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You watch the boy-shade, dog-like in his dedication, though perhaps without the good sense the dogs around the Crossroads seem to have, for he seems more akin to a lost pup than to Hecuba and her compatriots, trotting after the daughter of Hades whichever way she heads; would that certain others permitted entry to the Crossroads showed half as much commitment to their ultimate task as boy-shade does to Melinoë. You feel no need to move from your station at the Cauldron, much less to keep an eye on your student and her admirer, who repose just a few frog-leaps away. Nonetheless, snatches of conversation float their way over.
“It’s fascinating, really. I've got no idea how you keep it all straight,” says the boy-shade, accompanying Melinoë on one of her breaks in training. Nemesis is not one for idle chatter, or for chatter at all; you see her over yonder in the training grounds, having secured yet another victory over her sparring partner -- thus, the boy-shade has come to cheer on his friend. You know that Melinoë is sour over the loss; her stubbornness, and her present laconicism must have come from her father. Somehow, someway, he had reached through the Underworld, if only in spirit, to protect her how he could.
“Clearly, I haven't, else I wouldn't lose quite so much,” Melinoë responds. She turns Descura slowly, thoughtfully, in her hands, as if the Night-born weapon could break any moment she gets too rough with it.
“I don't know about that. I think you do a pretty great job,” he rather insists.
“Pretty great just isn't going to cut it,” sighs Melinoë. It takes a few seconds of recognition, but you see regret form in her gaze, before it turns to the boy-shade. “My apologies, Icarus. I needn't be so negative.”
“You know you don't need to apologize on my account, hey?” he replies with his faint smile. “I know you've got a lot weighing on you.”
“Still.” You think she attempts to emulate you with the firmness she wills into her words; she has not yet grown into that candour. She lifts her head. “I ought not to take it out on you.”
The boy-shade half-scoffs, in a manner that's self-deprecating, not derisive. “You just worry about yourself, alright, Meli?” You see him reach out his hand in a comforting gesture, and see, overmore, how his attempt falls short, and how his fingers only ghost upon her skin. He sits back, and adds, quietly, “And not about me.”
Melinoë tilts her body toward the boy-shade as she holds Descura against her knees. “I'll worry about you as I so please,” she says with the barest of smirks. “But you’re right that there are other things that demand our attention,” she adds wistfully; the boy-shade sinks back a little, not quite petulant, but certainly a little embarrassed.
“Of course, Your Grace,” he says in his mellow voice. Then, after a pause, the boy-shade reciprocates Melinoë’s closeness, and the conversation drops to a hush that you cannot make out without considerable effort; thus, you allow your tepid attention to fall away from them. They are young, too young, and what they talk about in clandestine tones oughtn’t concern you. You are not Melinoë’s mother, nor is it your responsibility to fret over her relationships and what she does in the scant time she is not dedicating to her task.
(All said and all done, you will come to regret this decision, to regret not paying close mind to what Melinoë had set her inexperienced mind to, vis-à-vis her companion.)
You broil yourself with a hatred you like to think is unspoken, but that you know well enough seethes through your words whenever you speak to her. She is a tool, but you are the one who have made her that way. She acts as if she owes you a debt of gratitude for having sharpened her into the venomous point that she is. You deserve no thanks for what you have done. Your assignment has not changed -- t’was to safeguard the realm, and even now, you spend every moment paying for the failure.
But patience remains ever a virtue -- thus, you wait. And you will wait until this acrimony boils over, and perhaps it will find purchase in a restored Underworld and vanquished Titan.
So, hypocrite that you are, you find yourself a little thankful for the boy-shade and his gentle demeanour, for his self-effacing attitude that seems to coax Melinoë, albeit briefly, out of her armoured shell. He does not hold for her the same sort of reverence that the other shades do, which causes them to cower at her fire-stepping feet, though he does treat her with due respect. It is ideal for her, to have a break from her training in casual company, undetermined by the complex web of relations that ensnares immortals, even if she finds it purposeless. Steadfast, that one is -- both for better and for worse. And you know just how much it can often be for worse.
So you turn your eyes away from the two of them, for you, Titaness that you are, are far too old for romance; unlike so many of your ilk, even great Selene herself, you never took to it.
Whom she interacts with, and what forms those interactions embody, have always been Melinoë’s choice.
(That is what you tell yourself.)
-
You don't need to rely on witchery for your strength. The chance to learn the craft had been offered to you, but you turned it down. You are big, and lean, and well-muscled. The Princess, being as scrawny as she is, uses magick as a crutch. You are not the same as her. You are better, far better, than she is, and you didn't even need special powers or preferential treatment to get that way. All you needed to do was stay at your shitty little post, surveilling all the nothing that happens in the Crossroads. It's maddening. But it’s a comfort to know that your brute strength comes solely from your honed body.
After all, look at where the Princess’s practice got her.
“You think that sitting on your ass is going to get you any closer to Chronos?” you mutter, sticking your blade in the dirt beside the Princess’s crouched body. She startles some, and directs a quick, annoyed look in your direction, craning her neck over her shoulder.
“I am not, as you call it, sitting on my ass.” She repeats your crass words with an indignance that gets under your skin, whether you like it or not. “I’m meditating. It's not only physical ability that determines the outcome of a fight,” she retorts.
You huff, humourless. “But physical ability sure is something you're lacking, Princess.” Your grip tightens on Stygius, something unbidden and terrible rising in your gorge as you sweep your gaze unsubtly over her ghastly left arm. From within, the bone glows a pallid, ghoulish white, drawing to a sharp, jagged end at her fingertips in a way that resembles Hecate. You almost want to laugh.
“This...” Princess sighs with a frustration you're well-accustomed to, having received the brunt of it time and time again while sparring, and she twists her wrist around. She glares at it, as if a stern look will make it turn back into flesh and ambrosia. “Is merely one example of my failing strength, Nem, rather than the epitome of it.”
Your suit clinks as you shift your stance. “You think of that one yourself, or are you just repeating something Hecate told you?”
She frowns up at you from the ground. Her hair, her lips, her armour of Night -- all of it glimmers with the weak light cast forth from her Altar, her arcana. Everything in this training ground was built for her. For a family she can't even remember. For a brother she never even met. You knew yours. You know yours. “If you're trying to ask me whether or not I regret my actions, the answer is no,” she scoffs. “I found the limits of my power, and I won't repeat it.”
“You were reckless, and could have jeopardized everything we've been working on.” You lean forward on the hilt of your sword, mouth filled with ice. “Don't try to pretend like it's anything more than that.”
Princess sets her jaw. “I was, yes.” Her eyes flash. “But it wasn't out of foolhardiness, whatever you may think.”
“Don't know about that.” You say this and hope it irritates her, hope it strikes to the marrow. The dimple on her chin pushes up, cross, because she knows you’re right. “Mortals and us, we don't mix well. Never have.”
She gazes at her palms, and you don't feel much of any sympathy for her, for the choices she's made, and the people she's pushed away. Your only job is to stand in the same damn place, day in and day out, so you obviously notice when even the smallest things are amiss; the Princess’s pet shade hasn't shown his face in the Crossroads since the alchemy tore her arm away, and it's for the best. The less distractions around, the better, and he was one in the fourth degree. You don't know what Princess saw in him, anyway, but then again, you don't claim to know much about her at all. A distinct acidic taste makes itself known in the back of your vengeful throat as you watch her expression travel; there's not many effective comebacks for the truth.
“You've made your point very clear,” she says finally, with that sarcastic edge she seems to save only for you, as she gets to her feet. The glow of her Altar dies at her toes, and only the ambient light of the woods of Erebus lends itself to the curves of her disdainful face. “I’d rather not discuss this with you. We can save it for the sparring grounds.”
You raise one eyebrow. “Suit yourself.”
Without another word for it, she walks away, toward where her so-called Commander waits, and your eyes trail her, much to your own chagrin. You may not know much about her, sure, but you think there's a few things, at least, that you've gleaned. Most are points of annoyance; even you can tell that the shade’s disappearance has unnerved her.
Let it hurt, then. She can simmer with it for eternity as far as you care, since she brought it upon herself. Kid probably won't come back if he knows what's good for him, either. All things come full circle in the end. That certainty -- of your strength, of Retribution -- is maybe the only thing you can rely on.
It isn't long before the sounds of combat break out between Princess and the skeleton, and you take that as your cue to get the Hell out. The reason you lingered, you don't really get yourself, but the skeleton’s goading words snap you from your stupor, and bring a snarl to your countenance.
You turn your back to the grounds, and return to your post. Maybe the Princess’s little chemistry experiment will knock some sense into Hecate and show her that it was foolish to shove you aside in favour of her.
As if.
-
The boy who tested the limits of the human drive to touch the sun is of the gentle kind, in your professional opinion. You've met many men in your day, seen even more die -- good men, bad men, unfortunate souls and lucky ones. No one can escape the clutches of the Gods, and they all end up in Lord Hades’s domain one way or another. When you followed the Dread Goddess's omen and beheld the shapes of the dead on the precipice of Oceanus, you confronted that inevitability more intimately than most. An eternity, your future and everyone else’s, unfurled behind the blind prophet with a prescient glow that reminded you it was not your time. Daedalus’s lad was simply taken earlier than most, and now the two of you stare into one another. You face down a shade with an eternal youth carved into his soft cheeks and citrine eyes, haunted by his fall.
You like him -- and so does your dear Goddess. He treats you with a sort of respect that's a bit different than the others around. If he had a mite more confidence, he'd be a better fighter. But not everyone has to be a warrior. If only more could know that.
“Good talking to you, Sir,” he says, wrapping up his report. He adjusts the explosives cinched onto his belt. “It's probably best if I get back up to the Rift--”
He's cut off by the sharp sound of a stir in the Goddess's tent, the furtive gasp and snap of magick that signals her returns. Last reports you received said she had burrowed her way down into Tartarus, and if her previous nights are any indication, she'd be stepping out into the Crossroads with the satisfied expression of one who had yet again conquered Time. Shame that she never takes a moment to relish her victories, though you suppose the role of support falls to you, and to Icarus.
“Aye, think I hear our Goddess up for another night,” you murmur as you tap your ear knowingly, and grin at the way Icarus immediately brightens like a fire was lit in his chest. “I reckon it wouldn't be too arduous for you, to stay a moment and wish her good tidings?”
“Uh, no. No, it wouldn't,” he stammers, and you turn your head.
You watch the Goddess emerge from her tent, and just as you had assumed, she carries the easy grace of one who has prevailed down in her father’s rightful estate. The string lights overhead catch her in her ethereal beauty, and you ache for her, for the Goddess with the hair of Spring, and the eye of the Dead. Old wounds, long since healed but still borne into you as scar tissue, itch with remembrancers of your family, of your oldest love. The Goddess’s gaze settles on you, on your left. You sense Icarus jolt as he waves and she smiles; the interaction lasts about a fraction of a second before her attention turns to her Fated List, which flashes a brilliant white, and its anointed guardian. Their conversation doesn't carry, and so you look back at Icarus, glimmering with a bewitched expression that makes you chuckle.
“Ah-- What is it, Sir?” asks Icarus, as if he has any chance of fooling anyone.
“Oh, nothing, Icarus,” you sigh, “I was just thinking that you look a little... Well, how should I put this? Familiar.”
“...Familiar, Sir?” The flickering of the shade’s pupils tells you all you need to know about the Goddess's movements through their encampment -- right now, she must be cleaning up after Strife. A thankless job, but like most, the Goddess sees it through without complaint. So much for the garbage can she had so graciously installed.
“Aye. You know, Icarus, my travels in my mortal days led me to the bed of many a Goddess.” Icarus blinks at you, at the bluntness of your words, less winged than how you've relayed them in the past. “I understand the charm of them, perhaps more than most.”
“I, um.” You see how he fumbles, boyishly and clumsily, with the multitudinous straps across his chest. By the time you were reunited with your own son, he was already a man, lines of muscle running pointedly into his hands, divots of experience rendered into his flesh by the sea wind. The curls of your own hair were reflected in his, but his eyes were your wife’s, always -- shrewd, clever, forgiving. More than you deserved. You were Zeus-born but weren't even able to watch him grow. Did the complexities of adolescence once frame him, in the same way they do Icarus? Would you have been able to watch him turn wine-pink, in the presence of a dear Goddess upon Earth? A sigh escapes you before you can stop it. “It isn't... quite like that,” Icarus continues, oblivious to your inner turmoil. “It's just that... I admire her so much. Her Grace, I mean. And she's got a lot on her plate. But she always makes time for me, and I--” He clamps his mouth shut. “Feel a little undeserving. There's other things she should be doing, yeah?”
“We're dead, lad.” After stopping by the broker, the Goddess winds her way toward Retribution, sharing a few jabs you hear over by the garden. “Time is all we have, and there's lots of it,” you say soberly, eyeing Icarus down. “In fact, you might say that's why we're in our current predicament.
“The good ones...” A deep exhale, resonant in your chest. As much as it can be, for your kind. “They'll wait.” And you click your tongue. “Don't make them.”
Icarus’s wings stutter.
Finally, the Goddess makes her way over to you. Fresh and saffron-cloaked, she greets, “Hey, Od, Icarus,” as she glances between the two of you. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”
“Oh, nothing, Goddess,” you reply for the both of you. “Just talking about some ancient history.”
-
“Mm, I'm disappointed in you, Trouble!” You greedily measure the weight of the Rail in your arm, cool adamant against your palm. Its teeth shine like pearls in the pale moonlight as you run your nails along the shaft. “What, too scared to face me with my other aspect?” Then you push the weapon back over your shoulder, cocking it. “Never took you for a coward, but you're full of surprises!”
Trouble twirls her blades around, metal black and mortal red. She can have any cool toy she wants, of course. “I'm but an agent of the Will of Night,” she says coolly, “something I'm sure even you are quite familiar with at this point. You can't sense that there's less Fear in the air?”
“I guess, now that you mention it.” You push out your bottom lip, wrinkling your face at the way she says even you. “So what, you're taking it easy. Doesn't mean I shouldn't get to have fun.”
“I'm sure you'll have fun regardless,” answers Trouble, and you hate that she's right, because you are definitely not supposed to be at her beck and call, nor anyone else's. The idea that she's figured out you're (perish the thought) fond of your little routine (yuck) makes your skin crawl like nothing else. Because you will never be that person. You're not her little dog. Speaking of.
“Oh, by the way, I noticed your little pet flapping his wings around the ships again,” you sneer, and it's got more poison in it than usual as it drips to the ground. You like the way the comment contorts Trouble’s face into one shrouded by shadows -- wow, the mere mention of him really puts her in a mood like nothing else, huh. Your lips curl into a cutting smile as the acrid stench of oil works around your neck. “What's in it for you, babe? He can't have any powers like your Godly relatives. You get a kiss for good luck, or something?”
Staid as ever, Trouble arches her back forward and readies her blades, luminous with frost -- dear old Grandmother's boon, likely. Sparks turn the sand under her feet to ash as she lowers herself into her battle position. “Nothing too special,” she bites, “just the power that I keep defeating you with.”
“We'll see about that.” You level the Rail with Trouble’s eyes and simper. She never seems quite as happy to see you as you are to see her, but that's perfectly alright. In a few short minutes she'll be packed up nicely, Fear or no Fear.
You like pushing Trouble’s buttons, prodding at her raw sores. It's fine to fall on your own sword, so long as you first plunged it through her chest. You alone clench the golden apple; you alone decide discord. But for all your blowharding, you lose to her that time, and make your way back to the Crossroads as the outcast that you are, greeting Moros blithely on your way to your corner. He responds with caution, the pretension that you don't exist shattered, and you call him a name for his mousiness. What it was doesn't matter as much as the fact that you bark it at him.
“Forgive me, Sister.” He bends his head forward primly, not even batting an eye at the insult. “It's just that it's not often you initiate conversation,” he finishes, hands folded behind his back.
“Yeah, and you're reminding me why,” you drawl, nostrils flaring, and sick to your stomach. Your lips part with the intention of further upbraiding when a shadow crosses your vision; your brow twitches as the pet shade swoops to a stop beside Trouble’s garden, skimming the top leaves of whatever she's got buried there. He's never tried to talk to you, for you think of you he is frightened, and you'd prefer to keep it that way. You don't need another grandstander proselytizing to you about the proper way to be. Any friend of Trouble's will surely see you the same as she -- wayward, destructive, able to be fixed with a little patience and attention. Dirty. Made wrong, down to your toes, down to the fingers that warp round the Rail. You breathe in, sudden, and feel the way it shreds down your chest.
“Is something the matter, Eris?” asks your brother with the audacity to seem like he cares, and you jerk your chin up.
“Trouble’s little puppy.” Your eyes narrow. “I get to be here by birthright, but everyone gets super mad when I show up.” You dig your nails into your hip. “And yet he just flies in like he owns the place?”
Moros casts an even glance in the shade’s direction. “I believe it is up to Princess Melinoë, and Great Hecate’s discretion, whom they allow inside.” When his focus once more addresses you, the well of intensity in his piercing, Fate-wrought eyes makes you gnash your teeth. Each and every possibility spills out from him in silver tresses, in dark etchings branded into his tri-colour drapery, as if life is all of that and nothing but -- a series of finely meted out passages that converge at one abrupt end, a set of worn glass bottles that topple and shatter in precisely the same way each time they are reset. No allowances for undulations, for excitement that issues forth in tremors and icicle-bright laughter. And within that gaze like a dark, gaping maw, one that sees and swallows everything, you detect a thin film of melancholy, saved there for you. Violet, churning irises search you, couching your dismay within a pantheon of already-devised options, perfectly designed for you by Nyx, by your dear sisters. He looks at you like he knows you. “Have you a reason for your dislike of him?”
The boy fell from the stars, from the bounty of Heaven, by the pressure of his own hubris, just like someone else whose name is just on the tip of your tongue, but refuses to form itself fully. That was what your sisters, surely, had planned for him; one child is thrown from a tower top, and the other has his wings clipped -- one is saved by Wisdom, and the other, by Trouble. You think that if you mentioned this out loud to Moros, he would burden you with his misplaced compassion, and say that this is always how it was meant to be -- that Trouble would always end up with that arm of hers, that it was preordained, not punishment.
Because no one is allowed to break from their weavings. No one at all.
So you choose not to think about how the pet isn't following his specially-designed path, and pretend that it is not sacrilege for him to tread upon these grounds. Because that would be ridiculous, right? For you to be trapped only ever as yourself, condemned for the form in which Night birthed you, while Trouble breathes new life into that wretch? You swirl your tongue around your mouth, resting it at the back of your fangs; all around you, mist rises and wreathes from Cocytus. “Have you forgotten? I don't like anyone, Moros,” you say, unaffected, toes in the dirt. “It isn't personal.”
The haze of the Crossroads drapes his stolid form in olive-green gloom, above which his physiognomy remains unperturbed, yet scraped by that same unnameable sadness. “I see,” he murmurs, betraying little else. “If that's the way it must be.”
-
What are you willing to risk?
Since your nymphhood, since the moment you gained cognizance of the Underworld and your place in it, you have known your role, and what it entails; nothing less than perfection in all aspects would bring you even close to your ultimate goal: to plunge your fist into your grandfather and rip out the golden sand that served his reconstitution. Just as mortals bleed out, so too could you tear wound after wound into the dark bosom of the Titan and gut him of his stolen eternality. You inch closer and closer with each win to the end of their reign of peril.
You are stronger than when you started, not merely in your craft, but emotionally, physically. You have slew not only Chronos, but the Father of all Monsters. Even as Fear fell upon you in droves and you faced each in turn, cloaked in nightmares so horrific it's no wonder they sprung from your mind, you emerged victorious.
To secure the safety of the realm, there is nothing you would not sacrifice. You have been lambasted for this, and yet it remains true.
He feared for you, when you told him of your plan. You could give up another arm, and both your legs, only for it to not work. And even if it would, even though he craves it so sorely, he would never ask that of you.
But you are stronger. Better. In magick, emotionally, physically. You refuse to repeat the errors of your youth as you unfold Shadow into the Cauldron. It is a substance unlike any other, not even the Shaderot it presently seeks to join; in wispy flames of dusk it clings to your hands, no heavier than vapour, no more opaque than fog, chasing the other reagents in a thick, indigo cloud, coating them in its ebullient essence. You think of his smile.
Headmistress keeps her watchful eyes upon you, preternatural green your constant reminder of your past failings. Reading her expression has never been easy for you. You want to believe that she's proud of how far you've come; her austere silence only reminds you of the expectations placed upon your shoulders as you call down the incantation, archaic musings filling out your mouth as the Cauldron’s liquid bubbles and boils. Possessed by your feverish want, the concoction writhes and hisses with the force of your words, the Shadow a fine webbing that folds the Shaderot into itself, enveloping it in a warm, dark embrace. Steam licks your face, much more subtle and bearable than down in Oceanus, as the Cauldron expels a burst of heat and white smoke that almost makes you flinch. The air is odorous with necromancy and desire and you feel not only the gaze of Headmistress upon you as the agitation cools, revealing but a paucity of liquid left over when all is said and done. Seafoam and iridescent, the draught lies in juxtaposition to the metal of its container.
You reach for your purse and withdraw a bottle with fingers you didn't expect to be trembling. With a deft hand, you guide the ectoplasm inside, and cork it quickly. Your arm, the draught -- both sparkle in the easy light as you tilt your creation skyward.
You are here. You are still the same.
Fear finds anticipation in the pit of your stomach and dovetails into wonder. An unsteady burble of emotion wells, fuzzy and laden with tears, up past your ribs and into your chest; the flame that stretches up to your collarbone is redolent of moons gone by, when you would sit with him after a sparring session and he would tend to your psychological wounds, when you would watch him pick and work on his inventions with a surgical precision that reminded you of your own inadequacy, and inspired you to rectify it. You remember a closeness that could never be consummated, the nascent bloom of a tender affection that you wanted to stifle, lest it weaken your resolve. And you remember the decision you made and how you paid for it. Equivalent exchange: you sought his life back, and it worked, just for a heartbeat -- but it wrenched part of you away, forever. But you are still here. Still the same. Always learning.
You do not begrudge him. You would do it again.
What are you willing to risk? Your other arm, your legs, your toes, your heart and your soul? Would you tear yourself asunder to let him touch you?
(Yes, you whisper later against his neck, slick with spit and heat, as he draws shivering nails up the sides of your spine. Stained crimson, and wildly, unapologetically alive, you tease a whine from him in an act of worship that you, born into the new Golden Age, have never been privy to. You were not reared in the adoration of mortals. Perhaps all of it, an existence devoid of supplication, was in preparation for this single sacrosanct moment, feeling human hands run down your thighs, feeling human lips graze your clavicle. Such was the moment where the Goddess of Nightmares, the Princess of the Underworld, finally tasted divinity.)
You will carve your own path for yourself. Wasn't that what you decided, watching petals and moss churn in the Cauldron and peel back the ancient rule that kept those of your blood kneeling in the Underworld? With the deck stacked against you, you chose persistence, chose strength, chose defiance.
Your hand tightens to a fist, and you know your answer.
-
She holds it out to you, second in its existence. A small green vial that opens up the entire world to you, a cacophony of sight and smell and taste and touch, touch that begins in your limbs and works its way back to your new nerves, excited and sore for the stimuli, bundling together like roots that all twist into one glorious tree. In the branches is where your heart lies, beating and bleeding for her, thread-light and incredible.
“I know I said to take it slow.” She closes her hand over yours. Already you swear you feel the pulse thrumming to life inside you, despite the sheer impossibility of it. And Gods, do you know about impossibilities. “I’m not going back on that, either. It's just that...” An inhale draws her chest up, and she looks askance. Her skin is aflush with exertion and something else, something there for you, quivering yet bold -- a paradox, one she bears in even her eyes. “Well, I thought you may appreciate having another evening to yourself.”
“It's okay, Meli, I get it.” You step just the barest bit closer, and it pulls her back toward you. Her attention fixes you as a captive. “I haven't really been able to stop thinking,” you say with a breath, “about how it felt being able to touch you.” Her eyes soften. “I-I mean, it's wonderful, to feel the wind in my face, and the sea, but you...” The words bubble up like song in your throat, overflowing in a frothy mess of desire and sweetness that runs down your front, so painfully obvious, so willfully open. You were never good at hiding your wants, capitulating to restraint. Such is the reason you stand in front of her now. “You're incredible,” you exhale. “You're just beyond compare.”
“I'm glad you feel the same as I do,” she responds carefully, her voice curled into a whisper as she touches her hair distractedly, tucking a few loose strands behind her ear; mesmerized, you cannot drag your eyes from her for even a single moment. “It's been a long time coming, I think.”
It's been a number of nights since she first placed the draught into your palm. In that rush, you had sworn a sacred oath to your phantom body, uttered it against the holy skin that hugged her chest, that you would carve that feeling into your very essence; when your corporeality ebbed away, that memory could bleed through the lines and lend to you a being in its own right, a self made up of hope and sweat and unassailable hunger, empty spaces caulked in by and drenched in love. So that, bit by bit, with her at your side, and buoyed by her belief, you could build yourself up again, construct an altar to life with her at the epicentre. You could, you think, as you take the draught now without a second thought, make yourself whole again. Brick by brick. Just the same way you create your hammers -- spinning together and spinning away, chipping function out of nothing.
And you leave those for her, don't you?
You remember the innocence that seemed almost antagonistic to an otherwise sordid youth, marked by the fleeting softness of feathers between your fingertips, snapping them up when they took not to the wax and fluttered away instead, almost as if hesitant of what they were to be used for. And you remember the laughter, the way the game amused you thus, and the way your father’s brow gathered into an irritated point as your meanderings only prolonged his work. You had no idea, then, about the weight in your mortal palms as you held the frame up, helping the master craftsman build your own casket, much like how the son of Helios, bound too, by his father and by the anticipation in his breast, as he held those fateful reins.
You remember when it used to feel that way. As if each step taken on that fateful day was one more consigning you to your untimely death, forgetting that in the interim, there was freedom. There was the sky, blue as it was wide, and there was the rush of the wind, and how it flung unruly locks of hair back against the sea air. Death leaves an awful lot of time to ruminate, and in the immediate while, you focused most all your thoughts on that final plunge -- on the fear and how your lips formed, terror-struck, around your father's name, on the golden wax and how it burned, on how your lifeless frame stirred with the beginnings of death-consciousness, able to grasp only hazily the form of a partridge, drumming its talons on the disturbed earth of Icaria.
It eases you now to instead recall the touch of the Sun, fierce but gentle, and the ache of your arms as you flew toward him. It had been warm and brilliant and for just a moment, when you tipped your head back, you beheld all of Uranus and Gaia and more. The stone walls of a Cretan prison tower melted away from your mind and all there was was the light, strong and true. And as you fell from the clouds, still there was the light.
And you remember that. You remember how the heat inundated you, and you remember how you glowed, and how from head to toe you were awash in greatness and bliss. You remember how beautiful it was.
And you kiss her.
And you feel her.
She tilts her head a little, maybe in surprise more than anything else, but it's a chaste thing, and you pull back as your pale, calescent skin flushes Sun-golden and Dawn-ruby. Her draught runs through your veins and lights up the heartbeat that whimpers and races for her, pulse beating a rhythm ascribed to her body. Her eyes shimmer in the Thessaly storm, romantic with concern and serrated with determination in equal measure, and you love her. And you have always loved her.
She says your name. She says it in that way of hers, with a wisdom beyond her too-many years, with a longing at the edge that's there for you. She asks you to do it again and you would do whatever she asked of you, you would throw yourself onto the surface of the Sun and so much more, so she runs her hands up the sides of your face and is graceful enough to ignore the full-body shudder that convulses through you, starting at the shoulders, and tearing down to the heels. She smiles against your lips when you touch her neck, touch the metal of her chest plate. She laughs and so do you, because your face is redder than it ever was when you were alive, and her fingers tangle themselves in your curls, and your stomach feels just how it did back then, filled to bursting with greatness and nerves and possibilities that seemed to span eons.
“Icarus, truly, I would love nothing more than to stay with you,” she says, smiling coyly up at you; her hands flex around the back of your head. It only makes sense, given how practiced she is, but they're strong, unrelenting. Her grip is a fierce one and it makes you lightheaded. Lightheaded as a shade can be, at least, and it's still something mighty. “But, I've a vow upon me tonight which necessitates I make haste. Such is the will of Night.”
“Oh, I wouldn't dream of keeping you from the Summit, Meli,” you tell her, and it's true, but you wish that you could bear her weight upon you forever. You rub your nose awkwardly, hoping your grin isn't too embarrassing, but not really caring too much if it is. You remember how you kept waving your arms, even when the feathers had sloughed off. “Give Typhon a whack for me. But I'll see you at the Crossroads, hey?” Then, you repeat it, this time as a prayer: “I'll see you at the Crossroads.”
“Yes, you will.” She squeezes you, and you two smile at each other again, as if you're swapping words in a language no one else knows, speaking to one another in ancient codes that have revealed themselves only to you two. The mystic runes that she devotes herself to -- you feel as if you catch a glimpse, bright cyan and teeming with endless hope. “Take care, Icarus.”
“You, too,” you say, holding out one of your premium service hammers. With a grateful nod, and a glance of an adoration so palpable it knots your throat up, she speeds off, her magick quick as a wink manifesting her Black Coat. Not made to uphold her same time constraints, you watch the spectral gate between ships swallow her, trace the movement of her back as she disappears from sight.
And you remember freedom.