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She is a girl made of shattered glass, thousands of jagged pieces fitted together into something resembling a person. That’s the thing about glass, it’s pretty to look at and useful enough until it shatters. After its inevitable destruction, it’s useless and in the end, the only thing it’s good at is making others bleed. And although she hasn’t shattered yet, every time the mahd wy’ry takes hold of her she feels more and more hairline fractures forming along her until she’s almost beyond repair.
She has no recollection of attacking Gilgamesh, but that doesn’t stop the inevitable damage she does to him. It’s what scares her the most when she has one of her episodes. One second she’s perfectly fine and the next she’s spiraling out of control and the jagged pieces of glass have turned against her and buried themselves into a place of her mind that she can’t reach. She has no recollection of how long she’s lost inside her mind, but it always ends the same. With Gilgamesh holding her hand, fresh wounds marring his arms and face, and a face devoid of any emotion except love despite all that she had done to him.
Sometimes she wishes that he would get angry at her. Anger doesn't seem to be an emotion that he experiences. He’s too understanding, too kind, too patient with her and when she sees the patchwork of scars and cuts on his body she wants to scream knowing that she was the one who caused him pain and the knowledge of that hurts more than anything else ever could.
Loving Gilgamesh is something that she’s always done. It's something that’s been wired into her since creation. For as long as she’s been alive she has loved him unconditionally, even before she could put a word to what the two of them had. She knows her feelings are reciprocated by the way he looks at her as if she is the sun and he is earth and together they are drawn to each other by some invisible force of gravity.
The two of them aren’t like Ikaris and Sersi, constantly touching as if they are opposite magnets, constantly straining to be together at all times. They don’t have a relationship like Druig and Makkari either, filled with flirting and converted glances. What she and Gilgamesh have together doesn’t have a name. She loves him in every way a person can love to the point where it almost pains her. She's afraid that one day her heart will shatter just like her mind, but this time from the weight of her love.
She keeps thinking that one day he’ll grow tired of taking care of her. That one day he’ll realize how he’s thrown his life away for someone who doesn't deserve it and leave her alone with her mind in the middle of nowhere.
These doubts crop up in her mind at the most random of times and when they do she has to drop everything she’s doing to make sure he’s still there.
He always is.
She’ll find him in the kitchen making new recipes or tending to their shared garden outside, or doing their laundry and her heart will clench painfully in her chest because he’s there. He’s there for her and he chose her over everything else.
Usually, she’ll curl up in a chair and just watch him doing whatever task he’s currently doing. Almost always he senses her presence when she walks into the room he’s in, even if his back is to her. They’ve gotten so attuned to each other’s presence over the many years they’ve been together that it’s almost second nature for both of them.
He continues making dinner and she continues watching him. Just the two of them peacefully existing together instead of manic fits and splintered glass and cuts marring Gil’s arms that she tries to avoid looking at so the guilt doesn’t drag her under into some inescapable hell.
After a while, she feels him sit down next to her, plate in hand which she declines with a shake of her head. Any traces of hunger have disappeared since her last attack.
The plate gets set on a side table in case either of them wants to eat and she leans her head against his side, finding comfort in his familiar solidness. He wraps his arm around her and she swallows hard as his marred skin comes into her vision. It’s still fresh from her last attack and hasn’t been treated yet leaving it raw and ugly. Blemishes didn’t belong on someone as perfect as Gilgamesh and someone as imperfect as her shouldn’t have been the one to give them to him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, the words thick in her throat. She hates feeling like this. Having to beg for forgiveness. She’s Thena, goddess of war, others should be begging her for mercy, not the other way around. It bothers her slightly less when it’s with Gilgamesh however. His opinion of her is the only one that really matters. The only one that’s actually real. He knows her inside and out, more than anyone else can claim.
“Why?” he asks, turning his head so that he’s looking at her. His eyes hold a thousand galaxies, a thousand possibilities within them and she has to stop herself from looking away. She knows that he can see the reflection of broken glass in her own gaze and it makes her feel even more damaged.
Gently she traces a finger around his wounds, making sure not to cause him any more pain than she already has.
“I hurt you.”
It’s a simple statement, but the words carry so much more weight that she can’t manage to articulate to him.
She’s a woman of few words. The dramatic speech making out of all of them was done by Ajak who always seemed to have a grasp on exactly the right words needed for the occasion, something she herself had never figured out.
For her, actions were enough to communicate with others. A reassuring nod, or a brush of her fingertips over someone’s arm, or helping her family fight a deviant. The spoke for her more than any words could properly communicate, so she bandages his wounds with the gauze and ointment stockpiled in their house.
They don't have Ajak to help them anymore, so she isn’t as experienced in bandaging wounds as Gilgamesh is, but it’s the only way she can think of to show him how badly she regrets hurting him.
It's for this specific injury but also for countless other times before. The injuries from this reality and the one’s from the countless nightmares and visions that plague her. For all the various ways in which she’s tortured and maimed and killed the person, she loves the most in her mind.
He doesn't say anything to her, just watches with eyes that understand everything, and the shard of glass that had been firmly lodged in her heart from the very first time she’d hurt him starts to dislodge itself slightly. It’s not gone, but it hurts a little less and that’s all that matters at the moment.
When she’s done Gilgamesh smiles at her and there’s not an ounce of regret or hatred or hurt in it. She doesn’t deserve him or his smiles or his eyes full of unadulterated love. He’s given up everything for her and she can’t give him back anything in return, but as she leans against his side, his arm wrapped firmly around her as if he’s holding all her shattered pieces together she thinks that’s okay.
They love each other.
It’s a simple fact despite the fact that they’ve never told each other it. It’s just so deeply engraved in who they are that it doesn’t have to be vocalized.
He interlaces their fingers together and it’s such a familiar feeling that all the tension in her veins immediately floods out of her. His touch has always grounded her, bringing her back from her visions of destruction and death. Even now, when she’s in her right mind, it’s a small comfort. Something she can focus on in the whirlwind of thoughts flooding her brain. It’s the only moment she ever feels peace, as fleeting as it is, so she closes her eyes, settling against him in a silence that says so much and yet so little.
“You didn’t hurt me,” he says after what feels like an eternity and she opens her eyes again in confusion. Gently she traces a finger around the bandages on his arm as if to tell him these say otherwise.
Gilgamesh sat up suddenly so that the both of them were suddenly staring at each other. Lifting his arm, he cupped the back of her head with his hand and smiled sadly, meeting her eyes.“The first time the mahd wy’ry overtook you I hit you in the back of the head. It knocked you out.”
His hand slides down from the back of her head to her cheek where his fingers played absentmindedly across her skin. “You hit the ground so hard that there were bruises covering this side of your face. Ajak healed them, but the shame of having hurt something so perfect stayed with me for far too long.”
Both his hands make their way to her arms which he gripped lightly despite his strength.“Every time I try to restrain you from either hurting me or myself, I leave marks on your arms.”
She lookes down at the fresh bruises marring her forearms, evidence of her struggle with Gilgamesh earlier that day.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and it feels so wrong hearing him apologize to her.
“I’ve hurt you more times than I can count. And each time I have to resort to stopping you by hurting you in some way, it injures me more than you ever could.”
He leans over almost reverently, pressing gentle kisses to her arms as if in reparation, and the nearness of him sends unprecedented shivers up her spine.
She smiles down at him and he laughs, sadness and love and some other indiscernible emotion all wrapped up in the sound.
“We sure are some couple,” he says, once again wrapping his bandaged arm around her and letting her lean into his side.
The word couple feels so wrong to describe them. Too simple and human to properly convey their complicated relationship of broken glass and stab wounds and gentle kisses.
They’re never going to stop hurting each other.
It’s inevitable.
Her visions are getting worse, more frequent, more haunting. They’ll continue this way until the day Ajak warns them about.
The inescapable day Thena kills Gil, or he kills her.
She secretly hopes it’s Gil who has to kill her, the guilt of killing him herself would drive the shards so deep into her brain that her chances of ever regaining any form of sanity would be gone forever. They’re intrinsically tied to each other. If he dies, her life is over too.
Until that day, she’s going to keep dreaming of worlds shattering and burning and Gil will continue to bring her back every time without fail and they’ll continue hurting each other.
She’s not okay with it, and she can see in Gil’s eyes that he isn’t okay with it either. Somehow this mutual understanding makes it all slightly more bearable than before.
He leans his head back against the headrest of the couch, eyes closed, completely at peace. It comes so easily for him and she envies him for it.
She studies his face, greedily snatching images of him to replace the ones of his death clouding her brain and blocking out everything else. Sometimes its enough to dispel those nightmares. Sometimes it is not.
This time it is, and despite everything she feels her body start to relax slightly, melting into Gil’s side and molding the two of them together like two puzzle pieces fitted perfectly to be together.
She isn’t sure how long the two of them stay like that before her body finally recognizes that against Gil’s side with his arm protectively wrapped around her waist that she’s safe and allows herself to shut down into the dangerous territory of sleep.
Her dreams consist of glittering icicles, just as deadly as glass, but more beautiful. They fall from the sky, raining down on them like a vengeful downpour from the heavens. Gilgamesh, her beautiful warrior, protects her and she watches helplessly as they hit him, leaving deep cuts on his body, similar to the one’s she’s inflicted on him herself. She can’t even scream as the first icicle pierces through him completely, leaving him pinned to the ground, crimson blood leaking from his wounds. She wants to help him, wants to bandage his wounds like she just did, wants to save him but she can't. There’s some invisible force holding her hostage and the only thing she can do is meet his eyes still full of love and trust, and watch as the life slowly fades from them.
She wakes suddenly, Gilgamesh still asleep beside her and for one terrible moment she thinks her dream is true, that he is gone, but he opens his eyes and it’s okay because he’s alive. He’s solid and warm and breathing and alive.
They don’t need to talk, he knows about her dreams, how they’ve been getting worse. She’s sure he’s recognized the haunted look in her eyes from all the countless other times before.
He pulls her into a hug, strong arms tightly bringing her against his chest so that she’s pressed against his heart.
His heartbeat is steady. It’s solid and consistent just like him and she finds comfort in how her own erratic heartbeat slows so that they are beating together in tandem.
She falls asleep again.
This time she dreams of two warriors on a remote farm in Australia, laughing and smiling at each other. No weapons or wounds in sight. The girl gardens, hands once used to destroy, now helping to cultivate the tiny green shoots springing from the unforgiving soil.
The man cooks, a surprising talent for one who looks built to pummel his enemies into dust. He prepares delicious feasts and meals for the girl in the garden and they eat together outside while the sun sets on the Australian outback in fiery shades of red and orange.
Sometimes family comes to visit and she shows her garden off proudly while he prepares a feast and they eat late into the night, laughing and catching up for hours.
It’s domesticity and peace and love and everything the girl has ever wanted. Broken glass is no longer a worry for her. Nothing can hurt her and those she loves.
She thinks that this dream is even worse than all the others.