Alice yipped softly and butted her flat head against the small space between the cerndyr's antlers, keeping quiet to allow the sisters their reunion. Hotaru had lost so many friends, so many foals and family members - Alice could not take this time from her, not when it was so rare. So scarce but so precious. So she and Tin retreated to the edge of the cavern, and Alice's hell black eyes averted from her bonded, giving privacy that never really existed with intertwined souls. But she could present a facsimile of it, at least, for Hotaru's sake. 

As everything spilled out, Hotaru felt a weight lift from her rosen shoulders - whether or not Raeden understood didn't matter, because she finally had someone to say it too. Someone to share the burden with. And...it felt amazing. Because this was her sister, someone she had once despised, someone she had thought lost to the wilds or worse - to death, like their parents. Hotaru never thought she'd get this again, this sisterly closeness she'd been missing for most of her life. They had both grown up...Raeden was no longer the prim princess bully that she'd been when they were younger, when Hotaru was weak and cowardly and cried as easily as the rains fell from the heavens. Hotaru had a sister, someone to share these moments of weakness with. Someone who may judge her in private, but would keep her confidence eternally. It was...well, Hotaru didn't really have fitting words for the feelings that realization managed to illicit in her tired heart. 

So even when Raeden tried to brush it away and comfort her, Hotaru still laughed, even if it hurt the raw edges in her soul a little. "I know. Trust me Raeden, I do, I have twisted them around my ankles just like you and mom used to. But..." her smiling face fell, and her eyes went dark with haunted ghosts that would never leave her alone these days. "Somehow, they managed to make me feel something real for them. Rae, I...I really love them. Both of them. And having someone you love that much leave you like it's nothing? I sit in here at night and I wonder why I wasn't enough to make them stay. Why they would tell me they love me only to disappear like I never meant anything in the first place." Pale frosted locks fell across her eyes, blank stare angled at her sister's hooves. 

"This emptiness where I used to carry their hearts hurts worse than any wound my body could bear. I thought myself invincible to everything this life could rain upon me, but it was love that brought me low. How shameful." And her mismatched eyes clench against the reality of her weakness, the way her heart still beats for Ashamin and Thranduli even as she begs for a new purpose in life. Hung up on them as surely as a noose around the neck, for how it makes her feel. 

But her sister has a son, and that is more important now. Hotaru has a nephew. And her eyes light up and she moves forward with a joyous laugh to bump noses with her sister. "You didn't tell me you had a son! Raeden! You must introduce us!" Raeden had already met Ru'in and Romina, but Hotaru didn't have the courage to tell her older twin that she'd had two other daughters - daughters lost to the world, one nearly lost to death were it not for her birthright of immortality. And wasn't that worse? To know her lost daughter was not lost to death, but that she'd simply left and never returned, because her immortality did not grant her that sort of excuse. 

The conversation took so many emotional turns Hotaru's head was spinning as her shoulders sagged once more in defeat. "Our numbers are dwindling. No matter what Deimos and I do, they are complacent, lazy. Invasion is inevitable at this rate. Take comfort in your herd's stability, Raeden; it may even be them who move against us. It is the weak deer that is hunted by the pack." Alice growled softly in the corner, vowing that she and Hotaru would never relinquish the Basin or the crown without giving their all in return. Perhaps even their lives. And while Hotaru would never have confessed such things to her sister - a sneak of another stronger herd - she was the Valkyrie's twin. She had to trust that what was said in this cavern did not leave it. 

And the news only continued into further depths of hell. Their parents' murder, Hotaru's unwitting hand in the process. Not that she could ever confess such sins to her twin, the only living family she had left. 

But she could comfort her elder sister. That, at least, was something the Valkyrie had power over. 

She stepped forth and wrapped her neck around her sister's withers, pulling her close until their heartbeats were pressed against one another. They may not be here, but I am. I am alive, and you have me. Things she couldn't say but hoped Raeden would understand. "I'm so sorry Rae," her own choked voice croaked, tears she hadn't shed in years forming once more in her vision. Hotaru would never let them fall, but they stung her eyes all the same. 

They stood pressed together for many, many long moments, until Raeden's composure returned to her and Hotaru tentatively retreated, wishing she had the power to take Raeden's grief away. To do something more. But this was Raeden's move now, and the Valkyrie stared incomprehensibly down at the glass bracelet offered to her, the tears returning with a vengeance. She lifted her leg to allow Raeden to press it on, and the tears dripped silently down her face. 

"Thank you Rae," she whispered unsteadily, lifting her eyes to her sister's pale gems. "I'll wear it always, so that we may be connected no matter how far we roam." And if the Gods did take them, the world would know their love for one another, symbolized by the bands around their arms. 

So sad ;-; @Raeden stupid tag