They flee as a pair, disoriented and frightened, hunted animals with no ability to think clearly. They are overwhelmed, burdened by their own hearts and the awareness of their shortcomings. They watch as the crowds disperse, leaving nothing but blood and sourness in its wake. She is shaken. They are both shaken. They are flawed and mortal, and she yearns for something more, something beautiful that seems just out of reach. No matter how hard she tries, she's stuck in this rut, and it scares her to look into the face of her problems and realize that they still existed no matter how hard she rallied against them or placed them into neat, hidden boxes. To stare into the brutality of it all had terrified her, and she'd fled, ashamed and torn by her own ideals and the problems they presented. She hid away, scared and childlike, her only companion irrevocably tied to her soul. Alice never wandered far, the terror and pain of their momentary separation having shaken them both to their pitiful foundations. 

At times, Hotaru regretted that Alice had ended up irrevocably tied to her soul. It was surely not a fate she would have wished upon anyone else, for all the troubles the hellhound surely had to endure for the sake of their bond. At her hooves, Alice whined softly, staring up at her soulmate and sister. World entire, friend and mother. How could she ever hate the maiden? The rosen lass ignored her, mind shuttered against their bond, a backwards sort of attempt to keep from feeling the pain of that separation that Ampere had thrust upon them in the battlefield. It was too much, too painful, and she carried on her quiet mission with a determined flicker in her dual painted eyes to conceal the terror that lay beneath.

- - -

Her eyes are pained.

Alice doesn't know much, not in the way that others do. Those of the equine race, that is. Alice is neither hellhound nor equine, rather some sort of incommensurate mix of the two. She despaired over their differences, prevailing at times over their spiritual connection. How could she comfort her maiden, her best friend, when their languages were so subtly but so profoundly different at times? 

Part of her doesn't see why Hotaru does not simply take what she so clearly desires, why she doesn't corner the golden one in a cavern and confess, throw her dominance at him until he sees that she is a perfect mate. Alice can't see why she doesn't exert her power over those beneath her who attempt to come at her with insolence and hatred, like Shadow at the entrance of the Basin or Aurelia with her failed attempt at challenging back the armor Hotaru had stolen. The hellhound did not comprehend the machinations and hierarchies of the Basin herd, and despaired over giving inadequate advice that was useless in practice.

Hotaru's pain was her pain, and even the crinkles around her blank eyes seemed to be sharp enough to cut into her heart. Merely gazing upon them caused her agony. 

She didn't understand. She probably never would. Alice had come into Hotaru's life late, after the years of suffering and loneliness that her mistress had suffered. She had the memories at her disposal, in part. Faded, blurred, but accessible. It haunted her in the late hours of the night, to look upon her sister's past and know that she hadn't been there to alleviate her pain. There was simply no real, deep understanding of that agony, not when she hadn't been there to feel it as it happened. Hotaru knew everything about Alice, the mare's awed face having been the first thing Alice had ever seen the moment she'd opened her eyes. To know that there were parts of her mistress still unlocked...it was a sorrowful, uncomfortable realization.

The primordial part of her wondered why Hotaru was not seemingly content. Alice was there now, wasn't she? But at the same time, she knew that old hurts did not disappear just because they'd knitted up and scarred over. Hotaru could hide away from her fears and her nightly terrors, could pretend they did not exist and could not harm her, but they would always be there. Because even with Alice, her mistress was seeing at last that she was still alone.

- - -

Hotaru's mind was on the same track as Alice's, and only when she'd scrambled gracelessly up the trail and past the sentinels did she feel her facade begin to crack and splinter away. Breaths came faster, and her hurried walk became an anxious jog, and she felt her control slipping away like silk between her grasping fingers. Some sort of beautiful disaster. Until at last she was running, galloping, tearing up the earth as she fled through the tundra, taking every winding and desolate path she'd come to memorize in her years. Paths and trails no other would tread in succession, because she could not let anyone gaze upon her weakness. 

Alice ran beside her, helpless and torn, shut out from her sister's mind but aware of the pain that seeped around the edges like overflow. Heard the hiccups and the torn, strangled sobs that escaped the rosen lass as she tore through her secret pathways. Heading for haven, for salvation and secrecy. A place she'd made her own, back when she was freshly torn from Tingal and alone in the snowy landscape, heavy with foal and scared out of her wits. Arya's birthplace. The only place she felt was intrinsically hers, beyond how the realm of the Basin was technically beneath her rule. 

She races down the shore of the waters, kicking up errant droplets when her path strays, eyes blurred with tears she can't understand. Even gritting her teeth, grimacing at her own weakness, cannot seem to make them go away. Alice bears it all, morose, aware that there was nothing she could do but be there as an anchor to keep Hotaru from getting swept away. This was why she despised how her mistress never let these emotions free, because they built up until the only way to achieve catharsis and purge them from her body was to shatter herself completely. 

Hotaru stumbled, barely catching herself and having a moment of deja vu, a flashback to bloodied knees and great swans that were caught by mountains as they were struck by lightning. Feathers like snow that drew others to tears even as they could not comprehend their loss. Why was she becoming this? Where was her control, her grace, her power? 

She could not sully the birthplace of her daughter, such a precious memory, with this disgusting moment of weakness. Turning so sharply she nearly lost her hooves from beneath her, she retreated to the woods just past the water's edge. Concealed by their thick, evergreen boughs, she finally cracked beneath the pressure of it all. Her parents deaths and how she'd never managed to mend her bond with them, the Goddess she could not help but love, her chaotic emotions and feelings towards Thranduil, the awareness that without Alice she would dissolve into nothing. 

With a broken, strangled scream she turned and kicked out against the bark of the nearest tree, taking joy in the burn of contact and the spray of wood particles. Her neck is aching and bleeding and burning, but it was nothing against the tumultuous nature of her heart. She kicked uselessly at the dirt and rocks, even as tears creased her cheeks and her lips upturned into a snarl more befitting the wolves she'd just killed rather than a broken mare with nothing of substance to lose. Only her daughters, and when was the last time the world had stopped exploding long enough for her to visit them properly?

"WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!" she screamed, crumpling to the kicked up dirt beneath her, tears flowing past shut eyes and crinkled face wrought with pain. Even in her destruction she was beautiful, soft pink hues in the long shadows, hair in wild curls of sunlight and frost, tears like diamonds and precious gems. Alice wriggled beside her, knowing Hotaru needed touch, was starved for it in a way that would forever haunt her. Hotaru leaned gently against her hellhound, purple smoke curling against the pair of them, fur soft and familiar against her hide. The queen lay alone and suffering, because she'd killed her heart so long ago, vowing through bloodied teeth never to let herself feel that way again. And here she was, brought low by its power and sway, wondering when she'd let it go so far. 

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

She misunderstands the weight of her own grief, the pain that rips raw and all-consuming into her body. She is ashamed. Where has her grace gone? Her power? She feels as though she is standing at the precipice of a great cliff, jagged and crumbling. She can feel the faultlines beneath her feet, hear the shuddering and sighing of the earth as the winds shake it relentlessly. The crash of the waves, the sea spray and thick salted foam, the hungry gaping waters below her. So far from the safety of land, but she does not have the power to take a step back. And there is nobody there to love her enough to try and pull her back.

These are weights that she cannot place upon her daughters. It is her job, her duty, her meaning as a mother to keep them from her woes. Hotaru wonders hysterically when it was that she began to hide her cracks from even herself, when she let them grow and shudder so deep and so long without her awareness. Alice had been a balm, a length of cloth wrapped round the open, gaping wound of old loneliness. A memory that festered, that boiled beneath her skin and soul like a sludge of disease and debilitation. Damnation. But the bond between them had been silenced, and the bandage had been ripped brutally free. How had she not seen that no clot had ever formed? How had she missed the blood that seeped through the cloth and dripped free from her skin? Was she so prolific and inventive a liar that she'd managed to fool even herself?

Had she ever truly had the power? Was that a facade as well, one that others entertained for her sake? Was she so abhorrently pitiful that they played along, allowing her the illusion of her own magnificence? She'd achieved so much, surely something valuable existed in the mires of her soul. Deep and buried beneath the muck and misery, perhaps, but existing nonetheless. Hotaru had never learned how to deal, how to cope and quarantine the sickness of her own flaws. There had been no idols, no role models, not for many years. She was a product of her own creation, a figure crafted from parts that ranged from uncertain molds made with shaking, childish hands to glittering gems and smooth planes. Hotaru had never had someone to emulate, didn't she deserve some recognition for making herself into someone so important? She'd built herself tirelessly from the ground up, in total solitude. I am my own creation. She could hear it spoken in her own voice. It was a ghost of her past ferocity, a facsimile of her grandeur. It broke apart with ease, the barest brush of air, like dandelion seeds that emulated a thousand childish wishes. So my destruction...it is entirely my fault.

Like an unwanted ghost from the past, she could hear his voice. The name she'd never speak aloud, the one that still encouraged pain to grow like weeds from the concrete cracks of her heart. "Well then aren't you a little whore. You're being passed around like a ball, and quite frankly I'm glad I'm not participating in this game of pass the tramp." Had he been right all along? Arya was the only good thing she'd ever left behind in her life, she'd even managed to sully Alice simply by being bonded to her. But she had achieved so much, had she not? Garnered the respect of both Illynx and Ophelia, if her material accomplishments were to be disregarded? A softer voice floated up as she pressed her blackened tears to Alice's coat, mixing with her own blood in a sordid chemical mix. “Boldness is an attractive and valuable trait in my opinion. A bold woman is always the one to survive in this harsh world.” Oh, Deodat. She could have loved him, in another world. Her own Corporal, the one who had given her the only good thing she seemed capable of creating. And was she not bold? Was she not fire and fuel in tandem? Who had ever been given the right to claim that they had tamed her? Even he, in their primordial convergence, had not managed to tie her down and break her. But she had never garnered his love, and so she'd never deigned to return it. To force her heart into a mold she'd cast aside ever since he had broken her to pieces.

They said love was what made you strong, but Hotaru had dedicated her life to proving them wrong. Hotaru didn't need love. She didn't need a prince to come and save her, not like Raeden had always believed and vied for. Maybe what she needed was far beyond a prince. A lord, of darkness and shadows, a discordant King of the realm she'd reborn herself into.

It was a sick joke, a twist of Fate surely, for her Goddess could not be so cruel as to let the golden wolf catch her scent when she was injured and at her weakest. To let him find her blood trail was a grievance too great for it to be anything but a disgusting mockery from the gods of destiny and desire. But he came nonetheless from the shadows, and even brought low and injured he was magnificent. She hated her own adoration of him, the respect he'd wrung and twisted violently from her grasp. How dare he bring her so low? How dare he not respect her as an equal, as to bring her into his gilded web of lies and honeyed words? How dare he stand there before her, as if concerned, while she burned beneath the fires of her unwanted craving of him? Because she could not label it as anything more. A craving. Something primal, something physical. Purely physical. Because then she could purge it, ignore it, burn it out of her body like a disease. She couldn't let it be anything more. If she labelled it, if she acknowledged it as anything greater, it could destroy her. He could destroy her. He with his heart weathered harder than hers, he with his years more numerous than hers. And she would fall to him, like the naive Helen of olde, and destroy empires with her foolishness. Because nobody should ever love the prince of Troy, for only fires lay in his wake.

He is concealed behind a curtain of gold and stardust, but she would recognize him anywhere for how he haunts her dreams. A wolf that did not need a sheep's skin to clothe him, for his words were as skilled as Apollo himself, and he'd charm any sheep into his waiting claws without ever needing a disguise. He paced her in her waking world, and hunted her in sleep. She hated him for all the pain he'd caused her without ever giving sign of acknowledgement of her. Hated herself far, far more for her weakness.

Her name had never held proper meaning to her. Firefly, her mother had told her once as they'd watched them dance in the Deep Woods, long before the Grey ever invaded the Foothills. You are named after them. But as he spoke it, she felt as if it held different tones between his teeth. Something rapturous and beautiful, when all she felt was ugly and broken. She lifted her head to gaze upon him from where she lay, eyes rimmed dark and cheeks glistening with tears that cleaned the muck regularly from her dual colored eyes. And...her ears twitched atop her crown, hidden and submissive though they lay in her hair, feeling powerless even as he stood physically battered before her. Was...was that his heartbeat? Gods, what sickness was this?

"Have you come to laugh?" she asked brokenly, her voice breaking and summarily dissolving into a soft sob. "Go ahead!" she spat, but even that was undermined by how her chest shook and her eyes dropped away from him as tears ran thick from her eyes. Even her shame was not strong enough to stop them from flowing. "Laugh! Laugh at wittle Ru, a fucking mess!" And it hurt so damn bad to call herself that, to hear Raeden's teasing words inside her head. Scared, wittle Ru? YES, her heart cried. YES I AM SCARED.

She rocked heavily to her hooves, ashamed to say she backed away from him as if he were truly the wolf she saw in her dreams. Her neck bleeding, crimson all down the side, cradled in the delicate curve of her shoulder. It was almost easy to imagine that he'd been the one to do it, some metaphor come to life, hunting her down and dragging her to the earth. The same way they'd killed the Elk together. And she stared at him from the mess of her hair, from the gleaming of her circlet upon her forehead and the trinkets in her hair. As if she deserved to wear them in that moment, dishonoring the memory of her accomplishments.

"It's not like you care," she hiccuped, trying to glare but ultimately failing with the sheen of diamonds in her eyes. "Well I CARE!" she shouted, though not nearly as loudly as she could manage for how her confession frightened her. "I care about your stupid fucking face! And I'm weak for it! So just laugh and fucking leave, I don't need you!" Her hoof stamped and her tail thrashed, but her eyes were wild as they darted around. Cornered. Betraying her. Alice whined, staring between the two of them, helpless. Slowly slinking towards Thranduil, as if hoping that her presence at his side would make him stay, make him see that Hotaru trying to push him away was a chance for him to overcome it. To prove that someone gave a damn about the thorny mare, even in some small way.

"I don't need you," she repeated faintly, her knees trembling and body shaking. "I...I thought..." she choked, eyes finally settling on him, needing to face this nightmare of her own loose tongue. "I thought I didn't need you." Oh but how fucking wrong she was. Even if she didn't need him she wanted him. She wanted this cold machine before her, the one who'd never shown her any real kindness. How had she stupidly managed to develop any form of affection for someone so cruel and disdainful? Did she live to hurt herself?

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

Neither of them are whole any longer. They had both been broken by the love of the innocent, too pure and ghastly for their twisted souls. In the bright light of innocence lay the sharpest knife, after all. They had both felt the pain keenly, and though neither know of the other's experiences, Hotaru feels something dusty and aching in her soul that feels a little like kinship. Remembrance. If anybody ever had a heart, Hotaru wouldn't be alone. She had only darkness and glittering pieces of diamond left to give, nothing worthwhile to the whole and unbroken of the world. Nobody would ever understand the crevices of her soul, the way she moved throughout the world and the why. But looking upon him, watching as little odd electrical flickers consumed her vision of him, she wondered if perhaps he would understand. Had they not been rivals? Cut of the same cloth? Or was he once more above her, better than her, by being able to avoid this pit she'd fallen into? One she was terrified to name, for how it had hounded her across the landscape of her dreams all her life. Weren't wayward princes and smiling gentlemen supposed to be her twin's gig? Why was it that instead, they all flocked to Hotaru, bidding with gleaming grins for the chance to shatter her twisted heart?

There is little understanding to his gaze, and instead she keenly feels the hateful stare of Haldir. A choked sort of noise crawls free of her throat, twisted and sick. Some sort of mix between a laugh and a sob. Oh, so now she was the criminal? He who had preyed upon her in all other ways, was not allowed to be submitted to the brutal honesty of her emotions? Was she to be hated by the pair of them, for her weakness but more so for her daring to love him? And it fell like a rock into the pit of her stomach, though with a weight akin to a boulder for how she felt suddenly floored by the realization. By the gods, she loved the asshole. And she wanted to scream, wanted to hyperventilate, wanted to GO GET OUT RUN NOW GET AWAY because she couldn't handle this pain another time. Not after all the chances and trials and heartbreak. Love had turned her into this monster, this darkened shadow of grace and mercilessness. If it was to ruin her any further, what would she become then? How much farther could she fall, until she was but a wraith of grief and anger like her father? Driven to madness over love?

But Alice was there, firmly at Thranduil's hooves, and their bond thrummed with betrayal and despair. Where Hotaru sought to find support she saw only a sea of faces standing against her, the physicality of her worst nightmares. One mare against the world, the ones that sneered and cajoled and whispered and cackled behind her back like starving hyenas. When she fell, they would descend upon her, rend her to pieces, and leave her with less than the nothingness she already carried. How could you? her heart screamed in agony staring into the nothingness of her companion's eyes. How could you leave me now? To this fate that she herself had concocted, a script she'd watched her own hands write. Now she had to recite them, watch as laughter took over his face, as he spit upon her empty hands held up to him in offering with nothing but the shards of her heart embedded in the skin. Except...the laughter never came. She waited, tense and hunched as if to physically protect and cradle her heart while it remained familiar to her, whispering condolences and apologies before it was shredded even further. 

In some ways, she was blessed, that he came to her as weary and hurt as she. His lack of comprehension was an out, a way to escape from her own confession before it tainted and cracked her lips like acid. And wasn't it ironic that the mare she regarded as her aunt had done this to him? Once upon a time Lakota had rescued Tingal to bring him to her in the Foothills. Was this her next sordid present? Bloodied and bruised in some unspoken understanding of how Hotaru had changed? And as his voice finally comes, cracked and warbled, she wonders why she ever thought that he could reciprocate. What sign had he ever given her of interest? Wasn't it supposed to be her job, the torch she carried for her mother, to warp and manipulate men? Why was it that she had been cursed with this one weakness, this one awful thing from her father? To love and love and love too much, left with nothing but a broken mind and sand that once belonged to her glass heart? Love is a game for fools and the desperate. Which one did I end up becoming?

He rattles and rasps, but the words he speaks are clear. Funny, she thought he'd be more vehement in his rejection. Why did she ever press this upon him? She knew his answer, after all. She was a child, a fool, a burden. So much left to learn, and he would serve her this lesson on a gilded platter with edges that cut severed until the only memory she left of him was bloodied. Until she stares at him, feeling desperate and lost, a hurricane whipping out of her control. Magic coils restlessly inside her, wind shifting disturbed and excited at her hooves, playing in the curls of her mane. Little lacerations that she did not notice, could not focus upon, caressing her skin like a demon's caress until her hide was bleeding steadily. At least, until his words came back stronger, his own self-hatred shining through whether he was aware or whether she projected it there upon his vocals. Shrouding the truth in her own desires. 

The winds died down, and though her blackened heart strangled her as it sat lodged in her throat, Hotaru took an unsteady step forward. Tried to swallow past the fear, arms trembling as she lifted her proffered heart higher to him. A chance...just a chance. "You were never my nightmare," she hiccuped softly, trying to clutch at her bravery, at something that still remained inside her control. Did you feel like this when you met father, mother? Did you stare into his eyes and find something of yourself in him? Did you feel this weakness that I feel in my knees, this fear that he will find me unworthy? But that if he does feel something for me, somewhere...that it will somehow erase all of my busted edges? Do all true love stories have such dark beginnings in our family tree? Somehow, thinking of her mother gave her strength, and she closed her eyes briefly and tried to think about what Raeden would do. 

Striding forward she closed the distance between them, trying to draw herself taller - not that it would help much with how he towered over her - and patch herself back together. She had one shot at this, she couldn't simply lay down and let him reject her. She had to try. "You are no nightmare to me. You are flesh and bone, pride and devilishness. You infuriated me for so long," she laughed helplessly, maybe a little hysterically. Was the air getting a little thin? Surely? "But you never scared me. Never." It was a whispered oath, a promise, and her eyes were wide open and bared for him for the first time in...Hotaru didn't want to think about how long it had been since she'd let herself feel something like this. "How can I not respect you? How can I not envy and desire you? Your soul is so much like mine, you are more home to me than terror of my dreams." And her breath left her on a trembling sigh, because that was far more profound a confession than any other in some ways. 

Denial comes next, slapping her in the face, and though Hotaru desires to rock back from the blow she stands her ground and swallows thickly. Laughs tearfully, disbelieving. "Which of us is hurt worse, Thranduil?" He is beaten and bloodied, and for a moment the rosen lass wished that she had an affinity for herbs, some sort of magic to offer to spare him the pain of his wounds. And wasn't that a new feeling? To want to ease the suffering of others, when generally she was the one inflicting it? 

Instead she dropped her eyes, sucked in a sharp breath. "If you feel nothing for me, then just say it," she hissed, but it warbled uncertainly and cracked in the middle. "Don't blame this on this disease. Don't reduce me to that, Thranduil," and it occurred to her that she was begging, but she couldn't help it. Not when he stood before her, evading her vague confession, trying to blame it on something out of both of their control. "Do you want me to say it plainly?" It was a challenge to herself, even as she felt quite like fainting even as the words came out of her mouth. Her lip quivered but she lifted her bi colored eyes to meet his earthen coins, wondered when the Laurelin had gotten so good at stealing hearts without the victim noticing. Steeling her resolve she sucked in a breath, trying to still her pounding heart.

"I love you, Thranduil." And her knees quaked, and this time she really did stumble back a little, as if terrified to hear her own voice speak those awful words. "I never thought I could again," came out unbidden, a strained murmur. Hotaru's form was tensed, prepared to turn and flee like a coward if his face took a turn for the negative. She couldn't bear it, she would not. Regardless of however he'd view her, she'd simply run. Run to hide her heartbreak, her disgust with herself. A frightened, cornered animal, her courage dwindling rapidly in the massive yawning void that had been opened after her words came free. Ready to swallow her whole. 

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

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

Everything spirals down and out like a fading storm, like a typhoon that wears itself out and lets the rains swell and die against the battered shores. They're left grieving in the wake, seeing only bars and chains in the prospect of love, and Hotaru wonders if it would have been kinder to spare him. But she was a selfish creature, and while it may have eased him to never know, it would leave her in shambles. She'd rather drag him down into the mire of her sick affections than drown without him next to her. Mother had never taught her any other way to love, after all. Possession and affection lay hand in hand, and Phaedra had been Tolio's demise in so many ways, just as he had been for her. An epic love story fit for the gods, so twisted and blackened their souls had been, made pure as they scalded one another clean. 

Was she following in their steps? Finding the same harsh soul to rub against for the rest of her days, until she was finally clean and saved?

There is nothing for her to say, and he lays before her broken beneath the weight of her sickness. Her heart cries to see him this way, because she'd love him in any fashion, but she knew that they both took comfort and strength in their facades. Why couldn't he see that she understood? She always would, because they'd walked the same paths, nearly toe to toe throughout their lives. If she knew herself, she knew him. Loved him even for the pits of darkness and sin and despair that marked him the same as she. 

Everything goes quiet. Not just because they've both stopped speaking, but something more profound than that. Her bones quiet, her spirit settles, and she stares down upon him and finds nothing left to do or say. He can reject her, but she will fight. She has fought for everything she has ever owned or attained in her life. She will fight for him. He cannot cast her aside, cannot ignore her love for him. This dance between them, it will continue, until one of them waves the final flag and their fates are decided. There was never a man my mother could not conquer, she tells herself hollowly, for how it only brings her determination rather than comfort. Am I not my mother's daughter? But as was the case for the Opulent, there was only one in the universe who truly mattered as an end game. 

She shuffled forward on her knees - a place she'd never let anyone else put her, see her - to where he lies crumpled and still. Tentatively twists to lay beside him, and gently drapes her neck over his withers if he allows her. Does it slowly, carefully, wondering if she was taking advantage of his state in order to do this. Sighs, a large gust of air that stirs the earth near her muzzle, and goes still. "I don't know much about the positives of love," she snorted caustically, even as her voice was weary. "But I'll show you," was whispered, a solemn but scared vow inside her heart. 

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