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