You look familiar...
Characters: Cassandra and Apollo
Setting/Location: The Beasts' hallways
Date & Time: Day 8, morning
Warnings: Possible language and flying fruit
Summary: Cassandra and Apollo reunite. There will be blood.
( ...Like your dead girlfriend )
But mostly, he was distracted by playing with this strange journal he had been given. He hadn't quite convinced himself that this wasn't a dream yet, or some sort of elaborate scheme set up by one of the gods--he wasn't sure which one--but this had seemed even more likely after he'd spotted Cassandra at the masked ball. Too much of a coincidence--especially considering the fact that she'd been dead for a good hundred years by now.
And there she was. He saw her before she saw him, and he paused in the hallway, leaning against the wall as he observed her for a few, brief moments. It was his first time seeing her without the mask. He'd known that night, but now there was no mistaking it. There was that hair, that chin, that graceful frame.
Apollo wasn't quite sure how that made him feel. Largely, irritated. She was supposed to be dead. What was she doing here?
He wasn't sure if she would run away or begin cursing him when she finally looked up.
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Or better yet, Othryoneus?
Of course, it wasn't a dream. There he was.
From Cassandra's perspective, it had been about a year since they last saw one another, but she couldn't help but wonder how long it had been for him. Although she had memories of him imprinted on her soul like a handprint, she had forgotten things. How handsome he was, for one thing. And how dangerous.
That's when it occurred to her. And she was surprised it hadn't sooner. "So you're the one who brought me here."
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"Don't be absurd," Apollo drawled, remaining where he was, leaned against the wall. Any closer and he'd spook her, like a startled deer. He had to keep a distance.
"Why would I bring you to this place?" He gestured around vaguely. "This, my dear, is hardly my style. If I were to somehow pull you out of the underworld and drag you away, I would have had the decency to drag you somewhere with a better view."
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This, of course, presented a whole separate set of questions.
Cassandra loosened her grip on the apple slightly. She still wasn't inclined to get too close to him, but for the moment, she would hold back from any sort of violence. "If you dislike the decor so much, why are you here? It seems impossible that great Phoebus Apollo would be subject to the whims of the Gate. Or whatever it was that brought me here."
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"For now, I'm biding my time. It seems that we aren't the only ones in this strange predicament."
He eyed her, though not with any sort of wolfish hunger. She was certainly alive, this wasn't any sort of ghostly apparition. The question wasn't what but how. He'd seen her die himself. "And you? How did you get here?"
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"I went to sleep," she replied with a shrug. "And I woke up here. Shouldn't come as a surprise, I suppose. I've been bounced around from place to place for a few years now."
The scent of the apple had reached her, abruptly drawing her attention. Sense memory seized hold of her and she thought about the last time they had seen one another, in her mind. It had been another sunrise. In Agamemnon's bedchamber on the ship. A night that would be utterly impossible to forget. Of course, it had only been a year ago. For her.
"How long has it been?" she asked him quietly.
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"That explains that answer you gave at the ball," he went on. "Rowan. That confused me, I must admit. Threw me off your scent." He ran his fingers through his hair, frowning. "What is Rowan?"
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She folded her hands behind her back. In her mind, she knew precisely what she was doing, she was falling back upon her old habits of playing the loon. And despite all of the progress she had made in the past year, all of the strides she had taken toward getting out of these patterns, she was falling right back into them. It made sense, on some level. The patterns had started with him. But she didn't want to regress and her mind was screaming at her to stop. But she couldn't.
"You'd like it, really," she hissed softly. "Plenty of beautiful girls and naive worshippers to be had. I was immediately claimed by their god of blood vengeance. I can't think why."
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He pushed himself back from the wall, taking a few confident strides over to her. "By the way," he murmured as he approached, "It doesn't bother you if I come a little bit closer, does it?"
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"It's been longer for you, hasn't it?" she murmured. That was a bit of a disappointment. She had been gratified to think that upon her death, she had somehow changed Apollo, but here he was, as lurid and sly as ever. Either she had had no effect on him at all, or else he had simply reverted to his old ways over many years. Just how many years, of course, she couldn't say, but something told her he wasn't exactly from Ianto's time, nor from hers.
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He folded his arms behind his back, inclining his head in polite inquiry. "Longer? Perhaps. I can't really answer that, since I don't know how long it's been for you." She looked young, but then again, she also looked alive when she ought to have been a skeleton.
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The weight of that year was a bit overwhelming. Of course, Apollo couldn't know that. It had been a very, very long year, though.
"I went from Agamemnon's bath house to a city called Jhelbor." She ran her fingers along her stomach, where the wounds should have been. "They told me that I could not return to earth."
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"And what is this Jhelbor?" he asked her. "Some sort of haven for those who escape the underworld? Singing and dancing and weaving of garlands?" He walked over to a bench and plopped himself down in it, folding his arms behind his head and leaning back. "And how did you end up here?"
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And there had only been a handful of the dead in the city. Cassandra really wished she could go find Ianto right now.
"As to how I ended up there...it's a complicated matter. All I know is that I never made it as far as the underworld."
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"So who else was there?" he asked. "Anyone else I should be expecting to run into? One of your brothers?" As he continued, the slightest trace of annoyance entered into his voice. "Or Othryoneus?"
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Another standby movement in her assortment of mad expressions.
"No," she said. "I went to Rowan alone and I came here alone."
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