"what’s a little bit of hopeless hoping?" scorpio bites out, a bitter edge that's unfamiliar on his tongue. he hates the taste. "I just wish she was here, that's not so bad, is it?"
the entire realm was grieving. aries and libra were clinging to one another — their grief was the same, was different from all other grief; revati had lost a friend and scorpio had lost his partner, his love, but aries and libra had loved someone who had filled many roles for them. to them, aquarius had been a blend of close friend, older sister and perhaps even mother figure. cancer was distanced, but it was not like usually was — this time, he did not seem bored or uncaring, this time it seemed like the uncharted depths of his mind held a secret that he was not sharing. her son was hurting, too, the uncertainty weighing heavy on him and she hated, hated that did not know what to say to make his pain stop. there was no one who was unaffected by this, no one she did not feel sorrow for. she pitied leo, too, because it was so obvious he did not know what to do to fix any of this ( and she was not even sure if it could be fixed ) but above all, she worried about scorpio.
when capricorn had been gone, when she had been sad and angry and then just furious, scorpio had been there ( so had aquarius, but the thought only hurt ). scorpio had been there, had helped her to keep it together when all she had wanted was a summoner powerful enough to track down the scum that was holding capricorn prisoner and hurt zoldeo, badly. many others had avoided her, had not wanted to get caught up in the vortex of her grief and her anger, but scorpio had been there, he had talked her down, he had held her until she had found a new sense of normal, one that was still laced with despair but not with as much suffering.
but in capricorn’s case, they had known his fate. and this had made a difference. revati had been able to dream about making zoldeo suffer because she had known that he was the one who had taken capricorn away. they knew nothing about what had become of aquarius; their king was silent, leo could only shrug when someone asked him and sagittarius said he did not remember anything about the time when his key was broken, which was not all that surprising; it had to be a traumatic experience.
and revati was despairing, once more, because her cousin’s head rested heavy against her shoulder and there was nothing she could do. there was nothing he could do, either. he was not supposed to ask his summoner about what had happened, he was supposed to keep it together and keep pretending that nothing bad had happened. revati thus concluded that their king had never loved anyone or anything. a troubling thought.
what she could do was support her cousin, to put her own grief aside and just hold him, drawing hopefully soothing circles onto his shoulder with her thumb and indulge in the ( likely unhealthy ) hope that any moment now, aquarius would return. it was not much and her hope hurt, but short of demanding an explanation from their king and risking punishment for insubordination, there was nothing she could do.
a sigh as she pulled scopio closer and held him tight. “ i wish she was here, too, ” she said softly, her hands stilling now that she was talking. she was missing aquarius, too, but she was not naive; she knew that scorpio’s pain dwarfed hers. and this was alright, it did not make her grief any less valid. it just meant that she knew better than to make any of this about herself. “ as much as it pains me to see you, to see everyone like this, i think it puts pressure on our king, pressure to end his silence. even he must know that this state can’t be sustained that sooner or longer, someone will break. ”
( had she any money to bet, she would put it on leo, determined to bear the weight of this on his own, something that had never worked out for him in the past. )
phantoms (marianas trench) sentence starters / accepting / @saharoshi
