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You learned, in the future, fireflies live such short lives.
You were only very young when they taught you that, and the knowledge has ingrained itself in you, in a harmless way. It is simply a fact of life. Fireflies, as beautiful as they are, were not meant to last years and years. A few, brilliant moments in the eyes of the world, and they are gone.
When you draw his human body from the depths of the blade, after hours of searching inside the metal and flames, probing and chasing until he finally takes form, and your hands are blackened with soot, and your face is raw from the heat-- the first thing you think, looking at his impossibly green eyes, is that he reminds you of a firefly.
When he gives you his name, that fact bubbles up from deep inside you. Fireflies, no mater how lovely, will never last.
You feel you have signed a contract for his death when Hotarumaru beams up at you for the first time.
It is an effort to protect him; you assign him to fight with tantous and washizaki, while you bring your oodachi and tachi to the harshest battlefields and return in tatters. You mend them before yourself, patiently treating their wounds on human and sword body alike. The human body, you think, is perhaps invincible, merely because it is not the true body, not like the swords they wield, the very cores of who they are, but you treat both bodies nonetheless, because to you they are and will always be more than simple swords.
He always watches you, when you go, when you come back; watching with large, hopeful eyes, as though perhaps he will join the others of his type if he watches you long enough.
You can't bear to look at him, acknowledge him, only hum when other swords point out his watchfulness.
You feel like a child keeping an insect in a jar, but you cannot bear to let him go.
He sits with you sometimes, at night. In the gentle warm of the summer air, he is considerate enough to bring you tea when you rest on the porch, and seats himself next to you. His legs are not even long enough to touch the dirt below.
You do not speak much, at these times; there is no need for it. Hotarumaru drifts off to sleep and slides into your lap, sometimes. Sometimes you let your hand trail through his hair, and fight yourself.
Fireflies are destined to live and die shortly.
Foolishly, you give in. Foolishly, you think it will be safe. You are foolish, so foolish, and it is by your bravado and confidence he dies.
It all happens in a moment, a wrong change of formation; normally, this would not be a problem, but he is a new addition to the front lines, and they do not have resonance yet. It is your fault; if you had not been so sloppy, so overconfident--
It is as though time freezes when he is knocked from his feet and there is blood, so much blood -- but more than that, his body, his real body, that large, beautiful blade lies in two pieces. His eyes are glazing over by the time you reach him, the others clearing your path. You lift his human body into your arms, tangle your fingers with his, crying, begging him to stay with you, to keep his eyes open. Some logical part of you tells you that it's useless, pointless; his blade is broken and there is no way to save him, but your heart screams in anguish watching the light fade from his eyes (exactly like a dying firefly).
He tells you, in a quiet, wavering voice, his fingers tightening around yours for but a moment, that he can see fireflies, and that they are beautiful.