too much living and I’m dying again

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Everything is numb.

And when he tries to listen to the world around him, it all ends up being static anyway. It’s likely the reason he’s ended up here. He received Darkeye’s letter, and any good previous leader of the Grounds might go and try to tackle the fact it was on fire, but he can’t seem to care.

It’s terrible, of course, he knows it is. Knows it’s selfish and everything he tries to tell himself he isn’t, but at the end of the day he gives into those darker thoughts, the ones that tell him to abandon everything (even himself) and maybe then things might actually work out for him. An old quote comes to mind, one he’d told himself over and over again like a mantra when Lusea died though he can’t seem to find it in him to relate.

Fuck love and relationships and having a life with someone else. If it ended like this every. single. time. he doesn’t want it. And rather than take the approach that he had before, he remembers he has the twins to raise, how unfair it would be for them to grow up without both parents again. It’s bad enough they have to go through it with Nate gone too.

He stares at the churning waves of the ocean, a part of him tied to it, a part of him wanting to delve in and let the salt water replace the air in his lungs as has happened to him on two separate occasions where he thought he’d die. Perhaps he should have let them. It would’ve saved this feeling over and over again.

Out of the safe haven he’s a conglomeration of his shifts, horns sprouting from his skull, curling around into the scales of his dragon shift that coat his chest and part of his neck like a turtleneck, but different from his dragon wings, his Pegasus wings are on full display. Draped. Drooping. Dragging along the sand as he takes a few more steps into the ocean and lets the waves crash against his knees.

And finally, the crashing of the waves takes over the never ending static in his ears, but nothing takes away from his numbness, the way he can’t feel the cool water soak into his pant legs, the way he knows that he should be able to.

The Lone Ranger was gone, and that last little bit of hope Sunjata has left is gone with him.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

Torchline's late fall sun warms Hotaru's scalp and shoulders nearly oppressively as she stands in the under layer that lives beneath her Halo garb, and though sweat slowly gathers on her skin she does not feel the heat that creates it.

Flora has returned to Torchline, to the house she'd once shared with her brother, and with her goes the Valkyrie's heart. Hotaru is left standing empty-handed and empty-eyed on the beach, out of place and out of time. She doesn't recall how she ended up here, or what drove her towards the ocean; unlike Sunjata, she has no inherent call to it, nor the element that gives it presence. She only knows that, though Flora will never be too far for Hotaru to reach, she is gone - living with Enzo's ghost instead of with her mother.

Ru can't resent her for it. Loves the girl too much, obviously, but she also recalls the dark days after Raeden disappeared. The darker ones when Helovia collapsed. To lose a win is nearly as bad as to lose a child - perhaps more. Hotaru can't tell the differences between the agonies anymore.

It is easier to live in a haze than the hell her life has become. Even as her eyes listlessly cast sideways across the sand and find a familiar figure, there is no change to her empty expression. Not even surprise at herself as her feet shuffle into motion once more, bringing her to Sunjata's side over a stretch of time she has already forgotten. She kicks her shoes off and drops gracelessly beside him, bare feet stretching into the cold shallows in the vain hopes of numbing out the rest of her body. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the news of Nate's death had reached her ears, and she is nearly ashamed of how she can't remember her own reaction. There is simply too much grief to make heads or tails of the sources.

"What the fuck do we do now?" she whispers, empty gaze staring out across the ocean, the blinding light of the sun bouncing off the water enough to burn shadows into her retinas. She still doesn't blink.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

That’s the age old question, isn’t it? What do they do now?

His own internal question is whether or not to drown himself here, but there’s a witness and gods if he doesn’t already know how much Hotaru is suffering. He can’t do that to her, he can’t add onto it. He already has in the past.

He’s stuck, the waves lapping against his calves, each one with grappling tendrils that want to drag him deeper and deeper as he tries to refrain from flinching from it.

The muscles feather in his jaw as he sighs out a slow breath, his throat feeling as though it’s on fire though he can’t remember why. He turns from the cold dark embrace of the ocean and steps back toward Hotaru, eyes red rimmed and puffy, frown lines forever permanently scarred into his face these days as he sinks down into the water beside her without a huge splash – his magic making sure not to douse her.

His knees rise, arms wrapping around them as a sea salt wet hand rises to rub at his face. “We can’t keep doing this.” He manages through a hoarse, unused voice (aside from the heartbreak that had destroyed it recently.) “I can’t. I…” That hand that rubs at his face shifts to cover his eyes and nose now, as if he applies enough pressure he can keep everything bottled up inside.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

Like a falling tree he crumples down beside her, though the water never splashes against her clothed legs. It's a kindness she hadn't anticipated, a forethought she didn't think he was capable of in this moment. Maybe that was an oversight. They have both suffered so very, very much, and continued on despite it. What is this but another flexing of that torn muscle?

The pale of his wings are inviting, but it's an idle thought, one that makes her twitch as if to move without following through with the full action. Instead she turns her head back to the horizon. Scales of her own crawl over her knuckles, an armor that keeps in as much as it pushes away.

"We could walk in together," she whispers. Restless fingertips dance on her thighs. "Promises be damned." To Deimos, Sah, Talyson, Flora.

Flora, always Flora. The noose of a rope that keeps Hotaru tethered to this godforsaken earth.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Perhaps hearing it aloud is as resonating as it is in his mind, because he doesn’t react with anything else other than a hiccupped, pitiful laugh as he pinches his face, hand dropping away to stare at the waves that lap easily around their figures, his wings drooping lower and lower until they’re half submerged. “I was considering it before you arrived.” He admits quietly, too far into his emotions to be ashamed of the thought.

“But I have the fucking twins and I don’t know what to do.” Both fortunately and unfortunately, Hotaru’s children were old enough to make their own decisions. His twins were still young, still looking for a way to thrive in this life that was appearing to non-stop throw wrenches in every heartbeat of a second.

So he heaves a quiet sigh again, finally turning his gaze toward her. “I’m sorry about Enzo.” It’s a quiet whisper, incapable of imagining the pain she’s going through – knowing that it’s different from his but still cut from the same cloth. A cloth that for the two of them had far too many nicks within to remain stable.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

It's far from a surprising answer. Even without the Attuned bond, which feels like two gaping voids with a magical bridge between them, she knows him too well for it to be shocking. "At least it would be ironic. The Flood - drowned." Her own huff of a laugh harmonizes belatedly with his own. Humor that only they can look past the black and bleak of to find something worthwhile.

His refusal shouldn't hurt, there shouldn't be anything left to hurt, but she aches all the same. Jealous, vindictive, bitter. "Flora is old enough to move on if I did it," she notes softly, responding to words left unsaid but deeply implied. Sunjata cannot do the same. They both know it. Hands limp in her lap, legs outstretched fully, her perfectly straight posture is wooden and hollow. It lends unflinching qualities to her figure that keep her from physically recoiling at his apologies, at her son's name on his lips.

The sand beneath her would be easier to swallow than the emptiness in her throat when she tries. "I'm sorry about Nate." Her voice cracks on the man's name - because unlike Sunjata, who had never met Enzo, Hotaru has to grieve them both. It's far from a competition, but her attempt at condolences weigh heavy with pain. Her eyes slip shut and crease heavily beneath the weight of her agony, but her head doesn't bow. She wants to see the sun on the water, feel it on her face. She isn't sure yet if she wants it to be her last remembered sensation.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“It would only be the third time.” He replies, steadfast in the bluntness of it – even however fucked up it would be. Only the last two times had been directly correlated to his father, this one? A choice of his own. Which also wouldn’t have been his first attempt. A rainy night looking over Korofi’s city rooftops can attest to the last time.

And where she harbors jealousy and vindictiveness for Sunjata being stuck here, a husk to remain for however long it took, he feels the same for her. To have that ability to say fuck it and go through with it. His attention shifts from her to his own hands, his fingers moving to his wedding ring, stubbornly refusing to take off, spinning it idly as he bites back the bitterness in the back of his throat. “Do you want her to?” He asks on a quiet whisper – as if they were in the same position after all.

In a way they are. In a way they aren’t.

It’s how it’s always been for them.

Nate’s name on her lips, though, has another quietly choked sound slipping from his lips, as if he hasn’t expected it, surprised and pained by the one syllable word as if it were a bullet straight to his chest. He takes a few moments to recover, frozen as he feels his heartbeat thunder in his ears and he yet again swallows down the turmoil in his stomach. “I knew it. I was… Optimistic, but, deep down I knew.” His nose twitches as tears flood his eyes again and he hides his face away from her, turning away – because he can’t break in public, because the one person he could, isn’t here anymore. “And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.”

Despite how hard he’d tried. Begging the Voice, getting Frey to work with her to make that safe haven on the fleeting hope his husband could stay within it with him.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

"Third time's the charm as they say." But her voice is hushed, and the afterimages of the sun on the water is the only blinder that keeps her from having to see his face, because it would surely break her if she did right now.

It's the first time she has been even remotely close to the ability to say 'fuck it'. Flora is the last hurdle, the final thread around her pinky, so easy to break if she desires. "I'm the one that's cursed," she answers softly after some deliberation on his question. "If I go first...maybe she'll finally be free. Maybe she won't die like all her siblings." Maybe Ru just needs to stop being selfish for once in her goddamned life, a life that is already her second lived. A chance she never should have gotten. All her life she has taken, stolen, climbed and climbed and scraped and kicked down every other person she could find to stand on top of. Maybe finally, finally conceding is all it will take to free Flora from her fate.

Their pain goes in cycling circles, and he is next to bow beneath the weight of it. She can't save him or spare him from it. It's a pain she can't hope to feel at the level he does, but she feels it regardless. "You did everything you could." It's a hollow comfort, but Nate had made his choice the day he became The Voice's demigod instead of merely one of her strongest. "If we had no hearts, we could say with certainty that you saved more lives, that the scales are tipped towards life entirely because of your efforts. But we - us, always us - we lose in the end. No matter how hard we try." And she is so very tired of losing. She knows he is, too.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Maybe it would be the charm to end it all. It’s a beautiful day for it, too, the way the sun hits the ocean in ways that have him debating whether he should stay to see it set or abandon it all beforehand. But he’s made his decision, he has to stay, even if it hurts, even if he’s already numbing to the sensation of life around him. “We both are cursed.” Sunjata agrees softly. Her with her children, his with sharing his heart with his lovers.

He certainly doesn’t think it’s better to have loved than lost than to never know it at all. If he had his choice, right in this moment, he wishes to have never experienced it to begin with. Wishes he hadn’t gotten swept up in Lusea, in those that came after, in Nate who had taken his world by storm, shook it up, and left him with the pieces after countless arguments about how he was the reckless one.

It's a shuddering breath that leaves him as he hides from her at her admission. He did but he didn’t and the guilt creeps up on him just as fast as the wave that crashes against his bent knees does, shocking him with the cold before it withdraws. Stubbornly, Sunjata swipes at his face, returning to pinching the bridge of his nose, though the glint of the smeared tear tracks are visible on his freckled cheeks. “Its terrible… But I don’t know if it was worth it. I could have done something to help.” He could have made the safe haven, let Phoebe or someone else run it, and maybe then Nate would still be here.

But it’s always the what-ifs and the maybe’s that keep him in his cage of guilt. It always has been. And he tries to pull himself together enough to speak again. “What did we do to deserve this, Ru?”

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

He has made his decision, and in this too Ru aches, hates him just a little. Even now he won't pick her, won't take her hand and walk alongside her into the end of it all. It hurts because she'll never stop loving him, but loving him isn't - never was - enough. Just another left in his wake. But as a mother, she can't begrudge him his choice either, and so she is stuck stewing in emotions that have no use or outlet.

It's apparent that he, too, has no outlet. At least not for this. Oh, and she knows it well. The guilt, the blame. How they could have done more.

"I could have forced Enzo and Flora into the refuge," she starts, softly. Almost dreamlike. "I could have stayed in Torchline. Convinced them to stay in Halo, if they wouldn't go to the refuge." Her toes dig deeper into the cold sand beneath the waves, up to the bones in the top of her foot, her ankles. "I could have trained Enzo in his magic sooner. More intensely." Hotaru's golden head tilts back and she stares aimlessly into the sky, and she laughs something hollow. "Maybe it wasn't worth it. At least not to us - selfish, awful people who would have let everyone else burn to have saved just those two." And as she stares at the sky the tears start to fall, sliding down her temples even as she laughs, even as her cheeks ache.

It ends as fast as it begins, and his painfully uttered question makes her shake her head. "I don't know. I don't know, Jata. As much shit as we've done, as much hurt as we've caused...it's still not enough to deserve all of this. It's not." No matter what the terrible voices in their heads say.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

The what ifs and maybes are a constant noose around their necks, never being enough or being too much, the extremes of each swing of the pendulum when it comes to their attempts to protect those they continue to lose over and over and over again. She laughs, a hollow sound, tears streaming down her face as Sunjata keeps his bottled up the best he can, but his vision swims until he can’t see the water anymore, until the sun is just a bright, hazy mark somewhere within sight.

“I would have.” He chokes out, pitifully. He knows she would have too, that others would have argued and argued about the rights and wrongs, but when Hotaru and Sunjata had their hands on something, they had a tendency to dig in, unconsciously in case it were taken from them. And time and time again, it was, leaning their fingers bloodied in the remains of nothing.

He takes a deep breath, another shuddering one before he tilts his head somewhere near her. “So what do we do? I can’t go to Frey. I’ll see him.” His voice drops to a whisper, as if speaking too loudly would let the emotions break from his fragile facade. “I can’t go home to King’s End, either.” Stuck, avoiding the pieces of him that he’s not ready to be gone just yet.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

In this they understand one another too well. They’d peered into the blackened, scorched, and ashen depths of the other’s soul too deeply to pretend there wasn’t a shared selfishness and greed between them. But it changes nothing. Even avarice cannot fix a world intent on stealing from their empty hands, taking flesh when it finds nothing more.

It may seem strange that Hotaru is pious even in these moments, but her faith had never wavered, not even when her beloved Goddess had commanded the death of her parents. “They are not so cruel as that. Ludo, perhaps, but not Frey. You’re their chosen; they wouldn’t cause you undue pain.” Her tears drip silent now they’ve been released, though her tone resonates oddly. Faithful unto the end, if not envious of his dilemma. She would do anything to replace the image of Enzo’s slack and bloodied face from her mind, the last vision of him she’d ever see. Even seeing a dead man’s face on a God would be worth it to her, but her heart has suffered the losses of far more lovers than Sunjata. Perhaps she is merely warped now.

“You can stay here. Take my old house, if you need. Settle temporarily in another city. Children -” her voice snaps clean in two, and she must swallow to clear the debris, “children are adaptable. A little time in a new house will not hurt them.” As for Hotaru, well…she still isn’t sure how this evening is going to end for her. Advice is all she has left to give.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“No, they’re not.” Sunjata sighs and it is with some relief, despite the heartache and the pain that soaks through him. He can’t go and see Frey without some sort of protection away from seeing Nate in their face, and eventually he hopes maybe it’ll subside. It’s unfortunately his own responsibilities he’s put on himself that keep him grounded here while Hotaru flutters in between letting go and remaining, Sunjata’s decision is made, though it isn’t without a too full box of regret.

He works his jaw, shaking his head immediately at her offer of staying here. He can’t – not with Torchline being watched by Safrin. Not with the interactions between him and the starry goddess. “I appreciate it Ru, but… I can’t stay in Torchline.” He offers softly, sadly, flashing a heartbroken attempt at a smile her way even as he twists and churns inside. “Not with Safrin and Maeve running things.” So he supposes he’ll just go hide out in the refuge, away from everyone else except those that distinctly needed him. Perhaps that would keep his curse at bay.

“I think my only option that isn’t tainted is the refuge.” The place that Nate hadn’t spent much time, even if their combined last name was within the place’s name. He ducks his head a little closer to his chest, gaze dropping to the waves. “If you stay… Will you remain in Halo?” He asks tentatively.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Hotaru

I'm made of dead man's money, you can see it in my smile

Perhaps it will never subside, but from her experience with demigods, Heralds do not often leave their chosen ones unattended for long. Her faith in Frey is immense, and she knows when the time comes that they will be kind, but she also knows that Sunjata won't be ready. He never will be. There is no moving on from love the level of what he had with Nate; Hotaru would know.

She hadn't considered Safrin and Maeve admittedly, but she forgives herself the oversight easily enough. Her head is too full of senseless noise and pain to consider his situation from a more nuanced standpoint. At least he has the refuge, which seems to be the only light at the end of the tunnel. She envies him that.

"There is nowhere else for me," she answers, voice deadened and eyes distant on the horizon. Torchline and the Greatwood too full of his ghost, Stormbreak inaccessible, and the Grounds razed to nearly nothing. At least in Halo there are people who love her, who will try to keep her clinging to this unfair earth. "But...maybe I could visit? If I..." make it through tonight. Hotaru's voice trails into nothing without making it reality, but he has never needed spoken word to be able to read her. If he would have no objections to her presence, perhaps she would find an escape there, when all the eyes in Halo - their pitying, sympathetic gazes - became too much.

Watch the fire rise, burning through my paper skin