Nocturne
After six months, he stopped trying to keep track of how long he'd been gone.
Today - this evening? Sometime, anyway - he looks around an empty office. For the first time in his memory - and honestly, his memory isn't all that bad, for all that it is sometimes not quite so precise as Nick's - for the first time in his memory, there's no paperwork on his desk. Or perhaps it's better to be specific and say that there is no paperwork there because there is no paperwork left that he needs to deal with, at all, because all of it has already been filled out, and organized, and filed.
Something to be said for (unwanted, to be sure) celibacy. It certainly leaves a fair bit of extra time lying around.
His fingers tap out a rhythm on the doorframe, somewhere between andante and allegro, and a moment later he pushes himself away from the wall, and the door shuts behind him as he leaves his office behind.
A hand on his arm - Ozymandias' - stops him. "Are you sure you want to be doing this, My Lord?"
A faint smile, perhaps not entirely reassuring. "I have My reasons, 'Mandias."
"Yes, well, I'm sure that's very mysterious of you, My Lord, but it doesn't really leave us much information, now does it." Sharp.
Calmly: "Fuck you, 'Mandias. This, as with everything else, I will do My way."
The ancient king scowls. Then, carefully, "You'd best be careful, My Lord. Going around saying things like that. Might be taken as an offer."
He laughs, softly, shaking his head, and then studies the man for a long moment, still calm. He knows what he plans to do, after all, and he will not change his plans now. "Do you want it to be?"
For the first time in well over eight hundred years, Ozymandias looks discomfited. "I - " He drops his gaze. "Is it?"
His hand slips into his pocket, thumb smoothing over the faint almost imperceptible ridges in the ring. "No. It isn't. I'll see you around, 'Mandias."
And then he slips out this door, too.
It's possible that Purgatory would have been a better place for this - less likelihood of stray mortals, after all - but the Purgatory Computer had registered a complaint at the prospect of having a situation like this on public grounds, and none of the Incarnations truly trusted each other enough to allow one to host the lovely little get-together.
Gaea is one of the first to arrive, already waiting by the time he makes it up from the Gates of Hell. She is clad in mists of green, and she is troubled, if the stormclouds on the horizon are as accurate a judge of Mother Nature's mood as usual.
Ares is there as well, striding up a moment later, red sword out and swung around almost carelessly, splitting the air around him. A nervous habit, for War. Somewhere between anxious and angry, perhaps.
Fate slides in on a thin thread, a slight body nervously shifting between forms. Clotho is beautiful, blonde again, hands twisting in her ball of thread. Lachesis is visibly worried, despite attempts to keep her matronly face blank and calm. Atropos doesn't bother, shears snapping quietly but audibly whenever she is in control.
Chronos, at least, is calm, watching with unreadable eyes, in white robes and carrying the Hourglass. He is silent, as well.
And then there is Thanatos, a skeleton in black robes, carrying his scythe. Death is as unreadable as Time, behind his mask of a skull.
There is another blonde woman as well, sitting in Mortis' passenger seat. She has had many trials in her short life, but this is not her story, and she steps out of the car and comes forward, stopping in front of him.
He studies her, for a long moment, but they have spoken before, and most of his questions have already been answered.
"You're ready?"
She nods, not quite formal enough to be a bow.
"I am."
His hand reaches out, catching beneath her chin, pulling her up again to look him in the eye.
"I'd rather you not start bowing to me now, when you'll have no reason for it soon enough, Orlene."
She smiles, a little, and then nods. "As you say," she says, with an almost audible My Lord removed from the end.
He refrains from rolling his eyes, looking around briefly at the other Incarnations. Only Chronos meets his eyes, nodding slightly, for all that this is still somehow slightly less than reassuring.
"Let's see if this works, then, shall we?"
"But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living... for the price of wisdom is above rubies."
He hadn't thought it would hurt quite so much as this, with his back on fire, as he turns away from the brightness of the light that had been before him.
But it's enough to blind, to burn, to rip and shred, and he is no longer so strong as he was only minutes ago.
His world narrows to pain and light and the ring cutting into his hand, and then darkness.
(The Book of Job, Chapter 28, verses 12, 13, 18)