The blood had been washed from her skin in the hot springs, her eyes closed and breaths coming slow and purposeful. The gentle bubbling and steam had released the tension in her muscles, and though the bruises would ache like phantom pains Lena could not erase, she would be whole. Tingal and Ampere could not touch her here, isolated queen in the reaches of the north. Had her flock noticed her absence? Cared at all? Then again it was likely they had merely assumed her absence was of a personal nature, or even business related. She could not scorn them when they were too vast for even she to record their prolonged absences. Though the time had faded and business had continued normally, the hot springs now reminded her of the nightmare her life had turned into. 

Tingal. Ampere. Thranduil. Ashamin. 

With a deep sigh she slid into the water, chasing the peace she found so rarely. Trying to remember her purpose, her strengths, in the face of all her newfound weaknesses. Alice leaped into the water with a splash and an unamused stare from her bonded, tongue lolling out cheekily from her long snout as she doggy-paddled in circles around Hotaru. Completely unbothered by the cloak of hair shining prettily floating atop the water. This was her momentary sanctuary, utilized less frequently as spring tantalized her lambs back down into green valleys where adventure awaited. She was young and sprightly but her bones and soul were weary, and the water ebbed and flowed across the crevices of her sorrow. Filling them in and awarding her peace - if only for a few hours. 

Memories of Rhiannon, the ghostly love that had abandoned her, were the only things to haunt her here. It was enough. It was worth it to ease the strain of burden on her small shoulders, the weight of dark love and weakness, business and loneliness. 

With a soft sigh she dipped her muzzle idly to the surface of the water, hooves slowly shifting against rock below. The only sound to break her quietude was the soft hiss and bubble of the springs. 

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

He was cold. He was merciless. He was unkind, unforgiving, relentless. He was immoral and savage, wild and brutal, soulless and depraved. He was monstrous and ruthless, and he wore whatever armor, paint, namesake, or moniker they gave him. He was a sword to his brethren, a weapon to the devil, and armor for the snow and rime. He bore many things, straight across his shoulders and back, down into the columns of his chest, past the dim glow of his nefarious heart, and said naught of the exhaustion he felt. He’d lost and won, then lost, lost, lost until he couldn’t recall what it was he’d actually gained in all the mayhem, all the glory. He was loyal, he was strong, he was diligent, he was born to tides and sands, then lifted to cliffs and mist, and tied, tethered, sewn in blood and bone to the mountains. But none of it mattered.
 
The Reaper could’ve walked the halls, the corridors, the caverns for centuries, and none of it would’ve mattered. He could be a ghost, a wraith, a phantom, wandering into tombs and catacombs, peering through furtive chambers and unlocked doors, for a hint, for a sign, a direction, for what he was supposed to be doing, and none of it would’ve mattered. He could peer through mirrors, cracks, and crevasses, and all he would see was the pale nothingness staring him back in the face – because, in reality, what had he ever accomplished? What had he ever done? How was he going to be remembered?
 
As death? As desecration? As a catalyst to the ruin of the Basin? Or barely recollected at all – bones tossed aside one of the many cliffs, forgotten, abandoned, an empty throne filled again?
 
You are naught, the winds seemed to whisper, and he stood amongst their threshold, whipped and tarnished, decrepit and withered, frayed and tired.
 
But the winter King didn’t lower his head to the ground, hang it low and bent, weary and fatigued. Instead, he wandered, over and over again, the endless, eternal cycle of what he knew and what he understood (protection, he could compose a tome of what it meant to flay, murder, and desecrate the ones who dared to endanger his kin), piercing, puncturing eyes staring out into the void. He’d see shadows, crumbling metal, barbaric, festering eaves, and still, not have a clue how to fix them.
 
Lord, was he willing, was he trying, was he praying for something to strike him down in his Machiavellian skull and grant him the wisdom to be more than what he was.
 
Instead, his gaze settled on rosy hues, a balance of pink against the stark backdrop of spring laurels and empty firs; the Queen, nestled on her peace and sanctity, resting on what little sanctum or sanctuary they’d been given in life. The beast thought about leaving her entirely, alone and adrift, to snatch and entangle the small snippets and hours of silence, and he could catch the next blade, the next countenance of shadow and sun, brood, slither, serpentine there until he received a reply to all his queries, all his quests, all his designs.
 
But he remembered the way she’d appeared at the meeting (that disastrous, hellish gathering), bloody and warped, stained and marked. “Hotaru,” he spoke, serious and impassive, voice gravelly from lack of use (because he’d stayed away, away, away from them, so neither could disappoint the other again). There was more he thought to say, to drag from his tongue, but naught appeared – the same as so many other tides before, rolling and leaving him behind, drowned in the wake of his own flaws, failures, and defects.

He comes to her like a shadow, for that is all he seems to be on the outside. A looming presence, a warning, nothing more. She wonders how long he has built himself into that persona, whether it reflects the realities of his soul. Is he a martyr, taking up the mantle of the untouchable for the sake of protecting his herd? How many stared into the darkness of his face and did not see the living soul inhabiting the stalwart figure? How many times had she done so? Surely there was more to him than stoicism and battle prowess. Surely in all his years as a pillar of the Basin, he had developed into a complex individual. And yet they took him for granted, over and over again. Relying upon the might of his name and title, the unfaltering loyalty he displayed without qualm or question, rather than their own herd unity and individual strength. She felt saddened and ashamed before him, beneath the weight of insecurity and defeat that seemed so childish in comparison to what he must have faced. He was far older than she, and had surely been burdened by her ascension. She had no faith in her own battle abilities, and her days as a thief were few and far between since she'd promoted Rexanna in her stead. She was too obvious a figure, too recognizable a bodice, to return to that shadowed lifestyle. Her actions had a far stronger impact on her herd than when she'd been an Impersonator. They were little more than figureheads anymore, for all the restrictions placed upon their station. 

And yet here they ended up, together, solitary. Fate or coincidence, she couldn't tell. Her name a low sound on his lips, a murmur of syllables that held so much more than the legend she'd been handed at her birth. Wondered if maybe she, too, was more complex than others gave her credit for. If he looked at her and thought what she was thinking in that moment, or if he was burdened by her inability to separate herself from the drama of the other herdlands. Not that she'd ever asked for it, but she certainly always seemed to attract it nonetheless. 

"Deimos," she allowed, softer than the gravel vocals of her counterpart. She turned to haul herself from the steaming waters, the chill of the air like a slap as her wet skin tried to adjust to the vastly different temperatures. Perhaps they should enclose the area, if only to make departure less displeasing. 

"Are you well? We've not spoken in ages," she lilted, sincerity a rare commodity in her conversations, but one she offered plainly to this man she respected so deeply. They rarely spoke at all, in fact, aside from business like promotions and recruitment. But she wanted to know how he was. And the distinction was obvious in the way she looked at him, feeling the same weariness he carried. And she felt like she didn't deserve it, to look at him that way, not when he had surely carried far more than she. 

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

The Reaper was in a constant state of imperfection. The shadows marked him as one of their own and breathed avarice into his bones; the darkness played over the wiles of his compassion (the little that remained) and whispered barbarity into his blood. The foolish ways in which he’d carved his name into rubble and chaos only rekindled the wild whims of his past atrocities – urged him to cling more to violence, to vigilance, to decay and acrimony. It was all he knew, all he’d ever known, and all he’d ever be. Despite his determination, the cold, savage winds beat down upon his chiseled surface and made him bleak, chilling, and miserable. Despite his perseverance, the forged, Lucifer intricacies of his birth, of his namesake, of his calling, of his soul, made him desolate, isolated, and unattainable. Despite all the years, all the seasons, all the days he’d lingered within the temples, ruins, and empires, he’d only managed to become an eroded shell, a remorseless vessel, a piece of earth and disaster. He’d been christened, anointed, designed by flaws, by defects, by cruel, bitter entanglements, by bewitched, eldritch incantations, by the slim handle of a scythe and the iron will of a titan, and he didn’t know why they needed him anymore. The Lord was in and out of iniquity, balancing tightly on a rope, on a noose, on a strangling cord binding its way across his neck, and every day, every moment, every hour, it told him of his worthlessness, of his failures, of the way the herd managed to crumble around him. It was breathtaking and harsh, and he fought on because he could, because he was strong, because he didn’t give in when everyone else yielded to cumbersome pressure.
 
What hurt the most was that he tried, and none of it seemed to matter.
 
Know your people, his father had said, love them….if they follow when you lead, then you will know you have done something magnificent. So what had he done after talking to his sire’s ghost, after whispering into the flames, after lingering and longing for something, for someone, to cling to and tell him how to accomplish these tasks?
 
Maybe the Basin was about to become as empty as his title, as his throne, and the rest of the world could sit and laugh while they chipped away at their own land.
 
He glanced to Hotaru now – and he didn’t know her. He had bits and pieces, fragments of her in his sight, in his memory, of rosy hues he once thought of as mere petals that somehow, somewhere, blossomed and bloomed into materials of stature and noteworthiness. She’d been sneaky, she’d been cunning, she’d orchestrated warfare alongside the Forsaken, she’d stolen and been stolen, and then he named her to the crown after everything was over, finished, final. What he learned since then?
 
The same as everyone else he’d encountered: nothing.
 
He was a hideous, worthless King. He might have told her that, as she asked how he fared, as she left the hot spring just to wile away the hours with a ridiculous, bloodthirsty soul who only knew how to hunt and murder, who could lead soldiers to battle but couldn’t get a group of rancorous brethren to agree on what to do with pieces of metal. He might have told her he was tired, he was exhausted, he wanted to lay across the dirt and ice and wait for the world to go quiet and dark around him, so he wouldn’t have to endure anymore of his own ineptitude, so he wouldn’t have to watch them all tumble, fall, and fail around him. Instead, however, he endured, like a timeless artifact, like a haunting, harboring disease, pestilent and pernicious until the end (when all he’d ever wanted to do was make them reign supreme, above everyone and anything), gravelly vocals punctured and laced from the carnivorous wake of his unreachable demeanor. “I am fine.” He’d always be fine, fine, fine, fine, until the devil chose to drag him back to where he belonged.
 
The monster’s great head turned then, surveying her from head to daggers, looking over scraps and chunks of scars where blood had once stained – she’d never told him how she’d managed to procure such injuries. She’d never told him who to stalk, chase, follow, or bludgeon (which was brutally unfair – to not employ him in one of the few skills he had). He wanted to ask her again (what happened?), to yield into the denizens of violence and not be awakened for eternity, to correspond and strike something, anything, anyone, down for marking and beating one of his own. But he didn’t – like one more foolish rendition of a failed monarch, he merely extended the query she’d composed back into the air. “Yourself?”

Dark eyes bore into her body as she wanders from the depths of the steaming, bubbling water. He is a mystery to her, and yet she knows that when the hounds rise from their satanic coils to pursue them across this frozen wasteland they command, Deimos will fight bloody and damned right beside her. Even when his physicality is absent, she can feel him, a solid presence at her back. A promise of kinship and power, a silent, protective shield. He is the oak that shelters and fosters growth, and she the tenacious, beautiful vines that slowly wound their way across his structure. And while his branches are barren and his trunk scarred and burned with age and horror, he stands stalwart against the howling winds. And between the two of them, they create shade and safety for those who huddle beneath the might of their construction. A haven from the buffeting winds, an obstruction that exists solely for the purpose of cultivating family and kin. There is something tight and tortured in the corners of his eyes, a weariness she only knows the beginning of. Wonders how much he has lost, how many broken dreams and festering wounds he has struggled through to get where he stands before her now. 

Though his voice rumbles solid and concise, Hotaru did not achieve her rank for her stunningly good looks. A weary smile tries to form itself into something more playful, some type of smirk, but she simply does not have the energy to try and create a charade for her comrade. Her eyes betray her, soft and understanding. The lies they weave for themselves have far fewer holes and far stronger threads than those that spring to tongue for others. Whether he will accept the intrusion she is planning is yet to be seen, but in her own melancholy reflection, she is inspired to be there for the stoic king. Perhaps he was as lonely as she once had been, standing in the Steppe with no family at her side and only the lost memory of her father's name carrying her north-bound. 

His dark eyes fostered sympathy and curiosity in her tired heart, and perhaps the mother in her yearned to protect the battered, hidden parts of this man she looked up to. 

"No you're not," she says quietly, softly, as if it will somehow soften the blow of her honesty. She cared about the truth behind those three words, wondered how many had sought to discover the reality of Deimos' emotions. Hotaru could not blame the likely pitifully few numbers. She had once believed him incapable of emotion, herself. But you know the idiom about assumptions...

Hotaru couldn't fathom why he'd wandered to her. Was it a misplaced sense of loyalty? Duty? Was she just another on a list of those to tend to and reassure, simply because it was their job as Lord and Lady? Did he worry, somewhere in his hidden heart, about her injuries? Hotaru recalled his dark, stormy gaze. Vitriol and violence, promising to rend and ruin whoever had called her blood to her skin. But Hotaru had held her tongue. Not because she did not trust Deimos to hold true to that silent promise, but because she had feared he would. And Hotaru could not risk their alliance with the Throat simply because she had stolen a piece of armor in her youth, and was too injured to keep up with Ampere's demands to liberate it from her body. She would rather lie and leave him confused, potentially hurt by her silence, than doom the herd that lay trusting and willing at their feet. 

Perhaps in time she would tell him. Perhaps even today, with how he quietly questioned after her own state of mind. Body? How deep did his worry run? How sincere were his stilted questions?

"Magic may erase all signs of any wound, but sometimes I ache as if I can still feel where they used to lie." It is spoken surprisingly quietly, perhaps because she is offering to him a piece of solitude and secrecy, honesty that is hard to come by from the sharp-tongued vixen. And though she fears that honesty, so deeply she wonders if it shows on her face despite her carefully controlled expression, she is moved to speaking nonetheless. Because she may be the vines that wrap around his sturdy branches, but he is the one that supports and centers. And nobody seems to appreciate him for that. So her tongue runs away from her, truth spilling out of her like a yolk running from a cracked egg. 

"I did not keep the truth from you out of distrust, Deimos. I trust you with my life." And it's a terrifying thing, that notion. Ashamin may have slowly convinced her to hand him the battered heart she held in her possession, but it did not hold quite the same value as the trust she placed in Deimos. Rightfully or wrongly placed, only time would tell. But Hotaru meant it with a fierceness that must show, if only in the frightened corners of the shadows of her eyes. She hadn't told him because the Basin came first, and because she couldn't bear the reminder of her own weakness, the demon of her nightmares, nor the golden who had saved her. Maybe in some deep, dark crevice of her heart, Hotaru had withheld the information so that Deimos would not think less of her for succumbing to the monster of her past. For being weak. Not worthy of her title, which he had given her. 

A soft shudder rocks her sides as she exhales, mismatched eyes straying upwards to try and gauge the Reaper's reaction. "Maybe I'm not fine either. But maybe we can be not-fine together." A wry smile twisted at her lips, feeling tired all the way to her bones and marveling at her own loose tongue. She just wanted so badly to reach him, to foster trust between them. To fix what had gone so wrong when Thranduil had completed their triumvirate. Hotaru was not a light-filled being, she could not chase away the monsters in the dark for Deimos. But perhaps she could keep him company in the shadows.

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

  As soon as her words fell, dulcet and quiet, unearthly and shattering (No you’re not), he wanted to flee. The measure, the movement, the motion, the desire to simply run was instinctual, sculpted from years dedicated to barrenness and nothing – where no one could touch, where no one could see, where no one could understand who he was and what he did and what he’d become. He’d been blessed in the outstretched arms of heathens and fiends, disciples of the devil, where insurrection and treacheries combined into callous, nonchalant, glacial indifference, because then he wouldn’t have to care when they died, when they bled, when they cried, when they called for their mothers and when they gasped for their last breath. It’d been so much easier to drive calamity and acrimony through their ribs, to lacerate, harpoon, ravage, and destroy their souls, when he’d been a mere statue, covered and coveted by Lucifer and Mephistopheles, feared by everyone and everything, and they’d leave him alone. He could’ve rampaged his way through sinful credence and seething rigidity, smoldered havoc, lavished iniquity, and not a single being would’ve dared to come any closer. He could’ve been the most impending, formidable malice the world had ever seen, and not one figure would’ve come to see fall apart; the mordant, acerbic embrace of the Reaper, cold and calculating, merciless and decadent, beautiful and dangerous.
 
But then she’d dared, foolish and patient, gentle and kind, all rain and compassion, somehow wearing down his roughened edges and scalding, blistering, bestial demeanor, bearing sweet nothings when he collapsed at her feet and told her of how he’d failed, of how they’d all failed. Instead of drowning him, instead of throwing him into the sea, instead of casting him aside as so many others had done, she took him in her heart and smoothed out some of the noxious, nefarious slivers, not caring how much he harmed, how much he wounded, how much he gave into ruthlessness or severity. And when she’d given him everything, moments and images and children he never thought he’d have, she left.
 
Then he had a herd to run, an empire to watch, protect, and serve, and all these sentiments running through him had no order, no semblance, too many colors and hues, too many pains and torments, and in lethal, malignant layers they unfurled over his mind – until he’d suddenly cared about more than just his family, but his entire brethren. From the ghosts, to the apparitions, to the engineers and sleuths, warriors and babes, he’d taken them all into his stead, reached out, guarded in his brutality, in his detachment, in his piercing, pulsing maelstrom. The King never told them when he was tired. The Lord never told them when he’d had enough. The Reaper never descended from his mask of brooding, deplorable reticence so they could see he ached, he pained, in the same way they did, each and every day. “Yes, I am,” he repeated to her, not Huyana, but Hotaru, pink and roses and cunning, trying to snake her way through his rigid, composed being – and he raised his head in defiance, still with too much strife coiled behind his eyes.
 
So he lied to himself and to her, listening to the answers she’d conjured for him, to the softness, to the quietude rushing over their senses. He watched her carefully, eyes roaming where scars lay, where wounds had been, where blood had stained, where he’d offered vengeance for her in their brooding, brewing silence. I trust you with my life, she’d said after, and the statement caused him to clench his jaw, swallow, and look away – too many feverish notions beat fraction whims behind his eyes at the sentiment, sent his soul reeling, and he had to stare at the horizon, at the sky, at the caves, for a few moments before he could look upon her again with the same savage, nefarious art as before. (He wondered, deep in the corners of his formidable, menacing mind, how many had ever trusted him at all – how many were glad he was there, watching over them, protecting them, shielding them?) “Next time, tell me. I can fight them.” It was the one thing he’d been capable of his whole life – to slaughter, to terminate, to massacre and sever – not politics, not sleuthing, but vengeance and power, bloodshed and ruin.  He could at least offer her that.
 
Her final statement tugged at him though, and a quick, barely-noticeable smile curled at the edge of his lips, vocals entrenched as part jest, part truth. “That would be fine.”