Weep, little lion man
Characters: Cassandra; Hyacinthus
Date/Time: Tonight
Location: Their apartment
Rating: PG-13 for owies
Warnings: Mentions of violence
Summary: Hyacinthus gets into a spot of trouble and Cassandra helps him out.
It wasn't Hyacinthus' day. It really wasn't. He let himself into the apartment, his hand trembling so much that he dropped his keys five times. It was dark in the living room and he immediately put on the lights. Darkness was just too terrifying right now.
He peered at the mirror on the wall and winced. The right side of his face was already swollen and his right eye was black and swollen shut. When he was running away from the guys who attacked him, he slipped and fell onto his outstretched hand so now his wrist was killing him. His ribs hurt whenever he took a breath. He stared at himself in abject horror and now the panic was starting to set in. He had just been walking home the library, that's all. It was late, sure, but he wasn't expecting four big guys to suddenly set on him. He still had his keys, fortunately, but his bag was gone, his laptop (that he still didn't really know how to use), his phone. Frozen to the spot, Hyacinthus had no idea what to do now that he was safe (though he wasn't sure how safe he was in this apartment).
Cassandra had been laying in her room, half reading, half day dreaming (could it really be called that when you do it at night?) and the sound of her roommate coming in startled her. She slipped out of her room to great him, wanting to make some tea and see if he wanted any.
A gasp escaped her when she saw the damage done to him. "Hyacinth-" she said quietly as she slowly walked towards him. The point wasn't to scare him. "What happened?"
In spite of Cassandra's best efforts, Hyacinthus visibly flinched at her approach. His one good eye was wide and his hair was a mess; in short, he looked like an utter vagrant. He clasped his ribs with his good hand and turned slowly to look at her, fearfully.
Almost dreamily, he murmured, "I'm not s- I. Uhm. Oh, gods." With that, he crumpled up slowly, almost gracefully, landing on the floor of the living room in a heap as he suddenly, forcefully understood what had happened.
"Fuck-" Growing up with a lot of brother had made Cassandra not have the cleanest of mouths, though she did manage to hide it usually. She rushed over to him and crouched down next to him. "Can you move? I'll get you up on the couch."
After she helped him move, she would go get the first aid kit and patch him up as best she could. "You don't have to tell me, let me just help clean you up." Maybe after that she could find out what happened, the poor boy.
Hyacinthus watched as Cassandra went to fetch the first-aid kit and was so close to begging her not to leave his sight. He might not have known his roommate very well but he felt considerably safer in her presence. It didn't even occur to him that this did not tally with what Apollo had told him because, right now, Hyacinthus was scared.
He sat patiently, both hands pinned between his knees, although that hurt quite a lot. Brokenly, he said, when she came back, "They took all my stuff. Wh-why would they do that?"
Oh gods, he was so innocent. He hadn't experienced everything that she had between living through the war and being a slave. No one deserved to have that innocence taken from them. Cassandra sat down next to him and carefully began to dab at the cuts and bruises Hyacinth was covered with.
"Humanity is not known for its kindness," she said quietly. "Greed for anything tends to overwhelm even the best people and they do hurtful things." She reached up and brushed a lock of his hair aside. "It's alright though, Hyacinthus, you're safe here."
"I don't." He paused and swallowed, before managing to stutter a very quiet thank you. He fidgeted as Cassandra tended to his injuries but, to his credit, he didn't flinch. He swallowed, thickly. "My ph-phone. Everything's gone."
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the names they had called him because even though they were true (gay boy and pretty boy), they had made them sound like insults; like he was no son of Kleio or beloved (or at least temporary possession) of a god. He tried not to think about the fact that he thought he knew those men from campus. "Is Medusa here?" he asked, almost to change the subject, though she was hardly less frightening than the ordeal he had just endured.
"You're the child of a muse," Cassandra said with a slight smile. "That's different." She hissed quietly out of anger and sympathy when she took his wrists to clean them. "We'll get you new ones. Either through Cronus or some other way. Don't worry about those."
It didn't matter to her that Hyacinthus was also Apollo's lover; she still had the ancient views on relationships and didn't plan on changing her views any time soon. "No, she isn't. It's just us right now."
Hyacinthus came close to smiling, though it was a little grotesque with his injuries. He obviously relaxed, though, knowing that Medusa wasn't there. "They're only things though. They're not. They're not real. Wh-why would they take them?" He shook his head, though that hurt a little, exacerbating the slowly-building headache that had begun around the back of his head. "Why would th-they hurt someone to take them?"
He looked at Cassandra, then, something urgent in his eyes. "Did I do something?"
"It's for the money," she said, still quiet. As Cassandra wrapped gauze on his wrists, she was considering how to go on when his question blew all other thoughts out of her mind. She looked up at him, making sure she was staring directly into his eyes before she answered.
"This was not your fault, Hyacinthus. Nothing you did provoked this-" as far as Cassandra knew anyway. She doubted he could ever do anything to provoke this. "And it is absolutely not your fault. Trust me on this."
As naively as only a Hyacinthus could, he frowned. "Money? That's - that's no reason." He understood war and battle and revenge but money? He wasn't sure he liked the twenty-first century (at least that part of it that he spent out of Apollo's bed).
He couldn't help but look Cassandra in the eyes and though she was scarily intense, he did trust her. She was so sincere that he believed that she was telling the truth. "Oh. Okay." He nodded (hurt!) and squeezed his good eye shut and relaxed the tiniest bit more (and if a tear did slip out from the corner of his eye, he certainly wasn't going to draw attention to it). "You. Uhm. Th-thank you."
He looked down at his bandaged hands then, suddenly and desperately missing his family. Softly, he murmured, "I'm not sure I like it here."
"Money means everything to these people, unfortunately. Honor is not nearly as important as it once was." On an impulse, Cassandra leaned forward and hugged the younger man. She made sure to be careful-so she wouldn't hurt him and so he could pull away if he wanted.
"I...have mixed feelings about it," she admitted quietly. "I miss my family-though Helenus is here and that makes it more bareable. I miss how things were. But...I don't miss the war. I don't miss what happened to me after." His life had been so very different from hers and it was something she couldn't even begin to imagine. Not having visions, that she could handle, but life without war or slavery was still too good for her to want to give this modern, insane world up.
"I miss my family too," he admitted. "I miss my mother." He raised his eyes to look at her again, almost smiling. "I know. It's rather daft. I'm a man, full-grown, and I miss my mother."
Tentatively, then, he continued, unsure of how much to say. He was determined, however, to be as honest as he could be to this woman who had helped him. "It's why I'm glad that Apollo is here. He's the only one I know. The only one I remember." He bit his lip (pain!). "It must be nice having your brother here."
She laughed quietly. "I'm 31 and I still miss my mother. It's not something that ever goes away." A nod while she reached up and wiped at his lip a bit to try and get rid of the blood there. Cassandra never really could stop looking after people.
"I didn't have anyone here that I knew." Surrounded by Greeks, all except for Ganymede, whom she barely knew. "It is, incredibly nice. The last...several years of my life before I was brought here were spent as a concubine with the invader of my city. Having even just one member of my family is making it better." If he pushed, Hyacinthus could probably get Cassandra to tell him what had happened to her, something she never told anyone before and would only feel comfortable doing so because Hya obviously needed to see that it wasn't that bad here.
Hyacinthus was heartened to hear that admission. He frowned, though, at the mentioned of Cassandra's history. "You were… Oh. Oh, gods, that's awful." Hyacinthus was just innocent enough that he could hardly believe that such bad things happened to people, even when he himself had just been beaten up.
"What- what happened?" He blushed. "I'm very behind on my history, you know."
"You came before my time," she told him. "You wouldn't have known about it unless you looked me up online." Not that she expected that.
A quiet sigh escaped as she looked to the side for a moment to try to gather herself. "Troy was beseiged for 10 years by the Greeks. I fortold events but...Apollo cursed me to not be believed so no one heeded my warnings. We fell to the Greeks." That part was easy to get out.
"When our city was being sacked, Ajax the lesser stole into Apollo's temple and raped me in front of the statue of Athena-it had been brought for safe keeping to us." All of this was said in a flat, almost bored tone. The horror of it would never really go away and it was the only way she could speak of it. "Then...Agamemnon claimed me as his slave and I went with him make to his home. I was brought here before I was able to see his death, though I saw it in a vision."
He almost smiled. "Online? Well, th-they took my laptop so…"
He went very still, then, listening to Cassandra's story and his horror was plain in his expression (in spite of his injuries, Hyacinthus' face was still so expressive).
"Oh Cassandra," he said quietly. "I'm so sorry. Oh, gods, in front of the gods, too." He reached out and touched one of his bandaged hands to the back of her hand in some attempt at solidarity or at least sympathy.
Her smile was lopsided-obviously an effort-but still it was there. She reached over and patted his arm before she answered. "I don't...it's not something I try to think about a lot," Cassandra admitted. "If I dwell on it, I lose my grip on reality too easily."
He should be aware that she was insane. "And I almost appreciate that Agagmemnon took me-it meant I didn't have to stay with Ajax." That thought sent a shudder through her entire body. He still terrified her. "But-well. Yes."
The way her body shook alarmed Hyacinthus and, with little thought to his own injuries, he put an arm around her shoulders.
"I'm glad it's better here, for you," he said, suddenly. "Maybe there's, uhm, some hope for us all?"
Cassandra returned the one arm hug, her smile becoming real. "It can be, I think." She glanced over at him. "Despite their cruelty I think that this place can be better for all of us."
"Who knows, maybe you'll find something you couldn't live without here."
Date/Time: Tonight
Location: Their apartment
Rating: PG-13 for owies
Warnings: Mentions of violence
Summary: Hyacinthus gets into a spot of trouble and Cassandra helps him out.
It wasn't Hyacinthus' day. It really wasn't. He let himself into the apartment, his hand trembling so much that he dropped his keys five times. It was dark in the living room and he immediately put on the lights. Darkness was just too terrifying right now.
He peered at the mirror on the wall and winced. The right side of his face was already swollen and his right eye was black and swollen shut. When he was running away from the guys who attacked him, he slipped and fell onto his outstretched hand so now his wrist was killing him. His ribs hurt whenever he took a breath. He stared at himself in abject horror and now the panic was starting to set in. He had just been walking home the library, that's all. It was late, sure, but he wasn't expecting four big guys to suddenly set on him. He still had his keys, fortunately, but his bag was gone, his laptop (that he still didn't really know how to use), his phone. Frozen to the spot, Hyacinthus had no idea what to do now that he was safe (though he wasn't sure how safe he was in this apartment).
Cassandra had been laying in her room, half reading, half day dreaming (could it really be called that when you do it at night?) and the sound of her roommate coming in startled her. She slipped out of her room to great him, wanting to make some tea and see if he wanted any.
A gasp escaped her when she saw the damage done to him. "Hyacinth-" she said quietly as she slowly walked towards him. The point wasn't to scare him. "What happened?"
In spite of Cassandra's best efforts, Hyacinthus visibly flinched at her approach. His one good eye was wide and his hair was a mess; in short, he looked like an utter vagrant. He clasped his ribs with his good hand and turned slowly to look at her, fearfully.
Almost dreamily, he murmured, "I'm not s- I. Uhm. Oh, gods." With that, he crumpled up slowly, almost gracefully, landing on the floor of the living room in a heap as he suddenly, forcefully understood what had happened.
"Fuck-" Growing up with a lot of brother had made Cassandra not have the cleanest of mouths, though she did manage to hide it usually. She rushed over to him and crouched down next to him. "Can you move? I'll get you up on the couch."
After she helped him move, she would go get the first aid kit and patch him up as best she could. "You don't have to tell me, let me just help clean you up." Maybe after that she could find out what happened, the poor boy.
Hyacinthus watched as Cassandra went to fetch the first-aid kit and was so close to begging her not to leave his sight. He might not have known his roommate very well but he felt considerably safer in her presence. It didn't even occur to him that this did not tally with what Apollo had told him because, right now, Hyacinthus was scared.
He sat patiently, both hands pinned between his knees, although that hurt quite a lot. Brokenly, he said, when she came back, "They took all my stuff. Wh-why would they do that?"
Oh gods, he was so innocent. He hadn't experienced everything that she had between living through the war and being a slave. No one deserved to have that innocence taken from them. Cassandra sat down next to him and carefully began to dab at the cuts and bruises Hyacinth was covered with.
"Humanity is not known for its kindness," she said quietly. "Greed for anything tends to overwhelm even the best people and they do hurtful things." She reached up and brushed a lock of his hair aside. "It's alright though, Hyacinthus, you're safe here."
"I don't." He paused and swallowed, before managing to stutter a very quiet thank you. He fidgeted as Cassandra tended to his injuries but, to his credit, he didn't flinch. He swallowed, thickly. "My ph-phone. Everything's gone."
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the names they had called him because even though they were true (gay boy and pretty boy), they had made them sound like insults; like he was no son of Kleio or beloved (or at least temporary possession) of a god. He tried not to think about the fact that he thought he knew those men from campus. "Is Medusa here?" he asked, almost to change the subject, though she was hardly less frightening than the ordeal he had just endured.
"You're the child of a muse," Cassandra said with a slight smile. "That's different." She hissed quietly out of anger and sympathy when she took his wrists to clean them. "We'll get you new ones. Either through Cronus or some other way. Don't worry about those."
It didn't matter to her that Hyacinthus was also Apollo's lover; she still had the ancient views on relationships and didn't plan on changing her views any time soon. "No, she isn't. It's just us right now."
Hyacinthus came close to smiling, though it was a little grotesque with his injuries. He obviously relaxed, though, knowing that Medusa wasn't there. "They're only things though. They're not. They're not real. Wh-why would they take them?" He shook his head, though that hurt a little, exacerbating the slowly-building headache that had begun around the back of his head. "Why would th-they hurt someone to take them?"
He looked at Cassandra, then, something urgent in his eyes. "Did I do something?"
"It's for the money," she said, still quiet. As Cassandra wrapped gauze on his wrists, she was considering how to go on when his question blew all other thoughts out of her mind. She looked up at him, making sure she was staring directly into his eyes before she answered.
"This was not your fault, Hyacinthus. Nothing you did provoked this-" as far as Cassandra knew anyway. She doubted he could ever do anything to provoke this. "And it is absolutely not your fault. Trust me on this."
As naively as only a Hyacinthus could, he frowned. "Money? That's - that's no reason." He understood war and battle and revenge but money? He wasn't sure he liked the twenty-first century (at least that part of it that he spent out of Apollo's bed).
He couldn't help but look Cassandra in the eyes and though she was scarily intense, he did trust her. She was so sincere that he believed that she was telling the truth. "Oh. Okay." He nodded (hurt!) and squeezed his good eye shut and relaxed the tiniest bit more (and if a tear did slip out from the corner of his eye, he certainly wasn't going to draw attention to it). "You. Uhm. Th-thank you."
He looked down at his bandaged hands then, suddenly and desperately missing his family. Softly, he murmured, "I'm not sure I like it here."
"Money means everything to these people, unfortunately. Honor is not nearly as important as it once was." On an impulse, Cassandra leaned forward and hugged the younger man. She made sure to be careful-so she wouldn't hurt him and so he could pull away if he wanted.
"I...have mixed feelings about it," she admitted quietly. "I miss my family-though Helenus is here and that makes it more bareable. I miss how things were. But...I don't miss the war. I don't miss what happened to me after." His life had been so very different from hers and it was something she couldn't even begin to imagine. Not having visions, that she could handle, but life without war or slavery was still too good for her to want to give this modern, insane world up.
"I miss my family too," he admitted. "I miss my mother." He raised his eyes to look at her again, almost smiling. "I know. It's rather daft. I'm a man, full-grown, and I miss my mother."
Tentatively, then, he continued, unsure of how much to say. He was determined, however, to be as honest as he could be to this woman who had helped him. "It's why I'm glad that Apollo is here. He's the only one I know. The only one I remember." He bit his lip (pain!). "It must be nice having your brother here."
She laughed quietly. "I'm 31 and I still miss my mother. It's not something that ever goes away." A nod while she reached up and wiped at his lip a bit to try and get rid of the blood there. Cassandra never really could stop looking after people.
"I didn't have anyone here that I knew." Surrounded by Greeks, all except for Ganymede, whom she barely knew. "It is, incredibly nice. The last...several years of my life before I was brought here were spent as a concubine with the invader of my city. Having even just one member of my family is making it better." If he pushed, Hyacinthus could probably get Cassandra to tell him what had happened to her, something she never told anyone before and would only feel comfortable doing so because Hya obviously needed to see that it wasn't that bad here.
Hyacinthus was heartened to hear that admission. He frowned, though, at the mentioned of Cassandra's history. "You were… Oh. Oh, gods, that's awful." Hyacinthus was just innocent enough that he could hardly believe that such bad things happened to people, even when he himself had just been beaten up.
"What- what happened?" He blushed. "I'm very behind on my history, you know."
"You came before my time," she told him. "You wouldn't have known about it unless you looked me up online." Not that she expected that.
A quiet sigh escaped as she looked to the side for a moment to try to gather herself. "Troy was beseiged for 10 years by the Greeks. I fortold events but...Apollo cursed me to not be believed so no one heeded my warnings. We fell to the Greeks." That part was easy to get out.
"When our city was being sacked, Ajax the lesser stole into Apollo's temple and raped me in front of the statue of Athena-it had been brought for safe keeping to us." All of this was said in a flat, almost bored tone. The horror of it would never really go away and it was the only way she could speak of it. "Then...Agamemnon claimed me as his slave and I went with him make to his home. I was brought here before I was able to see his death, though I saw it in a vision."
He almost smiled. "Online? Well, th-they took my laptop so…"
He went very still, then, listening to Cassandra's story and his horror was plain in his expression (in spite of his injuries, Hyacinthus' face was still so expressive).
"Oh Cassandra," he said quietly. "I'm so sorry. Oh, gods, in front of the gods, too." He reached out and touched one of his bandaged hands to the back of her hand in some attempt at solidarity or at least sympathy.
Her smile was lopsided-obviously an effort-but still it was there. She reached over and patted his arm before she answered. "I don't...it's not something I try to think about a lot," Cassandra admitted. "If I dwell on it, I lose my grip on reality too easily."
He should be aware that she was insane. "And I almost appreciate that Agagmemnon took me-it meant I didn't have to stay with Ajax." That thought sent a shudder through her entire body. He still terrified her. "But-well. Yes."
The way her body shook alarmed Hyacinthus and, with little thought to his own injuries, he put an arm around her shoulders.
"I'm glad it's better here, for you," he said, suddenly. "Maybe there's, uhm, some hope for us all?"
Cassandra returned the one arm hug, her smile becoming real. "It can be, I think." She glanced over at him. "Despite their cruelty I think that this place can be better for all of us."
"Who knows, maybe you'll find something you couldn't live without here."