i'm a path of cinders burning under your feet
There are no mirrors here, no shining steel or perfect pools of water; he cannot see himself but he can feel the difference, as if his mind's eye has perfect vision while the ones on his face remain blind. He is shorter but stronger, his skin is scarred but taned, his hair is long and curled and made golden by Apollo, and his right eye is green while the left stays blue. He is this and he is still the same, and perhaps if there was a pane of glass for him to peer into, he would see no differences - but they are there. He knows this with the easy conviction of the devout, and he is at peace.
Alexander has knelt within Athena's shrine many times now. He comes and goes, leaving gifts for her and sitting quietly, stirring the fires and bowing his head and never knowing what to say. She is a great entity, a pillar of white fire, and she humbles him like he was a child. He is twenty-five now, nearly twenty-six, and he is aching and bruised from heart all the way up to mind, cored out from the exertion of his own thoughts. Perhaps, as lost as he is, one would expect to find him on his knees before Zeus, his father-god, or Dionysus, his patron. They are the gods that have his heart and his soul and he knows them well. Athena, however - Athena knows him. She has been the eagle soaring over every victory, quiet and calculating and fierce. She was there at Troy, when he laid down his armor for her and pulled away his clothes for Achilles.
She knows the weight on his heart because she has seen it.
This time, Alexander has decided, he will finally ask her. He's held closed his lips for this long, never sure how to ask things of the gods besides their favor. The idea of begging something specific feels selfish, and he approaches it with a timidness that he isn't used to wielding. He stokes the fire beneath her altar once more, the bricks warm under him. The light is fading outside, and the small windows let orange beams leak in. He watches as curls of smoke become solid-looking for moments in the glow, and his thoughts are just as wandering and fleeting; though his decision is made, but he is still at a loss.
He's just thinking that he'll sit here for the next week if that's how long it takes him to form his question when the soft sound of sandals over stone draws his attention back from the meandering mental path. On the floor as he is, his eyes catch her feet first, up over her pale blue chiton and long coils of auburn hair. He's expecting a pretty but plain face, a shrine maiden finally seeking out the odd echo of the once-great king, but instead the sight makes his heart skip.
“Thaïs.”
Alexander would know her anywhere. Tall and strikingly gorgeous, all strong-soft curves and carved lines, Ptolemy's consort-lover, the indomitable, unconquerable hetaera. His friend. She smiles and all at once he realizes his mistake but is filled with such euphoria - it's her eyes on his; the light in them is not gold but not white, a color there is no word for, a color he has only seen in dreams and augury. It burns but fills him and steals his breath all at once. The woman blinks once and the light is gone, coiled back inside of her away from the fragile forms of the devout. It is only then that he can break away.
She is not Thaïs, she only wears her visage.
There is none more perfect for her to be.
The woman laughs and curls downward, sitting next to Alexander on the stone floor of her own temple. She covers his hands with one of hers and uses the other to run her fingers through his golden hair, fingertips dancing to his chin to lift his face. Her smile is fond and knowing. “Alexander,” she greets, and her voice is a hundred chiming bells, beautiful enough to bring tears to his eyes. It fades as she speaks, but he will forever hold the memory of what little she's shown him of her divinity. “My brother most loyal. Do not spend so much blood from your heart for me; I know it as I know you, as I know what it is you seek.”
And just like that, it's done. It's asked without him even speaking. Of course she would already know with how often he has come and left her gifts and worried over his selfish thoughts and gone again. She's been watching him this whole time, waiting for him to come to the decision. He doesn't deserve it - not her kindness and not this visitation. It's so easy for him to be egotistical and proud, but never here, never on his knees in the houses of the gods. It's the picture of fanatical obsession and always has been, but no one dared speak against the king about his reverent faith to the gods, and these days - these days it's private. It's something he holds too dear to share with anyone who wouldn't understand, and no one understands.
“You would give anything to see what you need to see,” the goddess tells him, confidently confirming what truth lies inside him. “To know when others cannot.”
“Yes.”
“Your eyes cannot see as we see. Only here.” She touches his chest over his heart, then his head. “So you will leave them with me, and I will give you our sight.”
He stops breathing.
Thaïs-but-not stands, her hands trailing over his shoulders and up over his face, until there is nothing connecting them. He watches her, a hundred thoughts passing through his mind, mixing like smoke and fading light. He can't articulate any of them - how to explain it, how to spin it, how to comfort his mother, how to walk, how to tell his love (when he finds him) why...
There is no question more pressing than the one that forces breath into his lungs again. How can he refuse this gift, the sight of the gods? The cost is immaterial. He knows (and they all knew) that to lay eyes on or listen to any god in their pure form brought death, their own mortal bodies nothing but fleeting mud and sinew in comparison to those luminous, beautiful beings. His mourning is brief, and the shock melts out of him.
Alexander watches her, and he is grateful for the sight. For Thaïs to be the last face he sees is a blessing. Had she taken the form of his sister or his mother, he would have lost his nerve, too heartsick. But Thaïs, beautiful, strong, free Thaïs - she gives him the will he needs. She's seated on the edge of the altar now, and Alexander bends forward to press his head and his hands against her feet in silent thanks.
He accepts.
#
He doesn't want the last thing that he sees to be a blurred image or the edge of a blade; he thinks of Thaïs and the room around him and exhales, knowing that he has suffered more pain than this. The adrenaline of battle would likely help, but alas - he feels like laughing, but wryly. He pulls up the memories of all of the injuries he's suffered, every sword and knife and arrow and bullet, every fall off a horse, every broken nose, every re-set bone.
This is nothing.
Scientifically, he knows it's just a protective membrane and it's only psychological discomfort. He gets over it and thinks of the warriors in the east who slice their stomachs open to honor themselves in death. They have only oblivion to look forward to - he has so much more than that. His darkness is only metaphorical, and nothing to fear. Blood, water, tissue - it hurts but it isn't anything, not really, not until he gets to the optic nerve. Gods, for four hands, to do both at the same time; for all his great self-control and mastery of senses the pain is so much that he feels his consciousness graying, though the only sound that leaves him is a quiet gasp. It's the feeling of it, the void in his own skull, the sensation of blood pouring down his face that disorients him.
The next one goes quicker, because he has to do it and get it done before his shaking hands betray him. He's sure he nicks himself despite it, on his lower eyelid, but his nerves are too in shock to register it and against the blade it just feels like - he doesn't want to think of a metaphor. It's too much.
He doesn't know if it's the pain, the shock, or the blood loss - maybe it's all three, maybe it doesn't matter - but as the knife clatters to the ground signaling that his work is done, Alexander collapses, his mind as dark as his vision.
#
To a man who harbors fear that he may be insane, dreams are never anything but nightmares, even when they're pleasant; a psychological minefield, waiting to destroy him with one huge blast or the smallest misstep. The ability to separate dreams from reality is sometimes lost on him if they're lucid or if he's drunk, and despite the fact that he knows better he still drinks too much wine and wakes up cold and grieving, lost in the turbulence of his own mind.
As such, it's an ingrained reaction to feel something like startled dismay when he realizes that he's dreaming, and the lack of it now strikes him as odd. For he must be dreaming: he is floating in the sun-gold-god-color and he is not a man at all anymore but a being made of glass; he is filled with warm water and all he knows is peace.
A figure stands before him: he is light and fire and though he has no features, Alexander can see his beauty, so striking that it would blind him or steal his loyalty or a hundred other wonderful, damning things if he looked upon him with mortal eyes. He takes Alexander's hands and he knows that this is no Athena. The god before him runs his flame hands up his arms to take his face, and he kisses Alexander like a lover, like he knows every inch of his soul and loves every beautiful, courageous, cowardly, broken, selfish part of him.
Once more, it's just too much.
#
He's laying in bed, and a window must be open - he feels sunlight on him and an intermittent breeze; he can hear leaves fluttering and the occasional bird and, briefly, the child of the couple on the other side of the private valley. He must be in the new house in Tarzana.
Alexander breathes out and his chest is heavy, like he's been asleep for far too long. The ceiling slowly comes into focus as he blinks and stretches, and it's not until he's shifted around to try and pull a kink out of his shoulder that sudden disorienting panic sets in and he sits up in one startled motion.
The ceiling - the room his hands his eyes. It seems immensely stupid to reach up and touch his own face when he's obvious that his eyes are still in his own head and intact when he can see things, but he can't help it. He feels lightheaded and nauseous - not that someone should be dismayed to discover they haven't actually carved their own eyes out, but that fear, that old, twisting fear that was absent during his gold-soaked fever-dream is coiling around his heart with a vengeance.
It's all imaginary, isn't it, the whole thing, my entire self--
He pulls himself up and off the bed and he feels weak and sore. His joints ache and his stomach feels numb from lack of food, and his throat hurts from need of water. How long as he been like this? It feels like days. He all but stumbles into the bathroom and leans heavily on the counter, staring into his reflection as if it can answer all the frantic, desperate questions in his head. He needs to shave, his hair's a mess, and though they're bloodshot and rimmed in gray, his eyes - perfect, blue, beautiful - are right there looking back at him.
He could cry, but he doesn't. He doesn't have the energy or, it seems, the liquid to spare. He's wrecked, and he has no idea how he got this way. He doesn't know where his phone is, what time it is or what day it is, but he'd put money on at least his parents being distressed over his whereabouts. He decides to deal with it later, and he lets out a shaking breath as his head drops, shoulders hunched. He looks and feels like shit, and he sounds just as ragged as he is.
“Christ - Zeus, father - I've - I'm losing my fucking mind.”
“Oh, I don't think that you are.”
His head snaps up, meeting his own startled gaze. That's it, then, he's hallucinating conversations with his own suppressed psyche, he'll wake up tomorrow in a mental hospital, it's all over and done for, burned, and so soon-
From here, with the bathroom door open, only a sliver of his bedroom is visible. It's just enough to catch sight of the man seated on his bed.
He should be afraid or angry - something, anything - but he isn't, hanging back in the doorway and watching him, one hand resting on the frame. Alexander knows this man, and it cows him. Shorter than he is but athletically proportioned, wide brown eyes and high cheekbones and dark curled hair, he watches Alexander back with gentle expectancy. When it becomes clear that he's not moving away from the bathroom doorway, he rises - his ash gray suit staying in perfect order - before crossing the room to join him, one hand raising to brush over his stubble-covered cheek and hold him, eyes searching his.
“Alexander.”
He lowers his head and Dionysus breathes out a laugh, pulling the younger - so much younger, in every way - man into his arms fully. His embrace is the same as in his dream, and though he is flesh and bone here, Alexander can still feel that fire from within him. “You'll see what you need to see,” he promises him in a whisper. “For your love I give you mine, though mine is so much more shallow. My sister, she laughs at me for my aestheticism, but she has her ways and I have mine. My ways are yours too here, Alexander, even if only for this moment.”
His mother's god, his patron, brushes his fingers over Alexander's mouth and tilts his face up and kisses him again. He tastes like wine.
“Don't stop, not ever,” he whispers. “And don't tell anyone. No one else shares our blood. I am selfish, and I want this just for you and I.”
#
The house is empty except for Alex and his sheepdog, waiting patiently in the kitchen and watching with single-minded intensity as he cooks up stir-fry. He's listening to Joan Jett and singing along, off-key. The sun is setting outside and all the patio doors are open. It's beautiful.
“Can't break free from the things that you do,” he talks along, bobbing his head, knowing his only audience doesn't give a fuck that he can't carry a tune if his life depended on it. Nana gets a scrap of chicken once it's thoroughly cooked, and Alex hums and slides across the tile on socked feet to pick up his phone when it rings.
“Hello! Yeah, sure. What time? No, I haven't, I was just making something, but I can put it in the fridge...”
In the midst of his conversation he glances up at his pale reflection in the glass of his kitchen window. He looks just like he always does, but when he blinks, he feels a subdued lightning-crack scrape against his upper zygomatic: behind his eyes.
He doesn't startle. He should.
He'll always feel it.
It's all right.