sleep in. Any private hopes or dreams of Maeve or some other poor soul pitying her long enough to share it with her now well and truly crushed. A wheeze of pain leaves her, wordless and raw, and completely incapable of even communicating how or why the switch has flipped. Waiting for him to distract her anew with the rumble of his words, so that she might claw her way back to some temporary level of joy.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

Brows raise in surprise, a sluggish steel meeting her face as she snarls her no, but he’s too far gone in the liquor to be eloquent in how the confusion scatters itself across his face. He does look at her, he looks at her more intensely this time, lips falling into a fine line. “But you didn’t tell me that you did it, Ru. After my father? After nobody believing me when I saw him? Claimed I was losing my head? You couldn’t have given me that solace?” It’s a near whisper, something throaty and hoarse bitten back behind teeth that wish to shift into something toothy, something jagged, something of a warning.

He dampens it down, however, quiet with the way he ducks his head, the way her head drops to his shoulder and he heaves a sigh. His arm is still tight around her, slipping to dig his fingers into the fabric of her shirt as her forehead meets his chin. “Yeah well, a lot of that happened when I was the good little up and comer.” He mutters, a smidge darkly, a smidge sensitively. “Don’t have much of that now.” But he’s got Nate and that’s all that matters to him anymore. And he isn’t about to try and do anything that would fuck it up as he had before.

He's learning.

She downs the rest of her liquor and he’s slow to untangle his hand from hers to push the glass back from the edge so it doesn’t crash into their laps, regardless if it’s empty. “I think you’re done, Ru.” He hums, eyeing the rest of his glass and reaching for it to down the rest of its contents as well, if only so she doesn’t feel like stealing it from him.

His hand finds hers again just in time to feel the tremors that lace up and down her fingers, to hear the wheeze of pain, his head dropping to press his cheek against the side of her head, against her shoulder. “You wanna go for a walk? Get out of here where there’s so many people?” Because again, rumors. It wasn’t like they were invisible here, regardless of the fact that they had a corner of the bar to themselves. People were going to talk.

That and there’s a part of him that doesn’t trust her to be alone right now, that protective pull of the dragon shift within him latching onto her for the moment, wanting to ensure she’s safe.

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

In some ways maybe they both needed this, this inelegant, fumbling emotional truth to really come to terms with what has happened between them. That's a thought for Sober-Ru however, because right now she can only wince and clench her eyes shut against the rightful accusation he lobs back at her. "I should have," she agrees, because she's not going to argue that point. More than the fire, or sleeping with Remi, the lie is what she regrets most. "I was so invested in making sure Morgan didn't find out, that I didn't tip our hand early because of my own stupid mistakes...I was a mess, Jata. And I hurt you because I didn't have my shit together." And that's the long and short of it, regardless of the hurt he'd caused beforehand, because the point of contention is the lying that had ensnared them in that moment. And she echoes the same sentiment he'd said moments ago right back at him - "And I never meant to hurt you."

They're holding onto each other like they're both drowning, and Hotaru isn't sure anymore if they're buoying each other up or dragging each other down. Doesn't rightly care with how intoxicated she is by both alcohol and his scent. Stealing the moment greedily, with both hands, so that she can carry it with her when she goes again. Knowing that even as teeth come out and frustrations mount as they are in this moment, he is still safe. That if she says the word, the matter will be dropped, or that if she loses all control he will shelter her. It tears her apart to know that, just as much as it gives her the strength to keep breathing.

"Everyone knows the bad boys are more fun," Ru mutters petulantly, as if disapproving of this vague general entity Sunjata has mentioned. "Their loss." It comes out firmer and more cohesive than her previous slurred mutter as if emboldened by her certainty.

Distracted by the length of his arm as it enters her field of vision so abruptly, her scowl is delayed but very much so present at the mere whiff of an order. Cattily petulant as she lifts her head to glare at him, hand snaking for - a glass that isn't there. Watching him finish his own drink, she spits a curse that's more hiss, the lion close to the surface as she is thwarted effortlessly. "Bastard," she grumbles, almost able to feel the prissy flick of her tail if she were shifted. Maybe it's the closeness of the cat that keeps her from losing it right there at the table, dimming the sharpness of human emotion, but whatever it is she's grateful for it as she weathers the turbulent waves of fresh grief.

"Walk. Yes, let's walk," Ru forces between numb lips, chest shuddering sharply with breaths that hitch unevenly. She lurches up, slamming her knee into the table and cursing as she stumbles fawnlike from the booth, fueled by determination and desperation for fresh air and wholly lacking any awareness of gravity or balance. Blind to the people around them and what it means for once, embracing her own novice drinking abilities and the way it narrows the world down for once in her goddamn life. Sparing her from thinking, always fucking thinking, because her brain can never rest. How she makes it outside is a mystery, but when she does she jerks to a stop as she feels the rain on her skin. As novel as a child feeling it for the first time. Right there on the pathway up to the door she tilts her head up to the sky and closes her eyes and stands there, letting the rain drench her until her golden hair is dark and slick against her skull.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

His head ducks slightly because he knows that he too, doesn’t have his shit together. And it burns something painful in his gut, twisting it over and over again until she admits the words he’d wanted to hear, but truthfully mean little to him now. It’s a cycle they can talk over again and again but it doesn’t fix anything. Not like it might have once.

“I know.” He whispers to her quietly, reaching for his glass and taking the rest of it, hearing her bad boy comment belatedly, the thought causing a snort to leave him as he shakes his head. “I think it’s the horns and the wings, honestly.” Yet again, a bit more self detriment, a bit more viewing of that low self esteem. “Or maybe, they think they can fix me.” Comes the quiet whisper of thought – because out of everyone lately, only Hotaru and Nate were the ones that didn’t try to change him.

He sets the glass down away from them, watching her hand flail in a space of nothing, before her grumble hits the air and his head cocks curiously with her outburst. “Hey, you’ve had enough.” He murmurs, pausing a second as he thinks about reaching for her chin, to make her look at him with those two-toned eyes. He’s too late, however, because he’s offering a walk and she’s stumbling to get out of the booth and it’s a bit of a nightmare all around, hushed voices and comments leaving patrons where the two of them make their escape.

Well, that’s a tomorrow problem.

He leaves a bit later than she does, once he’s organized his payment for their drinks, and when he steps out she’s soaked in rain and he immediately moves beside her, arm slipping around her shoulders again as a leathery wing extends up and over her to act as an umbrella. “You’re gonna get a cold.” He comments, guiding her down the pathway toward the surprising emptiness of Haulani. He can only assume it’s the rain. “And then what’re you gonna do?” He murmurs, a slurred tone to his words too, picking up on a little less Korofi formality in favor for a bit more slang-terms similar to Nate’s own speech patterns.

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

It's easier to let the subject lie. They've said their piece as many times as could be conceived it feels, but only time can really heal these sort of wounds. Instead she focuses in on that same disparaging tone. Practically trained to bloodhound-scent it out when he uses it. Emboldened by alcohol and the closeness of his body, she lifts her hand to wrap around the side of his throat when she can't reach his nape with her left hand, and squeezes gently. "Fixing implies being broken. We aren't broken. Just...new shapes. Like glass," she murmurs, and drops her hand to trace the edge of her empty glass on the table, "I would take fragments of different colors, useless in any other form. Melt it on fire hotter than any open flame could achieve. And only when it had been through the fire did it come out something new - the same color, the same glass, but different." Tilting her head back against the headrest, she closes her eyes briefly, missing her shop and those easy days in the Grounds. "We're not broken," she whispers, more to herself, an echo of Deimos' rumbling words.

Slitting her eyes open and glaring sideways at him at his own murmur, she mutters a parting, "But you're gonna be broken for telling me what to do." It doesn't hold water when she snorts a laugh moments later as she trips her way out the door, completely forgetting their tab. And herself, for a moment, as she stands poleaxed beneath the pouring rain. The sensation jolting her out of her grief like dunking your head in an ice bath. Until the rain stops hitting her face and her brow draws together trying to parse why, eyes blinking open to see a leathery wing overhead.

Swaying on the first step she takes as he ushers her forward and half-falling against Sunjata's side, the Valkyrie steadies herself on the next and gives a prolonged sigh as if his logic is a personal affront. "Deal with it like a woman, because I'm not a man and don't get man flu," she needles pointedly, a lofty tone to her voice that speaks of aristocracy the same way his Korofi accent deepens. The arm closest to him comes up to wrap around his waist as they wander down the empty stretch of Haulani's wet sands.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

Like glass, and yet all Sunjata can imagine is breaking over and over and over again, pieced back together not in a beautiful mural like she tries to paint for him but instead like a brutal shattered piece, threaded together with tape and nothing more – one wrong move would send the rest of him tumbling down into pieces. But he doesn’t admit it, because she has a point in a way. He might feel broken, but he continues on.

That’s progress, right?

“Am I?” He taunts her as she fails to stand with ease, trying to ignore the feel of her hand on his throat, swallowing thickly when her hand leaves him and he stands to pay the tab and slip out, an arm coming around her and a wing hovering above her as they walk, keeping the rain from soaking her too much more.

“Hey, I think I’m okay when I’m sick.” He murmurs. “Though I think the last time I was… Was when the Climb Fever came around.” And they all were sick, lost in their heads, unable to pick apart anything from reality to fantasy. “I’m not intending to get sick again, though. Where, uh, where are you staying?” He asks, cocking his head down to her, walking in a bit of a staggered way – his hip bumping against her side as he tries to even himself out from having only one wing partially shifted out, throwing off his balance.

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

Maybe she'll visit her shop to find one of those old dusty pieces still sitting around. Give it to him to prove just how durable fire-tested glass can be. She can almost scent the disbelief on him, the downtrodden refusal that holds his tongue from refuting her. It's okay - regardless of what he believes, they're both still putting one foot in front of the other, and in doing so he's proving her right. And Hotaru is always right, Sunjata, which is why she levels him with a narrow eyed glare over her shoulder at his parting taunt. Flipping him off gracelessly as she winds her way through the patrons to the outside world.

Her shoulders bristle at the memory of the sickness, and how it had been the beginning of the end. "S'mtimes I wish I never came back from that," she admits on a loose-tongued sigh that almost sounds peaceful. Envisioning hers and Atlas' skeleton intertwined somewhere in the Wilds as they always should have been. Ensuring she would never have to experience living so many long days without him. Never returning to fuck up Sunjata and Nate's relationship that they'd built in her absence. Never simply being herself, who withered everything to dust that so much as touched her fingertips. It's not that she wants to die, she argues with herself, but it would have just been so easy to have returned to the earth without even knowing what was happening.

The bump of his hip is rhythmic in its off-set balance, and jolts a little huff from her every time it connects somewhere around her waist with their height difference. Trying to recall where she's staying to give him the answer he needs to direct them. Unbothered as if she'd never said anything at all about the days she'd been lost to sickness. "The Inn. Uhhh, key," she mutters, and pats herself up and down until she finds it tucked into her bra. Brandishing it at him like a knife, somehow aware that she certainly shouldn't be holding onto it.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

SUNJATA

angel loves to keep me spinning, much too high to see
that all these chains have started thinning & hell is breaking free

He sighs at her admission, but a nod of understanding. If anything, Sunjata knew what it was like. There was still that fragile part of him that wished he hadn’t made it past the Trial. Perhaps so many things would’ve been better if he, too, hadn’t stuck his fingers in too deep. So instead, he works his jaw, walking with her, letting the words cover them in a way that he’s not sure how to respond to.

She pats herself up and down until she finds the key, brandishing it to him like a knife and he raises a brow toward her with a crooked smile forming, tugging on the corners of his lips. He reaches over to pluck the key from her hand, spinning it in his own as if it were indeed a knife, before he guides them toward the Inn. “That’s where I’m staying too.” He says offhandedly, as if the invitation of choosing her room or his were on the table.

As it stands, though, he has her key. So that’s the obvious choice, isn’t it?

They slip inside the Inn when it approaches far faster than he’d anticipated, figuring out where her room is and staggering his way there. He only lets her go so he can fumble with the door, his singular wing tucked in and brushing against her back as he fiddles with the lock until he manages to unlock it and push his way through the door, holding it open for her to enter.

every choice, every lie, demons that he kept inside
angel now that i've stopped spinning, could you come clean?

Hotaru

Part of why it was so easy to say is because she knows he understands, and in that sense he is the safest person to tell. There are no empty platitudes or assurances that she would have been missed. Only an empathy that resonates between them in the silence of their stumbling, swaying journey that leaves arcing footprints in the sand behind them.

Blinking dumbly, she stares at the bit of metal poking out of his hand. "Oh. Of course," she utters to herself, the idea of Sunjata staying in something as pedestrian as an inn having not crossed her mind. He would always be Governor to her, and entitled to far more lavish quarters, even if it was no longer her own home. But they were both strangers here now, in this land they once called their own.

Sobriety is closer by mere inches by time they arrive at the Inn, but Hotaru will take what her body will give her. For now. By tomorrow she'll be begging for it to be giving her a lot less. As they tumble in an uncoordinated tangle through the door (mostly on account of Ru leaning half her weight on the Flood for support) the Valkyrie realizes that...well, he has his own room to return to. She stands frozen in the first few feet of the room, watching the door closed, paralyzed by the idea of his departure. Without her input, her hands rise to grab onto his shirt, and she stares at her own fingers where they twine into the fabric as if startled they'd moved on their own. "Don't go," tumbles out of her throat, half-choked with urgency. Unable to lift her gaze from her own hands. "Just for tonight. Please." Saying it to his chest is easier than looking into his eyes as she pleads with him.

But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean