Aug 13, 2008 20:31
Title: Conversations in the Dark
Author: Caeria
Fandom: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys & Xena: Warrior Princess
Rating: G
Pairing: Ares
Summary: The last Greek god gives his confession to a Catholic priest. (PG)
As I'm posting old fics, and this one is really old, I give fair warning . . . you really have to had watched Hercules and Xena for this to make any sense.
Conversations in the Dark
New Author’s Note (Aug08): Anyone who is reading my current stories will have heard me whine about the fact that I hate writing conversations between characters and feel that I do a horrible job of it. In reading through my old stories, I think that dislike has been with me for a while. This story just proves how far I’ll go to NOT write a conversation between two characters.
Original Author’s Note: This one is a little different but it was stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. I don't think I would classify it as a story and it sure isn't a PWP so I'm not exactly sure what it is.
“Startled you, didn’t I, priest of the one god?”
“Don’t bother lying, I know the smell of fear -- that sudden, sharp tang of sweat and adrenaline. It is not a smell ever forgotten though it has been a long time since I've inspired it."
"But it matter not. You have nothing to fear. It would seem that I’ve finally learned a measure of subtly, for I truly thought to come and go from this place with none the wiser. But I found myself remembering the past and became caught in this place of the dead.”
“You smile, thinking me harmless now. I said that you had nothing to fear from me, do not mistake that for harmless.”
“Ah, you back away. I have scared you again. Perhaps it is for the best, for I suspect sometimes that I am not quite sane."
“What am I doing here? I’ve come to retrieve something that is mine. Something I lost a very long time ago. Though as I’ve wandered your halls, I’ve seen quite a few things here in this place that belong to me and mine.”
“Call you Father Michael? No, I think not. Just Michael will do.”
“Speak, Michael, you look as if you would ask a question?”
“Ahhh, the big question. Who am I and what am I doing here? I think the answer to that one might truly scare you, young Michael, if you were to believe.”
“Very well, but remember you asked for this telling. A story . . . yes, done the old way, the forgotten way. Forgive me if I laugh but who would have thought that I would give my tale, my confession, if you will, to such as you. The world has changed indeed - changed in wonderful and terrible ways. Take this city. Rome was beautiful once, you know. The marble gleamed in the sunlight and the city was filled with pride and knowledge. Caesar would rage if he saw what it has become. A sprawling, dirty gathering place for gawking tourists and con men who sell fake statues outside the place where once his palace stood.”
“I speak of Caesar as if I knew him because I did know him. I knew his brilliance, and his hate, and his insanity."
“But I digress. I said I would tell you who I was and in that telling give you a story. You might want to sit, Michael, this will be a long tale. Sit, yes. There. I doubt that warrior would care if you used his coffin for a seat. Where was I? Oh, yes. I sing a song of old. I sing a song of gods and goddesses in a time long past and of Xena, the Warrior Princess and the Amazon-Bard, Gabrielle. I sing of the final days. I sing of Ares, God of War.”
“It was a time of change. Caesar marched upon the world, the glory that was Greece fading before the emerging might of Rome. The people who had worshipped the gods faithfully for centuries were turning away, finding newer gods, newer ways. Aphrodite was becoming Venus, Zeus merging with Jupiter. Your historians say the gods were the same, just different names. That isn’t true. It weakened them, made them less than they were in subtle ways. Power stretched to thin, to cover too many attributes. And then there was the influence of the one gods. . .”
“What? Oh. Sorry. Lost in my memories, it happens more and more of late. Especially in this place, where the statues and the marbles bring the memories close. The one gods, they were considered a joke in the beginning, for how could one god rule everything. And there was more than one religion of the one god. Yours was quiet in the beginning. The other was . . . less subtle. More dangerous. Dahok and his only begotten daughter, Hope.”
“According to your views, priest, my soul is lost. If I have a soul still, Dahok and Hope condemned it to the lowest levels of Tartarus. At the time, I did what I thought best. My mistake -- I think, I pay for it still.”
“But I was telling you of the end of the Gods and of Ares and Xena and Gabrielle. You don’t remember Xena or Gabrielle in this time. Just as well. They wouldn’t want to be remembered. To have statues of them, of her, placed here in these forgotten corridors. To have charkram and staff on display for tourists to point and wonder over.”
“Yes, perceptive of you. That is indeed bitterness you hear in my voice. Along with a soul deep weariness you can not imagine. The death of the gods was slow, by degrees and the turning of the seasons. Fading away with the mists, lying down to sleep and never waking. That is the way of the ones that are forgotten. I think now that it is the way it should be. No pain or loss just endless dreams and death.”
“Except the God of War, in his arrogance, decided on a plan. He knew, you see. He saw and understood the decline, the changes that were slowly creeping across the world. For war is ever the harbinger of change. And change was definitely coming.”
“You look at me with skepticism in your eyes. You don’t believe in the gods of old. To you they are but myths and fantasies. You are wrong. They lived. Your god is distant from you. They . . . they were ever close. It was that very closeness that gave Ares his plan and the means to implement it. So he gathered his strength and his power and tied it into the very blood of Xena and Gabrielle, tied it deep and in their bones so that it was a curse . . . or maybe a blessing. And then he faked a fall in battle, caused the others to seal him up in a tomb of stone deep within the earth to sleep and wait for the turning of the seasons.”
“Through the bloodlines he viewed the passage of time, watched new gods come and go, beheld wars and peace and wars again. All through it all he laughed in his dark slumber, thinking that he had beat the fading until a child of their blood, of his blood, should set him free. He awoke in the 1940s and fought the descendants of those he knew best. Fought and lost. The loss cost him a decade. Ten years to climb out from under the mountain they dropped on his head. Gaea holds tight to her greatgrandchilden even in her own sleep of the forgotten.”
“Did you know priest that way to hold a god? Gaea, Mother Earth, birthed Rhea who birthed Zeus who fathered the rest. She is the beginning. It is why the gods could be trapped under rock and stone. Don’t shake your head. I know, well, of what I speak.”
“It took ten years for Ares to emerge into the light to proclaim himself a god once more.”
“Strange the passage of time. He thought that with wars still raging his power would be supreme. In his arrogance and pride Ares forgot one small thing - no one believed. You can not be a god with no followers. It started slowly, the power fading away bit by slow bit. The wars and the conflicts were enough to keep him immortal but nothing more.”
“Almost fifty years has passed since War stepped out to walk the earth once more.”
“Fifty years of being a god with no believers.”
“Fifty years of chasing the mortal children of his blood.”
“Fifty years of remembering a past only seen in dusty museums.”
“Fifty years of being alone.”
“And gods, priest, were never meant to be alone.”
“Which brings us here to this place of shadowed halls, and you, and the end of my tale. To the greatest temple to your one god. The Vatican. Rome. It brings me to you, Michael, with your red-blond hair and eyes of sharpest blue. Blood runs true you see - Xena’s blood and Gabrielle’s . . . and mine. Children born and drawn together by the magic in the blood to birth more children to find the others to repeat the cycle again. A blessing and a curse, we three forever bound together.”
“You seemed shocked, Michael. The fear in your eyes is back. You understand now. But surely you guessed? No? Well, it doesn’t matter now. Tonight, I break the cycle. You see that case there.”
“Yes, that one with the dagger.”
“It is called the Hind’s Blood dagger. Death’s dagger, really, for it is stained with the lifesblood of one golden creature and two gods.”
“I am Ares, though God of War no longer. And I am tired and alone.”
“That is the end of my tale. Time for me to go.”
“No, don’t get up. For I have what I came for and more. Blood does tell after all. And priest of the one god or not, you believe. In the morning light, you will doubt, but right now . . . right now you are mine. A heady thing is the taste of belief and power after so long.”
“So I will take my dagger and I will go down to the Halls of War one last time. Maybe Gaia will let me sleep in her arms to join the dreaming of the others. If not, then I will have the dagger and perhaps . . . perhaps Hades will welcome me in Tartarus after all.”
~End~
fanfic,
hercules,
xena