Collision Warning

Hotaru

the horrors you've seen do not define who you are

The Gods themselves could not have kept Hotaru rooted to the ground the moment Nate’s letter arrived at last, telling her where to find him. Somewhere in her home that parchment lies abandoned on the ground, if anyone cared to determine where she left in such a hurry. Hotaru has never spared a moment to be thankful for the various expressions of her soul before, but she does so now, grateful for the speed her wings allow her as she leaves the Greatwood behind her.

It may seem stupid. Girlish, brainless, emotional. Call it whatever you like, this senseless flight of hers, but it doesn’t matter that they have no ties to each other anymore. It doesn’t matter how they ended things, or what history lies between them.

He had been dead. And nobody told her.

She feels sick with the volatile mixture of wrath, guilt, and despair that roils like thunder in her stomach. Cinched around it all is a choking relief that makes every breath come hot and tight. She had lost him and hadn’t even known it, and that is unforgivable, but he is back. The Voice’s promise of eternal life had held true, and she could cry until the rivers flooded the woods around her with her gratitude for that.

She shifts before she even fully meets the ground the moment she spies him from above, feet hitting the ground so hard the roots below know the fury of her presence and spread word of her far and wide. Her legs eat the earth like giants from fairytales, and her hand is proprietary and contorted with pain as she grabs her former lover and pulls him into her desperate embrace. Choked to silence with the enormity of her emotion, tongue knotted and incapable of translating it all. Each breath comes on a heaving waver that shakes her, hand bunching the back of his jacket as she paradoxically clings and holds him protectively in her embrace. “I didn’t know,” she chokes, blinded by sudden tears that have the gall to appear now instead of earlier when she could’ve hidden them. “I didn’t - nobody told me. Fuck, fuck,” she strains, and rips herself away all at once lest she linger too long. Wiping her eyes roughly, furious and embarrassed. “What happened?” she asks down to the earth, and wonders if she should make it answer too, because somebody must take responsibility. Unable or unwilling to meet his eyes until her own are dry.

NATE

It's strange, how easily they fall back into a routine. How easy it is to wrap his arms around Hotaru's form as soon as it's human again and pretend like he isn't leaning into her more than he needs to. One hand tangles in warm golden hair while the other wraps around her waist, holding her close right up until he feels the weight of emotion trying to shake out of her, the words that eventually manage to leave her as steady as a teacup in an octogenarians frail grasp. "You didn't know." He agrees soothingly, trying to offer comfort in all the little ways he knows.

"I didn't know you hadn't heard." Nate offers by way of apology and explanation both. "I... would have been less casual." It's not really a joke, or even funny, but that's never stopped Nate from laughing at himself before. "If nothing else, I'd think that Remi would have said something. Or anyone." The laughter from before hasn't quite dissipated, the softness enough to keep his next words appropriately joking. "I don;t know if you know, but I'm kind of a big deal." His hands try to linger on her shoulders, her wrists as she pulls away, Nate not quite able to work up the nerve to actually hold onto her hands though.

“Its uh… it’s not great.” Nate warns, knowing full well how the story sounds to share. He knows Hotaru though, and she knows him, she’ll understand how point a leads to point d(ead). “Sam was killed by Gideon, and… Edy found out and cracked a plan to… borrow Sunjata’s dragon and piss on the tower. Fuck it up a lil.” Despite the fact that for Nate, these events feel like a week or so ago, the details have already lost their crispness. Edrei’s face is a blur in his mind, he knows it, but he can’t picture it, and Sam? Gods, Nate can’t even summon the sound of the bookmakers voice. Guilt is a funny thing when you're used to ignoring it.

Bright eyes dart back and forth, Nate picking at the threads of memories again for the relevant ones. "We did, but uh... Ronin showed up. And killed Edy. And... I get it." It's just common sense, right? No matter how cathartic, no matter how much they deserved something, they are still on opposite sides of the war, Edy was still a dragon actively attacking his city. Granted, the Dark Star was on the wrong side, but that was neither here nor there, not right now. Not in the face of the tidal wave of hatred that even now wells in Nate's chest like a festering wound, like the last little bit of ocean still trying to drown him long after he's left the waves. "But I couldn't," his hand moves, an impossible to read gesture fluttering his fingers, "not after everything he's done. Everything he's going to do."

but i'm going to be here until i'm nothing
but bones in the ground

Hotaru

the horrors you've seen do not define who you are

His hands are sure and, god help her, familiar. She suspects it will always be harder with Nate; letting go, moving on - forgetting. He’d never been the one to hurt her in their relationship, for all she’d unfairly included him in her retribution when it came. The ties that once bound them are frayed and singed in ways that pull with each breath, shaky as they are when they come, face buried in the lukewarm skin of his neck. Even his scent is familiar as she clings to him, and it makes the tremble in her chest shake harder with belated terror. I could have lost you forever. It torments her, and the way he leans into her - the two of them like felled trees propping each other up against all odds - is the tangible proof she needs that she hasn’t.

It’s the first time she’s heard him speak softly to her in years, and it has her blindly reaching back for the hands that linger but don’t have the courage to stay. As she waits for her tears to slow her hand blindly reaches for his, making the choice for him. Once impatient palms have brushed them away she moves back into his orbit, restless and helpless to avoid his gravity. Uniting the shoulders of the hands that find one another, using that slight touch as one last method of restraint to keep from crawling back fully into an embrace she has no further claim to.

She is sick with anger at her own ignorance. At the ignorance forced and foisted upon her by Remi, by Sunjata, by Wessex. She seethes through his explanations, silent, writhing. Sam is the only other loss she knows. A kind, nervous man in a bar she’d spent an afternoon with and nothing more. But it’s a loss that didn’t need to happen. And there it is - the crux of the issue. That it didn’t need to happen at all. And it feels ironic, that it so deeply parallels the same attack they’d made on her in Halo, but even that bitterness feels far away now.

Turning into him, weak, she rests her forehead on his clavicle beside where their shoulders meet. Squeezes his hand until her own fingers prickle with needles. “Every personal grievance has to be a shitshow you know,” she tries weakly for the same bitter bite of humor he wields, but it falls just as flat. Ru takes a moment to breathe, heart slowing only marginally. “I’m so glad she saved you,” she admits quietly, only capable of it because of the darkness of her closed eyes pressed against his skin. Like a private confession. Even without tears her eyes burn. “I’m so…” but what is there to say? The magnitude of her feelings chokes her once more. For all she feels with the intensity of the sun, Hotaru has never been gifted with verbalizing them. “I’m so sorry.” It’s a wretched thing, wrenched free from her lips by time it comes. And there’s so much to be sorry for that even Ru doesn’t know which she means.

For the fire. For the fire she didn’t set. For the way they left each other. For the last time they spoke in King’s End, and all that had been said. For having ruined everything so perfectly that even when he was killed, nobody felt Hotaru needed to know.

Or had they just assumed she would no longer care?

Maybe that would have been easier, if she didn’t.