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chokifandom · 6 days ago

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I HAVE TO REBLOG AGAIN BECAUSE I STILL HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABT THIS (and this time i won't make the poor decision of putting them in the tags so i am not restricted)

lasthenia's therapy sessions remind me so much of my own ngl 😭😭😭 HOW DID YOU CLOCK ME SO HARD, RIGHT DOWN TO THE NAIL PICKING AND BITING??? and how reader thought she could one up her with that "because he fucked her" line just to get put in place anyway LMFAOOO ts unfortunately so me

hellanike and rhode are so precious to me 😭 AND THE WAY THAT THEY DIED RIGHT AFTER ANAXA LEFT FOR THE GROVE.. IK IT HAPPENS IN THE ORIGINAL TOO BUT THIS JUST HIT SO HARD 💔 flashbacks to phainon and little ica in that one cycle 💔💔💔 (<- ALSO UNRELATED and i know it might not have been intentional but rhode REMINDED ME OF RHODES ISLAND FROM ARKNIGHTS I GIGGLED) it alr hurt me enough that hellanike died but the torturous slow death .. ough that hurt me so bad instant kill 😭

"To you who are a child, he has touched life in the way only a god can, and so you regard him with the careful caution of a devotee, too frightened to go any closer but too endeared to ever go very far." this line. THIS LINE. i had to sit and stare at the wall for five minutes before i could continue reading the fic. and the interaction right after it GODDDD i love the childhood yearning so fucking much. and the tension in the two weeks before anaxa has to leave for the grove IT'S JUST SO PERFECT

“Well, really his sister is the one who loves them,” you say. “But he loves her, and so it’s the same in the end.” AND THIS!!!! ANAXAGORAS HAS SO MUCH LOVE IN HIS HEART AND NO ONE CAN CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE!!!

── THEOPHANIA

Synopsis: Years after the fact, through your unspoken grief for a home and a woman you once knew, you recount how you met a boy named Anaxagoras.

HSR Masterlist

Pairing: Anaxa x F!Reader

Word Count: 11.6k

Content Warnings: two timelines running in tandem, angst, animal (dromas) death, canonical character (anaxa's sister) death, anaxa's sister is given a name, written before 3.5, childhood friends to lovers, mentions of bullying (including phsyical harm), light smut (fingering, virginity loss, it's only one scene that's not too explicit but mdni please!), grief and trauma, use of an original character for narrative reasons, anaxa might feel ooc (i mostly based him on what we know of his youth from his first character story + took some liberties with his backstory so he's not a hater yet #SORRY), canon...adjacent??? i suppose??? i wouldn't say it's canon compliant or non compliant it just kinda exists, i haven't played past the first half of 3.1 so i lowk don't even know bro like that this is just vibes

A/N: so it is actually not choki's birthday for almost another two weeks admittedly BUT !! i finally had Something to write and so i could not help myself SKDJHF for those of you who aren't up to date with my nonsense this is a little birthday gift i have thrown together for my beloved friend @chokifandom (the biggest profnax glazer i know) to choki — thank you for being both my trusted adult and my top goon, i could ramble on and on but to be honest that covers everything i could ever hope to say 😭 and to everyone else — sorry for butchering mr anaxagoras like this but i hope you enjoy regardless !!

Lasthenia, that stoic, unflappable woman, is growing tired of your silence. You know she is, not because you have some gift for reading people but because she says it to you plainly, in as many words: it’s been months since you came to the Grove. That boy you traveled with has settled in perfectly fine. Why can’t you? You’re not sure how to tell her that Anaxagoras has not been perfectly fine a day in his life, that when you both were children he would play with steel mice and tin birds, and now that you are older he comes to your room and stands in the doorway, clenching his fists, biting his lips until they bruise purple and bleed gold, for he can’t really bear to look at or speak to you anymore — but neither can he bear to leave you alone, not for good, not for any measure of time. But Lasthenia isn’t there in your room, she doesn’t see any of this, and so you suppose to her you are the only broken, defective thing, and he did indeed come to the Grove perfectly fine.

“What can I do to help you?” she asks you. This is how it always begins, and just like always, you shrug halfheartedly, tracing patterns in the dust gathering on the cedar surface of her desk.

“I don’t know,” you say. She clears her throat, and you wait for the next line in your standard dialogue, where she will tell you that she can’t do anything for you if you won’t even tell her what you're thinking, but to your surprise she instead slides something across the table.

“He mentioned you like painting,” she says by way of an explanation. You don’t need to ask her who he is, because there’s only one person here who would know that about you, but you do raise your eyebrows when she gives you a canvas and a pot of pigment, nodding towards them. “How about you test them out?”

“What should I make?” you say, and although it’s impassively done, when you dip the brush into the pigment, you take a moment to marvel at the richness of the hue seeping into the bristles. After swiping a small, experimental stroke in the corner of the paper, you look up at her expectantly.

“Anything,” Lasthenia says. “Whatever’s on your mind.”

“Okay,” you say, and then the two of you sit in silence. She watches you as you go along, which disconcerts you slightly in the beginning, but then you grow so involved in it that you can’t bring yourself to mind very much, busying yourself with the swoops and lines and curves that are beginning to form a familiar scene, one you won’t ever forget, no matter how many years have passed since it happened.

When you are done, you present it to her shyly, biting your tongue as she inspects it. For some reason, you want her to like it, to praise you for your efforts and tell you you’ve done well. The longer she doesn’t say anything, the more the tension brewing in your stomach grows, and when she finally looks up with the slightest of smiles, you think you may throw up if another second passes.

“What is it?” she says.

“Huh?” you say. “Isn’t it…obvious?”

“Of course it is,” she says. “Your work is beautiful, after all; he wasn’t lying when he said you’re talented. I want to know the story behind it.”

“Oh,” you say, and to your surprise you find you’re actually a little eager. In all your years, only Anaxagoras has ever cared enough to ask you about your art, to touch the drying colors and beg to learn them. Yet here is Lasthenia, her face softening into something resembling a woman you knew as a child, a younger woman whose hair was pale as well, albeit not silver like Lasthenia’s, and who was so gentle that even the dromases sang for her.

A lump rises in your throat then, at the thought of her, of dear, beautiful Hellanike, and you try to swallow it back, because if you cry now then you will never stop, and you don’t want that, especially not in front of Lasthenia, who hardly knows you. Taking a deep breath, you wait until it abates, until the pressure on your chest vanishes, and then you squeeze your eyes shut with enough force that pricks of light begin to form behind your lids.

I am in the Grove. I am in the Grove. I am in the Grove. You repeat this mantra enough times that Hellanike’s screaming abates, and only then do you open your eyes and face Lasthenia, who is blessedly back to being stern-faced and old and nothing like her.

“It’s a boy and a girl,” you begin, your index finger brushing against the rough outline of the boy’s face. You did not have time nor material to give him a proper expression, but you know he’s scowling, as he always is, not out of anger but because he is that deep in thought. You can picture so clearly how his brow was furrowed that day, his face pinched as he leaned against the headstone and stared at you and asked you what you were doing. “They’re in a graveyard.”

“A graveyard?” Lasthenia prompts. You nod.

“His parents have been dead since he was but a baby. You would think he’d be saddened by it, but he’s not, not really,” you say. “Not yet, anyways. It’ll be some years before either of them ever learn what it means to mourn.”

He’s an unfortunate and sorry sort, Anaxagoras, the kind of boy that one might pity if they have the heart for it and tease if they don’t. They whisper about him, your peers, their parents, pointing out his worn clothes and messy hair, the bruises on his cheekbones and the scrapes on his knees — they call him a mess, a boy whose dreams far outweigh his station, and then they laugh. How many questions he asks. How many stupid things he says, and yet he claims he will be the most knowledgeable man in the world someday! Anaxagoras the Idiot. Anaxagoras the Fool. He will certainly be remembered as such.

You both are in the same class when you begin school, though often, privately, you think that there’s some unfairness in that. The rest of you cannot even read, after all, and then there is Anaxagoras, who asks the teacher questions with words you cannot even pronounce, who says things that your tongue sits too thick and heavy in the cavern of your childish mouth to ever have hopes of replicating.

The others call him names, but he is deaf to their barbs and their witticisms, which you do think you admire. You notice him first in this setting, where he is tucked away in the shade of an oak tree, hunched over something in his lap while someone or another berates him. You think of asking them to stop, but in truth you are afraid, and so you can only watch in silence as they snatch his work away from him, holding it up to the light before shouting and dropping it.

It’s a dromas heart, still beating. A girl vomits. A boy kicks him and calls him sick, which he does not respond to, only picking the heart up once more, curling in on himself and hugging it protectively to his chest, narrowing his eyes against the glares of your classmates.

Later, you find out that the heart is fake, made of steel and sap instead of flesh and blood. He made it, according to his sister, who is an animal tamer by the name of Hellanike. She rushed to the school as soon as she was summoned, a young dromas toddling after her and nudging Anaxagoras fondly when it sees him, and she is distraught when she hears that the heart has been destroyed by the school’s principal. He made that, and you took it from him! What sort of a principal are you?

The principal tries to reason with her, but then Hellanike sees the boot-shaped mark on Anaxagoras’s face and she is inconsolable. Taking her brother by the shoulder, she curses at the principal, and then they both leave, the dromas stumbling over its own feet as it tries to keep up with Hellanike's furious pace.

He comes back the next day like nothing ever happened, but now he has this reputation of being macabre as well as insufferable, so he continues to be left alone. You do not think he minds, not particularly; maybe he even prefers it, but that doesn’t stop you from your wishing and your gazing, for you are quite taken with him, and even more now that you know the heart was his all along.

Those flowers which bloom in his hands and never wilt, the glass scales he weighs dead leaves in, the brass frogs that leap in place by his feet — how convoluted they are, how fascinating! To you who are a child, he has touched life in the way only a god can, and so you regard him with the careful caution of a devotee, too frightened to go any closer but too endeared to ever go very far.

He speaks to you only once, in an activity where you are told to draw something to your tastes. You scribble out a dromas, the big, mean one that follows Hellanike around your small city and howls whenever anyone approaches her, and Anaxagoras leans over to look at it, inspecting it carefully with those discerning vermillion eyes of his.

“That’s nice,” he says brusquely, and then he takes the well of purple dye from you. You glance over, your cheeks warm from the praise, and see that he, too, has sketched a dromas, although his is far more scientific in nature, a diagram from the side, measurements marked out in neat tick marks, body parts labeled in sloping handwriting that you can’t quite read but can at least infer.

“Yours is—” you begin, but your voice dies in your throat when he looks back at you and tilts his head. He waits, but when it becomes clear you have no intentions of continuing, he shrugs and turns away, beginning to fill in the dromas’s sturdy body with violet like you never spoke in the first place.

When you are seven, your mother’s uncle passes away. He was old when you were born and you never knew him well, but it is your first intimate brush with death and so you are shaken by it entirely despite all of that. In fact, a week passes before you can bring yourself to trudge to the graveyard and place flowers atop the dark earth where he is buried, your head spinning curiously, peculiarly, at the thought that he is somewhere in the ground beneath you, still wrapped in that shroud of his, tucked away in a casket, his body rigid and grey and bloodless.

“What are you doing here?” The voice is soft, curious, but you cannot stop yourself from shrieking at it — you weren’t expecting anyone to be here, for you didn’t see a single soul when you entered the desolate place, and for a second you think it must be a ghost scolding you for some perceived misconduct. “Why are you screaming?”

He’s not a ghost, although he is waifish enough to be confused for one. Anaxagoras is slender and small for his age, after all, his little figure white and bony, his fingers too long for his hands, his eyes too large for his face.

“I’m sorry, you just took me by surprise,” you say. “I thought — I thought you must be some kind of monster.”

“I see,” he says.

“I’m visiting my mother’s uncle,” you say, because now that you are not seeing him in the harsh light of the schoolyard, he is a little more approachable, a little more like any other boy that you might be friends with. “And you?”

“My parents,” he says casually, tapping on the headstone for emphasis. “My sister says it’s the anniversary of their wedding today, and that I should visit them and wish them well.”

“Hellanike,” you say.

“You know her?” he says. He looks kinder when he speaks of his sister, a smile dawning on his face, and even a blind man could tell from the unprecedented melody in his voice that he loves her in a way he loves little else.

“Who doesn’t?” you say rhetorically. Even the most difficult of beasts are turned to lapdogs by her touch, and even the most difficult of men are turned to saints by her gaze; you doubt there’s anyone in the city who hasn't heard her name.

He exhales at this, you guess in amusement. “True enough. Say, you’re in my class, aren't you?”

“Yes,” you say, though not without a moment of hesitation. Suddenly the bruise on his shoulder stands out stark against his skin, and you think of how easy he is for the others to abuse, how inviting it is to mock him, how simple it is to beat someone who cares so little they don’t even bother fighting back. “We haven’t really spoken much.”

“Right,” he says, and then he stands, brushing himself off, patting his parents’ gravestones, his expression dimming for the briefest of moments before he nods at you politely. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Wait,” you say when he turns to leave. You are sure you won’t have the boldness to do this ever again, but in the solemn gloom of the graveyard, you are suddenly spurred into action and loath to let him leave. “Wait, Anaxagoras, I — can I be your friend?”

He blinks at you once before shrugging. “Sure.”

“Sure?” you say, for you were expecting something elaborate, some profound declaration worthy of this designation you are bestowing on him. He has no friends, you are certain, and of the ones you have, you don’t like any as much as you think you may like him. So shouldn’t there be something to mark this moment? Something more grandiose?

“If that’s what you want,” he says. “Is there anything else?”

“No,” you say, suddenly very relieved and more than a little flustered that you have been so worried all this while when it was so simple in the end. “No, that’s it.”

“Okay,” he says. “Bye.”

It’s a strange place to begin a friendship, but Anaxagoras is a strange boy, anyways. The two of you become something like a pair, and although your companionship cannot make him less ragged, cannot make his clothes finer and his hair neater, at least the whispers and the wounds are lessened now. He never thanks you for it, never pays enough mind to, but you know he must be grateful somewhere deep inside, because Hellanike tells you so, and Hellanike never lies.

It means so much to me, she murmurs in your ear, that first time you meet her, her arms winding affectionately around your torso, that you protect my little brother so well.

You tell her it’s nothing. She smiles and tells you it’s everything.

“I think we made a lot of progress last time,” Lasthenia tells you. You furrow your brow, because you can’t quite understand what she means by that. All you did the last time you met her was paint a picture and explain what it meant; there wasn’t anything resembling a proper breakthrough like she’s implying. You feel the same, not worse but certainly not any better. Still, Lasthenia seems pleased enough, and painting is better than pretending to be deaf to her inane questions, so when she gives you a fresh canvas and a reed pen, you accept it without protest.

“Will you tell me what to do this time?” you say. She shakes her head.

“No, just do what you’d like,” she says. You hum and begin to doodle something or another, you’re not really sure what — it’s just nice to scratch the pen into the page, to gouge and gouge away at it until an image begins to form. “So, you’ve known Anaxagoras since you were a child?”

“Hm?” you say. “Oh, yes, we were very young when we met. He was my…”

“Your best friend?” she completes for you. You almost laugh at this, thinking back to that final night before he left your hometown for the Grove, the sound of his harsh breaths in your ear, the feel of his hand between your legs, but then instead of his bed you are remembering the floor beneath it and you are shaking and Hellanike is screaming and your vision is blackening, your lines growing jagged and long instead of sure and sharp.

“We knew each other,” you say shortly.

“You speak in the past tense,” she notes. “Did you two have a falling out?”

They’re killing Hellanike. They’re killing Hellanike. They’re killing Hellanike.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you say. “There’s no bad blood between us. We just aren’t close anymore.”

“It’s natural. Sometimes you outgrow your friends,” she says, but she speaks like she knows that’s not what happened. You detest her for just a second, detest how self-assured she is, but you push it down. It’s not her fault. These people in the Grove, they’re all like that, and you shouldn’t resent Lasthenia any more or less than you resent the others.

“Exactly,” you say.

“That boy and girl in the graveyard from your painting,” she says. “You mentioned they wouldn’t learn grief for a long time. What do you think taught them? You seemed to have something in mind.”

“The boy’s sister,” you say immediately, without even thinking about it.

“She died?” she says. You grit your teeth.

“Eventually,” you say. “Everyone does at some point, right?”

“Of course,” she says. “But—”

“Anyways,” you say, shoving your half-finished sketch in front of you and cutting her off in one swift motion. “Here. Do you like it?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful,” she says, thankfully taking the redirection with grace. “Are the boy and girl the same as the ones from the last painting?”

“They’re older now,” you say. “And that’s a dromas they’re with. The boy is fond of dromases.”

“Why do you think he is?” she says.

“Well, really his sister is the one who loves them,” you say. “But he loves her, and so it’s the same in the end.”

“Why can’t dromases fly?” he asks you one day. You are sitting at his dining table, and Hellanike is cooking dinner for you both, although you have told her time and time again that there’s no need to waste food on you.

“Stop speaking,” you say. “I’m working on your lips.”

He is your favorite model, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he is the only one who is willing to do it. In exchange for being allowed to tell you his favorite theories while you work, he poses how you command him to and does not complain when you study him intently; he calls it a symbiotic relationship, which is his way of saying that you both are friends and do things for one another when you can.

“Can you hurry up?” he says, for patience is not yet one of his virtues. It’s funny to you that the ever-tolerant Hellanike’s little brother is so short-tempered when he wants to be, so you don’t mind it too much, but today you nudge his leg with yours.

“I’ll be done in a minute or so,” you say, looking up from your practice only to glare at him when he opens his mouth again. He shuts it immediately, although his brows do draw together in silent rebellion. “Thank you. As for your earlier question, well, why would they? They’re children of Georios, are they not? They have no use for the sky.”

“I knew you would say that!” he bursts out, all at once. You sigh, because when he is like this there is no stopping him, and then you turn your paper so that you can perfect the shading of his hair instead. “Who cares, though? If they’re children of Georios or Aquila or Phagousa or whoever, why does it matter? Wouldn’t they be happier if they could fly?”

“Certainly,” you say dryly.

“Then they should,” he says. “Why should we let the gods tell us who we can or cannot be?”

“If you’re not careful, you’ll be thrown out of the church for saying things like that,” I say.

“Oh, whatever,” he says, waving his hand dismissively. “Those priests are useless anyways. They’re too scared to question the world around them, so they just spout nonsense from their scrolls and call it revelations. If I were a dromas, I wouldn’t let a priest or a god stop me from flying.”

“What about your lack of wings?” you ask. “That might be a problem.”

“Not so,” he says. “I can’t be limited so easily.”

“You’re ridiculous,” you say when he punctuates it with a snicker and you realize he’s joking.

“On a more serious note, though,” he says. “What’s to say you can’t fashion a set of wings from wax and put them on a dromas? It could fly then, surely, just like my birds.”

He speaks of the mechanical birds he crafts with his own hands, little creatures which can take to the sky and sing as readily as their living brethren. One of them sits in your room, and it likes to coo you to sleep, so you keep it on your dresser and pet its little head with your index finger whenever you walk past.

“A dromas is a bit bigger than a metal nightingale,” you say.

“Then I’d give it bigger wings,” he says, always so quick with a rebuttal, always so ready. “There’s nothing saying I can’t.”

“Well, go on and fashion a pair of wings for Rhode, and we’ll see how far she can fly,” you say, speaking of the young dromas that Hellanike has been raising for almost as long as Anaxagoras has been alive. She is lazy and affectionate, to Anaxagoras especially, for according to Hellanike she views him as her own son despite being younger than him.

“Rhode’s inability to fly has nothing to do with her being a dromas, and everything to do with her being entirely unmotivated,” he says with a snort.

“What’s all this about Rhode?” Hellanike says, balancing a steaming dish in one hand and three plates in the other. Her eyebrow is raised as if she’s angry, but she’s smiling, and anyways she’s incapable of anger, so it comes across as more of a silly thing than a true rebuke. “You shouldn’t tease her, Anaxagoras. She’s not bright for a dromas, but her heart is bigger than any you’ll meet.”

“What good does that do her?” he says, rolling his eyes and pushing the plate with the larger of the two portions towards you. You try to refuse it, but you’ve long since learnt that both he and his sister are too proud to accept anything resembling charity, so, pressing your lips into a thin line, you take it and begin to eat, albeit begrudgingly. “She’d never survive in the wild.”

“That’s right,” you say, interrupting sagely. “She can’t even fly.”

“Fly!” Hellanike says. “Why, have you heard of a dromas that could?”

Anaxagoras shoots you a look that makes it nearly impossible for you to maintain your composure, especially in front of the earnest Hellanike, who seems to really think that you have discovered such a thing. You open your mouth, but the only thing that escapes it is a strangled laugh, and so he kicks you under the table and gives his sister a bright grin.

“We were just discussing it,” he says. “If you give a dromas wings, might it not fly?”

“Oh, I see,” she says, because she’s better than you, better than anyone, and so she entertains his notions as if they are legitimate theories instead of just flights of fancy. “Maybe not Rhode, but Argos could.”

Argos is one of the dromases whose owner has sent him to Hellanike so she can attempt gentling him. He’s a beast of a thing, bred for war, and thus far she is the only one allowed close enough to him to touch. She’s right, too, it’s a lot easier to imagine him taking to the skies than Rhode, but even then it’s humorous, for he is such a behemoth that your mind cannot even fathom how he might lift himself into the sky.

“A fair point,” he says.

“I think that even if you gave him wings, he wouldn’t know what to do with them,” you say. “Just because he could fly doesn't mean he would.”

“We could teach him,” Anaxagoras says.

“Some things can’t be taught,” you say. “How could you make a creature that doesn’t even know what flight is understand that he must now take to the skies? How would wings be any different from a saddle?”

He’s about to shoot back with some other argument, you’re sure of it, but before he can, Hellanike is raising her hands in an attempt to calm you two. Neither you nor he can really refuse her, so you both grow silent and turn to her obediently, for it’s clear she has something to say, and this draws a smile out of her.

“I heard something interesting today,” she says. “From some merchants. They mentioned a holy sanctuary called the Grove of Epiphany.”

“So what?” Anaxagoras says. He’s never put much stock in divinity, and Hellanike knows this better than anyone, so you wonder what has driven her to bring this up.

“It’s an academy,” she says. “Devoted to Cerces, and to the pursuit of wisdom.”

Anaxagoras’s eyes light up, just for a second, although he immediately quashes that faint and fiery desire. You see it, though, just as you see every little change in his demeanor, in his very being.

“Well, anyways,” she says. “I just thought you might find it interesting, that’s all.”

The conversation moves on to other, lighter things, but the wanting does not fade from his irises. It has been imprinted in his soul, that need, that hunger, and he cannot forget it so easily. That night was the first time, although not the last, that you grew aware of the fact he would someday leave you for good.

“Do you ever consider trying to reconcile with Anaxagoras?” Lasthenia asks you, the next time you visit her. You are busy glancing around her office, trying to see where she must keep the art supplies she keeps miraculously bringing for you, so at first you do not register the question. Then, when you do, your spine stiffens.

“Did he tell you to ask me that?” you say. She shakes her head.

“I was only wondering out of my own curiosity,” she says. “Do you think that talking to him would make you feel better? Like I keep telling you, he’s adjusting to everything quite well. He could help you.”

“No,” you say immediately. “No, he — it would make it worse. For both of us.”

“Why is that?” she says.

“Can I draw?” you say instead of answering. Then, cringing at your rudeness, you hastily add: “It doesn’t matter. It just would.”

She regards you with condolence brewing in her eyes; for a moment, you think that she’s going to keep pressing, that she’ll withhold her materials from you until you explain everything to her, and that’s something you can’t bring yourself to do. So you rip at the skin around your nails and chew on your lower lip, a habit you learnt from Anaxagoras when you both were young, and you try your best to pretend that it isn’t real, that none of this is real, that Hellanike is still alive and Anaxagoras still speaks to you and Rhode is there, waiting outside of the window for you to give her a treat she is far too spoilt to deserve.

“Alright,” she says. “But I do have a request this time.”

“What is it?” you say, for you are so desperate to move on that you grasp at her words and her parchment like they are lifelines, like the only thing saving you from drowning is the feel of the brush in your hand and her orderly inquiries.

“Draw something pleasant,” she says. “Maybe that boy and girl. We’ve spoken a lot about their sadness, but how about a time when they were happy with one another?”

“I don’t know if they ever were,” you say, worrying with the ink pot’s lid, screwing and unscrewing it absentmindedly.

“Come on, now,” she says. “That isn’t fair to them, is it? Of course they must have been, at some point.”

“And if I said they really weren't?” you challenge.

“Then I would ask you why you did that to them,” she says. You let out a bark of laughter.

“I ask that, too,” you say. “Every day, I ask Thanatos why they did this to us, to me, but they never answer. Sometimes, there is no reason. Sometimes, it just happens.”

“But you can change that,” she says gently. “You can be better than Thanatos and the rest of the titans.”

“You sound like Anaxagoras,” you say, for even here, he has made something of a name for himself as a blasphemer.

“I don’t mean it like that,” she says. “This is your story. You can make them happy if you want.”

“Fine,” you say after a moment. “Yes. They were happy on one occasion, for a short while. An hour or maybe less.”

“Why is that?” she urges as you take the pen to your paper. “What made them so happy?”

“Because he fucked her,” you say sardonically, half-hoping the shock of it will bring her to leave you alone. She seems the prim type, but to your surprise, she doesn’t even flinch, only nodding pensively.

“Yes, that could make anyone happy,” she says. “Is that what you’re drawing, then?”

The detached approach causes your face to burn with shame, embarrassment flooding you as you sink deeper into your chair. She’s taking you seriously, and somehow this is more invasive, more violating than if she had been mortified by it.

“No,” you mutter. “I’m drawing a dromas.”

You show her as proof — it really is just a rough diagram of a dromas, the body parts labeled, Rhode written neatly in the corner. It’s contrary to her instructions, but Lasthenia doesn’t point that out, taking it in stride and examining it like it’s a piece in a museum.

“Incredible,” she says. “You have an excellent understanding of anatomy. You didn’t even have a reference, but this is nearly textbook-worthy. I know several people who would pay a lot of money for talent like that; I’ll be sure to recommend you if it ever comes up.”

“Thank you,” you say. “Is that all for today?”

“Do you think it is?” she says as you get up. You pause, and for a second your resolve wavers. A voice in the back of your mind whispers, wouldn’t it be nice? If you could tell someone about it…wouldn’t it be nice?

Then you realize that the voice is Hellanike’s, and so you leave before she starts screaming again.

Argos’s breeders made such a sum from his sale — apparently some representative of Kremnos’s royalty found him so fine that he was bought on their king’s behalf — that they were willing to give Hellanike a third of it, although she had not asked for any commission after sending him back to them, as docile as a lamb but with enough spirit to march alongside any army, even one such as Kremnos’s.

You and Anaxagoras only learn of this after the fact, and you are opposite in your reactions — he is delighted, for even that third is more money than he’s ever seen in his life, and you are irritated, for you believe she should’ve demanded more. She certainly deserves more, for without her, Argos would’ve long ago been put down for his bad manner, but she is too humble to ever give herself that much credit, and so all she says is this: a third is more than enough for what I want.

You’ve never known Hellanike to want much, so you ask her what she’s talking about, and although he doesn’t say anything, you know Anaxagoras is intrigued as well. She looks around furtively before beckoning you closer and lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper.

“I paid one of the traveling merchants,” she says. “He’s leaving in a fortnight, setting out for the Grove of Epiphany, and — and I asked him to take you with him, Anaxagoras.”

“What?” he says. “Me? Hellanike, why would you do that? You should’ve saved it.”

“What would I save it for? I make enough to feed Rhode and I as it is, and I know you’ve always wished to go. You’re meant for more than living the rest of your life here,” she says.

“What about you?” he says. “Where will you go?”

“Nowhere!” she says, as cheerful as ever. “I’ll stay right here, and I’ll brag to everyone that my little brother is going to be an eminent scholar. You’ll be the pride of our town!"

“I don’t want to go if you won’t be there,” he says.

“Oh, don’t say that, I already paid for your journey! Anyways, you can visit me whenever you’re able, so it’s not like you’ll never see me again,” she says. He turns to you as if for support, but you click your tongue.

“You’ve spent years waiting for this,” you say. “Don’t let something as fleeting and silly as homesickness stop you from going.”

“Alright,” he says, and when Hellanike crosses her arms and you pretend to scowl, he beams at you, like he’s proving a point. “Alright! I’ll go.”

“You’ll go!” Hellanike says, as happily as if she is the one who’s getting the chance to escape our remote hometown. “We have to start packing.”

“Two weeks isn’t long at all,” you agree. “The time for you to leave will be upon us before you know it.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he says. “It’s a long time.”

Then he does this thing he’s begun doing recently, his arm brushing against your own, quickly enough that it might be an accident but closely enough that you are left hot and shy from it anyways. And it’s just him, just Anaxagoras, so you shouldn’t feel this way, but you do, which only exacerbates it further. You’ve known him since you were little, you’ve braided his hair and fed his dromas countless times, so why now is it that your stomach knots itself into something tangled and sick from just that slightest, barest touch? Why is it that lately you are finding it difficult to speak with him, when your entire friendship thus far you have never approached him with anything but level candor?

You know you should tell him something, especially as the day of his departure grows nearer and nearer, but you don’t know what it is that you should say. He’s confused by it, you are sure, because your conversations are stilted instead of easy as they always used to be, but he’s never been good with this sort of thing, either, so he never brings it up. He does stop touching you as frequently, though, which you are as glad for as you are saddened by — your mind is a bit clearer, at least, and if you turn your back it’s almost like you are children and he will never leave and you will never feel so unwell again.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says. His room is empty, hollow without his things littering it, his various instruments and texts carefully packed away, his clothes folded around them to keep them safe. It makes the two of you feel closer than you are, although in truth he is perched on his bed and you are about to leave.

“Yes,” you say, and your voice does break when you do, but you do your best to pretend it doesn’t. “The journey isn’t too long by dromas, right? Write as soon as you get there.”

“Of course,” he says.

“To me, too,” you say. “Not just Hellanike.”

“I always planned to,” he says, and you can hear the way he must be rolling his eyes when he does.

“You’ll like it there,” you say, your hand resting on the doorframe, your forehead leaning against it. You are poised like you are about to walk away, but you have no intention to, not yet. You just don’t want him to see that your eyes are watering and your lower lip is trembling. “You can ask as many questions as you want, and there will be people who can actually answer them.”

“That’s right,” he says.

“It’s good,” you say. “It’s really good.”

“You’re crying,” he notes.

“I’m not,” you say. It comes out brattier than you would’ve liked, but to your eternal relief, he doesn’t point that out.

“Turn around, then,” he says. You remain still instead of obliging, and he exhales with something like amusement. “So you are.”

“You’ll make fun of me if I am,” you say. “I’m not.”

“I won’t,” he says, uncharacteristically gentle. “You have to know I wouldn’t do that to you. Come sit with me for a while longer, and if you want to cry, then I promise I won’t say anything about it.”

“You should sleep,” you say, a last-ditch attempt at denial. If you sit with him it will hurt even more when you have to get up and face the loss anew; it’ll be better, you think, for you to flee now, while you are on your feet and hardened to it. “You’re leaving early, Hellanike said.”

“Who cares what she said or when I'm leaving?” he says. It’s so willful you're taken aback, even though you’ve always known him to be stubborn. “It might be a while before I see you next. I don’t mind staying up the entire night, even. Like we used to.”

The mention of your childhood is what causes you to cave, as he must have known it would. The reminder of your youth, when you both would sometimes share a bed and he would lull you to sleep with stories of great bursts of fire in a faraway sky, is enough for you to flinch and then, before you know it, you are crossing the room and collapsing beside him. You’re not sure which of you lies down first, but then you both are splayed out atop his blanket and his pinky is just a hair’s breadth away from yours.

“You’ve been angry at me recently,” he says.

“I haven’t,” you say, but you still can’t look at him. “I’m not angry. Especially not at you. I don’t think I’ve ever been angry at you.”

“But something is bothering you,” he says. “I’m not an idiot. I can tell these things.”

“I need more time,” you say finally, after allowing yourself a single chuckle at the prospect of anyone calling him an idiot, even him. “I thought I would have longer to understand it, but now you’re leaving and I’m still so unsure.”

“Understand what?” he says. You turn on your side, so that you can look at him; he’s staring at the ceiling, and you are suddenly struck by how beautiful he is. You’ve never really considered it before, never thought to call him such a sweet word, but it’s apt, and the longer you look at him the more you are convinced it is. He isn’t spindly and odd-looking anymore, the way he was when the two of you first met — he’s beautiful, he is, his skin gold in the candlelight, his eyes a dark, unreadable sanguine, his hair loose and fanned out on his pillow.

“All of it,” you say.

“I can help you, if you’ll let me,” he says, and now your fingers are touching, although you are sure you haven’t moved. “Just tell me everything. I’ll understand it for you, so that you don’t have to.”

“You don’t need to do that,” you say, although it’s more of a deflection on your part than it is out of any real concern for him. You’re scared of what he’ll think, what he’ll discern. Will he laugh at you? Will he cast you from his bed and demand you leave at once? Of course he is going away tomorrow anyways, so maybe it doesn’t matter, but this makes you even more distraught, because it’s so immediate now. In the morning, he will set out for the Grove of Epiphany, and he will spend the rest of his life somewhere you can’t reach him, not for a long time. Maybe not ever.

“Please,” he says. “Just this once, let me listen to you.”

He tilts his head to look at you entreatingly; you are helpless to deny him, but you are also frozen, burdened by the weight of his stare, and so you do the only thing you can and roll over, your back to him as it has been more and more frequently.

The bed whines as he shifts with you, tucking his chin over your shoulder, his hand hovering over your waist but not yet touching it. You swallow, but you do not move away as you think he must anticipate — instead, you take his hand by the wrist and drag it up so that his cool palm can rest against your overwarm cheek.

“I like it when you do that,” you confess, because his newfound proximity has driven away all the will you might have mustered to argue. “Whenever your knee knocks against mine, whenever your arm slips past my own…I like it.”

“Hm,” he says, like this is a crucial finding that he must take into proper consideration.

“I don’t think I should, though,” you say. “Not so much.”

“Why not?” he murmurs.

“Because it’s you,” you say, keeping your gaze trained on a blank spot on the wall, willing your eyes to stay just as dry as they are now, your voice to remain exactly as steadfast.

“You want it to be someone else?” he says. “Echephron, maybe? Iasus? Hypenor?”

He’s naming boys from your town, the very boys who once tormented him. At first you think he is mocking you, and you almost get up and tell him you will go, if he means to be like this, but then an edge of despair enters his tone and it’s all you can do to cut him off before he can continue.

“No,” you say. “It’s just — I’ve known you for so long, and never have you made me feel so ill with…whatever this is. I have always told you everything, so why now am I shy? We’ve shared a bed countless times, so what about tonight is different?”

“I think,” he says, with the surety of a doctor describing some age-old and incurable malady, “you like me.”

“What?” you say, a knee-jerk reaction to this absurd new development, which perhaps isn’t so new or so absurd after all.

“You like me,” he repeats, and although he sounds victorious, he’s the furthest thing from smug. His hand pulls away from your face, and you almost beg for it back, but then it’s dancing along your side and coming to rest over your navel and your supplication dies before it can form. “You do.”

“What does it matter?” you say after a long pause where you neither confirm nor deny the claim. “If you’re leaving tomorrow, then what does any of it matter?”

“It matters to me,” he says. “It would’ve driven me mad to go so far away without knowing for certain.”

You lace your fingers through his rough ones, because you are so overcome with the need to hold onto him you cannot bear it any longer. His thumb pets along your knuckles, and a choked laugh escapes you, because it is so foreign and yet so familiar at once, and how could you have been so foolish? Of course it ended up this way. Of course it did.

“I like you,” you say, repeating it over and over as if it will make it more true. “Oh, I like you, I like you—”

You will cry if you continue, so you purse your lips and squeeze his hand, which is still on your stomach, and you do it so tightly you are surprised he doesn’t yelp. Miraculously, though, he really doesn’t; he only presses a kiss to your temple, a ghostly, lingering thing.

“Don’t stop,” he says. “Tell me again.”

“I like you,” you say. This time when he kisses you, it is at the angle of your jaw, and you must stop yourself from shivering for fear that it will chase him away.

“Once more,” he says. “So that I can be sure of it.”

“I like you,” you say. Now his nose is against your neck and his lips are at the tender place where your throat meets your shoulder and his palm is searing into you, you are sure it is, but you make no attempt at removing it.

“I like you, too,” he says. “So much. For so long. I was going to tell you, I swear, before you left to go home — well, I might’ve told you earlier, if only I had known…”

“Can I stay?” you say. “I don't want to go home. I want to stay with you tonight. Tell me I can.”

“Shall I wake Hellanike?” he says. “You might prefer sleeping in her room. Her bed is bigger.”

“No,” you say, and then, in the sort of bravery you can only summon now, when there is nothing left for you to lose barring your pride, which you have long ago relinquished to him anyways, you guide his hand from your stomach, taking it slowly, carefully, to where your waistband sits low on your hips. “No, there’s no need to wake her. I want to stay with you, Anaxagoras.”

Your hold on him loosens as he moves his fingers with deft curiosity, your nails digging into his forearm when he experimentally dips them into the place where your thighs come together. You inhale sharply, and you feel his chest vibrate against your back as he hums, cataloguing this reaction before repeating the motion, this time grinding the heel of his palm against you at the same time before pausing, only resuming when you make a small, pathetic sound to prompt him to continue.

He is so close to where you want him, but you want him closer and closer still, and you think he knows this and finds some humor in denying you that final plunge of his fingers inside of you, threatening it, tracing around it until you are sure you will burst, but never quite following through, leaving you to teeter on that precipice.

“Anaxagoras,” you say finally, when you grow tired of waiting. “Please.”

“Please what?” he says, and instead of sounding cocky, there is a faint hint of worry in his voice. You are reminded in that instant that you have never seen him with another girl, with anyone else, really, meaning that this is as foreign to him as it is to you. You swallow, and before you can burn away from the shame of asking, you steel yourself to it.

“Inside,” you say. “I want you inside of me, please, please…”

“You have to tell me if it hurts,” he says before indulging you slowly, methodically, with the same patience he uses to build those intricate models of his, the same delicacy and care. You groan at this newfound sensation, and immediately he freezes before beginning to withdraw, apologizing fervently until you cut him off before he can leave you empty again.

“Keep going,” you say. “Don’t leave.”

“Okay,” he says breathily, and then he is peppering kisses to your nape, you suppose to soothe your quivering, which only mounts more and more with every successive thrust of his fingers into you.

“I feel strange,” you say, and you don’t know whether an eternity has passed or a mere instant, for your mind is hazy and all you can think of is him and whatever is building deep within me. “An—Anaxa, Anaxa, I feel strange—”

“Do you want me to stop?” he says, without even teasing you for the way your tongue has grown so leaden in your mouth that you are stumbling over his name, the very name you are generally so fond of repeating as often as you can.

“No,” you say, your muscles involuntarily clenching at the mere prospect. “No, keep going, keep going, I just — my stomach, or no, not my stomach, somewhere else, I don’t know, I’ve never—”

Your babbling tapers off into a soft exhale as the edges of your vision blur and you clutch his arm so that you aren't swept away. He is saying something to you, but it takes a second for the air to return to your lungs and your awareness to creep back.

“It’s okay,” he says when you realize that there are crescent marks indented along the inside of his elbow where you have pressed into him, not hard enough to draw blood but enough that the skin there is angry and red. “It’s okay, it’s okay, please don’t worry. It’s okay.”

A single tear drips from the corner of your eye, and then another and another and another, splashing onto the sheets that your cheek is pressed to as you sniff in a vain attempt to suppress them before he can notice. But Anaxagoras is far too observant to miss it, and he pushes on your shoulder until you are flat on your back, so that he can loom over you, his brow furrowing as you cry in earnest.

Before he can ask you why you are being so irrational, you wrap your arms around his neck, knowing it is selfish but unable to stop yourself, tugging him closer to you until your lips meet, the salt of your sobs mingling with the taste of his sincere mouth. You cling to him, only drawing back to gasp for air briefly before you return to him once more, your hands beginning to wander until they are tugging his clothes off of him. He responds in kind, albeit with far more control than you, and then you are left bare, his chest to yours, his palms on the back of your head, your own skimming along the ridge of his spine.

“Are you sure?” he says, but it’s really more of a formality than anything, your legs already spreading wider to accommodate him, your fingers already combing through his hair. You nod anyways, and when he enters you, you begin to weep again, although it is not from pain, as you once thought it might be.

“Don’t leave tomorrow,” you beg. “Don’t leave me, I don’t want you to leave me — I’ve only just gotten you, please don’t leave tomorrow, please don’t leave—”

“I won’t,” he says, and he punctuates it with a roll of his hips against your own. “I’ll stay. I’ll stay here, I will, I will, I don’t care, I don’t care for the Grove or the merchants or any of it, I’ll stay with you, just like this.”

He kisses away your tears as he finishes on your thighs, and then his fingers find their home in you once more until you, too, are spent. You both lie side-by-side for a moment, neither of you looking at the other, the evidence of your union drying against your skin, pearly in the candlelight, and then he clears his throat.

“You know I still have to go,” he says, a little awkwardly.

“Yes,” you say, busying yourself with counting the dust motes swirling in the air.

“I shouldn’t have said I wouldn’t,” he says.

“I shouldn’t have asked you not to,” you say. “I didn’t mean it. I’m happy for you. This is what you’ve always wanted.”

“I’ve always wanted you, too,” he says, matter-of-factly, the simpleness with which he does so nearly caustic. It’s just another thing. Just another truth. He’s always wanted you, too.

“You don’t have to say that,” you say, feigning a laugh, because the time for crying has passed. “It’s not the same.”

“Yeah,” he says with a heavy sigh, because he knows better than to lie to you. “I guess not.”

“I’ll be here when you come back to visit,” you say. “And when we’re older, maybe I’ll go to the Grove, too. It’s not like this is goodbye forever.”

“Yes,” he says. “You should do that. Come to the Grove, I mean. Rhode is almost old enough to carry two people and their things for such a long journey, so you and Hellanike can ride her and cut the cost of the passage in half.”

“Exactly,” you say. “It won’t be that long. Long enough for you to gain some acclaim, but not long enough that you forget about me.”

“I won’t forget about you. Not ever,” he says, and then he helps you stand so that you can sneak towards the washroom, cleaning yourselves off together shyly, kissing only when you are sure that your footsteps have not caused Hellanike to stir.

You remain in his bed with him that night, your head on his chest, his knuckles rubbing against your cheek idly as you both drift off. The faint scent of mint and lemon soap sticks to him, and the steady rise and fall of his breathing is a melody all on its own, the kind of lullaby that even one of his pretty little tin birds could never replicate. It is easy for you to pretend like nothing will ever happen to the two of you, to fall asleep and dream of the countless nights you might spend exactly like this — but when you wake up the next morning, he is already gone, and you can pretend no longer.

“What’s that?” Lasthenia says. She’s given you paints again, but although they are your favorite medium, you cannot bring yourself to make anything beautiful from them. Instead, the colors bleed into one another, black ringing the canvas and red streaking through it, forming an incoherent tangle of something or another. Well, it may be incoherent to anyone else, but you can hear Hellanike’s voice emanating from the mess, can feel the floorboards digging into your back, can smell the corroding metal and taste rusty iron bursting from your unbitten tongue, so to you it’s the opposite.

“The bed,” you say. The page isn’t meant to take as much paint as you are slapping on it, and it crinkles in the most saturated places, protesting the thickness, but you continue without asking for a new sheet. “His bed.”

“The boy’s?” she guesses.

“Yes,” you say. “His bed at home.”

“Why is it dark?” she says.

“Because the girl is hiding beneath it,” you say without looking up, squinting and tilting your head before deciding that even now, it is too bright. Dipping the brush in the black ink, you splatter more without care for how it might fall, continuing to do this, although it is such a waste of what is no doubt the result of an entire month of efforts from some poor scholar or another.

“From him?” she says.

“No!” you say vehemently, for even the mere notion of hiding from him is unthinkable. “No, he left some time earlier to pursue greater things, and wherever he is, he is safe, at least. She’s hiding from the monsters.”

Lasthenia reaches across her desk to place a hand on your upper arm. The gesture is surprisingly maternal, but you do not allow yourself to dwell on it, because she isn’t your mother, she isn’t even Hellanike, and so you cannot embrace her and wail like a child.

“Such ugly things, those monsters,” you say. “They frighten that girl to no end, and worse so because they have paralyzed her completely. The boy’s dromas stopped its bellowing a few hours ago, and his sister has moved from pleading to resignation, and all the girl can do is hide under the bed and hope it ends soon.”

“And did it?” Lasthenia asks you.

For a moment, you think to yourself that if she pries your brush from your hands and embraces you, you will finally give in. But of course, why would she do that? This is only her job, dealing with people like you, who are too difficult for anyone else to manage. She holds no love for it, for you.

More dark ink. Now the entire canvas appears to have been dipped in black dye.

“No,” you say, finally satisfied with this final product. “She’s still there.”

“Still hiding?” Lasthenia says.

In the back of your mind, Hellanike is weeping, her throat too raw for anything more. You weep with her, though only in that place tucked far away from the rest of the world; to Lasthenia, to this abhorrent present where you are now, you only offer a tight smile.

“Yes,” you say. “I think so.”

A trumpeting cry from Rhode is the only advance warning you and Hellanike receive when the Black Tide comes. She’s uncommonly docile even for a dromas, and you’ve never heard her scream before — judging by the frown on Hellanike’s face, she hasn’t either, and so instead of rushing outside to comfort her, she hesitates, peering through the window first and then gasping.

“Lock all of the doors,” she instructs you, her gaze trained on the horizon.

“Hellanike?” you say. “What’s going on? Is Rhode alright?”

“There’s no time,” she says, and so rarely is she stern that you comply without further complaint, glancing at her one final time over your shoulder before checking all of the doors, making sure that they are secured before returning to her side.

Rhode is still causing a ruckus, and you are surprised that Hellanike has not gone to her yet. After all, she loves Rhode, more than anything or anyone except her little brother, so how can she leave her to her suffering? You almost ask, your mouth going so far as to open, but Hellanike raises her finger to her lips, shaking her head before you can.

“We can’t delay anymore,” she murmurs, and then she places a hand on the small of your back, pushing you towards the stairs. “I’ve heard stories from the merchants about these fiends. They’re called the Black Tide, and they kill everything they touch slowly, without mercy. They travel quickly, fleeing once they have wrought complete destruction, but sometimes, if you are a particularly good fighter, or if you can escape their notice…you can survive.”

“Then we must hide!” you say, reaching for her wrist so that you can yank her along with you. She pulls it out of your reach, leaving you bewildered, and then she shakes her head, her eyes crinkling at the corners

“You must hide. Hide, and no matter what you think you hear, do not leave until the beasts are well and truly gone,” she says.

“But what about you?” you say.

“Out there, they are killing Rhode,” she says gravely. “She is a dromas, and so she is no easy prey, but there is some gryphon-like creature rending her flesh with its claws, and soon she will fall and it will pounce upon her underbelly and she will die. It is her sacrifice which has given us a chance that no one else in the city got: a chance to adequately prepare ourselves. Maybe it’d be more prudent if I hid, but — but they are killing Rhode, don’t you see? I can’t.”

“You’re going to protect her,” you realize, because this is who Hellanike is. “Let me come!”

“Absolutely not,” she says. “I will not put you in danger. Enough of this; we’re running out of time. Go, and remember what I told you.”

“‘No matter what you think you hear, do not leave until the beasts are well and truly gone,’” you repeat uncertainly.

“Yes, that’s it,” she says.

“But—”

“No matter what,” she says emphatically, kissing your forehead afterwards with her typical good nature. “Darling little girl. Run now. Hide before it is too late.”

You want to tell her you won’t, but even in the best of times it is impossible and futile to argue with her, for she is more stubborn than she lets on, more stubborn than even her brother, who is notorious for the vice. So you turn and race up the stairs, crawling into the small space beneath Anaxagoras’s bed without thinking, lying flat and making yourself small behind his drooping blanket and praying to every titan you can think of to protect her, to protect you.

The day passes differently when you are stuck in a place like that. So many times you nearly stand in surrender, thinking that surely they must have moved on by now, but on each occasion, some instinct stops you. By the third occurrence, however, you resolve to ignore that insistence, but then the air is split by the moan of splintering wood, followed by a horrified shout.

Hellanike. The shout was definitely hers, and her words ring in your mind once more: no matter what you think you hear, do not leave until the beasts are well and truly gone. She swears loudly, and then there is the sound of fighting, of furniture breaking and dishes shattering on the ground, and all you can do is stuff your fist in your mouth, so that when you begin to sob in terror, at least it is soundless.

She sounds like a child when they tear into her, crying and shrieking, high-pitched and utterly frightened. You cannot see her, but her voice reverberates through the house, and so it is like you are there with her, watching those demonic creatures rip her into shreds until she resembles one of them, lifeless and bent in ways that should be impossible. Bile rises sour in your mouth, but you swallow it down, far too frightened at the prospect of accidentally inhaling it to even try spitting it out.

They are cruel and unhurried in killing her. You don’t know if they can understand revenge and so draw it out more than they otherwise would’ve, or if this is just how they always are; you also don’t know which of these options is worse, but that matters less. Whatever their motivations, the fact is that the Black Tide creatures take their time with Hellanike, refusing to kill her until she is reduced to an incomprehensible wreck that, in her final moments, can only whimper for her long-dead mother.

You don’t move from under the bed for what seems to be hours but could be more or less, and even then it is only because you hear footsteps, actual footsteps, not the spectral ones of the demons which have been haunting the house thus far. They are in a pattern you recognize, too, and so you clamber out of the cramped space and open the door to Anaxagoras without questioning why he is here, or how. You just fall against him, allowing him to hold you tightly, fisting the fabric of his himation for some semblance of grounding.

“You’re alive,” he says. “When I saw Rhode’s half-eaten carcass in her corral, I assumed the worst, but you — you’re alive.”

“Everyone else is gone,” you say, your knuckles pale as you cling to him with all the strength left in your cramped body.

“Everyone?” he says, and his body, which had relaxed so readily against yours only a few seconds prior, stiffens again. “What do you mean by that?”

The longer you don’t answer, the more you feel his panic begin to grow, but the worst part is that you cannot even tell him that what he is thinking is wrong. You know what his next question is, and he knows what you will answer it with, but the two of you go through the charade in miniature anyways, because he still has to do it. He still has to ask, he’s just that kind of person, there’s no version of him which ever won’t.

“Hey,” he says, though he does not push you from the safety of the crook of his neck, where you have buried your face. “Hey. Where’s Hellanike?”

“Lasthenia says that you and I should talk,” Anaxagoras says. When he had come to your chambers, you had half-expected him to stand motionless in the doorway as he always does, as he always has ever since you told him that his sister is dead. “I told her I’m trying, but she seems to think that’s not good enough.”

“What are we meant to talk about?” you say, and although you do not explicitly invite him, he is more than quick enough to read into your implication. Ducking into the room, he shoves the door behind him, allowing it to slam shut with an air of finality.

“You know,” he says.

“I don’t,” you say, continuing to massage oil into your face. You can see his form reflecting in the mirror — he is becoming more and more a man with every day he spends in the abundance of the Grove, impossible to ignore, muscles covering bare bones, scowls replacing awed smiles — but you do your best to act like you don’t.

“My sister,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“What?” you say. Of all the things you imagined he might come up with, the chance of that being the first thing he said to you was relatively low, if not nonexistent. Though then again, he thrives on such stakes, so maybe it’s not a surprise that he has once more proven himself eccentric.

“She died on her own terms,” he says. “You had nothing to do with it.”

The silver-backed mirror turns to water, your visage and his alike swimming in it, unsteady as the lump in your throat turns swollen and furious. You know you should set the bottle of oil down before you can drop it, because the crystal will be torturous to clean should it shatter, but the tendons of your hand have seized, and it’s all you can do to remember to breathe.

“I don’t blame you,” he continues. “Do you think I do?”

“I should’ve told her not to go to Rhode, to come and hide with me,” you say, your voice so quiet it is nearly inaudible. “I should’ve fought with her a little longer.”

“She never would’ve listened to you,” he says. “She would never have left Rhode like that.”

You squeeze your eyes shut. “Then I should’ve helped her. The two of us, maybe we could’ve—”

“You would’ve died,” he says dispassionately, cutting through the cacophony echoing in the chamber of your skull with an efficiency only he possesses. “You’re not some Kremnoan soldier or Okheman guard. You’re not a demigod or a Chrysos Heir. You can’t use a sword or a spear. What else would you have done but died as well?”

“Wouldn't it have been better that way?” you say.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “I would’ve had to mourn you both.”

“I’m sorry,” you say. “Anaxagoras, I’m sorry—”

“It’s not your fault,” he says again. You’ve lost track of how many times he’s repeated that phrase, but he hasn’t grown tired of it yet, and so he goes on. “Blaming yourself won’t change anything.”

“It should’ve been me,” you say.

“It shouldn’t have,” he says. “It shouldn’t have been anyone, but that tide is indiscriminate in who it takes.”

He shifts from foot to foot, like he is weighing the merits of further discussion, and you grieve for the time that the two of you spoke to each other without having to think about it. But now you are like this. Now his sister is dead and your home is destroyed and neither of you can ever go back.

“Thank you,” he says, all in a rush, like he cannot be rid of the words soon enough.

“What?” you say, taken aback.

“Lasthenia said I should be honest with you about how I feel,” he says. “So, thank you. For hiding. For running away. For living.”

When you finally bawl, it is excruciating, the months upon months that you have denied that blade of anguish from splitting you open compounding until you think it will kill you. You stain his tunic with your tears and cause blood to bead along his biceps from how you dig into him, and he does not complain, only murmuring in your ear in that wretched, broken voice of his, thick and profound with loss: it’s not your fault, I’ll bring her back, it’s not your fault, thank you for being alive, it’s not your fault, I love you. I love you. It’s not your fault. I love you.

image credits: official scene recoloring and blue line dividers by me; beige line dividers by @/thecutestgrotto

#choki reblogs #mdni #THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT I COULD HAVE ASKED FOR THANK YOU MIRAAA #if we weren't already this would've turned us into fellow top goons locked in 4L twin..#SFJHFDB I LOVED THIS #IT'S JUST SO PEAK...#THE WRITING IS FR THIS FIRE

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chokifandom · 6 days ago

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OMGOMG SORRY THIS REBLOG IS SO LATE I WAITED UNTIL I GOT HOME TO READ THIS BECAUSE I WANTED TO LOCK IN !!! THANK YOU SM MY DEAR MIRA FOR THIS IT IS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL 💖💖💖 and one of the best profnax fics i have read!!!