They are locked in a stalemate, Alice and Haldir the witnesses to their downfall. The King and Queen brought low by love, by affection and misplaced devotion. Maybe they were broken enough that they could fit the pieces into one another? Find some sort of comfort in a facsimile of wholeness, so that they could resist the battering of the world around them. What if I was wrong? she calls helplessly into Alice's head, because she doesn't know where to turn, doesn't know what to do as she burns beneath the gleam of his earthen gaze. How long she'd wanted it on her, only her, only to feel short of breath and inflamed when her wish was granted. She could not read him past her own turbulent emotions, the hitch of her breath and the too-quick pulse of her heart that seemed to drown out both logic and sound in her ears. Alice whines softly, the words she wants to say far beyond her mental capabilities, not sure how to comfort, how to heal a wound she wasn't even there to witness. One she still can't fully understand.

Hotaru feels like the world is shrinking down around her, too tight, constricting whenever she dares to try and breathe. Plastic wrap that clings to her skin, leaves her tangle and writhing in futile fight against the panic she can feel weighing down her chest. He's silent. Dead silent. Watching as she fights not to come apart, warring against the hundred shades of herself that she'd always been careful to never let touch for fear of becoming plain muddled brown. Losing sight of the good and bad of her. Hotaru had never been able to know where the real spirit of herself lay, she could not lose the grounding that she had, the system she'd concocted to not let that knowledge frighten her. 

He is nothing like Tingal, or Deodat, but she can see them in him. The possibilities. A thousand ways he could break her, the valiant spirit she'd fought tooth and nail to have born into her body and sustained. She could see her fall from grace, the crown she'd worked so hard to earn ripped from her childish grasping fingers as his laugh resounded in her ears. Still just as beautiful as she'd ever find it, but cruel and mocking, striking the softness of her shattered heart to ensure she was felled completely. I can't do this, she thinks in a sudden panic, her frail trembling legs locking like a terrified fawn. Her mind flashes to the idea of running, of simply turning and disappearing into the underbrush. Reconstructing her mask, pretending this never happened. Protecting herself, because Gods knew she would never be able to pick herself back up again after this confession alone had nearly ripped her apart. 

No run, Alice whispers, still standing uncertainly beside Thranduil. Try, or no know. Hotaru wanted to cry. What did the pup know of love? Of anything that wasn't Hotaru's all-consuming devotion to her? Love was weakness and pain and suffering. The ultimate form of manipulation. And how many times had Hotaru wielded it as one? Twisting others around in their desire for her, making them think they knew her and had somehow managed the impossibility of capturing her wild heart, only to break them and toss them aside? How many times had she slept well that night, unbothered by what she'd done? Yet there she was, awaiting her own damnation, for surely it was a fitting end to be broken by the rites she'd performed to manipulate others. 

His shout blasted into her face, and she willed herself not to flinch, to weather the storm of his rejection. Except, it wasn't disgust and disappointment that colored his outburst, but...even Hotaru wasn't sure. Something other than that. Something horrified and tender and broken. It had an echo similar to the one that she heard when she called out to the remnants inside her own chest, and in that way it was familiar enough to catch her attention. His coughing drove her a half-step closer, stuttered, instinctive. Help, Alice whined. Hotaru shook with the desire. I can't. I don't know how. But she would have done anything to be able to. God,  how he has ruined me...

It is almost ironic, though perhaps it is more fair than anything, that she watches him break and crumble before her confession. Didn't he see that she was slotting the blade inside the muscle of her heart just to say it? Did he really think it was easier for her than it was for him? When she felt like she was going to die, standing there before him, and she didn't even have the ability to deny him the way he could her? And even though her knees shook she pressed closer, eyes flashing like storms and lightning, stubbornly lifting her face to him. Step for step, backing him to the precipice she hoped was behind him, because she didn't want to fall alone. 

"Then let me try!" Tried to imagine she didn't sound like she was pleading, that her ferocity hadn't retreated cowardly beneath her skin as if preparing for the last fissure that would shatter her completely. Ready to conserve strength to try and piece her back together when it was over, try to keep her from simply laying down and never moving again. Because the world had never loved her, and she'd fought it all her life, stole and wrestled every little piece of good she ever had from Fate herself. Bit, twisted, clawed. A wild beast and eternal beauty in a single package. Only to be cut down, to be warped and shredded by a man. Gods, why? I need you, momma... Staring into Thranduil's eyes, her own pain reflected back to her, she choked on the viciousness of her own emotions. I need you to guide me, mom. How can I love this beautiful, broken, amazing bastard? How can I love him and not lose myself? How could two forces of nature combine, without one consuming the other?

"Don't think that I'm so foolish," she swore vehemently, but her throat quavered with the passage of her words. "You think I don't know what love is? What it really is? You think I don't know what it is to HURT? You think I don't know what it MEANS to sit here and say I love you and know that you could break me all over again?!" And she feels hysterical, like he's drawing her down into his madness, his denial. "It feels like a death sentence sometimes," she croaked, eyes too moist with more than the blackened tears that slipped down her cheeks. Not that Hotaru would ever admit to them, acknowledge them. "But I had to tell you," she whispered. "I have to try."

Until he's collapsing before her, and she stares down at him and wonders where the satisfaction is. Waits for it, to see him as if he's kneeling before her, to feel the smugness wash over her. But...it doesn't. So she lowers herself to her knees before him, joining him in the dirt, all their boundaries and titles erased. "Who else could know you better than me?" And she'd fight for that position, for that right, for that honor. "Let me try," she pleaded, even as he begged her to stop. Because she couldn't. Because she didn't know how. "Why can't - ?" she choked, throat working hard, beneath the eyes of their companions and the cold, empty sky above. Decaying greenery beneath their knees, sodden and malleable. Drawing them down, staining their skin. "Why can't I at least try? To show you that I mean it? To try and make you feel the same?" She'd do anything if he'd just give her a chance...maybe he didn't feel that way for her right then, but she would try, damn it!

I'm not a girl, I'm storm with skin