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